The Victorians' "unclaimed dividend" : a literary study of the middle-class spinster.

In this dissertation, I scrutinize the formation of female identity in the nineteenth century, which internalized a division between celibate and conjugal life. Additionally, I examine the debate over women's place in Victorian society, particularly the constituency of unmarried women whose singleness fueled this debate. Mainstream rhetoric classified Victorian women as true, fallen, widowed, blue-stocking, married—any number of designations—with the facility that Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor and innumerable blue book reports categorized class and labor. The advent of "redundant" or "surplus" women in Victorian culture instigates, what I term, the single woman question: what does a middle-class woman do if she does not marry? I seek answers to this conundrum and investigate what sustenance, material and otherwise, the middle-class spinster possesses in Victorian fiction. Precluded from the societal markers of true womanhood and the reproductive and moral imperative they assume, the spinster negotiates entry to the sanctum of female experience, or she rejects the simulacrum of "authentic" womanhood that she, unmarried, can achieve. As I argue, this character experiences particular destinies in Victorian fiction: rescue, through the agency of a beneficent suitor; resignation, to a life sacrificed for the good of family; or independence, cobbled from what education and employment a middle-class woman could seek. Mainstream rhetoric demanded that women be restricted to the private sphere; the rescued spinster gladly marries and meets this demand. The devoted domestic, however, complicates this expectation. Her surrogate wifehood imitates marriage, but as numerous characters illustrate, she loses the home and relative she serves. Unless she is able to insert herself into another family circle, she will become an unprotected female like the unwanted woman and abandoned bride, spinster-characters who either do not engender or fail to sustain male attention and desire. The unprotected female engages in the radical act of redefining herself and in response to her spinsterhood eschews self-abnegation to pursue the self-reliance her singleness requires as well as the kindredness her humanity necessitates.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Grantor

Baylor University.

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• Escobar, Kirsten E.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Losey, Jay Brian.

• Women -- Great Britain -- Social conditions.
• Single women -- Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century.
• Single women in literature.
• English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.

Statement dc:rights

• Baylor University works are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. Contact libraryquestions@baylor.edu for inquiries about permission.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2104/14610

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:baylor-ir.tdl.org:2104/14610