Focusing on the heroines in the novels Ivanhoe and The White Company: Peripheral but important

Sammanfattning

It is now well established that there is a reciprocal relationship between the content of literature and societal norms. Within feminist criticism, this has been highlighted as problematic, as women are often not portrayed fairly. In this essay, I will examine the relationship between literature and society by comparing the 19th-century Medieval novels Ivanhoe (1819) by Sir Walter Scott and The White Company (1891) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In relation to the former work, there is everything from general academic discussions about its chivalric, political content to a certain focus on its female characters, while the latter publication has received less attention. What makes this thesis novel is that it explicitly focuses on the heroines in these two historical novels and analyzes them through the concept of gender roles and the terms constraint versus mobility, from the field of New Historicism. This essay therefore offers a new reading of the heroines Rebecca and Rowena in Ivanhoe and contributes to a new discussion of The White Company in relation to its female protagonist, Lady Maude.