A Princess of the Gutter: Women, Writing,

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A Princess of the GutterWomen, Writing,
Slumming

• Mrs. L.T. Meade as Girl-Centered Writer
• Women Slumming

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Grant Allens New Womanin Aubrey Beardsley
style, Punch (1895)
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Grant Allen as New WomanThe Latest Literary
Success, Punch (1895)
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May 1895, Trials of Oscar Wilde
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Seth Koven on Women Slumming

• What made this possible? The broadening of
  social and educational opportunities for
  bourgeois women with the creation of womens
  colleges the extension of local government
  franchise to propertied women the rise of women
  journalists and female professions emerging out
  of the social hygiene movements of the
  mid-century and the appearance of New Women in
  fictionall these developments contributed to
  elite womens newfound freedom to move through
  urban space (Koven, Slumming 187).

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1. Representation of Joanhow is she
constructed in relation to gender and class?
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1. Representation of Joanhow is she
constructed in relation to gender and class?

• --Girton Girl (1)--Bloomsbury (2), Kensington
  Gardens (8)West End--Middle Class, Inheritance,
  Under Uncles Thumb--Independent, mobile
  (4)--Masculine element (14)--Not interested in
  lovers ball dresses (22)--Modern--Somewhat
  morbid--New Woman type

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2. Early Representation of the Slums Slum
Dwellers
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2. Early Representation of the Slums Slum
Dwellers

• Women thus feminised space (68)
• Bloody, Screaming, Scratching (68)
• Irish Italian
• Half cant speak English (73)
• Yells, Hisses, Breath (75)
• Remote Terrible Region (83)

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• 3.     Slumming Crossing Over
• What happens when these two worlds collide,
  intersect?

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Hansom Cab c.1896
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Victorian Landau
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Victorian Omnibus
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• It was a very hot day, and the sun beat on the
  glass with power. The omnibus was empty when I
  got into it. Presently a faded-looking woman in
  rusty black took a seat opposite to me. She had
  a sort of dim effect all over. Her face was not
  exactly dirty, but it was grimy with dust and
  toil. She was very pale, but the perspiration
  stood in large drops on her brow. I remarked on
  the heat of the day, and she gave me a weary
  glance. It is ot, she answered, in an
  apathetic tone. The omnibus moved forward, and
  the woman and I sat in opposite corners, now and
  then glancing at one anotherthere seemed the
  gulf of ages between us. (84)

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Joans Gender Class Transformationin the East
End
 
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Slumming vs Passing OED

• Slumming
• The visitation of slums, esp. for charitable or
  philanthropic purposes.
• 1884 Chr. World 22 May 391/3, I am not one of
  those who have taken to slumming as an
  amusement. 1894 D. C. MURRAY Making of Novelist
  87 Slumming had not become the fashion at that
  time of day.
• Passing
• 8. The fact of being accepted, or representing
  oneself successfully as, a member of a different
  ethnic, religious, or sexual group. See PASS v.
  43d.
• 1926 C. VAN VECHTEN Heaven 286 Passing, passing
  for white.