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Monday 22 February 2021

Brian Holland: ‘Angel in the House … or Angel in Heaven?’

In the first member’s presentation ever given to our group by Zoom, Brian Holland entertained us with a lively talk on 18 February 2021 entitled ‘Angel in the House … or Angel in Heaven? How the patriarchy operated in Victorian England with illustrations from the visual and verbal culture of the period.’

Brian recently completed a Master’s in Studies in Literature and Arts at Kellogg College, Oxford, and his talk was based on his Master’s dissertation (‘Fallen women and fearful men in English visual and verbal culture — 1850-70’). In a richly illustrated talk, Brian explored the double standards of the patriarchy in a period in which women tended to be categorised in binary fashion as either ‘respectable’ or transgressive.