The thesis investigates anxieties about urban life in late Victorian and Edwardian culture, and examines emotional responses to urbanisation, industrialisation and modernity at this high point of urban growth and rural-urban migration: one that marked Britain’s decisive breakthrough to a largely and permanently urbanised society. During the period, earlier nineteenth-century tropes of the ‘shock’ of the city, and anxieties surrounding rapid early urbanisation and industrialisation, began to recede. But from the 1880s onwards, as life in industrial cities came to be regarded as the norm, new anxieties came to the fore: concerns that related to the very pervasiveness and inescapability of urban life. I argue that the historically unprecedented growth in the size of cities placed enormous strain upon conceptions of the individual in modern society: the impulse to conceive of mass urban society in the abstract was in constant tension with a new, modernistic awareness of the essential humanity of each individual. The research utilises insights from the recent ‘emotional turn’ within the humanities, which is more sensitive to psychological factors in cultural practices and social processes; and brings this historiographical turn to bear on attitudes towards the city. An emotional approach enables both a deeper and subtler exploration of high cultural responses, and the extension of the range of sources and actors beyond ‘ideas’ and ‘intellectuals’. The thesis integrates a wide range of sources: literature, art, the writings of urban planners and social commentators, medical writings, working-class autobiographical writing, and oral history transcripts. Such an approach reveals the common emotional impulses and shared structures of feeling behind a diverse range of responses to the urban environment, and provides a deeper understanding of contemporary emotional life. It thus illuminates the ways in which individuals, societies and culture react to the complexities of modernity, and provides insights into the relationship between social transformation and emotional experience.

This thesis deals with the topic of the female characters in selected novels of Charles Dickens. The theoretical part is focused on describing the characteristic features of the women in the Victorian period. The practical part analyses the most important female characters according to the author's personal choice, shows similarities and differences among them and compares them with the society at that time.

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Abstract: Modern readers frequently perceive female characters in Victorian novels as insipid and inane, blaming the static portrayals on the angel in the house stereotype attributed to Coventry Patmore's poem of the same name. The stereotype does not accurately reflect the actual Victorian woman's life, however. Examining how the stereotype evolved and how the middle-class Mid-Victorian woman really lived provides insight into literary devices authors employed either to reinforce the angel ideal or to reconcile the ideal with the real. Wilkie Collins's portrayal of Marian Halcombe in The Woman in White features a dynamic female who has both androgynous characteristics and angel-in-the-house qualities, exemplifying one more paradox in a society riddled with contradictions.

This thesis considers the representation of manly identity in the works of George MacDonald, and the way in which that identity is formed in relation to shifting power networks and contemporary social discourses. I argue that the environment of technological and societal change experienced in the mid-Victorian era (in the wake of industrialisation, urbanisation, changes in suffrage and war) led to a cultural need to re-align social, political, physical and economic power within a framework of male moral strength. Taking his lead from Thomas Carlyle and German transcendentalism, MacDonald promoted a paternalist ‗ideal‘ of manliness that articulated a synthesis of moral and physical power, yet which also served to promote a paradigm of domestic authority within diverse areas of male interaction. The dual purposes of this ideal were the defence of national identity (the purview of what I term the ‗Soldier body‘), and the enforcement of a paternalist authority hierarchy that is swiftly subsumed within a hierarchy of social status. As a result, we see the growth of close inter-relationships between the representation of manly identity and the language of class, heavily influenced by Christian socialist narratives of individual development through social education and quiescence. Moreover, we begin to witness disturbing scenes of violence and control, as aspects of MacDonald‘s culture defy confinement within his model of patriarchal domestic authority.

The Earthly Paradise was William Morris’s first real success, and it remained his best-known work even after his death. It has not fared as well since the mid-twentieth century, when it became overlooked and problematic, as the Morris of The Earthly Paradise years became coextensive with a portrait of Victorian middle-class myopia. This verdict has been brought to the doors of the poem’s first readers, who are imagined to have liked it for uncomplicated reasons of fashion and entertainment. I reconsider these assumptions by returning to the contemporary reception of the poem to ask what audiences thought about Morris as a public figure, what it was that they so responded to in his work, and what the poem itself says about reception—the relationship between story, audience, and speaker. I argue both within the text and in the reception of it, such relationships are nearly always understood as communal, as storytellers—Morris and those in his text—address audiences as collective publics, and speak on behalf of them. Moreover, this speech is always marked by a mutually inclusive relationship with text, so that stories are properly understood as arising from the discursive field established through the participation, both textual and vocal, of anyone who understands himself or herself addressed by the discourse.

Dr. David Livingstone, the Victorian “missionary-explorer”, has attracted more written commentary than nearly any other heroic figure of the nineteenth century. In the years following his death, he rapidly became the subject of a major “biographical industry” and indeed he continues to sustain an academic industry as well. Yet, out of the extensive discourse that has installed itself around him, no single unified image of Livingstone emerges. Rather, he has been represented in diverse ways and put to work in a variety of socio-political contexts. This thesis interrogates the heterogeneous nature of Livingstone’s legacy and explores the plurality of identities that he has posthumously acquired. In approaching Livingstone’s “Lives” the methodology employed is that of metabiographical analysis, essentially a biography of biographies. This framework does not aim to uncover the true nature of the “biographee” but is rather concerned with the malleability and ideological embeddedness of biographical representation. The first chapter considers Livingstone’s own self-representation by critically analysing Missionary Travels, his best-selling travelogue. I argue that the text is more ambivalent than has hitherto been acknowledged and that its heterogeneity facilitated the diversity of Livingstone’s posthumous interpretations. The second chapter discusses Livingstone’s Victorian commemoration, exploring a body of hitherto unexamined remembrance literature, a wealth of obituaries and elegiac poetry. Focusing on a brief historical juncture, the year of his national memorial, presents an opportunity to reflect on some of the foundation stones of his legacy. The next chapter concerns itself with Livingstone’s imperialist construction, certainly his most persistent image. It discusses the way in which he was routinely re-presented in order to meet the evolving demands of empire. Yet, Livingstone was never constructed homogenously at any one colonial moment and so I argue that we should speak of his imperial legacies. The penultimate chapter considers the Scottish dimension of Livingstone’s reputation in a range of contexts, from the Celtic Revival to Kailyard. While some ignored his northern heritage, his national identity was of vital importance for others who used him to negotiate a Scottish national consciousness. The final chapter extends the concept of life-writing to include fictional portrayals of Livingstone. The focus here is primarily on postcolonial literature in which, as a cherished icon of empire, he became a focal point for critique and imaginative violence. The thesis contributes to the growing body of scholarship on life-writing and directs further attention to the changing nature and political efficacy of historical lives. Livingstone emerges as a site of competing meanings; the Victorian hero has himself become a colonised space.