The Woman in White: The Portrait of a Victorian Artist

( Son Younghee ) 한국근대영미소설학회 2016 근대 영미소설 Vol.23 No.2

In The Woman in White, Walter Hartright’s precarious class and gender status provides an impetus to restructure Victorian class hierarchy and art patronage. Hartright exploits the emergence of urban working class citizens for his professional success and embraces a new mode of mass production of art for them. While the mass production of art opens up the consumption of art for working class patrons, the standard of art is affected by the dangers of mediocrity and vulgarity. Despite his active agency to restructure the Victorian class hierarchy and art patronage system, Hartright is constrained by his allegiance to Victorian ideology and creates his gender identity as a middle class artist through the exclusion of talented women. His demarcation between the public sphere of art and literature, and the private sphere of home-making forces Laura to stop drawing, and Marian to change from an intelligent writer into a child-rearing Virgin Mary figure. Hartright’s ownership of Limmeridge heralds a new modern era, in which professional bourgeois artists diligently producing art commodities for working class patrons have replaced traditional artists serving aristocratic patrons. The hegemony of bourgeois artists with a middle class work ethic is symbolized by the replacement of Raphael’s static image of Madonna and Child with the dynamic image of little Hartright.

Decadence, Fabrication of the Fìn-de-siècle Salomé, and Oscar Wilde’s Salomé

Son, Younghee 한국중앙영어영문학회 2018 영어영문학연구 Vol.60 No.2

This essay explores the construction of Salomé in Wilde’s Salomé as the degenerate Jewish femme fatale, her transformation into a covert male transvestite, John the Baptist’s affiliation with fìn-de-siècle decadents, and his alliance with Herod against Salomé and Herodias. Drawing on Huysmans’s reading of Moreau’s Salomé, Wilde carries on with constructing Salomé’s image as the perverse femme fatale echoing the male decadents’ misogynous and anti-Semitic discourses. His text generates the Jewish femme fatale indulging in Oriental promiscuity, which brings Salomania into vogue throughout Europe. Wilde’s depiction of John the Baptist was influenced by Pater’s worship of Da Vinci’s portrayal of the feminized prophet, which embeds a cryptic code of homosexuality within the play. This secretly changes the cultural stereotype of the Jewish femme fatale into a male transvestite and hints at Wilde’s challenge to the taboos on homosexuality. However, the encryption of homosexuality also helps Salomé reveal Herod’s alliance with the Baptist, who acts as a misogynous male decadent like Wilde himself, and their antifeminism. Thus, Wilde’s Salomé turns out to be a self-contradictory text where the anti-patriarchal challenge to sexual taboos collides with patriarchal notions of women.

Gender, Class, and Romantic Idealization of Women in Thomas Hardy's Lesser-Known Novels

Younghee Son 19세기영어권문학회 2010 19세기 영어권 문학 Vol.14 No.1

In this study I propose that the narrator's sympathy with lower class heroes in Hardy's novels helps him to understand Victorian women's marginalized position but his male identity also makes the heroines sexually objectified and romantically idealized. The narrator in A Pair of Blue Eyes, assuming the identity of a lower class male, takes sides with Stephen, the son of a stone mason, when he encounters class prejudices and discrimination from a higher society. In contrast, he initially reveals strong misogynistic views on Elfride, an upper middle-class lady, and uses belittling terms for her. However, his conventional views on women gradually weaken as he becomes aware of women's marginalized position in society. However, the narrator's male identity also contributes to the sexual objectification and romantic idealization of the heroines, bringing about the dichotomy of the ethereal Avice-type and the fleshly Marcia-type. The ethereal Avice-type is sexually objectified and romantically idealized at the cost of the fleshly real women like Arabella and Marcia who mainly function as the foil for Sue and the three Avices. However, in The Well-Beloved, all three Avices, overtly or covertly, resist being reduced to Pierston's idealized ethereal Well-Beloved. Pierston's quest for beauty and three generations of Avices parodies the Platonic-Shelleyan romanticism and with his final loss of love and artistic creativity Hardy wished to reveal its ludicrousness and emptiness. After having sexually objectified and idealized women throughout his novels, Hardy, like Pierston, seems to finally awaken to the falseness of the dichotomy of women and accept them as they are, with their imperfection and spontaneous sexuality.

