english 6175 - victorian literature @ east carolina u.

Vanity Fair Part 5, Scene 6 "The Sharp Climax"

Becky reaches the pinnacle of her ambition, but then comes the reversal. Rawdon becomes more and more a sympathetic character.

Vanity Fair Part 5, Scene 2 "The Sedley Demise"

Poverty embitters the Sedley family, as George Osbourne offers to assist the family if he can take over the guardianship of his grandsome, young Georgie.

This Week in English 6175, Week 15 (28 - 02 Dec.)

Week 15
(28 - 02 Dec.)

Mon. 28 • Thackeray, Vanity Fair (Chapter 55-59, pp 636-699)

Wed. 30 • Thackeray, Vanity Fair (Chapter 60-64, pp 700-764)

Due: Assignment 11 - Thackeray DSIR (5 pts)

Fri. 02 • Thackeray, Vanity Fair (Chapter 65-67, pp 765-809)

This Week in English 6175, Week 14 (21 - 25 Nov.)

Week 14
(21 - 25 Nov.)

Mon. 21 • Thackeray, Vanity Fair (Chapter 50-54, pp 575-635); Review Instigator Questions for Documented Research Paper

Wed. 23 • Thanksgiving Break 24 - 28 - no class meeting

Fri. 25 • Thanksgiving Break 24 - 28 - no class meeting

Trollope, Bronte, Dickens, Thackeray Instigator Questions (Version 2.0) [DUE DEC. 09]

Basics about the Documentary Research Paper

DUE DECEMBER 09, Length—11-15 pages, including MLA works cited page (shorter papers will be returned). A works cited page is required, and in proper form (see MLA Style Manual, 1985 or more recent). This critical exercise should be a well-researched literary analysis. The student should select a subject only after consultation with the professor and an appropriate amount of reading and research in the area of the chosen topic; a sampling of previous criticism may prevent the student from repeating critical commonplaces.   (For more see "Guidelines for Documented Paper Assignment").

Anthony Trollope Instigator Questions

1.

J. Hillis Miller notes the way in which Trollope's narrator operates:

Trollope's narrator watches his people with an equable sympathy, a sympathy so perfect and so neutral in temperature that it insinuates itself into the reader's mind until the reader identifies himself with the narrator's consciousness and is no longer aware of it as something other than himself. The narrator becomes invisible in a union of reader and narrator.

Take Miller’s characterization of Trollope’s narrator as an opening to your own interpretation of Trollope’s narrator. How does the narrator further Trollope’s moral vision as it is set out by characters such as Mr. Harding, Archdeacon Grantly, Mr. Slope, Mr. Arabin and Mrs. Proudie?

• Robert Polhemus, Comic Faith, Chicago: University of Chicago P., 1982. ["Introduction" pp. 3-23]
• Robert Polhemus, Comic Faith, Chicago: University of Chicago P., 1982. ["Barchester Towers" pp. 166-203]
• Joseph Wiesenfarth, Gothic Manners and the Classic English Novel, "Barchester Towers" (Madison: University of Wisconsin P, 41-59)
• U.C. Knoepflamacher, Laughter & Despair: Readings in Ten Novels of the Victorian Era (Berkeley:University of California) ["Introduction" pp. 3-24]
• U.C. Knoepflamacher, Laughter & Despair: Readings in Ten Novels of the Victorian Era (Berkeley:University of California P) ["Barchester Towers" pp. 166-203]

2.

Jane Nardin argues the following:

The symbolic patterns about women’s capabilities that emerge from Barchester Towers do not seriously undermine the conventional views that its narrator espouses. Conventions concerning a woman’s proper place are indeed under attack by several female characters. Bt the patterning of events in Barchester Towers suggest that return to an earlier mode of relations between the sexes, not reform of that mode, is desirable.

Read Nardin’s well-argued essay, and respond by developing your own argument concerning Trollope’s view of women.

• Jane Nardin, He Knew She Was Right: The Independent Woman in the Novels of Anthony Trollope., Carbondale: Southern Illinois P., 1989.
• Robert Polhemus, Comic Faith, Chicago: University of Chicago P., 1982. ["Introduction" pp. 3-23]
• Robert Polhemus, Comic Faith, Chicago: University of Chicago P., 1982. ["Barchester Towers" pp. 166-203]
• Joseph Wiesenfarth, Gothic Manners and the Classic English Novel, "Barchester Towers" (Madison: University of Wisconsin P, 41-59)
• U.C. Knoepflamacher, Laughter & Despair: Readings in Ten Novels of the Victorian Era (Berkeley:University of California) ["Introduction" pp. 3-24]
• U.C. Knoepflamacher, Laughter & Despair: Readings in Ten Novels of the Victorian Era (Berkeley:University of California P) ["Barchester Towers" pp. 166-203]

3.

