Readers and Mistresses

Katie R. Peel is Professor of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington

• Introduction: ‘“I am my own mistress”’: Kept women in Victorian literature1 Old, particular, fallen, mustachioed, and queer: Other kept women2 The women who did (and the men who did not)3 Wives and mistresses in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall4 Marian Evans' story: The kept woman in Daniel Deronda5 Near mis(tres)ses: Narrative potential v. dead endsConclusion: ‘Conventionality is not morality’ReferencesIndex

'there is more to the kept woman than the conflicted figure in The Awakening Conscience, and Peel ensures that we see that figure in all of its complexity, and with fresh eyes.'— Simon Cooke, Victorian Web