Shadows of Bias: Habitus-Ideology Lag in First-Wave Feminist Literature
Advisor: Erin Vander Wall
Internship Location: American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA)
Onsite Mentor: Dr. Veronica Bryant
Whenever a new ideology is introduced to a culture or society, habitus (subconscious, socially-conditioned behaviors and responses) inevitably lags behind conscious ideology. Even when an individual adopts or promotes a newly-introduced ideology, they are still a product of the society they were raised in, which had not previously been imbued with this ideology, given its newness. This can take a number of forms, and is particularly relevant when studying progressive racial and gender ideology. Novels offer a unique glimpse into the dynamics of this habitus-ideology lag, given they grant access to both an author’s conscious intent and subconscious worldviews. Literature, of course, is one of the oldest ways of conveying social and political messages, and has been used by authors throughout history to promote radical ideologies. And yet, at the same time, the expansive nature of the novel gives readers a glimpse into the author’s implicit worldviews and values given how they build character, the logic of their fictional worlds, and more. Oftentimes, when habitus-ideology lag complicates psychology and worldview, self-contradictions may be found between overt and implicit messaging in novels written during periods of intense ideological shift. Thus, focusing on the era of first-wave feminism, this project investigates how, if at all, habitus-ideology lag complicates messaging and themes in the proto-feminist novels of Gaskell and Bronte.
Project Blog
Post 1: Intro Blog: When Novels Argue With Themselves: Habitus-Ideology Lag in Gaskell and Bronte Novels
Welcome to my senior project: an analytical study of habitus-ideology lag in the proto-feminist novels of Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte. Though this project is confined to two short months, it has its roots in a larger project that first started about five years ago. Through my reading, I'd begun to notice a tendency of authors to undercut and self-contradict their messages, especially when that message was a part of a progressive new social ideology. Often, I'd notice a tension between the message emphasized by the grand plot points and the details. A story might have a plot arc that argues against the objectification of women, while simultaneously introducing and describing their female characters through an objectifying lens. The explicit messaging, seen in things like plot arc, character endings, and major dialogue, tended to conform with the progressive ideologies the author seemed to support. But the more implicit messaging in details like character descriptions, minor dialogue, side-character roles, and word-choice often undermined the progressive point the authors were making. The more I read, the more different questions began to crop up. Was this more common if the author belonged to the minority group they were writing about? Was there an evolution in the prevalence of this phenomenon as an ideology became less new and radical and more established? Was it representative of an author's subconscious cognitive dissonance, outright lying, or a combination of the two?
It was the height of quarantine, and I took advantage of my enforced free time to begin compiling a binder of research, questions, and examples. I jotted down notes on self-contradictions in scores of random novels, from Grapes of Wrath to The Things They Carried to Little Women. I didn't have the vocabulary to fully conceptualize my analysis, but it was the beginning of an interest that would grow into a slew of new questions as a made my way through a seemingly never-ending list of books. Was this contradiction more common in out-group authored works across dozens of novels? Did the frequency of authors' self-contradictions evolve across their body of work? Was this more common at the onset of a new ideology, or at its peak?
Of course, two months would never be enough time to make it through my entire reading list or answer all these question. As such, I've narrowed my project to focus on Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte. Their novels offer a perfect starting place in that they are some of the first pioneering proto-feminist novels in English. Written at the very onset of first-wave feminism, they reflect all the inherent contradiction of when new ideology clashes with longstanding tradition. As with any radical new movement, first-wave feminism was complicated by habitus-ideology lag, wherein even the staunchest supporters of feminist ideology were often undercut by their own social conditioning and subconscious bias. Reading through Gaskell's and Bronte's novels, I'll be able to start building a preliminary answer to some of those questions about the evolution in self-contradiction as a writer and movement evolves through time.
Alongside this analysis, I'll be interning with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni to support their What Will They Learn? project. I'll be working under former literature professors, supporting them in evaluating the educational merits of core curricula and researching everything from the decline in undergraduate Shakespeare studies to waning language proficiency.
