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

Dr. C. Snodgrass; 4336 Turlington, 376-8362; 278-8362; snod@english.ufl.edu
 


 

SYLLABUS:  READING SCHEDULE


COURSE TEXTS (Books available at Goering’s-Bageland, unless otherwise indicated):

Oscar Wilde, The Plays of Oscar Wilde (Vintage)
Aubrey Beardsley, The Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley (Dover)
Seven photocopy supplements—from Orange & Blue Textbooks
 

SCHEDULE (subject to modest negotiation)

Week  1

Introduction — background


Week  2  [Packet #1 ; c. 115 pages; c. 50 pictures]

Chamberlin and Gilman, “Preface,” “Degeneration: An Introduction,” from Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress, eds. Edward J. Chamberlin and Sander L. Gilman (1985), vii–xiv.

Sandra Siegel, “Literature and Degeneration: The Representation of ‘Decadence,’” from Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress , eds. Chamberlin and Gilman (1985), 199–219.

Deborah Gorham, “Women and Girls in the Middle-Class Family: Images and Reality,” from The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal (1982), 3–35.            

Introduction, “Eliza Lynn Linton (1822–98)”
Eliza Lynn Linton — “The Girl of the Period,” Saturday Review, 14 March 1868: [356–60].

Introduction, “William Michael Rossetti (1829–1919)”
William Michael Rossetti — “The Brotherhood in a Nutshell”

Introduction, “John Ruskin (1819–1900)”
John Ruskin — “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood” (Letters to the Times); “ . . . absolute, uncompromising truth”; “Pre-Raphaelitism,” from Lectures on Architecture and Painting (London: Smith Elder, 1854), 189–239.

High Victorian Art (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html ): Hughes, The Long Engagement (1854-59), April Love (1855-56), Home from the Sea (1856-63), Good Night (1865-66), Sir Galahad (1865-70), Overthrowing of the Rusty Knight (1908); Egg, Travelling Companions (1862); Bouguereau, Le Printemps [The Return of Spring] (1866), The Abduction of Psyche (1895); Burne-Jones, Pygmalion & the Image: The Soul Attains (1868-78); Pygmalion & the Image: The Hand Refrains (1868-78); Pygmalion & the Image: The Godhead Fires (1868-78); The Annunciation (1879, 1884), King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid (1884); Draper, A Water Baby (1900); Dicksee, Harmony (1877), Chivalry (1885), The End of the Quest (1921); Hunt, The Hireling Shepherd (1851), The Awakening Conscience (1853), The Lady of Shalott (1889-92) [Manchester]; Ingres, The Source (1820–56); Leighton, The Bath of Psyche (c. 1890), Perseus and Andromeda (1891-94), Flaming June (1895); Long, The Babylonian Marriage Market (1875), The Chosen Five (1885); Manet, Nana (1877); Millais, The Woodman’s Daughter (1951), The Blind Girl (1854), The Crown of Love (1875), Cherry Ripe (1879); Moore, A Workbasket (1879), Dreamers (1879-82), A Summer Night (1887-90); Poynter, On the Temple Steps (1889), The Cave of the Storm Nymphs (1903); D. G. Rossetti, Beata Beatrix (1864-70), The Blessed Damozel (1875-78) [Fogg Art Museum Harvard], Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850); Sandys, Mary Magdalene (1858-60); Spencer-Stanhope, Eve Tempted (1877); Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott (1888), Hylas and the Nymphs (1896), Lamia (1905); and feel free to examine any others.

Articles on John Everett Millais’ Cherry Ripe (1879):
Laurel Bradley, “From Eden to Empire: John Everett Millais’s Cherry Ripe,” Victorian Studies 34.2 (Winter 1991): [179]–203.   
Pamela Tamarkin Reis, “Victorian Centerfold: Another Look at Millais’s Cherry Ripe,” Victorian Studies 35.2 (Winter 1992): [201]–205.    
Laurel Bradley, “Reply to Pamela Tamarkin Reis,” Victorian Studies 35.2 (Winter 1992): 206.

Week  3  [Packets #1 & #2 ; c. 215 pages]

Introduction: “Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)”
Arthur Symons, “Ernest Dowson,” The Poems of Ernest Dowson (London: Lane: Bodley Head, 1905), v–xxix.

