British Women Writers and the Reception of Ancient Egypt, 1840-1910 : Imperialist Representations of Egyptian Women

Thanks also to organizers of the British Women Writers Conference 2011 and 2012, for providing a venue for me to present early arguments about Chapters 2 and 3, and to Clare Simmons, editor of Prose Studies, who facilitated the publication of portions of Chapter 2. This chapter is derived in part from an article published in Prose Studies 33.2 (2011), available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/. Portions of Michael Field's unpublished journals, discussed in Chapter 4, are quoted with kind permission from Leonie Sturge-Moore and Charmian O'Neil. © The British Library, London, Add. Mss. 46777-46784, 46799, 45853. Thank you to editors Brigitte Shull, Ryan Jenkins, Leighton Lustig, and Jennifer Crane, for facilitating the process of publication; and to the xii • Acknowledgments "This book shows how British women writers' encounters with textual and visual representations of ancient Egyptian women such as Hathor, Isis, and Cleopatra influenced how British women represented their own desired emancipation in novels, poetry, drama, romances, and fictional treatises. Molly Youngkin argues that canonical women writers such as Florence Nightingale and George Eliot--and less canonical figures such as Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper (who wrote under the name 'Michael Field') and Elinor Glyn--incorporated their knowledge of ancient Egyptian women's cultural power in only a limited fashion when presenting their visions for emancipation. Often, they represented ancient Greek women or Italian Renaissance women rather than ancient Egyptian women, since Greek and Italian cultures were more familiar and less threatening to their British audience. This notable distinction opens up discussions about the history of British women, their writing, and the British view on gender in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."--Font no determinada Front Matter....Pages i-xxvii Bound by an English Eye: Ancient Cultures, Imperialist Contexts, and Literary Representations of Ancient Egyptian Women....Pages 1-33 Acting as “the right hand ... of God”: Christianized Egyptian Women and Religious Devotion as Emancipation in Florence Nightingale’s Fictionalized Treatises....Pages 35-61 “[T]o give new elements ... as vivid as ... long familiar types”: Heroic Jewish Men, Dangerous Egyptian Women, and Equivocal Emancipation in George Eliot’s Novels....Pages 63-97 “[W]e had never chosen a Byzantine subject ... or one from Alexandria”: Emancipation Through Desire and the Eastern Limits of Beauty in Michael Field’s Verse Dramas....Pages 99-130 The “sweetness of the serpent of old Nile”: Revisionist Cleopatra and Spiritual Union as Emancipation in Elinor Glyn’s Cross-Cultural Romances....Pages 131-153 “My ancestor, my sister”: Ancient Heritage Imagery and Modern Egyptian Women Writers....Pages 155-181 Afterword....Pages 183-184 Back Matter....Pages 185-229 "Focusing on British women writers' knowledge of ancient Egypt, Molly Youngkin shows how British women writers' encounters with textual and visual representations of ancient Egyptian women such as Hathor, Isis, and Cleopatra influenced how British women represented their own desired emancipation in novels, poetry, drama, romances, and fictional treatises"-- Provided by publisher Focusing on British women writers' knowledge of ancient Egypt, Youngkin shows the oftentimes limited but pervasive representations of ancient Egyptian women in their written and visual works. Images of Hathor, Isis, and Cleopatra influenced how British writers such as George Eliot and Edith Cooper came to represent female emancipation.