英文摘要 |
This paper explores how female philanthropy as an important theme is tackled by L. T. Meade and Margaret Harkness, two long ignored women writers of fin de siècle realistic slum novels. While both writers represent middle-class women’s positive experience in the slum, their attitudes toward poverty and class conflicts are nevertheless divided. A popular novel targeting at mass readership, L. T. Meade’s 1894 The Princess of the Gutter is dominated by a bourgeois ideology that shows understanding and sympathy toward the proletarian yet fails to criticize the social injustice that causes poverty. On the other hand, a social investigator and a serious realistic writer, Margaret Harkness represents the viewpoint of the working-class on poverty and approaches class conflicts through the lens of a critical socialist in her 1891 In Darkest London. |