Neo-Victorian Orientations towards the Fictional Writer: Jane Harris’s The Observations 

Cette communication a été filmée dans le cadre du colloque international  "Writers in Neo-Victorian Fiction" organisé par l'équipe anglophone ERIBIA le 11 octobre 2019 à la Maison de la Recherche en Sciences Humaines de l'Université Caen Normandie, sous la responsablilité d'Armelle Parey (ERIBIA, Caen) et Charlotte Wadoux (19-21, Paris 3).

Rosario Arias is Professor of English Literature at the University of Málaga (Spain). She has published a number of articles and book chapters on topics such as neo-Victorian fiction, trauma, haunting and spectrality, the trace, and memory and revisions of the past in contemporary fiction. Professor Arias has written on the work of contemporary writers, among them, Sarah Waters, Hilary Mantel, Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Kate Atkinson.

Abstract

JaneHarris’s The Observations (2007) narrates the story of BessyBuckley, an Irish girl who searches for work and finds it in CastleHaivers, employed by Arabella. While learning how to become amaid-of-all work, she is asked to keep a record of her dailyactivities by her mistress. This mystery is solved when Bessydiscovers Arabella’s “The Observations”, her own record of themaids’ progression at home, an experiment she conducts for her tofind out the distinctive features of the perfect maid. However, thenovel unfolds an unexpected course of actions, which will shiftBessy’s position from being a vulnerable subject to a resilientone, precisely by the writing her story. In this paper I will focuson the character of Bessy, a maid who finds redemption andimprovement through friendship, bonding and care, and who pens herstory, thus becoming a writer. The act of writing is then coupledwith ethics of care, which underlines issues of vulnerability andresilience in a Victorian context through a contemporary lens.