Material Culture and Identity in the Mid-Victorian Novel: Mayhew’s 1851, Dickens’s Bleak House and Gaskell’s Cranford

Der Philosophischen Fakultät und Fachbereich Theologie der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades Dr. phil.

vorgelegt von Maja Jäckle aus Nürnberg

Als Dissertation genehmigt von der Philosophischen Fakultät der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 20.12.2019

Vorsitzender des Promotionsorgans: Prof. Dr. Thomas Demmelhuber

Gutachterin: Prof. Dr. Doris Feldmann PD Dr. Simone Broders

Rights Statement

This PhD thesis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Acknowledgements

This PhD thesis could not have come into being without several people and institutions. First and foremost, I would like to thank Prof Dr Doris Feldmann. She invited me to join her department at an early stage in my studies, later supervised my PhD project and supported me in this process at all times. Prof Dr Doris Feldmann provided invaluable help and advice throughout the project. I am very grateful to her for accepting it and encouraging me to pursue my ideas. I am much obliged to PD Dr Simone Broders. She kindly read my thesis and provided helpful advice when the oral exam was approaching. I am also indebted to Dr Christian Krug. He pointed out some aspects which could be elaborated on and suggested some books for further reading. The archivists at the Rare Book Collection at the Archives and Special Collections at Bangor University, Wales, were most helpful in finding the monthly parts of 1851 and digitalizing several images for me. Without their support, the images could not have been published. Project Boz at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, USA, played a formative role in making the PhD project possible. The team digitalized the monthly parts of Dickens’s Bleak House and made them publicly available on their website. The digital versions of the monthly parts are an important asset to Victorian studies. The team from Historische Sammlungen of the Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg i. Br. digitalized some images from Cruikshank’s Mayhew’s Great Exhibition of 1851. Their scans were delivered quickly, which helped a lot. I would like to thank these institutions for their kind permission to reproduce their images in this thesis. Likewise, my thanks go to all the institutions that made scans of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century books and documents available to the public. The online archives they have created, particularly the one by Google Books, are a useful source. Karin Heiß put my ideas to the test, discussed them with me enduringly and read my drafts carefully. Her feedback was very much appreciated. Last but not least, my deepest thanks go to my parents for their untiring and loving support.

This PhD thesis is dedicated to my English teacher (years 6 to 8) in gratitude.

2 Contents

List of Figures ...... 4

1 Introduction ...... 6 2 National Identity and the Great Exhibition in 1851 ...... 18 2.1 Exploring National Identity at Mid-Century: Linking Eighteenth-Century Strategies of Representation to Mid-Victorian Material Culture ...... 18 2.1.1 Mid-Victorian Discourses in a Domestic Travel Account of Buttermere: Illustrating Intranational Difference ...... 19 2.1.2 The Rural Other in Mid-Century London: Staging Difference in a Picaresque Narrative ...... 35 2.2 The Urban Context: Forming English National Identity through Material Culture ...... 50 2.2.1 Doubling Narrated Time for the Opening of the Great Exhibition: A Narrative Strategy to Establish National Identity ...... 50 2.2.1.1 The Spectacular Representation ...... 51 2.2.1.2 The Repetition as a Farce ...... 58 2.2.2 The Expository Elements and the Limits of Defining National Identity Discursively ...... 66 3 Consumption in Bleak House: Polyphony on Class and Middle-Class Gender Roles ...... 75 3.1 The Heterodiegetic Narrator: Representing Classes through Consumption ... 76 3.1.1 The Aristocracy: Othering Lady Dedlock through Luxurious Material Objects ...... 76 3.1.2 The Urban Poor: Othering Jo through Discourses on Consumption ...... 79 3.2 The Middle Classes: Probing Diversified Concepts of Gender Roles in Esther’s Autodiegetic Account ...... 84 3.2.1 Esther as a Young Leisure Time Consumer ...... 84 3.2.2 Mrs Jellyby: A Satiric Account of the Businesswoman ...... 91 3.2.3 Richard as Heir and Leisure Time Consumer: A Metonymic Shift from Consuming Subject to Object of Consumption ...... 99

3 3.2.4 Mr Turveydrop: Satirizing an Eighteenth-Century Concept of the Gentleman ...... 108 3.2.5 Krook’s Shop: A Parody of the Court of Chancery ...... 113 4 Cranford: Fashioning Female Identity, Creating a Metalevel on Material Culture ...... 120 4.1 Negotiating Socioeconomic Status through Inconspicuous Consumption: The Narrator’s Retrospective Account of a Small Town in a Pre- or Early- Victorian Setting ...... 122 4.1.1 Social Self-Fashioning as an Identificatory Practice ...... 122 4.1.2 Consuming Food: Gaining Social Prestige by Consuming Inconspicuously ...... 127 4.1.3 Reflections on the Use of Material Objects: Individual Practices of Saving and Their Structural Ambivalences ...... 135 4.1.4 The Social Function of Waste ...... 144 4.2 Clothes, Fashion, Shops: Refracting Mid-Victorian Material Culture ...... 146 4.2.1 The Narrator’s Urban Perspective: Mocking Compulsory Cap Consumption and Small-Town Ideas of Style and Fashion ...... 146 4.2.2 Shopping and Shops: Negotiating Social Status at Sites of Consumption Set before Mid-Century ...... 155 4.2.3 Books as Indicators of Cultural Struggles ...... 166 5 Conclusion ...... 172 6 Bibliography ...... 182 7 Appendix I: Illustrations and Advertisements ...... 194 8 Appendix II: Summary in German – Zusammenfassung auf Deutsch . 208

4 List of Figures

Figure 1: Reviews of 1851 in the second monthly part of the novel ...... 194 Figure 2: Reviews of 1851 in the second monthly part of the novel ...... 195 Figure 3: Cruikshank’s illustration “The Opening of the Great Hive of the World May 1 or the Industrial Exhibition of all Nations” in the fourth monthly number of 1851 ...... 196 Figure 4: Advertisement for Comical Creatures from Wurttemberg; Including the Story of Reynard the Fox on the back wrapper of the seventh monthly number of 1851 ...... 197 Figure 5: Cruikshank’s illustration “The Opening of the Great Exhibition of All Nations” in Mayhew’s Great Exhibition of 1851 ...... 198 Figure 6: Cruikshank’s illustration “The first Shilling-day – going in” in the fifth monthly number of 1851 ...... 199 Figure 7: Cruikshank’s illustration “The first Shilling-day – coming out” in the fifth monthly number of 1851 ...... 200 Figure 8: Advertisement for Kaye’s Worsdell’s Pills in the back of the fifth monthly number of Bleak House ...... 201 Figure 9: Advertisement for Poulson and Company in the “Bleak House Advertiser” of the second monthly number of Bleak House ...... 202 Figure 10: Advertisement for Barker and Company in the “Bleak House Advertiser”of the seventh monthly number of Bleak House ...... 202 Figure 11: Advertisements for Watherston and Brogden and Rowland’s Kalydor in the “Bleak House Advertiser” in the second monthly number of Bleak House ...... 203 Figure 12: Advertisement for Home Truths for Home Peace in the “Bleak House Advertiser” in the first monthly number of Bleak House ...... 204 Figure 13: Advertisement for Home Truths for Home Peace in the “Bleak House Advertiser” in the tenth monthly number of Bleak House ...... 204 Figure 14: Advertisement for gentlemen’s wigs in the “Bleak House Advertiser” in the sixth monthly number of Bleak House ...... 204 Figure 15: Advertisement for Moses and Son’s on the back wrapper of the fourth monthly number of Bleak House ...... 205 Figure 16: Advertisement for the National Illustrated Library in the second monthly number of 1851 ...... 206

5 Figure 17: Specimen Page of Boswell’s Life of Johnson in the second monthly number of 1851 ...... 207

6 1 Introduction

The Victorian novel describes, catalogs, quantifies, and in general showers us with things […] – cavalcades of objects threaten to crowd the narrative right off the page. (Freedgood 1)

This observation can be considered symptomatic of studies which are concerned with the plethora of material objects represented in Victorian novels. Following “the material turn in Victorian studies”, literary analyses and material culture studies have been joined to become a well-established and burgeoning field of research (Pykett 4).1 A view commonly shared by scholars is that material objects in Victorian novels are not simply there but that they are meaningful. Developing their readings from this common denominator, scholars have approached the objects from different vantage points. Some studies tend to examine them from a semiotic perspective or adopt a historico-cultural point of view. They take the objects to be symbolic references. Freedgood, for instance, “assume[s] that critical cultural archives have been preserved” in the material objects (1). She carries out metonymic readings of concrete material objects in literary texts (cf. Freedgood 12). The objects, she proposes, have a history of their own which needs to be explored and then related to the narrative text in which it occurs (cf. Freedgood 12). Miller locates the material objects in the context of mass-production and display (cf. 1995, 1). Drawing on Marx, he posits that Victorian novels reflect “the power of commodities to affect […] attitudes of individual and social experience” (Miller 1995, 7). A recent collection of articles deals with material objects it calls paraphernalia: material objects “of everyday life, neither valuable enough for museums, not symbolic enough for purely literary study” (Kingstone/Lister 1). The collection looks at the contexts of paraphernalia and the practices or uses to which they are put (cf. Kingstone/Lister 6). Other studies, which contribute to the latest critical discourse, have brought to the fore a structural interest in the material objects of the Victorian novel. They take a specific aspect of material culture such as clothes, food or dirt and analyze its function regarding the narrative, plot or modes of representation and narration as well as conventions of genre (cf. Seys 3-5; cf. Lee 2016, 2-4; cf. Schülting 2016, 9). There is, moreover, a

1 On the development of this field of research, see Tetzeli 2001 and Scholz/Vedder 8-9. See Schülting 2016, 8-9 and Mills for an overview of approaches and theories on how to examine textual representations of material objects. Dickens is often foregrounded in discussions of Victorian material culture because he is considered to have “imagined a richly populated object world” in his novels (Wood 452). Please note that a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license applies to the PhD thesis on hand. This includes the illustrations and advertisements which have been reproduced in Appendix I.

7 metadiscourse on material objects in literary texts. The discourse dwells on different approaches to literary representations of material objects and addresses questions concerning the textual nature of the objects (cf. Mills; cf. Scholz/Vedder 8-13). This PhD thesis argues that material culture in the mid-Victorian novel serves to explore, shape and negotiate notions of collective identity. The novels examined here are Henry Mayhew’s 1851; or, The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and Family, Who Came up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves’, and to See the Great Exhibition, Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford.2 In these novels, the narrative voices represent aspects of material culture and practices of consumption. In doing so, they create different forms of collective identity narratively. This is because the narrative voices point to several categories of difference when they transmit material culture and shape concepts of nationality, class and gender roles. The thesis on hand is conceptualized as a cross-sectional study. It focuses on three mid-Victorian novels which were published within a relatively short period of time: 1851 was published in 1851, Bleak House between 1852 and 1853 and Cranford between 1851 and 1853. By focussing on this time frame, the study seeks to ensure that the representations of material culture and the role they play in formations of collective identity can be compared with each other: since the novels were all published in close temporal proximity to each other, they stem from the same cultural climate prevalent at this time and provide textual representations of the material culture of that time. This makes it possible to read them alongside each other in a tight historical frame of reference. The analyses are located in the time frame of the mid-Victorian period, hence within the larger cultural context of the time in which the novels were published. Thus, the analyses can take into account cultural phenomena and discourses of this period which are linked to material culture but not necessarily to the Great Exhibition, which is sometimes regarded as the pinnacle of Victorian material culture. 1851, Bleak House and Cranford have been selected for analysis because they have some aspects in common apart from their dates of publication: they are concerned with specific aspects of collective identity which is formed in the narrative voices’ representations of material culture. This happens in different ways because the narrative voices are distinct from each other regarding their conceptualization: there is one narrative voice in 1851, two narrative voices in Bleak

2 The cover of 1851 gives both Henry Mayhew and George Cruikshank as creators of the novel. In the following, references made to the novel will be to Mayhew since the study is mainly concerned with his novelistic text. When Cruikshank’s illustrations are referred to, his name will be clearly stated. For reasons of brevity, only the first part of the title of the novel will be mentioned in all further references to 1851.

8 House and one female narrator in Cranford. The study mainly examines the novels from a literary studies point of view. Yet it also takes into consideration some materials which are usually of interest in cultural studies: the illustrations and advertisements which appeared in the monthly numbers of 1851 and Bleak House are related to the literary studies analyses where they enter an alliance or a conflicting relationship with the novelistic texts. The analyses have been arranged to deal with 1851 first, with Bleak House after that and with Cranford last: 1851 is closely linked to the Great Exhibition, which is often seen as a key event in mid-Victorian material culture (cf. Waters 2-3). This is not only because of the time in which the novel was serialized; it also deals with the Great Exhibition on its intradiegetic level. 1851 takes the Great Exhibition as an impulse to explore and form notions of national identity. Bleak House is concerned with ideas of middle-class identity which are formed through consumption and in relation to other socioeconomic groups in the social spectrum. Within the middle-classes, the novel uses consumption in a literal and figurative sense to negotiate concepts of gender. Cranford is seemingly detached from mid-Victorian material culture because its happenings take place in a women’s community of a small town and are set before the mid-Victorian period. Yet it is precisely through this seeming detachment that the novel participates in mid-Victorian material culture. Regarding the concepts this study uses, collective identity needs to be defined, as well as material culture and consumption or consuming, and the interrelations between these terms need to be pointed out. Collective identity is a relational concept that hinges on differences (cf. Böhm/Feldmann 275).3 As a cultural construct, it is formed discursively, never stable and offers options or points of identification for those belonging to a given culture or group (cf. Assmann 2012, 204; cf. Assmann 2018, 132; cf. Straub 102; 104). Subjects may belong to one or several groups forming a collective identity if they identify with the values, tenets or discourses prevalent in a given group (cf. Straub 102). Formations of collective identity can be found amongst various cultural groupings

3 Collective identity is derived from the concept of individual identity. Individual identity refers to a person’s sense of ‘self’ (cf. Straub 85). It is a preliminary construct, subject to change and formed in the face of differences the subject experiences (cf. Straub 87-88; 95). Collective identity is transferred from the realm of individual persons to groups (cf. Straub 96-98). These individual persons are not to be understood in terms of Descartes’ Enlightenment idea of “[t]he self’s apartness and individuality” but as always being entangled in and part of social and discursive structures (cf. Hall 20).

9 such as nations or classes, and they also feature in conceptions of gender (cf. Straub 100).4 Collective identity is an important concept when approaching the mid-Victorian period. Profound changes in the fields of industry and technology which had started in the eighteenth century and continued in the mid-Victorian period affected Britain’s social and national structure (cf. Steinbach 84-87). This raised questions of nationality and led to negotiations of social status and concepts of gender roles. Nationality, class and gender are therefore central aspects of collective identity in the mid-Victorian period. Categories of difference play a formative role in shaping collective identity: perceiving differences brings about a sense of belonging in cultural and social terms (cf. Feldmann 2013a, 187). Rendering visible and marking differences is thus part of forming notions of identity (cf. Böhm-Schnitker/Feldmann/Krug 185): a sense of ‘self’ is created by highlighting differences which mark it off hierarchically from an ‘other’ (cf. Böhm- Schnitker/Feldmann/Krug 185; cf. Horatschek 323). The novels examined here participate in these processes. If novels are considered to participate in discourses which circulate in a given culture at a specific time, they contribute to formations of collective identity and do so in narrative form (cf. Glomb 324). The three novels under scrutiny here highlight categories of differences in connection with their representations of material culture. While the novels use them to focus on different aspects of collective identity, they all use them to mould notions of collective identity through a number of narrative strategies. The categories of difference which are central to this process are those of class and gender since they can be found on both the level of the characters and the level of discourse. Further categories of difference need to be taken into account due to the structural constitution of the texts: the settings and conception of the narrative voices add nation, region and age as additional markers of difference. These categories of difference partly intersect and engender tensions which surface when the narrative voices represent material culture. The manner in which these categories of difference overlap makes for the form of collective identity the novels focus on. 1851 plays with national identity, and Bleak House is concerned with the middle-classes and concepts of gender. Cranford additionally works with historical difference. The novel shows how the socioeconomic aspect of female identity is negotiated in a small town at a time before mid-century. In doing so, Cranford simultaneously refracts mid-Victorian practices of identity formation.

4 Straub points out that ideas of collective identity with larger groupings can be instrumentalized and used for ideological, manipulative purposes if they are construed as normative concepts (cf. 100). This pitfall will be avoided here since the study analyzes how notions of collective identity are formed but does not take them as a given or as normative concepts.

10 In the following discussion, the term material culture will be used to refer to the material universe represented in the novels. Following Lury, material culture is here used as a concept that is broader than consumer culture and encompasses the latter (cf. 9). Material culture designates “the use” and “significance” of material objects “in everyday practices” (Lury 9). “The first half of the term […] points to the significance of […] things in everyday practices, while the second half indicates that this attention to the materials of everyday life is combined with a concern with the cultural, […] values and practices” (Lury 9). Rather than speaking of ‘things’ in connection with material culture, this paper uses the term objects: a thing is an “entity consisting of matter, or occupying space […] which it is difficult to denominate more exactly” (Simpson/Weiner 17: 943). While the term shows that material culture is a broad concept, ‘thing’ is “a vague designation” nevertheless (Simpson/Weiner 17: 943). An object is a thing “to which action, thought, or feeling is directed” (Simpson/Weiner 10: 640). Objects therefore entail subject-object relationships: “relationship[s] felt, or the emotional energy directed, by the self […] towards a chosen object” (Simpson/Weiner 10: 641). This implies that objects are part of meaning-making processes, which ties in with culture as “a whole way of life” (Williams 1958, 76) and as contexts in which humans produce meaning (cf. Edgar 2003c, 102).5 Using the term material culture thus makes it possible to analyze how material objects are used and ascribed meaning in everyday contexts. The term thus encompasses both consumption and consumer culture. Consumer culture refers to symbolic practices of consumption in economic contexts (cf. Eichhammer 191; cf. Edgar 2003b, 80).6 It is thus concerned with the role of meanings and values that are created or articulated through consumption (cf. Lury 11). In its literal sense, consumption or consuming means “[t]o spend (goods or money)”, “[t]o use up” material, “eat up” or “wear out by use” (Simpson/Weiner 3: 801). With Lury, this paper argues that consuming or consumption does not necessarily imply that material objects are entirely used up when they are consumed (cf. Lury 10). Consumption or consuming here therefore refers to using, eating material objects or spending money on them as practices rather than as actions which invariably result in a finished state. Consumption thus also comprises activities such as acquiring, possessing and using

5 “[O]bjects are always entangled in a web of signification woven by the culture which produces, exchanges, glorifies or wastes them” (Frenk 2001, 193). 6 Another term which often surfaces in this context is commodity culture. Commodity culture focuses on material objects which are assigned a meaning in a conventionalized way and on producing, displaying and exchanging these material objects (cf. Eichhammer 191). The term commodity culture will not be used in the following because the concept is too narrow for the analyses carried out here.

11 material objects (cf. Eichhammer 191). Two further aspects of consumption need to be added: if consuming material objects in the sense of using and eating them involves a physical element, there is also visual consumption if material objects are looked at and taken in visually. Reading can be considered a form of consumption, too. It is situated at the interface of physical and visual consumption: the serialized numbers of the novels can be seen as material objects which can be acquired and used, and the techniques of representation used in these novels work to make the happenings on the intradiegetic level consumable for the readers. The mid-Victorian novel entertains a twofold relationship with material culture: the novels analyzed here deal with material culture on an intratextual level, and they can themselves be seen as a material objects in mid-Victorian material culture on an extratextual level. Regarding material culture in mid-Victorian novels, it has to be borne in mind that the novelistic texts do not give direct access to material culture ‘as it was then’. As narrative texts, they are always mediated by a narrative voice which makes the material culture represented in the novel accessible. Therefore, structural aspects of the novels are important in connection with material culture: the narrative voice, the rhetoric strategies it deploys, strategies of representation as well as the constellation of characters. Material culture in literary texts is hence never transmitted in a neutral way: the texts are influenced by discourses and ideas which shaped the cultural climate in which they appeared. This impacts on the novelistic representations of material culture. Yet the novels also participate in those discourses since their representations are consumed on an extratextual level. The strategies of representations have an effect on how the material culture they mediate is received on this level. At the same time, the novels are material objects which existed in mid-Victorian material culture. Dickens’s Bleak House and Mayhew’s 1851 appeared in monthly numbers. Bleak House was serialized in 20 numbers within a period of 19 months (cf. Gill 2008b, xxiii). Its last instalment was a double number (cf. Bowen 46). The novelistic text was accompanied by two illustrations (cf. Gill 2008b, xxv) and numerous advertisements which “were sewn into the binding” of each instalment (Turner 116). Some advertisements were grouped under the title of the novel and preceded the novelistic text. This was the so-called “Bleak House Advertiser”. The advertisements following the novelistic text were not grouped under any headings. As the name “Bleak House Advertiser” suggests, the advertisements were an integral part of each monthly number. Mayhew’s 1851 was serialized in a relatively short interval: it was published in eight monthly parts between February and October 1851. Its serial run thus took place in

12 the months preceding, coinciding with and following the Great Exhibition of 1851. Apart from the novelistic text, the monthly numbers of 1851 also comprised two illustrations and were accompanied by advertisements. Mayhew’s monthly parts differed from Dickens’s in one respect: the advertisements preceding the novelistic text of 1851 were not assembled under any particular heading. This publishing format originated from developments in production and changes in infrastructure (cf. Feltes 3; 5). Since disseminating the monthly parts on the print market was a characteristic feature of this publishing format, it can be seen as a material object or product which is sold and acquired, hence as “a ‘commodity-text’” (Feltes 8).7 Gaskell’s Cranford was serialized in Dickens’s journal Household Words. The issues of Household Words appeared weekly, but the Cranford contributions were published on an irregular basis (cf. Birch 2011c, xxvi-xxvii). Contrary to the monthly parts of 1851 and Bleak House, the Cranford articles did not form self-contained material objects in their own right: the articles were printed amongst numerous contributions by various other writers and were not surrounded by any illustrations. The few advertisements in Household Words drew attention to Dickens’s periodical publications and were not related to the text of Cranford (cf. Waters 16). Since Household Words also exploited developments in production and infrastructure, Cranford, too, can be seen as a commodity text. Yet its publication format differs from 1851 and Bleak House. Therefore, the articles published with the Cranford articles in Household Words will not be considered in the study on hand.8 The twofold relationship the mid-Victorian novel entertains with material culture shows that the novels examined here are situated at the interface of literary and cultural studies. This necessitates analytical tools which reflect these circumstances. The representations of material culture in the novels will be analyzed by means of concepts used in literary studies. Drawing on Chatman, a narrative voiced situated on the level of discourse is considered to mediate the characters’ movements on the level of story (cf. 19). For the narrative voices, Genette’s model will be used. It distinguishes between hetero-, homo- and autodiegetic narrators: the first type is not a character in the story which is told, the second participates in the story he or she tells as a character and the

7 In the following, the term commodity text will always be used in Feltes’s sense. 8 Delafield has recently analyzed the Cranford articles in the context of Household Words. Applying Genette’s concept of paratexts to examine novels which were serialized in journals, she argues that each novel she looks at “provided a connective textual and visual pattern over a longer horizontal timeframe but the links with other material within the periodical offered additional intertextual commentary” (Delafield 21). Waters provides readings for specific material objects in Cranford and relates her findings to their overall context in Household Words (cf. 101; 118; 123; 141).

13 third type is both character and protagonist of his or her story (cf. Genette 1983, 244- 245). Another distinction taken from Genette is that between different narrative levels of a novel: the characters and happenings on the level of story are located on the intradiegetic level of the novel; a narrator acting as a character and mediating instance is also part of this level (cf. Genette 1983, 228). A narrative voice which is located on the level of discourse is referred as extradiegetic (cf. Genette 1983, 228). The extradiegetic level of a novel is important not only with respect to its narrative voice. The narratee of the novels is located on this level, too, and “merges with the implied reader” (Genette 1983, 260). According to Genette, the “real reader can identify” with the narratee (1983, 260). Genette here tends to mix two levels which need to be distinguished from each other. The concept of the implied reader refers to structures in a text which preconceive their recipient (cf. Iser 61). These structures make the implied reader adopt a specific stance which integrates all the perspectives inherent in the text (cf. Iser 62). The narrative voice, characters and plot carry those perspectives (cf. Iser 61). The “real reader” Genette refers to is located on the extratextual level of the novels. Genette’s so-called “real reader” can consume them as material objects (1983, 260) and is offered “options for identity” which are created on the intratextual level (Assmann 2012, 204). In the following, the concept of the implied reader will be applied to analyses which are concerned with the intratextual organization of the novels. When the readers or consumers of the novels in mid-Victorian material culture are discussed, the extratextual level will be indicated. Further literary studies aspects which need to be considered are the plot and different modes of representation such as theatrical, realist, satirical, farcial or picaresque elements. From a cultural studies perspective, “the material characteristics” of the mid- Victorian novel are “central […] to its meaning” and need to be included in discussions of the novels (Beetham 96).9 If a broad understanding of ‘text’ is applied, the illustrations and advertisements accompanying the novelistic texts can be considered their visual and verbal con-texts. Genette’s concept of paratext provides a helpful device for dealing with these texts. Paratext are those features which are not the text proper of a book but have an influence on how the text is received (cf. Genette 1997, 2). Therefore, a “paratextual element is always subordinate to ‘its’ text” (Genette 1997, 12). The “location […]; date of appearance […]; mode of existence; […] sender and addressee” and “function” of a paratextual element have to be analyzed when it is interpreted (Genette 1997, 4).

9 Beetham originally stated that the material aspects of periodicals are meaningful (cf. 96). This observation is also applicable to novels published in monthly numbers. Beetham’s proposition tallies with Tetzeli’s methodological comment: “the study of the materialization of texts complements the study of the textualization of matter” (2001, 117).

14 Depending on where a paratextual element is located, Genette distinguishes between peritext and epitext (cf. 1997, 4). He considers peritext to be “the more typical” form of paratextual elements (Genette 1997, 4). It appears “within the same volume” as the text and includes “the title or […] preface”, “chapter titles” or “illustrations” (Genette 1997, 1; 5). Epitext refers to “elements” like “interviews […] or letters” which are “located outside the book” (Genette 1997, 5). The concept of paratext can be applied to the monthly numbers of 1851 and Bleak House because Genette envisions it as a phenomenon which is historically and culturally specific. “The ways and means of the paratext change continually, depending on period, culture, [and] genre” (Genette 1997, 3). If the illustrations and advertisements are considered central characteristics of the monthly parts as a publishing ‘genre’, they constitute the peritext of the novelistic texts. The epitext of the novels will not be part of this study. A few instances where discussing epitext sheds more light on the novelistic texts are exceptions. The analyses focus on peritext since they look at how the illustrations and advertisements interact with the novelistic text. This spatial proximity, which does not occur in the epitext, is deemed meaningful. Due to this analytical focus, the term paratext will be used to refer to Genette’s peritext. Concerning the methodological and structural framework, the paratexts of the novels will be examined in addition to the novelistic text, but the focal point of the study is a literary studies analysis. This is because the illustrations and advertisements appeared as additional material in the monthly parts, whereas the novelistic text was the main component. Amongst the welter of paratextual elements, the illustrations and advertisements which have been selected for analysis fulfil two conditions: they were published in the same monthly parts as the novelistic text which is examined in a given chapter, and it must be possible to relate them to the novelistic text in terms of content or in structural terms. The reason for this is that this study regards the monthly numbers as self-contained material objects. It therefore assumes that the paratexts which are located in the same monthly part as the novelistic text were perceived in conjunction with it. Thus, the paratexts and the novelistic text of a given monthly number entertain a close relationship with each other, and the paratext of a monthly part can be argued to directly impact on the novelistic text: it supports, refracts or diverges from how material culture is represented in the novelistic text.10 This is a significant contribution to the notions of

10 This methodological conclusion agrees with Delafield. Concerning “the serialized novel” in journals, she states it “was […] embedded […] in other serials both fictional and non-fictional which would reinforce, echo or contrast the situations and characters of the novel” (Delafield 21). The study on hand is not so much interested in echoes or contrasts between the intradiegetic level

15 collective identity formed in the narrative text. The close relationship between paratext and novelistic text and the meaningful parallels or tensions this engenders, need to be reflected in methodological terms. Accordingly, the paratextual elements will be analyzed in the same chapters as the novelistic text. In combining literary and cultural studies to approach 1851, Bleak House and Cranford, this study contributes to academic discussions in the following way: 1851 has been neglected in discussions of mid-Victorian novels so far. In the few articles dealing with the novel, it is often dealt with in passing or assessed in aesthetic terms (cf. Fisher 11-12; cf. McKinney). A fairly recent paper outlining new directions of research in Mayhew studies, proposes that “[t]he novel could be read in dialogue with […] Mayhew’s critique of the […] exhibition […] in the introduction to […] the 1862 edition of London Labour and the London Poor” (Roddy/Strange/Taithe 487).11 Apart from giving this hint, however, the paper passes over 1851. Besides Mersmann’s insightful analysis, there is no thorough study of 1851. Mersmann deals with the novel from a literary studies perspective but does not take into consideration its paratext. The study on hand will hence draw on his findings but extend his scope of analysis by including some illustrations and advertisements. Thus, new horizons of interpretation can be explored which could not be discerned in a purely literary studies approach. Some critical attention has been meted out to the illustrations of 1851. They are examined in the history of art and with reference to George Cruikshank, their well-known creator (cf. Codell 223; cf. Patten 1996, 298-300; 306). This study agrees with these contributions insofar as the illustrations are seen in the context of mid-Victorian practices of publishing which included illustrations, and Cruikshank’s popularity cannot be overlooked. Yet the study proposes that further insights can be gained if the illustrations are directly related to the novelistic text rather than separated from it. Last but not least, the role of the advertisements needs to be broached. So far, no analyses of the advertisements in the monthly parts of 1851 could be found. The study on hand seeks to redress this.

of the novels and their paratexts but in how the paratexts affect the representations of material culture in connection with formations of identity. 11 Roddy, Strange and Taithe here specifically refer to volume four of the edition mentioned above (cf. 487).

16 Bleak House comes with a large body of criticism.12 The two narrative voices in this novel are the subject of an ongoing debate in Dickens studies.13 The characters have been discussed at some length, too. More often than not, they are seen as embodying concepts of gender monolithically (cf. Danahay 417; 423; cf. Carens 122; cf. Stuchebrukhov 161). Other scholars are concerned with class. They propose that Bleak House charts out a middle-class nation, while others focus on the poor or suggest that the novel shows how the nation’s “social cohesion” is “‘obliterate[d]’” (cf. Stuchebrukhov 147-148; 161; cf. Robles 142-150; cf. Landon 38; Mufti 66). Bleak House is also read in connection with the Great Exhibition. Some scholars note that this event is nominally absent from the novel but suggest that the novel engages with the dark sides of a society that stages the Great Exhibition (cf. Sicher 195-196; cf. Tracy 30; cf. Landon 36; 38). The illustrations and advertisements in the monthly parts of Bleak House have been analyzed repeatedly and related to the novelistic text: Steinlight shows how an outfitter’s advertisement imitates the “narrative style” of the novel (139) and its rhetoric strategies to advertise clothes (cf. 141). Williams observes that some advertisements contradict the novelistic text: if the novel endorses thrift as a value, he argues, an illustration that advertises tea and represents a woman doing her needlework, turns the values the novel propagates into sales strategies which encourage consumption rather than thrift (cf. Williams 2008, 49- 50). In a fairly recent study, Damkjær proposes that “[t]he project of the novel is the making of the middle-class home” (23) and that “the ‘Bleak House Advertiser’ […] informs the novel’s aim to construct a national (domestic) time” (25). In the following, the narrative voices will be of central relevance. The study on hand takes up a strand of criticism that has already been pursued in scholarship but adds to critical discussions because it examines what functions the narrative voices have in representing material culture and in forging ideas of class and gender. It thus analyzes how concepts of gender are negotiated through consumption rather than reading the characters monolithically. Krook’s shop will be related to the law system because structural parallels between the two can be detected in Krook’s material objects. The illustrations and advertisements will be compared to the novelistic text and discussed with a view to how they contribute to multiple perspectives on class, concepts of gender or modify their literary representations.

12 For an overview of recent publications on Dickens’s Bleak House, see Lamouria 183-184; 192; 195; 197; 202; 206; 211; 214; 220-221; 226; 238 and Cook 148-149; 151; 154-155; 159; 161; 163; 169; 175; 181; 183-186. 13 See, for instance, Blain 31-33, Collins 1971, 18-33, Fletcher 68-70; 72; 74-77, Gaughan 80; 86; 89, Rajan 65-68 and Wilson 2015, 209; 214-217.

17 Cranford is often considered to stand for material culture (cf. Waters 97; cf. Miller 1995, 91). This is because some scholars read Cranford with its female characters and its concern with everyday material objects as a contrast to the Great Exhibition where elaborate objects were displayed (cf. Miller 1995, 91; cf. Huett 48). Miller looks at how the female characters and the representations of material culture affect the narrative structure of the novel (cf. 1995, 93; 116). Other scholars draw an analogy between the Great Exhibition and Cranford and see both as collections: the Great Exhibition because of the material objects it housed, Cranford because the novel appears like an assortment of anecdotal texts (cf. Dolin 1993, 180; 193). Some scholars are interested in the community created by the Cranford characters through material objects (cf. Rappaport 2008, 95; 98; 100; cf. Knezevic 415). Waters argues that material objects stemming from British colonies “play a key role in the formation of domestic identities” and uses non- novelistic texts to “explain […] the way in which empire underwrites the domestic world” (101-102). This study sees Cranford in the context of mid-Victorian material culture rather than as countering the Great Exhibition. The structures which underlie the characters’ ways of dealing with material objects and consuming are analyzed to two ends: the manner in which the characters consume material objects works to create a social sense of belonging and a communal identity in the eponymous town. In conceptualizing the narrative voice to point to a number of differences, the novel also broaches aspects of mid-Victorian material culture on a metalevel. What this outline of analytical concepts, methods and research questions proposes is that the study on hand aims to delve into the function the representations of material culture in 1851, Bleak House and Cranford have in connection with the narrative voices. Thus, the study ensures that the “post chaises, handkerchiefs, […] wills, […] dresses […], coffee, […] [and] cutlets” (Freedgood 1) which exemplify “the material plenitude of Victorian literature” (Frenk 2011, 135) and tend to “overwhelm” readers and critics alike are channelled into analyses that harness them from a literary and cultural studies perspective (Freedgood 1).

18 2 National Identity and the Great Exhibition in 1851 1851 deals with questions of English national identity. It explores and defines national identity against the backdrop of the Great Exhibition. For this end, the novel draws on regional difference to show what English nationality is not before it forms notions of Englishness which point towards an urban and middle-class conception.14 In doing so, it distances the implied readers from the Northern English protagonists. The narrative voice in 1851 uses elements from travel writing and picaresque novels as well as theatrical and spectacular modes of representation. It combines them with representations of material culture and mid-Victorian discourses to form national identity. Due to these textual strategies and because visual elements feature prominently in the novelistic text, the narrative can be argued to be an object of consumption for the readers. As this chapter will show, material culture, consumption and national identity are closely intertwined in the literary text. The paratext works in tandem with the novelistic text. It deploys similar strategies of representation and underpins and supports the literary constructions of English national identity.

2.1 Exploring National Identity at Mid-Century: Linking Eighteenth-Century Strategies of Representation to Mid-Victorian Material Culture 1851 deals with two exhibitions. The plot of the novel circles around the Great Exhibition on the level of content, and the novel presents an exhibition on the structural level. 1851 makes an exhibition of the Northern English protagonists to negotiate English national identity. For this purpose, the novel combines two elements from eighteenth-century writing with mid-Victorian discourses. The strategies adopted from domestic travel accounts are used to other the Sandboys in Buttermere. In order to narrate the protagonists’ trip to London and the mishaps they are involved in, the episodic structure of picaresque novels is combined with theatrical elements.15 The narrative voice is key in making the Sandboys’ otherness the object of a textual exhibition: it highlights the Sandboys’ difference because it continuously contrasts Buttermere and the Sandboys with ideas which were topical in the mid-Victorian period.

14 English national identity and Englishness are used interchangeably here. 15 Theatrical elements effect that the representations in which they are used are reminiscent of “a dramatic performance” which is staged for “display” (Simpson/Weiner 17: 883).

19 2.1.1 Mid-Victorian Discourses in a Domestic Travel Account of Buttermere: Illustrating Intranational Difference It is argued here that 1851 explores English national identity through its representation of Buttermere and the Sandboys. Drawing on domestic travel writing, the text first introduces a mid-Victorian, urban perspective on Buttermere and then illustrates the differences it ascribes to this region. The text links the strategies deployed in domestic travel accounts with consumption and material culture. Consumption in the sense of taking in an object visually and acquiring or eating material objects effects a contrast between the urban perspective the text establishes and Buttermere as a rural region. Material culture serves to other the Sandboys through their language and habits, and it suggests they are regressing in terms of civilization. The differences which render the Sandboys the Northern English other are gradually revealed by the narrative voice. This makes it pleasurable for the implied urban readers to follow these revelations. It also renders the narrative a textual exhibition since the narrator points out several aspects of difference. The narrative thus hinges on representations of consumption and material culture, and it is conceptualized as an object of consumption. Before the narrative voice deals with Buttermere in Cumberland and the Sandboys, it introduces London as Britain’s centre. This is a discursive strategy which can be found in domestic travel accounts (cf. Feldmann 1997, 33): “[t]he outer limits” of a region “can only be determined after a centre has been established. The city of London represents this centre” (Feldmann 1997, 33-34). This leads to a “London-centred perspective”, and “London serves as the norm which establishes the meaning and importance of the sights” which are visited while travelling (Feldmann 1997, 34). In the eighteenth century, domestic travel writing played an important role in constructing British national identity in an international context (cf. Feldmann 1997, 31): at that time, British national identity was investigated due to “military and economic conflicts […] carried out with those beyond Britain’s shores” (Feldmann 1997, 33).16 In the mid- Victorian period, explorations of national identity are prompted by another international event: the Great Exhibition. This can be seen in the full title of 1851; or, The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and Family, Who Came up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves’, and to See the Great Exhibition and in the first sentence of the novel: “THE GREAT EXHIBITION was about to attract the sight-seers of all the world” (1).17 London is then

16 See Colley 3-5 for a detailed account of these conflicts. 17 All references to the novelistic text are to a digitalized copy of 1851. This copy can be retrieved via Google Book Search. It comprises the text which was originally published in the eight monthly parts of 1851. Since the monthly parts cannot be found online and to facilitate access to the text,

20 presented as the centre for British visitors, too. For this end, British places are personified, and their encounter is staged as a spectacle to be viewed by the implied readers:18 All the houses of York were […] in the hope of shaking hands in Hyde Park with all the houses of Lancaster. Beds, Bucks, Notts, Wilts, […] and Herts were […] cramming their carpet bags [in] anticipation of ‘a week in London’. […] John o’ Groats was […] looking forward to the time when he was to clutch the Land’s End to his bosom, – the Isle of Man was panting to take the Isle of Dogs by the hand, and welcome Thanet, Sheppey and Skye […], – the North Foreland was preparing for a […] stroll up Regentstreet [sic] with Holy-Head [sic] on his arm – and the man at Eddystone Lighthouse could see the […] glimmer of hope of […] setting eyes on the […] Buoy at the Nore. (3)

The text personifies various British places since it represents them as waiting to meet other British places in London. This has two effects:19 it brings to life the places and suggests that they move like characters on a stage. Since places from across Britain meet in London, the text here already stages a play in which different regions across Britain participate. The readers can thus ‘watch’ in their mind’s eye various places interacting with each other. In this play, “[a]ll the houses of York” who “were […] in the hope of shaking hands in Hyde Park with all the houses of Lancaster” are mentioned first and hence take centre stage (3). Their gesture is highly symbolic: “shaking hands” is a greeting but it is also a gesture of reconciliation (3). By mentioning the houses of York and Lancaster and in suggesting that they want to shake hands, the text refers to the War of the Roses and alludes to an event in English history:20 the houses of York and Lancaster, who had been in conflict with each other in their struggles for the crown, were united when Henry VII married Elizabeth of York (cf. Weiß 35). The effect of this wedding ended the War of the Roses (cf. Weiß 35), and the subsequent doings of the Tudor dynasty are often represented as bringing about domestic peace and a flourishing trade (cf. Weiß 35; cf. Suerbaum 43). This ideology has been called the Tudor Myth (cf.

the digitalized copy has been chosen to quote from the novelistic text. The visual material in Appendix I has been taken from the original monthly numbers of 1851 and from Cruikshank’s Mayhew’s Great Exhibition of 1851, a collection of Cruikshank’s illustrations. 18 A spectacle is “[a] specially […] arranged display of a more or less public nature […], forming an impressive or overwhelming show for those viewing it” (Simpson/Weiner 16: 164). This definition also pertains to theatrical shows, which are staged to engender a pleasure in looking (cf. Feldmann/Böhm-Schnitker 196). Spectacle also refers to “[a] person or thing exhibited, or set before the public gaze, as an object […] of curiosity or contempt, or […] of marvel and admiration” (Simpson/Weiner 16: 164). 19 McKinney maintains that this passage is a “tiresome” catalogue of generic British surnames and does not fulfil a specific function. Her interpretation is not convincing. 20 The struggles for power are called the War of the Roses since they were named after the heraldic signs of the two houses that were fighting; the red rose stood for the house of Lancaster, the white rose for the house of York (cf. Suerbaum 39). Henry VII was Lancastrian due to his family branch (cf. Weiß 35).

21 Suerbaum 42).21 The Tudor Myth can also be argued to have affected notions of national identity (cf. Weiß 35; cf. Suerbaum 53). Since the text refers to this historical event and stages it “in Hyde Park” at mid-century, it aligns the Great Exhibition in London with a historical event that impacted on English nationality (3). The spectacular representation already indicates that the narrative is an object of consumption. It stages the spectacle of the personified places for the readers who imagine it visually while they are reading the novelistic text. In doing so, the spectacle anticipates the theatrical strategies of representation the narrative voice deploys to stage the Sandboys’ otherness in London and render them objects of consumption for the readers. Through viewing and consuming the spectacle, the representation lets the readers participate in the Tudor Myth and the ideas of national identity it invokes. Furthermore, personifying the places is relevant because some of them stand for the British fringes in a geographical sense: John o’Groats, Land’s End, Sheppey and Thanet, North Foreland and Holyhead are, respectively, a town far up North in the Scottish Highlands, a headland in South West England, an island in the East and North- East of Kent, a headland in this county and a port situated on Anglesey in North West Wales (cf. Tikkanen et al. 2018; 2010; 2013b; 2017; 2013a). The Nore is a sandbank in the East of England, and Eddystone Lighthouse is situated off England’s coast in the South West (cf. Tikkanen et al. 2011; 2016). These places, as well as Skye, the Isle of Man and York, can be used to draw a circumference of Britain. Imagining how the remote British places come together, “clutch”, “take” each other “by the hand” or “stroll up Regentstreet [sic]” encourages the readers to think of a map of Britain (3). Pairing the names John o’ Groats with Land’s End, North Foreland with Holyhead as well as Eddystone Lighthouse with the Nore admits of imagining line segments between these places (cf. 3). Thus, an area of Britain, which also includes the inland city of Lancaster and the regions Lancashire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Nottinghamshire, Wiltshire, […] and Hertfordshire, is mapped out (cf. 3). Hyde Park and Regent Street can be considered well-known places in London. Thus, this graphic representation centres on London and highlights the city as Britain’s centre. Having set London as Britain’s centre, the narrative voice turns to Buttermere in Cumberland.22 This region is in the North of England and borders on Scotland. It hence

21 As Suerbaum points out, the term Tudor Myth was coined by Tillyard (cf. 42). See Tillyard 29- 32 for a detailed explanation of the Tudor Myth. Scholars have discussed his idea controversially (cf. Suerbaum 541). 22 Buttermere belonged to Cumberland in the nineteenth century (cf. Youngs 648-649; 651). Following the Local Government Act 1972, this county, together with some areas of Lancashire

22 belongs to the remote English fringes. Since 1851 focuses on Cumberland after it has drawn a map of Britain, this shows that the novel is not concerned with British but with English national identity. Here, the narrative voice draws on further discursive strategies which are used in travel writing. It deploys “representational strategies” that “produce a […] notion of identifying ‘self’ against ‘otherness’” and “encourage the notion of a cultural hierarchy” (Feldmann 1997, 31). This hierarchy is formed by pointing out differences between self and other. Since the differences are structured in terms of binary oppositions, spotlighting them establishes hierarchies (cf. Feldmann 2013a, 187): what is represented as different is framed as inferior. The intranational differences outlined in 1851 thus entail “a cultural hierarchy”, and spotlighting them is a strategy of othering which negotiates English nationality by stating what is different from the implied norm (Feldmann 1997, 31). Buttermere with its “tranquil meadows” is introduced as a rural foil to London’s urban setting (3): He, who has passed all his life amid […] the ceaseless toil of Bethnal Green, or the luxurious ease of Belgravia, – who has seen no mountain higher than Saffron Hill, – […] whose eye has rested upon no spot more green than the enclosure of Leicester Square, […] can form no image of the peace, the simplicity, […] and the beauty […] around the Lake of Buttermere. Here are no bills, to make one dread the coming of the spring, or the summer, or the Christmas […], for (oh earthly paradise!) there are no tradesmen […]. Here are no dinner-parties for the publication of plate; no soirées for the exhibition of great acquaintances; no conversaziones for the display of your wisdom […]. (3-4)

The structure of the sentences rhetorically underlines the contrast between London and Buttermere because it tends towards parallelisms (cf. 3-4). Again, exemplary areas in London are enumerated. London’s urban characteristics – “the ceaseless toil of Bethnal Green” and “the luxurious ease of Belgravia” – are contrasted with the idealizing features “peace, […] simplicity and […] beauty” which are ascribed to Buttermere (3-4). By mentioning these areas, exaggeratingly referring to Saffron Hill as a mountain and mockingly calling Leicester Square a green spot, the narrative voice suggests that the implied readers are familiar with these names and makes them adopt a perspective focussing on London (cf. 3-4).23

and Westmoreland, was reorganized into a new county in 1974: Cumbria (cf. Department of the Environment/Welsh Office 161-162; cf. The National Archives). In the following, the name Cumberland will be used to account for historical difference. 23 In a guidebook dating from 1855, there is a chapter on London’s gardens. The chapter states: “Leicester House, at the north corner of Leicester Square, had its spacious gardens, now the site of Lisle-street” (Timbs 320). Weinreb and Hibbert point out: “[t]owards the middle of the 19th century the character of the square began to change” because of “a great increase in […] traffic”; “hotels, shops, exhibition centres [and] museums” were opened then (465). 1851 thus implies that not much of the green area had been left at mid-century.

23 This urban, London-centred perspective also surfaces in the way the contrast between London and Buttermere is elaborated on. Consumption plays a twofold role here: the text refers to practices of consumption and material culture to mark difference, and it simultaneously offers Buttermere for consumption on the level of discourse. Buttermere is represented as different because material objects are not circulated through commerce: “tradesmen” sell material objects, put them into circulation and write “bills” for them (4). If both “tradesmen” and “bills” are noted as being absent from Buttermere, this implies that consumption is a characteristic feature of London (4). The sacral vocabulary “oh earthly paradise” evaluates this contrast and idealizes Buttermere (4). London’s practices of display are another feature of this city: the words “exhibition”, “publication” and “display” suggest an exhibitionary aspect (4). They point to practices of display in London’s urban context: material objects (“plates”), people (“acquaintances”) and ‘knowledge’ (“wisdom”) are presented as objects of display on social occasions (4). Another rhetoric device underlines that consumption and exhibitionary practices are absent from Buttermere: the parallel structure of the sentences stating what cannot be found in Buttermere becomes increasingly elliptic (cf. 4). This mirrors the absence of urban forms of display and consumption on the level of language. The idealizing tendency on the narrative level, however, is at once countered and enhanced by an interlocutor fictus.24 This rhetoric strategy reveals the narrative technique of representing Buttermere on a metalevel. “‘But,’ says the Pudding-Lane reader, ‘[…] where are the shops? where that glorious exchange of commodities, without which society cannot exist? […]’ Alas! reader, the picturesque is seldom associated with the conveniencies [sic] or luxuries of life” (7). Since Pudding Lane is a street in central London that accommodated several merchants and businesses in the 1850s, the interlocutor fictus can be regarded as speaking from an urban point of view.25 Mentioning commodities in connection with Pudding Lane indicates that the implied readers of 1851 are constructed as being urban or familiar with London’s street and place names: Pudding Lane is usually known as the street where the Great Fire of London started in 1666 (cf. Weinreb/Hibbert 643). If the street is here linked to consumption and commodities at

24 The interlocutor fictus is characteristic of Seneca’s dialogues (cf. Brodersen/Zimmermann 185). It is an imaginary conversational partner who interrupts the speaker of the monologic dialogue to ask questions or raise concerns; these are then dealt with by the speaker (cf. Brodersen/Zimmermann 185). 25 For Pudding Lane as a street in central London, see Post Office 1856, 1 and 23. Concerning numerous merchants and businesses located in Pudding Lane, see, for instance, Post Office 1851, 606; 689-699; 819; 830; 834; 839; 1029; 1037 as well as 698; 727; 775; 838 and 930.

24 mid-century, understanding this reference requires context-specific knowledge of Pudding Lane. In the interpolation the interlocutor fictus makes, the notion of circulating material objects surfaces again. Commodities are material objects which are produced for the market (cf. Edgar 2003a, 71). “[I]n relation to […] desire or needs” (Simpson/Weiner 3: 563), they are convenient but non-necessary material objects of consumption (cf. Simpson/Weiner 3: 563). In highlighting the “shops” and “that glorious exchange of commodities without which society cannot exist”, the interlocutor fictus proposes that commodities which circulate are an urban phenomenon at mid-century (7). However, this phenomenon is also represented in an ironic way since it is called “that glorious exchange of commodities” (7; emphasis added). This has two effects: on the one hand, it underlines that Buttermere is conceptualized as different because commodities do not circulate there. On the other hand, it pokes fun at commodities as a mid-Victorian phenomenon. Thus, a sense of historical difference is evoked: using Gilpin’s eighteenth-century concept of the picturesque as a strategy to represent the landscape suggests that, at mid-century, Buttermere does not participate in the mid-Victorian craze for commodities.26 If “the aesthetics of the picturesque […] banishes practical matters from its scenic tableau” (Feldmann 1997, 40), the commodities and shops which are mentioned by the interlocutor fictus and called “the conveniencies [sic] or luxuries of life” by the narrative voice (7) can be considered “practical matters” (Feldmann 1997, 40): the commodities are produced for and circulate on the market (cf. Edgar 2003a, 71) and are exchanged in shops. The metalevel thus shows that the narrative voice aestheticizes Buttermere and represents it as a region which can “exist” without commodities because these material objects have not held sway there yet (7). Not only, however, does consumption of material objects feature on the metalevel of the text. The narrative voice combines the picturesque with two more concepts found in domestic travel writing: the sublime and the beautiful. It does so to aestheticize the landscape and turn it into an object of visual consumption for the readers.27 At the same time, practices of consuming food are referred to as a way to poke fun at the visual consumption which the eighteenth-century elements entail. Through this ambivalent strategy of representation, a contrast between ‘the North’ and ‘the South’ of England is

26 For Gilpin’s notions of the picturesque in domestic travel accounts, see Feldmann 1997, 40-43. 27 The sublime and beautiful are concepts which were proposed by Edmund Burke and informed “[a]esthetic experience” (Buzard 2002, 45).

25 established. The scenery in Buttermere is represented in terms of the sublime and the beautiful: [T]he man who could visit Buttermere without a sense of the sublimity and the beauty which encompass him on every side, must be […] dead to the higher enjoyments of life. […] [A]s you turn round to gaze upon the hills behind you, and bend your head far back to catch the Moss’s highest craigs you see blocks and blocks of stone tumbled one over the other, in a disorder that fills and confounds the mind […]. (8)

If the sublime evokes “the strongest emotion […] the mind is capable of feeling” (Burke 39) and elicits “astonishment […] with some degree of horror” (Burke 57), the description of the “disorder” of stones “that fills and confounds the mind” is modelled along the lines of the sublime (8). Considering that the readers have been constructed as urban, the descriptions evokes a sense of difference or unease: for the urban readers, Saffron Hill is a mountain, and they are not familiar with formations of rocks (cf. 3). At the same time, multifarious colours and hues visualize the scenery: there are “the grey-green waters of Crummock”, “ash-grey rocks”, “brown slopes”, “velvety meadows, spotted with red cattle”, and “the sloping slides are yellow-green” (8-9). Highlighting the colours, texture or shape of the landscape evokes the beautiful in Burke’s sense: the “velvety meadows” and “sloping slides” point to the smoothness, which Burke considers central to beauty (cf. Burke 113; 117). The hues of the landscape and cows also draw on Burke’s notion of colours in beauty since they are “clean and fair”, “not […] of the strongest kind” or, “if” they are “strong and vivid, they are […] diversified” (Burke 116). The words “[h]ere”, “[f]ar at the end”, “[o]n the one side”, “[h]igh up”, “[b]eside” and “[b]ehind” structure the panorama spatially and establish order on the level of discourse (8-9). Here, the picturesque comes in: Gilpin suggests that in “examining” scenery “by the rules of picturesque beauty”, viewers who watch it can order it visually (1-2). The pronoun “you” (8) and the structuring phrases position the readers as viewers who ‘see’ the landscape from a safe distance. Gilpin considers this distance “pleasing” (63). This attenuates the unease, “astonishment” or “horror” evoked by the representation (Burke 57) and makes it possible to integrate the features of Cumberland’s landscape into “an [sic] harmonious whole” (Gilpin 18). By drawing on the picturesque, the narrative voice aligns itself with strategies used in picturesque landscape painting (cf. Feldmann 1997, 40): according to Gilpin, “adapting the description of natural scenery to the principles of artificial landscape” is part of the aesthetic experience (3). The narrative voice thus frames the scenery as an aesthetic object which is pleasurable to behold. The aesthetic pleasure the implied readers derive from this representation, can be argued to stem not only from the details the narrative voice singles out for representation; it is also derived from the

26 difference between the cityscape and Cumberland (cf. Feldmann 1997, 41). Since the narrative voice points out various sights and mediates the landscape in textual form, it exhibits the scenery to the readers. The readers, who consume the text of 1851, can visually consume the scenery and its difference by reading. Considering that the readers are constructed as viewing subjects of the landscape, they are also empowered because they look at the landscape through a textually constructed gaze which has already ordered the landscape to make it consumable in its difference. And yet, the narrative voice deploys a further representational strategy which mocks the representation of the landscape as an aesthetic object: it quotes from entries in “the visitors’ book of the principal inn” at Buttermere to show that “many come to see, but few to appreciate” the scenery (10). The entries created by visitors from Blackheath, London, Ludley Bridge, Ludley Park, Manchester and Liverpool are concerned with consuming food and drink (cf. 10). They do not mention the scenery (cf. 10). The narrative voice therefore states: “the mountains […] seem more to affect the appetite of the Southerners than their imaginations” (10). Regarding English national identity, this is noteworthy in two respects: the visitors consume food, hence material objects (cf. 10), and the entries the narrative voice has selected all date from 1850 (cf. 10). Accordingly, the intradiegetic visitors who come to Buttermere at mid-century are represented as consuming food instead of the scenery. Consuming in this manner contrasts with the visual consumption suggested by the eighteenth-century concepts. This difference in consumption suggests that consuming the landscape as an aesthetic object is implicitly represented as an obsolete practice in the mid-Victorian period. The narrative voice thus uses different forms of consumption which are associated with a specific time frame and evokes a sense of historical difference. It deploys consumption in an ambivalent manner. On the one hand, the implied readers can consume the landscape by reading. On the other hand, they can be argued to note that the different modes of consumption allude to historical difference. Therefore, they can also laugh at the discrepancy between the representation of the landscape as an aesthetic object and the “bare and gross literality” of the entries focussing on food and drink (10). Moreover, all the places mentioned in the entries are classed as Southern (cf. 10). Manchester and Liverpool, however, do not belong to the South of England.28 This overgeneralization in a regional sense establishes a contrast between the North of England, represented by Buttermere in Cumberland, and the South. Not only does the

28 Ludley Bridge and Ludley Park could not be located, but this does not impinge on the argument presented here.

27 contrast reinforce the representation of Buttermere as being different from what the text calls the South. It also provides the background against which the Sandboys are introduced as the rural other. The Sandboys are distanced from the implied readers because the text deploys several strategies of othering. The Sandboys are conceptualized as being the Northern English other socially, linguistically and because of how they deal with material objects. The narrative voice points out the characters’ difference on several levels and does so by representing aspects of material culture. Additionally, the narrative voice here alludes to mid-Victorian notions of class, ethnicity and language and the discourses of urbanization and progress. They serve as the yardstick against which the protagonists’ difference is measured. Highlighting those aspects of difference is a parallel to the sights the narrative voice indicates when it represents the landscape. The Sandboys are thus fashioned as the rural other and, as such, they are exhibited on the narrative level. The characterization of the Sandboys foregrounds several aspects of difference at the same time: Their home was one of the two squires’ houses […]. […] Mr. Christopher, or, as after the Cumberland fashion he was called, ‘Cursty,’ Sandboys, was native to the place […]. […] [T]he […] market […] [n]ever open[ed] without Mr. […] Sandboys, but on […] his wedding with the heiress of Newlands. […] A ‘statesman’ by birth, he possessed some hundred acres of land […]; […] the walls of his ‘keeping-room,’ or, as we should call it, sitting-room, were covered […] with […] bills telling how his ‘lamb-sucked ewes’ […] had carried off the […] best prizes at the Wastdale and Deanscale shows. […] [I]t was his continual boast that he grew the coat he had on his back, and he […] clothe[d] himself […] in the undyed […] wool of his sheep […]. (11)

The Sandboys belong to the landed gentry: Mr Sandboys is a squire, hence “[a] country gentleman or landed proprietor, […] who is the principal landowner in a village” (Simpson/Weiner 16: 421). Moreover, he is also “[a] ‘statesman’ by birth” who “possessed some hundred acres of land” (11). Since the possession of land conferred the right to vote on its proprietor, Mr Sandboys holds a prestigious social position (cf. Steinbach 37; 44). Mrs Sandboys is of a similar social standing because she is “the heiress of Newlands” (11). The Sandboys’ financial and social background suggests that they belong to the old moneyed classes. They can thus be argued to depart from the middle- class ideas the novel later propagates in connection with English national identity. Regarding the Sandboys’ language, the narrative voice highlights its difference by presenting it as typical of Cumberland: not only does the narrative voice show the “Cumberland fashion” of address; it also gives an example of the Sandboys’ word stock (11). Inverted commas are deployed when the narrative voice refers to the “‘keeping- room’” (11). This indicates that the word used in Cumberland differs from what the narrative voice then presents as standard language. It adds the explanation “as we should

28 call it, sitting-room” (11). Paraphrasing the word “‘keeping-room’” suggests that the implied readers are not familiar with this lexical item (11). Using and italicizing the pronoun we can be considered a rhetoric strategy of othering (cf. 11): the pronoun includes the narrator and the readers who, as the text implies, use the word ‘sitting room’. The text thus marks the Sandboys’ rural word stock as deviating from or the other of standard vocabulary. In presenting linguistic difference, the Sandboys are distanced from the readers on the level of language. Their language is exhibited as ‘unusual’, which objectifies the rural word stock to be consumed by the readers.29 Moreover, the narrative voice highlights that the “walls of” Mr Sandboys’s “sitting-room […] were covered with bills” which testify to “prizes” Mr Sandboys has won with his sheep (11). The sitting room “was the status indicator” in the Victorian house (Flanders 131): “decorating” the room with material objects “was constitutive” (Logan 36; cf. 105). It therefore “held the most choice […] furniture and ornaments”, and the “paint and paper” on the walls were also meaningful devices of decoration (Flanders 137; 144).30 Therefore, it is significant that the narrative voice here points out the “bills” in the Sandboys’ sitting room. If these material objects constitute the decorative wall paper in Mr Sandboys’s sitting room, this suggests that they are represented to contrast the family’s home in the North of England with the readers’ ideas of material objects which can be found in the sitting rooms of urban homes. The bills functioning as a wall paper in the Sandboys’ sitting room thus enhance the Sandboys’ contrastive difference from the urban readers. Since the bills emblematize Mr Sandboys’s success as a raiser of sheep, the rural aspect of the Sandboys’ identity has entered the most representative room in their home and is hence at the core of their identity. This shows that the Sandboys are represented as standing for a rural type of English national identity. That Mr Sandboys “grew the coat he had on his back” and “clothe[d] himself […] in the undyed […] wool of his sheep” can be interpreted in the context of material culture and the mid-Victorian discourse on technological progress (11). If dying and weaving in urban factories were seen as industrialized, modern and contemporary means of

29 Further examples of exhibiting the Sandboys’ vocabulary as other are “‘self-coloured’” instead of “undyed” (11), the colour “‘Sandboys’ Grey’” which is explained as “a peculiar tint of speckled brown” (11) and the description of Mr Sandboys going to the Old Clothes Exchange: “he went, as the north country people say, ‘tappy lappy,’ with his coat laps flying ‘helter-skelter,’ as if he were ‘heighty-flighty’” (97). This demonstrates that the Sandboys’ word stock is repeatedly used to underline linguistic difference. For the debate on dialectal representations in literary texts, see Wales 41 and 43-44. She focuses on Dickens, but her approach could also be applied to other novels. 30 Logan points out that ‘drawing room’ is another term for ‘parlour’ (cf. 12). The sitting room can be regarded as a drawing room or parlour, too.

29 production in the discourse on progress, Mr Sandboys’s self-made coats stand for a pre- industrial method of small-scale production meeting his own needs.31 Emphasizing “the undyed” state of the “wool”, moreover, implies a binary difference between a ‘natural’ colour of the wool and ‘man-made’ or ‘artificial’ colours used in industrialized processes of production (11). This further underlines Mr Sandboys’s pre-industrial mode of production. It is old-fashioned if it is seen from within the discourse of progress which, due to the Great Exhibition, was particularly prominent in 1851 (cf. Fisher 6). On this reading, the pride Mr Sandboys takes in producing his coats himself suggests that the text alludes to the discourse on progress and, in doing so, represents the character’s method of and stance towards his mode of production as dated (cf. 11). Through material culture, then, Mr Sandboys is fashioned as a character that entertains ideas which are no longer topical and stand for the opposite of technological progress. Dated ideas particularly manifest themselves when Mr Sandboys refuses to go to the Great Exhibition (cf. 15). His views are represented as overcome since Jopson functions as a contrastive character.32 “Squire Jopson, who acted as Treasurer to the Travelling Association for the Great Exhibition” talks to Mr Sandboys about “the advantages of that […] institution as a means of conveying himself and his family […] to the great metropolis, and of allowing […] them […] the privilege of participating in all the amusements […] of the capital” (15). As a member of “the Travelling Association”, Jopson participates in a form of travel which was new at mid-century (15): in order to visit the Great Exhibition, “Exhibition Clubs” were formed (Buzard 1993, 53). Their members contributed to “group saving plans” which enabled them to travel to London and visit the Great Exhibition (Buzard 1993, 53). With urbanization as a pervasive phenomenon in the nineteenth-century and London epitomizing this development, Jopson argues in line with the discourse on urbanization (cf. Purchase 19; cf. Steinbach 94): he calls London “the great metropolis”

31 Purchase points out that Manchester was “the city at the centre of Britain’s […] cotton and textile industries” (86) and that industry can be associated with progress (cf. 86). When the terms ‘modern’, ‘contemporary’, ‘topical’ or ‘progress’ are used in the following, they are not used to evaluate the characters or representations but mark a viewpoint prevalent in mid-Victorian discourses. Accordingly, ‘modern’, ‘topical’ and ‘contemporary’ refer to the mid-Victorian period, not to the twentieth or twenty-first century. 32 The term contrastive character is used in Pfister’s sense (cf. 166-170; 195). Although Pfister developed the terminology to analyze dramatic texts, the structural mechanisms of the concept can be applied to narrative texts, too. Landon rightly accentuates the dispute between Mr Sandboys and Jopson. Mr Sandboys stands for “Romantic ruralism” that is opposed to “Jopson’s urban pragmatism” (Landon 35). Landon’s conclusion, however, departs from the reading offered here. He links Jopson’s stance to “institutional supervision” and “disciplinary practices” (cf. Landon 35-36).

