ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some closing thoughts on key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explores the role of nostalgia and inheritance in novels by late Victorian women writers. For Olive Schreiner, Ella Hepworth Dixon, Margaret Oliphant, Sarah Grand, Gertrude Dix, and many of their contemporaries, dress and textile culture provided an important link with a material past. In order to conclude the study of women's dual literacy and dress culture in the late Victorian period, author tells a story of a small square of knitted yarn, a dishrag made by her grandmother. The book discusses that late Victorian women novelists used their education in the material culture of dress and sewing to old and new purposes. It argues that Victorian women writers found inspiration in a variety of material cultures, such as furniture, landscape painting, and interior design.
