The separate sphere ideology, dominant but never hegemonic in Victorian Britain, dictated that women’s natural vocation was to be wives and mothers. Between the years 1850 to 1901, the surplus woman problem and a nascent feminist movement challenged the separate sphere ideology. It was also reinforced by imperialist ideologies that held the British family as a sign of Britain’s superiority, and eugenics which placed great importance on heterosexual marriage and reproduction. How did novelists, especially women novelists, respond to the challenges against the separate sphere ideology? How did they depict unconventional women such as surplus women, women who behaved in transgressive ways, feminist women, lesbians, and women who were in interracial relationships? The conventional narrative stressed the importance of marriage, and unconventional characters either reformed themselves or met tragic fates. This remained consistent throughout the second half of the 19th century. At mid-century, unconventional women were the ones who rejected marriage, had an affair, etc. As women began to gain rights in education, work, and civic rights, the temptations that drew middle class women away from conventional life shifted to wanting to work or becoming feminists. Novels also depicted alien others, such as lesbians and non-white people, as menaces and threats to conventional marriage. Acceptable unconventionalities were limited: it was acceptable for women to be unconventional if they were exceptional or they broke one convention but upheld another, such as motherhood. At the end of the century, New Women novelists and other novelists that sympathetically depicted unconventional women critiqued the separate sphere ideology, but were overwhelmingly pessimistic about the possibility that women could escape convention.

This research report explores the link between the novels of Ingrid Winterbach / Lettie Viljoen, a third culture and the neo-Victorian novel. The study is therefore situated within the cultural-philosophical framework of a third culture, which implies that the two cultures of science and literature do not function as separate disciplines, but as an organic unit. Researchers in the interdiscipline of literature and science identify the Age of Science (1879–1914) – including the Victorian era (1837–1901) – as a historical period where the existence of such a third culture was observed. This period was characterised by numerous scientific discoveries, and Darwin’s theory of evolution generated heated debates in Victorian society. Nineteenth-century literature (and specifically the Victorian novel) therefore reflects the spirit of an age where the interaction between science and literature was particularly evident. In our information-driven society, the focus is once again on scientific discovery and dissemination of knowledge, prompting social critics to typify the current period as “neo-” or “retro-Victorian”. The contemporary imagination still problematises Darwin’s theory of evolution, and fiction such as Winterbach’s therefore not only renegotiates the fixed modernistic boundaries between science and literature, but also revisits the nineteenth- century genres simptomatic of a similar third culture. Winterbach’s novels (1984–2006) display a distinctive predisposition towards natural history and Darwinistic principles and are therefore postmodern adaptations of nineteenth-century conventions. Darwinistic concepts such as growth, metamorphosis,transformation, evolution and the origin, naming and extinction of species are therefore accentuated. Winterbach’s fictionalisation of a nineteenth-century worldview can be linked to the work of her ancestors in the Afrikaans literary tradition, Eugène Marais and C. Louis Leipoldt (both amateur scientists). Her popularisation of scientific knowledge and revisitation of Victorian codes also link her to a neo-Victorian novelistic movement (a contemporary permutation of the Victorian tradition). Her oeuvre therefore also displays similarities to that of her British contemporary, A.S. Byatt, a prominent neo-Victorian novelist. An exploration of the natural world in this tradition, however, also implies an exploration of supernatural spheres, a trend which is equally evident in texts by congeners such as (George) Eliot, Marais, Leipoldt, Winterbach and Byatt. / Afrikaans / D.Litt. et Phil. (Afrikaans and Theory of Literature)

