Anderson, Melissa Jeanne (Author)
Richards, Robert John
University of Chicago
Edition Details: Advisor: Richards, Robert J.
Physical Details: 218 pp.
Language: English
This project explores the evolution of the concept of heredity in the Victorian novel and how this concept helped shape both the novelistic depiction of women and family life and also the form and structure of certain domestic novels. By starting with some of Charles Dickens's later texts, continuing through key George Eliot novels, and ending with the work of George Meredith, we see the concept of heredity develop narratively as theories of evolution, natural selection, eugenics, and related ideas were developed scientifically. In addition, we witness the concept of heredity mobilized and adapted to question Victorian beliefs about the family, marriage, and women's roles. Finally, we discover how novelists used contemporary work in genealogy, eugenics, and hybridity in an attempt to grasp at the meaning of heredity and expose its subversive potential as well as its potentially disturbing implications. Most of the novels discussed in this project contain deep narrative tensions that have proven problematic to readers and critics since they were first published, and these tensions seem to be linked to the cultural complexities theories of heredity introduced to Victorian constructions of the family. These scientifically-based theories were significant for certain key Victorian novelists since they were themselves based on a narrative of change, they could be stretched to allow questioning of the centrality of the male in familial history, and they were fluid enough for authors to imbue them with explanatory power beyond their original boundaries. The novelists examined in this work-Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and George Meredith-did not participate openly in the scientific debates of the late Victorian period, but all three were well-enough versed in contemporary scientific work to mobilize these concepts in key texts about the role of women in the Victorian family. By looking closely at how the concept of heredity functions in key Victorian novels, we can gain new insight into how they function as texts and their role in the changing form of the novel in the late nineteenth-century, and we can better understand the rapidly changing context of the woman in late Victorian culture.
...MoreDescription Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. (2012). ProQuest Doc. ID 1027145672.
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