Professor publishes book on women readers in the Victorian era
Karina Rodriguez | THE RIDER
UTRGV Associate Professor Marisa Palacios Knox has published a book exploring how modern gender stereotypes in literature derived from 19th century cultural attitudes.
“Victorian Women and Wayward Reading: Crises of Identification,” which was published last month by Cambridge University Press, focuses on female readers in the Victorian era.
“My book is about the woman reader in the Victorian era, and how she was both a source of profound anxiety for the culture, but also how, in fact, in actuality the figure of the woman reader became an inspiration for actual women to imagine and advocate for and create change,” Knox said.
She said that her book confronts modern gender stereotypes in literature that derive from the Victorian period.
“A lot of the stereotypes we have about the way people read, and modes of reading, and how it’s connected to gender, are not essential or inherent,” Knox said. “They are very much based on these cultural attitudes that are from the Victorian era. So, I wanted to go back to the Victorian era, trace those attitudes, and also, even more importantly, illuminate the aspects of that time.”
The associate professor said that writing a book about a popular era led to difficulties.
“The archive is huge for the 19th century, and luckily, you know, we’re living in a time with a lot of access, especially for 19th century books,” Knox said. “So much is digitized. So much has already been written about it. Just in order to kind of carve out what I wanted to say and not go on forever, because it could have gone on forever, [was difficult]. Also, you know, try and say something new amidst all that has been said about this time period.”
She said her success in writing the book was not without much needed support.
“I have to first acknowledge my adviser from my doctoral program at UC Berkeley,” Knox said. “His name is Ian Duncan. … He was just very encouraging, and … I do need a lot of, sort of, positive reinforcement from someone whose opinion I trusted.”
The author said fellow UTRGV colleagues also assisted her with the process of writing her book.
“In the later stages, I was very much helped by some of my colleagues and faculty members at UTRGV,” Knox said. “Particularly, in my whole department of Literature and Cultural Studies.”
She also gave insight to people who want to write a book one day.
“It’s probably not going to be great right away,” Knox said. “[It’s] going to take looking, and looking, and looking again at it, and working, and working, and making it better, as laborious as that is, but it’s also comforting, you know, not everything has to be perfect right away.”
“Victorian Women and Wayward Reading: Crises of Identification” is available for purchase on Amazon.com for $99.99.
