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Victorian Literature, Culture and Power, The New Woman undermined the…
Victorian Literature, Culture and Power
Progress
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Anti-Imperialism
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The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
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"New Woman"
Daughters of Decadence, Greg Buzwell
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
- Jane Eyre and the situation with Bertha in the attic. There is a complex connection between Bronte's argument against imperialism and her misinformation on how race actually works. The complex metaphorical use of race explains much of the difficulty of understanding the politics of "Jane Eyre". Bertha is described as once being white, but being a "native subject" places her outside of the white category. The duality of this shows feminism to b complicitous with imperialism. The two terms of the metaphor are not on shared inferiority but on shared oppression. The novel suppresses the history of racial oppression and slavery, but the ending shows the anxiety surrounding imperialism as other 'minorities' such as women/feminists worry they too might become the victim of imperialism.
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North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell
Desire and Domestic Fiction, Nancy Armstrong
Sexuality
Everywhere and Nowhere, Carolyn Dever
Writing Gone Wilde: Homoerotic Desire in the Closet of Representation, Ed Cohen
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Havelock Ellis
Nineteenth Century Writings on Homosexuality, Charlies Kains-Jackson
History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault
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Culture and Anarchy, Matthew Arnold
Nostalgia
"Old Woman"
"The Woman Question": The Victorian Debate about Gender, Ellis Ruskin
Anti-Industrialism
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Industrialism: Progress or Decline?, Thomas Babington Macaulay
Imperialism
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Empire in the Victorian Novel, Cannon Schmitt
Empire and National Identity, Rudyard Kipling
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- The New Woman undermined the traditional role of femininity. The New Woman was a real, as well as a cultural phenomenon. In society she was a feminist and a social reformer; a poet or a playwright who addressed female suffrage. In literature, however, as a character in a play or a novel, she frequently took a different form – that of someone whose thoughts and desires highlighted not only her own aspirations, but also served as a mirror in which to reflect the attitudes of society.
- For Lily, the kiss represents her initiation into sexual, rather than
simply romantic, desire. From this point forward, Lily considers herself married to Crosbie. Crosbie, on the other hand, is overwhelmed
by Lily’s love and repelled by the thought of middle-class marriage. Victorian novels offer a paradox, the marriage plot is the dominant form of literary fiction in this period. Sexual desire AND the limitations. Specific chapter from Trollope's book shows heterosexuality not as the end all be all, but as an option. By reading Victorian novels in terms of the genuinely polymorphous range of sexualities they present, we gain insight into the complexity of erotic expression in Victorian Britain.
- The public response to Wilde's open homosexual activities and themes should be considered in the light of the Victorian bourgeoisie's larger efforts to legitimate certain limits for the sexual deployment of the male body. - Court proceedings against Wilde provided a perfect opportunity to define publicly the authorized and legal limits within which a man could "naturally" enjoy the pleasures of his body with another man. - legal proceedings against Wilde crystallized a variety of shifting sexual ideologies and practices. At issue was the discursive production of "the homosexual" as the antithesis of the "true" bourgeois male.
- British sexologist Havelock Ellis made desire into a medical condition, studied his wife who was a lesbian. He was non-judgmental, had sympathy towards 'subjects'. - "sexual invert" suffered from neurasthenia (irritability), loss of self-control, and 'genital hyperesthesia' (masturbation). Could be treated by outdoor activity and stimulating the mind. The inversion, or attraction wasn't attempted to be healed. Ellis acknowledges his feelings for men, believing that all men have some amount of homosexual desire.
- Marriage and coupling up used to be about raising the population, about 'consummating a marriage' in order for it to be official. Change of times now allows for the "eternal desire for Love which nature has implanted into the breast of man requires to be satisfied without such an increase in population as has characterized the past". No necessity to reproduce, and therefore why force a marriage between man and woman? NEW CHIVALRY idea– arguing that a pretty woman would be favored over a plain man, but a pretty man would be favored over a plain woman. argues that when there is equal attraction to man and woman, the old ideal of reproducing will not outweigh the desire to be with the man.
- At the beginning of the 17th century a certain frankness was still common surrounding sexual practices. They had little secrecy. - Sexuality was moved to the privacy of the home as the Victorian era began, as silence became the rule and sex was becoming political. - repressed sexuality, sex becomes a sin
- social norms create a hierarchy of social standing, reading a person's situation (such as them being alone or with company, what time of day, etc) to determine their rank. he language and experience of social class become especially insistent themes in the novel in conjunction with new forms of social mobility in nineteenth-century Britain, but such mobility inof social mobility in nineteenth-century Britain, but such mobility in turn frequently generates crises of understanding because it strains existing categories. "Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named “fair competition” and so forth, it is a mutual hostility". Class became about opposition, about whosever enemy that is also your enemy is your friend. Isolation and competition were founding social themes.
- Labor needs to be organized. Man will need to have his debts and earnings paid by other men. Upperclass men speak just because they can be heard, not because they have something to say. Lower classes can no longer bear injustice, and that society needs to change. Rise of class is necessary, less distance between the hierarchal chain links.
- Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat. The proletarians are the poor and working classes that are living under poor conditions. They wanted to point out the solid differences between the upper and lower classes, and change the system. Capitalism displaced small craftsmen and overtook their businesses with large workshops, making the upper class richer and depriving the lower classes of a steady income.
