Chapter 2: Space and Place
Unlike the country with its idyllic broad vistas of greenery, broad landscapes and ‘huge conical masses of hill’ (Eliot, 1859, p.19), the generic city is proportionally smaller compared to the population that inhabits it. It could be considered overly obvious when stated that the city is smaller than the surrounding country and that the density of habitation is greater in the confines of a city. However, it is the act of confining and restricting space that provides a far richer snapshot of human civilization, encapsulated in the industrial prison of the city structure. The city, an almost independent world of its own engineering, encompasses a range of cultural diversity within its maze of streets, alleys, and walkways. Like the convoluted package of a human brain, the network of passages and locations build upon and behind each other in such an intensely folded pattern, that the city is impacted within itself, and is a veritable hub for the differentiation of lifestyle. It is perhaps ironic that the structurally introverted nature of the city gives rise to the explicitly extrovert natures of Victorian society which will be discussed in this chapter.
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I have discovered my dissertation for my BA Honours English Literature degree, written over a decade ago. I present it here in four instalments.
The dissertation is a socio-historical investigation regarding the importance of the city in terms of its representation and structure in Victorian literature by Dickens and Eliot. Initially studying the convergence and contrast of the city and the country, a relationship of binaries between the two presents the placement of an effeminised country subordinated to the masculine, overpowering city. The relevance of the author’s gender identities and the possible relevance of Victorian genders to affinities with country or city life are subsequently revealed from this method. The introduction of the importance of theological representations and church practices in city and country societies displays the vast contrast of difference between authors and also industrial and pastoral viewpoints, which are again related back to Victorian gender identities and the importance of religion in the industrious city lifestyle. The division of Victorian city space within the novels reveals a regulated region of gender and class zones. A Foucauldian reading implies a regulation of sexual segmentation of genders and a repression of gender identities for women who are stowed in domestic spheres for masculine usage. The dual roles of public spaces for commerce in the day and sexual subversions in nocturnal periods are examined within the texts, leading to discussion of how permeable the barriers are between the disciplinary spaces and the consideration of how gender oscillates between them. The industrial aspects of city life are examined through literary representations, noting the importance of transportation via rail as a factor in breaking down the rigidity of gender entrapping spaces as well as the impenetrability of the country and city relationships. Marxist readings in the texts regarding the city as a productive capitalist device to abuse the inhabitant proletariat, reveals the city to be a large factory mechanism with smaller bodies maintaining the system within. The Gothic revival of city architecture in the Victorian city is assimilated in the representation of literary cities for particularly gothic modes of writing. The Gothicised city represents a subversive version of society, harking back to an anarchic past. The city is presented as a panoptic region of observation and the Victorian representations of domesticated horror intimates the birth of the Urban Gothic genre, where the familiar becomes the foe. |
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