Touch of Basil: A Novel of Gender Politics and Domestic Abuse in 19th Century England

No Thumbnail Available
Date
2017-04-01
Authors
McGuire, Mariah
Major Professor
Advisor
Committee Member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Authors
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Organizational Unit
Journal Issue
Is Version Of
Versions
Series
Series
Honors Projects and Posters
University Honors Program

The Honors project is potentially the most valuable component of an Honors education. Typically Honors students choose to do their projects in their area of study, but some will pick a topic of interest unrelated to their major.

The Honors Program requires that the project be presented at a poster presentation event. Poster presentations are held each semester. Most students present during their senior year, but may do so earlier if their honors project has been completed.

This site presents project descriptions and selected posters for Honors projects completed since the Fall 2015 semester.

Department
English
Abstract

"Touch of Basil" is a novel exploring the tangled web of social mores and legislation of Victorian England in which a victim of sexual assault is forced into marrying her rapist, a man who in fact, raped her so she would be forced to marry him. The project was conceived using a novel outlining process known as 21 Days to a Novel which helped me plot the book and create its characters. Once the outline was complete, the first half of "Touch of Basil" was written during National Novel Writing Month, wherein one tries to write 50,000 words of a novel between November first and thirtieth. The latter half of this novel was drafted during spring semester. As time went on, the project became less about creating a perfect, complete novel—though it is still an important project as such—and became more about the actual task of writing a story so large and sprawling in contrast to university creative writing classes which focus on short fiction. This novel is presented not only for the story it is and the issues it discusses, but also the painstaking process through which it came into being.

Comments
Description
Keywords
Citation
DOI
Source
Copyright