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Medea in Victorian Women's Poetry

Rodriguez, Mia U.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=uthonors1355934808

Abstract Details

2012, Bachelor of Arts, University of Toledo, English.
During the mid to late Victorian period, Euripides’ tale of Medea was given new life by the suffragette movement. As Victorians began to question women’s rights and capabilities, Medea’s story resurfaced as a cautionary tale showing the damage that occurs when women repress and shape their identities to fit uncompromising social expectations for their gender. In this thesis, I examine two Victorian women poets who interpreted Medea as a feminist statement: Augusta Webster, whose “Medea in Athens” (1870) was featured as the lead dramatic monologue in her collection Portraits, and Amy Levy whose closet drama “Medea: A Dramatic Fragment” (1881) was published as a part of her collection A Minor Poet and Other Verse. Both these writers examine Medea’s psychology and the context in which she lives. Through their use of poetic conventions, Webster and Levy are able to suggest ways in which Medea’s autonomy and identity are co-opted by a patriarchal society. I argue that Webster uses the tactics of the dramatic monologue to explore Medea’s disintegrated sense of self, depicting her as a woman whose identity has been usurped by her husband’s view of her. Levy appropriates the techniques of closet drama to focus on the voice of a patriarchal culture that excludes Medea long before her act of filicide. Through close readings of these two poems, I show the cultural impact and relevancy of Webster and Levy as female voices in the Victorian literary tradition.
Melissa Valiska Gregory, PhD (Advisor)
Matthew Wikander, PhD (Committee Chair)
Christina Fitzgerald, PhD (Committee Chair)
47 p.
Comparative Literature; Gender; Womens Studies
Medea; Euripides; Augusta Webster; Amy Levy; Victorian; Women's Poetry; Suffragette; A Minor Poet and Other Verse; Portraits; Patriarchal Society; Victorian Literature; Hellenism; Greek Myth; Interpretation; Closet Drama; Dramatic Monologue; Women's Right

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Rodriguez, M. U. (2012). Medea in Victorian Women's Poetry [Undergraduate thesis, University of Toledo]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=uthonors1355934808

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Rodriguez, Mia. Medea in Victorian Women's Poetry. 2012. University of Toledo, Undergraduate thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=uthonors1355934808.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Rodriguez, Mia. "Medea in Victorian Women's Poetry." Undergraduate thesis, University of Toledo, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=uthonors1355934808

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

uthonors1355934808
944
© 2012, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by University of Toledo Honors Theses and OhioLINK.