Although history records that the British nineteenth century was obsessed with order,conventionality, and conformity, there were many Victorians from all walks of life, across lines of class, race, and gender, who resisted social mores and sometimes the laws themselves, in a variety of ways and to varying degrees. Some expressed dissension through music, art, literature, and social protest. Others were more subtle like manipulative wives who gained what they wanted while seemingly remaining docile and submissive. Some rebellion fermented into social and political movements. The revolt of still others was extremely executed by serial killers, criminals, and suicides. Contemporary readers can learn from these rebels and discern what values and ways that were uniquely Victorian should be retained and those that should be rejected after having observed their outcomes. To that end, this collection of essays offers a study for both novice and expert on Victorian rebels.
Figures
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: What Is a Victorian Rebel?
Brenda Ayres and Catherine Layton
Part I: A Rebel with a Pen
1 Oscar Wilde’s Velvet Rebellion
Nick Freeman
2 George Egerton’s Marriage Questions: Henry Peter Higginson “of unsavory memory” and Egerton Clairmonte, Imperial Vagabond
Gail Savage
3 The Morphology of Rebellion: Critiquing Colonial Alterity, Subversive Subalternity, and Dangerous Desires during the Great India Revolt in On the Face of the Waters
Preeshita Biswas and Purna Banerjee
4 Works of Quiet Rebels: The Unconventional Brontë Sisters
Catherine J. Golden
5 Florence Marryat’s Rebel Spiritualism
S. Brooke Cameron and Rachel M. Friars
6 Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Rebellion against “Monkeyhood”: The Contest between the “Determinate Counsel” and the Evolution Theories of Robert Chambers
Lauren Nicole Cameron
7 The Covert Rebels: The Curious Case of the Two Country-Born Anglo-Indians, Kipling and Kim
Sujata (Susie) Chattopadhyay
8 “Fierce as a Dragon”: New Zealand’s Rebellious Mary Taylor
Emily Dotson
9 Folly to Suppose It: Grace Aguilar’s Talmudic Apologia
Lindsay Katzir
Part II: A Rebel with a Cause
10 Lord Alfred Douglas: “Two Loves” and Two Rebellions
Aaron Eames
11 Rebellious Crank or Cranky Rebel? Caroline Giacometti Prodgers and Married Women’s Property, 1860‒1890
Ginger Frost
12 Rebel and Reactionary: The Case of Millicent Garrett Fawcett
Julie Donovan
13 From Helston to Benares: Katie Johns’ Journey to Theosophy
Julia Courtney
14 Free of Stays: Lady Florence Dixie and the Woman Question
Catherine Layton
15 Victorian Suicide: The Ultimate Act of Rebellion
Brenda Ayres
Part III: Rebels in Movement(s)
16 Bohemians and Bohemianism: Rebelling Against Mrs. Grundy
Catherine Layton
17 The Pre-Raphaelite Rebellion
Anne Anderson
18 Cranks and Crankdoms: Arts and Crafts Rebels and Rural Utopias
Anne Anderson
19 Topsy-Turvy Gilbert and Sullivan
Scott Hayes
20 Old Boy Uprisings: Rebellion and Reform at Victorian Public Schools
Daniel Stuart
21 Creating Work Opportunities for Women: The Tortoise of Polite Rebellion
Catherine Layton
22 Ishan Chandra Rai and the Pabna Peasant Uprising
Marshall Needleman Armintor
23 Enfranchising the Uitlanders: The Second Boer War and “Good Citizenship” in Baden-Powell and Chesterton
Clay Cogswell
24 Victorian Ghosts: Too Rebellious to Stay Dead
Brenda Ayres
25 Pickling the Past: Neo-Victorian Rebellion Against Victorian Morality
Brenda Ayres
Index
Biography
Brenda Ayres, now retired from full‑time residential teaching, currently teaches online in the graduate program for English Literature for Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. She has edited and authored chapters in The Palgrave Handbook of Neo-Victorianism (2024), The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture (2023), Neo-Victorian Things (2022), Neo-Disneyism: Inclusivity in the Twenty-First Century of Disney’s Magic Kingdom (2022), The Theological Dickens (Routledge, 2022), Neo-Victorian Madness: Rediagnosing Nineteenth-Century Mental Illness in Literature and Other Media (2020), Neo-Gothic Narratives: Illusory Allusions from the Past (2020), Animals and Their Children in Victorian Culture (Routledge, 2019), and Reinventing Marie Corelli for the Twenty-first Century (2019). Most recently, she has written and published Wollstonecraft and Religion (2024), and Becoming Wollstonecraft: The Interconnection of Her Life and Works (Routledge, 2024). Many of her other works are listed at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brenda+ayres&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2.
