著者

木村 正子

出版者

関西学院大学

雑誌

英米文学 (ISSN:04246853)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.49, no.1, pp.55-69, 2005-03-15

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In contrast to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Gaskell's heroine is recognized as obedient to the Victorian ideological figure, the "angel in the house." This is a strategy of Gaskell to hold her authorship in the mid-Victorian male-centered literary world, for male editors claimed that female writers should write "feminine" stories. Gaskell ostensibly obeyed their claim and wrote stories about angelic heroines ; however, she secretly contrived to undermine the patriarchal foundation that binds the heroines. In Cousin Phillls (1863), the heroine Phillis aspires to maturity that allows her to grow to womanhood, but her message is ingeniously hidden behind the veil of male narrative. The narrator Paul believes that Phillis' broken heart is no less tragic than loss of "innocence" - the innocence of Eden. Making this ironical use of Paul's view, Gaskell suggests that the image of the "angel in the house" is made up by the Victorian male self-deception.