Sophie Gengembre Anderson (1823–1903) is not a painter of considerable critical acclaim; her work has been largely disregarded by art history and criticism, charged on the often-fatal count of sentimentality and lumped in with the kinds of ‘kitsch’ art rejected by modernism and its descendants. Despite this, her work continues to sell – at multi-million-dollar auctions and printed on cheap paraphernalia. Anderson’s appeal at these very different cultural echelons is testament to her technical effectiveness and to the enduring quality of her particular brand of Victorian mawkishness, and though her many paintings of children may never quite find purchase amidst the innovations and revelations of art in the recent century, these qualities do lend themselves to a deeply sympathetic mode of historical and literary painting. Anderson’s large, Tennyson-inspired literary depiction of Elaine of Astolat signalled her desire to enter the aggressively male-dominated space of historical and literary art and offers a valuable new perspective on a story and a character which has been so often – even obsessively – depicted by men. Elaine, which sits high above the entryway to Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery, was one of the first such paintings by a woman to be purchased with public funds, and it represents a valuable entry-point for critique – both of the Victorian art establishment and of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Anderson’s artistic choices betray a profound sympathy for Elaine of Astolat and serve to highlight the pathos of a character who has seen her story and her character distorted from its inception.
{"title":"Take me to the River: Sophie Anderson and Elaine of Astolat","authors":"John McLoughlin","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcae009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcae009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Sophie Gengembre Anderson (1823–1903) is not a painter of considerable critical acclaim; her work has been largely disregarded by art history and criticism, charged on the often-fatal count of sentimentality and lumped in with the kinds of ‘kitsch’ art rejected by modernism and its descendants. Despite this, her work continues to sell – at multi-million-dollar auctions and printed on cheap paraphernalia. Anderson’s appeal at these very different cultural echelons is testament to her technical effectiveness and to the enduring quality of her particular brand of Victorian mawkishness, and though her many paintings of children may never quite find purchase amidst the innovations and revelations of art in the recent century, these qualities do lend themselves to a deeply sympathetic mode of historical and literary painting. Anderson’s large, Tennyson-inspired literary depiction of Elaine of Astolat signalled her desire to enter the aggressively male-dominated space of historical and literary art and offers a valuable new perspective on a story and a character which has been so often – even obsessively – depicted by men. Elaine, which sits high above the entryway to Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery, was one of the first such paintings by a woman to be purchased with public funds, and it represents a valuable entry-point for critique – both of the Victorian art establishment and of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Anderson’s artistic choices betray a profound sympathy for Elaine of Astolat and serve to highlight the pathos of a character who has seen her story and her character distorted from its inception.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141002849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What have the Belgians to do with British Nineteenth-Century Culture?","authors":"Henk de Smaele","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcae007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcae007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140666113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction to: ‘Meeting Together in an Equal and Friendly Manner’: The Workplace Literary Culture of Lancashire Mutual Improvement Societies","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcad035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcad035","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140250138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ford Madox Brown’s History of Manchester","authors":"N. Tromans","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcad045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcad045","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140479957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this essay, I extend the existing scholarship on the character of Bertha Mason Rochester by providing historical and textual evidence that Brontë represents Bertha’s ethnocultural background as an amalgam of Jamaican, Jewish, and Creole. In support of this thesis, I examine passages focusing on Bertha’s father and brother, and I describe the cultural meanings of Spanish Town (Jamaica) and Madeira (Portugal) with regard to Caribbean Jewish creole communities in the nineteenth century and their complex ties to England and the Continent. In contrast to previous claims (e.g. Heidi Kaufman’s), I argue that Brontë imbues Bertha with a literal (vs merely symbolic) Jewish lineage. Also, I consider Brontë’s portrayal of Bertha in relation to gender-specific tropes about Jews, which were familiar to Brontë and her Victorian readers. Furthermore, I discuss the sociopolitical zeitgeist during Brontë’s formative years and in the period in which she wrote Jane Eyre, with an emphasis on the pervasive attempts to evangelize England’s Jews and the vigorous debates about whether to grant Jews political rights in England. Additionally, I examine the phrase ‘stiff-necked’ as it is used in the novel and in the King James Bible, positing that it signifies an unwillingness to change. On the basis of these various forms of evidence, I argue that Brontë’s construction of Bertha as having hybridized Jewish origins helps make her an embodiment of radical otherness and stagnation. In this conceptual framework, the polarity between the ability versus inability to grow emerges as a core theme within the novel.
