LITERARY OBJECTS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE

by

HELEN MICHELLE LYONS-MCFARLAND

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of English

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

August, 2018

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES

We hereby approve the thesis/dissertation of

Helen Michelle Lyons-McFarland candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy*.

Committee Chair

Christopher Flint

Committee Member

Athena Vrettos

Committee Member

William Siebenschuh

Committee Member

William Deal

Date of Defense

May 18, 2018

*We also certify that written approval has been obtained

for any proprietary material contained therein.

Dedication

To Matthew

Without your love and support, I never could have done this. You are the beat of my

heart and the foundation of my life. Thank you.

Table of Contents

List of Figures 2

Acknowledgments 3

Abstract 6

Introduction 8

Chapter One - The Walls Between Us: Literary Objects in 32 Defoe, Mackenzie, and Austen

Chapter Two - Secret Passages: Objects and Social Mobility in 91 Defoe, Goldsmith, and Haywood

Chapter Three - Print as Authority, Literacy as Agency: Lennox, 158 Gay, and Sterne

Chapter Four - Illustrations and Authorial Control: Harrison and Cooke 208

Chapter Five - Conclusion 266

Notes 272

Works Cited 286

1 List of Figures

1. Robinson Crusoe’s list 53

2. Mrs. Bulkley as Kate Hardcastle 118

3. Title page of Henrietta, first edition (1758) 222

4. First page of The History of Pompey the Little, first edition (1751) 224

5. Frontispiece of The History of Pompey the Little, first edition (1751) 227

6. Illustration 1 for Henrietta (1787) 233

7. Illustration 2 for Henrietta (1787) 235

8. Illustration 3 for Henrietta (1787) 236

9. Illustration 4 for Henrietta (1787) 238

10. Illustration 1 for The History of Pompey the Little (1781) 241

11. Illustration 2 of The History of Pompey the Little (1781) 243

12. Illustration 1 for Henrietta (1798) 249

13. Illustration 2 for Henrietta (1798) 250

14. Illustration 3 for Henrietta (1798) 252

15. Illustration 4 for Henrietta (1798) 254

16. Illustration 5 for Henrietta (1798) 255

17. Illustration 1 for The History of Pompey the Little (1795) 257

18. Illustration 2 for The History of Pompey the Little (1795) 259

2 Acknowledgments

This project could not have happened without the patience and wisdom of so many people who supported me on the road from returning student to Ph.D. First, I would like to thank my advisor, committee chair, and mentor, Christopher Flint. His thorough feedback, keen insight, and endless support extended from the first Research Methods class I took with him to the last revisions of this project. I cannot thank him enough for everything he’s done.

I would also like to extend thanks to the other members of my dissertation committee: Athena Vrettos, William Siebenschuh, and my fourth reader William Deal.

Your enthusiasm, engagement, and support encouraged me and kept me going. Special thanks go to Athena, who supported me in my love of Gothic literature and helped me improve my writing so much. Thank you all.

Additionally, I am grateful to Kim Emmons, who supported me in my teaching as

Director of the Writing Program and was always available for advice when I needed it.

Kurt Koenigsberger likewise was there for me as my early advisor and as Director of

Graduate Studies, and I appreciate his support and generosity with his time. Rob Spadoni took an interest and gave me my first D on a paper ever, spurring me forward to greater effort -- that experience was invaluable. Erika Olbricht was ever willing to talk me through my concerns and gave me so much good advice. Barbara Burgess-Van Aken mentored me through my early teaching assignments and encouraged me to look beyond tenure-track positions. To all of you, my deepest thanks, as well as to the rest of the

CWRU English department.

3 To Latricia and Susan: you put up with my late paperwork and weird questions.

Thank you for all you do for all the grad students in the department, but especially for your help to me.

To John Webster at University of Washington, thank you for setting me on this path. I was an evening student attending UW part time, but I never forgot your words -- or your recommendation letter for grad school.

To Megan, Melissa, Erin, Jess, Thom, Kristin, Misha, Kate, and Ray: you have been my cohort, my support group, my band of scholars, my day-drunk brunch friends. I will always cherish your friendship and look back on this time with you at CWRU with particular fondness. All my love and thanks to you all.

I would also like to thank the British Library for access to its amazing holdings and permission to take photos of the relevant books, the KSL Special Collections department for its eighteenth-century collections, the University of Virginia Rare Book

School for a crash course in descriptive bibliography that was invaluable in Chapter Four, and the American Society of Eighteenth Century Studies for helping me refine my research interests and showing me where my people were.

Special thanks to Jonathan, who was the best combination cheering section and beta reader of a dissertation ever. Thanks also go to Kalyn for squiring me around Bristol and Bath, and who took on proofreading this monster of a project out of the goodness of her heart.

Last but not least, my undying thanks to my family. My husband Matthew, to whom this project is dedicated, supported me and kept me fed, safe, warm, and mostly sane throughout graduate school, which is no small task. Sarah, friend of my heart who

4 has stuck with me through ups and downs, actually took time off to come to my defense and celebrate with me. My parents supported me through the darkest times and refrained from asking awkward questions like “aren’t you done yet?” My extended family, the

McFarlands, McMillins, Lyonses, and Reddens, posted cute pictures and supportive notes and generally showed me they were proud of me.

Finally, my sons, Alisdair and William. They made the biggest sacrifice of all on the doctoral altar -- their time with their mother. I hope this has helped them understand that despite challenges, they can reach for even the farthest stars and, with the help of those who love them, get there despite the odds. I am so proud of you both. All my love, boys, always.

5 Literary Objects in Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Abstract

by

HELEN MICHELLE LYONS-MCFARLAND

As consumer culture expanded in eighteenth-century Britain, British literature likewise took a turn toward “realism,” a more lifelike portrayal of characters and settings that regularly included object references or “literary objects.” This dissertation examines the usage of literary objects from the early 1700s to the early 1800s, tracing the ways authors adapted to the growing presence of object ownership in British culture and society through their inclusion of literary objects in their works. Through a combination of close reading and historical context, this thesis argues that authors used the presence of literary objects to convey multivalent information about both fictional and real-world society and culture, enabling authors to indirectly question overarching power structures in ways that would have been difficult to do directly. The first three chapters address how authors primarily used objects as indicators of boundaries (“walls”) and points of access

(“doors”), with a third category of literary object that represented social and cultural authority. Building on these arguments, the last chapter investigates how booksellers used paratext involving literary objects, specifically through illustrations, to co-opt a degree of authorial status in reprinting formerly popular novels. The resulting body of evidence

6 suggests a larger pattern of authorial use of literary objects to reflect an increasingly complex relationship between people and goods, as shown across a selection of eighteenth-century British fiction.

7 Introduction

One of the most striking differences between seventeenth- and eighteenth-century

British cultures is the rising prominence of objects in daily life. As commerce took on growing importance within England and the merchant classes gained a greater portion of the nation’s wealth, relationships between people and objects changed. Items that were once restricted to the upper classes due to cost and rarity became more widely available due to improvements in manufacturing and transportation. As they did, the middle classes not only emulated the upper classes by purchasing significant but previously unavailable goods, but also created a sense of individualism through their objects. These people wished to be defined by their belongings rather than their origins — what they had achieved rather than what they had started with. In using objects as a social leveler, the

British middle classes created an opportunity for expression that transformed materialism in fiction, embedding objects into their national consciousness and sense of personal and social identity.

Mirroring the changes they saw in daily life and the rising importance of objects in personal interaction, authors incorporated the inanimate world in their fictional texts, reinforcing the very changes that motivated them. Whether simply adding objects to descriptions and character observations or writing in the “it-narrative” genre, where objects narrated their adventures in the world of people and commented on the vagaries of human nature along the way, eighteenth-century authors mapped out a fictional landscape where objects were nearly as important as people, communicating what the people would not or could not by themselves. The rise of objects and object ownership as

8 an important facet of British society and culture impacted what it meant to be a British citizen — in effect, to be recognized as a person. This dissertation addresses the presentation of objects in eighteenth-century British fiction and how they relate to the fictional presentation of social and cultural identity. It particularly examines how represented objects serve as mediators, and at times even gatekeepers, that regulate the flow of communication between authors, texts and readers, signifying boundaries (or

“walls”) between social strata or cultural areas, or points of access (or “doors”) where objects can let individuals cross between otherwise restricted categories.

References to material reality permeated evolving fictional portrayals of society and individuals in the eighteenth century. These material representations served as conduits for information about people and society, just as objects did in the everyday world. In this dissertation, I argue that through selective presentation of objects within a text, authors in the eighteenth-century revealed how integral and yet unstable material objects had become in British culture, conveying social and cultural information. They specifically used references to objects to indicate social and cultural boundaries and crossings, or metaphoric walls and doors, for the people associated with those items. By manipulating the growing library of associations created by interactions with objects, authors deepened the meanings of their texts and created flexible connections with their readers, enabling literature that was more representative of its readers’ lives and environments. Authorial use of objects not only disclosed complex information about characters and fictional worlds by inference, but also insinuated arguments about social issues, cultural boundaries, and other topics that were too difficult or controversial to discuss directly.

9 A significant portion of English philosophical thought from the Restoration through the rest of the eighteenth century focused on the close relationship between objects and ideas in the minds of observers, as well as what that relationship meant in terms of thought, identity, and social construction. John Locke’s work served as an origination point for a number of later eighteenth-century British social and political scholars in this arena. His efforts to define the mental experience dwell on the sensory impact of object encounters, effectively founding what we now call empiricist philosophy. Through his focus on how human perception of objects not only shapes how we perceive our surroundings, but also our mechanics of thought, he creates a foundation for others to build on when considering the relationship between human and object.

In An Essay Considering Human Understanding (1690), Locke describes the process of mental experience: “That all Sensation being produced in us … variously agitated by external Objects … must as necessarily produce a new sensation, as the variation or increase of it; and so introduce a new Idea” (Essay 133; bk. 2, ch. 8).

Sensation is produced by the agitation (or encounter with) external Objects, which then forms an idea. Locke refers to this as the “Quality” of that object. He offers the example of a snowball, which produces the ideas of “White, Cold, and Round” in an observer through its inherent qualities (Essay 134; bk. 2, ch. 8). Locke identifies primary and secondary qualities of objects, where primary qualities are intrinsic to the physicality of the object in question and cannot be changed, while secondary qualities are observable at a distance and can be deduced or recombined. The end result of Locke’s analysis of object qualities is that humans perceive ideas that are inspired by objects we encounter but do not actually resemble the object or its qualities, except through our own

10 associations (Essay 137; bk. 2, ch. 8). We then build up a body of associations through memory, increasing the ideas associated with objects until we have a library of knowledge that can be activated by moving through the world (Essay 152; bk. 2, ch. 10).

This concept forms the basis of modern empiricism, a school of thought that claims human understanding and behavior is based primarily on personal experience, particularly sensory input and direct observation (“empiricism, n.”).

Locke’s influence on Enlightenment thought extended his empiricist ideas of perception, memory, and object qualities throughout eighteenth-century political and philosophical thought. David Hume, for example, extended empiricism in his work A

Treatise of Human Nature (1740) to include beliefs. He asserted that not only are people accustomed to expect in the future what they have observed in the past, but that a thought, once conceived of, can be believed. Hume asserts that belief is not innate knowledge, but rather a strongly held conception based on previous experience and expectation: “that determination of the thought, acquir’d by habit, to pass from the cause to its usual effect” (658). Daniel Defoe was likewise heavily influenced by John Locke, as evidenced in Paula Backscheider’s analysis of Jure Divino and Locke’s Second

Treatise of Government (116). As she notes, Defoe is often credited with making Locke’s essays widely familiar (115), thus establishing a strong philosophical link between the two authors.

These examples show that, while Locke’s assertions were not universally accepted, they were nonetheless highly influential and promoted by later eighteenth- century authors in both literary and philosophical works. These later authors created a conceptual space where meaning could be attached to an object through prior personal or

11 reported experience. Individuals could thus extrapolate ideas and beliefs about both the object and an individual attached to it (the owner of the object, for example) that they could then act upon with a reasonable degree of certainty.

After Locke, there was increased attention to how objects become invested with meaning. Later philosophers such as Berkeley and Hume addressed and refined Locke’s theories, contributing to the rise of empiricist thought in religious, secular, and scientific circles.1 Authors and readers alike became accustomed to the thought that objects carried meaning for observers through repeated exposure to the new prominence of material commodities in scientific, philosophical, economic, and cultural thought. Questions regarding the role of people and objects, and the significance of these human/nonhuman relationships became a valid avenue of exploration, both directly and indirectly. As a result, many authors of fiction and philosophy confronted new materialist pressures by prominently featuring description and narrative that gave new consequence to materiality.

The signal importance of objects and their associations in the eighteenth century reflects a growing awareness of their status, not simply as forms of class-based wealth, but as reflections of personal aesthetic choice in British society.2 My thesis builds on that idea, examining how authors presented and questioned the roles of the individual in

British society and culture by relating characters to literary objects. While a number of scholars have written about objects in specific texts, some of which I touch on as well, this project studies several representative British literary texts from various points in the eighteenth century, including both drama and fiction. In doing so, I show that engagement with object representation as a means of communicating about and commenting on social and cultural institutions is not limited to any one specific author. It

12 is rather an ongoing process that reveals a new level of development during the eighteenth century in Britain, coinciding with the rise of consumer culture, the growth of the reading public, and a burgeoning middle class. Through exploring items that represent larger social forces and issues, eighteenth-century British authors discovered a powerful tool to form indirect (or even direct) discourse about Britain, what it meant to live in that time, and how specific socio-economic changes shaped cultural awareness.

The methods this dissertation uses to unearth the larger patterns of object presentation include close reading of primary texts, aligning the material culture of the time with publication of the novels, and applying current theories about the social and behavioral significance of material objects. I extend this work to the circulation of print, frequently using the methods of analytical bibliography as well in order to interpret the effect of literary objects on specific publishing practices in the late eighteenth-century.

The result of these modes of inquiry reveals an ongoing, if often unintentional, method of communicating symbolically about the culture and society in which the authors lived.

Throughout this dissertation, I am continually focused on the attention eighteenth- century British authors gave to characters through the subtext of their associated objects.

Along with the sudden expansion of meaning attached to objects, eighteenth-century

British culture provided fertile ground for the new exploration of objects as subtext in fiction. Given a tendency to align people with the objects they own, it was a natural shift for authors to capitalize on the wealth of associations already in place in society. For my purposes, however, the alignment of persons and objects is less important than the exploration of relationships between them. When objects take on a portable significance that transfers to their owners, people are then judged according to their object

13 associations. Relationships between people and objects indicate cultural position rather than class rank, creating personal boundaries that direct others in how to treat that person, for both observers and the person attached to the item.

In order to make my argument as clear as possible, I specifically define a number of important terms that reoccur throughout this project. To begin with, this work uses

“object” rather than “thing” to both disassociate the material referents from any direct physical analogue and to preclude concerns about “objects versus things,” as commonly debated in thing theory. I do draw from a number of scholars regarding thing theory, but my focus situates this project outside the particular concentration on concrete forms of materiality in thing theory scholarship.

I apply the term “literary objects” to denote things described within the text by the author and thus brought to the reader’s attention. These things can be references to real objects, or graphic elements within a text used to illustrate a scene, movement, or real physical object; Clarissa’s coffin, for example, is a literary object, as is the marbled page in Tristram Shandy. In Chapter Three I also explore “textual literary objects,” which are written texts such as books, plays, poems, or official documents referred to within a larger text. Examples of textual literary objects include the Bibles found in Robinson

Crusoe, Uncle Toby’s map in Tristram Shandy, and the letters in Richardson’s Pamela.

A “textual representation” refers to a description of an object that exists only within that text; the squirrel in Miss Betsy Thoughtless does not refer to any living squirrel, but solely to the fictional animal and the associations given to it by the author and reader. These generic representative objects should be considered different from objects that were specific and also existed in the material world, such as the British

14 Crown Jewels or the Cascade at Vauxhall Gardens.

“Society” and “culture” both play important and sometimes complementary roles in my project, but I define them as follows. When I say society, I am building on a definition listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED): “a community of people living in a particular country or region and having shared customs, laws, or institutions”

(“society, n.”). In particular I am referring to the legal and economic framework of life in

England; one’s wealth, social class, and legal standing all fall within the purview of society and the social.

Cultural matters, on the other hand, build on the OED’s definition: “the distinctive ideas, customs, social behavior, products, or way of life of a particular nation, society, people, or period” (“culture, n.”). When I use this term, I refer to issues of aesthetics, art, behavior, and beliefs pertaining to the people of eighteenth-century England. Religion, etiquette, morality, and shared experiences and perceptions are all examples of culture and cultural matters.

Society and culture can overlap, naturally — for example, a social occasion where admittance is largely dependent on class and wealth can also be a cultural event.

However, in literature these distinctions are often used to focalize events and convey a specific message. Fanny Burney’s Evelina (1778), for example, describes a trip to the

Vauxhall Gardens in London in which a concerto is played and the “cascade,” an artificial waterfall made of tin, excites the attendees (195). In this space, art and nature combine to form the backdrop for social interaction on a wide scale within Vauxhall and similar pleasure gardens throughout the eighteenth century. Burney uses this scene to highlight the uncomfortable confusion that occurs for Evelina when public and private

15 boundaries collide, leading to a case of mistaken identity and damage to Evelina’s reputation as she finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Culture draws people to the gardens, but social rules within that cultural space create difficulties for Evelina.

In addition, since a significant portion of my argument revolves around the interpretation of objects and their associated people by others, I use a number of different terms to define those others. “Observers” can refer to:

• Unspecified characters in a text, such as non-involved patrons in a tavern,

passers-by on the street, or unnamed attendees at a ball. They are the general

public who can be assumed to be in the background, receiving the portrayed

information, but are otherwise unmentioned.

• Readers of a text, who act as silent observers simply by reading the text, but

are unable to otherwise participate in the narrative

• Specific characters in a text who witness interactions between objects and

people, and thus come away with impressions that are sometimes conveyed by

the narrator.

I will clarify which definition I mean at the time of usage in order to be clear.

In addition, I also refer to “audience” and “readers.” “Audience” refers to people attending a performance of a play, and thus seeing the work acted out before them.

“Readers” refers to people who interact with a text through the medium of print. For example, an audience would attend a play, while a reader would instead obtain a print copy of the script. Both categories of end consumers would be familiar with a dramatic work, but the nature of their interaction with the text would vary considerably and thus convey different subtexts.

16 When analyzing the role of the individual, I also allude frequently to the “self” or

“selfhood.” These aspects were, I claim, newly relevant for eighteenth-century Britain in regard to material objects; the self or selfhood is used in this dissertation as an internal recognition of integrated consciousness and feeling. These are separate from

“personhood,” which is an external status conferred on an individual by his or her society. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn provides an example of this concept during

Oroonoko’s time as a slave, when he is recognized as a leader by the other slaves but still considered property by the slaveholders.3 Political personhood indicates recognition of an individual’s rights and duties within a political system; cultural personhood indicates recognition of an individual as being present within a given culture and having a voice that carries cultural weight and should be heeded. Both involve being considered a full member of the larger social and/or cultural system and thus deserving protection by and representation within that system. “Identity” extends further and recognizes the existence of an individual as a discrete entity that is unique within that person’s social and cultural milieu.

Lastly, I discuss “individual and cultural boundaries” with regard to objects and how authors demarcate literary spaces using them. Individual boundaries refer to the borders of the self, including both the human and any nonhuman objects that person deems integral to their identity. Cultural boundaries are social, class, and gender lines dividing one group from another, and include the boundaries for gendered spaces and roles, class-based activities, and taboos. A society recognizes the role of objects in determining these spaces through the types of usage and users people assign to a given object: a ball is for children, for example, while specialized balls may be played with by

17 adults within specific contexts (sports) and places (fields).

In terms of the period I’ve chosen for this project, I settled on eighteenth-century

Britain as particularly suitable, with a specific focus on London due to both its position as the primary publishing hub for Britain and its omnipresence as the background for much of the fiction of the period. Recent scholarship has pinpointed eighteenth-century Britain as a pivotal moment in literary treatments of the object world. Wolfram Schmidgen observes the importance of Britain at this time because “it reveals the persistence and permutations of a communal imagination that closely aligns persons and things,” arguing that the boundaries between communities of persons and things are characterized by

“permeable boundaries” and a sense of “open traffic across human and material zones”

(1). He argues that Robinson Crusoe is inseparable from his island despite no claim other than colonizer, and thus his identity as an Englishman in the days of empire is crucial to the novel as a whole and to our understanding of the material world he creates (37).

Eighteenth-century Britain is also important in terms of the links between human thought and nonhuman action, as Jonathan Kramnick suggests. He explores the period’s ongoing search for the source of consciousness and the will, dwelling particularly in

Locke’s Essay and the questions Locke raises about the nature of consciousness and materiality. “The question for eighteenth-century writers was not just how do agents know things, but rather what are agents and agency in the first place? … How does consciousness arise from matter, and where are we to locate the sources and limits of actions?” (97). The issue of a distinction between types of matter, particularly human and non-human, was not clearly drawn. Agency or will comprised consciousness, while at the same time both humans and non-humans were composed of matter. Kramnick outlines

18 the exploration at the time into what caused consciousness in one and not the other. He also details the eighteenth-century inquiry into whether all things could actually be conscious agents and, if so, what that meant for questions of religion and belief. This query exemplifies Schmidgen’s “permeable boundaries,” showing ongoing inquiry into the difference between human and non-human, particularly when objects and humans were linked or aligned together. The gap between the two is a matter of debate at this time, indicating a potentially heightened cultural sense of object presence and action that grants new significance to material acquisition, representation, and cultural and social meaning.

In addition, ties between personhood and objects in the eighteenth century are particularly evident in the independent objects in “it-narratives” of the period, according to Jonathan Lamb. It-narratives, also known as novels of circulation, were stories that featured inanimate objects as their central characters (and often first-person narrators), telling the story of their travels to each person they encounter throughout the world.

These texts were written during an age of expansion and success for the British Empire, leading to an influx of consumer goods priced so that almost anyone could afford items that had once been considered luxuries. The tide of commerce and consumerism raised the standard of living for lower-class British citizens, but it also blurred once-distinct lines of class by throwing the ownership of personal property open to the masses. The relationships between people and objects were in flux in eighteenth-century Britain, as were the resulting social and personal identities that were associated with or signaled by the possession of objects such as luxury goods. Material objects indicated both prosperity and anxiety, embodying rapid social upheaval.

19 As Locke and others recognized and as scholars such as Schmidgen, Kramnick, and Lamb reinforce, personal identity as a combined human subject / non-human object creation is crucial in eighteenth-century Britain and at the same time fraught with anxiety.

Julie Park notes that acquiring and displaying objects became central to forming the self, particularly for women, so much so that objects “threatened to displace the subject as a locus for selfhood in eighteenth-century England” (xiv). She recognizes the underlying ties of Locke’s work on identity and its links to property, a crucial philosophical foundation for eighteenth-century Britain that lays the foundation for identity as an amalgam of object and human subject. Bruno Latour likewise singles out the early eighteenth century in Britain as the origin of a “modern” identity that is tied inextricably to object manipulation and classification, creating an ideal that separated nature from humanity and made its secrets discoverable at the same time that it created a defining ideological separation from the past (35).

The dilemma of self and other that shared material goods prompted was particularly critical in literary works, which described how things shaped personal identity and were themselves commodities that circulated in the public sphere. Objects and their associations worked within the fictional world as a means of navigating culture and class and in the physical world as a way of mediating the relationship between reader and author (or publisher). Whether we focus on fictional materiality or the physical characteristics of the printed book, examining how objects are handled highlights the transformative effect of material culture on the eighteenth century in terms of identity, social interaction, and the effects of print on communication. Eighteenth-century British authors drew connections from material culture as they examined objects, taking ones

20 they found significant and assigning them both importance within a text and meaning within their stories. Authors throughout the time period demonstrate awareness of objects not simply as forms of class-based wealth, but as reflections of personal and aesthetic choice within society. This in turn redefines what constitutes identity, resulting in, for example, the conflation of Clarissa’s body with her letters, or the merging of subject and object in the many popular “it-narratives” of the eighteenth century. As the concept of self moves toward becoming a collective cultural entity, the question of what constitutes the human self reveals a growing anxiety about who or what is worthy of inclusion and protection in eighteenth-century Britain.

We can see examples of both the object-person basis of the constructed self and the conflicted reaction to it in Jonathan Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room.” The reader follows Strephon on an illicit journey into his beloved Celia’s chamber, surveying all her personal items and effluvia to determine what she was like beyond her charming façade.

His discoveries horrify him and strip him of his romantic ideals, trapping him in the contradiction between his elevated feelings and the excremental proof of Celia’s physicality. Swift’s detailed portrayal of the interactions between human and non-human objects examines how they combine to create the social construct of an eighteenth- century London socialite. Moreover, through Strephon, Swift captures the ambivalence and anxiety surrounding human / non-human relationships, particularly when the objects are proved to be integral to cultural and social interactions.

The twin poles of the poem’s satirical orbit are Celia’s gross physicality, belying her constructed social self, and Strephon’s naïveté and disappointment upon witnessing the necessary artifice that creates her public appearance. Swift sets a more moderate path

21 for the reader between these extremes with his “strict survey” (“Lady’s Dressing Room” line 7) of the objects in the dressing room. From the reader/narrator’s ostensibly impartial standpoint,4 the poem amounts to a mercantile listing of items and their conditions, a cavalcade of objects and the evidentiary record of their interactions with Celia’s flesh.5

Beyond showing us how these objects function, however, Swift’s portrayal of Celia’s belongings as both abject and gendered through association with her body disrupts the elided understanding of the constructed self. By analyzing Celia’s hybrid existence, Swift forces a conceptual rupture that separates Celia from both the reader and Strephon.6

As part of his poetic analysis of Celia, Swift reinforces the imagined physicality of the objects by placing the discoveries of Strephon within his “strict survey.” He satirically problematizes Celia and the aspects of her constructed social persona by mapping out the objects in her room, thus identifying socially important details of that presented self. Every object in the room is both privately owned by Celia and is serving a personal function, meaning they are both exclusive and intimate. Each item not only provides an imagined visual reference for the reader, but also marks a physical limit to the room (and body) of Celia. The literary objects in “The Lady’s Dressing Room” comprise the boundaries of the fictional space, or “world” of the poem as visualized by the reader, collected in the “dressing room” formed by the poem through both imagination and the poetic form. As such, the objects make the reader aware of the cultural and social boundaries of the world created by the author as well as their collective nature as a social human / non-human hybrid.

By taking pains to populate the poem with personal waste, refuse, and items kept out of public view, Swift sets the rules for engaging with the presented literary objects.

22 First, the poem/room is an extension of Celia’s body. Second, Celia does not intend for the public to know what goes on in her dressing room (although Swift has every intention of showing them). Third, anyone other than Celia and her maid in this space is a trespasser. As Strephon, the narrator, and the reader explore Swift’s fictional world, it’s clear that just as it would be a cultural crime to explore a woman’s body without permission, it is likewise an intrusive cultural crime to venture into her dressing room.

All the scene’s observers (Strephon, narrator, and the reader) have crossed into a private area that should be off-limits without both Celia’s presence and her express invitation.7

The objects of Celia’s dressing room, then, provide a clear cultural boundary, one that Strephon ignores with comically dire results. Her room is an extension of her body in both display and restriction. Swift’s listings make this clear, as he starts with her used linen, the layer worn between the body and the outer gown to prevent soiling more expensive, perishable garments. Her “dirty smock … / Beneath the armpits well besmeared” (“Lady’s Dressing Room” lines 11-12) stands in for her body.8 Readers not only see dirty laundry, left out to view because her maid had not yet cleaned the room, but are shown the items as they had come into contact with her flesh. Swift gives the reader an intimate glimpse of Celia’s body in a state of near undress: something no suitor should have had of a wealthy young woman of good reputation. The reader is aware by line 11, if not before, that Strephon has crossed a cultural line encoded in the objects of

Celia’s dressing room; the fact that he was able to do so, however, likewise blurs the lines between Celia as a young woman of good reputation versus someone who is easily accessible to the public, such as an actress or prostitute.

By crossing from the public into the private, Strephon also changes, emasculating

23 himself as he moves from ardent suitor to horrified aesthete through his trespasses. The items in the dressing room (the combs, the basin, the cosmetics, the close stool or

“chest”) all declare this space to be off limits to public eyes, creating a variation of a

“sacred” space for the “goddess” Celia (“Lady’s Dressing Room” line 70). By violating that boundary, Strephon changes his own status from suitor to trespasser on sacred ground. Swift’s goddess of Vengeance punishes him by granting him knowledge he was never meant to have, thus separating Strephon from society and potential heterosexual romance in return for his violation of cultural and personal boundaries. His unwillingness to accept and look past the hybrid nature of social personas, particularly those of women, creates a permanent rift that Strephon is unable to cross.

Swift’s adaptation of classical myth and local legend, calling to mind the pairings of Diana and Actaeon and Godiva and Peeping Tom, was certainly intentional. It speaks to the power of objects not only to comprise a community but also to enact punishment for transgression within the bounds of the poem. Swift’s use of Strephon as a stalking horse to uncover the truth of Celia’s physical reality reveals the dangers of overstepping intimate boundaries without permission. The ways in which Swift creates the boundary that Strephon violates, however, are indicative of a much larger pattern of object significance. We as readers can see quite clearly the world Swift builds within the poem through the objects he leaves for us to explore: that of Celia’s dressing room and, by extension, her person. Swift uses literary objects not simply to list items, but to create a living world that can enact and enforce cultural and social rules.

As we can see in Swift, the importance of objects is not simply a question of meaning, but of social status and cultural boundaries. Strephon seeks to prove that Celia

24 is not what she appears, not realizing that the objects he sees in her dressing room are regularly possessed by young women of similar wealth and class. In seeking to unmask her and divest her of her objects, he learns that his specific intimate truth is instead universal. He cannot un-know what he has observed about culture, leading to his banishment from the dual society of women and objects. Swift’s narrator effectively continues the parody of Greek epic myth by taking on the role of a coryphaeus, or the leader of a Greek chorus, conscripting the reader into the chorus as well (“coryphaeus, n.”). The reader is made complicit by witnessing Swift’s analysis of Celia’s hybrid nature. In this way, Swift overtly scripts Strephon’s tragic end and uses him as an example for the observer, recasting Strephon as a non-person by means of the character’s rejection of material society, and at the same time making the reader aware of the danger inherent in recognizing and investigating the hybrids that inhabit the social world.

Swift’s exploration of ways that people and objects merge socially is a brief example of how authors used literary objects to react to the increasing importance of consumer culture in daily life. This dissertation continues the examination that I began with Swift’s poem and applies it to selections from eighteenth-century British literature, moving from the early 1700s to the early 1800s. It primarily covers novels from throughout that span of time, but also addresses some dramas as well. Each chapter combines close reading and historical contextualization to explore not only the role of literary objects in that specific text, but also what that text offers toward explicating the uses of literary objects in the eighteenth-century as a whole. At the same time, I analyze the implications about the importance of objects made by those authors, drawing conclusions as to how this research might impact future literature studies during this

25 period.

Chapter One focuses on the authorial use of literary objects to illuminate cultural and social boundaries. By using descriptions and cultural associations, authors mediate the readers’ experience of the fictional world. They use literary objects as cultural signposts to set reader expectations for character behavior and reception within that world. In this chapter I examine three works, all of which use objects to create and strengthen cultural and social boundaries: Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Henry

Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling, and Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe’s errant merchant undergoes a radical transformation of spirit even as he reshapes the island on which he is shipwrecked. Defoe circumvents the difficulties of telling a story largely about a man without human contact in part by showing Crusoe’s relationships with his objects. Long before Friday’s appearance,

Crusoe devotes extensive time and attention to creating, arranging, and cultivating his houses, implements, and gear. Through that interplay with literary objects, Defoe is able to illustrate not only the boundaries of Crusoe’s material life, but also his personality and spiritual identity. Crusoe’s effort to impose order and meaning on his world of objects does the same to his own mind and soul.

In contrast, The Man of Feeling portrays literary objects primarily as symbols of personal interactions across social boundaries. Sentiment is crystallized in the novel’s objects, primarily in the form of currency. Economic exchanges, either real or potential, quantify personal relationships and the formless emotions that isolate the protagonist,

Harley, from the people who surround him. Mackenzie’s focus on these economic interactions serves to illuminate what is lost when personal connection is replaced by

26 economic exchange, encouraging a sentimental response in his readers.

