Walter Sickert: A Painter of Modern Urban Life

( Choe¸ Jian ) 동국대학교 영어권문화연구소 2019 영어권문화연구 Vol.12 No.2

The present thesis is intended to consider Walter Sickert’s urban vision, as configured in his images of modern London. In his formative years he was profoundly influenced by Impressionist masters like Whistler and Degas and developed an analogous approach to subject matter and technique, eventually attaining a highly individual style of his own. A quintessential urban painter, he was intent on grappling with and giving form to the gritty realities of city life. Sickert adopted the genre studies of urban existence like his predecessors, but he was more drawn towards the seedy, depraved and sombre aspects of the metropolis. His music hall series, alongside his other London paintings, attests to his attempt to illuminate the city as a modern text, revealing its disconcerting ambivalence and antithesis. Even while touching upon the world of urban entertainment, his prime concern consisted not in depicting the glamourous spectacle but in exploring the socio-cultural forces which condition that world. In this respect, Sickert’s key legacy to British art could be termed as new urban realism, which is engaged with addressing and opening to critical scrutiny the tensions and paradoxes inherent in modern city life.

Good Morning, Midnight Revisited

( Jian Choe ) 한국현대영미소설학회 2016 현대영미소설 Vol.23 No.3

Jean Rhys`s inter-war European novels, set in contemporary London and Paris, evince thematic regularity. They engage critically with the narrative of prostitution, or commodification of a female body, exposing its workings at various levels within a framework of the modern capitalist city. Good Morning, Midnight of 1939, replaying and summing up its predecessors, brings her work full circle. It sustains this particular theme and yet reworks the major concerns of her earlier fictions with an ironic twist. In this novel, women`s involvement with commodity culture emerges as more intricate and problematic. The heroine Sasha Jansen represents a commodity-cum-consumer in the marketplace of sex, which complicates the relevant issues, adding a further dimension to the discourse of sexuality, commerce and power. The mutable status between the consuming subject and the object implies dynamic power politics in operation in the arena of consumption and exchange, in which the relationship between hegemonic and non-hegemonic parties is subject to a constant revision by the interconnected variables of money, gender and class. Yet Sasha`s final transferring to a position of the object seems to reflect the tension and anxiety that Rhys would have felt in constructing a woman as a consumer of a sexualised male body. In conclusion, Good Morning, Midnight indicates that women`s involvement with the world of commodity is complex and open-ended rather than monolithic and one-dimensional.

"The tiredness of Rosabel" from a Consumerist Perspective

( Jian Choe ) 한국근대영미소설학회 2013 근대 영미소설 Vol.20 No.2

“The Tiredness of Rosabel”, Katherine Mansfield`s short story of 1908, can be read as the writer`s narrative-cum-commentary on consumer culture in the modern city. Set in London`s West End in the Edwardian era with an alienated milliner as a protagonist, the story focuses on the dehumanizing working conditions of the shop girl. Given that it is concerned with an unveiling of the disenchanting reality behind the glittering facade of the retailing business, Mansfield draws upon the precedent writers who portrayed the shop girl principally as the victim of advanced capitalism. Yet a closer reading reveals that the story is more than a critique of capitalist socio-economic arrangements, addressing the central issues that revolve around ``shopping`` in general, the practices of which comprise much of the heroine`s preoccupation. The story attempts to define shopping as a contested social arena in which the politics of class, gender and identity all come to the forefront, and intersect with each other, informing and shaping the individual`s consciousness and behaviour in a consumer society.

The Mill on the Floss

Choe, Jian(최지안) 계명대학교 여성학연구소 2015 젠더와 문화 Vol.8 No.1

조지 엘리어트의 『플로스강의 물방앗간』(1860)은 풍부한 지적 예술적 소양과 재능을 갖춘 한 소녀가 편협하고 인습적인 공동체 내에서 교육 및 자아실현의 기회를 얻지 못한 채 파국을 맞게 되는 과정을 다룬다. 본 논문은 여주인공 매기의 정체성과 행동이 가정, 학교, 사회 제도에 의해 형성되는 과정과 함께 그가 당대의 억압적인 젠더 규범과 이데올로기를 내면화하는 과정을 분석함으로써 작품에 재현된 여성교육의 문제를 규명한다. 작품은 매기의 비극 혹은 여성의 삶의 조건 일반에 대한 사회학적 탐구를 통해 교육이 여성의 도덕적·사회적 성취를 돕지 못하고 오히려 좌절시키는 핵심 기제로 작동한다는 점을 보여주며, 이 점에서 빅토리아 시대 여성 문제에 대한 재고 혹은 사회비평으로 간주될 수 있다. The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot’ novel of 1860, traces the process by which a girl with rich potential meets a tragic end, caught in a circumscribed society and denied the opportunity of education and self-realization. The present thesis is intended to elucidate female education as represented in the novel, focusing on the ways in which the heroine’s identity and behaviour are shaped by the institutions of family, school and society. Maggie’s caliber puts her at odds with the social codes of her community. Her survival depends on whether she could come to terms with them to accommodate herself within the community. But she fails. The social forces, in conjunction with her internalized values, compel her to take self-denial, the moral choice which leads to an impasse from which she is only delivered by an untimely death. The catastrophic ending can thus be construed as a protest against the restrictions imposed upon women. In sum, the novel presents a critique of the social system which accords no space for women. It makes a sociological inquiry into the defeat of the heroine and the condition of women at large and discloses the ways in which female education-its institution, practices and conventions-functions as a key mechanism which hinders women from attaining a morally and socially fulfilled existence.

