Department of English

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Browsing Department of English by Author "Bailey, Lily"

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    Women discussing men: gender as it is written in letters to Vernon Lee
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2019) Bailey, Lily; Pionke, Albert D.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    In "Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England," Sharon Marcus effectively complicates earlier critics’ definitions of gender by examining letters exchanged between women. Offering an ideal framework for future projects, such as this one, that attempt to study relationships between women constructed through life writing, she proposes epistolary exchange as a relatively under-examined genre through which women’s polyvalent participation in the process of gender normalization can be studied. Somerville Library, Oxford England, hosts a special collection of letters written to Vernon Lee/ Violet Paget, donated by her estate. This collection is in the process of being digitized and until now, no major moves have been made towards transcription and/or critical interaction with these letters. This overlooked collection contains almost 2,500 letters, many of which were written by prominent figures in the later Victorian era, and holds numerous possibilities for critical evaluation and engagement, especially for gender, cultural, and queer studies. Vernon Lee was a popular writer of her time, and the number of prestigious correspondences she maintained, contained in Somerville’s collection, reflect her popularity and importance. Letters and life writing hold the unique ability to provide some level of insight into the era from which they originated: discussions hosted in a patriarchal society have the power to complicate the standard perception of gender roles in the Victorian era, and the focus on language surrounding the performance of gender can be used to ascertain the different forms women’s dissidence can take. In particular, the letters Emily Sargent, Kit Anstruther-Thomson, and Ethel Smythe wrote to Vernon Lee about men and their behavior refocus women’s conversations around gender in the late 19th Century and illustrate the power these letters hold for providing an un-essentialized, moderated, look into the past.