Throughout Victorian culture, ‘The angel in the house’ works as a one-dimensional character identity, however, in ‘The Yellow Paper’ Charlotte Perkins Gilman chooses to write about a 19th century woman who overtly experiences a crisis of the self and case of conflicted identity. This becomes evident at first through the division of the ‘rational’ which … Continue reading The Yellow Wallpaper: Hysteria, Rest Cures & Gender Theory
Running a household in Victorian England had become a science – with tasks to be delegated and a system of categorised activity for those at every level of society. When Girouard writes of the eminent concern for ‘morality, domesticity, organisation and hospitality’[1] in the country house the emphasis is on the rigid upholding of standards … Continue reading The Victorian Country House: Morality, Domesticity & Organisation
A note on the text: I've been writing on Impressionism in 19th century Paris through a mini-series. If you haven't already, it might be beneficial to read the first two introductory parts before delving into this article. To contextualise The Impressionists, please read here... To discover Le Flâneur, please read here... In relation to men, … Continue reading The Impressionists – Putting Women in the Picture
Doctor Faustus (c. 1592) by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) and The Changeling (c. 1622) by Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) and William Rowley (c. 1585-1626) are concerned with human nature, gulling and sin. The relationship’s of Beatrice-Joanna and De Flores in The Changeling and Doctor Faustus and Mephistopheles in Doctor Faustus are founded on arrangements which entail the … Continue reading Toxic Renaissance Relationships in Literature: Beatrice-Joanna and De Flores (The Changeling) and Doctor Faustus and Mephistopheles (Doctor Faustus)
Virginia Woolf’s instruction for the woman writer to kill the ‘Angel in the House’ underpinned the crux of her argument Professions for Women delivered in 1942 to the Women’s Service League. American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ predates the essays of Woolf in the 20th century, contemporary to the ‘Angel in the House’ … Continue reading Women’s Literature: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper – Killing the Angel in the House (1)
Please note: This article follows on from part 1 (Mid-17th Century Amsterdam) and part 2 (Dutch Preoccupations in the 17th Century) of my written web series on Dutch Dollhouse Culture. At this time, hobbies for women related to material culture, consumption and domesticity so, textiles, shopping, ladylike activity, charity work and the running of a … Continue reading Worlds Within Worlds Part 3: Wealthy Dutch Women in the 17th Century
We've been introduced to Amsterdam in the 17th century. Let's continue our journey by taking on the Dutch view of the world. The Dutch were keen on categorization: An assured, enterprising curiosity led to great advances in lens-cutting, medicine, navigation and cartography... Domenico Remps, Cabinet of Curiosities, 1690s The entire universe could be boiled down to a single … Continue reading Worlds Within Worlds Part 2: Dutch Preoccupations in the 17th Century
