A Comparative Study of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1855) and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905): A New Historicist Reading
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Date
2023
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Publisher
Université Mouloud Mammeri
Abstract
The present dissertation is a comparative thematic study of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1855) and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905). As a supporting theory, our research paper relies on Stephen Greenblatt’s approach of New Historicism because a literary work is not separated from its historical context. The aim of this work is to show that despite the historical and historical differences that exist between the two selected novels, they share many themes in common among which we cite “class division” and “women’s status”. Following IMRAD method, my dissertation has started with a presentation of the two authors Elizabeth Gaskell and Edith Wharton and their novels North and South and The House of Mirth. In Method and Materials, we have explained the reason of our choice of New Historicism approach. In our analysis of this topic, our discussion is divided into two chapters. The first chapter focuses on the notion of ‘Class division’ in North and South where the Victorian society was divided into two main classes the ‘middle’ and the ‘working’ classes. Also, in the second section of the chapter we have highlighted the issue of ‘Women’s Question’ as a prominent theme in the novel. In its turn, the second chapter deals with the same themes in The House of Mirth including the issue of ‘Social Class’ that divided the American society into the ‘upper’ and the ‘working’ classes, and we have also tended to depict the American “ideal woman” and how she struggled to break the traditional values of the patriarchal society
Description
62 p. ; 30 cm. (+ CD-Rom)
Keywords
Industrial Revolution, Class Conflict, Social Class, Women’s Question, New Historicism
Citation
General and Comparative Literature