THE LEGAL REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS' FICTION

Date

2023-4-09

Author

Pirinçci, Yıldız Sinem

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This study analyzes William Wilkie Collins‘ The Woman in White (1860), No Name (1862), The Moonstone (1868), Man and Wife (1870), and The Evil Genius (1885) in terms of the representation of women in front of British law. The study suggests that in these novels of Wilkie Collins, the female protagonists and other characters find themselves in a serious struggle against legal and social injustices in Victorian society. Property rights and marriage and divorce laws together with custody rights are handled by Collins. By exploring how Collins‘ female characters deal with legal and social oppression and to what extent they can find solutions to it, this thesis argues that Collins‘ novels demonstrate a sensibility concerning legal issues realted to women. The dissertation also suggests that, in addition to being a popular writer of sensation fiction, Wilkie Collins was a novelist with a political agenda, and he made use of his fiction to expose existing legal problems, raise awareness and even bring about change and reform.Since this study aims to situate Collins‘ novels in a Victorian legal and social context, it first provides a survey of civil law and laws related to children in nineteenth- century Britain. This is accompanied by a discussion of unfair legal practices concerning women and attempts at legal reform supported by feminist activists of the time. The study then proceeds to an analysis of Collins‘ novels, and demonstrates the ways Collins makes a sharp, socially and legally aware criticism of civil injustices concerning women.

Subject Keywords

Wilkie Collins, Female Characters, Legal Reforms, British Law, Marriage Law, Property Law

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/102780

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis