Sexuality and erotic desire were important components of Victorian culture, and the novels of the Victorian era reflect the sexual attitudes of the authors and culture of that period. "The Stone and the Scorpion" focuses on the interplay of erotics in the novels of Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. Using several extra-literary critical approaches, particularly feminist gender-relations theory, this book determines degrees of female subjectivity and desire in these novels.

At the heart of the study is the belief that the disruption of conventional male-female dualities is...