The Mirroring of Self in Charlotte Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets and The Old Manor House

• Main Authors: Mei-Ying Lin, 林美瑩
• Other Authors: 吳雅鳳
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/65691632277756756514

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 外國語文學研究所 === 103 === This thesis proposes a cross-genre study of Charlotte Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets and The Old Manor House to analyze their similitude and inter-referentiality. Most critics tend to separate Smith’s sonnets from her novels, while a cross-genre comparison offers a possibility to examine the author’s construction of subjectivity, which is fluid and volatile. By investigating this challenge against generic boundaries, this study aims to argue for Smith’s subversive proto-feminist stance, a notion foregrounded in Judith Pascoe’s Romantic Theatricality: Gender, Poetry, and Spectatorship. Charlotte Smith is a highly self-aware writer who skilfully manipulates multiple images, voices, and characters to shape a persona saturated with her own feelings and sentiments. In the Elegiac Sonnets, an image of a forlorn and suffering woman is portrayed through numerous roles, among which the depiction of a Gothic heroine resonates with Smith’s Gothic romance The Old Manor House. Similarly, in the novel, the hero Orlando is imbued with a melancholic hue not far from that of the “weeping Charlotte” performed and publicized in both the sonnets and its preface. This deployment of the mirroring symmetry of persona-making, as well as the mix of generic conventions, helps to reveal Smith’s exploration of selfhood and her questioning of the patriarchal traditions.