Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Wives and Daughters'

This research is about Victorian women, who were either the daughters or wives of clergymen of the Church of England, placing them in the social and religious context of their time. In a group biography of three women it looks at the companionate marriage of Henrietta and Samuel Barnett, in a partnership of shared projects, reform and delivery of the social gospel. Catherine Marsh was the daughter of an evangelical clergyman. Her role as 'daughter at home' never changed though she developed a ministry of preaching, writing and philanthropy that took her influence far beyond her father's parishes. As a clergy daughter, Catharine Tait would have been happy so to remain had she not married Broad Churchman Archibald Tait who rose from schoolmaster to Dean to Bishop to Primate of All England. The account of their life together tells of the challenges of these roles, of personal ambition and of great personal tragedy. In the ordination service, a priest of the Church of England promises to 'so frame and fashion his own self, and that of his family' that they become 'wholesome examples and patterns to the flock of Christ'. In a wider context, this study looks at the lives of other clergy wives and daughters and the opportunities and constraints of the exemplary lifestyle. It explore the diversity of clergy lifestyles, the problems of poverty, loss of faith, marital incompatibility and the, often unreasonable, expectations imposed by society, their husbands and even the women themselves. Through a study of advice literature, as well as contemporary fiction, it looks at the stereotypes thus constructed, the potency of image and inaccuracy of perceptions with which these women had to live. In the long timespan of Victoria's reign the women in this thesis mirror change in the church and in society. Change made the priest relinquish many of his patriarchal roles and embrace a more sacerdotal form of ministry, while at the same time creating more and more opportunities for wives and daughters to take on new tasks. Change discredited the myth of the rural idyll and dislodged the certainties of a country parish while opening up new fields of mission in the industrial cities. Change saw the Anglican church relinquish its hold on a diminishing worshipping community while maintaining all the expectations and demands on clergy and their families. Change brought to light immense inequalities and injustices in women's lives and ultimately the reforms necessary to redress these while imposing the encircling restrictions of the separate (private) sphere. The thesis concludes that despite this attempt to 'net by invisible rules' the women of the Victorian middle class, and more particularly the women of the rectory and vicarage, these women were empowered by their exemplary position and that this empowerment enabled them to play a fuller role in supporting their husbands and fathers in what was in effect a shared ministry.

This thesis explores the role of the female characters in Williams Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice. Through contextualizing the characters of Portia, Nerissa and Jessica within the world of early modern England, this study explores the ways in which these characters do not conform to traditional Renaissance values regarding the role of women as daughters and wives. By using historical documents such as behavioral manuals, sermons, and "defenses" of women from the late sixteenth and seventeenth century, this thesis explores the ways in which Shakespeare's female characters challenge traditional social norms. Through the comparison of the female characters with Queen Elizabeth and Patient Griselda, this study discusses the implications of the rebellious behavior of the women in The Merchant of Venice. This thesis concludes that Shakespeare purposely challenges strict social views put forward on women by creating female characters who challenge male authority and are celebrated for their behavior.

The purpose of this study is to show how Elizabeth Gaskell creates a sense of place and why place is important in her novels. Gaskell's life and works indicate an interest in place and an ability to recreate it, but, although most critics mention her descriptive powers, few examine how a sense of place is achieved. Indeed, setting as a tool of analysis has received critical attention only fairly recently. Here the term 'place' has been chosen because it embraces the social, physical, and personal aspects of setting as well as the objects with which spaces are furnished, and for the purpose of discussing its significance a model of the novel has been devised which shows the interrelationships of character, action, setting, language, and ideas, as well as the influence of context (Introduction). Gaskell creates a sense of place in many unobtrusive ways, but particularly important are point of view, windows as vantage points, the connection of place with memory, and similarities in perception between scenes in the novels and fashions in painting (Chapter One). An analysis of Ruth illustrates the interrelationship of character and place. Ruth's journey mirrors her spiritual development, and character is often revealed through response to environment or the displacement of emotions onto it, while place is also used to signify innocence and to emphasize the plea for understanding of the unmarried mother and her child (Chapter Two). Places in North and South represent important aspects of newly industrialized Britain, and are significant to the novel's vision of a coherent society; an examination of how apparently irreconcilable communities are shown to be mutually dependent underlines the importance of place to the novel's ideas (Chapter Three). Wives and Daughters has a complicated plot based on a number of parallel, interlocking stories each centred on a home in the neighbourhood of Hollingford. How event, story, and plot are connected to these places shows their relationship with action (Chapter Four). Thus is an appreciation of Gaskell's literary achievement enhanced, and place shown to be a significant element in her novels.

