A Broadening of Prospects: Female Progression in Austen and Eliot

<p>Austen and Eliot register the turbulence and transformation of their respective historic moments in the portrayal of a young heroine on the cusp of adulthood with a number of potential paths ahead of her. The heroines, like their societies, are caught between old and new as they seek to acknowledge the ties that bind them to the past and simultaneously create a future of their own. This dilemma reveals the nineteenth-century novel’s concerns of the individual’s ability to grow while being enmeshed in a network of relationships, and the place of the past in an increasingly unstable future. Beginning with Emma (1815) and The Mill on the Floss (1860), and concluding with a comparison of Persuasion (1817) and Middlemarch (1871), this thesis tracks Austen and Eliot’s depiction of female development which moves from a focus on the centrality of the childhood home, and in particular the heroine’s relationship with her father, to a narrative which ends on a more conscious note of ambiguity and broadening prospects. Emma and Mill both depict heroines who find their future in their past. Emma and Maggie develop and assert their own agency, but their circumstances and experiences of childhood bind them to their site of origin. Conversely, both Austen and Eliot’s later works enact a deliberate loosening of the hold the heroine’s childhood has on her, and Anne and Dorothea end up in very different places to where they began. They both reject their position as part of the rural landed gentry to instead gain entry into a more dynamic and inclusive community. This personal transition is accompanied by a more explicit delineation of the evolving socio-political landscape, an increase in the heroine’s mobility and fluidity, and an ending that frustrates a sense of stable closure in preference for one of more open possibility. Thus, so far from being read simply as ‘marriage plots’ Austen and Eliot subversively depict the young woman’s changing position and prospects as a matter of national importance.</p>

A Broadening of Prospects: Female Progression in Austen and Eliot

<p>Austen and Eliot register the turbulence and transformation of their respective historic moments in the portrayal of a young heroine on the cusp of adulthood with a number of potential paths ahead of her. The heroines, like their societies, are caught between old and new as they seek to acknowledge the ties that bind them to the past and simultaneously create a future of their own. This dilemma reveals the nineteenth-century novel’s concerns of the individual’s ability to grow while being enmeshed in a network of relationships, and the place of the past in an increasingly unstable future. Beginning with Emma (1815) and The Mill on the Floss (1860), and concluding with a comparison of Persuasion (1817) and Middlemarch (1871), this thesis tracks Austen and Eliot’s depiction of female development which moves from a focus on the centrality of the childhood home, and in particular the heroine’s relationship with her father, to a narrative which ends on a more conscious note of ambiguity and broadening prospects. Emma and Mill both depict heroines who find their future in their past. Emma and Maggie develop and assert their own agency, but their circumstances and experiences of childhood bind them to their site of origin. Conversely, both Austen and Eliot’s later works enact a deliberate loosening of the hold the heroine’s childhood has on her, and Anne and Dorothea end up in very different places to where they began. They both reject their position as part of the rural landed gentry to instead gain entry into a more dynamic and inclusive community. This personal transition is accompanied by a more explicit delineation of the evolving socio-political landscape, an increase in the heroine’s mobility and fluidity, and an ending that frustrates a sense of stable closure in preference for one of more open possibility. Thus, so far from being read simply as ‘marriage plots’ Austen and Eliot subversively depict the young woman’s changing position and prospects as a matter of national importance.</p>

Chopin, Polish national culture and the question of “racial Purity”: Zofia Lissa’s voice in the debate over racial issues in the 1930s

The question of racial “purity” or “identity” was part of the fashionable discussion on human races in the 1930s. In 1938 a debate over Chopin’s “racial identity” took place in the Warsaw press, triggered by the publication a book entitled Polacy-chrześcijanie pochodzenia żydowskiego (Poles — Christians of Jewish Origin) by Mateusz Mieses, an outstanding Judaist and representative of one of Poland’s Jewish communities. Mieses’ aim was to familiarise the Polish reader with the very little-known scale on which the ethnically Jewish element had penetrated over the many centuries into the families of the Polish landed gentry, intelligentsia and even aristocracy. As a result, Mieses claimed, many eminent Poles known in Polish history had some Jewish blood in their veins. In addition to the more or less convincing examples of such assimilation, Mieses also quotes some rather dubious ones, including the genealogy of Chopin. On the basis of unconfirmed rumours and the composer’s facial features in some unidentified portrait he claims that Chopin was half Jewish through his mother Justyna Krzyżanowska. Mieses’ conclusions — as well as his entire methodology — were sharply criticised by the reviewer of Wiadomości Literackie as well as by Zofia Lissa, at that time a young scholar at the threshold of a brilliant musicological career. Lissa pointed out that establishing Chopin’s “racial affiliation” is difficult for a lack of reliable and objective sources. For a long time all images of Chopin available to researchers had been either portraits or sculptures, which — as artistic creations — used to deform his face. However, Lissa argued that most of his portraits point to his Dinaric characteristics, which were also confirmed by the two surviving real-life likenesses of the composer (referred to by the author as “racially unprejudiced” sources) — namely, his death mask and the only surviving daguerreotype. Taking into account the findings of contemporary (mainly German) anthropology, Lissa concluded that Chopin was a typical Dinaric with some Nordic features, and it was from his mother that Fryderyk inherited his few physical traits characteristic of that type. On the other hand, Lissa denied that there was any connection between Chopin’s music and his “racial identity”. It seems a paradoxical that Lissa — a scholar of Jewish descent — drew on Nazi theories formulated by German anthropologists to show that Chopin had no demonstrable Jewish ancestors. But if we place this debate in the context of its time, and of one specific period in the ideological and scholarly evolution of Zofia Lissa herself — things do not look so simple any more. Her emphasis on the role of the social environment and her rejection of Einchenauer’s theses concerning the impact of “race” on the character of music testify to Lissa’s intensifying links to the Marxist-Leninist ideology, which she most likely began to absorb in that very period.

Silver, Piracy, Conspicuous Consumption, and the Transformation of Ming China in the 16th Century

China historians have long recognized that the 16th century marked a significant shift in the economic, social, and cultural development of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). By then the program of the Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang (also known as Emperor Hongwu, r. 1368–1398) to recreate the autarkic village economy envisioned by early Confucian thinkers, had crumbled. During the first decades of the 16th century, China experienced a flourishing commercialized economy of urban and rural markets, cash-cropping, specialized handicraft industries, and extensive interregional and illegal overseas trade that also allowed merchants easier access to wealth and status. Nevertheless, two major problems originating in Emperor Hongwu’s governing strategies continued to affect the well-being of the empire at this point. Both his policies, that is, to promote the use of paper money and thereby exclude silver as a medium of viable exchange, and to prohibit maritime commerce, meant that the economy operated under severe monetary constraints and that illicit trade along China’s littoral thrived. The Emperor himself had exacerbated the latter situation by utilizing the ship-building and nautical skills of southern Fujianese, known as Hokkien, to help streamline the Ryukyu islands into the Chinese tribute system for his own benefit, with the result that by the end of the 15th century, a complex trade system that stretched to both Southeast and Northeast Asia became the backdrop to 16th-century maritime disorder and mayhem. Piracy up and down the coasts of Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang provinces, was endemic in the 16th century, and drew all strata of coastal society, from fishermen and sailors to merchants and gentry, into a web of smuggling, trafficking, and illegal protection rackets. With the discovery of silver in Japan during the 1530s piracy intensified, and the littoral’s illicit trade expanded into stealthy commerce centered on the island Shuangyu (near Ningbo, Zhejiang) where merchants covertly exchanged large amounts of Jiangnan-made high-quality silks and other textiles for Japan’s precious ore, while Portuguese venturers supplied arms and goods from Southeast Asia to multiethnic (but mainly of Chinese origin) pirate gangs, known as wokou. The silver, however much wanted and needed in China, could not enter the country legally because the Ming government had suspended all trade with Japan in 1523. Attempts by the Ming authorities in the following decades to wipe out the wokou failed until 1566 when fighting ended, the maritime ban was lifted, and China became “flooded with money.” With more silver available than ever before, the fortunes of the landed gentry elite as well as merchants steadily increased, leading them to engage in heightened levels of conspicuous consumption of goods and services. Commerce and connoisseurship fed off each other, as more and more rich people were able to acquire “things” and thereby distinguish themselves socially from others less well-off. While a small percentage of the literati elite engaged in discourses highlighting the market’s erosion of traditional mores, most people, including scholar-officials and the landed gentry, enjoyed their riches and pleasures. Their exuberant lifestyle would endure beyond the end of the 16th century.

