ENL 6256 VICTORIAN LITERATURE: THE WOMAN QUESTION IN LATE-VICTORIAN CULTURE

This course will study later Victorian poetry, drama, prose fiction, painting, graphic arts, clothing fashion, and contemporary (Victorian) works of cultural criticism and critical theory as a means for examining the Victorian fin-de-siècle culture’s varying views of gender identity, especially in relation to the issue known as “the Woman Question.” 

We will first try to understand some of the aesthetic and cultural assumptions of the eighteen-nineties, applying those assumptions to some texts that revolve around the figure of woman.  We will then read contemporary commentary on the issues raised by “The Woman Question” and use those issues to contextualize the works of some of the most significant canonical late Victorian artists, as well as important (if generally neglected) non-canonical fin-de-siècle figures.  We will not be focusing in depth on any one artist, but rather, we will be studying (albeit fairly briefly) an unusually large number of figures, in order to try to capture the full range of debate on one of the most critical issues of the period.  Among the artists we will read, in addition to various Victorian feminist and anti-feminist essayists such as Sarah Grand and Ouida, are Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons, Grant Allen, Victoria Cross, Henry Harland, George Egerton [Mary Chavelita Dunne], Ella D’Arcy, Mathilde Blind, Graham R. Tomson [Rosamund Marriott Watson], Edith Nesbit, Mary E. Coleridge, Charlotte Mew, Arthur Wing Pinero, Oscar Wilde, and a considerable number of 19th-century paintings and drawing, including the work of Aubrey Beardsley.
 

Program Status:  This course can be applied toward fulfilling part of the requirements for several possible program “tracks,” including but not limited to the Victorian Studies and Cultural Studies program tracks.