‘The Silent Tragic of the Everyday’: European women writers in the context of naturalism

Thesis

This thesis examines an as yet under-explored aspect of the reception of naturalism in France, Germany, and Norway by analysing the hypertextual dialogue the five women writers, Georges de Peyrebrune, Rachilde, Hedwig Dohm, Gabriele Reuter, and Amalie Skram established with naturalist fiction. Through their literary interaction with the works of Émile Zola and Henrik Ibsen, these women writers challenge contemporary ideas around women’s readership and authorship by reclaiming their right to participate in public debates and current literary trends. As naturalist fiction responds to and appropriates the various emerging scientific and anthropological discourses in a fictional realm, women writers’ interactions with naturalist narratives allow them to engage with contemporary debates and to forge their own analysis of society.

Tensions arise however within this dialogue when considering naturalism’s self-gendering as masculine – mirroring the gendering of the scientific discourses with which naturalist fiction engages – as well as how naturalist fiction sometimes perpetuates contemporary clichés, notably by using biological determinism as a narrative device. The exploration of this complex dialogue starts with an analysis of how women writers appropriate from naturalist fiction its political use of the tragic mode to denounce the man-made structures and social norms that shape women’s experiences. The second chapter examines women writers’ portrayal of female characters’ experiences of sexual violence and motherhood, and how, while inspired by naturalist fiction, their own descriptions reject physiological explanations for women’s victimisation. The final chapter explores how women writers are critical of the detached gaze deployed by naturalist narrators to depict experiences of madness and instead portray their female characters’ suffering from a subjective point of view to challenge biological definitions of madness. Reading these women writers’ works alongside canonical naturalist fiction enhances our understanding of the spread of naturalism in Europe while also providing a deeper contextualisation of these authors’ works.

Authors: Martine, MMT

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-kzpvdedwo
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: comparative literature; women writers; naturalism; nineteenth century