Simonetta Falchi – Greta Perletti – Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz (eds.), <i>Victorianomania. Reimagining, Refashioning and Rewriting Victorian Literature and Culture</i>
10.13125/2039-6597/2965
As Lotman stated, cultures do not live in complete isolation: the exchange between past and present, which overcomes even geographical barriers, is inevitable, and its outcomes unpredictable. Our contemporary culture makes no exception. We are drawn to the rediscovery of a past which does not want to be forgotten: Victorianomania. Reimagining, Refashioning and Rewriting Victorian Literature and Culture intends to prove it by examining the varied ramifications of Neo-Victorianism in literature and popular culture.
application/pdf
2039-6597
2965
13
it
Eleonora Fois
Between
Simonetta Falchi – Greta Perletti – Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz (eds.), <i>Victorianomania. Reimagining, Refashioning and Rewriting Victorian Literature and Culture</i>
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between
7
Between the Texts/Reviews: Eds. G. Iacoli, M. Guglielmi, C. Cao
2017-05-31
2017-06-20
2017-06-02
2017-06-20
1
Eleonora Fois
2017/05/31
10.13125/2039-6597/2965
2039-6597
13
Simonetta Falchi – Greta Perletti – Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz (eds.), <i>Victorianomania. Reimagining, Refashioning and Rewriting Victorian Literature and Culture</i>
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/download/2965/2517
7
     Simonetta Falchi – Greta Perletti –
      Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz (eds.)
              Victorianomania.
       Reimagining, Refashioning and
        Rewriting Victorian Literature
                and Culture
                Milan, Franco Angeli, 2015, 205 pp.


      As Lotman stated, cultures do not live in complete isolation: the
exchange between past and present, which overcomes even
geographical barriers, is inevitable, and its outcomes unpredictable. Our
contemporary culture makes no exception. We are drawn to the
rediscovery of a past which does not want to be forgotten:
Victorianomania. Reimagining, Refashioning and Rewriting Victorian
Literature and Culture intends to prove it by examining the varied
ramifications of Neo-Victorianism in literature and popular culture.
      Neo-Victorianism is not a passive reiteration (no adaptation can be)
of already-exploited Victorian themes, recycled and emptied of their
force, but a new reading, inevitably shaped by the fusion of
contemporaneity and past, where the Victorian Age mediates and filters
issues of our times.
      With the raise of interest in the Victorian Age, some solid academic
contributions have become the core of academic research: Hailmann and
Llewellyn’s Neo-Victorianism. The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century
traced a path which still guides and orients research towards a precise
ensemble of literary and non-literary works, united by the common


Between, vol. VII , n. 13 (Maggio/ May)
Simonetta Falchi – Greta Perletti – Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz (eds.), Victorianomania (Eleonora
Fois)


focus of «(re)interpretation, (re) discovery and (re)vision» (9) of
Victorian times, themes and issues; Kaplan’s Victoriana: Histories,
Fictions, Criticism, and Gutleben and Kohlke’s Neo- Victorian Series are
also among the pillars of the field.
      The force with which the Victorian age has overcome its historical
borders and permeated our times is surely worthy of reflection, and the
title of the book eloquently suggests an interpretation: the term
Victorianomania clearly defines the modality of Victorian fascination on
contemporary culture as a mania, an urge which, beyond a mere
interest, becomes great excitement, even obsession: clearly something
which cannot be escaped.
      The content of the book certainly seems to confirm such feeling and
justify the title: the numerous works analyzed, the plurality of the voices
and the wide range of media involved suggest the extent of such
fascination and of the possible variations on the subject.
      It is a book which surely aspires to fuel the Neo-Victorian debate,
without forgetting the readers who are new to the subject: the detailed
introduction does not merely synthesize the essays included in the book,
it also introduces the field and its core topics. The editors also ask
themselves the reasons for such a consistent presence of Victorian
suggestions in popular culture and literature, and which issues of
contemporaneity find expression and voice though the Victorian filter.
The meaning of rewriting the past and the will to make sense of
contemporary topics by repositioning them in the Victorian context are
the focus of this book, which lingers on the reflection between past and
present, «repetition and difference, sameness and otherness» (7). The
editors rightfully stress the various backgrounds of the scholars who
contributed to the book as the guarantee of a wider perspective: the
essays indeed manage to cover all major Neo-Victorian related themes,
starting from its origins, as in Diniejko’s essay which unravels the Neo-
Victorian viewpoint in Fowler’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman. It is one
of the earliest Neo-Victorian postmodern novels, «a model for the ways
in which Victorian themes can be represented in postmodern
metahistorical fiction» (35). The variety of discourses intertwined with
the typical Victorian background of fallen women and love stories