Denna uppsats analyserar Jane Austens roman Mansfield Park samt Elizabeth Gaskells roman Wives and Daughters för att utröna likheter och skillnader. Uppsatsen utgår ifrån en komparativ metod för att se hur romanerna närmar sig den romantiska konflikt som uppstår, samt karakteriseringar och värderingar. Syftet är att se hur romanerna är en del av/upprätthåller en motivtradition. Uppsatsen visar att romanerna i hög grad liknar varandra gällande intrig och motiv, och att de på så vis är en del av den romantiska motivtraditionen.

In the world of Henry James's novels, characters are often placed in difficult situations where their happiness depends on their ability to make a free choice. Female characters are manipulated and diminished by a patriarchal system that not only seeks to subordinate their will, but also to objectify them, to place them on the shelf as a trophy. Fathers and husbands are typically the controlling agents, but James also presents women who appropriate the dominating role. With varying degrees of success, each female character rejects the status of trophy. Instead, each attempts to make choices and determine her own future. James allows for ambiguity and nuanced resolutions. With ambiguity comes hope in the steadfastness of Catherine Sloper in Washington Square, in the tragic heroism of Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady, and even in the sacrificial loss of Verena Tarrant for Olive Chancellor in The Bostonians.

My thesis explores why beauty became so much more important in nineteenth-century Britain, especially for marriageable young women in the upper and middle class. My argument addresses the consequences of that change in the status of beauty for plain or ugly women, how this social shift is reflected in the novel, and how authors respond to the issue of plainer women and issues of their marriageability. I look at how these authorial attitudes shifted over the century, observing that the issue of plain women and their marriageability was dramatized by nineteenth-century authors, whose efforts to heighten the audience's awareness of the plight of plainer women can be traced by contrasting novels written early in the century with novels written mid-century. I argue that beauty gained more significance for young women in nineteenth-century England because the marriage ideal shifted, a shift which especially influenced the upper and middle class. The eighteenth century brought into marriage concepts such as Rousseau's "wife-farm principle" the idea that a man chooses a significantly younger child-bride, mentoring and molding her into the woman he needs. But by the end of the century the ideal of marriage moved to the companionate ideal, which opted for an equal partnership. That ideal was based on the conception that marriage was based on personal happiness hence should be founded on compatibility and love. The companionate ideal became more influential as individuality reigned among the Romantics. The new ideal of companionate marriage limited parents' influence on their children's choice of spouse to the extent that the choice lay now largely with young men. Yet that choice was constrained because young men and women were restricted by social conventions, their social interaction limited. Thus, according to my reading of nineteenth-century authors, the companionate ideal was a charade, as young men were not able to get to know women well enough to determine whether or not they were compatible. So instead of getting to know a young woman's character and her personality, they distinguished potential brides mainly on the basis of appearance.

碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
英語研究所
93
Abstract This thesis explores the representations of the female protagonist in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters and its television adaptation by BBC, investigating how “the techniques of vision,” namely, “the means by which images are produced and circulated,” function in the two occasions to characterize the heroine (Evans & Hall 4). This thesis argues that both the novel and the adaptation of Wives and Daughters appropriate the mechanism of observation when presenting the heroine; nevertheless, the same mechanism functions differently in the two versions of representation: in Gaskell’s novel, the use of visual techniques dwarfs the image of the heroine, attenuating her power of action; in the adaptation, the same technique works in the direction of strengthening the heroine’s self-image and fulfilling her potential. Consequently, whereas the novel visualizes a vulnerable image of the heroine as a girl-woman, whose character wavers between courage and dependency, the television adaptation presents an independent female protagonist, whose capability is fully developed, and whose autonomy remains intact. This comparison demonstrates versatile potential of the visual technology: it might either empower or disempower an individual’s subjectivity. This thesis concludes that the modern practice of vision not only sways the uses of visual techniques, but also determines the visuality of female characters in the realm of literature. Thus the formation of an ideal vision of female characters specific to each era: while the nineteenth-century visuality prescribes a semi-independent subjectivity of the heroine, the contemporary visuality sanctions an autonomous and wholesome individuality to her. Although the modern version of the heroine seems to have more autonomy than the Victorian one, both images of the heroine could be regarded as products of the same practice of vision﹘a mechanism that categorizes and enhances the circulation of stereotypical images.