Richard Rorty says that fiction is superceding philosophy as the place of moral discourse, and he’s glad of it because novels raise questions of what to do within a human context, guiding us not by principles but by our lived sympathy. Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers could be the poster boy for Rorty’s position, for it not only develops its moral ideas within a context of love and strong personality, it even reflects on the inadequacy of principle as a guide to behavior.  Write an essay evaluating the moral vision of Trollope's text, and the value of literature in illuminating moral nuance.

• K. M. Newton, "Allegory in Trollope's The Warden," Essays in Criticism 54,2: 128-43.
• Martha Nussbaum, "The Literary Imagination in Public Life," New Literary History 1991: 22(4):877-910.
• Richard Rorty, "Religious Faith, Intellectual Responsibilty, and Romance," in The Cambridge Companion to William James, Ed. Ruth Anna Putnam (Cambridge UP, 1997)
• Robert Polhemus, Comic Faith, Chicago: University of Chicago P., 1982. ["Introduction" pp. 3-23]
• Robert Polhemus, Comic Faith, Chicago: University of Chicago P., 1982. ["Barchester Towers" pp. 166-203]
• Joseph Wiesenfarth, Gothic Manners and the Classic English Novel, "Barchester Towers" (Madison: University of Wisconsin P, 41-59)
• U.C. Knoepflamacher, Laughter & Despair: Readings in Ten Novels of the Victorian Era (Berkeley:University of California) ["Introduction" pp. 3-24]
• U.C. Knoepflamacher, Laughter & Despair: Readings in Ten Novels of the Victorian Era (Berkeley:University of California P) ["Barchester Towers" pp. 166-203]

Jane Eyre Instigator Questions

1.

In a celebrated psychoanalytic essay on Jane Eyre, Dianne F. Sadoff explores the bond between Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre in terms of the sadomasochistic relationship between fathers and daughters in nineteenth-century patriarchal society.  Sadoff draws heavily on the work of Sigmund Freud who was extremely interested in the father-daughter relationship.  According to Sadoff, Jane's journey replicates the experience of some of Freud's patients.  Like Freud's patients who recalled childhood fantasies of being beaten by their fathers, Jane Eyre is a text that vividly imagines a series of paternal abuses.  For Freud, "fantasies" of paternal abuse originate in "the struggles of the Oedipus complex" and express "erotic love for the father" (520). 

Write an essay accessing Sadoff's argument.  Ultimately, for Sadoff, Jane Eyre attempts to reconstitute the father-daughter fantasy, involving not a sadistic father requiring a masochistic daughter, but rather "the father as protector, pitier, and all-embracing presence" (521).  Do you believe Jane triumphs over her sadomasochistic impulses?  And if so how?  Is Bronte subtlety advocating a new scheme of gender relations?   

Useful research begin with:

• Dianne F. Sadoff's "The Father, Castration, and Female Fantasy in Jane Eyre" in Jane Eyre: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, Ed. Beth Newman, Bedford/St. Martin's 1996: 475 - 501.
• Sandra Gilbert's "Plan Jane's Progress" in Jane Eyre: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, Ed. Beth Newman, Bedford/St. Martin's 1996: 475 - 501.
• Peter J. Bellis's "In the Window-Seat: Vision and Power in Jane Eyre," ELH, Vol. 54, No. 3. (Autumn, 1987), pp. 639-652.
• Bette London's "The Pleasures of Submission: Jane Eyre and the Production of the Text," ELH, Vol. 58, No. 1. (Spring, 1991), pp. 195-213.

2.

Jane Eyre is a classic bildungsroman, tracing the "life and adventures" of Jane Eyre as she matures and finds her identity in a sometimes hostile culture.  David Copperfield may be considered a rewrite of Jane Eyre -- this time placing a the male orphan David enmeshed in a system that actively attempts to rob him of his agency.  Write an essay comparing and contrasting the adventures of Jane and David -- what experiences do they share, and how do their experiences differ?  Ultimately, how do both novels sketch visions of an integral self maturing and making a valuable life out of a world of inhospitable forces.