Finally, in Sense and Sensibility objects serve as demarcations of class and economic background, such as Marianne’s pianoforte and the barouches so desired by

Mrs. Dashwood for her brothers. Austen uses objects as a unit of measurement against which individuals, particularly women, are assessed and either embraced or denied social entry accordingly. They are barriers rather than agents of change — they form the figurative walls separating the main characters from the lives they have been denied.

Whereas the first chapter focused on how literary objects can highlight and duplicate restraining elements in the society that the text emulates, Chapter Two explores how the same types of objects can be manipulated to break the boundaries they embody, allowing passage into areas of society that would normally be off-limits to characters of a specific class or gender. Here I examine how literary objects can also act as metaphorical doors, or points of access, allowing individuals to pass over and through social and cultural boundaries. The objects do this through means that may seem unintended or misappropriated, but that, in fact, promote cultural flexibility within rigid, unspoken systems of external cultural classification. The novels I examine in this chapter are

Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress by Daniel Defoe, the drama She Stoops to Conquer by

Oliver Goldsmith, and Eliza Haywood’s novel The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless.

Roxana focuses on social and cultural movement, using acquired objects to establish Roxana as a member of an entirely different social class. Through careful positioning of herself and her property, Roxana circumvents the social and legal barriers of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain that prevent her from raising her status. At the same time, Defoe introduces the question of whether personal identity changes in

27 accordance with external appearance, raising the concept of identity as related to one’s position in the social and cultural landscape.

She Stoops to Conquer supports the idea of identity as immutable despite outward presentation and object association. The play uses literary objects in the form of costume to give the heroine Kate Hardcastle temporary downward mobility, shedding the restraints of her upper-class role while keeping the economic freedom she experiences as part of her daily life. At the same time, Goldsmith analyzes the assumed power of literary objects to transform individuals; the objects — specifically her costume — hide Kate’s identity from her suitor, Marlow, but they also subject her to less respectful treatment at his hands.

In The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, Haywood presents the story of Betsy

Thoughtless’s journey to womanhood and eventual happiness against a backdrop of consumerism and shopping venues. The novel spotlights the dangers of liminal cultural and social spaces like shops, where exactly what is available for purchase and who is doing the selling can shift without warning. Betsy’s growth as a wise consumer is equally as important as her interpersonal relationships in determining her future happiness. The literary objects she encounters — particularly the ones she purchases or considers buying

— serve as markers for her personal growth throughout the novel.

Chapter Three turns to a special form of literary object, one representing a textual object within the larger text as a whole. These “textual literary objects” range from account books, to government documents, to letters, to poems and novels. In this chapter,

I explore how these objects move from a direct focus on consumerism and social boundaries to questions of political, social, and cultural authority and tradition. As

28 authors continue to explore aspects of individualism and identity throughout the eighteenth-century, textual literary objects often stand in as proxies for larger questions of duty, responsibilities, and traditions. At the same time, the ability of characters to resist textual authority through literacy, providing context and interpretation, receives considerable attention. The resultant tension between self-actualization and cultural and social roles and strictures rests at the core of the three novels examined in this chapter:

Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote, John Gay’s play The Beggar’s Opera, and A

Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne.

In The Female Quixote, Arabella struggles to mesh her highly developed literacies in romances and history to an eighteenth-century world that is entirely at odds with her understanding of the world. Charlotte Lennox shows her readers how Arabella’s books not only shape her internal self, but also mediate her relationship with and understanding of her society. Based on a reality that does not match the dominant culture around her, her constructed self deters her; only when she moves away from the objects foundational to her understanding can she integrate and succeed in society.

The Beggar’s Opera, on the other hand, uses its satirical premise to suggest that not only is authority ultimately empty of meaning, but that literacy is equally impossible to achieve. Gay’s comedic approach extends to the use of texts, even including the script of the play. His continued use of doubled meanings, contradictory interpretations, and mistaken understandings create a space in which discourse is impossible and the resulting chaos serves as tabula rasa for characters, audience, and readers alike.

Finally, Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy stages a competition between textual literary objects to see which form of authority ultimately

29 embodies individual identity in a humanistic world. In the story of Yorick’s efforts to acquire a French passport, Sterne creates a contest between social authority (the passport), cultural authority (a collection of Shakespeare’s works), and personal authority

(Yorick’s own story in the larger text of the novel). Each textual literary object has a claim to the identity of Yorick, and Sterne pits them against each other to discover which form of authority has the greatest power to determine an individual’s identity.

Chapter Four unites the previously discussed types of literary objects to create a case study in their real-world effects, as applied by booksellers to previously printed eighteenth-century British novels that had fallen out of copyright protection. I examine

Charlotte Lennox’s Henrietta and Francis Coventry’s The History of Pompey the Little in their initial printings. I then analyze their illustrated interpretations as part of the part- issue publication, The Novelist’s Magazine; and finally as part of the illustrated “Cooke’s

Select Novels” series, all published in the latter half of the eighteenth century. In each of these, I evaluate physical aspects of the text including type, page design, and illustration to explore the ways these changes to the physical object of the text modify the relation between the original author and reader that shapes the reading experience. These eighteenth-century booksellers used literary objects to assume a degree of authorial control over existing texts, taking on the authority within the text for their own branding purposes and, in the process, creating a new form of gatekeeping for print culture by inventing a proto-canon of British literature.

In the conclusion, I discuss some of the wider ramifications of the use of literary objects in eighteenth-century British literature. Each examination of objects as demarcators of individual, cultural, and social boundaries shows not just that objects

30 order culture, but that they also act to categorize individuals within a consumer-oriented culture. As they interact with the world, people study the objects that surround a person for clues as to the subject’s place in the social and cultural hierarchy. Viewers use this information to determine what sort of interaction with the subject is appropriate given their own stations in life. In this, the “wall and door” analogy is clearly visible as the object connected to a person determines access to that person on the part of observers.

This observed object-defined self stands in for the individual’s person to a large extent, leading to a void or absence for those unable to assemble an appropriate collection of objects. Authors manipulated and disseminated ideas through literature, challenging or supporting construed interpretations of object-person relationships such as ownership or possession. In doing so, they acted as a force for potential social change, whether intentionally or not. The result, in hindsight, was an exploration through literary objects into how the subject-object relationship defines an individual as a person, rather than as an object to be commodified as its owner saw fit.

31 Chapter One

The Walls Between Us: Literary Objects as Barriers in Defoe, Mackenzie, and Austen

As authors in the early eighteenth century began to experiment with new methods of telling stories, the presentation of objects in those stories underwent a significant change that focused on the representation of an object per se, with all its associated cultural and social meaning, as opposed to simply a plot device. Authors noted the changing role of objects as consumer culture expanded and brought this new awareness of objects as mediating social actors into their texts. A letter, for example, was no longer just a plot device as it was in Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina, or Love in a Maze (1725) where it serves only to prompt or record. Haywood does not describe letters as material objects; there is no description of their appearance, weight, or tactile impression. The letters and other objects exist only in the abstract as sketches to fill a narrative void. By contrast, the letters in Samuel Richardson’s novel Clarissa (1747), roughly twenty years later, are shown to readers through the work’s text and recreated as part of the novel’s manuscript. With pauses and scribbles, dashes and marginalia, the letters that comprise the novel are given in exacting detail that partially recreates the physicality of fictional acts of writing; they are the focus and method by which Richardson conveys all the plots and trickery and confession, mirroring to an extent his own method of composition. The letters represent both the fictional acts of writing and the characters of the novel, sent secretly and taken from hiding places. They convey information about the characters through writing styles, composition, and ostensible physicality.

Though the narrative role of letters in the two novels is similar, the attention

32 shown to the letters as objects is fundamentally different. Ian Watt argues that greater attention to objects, beginning with Defoe’s work, was in service to greater verisimilitude and echoed Locke’s focus on an object’s primary qualities (Watt 102). The inclusion of those primary qualities is indeed more immersive than material references in Haywood’s early works; we do not even have that information about Fantomina’s letters. Defoe’s use of sparing detail, however, is more than background description. His descriptions of the material world illustrate the personalities and beliefs of his characters in ways that their own admissions and descriptions never would. They use his readers’ experience with material culture to tacitly inform their understanding of his work. In Clarissa,

Richardson builds on Defoe’s efforts and takes advantage of layered cultural knowledge regarding letter writing and correspondence to convey important information to readers without making direct statements. His continued attention to material detail as a central part of the story represents a larger change. Over the course of the eighteenth century, objects became continually more complex in cultural significance as they proliferated throughout British society. Authors could then use references to these objects to draw upon shared cultural knowledge and convey information in multiple ways simultaneously. Cultural shifts in how objects and object ownership were viewed led to complex, subjective views of personal, everyday objects. Eighteenth-century British authors took advantage of this rapid accretion of cultural meanings to complicate their narratives, focusing on a particular meaning or meanings important to the story out of the multiple cultural associations available.

These literary objects, as I call the representational references to objects that proliferate throughout literature from the 1700s onwards, form a stock of images and

33 associations that the author can call upon for the reader, giving specific, tacit meanings to scenes and characters that readers who share the author’s cultural references will understand. By creating fictional environments filled with specifically interpreted literary objects, writers from Daniel Defoe in the early part of the century to Henry Mackenzie and Jane Austen in the later part could represent and manipulate those objects in ways that drew on what can be considered common knowledge for the author’s envisioned readers, what Cynthia Wall calls a “memory storehouse” (39). Authors then referenced those objects in ways that would indicate social, cultural, and personal boundaries, or

"walls," highlighting separations between individuals within the narrative setting of the novel that reflect similar separations in the real world.

These authors and others made use of the growing consumer culture in Britain to create a structured connection to their readers. They incorporated textual references to objects and deliberate manipulation of print technology to shape, or mediate, their remote interactions with contemporary readers, creating a secondary means of transferring information by embedding it in shared references within the text. In doing so, they reinforced the importance of objects in both cultural and social considerations, feeding narrative meanings back into the society from which it initially took those meanings.

Authors thus helped to build the role of objects as meaningful personal statements that could include or exclude individuals, signifying personal boundaries and advertising social and cultural status.

One reason for the increasingly polysemous use of objects throughout eighteenth- century British fiction is that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, British culture underwent a material transformation. James I had largely repealed the sumptuary

34 laws of the Elizabethan era in the early seventeenth century, which coincided with the rise of the British Empire and the resulting influx of what were once rare commodities.

By the eighteenth century, commerce provided British subjects with sugar from Brazil

(grown on plantations resembling Robinson Crusoe’s), tea from China, spices from the

West Indies, tobacco from the Thirteen Colonies, and cotton from India. Both domestic goods and imported luxuries became more affordable and easily available to individuals from nearly every class.9 As previously rare, restricted materials and objects grew more and more prevalent in eighteenth-century British culture, luxury as a concept underwent a significant revision. Disagreements about which citizens were entitled to what types of objects caused great concern on both political and religious fronts. “Luxury” as a term began the century describing the moral failing of members of the lower classes who owned objects associated with higher stations, thus seeking idle pleasure and muddling class distinctions.10 By the end of the century, however, it had changed to describe members of the upper class who sought out excessive consumption of foreign goods instead of domestically made items, thus harming the economy (Bellamy 14).

The rise of tea drinking in British society is a clear illustration of this phenomenon. Tea moved from a luxury good for the aristocracy at the advent of the eighteenth century, to a necessity for all classes by the beginning of the nineteenth century. Between servants reusing previously brewed tea leaves and a greater availability of tea for purchase at increasingly lower prices, the practice of tea drinking spread to all levels of society. By 1760, it was a staple of the middle classes, including all the pots and plate accompanying it (Berg 229). As late as 1773, Dissenting minister Richard Price wrote that the “lower ranks of the people are altered in every respect for the worse”

35 thanks to “delicacies” such as tea and wheaten bread (qtd. in Porter 218). By the 1790s, the inability to purchase tea and sugar became the definition of poverty (Olsen 356).

Tea and other objects once restricted to the upper classes, and thus signaling class membership, lost that larger cultural marker and instead gained significance as an expression of personal identity and preference. No longer solely indicating one’s social class and wealth, object ownership (particularly of imported objects) created controversies over the health and welfare of England as a whole. At the same time, the social and cultural need for demarcation did not disappear. Differentiation appeared in methods, costs, and means of consumption, providing new, aestheticized means of judging social class and cultural alignment through taste and understanding in addition to material ownership.

Changes in availability and ownership were not restricted to consumables, either.

Material objects became not only a source of individual identity within British culture, but also an agent of social change and anxiety, in some cases obscuring class and social boundaries.11 A toothpick case, for instance, could belong to nearly anyone. Its decoration, shape, and materials, however, acted as a statement regarding the owner's aesthetics, taste, and wealth, as we see in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811), when Elinor and Marianne encounter Mr. Robert Ferrars at the jeweler’s shop. As evidence of his vapid, foppish nature, Austen tells us he spends at least half an hour deciding on “the ivory, the gold, and the pearls” with which to adorn his new custom toothpick case (Sense 156). His expectation of admiration from the Dashwood sisters for his sense of taste denotes a personality of “sterling insignificance” (156), confirmed when we later learn his identity and observe his conversational skills.

36 Robert Ferrars’ concern over the details of his new toothpick case, however, reveals his own constructed self. Within his social circles, the expectation of admiration over expressions of taste was valid. New expectations of ability and wealth attended objects as consumer culture became more entrenched, colliding at times with the older class significations attached to object ownership. These items held a meaning beyond just use value; they signified social and cultural information about their owners. In eighteenth-century Britain, therefore, ownership became a widely understood means of self-expression, something that projected an aspect of one’s personal identity.

Within a consumer culture — a culture based on the availability and practice of consuming goods — the role of objects extends beyond mere utility. The anthropologist

Arjun Appadurai suggests that consumption in such a culture involves both sending and receiving social messages through objects — commodities — that circulate within it (33).

Messages sent by objects between the people involved in that culture are used to mark territory and declare where individuals belong in a social or cultural hierarchy. The eighteenth-century cultural anxiety about tea and bread is not actually about those objects, for example, but about the blurring of class and economic boundaries that those objects once represented. Other objects, however, such as teapots, dishes, and cutlery gained meaning as boundary markers that the consumable commodities lost. All these things served to mark distinctions between individuals, creating litmus tests of inclusion and exclusion for individuals based on the goods they owned or used. According to

Wolfram Schmidgen, eighteenth-century Britain in particular was home to “a communal imagination that closely aligns persons and things” (1), which was a clear result of a society that uses objects as conduits of social information. In such a society, a letter

37 becomes more than an abstraction; its form and details reveal important information about the person who wrote it that readers would be able to interpret. While objects in the physical world transmitted and received information, authors took that mediating functionality and applied it in their texts. Mentioning a type of object, such as a silver teapot, in association with a character would convey the teapot’s associated social and cultural information to the reader just as well as its physical counterpart would. Literary objects were no less subject to those rules than their physical counterparts, and became necessary for authors who attempted to create recognizable settings and empathetic characters.12

We can understand these relationships between consumers and objects in literary works by examining the ways British fiction in the 1700s portrayed complex social networks. The aim of this chapter is to use three representative novels to examine how eighteenth-century authors employed the complex position of objects in society to indicate social and cultural barriers. Taken together, they show us increasingly externalized perspectives of the relationship between self, objects, and society. By tracking the perspective outward from the individual across these three works, we can examine how eighteenth-century British authors increasingly used objects to trade on readers’ understanding of and participation in consumer culture.

The first of the three novels I examine in this chapter, Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, is not only one of the foundational novels of British literature, but also houses a self-contained community of objects with a single man at the center as both creator and consumer. Defoe shows us the individual as reflected by a self-sustained world of consumer culture, wherein the

38 boundaries created by Crusoe’s objects illuminate his interiority and create a blank-slate experiment in what makes up the human condition. His examination of reproduction and transformation is crucial to Robinson Crusoe (as it is in all of his works), but here Defoe uses it to create a closed system in which Crusoe can learn to know both himself and

God. Through his examination of objects and Crusoe’s relationships to them, Defoe illustrates Crusoe’s character; the objects on the island provide a model community with challenges he must systematically overcome for him to bring about his eventual spiritual rebirth.

In contrast, The Man of Feeling by Henry Mackenzie focuses not on a community of objects but on the human cost inherent in a culture of commodities. Harley’s inability to forge a connection that is not reliant on financial transaction reveals Mackenzie’s concerns about the decline of social connection and the need for emotional exertion in order to resist the invisible economic barriers, represented by currency, that separate people from one another. Through examining the social power of economic transactions,

Mackenzie attempts to train his readers to emotionally connect with one another through a shared response to the troubles of his protagonist in an unfeeling commercial world. His concerns with the role of the self in a consumer-based world are echoed in the patchwork form of the final “manuscript,” which is a jumble of mismatched chapters and anecdotes fictionally used as gun wadding that is salvaged and reassembled by someone with no direct knowledge of the ostensible author. By connecting function to form, we see

Mackenzie take the journals of Crusoe a step further, creating a book specifically designed to provoke emotion while showing how the text itself as a commercial object inevitably distances us from the characters in the text.

39 Finally, Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility explores how gender influences object ownership and relationships in a world dominated by concerns of wealth and class.

While Defoe focused on person-object interaction and Mackenzie focused on society and valuation, Austen focuses on cultural encoding of individuals and situations through objects. She takes up the externalized viewpoint of a society observer looking at and interpreting the objects in the scene in order to understand characters and actions as they navigate both social conventions and an uncertain financial future. Austen’s use of sparse detail highlights the important and meaningful objects in her works, allowing readers to interpret their associations and make judgments of her characters accordingly. Whether she’s discussing pianofortes and the need for young women to appear accomplished, the tendency of young men to overspend on horses and leisure, or the role of print as a cornerstone of British class culture, Austen’s precise portrayal of objects draws upon questions of class, wealth, and responsibility.

From these examples, we can see how authors from Defoe to Austen used objects not only to create and explicate their characters’ identities, but also to highlight the boundaries of class, wealth, and other issues that divided their society without having to directly address those divisions. These signified boundaries clarify the forces that separate people from one another — the “walls” that divide society by personal identity, gender, wealth, class, and nationality. Through Crusoe’s island, Harley’s transactions, and the Dashwoods’ belongings (or consequent lack), we can see how eighteenth-century

British authors grow increasingly skilled at tacitly conveying social landscapes through object placement and associations. In doing so, they create a reflection of society that is recognizable to readers despite the clear fictionalization of the work.

40 Robinson Crusoe and the Object-Defined Self

Robinson Crusoe clearly exemplifies how literary objects define personal boundaries in an imagined world. As Virginia Woolf admiringly observed, Defoe’s first novel is famous for its vast array of objects and the resourcefulness his protagonist displays (285).13 Thrown into a world full of potential but utterly lacking social accommodations, Crusoe establishes his personal identity and his relationship with God as he fashions a man-made settlement on the island. Crusoe takes lost materials that he pulls from the wreckage and creates new objects with them, using them to refigure himself through narrative. Defoe details (to the point of exhaustion) Crusoe’s situation and the various things his character makes to focus on the relationship between object and human, thus informing readers about Crusoe’s personality. His literary objects show the boundaries of Crusoe’s identity, and in doing so encourage readers to examine their own identities as well.

At first glance, the events of Robinson Crusoe stand in seeming defiance of Arjun

Appadurai’s argument that objects in a consumption culture serve as both transmitter and receiver of social information. Crusoe’s time on the island is in a non-capitalist (and thus non-consumer) society; he is both producer and consumer. The property of his person is unquestioned; he has no one to buy from or sell to, and no government to tax him. His labor and its fruits are, as Karl Marx observes, his own: “all the relations between

Robinson and these objects that form his self-created wealth are here so simple and transparent as to be intelligible without exertion” (169). The objects on the island cannot signal social information to others, nor can they receive it, as there is no culture for the

41 objects to mediate via information exchange. Cynthia Wall characterizes Defoe’s description as a “poised, still whole, inviting rather than responding to narrative action”

(112). Crusoe’s island waits for him to act, holding back from meaning until his interactions provide both context and content.

Crusoe is an ambitious trader and merchant during the early British Empire. Once on the island, however, Crusoe’s Lockean “State of Nature” makes his former life experience irrelevant. The context for his identity is erased. He is unwilling to abandon his past knowledge, however, so he creates a culture similar to the one he is familiar with out of the material at hand. He replaces individuals with objects, with himself as both ruler and ruled while adding value to the land (Novak, “Utopia” 480). He adapts his previous experience to impressing meaning upon his environment. The stillness of his described surroundings, however, force him to re-evaluate his sense of inherent material meaning. His assumed role is that of the sovereign of a created community with its various constituents, rural for the “Country-House” (his bower in the valley) and urban for his “Sea-Coast-House” or castle (Crusoe 74). Crusoe’s non-human subjects resist this classification, however, with some (such as the feral cats) refusing to take part in his society altogether. In order to create a functioning world out of his island, Crusoe has to set aside his mercantile experience and learn a new method of relating to the world and himself.14

Rather than using objects as indications of larger social or cultural boundaries,

Defoe employs Crusoe’s ongoing project of cultural creation as a means to reveal his character’s internal metamorphosis. The literary objects he creates still transmit and receive information, but it is regarding Crusoe’s personality and spiritual conversation,

42 creating boundaries of identity for readers to interpret. Just as Latour’s nonhuman actors participate in society by mediating human relationships, Defoe’s literary objects intercede between Crusoe and the reader, giving information to the reader that would otherwise be impossible to know.

Consequently, Defoe fills the island of his novel with a full slate of resources, taking inspiration from popular travel narratives of the day such as Aphra Behn’s

Oroonoko (1688), Joseph Addison’s Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (1705), and

Edward Cooke’s A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World (1712). From the time he begins to dismantle the ship, Crusoe takes control of his environment and begins organizing it to suit his desires. He has traveled the world, but it takes being shipwrecked on a deserted island for his interiority to become evident: his emotional storms, his spiritual struggles, his fears and joys. His world of objects and resources mediates all of

Crusoe’s interactions while on the island, building a walled-in space that allows for his self-exploration and eventual transition into a faithful Christian. Recovered objects serve as his religious guides; even his relationship to God is mediated by a set of particular, sometimes oppositional, material texts.15 Crusoe is able to repurpose and synthesize the found objects, however, into a syncretic whole while transforming himself in the process.

His ability to do so, however, is less about his inner resourcefulness and more about his response to the external pressure of existing goods limiting his adaptation. He is pushed toward a spiritual and personal change precisely because he is the most inherently malleable substance on the island.

Only through a forcible retirement are Crusoe’s internal workings effectively displayed; Defoe achieves this revelation by creating a community of literary objects to

43 function as Crusoe’s primary society. Beginning with the objects from the ship and their associated cultural and social resonances, Crusoe builds a familiar landscape for himself, walling out the uncivilized wilderness and only allowing that which he can domesticate within his space. Despite the New World hue of the plot, however, Defoe relies on his readers’ cultural expectations about knowledge, much as Crusoe himself draws upon the familiar resources of the ship to start his new life.

Building a realistic, sustainable, closed system of objects that is still open to change is not an easy task. As Defoe observes, “Every Man knows his own Affairs, moves in his own Circle, pursues the mechanism of his own particular Business; but take him out of his Road, he knows nothing of the Reason, or the End of what he is about”

(Plan of the English Commerce vii). Defoe has to strip Crusoe’s previous life experience away before new growth can happen, moving him from a man well-versed in his life and pursuits to a man who must learn everything from the objects he has rescued and his own trial and error. The world of the novel, as constituted by its objects, serves as a sounding board for Crusoe, allowing the reader to observe him and learn his character even without another human to illuminate and explain his thoughts and feelings.16 His efforts to master and create his environment challenge his self-defined identity, allowing him to grow and change over the course of his isolation. For this reason, Maximillian Novak calls Defoe

“the most versatile and prolific creator of systems in his age” (Realism 13). As Novak goes on to note, “[Defoe] provides us with a picture of imagination at work, creating, ordering, and absorbing the world around him” (45). The world Crusoe creates is a reflection of himself.

Within this bounded, stable space, Defoe sets up a binary relationship between the

44 confusing and shifting human cultural world and the steady, illuminating world of the object-filled island. From the beginning, we see Crusoe from the outside in. On the first page, for example, Defoe gives us Crusoe’s name, his family, and his prospects as seen by others, not by himself.

My Father being a Foreigner of Bremen … from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer, but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call’d me. (Crusoe 4)

Crusoe has nothing of his own to set him apart, not even his name, which is composed of the surnames of both his mother and father, with the latter changed further to suit English society. His dissatisfaction with his position in the world is evident from his first report of the name assigned to him by his community and companions, derived wholly from his lineage and thus irrelevant to his sense of personal identity.

When Crusoe finally leaves home and goes out on his own, he begins crafting an independent identity for himself, though time and again he is reminded of a prior object- relations economy (ships and their culture in particular) that dictates the roles he can play. The first test of his success is when he is taken as a slave and all his belongings are stripped away. He is treated as an object; chosen as a prize by the Sallee Captain, his previous social identity as a part of the “middle State” is eradicated. For the first two years of his servitude, he is kept primarily as a house slave and domestic laborer. He complains that there was “no Fellow-Slave, no Englishman, Irishman, or Scotsman there but myself” (Crusoe 16), with no one to recognize his previous status or commiserate with him. Only after Crusoe is able convince his master to let him go fishing regularly does he meet an Englishman, but that only briefly (Crusoe 16). During Crusoe’s time as a

45 slave he therefore owns nothing, not even himself. Because he holds onto his sense of who he was, though, he is able to keep his resolve intact. Refusing to be a slave, he sets out to regain the right of self-determination through escape. To accomplish that, however, he has to appropriate the objects that convey the status of his master; he accumulates and steals objects that belong to his enslaver (particularly the boat), which then permit his own liberation.

While captive to the Sallee Captain, Crusoe lacks the resources to create anything that will aid his escape. He achieves his freedom by commandeering the objects that symbolize his captivity. The boat he takes, the guns, the Moor Ismael, and the boy Xury: all these are the trappings of the Sallee Rover who enslaved him. Just taking possession of the items is insufficient, however; Crusoe does not bargain with Xury and Ismael, or offer to share with them. Instead, he asserts control, even to the extent of exiling Ismael since as an older man he proves a threat. He finally sells both the boat and Xury to the

Portuguese captain, freeing himself of the last of his captivity and resuming his independent status. Only when Crusoe has gained the ability to own and dispose of others can he reassert his own self-ownership.

The boat Crusoe steals is far from the only vessel in the novel, and all serve as a reflection of his struggle for self-identification, moving him closer to his goal. Each trip changes Crusoe’s economic status and social position for good or ill, but none allows him to change or establish his core identity in any meaningful way.17 By deconstructing the ship that traps as well as frees him and putting its components to new, personalized uses,

Crusoe creates the space in which his personal transformation can happen.

Because Crusoe values change (and exchange) so highly, the process of change is

46 crucial to the form of the novel. Before he is stranded on the island, Crusoe equates the ability to transform others with worth, determining how he treats the people he encounters. His Brazilian neighbor Wells, also a plantation owner (and thus potential slave owner) becomes his friend rather than a subordinate;18 the English Captain’s

Widow, on the other hand, is little more than a placeholder and a dependent. His relationships continually revert back to economic exchanges and use value, as we see in the valuations of the care of his friends and subsequent financial rewards, the worth of his plantation, and the cost of the materials he purchases for the island. The metrics of cultural and economic value by which he judges others remain steady regardless of his environment. Crusoe measures his success before his shipwreck according to his ability to transform his environment and make it profitable; once the possibility of economic value is removed, however, only the potential to enact change (and the power it represents) remains.

None of this requires a change in his own person; in fact, his life before the island indicates he is resistant to change. Taking advice is tantamount to allowing someone else to transform him, forcing him to resist even the best suggestions for his welfare in order to preserve his autonomy. In the end, however, material transformation is key to Defoe’s presentation of personal identity. Crusoe must himself be changed. The island cocoon of resistant objects that he creates redirects his transformational energies inward.19 He learns to occupy a subject position, imposed upon him by the material world and through that world, God. Defoe subverts Crusoe’s secular mercantile outlook of material transformation into a deterministic Christian belief system, in which external change is the purview of God alone. This essential conflict between beliefs is why the objects that

47 constitute the island are so energized in the text despite their spare descriptions. The literary objects here build a stable world for Crusoe to inhabit and transform, where the only movement or meaning is supplied and made evident by the changes to his environment, as opposed to the ongoing ebb and flow of humanity’s activity.

Crusoe’s self-perception prior to the island is largely rooted in his ability to turn land into goods, and goods into wealth. Once on the island, though, Crusoe’s same focus on his ability to change one thing into another leads him eventually turns inward, contributing to his own internal conversion. When he produces the pot that Woolf so admires, he is haunted by how inferior it is to those he saw made back in civilization: “as to the Shapes of them, they were very indifferent, as any one may suppose, when I had no way of making them; but as the Children make Dirt-Pies, or as a Woman would make

Pies, that never learn’d to raise Past” (Crusoe 89). His sense of his own individual accomplishment is diminished. It is not about invention so much as it is about replication.

From the first salvage trip to the shipwreck, Crusoe takes control of his environment and begins organizing it to suit his desires. In response to his need of a boat, he states “that it was in vain to sit still and wish for what was not to be had” (Crusoe 37).

Instead, Crusoe takes action and wrests the materials of a raft from the ship’s carcass. He uses the materials he gains to build an environment more suited to his liking and his prospective community, just as he uses the skins of animals to clothe and protect his body. In each of these instances, Crusoe’s focus is on the object and its utility, rather than its inherent qualities. Even when objects change on their own, such as when the stakes in his fence take root and grow into trees, or the seeds he carelessly scatters become plants, he prizes the unplanned growth and immediately acts to control it and bend it to his

48 advantage.20

Defoe discourages unfettered reproduction in the novel, perhaps because of the threat it poses to a stable system of objects. As Stephen Gregg notes, Defoe carefully sets limits to Crusoe’s productivity so as not to introduce ideas of profit or luxury (82).

Crusoe can transform what he has been given, and in the case of farming and animal husbandry even increase it. His resources limit his available goods, however; he cannot reproduce any object indefinitely. He does not master any of his crafts. Until the ship arrives to rescue him, he cannot even engage in trade, and thus cannot profit from any excess he might create (Crusoe 94). As Andrew Varney notes, in Crusoe’s isolation on the island, wealth as measured by consumer culture has ceased to have worth (17);

Crusoe’s previous standard measure of change has been made irrelevant, and thus he is forced to create new standards for success. From his clothes to his household objects, all sense of vanity and decoration is stripped away from Crusoe, reinforcing a focus on utility over aesthetics.21 The objects he creates are basic and functional; any aesthetic qualities that come to them do so accidentally, as with his earthen pot. When the sand melts and glazes the earthen pot, it is coincidental rather than an effort to add use-value or additional economic value (Crusoe 88).

In addition to using a closed system of objects to provide an opportunity for

Crusoe’s personal growth, Defoe uses the isolation of his island community to explore managing domestic and foreign affairs. Crusoe civilizes and transforms the island, creating his “subjects,” then proceeds to create a microcosm wherein he can experiment with methods of rule.

Beginning with the creation of the manmade cave in which to store and organize

49 his materials, Crusoe imposes order on his surroundings. His chosen organizational style, dividing and conquering, is designed to limit threats to both himself and his control over the island precisely because his rulership only continues while his community endures as a peaceful whole. He applies his methods of compartmentalization equally to humans and objects, using fences, religion, and physical locations to separate potentially dangerous influences from one another.

Crusoe survives (and even thrives) by applying order to what seems chaotic, emulating on a micro scale the division of the creation story in Genesis. By portioning out and separating anything that has sufficient power to challenge his preferred organizational pattern, whether human or object, Crusoe creates an effective governing structure on a small scale that empowers him as ruler over his object community, assuming sole responsibility for its well-being (and thus his own).

