Feminine subjects in masculine fiction: modernity, will and desire, 1870-1910

Abstract

This monograph is part of Palgrave Macmillan's Victorian Literature and Culture Series. Its intervention with regard to canonical constructions of Social Realism and Modernism was deemed 'highly significant by Palgrave's peer-reviewers. This book examines the proliferation of troubled, unstable and unreadable female, figures in English novels written by men between 1870 and 1910. This period saw the birth of literary modernism, the advent of psychoanalysis and the first wave of feminism. The faculty of will and the experience of desire structure a troubled relationship to modernity during this period. The tension between them is located in the feminine subject of popular fiction. This monograph focuses on tensions in the work of late-nineteenth century male authors, between woman as aesthetic object of the novel and woman as troubling subject of a new modern consciousness. These inscrutable female characters were the ground on which fiction staged its move fromthe popular into high art. During the writing process, work on this project was shared at conferences and symposia at the Universities of Glasgow and York, the University of the West of England and Universite Charles-de-Gaulle, Lille III.