Communities of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction

297 Pages·2021·5.096 MB·English

by  Talia Schaffer

communities of care

Communities of Care
the social ethics
of victorian fiction
Talia Schafer
prince ton university press
princet on & oxford
Copyright © 2021 by Prince ton University Press
“Small Kindnesses” from Bonfre Opera by Danusha Laméris, © 2020. Reprinted by
permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
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Jacket Credit: Ford Madox Brown, Henry Fawcett; Dame Millicent Fawcett, 1872.
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10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
Dedicated to the friends who have sustained me,
especially Nicole, who for the past twenty years
has been a care community in herself

Small Kindnesses
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “ Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of cofee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so l ittle of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fre. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
feeting temples we make together when we say, “H ere,
have my seat,” “Go ahead— you frst,” “I like your hat.”
—d anusha laméris, bonfire opera

contents
Preface and Acknowl edgments  · xi
Introduction: Care Communities Today 1
chapter 1 Ethics of Care and the Care Community 28
chapter 2 Austen, Dickens, and Brontë: Bodies
before the Normate 60
chapter 3 Global Mi grant Care and Emotional L abor
in Villette 88
chapter 4 Beyond Sympathy: The State of Care
in Daniel Deronda 117
chapter 5 Care Meets the S ilent Treatment in
The Wings of the Dove 140
chapter 6 Composite Fiction and the Care
Community in The Heir of Redclyfe 160
Epilogue: Critical Care 189
Notes  · 219
Works Cited  · 243
Index  · 2 67
[ ix ]