Famine, Femininity, Family: Rememory and Reconciliation in Nuala O'Faolain's My Dream of You

Heilmann, Ann

doi:10.1163/9789042032316_011

Cited by 2 publications

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“…As Llewellyn describes it, many readers of neo-Victorian fiction turn to the novels out of a desire to have "Victorian length, plot, and character but without the 'difficulties' of Victorian language and circumlocution concerning issues of the body and sexuality". 68 Llewellyn refers to the introduction of Michel Faber's story-collection The Apple: New Crimson Petal Stories (2006), in which Faber quotes some reader responses to the open ending of The Crimson Petal and the White. From the responses it is clear that the novel did not fulfil readers' expectations with regard to what a neo-Victorian (or, as they may suppose, a 'pretend-Victorian') novel should be like.…”

Section: Neo-victorianism's Postmodern Rootsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…See also the concluding chapter of Elizabeth Steere's The Female Servant and Sensation Fiction (2013), in which she analyses twenty-first-century sensation fiction. 68 Mark Llewellyn, "Ethics and Aesthetics", p. 33. 69 Llewellyn, "Ethics and Aesthetics", p. 32.…”

Section: Neo-victorianism's Postmodern Rootsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In his article on the development of both British and English nationalism, Kumar discusses the "initial and basic tension between nation and empire". 68 England formed 68 Kumar, "Nation and Empire", p. 578. part of two empires in the Victorian period: the island of Great Britain as a land empire next to the overseas empire in the East. Although both empires functioned differently, both "made meaningless the development of a specifically English national identity".…”

Section: Bhabha Describes In the Location Of Culture How The Colonisamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the process was labour intensive, it was much cheaper compared to daguerreotypes as it used glass plates rather than silver-plated copper ones. 68 67 Owen Clayton, Literature and Photography in Transition, 1850-1915(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, p. 27. 68 Helmut Gernsheim, A Concise History of Photography, 3 rd edn.…”

Section: Some Of the Aspects Of Travelling That I Looked At In Connecmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…68 67 Owen Clayton, Literature and Photography in Transition, 1850-1915(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, p. 27. 68 Helmut Gernsheim, A Concise History of Photography, 3 rd edn. (New York: Dover Publications, 1986[1965), p. 12; p. 16.…”

Section: Some Of the Aspects Of Travelling That I Looked At In Connecmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Making It Right

2018

The Problem With Software

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This thesis examines the representation of 'otherness' in postcolonial neo-Victorian fiction. It analyses a selection of novels that not only engage critically with the Victorian past but specifically with the legacy of Victorian Britain's empire. By looking at the ways in which neo-Victorian novels depict the (de)construction of their characters' identities, this thesis investigates whether these representations are able to provide insight in present-day constructions of who is seen as being at home in British or Western European society and who is defined as 'other'. Otherness, these novels show, is not limited to a binary of the Western 'self' and the stereotyped, non-Western 'other'. Rather, many of the novels' characters are made to discover the other(ness) within themselves. The introductory chapter considers neo-Victorianism's postmodern background and the way it relates to postcolonial theories of race and sexuality. Chapter One focuses on two novels: Julian Barnes' Arthur & George (2005) and Belinda Starling's The Journal of Dora Damage (2007). Both novels are set in Britain and engage with the figure of the other coming (too) close to home. The chapter employs a potentially multidirectional 'looking relation' to study how postcolonial neo-Victorian fiction constructs the other against which the British characters define their own identities. Moving away from Britain, Chapter Two looks at the notion of the journey, specifically sea voyages between metropole and colony. Using Gail Jones' Sixty Lights (2004) and Joseph O'Connor's Star of the Sea (2002), this chapter studies how the liminal experience of travel can function as an othering device. Chapter Three, finally, examines how Daniel Mason's The Piano Tuner (2002) and David Rocklin's The Luminist (2011) describe British society in the colonies. Away from the imperial mother country, making stable distinctions between self and other becomes increasingly difficult for the novels' characters. Ultimately, this thesis questions whether postcolonial neo-Victorianism maintains a binary between the Western self and a stereotyped figure of the other, or if it can play a role in changing readers' views of those people seen as 'other' in Western society. Contents List of Illustrations .

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Section: Neo-victorianism's Postmodern Rootsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Neo-victorianism's Postmodern Rootsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Bhabha Describes In the Location Of Culture How The Colonisamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Some Of the Aspects Of Travelling That I Looked At In Connecmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Some Of the Aspects Of Travelling That I Looked At In Connecmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Making It Right

2018

The Problem With Software

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“Slippy with Rot”: The Irish Potato Famine and Neo-Victorianism’s Colonial Roots

Tronicke

2024

Anglia

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In Paul Lynch’s neo-Victorian Famine novel Grace (2017), the protagonist’s encounter with the proverbial root of all evil marks a moment of Gothic horror. Much more threatening than a single dead body, the foul-smelling, rotten potato invokes the gigantic number of corpses the blight produced during the Irish Famine of the 1840 s. Rather than a natural disaster, this must be understood as a direct result of what is often broadly referred to as ‘ecological imperialism’. This article examines the ways in which Grace positions the Famine as both concrete reality and synecdoche of colonialism. The novel traces how the potato blight, caused by the pathogen oomycete Phytophthora infestans, transforms rural Ireland into an uninhabitable wasteland, populated by dehumanised creatures that are rendered disposable. In a second step, I consider the rotten potato as metaphorical of neo-Victorianism’s larger critical potential. As critics have argued, neo-Victorianism is well-suited to intervene in selective and largely nostalgic memorialisations of Britain’s imperial legacies. To do so, however, it must properly acknowledge that the soil on which it plants – the textualities, theoretical frameworks, and methodological tools upon which it draws – is saturated with imperialist ideology to an extent that precludes any critical re-readings of the past and its bearing on the present.

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Famine, Femininity, Family: Rememory and Reconciliation in Nuala O'Faolain's My Dream of You

Cited by 2 publications

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Making It Right

Making It Right

“Slippy with Rot”: The Irish Potato Famine and Neo-Victorianism’s Colonial Roots

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