Deciphering the Real through Artifice: A Study of the Gaze in Victorian Art

This thesis explores how the gaze is utilized to find hidden truth in Charlotte Brontë's first novel, The Professor, the early work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and George Eliot's novella, "The Lifted Veil." Brontë's narrator and protagonist of The Professor is an obsessive gazer who decodes the faces of those around him to find inner character; even though his gaze fails at times, he maintains an ideal that the true mind of a person can be seen upon the face. The early painting of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood demonstrates a similar mindset by rendering the mundane hyper-realistically. Specifically, Millais' 1849 oil Isabella and his 1850 oil Christ in the House of His Parents demonstrate that the inner character of person can be designated phrenologically; critics, however, disparaged the hyper-realism of the Brotherhood for being ugly and artless. Differing considerably from her other realist work, George Eliot's "The Lifted Veil" is a supernatural novella written from the perspective of a man who can read minds and see the future. Even though he is gifted with preternatural sight, he is afflicted by sickness and loneliness. All three works demonstrate that even though searching for the real through eyesight is at times problematic, it should always be treated as a closely tended process.

Grantor dc:publisher

Wake Forest University

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Davis, Rochelle Leigh

• Bronte

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/39271

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:wakespace.lib.wfu.edu:10339/39271