Post 2: Week One: Whiteboards, Wonderland, and Wittgenstein
This week marked the start of the senior project! With my internship not officially beginning until next week, this week was largely focused on preparation.
On Monday, I made my first trip to tour the American Council of Trustees and Alumni office site, where I'll be interning. I took the metro into DC, and then made my way down snowy M street to ACTA's office building. The ACTA suite sits right across the hall from former diplomat John Bolton's office, and looks out over DC's Saint Matthews Cathedral. The surprisingly perfect fluffy snow dusting the cathedral made it look like someone had just shaken a snow globe over M street. Inside, I was introduced to the employees I'd be working under and given the chance to explore. First, I checked out the delightful little glass library situated next to the office hall. There's nothing in the world more exciting to me than a good library, and this one was packed with political nonfiction and all the classic staples.
Next, I was shown the break room. Beside the breakroom kitchen was a wall filled with small hanging whiteboards, each featuring a literary quote or joke written by an employee. Each week, the employees would write a new quote on their board, as a fun little way of sharing what they were reading. At school, one of my favorite traditions is my Quotation of the Week: a weekly literary quote I write on the English class whiteboard for everyone to enjoy. Seeing the same tradition in the ACTA breakroom was a joyous little moment of familiar fun. After that, it became infinitely easier to see myself there in the coming weeks.
After that, I got a first look at the work station they were setting up for me, and read through the numerous newspaper clippings and historical ephemera framed on the walls. Then, we ended the tour by passing through a web of cubicles to the pamphlet corner, which houses all of ACTA's recent publications. At the end of my visit, I was given a small stack of literary-related ACTA publications to read through during the week in preparation for the start of my internship. Before heading home, I grabbed lunch at The Mad Hatter, a wondrous, Alice In Wonderland-themed local dive that I'm sure will become a routine favorite during my time at ACTA.
The rest of the week was focused on reading. I set up shop on campus at school, sprinkling in work on my Finnegans Wake-based AP Art painting during breaks. Throughout the week, I made my way through the ACTA publications and pamphlets, learning about everything from the decline of Shakespeare studies in modern curricula to the thriving web of underground universities in Central Europe. After finishing the pamphlets, I moved on to reading the theory foundational to my project. I read through Foucault's The Order of Things , Bourdieu's Outline of Theory and Practice, and part of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. As I read, I took notes on Bourdieu's theory of habitus, Foucault's analysis of the relationship between art and history, and Wittgenstein's theories of language and reality. Each of these works will help form the lens through which I'll approach Gaskell's and Bronte's novels throughout my project, which focuses on how tensions between habitus and ideology affect self-contradiction in novels.
Finally, I began to read through Lucasta Miller's The Bronte Myth. Miller's expansive book is half-biography, half-social-analysis. It explores the lives of the Bronte sisters through the scores of juvenilia and surviving documents that offer a glimpse into the evolving lives. At the same time, Miller analyzes the grand myths and narratives that have surrounded the Bronte's throughout history, cutting through shifting societal projections to the actual lives that lie beneath the larger-than-life legends. While I await the arrival of the primary sources I requested through Interlibrary Loan, Miller's biography offers the clearest picture of Charlotte Bronte's life context and writing process. This will be instrumental when I begin reading through Bronte's body of work next week, beginning with The Professor on Monday.
In all, this week helped lay the foundation for the kick-off of my official duties and research next week. I had a chance to see the office where I work and familiarize myself with their material, all the while making my way through three foundational works to help inform my research.
Post 3: Week Two: The Professor, Higher-Ed, and Spanish Churros
This week, everything really kicked off! Monday was my first day in the office and mainly focused on orientation, learning the different projects the Academic Affair office is working on, and getting accounts set up. During lunch, the Academic Affairs office took me out to get tapas at a local spot, where I got to know everyone in my department and had some splendid ice cream and churros. I wrapped up the day sitting in on meetings about upcoming events and publications in service of ACTA’s National Commission on American History and Civics education project.
