Matos-Ayala, Stephanie

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Cleverly voiced: The narrators’ uncommon perceptions and depictions of the bad woman in Middlemarch and Vanity Fair
(2011) Matos-Ayala, Stephanie; Batra, Nandita; College of Arts and Sciences - Arts; Irizarry, José M.; Vicente, Nancy V.; Carroll, Kevin S.; Department of English; Frey, William
This thesis explores the way in which William Makepeace Thackeray‘s Vanity Fair and George Eliot‘s Middlemarch present a different point of view towards their “bad” women than the one usually expected in the Victorian Period. This is done through subtlety and clever intrusions by their narrators, thus avoiding the certain rejection from their Victorian readers. Victorian Novels usually depicted female characters that represented what was considered good (commonly known as “Angels of the House”) and female characters that represented what was considered bad in the Victorian Period. Obviously, it was expected for the good female characters to succeed and the bad ones to fail. Nevertheless, by studying how these “bad” women are perceived and depicted by their narrators in these two novels, this thesis demonstrates how by subtle patterns in the narration and ultimate endings, the “bad” women, despite first impressions, were preferred over the Angel of the House.