proposal-Isabel Quintero
- 1. Quintero 1 Master's Thesis Project Cross-gendered Voices in Fin-de-Siècle Literature Isabel María Quintero Montesinos Supervisor: Dr. Rosario Arias Doblas and Lin Elinor Pettersson ABSTRACT. The New Women of the fin-de-siècle reflected their concerns about women's limited role in society. Throughout their literature they criticised the role of nineteenth- century women in marriage, social activism, motherhood, education and sexuality, as well as their difficulties to get better career opportunities, as Purdue and Floyd state in their book New Woman Writers, Authority and the Body (2009). These women's social struggle was difficult. However, there were brilliant minds like the British philosopher John Stuart Mill who, in his essay The Subjection of Women (1869), supported them in their struggle against the Victorian values. One of the main concerns of this study is to show how those fin-de- siècle writers portrayed their main characters in their texts. In order to do that, three short stories by George Egerton, and a novel by Sarah Grand with a first-person narrator of a different sex from that of the writer, will be discussed, which will provide different angles and perspectives on the late nineteenth century. I hope this research will show the connection which existed between female writers to get equity between men and women in a patriarchal society. Outline: 1. Objectives and Aims: a)To analyse the historical background of the Fin-de- Siècle. b)To examine how George Egerton and Sarah Grand portrayed their main characters in their texts, when they used a first-person narrator who was a man. c)To study the female and male gender roles in the Victorian society. 2. Theoretical Framework: a)The main theoretical tenets I will use are: a¹ Kahn, Madeleine. Narrative Transvestism: Rhetoric and Gender in the Eighteenth- Century English Novel. New York: Cornell UP, 1991. a² Goodman, Lizbeth & Jane de Gay. The Routledge Reader in Gender and Performance. New York, Oxon: Routledge, 2005.
- 2. Quintero 2 3. Analysis of the problems of gender in the Victorian society: a. Analysis and discussion of how the problems of gender were mirrored in Grand's Ideala (1888) and Egerton's A Little Gray Glove (1894), A Nocturne (1897), and A Lost Masterpiece (1894). 4. Tentative Conclusions: a. Sarah Grand and George Egerton's criticism against the institution of marriage through the use of a cross-gendered narrative voice. b. The difficulties to get better career opportunities in Grand's Ideala and Egerton's A Nocturne. c. The image of women in Grand's Ideala and Egerton's A Lost Masterpiece. 5. Works Cited 1. Objectives and Aims: The late nineteenth-century in Britain was extremely important for the development of women's rights, especially for upper and middle-class white women. Nineteenth century women fought to have their rights increased and started having better possibilities in society for their personal and economical development thanks to the Married Woman's Property Act in 1882, the repeal of the Contagious Disease Acts in 1886, and an 1891 act that denied men conjugal rights to their wives' bodies without their wives' consent. These struggles and changes to get more rights for women were mirrored in those New Women writers of the fin-de-siècle who reflected their concerns about women's limited role in society. Throughout their literature, these writers criticised the role of nineteenth- century women in marriage, social activism, motherhood, education and sexuality, as well as their difficulties to get better career opportunities.
- 3. Quintero 3 Although these New Women writers were well known at the end of the nineteenth century, they became unknown in the twentieth century due to the fact that these writers were more interested in writing short stories than novels. Elaine Showalter considered in the introduction of her book Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle (1993) that these female writers were tilted to write short stories, because they emphasised the psychological intensity and formal innovation these writers were experiencing at the end of the century (viii). One of the main female writers who experimented more with the short story form was George Egerton, who stated that she knew about complexes and inhibitions, repressions and the subconscious impulses that determine actions and reactions, and that she used all that in the creation of her short stories (Showalter xiii). Sarah Grand wrote short stories and novels, she was extremely worried about the Contagious Disease Acts, and she was one of the beneficiaries of the Married Woman's Property Act. As it can be seen, Grand was concerned with the female rights and she was an activist writer, trying to re-educate her readers. Due to the psychological complexity and the development of the British society at the end of the nineteenth century, one of the main objectives of this study is to show how George Egerton and Sarah Grand portrayed their main characters in their texts when they used a first-person narrator who was a man. These writers used a male narrative persona to portray their main characters, who were mostly New Women. As gender is the code of language, dress, thought, manners and sexual behaviour that society considered acceptable, these New Women writers wanted to break away from those Victorian values which coerced them, so these writers borrowed the voice of authority, the male first-person narrator, to modify the role of gender in the British society of the time.
