Professor Claudia Klaver Office: 423 Hall of Languages
Office hours: Monday 12:00-1:00 Office
phone: x2074
Tuesday 1:30-3:00 e-mail:
ccklaver@syr.edu
and by appt.
ETS 492 Studies in Gender:
Course description:
The domestic ideology that dominated the culture of bourgeois Victorian England dictated that in order to be good or “true,” a woman must be firmly rooted in and largely confined to the domain of the home. Her primary identity was to be that of a virtuous wife and mother, and before that a chaste and dutiful sister and daughter. Because of the rigidity of this ideology, almost any deviation from its ideals catapulted a woman from the status of “angel” to that of “demon,” or from “Madonna” to “Magdalene.”
Such “other” Victorian women—fallen, odd, evil, or perverse—occupy center stage in many nineteenth-century novels. Even when such novels impugn, punish, or banish these wayward women, their figures still trouble the snug domestic scenes with which the texts often conclude. In other novels, these figures play such a powerful role in the text as to make any such a turn toward a happy ending impossible.
In this course we will explore a number of nineteenth-century fictions of these “other” Victorian women. We will supplement our readings of the novels with contemporary feminist theory and criticism, as well as with selected primary source material.
Texts: Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton
George Eliot, Adam Bede
Charlotte Bronte, Villette
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit
George Gissing, The Odd Women
All novels available in Penguin Classics Editions at Folletts Orange Bookstore
Photocopied course reader—available at Campus Copies in Marshall Square Mall
Schedule of readings:
Jan. 19 Introduction to the course
Jan. 24 Readings
on domestic ideology-- “Sarah Lewis and Woman’s
Mission,” from The Woman
Question, Vol. 1, Defining Voices
Lynda Nead, “The Norm: Respectable
Femininity,” from Myths of Sexuality
Jan. 26 Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, Chs. 1-18, pp. 45-185
Jan 31 Dickens, cont. , Chs. 19-38, pp. 186-344
Elizabeth Langland, “Material
Angels: Wings of Clay,” from Nobody’s
Angels: Middle-Class
Women and Domestic Ideology in Victorian
Culture
Student presentation
Feb. 2 Dickens, concl., Chs. 39-53, pp.345-480
Feb. 7 Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, Preface-Ch. 10, pp. 3-125
selections on prostitution, from The Woman Question, Vol. 2, Social Issues
Charles Dickens, “An Appeal to Fallen Women,” from The Victorian Novelist
Student presentation
Feb. 9 Gaskell, cont., Chs. 11-17, pp. 126-201
Judith Walkowitz, “The Common Prostitute in Victorian Britain” and “Social Science and the
Great Social Evil,” from Prostitution and Victorian Society
Feb. 14 Gaskell, cont., Chs. 18-31, pp. 201-316
Student presentation
Feb. 16 Gaskell, cont., Chs. 32-38, pp. 316-393
Amanda Anderson, “Melodrama, Morbidity, and Unthinking Sympathy: Gaskell’s Mary Barton
and Ruth,” from Tainted Souls and Painted Faces
Feb. 21 George Eliot, Adam Bede, Ch. 1-13, pp. 7-138
Student presentation
Feb. 23 Eliot, cont., Chs. 14-21, pp. 139-246
Jill Matus, “Wet-Nurses, Infanticide and the Discourse of Motherhood” and “’The Unnaturalness
of her Crime’: Infanticide and Maternal Instinct in Adam Bede,” from Unstable Bodies
Feb. 28 Eliot, cont., Chs. 22-39, pp. 249-412
Student presentation
Mar. 1 Eliot, concl., Chs. 40-Epilogue, pp. 413-539
Margaret Homans, “Dinah’s Blush, Maggie’s Arm: Class, Gender and Sexuality in George Eliot’s
Early Novel,” sels.
