"The object of their life": defining female self in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Miss Marjoribanks

In this thesis, I study genre and characterization choices made by Anne Brontë in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Margaret Oliphant in Miss Marjoribanks. For the most part, these choices have been perceived negatively by critics because the resulting text does not produce evidence of either twentieth-century aesthetics or themes. However, as recent interpretations based on principles of cultural criticism suggest, these texts offer insights into Victorian women's interactions with their culture. Through texts like The Tenant and Miss Marioribanks, we catch glimpses of acts of female self-definition which radically contradict individualistic notions of self. Essentially, this thesis seeks to trace the perspective these texts offer which is founded on the integration of masculine and feminine and not on the exclusion of either.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts - MA

Level thesis:degree_level

master's

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor dc:publisher

University of British Columbia

Year dc:date

1993

Author dc:creator

• Goodison, Susanne

Statement dc:rights

• For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.

Language dc:language

eng

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/1741

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/1741