Feral Familiars and Cat Tales: Deconstructing Domesticity in Wilkie Collins' Heart and Science
Loading...
Authors
Watt, Kelsey
Date
Type
thesis
Language
eng
Keyword
Ferality , Domestication , Jacques Derrida , Eve Sedgwick , Wilkie Collins , Nineteenth-Century Studies , Literature , The Sensation Novel
Alternative Title
Abstract
Through an examination of Victorian artifacts, including contemporary paintings and literature, this thesis explores the ways in which the concept of the feral cat challenges the image of not only the Victorian family and its domestic sphere, but how the animal functioned within this space. In a period so forcefully defined by domestication and the taming of the beast, cats during the Victorian era walked against the path of human domination marking a defiant power. I look to the theoretical work of Jacques Derrida, Eve Sedgwick (and her term “feline pedagogue”) and Teresa Magnum to illustrate how the cat’s challenge to humanistic ideology opens up a feral pedagogue. Feral Pedagogy requires that the critic risks rhetorical, ideological and narratological certainty in the name of evoking fear, shame and uncertainty. It requires a reorientation of space as no longer ordered by the lines of domestic/wild boundaries in and beyond Victorian literary fields. I extend this methodology to the works of Wilkie Collins, in particular, his use of the sensation novel in Heart and Science. Through the animal’s escape beyond domestic structures, Collins’ work presents a feral reading of the Victorian family. By reading representations of ferality, as inspired by the cat’s power, I hope to reimagine the bounds of Victorian animal studies. As a field of study which is so heavily inspired by the Victorian ideas surrounding the animal, the prospect of recognizing feral familiars in Victorian cat tales opens up a new analytical field: cat studies. I hope to incite further revisits to and reexaminations of the way feline potential rewrites the discourse on animals, especially discourses rooted in the Victorian conceptions of human domination. Reading “ferally” requires an opening of space, taken up by many kinds of relationships that are no longer ordered by human domination and nonhuman subjugation.
Description
Citation
Publisher
License
Queen's University's Thesis/Dissertation Non-Exclusive License for Deposit to QSpace and Library and Archives Canada
ProQuest PhD and Master's Theses International Dissemination Agreement
Intellectual Property Guidelines at Queen's University
Copying and Preserving Your Thesis
This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
ProQuest PhD and Master's Theses International Dissemination Agreement
Intellectual Property Guidelines at Queen's University
Copying and Preserving Your Thesis
This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States