Author: Leah Miller

I have been drawn to Victorian literature even before I knew how to classify this genre.  Upon thinking about my interests in this period of time, I have come to the conclusion that I am attracted to Victorian literature as much of it raises questions about identity and the human experience. Of the novels I have read, most if not all have raised questions about gender, sexuality, race, and class. Furthermore, they explore how these elements of identity can intersect with one another to effect one’s experience within a society. The Victorian Era is situated against the backdrop of numerous social anxieties in response to political, economic, and social shifts. These include the rise of colonialism, industrialization, and overall fears towards acts considered immoral. For the purpose of my project, I plan to focus my scholarship on the intersections of race, gender, and class while paying close attention to the cultural and political backdrop (colonialism, industrialization, etc.,)

Ultimately, the occasion that I am looking at is the Victorian Era, largely due to the “coded” language used in many pieces of literature produced during this time. This coded language, as described by William Cohen in his book, Sex, Scandal, and the Novel, was used in many pieces of Victorian literature to have conversations that were deemed inappropriate to have within the public sphere. In fact, Cohen says “Sexual unspeakability…affords [Victorian writers] abundant opportunities to develop an elaborate discourse- richly ambiguous, subtly coded, prolix and polyvalent- that we now recognize and designate by the very term literary.”  I plan to use Cohen’s analysis of language within Victorian literature as means of performing my own analysis on sexuality within my primary texts. Although this chapter focuses on the Victorian novel, I argue that the same pattern emerges amongst short stories. When performing a close-reading, I pay close attention to the coded language Cohen addresses, using it as a means of uncovering deeper meanings on sex and sexuality in my short stories.

While I plan to use feminist and queer theory as lenses when analyzing my occasion, my intersectional analysis remains at the basis of my project. This means I must incorporate numerous lenses when writing about Victorian short stories. To account for the intense social anxieties that existed during this period, it is necessary for me to employ critical race theory to my project as well. Combining these seemingly separate lenses will allow me to perform an intersectional analysis on texts that will in-turn reveal dominant narratives, author biases, or even acts of resistance that manifest within the texts themselves.

To use critical race theory successfully, I must understand the discourse surrounding race during this period. Contrary to the dominant narrative of race within 19th century United States, conversations related to racial identity were grounded in colonial thought. The rise of colonialism during the Victorian era resulted in intense fear of and fascination with the exotic. In his book, Orientalism, Edward Said explains that studying European literature can expose certain patterns amongst discourses surrounding the geographic locations of “Africa, India, parts of the Far East, Australia, and the Caribbean,” (pg. 11). Said outlines the stereotypes and rhetorical figures used in European, which are based upon sentiments of ““the mysterious East”” and “the notions about bringing civilization to primitive or barbaric people,” (pg. 11). Furthermore, Said claims that anxieties towards the foreign man spread as a means of justifying colonialism. He explains that white men often argued that colonialism was a means of not only protecting European women, but women of the East as well.

These attitudes and anxieties contribute to an othering of those who are non-white, as seen in Elizabeth Gaskell’s,“The Great Cranford Panic.” The dynamic between the high society white women and the non-European foreign male exemplify the anxieties Said explores in his own book. The story expertly sets up a dynamic in which the white women are depicted as shallow, interested only in fashion and the social scene. Ironically, their fashion is inspired by the turban which originated in the Middle-East. This is a clear mode of mockery employed by the author who allows her characters to simultaneously exclude someone marked as other while borrowing foreign items of clothing and claiming these articles as high fashion. In this case, Elizabeth Gaskell’s text uses different elements of identity including gender, race, and class to explore racial tension within high-brown Victorian society. She appears to be poking fun and even critiquing the white, upper-class women for their quick judgments and shallow interests.

My scholarly research hinges upon intersectionality. I will use lenses such as gender and queer theory, feminist criticism, and critical race theory to explore my chosen occasion (19th-century British literature.) This analysis will expose the ways in which certain Victorian short stories may play into a dominant narrative or act as a resistant to it. As I continue my research, this dominant narrative will become more explicate. Furthermore, my continued reading of my primary texts will further illuminate what exactly I am looking for and what my intersectional lens can expose.

Citations:

Cohen, William A. “‘Sex, Scandal, and the Novel.’” Sex, Scandal, and the Novel, The Victorian Web, 4 Dec. 2003.

Denisoff, Dennis. “The Great Cranford Panic.” The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories. Broadview, 2004.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York : Pantheon Books, [1978], 1978.

Tucker, Herbert F. A New Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture. Hoboken : Wiley, 2014., 2014. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture.

