Outlandish English subjects in the Victorian domestic novel

"In literature written in the latter half of the nineteenth century, during the great age of the British Empire, savage antagonists crop up in unexpected places. The notion that savagery existed at a far remove was counter-balanced by a suspicion that it lurked within the English state and subject." "Outlandish English Subjects in the Victorian Domestic Novel traces the development of this suspicion in nineteenth-century evangelicism and anthropology. Both disciplines promoted the idea of a universal human family, establishing a theoretical context in which estranged "relatives," those beliefs and practices disparagingly associated with colonial otherness, might reappear within the English family home."--Jacket.