Mrs Oliphant and Emotion

Sanders, Valerie

Abstract

Margaret Oliphant's treatment of emotion in her writings is disturbing and problematic. Even in herAutobiography, where she grieves for her dead children, she distinguishes between significant and insignificant deaths; while in her novels, she sees freely displayed emotion as a sign of weakness. At the same time, she tries to find ways of articulating a more subtle kind of feeling in a social context where people resort to clichés and melodramatic gestures to express their emotions. Oliphant's treatment of emotion can be divided into three broad categories: the intensely self-conscious (as in the early chapters ofMiss Marjoribanks), the wildly melodramatic (as in the Susan subplot ofSalem Chapel), and a more profound feeling which is often best expressed in an understated phrase. Focusing on examples fromMiss Marjoribanks, Hester, Kirsteen and Janet, the article examines Oliphant's exploitation of apparently tasteless metaphor, cliché, and parody in expressing both grief and elation, concluding that her embarrassment about emotion is bound up with her own conflicting feelings about womanhood and femininity. © 1999 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Citation

Sanders, V. (1999). Mrs Oliphant and Emotion. Women's Writing, 6(2), 181-189. https://doi.org/10.1080/09699089900200072

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Dec 20, 2006
• Publication Date: Jul 1, 1999
• Deposit Date: May 3, 2022
• Journal: Women's Writing
• Print ISSN: 0969-9082
• Electronic ISSN: 1747-5848
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 181-189
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09699089900200072
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/3796584