Linley Sambourne`s Diary of 1889: A Punch Cartoonist at Leisure

( Jian Choe ) 한국영미문화학회 2015 영미문화 Vol.15 No.1

Linley Sambourne``s Diary of 1889 affords a glimpse into an English middle-class man``s everyday life. Above all, it serves as a reference point in considering the rise of modern leisure society in the late nineteenth-century city. The journal coincided with the period in which the informally organised forms of leisure shifted into a structured industry. The transition evinces a crucial symptom of capitalist society that everyday life was being restructured in new terms, subject to a massive extension of the capitalist market, and thus began to expose signs of tension and anxiety. Sambourne``s tantalising journal, however, while illustrating a wide range of venues, omits detailed description or sustained commentary upon the nature of modern leisure society, rarely revealing any of its underlying psychological or social complexities. They leave unanswered the feasible quests into what it was really like to be engaged in urban entertainment in the milieu of increasingly commercialised modern culture. In conclusion, the journal prominently features the rise of the leisure industry but the destabilising junctures of the phenomenon is intriguingly downplayed without being open to any critical scrutiny, which ultimately indicates a peculiarly conservative outlook on consumer oriented existence on the author’s part.

“The Garden Party” Revisited

( Jian Choe ) 한국현대영미소설학회 2017 현대영미소설 Vol.24 No.1

“The Garden Party”, Katherine Mansfield`s short story of 1922, deal with a bourgeois mode of consumption, interrogating the ways in which a new paradigm of shopping helped to fashion class consciousness in the early twentieth-century city. It indicates that the making of the middle class in contemporary society is involved not only with the matter of means of production but also with that of consumption style. The party in the story represents a nouveau riche version of the aristocratic banquet. It is a ceremony in which the rising middle-class family displays its wealth, social status and privileged lifestyle. The festivity epitomizes a celebration of bourgeois culture as consumer culture, affirming the point that the formation of class identity, to a great extent, hinges upon the acquisition and use of appropriate consumer goods. The story thus suggests that middle-class ideas, values and lifestyle are reproduced through the appropriation of commodities. Furthermore, the fact that the affluent world of the bourgeoisie is depicted in antithesis with the seedy world of the underclass can be read as Mansfield`s oblique social critique of class segregation; and the juxtaposition of the two incompatible rituals―the party and the funeral―in the story could be construed as her comment upon the futility of materialism that penetrates into the very heart of bourgeois culture.

A Female Declasse`s Dislocation: After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie

( Jian Choe ) 한국현대영미소설학회 2014 현대영미소설 Vol.21 No.3

After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Jean Rhys`s novel of 1930, is concerned with the dislocation or “placelessness” of Julia Martin, an ageing prostitute, in an organised society where there is little available space for a liminal woman who stands outside conventional social structures. As a sexual worker, she is in conflict with the family, the couple and the institutions of patriarchal capitalism. Consequently she is bound to drift incessantly from place to place, never mooring at one site. The numerous place-names in the novel, which serve as the subtitles of each section, not only document the heroine`s restless itinerary, but elucidate her desperate quest for a place in a given society that she could be possibly fit into and claim as her own. Yet the prevailing social dictates are determined to ostracize her out to the fringes of society where she is to stand on the precarious borderline, suspended in “the hour between dog and wolf.” In this context, the seemingly subdued narrative of a social outcast`s career proves to be a highly charged text with a sharp edge to it, critically touching upon the issue of prostitution. The novel suggests that the institution of prostitution is inextricably linked with capitalist social arrangements and bourgeois double standards as to female sexuality, calling into question the legitimate, sanctioned expressions of dominant social values and ideas. The novel thus gives a lie to the mystified aura of family and mounts a critique of the hypocrisy and philistinism of the middle classes and their moral bankruptcy.

