{"id":719,"date":"2018-10-15T01:02:59","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T05:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=719"},"modified":"2018-10-15T01:02:59","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T05:02:59","slug":"dionea-defies-victorian-ideals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2018\/10\/15\/dionea-defies-victorian-ideals\/","title":{"rendered":"Dionea Defies Victorian Ideals"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Vernon Lee\u2019s \u201cDionea,\u201d the majority of the factors that cause Dionea to be seen as a dangerous \u2018other\u2019 stem from her interactions and preferences rather than from her mysterious past. Reading \u201cDionea\u201d through Henderson and Sharpe\u2019s \u201cThe Victorian Age\u201d from The Longman Anthology of British Literature<\/em> helps us see how many of these actions and preferences are undesirable because they oppose the established values of the \u201cideal Victorian woman\u201d (Henderson and Sharpe 1061).<\/p>\n

According to Henderson and Sharpe, the \u201cideal Victorian woman was supposed to be domestic and pure, selflessly motivated by the desire to serve others rather than fulfill her own needs\u201d (Henderson and Sharpe 1061). Within this desired domesticity is the expectation of acquiring \u201c\u2019female accomplishments\u2019 such as needlework, sketching, or flower arranging\u201d (Henderson and Sharpe 1062). Dionea is intended to learn these skills at the school and convent, as \u201cthe accomplishments of young ladies are taught at a very moderate rate at Montemirto\u201d (Lee 6). Doctor Alessandro De Rosis writes, however, that \u201cpoor Dionea has<\/em> no skill\u201d and condemns her to uselessness (Lee 6). The Mother Superior furthers this condescension by insisting that she and the other sisters \u201cwill pray to the Madonna and St Francis to make [Dionea] more worthy\u201d (Lee 6). In other words, not only is Dionea incompetent because she can\u2019t learn the trivial \u201caccomplishments\u201d expected of well-bred women, her deficiency marks her as unworthy of the care and education she receives.<\/p>\n

Dionea is bad at the \u201caccomplishments of young ladies\u201d and despises them as well. Doctor De Rosis writes that \u201c[Dionea] hates learning, sewing, washing up the dishes, all equally. [He is] sorry to say she shows no natural piety\u201d (Lee 6). Her lack of \u201cnatural piety,\u201d in addition to her hatred of activities she\u2019s expected to enjoy, seems to cause the assumption that she is, again, not worthy of the investment of her patron, Lady Savelli. This lacking also seems to automatically mark her \u201ccharacter\u201d as \u201cnot so satisfactory,\u201d and makes \u201c[h]er companions detest her, and the nuns, although they admit that she is not exactly naughty, seem to feel her as a dreadful thorn in the flesh\u201d (Lee 6). The nuns\u2019 concession that Dionea \u201cis not exactly naughty\u201d highlights that Dionea doesn\u2019t have to do anything malicious to be treated with scorn; the mere fact that she isn\u2019t like the rest of the women at the convent designates her as an object of hate.<\/p>\n

Dionea\u2019s deviation from her expected role as a woman continues from her days at the convent to after she leaves. Henderson and Sharpe note that while \u201c[o]nly a small portion of the nation\u2019s women could afford to remain at home\u2026 the constant celebration of home and hearth\u2026 made conspicuous domesticity the expected role for well-born and well-married women\u201d (Henderson and Sharpe 1062). Whether or not Dionea is well-born is questionable, but she is constantly called the prot\u00e9g\u00e9e of Lady Evelyn Savelli, Princess of Sabina, by Doctor De Rosis. This sponsorship elevates Dionea\u2019s status and grants her the education of a woman of higher status, so that Doctor De Rosis expects to be able to marry her well. Even her beauty, however, \u201cdoes not bring her any nearer getting a husband\u201d due to her poor reputation (Lee 10). Doctor De Rosis writes that Dionea\u2019s \u201costensible employment is mending nets, collecting olives, carrying bricks, and other miscellaneous jobs; but her real status is that of village sorceress\u201d (Lee 16). As \u201c[i]t is love-philters that Dionea prepares,\u201d it is known that Dionea works with and prompts matters of love and desire (Lee 17). Dionea\u2019s \u201cevil trade,\u201d as Doctor De Rosis calls it, can be compared to that of the \u201cso-called \u2018redundant\u2019 women who could not find husbands or work\u201d and were driven \u201cinto prostitution\u201d because of the common subject of socially unacceptable dealings with desire (Lee 17, Henderson and Sharpe 1062) Dionea\u2019s occupation is further from acceptable, though because she chooses it and incorporates the other-worldly variable of sorcery into it.<\/p>\n

By defying the social norms she is expected to adhere to while in the convent and living as an adult, Dionea models the characteristics of the new Victorian woman that is considered to be of lesser value than the \u201cdomestic and pure\u201d \u201cideal Victorian woman\u201d (Henderson and Sharpe 1061).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Vernon Lee\u2019s \u201cDionea,\u201d the majority of the factors that cause Dionea to be seen as a dangerous \u2018other\u2019 stem from her interactions and preferences rather than from her mysterious past. Reading \u201cDionea\u201d through Henderson and Sharpe\u2019s \u201cThe Victorian Age\u201d from The Longman Anthology of British Literature helps us see how many of these actions … Continue reading Dionea Defies Victorian Ideals<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3613,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3613"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}