CENTURY LITERATURE A Dissertation by JUNG SUN ... - Repository

social authority, but it provides Jane with strength and a sense of comfort, similar to
Valentine’s eccentricity.
Most Victorian novelists used the word “queer” in their representations of
differences, Othernesses, and marginality from the conventional, the familiar, the
expected, and the normal. Braddon, Collins, and Brontë’s novels are selected to show
queer’s diverse utility and vitality, which are useful to understanding the Victorian
notion of marginality. Victorian marginal subjects are represented by categories of class,
gender, sexuality, money, race, and bodily fitness. The word “queer” may be understood
as a keyword that describes the way marginality is made into a category, and it is also a
concept that encompasses diverse marginal categories. The utility and vitality of the
Victorian word “queer” is helpful in understanding how social norms segregate the
acceptable from the unacceptable by assigning the unacceptable a name, that is “queer,”
and how marginal subjects comprehend the resourcefulness of their queerness, a
queerness that offers them a refuge, an excuse, and an identity for being different.
Its Beyond
One of my objectives in this dissertation has been to show that the utility of the
word “queer” as a reference to the social and cultural Other has been continuously
attractive to those who define a social and political position out of their individuality as
the Other and to those who intend to broaden their affiliations to minority subjects of
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