From the Insipid to the Inspired: Women in Thackeray's Fiction
Clarke, Micael Mary
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/69431
Description
Title
From the Insipid to the Inspired: Women in Thackeray's Fiction
Author(s)
Clarke, Micael Mary
Issue Date
1984
Department of Study
English
Discipline
English
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, English
Abstract
Women are central to the meaning of Thackeray's fiction, and an examination of their roles and characterization reveals that with time Thackeray acquired some remarkably forward-looking views on women. Writing at the leading edge of the great wave of nineteenth-century feminist reform, he seems to anticipate in his novels the emancipationists' criticisms of contemporary society. Although Thackeray rarely expressed sympathy for feminist ideas outside of the novels, his fiction, in its structure of ideas and (increasingly) its development of heroic qualities in women, reveals a gradual shift from personal ambivalence toward women to recognition of the damaging effects of female subordination. As he explores the effects of male-centered economic, educational, legal, aesthetic, and religious institutions on both men and women, his essential concern for truth and charity lead him to discover with increasing clarity how women can become either victims or heroines.
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