Odd Women Out: Transgression, Performance, and Progress in Victorian Fiction.

Abstract

“Odd Women Out: Transgression, Performance, and Progress in Victorian Fiction” explores the emergence of transgressive female characters who challenge traditional gender roles. This dissertation examines the limitations of the domestic model in terms of marriage and Victorian cultural values based on arbitrary social structures. Therefore, rebellious female characters reflect dissatisfaction with their status as they refuse to adopt domestic ideologies that stifle their independence. Though their transgressions of social and political boundaries threaten the status quo, they open the door to changes that allow women’s development. Accordingly, these female characters seek alternative routes by breaking social, moral, and legal boundaries. In this dissertation, I demonstrate in what manner women’s narratives provide an alternative model of womanhood and independence, thereby subverting the ideal image of middle-class women. Additionally, I illustrate by what means transgressing women shift narrative structures that fragment the traditional domestic plot and offer new possibilities for women’s progress. This dissertation focuses on the rise of the individual character in the context of female experiences, including Lucy in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, Maggie in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Lady Audley in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, and Lyndall in Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm. This project attempts to provide new insights into nineteenth-century critical studies and Victorian gender scholarship in relation to narrative forms.