Gender, the New Woman, and the Monster

Elizabeth D. Macaluso

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030304751
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030304768
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book views late Victorian femininity, the New Woman, and gender through literary representations of the figure of the monster, an appendage to the New Woman. The monster, an aberrant occurrence, performs Brecht's "alienation effect," making strange the world that she inhabits, thereby drawing veiled conclusions about the New Woman and gender at the end of the fin-de-siècle. The monster reveals that New Women loved one another complexly, not just as "friend" or "lover," but both "friend" and "lover." The monster, like the fin-de-siècle British populace, mocked the New Woman's modernity. She was paradoxically viewed as a threat to society and as a role model for women to follow. The tragic suicides of "monstrous" New Women of color suggest that many fin-de-siècle authors, especially female authors, thought that these women should be included in society, not banished to its limits.

This book, the first on the relationship between the figure of the monster and the New Woman, argues that there is hidden complexity to the New Woman. Her sexuality was complicated and could move between categories of sexuality and friendship for late Victorian women, and the way that the fin-de-siècle populace viewed her was just as multifarious. Further, the narratives of her tragedies ironically became narratives that advocated for her survival.

© The Author(s) 2019

E. D. MacalusoGender, the New Woman, and the Monsterhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30476-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Gender, the New Woman, and the Monster

Elizabeth D. Macaluso¹

(1)

Queensborough Community College, Queens, NY, USA

Elizabeth D. Macaluso

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

At the height of Britain’s power, at the fin de siècle, British subjects were plagued by specific cultural anxieties that were made in response to very complex social issues. In the literature of the age, the figure of the monster became a marker of these cultural anxieties as Britons could project their fears onto these monsters (Halberstam, 1995, p. 92). Dracula reflects Britons’ anxieties about the flood of Eastern European immigrants who made their way back to the British metropole (Arata, 1996, p. 115). ¹ Stoker’s novel expresses real concerns that white, conservative British had about the aftereffects of British colonization (imperialism and colonialism) (Arata, 1996, p. 107). Additionally, Dracula , Richard Marsh’s The Beetle , and Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire are meditations on the significance of the New Woman. British subjects did not know what to make of New Women, like Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra, who wished to have control over their romantic relationships. Neither did they know how to deal with women who wished to govern their own lives, like Marjorie Lindon, or who insisted on living independently like Harriet Brandt (prior to her marriage). Dracula takes on the subject of homosexuality and Dracula, himself, has been read as a doppelganger for Oscar Wilde (Schaffer, 1994, p. 406). The Beetle looks closely at the problem of poverty in Britain and aims to address it by eliciting readers’ sympathy for its indigent protagonist, Robert Holt.

This book, however, will focus on gender and I will argue that the liminal figure of the monster elicits new conclusions about women’s lives, women’s issues, the New Woman, and gender at the fin de siècle. I am adding to the debate about gender, made famous by Judith Butler, and am concurring with her that gender is an indeterminate social construct that resists categories and boundaries (1990, p. ii). As opposed to solely focusing on modern studies of women’s lives and gender theory or Victorian studies of gender, women’s lives, and female characters’ fictional lives (which I definitely involve in the book), to add to this already established conclusion, I am focusing on the special interrelationships that monsters have with female protagonists of British fin-de-siècle fiction to understand some of the new ways that gender is indeterminate and resists categories and boundaries in both fiction and the history of the British fin de siècle.

I will answer the question: How does the figure of the monster invite conclusions about the indeterminacy of gender in Stoker’s Dracula , Marsh’s The Beetle , and Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire ? My answer to this question is: the monster shows that female friendships can be almost lesbian, and that the foreign and perverse monster ² invokes a contentious debate between fin-de-siècle feminists, who see the New Woman as a role model for future generations of women, and antifeminists, who see her as a threat to family, nation, and Empire. My specific contribution to this well-established history of debate is: the New Woman, like the foreign and perverse monster (the Beetle), is an indeterminate figure herself and the foreign and perverse monster incites more debate about her and other pressing social issues like colonialism, sexuality, and poverty. The monster figure, and his/her foreign and perverse violence, helps to define her by inciting and presenting the debate about her to the reader of The Beetle , so that she (the reader) decides how to understand her. The final focus of my study is a female monster herself, Marryat’s Harriet Brandt. And, so, the subjects of gender and the monster become inextricably intertwined. Instead of writing a plot that solely attempts to get rid of the monster (like Dracula and The Beetle boast), Florence Marryat makes the monster female and, in doing so, asks her readers to sympathize with a woman, who paradoxically has the ability to take the lives of her acquaintances, but is so accomplished and lovely, otherwise, that it becomes difficult to solely condemn her. Though the British characters of Marryat’s novel wish to be rid of Harriet, because to them she bears the curse of heredity, race, and she is so modern and “New” (independent, wealthy, and accomplished, like the New Woman), Marryat, through the perspectives of Anthony Pennell and Miss Wynward, defends her monster by emphasizing Harriet’s good qualities (her kindness, beauty, talent, generosity and charity, and eventual maturity and fairness). Thus, instead of engaging in a circuitous debate about whether Harriet is good or monstrous, Marryat dares to sympathize with a monster and argues that she (an indeterminate subject), too, belongs to, and should be incorporated in, British society, and not be banished to its limits. Marryat even points the finger of “monster” at the other British protagonists of her novel and asserts that their attempts to castigate Harriet are “monstrous” themselves. In these ways, the book will also reveal that gender is related to other issues that may seem tangential but are actually deeply vetted to gender like sexuality (in the Dracula chapter), race, sexuality, and class (in the Beetle chapter), and race (in the Blood of the Vampire chapter).

My book’s secondary argument is that the liminal figure of the monster and the liminal figure of the New Woman present a conflict in fin-de-siècle culture between conservative Britons who held traditional values and liberal British subjects who had progressive viewpoints. This conflict is also embedded in the aforementioned issues of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Traditional Britons were conservatives in Parliament, and conservatives in the general populous, who believed that imperialism and colonialism were centrally important to the maintenance of Empire, the castigation of the New Woman was integral to preserving the traditional femininity of the British “woman,” the capital and/or criminal punishment of male homosexuals preserved the purity of the state and the marital relationships that made it so, and the “hands off” approach to dealing with the poor strengthened the social makeup of the state. Contrarily, progressive subjects (radicals and socialists), New Liberals in Parliament, were committed to anti-imperialist/colonialist agendas and independence movements, the enfranchisement of the New Woman and all women, the humanization of homosexuals, and the unionization of the poor. There were socially liberal moderates, who lived during Britain’s fin de siècle, but their financially conservative agendas were...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Gender, the New Woman, and the Monster
• 2. “I Love You with All the Moods and Tenses of the Verb”: Lucy and Mina’s Love in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
• 3. The Monstrous Power of Uncertainty: Social and Cultural Conflict in Richard Marsh’s The Beetle
• 4. The Rise of Harriet Brandt: A Critique of the British Aristocracy in Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire
• 5. Conclusion
• Back Matter