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UBC Theses and Dissertations

"The object of their life": defining female self in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Miss Marjoribanks Goodison, Susanne

Abstract

In this thesis, I study genre and characterization choices made by Anne Brontë in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Margaret Oliphant in Miss Marjoribanks. For the most part, these choices have been perceived negatively by critics because the resulting text does not produce evidence of either twentieth-century aesthetics or themes. However, as recent interpretations based on principles of cultural criticism suggest, these texts offer insights into Victorian women's interactions with their culture. Through texts like The Tenant and Miss Marioribanks, we catch glimpses of acts of female self-definition which radically contradict individualistic notions of self. Essentially, this thesis seeks to trace the perspective these texts offer which is founded on the integration of masculine and feminine and not on the exclusion of either.

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