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Identity in Victorian Literature - Coggle Diagram
Identity in Victorian Literature
Gender
Masculinity and Femininity
Gender Roles
Sexuality
Women expected to stay "pure" till marriage
Jane Eyre refuses to become the mistress of Mr. Rochester after finding out that he is married on their wedding day
"Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth" (Bronte)
Religion
Sexuality as moral/immoral
North and South
Margaret is hit in the head by a rock meant for John Thornton, the mill owner--this is viewed as a major faux pas and something that a "proper lady" wouldn't do, especially because he picks her up/takes her home
Margaret represents traditional aristocracy (the South") and Thornton represents the industrialist middle-class (South)
The missed handshake between Margaret/Thornton
Picture of Dorian Gray
Dorian's unbridled hedonism (including implied sexual affairs with men/women) is part of what causes the degradation of his soul/the painting
Characters who don't abide by social norms die violent deaths (Ayesha, Bertha Rochester, Dorian Gray)
The "femme fatale"/New Woman
"The love that dare not speak its name"
Basil's terror/arousal upon meeting Dorian: "I knew that I had come face-to-face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself" (Wilde)
Race
Fetishization of non-white British women as being somehow 'exotic'
Bertha Rochester
Bertha's supposed affairs/improprities are what Rochester uses to justify his imprisonment of her
What initially attracted Rochester to Bertha: she was "tall, dark, and majestic" and he "...was dazzled, stimulated: [his] senses were excited; and being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, [he] thought he loved her"
Bertha Rochester's/Ayesha's racial ambiguity
She
Ayesha's beauty as a weapon: "...never may the man to whom my beauty hath been unveiled put it from his mind, and therefore even with these savages do I go veiled’ (Haggard)
The loss of Ayesha's beauty is so intense that it literally kills Job
Horace Holly, right before he meets Ayesha: "At length the curtain began to move. Who could be behind it?--some naked savage queen, a languishing Oriental beauty, or a nineteenth-century young lady, drinking tea" (Haggard)
Orientalism: stereotypes that define Western representations of the East/Global South
Rider's mispronunciation of Ayesha's name as "Ah-sha" rather than "Ay-es-ha)
Denial of coevalness
Ayesha is literally ageless, she's maintained control of the Amarhaggars for thousands of years
Racist anti-imperialism
Imperialism is bad because it allows people like Bertha Rochester to assimilate into British society
Imperialism as a means of expressing masculinity--i.e. we're gonna go out and fight and be men
The "white man's burden" to "civilize" the East
Class
Pederastia (older men in sexual relationships with younger ones, often viewed as a way to transmit knowledge/culture)
Sir Henry, Basil (cultured adults) both of whom are attracted to the much younger, less worldly Dorian
Shame/homophobia
The emphasis placed on Dorian's attractiveness by these older men (and their inability to conceive him as anything more than an object for their pleasure) is what places the idea in his head that his beauty=his worth and thereby leads him down that path of destruction
Rise of the middle class
The novel as middle-class propaganda
Jane "girlboss" Eyre
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dorian Gray