B Victorian Literature II / British Modernism Flashcards
(13 cards)
Victorian Literature II
1860s
- the decade of ‘sensationalism’
-> sensation novel, sensation drama
sensation:
- element of shock, breaking taboos on sexuality and violence
- strong impression/feeling
- physical element
sub-genres of Victorian novels
- sensation
- the fin de Siecle
Victorian Literature
sensation novels
- secret hidden in a relationship family ( similarity with the growing genre of detective ficition)
- female characters gravely transgressing agains the accepted feminine role (e.g. murder, bigamy)
- complex plot twists as secret is gradually revealed
- order is restored in the end by removal of the offender (often combined with insanity)
- re-affirmation of the middle-class family and the masculine order
cultural context
- read by both working and middle class
- mirrowr social fears that womaen may no longer be contained by the role of the ‘angel in the house’
Victorian Literature
The Fin de Siecle
- intensification of 1860s anxieties about ‘new’ times and the threat they constitute to the Victorian value system
- ‘sensational’ elements have definitely arrived in the ‘literary’ novel
Dracula by Bram Stoker
as a fin de Siecle-Novel
- highly complex narrative structure
-> mixture of different text types (letters, diaries, etc) and a multiplicitiy of different first person narrators, often limited in outlook and/or knowledge
-> sometimes use of new technology in the recording process (e.g. phonograph, telgraph, typewriter)
-> striving for authenticity as each narrator narrates from first hand experience - again, combined with neo-gothic elements (supernatural forces with new meanings) especially the figure of vampire
-> image already present in Wuthering Heights
-> vampires biting on the neck was introduced for the first time in this novel (before they bit the chest)
Dracula
plot
Dracula is a Gothic horror novel that follows the battle between Count Dracula, a centuries-old vampire from Transylvania, and a group of people determined to stop his spread of evil to England.
The story begins with Jonathan Harker, a young English solicitor, traveling to Dracula’s castle in Transylvania to help the Count purchase property in London. Once there, Harker realizes he is a prisoner, and that Dracula is a vampire.
Dracula travels to England, bringing death and fear. He begins to prey on Lucy Westenra, a friend of Harker’s fiancée Mina Murray. Despite the efforts of Dr. Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey Morris, Lucy dies and becomes a vampire herself. The group, guided by the wise Professor Abraham Van Helsing, destroys her to free her soul.
The team then unites to hunt Dracula and protect Mina, whom he has begun to corrupt. Using journals, letters, and newspaper clippings, they track him back to Transylvania. In a final confrontation, they destroy Dracula, freeing Mina from his influence.
Modernism in Britain
- most representative genre: short story
relevant characteristics:
- focus on isolated event/scene (‘medias in res’ beginning and open ending)
- aim of recording a momentary strong impressions (Poe’s ‘unity of effect’)
- foregrounding questions of perception and its literary realization
James Joyce
Dubliners, Eveline
- attempts at recording different but finally similar scenes of Dublin life
- stories complement each other but do not add up to a coherent whole
- very negative image of Dublin and its effect on its inhabitants: stasis, (mental) paralyses
Eveline
James Joyce
plot
Eveline is a young woman living in Dublin who feels trapped in a life of routine and duty. She cares for her abusive father and younger siblings, fulfilling a promise to her dying mother. She dreams of escape and a better life.
Eveline plans to run away with her lover, Frank, a sailor who offers her the chance to start anew in Buenos Aires. As the moment to leave arrives, she becomes overwhelmed by fear, guilt, and uncertainty. At the dock, she freezes and is unable to board the ship with Frank.
The story ends with Eveline watching him leave without her, paralyzed and emotionally numb, symbolizing her inability to break free from the emotional and societal forces that bind her.
James Joyce
Eveline
narrative style
- the narrator sets the scene, provides a detailed description and sets the tone and mood
- Eveline is the focalizer
- third person limited perspective
-> text is controlled by the narrator but focalizer is Eveline
Virginia Woolf
Kew Gardens
plot
Kew Gardens is a modernist short story set in the famous botanical gardens in London. It presents a series of brief vignettes of different people walking through the gardens on a summer day, observed from the perspective of a flower bed.
As the narrative moves between a snail crawling through the grass and various passersby—a married couple, two men (one possibly mentally unwell), a young couple, and others—it explores the fleeting, inner thoughts of each person. Their reflections touch on love, memory, war, aging, and the passage of time.
There is no traditional plot; instead, the story captures the rhythm of life, thought, and perception. Woolf blends nature, human consciousness, and time into a stream-of-consciousness meditation on ephemerality and continuity.
Virginia Woolf
Kew Gardens
infos
- Woolf intensifies subjectivity compared with the early Joyce
- context: ‘Bloomsbury’ circle of writers, poets, philosophers and artists
-> highly unconventional life-style for the time
Woolfs charatceristic use of the short story format:
- very detailed descripitions
- focus on seemingly unimportant progression
- a total denial of narrative continuity. no plot progression
-> extreme intensification of the classical short story’s focus on one important event in the protagonist’s life
Virginia Woolf
Kew Gardens
narration
- omniscient narrator: the narrator knows all the thoughts, feelings and actions of every character in the story
- narrative situation is not stable
-> most of the narration is from within the flowerbed, but some is from outside the flowerbed
Key characteristics of (British) Modernism
- fragmentation / discontinuity
- foregrounding subjective perception
- disillusionment / (sense of) isolation
- formal innovation / turning away from literary tradition(s)
- trancending established genre / media boundaries)
