Thesis (M.A.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2006. / Thesis advisor: Jason Jones. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 64-69). Also available via the World Wide Web.

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'The World is Hard on Women'; Women and Marriage in the Novels of Wilkie Collins" examines the ways in which Collins sympathetically explores the situations of women in relation to marriage and to society in general. Each of the first five chapters deals with a particular topic relating to women and marriage, showing how these topical themes recur and develop through Collins's novels. Chapter One, "Marriage, Money and Power", looks at mercenary marriages in which husbands exploit there wives, or in which wives attempt to exploit their husbands. Chapter Two, "The Magdalen Theme", examines Collins's treatment of the question of "fallen" women, and his different attempts to plead for the reintegration of such women back into the fabric of conventional society. Chapter Three, "Marriage Breakdowns", discusses the situation of women who find themselves deserted by their husbands, and facing a hostile and Judgemental reaction from their social peers. Chapter Four, "Unmarried Women", shows Collins's sympathetic portrayal of diminution of power and importance of those women who either choose not to, or who are unable to marry. Chapter Five, "Widows" discusses the role played by widows as trustees of male power, and guardians to the younger generation. Chapter Six, "The Fallen Leaves", draws on the material discussed in the first five chapters in order to make a detailed examination of Collins's extensive treatment of topics related to women and marriage in The Fallen Leaves. The thesis concludes that Collins was very aware of, and radically sympathetic to the problems faced by women in Victorian society, and that this sympathy and knowledge form an important feature of his writing.

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of English, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis considers three British novels of the 1880s that imagined a range of middle-class domestic configurations that deviated in new ways from the long-contested fiction of the British household as a patriarchal stronghold. Although mid-Victorian novels very often featured narratives of domestic upheaval, they did so in a way that sensationalized and emphasized the rarity of middle-class familial deviance. In contrast, the fin-de-siècle domestic novel brought a greater range of idiosyncratic families and households under a newly sociological lens and explored them as part of the reality of modern British family life. The persistent attention to alternative domesticities by novelists writing in the fin-de-siècle period suggests that the social problems of the day required new novelistic genres and formal strategies beyond those favoured by writers of sensation fiction and sentimental domestic novels in the earlier part of the century. Through readings of late-career novels by the popular Victorian sensationalist Wilkie Collins and a New Woman novel by the anti-feminist editorialist Eliza Lynn Linton, this thesis argues that the generic hybridity of such fin-de-siècle British novels resulted in a capacious domestic narrative that often looked beyond the fraught unit of the biological family to posit an unprecedented range of new family configurations.

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Les membres de la classe des professions, qu'ils soient narrateurs ou personnages, occupent une place à la fois centrale et équivoque dans le texte victorien, dans sa construction, sa composition. En effet, si cette place prépondérante paraît indiquer une prise de pouvoir de ces derniers, elle s'accompagne fréquemment d'une mise en question, voire d'une mise en danger de leur statut au sein du récit. Cette position paradoxale semble être le résultat du lien quasi-systématique (mais souvent sous-jacent) entre l'apparition d'un narrateur ou d'un personnage issu des professions et la déstabilisation des notions de signification et de vérité dans l'ensemble du texte. Nous étudierons les modalités et les outils de cette déstabilisation, mais aussi ses conséquences sur le corps du texte. Pour ce faire, nous nous concentrerons sur le support de la nouvelle véhiculée par les périodiques pour son caractère propice à l'expérimentation et sa grande diffusion auprès du lectorat victorien. Par ailleurs, nous avons centré notre corpus de textes sur Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins et Le Fanu car ces derniers ont participé activement à la diffusion dans la littérature des idées propres aux classes moyennes et ont abondamment illustré les mutations sociales de cette classe durant la seconde moitié du XIXème siècle. Cela s’est fait à travers leurs nouvelles notamment, qui apparaissent comme le lieu privilégié de l’expression des interrogations concernant l'instabilité de certains discours structurants de la société : loi, religion et médecine. Ainsi, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, fils d’un homme d’église et féru de théologie, Arthur Conan Doyle, lui-même médecin de formation et William Wilkie Collins, homme de lettres portant un grand intérêt à la chose scientifique (comme le suggère son long roman didactique Heart and Science paru en 1883) ont tous trois contribué à la définition des relations particulières entre les membres des professions et le reste de la société victorienne. De plus, leur participation active à la publication des périodiques les plus lus de leur époque atteste de leur contribution importante à la définition de la pensée victorienne. / Members of the middle class, particularly clergymen, doctors, and lawyers occupy a central place in Victorian literature, both as narrators and characters. However, it seems that this prominent place fosters questioning as much as empowerment. This paradoxical position seems to stem from the recurrent appearance of members of the professions in texts within which the principles of truth and meaning are undermined. Therefore, we will show how members of the professions, both as narrators and characters, put forward discursive strategies which allow them to manipulate the notion of truth and to destabilize meaning. In order to do so, we will study predominantly short stories, as this genre was favoured by Victorian writers as the locus of narrative and literary experimentation. Besides, this genre was widely read by Victorian audiences and can be seen as a privileged media for authors to express their doubts and commentaries on contemporary society. We have chosen to study the works of three authors in particular, who played a vital role in the bringing of the middle classes on the forefront of Victorian literary representation. Indeed, we will focus on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the son of a clergyman and a man fascinated by the arcana of theology, Arthur Conan Doyle, a doctor himself, before he became a writer and William Wilkie Collins, who had a passion for science and the transformations its growing influence imposed on Victorian society. What is more, these three writers' active role in the establishment of the most popular Victorian periodicals attests to their vast contribution to the development of Victorian values.

