Class, Culture and Suburban Anxieties in the Victorian Era (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature)

190 Pages·2009·1.39 MB·English

by  Lara Baker Whelan

Class, Culture and
Suburban Anxieties in the
Victorian Era
Routledge Studies in
Nineteenth-Century Literature
1. Nineteenth-Century Narratives
of Contagion
‘Our Feverish Contact’
Allan Conrad Christensen
2. Victorian Servants, Class, and the
Politcs of Literacy
Jean Fernandez
3. Christian and Lyric Tradition in
Victorian Women’s Poetry
F. Elizabeth Gray
4. Class, Culture and Suburban
Anxieties in the Victorian Era
Lara Baker Whelan
Class, Culture and
Suburban Anxieties in the
Victorian Era
Lara Baker Whelan
New York London
First published 2010
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Whelan, Lara Baker, 1966–
Class, culture and suburban anxieties in the Victorian era / by Lara Baker Whelan.
p. cm.—(Routledge studies in nineteenth-century literature ; 4)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. English fiction—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Middle class in
literature. 3. Suburbs in literature. 4. Suburban life in literature. 5. Middle class—
Great Britain—History—19th century. 6. Suburbs—Great Britain—History—19th
century. 7. Suburban life—Great Britain—History—19th century. I. Title.
PR878.M53W47 2009
823'.8093552—dc22
2009024921
ISBN 0-203-86402-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-80217-2 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-86402-6 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-80217-8 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-86402-9 (ebk)
To Paul, who was there in the beginning, and to John
Raymond and Bonnie Victoria, who helped see it to the end.

Contents
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 Introduction: “Scenes of Peace and Quietude,” or Victorian
Fantasies of Suburban Utopia 1
2 Dying of One’s Neighbors: Victorian Suburban Literature and
Its Deconstruction of the Suburban Ideal 24
3 Where There Is No Profl igacy, Drunkenness or Crime:
Representations of the Working Class and Origins of Suburban
Anxieties 40
4 Cracks in the Façade: Looking Behind the Cult of the
Picturesque in Victorian Suburban Fiction 59
5 Controlling “That Region of Irregular Bodies”: The
Uninhabitable House and the Suburban Ghost Story 75
6 Gothic Terrors: The Suburban Ruin and Sensation Fiction 99
7 Sublime Suburbs 120
8 Conclusion: The Death of the Suburban Ideal and the Rise of
the “New” Suburban, 1880–1914 140
Appendix 159
Notes 161
Bibliography 167
Index 175

Figures
1.1 Nineteenth-century London expansion. 4
1.2 Ealing, 1881: an example of an ideal suburb. 15
2.1 The vision of the City from which suburbanites
wanted to escape. 25
2.2 The crowds in Regent’s Park, bordering the northern
suburbs. 36
2.3 The crowds on Hampstead Heath. 37
3.1 Umbrella mender and ginger-beer sellers on Clapham
Common, 1877. 44
6.1 Gustave Doré’s view of London from a train, 1872. 109
A.1 Outline Map of Greater London. 159