Journal of Victorian Culture最新文献

{"title":"War at t’ Parsonage: The Brontës and Military Conflict","authors":"Simon Avery","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac043","url":null,"abstract":"In 2015, the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth curated an important exhibition to commemorate the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo and the Brontë family’s engagement with its politics and legacies. Bringing together military-orientated books that were owned by the family (such as Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon), drawings and watercolour paintings by the children (such as Branwell’s disturbing depiction of conflict simply entitled Terror), and intriguing artefacts from the Museum’s collection (including a bust of Wellington and a fragment of Napoleon’s original coffin which was given to Charlotte by Monsieur Heger), the exhibition beautifully depicted the multiple ways in which Haworth’s most famous family were fascinated by, and responded to, ideas of war and conflict throughout their lives and careers. The exhibition was housed in a smallish room separated from the main exhibition area, which created both an intense viewing experience – the walls and cases were full of objects and information – and suggested that, after our immersion in the domestic and literary lives of the Brontës in the key exhibition rooms, we also need to bear in mind how engaged the family were in the wider world and in debates about history and socio-political transformation. For as Terry Eagleton neatly phrased it in Myths of Power, his ground-breaking Marxist study of the sisters’ mature writings, ‘the Brontës lived through an era of disruptive social change, and lived that disruption at a particularly vulnerable point’.1 The instigator of this exhibition was Emma Butcher, whose important research on the Brontë family’s understanding and manipulation of military conflict is the subject of her first monograph, The Brontës and War: Fantasy and Conflict in Charlotte and Branwell Brontë’s Youthful Writings. Taking as its key focus the Glass Town and Angria sagas which were developed by Charlotte and Branwell across the 1820s and 1830s, Butcher’s engaging analysis builds upon the work of critics like Christine Alexander, Heather Glen, and Victor Neufeldt, who have established the centrality of the siblings’ early writings to their literary careers.2 By focusing on a specific topic running throughout these writings, Butcher demonstrates again how fertile the material is for serious critical consideration. For in addition to providing some of the foundations for the siblings’ mature writings, this youthful work effectively reveals the","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46913930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall”: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Version 2.0","authors":"Shantanu Majee","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac041","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48583363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Killing the Letter: Alternate Literacies and Orthographic Distortions in Jude the Obscure","authors":"Louise Creechan","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac034","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 When Jude the Obscure (1895) was published as a single volume novel, Hardy added the biblical epithet ‘the letter killeth’ to the title page. In Jude and across his works, Hardy revels in moments in which literacy seems to undo itself. This article traces Hardy’s attempts to ‘kill the letter’ through non-standard engagements with orthography as part of a larger proto-modernist approach that destabilizes the fixity of meaning. There are several concerns linked to the growing primacy of literacy that appear time and again in Hardy’s novels, specifically: the alternative literacies of the lesser educated, semiotic multiplicities, and the transformative potential of spelling mistakes. I suggest that Hardy’s treatment of these themes demonstrates a sustained effort to ‘kill the letter’ and challenge the assumption of progress made by the various educational reforms that had taken place in the latter half of the nineteenth century.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41378982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The ABCs of Fame Culture in an ‘Age of Reform’","authors":"Joshua Dight","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac040","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42543281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Performing Plainness in Sarah Stickney Ellis’s Friends at Their Own Fireside: Or, Pictures of the Private Life of the People Called Quakers","authors":"M. Albassam","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac042","url":null,"abstract":"While Quaker plainness has encapsulated multiple positive meanings such as piety, worldliness and even human equality, many were attentive to its rootedness in social discipline and surveillance. Drawing on nineteenth-century assessments of Quaker plainness, both in journals and fiction, this article explores the dynamics of self-fashioning and performance that are exposed to be an important part of these bodily experiences of Quaker plainness. Plainness is not only self-disciplining but also controls the social and visual dynamics of displaying, seeing, and interpreting the body. Sarah Stickney Ellis’s Friends at Their Own Fireside: Or, Pictures of the Private Life of the People Called Quakers (1858) provides an intriguing account of the private experiences of plain Quaker women and their resistance to forms of social control and scrutiny. I use the context of this novel to examine the subjective experience of Quaker women as wearers of plain dress in ways that expose their agency and involvement in observing and adhering to these codes rather than completely or obliviously succumbing to social authority and control. The exploration of female plainness in this novel, as I will argue, confounds the notions of discipline attached to Quaker plainness, and instead brings to light women’s agency in navigating their identity and personal space in such a context.