Agnes Grey

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Brontë ◽  
Sally Shuttleworth
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Romantic Love ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Anne Bronte ◽  
Agnes Grey

‘How delightful it would be to be a governess!’ When the young Agnes Grey takes up her first post as governess she is full of hope; she believes she only has to remember ‘myself at their age’ to win her pupils’ love and trust. Instead she finds the young children she has to deal with completely unmanageable. They are, as she observes to her mother, ‘unimpressible, incomprehensible creatures’. In writing her first novel, Anne Brontë drew on her own experiences, and one can trace in the work many of the trials of the Victorian governess, often stranded far from home, and treated with little respect by her employers, yet expected to control and educate her young charges. Agnes Grey looks at childhood from nursery to adolescence, and it also charts the frustrations of romantic love, as Agnes starts to nurse warmer feelings towards the local curate, Mr Weston. The novel combines astute dissection of middle-class social behaviour and class attitudes with a wonderful study of Victorian responses to young children which has parallels with debates about education that continue to this day.

The Right to Dream: Gender, Modernity, and the Problem of Class in Kate O'Brien's Bourgeois Bildungsromane

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-289
Author(s):  
Naoise Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Class Status ◽  
The Right ◽  
Aristocratic Culture ◽  
Modern Form

Feminist critics have celebrated Kate O'Brien's pioneering approach to gender and sexuality, yet there has been little exploration of her innovations of the coming-of-age narrative. Creating a modern Irish reworking of the Bildungsroman, O'Brien's heroines represent an idealized model of female identity-formation which stands in sharp contrast to the nationalist state's vision of Irish womanhood. Using Franco Moretti's theory of the Bildungsroman, a framing of the genre as a thoroughly ‘modern’ form of the novel, this article applies a critical Marxist lens to O'Brien's output. This reading brings to light the ways in which the limitations of the Bildungsroman work to constrain O'Brien's subversive politics. Their middle-class status remains an integral part of the identity of her heroines, informing the forms of liberation they seek. Fundamentally, O'Brien's idealization of aristocratic culture, elitist exceptionalism and ‘detachment of spirit’ restricts the emancipatory potential of her vision of Irish womanhood.

North and South

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Sally Shuttleworth
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Difficult Problem ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Authority ◽  
Industrial Town ◽  
Middle Class Woman ◽  
Class Woman ◽  
And Gender ◽  
North And South ◽  
Obedience To Authority

`She tried to settle that most difficult problem for women, how much was to be utterly merged in obedience to authority, and how much might be set apart for freedom in working.’ North and South is a novel about rebellion. Moving from the industrial riots of discontented millworkers through to the unsought passions of a middle-class woman, and from religious crises of conscience to the ethics of naval mutiny, it poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Through the story of Margaret Hale, the middle-class southerner who moves to the northern industrial town of Milton, Gaskell skilfully explores issues of class and gender in the conflict between Margaret’s ready sympathy with the workers and her growing attraction to the charismatic mill ownder, John Thornton. This new revised and expanded edition sets the novel in the context of Victorian social and medical debate.

scholarly journals Disfluencies signal reference to novel objects for adults but not children

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. OWENS ◽  
Justine M. THACKER ◽  
Susan A. GRAHAM
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Novel Object ◽  
Filled Pauses ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
Novel Targets ◽  
The Way ◽  
Familiar Objects

AbstractSpeech disfluencies can guide the ways in which listeners interpret spoken language. Here, we examined whether three-year-olds, five-year-olds, and adults use filled pauses to anticipate that a speaker is likely to refer to a novel object. Across three experiments, participants were presented with pairs of novel and familiar objects and heard a speaker refer to one of the objects using a fluent (“Look at the ball/lep!”) or disfluent (“Look at thee uh ball/lep!”) expression. The salience of the speaker's unfamiliarity with the novel referents, and the way in which the speaker referred to the novel referents (i.e., a noun vs. a description) varied across experiments. Three- and five-year-olds successfully identified familiar and novel targets, but only adults’ looking patterns reflected increased looks to novel objects in the presence of a disfluency. Together, these findings demonstrate that adults, but not young children, use filled pauses to anticipate reference to novel objects.

Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending "Critical Attitudes" in the Face of Societal Ruination

2011 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Adrian J. Wallbank
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
British Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Concerted Effort ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
The Face ◽  
Literary Techniques

Adrian J. Wallbank, "Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending 'Critical Attitudes' in the Face of Societal Ruination" (pp. 1–36) In the aftermath of the French "Revolution Controversy," middle-class evangelical writers made a concerted effort to rehabilitate the moral fabric of British society. Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts (1795–98) are recognized as pivotal within this program, but in this essay I question whether they were really as influential as has been supposed. I argue that autobiographical evidence from the period demonstrates an increasing skepticism toward overt didacticism, and that despite their significant and undeniable penetration within working-class culture, the Cheap Repository Tracts, if not all "received ideologies," were increasingly being rejected by their readers. This essay examines the important contribution that Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues (1801) made to this arena. Hill, like many of his contemporaries, felt that British society was facing ruination, but he also recognized that overt moralizing and didacticism was no longer palatable or effective. I argue that Hill thus experimented with an array of literary techniques—many of which closely intersect with developments occurring within the novel and sometimes appear to contradict or undermine the avowed seriousness of evangelicalism—that not only attempt to circumvent what Jonathan Rose has described as the "critical attitudes" of early-nineteenth-century readers, but also effectively map the "transitional" nature of the shifting literary and social terrains of the period. In so doing, Hill contributed signally to the evolution of the dialogue form (which is often synonymous with mentoring and didacticism), since his use of conversational mimesis and satire predated the colloquialism of John Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae (1822–35) and Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations (1824–29).

