Title: Victorian Reclamations: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Protective Fictions in Mary Barton and Ruth
Abstract: In the first half of Chastity and Transgression in Women's Writing I have suggested that a small group of women writers participate in the construction of a "new" sexualized and politicized heroine; they then employ that figure in a critique of the hypocritical social and sexual mores which frustrate female "independence". While the Victorian women writers I discuss in the next two chapters, Elizabeth Gaskell and Christina Rossetti, also employ the figure of the sexually transgressive woman in their writing, they do so in a very different social and political climate. The categories of "author" and "social reformer" are themselves vexed during the period. Many Victorian authors were committed to social "missions" which they pursued outside — as well as inside — the text. Charles Dickens proselytized against the Poor Law in Oliver Twist and the Ragged Schools in Hard Times, even as he actively worked to reform such legal and social institutions. John Ruskin not only wrote of the need to educate the poor but also lectured at the Working Men's College. Elizabeth Gaskell's own philanthropy manifested itself in many ways. As the wife of a Unitarian minister she regularly visited the poor of her husband's parish, actively interceding to make their lives better; she also wrote "social problem" novels, including North and South, meant to mediate the divisive class boundaries that plagued post-agrarian England.
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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