Crusoe applies his principles of governance to everything that could disrupt his community, whether animals, gunpowder, or individuals. When Crusoe measures out the gunpowder parcels and places them throughout his cave so that “it might not be possible to make one part fire another” (Crusoe 46), he enacts the same rules that will apply to people. From that period, Crusoe repeatedly applies separation and differentiation to his world as a means of control. In dealing with the native inhabitants, he splits up forces that might otherwise overwhelm him; he uses force or physical violence only as a last resort

(147). Crusoe likewise supports religious tolerance among his “subjects,” specifically the

Spaniard and Friday’s father, noting that their respective religious differences will keep them separated from one another and thus unlikely to join in rebellion (174). When dealing with the English mutineers, he treats them with precisely the same care as he did

50 with his gunpowder, storing his volatile visitors in his cave, bound up and apart from each other (194). When Crusoe cannot enforce separation, he avoids the situation. For example, he refuses to go among the shipwrecked Spaniards as he might be overpowered by a group of like-minded desperate men, who cannot easily be contained (176). Instead, he sends their representative back to collect them, but only after they agree to come peacefully and accept him as their ruler:

I gave him a strict Charge in Writing, Not to bring any Man with him, who would not first swear in the Presence of himself [the Spaniard] and of the old Savage, That he would in no way injure, fight with, or attack the Person he should find in the Island, who was so kind to send for them in order to their Deliverance; but that they would stand by and defend him against all such Attempts, and where- ever they went, would be entirely under and subjected to his Commands. (179)

Crusoe is aware that his continued leadership rests in a supportive populace, and so he attempts to contractually engage the Spaniards to turn over their individual rights in return for acceptance into his society. His demands thus reinforce Defoe’s attempt to create a theoretical Lockean political structure within his novel.22

All Defoe’s political theorizing and Crusoe’s changes would be meaningless, however, without the ongoing reading and writing that provide the mechanism of transformation. In trying to shape his story for others, Crusoe rewrites himself. He knows the importance of writing, despite being no scholar, and recognizes the power of narrative to shape his story and make a useful example to others. Before he even finds writing utensils, he creates a system for measuring time out of materials at hand. From his first words written on the island, he crafts his story, carving “I come on Shore here on the 30th of Sept. 1659” into a large post with a knife (Crusoe 48). He uses objects (the knife and post) to make a definitive declaration of date, place, and being, summing up his previous trials and likewise dividing and organizing time. He carves his story out of the island

51 through “Pens, Ink, and Paper” (48) just as he carves a cave for himself out of the hill behind his tent. The journal he creates out of the writing objects he scavenges from the ship provides a carefully crafted window into his thoughts and emotions, which is later published as one of those very commodities altering England’s social and political landscape.

One of the first examples of Crusoe’s written thoughts is an outline of his

“Condition, and the Circumstance I was reduc’d to” (Crusoe 49). In making it, he creates a mental map of both his situation and his emotional state, showing both what frightens him and what gives him hope. Much as his carvings on the post give him a starting place and date, this document of his condition provides a benchmark against which his personal progress can be measured. By creating the document, Crusoe demonstrates that he is open to change, signaling a turn in the novel from cataloging specific events to taking stock metaphysically. Writing down “Evil” and “Good” about his situation, Crusoe answers each of his own concerns (most of which are about his loneliness) with the insight that he is alone, but he is alive, he has abilities, and he is surrounded by objects that will keep him safe and “supply his Wants” (50). His two-column list creates a visual

“crack” in the page, a space in which his transformation can begin (see fig. 1). The literary object of the two-column list marks a turning point in the novel, after which

Crusoe’s spiritual growth is highlighted.

52

Figure 1. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, first edition, London, 1719. ECCO. P. 76.

Defoe uses Crusoe’s journaling to create variant versions of the character and a detailed history that slowly moves him toward spiritual conversion. His sense of self and bodily experience is placed at the forefront to accentuate his emotional and physical trauma. He orders his narrative and experience and creates a proper distance between himself and his would-be readers, thus setting expectations for both intimacy in the culture he wishes to create and the role of bystanders in it. Through the journal, and thus

53 the novel as a whole, Crusoe’s position as an Englishman who maintains an appropriate cultural distance and class-based knowledge is secured and foreshadowed. Through the journal along with the rest of the island’s objects, eighteenth-century British readers can compare Crusoe to people and objects they know. They can observe his behavior via a familiar medium, and thus build their own relationship with the character despite his isolation through witnessing his interactions with his island world.

In giving us Crusoe’s story, Defoe breaks new ground in the realistic use of objects in prose narrative; he sets the stage for more detailed portrayals of objects and demonstrates that objects can energize new literary forms. Giving and receiving information to and from Crusoe as Appadurai suggests, Defoe’s literary objects create a visualized space for the reader in which a solitary man can manifest his otherwise invisible transformation. With Robinson Crusoe, Defoe lays the groundwork for other authors to use object-signified boundaries in their works as well, creating new pathways of communication between themselves and their readers.

Financial Transactions as Emotional Boundaries in The Man of Feeling

In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe uses a closed system of objects to make a bounded space to serve as Crusoe’s crucible, bringing him into a greater harmony with God and the world as a whole. With the advent of consumer culture through the eighteenth century and the prominence of worldwide trade within the British Empire, Defoe’s self-sufficient island had little basis in reality. The influx of goods and the resultant price decreases meant that all levels of society in Britain were changing, as the adoption of tea makes

54 evident. With a regular cycle of ships direct to China beginning in 1717, the tea trade alone jumped from nine million pounds of tea in the 1720s to more than 37 million pounds of tea by the 1750s. Durable goods accompanied consumables; wallpaper became popular, as did carpets and clocks, stockings and cloaks (Black 73-74).

Defoe championed a primarily internal system of trade for England much like he envisioned for Crusoe’s island, in which foreign goods were restricted or outlawed and domestic manufacturing replaced them.23 His dreams of a primarily self-sustaining

English economy, however, were dashed in a flood of both foreign and domestic commodities over the course of the eighteenth century. The rise of consumer culture led to a society in which novelty and comfort held sway, and goods — particularly imported foreign goods — increasingly signaled wealth or status, as demonstrated in the passage of the protectionist Calico Acts of 1700 and 1721, which banned not just the newly popular imported Indian calicos and other cotton fabrics, but also any fabrics made purely of cotton (thus protecting the domestic silk, woolen, and linen industries) until their repeal in 1774. English weavers supported these laws, blaming the East India Company and their calicos “not only for the collapse of the English economy but also for the moral corruption of Englishwomen” (Eacott 739).

Over time, however, despite protectionist efforts, traditional models of trade were replaced in favor of the ongoing purchasing power of the consumer. Improvements to roads and transportation made it easier to travel and thus traffic patterns in cities and towns changed (Black 62). The traditional monthly and quarterly fairs at which people bought wares from tradesmen declined over the course of the century as imported goods and consumer demand made shops practical and profitable (74). For some, these changes

55 indicated increased British importance and greater opportunities for wealth. Others, however, such as Henry Mackenzie, bemoaned the loss of contact and community.

Mackenzie was a lawyer from Edinburgh who was deeply involved in Scottish literary circles. His income practicing law and working for the Crown allowed him to pursue writing as well. Over his life he wrote plays and novels, as well as editing the first two

Scottish weekly periodicals, The Mirror and The Lounger. Mackenzie acted as a champion of both Scottish Enlightenment principles and as an early supporter of Scottish authors such as Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott (Dreischer).

In the wake of expanding consumer culture, Mackenzie might have agreed with

Appadurai’s view of objects as signals of social and cultural divisions, but only as a symptom of social decline. As described in his letters to Elizabeth Rose, Mackenzie sought to spur emotional connection between people, recreating a close-knit community such as he felt with his family and friends. The Man of Feeling came out of just such an effort to close the distances between individuals, marked by the objects they carried and the wealth those objects signified. He focused specifically on currency as a circulating and thus impersonal representation of wealth; unable to be personalized, it cannot send or receive information about its owner except in such quantity that removes it from circulation altogether. Instead, currency can expose the alienating effects of economic forces as they replace community-based systems of exchange. Using his hero’s journey,

Mackenzie identifies the ways money separates members of families and communities in hopes of teaching empathy and sensibility instead.

Mackenzie’s world is antithetical to Defoe’s organizational visions, dismissing the role of the individual as an agent of change. Where Defoe creates a celebratory vision

56 of managerial order, Mackenzie exploits sentimental fiction to draw a landscape in which civilization is slowly breaking down. Crusoe sets out to convert all he touches into a useful, civilized, and profitable arrangement; Mackenzie’s protagonist, Harley, is frustrated and unable to succeed in a materially focused society that does not value his heightened sense of civility and reason. Defoe’s locations teem with possibility and the unknown; Mackenzie’s world leaves no room for advancement or discovery — it is effectively the world an ambitious Crusoe leaves behind time and again in search of new opportunity. The Man of Feeling’s grim setting, however, allows Mackenzie to foreground emotional aspects of human relationships that might be lost against a busier backdrop. In The Man of Feeling, Crusoe’s personal transformation is impossible; instead, Mackenzie highlights the ways emotional connection and pathos could potentially renew the human spirit. In place of inherent possibility, he presents the impossibility of constructive organic change, urging readers to consciously feel and act in order to preserve human connection.

Drawing out his readers’ emotional reactions, Mackenzie launches Harley on a quixotic quest in the face of modern commercial life. He particularly focuses on moveable property and currency to map out how people tend to communicate through objects, strengthening a link between currency and a sympathetic response to others and thus counteracting the power of money and finance to sever traditional social ties.

Mackenzie uses Harley’s plight to highlight the protagonist’s encounters with neighbors, friends, and acquaintances at all social levels, which are interrupted by the forces of economic advancement. By forcing readers to confront the human cost of a commodity culture, Mackenzie attempts to train his readers to become people of feeling in an

57 otherwise unfeeling commercial world.

Unlike Defoe, Mackenzie’s attention is drawn to personal relationships and emotional connections to society. In his letters, he posits that sentiment works by recognizing a hidden capacity for feeling through language, which sentimental stories can reveal. In writing to his cousin, Elizabeth Rose, Mackenzie refers to the “Medium of

Sense which in some Degree are Pieces of Mechanism” (Letters to Elizabeth Rose 11).

He goes on to suggest that practice and exposure to ideas can improve not only the mind, but the sense as well. “There is something of an acquired as well as a natural Delicacy, & the Soul as well as the Body has Nerves, which are only affected in a certain indescribable Manner, & gain by frequent Exertion a very superior Degree of Feeling”

(14). As Idilko Csengei notes, Mackenzie uses The Man of Feeling to “mechanically” stir sensibility in readers by showing the suffering of people subject to economic forces who are cut off from community support when they need it most (955). Concerned with the deadening of emotional response that the advent of consumer culture prompted,

Mackenzie highlights the overlap between human interaction and financial transaction and the impossibility of those two motivations coinciding successfully. In doing so, he not only trains his readers in empathy, but also shows the need to re-forge and reinforce traditional community and personal relationships.

In The Man of Feeling, the coins and notes that comprise economic encounters also embody these interpersonal exchanges, drawing the reader’s attention to otherwise easily overlooked interactions. Emotional reactions, romantic attachments, civic duty, familial ties, and social activities are inextricably linked to monetary exchanges and proposals, creating webs that not only attach but also separate individuals, determining

58 both emotional and physical distance between bodies whether animate or inanimate.

Currency cannot attach to any one person, however. It continually circulates through society in moments of personal interaction as featured in multiple popular “it-narratives” of the eighteenth century — including Chrysal by Charles Johnstone, which was published eleven years before The Man of Feeling.24 The movement of currency through the world gives interpersonal exchanges an easily observed form, even as the economic nature of those exchanges degrades the human connection and renders it a mere act of consumption. By highlighting those moments, Mackenzie encourages readers to feel sympathy and outrage on behalf of the characters against an unfair, commercialized world.

Despite the focus on exchangeable forms of currency, none of the money shown accumulates to become wealth; nothing in the novel’s world is significantly changed by any of these exchanges. They are all temporary respites at best for situations that will arise again in a different form. Mackenzie never shows anything with sufficient value to act as movable property, highlighting the difference between his work and Defoe’s representations of amassed wealth. While Defoe shows us an island rich with resources and piles of money for Crusoe to disdain (and then keep), for Harley, increasing one’s income is nearly impossible. Crusoe owns houses and plantations in addition to his murky claim to his island. All his holdings can be, and regularly are, liquidated to give him the ready cash he needs once he returns to European civilization, while Harley is incapable of summoning up anything more than moderate spending money despite his family estate. Harley’s life is marked in currency because that is the only form of transferrable wealth available to him: the cost of a meal, a round of gambling, or alms for

59 a beggar.

Real estate in Mackenzie is both priceless and valueless. Being a landholder means ostensibly having cultural capital, economic wealth, and good social standing.

Mackenzie shows us through Harley, however, that none of these are assured: his cultural capital should be his family name, but it means little thanks to a lack of political power.

His family owns some land, but they live in straitened circumstances. He is respected in his small community, but he is mostly overlooked in favor of others with more wealth or stature. Harley’s land cannot be exchanged for personal property because it is not his: it belongs to his family line. He is the current holder of the estate, but that does not mean he is free to do whatever he wants with it. At the same time, the exact value of the land he wants to acquire is never stated and is irrelevant to the story. The only pertinent detail worth knowing about that parcel is that Harley believes that without it, he cannot marry

Miss Walton.

Land is the first and most pervasive form of economic object presented in The

Man of Feeling. As a gentleman of limited income, Harley cannot settle or even purchase new lands; he must try instead to obtain a lease on the lands next door. There is no room for expansion, only indebtedness. His friends and advisors impress upon him the need to increase his income, though the point is won when Mr. Walton, the father of the woman he admires, offers his assistance with an introduction to the landholder, thus setting

Harley’s efforts in motion. Harley’s adventures must be in the world of finance and favors rather than deserted islands: the social instead of the solitary. He embarks on his journey to London in the hope of changing his fortune, but with no desire to change himself.

60 There is no space in Mackenzie’s England for Harley’s income to expand, and consequently no space for personal transformation within the culture of appraisal he enters. Economic concerns fill The Man of Feeling, forcing its inhabitants to assess the financial cost of their place in society and pay it, or else be exiled from their homes.

Harley is sufficiently independent to avoid most payments, and his social awkwardness comes largely from his awareness of his standing. As his desire is to connect with his fellow people, however, his only opportunity to overcome that awkwardness happens when he meets someone and is able to take on and assume their cultural debt, whether buying a pint of wine for the abandoned Emily Atkins or paying a beggar for his story.

The exchange model of society that Mackenzie presents precludes any other interaction.

The pecuniary focus of Mackenzie’s novel highlights, as Maureen Harkin notes, “the peculiar air of intense emotion and the futility of effort that emerges in sentimental fiction” (13). As opposed to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, economic transactions may hold the promise of transfiguration, but they rarely if ever succeed. Even so, these exchanges and efforts comprise the active portion of human/object interaction within Mackenzie’s novel in both economic philanthropy and financial advancement.

Harley’s unwilling quest for economic improvement is the core of the novel’s plot. A chapter labeled “On Worldly Matters” presents us with Harley’s need for

“increasing his fortune” through the lease of “some crown-lands, which lay contiguous to his little paternal estate” (Man of Feeling 54), setting him on a path to a greater familiarity with the world in the name of financial gain. These lands form a boundary between Harley and his neighbors in a physical sense, yet they are also the basis of an emotional separation, in the form of his suitability in fortune to be worthy of Miss

61 Walton. Despite wanting to make himself a worthy suitor, though, Harley proves too refined for worldly matters. Mackenzie’s sentimental exemplar cannot harness his deep reserve of sensibility to better his economic standing; he can only access it to help those at the mercy of society. Even then, he is restricted in how he can aid others, as financial transactions are considered more socially acceptable than open emotion. His

“bashfulness” (51) indicates that he prefers emotion to currency, but leaves him awkward and ill at ease; he cannot become comfortable in a system where currency mediates personal relations.

Mackenzie’s novel confronts the idea of commercialization as a removal of value not only from land, but also from community. It goes even further, however, as the land in The Man of Feeling is economically unavailable. Instead of land, Mackenzie seems to place the heart of a moral and ethical Britain in a golden age of communal, localized economies based on the exchange of goods rather than money. Defoe’s work in Robinson

Crusoe situates goods as a means to facilitate an elevated sense of global commerce;

Mackenzie’s work uses commerce to illustrate the emptiness of a world without goods.

Harley's situation and thwarted desire for Miss Walton demonstrate this situation, as his land alone is worth very little without trade to support it. His status as a neighbor and lifelong friend of the Waltons should be enough to justify their marriage, yet it doesn’t.

Economic concerns weave their way into even the most remote corners of Mackenzie's narrative, as shown when Harley’s aunt pointedly ignores the change in their family status from important pedigreed landowners to impoverished gentlefolk, weaving the family crest into tablecloths and napkins and decrying the sudden appearance of the newly rich, or “mushroom-gentry, who wear their coats of arms in their purses” (Man of

62 Feeling 122).

Harley’s relationship to his lineage is conflicted, largely because it has been culturally devalued. His position is a significant change from Crusoe’s, where inheritance and cultural reputation were framed as negative aspects that interfered with the formation of individual identity. Harley is instead forced to rely on his family’s status, as it is effectively the only cultural leverage he has.

Despite Harley’s position as the protagonist and point-of-view character, he finds activity difficult, preferring to be a quiet observer. The initial chapter, entitled “On

Bashfulness” sets up this dichotomy, wherein he is pushed to action despite his personal inclinations through discussion of the nature of action and young men. In this chapter, social inactivity or bashfulness is equated to “rust” on the metal of a man’s nature, spoiling the spirit’s usefulness. Too much worldliness, on the other hand, is equated to rough use, spoiling the tool by removing too much metal along with the “rust” of bashfulness, thereby coarsening the spirit (Man of Feeling 51). The greater the sensitivity and virtue (the finer the metal), the greater the damage, hence destroying the individual and foreshadowing Harley’s own demise. His bashfulness comes from his delicate

“consciousness”; as with the initial analogy, his problem is that his metal is too fine for the economic struggle ahead. Instead of feeling energized by the potential economic and personal danger, Harley is overwhelmed. When his friends try to support him, he feels

“pressed,” unable to resist a “torrent of motives that assaulted him” (55). The imagery

Mackenzie uses reveals an onslaught of unpleasant force, equating emotional and physical assault. The exertion of his friends forces him into action, but not because he wants to act. He is cast as the victim of society’s focus on material wealth rather than its

63 champion.

Mackenzie ensures that the reader focuses on Harley's awkward interactions through his presentation of scattered chapters and incomplete tales, choosing moments when Harley's economic actions form the basis of his encounters and creating a piecework method of interaction that pushes readers to share Harley's feelings of awkwardness.25 In addition, Mackenzie strengthens the association between financial exchanges and emotion throughout the work, even as financial solutions prove increasingly inadequate to address the characters’ emotional needs. As an example,

Harley’s first transaction occurs when he tries to give a beggar an extra shilling beyond the sixpence he’d already mentally allocated elsewhere. The scene gives us a detailed example of both Harley’s emotional responses and the inability of financial objects to sufficiently represent them.

In this scene, Harley is leaving home for London and walking at least part of the way. He pauses to remove a pebble from his shoe, and in the process compares himself to a nearby happy beggar, walking barefoot without a care. Harley contrasts the hardiness of the beggar to his own “delicacies,” which are “not in nature,” meaning that the world is unmoved by his emotions and reveries, while he is overset by the smallest obstacle despite his greater social and financial situation (Man of Feeling 59). The main difference between them is that the beggar knows and freely interacts with everyone in the countryside on a purely economic basis, while Harley is a stranger to interpersonal financial exchange as a social interaction and thus is at a social disadvantage. The result is an unstated bargaining exchange with a shilling at stake, which Harley loses.

Mackenzie casts the encounter with the beggar as an internal struggle for Harley.

64 The beggar is a self-admitted professional liar whose cheerful demeanor belies any regret for his current state. Harley realizes this, yet is still persuaded to give the man more money than he had initially planned. Harley’s initial reluctance is portrayed as a scene of struggle between personified Virtue and “a milder form, a younger sister of virtue’s” wherein both influences struggle for his attention. Virtue “holds back his arm” whereas the “younger sister” smiles on his extra charity. Harley is consequently paralyzed with indecision; rather than giving the shilling to the beggar, “his fingers lost their compression” and the shilling fell to the ground, where the beggar’s dog “snapped it up”

(Man of Feeling 61). The end result is the same, but Harley’s position as an agent of change remains doubtful. The object of the shilling becomes the focus of the scene, embodying the silent conflict involved in its transfer but incapable of portraying Harley’s internal struggles to readers.

As the shilling falls to the ground, Harley’s charitable effort remains unresolved.

The satisfaction experienced by both the reader and Harley when he rescues Miss Atkins, for example, does not arise in this situation. This is particularly true compared to

Crusoe’s encounter with the piles of money he finds in the ship, inspiring a virtuous diatribe on the ultimate worthlessness of currency outside the social world (Crusoe 43) even if he ends up keeping it. Harley never takes the position that money is worthless, although he is generally unconcerned with it for himself. Harley’s judgment is placed in question, however, as Mackenzie seems to suggest that the beggar is undeserving of any additional largesse. The exchange accomplishes nothing materially positive and leaves

Harley poorer, but not much wiser. By these means, Mackenzie sets up Harley as not simply naïve, but disconnected from the way the world works. Harley’s “delicate

65 feelings” (Man of Feeling 51) leave him incapable of forming personal connections when financial exchanges are required.

To contrast Harley’s failed intervention, Mackenzie shows us the beggar making a successful living by telling fake fortunes. He goes on to his next appointment, in which the beggar is scheduled to tell teenage girls whether they will marry “peers of the realm, or captains in the army.” His statements are generally accepted as lies by both parties to the transaction and yet are still welcomed as the promise of future positive transformation, “a prospect of happiness” (Man of Feeling 61). All conversations with the beggar are therefore monetized and converted into economic exchanges based on false information. Harley’s shilling is thereby devalued from a charitable intervention to a meaningless gesture; its social worth is hollowed out, fostering a sense of disappointment rather than fulfillment on the reader’s part, setting expectations for future frustrating interactions.

While real estate and Harley’s shilling clearly represent financial concerns,

Mackenzie also considers the problem of human bodies as a form of currency, focusing on the plight of women and the working poor. Assigned a value and treated as resources rather than human beings, these groups receive special attention throughout The Man of

Feeling as Harley encounters them. Contrary to custom, he sees through objectifying social designations and returns them to equal status as human beings by learning their stories, giving them back their names where possible, and sharing emotion over their plights. In this way, Mackenzie highlights the dehumanization that occurs when people are treated as economic objects.

Of the commodified people in The Man of Feeling, Miss Walton fares the best.

66 Rejected by suitors as insufficiently attractive or wealthy, her value as a social commodity is weak. Harley sees past that to a hidden worth in her person, not her economic situation, but he cannot overcome the financial gulf between them in terms of both the land parcel and his own devalued legacy. In treating her as a precious commodity he cannot afford, Harley causes unhappiness for both of them. He is not alone in his view, however; as an unnamed friend explains to Harley’s aunt, “according to the conceptions of the world, the love of a man of Harley’s fortune for the heiress of 4000 l. a-year, is indeed desperate” (Man of Feeling 135). His maiden aunt considers the family pedigree to be valuable social currency, but the world does not agree. Her handwoven tablecloth and napkins with the family crests are rendered valueless and even ridiculous by comparison, much as Harley’s shilling or she herself is (123).

As Mackenzie refers to Miss Walton only by her surname, as Harley would, the reader is placed in a polite but distant relationship mirroring Harley’s own social position and calling to mind Crusoe’s distancing from his own inherited name. The next young woman we meet, however, does not even have her father’s name to fall back on. The madwoman in Bedlam has lost all value to society and has become nameless, not only to the rejected community in which she is kept, but also to herself. Locked away, both her value and her name were lost through the financial and emotional tragedy that befell her.

After her family rejects her impoverished suitor, he goes to sea to earn a fortune and return to her a wealthy man. He dies in the West Indies, however, and her father presses her to marry “a rich miserly fellow, who was old enough to be her grandfather” (Man of

Feeling 70), with the implication that he may have had ulterior financial motives in his choice of son-in-law. She refuses and in the process suffers a mental breakdown. Her

67 emotional crisis reduces her value as a wife and mother to nothing; the deal falls through and her father is financially ruined soon after.

The young woman's status as a commodity becomes clear at the moment she can no longer fulfill that purpose. Bill Brown notes that we cease to notice an object until it fails to serve its intended purpose, thus becoming a “thing” (4). The young woman

Harley encounters is likewise made a thing in that moment, placing her outside of society altogether and grouping her in the madhouse with similarly “broken” individuals who can no longer participate in social and economic exchanges. Her name is therefore voided and her situation as a failed item of commerce becomes plain to everyone.

Despite her forgotten identity and ruined condition, the woman still retains some of her former value. The gold ring she wears is the last sign of her material and social connections, given to her by her lover. It is the only uniquely identifiable object she owns. The other ring she bears was constructed of materials found within the asylum, made of braided gold thread: worthless but infused with sentiment. The thread ring replicates her objectified status and embodies the emotion that overwhelms her. She gives the latter ring to Harley, who values sentiment above material wealth. In return, both

Harley and his friend donate money to the keeper of the madhouse on the woman’s behalf, with the admonition, “Be kind to that unfortunate” (Man of Feeling 73). Although society will not assign her a cultural value, Harley offers money to reinforce his estimate of her worth. His gesture also reinforces his idealism for readers, as he trusts the woman’s keeper to do as he bids, despite the common knowledge that keepers in Bedlam were rarely trustworthy.

The economic transactions of Harley and his friend emphasize that the woman has

68 become an object for which they have no name, even as the payment offers a transactional outlet for their emotions. By contrast, the prostitute Harley meets (nameless until she is rescued from her commodified status) also has a value assigned to her, that of a “pint of wine” (Man of Feeling 80). She is herself an economic commodity; initially undertaking a wished-for exchange she believed would end in the economic security of marriage, the deception by her lover Mr. Winbrooke renders her worthless. Forced into debtors’ prison, a condition that reaffirms her lack of economic value, she comes out not as Miss Emily Atkins but as a nameless prostitute. Not until Harley gives her a drink, some food, and some money freely, without treating her as a commodified object, does she recover her name and become recognizable as a person again. Only then can she be reunited with her father, albeit with the clear understanding that she is tainted as a commodity and her social worth has been radically diminished.

Once the first rush of emotion is over, however, the characters can no longer ignore the status of Emily Atkins’s body as a commodified object. She cannot be traded in marriage, adding “obloquy and shame” to her father, who says, “her death I could have born!” (Feeling 97), but not her devaluing; his investment as her father has resulted in an economic loss, for which he is compensated only by the shared emotion between Atkins and Harley. Emily’s body, forming the currency of the bargain, is redeemed from debt through the men’s emotional transaction. Mackenzie’s portrayal of Emily as currency again brings to mind the beggar’s shilling, except that Harley is able to preserve some of

Emily’s value through additional emotional investment. Her body serves as not only a devalued economic unit, but also as an imperfect vessel for sentiment, linking the two even more closely and pointing out the ways in which financial transactions and cruelty

69 are often paired, ideally spurring sympathetic emotions in the reader.26

Mackenzie returns repeatedly to the personal cost of commodity culture, shown when men and women cannot meet the price for self-determination that society demands.

Even the youngest characters, Edwards’ orphaned grandchildren, know they must prove their value: “she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig; we shall not starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither” (Man of Feeling 115). Under the

Poor Laws of 1601, the children would be responsible for the care of their parents and grandparents should they be unable to work, just as Edwards is responsible for them. The loss of the Edwards’s farm and family, Harley’s hopeless desire to marry Miss Walton, the trap of Emily Atkins’ past: all of these events point out how grafting economic transactions onto what should be matters of the heart and soul devastates not just the individuals involved, but British culture as a whole.

To reinforce the damage people suffer under a commodity culture, Mackenzie merges Harley with the form of the novel as a whole to create an emotional experience for his readers, effectively turning him into a physical commodity. Beginning with

Harley’s role as witness and stand-in for both the reader and text, Mackenzie creates both an emotional connection and a transparency reminiscent of eighteenth-century it- narratives, wherein characters would speak and act freely in front of the protagonist object, allowing the reader access to a normally hidden world. Harley’s role in a scene is typically to take in information, whether through listening to the speeches and stories of others, or through “reading” their emotions. He then relays the appropriate emotional response, thus supplying a model and cue for the reader.

Christina Lupton observes how Mackenzie treats the sentimental as found writing,

70 much like graffiti, scratched into surfaces such as window glass or tree trunks, or even rock walls (123). The odd materials indicate an impromptu, spontaneous outpouring of feeling and thought in keeping with the aspirations of sentiment; just as Harley’s commonplace book is full of poems he encounters on his travels, so Mackenzie’s narrator treats Harley’s story as an example of found text that inspires him in turn.

Found texts and transitory media underlie much of the narrative in The Man of

Feeling. Harley’s body becomes a page for recording his feelings and thoughts as much as his book or window glass. Alex Wetmore describes how the Sentimental novel also treats bodies as a medium for transitory emotion, blurring the line between human bodies and printed books. “Gestures, blushes, tears, and other embodied manifestations of feeling are often described as impressed or imprinted on the surface of the body in ways that mirror the impression of legible characters on a sheet of paper” (28). Mackenzie shows this more than once, such as when, following Edwards’ story, Harley says, “let me hold thee to my bosom; let me imprint the virtue of thy sufferings on my soul” (Man of

Feeling 112). Harley is not only a witness on behalf of the reader, but equated to a page on which a record of virtue can be kept, offering a clear link to the page held in the reader’s hands. His role as the paper on which virtue is recorded involves the reader explicitly by creating an emotional tie to an object (the printed page), eventually redirecting his or her attention back to the physical world and the real people the reader encounters daily. In addition, it suggests to readers that they will (or should) serve as a platform for emotional moments, allowing others to “read” them just as we “read” Harley and his reactions. Mackenzie’s elevation of transient text and feeling celebrates public vulnerability as an achievement of a civil society, a celebration of extemporaneous

71 emotion and creativity that cannot be bounded within the printed page, but must use the uncommodified world as its medium.

The link between the found text of the framing device and the necessity of a medium apart from consumer culture for Mackenzie’s sentimental tale cannot be overlooked. The connection between the text and Harley’s person, which is highly resistant to economic engagement, is central to Mackenzie’s goals. The narrator rescues the fictional original text from its use as “excellent wadding” (Man of Feeling 48) for the curate’s gun during hunting season, a primarily social activity. The book’s fictional life as gun wadding reflects the misplaced position of Harley within the story, ill suited to his original station but functioning within unorthodox social boundaries. The jumbled, patchwork nature of the text, which the narrator refers to as “a bundle of little episodes, put together without art, and of no importance on the whole, with something of nature, and little else in them” (49), reflect Harley’s lack of emotional adaptation and development over time, much like the static nature of a printed page.

In addition, the “broken” structure of the novel forces readers to wrestle with the text as a physical object. Theorists have long noted the material nature of the printed page. Leah Price, for instance, suggests that readers overlook a text’s physical properties and instead engage with its intellectual content, with the object itself becoming

“invisible” (12). The Man of Feeling makes that middle gaze impossible to maintain, from its mismatched chapter headings to its gaps of time, to its sudden unannounced changes in narrators and characters. As readers we trust that the mismatched chapters and excerpts are assembled in a way that will form a sensible story, but the narrator in the introduction gives no such assurance (Man of Feeling 49). In his correspondence,

72 Mackenzie alludes to his strategy regarding the emotions The Man of Feeling “endeavors to produce”: “And if we can put the Pencil into their own Hands, a few Outlines will serve for our Part of the Picture” (Letters to Elizabeth Rose 29). He intended for his readers to fill in gaps and actively engage with the book, letting their emotions color the scenes he sketched within its disconnected pages, using currency as a guide to expressive moments. Led perhaps by the bodily reactions sentiment supposedly produced, readers could then engage with remnants of a familiar literary structure, the novel, and determine which aspects of their experience with Harley persisted once the book closed.

As he set out to create The Man of Feeling, Henry Mackenzie wrote to his cousin,

Elizabeth Rose, “There is something of an acquired as well as a natural Delicacy, & the

Soul as well as the Body has Nerves, which are only affected in a certain indescribable

Manner, & gain by frequent Exertion a very superior Degree of Feeling” (Letters to

Elizabeth Rose 14). His theory drove him to create a work intended to excite the reader’s sympathies: “the Feelings must appear; but not obtrusive; just so much as to call forth the

Hearts of our Readers” (29). His concerns about the cultural changes inherent in consumer culture pushed him to focus on economics, particularly currency. In doing so,

Mackenzie emphasized the human emotions underlying everyday object transactions, hoping to train his readers to do the same. He revealed the underlying conflict between the human experience and eighteenth-century British consumer culture—whether in lands and improvements, shillings and pounds, marriage and inheritance, or the balance between author, book, and reader.

73 Social Signifiers in Sense and Sensibility

When Mackenzie wrote The Man of Feeling, he captured the height of the sentimental novel trend in eighteenth-century Britain. Other works achieved more lasting fame or more critical acclaim, but his work became a touchstone for readers of the 1770s.