• Sandra Gilbert's "Plain Jane's Progress" in Jane Eyre: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, Ed. Beth Newman, Bedford/St. Martin's 1996: 475 - 501.
• Peter J. Bellis's "In the Window-Seat: Vision and Power in Jane Eyre," ELH, Vol. 54, No. 3. (Autumn, 1987), pp. 639-652.
• L.R. Levis's "David Copperfield and Jane Eyre," English Studies 67,2: 167-74.
• Needham, Gwendolyn B. "The Undisciplined Heart of David Copperfield" [from _Nineteenth-Century Fiction_ 9,(1954), 81-107], Reprinted in _David Copperfield_, Norton Critical Edition, Ed. Jerome H. Buckley,(New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1990): 794-806.
• Nussbaum, Martha C. "Steerforth's Arm," in Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature.  New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 335-363.

Charles Dickens Instigator Questions:

1.

What is "novel" or "new" about the novel? How does the material production of these works, as well as their consumption, reflect a changing age? What new subjects appear, and how do these subjects relate to the shifting social structures that novels explore? Take David Copperfield as an exemplum novel to answer these questions. Consider the way Dickens’s novel relates to the poetry of the Romantics? Consider, too, how David Copperfield relates to the late Victorian irony of Oscar Wilde?

• Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel, Chapter 1 "Realism and the Novel Form" and Chapter 2 "The Reading Public and the Rise of the Novel" Berkeley: U. of California P, 1958.
• Martha Nussbaum, "The Literary Imagination in Public Life," New Literary History 1991: 22(4):877-910.
• Nussbaum, Martha C.  "Steerforth's Arm," in Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature.  New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 335-363.
• Hornback, Bert. "David Copperfield" in Noah's Arkitecture: A Study of Dickens' Mythology. Athens, OH: Ohio State P, 1972: 63-82.
• Needham, Gwendolyn B. "The Undisciplined Heart of David Copperfield" [from Nineteenth-Century Fiction 9,(1954), 81-107], Reprinted in David Copperfield, Norton Critical Edition, Ed. Jerome H. Buckley,(New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1990): 794-806.
• Stewart, Garrett. "Dickens and Language," in Cambridge Campanion to Charles Dickens, Ed. John O. Jordan, New York: Cambridge UP, 2001: 136-151.
• Marsh, Joss. "Dickens and Film," in Cambridge Campanion to Charles Dickens, Ed. John O. Jordan, New York: Cambridge UP, 2001: 204-223.

2.

Why is it that morally attuned readers still fall in love, as David also falls in love, with James Steerforth? Why, and how, does this novel, which begins with an open question about who the hero of David Copperfield's life is, and which ends with the upward-pointing gesture of morality (Agnes pointing upward) lead us, at times, outside of morality into the "shadowy world" of moonlight and love, of magic, and an armed curved along the pillow?

Review Martha Nussbaum's celebrated essay, "Steerforth's Arm," and use it as a starting point to your own discussion of Dickens's moral vision in David Copperfield (Download "Steerforth's Arm".pdf)

Write an essay that explores these questions as you encounter them in the novel. You are welcomed to bring in other readings this quarter if you find them useful.

• Nussbaum, Martha C.  "Steerforth's Arm," in Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature.  New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 335-363.
• Hornback, Bert. "David Copperfield" in Noah's Arkitecture: A Study of Dickens' Mythology. Athens, OH: Ohio State P, 1972: 63-82.
• Needham, Gwendolyn B. "The Undisciplined Heart of David Copperfield" [from Nineteenth-Century Fiction 9,(1954), 81-107], Reprinted in David Copperfield, Norton Critical Edition, Ed. Jerome H. Buckley,(New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1990): 794-806.
• Martha Nussbaum, "The Literary Imagination in Public Life," New Literary History 1991: 22(4):877-910.

3.

David Copperfield is a classic bildungsroman, tracing the "life and adventures" of David as he matures and finds his identity in a sometimes hostile culture.  David Copperfield may considered a rewrite of Jane Eyre -- this time placing a less powerful David enmeshed in a system that actively attempts to rob him of his agency.  Write an essay comparing and contrasting the adventures of Jane and David -- what experiences do they share, and how do their experiences differ?  Ultimately, how do both novels sketch visions of an integral self maturing and making a valuable life out of a world of inhospitable forces.

• L.R. Levis's "David Copperfield and Jane Eyre," English Studies 67,2: 167-74.
• Needham, Gwendolyn B. "The Undisciplined Heart of David Copperfield" [from _Nineteenth-Century Fiction_ 9,(1954), 81-107], Reprinted in _David Copperfield_, Norton Critical Edition, Ed. Jerome H. Buckley,(New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1990): 794-806.
• Nussbaum, Martha C. "Steerforth's Arm," in Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature.  New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 335-363.
• Sandra Gilbert's "Plain Jane's Progress" in Jane Eyre: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, Ed. Beth Newman, Bedford/St. Martin's 1996: 475 - 501.
• Peter J. Bellis's "In the Window-Seat: Vision and Power in Jane Eyre," ELH, Vol. 54, No. 3. (Autumn, 1987), pp. 639-652.

