عنوان

'A large and passionate humanity plays about her' :

Number

TLets566434

Title Proper

'A large and passionate humanity plays about her' :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Murdoch, Christina

Title Proper by Another Author

women and moral agency in the late Victorian social problem novel

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Glasgow

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2012

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

University of Glasgow

Text preceding or following the note

2012

Text of Note

This thesis examines responses to the idea of a specific female moral agency in depictions of women's philanthropic work by late nineteenthcentury female novelists. Focusing on depictions of romantic and sexual female experience in the late nineteenth-century campaign against poverty, I explore the role of gender and sexuality in the making of the female moral self in novels by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Iota, Margaret Harkness, Jane Hume Clapperton, Gertrude Dix. I demonstrate the manner in which altruism was linked to romantic love and sexual desire, and show how this idea surfaced in the love-plot in novels by late nineteenth-century women. I argue that the novel was regarded as a valuable instrument to further the process of social reform, owing to its perceived unique ability to arouse the reader's sympathies; therefore, these novelists used the novel as a tool for constructing the altruistic self. Reading the novels alongside contemporary non-fiction discourse, I undertake an analysis of different romance plots and show how they relate to the debates of the social reform movement of the late nineteenth century. Finally, I suggest that by using the novel, and especially the romance plot, which was regarded as a feminine form of expression, these novelists are defending the idea of a feminine ethic, and a feminine conception of morality that was defined by emotion, feeling, and sympathy, as opposed to the more masculine scientific and sociological ideas behind the late nineteenth century social reform movement.

PR English literature

Murdoch, Christina

University of Glasgow

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y