Too much context

psychology in CD

-Freudian ideas of the subconscious- the unconscious mind and the idea of the external vs the internal, mind body separation- link to Rezia

>Wolf’s husband’s company published him, likely aware

-In 1916 carl jung introduced the theory that we all share a collective unconscious: that a species have certain shared subconscious instincts

Friendship

Friendship

Karen Marcus

‘victorians accepted friendship between women because they believed it cultivates the feminine virtues of sympathy and altruism that made women into good helpmates’

>’indicated a shift in the spiritual and emotional defition of marriage from a hierarchical…to a more egalitaruan conception modeled on friendship’

>’female friends…marriage brokers who helped facilitate courtship’ though not defined by ‘instrumental utility’

1830-80 was the ‘heyday of sentimental friendships legitimated in terms of affection, attraction, and pleasure and federated into marriage and family ties’

>’aristocratic women viewed friendship as an alternative to marriage and justified it as the cultivation of reason, equality, and taste’ post romantcisim+evangelicalism (emotions+faith priotitised)

Ellis ‘counseled women to accept their inferiority to men and to cultivate moral virtues[…]as counterweights to male virtues’

>’it trained women not to compete with men’ ‘it fostered feminine vulnerability’

>’Ellis explicitly argued that friendship trained women to be good wives by teaching them particularly feminine ways’

Marriage ‘rarely ended friendships and many women organised part of their lives around their friends’

>Princess Victoria was given a ring by her giverness (identified as her best friend) on her wedding day

>’because friendship involved close connection without the primal bodily contact or all-consuming commitment[…]it was the ideal’

friend ws ‘also in a category of her own’

>’force’ of other bonds ‘but without sharing households or sex’or ‘total caretaking’

>’entailed few of the material entanglements and responsibilities attached to middle-class family life’

Biblical views on finances

Biblical era, 1800BC and after): Under Jewish law, women have the right to own property and sue others in court without a man representing them.

>Wives can’t inherit directly from their husbands – unless it is a gift or they have no children

>daughters can inherit if they don’t have brothers.

>Sons who inherit are expected to use the estate to support the women in the family.

finances in England 1100

England, 1100s: English common law, a combination of Anglo-Saxon and Norman traditions, leads to the creation of coverture

>the belief that married men and women are one financial entity.

>married women cannot own property, run taverns or stores or sue in court.

>Those financial rights could be enjoyed, however, by widows and spinsters.

>Over time, coverture is corrupted into the view that women are property of their husbands. 

When did UK allow equal inheritance

UK and US, 1922: The UK finally allows equal inheritance. 

What happened in 1974

1974: Equal Credit Opportunity Act passes in the US. Until then, banks required single, widowed or divorced women to bring a man along to cosign any credit application, regardless of their income. They would also discount the value of those wages when considering how much credit to grant, by as much as 50%. 

Women in the 1940s-1950s 

• Women had a great part in the war, mobilised as the “home front” in December 1941 by conscription

  >The Women’s Voluntary Services for Civil Defence are introduced, as well as availability to be involved in the Air Raid Wardens, St John’s Ambulance and the Red Cross. 

• Parents had less time to look after their children, and, in the UK, the government was concerned about increased rates of juvenile delinquency. 

• During the war, there was more male policing of women’s morality, worried by increased employment, young soldiers on the streets and growing independence.

   

  EMPLOYMENT

• Despite the increase in the rate of women’s employment, women were still considered to be 'secondary workers' 

• Their wages weren't considered essential to families’ income - instead it was thought that women's wages were for ‘extras’ like holidays or new consumer durables

• After the Second World War, the welfare state is introduced. 

  >created more opportunities for work for women: the NHS created work opportunities as nurses, midwives, cleaners and clerical staff. 

• Baking, textiles and light industries also expanded at this time. Routine repetitive work is considered women’s work for women’s wage. 

• 1950s feminism is often termed “welfare feminism” – less of an emphasis on equality and more focus on women’s contribution to society. 

• Winnicott, a paediatrician and psychoanalyst, promotes the idea of the home as a private emotional world in which mother and child are bound to each other and in which the mother has control and finds freedom to fulfill herself 

• These periods are seen as a time of conformity for women, as, after the war and Great Depression, there was a desire for stability and traditionalism. Women were encouraged to return to the domestic sphere. 

  >in Cold War period post 1947 a woman’s contribution to the West was a strong family

• 1953 advice book: "A happy marriage may be seen, not as a holy state or something to which a few may luckily attain, but rather as the best course, the simplest, and the easiest way of life for us all" 

• Later, changes in attitudes to sex, leading to the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Women in the 60s 

 

Fashion for women became much less restrictive – Mary Quant became famous for popularising the mini skirt, which was designed to make women’s movement much freer  

 

Quant’s designs were playful and youthful, using geometric shapes and colours – by the end of the decade, psychedelic prints and vibrant colours gained more popularity, coinciding with the hippie movement 

 

Many more jobs available for young women, allowing them to move away from familial constraints  

 

Start of the Women’s Liberation Movement or ‘second wave feminism’: 850 women on strike at Ford factory in Dagenham arguing for equal pay  

This strike led to the passing of the Equal Pay Act of 1970 

 

1968 – Barbara Castle the first and only woman to be appointed Secretary of State 

https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/The-1960s-The-Decade-that-Shook-Britain/ 

 

1961 – The average age of first marriage for women was 23.3  

 

When the contraceptive pill was introduced in the UK in 1961, it was mainly only prescribed to married women – not until 1974 that it became widely available 

 

Rowbotham, in her memoir Promise of a Dream, writes about her experience as a student in the early 1960s: “not only were we all ignorant about contraception, but we had no idea who we could ask for advice… Abortion, an inconceivable horror of gin and screams, was still illegal.” 

 

1964 – the average woman had 2.95 children in her lifetime 

 

1967 – the Abortion Act was passed, legalising abortions on certain grounds by registered practitioners  

 

Women were still largely reliant on men economically, both because they earned much less (women’s earnings were 54.8% of men’s earnings) and because they need to get a signature from their father or husband to gain credit or buy bigger items 

 

1968 – the Observer reported on an official study showing “a massive wastage of women’s abilities and qualifications” and “at least four million women used virtually as slave labour” 

50% of working women earned less than five shillings per hour 

 

1975 – Sex Discrimination Act  

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/may/07/1963-beginning-feminist-movement 

 

Advertisers utilised feminist movements to make a bid for women’s money, but still portrayed women as very limited in what they could achieve 

 

Betty Friedan in 1963: “Women are shown solely as man’s wife, mother, love object, dishwasher, cleaner, and never as a person.” 

 

The number of women enrolled in higher education increased – in 1962 there were over 26,000 girls at university 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00wfrgf 

 

Many members of the Women’s Liberation Movement were also members of peace organisations like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) at university – war and militarism were seen as representative of male violence and a patriarchal society 

http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/sisterhood/clips/race-place-and-nation/patriarchy-militarism-peace-movement/143175.html 

 

 

 

 

Life for women in the 70s 

 

Expectations for women 

• Many women had jobs outside their home, but still were responsible for most housework and childcare while their husband's only responsibility in a marriage was to go to work and earn money to support the family. 

 

State of society in 70s 

• Women still required a man’s permission to borrow money from the bank 

• Jobs were advertised by gender 

• Only 26 of the 650 members of Parliament (MPs) were women in 1970, and fewer still (only 19) in 1979, the year Thatcher was elected as prime minster (Commons’ representation is far better now but still only 28% of the HOL are female L) 

• Domestic violence and marital rape were not considered crimes 

• Doctors (most of whom were men) were often ignorant of women’s health 

• Husbands often got child custody 

• Marriage — allowed only to heterosexuals — was still idealised as the high point of a woman’s life.  

• It was not until 1975 that the Sex Discrimination Act was passed and, as with equal pay, its changes were phased in over subsequent years. 

 

British Women’s Liberation Movement 

• Historians and founders of the British Women’s Liberation Movement (BWLM) consider that the year 1970 marked the start of the movement.  

• They mention two major events that took place that year:  

• The first British Women’s Liberation Movement Conference in Oxford from which gathered between 500 and 600 participants, many more than expected, and the protest against a Miss World beauty competition held in London which brought the attention of the movement into the public and media arena (also influenced by and took place within a context of diverse contestation movements that had emerged in the 1960s in Britain, parts of Europe and also in the US eg. Civil rights movement, campaign for nuclear disarmament, gay rights).  

• The publication in 1963 of Betty Friedan’s best seller The Feminine Mystique had a profound influence on second-wave feminism in the United States but also in Britain. 

• The book was a condemnation of the consumer society that fed the myth of the fulfilled housewife and mother, making women prisoners of their homes and depriving them of their lives.  

• As Betty Friedan put it: The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive. There is no way for these women to break out of their comfortable concentration camps except by finally putting forth an effort – that human effort which reaches beyond biology, beyond the narrow walls of home, to help shape the future. 

• Growth of the notion of “conscious-raising” and “the personal is political” (the radical feminist idea that women’s personal choices in the home affected gendered interactions in the public sphere eg. choosing to be a housewife reinforced patriarchal structures + idea that women were naturally homemakers whilst men were naturally breadwinners)  

 

Women’s growing dissatisfaction:  

• Forty years after gaining the right to vote on an equal footing with men (The Reform Act of 1818), British women felt that equality between the sexes was still a long way off.  

• In the political, economic and social fields, things had barely changed since the 1920s, women were grossly underrepresented in Parliament, access to many professional jobs continued to be restricted, unequal pay was still legal, in universities women made up only a quarter of the student population.  

• Cultural attitudes and beliefs were still very backward despite important changes in women’s lives. Mentalities were patriarchal and, based on old-fashioned values: eg. refusing women mortgages if they did not have the backing of male guarantors was common.  

• The dominant view was that women’s ‘natural’ role was to care for children at home, that men were the breadwinners, and that money earnt by women was pin money. 

• These legal and social practices that were keeping women in subordinate positions were increasingly perceived as unfair and outdated especially by women. 

 

WLM seven demands: 

1. Equal pay 

2. Equal educational and job opportunities 

3. Free contraception and abortion on demand 

4. Free twenty-four-hour nurseries for children 

5. Legal and financial independence for all women (links between class and gender struggles encouraged this demand – led to the ‘YBA’ campaign, as in: Why Be A Wife) 

6. The right to a self-defined sexuality, including an end to discrimination against lesbians 

7. freedom for all women from intimidation by the threat or use of violence or sexual coercion regardless of marital status; and an end to the laws, assumptions, and institutions that perpetuate male dominance and men’s aggression to women 

 

Proposals biography

-Her older sister Cassandra's engagement stretched on for several years because the marriage was postponed for lack of money.

