“Replotting the Harlot’s Progress: Motherhood and Moral Agency in Gaskell’s Ruth”
Anneliese Ng - The University of Hong Kong Abstract This talk examines how Elizabeth Gaskell offers an alternative plot for the fallen woman in her 1853 novel Ruth. Gaskell reworks the dominant plot of the fallen woman genre by revoking what Amanda Anderson calls “the downward-path principle.” It dictates that once a woman has sex outside […]
