Academic literature on the topic '1812-1870 Characters Women'

The field of research of this thesis covers three main areas: the novels of Charles Dickens; fairy tales and storytelling; and notions of women as reflected in feminist literary theory. A reading of selected novels by Dickens provides the primary source. That he copiously drew on fairy tales has been explored in such notable works as Harry Stone's, but the thesis concentrates on Dickens 's propensity in his creation of female protagonists to give them a voice which is vivified through fairy tale. The analysis of fairy story through narrative theory and feminist literary theory functions as the basis of an exploration of the role female narrative voices play in a reading of the novels which reveals a more sympathetic vision of the feminine than has been observed hitherto. The context of this study is Victorian attitudes to women and that modem criticism has not sufficiently acknowledged Dickens's insight into of the condition of women; much of this is discovered through an examination of his use of fairy tale wherein the woman is bearer of imaginative and emotional capacities magically bestowed. The research aims to counter the view of Dickens's novels as being sexist, through the iIluminatory characteristics of fairy tale. Dickens activates his women characters by means of their often being tellers of tales replete with fairy tale imagery, and their tales are almost always seminal to the novelist's moral purpose.

This thesis examines Dickens's presentation of evil women. In the course of my reading I discovered that most of the evil women in his novels are mothers, or mother-figures, a finding which altered the nature of my interpretation and led to closer examination of these characters, rather than the prostitutes and criminals who may have been viewed negatively by Nineteenth century society and thereby condemned as evil. Among the many unsympathetically portrayed mothers and mother-figures in Dickens's works, the three that are most interesting are Lady Dedlock, Miss Havisham, and Mrs Skewton. Madame Defarge initiates the discussion, however, as a seminal figure among the many evil women in the novels. Psychoanalytical and socio-historic readings grounded in Nineteenth century conceptions of womanhood provide background material for this thesis. Though useful and informative, however, these areas of study are not sufficient in themselves. The theory that shapes the arguments of this thesis is defined by Steven Cohan, who argues strongly that the demand for psychological coherence as a requisite of character obscures the imaginative power of character as textual construct, and who both refutes and develops character theory as it is argued by Baruch Hochman. Cohan's theory is also finally closer to that outlined by Thomas Docherty, who provides a complex reading of character as ultimately "unknowable".

This thesis is comprised of two articles that examine sympathy, material culture, and ownership in Victorian literature. In the first article, I explore the figure of the heiress in the Victorian literary tradition, focusing on Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. George Eliot marked the heiress figure as unsympathetic, no matter her incarnation: whether the moralist of popular fiction or madwoman of gothic fiction, she is representative of excess and indulgence—ideas that society wanted to condemn in harmony with Georges Batailles's observation that a time of indulgence will be checked by a return to conservative bourgeois ideals. The heiress is made a vessel for these cultural anxieties, representing both the desire for and reaction against material possession within the larger male imperial imaginary landscape. The heiress is a way for the male protagonist to indulge in a decadent coming-of-age narrative before being scalded by his secular desires, abandoning this dream for bourgeois security. I employ the criticism of Batailles, Laura Brown, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, etc., in order to discover how the heiress is objectified and controlled, yet, in the greater narrative structure, finds ways to act outside of the male linguistic system as an agent for change—bringing about the collapse of the fake set and props of the material world. In the second article, I examine Charles Dickens's attempts to control his printed materials and his belief that he could coalesce the expanding literate public into a faithful readership. However, Dickens was troubled by illicit reproductions of his work by the popular presses. In order to look at Dickens's concerns not only over losing control of his product, but also having the emotional essence of his characters and stories compromised, I turn to Bleak House which, critics have established, is in part a treatise against unlicensed copies. I argue that the character of Lady Dedlock serves as a representation of Dickens since she, like him, relies on the popular press in order to maintain her social standing, yet she also imagines that she is above them—though, in reality, much of her "private" life is already in public hands. I focus, specifically, on an unlicensed image of Lady Dedlock (that she is unaware of) that has been reproduced in a collection that anyone can purchase. In the end, Dickens allows his fiction to speak for him, forcing the reader to process the invasive horror of unlicensed copies through the emotion they feel for the actual, authentic woman.
Graduation date: 2012
Access restricted to the OSU Community at author's request from June 20, 2012 - June 20, 2014