Title: “Wife Sale” in 19th Century English Literature and Its Sexual Politics

Abstract: The Enclosure Movement really was coming to its end by the 1830s but leave as is if the article itself is also inaccurate, when machines replaced cottage industries workshop crafts and commodity economy replaced natural economy, farmers became vagrants, craftsmen went bankrupt, workers lost their jobs, and the uneven distribution of wealth caused polarization between the rich and the poor. Through the study of Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy’s novels, as well as the phenomenon of wife-selling in broadside ballads, this paper argues that the writing of wife-selling in the 19th century is a criticism of the commodification of women during the economic boom of England, a true depiction of the polarization between the rich and the poor in society, a ritual manipulation of the demonization and marketization of women, a sexual political complaint of women’s long-term discriminated and subordinate status, and a perfect example of the collapse of the moral system.

Keywords: 19th-century English literature, wife sale, sexual politics, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy

Author: Wenquan Wu, Professor, School of Foreign Languages, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, China.