William Thackeray Instigator Questions:

1.

J. Hillis Miller notes the way in which Trollope's narrator operates:

Trollope's narrator watches his people with an equable sympathy, a sympathy so perfect and so neutral in temperature that it insinuates itself into the reader's mind until the reader identifies himself with the narrator's consciousness and is no longer aware of it as something other than himself. The narrator becomes invisible in a union of reader and narrator.

Take Miller’s characterization of Trollope’s narrator as an opening to your own interpretation of Trollope’s narrator versus the narrator of Thackeray's Vanity Fair.  How are these narrators similar and how are they different?  How do they shape the moral vision of their respective books?

• Juliet McMaster, Thackeray: The Major Novels.  Oxford UK: U. of Toronto P, 1971["Narrative Technique in Vanity Fair," pp. 1-49]
• Robert Lougy, "Vision and Satire: The Warped Looking Glass in Vanity Fair" PMLA 90:2 (1975): 256-69.
• Maria Dibattista, "The Triumph of Clytemnestra: The Charades in Vanity Fair," PMLA 95:5 (1980): 827-37.
• Robert Polhemus, Comic Faith, Chicago: University of Chicago P., 1982. ["Introduction" pp. 3-23]
• Robert Polhemus, Comic Faith, Chicago: University of Chicago P., 1982. ["Barchester Towers" pp. 166-203]
• Joseph Wiesenfarth, Gothic Manners and the Classic English Novel, "Barchester Towers" (Madison: University of Wisconsin P, 41-59)
• U.C. Knoepflamacher, Laughter & Despair: Readings in Ten Novels of the Victorian Era (Berkeley:University of California) ["Introduction" pp. 3-24]
• U.C. Knoepflamacher, Laughter & Despair: Readings in Ten Novels of the Victorian Era (Berkeley:University of California P) ["Barchester Towers" pp. 166-203]

2.

Becky Sharp, next to Jane Eyre, is one of the most famous female characters in the nineteenth-century novel.  She is smart, sassy, and powerful.  Compare Becky Sharp to her soul sisters Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason.  How is Becky's bildungsroman similar to and different from that of Jane's?  Is there anyway that she can claim the status of heroine in Vanity Fair?

• Juliet McMaster, Thackeray: The Major Novels.  Oxford UK: U. of Toronto P, 1971["Narrative Technique in Vanity Fair," pp. 1-49]
• Robert Lougy, "Vision and Satire: The Warped Looking Glass in Vanity Fair" PMLA 90:2 (1975): 256-69.
• Maria Dibattista, "The Triumph of Clytemnestra: The Charades in Vanity Fair," PMLA 95:5 (1980): 827-37.
• Sandra Gilbert's "Plan Jane's Progress" in Jane Eyre: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, Ed. Beth Newman, Bedford/St. Martin's 1996: 475 - 501.
• Peter J. Bellis's "In the Window-Seat: Vision and Power in Jane Eyre," ELH, Vol. 54, No. 3. (Autumn, 1987), pp. 639-652.

3.

Write an essay on "Becky Sharp and marriage" Thackeray offers us two female protagonists at the start of Vanity Fair. How is Becky different from Amelia? What is the significance of Becky's throwing Johnson's dictionary out the window of the carriage? How does Amelia treat Becky and why? How are the backgrounds of these two girls different? What is the point of the comparison?

On p. 13 Thackeray describes Becky playing at puppets and entertaining people with her imitation of others. "The girl's sense of ridicule was far stronger than her gratitude." In what sense is Becky a gifted puppeteer? How does this compare with Thackeray's metaphor for himself as a stage manager in the section entitled "Before the Curtain." Becky unabashedly attempts to get a husband, but she has clear expectations for the person who fills that role. What makes Jos a good candidate? On page 19 the narrator says

"If Miss Rebecca Sharp had determined in her heart upon making the conquest of this big beau, I don't think, ladies, we have any right to blame her; for though the task of husband-hunting is generally, and with becoming modesty, intrusted by young persons to their Mammas, recollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent to arrange these delicate matters for her, and that if she did not get a husband for herself there was no one else in the wide world who would take the trouble off her hands."

