“You are underbred, Sir, you are no good match for my sister. There is bad blood in you, vulgar blood”: Racial and Sexual (Im)Purity in A. S. Byatt’s “Morpho Eugenia” (1995) (original) (raw)
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15th Annual Victorian Popular Fiction Conference: Hidden Histories/ Recovered Stories, Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, UK/ online, 12-14 July, 2023
Welcome to the Victorian Popular Fiction Association 15 th Annual Conference "Hidden Histories / Recovered Stories". It is our great pleasure to have you with us at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln. The conference celebrates the ways in which Victorian popular culture, fictions and artistic productions addressed topics and subjects, and experimented with stories and genres, that went unacknowledged, were repressed or censored by the mainstream, focusing, on the one hand, on the hidden, lost, forgotten and, on the other hand, on the recovered, reclaimed, remembered. Our aim is to re-centre the popular, from gruesome murder stories to sensational tales of sexual violence and adultery, discussions of pseudo-sciences like spiritualism, to addressing miscegenation, and Victorian historical fiction that reimagines the lives of marginalised figures. We also want to highlight the ways in which current scholarship is rediscovering hidden aspects, characters, and narratives of the Victorian period. Some contributions also explore the relevance of forbidden or unspeakable themes in neo-Victorianism. Silenced by Victorian mainstream culture but obliquely voiced in such popular genres as the sensation novel, the penny dreadful and the bodice-ripper, these themes have taken centre stage in today's fictionalisation of a past that tends to be reimagined in all its deviant, arousing, and disquieting aspects.
Neo-Victorian Studies. Special Issue: Neo-Victorian Sexploitation (Guest edited by Inmaculada Pineda Hernández and Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz)., 2017
This essay analyses the way Byatt's novella is shaped by (neo-Victorian) Gothic by borrowing the concept of 'abhumanness' to focus specifically on Eugenia Alabaster. I argue that Eugenia's conflation of deviance and defiance is an intellectual investigation into the biological and ethical nature of desire. Hence, Eugenia's incestuous relationship with her half-brother Edgar and her marital relationship with William Adamson are read in the context of gendered sexploitation in order to analyse Victorian sexual politics in relation to the neo-Victorian investigation into Victorian sexual deviance. Eugenia's deviant/defiant sexuality is thus read as a subversive form of Victorian female sexual agency and a way to break both the incest taboo and the virginity taboo. Finally, Eugenia's sexual behaviour is discussed against the backdrop of past and present anthropological and psychiatric approaches to sexuality, which I argue have cross-fertilised Byatt's own exploration of what constitutes sexual deviance in the novella.
Breeding and Eugenics in the American Literary Imagination
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2015
is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Luczak, Ewa Barbara. Breeding and eugenics in the American literary imagination : heredity rules in the twentieth century / Ewa Barbara Luczak. pages cm.-(Palgrave studies in literature, science and medicine) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. American literature-20th century-History and criticism. 2. Eugenics in literature. 3. Breeding in literature. 4. Heredity in literature. I. Title.
Breeding and Eugenics in the American Literary Imagination: Heredity Rules in the Twentieth Century
2014
is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Luczak, Ewa Barbara. Breeding and eugenics in the American literary imagination : heredity rules in the twentieth century / Ewa Barbara Luczak. pages cm.-(Palgrave studies in literature, science and medicine) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. American literature-20th century-History and criticism. 2. Eugenics in literature. 3. Breeding in literature. 4. Heredity in literature. I. Title.
Lit-literature Interpretation Theory, 2005
And yet there can be no doubt that, even judged by his novels alone, Meredith remains a great writer. The doubt is rather whether he can be called a great novelist; whether, indeed, anyone to whom the technique of novel writing had so much that was repulsive in it can excel compared with those who are writing, not against the grain, but with it. He struggles to escape, and the chapters of amazing but fruitless energy which he produces in his struggle to escape are the true obstacles to the enjoyment of Meredith. What, we ask is he struggling against? What is he striving for?
Gender in Victorian Popular Fiction, Art, and Culture
<1>Issues of gender are at the heart of popular culture studies. To offer just one of many examples, the extent to which heroines such as Joss Whedon's Buffy Summers and Stephanie Meyer's Bella Swan can be seen as role models for young women, and the type of message they may be conveying to their viewers and readers, continues to generate much critical interest (see Jarvis, Levine and Parks). More recently, shows like Transparent (which, at the time of writing, has won numerous awards) have led to much discussion in the popular press about the representation of trans people in the media and what they might teach viewers (both trans and cis). This suggests that discussions about the depiction of gender in popular culture, and how it may influence the public conception of gender, will only continue to become more complex and pressing. <2>These issues were equally pertinent in the nineteenth century. As Walter Besant argues, popular fiction "may be considered as a great educational power. As dealing with different aspects of life, it teaches the nature of the world we live in" (49). This statement is a defense of sensation novels, which, as it was published in M. E. Braddon's own periodical, Belgravia, is hardly free from bias, but it does illustrate a key point: popular fiction educates. Through its choice of subject matter, characterization, narrative voice and plots-particularly endings that seem to reward or punish certain types of behavior-popular fiction can teach its readers about what is and is not acceptable, admirable, and to be aspired to. Popular fiction can also affect readers' opinions on matters of genre, class, race, age, and of course gender. This is true of many genres, not only popular ones, but Victorian reviewers were often most critical of the moral (as well as the literary) quality of popular fiction (as demonstrated in Brooke Fortune's article on Newgate fiction), and so its ability to influence its readers became a cause for concern, especially because popular fiction was popular-read by large numbers of people from different levels and corners of society, numbers so large, and groups so disparate, that their reading, and responses to that reading, could not be effectively controlled or monitored. While