<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Neo-Victorian novelists sometimes use postgraduate students – trainee academics – who research nineteenth-century writers as protagonists. This article discusses four neo-Victorian novels, Lloyd Jones’s <italic>Mister Pip</italic> (2006), Justine Picardie’s <italic>Daphne</italic> (2008), A.N. Wilson’s <italic>A Jealous Ghost</italic> (2005) and Scarlett Thomas’s <italic>The End of Mr Y</italic> (2006), in which female postgraduate students take the centre stage. In Victorian literature, which mirrors the gender bias in the academic world and in society at large at that time, most scholars are male. The contemporary writers’ choice of female trainee academics is worth investigating as it speaks to the visibly changed gender make-up of contemporary academia. However, this utopian situation is complicated by the fact that the writers have chosen to frustrate the characters’ entry into the world of scholarship by having them leave the university environment altogether before the end of the novel. The fact that these females all choose to depart the university forms a contrast with notions of the university found in Victorian novels, in which leaving or not attending university might have detrimental effects on the characters.</p></abstract>

Neo-Victorian novelists sometimes use postgraduate students – trainee academics – who research nineteenth-century writers as protagonists. This article discusses four neo-Victorian novels, Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip (2006), Justine Picardie’s Daphne (2008), A.N. Wilson’s A Jealous Ghost (2005) and Scarlett Thomas’s The End of Mr Y (2006), in which female postgraduate students take the centre stage. In Victorian literature, which mirrors the gender bias in the academic world and in society at large at that time, most scholars are male. The contemporary writers’ choice of female trainee academics is worth investigating as it speaks to the visibly changed gender make-up of contemporary academia. However, this utopian situation is complicated by the fact that the writers have chosen to frustrate the characters’ entry into the world of scholarship by having them leave the university environment altogether before the end of the novel. The fact that these females all choose to depart the university forms a contrast with notions of the university found in Victorian novels, in which leaving or not attending university might have detrimental effects on the characters.

Female Researchers in Neo-Victorian Fiction

American, British and Canadian Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"Female Researchers in Neo-Victorian Fiction"}

Neo-Victorian novelists sometimes use postgraduate students – trainee academics – who research nineteenth-century writers as protagonists. This article...

Female Researchers in Neo-Victorian Fiction

Published Online: Jun 11, 2016

Page range: 72 - 86

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/abcsj-2016-0005

Keywords
Neo-Victorian fiction, literary adaptations, gender, intellectual cannibalism, trainee academics, fiction vs literary criticism, Lloyd Jones, Justine Picardie, A.N. Wilson, Scarlett Thomas

© 2016 ABC Studies, Journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Female Researchers in Neo-Victorian Fiction

Published Online: Jun 11, 2016

Page range: 72 - 86

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/abcsj-2016-0005

KeywordsNeo-Victorian fiction, literary adaptations, gender, intellectual cannibalism, trainee academics, fiction vs literary criticism, Lloyd Jones, Justine Picardie, A.N. Wilson, Scarlett Thomas

© 2016 ABC Studies, Journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
Neo-Victorian fiction, literary adaptations, gender, intellectual cannibalism, trainee academics, fiction vs literary criticism, Lloyd Jones, Justine Picardie, A.N. Wilson, Scarlett Thomas