“Literature,” wrote poet Robert Southey to a young Charlotte Brontë, “cannot be the business of a woman's life: and it ought not to be.” This course will read some of those nineteenth-century women who defied a culture to make literature their business: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Brontë herself, George Eliot, and Christina Rossetti. We will read these women's novels and poetry with the following set of questions in mind:

1. How do our authors implicitly or explicitly imagine a female author in a literary world dominated by male writers? What strategies of legitimation are detectable in their work?
2. Can we see our writers' gender as in some way connected to the form in which they choose to write? In what sense can the novel be understood as a particularly feminine art form?
3. The nineteenth century witnesses the rise of the novel as a marketable commodity. As feminism emerges (Mary Wollstonecraft's 1792 Vindications of the Rights of Woman is a touchstone here), feminists develop a sophisticated analysis of the way in which woman herself is a kind of commodity in a patriarchal society, objectified and exchanged between men. What kinds of metaphorical or thematic links do our writers forge between objects and women?
4. The Victorian era produces the public/private split that still governs Western thinking. We have a public self that is political and economic and a private self that is emotional and reserved for our families. This division is—it will come as no surprise—gendered. To what extent does the literature we read reproduce, interrogate, or deconstruct either the gendering of the dichotomy or the dichotomy itself?

This course is run as a seminar, meaning that it is not a lecture class but a discussion-oriented one. If the class is to be rewarding for all students, each student must take responsibility for the class dialogue and dynamic. You take responsibility by: 1) coming prepared. The amount of reading is such that you should be able not only to finish the assignment but also to substantively reflect on it. Do not come to class if you are not prepared; no virtue attaches to your mere presence. 2) being sensitive to the quantity and quality of your participation. Do not limit yourself to one or two comments per class or to a few sentences at a time (often an interesting idea or question requires some time to articulate) but do help foster participation by being aware of others who might contribute if given time. Conversely, if you have trouble speaking, push yourself to make a comment or two regularly.

Requirements: In-class short writing assignments, primarily close reading. For the most part, I will not comment on the in-class assignments except to indicate whether you are hot or cold by giving a check plus, a check, or a check minus. Undergraduates and non-literature graduate students submit one “official” close reading and three papers, two short and one long. Literature graduate students deliver one presentation on literary criticism (in pairs) and submit one “official” close reading and one final 12 page paper.

Texts: Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own. Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh and Other Poems. Charlotte Brontë, Villette. George Eliot, Middlemarch. Books available through In Other Words bookstore.

Syllabus:

Week 1	Introduction; Close Reading
Week 2	A Room of One's Own; Goblin Market
Week 3	NO CLASS   MLK DAY
Week 4	Aurora Leigh. Short paper on AL due: 2-3 pages, double-spaced.
Week 5	Villette
Week 6	Villette. Short paper on Villette due: 2-3 pages, double-spaced
Week 7	Middlemarch
Week 8	Middlemarch   Close reading due.
Week 9	Middlemarch
Week 10	First drafts of final papers due: 6 pages for undergrads and non-lit grads; 10-12, lit grads. Bring two copies, one to turn into me and one to workshop in class.