A Study Of The Inversion Of Sexual Identity Of The Characters In Elizabeth Gaskell's Novels

This paper is chiefly concerned with gender issues, for in Gaskell's novels, sexual identity is closely related to the issue of honesty and dishonesty. Therefore, to violate norms of truth-telling also means to violate gender norms. More specifically speaking, this thesis concerns more how Elizabeth challenges the gendered ethical conventions by means of inversions of sexual roles. Elizabeth Gaskell inverts a traditional moral mode and explores what happens when men begin to lie and when women tell the truth.Although many writers are similar in their moral and sexual inversions, Gaskell makes completely different ideological uses of such inversions. She puts forward a literal mutual benefit of gender roles that might moderate sexual conflict without disrupting middle-class sexual norms. She hopes to achieve that consequence by appropriating the violating discourse for middle-class women. In this way, the power of the females and the wider prospect of middle-class elitism are linked together.Elizabeth Gaskell tries to understand the position of women relating to models of middle-class sophistication, from the perspective that causes her preference of the dynamic violation and the cultural hierarchies of sophistication it defines.