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TW v Thy, despite increasing self-reflexivity, internal critique, and instructive defections on the part of other fields, does Victo-rian studies refuse to abandon the all-too-apparent limita-tions of its own field designation? Why do we keep the name" Victorian studies"? Doubtless several factors contribute to this state of affairs. There remains a lingering disaffiliation with Romanticism on the ques-tion of founding theoretical investments and governing generic emphases, a tension that makes the alternative anodyne designation of" nineteenth century" seem less available, though certainly some have opted or argued for it (see Marcus). And while the term" Victorian" remains anachronistically wedded to the person of the queen, it none-theless manages to indicate the primacy of history, as well as the notion of a unified era, which allows for an assumable social totality or unified culture. This conceptual chain becomes …