19th-Century British Fiction (357-0-20)
Topic
Sex, Madness, and Marriage
Instructors
Samantha Jo Botz
Meeting Info
Parkes Hall 214: Mon, Wed 3:30PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
The word "Victorian" exudes a certain stuffiness, a corseted and stiff-lipped repression characteristic of, and confined to, a distinct historical moment. Comparing modern sexual mores to those of the past, however, Michel Foucault notoriously deems us "other Victorians" in our erotic predilections and preoccupations, suggesting far less has changed since the nineteenth century than we might like to believe. By examining a number of nineteenth-century novels that particularly grapple with issues of desire, eroticism, and consent alongside queer and feminist scholarship, this course will investigate questions of sexual identity, desire, gender conformity, and fluidity, that remain provocative today.
Melodramatic, sensational, sensual, and challenging, texts like Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, and Vernon Lee's A Phantom Lover give us the opportunity to reconsider what the Victorians often referred to as "the Woman Question": a growing social conservatism in response to changing gender conventions in no way confined to a single sex. How do these narratives negotiate questions of consent and kinship in response to growing calls during the period for gender equality? And what does the Victorian novel have to tell us—"we other Victorians"—about ways of thinking about sexual difference, deviance, and desire?
Teaching Method
Discussion-based.
Evaluation Method
Participation, short writing assignments and final essay/project.
Class Materials (Required)
Texts Include: Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights; Mary Seacole, The Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole in Many Lands; George Eliot, The Lifted Veil; Vernon Lee, A Phantom Lover; Rokeya Hossain, Sultana's Dream; Marghanita Lasky, The Victorian Chaise-Longue.
Class Attributes
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area