本論文以康德和經驗主義美學切入討論維多利亞文學中女性的家庭和社會奉獻，論證女性家庭奉獻的美感並非單純呼應家內天使的形象，而是作者藉此美感，提供女性一符合性別期待的社會奉獻管道。十九世紀的家內天使意識型態，歌頌中產階級女性角色為男性的幫手，其家庭奉獻象徵秩序與道德，讚揚女性的道德美感。此兩性空間的意識型態視女性的主要活動範圍為家庭，看似縮減其參與社會奉獻的相關性，但作家實以女性家庭奉獻的美感為敘事手法，傳達慈善始於家庭的想法，傳達女性情感與落實社會奉獻。 本論文檢視三本1850至1870期間的英國小說：喬爾斯‧狄更斯（Charles Dickens）、喬治‧愛略特（George Eliot）、伊利莎白‧蓋斯凱爾（Elizabeth Gaskell）的小說皆以女性奉獻為主，但各展現不同的美感與社會奉獻的關係，融合社會對家庭奉獻的傳統要求和實踐女性自我主體性。論文第一章介紹美的概念演變、維多利亞時期的女性奉獻美感、以及本論文的章節架構。第二章探索美感與道德的同異性。從康德美學的觀點，探討維多利亞的家內天使形象和狄更斯《荒涼山莊》女主角的家庭奉獻，論證美雖不等同於道德，但卻是道德的象徵。第三章分析女性的愉悅美感是源於奉獻行為。愛略特《米德爾小鎮》的女主角，融合利己情感和利他奉獻，以道德和愉悅感為奉獻的基礎，彰顯女性奉獻與道德愉悅感的關係。第四章檢視女性的同情美感和社會改革。蓋斯凱爾《北方與南方》女主角的同情美感，塑造出獨立能幹的形象，致力於家庭奉獻和排解階級糾紛，並促使男性角色改善階級衝突。結論章節論述，維多利亞小說中的家內天使形象和女性奉獻所產生的美感，隱藏複雜多樣的奉獻和主體關係，雖然女性以家庭奉獻的美感為出發點，實為進行社會奉獻，蘊含豐富的改革和情感動力，挑戰傳統家內天使形象的寓意。 / This study uses Kantian and Empiricism aesthetics to explore women’s devotion and effect to home and society in Victorian literature. The beauty of heroines’ devotion to home does not simply convey the conventional image of an angel in the house but offers women a socially acceptable access to social commitment in the Victorian novels written by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Gaskell. The ideology of an angel in the house regards middle-class women as helpmates. Women obtain the sense of beauty via their domestic devotion, which symbolizes order and morality. This female image not only reinforces the ideology of separate spheres but also cooperates with women’s participation in social commitment. Female devotion is used to reinforce the notion that charity begins at home and express women’s feeling and pursuit of social commitment. This study examines three Victorian novels between 1850 and 1870. The novels of Dickens, Eliot, and Gaskell accentuate female domesticity and present different aspects of female beauty in women’s participation in domestic devotion relevant to their social commitment of improving the world. They reconcile the society’s demands of women’s domestic devotion with personal pursuits for female subjectivity. In the first chapter, the study defines beauty, particularly of devotion in the Victorian time. It also shows the structure of the work through describing how other chapters are organized. The second chapter examines the affinity of beauty and morality in women’s devotion to home. Kantian aesthetics which explains the exercise of aesthetic judgments is helpful to explore Dickens’s angelic heroine’s moral beauty in Bleak House. The heroine’s beauty is not synonymous with morality but is, instead, symbolic of morality. The third chapter centers on the relation between female agreeable feelings, virtues, and beauty in Eliot’s Middlemarch. The heroine undergoes the process of reconciling self-regarding feelings and altruistic devotion to make virtuous contributions. Empiricist David Hume’s virtue theory helps explore the motivation and transformation behind the heroine’s virtuous action based on agreeable feelings and approbation of virtuous actions. The fourth chapter explores women’s beauty resulting from sympathy with family members and the poor. The independent heroine of Gaskell’s North and South dedicates herself to domestic devotion and class conflict. Her sympathetic beauty causes men to change present condition for the improvement of working-class life. In the fifth chapter, the analysis of female beauty and devotion in the three Victorian novels helps discover that various, complicated relation between devotion and subjectivity under the conventional disguise of women’s moral image. Although the women’s beauty originates from their devotion to home, the domestic devotion functions as their social commitment of reforming the world which contains rich, dynamic challenge to the ideological image of female beauty.

This research report explores the link between the novels of Ingrid Winterbach / Lettie Viljoen, a third culture and the neo-Victorian novel. The study is therefore situated within the cultural-philosophical framework of a third culture, which implies that the two cultures of science and literature do not function as separate disciplines, but as an organic unit. Researchers in the interdiscipline of literature and science identify the Age of Science (1879–1914) – including the Victorian era (1837–1901) – as a historical period where the existence of such a third culture was observed. This period was characterised by numerous scientific discoveries, and Darwin’s theory of evolution generated heated debates in Victorian society. Nineteenth-century literature (and specifically the Victorian novel) therefore reflects the spirit of an age where the interaction between science and literature was particularly evident. In our information-driven society, the focus is once again on scientific discovery and dissemination of knowledge, prompting social critics to typify the current period as “neo-” or “retro-Victorian”. The contemporary imagination still problematises Darwin’s theory of evolution, and fiction such as Winterbach’s therefore not only renegotiates the fixed modernistic boundaries between science and literature, but also revisits the nineteenth- century genres simptomatic of a similar third culture. Winterbach’s novels (1984–2006) display a distinctive predisposition towards natural history and Darwinistic principles and are therefore postmodern adaptations of nineteenth-century conventions. Darwinistic concepts such as growth, metamorphosis,transformation, evolution and the origin, naming and extinction of species are therefore accentuated. Winterbach’s fictionalisation of a nineteenth-century worldview can be linked to the work of her ancestors in the Afrikaans literary tradition, Eugène Marais and C. Louis Leipoldt (both amateur scientists). Her popularisation of scientific knowledge and revisitation of Victorian codes also link her to a neo-Victorian novelistic movement (a contemporary permutation of the Victorian tradition). Her oeuvre therefore also displays similarities to that of her British contemporary, A.S. Byatt, a prominent neo-Victorian novelist. An exploration of the natural world in this tradition, however, also implies an exploration of supernatural spheres, a trend which is equally evident in texts by congeners such as (George) Eliot, Marais, Leipoldt, Winterbach and Byatt. / Afrikaans / D.Litt. et Phil. (Afrikaans and Theory of Literature)