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Victorian Literature, Culture, and Power, Color Key: Purple - Women in…

- - - - Dever explains how a kiss is a turning point for sexual narratives in Victorian fiction for women - if you kissed a man, you had the same sexual knowledge as a married woman.
      - Lust is the key component for the marriage plot for virtuous young women.
      - Victorians were notorious as the enemies of sexuality - they give a paradox of a marriage plot being the dominant form of literary fiction but question how to show direct expressions of sexual desire.
      - The marriage plot serves as a strategy of containment - it institutionalizes heterosexual marriage as the only logical outcome.
      - Victorian literature had sex as a very prevalent topic - were a form of the “will to knowledge” where they participated int he expression of sexuality as the secret the center of cultural modernity.
      - Sexuality served as an organizing system for people and economic systems.
      - Representations of female sexuality in fiction contend with the ideas of middle-class domestic femininity.
  - - - Women in the Victorian Era were valued for being feminine and domestic.
      - Women became an object to be worshipped - society put them on a pedestal which became an obstacle for them in achieving tier place in society.
      - Very few women held jobs, and most were low-paying.
      - Women were told to be bored in upper class homes - feminine idleness was a treasured status symbol.
      - If finances failed - women faced considerable difficulties.
      - Drives for independence produced extraordinary changes for women - in the form of the “New Woman”.
    - - Domestic fiction sought to disentangle the language of sexual relations from the language of politics and introduced a new form of political power.
      - Women had authority over the household and courtship procedures
      - Representing this domestic life of women was desirable to unify the interests of the middle class
      - Literature devoted to producing the domestic woman ignored the political world run by men
      - Domestic novels antedated the way of life it represented - showed the operations of human desire as if they were independent of political history and were basically an illusion.
      - Gendered discourse made its way into common sense and determined how people understood themselves.
      - Domestic novel was seen as an agent and product of cultural change that attached gender to types of writing.
      - Stories of marriage gave readers a way of indulging in fantasies of political power that were more acceptable because they were seen in domestic fiction.
    - - Speaks of a town with only women.
      - A new man comes into town - Captain Brown
      - He’s respected by the ladies and invited to their parties.
      - He absorbs the role of the man at the parties - brings them tea, etc.
      - He doesn’t get along with one of the women - Mrs. Jenkyns.
      - When he passes away, she takes in his two daughters - one of his daughters also passes away.
      - It shows that even women without men had to live very domestic lives.
    - - Two sisters are the complete opposite of each other.
      - Mary - is quiet, sympathetic, and always wanted to help everyone.
      - Etta - got in the way of others and was quite selfish.
      - Men would only call on Etta and never Mary - they thought she was a spinster.
      - A man named Wilfred Martin falls in love with Etta and asks her to marry him but he doesn’t have much money.
      - She decides to marry a much older man because he has money - leaves Wilfred heartbroken.
      - He goes to New Zealand and becomes very rich - he thinks that he’s in love with Mary so he writes her a letter and asks her to marry him.
      - He doesn’t mention that he has money - he wants her to marry him for love.
      - Mary, who is living the spinster life, accepts him for who he is and they get married.
      - Moral of the story - if you marry only for money, you might be unhappy for the rest of your life.
  - - - The New Woman represented the fears of untamed women’s power and sexuality when boundaries of domesticity transgressed.
      - Marriage followed by motherhood was no longer seen as the inevitable route towards financial security.
      - Men found the idea of women making their own way in the world desirable while many women were against female emancipation.
      - New Woman in literature served as a mirror to reflect the attitudes of society.
    - - Lady Sybil Courteney - is a single, attractive and charming woman.
      - She is able to attract the attention of two different men - she turns them both down.
      - She holds power in the relationships through her sexuality.
      - She doesn’t believe in love and marriage anymore - embodies the new woman persona.
  - - - Many Victorian novels showed how powerfully social life was strutted around the hierarchy of class
      - Novels focused on private life - Victorian domesticity was seen as a refuge from the volatile economy.
      - Middle class ideals of self determination came in the form of a subtle changes in social etiquette.
      - For women, there was the idea that social mobility was attached to the seduction of men.
      - Governesses had very precarious social positions and also brought about the fear of social decline - the middle class was exposed to economic volatility that could cost them their social positions.