Mar. 6 Charlotte Bronte, Villette, Chs. 1-13, pp. 61-193
Student presentation
Mar. 8 Bronte, cont., Chs. 14-22, pp. 194-333
*First paper due*
Mar. 20 Bronte, cont., Chs. 23-35, pp. 333-502
Cannon Schmitt, “Border Crossings: Nationality, Sexuality, and Colonialism in Charlotte Bronte’s
Villette,” from Alien Nation; 19th-Century Gothic Fictions and English Nationality
Student presentation
Mar. 22 Bronte, concl., Chs. 36-42, pp. 503-596
Sara M. Putzell-Korab, “Passion Between Women in the Victorian Novel”
Mar. 28 Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, Bk. I, Chs. I-XIII, pp. 15-167
Student presentation
Mar. 30 Dickens, cont., Bk. I, Chs. XIV-XXV, pp. 167-299
Sarah Winter, “Domestic Fictions: Feminine Deference and Maternal Shadow Labor in Dickens’
Little Dorrit”
Apr. 3 Dickens, cont., Bk. I, Ch. XXVI – Bk.II, Ch. V, pp. 299-451
Student presentation
Apr. 5 Dickens, cont., Bk. II, Chs. VI-XIV, pp. 451-571
Patricia
Ingham, “Nobody’s Fault: The Scope of the Negative in Little Dorrit”
Apr. 10 Dickens, cont., Bk. II, Chs. XV-XXVIII, pp. 572-703
Student presentation
Apr. 12 Dickens, cont., Bk. II, Chs. XXIX-XXXIV, pp. 703-787
Annamarie Jagose, “Remembering Miss Wade: Little Dorrit and the Historicizing of Female
Perversity”
Apr. 17 Gissing, Odd Women, Chs. 1-9, pp. 1-108
Student presentation
Apr. 19 Gissing, cont., Chs. 10-16, pp. 109-197
Apr. 24 Gissing, cont., Chs. 17-25, pp. 198-307
Student presentation
Apr. 26 Gissing, concl., Chs. 26-31, pp. 307-386
*Second paper due*
May 1 Course review and evaluation
Course requirements:
1. Regular (and respectful) class attendance and participation. This class will be conducted as a seminar, depending largely on student contributions to class discussion. Because of this, regular attendance and respectful attention are the only ways to successfully participate in and complete this course. All students will be allowed one unpenalized absence. After this absence, all other absences must be excused with a note from a doctor or a dean. Extra work may be required to compensate for such unavoidable excused absences. Every two unexcused absences will lower your final course grade by at least one third of a letter grade. Frequent tardiness will contribute toward the total of unexcused absences. I also will provide opportunities for and encourage you to learn one another’s names, since each of you as students, as well as me as your professor, will be responsible for much of the teaching and learning that happens in this course.
2. Oral presentation and presentation essay. Each student will select an historical, literary historical, or theoretical topic which they feel is relevant to the primary reading for the day on which their presentation is scheduled. The student will then conduct some independent research of this topic and meet with me to discuss their presentation. The student will then present the results of his or her research to the class in the form of a fifteen-minute oral presentation. Finally, the student will write a 6-8 page essay using his or her research to construct an original reading of the relevant novel. This paper will be due no later than two weeks after the date of the original presentation.
3. Two 6-8 page papers. These papers will focus on the novels we are reading for the course, but students are also encouraged to develop and support their arguments with references to materials presented in class (in the form of oral presentations) and to the secondary readings for the course. The first of these papers may be re-written. Re-write grades will be averaged with your original grade
4. In-class writings and reading quizzes. To ensure that you keep up with the reading for the course, we will have brief but frequent in-class writings and/or reading quizzes that should help to stimulate your super-ego to do the required reading for the assigned date.
5. Possible final examination. If the in-class writings and reading quizzes do not adequately stimulate your superego, there may be a final examine to further resuscitate it. This is up to you: I prefer NOT to give final examinations in literature courses, but if I feel like students are not keeping up with the reading for the course, and thus not able to contribute meaningfully to class discussions, I may decide that one is necessary to ensure you really do learn something from ETS 492!