Victorians and the Virgin Mary

This interdisciplinary study of competing representations of the Virgin Mary examines how anxieties about religious and gender identities intersected to create public controversies that, whilst ostensibly about theology and liturgy, were also attempts to define the role and nature of women. Drawing on a variety of sources, this book seeks to revise our understanding of the Victorian religious landscape by retrieving Catholics from the cultural margins to which they are usually relegated. By showing that the Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics constituted a significant proportion of Victorian society that was opposed to the Protestant majority, this analysis more accurately evaluates their contributions to Victorian culture.In addition, this analysis of the Protestant hostility toward the Virgin Mary and preference toward a more ordinary woman suggests that Protestant clergymen, who are generally associated with promoting the feminine ideal associated with nineteenth-century culture, were actually uneasy about the ideal when they realized it could give women a great deal of public power. This book will be useful to advanced students and scholars in a variety of disciplines including history, religious studies, Victorian studies, women's history and gender studies, as well as the educated lay reader who is interested in changing views of the Virgin Mary.

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