- 4. Quintero 4 In my thesis I will analyse three short stories written by George Egerton: A Little Gray Glove (1894), A Lost Masterpiece (1894), A Nocturne (1897), as well as a novel written by Sarah Grand, Ideala (1888). I will analyse how the male first-person narrator portrayed this New Woman who was emerging, as well and how Egerton and Grand criticised the question of gender throughout their texts. 2. Theoretical Framework: For the theoretical framework, I have chosen Madeleine Khan's study in Narrative Transvestism: Rhetoric and Gender in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel published in 1991. Khan's study of narrative transvestism is focused on eighteenth- century male writers who used a female first-person narrator in their novels, but her study can be applied to those female writers of the fin-de-siècle who used a male voice as a first-person narrator. Khan considers Narrative Transvestism as the process by which a male-author borrows a marginal voice, the voice of a woman, to get access to the world of women, without being trapped in the devalued female realm. Through narrative transvestism, the male author gets access to the ambiguous possibilities of identity and gender (6). Dealing with my study, Narrative Transvestism is a process by which a female author gets access to a male voice, culture and sensibility. The author plays out the ambiguous possibilities of identity and gender but in the case of the nineteenth-century female writers, the repercussions are different from those of the eighteenth-century male writers. Although these female writers were borrowing the voice of authority, their main idea was to make strong criticism in order to support the women's struggle towards their social rights. However, as these female writes of the fin-de-siècle wanted to break away from those Victorian values which coerced them, the society was reluctant to these New Women's ideas and voices, so their literature was always criticised, and in contrast to the eighteenth-century
- 5. Quintero 5 male writers who used a female first-person narrator, these women were not able to separate their own self, from the narrator's self. Performance theory is another critical tool for my study. In analysing performance theory I will pay attention to several articles which appear in Lizbeth Goodman and Jane de Gay's The Routledge Reader in Gender and Performance published in 2005. Although the book is focused on theatre, its theories can be applied to fiction. Ferris explains that humankind learn by imitation, since Aristotle women were absence from the stage, because woman's “natural” place was inside, in a private world as women were associated with nature and passivity. By contrast, men were cultural creators and have access to the arts (166). That was the reason by which men were able to perform on the stage and they performed male and female roles. Moreover, these plays were written by men so the image the spectators got of women, were unreal. Due to it, when actors dressed as women were on the stage, they were sending a message to the spectators connected with a specific female role, they were sending a code. Focusing my attention on Judith Butler's study, she considered that gender is a social matter. The society imposes a system of codes of dress, manner, sexual behaviour and thought. These labels are imposed because they are continuously cited, and spectators are assimilating them because they see these marks performed (171). In my case, nineteenth-century readers assimilated those codes of behaviour. So, as Butler puts it, those labels must be revised because they are transformed throughout history. In the texts of these nineteenth century female writers, I can see how those marks are changing and I will focus my study on their development. 3. Analysis of the problems of gender in the Victorian society: Through the aforementioned theories, I will analyse how the problems of gender are depicted in Grand's Ideala and Egerton's A Little Gray Glove, A Lost Masterpiece, and A
- 6. Quintero 6 Nocturne. I will pay attention to the historical background, the most important changes which took place in the fin-de-siècle dealing with the development of women's rights, the importance of the male-first person narrator in each text as a supporter, opposer, or a simple observer who analyses the New Woman. The analysis of male and female gender will be also studied throughout the different texts. 4. Tentative Conclusions: My analysis will show how Grand and Egerton criticise the institution of marriage, and how the Victorian society strongly punished these women. The desire these heroines expressed after being free and the possibilities they found as divorced women, although they lost the stability and respectability they got throughout marriage. The impossibility of getting better career opportunities is shown throughout Grand's Ideala, and Egerton's A Nocturne where the heroine has a tragic ending due to the society's lack of understanding or she is not able to find a proper job without the support of man. And to conclude, I will analyse the image of the New Woman throughout two narrators who support the Victorian values as Lord Dawne in Ideala, and the male first-person narrator in A Lost Masterpiece. 5. Works Cited References and Bibliography used in my thesis will be carried out according to the MLA format provided in: Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th Edition 2008. Working Bibliography Ardis, Ann. New Women, New Novels. Feminism and Early Modernism. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990. _____ Modernism and Cultural Conflicts 1880-1922. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.
