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Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth
Here is a bold new vision of Victorian culture: a study of myths of womanhood that shatters the usual generalizations about the squeezed, crushed, and ego-less Victorian woman.
Through copious examples drawn from literature, art, and biography, Auerbach reconstructs three central paradigms: the angel/demon, the old maid, and the fallen woman. She shows how these animate a pervasive Victorian vision of a mobile female outcast with divine and demonic powers. Fear of such disruptive, self-creating figures, Auerbach argues, produces the approved ideal of the dutiful, family-bound woman. The awe they inspire associates them with characters in literature, the only vehicles of immortality in whom most Victorians could unreservedly believe.
Auerbach looks at a wonderful variety of sources: Svengali, Dracula, and Freud; poets and major and minor novelists Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and Ruskin; lives of women, great and unknown; Anglican sisterhoods and Magdalen homes; bardolatry and the theater; Pre-Raphaelite paintings and contemporary cartoons and book illustrations. Reinterpreting a medley of fantasies, she demonstrates that female powers inspired a vivid myth central to the spirit of the age.
Through copious examples drawn from literature, art, and biography, Auerbach reconstructs three central paradigms: the angel/demon, the old maid, and the fallen woman. She shows how these animate a pervasive Victorian vision of a mobile female outcast with divine and demonic powers. Fear of such disruptive, self-creating figures, Auerbach argues, produces the approved ideal of the dutiful, family-bound woman. The awe they inspire associates them with characters in literature, the only vehicles of immortality in whom most Victorians could unreservedly believe.
Auerbach looks at a wonderful variety of sources: Svengali, Dracula, and Freud; poets and major and minor novelists Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and Ruskin; lives of women, great and unknown; Anglican sisterhoods and Magdalen homes; bardolatry and the theater; Pre-Raphaelite paintings and contemporary cartoons and book illustrations. Reinterpreting a medley of fantasies, she demonstrates that female powers inspired a vivid myth central to the spirit of the age.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 9, 2018
3 1/2 stars but 5 stars for the chapter "the rise of the fallen woman"
February 18, 2023
I don't quite know what to say about this book. Its quixotic goal is, apparently, to prove that Victorian England wasn't as misogynistic as we think it was. It's well written and clearly well researched, and I'd like to buy the idea that there's a powerful female archetype (or archetypes) that the apparent misogyny of Victorian England is a response to.
And, you know, I just don't. I enjoyed reading the book quite a lot (it would have been even better published now, with color printing for the art), but I was not persuaded by it.
And, you know, I just don't. I enjoyed reading the book quite a lot (it would have been even better published now, with color printing for the art), but I was not persuaded by it.
October 18, 2022
Quite insightful analysis on female characters in Victorian imagination and beyond.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews