Literature Research seminar

English Literature at Brighton: Research Seminar Series

‘Fallen Women/ Fallen Narratives: Chapter 14 of the NovelI Am Happy’
Richard Jacobs
Faculty of Arts
University of Brighton

Abstract

The ‘fallen woman’ in the Victorian novel is the ideologically necessary counterpart to the ‘angel in the house’. Narratives of fallen women, as ‘othered’ or ‘bad’ narrative, serve to legitimate and naturalise the Edenic ‘good’ master-narrative of heterosexual middle-class marriage in the novel’s drive towards closure.

This paper considers ways in which ‘fallen’ narratives come to stand for a kind of pure or mere fictiveness or pattern in the novel and discusses narrative form in terms of appropriation and coercion, as well as suggesting further strategies deployed in the Victorian novel whereby typologies of narrative shadow each other in an Edenic and fallen relation.The paper is part of a novel which contains, dispersed among a narrative of loss and exclusion, an examination of the impact on literary texts of the myth of the Fall, in the form of eight lectures delivered by the novel’s protagonist on an American university campus. The relationship and counterpointing between the biographical plot and the critical material in the lectures make up the novel’s inner life.

ALL WELCOME!

Research papers in this series last approximately 25-30 minutes, followed by discussion. There is also the opportunity to meet, talk, and have a drink.

For further information, please contact: Nigel H. Foxcroft, nhf@brighton.ac.uk