Killing the angel: George Eliot, Virginia Wolff and the angel in the house

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dc.contributor.advisorMcCallum, Pamela M.
dc.contributor.authorScott, Barbara J.
dc.date.accessioned2005-07-21T19:41:23Z
dc.date.available2005-07-21T19:41:23Z
dc.date.issued1989
dc.descriptionBibliography: p. 132-137.en
dc.description.abstractBoth Virginia Woolf and George Eliot have been the subject of a great deal of feminist criticism, and in the process have frequently been attacked for not taking up in their fiction the feminist concerns that both have presented in some of their non-fiction. In examining Middlemarch and To the Lighthouse , this thesis takes the position that Eliot and Woolf in fact did much toward subverting patriarchal conceptions of women particularly through their treatment of the chief ideal of femininity during the Victorian age: the Angel in the House , who was eulogized in Coventry Patmore's poem of the same name. The Angel was by definition submissive and selfless or ego-less; lacking ambition and accepting her inherent inferiority to the male, she found her total expression and fulfillment in the family. The question of whether woman was inherently submissive and self-sacrificing and in all ways inferior to man was especially crucial to the female artist , for the Angel was the very antithesis of the artistic character: the Angel's chief characteristic is selflessness; to write at all is to claim a subject position at odds with the notion of selflessness. This thesis contends that through revision , subversion and deconstruction, Eliot and Woolf probe the limits and possibilities of the Angel as an ideal of womanhood, revealing not only commitment to the major feminist concerns of their day, but even subversion of dominant patriarchal constructs. The thesis also explores the ways in which Eliot and Woolf's strategies vary because of the different assumptions about identity and the nature of reality associated with realism and modernism.
dc.format.extentvii, 137 leaves ; 30 cm.en
dc.identifier.citationScott, B. J. (1989). Killing the angel: George Eliot, Virginia Wolff and the angel in the house (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/13387en_US
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/13387
dc.identifier.isbn0315543221en
dc.identifier.lccPN 98 W6 S36 1989en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1880/21755
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Calgaryen
dc.publisher.placeCalgaryen
dc.rightsUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subject.lccPN 98 W6 S36 1989en
dc.subject.lcshFeminist literary criticism
dc.subject.lcshEliot, George, 1819-1880 - Criticism and interpretation
dc.subject.lcshWoolf, Virginia, 1882-1941 - Criticism and interpretation
dc.titleKilling the angel: George Eliot, Virginia Wolff and the angel in the house
dc.typemaster thesis
thesis.degree.disciplineEnglish
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Calgary
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Arts (MA)
ucalgary.item.requestcopytrue
ucalgary.thesis.accessionTheses Collection 58.002:Box 717 520541507
ucalgary.thesis.notesoffsiteen
ucalgary.thesis.uarcreleaseyen
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