What fueled the Victorian passion for hair-jewelry and memorial rings?
When would an everyday object metamorphose from commodity to precious
relic? In Portable Property, John Plotz examines the new role played
by portable objects in persuading Victorian Britons that they could
travel abroad with religious sentiments, family ties, and national
identity intact. In an empire defined as much by the circulation of
capital as by force of arms, the challenge of preserving Englishness
while living overseas became a central Victorian preoccupation, creating
a pressing need for objects that could readily travel abroad as
personifications of Britishness. At the same time a radically new
relationship between cash value and sentimental associations arose in
certain resonant mementoes--in teacups, rings, sprigs of heather, and
handkerchiefs, but most of all in books.
Portable Property examines how culture-bearing objects came to stand
for distant people and places, creating or preserving a sense of self
and community despite geographic dislocation. Victorian novels--because
they themselves came to be understood as the quintessential portable
property--tell the story of this change most clearly. Plotz analyzes a
wide range of works, paying particular attention to George Eliot's
Daniel Deronda, Anthony Trollope's Eustace Diamonds, and R. D.
Blackmore's Lorna Doone. He also discusses Thomas Hardy and William
Morris's vehement attack on the very notion of cultural portability. The
result is a richer understanding of the role of objects in British
culture at home and abroad during the Age of Empire.
