Portraits de Résistantes (1847-1875) : la femme face au système patriarcal dans quelques romans victoriens

The analysis bears on the literary representations of women’s resistance to patriarchal figures, drawing from a wide-ranging corpus. Passive resistance is depicted—and often denounced—in Thackeray and Eliot as a pattern of behaviour imposed by a world that expects women to resist male desire in cour...

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Main Author: Jacqueline Fromonot
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2012-06-01
Series:Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/cve/1634
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author Jacqueline Fromonot
author_facet Jacqueline Fromonot
author_sort Jacqueline Fromonot
collection DOAJ
description The analysis bears on the literary representations of women’s resistance to patriarchal figures, drawing from a wide-ranging corpus. Passive resistance is depicted—and often denounced—in Thackeray and Eliot as a pattern of behaviour imposed by a world that expects women to resist male desire in courtship and to master their own impulses in society, in the name of decorum and decency. Nonetheless, this skilful suppression of feeling paradoxically proves at times an aid to secret resistance, thanks to which women only seem to obey. More active ways of resisting are based on lying and deception, a mise en abyme of literary creation itself—a signature in Thackeray and Meredith. However, the freedom women obtain from such dissent is doomed, as resistance remains covert and does not result in overt claims likely to challenge the patriarchal system. Yet, some novelists stage dramatic forms of frontal attack and resistance, in which women choose heroic postures by emphatically rejecting the male-dominated world, like Dickens’s Estella in Great Expectations. Greatly influenced by the sensational genre, Trollope, on his part, creates a wilful character resisting her father in The Way We Live Now. However, the eponymous heroine of the earliest novel of the corpus, Jane Eyre, proves strikingly ahead of her time in her systematic defiant refusal of all forms of patriarchal domination—and her overall success in doing so.
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spelling doaj-art-6278ce16b4664452aaaa07d07ef58f422025-01-30T10:21:32ZengPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéeCahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens0220-56102271-61492012-06-0175698010.4000/cve.1634Portraits de Résistantes (1847-1875) : la femme face au système patriarcal dans quelques romans victoriensJacqueline FromonotThe analysis bears on the literary representations of women’s resistance to patriarchal figures, drawing from a wide-ranging corpus. Passive resistance is depicted—and often denounced—in Thackeray and Eliot as a pattern of behaviour imposed by a world that expects women to resist male desire in courtship and to master their own impulses in society, in the name of decorum and decency. Nonetheless, this skilful suppression of feeling paradoxically proves at times an aid to secret resistance, thanks to which women only seem to obey. More active ways of resisting are based on lying and deception, a mise en abyme of literary creation itself—a signature in Thackeray and Meredith. However, the freedom women obtain from such dissent is doomed, as resistance remains covert and does not result in overt claims likely to challenge the patriarchal system. Yet, some novelists stage dramatic forms of frontal attack and resistance, in which women choose heroic postures by emphatically rejecting the male-dominated world, like Dickens’s Estella in Great Expectations. Greatly influenced by the sensational genre, Trollope, on his part, creates a wilful character resisting her father in The Way We Live Now. However, the eponymous heroine of the earliest novel of the corpus, Jane Eyre, proves strikingly ahead of her time in her systematic defiant refusal of all forms of patriarchal domination—and her overall success in doing so.https://journals.openedition.org/cve/1634Jane Eyreactive resistanceDickens (Charles)dramatic resistanceEliot (George)Estella
spellingShingle Jacqueline Fromonot
Portraits de Résistantes (1847-1875) : la femme face au système patriarcal dans quelques romans victoriens
Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
Jane Eyre
active resistance
Dickens (Charles)
dramatic resistance
Eliot (George)
Estella
title Portraits de Résistantes (1847-1875) : la femme face au système patriarcal dans quelques romans victoriens
title_full Portraits de Résistantes (1847-1875) : la femme face au système patriarcal dans quelques romans victoriens
title_fullStr Portraits de Résistantes (1847-1875) : la femme face au système patriarcal dans quelques romans victoriens
title_full_unstemmed Portraits de Résistantes (1847-1875) : la femme face au système patriarcal dans quelques romans victoriens
title_short Portraits de Résistantes (1847-1875) : la femme face au système patriarcal dans quelques romans victoriens
title_sort portraits de resistantes 1847 1875 la femme face au systeme patriarcal dans quelques romans victoriens
topic Jane Eyre
active resistance
Dickens (Charles)
dramatic resistance
Eliot (George)
Estella
url https://journals.openedition.org/cve/1634
work_keys_str_mv AT jacquelinefromonot portraitsderesistantes18471875lafemmefaceausystemepatriarcaldansquelquesromansvictoriens