Drawing upon historical studies of the family and feminist studies of discourse and culture, this dissertation explores representations of the family in Charles Dickens's Bleak House, Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, and George Eliot's Daniel Deronda. It situates each novel's representation of the family within a central ideological undertaking in Victorian culture—the attempt to confirm individual autonomy without sacrificing collective responsibility. It claims that a new family paradigm, the affective family ideal, gains cultural currency because it appears to reconcile these competing values by, on the one hand, giving a new primacy to individual feeling and choice and, on the other hand, insisting that individual choice be contained by familial bonds. This dissertation thus delineates the network of associations—among them individuality and collectivity, natural law and social progress—that composes the affective family ideal and explores its implications. It suggests that normative conceptions of gender and selfhood mandated by this ideal actually obstructed individual choice even as its new articulation of class difference undermined collective well-being. Fundamentally, it claims that the affective family ideal, despite its construction as individualism's antidote, rationalized practices central to the ideology of individualism and promoted middle class hegemony. The first chapter summarizes historical developments that produced the affective family ideal and explores the ways in which gender, class, and subjectivity were shaped within the context of that ideal's construction. Each succeeding chapter analyzes the discursive construction of the family in one Victorian novel. In each novel, three entities structure the family narrative: the aristocratic patrilineal family, individualism, and the affective family. Besides tracing these recurrent figures, this dissertation demonstrates the complex nature of nineteenth century domestic ideology by identifying points of consensus and dissent among these representations of the family. It claims that, despite notable differences, both Bleak House and Wives and Daughters identify the affective family ideal as a distinctively moral alternative to the traditional patrilineal family and individualism. It argues that Daniel Deronda, despite its similar critique of both patrilineal family and individualism, rejects the family ideal that the earlier two novels posit as the key to individual and collective progress.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
外國語文學研究所
94
From the late-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, family values come to dominate English ideology. Social order is consolidated through the reiteration of the importance of domestic happiness throughout late eighteenth to nineteenth century English literatures. What lies at the center of such emphasized domestic happiness is the domestic woman—the good mother, wife, sister, and daughter. Since the national identity of England is based on family values, and the familial realm is sustained by the domestic woman, it is thus essential to study how women come to be educated as domestic woman; how domestic values are taught to women as such. I chose Maria Edgeworth and Elizabeth Gaskell’s works as the subject of my research, for they are both the prototypes of domestic women—Edgeworth is the model good daughter, whereas Gaskell is the good wife and good mother. And their upbringings are quite similar. They both suffer from the bereavement of their birth mothers and a painful relationship with their stepmothers, and they both love their fathers so dearly, as their literary works and correspondences show. Furthermore, Gaskell reads Edgeworth’s novels throughout her puberty. I think it would be interesting to study how domestic education is presented in the works of these two generations of women writers whose lives were so similar and whose social circles were so close. In the 19th century, the main objective of a middle-class girl’s education was to augment her marriageability, and the awkwardness of a single father burdened with such mission is humorously depicted by both Edgeworth and Gaskell, whose biographical backgrounds enable them to deal with the intricacies in father-daughter relationships. I choose Edgeworth’s Belinda (1801) and Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters (1866) as the main texts of my discussion. These volumes abound in female characters brought up either by a single father or by a substitute father-figure, with whom they bear a warm and intimate relationship. Also, the mother-daughter relationships depicted in both works expose the ideology behind women’s seemingly willing subjugation to the patriarchal rule. Instead of feminist approaches, which this topic readily invites, I put my emphasis on situating the texts within the specific socio-historical arena. Feminist criticisms often read in the nineteenth-century literature a presentation of women as victims of patriarchal suppression. But as far as I am concerned, the domestic education of women in the late eighteenth to middle nineteenth century should not be scrutinized merely in terms of feminist issues, for it reflects the entire cultural environment. I thus distinguish my argument from the more radical feminist viewpoint by emphasizing that the image of a domestic woman is far from simply repressive for women: Though abiding to the patriarchal order, they are not passively subjugated. Through a specific kind of education, which is taught by woman to woman and through which a female bond is created, women actively participate in their domestic roles, without losing their own consciousness and identity. The domestic education they receive through every-day-life experiences such as cosmetics and clothing actually enable them to recognize the façade, its deceptive features and maneuvering power—such mechanism is less known to men. While women are aware of the shallowness of the façades—the physical appearance, the well-kept familial harmony, and even the seemingly essential notion of human nature—they nonetheless learn, via the domestic education, to overlook the falsity of such façade. It is my argument that women are not only taught to acknowledge the falsehood of surfaces but also to willingly and consciously sustain the illusion of such surface. Instead of emphasizing the women’s submission to patriarchal order, I instead argue that women follow the dictates of their own hearts, which does not necessarily contradict the patriarchal order. My discussion is divided into several parts. In the first chapter I examine the framing devices of Belinda and Wives and Daughters. In Belinda the story of Rachel Hartley is associated with Paul and Virginia and Rousseau’s Emile, whereas in Wives and Daughters Molly Gibson’s childhood experience is depicted with conventions of fairy tales. These two generic borrowings both help establish the patriarchal-heterosexual order. While Paul and Virginia as well as Emile consolidate the separate spheres of the two sexes and emphasize the feminine virtues, the fairy tales associated with Molly’s story such as the “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Sleeping beauty” emphasize the preservation of chastity, purity and innocence of adolescent girls. Yet they also delineate a female domain in which the father figure is often absent. These stories take place while Rachel and Molly’s fathers are away, and such occasions imply a purely female