    - - It was all women who were working in the factory with the girl.
      - The “missus” looks after them but she doesn’t have the same authority as her husband.
      - Married women did work in the factory - they were lower class so they had to bring in an income.
      - The girl questions why women couldn’t have the same freedom as the two men who worked there - to talk the way they did, and to have no care in the world.
      - The “missus” tells the girl that some as respectable as she is should get married to a nice man.
  - - - Charlotte Bronte emphasizes the separate spheres theory.
      - Upper and middle class women should be the moral high ground and shouldn’t be in the working class.
      - Even as a governess - Jane tends to stay in the house, and doesn’t have the same level of freedom as the male staff do.
      - When she falls in love with Mr. Rochester, they both base their whole lives around being married.
      - Marriage plot - the book has to end with Jane and Mr. Rochester getting married in order to give Jane status in society.
    - - Margaret - is a middle - upper class woman who has never worked in her life.
      - She ends up falling in love with Mr. Thornton, which follows the marriage plot of the Victorian era.
      - Margaret believes highly in gender norms - when his workers are protesting, Margaret tells Mr. Thornton to “go down and face them like a man.”
      - As a part of the separate spheres ideology - women were supposed to protect the private sphere, and guide their husbands to make noble decisions. Margaret plays this role with Mr. Thornton.
      - Margaret also feels ashamed of having sexual feelings for Mr. Thornton - she feels like she has become a “public woman”.
      - As an upper class woman, she has been taught that she can’t have those feelings in public for a man.
- - - - Many Victorian novels showed how powerfully social life was strutted around the hierarchy of class
      - In the latter half of the 18th century - the industrial economy had a huge impact on social order and social mobility.
      - Karl Marx - saw class conflict in purely economic terms and said that social class becomes entangled with status hierarchies, which is arbitrary.
      - Secure class membership was reserved for those born into high ranks.
      - Over the course of the century, the upper class slowly started to accommodate families who gained large fortunes thorough industry and commerce.
      - Growing cultural authority of the middle class didn’t take away the attraction of aristocratic social forms - they came in forms of tradition against the currents of social change.
      - “Shabby genteel” - office workers, retail employees, and even writers.
      - Increased civilian in Victorian society along class lines showed in different forms of speech’s which was also evident in literature.
  - - - Victorians debated if the “machine age” was a blessing or a curse, even while it was happening.
      - They questioned if the industrial revolution represented progress, and how progress should be defined.
      - The revolution was a result of many social causes - technology and new innovation wouldn’t have happened without intense population growth.
      - In the 1840’s people started to care about the condition of the working class, and new legislation was introduced to protect child workers.
      - Some writers saw the revolution as a “retrogression”, namely Thomas Carlyle.
    - - He was a communist and worked with Karl Marx.
      - He came from a German industrial family.
      - He believed that all human beings had the same innate characteristics and aims, and everyone should receive equal opportunities and rewards for their work.
    - - He was a conservative who was part of the Tory party.
      - He supported the aristocracy and protecting the monarchy.
      - He tended to romanticize the life of agricultural workers, and said that they had it much better before the industrial revolution.
    - - Says that the age old question of work and wages needs to be answered.
      - He says that the most unbearable thing is not even to die, but to live miserably by working and gaining nothing.
      - Carlyle believes that the true liberty of a man is in him finding the right path to walk on and learn the type of work that he is meant to do.
      - God’s law is above human law.
      - He constantly compares the Victorian era to the Middle Ages.
      - He thought that the medieval period represented a per-modern period where there was organic order and harmony in society - romanticizes the feudal system.
      - He does acknowledge that the working class lived in terrible environments, but didn’t believe in giving them power in society.
    - - Says that it is high time that Communists should openly publish their views
      - The oppressor and the oppressed stand in constant opposition to one another.
      - The feudal system of industry has been replaced by the manufacturing industry
      - The Modern bourgeois is a product of a long course of development that has made family relations solely about money.
      - They need to constantly expand society and markets - which has made the bourgeoise rise to the top through their exploitation of the market
      - Says that the means of production were created in a feudal society - this is the foundation on which the bourgeois built their power.