30 (15; emphasis added), which can be read as meaning both large (cf. Simpson/Weiner 6: 796-797) and “pre-eminent in importance” (Simpson/Weiner 6: 797). This implies that “Squire Jopson”, who is of the same social position as Mr Sandboys, stands for notions of travel which were topical at mid-century (15). The second argument Jopson puts forward draws on the notions of future and progress: Jopson talked sagely of youths seeing the world and expanding their minds by travel; […] but the father rejoined, that travel was of use only for the natural beauties of the scenery it revealed, and the virtues of the people with whom it brought the traveller into association; ‘and where,’ he asked, with evident pride of county, ‘could more natural beauty or greater native virtue be found than amongst the mountains and the pastoral race of Buttermere?’ (16)

In the context of the Great Exhibition, “youths […] expanding their minds by travel” can be seen as another topical reason for travelling (16): at mid-century, the Great Exhibition was a topical event in material culture. If the “youths” Jobby and Elcy Sandboys are a younger or new generation that can be associated with future, visiting the Great Exhibition with its mid-Victorian, topical discourses contributes to the youths’ education (16). This shows again that Jopson promotes contemporary ideas. By contrast, the text suggests that Mr Sandboys’s views of travelling are based on old ideals. He links the purpose of travelling to “the natural beauties of the scenery” and states that this can “‘be found […] amongst the mountains […] of Buttermere’” (16). This echoes the eighteenth-century concepts which fashion the landscape of Buttermere an aesthetic object. If the entries in the visitors’ book mock the aesthetic consumption of the landscape as a dated practice, Mr Sandboys supports views which are overcome. He propounds eighteenth-century ideas of domestic travel – instead of mid-Victorian discourses – to educate the younger generation. That Mr Sandboys considers “the virtues of the people” another reason for travelling and ascribes them to “‘the pastoral race of Buttermere’” underpins his dated notions (16): his utterance is reminiscent of the pastoral as a literary genre that is “associated with shepherds and country living” (Murfin/Ray 270). The pastoral represents notions of “an imaginary Golden Age” (Congleton/Brogan 221), “a legendary time before the […] depredations and conniving of civilized existence set in” (Mikics 226). Its “landscape is […] associated with […] simple, honest folk” (Mikics 225-226). These idealizing features (cf. Baldick 249) are evoked “in contrast to the […] corruptions of urban life” (Mikics 227). Mr Sandboys’s argument regarding “‘the pastoral race of Buttermere’” can thus be interpreted as refusing to go with the times (16). Mr Sandboys advocates ideals which run counter to the discourse on urbanization and oppose recent forms of travelling. Since Mr Sandboys endorses dated ideas and because Jopson is represented as following mid-Victorian discourses, this contrastive character

31 serves as a textual strategy to other Mr Sandboys.33 This otherness can be argued to stem from a notion of historical difference which is evoked in two ways: on the intradiegetic level, it is created by the clash between Mr Sandboys’s dated ideas and mid-Victorian discourses. The clash suggests that Mr Sandboys lags behind the intradiegetic present. Since the Great Exhibition as an upcoming intradiegetic event coincides with the mid- Victorian present time on the extratextual level of the text, Mr Sandboys can also be argued to stand for historical difference regarding the extratextual level. His otherness thus serves as an incentive for the readers to keep on buying and consuming the monthly parts of 1851: the full title of the novel is a give-away, for it makes it clear from the outset that the Sandboys will eventually go to London in order to see the Great Exhibition. The readers, it might be argued, thus wonder how a character who is from the English rural fringes and has not quite arrived in the mid-Victorian period will fare when he is in London. The Sandboys’ practice of consuming drinks can be seen in the context of everyday material culture. It stands for regress because the characters are represented as moving from culture to nature. After the Sandboys have run out of tea (cf. 21), “Mr. Sandboys […] decided upon the whole family’s reverting to the habits of their ancestors, and drinking ‘yale’ for breakfast” (21). Yet since “someone had left the tap running” (21) and the brewer had gone to the Great Exhibition (cf. 21-22), “[t]he family […] was […] reduced to the pure mountain stream for their beverage” (22). Two aspects of regress feature here: the Sandboys pursue the “habits of their ancestors” (21). This means that they take up a past practice of consumption. If a family’s ancestors stand for bygone times, the Sandboys are about to embody historical difference. Moreover, yale can be considered to imply culture: knowledge and practical devices are required to produce this man-made drink. Being “reduced to the pure mountain stream” implies going back to nature and regressing to a pre-civilized or primitive stage since drinking from the “mountain stream” does not require any knowledge or tools (22). Thus, there is a clash between the way in which the Sandboys drink and the mid-Victorian discourse on

33 Mr and Sandboys Mrs Sandboys do not visit the Crystal Palace at all. Their attempts to do so are spoilt every time they try to visit the Exhibition (cf. 142; 228; 239-240). In the end, Mr Sandboys has not realized that the Exhibition has already been closed (cf. 242). Jobby and Elcy, however, are guided through the Crystal Palace by Major Oldschool (cf. 240). Hence, it is only the younger generation who makes it into the Crystal Palace. The text thus also implies age as a further category of difference to distinguish between Mr and Mrs Sandboys and their children, who are all from ‘rural’ Buttermere. However, it does not elaborate on this difference in age between the members of the family. It focuses on Mr and Mrs Sandboys, who belong to the older generation, to poke fun at the protagonists and explore English national identity.

32 progress of civilization. This discourse was particularly prominent at that time because it was inscribed in the Great Exhibition (cf. Mersmann 94-95; 99): ideas of progress pertained to prosperity which had been brought about by industrial means as well as technological developments but also colonial discourses (cf. Mersmann 94; 101-102). In colonial discourses, primitive was a binary opposition to civilized (cf. Ashcroft/Griffiths/Tiffin 181). The Sandboys’ regress thus fashions them as the opposite of progress. It further distances the protagonists from the implied readers since they are represented as the uncivilized other through material culture. The protagonists’ regress culminates when they have embarked a train. It is represented through material objects which featured in two mid-Victorian discourses. On the rail journey to Workington, “the engines on this line are perpetually smoking in the faces of the passengers”, making them “dark-complexioned” (37). Therefore, “the Sandboys, who, on their arrival, might have been taken for a family of Ethiopian serenaders, […] bleached themselves as well as possible with their […] handkerchiefs” (37). It is significant that the railway and handkerchiefs appear in connection with the “dark-complexioned” Sandboys (37). These material objects are meaningful and play a role in othering the Sandboys. The railway stood for technological progress (cf. Purchase 133) and “increasingly connected the nation’s rural and urban areas” (Purchase 133). In colonial discourses, “‘[t]he handkerchief’” was considered “an attribute of ‘civilization’” (Simpson in McClintock 230).34 With the railway standing for progress (cf. Purchase 133), it is telling that the Sandboys resemble “Ethiopian serenaders” after they have been on the train since this implies ethnic difference (37). The Sandboys physically take on otherness through their dark complexions and further regress in terms of civilization (cf. Ashcroft/Griffiths/Tiffin 183; 220). This is because white is constructed as the opposite of dark in colonial and ethnic discourses, and dark is associated with the other who is of a less civilized state. However, the Sandboys only physically take on otherness after they have travelled on the train: using the railway as a progressive means of transport ironically causes them to regress (cf. Purchase 133). The implied norm of whiteness in the colonial discourse here surfaces in the Sandboys who “bleached themselves as well as possible” (37). In using “their handkerchiefs” to do so, the Sandboys can be argued to retain a degree of civilization. Nevertheless, “as well as possible” suggests that the colour and, by implication, the otherness, cannot be removed completely (37). The Sandboys thus already arrive in London as the rural, Northern English other.

34 It was “‘the tool for making away with the unseemly sweat of the brow’” and “‘the nasal discharge of cold climates’” (Simpson in McClintock 230).

33 By combining eighteenth-century concepts with mid-Victorian discourses, the text engenders several discrepancies between Buttermere and the urban perspective it establishes. These discrepancies are represented through material culture and consumption. In deploying this combination, the novelistic text presents a type of English nationality which is framed as the other of the implied readers’ urban perspective. For the readers, it is pleasurable to follow the narrative voice as it exhibits these differences for them and creates otherness because it entails recognizing several mid-Victorian discourses which are broached and related to the Sandboys. At the same time, the panoply of differences rouses the readers’ curiosity since they wonder how a narrative circling around a version of English national identity which has been othered will continue. Intranational difference also features prominently in the reviews of 1851. These paratextual elements appeared in the second monthly number and can be seen as a means of advertising the novel: they are reproduced on the opening pages of the monthly part, hence occupy a prominent position. At first glance, the reviews are concerned with the novelistic text on a metalevel. However, they participate in forming English national identity themselves: the reviews not only highlight the Sandboys’ regional difference; they partly also modify phrases from the novelistic text or use a category of difference which is hinted at by the text to underline intranational difference or other the Sandboys. The reviews also support the reading which has been offered regarding the landscape as an aesthetic object for consumption. That the reviews spotlight regional difference in particular can be seen in the rhetoric they deploy. They quote from the text of 1851 and take over the opposition between rural Cumberland and London. The reviews in the Sunday Times and the Coventry Herald exemplify how this works. The review in the Sunday Times refers to 1851 as “‘The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Cursty Sandboys,’ who come from the tranquil solitudes of the village of Buttermere, to enjoy themselves at the World’s Fair in Hyde-park [sic]’” (fig. 1). This quotation imitates the title of the novel and inserts additional information on the region the protagonists come from. It does so by echoing the phrase “the tranquil meadows of Buttermere” from the novelistic text (3). In appropriating the words, the review adopts the implied urban perspective the text creates and the regional difference it marks as strategies of representation. Similarly, the review in the Coventry Herald advertises “‘the effects […] wrought on the Sandboys, […] from their secluded home in the primitive regions of Buttermere, by the noise, glare, bustle and bewildering excitement of the great metropolis’” (fig. 2). This text, too, quotes the phrase “the great metropolis” from the novelistic text and contrasts the rural region of Buttermere with London (15).

34 The review in the Sunday Times also comments on how the landscape of Cumberland is represented in Mayhew’s text. “‘More […] beautiful is the sweet picture he gives us of the sublime scenery of Buttermere, and the primitive simplicity of its institutions and inhabitants’” (fig. 1-2). Again, the review echoes words which appear in the novelistic representation of Buttermere: “‘beautiful’” and “‘sublime’” (fig. 1). This, and that the review calls the representation of the landscape a “‘sweet picture’” (fig. 1), suggests that the review is concerned with the effect of the eighteenth-century concepts which are used in the textual representation of Buttermere. If “‘the sweet picture’” the text draws is pleasurable to conceive and the reason why the review recommends 1851 (fig. 1), this indicates that the landscape is construed as an aesthetic object which can be consumed by reading. The Nottingham Review supports the interpretation, too. It states: “‘[t]he description of Buttermere and its vicinity is well done’” (fig. 2). Not only, however, is the review in the Sunday Times concerned with the landscape. It also contributes to othering the Sandboys. The “‘primitive simplicity’” the review ascribes to the “‘institutions and inhabitants’” of Buttermere exemplifies how the review draws on the text of 1851 regarding the words it uses but modifies their scope (fig. 2). In the novelistic text, “the simplicity” is part of the beautiful as a concept used to represent the landscape of Buttermere (4). In the review, “‘the primitive simplicity’” is ascribed to the “‘institutions and inhabitants’” of Buttermere (fig. 2). The phrase which the review takes from the novelistic text is not part of an aesthetic concept of representation but is applied to evaluate cultural aspects: the “‘institutions and inhabitants’” (fig. 2). Since it changes the scope of the word ‘primitive’ and echoes colonial discourses by using it as an implicit binary opposition of civilized, the review others the Northern English region in cultural terms (cf. Ashcroft/Griffiths/Tiffin 181). This ties in with the notion of regress to a pre-civilized state the text evokes in connection with the Sandboys. The review adopts the strategy of othering the novelistic text uses to recommend the first monthly part to potential readers. It thus reproduces the discursive strategies and effects of representing the Sandboys as the rural other in connection with their trip to London. The corollary to this reading is that the review does not deal with the novel on a metalevel in terms of an objective report. It advertises the novel by engaging in its processes of othering. The review in the Bath and Cheltenham Gazette operates with historical difference in addition to regional difference to praise 1851. It advertises “‘the adventures of a family residing in one of those rural villages which have become almost extinct, but formerly were numerous in England’” (fig. 2). The review thus proposes that the

35 Sandboys are part of a rural social structure which it represents as declining or overcome and which it locates in the context of ‘old’ England. In highlighting historical difference, the review temporally distances the protagonists from mid-Victorian readers. This, too, can be seen as a strategy of othering which is deployed to interest potential readers in subsequent numbers of 1851. Regarding historical difference, the novelistic text and the review differ in the degree to which they openly broach this aspect: the novelistic text only hints at historical difference when it others Mr Sandboys’ social position as a squire, which marks him as a member of an old moneyed class. The review explicitly refers to the old structures the Sandboys belong to at mid-century and thus introduces historical difference as another category of difference. On the extratextual metalevel of 1851, it thus makes transparent historical difference as a category of difference which is hinted at in the novelistic text. Since the reviews broach several aspects of difference, they not only reinforce the discursive strategies of 1851. They can also be seen as a further, extratextual strategy of othering which is used to underpin or advertise the Sandboys’ otherness because they are inserted as paratext in a monthly part of 1851 and may be read alongside the novelistic text.

2.1.2 The Rural Other in Mid-Century London: Staging Difference in a Picaresque Narrative This chapter proposes that the Sandboys’ movements in London which take place before the Great Exhibition is opened serve two functions. Their sojourn caters to the readers’ curiosity which the text has created by framing the Sandboys as the rural other. The novel here plays with this type of English nationality. It accordingly stages the protagonists’ otherness as an entertainment for the readers through the mishaps which occur to the Sandboys. The mishaps are brought about because the Sandboys are not familiar with features which are characteristic of London at mid-century.35 Furthermore, the narrative voice keeps othering the Sandboys in London’s urban context. This, together with the set- pieces taken from mid-Victorian London, ridicules the Sandboys. On the structural level, the narrative voice uses theatrical strategies of representation to fashion the play with the rural version of English nationality as a stage show.

35 McKinney mentions the exhibitionary aspect of 1851, too: “the world of 1851 is being made into a museum, rife with all of the problems that plagued visitors of the Crystal Palace. In the museum world that Mayhew creates, individual subjects can be exhibited like objects”. The reading offered here departs from McKinney in that it interprets the so-called “problems” as meaningful textual strategies.

36 The second function, which is closely linked to ridiculing the Sandboys, is to show what English nationality is not. London is the setting for this since the travel account has represented the city as Britain’s centre. As will be seen in the chapter dealing with the opening ceremony of the Great Exhibition, the version of English national identity the novel endorses is negotiated in London, too. Therefore, 1851 first represents English nationality ex negativo and offers this ridiculed version as an entertainment to the readers. In order to do this, the narrative voice pairs the theatrical strategies of representation with further elements taken from eighteenth-century writing. 1851 draws on picaresque novels to shape two structural parameters of the text: regarding the plot, the episodic, additive structure of picaresque novels is used to render the mishaps theatrical, self-contained units which can be consumed by the readers bit by bit as play-like scenes (cf. Graeber 587; cf. Hübner 683). Concerning the characters, 1851 modifies the concept of the picaro. Picaro characters usually belong to the lower orders or are of obscure origin and learn to slyly beat their way into society or roguishly exploit other characters (cf. Graeber 587; cf. Murfin/Ray 283). These eighteenth-century, picaresque elements underline the Sandboys’ otherness in the novel’s mid-Victorian setting. To display the Sandboys’ otherness, the text first uses blackness again to highlight their ethnic difference and then stages the spectacle of otherness which is based on the Sandboys’ ethnic and rural difference. In their first night in London, the Sandboys’ faces become black again because they are showered with coals in their accommodation (cf. 62). Regarding Mr Sandboys’s appearance, the narrative voice states: “the most experienced ethnologist would […] have mistaken that gentleman for one of the Ethiopian tribe” (72). In ascribing Mr Sandboys to an African tribe again, the narrative voice reinforces the Sandboys’ otherness. This marks the characters as being the ethnic other in London’s urban context. The consequences of this incident are fashioned as two theatrical shows. Mr Sandboys bumps into Mrs Quinine. This is fashioned as a spectacular encounter between a black man and a white woman, while Mrs Sandboys’s visit to the bathhouse is represented as a farce. In the confrontation between Mr Sandboys and Mrs Quinine, the contrast between black and white is emphasized. This supports the representation of Mr Sandboys as the coloured other and the implied ethnic difference: The lady in white had descended the first flight of stairs, […] when the black gentleman […] bounced suddenly upon her. The nervous Mrs. Quinine was in no way prepared for the sight of a ‘man of colour’ […]; […] to find herself […] face to face with ‘a black’ […] was more than the shattered state of her nerves was able to bear. The lady no sooner set eyes upon the sable monster than she screamed liked a

37 railway engine on coming to some dark tunnel, and fainted off […] into the arms of the astonished […] Sandboys. (72-73)

The “white” colour ascribed to Mrs Quinine is in stark contrast to Mr Sandboys’s dark face (72): he is called “‘a man of colour’” and “‘a black’” (72). If white is associated with innocence, referring to Mr Sandboys as “the sable monster” demonizes this character in a way that holds him responsible for ‘innocent’ Mrs Quinine passing out (72). “[T]he shattered state of” Mrs Quinine’s “nerves” suggests that this character is constructed along the lines of female gender stereotypes (72). Thus, Mrs Quinine is frightened by “a ‘man of colour’” (72). In this situation, Mr Quinine adds class as another category of difference to Mr Sandboys’s otherness so that it intersects with ethnicity. He mistakes Mr Sandboys for “nothing more refined than a London coal-heaver” who is trying to approach his wife (73). Therefore, he attacks Mr Sandboys “with his paint-brush” and makes “the complexion of Mr. Sandboys” go “as dark and many-coloured as that of a highly tattooed Indian chief” (73). If “coal-heaver[s]” belonged to the urban working classes, Mr Sandboys is ascribed to the wrong class (73). Hence, there is a discrepancy between the extradiegetic level and the intradiegetic level: the readers have already learnt that Mr Sandboys is from the landed gentry (cf. 11), whereas he is degraded regarding his social status on the intradiegetic level. This engenders a comic effect because the readers are aware that Mr Sandboys is not the roguish working-class character Mr Quinine takes him to be. The concept of the roguish picaro who is from the lower orders is inverted here. If picaro characters are usually autodiegetic narrators of their adventures, 1851 also modifies this picaresque element because of its narrative conception (cf. Murfin/Ray 283). The Sandboys are the protagonists in their mishaps, but the mishaps are mediated by the heterodiegetic narrator. Heterodiegetic narrators are associated with mid-Victorian novels (cf. Newton 331). Combining a picaresque, eighteenth-century element in conceptualizing the characters with a mid-Victorian narrative conception effects a split between protagonists and narrative voice. It is this split that allows for exhibiting the Sandboys as the rural other in London’s urban context and, as such, offering them for consumption. The conflict is, seemingly, solved in a theatrical way. It positions both the visitors from abroad and the readers as spectators of “the scene” (73). When Mr Sandboys has explain[ed] and apologize[d] for […] the misadventure, the lady […] made the […] house ring with her laughter. The noise brought the […] lodgers […] to the stairs, and […] at every landing-place, was a bunch of heads ‘of all nations’ […] – all enjoying the scene, and mightily taken with the piebald state of Mrs. Quinine’s face […] and the party-coloured character of Mr. Sandboy’s [sic] complexion. (73)

38 The “bunch of heads” which appears “at every landing-place” consists of the foreigners (73). They are the spectators of the encounter. Even though Mrs Quinine’s “laughter” and Mr Sandboys’s explanation mark the end of the conflict, the conflict is only seemingly solved because the contrast between Mrs Quinine’s whiteness and Mr Sandboys’s colour persists (73): the foreign visitors are “mightily taken with the piebald state of Mrs. Quinine’s face […] and the party-coloured character of Mr. Sandboy’s [sic] complexion” (73). The conflict that originates from Mr Sandboys’s otherness is staged as a spectacle which positions the foreign visitors as spectators: they are “all enjoying” what the narrative voice calls “the scene” (73). The theatrical vocabulary which is used on the level of language speaks to the staged nature of the conflict. Thus, the visitors who are “enjoying the scene” watch it as an entertainment or stage show which they consume visually (73). The text also suggests that Mr Sandboys, who is from the North of England, is displayed to the visitors from abroad in the context of the Great Exhibition: the text draws on the phrase “‘of all nations’” and alludes to the full name of the Great Exhibition (73). Since the audience consists of foreign visitors “‘of all nations’”, the text makes an exhibition of Mr Sandboys in his state of otherness and objectifies him as a character participating in a theatrical spectacle (73). Not only, however, is this spectacle consumed by the foreign visitors on the intradiegetic level. The readers on the extratextual level consume it, too: by reading the novelistic text in the monthly part, which is an entertaining material object to be consumed itself, the readers follow both the conflict that revolves around Mr Sandboys and the foreign visitors who are watching “the scene” (73). Thus, the readers are presented a twofold spectacle in which Mr Sandboys’s otherness takes centre stage. Mrs Sandboys’s otherness is staged through a mishap at the bathhouse. Her regional and ethnic difference is highlighted first; the character is then turned into the laughing stock through farcial elements. In addition to the categories of difference, the narrative voice is important here because it judges on Mrs Sandboys on the level of discourse. Mrs Sandboys’s black face symbolizes her ethnic difference. The “warm-bath” she fancies is meant to do away with this difference (72). In representing her desire to have a bath, however, the text adds regional to ethnic difference. [T]he […] attendant […] informed her that all the ‘warms’ were full, but that she expected there’d be ‘a shower’ shortly. […] [T]he innocent Mrs. Sandboys, having never heard of such a style of bathing […], was led to believe that the attendant alluded to the unsettled state of the weather; so casting her eyes up to the skylight, she observed […] that she dare say they would have a shower before long, adding, that it was just what country people wanted. (74)

39 The text foregrounds Mrs Sandboys’s rural perspective. She has “never heard of” showers as “a style of bathing” and therefore associates the word ‘shower’ with “the weather” (74). For this reason, the narrative voice calls her “innocent” (74). This underlines that she is not familiar with showers: even though the attendant offers “‘a shower’” as an alternative to “the ‘warms’”, Mrs Sandboys only sees one sense of the word (74). She reveals her rural origin by stating a shower “was just what country people wanted” (74). Mrs Sandboys’s regional difference is underlined on the level of language. She has a chat with the attendant. In this dialogue, Mrs Sandboys dialect contrasts with the attendant’s standard English. The dialogue puns on the polysemous word ‘shower’. The interplay of the dialogue on the story level and the narrative voice on the discourse level creates discrepant awareness between the intra- and extradiegetic level.36 This, in turn, prepares dramatic irony.37 ‘Perhaps, then, you wouldn’t object to that there, mum?’ returned the attendant […]. ‘Whya, as Ise here, I dunnet mind, if ’twill be ow’r suin,’ replied the simple-minded Mrs. Sandboys, still referring to the rain. ‘I dare say ’t’ull dui a power of guid to cwuntry fwoke.’ ‘Oh, yes […]! always does a vast deal of good, and is sure to be over in no time,” returned the bath-woman, still harping on her baths. (74)

The dialect is used to other Mrs Sandboys linguistically: in the attendant’s replies, Mrs Sandboys’s utterances are paraphrased in Standard English and marked as different. On the level of discourse, moreover, the characters’ utterances are followed by participle clauses. The clauses “referring to the rain” and “still harping on her baths” follow Mrs Sandboys’s remark about ‘shower’ designating “[a] fall of rain” and the attendant’s comment on ‘shower’ in the sense of “[a] bath in which water is poured […] upon the person” (Simpson/Weiner 15: 362-363). In addition to the characters’ utterances and the two options of washing which have already been introduced in the attendant’s reported speech, the clauses make clear what meaning of the polysemous word is implied (cf. 74).

36 Discrepant awareness designates “the differences in the levels of awareness […] between the […] figures and the audience” (Pfister 50). It is based on information which is transmitted incongruously in the internal and external communication systems (cf. 49). The concept, which was originally developed for studying dramatic texts, can be applied to narrative texts because it “refers to the relationship between the internal and external [communication] systems” of a text (Pfister 50). In a narrative text, the characters are located on the intradiegetic level, hence in the internal system; the implied readers are positioned on the extradiegetic level which is above and in this sense external to the intradiegetic level. 37 Dramatic irony is based on “discrepant awareness” between the figures and the audience (Pfister 55). It “is […] created on the syntagmatic level by arranging the dramatic situations in such a way as to make the links between them obvious to the audience but to keep them hidden from the stage-figure itself. On the paradigmatic level it rests in the ambiguity, of which the audience is aware, of a verbal or non-verbal utterance made by the dramatic figure” (57). The concept can be applied to narrative texts since a “syntagmatic” and “paradigmatic level” can also be found in the structure of narrative texts and because it is possible to engender discrepant awareness between the intra- and extradiegetic level of a narrative text (57).

40 This, together with how the narrative voice judges over Mrs Sandboys on the level of discourse, effects discrepant awareness: while there is no doubt for the readers what kind of shower is to be expected, the narrative voice suggests that Mrs Sandboys is “simple- minded”, does not understand the meaning of ‘shower’ in the mid-Victorian context of an urban bathhouse and therefore continues to think about the benefits of rain for “‘cwuntry fwoke’” (74). If Mrs Sandboys fails to understand this meaning, this is reminiscent of Mr Sandboys. The text suggests he does not go with the times because of his ideas of travelling. Similarly, it implies that Mrs Sandboys is not up to date regarding recent developments propelled by sanitary discourses: the first wash-house in London opened in 1845 and more wash-houses were opened in the following years (cf. Weinreb/Hibbert 642). Similar to Mr Sandboys’ ideas of travelling, the text here implies that Mrs Sandboys does not go with the times. Discrepant awareness creates tension because the narrative voice indicates that the moment when Mrs Sandboys takes the shower is approaching: “[i]n a few minutes the shower-bath was at liberty, and Mrs. Sandboys seated herself […] in the passage, while the attendant went to prepare the room for her” (74). However, the moment which will release the tension, is delayed because the narrative voice makes another comment on Mrs Sandboys: “Mrs. Sandboys observing nothing that appeared to her primitive mind to bear the slightest resemblance to a bath in the room, conjectured that the hot water would be brought to her” (75). The comment recalls and underlines Mrs Sandboys’s otherness before she takes the shower: supposedly being “primitive” (75) is attributed to the colonized other in colonial discourses (cf. Ashcroft/Griffiths/Tiffin 181). Tension is released when Mrs Sandboys takes the shower. Apart from creating dramatic irony, the incident is mediated as a farce. This mode of representation is connected to excess.38 Farce comprises “an increasingly rapid series of” incidents (Baldick 126) which is designed to produce laughter (cf. Murfin/Ray 120). Mrs Sandboys grows impatient to have her bath (cf. 75). In order to call the attendant, “she […] seized the cord which dangled above her head, […] which she […] mistook for the bell-pull” (75). Thump went the catch, and instantly down […] came a miniature deluge, […] suddenly let loose […] upon the head of […] Mrs. Sandboys. What with the unexpectedness of the catastrophe, and the coldness of the water […], together with the […] novel character of the bath to the unsophisticated native of Buttermere, the poor lady was so […] paralysed by the icy torrent, that she was unable to escape

38 This is due to the etymology of the term which is derived from Latin. The verb farcire means “[t]o […] stuff, pack” or “cram” (Glare 742; cf. Georges 2688).

41 from it […]. […] As soon as she could fetch breath […], she gave a series of shrieks, and capered about in the manner of the war-dance of the wild Indians. (75)

Narrative pace is accelerated here: the word order in “[t]hump went” and “down […] came” is inverted (75). This evokes the notion of a fast-working mechanism which has been set in motion and cannot be stopped. “[I]nstantly” and “suddenly” underline the rapidity of the shower mechanism (75). The narrative voice enumerates all the aspects which puzzle Mrs Sandboys: “the unexpectedness of the catastrophe”, “the coldness of the water”, “the […] novel character of the bath” and “the icy torrent” (75). Thus, the narrative voice evokes a notion of excess. This achieves a comic effect because the text has prepared the readers for what it styles “the catastrophe” from Mrs Sandboys’s perspective. The narrative voice also repeatedly devaluates Mrs Sandboys: it calls her “the unsophisticated native of Buttermere” (75). This highlights region as the central category of difference for othering Mrs Sandboys in the context of the urban bathhouse again. “As soon as” renders the happenings scenic and serves as the transition to Mrs Sandboys becoming the laughing stock (75): she “gave a series of shrieks, and capered about in the manner of the war-dance of the wild Indians” (75). If “the wild Indians” are considered a set-piece standing for the other, Mrs Sandboys’s otherness is underpinned here (75). That she “capered about” in a “war-dance” evokes the notion of hyperbolic gestures or movements (75). This ridicules Mrs Sandboys and turns her into the laughing stock of the mishap. Following the shower, Mrs Sandboys is further ridiculed. The ridicule stems from a discrepancy in Mrs Sandboys’s figural perspective and the narrator’s tone of voice. The narrative voice relates “she begged to be informed […] – just to let the Londoners see that she was not […] so simple as they seemed to fancy her,– ‘if showers were so highly recommended by the faculty, what people carried umbrellas for’” (76)? Mrs Sandboys is here represented as marking off her rural origin from “the Londoners” (76). As her question about “umbrellas” suggests (76), she adheres to her interpretation of ‘shower’ in the sense of falling rain and defends her interpretation of this word (cf. Simpson/Weiner 15: 362). The narrative voice ridicules this question by styling it an “overpowering inquiry” (76). At the same time, the narrative voice states: “[i]t was impossible even for the grave functionaries to keep serious any longer” (76). This implies laughter and underpins the notion of Mrs Sandboys becoming the laughing stock of the farcial representation. That the mishaps in 1851 serve as an entertainment for the extratextual readers and make them laugh is spelt out on a metalevel in a review in the Devonshire Chronicle.

42 This review is concerned with the first monthly part but can be interpreted in connection with the following monthly numbers because mishaps occur there, too. It construes the mishaps of the Sandboys as an entertainment because they produce laughter: “‘The contretemps which are set out in No. 1, and […] compel the Sandboys to visit the great metropolis […] cannot fail to draw a laugh even from the most saturnine phisiog [sic]’” (fig. 2)! The review published in the Nottingham Journal argues in a similar way. It sees the first monthly number as a material object which can be consumed as an entertainment when it has been bought: “‘judging from No. 1, we can truly say that those who purchase it will have something wherewith to ‘enjoy themselves’” (fig. 2). If the monthly parts are consumed as an entertainment, the protagonists, too, can be consumed because their otherness and mishaps are exhibited theatrically in the novelistic text. The flower seller whom Mrs Sandboys and Elcy encounter in their accommodation is another element which is typical of mid-Victorian London.39 He is relevant in two ways: the flower he gives to Elcy is an instance where Elcy and Mrs Sandboys consume or acquire a material object on the intradiegetic level. This instance is followed by consequences for the Sandboys which highlight class as a category of difference and which also deal with material culture to imply another aspect of Mr Sandboys’s difference. The flower seller also propels the plot since his visit is followed by further mishaps which are represented theatrically. Mrs Sandboys and Elcy acquire a flower. Consuming this object emphasizes the Sandboys’ rural difference. The consequences this has for Mr and Mrs Sandboys are central: it threatens their respectability and social status, hence foregrounds difference in terms of class. Regional difference surfaces in how Elcy and Mrs Sandboys consume. On the structural level, shifting character-focalizers whose perspectives on consumption are mediated by the narrative voice underpin this difference. Elcy accepts a flower from the flower seller (cf. 94). When Mrs Sandboys hears that the flower seller accepts “even old rags” by way of payment, she is surprised at “the novelty of the transaction […], and the seeming […] cheapness of them (94). As “novelty of the transaction” implies, Mrs Sandboys is not familiar with giving old material objects in exchange for another object (94). At the same time, she considers the flower cheap (cf. 94). Yet “seeming” undercuts her perspective on the level of narrative transmission (94): it already suggests that Mrs Sandboys is wrong in considering the flower cheap. Mrs Sandboys and Elcy decide “that the trowers [sic] which Mr. Sandboys had worn in the morning were too shabby for him

39 In London Labour and the London Poor, Mayhew mentions flower sellers in the category “THE STREET-FOLK” (1: 3).

43 to put on in London (95). They accordingly give away Mr Sandboys’s pair of trousers to pay for the flower. The Sandboys’ marriage certificate, however, is in the pocket of the trousers (cf. 96). The flower seller’s perspective is also transmitted. He is aware that he might be tricked if he takes old clothes in exchange for his flower (cf. 105); yet he is “too fully satisfied of the thorough rusticity and consequent simplicity of Mrs. and Miss Sandboys, to believe that they could be capable of any […] trick” (105). In giving “the thorough rusticity and consequent simplicity” as the reason why Mrs Sandboys and Elcy are unlikely to play a trick on him, he spells out the notion of regional difference. His perspective also indicates that Mrs Sandboys and Elcy are not roguish characters. Instead, the flower seller is represented as calculating (cf. 104-105). He also belongs to a social group which Henry Mayhew called “the street-folk” in London Labour and the London Poor and which was regarded as the other of the middle-classes in mid-Victorian social discourses (1: 43; cf. Brantlinger/Ulin 47; 58).40 Due to his slyness and lower social position, the flower seller thus resembles the picaro character. He can exploit the Sandboys as his social uppers because they are not conversant with the tricks of mid- Victorian, London-based flower sellers. After it has turned out that the Sandboys’ marriage certificate was in the pair of trousers Mrs Sandboys gave to the flower seller, regional difference comes to intersect with class (cf. 96). The novel here draws on the concept of the picaro again because it suggests that the Sandboys are in danger of losing their respectability, which is closely linked to notions of class.41 The Sandboys are threatened with sliding from their social position since they have been tricked by the flower seller. This can be seen in how Mr Sandboys reacts when he realizes that the marriage certificate is gone. He points to notions of middle- and upper-class respectability. “‘Well, Aggy, […] thee’ll have to suffer for’t […] as well as meysel […], thar was thy marriage lines that thee wud mek me bring up wi’ me to show thee wast an honest woman […].’ ‘Waistoma! […]’ cried […] Mrs. Sandboys, when she heard of this […] loss” (96). If being “legally married” (Steinbach 131) and having “marriage lines” are central to respectability, the Sandboys

40 Mayhew explains that flower sellers are “costers” and “purchase their flowers (in pots) which they exchange in the streets for old clothes” (Mayhew 1: 83). He establishes a binary opposition between “the wandering and the civilized tribes” and assigns the costermongers to the first social group (Mayhew 1: 2). Wandering is opposed to middle-class notions of a settled home (cf. Brantlinger/Ulin 54; 59-60). For an exhaustive, critical discussion of Mayhew’s representation of the costermongers as the other of the middle classes, see Brantlinger/Ulin 48; 53-55. 41 “[W]hether a couple was legally married” was a central question in judging the working classes’ respectability from a middle-class perspective (Steinbach 131). Conversely, this also holds true for middle- and upper-class respectability.

44 are about to move downward socially (96): “honest” points to a moral notion of respectability (96). This can be read in two ways: first, the Sandboys are in danger of losing their respectability because they are no longer able to prove they are impeccable in moral terms. Thus, their social status is at stake. Second, the Sandboys invert the concept of the picaro because they are about to be degraded regarding class as a category of difference. When the Sandboys’ respectability is at risk and Mrs Sandboys has sent her husband to go and look for the flower seller to regain his pair of trousers, the third monthly number ends. The narrative voice comments on this in a reader address: “[a]nd here, we must, reader, for the present drop the curtain” (96). This, together with the point in the narrative at which the monthly part ends, is relevant to consumption: the monthly number ends when the Sandboys’ respectability is threatened. This can be seen as a cliffhanger which encourages the readers to acquire and consume the following monthly part.42 The cliffhanger, which is characteristic of Victorian novels published in parts, thus supports the episodic narrative structure which draws on picaresque novels and offers the mishaps for consumption one after another (cf. Allen 41). At the same time, the narrative voice uses theatrical language, as the phrase “drop the curtain” shows (96). On the level of discourse, then, the narrative voice already fashions the consequences of losing the marriage certificate as a show which will be staged for the readers in the following monthly number. This can be seen in how the consequences are represented. They are dealt with in the first chapter of the fourth monthly part: Mr Sandboys’s trip to the Old Clothes Exchange is represented by using strategies featuring in tableaux vivants. They were a form of entertainment in Victorian visual culture (cf. Brosch 35).43 Mrs Sandboys’s quarrel with Mrs Fokesell is staged as a show that takes place in front of an intra- and extradiegetic audience. Mr Sandboys goes to the Old Clothes Exchange to find the flower seller. The Old Clothes Exchange was a second-hand fair in mid-Victorian London (cf. Schülting 2016, 17). Consumption here plays a central role: in representing the Old Clothes Exchange, the text highlights visual aspects of the market and draws on theatrical

42 Cliffhangers were deployed by Victorian writers (cf. Allen 38; 41). They “took advantage of the regular breaks in serial publication by ending on moments of particular suspense” (Allen 38). This is because “the business of an installment ending is to ensure the continued publication of a serial on an extremely competitive periodical market. It must imply the promise of eventual […] resolution, while at the same time promoting […] readerly desire […] for more” (Allen 40). 43 A tableau vivant “was the performance of a picture in which amateur actors, dressed up in the costumes of a famous painting, posed in the attitude of the figures in front of a backdrop in imitation of the picture” (Brosch 35).

45 elements in doing so. It also positions Mr Sandboys as a flâneur.44 By reading the narrator’s account of this visit, the readers consume the Old Clothes Exchange visually.45 In addition, mid-Victorian material culture is important here: the Old Clothes Exchange can be located in the same discourse on material culture as the Great Exhibition (cf. Schülting 2016, 17) because “their [textual] representations are the product of the same historical moment” (Schülting 2016, 20).46 From this vantage point, it can be argued to add to Mr Sandboys’s difference that he visits the Old Clothes Exchange but does not make it into the Crystal Palace.47 The Old Clothes Exchange is represented as a spectacular sight for Mr Sandboys. Once in the body of the market, Cursty had time to look well about him, and a curious sight it was – perhaps one of the most curious in all London. […] A greater bustle and eagerness appear to range among the buyers of the refuse of London, than among the traders in its most valuable commodities. (99)

The representation of the Old Clothes Exchange evinces a visual component: Mr Sandboys “look[s] well about him” (99), and “the market” is not only called “a curious sight” but “perhaps […] the most curious in all London” (99). The “bustle” which is “greater among the buyers of the refuse of London, than among the traders in its […] commodities” (99) shows that material culture comprises both commodities circulating in consumer culture and refuse or waste which is ascribed a value in circles of recycling (cf. Schülting 2016, 21). The Old Clothes Exchange is thus an exhibition in its own right. To walk down the various passages between the seats, and run the eye over the several heaps of refuse […] was to set the mind wondering as to what could possibly be the uses of […] them. Everything […] seemed to have fulfilled to the very utmost the office for which it was made; […] the novice to such scenes could not refrain from marvelling what remaining purpose could possibly give value to ‘the rubbish.’ (100)

The phrases “[t]o walk down […], and run the eye over” suggest that visitors are turned into flâneurs at the Old Clothes Exchange (100). If flâneurs walking through the city enjoyed the visual impressions they came across, these impressions can be argued to

44 Flâneurs were “spectators” who “rambled through […] cities, keenly observing” (Steinbach 16). They were “looking for visual impressions” and “sought visual entertainment” (Brosch 26). 45 This argument follows Tetzeli von Rosador. He proposes that, by reading writings on the urban poor, Victorian readers can ‘travel’ to the areas of the poor (cf. 1997, 139). Tetzeli shows that one “way of putting the poor on show” in these writings “is to present them theatrically” (1997, 138). This strategy of representation can be found in the visual and theatrical elements surfacing in Mr Sandboys’s visit to the Old Clothes Exchange. 46 Schülting convincingly argues “that Victorian representations of street markets, curiosity shops, and second-hand fairs […] can all be read as the discursive effects of a culture obsessed with material objects” (2016, 17). 47 Regarding the representation of the Old Clothes Exchange in the novelistic text, Patten states: “Mayhew invented” it “to bring out his artist” (1996, 302). The reading offered above interprets the function of the Old Clothes Exchange differently. For the reason why Cruikshank did not create an illustration of the Old Clothes Exchange, see Patten 1996, 302.

46 resemble theatrical events which were staged in the streets (cf. Brosch 26). Apart from the “heaps of refuse” which are staged for the visitors, the traders, too, are displayed: “[t]here sat a barterer of crockery […], in a bright red […] waistcoat […]. A few yards from him was a woman done up in a coachman’s drab and many-caped box-coat […]. […] Farther on was a […] bone-grubber, clad in […] greasy rags” (99). The traders who populate the market are represented as forming a tableau vivant against the backdrop of the Old Clothes Exchange. This can be seen as a further theatrical element which draws on a form of entertainment in nineteenth-century visual culture and renders the overall scene at the market an object to be consumed visually by the visitors. Due to the staged nature and the strong visual component of the market, Mr Sandboys can be argued to visually consume the Old Clothes Exchange as a flâneur while he is walking about in the market. At the same time, the market is rendered visible to the readers on the extradiegetic level through Mr Sandboys. By reading, then, the readers consume the market and its visual impressions since they are exhibited to them by the narrative voice that reports on Mr Sandboys’s trip. Not only, however, is the Old Clothes Exchange an instance of visual consumption. It can also be interpreted as a foil for the Great Exhibition.48 If representations of “street markets, […] and second-hand fairs” are seen as “[c]omplementing department stores, markets, and the Crystal Palace, they constitute textual spaces where a different form of material culture is put on display” (Schülting 2016, 17). On this reading, Mr Sandboys’s visit to the Old Clothes Exchange as a second- hand fair ironically anticipates the Sandboys’ spoilt attempt to attend the opening ceremony of the Great Exhibition or going to the Exhibition afterwards. “[S]econd-hand fairs” and “[s]treet markets on the one hand and the Crystal Palace […] on the other constitute a set of binary oppositions” such as “open – closed, […] old – new, chaotic – ordered […], the other – the self” (Schülting 2016, 17; 20). “[T]hey are separated by clear-cut boundaries along class, [and] ethnic […] lines” (Schülting 2016, 20). Accordingly, Mr Sandboys’s visit to the Old Clothes Exchange can be seen as pointing to another aspect of difference in connection with this character.

48 This argument follows Schülting and Mersmann. Schülting points out that, in London Labour and the London Poor, “the Crystal Palace as well as the department stores” with “[i]ndoor shopping and commodity fetishism function as the implicit foil for Mayhew’s […] studies” (2016, 20). Mersmann reads the Old Clothes Exchange as both a contrast and a parallel to the Great Exhibition (cf. 237-238). He argues that the representation of the Old Clothes Exchange shows that poverty can be banned from the Great Exhibition but is not excluded in 1851 (cf. 237). He does not, however, offer the reading pursued above.

47 At the Great Exhibition, numerous new and elaborately designed material objects were displayed, and visitors to the Crystal Palace could walk down the corridors as flâneurs to look at the objects (cf. Richards 23-25; 35; cf. Shears 2017b, 65-66). The exhibits could not be purchased and did not have any price tags (cf. Richards 38). Through this marked absence of financial aspects, the exhibits pointed to material objects circulating in consumer culture nevertheless. The Old Clothes Exchange is based on a similar yet inverse logic: the material objects are old and used (cf. 100), and visitors or, as in Mr Sandboys’s case flâneurs, who “walk down the various passages” see “several heaps of refuse” (100).49 Like the number and quality of the exhibits in the Crystal Palace which were awe-inspiring or bewildering for the visitors (cf. Schülting 2016, 17), “the novice to” the “scenes” at the Old Clothes Exchange cannot help “marvelling” (100). In contrast to some exhibits which had an aesthetic value but could not be used (cf. Richards 33), the old objects at the Old Clothes Exchange only appear to be useless, as the text implies: they “seemed to have fulfilled to the very utmost the office for which” they had been “made” (100; emphasis added).50 While the material objects were prevented from circulating at the Great Exhibition, the texts suggests that “‘the rubbish […]’” at the Old Clothes Exchange is ascribed a “value” by the traders and visitors and can enter further circles of use (100). The “value” surprises “the novice to such scenes” (100). This shows that the processes of ascribing material objects a value at the Old Clothes Exchange differ from processes of ascribing objects a value in consumer culture, while both the Great Exhibition and the Old Clothes Exchange can be located in the context of material culture. If the Great Exhibition was influenced by the material culture of the middle classes, the Old Clothes Exchange presents a foil to middle-class material culture as it was represented at the Great Exhibition (cf. Schülting 2016, 16): this is because the Old Clothes Exchange exists among the London poor, as the clothes the traders and visitors wear suggest (cf. 101).51 The material culture at the Old Clothes Exchange is hence indicative of social difference. Therefore, it is significant that Mr Sandboys visits the Old Clothes Exchange instead of the Great Exhibition: he has already been represented as the other because of his regional and social difference. Now, he visits a market which shows him the material culture of the London poor but not that of the urban middle-classes.

49 This observation tallies with Mersmann (cf. 238). 50 Mersmann also draws a parallel between the bewilderment the objects in the Crystal Palace cause and the old objects at the Old Clothes Exchange which will circulate further (cf. 238-239). 51 The so-called London poor are difficult to define. See Himmelfarb 309-311 on how the London poor may be envisioned. For nineteenth-century discourses on the poor and recycling, see Schülting 2016, 6-7.

48 Since he does not gain access to the Crystal Palace as the narrative continues, he only sees the other of middle-class material culture. He thus remains an outsider to middle- class material culture. This underpins the difference which has been represented in connection with this character so far. If seeing the material culture of the poor is a marker of difference, representing Mr Sandboys as a flâneur at the Old Clothes Exchange can also be seen as a textual strategy to implicitly contrast him with the implied readers. As will be shown later, the text turns them into flâneurs when it deals with the interior of the Crystal Palace. The quarrel between Mrs Fokesell and Mrs Sandboys is staged for the guests in Mrs Fokesell’s house and, by extension, for the readers. It is reminiscent of garrulous women who argue in the street and feature in nineteenth-century literary representations of less affluent districts of London.52 Mrs Fokesell embarrasses Mrs Sandboys. She confronts Mrs Sandboys because the latter has allegedly attacked a police officer (cf. 114). Mrs Sandboys refutes this “assertion” (114) and defends her honesty (cf. 114). The quarrel is first mediated in reported speech and focuses on Mrs Sandboys’s and Mrs Fokesell’s reactions alternately (cf. 114). Spotlighting the characters’ reactions in this way renders the quarrel scenic and evokes the notion of a fast-paced dispute. When the quarrel circles around the characters’ marriage certificates to prove their respectability, the account records Mrs Fokesell’s direct speech to challenge Mrs Sandboys. “‘There’s my marriage lines, woman! show your’n […] and prove yourself to be what you says you are’” (114). In confronting Mrs Sandboys who cannot show her marriage certificate, Mrs Fokesell stages the quarrel as an entertainment for her lodgers. Mrs Fokesell […] was […] making her [Mrs Sandboys’s] misfortune the laughing- stock of the whole house – for the lodgers, hearing the wrangling of the two ladies in the passage, had crept […] from their […] apartments, and stood with their necks stretched out over the balusters, giggling at the disputants below. (114)

“[T]he lodgers”, who have “crept […] from their apartments” after “hearing […] the two ladies”, watch and consume the quarrel as a theatrical show (114). That they “stood with their necks stretched out over the balusters” shows “the lodgers” try to see as much as possible of the quarrel which they find pleasurable to watch (114): they are “giggling at the disputants” (114). The theatrical effect is intensified when Mrs Fokesell challenges Mrs Sandboys again: the narrative voice relates she “was […] anxious to make a public case of the matter, and finding that she was getting a good audience about her, shouted at

52 Mrs Fokesell and Mrs Sandboys resemble the women arguing in Seven Dials in Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (cf. 1957, 69-73) and in a so-called “coster colony” in Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (2: 504). These quarrels are also represented in a theatrical way. On garrulous women as stock characters, see Looser 14-15 and 183.

49 the top of her voice, ‘Where’s your marriage lines […] I ask again in the presence of all these respectable gentlemen’” (115). The publicity Mrs Fokesell aims at – she tries “to make a public case of the matter” (115) – can be considered a way to exhibit and humiliate or incriminate Mrs Sandboys because she cannot show her marriage certificate, hence ‘lacks’ respectability: Mrs Fokesell transforms the lodgers, who are making “a good audience”, into witnesses of a scene at court since she calls them “these respectable gentlemen” (115). The readers witness and consume the altercation between the characters, too. As in the case of Mr Sandboys’s encounter with Mrs Quinine, the intradiegetic audience watching the quarrel constitutes another spectacle for the readers. In contrast to this encounter, however, the narrative voice here broaches the theatrical technique of representation on the level of discourse and creates a metalevel. On the extratextual level, this metalevel can be argued to heighten the readers’ pleasure of consuming the text: it aligns them with the narrator’s technique of representation and spells out that Mrs Sandboys is used as a laughing stock that entertains the readers and whose mishaps can be consumed by reading the novelistic text. The episode about the marriage certificate concludes when the family is reunited: Mr Sandboys returns from the Old Clothes Exchange and frees his wife from Mrs Fokesell (cf. 115). This conclusion draws on family reunions and happy endings as characteristic elements of domestic melodrama.53 Thus, the episode not only stages the consequences of the lost marriage certificate theatrically but also ends on a theatrical note. Staging the Sandboys’ otherness in London suggests that the rural type of English nationality is not compatible with the city’s mid-Victorian context. Similar to the welter of differences the narrative voice has unravelled in the account of Buttermere, it here deploys several strategies of theatrical representation. Together with the plot from picaresque novels, various theatrical strategies make it pleasurable for the readers to consume the consequences that occur when a rural type of English nationality is inserted into mid-Victorian London. Inverting the eighteenth-century concept of the picaro shows that the Sandboys and the version of English nationality they represent remain outsiders in the context of contemporary London. If the novel ridicules this type of nationality before the Great Exhibition is on, this anticipates and complements the function some

53 “[D]omestic melodrama was preoccupied […] with […] the return home, and the struggle to reunite with family” (Buckley 22). Mr and Mrs Sandboys going back to their London accommodation after the mishaps ensuing from the lost marriage certificate can be seen as another melodramatic element. Confer Vicinus for a comprehensive definition of domestic melodrama. On happy endings in this form of melodrama, see Vicinus 129; 132 and 139.

50 events have as the narrative continues. It is with the opening of the Great Exhibition that the text presents distinct ideas of English national identity.

2.2 The Urban Context: Forming English National Identity through Material Culture In the chapters dealing with the opening of the Great Exhibition, national identity is formed by means of a national discourse which develops an urban and middle-class version of Englishness. The formation of national identity is closely linked to material culture. If the Great Exhibition is seen as an event epitomizing material culture at mid- century, 1851 not only negotiates English nationality at a pivotal point in time; it also represents the material culture of the Great Exhibition to construct national identity. For this end, the text uses a host of rhetoric and narrative strategies. On the structural level, it doubles narrated time to form national identity through discrepant awareness between the protagonists on the intradiegetic and the implied readers on the extradiegetic level. On the extratextual level, the readers consume the novelistic text in the monthly parts as material objects and gain access to its intra- and extradiegetic level. Discrepant awareness can therefore be considered to pertain to the extratextual level, too: the extratextual readers are offered the viewpoint constructed for the implied readers on the extradiegetic level as an identificatory option. A further strategy is inserting expository elements into the text. They are not concerned with the protagonists of 1851 and serve a discursive function. Regarding the working classes and English nationality, the expository elements propound contradictory notions and point to the ideological ruptures of the text.

2.2.1 Doubling Narrated Time for the Opening of the Great Exhibition: A Narrative Strategy to Establish National Identity The opening of the Great Exhibition is represented twice in 1851. This is significant because it entails a doubling of narrated time. The narrative strategy allows for telling the same event with a difference regarding the aspects foregrounded in the two narrations. The opening is first represented as a spectacle for the implied readers without the protagonists.54 It is then repeated as a farce with the Sandboys. Doubling narrated time

54 Prasch maintains that “Mayhew […] interrupts his narrative to entertain readers with his own account of the Crystal Palace’s rich offerings”, whereas “[t]he Sandboys […] never […] manage to make their way through the entrance gates” (588). This biographical view is untenable because it neglects central narrative aspects of the text. Mersmann rightly states that the representation of the inauguration ceremony in 1851 is not connected to the plot of the novel (cf. 51). However, the reading offered here does not construe this representation as a “separate chapter” or “self- contained essay” as Mersmann does (51; own translation). Instead, it proposes that the chapter

51 thus creates discrepant awareness between the readers on the extradiegetic and the protagonists on the intradiegetic level as well as between the extratextual level. The discrepancy is relevant regarding the way the readers and protagonists participate in the opening ceremony: both readers and protagonists consume the opening ceremony as a spectacle. However, they do so differently: the readers participate in the entire ceremony by reading the text of 1851, whereas the Sandboys participate partially from the margins. It is through this difference that English national identity is formed in the first place. The two narrations focussing on the opening ceremony, moreover, use different representations of material culture. This is central to how the text constructs national identity.

2.2.1.1 The Spectacular Representation The first representation of the opening day presents a centralizing move which is staged in a spectacular manner and peaks in the inauguration ceremony inside the Crystal Palace.55 The spectacular mode of representation is accompanied by rhetoric strategies which exhibit both characters and objects related to the opening ceremony and sacralize the ceremony. The account of the opening day presents a panorama in social and spatial terms. First, members of the lower classes in the surrounding area of the exhibition are pointed out (cf. 128): there are “work-people […] decked out in […] the bright colours of their Sunday attire”, street sellers “with […] wicker sieves piled up in pyramids with oranges” and “men with trays of […] medals of the Crystal Palace” (128). “[B]eggars” as the lowest end of the social continuum are highlighted as well as disabled people, “the blind and the crippled, reaping their holiday harvest” (128). These characters are singled out amidst “the crowds that came straggling on” (128). They are thus connected to the representation of the opening day and exhibited as spectacles in the streets. This can be argued to aim at middle-class readers for whom the display of lower-class characters is a spectacle of social difference. At the same time, the characters are ascribed a specific material object or activity which links them to the material culture surrounding the Great Exhibition. The street

which is not linked to the plot about the protagonists is part of the overall narrative conception of the novel. The function of this feature will therefore be analyzed as a meaningful narrative strategy of the text. 55 Mersmann also sees the inauguration ceremony as a spectacle (cf. 70-71). The concept is applied more broadly in the reading carried out here: it is not only the representation of the inauguration ceremony that constitutes a spectacle but also the entire representation of the opening day.

52 sellers with “oranges” and souvenir “medals” can be seen as standing for the material culture of London’s streets while simultaneously using or commercializing the material culture displayed in the Crystal Palace to make profit (128). The “beggars” (128) and disabled characters accepting charity are represented as benefitting from the material culture of the Great Exhibition and, by implication, from England’s economic power while not contributing any labour themselves (cf. 128).56 This suggests that the text defines labour as an integral part of the material culture of the Exhibition. This aspect surfaces more prominently in the representation of the Manchester handloom weavers. The representation then shifts to the exhibition building itself. Here, a rhetoric of excess mirrors the plethora of colours and objects displayed inside the building. From the outside, the Crystal Palace is portrayed as a “visual feast”, which already points to the spectacular component in representing the building (134). In its interior, specific material objects are foregrounded. This foregrounding has two functions which are key in the formation of English national identity: the material objects are symbolically charged with meaning, and their representation is fashioned as a tour of the Crystal Palace for the readers by the narrator-focalizer.57 The machine court is highlighted first on this tour: In the machine-room, with its seeming infinity of engines, were the ‘self-acting mules’ […], drawing out […] long lines of threads, as if from a thousand spiders; the huge Jacquard lace machines were […] weaving the finest […] ‘edgings’; the pumps were throwing up […] huge cascades of water, while the steam printing-press was whirling its vast sheets through a maze of tapes, and […] pouring them forth […] impressed with a whole firmament of ‘signs and symbols’; the envelope machine […] – the power-looms – the model locomotives […] – were each and all at work […]. (134)

The technical devices which produce material objects that can be considered to symbolize England’s economic power are exhibited as material objects themselves.58 The machines on display are all working, which indicates that they demonstrate the processes of production contributing to England’s economic power. The machines can therefore be considered to stand for industrial progress and, accordingly, to be charged with meaning. On the structural level, the rhetoric used in this list of technical devices is significant: the machines are enumerated, which is reminiscent of catalogues featuring in epic writing.59

56 For a contextualization of the beggars and disabled characters in 1851 and on how they are related to Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, see Mersmann 67-68. 57 The concept of the narrator-focalizer is taken from Bal (cf. 39-40). With narrator-focalizers, “[e]xternal focalization is felt to be close to the narrating agent” (Rimmon-Kenan 75). 58 This observation tallies with Mersmann. He argues that the machines are turned into exhibits which bear testimony to the representational strategies of the Great Exhibition (cf. Mersmann 214). 59 Catalogues are characteristic features of ancient epic (cf. Toohey 282), which can be “encylopedic […] in its scope” (Mikics 104). This observation is indebted to Dr Krug.

53 On the level of language, this epic element is accompanied by linguistic features that evoke a sense of boundlessness: the adjectives “huge”, “vast” and “whole”, which are uncountable, as well as the number “thousand”, which exceeds the mind’s numerical imagination, are used to describe the machines (134). These adjectives and the epic element can thus be argued to stylistically elevate the spectacular display of machines, which is indicative of a sense of national pride.60 Moreover, foregrounding those machines which stand for industrial progress can be argued to fashion the Great Exhibition as an urban and contemporary destination of travel: strategies which were prevalent in the eighteenth-century are used to highlight scenic aspects of the landscape in Buttermere. These strategies, however, are also undermined to distance mid-Victorian readers from a form of consumption which the text suggests is obsolete. By contrast, the rhetoric strategies describing the machines in the urban context of the Exhibition strike a high register in stylistic terms. The high register is not undermined, which represents the Great Exhibition as a mid-Victorian, topical destination of travel. The visual spectacle of further material objects in the Crystal Palace is continued with a similar rhetoric strategy. It evokes a notion of excess in quantitative and qualitative terms, which aligns the representation of the Crystal Palace with contemporary accounts stressing “the […] wonder” and “the mind overwhelmed […] by the scale and scope of the show” (Fisher 8; cf. Mersmann 43; 52; 147). As you glanced down the avenues, objects of exquisite texture, form, or colour everywhere saluted the eye. From the top of the galleries were hung huge carpets and pieces of tapestry, gorgeous in their tints, and exquisite in their designs. Here was reared, high towards the […] roof, the ‘Spitalfields trophy’, from which hung the richest silks, with their glossy colours variegated with tints and forms of surpassing beauty; and looking […] farther down the nave, the eye could […] catch sight of the colossal mirror, set in its massive gilt frame […]. (135)

Again, a catalogue of material objects is presented here. In addition to the quantitative dimension, which surfaces in the adjectives “huge”, “colossal” and “massive”, a qualitative dimension is relevant (135). The decorative objects are represented as “exquisite” and “gorgeous”, and there are “the richest silks […] of surpassing beauty” (135). Not only do the adjectives evaluate the exhibits; they also imply excess: while “richest” presents a superlative form, “exquisite”, “gorgeous” and “surpassing beauty” are connoted with a sense of the superlative, too (135). This underlines the scope of the visual spectacle. The conjunction “as”, which introduces the catalogue of exhibits,

60 The “glorification of the past” is another hallmark of ancient epic (Toohey 282). This epic element is transposed to the mid-Victorian context of 1851.

54 suggests that the machines and the decorative objects are scenically rendered the focal points of attention one after another (135). Therefore, the account of the interior of the Crystal Palace is fashioned as a tour of the building for the readers: through the spatial references “glanced down”, “[f]rom the top of the galleries”, “here”, “high towards the […] roof” and “farther down”, the readers’ gaze is directed through the interior of the Crystal Palace (135). In deploying these spatial references, the text positions the readers as viewers or flâneurs on the ground level and guides them through the exhibition building. The readers are thus surrounded by and absorbed in the spectacle taking place inside the Crystal Palace.61 The readers’ immersion can be argued to play a vital part in the formation of English national identity. If the text fashions the readers on the extradiegetic level as participants in the spectacle, it also shows them the discourse on industrial progress displayed on the intradiegetic level. On the extratextual level, the readers consume the text of 1851 and are offered the viewpoint constructed for the implied readers. They also go on a ‘tour’ and ‘look’ at the symbolically charged objects. They are thus aligned with the notion of progress as an aspect of English national identity. Not only are the readers presented the discourse on progress; they also participate in the inauguration ceremony and, as the following analysis will show, in a sacralized conception of English national identity. The representation of the opening day peaks in the inauguration ceremony, which begins with the entrance of the queen. Before the royal family arrives, the spectacular display of material culture inside the Crystal Palace is rhetorically inscribed in a sacralized discourse: “[i]t was a feast of colour and splendour to sit and gloat over – a congress of all the nations for the most hallowed and blessed of objects” (136).62 The ensuing representation of the opening ceremony is staged like a theatrical performance that evinces structures of a ritual.63 This forges English national identity in a way that includes the readers.

61 This observation is in keeping with Mersmann. He argues that the enormous dimension of the Crystal Palace renders people in its interior small (cf. Mersmann 52). 62 Mersmann also quotes this sentence to show the pleasure inherent in the spectacle of colours in the Crystal Palace (cf. 72). 63 “A ritual is a formal action, following set and repeatable patterns, that is expressive of communal values, meanings and beliefs” (Edgar 2003d, 340). For Durkheim, it can entail a sacred dimension that “is expressive of the community within which individuals live. Ritual therefore serves the function of integrating the individual more closely into the social whole” (Edgar 2003d, 341). Rituals can hence be used to “define and articulate” the “identity” of a group (Edgar 2003d, 341). Cannadine argues that the meanings of royal ceremonials have to be considered not so much from Durkheim’s sociological but from a historic perspective (cf. 104). Since the analysis in this paper looks at the function of the opening ceremony for English national identity, hence for a sociocultural dimension, Durkheim’s definition is used here.

55 [T]he gates were flung back, and within the crimson vestibule appeared a blaze of gold and bright colours. […] Then advanced the royal retinue […]. […] As the queen moved onwards with her diamond tiara and little crown of brilliants scintillating in the light, the whole assembly rose, and […] shouted forth peal after peal of welcome. Then was sung the National Anthem […]; while, as the ‘melodious thunder’ of the organ rolled through the building, the choristers […] chanted in the rich unison of many voices. […] The Archbishop then invoked a blessing on the objects […] and then the Queen and Prince […] walked round the building in procession. […] On her Majesty declaring the Exhibition opened, there followed another flourish of trumpets […]. Immediately were heard the booming of the […] guns without, telling the people of the metropolis that the Great Exhibition […] had been […] inaugurated. (136-137)

In this passage, the queen’s entrance constitutes a spectacle of colours and royalty.64 The dimension of sound is added to the visual aspects, which underlines the theatrical nature of the opening ceremony.65 The adverbs “then” as well as the phrases “[a]s the Queen moved onwards” and “[o]n her Majesty declaring the Exhibition opened” suggest a highly structured, scenic opening ceremony (137). The scenic representation serves two functions. First, it can be seen as underpinning the theatrical spectacle which is staged for the readers. This theatrical spectacle is doubled in 1851. The fourth monthly number comprises the account of the happenings outside the Crystal Palace on the opening day. This representation precedes the account of the inauguration ceremony in the fifth monthly part. An illustration which shows the queen’s entrance into the Crystal Palace features in the fourth number: “THE OPENING OF THE GREAT HIVE OF THE WORLD MAY 1 OR THE INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION OF ALL NATIONS” (fig. 3). In this panoramic illustration, the royal family proceeding towards the entrance of the Crystal Palace takes centre stage (cf. fig. 3).66 In the foreground, two tall trees on the left and right direct the gaze towards the centre of the image. There, the guards and spectators form a corridor that highlights the royal family (cf. fig. 3). If the corridor is seen as a stage, the illustration also represents the queen in a spectacular manner. This is significant regarding the readers. The arrival of the royal family which is shown from the outside in the fourth monthly part is continued in the interior of the Crystal Palace in textual form in the fifth monthly number. The readers, who have a heightened viewing position, thus

64 This observation can be related to Homans’s notion of “the spectacle of royalty” (xxi): the (self-)representations of Queen Victoria render the queen figure visible to the public and involve a theatrical element, hence constitute a spectacle (cf. Homans xxi; xxiv-xxv). 65 For Pfister, visual and acoustic codes are central aspects of theatricality (cf. 7-8). 66 Concerning the representation of the Crystal Palace in the illustration, Patten points out: “instead of rendering a faithful image of the architecture, Cruikshank alters the central transept to a kind of vitreous beehive” (1996, 303). This observation is accurate but not relevant to the discussion above. The detail will therefore not be explored further.

