"All she knew was, that she wished to live": late-Victorian realism, liberal-feminist ideals, and George Gissing's In the Year of the Jubilee.(Critical Essay) From: Studies in the Novel | Date: March 22, 2004| Author: Youngkin, Molly | COPYRIGHT 2004 University of North Texas. 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.Copyright information

Toward the beginning of In the Year of the Jubilee, George Gissing's 1894 novel about a young, middle-class woman who struggles with her identity in a non-traditional marriage, the narrator draws for his readers a picture of the heroine, Nancy Lord. Through his external view of her, the narrator characterizes Nancy as happy and healthy, "a well-grown girl of three and twenty, with the complexion and the mould of form which indicate, whatever else, habitual nourishment on good and p...