Handout Lecture 10 11/05/2010

Victorian novel: Introduction

What constituted suitable reading material? The question reflected the concerns about class and gender. Major Victorian novels are plotted as providential progresses: an individuals progress toward an identity if the hero is male, OR toward marriage as a confirmation of feminine identity and domestic stability if one is female. The Victorian novel was predominantly a novel of domestic matters, NOT a novel of ideas because the readership was considered to be primarily *female and/or *working class, therefore intellectual life (perceived as mens sphere) was not considered to be an appropriate subject. Victorian fiction Gradually, a distinction developed between: intellectually, psychologically and aesthetically demanding fiction (serious fiction) and the fiction intended for relaxation and an escape from reality, primarily written by women for women but also including the detective novel, adventure novels (R.L. Stevenson, Rider Haggard), etc. 19th century attitudes to womens writing Robert Southey, the poet laureate, to 20-year-old Charlotte Bront: "Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation." George Henry Lewes, a reviewer: Women's proper sphere of activity is elsewhere [than writing]. Are there no husbands, lovers, brothers, friends to coddle and console? Are there no stockings to darn, no purses to make, no braces to embroider? My idea of a perfect woman is one who can write but won't (1850). The Bront sisters Anne Bront (1820-1849) Pen name (pseudonym): Acton Bell Agnes Grey (1847) Based on her experience as governess The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)

Emily Bront (1818-48) Pen name: Ellis Bell Wuthering Heights (1847) acknowledged as a masterpiece only after her death of consumption at the age of 30. A unique novel in 19th century English fiction: at the same time a Romantic poem and realistic novel Love that is larger than life (btw. Heathcliff, a foundling, and Catherine Earnshaw, his adopted sister) Gothic elements: boundaries are trespassed, specifically love crossing the boundary between life and death; Heathcliff's transgressing social class and family ties ghosts, dreams, a mysterious foundling near-necrophilia and incest, sadism, irrational revenge location: weather-worn isolated house, haunted Romantic elements in Wuthering Heights Nature= a living, vitalizing force, a refuge from the constraints of civilization Passion & obsessive love that transcends death focus on the individual Heathcliff as a Byronic hero Hareton as a noble savage the supernatural Passion and society as mutually irreconcilable The novel questions the assumptions about domestic love and social security. The trials of the first Catherine expose the confinements of patriarchal culture (death in childbirth) Charlotte Bront (1816 - 55) Pen name: Currer Bell Her first novel, The Professor, was only published after her death, in 1857. The second novel, JANE EYRE (1847), achieved immediate success. Other novels: Villette (1853), Shirley (1849) Charlotte Bront, Jane Eyre: An Autobiography (1847) Burning issue of the day: Governesses' Benevolent Institution Report for 1847 governess=crossed the borders (worked for her wages, her work=that of a middle class mother), questioned the confinement of the angel in the house women as critical to social stability Jane: Women feel as men feel ! Rejected the convention of the beautiful heroine later critics (Gilbert & Gubar) referred to the narrative as plain Janes progress. Presented a childs experience as the child experienced it. Bildungsroman morality vs. sensuality; reason and decorum vs. passion: "I could not, in those days, see God for his creature of whom I had made an idol."

Redemption followed by reunion but only after suffering and moral growth both of Jane and Rochester Gothic elements in the novel: the incident in the red room the secret locked up on the third floor the mad woman in the attic and the nightly supernatural excursions of the same Jane Eyre - contemporary readings Interpretation of Jane Eyre changed significantly over time: C. B.: A mere domestic novel lacking any subject of public interest Margaret Oliphant, 1867: protest against the conventionalities Unconventional aspects of JE Jane rejects the idea of duty and sacrifice by refusing to become St John Rivers (missionarys) wife She rejects Rochesters offer of becoming a kept mistress or becoming a woman from the conduct books--purifying and redeeming Rochester through her love Jane: I care for myself I am not an angel...I will be myself Conventionality is not morality =Individualism that frightened the contemporaries because it spoke against the social order and the gender roles Still, the end is a conventional fulfilment for a heroine: marriage Early Readings of Jane Eyre V. Woolf: limitations: JE lives for love only Mary Ward: passionate realism remarkable: a womans voice speaking to women- she speaks what she thinks political implications: a liberating text Later readings of Jane Eyre Political implications: -supporting the very social and gender organizations against which its protests raged --doctrines of separate spheres home=a sanctified sphere presided over by a nurturing, caring woman Janes change of fortune at the end is due to a legacy from an uncle in Madiera and the money Rochester has earned in the West Indies=places of colonialism, slavery and economic imperialism Spivak, Kaplan: Her individualism and marriage = an apology for British imperialism; the comfort comes from=>colonialism Janes relation to the madwoman in the attic, Bertha Mason =problematic

Bertha, a white Jamaican Creole, whose humanity is erased by the middle-class will to control and have power over women and society Rewriting - Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea (1967)

Charlotte Bront (1816 - 55) Similarities btw. J E and Elizabeth Barrett Brownings Aurora Leigh: both texts= about a womans struggle to become an individual on her own terms, defying the limited roles imposed by the society. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) Read, wrote and translated from an early age (Latin, Greek, Hebrew) Eloped with Robert Browning to Italy More successful and famous than her husband as a poet, until her death: Poems (1844) huge success Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) a sonnet sequence much admired by contemporaries Aurora Leigh (1856) a novel in verse, a womans growing up and struggle to become an artist Topical poems (Cry of the Children, 1843) social critique (against child labour) Robert Browning (1812-1889) Perfected the dramatic monologue, the best examples in the collections Men and Women (1855) and Dramatis Personae (1864) Robert Browning: dramatic monologues His speakers: dissatisfied lovers (possessive or obsessive Porphyrias Lover, the Duke in My Last Duchess); madmen; tricksters Influenced by wide reading, esp. Italian Renaissance (history and literature): The Ring and the Book a verse novel (formula of a detective story) consisting of 12 monologues of the 12 participants (different perspectives) set in 17th c. Italy Also, poems on modern love, life in exile (Home thoughts, from abroad)