Discourse Patterns of Potent Women in Victorian Literature: Rebecca Sharp in Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray and Rhoda Nunn in The Odd Women by G. Gissing as Case Studies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14456/nvts.2022.13Keywords:
face, (im)politeness, positioning, potency, power, speech actsAbstract
The dissertation suggests the concept potency (Otsmatiut) as distinct from power, and defines a Potent Woman in Victorian Literature. The study explores how the concept of potency is applied in discourse, using pragmatic concepts such as Positioning, Face, (Im)Politeness and Speech Acts, to analyze the discourse patterns of two prominently potent women characters in Victorian literature: Rebecca (Becky) Sharp in Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray and Rhoda Nunn in The Odd Women by George Gissing. Thus it applies a pragmatic perspective to the study of literary texts. The dissertation examines how the potent women's discourse patterns both reflect and construct their positioning as potent women, based on conversations they conduct with various addressees. The addressees are divided into two groups: one consists of addressees who are socially powerful relative to the potent women. The other consists of conventional women characters who are socially powerless in comparison to the potent women.
The identification of the discourse patterns is based on the analysis of the characters' utterances, the addressees' responses, the characters' meta-pragmatic comments and the narrator's voice, including Free-Indirect-Speech. Consequently, the conversations are analyzed from different angles and points of view.
The analysis reveals that potency shapes the discourse patterns of the potent women, and that potency can be identified through the use of pragmatic tools. By means of their discourse patterns, the analyzed women construct a second-order positioning as potent women, which differs from their first-order positioning in society. The analysis highlights the distinction between first- and second-order positioning, and shows how potent women challenge and defy the social conventions of class and gender through the use of discursive patterns.
The findings indicate that there are significant similarities in the discursive patterns of the two potent women, yet differences were also found. Even when using the same discursive patterns, they may have different motives for doing so. The findings further indicate that under certain circumstances, unique to each of them, temporary changes occur in the discourse patterns of the potent women, which reflect a temporary transition from potency to weakness. This particular finding confirms the dynamic character of positioning. The analysis of the conversations between the potent women and the conventional women help to clarify the distinction between potency and power, because although some of the latter exercise power during the conversation, their lexical choices and the content of their utterances position them as weak and as submissive to social conventions.