The limits of sympathy : professional philanthropy and detachment in narrative, 1869-1914

The Limits of Sympathy intervenes in the scholarly conversation surrounding the relationship between philanthropic reform and the novel as well as the role of women in philanthropic work during late Victorian England. Importantly, this project brings archival texts, such as the philanthropic case reports of the Charity Organisation Society, into the conversation in order to demonstrate how the professionalization of philanthropy eliminated the role of sympathy in philanthropic work and narrative. Where philanthropic texts created new narrative forms to grapple with the New Poor Laws and the changing urban environment of late Victorian London, novels by George Eliot, Walter Besant, H. G. Wells, Edith Johnstone, and Isabella Ford considered how the adoption of professionalized, distanced discourse affected women's perception of and participation in philanthropic work. These novels demonstrate how our current critical reliance on sympathy as a way to mediate the relationship between philanthropic and poor characters, as well as between reader and novel, no longer works within the context of professionalized philanthropy. -- Abstract.