UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Sentimentality and Gender in Virginia Woolf and Laurence Sterne Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7x94j4td Author Barber, Keri Publication Date 2010 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Sentimentality and Gender in Virginia Woolf and Laurence Sterne A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Keri Diane Barber June 2010 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Kimberly J. Devlin, Chairperson Dr. George E. Haggerty Dr. John M. Ganim Copyright by Keri Diane Barber 2010 The Dissertation of Keri Diane Barber is approved: _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As with every project, there are a lot of people to thank. I would like to thank Professor Kimberly Devlin, Professor George Haggerty, and Professor John Ganim, for all their assistance. They encouraged me and helped me formulate ideas. They also guided me through the process and gave feedback on drafts. All of them have made my experience at UCR a memorable and productive one. I would also like to thank them for being on my Exam Committee as well as Professor Steven Axelrod and Professor Marguerite Waller. I would like to thank both David Armenta and Max Armenta. In many ways, this project is dedicated to David Armenta and the family he left behind. He is one of many lost soldiers, and his zest for life inspired the project and my work on war and soldiers. I would also like to thank Kim Palmore and Mikage Kuroki who befriended me year one of the Ph.D. program and have been valuable colleagues. Prior to my adventures at UCR, I would like to thank some Professors who paved the way for me to begin advanced studies: Madelyn Detloff, Ruben Quintero, Marilyn Elkins, and Anne B. Simpson. I would especially like to thank the International Virginia Woolf Society (IVWS), its various officers and members for welcoming me into their community. Finding this society was pivotal to my development as a scholar. I appreciate all the Annual Conference Attendees for listening to so many parts of my Dissertation as I was working on it. Lastly, I would like to thank my mom, Kathleen Barber, and my husband, Taliiloa Fua’au. iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Sentimentality and Gender in Virginia Woolf and Laurence Sterne by Keri Diane Barber Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, June 2010 Professor Kimberly J. Devlin, Chairperson Virginia Woolf employs eighteenth-century sentimentality in her work and when she does, it has always been assumed that she perceived sentimentality in the same negative way as the Victorians. Woolf, however, adopts Laurence Sterne’s playfulness with sentimentality. In A Sentimental Journey, Sterne exposes the ravages of war and the topsy-turvy nature of culture when it is built on empire. Sentimentality is expressed for the weak and abject, but Sterne understands that these abject characters are soldiers that previously served the nation. In Jacob’s Room, Woolf exposes the same with Betty Flanders expressing sentiment for fallen soldiers. In addition to this sentimentality is a false sentimentality that men learn at institutions like Cambridge, even though sentimentality is associated with feminine weakness. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf is the most ambivalent about sentimentality and hoping to find a sense of true feeling. Clarissa Dalloway, Peter Walsh, and Septimus Warren Smith, all display a sense of true of feeling v in addition to the false sentimentality. Because of rigid class differences, Septimus is the most natural without having learned sentimentality at Cambridge. His lack of learning and his true feeling make him an outsider, and he must escape society. In The Waves, the men all adopt false sentimentality. The women are outside because they are not allowed to attend Cambridge, but like Betty Flanders, Jinny is able to learn sentimentality. The most natural and wild character who is outside this false sentimentality is Rhoda, and she too must escape society. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………… iv ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………. v ABBREVIATIONS ………………………………………………………. viii INTRODUCTION: The Sentiment of Virginia Woolf and Laurence Sterne ………………………….……….. 1 CHAPTER I: Laurence Sterne’s Sentiment for the Soldier in A Sentimental Journey: The Loss of a Country …….. 33 CHAPTER II: The Mark of Sentimentality: The Death of the Soldier in Jacob’s Room ……….…………………. 94 CHAPTER III: Virginia Woolf and the Sentimental in Mrs. Dalloway ……………………………………. 171 CHAPTER IV: “I come like a lord to his halls appointed”: Percival as the Everyman Soldier Hero in The Waves ……………. 215 CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………….. 278 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………….. 