Les études qui entreprennent d’évaluer la place de la maladie dans les romans de Dickens et Collins adoptent souvent le point de vue du médecin, montrant comment leurs peintures de la maladie constituent des diagnostics scientifiquement exacts. Or la médecine est d’abord un discours sur la maladie : diagnostiquer les personnages des romanciers reviendrait donc à considérer la grille de lecture médicale comme outil d’analyse valable pour évaluer la maladie dans leur œuvre. Cette thèse se propose d’interroger la pertinence d’une telle grille de lecture, qui semble anachronique [ce discours se construit tout au long du XIXe siècle, il n’est donc pas constitué au moment où les deux romanciers écrivent]. Il s’agit de comprendre comment le discours médical s’est imposé au fil du XIXe siècle : pour dire et écrire la maladie, la médecine s’est inspirée d’autres types de discours, et en premier lieu celui du roman, qu’elle a utilisé pour tenter de prendre place dans les esprits victoriens. Après avoir établi les conditions dans lesquelles est né ce nouveau discours normatif, cette thèse analyse la relation de Dickens et Collins avec ce discours. Conscients que les médecins tentent de passer d’un art à une science positive, les deux romanciers semblent se méfier des nouvelles catégories nosographiques et méthodes cliniques. Nous sommes alors fondés à lire leurs romans non plus seulement comme des documents qui questionnent la pathologie scientifique, mais aussi comme des prismes d’autres imaginaires du corps malade. L’étude de leur œuvre dévoile ainsi les soubassements imaginaires de la nouvelle médecine, mais aussi l’esthétique du morbide propre à chacun des deux auteurs. / Studies concentrating on the value of disease in novels by Collins or Dickens often adopt a medical point of view, showing that the novelists depict illness with the eyes of trained clinicians, offering surprisingly precise case studies and diagnoses. This approach sheds light on some episodes; yet, the “medico-realists” seem to overlook that by viewing literature through a medical prism, they are using the tools and rationale of a constructed discourse. Pathology, which is the science that studies the disease and not the disease itself, was created all long the 19th century. Viewing the novelists’ treatment of disease only through the filter of pathology gives a reductive image of the way they understand morbidity. This research aims at deconstructing the medical discourse, and at showing how, to take up Dickens’s words, “for theories, as for organised beings, there is also a Natural Selection and a Struggle for Life”, which str! uggle scientific medicine has apparently won. Doctors have used other types of discourse to create their own, and in so doing, novels have been a great source of inspiration. After positing that medicine creates a myth of positivism, this study goes on to analyse the way Dickens and Collins considered the rise of this new field. Unlike what medico-realists seem to take for granted, the novelists did not subscribe to the new medical methods and even denied understanding disease according to pathological categories. Their use of diseases unexpectedly unveils the way doctors wrote and imagined disease. Studying Dickens’s and Collins’s ways of conceiving pathology offers insight into the imaginary origins of a burgeoning science.

In his preface to The Moonstone , Wilkie Collins declares that his object with the novel has been "to trace the influence of character on circumstances", referring mainly to the conduct of the novel's heroine, Rachel.  In view of the other characters' similar function in this symbol-laden novel, this essay looks closer at the one character with whom Collins brings his extensive tapestry to a close, Ezra Jennings, thereby exposing the deeper significance of this 'detective novel'.  Ezra's added function in this novel, is to be the physical focal point, within the plot, for three crucial themes within the novel: 'Opium', 'Empire' and 'Sacrifice'.  Of course, the other characters incorporate these themes as well, but it is always Ezra who has the ultimate representational power.  He is, literally, the sum of the others' hopes and fears, and Collins's metaphorical 'third eye' of The Moonstone, presenting an alternative aspect of events.

Two of Wilkie Collins’ sensation novels, The Woman in White (189-60) and Heart and Science (1882-83), represent women and non-human animals as occupying comparable cultural positions of vulnerability in Victorian society. This alignment between women and animals became particularly apparent in the emerging debates over the scientific practice of vivisection in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The first chapter of this thesis examines the antivivisection movement which protested strongly against the practice of vivisection on animals and came to beled primarily by women. This chapter’s focus is on the reasons behind women’s passionate identification with non-human animals subject to cruel and painful experiment and how this reflected both groups’ vulnerable and subordinate position in society. The second chapter analyzes Collins’ own contribution to the antivivisection campaign in his polemic Heart and Science. This novel demonstrates the cruelty of the vivisector in Collins’ villain, Dr. Benjulia, but also, the strength and value of instinct and emotion as forms of knowledge which are typically feminized and devalued. Collins ultimately recommends a type of medical care that is attentive to both the body and the mind rather than separating them into binary structures. Lastly, the third chapter examines The Woman in White, which was published before the vivisection controversy yet still demonstrates women’s alignment with animals particularly in their relationships with the two different male villains Count Fosco and Sir Percival. This novel represents women resisting these men’s attempts to treat them like inferior animals and instead asserting their own authority as capable beings. By doing so, Collins reveals not only the constructed ideals of superiority and inferiority in society but also the extreme vulnerability of those labeled ‘inferior’ beings. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)