Carnage, medicine and "The Woman Question" : representations of the Crimean war in neo-Victorian fiction

Bożena Kucała

doi:10.5817/BSE2022-1-10

Carnage, medicine and "The Woman Question" : representations of the Crimean war in neo-Victorian fiction

Vol.48,No.1(2022)

Bożena Kucała

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2022-1-10

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.76864

PDF

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse and compare representations of the Crimean war in three neo-Victorian novels, Beryl Bainbridge's Master Georgie (1998), Julia Gregson's The Water Horse (2004) and Katharine McMahon's The Rose of Sebastopol (2007), with reference to the commonly established view of this historical event. The novels foreground the experience of civilians who found themselves on the periphery of the battlefields, caring for the casualties of the war. As the course of history and private lives intersect, the main characters undergo a personal transformation; for the female protagonists, the experience leads to liberation from conventional gender roles. It is argued that by focusing on civilians rather than soldiers the novels offer a new perspective on the war; nonetheless, they uphold its overwhelmingly negative image in British collective memory.

Keywords:
Crimean War; historical novel; neo-Victorian fiction; war in literature; "the woman question"

Pages:
175–186

References

Arnold, Guy (2002) Historical Dictionary of the Crimean War. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

Bainbridge, Beryl (1999 [1998]) Master Georgie. London: Abacus.

Berridge A.L. (2015) Off the Chart: The Crimean War in British Public Consciousness. Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, issue 20. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.726. Available at:

Brown, Michael (2010) "Like a Devoted Army": Medicine, Heroic Masculinity, and the Military Paradigm in Victorian Britain. Journal of British Studies, 49 (3), 592−622. | DOI 10.1086/652000

Figes, Orlando (2011) The Crimean War: A History. New York: Metropolitan Books.

Gregson, Julia (2010 [2004]) The Water Horse. London: Orion Books. Kindle ebook.

Guignery, Vanessa (2010) Photography, Trauma and the Politics of War in Beryl Bainbridge's Master Georgie. In: Kohlke, Marie-Luise and Christian Gutleben (eds.) Neo-Victorian Tropes of Trauma: The Politics of Bearing After-Witness to Nineteenth-Century Suffering. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 191−216. | DOI 10.1163/9789042032316_008

Grubisic, Brett Josef (2008) Understanding Beryl Bainbridge. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

Hadley, Louisa (2010) Neo-Victorian Fiction and Historical Narrative: The Victorians and Us. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Heilmann, Ann and Mark Llewellyn (2010) Introduction. Neo-Victorianism and Post-Authenticity: On the Ethics and Aesthetics of Appropriation. In: Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1999-2009. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1−27. | DOI 10.1057/9780230281691_1

Jones, David R. (2017) The Crimean War: Then and Now. London: Frontline Books.

Julia Gregson (n.d.) Available at: http:www.juliagregson.net/ (Accessed on 24 Sept 2021).

Katherine McMahon (n.d.) Available at: https:www.katharinemcmahon.com/ (Accessed on 24 Sept 2021).

McLoughlin, Catherine Mary (2011). Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War From the Iliad to Iraq. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McMahon, Katherine (2007) The Rose of Sebastopol. London: Weidenfield & Nicolson. Kindle ebook.

Mitchell, Kate (2010) History and Cultural Memory in Neo-Victorian Fiction: Victorian Afterimages. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

O'Grady, Carrie (2011) Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge – Review. The Guardian, 20 April. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/apr/20/master-geor-gie-beryl-bainbridge-review (Accessed on 22 Oct 2021).

Pattinson, Juliette (2020) Women of War: Gender, Modernity and the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Ponting, Clive (2011) The Crimean War: The Truth behind the Myth. London: Vintage Digital.

Sánchez-Arce, Ana María (2001) The Prop They Need: Undressing and the Politics of War in Beryl Bainbridge's Master Georgie. In: Usandizaga, Aránzazu and Andrew Monnickendam (eds.) Dressing up for War: Transformations of Gender and Genre in the Discourse and Literature of War. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 93−110.

Tate, Trudi (2019) A Short History of the Crimean War. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.

The Rose of Sebastopol (2009) Kirkus Reviews, 15 January. Academic Search Ultimate (Accessed on 27 Sept 2021).

Zipp, Yvonne (2009) The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon. The Christian Science Monitor, 13 March. Available at: https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Re-views/2009/0313/the-rose-of-sebastopol (Accessed on 22 Oct 2021).

Metrics