Tag: Fiction

“The Lady is Ugly!”: The Imposition of Gender Binaries Upon Marian Halcombe

Other

Marian Halcombe is a complex woman. Unlike many other female characters, both within and outside Victorian fiction, she stands outside the gender binary. She is often attributed male characteristics, both in mind and appearance. Her appearance is complex, juxtaposing her feminine and sexualized body with her masculine and ‘ugly’ face: The lady is dark. […] The lady is young. […] The lady is ugly! Never has the old conventional maxim, that Nature cannot err, more flatly contradicted – never was

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Bloggers Fair: Louisa Yates ‘Neo-Victorian Thought’ blog

Victorians Beyond the Academy

Having completed a thesis on neo-Victorian fiction – specifically, the three neo-Victorian novels of Sarah Waters – I am left with a hopeless and seemingly ineradicable ‘gift’: identifying the many and varied ways in which Victorians and Victoriana reveal themselves within contemporary culture. Many of these moments are fleeting, transient, or otherwise unsuited to extended academic examination (at this point in time, at least). They are, however, often entertaining, inspiring, and eminently suitable for life outside the academy; as the

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Bloggers Fair: Gaby Malcolm’s blog on Mary Braddon

Victorians Beyond the Academy

Mary Braddon’s centenary is fast approaching (2015) and as the new Visiting Research Fellow at Canterbury Christ Church University my remit is to develop and publish on the Braddon Archive Collection now held at the university’s Augustine Library – with the landmark date in mind. I am joining colleagues Adrienne Gavin (biographer of Anna Sewell) and Carolyn Oulton (biographer of Mary Cholmondeley) of the English and Language Studies department, as they begin their directorships of the new International Centre for

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Bloggers Fair: Novel Readings

Victorians Beyond the Academy

At Novel Readings I write about my reading, teaching, and research, much but not all of which is Victorian. Blogging is a way to make my academic work more transparent and accessible, and an opportunity to experiment with different kinds of critical writing. Novel Readings has become an indispensable part of my intellectual life, not only for the intrinsic challenges and rewards of writing for it, but because of the community of other readers and writers it has brought me

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