Objects and Memorabilia in Deborah Lutz's _The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects_ (2015).

Abstract

This chapter explores Deborah Lutz’s _The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects_ (2015) in the light of a renewed interest in Victorian material culture, and through an analysis of the material side of the trace of the Victorian past, objects and things in contemporary culture. The growing interest in objects and sensory experience in Victorian scholarship provides the broader context for a neo-Victorian burgeoning fascination with objects, bodies and the sense of touch. By paying a heightened attention to things, Lutz illuminates not only the Brontë sisters’ lives, but also provides a nuanced reading into Victorian material culture. These Victorian traces prove the affective power invested upon objects and texts which clearly mediate between an absent Victorian past and a contemporary present. Therefore, Lutz’s text demonstrates the relevance of affective encounters with the past through collecting, and the complex relationship between subject and object.