‘A large and passionate humanity plays about her’: Women andmoral agency in the late Victorian social problem novel

PR English literature

Murdoch, Christina ; Blair, Kirstie

University:University of Glasgow

Department:School of Critical Studies

关键词: PR English literature;   

Others  :  http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3703/1/2012Murdochphd.pdf

来源: University of Glasgow

【 摘 要 】

This thesis examines responses to the idea of a specific female moralagency in depictions of women’s philanthropic work by late nineteenthcenturyfemale novelists. Focusing on depictions of romantic and sexualfemale experience in the late nineteenth-century campaign against poverty,I explore the role of gender and sexuality in the making of the femalemoral self in novels by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Iota, Margaret Harkness,Jane Hume Clapperton, Gertrude Dix. I demonstrate the manner in whichaltruism was linked to romantic love and sexual desire, and show how thisidea surfaced in the love-plot in novels by late nineteenth-century women.I argue that the novel was regarded as a valuable instrument to further theprocess of social reform, owing to its perceived unique ability to arousethe reader’s sympathies; therefore, these novelists used the novel as a toolfor constructing the altruistic self. Reading the novels alongsidecontemporary non-fiction discourse, I undertake an analysis of differentromance plots and show how they relate to the debates of the social reformmovement of the late nineteenth century. Finally, I suggest that by usingthe novel, and especially the romance plot, which was regarded as afeminine form of expression, these novelists are defending the idea of afeminine ethic, and a feminine conception of morality that was defined byemotion, feeling, and sympathy, as opposed to the more masculinescientific and sociological ideas behind the late nineteenth century socialreform movement.