I have chosen to use Elizabeth Gaskell’s short story, “The Great Cranford Panic” as one of my primary texts for my thesis. This story was written in 1853 and is a part of a larger piece of work that Gaskell composed titled Cranford. I stumbled upon this short story in The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short stories, while I was going through the anthology in hopes of finding interesting short stories written by female authors. The name Elizabeth Gaskell has often come up in my studies of Victorian literature and so I decided to narrow in on one of her short stories to explore the possibility of using one of her pieces as a primary text in my own research. Why I settled on this short story, however, is because of the way the text deals overtly with race and gender immediately at the onset of the story. “The Great Cranford Panic” explores the interactions between white women of high society rural England and the mysterious newcomer, Signor Brunoni, whose racial identity is perceived as a threat within the town of Cranford. I plan on using this text to explore Victorian anxieties surrounding race, especially within the context of non-white men being seen as a threat to white women.

One way in which “The Great Cranford Panic” explores racial identity is by setting up the town of Cranford as being traditional, proper, and overwhelmingly populated by women. By setting up Cranford as this pinnacle of British high society, Gaskell is furthering the “otherness” of the traveling foreign magician, Signor Brunoni. The story opens with Miss Matey writing the protagonist and narrator asking for help with fashion. Miss Matey requests for the narrator to bring her a turban, as she wishes to don a different type of headwear that is “newer” than the other ladies in town (pg. 124). The narrator, however, brings her a traditional (to England) cap and explains that she was, “anxious to prevent her [Miss Matey] from disfiguring her small gentle mousey face with a great Saracen’s head turban; and, accordingly, I bought her a pretty, neat, middle-aged cap,” (pg. 124). Here, the juxtaposition between the threat of the foreign and the innocence and daintiness of the white woman is seen in the syntax of the sentence. Throughout this quote, the narrator displays concern over the white woman who is described as “gentle,” “mousey,” “small,” “pretty,” and “neat,” all of which are terms that imply innocence and fragility. The turban, however, is described as “Saracen,” which, according to the footnotes, refers to Arabs or, “a non-Christian heathen,” (pg. 124). Furthermore, this piece is described as having the potential to “disfigure” a woman. This juxtaposition between the piece of Muslim culture and the white woman is meant to exacerbate racial tensions and public fear and anxiety towards the foreign, Eastern world.

Not only does Gaskell’s short story explore racial tension in high society rural England through social/cultural facets such as fashion, but also through the characters themselves. After a round of robberies occurs within the beloved town of Cranford, the narrator says, “Cranford has so long piqued itself on being an honest and moral town, that is had grown to fancy itself too genteel and well-bred to be otherwise, and felt the stain upon its character at this time doubly,” (pg. 132). Here, Gaskell is setting up the pristine nature of the town and the way in which it is held as the pinnacle of propriety and even whiteness. Although it may be a stretch, the term “stain” here can be interpreted within a radicalized context. If the town is stained, it implies a sort of purity and pristine about it; however, it is the foreigner, Signor Brunoni’s, presence that results in a sort of corruption. The narrator says, “we must believe that the robbers were strangers- if strangers, why not foreigners?- if foreigner, who so likely as the French? Signor Brunoni spoke broken English like a Frenchman, and…he wore a turban like a Turk,” (pg. 132). Here, the citizens of Cranford immediately blame the “foreigner,” who is posed as threatening. This image of the radicalized threat is exacerbated by the fact that Signor Brunoni wears a turban, a symbol that is used throughout the text to represent the foreign threat.

Ultimately, Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Great Cranford Panic” is a useful piece to my thesis that is intriguing to me because of of one of its main themes;  the threat of the non-British male to the pristine, white women.

Citations:

Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories. Edited by Dennis Denisoff, Broadview Press, 2004.

Malcomb, Elizabeth. “Cranford.” Cranford, The Victorian Web, Jan. 1997.

Although my primary sources may span across the Atlantic to include 19th century short stories from both England and North America, for this blog post I will focus on Victorian literature and Wilkie Collins.

I first read a piece by Wilkie Collins during my class title Victorian Sexualities. I was interested in this author upon reading The Woman in White as I was intrigued by the racialized and gendered language that he used. Not that I am using an intersectional lens to analyze 19th century short stories, it is only appropriate that I start with an author who has sparked my interest in the past.