Ernest Dowson — Poetry: “In Preface: For Adelaide,” “Vita summa brevis,” “Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration,” “My Lady April,” “Ad Domnulam Suam,” “Yvonne of Brittany,” “Benedictio Domini,” “Growth,” “Ad Manus Puellae,” “Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae,” “Exile,” “Spleen,” “O Mors! Quam Amara Est Memoria,” “You would have understood me had you  waited,” “April Love,” “Vain Hope,” “Vain Resolves,” “Villanelle of His Lady’s Treasures,” “The Garden of Shadow,” “Amantium Irae,” “Impenetentia Ultima,” “A Valediction,” “Cease smiling, Dear! a little while be sad,” “Epigram,” “Beyond,” “To His Mistress,” “The Sea-Change,” “Dregs,” “Venite Descendamus,” “Transition,” “Exchanges.”

Dowson — Fiction: Mark Longaker, “Introduction,” 1–10, and “Notes,” 116–122, from The Stories of Ernest Dowson (1947); “Apple Blossom in Brittany,” from The Yellow Book 3 (October 1894), 93–109; “The Statute of Limitations,” Century Guild Hobby Horse (January 1893) and Dilemmas (London: Lane, 1895), 123–39; “Souvenirs of an Egoist,” Temple Bar (January 1888) and Dilemmas, 87–122; “A Case of Conscience,” Century Guild Hobby Horse (April 1891) and Dilemmas (1895), 27–49; “Countess Marie of the Angels,” Savoy 2 (April 1896): 173–83; “The Fortunate Islands,” Decorations: In Prose and Verse (London: Leonard Smithers, 1899), 43–44; “The Princess of Dreams,” Decorations, 49–50.   

Chris Snodgrass, “Ernest Dowson’s Aesthetics of Contamination,” ELT 26.3 (1983): 162–74; “Aesthetic Memory’s Cul-de-sac: The Art of Ernest Dowson,” ELT 35.1 (1992): 26–53.
——PROJECT SELECTION DUE——


Week 4  [Packet #2, c. 100 pages]

Introduction: “Arthur Symons (1865–1945)”
Arthur Symons — Criticism: “The World as Ballet,” Studies in Seven Arts (1906), 244–46; “Music Halls and Ballet Girls” (1890s; TS Princeton, unpublished until Beckson, ed., Memoirs, 1977), 109–114; “Sex and Aversion” (1890s; TS Princeton, unpublished until Memoirs, 1977), 137–40; “Lydia” (1890s; TS Princeton, unpublished until Memoirs, 1977), 157–69. 

Symons — Poetry:  “Eyes,” “Morbidezza,” “Maquillage,” “Impression,” “On Meeting After,” “Emmy,” “Javanese Dancers,” “Prologue: Before the Curtain,” “Prologue: In the Stalls,” “To a  Dancer,” “Renée,” “Nora on the Pavement,” “Violet: La Mélinite: Moulin Rouge,” “Violet: At the Ambassadeurs,” “Stella Maris,” “Hallucination: I,” “Hallucination: II,” “Flora of the Eden: Antwerp,” “White Heliotrope,” “Nerves,” “Madrigal: I,” “In the Sanctuary at Saronno,” “Bianca: Bianca,” “Bianca: Benedictine,” “Epilogue: Credo”    

Symons — Fiction: “Esther Kahn” (c. 1890), Spiritual Adventures (London: Constable, 1905), 35–53; “The Death of Peter Waydelin,” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine 63 (February 1904) and Spiritual Adventures (London: Constable, 1895), 99–116.


Week 5  [Packet #3, c. 145 pages; Best of Beardsley; c. 46 pictures]

Introduction, “The New Woman”

George John Romanes — “Mental Differences Between Men and Women,” Nineteenth Century 21 (May 1887): 654–72.

Edith Jemima Simcox — “The Capacity of Women” (September 1887).

Karl Pearson — “The Woman’s Question,” from The Ethic of Freethought (1888): 370–94.

Grant Allen — “Some Plain Words on the Woman Question,” Fortnightly Review, ns. 46 (1889): 448–58.

Introduction: “Mona Caird (1858–1932)”
Mona Alison Caird — “The Morality of Marriage” (1890).

Eliza Lynn Linton — “The Wild Women As Social Insurgents,” Nineteenth Century 30 (October 1891): 596–605.