Spectral Shadows of the Oxford Movement and Aestheticism in Jude the Obscure

( Younghee Son ) 한국근대영미소설학회 2017 근대 영미소설 Vol.24 No.1

In Jude the Obscure, following the tenets of the Oxford Movement and religious aestheticism, Jude becomes a Gothic cathedral mason seeking beauty and harmony in the Gothic Revival which was supposed to counter the ugliness of industrialized Victorian society. He tries to live up to the teachings of the Tractarians and the religious aesthetes who preached that an aesthetic environment would help civilize the working classes and that aesthetic education would guide them towards embourgeoisment. His gradual awareness that materiality is a prerequisite for cultivating a finer artistic taste and an aesthetic education has become a means of social control rather than social harmony leads him to embrace Sue`s vision of decadent aestheticism and its attendant tenets such as Hellenism and anti-Christianity. However, the Victorian Hellenic golden age that seems to promise a Greek-like joyousness free from modern sickness and sorrow is also overshadowed by the specters of Victorian customs. It becomes clear that the aesthetic discourses of the Oxford Movement, Ruskin`s religion of art, and decadent aestheticism, initiated by bourgeois clerics and aesthetes, alternately foster and restrain the dream of self-improvement and social mobility of the working classes.

Sue Bridehead as the Fìn-de-Siècle Femme Fatale

Younghee Son 19세기영어권문학회 2017 19세기 영어권 문학 Vol.21 No.3

Sue Bridehead is portrayed as an admixture of the intellectual New Woman and the ‘perverse’ femme fatale, drawing off her lovers’ intellect, thwarting their prospects, and draining their virility. Her repudiation of sexual intimacy is based on her perception that woman is subject to reproduction and motherhood. Comparable to such femme fatales as Lilith, Salomé, and vampire women, Sue poses a threat to the established social order. Father Time’s murder and suicide function as a punishment for Sue’s castration of her lovers, repudiation of motherhood, and her role as a child slayer. In his portrayal of Sue as a perverse femme fatale, Hardy projects the anxiety over the emancipated New Woman and the pervasive misogyny at the fìn de siècle. Her characterization also reflects the backlash of Victorian society against the perceived affinity among the femme fatale, the New Woman, and the decadent. Hardy’s depiction of Sue’s victimization of her lovers and her own gradual destruction by the fìn-de-siècle misogyny and fear of the New Woman and the femme fatale allows the reader to acknowledge her struggle to vindicate her sexual and intellectual independence at the turn of the century.

『뱀파이어』와 『드라큘라』에서 성적 금지와 부르주아 성인에의 입문

손영희 ( Younghee Son ) 한국근대영미소설학회 2019 근대 영미소설 Vol.26 No.1

In Polidori’s The Vampyre and Stoker’s Dracula, aristocratic vampires have a close relationship with bourgeois men, but they vamp the women closely related to them, not the men themselves. Since these women act as substitutes for the bourgeois men, vampirism represents an indirect sexual attack against the men under the disguise of heterosexual desires which displace their homosexual desires. In both works, the vampires liberate repressed sexual desires, bringing about the potential disintegration of the bourgeois dichotomy of gender and sexuality. In The Vampyre, Aubrey keeps his vow not to disclose Ruthven’s secret, which actually turns out to be his own secret of homosexual desires. In consequence, he is destroyed and fails to initiate into the bourgeois manhood. In Dracula, however, Mina breaks her vow not to read Harker’s journals and learns of his deviant sexuality, thereby inviting Dracula. The crisis of her awakening to the repressed sexual desires triggers vampire hunters’ frantic pursuit of Dracula. With the destruction of Dracula, the bourgeois gender and sexual norms seem to be restored and reaffirmed. However, Mina becomes marginalized and inarticulate while Harker proves his masculinity, initiates into manhood as a successful lawyer, and becomes a disciplined modern bourgeois subject that can control his own sexual desires. As Quincey Harker was fathered by Dracula as well as by Lucy’s three suitors, Van Helsing, and Harker, Dracula is resurrected through the boy and once again threatens to wipe out the bourgeois dichotomy of gender and sexuality.