2
                                       Between, vol. VII , n. 13 (Maggio/May 2017)



includes the coexistence of the Darwinian theory, Marxist ideas and an
existentialist message, which allow for the deconstruction of the
Victorian model, deformed but enriched by the postmodern sensitivity.
      The search for new meanings in gender and sexuality on the one
hand, and the postcolonial look on the Victorian empire on the other, are
the two dominant issues which have been tackled by the Neo-Victorian
esthetic and, in turn, by Neo-Victorian studies. A closer look at the
essays in Victorianomania, however, reveals a predominant interest
towards gender-related issues. Since adaptations or rewritings tend to
reveal more about the times which produce them than about the times
they are inspired by, this might imply that modernity has found in neo-
Victorianism the ideal voice, the proper filter to face the gender topic,
whose importance at a social level is surely undeniable.
      The Victorian age certainly appears particularly suitable to discuss
and challenge ideas related to women and the female condition: it was,
after all, a period of great contradictions, where the figure of the ‘new
woman’ was born while restrictive role definitions and social codes were
still expected, where a queen reigned but did not support suffrage.
Romero Ruiz focuses then on Sarah Waters’s exploitation of the
Victorian obsession and fascination for the secret and the forbidden, in
an attempt to give new energy to the development of lesbian sexual
identity by bringing forth themes which were (and still are) debated as
deviant. Affinity and Fingersmith establish a tradition of same-sex
relationships in Victorian times, empowering women by revealing what
was kept hidden, and dismantling some of the classic beliefs rooted in
gender division: the centrality of the mother’s influence in the
construction of the female identity, and pornography seen as a male-
dominated trade. With her open approach, indicative of the influence of
the contemporary, Sarah Waters also directly addresses the
contemporary debate concerning the explicitness in the description of
same-sex encounters.
      Gender is also the core of Jerez’s essay: steampunk culture plays
with fixed and stereotyped ideas related to gender and identity,
expunging the duality and looking for unification. Mina Harker’s
transformation from Dracula to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen


                                                                                3
Simonetta Falchi – Greta Perletti – Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz (eds.), Victorianomania (Eleonora
Fois)


proves the renewed sensibility towards the female heroine: from a
woman who needs to be tamed and framed into more familiar
structures, to a dominant, fierce and warrior-like character, perfectly
aligned with the utopian conception, typical of the steampunk
movement and of Neo-Victorian philosophy, which emancipates
marginalized people via social achievement.
      Women can reclaim identity but also lose it. The ‘caged bird’
metaphor, at the core of Ana Stevenson’s essay on Neo-Victorian film
musicals, describes women deprived of liberty and initiative, bound to
be prisoners of the house. Such metaphor has been exploited in both its
aesthetic ramifications (the woman being represented as a delicate and
beautiful human being) and its social implications (where women are
torn between the safety of the domestic wall and the adventures of the
outer world, symbolized by the garden). In the musical Les Miserables,
Cosette’s cage is merely metaphorical but she does not show particular
initiative or strengths; in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, Satine’s cage is
also the gigantic set (from which she wishes to fly away) for her
performances; Johanna’s cage in Sweeney Todd is concrete and restrictive.
The demise of women in Sweeney Todd (Johanna and her mother) is
rooted on an aesthetic according to which women are helpless without
men’s protection, and beautiful in their defenselessness. These works
hide a vivid male gaze which, barely scraping the surface, does not have
the sensitivity to see beyond this aesthetic and fails to face on a deeper
level the issue of the restrictions placed on women by Victorian society.
      One more example of contemporary vision unable to pay justice to
the complexity of the Victorian text can be found in BBC adaptations of
Dickens. Falchi demonstrates that issues related to social conditions,
once privileged in Dickens’s writing, are left aside in Andrew Davies’s
2008 BBC adaptation of Little Dorrit in order to please an audience drawn
to «romanticism of pure love in a remote era of respectable values» (92).
The gender problem, however, is still present: Amy’s insistence on being
called Little Dorrit, for instance, implies the renunciation of her identity
as an individual; Miss Tattycoram is the fallen, unconventional woman,
the ‘madwoman’ – this time not confined in the attic – who, once tamed,
is ready to fulfill the classic womanly expectations; Dickens’s


