From the Insipid to the Inspired: Women in Thackeray's Fiction

249 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1984.Women are central to the meaning of Thackeray's fiction, and an examination of their roles and characterization reveals that with time Thackeray acquired some remarkably forward-looking views on women. Writing at the leading edge of the great wave of nineteenth-century feminist reform, he seems to anticipate in his novels the emancipationists' criticisms of contemporary society. Although Thackeray rarely expressed sympathy for feminist ideas outside of the novels, his fiction, in its structure of ideas and (increasingly) its development of heroic qualities in women, reveals a gradual shift from personal ambivalence toward women to recognition of the damaging effects of female subordination. As he explores the effects of male-centered economic, educational, legal, aesthetic, and religious institutions on both men and women, his essential concern for truth and charity lead him to discover with increasing clarity how women can become either victims or heroines.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD