The Visual Exchange: The Intersection of Vision, Gender, and Empire in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

<p>This dissertation examines key moments in fictional and autobiographical texts when gender construction and colonization intersect and create the possibility for reciprocal visual exchange between disparate people. In a visual exchange, the participants actively and meaningfully look at one another, at the same time acknowledging the others subjectivity. I argue that these moments hint at the subliminal utopian desire by the author, and perhaps the reader, for a more equal, even democratic, community. I study a range of texts written during the long nineteenth century by male and female authors, including Sydney Owenson's The Wild Irish Girl (1806), The History of Mary Prince (1831), Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), and Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883). Despite the rich scholarship in recent years on race and imperialism, gender, and the gaze as they are conceived in the nineteenth century, it is rare to find scholarship that examines the intersections of all three, and none of the texts I study have been the subject of this kind of intersectional analysis.'</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

English

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2012

Author dc:creator

• Kikendall, Stacey L.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Houston, Gail
• Harrison, Gary
• Hunt, Aeron
• Cheek, Pamela

• British literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
• Morgan
• Lady (Sydney)
• 1783-1859 -- Criticism and interpretation
• Prince
• Mary -- Criticism and interpretation
• Dickens
• Charles
• 1812-1870 -- Criticism and interpretation
• Schreiner
• Olive
• 1855-1920 -- Criticism and interpretation
• Imperialism in literature
• Race in literature
• Sex role in literature
• English Language and Literature

Language dc:language

English

Identifier

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/engl_etds/16

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalrepository.unm.edu:engl_etds-1015