This work examines the dialectic of desire and value, as it affects the protagonist's identity, in fiction from Dickens and George Eliot through Hardy and Conrad to Lawrence and Joyce. Philip Weinstein describes the growing sexualization of the imagined body--the transformation of the protagonistic self from a figure defined by semantics, signification, and cultural value to one characterized by desire, force, and natural impulse.

Originally published in 1984.

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