Reading the Icon of Beauty and Sensation in The Woman in White and Ophelia
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Shao, Ke-Ni
Abstract
This thesis studies the iconic image of “the woman in white” in mid-nineteenth century England in two representative texts: John Everett Millais’s painting, Ophelia (1851-52); and Wilkie Collins’s sensation novel, The Woman in White (1860). By analyzing the reading process and / of the image of sensationalized femininity of the time, this thesis attempts to point out male artists’ deliberate playing between sensation and femininity, and their construction of its link as seemingly natural and inherent. The purpose of this study lies in underlining an effective pattern for representing female icons, a strategy that is assisted by dramatically performing the connection between beauty and sensation, while ultimately reducing female bodies to an over decorated, flattened image for trade.
This pattern of representation will first be examined in the case of Millais’s Pre-Raphaelite Ophelia. Through this painting, the Pre-Raphaelite artist established a formula that showcases the transformation of a dying woman into an idol of pathos and beauty—a morally acceptable image for sexualized gaze. A decade later, Millais’s novelist friend, Collins, elaborates the formula in a suspense tale with loads of similar triviality. By meticulously painting the image of elevated femininity while gradually eliminating its colorful individuality, the artist-writer Collins and his puppet artist in the novel provide readers a canvas of well-manufactured sensation in the prime form of a suffering woman. With a carefully designed perspective, Collins, as Millais does, allow readers to be entertained as they feel her pain in an intimate and excusable way.
By analyzing the image of “the woman in white” in these two texts, this thesis provides an answer to its popularity in the cultural imagination and the market and attempts to locate an analytical position where both feminist researchers and general readers need as we consume these icons of beauty.
Subjects
《白衣女郎》
煽情
女性肖像
米雷
奧菲莉雅
維多利亞視覺文化
柯林斯
Type
thesis
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