Date of Award
Spring 5-11-2015
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
English
First Advisor
Dr. LeeAnne Richardson
Second Advisor
Dr. Paul Schmidt
Third Advisor
Dr. Randy Malamud
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on the triangulated relationship among female sexuality, patriarchy, and empire and examines literary and historical texts to understand how Britons increasingly identified as imperialists over the course of the nineteenth century. This project, the first book-length study of its kind, features analyses of canonical works like Mansfield Park, David Copperfield, and Adam Bede as well as analyses of paintings, etchings, conference proceedings, newspaper advertisements, colonial reports, political tracts, and medical records from Britain and its colonies. I challenge critical conceptions of the fallen woman as a trope of domestic fiction whose position as outcast illustrates the stigmatization of female sex during the nineteenth century, and I argue that the depiction and punishment of fallen women in multiple genres reveal an interest in protecting and maintaining an imperial system that claims moral superiority over the people it colonizes. My critical stance is both feminist and postcolonial, and my work complicates readings of fallen women in Victorian literature while also adding significantly to scholarship on gender and empire begun by Anne McClintock and Philippa Levine. I claim that during the nineteenth century, the fallen woman comes to represent that which will threaten patriarchal and imperial power, and her regulation reveals an intent to purify the British conscience and strengthen the nation’s sense of itself as a moral and exceptional leader in the world. My investigation into fallenness and empire through a wide range of texts underscores the centrality of imperialism to British society and to the lives of Britons living far removed from colonial sites like India or East Africa.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/7020477
Recommended Citation
Stockstill, Ellen, "The Fallen Woman and the British Empire in Victorian Literature and Culture." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2015.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/7020477