{"title":"The Jew in the Jamaican, the Amalgam in the Attic: A New View of Bertha Mason in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre","authors":"Shanee Stepakoff","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcae001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcae001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this essay, I extend the existing scholarship on the character of Bertha Mason Rochester by providing historical and textual evidence that Brontë represents Bertha’s ethnocultural background as an amalgam of Jamaican, Jewish, and Creole. In support of this thesis, I examine passages focusing on Bertha’s father and brother, and I describe the cultural meanings of Spanish Town (Jamaica) and Madeira (Portugal) with regard to Caribbean Jewish creole communities in the nineteenth century and their complex ties to England and the Continent. In contrast to previous claims (e.g. Heidi Kaufman’s), I argue that Brontë imbues Bertha with a literal (vs merely symbolic) Jewish lineage. Also, I consider Brontë’s portrayal of Bertha in relation to gender-specific tropes about Jews, which were familiar to Brontë and her Victorian readers. Furthermore, I discuss the sociopolitical zeitgeist during Brontë’s formative years and in the period in which she wrote Jane Eyre, with an emphasis on the pervasive attempts to evangelize England’s Jews and the vigorous debates about whether to grant Jews political rights in England. Additionally, I examine the phrase ‘stiff-necked’ as it is used in the novel and in the King James Bible, positing that it signifies an unwillingness to change. On the basis of these various forms of evidence, I argue that Brontë’s construction of Bertha as having hybridized Jewish origins helps make her an embodiment of radical otherness and stagnation. In this conceptual framework, the polarity between the ability versus inability to grow emerges as a core theme within the novel.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140482184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay traces chronologically Elizabeth Gaskell’s reception in mainland China from 1916 to the present day. It focuses on the ways in which Chinese translations and studies of Gaskell are governed by China’s changing socio-political and cultural concerns. The translation of Gaskell was motivated by cultural reasons in Republican China and by political ones in Maoist China. In the former period, Gaskell’s work was considered useful for the creation of a new, modern Chinese literature, while in the latter period, it was seen as conducive to China’s socialist revolution and education. In the post-Mao era, cultural and commercial considerations have come to dominate Gaskell translation. Serious Chinese Gaskell scholarship emerged as part of the critical effort to reaffirm the historical significance of nineteenth-century European realism in the late 1970s. Since then, Chinese criticism of Gaskell has developed from an initial period dominated by Marxist critical approaches through a formative period marked by feminist approaches to a flourishing period featuring diverse critical approaches. The study of Chinese Gaskell would contribute to the global awareness of foreign Gaskells.
{"title":"Gaskell in China: A History of Translation and Critical Reception","authors":"Kui Zeng","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcae002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcae002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay traces chronologically Elizabeth Gaskell’s reception in mainland China from 1916 to the present day. It focuses on the ways in which Chinese translations and studies of Gaskell are governed by China’s changing socio-political and cultural concerns. The translation of Gaskell was motivated by cultural reasons in Republican China and by political ones in Maoist China. In the former period, Gaskell’s work was considered useful for the creation of a new, modern Chinese literature, while in the latter period, it was seen as conducive to China’s socialist revolution and education. In the post-Mao era, cultural and commercial considerations have come to dominate Gaskell translation. Serious Chinese Gaskell scholarship emerged as part of the critical effort to reaffirm the historical significance of nineteenth-century European realism in the late 1970s. Since then, Chinese criticism of Gaskell has developed from an initial period dominated by Marxist critical approaches through a formative period marked by feminist approaches to a flourishing period featuring diverse critical approaches. The study of Chinese Gaskell would contribute to the global awareness of foreign Gaskells.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140492764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Focusing on critically neglected works by prolific writer Netta Syrett (1865–1943), this article reveals her New Woman dialogue with aestheticism and decadence in her early short stories written for the iconic 1890s periodical The Yellow Book: primarily, ‘A Correspondence’ (1895) and ‘Far Above Rubies’ (1897). Together they trace Syrett’s increasingly assertive voice and navigation of the period’s seemingly competing but intersecting aesthetic, decadent and feminist movements. I argue that Syrett uses aesthetic and decadent discourses as strategic vehicles for the articulation of the evolving feminist ideas more fully expressed in her later pro-suffrage works. Specifically, her stories register her response to the male elitism and misogyny of aestheticism and decadence through a critical engagement with their tropes (exotic setting; aestheticized interior; femme fatale) and discourses (of mythology; statuary; floriography) in order to challenge the objectification and marginalization of women by masculinist culture using its own terms of reference. Syrett’s stories are thus discursive spaces through which she articulates anxieties about women’s place in, or exclusion from, aestheticism and decadence, asserting her role in these movements as both participant and critic. This article thus offers a more comprehensive understanding of the evolving discourses of, as well as the dialogues and debates enacted by, fin-de-siècle women’s writing, shedding new light on the aesthetic and decadent movements.
