ABSTRACT

It is probably safe to say that there is no aspect of Victorian literature, as in other domains of Victorian culture, which was not conditioned to some degree by social class. It is also true that there are few elements of the class system in Victorian Britain that were not addressed by literary interventions. Yet despite the importance of class for Victorians (and hence for Victorianists), the category “class” as a vector of analysis seems to have slipped out of the spotlight. Considered from a broader perspective, however, class critique is alive and well—in studies of working-class literature, domesticity, gender, and the family, as well as in work on professionalism and ritual behaviors. If class is not an exclusive or primary focus in the literary and cultural projects we see today, it is because it has generally been interpolated into other intersecting modes of analysis.