Devoted Sisters: Representations of the Sister Relationship in Nineteenth-century British and American Literature

Devoted Sisters seeks to explore - and explain - the power of the sister bond in nineteenth-century literature. Sarah Annes Brown has researched a wide range of British and American texts, including both canonical works, such as Pride and Prejudice, Little Women and Middlemarch, and fascinating but lesser known novels by authors such as Dinah Mulock Craik and Catharine Sedgwick. In addition to contemporary resources such as conduct books, letters, and accounts of parliamentary proceedings, Devoted Sisters draws on recent psychoanalytical and anthropological research to illuminate nineteenth-century depictions of the sister relationship. Building on the work of Girard and Kosofsky Sedgwick, Brown concludes her study with an exploration of the Deceased Wife's Sister Act and the 'lesbian incest effect'.