-Jane Austen changed her mind after initially accepting a respectable marriage proposal from a family friend, Harris Bigg-Wither.  

>highly unconventional choice for a woman in Austen’s position (as a relatively poor clergyman’s daughter).  

Attachment v connection

-Mari describes her attachment with Will

>deeply individualised, subjective feeling of love

>tied to sensibility (romantic)

-connection refers to a public bond (Eli identified between her and Ed)

>tied to sense

Showalter on MD v Ulysses

-Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) shares structural similarities with Joyce’s Ulysses

>both take place over a single day in a modern city

-BUT Woolf diverges by focusing on an “ordinary” woman rather than mythologising her character.

>The title alone—*Mrs Dalloway*—reflects how Clarissa is defined by her marital status, “her identity submerged in his \[her husband’s]” and her first name “erased by her social signature.”

Woolf’s 1924 essay Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown

-Woolf addresses what she sees as the arrival of modernism which led to a change in human relations, and thence to change in "religion, conduct, politics, and literature".

>She envisaged modernism as inherently unstable, a society and culture in flux.

-She develops her argument through the examination of two generations of writers.

>Bennett was a critic of modern writers in general + challenged their depiction of reality

>Her argument is that as times change, writers and the tools that they use must evolve, "the tools of one generation are useless to the next".

-Woolf argues that the Edwardians focused on external realism (furniture, houses, clothes) but that what matters more is how people think, feel, and experience the world.

-Her vision of reality is captured in the world of an anonymous woman she has observed, to whom she gives the name "Mrs. Brown", whose world is to be reflected by modernist writers.

>represent the mystery and subtlety of human nature.

>writers like Bennett can describe her house in perfect detail but fail to capture who she really is.

LINKS

• Rather than plot or external events, the novel explores the inner lives of characters like Clarissa and Septimus.

• She uses stream of consciousness to portray the mind’s “shivering fragments”, memory, and emotion.

• Clarissa is Woolf’s version of Mrs Brown: ordinary on the outside, complex and rich within.

Women and the Vote

Women and the Vote

-The war demonstrated women’s capability in traditionally male roles, prompting legislative change

>Representation of the People Act (1918) granted the vote to 8.5 million women over 30.

>Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act (1919) made it illegal to exclude women from jobs based on gender.

>Dr Gerry Oram observes: “There was little point in pretending any more, women had proved they could take on the roles vacated by men.”*

-Yet the promise of equality was limited:

>Women’s employment *declined post-war** (from 27% in 1911 to 21% by 1931 in Wales).

>Many jobs returned to men, and marriage bars remained in professions like teaching.

Oram notes, “In many instances women's lots were actually considerably worse after 1918.“

-Women gained *full voting rights in 1928** and increased legal protections (e.g., equal inheritance rights, Matrimonial Causes Act).

>Feminist groups like the *Six Point Group** continued to fight for systemic change.

>The *flapper** became a symbol of this new woman—free, fashionable, sometimes shallow—representing both liberation and concern.

(The Times): “The scantily clad, jazzing flapper... must never be entrusted with a vote.”

Women in the 60s 

 

-Fashion for women became much less restrictive – Mary Quant became famous for popularising the mini skirt, which was designed to make women’s movement much freer 

 -Start of the Women’s Liberation Movement or ‘second wave feminism’

>850 women on strike at Ford factory in Dagenham arguing for equal pay  

>This strike led to the passing of the Equal Pay Act of 1970  

>Many members of the Women’s Liberation Movement were also members of peace organisations like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) at university – war and militarism were seen as representative of male violence and a patriarchal society 

1961 – The average age of first marriage for women was 23.3  

-When the contraceptive pill was introduced in the UK in 1961, it was mainly only prescribed to married women – not until 1974 that it became widely available 

1967 – the Abortion Act was passed, legalising abortions on certain grounds by registered practitioners  

-Women were still largely reliant on men economically

>they earned much less (women’s earnings were 54.8% of men’s earnings)

>because they need to get a signature from their father or husband to gain credit or buy bigger items  

 

 

 

Life for women in the 70s 

Expectations for women 

• Many women had jobs outside their home, but still were responsible for most housework and childcare while their husband's only responsibility in a marriage was to go to work and earn money to support the family. 

State of society in 70s 

• Women still required a man’s permission to borrow money from the bank 

• Domestic violence and marital rape were not considered crimes 

• It was not until 1975 that the Sex Discrimination Act was passed and, as with equal pay, its changes were phased in over subsequent years. 

British Women’s Liberation Movement 

• The publication in 1963 of Betty Friedan’s best seller The Feminine Mystique had a profound influence on second-wave feminism in the United States but also in Britain. 

  >The book was a condemnation of the consumer society that fed the myth of the fulfilled housewife and mother, making women prisoners of their homes and depriving them of their lives.  

  >“the personal is political” (the radical feminist idea that women’s personal choices in the home affected gendered interactions in the public sphere eg. choosing to be a housewife reinforced patriarchal structures + idea that women were naturally homemakers whilst men were naturally breadwinners)  

 . 

 

-World War One catalysed significant social and political change in Britain, notably transforming women’s roles, the welfare state, and attitudes toward government intervention.

Women and the Vote

-The war demonstrated women’s capability in traditionally male roles, prompting legislative change

>Representation of the People Act (1918) granted the vote to 8.5 million women over 30.

>Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act (1919) made it illegal to exclude women from jobs based on gender.

>Dr Gerry Oram observes: “There was little point in pretending any more, women had proved they could take on the roles vacated by men.”*

-Yet the promise of equality was limited:

>Women’s employment *declined post-war** (from 27% in 1911 to 21% by 1931 in Wales).

>Many jobs returned to men, and marriage bars remained in professions like teaching.

Oram notes, “In many instances women's lots were actually considerably worse after 1918.”*

Welfare, Health, and Education

-Education Act 1918 introduced a school-leaving age of 14 and recognized special educational needs.

-Ministry of Health Act 1919 marked the state’s first step toward healthcare responsibility.

>Health insurance schemes expanded to cover all workers, later forming a foundation for the *NHS**.

-The *Housing and Town Planning Act 1919** aimed to build 500,000 new homes—but fewer than 50% were actually completed.

Education Act

-Education Act 1918 introduced a school-leaving age of 14 and recognized special educational needs.

-Girls were expected to learn how to be wives and mothers, not thinkers or professionals.

>Diana E. St John critiques how even schooling enforced “the burden of responsibility that the years will bring”

>Critic Elizabeth R. Doolittle: Woolf believed education was “an extension of the masculine perception of violence” and must be “burned down and built over again” to free women.

>Benjamin Schwarz notes Woolf’s keen awareness of being “a non–academically schooled amateur” despite her deep, informal education.

-World War One catalysed significant social and political change in Britain, notably transforming women’s roles, the welfare state, and attitudes toward government intervention.

Health Act

-Ministry of Health Act 1919 marked the state’s first step toward healthcare responsibility.

>Health insurance schemes expanded to cover all workers, later forming a foundation for the *NHS**.

-The *Housing and Town Planning Act 1919** aimed to build 500,000 new homes—but fewer than 50% were actually completed.

-World War One catalysed significant social and political change in Britain, notably transforming women’s roles, the welfare state, and attitudes toward government intervention.

-Their first meeting in 1922 led to a vibrant epistolary relationship.

> “I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia…” – Vita to Virginia, 1926

>They used imagery like oysters and dolphins as code: Virginia described Vita devouring “a bedful of oysters”, while Vita replied with a doodle of an oyster.

-Described themselves was “Sapphist”

-Both women were married to men (Virginia to Leonard Woolf, Vita to Harold Nicolson), yet their relationships allowed space for same-sex affection.

>Vita wrote candidly to her husband: “I have gone to bed with her (twice), but that’s all.”

-Their romance profoundly shaped their writing. Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando – inspired by Vita – is often described as:

> “The longest and most charming love letter in literature.” – Nigel Nicolson, Vita’s son

>Virginia asked Vita's permission before publishing:

Commemoration (war) in CD

-Although Mrs Dalloway critiques militarism, Bradshaw shows that it also sincerely commemorates the dead:

>Woolf evokes the boy soldiers, and rituals of remembrance with reverence.

>Peter Walsh sees marching boys “like the patter of leaves in a wood”, linking them symbolically to death.

>The *falling leaves** topos echoes across the novel (and literature eg Virgil) as a symbol for “the passing generations ... to be soaked and steeped and made mould of”

Women+work post war

-Post-WWI Britain saw women pushed back into “women’s work” (laundry, dressmaking, domestic service)

>returning men reclaimed jobs and the economy slumped.

>some *new professions** opened—civil service, nursing, teaching—these were mostly low-paid and excluded women from technical or supervisory roles.

>Only 10% of married women worked, due to social norms and institutional barriers like the “marriage bar” (restricted employment of married women) in the civil service and education sectors.

>All this served to force women back towards what was considered ‘women’s work

>The Times (1923) naturalised the subjugation of women by stating that the mother’s work was not really “work” but “an extension of her personality.”

Septimus’ hallucinations + nature

(Bradshaw)

-Shell-shocked Septimus embodies post-war psychic collapse, but his hallucinations also carry deep symbolic meaning:

>He sees “leaves \[as] alive … connected by millions of fibres with his own body”* (p. 19).

>The sparrows sing “in Greek words … from trees in the meadow of life beyond a river where the dead walk”* (p. 21), suggesting a spiritual connection with the dead.

>He insists, “Men must not cut down trees”*—a plea against destruction, resonating with pacifist undertones.

Evans’ death

(Bradshaw)

-Evans’s death in the final days of the war (*“just before the Armistice, in Italy”*) deepens the tragedy:

>The Battle of Vittorio Veneto* was futile, with “the outcome already decided”.

>Septimus’s trauma is not only due to war but likely compounded by *repressed homoerotic love** for Evans, reflected in imagery and Greek references: “a harrowing legacy of his intimacy”.

Signs of the war (CD)

-Bradshaw argues it is “a war novel of towering importance”, set in June 1923, when “the trauma of the conflict was ongoing”.

>Woolf shows how grief, anxiety, and remembrance haunt the living.

-The novel begins with subtle signs of war’s residue

>An *aeroplane overhead** stirs unease, reminding people of “the German planes that had attacked the capital so terrifyingly during the war”.

>Mrs Foxcroft is “still eating her heart out because that nice boy was killed”*.

>Miss Kilman’s dismissal due to her “German-sounding surname”* shows lingering xenophobia.

-The city itself becomes a cemetery:

>The *grey nurse** in Regent’s Park morphs into a mourning mother “whose sons have been killed in the battles of the world” (p. 49).

