READING the BODY: PHYSIOGNOMY, DISFIGUREMENT, and DISGUISE in the BRITISH SENSATION NOVEL of the 1860S and 70S
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READING THE BODY: PHYSIOGNOMY, DISFIGUREMENT, AND DISGUISE IN THE BRITISH SENSATION NOVEL OF THE 1860s AND 70s By SARAH L. LENNOX A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2016 © 2016 Sarah L. Lennox ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are many colleagues and friends from the University of Florida that I would like to thank for their guidance, support, and encouragement during this process. Special thanks to my adviser, Pamela Gilbert, for reading numerous drafts of this dissertation and for checking in with me throughout the writing process to keep me on task. I also thank my committee members, Chris Snodgrass, Leah Rosenberg, and Jessica Harland-Jacobs, for their generous feedback during my exam and defense. I appreciate my dissertation group members past and present, who offered suggestions on what was often the earliest and messiest versions of my writing. I am also so grateful to my UF friends, particularly Jackie Amorim and Najwa Al-Tabaa, who kept me happy and sane during this sometimes overwhelming process. In addition to all of these important individuals, I would like to thank the English department for providing me with a Kirkland Fellowship and Graduate Student Fellowship, financial support that made my degree and this dissertation possible. As I composed this dissertation, I was also supported from afar by many loving family members and friends. My sister, Catie, my brother, Chris, and my long-time friends, Kelly, Ange, Kim, and Jivka, offered encouragement, made me laugh, and distracted me with their own exciting news and accomplishments. In addition, through it all, I could not have asked for a better partner than Jordan. More than anyone else in my life, he understood the intellectual and emotional difficulties of writing a dissertation and was always there to help me through it: to offer a hug, to let me vent, to celebrate my successes. I am grateful to know and love so many caring, supportive, and inspiring individuals. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, two of the smartest, kindest, and most giving people I have ever met. While my dad passed away just three weeks after I started my PhD program, I think he would have been prouder than anyone else to see me finish. Above all else, 3 my dad was a dreamer, and he liked nothing better than to dream of his children’s happiness and success. My dad believed in my abilities and ambitions (perhaps before there was much reason to do so!) and encouraged me, in particular, to pursue my PhD. Many of my dad’s favorite things— literature, history, books, crossword puzzles, games, travel—became my favorite things too. And in ways big and small, those interests influence both this project and who I am today. Like my dad, my mom loves books and has probably read more of them than most English PhDs. She instilled in me a love of words from the time she taught me my first ones. And, importantly, while my dad taught me to dream, my mom showed me how to actually get things done. Over the years, I’ve seen my mom tackle so many challenges—both her own and those of her loved ones—with indomitable strength, determination, and fortitude. I am proud to say that I get my grit and willpower from her. For all these reasons and many more, I dedicate this dissertation to my mom, Susan Henneberry Lennox, and in loving memory of my dad, Christopher Lennox Sr.—my first and best teachers. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................3 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................9 Review of Criticism on Physiognomy in Victorian Literature ...............................................15 Chapter Summaries .................................................................................................................33 2 THE PHYSIOGNOMIC DEBATES IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND ..............41 Review of Criticism on Physiognomy ....................................................................................42 A Brief History of Physiognomy ............................................................................................47 Lavater’s Physiognomic System.............................................................................................48 Lavater’s Scope, Methodology, and Awareness of the Science’s Potential Pitfalls ..............50 Diverse and Shifting Beliefs about Physiognomy in the Nineteenth Century ........................53 Factors that Impacted Nineteenth-Century Attitudes towards Physiognomy .........................55 Debates Regarding the Physiognomist’s Scope and Methodology ........................................58 Debates Regarding the Capacity for and Acquisition of Physiognomic Skills ......................61 Debates Regarding Flaws in the Physiognomic System and the Future of the Science .........62 3 THE ILLEGIBLE BODY: PHYSIOGNOMY, FACIAL DISTINCTIVENESS, AND CHARACTER DOUBLES IN LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET AND THE WOMAN IN WHITE ....................................................................................................................................69 Braddon’s Rejection of Physiognomic Principles in Lady Audley’s Secret ...........................78 “The Beautiful Fiend”: Lady Audley and the Physiognomic Legibility of Morality .............84 “She Looked Quite the Lady”: Phoebe Marks and the Physiognomic Legibility of Social Class ....................................................................................................................................90 “Not a Woman We Can Believe In”: Critical Reactions to Lady Audley’s Secret .................98 Collins’s Rejection of Facial Distinctiveness and the Legibility of Fictional Bodies in The Woman in White .........................................................................................................100 “Twin Sisters of Chance Resemblance”: Identical Faces and the Problem of Recognition and Identification ..........................................................................................105 “As Plain as Print”: Reading the Bodies of Fictional Characters .........................................114 4 THE LEGIBLE BODY: PHYSIOGNOMY, ADORNMENT PRACTICES, AND THE SYMBOLIC MEANING OF DISFIGUREMENT AND DISGUISE IN EAST LYNNE .....121 “He Carries It in His Countenance”: Physiognomy in East Lynne ......................................126 “What Does it Signify?”: Women’s Adornment Practices in East Lynne ............................135 “Every Part of her Face and Form Was Changed”: Disfigurement and Disguise ................156 5 The Hyper-Legible Body in East Lynne ...............................................................................163 5 NOT ALL BODIES ARE CREATED EQUAL: THE FANTASY OF INDIAN HYPER- VISIBILITY AND THE DOUBLE STANDARD OF RACIAL DISGUISE IN THE MOONSTONE ......................................................................................................................172 History of the Indian Mutiny/Rebellion of 1857-‘58 ...........................................................176 The Pre-Mutiny Setting of The Moonstone ..........................................................................180 Review of Criticism on The Moonstone ...............................................................................185 The History of Fingerprinting in India .................................................................................197 “Three Mahogany-Colored Indians”: The Fantasy of Indian Hypervisibility and Identifiability .....................................................................................................................199 “Looking Under the Smooth Outer Surface of Him”: The Double-Standard of Disguise ...209 The Counter-Narrative: Exposing the Novel’s Imperialistic Fantasies ................................219 6 AFTER PHYSIOGNOMY: BIOLOGICAL INHERITANCE AND GENDER DISGUISE IN MARRYAT’S HER FATHER’S NAME ......................................................230 Degeneracy in No Name and Her Father’s Name ................................................................236 “One of Those Caprices of Nature”: Magdalen’s Indeterminate Physiognomy and the Body of the “Born Actress” ..............................................................................................239 “Do Not My Features Speak For Themselves?”: Signs of Racial, Familial, and Gender Identity on Leona’s Body ..................................................................................................242 Identity as Performance: Theoretical Background on Gender Identity ................................251 “One Woman Can’t Fill Every Part”: The Fantasy of Physiognomic Legibility and Failed Female Disguise on the Professional Stage ...........................................................254 “I Never Saw a Man’s Part Better Filled by a Woman”: Leona’s Male Disguises ..............261 Marryat’s Conservative Ending: The Persistence of Essential Identity, Bodily Legibility and Traditional Gender Roles ...........................................................................................279 7 CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................................295