56 obtain a full view of the arrival from the outside and they also participate in the ceremony proper inside (cf. fig. 3). This double spatial vision is relevant to discrepant awareness: the protagonists on the intradiegetic level will not attain full vision, which leads to superior reader awareness – an advance in the readers’ ‘knowledge’ of the happenings at the opening ceremony.67 The text thus links the degree of vision and, as will be argued later, the manner of observing the opening ceremony to participating in national identity. The iconography of the illustration, moreover, mirrors the rhetoric strategies of the text. The laurel wreath embracing the illustration serves as a meaningful framing device (cf. fig. 3). If laurel wreaths mark outstanding achievements in the arts and sciences in Western iconography, the laurel wreath in the illustration can be interpreted as pointing to the Crystal Palace as a building which stands for progress (cf. Kretschmer 270). With laurel wreaths also symbolizing triumph, the illustration can be argued to articulate a sense of national pride in the face of the Great Exhibition, which anticipates the textual representation in the fifth monthly part (cf. Kretschmer 270). Thus, the iconographic strategy similarly ennobles the illustration as the rhetoric strategies representing the material objects in a stylistically elevated manner. At the same time, the illustration can be seen as a commodity because of its composition. The “panoramic view” of the illustration (Charlesworth 352), its “‘over- seeing’ viewer” (Stewart 75) and the laurel wreaths serving as framing devices can be seen as characteristic visual strategies of picturesque paintings (cf. Stewart 75). Due to its shape, the illustration can also be linked to miniatures, which were consumed as commodities (cf. Callaghan 459) from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century (cf. Lloyd 39). Not only, then, does the illustration enable the readers to obtain full vision of the opening ceremony from both the outside and inside. On the extratextual level, it can also be seen as a commodity placed in a commodity text. As such, it lets the readers partake in the royal spectacle by acquiring the monthly part and the illustration as a material object that comes with it.68 Second, the scenic mode can be argued to represent the inauguration ceremony along the lines of a sacralized ritual. The succession of actions adhering to a specific order and the

67 The term superior reader awareness is used here for the phenomenon Pfister has called superior audience awareness: the audience knows more than the figures (cf. 51). 68 A review of 1851 that was published in the second number supports the argument regarding the status of the illustration as a commodity. It calls “George Cruikshank’s frontispiece of ‘All the World going to see the Great Exhibition of 1851’ […] a great device […] and one which is cheap at a shilling” (fig. 1). The review is concerned with a different illustration than the one discussed above. Nevertheless, this shows that the illustrations themselves could be seen as incentives for buying the monthly parts of 1851, hence as commodities.

57 participants involved in them resemble a service at church. There is “[t]he Archbishop”, the royal couple walk through the Crystal Palace “in procession” (137), and the “organ” is playing (136).69 This sacralizes the opening ceremony. The “blessing” the archbishop “invoked […] on the objects of the building” may be read as inscribing the symbolically charged material objects in a sacralized discourse (137). If the archbishop and the royal couple are considered actors in the service represented on the intradiegetic level, the readers on the extradiegetic level witness the inauguration ceremony. This, together with the rhetoric strategies deployed by the text, is important to the construction of English national identity. By gaining access to the opening ceremony through the text, the extratextual readers, too, are enabled to view the spectacle and consume it visually. They can do this after they have acquired the monthly part of 1851 which they consume in material form. Viewing and consuming both in visual and material form thus work in tandem and make it possible for the readers to identify with the version of English national identity presented in the Crystal Palace. This is a parallel to the spectacle of the Houses of York and Lancaster “shaking hands” (3) and the spectacle of the royal family arriving at the Crystal Palace in both the novelistic text and the illustration (cf. 136; cf. fig. 3): there, too, national identity is shaped through viewing and consuming in visual and material form. This suggests that consuming the novelistic text and the illustrations as material objects is a way of participating in national identity. Not only can the readers be seen as forming part of the audience or congregation assembled in the Crystal Palace and as being integrated in the sacralized ritual through consumption; they are also incorporated rhetorically: “[a]nd well may the nation be proud of its Crystal Palace. […] [T]here was […] a feeling of gratitude to the Almighty, who had vouchsafed to confer upon us so much of his own power” (137). Similar to the pronoun “you” in the catalogue of decorative objects listed on the ‘tour’ for the readers (135), which integrates them into the secluded space of the Crystal Palace, the pronoun “us” incorporates the readers linguistically (137): it links them to the national pride articulated in the text and includes them in the sacralized conception of English national identity (cf. 137).

69 See Mersmann 86-87 for an extended discussion of the royal procession into and around the Crystal Palace.

58 2.2.1.2 The Repetition as a Farce The second representation of the opening day is represented as a farce. The narrative repetition of the opening day is characterized by a plotline that is rife with mishaps which engender laughter or ridicule the Sandboys. This excess of ridiculous events is accompanied by another catalogue with a slighting function. Material culture in the farce is represented differently from the first narration. Here, it serves to ridicule the protagonists. The farce contributes to the formation of English national identity because it lampoons a version of national identity that differs from the urban, middle-class discourse. The Sandboys’ visit to the opening ceremony is framed by representations of material culture. Prior to setting forth for the opening, Mrs Sandboys buys “a new dress, a mantle, and bonnet” because, “woman like, she had much rather stay at home unless she could appear ‘decent […]’ on the auspicious occasion” (139). In deploying a female gender stereotype, the text here already ridicules the character’s consumption because it suggests that Mrs Sandboys is overly concerned with her outfit. The Sandboys’ ride on an omnibus which takes them to the exhibition grounds contributes to this effect. It is the first incident in the farcial representation and indicates that the Sandboys stand for an alternative concept of English national identity. Mr Sandboys crashes through the roof of the omnibus and (cf. 141), “with each fresh plunge of the intruding limbs, some fresh damage was done to the new lace mantilla, or white chip bonnet, that Mrs Sandboys had purchased expressly for the occasion” (141). By using the words “expressly for the occasion”, the narrative voice emphasizes Mrs Sandboys’s concern for her clothes again (141). However, drawing this graphic picture of the damage which is done to the articles of dress pokes fun at the character. At the same time, the omnibus – like the machines in the Crystal Palace – is a meaningful material object. It can be seen as an urban means of transport (cf. Reynolds 813).70 If this is considered in connection with the Sandboys, who stand for an ‘old’ or ‘dated’ class existing in a rural area and who are not familiar with urban technology, the characters’ mishap on the omnibus is telling. It suggests that the Sandboys present a form of English national identity that differs from the urban, middle-class version constructed and propounded by the text: compared to this version, they represent a form of Englishness which, from an urban perspective, does not comply with technological progress.

70 This observation is owed to Prof Feldmann.

59 That the Sandboys participate in the opening ceremony from the margins can also be interpreted in this vein. Following another mishap in the preceding plotline, they have unwittingly given away their ticket (cf. 140) and are not admitted to the Crystal Palace (cf. 142). The Sandboys decide that, if Fate had denied them the privilege of witnessing the ‘pageant’ from the interior, which they had paid the sum of five guineas to be enabled to do, they might as well make the best of their bargain, and enjoy a gratuitous sight of the procession from without. (148)

Therefore, they move “towards the north side of the Transept, where […] the Queen was to make her entrance” because “Mrs. Sandboys […] [is] eager to obtain a peep at the Queen at all risks” (143). It is noteworthy that the words “privilege”, “‘pageant’” and “from the interior” are used by the Sandboys as focalizers (143).71 This suggests that observing the royal procession from the interior of the Crystal Palace plays an important role in forming national identity. It tallies with the spectacular manner of staging the royal arrival for the readers in the first representation. Another important aspect in this passage are the financial terms: the Sandboys have spent “five guineas” to attend the inauguration ceremony, the transaction is called a “bargain”, and watching the queen’s arrival from the outside is “gratuitous” (143). As the following analysis will show, prices are meaningful details in the farcial repetition. The Sandboys observe what is happening at the Crystal Palace from the river. Contrary to the readers, the protagonists are spatially removed from the exhibition building. This is relevant to the discrepant awareness created by the text. The queen’s arrival is staged like a theatrical performance in the second representation, too. However, the rhetoric used here is different. The Sandboys […] could hear the shouts of people, as some […] Minister or nobleman was recognised […]. Then, as they stood up in the boat, they could catch sight of the breast-plates and helmets of the Life Guards, as they galloped rapidly by. Next they could see the scarlet and gold coats of the royal coachmen […]; then they heard the hoarse cheers of the multitude, as the Queen entered the Crystal Palace. (145)

The dimension of vision and sound also features prominently in the arrival watched by the Sandboys: specific objects belonging to the figures that are arriving are highlighted as well as the noises made by the onlookers (cf. 145). Thus, the Sandboys on the intradiegetic level also consume the arrival as a spectacle. Yet the adverbs then (cf. 145)

71 Mersmann rightly argues that the opening ceremony is not represented with the Sandboys as reflector figures because the difference between the interior and exterior highlighted in representations of the Crystal Palace creates distance and hierarchies (cf. 66-67). The notion of hierarchies is relevant to the form of English national identity represented by the Sandboys. Instead of Stanzel’s concept of reflector figures, Genette’s notion of focalization is used here.

60 and “next” imply a rapid succession of arrivals (145). This notion of an accelerated narrative pace, which can be foregrounded through doubling narrated time, contrasts with the representation consumed by the readers: by following the narrator-focalizer, they take in the spectacle in the Crystal Palace more slowly. The narrative acceleration creates tension because it suggests that the opening ceremony is approaching. A further difference foregrounded by doubling narrated time is how the Sandboys participate in the ritual of the opening ceremony. Instead of the sacralized atmosphere inside the exhibition building, the commercialized material culture outside is highlighted: For a short time afterwards all was still and silent, with the exception of […] the hawkers, who […] might be heard shouting at the tops of their voices their ‘full and correct Programmes of the Procession – only a penny.’ Presently they could catch by gusts the faint sound of the organ […]. (145)

The sounds heard outside the Crystal Palace are juxtaposed antithetically: “the hawkers” are “shouting at the tops of their voices”, whereas “the […] sound of the organ” is “faint” (145). Thus, the Sandboys only perceive the hawkers advertising their cheap products, which are used to make profit from the Great Exhibition, while they do not hear the organ properly. This shows that the protagonists are not incorporated in the sacralized atmosphere of the opening ceremony. Regarding discrepant awareness, the protagonists participate in the opening ceremony partially and from the margins. The readers, by contrast, witness the entire ceremony and are part of the sacralized conception of English national identity propounded through this event. Through this discrepancy, the Sandboys can be exhibited for the readers. They are positioned as observers on the intradiegetic level, while they are simultaneously staged as objects for the implied readers’ gaze on the extradiegetic level. After the “faint sound of the organ” has indicated that the opening ceremony is moving towards its climax, doubling narrated time now lets the farce culminate in an anti-climax (145): Mrs Sandboys is turned into a spectacle herself. [T]he sculler pulled the boat […] so that Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys might see the signal made […] that the Queen had declared the Great Exhibition […] opened. […] Once more they stood up in the boat, so as to obtain a better view […]. In a few minutes they beheld the soldier prepare to raise the flag, and no sooner had he lifted it […], than the guns […] thundered forth a deafening ‘broadside.’ Poor Mrs. Sandboys […] was so startled with […] the noise, that she […] fell back head-foremost into the river. (145)

The readers on the extradiegetic and extratextual level have already witnessed the visual and acoustic signals which are made in the first narration after the Exhibition has been opened (cf. 136-137). This contrasts with the figural knowledge the Sandboys have as focalizers on the intradiegetic level. The clash between ‘knowledge’ on the different levels engenders a comic effect: Mrs Sandboys is represented as the laughing stock

61 because she falls into the water. The plotline constituted by mishaps peaks in this incident. Mrs Sandboys’s accident marks a stark contrast to the solemn, sacralized representation in which the first narration reaches its climax. The readers, in turn, can laugh at the rural character who misses the opening ceremony with its royal spectacle and becomes a spectacle herself instead. The farce ends with a catalogue of the damage done to Mrs Sandboys’s clothes. Because of its detailed enumeration, the catalogue mirrors the catalogues in the first narration. Here, however, the catalogue serves to ridicule Mrs Sandboys. Additionally, the female gender stereotype used at the beginning of the farce is repeated. Mrs Sandboys is represented as “indulging in the feminine luxury of a ‘good cry’” because of (146) the […] ungainly state of her two-guinea chip bonnet, the artificial flowers of which looked as if they had been boiled,– for the colours had run one into the other […]. Her green satin dress […] had lost all its gloss and a good part of its colour, which had run into her petticoats […]. […] [H]er auburn front, too, had […] dried by a quick fire, so that the foundation had shrivelled up, and the natural parting had been scorched into a deep brown […]. (146)

Similar to the first narration, the catalogue circles around specific material objects. Yet the price of Mrs Sandboys’s “two-guinea […] bonnet” indicates that the character laments for cheap material objects (146). Moreover, the choice of words like “shrivelled up”, “scorched” and “artificial flowers which looked as if they had been boiled” suggests that the catalogue pokes fun at Mrs Sandboys’s articles of dress (146). The damage is enumerated in the form of a catalogue. However, the catalogue mentions the cheap price of the clothes and uses linguistic features implying poor quality: the articles of dress are ruined once they have made contact with water. This points to the mock-heroic style of the catalogue. If mock-heroic is seen as “grand style that is comically incongruous with the […] trivial subject treated” (Baldick 212) and “mock[s] the subject by treating it with a dignity it does not deserve”, the text uses this rhetoric strategy to make fun of Mrs Sandboys’s excessive concern for cheap material objects (Murfin/Ray 217). By spatially distancing the Sandboys from the opening ceremony and ridiculing them through symbolic material objects and mock-heroic style, the farcial repetition lampoons the Sandboys’ rural version of English national identity. This, in turn, suggests that the text mocks them from an urban perspective and that it is from this stance that the Sandboys represent a different version of English national identity than the one constructed in the first narration. On the paratextual level, an advertisement on the outside wrapper of the seventh monthly part is of interest. It advertises a publication called “COMICAL CREATURES FROM WURTEMBERG; INCLUDING THE STORY OF REYNARD THE FOX.

62 Illustrated with Twenty Large Engravings, FROM THE STUFFED ANIMALS […] [i]n the Great Exhibition” (fig. 4).72 This item was published by David Bogue and sold at 3 shillings and 6 pennies or 6 shillings (cf. fig. 4). The advert quotes reviews of this publication which call it “‘a memorial’” and “‘a pleasant memento of the Exhibition’” (fig. 4). This advert can be interpreted in two ways. It can be linked to the novelistic text because it illustrates on the level of the paratext how profit is made from the Great Exhibition, and it can be read with the help of cultural memory as a cultural studies concept. If the publication is seen as a spin-off from the Exhibition, it can be related to the hawkers’ cheap souvenirs in the novelistic text (cf. 128; 145): on the intradiegetic level, the hawkers try to make money with their Exhibition souvenirs. On the extratextual level, the publisher David Bogue, who also distributed the monthly parts of 1851, will profit from copies sold of the “COMICAL CREATURES” (fig. 4). This shows that 1851 – not least because of its title – is rooted in the material culture surrounding the Great Exhibition, too. It can therefore also be seen as an Exhibition spin-off itself (cf. Humpherys 50). From a cultural studies perspective, the advert shows that the publication is a souvenir of the Great Exhibition that transmits the Great Exhibition into cultural memory. A souvenir is an object which points to an event metonymically (cf. Stewart 136). Cultural memory is “the set of diachronic traditions and those forms collective knowledge and memory which serve an identificatory function for a cultural group” (Böhm-Schnitker 192; own translation). Cultural memory spans several generations and is sustained by media and institutions (cf. Böhm-Schnitker 192). The advert for the publication states that it can also be used “as a gift-book for children” and “may lie on the drawing room table, or be thumbed in the nursery” (fig. 4). This suggests that the publication can be displayed in the drawing room or be used as a children’s book due to its illustrative character. With illustrations as a central feature of gift books and since gift books were displayed on the table in middle-class drawing rooms (cf. Golden 1-2; 100-101; cf. Kooistra 5), the publication with its illustrations, which could also be acquired in “[c]oloured [p]lates”, serves as a gift book and souvenir that provides the link to the Great Exhibition (fig. 4). If the publication pointing to the Great Exhibition is integrated into the domestic space and used for bringing up children, it transports the Great Exhibition into the cultural memory of the present time and, in the case of the children’s nursery, ensures the Exhibition’s position in the cultural memory of future generations. The cross-

72 See Poliquin 175-177 on the stuffed animals at the Great Exhibition.

63 generational aspect of the Great Exhibition evoked in the advertisement can be argued to instigate processes of identification with the nation hosting the Great Exhibition. An element from the epitext of 1851 has a similar function. The publication Mayhew’s Great Exhibition of 1851 is a collection of the illustrations George Cruikshank produced for 1851. If Mayhew’s 1851 is an Exhibition spin-off, the collection can be seen as another Exhibition spin-off (cf. Humpherys 50). As the title of the collection suggests, it is also a spin-off from Mayhew’s novel.73 This collection comprises an additional illustration: “THE OPENING OF THE GREAT INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION OF ALL NATIONS” (fig. 5).74 The illustration was “[t]aken on the spot by GEORGE CRUISKHANK” (fig. 5). It relates to the novelistic text because it represents the opening ceremony inside the Crystal Palace and also inscribes the Great Exhibition into cultural memory. The illustration literally stages the queen and her family on a dais (cf. fig. 5). It resembles “The Opening of the Great Hive of the World” in this respect, but here the focus is on the interior of the building. Regarding the novelistic text, the illustration is relevant in two ways: on a structural level, it visualizes the spectacular representation of the inauguration ceremony the narrative voice mediates before narrated time is doubled. The caption says “[t]he View is taken From the South West Gallery, at the time when the Archbishop is offering up a Prayer for the Divine, blessing upon the objects of the Great Exhibition” (fig. 5). Thus, the illustration lets its viewers participate both in the spectacle of royalty it visualizes and in the sacralized version of Englishness – with a slight difference in the strategies used to represent the sacralized atmosphere: the novelistic text mentions the archbishop (cf. 137) and states that “the ‘melodious thunder’ of the organ rolled through the building” (136-137). With the thunder rolling through space, a sense of vastness is linked to the sacralized atmosphere. In the illustration, this vastness can be detected, too.75 It is visualized through the crossing of corridors where the dais is set and the high vaults of the Crystal Palace. That the queen’s dais is located in the lower part of the illustration enhances the sense of vastness (cf. fig. 5). The vastness which dwarfs the humans in the Palace and the vaults in particular can be argued to underpin the sacralized

73 Both 1851 and Mayhew’s Great Exhibition of 1851 were marketed by David Bogue (cf. Patten1996, 303). 74 See Patten 1996, 303-304 for a contextualization of this illustration. 75 Patten rightly points out the vastness and vaults, too. However, he does not analyze the illustration or relate it to Mayhew’s novelistic text: “Cruikshank’s representation […] managed to convey something of the vastness of the vaulted space, though the arch of the transept is cut off by the top frame of the plate” (1996, 304).

64 atmosphere visually:76 the vaults in the illustration are reminiscent of vaults in cathedrals and thus align the Crystal Palace with sacral buildings in architectural terms.77 This sacralized aspect of English national identity is another structural parallel to the novelistic text. The viewers of the illustration can participate in the textual formation of English national identity by reading the narrative voice’s account and consuming it by reading. Here, they identify with the sacralized version of English nationality by looking at the illustration, hence by consuming it visually. Similar to “The Opening of the Great Hive of the World”, the viewers here, too, oversee the opening ceremony from a heightened angle (cf. fig. 5). Thus, the link between vision, spectacle, overseeing and identifying surfaces again: it is significant that the readers of 1851 are first offered a staged encounter between the Houses of York and Lancaster which they ‘watch’; the readers are then offered a spectacular account of how the royal family arrives at the Crystal Palace, while they also oversee it through the illustration “The Opening of the Great Hive of the World”. Following the arrival, the readers gain access to the interior of the Palace and the inauguration ceremony which is also framed as a spectacle. All of these spectacles are consumed visually. On the extratextual level, those readers who buy Mayhew’s Great Exhibition of 1851 in addition to Mayhew’s novel obtain an illustration of the account which has been given by the narrative voice in the novelistic text. This leads to a doubling of vision and visual consumption. The readers of 1851 who acquire the additional illustration in Mayhew’s Great Exhibition of 1851 can hence be argued to gain a particularly privileged viewing position of the opening ceremony and, by implication, of English national identity. They have this viewing position because they consume the epitext in addition to the novel or, to argue with Humpherys, because they buy the spin- off from the spin-off. Since all the spectacles, be it in the novelistic text or in the illustrations published in its paratext and epitext, are encapsulated in material form, this suggests that English national identity is formed by consuming: the readers buy the monthly parts of 1851 or Cruikshank’s collection, are thus presented spectacles and gain access to them through the representational strategies deployed by the novelistic text and the illustrations as visual texts. They can consume these spectacles visually after they have physically

76 Patten comments on how visitors are represented in the illustration: “the figures are so small that the human dimensions of the ceremony are overwhelmed by the architecture” (1996, 304). The interpretation offered above does not agree with this statement: dwarfing the visitors is a representational strategy to highlight the sacralized atmosphere. It works in tandem with the caption referring to the archbishop. 77 On the Crystal Palace bearing resemblance to cathedrals, see Auerbach 194.

65 acquired or consumed a material object. If Cruikshank’s collection comprises prints of spectacular views, is called Mayhew’s Great Exhibition of 1851 and refers to his novel as an exhibition, this supports the argument that the narrative voice in 1851 exhibits the differences it ascribes to the protagonists and the Sandboys’ otherness to the readers. Considering that visual consumption is predicated on consuming material objects which are souvenirs of the Great Exhibition, this suggests that both 1851 and Mayhew’s Great Exhibition of 1851 transmit the Great Exhibition to cultural memory. They inscribe it into cultural memory next to an event which is also associated with national identity and has already been transmitted to cultural memory since 1851 can allude to it: the union of the Houses of York and Lancaster. If the Great Exhibition is inscribed into cultural memory by these material objects which are durable and can also be consumed by subsequent generations, this shows that mid-Victorian material culture is inextricably linked to national identity: 1851 explores, negotiates and forms English national identity by representing mid-Victorian material culture, and the material culture of this period – epitomized by the Great Exhibition – ‘enters’ the novelistic text. Moreover, the novelistic text represents material culture to form national identity, and it is a material object that can be consumed together with its representations of national identity. Similarly, the additional illustration in Mayhew’s Great Exhibition of 1851 represents material culture in connection with national identity, too: the Crystal Fountain can be seen in the illustration, there are several other material objects and the caption mentions the objects, too (cf. fig. 5). It also refers to the Exhibition as “THE GREAT INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION” (fig. 5). Thus, the caption broaches production or industry and, it may be argued, alludes to the discourse on progress regarding mid-Victorian material culture (fig. 5). At the same time, the illustration is a material object in mid-Victorian material culture and can be consumed. Both 1851 and the illustration thus forge national identity in representing material culture, while they simultaneously inscribe an event which symbolizes this material culture into cultural memory through their nature as material objects. This is an instance where mid-Victorian material culture with its function for national identity comes full circle.

66 2.2.2 The Expository Elements and the Limits of Defining National Identity Discursively The representation of the opening day of the Great Exhibition is framed by expository passages which are not related to the plot about the Sandboys.78 Inserting these expository elements serves a discursive function: if discourses create knowledge on a given field, the expository elements are a strategy to rhetorically integrate the working classes into English national identity (cf. Foucault 100-101). This is because they shape how the working classes are to be perceived. In doing so, the expository elements move in a “field of force relations” (Foucault 101-102): they speak about the working classes in a top- down relation of power (cf. Foucault 94; 101). However, the discursive construction to reduce difference in class is destabilized: the rhetoric deployed in the representation of Manchester and its handloom weavers on the level of story reveals the ideological ruptures of the text. This shows that social difference in terms of class is too heterogeneous for some parts of the working classes to be integrated into the textual conception of national identity. The spectacular representation of the opening day is preceded and followed by passages that advocate the Great Exhibition as a means to highlight the working classes’ manual labour. The text thus uses the Great Exhibition as an event where the working classes’ labour becomes visible. The expository elements propose revaluating the working classes through this show: “the Great Exhibition […] is a huge academy for teaching the nobility of labour” (155). “Anything which tends to elevate the automatic operation of the mere labourer to the dignity of an artistic process, tends to confer on the working classes the greatest possible benefit” (132). By redefining the notion of “the automatic operation” from being “mere” labour into “an artistic process” endowed with “dignity”, the text aims at refashioning the working classes’ prestige in society (132; emphasis added). Regarding the exhibits produced by “working men”, it is argued that “[t]he sight cannot fail to inspire them with a sense of their position in the state, and […] it must […] increase the respect of all others for their vocation” (132). Yet the text also

78 The expository elements are taken from articles Mayhew first published in the Edinburgh News (cf. Humpherys 51). Humpherys points out that “[p]arts 5 and 6 [of 1851] were written roughly at the same time as the articles for the Edinburgh News” (cf. 51). She argues that the fifth and sixth monthly number provide “a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the Exhibition, and […] the attitude of the lower classes toward it. The descriptions of the visitors and rooms of the Crystal Palace are vivid […] but not satiric” (cf. 51). This approach does not consider the function of these insertions in the novelistic text. The same holds true for Gurney’s (cf. 115), Fisher’s (cf. 11-12) and Message and Johnston’s readings of the expository elements (cf. 39). The assumption of the reading offered here is that inserting expository elements in the narration is meaningful and has to be interpreted.

67 argues that “[t]he Great Exhibition is a higher boon to labour than a general advance of wages” (132).79 This argument is already indicative of a discursive ambivalence inherent in the attempt to integrate the working classes into English national identity: it may be read as rhetorically revaluating the working classes on the one hand, while maintaining social difference on the other because it is not concerned with the working classes’ financial or economic situation.80 The argument presented in the expository elements also evinces the discourse on national progress and notions of respectability in its attempt to integrate the working classes into English national identity.81 It is put forward that if society would really have the world progress, it should do away with the cheat, which makes those men the most ‘respectable’ who do the least for the bread they eat. […] [O]ur first step must be to assert the natural dignity of labour. […] Let industry be with us ‘respectable’ […] and the industrious poor instead of the idle rich will then be the really respectable men of this country. (155-156)

As the inverted commas imply, the term respectability can be negotiated discursively (cf. 155). The text suggests that the term respectability be redefined. For this end, it puns on the word “industrious” (156): it means both “[p]ertaining to […] productive labour” (Simpson/Weiner 7: 897) and “diligent” or “hard-working” (Simpson/Weiner 7: 899). Read in the first sense, the working classes are industrious since they contribute to Britain’s economy by working manually. If the word is used in the second sense, the upper classes with inherited money are disparagingly called “the idle rich” because they do not work, hence “do the least for the bread they eat” (155). If respectability is redefined and the working classes’ manual labour revaluated, the expository passages propose, the working classes can be integrated into English national identity, which, in turn, will effect progress. This argument can be read in connection with the assertion that “the machinery department” at the Great Exhibition “[was] especially attractive for the evidence it afforded of the supremacy of this nation over all others in mechanical genius and industry – exhibiting at once the cause and effect of Britain’s greatness” (137). The discourse on progress surfaces again here: if machines and industry are “the cause and effect of Britain’s greatness”, they testify to “the supremacy of this nation” (137). Accordingly, as

79 This passage from 1851 is reproduced in Shears’s The Great Exhibition, 1851: A Sourcebook (cf. 2017a, 149). He contextualizes it by stating that, in an attempt to create “an image of peace, progress and prosperity in which […] the welfare of all was foremost”, the workers’ “cause was assisted not only by the display of industrial and mechanical exhibits but also by a number of […] representations of the Exhibition that appeared in prose and verse during 1850 and 1851” (2017a, 145). Shears rightly considers the passage an attempt to work towards social peace but does not point out its discursive fissures. 80 See Steinbach 92 on the economic situation of the working classes between 1820 and 1851. 81 For respectability as an important notion in Victorian society and occupation or work as a key element in nineteenth-century hierarchical ideas of class, see Steinbach 125-126 and 129.

68 the expository elements suggest, the working classes can be integrated into English national identity through the discourse on national progress. The criticism levelled at “the idle rich” and the redefinition of respectability indicate that the expository elements are presented from a middle-class speaking position (155). Since the expository passages speak about the working classes, power can be considered to run top-down in a discourse-analytical reading. The first-person pronouns “our” and “us” rhetorically include the readers, who are thus constructed as being middle- class, too (155). The readers’ implied social status becomes relevant when the text stages the handloom weavers as a spectacle for the readers. Manchester is portrayed as ‘the’ industrial city of England’s material culture. As part of the travel narrative plot, the Sandboys do a stopover in Manchester (cf. Mersmann 213). The city and the handloom weavers are represented in a spectacular manner for Mr Sandboys on the intradiegetic and the readers on the extradiegetic level. This mode of representation is significant: on the one hand, it celebrates Manchester as a modern site of production. On the other, it also exhibits characters left behind by industrial progress and modernization (cf. Mersmann 213; 236-237; cf. Landon 34).82 A panorama of Manchester is given which highlights its machines and cotton products: To see the city of factories in all its bustle […], with its forests of tall chimneys […] with long black flags of smoke streaming from their tops, is to look upon one of those scenes of giant industry that England alone can show. As you pace the busy streets, you hear the drone of a thousand steam-engines […]. As you sit in your home, you feel the floor tremble with the motion of the vast machinery […]. Here the buildings are monstrous square masses of brick […] with a hundred windows […]. […] The streets swarm with carts […], some piled with […] bags of wool, and others laden with […] blocks of cotton […]. […] This basement […] is transformed into the showroom of some warehouseman, and as you look down into the subterranean shop, you can see […] shelves, filled with showy cotton prints. (52-53)

Manchester is portrayed as the epitome of an industrial city since it is called “the city of factories” (52). The rhetoric strategies deployed here resemble the rhetoric used in the spectacular representation of the Great Exhibition: they also evoke a sense of “wonder” and imply a “mind” that is “overwhelmed” by what it encounters (Fisher 8). The account of Manchester is fashioned as another ‘tour’ for the readers and turns them into flâneurs: the phrase “[a]s you pace the […] streets” positions the readers on street level while rambling through the city (52). The movement through the city takes the form of a scenic

82 This proposition agrees with Mersmann. His conclusion regarding the function of this representation and the account of Manchester, however, is not convincing: “[d]iese Einblicke in die Lebenssituation der Industriestädte bleiben […] episodenhafte Exkursionen; sie […] tragen mithin zum heterogenen, verwirrenden Eindruck des Romans bei” (Mersmann 213). The interpretation offered here is concerned with how these representations relate to each other in a discourse-analytical reading.

69 and almost synesthetic experience:83 the phrases “you hear the drone of a thousand steam- engines”, “[a]s you sit in your home, you feel the floor tremble” and “as you look […] into the […] shop, you […] see […] shelves” imply that Manchester can be perceived through several senses, and they present different scenes or sensations of industrial Manchester (53). The choice of words evokes a sense of immensity: the cityscape is characterized by “forests of tall chimneys” emitting “long […] flags of smoke”, there are “a thousand steam-engines” and “vast machinery” contributing to the “giant industry”, and “the buildings are monstrous […] masses of brick with a hundred windows” (52; emphasis added). The notion of immensity can be read as testifying to and underpinning the discourse on national progress surfacing in the statement “those scenes of giant industry […] England alone can show” (52). The raw materials, the “bags of wool” and “blocks of cotton”, point to the material culture of Manchester as a site of production (53). By deploying the pronoun “you”, the text rhetorically integrates the readers in the ‘tour’ of Manchester (52-53). In consuming the text, then, the readers witness the industrial and national progress which manifests itself in Manchester as a site of production. As in the representation of the Crystal Palace, specific material objects which are charged with meaning are highlighted on the ‘tour’ of Manchester. There are “steam- engines” and “cotton prints” (53). The steam engines can be read as standing for recent technological developments in industry which are central to England’s economic and national progress.84 The “showy cotton prints” may be seen as the products resulting from the industrialized, modern methods of processing raw materials (53). It is this notion of national progress based on technologically advanced machines that is partly put into perspective by the representation of the handloom weavers. On the intradiegetic level, Mr Sandboys goes on a guided tour of Manchester. He visits “the top of [a] house” where there are “rooms crowded with crazy old looms” (56). There is also a band of grim, hollow-cheeked, and half-starved men, toiling away for a crust – and nothing more. Mr. Sandboys started back in horror, as he looked at the pinched faces and gaunt figures of the workers. He asked why they were not […] at the Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations. ‘Ha! ha! ha!’ laughed out one. ‘last week I earnt [sic] three and ninepence, and this week I shall have got two and a penny. Exhibition of Industry! let them as wants to see the use of industry in this country come and see this here exhibition.’ ‘I warrant it’ll beat all nations hollow,’ cried another. (56)

83 Mersmann shows that synaesthesia is used to represent the Machine Court in 1851 (cf. 214). This also applies to the novel’s representation of Manchester. 84 “[S]team power […] was applied to textile manufacture in the 1830s and 1840s. Once steam- powered production was introduced into industry, its use grew quickly” (Steinbach 91).

70 The working-class characters’ utterances are significant because they undercut both the expository elements and the spectacular representation of Manchester regarding the discourse on national progress. Since the workers are “handloom weavers” and operate “old looms” (56), they can be considered to belong to a dated occupation which had been made “‘redundant’” (Mersmann 213; own translation) by the Industrial Revolution and the new technology – such as the steam engine – it introduced (cf. Landon 34).85 Accordingly, these workers do not participate in national progress but are pauperized by the industrial developments (cf. Mersmann 237). The worker’s statement “‘let them as wants to see the use of industry in this country come and see this here exhibition’” not only self-consciously draws attention to the textual strategy of representing poverty on a metalevel (56). It even implies that industry with its technology means regress rather than progress to the weavers. Read in this vein, the remark “‘it’ll beat all nations hollow’” undermines the notion of supremacy and national pride articulated in connection with the opening of the Great Exhibition (56). The representation of the workers thus points to the ideological ruptures of 1851 in two respects: in a discourse-analytical reading, their protest against the Great Exhibition can be read as an instance where power runs bottom- up because the figural utterances on the level of story counter both the discourse on progress accompanying the Great Exhibition and the solution proposed to integrate the working classes offered in the expository passages. The weavers with their old-fashioned, ‘dated’ methods of production cannot be integrated in the discourse on progress and the textual construction of English national identity. This results in one of the ideological ruptures of 1851: ‘the’ working classes are too diverse and heterogeneous to be fully integrated into the conception of English national identity, and the solutions offered from a middle-class perspective – instigating the Great Exhibition instead of raising the wages – are not feasible and are hence exposed as mere rhetoric. Another ideological rupture of the text is that the weavers are fashioned as an exhibition of poverty (cf. Mersmann 236).86 Even though the workers’ figural utterances can be read as a critique of modern methods of production and as countering and contradicting the discourse on progress, their bottom-up speaking position is weakened: the text turns them into a spectacle to be looked at both on the intra- and extradiegetic

85 “Weaving was mechanized […], with power looms first appearing in cotton factories in the 1820s. Weaving had been a highly skilled […] task, but handloom weavers found their artisanal craft made obsolete and their social status and earnings capacity destroyed by the new powerlooms [sic], which […] were located in factories” (Steinbach 87). 86 Mersmann, however, does not concern himself with the ideological implications of this representation in relation to the expository passages.

71 level. The representation of the workers is focalized through Mr Sandboys: “Mr. Sandboys grew somewhat alarmed at the man’s manner, and not finding much gratification in the contemplation of misery […] he knew it was out of his power to mitigate, beckoned Inspector Wren away” (56-57). This reaction demonstrates that no answer to the side effects of industrial progress is given on the level of story. It also shows that there are various cultural differences and heterogeneous social groups which cannot be integrated into the textual formation of English national identity:87 the weavers form part of the working classes, yet they do not belong to the working-class labourers who operate the modern machines exhibited in the Crystal Palace. If there is “nothing […] so thoroughly English as that iron type of our indomitable energy to be found in the machinery”, as the text suggests regarding the machines displayed in the Crystal Palace, the handloom weavers do not belong to English national identity defined in this manner (137). The Sandboys are from the rural fringes of England and stand for dated social structures. In Mr Sandboys’s encounter with the handloom weavers, two social groups or types of otherness meet. These social and regional others cannot be integrated into the middle-class and urban conceptualization of Englishness the text propounds. The social groups, moreover, are too different or too alienated from each other to be unified in differing from the version of national identity propagated by the text.88 It is here that the textual limits of (rhetorically) forming English national identity through material culture can be seen. Since the readers on the extratextual level consume the text and also look at the workers from Mr Sandboys’s focalized perspective, they become complicit in gazing at the spectacle of poverty – from a ‘safe’ distance because the weavers are exhibited on the intradiegetic level. This can be considered another ideological issue of the text: it stages

87 Mersmann proposes that the handloom weavers are excluded from participating in society and concludes (cf. 237): “es [ist] unmöglich […], diese historischen Verlierer des Fortschritts in die menschheitsbeglückenden Konstrukte der Great Exhibition zu integrieren” (237). The reading above goes one step further: it relates the handloom weavers to the construction of English national identity and to the Sandboys. 88 This reading departs from Mersmann’s and Landon’s interpretations. Mersmann argues that the Sandboys metonymically stand for a large part of the population that has been de-rooted socially and is hence floating from one absurd situation to another (cf. 237). The interpretation in the study on hand sees the Sandboys as being a rural type of otherness rather than as fulfilling a metonymic function. If the Sandboys are interpreted in this fashion, the encounter with the handloom weavers reveals different types of otherness, which is not possible in Mersmann’s reading. According to Landon, Mr Sandboys travelling on to London “instead of drawing support for his skeptical [sic] outlook [on the Great Exhibition] from the destitute handloom weavers” in Manchester shows that the Sandboys’ “journey towards London” can be read as moving “towards cultural conformity” (34). This interpretation runs counter to the reading presented above.

72 industrial poverty for the implied readers whom it conceives of as being middle-class. In making an exhibition of the workers, then, the text may be seen in line with Mayhew’s nearly contemporaneous journalistic writing London Labour and the London Poor: both London Labour and the spectacle of industrial poverty were conceptualized as travelogues for middle-class readers (cf. Tetzeli 1992, 10-12).89 This, too, weakens the workers’ speaking position on the intradiegetic level and once more points to the ideological fissures of 1851. The ideologically ‘problematic’ exhibitionary aspect can also be observed in one advertisement and two illustrations which accompany the novelistic text. In the second monthly number, Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor and its illustrations are advertised. The advertisement displays a character featuring in London Labour. The spectacular representation of the handloom weavers is also contained in the same number. This, it can be argued, not only shows that London Labour and the representation of the weavers are structurally and ideologically kindred regarding their journalistic and exhibitionary strategies. It also suggests that ‘the London poor’ can be exhibited and marketed as a commodity in the monthly number aiming at middle-class readers. This further undermines the speaking position of the workers on the level of story. The highly ambivalent way of representing the working classes in 1851 can also be seen in the fifth monthly part. This number features a foldout page with an illustration by George Cruikshank. It is called “The first Shilling-day – going in” (cf. fig. 6). The text in the fifth number aims at integrating the working classes into its concept of English national identity and even evinces idealizing tendencies in representing the working-class visitors at the Great Exhibition: “[t]he shilling folk […] at least […] know something about the works of industry, and what they do not know they have come to learn” (160). Similarly, the text asserts that the working-class visitors “have come to look at the Exhibition, and not to make an exhibition of themselves” (160). At the same time, however, the monthly number provides an illustration that draws on and caters to stereotypes of the working classes in an exaggerated manner: an ‘unruly’ mass of visitors is rushing towards the gates of the Crystal Palace on the first shilling day (cf. fig. 6).90

89 Concerning Mayhew’s journalistic writing that was made into London Labour and the London Poor, Tetzeli states: “[a]ll diese […] Beschreibungen erfolgen aus bürgerlicher Sicht und in bürgerlichem Interesse” (1992, 10) – “als […] Reisebericht in ein fremdes Land […], von dem die wohlhabenden Schichten keine Kenntnis haben” (1992, 11-12). 90 Regarding middle-class fears of the working-classes visiting the Crystal Palace on the first shilling day, see Auerbach 128; Codell 222 and Pearson 185-186.

73 The novelistic text also explicitly links the illustration to “George Cruikshank himself” (153).91 By highlighting the connection between textual and visual representation and stating that, on the first shilling day, there are no ‘unruly’ masses rushing in but orderly visitors, the text draws attention to the discrepancy between these media (cf. 153). The way in which the illustration exhibits or imagines the working classes is in stark contrast to the textual representation. This discrepancy between text and illustration can be seen as a means to entertain middle-class readers. The second illustration on the foldout page can be read in a similar fashion. It serves as the companion piece to the first illustration and is called “The first Shilling-day – coming out”. In the group of people represented here, some men are trying on top hats or, in the centre of the illustration, are already displaying them (cf. fig. 7). The men have also dropped their old hats (cf. fig. 7). Likewise, a woman in the centre is flaunting a shawl, another woman in the right corner is being helped into a large shawl, and the vendor in the left corner is holding out yet another shawl to the group assembled outside the Crystal Palace (cf. fig. 7). He is also offering a pair of gloves to the bare-handed members of the working classes (cf. fig. 7), who have cast off their old gloves in front of the Crystal Palace (cf. fig. 6). Top hats were an attribute of the middle classes in the nineteenth century (cf. Loschek 123), and the choice of a woman’s shawl was indicative of her social position (cf. Anonymous in Cunnington 456):92 shawls were “typical of women’s dress in the upper and middle-classes” (Boucher-Rivalain 214). “[G]loves were the mark of a lady or gentleman” (Tortora/Keiser 187). Therefore, the working-class visitors who have visited the Exhibition on shilling day can be argued to try and do away with difference in class and adopt a middle-class status by consuming material objects charged with meaning. This can be related to two ideas accompanying the Great Exhibition: the first notion is the middle-class discourse on rational recreation. It held that

91 This can be seen as branding which advertises the illustration by mentioning its creator. George Cruikshank had become a well-known artist by 1851, who had worked with the Mayhew brothers before and had also provided illustrations for other writers – especially for those publishing novels in monthly parts (cf. Patten 1996, 264-266; cf. Elwell 387; cf. Burton 107-108; 116-117; 124- 127). The illustration “LONDON, in 1851” in the second monthly number works in a similar fashion. A sign saying “‘1851’ BY Henry Mayhew and George Cruikshank” is held up in the crowd of people heading to the Great Exhibition. This advertises the novel by linking it to the Exhibition and mentioning its creators, both of whom were well-known to mid-Victorian readers (cf. Patten 1996, 299). Several reviews in the second monthly number engage in branding. They suggest that Henry Mayhew and George Cruikshank are well-known figures (cf. fig. 1-2). The Exeter Flying Post, for instance, states: “‘[t]he names of the authors are a guarantee that the work will display much merit’” (fig. 2). 92 The observation regarding the top hats is owed to Prof Feldmann, who pointed out the significance of these material objects.

74 the working classes could be educated or ‘improved’ if they engaged in ‘edifying’ free time activities (cf. Steinbach 140; 212; cf. Bailey 6; cf. Beaven 18-19). This discourse also surfaces in the claim raised for educating the working classes in the novelistic text (cf. 154-155; 157; 160).93 The second idea is that integration could be achieved if different classes mingled at the Great Exhibition (cf. Auerbach 154). If the second illustration is related to “The first Shilling-day – going in”, to the discourse on rational recreation and the idea of “social mixing”, it visualizes a narrative development inherent in the two pictures (Auerbach 151): it suggests that the members of the working classes who have rushed towards the gates of the Crystal Palace in the first illustration have now been educated by visiting the Great Exhibition. The working-class visitors have consequently abandoned their ‘unruly’ behaviour – this is symbolized through the hats scattered on the ground – and ‘don’ a higher social status (cf. fig. 7). Contrary to the novelistic text where the handloom weavers present a social group that cannot be accommodated in the formation of English national identity, the second illustration seemingly tells a story of success. And yet, since the illustration is paired with an exaggerated representation of the working classes in “The first Shilling-day – going in”, it mocks the members of the working classes who attempt to gain middle-class status. By visualizing social difference in two illustrations and in accentuating the status of the illustrations as commodities themselves through the foldout format, this difference is offered to the readers as an object of consumption.94 If difference in class is staged to be consumed by middle-class readers, another ideological rupture which counters the integrative rhetoric deployed in the expository elements is revealed. This shows that, while using the Great Exhibition as an event and its material culture as a means to negotiate English national identity and while trying to integrate ‘the’ working classes, the version of English national identity propounded in 1851 proves to be middle-class and cannot overcome differences in class.

93 “The origins of rational recreation lay in the instruction and improvement societies that were formed as an antidote to the emergence of working-class political agitation during the 1830s and 1840s” (Beaven 18). Through rational recreation, middle-class reformers hoped to “‘improve’ the working class[es]” (Beaven 18) by “educating” them (Bailey 35) in middle-class values and teaching them middle-class ideas about how to spend leisure time in a respectable manner (cf. Bailey 35; cf. Steinbach 153). “Abstinence and edification” were central tenets of this discourse (Bailey 6). Lectures were one example of rational recreation (cf. Beaven 18; cf. Steinbach 212). Visiting the Great Exhibition can also be seen in this context (cf. Steinbach 156). 94 George Cruikshank’s shilling day illustrations can be related to two illustrations published in Punch in 1851: “The Pound and the Shilling: ‘Whoever Thought of Meeting You here?’” and “Dinner-Time at the Crystal Palace”. These illustrations also play with social difference and the working classes at the Great Exhibition. See Auerbach 153-155 for a reproduction and discussion of these illustrations.

75 3 Consumption in Bleak House: Polyphony on Class and Middle-Class Gender Roles This chapter argues that consumption in Bleak House serves two functions. First, both narrative voices use discourses on consumption to conceptualize differences in class.95 These representations are relevant because they reveal the narrators’ middle-class perspective. They effect polyphony on different classes in quantitative terms.96 Within the middle-classes, moreover, Esther’s representations of consumption show that concepts of gender roles are diversified: several characters consume in a specific manner and interact with Esther. They comment on how they consume, and Esther’s narrative voice evaluates this. On the level of story, the consuming characters articulate different concepts. Yet their voices are contained because they are subject to the narrative voice on the discourse level. The plot is meaningful, too: Esther’s narration follows to the end the individual accounts of causally connected events which are linked to the consuming characters (cf. Forster 60). This is another strategy to evaluate the concepts. Within the bounds of the narrative voice, then, this creates polyphony regarding concepts of gender roles. Regarding the terminology, the concept of classes is used to refer to socioeconomic groupings which share certain values, notions of status and education (cf. Day 9-10; cf. Steinbach 125). Gender roles are defined as behavioural patterns which are expected from men or women (cf. Feldmann/Habermann 158). They are historically specific sociocultural formations and shape gender identity if they are internalized (cf. Feldmann/Habermann 158-159; cf. Wende 141). Different concepts of gender roles can therefore be considered “options for” identification (Assmann 2012, 204). Within different fields of action in the novelistic text, expectations of the behaviour which a character is supposed to show may be at variance with each other (cf. Feldmann/Habermann 159). This leads to conflicts between gender roles (cf. Feldmann/Habermann 159). Accordingly, gender roles are variable formations and can be negotiated (cf. Feldmann/Habermann 159). The term polyphony is borrowed from

95 As Rajan observes, “[t]he atypical narrative strategy of […] Bleak House […] represents one of the novel’s most distinctive formal features. This formal feature has not lacked in critical attention” (64). So far, however, no attempts have been made to examine the two narrative voices with regard to representations of material culture or consumption. Wicke discusses the heterodiegetic narrator in connection with advertising but does not take into account Esther’s role in the overall representation of material culture in the novel (cf. 46-47). Blain rightly stresses that the significance of the two narrators has to be taken into consideration when reading Bleak House (cf. 31-32). 96 Collins “regard[s] the Esther experiment as a failure” (1971, 33). This statement greatly underrates the structural relevance the two narrative voices have in Bleak House.

76 Bakthin but is used metaphorically here. For Bakhtin, polyphony designates “[a] plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses […] with equal rights” (6). It is “the plurality of” voices and “consciousness-centers not reduced to a single ideological common denominator” (Bakhtin 17). In this study, polyphony does not mean that the characters’ voices are equal since they are filtered by the narrative voices. Polyphony is seen as multiperspectivity and called polyphony because there is an interplay between the articulations made by the narrative voices, characters and paratext. As the analyses in the following will show, different concepts of gender roles are presented by consuming characters. The paratext of Bleak House partly agrees and partly breaks with the representations offered by the novelistic text, which also contributes to polyphony.

3.1 The Heterodiegetic Narrator: Representing Classes through Consumption The narrative voice uses consumption to represent different classes in the novelistic society. The details the narrator provides about Lady Dedlock and Jo suggest that it is a heterodiegetic narrator. Conceptualizing the narrative voice in this way implies that the narrator has an outside perspective on the characters and can, seemingly, provide reliable information on the aristocracy and the urban poor. However, the analyses will demonstrate that the narrative voice is biased: it reduces the characters to types and portrays them as representatives of their class. It also deploys discourses on consumption to shape the readers’ perception of the characters and the classes they belong to.

3.1.1 The Aristocracy: Othering Lady Dedlock through Luxurious Material Objects Lady Dedlock stands for the aristocracy. To point out social difference, the narrative voice uses consumption metonymically and presents a detailed list of the goods she consumes. The narrative voice thus others Lady Dedlock and distances itself from the aristocracy.97 The narrative voice rhetorically connects Lady Dedlock’s social environment to consumption. It states that the aristocracy is “a world wrapped up in too much jeweller’s cotton and fine wool” (17).98 This image is a metonymy for a class which, the text implies, has become alienated from society: if “cotton and […] wool” are used to cushion pieces of jewellery, the aristocracy can be considered to be isolated from other classes since it is

97 In a narrow sense, metonymy is “[a] figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something else closely associated with it”; the term is here used “in a wider sense” and “involves establishing relationships of contiguity between two things” (Baldick 206). 98 The edition quoted here is: Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. 1996. Ed., introd. and notes Stephen Gill. Oxford: OUP, 2008.

77 “wrapped up in too much […] cotton and […] wool” (17). Therefore, it “cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds” (17). In creating this image of a social microcosm, the narrative voices distances itself from the class Lady Dedlock belongs to. Social difference is hinted at in a remark the narrative voice ascribes to two jewellers. Making them talk about Lady Dedlock can be seen as a narrative strategy to represent social difference. The jewellers characterize her as a consumer. “‘If you want to address our people,’ say Blaze and Sparkle the jewellers – meaning by our people, Lady Dedlock and the rest – ‘you must remember that you are not dealing with the general public’” (21).99 The jewellers emphasize that “‘our people’” are a group of customers that differs from “‘the general public’” (21). If jewellers sell expensive commodities, the difference manifests itself in the customers’ affluence that allows them to consume luxurious objects. The narrative voice interrupts the jewellers. It interpolates “meaning by our people, Lady Dedlock and the rest” to specify the expression “‘our people’” (21). Highlighting that Lady Dedlock is one of the customers the jewellers serve and calling them “the rest” has two effects (21): the remark reduces Lady Dedlock to a stereotype the narrative voice takes to be representative of aristocratic consumers. If realistic narrative styles are characterized by “extended description […] and […] detail”, reducing Lady Dedlock to a stereotype can be considered a non-realistic strategy of representation which is deployed as a means of othering this character (Levine 2013, 84).100 Furthermore, the deprecatory tone of voice suggests that the narrator disproves of the aristocracy. The narrator presents a list of the goods Lady Dedlock consumes. This can be seen as another strategy of othering. [E]very […] little star revolving around her, from her maid to the manager of the Italian Opera, knows her weaknesses, prejudices, follies, haughtinesses, and caprices […]. Is a new dress, a new custom, a new singer, a new dancer, a new form of jewellery, a new dwarf or giant, […] a new anything so be set up? There are deferential people, in a dozen callings, […] who can […] manage her as if she were a baby; who do nothing but nurse her all their lives […]. (21)

“Italian Opera” and “jewellery” are key words because they show what kind of goods Lady Dedlock consumes (21). Both implicitly characterize her as being well-to-do since

99 Wicke interprets Bleak House in terms of social readings of advertisements and argues that the novel “registers a world whose elite is a veritable construct of advertisement, and whose political horizons are regimented by advertising parameters” (46). She deals with this quotation, too, and puts forward that “Lady Dedlock is portrayed as being so immersed in the system of social reading that she cannot see anything else; her life is predicated on fashion and artificial, advertising- induced desires” (47). The interpretation offered above is not concerned with reading advertisements into the novelistic text. Instead, it takes as its point of departure how Lady Dedlock’s practices of consumption are represented by the narrative voice. 100 Stereotypes are “simplified […] notions of seemingly representative features of a group of people” and are used in “strategies of othering” (Dencovski 19; own translation).

78 she is able to afford costly performances and material objects. “[T]he Italian Opera” (21) also stands for high culture (cf. Krug 194) and was associated “with upper class forms of leisure” (Wilson 2007, 251).101 By referring to the Italian opera, the narrative voice establishes Lady Dedlock’s difference in class through consumption and distinctions made between different forms of contemporary culture: visiting the Italian opera was regarded as a high cultural form of entertainment at mid-century.102 By contrast, the monthly parts in which, for instance, Bleak House appeared were considered popular culture because the monthly parts at a shilling were affordable for a large number of people (cf. Turner 117).103 Lady Dedlock thus differs from the middle-classes because of the entertainments she consumes. If popular culture was seen as the other of high culture in the mid-Victorian period, mentioning the Italian Opera is a strategy of othering Lady Dedlock through her practices of consumption (cf. Krug 194). “[T]he Italian Opera […], new custom, […] new singer, […] new dancer, […] new dwarf or giant” which are “set up” can be considered special events which are staged to be consumed (21). The anaphora in the list supports this reading: “new” is repeated with every object or event that is added to the list (21). It suggests that the events Lady Dedlock consumes are short-lived, ephemeral forms of consumption. The enumeration peaks in “a new anything” (21). This underpins the notion of the fast-paced way in which she consumes since it implies that Lady Dedlock is constantly looking for more or novel events. The “new dwarf or giant” can be interpreted in this vein, too (21): humans who were shorter or taller than average were displayed at fairs or so-called freak shows because they were thought to embody physical difference (cf. Craton 26-27; cf. Diamond 9).104 Thus, they presented a “bodily spectacle” (Craton 26) that was staged for consumption in popular culture (cf. Craton 25): physical difference was displayed as an entertainment which was accessible for and accessed by a large number of people (cf.

101 “During the period from the 1780s to the 1820s, aristocratic influence at the opera intensified, with the nobility not only attending operas but playing an important role in financing […] the art form in London” (Wilson 2007, 251). Wilson argues that “Italian opera […] was […] regarded by the middle classes as […] a […] vehicle for gratuitous vocal display rather than a serious form of art” (2007, 252). 102 It is important to note that opera had not always been seen as high culture: it was depopularized in the eighteenth century and ascribed a high cultural function after that (cf. Krug 194). On the strategies which were used to fashion opera as high culture, see Storey 33-34. 103 Popular culture “refer[s] to those […] forms of entertainment and leisure activity that are common to the general population […]. Within the Victorian context, scholars see these as including […] everyday activities and objects of pleasure and leisure such as street ballads, broadsides, [and] melodrama” (Denisoff 136). Dickens’s monthly parts are also popular culture because they were available to a large audience. 104 Physical difference had already been displayed at fairgrounds before the nineteenth century; its display continued into the nineteenth-century (cf. Craton 25).

79 Craton 25-27). That Lady Dedlock consumes dwarfs or giants is not so much a contradiction to attending Italian Opera performances but another way of characterizing her implicitly through an ‘object’ of consumption (cf. 21). If Lady Dedlock is interested in “a new dwarf or giant” that is “to be set up” apart from going to “the Italian Opera” (21), this shows how intent she is on consuming some event to be entertained incessantly, irrespective of the cultural prestige the event carries as long as it abates her feeling of boredom (cf. 18). This obsession with consumption tallies with the anaphora “new” and ties in with her “caprices” (21). Her capricious nature is only one of several traits of character the narrative voice mentions to characterize Lady Dedlock (cf. 21): “weaknesses, prejudices, follies, haughtinesses” all connote negative traits of character (21). This, and the fact that they are given in the plural form, can be considered to discredit Lady Dedlock. Similarly, the metonymy which equates the solar system with Lady Dedlock’s environment serves to represent her as egocentric: the “people” serving her are “little stars revolving around her” (21). She is also infantilized because she can be “manage[d]” like “a baby” that needs to be “nurse[d]” (21). Thus, the character is represented as malleable. The list of goods here serves to foreground a few of Lady Dedlock’s traits of character. Highlighting these traits further reduces her to a number of stereotypes. In consistently using stereotypes to represent Lady Dedlock and by speaking about her in an opinionated manner, the narrative voice precludes polyphony on the aristocracy and others this class from what will later be revealed as a middle-class perspective.

3.1.2 The Urban Poor: Othering Jo through Discourses on Consumption The urban poor are also represented by means of a type: “Jo lives […] in a ruinous place, known to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-alone’s” (235). “[T]he like of him” shows that the narrative voice uses Jo as a type who is representative of the slum dwellers (235). The narrative voice states the slum with “tumbling tenements” is “avoided by all decent people” (235). It marks off this area socially, morally and spatially. Like the aristocracy’s microcosm, the slum is another district which is socially and spatially removed from the other classes. The narrative voice also draws on consumption to represent Jo: it uses shops to represent him as an outsider to society.105 Moreover, it takes up economic and colonial

105 This argument follows Wicke. She proposes that Jo “is outside the circle of social functioning” (46) and “unable to participate in any form of social reading” (47).

80 discourses to reflect on his situation. While the narrative voice is able to provide detailed information on Lady Dedlock, it can only speculate about Jo:106 It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through the streets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the meaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops, and at the corners of the streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! (236)

If the “mysterious symbols” which are visible “over […] shops”, “at the corners of the streets”, “on […] doors” and “in […] windows” are shop signs, advertisements or price tags (236), Jo cannot participate in consumption because he is not able to read (cf. Wicke 46-47).107 Since the “symbols” have a “meaning” (236), they can be considered semiotic signs or, as Wicke puts it, “codes” (47). It is significant that the narrative voice approaches Jo through shops and foregrounds that he cannot decipher their signs. This suggests that the narrative voice itself speaks from within a discourse on consumption. In this discourse, being able to make sense of signs is part and parcel of consumption.108 Therefore, the narrative voice relates to Jo through a semiotic approach on consumption. “It must be”, however, shows that the narrative voice can only tentatively speak about how being excluded from consumption is perceived by Jo (236). This points to the class the narrative voice belongs to: it has a middle-class stance because its knowledge of Jo’s perspective is limited and since it represents the aristocracy in a hostile tone of voice. It is from this middle-class perspective that Jo is the other because he does not participate in consumption. The narrative voice also draws on consumerist or economic discourses to describe Jo: “he is not a […] foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made article” (669). On the level of language, the words “foreign-grown”, “home-made” and “article” belong to the lexical field of economic or consumerist terms (669). The opposition between “foreign-grown” and “home-made” evokes the notion of goods which are imported for consumption from abroad and goods that are produced in the domestic economy (669).

106 Gill rightly points out that the narrative voice “is not quite omniscient” (2008a, xvi). 107 This observation agrees with Wicke insofar as it also proposes that Jo is excluded because he is not able to read (cf. 47). Wicke takes Jo to embody “social invisibility” which results in a “neglect of those who cannot make themselves seen” (46): “by his inability to penetrate the codes of shops windows, and signs – he is unable to participate in any form of social reading” (47). She therefore conceives of Jo and Lady Dedlock as contrastive characters (cf. Wicke 47). The reading offered here departs from Wicke in two respects: it is not concerned with practices of social reading but consumption, and it considers the role of the narrative voice in the representations of Jo and Lady Dedlock, which Wicke does not take into account. Robles, too, highlights “the importance of reading in capitalist exchanges” but does not explore this further (146). 108 Wicke writes that “Jo is blind to the readings he is meant to see” (47). This interpretation presupposes that the narrative voice is situated within a semiotic discourse on consumption. It is only from this vantage point that “Jo […] is meant to see” the signs (Wicke 47).

81 Here, the language of economy and consumption comes to metonymically stand in for social issues: Jo is a ‘product’ which is created by England’s domestic economy and developments in English society. That the slum dweller is ‘produced’ by the domestic economy can be seen in another phrase. The narrator alludes to agriculture and states: Jo is “the growth of English soil and climate” (669). If an “article” is the result of processes of production and if agriculture implies that crops or plants are cultivated carefully to obtain articles of food, it is ironic that these processes result in a “home-made” slum dweller (669). By using metonymy on the level of discourse, the narrator voices social criticism.109 The figurative language is thus also deployed to arouse the readers’ sympathy: if economic or agricultural processes result in a slum dweller, the text proposes, something is wrong with them. In being called an “article”, moreover, Jo is dehumanized and turned into an object (669). This can be interpreted as a blast against economic or social developments which cause alienation towards the poor. Like the aristocracy, then, the urban poor are represented by an opinionated narrative voice. Here, however, the narrative voice creates outrage over the situation of the urban poor rather than distancing itself from a well-off class it represents as being alienated from society. Yet at the same time, the narrative voice also inscribes Jo into a colonial discourse and others him.110 It emphasizes that Jo “is not a […] savage” (669). The savage is considered “primitive” or “undeveloped” in colonial discourses, for these discourses “take the West as norm and define the rest as inferior, different, deviant” (Torgovnik 21). Even though the narrative voice stresses that Jo “is not a […] savage”, it evokes the notion of the uncivilized other nevertheless (669; emphasis added): the character is associatively connected to ideas of otherness prevalent in colonial discourses. The representations of Lady Dedlock and Jo show that the narrative voice uses consumption figuratively to shape the readers’ perception of these characters and the classes they belong to. This and that the narrative voice deploys discourses on consumption to mark social difference indicates that consumption serves as a representational strategy on the level of narrative transmission: it creates ‘knowledge’ of

109 The observation on social criticism agrees with Mufti (cf. 78). 110 Robles provides an extended reading of the colonial discourse used here: “Bleak House presents London as an […] ethnological stage on which the social explorer […] exhibits the overlooked ‘home-made’ ‘savage.’ The […] city offers itself as a microcosm of Empire in which ethnological categories are endowed with new social significance, while literary exhibition attempts to reveal processes of urban concealment” (150-151). She does not, however, relate her reading to discourses on consumption.

82 social groups which are not middle-class and makes it possible to speak about them from a middle-class perspective. On the paratextual level, the advertisement for Kaye’s Worsdell’s Pills contributes to polyphony on class. It suggests that social differences can be overcome if the readers consume. The advert is particularly relevant because it appeared in the fifth monthly number of Bleak House, the very number in which Jo is represented as an outsider to society.111 Taking an upcoming general election as its point of departure, the advert acknowledges and explicitly broaches social difference. It states “the limitations of the Franchise will leave the great majority of you in the position of spectators rather than of actors in the GREAT NATIONAL DRAMA” (fig. 8). The advert here implies that a considerable number of readers will be excluded from voting since their possessions of land or money are not enough to allow them to vote (cf. Steinbach 44). The readers who are not eligible to vote can be argued to have something in common with Jo: they are excluded from the election since they ‘lack’ material possessions; Jo is excluded from society because he is penniless, not able to read and cannot participate in consumption. In the face of the election, the advert engages in nation building and uses consumption to bridge social and political differences. It insinuates that social differences can be eliminated if the readers buy Kaye’s Worsdell’s Pills to stay clear-headed when the election takes place (cf. fig. 8). “Here, at least, you are all […] on a level. On this point we enjoy UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, and every man, woman, and child have a vote. […] All […] that I will venture to do is, […] to recommend to your adoption KAYE’S WORSDELL’S PILLS” (fig. 8). Since the advert proposes that the readers should buy the pills, it is similarly concerned with possession as “the limitations of the Franchise” (fig. 8). If the readers acquire and possess the pills, the advert suggests, they will “all” be “on a level” and “enjoy UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE” irrespective of their social background (fig. 8). The readers thus need to consume in order to be equal in social terms: they have the vote or choice of buying or not buying, of consuming or not consuming, for they “enjoy UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE” in this decision (fig. 8). The equality that is evoked in the recommendation to adopt the pills is supported on the level of language (cf. fig. 8): the speaker of the advert addresses the readers as “FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN”, rhetorically includes them by using “we” and signs “Your […] Fellow-countryman” (fig. 8).

