In Charlotte Riddell's A Struggle for Fame (1883), motherless Glenarva Westley becomes a professional novelist to support first her financially ruined father and then her insolvent husband. This article examines the impact of Glen's father and husband on her development as not only an author, but also as an autonomous person, and reads A Struggle for Fame as a novel in which independence, creativity, productivity, and contentment are threatened by emotional and familial commitments. Neither Glen's father nor husband deliberately hinder her professional progress, but the financial and emotional drains they place on her outweigh their attempts at support. The novel concerns the worldly themes of business and professionalism for which Riddell was famous, and some of the particular difficulties encountered by women in the public sphere and the marketplace. It also, however, explores more universal existential anxieties about selfhood and the subordination of duty to oneself to duty to one's family. Significantly, Glen's greatest professional successes are coupled with the deaths of her father and husband, who due to his age and demeanour acts as a father figure, meaning that Riddell effectively shows Glen to be twice-orphaned, and so twice liberated from family constraints.
Reclaiming lost or forgotten (Victorian) popular women writers and their works is still an important, ongoing aim of literary and gender studies. In this article, we take the Key Popular Women Writers series, published by Edward Everett Root Publishers and edited by Janine Hatter and Helena Ifill, as one example of a current series that continues and develops this feminist practice. By drawing upon the research, writing and publishing practice of current women academics, as well as related issues concerning literary value, canonicity and the popularity of the Victorian writers themselves, we showcase the methodological and pedagogical practice of finding motivation and inspiration beyond that which is established as the norm. Furthermore, through examining the current political, academic and publishing fields’ impact on researching and teaching (Victorian) popular fiction, we discuss breakthroughs, challenges and potential ways for the study of this area to move forward. Popular women’s writing continues to offer readers, students and academics, ways to challenge conventions, embrace the multi-faceted nature of our field and take our place on the landscape.
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