4
                                          Between, vol. VII , n. 13 (Maggio/May 2017)



disenchanted awareness of the true aspects of marriage surrenders to a
classic marriage scene reminiscent of the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride
and Prejudice.
      A different aspect concerning Dickens is shown in Cao’s analysis of
modern versions of Great Expectations: the osmotic process which
derives from the intersection between old and new media contributes to
the evolution and the development of Victorian storytelling in new and
unexpected ways. The secondary plot of Dickens’s stories, often
sacrificed in adaptations, benefits from this approach and gains a new
dignity. The satiric elements related to Pip’s hopes of ascent, for
instance, are being rediscovered thanks to Twitterliterature and
fanfiction: further examples of how modern eyes can look back at the
past, with a new public of contemporary teenagers drawn to a
masterpiece which now speaks a more familiar language.
      With Wakefield, the gaze turns back to gender issues. In order to
preserve the perfection that the main character must always incarnate,
contemporary film adaptations of Jane Eyre heighten the feeling of
affection for the little Adele (whereas little doubt is left in Brontë’s novel
as to Jane Eyre’s cold approach): such forced motherly love exemplifies
the tension towards the ideal image of a woman and a mother. The true
madwoman in the attic, Bertha, the symbol of the feminist literature, is
also the object of renewed attention. Far from following Brontë’s
dehumanisation, the adaptations choose to exploit Bertha’s humanity
and ‘vindicate’ her: instead of taking Rochester’s hand and endure her
imprisonment, Bertha voluntarily chooses to die.
      Di Blasio focuses on Emma Tennant’s postmodern retellings of
classic novels, with the addition of an unexpected twist, which, once
more, exposes gender stereotypes. Stevenson wrote a deviant short
novel, focused, even stylistically, on the game of the double. The double,
in Tennant’s case, stems from the pressure of accepting the established
model for women in society: Mrs Hyde’s only choice is to split.
Moreover, Tennant reinstates the Victorian dualism between good and
evil and connects it to the contemporary obsession for beauty.
      The postcolonial perspective in Neo-Victorian studies is a key
feature which cannot be left behind, and the book does not fail to include


                                                                                   5
Simonetta Falchi – Greta Perletti – Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz (eds.), Victorianomania (Eleonora
Fois)


it. The political spectrum of Neo-Victorianism emerges with
Somacarrera’s essay on the influence of Walter Scott in Atwood’ s Neo-
Victorian novels. There is not a direct adaptation from a Victorian work,
but the Victorian fascination with Scotland surely represented the
fundamental starting point for the novel: by adhering to Scott’s model
of «national narratives with postcolonial resonances» (163), Atwood’s
Canada mirrors Scotland, a country which both contributed to the
creation of the empire and paid the price for its survival.
      Lutzoni ideally brings together the two core Neo-Victorian themes;
it shows the postcolonial attitude of using the Victorian novel as a
narrative model and as a political delegitimization tool on the one hand,
and it offers a solid feminist perspective on the other. The dichotomic
attitude of postcolonial writers is here evident in the choice of the
Victorian narrative model and in the will to give cultural representation
its rightful space. Far from providing an unambiguous picture of the
historical events, Soueif opts for multiple and contradictory voices,
refusing the idea of a true historical knowledge and embracing the
«historiographic metafiction» (173) introduced by Linda Hutcheon.
      The essay which closes the book pivots on another Victorian theme:
illusion. Violi looks at the cinematographic universe which in 2006
released two similar movies, The illusionist and The Prestige, reconnecting
the roots of contemporary entertainment industry to the Victorian
practice related to magic and illusion; the metaphor of the mirror is
typically Neo-Victorian, as a multifaceted reference to the Victorian
world.
      Creating a definitive guide to the trends of the Neo-Victorian
phenomenon is impossible: the speed at which new works are released
in literature or in popular media is surely challenging, and new themes
might be explored in the future. The book, however, certainly provides
an extensive and in-depth investigation of the neo-Victorian
phenomenon, stressing the importance of continuously looking to the
past, the filter through which to face issues of modernity, in order to
move forward. Looking at the ensemble of essays, it emerges how Neo-
Victorianism has an important role to play the postmodern feminist
movement, whose issues clearly occupy the larger part of the book; a


6
                                       Between, vol. VII , n. 13 (Maggio/May 2017)



reflection on the postcolonial approaches, however, is not forgotten by
the editors: neo-Victorianism can also contribute to a fruitful reflection
on past politics and contemporary threats.




                                                                                7
Simonetta Falchi – Greta Perletti – Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz (eds.), Victorianomania (Eleonora
Fois)


                                     The author
        Eleonora Fois

PhD in Philological and Literary Studies at the University of Cagliari.
Her research pivots on theatre and English literature: specific studies
related to this research involve Italian translations of Shakespearean
plays and analysis of the production of contemporary British
playwrights.

        Email: eleonora.fois@libero.it




                                     The review
Date sent: 30/01/2017
Date accepted: 15/04/2017
Date published: 31/05/2017




                         How to quote this review
Fois, Eleonora, “Simonetta Falchi – Greta Perletti – Maria Isabel Romero
Ruiz (eds.), Victorianomania. Reimagining, Refashioning and Rewriting
Victorian Literature and Culture”, Eds. M. Fusillo, B. Le Juez, B. Seligardi,
Between, VII.13 (2017), http://www.betweenjournal.it/.




8
