TY - JOUR
T1 - The picturesque, portraiture, and the manor house
T2 - The social functions of art in mary augusta ward's marcella
AU - Codell, Julie
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Cambridge University Press 2017 and circ;.
PY - 2017/12/1
Y1 - 2017/12/1
N2 - The very first line of Mary Augusta Ward's novel Marcella ends with the word beautiful, repeated twice, the second time in italics. In this paper I will argue that this symbolizes the central role of aesthetics in the novel in a discourse that engages the social criticism of John Ruskin and William Morris. Some scholars have assessed Marcella (1894) as having a retrograde ending of Marcella marrying a Tory politician and landowner. Judith Wilt's critical study of Ward is entitled Behind Her Times, an indication of the general view of Ward as a political conservative, although Wilt argues that she was also progressive in many ways, and Ward has enjoyed other nuanced, sensitive re-readings and assessments (Argyle; Sutton-Ramspeck). I, too, am arguing that Ward's political and social views in this novel are complex and mixed and that examining the novel's Victorian cultural discourses can illuminate complex socio-political content that draws on late-century art world debates. The very texture of Marcella belies an unstable view of class and social problems, as the eponymous protagonist goes through several stages of thinking and trial-And-error solutions, some socialist, to problems of poverty and class disparity.
AB - The very first line of Mary Augusta Ward's novel Marcella ends with the word beautiful, repeated twice, the second time in italics. In this paper I will argue that this symbolizes the central role of aesthetics in the novel in a discourse that engages the social criticism of John Ruskin and William Morris. Some scholars have assessed Marcella (1894) as having a retrograde ending of Marcella marrying a Tory politician and landowner. Judith Wilt's critical study of Ward is entitled Behind Her Times, an indication of the general view of Ward as a political conservative, although Wilt argues that she was also progressive in many ways, and Ward has enjoyed other nuanced, sensitive re-readings and assessments (Argyle; Sutton-Ramspeck). I, too, am arguing that Ward's political and social views in this novel are complex and mixed and that examining the novel's Victorian cultural discourses can illuminate complex socio-political content that draws on late-century art world debates. The very texture of Marcella belies an unstable view of class and social problems, as the eponymous protagonist goes through several stages of thinking and trial-And-error solutions, some socialist, to problems of poverty and class disparity.
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U2 - 10.1017/S1060150317000250
DO - 10.1017/S1060150317000250
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85047312257
SN - 1060-1503
VL - 45
SP - 857
EP - 880
JO - Victorian Literature and Culture
JF - Victorian Literature and Culture
IS - 4
ER -