Secondary Reading, on Reserve and
Otherwise
for Persuasion,
Wuthering
Heights, North
and South, She,
and Dracula
As part of your work for this class, you will be
learning to summarize articles,
discuss the theories on which they draw, and write a research
paper.
Articles listed here will provide you starting places from which to
do so;
you may also do your own library searches.
Brown, Julia Prewitt. Jane
Austen's Novels: Social Change and Literary
Form. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1979. Ch. on
Persuasion. On reserve. Halperin, Mark. "Jane Austen's Lovers."
Studies in English Literature 25.4 (1985): 719-736.
Shelved w/journals. Kaplan, Deborah. "Assuming Spinsterhood"
[ch.5]. Jane Austen Among Women. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins UP, 1992. 109-130. PR4036.K3 1992. On
reserve Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline. "`She Learned Romance as
She Grew Older': From Conduct Book Propriety to Romance in
Persuasion."
Persuasions 15 (Dec. 1993): 216-225. On
reserve Warhol, Robyn. "The Look, the Body, and the
Heroine: A Feminist-Narratological Reading of
Persuasion."
Novel 26.1 (Fall 1992): 5-19. Shelved
w/journals. Wilkes, Joanne. "`Song of the Dying Swan'?: The
Nineteenth-Century Response to
Persuasion."
Studies in the Novel 28.1 (Spring 1996): 38-56.
Shelved w/journals.
Burgan, Mary. "`Some Fit Parentage': Identity and
the Cycle of Generations in Wuthering
Heights." Philological Quarterly 61.4 (Fall
1982): 395-413. Shelved w/journals. Burgan discusses the children's psychology as response to
Mr Earnshaw's behavior. Conger, Syndy McMillen. "The Reconstruction of
the Gothic Feminine Ideal in Emily Bronte's
Wuthering
Heights." In The Female
Gothic. Ed. Julian E. Fleenor. Montreal: Eden, 1983.
91-106. On reserve. In this article drawing on feminist interests, Conger
contextualizes the kind of heroine Cathy is through
discussion of kinds of heroines conventionally or previously
presented in the gothic novel, the genre of fiction into
which Wuthering Heights fits. Goetz, William R. "Genealogy and Incest in
Wuthering Heights." Studies in
the Novel 14.4 (Winter 1982): 359-376. Shelved
w/journals. Using an anthropological approach, Goetz discusses
relationships in terms of desire for but recognition of need
to avoid incest; he discusses culture building as based on
rejecting incest. Goff, Barbara Munson. "Between Natural Theology
and Natural Selection: Breeding the Human Animal in
Wuthering Heights." Victorian
Studies 27.4 (1984): 477-507. Shelved
w/journals. Goff argues Bronte would have read animal husbandry
pamphlets and rejected planned breeding as producing weak
creatures, unable to withstand harsh conditions; she
therefore prefers humans closer to an animal state as both
stronger and more "natural" than humans over- civilized.
Discussion here of sheep breeding. London, Bette. "Wuthering
Heights and the Text Between the
Lines." Papers on Language and Literature
24.1 (Winter 1988): 34-52. London focuses on Nelly's life and her emotions as they
are implied by ways she narrates and characterizes the other
characters. McCarthy, Terence. "The Incompetent Narrator in
Wuthering Heights." Modern
Language Quarterly 42.1 (March 1981): 48-64.
Shelved w/journals. In this reader-response essay, McCarthy focuses on
Lockwood and shows why we shouldn't identify with his
stance; he argues that Nelly is a little more capable of
recognizing what she can't understand without rejecting it
utterly. Newman, Beth. "`The Situation of the Looker-On':
Gender, Narration and Gaze in Wuthering Heights."
PMLA 105.5 (Oct 1990): 1029-1041. Shelved
w/journals. In this rather difficult feminist article, Newman speaks
of the gaze, a phrase used in film theory and as discussed
as representing a male position of power; she argues that
the novel rejects that version of the gaze through its
depiction of the 2nd Cathy, who insists others return her
gaze and whose gaze therefore rejects a hierarchy of
power. Pratt, Linda Ray. "`I Shall Be Your Father':
Heathcliff's Narrative of Paternity." Victorians
Institute Journal 20 (1992): 13-38. On
reserve. The title gives you a good idea of this: who's his
father? What kind of a father is he? von Sneidern, Maja-Lisa.
"Wuthering Heights
and the Liverpool Slave Trade." ELH 62
(1995): 171-196. Shelved w/journals. What race is Heathcliff? Why is it important that he's
found in Liverpool? How does Liverpool's role in the slave
trade shape views of Heathcliff, and, hence, of the
novel? Wion, Philip K. "The Absent Mother in
Wuthering
Heights." American
Imago 42.2 (Summer 1985): 143-165. Shelved
w/journals. This article unfortunately bases its psychological
reading on conjectures about the author's psychological life
but otherwise gives an interesting interpretation for the
apparent arrested development of the first Cathy.
Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. The Politics of Story
in Victorian Social Fiction. PR878.S62 B63 David, Deirdre. Fictions of Resolution in
Three Victorian Novels. London: Macmillan,
1981. Elliot, Dorice Williams. "The Female Visitor and
the Marriage of Classes in Gaskell's North and South.
Nineteenth-Century Literature 49 (1994).
21-49. Shelved w/journals. Gallagher, Catherine. The Industrial
Reformation of English Fiction 1832-1867.
PR878.162 G35 1985. On
reserve. Hall, Catherine. "The Early Formation of
Victorian Domestic Ideology." Fit Work for
Women. Ed. Sandra Burman. London: Croom Helm, 1979.
