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.

. The thesis utilizes Althusser's notion of ideology as a system of imaginary as class and morality. Althusser's axioms are to serve as bases for the theoreti analysis of the aforementioned novels. Gaskell's concern for the polarising classes with -

Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels have been praised for their depiction of contemporary society and for giving the voiceless working-class a voice. Her two novels Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1854) are referred to as industrial novels, giving a contemporary depiction of nineteenth century England. However, Gaskell did receive contemporary criticism for being biased in her first novel, Mary Barton, by not givingthe upper class an adequate and honest depiction. This essay argues that North and South gives a more impartial impression by including a greater complexity with the use of more perspectives and contrasts, and that ultimately this is a response to the critique of Mary Barton. By analysing the mixed genres, the different perspectives of settingand select characters in North and South, and comparing it to Mary Barton, this essay aims to highlight the extensive inherent complexity of North and South. Comparisons between the novels North and South and Mary Barton have been done in earlier journal articles and essays, but never with the focus on the difference in relation to earlier criticism. Therefore this essay could contribute to future research in the sense of suggesting a possible reason for Gaskell’s choice or development in her complex depiction of society.

This essay identifies a type of narrative dissonance in the depictions of working-class conditions within Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life and George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. In this thesis, the dissonance is argued in part to be the effect created when an author belonging to one social class attempts to portray a class separate from their own. According to Marxist views, class constructs are well-defined and exist in opposition to one another. As such, there is a distinction between describing circumstances while viewing from outside and portraying conditions from within a class consciousness one does not share. The contrast between these perspectives introduces a discordant element into the narrative which interferes with a reader’s immersion. Furthermore, instances of both intranarrational and extratextual unreliability exacerbate the peculiar sense of dissonance when those elements conflict with the experiences of the reader. Understanding and sympathizing with the experiences of the Other, while beneficial in many regards, should not be conflated with knowledge of their lived experience. In order to establish this distinction, a close reading of the books, highlighting examples, is utilized. Additionally, by way of further explanation, Althusser’s concept of “internal distantiation” is used to define conflicting class viewpoints as a contributing factor to the dissonance perceived.