Women's voices in Augusta Webster's dramatic monologues

Abstract

This dissertation examines eight poems by Augusta Webster (1837¿1894), a key Victorian woman poet. Selected from Webster's Dramatic Studies (1866) and Portraits (1870, 1893), these eight dramatic monologues spoken by women offer a significant array of female characters, including a nun, a saint, a newly-engaged girl, an old maid, a plain woman, a prostitute, Medea, and Circe. These characters form a continuum of female identities from repression to transgression, from resignation to protest, from weakness to strength and empowerment. This study traces these themes and argues that studying a fine but unjustifiably neglected poet like Webster can both enrich the study of Victorian poetry in general and diversify our understandings of the dramatic monologue in particular. The approach of this study combines feminist criticism, cultural discourse, constructivism, social studies, and textual analysis. The discussions focus on Webster's texts to show both the poetics and the politics of her dramatic monologues: her significant choice of female speakers from social or moral margins (such as an old maid and a prostitute); her deployment of more than one context in their stories (e.g. contexts that show Medea as a healer, a helpmate, and a lover, not merely as a killer); her use of more than one voice in monologues, and her application of this form to social and feminist criticism. The Introduction surveys criticism of the dramatic monologue, approaching this form in terms of gendered reading, writing, and speaking. It also introduces Augusta Webster's life and work. Chapter One analyzes the construction of the identities of two religious women, ¿Sister Annunciata¿ and ¿Jeanne D'Arc,¿ demonstrating both Annunciata's struggle between earth and heaven and Jeanne's negotiations among gender roles. Chapter Two discusses four women speakers from the Victorian era, emphasizing their protests about Victorian women's social experience. Chapter Three discusses how Webster revises the femme fatale of Medea and Circe, whose daring transgressions empower female identity. The Conclusion suggests that more studies of this talented poet be undertaken to enrich our understanding of both Victorian women poets and the dramatic monologue itself.