287 vii ABBREVIATIONS AROO A Room of One’s Own AWD A Writer’s Diary BTA Between the Acts CDB The Captain’s Death Bed and Other Essays CE Collected Essays (4 vols.) CR1 The Common Reader Vol. 1 CR2 The Common Reader Vol. 2 CSF The Complete Shorter Fiction D The Diary of Virginia Woolf (5 vols.) DM The Death of the Moth and Other Essays DNB Dictionary of National Biography E The Essays of Virginia Woolf (6 vols.) F Flush JR Jacob’s Room L Letters of Virginia Woolf M The Moment and Other Essays MOB Moments of Being MT Monday or Tuesday MD Mrs. Dalloway ND Night and Day O Orlando RF Roger Fry: A Biography TG Three Guineas TTL To the Lighthouse TW The Waves viii TY The Years TVO The Voyage Out Sterne ASJ A Sentimental Journey LS The Letters of Laurence Sterne TS The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a Gentleman ix Introduction: The Sentiment of Virginia Woolf and Laurence Sterne Prior to the 1970s, scholarship on Virginia Woolf focused upon Woolf‟s aesthetic quality and experimentation, in lieu of her politics. The work of Leonard Woolf and Quentin Bell privileged Woolf‟s aesthetics over her politics and this influenced the scholarship for many years. Leonard Woolf called her the most apolitical animal he ever knew, and Bell‟s biography worked from that assumption. Because most of the scholarship done on Woolf was based on Bell‟s biography, this assumption was generally adopted. This perception is also reinforced by her upbringing. She was raised by a Victorian “angel” in the house and still bound by social convention (Professions for Women 1931). The political sphere was public and therefore masculine, and to be involved in politics was unladylike. Women were outside the public sphere and to illustrate this, when Woolf participated in the Dreadnought Hoax, she had to disguise herself as a man. In 1910, Virginia Woolf (nee Stephen), Adrian Stephen, Duncan Grant, Guy Ridley, Anthony Buxton and Horace de Vere Cole, disguised themselves as Abyssinian Princes and boarded the HMS Dreadnought Navy Ship. This Hoax was so offensive to the Royal Navy that they wanted to publicly flog the men who participated, and then they learned that a woman was involved. The Navy was outraged. It is one thing to be duped, and apparently it is another to be duped by a woman. Due to the Navy‟s outrage, Woolf‟s family was genuinely concerned about the punishment the hoaxsters would receive. This Hoax is one of many experiences that solidified Woolf‟s belief against a patriarchal culture. 1 From the assumption that Woolf is apolitical, critics focused upon her aesthetic quality and failed to see her politics. David Daiches examines how Woolf contributed to modernism through her experimentation (1940). Avrom Fleishman studies Woolf‟s use of symbol and image. Lucio Ruotolo explores Woolf‟s “interrupted moment” embedded in human interaction. Nicholas Marsh finds that Woolf‟s style is not that distinct or difficult, but that everything in the novel adds up to create a distinct impression of the novel as a whole. These critics focused upon Woolf‟s aesthetics at the expense of any political statement she was making. Linden Peach was recognized as one of the first critics to notice Woolf‟s politics but that was as late as 2000, years after some feminist critics had taken note. Julia Briggs suggests that by viewing Woolf politically, critics ignore her art. This position has been adopted by many with few scholars considering Woolf‟s art and politics together. Natania Rosenfeld argues that Woolf uses “politics through an aesthetic practice” (7). In The Feminist Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf, Jane Goldman reveals Woolf‟s ability to combine aesthetics and politics. In early twentieth-century London, females were outside politics and made to feel so. Despite this, Woolf had clear ideas about war, patriarchy, and feminism. She was appropriated by the feminist movement in the 1970s and became an icon despite her claim that she was not a feminist. Many first-wave feminists found in her things worth emulating, such as Sandra M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar, Jane Marcus, Elaine Showalter, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, and Toril Moi. Marcus points out that feminists were trying to “revive [Woolf‟s] reputation as a political thinker” during the 70s and 80s (xi). In Brenda R. Silver‟s Virginia Woolf Icon, Silver traces the story of 2 Woolf as icon after publishing The Years in 1937. From then, the image of Woolf has been sold on postcards, tote bags, calendars, post-it notes, cards, magnets, mugs, etc. Studies celebrating Woolf‟s feminism dominated the field and after the 70s, Woolf scholarship branched out to include studies on trauma, queer studies, essays, biography, memoir, and journalism. Jane Garrity and Laura Doan examine images of Sapphism throughout modernist novels and find that Woolf is at the forefront of such a representation because of her study of Greek. For the first time, Woolf‟s aesthetics were not the only thing being studied.