Człowiek-zbiorowy pospolitej rzeczy. Norwid a społeczeństwo obywatelskie

The intellectually and politically tempestuous crystallization of the civic ideal in the nineteenth and twentieth century manifested not only in Europe (especially Western), but also in North and Middle America, and in time – all over the globe. An intense search for the “civic ideal” is clearly discernible in societies comprising the former Polish Republic, whose demise towards the end of the eighteenth century and the subsequent phases of its increasingdecompositionnot only failed to annihilate the republican tradition but in fact intensified authentic debate on possible roads toward modern society in the future independent state. A key role in this important dialogue was played by representatives of the landed gentry and the intelligentsia, the latter emerging in the nineteenth century as a new social formation that basically had no exact counterpart in other countries. In time, a few representatives of other classes also joined this dialogue on the shape of the future Polish state. What is the meaning of the phrase “civic society”? Today, it is used almost naturallyby columnists and politicians representing various positions, but it was virtually non-existent during Norwid’s lifetime, although the very ideaof organizing collective life on the basis of “civic” virtues has an almost immemorial provenance. This article attempts to describe Norwid’s civic thought, mainly by analysing his discursive statements, chiefly in journalism. Norwid was decidedly opposed to any doctrinaire elevation of “humanity” (which he called a “holy abstraction”) over “nation” and “Church,” through which individuals can actually partake in “the work of ages.” Another area in which Norwid struggled to develop clear civic categories comprises visions of humanity’s universal happiness and/or its apocalyptic fall, many of which were promulgated at the time. In his polemics with utopias of “fulfilled history” it is possible to discern clear echoes of ideological debates held at the time, especially ones between mystical and political visions used by various “prophets” to describe the ultimate perspectives for the development of current events whose subject is “humanity” – a category replacing “nations,” which would be thus seen as ending their historical “mission.”From this angle, Norwidwould criticise Skład zasad[A collection of principles] by Adam Mickiewicz– a manifesto of revolutionary transformations of civic rights, which are part of the legacy of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.In a letter to Józef Bohdan Zaleski, dated 24 April 1848, Norwid expressed his outrage at most theses contained in Skład, which he saw as undermining traditional values such as “homeland,” “property,” “lineage,” “nation,” etc.

“Much Might Be Said on Both Sides”

Sir Roger de Coverley, representative of the landed gentry in The Spectator, is typically read as a lovable, old-fashioned eccentric and comic object. Closer attention to the series of essays set in and around Sir Roger’s Worcestershire estate — especially numbers 117, 122, and 130 — reveals that the baronet’s work as a justice of the peace stimulates Mr. Spectator’s moral development. Sir Roger’s intimate relationships with his inferiors and his quasi-familial approach to problem-solving challenge Mr. Spectator’s worldview, allowing Addison and Steele to express their ideas through an interplay of voices. Mr. Spectator’s evolving first-person perspective, animated by the loose, ad hoc structures of the justice’s work, where determining the beginning and ending of a legal action is often difficult, clarifies Sir Roger’s exemplary functions in the text. This essay argues that The Spectator functions as a provocative inquiry into ideology rather than a vehicle for Whiggish politics through a narrative point of view that responds to the characters and settings it encounters, most significantly the figure of the country magistrate. The Spectator’s adoption of the magistrate’s structures of judgment elucidates the role of the rural justice of the peace in eighteenth-century English society and law.

