Notas de Literatura inglesa del siglo XIX, Apuntes de Idioma Inglés

¡Descarga Notas de Literatura inglesa del siglo XIX y más Apuntes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity! Nineteenth-Century Literature THE WOMAN QUESTION Romanticism (until 1840s) Issues: Emotion, individualism (hero/heroine who needs to stay alone), past/nature (glorifying past, importance of nature, especially in Gothic genre), medievalism (also Greeks and Romans), isolation. Early Gothic genre; 2 kinds of Gothic: "to mind to outside" (subjectivity of the characters and the power of the mind, magic, fear, supernatural) and "to outside to mind". Industrial revolution plays an important role: Emergence of middle class, urban sprawl, they start being represented, class/gender difference. More people start "being British". There was extremely rich people and extremely poor people. Victorianism (1837-1901): realism, Gothic gender revised (feminized). Until 19th century in England we never heard the voice of women because of the patriarchy society but, at the same time, the most powerful person in England was a woman called Queen Victoria who also was educated and from high-class. Since then the question about what is a woman emerged and thanks to Wollstonecraft and A Vindication of the Rights of Women this debate of what a woman was supposed to be became very popular. It is a discourse in which she is interested how the picture of women is drawn. Women’s morality was closed from how they use their bodies because in that time, her body was the only personal having for a woman and not for a man. So, having this on account, a woman was moral if she was virgin or married while if a woman was a prostitute she was seen as an immoral person. Also, nannies and teachers was de only way to escape from this entire world because it was the only role they could get. At that time, the ideology from industrial revolution was flourishing, which means the subjugation of woman because: -Men: the will of god made men to be the stronger of the two by biological determinism. PUBLIC SPHERE. -Women: religious doctrines. PRIVATE SPHERE (not domestic). -Coventry Patmore's "The Angel in the House" and the Separate Spheres as an ideology Ideology from Industrial Revolution Men -will of God and biologic determinism (bad use of Darwinism) - domain the public sphere. Nineteenth-Century Literature 1 Women -religious doctrines- private sphere (not domestic) The separate spheres ideology: women and men are unapologetically different and therefore distinctive gender roles are natural. But then, why and how women could take central stage? It is mainly because the Industrial Revolution changed class and gender meaning. The new types of labour could be done either by men or women. The fake morality of the Victorian era can be seen in the high rate of prostitution. The economical development of women was a proof that they weren't inferior to men. If a women could work the same as men, that was a challenge for the nation; then, women were fakely depicted as crazy because was "dangerous" to the nation. Therefore, even the most educated women had a lot of problems to work. The act of writing was a feminist action; men thought that writing was only for women. Women and men were unapologetically different and therefore distinctive gender roles were natural. The main reason is to be found in the changes that industrialization and capitalism brought about. J.S. Mill and his discourse The Subjugation of Women explains it: reality imposes women not to be prepared to work despite reality was the contrary. With his discourse he wanted to destroy a legal law that exited in Britain at that time which consisted on the notion of covertures: a man owns a woman as a slave. Coverture refers to the legal conception that a woman’s rights were engulfed under her husband which implied that women had no right to own any property but prostitution. Prostitution was the only own of women because it was about the body. Text 13: Novels were long not only to entertain but also to instruct. She wants the penny novels to imitate the classical novels. “Why may not tales of imagination... rather than to evil?” “Those who love the souls of their fellow-creatures...this pernicious literature” so on Literature always renders a message so we have to be careful because reading implies a moral lesson. THE LITERATURE OF THE WORKING CLASSES Falling costs of production led to the emergence of a working market for print that led Mary to worry about the penny fiction magazines that were being sold as a fraction of the price of authors who are now considered to be part of the 19 century literature canon. With mass-produced popular fiction came the notion of the popular mass that consumed that cared little about the content of what they read as long as it gratified the sensual needs, violent or romantic, of the moment. Nineteenth-Century Literature 2 To sum up: Gothic tropes in the 18th century included psychological and physical terror; mystery and the supernatural; madness, doubling, dark landscapes, and heredity curses. The Victorian Gothic novels moves away from the familiar themes of Gothic fiction- ruined castles, helpless heroines, and evil villains – to situate the tropes of the supernatural and the uncanny within a recognisable environment. This brings a sense of verisimilitude to the narrative, and