Writing to Sir Walter Scott about the novel in 1826, Lady Louisa Stewart declared, “I remember so well its first publication, my mother and sisters crying over it, dwelling upon it with rapture! And when I read it, as I was a girl of fourteen not yet versed in sentiment, I had a secret dread I should not cry enough to gain the credit of proper sensibility” (Stewart 273). Reactions to the novel were taken by at least some as a benchmark for proper emotional understanding and ability to display one’s feelings in public. Resistance to consumer culture was still being expressed though less effectively, and thus Mackenzie’s exhortations to sentiment were well received.

By the time Jane Austen began writing her adult work at the end of the century, sentimental novels no longer elicited the same response. As of 1785, even Mackenzie had retreated from his previous position supporting the fictional stimulation of sentiment:

“That creation of refined and subtile feeling, reared by the authors of the works to which

I allude, has an ill effect, not only on our ideas of virtue, but also on our estimate of happiness.” Skeptical of the value of his earlier endeavors, Mackenzie encouraged a more measured reaction that embraced both good and bad experiences. His assessment signals a movement away from the heightened reactions and often exaggerated drama associated with reading sentimental novels. Instead, he urged readers to acknowledge contentment as a positive force, extolling the “common attainments of life” (Lounger 198). In doing

74 so, Mackenzie seemed resigned to, if not approving of, the economic changes Britain had undergone.

The timing of Jane Austen’s foray into publication, then, places her at a point where aesthetic considerations of object ownership and statements of identity had trumped concerns over whether or not such ownership was a social malady. Her work moved past early economic objections about what should be to deal with what was, cataloguing the material and social landscape of daily life at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Throughout her works, Austen reveals how society impacts individual actions and beliefs as seen through a filter of material goods, particularly as regards women coming of age and the role of marriage in late eighteenth-century England.

Though Defoe featured female protagonists dealing with economic injustice in

Moll Flanders and Roxana, he notably absented women from the island life in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventure of Robinson Crusoe.27 Mackenzie took special notice of the way women were commodified in The Man of Feeling, though he stopped short of suggesting an alternative. Austen’s writing, however, speaks directly to the cultural experience of women in the late eighteenth century by employing personal observations and experience, making the economic and cultural difficulties of women personal for her readers. Each of her heroines is determined to remain a productive and respectable part of society rather than rejecting it and making her own way through the world.

While Austen was not an economist or merchant as Defoe had been, nor, like

Mackenzie, a lawyer or government administrator, her position in life as a woman of small income made her acutely aware of the value of money in terms of class expectations (MacDonagh 43). Though her upbringing and connections afforded some

75 flexibility in her circles of friends and relatives, she knew first hand the limits that economics placed on a woman’s life. She uses her readers’ understanding of society to fill in gaps in description through inclusion of literary objects, framing character decisions in ways that are both subtle and profound.

In Sense and Sensibility, Austen specifically accentuates cultural and social boundaries generated by wealth, referring conspicuously to yearly incomes, expected values, improvements, estates, entailments, and costs, but those aspects are the backdrops against which her stories take place. While large-scale financial aspects permeate the novel, Austen’s depictions of the difficulties that individuals of different economic strata face and the indicators of class status are far more critical, particularly for her contemporary readership. Austen’s presentation of real property contrasts with both

Defoe’s and Mackenzie’s, primarily in that she includes land, estates, and houses as part of a greater economic system that includes both income and expenses as well as the social impact of owning property. Her perspective focuses on the relationship and responsibilities between people and their estates, rather than just the value of that estate, as with Defoe, or the intangibility of property-based wealth as in Mackenzie. Her greatest focus is not on estates or houses, however, though she spends significant time on both, but on objects in everyday domestic life and what those objects say about their owners.

Through her treatment of personal possessions, Austen provided contemporary readers with information that made her characterizations clearer, delineating social boundaries through the musical instruments, household possessions, and printed materials that fall within feminine domestic economy.

One important aspect of Austen’s writing is that she only sparingly mentions

76 details of locations, clothing, or objects. When she highlights something, she intends it to be meaningful to her readers, who, as MacDonagh notes, “shared her background of everyday information, for whom further explanation was unnecessary” (43). Whereas some objects are occasionally crucial to the plot, such as Edward’s ring containing a lock of hair, those objects are the exception rather than the rule in her fiction. Instead, she includes objects as a means of succinctly conveying information about a place or character based on shared cultural background. As Sandie Byrne notes, “Objects in

Austen’s fiction can signify socially, denoting, for example, rank, and which characters do or do not observe or comment on objects, and how characters observe or comment, are similarly significant” (2). Objects, then, illuminate both personalities and relationships in

Austen, acting less as a mediator and more as an oblique mirror for both characters within the novel and the reader, showing what normally remains out of view.

A primary example of Austen’s method is in the first volume of Sense and

Sensibility, in Chapter V, when Austen describes the Dashwoods departure from Norland

Park and into Barton Cottage. Here we see a description of what the Dashwoods are taking away from the house: in short, very little. Austen refers to it as “furniture,” but then goes on to give us a more detailed list of what comprised that term. “It chiefly consisted of household linen, plate, china, and books, with a handsome pianoforte of

Marianne’s” (Sense 21). The pianoforte is connected to Marianne specifically, in an era when young unmarried women would have few specific belongings, especially anything as large and valuable as a pianoforte. Given how sparing Austen is with object details, her attention to the pianoforte marks its importance, particularly when she later uses the same adjective (“handsome”) to describe Marianne. But the reason for highlighting the

77 pianoforte for readers speaks to the character not only of Marianne, but of those around her as well.

Austen’s definition of furniture in this context fulfills the prevailing definition of furniture according to the OED, specifically that of “movable articles, whether useful or ornamental, in a dwelling-house, place of business, or public building” (“furniture, n.”), or “furnishings” in contemporary usage. Her description also engages an alternate meaning in use during Austen’s lifetime, however, “that with which something is or may be stocked; something to fill or occupy (a receptacle, etc.), contents” (“furniture, n.”).

The difference between these two meanings is not carefully observed elsewhere in the novel. A few pages later, Austen uses the word without further detail: “With the size and furniture of the house Mrs. Dashwood was on the whole well satisfied” (Sense 24). In the prior instance, however, she clarifies that, with the exception of the pianoforte, their belongings are mostly personal, in terms of small items that can be “stocked”: dishes, linen, and books.

Why did Austen make the distinction? Why does it matter what the Dashwood women took with them from Norland, or whether Barton Cottage was already furnished?

Byrne suggests that it was due to a desire to create a realistic picture of similar situations

(18), while others, such as Alistair Duckworth, have pointed to Austen’s personal life as the dependent daughter with no income of her own as the inspiration (161). Neither of these answers fully addresses the endpoint of Austen’s clarification, that is, the effect on her readers’ understanding.

Austen’s clarification ensures that the reader understands how little the Dashwood women have to their names. The only items they can claim are those that stocked

78 Norland, rather than the furniture, art, and decorations that surrounded them. Thus particular objects, otherwise undistinguished, assume implicit relevance. The rightful owner of the rest of the possessions at Norland is the late Mr. Henry Dashwood’s son,

John, from his previous marriage, making him the stepson of Mrs. Dashwood and the half-brother of Elinor and Marianne. John’s wife, Fanny Dashwood née Ferrars (sister to

Edward and Robert), becomes the keeper of the Norland goods for the lifetime of her husband. She notes that any furnishings that might have counted as personal belongings for Mrs. Henry Dashwood and thus passed down were sold off when Mr. and Mrs. Henry

Dashwood moved into Norland before Henry’s inheritance, when their daughters were young (Sense 12). The plate, china, books and linen were all left from their former residence, Stanhill, and thus do not belong to Norland but to Mrs. Dashwood. And yet,

Fanny resents giving the items up, noting that the china was “a great deal too handsome for any place they can ever afford to live in” (12). Through this detail, Austen’s readers learn that Fanny covets not merely money, but everything that comes within her grasp, down to the last china cup and table runner in the building — a glimpse of her personality that would be otherwise difficult to thoroughly sketch.

The exception among the Dashwoods’ belongings that are removed from Norland is Marianne’s pianoforte, which we are informed Fanny begrudged along with the china and linen, and “could not help feeling it hard that as Mrs. Dashwood’s income would be so trifling in comparison with their own, she should have any handsome article of furniture” (Sense 21). Fanny’s association with beauty as inherently belonging only to wealth foreshadows the Ferrars family’s obsession with Edward’s marriage to Miss

Morton, along with the resentment and hinted jealousy that Fanny feels toward her

79 attractive but newly impoverished sisters-in-law. Fanny’s dominion at Norland is thwarted by Marianne’s pianoforte and beauty: indicators of youthful independence and future economic possibility that Fanny has left behind as John Dashwood’s wife.

Austen repeatedly connects young women and pianofortes: Jane Fairfax in Emma, for example, and Miss Bingley, Elizabeth Bennet, and Mary Bennet in Pride and

Prejudice. Musical performance was an integral part of young women’s education, which they could display at public events in order both to entertain the party and draw the attention of potential suitors (Olsen 252). At the same time, music was not required of a wife and mother: as we see with both Charlotte Palmer and Lady Middleton, women often gave up their artistic achievements once they were married (Sense 28). While musical performance served as an important source of entertainment within the home, married women were expected to have little personal time to practice, between caring for family members, raising children, handling social and charitable commitments, and managing a household. With no daughter of her own and no particular noted musical inclination, Fanny would have little reason to insist on keeping Marianne’s pianoforte. In fact, doing so might be considered an overtly hostile act toward the Dashwoods, robbing

Marianne (and potentially Margaret, the youngest Dashwood daughter) of an expensive yet necessary item for securing a good match.

Austen’s choice of a pianoforte for Marianne conveys more than just her availability in marriage, however. As Kirstin Olsen points out, the pianoforte was among the most common instruments played by young women, surpassing both the harpsichord and the spinet in the late eighteenth century (254).28 One reason for this surge in popularity is that the pianoforte was a modern instrument, only reaching England in the

80 1760s as refugee instrument makers from Saxony relocated to London after the Seven

Years’ War (Adlam 735). By striking strings rather than plucking them, a pianoforte had the capacity to vary in volume from soft to loud, in addition to delicate, quick action that allowed for an expressiveness and emotion in performances that harpsichords simply could not match. Combined with the pianoforte’s size and shape, which let the performer be easily observed and show a pleasing posture and form to onlookers, a young woman could thereby convey passion and emotion publicly without being censured.

The pianoforte acts as Marianne’s representative throughout the novel, a forward- looking object of sound and emotion that reacts dramatically to the actions of others.

Marianne’s disregard for the past mirrors the technological advance of her favorite instrument. She rejects “propriety” as defined by cultural norms (Sense 52), just as the pianoforte makes use of its volume and expression. Both Marianne and the pianoforte are impractical but beloved, and both are considered “handsome.” Through the instrument,

Austen gives knowing readers an intimate cultural substitution showing Marianne’s position in society and her attitude toward modernity.

As Marianne is represented by a pianoforte, Willoughby is epitomized by his hunting horses. Expensive, handsome, unpredictable and difficult to maintain, horses were a special expense that immediately conveyed the status, income, and personality of their owners. Byrne notes that Willoughby is described primarily through the property he has access to (namely his aunt’s estate and wife’s money) and what he owns, which are horses and dogs (53). The horses and dogs in question are for sport, being hunters and pointers. Given that hunting from horseback (whether for fox or hare) was seen as a pastime of the upper classes and the wealthy (Olsen 212), the inclusion of Willoughby’s

81 sport animals in his first descriptions is telling. In response to Mrs. Dashwood’s question about Willoughby’s character, Sir John describes Willoughby as “As good a kind of fellow as ever lived, I assure you. A very decent shot, and there is not a bolder rider in

England” (Sense 34). Sir John’s answer indicates a blindness to Willoughby’s character that completely fails to answer the question. Willoughby’s skill at riding, ownership of horses, and ability at shooting equate to his being “as good a kind of fellow as ever lived” for not only Sir John, but likely many others in England as well. Hunting horses in particular were thoroughbreds kept purely for sport, being bred for agility, speed, and beauty over strength and stamina. In addition to the luxury of having such an animal for leisure pursuit, owning horses meant paying the tax on them, giving them food, medical care, stables, grooms, and smithing. Willoughby’s hunting and equestrian activities conveyed specific information about his income and his financial prospects, marking him publicly as a good economic catch.

Horses were a significant household expense, even for just a plain farm horse or pony (Olsen 205). As Claudia Johnson notes, Jane Austen’s own father found it challenging to maintain horses and a carriage on £700 a year; the Dashwood women would only have £500 (Sense 21). Upon a significant reduction in income, therefore, the horses are the first things to go, as we see upon Mr. Dashwood’s death: “The horses which were left her by her husband, had been sold soon after his death, and an opportunity now offering of disposing of her carriage, she agreed to sell that likewise at the earnest advice of her eldest daughter” (21). If Willoughby is unable to keep from going into debt over his horses, of course, then his offer of a saddle horse to Marianne is highly irresponsible, even if no one at the time realizes the extent. Mrs. Jennings, for

82 example, blames Willoughby’s financial straits on his insistence on keeping expensive horses (137), and thus sees his treatment of Marianne and his marriage to Miss Grey as the necessary result.

As Austen’s association between Willoughby and horses suggests, his offer of a riding horse for Marianne serves as little more than a dissembling offer of himself. Even if he assumes the responsibility for the care of the animal, he is placing Marianne and her family in his debt if they accept (Wilwerding 211). Elinor’s interpretation of his offer of the horse can therefore be clearly understood, particularly when combined with

Willoughby’s use of Marianne’s first name as a show of intimacy (Sense 45). Austen carefully associates Willoughby with an object that is flashy, expensive, and entirely directed toward leisure as a means of gesturing toward his real character. She thus prepares her readers for the eventual revelation of his character by shifting what horses mean within the story: they move from proof of wealth and good breeding to proof of vanity and bad judgment as the plot progresses. His seeming match with Marianne’s expressiveness and modernity is instead a lack of self-regulation and understanding, which Austen makes believable through his equine associations.

Horses and their equipage don’t only apply to Willoughby, however. Edward

Ferrars dreads the expectations of his family, which involve driving a barouche about town with a team of fine horses.

His mother wished to interest him in political concerns, to get him into parliament, or to see him connected with some of the great men of the day. Mrs. John Dashwood wished it likewise; but in the mean while, till one of these superior blessings could be attained, it would have quieted her ambition to see him driving a barouche. (Sense 14)

A barouche was an open carriage with a collapsible roof that only covered the back seats

83 of the carriage. It was a summer leisure vehicle that could hold a maximum of six people, often four passengers, a coachman, and a footman (making it the equivalent of a convertible sports car in contemporary terms) (Olsen 29). Owning a carriage of any sort was a considerable expense; owning one that could only be used for seasonal leisure was even more so. Marianne’s dreams of owning “a carriage, perhaps two” signal her unrealistic ideas for a mere “competence” of £2000 a year (Sense 67). When Sir John’s planned excursion to Whitwell requires “open carriages only to be employed” (47), it underlines that the excursion was for the local wealthy landowners and their friends and family. Individuals without carriages of their own, even a simple gig or cart, knew the

“disconvenience” of being obliged to hire carriages or simply rely on the generosity of others for their travel arrangements, as Austen herself had to during her life (Duckworth

171).

Fanny's ambition for Edward, then, is not simply that he should drive a carriage, but rather that he would make a show of wealth and distinction in keeping with their hopes for his marriage. The Ferrars family wants to be seen as wealthy and socially important, and part of that effort involved owning impressive equipage. Edward wants anything but that; his dreams of joining the church are a rejection of consumer culture and the social expectations accompanying object ownership that go along with it. His rejection of his family’s ambition alone does not make him practical or a good consumer, as his ill-advised engagement to Lucy Steele proves.

Here Austen again illustrates her deftness at exploring social and cultural issues regarding object ownership in ways that Defoe and Mackenzie glossed over. Harley, for example, is also ill-suited for the life of a gentleman, but Mackenzie’s focus is primarily

84 on Harley’s experience of the world and its pecuniary moments rather than how he actually fits into society as a whole. Crusoe likewise would not own a barouche unless he had stayed home and been irresponsible with money. He had an opportunity to be a gentleman, but not one of consequence. The type of equipage Fanny desires for her brother is reliant on both wealth and leisure; the late seventeenth-century world that

Crusoe would have inhabited did not have the same expectations in terms of object ownership and social performance for those in the “middle-state,” such as himself,

Harley, and Edward. Austen highlights the Ferrars’ expectations for Edward to point out his difficulty in escaping the expectations of both his family and society as a whole. At the same time, in pointing out Edward’s disinterest in barouches or owning private carriages of any kind, Austen shows her readers that he is ill-suited for aristocratic life.

The necessity of these types of expenditures to maintain class and wealth appearances acts as an effective barrier for Edward; he cannot bring himself to act in a way that will meet the expectations of not only his family, but also society as a whole.

While owning a barouche is in no way equivalent to joining Parliament, Fanny’s instincts are not altogether wrong. By refusing to even go through the motions of expected object ownership, Edward fails to maintain membership in his class and becomes excluded from society. Austen uses Edward’s passive rejection of his inherited social station to justify his eventual pursuit of the church as a career.

Personal objects used for public exhibition, such as pianofortes and carriages, provide a fine degree of visual distinction between individuals within a given class given quality, ornamentation, and skill of use. The type of personal object that allows for evaluation of a specific individual’s quality is even more significant. Books serve as one

85 such type of object in Sense and Sensibility, both in ownership and appreciation. The

Dashwood women represent Austen’s own regard for not only literacy, but also the enjoyment of literature as a necessary part of one’s education, regardless of gender.

Early on in Elinor’s acquaintance with Edward, Marianne despairs of his ability to value Elinor because he cannot read William Cowper’s poetry with the passion she feels it is due. “Oh! mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward’s manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely” (Sense 15). Edward’s seeming lack of enjoyment in Marianne’s favorite poet is, to her, a lack of taste and feeling that makes her question whether Edward would be a suitable match for her sister. Elinor refutes this point, however, informing Marianne that, “his mind is well-informed, his enjoyment of books exceedingly great, his observation just and correct, and his taste delicate and pure”

(17). It is as important to Elinor as it is to Marianne that Edward be not only literate but also educated and takes pleasure in books, though they weigh the evidence differently.29

Once the Dashwood women move, their relationship to print changes. On their reduced income, they are largely unable to afford to buy books, newspapers, or even sheet music, thanks in part to the stamp tax of the period.30 They hold to their former privileged relationship with printed material, however. While the pianoforte and the china receive most of Fanny’s attention, the fourth item of the list of furniture the Dashwood women take with them to Barton Cottage is “books” (Sense 21). Sir John acknowledges their shift in financial but not cultural status regarding print materials upon taking up residence at Barton Cottage: he “would not be denied the satisfaction of sending them his newspaper every day” (25). While sharing newspapers among neighbors was common, the immediate offer by Sir John to provide a daily newspaper recognizes their literate and

86 privileged status as regards to printed materials. Edward likewise teases both Elinor and

Marianne for their refined preferences, suggesting it would be “a happy day for booksellers, music-sellers, and print-shops!” (68), not to mention authors like Austen, were the Dashwoods to suddenly receive large fortunes.

Conversely, Elinor is quick to notice and withdraw from those whose education and literacy is unequal to her own. One of the first condemnations of Lucy Steele is that

“she was ignorant and illiterate, and her deficiency of all mental improvement, her want of information in the most common particulars, could not be concealed from Miss

Dashwood, in spite of her constant endeavor to appear to advantage” (Sense 93).

Particularly in light of Miss Steele’s father being a schoolmaster and education being therefore available, she seems all the more condemned for not taking advantage of it.

Austen’s description of Lucy Steele suggests that illiteracy is as ill becoming as poverty, if not more so. The Steeles have sufficient economic capital to be considered the same class as the Dashwood sisters, but their cultural capital is far below that of Elinor and

Marianne. Austen paints a picture in which she can forgive an educated woman who is poor. A rich woman without good sense, curiosity, literate habits, and social accomplishments is not worthy of notice, however, if only because she had the opportunity for self-improvement. Thus when Marianne realizes her errors, she prescribes herself a “course of serious study” to correct her behavior, planning to read “only six hours a-day” (243). While Marianne’s plan for self-improvement still overcorrects, much to Elinor’s private amusement, it is clear the Dashwoods value reading as part of their social and personal identities despite their straitened income. The Dashwoods will always make the most of their cultural capital, despite the lack of economic advantage.

87 Austen’s presentation of objects as indicators of character and social position is not restricted to Sense and Sensibility. Her keen sense of context and wide knowledge of society across class boundaries gave her ample opportunity to study behavior and learn from it. As she includes pianofortes, or coaches, or chimneypieces, she does so with the knowledge that her readers will share context if not her own skills of observation. She makes such sufficient connections that even as time has passed, contemporary readers can still understand her intent even if the cultural associations are no longer as clear. By restricting herself to object details that impart important information about the people in the story, she has given modern readers a sense of her world that continues to resonate.

Conclusion

With the rise of eighteenth-century consumer culture and the affordable goods provided to Britain from its colonies, individuals gained access to an unprecedented range of customizable goods that offered the promise of not just variety, but self- expression through object ownership. The state of one’s internal consciousness could be made outwardly visible through choices of domestic goods, specifically clothing, transportation, furniture, and other housewares. Between the lure of novelty and the opportunity to raise one’s apparent (if not actual) social station, consumerism became an ever-larger part of British eighteenth-century culture, reaching from the cities to the countryside as methods of commerce adapted to new wares and customer expectations.

With unprecedented opportunity for self-identification, however, came uncertainty and concern about the health of traditional power hierarchies within British culture. Whether

88 authors were concerned or excited about these changes, they were able to leverage new symbolic meanings and expose the limits of cultural currency for their own ends through a more realistic presentation of objects in their writing.

These literary objects, as I call them, provided a flexible yet deep medium for conveying meaning between author and reader. They could create a bounded space for self-transformation, indicate where emotion should resist purely economic valuations, or show us how well individuals fit within a given social class, illuminating restrictions that complicate characters’ lives. Crusoe’s personal and spiritual transformation concentrates on how people surround themselves with items that both convey individualism and wall off the external world. Defoe’s presentation of Crusoe’s object civilization serves as a reminder that our choices have personal meaning, either offering a space for internal growth and change, or scattering our focus and leaving us unfulfilled. Mackenzie’s targeted examination of the role of small economic transactions widens our gaze, showing how we are connected to our communities through exchanges of currency. At the same time, his literary objects serve to coalesce his fears that members of his society are inherently devalued and isolated by a consumer culture that values wealth over relationships, and commodities over intimacy. Austen, on the other hand, creates a world out of object meanings situated within the larger social and cultural landscape. Her characters’ relationships to objects create impressions for readers that are mirrored by observing characters within the novel itself. She builds on the work done by Defoe’s representations of self and Mackenzie’s web of economic and personal relationships to give a larger picture of object-human interaction, all by capitalizing on the cultural knowledge she and her readers share.

89 Relying on familiarity with object use and availability to convey background meaning to readers serves as a useful shorthand for information that might otherwise seem heavy-handed. It relies on the reader sharing the author’s context, however, in order for the indicated boundaries to be fully understood and the meaning absorbed. Authors using this method relied on the idea that their books would be read within their lifetimes by those from similar cultural and social backgrounds—a reasonable assumption prior to

1774 and the widespread availability of works outside of copyright for reprinting.31 That assumption also means, however, that as time passes and books move into new cultures and societies, the fine details of eighteenth-century British life are inevitably lost. The walls and boundaries that Defoe, Mackenzie, and Austen point out become little more than lines on a map for a place that no longer exists. We are largely aware of their former placement, but the cultural landscape has shifted enough that they are difficult to recognize by their descriptions.

Despite the difficulty inherent in relying on culturally encoded information, literary objects and the context they provide allow authors to direct their readers’ attention, conveying information in ways that foreground realistic settings. Authorial focus on objects makes these settings dynamic in ways that increasingly called upon not simply a reader’s experience with a specific type of object, but with how that object was viewed by the society as a whole. Specifically, though, each author uses that information to tacitly communicate social and cultural expectations and requirements. With these tools, authors identified personal boundaries, moments of estrangement, social requirements, and points of conflict between individuals and communities, interiors and exteriors, all without directly saying a word.

90 Chapter Two

Secret Passages: Objects and Social Mobility in Defoe, Goldsmith, and Haywood

Over the course of the eighteenth century, British goods became increasingly available and affordable for consumer purchase, as did goods customized by materials and decoration to different price points. Exotic foreign goods such as porcelain and silk were increasingly manufactured in England as foreign trade was restricted, creating a demand that English manufacturing could then fulfill. Consumables such as tea and sugar were necessarily imported, but when industries could be transplanted to England, they were. The result was that goods previously restricted to the wealthy dropped precipitously in price and rose in cultural value, making them available across socio- economic classes.

British society’s reliance on objects to relay information about class, wealth, and culture had not changed, however. Since a specific object alone was no longer sufficient to signify inclusion in a restricted group, other means of visible differentiation were needed. One of the social roles of consumption was to allow for individuality as well as advertising how that person should be treated. The object alone no longer provided sufficient differentiation, so aspects of taste, wealth, and appreciation took center stage, enabling finer gradations of acceptance within social categories. The commodity itself often became less important than its attributes in terms of providing and receiving information to onlookers.

Starting in the seventeenth century and continuing forward, even commonplace goods, such as teapots or tables, became stratified according to composition and

91 aesthetics. Stoneware or common pottery was less expensive than porcelain or “china.”

Silver goods were more expensive than those made of tin or copper. Within the range of common personal possessions and household items, this prestige gap became even more apparent as a wide variety of commercially crafted goods became available, allowing individuals to satisfy both class and personal aesthetics. Luxury now became a question of the money invested in personalizing or customizing an item, leading to early examples of conspicuous consumption.32 As a result, the potential for associations based on class, wealth, or personal status bloomed based on object details, usage, and how much the item might be noticed.

In response, eighteenth-century British authors used the new wealth of detail regarding objects to identify social and cultural boundaries, consequently creating a more

“realistic” setting for their fiction. The literary representations of those objects suggested cultural associations in order to create information about the characters within the text, mirroring real-life interactions between objects and people in society. In doing so, however, they inevitably (if often unwittingly) acknowledged the fragility of those invisible divisions. Once a boundary is revealed, it can be bypassed. A barrier is, after all, also a possible point of passage.

As more commodities circulated, the capacity for objects to signify strong boundaries simply by their presence diminished. Successful gatekeeping and establishment of object-signified boundaries relied ever more heavily on the relationship between an individual and his or her owned objects. It was not enough to own a hunting horse, for example; ownership had to be supplemented by knowledge and discernment about horses, including the ability to have an intelligent conversation with other horse

92 owners to prove one’s “worth,” as seen in Sir John’s description of Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility. While this seems on its face to make it easier to maintain object- represented social boundaries, the reality is that as observers take on more of the burden to assess individuals, those inclined to slip past those boundaries find it easier to do so.

Taste and discernment can be gained without object ownership; the objects themselves indicate a boundary, not where a given person should be.

The potential permeability of object-signified boundaries was not lost on eighteenth-century authors. Lady B’s bequest of fine clothes to Pamela in Richardson’s novel, for example, causes uneasiness because it could lead to class confusion where

Pamela is concerned, either causing gentlemen to believe Pamela was either already their social equal or that she wished to become so. The clothes become a potential conduit for social movement rather than a steady indicator of class boundaries, and in doing so, turn into a passage rather than a wall keeping others out. Tension arises as the other characters interpret Pamela’s social status through the objects attached to her. By doing this,

Richardson demonstrates the ability of literary objects to generate social and cultural change.

In Chapter One I analyzed how authors focus on specific meanings or associations of literary objects to highlight social and cultural boundaries. It’s equally true, however, that authors can do the same to highlight how objects provide access to restricted social or cultural groups. Because literary objects are multivalent, an author can choose to frame the object in terms of its surroundings, its associated people, and its traditional cultural meanings, even as they may change its owner or location and thus grant access to someone instead of blocking it. In this way, authors can subvert a literary object’s normal

93 purpose, such as signaling wealth, and instead access the restricted status signified by the object.

Arjun Appadurai describes this situation when he defines luxury items as “goods whose principal use is rhetorical and social, goods that are simply incarnated signs”

(38). According to his theory, while many objects have a practical use as tools, some objects (or luxury versions of commonplace objects, such as dishes or furniture or designer clothing) serve primarily to signal the wealth and importance of the owner. They are rhetorical moves designed to broadcast information regarding social position, a well- understood fact in eighteenth-century Britain’s stratified society. If the luxury good changes hands, the new owner still has a luxury item; possession of that item could convince others that he or she is wealthy and potentially of an entirely different socio- economic class.33

Objects that act as barriers are often associated with highly restricted social or cultural conditions. These conditions may refer to gender, wealth, socio-economic status, or cultural positions (religious or military orders). Objects with such strong associations carry specific cultural meanings, which can be passed to whichever individual possesses the object. Part of Fanny’s concern about the furniture in Sense and Sensibility, for example, is that the “handsome” (Sense 21) items the Dashwoods are taking will confuse others regarding the women’s social status and wealth. That transferal conveys some measure of the appropriate condition, potentially enough to convince observers that the individual is legitimately entitled to that object.

Appadurai discusses the real-life role of objects in conveying social information about an individual. Eighteenth-century British authors were very aware of the ways

94 objects dictated social responses in real life. They used literary objects to replicate that phenomenon in their works, conveying nuanced information through the manipulation of literary objects. In doing so, they displayed a sophisticated understanding of the ways objects act as cultural and social mediators between people.34 The resulting nuanced authorial approach to object-human relations sheds light on a complicated reliance upon things as both obstacles and enablers of social mobility. As Cynthia Wall notes, describing an object “creates new presences and absences, it lifts an object or a space into a context, it creates what is not about that thing in the act of asserting what it is” (113).

By placing more emphasis on what an object is or is not, the characters associated with that object become included or excluded from a restricted group.

In particular, misused or misconstrued objects provided authors with a wealth of opportunities for otherwise improbable circumstances to happen. They mediate the reader’s understanding of a given literary object in ways that forward the authors’ narratives, even if a depicted situation rarely occurs with objects in real life. In this way, eighteenth-century authors created plot twists and character development through object placement and meaning association. The process works because by its very nature, fiction amplifies and isolates actions and reactions. The focus in fiction is only what the author presents; there is no background data to contradict or reinforce the information being presented. Unlike in daily life where the motion and sound of the world’s backdrop dilutes the meaning of a piece of information, text simplifies and distills social and cultural actions into single points of data presented consecutively as the reader processes the text. The moment of information transference between author and reader is thus reduced to the information on the page, with authorial intent happening before and reader

95 interpretation occurring after.

In this chapter, I explore how three works acknowledge the social expectations created by the presence of specific literary objects, but then subvert those meanings through misuse and unauthorized use to create social and cultural opportunities. Each of these texts employs different aspects of literary objects to foreground moments of social transition and mobility enabled by those same objects. Taken together, they provide a broad view of the ways society uses objects to enforce internal differentiation of its members and how that process can be turned to a person’s advantage.

In Daniel Defoe’s novel Roxana, an ambitious woman works her way up in the world from poverty to riches. Object acquisition and transferal is key to her strategy, as she in effect uses class-associated objects to advertise the class she wants to join, and from there to attract opportunities to move up another social tier. Her focus on personal and household goods, both as movable property and status signifiers, highlights how objects function as intermediaries between individuals and society as a whole. The second work in this chapter is Oliver Goldsmith’s 1773 drama She Stoops to Conquer, a comedy featuring a case of mistaken identity that first complicates and then resolves a love match, is based on misinterpretation of a woman’s two outfits. Goldsmith foregrounds the way costume adheres to and subverts social expectations, potentially allowing movement both up and down the socio-economic spectrum at will (at least in this case). Finally, Eliza Haywood’s The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless steps away from individual experience of object ownership to focus on the social and cultural risk inherent in areas of economic transactions, specifically shops. Haywood presents these spaces as fundamentally dangerous, where the line between individual and commodity

96 grows thin and onlookers effectively confuse people with un-owned objects by accident.

In doing so, Haywood touches on what it means to be an unattached object in a society of consumers, as well as the perils of non-ownership.

From these three works, the role of literary objects as a type of social swinging door becomes evident: something that is potentially an indicator of what is not can instead tell what is, and that information is transferable to the individuals associated with those objects. Social efforts at differentiation can be undermined so long as they are part of a consumer culture that uses material signifiers (or representations of them) to establish boundaries between groups. In circumventing those boundaries, attempts to resist social or cultural categorization become visible along with the object that allows that transgression.

