Pegg, Cassandra Sarah (2025) “The last daisy stood all astunt”: Acceleration, Alienation, and Victorian Fairies. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
Preview |
Text (application/pdf)
1MBPegg_MA_S2026.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Spectrum Terms of Access. |
Abstract
This thesis explores Victorian fairy literature through the lens of Hartmut Rosa’s theories of social acceleration, resonance, and alienation. Following industrialization and rapid developments in the field of natural history—especially after Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species—the human was experiencing a disruption in scale, one that diminished them in relation to machines and to their place in a world that was much older and more complex than they had ever imagined. In navigating the interaction of social acceleration, alienation, and the desire for resonance, these Victorians found refuge in the underbelly of fairyland, a dark place to express their fears, desires, and disillusionment. Drawing on John Ruskin’s writings on fairyland and labour, I explore the connection between fairies and modernity. By turning to Christina Rossetti’s writings, “The Prince’s Progress” and “Goblin Market,” I present an allegory for social acceleration, and a reading of the fairy changeling in literature in relation to forbidden resonance, respectively. The changeling figure is also analyzed in the novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson as a representation of alienation. My analysis of these works is contextualized and supported by discussions of the interlacing cultures of folklore collection, art, factory work, Christianity, and social Darwinism. By engaging with fairy stories, Victorians were able to represent and locate in them their own struggles surrounding the pace, scale, and uncertainty of the modern world.
| Divisions: | Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > English |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
| Authors: | Pegg, Cassandra Sarah |
| Institution: | Concordia University |
| Degree Name: | M.A. |
| Program: | English |
| Date: | 27 March 2025 |
| Thesis Supervisor(s): | Languay, Darragh |
| Keywords: | Victorian, Fairies, Resonance, Alienation, Acceleration |
| ID Code: | 996928 |
| Deposited By: | Cassandra Sarah Pegg |
| Deposited On: | 29 Jun 2026 14:06 |
| Last Modified: | 29 Jun 2026 14:06 |
References:
Allen, Robert C. “The Industrial Revolution and Pre-Industrial Economy.” The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp.Allen, Robert C. “The Condition of England.” The Industrial Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 60-83.
Arntfield, Michael. “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Criminal Responsibility and Psychogeography.” Gothic Forensics: Criminal Investigative Procedure in Victorian Horror & Mystery. Edited by Michael Arntfield, New York, Palgrave Macmillan US, 2016, 135–160. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56580-8_7.
Arntfield, Michael. Glossary. Gothic Forensics: Criminal Investigative Procedure in Victorian Horror & Mystery. Edited by Michael Arntfield, New York, Palgrave Macmillan US, 2016, 227–243. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56580-8_7.
Blair, Kirstie. “Addressing the Machine: Victorian Working-Class Poetry and Industrial Machinery.” Journal of Victorian Culture, vol. 28, no. 3, 2023, pp. 394-409. https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac064.
Bourke, Angela. The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story. London, Pimlico, 1999. http://archive.org/details/burningofbridget00bour.
Bown, Nicola. Fairies in Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Burne, Charlotte Sophia. The Handbook of Folklore. London, Senate, 1985. http://archive.org/details/handbookoffolklo0000burn.
Casteras, Susan P. “Winged Fantasies: Constructions of Childhood, Innocence, Adolescence, and Sexuality in Victorian Fairy Paintings.” Picturing Children: Constructions of Childhood Between Rousseau and Freud. Edited by Marilyn R. Brown, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002, 126–58.
Crawford, Jason. “The Trouble with Re-Enchantment.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 7 Sept. 2020, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-trouble-with-re-enchantment.
Darwin, Charles. Letter no. 2814. 22 May 1860. Darwin Correspondence Project, University of Cambridge, Cambridge. https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2814.xml.
Delay, Cara. "“Deposited Elsewhere”: The Sexualized Female Body and the Modern Irish Landscape." Études irlandaises, vol. 37, no. 1, 2012, pp. 71-86.
Dickens, Peter. "Social Darwinism." Encyclopedia of Social Theory. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2005, pp. 730-31. Sage Knowledge, doi: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412952552.n272.Dieguez.
Frere, Mary. “Introduction.” Old Deccan Days. London, 1868. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.282515
Hillard, Molly Clark. Spellbound : The Fairy Tale and the Victorians. Columbus, The Ohio State University Press, 2014.