According to Lyn Pyckett’s Wilkie Collins: Authors in Context, Collins was born in London, 1824. In her book, Pyckett dedicates a section to Collins’s relationship to social change, especially that which centered upon gender and sexuality. Within this section, Pyckett explains that Wilkie Collins produced literature for a liberal weekly paper titled the Leader, and that later, He worked for Dickens’s Household Words. The different papers Collins worked for were associated with political and economic pushes for reform. Collins sought to increase conversations surrounding the, “family, marriage, and relations between the sexes,” (Pyckett, 50). He also had a strong interest in the relationship between women and the law, especially in terms of property rights and marriage. Pyckett explains the social context of Collins’s writing as she says, “The legal vulnerability of women, and their position as objects of exchange between men were already staples  of the Gothic plot when Collins began writing, and partly as a result of his efforts they became central to the plots of sensation novels in the 1860s,” (Pyckett, 52). This focus on women as objects and the role of women within the legal system indicates that Collins’ work might use a feminist lens to analyze his contemporary social context.

Not only did Wilkie Collins have a strong interest in women and reform, but he also held a clear curiosity in gender roles, especially women within the social and the familial contexts. According to Pyckett, Collins lived during a period where women became more vocal about their lack of civil rights and as a result, there became a push against traditional roles of the family. According to Pyckett, “Both Collins’s life and his fiction (in common with quite a lot of Victorian fiction) suggest that the Victorian home, family, and gender roles were rather more fluid and complex in practice than they were in this ideological inscription,” (Pyckett, 57). Pyckett then goes on to elaborate that the reality of the family during the Victorian period was that there was a “domestic ideal”, however, this ideal was simply not attainable by everyone. Thus, Collins saw a variety of family lifestyles that do not all adhere to this “domestic ideal.,” in which women were expected to exist within the private sphere to perform domestic duties while the men ventured into the public sphere to receive employment and an education (Pyckett, 56).

Although the scope of my thesis is still very broad, I am seeing different themes emerge already such as women in the family and mental health, the latter being another interest of Collins. According to Pyckett, “Contemporary sexual mores and morality come under scrutiny as Collins investigates the hypocrisies  of ‘respectable’ Victorian society and the relationship between respectable society and the demi-monde,” (Pyckett, 119). Pyckett goes on to explain that Collins was fascinated by the relationship between mental disorders and one’s divergence from sexual ‘norms.’  This might be yet another avenue for me to explore through my intersectional lens; how race, gender, and sexuality intersect to create social positions that constitute as either respectable or not respectable.

Lyn Pyckett’s Wilkie Collins: Authors in Context exposes the social context of Wilkie Collins and his writing. Knowing the background of his work will allow me to better analyze his short stories such as “A Terribly Strange Bed.” His interest in women within the realm of legal reform, the family, and sexual morality indicates that his work might be feminist texts that will prove integral to understanding writing about women within the Victorian era. As one of the most famous writers of his time, studying the works of Wilkie Collins along with his background is essential to the purpose of my project.

Works Cited:

Pykett, Lyn. Wilkie Collins. [Electronic Resource] : Authors in Context. Oxford : Oxford University Press, UK, 2005., 2005. Oxford World’s Classics.

*Trigger Warning*- This post contains  close-readings of violent scenes that involve sex and physical abuse.

Throughout Toni Morrison’s Beloved, a consistent thread appears that depicts the dehumanization of slaves at the hands of those with privileged identities. Within the text, Morrison uses animalistic language to describe different scenes in which Sethe and other slaves are being beaten, coerced into sexual acts, and controlled by someone of privilege.

One of the first moments in which Morrison uses language related to animals to describe a scene of abuse and powerlessness occurs when Sethe partakes in a  sexual act with the engraver in order to have the name “Beloved” written on her daughter’s head stone. The narrator describes the scene once saying, “she thought it would be enough, rutting among the headstones with the engraver, his young son looking on, the anger in his face so old; the appetite in it quite new,” (pg. 5). This graphic scene was extremely disturbing for me to read, indicating it was a passage worth noting. Here, a key aspect of the scene is the nature of the son and the engraver who both contribute to the dehumanization of Sethe. By describing the son as, “looking on,” Morrison creates a sense of spectatorship, as if Sethe was an interesting object to gaze upon. Furthermore, the engraver is said contain an amount of “anger” and an “appetite.” This image immediately evoked a dynamic of predator and prey, as the words “anger” and “appetite” indicate a sort of animalistic, instinctual need for satiation. The juxtaposition of the engraver’s “old” face yet “new” appetite emphasizes the instinctual nature of his need for sexual gratification. It’s as if despite his age, the act of asserting himself upon Sethe ignites feelings of youth and power. Lastly, the word “rutting” in this context contains significant meaning. I decided to look up the definition of this word and its connotations. I found that “rutting” has another meaning and often refers to the sexual acts of farm animals, mainly deer. This term is repeated later in this section as the narrator says, “Rutting among the stones under the eyes of the engraver’s son was not enough,” (pg. 5). The repetition of this word refers to the way in which the engraver and his son treat Sethe as non-human. Instead, she is an object with little importance to them, similar to an animal. This can be connected back to Mulvey when thinking about the object of the gaze and the performer of the action.

