Adopting the Next Generation: Parenting in Women’s Writing of the 1880s

Wagner discusses parenting in the work of Victorian female authors who were ageing in the transitional decade of the 1880s, arguing that their writing captures a profound awareness of literary and larger cultural change. In particular, Wagner shows that parenting emerges as a central theme in several of their works, not simply because it forms a central concern of Victorian women, reflecting debates on the mother’s role in the family and in society, but also because it provides a metaphor for cross-generational influence. Examining Margaret Oliphant’s Hester (1883), Charlotte Yonge’s Chantry House (1886), and Dinah Mulock Craik’s King Arthur: Not A Love Story (1886), all of which feature ageing protagonists who ensure their continued influence by parenting the next generation, Wagner shows that these three 1880s novels portray the changing perceptions and realities of women’s roles in late Victorian Britain, while revealing the writers’ reflections on what these changes meant for their place in literature.