Dark smiles : race and desire in George Eliot / Alicia Carroll.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Carroll, Alicia, 1960-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Eliot, George, 1819-1880--Criticism and interpretation.

Eliot, George.

Eliot, George, 1819-1880.

Difference (Psychology) in literature.

Ethnicity in literature.

Exoticism in literature.

Desire in literature.

Race in literature.

Sex in literature.

Criticism and interpretation.

Race.

Physical Description:

xvii, 179 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Athens : Ohio University Press, [2003]

Summary:

Although George Eliot has long been described as "the novelist of the Midlands," she often brought the outer reaches of the empire home in her work. This study examines Eliot's problematic, career-long interest in representing racial and ethnic Otherness. Placing Eliot's diverse and wide-ranging treatment of Otherness in its contemporary context, Alicia Carroll argues that Eliot both engages and resists traditional racial and ethnic representations of Otherness. Carroll finds that Eliot, like other women writers of her time, often appropriates narratives of Otherness to explore issues silenced in mainstream Victorian culture, particularly the problem of the desirous woman. But if Otherness in Eliot's century was usually gendered as women and constructed as the object of white male desire, Eliot often seeks to subvert that vision. Carroll notes Eliot's tendency to "exoticize" images of girlhood, vocation, and maternity in order to critique and explore gendered subjectivities. Indeed, the disruptive presence of a racial or ethnic outsider often fractures Eliot's narratives of community, creating a powerful critique of home culture. Dark Smiles explores for the first time Eliot's consistent reliance on racial and ethnic Otherness as a mode of cultural critique.

Contents:

1 Eroticizing the Other 1

2 "Dark Smiles": George Eliot and "Gypsydom" 29

3 The Giaour's Campaign: Seduction and the Other in Felix Holt: The Radical 65

4 "A Queer Genealogy": Ethnicity and Sexuality in Middlemarch 92

5 Arabian Nights: "Make-Believe," Exoticism, and Desire in Daniel Deronda 107.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 141-173) and index.

ISBN:

0821414410

OCLC:

48857557