Another instance in which animalistic language is used to describe a scene of abuse when Sethe recalls slaves being forced into wearing bits generally used on farm animals. The narrator ays, “She already knew about it, had seen it time after time in the place before Sweet Home. Men, boys, girls, women. The wildness that shot up into the eye the moment the lips were yanked back. Days after it was taken out, goose fat was rubbed on the corners of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the wildness out of the eye,” (pg. 84). This instance is one more of many examples in which Morrison uses animalistic language to emphasize the dehumanization of slaves. The terms “wildness” and the picture of one’s lips being “yanked back” evoke images of a horse being tamed. Generally, this is called “breaking” a horse and often involves using a bit to tame the wild creature. The practice is based upon removing the independence and power of the horse in order to serve its master. The same practice is being used here on people as means of control. Ultimately, Morrison seems to be using both this scene and that which Sethe is at Beloved’s gravestone to depict the way in which African Americans were treated as though they were animals. The language here is not only rooted in referenced to animals, but also to the body and the lack of power. Both of these scenes depict an act being committed against the will of the recipient. The language is centered upon the body and contains notions of forced penetration, whether the mouth or other areas of the body. This constant referral to animals throughout the text furthers the central theme which is the deep-rooted pain that is a result of years of torture and abuse. It highlights the lack of agency had amongst slaves and the cruel practices held by their owners who often performed violent acts centered upon penetration and disfiguration of the body.

For as long as I have been at Dickinson College, I have been passionate about combining my two majors to discover different potential meanings behind texts. My favorite courses throughout my college career have allowed me to explore connections between identity and literature, such as “Victorian Sexualities” and “Evil and Anxiety in Contemporary Global Fiction.” Amidst my studies in both fields, key words that keep popping up include intersectionality and feminist literary analysis. Culler explores cultural studies in Chapter 3 of his book, “Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction,” claiming that a part of cultural studies involves analyzing, “how cultural identities are constructed and organized, for individuals and groups, in a world of diverse and intermingled communities, state power, media industries, and multinational corporations,” (p.43).   Here, several words catch my attention as they often show up in my studies. Power and identity are two key terms that will be necessary to engage with while I pursue a thesis that might take a closer look at gender and sexuality. Cultural studies will undoubtably be key in my studies as I plan to look at how my chosen texts interact with the culture in which they were developed. Identity, one of my key words, is essential to cultural studies as Culler says, “Work in cultural studies has been particularly attuned to the problematical character of identity and to the multiple ways in which identities are formed, experiences, and transmitted,” (p.45).  Applying these ideas and key concepts to my literary analysis will help me explore deeper meanings within a text. For example, I can ask questions to myself about Toni Morrison’s “Home” that include: how does Cee’s intersectional identity of female, African American, and lower class affect her role in the text? How does Morrison display power within this text? How are power and sexuality intertwined within this book and does that point to an argument behind the text?

Intersectionality, gender, identity, and power, are a few key terms that are essential to take into consideration when performing feminist literary analysis. Some genres I am interested in include children’s literature, fairy tales, Victorian literature, war novels, and literature founded upon fantasy.  By using key terms such as power and identity to analyze texts within these categories, I will be able to gain a deeper understanding of the perspectives within the text. Each of these genres can ask a diverse set of questions as related to my key terms of gender, intersectionality, and power. For example, it would be interesting to examine the role of Victorian heroines and their often struggle with ‘wild’ sexuality versus a restrictive family or culture, as seen in “Wuthering Heights.”

Lastly, I would be interested in exploring intertextuality as a key literary term for my line of inquiry. For example, over the Summer I studied the references to the story of King Arthur in the Harry Potter series. Another example of this that I am interested in possibly pursuing is motifs or images in “Beowulf” that make an appearance in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” While these texts contain obvious references to famous older stories, I believe intertextuality can be a literary concept I explore no matter which texts I end up focusing upon.

Ultimately, I hope to use my background in Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies to enrich my understandings of the texts I choose. I plan to use key terms such as intersectionality, gender, power, and sexuality to explore one of the genres I outlined earlier, as well as expand my vocabulary to include different lenses in my analysis. This will help me learn how to employ different modes of looking at a text while enhancing my own work.