Rising Up: Defoe’s Roxana and Social Mobility

Appadurai’s definition of luxury items as primarily social and cultural markers is in good measure anticipated by Defoe’s tale of social mobility via acquisition, Roxana,

Or The Fortunate Mistress. As a tradesman and economist, Daniel Defoe was well aware of the role that luxury items played within British culture. In Roxana, he makes that point clear by allowing his title character significant upward social mobility thanks to her associated luxury objects. Using the information culturally encoded in those objects,

Defoe shows how closely they were tied to rank and behavior in the early eighteenth century, if not beyond. In the case of Roxana, all that glitters may not be gold; if it is treated as though it were, however, the difference is negligible.

97 In this novel, Defoe observes how literary objects can function as doors into otherwise restricted social circles, focusing on how those objects affect relationships between Roxana and everyone else she meets as she slowly increases her social status.

While the objects in Robinson Crusoe allow readers to note changes in Crusoe’s personality, Roxana’s objects act to obscure hers. She does not gather and keep objects around her as Crusoe does, but rather continually cycles them as needed in terms of money, location, and social expectations, perhaps in part due to legal restrictions on women in the period. In this way, Defoe creates a model for circulating goods and commodities through society and links it to increased prosperity, even if it requires appropriating objects associated with a different social or cultural group. Defoe conveys the meaning he intends for readers to understand as Roxana interacts with objects, followed by how those objects open doors for her in British culture and society. In doing so, he fosters a new method of writing about material culture that would influence British writing throughout the eighteenth century.

Roxana is a story about a woman ruthlessly attempting to secure wealth and ease in her life. More pragmatic than moral, she does whatever is necessary to ensure her ongoing economic stability. Defoe shows us these aspects of Roxana’s character early on in the novel, quickly summarizing her easy early life and the circumstances of her first marriage to a brewer. Within a few pages, however, her ne’er-do-well husband has ruined the business and vanished without a trace while her brother has squandered an inheritance for Roxana that their father had entrusted to him, leaving her and her children without any income or economic support. With no family she can turn to, no hope of remarriage without proof of her husband’s death, and no business to run or occupation she can

98 pursue, she despairs: “I saw nothing but Misery and the utmost Distress before my Face”

(Roxana 14). She lacks the objects that would signify the status she was born into, and thus becomes determined to regain them.

Roxana’s early losses leave a strong impression on her, one that provides her motivation for the remainder of the story. During the first year of her abandonment, she begins selling off her possessions one at a time to feed herself and her children. Her landlord takes away her furniture against her owed rent, and in short she is stripped of anything but “rags and dirt” (Roxana 17) by the time she sends away her children to live with relatives. When her landlord (the Jeweler) approaches her and offers to restore some of her goods, she has nothing left but some basic clothing -- no house, no husband, no children, no household goods, no jewelry, and no money. Her identity in the world has been hollowed out, and her nearest relatives (her husband’s family) believe her to be in the madhouse and erased from society. From here, her romantic associations with the

Jeweler, the Prince, and others all furnish and rebuild her rather than erase her existence.

Bereft of her origins, which were lost through the actions of men, she instead finds ways to gain from men and remake herself in the process.

Throughout the novel, in fact, Roxana confesses her fear of returning to the year of poverty and starvation as her motivation in all that she does, “not that I plead this as

Justification of my Conduct, but that it may move the Pity, even of those that abhor the

Crime” (39). Andrew Varney notes that despite Roxana’s self-abnegation, including decrying herself as a whore, she is both knowledgeable and realistic about her financial status and economic situation as a woman in eighteenth-century Britain (76). Her ambition is to keep herself from want in a society where her gender is both her most

99 salable quality and biggest liability. To stave off poverty, she enters into a form of trade in order to acquire the luxury objects that will both give her wealth as moveable property and privileged status in terms of class and culture, making it easier for her to cross social lines and improve her standing.

Roxana’s reasoning establishes the core economic and cultural stakes of the novel; never more than a twist of fate away from ruin and scandal, Roxana discards her scruples in test after test, seemingly believing that all will be lost if she does not. She is motivated to avoid poverty by any means necessary, which requires not simply becoming wealthy, but making connections and moving into higher social ranks. She enters into a sequence of profitable relationships that she brands as “whoring” with men whom she considers morally dubious, from her initial landlord and jeweler to a French prince.

Defoe’s portrayal of Roxana’s determination to be financially emancipated at the beginning of the eighteenth century stands in contrast with Austen’s treatment of women’s economic situation at the end. For a single woman with neither wealth nor family status, the only respectable way to acquire these forms of cultural capital is to marry into them, as nearly every Austen heroine does. Doing so, however, requires forfeiting financial or legal independence, as the husband not only assumed ownership of the wife’s property, but of the woman herself so that she no longer held a legal standing during the term of her marriage (Varney 75).

Rather than legally having to relinquish all her wealth and property (both real and moveable) upon marriage, Roxana determines to remain a “Free Woman” and thus maintain control of her money (Roxana 171). As she contemplates her freedom, however,

Defoe seems to call upon the Lockean concept of self-ownership as it applies to women,

100 in that Roxana “has a Property in [her] Person” so long as she remains unmarried (Second

Treatise of Government 17; ch. 4). Her willingness to loan that property, much as a landowner might lease a parcel to a renter, speaks to an inherent claim as to her own person that was at odds with much of British society’s view of women. When coupled with the knowledge that she is actually married, it raises the question whether her self- accusations of “whore” come from moral epiphany or the constant knowledge that she was, in effect, stealing herself from her lawful husband until the time of his death. Her willingness to invest in her own “property” however, and enrich it with improvements such as jewels, clothing, and domestic settings, indicate that she is entirely aware of herself as a commodity and that she acts accordingly to ensure that those who see her set the right value on her, regardless of her origins.

Upon returning to England, Roxana seeks out financial advice, which she receives from Sir Robert Clayton, the only historical figure to appear in the novel. He was one of the first deposit bankers in England and a regular target of criticism for Defoe, who accused him of being a greedy moneylender (Reformation 12).35 When Roxana speaks with Sir Robert about financial matters, the advice he gives seems to justify her approach to using her person as a circulating commodity. He notes:

That an Estate is a Pond; but that a Trade was a Spring; that if the first is once mortgaged, it seldom gets clear, but embarrass’d the Person for ever; but the Merchant had his Estate continually flowing; and upon this, he nam’d me Merchants who live’d in more real Splendor, and spent more Money and most of the Noblemen in England could singly expend, and that they still grew immensly rich. (Roxana 170)

According to Clayton, if the single woman’s person is an estate, entailed to the man who marries her and who will use it to create a legacy within his line, then a “circulating” body moving from client to client is a spring of wealth. The married woman’s estate is

101 forever linked to her husband and “seldom gets clear” of a mortgage (or marriage) that will stay forever in the public record. The latter echoes Roxana’s fears that her first husband might return, as well as the fear that her initial marriage might be discovered and her more humble origins made public. Trading her person for wealth and goods, however, creates a financial “Spring … continually flowing” that might provide for her for years to come in comfort if managed correctly. Defoe’s juxtaposition of satirized recommendations for trade from a banker stands in contrast to Roxana’s legal and economic position as a woman in eighteenth-century Britain. The difference takes what

Roxana seems to interpret as a statement of her financial acumen and emphasizes how precarious her situation actually is.

Roxana’s actions reveal that she understands she has property in her person, and that it is the only property she knows she will always have access to as long as she remains unmarried. She therefore takes care to attract clients that will also invest in and care for her, so that after each arrangement ends, her circumstances and social class have improved, thus enabling her to appeal to an ever more elite clientele. Since Roxana makes her career out of patronage arrangements in which she trades companionship and sex for movable property and money, she is deeply concerned with not just money, but economic value. She is interested in money as it contributes to her net worth (and thus financial stability) and demonstrates her position in society, not in itself. There is no sense of regular expenditures or bills except in either those instances when she is destitute, to show the extent of her hardship, or when she is very wealthy, to show the extent of her generosity. Mackenzie’s focus on the circulation of currency has no equivalent here; Defoe is concerned with wealth, as Deidre Lynch notes, not the

102 masculine sentimental model of small currency exchanges and acts of charity that

Mackenzie details so extensively (Economy 114). Defoe writes the transactions readers witness as examples of how Roxana is viewed by members of society, not as fuel for introspection (which comes primarily from moments where an older Roxana as the narrator retrospectively informs readers of her younger self’s “Crimes”). In this way,

Defoe highlights how Roxana’s goods function as Appadurai’s incarnated signs, allowing her to move through society at will, whereas Mackenzie focuses on the social boundary that economic transactions represent.

Roxana is not only interested in her personal goods. Just as she primarily sees herself as an object of moveable property, she judges her acquaintances and partners the same way, proving her abilities as an intelligent consumer and judge of potential clients.

Through the lens of her observations, Defoe gives us a far more detailed description of the Jeweler’s diamond and gold rings than of his face, a trend that holds throughout the novel. The more exalted the station of her partner, the more we hear of their goods. For example, readers know much more about the Foreign Prince’s gifts than his person.

When the prince first comes to dinner with her, Roxana inventories the goods he brings:

His Gentleman immediately brought up a little Table, cover’d with a fine Damask Cloth, the Table no bigger than he could bring in his two Hands; but upon it, was set two Decanters, one of Champaign, and the other of Water, six Silver Plates, and a Service of fine Sweet-Meats in fine China Dishes, on a Sett of Rings standing up about twenty Inches high, one above another; below, was three roasted Partriges, and a Quail. (Roxana 62)

From the list of furnishings, dining ware and foodstuffs, Roxana understands the wealth and taste of the man dining with her. He, on the other hand, demonstrates that he understands the difference in their ranks (“my Quality sets me at a distance from you”

(Roxana 62)); she will not own anything of sufficient quality or value to suit his royal

103 standard of living, so he brings his own. That he does so is significant, because it demonstrates that instead of using lesser goods to socially lower himself, he is willing to provide the needed goods to elevate his partner’s status instead. In addition, Defoe demonstrates the differences in their status for the reader through this passage. The Prince chooses the best not simply due to expense, but rather what satisfies his sense of the aesthetic, while Roxana sees his goods as an economic profusion; she sees his wealth first and taste second, as evidenced by the lack of aesthetic detail, while as nobility he sees his taste and appreciation first and wealth scarcely at all.

Among Roxana’s inventory of the Foreign Prince’s goods, the damask linen cloth is noteworthy as an item in vogue among aristocrats during the late 1600s, likely from

Lyon, France. The porcelain “China” dishes could be either expensive imports from Asia or exclusive French goods, as European porcelain was not available until 1698 in France and made exclusively for the aristocracy (Berg 127). The silver plates would be solid silver and possibly unusual, in that Louis XIV mandated increasingly comprehensive silver levies to pay for his wars until 1698, when he declared that all silver used in French homes must be surrendered to the mint and melted down, leaving very few pieces behind

(Jacquemart 177). Each of the listed items is therefore rare, expensive, and tasteful in ways that would be evident to any British citizen with a rough knowledge of the contemporary consumer market.36

The profusion of items is notable for its effect on Roxana and as an opportunity to define her outlook for the reader. Certainly Roxana is aware of the rarity and expense of the items she lists; as an older Roxana narrates, she guides the reader’s perception of those objects to match her own, even if the reader might otherwise be unfamiliar with

104 their worth and intended social message. Defoe therefore not only gives us Roxana’s perspective of the list, he allows the list to educate his readers. Through the inventory,

Roxana’s position as an exceptional commoner (and consumer) is understood because her overawed response to the luxury she witnesses is apparent. Her perspective and that of the reader are expected to align. Moreover, it indicates that Roxana is aware of the ways that objects and social differentiations intersect; there is no danger that she will mistake the status of the Jeweler with that of the Prince, for example. She demonstrates through her inventories a continued awareness of whom she is with and what their status is in the larger social world, which unmistakably signals her mercantile ways of thinking. Her continual inventories set her apart from both the Foreign Prince (and the nobility she encounters later on) and the laboring class, setting her firmly in the “middle state,” as

Crusoe’s father terms it.

While Defoe uses objects to signal the worthiness of Roxana’s lovers, he is no less aware of her status as a rare and potentially valuable commodity, in terms of art, entertainment, and companionship. While Roxana rarely refers to herself in those terms, she never expresses surprise when others do. As her Prince says when justifying his gift of jewelry, “I love, Child, says he, to see every thing suitable; a fine Gown and Petticoat; a fine lac’d Head; a fine Face and Neck, and no Necklace, would not have made the

Object perfect” (Roxana 73). His list is not an inventory in the way Roxana’s is, but rather a checklist of aesthetic perfection. He catalogs her clothes and body by category rather than as components of a whole being that belongs specifically to her. All these things together, neck and necklace alike, come to make her a perfect “Object,” which the

Prince can admire and enjoy as he would a piece of fine art. Properly attired, Roxana

105 becomes worthy of the Prince’s appreciation in a way that someone without access to the right accouterments — a servant, for example — would never be.

Even Roxana’s first lover, the Jeweler, needs her to be appropriately “raised” in status via objects in order for him to stay within his social and cultural boundaries. To do otherwise would risk his own reputation by establishing a relationship with someone of a lower social class (as he later does with Amy, Roxana’s maid, which he soon regrets as a

“vile Action” (Roxana 47)). In setting up this early relationship for Roxana, Defoe continually notes how the position of status-appropriate objects appears in the eyes of observers, though he rarely names or acknowledges them. When the Jeweler seems to notice Roxana’s condition and visits her, both she and the house have to be made presentable to other unnamed observers in the novel: the house must have the garden put in order and the weeds pulled, and Roxana must be washed and dressed in clean, orderly clothing (29). Only when both tasks are completed can he come inside the house without it reflecting poorly on him as its landlord; only then can he pay his addresses to Roxana as she takes on the accepted appearance of her station as a middle-class woman. His courtship of her is therefore tied to his business role as her landlord; her role is thus likewise blurred, shown by the similar treatment for both her and the house’s garden. It becomes difficult to tell whether she is likened to furnishings of the house, or a client, or a love interest.

The Jeweler then further sets her up by returning all the furniture seized for rent, so that her home better reflects her original status and is worthy of his visits. Each of these material changes conveys a specific message about status in society, even though the only observers we know of are the gardener and Amy, who already understands the

106 proper social status of her mistress. Defoe details these object transactions for the reader, showing the importance they make to the Jeweler (and presumably to Roxana). Defoe’s descriptions are shallow, focusing on outward perceptions rather than Roxana’s comfort, for example. They limit the reader’s impression of both the events and the literary objects he uses, directing the reader to a specific interpretation. His narrow portrayal of his literary objects direct the reader’s attention away from the meaning any one object might have, and instead calls upon all of them together as a united group aimed at a specific social goal.

Defoe emphasizes appearances as a major concern for Roxana and tailors his object descriptions to focus on the qualities she desires most: specifically their appearances. The objects in Roxana’s possession, including her person, are crucial to her continued success in society. The Jeweler and the Prince, as shown, are keenly aware of the need for their chosen partners to be social equals. Roxana is no less aware of this, and takes care to ensure that her possessions and her appearance are equal to that of the type of wealth and social status she is looking for in a lover, leading to a very specific sort of description in the text that highlights her own status rather than any details of objects or her interiority. For example, when Roxana moves to London, she begins “to make a

Figure suitable to my Estate, which was very great.” Her lodgings were “handsome … and very richly furnish’d”; her “Equipage” was nice looking but not overly expensive.

She hires servants, specifically “a Coachman, a Footman, my Woman, Amy, who I dress’d like a Gentlewoman, and made her my Companion, and three Maids” (Roxana

165). The list of staff is important; through it, Defoe reveals Roxana’s obsession with appearances. She has one male servant devoted to her equipage, while a footman works

107 both with the coach and in the house. She hires three maids but no senior staff, instead economizing by keeping Amy as both her head of household and her companion. Her staff of servants is thus incomplete for a household of “very great” estate and is unable to support the social duties involved with such a consequential show of wealth, specifically in entertaining other members of her class with balls, luncheons, or teas. She keeps a skeleton crew to maintain her home and her goods, diverting her resources toward the show she creates for others to see.

By giving us an itemized list of her servants and their duties and nothing else,

Defoe shows us how focused Roxana is on matching her outward appearance to her chosen social class, particularly for potential suitors. She is uninterested in making a complete transition to an aesthetic perspective like that of the Foreign Prince, as her continued prosperity is never guaranteed. Defoe also does not want to delineate an emotional core in the way Mackenzie later does through The Man of Feeling’s deployment of coinage and land. Roxana’s social status, like her objects, is just another costume she wears while remaining a merchant’s daughter at the core.

In addition to her household, Roxana’s personal appearance is treated as one more part of her social camouflage. As with the Jeweler and the Prince, Roxana pays strict attention to her adornments, not the qualities of her body or face. Through Roxana, Defoe gives us only what she is concerned with, limiting the reader’s scope of inquiry as well.

She comments on her wardrobe, noting that she “dress’d to the height of every Mode; went extremely rich in Cloaths; and as for Jewels, I wanted none.” Her servants, dressed in rich uniforms “lac’d with Silver,” were on par with anyone short of the nobility. She seeks to make “as gay a Show as I was able to do, and that upon all Occasions” (Roxana

108 165). In other words, she endeavors to exert complete control over her presentation through the careful use of objects.

Defoe understands the relationship between the objects we observe and the assumptions people make as a result. Others treat Roxana as a woman of high social rank because the objects she displays on and about her person are associated with such a rank due to expense and rarity. Through Roxana’s inventory, Defoe shows the way such objects work to convey information about status, as well as how she employs them to create the impression she desires. Just as with her servants, however, Defoe shows the gaps in that inventory to convey the truth about Roxana’s station. She puts on a show, as she says, with no substance behind it, a statement that reveals her perspective on her situation. She has not internally changed despite her rise in station, any more than she changed internally into a pauper when she was destitute. Her household and clothing create a façade that she maintains by curtailing access to her personal life, except for visits from would-be suitors and noblemen. Her clothes, carriage, and house are merely props for staging the appearance she wants to project. The richness of her fashionable clothing and the silver on the livery of her servants highlight her desire to be impressive.

The reader is outside of the targeted population of observers, though, and so is related only general information about the pertinent aspects of her clothing: the costly silver, the to-the-minute fashion, and the jewels. Through Roxana as narrator, Defoe uses such tightly edited references to reveal not just the objects, but how Roxana uses them to enter the English aristocratic class.

Through the use of status-associated objects, Roxana creates herself as a commodity on display for potential clients. The pinnacle of her personal self-promotion

109 is when she appears in her famous Turkish outfit during a ball she holds for members of the court. Eager to attract the attention of the king, she puts on the outfit of a Turkish princess. Notably, the outfit belonged to a slave Roxana had been given by the Foreign

Prince, who had once been a rich woman in her own right. Reducing the Turkish woman to an object in making her a slave, her clothes can then be separated from her, as her position as an owned object means she cannot then own any other object. As Roxana notes, the clothes and the slave were purchased separately: “and with this Turkish Slave, I bought the rich Clothes too” (Roxana 174), indicating that both she and the prince took part in this exchange. Whoever the woman was, once she becomes a slave she is transformed into an object. By donning the slave’s clothing, Roxanna likewise knowingly takes on aspects of an object, offering her person up for examination.37 Wearing this outfit, Roxana can pretend to be outside the British social structure and initially refuse the requests of the masked man she believes to be the king, while choosing the way she displays herself to him. She makes herself available as an object for him to show off to the other guests as he escorts her to dance, then claims center stage as an unexpected entertainment in a manner that would have been gauche if she had worn her customary clothing.

By inhabiting the foreign clothes and donning the “exotic” costume, Roxana steps outside not just the social order, but the cultural order as well. Her solo dance in costume reinforces that the normal cultural reserve between genders does not have to apply to her, placing her outside British (and even Christian) morals. Her Turkish costume encourages the audience at her ball to consider her as other, potentially helping them overcome any reluctance to approach her with an offer of patronage. In addition, the fact that Turkish

110 women were regularly veiled in public during the Ottoman Empire contributed a frisson of the forbidden, heightening the potential eroticism of her dance for the men present by suggesting that the scene was private and intimate, similar to what an Ottoman sultan might see from a member of his harem (Mukerji 164).38 Roxana uses the outfit to objectify herself, encouraging the men in the party to view her as an object of entertainment. Through the dance scene, Defoe is able to navigate the relationship between Roxana as the protagonist and Roxana as a would-be royal mistress, offering herself up for purchase as an “owned” object without specifically stating that action for the reader or the characters observing her dance. Much as the refurbished landlord’s house allows the Jeweler to enter and court her, the costume operates as a door between owner and owned, allowing Roxana to gesture to the possibilities for potential “owners” while remaining firmly on the side of self-government. Men own the social and cultural spaces, but the objects within (largely owned by women) determine the potential use of that space.

Recognizing the potential for objects to moderate social settings on behalf of individuals is not a new phenomenon. Every character in the room realizes the dancer is

Roxana; no one is fooled. At the same time, the costume introduces an air of uncertainty that allows for flexibility in social behavior. She is not transformed into a Turkish princess, but she is recreated as “other”; she reveals herself to be unlike other women while deferring to the men with power in the room. She is not a barbaric foreigner, but her beliefs and ethics are as foreign to contemporary British culture as if she were. This is made particularly clear when the Georgian and Armenian women come to one of her balls soon thereafter. They dance native dances for her and her company to traditional

111 music and everyone is pleased, but as Roxana says, “The Novelty pleas’d, truly, but there was something wild and Bizarre in it, because they really acted to the Life the barbarous

Country from whence they came” (Roxana 179). Roxana’s costume does not turn her into a Turkish princess, but rather reveals her as an outsider who is unwilling to accept social and cultural norms except when it pleases her.

Roxana’s use of the Turkish costume mirrors that of the lords “attending in

Masquerade” (Roxana 173), or choosing to wear masks to an otherwise non-costumed party in a practice called “incognito.” The lords are flouting social conventions by downplaying their social status and rank. Their masks indicate a wish for their normal social ranks to go unremarked, even as they claim a heightened level of respect by obviously being nobles. Their expensive clothing and court manners remain evident, however; the disguise is not intended to be complete. Rather, the masks signal the desire for an alternate set of social rules governing costumed individuals who do not wish to be publicly recognized, allowing freedom of movement and expression that would normally violate the cultural norms of their class. Someone who travels incognito is inherently worth noticing, yet assumes a disguise; the more obvious the disguise, the more that the practice signals the wearer’s tacit admission of their identity along with a request to have that identity politely ignored (“incognito”).

Calling out an incognito lord by his true title and forcing social rules upon him would in effect be challenging his real status and assuming a higher one. For Roxana to change her plans and don a foreign costume constitutes, if not a challenge, then a demonstrated willingness to similarly discard conventional morality. She can make that choice because, as hostess, she acts as “ruler” of the social event and thus can set aside

112 social convention in a limited fashion. By wearing her exotic costume and performing a dance for the room as a whole and passing it off as a Turkish dance, Roxana is using the costume to advertise her body and her person as a rare collectible object, with a veneer of exoticism over a more conventionally acceptable Franco-English core. She demonstrates that she is cosmopolitan but retiring; showy but private; expensive but discreet; and beautiful but talented at keeping her companion entertained. Given her stated goal of becoming a mistress, her costume and dance form an opportunity for advertisement to a select group. When word of her performance travels outside of that group and she gains a reputation, she becomes disconcerted at gaining “Roxana” as a nickname as it reinforces her ultimate lack of control over people, if not objects (Roxana 176). She uses objects to attract potential sponsors of a more private future performance — a gambit that works exactly as she intended and yet perhaps reveals more of her true self than she meant to.

Her desire to market herself even among such socially exalted company reveals that, regardless of her object ownership, she is always a member of the middle, merchant classes. She is eternally moving throughout society, rising and falling but never able to truly ascend into the upper classes or nobility because her essential nature does not change. Her efforts at social mobility keep her from starving, but are unable to change her outlook; her final choice to marry the Dutch merchant and be kept “as a princess”

(255) is perhaps her ideal state, as she achieves the comfort and security of wealth without the need to change her inner self. The appearance of her daughter, of course, and

Roxana’s distress at the thought of the girl’s murder, prove that she would be unable to transform her self regardless of her desire to do so.

Roxana’s ongoing concern with appearances means that Roxana as a whole is a

113 highly visual novel, even without illustrations or detailed descriptions. It is deeply concerned with appearances and perception, both for readers and characters, with objects acting as the measuring stick for Roxana’s social stature and prospects. Defoe ensures this understanding by showing only the object aspects that are crucial to understanding their function in the novel; when he describes the “silver-lac’d” livery but tells us nothing else about it, it’s because he’s giving us the information he intends the observer to take away from the encounter: the obvious expense of the uniform. He shows only the part of the object needed to express his meaning, doing away with any superfluous detail. The result is that in Roxana, Defoe writes not in terms of what the observer sees, but what the observer knows as a result of seeing: the social information conveyed through carefully chosen objects. Defoe uses literary objects as a medium for otherwise absent information about people, society, wealth, and culture.

By choosing Roxana’s incarnated signs carefully and displaying them to their best advantage, Defoe reveals the inherently shallow nature of class difference. In doing so, he offers a glimpse of how objects work to enable class mobility through the appearance of wealth and taste, even as he makes it clear how morally abhorrent Roxana’s actions are.

She continually elevates her social class simply because her skills as a consumer and various object associations make it appear she is already a part of her targeted group. Her inability to conform to the beliefs and mores of the upper classes suggest, however, that while Defoe understood how objects can be used to participate in and manipulate society into creating social mobility, he felt that outward object-enabled transformation was ultimately incapable of changing the self, and thus any social mobility gained by that method would be inevitably fleeting. He demonstrates this through Roxana’s struggles

114 with her chosen status versus her maternal body.

As time passes, the crucial object that Roxana has trouble keeping under control is her own maternal body. Her objects cannot serve to mask her origins effectively when her responses override them, as they do upon greeting the young woman she recognizes as her daughter, years after having abandoned her.

No Pen can describe, no Words can express, I say, the strange Impression which this thing [kissing her daughter] made upon my Spirits; I felt something shoot thro’ my Blood; my Heart fluttere’d; my Head flash’d, and was dizzy, and all within me, as I thought, turn’d about, and much ado I had, not to abandon myself to an Excess of Passion at the first Sight of her, much more when my Lips touch’d her face; I thought I must have taken her in my Arms, and kiss’d her again a thousand times, whether I wou’d or no. (Roxana 277)

Here Defoe treats the innermost embodiments of Roxana’s self as objects that will not be controlled. The moment of maternal reaction is intensified through contrast with the controlled presentation of objects elsewhere in the novel. That sudden dissonance between the presentation Roxana has painstakingly built and her maternal, physical responses to the presence of her child reveals a complex person behind the performative surface. It suggests a teleological moment that reveals Roxana’s core nature as a woman and a mother. It reveals her preoccupation with her daughter and concerns about the tension between her maternal self and the life she has painstakingly constructed, as well as the inability of the two to coexist. While Crusoe’s objects serve to reveal and expand his interiority, this moment for Roxana shows how she uses material culture to suppress her own. Her self-control is shown to be limited to outward expressions, bolstered by the objects she uses to camouflage herself.

The result is a calculated retreat to a Puritan costume in the hopes of escaping the paradox she created by replacing herself with the objects she needed to transform her life.

115 The ending of Roxana suggests that despite understanding how objects and society interact, mistaking outward manipulation of objects and associated meanings for internal change invites disaster; Roxana’s ending reinforces that the self is immutable, although its outward expression may change. Society’s focus on consumer culture and materialism, however, renders it susceptible to falsehood, underlying the divide between the world’s meaner nature and the intrinsic truth of the soul beyond the conditions of the easily manipulated material world.

Clothes Make the Woman: Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer and Identity

Literary objects in a textual work are malleable, allowing authors to pick and choose what they want to represent. When a work is translated onto the stage, however, the literary object gains a physical representation. Such an object lacks any real life association of its own despite its physical form; unlike everyday objects, staged literary objects (or props) have no owners and only function within the artificial environment of a stage production. Because they are not used in real social and cultural contexts, props do not accrue associations in the way that everyday objects do, lacking any sort of actual use value. Props are the ultimate expression of Appadurai’s “incarnated signs”: they are strictly performative items, used to transmit information about the embodied characters that use them.

In this section, I shift from solely textual works to examine Oliver Goldsmith’s

She Stoops to Conquer, performed in London for the first time in 1773 and published a short time later that same year. In She Stoops to Conquer, the central character Kate

116 Hardcastle turns social perceptions surrounding clothing to her own advantage in pursuing her reluctant suitor, Marlow. By wearing clothing and accessories suitable to a maid’s position, Kate fools Marlow into revealing his true personality and falling in love with her despite his anxiety about marriage.

She Stoops to Conquer provides a noteworthy opportunity to study the use of a literary object in both textual and physical form, specifically that of the dresses worn by the protagonist, Kate Hardcastle. As literary objects, they remain defined primarily in the mind of the reader; as garments worn on stage by an actor, they are collectively defined within the scope of the production by the author, actor, director, costumer, and audience.

The result is that fewer associations are conveyed due to the object’s physical form and collective origin, but the impressions given are more direct and particular.

The perishable nature of props and costumes means that very few of them from eighteenth-century British theater survive in their original forms. It is difficult to know what sorts of costumes or props were used in various plays, as costumes, staging, and non-essential props were regularly determined by a theater out of their available inventory, rather than written into the script. Even if manuscript notes on props or costumes existed for a given play, they were not generally included in the published versions.

In the current day, most material aspects of eighteenth-century theater are unavailable. However, some illustrations still survive, particularly those of actors wearing costumes from their most famous roles. Because Goldsmith specifically called for the use of costume in She Stoops to Conquer as an essential part of the plot, moreover, its central literary object — in this case, clothing — was recorded in both text and illustration (see

117 fig. 2). Its singular importance in both performance and print is enacted both in text and on the eighteenth-century stage.39

Figure 2. Mrs. Bulkley as Kate Hardcastle in her "housemaid's dress" from the 1773 performance. Source: Portrait of Mrs Bulkley as Miss Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer. 1780, Engraving, printed ink on paper, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

118 This image features the actress Mrs. Bulkley, who was the first actress to play Kate

Hardcastle in the 1773 London debut of She Stoops to Conquer. Her dress, as pictured, is from the original epilogue by Goldsmith, in which she wears her plain “housemaid’s dress” from the end of the play (Goldsmith 61). The nature of the engraving makes any decorative pattern in the fabric difficult to discern, but it appears to be a plain colored fabric with no decorative embroidery. The neckline of the bodice and the sleeves are decorated with fabric ruffles rather than lace. A ring of keys hangs from her waist, indicating her ostensible position as a household servant. She wears no jewelry of any kind. The outfit is topped off by a beribboned, ruffled loose cap, the type worn to cover the hair and protect it from daily dirt and smoke, both under bonnets and by itself around the house.

From these aspects alone, the outfit seems simple enough, but additional factors complicate the outfit’s lower-class interpretation. Starting with her head, Mrs. Bulkley wears a tall, ostentatious wig that her cap barely covers, complete with multiple tiers of rigid curls. The dress she wears is not a working frock, which would be a separate bodice and ankle-length skirt combined with an apron, with either no panniers or pocket hoops, the smallest pannier style worn in the eighteenth century. Instead, Mrs. Bulkley wears a fashionable robe a l’anglais, unsuitable for housework. She wears moderate panniers to hold out her skirt to the sides, which is made with enough fabric to create a train down to the floor.

Examining this illustration, it’s clear that the costume works on three different levels. At a cursory glance, it is plain enough to pass for a modest woman’s dress particularly when one notices the house keys hanging from her waist. The central plot of

119 the play, in which Kate’s would-be suitor, Marlow, mistakes her for a housemaid and is led into believing himself involved with two different women in the household, is therefore made believable for the audience.

At the same time, the style of the gown is obviously that of at least a middle-class woman, allowing the audience to remain certain that the character is still Kate regardless of her outfit. Finally, it is unlikely that Kate Hardcastle would have worn a wig (although they had become fashionable for women in England beginning in 1770) or used false hair to create such an elaborate style; certainly Goldsmith only mentions elaborate hair in conjunction with Mrs. Hardcastle, her stepmother. The towering hairstyle on Mrs.

Bulkley’s head therefore adds unrealistic drama to the look, placing it firmly in the realm of theatrical costume. It combines a number of incongruous aspects that, while out of place in daily life, mesh well to create the character of Kate Hardcastle on the stage and allow a suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience.

