Lady Delacour’s Gender Performativity In Belinda

Maria Edgeworth(1767–1849)is a writer of dual British-Irish nationality who is famous for her children stories and her works on the problem of education. She is called “the Irish Austen” in English literary history. There are seldom monographs on Edgeworth or her works in China, as she and her works are merely studied as a reference to Walter Scott or Jane Austen; she is almost ignored among numerous published books of British literature. In the English academia, the studies on her novel Belinda(1801) mainly focus on such subjects as the spouse-selection in early nineteenth century, marriage views, women’s education, and miscegenation and colonial boundaries.Judith Butler proposed in her Gender Trouble that gender, and actually all identities are the result of performativity. People construct and deconstruct their gender statuses by reiterated performances, which hints various possibilities of identity for subjectivity. In the novel Belinda, Lady Delacour experiences acting a traditional woman identity, then trying to blur the gender differences, and finally performing a new gender identity. She fights for freedom and equal rights both in family life and in public politics, which reveals her reversion of the prescribed gender and the reconstruction of a different gender identity.This thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter analyzes how Lady Delacour performs a traditional woman identity. In social situations, she is a shining pearl, blooming in all parties with her own light. Men cannot hide affections to her while women follow her steps. In family life, she follows the traditional conception of spouse selection to get married with Lord Delacour, and qualifiedly fulfills wife’s responsibility. This indicates the fact that women could do nothing but to meet the social demands and standards given to get respect and dignity in the traditional culture. Although she appears to maintain a qualified, even good traditional female image, she is discontent with the social conventions in her heart and privately challenges her husband for his emotional negligence and alienation.The second chapter illustrates Lady Delacour’s implementation of gender performativity and temporary subversion of gender prescription by drag. As duel is an exclusive act for men,so the duel between Lady Delacour and another woman by putting on men’s dress is already an invasion of the male domain and a challenge to male authority. The role of tragic musewhom Lady Delacour parodied in drama-acting actually reveals her own life and the whole play hints her discontents with the unhappy marriage. Lady Delacour tries to express her appeal for a different woman identity by blurring the gender differences. The third chapter analyzes how Lady Delacour performs the role of unconventional woman. She is actively involved in political affairs, attempts to claim equal family rights with her husband, boldly expresses and performs her inner real ideas, all of which greatly challenges patriarchy at the time and truly subverts gender identity.If Lady Delacour’s gender performativity at the beginning is a performance or a disguise to cover the conflicts between sex and gender, her drag for a duel of the prescribed gender of Belinda is a subversion of gender stereotypes to obscure the gender differences, and even to cross gender boundaries. And her final challenge to male dominance in family and attempt to intervene in public politics is the realization of female subjectivity. Edgeworth’s Belinda explores the multiple female identities under the patriarchal system.