The central project of this thesis is to diagnose, define, and articulate the concept of resonance. Resonance is a deeply textual, but not intertextual, relationship that exists between fictional and theoretical texts, allowing the former to position itself as a co-discursive partner to the latter. This is achieved via the subtle importation of theoretical models into fictional settings. In this instance, a resonant relationship is traced between Sarah Waters’s three neo-Victorian novels – Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, and Fingersmith – and three publications which are representative of queer theory published in the early 1990s: Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Epistemology of the Closet by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (both published in 1990), and Terry Castle’s The Apparitional Lesbian (1993). As the introduction to this thesis clarifies, Waters’s novels are particularly useful to the resonant critic. All three novels are popularly and critically established as part of the neo-Victorian genre, yet their participation in many of that genre’s defining processes – overt intertextuality, metafictionality, parody – is limited. Limited, too, is their relationship with the Victorian texts that so infuse the genre. It is not, however, that Waters’s novels completely fail to reach for textual models; rather, as this thesis establishes, they reach for models found in contemporary queer theory, rather than canonical Victorian novels. This thesis contends that Waters’s fictions are examples of a distinctive assimilation and reworking of the postmodern principles that have helped to make the contemporary historical novel so very popular. The novels’ determination to articulate previously silenced voices, meanwhile, gives rise to this thesis’s second project, also stated in the introduction: an examination of the homonormative lesbians found in Waters’s novels. Women love, desire, and cherish one another – but are also viciously cruel, devastatingly unfaithful, and coldly deceiving to one another. The thesis as a whole identifies the range of relationships and individuals strewn across Waters’s neo-Victorian output as a co-discursive reverberation with queer theory’s politicised calls for queer representation. Each chapter surveys the extant scholarship on each of Waters’s novels, before pairing each fictional text with the theoretical text with which it resonates, in order to systematically examine the resonant relationship. As such, the fictional and theoretical texts examined in this thesis are given equal weight; theory is not positioned as a lens through which fiction is to be read. Chapter 1 traces models of performativity, Gender Trouble’s dismantling of the originating status of the body, and the failure of feminism to represent the lesbian through the bold picaresque narrative of Tipping the Velvet. Chapter 2 identifies Affinity’s claustrophobic corridors and panoptic middle-class houses as a receptive environment for an importation and repositioning of Epistemology of the Closet’s homosexual panic and the spectacle of the closet. Finally, chapter 3 finds the rather less deconstructive approach to lesbian bodies in The Apparitional Lesbian suggestive of Waters’s project as a whole; with regards to Fingersmith in particular, triangulated relationships, blocking gestures, and the de-apparitionalising of the lesbian are established as evidence of the resonant relationship.