    - - Says that bourgeois socialists want to get all of the perks from society, but not the consequences of those perks.
      - What this means is that they want better social conditions but only to the point where there won’t be a revolution against them.
      - Most of their efforts for economic inclusion is performative - they mainly want to save the status quo.
  - - - Everyone in the town wore plain clothing and no one spoke of money - it was very normal to be lower to middle class.
      - Parties or outfits weren’t lavish.
      - It was vulgar to give anything expensive as a gift.
    - - The author of the diary is trying to find work in East London - where a lot of the industrial work is for the lower class.
      - She’s able to secure a job in a workroom - she realizes that she isn’t trained for the type of work they are asking for.
      - She needs money to even buy her dinner for that night.
      - Many of the other women who work there are from the slums.
      - The working girl is very tired after working all day, but knows that she needs the money.
- - - - The New Woman brought a new air of sexual freedom - showed the importance of pursuing one’s sexuality.
      - Male writers casted the New Woman either as a sexual predator or an over-sensitive educated woman who didn’t want to accept herself as a sexual being.
      - Some women in literature did enjoy their sexuality
      - Femme fatale - women were blamed for eliciting desire in men by being portrayed as using sexuality to manipulate men.
      - The New Woman was seen as a sex symbol.
    - - Lady Sybil Courteney - considered very charming and attractive by men.
      - She attracts the attention of two different men - she rejects both.
      - She holds power through her confidence and aura of being an independent, upper-class woman.
      - She doesn’t really believe in marriage and love.
    - - Ayesha is extremely fetishized and sexualized as being a beautiful exotic non-European woman.
      - They see her as the “femme fatale” character of the novel.
      - There is paranoia around what would happen if she is able to employ her power over men through her sexuality - this is what makes Ayesha evil to them.
      - Holly uses derogatory terms to describe her - he fears her but is also attracted to her.
  - - - In the beginning of the 17th century - sexual practices weren’t secret.
      - The Victorian bourgeoisie changed that - sexuality moved into the home
      - It had a single locus - fertility.
      - Sexual repression - used to silence and create the nonexistence of sex.
      - Repression is the link between power and sexuality
      - Discourse on modern sexual repression is owed to the historical sexual repression
      - If sex is repressed then it is condemned, and the fact that someone is even speaking of it is a transgression - they then are participating in a form of freedom.
    - - Through philosophical practices over time, people came to the idea of a the reconciliation of both moral and comprehensive claims that men need to have freedom.
      - Puritan force - ruling force
      - Their greatest danger is that he imagines himself in position of a rule of the one thing he needs.
    - - He encouraged “spiritual friendships” between men.
      - New chivalry - young an old men should date so that the older men can teach them intellectual things.
      - Old chivalry is the love between men and women.
      - Kaons-Jackson believes that new chivalry is superior to old chivalry because women are not intellectual enough to stimulate men, and they need older mean to help them with that.
      - The love between older and younger men is beneficial for society as a whole - it’s a meeting of the minds and brings society forward by mentoring young men into intellectual beings.
  - - - Ellis argues that homosexuality shouldn’t be met with legal consequences.
      - He believes that it’s society’s duty to protect those who are the “inverts” - they are considered the weakest members of society.
      - If you destroy them - they could destroy straight people and convert them.
      - Being homosexual is almost parasitic to society - he views them as morally corruptive to society.
      - Homosexuals are the “children of the spirits” instead of “children of the flesh” - they should devote all of their time to arts and philosophy so they don’t reproduce and pass on their homosexuality to their children.
  - - - The trial of Oscar Wilde erupted in British newspapers - became the talk of the town.
      - Why was the public so fascinated with his trials? Part of the bourgeoisie’s efforts to legitimize limits for sexual deployment of the male body.
      - Straight males who criticized Wilde saw themselves as controlling the “degenerate form of male sexuality”.
      - The court proceedings served s a way to define the legal limits in which a man could enjoy the pleasures of his body with another man.
    - - Lord Henry tells Dorian to follow his instincts and feelings, even if society says no to it.
      - He doesn’t want society to regulate his behavior.
      - As he continues to receive Lord Henry’s advice, Dorian becomes more and more “immoral”.
