The Dynamics of Oscillation between the Self and the Representation: The Construction of Female Subjectivity in Augusta Websters Dramatic Monologue Form

Abstract

Recent criticism on the dramatic monologue has redefined the genre as a form of interrogation of the relationship between the self and the social discourse. In this revisionist approach, the (re)discovery of the women writers dramatic monologue has claimed a key position in developing critical discussion. Augusta Websters Portraits dramatizes its female speakers interplay with the contemporary Victorian ideology as they problematize the cultural representations of women. Whereas each speaker articulates her anxiety and frustration from the cultural discourse, she also delineates her susceptibility to the discursive representation as her speech betrays internalized sentiments and desires inculcated by the very social norms she strives to resist. The Happiest Girl in the World portrays the speakers ambivalent attitude toward her imminent marriage. The bride-to-bes inadequacy and inability to articulate her feelings for her betrothed and marriage tellingly disclose the unsettling interplay between self and society, in which the self is never separate from the ideological discourse even when it self-consciously seeks to be apart from it. The speaker oscillates between the discursive representation that reproduces her and the uncharted territory of the self-aware dissonance from the discursive prescription. By dramatizing the contradiction of the self, Webster enables a critical understanding of the construction of the female subject.