Research Project Chat

Now is the time to get help and encouragement on your research projects.  Please tell the class what your proposal is and how you plan to prove your point.  This is your chance to collaborate.

Sensation Fiction vs "Literature"

Can you, as a literary critic, determine a difference in quality of the writing between Braddon and any of the other, usually considered more serious, women writers of the nineteenth century?

Also, do you agree with Beth Palmer that the novel seems to be self-conscious (aware) of the place and audience and viability of serialized fiction?

Lady Audley??

In Volume I, the reader immediately becomes suspicious, along with Robert Audley, of Lady Audley. What is suspicious about her and her behavior?  But which of the characters can we really trust?

Maggie's Lovers

The middle half of the book introduces Maggie as a young woman.  It seems to me that Stephen and Philip, while similar in some ways, appeal to very different aspects of Maggie's personality and psyche--and are almost two sides to one whole.  You are certainly free to disagree with this assessment of them, but I ask you this week to consider what each offers to Maggie, what they help her to discover about herself, and how they complicate her life and the story.  And as a side note, how does Tom fit into this storyline?

Just Who is Maggie Tulliver?

What kind of a girl/woman/person do you think George Eliot is presenting/creating/defining with Maggie?  Look at her from a couple of perspectives.  There are plenty of models of womanhood--for better or for worse--that Eliot presents in the novel, with the Dodson sisters, Mrs. Moss and even Mrs. Snelling.   We also have the narrative perspective--how do you think the narrator feels about Maggie (which, of course, can be seen not only in how she describes Maggie, but in how she describes the other women)?  And then you also have the perspective of the men--Mr. Tulliver, Tom and Philip.

Spring Break Week off

Look for the next blog prompt on Friday, March 26.  I bet you all plan to spend your break reading The Mill on the Floss.  I know I am!

Aurora Leigh Take Two

If you agree with Deborah Logan that the poem explores deviations from the "Victorian norm of acceptable female sexuality" do you find anything revealing in that exploration (294)?  Does the deviance defined by Aurora, Lady Waldemar and/or Marian empower them in any way?  What is the effect of any empowerment, if you see it?

Ultimately, it seems, despite the ending of Aurora's marriage to Romney, Logan concludes that the poem is an example of one woman writer (Barrett Browning, not Aurora) who acknowledges the presence of a character like Marian who "demands recognition and articulation on her own terms" in the case of defining her own sexuality, and that Barrett Browning uses Marian to "say the unsayable and think the unthinkable" and posits a "femaleness not bound by social, sexual, or economic constructs" (305).  Does it matter that the poem is not about Marian?  What about how Aurora ultimately defines her sexuality?