<p>Predmet istraţivanja ove doktorske disertacije jesu metafore tela i prostora u stvarala&scaron;tvu savremene vel&scaron;ke spisateljice Sare Voters. Istraţivanje se usredsreĊuje na prvih pet romana iz njenog opusa, objavljenih u periodu od 1998. do 2009. godine. Romani Usne od somota, Srodne du&scaron;e i Dţeparo&scaron; spadaju u neoviktorijansku prozu, dok su romani Noćna straţa i Mali stranac sme&scaron;teni u period za vreme i nakon Drugog svetskog rata. Uloga protagoniste u njenim romanima najĉe&scaron;će se dodeljuje lezbejskim likovima, pa se njeno stvarala&scaron;tvo moţe shvatiti kao poku&scaron;aj da se navedene istorijske epohe rekonstrui&scaron;u tako da se omogući predstavljanje lezbejskih likova i lezbejske seksualnosti. Istovremeno, njeni romani doprinose &scaron;irem predstavljanju lezbejske tematike u savremenoj knjiţevnoj produkciji. Osnovni cilj istraţivanja jeste da se ispita uloga telesnih i prostornih metafora u obradi teme istopolne ljubavi, ali i znaĉaj ovih metafora za ĉitav niz drugih tema.<br />Istraţivanja tela i prostora predstavljaju izuzetno plodnu i dinamiĉnu oblast savremene kritiĉke teorije. Ovi pojmovi dospevaju u ţiţu kritiĉkog interesovanja u drugoj polovini dvadesetog veka, mada je njihovo prisustvo u oblastima nauĉnih istraţivanja znatno duţe, pa rasprave o telu i telesnosti nalazimo jo&scaron; u klasiĉnoj filozofiji. Prostor je pak sve do druge polovine dvadesetog veka prevashodno bio predmet matematiĉkih i geografskih istraţivanja, dok je u humanistiĉkoj tradiciji bio shvaćen tek kao pasivna i statiĉna pozadina istorijskih dogaĊaja. Istraţivanje polazi od istorijskog pregleda kljuĉnih teorijskih pristupa telu, poĉev od platonistiĉke dualistiĉke tradicije,&nbsp;preko kartezijanskog dualizma, sve do savremenih poststrukturalistiĉkih teorija, a teorijsko upori&scaron;te analize telesnih metafora ĉine teorije Mi&scaron;ela Fukoa i Dţudit Batler. Analiza romana se usredsreĊuje na motiv transodevanja, metaforu duha, ali i na skup konkretnih telesnih slika kojima se spisateljica iznova vraća. Potom se razmatraju savremena teorijska poimanja prostora, pri ĉemu se istraţivanje oslanja i na relevantna istorijska, knjiţevnoistorijska i sociolo&scaron;ka istraţivanja. Ovaj teorijski okvir sluţi da se ispitaju predstave kuće, zatvora, ludnice i britanske prestonice, te interakcija lezbejskih likova s ovim lokalitetima<br />&nbsp;</p> / <p>The aim of this doctoral thesis is to explore the corporeal and spatial metaphors in the fiction of Sarah Waters, a contemporary Welsh novelist. The critical focus of the thesis is on Waters‟s first five novels, published between 1998 and 2009. Tipping the Velvet, Affinity and Fingersmith belong to the neo-Victorian genre, while Night Watch and The Little Stranger are set in the period during and after the Second World War. In Waters‟s fiction, the role of protagonist is mostly reserved for lesbian characters and her oeuvre can be perceived as an attempt to rewrite the chosen historical periods in ways which provide for the representation of lesbian characters and lesbian sexuality. In addition, her novels make a significant contribution towards wider literary representation of lesbian issues in the contemporary context. The main goal of this research is to analyze the role of corporeal and spatial metaphors in the portrayal of same-sex relationships, class tensions and other relevant themes in Waters‟s work.<br />The issues of body and space are undoubtedly at the centre of contemporary critical interest and theoretical debates that surround them are diverse and wide-ranging. However, while the history of theoretical interest in the body dates back to the classical tradition, spatiality only came to prominence in the second half of the twentieth century, when a surge of critical interest can be observed marking the beginning of the so-called spatial turn. The thesis therefore&nbsp;starts by providing a brief historical overview of the key theoretical approaches to the body, including the mind/body debate in the classical Platonic tradition, Cartesian dualism and contemporary poststructuralist theory. The theories of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler are then used as the main theoretical framework for the analysis of corporeal metaphors, which focuses on the motif of cross-dressing, the spectral metaphor, as well as a range of recurrent corporeal images in Waters‟s writing. In the following chapters, the focus shifts to contemporary theoretical approaches to spatiality and relevant sociological, cultural and historical research, which are used to explore the representations of home, prison, asylum and urban space, as well as the interaction between the lesbian protagonists and their surroundings.</p>

Fingersmith is a historical novel with a clear, non-heteronormative agenda. It was published in 2002 by Sarah Waters, and it challenges the way the Victorian era viewed and oppressed non-heteronormative sexuality. The characters Susan Trinder and Maud Lilly, is exposed to both imprisonment, violence and abuse as a kind of collective punishment of “the mad woman”. The primary goal of this queer analysis is to see how ‘multisexual’ expressions can be traced in the novel, often conveyed through neo-Victorian symbols and the function of the colour ’red/crimson’. It also discusses how the neo-Victorian symbols (especially the important function of Maud’s white gloves) works as both a way of turning women mad and keeping them sane in a world determined to ’cure’ sexuality that differs from its heteronormative structure. / Fingersmith är en historisk roman med en tydlig icke-heteronormativ agenda. Den publicerades år 2002 och skrevs av Sarah Waters, och utmanar sättet den viktorianska eran såg på och förtryckte icke-heteronormativ sexualitet. Karaktärerna Susan Trinder och Maud Lilly utsätts båda för fångenskap, våld och övergrepp som en slags kollektiv bestraffning av ”den galna kvinnan”. Målet med denna queerteoretiska närläsning är att undersöka hur multisexuella uttryck kan spåras i romanen, ofta förmedlade via neo-viktorianska symboler och den röda färgen. Den diskuterar även hur de neo-viktorianska symbolerna (Mauds vita handskar fyller här en viktig funktion) fungerar både som verktyg för att driva kvinnor till galenskap och rädda dem från den, i ett samhälle som kämpar för att ’bota’ den sexualitet som skiljer sig från den heteronormativa strukturen.