The Commission’s primary goal is to combat the unraveling of higher-ed requirements and offerings in American history and government. According to ACTA, steep drop-offs in requirements have led to graduating student populations without a basic understanding of their own history and government, leading to increased misinformation, falling voter numbers, and increased historical illiteracy. The Commission aims to curb these effects by promoting legislation and policy changes that reintroduce civics education to both core curricula and specialist programs. On Monday, I attended logistical meetings for planning ahead of the publication of their whitepaper in honor of the nation’s 250th anniversary, and throughout the week helped to develop a one-pager and other key writings for the Commission.
On Tuesday and Thursday, my work centered more around aiding ACTA's efforts to combat the slashing of language programs in Universities across the country. I collected data on programs cut in the wake of Indiana's REACH Act. Finally, I closed off the week with meetings and planning for articles and blogs I'll write for ACTA's website. All ACTA publications focus on defending higher education funding, and in particular, focus on threatened programs such as those in the humanities. My articles, of course, will center around my central, all-consuming passion: literature.
I couldn’t have imagined a better internship -- I get to do all my favorite things: research, writing, reading, and talking about literature, all in service of a mission I viscerally support. When not in-office, I had plenty of time to dive into my first novel of study: The Professor. Categorized by some as juvenilia rather than a legitimate part of Charlotte Bronte's body of work, The Professor is distinctly different from what one might expect from Bronte's work. It's her only novel written from a male point-of-view, and features characters, such as Crimsworth, painted in a likable light despite significant cruelties and misogyny. As Bronte's earliest post-Angria novel, it will serve as the starting point for me in charting the ideological evolution of Bronte's novels.
In all, this week was wildly productive, joyous, and somewhat uncharted. I've never been in an office setting before, so learning the annoyances and hilarities of workplace politics and logistics was simultaneously educational and entertaining. I'm so excited about the articles I'll be writing for ACTA and my work on The Professor, which is an absolute goldmine for my project.
Post 4: Week Three: Donors, Data, and Jane Eyre
Though the first half of this week was marred by an unfortunate episode of violent illness (courtesy of my food allergies), the second half of the week more than made up for it!
At the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), I got to help with all kinds of projects and was even assigned a few of my own. On Thursday, I helped with research and gathering data for articles being written by other members of the team. I helped categorize and sort through ACTA's curriculum scoring of each of the March Madness schools to help with a fun article being posted in honor of the start of the games. Then, I helped gather information on young peoples' political opinions and historical knowledge for an article being written by a different team member. It was, in a word, depressing. Reading that only 8% of high school seniors can identify slavery as the cause of the Civil War was among the most sobering stats I've read in my life. But, at the same time, collecting the data was wildly fun. Diving deep into a specific topic, especially one I have a pre-existing interest in, is one of my favorite things. Overall, collecting the data was fun and heartbreaking in equal measure.
Then, on Friday, I got assigned to write a few articles of my own! ACTA's Fund for Academic Renewal department reached out and asked that I write an article that offered the high school perspective on the college search in order to help university donors funnel their money towards what actually draws students in. Next week will definitely be focused on drafting both this article and my existing one in defense of literature's necessity to society. I've said it before, but it remains just as true: I couldn't imagine a better possible internship. I get to research, write, read, and champion a cause that's always been important to me.
On the research project side of things, I unfortunately wasn't quite as productive as planned due to the aforementioned illness. I did, however, manage to get through a second pass at The Professor, to better standardize my notetaking practices. And on Friday, I got to start Jane Eyre once more. The ten-year-old in me who fell in love with Jane Eyre and took to reading in curtained windowsills for years after reading the first scene was hungry to tear through the book in one sitting, but I had to reign myself in. An interesting part of the project has been forcing myself into the slower, more methodical pace necessary for a project of this kind. It's an odd experience to have your favorite thing in the world become a systematic, organized task. The obsessive reader in me gets swallowed up in the splendor and the horror of Bronte's novels, and it takes a conscious restraint not to devour them at the speed of light. It's certainly great practice for college and a potential academic career, where I'll have to balance the kid-in-a-candy-store approach with measured, methodical thinking.
