Defying Superfluity: The Representation of Spinsterhood in Mid-Victorian Literary Fiction by Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens

Persistent URL of this record https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3194057

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Engelse taal en cultuur (BA)

Zijverden, Anke van (2022)

Defying Superfluity: The Representation of Spinsterhood in Mid-Victorian Literary Fiction by Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens

Bachelor thesis | Engelse taal en cultuur (BA)

This thesis discusses the representation of spinsters in mid-Victorian literary fiction, examining how different authors deviate from the negative view of these unmarried women and respond to the contemporary debate on their ‘superfluity’. It analyses the representation of spinsterhood in three novels from the mid-Victorian period: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford (1853); Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853); and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1861). This thesis argues that these authors take spinsters out of their marginal space, and present them at the heart of their texts. Moreover, by granting spinsters a central position and considerable power, these mid-Victorian authors validate their existence, oppose their ‘superfluity’, and demonstrate that women can be unmarried and independent instead of relying on men.

Mid-Victorian literary fiction

Spinster

The 'surplus woman' debate

1851 census