Ouida the Phenomenon : Evolving Social, Political, and Gender Concerns in Her Fiction

by Schroeder, Natalie; Holt, Shari Hodges

• ISBN13: 9780874130331
• ISBN10: 0874130336
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-11-30
• Publisher: Associated Univ Pr

Summary

"This first full-length study of the works of best-selling Victorian novelist Ouida (pen name for Marie Louise Rame) examines the evolution of social, political, and gender issues in Ouida's fiction from her "high society" romances of the 1860s to her satirical exposes of contemporary society in the 1880s and 1890s." "This study places Ouida in the context of nineteenth-century debates over gender by exploring the contradictions between the vehement critiques of marriage in her fiction and the equally vehement anti-feminist sentiments of her journalism. Examining Ouida's revision of gender stereotypes such as the domestic angel, the adventuress, and the dandy, Schroeder and Holt establish Ouida as a significant predecessor of the 1890s New Woman."--BOOK JACKET.

Author Biography

Shari Hodges Holt is an Instructional Assistant Professor of English at The University of Mississippi.

Table of Contents

A Miracle of Modern Literature	p. 9
Dandies, Angels, and Adventuresses	p. 28
Ouida in Transition: "Romanticist Pure et Simple" and Champion of the Oppressed	p. 53
Ouida's Tragic Vision: Materialism, Commodification, and the Artist	p. 78
Male Predators, Female Victims, and the Plight of the Female Artist: "The Glory Disk of Females Is Only a Crown of Thorns"	p. 103
Love, Pity, and Indictment: The Poetics and Politics of the Italian Novels	p. 124
Subversion and Submission to Male Power in Ouida's Female Gothic	p. 153
European Novels of Society: Fantasies of Female Empowerment	p. 173
Marriage and the Ouidean New Woman: The Bondage of Domestic Monotony	p. 206
The Fin de Steele: The Age of "Decadence"	p. 229
Notes	p. 249
Bibliography	p. 269
Index	p. 275
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