Current Search: DeFalco, Dana. (x)
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Title
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The discourse of confession and the rhetoric of the devil: unnatural attraction and gender instability in Wuthering Heights and The Master of Ballantrae.
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Creator
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DeFalco, Dana., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
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Abstract/Description
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Often overlooked in the nineteenth century Gothic novel are the complicated social issues existing within the text. In Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae, the authors each create villains who represent the preoccupation with appropriate sexuality and conventional gender roles existing in Victorian England. Brontèe's Heathcliff and Stevenson's James Durie embody all that is immoral and non-normative in society with their depraved behavior ;...
Show moreOften overlooked in the nineteenth century Gothic novel are the complicated social issues existing within the text. In Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae, the authors each create villains who represent the preoccupation with appropriate sexuality and conventional gender roles existing in Victorian England. Brontèe's Heathcliff and Stevenson's James Durie embody all that is immoral and non-normative in society with their depraved behavior ; however, because of the authors' craftiness with language, the authors, through their villains, manage to magnetize the other characters and subsequently emasculate those men in the text who emulate the Victorian ideal of masculinity. By focusing their novels on the plight of the Other and his disruption to the homogeneous rules regarding sexuality and gender in the nineteenth century, both authors articulate a profound understanding of the societal fears regarding these issues existing in their time.
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Date Issued
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2011
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3170602
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Subject Headings
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Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Homosexuality in literature, Symbolism in literature, Confession in literature, Desire in literature
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Format
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Document (PDF)
