Reading the Villain: The Psychology of Character in the Victorian Novel
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Type
ThesisThesis type
Doctor of PhilosophyAuthor/s
Last, Stephanie JaneAbstract
This thesis is concerned with the complex and unsettling villain that emerges from the Victorian novel. Moving away from simplified, black and white conceptions of the ‘bad character’, the novel offers a nuanced, vivid, uncertain picture of villainy. Recent contributions to character ...
See moreThis thesis is concerned with the complex and unsettling villain that emerges from the Victorian novel. Moving away from simplified, black and white conceptions of the ‘bad character’, the novel offers a nuanced, vivid, uncertain picture of villainy. Recent contributions to character studies usefully acknowledge that characters can be both human-like entities and integral cogs in the formal structures of narratives, yet the specific import of the villain character remains an intractable problem. This thesis offers a new intervention into the character debate by focusing on the intricacies the ‘villain effect’ – that is, what one character type, the villain, does to readers and what plot requires of it. It scrutinises the affective impact of the villain, alongside its imperative contributions to narrative configuration and explication, in the works of Charles Dickens, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Given its tendency to spark confused and conflicted feelings rather than straightforwardly negative ones, the villain offers a unique way to address the psychology of reading. The experience of reading the villain is bound up in a specific type of fervid attachment entrenched in both negative and positive affect. The conundrum this thesis investigates, therefore, is why the villain produces dynamic psychological responses in readers, involving an overflow of feeling and paradoxical reactions which are difficult to reconcile. I draw primarily on psychoanalytic methodologies, which are attuned to fixations and ambivalences, to work through these knotty, heightened responses. Among others, Sigmund Freud’s theory of the uncanny and Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection help to explicate the villain’s uniquely uncomfortable hold on readers. Silvan Tomkins’s theory of primary affect offers another psychological angle, illuminating the more instinctive dimensions of reader response.
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See moreThis thesis is concerned with the complex and unsettling villain that emerges from the Victorian novel. Moving away from simplified, black and white conceptions of the ‘bad character’, the novel offers a nuanced, vivid, uncertain picture of villainy. Recent contributions to character studies usefully acknowledge that characters can be both human-like entities and integral cogs in the formal structures of narratives, yet the specific import of the villain character remains an intractable problem. This thesis offers a new intervention into the character debate by focusing on the intricacies the ‘villain effect’ – that is, what one character type, the villain, does to readers and what plot requires of it. It scrutinises the affective impact of the villain, alongside its imperative contributions to narrative configuration and explication, in the works of Charles Dickens, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Given its tendency to spark confused and conflicted feelings rather than straightforwardly negative ones, the villain offers a unique way to address the psychology of reading. The experience of reading the villain is bound up in a specific type of fervid attachment entrenched in both negative and positive affect. The conundrum this thesis investigates, therefore, is why the villain produces dynamic psychological responses in readers, involving an overflow of feeling and paradoxical reactions which are difficult to reconcile. I draw primarily on psychoanalytic methodologies, which are attuned to fixations and ambivalences, to work through these knotty, heightened responses. Among others, Sigmund Freud’s theory of the uncanny and Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection help to explicate the villain’s uniquely uncomfortable hold on readers. Silvan Tomkins’s theory of primary affect offers another psychological angle, illuminating the more instinctive dimensions of reader response.
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Date
2022Rights statement
The author retains copyright of this thesis. It may only be used for the purposes of research and study. It must not be used for any other purposes and may not be transmitted or shared with others without prior permission.Faculty/School
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Art, Communication and EnglishDepartment, Discipline or Centre
Discipline of EnglishAwarding institution
The University of SydneyShare