Polska kultura łowiecka jako niematerialne dziedzictwo kulturowe

Polish hunting culture as intangible cultural heritage Towards the end of the Middle Ages, hunting based on the knightly ethos became an important part of court culture and, in the following centuries, became an integral part of life for the Polish landed gentry. Despite foreign (particularly German) influence, it retained its distinctive and national character, and was one of the factors that helped shape national identity during the Partitions and the Second Polish Republic. Attempts to eradicate its legacy were made during the Communist era, yet the hunting culture survived and was successfully reconstructed in the 1990s, becoming a source of shared identity for over 120 thousand hunters and their families. Polish hunting culture combines principles of ethical behaviour towards nature, especially towards humans and animals, with a unique language and extensive socio-cultural practices, including both religious and secular customs, rituals and ceremonies. Its manifestations can be found in literature and the arts, especially visual arts and theatre. It also appears in music, performed both during hunting expeditions and on special occasions. Linked to the Polish hunting culture is a distinctive cuisine, which follows with the cycle of nature and is based on venison and fruits from the forest. Last but not least, it also includes breeding and raising hunting dogs (especially typically Polish hunting breeds) and birds of prey. Polish hunters, aware of the values inherent in the hunting culture, actively follow historical traditions. It contributes to the preservation of this unique community culture, rooted in the country’s history and thus constitutes intangible heritage.

The Convent of Premonstratensians in Imbramowice:

During the several hundred years of its history, The Convent of Norbertine Sisters in Imbramowice has become a permanent part of Polish culture. A cloistered order, seemingly cut off from the outside world, is a place where a rich social culture is created. Educational activity was among many areas of the Norbertine sisters’ activity. The Norbertine nuns ran the Institute for girls from landed gentry many years before the partitions of Poland. Zofia Grothówna mentioned this many times in the convent chronicle. However, the institute was closed due to the repressions caused by the outbreak of the January Uprising in 1864. Many years later, Maria Nidecka, the abbess of the convent from 1897 to 1917, opened a so-called Non-resident School for Village Children. Her idea was continued by the abbess Anzelma Wiśnicka, thanks to whom the Household School for Girls was established. Its shape was influenced by the School of Household Works for Women, founded by Jadwiga Zamoyska in Kórnik near Poznań in 1882, and transferred to Kuźnice near Zakopane. The Household School for Girls in Imbramowice was officially opened on 15 November 1919 and was then named the Norbertine Girls Lower School of Agriculture, and from 1939 the Private Female Agricultural School of St. Norbert's Sisters in Imbramowice. The main goal of the Norbertine sisters when organising the school was to prepare Polish girls for a decent life in the independent Poland, reborn after many years of partitions. Unfortunately, with the advent of the Polish People's Republic, the school in Imbramowice was closed.

‘This horrible patrimony’: Masculinity, War and the Upper Classes in Jessie Douglas Kerruish's The Undying Monster

The recent reissue of Jessie Douglas Kerruish's critically neglected Gothic novel The Undying Monster: A Tale of the Fifth Dimension (1922) describes it as ‘dated’ but its more conservative elements nevertheless exist alongside a subversive thrust. Published just four years after the end of the First World War, the novel extols the nobility of the landed gentry, positioning protagonist Oliver Hammand as representative of a positive tradition that guarantees social order in a time of chaos, while simultaneously discrediting the upper class by depicting Oliver as an untamed beast that threatens social order. The Undying Monster has something to add to understandings of Gothic narratives that use the figure of the werewolf to explore the sinister side of masculinity, in particular the possibility that depravity might belong to the upper classes, rather than the lower class as was popularly imagined.