Holmes, John. “God: Darwinism, Christianity and Theology.” Darwin’s Bards: British and American Poetry in the Age of Evolution. Edinburgh University Press, 2009, pp. 75-80.
Knowles, Rev. James Hinton. Folk-Tales of Kashmir. London, Trübner, 1888. http://archive.org/details/folktalesofkashm00knowuoft.
Martineau, Jane, ed. Victorian Fairy Painting. London, Merrell Holberton, 1997. http://archive.org/details/victorianfairypa0000unse.
Mockler-Ferryman, A. F. (Augustus Ferryman). British West Africa : Its Rise and Progress. London, Swan Sonnenshein, 1900. http://archive.org/details/britishwestafri01mockgoog.
More, Charles. Introduction. Understanding the Industrial Revolution. Routledge, 2000, pp. 1-8. https://doi-org.lib-ezproxy.concordia.ca/10.4324/9780203136973
Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. 1st ed., Harper & Row, 1980.
Naithani, Sadhana. The Story-Time of the British Empire: Colonial and Postcolonial Folkloristics. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2010. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10396001.
Nelson, Claudia. “The Arrested Child-Man and Social Threat.” Precocious Children and Childish Adults: Age Inversion in Victorian Literature, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012, 41-70. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/monograph/book/14635.
Paton, Sir Joseph Noel. The Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania. 1847, Scottish National Gallery, Scotland. https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/5265
Paul, Diane B. “Darwin, Social Darwinism, and Eugenics.” The Cambridge Companion to Darwin. Edited by Jonathon Hodge and Gregory Radick, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 214-239.
Poliquin, Rachel. The Breathless Zoo : Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012, https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780271059617.
Prickett, Stephen. Victorian Fantasy. 2nd rev. and Expanded ed., Texas, Baylor University Press, 2005.
Purkiss, Diane. At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things. New York, New York University Press, 2000.
Rosa, Harmut. “Resonance as Medio-Passive, Emancipatory and Transformative Power: A Reply to my Critics.” The Journal of Chinese Sociology, vol. 10, no. 16, 2023. https://doi-org.lib-ezproxy.concordia.ca/10.1186/s40711-023-00195-4
Rosa, Harmut. Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. Translated by Jonathan Trejo-Mathys. New Directions in Critical Theory. New York, Columbia University Press, 2013. https://dokumen.pub/social-acceleration-a-new-theory-of-modernity-9780231519885.html.
Rosa, Hartmut, and James C. Wagner. Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World. English edition. Cambridge, Polity Press, 2019.
Rosa, Hartmut. “The Idea of Resonance as a Sociological Concept.” Global Dialogue, vol. 8, no. 2, 2018, pp. 41-44, https://globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/articles/the-idea-of-resonance-as-a-sociological-concept.
Rossetti, Christina. “Goblin Market.” The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti, LSU Press, 1990. ProQuest, https://lib-ezproxy.concordia.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/books/goblin-market/docview/2148123978/se-2.
Rossetti, Christina. “The Prince's Progress.” The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti, LSU Press, 1990. ProQuest, https://lib-ezproxy.concordia.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/books/princes-progress/docview/2147556872/se-2.
Ruskin, John. “Fairy Land.” The Art of England: Lectures Given in Oxford. New York, 1884. Internet Archive, http://archive.org/details/artofenglandlect1884rusk.
Ruskin, John. “The Nature of Gothic.” Unto This Last and Other Writings. Penguin Books, 1997, pp. 77-109.
Ruskin, John. Introduction. German Popular Stories, by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Edited by Edgar Taylor. London, 1868. Internet Archive, http://archive.org/details/germanpopularsto01grim.
Silver, Carole G. Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness. New York, Oxford University Press, 2000. https://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=4702442.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Strange Tales of Horror. Edited by Robert Mighall, Penguin Classics, 2002.
Vejvoda, Kathleen. “‘Too Much Knowledge of the Other World’: Women and Nineteenth-Century Irish Folktales.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 32, no. 1, 2004, pp. 41–61, doi:10.1017/S106015030400035X.
White, Carolyn. A History of Irish Fairies, Carroll & Graf, 2005. Internet Archive. http://archive.org/details/historyofirishfa0000whit_o8r8.
Yeats, W.B. Irish Folk and Fairy Tales, Chartwell Books, 2024.
All items in Spectrum are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved. The use of items is governed by Spectrum's terms of access.
Repository Staff Only: item control page
Download Statistics
Download Statistics