Victorian Fiction and the Cult of the HorseThe horse was essential to the workings of Victorian society, and its representations, which are vast, ranging, and often contradictory, comprise a vibrant cult of the horse. Examining the representational, emblematic, and rhetorical uses of horses in a diversity of nineteenth-century texts, Gina M. Dorré shows how discourses about horses reveal and negotiate anxieties related to industrialism and technology, constructions of gender and sexuality, ruptures in the social fabric caused by class conflict and mobility, and changes occasioned by national "progress" and imperial expansion. She argues that as a cultural object, the horse functions as a repository of desire and despair in a society rocked by astonishing social, economic, and technological shifts. While representations of horses abound in Victorian fiction, Gina M. Dorré's study focuses on those novels by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Braddon, Anna Sewell, and George Moore that engage with the most impassioned controversies concerning horses and horse-care, such as the introduction of the steam engine, popular new methods of horse-taming, debates over the tight-reining of horses, and the moral furor surrounding gambling at the race track. Her book establishes the centrality of the horse as a Victorian cultural icon and explores how through it, dominant ideologies of gender and class are created, promoted, and disrupted. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic animal Anna Sewell anxiety articulates Aurora Floyd authority bearing-rein Black Beauty body bourgeois Braddon Brown constructions corset critics cult of domesticity depiction Dickens Dickens’s discourses Dombey Dombey and Son Dombey's domestic ideology domestic sphere domination dress reform economic Edith equestrian equine Esther Waters fashion female feminine fetish Fin De Siècle function gambling gender and class George Moore Horse Taming horse's horsebreaking horsey heroine human ideal ideologies of gender industrial Kranidis late-century literary literature London male manliness marriage Mary Elizabeth Braddon masculine agency masculinity mass culture middle-class modern Moore's moral narrative narrator nature nineteenth century novel Oxford Parker physical Pickwick Papers Pickwickians popular production Queen racehorses racing railway Rarey Rarey's representation reveals rhetoric riding roles scene sensation Sensation Novel Sewell Sewell's sexual signifies social symbolic thoroughbred traditional trope turf University Press Victorian culture Victorian Literature Victorian masculinity Vixen woman women Woodview York