111 The advertisements in the monthly parts of Dickens’s Bleak House can be retrieved here: Worcester Polytechnic Institute, comp. “Bleak House.” Digital WPI. George C. Gordon Library. n.d. Web. 3 May 2020. .

83 The advert also testifies to political differences: “[w]hatever differences there may be on other points, all are agreed, that REFORM […] should BEGIN AT HOME” (fig. 8). “AT HOME” is ambiguous because it can be read as ‘national politics’ or ‘the private home’ (fig. 8). If these differences can be overcome by consuming, too, the advert implies that changes or “REFORM” in national politics start with individual consumers buying the pills for private use (fig. 8). Consuming on a private, individual level, the advert communicates, makes the nation a family: “every man, woman, and child have a vote” to consume the pills (fig. 8). By mentioning women and children as potential consumers, the advert proposes consumption not only as a way to straddle social and political differences but also differences in gender and age. In suggesting that social differences can be levelled by consuming, the advert differs from the novelistic text considerably. There, the heterodiegetic narrative voice draws on discourses on consumption to mark off from the middle-classes characters from the upper-classes and the poor. The narrative voice thus establishes and represents classes through consumption. Since the advertisement clashes with the novelistic text, polyphony on social difference is created: the discrepancy between the novelistic text and the advertisement is not resolved. That the advert proposes consumption as a solution to social difference ironically refracts how Jo is represented. While the notion of being excluded from an event that is important to society does align the readers with Jo, the readers still have enough money to afford Dickens’s monthly number as a commodity text and consume it in their leisure time. Jo, by contrast, is utterly destitute. This shows that social difference as it is embodied by Jo is not considered in the advertisement. Being a representative of the poor, Jo is exempt from the idea of a national family propounded in the advert. Taking into account that the advert does not include the poor in its nation building, it reverberates the representation of the handloom weavers in 1851. Like the advert engaging in nation building with the upcoming election, 1851 attempts to integrate the working classes into its conception of English national identity when the Great Exhibition takes place. Both texts, moreover, conceive of the respective event in theatrical terms, and in both texts the nation building or formations of English national identity have blind spots regarding social difference.

84 3.2 The Middle Classes: Probing Diversified Concepts of Gender Roles in Esther’s Autodiegetic Account Esther is both a character in her story and one of the narrative voices. As a mediating instance, she is positioned at the interface of the levels of story and discourse. She moves in a middle-class environment, hence observes how other characters consume and what concepts of gender roles they propagate. Since her account is narrated retrospectively, she can follow the characters she represents throughout the course of the plot. As an autodiegetic narrator, Esther presents and evaluates their concepts of gender roles. As will be seen in the following, Esther as an autodiegetic narrator has the function of presenting different concepts of gender roles. These concepts can be seen as “options for” identification regarding notions of gender roles (Assmann 2012, 204). Since Esther evaluates the concepts, these options are always already filtered by her narrative voice.

3.2.1 Esther as a Young Leisure Time Consumer Esther not only mediates how other characters consume; she also consumes herself. She is a young consumer and new in London (cf. 37). For her, consuming is a leisure time activity since she is “out for a walk” with other characters when she comes across the shops (58). Esther highlights “the brilliancy of shops” (73): “I admired […] the busy preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags […] groping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse” (60). Two aspects are relevant in this remark. It suggests that Esther consumes visually and it shows that social difference is staged as an object of consumption. Both aspects can be related to representations provided by the heterodiegetic narrator. The poor are turned into a spectacle because they are called “extraordinary creatures” and “admired” by Esther (60). While they are “groping […] among […] the rubbish” (60), they are “set before the public gaze as […] object[s] of […] admiration” (Simpson/Weiner 16: 164). Thus, the poor are staged or displayed in the street, and watching them is a pleasurable “show or entertainment” which can be consumed visually (Simpson/Weiner 16: 164). It is due to social difference that the poor are perceived as a spectacle by Esther: the “rags” the poor wear for their clothes show that they are destitute (60). If they appear “extraordinary” to Esther (60) or “unusual” and cause “astonishment”, the poor are construed in this manner because they are focalized by middle-class Esther (Simpson/Weiner 5: 614). Conceiving of the poor as a spectacle is reminiscent of the beggars and disabled characters who are staged in a spectacle of difference in 1851 (cf.

85 Mayhew/Cruikshank, 128). Regarding the urban poor, Esther’s figural perspective and that of the heterodiegetic narrator converge. Both connect them to consumption in that they highlight their difference: the poor are represented as not participating in consumption, hence as other, or they are regarded as a spectacle to be consumed visually. This underpins the middle-class stance from which both narrative voices represent consumption. Esther’s perspective on the poor also evinces an aspect of consumption which is morally ambivalent: she consumes the poor since they are socially different from her. Strictly speaking, then, she consumes human beings. In this respect, Esther resembles Lady Dedlock. Social difference, which the “rags” emblematize (60), and physical difference engender a “pleasure in looking” for the observer (Mulvey 11):112 both characters enjoy a visual spectacle that is constituted by human beings. Consuming social and physical difference thus means taking pleasure in a social status or physical state of a human being that is perceived as different from the status of the observer.113 This pleasure entails subjecting the observed to the gaze of the observer as well as objectifying and inferiorizing it. The ways in which Esther and Lady Dedlock consume is therefore ambivalent. They are, however, not the only characters to consume human beings. Mr Jarndyce does so, too. He conceives of Harold Skimpole as an entertainment: Mr Skimpole’s “off-hand professions of childishness and carelessness […] could not fail to give him pleasure” (220). This can also be considered a morally ambivalent form of consumption since Mr Jarndyce covers Mr Skimpole financially yet, as the text implies, does so because he sees him as an entertainment (cf. 262). The servant girl Mr Jarndyce gives to Esther as a present is another morally ambivalent example of how Mr Jarndyce deals with human beings (cf. 356). Charley is objectified because she is treated like a commodity which changes its owner in a transaction of gift making and receiving.114

112 Mulvey draws on Freud’s psychoanalytic concept of scopophilia to suggest that a pleasure in looking means “taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (8). The person who is being “looked at” is “displayed” to “the […] spectator” (Mulvey 11-12). Mulvey’s approach was developed in connection with film theory and has been criticized (cf. Neale 2; 4). Nevertheless, her concept can be structurally applied to literary texts because they, too, can evince power structures in their representations of looking. 113 Since Esther finds watching the poor interesting, her visual consumption is structurally reminiscent of slumming, a practice that entailed going on a tour of poor London areas and which served as “an […] entertainment for […] well-to-do Londoners” (Koven 1) in the late nineteenth- century (cf. Koven 1; 6). 114 Danahay proposes that the servant Esther receives is “a marker of her class position” (422). This ties in with the observation made above: if the servant is an ‘object’ which is presented to

86 Since Mr Jarndyce consumes and objectifies human beings, it can be argued that his behaviour, which scholars sometimes consider to stand for benevolence or selflessness, is by no means as exemplary as it appears to be.115 Esther admiring “the setting forth of shop windows” can be related to the semiotic approach the heterodiegetic narrator takes to shops (60). The shop windows make the objects behind the glass visually available but render them physically inaccessible (cf. Armstrong 2008, 3): they are “an almost invisible layer between the seer and the seen” (Armstrong 2008, 3). Thus, the shops attract Esther because the space behind the windows is being filled with objects which will be “mediated” by “glass” to her outside (Armstrong 2008, 3). Staging the objects behind glass and mediating them to the outside ascribes them a meaning (cf. Armstrong 2008, 3). Accordingly, the shop window becomes readable. Esther, then, consumes visually by looking at the objects behind the glass because they are meaningful. Contrary to Jo, she can make sense of the objects and ‘read’ the display that is staged behind the window. That objects which are arranged behind glass are attractive is spelt out by the heterodiegetic narrative voice. It represents male characters as “unaffected by the seductive show in the window” (294). Not only does this remark frame visual consumption as an activity which is coded feminine. It also insinuates that the array of exhibits behind shop windows is a semiotic set of objects which is meant to entice potential customers. With “seductive” (294) implying that it is possible to be “[led] astray” and therefore be “tempt[ed]”, the narrator’s remark suggests that the semiotics of shop windows can “lead astray” customers if they are overwhelmed by the display instead of reading it (Simpson/Weiner 14: 860). This notion of losing control also surfaces in the sexual connotation of “seductive” (294). The remark thus implies that female customers can be morally led astray through shop windows.116 Given

Esther to display her social position, the text here transposes structures of consuming material objects to human beings. 115 On Mr Jarndyce as a benevolent character, see Danahay 422. In most recent scholarship, Charley and Mr Skimpole have been analyzed in terms of network theory. Highlighting “Jarndyce’s charitable sympathy” (40) and benevolence (cf. 38), Grener and Parker suggest that these characters are part of “Jarndyce’s philanthropic orbit” (40). However, since Mr Jarndyce also objectifies them, the reading offered above shows that Mr Jarndyce cannot exclusively be seen as an exemplary or model character regarding morality and philanthropic ideas. Another strand in recent criticism is concerned with philanthropic discourses. Bivona rightly questions that Mr Jarndyce is a selfless philanthropist; he also points out and that his philanthropic behaviour towards other characters does not help them in the long run (cf. 38-39). However, Bivona does not read Mr Jarndyce as a consumer. 116 “Polite middle-class women shopped accompanied by a servant, male relation, or other chaperone; they did not appear in public alone. This was […] because the middle-class domestic ideal fit poorly with the figure of the urban consumer” (Steinbach 111) who was feared to turn into an “irrational and sensual shopper […] by a range of […] critics” (Rappaport 2001, 36).

87 that Esther watches how the shop windows are being arranged and sees how the semiotics are put on display (cf. 60), she does not run the risk of being “[led] astray” (Simpson/Weiner 14: 860). Nevertheless, she can only testify to the attraction of shop windows but cannot spell out their semiotic aspect. This is due to her internally focalized, limited figural perspective as autodiegetic narrator. The extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrative voice, by contrast, is located on the level of discourse, hence above and outside the level of story. Therefore, it is able to point out that it is ‘necessary’ to read the display as a semiotic arrangement and it can articulate what renders shop windows so attractive. The narrator’s middle-class speaking position thus complements that of Esther’s autodiegetic narration. The heterodiegetic narrative voice also introduces a metalevel on visual consumption if it is read alongside Esther’s account: it reflects on the attractive nature of shop windows. This shows how the two narrative voices interact regarding consumption. In offering a double perspective on consumption, the novel displays polyphony on its level of discourse. On the level of the paratext, two advertisements can be related to the novelistic text since they evince structural parallels to its discourse level; another advertisement can be discussed because it also offers human beings for consumption. These advertisements show that polyphony is not restricted to the content level of the novel and its paratext. The advertisement for Poulson and Company contributes to polyphony on visual consumption in structural terms: it represents the working mechanisms of visual consumption in a similar manner as the novel. The illustration of a shop front with large glass windows dominates the advertisement (cf. fig. 9). It catches the extratextual readers’ eyes and manipulates their gaze: the pavement and the shop sign displaying the name of the company are bright and stand out against the dark shop window (cf. fig. 9). They serve as intradiegetic framing devices and make the viewers focus on the shop front.117 The people on the pavement engage in window-shopping: they are looking at the objects behind the shop window (cf. fig. 9). Since they are turning their back on the readers, they direct their gaze to the semi-transparent windows where the shapes of coats are dimly visible (cf. fig. 9). The readers, who behold the scene in front of the shop window from an outside perspective and look at the window-shoppers inspecting the objects behind the glass, thus become complicit in their gaze. They are turned into window-shoppers, too, and consume the objects on display visually.

117 Jordan applies Genette’s concept of focalization to the illustrations of Bleak House (cf. 27-28). This approach is convincing and is also used to interpret the advert for Poulson and Company.

88 The advert shows how window-shopping and applying a semiotic approach to shop windows work: the people on the pavement and the readers of the advert can be argued to perceive the shop window in the paratext like Esther does on the novel’s intradiegetic level. Regarding the novelistic text, the readers follow the representation of the shop windows Esther gives on the discourse level and proceed in a similar manner when they look at the illustration of the advert. The text below the illustration can be argued to serve the same function as the heterodiegetic narrator. The latter articulates on the discourse level why shop windows attract the characters; the advertising text spells out what makes the glass front so interesting for intradiegetic and extratextual window-shoppers: the company offers an “OVER-COAT” which “is made of an extremely fine though durable cloth” and “has had but few precedents” (fig. 9). In explaining to the extratextual consumers why the people on the pavement are looking at the shop-window and by doing this in a written statement, the advertising text also parallels the heterodiegetic narrator who suggests that consuming and reading shop windows or signs are intertwined. Regarding the heterodiegetic narrator’s representation of consumption, there is a further parallel to the paratext. The illustration excludes the poor, for the pavement is mainly peopled with men in top hats, which shows they are from the middle or upper classes. While the advert thus only visualizes those customers on the intradiegetic level whom it seeks to address on the extratextual level, the novelistic text does deal with the poor yet both narrative voices represent them as being outsiders to consumption. This, it may be argued, points to polyphony regarding the ideological projects of the advert and novelistic text: the first needs to ensure that the readers identify with the intradiegetic window-shoppers because they are potential customers. The latter draws on consumption to represent the entire social spectrum and, as in the case of Jo, voice social criticism which may move the readers. While paratext and novelistic text are structurally kindred here, they differ in their goals. Since the advert and novelistic text share the same monthly part, hence the same material space, this points to a polyphonic aspect of how paratext and novelistic text address or tackle the readers of the monthly part. The second advertisement structurally resembles the novelistic text insofar as it shows on a visual level how shop windows attract customers. It can therefore be linked to Esther reporting on “the […] setting forth of shop windows” (60). While Esther only relates that the process captivates her attention, the advert for Barker and Company illustrates how this works. The illustration captures the shop window at an angle which is slightly narrower than in the advert for Poulson and Company (cf. fig. 10). The gentleman standing in the centre of the illustration directs the readers’ gaze to the shop

89 window (cf. fig. 10). The upper part of the window is not transparent; only some lamps inside the shop can be seen. The lower part reveals several material objects arranged behind the glass front (cf. fig. 10). The objects, however, cannot be discerned clearly: they are cut off on top because the reflection in the glass renders the window semi- transparent and hinders the intradiegetic window-shopper and the extratextual viewers from looking at the articles behind the glass in full length (cf. fig. 10). What can be seen of the objects is that they are crammed in the space behind the glass, which makes it difficult to focus on single articles (cf. fig. 10). The door of the shop is half open and serves as a peephole into the shop: it lets the viewers see a tailor or shop assistant trying a coat on a man (cf. fig. 10). Yet it does not help with identifying the objects arranged in the window. Therefore, two articles are depicted next to the illustration (cf. fig. 10). The drawings of these objects give their names and indicate how much they are (cf. fig. 10). These two objects are mentioned in the list of articles and prices below the illustration. The list can hence be argued to comprise those articles which are displayed in the shop window (cf. fig. 10). The articles which can only partly be seen in the semi-transparent window are thus made accessible through writing. The shop window, together with the list of articles and prices, highlights the process of mediation: since the shop window is only semi-transparent, it points to glass as a “third or middle term” (Armstrong 2008, 3). It is a mediating layer between inside and outside, between the objects on display and the visual consumers looking at them (cf. Armstrong 2008, 3). On this reading, the advert visualizes what holds Esther’s fascination and what she does not elaborate on in her account. The list of prices and articles takes over the mediating function of the glass front: being not quite transparent, it heightens the readers’ interest because it seems to conceal some aspects from them. The list conveys these pieces of information, complements the process of mediation in words and numbers and again shows that consumption and reading form a semiotic alliance: the process of mediation in the advert succeeds because the readers are able to read, can decipher the information the list provides and relate it to the illustration. In complementing the process of mediation, the list carries one step further what the heterodiegetic narrative voice does on the discourse level. It states that shop windows are attractive because they present a “seductive show” but does not explain what renders this “show” so “seductive” (294). On the structural level, then, the advert for Barker and Company engenders polyphony regarding the attractive nature of shop windows because it illustrates what the novelistic text does not describe. An advertisement published by Watherston and Brogden can be interpreted with regard to human beings who are visually consumed in the novelistic text. The goldsmiths

90 “announce to the Nobility, Gentry, and Public in general, that […] they have resolved to throw open their Manufactory to the public” (fig. 11). They consider this “a closer connexion than has hitherto existed between the real worker […] and the Public” (fig. 11). They open their manufactory “to establish confidence in the gold employed in the manufacture of chains, where at present the greatest uncertainty exists, owing to the prevalence of electro-gilt articles” (fig. 11). Since some vendors cheat their customers by selling them articles which are not made of gold, the goldsmiths are concerned with proving the authenticity and value of their chains (cf. fig. 11). They use the workers to vouchsafe for these aspects: “the processes of manipulation may be seen by those who are interested in the subject” so that “the purchaser will see […] the proportion charged for labour” (fig. 11). Thus, Watherston and Brogden advertise their jewellery by putting their workers on display. Since the customers are constructed as being “the Nobility, Gentry, and” other well-to-do people from the “Public in general”, this sales strategy entails exhibiting social difference (fig. 11). The workers carrying out manual labour may be ascribed to the working classes. They are consumed as spectacles by those people who belong to different, more affluent classes. This points to an ambivalent aspect of consumption: at a first glance, the advertisement revaluates the worker’s manual labour to set if off from mass-produced “electro-gilt articles” (fig. 11). Yet in doing so, it turns human beings into objects of visual consumption: the advert exposes the workers to the gaze of potential customers. Being watched inferiorizes the workers who, it may be assumed, do not have a say in this marketing strategy. In exhibiting human beings for consumption, the advert presents a parallel to Esther, Lady Dedlock and Mr Jarndyce since these characters consume human beings, too. Considering that the advert features in the same monthly number with the passages on Esther’s and Lady Dedlock’s forms of consumption, this similarity is particularly striking. On this reading, the advert does not contribute to polyphony on forms of consumption in the sense that it diverges from the novelistic text. It participates in polyphony because it presents another instance of consuming human beings and thus doubles the two narrative voices. Here, novelistic and paratext take the same line. And yet, the advert can be argued to create polyphony regarding the mid-Victorian discourse on progress if it is related to 1851. In Mayhew’s novel, the handloom weavers are a spectacle of poverty because their manual labour is no longer required; it has been replaced by modern machines which are capable of processing cotton on a large scale. The handloom weavers are losing out as a consequence of technological progress (cf. Mersmann 237). By contrast, Watherston and Brogden make a spectacle of their workers

91 and exhibit their manual labour. This is because the goldsmiths fear competitors who use modern means of mass-production in the jewellery trade. The advert hence suggests that the goldsmiths are afraid of falling behind in their sales and profits due to technological developments such as electro-gilding. When it is compared to the handloom weavers in 1851, the advertisement also shows the flipside of mid-Victorian discourses on technological developments or progress. It is in this respect that the advertisement engenders polyphony. That the findings pertaining to this advert and that for Kaye’s Worsdell’s pills can be related to 1851 speaks to different views on social difference and discourses on progress, hence to traces of polyphony which can be detected in the cultural climate of the mid-Victorian period.

3.2.2 Mrs Jellyby: A Satiric Account of the Businesswoman Mrs Jellyby is a mother of several children and runs a trade in coffee. The character contributes to polyphony on gender roles because she presents an alternative version to the mid-Victorian, middle-class concept of female gender roles. This concept is probed in the course of the plot. Esther plays a central role here: as a character, she witnesses how Mrs Jellyby consumes. Moreover, she embodies a concept of female gender roles, too. Her concept is opposed to that propagated by Mrs Jellyby, which renders them contrastive characters. As a narrator, Esther has the power to represent Mrs Jellyby’s concept. This means that Mrs Jellyby voices her ideas of female gender roles on the level of story, but her utterances and actions are contained in and subordinate to Esther’s narrative voice on the discourse level. Thus, it is because Mrs Jellyby’s alternative concept exists on the level of characters that polyphony regarding female gender roles can be postulated. When Esther, Ada and Richard visit Mrs Jellyby for the first time, she introduces herself by describing her coffee project: ‘You find me […], as usual, very busy […]. […] The African project at present employs my whole time. It involves me in correspondence with public bodies, and with private individuals anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country. […] We hope by this time next year to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred […] families cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger.’ (47-48)

Mrs Jellyby attaches great importance to her coffee project: she emphasizes that she is, “as usual, very busy” and that “[t]he African project employs” her “whole time” (47). If coffee is considered a consumer good that is imported to England to be sold and consumed there, Mrs Jellyby is a businesswoman who sets coffee circulating on the

92 domestic market. That she tells her daughter “‘you have a business example before you in your mother’” supports this interpretation (352).118 Mrs Jellyby’s household and children, by contrast, are not represented by this character but by Esther. She reports on the interior of the house in a reproachful tone of voice: “the windows were […] encrusted with dirt” (58), the rooms “were excessively bare and disorderly” (49), “[c]rumbs […] were all over the house” (59), and “the stair- carpets […] were so torn as to be absolute traps.119 We had a fine cod-fish, a piece of roast beef […], and a pudding; an excellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was almost raw” (50). She describes Peepy, who is Mrs Jellyby’s youngest child and representative of her children, in a similar manner. “Everything the […] child wore, was either too large for him or too small. […] [H]is legs, so crossed […] with scratches that they looked like maps, were bare, below a very short pair of plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different patterns” (199). This representation suggests that Mrs Jellyby does not look after her children and household, whereas she pays meticulous attention to the trade in coffee. The neglect which Esther implies can be contextualized through a middle-class discourse on female gender roles. It was prevalent at mid-century and conceived of middle-class women as mothers and household managers in an idealizing manner (cf. Loeb 42). As such, women were assigned duties in the domestic sphere (cf. Loeb 19), whereas “the public sphere [w]as reserved for men” (Schneider 149).120 This has come to be called the ideology of separate spheres.121 Since Mrs Jellyby is also concerned with “educating the natives of Borrioboola- Gha”, her concept of female gender roles raises questions of national identity (48). She engages in trade as a businesswoman and acts as a tutor for the African colony but not as

118 Carens reads Mrs Jellyby as a “professional woman” (126). 119 Carens considers the “[m]isplaced, misused, and broken objects” in Mrs Jellyby’s house to “signify a general disregard for the implements that […] enable the comforts of the ‘civilized’ domestic sphere” (127). Wood similarly attributes the material objects to Mrs Jellyby’s ‘neglectful’ conduct at home (cf. 452-453). This study reads these objects as being part of Esther’s narrative strategy. 120 More often than not, Mrs Jellyby is read as ‘deviating’ from or ‘transgressing’ middle-class conceptions of female gender roles which scholars take to be ‘normative’. Carens interprets Mrs Jellyby within the middle-class ideology of separate spheres. He accordingly ascribes the state of Mrs Jellyby’s children to her “inadequate mothering” (126). The argument put forward above insists that Mrs Jellyby presents an alternative to rather than a digression from this ideology. This is because conceiving of women as mothers and household managers is one of several discourses on female gender roles in the mid-Victorian period and “is hardly ever found in in a pure form in any of the discourses” (Schneider 148). 121 See Schneider 148-149 and Purchase 73-74 for a critical review of this ideology. They show that it is by no means as monolithic as it is sometimes considered to be.

93 a mother for her children.122 This concept of female gender roles has repercussions on national identity insofar as it links Mrs Jellyby’s business and consumption with bringing education to an African colony rather than with bringing up her children in her London home: if Borrioboola-Gha is a British colony and the Jellybys’ London home metonymically stands for the nation, Mrs Jellyby consumes for the benefit of a colony as a businesswoman. She does not act as a household manager and does not consume for her children, who symbolize the nation’s young generation and may be associated with its future. From this vantage point, Mrs Jellyby contributes to polyphony on female gender roles: she embodies an alternative concept to that of women as mothers and household managers and articulates the notion of a businesswoman in direct speech. And yet, it is only in Esther’s narration that Mrs Jellyby speaks. Her voice is thus contained in Esther’s narrative voice. On the level of discourse, Esther satirizes Mrs Jellyby’s household to police Mrs Jellyby’s concept.123 She deploys exaggerations and a non-realistic mode of representation:124 “the curtain to” Esther’s “window” is “fastened up with a fork” (49), during dinner “the dish of potatoes” is “mislaid in the coal skuttle” (50), and “wonderful things [come] out of the closets […] – bits of mouldy pie, […] odd boots and shoes […], firewood, […] books with butter sticking to the binding, […] heads and tails of shrimps” (442). Richard is reported to have “washed his hands in a pie-dish” and, during dinner, to notice “four envelopes in the gravy at once” (50). The exaggerated examples Esther gives of the household tally with the reproachful tone of voice she strikes to describe Peepy. Together with the non-realistic mode of representation, they suggest that something is wrong with Mrs Jellyby’s concept of female gender roles: she engages in trading coffee but does not commit herself to looking after her children and household. The function Esther’s representation of Mrs Jellyby’s house has can be related to that of the Sandboys’ parlour. In 1851, too, an interior space in the house is represented to signify that the protagonists deviate from the urban perspective on material culture the

122 Mrs Jellyby’s colonial venture has been discussed with reference to her ‘neglected’ home repeatedly. Carens, for instance, puts forward that Bleak House evinces “anxieties related to the location of philanthropic duties in the context of empire and the division of those duties into gendered spheres of influence” (122). Through Mrs Jellyby, he argues, the novel creates “a sub- plot that […] rebukes the woman who fails to manage her domestic sphere before acquiring other projects” (Carens 123). Since Carens has discussed Mrs Jellyby’s colonial project and her philanthropy exhaustively, these aspects will not be elaborated on here (cf. 122-128). Damkjær (cf. 33; 49) and Mufti broach this issue, too (cf. 77). 123 This proposition agrees with Carens; he argues that the novel “satirizes Mrs. Jellyby” (125). 124 A non-realistic mode of representation refers to features of settings which are unlikely to be encountered in reality (cf. Murfin/Ray 330).

94 text establishes. Both interiors thus communicate that the characters diverge from a perspective or concept of gender roles the respective novelistic text propounds with a view to creating identificatory options. If satire works to mark that its object of criticism deviates from a given norm and simultaneously points to that norm, Mrs Jellyby departs from the concept of the mother and household manager (cf. Lee 2006, 211). Esther, by contrast, stands for the norm: she looks after Mrs Jellyby’s children and household, hence embodies the role of surrogate mother and housekeeper (cf. 49-50; 442).125 While Esther also consumes, she does not do this professionally but as a leisure time activity which she engages in when she is not requested in the house and which is restricted to consuming visually. Since Esther and Mrs Jellyby embody different concepts of female gender roles, they can be seen as contrastive characters.126 These concepts are probed in the course of the plot. Esther becomes a housekeeper and consumes efficiently (cf. 81). By the end of the novel, she is married and a mother of two children (cf. 911). The plot developing around Esther thus closes in the conventional ending of Victorian marriage plots.127 Conceptualizing Esther as an autodiegetic narrator, is therefore significant: on the level of story, she embodies a concept of gender roles that agrees with mid-Victorian notions of female gender roles. Since autodiegetic narrators are the protagonists of the narration they transmit, constructing Esther in this way is a strategy which represents her concept as exemplary or as the yardstick by which she measures other concepts of female gender roles (cf. Genette 1983, 245). On the discourse level, Esther represents and evaluates these “options for” identification accordingly (Assmann 2012, 204). If heterodiegetic and autodiegetic narrators are two prominent ways of conceptualizing narrative voices in Victorian novels, the heterodiegetic narrator primarily serves to represent the intradiegetic society and its differences in class (cf. Tetzeli 1991, 456). Esther has the function of dealing with gender roles in a distinctly middle-class environment. Apart from creating polyphony in a quantitative sense, the two narrative voices also engender polyphony in that they deal with different aspects of the intradiegetic society they represent.

125 Esther has been interpreted as a housekeeper and mother figure at the Jellybys repeatedly (cf. Danahay 420-421; cf. Carens 128). This aspect will therefore not be elaborated on here. 126 Carens makes a similar point. He suggests that “Esther’s theory of reform” is the counterpart of “the satire on Mrs. Jellyby” (122). 127 Danahay argues in a similar way and states that “Esther […] is rewarded with marriage” (421). Plot here designates a larger structural pattern that encompasses specific developments or novelistic closures on the level of story (cf. Antor 604). On marriage as a form of novelistic closure, see Armstrong 1987, 6 and 47-48.

95 Mrs Jellyby’s coffee project fails (cf. 912). The character no longer departs from the implied norm by consuming. This can, on the one hand, be argued to devalue Mrs Jellyby’s alternative concept. On this reading, Mrs Jellyby’s concept is disproven, whereas Esther’s concept is represented as workable. On the other hand, however, Mrs Jellyby’s field of activity shifts from consumption to politics. At the end of the novel, Esther reports: “Mrs Jellyby […] has taken up with the rights of women to sit in Parliament” (912). Another concept of female gender roles emerges here. This concept, too, deviates from the norm constructed by Esther’s narrative voice. Mrs Jellyby, then, continues to inscribe into the text an alternative concept which, however, is also contained within Esther’s narrative voice.128 The corollary to this reading is that both Esther and Mrs Jellyby contribute to polyphony on female gender roles. This is because the characters embody different concepts which cannot be reconciled. It is, however, polyphony within bounds and on the level of the characters: Esther devalues Mrs Jellyby’s concept on the level of discourse. She does not allow Mrs Jellyby’s concept to be equal to hers. In presenting different concepts and probing them, the novel participates in mid-Victorian discourses on female gender roles. The advertisements accompanying the novelistic text participate in these discourses, too. They tackle female readers by ascribing them the functions of housewives or mothers but they also address them as leisure time consumers. The paratext contributes to polyphony in that it presents different concepts of female consumers. It does, however, not construe of female gender roles in a way that resembles Mrs Jellyby’s concept. The first and tenth monthly number come with an advertisement for the guidebook Home Truths for Home Peace; or, Muddle Defeated. If guidebooks have a didactic concern, this suggests that the readers of the book are meant to take on tenets which are mediated in the guidebook. The advert follows this didactic outlook: it represents the role of mothers or housewives as a norm but simultaneously hints at concepts of female gender

128 Another female character that contributes to polyphony on female gender roles is Miss Wisk. She refutes the middle-class ideology of separate spheres. Ironically, she does so during the breakfast held on Caddy Jellyby’s wedding day. Esther relates: “indeed, Miss Wisk informed us, with great indignation, […] that the idea of woman’s mission lying chiefly in the narrow sphere of Home was an outrageous slander on the part of her Tyrant, Man” (444-445) and “that the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation of Woman from the thraldom of her Tyrant, Man” (445). As the capitalized words “Home”, “Tyrant” and “Man” and the use of evaluative words like “narrow sphere” and “outrageous slander” indicate, Miss Wisk explicitly spells out a critique of the ideology of separate spheres (444-445). Miss Wisk’s utterance can hence be read as another voice in the novel’s polyphony on female gender roles. This is overlooked in studies dealing with female gender roles in Bleak House; one example of this is Danahay’s interpretation (cf. 423).

96 roles which depart from the conception the guidebook propagates. It points to a norm in describing the guidebook and establishes what may be seen as binary oppositions: the description calls the guidebook an “INQUIRY INTO WHAT […] MARS OR MAKES […] DOMESTIC LIFE” (fig. 12). The binary rhetoric follows the rhetoric opposition in the title of the book. The title opposes “HOME PEACE” to “MUDDLE” which needs to be “DEFEATED” (fig. 13). These binaries suggest that “[MAKING] […] DOMESTIC LIFE” and creating “HOME PEACE” is desirable (fig. 12). They also imply that creating “MUDDLE” (fig. 13) and “[MARRING] […] DOMESTIC LIFE” (fig. 12) should be avoided because they do not “lead to Domestic Happiness” (fig. 13). If “Domestic Happiness” is a goal the female readers of the guidebook are supposed to achieve and if this is attained by adopting certain gender roles, the advertisement presents concepts of women as mothers or housekeepers as normative (fig. 13). It does so by quoting reviews of the book which were published in newspapers or journals. It compiles several critical voices of the press, which may be seen as pointing towards polyphony on the concepts propounded by the guidebook in a quantitative sense. The reviews serve to further advertise the book and lend force to the advert. One review claims that “‘female readers cannot fail to become efficient housekeepers and exemplary wives and mothers’” if they read the guidebook (fig. 12). Another exhorts women to read the book since it is “‘[f]ull of golden truths, which ought to be read […] by every housewife’” (fig. 13). In using ‘ought to’ when articulating the imperative and by recommending the book to housewives, the review presents this concept of female gender roles as a norm (cf. fig. 13). A review which recommends the guidebook because it serves to “‘diffuse practical Christianity amongst the middle class social circles’” shows that ascribing women the role of mothers or housekeepers is represented as a middle-class idea (cf. fig. 13). And yet, the fact that the advert and the reviews are so intent on recommending the guidebook implies that there are indeed notions of female gender roles which are alternatives to the concepts represented as normative in the advert. The reviews themselves hint at alternative conceptions: one suggests that the book should be given to women “‘as a proper reward, or […] warning caution’” (fig. 13). In behavioural terms, this review proposes that women who comply with the norm should be rewarded by having their practices sanctioned when reading the book, whereas those women who depart from the norm need to be cautioned so as not to slide into ‘muddle’. Both reasons for buying the book thus aim at strengthening or reinstating the ‘normative’ concept of women as housekeepers, wives or mothers. Another review indicates that there is

97 ‘muddle’ in some homes. It praises the book because it is an antidote to ‘muddle’. “‘Muddle is treated to a sharp analysis, and the means of putting an end to its empire in the family are clearly […] pointed out’” (fig. 13). It is interesting that neither the review nor the title of the guidebook nor the advert as a whole specify what ‘muddle’ is; it is just opposed to “HOME PEACE”, forming another binary (fig. 13). Therefore, ‘muddle’ might be argued to stem from those notions of female gender roles which differ from the concept the advert endorses. Regarding the interplay of novelistic and paratext, it is notable that the advertisement in the first and tenth monthly number appears in the “Bleak House Advertiser” and precedes the novelistic text. If the readers of these monthly parts peruse the advertisements before they move on to the novelistic text, they come across the advert for Home Truths for Home Peace before they are confronted with the representations of Mrs Jellyby’s family and house. On the one hand, this underpins Esther’s critical narrative voice and supports the norm she constructs by representing herself as a housekeeper and surrogate mother for the Jellyby children. On the other hand, however, the novelistic text can be seen as a space where an alternative concept of female gender roles can be explored. This is because the representations are contained in two ways: they are contained in Esther’s narrative and, in its turn, Esther’s narrative is a textual construct. The novel can thus explore and probe an alternative concept in a restricted space and at a safe distance from the extratextual level. Mrs Jellyby’s household and family can hence be argued to almost parody or poke fun at the advert with its reviews of the didactic publication and the monolithic concept of middle-class female gender roles they tend to endorse. Esther’s satire of the ‘muddle’ in Mrs Jellyby’s household in its turn arrests the concept Mrs Jellyby embodies and thus attenuates the polyphony between the novelistic text and the paratext. An advertisement for Rowland’s Kalydor contributes to polyphony not only because it targets female readers as leisure time consumers. It thus shows that female readers are not exclusively construed as housewives or mothers in the paratext. It also contributes to polyphony on male gender roles since it suggests that men consume, too. Moreover, in drawing on an Orientalist discourse, the advert also creates polyphony regarding the heterodiegetic narrative voice of Bleak House on the discourse level. With its bold, eye-catching lettering, the name of the product attracts the readers’ attention (cf. fig. 11). It promises a “SKIN SOFT, CLEAR, AND FAIR” because it “dissipates all […] cutaneous visitations so inimical to FEMALE BEAUTY” (fig. 11). The product can be considered a commodity which is not essential to daily life: the

98 product claims to give women a “BEAUTIFUL COMPLEXION”, hence to ‘improve’ their outer appearance (fig. 11). Moreover, it is not cheap: the bottles of Rowland’s Kalydor are “[s]old […] at 4s. 6d. and 8s. 6d. each” (fig. 11). This is four to eight times the price of Dickens’s monthly parts which were “sold for a shilling” (Bowen 46). The advert is hence directed at readers who belong to a socioeconomic group that can afford to spend this amount of money on a non-essential cosmetic product. They can consume the product in their leisure time because they are financially situated in a way that allows them to be concerned with commodities. Not only, however, does the advert target female readers. It is also addressed at male readers: the product is supposed to do away with “cuticular irritation” after “shaving” (fig. 11). The advert as a paratextual element therefore does not exclusively conceive of leisure time consumers as being female. If this advert is read in a way that anticipates the concept of male gender roles Richard Carstone embodies, it engenders polyphony because it departs from the novelistic text which disproves Richard’s concept. While the advert does point to both female and male readers as leisure time consumers, it mainly targets female readers nevertheless: compared to the lines dealing with male consumers, about double the amount of lines advertising the product is about its effects on “FEMALE BEAUTY” (fig. 11). This, in turn, tallies with the novelistic text where Lady Dedlock consumes expensive commodities in her leisure time. If the advert for Rowland’s Kalydor is related to the adverts for Home Truths for Home Peace, the paratext also shows that there is not one concept of female gender roles. Furthermore, the advert for Rowland’s Kalydor contributes to polyphony on discourses on otherness and ethnicity. This is because it communicates that Rowland’s Kalydor is “[a]n Oriental Botanical Preparation […] [c]omposed of BALSAMIC EXOTICS” (fig. 11). As such, it claims to bring about “fairness” in women (fig. 11). The advert also states “[i]ts constant use will transform the […] clouded COMPLEXION to one of […] spotless white” (fig. 11). The advert can be related to the heterodiegetic narrator’s narrative and to 1851. The heterodiegetic narrator draws on a colonial and economic discourse to other Jo and voice social criticism, hence using the colonial discourse is connoted as negative in this case. The advert, by contrast, deploys an Orientalist discourse, which also encompasses notions of otherness, in a way that is connoted as positive. It stresses that Rowland’s Kalydor is “[c]omposed of BALSAMIC EXOTICS […] derived from the EAST” (fig. 11). Thus, it literally constructs ‘the East’ or, in Orientalist terminology the other of ‘the West’, as the source of beautifying materials (cf. Said 1-3). There is, however, a discursive fissure in this representation: if

99 Rowland’s Kalydor makes the women’s faces white, it effects that their skin conforms with the ideal of whiteness, which is prominent in Western thinking and colonial discourses (cf. Ashcroft/Griffiths/Tiffin 183; 220). This shows that the advert deploys an Orientalist discourse to propagate the product, yet models its ideal of beauty on notions of ethnicity prevalent in colonial discourses of otherness: it hints at the binary opposition between whiteness and blackness. The advert encourages female consumers to buy and apply Rowland’s Kalydor because the material stemming from the Eastern other will make them adopt whiteness and comply with a Western ideal the advert presents as desirable to achieve. That this ideal rests on feet of clay can be seen in an additional statement the advert makes: it is only the “constant use” of Rowland’s Kalydor that makes the women’s faces remain white and that prevents the consumers from resembling the ethnic other (fig. 11; emphasis added). Otherwise, it may be inferred, the female consumers run the risk of relapsing to a state of non-whiteness with a “clouded COMPLEXION” and might resemble the ethnic other (fig. 11). Since these ideas of whiteness are connected to a product or material object effecting this colour, the advert can be related to 1851. There, the Sandboys use handkerchiefs to wipe their blackened faces after their rail journey. The novelistic text calls this bleaching (cf. Mayhew/Cruikshank 37). Rowland’s Kalydor can thus be seen as another meaningful material object or tool that can be used to attain whiteness. Thus, the advert may be argued to participate in polyphony on mid-Victorian colonial discourses insofar as it uses the discourse in a similar manner as 1851 but differs in its use from Bleak House.

3.2.3 Richard as Heir and Leisure Time Consumer: A Metonymic Shift from Consuming Subject to Object of Consumption Richard Carstone is an instance where two forms of consumption are intertwined. Richard consumes by acquiring material objects and he is consumed because he suffers from tuberculosis. In Richard’s case, consumption in the first sense not only contributes to presenting diversified concepts of gender roles; it also shows that consumption renders these concepts flexible: instead of finding a profession, Richard enjoys his leisure time as a consumer and he conceives of himself as a young heir who will, in good time, inherit the money which is at stake in the Chancery suit. When he consumes, he has to be advised by Esther. Ultimately, this chapter proposes, removing Richard from the plot unhinges his concept of male gender roles. It is thus an ironic twist that consumption understood as spending money on material objects falls back on Richard metonymically: Mr Vholes

100 consumes Richard’s money, and the costs of the law suit exhaust or consume his inheritance. Richard is left destitute and dies of pulmonary consumption.129 Esther and Ada accompany Richard when he consumes. Esther is critical of how Richard consumes. She states that he is not economic with his money: “he was, in money affairs, […] generous, profuse, wildly careless, but fully persuaded that he was rather calculating and prudent” (260). This characterization sets the tone for Esther’s sustained criticism of Richard’s consumerist behaviour. She questions how Richard consumes on the story level. Richard’s reply testifies to how Esther has characterized him on the level of discourse: I happened to say to Ada, in his presence […], about the time of his going to Mr Kenge’s, that he needed to have Fortunatus’s purse, he made so light of money, which he answered in this way: ‘[…] Why does she say that? Because I gave eight pounds odd (or whatever it was) for a certain neat waistcoat and buttons a few days ago. Now, if I had stayed at Badger’s I should have been obliged to spend twelve pounds at a blow, for some heart-breaking lecture-fees. So I make four pounds […] by the transaction!’ (260)

The allusion to “Fortunatus” is significant (260). Fortunatus is the protagonist of a sixteenth-century novel (cf. Jakob 642). His father invests his money in an effort to imitate the royals’ life style (cf. Jakob 642). On his travels, Fortunatus is later given a purse that will always supply him with money (cf. Jakob 642). By insinuating that Richard “needed to have Fortunatus’s purse” because “he made so light of money” (260), Esther draws a parallel between Richard and Fortunatus. She suggests that Richard consumes excessively since consuming in his case means spending a lot of money. In pointing this out, Esther polices Richard’s consumerist behaviour and tries to prevent him from spending too much money. This already shows that Esther takes on the role of Richard’s supervisor when he consumes. In order to strengthen her position, Esther addresses her remark “to Ada in” Richard’s “presence” (260). Ada thus becomes complicit in Esther’s criticism since she does not contradict (cf. 260). By deploying this rhetoric strategy, Esther not only sanctions her perspective on how Richard consumes; she also lends force to her role as supervisor:130 she talks to Ada about Richard instead of talking to Richard himself. This disempowers Richard and makes him appear immature.

129 This argument agrees with Stuchebrukhov: “Richard[’s] demise is […] attributed to his ‘wrong’ choice; instead of following the path of middle-class values and learning a profession in order to be self-dependent […] he chooses the aristocratic values that Chancery entices him with” (150). What Stuchebrukhov does not consider is the role consumption plays for Richard’s concept of male gender roles. 130 Wilson analyzes how Esther exerts and maintains narrative control in Bleak House (2015, 209; 215-217; 220). She argues that “Esther’s ‘talking over’ of other characters” (2015, 215) is a distinctive strategy of this narrative voice which is deployed repeatedly (cf. 2015, 215-216). The instance interpreted above can be seen as another example of this narrative strategy.

101 It is important that Esther criticizes Richard’s consumerist behaviour at “about the time of his going to Mr Kenge’s” (260). At that point in the narrative, Richard has given up his medical studies and now turns to the law for a new profession (cf. 180; 260). Reading between the lines, this implies that Richard spends his money lavishly before he has settled in a profession that will sustain him. As his counterattack shows, he does not consider it necessary to pay for his professional training. Richard immediately counters Esther. Yet by defending himself, he testifies to how Esther has characterized him on the discourse level. He justifies how he consumes by deceiving himself: he argues in purely numerical terms and does not differentiate between the objects he spends money on. He proposes that spending “‘eight pounds odd’” on “‘a neat waistcoat and buttons’” is more economic than spending “‘twelve pounds for […] lecture-fees’” (260). If the “‘neat waistcoat and buttons’” are seen accessories, therefore as non-essential articles of dress, and “‘lecture fees’” as an investment in a future profession, Richard puts these areas on a par where money is concerned (260). That he calls the waistcoat “‘neat’” but styles the lecture fees “‘heart-breaking’” suggests that he prioritizes unnecessary material objects he buys for pleasure over professional qualifications (260). At the same time, the expression “‘or whatever it was’” regarding the price of the accessories indicates that Richard does not keep track of the money he spends (260). This underpins the criticism voiced by Esther. She gives an example of how Richard consumes and represents him as an irrational consumer: He immediately began to spend all the money he had, in buying the oddest little ornaments and luxuries for his lodging; and as often as Ada and I dissuaded him from making any purchase […] which was particularly unnecessary and expensive, he took credit for what it would have cost, and made out that to spend anything less on something else was to save the difference. (261)

Esther here repeats on the level of discourse what Richard has said on the story level. Representing Richard’s consumerist behaviour on both levels allows Esther as a narrator to exert narrative control over this character and the concept of male gender roles he embodies. She stresses that Richard purchases “the oddest little ornaments and luxuries” and thus makes clear that Richard acquires accessories (261). The adjectives Esther uses to describe these objects support this reading: the superlative form “oddest” suggests that Richard buys non-necessary items (261). By dubbing the “purchase[s]” he makes “particularly unnecessary and expensive”, Esther spells out how Richard has implicitly characterized himself on the story level (261): he attaches importance to non-essential material objects and deludes himself when it comes to spending money economically. Esther also reinforces the notion of Ada and her guarding Richard against spending too

102 much money. The two female characters watch over Richard when he consumes. This demonstrates that concepts of gender roles are flexible where consumption is concerned: if it was common for nineteenth-century women to have a male guardian watching over their financial and legal affairs (cf. Kenschaft 185), the roles are reversed here. Esther and Ada watch over Richard who is represented as not being capable of consuming economically. Richard tends to be feminized here.131 This role reversal reaches a point where Esther unites the roles of guardian and consumer and acts as both: “I trotted about him […], buying a variety of things, of which he stood in need. Of the things he would have bought, if he had been left to his own ways, I say nothing” (361). Esther consumes for Richard vicariously and, as the praeteritio regarding his wishes implies, prevents him from consuming himself. She thus takes away his power as a consuming subject and appropriates it. In mediating this on the discourse level, Esther exerts narrative control over and contains in her narrative the consumerist behaviour accompanying Richard’s concept of male gender roles. That Richard spends his money lavishly in his leisure time can be interpreted in connection with the concept of male gender roles he stands for. His upbringing and perspective on finding a profession point to an upper-class concept of male gender roles. Esther relates: He had been eight years at a public school, and had learnt […] to make Latin Verses of several sorts, in the most admirable manner. Still, although I had no doubt that they were very beautiful […], I did doubt whether Richard would not have profited by some one studying him a little, instead of his studying them quite so much. (180)

This passage foregrounds the role Latin played at Richard’s school, which indicates that he has received an education typical of upper-class boys.132 Esther speaks out against this form of education: she is critical of what she styles “beautiful” but implicitly suggests are ‘useless’ skills (180). This further demonstrates that she speaks from a middle-class perspective and distances herself from Richard’s upper-class education. Richard himself considers having a profession a temporary matter. “‘It’s not as if I wanted a profession for life. These proceedings will come to a termination, and then I am provided for’” (343). At this point in the narrative, “‘[h]e has exhausted his resources’” (359), abandoned his training in the law (cf. 341) and run into debt (cf. 341- 342). He therefore turns to the army as a stopgap measure for making money (cf. 343;

131 This observation is owed to Prof Feldmann, who pointed out that feminization is relevant regarding concepts of gender roles and tuberculosis. 132 “Boys from the gentry and aristocracy were sent to boarding schools […]. Their educations stressed the classics; they spent three quarters of their time learning […] Latin and Greek, which went on to serve as a […] marker of class and status” (Steinbach 171).

103 359). The statement can be read against the background of the education he has received: his financial situation notwithstanding, he does not see why he should work continually in the future. This is because he is sure the “‘proceedings’” at Chancery will supply him with money (343). Richard thus follows the upper-class concept of a young heir who is waiting for his money to come free.133 Yet in doing so, he speculates on his inheritance: “‘I have exhausted my present resources […] [b]ut what I have of certainty is not all I have’” (359). He also thinks about what might happen “‘if the suit should make us rich […] – which it may’” (198). Esther confirms Richard’s speculative take on his inheritance: “the uncertainties […] of the Chancery suit had imparted to his nature […] the careless spirit of a gamester, who felt that he was part of a great gaming system” (244- 245). Here, financial speculation is used as an element featuring in plots of nineteenth- century novels and transposed from the context of banking and the stock market to the law.134 This connection between finances and the law hints at the economic aspect which is ascribed to Chancery through Krook’s shop, as will be seen later. Richard employs Mr Vholes to follow the proceedings at Chancery and obtain his inheritance (cf. 559). After this move, Richard is recurrently represented as suffering from poor health. Esther’s narrative records several voices on Richard’s physical decline: Esther states “‘[h]e looks very ill’” (854) since she “found” him “thin and languid” and “noticed how sunken […] his eyes appeared” (724), Mr Woodcourt mentions “the haggardness of his face” (721), and Ada fears that “‘[t]hat he may not live to see his child’” (859). This implies that employing Mr Vholes and Richard’s deteriorating health are connected. The connection is a contiguity between financial and physical resources and a metonymic shift from consuming to being consumed, that is, from a consuming subject to an object of consumption: Richard is consumed by Mr Vholes. The lawyer offers him his services and takes Richard’s money in return (cf. 576; 581). If services are considered goods that can be bought like material objects, Richard can still be seen as a consumer who buys Mr Vholes’s services (cf. Edgar 2003a, 71). However, Mr Vholes conceives of Richard as an object of consumption. Both Esther’s and the heterodiegetic narrator’s voice draw on the semantic field of food and feeding to represent this. Esther uses the

133 Bivona argues in a similar manner: “Richard eventually falls victim to Chancery-induced hallucinations of the gentility to which he comes to believe himself entitled” (38). He does not, however, take into consideration Richard’s upbringing. Upper-class men did not work to earn money; they inherited their money (cf. Steinbach 175). 134 Wagner points out that “the Victorian novel was […] shaped by financial speculation” and that finances were “a source of plots” (2).

104 vampire as a figure from Gothic novels (cf. Brusberg-Kiermeier 37): “[s]o slow, so eager, so bloodless and gaunt, I felt as if Richard were wasting away beneath the eyes of his adviser, and there was something of the Vampire in him” (854). With vampires consuming or feeding on human blood, rhetorically fashioning Mr Vholes as a vampire suggests that Richard, whose money (rather than blood) can be cupped, is an object of consumption for the lawyer (cf. Botting 288; cf. Hughes 252-253).135 The expression ‘waste away’ already points to Richard suffering from tuberculosis (cf. 854). It indicates that Richard is consumed physically, particularly so because the phrase is connoted with patients who suffer from this disease and grow weaker and weaker before they die (cf. Simpson/Weiner 19: 960; cf. Herold et al. 412; 418). This illustrates the contiguity between Richard’s financial and physical resources. The heterodiegetic narrator states: “Vholes” is “looking at his client, as if he were making a lingering meal of him with his eyes as well as with his professional appetite” (576). In likening Richard to food that whets Mr Vhole’s “professional appetite”, the heterodiegetic narrator, too, shows on the level of language that Richard can be consumed physically and becomes an object of consumption (576). Esther also uses the language of food to demonstrate that Mr Vholes sees Richard as an object of consumption. When the law suit has ended, she states that “Mr Vholes […] gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of this client” (901). That Richard is consumed by the lawyer like food can be read as a structural device which unhinges Richard’s upper-class concept of male gender roles: it shows that speculating on the law as a source of money has failed and turned him into an object of consumption. Not only is Richard’s money used up by Mr Vholes. The costs of the law suit also counterbalance the money that would have come free as Richard’s inheritance (cf. 901). This deprives him of his last financial resource. Richard’s “mouth” is “full of blood” when the last session is over (901); he dies on the same day (cf. 904). Financial and physical resources are shown to be intertwined again here. The “mouth […] full of blood” (901) and the symptoms of weakness and decline Richard has displayed can be identified with pulmonary tuberculosis (cf. 721; 724; 857): its symptoms are fatigue, blood cough and a loss in weight (cf. Herold et al. 418). The disease has been called consumption due to this loss in weight and the bodily decline which accompanies it (cf. Herold et al. 412). Thus, exhausting Richard’s financial resources parallels and concurs with exhausting his

135 Fredricks, Smith and Brusberg-Kiermeier discuss Mr Vholes as a snake (cf. Fredricks 174; 176) and a vampire (cf. Brusberg-Kiermeier 37-38; cf. Fredricks 177; cf. Smith 14-15). These representational strategies will therefore not be discussed here.

105 physical resources: his life ends when his money is completely gone. Regarding the shift from consuming object to object of consumption, Richard’s death effects the last step in this process. Having neither money nor physical resources left, he is eliminated, thus being neither subject nor object. Richard’s death can be read as a plot device that again disproves his concept of male gender roles. It further illustrates how consumption renders gender roles flexible. In the nineteenth century, tuberculosis was considered a disease that was connoted as feminine (cf. Byrne 33; 150). That Richard suffers from tuberculosis feminizes him in addition to being guarded whilst shopping.136 Therefore, consumption in the sense of pulmonary consumption, too, shows that concepts of gender are dynamic in the field of consumption (in both senses of the word) and hence contributes to polyphony regarding concepts of gender in Bleak House. An advertisement which is exclusively geared towards male readers evinces an uneasiness regarding how they can be envisaged as consumers. This is because the advert encourages men to consume on the one hand, yet on the other it rhetorically conceals that it wants men to do so. Therefore, the advert offers interesting perspectives on Richard as a consumer. It depicts a young bald man, which indicates that the advert is directed at male readers (cf. fig. 14). The heading of the advert reads “THE GENTLEMAN’S REAL HEAD OF HAIR, OR INVISIBLE PERUKE” (fig. 14). Thus, the advert propounds aesthetic notions regarding men’s outer appearance in two ways. It suggests that it is desirable for young men to take measures against their balding head. Yet the advert simultaneously implies that aesthetic modifications should be carried out secretly: the oxymoron “REAL HEAD OF HAIR” glosses over the fact that an “INVISIBLE PERUKE” compensates a ‘lack’ of hair (fig. 14). In using the men’s baldness as an incentive to consume, the advertisement resembles the advert for Rowland’s Kalydor: there, the women’s and men’s outer appearance, which stands in need of being ‘improved’, is also given as a reason that makes consuming necessary. Contrary to the advert for Rowland’s Kalydor, however, the advertisement for gentlemen’s wigs conceals that the male readers become consumers if they buy a wig. It rephrases the image of men

136 This argument agrees with Byrne. She puts forward that Ralph Touchett in Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady is feminized by consumption (cf. 174). Miller is critical of “[t]his feminising of consumption” which “extends […] to the reading of male characters” (2018, 108-109). She suggests that “the wasting male youth” is “often overlooked […] in the cultural imagining of the tubercular body” (2018, 109). She considers “the tubercular male body” a “thread” of study in its own right and proposes that it can be “[associated]” with “masculine dissent” (2018, 109). Both approaches can be reconciled with each other if they are used to show how pulmonary consumption works to unhinge Richard’s concept of male gender roles.

106 as consumers so that they become art critics. It “invites the honour of a visit from the Sceptic and the Connoisseur, that one may be convinced, and the other gratified, by inspecting this and other […] beautiful specimens of the Perruqueian Art” (fig. 14). The advert here draws on aesthetic notions again: it rhetorically represents the wigs as an exhibition because it calls the objects for sale “beautiful specimens” which can be looked at by the customers (fig. 14). Since the male customers are referred to as “Sceptic[s]” and “Connoisseur[s]”, they are ascribed the function of art critics (fig. 14). As such, they can gain insight into or derive pleasure from the quality of the wigs, which the advertisement claims “is superior to everything yet produced” (fig. 14). The idea that male consumers are art critics is supported by the French word “Connoisseur” and the pseudo-French coinage “Perruqueian” which the advert uses to lend prestige to its wigs (fig. 14). In constructing and addressing their potential customers as art critics, the advert tries to hide the concept of men as consumers, even though it persuades male readers to consume. Targeting male readers as consumers but representing them as art critics speaks to an uneasiness if men are seen as consumers. Regarding Richard as a young consumer, the novelistic text, too, can be argued to have some apprehensions. Thus, polyphony on male consumers emerges in two respects: first, both the novelistic and paratext try to keep the concept of male consumers at a distance. This points to polyphony on male consumers in a quantitative sense. That the advert refashions male consumers into art critics can be seen as propounding another concept of male gender roles in connection with consumption. The second aspect of polyphony is that the paratext deals with the qualms concerning male consumers differently from novelistic text: the latter deconstructs Richard as a consumer who acquires non-necessary objects. The advert pursues a commercial goal and depends on male consumers. In order to attenuate qualms regarding male consumption, it modifies the concept of male consumers by inscribing the concept into an aesthetic discourse: turning the wigs into objects of art makes the consumers become art critics and at once justifies and, to a certain degree, conceals male consumption. Nevertheless, the ambivalence inherent in the notion of male consumers cannot be eliminated completely. The advertisement “A Suit in Chancery and a Suit of Chancery” published by Moses and Son’s is an interesting element from the epitext of Bleak House. It establishes a link between male consumers and the Court of Chancery. The advert can be read with reference to how Richard consumes. It puns on the two senses of the word ‘suit’: a law suit and an outfit for men (cf. Simpson/Weiner 17: 146-148). Regarding “a Suit in Chancery”, the advert states (fig. 15): “if a gentleman has property he is in a fair way of

107 losing it; if he has a good suit he may wear it out in expectation, and […] may find it difficult to get another” (fig. 15). The advert here represents property as being central to “a gentleman” (fig. 15). This is a parallel to Richard, who is waiting for his money to come free. Another parallel to Richard is that the advert also broaches the speculative aspect of waiting for the money: a man “may wear out” his suit “in expectation” of his property which, however, may be lost in the suit (fig. 15). This suggests that a gentleman’s money and clothes can be consumed in the sense of being used up. The advert also associates the law suit with danger: “a man is […] tormented, […] plagued […] and threatened” (fig. 15). It insinuates that human beings, too, might be consumed by the proceedings going on at court. In this respect, the advert also parallels the novelistic text. There is, however, a marked difference in what the advert proposes can be done to keep the property: “a Suit out of Chancery, from E. MOSES & SON’S, is the best portion of a Gentleman’s estate, maintained at the least expense” (fig. 15). The advert suggests that property can be saved if the male readers consume and acquire an outfit from Moses and Son’s. It envisions consumption as the measure to be taken so as not to have the money consumed in the law suit. It even represents consuming as a wholesome activity: “a Suit out of Chancery, especially a suit of Summer Dress from the Establishment of E. MOSES & SON is […] heartcheering, and brainreviving” (fig. 15). At the same time, notions of an upper-class concept of male gender roles are discernible here: “Gentleman’s” is capitalized, and on the level of language “estate” as well as “maintained” allude to upper-class men looking after their land (fig. 15). This clashes with the novelistic text: in Esther’s narrative, it is suggested that Richard should find a profession to have an income and not concern himself with the property which is at stake in the law suit. Instead, Richard with his upper-class education consumes in his leisure time while he is waiting for the law suit to end and give him access to his money. He does what the advert suggests that male readers do. Yet he is consumed and does not survive the law suit. Even though the advert was not published in a monthly part concerned with Richard as a consumer, it creates polyphony on Richard’s concept of male gender roles nevertheless: the way the advert envisions consumption breaks with the manner in which the novelistic text deconstructs Richard’s upper-class concept of gender roles, for the character is consumed because he consumes.

108 3.2.4 Mr Turveydrop: Satirizing an Eighteenth-Century Concept of the Gentleman Mr Turveydrop endorses an aristocratic concept of gentlemanliness. In his case, consumption comes into play through the material objects he uses to fashion himself as an eighteenth-century gentleman.137 While the character embodies this concept on the story level, Esther devalues the concept on the level of discourse. Mr Turveydrop thus contributes to polyphony on concepts of gender roles on the level of characters. However, the concept is censored by Esther’s narrative voice by means of the representational strategies she uses. Mr Turveydrop implicitly characterizes himself as following an eighteenth- century concept of gentlemanliness. He emphasizes: “‘I have been called for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop’” (210). He also establishes a link between himself and the Prince Regent: “‘His Royal Highness […] did me the honour to inquire […], as he drove out of the Pavillion at Brighton […], ‘Who is he? […] Why hasn’t he thirty thousand a year’” (210)? He calls these memories “‘little matters of anecdote – the general property […] – still repeated […] among the upper classes’” (211). In stressing these aspects, Mr Turveydrop cherishes memories of the Regency period, which were bygone times in the mid-Victorian period. Regarding the intradiegetic present, he regrets: “‘we are not what we used to be in point of Deportment’” (210). With ‘deportment’ designating a person’s “carriage” or “demeanour” and the “manner of conducting oneself” (Simpson/Weiner 4: 481) and since Mr Turveydrop links his ideas of gentlemanliness to the Regency period, capitalized “‘Deportment’” can be considered to stand for an upper-class life style entailing practices and manners which are associated with an eighteenth-century gentleman (211). There are, however, some fissures in his self-representation (210). If the Prince Regent asks “‘Why hasn’t he thirty thousand a year?’”, it demonstrates that Mr Turveydrop does not belong to the old moneyed classes (210). This is why he rephrases “‘these […] matters of anecdote’” to mean “‘general property’” to be “‘repeated […] among the upper classes’” (211): he does not possess old money and thus has to refashion his anecdote into a form of verbal currency which he recounts to edge his way into or remain part of the upper echelons of society. Moreover, he runs a dancing school but lets his son work for himself (cf. 203; 209). On the one hand, this indicates that he disapproves of working for a living, which ties in with his ideas of an aristocratic, eighteenth-century

137 Self-fashioning is here used in Greenblatt’s sense; it is the possibility for individuals to stage themselves in a given context (cf. 1; 3-4). Greenblatt used the concept of self-fashioning in the context of the Renaissance, but it can structurally be applied to other periods, too.

109 gentleman: in the eighteenth century, being a gentleman was linked to notions of politeness and was an aristocratic ideal (cf. Steinbach 167) of “elite social standing […] and ease of manner” (Steinbach 167). On the other hand, however, the fact that he runs a dancing school proves that he is not ‘above’ work and needs the school to have an income. Mr Turveydrop thus pretends to be upper-class and strives to move upwards socially. Yet at the same time, he is critical of social mobility where another class is concerned: “‘England – alas, my country! – has degenerated very much […]. She has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed us, but a race of weavers’” (210-211). He states this is because “‘[a] levelling age is not favorable [sic] to Deportment. It develops vulgarity’” (211). Being so anxious about social mobility seemingly contradicts Mr Turveydrop’s social aspirations. As will be seen in the following, however, it is not contradictory if Mr Turveydrop is considered to stand for a dated concept of gentlemanliness. The “‘levelling age’” and “‘the race of weavers’” can be read in a mid-Victorian context (210-211). They refer to fairly recent industrial and social developments: the Industrial Revolution was followed by an “increase in social mobility” and “rearrangements of […] status” (Lerner 196). It also created the “new working class” which emerged from the jobs that entailed working with “steam power and [in] cotton-mill[s]” (Thompson 209). If the weavers were a relatively new social group at mid-century that stood for working-class labour, hence for a very different social background than that of the old moneyed classes, Mr Turveydrop voices anxieties regarding national identity. For him, national identity is linked to the eighteenth-century aristocratic concept of gentlemanliness. He considers the gentlemen’s decreasing number a source of national and moral decline, as the nostalgic exclamation “‘England – alas, my country!’” implies (210).138 The words “‘degenerate’” and “‘vulgarity’”, moreover, can be interpreted as evincing social fears (211): the new social class which is constituted of working-class weavers threatens to ‘abolish’ or substitute the eighteenth-century, upper- class concept of gentlemanly “‘Deportment’” (210). Thus, a new class which stands for manual labour will become characteristic of English national identity. It will make national identity ‘deteriorate’ because its members are not from an affluent social background or ‘above’ work. This shift from aristocratic leisure to labour causes manners, as they are represented by Mr Turveydrop’s “‘Deportment’”, to be on a decline (210). That the character looks back on the Regency period nostalgically at mid-century makes his eighteenth-century concept of gentlemanliness appear dated and overcome. Mr

138 Nostalgia is a “sorrowful longing for […] the past” and a “wistful memory or recall of an earlier time” (Simpson/Weiner 10: 535).