15-32. On reserve. Harsh, Constance. Subversive Heroines:
Feminist Resolutions of Social Crisis in the Condition of
England Novel. PR878.F45 H37 1994. On
reserve. Kubitschek, Missy. "Defying the Old Limitations
of Possibility: Unconventional Aspects of Two Gaskell
Novels." University of Mississippi Studies in
English 4 (1983): 101-111. On
reserve. Langland, Elizabeth. Nobody's
Angels: Middle-Class Women and Domestic Ideology in
Victorian Culture. Ithaca: Cornell UP,
1995. Stevenson, Catherine Barnes. "What Must Not Be
Said: North and South and the Problem of Women's Work.
Victorian Literature and Culture 19
(1991): 67-84. On reserve. Ruskin, John. Sesame and
Lilies. New York: Burt, 1871.
PR6520.A1.1871.
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. No Man's
Land. Vol 2: Sexchanges. New Haven,
Yale UP, 1989.PR116.G5 1988. On
reserve.
Auerbach, Nina. Woman and the
Demon. Cambridge: Harvard UP,
1982. PR878.W6 A9 1982 Cranny-Francis, Anne "Sexual Politics and
Political Repression in Bram Stoker's
Dracula."
From Nineteenth-Century Suspense from Poe to Conan
Doyle. Eds Clive Bloom, Brian Docherty, Jane Gibb, and
Keith Strand. New York: St. Martin's, 1988. 64-79. Cranny-Francis argues that the novel constructs female
characters and the count the way it does and uses situations
as it does to "dramatis[e] some of the political and
social dilemmas faced by the bourgeoisie in the late
nineteenth century" (64), ultimately disarming threats posed
by the New Woman (late 19th-century women wanting equity
with men) and by other social, political, economic issues of
the period. Howes, Marjorie. "The Mediation of the Feminine:
Bisexuality, Homoerotic Desire, and Self-Expression in Bram
Stoker's Dracula." Texas
Studies in Literature and Language 30.1 (Spring 1988):
104-119. Howes argues that the real sexual desire in
Dracula is homoerotic but because such sexuality is
threateningly shunned by Victorians, it gets projected onto
the women in the novel and thereby mediated. Macfie, Sian. "`They Suck us Dry': A Study of
Late 19th-Century Projections of Vampiric Women."
From Subjectivity and Literature from the Romantics to
the Present Day. Eds Philip Shaw and Peter Stockwell.
London: Pinter, 1991. 58-67. Macfie focuses on ways Stoker's novel's treatment of its
vampiric females is echoed in literary and non-literary
thought in the late Victorian period. Pope, Rebecca A. "Writing and Biting in
Dracula."
LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory 1 (1990):
199-216. On writing, like the sexuality in the novel, as gendered
female and treated as threatening. Showalter, Elaine, ed.
Speaking of Gender. New
York: Routledge, 1989. PR408.S49 S4 1989. See Christopher Craft essay,
"`Kiss Me with Those Red Lips': Gender and Inversion in Bram
Stoker's
Dracula"
(216-242). Possibly the best article written on the novel;
its content is clear from its title. Smith, Malcolm. "Dracula and the Victorian Frame
of Mind." Trivium 24 (1989): 76-97. Smith argues that Dracula raises and responds to
political, social issues of concern to Victorians, discusses
how it does so, and points out that the novel nonetheless
has continued appeal, even though these particular issues
are perhaps not currently important, at least not in the
same way. Williams, Anne.
"Dracula: Si(g)ns
of the Fathers." Texas Studies in Literature and
Language 33.4 (Winter 1991): 445-463. Drawing on psychoanaltyic and feminist theories, Williams
argues that although Dracula is male and is "experienced as
an evil, threatening father" (455), he represents what
western culture frequently identifies as female and
threatening. She links her argument to Christian and
pre-Christian mythologies. Zanger, Jules. "A Sympathetic Vibration: Dracula
and the Jews." English Literature in
Transition 34.1 (1991): 33-44. Zanger shows how Stoker's portrayal of Dracula works
similarly to anti-semitic portrayals of Jews in popular
thought and in other literature in the Victorian era.
On
DRACULA
Essays not on reserve but in journals in the library, worth
reading
Arata, Stephen D. "The Occidental Tourist:
Dracula and the
Anxiety of Reverse Colonization." Victorian
Studies 33.4 (Summer 1990): 621-645. Arata argues that in this period of imperialism,
Dracula addresses fears that if the British could
colonize less "civilized" countries, they could perform
"reverse colonization," infiltrating Britain or bringing
about devolution (as perhaps happens in Conrad's 1902
Heart of Darkness). Case, Alison. "Tasting the Original Apple: Gender
and the Struggle for Narrative Authority in
Dracula."
Narrative 1.3 (Oct 1993): 223-243. Case addresses who gets to speak in the novel, who
controls the story, and the relation of that issue to the
gender of the speaker. Halberstam, Judith. "Technologies of Monstrosity:
Bram Stoker's
Dracula."
Victorian Studies 36.3 (Spring 1993): 333-352. On the similarity of the depiction of Dracula to
19th-century anti-semitic portrayals of Jews, and on Dracula
as the threatening "other" to English Victorian culture. Spear, Jeffrey. "Gender and Sexual Dis-Ease in
Dracula."
In Original Sexuality and Textuality in Victorian
Literature. Ed. Lloyd Davis. Albany: SUNY P, 1993.
179-192. Spencer, Kathleen L. "Purity and Danger:
Dracula, the Urban
Gothic, and the Late Victorian Degeneracy Crisis."
ELH 59.1 (Spring 1992): 197-225. Spencer argues that Lucy and Dracula are both treated as
belonging but marginal to culture, as representing elements
of culture to be purged to keep culture from degenerating;
it's historically based and focuses on other kinds of
novelistic "movements" preceding what Spencer calls the
"urban gothic."
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