『이사벨라; 혹은, 바질 화분』과 라파엘전파 회화

손영희(Younghee Son) 한국영미문학교육학회 2013 영미문학교육 Vol.17 No.2

This essay explores the major themes of John Keats's Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil and cultural changes in Victorian era revealed in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, John Everett Millais's Lorenzo and Isabella and William Holman Hunt's Isabella and The Pot of Basil. John Ruskin's aesthetic democratization inspired the first-generation Pre- Raphaelite artists with the idea of social reform and moral edification of the masses through art. However, aesthetic democratization, censured by conservatives for lowering the standards of art, was controversial from the beginning since it wanted to dole out art to working class who lacked the leisure and means to enjoy it. The second generation Pre-Raphaelite artists turned away from aesthetic democratization and catered to the demands of affluent bourgeois clients. Pre-Raphaelite painters identified with and worshipped Keats who, they thought, sought to improve himself through self-education and craved for fame. The image of Keats as a defiant, precocious genius fighting for the autonomy of art was constructed from a series of Keats's biographies published in the Victorian era. While Keats's poetry embodies the spirit of Revolution, it is also rich in sensual imagery with frequent allusions to Greek mythology and medieval literature, which is one reason why the second generation Pre-Raphaelites preferred Keats's poetry to Wordsworth's for their subject matters. Keats's Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil, based on the story from Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, is not limited to the convention of romance genre as it encompasses the themes of class conflicts, greedy capitalists, and British middle-class women confined at home. Despite the fact that Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil was not positively received because of its alleged mawkishness, it was one of the most popular poems among Pre-Raphaelites along with The Eve of St. Agnes. The first generation Pre-Raphaelites who advocated aesthetic democratization focused on class conflicts, attacking avaricious industrialists. Millais's Lorenzo and Isabella, which underscored the conflicts between Lorenzo and Isabella's brothers, is representative of the period. The second generation Pre-Raphaelites were more interested in Isabella's grotesque love for Lorenzo, whose head is buried in the pot of basil. Keats emphasized Isabella's abnormal psychology after her sexual desire and maternity are frustrated. However, most of the second generation Pre-Raphaelite paintings, including Hunt's Isabella and The Pot of Basil, ignored Keats's intention and portrayed Isabella as a luxurious decoration for bourgeois home, thereby making her the object of sexual desire for bourgeois male clients.

호세 안토니오 비야레알의 『포초』: 이방인에서 트랜스내셔널 주체로의 실험적 실천

손영희(Son, Younghee) 미래영어영문학회 2022 영어영문학 Vol.27 No.2

José Antonio Villareal"s Pocho is regarded as the first modern Chicano novel which reflects the author"s autobiographical experience as a Mexican-American second generation. Pocho describes the life of Juan Rubio, a Mexican migrant worker who settled in Santa Clara, California, and focuses on the identity problem of his son, 9-year-old Richard Rubio. It deals with the issues of bilingualism, biculturalism, and dual identity that Richard Rubio faces in the racialized society because he is a stranger, neither American nor Mexican. In fact, Villareal has been criticized severely by many Chicano critics for being too assimilated in American society. However, Pocho can suggest a new reading in the transnational era where the boundaries of nations, ethnics, and races are blurred. This paper attempts to explore Richard"s struggle to find his own identity as a transnational subject, not a stranger who dose not belong to either of them, in that he resists the dichotomous violence between Americanness and Mexicanness. It examines the meaning of Chicano Spanish with regard to the creation of his transnational identity. In addition, it seeks to understand the lives of Chicano migrants, who are excluded from American history and monolingualism, with a more balanced transnational literacy.