>Septimus sees Evans appear with “legions of men prostrate behind him”* (p. 60), evoking battlefield imagery.

>Doris Kilman and Elizabeth are described in *monumental, statue-like terms**, echoing the aesthetic of war memorials.

-Woolf suffuses civilian life with violent and military imagery:

>Clarissa “plunges”* her hand into her wardrobe—echoing bayonet action and anticipating Septimus’s suicidal fall.

>Richard Dalloway returns with flowers “like a weapon”*.

>Peter imagines London’s *streetlights** as “bayonets thrust into the sky” (p. 137).

>Even Clarissa’s scissors and Peter’s penknife during their meeting imply a suppressed violence*.

primogeniture

-inheritance laws followed something called primogeniture.

>This meant that the eldest son would always inherit, no matter what the late person’s wishes were.

-in place in order to keep land and estates intact, as it meant the majority/all the land or building would go to one person.

-If the eldest son died without children, the next eldest man would inherit and so on.

>If there were no sons, then the inheritance would be divided, and all the daughters would inherit as coheiresses.

>women were always the last option for inheritance

AUSTEN

-despite Mr Dashwood wishing for them to have money from his will he has no control over it as the law dictates that all his estates must go to John Dashwood as the eldest son. 

>these laws cause women to be dependent on men

-the money was more needed by the daughters as John was already provided for by his mothers fortune and his wife’s

>unlike sentimental novels she doesnt romanticise normal life

Marriage laws

-(until 1753) marriage laws were scarce, allowing a marriage to occur anywhere as long as it was conducted before an ordained clergyman of the Church of England.

>resulted in many secret marriages that either occurred without parental consent or between two people, one of whom was underage.

-However, (1773) the Marriage Act stated that all marriages must occur before a minister in a parish church or chapel of the Church of England.

>allowed for more transparency around marriages, and with this came a great deal of input from parents and society on the fashion of the marriage. 

 

femme couvert

-husbands and wives shared a single identity.

>it was the husband's legal personality that had full power and authority.

>both the Bible and Common Law considered a husband and wife to be ‘one flesh’, a husband couldn’t technically give his wife a gift as he would only be giving it to himself.

-Coverture had great impact on the finances of women, with any property they owned becoming their husbands. A husbands powers allowed him to lease a woman’s property to whom he pleased, though he could not sell it. 

 

Due to a man’s marital privileges, he had a duty to maintain his wife’s social status while being liable for her debts. However, as women were unable to sue, this wouldn’t necessarily be enforced which manifested itself in a power imbalance between partners. Further, women were reduced to being powerless over their body and minds as within a marriage, consent was implied. The coverture ensured that all women would only exist under the guise of a man as at birth, a woman existed under her father's identity until she would eventually be ‘covered’ by her husband

post war trauma (Clarissa, Septiumus, Doctors)

Leslie Conner argues that Mrs. Dalloway is Virginia Woolf’s powerful critique of post-World War I British society

>focusing on its emotional repression and failure to reckon with national trauma.

Clarissa Dalloway: Repression and Denial

-Clarissa embodies the aristocratic response to trauma: emotional suppression masked by composure and beauty.

>Larson, she symbolizes “a blockage to change, a love of beauty and familial attachment... and a false sense of immunity.”

>She evades pain and death by focusing on aesthetics, mirroring “Great Britain’s repression of the devastation caused by World War I” (DeMeester).

>Her trauma is second-hand, yet her alienation is real — a result of “a traumatic shattering of her identity” (Buria).

Septimus Smith: Shell Shock and Collapse

-Septimus reveals the devastating direct impact of war on the individual psyche.

>He once believed in the ideals of England — “Shakespeare’s plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress” (Woolf)

>the war left him disillusioned and broken. DeMeester states that “the war invalidated the fundamental beliefs that had given his prewar life meaning.” He becomes a “tragic symbol” of veterans suffering from what was then termed "male hysteria"

>a challenge to Victorian masculinity and societal expectations (Showalter).

>inability to conform to post-war ideals of masculinity isolates him further. Even his wife Rezia and his doctors, Holmes and Bradshaw, pressure him to suppress his trauma in the name of national stability and appearance.

The Role of Doctors and the System

-Holmes and Bradshaw embody institutional repression, attempting to silence trauma in order to “rebuild a stable, unified image of nation and empire” (Tsai).

>Bradshaw believes he protects “the health and virility of all of England,” by maintaining traditional ideals (Tsai)

>Larson notes that their treatment offers only an “illusory mental sanctuary.” They destroy Septimus’ chance of recovery and “society’s meaningful recovery from the war” by enforcing denial (DeMeester).

Woolf’s Wider Critique

-Woolf critiques this national denial and glorification of imperial identity, which ignored the war’s psychological toll.

>She holds the ruling class accountable.

>Lawson, the postwar period saw “extreme nationalism” used to maintain the comforting certainties of the 19th century — even as those certainties collapsed.

-Through Clarissa and Septimus, Woolf shows two sides of postwar trauma: one repressed and socially acceptable, the other openly broken and rejected.

>Tsai notes, “both war veterans and civilians struggle to survive the havoc of the Great War,” making the two characters “two sides of the same coin.”

-before the war many believed in the inevitability of human progress- after the war technology that sympolised progress was used for mass destruction shattering the hopeful image

early 20th education

Diana E. St John

-In early 20th-century Britain, girls' education in elementary schools increasingly focused on domestic instruction, aligning with broader social ideals about femininity and motherhood.

>promoted gendered expectations of women as future wives and mothers, often at the cost of broader intellectual and vocational development.

• Critics questioned whether such training was practically useful, given the work many girls did before marriage (would they forget) and risked exploiting girls as unpaid labour or servants

Times Educational Supplement (1923) implied a woman’s individuality should dissolve into motherhood + it criticised girls' education as too self-centred and lacking preparation for domestic responsibility:

-Girls were expected to learn how to be wives and mothers, not thinkers or professionals.

>Diana E. St John critiques how even schooling enforced “the burden of responsibility that the years will bring”

>Critic Elizabeth R. Doolittle: Woolf believed education was “an extension of the masculine perception of violence” and must be “burned down and built over again” to free women.

>Benjamin Schwarz notes Woolf’s keen awareness of being “a non–academically schooled amateur” despite her deep, informal education.

FEMINIST VIEWS

• Catherine Webb (Women’s Co-operative Guild) argued that education neither prepared girls for independence nor equipped them as partners to working men:

  “[M]odern education […] neither fitted working girls to become the helpmeet of the working man nor for an independent economic and social responsibility.”

• The National Federation of Women Teachers (NFWT) warned that domestic training should not dominate girls’ education:

  “‘Unduly curtailing the opportunities of girls under fourteen will not secure the enlightened motherhood our country so much needs...’”

• The London Head Teachers’ Association (1918) criticised the narrowness of domestic instruction:

  “Domestic teaching was attacked as failing to provide the mental training for girls that the equivalent subjects do for boys...”

• An NFWT article (1916) condemned the “ceaseless, soulless drudgery” of women's future domestic roles and called for teachers to broaden girls’ intellectual horizons:

  “The only intellectual and broadening influence that ever touches their lives comes during the few school years and via the teacher.”

women’s unfulfilled potential

-in the male-dominated social and political climate of Austen’s era, many of her heroines struggle to assert control over their identities and futures.

>Female characters often express dissatisfaction with their constrained roles, especially older women like Mrs Dashwood, Mrs Ferrars, and Lady Middleton, who have largely accepted their positions without seeking change.

-John Mullan notes, Austen's heroines undergo "tests" of character, evolving through personal growth to earn their "happy endings."

>Marianne Dashwood exemplifies this, as she transitions from emotional impulsiveness to rational maturity

>reflects how such literature (often male-authored) sets women up for disillusionment and reinforces their social confinement.

-Marianne’s yearning for more—"more action, more excitement"—signals her frustration with the domestic limitations imposed on women

>particularly as they lacked a presence in the public or political spheres.

>intelligent women often turned to subtle manipulation. Fanny Dashwood, for instance, gradually convinces her husband to disinherit his sisters, demonstrating strategic intellect despite being confined to the domestic realm.

-unfulfilled female potential seen in Mrs Dalloway

>Clarissa envies the political influence of Lady Bruton-Clarissa longs to be "interested in politics" but is instead reduced to the role of "the perfect hostess" by societal expectation.

-Romantic agency is another key area of repression.

>Tilney “Man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal.” Women could not pursue desirable matches but had to wait to be chosen.

>This often led to romantic unfulfillment, as seen with Marianne although her journey earns her happiness, Austen implies that many women weren't as fortunate and were likely trapped in loveless marriages.

-Austen rewards her heroines—Marianne and Elinor—with happy endings once they undergo personal growth. By contrast, in Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, female characters like Clarissa reflect on paths not taken and remain unfulfilled, suggesting a more modern, realistic portrayal of women constrained by patriarchy.

property act

-In regard to women, they held little rights in terms of finance and ownership of land.

>It was not until 1882 that the Married Women’s Property Act was passed.

>This allowed women to own, sell and buy properties. Further, their legal identities were returned. 

Henry Brooke’s The Fool of Quality (1765–70)

• The protagonist, Harry Clinton, is a young aristocrat raised with extreme emotional and moral sensitivity.

• aimed to present an ideal of human virtue based on benevolence and emotional responsiveness.

Allen criticizes the execution: “The weight of his sentiments suffocates the reader.”

>Harry acts on feeling alone, without balancing it with reflection or practical judgment.

• A lack of realism: Harry’s world is one where emotion fixes all problems.

• Marianne Dashwood resembles Harry Clinton in her instinctual, unfiltered emotional responses.

• But Austen undercuts this romanticized sensibility, showing that feelings without discernment can lead to self-destruction.

• Marianne’s collapse after Willoughby’s betrayal mirrors the self-induced suffering typical of characters like Clinton — but Austen has Elinor (and reality) gently correct this.

Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771)

• The central figure, Harley, is a paragon of sentiment. He is gentle, tearful, and morally upright, but utterly ineffectual.

• The novel is episodic: Harley moves from one emotional encounter to another

• Harley is too good, too feeling, too removed from practical life.

Austen’s engagement:

• Elinor can be read as the anti-Harley: she feels deeply but acts wisely.

• Marianne, by contrast, embodies Harley’s tendency to be overwhelmed by emotion, losing control of her body and mind in the wake of heartbreak.

• Austen, however, allows for growth and reform — unlike Mackenzie, who lets Harley remain static and doomed.

everything about mothers

Motherhood in Jane Austen: A Summary with Key Quotes and Critics1. Influence of Mothering Styles on Austen’s Heroines

-Eddleman highlights the formative role of the family, arguing that a child's identity is deeply shaped within the household.

