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Cover image for book The Professional Ideal in the Victorian Novel

The Professional Ideal in the Victorian Novel

The Works of Disraeli, Trollope, Gaskell, and Eliot
By:S. Colon
Publisher:Springer Nature
Print ISBN:9781403976130
eText ISBN:9780230604254
Edition:0
Copyright:2007
Format:Page Fidelity

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This book makes the claim that Victorian novels do not simply reflect professional ideology; they also scrutinize its dilemmas, contradictions, and limitations. In this volume, innovative readings of canonical texts like Sybil, Barchester Towers, Romola, and Daniel Deronda accompany groundbreaking work on less familiar texts like Tancred and My Lady Ludlow to illuminate the Victorians' own struggles with the emerging professional ideology. The Victorians' engagement with fundamental ideas of professional identity such as autonomy, meritocracy, and the service ethic reveal professionalism's dual basis in materialist and idealist rationalities.