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The Other Dickens by Lillian Nayder; Victorian London’s Middle-Class Housewife – what she did all day by Yaffa Draznin and Dinner for Dickens by Susan M. Rossi Wilcox<\/p><\/div>\n
In the chapter \u201cReconstructing Catherine\u201d in her magnificent tome \u201cThe Other Dickens<\/a>\u201d Lillian Nayder<\/a> writes about her motivations for researching the life of Catherine in an explanation that really resonates with me;<\/p>\n Rather than search for an \u201cessential\u201d Catherine Dickens, this book considers how she presented herself to the world, constructing and reconstructing her own identity while also being constructed by others. It looks at her from an array of vantage points, acknowledging discrepancies rather than seeking to obscure them, and approaching selfhood as a largely relational phenomenon. I have been thoroughly energised by reading Lillian\u2019s book. It is a rich, scholarly investigation into Catherine\u2019s life, and it saves her from being defined entirely by her marriage to Charles Dickens \u2013 a fate compounded both by Charles\u2019s narrative powers, and by subsequent generations of scholars who have taken his<\/em> word over hers<\/em>. In its thorough investigations into the complexity of selfhood for women in Victorian Britain, and in its respectful examination of Catherine\u2019s life, marriage and relationships, it paints an engaging and well-evidenced portrait of a lively, competent, warm and loving woman with proud Scottish origins and a wide circle of friends. It is then a book about Catherine Dickens, but it has wider implications for understanding what life was like more generally for women in Victorian Britain. It also models some of the scholarly strategies that might be used to retrieve women \u2013 like Catherine \u2013 whose lives are scantly documented, and whose experiences, versions of events and social role are simply not as well represented as those of men. This matters a great deal for the future as well as for the past, because with each fragment of obfuscated female experience unearthed from the archives and given a bigger place in history, the version of the world passed on to future generations becomes a bit more balanced; a bit more equal, by increments. <\/p>\n
\nCatherine\u2019s story helps us understand the workings of her culture and ours. For all its notoriety, her situation as Dickens\u2019s estranged wife merely publicized the potential vulnerabilities of all Victorian wives, legally denied properly and custody rights well into the nineteenth century, many of whom struggled to embrace submission and service as womanly duties, as Catherine long did. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n