110 Turveydrop can thus be seen as a dissenting voice on the expository elements in 1851: they inveigh against notions of aristocratic leisure and argue for a redefinition of respectability to integrate the working classes into English national identity. 1851 and Mr Turveydrop’s views on social mobility and the new working classes can hence be argued to create polyphony on social developments and their impact on national identity in the mid-Victorian period. Esther devalues Mr Turveydrop’s concept in her narrative. This can already be seen in how she introduces him. She characterizes him along the lines of a dandy, a figure that was prominent in silver fork novels (cf. Sadoff 106).139 Using the dandy figure is an ironic strategy of representation which implicitly unhinges Mr Turveydrop’s concept of gentlemanliness: a dandy stood for “aristocratic exclusiveness” and “social mobility”, for he tried to move towards the upper-classes (Sadoff 110). He was “perfect in manners, behaviour and dress, […] careless of anything but rituals of taste and precision of personal style” (Sadoff 110). Esther pairs this strategy of characterization with satiric and grotesque elements of representation.140 In this way, she ridicules the character’s upward social aspirations and his notion of an eighteenth-century gentleman they are connected to. She also pays particular attention to the material objects Mr Turveydrop displays.141 The material objects underline the fissures in his self-fashioning because they allow Esther to spell out that his concept of male gender roles is based on pretence: He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar […]. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear. He had […] a neck-cloth on […] puffing his eyes out of their natural shape […]. He had […] a pair of white gloves […], as he stood poised on one leg, in a high-shouldered […] state of elegance not to be surpassed. He had a cane, […] he had rings, he had wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; […] he was […] a model of Deportment. (208)

In the very first sentence, Esther already distances herself from Mr Turveydrop since she calls him “a fat old gentleman” (208). She starts several sentences with “he had” and highlights numerous material objects contributing to the character’s appearance (208).

139 This proposition also agrees with McCullen; he argues that Mr Turveydrop is a Regency dandy who “represents the fashion of another day and a different order” (19). For a definition of the silver fork novel, see Sadoff 106, 110 and 118. 140 A grotesque style of representation is “[c]haracterized by […] distortions, especially in the exaggerated […] depiction of human features” (Baldick 146). McCullen states that Mr Turveydrop is represented satirically and that Esther comments on him (cf. 15-16). He does not show how the satire works. 141 Bigelow argues that “social relations between Mr. Turveydrop and the rest of the world are imprinted onto a set of objects” which “carry with them social meanings” (2008, 54). He does not see the material objects as part of a grotesque or satiric strategy of representation.

111 These objects are meaningful because they suggest that Mr Turveydrop consumes to display social status: the “fur collar”, “pair of white gloves”, “rings” and “wristbands” are luxurious accessories (208). Mr Turveydrop can hence be argued to have acquired these costly objects and now use them to fashion himself as upper-class (208). The white colour of his gloves supports this reading. They indicate that Mr Turveydrop represents himself as being ‘above’ work even though he is not.142 This, in turn, proves that he follows an upper-class or aristocratic concept of male gender roles. It also provides further evidence for the argument that his display of social status is based on pretence. The costly material objects are a parallel to Lady Dedlock. Both characters consume luxurious goods. Lady Dedlock does so as part of her aristocratic status; Mr Turveydrop, in contrast, to fashion himself as a member of a class he does not belong to. Therefore, Mr Turveydrop’s consumption of luxurious goods is a middle-class character’s mimicry.143 With both characters, the narrative voices are critical of consuming luxurious objects. This creates polyphony on practices of consumption in quantitative terms: the heterodiegetic narrator uses Lady Dedlock’s costly objects as a means of othering her. In Esther’s narrative, reiterating “he had” several times to enumerate Mr Turveydrop’s material objects suggests the character’s use of objects in creating his outfit is over the top (208). Evoking this impression can be seen as part of Esther’s satiric strategy of representation. Mr Turveydrop’s outfit can also be seen in connection with Mr Sandboys’s self-made coats. In 1851, too, the narrative voice draws attention to Mr Sandboys’s apparel to imply that this character differs from the urban perspective on material culture the text establishes. As the following discussion of the illustration “The Dancing-School” proposes, Mr Turveydrop differs from a nineteenth- century, middle-class concept of male gender roles. The notion of overdoing the outfit is mirrored by Mr Turveydrop’s carriage. Esther calls it “a high-shouldered state of elegance not to be surpassed” and considers him “a model of Deportment” (208). The material objects constituting Mr Turveydrop’s outfit and the character standing “poised on one leg” thus suggest that his overall appearance is studied and appears artificial (208). The pun playing with various

142 “[W]hite gloves” stood for “the erasure of signs of labour” (McClintock 230). 143 Mimicry is a concept which is used in post-colonial studies. It means that “the colonized subject” is “encourage[d] […] to ‘mimic’ the colonizer, by adopting the colonizer’s cultural habits […] and values” (Ashcroft/Griffiths/Tiffin 125). However, “the result is never a simple reproduction of those traits” but “a ‘blurred copy’ of the colonizer” (Ashcroft/Griffiths/Tiffin 125). The concept can be applied to Mr Turveydrop because the way he imitates the aristocracy structurally resembles the colonized who takes on “the colonizer’s cultural habits […] and values” (Ashcroft/Griffiths/Tiffin 125).

112 prepositions of verbs which refer to physical containment or expansion underlines the artificial impression Mr Turveydrop’s outfit evokes (cf. 208). This tallies with his “false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers” and the “neck-cloth […] puffing his eyes out of their natural shape” (208). Esther here satirically contrasts the objects she considers to make up Mr Turveydrop’s “false” appearance with an implied norm (208): “nature” (208). Mr Turveydrop’s “false” appearance thus parallels the social pretence inherent in his self-fashioning. Esther sanctions Mr Turveydrop’s self-fashioning and, by implication, his concept of gentlemanliness on the level of discourse. She represents his manners and appearance in a grotesque way. “As he bowed to me in that tight state, I almost believed I saw creases come into the whites of his eyes” (208). The “creases” that seemingly “come into the whites of his eyes” exaggerate Mr Turveydrop’s appearance which, the text suggests, is pent-up because of the character’s clothes and accessories (208). In using a non-realistic mode and satirical strategies of representation, the narrative voice devalues Mr Turveydrop’s self-fashioning and turns it inside out. The illustration “The Dancing-School” contributes to polyphony on concepts of male gender roles. It does so because it visualizes an alternative version of male gender roles and mocks Mr Turveydrop. This effect is achieved through the spatial composition of the illustration: on the right, Mr Turveydrop is standing aloof from the pupils (cf. 206). On the left, there is a girl who is similarly detached from the pupils (cf. 206). With the girl and Mr Turveydrop serving as framing devices, Mr Turveydrop’s son is the focal point of attention. This can be interpreted to illustrate different concepts of male gender roles. While Mr Turveydrop embodies the eighteenth-century concept of a gentleman, his son can be argued to stand for a contemporary, middle-class concept. If notions of male gender roles in the nineteenth-century implied “values of work, self-discipline […] and perseverance”, Mr Turveydrop’s son follows these ideas (Gilmour 167). Esther represents Prince as teaching “conscientiously” (208) and emphasizes that he is “working so hard” (210). Likewise, the illustration shows him amidst his pupils, fiddle in hand, working (cf. 206). With Prince in the centre, the illustration can be argued to spatially relegate Mr Turveydrop to the margin and foreground a nineteenth-century concept of male gender roles as the norm behind the satire in the novelistic text. Not only does the illustration marginalize Mr Turveydrop and, by implication, his aristocratic concept of gentlemanliness; it also pokes fun at it. The girl on the left is nicely dressed, and her hair is neatly done (cf. 206). She is standing on tiptoe to look at herself in a mirror and reflects Mr Turveydrop on the right (cf. 206). The back of his head can be seen in the mirror behind him (cf. 206). The young girl looking at herself rather than dancing with the other

113 pupils insinuates that she is similarly concerned with her outer appearance as Mr Turveydrop and that she has learnt to mimic his “‘Deportment’” (210). This pokes fun at Mr Turveydrop because his eighteenth-century concept of gentlemanliness is copied by a young girl. On the structural level, some parallels and differences to other characters in Bleak House can be detected: the non-realistic mode deployed here serves the same function as in Esther’s representation of Mrs Jellyby’s house. In both cases, a satiric and exaggerated representation is offered to contain a concept of gender roles. In the course of the plot, it is reported that “Old Mr Turveydrop […] still exhibits his Deportment about town” (912). Like Mrs Jellyby, Mr Turveydrop continues to contribute to polyphony on the level of characters. Unlike Richard, he is not removed from the plot. This, it can be argued, is because he is an old character who is satirized by Esther’s narrative voice to an extent that his concept of gentlemanliness seems ‘eccentric’ and renders the character comic. Another structural parallel and difference concerns George Cruikshank’s illustration “The first Shilling day – Coming out” in 1851. While the illustration lampoons members of the working classes who appear to adopt middle-class status, Bleak House satirizes a middle-class character feigning upper-class status. Both the text of Bleak House and the illustration use exaggerations as a representational strategy to indicate that a given social position is (seemingly) left. In both instances, the notion of upward social mobility is curbed: by Esther’s narrative voice in Bleak House and through the representation of the handloom weavers in 1851. The novelistic text and the illustration as a visual text can be interpreted as testifying to social mobility as an issue that was topical in the mid-Victorian period. They point to anxieties connected to instability of class or the mixing of different classes, hence contribute to mid-Victorian discourses on class and national identity.

3.2.5 Krook’s Shop: A Parody of the Court of Chancery Krook stands out from the other male characters. He is relevant because of the class he belongs to. Krook can be read as a lower-class consumer or collector, and he is another character who is consumed: Krook collects old material objects. He is consumed in the sense of material being used up or destroyed since he dies of spontaneous combustion (cf. Simpson/Weiner 3: 803).144

144 Hack offers an insightful analysis of bodies, materiality and writing in Bleak House, reads Krook’s spontaneous combustion in this context and relates the novelistic text to some advertisements (cf. 37-38; 44-61).

114 This chapter argues that Krook’s shop is a parody of the Court of Chancery:145 due to the working mechanisms of the shop and court, consumption and the law are linked metonymically.146 Krook’s inefficient way of running his shop, to speak from an economic point of view, can be detected in another system. The law, the text suggests, works equally inefficiently. When Krook dies in the course of the plot, Krook’s parody of Chancery is removed on the figural level. His shop, however, lingers on. It functions as a catalyst for the resolution of the law suit, for it reveals the will which leads to the conclusion of the suit. If Krook is seen as an uneducated, lower-class character whose desire to collect leads to the resolution of the law suit, this ridicules the proceedings of the Court of Chancery. Krook is a collector who consumes to a certain extent.147 This can be seen in his shop over which was written, KROOK, RAG AND BOTTLE WAREHOUSE. […] In one part of the window […] was the inscription BONES BOUGHT. In another, KITCHEN STUFF BOUGHT. […] In another, WASTE PAPER BOUGHT. In another, LADIES’ AND GENTLEMEN’S WARDROBES BOUGHT. (61)

The dual nature of Krook’s shop becomes manifest here. Esther dubs it “a shop”, but the shop sign reads “WAREHOUSE” (61). If warehouses are “building[s] in which a wholesale dealer keeps his stock of goods for sale” (Simpson/Weiner 19: 908), Krook’s shop also serves as a repository of objects. This already suggests that Krook keeps or collects objects.148 The inscriptions in the shop window listing what Krook buys support this reading (cf. 61). They show that he buys old and used material objects and even waste (cf. 61). Esther, who knows how to read shop windows, is surprised at the principle on

145 A parody draws on prominent features of a text or genre and alters them to achieve a comic or satiric effect (cf. Weidhase/Kauffmann 572). In a broader context, it can also be used to criticize historically specific conventions (cf. Weidhase/Kauffmann 572). If this definition is extended to include cultural phenomena or institutions, the Court Chancery can be seen as a societal institution whose structural features are parodied by Krook’s shop. Williams posits that “Krook’s shop is a kind of Chancery-parody” because “[i]t contains aged law books and parchment scrolls, over which the black contents of […] inkbottles have at one time spilled. Like Chancery, Krook’s appetite is impervious to boundaries: his shop overflows, yet he is still acquisitive” (2003, 73). William’s explanation is not enough to substantiate the thesis that Krook’s shop is “a kind of Chancery-parody” (2003, 73). Krook’s shop has also been discussed with regard to the Crystal Palace. Schülting has pointed out that the shop resembles the Crystal Palace since it is a “reversal of Victorian commodity culture” (2001, 146) or “an ironic distortion of the exhibitions in the Crystal Palace” (2016, 18) but “is, nevertheless, predicated on a similar logic” (2001, 146). Since Schülting’s analyses are convincing, Krook’s shop will not be related to the Crystal Palace in the following. For another perspective on Krook’s shop and the Crystal Palace, see Williams 2003, 72-73. 146 Dolin connects Krook’s shop and the Court of Chancery, too. “The objective correlative of this wasteful system is […] Krook’s rag and bottle shop, a business without turnover” (2008, 84). The study on hand proposes that Krook’s shop cannot be seen as a “correlative” of the Court of Chancery if consumption considered (2008, 84). 147 Williams states: “in Krook’s shop, the shop-owner himself consumes” (2003, 72). 148 This proposition agrees with Schülting: “Krook is an obsessive collector” (2016, 18).

115 which Krook runs his shop: “[e]verything seemed to be bought and nothing to be sold there” (61).149 The illustration “The Lord Chancellor copies from Memory” reproduces the inscriptions mentioned in the text (cf. 70). In this way, it buttresses Esther’s perspective and visually reinforces the notion of Krook’s uneconomic manner of running his shop. The illustration, like the text, suggests that Krook’s shop departs from economic principles if shops are seen as economic ventures to make money from the goods they sell. Krook’s desire to collect is why he is associated with the Court of Chancery. Miss Flite states: “‘[h]e is called among the neighbours the Lord Chancellor. His shop is called the Court of Chancery. He is a very eccentric person. He is very odd’” (63).150 Krook explains this. It is because of the old material objects that he is associated with the Court of Chancery: ‘I have so many things here […] and all […] wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that that’s why they have given me and my place a christening. And I have so many old parchmentses [sic] and papers in my stock. And I have a liking for rust […] and cobwebs. And all’s fish that comes to my net. And I can’t abear to part with anything I once lay hold of […] or to alter anything, or to have any sweeping […] nor cleaning […] going on about me. That’s the way I’ve got the ill name of Chancery. I don’t mind. I go to see my noble and learned brother pretty well every day, when he sits in the Inn.’ (63-64)

Krook here characterizes himself as a collector. He stresses that “‘all’s fish that comes to my net’” and that he likes “‘rust […] and cobwebs’” (63). Krook ‘fishes for’ or buys old material objects because he ascribes them a value.151 He also amasses them: “‘I can’t abear to part with anything I once lay hold of’” (63). If consumption is defined as acquiring, possessing and using material objects, Krook acquires and possesses the objects (cf. Eichhammer 191). Yet he does not use them. He watches them decay, as “‘wasting away and going to rack and ruin’” shows (63). This makes him a collector rather than a consumer. He also flouts the mid-Victorian tenet of recycling and the discourse on utility, where even waste was considered to retain a use-value (cf. Schülting 2001, 145; cf. Sicher 342). In his desire to collect dirty, useless and old objects, he is considered “‘eccentric’” and “‘odd’” by Miss Flite (63). Krook’s collection of “‘old parchmentses [sic] and papers’” and his aversion to “‘sweeping […] [and] cleaning’” can be interpreted in the context of the Court of Chancery (63-64). The court produced documents on various cases and was considered

149 Williams considers Krook “the antithesis of a shop-master” because he does not sell any material objects (2003, 72). 150 Hack rightly argues that “Krook[’s] […] hoarding ways lead his neighbours to think of him as a parodic version of Chancery’s Lord Chancellor” (45). 151 This observation is in keeping with Schülting (cf. 2016, 18; cf. 2001, 145).

116 to adhere to a ‘dated’ legal system in the nineteenth century (cf. Dolin 2008, 71; 84). Krook’s collection of parchments and that he refuses to change anything about his shop, can be associated with the law court:152 like the cases at court, his shop stagnates and, economically speaking, works inefficiently. Krook’s shop where waste and (seemingly) useless objects are amassed can thus be seen as a structural parallel to the Court of Chancery as an inefficient institution. Therefore, Krook’s shop parodies the law court through the waste and the collection of old material objects. At the same time, this link between Krook’s shop with its lack of economic principles and Chancery suggests that the law would have to follow economic principles to work efficiently. The novelistic text metonymically inscribes the law court as a societal institution of law and justice into the realm of consumption. This can be considered an ambivalent move because it indicates that the novelistic text is firmly grounded in consumption. Krook also relates himself to the law suit. He calls the Lord Chancellor “‘my noble and learned brother’” whom he “‘go[es] to see […] every day’” (64). Not only does he follow the law suit; he is also informed about past events and characters connected to it (cf. 64-65). That Krook calls the Lord Chancellor his “‘noble and learned brother’” can be seen as another parodic element (64):153 Krook is an uneducated “old man” (62). He cannot read or write (cf. 71), and his language is faulty, as his grammar mistake “‘parchmentses’” suggests (63). Moreover, Krook consumes “raw gin” in “great quantities” (218). He can therefore be considered an alcoholic. Gin was an alcoholic beverage that was associated with the lower classes in the nineteenth century (cf. Hands 30). Thus, Krook who is uneducated and addicted to alcohol runs counter to the notion of “‘noble and learned’”, hence respectable lawyers at the Court of Chancery (64). Esther and Richard also associate Krook’s shop with the law because of the material objects it contains. Esther relates there were quantities of dirty bottles: blacking bottles, medicine bottles, ginger-beer and soda-water bottles, […] wine bottles, ink bottles: I am reminded by mentioning the latter, that the shop had […] the air of being in a legal neighbourhood, and of being […] a dirty hanger-on and disowned relation of the law. […] One only had to fancy,

152 Simon maintains that “Krook trades in […] documents” (227). This proposition is not convincing because, like all the other material objects in his shop, Krook collects documents. Heady rightly notes that the Court of Chancery is related to Krook’s shop because Krook collects documents (cf. 331). She infers from this that “Chancery’s [...] flaw is a matter of aesthetics and economics at once” but does not explore this further (331). 153 Dolin regards “Mr Jarndyce’s role as a supplement to the Lord Chancellor” and states that “Bleak House becomes and alternative Chancery” because of “Jarndyce’s quiet generosity” (2008, 84). Regarding, Krook’s relationship to the Lord Chancellor, Dolin merely calls him “the pseudo-Lord Chancellor” (2008, 84). This reading does not take into consideration the relationship Krook establishes between himself and the Lord Chancellor.

117 as Richard whispered to Ada and me […], that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very clean, were the bones of clients […]. (61-62)

The “ink bottles” metaphorically symbolize the law court because they are used for writing letters and producing documents (61). This leads Esther to consider the shop “a dirty hanger-on and disowned relation of the law” (61). The “bones piled together and picked very clean” achieve an uncanny effect (62).154 If bones are considered dead matter that was once part of a living organism, the bones in Krook’s shop imply that characters involved in the suit have died while it was on. The clients’ bones which have been “picked very clean” insinuate that the characters have been eaten up or consumed by the law (62). If the bones are “piled together”, many clients have been consumed in the course of the suit (62). This reading is supported by the text. It states the law suit has outlived many generations (cf. 14). The Court of Chancery is thus fashioned as a consuming institution. Since it consumes the characters involved in the law suit and produces documents but does not come to an end, Richard associating the bones in Krook’s shop with the law suit can be seen as another parodic element. Richard’s association can be interpreted in two ways (62): on the level of content, it is ironic that, of the three characters looking at Krook’s objects, it is Richard who thinks of the “bones” as “bones of clients” (62). Since he is later consumed by the very law suit he is referring to here, he unwittingly spells out what will happen to him as the plot develops. His remark can be seen as a means of foreshadowing. Moreover, Richard’s remark can also be interpreted by means of a comment the heterodiegetic narrative voice makes. It refers to the law in economic terms and represents it as a consuming institution, too: The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. […] Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.” (573)

The narrative voice here represents the law as an economic venture. If it is “[t]he principle of the […] law to make business for itself”, this entails that the law aims at making money (573).155 Focalization in this passage is important: “the laity” are represented as

154 In Freud’s sense “the uncanny designates both a concept and a feeling and is […] associated with a sense of profound unease […]. […] [It] calls into question established […] boundaries, especially those between the familiar and the unfamiliar, imagination and reality” (Allan 245). 155 Gaughan quotes these lines, too, but proposes that they point to the “social and institutional use of language as a game”, which is not relevant here (82). Heady states that “Chancery’s hoarding of documents and co-optation of money […] are analogues, and both […] play out the dangers of artistic absorption” (331). She rightly raises concerns in ideological terms here but does not consider the heterodiegetic narrator’s account of Chancery in stating this, which, however, complements how Chancery is represented by Krook and the other characters.

118 considering the law a “monstrous maze” (573). That they see it in this way and “grumble” implies its working mechanisms are not transparent to them (cf. 573). This suggests the narrative voice pretends to use “the English law”, which is aware of the criticism levelled at the institution by “the laity”, as a focalizer (573). As such, the narrative voice makes the law-as-seeming-focalizer explain its economic working mechanisms: they are a “coherent scheme” (573). In laying bare its working mechanisms, the law seemingly counters the “the laity[’s]” critical voices (573). This, however, is a strategy to articulate social criticism. The narrative voice criticizes the law as an economic, money-making institution: not only does it state twice that the law wants to “make business for itself” (573). It also deploys an ironic crescendo in its rhetoric. The first statement exposing the economic aspect of the law refers to “the great principle of the English law”, the second statement calls it “the grand principle” (573). Regarding the laity, the second statement additionally stresses that “the grand principle” entails that the law “make business […] at their expense” (573). The law, the narrative voice suggests, exploits the clients or laity and consumes their money to flourish. The narrator here corroborates Richard’s association and Esther’s surprise at Krook’s uneconomic shop. Interpreting the law and the economic aspect the text ascribes to it, also points to polyphony regarding the two narrative voices. The narrative voices interact and are congruent insofar as both conceive of the law as an economic consuming institution. However, there is also friction between them. The heterodiegetic narrator draws on economic terms to voice social criticism. This applies to the representations of Jo and the law. In Esther’s narrative, the autodiegetic narrator associates Krook’s shop with the law precisely because it is not run on economic, money-making principles. Here, the economic aspect of the law is not a means of critique but given as an implicit norm. This incongruence between the narrators can be argued to create polyphony: the text evinces both a critique of the law which is voiced in economic terms, and the law is represented as being related to an uneconomic shop. Since the two narrators speak about the law independently of each other, the text does not straddle the gulf between this discrepancy. It does not mediate between the narrators’ diverging representations. This is a parallel to objectifying the poor in the narrators’ accounts. The narrator objectifies Jo, the “home- made article”, as a rhetoric device to communicate social criticism (669). Esther, by contrast, consumes human beings because she sees the poor as objects of visual consumption. The text does not resolve this morally ambivalent issue. From this follows that representations involving consumption reveal fissures in the two narrators’ accounts.

119 These fissures testify to the polyphonic structure of Bleak House on the level of narrative transmission. In the course of the plot, Krook dies of spontaneous combustion (cf. 479).156 Combustion is a process in which a substance is burnt; the substance feeding the flames is usually consumed or used up completely in this process (cf. Simpson/Weiner 3: 517). Krook, then, is the material which is used up: he is consumed himself, leaving “white ashes” (479). With Krook’s death, the character parodying the Court of Chancery is removed. Since the will which causes the law suit to end is found among the papers in his shop, Krook’s shop can be argued to function as a catalyst in the suit (cf. 872-874; 876- 877; 899).157 This, too, parodies the Court of Chancery. It also mocks the discourse on utility. The document is found at an old, alcoholic, lower-class and uneducated collector amongst masses of material objects which are, as the plot shows, only seemingly useless. It is not the learned lawyers’ skill that end the law suit. Representing consumption in connection with Krook’s shop does not point to flexible concepts of gender roles. Instead, it implies that consumption is a flexible field in associative terms which can be metonymically and structurally related to realms that are not necessarily linked to consumption.

156 Dolin maintains that Krook’s spontaneous combustion is “a fictitious natural process” and “makes the death of the corrupt order an organic necessity, not the result of a political action. Krook’s death therefore functions less as revolutionary prophecy than as apocalyptic warning” (2008, 91). This interpretation is not convincing. Henchman explores the function of references to tallow candles in Bleak House. She argues that they are linked to “anxieties about […] waste” (Henchman), links the smells perceptible after Krook’s spontaneous combustion to tallow candles and regards Krook’s remains as waste (cf. Henchman). Bigelow maintains that “Krook dies […] because the market-system loathes a hoarder. Stoppage of circulation creates build-up, friction, heat” (2000, 596). This interpretation is not convincing because it argues from within a discourse which prescribes that goods have to circulate on the market. 157 Brattin takes into consideration the monthly parts of the serial run of the novel and counts the last double number of Bleak House as two numbers. Regarding the monthly part in which Krook dies, Brattin points out that it happens “at the precise midpoint of the novel” (24). Other scholars, too, have pointed out that Krook’s death is a significant point in the narrative (cf. Hack 45; cf. Kobayashi 185-186). After Krook has died, Chappell argues, he “turn[s] out to have a lingering influence and even a [...] use value in the narrative economy” (794). These observations support the argument that Krook is a catalyst in the law suit.

120 4 Cranford: Fashioning Female Identity, Creating a Metalevel on Material Culture This chapter argues that Cranford takes issue with mid-Victorian ideas of material culture. The novel does so by representing how female characters shape the socioeconomic aspect of their collective identity through consumption – in a small town and at a time which precedes the mid-Victorian period.158 If consumption means that money is spent on material objects and if these material objects serve to display social status at mid-century, the Cranford characters negotiate prestige in the town by treating material objects sparingly.159 This creates a metalevel on material culture in two ways:160 on the extratextual level, “Cranford evolved in Household Words as a […] serial located in discussions of other near-historical events or parodies of contemporary malpractice” (Delafield 13). If the novel is situated amongst these articles, it can be considered to form part of a larger metadiscourse on mid-Victorian issues, and material culture can be regarded as one subject area of this discourse. Cranford, then, creates a metadiscourse on the topic of material culture within the larger metadiscourse. On the intradiegetic level, the novel is set in an earlier period, but the Cranford ladies’ practices of consumption and negotiations of social status encompass phenomena which were prominent in everyday mid-Victorian material culture. These are the consumption of comestibles, drink, clothes as well as fashion and shops. In realist novels, the concern with practices and material objects that belong to “the everyday and the ordinary” achieves a mimetic effect (Kearns 3) and makes the textual representations appear familiar to the readers (cf. Kearns 14; cf. Levine 1981, 10). In Cranford, it has a different function. Here, the realist elements the narrator uses show how Cranford’s and mid-Victorian material culture are related to each other in structural terms, and they also serve to distance mid-Victorian readers from Cranford’s material culture.

158 Pinch has argued that “Cranford’s ‘women’s culture’ […] is […] an instance of the gendered nature of mid-Victorian, middle-class identity formation” (153). The thesis advanced here differs from Pinch in that it considers the novel to be set before the mid-Victorian period. It is this temporal setting of the novel that is important. 159 In the mid-Victorian period, clothes and food were important aspects in class-specific practices of consumption and displays of social status (cf. Steinbach 111-112). 160 “Gaskell’s old ladies”, Pinch proposes, “articulate the nature of a historical moment that is central to […] British class-consciousness, the 1840s; […] they do so by articulating their relationship to that era’s own icons: the new manufactured goods of the industrialized city” (150). Pinch rightly highlights the relational effect which is achieved by the representations of the Cranford women. She does not, however, reflect on this on a metalevel. In order to fully grasp the metalevel created by the novel, this study argues that practices of consumption rather than just “the new manufactured goods” have to be taken into account (Pinch 150).

121 Cranford, it is proposed here, shows how these phenomena contribute to negotiations of status in the eponymous town. In representing this, the novel points to a continuum regarding practices of material culture. Cranford attempts to relativize the notion that consuming to assert social status, fashion or women as consumers were new phenomena in the mid-Victorian period. It simultaneously questions the idea that the role Cranford’s pre- or early-Victorian material culture plays for forming the social aspect of the character’s collective identity is so different from mid-Victorian material culture.161 The structural organization of the novel, too, plays an important role in creating the metalevel:162 the way the novel connects its story to its discourse level refracts mid- Victorian notions and practices of material culture. While the elderly Cranford women consume on the story level, the homodiegetic narrator on the discourse level is younger than the Cranford characters and from Drumble, a town which is larger than Cranford. She recounts her memories of Cranford retrospectively after she has participated in its female community as a visitor. Conceptualizing of the narrative voice in this way leads to a number of contrastive differences which make it possible for the novel to reveal what Cranford has in common with mid-Victorian material culture and in what respect these cultures are distinct from each other.163 These differences are a contrast between urban Drumble and Cranford as a small town, a difference in age as well as historical difference. The differences, in connection with the conception of the narrative voice, engender tensions and ambivalences in the text which impact on how Cranford is represented to the implied readers: the narrator oscillates between nostalgic remembering, sympathy or identification and distancing mockery, which is indicative of her ideological perspective on Cranford’s material culture and which cannot be hidden entirely.164

161 It cannot be clearly determined whether the setting of the novel is pre- or early-Victorian. The fact that the setting evokes historical difference is more important to the following analyses than specifying the time frame as being pre- or early-Victorian. 162 Miller, too, stresses that the structural organization of the novel is important. He argues that the novel has a linear plot structure and repeats representations of daily routines in material culture (cf. 1995, 93). “[T]he narrative […] congeries […] inflects” the “representation of female subjectivity” (1995, 93). 163 Mulvihill stresses the importance of the narrative voice, too (cf. 339). Because of the narrative voice, he argues, the “activities” the Cranford ladies engage in are shown to “collectively […] constitute the functional entity that is Cranford […]. The reader […] is […] not invited […] to scorn the foibles of the Cranford ladies but […] challenged to see how their habits reflect the many economies of living that form the economy of Cranford’s life” (339). This statement already hints at a metalevel which, however, is restricted to the intradiegetic level of the text and does not connect to mid-Victorian material culture. Pinch notes the “relation […] of difference” between the Cranford women and Drumble but does not consider the set of contrastive differences inherent in the novel on a structural level (152). 164 This argument agrees with Dolin (cf. 1993, 200). Dolin, however, does not take into account what the narrator’s representations of Cranford reveal about herself. In a recent attempt to analyze

122 4.1 Negotiating Socioeconomic Status through Inconspicuous Consumption: The Narrator’s Retrospective Account of a Small Town in a Pre- or Early-Victorian Setting This chapter proposes that inconspicuous consumption is the practice the Cranford women engage in when they deal with material objects. This term can be derived from Veblen’s notion of conspicuous consumption. For Veblen, conspicuous consumption means that goods are consumed to provide “evidence” for the consumers’ “pecuniary strength” or “wealth” (cf. 60-61).165 Consumers engage in these practices to display social status or assert their position in society (cf. Veblen 61; 64). If consumption serves these purposes, it functions to integrate consumers in specific social circles. Consuming inconspicuously in Cranford works to the same effect but deploys the structures of conspicuous consumption inversely: the Cranford characters deal with material objects sparingly to identify with the community and gain prestige in the town. The structural parallels between conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption, this chapter proposes, can be seen because the narrator foregrounds differences in time and place and focuses on specific material objects. A further point this chapter makes is that inconspicuous consumption in Cranford is represented as an identificatory practice that is as meaningful and socially coded as conspicuous consumption.

4.1.1 Social Self-Fashioning as an Identificatory Practice The narrator already establishes a metalevel at the outset of the novel. Mary Smith points out that Cranford is a predominantly female town, explains conventions regarding material objects and represents them as characteristic features of Cranford’s material culture (cf. 3-4). She highlights that the characters’ concern with their socioeconomic status is a hallmark of their identity: “[w]e none of us spoke of money, because that subject savoured of commerce and trade, and though some might be poor, we were all aristocratic” (4).166 In this statement, the Cranford characters define the socioeconomic aspect of their identity: as the pronoun “we” indicates, they collectively consider

the narrative technique of Cranford, Werner proposes that Cranford uses Gothic conventions (cf. 156) and “integrate[s]” them “into the rhythms of daily life, in effect rendering the morbid and ghastly probable […] and everyday” (156). Her essay is not convincing since it assumes that extratextual ‘reality’ of the mid-Victorian period is directly reflected by the novelistic text (cf. Werner 157). 165 Veblen put forward his concept of conspicuous consumption in 1899. Even though his concept originated at the end of the nineteenth century, it can be applied to other periods if its structural working mechanisms are considered. 166 The following edition is used here: Gaskell, Elizabeth. Cranford. Ed. Elizabeth Porges Watson. Introd. and notes Dinah Birch. New ed. Oxford: OUP, 2011a.

123 themselves “aristocratic”, although “some might be poor” (4).167 If “some” characters are “poor”, the Cranford women are not “aristocratic” in financial terms but use this word as a rhetoric strategy to fashion their social status (4). Thus, the socioeconomic aspect of their identity is based on social self-fashioning.168 This self-fashioning is in operation on the level of language where it exists as a set of rules, and it is an integral part of the characters’ everyday practices of consumption. On the level of language, the women fashion their status by silencing monetary aspects. They follow rules which are based on a contradictory logic: for the characters, being ‘aristocratic’ is linked to being constricted financially. Accordingly, they do not speak about money to conceal their financial situation. They avoid the “subject […] of commerce and trade” because these economic fields can be associated with money circulating on a large scale (4). Speaking about these economic fields would point to their financial situation. Remaining silent about these fields thus suggests that the Cranford ladies strive to model the socioeconomic aspect of their identity on the ideal of the old- moneyed, aristocratic classes:169 in the mid-Victorian period, these classes regarded trade and commerce with suspicion because the wealth that could be attained in these fields allowed people from the middle and working classes to rise in socioeconomic terms and display their wealth through consumption (cf. Purchase 23; cf. Steinbach 111-112). As the following analyses will show, the narrator represents the intricacies of the Cranford ladies’ aristocratic self-fashioning in view of their financial situation and partly idealizes and partly mocks their practices of consumption from a mid-Victorian viewpoint. The notion that money should not be referred to overtly impacts on how the characters deal with material objects. The examples of how the Cranford women speak about or treat material objects hence illustrate what consequences the rules have for shaping the socioeconomic aspect of their identity if referring to money has to be avoided. In order to remain silent about financial aspects, the Cranford characters have developed a strategy to gloss over their situation. If we walked […] to a party, it was because the night was so fine, or the air so refreshing; not because sedan-chairs were expensive. If we wore prints, instead of summer silks, it was because we preferred a washing material; and so on, till we

167 Knezevic makes a similar point: “the self-understanding as ‘aristocracy’ is […] constituted not by economic status, but by […] maintenance of a group solidarity” (410). 168 This reading departs from Miller. He considers the Cranford ladies to be “pressed by economic constraints and genteel aesthetic and social codes”; this, he argues, is why they “practice an ‘elegant economy’” (1995, 98). The study on hand proposes that the “social codes” are in operation as a consequence of the characters’ financial situation (1995, 98). 169 This observation agrees with Knezevic: “[m]oney talk is prohibited in Cranford society, because the society sees itself as free from economic necessity, like the leisure class it emulates” (410).

124 blinded ourselves to the […] fact, that we were […] people of very moderate means. (6)

If a material object is too “expensive” for the women (6), they use euphemisms to rephrase this and, in doing so, rhetorically hide their financial constrains (cf. 6). That the characters “blinded” themselves “to the […] fact, that” they “were […] people of very moderate means” works to the same effect (6). The tenet of dealing with material objects sparingly is thus based on a rhetoric and behavioural practice the Cranford ladies follow to collectively conceal their situation. The past tense which the narrator uses consistently is indicative of historical difference: it suggests the Cranford ladies’ manner of fashioning the socioeconomic aspect of their identity is specific to the time in which the novel is set. The pronoun “we” (6), and the fact that Cranford is “distant […] twenty miles on a railroad” from “the great neighbouring […] town of Drumble” imply that the characters’ practices of self-fashioning are also specific to this group of female characters living in a small town (3). This passage is also relevant because of the “sedan-chairs” the narrator mentions since they refer to the time in which the novel is set (6). If sedans were mainly used from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, these material objects signify historical difference regarding the novel’s publication at mid-century (cf. Simpson/Weiner 14: 855). At the same time, historical difference is mitigated through two other material objects or realist elements: in the intradiegetic present, the railway already exists, and The Pickwick Papers are being published (cf. 3; 10). The railway was built in 1830, and the Pickwick Papers were published between 1936 and 1937 (cf. Purchase 132; cf. Kinsley 1988b, vii). If the railway was associated with advances in technology and a new age of mobility and if the Pickwick Papers used a publishing format that harnessed new technologies in print culture and distribution, the novel is set before mid-century but the realist elements indicate that society in Cranford is in a state of cultural transition between pre- or early-Victorian times and the years leading up to mid-century (cf. Feldmann 2013b, 53; cf. Patten 1999, 480; cf. Dencovski/Karl 76).170 This is relevant because it makes the moment of cultural transition another characteristic feature of the town of Cranford. It also suggests there may be cultural tensions in how the Cranford ladies deal with material objects. The women treat material objects in a way that tallies with the convention of silencing their financial situation. When they consume, they engage in a practice of saving

170 Dencovski and Karl argue in similar way; they point out that Cranford is set at a moment of economic change (cf. 78).

125 which follows certain rules. This practice of saving can be regarded as inconspicuous consumption. It is also part of the characters’ social self-fashioning because it is concerned with concealing their financial situation. [I]t was considered ‘vulgar’ to […] give anything expensive, in the way of eatable or drinkable, at the evening entertainments. Wafer bread-and-butter and sponge- biscuits were all that the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson gave; and she was sister-in-law to the late Earl of Glenmire, although she did practise such ‘elegant economy.’ ‘Elegant economy!’ How naturally one falls back into the phraseology of Cranford! There, economy was always ‘elegant’ and money-spending always ‘vulgar and ostentatious’ […]. (5)

Taking food and drink as an example of how the Cranford women consume, the narrator shows that the price of “eatable or drinkable” objects is entwined with notions of social status and hierarchy (5). She also demonstrates that the rules reflect the characters’ social self-fashioning on the level of language. The material objects offered for consumption must not be “expensive” because this will be “considered ‘vulgar’” (5): if ‘vulgar’ means “lacking in refinement”, inconspicuous consumption ennobles the characters’ practices of consumption (Simpson/Weiner 19: 784). This is because consuming sparingly is in keeping with their financial situation. Offering costly food and consuming above their financial means would point to the characters’ financial situation while trying to conceal it. Thus, the Cranford women’s prestige is enhanced if they consume inconspicuously. The terminology which the characters use to evaluate practices of consumption reflects their concern with social status: since they redefine their financial situation and call themselves “aristocratic” (4), they refer to the practice of consuming objects sparingly as “‘elegant economy’” and dub “money-spending […] ‘vulgar and ostentatious’” (5). This is the structural link between the Cranford women’s inconspicuous consumption or “‘elegant economy’” and conspicuous consumption (5). The Cranford women’s inconspicuous consumption inverts how conspicuous consumption works, but the structure underlying the character’s inconspicuous consumption is the same as in conspicuous consumption: if wealthy consumers spend money on goods to show off their social status and identify with specific social groups, the opposite applies to the Cranford women. They treat material objects as sparingly as possible and save money to assert their social status in Cranford’s social structure. The food Mrs Jamieson offers at her parties illustrates how this works: the narrator suggests that the modest food the character presents does not impinge on her social position or prestige. In stressing that “[w]afer bread-and-butter and sponge-biscuits were all that […] Mrs. Jamieson gave”, the narrator highlights that this character restricts herself to offering inexpensive food (5). The narrator then adds some information on Mrs Jamieson’s social status: she is “sister-in-

126 law to the late Earl of Glenmire”, which implies she is distantly related to an aristocratic character (5). If Mrs Jamieson offers inexpensive food but has an aristocratic connection, this character sanctions inconspicuous consumption. Using Mrs Jamieson to explain how saving material objects is connected to social status and calling her “[h]onourable” suggests there is a social hierarchy in the town community headed by Mrs Jamieson (5). The hierarchy, as the material objects she offers suggest, can be negotiated by saving money and dealing with objects sparingly, hence through consuming inconspicuously. If the characters negotiate their status in the social structure of the town by consuming inconspicuously, this can be seen as the practical manifestations of their concern with the socioeconomic aspect of their identity and their social self-fashioning. On the level of narrative transmission, the narrator’s description of how objects are dealt with in Cranford is relevant in two respects: first, she uses inverted commas to mark the terms that characterize the Cranford women’s mode of consumption (cf. 5) and calls them “the phraseology of Cranford” (5). She indicates on a metalevel that consuming inconspicuously is specific to the small town.171 If the narrator speaks about consumption in Cranford on a metalevel and has to explain how it works, the mid-Victorian readers are not familiar with inconspicuous consumption.172 Consuming inconspicuously instead of conspicuously to identify with a social group and assert a position in its hierarchy makes the Cranford women’s way of dealing with material objects appear different to the readers. It is, however, the structural parallel between these two forms of consumption that makes it possible for the readers to note this difference as a distinctive feature of Cranford’s material culture. Second, the narrator evokes historical difference in addition to presenting a different form of consumption. She states that she uses the Cranford character’s terms “naturally” and “falls back” into their “phraseology” (5). This implies that she reports on the town retrospectively and looks back benevolently on the Cranford ladies’ inconspicuous consumption. The narrator’s account of Cranford is hence not rendered in a neutral manner but evinces sympathy here. In conveying sympathy or distance when she reports about Cranford, the narrator shapes how mid-Victorian readers are meant to perceive Cranford’s material culture. This is important because it invites the readers to

171 Knezevic considers “quoting […] terms of Cranfordian phraseology” a “stylistic device” the narrator uses to mark the terms “as key ideologemes of the local parlance” (411-412). 172 Quoting expressions the Cranford characters use and marking them for the readers in inverted commas can be seen as an element of the “ethnographic narrative” the narrator presents to the readers (Knezevic 405). This ties in with the argument that inconspicuous consumption has to be explained to the readers.

127 compare and contrast the social function of consumption in Cranford’s material culture with mid-Victorian material culture.

4.1.2 Consuming Food: Gaining Social Prestige by Consuming Inconspicuously Cranford registers several instances of consuming food or drink. Food is an important material object because its “consumption […] convey[s] cultural meanings, including distinctions on an intra- and intercultural level”, and the same holds true for drink (Feldmann 2012, 39). The intracultural level is relevant in Cranford since consuming food and drink is a way to negotiate social status in a small town. Two instances where the female characters consume food and drink illustrate the social ramifications of inconspicuous consumption because, on a structural level, they are constructed in a similar manner: both examples feature a character who offers food at a party and who makes a mistake when consuming. Due to this structural similarity, the instances can be compared. Furthermore, this chapter proposes that the instances illustrate that inconspicuous consumption in Cranford is a socially coded practice in two ways: it is not only concerned with offering inexpensive articles of food; it also triggers a specific behaviour amongst the characters. This behaviour aims at maintaining the Cranford ladies’ self-defined ‘aristocratic’ collective identity instead of excluding characters from the community. Mrs Forrester follows the tenet of inconspicuous consumption when she gives a party. When Mrs. Forrester […] gave a party in her baby-house of a dwelling, and the little maiden disturbed the ladies on the sofa by a request that she might get the tea-tray out from underneath, every one took this novel proceeding as the most natural thing in the world […]. […] [H]er mistress now sate [sic] in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up; though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes. (5)

The text suggests that Mrs Forrester offers inexpensive articles of food: she gives “tea- bread and sponge-cakes” (5). Moreover, she has saved money since she has not bought the food but prepared it herself (cf. 5). On the one hand, this implies that Mrs Forrester is not well-off and cannot afford to spend a lot of money. This reading is supported by the fact that she lives in a “baby-house of a dwelling” (5). On the other hand, she acts in line with the Cranford ladies’ self-fashioning since she offers inexpensive, self-made food and thus conceals financial aspects. Mrs Forrester is therefore in an ambivalent position: she is visibly not well-to-do, which runs counter to the Cranford women’s ‘aristocratic’ definition of their socioeconomic status. Still, she follows Mrs Jamieson’s example since she gives inexpensive food. She thus acts in line with the Cranford characters’ social self-

128 fashioning. If conspicuous consumption effects that consumers who spend money on objects are accepted in specific social circles because their consumption demonstrates that they have enough money to socioeconomically comply with this circle, the reverse applies to Mrs Forrester. She does not spend a lot of money on the food she presents (cf. Veblen 70-71). This can be seen in the way the Cranford women behave at Mrs Forrester’s party. Their behaviour suggests that consuming inconspicuously outweighs a character’s financial situation in fashioning the socioeconomic aspect of their identity. Mary Smith relates that Mrs Forrester’s maid does not adhere to etiquette (cf. 5). This is another sign that she is not well-off: she cannot afford any servants who are conversant with etiquette but has to make do with “one little charity-school maiden” (5). If maids were to be supervised by their mistress, Mrs Forrester has made a mistake because she has not communicated etiquette to her maid (cf. Loeb 21). The Cranford women ignore the maid’s “novel proceeding” after she has “disturbed the ladies” (5) and pretend to believe Mrs Forrester when she feigns surprise at the food (cf. 5).173 They do so because Mrs Forrester consumes inconspicuously, thus hides her financial situation and identifies with the characters’ ‘aristocratic’ self-fashioning. This, in turn, triggers a behaviour amongst the characters which confirms Mrs Forrester as a member of their ‘aristocratic’ community. The narrator states: “[t]he Cranfordians had that kindly esprit de corps which made them overlook all deficiencies in success when some among them tried to conceal their poverty” (5).174 The Cranford ladies thus uphold and reciprocate the pretence Mrs Forrester engages in to fashion her social status.175 This can be seen in the way the

173 Lee analyzes this passage, too. He rightly argues that Mrs Forrester “performs a social position distinguished by the luxury to take matters of dining for granted and to not concern oneself directly with the food that comprises […] one’s hospitality” (2016, 67). He takes “her inability to extinguish all traces of her involvement in food preparation” to prove that “the appearance of food in Cranford often entails the self’s openness to other” because “Mrs. Forrester’s guests […] know that she has spent the morning preparing the food” and “that this involvement with food is […] on her mind” (2016, 67). This observation is astute, but the interpretation could delve deeper into the function of offering food. 174 Knezevic argues that the Cranford “community’s self-understanding as ‘aristocracy’ is […] constituted not by economic status, but by an active maintenance of a group solidarity – the esprit de corps. Mary explains this bond as a response to the economic predicament of the Cranford society” (410). The study on hand departs from Knezevic and proposes that the financial aspect cannot be separated from the characters’ ‘aristocratic’ identificatory mechanisms. 175 Rappaport rightly states that the Cranford ladies create “a communal identity” (2008, 101). However, she claims that the identity is “maintained by sympathetic transactions” of “secrets” (2008, 101). She also maintains that “[t]his sympathetic economy […] gives” the Cranford characters “a way to maintain their community in the absence of […] consumption” (2008, 98). These claims are not tenable. Rappaport also refers to the scene where the Cranford ladies pretend not to know about Mrs Forrester financial situation, but her analysis is not convincing (cf. 2008, 101).

129 characters react to the maid’s gaffe and Mrs Forrester’s surprise. A mechanism of mutual silences is set in operation to gloss over Mrs Forrester’s socioeconomic situation: the sentence playing with various subjects and objects governing the verb ‘know’ shows that Mrs Forrester’s situation is common knowledge amongst the characters (cf. 5). Yet they evade it to prove that Mrs Forrester’s social self-fashioning is successful since she avoids all references to financial aspects. This implies that inconspicuous consumption here has the function of strengthening the characters’ collective identity in view of their financial constraints: in disregarding Mrs Forrester’s mistake they uphold their collective ‘aristocratic’ identity. If the narrator shows that consuming inconspicuously is coded in a way that aims at upholding the Cranford women’s collective identity, she implicitly hints that the reverse applies to conspicuous consumption at mid-century. It is socially coded in that consumers cannot gain access to certain social circles if they are not affluent enough to consume in the ‘right’ way and if conspicuous consumption then has an exclusionary function. On this reading, inconspicuous consumption is shown to be as coded and meaningful as conspicuous consumption. The clause communicating the characters’ mutual silences evinces a syntax that is noteworthy:176 “though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew” plays with Behaghel’s law of increasing terms (5).177 That the narrator uses an increasing number of constituents is relevant in two respects: the syntax reflects on level of language that inconspicuous consumption is a coded practice which is accompanied by a specific behaviour. The clause which illustrates how the Cranford women silence Mrs Forrester’s financial situation has to be read and reread to fully grasp the different levels of awareness. Moreover, the clause suggests that the narrator represents the inconspicuous consumption as a socially coded practice to hold together collective identity in a benevolent or idealizing manner in retrospect: the clause makes the readers smile and sympathize with the Cranford characters. If displays of social status in the mid-Victorian period required specific knowledge of the material objects which lent prestige to the consumers, the narrator here shows that with the Cranford women’s inconspicuous consumption specific knowledge is required, too (cf. Steinbach

176 Lee stresses the relevance of this sentence, too. His interpretation, however, is not convincing: “the long sentence owes most of its bulk to the laborious preparation […] of food and to the maid whose […] lack of strength might hint at an earlier malnourished food plot of her own” (2016, 68). 177 Behaghel’s law presents observations on word order and constituents in sentences; one of these observations is the law of increasing terms (cf. Plath 544). It says that shorter constituents tend to be followed by longer constituents and that pieces of information which are attached most importance or are difficult to memorize appear at the end of a sentence (cf. Plath 544).

130 111). The sympathy evoked here points to a nostalgic perspective the narrator has on inconspicuous consumption: she communicates that the characters do not use inconspicuous consumption to exclude members from their town community but to jointly fashion their status which further strengthens their communal ties. This, the narrator’s retrospective account implies, works within the context of a small town before mid-century. Yet in making the readers smile, she simultaneously “prevents unrestricted immersion into […] an idealised perspective” on inconspicuous consumption and “distances the readers from” it (Enderwitz/Feldmann 51). Miss Barker flouts the tenet of inconspicuous consumption because she serves costly food. She consumes conspicuously to demonstrate “pecuniary strength” (Veblen 61). Considering her social background, this can be seen as a way for Miss Barker to enhance her position and gain prestige in the Cranford’s ‘aristocratic’ community. The narrator’s detailed representation of this incident here mocks the function of holding together the characters’ collective identity through inconspicuous consumption and shows that this function is limited. Another tray! ‘Oh, gentility!’ thought I, ‘can you endure this last shock?’ For Miss Barker had ordered (nay, I doubt not prepared, although she did say, ‘Why! Peggy, what have you brought us?’ and looked pleasantly surprised at the unexpected pleasure) all sorts of good things […] – scalloped oysters, potted lobsters, jelly, a dish called ‘little Cupids,’ (which was […] too expensive to be given, except on solemn […] occasions – macaroons sopped in brandy, I should have called it, if I had not known its more refined […] name). […] [W]e were evidently to be feasted with all that was sweetest and best […]. (67-68)

Mary Smith’s exclamation “Another tray!” suggests that Miss Barker serves a lot of food (67). Mary Smith’s rhetoric supports this observation: “[w]e were […] feasted with all that was sweetest and best” (67-68). “[F]easted” (67), which designates “[t]o […] regale oneself” (Simpson/Weiner 5: 783), the amount “all” and the superlatives “sweetest and best” point to a maximum of quantity and quality regarding Miss Barker’s food (67-68). Moreover, the narrator states that Miss Barker offers “all sorts of good things” (67) and enumerates them (cf. 67). Not only does this list of comestibles illustrate the quantity of Miss Barker’s food; it also points to a maximum of quality: the “oysters” and “lobsters” can be considered luxurious food (67). If consuming inconspicuously means that the characters avoid spending a lot of money, Miss Barker does the opposite here. She can therefore be argued to disregard the tenet of inconspicuous consumption and consume conspicuously. Mary Smith’s narrative voice underpins this reading. Imitating the Cranford women’s point of view, she wonders whether “‘gentility […] can endure this last shock’” (67). Moreover, she explains on a metalevel why Mrs Barker consumes the

131 ‘wrong’ way. Her food exceeds the price of what is considered acceptable amongst the characters (67): the “dish called ‘little Cupids’ […] was too expensive to be given” (67). That Miss Barker presents several costly articles of food and does not attend to the tenet of inconspicuous consumption is represented as problematic because she transgresses the characters’ accepted financial range. If the hints the narrator provides about Miss Barker’s financial and social situation are considered, the character can be considered to aim at advancing her social prestige in the ‘aristocratic’ community expressly by not consuming inconspicuously: Miss Barker used to be a lady’s maid, ran a shop after that and only retired when she had made enough money with her shop (cf. 61). Miss Barker’s former life is thus connected to money and trade, which runs counter to the characters’ social self-fashioning. Mary Smith questions whether “Miss Barker had ordered” the food, as her remark “nay, I doubt not prepared” demonstrates (67). This implies that Miss Barker cannot afford a servant who does the work for her. In this respect, Miss Barker resembles Mrs Forrester. Yet while Mrs Forrester moves within the accepted financial range and consumes modestly, Miss Barker exceeds this range to pretend that she is better-off than she is. This can be seen when Mary Smith mocks the surprise Miss Barker feigns as the food arrives. The narrator uses the pun “pleasantly surprised at the unexpected pleasure” to reveal the discrepancy between Miss Barker’s costly food and the necessity to prepare it herself (67). On the discourse level, the narrator counters the system of mutual silences regarding Miss Barker’s financial and social status. Adopting the perspective of the Cranford characters, she thus marks Miss Barker’s mode of consumption as an attempt to enhance her social status in the town in a way that is overdone. Yet in doing so, she also demonstrates that inconspicuous consumption is a way for the Cranford women to negotiate their hierarchy but not an exclusionary mechanism. Regarding Miss Barker’s costly food, the narrator mockingly states: “we though it better to submit ourselves graciously, even at the cost of our gentility – which never ate suppers in general – but which, like most non-supper-eaters, was particularly hungry on all special occasions” (68). Mary Smith here shows that the tenet of inconspicuous consumption can be disregarded: if the Cranford women consume the costly food even though Miss Barker does refer to their financial situation in offering it, they “kindly […] overlook” Miss Barkers’ conspicuous consumption since she engages in it to “conceal” her “poverty” (5). This shows that inconspicuous consumption as a strategy to fashion the characters’ socioeconomic status does convey notions of prestige but that it does not to work to exclude any characters who share their socioeconomic situation with the Cranford women. The narrator’s mocking tone of voice can here be

132 interpreted to suggest that she pokes fun at the characters’ concern with fashioning themselves as ‘aristocratic’ since they do not censor Miss Barker’s ‘wrong’ mode of consumption. This distances the readers from Cranford’s locally specific practice of moulding their socioeconomic status. The drink Miss Barker offers to her guests points to the limits of the characters’ leniency in overlooking mistakes in social self-fashioning. Miss Barker trespasses since she offers the ‘wrong’ drink. The narrator’s account of this provides further evidence for the argument that consumption in Cranford is socially coded. Mary Smith relates: “Miss Barker, in her former sphere, had […] been made acquainted with the beverage they call cherry-brandy. We none of us had ever seen such a thing, and rather shrunk back when she proffered it us” (68). The narrator calls Miss Barker’s background “her former sphere” (68). This underlines that Miss Barker differs from the Cranford women socially. Miss Barker’s background can be connected to how she consumes: if she is socially different from the other characters, she flouts the tenet of inconspicuous consumption to compensate her ‘inferior’ social status. Offering overly costly food is thus meant to provide evidence that Miss Barker has enough money to impress the Cranford characters. It is a way for her to assert that her socioeconomic status is now similar to that of the other characters. The drink Miss Barker offers can be read as a semiotic marker which triggers a reaction from the other characters. Mary Smith’s tone of voice is derogatory when she refers to “the beverage they call cherry-brandy” (68). Since she connects the “cherry- brandy” to Miss Barker’s “former sphere”, the drink can be argued to stand for Miss Barker’s social background (68). Accordingly, the characters hesitate when they are offered the brandy. They “rather shrunk back” from what the narrator calls “such a thing” (68). The characters are loath to consume a drink they consider below their social status. They sanction Miss Barker’s gaffe: “we thought ourselves bound to give evidence that we were not accustomed to such things by coughing terribly” (68). The pronoun “we” shows that the Cranford ladies and Mary Smith, who identifies with them, collectively oppose the drink and mark off their social status from Miss Barker’s “former sphere” (68). Since they “thought” themselves “bound to give evidence”, this demonstrates that consumption is socially coded amongst the characters (68): if a material object does not tally with the Cranford characters’ ideas of consumption because it is semiotically problematic for them, they react to this object in a way that shows they disapprove of it. When the characters have tried the brandy (cf. 68), they cough to state that they are “not accustomed” to what the narrator disparagingly styles “such a thing” (68).

133 Even though the parties are not explicitly represented as creating a metalevel on consumption, they point to a metalevel nevertheless. Not only do they illustrate the intricacies of inconspicuous consumption; they also connect to mid-Victorian material culture. On the one hand, Miss Barker’s food and drink show that the novel represents these material objects in connection with social status and ascribes them a signifying function at a time set before mid-century. The novelistic representation can also be seen as a comment on contemporary practices of consumption: by creating a society of bygone times where status is displayed through inconspicuous consumption and where conspicuous consumption is sanctioned, the novel holds up a mirror to mid-Victorian practices of consumption and shows how status is negotiated there by inverting the structures of consumption. The characters pursue the same goal as in conspicuous consumption, but the novel represents inconspicuous consumption as the way to assert social status in the characters’ community. If these structures of consumption were the same in the context of the intradiegetic material culture and the mid-Victorian period, the narrator would not have to explain the tenet of inconspicuous consumption first and then illustrate in detail the implications of how the Cranford women consume food and drink. A third instance where the Cranford women consume food is outside Cranford and with a male host. The instance can be argued to unravel different, coexisting forms of material culture and hence to create a metalevel. This is because Mr Holbrook stands for a form of material culture that differs from the Cranford women. Mary Smith’s narrative thus records two varieties of material culture which coexist in the intradiegetic past. The “distinctions on an intra[cultural] […] level” between Mr Holbrook and the Cranford characters become manifest when they consume food (Feldmann 2012, 39): When the ducks and green peas came, we looked at each other in dismay; we had only two-pronged […] forks. […] [W]hat were we to do? Miss Matty picked up her peas, one by one, on the point of the prongs […]. Miss Pole sighed over her […] peas as she left them on […] her plate untasted; for they would drop between the prongs. I looked at my host: the peas were going wholesale into his […] mouth, shovelled up by his large round-ended knife. I saw, I imitated, I survived! My friends, in spite of my precedent, could not muster up courage enough to do an ungenteel thing; and […] the good peas went away almost untouched. (34)

Here, the Cranford women are confronted with a piece of cutlery they are not familiar with: “two-pronged forks” (34). While Mr Holbrook uses his “round-ended knife” and consumes the peas “wholesale”, the Cranford women try to use their forks on all accounts (34). The narrator imitates Mr Holbrook and states that the Cranford women do not follow her “precedent” (34). For them, using the knife would be “an ungenteel thing” (34). The word “ungenteel” is key here (34). It shows in another respect that consumption is socially

134 coded amongst the characters:178 using a fork to consume is considered genteel. Since the Cranford characters negotiate their ‘genteel’ or ‘aristocratic’ status through consumption, they refuse to use their knives as a way of collectively identifying with their town community. If the categories of difference the character constellation entails are considered, the Cranford ladies’ and Mr Holbrook’s practices of consumption are linked to different varieties of contemporaneous material culture. The categories of difference relevant here are those of gender, class and place. While the Cranford characters live in a predominantly female community, their male host lives on his own. He is “a yeoman” and “had refused to push himself on […] into the ranks of the squires” (30). He owns land but is not aristocratic and does not try to move upward socially.179 The Cranford ladies, by contrast, are constricted financially but style themselves ‘aristocratic’. This self-fashioning in a female community entails the characters’ specific mode of consumption. In addition, the Cranford women are from a small town, whereas Mr Holbrook lives in the country: “he lived four or five miles from Cranford on his own estate” (30). If the narrator draws on contrasts between London and Cranford to suggest that the female characters’ material culture is specific to Cranford, regional difference between the Cranford ladies and Mr Holbrook achieves the same effect. On this reading, Mr Holbrook represents a rural, masculine material culture and is not concerned with fashioning his social status in a way that is above his socioeconomic situation. As a consequence, Mary Smith’s narrative registers two different forms of material culture. Both are located in the intradiegetic past and represented as preceding the mid-Victorian period. Mary Smith can record these material cultures because she is conceptualized as a homodiegetic narrator who brings into play differences and contrasts. She is from Drumble’s urban context (cf. 152) and characterizes herself as a “young woman” (88). She thus differs from the elderly Cranford women in terms of region and age (cf. 30-31). This enables her to at once participate in their community and its material culture and see it from an outside perspective. Thus, she is able to state why the Cranford women insist on using their forks but uses the knife herself. Her stance on the Cranford women’s material culture is detached because of her difference in age and place of origin. She

178 Lee argues that the meal with Mr Holbrook demonstrates “incompatible eating practices” (2016, 64). He proposes that its structural function is to terminate “the renewed relationship between Miss Matty and Mr. Holbrook” (2016, 64). He does not explore why the Cranford women refuse to use their knives. 179 A yeoman is “[a] man holding a small landed estate […] under the rank of a gentleman” (Simpson/Weiner 20: 728).

135 therefore does not have to refuse the knife and identify with the elderly ladies. Likewise, she is detached from Mr Holbrook’s rural material culture due to a difference in gender, age and place. Mary Smith is thus aloof of both material cultures as a homodiegetic narrator. As such, it might be argued, she is already positioned on a metalevel when she has dinner at Mr Holbrook’s: she acknowledges differences in the material cultures of the other characters, reflects on the Cranford women’s behaviour and consumes her peas like Mr Holbrook does because she has understood that the significance and functions of certain practices in different material cultures can be place-specific. Moreover, if it is taken into account that Cranford in the mid-Victorian period registers two material cultures which coexist in the intradiegetic past of the text, this gestures towards a metalevel in yet another respect. Since the material culture of the small town of Cranford differs from Mr Holbrook’s rural variety, this raises questions about the universality of ‘the’ material culture of a given period. It relativizes the notion that there is one dominant form or discourse on material culture at a given point in time. Instead, it suggests that there is a multiplicity of material cultures at any given point in time – including ‘the’ mid-Victorian material culture that is emblematized in the Crystal Palace and which is sometimes considered to have shaped mid-Victorian identity.180 Furthermore, it is noteworthy that food is used to represent Mr Holbrook’s rural material culture as differing from Cranford’s material culture. This can be seen as a parallel to 1851. There, the yale the Sandboys are about to drink and the food the visitors to Buttermere consume are material objects which serve to highlight historical difference. The food Mrs Jellyby serves can also be seen as a marker of difference insofar as it implies that the character presents and alternative to middle-class ideas of female gender roles. In all the novels, then, food serves as a marker to indicate difference.