>Citing sociologists Bank and Kahn, she notes that family dynamics often assign children fixed roles: “there is only one person who can occupy a certain psychological space in a family at any one time.” For instance, one sibling may be designated “the pretty one,” limiting the identity options for others.

Peter W. Graham likens Austen’s families to a “Darwinian microenvironment” where siblings compete for parental favour—most often, according to Eddleman, via beauty, the trait parents seem to value most.

However, this view can be nuanced. In Sense and Sensibility, Mrs Dashwood’s favouritism toward Marianne is arguably based not on beauty, but on shared romantic sensibility. The narrator underlines their emotional similarity: “The resemblance between her and her mother was strikingly great” (SS, p.4). While Elinor critiques Marianne’s excesses, Mrs Dashwood “value[s] and cherishe[s]” them—failing to recognise Elinor’s quiet emotional depth.

Mrs Dashwood’s moment of realisation comes in Ch. 47 after Elinor finally reveals her suppressed heartbreak over Edward:

“She feared that… she had been unjust, inattentive — nay, almost unkind to her Elinor” (SS, p.274-5).

This belated epiphany critiques mothers who overlook emotionally resilient daughters, forcing them into premature adulthood. Austen draws a contrast with Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, who is often satirised as a foolish, ineffectual parent: “a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper”. Yet Mrs Dashwood’s grief and lack of support from a husband evoke reader sympathy—though she too burdens Elinor with a parental role:

“To counteract… the eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led to imprudence”.

Elinor’s premature maturity and self-discipline mark her out as the novel’s moral centre. As Professor Mullan notes, she emerges as the primary heroine, her moral authority increasing as the story unfolds.

Marianne ultimately acknowledges Elinor’s maternal role:

“You — you above all, above my mother, had been wronged by me.”
She even credits Elinor’s behaviour, not her mother’s, with her transformation:
“I compare it with yours” (SS, p.266).

2. Socio-Literary Contexts of Motherhood

Hina Nazar highlights the vacuum left by failing patriarchal and matriarchal figures, arguing that Austen’s heroines must develop “independent judgment” in a world lacking reliable guardians. She claims:

“Austen makes clear that the old patriarchy cannot be replaced by a matriarchy, since she presents mothers… as inept mentors.”

The domestic realm becomes public and social:

“The drawing room becomes a crucial space for women to negotiate difference and plurality.”

Frank O’Gorman contextualises the mother’s social role, noting that while society entrusted them with raising children, women were simultaneously viewed as intellectually and morally inferior. This contradiction, he says, set mothers up to fail. Destiny Cornelison builds on this, arguing that motherhood became an “impossible system of measurement”, with women burdened by unrealistic ideals.

Cornelison further argues that Austen challenges the expectation that women be “perfectly selfless nurturers.” In SS, this expectation is inverted: Elinor, not her mother, becomes the true nurturer. Austen thereby “separates the qualities [of motherhood] from the name.”

Cornelison’s ideas echo Austen’s own distaste for perfectionism:

“Pictures of perfection make me sick and wicked.”

Indeed, Austen’s heroines are beloved for their flaws. Professor Mullan states that characters like Emma, Elizabeth, and Marianne are compelling precisely because they “keep getting it very, very wrong.” Austen’s critique of sentimental heroines (“Heroine — perfectly good — no wit — no foibles”) aligns with her refusal to present mothers as moral ideals.

Yet, while heroines are forgiven their flaws, mother figures often are not—their shortcomings become obstacles for heroines to overcome. Elinor’s virtue is highlighted partly through contrast with her mother’s failings.

3. Fanny Dashwood: A Corrupted Maternal Ideal

Fanny Dashwood offers a cynical inversion of maternal values. When she moves into Norland, she usurps the domestic sphere—the only realm of power left to Mrs Dashwood. Fanny then manipulates her husband to deny financial support to his half-sisters, appealing to his role as a father:

“He could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half your fortune from your own child.”

Her invocation of maternal self-sacrifice is hollow, exposing how women weaponise domestic stereotypes for personal gain. Austen’s portrayal is a critique of how marriage laws and inheritance fuel female rivalry. As Hina Nazar and Gayle Rubin suggest, the “exchange of women” turns them into commodities, while William Magee notes that marriage was virtually the only career open to women—forcing them to compete, often through roles like ‘devoted mother’ or ‘beautiful heiress’.

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Conclusion: Austen’s Complex Mothers

Austen presents a spectrum of maternal figures, none of whom conform to idealised standards. From the flawed but forgivable Mrs Dashwood to the comic failure of Mrs Bennet and the coldly calculating Fanny Dashwood, Austen questions whether mothers can—or should—be perfect. Instead, she invites readers to redefine motherhood through the actions and values of heroines like Elinor, who models empathy, restraint, and moral maturity—even without the title of “mother”.

This nuanced portrayal reflects broader cultural anxieties about women’s roles, domesticity, and female identity in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

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Let me know if you’d like this adapted into essay format, with a clearer thesis or introduction and conclusion.

what did the cult of sensibility emerge in response to

In the 18th century, rationalism waned, and literature turned toward the heart.

The cult of sensibility arose partly as a protest against arbitrary social power and reason’s failure to address injustice.

Forster on flat v round characters

As per E.M. Forster’s definitions:

• Flat characters: Represent single traits, do not develop (e.g., Lady Middleton).

  >Lady Middleton, for instance, exemplifies aristocratic emptiness.

  >maintains polite social conventions but lacks emotional depth or intellectual curiosity.

  >Austen satirises her superficiality, yet does not villainise her—her role is static, and she remains largely unchanged throughout the novel.

• Round characters: Complex, develop through the story (e.g., Elinor, Marianne).

Lucy Steele, Mrs Jennings, and Lady Middleton are not purely flat, but Austen gives them nuanced roles that serve both comic and social commentary functions.

Burke v Rousseau on the role of social norms for women

-Elinor, more aware of social expectation than Mari pleas – “Pray, pray be composed... do not betray what you feel to everybody present”

• Rousseau suggests that societal repression corrupts natural feeling, and Marianne, in resisting conformity, suffers for her emotional honesty.

• Burke, on the other hand, would argue that adhering to social norms protects women from disgrace and ridicule, aligning with Elinor’s belief in self-control as a form of protection

Kantian ethics+independent judgement

-In The Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant argues that aesthetic judgment (like when we judge something to be beautiful or tasteful) is:

• Subjective: It originates in individual feeling, not in universal laws like mathematics or logic.

• Yet shareable: When we make a judgment of taste (e.g., "This painting is beautiful"), we expect others to agree—not because of external rules, but because we all share a capacity for judgment.

-Nazar sees Austen applying a similar model of reflective judgment to her characters—especially Elinor.

>Elinor’s moral judgments are not acts of self-isolated genius they are carefully formed in relation to her conversations, and observations

>Her restraint is not repression—it’s the result of thoughtful self-governance within a shared moral and social world.

>Nazaar “Independent judgment is not independent of listening to others.”

-This challenges a Rousseauian or Romantic model of the self, which idealizes:

• Solitude in nature

• Intuition as pure truth

• Society as corrupting or distorting\

>this model fails, Mari illness, disillusionment, and eventual submission to reason mark the limitations of unmediated feeling- authenticity without judgment is immature; judgment without sociability is barren.

-Critics like Armstrong argue that Austen’s heroines are domesticated because they internalize society’s rules.

• But Nazar’s Kantian reading suggests that Austen doesn’t merely show women conforming — she shows them learning how to think and judge well through engagement with society.

• Rehabilitates propriety as a site of reflection, not just repression.

• Rejects the Romantic myth of pure inner truth.

• Opens up a non-solipsistic, socially embedded path for women’s moral and political development.

independent judgement+jane eyre

Though Nazar does not explicitly discuss Jane Eyre, connections abound:

• Like Elinor, Jane Eyre cultivates judgment within social constraints—learning to reconcile independence with moral responsibility.

• Jane’s reveries, like Elinor’s, often occur within or adjacent to domestic settings, rather than in nature alone.

• The education of judgment through experience, suffering, and social engagement is central to both heroines.

Both novels challenge Rousseau’s model of the self-formed in nature, instead showing that selfhood and ethics are developed within relationships and structured environments.

Like Nazar’s Austen, Brontë’s Jane does not seek escape from society but a meaningful place within it, on her own terms—illustrating a third space between solitary romanticism and total social conformity.

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what does Eli assume Ed has of hers

-Elinor’s misreading of the lock of hair in Edward’s ring

>she assumes is hers but later learns belongs to Lucy

>dangers of inference over direct communication.

-Austen critiques a society where engagements are clandestine, inferred, or symbolically implied (e.g., keepsakes, letters), rather than honestly declared.

-Later, a servant’s mistaken identification of Edward as Robert Ferrars again reflects how easily external appearances deceive, reinforcing the unreliability of social performance and the fragility of romantic understanding based on presumption.

what is Lucy to Eli

a romantic rival and character foil

How is Willoughby paralleled with the romantic leads

Austen draws parallel incidents to contrast characters:

• Marianne’s illness and rescue by Brandon reworks the earlier storm scene with Willoughby, showing that genuine care (Brandon) is preferable to dramatic romantic gestures (Willoughby).

• Edward’s confession to Elinor, once he is honourably released from Lucy, contrasts Willoughby’s delayed, self-serving explanation—only prompted by Marianne’s illness.

Moral Sensibility versus Aesthetic Sensibility

Austen distinguishes between superficial charm and genuine moral character:

• Willoughby embodies lively aesthetic taste but lacks constancy.

• Colonel Brandon, initially dismissed, proves emotionally profound and dependable.

Austen “tests” both suitors through parallel narrative incidents (sudden departures) to deepen our understanding of character beyond first impressions

>Marianne’s illness and rescue by Brandon reworks the earlier storm scene with Willoughby, showing that genuine care (Brandon) is preferable to dramatic romantic gestures (Willoughby).

1. Biographical and Historical Context (AO3)

Jane Austen herself rejected a secure marriage to Harris Bigg-Wither despite family approval, suggesting that affection should outweigh material comfort—a radical choice in her time. This biographical detail echoes Mr Knightley's view in Emma that marriage should make a woman "safe for the rest of her life," revealing Austen's deep interrogation of the marriage market.

Gossip and Social Performance

Miscommunication is compounded by gossip and rumour: Sir John spreads Elinor’s affection for Edward, prompting Lucy’s cruel boasting. Mrs Jennings, though well-meaning, represents another threat to private emotional truth, frequently misunderstanding or trivialising serious situations (e.g., Marianne’s heartbreak).

