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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Dangerous Women: Vera Caspary’S Rewriting Of 'Lady Audley’S Secret' In 'Bedelia', Laura Vorachek Oct 2010

Dangerous Women: Vera Caspary’S Rewriting Of 'Lady Audley’S Secret' In 'Bedelia', Laura Vorachek

English Faculty Publications

Considering Vera Caspary's Bedelia as a reimagining of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret allows for a new critical interpretation that refutes the typical view of Bedelia as reinforcing traditional gender roles. Instead, Caspary critiques World War II America by bringing Victorian concerns with female roles into the twentieth century.


Reading Music: Representing Female Performance In Nineteenth-Century British Piano Method Books And Novels, Laura Vorachek Jan 2010

Reading Music: Representing Female Performance In Nineteenth-Century British Piano Method Books And Novels, Laura Vorachek

English Faculty Publications

The editorial content of piano method books published in the nineteenth century contributed to the gendering of the domestic piano by targeting a middle-class female audience. At the same time, these tutorials circumscribed the ability and ambition of female pianists, cautioning women against technical display or performing challenging pieces in company, thereby reinforcing the stereotype of the graceful, demure woman who played a little. However, this effort was complicated by both the tutorials themselves and contemporary fiction. The middle-class women reading these tutorials also read novels—a fact the method books occasionally acknowledge—which often presented a very different picture of women’s …