Translation and Its Affects

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-215
Author(s):  
William A. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
French Language ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Language Competence ◽  
Vanity Fair ◽  
Good Morning ◽  
Do So

Vanity Fair (1848) famously opens with a departure. As Becky Sharpe flounces off from Miss Pinkerton's academy, she takes leave of her patron by telling her “in a very unconcerned manner … and with a perfect accent, ‘Mademoiselle, je viens vous faire mes adieux.’” Miss Pinkerton, we learn, “did not understand French, she only directed those who did: but biting her lips and throwing up her venerable and Roman-nosed head … said, ‘Miss Sharp, I wish you a good morning’” (7). This performance of befuddlement on the part of a respectable schoolmistress bespeaks a whole collection of Victorian cultural norms about language competence in general and about the French language in particular. Even though the action is set in a period when Becky's speaking “French with purity and a Parisian accent … [was] rather a rare accomplishment” (11), the novel was written for a mid-nineteenth-century audience that could mainly count on middle-class young ladies to have acquired this degree of refinement—or at least to aspire to do so.

Sex Differences in Rotary Pursuit Performance of Young Children: A Follow-up

1968 ◽  
Vol 26 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1199-1202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Davol ◽  
Susan L. Breakell
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Grade Level ◽  
Rest Period ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Rotary Pursuit

A 30-rpm or a 45-rpm rotary pursuit task was given to 72 boys and 72 girls from Grades 1 to 5 of a lower-class and a middle-class school; each S was given 5 125-sec. trials with a 1-min. rest period between trials. Analyses of time-on-target showed a different pattern of results for each school. No significant sex differences were found except through interaction with sex of E. Level of performance was determined primarily by speed of rotation and grade level of S, but there was a lag in performance of Ss from the first two grades of the lower-class school.

FERTILITY, CHILDHOOD, AND DEATH IN THE VICTORIAN FAMILY

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-226
Author(s):  
Lynne Vallone
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Large Family ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Good Mother

GEORGE ELIOT’S MIDDLEMARCH concludes with the summing up of the lives of her most visionary characters, bringing them to either happy fulfillment or early demise according, not to the worth of their dreams but, in part, to their success or failure in choosing a domestic partner. For Dorothea Brooke, Middlemarch’s most luminous and large-souled citizen, Eliot can finally justify no other existence than that of a devoted wife and mother. Eliot defends this apparent demotion of her heroine from modern Saint Theresa to London matron by arguing that her “study of provincial life” was of necessity the story of domestic times, when, in fact, the “heroics” of raising a family and offering “wifely help” to a husband were more noble than sororal obligation or religious mysticism. Though the novel is set in the late Georgian period just before the first Reform Bill of 1832, it was published in 1871–72, at the height of the Victorian era and is thoroughly Victorian in character. For the Victorians, the “reformed rakes” of Richardson and Fielding are no longer desirable as heads of households. The Queen herself seemed to offer a model of perfect domesticity in her large family, middle-class values, and reliance on her husband. In fact, just as Eliot concedes the dominance of the “home epic” (890), the myth of the Victorian family continues to maintain a powerful presence within contemporary American culture. Questions that still consume us today — What makes a good mother?

scholarly journals Pomiędzy miłością agapiczną a erozyczną. Praktyki miłości i związków intymnych wśród indyjskiej miejskiej klasy średniej

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-93
Author(s):  
Anna Romanowicz ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Romantic Love ◽  
Heterosexual Relationships ◽  
Arranged Marriages ◽  
Traditional Form ◽  
Research Participants ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork

Arranged marriages are the most common (and perceived as traditional) form of formalized heterosexual relationships in India. However, interest in relationships based on romantic love – especially among urban middle class –is increasing. The goal of the article is to present various practices related to romantic love, which cannot be inscribed in a rigid division for arranged and love marriages; to present everyday strategies and tactics, as they are being practiced by my research participants in context of sociocultural changes. The article is based on information gathered in ethnographic fieldwork (with a technique of participant observation) in Delhi.

scholarly journals Postfeminist Micro-Politics in Shobha De’s Novel Second Thoughts

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-110
Author(s):  
Dr. Aishwarya M
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Married Woman ◽  
Drastic Change ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Relationship ◽  
Arranged Marriages ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
Insight Into

The novel Second Thoughts deals with the story of a young middle class Bengali girl who marries a Bombay based foreign returned Bengali Boy. The story depicts the disillusionment of a married woman and an explosive tale of love and betrayal that exposes the hollowness of human relationship especially within arranged marriages. This chapter deals with the concept of Micro-Politics which is a significant dogma of postfeminism. Micro-Politics believes that there has been drastic change in the position of women in basic social relationships, within the families, workplace and other public spheres. Postfeministic notion of micro-politics is intended to provide insight into the complicated nexus of relationship and also to rethink this same concept in terms of postfeminism.

Alternative Literary Modernities: A Voice from Colonial Punjab

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-48
Author(s):  
Arti Minocha
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Discursive Space ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Language Content

Abstract This paper looks at the formation of colonial print publics in Punjab, the gendered subjectivities that emerged in this new discursive space, and middle-class women’s deployment of print to articulate the self. This will be done through a close reading of one of the first novels in English, Cosmopolitan Hinduani, which was published in Lahore, Punjab, by a woman in 1902. The essay examines the narrator’s notion of a gendered cosmopolitanism and the subject position that it affords, her attempt at going beyond the fault lines of religion to articulate a liberal and modern political subject, while reworking the cosmopolitan/local binary. How does her insertion of herself as a gendered subject in the provincial, national, cosmopolitan imaginary reflect in the author’s choice of language and genre? My attempt will be to see the novel and its author as part of a literary culture in which she made certain choices about the form, language, content, and audience.

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