How does the narrator represent husband-hunting? Are we expected to sympathize with Becky? The narrator again mentions the importance of mothers: "All she [Becky] wanted was the proposal, and ah! how Rebecca now felt the want of a mother! -- a dear tender mother who would have managed the business in ten minutes" (53). How serious is Thackeray here? How does this affect the way we respond to Becky?

Use the questions above to frame your thesis and essay on Becky Sharp.

• Juliet McMaster, Thackeray: The Major Novels.  Oxford UK: U. of Toronto P, 1971["Narrative Technique in Vanity Fair," pp. 1-49]
• Robert Lougy, "Vision and Satire: The Warped Looking Glass in Vanity Fair" PMLA 90:2 (1975): 256-69.
• Maria Dibattista, "The Triumph of Clytemnestra: The Charades in Vanity Fair," PMLA 95:5 (1980): 827-37.

4.

Class and Money issues

Note how families rise and fall in Vanity Fair (for example the Sedleys and the Dobbins). What is different about this society (as compared with earlier novels)? How does the fluidity of family fortunes affect the novel? How might it operate as a theme? Note also that Becky forms her expectations for nobility upon Burney novels: "Sir Pitt is not what we silly girls when we used to read Cecilia at Chiswick, imagined a baronet must have been, anything indeed less like Lord Orville cannot be imagined" (76). (Cecilia is the novel Fanny Burney wrote after Evelina.) How does Sir Pitt surprise her? What does the contrast with the usual representation of nobility suggest about the current (1814) society? About girls that read novels? Perhaps more importantly, what does it mean that Thackeray has so completely separated nobility from refinement and moral superiority in the figure of Sir Pitt Crawley? Examine Miss Crawley's speech to Becky on equality (pp. 111-2). In what sense is Becky Miss Crawley's equal? What is the significance of pointing out that Miss Crawley nonetheless expects Becky to wait on her? Why does the narrator correct Becky's narrative of Colonel Rawdon's attentions to her? Why is she reticent? What are we privileged to know?

Use the questions above to frame your thesis and essay on class and money in Vanity Fair.

• Juliet McMaster, Thackeray: The Major Novels.  Oxford UK: U. of Toronto P, 1971["Narrative Technique in Vanity Fair," pp. 1-49]
• Robert Lougy, "Vision and Satire: The Warped Looking Glass in Vanity Fair" PMLA 90:2 (1975): 256-69.
• Maria Dibattista, "The Triumph of Clytemnestra: The Charades in Vanity Fair," PMLA 95:5 (1980): 827-37.

Study Abroad 2006 - "Locating" Literary England (film) - 27 June to 16 July

This film chronicles Dr. Gregg A. Hecimovich's Study Abroad course, "Locating" Literary England. The course is a wide-ranging, "on-location" adventure in British Literature. We read works by area writers and visit relevant literary sites. Our authors include: Shakespeare, Wordsworth, the Brontes, and Dickens. Classes meet "on-location" and in the splendidly appointed Gold Room at Harlaxton Manor House. "On-location" adventures include the Lake District, Haworth, Castlerigg, Stamford, Grantham, and London.   Click here for more information.

Vanity Fair Volume 2, Part 5, Scene 2

Vanity Fair Volume 2, Part 5, Scene 2

Vanity Fair Volume 2, Episode 4, Scene 6

Lord Steyne introduces Becky at court, and she shines. Meanwhile Rawdon Crawley has been placed in jail for debt. He writes to Becky to "make haste" to free him.

Becky writes back and excuses herself for not being able to spring him immediately. This is part of her plot to further ensnare Steyne and to extract more money and jewels. She also seems perversely attracted by his power.

Lady Jane comes and frees Rawdon (she is impressed by Rawdon's qualities as father and husband). This leads to discoveries regarding Becky and Lord Steyne.

Vanity Fair Volume 2, Episode 4, Scene 3

Amelia Sedley makes the difficult decision to yield her son, George Osbourne III, to George Osbourne, Senior. We see the re-incarnation of George in this son, as the mother, Amelia, continues her blind love for George.

George Osbourne, Senior, begins to spoil this George as he did the first. Illusions replace reality as character after character view themselves in the mirror of their own vanity.

This is a very affecting scene. Brilliantly enacted from Thackeray.

Meanwhile, Rebecca ensnares Lord Steyne, while Rawdon Jr. learns to distrust Lord Steyne and perceive his mother's detached love.

Vanity Fair, Part II, Scene 4, "Can't Help Pedigree"

George Osbourne Sr. as the rising middle-class -- a man of money, and no manners or moral "sentiment." Transposed with Miss Matilda Crawley, his aristocratic double -- attended by Becky Sharp.