4.1.3 Reflections on the Use of Material Objects: Individual Practices of Saving and Their Structural Ambivalences The tenet of inconspicuous consumption as a distinctive practice which characterizes the Cranford women’s collective identity not only pertains to practices which involve the entire community of female town dwellers; it also applies to how the characters treat everyday material objects on an individual basis. It is with everyday objects that inconspicuous consumption is shown to be a diversified practice that shapes the socioeconomic aspect of the characters’ identity. As such, it creates tensions. These

180 On the role scholars ascribe to the Crystal Palace in connection with national identity, see Auerbach 4-5 and 214.

136 tensions occur when material objects are ascribed a value which exceeds their use- value.181 This aspect can be related to discussions which were prominent at mid-century: in the Crystal Palace, material objects were displayed which were purely aesthetic in their conception and could not be used (cf. Richards 33). This raised questions concerning the use-value of objects as opposed to other values that could be ascribed to them. The carpet Miss Jenkyns buys is a case in point. Mary Smith outlines a conflict between the representative and the use-value of this object. Her representation achieves a comic effect because she shows that the characters try to divest the carpet of its use- value but do so in a way that compromises its representative function. Miss Jenkyns had purchased a new carpet for the drawing-room. Oh the busy work Miss Matty and I had in chasing the sunbeams, as they fell in an afternoon right down on this carpet […]! We spread newspapers over the places […]; and, lo! in a quarter of an hour the sun had moved, and we went on our knees to alter the position of the newspapers. We were very busy, too, one […] morning before Miss Jenkyns gave a party […] in cutting out and stitching together pieces of newspaper, so as to form […] paths to every chair, set for the […] visitors, lest their shoes might dirty or defile the purity of the carpet. (15)

The measures the characters take to protect the carpet stem from two conflicting purposes the carpet can be used for: on the one hand, it fulfils a representative function because it has been placed in “the drawing-room” (15). Since this room has a representative function, guests coming to the house can see it and may take the carpet to stand in for the house as a whole (cf. Logan 195).182 The carpet hence provides hints about the social status and identity of its owners. It is also an expense because “Miss Jenkyns” has “purchased” and spent money on it (15). If the carpet is seen as a representative object, Miss Jenkyns has consumed conspicuously since acquiring and possessing material objects is part of consumption (cf. Eichhammer 191). This shows that the line between conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption in Cranford is not as clear-cut as it appears to be. On the other hand, a carpet is merely an item to walk on, hence an object of daily use. This inherent use-value, however, is second to the representative function since the drawing room or parlour is a meaningful space. The notion that material objects have to be treated sparingly dictates that the carpet be preserved in its new state and does not show any signs of usage. Accordingly, the narrator relates two instances when she and

181 The term use-value is usually linked to Marxist terminology but can be used in non-Marxist readings: “it refers to the usefulness of a thing, and as such is grounded in the inherent […] properties of the thing” (Edgar 2003e, 425). 182“An […] elaborate collection of things is the distinguishing feature of the Victorian parlour: despite variations over time and across income levels, the parlour is […] the scene for the display of that accumulation of objects that is the index […] of a successful domestic situation” (Logan 105).

137 Miss Matty try to protect it. In the first instance, “the sunbeams” which “fell […] right down on this carpet” are represented as a problem because they might make the new carpet lose its colour (15). Therefore, the characters “spread newspapers over the places” and “alter the position of the newspapers” when “the sun [has] moved” (15). This, and the fact that the narrator is very specific about the time which passes before they adjust the newspapers, shows that the carpet is not regarded as a mere object of daily use (cf. 15). If the characters are so particular about not letting the carpet fade, they ascribe it an aesthetic value in addition to its use-value. This suggests the representative function of the carpet outweighs its use-value in an everyday context. The narrator’s serious tone of voice here clashes with the notion that she and Miss Matty “went on” their “knees” to protect the carpet and achieves a comic effect (15). This discrepancy between the characters crawling on their knees and a new carpet thus comically distorts the notion of the carpet as an aesthetic object in a representative room. The second instance is an occasion where the carpet is used for representative purposes. Since Miss Jenkyns is giving “a party” in the “drawing-room”, the carpet can be displayed to the guests as a representative object (15). If the guests, however, are received in that room, they also have to walk on the carpet and use it. The precautions the narrator and Miss Matty take for the party point to a conflict between the representative function of the carpet and its use-value. They are “busy […] cutting out and stitching together pieces of newspaper, so as to form […] paths to every chair” (15). This implies they are concerned with how the carpet can be used for display while they simultaneously strive to prevent it from obtaining any signs of usage: the visitors’ “shoes might dirty or defile the purity of the carpet” (15). The characters keep the carpet from being affected by the visitors’ shoes on an occasion where its representative value might be played out. The representative and use-value are in conflict with each other due to the tenet of inconspicuous consumption and the dual uses to which the carpet can be put: as an object on the floor, it has an intrinsic use-value, and the characters cannot divest it from this value by construing of it as a representative object. Using the carpet for representative purposes entails acknowledging its use-value which, however, needs to be minimized to deal with it carefully and consume it sparingly. This ambivalence suggests that the dividing line between conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption is fuzzy: while buying and regarding the carpet as a representative material object is indicative of conspicuous consumption, treating it with great care points to inconspicuous consumption.

138 However, creating “paths” may not be considered conducive to the representative function of the carpet since it impinges on its appearance (15). This, too, evokes a comic effect: the precautions taken to protect the carpet and to suspend its use-value aesthetically undermine its representative value. Here, the comic effect is enhanced by the narrator’s reader address. She asks the readers “Do you make paper paths for every guest to walk upon in London?” and establishes a difference in place in doing so (15). Evoking this difference constructs the readers as being London-based, hence as being from an urban context. The narrator contrasts the urban context with the small town of Cranford. She does so by representing the careful manner in which the carpet is treated as being typical of Cranford and, as the present tense in her question implies, sets it apart from contemporary London.183 Creating this contrast is significant: it suggests that mid- Victorian London is framed as the yardstick by which to measure practices in material culture. This is reminiscent of 1851: there, the readers are also framed as being from London. In Cranford, the readers are constructed in a way that ascribes them a London- based perspective on a small town existing before mid-century. That the narrator foregrounds saving the carpet at the cost of its aesthetic value, it can be argued, will appear unusual to these readers: if mid-Victorian readers recognize the significance the carpet has for displaying social identity, it evokes a comic difference between the way material objects are treated in Cranford and London. This difference makes it possible for the readers to smile at a practice of saving the narrator represents as being exaggerated. Here, the carpet as a realist element serves the function of creating distance between the implied mid-Victorian urban readers and the characters of a material culture which is ascribed to a time before mid-century. Using the carpet in the living room as a distancing device can be related to the Sandboys’ parlour. The latter also ‘deviates’ from urban ideas of a parlour and serves as a strategy of othering the Sandboys. Mrs Jellyby’s house ‘departs’ from middle-class ideas of gender roles, which is also communicated through an interior space. Notions of cultural identity – urban, rural, contemporary or past as well as class- and gender-specific – are thus implicated in the representations of parlours and the material objects that furnish them. The narrator can point out the difference between Cranford and London because she is not from Cranford but from Drumble, which is another urban context. Moreover, she reports on Cranford retrospectively. Given that the narrator reports in the mid-

183 Knezevic points out that the narrator’s account “is offered neither to a provincial nor to an industrial-urban audience, but to the metropolitan audience designated in the novel by ‘London’” (407).

139 Victorian period, the way in which the carpet is treated is also removed from the implied readers through historical difference. This also makes it appear unusual that the aesthetic value of the carpet is compromised. Nevertheless, while protecting the carpet may appear comic on a surface level, the structure underlying this measure evinces more continuities than differences between inconspicuous and conspicuous consumption: the narrator’s account does build on differences in place and time, and these differences establish a contrast between Cranford’s material culture and mid-Victorian urban material culture, but on a structural level the material cultures of these times are related. It is this relationship or structural similarity that makes it possible for mid-Victorian readers to at once recognize the characters’ ways of saving material objects as a characteristic feature of the material culture of a small town and, because of this regional and historical difference, regard it as a comic facet of the Cranford ladies’ socioeconomic identity. Miss Matty’s candle and the narrator’s string economy are examples of ‘trivial’ objects which are ascribed a value that exceeds their use-value. The manner in which the narrator represents these economies points to tensions between different values ascribed to specific material objects and between her and Miss Matty. On an extratextual level, the candles and strings can be structurally related to the objects in the Crystal Palace since the exhibits were also endowed with a value. This reveals similarities and differences between Cranford’s material culture and the mid-Victorian period in a way that makes the economies pertaining to ‘trivial’ objects appear comic at mid-century. Mary Smith states that the characters deal with specific objects sparingly to save money: “almost every one has his own individual small economies – careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one peculiar direction – any disturbance of which annoys him more than spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance” (41). The “individual […] economies” can thus be seen as a variety of inconspicuous consumption which is practiced in private (41). The economies follow a logic which is paradoxical, as the narrator’s explanation suggests: they are “habits of saving in some one peculiar direction”; flouting a tenet of “saving fractions of pennies” is regarded as trespassing, whereas “spending shillings or pounds” on another object which is more expensive is not (41). While saving money is at the heart of the “individual […] economies”, the contradiction between “saving fractions of pennies” with specific objects and “spending” money on other items suggests that a non-pecuniary value plays a role in these economies (41). The narrator explains that Miss Matty saves candles: she “only burnt one at a time” and “sit[s] […] knitting in the dark” to avoid using candles altogether (42). This and the fact that she is concerned about their length shows she ascribes these objects an aesthetic

140 value which goes beyond their use-value:184 when the candles are used, they have to be “of the same length” and must not “become too uneven in length to be restored to equality” (42). Miss Matty is so particular about the aesthetic appearance of the candles because potential visitors are meant to believe that she “burnt two always” (42). The aesthetic value Miss Matty ascribes to candles here is a parallel to Miss Jenkyns’s new carpet. If the candles are of equal length, they imply that Miss Matty has a tidy, presentable home and can afford using two rather than just one candle in her daily life. This shows that the characters connect individual practices of saving to notions of social status and prestige. On a structural level, the aesthetic value Miss Matty ascribes to the candles and which she takes to symbolize status resembles the function some objects had in the Crystal Palace. There, the machines and the products made from them stood for technological progress and industrial prowess. These objects had a use-value but were ascribed a semiotic function that transcended their use-value. This structural parallel shows that ascribing material objects a value which goes beyond their intrinsic use-value is attributed to a time that preceded the mid-Victorian period at mid-century. There is, however, a difference regarding the material objects which receive an extra value: the objects in the Crystal Palace had been produced by means of new technologies. The candles Miss Matty endows with a special value are mere objects of everyday use. This results in a conflict between their aesthetic and use-value. The conflict which arises from ascribing candles as ‘ordinary’ or ‘mere’ objects of daily use an extra value is censored by the narrator on the discourse level. From her vantage point, candles are overvalued and are ascribed an excessive aesthetic value. She therefore distances herself from Miss Matty’s way of saving:185 she states she was “particularly annoyed” at how she treats her candles (42). She also evokes a comic contrast between the static picture of Miss Matty’s eyes being “fixed upon the candle” and the rapid motion implied when the elderly woman “jump[s] up and extinguish[es]” the candle “to light the other” (42). If the readers smile at how the carpet is protected, the representation of Miss Matty’s candle economy can be argued to make the readers

184 Mulvihill states that “the social and economic” aspects of saving candles “satisfy needs other than those of strict utility” (347). The reading above is not concerned with needs but with structural processes of ascribing material objects a value. 185 O’Donnell maintains that Mary “Smith encourages us to view Miss Matty and her […] economy with empathy” (11). The language the narrator uses here shows that this statement is not tenable.

141 perceive this manner of saving as an elderly lady’s idiosyncratic practice which takes the tenet of inconspicuous consumption to extremes. And yet, Mary Smith has an economy, too. She reflects on her string economy and reveals that the use-value of the strings is a problematic notion for her. String is my foible. My pockets get full of little hanks of it, […] ready for uses that never come. […] How people can bring themselves to use Indian-rubber rings, which are a sort of deification of string, as lightly as they do, I cannot imagine. To me an Indian-rubber ring is a precious treasure. I have one which is not new; one that I picked up off the floor, nearly six years ago. I have really tried to use it; but […] I could not commit the extravagance. (42)

The “string[s]” or “rings” can be seen as small objects of use which serve practical purposes in an everyday context (42). Mary Smith, however, can be considered a collector of these objects. This is because she “cannot imagine” why strings are used and accumulates them in her “pockets” (42). Indeed, she considers “an Indian-rubber ring […] a precious treasure” and using it would be an “extravagance” (42). Yet she acknowledges the use-value of strings and states she has “really tried to use” them (42). This can be read in two ways: first, the narrator knows that strings are ‘mere’ objects of use but ascribes them a special status which suspends their use-value altogether. She does not give a reason why she does not use the strings. She only states they are “a sort of deification of string”, but does not provide an explanation why they are so special to her (42). This is a contrast to Miss Matty’s “candle economy” (42). Miss Matty uses her candles to a certain extent and saves them to fashion social status, whereas the narrator does not use the strings at all and does not pursue a specific goal in doing so. That she collects strings can be considered an idiosyncratic practice of dealing with an object of daily use. This idiosyncratic practice is relevant with regard to three aspects:186 the level of discourse, the metalevel created in the text and the metalevel that emerges if Cranford is read against the backdrop of mid-Victorian material culture. Concerning the discourse level, it is interesting that Mary Smith distances herself from Miss Matty’s “candle economy” but practices an economy which even keeps material objects from being used (42). It is noteworthy that Mary Smith explains why Miss Matty saves candles but, when she reflects on her own economy, cannot give a more specific reason for this than regarding strings as a “a sort of deification” (42). This can be interpreted in two ways: first, the contrast between Miss Matty’s and Mary Smith’s economies shows that the

186 Mary Smith’s string economy is sometimes considered a fetishistic practice (cf. Lupton 237; cf. Pinch 158). The readings offered here seek to analyze the string economy in a larger structural context.

142 structures underlying the characters’ “individual […] economies” are the same since the characters try to save a specific everyday object. Yet the reasons for doing so differ, do not follow the same logic and are not shared or universally agreed on in the town (41). Thus, the homodiegetic narrator can disagree with Miss Matty on the candles and treasure strings nevertheless. Second, the narrator speaks about her string economy in the present tense but reports on Miss Matty’s candles using simple past (cf. 42). The past tense marks Miss Matty’s economy as a practice pursued in bygone times; the present tense suggests that Mary Smith still practices her string economy at the point of narration. This implies there is no historical difference between when Mary Smith saves strings and the time when she narrates. Mary Smith, it may be argued, cannot reflect on her own economy in a manner that is as differentiated as when she reports retrospectively on practices of consumption other characters used to engage in. This renders the account of her own economy ambivalent. It is important here that the narrative voice is conceptualized as homodiegetic. Since Mary Smith is the only narrator in Cranford and because no other character comments on her economy, there is no difference in figural perspective, hence no outside perspective on her strings. The narrator is thus able to reflect on her economy on an intradiegetic metalevel but she can do so only to a certain extent. She is a character in her own narration. Therefore, her figural knowledge is invariably limited. This structural feature of Cranford resembles the narratological conception of Bleak House. Esther, too, is a character in her own narration and has limited figural knowledge, as the incident when she admires shop windows shows. In Bleak House, however, the heterodiegetic narrator offers an outside perspective, complements Esther’s limited figural perspective and introduces a metalevel.187 In the context of mid-Victorian material culture, Mary Smith’s string economy can be argued to parallel the exhibits in the Crystal Palace in so far as some of them resembled works of art which had an aesthetic value and displayed artisanal prowess but could not be used (cf. Richards 33). Thus, both the strings the narrator does not use and the “gadgets” in the Crystal Palace are material objects which are ascribed a value that transcends their use-value (Richards 33). While the objects share this structural aspect, the strings also differ from the aesthetic exhibits. They are material objects designed for

187 This distinguishes the narrative structures of Bleak House and Cranford from each other. Delafield rightly notes that Esther’s “viewpoint” is “contextualized by the omniscient narrative” but considers this to be a parallel to Mary Smith’s “narrative” which is “set against the omniscient present tense of the surrounding material” (40). The reading above does not support Delafield’s idea that the novels evince parallels in this respect (cf. 38; 40).

143 use in an everyday context rather than for display and they are partly old objects, as the string which is “nearly six years” old shows (42). In treasuring an old string and adding strings to her collection, Mary Smith resembles Krook. He also collects old objects, does not use them and ascribes them an idiosyncratic value. The difference between Mary Smith and Krook is that the first does not acquire her strings but takes them when she comes across them: as can be seen with the string she “picked up off the floor”, she does not acquire or consume them with a specific purpose in mind (42). Since both characters are concerned with old objects, they may be argued to invert the structures of Victorian consumers (cf. Schülting 2016, 18). Here, an extratextual metalevel surfaces: Mary Smith’s string economy is represented as an idiosyncratic practice and Krook is considered a mad collector by other characters (cf. Dickens 2008, 66). This suggests that both characters draw on the structures which are prevalent in dealing with new material objects in mid-Victorian material culture but modify or deploy them to different ends. The literary representations showing how the structures existing on the extratextual level can be changed implicitly underpin them by marking the modifications as idiosyncratic or ‘odd’ ways of dealing with material objects. Yet they simultaneously relativize these structures by pointing out that and how they can be modified. Thus, they at once evince continuities and discontinuities with mid- Victorian material culture. These analyses show that the characters’ individual practices of saving are not as homogenous as the tenet of inconspicuous consumption, although they are a variety of inconspicuous consumption. This is because the value the characters ascribe to specific material objects is not derived from a rule all the characters share. On the level of content, the “individual […] economies” hence create tensions rather than identificatory processes amongst the characters (41). If the metalevel surfacing in the representations of the “individual […] economies” is considered, the ambivalences regarding the status of a given object arise from the idiosyncratic manner in which objects of daily use are ascribed an excessive value (41). The narrative conception of the novel reveals these ambivalences because the homodiegetic narrator, who is critical of a past economy yet engages in an economy, too, is ambivalent herself. In structural terms, the analyses suggest that the process in which an extra value ascribed to the objects in Cranford is not entirely different from endowing objects with a specific extra value at the Great Exhibition in the mid- Victorian period. The objects which are ascribed this value in Cranford, however, are ‘mere’ objects of everyday use, which reveals a difference between mid-Victorian material culture and that of Cranford which is set before this time. This holds up a mirror

144 to mid-century practices of ascribing material objects a value that goes beyond their use- value.

4.1.4 The Social Function of Waste In the town community of Cranford, even waste has a function in shaping the socioeconomic aspect of the characters’ identity. Waste, moreover, is an issue that was discussed in the mid-Victorian period. What classifies as waste in Cranford and how it is avoided or produced evinces more differences than similarities when it is compared to mid-Victorian material culture. These differences become manifest because, on the level of discourse, the narrator combines realist attention to small everyday objects with a nostalgic tone of voice. Mary Smith suggests that even small material objects can be used to form a sense of identity. She also insinuates that these objects become waste if they are not used: “I had often occasion to notice the use that was made of fragments and small opportunities […]; the rose-leaves were gathered ere they fell, to make a pot-pourri for some one who had no garden […]” (17). The small material objects do not refer to objects which result from a process of production. “[T]he rose-leaves” are matter that grows in gardens (17). If “the rose-leaves” are “gathered ere they fell, to make a pot-pourri”, this shows that the Cranford ladies take the leaves which are in danger of becoming waste and convert them into constituents of another material object before they fade (17). The leaves are prevented from becoming dead matter which cannot be used anymore and then becomes waste. This can be related to the mid-Victorian notion of recycling. If recycling means that objects which cannot be used any longer are reworked in a way that makes them fit for use again, collecting and using “the rose-leaves” differs from recycling in two significant ways (17): waste at mid-century can be seen as “the leftovers of Victorian culture” (Schülting 2016, 21), which implies that consuming or using up material objects precedes waste production. In Cranford, “the rose-leaves” do not become waste because they have been used up or consumed; they turn into waste if they are not used (17). This is because they are of a different nature than “the left-overs of Victorian culture” (Schülting 2016, 21). Since recycling entails reworking waste, moreover, collecting and using the leaves can be seen as a step prior to recycling. Thus, waste is avoided because material objects whose nature admits of doing so are kept from becoming waste, which does not make recycling necessary. If Cranford is set in a time which precedes the mid-Victorian period, this implies that waste is not a novel phenomenon in the mid-Victorian age. What

145 classifies as waste in the small town, however, is very different from waste as a predominantly urban phenomenon in the mid-Victorian period.188 Dealing with material objects in a way that avoids waste is a characteristic feature of Cranford’s material culture: “I had often occasion to notice the use that was made of fragments and small opportunities […]; […] [t]hings that many would despise, and actions which it seemed scarcely worth while to perform were all attended to in Cranford” (17). In a benevolent tone of voice, the narrator here stresses twice that the Cranford characters find uses for seemingly ‘worthless’ “things” and, by implication, avoid waste (17): they make “use […] of fragments and small opportunities” (17). This entails that they make it a point to use even “things” which others “would despise” because dealing with these objects “seemed scarcely worth while” to them (17). The narrator also points out that turning to seemingly ‘worthless’ material objects serves a social function: the “pot-pourri” is made “for some one who had no garden” (17). Highlighting this feature of Cranford’s material culture on the level of discourse is important: it suggests that Cranford differs from mid-Victorian material culture and invites comparison on a metalevel. In the small town community set in bygone times, looking to “things” not only entails avoiding waste; it also strengthens the communal ties (17). These ties have been established by the characters’ self-fashioning in view of their financial situation. Preventing “things” from becoming waste is thus a strategy to reinforce identificatory processes that have already taken place (17). In the mid-Victorian period, urban notions of dealing with seemingly worthless objects or waste were entangled in sanitary discourses or in discourses on utility (cf. Schülting 2016, 21-22). In the latter discourses, the uses or purposes to which waste could be put did not serve a social but an economic function (cf. Schülting 2016, 21-22). The narrator can hence be argued to highlight the social function of avoiding waste in Cranford’s material culture because she looks back on it nostalgically at mid-century. The representations of waste in Cranford imply that waste is a phenomenon that is also ascribed to a time preceding the mid-Victorian period at mid-century. The novel thus contributes to notions, conceptions and functions of waste on a metalevel: the way it suggests that waste can be avoided differs from how waste was conceptualized and dealt with at the time when the novel was published. If the idea of what classifies as waste in Cranford is seen in the context of urban mid-Victorian discourses on this issue, the realist elements the narrator here represents idealize and remove Cranford’s material culture

188 On waste as an urban phenomenon, see Schülting 2016, 21-22.

146 from mid-Victorian material culture. They imply that the social function of waste is specific to a small town in pre- or early-Victorian times.

4.2 Clothes, Fashion, Shops: Refracting Mid-Victorian Material Culture The caps and shops featuring in Cranford are central in forming the characters’ collective identity in socioeconomic terms. They, too, are part of the characters’ social self- fashioning but reveal ambivalences in the concept of inconspicuous consumption. This is because they are material objects or sites where the characters consume visibly or even ostensibly to identify with the town community or attain prestige. The characters’ interest in caps and shops also introduces a metalevel on consuming women, for it ascribes them to a time preceding the mid-Victorian period. A similar point can be made for books: if they are seen as material objects which are consumed and associated with cultural prestige, they are embroiled in cultural negotiations in a town community which is in flux.

4.2.1 The Narrator’s Urban Perspective: Mocking Compulsory Cap Consumption and Small-Town Ideas of Style and Fashion Caps have two functions in the female characters’ town community. The Cranford ladies strengthen their collective identity by acquiring them and set themselves off from the other characters through these objects. Fashion plays an important role for both functions and with regard to the levels of story and discourse. It designates “[a] prevailing custom” which is “characteristic of a particular place or period of time” and can also refer to “a particular ‘cut’ or style” of an article of dress (Simpson/Weiner 5: 743). Due to the differences established by the narrative voice, the representation of caps is an instance where the young narrator’s urban and mid-Victorian perspective on Cranford can be seen. The narrator strikes an ironic and mocking tone of voice when she relates why caps matter. She ridicules the elderly characters’ interest in fashion, but doing so also reveals her ideological stance on material culture. This, in turn, provides hints about notions of mid-Victorian identity the narrator invokes implicitly. Lady Glenmire’s upcoming visit is an event which makes the Cranford women assert their socioeconomic status. This is because Lady Glenmire has a higher social status than the Cranford women, as her title implies (cf. 70-71).189 The Cranford women can thus be argued to regard her as a threat or competitor since they only fashion

189 ‘Lady’ is “an honorific title” that refers to “a woman of rank” (cf. Simpson/Weiner 8: 583).

147 themselves as ‘aristocratic’. This makes it necessary for them to strengthen their communal ties and mark themselves off from Lady Glenmire. The characters show their sense of communal belonging by acquiring caps. Miss Pole purchases a new cap before Lady Glenmire appears: “‘I ordered a cap this morning, to be quite ready’” (71). When Mrs Jamieson invites the Cranford women to a party she gives for Lady Glenmire (cf. 70- 72), Miss Pole urges Miss Matty to accept the invitation, “assuring her it was her duty […] to buy a new cap, and go to the party” (73). Since Miss Pole has already bought a new cap and presses Miss Matty to do likewise, purchasing this article of clothing can be interpreted as ‘a must’. Miss Pole therefore calls buying a cap Miss Matty’s “duty” (73). Thus, if Miss Matty also purchases a cap, she shows that she identifies with the characters’ community. If there is a threat from outside and proof is needed that a character belongs to the Cranford women’s community in socioeconomic terms, consuming ostensibly is compulsive. Consuming in the sense of acquiring and wearing or using a cap effects integration amongst the Cranford women. It is a meaningful practice because it is tied to their ‘aristocratic’ social self-fashioning: Lady Glenmire may have a more prestigious social status due to her ascendancy but she is prevented from entering and competing with the self-defined ‘aristocratic’ community. The Cranford women exclude her from their community because she is not familiar with a form of consumption which is locally specific. Towards outsiders to the community, consumption here has an exclusionary function: the Cranford women follow the self-imposed tenet of inconspicuous consumption to fashion themselves as ‘aristocratic’ but do not use this mode of consumption to exclude characters from their community if they deviate from it. Yet they consume ostensibly to defend or assert their self-given ‘aristocratic’ status when it is challenged. On this reading, the characters’ notion that buying a new cap will help them assert their social status resembles Veblen’s concept of conspicuous consumption. This can be regarded as a characteristic feature of the material culture of Cranford: in a small and predominantly female town where the characters consume inconspicuously and are financially constricted, consuming caps as an article of women’s dress serves an identificatory function. For the form of conspicuous consumption practiced by the Cranford women, gender hence plays an important role apart from notions of class or social status. In acquiring articles of dress to identify with their ‘aristocratic’ community, the Cranford women’s consumption does not differ from mid-Victorian practices of consuming articles of dress to display social status (cf. Boucher-Rivalain 213). The character’s distinctive concern with caps, however, can be considered characteristic of the predominantly female town.

148 The narrator also stresses that consuming caps is a specific feature of Cranford’s material culture. “The expenditure in dress in Cranford was principally in that one article […]. If the heads were buried in smart new caps, the ladies were like ostriches, and cared not what became of their bodies” (73). Not only, however, does the narrator represent consuming caps as a locally specific practice. She also comments on the characters’ appearance. The simile “like ostriches” suggests that the characters pay attention to caps but are not concerned about “what became of their bodies” (73). This graphic picture creates distance between the characters and herself. A detail is added to the picture when she describes the women’s overall appearance: “old brooches for a permanent ornament, and new caps to suit the fashion of the day; the ladies of Cranford always dressed with chaste elegance and propriety, as Miss Barker once prettily expressed it” (73).190 Mary Smith here proposes that the women’s appearance is incongruous since she contrasts “old brooches” with “new caps” (73). The women’s “old brooches” which are worn “for a permanent ornament” can be considered to stand for styles that have gone out of fashion in the intradiegetic past but are still worn by the women and combined with current styles (73): “new caps” are meant “to suit the fashion of the day” (73). It is this mixture of styles which the narrator mocks. It leads her to imply that the characters neglect “their bodies” to contradict the idea that “the ladies of Cranford always dressed with chaste elegance and propriety” (73). On the discourse level, she lifts an expression a character has coined but ironizes it: she presents Miss Barker’s words as a conclusion to the impression of incongruity she has created. In addition, she frames as an anecdote how the women go to Mrs Jamieson’s party. She thus reports on the women’s outfit as an “event” which is “told as being in itself interesting” (Simpson/Weiner 1: 454). This is a narrative strategy to at once illustrate the Cranford women’s outfit and mock it: the characters’ outfit is represented “as being in itself interesting” because of the array of material objects which constitute it (Simpson/Weiner 1: 454). Mary Smith again highlights the contrast between new caps and old brooches and elaborates on it:

190 Regarding the Cranford ladies’ manner of dressing, Miller states: the “characters’ apparel are extravagant and comical[.] […] The need for economy does not eradicate this eccentricity. Rather than wearing ensembles of unusual taste, women mark their individuality in the […] less costly details of ornamentation” (1995, 98). This observation departs from the reading offered above insofar as the interpretation offered here considers the ‘incongruous’ impression of the characters’ outfit to be constructed by the narrative voice rather than being inherently ‘eccentric’. Moreover, the reading offered here insists that the Cranford ladies’ outfit for Mrs Jamieson’s party serves the purpose of strengthening their collective identity; the cap Miss Matty longs for can be seen as an instance where a character “mark[s]” her “individuality” (Miller 1995, 98).

149 [W]ith three new caps, and a greater array of brooches than had ever been seen together at one time […], did Mrs. Forrester, and Miss Matty, and Miss Pole appear on that memorable […] evening. I counted seven brooches […] on Miss Pole’s dress. Two were fixed […] in her cap […]; one fastened her net-kerchief; one her collar; one ornamented the front of her gown […]; and another adorned the point of her stomacher. Where the seventh was I have forgotten, but it was somewhere about her, I am sure. (74)

By emphasizing that the characters wear “three new caps”, the narrator connects her representation to the notion of incongruity she has already created. Here, however, she adds numbers, and her rhetoric is hyperbolic: the “greater array of brooches than had ever been seen together at one time” suggests that the characters’ outfit is overdone since there are too many accessories. Not only, it would appear, are the characters’ new caps a way to assert their social status; their old brooches, too, are meant to keep Lady Glenmire at bay. Furthermore, the old brooches outnumber the “new caps” the characters have bought for the party, which makes their outfit look even more incongruous (74). This is why the narrator styles the incident “that memorable […] evening” (74): it is “in itself interesting” because, the narrator implies, the material objects used to create the style do not fit together (Simpson/Weiner 1: 454). Mary Smith carefully describes where Miss Pole’s brooches are to exemplify the Cranford ladies’ incongruous style (cf. 74). This has two effects: if the narrator singles out a specific outfit which is representative of all the characters’ style, this shows that the outfit as a whole serves an identificatory function and that the mixture of styles is an integral part of it. In paying close attention to these realist details, moreover, Mary Smith visualizes Miss Pole’s outfit in a way that distances the outfit from the readers. This can be seen in the wry tone of voice the narrator uses when she refers to Miss Pole’s seventh brooch: she has “forgotten” its position and insinuates “it was somewhere about her” (74). That she cannot recollect “[w]here the seventh [brooch] was” and, as her afterthought “I am sure” implies, does not care to remember ironizes what she has already related about the six brooches and ridicules Miss Pole’s outfit (74). If Mary Smith represents the characters’ outer appearance as incongruous and derides it, she does so because there is a discrepancy of figural perspectives. The discrepancy, in its turn, is based on differences in age and region which engender tensions. Mary Smith is younger than the elderly women. Moreover, her home town Drumble is larger than Cranford and associated with the “‘cotton trade” (61). Since Drumble is known for its textiles, this implies that Mary Smith is also informed about current trends in fashion. If she observes how the characters dress, her ideas of style are influenced by urban notions of fashion which are topical in the intradiegetic present.

150 These urban notions dictate that the latest fashion has to be followed when specific articles are consumed and the overall outfit is assembled. The latest fashion can thus be regarded as a central element in identificatory processes. Mixing current styles with those that are no longer fashionable may hence be argued to depart from the young narrator’s urban perspective. She looks down on the elderly women where caps or fashion are concerned and judges their style accordingly. Analyzing Mary Smith’s mockery in this manner points to a metalevel on fashion in three respects: if Mary Smith implicitly speaks about fashion on a metalevel when she comments on the characters’ appearance, this indicates that mixing old and current styles is a phenomenon that is broached in the mid-Victorian period and represented as an aspect of a material culture belonging to bygone times. By introducing this metalevel and playing with historical difference, Cranford contributes to mid-Victorian discourses on fashion: it participates in them in novelistic form alongside several fashion magazines which appeared at and before that time in periodical form and were concerned with fashion on a metalevel, too (cf. Birch 2011b, 189).191 Moreover, the narrator’s mockery can be related to 1851 and Bleak House. In 1851, Mr Sandboys’s woollen coat is represented as a means of othering the character. In this text, too, an urban perspective implying regional difference serves as the yardstick by which to measure Mr Sandboys’s clothes. Mr Turveydrop in Bleak House is satirized by means of his clothes because he endorses a concept of male gender roles that belongs to the past. The representations of fashion and clothes in 1851, Bleak House and Cranford thus suggest that these material objects play a central role in forming notions of identity in mid-Victorian material culture. They are used to mark off forms of identity from those options the respective text endorses. In the three texts examined here, this form of identity tends to be urban and middle-class. On the individual level, Miss Matty desires a new cap to set herself off from the other women in the town community. If a cap serves this function, the text suggests, it is important that the article is fashionable. The representation of Miss Matty’s desire engenders a metalevel on fashion in two ways: region as a category of difference in Cranford can be related to fashion in the urban contexts in 1851 and Bleak House. On the

191 For an overview of nineteenth-century fashion magazines, see Beetham/Boardman 10-20 and 140-144. La Belle Assemblée can also be mentioned in this context. I am indebted to Dr Krug for pointing out this magazine. Birch notes that fashion plates also appeared in journals which were not exclusively devoted to fashion and gives Reynold’s Miscellany as an example (cf. 2011c, 189). The “Bleak House Advertiser” can be argued to contribute to mid-Victorian discourses on fashion, too. This is because advertisements for clothes appear in the monthly parts of the novel.

151 intradiegetic level, moreover, Cranford plays with differences in and diverging perspectives on region and age. This is possible because Miss Matty’s wish to have a fashionable cap is filtered by the narrator who is from an urban context and critical of the latest fashion. Mary Smith receives a letter from Miss Matty. She asks Mary Smith “if turbans were in fashion, could I tell her” (80)? Mary Smith relates that Miss Matty also writes “she was, perhaps, too old to care about dress, but a new cap she must have; and, having heard that turbans were worn”, asks her “if I would bring her a cap from the milliner I employed”, adding “sea-green was her favourite colour” (81). Several categories of difference surface here. Miss Matty is an elderly lady who is, as she writes herself, “perhaps […] too old to care about dress” (81). However, the desire she expresses by stating “a new cap she must have” shows that Miss Matty ignores her age and allows herself to be interested in fashion (81). If she wishes for a turban-shaped cap, this points to Orientalist notions in fashion: a turban-shaped cap appears ‘exotic’ in Cranford since Miss Matty considers its style to be influenced by notions of dress from ‘the East’.192 She can thus use it to visually set herself off from the other characters if she consumes it ostensibly in the sense of using or wearing it. Moreover, Miss Matty asks Mary Smith to bring a fashionable cap from her “milliner” in Drumble (81). There are regional differences in the choice of clothes in Drumble’s urban context and the small town of Cranford: Drumble as a larger town is ahead of Cranford where fashion is concerned (81). At mid-century, Cranford represents the context of a larger town as being already associated with fashion at a time which preceded the mid-Victorian period. The novel thus underlines difference in region as a central aspect regarding fashion. This aspect can be read alongside 1851 and Bleak House. The novels also represent fashion as a distinctive feature of the urban context at mid-century: in 1851, Mrs Sandboys and her children regard London as the place “where fashion and amusement never failed” (Mayhew/Cruikshank, 13). In Bleak House, Lady Dedlock visits London and Paris because she is interested in the “fashionable things” happening there (Dickens, 17). While all three novels thus introduce a metalevel on fashion at mid-century because they represent it as a hallmark of urban contexts, Cranford broaches two additional aspects: it invokes a continuity regarding an urban context and fashion since it suggests at mid- century that fashion was already an urban phenomenon before the mid-Victorian period.

192 Exotic objects are brought “from abroad into a domestic economy” and associated with “a stimulating or exciting difference” (Ashcroft/Griffiths/Tiffin 87). In Miss Matty’s case, the style of the cap she desires can be considered exotic.

152 Furthermore, Cranford can be argued to relativize the idea that London is the locus of fashion. This is because the novel implies that the latest fashion can also be found in Drumble.193 While it does use London in connection with regional difference, it refers to this city as a contrastive device to evoke historical difference and highlight characteristic aspects of Cranford’s material culture and to represent them as being specific to the small town. Region as a category of difference, then, is relevant to Cranford’s material culture in two ways: London serves as a contrastive device to frame practices of saving as being characteristic of Cranford’s material culture and as ensuing from the tenet of inconspicuous consumption. Regarding fashionable material objects which are consumed ostensibly, Cranford contrasts with Drumble, a town that is larger than Cranford but smaller than London. Cranford, then, modifies mid-Victorian representations of London in connection with consumption. The narrator forsakes Miss Matty a fashionable cap: “I was […] anxious to prevent her from disfiguring her […] face with a […] Saracen’s-head turban; and […] bought her a pretty, neat, middle-aged cap” (81). Mary Smith is familiar with the latest fashion but disapproves of it, as her choice of words “Saracen’s-head turban” shows (81). She also regards Miss Matty as being too old to follow the turban fashion. Therefore, she “bought her a […] middle-aged cap” to avoid that Miss Matty’s age and headdress look incongruous (81). Since Mary Smith uses the word ‘disfigure’ to describe how a turban- shaped cap would affect Miss Matty’s face, she can be argued to judge this material object in aesthetic terms (cf. 81). The narrator, who is younger than Miss Matty and from Drumble’s urban context, thus represents herself as an authority in questions of style: she knows the latest fashion and is able to assess its aesthetic effect. She is therefore amused by what Miss Matty says about the new cap. “‘It is just like the caps all the ladies in Cranford are wearing; and they have had theirs for a year […]. I should have liked something newer […]. […] I suppose turbans have not got down to Drumble yet’” (81)? Miss Matty is disappointed with the cap because it will not make her stand out from the other characters: its style is neither ‘exotic’ nor new (cf. 81). By wondering “if turbans have not got down to Drumble yet’”, Miss Matty contradicts herself and shows that she is not proficient in questions of fashion (81): after she has asked the narrator from urban Drumble “if turbans were in fashion”, she now assumes that regional difference effects that Drumble lags behind the small town of Cranford in terms of fashion (80). On the structural level, the sequence of the characters’ perspectives is important: Mary Smith

193 This holds true for the Cranford articles which were serialized between 1851 and 1853. As will be seen shortly, a later contribution the Cranford ladies relativizes this idea.

153 first shows on the level of discourse that she knows about the latest fashion and explains why she does not buy a turban-shaped cap. She then reports that Miss Matty is disappointed with the cap and considers Drumble to be less informed on fashion. This highlights the diverging perspectives: it makes the young narrator from urban Drumble appear as the voice of reason and opposes it to an elderly lady’s desire to wear the latest fashion in a small town. Since the narrator has already implied that her narration caters to London-based readers, the text here plays with different perspectives: not only does the young, urban narrator mock an elderly lady’s desire for an article of fashion and the way she considers regional difference to impact on fashion; the readers also participate in this play of perspectives. They may be argued to side with the narrator because they are constructed as being from an urban context, too. Miss Matty’s ideas of fashion are thus doubly undermined, and the text simultaneously strengthens its urban stance on material culture. Importantly, the idea that the latest fashion can also be found in Drumble is put into perspective by an additional Cranford article. In 1863, Gaskell’s article “The Cage at Cranford” was published in Dickens’s journal All the Year Round (cf. Birch 2011a, 166).194 The characters’ interest in fashion is obvious in this later contribution. The article is set after 1856, hence after the time in which the Cranford articles dating from the 1850s were set. “The Cage at Cranford” evinces differences in age, class and region as well as national difference. These differences are used to poke fun at the Cranford characters and the pretensions accompanying their social self-fashioning. They also undermine Mary Smith’s urban perspective on Cranford: Mary Smith has asked Jessie Gordon to bring a fashionable present for Miss Pole from Paris (cf. 2011b, 166). Jessie Brown writes Mary Smith she has chosen a cage (cf. 2011b, 166). Since Mary Smith is not conversant with the latest fashion terminology, she takes the cage to be a device for keeping animals instead of a hooped skirt (cf. 2011b, 166-167). Miss Pole boasts to the other characters that she will receive a cage from Paris for her parrot (cf. 2011b, 171). When the present arrives, she and Mary Smith cannot make sense of the hooped skirt: what they consider a cage for the parrot cannot be used to keep the animal because there is no bottom (cf. 2011b, 172-173). Miss Pole’s maid Fanny repeatedly tells them it is a hooped skirt, but they do not believe her and rework the article of fashion into a cage for the parrot (cf. 2011b, 172-174). When the other characters, amongst them two men, come to look at the

194 See Collin (cf. 74-75) and Birch on why “The Cage at Cranford” was published several years after the articles which constitute the text of Cranford proper (cf. 2011a, 166). Lupton briefly broaches this article when she discusses how paper and fabric relate to each other in Cranford (cf. 250).

154 cage, Mr Hoggins refers to his wife’s “Paris fashion-book” (2011b, 174) and informs Miss Pole that she has received an item of fashion instead of a cage for her parrot (cf. 2011b, 174). The categories of difference that surface in “The Cage in Cranford” refract the effect produced by those differences featuring in the Cranford articles from the 1850s. Jessie Gordon, who is even younger than Mary Smith, chooses an article which fits the latest fashion: “‘I am not sure if they have […] reached you, for it is not a month since I saw the first of the kind in Paris’” (2011b, 173). Regarding differences in age, Jessie Gordon thus knows the new fashion in Paris and recommends it because she considers its quality superior to that of English fashion (cf. 2011b, 173). Fanny as a “charity school” maid is of a lower social position than Miss Pole and Mary Smith but knows more about the latest fashion (2011b, 171): “‘my sister-in-law has got an aunt as lives lady’s maid with […] Miss Arley. And they did say as she wore iron petticoats all made of hoops ’” (2011b, 172). Miss Pole and Mary Smith do not believe her since they consider Drumble to be in advance of Cranford where fashion is concerned: “‘Nonsense […]!’ we all cried; for such a thing had not been heard of in all Drumble, let alone Cranford” (2011b, 172). Similar to Fanny, Mr Hoggins is another character the Cranford women look down on: they consider him vulgar (cf. 2011b, 114). Besides Miss Pole’s maid, Mr Hoggins as a male character knows about the latest fashion through his wife. It is thus an ironic twist that he informs Miss Pole about the function the hooped skirt has. “‘It’s a new invention to hold your gowns out’” (2011b, 174)! These differences unhinge Mary Smith as an authority on fashion and the Cranford women’s social pretensions. Moreover, it shows that Drumble is no longer the yardstick by which to measure the latest fashion. The town has been taken over by Paris. Regarding national difference, this implies that the French capital city is the place for current fashion and superior to England’s articles of fashion. The contribution dating from 1863 thus participates in the contemporary discourse on fashion through its categories of difference, too, but brings into play new perspectives. The difference in age Jessie Gordon stands for suggests that it is the youngest adult generation that straddles national difference through fashion, whereas Miss Pole and Mary Smith do not. The hooped skirt as a foreign material object is out of place in Cranford: it is too fashionable to be worn by Miss Pole. She suggests that it be reworked into “two […] English calashes” and rhetorically defends Englishness against the new material objects washing over from France (2011b, 175). This creates a metalevel on English national identity in the mid-Victorian period: “The Cage at Cranford” was published in 1863 and is set after 1856 (cf. 2011b, 166). Regarding its date of publication, the text is concerned with English national identity in connection with fashion twelve

155 years after it had been negotiated in Mayhew’s 1851. Concerning its intradiegetic setting, it deals with this issue only a few years after Mayhew’s novel. The date of publication and the intradiegetic setting thus suggest that English national identity was negotiated or discussed in an extended span of time in the mid-Victorian period.

4.2.2 Shopping and Shops: Negotiating Social Status at Sites of Consumption Set before Mid-Century Shops in Cranford feature in two ways. The characters frequent them as consumers, and some characters are shopkeepers. Consumption is thus shown in the sense of acquiring and selling material objects. In both regards, shops are ambivalent sites: they coexist with the tenet of inconspicuous consumption and are places which are associated with conspicuous consumption. Shops thus need to be accommodated in the characters’ practices of self-fashioning. The characters’ strategies to accommodate shops are formative in shaping the socioeconomic aspect of their identity. This chapter proposes that the Cranford women not only negotiate their hierarchy by consuming inconspicuously; they also do so by consuming visually at shops. As shopkeepers, they adapt their sales strategies to the social climate of Cranford to align themselves with their customers’ self-fashioning and obtain a place in their social hierarchy. The representations of shops in Cranford can also be argued to show on a metalevel that the novel ascribes fashion and discourses on consuming women to a time prior to the mid- Victorian period. The characters visit shops to see the latest fashion. Mary Smith recounts how she went to a shop with Miss Matty. Her account suggests that looking at the latest fashion is associated with prestige amongst the characters: We inspected the Fashions with […] minute and curious […] interest […]. […] [Miss Matty] once or twice exchanged congratulations with me on our private […] view of the bonnets and shawls; but I was […] not so sure that our examination was so utterly private, for I caught glimpses of a figure dodging behind the cloaks and mantles; and, by a dexterous move, I came face to face with Miss Pole, […] in morning costume (the principal feature of which was her being without teeth, and wearing a veil to conceal the deficiency), come on the same errand as ourselves. (123)

The characters are elderly ladies who live in a small town and have established the tenet of consuming inconspicuously, but this passage shows that the small town is neither cut off from receiving fashionable articles, nor do the characters disregard fashion. The contrary applies, for Miss Matty and the narrator take a “minute and curious […] interest” in “the Fashions” (123). The capitalized term suggests that Miss Matty and the narrator look at the latest, most recent articles of fashion. Miss Matty has a close look at the clothes

156 and pays attention to detail. The narrator notes her “curiosity as to the make of sleeves, or the sit of skirts” (123). Fashion is thus an important issue in Cranford. There, “the Fashions” are consumed visually (123). The words ‘inspect’ and “view” indicate that the women look at the articles but do not buy them (123). This can be attributed to their tenet of inconspicuous consumption: if the characters bought the articles, they would consume ostensibly since they would spend money on ephemeral articles: as the term ‘fashion’ implies, the articles will be representative for a limited period. If the characters consume the fashionable articles visually, they can gain insight into the latest fashion and participate in fashion this way. Fashion can thus be seen as an ambivalent form of consumption: the tenet of inconspicuous consumption prescribes that consumption as a practice should not be rendered visible, yet the characters hold that participating in “the Fashions” is important (123). On a structural level, this form of consumption parallels Esther’s window-shopping in Bleak House. Although Esther does not enter the shops and is a young woman, both Cranford and Bleak House are concerned with a female character who consumes visually. This can be argued to frame the activity as a mode of consumption which is coded as feminine and which is not restricted to a specific age group. That the Cranford women consider it prestigious to know about “the Fashions” is a consequence which ensues from the ambivalent status of consuming fashion (123): the characters obtain an advance in knowledge of what is fashionable by looking at the articles. This substitutes conspicuous consumption because the characters consume the articles visually but do not consume them by buying, wearing or displaying them. Gaining an advance in knowledge thus takes a competitive form amongst the characters. Mary Smith relates that Miss Matty “exchanged congratulations with me on our private […] view of the bonnets and shawls” (123). The “private […] view” and the “congratulations” indicate that the characters try to look at the fashion clandestinely to secure their advance in knowledge (123). Mary Smith states “I […] was not so sure […] our examination was so utterly private”, which provides further evidence that being the first to know about fashion or knowing more about it is a marker of prestige (123). The narrator represents Miss Pole, who is in the shop, too, as Miss Matty’s competitor. Mary Smith suggests that Miss Pole is “on the same errand” and also tries to look at the clothes secretly (123). She even hides for this purpose: Mary Smith discovers “a figure dodging behind the cloaks and mantles” and comes “face to face” with Miss Pole after she has “caught glimpses” of her (123). This speaks to the competitive nature of consuming fashion visually in Cranford. The competitive aspect can be argued to implicitly testify to visual

157 consumption as another identificatory practice: if the characters vie for an advance in knowledge of the latest fashion, they collectively consider this kind of knowledge meaningful and prestigious. Mary Smith even makes “a dexterous move” to uncover Miss Pole and to ensure Miss Matty’s privacy and her advance in knowledge (123). She also ridicules Miss Pole because she competes with Miss Matty. For this end, the narrator deploys the same strategy she already used when she mocked the outfits the Cranford women put on for Mrs Jamieson’s party. The narrator again uses a contrast between old and new to evoke a sense of incongruity. Here, the narrator’s difference in age renders her verbal attack particularly scathing. Mary Smith points out that Miss Pole is “in morning costume”; she adds this means the character “was being without teeth, and wearing a veil to conceal the deficiency” (123). As a character who is younger than Miss Pole, Mary Smith highlights that the elderly lady is “being without teeth” and even calls it “the deficiency” (123). In pinpointing this aspect, the narrator suggests that Miss Pole has not paid attention to her outer appearance. The character’s outer appearance thus clashes with the articles of fashion she has come to see: if Miss Pole looks at “the Fashions”, this implies she is interested in how visual impressions can be created through new articles of dress (123). Miss Pole takes to extremes the practice of gaining an advance in knowledge by consuming. For her, shops are a way to hear gossip: She was in the habit of spending the morning in rambling from shop to shop; not to purchase anything (except an occasional reel of cotton, or a piece of tape), but to see the new articles and report upon them, and to collect all the stray pieces of intelligence in the town […]; a way which, if she had not looked so […] genteel and prim, might have been considered impertinent. (82)

Miss Pole is not concerned with shops as sites where material objects can be acquired. Instead, she goes “from shop to shop […] to see the new articles […], and to collect all the stray pieces of intelligence in the town” (82). “[T]he new articles” can be interpreted in the same vein as the articles of fashion (82): Miss Pole goes to “see” and consume them visually (82). Since she does so to “report upon them”, this supports the reading that an advance in knowledge of the latest fashion is a way for the characters to claim prestige in the women’s town community (82). If “intelligence” (82) designates information or knowledge which is communicated orally (cf. Simpson/Weiner 7: 1069), Miss Pole also visits shops to hear gossip. Buying cheap material objects can be seen as strategic shopping: Miss Pole acquires inexpensive objects, thus follows the tenet of inconspicuous consumption and does not endanger her social status in the community of female characters. At the same time, the purchases she makes give her an excuse for entering the shops which makes it possible to hear gossip. The gossip she “collect[s]” can be seen as

158 another kind of knowledge which, from Miss Pole’s point of view, enhances her social position in a similar manner as “the new articles” she “report[s] upon” (82). The narrator calls “rambling from shop to shop” Miss Pole’s “habit of spending the morning” (82). This can be read in two ways: if ‘rambling’ designates “walk[ing] […] without definite route or other aim than recreation or pleasure”, Miss Pole is a leisure time consumer (Simpson/Weiner 13: 153). This gestures towards a metalevel on notions of consuming women in the mid-Victorian period: if department stores were opened as the mid-Victorian period progressed and invited women to engage in leisurely consumption, Cranford’s intradiegetic level here shows a consuming woman who goes shopping for pleasure before the mid-Victorian period (cf. Steinbach 112). The novel thus engages in contemporary discourses on women as consumers and shopping insofar as it textually constructs a continuum between the mid-Victorian period and the time preceding it. Moreover, since visiting shops strategically is Miss Pole’s “habit”, she does so on a regular basis because she makes it a point to “see […] new articles” and hear gossip first (82). Besides gaining an advance in knowledge, Miss Pole tries “to collect all the stray pieces of intelligence”, which suggests that she pursues her shopping strategy ambitiously (82; emphasis added). Mary Smith disapproves of what Miss Pole does. She stresses that the character successfully gains an advance in knowledge because she “looked […] genteel and prim” (82). Otherwise her behaviour “might have been considered impertinent” (82). This indicates that Miss Pole modifies the concept of how shops work: she does not go to shops to purchase material objects. Since she only buys cheap objects, she uses shops and the articles they offer to advance her status. In making this evaluative comment on Miss Pole’s shopping strategy, the narrator from “the […] commercial town of Drumble” also points to the behaviour that is expected of customers ex negativo (3): if they go to a shop, they are expected to consume and buy material objects more often than “an occasional reel of cotton” (82). At the same time, Mary Smith is critical of Miss Pole and her gossip because of a difference in region: the narrator looks at this practice from an urban point of view, whereas gossiping tends to be associated with the country (cf. Veblen 72). Thus, there are tensions of place in Cranford: the small town is situated ambiguously between fashion, which is connoted with notions of an urban context, and gossip, which is coded as rural. The shops which are run by the Barker sisters and Miss Matty are examples of how the mid-Victorian novel Cranford deals with women who engage in trade at a time set before mid-century. The narrative voice is particularly relevant here since the shops

159 are mediated by the narrator in the telling mode. The way she represents them shows how they are integrated into the social structure of Cranford with the characters’ self- fashioning. The strategies which are used for this purpose create a metalevel on consuming women: this is because the novel projects shop-keeping women and consumption entering the sphere of the home, which were considered central and recent issues at mid-century, on an earlier period.195 It also suggests that the mid-Victorian representations of female shopkeepers in the novelistic text might be a product of their own time. Both the Barker sisters and Miss Matty are shopkeepers. They participate in consumption in the sense of selling goods. The difference between them is that the Barker sisters’ shop was closed in the intradiegetic past, whereas Miss Matty opens a shop in the intradiegetic present. This impacts on how the shops are represented. Since the Cranford women hold that trade cannot be reconciled with their social self-fashioning, running a shop is an ambivalent venture in their town community (cf. 4). It raises questions regarding their social status and membership in the community. The narrator therefore emphasizes the sales strategy the Barker sisters used to pursue. She also stresses that their shop is a phenomenon of the past. Miss Betty Barker […] and her sister […] had saved up money […] to set up a milliner’s shop, which had been patronised by the ladies in the neighbourhood. Lady Arley, for instance, would occasionally give Miss Barkers the pattern of an old cap of hers, which they immediately copied and circulated among the élite of Cranford. I say the élite, for Miss Barkers had caught the trick of the place, and piqued themselves upon their ‘aristocratic connection’. They would not sell their caps and ribbons to any one without a pedigree. Many a farmer’s wife or daughter turned away huffed from Miss Barker’s select millinery […]. […] And when Miss Barker died, their profits and income were found to be such that Miss Betty was justified in shutting up shop, and retiring from business. (60-61)

The Barker sisters adopt an ‘aristocratic’ sales strategy to ennoble their articles. Their strategy pertains to the material objects they produce and the range of customers they sell them to. Regarding the material objects, they imitate patterns which are worn by customers with “an honorific title” (Simpson/Weiner 8: 583): if the Barker sisters copy “the pattern of an old cap” which “Lady Arley […] give[s]” them, this suggests that Lady Arley’s aristocratic title outweighs the “old” pattern and is an incentive to buy the article (61). By imitating patterns which are associated with an aristocratic title, the Barker sisters not only ascribe the article an aristocratic connotation but also market this association.

195 On women consuming in or for the home, see, for instance, Logan 36-37, Loeb 5 and 13 as well as Rappaport 2001, 36.

160 Moreover, the Barker sisters carefully select the customers they sell their articles to. Mary Smith explains that the customers need to have “a pedigree” if they want to buy articles at the Barker sisters’ shop (61). They even send away customers whose social status is not prestigious enough. In calling the marketing strategy “the trick of the place” and using inverted commas to refer to the Barker sisters’ “‘aristocratic connection’”, the narrator shows on a metalevel how the Cranford women’s social self-fashioning works (61): while the Cranford women are not aristocratic by birth, they fashion themselves as aristocratic by consuming. The Barker sisters cater to the Cranford women’s social self-fashioning by reproducing it in their sales strategy: they participate in consumption by selling their articles. If they only sell them to customers whose social status contributes to the prestige of their shop, they do so as a way of self-fashioning. Their self-fashioning is a strategy to reconcile their shop with the idea that trade has to be excluded from the characters’ town community. Therefore, it has an identificatory function because it acknowledges and follows the rules of social self-fashioning prevalent in Cranford. Mary Smith highlights that the Barker sisters’ shop no longer exists. She stresses three times that “Miss Betty was justified in shutting up shop, and retiring from business”; “[i]t was five or six years since she had given up shop” (61). Miss Barker closes the shop after the “profits and income were found to be” enough to abandon the enterprise (61). “[B]usiness”, “profits and income” are associated with money, which implies that the Barker sisters used to have an economic venture (61). This is relevant to the self- fashioning happening on intradiegetic level, and it sheds light on representations of businesswomen. Therefore, it is telling that Mary Smith relegates the Barker sisters’ shop to the intradiegetic past. On the intradiegetic level, this is a rhetoric strategy to accommodate the shop in the ‘aristocratic’ town community: pointing out that the Barker sisters have made enough money with their shop proves that Miss Barker has reached a socioeconomic status that allows her to be accepted by the other Cranford women. She is ‘above’ work now and can hence become a member of the women’s community with its ‘aristocratic’ self-fashioning. Representing the shop as a phenomenon of bygone days thus acknowledges Miss Barker’s money and simultaneously disconnects her from trade as a way of making money. Miss Barker acquires a status symbol when she has risen in socioeconomic terms. She “set[s] up her cow” after she has closed the shop which, the narrator explains, is “a mark of respectability in Cranford” (61). If the cow is seen as a material ‘object’ that testifies to Miss Barker’s new socioeconomic status, she can be argued to consume conspicuously here to make known her “pecuniary strength” (Veblen 61). Yet Miss

161 Barker’s status symbol is also represented in a comic manner: she makes clothes for her cow (cf. 7). On this reading, Miss Barker is an example of social mobility: after she has started out as a lady’s maid, she becomes a self-employed shopkeeper and then moves on to live on the profits she has made in the trade sector (cf. 61). Not only, then, does the representation of Miss Barker broach the phenomenon of businesswomen in the mid- Victorian period on a metalevel; it also shows that notions of female social mobility, which some scholars consider to have started in the mid-Victorian period, are comically projected on a pre- or early-Victorian setting.196 Considering that Mr Turveydrop in Bleak House broaches social mobility, too, this suggests the phenomenon was topical enough at mid-century to surface in a novel which was published at that time and refracted contemporary cultural issues through its representation. The narrator compares the status symbol Miss Barker acquires with “setting up a gig […] among some people” (61). If private carriages are material objects which are used to assert and display social status in mid-Victorian urban contexts, the cow Miss Barker buys varies this form of conspicuous consumption (cf. Reynolds 813): it is practised in a small town before that time and comically refracts mid-Victorian ways of displaying social status. On a metalevel, the Barker sisters as shopkeepers put into perspective ideas of women as shopkeepers and social mobility since they are represented as already belonging to the past of a time set before the mid-Victorian period. The Barker sisters also establish a metalevel regarding mid-Victorian discourses on concepts of gender. Since they are engaged in trade on a professional basis, they are reminiscent of Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House. They therefore relativize the idea that women engaging in trade is a novel concept of gender roles at mid-century. And yet, the representation of the Barker sisters’ shop is also indicative of mid- Victorian discourses on women and shows how Cranford as a mid-Victorian novel deals with them. In middle-class discourses, it was proposed that women should stay in the home and not be involved in activities taking place in the public sphere. If the Barker sisters’ shop is seen as a business that is located in the public sphere, the characters suggest that the division between the private sphere of home and the public sphere cannot be maintained where concepts of gender roles are concerned. Removing their shop to the past and representing the characters as former businesswomen can be argued to make the Barker sisters compatible with this discourse at mid-century. The representation of the Barker sisters thus creates a metalevel in several respects: it makes the intradiegetic

196 On female social mobility in mid-Victorian Britain, see Steinbach 140-141.

162 process of social self-fashioning transparent. On the extratextual level, it constructs a continuity between women as shopkeepers in mid-Victorian times and a time preceding this period, it is revelatory of middle-class ideas regarding consuming women at mid- century and presents a strategy for representing them in a contemporary novelistic text. A similar point can be made for Miss Matty’s shop. It exemplifies how a shop is accommodated in Cranford’s social structure if it is set in the intradiegetic present. The strategies which are used to fit the shop into the social structure gesture towards a metalevel on consuming women: they imply that consumption in the sense of selling material objects already enters the domestic sphere before the mid-Victorian period.197 They can also be read as playing with middle-class discourses on consuming women. Miss Matty’s status in the town community is endangered: she is bankrupt, hence poor and has to open a shop to make ends meet (cf. 125). She thus lacks the money to be considered ‘aristocratic’ in the context of Cranford’s self-fashioning, and by engaging in trade to make money she trespasses against the women’s convention to shun the topic of trade and money: “condescending to anything like trade” is a “degradation” for Miss Matty (131), and Mrs Jamieson needs “a few days to consider whether by so doing Miss Matty would forfeit her right to the privileges of society in Cranford” (141). Since Mrs Jamieson with her distant aristocratic relation is superior to Miss Matty in the town hierarchy, she has to approve of the plan before Miss Matty’s shop is installed (cf. 141). The material objects Miss Matty sells are relevant. This is a parallel to the Barker sisters. In addition, the location of Miss Matty’s shop is significant. Miss Matty mainly sells tea. Tea can be considered a special material object because it is imported from a British colony: Miss Matty is “an agent to the East India Tea Company” (131).198 At the same time, tea is a material object which is consumed by the upper and middle classes (cf. Fromer 4; 70). Selling tea can therefore be seen as a strategy that allows Miss Matty to remain a member of the women’s town community: tea is associated with specific classes, which renders Miss Matty’s tea an acceptable material object to be sold in a town which is characterized by its social self-fashioning. The associations linked to Miss Matty’s tea parallel the aristocratic connotation of the articles the Barker sisters sell. Apart from this,

197 In putting forward this thesis, the following analysis departs from Miller’s reading of Miss Matty’s shop. He argues that “Miss Matty’s shop […] subverts the space of exchange; it is resolutely domestic, located in the front parlor of Matty’s house” (1995, 116). The reading offered here questions that the shop is “resolutely domestic” (1995, 116). Miller relates Miss Matty’s shop to the Crystal Palace since it “displays goods from across the world” (1995, 116). This aspect is not relevant to the analysis carried out here. 198 Mathieson has pointed out that Britain’s colonial ties with India are discernible in Miss Matty’s trade in tea (cf. 135; 138). This aspect will therefore not be elaborated on here.

