Ambivalence in Victorian women’s writing: Ellen Wood’s East Lynne, Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Margaret Oliphant’s Hester

Download

index.pdf

Date

2014

Author

Coşar Çelik, Seda

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

456
views

2070
downloads

The simultaneous rise of Victorian women’s movement and the dominance of female authorship and readership in the nineteenth century prompted scholars of Victorian literature to interpret women’s novels as fictional examples of Victorian feminism or anti-feminism. Yet, this study stresses the ambivalent nature of women’s fiction by paying attention to the contradiction between the feminist and subversive content in women’s texts and their anti-feminist and disciplinary treatment. Exemplary underread novels from two opposing literary genres are examined in detail: Ellen Wood’s East Lynne (1861), Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), as representative samples of the sensation genre and Margaret Oliphant’s Hester (1883), as an anti-sensational domestic novel. Close readings of these novels and the examination of additional non-fiction writings by Margaret Oliphant demonstrate that (1) Victorian women’s writings cannot be clustered as feminist or anti-feminist, they represent a bifurcated voice due to the disciplinary power that operate on different levels and with varying effects both in the novels (through characterization, plot formation, narrative voice and perspective) and among the texts, the genres and the novelists, (2) the moralizing reading experience can turn into a tool of controlling and disciplining Victorian women readers (3) although the generic conventions of both the sensation novel and the domestic novel proceed to the disadvantage of the heroine, the ways of disciplining in both genres are different. The sensational narratives display severe and grievous forms of disciplining while the disciplinary power of domestic narratives is subtle, milder and less transparent.

Subject Keywords

Feminism., Ambivalence in literature., English literature, English fiction

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12617528/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/23664

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Mythmaking in progress: plays by women on female writers and literary characters Uçar Özbirinci, Pürnur; Çileli, Fatma Meral; Department of English Literature (2007) This thesis analyzes the process of women’s mythmaking in the plays written by female playwrights. Through writing the lives of female writers and rewriting the literary characters, which have been created by male writers, the women playwrights assume the role of a mythmaker. A mythmaker possesses the power to use the ‘word,’ thereby possesses the power to control ‘reality.’ However, for centuries, women have been debarred from generating their own myths, naming their own experiences, and controlling their ...
History of the novel in stories of femininity: Moll flanders, Evelina and Fordyce’s sermons / Kaya, Tuğba Billur; Yıldız Bağçe, Hülya; Department of English Literature (2015) In this study the rise of the English novel is investigated from the perspective of Nancy Armstrong’s Desire and Domestic Fiction which put forward that the novel genre emerged out of the conduct books of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Within this scope two of the first English novels Moll Flanders (1742) by Daniel Defoe and Evelina (1778) by Frances Burney will be studied side-by-side by comparing their plots with one of the most popular conduct books of the era: Fordyce’s Sermons. The study aims to...
Abject representations of female desire in postmodern British female gothic fiction Aktari, Selen; İçöz, Nursel; Department of English Literature (2010) The aim of this dissertation is to study postmodern British Female Gothic fiction in terms of its abject representations of female desire which subvert the patriarchal definition of female sexuality as repressed and female identity as the object of desire. The study analyzes texts from postmodern Female Gothic fiction which are feminist rewritings of the traditional Gothic narratives. The conventional Gothic plot is based on the Oedipal development of identity which excludes the (m)other and deprives the fe...
The Function of the fantastic in the works of Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson Özyurt Kılıç, Mine; İçöz, Nursel; Department of English Literature (2005) This study sets out from the premise that the fantastic, in the hands of the women writers with feminist awareness,can be used as a tool to subvert patriarchal gender roles that are culturally constructed. The dissertation aims at analysing the fantastic novels by Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman and Nights at the Circus, and by Jeannette Winterson, The Passion and The.PowerBook as examples in which the transgression of gender roles is achieved through the use of fantastic image...
Caryl Churchill and gender roles : Owners, Cloud Nıne, Top Girls Fırat, Serap; Çileli, Fatma Meral; Department of English Literature (2005) This thesis evaluates Caryl Churchill's criticism of culturally defined roles imposed by patriarchy on both sexes in her three plays Owners, Cloud Nine, and Top Girls by referring to Kate Millet's defination of aspects of patriarchal ideology in Sexual Poitics, and the thesis contends that gender roles are arbitrary. Churchill's attempt to draw attention to patriarchal essentialism is discussed within this framework.

Citation Formats

S. Coşar Çelik, “Ambivalence in Victorian women’s writing: Ellen Wood’s East Lynne, Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Margaret Oliphant’s Hester,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2014.