- clarifies that ideology is not a set of doctrines but rather it signifies the way men live out their roles in class-society– the values, ideas, and images which tie them to their social functions prevent them from a true knowledge of society as a whole. The difference between science and art is not that they deal with different objects, but that they deal with the same objects in different ways. Science gives us conceptual knowledge of a situation; art gives us the experience of that situation, which is equivalent to ideology.
- The institution of marriage is "on trial" as the relationship between what makes a man and a woman different is challenged. Queen Victoria was what I would classify as a "misogynistic feminist", wanting for women to be educated but denying them voting rights, saying marriage was the best thing a woman could do but recognized that their devotion to their man was one of submission and men are selfish. The woman's role was accepted as willed by the divine. "Angel in the House", being valued for her contributions but still every bit as owned and inferior as before.
- Empire denotes power and authority. Large and overarching, a force to be reckoned with. Conceived as a global system of political, military, cultural and economic power= British imperial network during 19th century. Victorians understood the term "empire" in a narrowly political sense, not recognizing the overall thing for what it was. The empire's sheer diversity of the social and political relationships convened. The Empire was "the realization of the unity of mankind".
- One account of the relation between empire and the Victorian novel might put this passage in evidence to argue that Dickens and other novelists functioned as apologists for empire. their fictions reflected imperialist assumptions and aspira- tions, including most crucially an anglocentric world view and a sense of obvious, perhaps divinely sanctioned British superiority. With that superiority came, in turn, the implication of a right to rule the globe. Perhaps the only accurate general pronouncement that may be made in this context is that neither the novel, nor empire, nor their interimplication can be reduced to merely one thing. This view of the novel and the novel’s representation of imperialism in particular comports well with the emerging critical consensus about empire. The absence of an ‘overall logic’ was in part the result of the long and varied history of Britain’s imperial activity. Coming into contact with and subduing vastly different societies at different times in those societies’ history as well as in their own, the British shaped imperial and colonial policy in an ad hoc manner, pro- ducing an empire united in name but varied in fact.
- Great Britain during Victorias reign was a powerful nation, and the center of a global empire. Brought Britain into contact with far away lands and inacted control over them. Pre-existing ideas about Britains superiority were channeled into a romantic vision of the British Empire as a tremendous force for the good of the WHOLE world. Imperialism! Many Britons believed that their country was performing a noble duty through imperialism, which explains why they were so shocked and outraged when subjugated people rose up against their control.
- Industrialism led to workers living in cramped, unsanitary living spaces - North and South showed opposition to industrialism through plight of workers. - overworked for very little pay
- Domestic fiction actively sought to 'disentangle' the language of sexual relations from the language of politics– which made it a new form of political power. Rise of domestic woman caused this power to emerge, and established its hold over British culture through the woman's dominance over all those objects and practices associated with the private sphere. Her authority over the household brought all private life qualities under her jurisdiction. This change caused a change in the criteria that determined what was most important in a female.
- "The Puritan's great danger is that he imagines himself in possession of a rule telling him the unum necessarium, or one thing needful, and that he then remains satisfied with a very crude conception of what this rule really is and what it tells him, thinks he has now knowledge and henceforth needs only to act, and, in this dangerous state of assurance and self-satisfaction, proceeds to give full swing to a number of the instincts of his ordinary self." Hebraism, religion, is telling men they cannot at on the desires to be with another man. Hellenism, the greek philosophy, says it isn't a sin.
- Margaret Hale stood up for the working class, saw that they were working under unfair circumstances. Still saw them as workers who belonged in the working class, but saw they deserved better conditions and pay. Wanted everyone to "get along". Margaret was a small example of the "New Woman", as she stood up for her beliefs against men. She was proud and independent, making her own decisions. Imperialism is present and seen to be agreed with as the women in the beginning of the novel all marvel over Indian scarves and shawls, imported there.
- New Woman trope is seen as dangerous: Ayesha is so beautiful that men cannot help but be under her command. She is a "femme fatale", using her sexual power and allurement for her own personal gain, most often in a negative way. She is powerful and independent, asserting dominance and not being "meek" as most women were thought to be/ought to be. Imperialism is a large topic of the book, specifically "New Imperialism", which was the frantic grasping for land by European nations as they tried to become more powerful. The main male characters of Holly and Leo are seen trying to stop a domineering and evil nation/race stop Britain's spread, which they eventually defeat. Sexuality goes hand in hand with the new woman trope, as Ayesha pushes for control by using her sexuality for her own gain against the helpless men.
- The "New Woman" trope is a big part of the plotline for this book. Jane is the poster child for the new woman, an intelligent rather than beautiful woman who pushed new Middle Class values of internal quality over that of Aristocratic external quality, which went hand in hand with the "Old Woman" trope. She was chosen by her love interest because of her intelligence and internal qualities over that of Blanche, the beautiful but hollow woman that was the other option. See Indian ink summary for explanation for the Anti-Imperialist perspective.
- There are subplots in this book surrounding India and Ireland that hint at an anti-imperialist view, as watching Dorian embark on a quest to satiate his insatiable need to remain youthful and beautiful could easily be paralleled with New Imperialist ideals. With European nations all scrambling to conquer as much land and civilization as they can, their power becomes stretched too thin, and their quest for power results in their downfall. The underlying tones of desperation and bad influences in Dorian Gray could easily be seen as code for the British empire falling victim to excess and decay.