- 7. Quintero 7 _____ & Leslie Lewis, eds. Women's Experience on Modernity, 1875-1945. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2003. Dowling, Linda. “The Decadent and the New Woman in the 1890's.” Nineteenth- Century Fiction 33.4 (1979): 434-53. Egerton, George. “A Little Gray Glove.” Keynotes. Ed. Roberts brothers. Boston 1893. Internet Archive. University of California Libraries. 25 May 2013. <http://archive.org/details/keynotes00egerrich>. ______. “A Nocturne.” Symphonies. Ed. London and New York. 1897. Internet Archive. Harvard Univesity. 25 May 2013 <http://archive.org/details/symphonies03egergoog> ______. “A Lost Masterpiece”. Discords. 1894. Ed. Forgotten Books, 2012. Fraiman, Susan. “Ardis's New Women, New Novels and Showalter's Sexual Anarchy.” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 11. 2 (1992): 119-22. Goodman, Lizbeth and Jane de Gay, eds. The Routledge Reader in Gender and Performance. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Grand, Sarah. Ideala. Ed. Donohue, Henneberry. Chicago 189-. Internet Archive. University of California Libraries. 25 May 2012. <http://archive.org/details/idealagrand00graniala> Hager, Lisa. “A Community of Women: Women's Agency and Sexuality in George Egerton's Keynotes and Discords.” Nineteenth- Century Gender Studies 2.2 (2006). <http://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue22/hager.htm> _______Piecing Together a Gray Patchwork: The Formation of Feminine Identity in George Egerton's Keynotes and Discords. MA University of Florida, 2001. <http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/ download? doi=10.1.1.8.5640&rep=rep1&type=pdf>
- 8. Quintero 8 Khan, Madeleine. Narrative Transvestism: Rhetoric and Gender in the Eighteenth Century English Novel. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991. Kim, Rina and Claire Westfall, eds. Cross-Gendered Literary Voices: Appropriating, Resisting,Embracing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Ledger, Sally, & Scott McCracken. Cultural Politics at the Fin de Siècle. Oxford: Oxford Oxford UP, 2000. MacLeod Walls, Elizabeth. “ 'A Little Bit Afraid of Women Today. ' The Victorian New Woman and the Rhetoric of British Modernism.” Rhetoric Review. 21.3 (2002): 229- 46. Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty and The Subjection of Women. 1869. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1996. O'Toole, Tina. “Keynotes from Millstreet, Co Cork: Egerton's Transgressive Fictions.” Colby Library Quaterly 36. 2 (2000): 145-156. Peterson, Jeanne. “No Angel in the House: The Victorian Myth and Paget Women.” American Historical Review 89.3 (1984): 677-708. Randall, Bryony. “George Egerton's 'A Lost Masterpiece': Inspiration, Gender, and Cultural Authority at the Fin de Siècle”. New Woman Writes, Authority and the Body. ed. Melissa Purdue and Stacey Floyd. New Castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009. 1-18. Richardson, Angelique & Chris Willis. eds. The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: Fin de Siècle Feminisms. Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2001. Showalter, Elaine. Sexual Anarchy. Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle. London: Virago, 1992. Stubbs, Patricia. Women and Fiction: Feminism and the Novel, 1880-1920. London: