scholarly journals The Gentleman as a Hero? (Mis)representations of Heroic Masculinity in W. M. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 372
Author(s):  
Katri Sirkel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Implicit Assumption ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Vanity Fair ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Controversial Nature

The aim of the article is to analyse the concept of gentlemanliness with regard to heroic masculinity in W.M. Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair. Set at the time of the Napoleonic Wars and written in the 1840s, the novel casts light on the controversial nature of the notion of gentleman. In the Victorian period, gentlemanliness came to be modelled on the principles of chivalry but there was nevertheless an implicit assumption originating from the Regency era that being a gentleman meant yielding to leisurely elegance rather than performing heroic deeds. Thackeray, whose formative years had passed in the Regency-tinted 1820s and early 1830s but who as a novelist gained maturity in the mid-nineteenth century, was acutely aware of the contradiction between the Regency and Victorian perceptions of gentlemanliness and the unease resulting therefrom. Thus, the paper argues that although the Regency standards of gentlemanliness were discarded as incompatible with Victorian heroic masculinity, they had a considerable influence on how heroism as a component of gentlemanliness was perceived in the Victorian era. The analysis of gentlemanliness focuses on the four principal male characters in the novel – Jos Sedley, Rawdon Crawley, George Osborne, and William Dobbin, of whom each represents aspects of gentlemanliness not entirely compatible with the Victorian heroic ideal. The article suggests that the characters take heroism as an asset for creating a heroic image rather than as a manifestation of heroic deeds, thus presenting vividly the contradiction within the concept of Victorian heroic masculinity.

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.

scholarly journals Curing the Vampire Disease with Transfusion: The Narrative Structure of Bram Stoker’s Dracula

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Anthony Salazar
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Blood Transfusion ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Vital Component

Blood transfusion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula serves as a vital component to life for characters who have been bitten by vampires. But blood transfusion can mean much more when comparing it to the narrative’s structure. While characters contribute to the narrative, parallels between blood transfusion and narrative assembly emerge, which thus grants characters within the novel immortality as their writing lives on while they slowly die from the vampire disease. Although transitioning into a vampire can also grant these characters immortality, vampires and other supernatural creatures during the Victorian Era were frowned upon by nineteenth century values and religious beliefs. Therefore, seeking immortality through narration allows these characters to abide to Victorian values while also living eternally.

“…but there were no broken legs”

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Chovanec
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Daily Newspaper ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Football Match ◽  
Sports Reporting ◽  
The Times ◽  
Substantial Uncertainty

The appearance of sports reporting was among the major developments of nineteenth-century journalism. While sports were only very exceptionally covered in the newspapers during the first half of the century, by the end of the Victorian era a diverse array of sports stories provided staple content for the pages of both broadsheet and popular papers. Dealing with the phenomenon of football match reports in The Times, this article documents the early specimens of the novel genre from the 1860s and the 1870s, tracing some of the linguistic forms and structural features that characterise the early search for the discursive conventions of the new genre. By focusing on a popular topic in a serious newspaper, the analysis illustrates that the emergence of the popular topic of football in a serious daily newspaper was not only very gradual and tentative, but was also marked with substantial uncertainty about the macrostructural and microstructural composition of the reports.

The Anglo-Indian Novel to 1947

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Crane
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Indian Literature ◽  
Dominant Form ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Prose Narratives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo Indian

This chapter explores the Anglo-Indian novel. The history of British writing on India stretches back almost as far as the Indo-British imperial encounter and includes travel writing, missionary letters, military memoirs, and scholarly accounts of Indian history and culture, all of which were published in great numbers in the eighteenth century. Literary texts followed, and included short prose narratives depicting Anglo-Indian life, missionary tales, descriptions of the landscape, and stories of native life. While all these forms were well received in their day, none was to prove as popular as the novel, which during the nineteenth century became the dominant form of Anglo-Indian literature. In the early nineteenth century, India was also used as an exotic setting for early fictions by a number of writers who would go on to rank amongst the best-known novelists of the Victorian period.

scholarly journals ADULTERY IN LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIAN AND GERMAN LITERATURE

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-163
Author(s):  
Римма Хатиповна Каримова ◽  
Галина Витальевна Мишина
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
German Society ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Anna Karenina ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
The Family ◽  
Effi Briest

Введение. Дана характеристика меняющихся представлений о семье и роли женщины в общественном сознании конца XIX в. Цель статьи – исследовать отражение процесса женской эмансипации в русском и немецком обществе конца XIX в. Материал и методы. Материалом исследования стали романы Л. Н. Толстого «Анна Каренина» и Т. Фонтане «Эффи Брист». В исследовании используются аналитико-описательный, сравнительно-сопоставительный и культурно-исторический методы. Результаты и обсуждение. В последней четверти XIX в. в европейском и российском обществе обозначился кризис института семьи. Глобальные историко-политические, социально-экономические и идеологические изменения сказались на представлениях о роли и месте женщины. Проблема женской эмансипации активно представлена в творчестве европейских и русских писателей указанного периода. Лев Толстой в романе «Анна Каренина» дает критическую оценку состоянию «семейного вопроса». Писатель указывает на дискредитацию традиционных представлений о браке в обществе московского и петербургского дворянства, разоблачает лицемерие людей света, порочных во всех сферах жизни (служебных, родственных, экономических), но ратующих за соблюдение приличий. В «Анне Карениной» показано, насколько неравноправны общественные гендерные роли. Героиня романа оказалась отверженной не из-за адюльтера, а по причине стремления жить прямолинейно. Конфликт эмансипированной личности и закостенелого общества становится двигателем сюжета и в романе немецкого писателя Т. Фонтане «Эффи Брист». Нами обнаружено совпадение ключевых черт личности героинь Т. Фонтане и Л. Н. Толстого. Объединяющим качеством является честолюбие, основанное на нераскрытом эмоциональном потенциале женщины из дворянской среды. Если социальной причиной трагедии Анны Карениной в романе Толстого становится лицемерие высшего общества, то катастрофа Эффи Брист связана, по мысли Фонтане, с ложным представлением о чести в немецком аристократическом обществе. Сходные черты наблюдаются и в мужских образах произведений. Однако отмечено нравственное превосходство Каренина над Инштеттеном, что также может быть объяснено спецификой менталитета. Заключение. Сопоставительный анализ произведений Л. Н. Толстого и Т. Фонтане позволяет сделать вывод о совпадении воссозданной социально-психологической ситуации и эмоциональных реакций героев на схожие коллизии без доказанного взаимовлияния текстов. Развивающаяся женская эмансипация изображается в обоих произведениях как сложный и драматичный процесс, свидетельствующий о кризисе эпохи. Introduction. The article describes the changes in ideas on the family and the role of woman in public consciousness at the end of the nineteenth century. The aim and objectives. The aim of this work is to study the reflection of female emancipation process in Russian and German society at the end of the nineteenth century. Material and methods. The material for research is the novel by L. N. Tolstoy “Anna Karenina” and the novel by Th. Fontane “Effi Briest”. The analytical and descriptive, comparative, cultural and historical methods are used in this work. Results and discussion. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, European and Russian society faced the crisis of the family institution. The global historical, political, socioeconomic and ideological changes had their influence on the understanding of the role and place of women. The problem of women emancipation is widely represented in the works of the European and Russian writers of the given period. L. N. Tolstoy in the novel “Anna Karenina” gives a critical eye to the state of the “family matter”. The writer indicates the discredit of the traditional ideas on marriage in the society of Moscow’s and Petersburg’s nobility. L. N. Tolstoy exposes the hypocrisy of nobles, vicious in all spheres of life (official, family, economical spheres) but advocating for decency. In “Anna Karenina” we see how inequitable social gender roles are. The heroine of the novel was rejected not due to the adultery, but because of the aspiration to live openly. The conflict of the emancipated person against the ossified society becomes a plot engine in “Effi Briest” novel by the German writer. We found the coincidence of the key personality traits of the Th. Fontane and L. N. Tolstoy protagonists. The unifying quality is the ambition, based on the undisclosed emotional potential of a woman from noble society. If the social ground of Anna Karenina’s tragedy in the Tolstoy novel is the hypocrisy of the high society, the Effi Briest catastrophe is due to (in Fontane’s opinion) misconception of honour in the German noble society. Similar features are found in the male characters of the novels. However, there is a moral superiority of Karenin over Instetten that can be explained by peculiarities of the mentality. Conclusion. The comparative analysis of L. N. Tolstoy’s and Th. Fontane’s works allows us to conclude that there is coincidence of the created social and psychological situation and the characters’ emotional reactions to similar collisions without proven interference of the texts. In both works, developing women’s emancipation is portrayed as a complicated and dramatic process, which testifies to the epoch’s crisis.