163 Miss Matty’s teas are ennobled, too. This is because another shopkeeper in the town “repeatedly sent customers to her, saying that the teas he kept were of a common kind, but that Miss Jenkyns had all the choice sorts” (143). In stating this, Mr Johnson turns Miss Matty’s types of tea into desirable material objects for the few rather than for the many. Another parallel to the Barker sisters is that Miss Matty makes money successfully: the narrator relates her “sale went off famously” (142) because “[t]he whole country round seemed to be all out of tea at once” (144). This lets her gain a financial status that allows her to remain a member of the ‘aristocratic’ town community in terms of finances. Her engagement in an economic venture, however, still renders her status ambivalent. The place where her shop is opened and the manner in which she sells her tea can hence be seen as strategies which reduce the commercial aspect of her shop. The shop is set up in Miss Matty’s house, and Mary Smith stresses that Miss Matty sells tea in her private space: her “dining-parlour was to be converted into a shop” (140). If the realist novel concerns itself with descriptions of interiors in private homes, Cranford shares this concern but deploys it to a different end (cf. Fraiman 169). It is significant that the narrator describes Miss Matty’s “dining-parlour” as a private room but fills her representation of the room with terminology which is associated with the field of trade (140): “a table was to be the counter” (140), the shop sign is “hidden under the lintel of the […] door, and two boxes of tea […] stood ready to disgorge their contents into […] canisters” (142). She also states “Martha had scoured the […] floor to a white cleanness” and mentions that “it was adorned with a brilliant piece of oil-cloth on which customers were to stand before the table-counter” (142). As “table” and “lintel of the […] door” suggest, Mary Smith here mixes words and realist details which belong to the lexical field of private interiors with business vocabulary (140; 142): “counter” (140), the shop sign (cf. 142), “boxes of tea” and “canisters” (142). By emphasizing that all the business utensils are positioned in Miss Matty’s parlour, the very room which stood for ‘the home’ in the Victorian period, the narrator can be argued to reduce the commercial aspect of the shop (cf. Logan 36): the customers who enter the shop in Miss Matty’s private sphere thus ‘visit’ Miss Matty in her parlour. This can be read against the backdrop of the middle- class discourse which was topical when Cranford was published and held that women belonged in the private sphere of the home. If Miss Matty receives her customers as visitors in a room of her house, she stays at home while she is carrying out business. The location where Miss Matty’s shop is opened can hence also be seen as participating in mid-Victorian discourses on women and reconciling Miss Matty as a businesswoman with this discourse. Yet at the same time, mixing words which belong to the lexical fields

164 of the home and business also demonstrates that consumption and business have found their way into a woman’s private space that is set before mid-century: the domestic sphere and the shop as a public space are not separated from each other. The narrator even coins the compound “table-counter” (142). This mirrors the blurring of spheres on a linguistic metalevel. Mary Smith’s description of the “floor” and “oil-cloth” achieves a similar effect (142). It echoes her representation of the “new carpet” Miss Jenkyns has bought “for the drawing-room” (15). The carpet can be seen as a realist element in the representation of Miss Jenkyns’s private room. It embellishes the room and fulfils a representative function. The same can be said of the “brilliant piece of oil-cloth” (142): Mary Smith states it “adorned” the “floor” (142). It also has a representative function and serves to receive customers: similar to Miss Jenkyns’s guests who are received on the carpet at her party, Miss Matty’s customers “[are] to stand” on the “oil-cloth” when they put in their orders (142). In highlighting the “oil-cloth”, the narrator draws on a representational strategy which is typical of realist novels but refracts it (142): she is not concerned with a private or domestic but a semi-public business space. On the structural level of the novel, this speaks to the ambivalent nature of shops in Cranford. It can be seen as a representational strategy to attenuate the public aspect of Miss Matty’s shop: if singling out pieces of furniture as realist elements achieves a mimetic effect, the ‘furniture’ of Miss Matty’ shop-parlour might be a strategy to evoke a sense of familiarity: the readers might recognize the “oil-cloth” in the interior of the shop as a realist element. If they are conversant with the function of realist elements, this makes the interior appear less business-like (142). Nevertheless, if realist elements are used to represent both private and business spaces, this also signals that the distinctions between domestic and public spaces have been blurred. Ultimately, this indicates that the ambivalence of shops on the level of story cannot be resolved on the structural level either. Mary Smith also stresses that Miss Matty is concerned about her customers’ well- being. This can be seen as another way to integrate her shop into the social structure of the town community. The narrator reports she “entreated her customers not to buy green tea – running it down as slow poison, sure to destroy the nerves” (144). Since Miss Matty worries about the customers’ health, the narrator implies, she is not purely interested in making money. Mary Smith even relates that Miss Matty is so caring that the customers’ “pertinacity in taking” green tea “distressed her so much that I really thought she would relinquish the sale of it, and so lose half her custom” (144). In pointing this out, the narrator further reduces the commercial aspect of Miss Matty’s shop. She proposes that

165 the customers’ health is more important to Miss Matty than the profits she makes for herself if she sells green tea. This is another ambivalent aspect of Miss Matty’s shop: it is installed as a way for Miss Matty to make money, but its commercial aspect is attenuated by the narrative voice. If Miss Matty’s shop is compared to the Barker sisters’ shop, the financial aspects are attenuated in both representations: in the Barker sisters’ case, the money-making aspect is acknowledged but removed to the past; with Miss Matty’s shop in the intradiegetic present, it is acknowledged but reduced. Thus, both shops are set at a time which predates the mid-Victorian period and framed as ambivalent sites; in both cases strategies of representation are used to reduce their commercial aspect. This can be interpreted in two ways: on the one hand, the ambivalence of the shops can be argued to stem from the climate of social self-fashioning which is created on the intradiegetic level. The strategies of representation thus try to reconcile the shops with the self-fashioning practiced in Cranford. On the other hand, if it is considered that Cranford is a mid-century novel, it could be argued that it was written from and for a middle-class perspective on consuming women which was prevalent in middle-class discourses at that time. From this vantage point, the representations of the two shops may be regarded as a child of their own time, and the historical difference evoked in the novel suggests that regarding shops as ambivalent sites is not a new perspective in the mid-Victorian period. Due to this continuity and because Cranford and Bleak House are mid-Victorian novels, Miss Matty can be compared to Mrs Jellyby. Both Miss Matty and Mrs Jellyby trade in a material object from a British colony, and in both cases their venture is represented as being ambivalent. Mrs Jellyby’s trade in coffee is problematized by Esther because the middle-class character is married and a mother but focuses on her business enterprise rather than on her family. Mrs Jellyby’s trade is ‘problematic’ since it presents an alternative version of gender roles to those propagated in middle-class discourses. Miss Matty, by contrast, is an elderly woman, unmarried and ‘merely’ trades in tea because she has lost her savings. Her shop is ambivalent because it stems from financial loss and threatens her membership in a town where the characters fashion themselves as being ‘aristocratic’. This suggests that the characters’ difference in age and their social circumstances impact on why their shops are framed as ambivalent and on how they are represented by the narrative voices. A further parallel and difference between Mrs Jellyby and Miss Matty is the role the colonies Borrioboola-Gha and India play in the plots of Bleak House and Cranford. Mrs Jellyby’s coffee enterprise fails. The reason the novel offers for this is a colonial sub-

166 plot which is hinted at but not elaborated on: “the King of Borrioboola [wanted] to sell […] everybody for Rum” (Dickens 2008, 912). The colony thus participates in disproving Mrs Jellyby’s alternative conception of gender roles. With Miss Matty, India saves her social status. Her brother returns in the course of the plot. He has made money in the colony and relieves Miss Matty from her situation.199 The narrator relates that “he had enough to live upon ‘very genteelly’ […]; he and Miss Matty together. And a day or two after his arrival, the shop was closed” (151). In pointing this out, the narrator represents Miss Matty’s shop as a stopgap measure, which attenuates its ambivalence. Moreover, the narrator highlights that Miss Matty and her brother could “live […] ‘very genteelly’” on his money, thus reinstates Miss Matty’s socioeconomic status and reconciles it with the characters’ self-fashioning (151). “[T]he tea” which is “sent in presents to the Cranford ladies” serves a similar function (151). It proves on the level of story that Miss Matty is ‘above’ work again and can hence afford to give away for free the material objects she used to sell to make ends meet (151).200 The tea, then, has a similar function as Miss Barker’s expensive food. Yet it evinces a structural difference. Regarding Veblen’s notion of conspicuous consumption, the tea Miss Matty presents to the characters can be seen as a twist of conspicuous consumption: if conspicuous consumption entails that money is spent on material objects which are acquired to assert social status, Miss Matty reasserts her social status by giving away material objects for free.

4.2.3 Books as Indicators of Cultural Struggles The books featuring in Cranford are significant material objects. Samuel Johnson’s Rambler stands for an eighteenth-century, Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers for a nineteenth-century mode of publication. This chapter argues that The Rambler and The Pickwick Papers are realist elements which are used in cultural struggles that are fought out in the context of Cranford’s material culture.201 The prestige the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century modes of publication carry is important in these struggles because

199 For a discussion of Mr Peter in connection with India, see Mathieson 144-152. 200 Lee makes a similar point: “Matty can now take food for granted, giving away as gifts the […] tea […] she previously had to sell […] to sustain herself” (2016, 72). 201 For the publication in Household Words, Dickens removed Gaskell’s reference to The Pickwick Papers and mentioned Thomas Hood instead; Gaskell reinserted the Pickwick reference in her 1853 edition of Cranford (cf. Birch 2011c, xxv-xxvi). Even though the Pickwick reference did not appear when Cranford was first serialized, it can be discussed with reference to mid- Victorian material culture since the 1853 edition still belongs to the time frame set for this study. For a discussion of the extratextual implications of the Dickens reference in Cranford, see Dencovski/Karl 75-76.

167 Cranford is a society in a state of cultural transition. Adopting a cultural studies point of view, the chapter also proposes that it is telling that the cultural negotiations, which are set at time preceding the mid-Victorian period, take place in Dickens’s journal Household Words in 1851 (cf. Birch 2011c, xxvi). The tensions between eighteenth- and nineteenth- century modes of publication can thus be related to processes of identity formation which extend to the extratextual level of the novelistic text. This chapter shows that Cranford creates a metalevel on mid-Victorian material culture through an interplay of its intra- and extratextual level: The Rambler and The Pickwick Papers are represented as a bone of contention in a mid-Victorian novel which was serialized in yet another mid-Victorian publication format.202 On the intradiegetic level, Miss Jenkyns and Captain Brown quarrel over the books they read. The narrator here keeps herself in the background: although the quarrel is mediated in the telling mode, her presence on the level of discourse is reduced. This turns a spotlight both on the characters who argue over books and on the significance of these material objects. Captain Brown differs from the female characters in Cranford in several respects. Not only is he a male character who has only recently moved to Cranford (cf. 7). He also does not follow the Cranford women’s self-fashioning and does not conceal his financial situation (cf. 6). Moreover, Captain Brown consumes differently: he buys and reads Dickens’s Pickwick Papers. He asks Miss Jenkyns “‘Have you seen any numbers of ‘The Pickwick Papers?’ […] Aren’t they famously good’” (10)? The Pickwick Papers were published in monthly numbers. This is important in two respects:203 first, the monthly parts of the novel can be seen as commodity texts, hence as material objects which could be consumed in mid-Victorian material culture. Second, the monthly parts as material objects point to Captain Brown’s socioeconomic status. Monthly numbers were a new publishing format which originated from developments in print technology (cf. Feldmann 2013b, 53; cf. Patten 1999, 480). As a consequence of these developments, monthly parts could be produced in great numbers and sold at a relatively cheap price (cf. Feldmann 2013b, 53). Therefore, new readers from the middle classes could increasingly afford novels published in monthly numbers (cf. Feldmann 2013b, 55; cf. Turner 117). If

202 Cass interprets the function of The Rambler, too (cf. 420-424). However, his reading is not convincing and will not be drawn on in the following. 203 Delafield considers the reference to The Pickwick Papers “[i]n the context of a periodical edited by Dickens whose name appeared on the very page […] wonderfully self-referential” (75). The following analysis is not concerned with the fact that Cranford refers to a novel by Dickens in his own journal but seeks to explore the cultural significance of this reference.

168 Captain Brown buys the monthly parts of The Pickwick Papers, he belongs to this new readership in socioeconomic terms.204 In the ensuing quarrel between Captain Brown and Miss Jenkyns, differences in age and publication formats are central issues. Miss Jenkyns dismisses Dickens’s writing as being inferior to Samuel Johnson: she maintains that The Pickwick Papers are not “‘equal to Dr. Johnson’” (10). She admits “‘the author is young’” but recommends that Dickens “‘take the great Doctor for his model’” (10) because “‘Dr. Johnson’s style is a model for young beginners’” (11). As an elderly woman, she disproves of the first novel published by young Dickens because he is not as experienced as “‘the great Doctor’” (10).205 After Captain Brown has read to the Cranford characters from The Pickwick Papers, Miss Jenkyns launches a counterattack. She reads from a copy of Rasselas (cf. 10-11), a novel which was published in 1759 (cf. Hardy ix-x). The difference in the publication formats of the novels is broached by Miss Jenkyns: “‘I consider it vulgar, and below the dignity of literature, to publish in numbers’” (11). Miss Jenkyns thus advocates an eighteenth-century mode of publication she associates with cultural prestige. If she “‘consider[s] it vulgar […] to publish in numbers’”, she opposes Dickens’s monthly parts because they do not comply with the social self-fashioning in Cranford (11): the new readership departs from the notions of the socioeconomic aspect of the Cranford women’s identity. Moreover, Dickens’s monthly parts stood for a new “mode of literary production […] and a new source of economic capital for the literary profession” (Knezevic 422). In rejecting The Pickwick Papers, Miss Jenkyns marks herself off from this socioeconomic group of readers these material objects stood for. Apart from the mode of publication, Miss Jenkyns gives Samuel Johnson’s style as a reason why she favours “‘Dr. Johnson, as a writer of fiction’” (11). If Samuel Johnson’s style is regarded as exemplary, the writer may be associated with the ideal of the poeta doctus (cf. Dencovski/Karl 78).206 Samuel Johnson thus fits the Cranford women’s social self-fashioning.207 Young Dickens’s monthly parts, by contrast, cater to ‘the masses’ (cf. Turner 119). Captain Brown contradicts Miss Jenkyns. He asks “‘How was the ‘Rambler’ published, Ma’am?’” and states “‘I should be very sorry for him to exchange his style for any such

204 This observation agrees with Knezevic (cf. 416). 205 The Pickwick Papers were the first novel Dickens wrote in his early twenties (cf. Kinsley 1988a, vii). 206 The term poeta doctus refers to an idealized conception of a poet or writer who has a vast knowledge and writes for an educated audience (cf. von Wilpert 615). Samuel Johnson was a learned writer and can hence be considered a poeta doctus (cf. Davis 7-8). 207 For a detailed discussion of questions of style and language in The Rambler and The Pickwick Papers, see Knezevic 421.

169 pompous writings’” (11). Captain Brown alludes to the periodical form in which The Rambler originally “appeared twice weekly” between “1750 and 1752” in “500 copies” (Korshin 52). He thus tries to vindicate Dickens’s monthly numbers from the ‘vulgar’ connotation Miss Jenkyns ascribes them. In favouring Dickens’s writing, he also questions authoritative ideas of style. He even calls Samuel Johnson’s style “‘pompous’”, which suggests that he considers Dickens’s style more accessible than Johnson’s (11). Miss Jenkyns and Captain Brown are therefore involved in cultural struggles over historical difference and between old and new publishing formats and between readers who differ in socioeconomic terms.208 Miss Jenkyns as an old woman tries to establish cultural supremacy over the new mode of publication. This suggests that newcomers to Cranford already introduce publishing formats which have recently emerged or new, socially significant material objects. The old generation Miss Jenkyns represents still has reservations and even fights against this new phenomenon in material culture. The quarrel between Miss Jenkyns and Captain Brown is not resolved on the level of the characters but in the course of the plot. Thus, the novelistic text first pits against each other two material objects which are charged with cultural associations. It then ends the cultural struggle: Captain Brown is killed by a train while he is reading “‘a number of ‘Pickwick’” (19). On the intradiegetic level, then, the character is symbolically removed from Cranford with its ‘aristocratic’ self-fashioning: he does not fit into the social structure of the town, and consuming the ‘wrong’ book falls back on him. On the extratextual level, however, the cultural negotiations continue. The quarrel over material objects and the prestige they carry is represented in a text which appeared in Dickens’s journal Household Words. This was between December 1851 and May 1853 (cf. Birch 2011c, xxvii). The journal itself originated from developments in print culture and catered to readers of Captain Brown’s socioeconomic status (cf. Patten 1999, 480). Because of its publication format, then, the text of Cranford can be seen as a commodity text, too.209 This establishes a metalevel on books as material objects: on the intradiegetic level of Cranford, the new publishing mode is attacked, yet the novel itself is serialized in a publishing format which is similar to that of The Pickwick Papers. This raises questions concerning the status of serialized novels in the mid-Victorian period and how this status on the extratextual level of the novel impacts on its intratextual representation.

208 Cranford is “set in a completed past which occupied an intertextual place within the issues of a periodical constructed out of the discussion of the present” (Delafield 94). 209 Huett calls Cranford a “‘commodity narrative’” (41). She deals with the quarrel between Captain Brown and Miss Jenkyns, too, but her discussion is not convincing (cf. 41-42).

170 By the time Cranford was published in Household Words, Dickens had become a prominent name and even a brand in mid-Victorian material culture (cf. Feldmann 2013b, 59; cf. John 50). If the readers of Cranford at mid-century were familiar with Dickens as a prominent name in contemporary material culture, it is significant that Captain Brown reads The Pickwick Papers. It is one of Dickens’s early novels and was serialized between 1836 and 1837 (cf. Kinsley 1988b, xvii). The novel thus indicates that the quarrel between Miss Jenkyns and Captain Brown takes place in the intradiegetic past before mid-century. Considering the period of time over which Cranford was serialized, the mid-Victorian readers on the extratextual level can be argued to recognize this temporal hint. They therefore view the quarrel between Miss Jenkyns and Captain Brown through the lens of historical difference. This engenders a comic effect: on the extratextual level in mid- Victorian material culture, Dickens had gained wide-spread popularity by the 1850s (cf. Collins 1999, 460). His popularity was not only based on the monthly parts in which most of his novels were serialized; it also stemmed from his journal Household Words which hosted several novels published in serial form amongst other articles (cf. Drew 281). At 2d per issue, Household Words was even cheaper than Dickens’s monthly numbers (cf. Drew 283; cf. Turner 116). Thus, there is a discrepancy between the extratextual context of Cranford and its intratextual level: since Dickens’s publications were widely popular in the mid-Victorian period, this shows that the monthly parts had gained acceptance. The popularity of the publication format thus contradicts the notion that the monthly numbers are what Miss Jenkyns styles a “‘vulgar’” format of publication (11). Moreover, the readers of Cranford may be argued to side with Captain Brown: consuming Cranford in the mid-Victorian period, they not only consume a similar publication format as the character; they also move on and see through the metalevel that is created through the interplay between the intra- and extratextual level of the novel. Therefore, they straddle the gulf of historical difference. This, together with the popularity of Dickens’s monthly parts in mid-Victorian material culture, undermines and ironizes on the extratextual level the ideas which Miss Jenkyns entertains of a new publication format before mid-century and which appear old-fashioned to the readers at mid-century. Another ironic twist can be detected in an advertisement for a book called Boswell’s Life of Johnson. This publication is an interesting paratextual element to connect with Cranford in the context of mid-Victorian material culture: there are structural similarities between the publishing formats of Cranford, The Pickwick Papers and Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Moreover, Samuel Johnson appears as a character in the

171 latter publication. The advertisement can be related to Cranford if it is seen as an element from its epitext since both appeared at roughly the same time.210 The advertisement appears in the second and fifth monthly number of Mayhew’s 1851. Following the novelistic text of 1851, a booklet within the monthly part can be found. The booklet announces that the National Illustrated Library will publish some books “IN MONTHLY VOLUMES”, each at “HALF-A-CROWN.—BEAUTIFULLY BOUND” (fig. 16). One of the books published in this series is Boswell’s Life of Johnson. The booklet contains a specimen page on which an extract and an illustration from Boswell’s Life of Johnson have been printed (cf. fig. 17). The extract is mediated by a homodiegetic narrator who meets Samuel Johnson for the first time and is rhetorically checkmated by him (cf. fig. 17). Boswell’s Life of Johnson, it can be argued, is turned into a commodity text and shares this feature with Cranford and The Pickwick Papers. Boswell’s Life of Johnson was first published in 1791, is advertised in 1851 and is one of several volumes that will be published monthly by the National Illustrated Library (cf. fig. 16). This means that the volumes which constitute the series advertised in 1851 are serialized or published in parts, too. Moreover, the text of Boswell’s Life of Johnson comes with illustrations, which was another characteristic feature of those commodity texts which were published in monthly numbers. The price of Boswell’s Life of Johnson is about twice as much as the monthly parts of Dickens’s Pickwick Papers and Mayhew’s 1851 (cf. fig. 16). This and the promise that the publication will be “BEAUTIFULLY BOUND” also suggest that it is a commodity (fig. 16). Since Samuel Johnson is the main character in the publication, this eighteenth- century figure becomes an object of consumption in mid-Victorian material culture: as a character, he can be consumed by the readers. The publication format, moreover, can be argued to turn the text it comprises and the characters that appear in it, into objects of consumption. Furthermore, the medium which is used to advertise Boswell’s Life of Johnson is important: it is advertised in the monthly parts of 1851. Boswell’s Life of Johnson as a commodity text is thus advertised by means of another commodity text which could be consumed in mid-Victorian material culture. This refracts on the extratextual level Miss Jenkyns’s intradiegetic notion that “‘it [is] vulgar […] to publish in numbers’” (11). At the same time, it points to a metalevel regarding the extratextual

210 Regarding novels which were serialized in journals, Delafield states that “the links with other material within the periodical offered […] intertextual commentary” (21). This observation also holds true for material published alongside or outside the journals.

172 level of Cranford: it raises questions on how the material objects published as commodity texts in mid-Victorian print culture use and draw on each other. Ultimately, it also gestures to a metalevel in methodological terms. It shows that interpreting novelistic texts together with paratextual elements can reveal interesting fissures between novelistic text and paratext and suggests there are interrelations between publications of a similar publishing format in mid-Victorian material culture.

5 Conclusion This study aimed at analyzing how novelistic representations of mid-Victorian material culture contribute to and participate in formations of collective identity at mid-century. 1851 negotiates and plays with national identity. The novel takes the Great Exhibition as the background against which to explore national identity. Representing this event on its intradiegetic level is a central strategy in forming national identity. The narrative voice consistently pairs narrative strategies which are associated with the eighteenth century with mid-Victorian discourses to highlight and display the protagonists’ regional difference. Drawing on elements from domestic travel accounts, the novel first establishes a London-based perspective and constructs its implied readers as urban. It then introduces the Sandboys as a rural form of national identity. The narrative voice combines the strategies taken from travel writing with the mid-Victorian discourse on progress and represents the Sandboys as running counter to this discourse because of how they consume in Buttermere’s rural material culture. Engendering a discrepancy between the implied urban perspective and the rural protagonists’ material culture is a strategy of othering. It distances the Sandboys from the urban readers by invoking difference in region and class in particular. The narrative voice also draws on picaresque novels: it uses their episodic structure and modifies the concept of the rogue figure. These elements are combined with theatrical strategies of representation as well as with set-pieces of contemporary London. The Sandboys are not familiar with the London set-pieces and are hence entangled in several mishaps. These mishaps invert the concept of the picaro in a way that makes the Sandboys remain outsiders in London’s urban context. Through the additive, episodic structure and the theatrical strategies of representation, 1851 stages the Sandboys’ otherness for the implied readers: after they have been shown a rural variant of English nationality in the travel account, they can now consume the textual stagings as an entertainment. 1851 exhibits the Sandboys’ otherness in London to demonstrate what English nationality is not. The opening ceremony of the Great Exhibition is represented to propound distinct notions of English nationality. The text doubles narrated time and

173 represents the inauguration ceremony twice: as a spectacle which is mediated by the narrator-focalizer and takes place without the protagonists and as a farce with the Sandboys as focalizers. The spectacular account presents a visual spectacle to the readers: they are taken on a ‘tour’ of the Crystal Palace and are shown the machines symbolizing progress. They also witness the spectacular arrival of the royal family and the service that is held to open the Exhibition. Since the readers gain access to the opening ceremony by reading the novelistic text, they are integrated into the sacralized conception of English nationality the novel constructs. Considering that the novelistic text appeared in monthly parts, participating in English nationality can here be achieved by consuming the monthly numbers as a commodity text. The Sandboys do not gain access to the Crystal Palace: they witness the arrival of the royal family from a distance and only catch snatches from the opening ceremony. They are therefore excluded from the sacralized version of English nationality. It is noteworthy that 1851 repeatedly connects representations of spectacles which can be consumed by the readers visually to formations of national identity: staging the union of the Houses of York and Lancaster at the beginning of the novel, representing the opening ceremony twice and including an illustration to support the novelistic text are cases in point. This visual component can be regarded as a central aspect of the novel. There are, however, some discursive fissures in the urban, middle-class version of English nationality the text endorses. While it proposes in the expository passages that the working classes be integrated into its conception of national identity, the handloom weavers in the narrative run counter to this argument. The representation of these characters shows that ‘the’ working classes are too heterogeneous to be integrated. The handloom weavers thus remain excluded from the conception of English nationality in addition to the Sandboys. For the most part, the paratext of 1851 works in tandem with the novelistic text and underpins its representational strategies. This can be seen in the reviews which draw on and add to the textual strategies of othering as well as in the illustrations visualizing the arrival of the queen and the opening ceremony. Regarding difference in class, however, the advertisement for London Labour and the London Poor and the illustrations imagining how the working classes visit the Great Exhibition exhibit social difference to the readers; they do not integrate the working classes into the conception of national identity. Bleak House is concerned with differences in class and middle-class gender roles as aspects of collective identity. The two narrative voices deal with these issues through consumption and from a middle-class perspective. Polyphony on class is created through

174 the narrative conception of the novel. The heterodiegetic narrative voice uses discourses on consumption to represent classes in the social structure of the novel. Esther can be considered a middle-class narrator since she consumes social difference and conceives of the poor as a spectacle. The heterodiegetic narrative voice converges with Esther’s autodiegetic stance in terms of class and complements it at points where her figural perspective on consumption is limited. Esther’s account records how various characters consume and what concepts of gender roles they stand for. It shows that gender roles are diversified in the field of consumption. This brings about polyphony: the consuming characters belong to the middle classes and propagate notions of gender roles which are alternatives to those endorsed in middle-class discourses. In particular, Mrs Jellyby as a businesswoman presents an alternative to the middle-class conception of women as mothers or housekeepers. She continues to inscribe an alternative conception into the text after her coffee project has failed. Richard Carstone is a case where consumption shows gender roles to be flexible. He adheres to an aristocratic conception of male gender roles and acts as a leisure time consumer. Esther watches over his money while he does his shopping and adopts the role of his guardian, which was connoted as male in the mid- Victorian period. This implies that Richard is feminized and that gender roles are reversed here. If tuberculosis was coded as feminine in the mid-Victorian period, there is another instance where Richard is feminized and where consumption suggests that gender roles are flexible: there is a contiguity between Richard’s financial and physical resources. The more money Mr Vholes takes from Richard’s resources, the more his health deteriorates. He is metonymically turned from consuming object into an object of consumption. Richard dies of tuberculosis or consumption, when his financial resources have been spent on the costs of the law suit. The diversified or alternative concepts of gender roles which are discernible in the text and contribute to polyphony are always filtered by Esther’s narrative voice. In order to contain the identificatory options the concepts of gender roles present, Esther deploys non-realistic strategies of representation. She represents Mrs Jellyby and Mr Turveydrop, who endorses an aristocratic, eighteenth-century concept of male gender roles, in connection with material objects. These material objects feature in satiric and grotesque strategies of representation which describe Mrs Jellyby’s house and children and Mr Turveydrop’s outfit. This marks the characters’ conceptions of gender roles as alternatives Esther does not approve of. If Esther uses non-realistic modes to contain alternative conceptions of gender roles, the heterodiegetic narrative voice deploys these strategies of representation to mark off its perspective from characters belonging to the

175 upper classes. In the case of Richard Carstone, using metonymy makes it possible to render gender roles flexible and trace how Richard is transmuted from consuming subject into an object of consumption as the plot develops. This, too, is a way to disprove his conception of male gender roles. With Krook, metonymy is not used to assess a concept of gender roles but to align the law court with consumption. This allows for reading Krook’s shop as a parody of the Court of Chancery. The representation of consumption in the case of Krook’s shop suggests that consumption is a field which is flexible in associative terms and can therefore be metonymically or structurally related to other realms which are not usually associated with consumption. On the paratextual level, the illustrations underpin how the novelistic text conceives of gender roles. The advertisements, however, do not always support the novelistic text. In structural terms, they work to a similar effect as the heterodiegetic narrative voice where representations of shop windows are concerned. The manner in which they deal with social difference cannot be pinned down to one form of representation. One advertisement suggests that social difference can be overcome by consumption, whereas another advertises material objects by displaying social difference. Likewise, the advertisements partly tally with and partly modify or diverge from the concepts of gender roles the novelistic text endorses or disproves: the advertisements targeting female readers imply that there are different conceptions of female gender roles. The advertisements also address male consumers but evince an uneasiness in conceptualizing them. The advertisements thus contribute to polyphony on the structural level and where questions of social difference and gender roles are concerned. Compared to the advertisements and illustrations analyzed in connection with 1851, the paratext of Bleak House does not always take the same line as the novelistic text. In Bleak House, more fissures can be detected in the interplay between the novelistic text and its paratext. This suggests that the monthly parts as a publication format are not homogenous: both 1851 and Bleak House are constituted by novelistic text, illustrations and advertisements and both were serialized in monthly parts within a time frame that can be considered synchronic. Yet the paratextual elements achieve different effects when they are read alongside the novelistic texts. In methodological terms, this indicates that the paratext of the monthly parts needs to be considered when it is available since it is integral to the meaning-making processes of the novel. Cranford deals with practices of consumption in a small, predominantly female town and locates them in a context that is set before the mid-Victorian period. Mary Smith’s homodiegetic narrative voice is key in representing this pre- or early-Victorian

176 form of material culture because she introduces regional and historical difference in particular to contrast Cranford’s material culture with mid-Victorian material culture. Thus emerges a metalevel on material culture which works in two directions: on the intradiegetic level, the novel shows how the Cranford ladies define and negotiate socioeconomic status as part of their female collective identity by consuming inconspicuously. These representations can be related to the extratextual level of the novel: the tenet of inconspicuous consumption and the realist elements the narrative voices foregrounds to illustrate this precept can be structurally related to mid-Victorian material culture. The characters are restricted financially but fashion themselves as ‘aristocratic’. This social self-fashioning entails that financial aspects are concealed which, in turn, accounts for the characters’ tenet of inconspicuous consumption. Being ‘aristocratic’ means that material objects have to be treated sparingly. Accordingly, social status and prestige in the Cranford ladies’ community are negotiated and asserted through inconspicuous consumption. This can be seen in the way the characters deal with food. In these representations, inconspicuous consumption is shown to be a coded social practice: it serves to negotiate social status, and it is also a way to strengthen and uphold the characters’ communal ties in view of their financial situation. Here, the narrator’s representation of inconspicuous consumption works with historical difference. It alludes to mid-Victorian practices of conspicuous consumption: if the narrator illustrates how inconspicuous consumption works and nostalgically highlights the effect it achieves, she renders visible the structural resemblance it bears to conspicuous consumption. She thus implicitly suggests that negotiating social status at mid-century works through conspicuous consumption. Mr Holbrook’s function is to visualize a masculine, rural material culture which coexists with the Cranford ladies’ material culture. The meal he shares with the Cranford ladies underlines the role consuming food plays for their social self-fashioning. On a metalevel, the representation of this character also suggests that there are always coexisting forms of material culture which are contemporaneous but locally and socially specific. The narrator’s perspective on Cranford’s material culture is not always nostalgic. It is with material objects of everyday use that she distances herself from the implications inconspicuous consumption has. She comically represents how the characters try to divest material objects of their use-value and mocks the conflicts which arise from the characters’ ways of ascribing ‘ordinary’ material objects of daily use an aesthetic value on an individual basis. In doing so, she distances the urban and contemporary readers from Cranford’s material culture. Yet on the structural level, the representation insinuates

177 that there are parallels between Cranford’s and mid-Victorian material culture where material objects are ascribed a value that exceeds their use-value. Waste is an aspect which does not mirror mid-Victorian material culture in structural terms. The narrator explains that it has a social function, for preventing it works to reinforce identificatory processes in the small town. This contrasts with the economic function of urban waste in mid-Victorian discourses. Clothes, fashion and shops are phenomena that refract mid-Victorian ideas and discourses of consuming women because they are ascribed to a period which existed before that time. Regarding how clothes and fashion are represented, regional difference and difference in age are particularly relevant. The narrator shows that the Cranford ladies consume new caps compulsorily to defend their communal ties and collective ‘aristocratic’ identity against characters who do not belong to their community. Compulsory consumption here borders on conspicuous consumption and has an identificatory function amongst the Cranford characters. The narrator’s mocking comments on the Cranford ladies’ outfit which mixes current and old styles is indicative of her perspective on Cranford: the young, urban narrator represents the style the elderly ladies pursue in a small town as incongruous. Due to her difference in age and region, the narrator can here be argued to evince an urban stance on the Cranford ladies’ material culture. This urban perspective suggests that the latest styles or fashions be followed. In commenting on the characters’ outfit, the narrator’s representation here contributes to mid-Victorian discourses on fashion. The manner in which the Cranford characters consume in shops is linked to the tenet of inconspicuous consumption. The Cranford women consume the latest fashionable articles visually and try to be ahead of the other characters. That the Cranford characters connect knowing about the latest fashion to prestige can be attributed to the tenet of inconspicuous consumption: it does not allow the characters to spend money on the articles to assert prestige. In terms of the prestige it conveys on the consumer, consuming the articles visually stands in for acquiring them. Regarding the extratextual level of the novel, Cranford ascribes women who consume for pleasure to a period that is set before mid-century. In doing so, the novel engages in mid-Victorian discourses on consuming women since it invokes a continuum between these times. The shops which are run by the Barker sisters and Miss Matty show how trade is accommodated to the Cranford characters’ ‘aristocratic’ community. The Barker sisters mimic the ladies’ self-fashioning in their sales strategy. Miss Matty sells tea as a material object that is associated with the middle and upper classes and can hence be reconciled with the characters’ ‘aristocratic’ self-fashioning. Mary Smith stresses that the

178 Barker sisters’ shop was closed in the intradiegetic past to relegate its commercial aspect to bygone times. Miss Matty’s shop is opened in the intradiegetic present. Here, the narrator attempts to reduce its commercial nature by highlighting that it is established in Miss Matty’s parlour, hence in a private space. Emphasizing the private space is indicative of two aspects: the novel implies that consumption enters the domestic private space before mid-century. It also suggests that the representation of Miss Matty as a shopkeeper is a product of its own time. Cranford thus refracts mid-Victorian discourses on consuming women on a metalevel and simultaneously participates in them. The argument Miss Jenkyns and Captain Brown have about The Rambler and The Pickwick Papers is particularly relevant from a cultural studies perspective. On the intradiegetic level, these eighteenth- and nineteenth-century modes of publication are associated with cultural prestige. The books feature in cultural negotiations which take place in a society which is in a state of cultural transition. The cultural negotiations extend to the extratextual level since Cranford appeared in Household Words. This journal had developed from new print technologies and hence resembles The Pickwick Papers. On the extratextual level, the mid-Victorian readers of Cranford are positioned on a metalevel: they recognize the historical difference the novelistic text evokes between the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century modes of publication on the intradiegetic level. They are also aware of Household Words as a popular publication format on the extratextual level. This makes the reservations Miss Jenkyns has about the recent nineteenth-century publication format, which she considers to lack prestige, appear comically old-fashioned to the readers at mid-century. Considering that Cranford represents practices of consumption that were prominent at mid-century and projects their working mechanisms on a context which is set before that time, the novel can be said to be equally concerned with mid-Victorian identity as it is with creating a metalevel on material culture. Establishing a metalevel on material culture, it can be concluded for Cranford, raises questions about and broaches issues of mid-Victorian identity. The synopsis of these findings suggests that novelistic representations of material culture in the mid-Victorian period are linked to formations of collective identity. By representing material culture on their intradiegetic level, the novels explore, mould or negotiate specific aspects of collective identity. Their narrative voices are central to these processes because they strategically single out specific aspects of material culture to form, present and offer, but also discard and unhinge, different options for identification. The narrative voices also deploy rhetoric strategies to shape the readers’ perception of their representations of material culture. More specifically, the narrative voices do this through

179 the way in which they are conceptualized: as hetero-, auto- or homodiegetic narrators, they make the material culture of the intradiegetic level accessible to the readers on the extradiegetic level but already filter it in a way that influences the readers’ perception of the characters and happenings involved in the explorations and negotiations that take place on the story level. The narrative organization of the novels is therefore key in forming notions of collective identity. Apart from the intradiegetic level, the extratextual level is relevant, too: since the novels are themselves material objects in mid-Victorian material culture, they can be considered to contribute to formations of collective identity on their extratextual level. The readers acquire the monthly parts of 1851 and Bleak House or the Cranford articles in Household Words as material objects and, by reading them, textually engage in the explorations and formations of collective identity going on in the novelistic texts. The same holds true for the illustrations and advertisements that come with 1851 and Bleak House: looking at them and consuming them engages the readers in the novelistic representations on an additional level insofar as the paratext supports or diverges from the novelistic text and contributes to the textual formations of identity in this way. Compared to the illustrations, the advertisements in particular can be argued to present identificatory options since they tackled consumers on the extratextual level. What the three novels have in common apart from their concern with formations of collective identity is their engagement with specific material objects or material spaces. The analyses in this study suggest that clothes or fashion, parlours or private interiors and comestibles are meaningful because they are used to mark a form of identity the respective text presents as different from the notions of collective identity it endorses. In 1851, Mr Sandboys’s self-made woollen coats indicate that he belongs to a rural form of material culture which diverges from urban discourses on technological progress. In Bleak House, Mr Turveydrop’s outfit unhinges the character’s upper-class conception of male gender roles which run counter to Esther’s middle-class perspective, and the Cranford ladies’ outfit marks them as differing from urban notions of style. Similarly, the Sandboys’ parlour which is decorated with farming certificates underlines the protagonists’ rural difference and represents them as the other of the implied urban readers. With Mrs Jellyby, the interior of her home as well as the food that is served for dinner satirize her conception of female gender roles through the ‘disorder’ in her house and implicitly point to the middle-class conception Esther propounds. In Cranford, the carpet in Miss Jenkyns’s parlour is represented to achieve a comic effect and to distance mid-Victorian readers from the Cranford ladies’ tenet of inconspicuous consumption. The yale the Sandboys are about to consume and the entries in the visitors’ book highlighting

180 that visitors to Buttermere enjoy the food instead of the scenery are devices to invoke historical difference which works to underpin the sense of otherness 1851 evokes in connection with the Sandboys. The food the Cranford ladies consume at their parties removes inconspicuous consumption from contemporary readers in a way that tends to idealize its function of holding together the community. Since the text ascribes this function to a period before mid-century, it also invokes historical difference. Consuming food with Mr Holbrook’s works to show that the forms of material culture this character and the Cranford ladies represent coexist in the intradiegetic past but differ in terms of region and social status. Reviewing the conception of this study, the following conclusion can be given: this PhD thesis carried out a synchronic study of three mid-Victorian novels and focused on the time frame between 1851 and 1853. It mainly analyzed the novels from a literary studies perspective. 1851, Bleak House and Cranford could thus be examined in detail. The results provide insight into how notions of collective identity are formed through novelistic representations of material culture at mid-century. Reading select advertisements and illustrations from the monthly parts of 1851 and Bleak House alongside the novelistic representations has shown that the paratextual elements are meaningful and contribute to formations of identity. The flipside of this conception is that the study does arrive at conclusions which reveal the function novelistic representations of material culture have in processes of identity formation but that it tends to interpret them from within a literary studies discourse on material culture. Thus, the study does not connect its findings to other texts which were also part of mid-Victorian culture and participated in processes of identity formation, too. These texts include fashion magazines, historical accounts of particular articles of dress, non-novelistic texts concerned with gender roles or treatises dealing with questions of nationality or differences in class. The scope of the in-depth study on hand could hence be widened if the time frame remained unaltered but if non-novelistic texts were read alongside the novelistic texts and their paratext in a discourse-analytical approach. If processes of forming collective identity through material culture were approached in a discourse- analytical reading, the findings pertaining to the novelistic texts and their paratext could be located in the larger cultural context from which the novels originated and in which they participated. A further strategy to enhance and reflect on the findings outlined above would be to add further novels dealing with material culture and questions of identity to the time frame that has been set for this study. At the same time, a comprehensive rather than a

181 selective reading of the novels’ paratextual elements, including their epitext, could be carried out. This would make it possible to fully account for how the paratextual elements interact with the novelistic representations and how the novels as material objects participate in formations of identity in mid-Victorian material culture. A particularly promising aspect of future research would be to link a literary and cultural studies approach with reception studies. Regarding the extratextual level of the novels examined in this PhD thesis, pursuing this project would enhance the impact of the findings presented here: while the study on hand mainly analyzes the intradiegetic mechanisms of identity formation, reception studies could provide information on how the novels were received by mid-Victorian readers. Considering that mid-Victorian novels were material objects that stemmed from the cultural climate which produced them and that they also participated and shaped discourses within this climate, the evidence gained from reception studies could be used to discuss how the novelistic representations of material culture and the notions of collective identity they form were perceived by the readers. This additional layer of meaning could be considered when interpreting the novels. Taken together, the results presented in this study and the methodological reflections offer points of departure for future literary or cultural studies on mid-Victorian material culture and the role it plays in processes of identity formation.

182 6 Bibliography Allan, Janice. “Uncanny, the.” The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms. Ed. Peter Childs and Roger Fowler. London: Routledge, 2006. 245-246. Allen, Rob. “‘Pause You Who Read This:’ Disruption and the Victorian Serial Novel.” Serialization in Popular Culture. Ed. Rob Allen and Thijs van den Berg. New York: Routledge, 2014. 33-46. Antor, Heinz. “Plot.” Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie: Ansätze – Personen – Grundbegriffe. Ed. Ansgar Nünning. 5th ed. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2013. 603-604. Armstrong, Isobel. Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and the Imagination 1830– 1880. Oxford: OUP, 2008. Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. New York: OUP, 1987. Ashcroft, Bill, Garth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2007. Assmann, Aleida. Introduction to Cultural Studies: Topics, Concepts, Issues. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2012. Assmann, Jan. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. 8th ed. München: Beck, 2018. Auerbach, Jeffrey A. The Great Exhibition: A Nation on Display. New Haven: Yale UP, 1999. Bailey, Peter. Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. 1984. Ed. and transl. Caryl Emerson. Introd. Wayne C. Booth. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2014. Bal, Mieke. Narratologie: Essais sur la signification narrative dans quatre romans modernes. Paris: Klincksieck, 1977. Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP, 2008. Beaven, Brad. Leisure, Citizenship and Working-Class Men in Britain, 1850–1945. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2005. Beetham, Margaret. “Open and Closed: The Periodical as a Publishing Genre.” Victorian Periodicals Review 22.3 (1989): 96-100. Beetham, Margaret, and Kay Boardman, ed. Victorian Women’s Magazines: An Anthology. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2001. Bigelow, Gordon. “Bleak House and the Culture of Commodities.” Approaches to Teaching Dickens’s Bleak House. Ed. John O. Jordan and Gordon Bigelow. New York: MLA, 2008. 51-56. ---. “Market Indicators: Banking and Domesticity in Dickens’s Bleak House.” English Literary History 67.2 (2000): 589-615. Birch, Dinah. “Appendix II: ‘The Cage at Cranford.’” Cranford. By Elizabeth Gaskell. Ed. Elizabeth Porges Watson. Introd. and notes Dinah Birch. New ed. Oxford: OUP, 2011a. 166. ---. “Appendix III: Cranford in Context.” Cranford. By Elizabeth Gaskell. Ed. Elizabeth Porges Watson. Introd. and notes Dinah Birch. New ed. Oxford: OUP, 2011b. 176- 198. ---. “Note on the Text.” Cranford. By Elizabeth Gaskell. Ed. Elizabeth Porges Watson. Introd. and notes Dinah Birch. New ed. Oxford: OUP, 2011c. xxv-xxvii. Bivona, Daniel. “Self-Undermining Philanthropic Impulses: Philanthropy in the Mirror of Narrative.” Philanthropic Discourse in Anglo-American Literature, 1850–1920. Ed. Frank Q. Christianson and Leslee Thorne-Murphy. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2017. 30-58. Blain, Virginia. “Double Vision and the Double Standard in Bleak House: A Feminist Perspective.” Literature and History 11.1 (1985): 31-46.

183 Böhm, Nadine, and Doris Feldmann. “Identität.” Lexikon der Bibelhermeneutik: Begriffe – Methoden – Theorien – Konzepte. Ed. Oda Wischmeyer. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009. 275-276. Böhm-Schnitker, Nadine. “Kulturelles Gedächtnis.” Viktorianismus: Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2013. 192. Böhm-Schnitker, Nadine, Doris Feldmann, and Christian Krug. “Alterität.” Viktorianismus: Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2013. 185-186. Botting, Fred. “Aftergothic: Consumption, Machines, and Black Holes.” The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge: CUP, 2002. 277- 300. Boucher-Rivalain, Odile. “Woman’s Dress as a Polemical Object in the Mid-Victorian Period.” Paraphernalia! Victorian Objects. Ed. Helen Kingstone and Kate Lister. New York: Routledge, 2018. 213-228. Bowen, John. “Dickens as Professional Author.” The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens. Ed. Robert L. Patten, John O. Jordan and Catherine Waters. Oxford: OUP, 2018. 43-58. Brantlinger, Patrick, and Donald Ulin. “Policing Nomads: Discourse and Social Control in Early Victorian England.” Cultural Critique 25 (1993): 33-63. Brattin, Joel J. “Three Revolutions: Alternate Routes to Social Change in Bleak House.” Charles Dickens as an Agent of Change. Ed. Joachim Frenk and Lena Steveker. New York: AMS P, 2015. 19-31. Brodersen, Kai, and Bernhard Zimmermann, eds. Metzler Lexikon Antike. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2006. Brosch, Renate. “Victorian Challenges to Ways of Seeing: Everyday Life, Entertainment, Images, and Illusions.” Victorian Visual Culture. Ed. Renate Brosch. Heidelberg: Winter, 2008. 21-63. Brusberg-Kiermeier, Stephanie. “Deprived and Frail Men in Victorian Fiction.” Journal for the Study of British Cultures 21.1 (2014): 27-45. Buckley, Matthew. “Early English Melodrama.” The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama. Ed. Carolyn Williams. Cambridge: CUP, 2018. 13-30. Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful. 1958. Ed., introd. and notes James T. Boulton. London: Routledge, 2008. Burton, Anthony. “Cruikshank as an Illustrator of Fiction.” George Cruikshank: A Revaluation. Ed. Robert L. Patten. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992. 93-128. Buzard, James. The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to ‘Culture’, 1800–1918. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1993. ---. “The Grand Tour and after (1660–1840).” The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. Ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs. Cambridge: CUP, 2002. 37–52. Byrne, Katherine. Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination. Cambridge: CUP, 2011. Callaghan, Dympna. “The Elizabethan Miniature.” A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present. Ed. Dana Arnold and David Peters Corbett. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. 451-472. Cannadine, David. “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the ‘Invention of Tradition’, c. 1820–1977.” The Invention of Tradition. 1983. Ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Cambridge: CUP, 2009. 101-164. Carens, Timothy. “The Civilizing Mission at Home: Empire, Gender, and National Reform in Bleak House.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 26 (1998): 121-145.

184 Cass, Jeffrey. “‘The Scraps, Patches, and Rags of Daily Life’: Gaskell’s Oriental Other and the Conservation of Cranford.” Papers on Language and Literature 35.4 (1999): 417-433. Chappell, Patrick. “Bleak House, Rubbish Theory, and the Character Economy of Realism.” English Literary History 80.3 (2013): 783-810. Charlesworth, Michael. “Theories of the Picturesque.” A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present. Ed. Dana Arnold and David Peters Corbett. Malden: Wiley- Blackwell, 2013. 351-372. Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1978. Codell, Julie F. “International Exhibitions: Linking Culture, Commerce, and Nation.” A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present. Ed. Dana Arnold and David Peters Corbett. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. 220-240. Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992. Collin, Dorothy W. “The Composition and Publication of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 69.1 (1986): 59-95. Collins, Philip. A Critical Commentary on Dickens’s Bleak House. London: Macmillan, 1971. ---. “Popularity of Dickens.” Oxford Reader’s Companion to Dickens. Ed. Paul Schlicke. Oxford: OUP, 1999. 459-462. Congleton, J. E., and T. V. F. Brogan. “Pastoral.” The New Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms. Ed. T. V. F. Brogan. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994. 221-224. Cook, Susan E. “Recent Dickens Studies: 2017.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 50.1 (2019): 130-203. Craton, Lillian. The Victorian Freak Show: The Significance of Disability and Physical Differences in 19th-Century Fiction. Amherst: Cambria P, 2009. Cruikshank, George. Mayhew’s Great Exhibition of 1851. London: David Bogue, 1851. Cunnington, C. Willet, and Phillis. Handbook of English Costume in the Nineteenth Century. Illustr. by Phillis Cunnington and Cecil Everitt. London: Faber and Faber, 1959. Damkjær, Maria. Time, Domesticity and Print Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Danahay, Martin. “Housekeeping and Hegemony in Bleak House.” Studies in the Novel 23.4 (1991): 416-431. Davis, Philip. “Extraordinarily Ordinary: The Life of Samuel Johnson.” The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson. Ed. Greg Clingham. Cambridge: CUP, 1997. 4-17. Day, Gary. Class. London: Routledge, 2001. Delafield, Catherine. Serialization and the Novel in Mid-Victorian Magazines. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Dencovski, Ulrike. “Stereotyp.” Viktorianismus: Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung. Ed. Doris Feldmann and Christian Krug. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2013. 196. Dencovski, Ulrike, and Rosa Karl. “Weibliche Autorschaft im viktorianischen Literaturbetrieb: Elizabeth Gaskell.” Viktorianismus: Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung. Ed. Doris Feldmann and Christian Krug. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2013. 69-82. Denisoff, Dennis. “Popular Culture.” The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Culture. Ed. Francis O’Gorman. Cambridge: CUP, 2010. 135-155. Department of the Environment, and Welsh Office. Local Government in England and Wales: A Guide to the New System. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1974. Diamond, Michael. Victorian Sensation: Or, the Spectacular, the Shocking and the Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain. London: Anthem P, 2003.

185 Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. 1996. Ed., introd. and notes Stephen Gill. Oxford: OUP, 2008. ---. Sketches by Boz: Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People. Introd. Thea Holme. London: OUP, 1957. Dolin, Kieran. Fiction and the Law: Legal Discourse in Victorian and Modernist Literature. 1999. Cambridge: CUP, 2008. Dolin, Tim. “Cranford and the Victorian Collection.” Victorian Studies 36.2 (1993): 179- 206. Drew, John. “Household Words.” Oxford Reader’s Companion to Dickens. Ed. Paul Schlicke. Oxford: OUP, 1999. 281-286. Edgar, Andrew. “Commodity.” Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts. 2002. Ed. Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick. London: Routledge, 2003a. 71. ---. “Consumption.” Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts. 2002. Ed. Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick. London: Routledge, 2003b. 80-83. ---. “Culture.” Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts. 2002. Ed. Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick. London: Routledge, 2003c. 101-103. ---. “Ritual.” Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts. 2002. Ed. Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick. London: Routledge, 2003d. 340-341. ---. “Use-value”. Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts. 2002. Ed. Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick. London: Routledge, 2003e. 425. Eichhammer, Barbara. “Konsumkultur.” Viktorianismus: Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung. Ed. Doris Feldmann and Christian Krug. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2013. 191. Elwell, Stephen. “Illustration.” Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Sally Mitchell. New York: Garland, 1988. 387-388. Enderwitz, Anne, and Doris Feldmann. “Nostalgia and Material Culture: Present-ing the Past in Cranford.” Neo-Victorian Literature and Culture: Immersions and Revisitations. Ed. Nadine Boehm-Schnitker and Susanne Gruss. New York: Routledge, 2014. 51-63. Feldmann, Doris. “Differenz.” Viktorianismus: Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2013a. 187-188. ---. “Economic and/as Aesthetic Construction of Britishness in Eighteenth-Century Domestic Travel Writing.” Journal for the Study of British Cultures 4.1-2 (1997): 31-45. ---. Introduction. Travelling Goods, Travelling Moods: Varieties of Cultural Appropriation (1850-1950). Ed. Christian Huck and Stefan Bauernschmidt. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2012. 39-43. ---. “Literatur als Business: Zur spektakulären Popularität von Charles Dickens.” Viktorianismus: Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung. Ed. Doris Feldmann and Christian Krug. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2013b. 53-68. Feldmann, Doris, and Nadine Böhm-Schnitker. “Spektakel.” Viktorianismus: Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2013. 196. Feldmann, Doris, and Ina Habermann. “Geschlechterrolle.” Metzler Lexikon Gender Studies Geschlechterforschung: Ansätze – Personen – Grundbegriffe. Ed. Renate Kroll. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2002. 158-159. Feltes, Norman N. Modes of Production of Victorian Novels. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1986. Fisher, Nick. “The Great Exhibition of 1851: The Struggle to Describe the Indescribable.” Endeavour 36.1 (2012): 6-13. Flanders, Judith. The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed. London: Harper Perennial, 2003.

186 Fletcher, LuAnn McCracken. “A Recipe for Perversion: The Feminine Narrative Challenge in Bleak House.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 25 (1996): 67-89. Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel and Related Writings. 1927. Ed. Oliver Stallybrass. London: Edward Arnold, 1974. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. 1979. Transl. Robert Hurley. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984. Fraiman, Susan. “The Domestic Novel.” The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume Three: The Nineteenth-Century Novel 1820–1880. 169-184. Fredricks, Dan. “The Overlooked but Omnivorous Vholes: The Rhetoric of Consumption in Bleak House.” The Dickensian 84.3 (1988): 172-179. Freedgood, Elaine. The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 2006. Frenk, Joachim. “Smashing Crockery: Undisciplined Tableware in Alice-Books.” Journal for the Study of British Cultures 8.2 (2001): 193-218. ---. “Unending Dickens: Droodian Absences.” Neo-Victorian Studies 4.2 (2011): 133- 153. Fromer, Julie E. A Necessary Luxury: Tea in Victorian England. Athens: Ohio UP, 2008. Gaskell, Elizabeth. Cranford. Ed. Elizabeth Porges Watson. Introd. and notes Dinah Birch. New ed. Oxford: OUP, 2011a. ---. “The Cage at Cranford.” Cranford. By Elizabeth Gaskell. Ed. Elizabeth Porges Watson. Introd. and notes Dinah Birch. New ed. Oxford: OUP, 2011b. 166-175. Gaughan, Richard T. “Their Places Are a Blank: The Two Narrative Voices in Bleak House.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 21 (1992): 79-96. Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Transl. Jane E. Lewin. Foreword Jonathan Culler. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1983. ---. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Transl. Jane E. Lewin. Foreword Richard Macksey. Cambridge: CUP, 1997. Cambridge Core. CUP. Nov. 2009. Web. 16 Aug. 2019. . Georges, Karl Ernst, comp. Ausführliches Lateinisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch: Band 1: A – H. 8th ed. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1913. Gill, Stephen. Introduction. Bleak House. By Charles Dickens. 1996. Ed. and introd. Stephen Gill. Oxford: OUP, 2008a. vii-xxi. ---. “Note on the Composition and the Text.” Bleak House. By Charles Dickens. 1996. Ed. and introd. Stephen Gill. Oxford: OUP, 2008b. xxiii-xxv. Gilmour, Robin. The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1830–1890. London: Longman, 1993. Gilpin, William. Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, &c. Relative Chiefly to the Picturesque Beauty; Made in the Summer of the Year 1770. London: Blamire/Faulder, 1782. Archive.org. MSN. 25 June 2010.Web. 16 Aug. 2019. . Glare, P. G. W., ed. Oxford Latin Dictionary: Volume 1: A – L. 2nd ed. Oxford: OUP, 2012. Glomb, Stefan. “Identität, persönliche.” Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie: Ansätze – Personen – Grundbegriffe. Ed. Ansgar Nünning. 5th ed. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2013. 324. Golden, Catherine. Serials to Graphic Novels: The Evolution of the Victorian Illustrated Book. 2017. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2018. Graeber, Wilhelm. “Pikaro-Roman.” Metzler Lexikon Literatur: Begriffe und Definitionen. 3rd. ed. Ed. Dieter Burdorf, Christoph Fasbender and Burkhard Moenighoff. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007. 586-587.

187 Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. 1980. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 2005. Grener, Adam, and Isabel Parker. “Dickens’s Anonymous Margins: Names, Network Theory, and the Serial Novel.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 50.1 (2019): 20-47. Gurney, Peter. “An Appropriated Space: The Crystal Palace and the Working Class.” The Great Exhibition of 1851: New Interdisciplinary Essays. 2001. Ed. Louise Purbrick. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2013. 114-145. Hack, Daniel. The Material Interests of the Victorian Novel. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2005. Hall, Donald E. Subjectivity. New York: Routledge, 2004. Hands, Thora. Drinking in Victorian and Edwardian Britain: Beyond the Spectre of the Drunkard. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Springer Link. Springer Nature. n.d. Web. 16 Aug. 2019. . Hardy, J. P. Introduction. The History of Rasselas Prince of Abissina. 1968. Ed. and introd. J. P. Hardy. Oxford: OUP, 1988. ix-xxii. Heady, Emily. “The Polis’s Different Voices: Narrating England’s Progress in Dickens’s Bleak House.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 48.4 (2006): 312-339. Henchman, Anna. “Tallow Candles and Meaty Air in Bleak House.” 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 25 (2017): n. pag. Open Library of Humanities. n.d. Web. 15 Aug. 2019. . Herold, Gerd, et al. “Pneumologie.” Innere Medizin: Eine vorlesungsorientierte Darstellung, unter Berücksichtigung des Gegenstandskataloges für die Ärztliche Prüfung, mit ICD 10-Schlüssel im Text und Stichwortverzeichnis. Ed. Gerd Herold. Köln: Gerd Herold, 2019. 327-430. Himmelfarb, Gertrude. “Mayhew’s Poor: A Problem of Identity.” Victorian Studies 14.3 (1971): 307-320. Homans, Margaret. Royal Representations: Queen Victoria and British Culture, 1837– 1876. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998. Horatschek, Anna-Margaretha. “Identität, kollektive.” Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie: Ansätze – Personen – Grundbegriffe. Ed. Ansgar Nünning. 5th ed. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2013. 323-324. Huett, Lorna. “Commodity and Collectivity: Cranford in the Context of Household Words.” The Gaskell Society Journal 17 (2003): 34-49. Hughes, William. “Vampire.” The Handbook of the Gothic. 2nd ed. Ed. Marie Mulvey- Roberts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 252-257. Humpherys, Anne. Henry Mayhew. Boston: Twayne, 1984. Hübner, Klaus. “Schelmenroman.” Metzler Lexikon Literatur: Begriffe und Definitionen. 3rd ed. Ed. Dieter Burdorf, Christoph Fasbender and Burkhard Moenighoff. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007. 683. Iser, Wolfgang. Der Akt des Lesens: Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung. 4th ed. München: Fink, 1994. Jakob, Hans-Joachim. “Fortunatus.” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon: 5: Duf – Fuz. 3rd ed. Ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2009. 642-643. John, Juliet. Dickens and Mass Culture. Oxford: OUP, 2010. Jordan, John O. Supposing Bleak House. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2011. Kearns, Katherine. Nineteenth-Century Literary Realism: Through the Looking-Glass. Cambridge: CUP, 1996.

188 Kenschaft, Lori. “Married Women’s Property Act.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History: Volume 3: Kaffka – Service Sector. Ed. Bonnie G. Smith. Oxford: OUP, 2008. 185. Kingstone, Helen, and Kate Lister. Introduction. Paraphernalia! Victorian Objects. Ed. Helen Kingstone and Kate Lister. New York: Routledge, 2018. Kinsley, James. Introduction. The Pickwick Papers. 1986. By Charles Dickens. Ed., introd. and notes James Kinsley. Oxford: OUP, 1988a. vii-xvi. ---. “Note on the Text.” The Pickwick Papers. 1986. By Charles Dickens. Ed., introd. and notes James Kinsley. Oxford: OUP, 1988b. xvii. Knezevic, Borislav. “An Ethnography of the Provincial: The Social Geography of Gentility in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford.” Victorian Studies 41.3 (1998): 405-426. Kobayashi, Emily V. “Detective or Defective Vision: A Matter of Breathing or Dying in Bleak House.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 46 (2015): 185-207. Kooistra, Lorraine Janzen. Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing: The Illustrated Gift Book and Victorian Visual Culture 1855–1875. Athens: Ohio UP, 2011. Korshin, Paul J. “Johnson, the Essay, and The Rambler.” The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson. Ed. Greg Clingham. Cambridge: CUP, 1997. 51-66. Koven, Seth. Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004. Kretschmer, Hildegard. Lexikon der Attribute und Symbole in der Kunst. 2008. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2016. Krug, Christian. “Populärkultur.” Viktorianismus: Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2013. 194-195. Lamouria, Lanya. “Recent Dickens Studies: 2016.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 49.1 (2018): 182-248. Landon, Philip. “Great Exhibitions: Representations of the Crystal Palace in Mayhew, Dickens, and Dostoevsky.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts: An Interdisciplinary Journal (20.1): 27-59. Lee, Brian. “Satire.” The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms. Ed. Peter Childs and Roger Fowler. London: Routledge, 2006. 211-212. Lee, Michael Parrish. The Food Plot in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Lerner, Laurence. “An Essay on Dombey and Son.” The Victorians. Ed. Laurence Lerner. London: Methuen, 1978. 195-208. Levine, Caroline. “Victorian Realism.” The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel. 2012. Ed. Deidre David. 2nd ed. Cambridge: CUP, 2013. 84-106. Levine, George. The Realistic Imagination: English Fiction from Frankenstein to Lady Chatterly. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1981. Lloyd, Stephen. “The Miniature Portrait: Continuing the Tradition.” The Intimate Portrait: Drawings, Miniatures and Pastels from Ramsay to Lawrence. Ed. Stephen Lloyd and Kim Sloan. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland/The British Museum, 2008. 39-76. Loeb, Lori Anne. Consuming Angels: Advertising and Victorian Women. New York: OUP, 1994. Logan, Thad. The Victorian Parlour: A Cultural Study. 2001. Cambridge: CUP, 2003. Looser, Devoney. Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750–1850. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 2008. Loschek, Ingrid. Accessoires: Symbolik und Geschichte. München: Bruckmann, 1993. Lupton, Christina. “Theorizing Surfaces and Depths: Gaskell’s Cranford.” Criticism 50.2 (2008): 235-254. Lury, Celia. Consumer Culture. 2nd ed. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2011.

189 Mathieson, Charlotte. Mobility in the Victorian Novel: Placing the Nation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor. Ed. and introd. John D. Rosenberg. 4 vols. New York: Dover, 1968. Mayhew, Henry, and George Cruikshank. 1851; or, The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and Family, Who Came up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves’, and to See the Great Exhibition. London: David Bogue, 1851. Google Book Search. n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2019. . McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995. McCullen, Maurice L. “Turveydrop of Bleak House: Basis of Dickens’ Redefinition of Dandyism.” Dickens Studies Newsletter 4.1 (1973): 15-21. McKinney, Kayla Kreuger. “Crystal Fragments: Museum Methods at the Great Exhibition of 1851, in London Labour and the London Poor and in 1851.” The Victorian 5.1 (2017): n. pag. Simon Fraser University Library. Web. 18 Aug. 2019. . Mersmann, Arndt. ‘A true test and a living picture’: Repräsentationen der Londoner Weltausstellung von 1851. Trier: wvt, 2001. Message, Kylie, and Ewan Johnston. “The World within the City: The Great Exhibition, Race, Class and Social Reform.” Britain, the Empire, and the World at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Ed. Jeffrey A. Auerbach and Peter H. Hoffenburg. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. 27-46. Mikics, David. A New Handbook of Literay Terms. New Haven: Yale UP, 2007. Miller, Andrew. Novels behind Glass: Commodity Culture and Victorian Narrative. Cambridge: CUP, 1995. Miller, Meredith. “Tuberculosis and Visionary Sensibility: The Consumptive Body as Masculine Dissent in George Eliot and Henry James.” The Victorian Male Body. Ed. Joanne Ella Parsons and Ruth Heholt. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2018. 108- 127. Mills, Victoria. “Introduction: Victorian Studies and the Material Imagination.” 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 6 (2008): n. pag. Open Library of Humanities. n.d. Web. 15 Aug. 2019. . Mufti, Nasser. “Walking in Bleak House.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 49.1 (2016): 65- 81. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16.3 (1975): 6-18. Mulvihill, James. “Economies of Living in Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford.” Nineteenth- Century Literature 50.3 (1995): 337-356. Murfin, Ross, and Supryia M. Ray. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997. Neale, Steve. “Masculinity as Spectacle: Reflections on Men and Mainstream Cinema.” Screen 24.6 (1983): 2-16. Newton, K. M. “Anthony Trollope and ‘Classic Realism.’” A Companion to the Victorian Novel. Ed. William Baker and Kenneth Womack. Westport: Greenwood P, 2002. 329-339. O’Donnell, Molly C. “Speaking Amazonian: Communities of Practice in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford.” The Gaskell Journal: Journal of the Gaskell Society 30 (2016): 1-22. Patten, Robert L. George Cruikshank’s Life, Times, and Art: Volume 2: 1835–1878. Cambridge: The Lutterworth P, 1996.