Mona Alison Caird — “A Defence of the So-Called Wild Women,” Nineteenth Century 31 (May 1892): 811–29.

Introduction, “Sarah Grand”
Sarah Grand — “The New Aspect of the Woman Question,” North American Review 158 (1894): [660–68].

Introduction: “Ouida [Marie Louise de la Ramée] (1839–1908)”       
Ouida — “The New Woman,” North American Review 158 (1894): 610–19 [a response to Grand’s “The New Aspects of the Woman Question”].

Anonymous (“A Woman”) — “Women—Wives as Mothers,” The Yellow Book 2 (1894): [11]–18.

Hugh E.  M. Stutfield,  “Tommyrotics,”  Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 157.956 (June 1895): 833–45.

Sarah Grand — “The New Woman and the Old,” Lady’s Realm (1898): [668–75].

Aubrey Beardsley — “Bookplate of John Lumsden Propert,” reproduced in Yellow Book 1 (April 1894), Plate 14, p. [251]; “ Design for a poster to advertise The Yellow Book” (but not used) (c. 1895); “Design for a poster to advertise The Yellow Book” (April 1894), The Best of Beardsley, p. 40; “Poster advertising the play A Comedy of Sighs by John Todhunter (March 1894); “Portrait of Himself,” from The Yellow Book 3 (October 1894): 51, The Best of Beardsley, p. 50; “Frontispiece for Juvenal,” from The Yellow Book 4 (January 1895), p. [288–89], The Best of Beardsley, p. 57.

Punch cartoons (see my website): “Imitation is Sincerest Flattery” (Vol 98, p. 162), “Sterner Stuff” (Vol. 101), “A Bird of Prey,” (Vol. 102), “Darwinian Theory” (Vol 102, p. 291), New Woman with Flowerpot Hat (Vol 103, p. 49), Woman with Peacock Fan (Vol 104, p. 21), “Descent Into the Maelstrom” (Vol 104, p. 38), “A Terrible Turk” (Vol. 104), “Modern Labor” (Vol. 104), “We’ve Not Come To That Yet” (Vol. 106), “What It Will Soon Come To” (Vol. 106), “Donna Quixote” (Vol. 106), “Our Decadents (Female)” (Vol. 106), “Passionate Female Literary Types” (Vol. 106), “An Appropriate Illustration, by Danby Weirdsley” (Vol. 106), “Ars Postera” (Vol. 106), “Billing and Cooing” (Vol. 106), “A Little ‘New Woman’” (Vol. 107), “Quid Est Pictura? — Veritas Falsa” (Vol. 107, p. 47), “A ‘New Woman’” (Vol. 107, p. 111), “The Minx” (Vol. 107), “By Mortarthurio Whiskersley” (Vol. 107), “Ars Presumptera” (Vol. 107, p. 205), “Britannia à la Beardsley” (Vol. 108), New Woman Riding Bike (Vol. 108), “Sylvia Scarlet” (Vol. 108), “Beardsley Pulling Carriage” (Vol. 108), “Published at the Bodily Head” (Vol. 108), “Le Yellow Book” (Vol.108), “The New Woman” (Vol. 108, p. 282), “Presiding Deity, 1895” (Vol. 109), “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (Vol. 109, p. 268), “The New Expression” (Vol. 110), “Prospects of the Leap Year Club” (Vol. 110), “I Do Not Bike” (Vol. 112, p. 17). ——BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE——


Week 6 [Packet #4, c. 140 pages; 2 pictures]
Introduction: “Grant Allen (1848–1899)”                
Grant Allen — The Woman Who Did (1895)

Punch cartoons (see my website): “The Woman Who Wouldn’t” (Vol. 108), “The Woman Who Wanted To” (Vol. 109).


Week 7 [Packet #5, c. 170 pages]
Introduction: “Victoria Cross [“Vivian” Annie Sophie Cory] (1868–1952)”   
Victoria Cross [“Vivian” Annie Sophie Cory] — “Theodora, A Fragment,” The Yellow Book 4 (January 1895): [156]–188.   

Introduction: “Henry Harland (1861–1905)”
Henry Harland — “The Bohemian Girl,” The Yellow Book 4 (January 1895): 12–44; “Rosemary for Remembrance,” The Yellow Book 5 (April 1895): 77–96; “P’tit Bleu,” The Yellow Book 8 (January 1896): 65–93; “Cousin Rosalys,” The Yellow Book 9 (April 1896): 35–53; “Flower o’ the Clove,” The Yellow Book 12 (January 1897): 65–109.


