‘A large and passionate humanity plays about her’: Women and moral agency in the late Victorian social problem novel

Murdoch, Christina (2012) ‘A large and passionate humanity plays about her’: Women and moral agency in the late Victorian social problem novel. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

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

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PR English literature
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Literature
• Supervisor's Name: Blair, Dr. Kirstie
• Date of Award: 2012
• Depositing User: Christina Murdoch Murdoch
• Unique ID: glathesis:2012-3703
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 18 Feb 2013 09:57
• Last Modified: 18 Feb 2013 10:04
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/3703