This thesis provides an overview of the engagement with the material culture of Assyria, unearthed in the Middle East from 1845 onwards by British and French archaeologists. It sets the artistic discovery of Assyria within the visual culture of the period through reference not only to painting but also to illustrated newspapers, books, journals, performances and popular entertainments. The thesis presents a more vigorous, interlinked, and widespread engagement than previous studies have indicated, primarily by providing a comprehensive corpus of artistic responses. The artistic connections between Britain and France were close. Works influenced by Assyria were published, exhibited and reviewed in the contemporary press, on both sides of the English Channel. Some artists, such as Gustave Doré, successfully maintained careers in both London and Paris. It is therefore often meaningless to speak of a wholly ‘French’ or ‘British’ reception, since these responses were coloured by artistic crosscurrents that operated in both directions, a crucial theme to be explored in this dissertation. In Britain, print culture also transported to the regions, away from large metropolitan centres, knowledge of Assyria and Assyrian-inspired art through its appeal to the market for biblical images. Assyria benefited from the explosion in graphical communication. This thesis examines the artistic response to Assyria within a chronological framework. It begins with an overview of the initial period in the 1850s that traces the first British discoveries. Chapter Two explores the different artistic turn Assyria took in the 1860s. Chapter Three deals with the French reception in the second half of the nineteenth century. Chapter Four concludes the British reception up to 1900, and Chapter Five deals with the twentieth century. The thesis contends that far from being a niche subject engaged with a particular group of artists, Assyrian art was a major rediscovery that affected all fields of visual culture in the nineteenth century.

In this studyi apply a feminist-narratological grid to the works under discussion. I show how narration is used as strategy to highlight issues of concern to women, hereby attempting to make a contribution in the relatively new field of feminist narratology. Chapter One provides an analysis of Pride and Prejudice as an example of a feminist statement by Jane Austen. The use of omniscient narration and its ironic possibilities are offset against the central characters' perceptions, presented by means of free indirect style. Chapter Two examines The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as a critique of Wuthering Heights, both in its use of narrative frames and in its at times moralistic comment. The third and fourth chapters focus on Charlotte Bronte. Her ambivalences about the situation of women, be they writers, narrators or characters, are explored. These are seen to be revealed in her narrative strategies, particularly in her attainment of closure, or its lack. Chapter Five explores the increasing sophistication of the narrative techniques of Elizabeth Gaskell, whose early work Mary Barton is shown to have narrative inconsistencies as opposed to her more complex last novel Wives and Daughters. Finally, I conclude that while the authors under discussion use divergent methods, certain commonalities prevail. Among these are the presentation of alternatives women have within their constraining circumstances and the recognition of their moral accountability for the choices they make. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

This paper examines the expansive history of literary tomboys in the century preceding Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868). Applying concepts from gender performativity theory, it explores earlier and previously overlooked portrayals of tomboys (or, alternatively, "hoydens" or "romps"), especially in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's A Trip to Scarborough (1777), Isaac Bickerstaffe's The Romp; A Comic Opera in Two Acts (1786), Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1817), and E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand (1859). Because the tomboy phenomenon emphasizes that gender roles must be learned and can be resisted, tomboy characters are implicitly making a feminist point. As such, in the gap between Austen and Southworth, texts with minor and derogatory mentions of tomboys connect tomboyism with the prevailing anti-feminism of the early nineteenth century. By examining the developmental arc of tomboyism throughout literature and culture, this essay develops a greater understanding of how tomboyism fits within different historical periods and was a fully recognizable type in Britain and America decades before Alcott's Jo March supposedly normalized it in popular culture.

My thesis explores why beauty became so much more important in nineteenth-century Britain, especially for marriageable young women in the upper and middle class. My argument addresses the consequences of that change in the status of beauty for plain or ugly women, how this social shift is reflected in the novel, and how authors respond to the issue of plainer women and issues of their marriageability. I look at how these authorial attitudes shifted over the century, observing that the issue of plain women and their marriageability was dramatized by nineteenth-century authors, whose efforts to heighten the audience's awareness of the plight of plainer women can be traced by contrasting novels written early in the century with novels written mid-century. I argue that beauty gained more significance for young women in nineteenth-century England because the marriage ideal shifted, a shift which especially influenced the upper and middle class. The eighteenth century brought into marriage concepts such as Rousseau's "wife-farm principle" the idea that a man chooses a significantly younger child-bride, mentoring and molding her into the woman he needs. But by the end of the century the ideal of marriage moved to the companionate ideal, which opted for an equal partnership. That ideal was based on the conception that marriage was based on personal happiness hence should be founded on compatibility and love. The companionate ideal became more influential as individuality reigned among the Romantics. The new ideal of companionate marriage limited parents' influence on their children's choice of spouse to the extent that the choice lay now largely with young men. Yet that choice was constrained because young men and women were restricted by social conventions, their social interaction limited. Thus, according to my reading of nineteenth-century authors, the companionate ideal was a charade, as young men were not able to get to know women well enough to determine whether or not they were compatible. So instead of getting to know a young woman's character and her personality, they distinguished potential brides mainly on the basis of appearance.