The forge of new identities - a victorian perspective

Abstract

During Victorian times, women started to abandon the confinement of their gynaecium, that cut them off from the world outside, and that would only allow mere, simple, projection of the silhouette of things, distorted as they were onto the walls of their ‘cave’. Victorianism equals the leaving of the cave by women, who start to approach the fire and to perceive the light through all their pores. The first steps taken out of the darkness into the light cast blurry plays of light over their profile (which may account for women writers’ male-pseudonyms) and step by step they start assuming their identity, wrapping themselves in the fabric of light, learning to be themselves, and most importantly, wanting to be themselves. Women start throwing their society imposed masks away, and go in search of the real light. The paper highlights the steps women had to take in order to come to affirm their personality, their real self, and it offers a double perspective upon this fragile social affirmation of womanhood in Victorian England.