Archetypal Patterns in New Woman Fiction
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_________________________________________________________________________Swansea University E-Theses The child and the spirit: Archetypal patterns in New Woman fiction. Chang, Mei-Fang How to cite: _________________________________________________________________________ Chang, Mei-Fang (2007) The child and the spirit: Archetypal patterns in New Woman fiction.. thesis, Swansea University. http://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42231 Use policy: _________________________________________________________________________ This item is brought to you by Swansea University. Any person downloading material is agreeing to abide by the terms of the repository licence: copies of full text items may be used or reproduced in any format or medium, without prior permission for personal research or study, educational or non-commercial purposes only. The copyright for any work remains with the original author unless otherwise specified. The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holder. Permission for multiple reproductions should be obtained from the original author. Authors are personally responsible for adhering to copyright and publisher restrictions when uploading content to the repository. Please link to the metadata record in the Swansea University repository, Cronfa (link given in the citation reference above.) http://www.swansea.ac.uk/library/researchsupport/ris-support/ THE CHILD AND THE SPIRIT: ARCHETYPAL PATTERNS IN NEW WOMAN FICTION Mei-Fang Chang Submitted to the University o f Wales in fulfillment o f the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of English Swansea University June 2007 ProQuest Number: 10797933 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10797933 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 library Summary This thesis offers a Jungian-inflected reading of three key New Woman novels: Mona Caird’s The Daughters of Danaus (1894), Sarah Grand’s The Beth Book (1897), and Olive Schreiner’s From Man to Man (1926). By examining two archetypal images—the Child and the Spirit—not as psychological entities but as symbolic forms in the socio-cultural context of thefin de siecle, I explore the ways in which feminist New Woman writers seek to present women artists’ collective experience and the extent to which their work revises the dominant discourses of female subjection and sacrifice. Part I is engaged with the Child Archetype with a focus first on the Abandoned Child, where I investigate sisterless children through a combined discourse of sisterhood and trickster. In Chapter 1 ,1 add a discussion of Caird’s maternal theory and a mythic reading to examine motherless children. In Chapter 2 ,1 include a study of a loverless child to cast light on the conventional ideology of woman’s purity. In the second section of this Part, where Chapter 3 is located, I scrutinize the ways in which Grand portrays the Nature Child in the Romantic and Transcendental fashions, the ethics of which, I argue, anticipate today’s ecofeminism. Part II deals with the Spirit Archetype in different manifestations (the Wise Old Man in Chapter 4, the Romantic Knight in Chapter 5, and the Platonic Lover in Chapter 6), drawing attention to gender-power politics in relation to the New Man and the New Woman by adopting different approaches (revised Jungian, quasi-Bakhtinian Camivalesque, and narratology). Shifting signifiers, the Child and the Spirit archetypes, I argue, are New Woman writers’ strategic vehicles to (con)textualize women’s collective concerns. This act of female “unconsciousness-raising” caused a sensation at the time and can now serve to better our understanding of the diversity and discursiveness of the New Woman movement. 11 Declaration and Statements DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not being concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. Signed — 7 7 - Date ;to e ?£■, y&>') STATEMENT 1 This thesis is the result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. Other resources are acknowledged by footnotes giving explicit references. A bibliography is appended. Signed / Date / £ , ^ STATEMENT 2 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organizations. Signed Date 'JhOC Acknowledgements I am indebted to my supervisor, Professor Ann Heilmann, for her instruction, encouragement and unfailingly quick response throughout these four years. In particular, I appreciate her extraordinary generosity in tolerating the points where my critical ideas diverge from hers. Her enormous enthusiasm for and devotion to academic research provide an exemplary model for me to follow. I would also like to thank my external examiner, Professor Sally Ledger, and my internal examiner, Dr. Marie-Luise (Mel) Kohlke, for their helpful comments on my thesis and valuable suggestions for my future publications. To be able to gain their high appraisal is very encouraging and is indeed an honor to me. I appreciate their whole-hearted support and approval, which brings to my PhD life such a sweet and fruitful ending after this long, hard battle. Huge and heartfelt thanks are due to my proofreader, the established poet and writer Roger Garfitt, who, as one of the Royal Literary Fund Fellows at the University, always gave me immediate support, showing me how to write accurately and elegantly while recognizing my own ability and literary potential. The countless hours I spent working with him were a pleasure in themselves, a source of instruction, and, most importantly, an encouragement to have faith in myself and confidence in my English. Special thanks should go to my beloved family—my parents, elder sister, younger sisters and brother—for their consistent prayers, encouragement, love and support. I also want to thank my family-in-law for their consideration of and constant care for me. Finally, my greatest thanks and deepest appreciation must go to my husband, Shin-Tza Wu, who wholeheartedly supported me in the pursuit of my dream abroad, selflessly providing me with whatever I needed and patiently offering a listening ear, his faith in me so adamant and his encouragement so indefatigable that without him and his deepest love this thesis would never have been completed. If I have accomplished anything in this work, he is surely the person who deserves to share the credit. To my husband and my family, this thesis is dedicated with much love. IV Sections of this thesis have been presented at BAVS annual conferences (2003-06), the international/annual conference of the R.O.C. English and American Literature Association in Taiwan (2006), the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers conference in Kentucky (2007), and will be delivered at an international conference in Exeter (UK) in September 2007. I wish to thank those participants who have commented and responded at these events. I also wish to thank the University of Wales Swansea, the Ministry of Education (Taiwan), the Taipei Representative Office in the UK, the R.O.C. EALA, and National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan) for providing me with conference grants. Thanks also to the staff of the Inter-Library Loans Office at the University of Wales Swansea for the unfailing efficiency of their service. Contents Summary................................................................................. i Declaration and Statements ......................................................................................ii Acknowledgements ................................................. :......................................................iii List of abbreviations ................................................................................................ vi Introduction ..................................................................................................................1 Part I The Child Archetype ............................................................................... 40 I-A The Abandoned Child ........................................................................................45 1 The Sisterless and Motherless Child in Mona Caird’s The Daughters of Danaus (1894)..............................................62 2 The Sisterless and Loverless Child in Olive Schreiner’s From Man to Man (1926) 121 I-B The Nature-Child ................................................................................................. 162 3 The Ecofeminist Forerunner: The Nature Child in Sarah Grand’s The Beth Book (1897) .......................... 172 Part II The Spirit Archetype ...............................................................................240 4 The Wise Old Man in Mona Caird’s The Daughters of Danaus (1894)............244 5 The Romantic Knight in Sarah Grand’s The Beth Book (1897) ....................263 6 The Platonic Lover in Olive Schreiner’s From Man to Man (1926)