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Abstract
The medieval knight in his Victorian reincarnation, crystallised by Thomas Carlyle, provides a national and autochthonous model to counter the alienation produced by industrialisation and political unrest, and is a model which easily morphed into that equally protean entity that is the English gentleman. The Victorian gentleman is defined by Englishness and the common sense that is his birth-right, while Victorian women are increasingly excluded from this ancestry and from social activity. Arthur Donnithorne, Stephen Guest, Sir James Chettam and Heinleigh Grandcourt embody different versions of a common sense gentleman, and their behaviour is perfectly in line with what the world expects of them. Exploding the myth of the Victorian gentleman as knight, Evans shows their destructive, violent, predatory, and self-serving practices proving that the new myth of Victorian manliness adopts and perpetuates the same attitude towards women of the older narratives.
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2025
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Research Projects
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Citation
Grego, Alessandra. “Knights.” In The Myth of George Eliot. Routledge. 2025.