빅토리아 시대 출판시장과 여성성의 구성: 엘런 우드의 『이스트 린』 (Victorian Publishing Market and Construction of Femininity: Ellen Wood's East Lynne)

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초록

This paper examines the relationship between Ellen wood’s strategy in the Victorian publishing market and her construction of femininity in Victorian society and culture focusing on East Lynne. Wood tried to establish her career in the Victorian publishing market by taking her authorial persona as the Victorian ideal woman. Despite her outward conventionality, her career ran counter to the ideal woman which she endorsed. In addition, she led her readers to see the dark side of contemporary women’s lives.
In East Lynne the structural juxtaposition of the two main female characters, Isabel Vane and Barbara Hare, shows the cultural conflict which was originated from the contradictory discourses on women. It also leads the readers to reevaluate the conditions of women in the Victorian domestic and sociocultural space. Isabel has been replaced by Barbara, the moral guardian and the competent manager of Victorian middle class home. Wood presents Isabel as an object lesson of immoral behaviors to the readers. By using the intrusive and moralizing feminine narrator, Wood suggests the necessity of controlling passion and sexual desire for women. While the text endorses the Victorian age’s moral values and warns the readers of the dangerous passion, Wood also shows the gaps within contemporary ideologies on femininity, domesticity and maternity. In particular, she exposes that Isabel has been tyrannized within her own household by men or women. The narrator’s sympathetic response to Isabel’s sufferings and her maternal feelings also leads the readers to resist the fixed readings of the text.
Although the text shows the dangerous woman as a concept to aim at the purification of the domestic space and whole nation, it leads to destabilize the readers’ commitment to the middle class femininity of Victorian society. The polyphonic narrative structure and the mixture of sensationalism, melodrama and domestic fiction in East Lynne serves to expose the contradictions of the ideology of ideal femininity, even as Wood shows its re-establishing process.

영어초록

This paper examines the relationship between Ellen wood’s strategy in the Victorian publishing market and her construction of femininity in Victorian society and culture focusing on East Lynne. Wood tried to establish her career in the Victorian publishing market by taking her authorial persona as the Victorian ideal woman. Despite her outward conventionality, her career ran counter to the ideal woman which she endorsed. In addition, she led her readers to see the dark side of contemporary women’s lives.
In East Lynne the structural juxtaposition of the two main female characters, Isabel Vane and Barbara Hare, shows the cultural conflict which was originated from the contradictory discourses on women. It also leads the readers to reevaluate the conditions of women in the Victorian domestic and sociocultural space. Isabel has been replaced by Barbara, the moral guardian and the competent manager of Victorian middle class home. Wood presents Isabel as an object lesson of immoral behaviors to the readers. By using the intrusive and moralizing feminine narrator, Wood suggests the necessity of controlling passion and sexual desire for women. While the text endorses the Victorian age’s moral values and warns the readers of the dangerous passion, Wood also shows the gaps within contemporary ideologies on femininity, domesticity and maternity. In particular, she exposes that Isabel has been tyrannized within her own household by men or women. The narrator’s sympathetic response to Isabel’s sufferings and her maternal feelings also leads the readers to resist the fixed readings of the text.
Although the text shows the dangerous woman as a concept to aim at the purification of the domestic space and whole nation, it leads to destabilize the readers’ commitment to the middle class femininity of Victorian society. The polyphonic narrative structure and the mixture of sensationalism, melodrama and domestic fiction in East Lynne serves to expose the contradictions of the ideology of ideal femininity, even as Wood shows its re-establishing process.

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