Narratives of nation-building

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn ◽  
Mark Lipovetsky ◽  
Irina Reyfman ◽  
Stephanie Sandler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
The Novel ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
National Significance ◽  
Generational Conflicts

This chapter focuses on two related subjects: the sharpening of historical awareness and the formation of Russian national consciousness. Mature historical narratives inspired historical fiction and drama. Tolstoy’s War and Peace offered a powerful nationalistic view of the Napoleonic Wars. Russians of all political persuasions attempted to articulate a view of Russia as a multinational empire and to define specifically Russian historical path. These attempts caused sharp generational conflicts reflected in literature, particularly the novel. Pushkin, neglected by the mid-nineteenth-century radicals, by the end of the century emerged as the poet of national significance, the incarnation of Russian national spirit.

scholarly journals WOMEN AND MARRIAGE IN MIDDLEMARCH AND THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
Najia Asrar Zaidi ◽  
Fouzia Rehman Khan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Thomas Hardy ◽  
Good Time ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Right

Women in the nineteenth century were the worst victims of patriarchy, socio-cultural norms and class difference. It was not a good time for women. In the Victorian era, women did not have the right to vote, own property or come out of the violent marriage. This picture has been painted by many writers of the time. Of all the Victorian novelists, Eliot and Hardy have the gifted ability to chart the women situation from all angles. Both writers show that women had few rights and privileges. The socio-cultural and economic factors further contributed to women’s oppression. Women were expected to remain attached to the domestic sphere. Marriage is one such institution, which during the Victorian period became a tool for women’s exploitation and subjugation. The heroines and protagonists suffer due to social and moral taboos. Mismatch in marriage leads to several problems for the couple and their respective families. George Eliot in her novel Middlemarch and Thomas Hardy in his work The Return of the Native, portray the heroines who decide to step into life that is just contrary to their expectations and later regret their decisions. This paper would attempt to analyze the repercussions of their choices and compare their nature and the line of action these heroines take to deal with the situation they are placed into.

A Christmas Carol: Disability Conceptualised through Empathy and the Philosophy of ‘Technologically Useful Bodies’

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-191
Author(s):  
Ester Vidović
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Models ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Image Schemas ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Linguistic Approach

The article explores how two cultural models which were dominant in Great Britain during the Victorian era – the model based on the philosophy of ‘technologically useful bodies’ and the Christian model of empathy – were connected with the understanding of disability. Both cultural models are metaphorically constituted and based on the ‘container’ and ‘up and down’ image schemas respectively. 1 The intersubjective character of cultural models is foregrounded, in particular, in the context of conceiving of abstract concepts such as emotions and attitudes. The issue of disability is addressed from a cognitive linguistic approach to literary analysis while studying the reflections of the two cultural models on the portrayal of the main characters of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. The studied cultural models appeared to be relatively stable, while their evaluative aspects proved to be subject to historical change. The article provides incentives for further study which could include research on the connectedness between, on one hand, empathy with fictional characters roused by reading Dickens's works and influenced by cultural models dominant during the Victorian period in Britain and, on the other hand, the contemporaries’ actual actions taken to ameliorate the social position of the disabled in Victorian Britain.

Hurry Up and Wait: The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ and the Maritime in Modernism

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell Uphaus
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Cultural Role

The burgeoning subfield of literary oceanic studies has largely neglected modernist literature, maintaining that the end of the age of sail in the late nineteenth century also marks an end to maritime literature's substantive cultural role. This essay outlines a way of reading the maritime in modernism through an analysis of the engagement with history and temporality in Joseph Conrad's sea novel The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1897). The novel depicts the sea as variously an anachronistic sphere left behind by history, an integral foundation to history, an element that eclipses history, and an archive of history's repressed violence. This article traces the interactions of these various views of the sea's relationship to history, highlighting how they are shaped and inflected by the novel's treatment of race. Based on this analysis, it proposes an approach to the sea in modernist literature that focuses on its historiographical rather than social import.

The Late-Victorian ‘New Man’ and the Neo-Victorian ‘Neo-Man’

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Margaret D. Stetz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
New Man ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The New Woman ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Victorian Age

The New Man was a crucial topic of discussion and a continual preoccupation in late-Victorian feminist writing, precisely because he was more often a wished-for presence than an actual one. Nevertheless, creators of neo-Victorian fiction and film repeatedly project him backwards onto the screen of literary history, representing him as having in fact existed in the Victorian age as a complement to the New Woman. What is at stake in retrospectively situating the New Man – or, as I will call him, the ‘Neo-Man’ – in the nineteenth century, through historical fiction? If one impulse behind fictional returns to the Victorian period is nostalgia, then what explains this nostalgia for The Man Who Never Was? This essay will suggest that neo-Victorian works have a didactic interest in transforming present-day readers, especially men, through depictions of the Neo-Man, which broaden the audience's feminist sympathies, queer its notions of gender relations, and alter its definition of masculinity.

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