One of the most compelling aspects of Mrs. Bulkley’s costume is the mix of objects that would not ordinarily be associated with each other: expensive wigs with mob caps, for example, and stylish gowns with plain fabric. This blend of class significances creates a space within the object of the costume that allows for both confusion by observers (both other characters and the audience) and multiple social and cultural identifications. Appadurai’s notion of incarnated signs primarily concerns luxury items, as those objects are often obtained specifically to advertise the owner’s status to onlookers. As Lynch observes, though, when an object signifies what it is, it also signifies what it is not. Mrs. Bulkley’s outfit confuses those boundaries by combining status indicators.

120 As social status is conferred by luxury objects, for example, status can also be removed by association with commonplace or low-status objects: the more stigmatizing the object, the lower the perceived status of the associated individual, regardless of his or her origins. Since this perceived change is dependent on observers, it can be used to create a temporary shift in status. The owner can resume his or her original status when he or she reassumes objects with the appropriate significance.40

These temporary object-based shifts in status can be seen throughout British fiction. While Defoe’s Roxana uses luxury objects to create opportunities for social mobility, other objects — particularly clothing — could also allow authors to manipulate expectations about lower social status. Emily Atkins in The Man of Feeling is forced into a lower class when she loses all her indicators of status and is unable to regain them, but individuals could choose to adopt the trappings of a lower status as well, disguising their allotted place in society.

Kate Hardcastle’s clothes are at the heart of the plot in both the written and performed text. They obscure and reveal the secrets of herself, her father, and her would- be suitor throughout the play for both the audience at the performance and a reader of the printed text. The costumes do so by obviously embodying social signifiers through construction, materials, and ornamentation. Kate’s “social” outfit, for example, is made of silks, with “French fripperies” (Goldsmith 3) of ruffles and a fashionable bonnet. It advertises her father’s wealth as well as her own taste and beauty, declaring that she is the discerning daughter of a wealthy gentleman and is adhering to social and cultural expectations for a young unmarried woman of her social class. Her father disapproves of luxury, however, as he has labeled Kate’s social dress. He prefers her to wear modest

121 English goods without unnecessary embellishments (particularly if those accessories have a foreign origin), and so she has her “home” outfit, which is well made but plainly designed and unornamented. When wearing the latter at home, Kate sheds the signs of her social position and dresses for her domestic duties as an act of filial obedience, moving from one set of expectations to another.

The two outfits together embody one of the core struggles of this work, which is the tension between the domestic private world and the culture of consumerism. Kate deals with having two sets of expectations to deal with by wearing the appropriate outfit for each, effectively code-switching depending on the location and who is watching. Very few other characters in the play, however, exhibit her quick wit and flexibility of character. Her ability to adhere to functionally opposing sets of values confuses her would-be suitor, Marlow, who fears conforming to social norms and thus dresses as a means of social warfare rather than acquiescence. His arrival at the Hardcastle’s manor house provides not only a clear view of Marlow’s perspective on clothing as a social weapon, but also how others in the play share his views of clothing and self-expression.41

After Marlow and Hastings arrive at the “inn,” they begin planning the meeting with Kate and Constance, who Hastings already wishes to marry. Rather than attempting to impress Mr. Hardcastle with his suitability or adhere to rural expectations, however, the two young men discuss what clothes to wear as though they are planning a siege battle. They do not plan to change themselves, but rather to force capitulation from the women they will meet. As opposed to Kate’s outfits designed to appease social expectations, the men’s clothes are planned as a stylistic rhetorical statement designed to impress and overwhelm, rather than a commitment to honor an advertised social or

122 cultural duty. The men are attempting to impose their desires on the situation through their objects, rather than conform to expectations.

From the beginning of the clothing discussion between the two men, Hastings uses military jargon, talking of “opening the campaign with the white and gold.” Marlow counters with more military phrasing, saying, “Yet, George, if we open the campaign too fiercely at first, we may want ammunition before it is over. I think to reserve the embroidery to secure a retreat.” Marlow considers a “ventre d’or” waistcoat to wear with a brown suit, saying, “girls like finery” and referring to meeting the upcoming women as

“carry[ing] on the siege” (Goldsmith 14-15). The men respond to an upcoming meeting with the need to overwhelm and impress, not fit in and be accepted.42

At the same time, Marlow’s reliance on wearing situationally appropriate clothing should not be understated. Within Hardcastle’s house, believing himself to be in a public setting, Marlow is still in his disordered traveling clothes while Kate is in her social dress

(although she is in her home). Without his own socially approved clothing to moderate the interaction with Kate on his behalf, Marlow is overcome by anxiety. On the other hand, while Kate is thus prepared for social interaction, she is pushed to bring her social role and duties to bear on a private situation. Her fashionable clothes and expensive materials advertise her station, telling others how she should be treated. At the same time,

Marlow is disarmed by feeling underdressed. He is made vulnerable in a setting that seems to call for polite public interaction, when it instead is a domestic discussion that should indicate intimacy. The appropriate locations, costumes, and expectations are confused and mismatched, and the characters react accordingly.

In contrast, when Kate wears her plain dress, Marlow feels superior and assumes

123 her to be a servant without the clothing that marks her wealth and status. He relies on the signals from visible personal objects to determine how he should treat someone, rather than relying on more subtle clues. Goldsmith shows us that Kate sees past what one wears to whom someone is, and thus her goal is to have Marlow do the same. As Kate says when justifying the ruse to fool Marlow:

In the first place, I shall be seen, and that is no small advantage to a girl who brings her face to market. Then I shall perhaps make an acquaintance, and that’s no small victory gained over one who never addresses any but the wildest of her sex. But my chief aim is to take my gentleman off his guard, and like an invisible champion of romance examine the giant’s force before I offer to combat. (Goldsmith 33)

Goldsmith’s use of a “market” analogy hearkens back to Roxana’s awareness of her status as a commodity, though there is a clear difference between Kate’s intention to find a buyer and Roxana’s desire to lease, as it were. While both individuals are aware of the economic realities involved in marriage during the period, Kate’s dedication to her social responsibilities is clear, just as Roxana continually avoids any such entanglements in favor of her freedom. On the other hand, Kate’s discussion of “bringing her face to market” seems to indicate she has no long-term investment in her person, and in fact does not consider it hers but rather inevitably another’s property, which is in keeping with her desire to adhere to social norms. The third such character, Constantia Neville, considers her fortune to be in her inheritance of jewels, not in her person, despite her lover insisting that his only interest is the latter. The women’s situations suggest that for a woman in the eighteenth-century, the Lockean ideal of owning one’s own “person” is an inherently radical act.

At the same time, Kate’s emphasis on the word “seen” accentuates a problem inherent in the use of objects as social signifiers: in the first meeting, Marlow only saw

124 her clothes, which is to say the signs of her status. He encountered the social boundary signified by her outfit and, feeling ill-equipped to prove himself her equal, he was overcome and withdrew without ever clearly seeing her. She seeks to be known, to know him, and to assess her would-be fiancé “like an invisible champion of romance.” If luxury objects are incarnated signs, intended to draw the eye and be seen, then Goldsmith’s implication here is that the lack of those deliberate signals is equivalent to invisibility — at least where those signs are normally expected to be. Goldsmith’s necessary added detail, however, in order to accommodate dramatic action on stage, means that the costumes enhance awareness of social signaling for the audience and readers, rather than downplaying the process under the term “disguise.” The audience, like Marlow and the other characters, specifically sees not only the objects of the costumes but also the visual significance of those costumes in terms of class identification and required behavior.

In order to learn more about Marlow, Kate dispenses with the clothes that label her as his social equal. Instead, she wears her plain dress, which he interprets as being of a lower social class (again, a lack of luxury equates to lesser status), and adds accessories in keeping with her assumed servant status to complete the transformation.43 Through this process, she creates a perceived power differential where he will feel more at ease, allowing the lower-status signals sent through her clothing to enable a new “first” meeting, wherein she can get a better sense of his personality and character and thus remediate their meeting as though it were the first. As a result, Marlow — who as a practiced consumer cannot see anyone past his mental inventory of their personal objects

— falls for a ruse that does not confuse anyone else in the household.

By having Kate (and indeed, the play as a whole) rely so heavily on the idea of

125 seeing, or being seen, for what one is rather than what one has, Goldsmith emphasizes the role of objects in how we evaluate ourselves and others. Maxine Berg specifically examines this phenomenon, noting that most personal possessions are “shaped by public structures of meaning, but in turn, these public structures are modified by how people experience and respond to such possessions in private” (30). Marlow’s understanding of luxury consumer items as symbols of social status is shaped by his experience of society and the wealthy urban culture of London. He lacks experience with what those possessions mean outside of that milieu, if anything. He interprets his experience as universal rather than particular. Marlow comprehends the correct meaning of objects within his social circles in London through experience there and abroad. His lack of familiarity with domestic life beyond that of his immediate family, however, means that he has no sense of what possessions might mean in private. He cannot suspend his knowledge to engage with the person associated with the objects he expects. The absence of those socially significant objects, therefore, leads Marlow to assume others are outside his social structure.

Mr. Hardcastle, in turn, may abstain from consumer culture, but he has no pretensions to a place in London’s cultural circles. He is quite familiar with rural public structures and content with his role, given his social class and attendant responsibilities.

His poor opinion of Kate’s “gauze, and French frippery” (Goldsmith 3) has less to do with any misunderstandings and more to do with his feeling that such objects are not only out of place in a rural social context, but also dangerous to the larger public good.

Hardcastle criticizes his daughter’s morning outfit as foolish, for example, for its accessories and materials: “Goodness! What a quantity of superfluous silk hast thou got

126 about thee, girl! I could never teach the fools of this age that the indigent world could be clothed out of the trimmings of the vain” (3). Specifically, he blames London society for her fashionable taste: “By living a year or two in town, she is as fond of gauze, and

French frippery, as the best of them” (3).

Hardcastle’s complaints foreground the idea of consumer culture as a social ill, particularly the related growth of luxury goods and fashion. In claiming that the “indigent world” could be clothed by what the vain use to decorate their clothing, Hardcastle expresses concern at how luxury objects increase the distance between the middle and lower classes. The wealthy purchase socially significant objects at the expense of charity and investment in English society as a whole, acting as a moral and economic drain on the country. By purchasing foreign luxury goods, whether smuggled into the country or brought in under tariff, individuals expressed their wealth and some degree of indifference or immunity to potential legal consequences. In either case, the money paid for the items flowed out of the country rather than circulating and contributing to domestic economic growth.

For example, the “gauze” Mr. Hardcastle bemoans is made from raw silk brought back by the East India Company. The fabric was manufactured throughout Europe, though Kate’s fashionable attire most likely came from within England given that foreign finished silk products were prohibited (Farrell 268). Throughout the eighteenth century, the British government employed a protectionist strategy for their home market, including prohibiting the export of raw domestic materials (like wool), textile machinery, and artisan emigration. At the same time, the government also restricted or prohibited manufactured imports from silks and printed calicoes in 1700 to all imported printed

127 fabrics in 1721, to manufactured silks and velvets in 1766 (Black 70). The “French frippery” could indicate lace, trims, or ribbons, all of which were more easily smuggled in and were in high demand despite being banned from sale in England (Farrell 269). Her fashionable silks and embellishments were therefore indicative of restricted categories of luxury goods, all of which were perceived as a threat to British domestic manufacturing during the eighteenth century.

In objecting to Kate’s chosen apparel, Mr. Hardcastle appeals to the familiar, which makes up the bulk of his environment (Goldsmith 1). Goldsmith exposes

Hardcastle as a conservative country squire. Like Swift, he uses Hardcastle to show real resistance to mercantile London’s theories of the importance of trade and importing in economic growth. Through him, Goldsmith decries novelty, unnecessary expense, and foreign influence, echoing many contemporary economists such as Adam Smith in both

The Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments (De Marchi 29), but particularly

Daniel Defoe in his pamphlet Reflections on the Prohibition Act, which lays out the case against the East India Company and discusses the benefits of protectionism for English manufacturing. Hardcastle’s comments even refer to King William III’s speech from the throne on the occasion of the first “Calico Act” in 1701, casting a restriction on imports in light of the need to employ the poor (O’Brien 401). In doing so, the king tied the idea of domestic production to the social good of the nation from the very beginnings of the eighteenth century, a fact Goldsmith uses to justify Hardcastle’s opinions.

Resisting urban social norms and the influences of both foreign goods and consumer culture in general, Hardcastle insists that Kate’s evening clothing be plain, or as she calls it, a “housewife’s dress” (Goldsmith 3), convinced from his own lack of

128 social connection beyond his rural community that items signifying status are unnecessary. Hardcastle’s request that Kate dress plainly when not paying or receiving visits indicates a resistance to the influence of consumer culture within his domestic life; if the social world cannot function without objects to signify class and wealth, then he wants no part of it. His son-in-law Toby feels similarly, disdaining his cousin and her inheritance of jewels in favor of a barmaid more attuned to rural life and companionship

(26). Whether out of a sense of national pride or a desire for comfort, both men favor an insulated domestic life over one ruled by consumerism.

Hardcastle and Toby are not alone in their concerns regarding the domestic lives of men living in a consumer culture. The Spectator published a number of pieces focusing on masculine distress in the household. The tales portray wives as more involved with the income provided by husbands than the men themselves. The men feel they are less important to their wives than the women’s laces, or brocaded cloth, or china cups (Maurer 223). Hardcastle’s resistance to going to London, his lack of casual social engagement, and his refusal to allow Kate access to her finer clothes in the evening at home mirror a social concern over the role of objects in domestic relationships. He fears those signifying objects will invade his home and, like foreign insurgents, displace the loyalty of British subjects (in this case, the family) from the source of their livelihood and stability (in this case, the father/husband). Goldsmith’s use of objects in the play supports this fear, as the sources of strife in his household revolve around his niece’s jewels, his daughter’s dresses, and his wife’s fascination with London society. By equating British economic and social policy to personal spending habits, Goldsmith taps into uneasiness about the moral and ethical costs of consumption and an over-reliance on objects for

129 social mediation.

Hardcastle is not the only man in She Stoops to Conquer who is concerned about domestic shifts in material culture. Marlow’s inability to look past the personal luxury goods of women in his own class is a significant challenge to his own happiness. He fears women who might be suitable candidates for marriage, not because of who they are, but because of the material expectations of the courtship and marriage process:

But to go through all the terrors of a formal courtship, together with the episode of aunts, grandmothers, and cousins, and at last to blurt out the broad staring question of, Madam, will you marry me? No, no, that’s a strain much above me, I assure you! (Goldsmith 14)

His apprehension of bearing the scrutiny and meeting the material expectations of all the extended female relatives — not her father and mother, but her female relations once removed — is so great as to render him speechless in front of any socially eligible woman. The “terrors” he mentions indicate a highly emotional reaction to the prospect of being judged on his eligibility as a future husband and provider of income (and through that, luxury goods for his prospective spouse and family).

Instead of resisting matrimony based on fears of financial expectations, Marlow claims that his problems derive from a sense of personal modesty that is unmatched in women of his acquaintance (Goldsmith 13). His account of modesty is at odds with his behavior, however; though he is shy among people of his own social class, he is exuberant among lower social classes. His use of the word rather seems to indicate a preference shared with Hardcastle for banishing luxury objects denoting status rather than inappropriate social behavior for his class, as he has no particular account of women with unbecoming behavior to report. Marlow’s meaning seems to indicate the OED definition, which refers expressly to matters “of a woman's dress: seemly, not ostentatious; sober in

130 colour and style, esp. so as to avoid revealing the figure of the wearer” (“modest, adj.”).

Here we see modesty connected specifically to plain clothing that is not “ostentatious,” which is defined in the OED as “likely to attract attention; conspicuous,” especially when connected to women’s clothing ("ostentatious, adj.”). The modifier is also closely connected with objects that are pretentiously expensive. Note that all of these key words revolve around the interaction between the garment being worn and the observer making assessments of the wearer based on that garment. Marlow’s continuing dread of that perceptive moment and the expectations it places upon him highlights his inability to read past the social meaning of possessions. In imagining an entry into domestic life, he can only see a material judgment to which he feels unequal, as he cannot see and understand women beyond the laces, fichus, and bonnets that culture assigns to them.44

Marlow serves as an object lesson to both the audience and reader, who are in on the deception. The two costumes are defined as Kate’s wardrobe and justified before

Marlow enters the picture, so that the audience and readers as observers are never fooled by Kate’s masquerade. In this way, Goldsmith places the audience and the reader in a state of mastery over the objects in the performance and the text within the domestic sphere. Notably, he does so without blaming Kate or Miss Neville, characters who maintain control over their relationships with objects and the way those objects mediate relationships with those around them. He reserves fault for the characters who cannot interact without an object intermediary and thus cede all control over social exchanges to those same objects, regardless of whether or not that is an appropriate choice.

Goldsmith makes Kate, the hero, a person who uses her objects (her two dresses) to reveal Marlow’s emotional capacity — and therefore domestic suitability — despite

131 his efforts to keep her at a polite distance. Kate’s familiarity with object signification, both from her time in London and her time performing socially in her community, combines with her cultural role as an unmarried daughter expected to be subservient to the rest of her family within the home. While her father worries about her intellect being swayed by consumerism, Kate proves through her ruse that she not only understands the information that objects project and receive, but that she is able to turn that knowledge to her advantage as needed. She knows how to see past the object to the person associated with it, and she uses her deception to teach Marlow to do the same. In doing so, she proves to her father not only that Marlow is an appropriate future son-in-law, but also that she has mastered the role of objects both in and out of the home. In addition, Kate shows her father that his skepticism regarding social objects has been taken too far, causing at least as much household chaos as the domestic consumerism he fears. In strictly adhering to his provincial and outdated beliefs, Hardcastle acts as a warning to conservative audiences and readers as well as a potential example of reformation.

By adjudicating between Hardcastle and Marlow, as well as showing them both the error of their ways, Kate rescues the public structure of marriage from the unwanted mediation of consumer culture; by teaching Marlow to see her without mediating luxury items in the way, she removes the social proprieties enforced by her morning visiting dress from a domestic space, making room for emotional connections. Kate’s rhetorical move is echoed in the subplot with Miss Neville and Hastings, where they return to resolve their filial duties by explaining their elopement and asking for her inheritance, even as they demonstrate their willingness to cast aside that traditional interaction when it becomes an impediment to reasonable action. Toby Lumpkin, Hardcastle’s stepson, takes

132 up the challenge and finishes the play by refusing the jewels in favor of his preferred sweetheart, the barmaid, who ostensibly does not employ social object mediation and thus seems in his eyes to be available. In each case, objects are banished from consideration when their presence proves an impediment to self-determination in domestic life, to the extent of Kate’s actress delivering the epilogue while wearing the plain gown, saying that she “gained a husband without aid of dress” (Goldsmith 61).

Domestic life is thus restored as a refuge from the practice of consumer culture.

Kate’s ability to briefly switch social classes relies on both confusion of status for its trappings and on her knowledge that a person’s belongings, while important in the world at large, say nothing deeply meaningful about that person. Goldsmith’s clear support of Kate’s moderate viewpoint, which neither rejects luxury nor encourages its unquestioned adoption, exhorts his audience to adhere to social standards of object signification but practice restraint in private. In that way, just as King William III initially intended with the Calico Act of 1700, the reach of consumerism might be contained and in turn be harnessed to support the public good.

Shopping for Trouble: The Circumvention of Cultural Standards in Haywood’s Miss

Betsy Thoughtless

While Defoe and Goldsmith both focus on the ownership of luxury items and their literary counterparts, how an individual (or character) acquires those items is rarely discussed. Throughout much of eighteenth-century British literature, readers encounter objects in medias res, as it were: already associated with a person or persons and with

133 their associations clearly established. Objects are often acquired through marriage or inheritance, but typically those interactions happen in the background, with little object description provided. When specific objects are noted in transition between characters or in acquisition, it is because something about the object or the interaction is notable in the story.

As Cynthia Wall observes, within the eighteenth century, people could be enmeshed with the things they shared space with: objects and subjects intertwined in meaning and interpretation (152). When Crusoe creates his objects, for example, his choices and actions tell readers about the substance of him as a person. When Harley engages in transactions, his failure to actually acquire anything likewise speaks to his inherent inability to function in consumer culture. What does this mean, however, for spaces where objects and subjects were untethered, as in a shop? As human and non- human intermingle in a space dedicated to acquisition and linking, the idea of owned and unowned within a fixed location is fascinating. If people and things are intertwined when associated with one another, as Wall suggests, then the question of explicitly separate humans and non-humans who congregate in order to join together and add new meanings to one another takes on new importance. The space of the shop becomes a place and time where wants are created and needs are fulfilled. Appearance becomes paramount with the addition of store fixtures and glass windows, with the promise of abundance and wealth inside the shop’s walls.

Wall notes that the displays inherent to shops suggested “kernel narratives” to individuals, inviting shoppers to imagine the connections between themselves and the object “as it would be if it were mine” (162). The shop not only advertises and sells

134 goods, but possibilities as new associations are made. As closely as people and objects are conceptually enmeshed in this period, the question of what (or who) is being acquired and by whom makes shops a dangerous and meaningful setting for anyone sufficiently unanchored in society. Retail locations become places where wants and desires are exploited. In such an uncontrolled space, almost anything could happen.

Eliza Haywood’s last novel, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751), repeatedly features discussions of shops and shopkeepers and the questionable events that occur in those establishments. The work has a far more moral overtone than her previous novels, with Haywood taking her heroine to task for her disregard for cultural traditions, the feelings of others, and even her future, as the title suggests. Many critics over time, including contemporary author Clara Reeve, assumed that Haywood’s heightened moral concerns in Miss Betsy Thoughtless represented a change of heart toward her earlier work and that her mid-eighteenth century work was “expiating the offenses” of her former writing (642). Some scholars have likewise suggested that Haywood’s late writing took on a more conservative bent;45 in Miss Betsy Thoughtless, Haywood created a cautionary tale for careless young women given to idle flirtation. Haywood’s amended literary trajectory, however, was toward pragmatism in a consumer society rather than conservative British sensibilities.

Miss Betsy Thoughtless is not a simple reformation story of a young, mostly unremarkable girl as contemporary critics presumed it to be.46 Haywood foregrounds

Betsy’s struggle as a consumer without any strong social ties to protect her. The choices

Betsy makes as she engages with the world, much of the time doing so in shops, shape her future domestic life. Her vulnerability to novelty and manipulation embroils Betsy in

135 exaggerated but relatable danger as she learns to successfully navigate both social and material environments while remaining in control.

Haywood portrays Betsy not as happily limited to her domestic sphere, but as someone who values herself as an individual and seeks a cultural space to explore her beliefs. Though culturally naïve, Betsy finds strength of character in the transitional public spaces of shops rather than as a constant guest in domestic circles. Her trials involve her role as a consumer, and thus so do her victories. Haywood’s moral tale of redemption, then, takes on a form of social realism in showing the potential dangers involved in the commerce of personal objects.

Haywood’s focus in Miss Betsy Thoughtless centers on issues of taste, manners, frugality, and appropriate household management while exploring how those aspects intersect with class and economic issues. Through Betsy’s adventures, Haywood creates a progressive portrayal of middling class culture and domestic life. Her characters’ behavior in and around retail spaces and practices of consumption highlights the link between middle-class consumer practices and personal ethics. From Volume 1, Chapter

1, Betsy’s story leads off with a tale of ill-conceived romance in the marketplace. Her older friend, Miss Forward, recruits Betsy to help arrange meetings with Forward’s teenage admirer, Master Sparkish.

Sometimes [Betsy] made pretences of going to the milliner, the mantua-maker, or to buy something in town, and begged leave, that Miss Forward should accompany her, saying, she wanted her choice of what she was to purchase. Sparkish was always made acquainted when they were to go out, and never failed to give them the meeting (History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless 29).

Even as a young girl, Betsy calls upon the excuse of shopping to arrange meetings for her friends with young gentlemen. They did not actually enter the shops, but merely made

136 excuses of purchasing clothing as a reason to go out by themselves, unaccompanied by a chaperone. From the beginning, therefore, we can see Haywood setting up not simply

Betsy’s lack of judgment and foresight, but also the presence of shopping as a cover for socially questionable actions on the part of others. It functions as an ungoverned space, even in reference, and becomes the center of Betsy’s future lessons in discernment.

Miss Betsy Thoughtless exploits innovations in consumption that had occurred since the beginning of the eighteenth century. In early eighteenth-century Britain, the means through which one obtained new goods was changing rapidly. The days of open- air markets and itinerant peddlers came slowly to an end as imported commodities became more popular and available, beginning with coffee, tea, sugar, and tobacco

(Kowaleski-Wallace 77). The advent of larger and more flexible glass allowed for the creation of storefront windows and glass display cabinets, which made it possible to store these items in bulk and sell them in a protected interior space, with sufficient light to make it possible to examine goods and thus both see and be seen by other shoppers

(Stobart et al. 16). Buying goods thus moved from being an outdoor public activity to a semi-private, indoor activity, in which people sought specific goods to suit their tastes and budget, rather than simply accepting whatever the traveling peddler might have in his cart.

As a result of that market transformation, what was formerly a scene of group public interaction became a more intimate moment in which objects and people became intertwined. A sense of personal expression once reserved for craftsmen and their wares, as seen in Crusoe’s connection to his creations, came to apply to purchased goods as well. As Wall suggests, the sort of consumerism that allowed for shopping “could include

137 the fashioning of identities through the inventive accumulation and arrangement of color, texture, pattern, material” (153). In short, by giving consumers choice, meaning occurred; differentiation and taste became necessary aspects of consumption. Even more telling, the transaction became a moment between those with money to spend and those who sold goods for money — in short, it brought together disparate socioeconomic and cultural groups to discuss matters of taste and personal expression.

In addition to mixing groups within a physical space, the culture that governed within a shop was likewise complicated. Whereas most public or semi-public spaces belonged either to the government or the upper classes, the space inside the shops belonged to the merchants who ran them (even if the buildings did not). Upper-class patrons with wealth or the social status to command credit were guests within that space, not owners, flipping traditions of ownership and social expectations. This phenomenon grew even more common as urban consumer space in larger towns became more common during the first half of the eighteenth century. As a result, the semi-public cultural space within the shop was defined by middle-class social expectations. All these factors together culminated in the creation of the shop, a new social realm dedicated to consumption and therefore object acquisition, where the rules for social interaction were tacitly set and enforced by the merchant classes.

The situation was not quite so simple as it might seem, however. The middle-class merchant owned the space and set the norms for retail culture, but part of that culture was deferring to customers as though dealing with individuals of a higher social class, reinforcing class norms in terms of both social interaction and economic transaction through politeness (Stobart et al. 84). Class-based deference became directly monetized

138 and temporarily decoupled from social status, effectively creating a separate but connected social space for interaction.

While retail space was public or semi-public, normal non-monetized cultural rules of group interaction were ignored. Middle class standards of behavior were the norm, but they were only weakly enforced and prone to being undermined or even temporarily dismissed, depending on a number of factors including social connections, ties to the community, and, above all, the amount of money involved (including past transactions, current expenditures, and the likelihood of future business). Finally, the shop’s function as a place where wants and desires were nurtured and fulfilled created an expectation of gratification in its patrons, all placed within a space where objects and people congregated with the goal of new entanglements and meaning. The result was a dangerously unstable public area where those who entered without sufficient social and cultural armor were at a distinct disadvantage. In these places, among these public or yet- unsold objects, the rules for social and cultural interaction between normally well-defined socioeconomic classes, genders, and nationalities were suspended; social differentiation proved tricky as the objects that would normally signify different social meanings instead remained unaligned to any specific person, granting limited access to any shopper who looked upon them. The unassigned signifiers thereby allowed a certain amount of cultural slippage between otherwise rigid categories.

Haywood examines the intrinsic peril of shops throughout Miss Betsy

Thoughtless, but she is not the only author to do so. Richardson shows similar concerns in Clarissa, when Lovelace discovers where Clarissa is staying after escaping from him.

When thwarted in his efforts to see her, he takes over the store on the first floor, playing

139 the part of the shopkeeper and alternately abusing and flirting with customers (Clarissa

1213). In both cases, a determined libertine converts the shop into a sexualized marketplace where the focus becomes the “shopkeeper’s” relationship with the customers as though they were available for purchase, rather than the domestic goods sold in the store. While Lovelace takes the part of shopkeeper, at least one customer participates willingly in the flirtatious exchange Richardson describes. The customer’s response is almost as if the two people were at a theater or other public social venue.

Stobart, Hann, and Morgan explain that consumer spaces, such as shops, were an important part of the public sphere of consumerism and cultural interaction. Being seen perusing fashionable goods was in some ways just as important as owning those goods, and all were part of the leisure landscape, along with theaters, assembly rooms, and pleasure gardens such as Vauxhall (Stobart et al. 112). Pierre Bourdieu’s work on distinction suggests that social differentiation is determined by a set of linked practices and goods, particularly those that mark out taste and judgment in either aesthetics or rarity (7). When applied to the social fabric of eighteenth-century British consumerism, however, it becomes clear that taste and expression were negotiated in the liminal realm of the storefront, wherein the rules for manners, discernment, and wealth as social boundaries were set and judged by the merchant class, not the aristocracy. The space between upper and middle classes, such as the confines of a shop, set cultural definitions for how class could express itself and be recognized by others within the larger culture. In between the push and pull of commerce, though, the boundaries for social interaction wore thin; British upper classes acted under advisement from those beneath their elevated station, and middle classes profited off the necessity of object acquisition in the name of

140 social rank and personal expression.

Within this carefully managed moment of social upheaval, authors seemed to recognize the potential for dangerous events that could bring about disgrace and ruin one’s reputation. The ease with which money provided mobility between classes, even if just within the space of a shop, was regularly portrayed in eighteenth-century British fiction as a sort of trap from which incautious shoppers, particularly women with their closer cultural relationship to consumption, might be unable to escape unscathed.47 Eliza

Haywood returns repeatedly to those moments of potential throughout Miss Betsy

Thoughtless, but rather than falling into a treacherous slough of undefined cultural meanings, Betsy quietly triumphs despite her trademark “thoughtless” behavior. She is a canny consumer, able to rationally manage her object associations rather than being overwhelmed by either implied cultural significance or social ambition.48 Through her interaction with shops and unclaimed goods, Betsy exerts control over her environment and her person in ways she is never allowed to do in her domestic life, proving her inherent worth despite the personality flaws of her youth.

From Betsy’s arrival in the Goodman household, she is placed in the midst of

“publick diversions” (History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless 36) including court, theaters, balls, and operas. With these social occasions comes a need for new dresses, shoes, hats, and accessories, all requiring trips to shops with her guardian’s wife and daughter. To take part in these public structures, she must enter into the semi-public space of a shop, there to purchase personal belongings from a person with whom she has no prior social connection. Other than an effort at public politeness (which was sometimes ignored), there was no determined rule of social interaction, which created a public commercial

141 space where cultural and social behavior was curiously unmanaged, as the middle classes often lacked proprietors with both sufficient social capital and interest in policing behavior beyond the minimum level necessary to ensure continued business.

The potential dangers associated with shops are first hinted at when her first suitor, Mr. Saving, asks Betsy to meet him: “I have made a little kind of interest with the woman at the habit-shop in Covent-Garden, where I know you sometimes go: -- I dread to intreat you would call there to-morrow” (History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless 47).49 The location and illicit nature of the meeting suggest that even a shop visited regularly by young women and their chaperones can hold unrecognized dangers. The visit does not occur, thanks to an intervention by Mr. Saving’s father, the alderman, but the role of the store as a romantic trap does not end with the ruined meeting, however.

Mr. Goodman, Betsy’s guardian, is a merchant. When he speaks with Alderman

Saving after the failed meeting, the alderman goes so far as to compare Betsy to an enticing but worthless object in a shop display. “‘You take a great deal of pains to set her off,’ said the alderman. … ‘A good family! -- very pleasant i’faith. Will a good family go to market? -- Will it buy a joint of mutton at the butcher’s? -- Or a pretty gown at the mercer’s?’” (History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless 53) The alderman compares courtship to a financial exchange, with Betsy in the role of the object to be acquired, and Mr.

Goodman as an unscrupulous or perhaps foolish merchant, who does not know how to properly assess value, based on Goodman’s choice to marry the beautiful but impoverished Lady Mellasin. Mr. Saving’s request for an assignation at a location Betsy frequents to purchase clothing echoes his father’s assessment of Betsy as a purchasable good. It closely links the purchase of a woman’s personal goods with the potential for

142 illicit sexuality, thus commodifying a young woman’s unowned body in a public space.

Of the different types of shops, the ones specializing in sales of fabric, dresses, and fashionable accessories for women were the most suspect, particularly milliners.