In all, anaphylaxis aside, this was a splendid and productive week! I can't wait to get started on my new articles and spend next week buried in Jane Eyre once more.
Post 5: Week Four: Articles, Oxford, and Villette
Joyous news! This week, I finished my first (small) article for ACTA. It’s by far the shortest and least significant piece I’m writing for them, with the bigger op-ed’s still being in the works. Nonetheless, it’s exciting that it’s finished!
The piece is called What Students Actually Want: Searching for Rigor In The Age of Budget Cuts, and is designed to incentivize major donors not to continue the unfortunate recent trend of slashing funds for humanities departments and sometimes universities as a whole. It leverages my position as a prospective college student to showcase, as the name suggests, what students actually want. Overall, it’s meant to show that modern students do still care about the humanities, and that budget cuts and easy-A courses are only pushing students away.
I spent my in-office days finalizing the draft, and by Thursday it had been reviewed by the editors and will be ready to go live on the College Donor Digest likely next week.
Then, early on Friday, I jumped on a red-eye plane to fly to Oxford! I’m writing this now on 0 hours of sleep, from a splendid university-themed hotel a few feet from campus. The next few days will be spent touring the area and attending an admitted students event, so I likely won’t have much time for research project work amid all the scheduled activities. My copy of Villette did, however, make the trip with me, so assuming I don’t get the chance to look at the Bodleian’s annotated Villette manuscript while I’m there, I’ll be working my way through that. It’s absolutely splendid reading about ghostly nuns and stormy heroines in the shadows of Oxford’s millennium-old arches!
Post 6: Week Five: Shirley, Poetry Month, and Cornell
Last week was all about touring Oxford (yes, the Bodlein is indeed the most magical place on Earth, as one would expect), but now I’m back in the US, which means back to the usual schedule. At my internship, there was plenty to do—we had the quarterly staff meeting on Tuesday, followed by trivia and donuts just for the joy of it all. I worked my way through reading school newspapers from 82 different universities and got started on my second article. This one is substantially longer and focuses on building an argument for the value of poetry and literary study (in honor of April being the 30th annual National Poetry Month). Having an internship at a corporation that is fighting for higher standards in US higher-ed is both enlightening and a bit surreal, given that I'm currently navigating my own college decision process. Choosing a college—and by extension, a life path, in many cases—is not for the weak. But having this internship offers me access to all kinds of information about schools that I would never have had on my own. In fact, as I write this, I’m on my way to a Cornell admitted students event—the very school I was just researching last week for ACTA. It’s so strange to see the higher ed world from both ends, and it’s certainly shaping my college decisions. It was my concern about eroding funding and rigor in US humanities programs that first prompted me to look at Oxford. Now, my research into cuts to the NEH and humanities departments, diluted rigor, and a variety of other issues in the US system, is certainly influencing the way I’m looking at my college options. Senior year is certainly wild and uncharted, and this internship, as well as being joyous and fascinating and perfectly suited to me, offers a helpful look behind the curtain at the places I’m considering devoting four years of my life.
On the research project front, this week was rather efficient. I finished Shirley early in the week, marking my final Charlotte Brontë novel. Next up is Elizabeth Gaskell, of course. I’ve been working on writing up and organizing my Brontë notes into neater conclusions, and have begun working my way through my Gaskell supplementary material, just as I did before starting to make my way through Brontë. I’ve spent the week reading Gaskell’s letters and biographies, taking breaks in between to work on my new June Jordan-based painting for AP Art. In all, this was quite the busy and fruitful week, and I can’t wait to finally start Gaskell once I return from Cornell!
