UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Aesthetic Intersections: Portraiture and British Women’s Life Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/48w1777g Author Ruzi, Flavia Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Aesthetic Intersections: Portraiture and British Women’s Life Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Flavia Ruzi September 2017 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Adriana Craciun, Chairperson Dr. George Haggerty Dr. Malcolm Baker Copyright by Flavia Ruzi 2017 ii The Dissertation of Flavia Ruzi is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside iii Acknowledgments This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and support of my committee, who have stood relentlessly beside me through every step of the process. I am immensely grateful to Adriana Craciun for her continued faith in my project and in my capacity to meet her ambitious expectations. She has made me a better writer and a more sophisticated thinker. I would also like to express my gratitude to Malcolm Baker, who has patiently born with my literary propensities through my examination of art historical materials. His dedicated guidance has enabled me to discuss such materials in each chapter with the art historical rigor they deserve. The interdisciplinary impetus of my project would not have been possible without him. And I would like to thank George Haggerty, who has been there for me since the first day of my graduate career and continues to inspire me with his unabating love for eighteenth- century literature. The reading group he organized for me and my friend, Rebecca Addicks-Salerno, was instrumental in the evolution of my project. Our invaluable conversations ensured that my dissertation was not a lonely and isolated process but the product of an eighteenth-century-salon-like culture of enjoyable intellectual exchange. My project’s reliance on multiple archives in the UK and the US was made possible by several research fellowships. I am grateful for the financial support of UC Riverside’s Graduate Division through the Dissertation Year Program Fellowship. I am also thankful to Mr. Burt McKelvie for his generous support through the Ernest Propes Endowed Fellowship. These funds enabled me to visit the British Library in London and Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, as I prepared my chapters on Mary Robinson and iv Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Southampton Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Chawton House Library for funding my research on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Eliza Haywood, and Mary Robinson. I would also like to thank the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA for their generous short-term fellowship, which allowed me to examine the Elizabeth Montagu Papers, an indispensable archive for my third chapter. The continued financial support of the English Department at UC Riverside through innumerable conferences has enabled me to incorporate the results of these fruitful intellectual encounters throughout my dissertation. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my uncle, Jim Evans, who made sure I never ran out of lactaid pills, even when I forgot myself in my writing. Malcolm and Jesse generously shared not only their London home with me, as I hopped from one UK archive to the next, but also Mr. S and Miss F, who made my stay even more enjoyable. Liz Gumm and Patricia Robinson have provided emotional support and wisdom during the inevitable periods of doubt. Without them, this project would not have been finished. Last but not least, I would like to thank my trusty companion and incorrigible saboteur Wynsi for any typos in the final document. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Aesthetic Intersections: Portraiture and British Women’s Life Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century by Flavia Ruzi Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, September 2017 Dr. Adriana Craciun, Chairperson This dissertation examines the ways in which British women authors engaged with visual representations of femininity in their letters, memoirs, and autobiographical novels. I pair these materials with these writers’ portraits and graphic prints and explore the resulting intersections between these closely entwined processes of self-production. My project traces the extent to which these authors questioned or reinforced representational strategies of femininity by participating in the aesthetic conversations of their time, bringing to light an underexamined feminist tradition of engagement with eighteenth-century aesthetic theories and practices. My project proceeds from the assumption that portraiture in various media is a collaborative transaction between sitter, artist, patron, and projected audience – a transaction that both generates a self and enables the sitter to manipulate that self through the performance of the pose. Stressing the agency of the sitter questions dominant interpretations of the female sitter as the passive object of the male gaze. The travel writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for example, did not simply roll over for her vi portraits in Turkish dress. When paired with her aesthetic commentary on the harem in The Turkish Embassy Letters, her portraits become staged events orchestrated by Lady Mary herself, who unlike male artists, had access to the all-female space of the harem. Art historians have often used these portraits to construct stylistic genealogies of male artists instead of understanding the aesthetic contributions of their literary female sitters. My project regroups these portraits alongside the writing of these women authors to recognize the collaboration that produced them. My findings will also demonstrate that an insular literary hermeneutics that fails to account for the material circulation of aesthetic objects, which were as crucial to the production of the eighteenth-century self as any text, is incomplete. The aim of my project is to trace a subordinated female-centered narrative of engagement with aesthetic discourse alongside the grand narratives perpetuated by conventional male-centered studies of aesthetics in the eighteenth century. By tracing the contribution of women authors to the development of visual culture, I aim to destabilize the long-standing masculinist interpretation of eighteenth-century aesthetics as a product of cultural debates among men. vii Table of Contents Introduction 1-22 1. Woman in Turkish Dress: Imaging the Turkish Embassy Letters in the Portraits of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in Turquerie 23-79 2. Georgiana’s Public Bodies: Classed Femininity and the Nation in the Portraits and Prints of the Duchess of Devonshire 80-135 3. “brilliant in diamonds, solid in judgment, critical in talk”: An Archival Reconsideration of Elizabeth Montagu as Connoisseur and Art Patron 136-193 4. The Mediated Gaze: Romantic Visuality and Gender in the Portraits and Works of Mary Darby Robinson 194-249 Conclusion 250-259 viii List of Illustrations 1. Frontispiece to volume 1 of Eliza Haywood’s The Female Spectator, 1745. Huntington Library, San Marino. 1 2. Mary Wortley Montague, attributed to Jonathan Richardson, 1725. The Earl of Harrowby, Sandon Hall. 31 3. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, attributed to Jean-Baptiste Vanmour, c. 1717. National Portrait Gallery. London. 34 4. Le Bain Turc. Dominique Ingres. 1862. Musée du Louvre. Paris. 38 5. Henrietta of Lorraine, Sir Anthony Van Dyck. 1634. Kenwood House. London. 47 6. Marchesa Elena Grimaldi, Sir Anthony Van Dyck. 1623. National Gallery of Art. D.C. 47 7. Mary, Duchess of Ormonde, John Smith after Sir Godfrey Kneller. 1702. National Portrait Gallery. London. 47 8. Elizabeth Murray, Lady Tollemache, Sir Peter Lely. c.1651. National Trust. Ham House. 47 9. Trade card of John Cotterell. c.1751. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford: John Johnson Collection. 56 10. Mezzotint of Anne Bracegirdle in the role of The Indian Queen from Sir Robert Howard’s eponymous play. c. 1685- 1695. Published by John Smith and printed by William Vincent. The British Museum. 56 11. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Sir Godfrey Kneller. 1719-1720. The Marquess of Bute. 58 12. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Charles Charles Jervas. 1718-1720. National Gallery of Ireland. Dublin. 60 13. Elizabeth, Countess of Bridgewater Charles Jervas. c.1710-1720. National Gallery of Ireland. Dublin. 60 14. Lady Mary Churchill, Duchess of Montagu, Charles Jervas. The Duke of Buccleuch. Boughton House. 60 ix 15. Lady Jemima Gray. Charles Jervas. English Heritage. Wrest Park. 60 16. Frontispiece to William Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty. 69 17. The line of beauty (#4). Detail from Plate 1 of The Analysis of Beauty. 69 18. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Thomas Gainsborough, (1787). Chatsworth, Derbyshire. 82 19. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (ca. 1775-76), Joshua Reynolds, Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA. 94 20. The Vis-à-vis Bisected or The Ladies [sic] Coop, Published by Mathew Darly, 1776. The British Museum, London. 103 21. The Devonshire Amusement, Published by McPhail, 5 May 1784. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. 109 22. The Tipling Dutchess Returning from Canvassing, Published by A. Aitken, 29 April, 1784.