Week 8  [Packets #5 & #6; c. 140 pages; Best of Beardsley; 3 pictures]

Introduction: “George Egerton (1859–1945)”    
George Egerton [Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright] — Martha Vicinus, “Introduction,” pp. v–xix; “A Cross Line,” Keynotes (London: Mathews & Lane, Bodley Head, 1893), 9–44; “The Little Gray Glove,” Keynotes, 99–122; “An Empty Frame,” Keynotes, 123–31; “Wedlock,” Discords (London: John Lane, Bodley Head, 1894), 115–44; “Virgin Soil,” Discords, 144–62.        

Aubrey Beardsley — “Cover Design from Keynotes by George Egerton” (1894), The Best of Beardsley, p. 61.

Punch cartoons (see my website): “SheNotes” (Vol. 106), “SheNotes Reclining” (Vol. 106).


Week 9 [Packet #6, c. 225 pages]

Introduction: “Ella D’Arcy (1856?–1937?)”

Ella D'Arcy — “Irremediable,” Yellow Book 1 (April 1894): 87–108, and Monochromes (London: John Lane, Bodley Head, 1895), 87–120; “The Pleasure-Pilgrim,” Yellow Book 5 (April 1895): 34–67, and Monochromes (1895), [165]–218; “An Engagement,” Yellow Book 8 (January 1896): 379–406; “A Marriage,” Yellow Book 11 (October 1896): 309–42; “At Twickenham,” Yellow Book 12 (January 1897): 313–32.


Week 10  [Packet #7, c. 60 pages]

Introduction: Virginia Blain, “Mathilde Blind (1841–96)”
Mathilde Blind — “A Fantasy,” “Scarabaeus Sisyphus,” “Mourning Women,” “Noonday Rest,” “The Russian Student’s Tale,” “A Carnival Episode,” “Sonnet,” “A Parting.”
Introduction: “Graham R. Tomson [Rosamund Marriott-Watson] (1860–1911)”
                       Virginia Blain, “Graham R. Tomson [Rosamund Marriott-Watson] (1860–1911)”
Graham R. Tomson [Rosamund Marriott Watson] — “Old Pauline,” “Ballad of the Bird-Bride,” “A Ballad of the Were-Wolf,” “Vespertilia,” “Hic Jacet,” “Children of the Mist,” “The White Lady,” “The Cage,” “Epitaph,” “Nirvana.”

Introduction: Angela Leighton, “E[dith] Nesbit (1858–1924)”
E. [Edith] Nesbit — “Song,” “The Husband of Today,” “ Vies Manquées ,” “Day and Night,” “The Dead to the Living,” “Great Industrial Centre,” “Love’s Guerdons.”
——STATEMENT OF THESIS DUE——


Week 11  [Packet #7; c. 75 pages]

Introduction: “Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907)”
                    Virginia Blain, “Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907)”
Mary E. Coleridge — “To Memory,” “The Other Side of the Mirror,” “Master and Guest,” “Doubt,” “The Witch,” “Awake,” “Marriage,” “Wasted,” “The fire, the lamp, and I, were alone together,” “September,” “The White Women,” “The Witches’ Wood,” “An Insincere Wish Addressed to a Beggar,” “A Day-dream,” “Unwelcome,” “A Clever Woman,” “Impromptu,” “Solo,” “I envy not the dead that rest,” “Gone,” “‘True to myself am I, and false to all,’” “Mortal Combat,” “Friends—With a Difference,” “The Contents of an Ink-bottle,” “He Knoweth Not That the Dead Are Thine.”

Introduction: Angela Leighton, “Charlotte Mew (1869–1928)”
Charlotte Mew — Poetry: “The Farmer’s Bride,” “Fame,” “Ken,” “A Quoi Bon Dire,” “On the Asylum Road,” “The Forest Road,” “Not for That City,” “Ne Me Tangito,” “An Ending,” “A Question,” “Pécheresse”; Fiction: “Some Ways of Love,” “Passed,” Yellow Book 2 (July 1894): 121–41.
——OUTLINE DUE——


Week 12  [Packet #7; c. 60 pages; Best of Beardsley; c. 5 pictures]

Introduction: “Arthur Wing Pinero (1855–1934)”
Arthur Wing Pinero — The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1892)

Aubrey Beardsley — “Cover Design” for The Yellow Book 3 (October 1894), The Best of Beardsley, p. 49; “Mrs. Patrick Campbell,” from The Yellow Book 1 (April 1894): [Plate 10], p. 157.

