English 185B - Spring, 2013

Women's Writing II

Class Information

Instructor: Miller, Elizabeth
Time: TR 4:40-6:00
Location: 6 Olson

Description

Women in nineteenth-century Britain are conventionally thought of as “angels in the house,” confined to the domestic sphere and to traditional domestic duties, yet in the nineteenth century women produced a larger percentage of published novels than they did in the twentieth century. This class will focus on some of the most successful and important women novelists of the day – Jane Austen, Charlotte Bront�, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. We will also consider poetry by Felicia Hemans, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Bront�, Christina Rossetti, Adelaide Proctor, Amy Levy, Michael Field, and Louisa Sarah Bevington. Our goal will be to think about these authors and texts in relation to questions of class and education; politics and the public sphere; gender and sexuality; marriage and the marriage plot; authorship, readership, and the literary sphere. We will also discuss such ostensibly "feminine" genres as domestic realism, the Gothic, and the sensation novel.

Grading

Grading will be based on 2 papers, weekly quizzes, final exam, and participation

Texts

Emma, Jane Austen
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Lady Audley\'s Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Poetry, Course Reader