From The Graphic, Women reading in the London Free Library, from Lady’s Pictorial, 1895)
For a Study Group at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at American University
Day: Nine Monday late mornings into early afternoon, 11:45 am to 1:15 pm
4801 Spring Valley Building, near American University main campus, Northwest, Washington DC
Dates: Classes start Sept 26th; last class Dec 5th, 2015; Oct 17th cancelled.
Dr Ellen Moody
Description of Course
We will ask what did a woman writer’s career look like, what genres and journalism women published, what were obstacles & advantages women experienced, like & unlike today. We’ll read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (gothic, 1818), Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (“condition of England” novel, 1849), George Eliot’s “Janet’s Repentance” (a Clerical Tale, domestic fiction, 1857) and Margaret Oliphant’s Hester: A Tale of Contemporary Life (1883, not quite a “new woman” novel). We’ll also read on-line excerpts from Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography (abolitionist, de Toqueville-like US travels), journalism at mid-century (from Caroline Norton’s English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century, 1854), and 1890s suffragette writing (Emmeline Pankhurst, “Freedom or Death,” 1913, and from an online Sylvia Pankhurst archive).
Required Texts in the order we’ll read them:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, ed. Maurice Hindle Penguin, 1992. ISBN: 0140433627
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life, ed Macdonald Daly. Penguin, 1996 ISBN: 0-140-43464-X
George Eliot, “Janet’s Repentance,” from Scenes of Clerical Life, ed. Jennifer Gribble Penguin, 1998. ISBN: 0-14-043638-3
Margaret Oliphant, Hester: A Story of Contemporary Life, introd. Jennifer Uglow. Penguin/Virago, 1984. ISBN: 0140161023
On-line:
Harriet Martineau, from her Autobiography (The Fourth Period). http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/vwwp/view?docId=VAB7103&doc.view=print
Caroline Norton, from English Laws for Women: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/norton/elfw/elfw.html
Emmeline Pankhurst, “Freedom or Death,” Great Speeches from The Guardian, 2007: https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/apr/27/greatspeeches1
Sylvia Pankhurst Archive: Selection, https://www.marxists.org/archive/pankhurst-sylvia/index.htm
Margaret Oliphant, “Old Lady Mary.”
http://www.loyalbooks.com/download/text/Old-Lady-Mary-by-Mrs-Oliphant.txt
Or alternatively
“The Open Door:”: a Gaslight text
Illustrations for Gaskell’s Mary Barton
Jem saving a man from the fire
Mary to Jem: “Oh, Jem, Take me Home” (1905, Ivor Symes)
Format: Study group meetings will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion (essays mentioned will be sent by attachment or are on-line).
Sept 26th: Writing and other careers for 19th century women. Shelley’s Frankenstein (please have read the first third by this day).
Oct 3rd: For this week although we have no class, please have read the second third of Frankenstein. Holiday
Oct 10th: Please finish Frankenstein for this day.
Oct 17th: Outside class: read the first third of Mary Barton, Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, Part IV, Section 1 and 2, pp 206-17. 2 essays on Martineau’s life and early writing, and on O’Flinn’s essay on Frankenstein sent. Class cancelled.
Oct 24th: Mary Shelley and Harriet Martineau’s career, we begin Gaskell and Mary Barton (begun)
Oct 31st: Mary Barton; Bodenheimer on “Private Griefs and Public Acts in Mary Barton” (essay); Sections 1 and 2 of Caroline Norton’s Defense of Woman, the ODNB life; finish Mary Barton.
Nov 7th: Mary Barton, we move onto Caroline Norton and other cases (law & custom); for next time read E Gruner on “Mother Plotting” novels by Ann Bronte, Ellen Wood and Caroline Norton and “Janet’s Repentance”
Nov 14th: Norton, Rosina Bulwer-Lytton’s Blighted Life; Eliot’s life; the problem of “Janet’s Repentance” (from Clerical Tales) in context. Read for next time Oliphant’s Hester, ODNB on Bulwer-Lytton, Oliphant, MA thesis “Bruised, Battered Women in 19th century Fiction” by Wingert.
Nov 21st: Eliot’s life, career and her books: close reading “Janet’s Repentance.” Finish reading Hester.
Nov 28th: Finish Eliot; the women’s suffrage movement. Begin Oliphant and Hester; Oliphant’s ghost stories and Autobiography. Read for next time Oliphant’s “Old Lady Mary” and Lewis C. Roberts, “The Production of a Female Hand: professional writing and career of Geraldine Jewsbury;” Mary Burnan, “Heroines at the Piano: Women and music in 19th century fiction” (essays sent by attachment).
Dec 5th: Oliphant’s Hester and her answer to Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” Tentative final thoughts and women of letters in the 19th century.
A photograph of Margaret Oliphant when young, shortly after she married (1852)
A quick drawing of George Eliot, late in life, leaving a London concert (1879)
Suggested supplementary reading:
Bennett, Betty T. Mary Diana Dods: A Gentleman and Scholar. Johns Hopkins, 1991. One of Mary Shelley’s close friends.
Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. The Real Life of Mary Ann Evans aka George Eliot, Her Letters and Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell, 1994. The best.
