{"id":2014,"date":"2025-02-08T00:21:25","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T00:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=2014"},"modified":"2025-02-08T00:22:56","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T00:22:56","slug":"dont-poke-the-anne-bear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2025\/02\/08\/dont-poke-the-anne-bear\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Poke the Anne Bear"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After mildly scrubbing Mrs. Fairlie\u2019s tombstone, Anne Catherick transforms from a peaceful, innocent girl to a ferocious creature at Walter Hartright\u2019s insinuation that she may belong in an insane asylum after all. The change is witnessed on her face, which before was characterized by \u201cnervous sensitiveness, weakness and uncertainty\u201d (Collins 104). These descriptions paint Anne as harmless and helpless, as a Victorian woman is expected to be. However, this softness morphs into \u201can expression of maniacally intense hatred and fear\u201d (104). Both feelings alter the woman\u2019s passive emotional state in an unfeminine way, making her dangerous. The word \u201cwild\u201d is used twice, as well as \u201cunnatural,\u201d emphasizing Anne\u2019s departure from traditional feminine nature (104). She is specifically described as a \u201cwild animal,\u201d separating her from humanity entirely (104). This description is especially notable since animals are typically associated with the masculine, perhaps suggesting a subversion of gender roles. Lastly, Anne uses her \u201cconvulsive strength\u201d to \u201ccrush\u201d the cloth she had been using to clean the tombstone, \u201cas if it had been a living creature she could kill\u201d (104). The ferocious violence of this action is emphasized by each descriptor, once again comparing Anne Catherick to an animalistic predator. I think this passage shows a dark side of Anne Catherick lurking beneath her meek demeanor, which is agitated by Hartright\u2019s insult to her mental stability. With this scene, Collins subtly aligns unfemininity with insanity, or mental illness at the least. Here is also an image of a woman overcome by sensations\u2014dark sensations of <em>fear <\/em>and <em>anger<\/em>\u2014who is thus transformed into something unnatural, masculine, and frighteningly powerful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After mildly scrubbing Mrs. Fairlie\u2019s tombstone, Anne Catherick transforms from a peaceful, innocent girl to a ferocious creature at Walter Hartright\u2019s insinuation that she may belong in an insane asylum after all. The change is witnessed on her face, which before was characterized by \u201cnervous sensitiveness, weakness and uncertainty\u201d (Collins 104). These descriptions paint Anne &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2025\/02\/08\/dont-poke-the-anne-bear\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Don&#8217;t Poke the Anne Bear<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4760,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135984],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4760"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}