Example for ePortfolio use/sample from Dickens presentation, Oxford/Berkeley summer school 2011

1. Charles Dickens
Subverting the Victorian feminine ideal … but
retaining the right to personal chauvinism

2. Realism in Dickens: grit

3. Feminism…sort of
“Despite some misgivings, Dickens was broadly
sympathetic towards the idea of property rights for
women, publicly intervening in 1868 … in the debates
on the first Married Women’s Property Bill” (Wynne
59)
Vulnerable working women – protection from
“unreasonable lower-class men”
In Bleak House, Victorian gender models are
reversed: Skimpole and Turveydrop act like ideal V.
wives
Skimpole: parody! financially dependent on JJ,
foppish, feminine, “I am a child,” irresponsible

4. Dickens “overtly promotes an ideology of
womanhood, however, at the same time […]
modifies and subverts that ideology” (Ayres 2)
Conflict complicating domestic ideology in
Dickens:
Patriarchs do not automatically deserve the
respect they command from their privileged social
positions
Women, regardless of being exemplars, are
unable to effect moral or social change
Many women succeed (they are happy and do not
die of brain fever or end up in the workhouse,
Newgate, or, worst of all, America) outside
domesticity (Ayres 3)

5. Esther Summerson: Guppy
love
Guppy’s first proposal… he’s seen her once:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZL-SwOmYJ8
Guppy stalks Esther (p.186-187)

7. Guppy rescinds his proposal after Esther’s pox
(p. 568-569)
Guppy proposes AGAIN once she has
recovered:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KN9rRuAS88
&feature=related
although the “text constructs Esther as an
exemplar of womanhood and a female advocate
for domesticity, it also struggles to convey
Dickens’ understanding of women, and at the
same time to convey a Victorian woman’s
attempt to understand herself. This is no easy
task because Esther is constantly being either
defined or effaced by other people” (Ayres 141)

8. Esther’s lesson
“Though the lesson of the narrative is that
discipline is expected of women, to deny
themselves, the narrative itself suggests that self
denial is no natural behavior for women” (Ayres
152)
Esther’s self denial is torment -- though she is
the Angel of the House, she never knows herself
completely except as how she is defined by
others

9. Dickens’ legacy

10. Works Cited
Ayres, Brenda. Dissenting Women in Dickens’
Novels: The Subversion of Domestic
Ideology. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
1998. Print.
Wynne, Deborah. Women and Personal Property
in the Victorian Novel. Farnham: Ashgate,
2010. Print.