Kimberly Chrisman Campbell notes that because milliners sold not simply hats, but all manner of fashionable accessories, they had access to the body of women of both high and low station. “Milliners acted as a bridge — or if you will, a buffer — between the working classes and the aristocracy, enjoying intimate access to the boudoirs and the bodies of their social superiors” (159). The objects they sold allowed access across a vertical slice of society, as they were available in a wide variety of price and quality. The profession’s social standing was recognized by contemporaries as being uniquely flexible, and thus also suspect; everyone from prostitutes, to procurers, to shroud-makers could call themselves “milliners” without arousing outrage. The social and cultural reach of the profession, the breadth of the types of goods thus purveyed, and the physical access given through sales and deliveries allowed for a great deal of elasticity in the term’s meaning throughout the eighteenth century, muddying further the definition and practices of that profession. The same stigma applied to a lesser extent to mantua-makers, or dressmakers, whose skilled labor provided a slight respite from accusations of promiscuity. In addition, women who needed to earn a living often ran these types of shops as no education or dowry beyond knowledge of clothing was necessary to do business. The social view of young women as a commodity, combined with the cultural instability of shops and the economic instability of eighteenth-century career women all combined to create an additional level of suspicion around milliners. Any shop frequented by or run by women became tainted with a cultural expectation of potentially

143 illicit behavior (Campbell 160).

Dependent on sales and cultural trends, milliners (and their cultural cousins, mantua-makers) were beholden to countless others, drifting on the tide of social currency and a model of commercial patronage to enable their livings. Without clear lines of social hierarchy or customs to regulate behavior, the physical space of the shop became a potential trap for vulnerable members of society, drawing them in with innocent fancies but hiding sexual and cultural exploitation. Within a shop, unprotected and incautious young women are as likely to be taken as a form of commodity to be sold or traded away as they are to buy material goods themselves. Working from this cultural assumption,

Haywood continually returns to shops as both important and complicated locales, testing all the characters in their relationships between themselves, consumption, and culture as a whole.

Mrs. Modely, Betsy’s dressmaker, embodies the dangers inherent in eighteenth- century shops by acting as lure and procuress.50 She arrives in the novel on Betsy’s doorstep, bringing her an offer of romantic interest:

“Heyday, Mrs. Modely,” cried [Betsy], “what brings you here thus early?” -- “Indeed, madam,” answered she, “I could not well come out; -- I have eight or nine gowns in the house now, which should all have been finished, and sent home to-day: -- the ladies will team me to pieces about them, but I left all my business, and run away to acquaint you with a thing you little dream of. -- Ah! Miss Betsy, such a fine gentlemen! -- such a vast estate! -- but ‘tis no wonder,” continued she, “you are so pretty, that you make all the men die for you.” (History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless 319)

Modely’s offer on behalf of Sir Fredrick Fineer is false, of course. She draws Betsy in with implied respectability and safety, only to deliver her to a forced marriage and attempted rape. Modely reinforces the inherently deceptive nature of shops, where nothing is guaranteed and no clear authority prevails to ensure good behavior. Haywood

144 uses this episode to emphasize the ease with which Mrs. Modely and others in the shop not only deceive Betsy, but also use the storefront to disguise both the inhabitants and their actions from potential observers.

Mrs. Modely is certainly one of the more villainous examples of shop owners and their duplicitous establishments in eighteenth-century British fiction, but shops as a location for dangerous events or unscrupulous characters occur throughout the period. In

Fanny Burney’s Evelina, the title character describes her experience “a shopping” at a milliners: “the ladies we met were so much dressed, that I should rather have imagined they were making visits than purchases. But what most diverted me was, that we were more frequently served by men than by women; and such men! so finical, so affected!”

(29). Burney raises concerns about the obviously public spectacle of women shopping to be seen among the displays, the frequent presence of men giving advice on women’s clothing, and the additional feminization of the men present. All of these aspects combine to suggest flipped cultural expectations and gender role confusion within that space.

Austen is likewise aware of the precarious nature of shops. In Pride and

Prejudice, the Bennet sisters meets the duplicitous Mr. Wickham while walking in

Meryton looking into shop windows: “[The younger Bennet sisters] eyes were immediately wandering up in the street in quest of the officers, and nothing less than a very smart bonnet indeed, or a really new muslin in a shop window, could recal them”

(Pride 49). They look at both soldiers and shops in their search for novelty, with the goods being displayed and the presence of officers equating to the same experience. As a result, Wickham takes advantage of Elizabeth’s prejudice against Darcy and Lydia’s rash behavior to sow chaos in the family in hopes of acquiring a fortune.

145 Richardson similarly denounces shopkeepers in Clarissa, when John Belford identifies the individuals who provide evidence against Clarissa to a stranger. He classifies their natures according to their professions:

Oh how I cursed the censoriousness of this plaguy triumvirate! A parson, a milliner, and a mantua-maker! The two latter not more by business led to adorn the person than generally by scandal to destroy the reputations of those they have a mind to exercise their talents upon! (Clarissa 1296)

While Mrs. Smith, the milliner in question, manages the building that houses both their shop and Clarissa’s lodgings after her rescue by Belford, her concern at seeing a young single woman meet repeatedly in private apartments with a man she did not know trumps her professional role as Clarissa’s landlord. The Smith’s middle-class cultural norms, combined with the gossip of her cousin Barker (a mantua-maker who also lodges in the building), are sufficient to lead them into the gossiping and error that prevent Clarissa from reuniting with her family. They collectively hold Clarissa accountable for violating their cultural traditions, despite (or perhaps because of) the general opinion of their professions, which in turn reinforces the perception that they are not trustworthy.

In keeping with these literary presentations, Haywood emphasizes the dangers of consumer spaces for even a practiced and responsible consumer. Betsy’s experiences with consumer culture teach her to navigate through a challenging world, but not without risk to her reputation. As her name indicates, she is thoughtless about the consequences of her choices, if not her behavior in the moment. The biggest threat to her long-term happiness, however, is adopting the common consumer culture tendency of viewing one’s self as an object, particularly as a commodity, and then self-evaluating according to the responses of others. Initially, Betsy’s self-image is shaped by others’ reactions to her culturally commodified self, leading to her early social missteps. Haywood’s narrator

146 places this concept, referred to as vanity, as a central theme in the first line of the novel:

“It was always my opinion, that fewer women were undone by love, than vanity”

(History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless 27), wherein vanity is an inflated sense of self-worth in terms of her social and physical value — in other words, her worth as a commodity.

For Haywood, the antidote to being a cultural commodity is to become a thoughtful consumer and thus make the most of the choices presented within women’s allowed cultural space.

Betsy’s vanity about her worth and love of flattery are her first character flaws, but they slowly fade when the social consequences of her coquetry are made clear. She is initially a careless consumer, particularly when it comes to suitors. Her family and friends, however, act as cautionary tales for their own bad consumer behavior. Both men and women throughout the novel succumb regularly to vanity, overvaluing themselves and failing to appropriately value others. Haywood’s characters, such as Flora, Mr.

Goodman, and even Betsy’s brother Thomas Thoughtless, are often poor consumers.

They demonstrably lack the ability to fairly judge the worth of themselves or others, much less objects.

Despite Betsy’s flaws, she maintains a sense of self-ownership and self-worth; she is not an object to be displayed to potential buyers, but maintains her independence through both investment in her own person, both mentally and physically. Deidre Lynch observes that Betsy’s positive view of herself is undermined because she is culturally unable to both display her person and claim ownership of it at the same time; the bodies of women are not their own (Economy 102). Betsy’s ongoing struggle to assert self- ownership revolves around the twin poles of sexuality and property (often punned as

147 “propriety”) in a society that insists middle- and upper-class women are an economic commodity for men (or, as Mr. Staple refers to Betsy, a “beautiful object” (History of

Miss Betsy Thoughtless 167)).51 Betsy’s refusal to admit to these conditions leads to much of her suffering, including her eventual marriage to Mr. Munden, but her struggle leads finally to a form of emancipation even before her marriage to Trueworth.

Betsy’s transformation into a responsible consumer comes through a greater understanding of how society works and her social value in particular. Though Betsy’s background initially serves to foster self-reliance and a sense of personal worth, it does little for her social discernment. It takes a number of close calls and experiences with

Lady Mellasin and her daughter Flora in order for her to start developing a keener sense of judgment along with the confidence to act on it.

Betsy first takes self-affirming action during the preparations in Book I, Chapter

VII when she rethinks a purchase made on her behalf. Again, Haywood’s narrator describes Miss Flora as having “nothing in her head, but the many hearts she expected to captivate” and her mother Lady Mellasin as one who “soothed [Flora] in all her vanities”

(History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless 60). Reflecting the novel’s first line, then, we have those two characters in the Goodman house expressly concerned with vanity and thus contrasted with Betsy. In preparations for Betsy and Flora to visit a long-time friend,

Lady Trusty, and perhaps gain the attention of potential suitors, Lady Mellasin, Flora, and Betsy visit a mercer to purchase fabric for new gowns. The prospect of suitors choosing between Flora and Betsy introduces a competitive aspect to the shopping trip, since both girls depend on being an attractive commodity in the marriage market.

When Lady Mellasin buys silk at the mercer’s for both Flora and Betsy, she

148 purchases a “very genteel new-fashioned pattern” for Flora. Anxious to have Flora outshine Betsy to any potential suitors, Lady Mellasin chooses silk for Betsy that,

“though rich, seemed to her not well fancied” (History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless 60).52

Lady Mellasin and the mercer both convince Betsy to buy the silk though she does not to like it. In the following scene, Betsy comes to positively dislike the fabric, despite Flora’s insistence. The entire transaction becomes a power play in which Flora states that Betsy has no choice and should wear what has been chosen for her, suggesting a lack of taste on

Betsy’s part.53 The fabric becomes a proxy for the larger question of who determines

Betsy’s relative social worth: is she an object to be priced by her guardian’s wife and prospective suitors, or is she answerable to herself as an independent person?

Much like Roxana’s determination to find independence through financial stability, Betsy’s first instinct is to stabilize her social value. In response to Flora’s slight,

Betsy neither submits nor creates a stir, but instead asks for and receives her dress allowance, orders a carriage, returns to the mercer’s with the fabric, and convinces him to take it back in exchange for new purchases and a promise of further custom. She moves from reluctant consumer to sophisticated customer in the space of a day, buying two dresses worth of material with trims for less than her guardian gave her to spend (History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless 62). She demonstrates an ability to control commercial interactions and get what she wanted rather than taking what she was given, displaying self-reliance and knowledge.

Not satisfied with showing Betsy to be fiscally responsible, however, Haywood also uses this opportunity to show the difference in taste between Betsy and Lady

Mellasin. Mellasin’s fabric of choice is simply described as a “genteel, new-fashioned

149 pattern,” focusing on the elegance of pattern and its novelty rather than the quality of fabric. Betsy’s choices, on the other hand, are both reasoned and tasteful; the pink

“French lustring” was an imported thin silk of very fine quality and sheen, possibly with metallic fibers for extra shine, which she chose “so that the plaits lying flat, would shew the beauty of her waist to more advantage” (62). “Plaits” here refers to pleats, not braids, as per the OED (“plait”), demonstrating her knowledge of dress construction. Haywood is showing that Betsy understands both her clothing and her body and is able to make a choice that is not simply attractive, but highly suitable for her age and purpose. She purchases something that will suit her form and be appropriate for a ball in addition to being something that she likes.

In addition, the “rich green Venetian satin” Betsy purchases for a riding habit is a modern practical cotton with a rich satin sheen that was suitable for a smart summer daytime outfit (David 411); the cloth she chooses is expensive and fashionable, an imported cotton weave that was highly competitive with fine wool and silk (Salusso 308).

Much like the prospective ball gown, Betsy’s day dress would be attractive but comfortable and flattering, allowing for travel. In highlighting Betsy’s choice, Haywood is implicitly contrasting Betsy with Lady Mellasin and with Flora, both of whom settle for a novel appearance and presumed gentility over practicality and actual innovation.

With this scene, Haywood not only establishes the three women’s personalities, but also shows how closely their abilities as consumers will eventually impact their fates.

Betsy’s ability to resist outside pressure while using intelligence and consumer savvy to come up with solutions to thorny issues speaks to core qualities that will continue to surface throughout the novel as she works to preserve her social value. Lady Mellasin’s

150 willingness, on the other hand, to choose short-term commercial solutions (buying Betsy less flattering dress material) over long-term personal investments (educating her daughter), as well as her willingness to hold a grudge at Betsy for circumventing her plan, shows both her selfish nature and her incapacity for growth. In this light, the later revelation that she continually stole from her husband to pay blackmail is foreseeable. As for Flora, her insistence that Betsy capitulate to give her an advantage with potential suitors points to an inherent selfishness at the cost of her own prospects. She exhibits an internalized competitive vanity that she seeks to satisfy through immediate trifles, such as the insincere attentions of Mr. Gaylord. Her desire first to ruin Betsy’s reputation with

Mr. Trueworth, then to seduce him as an incognita, then to undermine his marriage to

Miss Harriott, is reflected in her early spiteful dealings with Betsy over competition as commodities in the marriage market. In each of these cases, Haywood extrapolates the women’s characters from an early consumer encounter.

In these minor shopping episodes, Haywood conveys character information directly to her intended readers — women who are versed in the niceties of dress and consumption. In doing so, she creates a potential connection to Betsy that would be difficult to achieve by description alone. It also foregrounds the importance of consumerism in the novel as a means of evaluating personality and virtue, tying consumption to behavior at a basic level and alerting readers to the ongoing struggle between the female self-as-individual and self-as-commodity.

A later shopping incident continues this pattern, foreshadowing an imminent development and conveying Betsy’s self-image. After Betsy’s marriage to Mr. Munden, she visits a mercer’s shop out of boredom in Vol. IV, Chapter XI. As she examines the

151 silks on display, she hears a woman singing beautifully. She is shown into the shop’s parlor where she meets a mysterious woman who gently rebuffs her overtures at friendship with no reasons given at the time, though it later becomes clear she is Betsy’s brother’s French mistress, Mademoiselle de Roquelair.54 The mysterious introduction in the liminal public/private space of the mercer’s shop mirrors Betsy’s introspection and growing uncertainty after her marriage to Mr. Munden begins to fall apart. Her self- image and worth are continually challenged by her difficult marriage and Mr. Munden’s abusive treatment. Haywood conveys Betsy’s troubled sense of her self-worth by using scenes and language that would have tacitly made sense to the majority of Haywood’s readers. For example, Mr. Munden makes it clear he views her as a troublesome commodity and is continually looking for ways to improve his profit on his investment.

At the same time Haywood’s narrator stops referring to her as Betsy, changing entirely over to her married name of “Mrs. Munden,” reinforcing that she no longer has legal or cultural control over her life. In the first months of her marriage, we see Betsy struggling with that knowledge, attempting to please a man who married her for her money and who has no regard for her. Doubting her abilities as a wife and deprived of the company of her brother Francis and her friend Lady Trusty, for the first time she finds little value in her home life and thus little value in herself. She seeks diversion as a result. Falling into old habits, she mirrors the old behaviors of Lady Mellasin and Flora in visiting shops as an entertainment without any intent to purchase (History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless 522).55

Once Betsy enters the mercer’s store, Haywood reinforces Betsy’s sense of being devalued and out of place. The shop that Betsy enters is part public space, part private: the room facing the street is a storefront, while behind the shop is a private parlor. While

152 that division of space was not irregular in itself, with some stores keeping semi-public parlor space where owners could meet and wait on important clients, having music come from the parlor into the store was unusual (Stobart et al. 117). The music turns the shop into a concert hall, thus confusing the activities of consumption and entertainment even further as public commerce and private entertainment are overlaid.

Once Betsy is admitted to the more private areas of the store, she finds a woman she instantly admires there. The mysterious woman — the first thing in the store to pique her interest — refuses Betsy’s social overtures of friendship. Mademoiselle de Roquelair is not related to the shop except as a client; she enjoys the company of the mercer’s wife, but does not claim an acquaintance with her. She is foreign (or as the silk sometimes was,

“imported”) and so does not share a background or culture with Betsy. In this, we see how Betsy is made neither confidant nor customer. The mercer has nothing to sell her and waits on samples; the woman (Mademoiselle de Roquelair, the mistress of Betsy’s elder brother) rejects friendship as she is advertising herself as a commodity. Both functions of this store, a place of commerce and an entertainment venue, break down; Betsy is out of place as Munden’s wife, reflecting both the estrangement between herself and Munden, as well as her reliance on him for her social and cultural meaning. Betsy Munden, however, understandings what her role should be in both society and in the store.

By the end of the encounter, perhaps spurred by meeting the woman whose company she cannot secure or even request, Betsy purchases a length of silk “for a night- gown, although at that time she had not the least occasion for it, nor on her coming into the shop had any intention to increase her wardrobe” (History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless

534). In this instance, the silk purchase draws attention back to her odd marriage, wherein

153 “she had not the least occasion” for a new nightgown since she and her husband shared no intimacy with each other. Nor, for that matter, was her allowance enough to furnish her wardrobe and care for the household. It also suggests a gap that de Roquelair will widen as she fills the conjugal place with Mr. Munden that rightfully belongs to his wife by beginning an illicit affair. The silk Betsy buys is lovely, but unneeded, just as she is in her marriage; by purchasing it, however, Betsy recovers herself as a consumer, recalling her location and the appropriate social conventions for that place. Her action restores some of the boundaries not just of the shop, but also her role in society. Despite

Munden’s violation of her rights and role within the economic contract of their marriage,

Betsy’s willingness to reinforce expected social behavior restores some amount of control over her surroundings. Additionally, her “discovery” of de Roquelair in the shop indirectly exposes her brother, husband, and de Roquelair as poor consumers, highlighting the poor “purchases” they have made and will continue to make.

Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace notes that the eighteenth century constructed women in relation to the retail process as both a vulnerable, yielding consumer who was observed within the shop as though she were available for purchase, and as a powerful agent capable of subverting the retail model and usurping power from the (imagined) male retailer by using the retail space for entertainment rather than commerce (87).

Haywood seeks a balance between these two situations in The History of Miss Betsy

Thoughtless, allowing Betsy to become a conscientious and powerful buyer who will reinforce the roles of consumption rather than weaken them, using that powerful social construct to resist efforts to manipulate her. Because Betsy gains an early understanding of her power as a consumer, she retains authority to gain a measure of control and

154 security even when other aspects of her life fall apart. As a result, her understanding of her own worth enables her to not only seek a divorce from Mr. Munden, but to return to his side when he is ill. She is no longer reliant on the valuation of others, giving her the ability to enter into relationships with caution and dignity, now thoughtful rather than thoughtless. In this way, Haywood reinforces her social existence and illuminates her character for the novel’s readers, thus showing the potential dangers and rewards of a retail setting as well as the stakes of participation in a consumer culture.

Conclusion

There are spaces in eighteenth-century British culture where person-object association is unclear. The space could be a shop where objects await purchase, a house with both private and public aspects, or a home where visitors are entertained out of the public eye. In those in-between spaces that bridge public and private, objects can become unmoored from their typical social and cultural associations. Luxury items might be assigned to a person who normally would not have access to them. Common items might be misinterpreted as holding an association with lower status. If the objects are as yet unowned and in sufficient quantity, the location might itself become socially misinterpreted as a place where rules of behavior between genders and classes might be overlooked entirely.

The resulting lack of clarity creates an undercurrent of social confusion among participants in that physical moment: what is my relationship to the person near me? Are they married or unmarried? Are they rich or poor? Do they require my attention or may I

155 go about my business? Do they possess a standing in the community, or may I ignore their request? Objects fail to mediate relationships by conveying the appropriate information, and the resulting gap of knowledge can become an opportunity for social mobility and reinterpretation.

Roxana’s use of objects to scale the social ladder and continually reimagine herself leads to a form of emancipation so long as her origins and past acts are never revealed, turning to sources of fear and anxiety as discovery nears. Through her, Defoe conveys what objects mean in society rather than what they actually are, interpreting their meanings for the reader and omitting irrelevant details. In doing so, he created a work that revolves around objects as incarnated signs, as Arjun Appadurai would later call them, focusing in the social and cultural work that objects do.

In She Stoops to Conquer, on the other hand, Goldsmith directs attention to the line between social and domestic spaces, and how consumption affects relationships in both of them. Here, Kate Hardcastle begins at a higher social class. By setting her luxury goods aside, she is able to camouflage herself as a lower-class servant in order to sound out her prospective husband’s personality and feelings. Goldsmith’s work asks what happens when objects are not luxury goods aligned with elite status, and whether an adherence to consumer culture is in fact impeding people in making worthwhile personal connections.

Finally, Haywood’s portrayal of consumption in The History of Miss Betsy

Thoughtless skips largely past signification of the goods themselves to dwell on the spaces in which those goods are bought and sold. Her focus on shops and the social gambits at play in these liminal spaces marks the ways people buy and sell objects, each

156 other, and even themselves in order to create social mobility. Admitting that women in eighteenth-century Britain were regularly considered as much commodity as person, even by themselves, Haywood examines the pitfalls of trying to navigate between individual and commodity without full legal protection or the ability to access one’s full economic value. Her exploration of the feminine person/object within consumer culture championed the importance of interiority and self-awareness in women beyond their potential value in the marriage market.

While the novels in this chapter dealt with the ways literary objects indicate social and cultural boundaries, they all show a complicated cultural relationship with the idea of differentiation. They at once pursue a reassuringly static situation, and yet reward those who could navigate the world of object meanings with enough skill to change their future paths and reveal hidden information. When this function of objects is applied to their literary counterparts, however, imagination heightens the results and allows audience and readers to envision changes in society and culture that might never otherwise come to pass.

157 Chapter Three

Print as Authority, Literacy as Agency: Lennox, Gay, and Sterne

As I have demonstrated, throughout the eighteenth century, authors used literary objects to make social and cultural boundaries visible. They also employed literary objects to circumvent those boundaries in pursuit of alternate narrative possibilities. In addition to those object portrayals, however, a third form of literary object was in common use. Unlike the first two modes, this type of object representation shifts away from a direct focus on consumer culture. Instead, it addresses questions relating to cultural and social differences as demonstrated by textual representations of authority in action. From literary discernment of readers to how society uses literacy to decide who is worthy of representation to the way government documents work with and against literature to determine questions of identity and representation, the eighteenth-century print economy exerted authority in a sophisticated system that required readers and authors to be aware of various literacies and media. This chapter features authors who explored that ongoing evaluative process by highlighting printed materials in their works, creating textual literary objects that exert influence over characters, settings, and events.

In previous chapters, the role of textual literary objects (journals, manuscripts, books, and so forth) has already featured significantly within the selected works.

Crusoe’s multiple denominational bibles in assorted languages, including “three very good Bibles which came to me in my Cargo from England, and which I had pack’d up among my things: some Portuguese Books also, and among them two or three Popish

Prayer-Books” (Crusoe 48) gird his various spiritual lessons on the island, while his

158 journal enacts the beginnings of his self-transformation for as long as his ink holds out

(Crusoe 52). Henry Mackenzie’s novel The Man of Feeling reproduces a fictional manuscript that has had parts used as gun wadding, thus explaining the disconnected chapters that prevent readers from becoming overly entangled in the sentiments of its characters. Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility shows how literary taste and refinement serve as criteria for determining a person’s cultural worth. Even in Goldsmith’s She

Stoops to Conquer, one of the jokes revolves around Mrs. Hardcastle copying her elaborate hairstyle from a memorandum book designed for ladies to keep accounts in rather than seeking out more reliable sources (Goldsmith 23).

In each of these examples, authors use references to print materials to establish the presence of cultural and personal authority (or its notable absence) within the fictional landscape of the larger text. The semi-permanence of print allows an author to create a fictional sense of tradition in an otherwise temporary moment of reader interaction within a specific text. Through showing a character reading or owning a text that was previously printed and read, perhaps containing links to a previous era or situation, authors instill a sense of continuity for readers that closely aligns with perceptions of real cultural and social authority. Referring to print within a text undermines the novelty inherent in a new printed work by calling up associations with persistent social and cultural references.

Authors can, in that way, examine authority remotely through the proxy of print, encouraging readers to likewise read objectively, both in the printed text they hold and the cultural and social associations they may find performing similar authoritative functions in their daily lives.

The persistent nature of print imbues it with authority, as it speaks for remote or

159 unknown authors with sufficient cultural or social cachet to be published and thereby preserved. Print conveys information that would otherwise be rendered inaccessible by the passage of time. However, proper use of that information (and the authority behind it) requires the reader to have an appropriate literacy to make use of it.

For the purposes of this chapter, literacy is the ability to understand and apply information correctly within a specific area of knowledge. Specifically, my focus is on exerting power and thus effecting change within a given social or cultural sphere. While acting within a society or culture does not necessarily require literacy, exerting power within that same area does. Addressing questions of literacy, therefore, also brings up the question of individual agency in the face of authority. The OED’s second definition for agency, “the ability to act or exert power” (“agency, n.”), was in regular use during the eighteenth century and is my intended meaning as well.

Being literate within an area of knowledge carries the potential to create change, which is what we see debated in the works in this chapter: can characters overcome a lack of literacy to achieve agency? Can alternative literacies be used to subvert a dominant social and cultural paradigm? Is it possible to communicate meaningfully across competing literacies to enact agency in a way that creates positive change? Combining these two ideas of print authority and literate agency, this chapter focuses on the way textual literary objects (characters’ books, bureaucratic documents, manuscripts, or letters) promote or prohibit the characters’ ability to exert power within narratives by acting as a cultural, legal, or social litmus test. These objects determine whether one can sufficiently gain and exhibit “competence or knowledge in a particular area” (“literacy, n.”), such that the person is then allowed to act or exert power over others, over

160 themselves, or over their environment.

Through analysis of the following three works, I examine how eighteenth-century

British literature represents literacy through textual literacy. First, Arabella’s French historical romance bona fides in Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote at once permit and endanger the heroine’s rights as a British heiress, exposing the tenuous links between cultural approval and madness. Arabella’s impressive command of the culture and catalogue of French heroic romances subverts contemporary cultural discourse by effectively replacing it, much to the confusion of the people around her. She adheres to a cultural authority that predates the current one, while lacking thorough familiarity with the overarching contemporary social and cultural structures. Her unorthodox literacies give rise to conflict with Arabella’s environment regarding her right to self-representation and legal independence in eighteenth-century Britain. Lennox thereby creates a discursive space to examine the cultural role of women in contemporary society.

Second, John Gay’s comedy The Beggar’s Opera uses novels, accounts, and legal texts to satirize the importance of literacy as a credential of artistic and legal worth, prompting audiences to reconsider its value as a cultural and social marker. Gay continually examines the difference between reading and understanding in The Beggar’s

Opera. The characters apply the embedded authority of print materials repeatedly, but without a clear understanding of the original context or meaning of those same materials, substituting their own interpretations, just as Gay does throughout the play by recasting lyrics to popular tunes. He not only questions the social and cultural authority of print, but also raises the question as to whether any form of literacy or print should function as a mark of status by underlining how they function to separate people from one another.

161 Finally, in A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, Laurence Sterne deconstructs the links between literacy and authority in a scene critically involving

Shakespeare’s bound works and a passport of dubious validity. He clarifies how different literacies compete and the difficulties of communicating across mediums, requiring descriptions rather than discourses. By integrating journalistic and novelistic forms,

Sterne encourages a personal literacy that resists overarching cultural narratives and definitions. His character Yorick, with whom he often self-identified in his correspondence, is an early example of an authorial self-insert who goes beyond the limits of fictional biography. Through Yorick, Sterne creates an autonomous embodied self that is both a print artifact and a form of personal literacy. He thereby has both authority and agency, allowing him to prioritize the emotional engagement required by

Sentimentalism and overcome social and cultural divisions in personal interactions.

Through this examination, the role of a textual literary object as a prompt for an expressed cultural or social literacy becomes clear, allowing authors to address how expectations regarding knowledge impact a person’s perceived status and thus his or her opportunities. While previous chapters examined how literary objects indicated wealth or status, the objects in this chapter are intrinsically tied to an individual’s identity and interaction with authoritative aspects of eighteenth-century British society and culture, such as legal status, personhood, and political representation.

The role of textual literary objects as embodiments of potential competence and inclusion indicates the rise of a new eighteenth-century form of social and cultural gatekeeping based on literacy and familiarity with text. This new category of evaluative criteria adds levels of subtle differentiation dependent on maintaining education, access

162 to print, and leisure time in order to exert power within one’s environment (or achieve agency); in doing so, it determines which people are accorded representation in that society, and which ones are not.

A Fine Madness: The Dangers of Aberrant Literacy in The Female Quixote

Eighteenth-century British authors often explored representations of selfhood through textual literary objects, offering up imagined letters, diaries, or even entire books as evidence of the character as a person whose voice matters and who ought to have some form of self-determination. These objects range from the letters and diaries of Pamela or the “ruined” manuscript of The Man of Feeling, to the books read by Walter Shandy (or even the entire text of Tristram Shandy) and the Gothic novels that Catherine consumes in Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Each of these fictional texts-within-texts creates a moment when a character who reads, assimilates, and potentially describes that text then offers up his or her gained information as a demonstration of literacy. The accuracy of that character’s understanding and application of the text in question serves as a litmus test for their larger understanding of their fictional world. Understanding of texts served as a tool to place a character within the larger social and cultural landscape. The degree of orthodoxy displayed by a character’s literacy or understanding of a text provides readers with a sense of how that character responds to cultural or social authority, as well as how keenly he or she observes (or “reads”) the world at large.

How and why authors chose to use a character’s reaction to and interpretation of texts within a fictional work are complex questions. The use of textual literary objects in

163 British fiction, however, mirrored the importance of narrative, reading experiences, and expressions of identity found in eighteenth-century British daily life. Textual literary objects evoke the role of texts and writing in a society where the amount of available information was continually increasing, the bar to authorship was continually lowered, and the role of literacy in determining legal and social status was in flux. As Deidre

Lynch observes, the literacy rate soared following 1780 and the wide scale implementation of Sunday schools throughout England by the Evangelical movement

(Economy 129). The laboring poor therefore learned to read and write in large numbers soon after the decisive legal case of Donaldson v. Becket in 1774 effectively terminated perpetual copyright in England, making novels from the earlier part of the century available for reprinting by anyone with access to a press. In the same way that silk petticoats, snuffboxes, and tea spread from the upper classes into the middle and lower classes, reading materials and education likewise became more affordable and accessible.

As with other luxury goods, however, books, education, and information were still considered indicators of wealth and status in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century

England, just as they had been for centuries before. Rather than lose a means of social demarcation, new ways of reading and writing developed that served the same purpose.

Reading and understanding became differentiated and evaluated, used to interpret someone’s quality and proper treatment.

According to Deidre Lynch, literary characterization performed a social office that was “historically contingent” (Economy 127), by which she means that the change in literature between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not only inevitable, but a response to a social need. The increasing focus on interiority; the rise of free indirect

164 discourse; the growing popularity of complex, cohesive narrative structures and the “rise of the novel” grew out of the need for literacies that would allow for social differentiation.56 Lynch cites Maurice Morgann’s An Essay on the Dramatic Character of

Sir John Falstaff (1777) as one of the first examples of “reading as an ethical exercise”

(Economy 133), representing an elevation of reading into a moral and intellectual pursuit associated with social class and cultural taste. Defending Falstaff’s character against charges of cowardice, Morgann argues that readers should be able to draw out meanings from the text based on what is said, what is not said, and their knowledge of themselves as people; in effect, he is calling for individual interpretation of characters beyond what is written on the page.

Henry Mackenzie likewise supports deep reading, though by the 1770s he has moved from encouraging a heightened emotional response to a heightened intellectual response by engaging in character interpretation (Economy 134). Lynch refers to this as the emergence of literary reading, a style of reading that moved from an applicable skill to an aesthetic experience requiring judgment. Literary reading was “thought of as a historical achievement whose establishment involved real cultural effort” (Loving 31) to arrive at a complex yet orthodox understanding of the material.

Individuals could and would be expected to demonstrate taste, feeling, and interpretative savvy to meet cultural and social expectations, as demonstrated in

Marianne’s disapproval of Edward’s dispirited reading of Cowper’s poetry in Sense and

Sensibility. Upper- and middle-class readers were expected to develop relationships with literature, “loving” Shakespeare rather than simply reading his works, for example

(Loving 34). Judith Frank observes that literacy transformed into a matter of gathering

165 experience and knowledge through reading to an extent that required wealth and status to achieve. The process of reading properly required a conspicuous expenditure of time and effort in understanding and interpretation of texts, enough that those who labored for a living would be largely excluded from its practice (12). In order to be considered literate, it became necessary to discern and appreciate writing of quality; to determine what was useful and ignore the rest; and to retain one’s own self-determination and authority by regarding literature as a source of education and entertainment instead of an authoritative cultural force.

