Kathryn (Kate) Waters

DPhil in Literature and Arts

Thesis

Catching the Angel by the Throat: Feminine Appropriation of Shakespeare's Women in the Nineteenth-Century

Research abstract

My thesis will consider the interpretation of Shakespeare’s female characters by women during the nineteenth-century, focusing on the period 1850-1870.  Through a consideration of specific characters from Shakespeare’s plays and the engagement with Shakespeare’s heroines by a number of women writers and actresses in this period, it will aim to explore how such feminine interpretations were influenced by the Woman Question and Victorian ideas of appropriate female behaviour.  It will consider the evolution of feminine Shakespeare interpretation and link that evolution to the changing role of women in Victorian society.  Via their interpretation and appropriation of Shakespeare’s female characters, I will argue that Victorian women writers re-imagine these characters from the perspective of their own role in Victorian society and culture, figuratively foreshadowing Virginia Woolf’s explicit denouncement of the restrictions of the ‘Angel in the House’ trope of the Victorian period as referenced in my title.

Supervisor(s)

Dr Lynn Robson, Regent's Park College, https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-lynn-robson

Dr Sandie Byrne, Kellogg College, https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-sandie-byrne 

Biography

I started my DPhil in 2018, having previously undertaken the MSt Literature & Arts at the Department of Continuing Education 2015-2017.  Prior to that I undertook a BA (Hons) Literature with the Open University.  This has all been done while working full-time as a solicitor in the City of London and my first degree is in Law from the University of Wales, Cardiff (1998-2001).  

Publications

Associate Editor - Vides, Vol.5, 2017, Online https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/mnt/attachments/vides_2017.pdf 

'Unsex Me Here:  Mythical Women and the threat of the femme fatale in the Victorian era, as seen in John Singer Sargent's Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (1889) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 'Body's Beauty' (1866), Vides, Vol.5 (2017), 231-243 Web. https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/mnt/attachments/vides_2017.pdf 

Research interests

Shakespeare, Feminism, Victorian Women, Women Writers, Nineteenth-Century, Victorian Theatre, Actors and Actresses