الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 127 |  |  |
| | | from | 127 | | |
Abstract
This will be illustrated through trying to prove that Sarah Waters in her neo-Victorian novel Fingersmith (2002) not only imitates Oscar Wilde’s gender script in his Victorian novel The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1993),Victorian pornography and charles Dickens’ way of describing London, but she also criticizes them through voicing her contemporary critical opinion. Moreover,
through comparing John Harwood’s neo-Victorian novel The Asylum (2013) with Wilkie Collins Victorian novel The Woman in White (2008), this study will compare
iii
Victorian and neo-Victorian ventriloquism through introducing the idea of institutionalized dummies. This study is divided into four chapters and a conclusion. Chapter one will start out with a brief comparison between definitions proposed by critics in order to define the neo-Victorian domain and then will explain why this study considers neo-Victorianism as the most suitable of them. The rest of the chapter will be devoted to defending the genre against critics who believe that the genre is a sign of exhausted mimicry as it relies on repeating Victorian literary conventions. This defense is based on the metaphor of voice since it connotes repetition, yet in a critical way. The chapter ends by pinpointing the reason behind the significant appearance of the Victorians in contemporary literature. Chapter two will utilize the metaphor of voice as well as Judith Butler’s gender as a performance theory in order to prove the innovative aspect of certain neo-Victorian texts since they share the same problem, which is the inability to distinguish original and copied acts. The chapter will start out by discussing this problem in relation to the metaphor of ventriloquism; in addition, it will try to deconstruct the relationship between the dummy and the ventriloquist through the opinions of different philosophers. The second part of the chapter will explicate Butler’s gender theory, which considers individuals dummies to social agency. Furthermore, it will also underline the limitations of her theory through highlighting various views of academic critics who prove that there is more than one agency controlling the individual in society. Additionally, it will demonstrate how the metaphor of voice is used to delineate the difference between performative and performance acts since Butler does not provide adequate explanation to this problem.
iv
Chapter three will prove that the neo-Victorian Writer Sarah Waters does not blindly repeat the Victorian heritage, but she expresses her gratitude to the Victorian ancestors and at the same time voices the critical points of view of contemporary readers regarding several Victorian topics. Thus, this chapter will compare Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith as well as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in order to prove the unfixed relationship between the dummy and the ventriloquist in both novels. Moreover, this chapter will also reveal how Sarah Waters is a dummy author who is affected by Oscar Wilde’s homosexual script as well as the metaphorical representation of Butler’s drag performance. In addition, it will demonstrate how she imitates charles Dickens’ description of Victorian England, and Victorian pornography. At the same time, this chapter will show how she deviates from the Victorian script by becoming a passionate dummy voicing her critical opinion of Victorian heritage.
Chapter four will introduce the idea of institutionalized dummies through comparing Victorian ventriloquism to neo-Victorian ventriloquism. This chapter will trace the shift in gender roles, family and asylum institutions in the Victorian novel The Woman in White and the neo-Victorian novel The Asylum in order to prove that capitalism is the reason behind the construction and deconstruction of any social norms. This chapter will try to figure out the reason behind the recurrent presence of queer women in neo-Victorian literature, in addition to the recurrent appearance of asylums.