{"title":"A New Woman Dialogue with Aestheticism and Decadence: Netta Syrett’s Short Stories for The Yellow Book","authors":"Lucy Ella Rose","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcad044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcad044","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Focusing on critically neglected works by prolific writer Netta Syrett (1865–1943), this article reveals her New Woman dialogue with aestheticism and decadence in her early short stories written for the iconic 1890s periodical The Yellow Book: primarily, ‘A Correspondence’ (1895) and ‘Far Above Rubies’ (1897). Together they trace Syrett’s increasingly assertive voice and navigation of the period’s seemingly competing but intersecting aesthetic, decadent and feminist movements. I argue that Syrett uses aesthetic and decadent discourses as strategic vehicles for the articulation of the evolving feminist ideas more fully expressed in her later pro-suffrage works. Specifically, her stories register her response to the male elitism and misogyny of aestheticism and decadence through a critical engagement with their tropes (exotic setting; aestheticized interior; femme fatale) and discourses (of mythology; statuary; floriography) in order to challenge the objectification and marginalization of women by masculinist culture using its own terms of reference. Syrett’s stories are thus discursive spaces through which she articulates anxieties about women’s place in, or exclusion from, aestheticism and decadence, asserting her role in these movements as both participant and critic. This article thus offers a more comprehensive understanding of the evolving discourses of, as well as the dialogues and debates enacted by, fin-de-siècle women’s writing, shedding new light on the aesthetic and decadent movements.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139381126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Day in the Life","authors":"Susie Steinbach","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcad046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcad046","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139384289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While the term ‘alienation’ is frequently mentioned in criticism of sensation fiction, there is a lack of a stringent definition of this term. This article aims to address this gap with a focused examination of the depiction of alienation in three sensation novels, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) by M. E. Braddon, East Lynne (1861) by Mrs Henry Wood, and Basil (1852) by Wilkie Collins. Borrowing a critical framework from contemporary philosopher Rahel Jaeggi, the article sees alienation as an obstructed relation of ‘appropriation’. According to Jaeggi, to appropriate is, briefly, to take oneself and one’s world at one’s own command. The relation of appropriation bespeaks a more profound relationship between the self and the world than ownership. Previous studies of sensation heroines often associate their alienation with their desires for material property. With Jaeggi’s critical framework, however, this article moves forward by identifying a parallel between the heroines’ troubled desires for material possessions and their problematic relationships in life. Through a Jaeggian lens, all three texts illustrate the heroines’ dispossession of the self and dispossession of property as profoundly, even structurally, linked. A Jaeggian reading of the novels also provides new insights into the genre’s ideological function, particularly in relation to the limited social roles and precarious hold on the material world faced by ambitious Victorian women.
{"title":"Alienated Heroines in Basil, Lady Audley’s Secret, and East Lynne: A Jaeggian Reading","authors":"Rui Qian","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcad043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcad043","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 While the term ‘alienation’ is frequently mentioned in criticism of sensation fiction, there is a lack of a stringent definition of this term. This article aims to address this gap with a focused examination of the depiction of alienation in three sensation novels, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) by M. E. Braddon, East Lynne (1861) by Mrs Henry Wood, and Basil (1852) by Wilkie Collins. Borrowing a critical framework from contemporary philosopher Rahel Jaeggi, the article sees alienation as an obstructed relation of ‘appropriation’. According to Jaeggi, to appropriate is, briefly, to take oneself and one’s world at one’s own command. The relation of appropriation bespeaks a more profound relationship between the self and the world than ownership. Previous studies of sensation heroines often associate their alienation with their desires for material property. With Jaeggi’s critical framework, however, this article moves forward by identifying a parallel between the heroines’ troubled desires for material possessions and their problematic relationships in life. Through a Jaeggian lens, all three texts illustrate the heroines’ dispossession of the self and dispossession of property as profoundly, even structurally, linked. A Jaeggian reading of the novels also provides new insights into the genre’s ideological function, particularly in relation to the limited social roles and precarious hold on the material world faced by ambitious Victorian women.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139385937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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