Punch cartoons (see my website): “Proceeding By Leaps & Bounds” (Vol. 104, p. 273), “2nd Mrs. Tanqueray” (Vol. 105, p. 54), “2nd Mrs. Tanqueray Is Played Out” (Vol. 106).
——DRAFT OF TERM PAPER DUE——


Week 13 [Packet #7; c. 220 pages]

Introduction: “Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)”
Oscar Wilde — An Ideal Husband (1894); A Woman of No Importance (1893)


Week 14 [c. 65 pictures]

Nineteenth-Century Paintings (on my website:  http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html):  Rowlandson, The Concert (after 1812), Susanna and the Elders (after 1812); Ingres, La Grande Odalisque (1814), Odalisque with a Slave (1840); Ford Madox Brown, “Take Your Son, Sir!” (1851-92) [unfinished]; Millais, Mariana (1851), then click “Archive” and “Millais” and “Mariana in the Moated Grange” then zoom as desired (similarly with subsequent ArtMagick selections); Morris, Queen Guinevere (1857); Courbet, La Source du Monde [The Origin of the World] (1862); Manet, Olympia (1863), then click on image list then the image and zoom as desired (similarly for subsequent Artchive selections), Woman with a Parrot, or Young Lady in 1866 (1866), Nana (1877); Moreau, Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864), Jason (1865); Sandys, Morgan le Fay (1864); D. G. Rossetti, Mariana (1870), La Ghirlandata (1873), then click on image (similarly with subsequent Art Renewal selections), Astarte Syriaca (1877); Burne-Jones, Phyllis and Demophöon (1870, Birmingham), Phyllis and Demophöon (1881-82, Lady Lever Art Gallery), Pan and Psyche (1872-74), The Beguiling of Merlin (1874), Perseus Slaying the Sea Serpent (1876-88), The Depths of the Sea (1887); Leighton, The Fisherman and the Siren (1856-58), Idyll (1880-81), The Garden of the Hesperides  (1892); Bouguereau, Naissance de Vénus [Birth of Venus] (1879); Alma-Tadema, In the Tepidarium (1881); Collier, Lilith (1887); Rops, La Tentation de St-Antoine [The Temptation of Saint Anthony] (1878), Pornokrates , or La Dame au cochon (1879), L’Incantation [Incantation], La Femme au Lorgnon, or La Buveuse d’Absinthe; Cabanal, Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners (1897); Lévy-Dhurmer, Salome Embracing the Severed Head of John the Baptist (1896), Medusa (1897); Godward, The Betrothed (1892), Mischief and Repose (1895), The Delphic Oracle (1899), The Mirror, or Contemplation (1899);  Waterhouse, Ulysses and the Sirens (1891), La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1893), Pandora (1896), Ariadne (1898), “I am Half-sick of Shadows,” said the Lady of Shalott (1915); Draper, The Gates of Dawn (1900, black & white), The Kelpie (1913), Ulysses and the Sirens (1909); Khnopff, Head of a young English Girl (1895), The Caresses (1896); Stuck, Sin (1893), Kiss of the Sphinx (1895), Salomé (1906); Klimt, Judith I (1901), Judith I [another version] (1901), Judith II (1909), Judith II [another version] (1909); Dicksee, La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1902); Wardle, A Bacchante (1909).


Week 15 [Packet #7; Best of Beardsley; c. 65 pictures]

Introduction: “Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898)”

Beardsley — illustrations from Yellow Book and Savoy periods: Best Works of  Aubrey Beardsley, pp. 23–107, 136–40, 149–50, 152–53, 156–60, plus the additional Yellow Book and Savoy images on my website.

Beardsley — illustrations for Lysistrata (1897), Best Works of Beardsley, pp. 141–43, 97, plus the additional Lysistrata images in packet and on my website.

High Victorian Art (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html ): Collier, In the Venusburg (Tannhäuser) (1901);

——TERM PAPER DUE NOON, MONDAY OF FINALS WEEK——