“The danger of gossip about romantic attachments” becomes evident as assumptions about engagements risk reputational ruin, especially for women.

Narrative Mode in Sense and Sensibility

-Austen’s omniscient narrator has access to the “authentic, unspoken thoughts” of various characters, which allows the narrator to expose failures in communication.

>eg emotional gap between Elinor and Edward — their “deeply felt emotions” are barely reflected in their “restrained, decorous dialogue”.

-Austen also uses narratorial satire to highlight dishonest or manipulative speech,

>eg Fanny Dashwood and Lucy Steele, whose outward politeness “belies” their true motives- Fanny quickly persuades John Dashwood to cut down the Dashwood sisters' inheritance.

-Even well-meaning characters misunderstand one another

>eg Elinor’s mistaken belief that Edward has married Lucy — due to gossip based on mistaken identity — finally drives her to confess her long-suppressed love for him.

-The omniscience is selective; the narrator often withholds information from the reader for dramatic and thematic effect.

>eg the reasons for Colonel Brandon’s abrupt exit from the picnic or Willoughby’s contradictory behaviour are only clarified later.

>reflects Austen’s theme that moral character is revealed through actions, not words: Willoughby’s charm contrasts with his ultimate betrayal, while Brandon’s “subdued” manner hides deep integrity and loyalty, demonstrated through action (e.g. offering Edward a job and helping Marianne).

-Austen frequently uses free indirect discourse deepening our understanding of characters’ emotional restraint or confusion.

-Narrator often offers direct commentary on broader human behaviour — aligning with authorial voice.

>eg Elinor and Edward’s relationship, the narrator remarks ironically on “some mothers” who would either “encourage intimacy from motives of interest” or “repress it from motives of prudence” — distancing Mrs Dashwood, and perhaps Austen herself, from both.

Gossip in austen

GENERAL

-In 18th-century England, gossip emerged as both entertainment and a significant social practice, particularly among women.

>Periodicals such as The Tatler, The Spectator, The Female Spectator, and The Female Tatler shaped public discourse around manners, romance, and domestic life.

• The Tatler (1709), organized its content by fictitious coffeehouse locales—“White’s Chocolate-house” for entertainment, “Will’s Coffee-house” for poetry, “St. James’s” for learning (Aitken 19–20). This format mimicked real social venues, offering readers (mostly women) an indirect but familiar social immersion.

-it was a method of social navigation, knowledge transmission, and competitive strategy.

>Elaine Bander explains, “Gossip is a favorite pastime in all human societies because knowledge is power” (120). Women used it to exchange vital information—mostly about romance, reputation, and social opportunity.

>Gossip, particularly in elite society, could be weaponized- gossip as a form of reputation management in romantic competition. It served to harm rivals and elevate one’s own desirability:.

-gossip was also a bonding mechanism, creating a sense of female solidarity and shared experience.

AUSTEN

-Austen presents gossip as an ominous force

-Marianne becomes vulnerable through her unguarded emotional expressions.

>The danger here is not merely emotional embarrassment but potential ruin,

>society where women’s reputations are fragile and closely tied to their marriageability.

-Hina Nazar supports this reading by noting the double-edged nature of gossip

>it can elevate an individual’s status but also destroy them, highlighting society’s failure to act as a moral guardian.

>This is clearly evident in the contrast between Willoughby—still accepted in society despite his cruelty—and Marianne, who is at risk of social ostracism simply for having loved too openly.

>recalls William Hogarth’s "A Harlot’s Progress", in which the fall from grace for a woman leads not only to reputation loss but physical and moral decay.

-In Persuasion, gossip helps untangle plot threads. For example, in Chapter 21, Mrs. Smith’s satirical gossip about the Durands reveals more about herself than her targets

>indirect narration invites readers to analyze the content of gossip for underlying truths

Jane Austen and the landscape/picturesque

-Jane Austen satirizes the 18th-century picturesque movement in landscape gardening

>evolved from the more naturalistic style of Capability Brown—curved paths, irregular lakes, and classical "follies"—into something more dramatic and artificial

>mimicking romantic, even violent scenes like those of Salvator Rosa.

-Edward Ferrars mocks these overly theatrical aesthetics in Sense and Sensibility gently teasing Marianne for her romantic tastes

>shaped by figures like William Gilpin.

-While Elinor appreciates Edward’s quiet sincerity, Marianne finds him dull and judges him by superficial standards—his lack of flair in reading or artistic talents.

>Mari doubts their ‘polite affections’ as disguising passion as for her to love is ‘to burn’

-Marianne's passion for the picturesque and poets like William Cowper reflects her taste for emotional intensity, which she misreads as true sensibility in Willoughby.

>Her mistaken trust in his poetic persona leads to heartbreak and illness.

>Ultimately, the novel reveals that true sensibility lies in the quiet integrity of characters like Edward and Colonel Brandon, rather than in theatrical emotion.

Macaylay and Chapone on women’s right to education

-prominent thinkers condemned the narrow education available to women:

• Catharine Macaulay (Letters on Education, 1790): Warned parents, “Confine not the education of your daughters to what is regarded as the ornamental parts of it.”

• Hester Chapone, more conservative, still promoted substance over show: “The principal study I would recommend is history […] to form and strengthen your judgment.”

(Sutherland) Austen’s education

-In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, there was intense debate over women’s education.

-boys had access to universities and travel

-girls — even those from the gentry like Jane Austen — received limited formal schooling

>focused on “ornamental” accomplishments (music, drawing, French) aimed at attracting a husband.

-Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra briefly attended schools, including Abbey House in Reading (1785–6), but much of their education came from home.

>Their father, Reverend George Austen, had a strong library, and it’s likely the girls benefited from both books and informal instruction.

Sutherland on Reading and Education in Austen’s Novels

-Austen copied out music scores

>all her heroines share an appreciation of music to varying degrees — a skill tied to genteel femininity at the time.

-Austen’s novels contrast superficial accomplishments with intellectual depth and self-awareness:

• Elizabeth Bennet (Pride and Prejudice, ch. 29) dismisses “accomplishments” and emphasizes:

  “We were always encouraged to read.”
  This marks her as morally and intellectually superior to women who rely only on show.

• Emma Woodhouse, by contrast, has had a spoiled, shallow education. Mr Knightley criticizes her:

  “She will never submit to anything requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding.”
  Her lack of disciplined reading reflects her immaturity.

-Sutherland argues that Jane Austen’s own experience — limited formal schooling but wide, thoughtful reading — is mirrored in her characters.

>Her novels challenge the era’s educational norms by celebrating heroines who pursue intellectual self-improvement, not just decorative skills.

My Brilliant Friend

"My Brilliant Friend" is a story of friendship in a poor section of postwar Naples, Italy. 

-The novel opens with a flashback: the narrator is Elena, a woman in her mid-60s, looking back on her six-decade friendship with Lila Cerullo.

-The girls meet at age six in their poor Naples neighborhood. They immediately bond over school and common hatred for the neighborhood ‘ogre,’ Don Achille. 

-As the girls grow older, they compete in all things.

>at the end of elementary school, Lila is unable to continue because her parents won’t pay for it, but Elena does.

>Without Lila to compete with, she continues through school with success. At times she needs Lila’s help, and at times she is carried by her own intelligence and flair for writing. 

-By age thirteen, Lila has developed into the beauty of the neighborhood. Elena, too, longs to be pretty and finds as many ways as she can to match Lila’s success. 

-The goal for both girls is to rise above their birth and leave 'the neighborhood’

>Lila, who is brilliant but cannot go to school, throws all of her energy and intelligence into a hand-make a pair of shoes that they hope to mass market and sell with the Cerullo name.

-Elena fills her time with several empty relationships to try to keep pace with Lila’s string of admirers. Although her heart belongs to Nino Sarratore, the son of the local poet and rumored lecher, she settles for a few neighborhood boys that help her feel loved and wanted. 

-Marcello Solara, the son of the new ‘ogre’ of the neighborhood, courts Lila ruthlessly with his money and power, and she resists him against her family’s will.

-Elena goes away for a summer to an island in the sea, becoming strong, confident, and beautiful. Nino kisses her, and the beauty of the moment is lost when his father sexually assaults her. 

-Lila walks a tightrope between these two young men, finally choosing Stefano over Marcello, (Steph agrees to invest in an expansion of her father’s shoe business)

-During their engagement, Lila becomes even more beautiful because of Stefano’s wealth.

-The novel ends on a cliffhanger, at Lila’s and Stefano’s wedding.

>They are sixteen years old: Elena has two years left of high school, and is desperate to leave and elevate herself above the ‘plebs’ among whom she was born.

>Lila walks with feigned boldness into her marriage, finding at the last minute that her husband Stefano has sold out to the hated Solara family. 

The Drawing Room as Repressive

• Uses Cixous's binaries and Berger’s gaze theory to frame the passivity of women:

  “Men act and women appear…”

• Nancy Armstrong claims Austen’s domestic focus “render[s] [women] mute by harness[ing] [them] to the home.”

• Cites Florence Nightingale’s frustration: women are perceived to have “confessedly nothing to do.”

• Draws parallels to other texts like Mrs Dalloway and Middlemarch to highlight how domestic spaces serve men and reinforce gendered passivity.

The Drawing Room as Empowering:

• Nazar claims Austen “socializes the domestic sphere,” arguing it functions as a “crucial venue for the exercise of judgement.”

• The domestic setting cultivates skills of observation and discussion essential for public life,

  >linking to Woolf’s idea that “sensibility had been educated for centuries by the influences of the common sitting room.”

• While acknowledging the boredom and confinement, the essay asserts the drawing room is not wholly restrictive.

BUT Challenges Nazar by asserting that class, wealth, and circumstance also determine agency.

• Women like Fanny Dashwood and Mrs Ferrars wield power manipulatively and financially.

• Lucy Steele manipulates Edward, revealing how social codes bind both genders: Edward is forced into passivity by honour.

"Orphans in Fiction" by John Mullan

• orphanhood enables adventure and moral development.

  >Orphans are “essentially novelistic” – their displacement fits the novel's focus on individual moral and social journeys.

• Characters like Annie, Tom Sawyer, and Anne of Green Gables begin their stories unbound by parents, becoming “mirrors” to the world’s virtues and flaws.

• Orphanhood offers a blank slate — “set loose from established conventions”, allowing the protagonist to navigate life independently.

  >“naïve mirror” for others’ behaviour, untainted by social corruption.

• Orphans like Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe must survive abuse and alienation, relying solely on inner strength.

• Orphanhood in fiction exposes characters to prejudice, but also allows for moral resilience and emotional introspection.