Daniel Deronda: Modern Women in the Modern World

( Jian Choe ) 한국근대영미소설학회 2016 근대 영미소설 Vol.23 No.3

Daniel Deronda presents George Eliot`s social vision with its dual plots being inextricably interlocked in thematic parallelism. The split fictional world represents the social reality of contemporary England, in which opposing worldviews and social forces were intensely contested. Division is not just the form of the novel, but also constitutes its social and moral theme. While the Jewish plot represents a culture of traditional communitarianism, the English plot, formally and semantically counterpointed with the former, is set up as an emblem for an alienating modern society. Characterization in the English section, which evinces the unsettling aspects of modern existence, claims attention. Particularly notable is the representation of modern femininity, which indicates George Eliot`s engagement with feminism, a topical issue of her time. In characters like Gwendolen and Leonora, the writer carves out a new kind of femininity which is transgressive of the Victorian codes of womanhood, seeking to redefine woman`s role and place in society. Leonora stands for female empowerment and self-assertion and Gwendolen, the more subtly drawn of the two, appears a stranded figure. The latter represents the complexity of modern femininity, exhibiting the plights and dilemmas of a modern woman in the making and, in this respect, prefigures the heroines of twentieth-century novelists such as Henry James, D. H. Lawrence or E. M. Forster.

Picturing Leisure Society 1870-1910

Jian Choe 경희대학교 인문학연구원 2017 인문학연구 Vol.0 No.35

The turn of the the twentieth century witnessed the rise of leisure society. The period coincided with that of the emerging modern entertainment industry, which fundamentally changed entrenched forms of sociability and leisure-making. One’s pastime, hitherto informally arranged in private, was subject to increasingly commercialized and organized pleasures in the public sphere. This particular current had an impact on the cultural disposition of the day, and the visual arts were profoundly touched by it. Painters were engaged in this juncture of modern life, seeking to reformulate it with their creative forces. With this in mind, the present article is intended to consider key aspects of turn-of-the-century leisure society as represented in a selection of significant but under-researched images of contemporary artists. This body of works address the pathology of modern entertainment, holding a mirror up to the historical moment at which everyday life was being restructured by the imperatives of the capitalist market. They thus open to critical scrutiny the consumer-oriented leisure culture of modern society. 세기전환기 유럽 사회의 특기할 만한 현상의 하나로 레저 문화의 부상을 들 수 있다. 이 시기 근대적 연예 산업의 발달은 중산층의 사교생활 및 여가문화의 패턴을 근본적으로 변모시켰다. 지금까지 사적 영역에서 비공식적으로 혹은 지역 공동체 기반으로 행해지던 여가 활동이, 공적 영역에서의 점차 상업적으로 조직되는 오락으로 전환되었다. 이와 같은 새로운 조류는 당대의 시각문화에 반영되었으며, 특히 회화 장르에 지대한 영향을 주었다. 다수의 예술가들이 부르주아 사회의 근대적 여가문화의 재현에 주력함에 따라, 전통적으로 미술사의 주변부에 머물렀던 레저, 오락, 레크리에이션과 같은 제재들이 당대 회화의 주요 모티프로 등장하였다. 이런 맥락에서 본고는 세기전환기 예술가들의 작품에 재현된 동시대 레저 사회의 핵심적 양상들을 고찰한다. 이들 작품들은 일상생활이 자본주의에 의해 전면적으로 재편되기 시작하던 역사적 시기에 구상되고 생산된 것으로서, 근대사회의 상업주의적 여가 문화에 내재된 병리적 징후들을 포착하고 나아가 이에 대한 비평적 검토를 제안한다.

Female Moral Deviation in Victorian Culture

Choe, Jian(최지안) 계명대학교 여성학연구소 2017 젠더와 문화 Vol.10 No.2

19세기 영국에서 빈번했던 여성의 성적 일탈은 당대 문화의 문제적인 양상들을 체현하는 바, 이 주제는 다수의 텍스트 및 이미지에서 다루어졌다. 섹슈얼리티가 인간의 기본 충동으로서 생물학적으로 결정된다는 가정은 도전 받아왔다. 관련 연구는 성이 근대 서구사회에서 권력이 작동하는 주요 지점임을 규명함으로써 성의 정치학을 논증했다. 즉 성이란 역사적으로 구성되는 실체로서, 경제, 정치, 사회문화적 제 과정들에 의해 조건지어진다. 빅토리아 시대 시각 텍스트에 나타난 타락한 여성의 특수한 재현 양식은, 문화적 실천이 성에 관한 지배적인 관념, 도덕, 가치의 (재)구성에 어떤 식으로 개입하는지를 예시한다. 이는 또한 성이란 사회적 역학 ― 관계, 균열 그리고 투쟁 ― 이 전면화되는 하나의 경연장임을 시사한다. The sexual deviance of women in nineteenth-century England embodies certain problematic aspects of contemporary culture ― its desires, anxieties and preoccupations ― as covered in numerous texts and images. The long-held assumption that sexuality is biologically determined as the basic natural drive of the human being has been fundamentally challenged. Related studies have demonstrated the politics of sexuality by identifying it as the vital locus of power in modern Western societies. Research indicates that sexuality is a historically constructed entity, conditioned by economic, political and socio-cultural processes. The specific modes of representation of the fallen woman in Victorian art illustrate the ways in which artistic and cultural practices intervene in the construction of and, to a far lesser degree, the revision of the dominant ideas, values and morals regarding sexuality. They thus ultimately affirm the point that sexuality is a contested arena in which social relations, divisions and struggles all come to the forefront.