190 ---. “Publishing, Printing, Bookselling: Modes of Production.” Oxford Reader’s Companion to Dickens. Ed. Paul Schlicke. Oxford: OUP, 1999. 480-485. Pearson, Richard. “Thackeray and Punch at the Great Exhibition: Authority and Ambivalence in Verbal and Visual Caricatures.” The Great Exhibition of 1851: New Interdisciplinary Essays. Ed. Louise Purbrick. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2001. 179-205. Pfister, Manfred. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Transl. John Halliday. Cambridge: CUP, 1988. Pinch, Adela. “Rubber Bands and Old Ladies.” In Near Ruins: Cultural Theory at the End of the Century. Ed. Nicholas B. Dirks. Minneapolis: U of Minneapolis P, 1998. 147-171. Plath, Robert. “Behaghelsches Gesetz.” Der neue Pauly: Enzyklopädie der Antike. Band 2: Ark – Ci. Ed. Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997. 544. Poliquin, Rachel. The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing. University Park: The Pennsylvania State UP, 2012. Post Office, comp. Principal Streets and Places in London and Its Environs, as Divided into Postal Directions. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1856. Hathi Trust. 30 July 2016. Web. 16 June 2018. . ---. The Small Edition of the Post Office London Directory, 1852: Comprising, amongst Other Information, Official Directory; Commercial Directory; Court Directory; Parliamentary Directory; Postal Directory; Banking Directory; &c. &c. &c. 53rd ed. London: Kelly & Co., 1851. University of Leicester Special Collections. n.d. Web. 16 June 2018. . Prasch, Thomas. “Eating the World: London in 1851.” Victorian Literature and Culture 36.2 (2008): 587-602. Purchase, Sean. Key Concepts in Victorian Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Pykett, Lyn. “The Material Turn in Victorian Studies.” Literature Compass 1.1 (2003): 1-5. Rajan, Supritha. “The Epistemology of Trust and Realist Effect in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 72.1 (2017): 64-106. Rappaport, Erika Diane. Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End. 2000. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001. Rappaport, Jill. “Conservation of Sympathy in Cranford.” Victorian Literature and Culture 36.1 (2008): 95-110. Reynolds, John. “Transportation, Urban.” Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Sally Mitchell. New York: Garland, 1988. 812-814. Richards, Thomas. The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851–1914. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. 2002. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2007. Robles, Fanny. “Dickens and His Urban Museum: The City as Ethnological Spectacle.” Dickens and the Virtual City: Urban Perception and the Production of Social Space. Ed. Estelle Murail and Sara Thornton. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 133-153. Roddy, Sarah, Julie-Marie Strange, and Bertrand Taithe. “New Agenda: Henry Mayhew at 200 – the ‘Other’ Victorian Bicentenary.” Journal of Victorian Culture 19.4 (2014): 481-496. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 1978. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

191 Sadoff, Dianne F. “The Silver Fork Novel.” The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume Three: The Nineteenth-Century Novel 1820–1880. Ed. John Kucich and Jenny Bourne Taylor. Oxford: OUP, 2012. 106-121. Schneider, Ralf. “The Invisible Center: Conceptions of Masculinity in Victorian Fiction – Realist, Crime, Detective, and Gothic.” Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present. Ed. Stefan Horlacher. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 147-168. Scholz, Susanne, and Ulrike Vedder. Einleitung. Handbuch Literatur und Materielle Kultur. Ed. Susanne Scholz and Ulrike Vedder. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018. 1-17. Schülting, Sabine. Dirt in Victorian Literature and Culture: Writing Materiality. New York: Routledge, 2016. ---. “‘Pray, Did You Ever Hear of Pears’ Soap?’ Soap, Dirt, and the Commodity in Victorian England.” Journal for the Study of British Culture 8.2 (2001): 137-156. Seys, Madeleine C. Fashion and Narrative in Victorian Popular Literature: Double Threads. New York: Routledge, 2018. Shears, Jonathon. “Class.” The Great Exhibition, 1851: A Sourcebook. Ed. Jonathon Shears. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2017a. 143-185. ---. “Display.” The Great Exhibition, 1851: A Sourcebook. Ed. Jonathon Shears. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2017b. 56-76. Sicher, Efraim. Rereading the City/Rereading Dickens: Representation, the Novel, and Urban Realism. New York: AMS P, 2003. Simon, Leslie. “Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, and the Aesthetics of Dust.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 42 (2011): 217-236. Simpson, John A., and Edmund S. C. Weiner, eds. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 20 vols. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1989. Smith, Monika Rydgier. “The W/Hole Remains: Consumerist Politics in Bleak House, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend.” Victorian Review 19.1 (1993): 1-21. Steinbach, Susie L. Understanding the Victorians: Politics, Culture and Society in Nineteenth-Century Britain. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central. n.d. Web. 28 Aug. 2018. . Steinlight, Emily. “‘Anti-Bleak House’: Advertising and the Victorian Novel.” Narrative 14.2 (2006): 132-162. Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. 1993. Durham: Duke UP, 2007. Storey, John. “‘Expecting Rain’: Opera as Popular Culture?” High-Pop: Making Culture into Popular Entertainment. Ed. Jim Collins. Malden: Blackwell, 2002. 32-55. Straub, Jürgen. “Personale und kollektive Identität: Zur Analyse eines theoretischen Begriffs.” Identitäten. 2nd ed. Ed. Aleida Assmann and Heidrun Friese. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999. 73-104. Stuchebrukhov, Olga. “Bleak House as an Allegory of a Middle-Class Nation.” Dickens Quarterly 23.3 (2006): 147-168. Suerbaum, Ulrich. Das elisabethanische Zeitalter. Rev. ed. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2007. Tetzeli von Rosador, Kurt. “19. Jahrhundert.” Die englische Literatur: Band 1: Epochen – Formen. Ed. Bernhard Fabian. München: dtv, 1991. 456-479. ---. “Editorial.” Journal for the Study of British Cultures 8.2 (2001): 115-120. ---. Ein Leben und Werk in Widersprüchen. Arbeit und Armut in London: Ein Kompendium der Lebensbedingungen und Einkünfte derjenigen, die arbeiten wollen, die nicht arbeiten können, und derjenigen, die nicht arbeiten wollen. By Henry Mayhew. Ed. Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador. Transl. Doris Feldmann et al. Passau: Karl Stutz, 1992. 7-19.

192 ---. “Into Darkest England: Discovering the Victorian Urban Poor.” Journal for the Study of British Cultures 4.1-2 (1997): 129-144. The National Archives. “Local Government Act 1972.” Legislation.gov.uk. The National Archives. n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2019. . Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. 1963. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1980. Tikkanen, Amy, et al., eds. “Eddystone Lighthouse.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 22 Apr. 2016. Web. 8 May 2019. . ---. “Holyhead.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 22 Oct. 2013a. Web. 8 May 2019. . ---. “Isle of Sheppey.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 10 May 2013b. Web. 8 May 2019. . ---. “Isle of Thanet.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 17 Apr. 2017. Web. 8 May 2019. . ---. “John o’Groats.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 20 Apr. 2018. Web. 8 May 2019. . ---. “Land’s End.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 8 Oct. 2010. Web. 8 May 2019. . ---. “The Nore.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 11 Mar. 2011. Web. 8 May 2019. . Tillyard, E. M. W. Shakespeare’s History Plays. 1944. London: Chatto & Windus, 1948. Timbs, John. Curiosities of London: Exhibiting the Most Rare and Remarkable Objects of Interest in the Metropolis; with Nearly Fifty Years’ Personal Recollections. London: David Bogue, 1855. Archive.org. Google. 26 June 2009. Web. 20 July 2019. . Toohey, Peter. “Epic.” The Encyclopedia of the Novel: Volume 1: A – Li. Ed. Peter Melville Logan. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. 281-288. Torgovnik, Marianna. Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives. 1990. The U of Chicago P: Chicago, 1991. Tortora, Phyllis G., and Sandra J. Keiser. The Fairchild Books Dictionary of Fashion. Illustr. by Bina Abling. 4th ed. New York: Fairchild Books/Bloomsbury, 2014. Tracy, Robert. “Lighthousekeeping: Bleak House and the Crystal Palace.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 33 (2003): 25-53. Turner, Mark W. “‘Telling of my weekly doings’: The Material Culture of the Victorian Novel.” A Concise Companion to the Victorian Novel. Ed. Francis O’Gorman. Malden: Blackwell, 2005. 113-133. Veblen, Thorsten. The Theory of the Leisure Class. Introd. John Kenneth Galbraith. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. Vicinus, Martha. “‘Helpless and Unfriended’: Nineteenth-Century Domestic Melodrama.” New Literary History 13.1 (1981): 127-143. von Wilpert, Gero. Sachwörterbuch der Literatur. 8th ed. Stuttgart: Kröner, 2001. Wagner, Tamara S. Financial Speculation in Victorian Fiction: Plotting Money and the Novel Genre, 1815–1901. Columbus: The Ohio State UP, 2010. Wales, Katie. “Dickens and Northern English: Stereotyping and ‘Authenticity’ Reconsidered.” Perspectives on Northern Englishes. Ed. Sylvie Hancil and Joan C. Beal. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 2017. 41-60. Waters, Catherine. Commodity Culture in Dickens’s Household Words: The Social Life of Goods. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.

193 Weidhase, Helmut, and Kai Kauffmann. “Parodie.” Metzler Lexikon Literatur: Begriffe und Definitionen. Ed. Dieter Burdorf, Christoph Fasbender and Burkhard Moenighoff. 3rd ed. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007. 572. Weinreb, Ben, and Christopher Hibbert, eds. The London Encylopædia. Rev. ed. London: Papermac, 1993. Weiß, Wolfgang. “Renaissance.” Die englische Literatur: Band 1: Epochen – Formen. Ed. Bernhard Fabian. München: dtv, 1991. 32-81. Wende, Waltraud. “Gender/Geschlecht.” Metzler Lexikon Gender Studies Geschlechterforschung: Ansätze – Personen – Grundbegriffe. Ed. Renate Kroll. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2002. 141-142. Werner, Jade Winter. “Cranford and the Gothic Everyday.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 49.1 (2018): 155-182. Wicke, Jennifer. Advertising Fictions: Literature, Advertisement, and Social Reading. New York: Columbia UP, 1988. Williams, Andrew. “Bleak House and the Culture of Advertising.” Approaches to Teaching Dickens’s Bleak House. Ed. John O. Jordan and Gordon Bigelow. New York: MLA, 2008. 45-50. Williams, Katherine. “Glass Windows: The View from Bleak House.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 33 (2003): 55-85. Williams, Reynold. “Culture Is Ordinary.” Conviction. Ed. Norman Mackenzie. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1958. 74-92. Wilson, Alexandra. “Killing Time: Contemporary Representations of Opera in British Culture.” Cambridge Opera Journal 19.3 (2007): 249-270. Wilson, Michelle L. “Esther Summerson’s Narrative Relations: Re-inscribing Inheritance in Bleak House.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 46 (2015): 209-230. Wood, Claire. “Material Culture.” The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens. Ed. Robert L. Patten, John O. Jordan and Catherine Waters. Oxford: OUP, 2018. 453-467. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, comp. “Bleak House.” Digital WPI. George C. Gordon Library. n.d. Web. 3 May 2020. . Youngs, Frederic A., Jr. Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England: Vol. 2: Northern England. London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1991.

194 7 Appendix I: Illustrations and Advertisements

Figure 1: Reviews of 1851 in the second monthly part of the novel

Archives and Special Collections, Bangor University, Rare Book Collection (Mayhew, Henry, and George Cruikshank. 1851; or, the Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys, Who Came up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves’, and to See the Great Exhibition. London: David Bogue, 1851) (image cropped and resized; no unauthorized use)

195

Figure 2: Reviews of 1851 in the second monthly part of the novel

Archives and Special Collections, Bangor University, Rare Book Collection (Mayhew, Henry, and George Cruikshank. 1851; or, the Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys, Who Came up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves’, and to See the Great Exhibition. London: David Bogue, 1851) (image cropped and resized; no unauthorized use)

196

Figure 3: Cruikshank’s illustration “The Opening of the Great Hive of the World May 1 or the Industrial Exhibition of all Nations” in the fourth monthly number of 1851

Archives and Special Collections, Bangor University, Rare Book Collection (Mayhew, Henry, and George Cruikshank. 1851; or, the Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys, Who Came up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves’, and to See the Great Exhibition. London: David Bogue, 1851) (image rotated by 90 degrees and resized; no unauthorized use)

197

Figure 4: Advertisement for Comical Creatures from Wurttemberg; Including the Story of Reynard the Fox on the back wrapper of the seventh monthly number of 1851

Archives and Special Collections, Bangor University, Rare Book Collection (Mayhew, Henry, and George Cruikshank. 1851; or, the Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys, Who Came up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves’, and to See the Great Exhibition. London: David Bogue, 1851) (image cropped and resized; no unauthorized use)

198

Figure 5: Cruikshank’s illustration “The Opening of the Great Exhibition of All Nations” in Mayhew’s Great Exhibition of 1851

Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg i. Br. / Historische Sammlungen (shelf mark: RA gr.2.77/76) (image rotated by 90 degrees and resized)

199

Figure 6: Cruikshank’s illustration “The first Shilling-day – going in” in the fifth monthly number of 1851

Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg i. Br. / Historische Sammlungen (shelf mark: RA gr.2.77/76) (image rotated by 90 degrees and resized)

200

Figure 7: Cruikshank’s illustration “The first Shilling-day – coming out” in the fifth monthly number of 1851

Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg i. Br. / Historische Sammlungen (shelf mark: RA gr.2.77/76) (image rotated by 90 degrees and resized)

201

Figure 8: Advertisement for Kaye’s Worsdell’s Pills in the back of the fifth monthly number of Bleak House

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Project Boz, https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/bleakhouse/5/, CC BY-NC 3.0 (image cropped and resized)

202

Figure 9: Advertisement for Poulson and Company in the “Bleak House Advertiser” of the second monthly number of Bleak House

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Project Boz, https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/bleakhouse/2/, CC BY-NC 3.0 (image cropped and resized)

Figure 10: Advertisement for Barker and Company in the “Bleak House Advertiser”of the seventh monthly number of Bleak House

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Project Boz, https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/bleakhouse/7/, CC BY-NC 3.0 (image cropped and resized)

203

Figure 11: Advertisements for Watherston and Brogden and Rowland’s Kalydor in the “Bleak House Advertiser” in the second monthly number of Bleak House

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Project Boz, https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/bleakhouse/2/, CC BY-NC 3.0 (image cropped and resized)

204

Figure 12: Advertisement for Home Truths for Home Peace in the “Bleak House Advertiser” in the first monthly number of Bleak House

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Project Boz, https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/bleakhouse/1/, CC BY-NC 3.0 (image cropped and resized)

Figure 13: Advertisement for Home Truths for Home Peace in the “Bleak House Advertiser” in the tenth monthly number of Bleak House

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Project Boz, https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/bleakhouse/10/, CC BY-NC 3.0 (image cropped and resized)

Figure 14: Advertisement for gentlemen’s wigs in the “Bleak House Advertiser” in the sixth monthly number of Bleak House

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Project Boz, https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/bleakhouse/6/, CC BY-NC 3.0 (image cropped and resized)

205

Figure 15: Advertisement for Moses and Son’s on the back wrapper of the fourth monthly number of Bleak House

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Project Boz, https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/bleakhouse/4/, CC BY-NC 3.0 (image cropped and resized)

206

Figure 16: Advertisement for the National Illustrated Library in the second monthly number of 1851

Archives and Special Collections, Bangor University, Rare Book Collection (Mayhew, Henry, and George Cruikshank. 1851; or, the Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys, Who Came up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves’, and to See the Great Exhibition. London: David Bogue, 1851) (image cropped and resized; no unauthorized use)

207

Figure 17: Specimen Page of Boswell’s Life of Johnson in the second monthly number of 1851

Archives and Special Collections, Bangor University, Rare Book Collection (Mayhew, Henry, and George Cruikshank. 1851; or, the Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys, Who Came up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves’, and to See the Great Exhibition. London: David Bogue, 1851) (image cropped and resized; no unauthorized use)

208 8 Appendix II: Summary in German – Zusammenfassung auf Deutsch

Englischer Titel der Arbeit: Material Culture and Identity in the Mid-Victorian Novel: Mayhew’s 1851, Dickens’s Bleak House and Gaskell’s Cranford

Deutscher Titel der Arbeit: Materielle Kultur und Identität im mittviktorianischen Roman: Mayhews 1851, Dickens’ Bleak House und Gaskells Cranford

Die vorliegende Doktorarbeit zu dem oben genannten Thema befasst sich mit Formationen kollektiver Identität im mittviktorianischen Roman. Hierzu werden drei Romane, die im Zeitraum zwischen 1851 und 1853 erschienen, untersucht. Dies sind Henry Mayhews 1851; or, The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and Family, Who Came up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves’, and to See the Great Exhibition,211 Charles Dickens’ Bleak House sowie Elizabeth Gaskells Cranford. Die zentrale These der Arbeit lautet: Die Erzählstimmen stellen materielle Kultur sowie Konsumpraktiken dar und setzen dabei unterschiedliche Differenzkategorien ein. Hierdurch werden unterschiedliche Arten kollektiver Identität narrativ formiert und Konzeptionen von nationaler Identität, Klasse und Geschlechterrollen geschaffen. Die Arbeit ist als Querschnittstudie konzipiert. Das Hauptaugenmerk liegt auf den drei oben genannten Romanen, die innerhalb eines relativ kurzen Zeitraums veröffentlicht wurden. 1851 erschien im Jahr 1851, Bleak House zwischen 1852 und 1853 und Cranford zwischen 1851 und 1853. Durch diesen engen Zeitrahmen wird gewährleistet, dass die Romane in einem synchronen Zeitschnitt nebeneinander gelesen und miteinander verglichen werden können: Kulturhistorisch werden die Romane im sog. Mittviktorianismus verortet. Dies bedeutet, dass die Romane in einem größeren kulturellen Zusammenhang gesehen werden können und Diskurse dieses Zeitalters berücksichtig werden, die sich auf materielle Kultur beziehen, aber nicht notwendigerweise auf die Londoner Weltausstellung von 1851. Diese wird häufig als Inbegriff oder Höhepunkt der viktorianischen materiellen Kultur angesehen. Für die

211 Dieser Titel kann etwa wie folgt ins Deutsche übersetzt werden: 1851; oder die Abenteuer von Mr. und Mrs. Sandboys und ihrer Familie, die nach London kamen, um ihre Zeit dort zu genießen, und die große Weltausstellung zu sehen.

209 Untersuchung wurden 1851, Bleak House und Cranford deswegen ausgewählt, weil sie neben ihrem Veröffentlichungszeitraum weitere gemeinsame Merkmale aufweisen: Jeder dieser Romane befasst sich hauptsächlich mit einem bestimmen Aspekt kollektiver Identität, der durch die narrative Darstellung von materieller Kultur formiert wird. Dies geschieht in den Romanen jedoch auf unterschiedliche Weise, da ihre jeweiligen Erzählstimmen unterschiedlich konzipiert sind. In 1851 gibt es eine Erzählstimme, in Bleak House zwei Erzählstimmen, was für den mittviktorianischen Roman eher ungewöhnlich ist, und in Cranford eine klar als weibliche markierte Erzählstimme. Ausgehend von dieser Beobachtung werden die Romane hauptsächlich aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Sicht untersucht. Gleichwohl finden auch Materialien, die gewöhnlich in den Kulturwissenschaften von Interesse sind, Eingang in die Analyse: Dies sind die Illustrationen und Werbeanzeigen, welche in den monatlich erschienenen Fortsetzungsheftchen von 1851 und Bleak House mitveröffentlicht wurden und in konvergierender oder auch divergierender Weise mit dem jeweiligen Romantext in Verbindung traten. Die für die Analyse zentralen Konzepte sind kollektive Identität sowie materielle Kultur und Konsum. Kollektive Identität ist ein relationales Konzept, das sich auf Differenzen gründet (vgl. Böhm/Feldmann 275). Kollektive Identität wird zudem kulturell und diskursiv formiert und bietet Identifikationsmöglichkeiten (vgl. Assmann 2012, 204; vgl. Assmann 2018, 132; vgl. Straub 102; 104). Formationen kollektiver Identität finden sich in unterschiedlichen kulturellen Gruppieren: etwa bei Nationen, Gesellschaftsschichten bzw. Klassen oder bei Geschlechterrollenentwürfen (vgl. Straub 102). Bei der Bildung von kollektiver Identität spielen Differenzkategorien eine entscheidende Rolle: Differenzen wahrzunehmen bewirkt ein soziales und kulturelles Zugehörigkeitsgefühl. Dementsprechend ist das Markieren von Differenzen Teil von Identitätskonstruktionen (vgl. Böhm-Schnitker/Feldmann/Krug 185). Durch das Hervorheben von Differenzen wird ein ‚Selbst‘ gebildet, das sich hierarchisch von einem ‚Anderen‘ abhebt (vgl. Böhm-Schnitker et al. 185; vgl. Horatschek 323). In den hier untersuchten Romanen sind Differenzkategorien bei der Darstellung von materieller Kultur wichtig, da sie dazu beitragen, Vorstellungen kollektiver Identität zu formen. Die zentralen Differenzkategorien sind hierbei Klasse und gender, da sie sowohl auf Figuren- als auch auf Vermittlungsebene zu finden sind. Aufgrund der strukturellen Beschaffenheit der Romantexte sind weitere Differenzkategorien zu berücksichtigen: Dies sind die Differenzkategorien Nation, Region und Alter. All diese Differenzkategorien überschneiden sich bei der Darstellung materieller Kultur und sind konstitutiv für die

210 Form kollektiver Identität, auf die in den Romanen jeweils fokussiert wird: 1851 spielt mit nationaler Identität, Bleak House befasst sich mit Klassendarstellungen sowie Konzepten von Geschlechterrollen, und Cranford arbeitet zusätzlich mit historischer Differenz. Der Begriff materielle Kultur bezeichnet die Benutzung und Bedeutung materieller Gegenstände in alltäglichen Praktiken (vgl. Lury 9). Dabei können materielle Gegenstände in täglichen Kontexten auch mit Bedeutung aufgeladen werden. Unter Konsum werden hier die Verwendung oder der Verzehr materieller Gegenstände, aber auch Geldausgeben verstanden. Damit schließt Konsum auch den Erwerb und Besitz materieller Gegenstände ein (vgl. Eichhammer 191). Darüber hinaus wird der Begriff Konsum hier auch so definiert, dass er visuellen Konsum im Sinne einer Betrachtung von Gegenständen sowie Lesen umfasst. Bei diesen Definitionen ist zu berücksichtigen, dass der mittviktorianische Roman in zweierlei Hinsicht mit materieller Kultur verbunden ist: Auf der intratextuellen Ebene stellen die Romane materielle Kultur dar. Auf der extratextuellen Ebene ermöglichten es Entwicklungen in der Herstellung von Romanen sowie Veränderungen in der Infrastruktur, die Romane auf dem Printmarkt als materielle Gegenstände zu verkaufen (cf. Feltes 3; 5; 8). Mithin können die Romane nach Feltes als Waren gelten, die in Form von monatlich erscheinenden Fortsetzungsheftchen veröffentlicht wurden (vgl. 8). 1851 und Bleak House erschienen in diesem Format. Die Fortsetzungshefte beinhalteten neben dem Romantext auch Illustrationen und Werbung. Werden die Romane als materielle Gegenstände aufgefasst, sind Illustrationen und Werbung bei der Analyse miteinzuschließen. Cranford erschien in Dickens’ Zeitschrift Household Words. Der Text von Cranford kann ebenfalls als Ware aufgefasst werden, da Household Words auch vor dem Hintergrund der Veränderungen von Herstellung und Infrastruktur entstand. Dennoch liegt hier ein anderes Veröffentlichungsformat vor: Die Artikel, welche die Cranford-Kapitel bilden, erschienen in Household Words neben zahlreichen weiteren Beiträgen anderer Verfasser ohne Illustrationen und Werbung. Aus diesem doppelten Bezug der Romane zur materiellen Kultur ergeben sich zwei methodische Konsequenzen, die zu einer Verschränkung literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Ansätze führen: Die Romane gewähren auf intratextueller Ebene keinen direkten Zugang zur materiellen Kultur; denn das Romangeschehen – inklusive der materiellen Kultur – wird stets von einer Erzählstimme vermittelt. Daher sind bei den folgenden Analysen die strukturellen Aspekte der Romane besonders wichtig: die Erzählstimme, ihre rhetorischen Strategien, Darstellungsstrategien sowie die

211 Figurenkonstellation. Diese Gesichtspunkte werden hier unter Rückgriff auf Chatman (1978) und Genette (1983) untersucht. Die Romantexte werden dabei von Diskursen, die im kulturellen Kontext zum Zeitpunkt ihrer Entstehung und Veröffentlichung aktuell waren, geformt. Zugleich tragen die Darstellungen in den Romanen aber auch zu diesen Diskursen bei, da sie auf extratextueller Ebene konsumiert werden. Insofern wirken sich die Darstellungsstrategien darauf aus, wie die im jeweiligen Roman repräsentierte materielle Kultur auf dieser Ebene rezipiert wird. Die den Romantext von 1851 und Bleak House begleitenden Illustrationen und Werbeanzeigen werden als Paratext nach Genette aufgefasst (vgl. 2001, 1-5; 12). Dem Paratext der beiden Romane kommt bei der Formierung kollektiver Identität eine zentrale Rolle zu: Die Illustrationen und Werbeanzeigen können die textuellen Identitätsformationen unterstützen oder aber davon abweichen. In beiden Fällen sind sie bedeutungstragend und konstitutiv für die im jeweiligen Roman gebildete Form kollektiver Identität. Aufgrund des anders konzipierten Veröffentlichungsformats von Cranford sind die Beiträge, welche die Cranford-Artikel in Household Words umgaben, hier nicht Untersuchungsgegenstand. Bei den Romananalysen geht die Arbeit jeweils folgenden Fragestellungen nach: Der aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Sicht vernachlässigte Roman 1851 soll im Folgenden eingehend untersucht werden. Im Vordergrund stehen dabei narrative Strategien, welche zur Formation nationaler Identität eingesetzt werden. Die Beschäftigung mit nationaler Identität ist für 1851 deswegen zentral, weil der Roman auf intratextueller Ebene die Londoner Weltausstellung von 1851 darstellt und diese zum Anlass nimmt, englische nationale Identität zu erkunden. Illustrationen und Werbung werden zu den textuellen Formationsprozessen in Verbindung gesetzt, um so deren Beitrag zur Bildung und Aushandlung nationaler Identität zu erforschen. Hier sind bei den Illustrationen insbesondere die visuellen Darstellungsstrategien interessant sowie die Darstellung von Klassendifferenzen, bei den Werbeanzeigen solche Inserate, die mit der Londoner Weltausstellung in Verbindung stehen oder ebenfalls mit Klassendifferenzen. Bleak House wurde bereits eingehend in der Forschung untersucht. Die vorliegende Arbeit greift einen Forschungszweig, der sich mit der Funktion der beiden Erzählstimmen des Romans befasst, auf und dehnt ihn auf die im Roman dargestellte materielle Kultur aus. Es wird untersucht, welche Rolle den Erzählstimmen bei der Darstellung materieller Kultur zukommt und wie diese Darstellungen ihrerseits zur Repräsentation von Gesellschaftsschichten sowie zur Verhandlung von Geschlechterrollen als Angeboten zur Identifikation beitragen (vgl. Assmann 2012, 204). Die Analysen sollen zeigen, dass Mittelschichtskonzeptionen von Geschlechterrollen durch Konsumdarstellungen

212 verhandelt werden. Die Illustrationen und Werbeanzeigen werden auf die Romandarstellungen bezogen. Sie werden hinsichtlich der Fragestellung analysiert, wie sie zusätzliche oder unterschiedliche Perspektiven zu den im Romantext stattfindenden Verhandlungen eröffnen. Cranford wird mit Blick auf die Konsumpraktiken der Figuren untersucht. Dies soll zum einen zeigen, dass ihre Art zu konsumieren Bildung und Erhalt ihrer kommunalen Identität beiträgt. Zum anderen bewirken die durch die Erzählstimme aufgeworfenen Differenzkategorien, dass der Roman auf einer Metaebene auch Gesichtspunkte mittviktorianischer materieller Kultur thematisiert. Die Detailanalysen von 1851 zeigen, dass die Erzählstimme des Romans Erzählstrategien einsetzt, die mit dem achtzehnten Jahrhundert assoziiert werden, und diese mit mittviktorianischen Diskursen kombiniert. So hebt die Erzählstimme die regionale Differenz der Sandboys hervor. Das erste Kapitel zu 1851 legt dar, dass die Erzählstimme auf Reiseberichte, die im achtzehnten Jahrhundert über Inlandsreisen verfasst wurden, zurückgreift, um zunächst einen städtischen, London-basierten Blickwinkel zu etablieren und die impliziten Leser als städtisches Lesepublikum zu konstruieren. Hierzu wird Londons städtische materielle Kultur, welche die Erzählstimme dieser Stadt zuschreibt, der Gegend Buttermere im nordenglischen Cumberland gegenübergestellt: In Buttermere, so suggeriert die Erzählstimme, gibt es die auf Aus- und Darstellung angelegte materielle Kultur Londons nicht; stattdessen findet sich eine, wie der Text nahelegt, eine ästhetisch ansprechende Landschaft. Diese Landschaft wird von der Erzählstimme unter Rückgriff auf das Pittoreske und Sublime als Konzepte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts den Lesern als visuelles Konsumobjekt angeboten. Gleichwohl impliziert die Erzählstimme auch, dass visueller Landschaftskonsum in den 1850er Jahren nicht mehr aktuell ist: Die Einträge im Gästebuch des örtlichen Gasthauses lassen darauf schließen, dass die Besucher in Buttermere das Essen anstatt der Landschaft konsumieren. Hier zeigt sich bereits, dass die Erzählstimme strategisch zwei unterschiedliche Formen des Konsums gegenüberstellt. Die impliziten Leser können so einerseits die Landschaft durch das Lesen des Romantextes visuell konsumieren, werden aber andererseits durch die komische Darstellung des zeitgenössischen Essenkonsums auch von dieser Art des Konsums distanziert. Die Protagonisten werden eingeführt, als die städtische Perspektive auf Buttermere bereits etabliert ist. Die Sandboys sind aufgrund ihrer Klassenzugehörigkeit zum Landadel und als Bewohner des ländlichen Buttermere mehrfach von den Lesern distanziert. Die Erzählstimme hebt bestimmte materielle Gegenstände in ihrer Darstellung der Sandboys hervor, um diese als das ländliche Andere im Kontrast zur städtischen Perspektive darzustellen. So beschreibt die

213 Erzählstimme etwa, dass Mr Sandboys seine Mäntel aus der Wolle seiner Schafe für den Eigenbedarf herstellt und die Wolle nicht färbt. Hier zeigt sich implizit ein mittviktorianischer Diskurs, demzufolge industrialisierte Herstellungsverfahren in städtischen Fabriken fortschrittlich sind. Mr Sandboys weicht von diesem Diskurs ab und wird somit zum ländlichen Anderen. Im Gegensatz zu Squire Jopson, einer ebenfalls dem Landadel angehörenden Figur in Buttermere, weigert sich Mr Sandboys auch, mit seiner Familie zur Londoner Weltausstellung zu fahren. Squire Jopson und Mr Sandboys sind als Kontrastfiguren konzipiert: Durch Squire Jopson wird die Weltausstellung implizit als zeitgenössisches Reiseziel dargestellt, doch Mr Sandboys teilt nicht Squire Jopsons Ansicht, dass die Londoner Weltausstellung bildend sei. Er hängt Reisevorstellungen an, die eher mit dem achtzehnten Jahrhundert in Verbindung gebracht werden können. Auch die Konzeption von Squire Jopson und Mr Sandboys als Kontrastfiguren ist eine Strategie, die Andersheit der Sandboys hervorzuheben. Die Andersartigkeit der Sandboys, die als ländliche Form englischer nationaler Identität im Romantext formiert wird, findet sich auf paratextueller Ebene wieder. Die Rezensionen des ersten Fortsetzungshefts greifen die othering-Strategien des Romantextes auf und erweitern diese teilweise, um zu begründen, weshalb der Roman mit den ländlichen Protagonisten lesenswert ist. Da die Sandboys infolge von Missgeschicken auf die Unterstützung ihrer Nachbarn angewiesen sind, diese aber alle zur Londoner Weltausstellung gefahren sind, begibt sich die Familie ebenfalls nach London. Dort werden die Sandboys als das ländliche Andere im Kontext der Großstadt London für die Leser zur Schau gestellt. Hierzu greift die Erzählstimme erneut auf literarische Elemente des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts zurück. Dies ist zum einen die episodenhafte Struktur des pikaresken Romans, zum anderen das Konzept der verschlagenen Picaro-Figur, die aus einer niedrigen sozialen Schicht stammt und sich trickreich einen Weg in die Gesellschaft bahnt (vgl. Graeber 587; vgl. Murfin/Ray 283). Diese Elemente werden mit theatralen Darstellungsstrategien sowie mit Versatzstücken aus dem mittviktorianischen London kombiniert. Da die Sandboys mit den Versatzstücken bzw. charakteristischen Gegebenheiten des zeitgenössischen London nicht vertraut sind, geraten sie in eine Reihe Missgeschicke. Diese werden durch die theatralen Darstellungsstrategien für die städtisch vorgestellten Leser zum Konsum inszeniert. Für die Leser sind die in sich abgeschlossenen und aneinander gereihten theatralen Episoden mit immer neuen Missgeschicken unterhaltsam. Durch die pikareske Struktur führt der Roman so vor, was englische nationale Identität nicht ist. So etwa die farcenhafte Darstellung von Mrs

214 Sandboys’ Besuch in einer Badeanstalt: Die Figur möchte ein Bad nehmen, bekommt jedoch eine Dusche angeboten. Der Text spielt mit dem polysemen Wort shower, das im Englischen sowohl ‚Dusche‘ als auch ‚Regenschauer‘ bedeuten kann. Mrs Sandboys wird so dargestellt, dass sie unter shower nur ‚Regenschauer‘ versteht. Bedenkt man, dass Badeanstalten in den 1850er Jahren ein relativ neues und städtisches Phänomen waren, ist die Badeanstalt eine Strategie, um Mrs Sandboys’ ländliche Andersheit hervorzuheben und vorzuführen. Durch die Figur der Bediensteten im Badehaus, an der Mrs Sandboys vorbeiredet, wird diskrepante Informiertheit in Pfisters Sinne erzeugt (vgl. 50): Die Leser wissen, was auf Mrs Sandboys zukommt und warten auf diesen Moment. Die aufgebaute Spannung entlädt sich, als Mrs Sandboys in der Dusche vom kalten Wasser überrascht wird. Ihre Reaktion ist der Höhepunkt der farcenhaften Darstellung und macht die Figur in der ländlichen Andersartigkeit, die sie verkörpert, lächerlich. Der Blumenverkäufer, der Mrs Sandboys und ihre Tochter dazu bringt, Mr Sandboys’ alte Hose gegen eine Blume einzutauschen, ist ein weiteres Versatzstück aus dem mittviktorianischen London und zeigt, wie der Roman das Konzept der Picaro-Figur modifiziert. Der Blumenverkäufer gehört einer niedrigen sozialen Schicht an und versucht, mit dem Tauschhandel für sich Geld herauszuschlagen, da er vermutet, dass sich dieses in der Hosentasche befindet und ihn die Sandboys aufgrund ihrer ländlichen ‚Unwissenheit‘ in solchen Tauschgeschäften nicht hereinlegen werden. Da sich in der Hosentasche die Heiratsurkunde der Sandboys befand, ist ihr Ansehen gefährdet. Hier zeigt sich, dass das Picaro-Konzept dahingehend modifiziert wird, dass das Ansehen der dem Landadel angehörenden Sandboys gefährdet ist, da sie zum Opfer eines trickreichen Verkäufers aus der Unterschicht wurden. Mr Sandboys begibt sich zur Old Clothes Exchange, einem Markt für alte Kleider, um die Hose samt der Urkunde wieder zu erlangen. Dieser Markt stellt die materielle Kultur der Armen von London dar. Indem Mr Sandboys diesen besucht, bekommt er Einblicke in die zeitgenössische materielle Kultur der armen Schichten, nicht jedoch – wie sich später zeigen wird – in die ebenfalls zeitgenössische materielle Kultur der Londoner Weltausstellung. Somit bleibt er von der materiellen Kultur der Weltausstellung, die bei der Bildung englischer nationaler Identität in 1851 zentral ist, ausgeschlossen. Im zweiten Kapitel zu 1851 wird mit der Eröffnung der Weltausstellung eine städtische Mittelschichtskonstruktion von nationaler Identität vorgestellt. Zur Darstellung der Eröffnung der Londoner Weltausstellung wird die erzählte Zeit verdoppelt. Die Eröffnungszeremonie wird einmal ohne die Protagonisten als Spektakel dargestellt und einmal mit den Sandboys als Farce. Bei der spektakulären Darstellung erhalten die Leser

215 durch die Erzählstimme, die gleichzeitig als Fokalisierungsinstanz fungiert, Zutritt zum Kristallpalast. Die Erzählstimme nimmt die Leser als Flâneure mit auf eine ‚Tour‘ durch das Ausstellungsgebäude und verweist konkret auf bestimmte Exponate. Dies sind insbesondere die Maschinen. Liest man diese als bedeutungsvolle mit Fortschritt assoziierte materielle Gegenstände, wird den Lesern auf ihrer ‚Tour‘ durch den Kristallpalast der mittviktorianische Fortschrittsdiskurs vorgeführt. Zudem nehmen die Leser als ‚Augenzeugen‘ an der Eröffnungszeremonie teil: Sie verfolgen die spektakuläre Ankunft der Königsfamilie. Anschließend nehmen sie durch Lesen des Romantextes am Eröffnungsgottesdienst teil. So werden sie in die sakralisierte nationale Identität, die der Text hier konstruiert, eingeschlossen. Auf der Paratextebene unterstützen die Illustrationen durch ihre visuellen Strategien die narrative Darstellung des Romantextes und verdoppeln das dem Leser gebotene Spektakel. Bei der narrativen Wiederholung der Eröffnungszeremonie fungieren die Sandboys als Fokalisierungsinstanzen. Sie verlieren durch ein weiteres Missgeschick ihre Eintrittskarte für die Eröffnungszeremonie. Infolgedessen nehmen sie an dieser als Zaungäste teil. Aus der Entfernung sehen sie die Ankunft der Königsfamilie, bleiben aber von der eigentlichen Zeremonie samt dem Gottesdienst ausgeschlossen: Sie hören nur leise die Orgel spielen, wohingegen sie die Straßenverkäufer, die ihre Souvenirs verkaufen, laut rufen hören. Damit bleiben die Sandboys von der sakralisierten Version nationaler Identität ausgeschlossen. Die farcenhafte Darstellung gipfelt am Ende der Eröffnungszeremonie. Es werden Salutschüsse abgegeben, die das Ende der Zeremonie markieren sollen. Mrs Sandboys, die mit Mr Sandboys die Zeremonie von einem Boot auf dem Wasser verfolgt hat, erschrickt sich durch diese Schüsse und stürzt in das Wasser. Damit wird die Figur samt der ländlichen Form nationaler Identität, für die sie steht, erneut lächerlich gemacht. Der Roman enthält zudem expositorische Elemente, die mit den Sandboys nicht in Verbindung stehen. Diese expositorischen Elemente argumentieren dafür, das Ansehen der Arbeiterschicht aufzuwerten und diese in die Konzeption nationaler Identität zu integrieren. Diese Position wird jedoch durch im Romantext vorkommende Arbeiterfiguren widerlegt. Auf dem Weg nach London begegnet Mr Sandboys in Manchester, in ‚der‘ englischen Industriestadt, Arbeitern, die von den ‚fortschrittlichen‘ Maschinen abgehängt wurden. Diese Arbeiter sprechen sich gegen die Londoner Weltausstellung aus und zeigen, dass nicht alle Teile der Arbeiterschicht in die Konzeption von nationaler Identität, wie sie in den expositorischen Elementen befürwortet wird, integriert werden können. Wie auch die Sandboys, bleiben diese Arbeiter von der urbanen Mittelschichtskonstruktion nationaler Identität ausgeschlossen.

216 An dieser Stelle erweist sich die in 1851 vorgenommene Bildung nationaler Identität als brüchig. Der Paratext enthält Illustrationen, die imaginieren, wie die Arbeiterschicht den Kristallpalast besucht und wie sie sich nach dem Besuch der Weltausstellung verhält. Diese Illustrationen stellen soziale Differenz zur Schau und können von den Lesern sowohl visuell als auch durch den Erwerb des entsprechenden Fortsetzungsheftes konsumiert werden. Auch dies konterkariert die Darlegungen der expositorischen Elemente. In Bleak House sind die Konsumdarstellungen mit Polyphonie verbunden. Dieser Begriff wird in Anlehnung an Bachtin verwendet, hier jedoch als Multiperspektivität verstanden (vgl. 6; 17). Diese entsteht in Bleak House sowohl in struktureller Hinsicht durch die beiden Erzählstimmen als auch bezüglich der Darstellung sozialer Differenzen und mit Blick auf Geschlechterrollen. Bei beiden Erzählstimmen werden soziale Differenzen zwischen Mittel-, Ober- und Unterschicht mithilfe von Konsumdarstellungen sichtbar. Die heterodiegetische Erzählstimme verwendet Konsumdiskurse, um die Ober- und Unterschicht der Gesellschaft im Roman darzustellen. Die Erzählstimme distanziert sich bei der Repräsentation des Konsumverhaltens einer typenhaft dargestellten aristokratischen Figur von dieser Schicht. Über die Unterschicht kann die Erzählstimme nur mutmaßen, was – wie auch die Darstellung der Oberschicht – auf ihre Mittelschichtsperspektive hindeutet: Die Erzählstimme greift auf Konsumdiskurse zurück, um nachzuvollziehen, wie es sich für Jo, den Repräsentanten der Armen, anfühlt, vom Konsum ausgeschlossen zu sein. Des Weiteren bedient sie sich eines ökonomischen Diskurses, um Sozialkritik am Zustand der Unterschicht zu üben. Hierbei wird die Figur Jo gleichzeitig in einen kolonialen Diskurs eingeschrieben, was als othering-Strategie gelesen werden kann: Die Unterschicht wird somit als das Andere der Mittelschicht dargestellt. Die autodiegetische Erzählerin Esther konsumiert soziale Differenz visuell und als Teil ihres Schaufensterbummels. Dies deutet auf ihre Zugehörigkeit zur Mittelschicht hin. Anhand ihrer Darstellung anderer Mittelschichtsfiguren zeigt sich, dass Entwürfe von Geschlechterrollen im Bereich des Konsums diversifiziert sind. Diese Konzeptionen können als Angebote zur Identifikation gesehen werden (vgl. Assmann 2012, 204). Innerhalb Esthers Erzählstimme, welche die Figurenperspektiven filtert, tragen diese Angegote zu Polyphonie hinsichtlich Entwürfen von Geschlechterrollen bei. So konsumiert etwa die Figur Mrs Jellyby durch ihren Kaffeehandel; gleichzeitig ist sie Mutter mehrerer Kinder. Mrs Jellyby charakterisiert sich selbst als Geschäftsfrau, deren ganze Aufmerksamkeit ihrem Kaffeehandel gilt. Esther beschreibt Mrs Jellbys Haushalt

217 und Kinder mit einer satirischen, nicht-realistischen Darstellungsstrategie. Sie suggeriert mit der Darstellung diverser materieller Gegenstände, welche die ‚Unordnung‘ in Mrs Jellybys Haushalt verdeutlichen sollen, dass der Haushalt und ihre Kinder vernachlässig sind. Esthers Darstellung kann vor dem Hintergrund eines mittviktorianischen Mittelschichtsdiskurses über weibliche Geschlechterrollen gelesen werden: Dieser Diskurs verortete Frauen im Haus und konzipierte sie als Mütter, die ihren Haushalt effizient führen. Esthers satirische Darstellung von Mrs Jellyby legt dementsprechend nahe, dass die Figur aus Esthers Perspektive von diesem Diskurs abweicht. Somit kann die Figur so gedeutet werden, dass sie eine Alternative zum Mittelschichtsdiskurs über Frauen darstellt. Im Laufe der Romanhandlung scheitert Mrs Jellybys Kaffeehandel. Die Figur geht daraufhin in die Politik. Zum einen zeigt dies, dass der Handlungsverlauf dazu dient, Mrs Jellybys alternative Konzeption zu widerlegen; zum anderen zeigt es aber auch, dass die Figur weiterhin alternative Konzeptionen weiblicher Geschlechterrollen in den Roman einschreibt. Mr Turveydrop verkörpert ein aristokratisches Konzept männlicher Geschlechterrollen aus dem achtzehnten Jahrhundert. Wie bereits in Mrs Jellybys Fall, repräsentiert Esther Mr Turveydrops Erscheinungsbild mithilfe materieller Gegenstände, die im Rahmen einer satirischen, nicht-realistischen Darstellungsstrategie erscheinen. Diese verzerren Mr Turveydrops Aussehen in grotesker Weise. Hierdurch wird Mr Turveydrops Konzept als nicht tragbare Alternative markiert. Richard Carstone ist ein Beispiel dafür, wie Konsumdarstellungen Geschlechterrollen flexibel erscheinen lassen. Diese Figur hängt einem Oberschichtsideal männlicher Geschlechterrollen an. Richard ist ein Freizeitkonsument, der nicht für seinen Lebensunterhalt arbeitet. Vielmehr spekuliert er darauf, sich den Lebensstil der Oberschicht leisten zu können, sobald der Chancery-Gerichtshof sein Erbe freigegeben hat. Wenn Richard einkauft, muss Esther dafür sorgen, dass er nur die notwendigen Gegenstände kauft. Hier zeigt sich, dass die autodiegetische Erzählerin gewissermaßen als Vormund über Richards Geld verfügt. Indem Esther die Rolle des Vormunds übernimmt, werden in dieser Konsumdarstellung mittviktorianische Vorstellungen von Geschlechterrollen umgedreht: Der zeitgenössische Diskurs konzipierte das Frauenbild so, dass sie einen männlichen Vormund oder Betreuer benötigten, der über ihre finanziellen Angelegenheiten wachte. Im Laufe der Handlung wird Richard zudem metonymisch von einem konsumierenden Subjekt zu einem Konsumgegenstand. Die Figur engagiert einen Juristen, der sich um die Freigabe seines Erbes kümmern soll. Die Juristenfigur wird jedoch so dargestellt, dass sie Richards Vermögen aufzehrt. Der

218 Schwund von Richards finanziellem Habe geht einher mit einem Schwund seiner physischen Kräfte. Er leidet an Tuberkulose und wird sowohl von dem Juristen als auch von der Krankheit konsumiert bzw. aufgezehrt – ebenso wie sein Vermögen. Nachdem sein Erbe durch die Gerichtskosten aufgebraucht worden ist und damit seine finanziellen Ressourcen endgültig erschöpft sind, erliegt die Figur ihrer Krankheit. Da Tuberkulose im neunzehnten Jahrhundert eine weiblich konnotierte Krankheit war, kann auch dies als Flexibilisierung von Geschlechterrollen bzw. als Feminisierung Richards gesehen werden (vgl. Byrne 33). Gleichzeitig erweist sich Richards Geschlechterrollenentwurf durch seinen Tod im Laufe der Handlung als nicht tragfähig. Metonymische Verschiebungen spielen auch bei Krook eine Rolle. Dieser Ladenbesitzer ist weniger im Kontext eines bestimmten Geschlechterrollenentwurfs zu sehen, als in Verbindung mit dem Chancery-Gerichtshof. Krook konsumiert insofern, als er alte Gegenstände und sogar Müll für seinen Laden kauft, dort anhäuft und verfallen lässt. Aufgrund seiner Sammelleidenschaft, aber v.a. weil er es ablehnt, an dem Zustand seines Laden Veränderungen vorzunehmen, kann Krook mit dem Gerichtshof assoziiert werden: Wie das Gericht, bei dem die Prozesse nicht vorangehen, stagniert auch Krooks Laden und ist aus ökonomischer Sicht ineffizient. Strukturell gesehen ist Krooks Laden somit eine Parallele zum Chancery-Gerichtshof als ebenfalls ineffizienter Institution. Der Müll und die Sammlung alter Gegenstände parodieren somit das Gericht. Gleichzeitig legt diese Darstellung jedoch auch nahe, dass das Gericht ökonomischen Prinzipien folgen müsste, um effizient zu sein. Durch diese metonymische Verbindung schreibt der Roman den Gerichtshof als gesellschaftliche Institution in den Bereich des Konsums ein. Esther und Richard assoziieren Krooks Laden mit dem Gerichtshof, da sie sich die Knochen in dem Laden als Knochen von ehemaligen Klienten vorstellen. Diese Figurenperspektiven suggerieren, dass der Gerichtshof eine Institution ist, die ihre Klienten konsumiert. Im Handlungsverlauf stirbt Krook durch spontane Verbrennung. Damit ist er eine weitere Figur, die konsumiert wird. Bei dem Verbrennungsprozess fungiert Krook als Material, das verbrannt und damit aufgebraucht wird. Krook kommt die Funktion eines Katalysators zu, der die Handlung vorantreibt: Im Müll in seinem Laden wird das Dokument gefunden, das zur Beendigung des langwierigen Gerichtsprozesses führt. Dies bedeutet, dass mit Krooks Tod die Chancery-Parodie nicht aufgehoben, sondern fortgeführt wird: Das wichtige Dokument befindet sich unter scheinbar nutzlosen Gegenständen, die ‚nur‘ Müll sind und von einer alkoholabhängigen, ungebildeten Figur der unteren Schichten angesammelt wurden. Der Prozess wird nicht von den gebildeten Juristen gelöst. Die Konsumdarstellung suggeriert hier, dass Konsum

219 ein assoziativ flexibles Feld ist, das metonymisch und strukturell mit Bereichen in Verbindung gebracht werden kann, die nicht notwendigerweise mit Konsum zu tun haben. Die Illustrationen in Bleak House unterstützen die Darstellungen im Romantext und tragen zu Polyphonie im Sinne einer weiteren, dem Romantext ähnlichen Perspektive bei. Die Werbeanzeigen erzeugen in zweierlei Hinsicht Polyphonie: Teilweise gehen sie mit den Romanrepräsentationen einher, indem sie z.B. ebenfalls soziale Differenz ausstellen und als Werbemittel nutzen; teilweise treten jedoch Divergenzen zum Romantext auf. Dies betrifft z.B. ein Inserat, dass Konsum als Weg vorschlägt, soziale Differenzen zu überwinden. Ebenso betroffen sind v.a. die Werbeanzeigen, die an Konsumentinnen gerichtet sind. Hier suggerieren die Werbeanzeigen, dass es durchaus unterschiedliche Konzeptionen weiblicher Geschlechterrollen gibt. Gleichwohl wird in keiner Werbeanzeige ein alternatives Konzept, wie es Mrs Jellybys entwirft, formuliert. Cranford befasst sich mit Konsumpraktiken in einer Kleinstadt mit überwiegend weiblichen Figuren. Der Roman verortet die Konsumpraktiken in einem zeitlichen Rahmen, der vor dem Mittviktorianismus liegt. Die homodiegetische Erzählerin Mary Smith spielt bei der Darstellung dieser vor- oder frühviktorianischen materiellen Kultur eine zentrale Rolle: Sie führt regionale Differenz sowie historische Differenz ein und kontrastiert Cranfords materielle Kultur mit der mittviktorianischen materiellen Kultur. Hierdurch entsteht in zweierlei Hinsicht eine Metaebene bezüglich materieller Kultur: Auf der intradiegetischen Ebene zeigt der Roman wie die Cranford-Figuren sozioökonomischen Status als Teil ihrer kollektiven weiblichen Identität definieren und verhandeln. Diese Darstellungen können auf die extratextuelle Ebene des Romans bezogen werden: Das unauffällige Konsumieren der Figuren sowie die realistischen Elemente, die die Erzählstimme zur Veranschaulichung dieser Konsumform hervorhebt, können strukturell auf die mittviktorianische materielle Kultur bezogen werden. Die Figuren sind finanziell eingeschränkt, erklären sich aber für ‚aristokratisch‘. Diese soziale Selbstinszenierung erfordert es, dass über Finanzen geschwiegen wird. Dies wiederum erklärt den Grundsatz der Figuren, dass Konsum unauffällig zu erfolgen hat. Der Begriff ‚unauffälliger Konsum‘ wird in Anlehnung an Veblens Begriff des ostentativen Konsums verwendet (vgl. 60-61): Sowohl bei ostentativem als auch bei unauffälligem Konsum wird sozialer Status verhandelt, aber im Gegensatz zum ostentativen hat der unauffällige Konsum sparsam zu erfolgen. ‚Aristokratisch‘ zu sein bedeutet in Cranford, mit materiellen Gegenständen sparsam umzugehen. Sozialer Status und Ansehen werden in der Gemeinschaft durch unauffälligen Konsum verhandelt und zur Geltung gebracht.

220 Dies zeigt sich am Essenskonsum der Figuren, der eine bedeutungsvolle soziale Praxis ist: Unauffälliger Konsum dient zur Verhandlung von sozialem Status, dient aber gleichzeitig dazu, die kommunalen Bindungen der Figuren in Anbetracht ihrer finanziellen Situation aufrechtzuerhalten und zu stärken. Die Erzählerin arbeitet hier mit historischer Differenz und betont, dass durch diesen Konsum die Gemeinschaft aufrechterhalten werden soll. Durch diese Darstellung werden mittviktorianische Praktiken des ostentativen Konsums umgedreht: Indem die Erzählerin darlegt, wie unauffälliger Konsum funktioniert und nostalgisch seinen gemeinschaftsstärkenden Effekt hervorhebt, zeigt sie die strukturelle Ähnlichkeit zwischen unauffälligem Konsum und ostentativem Konsum auf. Zudem legt sie nahe, dass zur Jahrhundertmitte sozialer Status durch ostentativen Konsum verhandelt wird. Die Figur Mr Holbrook, auf dessen Landgut die Cranford-Figuren zum Essen eingeladen sind, verkörpert eine maskuline, ländliche materielle Kultur, die zeitgleich neben der materiellen Kultur der Cranford- Damen existiert. Das Verhalten der Cranford-Frauen an Mr Holbrooks Tisch betont die zentrale Funktion, die dem Essenskonsum bei ihrer sozialen Selbstinszenierung zukommt. Auf einer Metaebene sugeriert die Darstellung von Mr Holbrook, dass es niemals nur eine Form von materieller Kultur gibt, sondern stets koexistente, orts- und klassenspezifische Formen materieller Kultur. Die Erzählperspektive auf Cranford ist nicht nur nostalgisch. Insbesondere bei materiellen Alltagsgegenständen distanziert sich die Erzählerin vom unauffälligen Konsum und seinen Auswirkungen auf das Alltagsleben der Figuren. So stellt sie etwa komisch dar, wie die Figuren versuchen, einen Teppich seines Nutzwertes zu entäußern. Zudem macht sie Konflikte lächerlich, die entstehen, wenn Figuren ‚gewöhnlichen‘ Gebrauchsgegenständen einen individuellen ästhetischen Wert zuschreiben. Durch diese Darstellungen schafft sie Distanz zwischen Cranfords materieller Kultur und den Lesern, die sie durch Leseranreden im gegenwärtigen London verortet. Auf struktureller Ebene können diese Repräsentation jedoch so gedeutet werden, dass es hinsichtlich der Wertzuschreibung Parallelen zwischen der mittviktorianischen und Cranfords materieller Kultur gibt: In Cranford wird bestimmten Gegenständen ein ästhetischer Wert zugeschrieben, der seinen Nutzwert übersteigt. Bei der Londoner Weltausstellung wurden teilweise Gegenstände ausgestellt, denen ebenfalls ein Wert jenseits ihres Nutzwertes zugeschrieben wurde (vgl. Richards 33). Die Darstellung von Abfall in Cranford lässt sich strukturell nicht auf die mittviktorianische materielle Kultur beziehen. Die Vermeidung von Abfall erfüllt in Cranford eine soziale Funktion: Die Erzeugung von Abfall soll in Cranford vermieden

221 werden. Deshalb verarbeiten die Figuren kleine materielle Gegenstände, die zu Abfall werden könnten, wenn sie keine Verwendung finden, zu einem anderen materiellen Objekt und verschenken diesen. Die soziale Funktion der Abfallvermeidung stellt einen Kontrast zu der ökonomischen Funktion dar, die mittviktorianische städtische Diskurse Abfall zuschreiben (vgl. Schülting 2016, 21-22). Bei der in Cranford dargestellten Kleidung, Mode und den Läden handelt es sich um Phänomene, die mittviktorianische Vorstellungen und Diskurse zu konsumierenden Frauen thematisieren, indem sie auf intradiegetischer Ebene einer Zeit vor dem Mittviktorianismus zugeschrieben werden. Bei der Darstellung von Kleidung und Mode sind regionale Differenz sowie Altersunterschiede wichtig. Die Erzählerin zeigt, dass die Cranford-Figuren zwanghaft neue Hauben konsumieren, um ihre kommunalen Bindungen und ihre kollektive ‚aristokratische‘ Identität gegenüber Figuren zu verteidigen, die nicht zu ihrer Gemeinschaft gehören und sozial angesehener sind. Der zwanghafte Konsum grenzt hier an ostentativen Konsum. Ihm kommt bei den Cranford- Damen eine identitätsstiftende Funktion zu. Die spöttischen Bemerkungen der Erzählerin über das Outfit der Cranford-Frauen verweist auf die Perspektive, mit der die Erzählerin rückblickend über Cranford berichtet: In dem Outfit der Cranford-Frauen werden neue Stile mit alten gemischt. Die Erzählerin ist jünger als die Cranford-Frauen, kommt aus einer größeren Stadt als Cranford und stellt den Stil der Cranford-Figuren als inkongruent dar. Dies deutet auf ihre städtische Perspektive hin, nach der die neuesten Stile oder die neueste Mode zu tragen ist. Auf der extratextuellen Ebene trägt die spöttische Darstellung des Outfits zu mittviktorianischen Modediskursen bei. Der Roman hat durch die Darstellung ‚alter‘ Stile Teil an zeitgenössischen Diskursen, die während des Veröffentlichungsprozesses von Cranford aktuell waren. Die Darstellung von Läden in Cranford zeigt, wie diese mit unauffälligem Konsum vereinbart werden. Die Cranford- Frauen versuchen, durch heimlichen visuellen Konsum neuer Kleidungsstücke einen Wissensvorsprung gegenüber den anderen Figuren zu bekommen. Da sich die Cranford- Damen verbieten, offensichtlich zu konsumieren, konsumieren sie stattdessen neue Kleidung visuell und assoziieren einen Wissensvorsprung hinsichtlich neuer Mode mit Prestige. Auf der extratextuellen Ebene nimmt Cranford an mittviktorianischen Diskursen zu konsumierenden Frauen insofern teil, als es ein Kontinuum zwischen der intradiegetischen früh- oder vorviktorianischen und der extratextuellen mittviktorianischen Zeit konstruiert. Die von den Barker Schwestern und Miss Matty geführten Läden zeigen, wie Handel, der mit finanziellen Aspekten verbunden ist, mit der ‚aristokratischen‘ Gemeinschaft vereinbart wird: Die Barker Schwestern reproduzieren

222 in ihrer Verkaufsstrategie die soziale Selbstinszenierung der Cranford-Figuren. Miss Matty verkauft Tee als Ware, die mit klassenspezifischen Konnotationen einhergeht und in Cranfords ‚aristokratischer‘ Gemeinschaft akzeptiert wird. Die Erzählstimme wendet zudem Strategien an, die den kommerziellen Aspekt der Läden verringern sollen: Sie betont, dass der Laden der Barker-Schwestern vor langer Zeit aufgegeben wurde und Miss Barker nach Aufgabe des Ladens finanziell in der Lage war, sich ein in Cranford anerkanntes Statussymbol zu leisten. Miss Mattys Laden kann dagegen nicht der Vergangenheit zugeschrieben werden. Die Erzählstimme versucht hier, den kommerziellen Aspekt zu reduzieren, indem sie betont, dass der Laden in einem privaten Raum in Miss Mattys Haus eröffnet wird. Miss Mattys Kunden ‚besuchen‘ sie somit nur in ihrem Haus. Mit dieser Darstellungsstrategie suggeriert der Roman, dass Konsum bereits vor der mittviktorianischen Zeit in die häusliche, private Sphäre eindringt. Gleichzeitig kann die Darstellung als Produkt ihrer eigenen Zeit, also als Produkt mittviktorianischer Diskurse zu konsumierenden Frauen, interpretiert werden. So bricht der Roman durch historische Differenz diese mittviktorianischen Diskurse auf einer Metaebene und nimmt gleichzeitig an ihnen teil. Der Streit, der sich aufgrund zweier Bücher zwischen Miss Jenkyns und Captain Brown entfacht, ist aus kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive interessant. Der Streit dreht sich um das kulturelle Prestige, mit dem die unterschiedlichen Veröffentlichungsformate von Samuel Johnsons The Rambler und Charles Dickens’ Roman The Pickwick Papers von den Figuren assoziiert werden. The Rambler erschien im achtzehnten Jahrhundert, The Pickwick Papers in den 1830er Jahren in Form von Fortsetzungsheftchen. Diese Fortsetzungsheftchen wurden von neuen Leserschichten gekauft, die sich die Heftchen aufgrund ihres Preises leisten konnten (vgl. Feldmann 2013b, 53; 55; vgl. Turner 117). Captain Brown gehört zu dieser Leserschaft, die nicht mit Miss Jenkyns’ ‚aristokratischen‘ Vorstellungen übereinstimmt. Daher verachtet Miss Jenkyns die Fortsetzungshefte aufgrund ihres ‚mangelnden‘ Prestiges. Hinsichtlich der extratextuellen Ebene, ist festzuhalten, dass Cranford in Dickens’ Zeitschrift Household Words erschien. Diese Zeitschrift war, wie auch die Fortsetzungsheftchen von Dickens’ Romanen, ebenfalls erschwinglich und um die Jahrhundertmitte sehr beliebt. Insofern werden die mittviktorianischen extratextuellen Leser auf einer Metaebene positioniert: Sie erkennen die historische Differenz zwischen den Veröffentlichungsformaten von The Rambler und The Pickwick Papers und wissen ebenfalls um die Ähnlichkeit des Veröffentlichungsformates, in dem Cranford erschien, mit dem der Pickwick Papers.

223 Somit werden Miss Jenkyns’ Vorstellungen auf der extratextuellen Ebene komisch gebrochen und als altmodisch enttarnt. Diese Ausführungen zu Cranford legen nahe, dass der Roman sich so sehr mit mittviktorianischer Identität beschäftigt wie er sich mit einer Metaebene zu materieller Kultur befasst: Er repräsentiert im Mittviktorianismus aktuelle Konsumpraktiken und deren Funktion, projiziert diese jedoch zurück auf einen Kontext, der vor dieser Zeit liegt. Indem der Roman eine Metaebene zu materieller Kultur erschafft – so lässt sich schlussfolgern – wirft er Fragen hinsichtlich mittviktorianischer Identität auf und thematisiert Aspekte mittviktorianischer Identität. Diese Zusammenschau der Einzelanalysen zeigt, dass die Erzählstimmen in allen drei Romanen bei der Bildung, Erkundung und Verhandlung kollektiver Identität durch Darstellungen materieller Kultur zentral sind. Die vorliegende Arbeit stellt somit hauptsächlich literaturwissenschaftliche Analysen und Erkenntnisse bereit, auf die im Rahmen weiterer, künftiger Studien zurückgegriffen werden kann. Diese könnten beispielsweise weitere Romane samt ihrem Paratext in dem für die vorliegende Arbeit ausgewählten Zeitfenster untersuchen und so die hier getroffenen Aussagen erweitern. Des Weiteren wäre eine stärker diskursanalytisch ausgerichtete Untersuchung denkbar, die nicht nur Romantexte und ihren Paratext berücksichtigt, sondern auch Modezeitschriften einbezieht sowie nicht-narrative Texte zu gender, Nationalität oder Klassendiskursen. Durch eine solche Studie könnten die Ergebnisse der Romananalysen in ihren größeren kulturhistorischen Kontext eingebettet und vor diesem Hintergrund vertieft interpretiert werden. Nicht zuletzt wäre es interessant, die Rezeptionsgeschichte der Romane in die Interpretation einzubinden sowie Studien zum mittviktorianischen Rezeptionsverhalten. Auf diese Weise könnten insbesondere mit Blick auf die extratextuelle Ebene der Romane annähernd empirisch basierte Aussagen dazu getroffen werden, wie die in den Romanen dargestellten Formen kollektiver Identität von ihren zeitgenössischen Lesern aufgenommen wurden und wie sie auf extratextueller Ebene zu Identitätsformationen beitrugen.