Rewriting Victorian Stereotypes

Questions of Female Identity in Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent

Abstract

Contemporary British novelist Sarah Perry’s pastiche, The Essex Serpent (2016), goes beyond the way women were portrayed in 19th-century fiction in several ways, including their relationships with men. Therefore, it is worth having a closer look at the complexity of female-male relationships represented in the novel. After a brief outline of the social construct known as Victorian marriage, I will examine the three main female characters’ relationships with men, let them be husbands, suitors or, for that matter, comrades. In this way, I intend to prove that these women understand female-male relationships on a spectrum transcending the stereotypical roles offered to them by Victorian society.