A Master's Thesis at the University of Basra Examines "The Political Novel in the Victorian Age: A Critical Study of Selected Novels by Elizabeth Gaskell"

A Master's Thesis at the University of Basra Examines "The Political Novel in the Victorian Age: A Critical Study of Selected Novels by Elizabeth Gaskell"

A Master's thesis at the College of Education for Humanities at the University of Basra examined "The Political Novel in the Victorian Age: A Critical Study of Selected Novels by Elizabeth Gaskell."

The thesis, submitted by student Hisham Sahib Mithkal, aimed to reread and analyze the political and ideological discourse in the literature of the Victorian writer Elizabeth Gaskell (specifically in her novels Mary Barton and North and South), through the application of an integrated theoretical framework combining New Historicism and Marxist Feminism, represented by the theory of social reproduction. It also aimed to demonstrate that Victorian narrative fiction was not merely a passive reflection of historical events, but rather a discursive practice and a political actor that contributed to shaping concepts of power, class conflict, and ideological containment. The thesis included:

A comprehensive critical review of previous studies tracing the intellectual shift in reading Gaskell's literature from biographical approaches to political analysis; a theoretical framework addressing the concepts of discourse, power, and mechanisms of subversion and containment; and a deconstruction of the economic position of feminist subjects and unpaid labor under industrial capitalism. It also included an applied analytical study based on a parallel reading of the novels alongside historical documents and press reports to address ideological contradictions, the image of the working class, and the patriarchal constraints imposed by the Victorian publishing system.