ABSTRACT
Eighteenth-century women are generally allowed less latitude than men in Victorian historical fiction. The patriarchal view that tends to divide women into two categories – angel or whore – is inimical to social, moral or historical relativity. The presentation of costume is again a helpful indicator of Victorian attitudes. Victorian historical novels can appear like exceptionally vivid dreams of the youth, inhabited by characters whose faults are judged by Victorian standards, and whose virtues spring from aspirations to become Victorians before their time. It was easy to invent characters who imagined, or even helped to bring about, the material, moral and intellectual conditions within which, as Victorian artifacts, they were being created. The difficulty lay in making their aspirations and conduct comprehensible and convincing in terms of their own historical period: there was a danger that these 'half-way' characters might become temporally displaced outsiders.