thereby renders the Gothic features of the text all the more disturbing. Why was that so? The Victorian era saw the abandonment of conventional religion. In the search for meaning, people were prepared to suspend reason. Text 2: it is a parody about The Mysteries of Udolpho, Radcliffe, A. A parody is a literary recourse in which the author makes laugh about a theme and often criticising it. It is reinterpreting the text giving it another new meaning sometimes making fun of it. Parody just does not mean to carry elements of fun. It talks about human strength, human power. It’s mockery about superiority. There is a double mockery: she mocks over convections of romanticism but at the same time she uses it. There is also a lot of feminist strategy hides in the text. ‘They called each other by their Christian name’ she brings up Christians name because the religion was connected with morality. In protesting culture use Christian names to vindicate the spirituality of women. Women read novels together, out loud. The role of literature at the beginning of nineteenth century The second awakening on the first half of the 19th century: very important writing in the UK and US. She gives the reader a strong and accurate definition about what a novel means on the nineteenth century. On the chapter two there is a statement in which she positions women as the same state as men. Irony surfaces are also notable. Also we can see a parody about how people read novels. On chapter seven she talks about the active behaviour of the woman. It is a mixture about romantic and second gothic reading. On chapter nine it also appears again the dichotomy of light vs. Darkness. Dark reality is through the light in which women can find the way of show her virtues and strong moments. In the text England is showed as a private security for exist. There is a confession: sentimental empathy. Writers address people directly. At the very end of the story it is shown a problem: she is forced to choose between marriages and money. She chooses marriage because she has to life under the beliefs of Victorian society and ideals. Nineteenth-Century Literature 5 Two novels between romanticism and gothic themes: Frankenstein and Wuthering Heighs. Wuthering Heighs has many levels. The story’s plot is about the impossibility of love between Edgar and Catherine because of their classes. It was published in 1847 and also it was written aware of readings. It is a Victorian novel but very romantic because it has a lot of landscapes, wildness and these elements are not common in gothic novels so that it is romantic. There are a lot of descriptions about these landscapes. Nature and dark are always present. There are many levels and readings. Passion was not morally accepted. Ending: as a Victorian novel we expect a marriage or maybe violence, something more shocking but in fact it is the contrary. It is a transition novel from one genre to other and because of that the ending would be not very striking. There is a balance between supernatural things and real; past and present; the madness of love and the rigorous marriage of the Victorian Era. Frankenstein is a romantic novel with elements from the second wave of Gothic literature. The novel has a lot of meanings on the text in terms of rethinking. It can be considered fiction writing by transitory figures of the Victorian novel. It is important the act of given birth. Article from El País: ¿Puede alguien arrepentirse de ser madre? It is also connected with this idea of giving birth. This novel is the precursor of Naturalism. Shelley sat by whilst her father, Byron and Polidori discussed the new sciences of mesmerism, electricity... which promised to unlock the riddle of life, and planned to write ghost stories. Lifting of the Victorian taboo against writing about physical sexuality (including pregnancy and labour). Brought birth to literature not as realism but as Gothic fantasy, and thus contributing to Romanticism a myth of genuine originality. She was extremely interested in the fact of giving birth and after that regretting of it. She exposes many feminist questions so advance for the time and so that there are many hidden messages of that kind in the text. GOTHIC FEMINISM The novel is most feminine in the motif of revulsion against newborn life, and the drama of guilt, dread, and flight surrounding birth and its consequences. Frankenstein- distinctly a woman’s mythmaking on the subject of birth precisely because its emphasis is not upon what precedes birth. Not upon birth itself, but upon what follows birth: the trauma of the afterbirth. Nineteenth-Century Literature 6 Victor; feminized man who breaks through normal human limitations to defy the rules of society and infringe upon the realm of god. Frankenstein defies morality not by living forever but by giving birth. Shelley faces the monster’s sexual needs for the denoument of the story hangs on his demands that Frankenstein create a female monster partner. Strange perversity; a mother’s hatred (when an innocent girl is strongly executed for the murder of Frankenstein’s brother). Frankenstein transforms the standard Romantic matter of human relationships into a phantasmagoria of nursery and the rethinking of human/gender relations through the first openly Victorian and Gothic (though also Romantic) novel. Read 73 page Nineteenth-Century Literature 7