Legal Narratives in Victorian Fiction

Description

The law holds up a mirror to society and reflects that society and its ongoing preoccupations. This book establishes legal interpretation as a mode of literary interpretation, contextualising the opinions and sociological background of literature within the context of the law of its period and examines the inherent role of the law in the construction of the narrative in the literature of the nineteenth century. From the approach to the operation of jurisprudence and legal application, to the prosecution of the poor, the criminological approach to moral panics and the use of the affirmative defence to mitigate women within society, this book explores the ways in which the authors of the period used the novel form as a way of challenging and critiquing the legal operating model of the world in which their characters found themselves; examining the way in which the authors of the period used the novel as a means of critiquing the nature of the role of the law within society, its impact upon the general public, and the reciprocity which exists between legal ideals and the society which manifests those ideals through thought and action. This is a useful text for students of nineteenth-century literature or the law. Cover Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgements 1 A Trying Situation: Narrative Structure and the Law 1.1 The Law as a Mirror 1.2 Legislation and the Civil Law Background 1.3 Social Change 1.4 Fiction 1.5 The Law and Society 1.6 The Novels 1.6.1 Authors and Novels in Context 1.6.2 The Spirit of the Law, the Letter of the Law and the Administration of Justice 1.6.2.1 George Eliot 1.6.2.2 Wilkie Collins 1.6.3 Arthur Conan Doyle 1.6.4 Prosecuting the Poor: Victorian Poverty and the Poor Laws 1.6.5 Charles Dickens 1.6.6 Elizabeth Gaskell 1.6.7 Women and the Defence of Insanity 1.6.7.1 Charlotte Brontë 1.6.7.2 Mary Elizabeth Braddon Notes 2 Order in the Courts: The Writer and the Legal Applicability Debate 2.1 The Influence of Jurisprudence 2.2 The Spirit of the Law and the Letter of the Law 2.3 Structure of the Law and Fiction 2.4 Felix Holt: Questioning the Letter of the Law 2.5 The Law and the Lady: The Spirit of the Law 2.6 A Study in Scarlet: Jurisprudence Perfected 2.7 Prudent Jurisprudence Notes 3 Prosecuting the Poor: Victorian Poverty and the Poor Laws 3.1 The Criminology of the Prosecution of the Poor 3.2 Class and Culture in Victorian England 3.3 Moral Panics and Folk Devils 3.4 The Criminal Poor 3.5 The Novels 3.5.1 Oliver Twist 3.5.2 Mary Barton 3.6 The Criminal Poor 3.7 Poverty and the Law Notes 4 Bad and Mad: Defending the Criminal Woman 4.1 Mad and Bad 4.2 The Defence of Insanity 4.3 Criminal Women 4.4 The Criminal Defence of Women 4.5 Guilty By Reason of Insanity 4.5.1 Jane Eyre 4.5.2 Lady Audley’s Secret 4.6 Legal Madness Notes Bibliography Index