      - Some consider the ending of the book as highly moralistic and even a bit homophobic, as Dorian is punished for his “sins”, which include having homosexual feelings for other men.
      - The portrait of Dorian itself continuously changes, almost as a mirror of how Dorian views himself.
      - “Homme fatale” is the fatal man - Dorian Gray is supposed to be an example of this type of attractive young man who is dangerous to other men in his orbit due to his sexuality.
- - - - Jane Eyre was written at a time when white women were compared to women of color to emphasize their inferiority to white men.
      - Bertha Rochester’s image as the mad West Indian Wife who is locked up in the attic serves as Bronte’s central locus of oppression in England.
      - Bertha’s ambiguity of race - represents the dangers that threaten the white man’s world.
      - Bronte uses biased language to describe Bertha - Jane describes her as a scary woman who has been “haunting” her.
      - Bronte wanted to critique British slavery and its attempt to colonize.
      - Bertha represents the “dark races” in the empire and gives them a human presence.
      - Bronte also uses the slavery metaphor for the lower middle class to dehumanize them.
      - Jane Eyre associates nonwhite races with the idea of oppression between Black slaves and those oppressed by the hierarchies of social class and gender.
    - - Mr. Rochester marries a Creole woman and brings her over to England - keeps her locked up in his attic as he deems her crazy.
      - Jane uses racist language when talking about Bertha - Bronte makes a person of color the villain of the story.
      - Jane is anti-imperialist - not because she believes that colonization is bad, but because she thinks that White Britains colonizing people of color is harmful to white people.
      - Jane sees herself as superior to the women in the Middle East - she says that she would preach liberty to them.
      - The idea that Mr. Rochester brings her back to England thinking that the English climate would “purify” her and not make her “crazy” anymore.
      - When Mr. Rochester explains his relationship with Bertha to Jane - he makes her out to be the villain, even though Bertha and him just didn’t get along.
      - He expected Bertha to conform to what he believed was a good and obedient wife, and when she didn’t do so, he considered her crazy.
  - - - The word “empire” shows power and political domain - authority of one state over a wider group of people.
      - “Imperial century” - England felt the benefits and challenges of world rule.
      - Empire spanned a quarter of the earth’s surface - controlling over 450 million people.
      - The Empire was always precarious though, even with its success.
      - Conceived as a globalized system of political, cultural, and economic power, the imperial network was consequential - very few nations escaped its grasp.
      - Victorians at the time understood the terms of the empire in a narrow political sense - just in terms of territories.
      - The de jury empire was de facto larger than what people even knew - had a shifting network of economic dependencies and trade routes.
      - The process of coerced integration by which England dominated communities is still visible today - “civilizing mission”
      - They justified imperialism through the said spreading of modernity and progress.
    - - The relationship between the empire and Victorian literature - novelists could function as apologists for the empire.
      - Their work reflected imperialist assumptions in an extremely anglocentric world view.
      - “The earth was made for the British to govern.”
      - Imperialism received critical consensus in literature.
      - The British empire functioned in two ways - featured structures of governance and systems of economic change, as well as a military apparatus that brought force to control people.
      - The British shaped imperial and colonial policy in an “ad hoc” way - produced an empire united by name but not united in practice.
      - There were stark differences between the colonizer and the colonized.
      - It was imperative for colonizers to supplement the use of force with ideas that distinguished themselves
      - Authors created imperialist discourse - representation of European and non-European people and places.
    - - The center of the global empire brought Britain into contact with different cultures.
      - It was a heterogeneous entity with heterogeneous practices.
      - “New imperialism” - changed the mode of the empire and would continue until WW1
      - The balance of power had shifted in Britain’s favor.
      - Britain had enhanced national pride in expanding its physical size
      - The East India company grew into one of the largest corporations over the course of the 18th century
      - Rise of new imperialism was also bolstered by “scientific” theories that supported Britain’s expansion - the idea of evolutionary advanced event of the British people as compared to the people they were colonizing.
      - The empire had an incalculable physical and psychological impact on the individuals and cultures it colonized both abroad and at home.
      - The working class didn’t connect their subordination to the English ruling class to the lives of those who were being colonized to understand their identity. The British people were told to come together in unity but a few were willing to accept the people of the colonies.