published_or_final_version / Humanities / Master / Master of Philosophy

Juxtaposing historical evidence with fiction, this thesis probes into the social marginalization of Third Republic schoolmistresses reflected in literary stereotypes. Despite their manifold representation in novels, the general stereotype is still predominant: a displeasing teacher in misery. Mostly secluded in provincial posts, they suffered not only from material indigence and burdensome teaching, but also from the hostility projected from their surroundings. Under these unfavorable circumstances, many took refuge in professional devotion and abnegation. However, they sometimes developed an ideal of heroism and self-sacrifice, which were comparable to nuns’ religious credos. Women teachers’ political portrait is often left out of literary representation. Because they could not even defend themselves and have their interests protected by superiors, political engagement would mean little to their secluded lives. Yet in the masculine Republic, women educators shouldered a political task of forming girls as qualified mothers and companions who embraced republican values. The Republic’s reinvention of the secular faith and the lay School manifested its inheritance of the Catholic legacy it strived to eradicate, best demonstrated by its imitation of a laicized religious discourse, epitomized in literature by institutrices’ spirit of martyrdom. Through their professional efforts, they came into the public sight and increased their political impact. With their pacifist ideal, militant teachers safeguarded the Republic as well as republican schooling. Above all, as a result of their continuous struggles, they shattered the image of domestic women by proving themselves to be independent and public, shaping the New Woman “prototypes” of the new century. The “vices” of new career women were evident, for their new professional identity contravened conventional norms of gender roles. It was the teaching career that gave them an anomalous sexual experience, by depriving them of their womanly roles as wives and mothers. The image of the embittered “vieille fille” thus became a target for demonization, which was presumably a cultural motive behind Colette’s writings. She arguably employed the image of schoolmistress as a vehicle for exposing a public polemic between traditional and modern views on gender roles, in the context of major social transformations especially in thought. Schoolmistresses are a metonymy of French republicanism: a republican experiment which conflicted with women’s traditional functions and undermined the inveterate masculinist order. Third Republic schoolmistresses underwent a metamorphosis from domestic to public as they acquired new social roles. While institutrice literature shares profound bonds with autobiographical accounts, many testimonies also suggest an inclination of being attached to and even governed by novels. Despite the fact that literature is fabricated upon a universe of stereotypes, many teachers spontaneously chose fictional texts as the representative of their professional voice, making these “republican mythologies” a collective autobiography which articulated institutrices’ individual career pathos to a broader audience. / published_or_final_version / Modern Languages and Cultures / Master / Master of Philosophy

This study analyses the ‘prose of circumstances’ which implies the ‚discovery of prose fiction by the working-class movement in Germany from 1863 to 1906‘. In its introduction, it points to the prior history in the 1840s. The aim is both to identify developments in the working-class prose and to further differentiate the literary network in the second half of the 19th century. Previous research mostly perceived working-class literature from a socio-historical perspective; the last publications date back more than thirty years. Mostly summaries and not monographs, they focus on poetry and theatre of the labour movement. In contrast, this study looks into various forms of prose writing: a pre-revolutionary novel fragment by G. Weerth, a novel in three volumes dealing with the foundation phase of social democracy by J.B. von Schweitzer; short narratives published in feuilletons and calendars of the 1870s by the authors C. Lübeck, A. Otto-Walster and R. Schweichel; autobiographical writing from 1867 to 1906 by J.M. Hirsch, H.W.F. Schultz and F.L. Fischer as well as a piece of early social reportage by P. Göhre. In this way, the study presents a spectrum of diverse narrative modes, reflects on the conditions of genre and highlights differences and similarities at the same time. By considering source texts and intertextual relations, I do not examine the narrative pieces separately, but in their interdependence with other texts. The study focuses on narrative characteristics while examining overall literary and social developments. As a sequence of case studies, the chosen working-class prose narratives can be perceived from an innovative angle. The majority of texts are discussed in detail and related to contemporary bourgeois texts for the first time. Thus, the dominant perspective of bourgeois and poetic realism is broadened by the category of ‘social realism’. For this reason, the study can be seen as a contribution to a revised understanding of literature in the second half of the 19th century.

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This thesis is a study of Durham University, from its inception in 1831 to the opening of the College of Physical Science in Newcastle in 1871. It considers the foundation and early years of the University in the light of local and national developments, including movements for reform in the church and higher education. The approach is holistic, with the thesis based on extensive use of archival sources, parliamentary reports, local and national newspapers, and other primary printed sources as well as a newly-created and entirely unique database of Durham students. The argument advanced in this thesis is that the desire of the Durham authorities was to establish a modern university that would be useful to northern interests, and that their clear failure to achieve this reflected the general issues of the developing higher education sector at least as much as it did internal mismanagement. This places Durham in a different position relative to the traditional understanding of how universities and colleges developed in England and therefore broadens and deepens the quality of that narrative. In the light of the University's swift decline, and poor reputation, from the mid-1850s what were the ambitions of the founders and how did this deterioration occur? Were the critics' accusations against the University - principally that it was a theologically-dominated, inadequate imitation of Oxford, bound to the Chapter of Durham and ruled autocratically by its Warden - based on fact or prejudice? And if the critics were wrong, what were the factors that lead to the University's failings?

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