Eliza Haywood's Love in Excess
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Studies in Identity A Moderna Diferença STUDIES IN IDENTITY Organização Luísa Maria Flora Revisão do inglês John Elliott Revisão de provas Ana Rosa Nobre Márcia Bessa Marques Design, paginação e arte final Inês Mateus Imagem na Capa © Maria João Worm Linogravura sobre papel, 2005 Edição Centro de Estudos Anglísticos da Universidade de Lisboa e Edições Colibri Impressão e acabamento COLIBRI - Artes Gráficas Tiragem 600 exemplares ISBN 978-972-772-785-8 Depósito Legal 291 139/09 2009 PUBLICAÇÃO APOIADA PELA FUNDAÇÃO PARA A CIÊNCIA E A TECNOLOGIA A MODERNA DIFERENÇA Studies in Identity Luísa Maria Flora Editor UNIVERSITY OF LISBON CENTRE FOR ENGLISH STUDIES Scientific Coordinator João Almeida Flor Research Programme A MODERNA DIFERENÇA Researchers Alcina Pereira de Sousa Alcinda Pinheiro de Sousa Alda Correia Ana Rosa Nobre Joana Vidigal Luísa Maria Rodrigues Flora Márcia Bessa Marques Maria José Pires Teresa de Ataíde Malafaia Contents Introduction Luísa Maria Flora . 9 Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess - figuring women, subverting conventions Marina Estevão Tiago . 17 Discussing Scottish Nationhood in Robert Burns’ Songs: A Dialogical Perspective Paulo César Martins . 31 Zofloya by Dacre and the Problem of Women’s Education at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century Raquel Sara Simões . 45 Gender and Identity. A reading of The Subjection of Women Eunice Dilena Fernandes . 61 ‘Grant me, wherever I am, To Become the Supreme Object of Admiration’: Christina Rossetti’s She “Hero” Ana Rosa Nobre . 77 Exceptionality and Otherness in Olive Schreiner’s Writing Ana Maria Parente . 95 A MATTER OF TASTE: To The Ligthouse as a representation of consciousness during the aesthetic experience according to the Critique of the Power of Judgement Nuno Neves . 117 Angela Carter’s uncontaminated renegotiation and redefinition of values Maria José Pereira Pires . 135 Things are (not) what they seem: in between dream and nigthmare images of female submission in A. S. Byatt’s Morpho Eugenia Alexandra Cheira . 151 Contributors . 173 Introduction ISBN 978-972-772-785-8 • STUDIES IN IDENTITY • ULICES / COLIBRI 2009 he nine essays collected in this volume aim at representing the wide diversity and noticeable quality of a group of young researchers who Tobtained their Master’s degrees in English Studies under the scope of the Research and Educational Programme on ‘Studies in Identity’. ‘Studies in Identity’, as its name certainly implies, has been devoted to exploring the complex issues raised by the concept of identity. If special attention has been given to the question of gender, both in the dominant approach inspir - ing the two MA courses that the programme has offered at Lisbon University1 and in several publications and activities,2 the present volume shows how various identity matters (otherness, nationhood or the aesthetic experience, for instance) were free to evolve from the original agenda, since a multiplicity of perspectives had from the very beginning been central to the programme. First imagined in 1994-95, ‘Studies in Identity’ was shaped, developed and coordinated by Portuguese academics from the Department of English Studies at Lisbon University, in collaboration with scholars from England and Russia, and its researchers often participated in a number of national and international academic events. Some of these occasions provided the opportunity for publica- 1 English Department MA Courses – ‘Gender as Identity Construct: From 1700 to the present day’ (1997) and ‘Constructing and Figuring Feminine Sexual Identity’ (1999). 2 See The Crossroads of Gender and Century Endings, Alcinda Pinheiro de Sousa, Luísa Maria Flora and Teresa Ataíde Malafaia (eds.), Cadernos de Anglística, 2, University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies and Edições Colibri, Lisboa, 2000, and Actas do XX Encontro da Associação Portuguesa de Estudos Anglo-Americanos, Santa Maria da Feira, 2000. See also the two different sections organized for the European Society for The Study of English – The Crossroads of Gender and Century Endings (Debrecen, 1997) and Looking Back on Women’s Rights and Women’s Studies: Writing the Feminine Difference (Helsinki, 2000) or the panel presented at the 23rd Meeting of APEAA (Portuguese Association of Anglo-American Studies), with papers by MA students of the Programme (Coimbra, 2002) as well as the volume Feminine Identities, Luísa Maria Flora, Teresa F.A. Alves and Teresa Cid (eds.), Cadernos de Anglística, 5, University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies and Edições Colibri, Lisboa, 2002. 