Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian CultureProstitute, adulteress, unmarried woman who engages in sexual relations, victim of seduction—the Victorian "fallen woman" represents a complex array of stigmatized conditions. Amanda Anderson here reconsiders the familiar figure of the fallen woman within the context of mid-Victorian debates over the nature of selfhood, gender, and agency. In richly textured readings of works by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, among others, she argues that depictions of fallen women express profound cultural anxieties about the very possibility of self-control and traditional moral responsibility. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 MidVictorian Conceptions of Character Agency and Reform Social Science and the Great Social Evil | 22 |
2 The Taint the Very Tale Conveyed SelfReading Suspicion and Fallenness in Dickens | 66 |
3 Melodrama Morbidity and Unthinking Sympathy Gaskell s Mary Barton and Ruth | 108 |
4 Dramatic Monologue in Crisis Agency and Exchange in D G Rossettis Jenny | 141 |
5 Reproduced in Finer Motions Encountering the Fallen in Barrett Brownings Aurora Leigh | 167 |
Afterword Intersubjectivity and the Politics of Poststructuralism | 198 |
235 | |
245 | |
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action activity actual aesthetic agency appears approach argues attempt Aurora autonomy Barton becomes cast causes chapter character claim communicative con conception condition consciousness constitutes course critics critique cultural David defined depictions desire determined Dickens discourse discussion Dombey effect Elizabeth Elizabeth Barrett Browning encounter Esther experience face fact fall fallen woman feelings feminine figure forces Gaskell Gaskell's gender Greg human idea ideal identity important individual insists intersubjective Jenny literary living Marian Mark Mary means Mill moral narrative nature novel passage person perspective poem political poor position possibility practice precisely present problem produces prostitute question reading reason reflects reform relation representation represented reveals rhetoric Ruth scene seems seen serves sexual social society speaker status story suggest sympathetic sympathy systemic tension theory thinking thought transformation understanding Victorian virtue women writes