Of Lovely Tyrants and Invisible Women

Invalidism as Metaphor in the Fiction of Ellen Glasgow

By (author) Emma Dominguez-Rue

Book cover: Of Lovely Tyrants and Invisible Women

Extent: 252 pages

Publisher: Logos Verlag Berlin

Subjects: Literary Studies

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(May 2011)

ISBN: 9783832528133

5.71 x 8.27 inches

Price: $59.00

Out of stock

This book examines images of female illness and invalidism as a metaphor of women’s position of invisibility in Victorian and fin-de-siecle America, which pervade the fiction of the Virginia writer Ellen Glasgow (Richmond, 1873-1945). The study contends that the author explores the Victorian cult of invalidism to reveal the mechanisms of patriarchy: her novels warn against adhering to its values, since women are moulded to become epitomes of extreme delicacy and selflessness, being ultimately reduced to virtual inexistence. Many times physically incapacitating, Glasgow seems to suggest, the doctrine of female self-effacement always debilitates women’s autonomy as human beings. The female invalids in Glasgow’s fiction thus operate as uncanny mirrors of the self women become if they adhere to the traditional code of femininity and its adjoining principle of self-sacrifice.

  • By (author) Emma Dominguez-Rue