여성 예술가와 남성 화가의 뮤즈로서 엘리자베스 시덜

손영희(Younghee Son) 19세기영어권문학회 2013 19세기 영어권 문학 Vol.17 No.1

Elizabeth Siddall was the model for most of Dante Gabriel Rossetti"s paintings in the early and mid-1850s.After Siddall was unable to sit for Rossetti due to her illness, he began to draw voluptuous women with long blond hair, bare shoulder, and angular chin in the elaborately decorated background. Not only Siddall but also sensual models were signifiers showing Rossetti"s genius. Rossetti is always the signified and the origin of meaning. Siddall is a sign for pure virgin whereas the later voluptuous models are signs for tainted fallen women. Rossetti high lights the model"s beautiful face and voluptuous body even when he portrays female artists. In Veronica Veronese, he captures the soul of a composer at the mysterious moment of creation. Listening to the bird with her hand laid on the strings of the violin, Lady Veronica tries to find out the perfect note for the inspiration that has just struck her. However, in Rossetti"s painting, Veronica, the composer, is seen as the erotic object of the male gaze since her beautiful face occupies most of the canvas and the paper on which she composes music is thrust aside in the corner. As Rossetti’s muse Siddall is always idealized in his drawings. What Rossetti drew was the imagined face of Beatrice, Dante Alighieri’s muse, not the face of Siddall herself, as he fancied that he himself was Dante. In Rossetti’s drawings of Siddall at the moment of artistic creation, she is the object of male gaze since Rossetti focuses on her face and figure. Unlike Rossetti’s portraits of Siddall, she depicted herself as a weary and unbeautiful woman with coarse complexion. Her self-portrait indicates that Siddall’s idealized image in the paintings of Rossetti and other Pre-Raphaelte artists is the production of male artists’ imagination. Siddall tried to liberate herself from Rossetti’s imagination and create her own artistic world. In her poems, the heroine laments the loss of lover with her fading beauty and the impossibility of true love. Siddall knew that she was the signifier for male artists. Using the strategy of silence and feigned death of the female narrator in her poems, Siddall defies the Western art convention which exploits the face of beautiful women in the name of muse for male artists. Her artistic creations serve to prove that she was a creative artist on her own right.

르 파누의 『카밀라』에서 레즈비언 뱀파이어와 어머니의 귀환

손영희(Younghee Son) 19세기영어권문학회 2021 19세기 영어권 문학 Vol.25 No.1

In Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, Camilla overtly reveals homosexual desires unlike her vampiric counterparts in John Polidori’s The Vampyre and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In Carmilla, three lesbian stories with similar characters and incidents are intricately entwined and the boundaries between each young lady and the vampire, past and present, and the dream and reality are constantly blurred. This enables the reader to interpret the lesbian vampire as the heroine’s double embodying her repressed homosexual desires and her absent mother. In this paper, referring to Sigmund Freud’s concept of the ‘Uncanny’ and Barbara Creed’s refutation of Freud’s theory, I argue that Camilla’s biting of Laura’s breasts with phallic teeth awakens her repressed homosexual desires and forces Laura to confront her absent mother thrown off in childbirth as the abject. Since Camilla’s vampirism threatens to forestall the patriarchal customs of the exchange of women as a gift given to men in marriage to reinforce male bonding and restore Laura to the matrilineal society, the alliance of authoritative men is established. Through the execution of Carmilla, the lesbian vampire-cum-mother is castrated and expelled. However, Laura is reborn as a vampire and threatens the law of patriarchy.