Fallen Bodies and Discursive Recoveries in British Women's
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Fallen Bodies and Discursive Recoveries in British Women’s Writing of the Long Nineteenth Century DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Meghan Burke Hattaway, M.A. Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2012 Dissertation Committee: Clare A. Simmons, Advisor Brenda Brueggemann Marlene Longenecker Roxann Wheeler Copyright by Meghan Burke Hattaway 2012 Abstract My dissertation argues that nineteenth-century British women writers’ understanding of embodied female experience as disabling enabled their feminist interventions in the discourse of women’s “fallenness.” Using insights from feminist disability theory, I consider how throughout the nineteenth century, femininity, disability, and fallenness (a category often understood as indicative of violations of sexual standards, but encompassing a number of transgressive female identities) are discursively constructed as conditions similarly “out of control.” My study focuses upon four women writers of the long nineteenth century (Mary Robinson, Amelia Opie, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Harriet Martineau) who speak for or as fallen women in their texts—a potentially risky choice at a time when women’s professional authorship already carried associations of prostitution. My project connects this textual adoption of fallen subject positions to the writers’ first-hand experiential knowledge of female embodiment as disabling (in terms of both physical impairments and societal barriers), and thus with their own negotiations of potentially “fallen” reputations and identities. Creating, modeling, and advocating for female communities and cooperation between “proper” and “improper” women in their texts is, I argue, a conscious rhetorical strategy through which these writers expose the culturally fabricated scripts that surround the variously “fallen” body. These projects allow women writers to both recover control of personal narratives, and ultimately open up discursive spaces that allow a critique of—and importantly, offer readers ways to ii challenge—the limited gender ideologies to which so many other nineteenth-century women are subjected. Through these very means, many of the social conditions that disable women’s bodies are also combated. Thus, I argue, the experience of female embodiment as disability actually enables the possibility of large-scale feminist activism. iii Acknowledgments This dissertation could not have been completed without the guidance of my advisor, Clare Simmons, who has shown tireless interest in and support for my scholarly work from the moment I arrived at The Ohio State University. Her encouragement and advice led me through every stage of the PhD program, from coursework to candidacy exams to dissertation writing, and helped shape many of the central ideas of this project. I also want to thank my committee members Brenda Brueggemann, Marlene Longenecker, and Roxann Wheeler for generously contributing their time, expertise, and enthusiasm over the course of this project. It was in Brenda’s Disability Studies seminar that I first discovered feminist disability theory and considered its applications to Harriet Martineau’s life and work; the ideas I shared with her in initial exploratory papers would become the basis of this entire study. Though my first course at Ohio State was the last Marlene would teach before her retirement, she graciously agreed to continue to share her passion and knowledge about Romantic and Victorian women writers through independent studies, informal meetings, and all her insightful readings of my work. My writing benefited greatly from Roxann’s careful responses to each of my dissertation chapters, as well as her high standards as a scholar; this is a far stronger work because of her thoughtful critiques and suggestions. I also thank each of my dissertation committee members for taking an interest in all my other academic and professional endeavors. iv From suggesting publishing opportunities, to offering teaching advice, to assisting in my efforts to bring the British Women Writers Conference to Ohio State’s campus, their support has been invaluable throughout my graduate career. Many other members of the English department at The Ohio State University have enriched my professional and personal life at various stages of my graduate studies, including David Brewer, Jill Galvan, Amanpal Garcha, David Riede, and Susan Williams. I particularly thank Sandra Macpherson for serving on my candidacy exam committee, and Les Tannenbaum for being an inspiring teaching mentor. The collegiality and friendship of my fellow graduate students did much to contribute my happiness and success at Ohio State; this especially applies to the students of Nineteenth-Century British Literature, who provided good company and great ideas in classes, reading groups, and social gatherings. I must also extend a special thanks to my valued colleagues and friends Lindsay DiCuirci, Amanda Gerber, Eugenia Gonzalez, Erin Kelly, and Lis Ravert, each of whom offered supportive words about this project since its inception. I am particularly indebted to Eugenia, who read all of my chapters in their early stages, and whose feedback and friendly chats—even from across the Atlantic—were a constant source of encouragement and cheer. I am grateful to The Ohio State University for supporting my research and writing with a generous University Fellowship. I must also recognize those who helped start my academic journey at Florida State University, including Meegan Kennedy, Eric Walker, and my M.A. advisor Candace Ward. Their courses in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature sparked my interest in the very topics to which I now devote my v professional career. I especially want to recognize Candace for introducing me to the life and work of Mary Wollstonecraft while I was still an undergraduate. Reading Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman in her classroom—and later, delving into more literature from 1790s women writers under her careful advising—was instrumental to my development as a scholar and a person, and for that I cannot thank her enough. I also offer my heartfelt thanks to all the family members and friends outside academia who never wavered supporting me, especially Devon Wade, Betsy Berry, Katie Donald, Gabrielle Harbin, and Laura McDonald (my own “female community”). For their boundless love and generosity, I thank my parents, Timothy and Daryl Ann Burke, and my siblings, Erin, Shannon, and Garrett; their belief in me has sustained me throughout this process. Finally, I thank my husband, Doug Hattaway, without whose kindness, companionship, patience, and humor this would have been a much more difficult task. vi Vita March 31, 1983 ..............................................Born, Rochester, New York 2005................................................................B.A. English, Florida State University 2007................................................................M.A. English, Florida State University 2007 to present ..............................................Graduate Teaching Associate and University Fellow, Department of English, The Ohio State University Publications Guest co-editor, Special Issue: “The Intersections of Private and Public Life: Papers from the British Women Writers Conference.” Prose Studies 33.3 (2012). “Genius and the (Un)Dead Girls: Consumption, Artistry, and the Female Body in The Song of the Lark.” Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark. Ed. Debra Cumberland. New York: Rodopi, 2010. 1-19. “Making Mother Obsolete: Eliza Fenwick’s Secresy and the Masculine Appropriation of Maternity.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 21.3 (Spring 2009): 357-84. Co-author. Review of Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in Britain by Marlene Tromp, ed. Disability Studies Quarterly 29.2 (Spring 2009). Fields of Study Major Field: English vii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iv Vita .................................................................................................................................... vii Introduction: Recovering Control ....................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Invisible Virtue: Mary Robinson’s Transparent Heroines .............................. 28 Chapter 2: Amelia Opie’s Fiction: Contagious and Recuperative Texts .......................... 97 Chapter 3: “Such a Strong Wish For Wings”: The Life of Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Fallen Angels .................................................................................................. 151 Chapter 4: “The Spoiler of My Life Has Become the Agent of My Usefulness”: Harriet Martineau’s Enabled Feminism ...................................................................................... 213 Coda ................................................................................................................................ 284 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 290 viii Introduction: Recovering Control This study begins, in a way, with an end: the death of Mary Wollstonecraft and the rapid posthumous fall of her reputation.