education, taught by woman to woman and the Father figure looms in the background. Furthermore, as Rachel and Molly’s experiences demonstrate, in Belinda and Wives and Daughters at times the patriarchal rule is violated, and the heroine’s own power emerges. The framing structure play crucial roles in the general theme of these texts: Rachel’s story not only stands at the center of the examination of girl’s education, but also serves as concurring point of both Belinda and Lady Delacour; Molly’s childhood experience is itself told like a fairy tale, and the teachings conveyed through fairy tales would resurface at various turning points throughout her adolescence. These framing devices are not merely peripheral subplots, for they illustrate the core of the domestic education in question. I want to emphasize that although kept within patriarchal order, girl’s domestic education find its own expression through domains dominated by women only. The second chapter discusses the concepts of nature and nurture. First of all, I scrutinize the significance of “Nature” as a background. In Belinda the mentioning of Paul and Virginia threatens the exceedingly civilized British urban life with its natural setting and an entailing wildness of female sexuality. It is however nothworthy that such threat is merely suggested by analogy: it appears in a story read by Rachel, and it finds expression in her dreams, yet it never actually disrupts the patriarchal order. I’d like to emphasize here that the female sexuality itself is not detrimental. It is only dangerous or threatening when it is incorrectly suppressed. And the danger is only hinted, not actual. In Wives and Daughters Nature on the one hand becomes a background in which girls are taught lessons of domesticity. Molly learns to be a good domestic woman in Nature. And on the other hand it is classified by scientific men. I bring into discussion the evolutionary theories popular at the time in order to provide a historicized reading. Nature is utilized as such so as to uphold the social and familial order. Under the general atmosphere of evolutionary discourses, Africa is described as a barbaric land, and a sense of England as “home” is established and defined by women, who represent the domestic domain. This chapter then enters the discussion of “nature” vs. “nurture.” However Edgeworth and Gaskell’s novels emphasize the nature of parental love, the “naturalness” of nursing is suggested in both as problematic. In the nineteenth-century Britain, the ways of nursing began to occupy an important position in social and scientific discourse: A mother has to be “taught” her “natural” maternal duties. In Belinda such subject centers around the arguments of breast-feeding, as Lady Delacour’s case illustrates. At the time a mother is thought a “natural mother” only when she fulfills the grueling task of breast-feeding her child. Lady Delacour fails to accomplish such motherly task, and she sends her daughter away to be nursed and raised by hired help. She is punished with an injury in her breast, which becomes cancerous. It is my argument that such punishment is inflicted by herself, for she is troubled by a sense of guilt. She seems to have the power to choose between her public life and her role as a mother, but in fact such choice is already dictated by public discourse. When the Lady finally regrets and learns to play along, to succumb to the general climate of family values without losing herself in the game, then her breast cancer is diagnosed to be nonexistent. Indeed, after her “transformation” or “healing,” she is described to be “no different” in appearance, disposition, and living habits. In the third chapter, I combine issues of “naturalness” and “nationality” via the analyses of blush and rouge utilized in the texts. Blush is a spontaneous reaction symbolizing innocence and a healthy body, and by mimicking blush rouge serves as an excellent example of how “naturalness” can be manufactured. The different applications of rouge by the English and the French women serve as an appropriate ground for investigations of how cultural differences are presented with a color of morality. While the French are seen to value artificial beauty and excessive demonstration of sentiments, the English seems relatively “natural” and “prudent.” The difference between “Frenchness” and “Englishness” is profusely discussed in both novels, with the qualities associated with Frenchness regarded by the general English public as chic yet immoral. Besides morality, “Frenchness” as a fashionable symbol of class is also an issue central to the education of girls. It is part of the education of middle to upper-class girls to catch a “French” accent. The “Frenchness” in the English ideology is stereotyped as a convenience: For an English national character to establish itself, a reputed “other” must be construed as a foil. With the conspicuously ambivalent representations of “Frenchness” throughout both texts, it is elucidated that even “racial” or “national” identity is far from essential. In my viewpoint the stereotyping of Frenchness, or “foreignness,” is acknowledged by both authors, but such stereotypes must exist in order for the society to function. In the fourth chapter I discuss, via the dress-code, how girls are taught the importance of domestic felicity, and how the dress serves as a ground for women to learn the intricacies in appearance. While the masquerade enables Belinda to realize the importance of prudence in terms of her marriageability, Rachel’s uninterest in accessories and her penchant for austerity illustrate not her real nature, but merely an ignorance of human society: Her upbringing is an embodiment of “perpetual babyism,” a term adopted by critics to indicate a state in which the Victorian woman is expected to remain and maintain. Besides the dresses, the boudoir—the space associated with grooming—also plays a crucial role in domestic education. Lady Delacour’s boudoir serves as a representation of her own body, and the room, originally functions as a space for her to adorn herself, becomes the nursery for her reformation into a proper mother and wife. In Wives and Daughters, clothing is used as a means of familial control and possession—Clare utilizes clothes to control Molly, while Preston tyrannizes Cynthia with the gift of dress. Through the lessons of clothing the young heroines learn to deal with the problematic relationship between the surface and the content, between the fascinating façade and the bare truth. Furthermore, through clothing a familial bond is established: Inherent in “dress as a gift” is a power-relation that authorizes the giver, and thus when parents provide dresses for their daughters, or when a husband pays for his wife’s dress, a familial order is strengthened. Through the domestic lessons women thus learn the necessity to abide by the patriarchal order, yet it is through the same lessons that they develop a keener understanding of appearances—its shallowness as well as the way to maintain it. In comparison to men, who are unable to delve into the mechanism behind appearances, women are able to understand the façade, not only of personal adornments such as clothes or cosmetics, but also of the familial structure based on an image of domestic woman. Restricted within the patriarchal order, women in Belinda and Wives and Daughters are not passive: They choose to follow the rule of the game, though not before they understand the intricacies lying underneath.