12 Luísa Maria Flora tions such as The Crossroads of Gender and Century Endings or the panel edited in the proceedings of a meeting of the Portuguese Association of Anglo-American Studies. Isobel Armstrong supported the programme right from the start as its scientific adviser. Even when, during 2004, Alcinda Pinheiro de Sousa, Luísa Maria Flora and Teresa Ataíde Malafaia decided that it was time to build on the experience so far gained and to move on to ‘The Modern Difference’, she agreed to continue with us, as confident and generous as ever. The University of Lisbon, where the coordinators are affiliated as Associate Professors, and the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (ULICES), particularly through the support of its scientific coordinator, João Almeida Flor, have provided a congenial atmosphere in which to work on the challenge such research and educational venture has implied. As mentioned before, the productive experience obtained throughout the ten very busy years of ‘Studies in Identity’ encouraged its coordinators to move on to a new transdisciplinary Research Programme within the ongoing epistemo - logical re-evaluation and expansion of English Studies. Sited at ULICES, ‘The Modern Difference’ has been conceived to reflect on, (in)form and act upon the question of the concepts of equality and difference, identity and alterity, and their diverse mutual relations in our modernity, as well as to consider the conflicts that such problematic relations originate.3 The programme also aims at intervening in society, and one of the ways it has chosen to do this is precisely through its network of former MA students of ‘Studies in Identity’,4 most of whose essays the present book is now happy to publish. The diversity of essays in this collection is first and foremost a confirmation of the ample scope of these researchers’ interests, also demonstrated by the fact that their dissertations were supervised by different professors, namely Alcinda 3 For more detailed information on this programme (under the scope of which several conferences have been organized and five MA dissertations have so far been successfully approved) see Alcinda Pinheiro de Sousa, Alda Correia and Teresa Ataíde Malafaia, (Org.), Ana Daniela Coelho, Joana Vidigal and Maria José Pires (Co-org.), A Palavra e a Imagem. University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies and Edições Colibri, Lisboa, 2007, particularly the Introduction. 4 These MA graduates, together with other researchers, academics, educationalists and teachers, have participated in the discussion of theoretical frameworks, methodological directions and practical issues, concerning the role of English Literature in school curricula and students’ reading habits. Their ongoing activities are a very important dimension of ‘The Modern Difference’ research and practical intervention. Introduction 13 Pinheiro de Sousa, João Almeida Flor, Luísa Maria Flora, Salomé Machado and Teresa Ataíde Malafaia. The chronological span of their objects of study, as well as their choice of literary genres and their different approaches, emphasize the variety of the texts. Written after the successful discussion of their theses, the essays in some cases include reflections and afterthoughts that arose as a result of those discussions. However diverse they may be, they all have as a common purpose a carefully researched personal examination of their chosen themes or authors. More often than not they also offer a truly innovative approach. As such, they are significant contributions in their respective areas of research. All of them are Studies in Identity. Marina Estevão Tiago addresses Eliza Haywood’s audacious first novel, Love in Excess, and her ‘attempt to convey behavioural models – both positive and negative – that would reappear in many of her other works’, particularly by making the reader come to terms with an eighteenth-century paradigmatic duality, ‘the desires of the heart versus the restraints of reason’. The essay shows the difficulties that Haywood’s female characters must face in order to achieve any sort of balance between adequate social behaviour and love and desire, and explains how the novelist was able to reconcile the decorum her (male and female) audiences expected, while suggesting that ‘women’s submissive position was a mutable fact and that change was close at hand.’ In ‘Discussing Scottish Nationhood in Robert Burns’ Songs: A Dialogical Perspective’, Paulo César de Almeida Martins concentrates on the harmonious dialogue between text and music accomplished by Burns in his songs and empha sizes how the poet’s development of song culture served to ‘redefine Scottish national identity’. Studying ‘the intertextual dialogue the poet achieved between music and text’, the essayist considers the poet’s use of his profound knowledge of Scottish music and oral tradition and his superior technical expertise when dealing with the written and spoken word and music. While bringing out Burns’ central role in