Thackeray and women

In this first study to address women in Thackeray's fiction, Clarke draws on the writer's biography as well as his novels, tales, and nonfictional writings to place him in the context of the women's movement. Approaching her analysis from a feminist-sociological perspective, Clarke connects Thackeray's novels to historical developments in nineteenth-century feminism and identifies an evolution in Thackeray's fictional treatment of women. Contrary to traditional representations of the writer as conventional and even hostile to "the Cause," the portrait of Thackeray that emerges is of a man both of his age and far ahead of it. Clarke explores the relationship of Thackeray's depiction of women to the prevalent discourse on gender that energized nineteenth-century literature. She synthesizes recent Thackeray studies and examines writers and works Thackeray knew - writers including Judith Drake and Sidney Owenson and works including An Essay in Defense of the Female Sex and Woman and Her Master. The life and works of Caroline Norton serve as a particularly important influence and thread throughout Thackeray's writing. Establishing a strong tie between Thackeray's novels and the nineteenth-century women's movement, Clarke offers a new perspective on the complex, distinctive voice of the writer. Because her study demonstrates the views on women of a major nineteenth-century writer as they are reflected in his novels, the study will appeal to scholars of women's studies, the novel, and Victorian literature and history.