Routledge Handbook of Victorian Rebels

Although history records that the British nineteenth century was obsessed with order,conventionality, and conformity, there were many Victorians from all walks of life, across lines of class, race, and gender, who resisted social mores and sometimes the laws themselves, in a variety of ways and to varying degrees. Some expressed dissension through music, art, literature, and social protest. Others were more subtle like manipulative wives who gained what they wanted while seemingly remaining docile and submissive. Some rebellion fermented into social and political movements. The revolt of still others was extremely executed by serial killers, criminals, and suicides. Contemporary readers can learn from these rebels and discern what values and ways that were uniquely Victorian should be retained and those that should be rejected after having observed their outcomes. To that end, this collection of essays offers a study for both novice and expert on Victorian rebels.

Brenda Ayres, now retired from full‑time residential teaching, currently teaches online in the graduate program for English Literature for Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. She has edited and authored chapters in The Palgrave Handbook of Neo-Victorianism (2024), The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture (2023), Neo-Victorian Things (2022), Neo-Disneyism: Inclusivity in the Twenty-First Century of Disney’s Magic Kingdom (2022), The Theological Dickens (Routledge, 2022), Neo-Victorian Madness: Rediagnosing Nineteenth-Century Mental Illness in Literature and Other Media (2020), Neo-Gothic Narratives: Illusory Allusions from the Past (2020), Animals and Their Children in Victorian Culture (Routledge, 2019), and Reinventing Marie Corelli for the Twenty-first Century (2019). Most recently, she has written and published Wollstonecraft and Religion (2024), and Becoming Wollstonecraft: The Interconnection of Her Life and Works (Routledge, 2024). Many of her other works are listed at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brenda+ayres&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2.