Females in Victorian Adventure Literature

This paper analyzes the tendency among Victorian adventure novel authors to exclude women by exploring three novels: H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, and John Buchanan's Greenmantle. Through close readings of the texts and comparisons to the authors' other works, as well as a survey of the secondary literature, it becomes clear that, while Victorian adventure authors did create areas of sex-segregated action in their novels, they did so for very different reasons. In Greenmantle and The Lost World, Buchanan and Conan Doyle sought to strengthen the eroding social structure by reinforcing the gender binary that formed the basis (in their minds) of civilized society. Conan Doyle and Buchanan believed that real men were those who were naturally impelled to heroic action and that women should be the passive audience, appreciating male action but not taking part. By...
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