Victorian Fictions of Middle-Class Status

Essential reading for Victorianists, this book gives a powerful and illuminating account of the novel’s role in defining the middle class. Set against birth and wealth, force and fact, desire and authority – the middle class, Pionke shows us, was knowable only by way of its others -- Caroline Levine, Cornell University
Pionke’s approach to examining the connective tissue between life and literature ultimately sets this work apart from previous investigations... The study ultimately deserves praise for offering a new set of categorisations that shaped the Victorian middle-class as represented in, and influenced by, nineteenth-century fiction: more work employing this multidisciplinary route will be welcome and insightful. -- Hendrikje Kaube * Romance, Revolution & Reform *
Pionke’s striking innovation is to propose that mid-Victorian bourgeoisie strove to justify their status in negative terms. His persuasive and thought-provoking work allows readers to connect current-day notions of class and economic privilege to an earlier period of capitalist plutocracy – a period in which questions of privilege and invidious economic comparisons found their expression in very different cultural forms." -- John Plotz, Brandeis University