Book Description

The purpose of this book is to analyse how marginality is experienced by ́the Other ́ (women, orphans, children, labourers) in Victorian literature and how these individuals succeed in transgressing borders or attempt at doing this. The Other uses many strategies to climb the social ladder and to preserve a certain social position: marrying into a superior social class, subverting the master ́s position and usurping him, acquiring education and knowledge to become superior, tempting the master into passionate love affairs, approaching interpersonal communication, or staying true to one ́s own self, defending ones moral values, accepting lessons of domesticity, becoming an ́angel in the house ́, travelling to unknown territories, exchanging reality for fictional worlds, and so on. On their way of achieving their goals, the Others are shown in different spaces which contribute to the construction of their identity. Our survey unfolds the complexity of the marginalization experience of the Victorian Others, their individual or collective mentality and their agency. Drawing on Otherness from six Victorian novels, our book takes an interpretative approach. The analysis of spaces revealed how the positionality of women or orphans or labourers in social hierarchies of gender, race and legal status influences and even affects their legitimacy or access to a superior position. Their agency has not always overcome their marginalization embedded within the structure of society, but at least temporarily and gradually it has improved the women ́s living conditions by being rewarded with a beautiful family or by earning a living thus eluding the dependency on a man. By contextualizing the six novels into the Victorian Age, our survey will hopefully contribute to the understanding of women and of their attempts at emancipation by demonstrating how their positionality impacts their agency and their personality.