Gendering the silver fork: Catherine Gore and the society novel

Abstract

Catherine Gore (1799–1861) was best known as the witty and prolific author of “silver fork” novels in which she satirised the fashionable world of nineteenth-century England. Although she single-handedly sustained the fashionable novel's popularity for three decades, Gore has been overshadowed by Edward Bulwer and Benjamin Disraeli, to whom she is most often compared. The suggestion that she was a mere imitator of her more famous male colleagues has further marginalised an already neglected author. A closer examination of the fashionable fiction of Bulwer, Disraeli, and Gore challenges the familiar constructions of the silver fork novel and suggests two distinct genres: the dandy novel and the society novel, or, respectively, the male and female fashionable novels. The attempt at restructuring the fashionable novel which follows in this article aims to encourage a re-reading of Gore and a re-evaluation of her contributions to nineteenth-century literature