Broomfield, Andrea and Sally Mitchell, ed. Non-fiction Prose by Victorian Woman: An Anthology. NY: Garland, 1996.\
Bulwer-Lytton, Rosina. A Blighted Life: A True Story, introd Marie Mulvey Roberts. Bristol: Thoemmes, 1994.
Coghill, Mrs Harry aka Annie Walker. The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. M.O.W. Oliphant. NY: Dodd, 1899. Nothing better on Oliphant than this.
Clarke, Norma. Ambitious Heights: Writing, Friendship, Love: The Jewsbury Sisters. Felicia Hemans, and Jane Carlyle. London: Routledge, 1990.
Mackenzie, Midge. Shoulder to Shoulder: A Documentary. NY: Knopf, 1975.
Flint, Kate. The Woman Reader, 1837-41. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002.
Harman, Barbara Leah and Susan Meyers, edd. The New Nineteenth Century” Feminist Readings of Underread Victoria Novels. NY: Garland, 1996.
Lupack, Barbara, ed. Nineteenth Century Women at the Movies: Adapting Classic Women’s Fiction to Film. Ohio: Bowling Green State UP, 1999.
Maroula, Joanou and June Purvis, edd. The Women’s Suffrage Movement: new Feminist Perspectives. Manchester UP, 1998.
Merman, Dorothy. Godiva’s Ride: Women of letters in England, 1830-1880. Indiana University Press, 1993.
Mill, John Stuart. On the Subjection of Women (1861). Broadview Press, 2000.
Peterson, Linda ed. The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women’s Writing. Cambridge, 2015.
—————-. Traditions of Women’s Autobiography: Poetics and Politics of Life Writing. Univ Press of Virginia, 1999.
Robins, Elizabeth, The Convert: suffragette and new women novels. A blog: https://reveriesunderthesignofausten.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/elizabeth-robinss-the-convert-excellent-suffragette-novel/
Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. London: Picador, 2000. Superb, original research.
Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. NY: New American Library, 1987. Short version of the life, insightful.
Stoneman, Patsy. Elizabeth Gaskell. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987. Very good short life and works.
Sturridge, Lisa. Bleak House: Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction. Athens: Ohio UP, 2005.
Uglow, Jenny. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1993. The best.
————. George Eliot. NY: Virago, 1987. Short life.
Webb, R. K. Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian. NY: Columbia UP, 1960.
Williams, Merryn. Margaret Oliphant: A Critical Biography. NY: St. Martin’s, 1987. Excellent.
Wingert, Lee. Battered, Bruised and Abused Women: Domestic Violence in 19th century Fiction. Ph.D. Thesis, Iowa State University. On-line pdf.
Films:
Shoulder to Shoulder. Script: Ken Taylor, Alan Plater, Midge Mackenzie. Dir. Waris Hussein, Moira Armstrong. Perf: Sian Philips, Angela Downs, Judy Parfitt, Georgia Brown. Six 75 minute episodes available on YouTube. BBC, 1974.
Suffragette. Script. Abi Morgan. Dir. Sarah Gavron. Perf: Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Marie Duffey. Ruby, Pathe, Film4, BFI, 2014
Talking Books: On CD:
For Frankenstein, Gildart Jackson the reader (Dreamscape, available at Downpour)
For Mary Barton, Juliet Stevenson the reader (Cover-to-cover, available at their site)
Ralph Hedley, Seeking Situations (1904)
Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two 
Looks like a fascinating course, Ellen, and on a subject that definitely needs more exposure.
Tyler Tichelaar
I was somewhat thwarted because I also wanted to choose books a little off the beaten track, like Oliphant’s own autobiography, but there is no good edition any more. When I’ve tried to an unusual perspective (outside graduate school, this is unusual, sadly) then I find it’s hard to find available inexpensive texts.
But it’s a try and if it goes well maybe I’ll find some more or do others: like Gaskell’s Life of Bronte. Thanks for this endorsement.
That’s too bad there isn’t a good edition of Oliphant’s bio – I have it on my to read list.
Diane Kendig: Have you read the dual biography of Mary Wollenstonecraft and Mary Shelley, Romantic Outlaws? Nothing new there, and I felt it could have been so much more, but it was interesting to pingpong back and forth between the two lives.
Me: I was disappointed for the reason you’ve suggested: nothing new. More: it was at times so popularly written I felt it was misleading. Muriel Spark’s much older book, short and pithy, gives the right proportion and has more on Mary Shelley than many more pages in Romantic Outlaws.
Diane: There is a whole stable of women in New England writing such books: on Anne Bradstreet, on the Salem witch trial. And they get great press, lots of interviews, which is why the popular writing style: to get the popularity, and insight be damned.
Me: I’ve discovered that Mary Shelley is that rare woman writer about whom too many biographies are written — like Jane Austen. Alas, they stop, just about, when Percy Bysshe died. There is a type of writer I’d call a woman professional biographer and some of them make it a trade by being upbeat, not disquieting, nothing unexpected you see. Another obstacle: it’s hard to write an original work of this type every other year.
Diane: Boy, no kidding. I just read a very lengthy biography of Queen Isabella, and you’d never know that she saw to the torture of hundreds during the Inquisition, and when the big “I” word comes up, it’s all just because she loves her Catholic faith. (Sorry to go on here, but I haven’t had anyone to talk to about these.)
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