Ambitious Heights

<p>How did the Victorian woman cope with the image of herself as a writer?</p><p>What were the constraints on female friendships in a world centred on the pre-eminence of the husband?</p><p>How significant for an ambitious woman were her politics about men?</p><p>At the heart of this book originally published in 1990 is a friendship between two women: Jane Carlyle and the novelist Geraldine Jewsbury. But it was a difficult friendship and in its difficulty lies much that is illuminating: about nineteenth-century domestic ideology; about writing for a market and female fame; and about the complex ambivalences between women.</p><p>Examining aspects of their lives writing and relationships alongside those of two other writers – Felicia Hemans and Geraldine’s sister Maria Jane – Norma Clarke provides a subtle and illuminating discussion of the possibilities that were open to women in the Victorian age.</p>