Accomplished women: Gender, artistry, and authorship in nineteenth-century England

This dissertation examines the neglected subject of feminine accomplishments in the period of greatest controversy in English culture about women's education in and practice of the arts. First, I trace the history of accomplishments in primary sources from the Renaissance to the Victorian eras, analyzing the arguments made in the conduct and education literature for and against these increasingly popular pursuits. I establish accomplishments' role in the evolution of the feminine ideal, education reform, debates about the "Woman Question," and the emergence of a new model of amateurism.; I then investigate accomplishments' significance to three prominent women novelists---Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and George Eliot---each of whom was a devoted musician or visual artist as well. I read each author's practice of the arts and views about accomplishments in light of social convention, discussing her correspondence, juvenilia, and critical writings, if any; I also consider Bronte's extant artworks. Each novelist's contemporaries and reviewers, I contend, employ the figure of the accomplished woman in order to contain the anxieties raised by women's professional authorship.; In the novels, I explore each author's use of accomplishments in order covertly to explore aspects of professional artistry and authorship, subjects that the demands of propriety and literary popularity made it impossible to address directly. By increasingly emphasizing personal pleasure, self-expression, and ambition, these authors actually anticipate the evolution of the accomplishments controversy. Austen engages the controversy directly, arguing for the redefinition of accomplishment and a reconsideration of its role in characterizing the heroine, although she mitigates the radicalism of her views through strategies of indirection and displacement. Bronte moves beyond Austen by explicitly representing the pleasurable experience of artistic creation and the gratification of professional ambition, albeit separately; she often relies upon the conventions of romance rather than following through on the implications of these depictions. Eliot analyzes the consequences of embracing conventional accomplishment, and she articulates a philosophy of pleasurable amateurism. Her essential conservatism and commitment to realism, selfless sympathy, and high artistic standards, however, restrict the availability of amateurism to many of her characters, particularly women.