The first decade of this century marked a moment of hypervisibility for lesbians and bisexual women on British television. During this time, however, lesbian hypervisibility was coded repeatedly as hyperfemininity. When the BBC and ITV adapted Sarah Waters’s novels for television, how, I ask, did the screen versions balance the demands of pop visual culture with the novels’ complex, unconventional – and in some cases subversive – representations of lesbianism? I pursue this question with an interdisciplinary methodology drawn from queer and feminist theories, cultural and media studies, and film adaptation theory. Chapter Two looks back to Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (BBC 1990). I examine this text – the first BBC television serial to feature a lesbian protagonist – to establish a vocabulary for discussing the page-to-screen adaptation of queer identities throughout this dissertation. Chapter Three investigates Waters’s first novel Tipping the Velvet (1998) and its complex intertextual relationship with Andrew Davies’s serialized version (BBC 2002). I also examine responses to the serial in the British press, tracing the ways in which dominant cultural forces seek to domesticate non-normative instances of gender and sexuality. Chapter Four examines Waters’s novel Fingersmith (2002) in relation to Peter Ransley’s adaptation (BBC 2005) to situate adaptations of Waters’s retro-Victorian texts amid the genre of television and film adaptations of Jane Austen novels. I argue that Ransley’s serial interrogates the notion of Austen as a “conservative icon” (Cartmell 24) and queers the Austen adaptation genre itself. To conclude this study I address Davies’s television film (ITV 2008) of Waters’s second novel Affinity (1999). In this chapter I examine how the adaptation depicts the disruptive lesbian at the centre of the text. I argue in particular that by casting an actress who does not conform to dominant televisual norms of femininity, the adaptation is able to create a powerful audiovisual transgendered moment which adds to the novel’s destabilization of Victorian hierarchies of gender and class. This chapter considers, finally, how Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith and Affinity have contributed to lesbian visibility on British television. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2009-05-27 11:26:42.504

This study consists of an analysis of the novel Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters, in terms of cross-dressing as self-representation. The study aims to emphasise how cross-dressing can be significant when expressing one’s gender identity, by examining the gender identity and sexual orientation of the male impersonator Nancy Astley/Nan King and how she reacts to her own queerness. With the use of queer literary theory, Judith Butler’s theories on gender performativity, and ideas of gender as social constructs, this study argues that the novel is a powerful representation of the fluidity and inconsistency of gender and the non-existence of the gender binary. Throughout the novel, the main character disrupts the expected gender roles of the British Victorian era, and through the use of cross-dressing, uses masculinity and masculine femininity to discover and express her gender identity.

It has always been important to study history. But what we can’t forget is that there’s more than one way of doing so. One of those is literature. In this thesis I will therefore study two contemporary historical novels: The Night Watch by Sarah Waters and The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. The aim is to explore how they portray different kinds of historical experiences and how that may relate to questions that are relevant even in a contemporary context. Because both novels have an interestning relationship with time and space, I’m going to use the russian literary theorist Micheal Bachtins concept of the chronotope to explore how time and space operates and relate to eachother. In the end, this thesis also aims to show that literature can be a valuable object to study for those that are intererested in histiography.

The diploma thesis is concerned with the portrayal of the female experience with the Second World War in The Night Watch (2006) by contemporary British writer Sarah Waters. The theoretical part outlines the socio-historical background of the novel with particular attention to the female experience of the Second World War in various fields, such as their family lives, job opportunities, and everyday life during the Blitz. Special attention is also given to the description of the female experience with abortion during the war and the lifestyles of female homosexuals in that historical period. The thesis further presents the theoretical delimitation of the neo-historical genre, of which the novel is a representative, and briefly introduces the novel in the context of Sarah Waters's other works in order to establish the basis for the analysis. The practical part of the thesis relies on the theoretical part and examines how the fictional portrayal of the female experience corresponds with the outlined reality. Simultaneously, the work considers how Waters uses the Second World War in her fictional story and which elements she chooses to highlight. Moreover, it discusses the reasons behind emphasising these elements in the novel and how it corresponds to the neo-historical genre. KEYWORDS Sarah Waters;...