This study uses probate records to explore gender patterns in testamentary customs from 1800 to 1860 as well as heretofore-unexamined shifts in testamentary relationships between men and women in the mid-1800s. In western Massachusetts, beginning in the 1830s, fathers favored wives and daughters over sons as their primary beneficiaries. This finding counters conventional wisdom that nineteenth-century fathers preferred to bequeath property to sons. Fathers' favoring wives and daughters as heirs, plus increasing numbers of “sole and separate” bequests to women, indicates that men protected women with bequests well before the passage of Married Women's Property Acts in the 1840s and 1850s, so this cultural change predated changes in the law. One possible explanation for favoring female beneficiaries is that sons were devaluing themselves as heirs by emigrating, thereby making themselves unavailable for supporting widowed mothers and dependent sisters. Another explanation might be that fathers had already made premortem land grants to sons, reserving only the residue for female heirs. A less quantifiable possibility is that propertied and prudent fathers may have had rising respect for women at a time when men's character issues such as debt and drinking were a target of public concern. “Sole and separate” bequests, which protected married women's property from husbands and husbands' creditors, suggest that men's debt and/or character were primary areas of willmakers' concern. This evidence, along with declining bequests of dower thirds, shows that men challenged socioeconomic traditions to benefit female heirs. If it is true, as Marylynn Salmon asserts, that “control over property is an important baseline for learning how men and women share power in the family,” then testators were engaged in a redistribution of power in western Massachusetts from 1830 to 1860.1 Finally, because women favored female heirs from 1800 to 1860, property women acquired tended to remain in women's hands, and because many women served as moneylenders in small towns where creditors were often individuals, women wielded economic influence behind the scenes. 1Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (1986), xii.