Bound by Narrative: ‘Reading’ the Female Body and Genre in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

Abstract

In George Eliot’s 1860 realist novel, The Mill on the Floss, Henry Rider Haggard’s 1887 adventure romance She: A History of Adventure, and George Egerton’s 1894 New Woman short story, “The Regeneration of Two”, the female body becomes a representative surface upon which is inscribed the discourses and conflicting ideologies of the social context. This thesis examines authors’ engagement with conventional narratives of femininity in their representations of the physical female body, and in its absence or presence. The representation of female characters within frameworks of genre both reflects and represents changing concerns about bodily identity, gender, and national identity.