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Article: Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America.
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- April 23, 1990
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1990 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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SEARCHING THE HEART-. Women, Men, and Romantic Love in NineteenthCentury America. By Karen Lystra. Oxford University Press. 336pp. $24.95.
Historians, who make it their business to read other peoples mail, have largely ignored love letters. In Sewrhing the Heart, Karen Lystra examines the love letters of more than a hundred men and women and finds those letters a rich source for understanding the private/public dichotomy at the heart of middle-class Victorian culture. Lystra's engaging study adds to the literature that rejects the old stereotype of Victorian sexual repression and moves beyond it to advance the more provocative and more problematic argument that ...