Governesses

• The governess, often an orphan herself (e.g. Jane Eyre, Jane Fairfax), is a symbol of class ambiguity: “betwixt and between”.

• Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair) and Lucy Graham (Lady Audley’s Secret) exploit this role for social ascent, whereas others, like Jane, find it akin to slavery.

• The orphaned governess is educated but powerless — excluded from both servant class and family structure.

Adoption and Institutions

• Orphans were often adopted informally, due to a lack of legal structure until the 1920s.

  • Jane Eyre is adopted by an unloving aunt, then placed in Lowood School, described as “an institution for educating orphans”.

    >Jane Eyre’s world reflects institutional neglect and moral hypocrisy (Mr. Brocklehurst).

  • Silas Marner: Adoption of Eppie shows a more compassionate possibility, accepted without legal interference.

Dickens and the Orphan Archetype

• Dickens’s obsession with orphans (Oliver Twist, Esther Summerson, Pip, Jo, etc.) reflects both sentimentality and social critique.

• Some characters triumph through resilience (e.g., Esther), others succumb to despair (e.g., Richard Carstone, Jo).

• Dickens uses orphans to expose systemic cruelty and to elicit reader sympathy.

Victorian literature and madness

-Victorian literature often portrays female madness as closely tied to sexual repression, societal pressure, and deviation from strict gender norms.

>Women were expected to marry and maintain moral purity; failing to do so could damage their social standing.

-Madness was frequently seen as an inherent risk of femininity, leading to more women being institutionalized than men.

BRONTË

-Charlotte Brontë, in Jane Eyre, depict madness in women using animalistic and demonic imagery, particularly in characters like Bertha Mason

>reflecting the period's belief in “moral insanity” — a condition defined by defiance of social expectations, especially around sexuality.

>Such portrayals aligned with medical and cultural assumptions that women were more prone to insanity.

-Showalter argue that madness became culturally understood as a “female malady” during this era.

>Brontë herself justified Bertha’s portrayal as a product of sin and moral degradation, though later admitted she emphasized horror over compassion.

Regency views on maddness/illness

-Austen published Sense and Sensibility during King George III’s madness and the regency era,

>a time of political instability and conservative backlash against revolutionary ideals.

>she was an anti-jacobin (did not accept the radical view of sensibility as a signifier of individualism, a rebellion against the norm)

-In the 18th century, body and mind were seen as interacting to produce passion, contrasting with Cartesian dualism.

>When passion overwhelmed, it was linked to mental breakdown.

>By the 19th century, sensibility became associated with nervous disorders and hysteria, particularly in women.

>Excessive emotion was viewed as a threat to health and needed mental discipline.

-Austen diverged from the male medical view by seeing sensibility and emotional suffering (such as depression) not as signs of unstable femininity, but as responses to societal oppression and sensitivity to injustice.

>She challenged the idea that sensibility was inherently feminine or pathological, instead portraying it as ethically and emotionally intelligent.

Illness in Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility uses illness as a metaphor to explore emotional distress, morality, and social Behaviour

>The novel is seen as deeply concerned with illness and suffering (Kaplan).

>Austen was well-informed about contemporary medical knowledge often referencing ailments like fevers, headaches, nerves, and melancholia

-Body and mind were seen as interacting (excessive emotion was viewed as a threat to physical and mental health)

>Austen diverged from the male medical view by seeing sensibility and emotional suffering (such as depression) not as signs of unstable femininity, but as responses to societal oppression and sensitivity to injustice.

>She challenged the idea that sensibility was inherently feminine or pathological, instead portraying it as ethically and emotionally intelligent.

MARIANNE V ELINOR

-Marianne’s emotional suffering over Willoughby leads to physical collapse, symbolizing her unchecked romanticism.

>In contrast, Elinor hides her heartbreak, maintaining social decorum and “application” (a term Dr. Heberden used for emotional discipline).

>Their contrasting reactions highlight the novel’s broader theme of emotional control versus excess.

(Sensibility not wholly deamonised- her suffering reflects emotional honesty in a society driven by rational compromise and economic interest

>>Emotional breakdowns like Marianne’s are contextualized within female oppression and economic precarity (nit the product of femininity or exclusively sensibility)

PLACE IN STRUCTURE

-Austen uses illness structurally—every ailment moves the plot forward.

-Marianne initially mocks Colonel Brandon’s rheumatism as a symbol of old age and dullness

>Austen cleverly foreshadows their future connection by introducing Brandon through the lens of illness.

-Austen structures the novel symmetrically, placing Marianne’s physical and emotional collapses in early chapters of each volume

>she sprains her ankle (Volume I), suffers emotional devastation (Volume II), and nearly dies from fever (Volume III).

>Her decline is gradual—starting with physical injury, then emotional breakdown, and finally life-threatening illness—reflecting her deepening vulnerability.

-Tanner labeled Marianne’s illness psychosomatic or even pathological

-Austen explores sisterhood and female solidarity

>also reveals the competitive, sometimes cruel behavior of women (e.g., Lucy Steele, Fanny Dashwood).

>Emotional breakdowns like Marianne’s are contextualized within female oppression and economic precarity (nit the product of femininity or exclusively sensibility).

1. -Sense and Sensibility reflects Smith’s “Theory of Moral Sentiments” through its exploration of sympathetic imagination, but Austen subverts this with Marianne’s unruly passions and Elinor’s quiet resistance.

   -Rousseau’s ideas influence Elinor’s self-governance through religion, reason, and constant employment

Rousseau and Elinor

-Rousseau’s ideas influence Elinor’s self-governance through religion, reason, and constant employment.

-Elinor embodies a Rousseauian ideal of moral autonomy

>the individual regulates their passions through reasoned self-discipline and ethical responsibility.

-Belief that man was born basically good, and idea that society is what corrupts mankind.

-believed in a social contract that maintained the relationship and balance between a government and its citizens- laws made are by the citizens' will, so people follow their own will and in doing so are abiding the law.

-the party setting is presented as oppressive rather than celebratory. The sisters enter an environment that is “splendidly lit up, quite full of company, and insufferably hot.”

>reflects the claustrophobia and emotional suppression experienced by the sisters, particularly Marianne.

>The heat becomes a metaphor for societal pressure and emotional containment.

>The requirement to greet the hostess is described as a “tribute of politeness”-unwilling sacrifice, “tribute” underscores the contractual and obligatory nature of politeness,

>reminiscent of Rousseau’s critique of social conformity: that society demands masks and sacrifices true feeling.

>social gatherings are not about enjoyment, but about maintaining appearances. Elinor and Marianne must mask their true emotions, engaging in rituals that offer no genuine relief or connection.

>Rousseau wishes to find a way of preserving human freedom in a world where people are increasingly dependent on one another to satisfy their needs.

-In the modern world, human beings get their very sense of their identity and value from the opinion of others, (destructive of individual authenticity)

-Rousseau believed that true virtue arises from an internal moral compass rather than external social approval

>While she experiences deep emotional pain, she channels it inward, guided by her rational judgment, and commitment to duty.

-Watt observes, Elinor controls “the anguish of disappointed love so that she can fulfill her obligations […] as a member of society.”

-Her devotion to “constant employment” serves as both a moral and emotional safeguard, aligning with Rousseau’s belief in purposeful activity as a means to prevent the corruption of idleness. In this way

>Elinor’s restraint and self-regulation are not signs of repression but rather reflections of an Enlightenment-informed ideal of virtuous sensibility—one rooted in self-command, rational piety, and social responsibility

BUT

-we see the emotional taxation in takes, clearly not successful

>Tanner, true conflict between individual and collective/society, she has prioritised everyone above herself in an unhealthy manner

>see the classical idea of moderation prioritised

Society as Antagonist & Romantic Illness

Society is subtly cast as an antagonist—shallow, voyeuristic, and glorifying the spectacle of romantic suffering. Marianne, obsessed with Gothic and sentimental ideals, plays into this cultural narrative by appearing “ill and forlorn,” almost theatrically consumed by heartbreak. This reflects not only her influence from romantic literature (as satirised in Northanger Abbey) but also how women were socialised to perform grief and passion.

This self-destructive romanticism builds suspense: the contemporary reader anticipates that Marianne might die, fulfilling the trope of the heartbroken heroine. However, Austen ultimately subverts this expectation, allowing Marianne to recover and find love again—suggesting that emotional growth, not tragedy, is the true moral resolution.

Reputation and Rousseau: Public vs. Private Emotion

Elinor’s protective instincts echo Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notion of ‘in his mask’—the idea that individuals must present a composed facade to society. Elinor urges Marianne to process her grief in private, recognising the gendered consequences of public emotion. Women, unlike men, cannot afford the same displays of pain without risking social and marital ruin.

---

AUSTEN

-Austen published Sense and Sensibility during King George III’s madness and the regency era, a time of political instability and conservative backlash against revolutionary ideals.

>anti-jacobin

-Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility uses illness as a metaphor to explore emotional distress, morality, and social Behaviour

>The novel is seen as deeply concerned with illness and suffering (Laurie and Richard Kaplan).

>Austen was well-informed about contemporary medical knowledge often referencing ailments like fevers, headaches, nerves, and melancholia

-Marianne’s emotional suffering over Willoughby leads to physical collapse, symbolizing her unchecked romanticism.

>In contrast, Elinor hides her heartbreak, maintaining social decorum and “application” (a term Dr. Heberden used for emotional discipline).

>Their contrasting reactions highlight the novel’s broader theme of emotional control versus excess.

-Austen uses illness structurally—every ailment moves the plot forward.

>The novel's focus on health, suffering, and recovery gives it thematic cohesion

-Marianne initially mocks Colonel Brandon’s rheumatism as a symbol of old age and dullness

>Austen cleverly foreshadows their future connection by introducing Brandon through the lens of illness.

-Austen structures the novel symmetrically, placing Marianne’s physical and emotional collapses in early chapters of each volume

>she sprains her ankle (Volume I), suffers emotional devastation (Volume II), and nearly dies from fever (Volume III).

>Her decline is gradual—starting with physical injury, then emotional breakdown, and finally life-threatening illness—reflecting her deepening vulnerability.

-Tony Tanner have labeled Marianne’s illness psychosomatic or even pathological

-In the 18th century, body and mind were seen as interacting to produce passion, contrasting with Cartesian dualism.

>When passion overwhelmed, it was linked to mental breakdown.

>By the 19th century, sensibility became associated with nervous disorders and hysteria, particularly in women.

>Excessive emotion was viewed as a threat to health and needed mental discipline.

-Austen diverged from the male medical view by seeing sensibility and emotional suffering (such as depression) not as signs of unstable femininity, but as responses to societal oppression and sensitivity to injustice.

