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This dissertation explores the ways in which Charles Dickens writes Nancy in Oliver Twist, Anthony Trollope writes Carry Brattle in The Vicar of Bullhampton, and Elizabeth Gaskell writes Esther in Mary Barton to represent and examine some very personal and painful anxiety. About Dickens and Trollope, I contend that they turn their experiences of shame into their prostitute's shame. For Gaskell, I assert that the experience she projects onto her prostitute is that of her own maternal grief in isolation. Further, I argue that these authors self-consciously create biographical parallels between themselves and their prostitutes with an eye to drawing conclusions about the results of their anxieties, both for their prostitutes and, by proxy, for themselves. In Chapter II, I assert that in Nancy, Dickens writes himself and his sense of shame at his degradation and exploitation in Warren's Blacking Factory. This shame resulted in a Dickens divided, split between his successful, public persona and his secret, mortifying shame. Both shame and its divisiveness he represents in a number of ways in Nancy. In Chapter III, I contend that Trollope laces Carry Brattle with some of his own biographical details from his early adult years in London. These parallels signify Carry's personal importance to her author, and reveal her silences and her subordinate role in the text as representative of Trollope's own understanding and fear of shame and its consequences: its silencing and paralyzing nature, and its inescapability. In Chapter IV, I posit that Gaskell identifies herself with Esther, and that through her, Gaskell explores three personal things: her sorrow over the loss of not one but three of her seven children, her possible guilt over these deaths, and her emotional isolation in her marriage as she grieved alone. In her creation of Esther, Gaskell creates a way both to isolate her grief and to forge a close companion to share it, thus enabling her to examine and work through grief. In Chapter V, I examine the preface of each novel and find that these, too, reflect each author's identification with and investment of anxiety in his or her particular prostitute.

This dissertation explores the ways in which Charles Dickens writes Nancy in Oliver Twist, Anthony Trollope writes Carry Brattle in The Vicar of Bullhampton, and Elizabeth Gaskell writes Esther in Mary Barton to represent and examine some very personal and painful anxiety. About Dickens and Trollope, I contend that they turn their experiences of shame into their prostitute's shame. For Gaskell, I assert that the experience she projects onto her prostitute is that of her own maternal grief in isolation. Further, I argue that these authors self-consciously create biographical parallels between themselves and their prostitutes with an eye to drawing conclusions about the results of their anxieties, both for their prostitutes and, by proxy, for themselves. In Chapter II, I assert that in Nancy, Dickens writes himself and his sense of shame at his degradation and exploitation in Warren's Blacking Factory. This shame resulted in a Dickens divided, split between his successful, public persona and his secret, mortifying shame. Both shame and its divisiveness he represents in a number of ways in Nancy. In Chapter III, I contend that Trollope laces Carry Brattle with some of his own biographical details from his early adult years in London. These parallels signify Carry's personal importance to her author, and reveal her silences and her subordinate role in the text as representative of Trollope's own understanding and fear of shame and its consequences: its silencing and paralyzing nature, and its inescapability. In Chapter IV, I posit that Gaskell identifies herself with Esther, and that through her, Gaskell explores three personal things: her sorrow over the loss of not one but three of her seven children, her possible guilt over these deaths, and her emotional isolation in her marriage as she grieved alone. In her creation of Esther, Gaskell creates a way both to isolate her grief and to forge a close companion to share it, thus enabling her to examine and work through grief. In Chapter V, I examine the preface of each novel and find that these, too, reflect each author's identification with and investment of anxiety in his or her particular prostitute.

Although Anthony Trollope has traditionally been considered an anti-feminist author, studies within the past decade have shown that Trollope's later novels show support for female power and sympathy for Victorian women who were dissatisfied with their narrow roles in society. A feminist reading of two of his earliest novels, The Warden and Barchester Towers, shows that Trollope's feminism is not limited to his later works. In The Warden, Trollope acclaims female power and "woman's logic" through female characters and the womanly warden, Septimus Harding. In Barchester Towers, Trollope continues to support feminism through his positive portrayals of strong, independent women and the androgynous Harding. In Barchester Towers, the battle of the sexes ends in a balance of power.

Postcolonial theory teaches us that the Empire was as much a textual as a physical undertaking: the Empire was (and is) experienced through its texts. Anthony Trollope was an enthusiastic traveller and helped to "write the Empire" in both his travel narratives and in his novels. This study examines his travel narrative South Africa, and explores how the colony is depicted in this work and in Trollope's "colonial" novels: Harry Heathcote of Gangoil, John Caldigate, An Old Man's Love and The Fixed Period. Trollope's colonies are places of moral danger where the value systems instilled by English society provide the only means for overcoming the corrupting influences of the colonial space. He writes the colonies as images of Britain, but these images are never true reflections of the homeland: there is always an element of distortion present, which serves to subvert the "Englishness" of his colonial landscapes. / English Studies / MA (ENGLISH)

Postcolonial theory teaches us that the Empire was as much a textual as a physical undertaking: the Empire was (and is) experienced through its texts. Anthony Trollope was an enthusiastic traveller and helped to "write the Empire" in both his travel narratives and in his novels. This study examines his travel narrative South Africa, and explores how the colony is depicted in this work and in Trollope's "colonial" novels: Harry Heathcote of Gangoil, John Caldigate, An Old Man's Love and The Fixed Period. Trollope's colonies are places of moral danger where the value systems instilled by English society provide the only means for overcoming the corrupting influences of the colonial space. He writes the colonies as images of Britain, but these images are never true reflections of the homeland: there is always an element of distortion present, which serves to subvert the "Englishness" of his colonial landscapes. / English Studies / MA (ENGLISH)

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