Cultural Materialism, hegemony, dissidence, subversion, discourse

ÇEKER GÜNDOĞDU, Ebru. A Study of Subversion as Represented in the Novels ofVictorian and Thatcherite England: North and South, Hard Times, Waterland, TheRadiant Way, Ph.D. Dissertation, Ankara, 2019.This dissertation aims to provide a dissident reading of the selected novels of Victorianand Thatcherite England in the light of Cultural Materialism. Four novels which revealthe general characteristics of these two epochs have been chosen. North and South byElizabeth Gaskell and Hard Times by Charles Dickens are the selected Victoriannovels and The Radiant Way and Waterland are the novels of Thatcherite England.The focus of the study has been on the subversive elements in these novels concerningthe institutions of class, family and education. Through the comparison of such distantperiods, the study aims to reveal how the power relations in English society changedin-between two periods and to lay bare how dissidence managed, at times, toappropriate or to subvert the hegemonic ideologies of those times. The claim of thisstudy is that these novels embody not only hegemonic ideologies but also subversionsof them, and in order to make a deeper comprehension of the novels, one needs to beaware of the manipulations present in the novels. The study also provides a means torealize how ideologies functioned in society and how they shaped people’s perceptionsin these different epochs.