The Intriguing Women:
Between Wilkie Collins’ The Law and the Lady (1875),
The Haunted Hotel (1879) and Gail Carriger’s Soulless
(2009)
Aleksandra Tryniecka
Maria Curie-Skłodowska University
Lublin, Poland
“Only give a woman love, and there is
nothing she will not venture, suffer, and do.”
Wilkie Collins, The Law and the Lady (20)
Valeria Brinton
Countess Narona
Alexia Tarabotti
1875
1879
2009
Ann Heilmann, New Woman Fiction: Women
Writing First-Wave Feminism :
1865 – ‘New
1893 - ‘New
Woman’ – as
a subversive
heroine
Woman’ – as
the „fin-desiѐcle female”
1894 - ‘New
1895 – ‘New
Woman’ – as
a „dystopian
figure of
degeneration”
Woman’ – on
the altar of
domestic
ideal
Sarah Grand,
“The New Aspect of the Woman
Question”-The North American Review
(vol. 158, No. 448, 1894)
Quida,
“The New Woman” –
-The North American Review
(May 1894)
Jeannette King, The Victorian Question in Contemporary
Feminist Fiction:
‘dualisms’ in the nineteenth-century literary representation:
• man-woman
• intellect-nature
• intellect-feelings
• emotions-reasons
• mind-body
• active-passive
• public-private
• public-domestic
• the angel-the fallen woman
1875
Lyn Pykett, The ‘Improper Feminine’: The Women’s Sensation
Novel and the New Woman Writing:
The ‘New Woman’ writers and women sensationalists "reworked and
recombined melodrama, gothic, sensationalism and the domestic (...),”
focusing on “the contradictions of the dominant ideology of the
feminine, by charting the conflict between ‘actual’ female experience
and the domestic, private, angelic feminine ideal. Both focused on
marriage, rather than on the courtship which formed the main narrative
trajectory of most Victorian fiction. Both constructed plots and
characters which registered or interrogated the contradictions of
contemporary marriage and domestic ideal. (...) Both actively contested,
or implicitly (...) challenged the dominant definitions of ‘woman’ and her
prescribed social and familial roles (...) (6).
1879
„[o]n the day of the marriage Agnes Lockwood sat alone in
the little drawing-room of her London lodgings, burning the
letters which had been written to her by Montbarry in the
bygone time. (...) There were none of the ordinary signs of
grief in her face, as she slowly tore the letters of her false
lover in two, and threw the pieces into the small fire which
had been lit to consume them. Unhappily for herself, she was
one of those women who feel too deeply to find relief in
tears.” (Collins, The Haunted Hotel, 25)
2009
‘“Really, darling,” Alexia's mother had said at the time in
tones of the deepest condescension, “with that nose and
that skin, there is simply no point in us going to the expense.
I have got your sisters to think of.” So Alexia, whose nose
really wasn't that big and whose skin really wasn't that tan,
had gone on the shelf at fifteen. Not that she had ever
actually coveted the burden of a husband, but it would have
been nice to know she could get one if she ever changed her
mind. Alexia did enjoy dancing, so she would have liked to
attend at least one ball as an available young lady rather than
always ending up skulking in libraries’ (Carriger, Soulless, 26)
Thank you for your attention!
REFERENCES
Carriger, Gail. Soulless: An Alexia Tarabotti Novel. London: Orbit, 2009. Print.
Collins, Wilkie. The Haunted Hotel. London: Vintage Classis, 2015. Print.
Collins, Wilkie. The Law and the Lady. London: Penguin Classics, 1998. Print.
Frost, Ginger S. Broken Promises: Courtship, Class, and Gender in Victorian England. Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1995. Print.
Grand, Sarah. "The New Aspect of the Woman Question." The North American Review, vol. 158, No. 448 (March, 1894), pp.
270-276. University of Northern Iowa. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25103291 . Web. 20.10.2015.
Hadley, Louisa. Neo-Victorian Ficton and Historical Narrative: The Victorians and Us. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Print.
Heilmann, Ann, Llewellyn, M. Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1999-2009. London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2010. Print.
Heilmann, Ann. New Woman Fiction: Women Writing First-Wave Feminism. London: Macmillan, 2000. Print.
King, Jeannette. The Victorian Question in Contemporary Feminist Fiction. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print.
Quida. "The New Woman." The North American Review, vol. 158, No. 450 (May 1894), pp. 610-619.University of Northern
Iowa. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25103291.Web. 24.11.2015.
Pykett, Lyn. The ‘Improper Feminine’: The Women’s Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing. New York: Routledge,
2004. Print.
Reed, John R. Victorian Conventions. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1975. Print.
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature: The Essential Guide to the Lives and Works of Gothic Writers. New
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Willis, Chris. “‘Heaven defend me from political or highly-educated women!’: Packaging the New Woman for Mass Consumption
”. The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: Fin-de-Siècle Feminism. Angelique Richardson, Chris Willis, red., New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Print.