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44160714","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Inconsistency is the Key: Unravelling the Relationship between Victorian Penny Fiction and Radical Politics","authors":"Anna Gasperini","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac038","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45214983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Humbug and a ‘Welsh Hindoo’: A Small History of Begging, Race and Language in Mid-nineteenth Century Liverpool","authors":"M. Johnes","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac033","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In 1849, a Liverpool newspaper printed a letter about an encounter with a lascar who was selling hymn sheets. The same newspaper had recently reported the arrest of someone similar for drunkenness and the letter writer, a migrant from Wales, confronted the hymn seller angrily in Welsh. To his surprise, the man responded in the same language and eventually confessed to being from Anglesey rather than Bombay. Much about the incident is unclear. Had the hymn seller coloured his skin? Why did he regard passing as an Indian as a useful sales technique? Why was the letter writer angry and why did he confront the man in Welsh? Did the incident even happen? Attempting to answer such questions can provide pointers to much wider historical issues. A ‘small history’ of this incident offers an opportunity to explore the dynamics of class, language and race in the middle of the nineteenth century. The incident reveals the anxieties the middle classes had around their position and whether their goodwill was being exploited by the poor. It points towards the impact of racism on people of colour and the significance of ethnicity for white migrants too. The incident also illustrates how the working classes and people of colour were not without agency, however they were thought about by those whose attitudes and power shaped their lives. Yet all these interpretations rest on a degree of supposition and the article concludes that historians too can engage in a degree of deception in their writings.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47548183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘A man greatly beloved’ and Immortalized in opus sectile Powell & Sons, Monument to Robert Claudius Billing (1899)","authors":"Jasmine Allen","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac025","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The alabaster wall monument to Robert Claudius Billing, Suffragan Bishop of Bedford, placed in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral, commemorates the life and service of a Victorian cleric known for his work in the overcrowded parishes of east London. Supplied by Powell and Sons, a London-based glassmaking firm that made stained glass and mosaics as well as reredoses and tablets, the monument echoes the architectural style and decoration of the iconic building in which it is placed, as well as showcasing a new vitreous mosaic material known as opus sectile that the firm innovated and marketed as suitable for both wall and floor decoration. The striking opus sectile portrait of Billing preserves an image of the deceased, and together with the accompanying epitaph demonstrates the affection and high esteem in which he was held in the Diocese of London and beyond.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47886734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sculpture and Faith at St Paul’s Cathedral, c. 1796-1914: W. F. Woodington, The Gospel of St Luke (1862): Enlisting the Bible","authors":"M. Giebelhausen","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac022","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42504655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Vishnu-Come-Lately: John Bacon’s Monument to William Jones (1799)","authors":"S. Monks","doi":"10.1093/jvcult/vcac027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac027","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article considers John Bacon’s marble monument to one of eighteenth-century British colonialism’s most important protagonists, William Jones (1746–1794). A prodigious scholar of Indian languages, religions, and laws, as well as a Supreme Court judge in Bengal, Jones epitomized early orientalism, promoting the study of Indian cultures as a means of facilitating the East India Company’s ‘governmental’ regulation of colonial subjects in its own interests. However, by the time this monument was erected, that vision of British India was becoming a thing of the past, gradually replaced by a more self-consciously imperializing, Anglicizing approach. Reading the monument both with and against the grain, this article argues that the tensions inherent in the orientalist attitude towards India are registered within the monument itself, especially in the relationship between its statue of Jones and the Hindu imagery on its pedestal. For while that imagery pays tribute to Jones, especially through its iconographical depiction of Vishnu, the Hindu god of justice and protection, it is dominated by the undemonstrative yet emphatically present figure of an Indian woman, seemingly the monument’s sole visual reference to a colonized human subject. Existing somewhere between human and sculpture, and between human and divine, she resists meaning and knowledge, troubling the monument’s semantic clarity and commemorative purpose.","PeriodicalId":43921,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Victorian Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44018786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}