>She challenged the idea that sensibility was inherently feminine or pathological, instead portraying it as ethically and emotionally intelligent.

1. -Austen explores sisterhood and female solidarity

   >also reveals the competitive, sometimes cruel behavior of women (e.g., Lucy Steele, Fanny Dashwood).

   >Emotional breakdowns like Marianne’s are contextualized within female oppression and economic precarity (nit the product of femininity or exclusively sensibility).

   =Marianne’s intense feelings are framed as both dangerous and redemptive

   >her suffering reflects emotional honesty in a society driven by rational compromise and economic interest.

   -Sense and Sensibility reflects Smith’s “Theory of Moral Sentiments” through its exploration of sympathetic imagination, but Austen subverts this with Marianne’s unruly passions and Elinor’s quiet resistance.

   -Rousseau’s ideas influence Elinor’s self-governance through religion, reason, and constant employment

Marianne’s illnesses

Marianne’s emotional suffering over Willoughby leads to physical collapse, symbolizing her unchecked romanticism.

>In contrast, Elinor hides her heartbreak, maintaining social decorum and “application” (a term Dr. Heberden used for emotional discipline).

>Their contrasting reactions highlight the novel’s broader theme of emotional control versus excess.

>While Elinor represents reason, Austen does not dismiss Marianne’s sensibility; instead, she humanizes her and gives her ethical depth.

-Austen uses illness structurally—every ailment moves the plot forward.

>The novel's focus on health, suffering, and recovery gives it thematic cohesion

-Marianne initially mocks Colonel Brandon’s rheumatism as a symbol of old age and dullness

>Austen cleverly foreshadows their future connection by introducing Brandon through the lens of illness.

-Austen structures the novel symmetrically, placing Marianne’s physical and emotional collapses in early chapters of each volume

>she sprains her ankle (Volume I), suffers emotional devastation (Volume II), and nearly dies from fever (Volume III).

>Her decline is gradual—starting with physical injury, then emotional breakdown, and finally life-threatening illness—reflecting her deepening vulnerability.

-Tony Tanner have labeled Marianne’s illness psychosomatic or even pathological

Rest Cure

-1872 Mitch developed rest cure to treat soldiers with battle fatigue, used theoretically for men and women (mostly women bat fatigue on home front)

-S Weir Mitchell’s rest cure commonly used for women with severe nervous symptoms

> hypochondriacs, hysteric, neurasthenics > many worsened

>(considered too intrusive and sadistic))

PHYSICAL ASPECT: rest seclusion excessive feeding

-Doctors promised patients a ‘pos cure’ if she gave control to physician + “concerned herself with nothing but following directions” (Byford)

Eg spoon fed+sponge bathed+rectal enemas/vaginal douche by nurse, brief reading to by nurse after 2 weeks for a few hours a day, did passive exercise to offset ill effects (muscular atrophy), exclusive diet of milk (4ounces per 2 hours) Mitch thought surplus of fat would help fight moral/mental strains+fevers+improve blood quality (being thin also interfered with having children, ideal vict woman obese)

 “I arrange to have the bowels and water passed lying down” Mitch

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT: moral reeducation

-Moral reed aimed to “make clear to her how she is to regain and preserve dom over her emotions” STOICISM

>(women too emot expressive>weakened physical endurance) patients promised to fight “every desire to cry, or twitch or grow excited”

>(if disorders from self sacrificing maternal role must suppress those instincts)+ mustn’t share emotions (bored listener and worsened matters, criticises self absorption and emotional excess)

-nervous women=slefish+tyrannical must abdicate control “vampires sucking the blood of the healthy people of a household”

>control of fem body transferred to male doctor

-Believed women’s behaviour should conform more with masc values, rational ordered

>women should be more like men live domestic life according to male rules (focused on moral imperatives)>less hysterical

MEDICAL RATIONALE

-To remain healthy one must achieve harmony with environ + bodily organs (disruption>strain>decrease resistance+nutrition) rest diet exercise for preserving “golden mean”, disease prevented by avoiding excess+indulgence

-Believed women inferior>nervous systems more irritable>more susceptible to disease, believed reproductive physiology (menstruation, menopause, lactation, etc) caused nervous disorders+inferior organs as reproductive ones dom

>believed in finite energy, avoid diversions from children eg work)

>DEVELOP ILLNESS DUE TO UNFEM STRIVINGS

“There are in the physiological life of women disqualifications for continuous labour of the mind”

SYMPTOMS+SYMBOLISM

-Vict women regressed phys+emot, taught complete sub in isolation, instructed how to think and feel

-The Yellow Wallpaper shows protagonist madding due to RC

Many didn’t benefit instead escaping trad roles of sub and growing personally

Politics in CD

Book has a large focus on transitions in life, Britain was going through a political and social transition

·       Just after WW1 – England’s power begins to crumple – whilst there were victories in the war, thousands of soldiers had also died – the country had also suffered huge financial loss - people began to question morality.

·       Women over 30 only gained the right to vote who met property requirements in 1918

o   Not until 1928 that all women could finally vote

·       ‘Matrimonial causes act’ 1923 where adultery became the sole grounds for divorce

·       Homosexuality in uk still criminal offense until ‘sexual offenses act’ 1967 (no similar legislation targetting women

1921- lawmakers voted to criminalise “sexual acts of gross indecency” between women but this was never passed

Woolf and the rest cure

-Woolf “Really a doctor is worse than a husband”

>believed Victorian husbands to be too authoritarian

>(her father had made her family miserable but post his death doctors took control of her)

>Leonad coddled her, though not being the trad husband

-Dr Savage 1904 said the illness was physical (inherited by father)+worsened by intellectual activity

>vulnerable girl+education=insane

>prescribed conventional treatment for MC isolation in country (‘a polite madhouse) gave soporifics +electrical stimulation

>Woolf referred to it in letters as ‘tyrannical’ and ‘shortsighted’

-Savage encouraged children> decrease intellectual activity+balanced life but others recommended against it

-Bradshaw is arguably inspired by Savage

>he recognises the severity but the treatment is satirised eg insists childless

-In the books finale Woolf rejects outmoded medical ideas (Clarissa embraces life) (she too heard birds singing in Greek and attempted to kill herself by jumping out a window) (CD’s walk would feel especially liberating to her)

“I reject being kept with my head on a platter like some giant sow” Woolf, feels dehumanised

Science and Mathematics in CD

-The age of invention: recent inventions included the motorcar and the telephone
-In 1915 Einstein published his theory of relativity which introduce people to the existence of black holes in space where space and time are reduced to nothingness similar similar image that is depicted in Mrs Dalloway

Imperial gothic info 

• Imperial gothic = late 19-the C fiction within the British Empire using Gothic elements 

• E.g. gloomy atmosphere, tyrannical men, violence, punishment, the occult/supernatural 

• Example of late-Victorian imperial Gothic literature: Rudyard Kipling’s story The Phantom Rickshaw’ (1888), set in British India 

 

Roots of imperial Gothic 

• First English-translations of The Arabian Nights appeared early 18^th C – key elements included tyrants, harems, dungeons, abductions, betrayals and mysticism 

• Created desire for ‘Oriental tales’ 

• In 19^th C, authors increasingly incorporating Gothic and Orientalist elements 

 

Jane Eyre 

• Bertha = ‘hidden menace’ in Thornfield Hall 

• Bertha’s mental and moral degradation seems to bear some relation to Jamaica’s climate and corrupt planter society 

• British Empire: ‘great fortunes may be made, but often at grave risk to British bodies, minds and souls’ 

madness Bertha

• Rochester’s lack of sympathy not representative of attitudes to mental illness of the time 

• Westminster Review (1844) reported that the ‘disposition of the public’ towards the mentally ill was becoming ‘more enlightened and benevolent’ – said those responsible for the care of patients in mental asylums should ‘avoid everything which might give to the patient the impression he is in prison’ 

• Indicates Rochester is not enlightened – perhaps encouraging a less favourable view of him 

Ambiguous ethnicity (Bertha)

• Bertha is Creole, daughter of white European settlers in the West Indies 

• Ethically ambiguous – implications for Brontë’s portrayal of her as ‘unstable, dangerous and threatening’ 

• Even as a white Creole, the European writers in the West Indies would have distanced themselves from her 

• Creole women in particular often depicted as self-willed, decadent and untrustworthy 

• Gothic as focuing on the unnatural mixing- her foreigness could be viewed as key to her gothic (bigamy + male composite control has composite effect)

• Idea of inheriting a declining gene- source of horror

Context

- During the period 1781-1807, Britain carried more than a million slaves from Africa to the Americas.

- As a ‘Creole,’ Bertha Mason would probably have counted slaves traded by France – which initially abolished slavery during the Revolution – among her ancestors.

- Bertha reflects the dominant, Eurocentric ideologies of nineteenth-century England concerning race and the racial order.

- Spivak argues in Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism that British novels of the nineteenth century should not be read without considering the imperialist agenda and its implications both on society and the individual.

Bertha as Jane’s mirror 

• Her earliest appearances occur when Jane is troubled, tense or desperate for freedom 

• Her confinement in the attic mirrors Jane’s imprisonment in the Red Room – a punishment for her anger and lack of conformity 

• Bertha, according to Gilbert and Gubar, is Jane’s ‘truest and darkest double’ – doubling is a common gothic motif 

• Bertha’s presence acts as a foil to the ideal Victorian woman in Jane  (Post-colonial and feminist reading) 

  >obedient, modest, spiritual BUT firey spirit

Wuthering Heights+ambiguous race

• 1847

• Emily Brontë

• Heathcliff is racially ambiguous and treated as an outsider within the family  

• Both characters are associates with animalistic rage 

• Bestial imagery, zoomorphism  

• Gothic Yorkshire setting is also seen in the countryside of Thornfield and the wildness  

• Fields and wildness are echoed within the characters of Heathcliff and Bertha  

• Cannot be contained within euro-centric setting

Yellow Wallpaper

-1892

-Charlotte Perkins Gilman

ADD

Brontë

• The mad woman as the other  

• Bertha likened to the woman in the short story  

• Mimics Victorian-era fears of anything outside of the norm  

• Such as the mentally ill  

• Both women are demonised and controlled  

• Physically repressed by their paternalistic husbands  

• Bertha can never speak for herself- she gurgles and laughs, can only express herself animalistically, society has stripped her of a voice

  >Jane refuses to be characterised as an animal, uses her speech to undercut expectations (eg Roch is ugly, i am not a bird, self expression)

• Jean Rhys prequel to Jane Eyre that focuses on Bertha’s story shows that, regardless of what Rochester would have liked, Bertha will not stay hidden 

The ‘Other’ 

