Date Thesis Awarded
5-2008
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
English
Advisor
Deborah Denenholz Morse
Committee Members
Terry L. Meyers
Kathrin Levitan
Kim Wheatley
Abstract
Marriage gives the Victorian heroine possibilities, authority, and knowledge, while also presenting the heroine with new challenges and concerns. The journey between maiden and matron is a time of enormous upheaval in which the heroine must transform her identity and prepare for new domestic and sexual roles. My thesis explores this liminal stage between girlhood and womanhood in the Victorian novel. To support my thesis, I am using Anthony Trollope's He Knew He Was Right, Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend and George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, novels that directly engage with Victorian ideas about gender, marriage and sexuality.
Recommended Citation
Harvey, Margaret Patricia, "From Maiden to Matron: Victorian Heroines and the Creation of Domestic Identity" (2008). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 824.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/824
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Comments
Thesis is part of Honors ETD pilot project, 2008-2013. Migrated from Dspace in 2016.