Week 6: Publishers, Manuscripts, and Infinite Spreadsheets
This week, I finally got started on my research paper. As I'm working my way through the Gaskell novels, I'm organizing my notes to start to build conclusions for my paper, and to better guide my reading. Throughout Charlotte Bronte's novels, there's a clear trajectory: starting with The Professor, her earliest and least feminist novel by a considerable margin, and ending with the role-defying female protagonists such as Lucy Snowe. And yet, the shift in ideology is obviously far from linear, in part due to the influences of publishers, editors, readership markets, and how much freedom and authority Bronte had to write as she wanted to. In reading through Bronte's body of work, Jane Eyre, despite being her most beloved and recognizable work, sticks out from the others both in terms of the strength of radical messaging and sensational nature of the plot. In many ways, despite defining her legacy, it is the least characteristically "Charlotte Bronte" novel of the bunch. This is largely due to her publisher's desire for more drama and intensity, as opposed to the quiet, less eventful interior lives Bronte was more drawn to write both in her first novel, and later on once the success of Jane Eyre allowed her a bit more flexibility to write as she wanted. The role of external factors, such as the influence of publishers, editors, and marketability, wasn't something I initially thought to consider in my research question. But now, as I'm making my way through Gaskell's canon, I've been taking into account more variables, such as publisher influence, which I hadn't been considering in my analysis. I've been reading through correspondants with publishers and editors, and have ordered through interlibrary loan restored manuscript versions, so that I can take into account the full process that a novel goes through before reaching its final stages.
On the internship side, this week has been fairly run-of-the-mill. I've continued working on my article for the National Poetry Month, as well as working on researching schools for a bunch of different projects the Academic Affairs department is working on. It's an infinite amount of spreadsheets, but it's great fun! Who would've thought prowling the internet for university self-evaluation data would be entertaining for me, but here we are.
Week 7: Cranford and Linen Paper
This week I began working on my methodology and introduction for my research paper. I haven't yet entirely solidified my conclusions or analysis, given that I'm still reading through Gaskell, but the deadline is coming up so I figured I'd get started on the sections I could write move not to the findings section when I had more of a complete analysis and conclusion to work with. Alongside, I've been reading my way through Gaskell's Cranford, which is a joyous and funny change of pace from the other novels I've been reading thus far for this project.
At my internship, everything's been quite busy. I've been working on shortening my literature article to something more fitting for the length and format. When writing about something you love, it's hard not to cram every argument, tidbit, emotion, and fascinating quote into one article. But of course, no one wants to read an article that's just me going on for hundreds of pages about my own passions and interests. So this week has been about condensing and focusing the argument. Hopefully I'll be finished soon, as April is, somehow, coming to an end already. On top of the article, I had more research assignments (spreadsheets galore), and errands and tasks to do for the ACTA Scholars Program the Academic Affairs department runs. This week, we had to print certificates and mail graduation cords to universities. This would all be a very simple task if the certificates didn't need to be printed on a very specific type of linen paper that was mysteriously missing from nearly every print shop. So I spent my week scouring DC for paper, running from print shop to print shop, while also juggling my article, my research tasks, and of course, taking notes on Cranford.
Week 10: Book Reviews and APs
Splendid development in terms of internship- I get to write a book review for the quarterly issue of Inside Academe! On Tuesday, I was given a free (signed!) copy of Richard Haass' Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens. I only had three days to get the review finished, but I was able to finish the book that night, leaving two days to write and proof the review before it was due to the editor. At the same time, I was juggling my APs, which ended up being down to the wire. This was, of course, due to no fault of my own, as I did absolutely zero procrastinating whatsoever. My AP art portfolio was due Thursday, so I had to call out of my internship to spend the day in Ms Rowland's room hastily painting Bill Knott poems, Moby Dick, and June Jordan poems. And then, the next Monday, I had my Calculus BC exam. Given that all BC content is taught in Trimester 3 and seniors don't attend classes for Trimester C, I found myself in the lovely predicament where I had to self-study the entirety of the BC content in the span of two days. Over that weekend, I reached a level of productivity hitherto undreamt of, and ended up getting a 5 on both AP practice exams I took. On Monday, I took the exam, and it went fairly well.
However, all that studying definitely ate up a lot of the time I had planned on using to work on my research paper. This week, I didn't make much progress. However, with my last AP over, I'll be able to devote the entirety of Week 11 to finally compiling all my analysis and chaotic notes into a coherent research paper! Wish me luck!