• Bertha is an obstacle to the marriage, surrounded by a web of Gothic imagery 

• Rochester seems to believe she had a degree of choice about her situation 

• Brontë drew on contemporary descriptions of illness – the volume of Modern Domestic Medicine, the family’s medicinal encyclopaedia, was frequently consulted by Brontë BUT rest cure

Time in CD

(Woolf knows that the next pm will be labour- adds to sense of nostalgia and living in the past- it is the end of an empire- Septimus’ extreme illness reflected the state of society)

-Struggled organising flow of perceptions

>(didn't want to disturb allusion of the stream with chapter titles)

>(considered a Greek chorus, diving book into acts, she decided to mark the transition with a double space (of which there are twelve)
>Big Ben striking punctuates the passing time

-Central motif is the analogy between hours of the day and female life cycle (biological clock)

>(CD placed in the middle and surrounded by women 18-80)

-CD has internalised medical attitude that her change in life (menopause, loss of youthful beauty, lacking independent social role and job) is a hopeless decline

Mental illness in CD

-Sept's day is juxtaposed with CD's (paranoid suspicions and distorted perceptions v her omentalnorder)
>(he was initially planned to be a terrorist planning for get revenge for the war by killing the PM> emotionally numbed by war, grieving, angry at society, guilty about wife)

>his extreme illness is reflective of the state of society (self control is worshipped, feelings suppressed, emotional after effects of war evaded)

-Woolf draws on her own experience of madness to present his delusions and condemn the doctors who misunderstand his terror

-The war seems to have left governing classes untouched (continue in their routines, Sept escapes through suicide)

-A time in which there was very little understanding of mental health, treatment often like the “rest cure”, which Woolf criticises through Septimus

>could be alluding the  short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman also a famous criticisim of the rest cure >Biographical – Woolf herself prescribed the rest cure at various points in her life

 

 

 

 

CD’s ending

-The party (where CD affirms her life choices) (paired with Sept deaths) is intended to reflect "life in every variety and funk of anticipation; while S. dies"

>(mixture of snobs and lost souls who are all shown to have hidden and troubled feelings despite the facades, a bravery which CD appreciates)
>CD's transition in understanding post Sept death mirrors societies' transformation
>Book has a large focus on transitions in life, Britain was going through a political and social transition

economy, industry and employment in CD

-Age of mass production including the mass production of motorcars
-By the mid 1920s the immediate post-war economic boom had declined an interest rates were high.
-Unemployment rose to 2,000,000
-The advertising industry began to boom with companies such as pears soap leading the way

in 1918 the representation of the people act was passed...

-Allowed women over the age of 30 who met a property qualification to vote.
-Although 8.5 million women met this criteria, it was only about 2/3 of the total population of women in the UK

The married women's property act 1882

-Through marriage women had practically no rights, everything they previously owned became their husbands and everything they owned within their marriage was not theirs but under their husbands possession for example food clothes and children.
-The married women's property act is referred to in Virginia Woolf's essay a room of one's own

The great war of 1914 to 1918 add to

Affects war had on gender positions and roles as well as mental health affects

Virginia Woolf's mental health issues

-She suffered with depression anorexia and multiple eating disorders.
-From the age of 13, following the death of her mother, Woolf suffered periodic mood swings from severe depression to manic excitement, including psychotic episodes, which the family referred to as her "madness". After the death of her father in 1904, she threw herself out of a window and was briefly institutionalised.
-She will have experienced the ignorant attitudes towards mental health at the time and this is reflected in Mrs Dalloway through Septimus and her social criticism of Dr Holmes and Dr Bradshaw

-She claimed to hear birds singing in Greek, King Edward using obscene language, and voices commanding her to kill herself, which, at one point, she attempted by throwing herself from a window.

>CD deciding to live despite having such symptoms is a clear rebeliance

Angel in the House (1854)

-Poem inspired by Patmore's feelings about his own wife.
-'Man must be pleased' (opening phrase- all that matters in their relationship), 'To please is woman's pleasure' (a woman's sole purpose, no consideration/understanding of the woman's feelings), 'Another, not for her but for him' (only he is gaining, she feels nothing), 'Expecting his remorse' (doesn't care about or value her feelings), 'She leans and weeps against his breast' (he's supporting her, she's over-emotional. His strength and her weakness) Clearly devoted', 'She loves with love that cannot tire'.Women/wives are supposed to be submissive, loving, caring, their sole purpose is to look after and pleasure their husbands.
-Virginia Woolf (1931)- 'Killing the angel in the house was part of the occupation of the women writer.' 'Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own.'

Florence Nightingale, essay 'Cassandra' (1852)

'The family? It is too narrow a field for the development of an immortal spirit, be that spirit male or female.'
'Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity - these three - and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised?'
'Passion, intellect moral activity - these three have never been satisfied in a woman. In this cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere, they cannot be satisfied. To say more on this subject would be to enter into the whole history of society, of the present state of civilisation. Look at the poor lives we lead.'
'The true marriage - that noble union, by which a man and woman become together the one perfect being - probably does not exist at present upon earth.'

A Room of One's Own: Shakespeare's Sister, women writers, writing about women, and by women

-Imagines a sister for Shakespeare, just as creative as her brother.
-Her exclusion from education and from the theatrical profession leads her to her suicide.

Lucrezia's inspiration

-Woolf based her loosely on the ballet dancer Lidia Lopokova who was married to economist John Maynard Keynes (like Septimus, secretly gay).
-Woolf tried to get the character of a vibrant foreigner treated badly by the English social scene (including Woolf's own social circle).

Woolf's thoughts on religion

-Woolf wasn't religious. She had disdain for organised religion.
-Shown through her writing of Miss Kilman (highly religious character, Clarissa's dislike for her)

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (1811)

Elinor Dashwood is the sensible and reserved daughter of the novel, who feels a keen sense of responsibility to her family and friends, places their welfare and interests above her own and suppresses her own strong emotions in a way that leads others to think she is indifferent or cold-hearted.
Marianne Dashwood is the romantically inclined and eagerly expressive second daughter of the novel, who embraces spontaneity, excessive sensibility, love of nature, and romantic idealism, and has to learn that her behaviour has been selfish.
John Willoughby is an attractive but deceitful young man who wins Marianne Dashwood's heart but then abandons her (greedily) in favour of the wealthy Miss Sophia Grey.

Coverture

A legal doctrine in the English common law in which a married woman's legal existence was considered to be merged with that of her husband, so that she had no independent legal existence of her own. Upon marriage, coverture provided that a woman became a feme covert, whose legal rights and obligations were mostly subsumed by those of her husband. An unmarried woman, or feme sole, had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name (Clarissa is a feme covert).

Womens Status & Place:
Adam Smith -

Recommends "the virtues of self-denial, of self government"

Womens Status & Place:
John Gregory, A Fathers Legacy to his Daughters -

"men have a larger share of reason bestowed on them"
" modest reserve, retiring delicacy"

Womens Status & Place:
Elizabeth Montagu

"wit in a woman is likely to have bad consequences"

A Vindication of the Rights of Women 1792
Mary Wollstonecraft -

- objects that the highest reward for female virtue is male attention
- advocates education for women

Enlightenment/ NeoClassicism

- rationality, insight, judgment, moderation, and balance
- idea that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy
- advocated for liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state

Romanticism + Marianne

- Focus on human emotion
- Artistic and intellectual movement
- Imagination over reason
- Excess
- Dedication to the beauty of nature
- Emphasis on the importance of the individual; a conviction that people should follow ideals rather than imposed conventions and rules

-This unchecked enthusiasm for the “cult of sensibility” results in Marianne revelling in the advantages of her physical attractiveness, and linking her own beauty and youth to feminine concepts vulnerability and self-sacrifice. 

>She recreates, in her own “real” life, the generic plot line of many of the romantic novels Austen gently mocks.  

-Marianne sets up and interprets the action of her life as a drama, in which the beautiful, passionate but vulnerable young woman needs to be “rescued” by Willoughby - a beautiful, dashing male hero on a horse.  

-When this intense connection is lost, Marianne sacrifices herself for love, in the style of the suicidal romantic hero, Werther. 

-Her preference for wild weather and exhausting solitary walks over challenging, wet terrain leads directly to her injuring her ankle, and later, catching a serious infection. 

Progression

-Marianne’s journey involves a complete reassessment of her values, before she is able to ‘see’ Willoughby and Brandon correctly, initially considers Brandon - a man of thirty-five, of rather dull and dreary appearance to boot - to be ‘an old bachelor’, wholly unsuitable for marriage

>her positive appraisal of Willoughby is based on a rather superficial, naive appreciation of his aesthetic attractiveness, youth and charisma.  

>women in the late 18^th century Romantic novels that Marianne enjoys reading teaches her to view youth/age in women through Bergers proscriptive male lens: ‘“A woman of seven-and-twenty,”, said Marianne “[…] can never hope to feel or inspire affection again”’ (‘S&S’, p.28).  

>BUT Pam Morris lies underneath Marianne’s preference for Willoughby is a narcissistic assumption that a young man's propensity to agree with all her opinions, and imitate her own tastes is what makes him most attractive and marriageable.  Morris refers to this as ‘narcissistic subjectivism that [seeks] to impose self and its systems upon the world’.  

>The young are more susceptible to this form of narcissism than the more mature characters - core values which make him truly ‘marriageable’ - should be kindness, integrity and loyalty.  

-Austen makes Brandon’s inner worth central to the plot’s scheme of rewards and punishments.

>There is room within a good marriage for superficial differences of taste and outlook - as we find between Marianne and Brandon - but core values such as kindness and integrity must be shared.  Marianne’s rite of passage requires her to accept that ‘her passionate opinions and principles have been tested by experience and observation and proved false.’  In rejecting her ‘narcissistic subjectivism’, she learns to acknowledge ‘the empirical reality that constitutes a shared world’ [Morris].

-Revelations of Brandon’s colourful past reveal that, in his youth, Brandon in fact manifested many of the qualities of an attractive romantic hero, which Marianne so deeply admires in the romantic fiction she reads, and so foolishly projects onto Willoughby.  Even as a more mature adult, he defends the young Eliza’s honour by inviting Willoughby to a duel - the stuff of romantic adventure stories.  

Spinsters

Women, like Austen herself, who passed beyond their youth without marrying became spinsters. They had no formal role in society and were occasionally a burden to their families.

fate of educated young women of good standing whose fortunes were thrown in jeopardy by the sudden loss of their family.

With no fortune, these women were nearly unmarriageable and might be required to enter the servant class as a governess of wealthy children in order to provide a living for themselves.

Religion:

god made women as a 'helper' to man, predominantly Christian society, viewed Eve as the epitome of a deceitful woman