{"id":2240,"date":"2025-03-26T21:16:22","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T21:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=2240"},"modified":"2025-03-26T21:16:22","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T21:16:22","slug":"queen-vanora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2025\/03\/26\/queen-vanora\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen Vanora"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Mona Caird’s \u201cThe Yellow Drawing-Room\u201d, Vanora Haydon is placed into the complicated position of queenliness. The protagonist, Mr. St. Vincent, is hopelessly in love with her against what he considers to be his own best judgement. Because, to him, Vanora has \u201cmany qualities and ideas that are not suited to [her] sex\u201d (106), and borders on \u201cinevitably ridiculous\u201d (107), she cannot be his ideal woman. He repeats several times that a woman\u2019s true power lies in the \u201csacred realms where a woman is queen\u201d (106). By this he means the home, as a wife and mother, which Vanora expresses absolutely no interest in. He also means by this that Vanora should be silent, submissive, and unopinionated. For Mr. St. Vincent, Vanora\u2019s true power as queen lies in her giving up her authority and self to him and reigning only over \u201cwomanly\u201d areas. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But Vanora is already a queen in her own right, with a kingdom of her own. Her yellow drawing room serves as her own sacred realm where her authority reigns and her ideas are allowed to exist. <\/span>In Victorian times, the country’s regent was\u00a0a queen, and Vanora\u2019s attitude about herself and her agency reflect the attitude that women are not simply wives and mothers, but leaders, and can hold positions of authority. Mr. St. Vincent’s rejection to this attitude because it is not \u201cideal\u201d reflects the resistance against the \u201cnew woman\u201d ideology and women’s liberation movements that were born out of the Victorian era and the extensive reign of a queen. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Mona Caird’s \u201cThe Yellow Drawing-Room\u201d, Vanora Haydon is placed into the complicated position of queenliness. The protagonist, Mr. St. Vincent, is hopelessly in love with her against what he considers to be his own best judgement. Because, to him, Vanora has \u201cmany qualities and ideas that are not suited to [her] sex\u201d (106), and … Continue reading Queen Vanora<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5571,"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-2240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240","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\/5571"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}