ing goals and ambitions of women can be observed. By bringing a unique Marxist, feminist ontology to bear on a comparison of HardyÆs work and that of the Brontes, it becomes possible to read the Victorian bildungsroman as a product of gendered imagination. It is therefore the goal of this proposed research to undertake such a task.
The Marxist Feminist lens is of special value in this context. Humm (1986) stated that what Marxism gives to feminist theory is an approach to historical contexts, rooting history in terms of productivity and power relations. The function of Marxist criticism is to prove that art (and history) derives from social-historical processes. Marxism, in addition to feminism, provides a revolutionary ontology for womenÆs daily experience and gives historical significance to the everyday and therefore redeems the notion of lived experience (Kristeva 1980). Feminist-Marxist criticism, in literature, history and other areas, is said to move toward a conjoining of literary and historical events to achieve a gendered reading of those events and the texts that document them (Robinson, 1978).
Specific primary texts to be employed in the analysis include the major novels of Thomas Hardy, with an emphasis on Jude the Obscure, as well as the work of Emily, Anne, and Charlotte Bronte (e.g., Wuthering Heights, Villette, Jane Eyre). In addition, secondary critical analyses and commentaries on these works and theoretical treatises on Feminist and Marxist as well as Marxist-Feminist criticism will be examined in the proposed research.
The proposed research therefore consists of a Marxist-Feminist analysis of the conditions of production in which selected fictional texts of the Victorian era (written by both males and females) were created. The goal of the research is to identify the gendered meanings of womanÆs condition as evident in the works of male and female writers of the era, leading to an underst...