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Against Orthodoxy: Sex, Marriage, and Gender Roles in George Meredith’s Poems and Novels
Anna Enrichetta Soccio
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2013.06.003
University “G. d’Annunzio”, Chieti, Italy
George Meredith (1828-1909) is acknowledged as a creator of memorable female characters. Meredith’s heroines are radically different from the women generally encountered in Victorian fiction. Characteristically, Meredith constructs a type of female character who, in a social context hostile to any break with convention, refuses to conform to the stereotype of the weak, passive, and dependant woman. In accordance with J. S. Mill’s observations in The Subjection of Women (1869), Meredith thought that the progress of society could be possible only through female emancipation and admittance of women into public practice. This paper discusses the themes of marital disintegration and “conscious adultery” that affirm the legitimacy of female pleasure against coercion. Thus, the paper will take into consideration the sonnet sequence Modern Love (1862) and one of Meredith’s most neglected novels, Lord Ormont and His Aminta (1894), whose heroines are unexpectedly depicted as non-conventional, strong, and proud. A close reading of the texts will reveal the narrative strategies and textual devices through which Meredith exploited a model of womanhood that, by subverting the current ideas on sex, marriage, and gender roles, is able to countermine male “egoism”, the only obstacle to the genuine progress of Victorian society toward real democratization.
George Meredith, Victorian women, love, sex, gender, subversion
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