Vernon Lee and the Victorian Aesthetic Movement: "Feminine Souls" and Shifting Sites of Contest

Victorian aesthetic theories offered an alternative to traditional agonistic discourse associated with male-dominated public domain. However, those writings established sites of contest ironically reinscribed power within aesthetic realm. ********** The Victorian era saw solidification of change in British had roots in eighteenth century. The broad interest in art and literature among Victorian essayists such as Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, and Walter Pater continued eighteenth-century move toward polite discourse intended to promote social stability. This shift transforms traditional role of rhetoric, defined according to classical ideal of moving an audience to act on specific juridical or political matters. Those writers who focused their attention on theories of aestheticism rejected agonistic training had at one time been considered vital for men entering public life, retreating from world of public affairs and willingly engaging in an introspective use of language had traditionally been associated with feminine private sphere. The political aims of these writers involved appropriating an idealized virtue for masculine ends of revitalizing industrial society, strategy made possible by increasing literacy of their society. The aesthetic discussions developed in writings of these Victorian figures offered an alternative to those discursive practices had previously been associated with male-dominated public domain. However, they formed basis for new sites of contest continued to preserve masculine power at expense of those women who sought entry into feminine realm that, ironically, held no place for them. The changing standards of masculine and feminine discourse during Victorian era exemplify what Julia Kristeva describes as repression of feminine in terms of positionality rather than of essences (Moi 166). The discursive formation of realm largely comprised of male writers demonstrates how relationships between and language change in response to specific cultural contexts without representing fixed preferences in styles of language use are somehow biologically determined. Gender has frequently been identified as factor helps to define different styles of discourse. In Fighting far Life, Walter Ong depicts agonistic discourse as form of communication historically associated with masculinity. In Ong's view, notion of conflict provides basis for early rhetorical theories and practices reflects importance of struggles are a larger element in lives of males than of females, for reasons relating both to development of individual males and to evolution of species (51). In Ong's view, masculine obligation to engage in contest is naturally reflected in speech, which serves as conspicuous manifestation of adversativeness in human lifeworld across globe (34). Thus, Ong maintains began as concrete manifestation of struggle for domination required by masculine conduct of public business in oral societies. The implicit connection between masculinity and deliberative has not surprisingly created situation in which women have not been highly visible within established rhetorical canon. Cheryl Glenn notes Walter Ong's argument the agonistic patterns we automatically accept as rhetorical argument and dialectic are inscribed by gender--the male gender ultimately fails to address fact that women, from beginning of recorded time, have been excluded from participating in those practices informed and codified practice of rhetoric, practices were, handily enough, labeled rhetoric (19). In Glenn's view, exclusion of women's voices from history of begins with assumption meaningful discourse takes place within a tradition of vocal, virile, public--and therefore privileged--men (1). …