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This book explores diverse signifying processes of objects embedded with paradigmatic class discourses and various subjective situations derived from those signifying objects within social and cultural contexts in Sarah Waters’ novels. Sarah Waters, the British contemporary novelist, is best known for her novels set in Victorian society and featuring lesbian protago¬nists. Waters’ criticism on the underlying indeterminacy between class imagination and class reality constructed as the ostensible solidification of social ladders in Victorian society is pervasive and profound although her works are conventionally categorized as historical fictions or lesbian novels. Employing critical concepts concerning objects and things, this book proves Waters’ figurative particularities and heterogeneities of objects may contribute to an innovative scope of a materialisation of class and a significant influence upon contemporary material culture studies.
作者簡介
Ya-Ju Yeh(葉雅茹)
Ya-Ju Yeh is Associate Professor at Department of English in Aletheia University, Taiwan.
She received her Ph. D. degree at Department of English in National Chengchi University.
Her current research interests are Victorian novels, contemporary English literature, and material culture studies. She has published journal papers in NTU Studies in Languages and Literature, NTU Humanitas Taiwanica, Fiction and Drama, and a number of academic journals.
Acknowledgements
English Abstract
Chinese Abstract
chapter 1. Introduction: The Materialisation of Class
chapter 2. Class Politics and Metonymic Possession in Affinity
Introduction
The Lady and the Inmate
The Lady and the Maid
Conclusion
chapter 3. Class Performance and Symbolic Dresses in Fingersmith
Introduction
Maid Performance
Mistress Performance
A Contrived Performance Ever
Conclusion
chapter 4. Class Identity and Ironic Décor in The Little Stranger
Introduction
The House
The Décor
The Identity
Conclusion
chapter 5. Conclusion: Figurative Appropriation of Objects
Bibliography