One awkward question regarding literacy that eighteenth-century England seemed unable to answer, of course, is how to handle disenfranchised individuals who nonetheless possessed upper-and middle-class literacies. Because it contained the potential for class leveling created by emulative spending, consumer culture caused considerable anxiety among the ruling classes (Frank 12). Literacies that should belong to the middle and upper classes in terms of their education and investment in understanding literature can likewise be emulated. The propensity for downward social mobility on the part of dispossessed sons of gentlemen, genteel single women of quality, illegitimate but acknowledged children, and higher status servants and their families as well as industrious lower-class and poor individuals meant that literary reading could not be restricted just to wealthy individuals of status. It was an unreliable criterion for restricting agency and thus preserving the status quo. Women, the poor, the merchant classes, and even foreigners (including non-English citizens within the United Kingdom, such as the

Irish) could theoretically achieve or subvert the required literacies, and thus enact social change to benefit themselves. Roxana’s knowledge of finances and fashionable taste

166 accomplishes this change and allows her, for example, to rise socially. Aesthetic knowledge of culture and art, however, posed a different challenge, as we can see in

Betsy’s confusion regarding the social position of Mademoiselle de Roquelair in The

History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless. Literacy in nuanced areas that emphasized individual interpretation and meaning immediately threatened to create social leveling, because expressing an understanding of taste and aesthetics was an act of cultural empowerment intended to be reserved to the gentry and above.

For women in particular, arguments about what sort of reading was allowed and respectable and in what quantities were an ongoing concern throughout eighteenth- century Britain. The demonstrated literacies of the title character in Richardson’s Pamela and her subsequent rise in station through two volumes worth of fictional correspondence touched a nerve, bringing accusations that Richardson was in favor of equality between the classes. In response, Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews features Fanny, a heroine whose virtue is inherently tied to her illiteracy. Fanny not only cannot read or write, but she refuses to even allow others to read or write for her for fear of corruption (87). Even intelligent upper-class women were a cause of concern; if women could exert power on their own behalf, what would happen to British society with its dependence on keeping property, wealth, and power in the hands of its firstborn sons?

Charlotte Lennox addresses the social difficulties faced by intelligent, literate eighteenth-century British women in The Female Quixote. The comic crux of the novel is formed by Lady Arabella’s encyclopedic knowledge of heroic romances from the beginning of the eighteenth century, particularly those by Madame de Scudéry, combined with her entirely sheltered upbringing.57 When her father dies and she is left an heiress,

167 she is pushed into interacting with a culture that is as foreign to her as if she had woken up in another country. Pressured by her uncle into marrying her cousin Glanville to keep the estate intact and in the family, Arabella refuses to participate. She demands deference to her wishes in keeping with the culture she understands, specifically that of the novels she believes are recent histories and thus known to everyone. The conflict between

Arabella’s understanding and that of everyone else leads to continued drama and adventure until she is finally “cured” by being brought in line with the dominant culture’s precepts regarding the cultural and financial roles of women in British society.

Despite Lennox’s humor, the power that drives the story is the specter of real danger to Arabella that lurks in the background. Arabella’s misunderstandings do more than subject her to awkward social encounters; they cause the people responsible for her care to question whether or not she is capable of self-governance, and if not, what would be the appropriate course of action to protect her from herself? Her cultural understandings — specifically, her insistence on the truth of her cultural heritage and demonstrated mastery of the literature she has consumed — grant her self-ownership, or agency, to act on her own behalf even when those actions seem strange. They also cause her relatives and suitors to doubt her reason and thus question her rights as a person.58

Much like Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the novel hinges on whether or not Arabella’s quest for adventure (and thus self-governance) is reasonable or the act of a disordered mind, and if the latter, what will the consequences be? The stakes of that decision carry a different weight for a single young British woman of property in the eighteenth century than they do for an older wealthy Spanish nobleman a century and a half earlier.

Arabella’s inheritance of books and the cultural legacy they represent lies at the heart of

168 the issue: the personal agency allowed to a women, or her self-ownership, in the face of cultural expectations and social (and thus legal) recognition or personage.

Beginning at the first chapter, we become familiar with Arabella’s inheritance in the form of her father’s library. Uninterested in the outside world that had disappointed him so severely, the Marquis retired to seclusion, chose a wife, planted gardens, and built a “large and well-furnished” library (Quixote 6) that held both his own extensive choices for his personal reading and the translated French romances her deceased mother had purchased to help ease her solitude (7). Reading all of the above volumes intermixed with nothing to differentiate between the two categories of knowledge, Arabella believes the romances to be real histories rather than fiction (7). Additionally, Arabella’s father raises her in seclusion, rendering her interpretation of the texts plausible due to the lack of external references.

The library, then, acts as an origination point for Arabella and everything that is to follow. Her logic, rhetorical skill, and classical literacy stem from her father’s books, while her extensive knowledge of heroic romances comes from her mother’s books. She is the product of that created literary space filled with books, but not simply in terms of her demonstrated knowledge and intelligence. Arabella is also the embodiment of the eighteenth-century concerns about both the benefits and detriments of reading. Her agency as a literate, upper-class heiress of an estate is paired with her “madness” in insisting that her romances are accurate examples of British society. The two together form a filter for her worldview that proves dangerous to herself and others. Both aspects are then made even more threatening by Arabella’s gender.

Margaret Doody points to the proliferation of conduct books in the eighteenth

169 century as an indication of social fears that women (in addition to the young and the poor) might attempt to take on more social autonomy than they were allowed as a result of novel reading, which would teach them to see themselves as protagonists in their own stories (280). Nancy Armstrong sees Lennox as rather pointing to the dangers of a form of magical thinking as embodied in novels, in which all desires and models therein are externally and thus artificially generated. Armstrong suggests that Lennox wishes to draw a distinction between the external social world and an internal authentic identity

(Armstrong). Both Armstrong and Doody see Lennox’s work as centering Arabella, thus providing her with agency and making her the subject of her own story for the reader and the novel’s other characters. Both scholars, however, see Arabella’s unusual cultural position as not only anomalous, but also as a warning to readers, specifically young women. I contend that Arabella’s cultural status as a woman prompts the warning rather than her extensive education; her position as protagonist, in contrast with that of her cousin Glanville, suggests that it is not her reading but the circumstances of her upbringing that are to blame for her misguided beliefs. Arabella’s compromised understanding is due to her isolation and lack of proper guidance, not her gender, intellect, or social forces. Through the placement of literary objects at the core of her novel, Lennox sets up an alternate cultural authority with its source within Arabella’s family, allowing critique not only of traditional seventeenth-century romances but also of eighteenth-century British treatment of intelligent, educated women who desire something else.

Arabella stands as an example of what might happen if young women were educated according to the standards for young men, paired with extensive novel reading.

170 She reads deeply, drawing parallels between her life and the events in the histories and romances. She gains experience and applies it thoughtfully, claiming the agency she sees within her literary sources. In short, she reads and understands as a thoughtful, intelligent upper-class man should, which lies at the root of her subsequent troubles. Her education from her father suggests parity in social power with men, while her education from her mother via the romances says that she should be deferred to culturally as a virtuous and beautiful woman of status. Together, they create parallel forms of accidental rebellion that can be interpreted by those such as her uncle as “madness.” Lennox then twins

Arabella’s reason and her disorder within the object space of the library, a specific room built by her father and added to by her mother, creating a model of women’s public/private consciousness within her novel.

The library and the books it contains form the core literary objects in The Female

Quixote. None of the books merits much in the way of physical description; we know the library was considered “well-furnished,” and that there were many volumes of romances

“not in the original French, but very bad Translations” (Quixote 7). The need for physical object details is mitigated, however, by the exhaustive and detailed content references that Arabella provides throughout the novel. Her blindness to these potentially dire consequences is the result of her adherence to her romances, her “Copies of Life, and

Models of Conduct” (376). She takes them as relevant seventeenth-century conduct books, not simply histories, assuming they model the proper behavior for young women of her social situation (376). Through her extensive recitations, the books are kept present in the readers’ minds; their stories effectively become their described forms. By this means, the books live for Lennox’s readers through content rather than their pages or

171 covers, just as they do for Arabella — continually present in her memory, if not always within sight. She reads deeply, in keeping with her class and education, and presages the turn toward Morgann’s portrayal of reading as an ethical exercise. Much as with Defoe’s object descriptions in Roxana, here Lennox shows us the books as Arabella experiences them: not as tactile objects of questionable value (as her father, Glanville, and her uncle would, not having read them), but rather as the sum of their content.

In portraying the titles as their content rather than their physical forms, Lennox draws upon a familiar aspect of literacy in which the physical attributes of a book fall away in the reader’s mind (McLaughlin 23). Just as most readers think of books according to their contents rather than their physical attributes, Lennox shows us the same mental process with the contents of the library, including Arabella’s romances.

They are presented as the experience and knowledge gained from reading, rather than the printed objects. Arabella is bound up in her education and literary inheritances, referencing it all indiscriminately; her thoughts are the books and she becomes the library, keeping it and its contents ever present in readers’ minds. Through the character’s ongoing citation of precedent and example, Lennox makes Arabella’s unconventional acts of literacy the fulcrum between autonomy and pathology, illustrating the delicate balance required to keep Arabella in command of her own life.

Even with her unconventional knowledge, Arabella’s independence and refusal to marry would be of less social concern if she were male. The level of control she wields over her person and her environment, however, makes her position a radical one. Given a traditionally male education by her father, reading classical authors only reinforces the ethos of the heroic romances, creating a cultural space wherein they could be real

172 histories. On top of this seemingly coherent education, the romances teach Arabella that her gender makes her culturally and morally superior to men. She learns that the only acceptable answer to adversity is to stoically remain unmoved, and to adhere to principles regardless of temptation or torture. Her education gives her agency to exert power over her environment in ways that British women rarely had, even those of her class. At the same time, beyond the boundaries of her father’s protection, her actions are so incongruous that Sir Charles and Glanville are unable to understand them. Her father’s relatives cannot match her literacy in the classics; they have no knowledge of romances whatsoever, and she lacks their understanding of the greater social world of England.

Communication between the two groups, then, is nearly impossible; neither has a frame of reference for the others’ knowledge. Her autonomy can only persist outside of the world’s influence where nothing new or unexpected can penetrate — her father’s death opens up his home to outside influences and news, just as his will splits his estate between Arabella and Glanville.

Arabella’s insistence on a level of agency and self-possession at odds with contemporary British culture imperils her status within that society. As a woman of wealth and beauty, she should be a particularly privileged disenfranchised person awaiting marriage and bound by her father’s judgment, except for his untimely death.

More than once, her relatives and acquaintances note the oddity of her behavior and wonder if she is “fit for a Mad-house” (Quixote 157). Her uncle wonders if she “was not really disorder’d in her Senses” and, finding her “absolutely mad,” debates whether he should “bring a Commission of Lunacy against her” (339).

A Commission of Lunacy was a court order calling for an inquiry into someone’s

173 sanity, judged during the eighteenth century by the Court of Chancery. If the court decided the individual was a lunatic, as they termed it, then that person lost their civil rights; any contracts into which they had entered (including marriage) were void, and they lost control over any property they had (Suzuki 18). By petitioning for a

Commission of Lunacy, Arabella’s uncle would be removing her from control of the estate, which would in all probability pass to him (and thus his children). It would be less certain and take longer than having Arabella and Glanville get married, but it would be equally effective in the long run at preventing her from splitting the estate by either refusing to marry or, worse, by marrying someone else. If she were found a lunatic, her uncle could also arrange to have her kept in an asylum or a private madhouse, the latter being more likely given her wealth and social status, and thus avoid further embarrassment. The stakes of having her sanity recognized and reinforced are very high, then; they are nothing less than her cultural and legal recognition as a person and citizen of Britain.

The real threat, though, is that Arabella is displaying both depth of reading, in integrating an early form of literary reading into her life, and breadth of reading, as demonstrated by the way she expertly displays her literacies. She is marked as different because she expects others of her class to take after her parents’ examples, displaying encyclopedic knowledge and applying it to their lives with equal seriousness. In this, she is deeply mistaken: Sir Charles is not a great reader and neither is Glanville. Sir George has a base familiarity with her romances from his own reading as a youth, but he read neither ethically nor deeply and thus mistakes her investment and meaning entirely.

Combined with the motivation of keeping the estate intact and within the family, Sir

174 Charles is more concerned with social literacy than ethical or historical knowledge.

Because Arabella fails to match him (combined with the motivation to keep the estate intact and within the family), he is willing to use her unorthodox literacies against her if necessary.

Arabella is unaware of the legal ramifications of her actions. She is not insane, of course, but rather functioning as the Lockean tabula rasa that Lennox created her to be.

As she is the human embodiment of her father’s library, the Marquis furnished not only his library when he undertook her education, but also her mind. Locke argues in An Essay

Concerning Human Understanding that children are furnished with ideas over time, which are then measured against their own observations and kept or discarded according to their validity (106; bk. 2, ch. 1). Growing up in isolation, Arabella is Locke’s proverbial child who saw only black and white in her surroundings, and thus had no concept of scarlet or green (Essay 107; bk. 2, ch. 1).

In Arabella, Lennox builds on Locke’s idea of a person who lacks the external references to evaluate the ideas she has learned. Arabella serves in particular as an example of Locke’s definition of “Unreasonableness,” in that until she is cured through conversation with the Doctor, she “yields not to the Evidence of Reason” due to misguided self-education. Locke uses the word “Madness” to describe that condition, defining it as “opposition to Reason” even as he acknowledges that it is a “Weakness to which all Men are so liable.” Despite its pervasive nature, Locke insists on calling it madness so that it might be taken seriously and thus prevented (Essay 395; bk. 2, ch. 23).

Arabella’s unreasonableness, or madness, is taken beyond a quirk of character and applied to her entire social existence. Patricia Hamilton builds on Locke’s definition of

175 madness, applying it to Arabella’s behavior, and calls her situation notable primarily in the degree to which Arabella adheres to her beliefs (116). Hamilton’s argument, however, omits the influence of Arabella’s books, which continue to promote and enable this behavior along with the dangerous possibility of having her legal rights and belongings stripped as a result.

Arabella’s unreasonableness is not necessarily a problem in scope, as Hamilton asserts, but rather in her position as a young unmarried woman in possession of a large fortune that her uncle is determined to keep within the family line.59 The difficulty does not come from her odd clothes or her desire to remain secluded. Instead, the problem is that her beliefs regarding proper romantic behavior largely preclude her marriage to her cousin Glanville. Her agency, or self-ownership, stands at odds with accepted cultural wisdom regarding inheritance, familial duty, and gender, which put her at risk.

Arabella refuses to play a woman’s part in eighteenth-century British society, but the greater social problem is that there is no mechanism that can force her to do so. She is legally and financially independent, and of sufficient social rank that there is no one she has to answer to. She cannot be forced to give up that state by any of the characters in the novel, following the death of the Marquis. Sir Charles, Glanville, Miss Glanville, and nearly everyone with whom Arabella comes into contact consider her position unreasonable, however. Even if she were otherwise adhering to social norms, her insistence on her independence is not considered acceptable.

Building on the Lockean principle of unreasonableness, Michel Foucault suggests that, by the eighteenth century, certain cultural behaviors had been pathologized as

“Unreasonable” or mad, specifically those dealing with “sexuality and its relation with

176 the organization of the bourgeois family” (81). Arabella’s refusal to submit to eighteenth- century ideas of courtship and marriage would thus render her mad in the eyes of the law and her family, whether or not her behaviors themselves justified the label. Lennox’s comedic style offsets a plot that otherwise could easily have surfaced in a Gothic novel: as a woman trapped in a castle and besieged by unwanted suitors, whose extended family seeks to disinherit her for their own gain, everything about Arabella’s story seems unreasonable.

In addition, the example of her mother’s history uncomfortably mirrors the plot of a number of Arabella’s romances, in which a rich and handsome lord woos a young, beautiful woman. Upon marriage, he takes her away to his isolated castle in the country, where they live together in ostensible harmony and contentment, though their inner feelings on the matter are not typically discussed. Lennox ensures that readers realize the marchioness did not enjoy her isolated life, and purchased the books to “soften a Solitude which she found very disagreeable” (Quixote 7), but Arabella is never shown to be privy to this information. Instead, her mother serves as a real-life example of a heroine from one of her romances, giving Arabella yet another reason to believe in the books she inherited. The objectified “unreasonableness” of both her mother and the heroines of her novels (and their unlikely stories) is then transferred to Arabella.

Marta Kvande notes that Arabella’s life as a female Quixote has to follow a different model for adventure than Cervantes allowed his Quixote, also hewing more closely to the seventeenth-century romances Arabella adores (227). What most critics neglect, however, is the way the novel presages the appearance of Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and the later Gothic genre, particularly as a woman-centered narrative about

177 cultural dangers and expectations. Arabella’s state as an orphaned heiress, losing her devoted father and being placed in the control of an uncle determined to control her inheritance is written to form for a Radcliffean plot. Her forced entry into a society and culture alien to all she knows is similar to the de rigeur foreign settings in later eighteenth-century Gothic novels, as is the unwanted romantic attention of a cousin she had never met. Most important, however, is the ongoing question in the minds of those around Arabella as to whether or not she is mad and, more importantly, what that means for her property.

The difference (and the humor) that prevents the novel’s categorization as Gothic is that Arabella uses her literacies and her skill at reading deeply to maintain herself as an active and resistant participant in her adventures. Her right to her “property in [her] own person” (Second Treatise of Government 15; ch. 3) as stated by Locke is inalienable in her mind. Her books and her efforts to justify her belief in them keep her active even as she believes herself to be the passive, pre-eminent focus of a world driven by beauty, love, and heroism. This struggle to maintain her chosen reality forces Arabella to create the situations she expects to happen, pushing her into activity to maintain her status as the protagonist of her own story, and thereby forcing her suitors to prove themselves equally worthy by matching her in understanding and behavior. She finds Glanville unworthy primarily because he assumes her assent to marrying him without earning her goodwill or proving he understood her worth, according to the standards established in her heroic romances. He sought, for instance, her father’s approval when he should have set out to obtain hers. Sir George comes closer to her ideal with the false stories of his heroism, but he also fails because he portrays his fictional beloveds as interchangeable and thus

178 worthless, seeking to glorify himself above them.

Only when the Doctor intercedes, understanding the situation from an academic perspective, is she able to come to see “reason” and step away from her books. The

Doctor perceives Arabella’s devotion to study and ethical reading, as well as her classical and romantic literacies. Accordingly, he treats her as a person of value with the deference she expects, and yet still speaks seriously to her in a way that models her interactions with her father but pays homage to her influences. By bringing to bear his skills as a rhetorician and a theologian, the Doctor is able to detect where her ideas are wrongly joined, as Locke would say. He can then attempt to disconnect them so that Arabella can revise her understanding, putting her mediating books aside “to Moths and Mould,” as she refers to setting aside their ideas and guiding principles (Quixote 377). Notably, the

Doctor apprehends that it is the value of her romantic literacy that must be challenged, not Arabella’s understanding. By isolating the books rhetorically and attempting to

“procure their Banishment from your Ladyship’s Closet,” (377) he cuts to the heart of the problem in a way that no one else was able to do. The Doctor’s intercession embodies the final struggle between Arabella’s self-ownership, or agency, and her person, or social and civil recognition. As an officially recognized agent of the state in the form of the church, he is authorized by Arabella as a member of his faith, by her family as a disinterested representative of society, and by the larger society as a duly appointed moral figure who supports the status quo, in no small part due to both his gender and the attachment to both church and state inherent in his office. He takes up the case of Arabella’s legal person against her manifested self-ownership, attempting to bring the two into alignment.

What enables the Doctor to succeed where everyone else has failed, and what

179 Lennox takes pains to point out in Arabella’s thoughtful responses, is that Arabella is shown to be the intellectual and moral superior of everyone else she has come in contact with. She is not only intelligent and capable, but she has discipline and determination.

She endeavors always to live up to her role in the world as she understands it, using the tools at her disposal (in this case, texts) to do so. When confronted with compelling arguments, she is able to let go of the damaging information despite her considerable investment in time and mastery and instead devote herself to learning the social and cultural literacies required of her rank and wealth.

In this portrayal of Arabella, Lennox ridicules the joke at the heart of her novel.

While the novel ostensibly deals with the problem of a woman who is allowed unfettered access to reading, particularly novels, and the misunderstandings engendered when she takes the novels for reality, the crux of the story is closer to showing how damaging misinformation can be. Arabella’s position on fiction as “empty” (Quixote 377) and a waste of time is not simply a question of reading, but a question of the time spent building literacy devoted to fictional events. Lennox makes it clear, though, through the discussion of Aesop, that the problem is not that the novels exist, it’s that Arabella was never given their context. She was perfectly capable of choosing appropriate material, but as with Locke’s child who only knows black and white, she lacked the references to do so. Her deficit was endemic to her education in isolation, not in her abilities or reason.

Lennox takes the radical perspective that women are at least equal to men in their faculties and feelings, and only the artificial limitations of society enforce differences between them. Lennox’s ending, where Glanville and Arabella are united “in every

Virtue and laudable affection of the Mind” (383), does more than just compare their

180 marriage to that of Sir George and Miss Glanville; it points out that their intellects are just as important as their emotions to their ongoing happiness, and that Arabella is at least

Glanville’s equal in that respect. Arabella’s fitness for education and deep reading is settled, then, as an irrelevant question; the fault is with her father’s restrictions on the rest of her life, not his permissiveness in her reading material. Lennox’s ending and final statement address society’s concern about the education of women and undermine it, leaving Arabella as the imposed-upon heroine and everyone but the Doctor and Glanville as flawed and shallow.

Arabella’s position as an intelligent, educated woman of property should leave her secure, but the novel’s abrupt ending with her “cure” poses a question for the reader: was

Arabella’s self-ownership obliterated by her acknowledgement of her duties as a woman of rank and property? Her intended role was as a placeholder for her inheritance until a proper male heir was acquired by marriage or birth. Lennox leaves the potential for women’s self-realization past the point of marriage undetermined; Arabella’s literacies seem to facilitate married happiness, but whether they can give her agency once she marries is unresolved. The fact that the question remains unanswered, however, is perhaps Lennox’s plainest statement of the novel; it makes the public erasure of married women visible, and in doing so completes Arabella’s rebellion by translating her experience of frustrations into the reading experience.

181 Letters and Text: Romances, Catechism, and Accounts Payable in The Beggar’s Opera

While Arabella uses an internalized library to gain social freedom in The Female

Quixote, John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera offers a more cynical view of both acts of literacy and literary objects. Gay’s satirical play is not normally regarded as a work that features texts prominently, but The Beggar’s Opera in fact offers a complex view of the daily use and misuse of the written word in contemporary English society. The role of the script as an authority in The Beggar’s Opera is both reinforced and undermined as its literary object representations are shown to be doubly valenced and prone to manipulation.

The initial literary object presented by Gay’s work is the text itself.60 The title alone suggests the reader’s quandary in approaching this play; it is either written by and for beggars, or it is an opera; according to the conventions of the day, it could not be both. Gay thus confronts the audience member with the contradiction of the text from the first moment of interaction. The play’s published script reinforces this message. Although there are no “beggars” physically present as there would be during a performance, the epigram by Marital is centrally displayed: Non haec novimus esse nihil, or “We know these things to be nothing” (Gay 1). Given the narrative conceit that the play was written by a beggar, the Latin epigram is an additional detail strictly for readers of the printed play.61 Gay specifically signals readers that the text itself is authoritative and meaningless at the same time, in keeping with its understood satirical bent, but it also prepares readers for Gay’s ongoing struggle with the pairing of print and authority throughout the rest of the text.62

182 The introduction to the play supports Gay’s presentation of the text as an object that both negates its own authority and lays claim to artistic meaning at the same time.

The first character to speak is the Beggar, the fictional author of the play:

If Poverty be a Title to Poetry, I am sure no-body can dispute mine. I own myself of the Company of Beggars; and I make one at their Weekly Festivals at St. Giles’s. I have a small Yearly Salary for my Catches, and am welcome to a Dinner there whenever I please, which is more than most Poets can say. (Gay 3)

The Beggar establishes his bona fides straightaway: poverty, community, and patronage from an eminent establishment. None of these are true, of course: his poverty is imagined, as he is a fictional character; his literary community consists of other indigent people among whom literacy is by no means guaranteed; St. Giles is not a reputable church in London but rather a parish outside the city, notorious as a slum home to all manner of petty criminals, foreigners, and impoverished authors (190). Even the Beggar’s

“catches” are suspect: as both the Oxford edition of the play and the OED point out,

“catches” can refer to verses sung in a round, often as a drinking song (Gay 190; “catch, n.1”), but it can also refer to “that which is caught or worth catching; something gained; an acquisition,” which can as easily refer to the alms received from begging (“catch, n.1”).

Given his continued double meanings, there is no point on which the Beggar can be taken seriously. The Player (the more respectable counterpart to the beggar, representing both the theater’s and the audience’s interests) does so, however, vouching for the Beggar to the audience (Gay 3). The observer is caught between rejecting the play on the grounds of impossibility, accepting the information being given by the characters as truth, or doing both simultaneously. The impossibility of both claims being true simultaneously, and yet both being intentional, creates confusion that is easily made into

183 a joke. Nervous laughter becomes real laughter.

While the audience has the actor portraying the Player step in to mediate between the Beggar/Poet and the audience, the reader’s mediator is the text. The script format of the page levels the status difference between the Beggar and the Player. The decorative woodcut initial that starts the Beggar’s lines grants even more consequence to him, contradicting the expected status of a beggar.63 The force of Gay’s contradictory meanings is blunted as compared to the performance, but the use of ornament to present the beggar performs some of the same function as the Player’s intercession, again setting up a contradictory experience that leaves readers to question the validity of the text.

The way that Gay uses his text-as-performance to level social perception is mirrored throughout the play by ongoing simultaneous performances of meaning. First, the frame of the Beggar and Player provides the rhetorical action; second, the story provides the character within the main narrative of the play. At the same time, Gay’s continual use of doubled meanings and puns introduces a third performance, this one designed to introduce doubt of the Beggar’s story and push him into the narrative as well, using the literary object of the text to create uncertainty and unmoor the reader’s perception of the truth. In doing so, Gay lays the groundwork for the upside-down moral and ethical codes of his characters, as well as a suspicion of authority (in this case, textual authority) that mirrors the experiences of the play’s characters.

Once within the narrative proper, Gay introduces the audience and his readers to a number of textual literary objects that embody and explain relationships between characters, as well as objects that determine the interaction between characters and the state. While using textual literary objects in this way is not in itself especially

184 noteworthy, Gay goes on to undermine their authority within the setting; the texts perform their tasks, but they are falsified, misapplied, or deliberately misleading. For example, the least of these is the book that Macheath loans to Polly — a historical romance of the type Arabella reads in The Female Quixote. Drawing from his education, which at least exposed him to historical novels and Shakespeare, Macheath attempts to woo Polly with heroic language, swearing “may my Pistols miss Fire, and my Mare slip her Shoulder while I am pursued, if I ever forsake thee!” She responds, having read the heroic romance, that she has no reason to doubt him, “for I find in the Romance you lent me, none of the great Heroes were ever false in Love” (Gay 22).

Just as with Arabella, Polly has taken a heroic romance for her model of heterosexual relationships and romantic love. Whereas Arabella had examples in her life that mirrored the background of the heroines in those texts, Polly’s lower-class, criminal culture upbringing provides multiple examples of contradictory evidence. Polly’s romance was not a conduct guide for her, as it was for Arabella. Instead, she uses it as proof that the world is idyllic, just as she imagines it to be. As evidence, Polly uses the book (loaned to her by Macheath) to interpret his behavior romantically. He points to the heroes and their trials as examples of his behavior, and she believes in his faithfulness because the heroes in the romance proved true to their lovers. He continues to invoke the comparison by his attentive behavior and flowery vows, calculated to impress her and win her trust. Polly’s willingness to romanticize both her situation and her lover’s disposition suggests a naiveté that belies her life experience and the world she lives in.64

Likewise, Mrs. Peachum uses both the Bible and her knowledge of the law to favorably interpret situations involving Filch, one of her favorite thieves. When Mrs.

185 Peachum and the young pickpocket discuss his gains from pickpocketing at the opera house the night before (Act I, Scene IV) he expresses concern about being caught and killed for his thefts. She fusses over his fears, even as she acknowledges that he has no idea how hard it will be. She promises him that she will protect him from being hanged and tells him to “go to your Book, and learn your Catechism; for really a Man makes but an ill Figure in the Ordinary’s Paper, who cannot give a satisfactory Answer to his

Questions” (Gay 12). In doing so, Mrs. Peachum both potentially misunderstands the letter of the law regarding the “benefit of clergy” at the time, and exhorts Filch to study the Bible not as a spiritual guide but as a cultural reference in order to appear well in print. Mrs. Peachum’s references to the “Book” indicate the Bible, suggesting that Filch learn verses or a “Catechism.” She is not intending to improve his morals or urge him toward religion. Instead, she wants both to ensure he receives benefit of clergy, thus keeping him from being hanged the first time he is captured, and guarantee that he makes a figure in the Ordinary’s Accounts, which were regular pamphlets released by Newgate

Prison containing the stories and confessions of the condemned (193).

Mrs. Peachum tells Filch to study his “Book” primarily so that his knowledge of the Bible might entitle him to “benefit of clergy” if he is caught. Under this practice, a first-time offender who could prove literacy was allowed to have their sentence reduced

(Gay 193). The practice was initially intended to spare clergy from being punished in secular courts rather than ecclesiastical courts, thus granting a form of immunity from all crimes except high treason, following the murder of Thomas á Becket in 1170

(“benefit”). By the early seventeenth century, the restriction of the benefit to clergy alone had largely disappeared, with the plea becoming available to all literate men. The proof

186 of literacy was reading or in some cases reciting Psalm 51 (Potter 97). The requirement for a literacy test to invoke the benefit was retired in 1706, however, opening the plea to everyone. This would seem to indicate that Gay is setting his play in the late seventeenth century rather than making it contemporary with its performance in 1728, except that the focus on capital punishment is more in keeping with a post-1723 setting, as that year saw the reclassification of a significant number of crimes as punishable by death (Gallagher

108). If so, then Mrs. Peachum is mistaken in her understanding of the law as it stands, painting her as unreliable in ways that would be known to contemporary audiences and readers.65

The Ordinary who would administer questions was the chaplain of Newgate prison. Thus, Filch’s “Catechism” is not just Psalm 51, but the entire call-and-answer style of questioning by the Ordinary, with the assumption that at some point Filch will be condemned and his story will appear in print. The role of the papers was to frame the criminal’s story in Christian terms, and thus create a narrative that moved from confession to repentance to conversion (Gladfelder 77). Mrs. Peachum is therefore urging

Filch to prepare for the day when his chance at a questionable fame arises rather than cut

“an ill Figure” by appearing ignorant and breaking the expected narrative arc. Her concerns suggest a close pairing between religion and crime for the readers of the

Accounts, primarily in the appearance of redemption rather than any expectation of salvation.

The textual literary objects of the Book and the Catechism, linked by proximity in the text, also recall the Catechism in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, tying the sufferings and confessions of the criminals in Newgate to confirmation of Anglican

187 worshippers. For both readers of the play and theater audiences, the two objects form a satirical link between the sacred documents of the official faith of England and the reports of criminal executions from the Old Bailey. The resulting associations effectively create a periodical version of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs for robbers and scoundrels.

Gay gives us equally contradictory meanings for the textual literary objects described above; the humor of the play lies in accepting that both are true and false at the same time. Filch’s literacy and use of the Book does not mean either that he will stop stealing or that he is lay clergy, as the plea once indicated; Mrs. Peachum does not mean that he should turn religious or quit stealing, but rather that his time to stand in the dock has not yet come. Texts that should prompt his moral improvement are instead placed before the audience and the reader to indicate the impossibility of religion as a means of salvation in this world. The only benefit these books can offer, according to Mrs.

Peachum and Filch, is a single escape from a harsher sentence; the salvation they offer is therefore transitory and worldly, not eternal and spiritual.

Moreover, through the characters’ misuse of these textual literary objects, Gay questions the social utility of literacy for the lower class and the poor. The focus on the practical application of reading juxtaposed with the complete lack of interest in content indicates a disregard for reading as a means of personal improvement, setting aside much of the ethical or moral grounds for literacy. Given the doubling of classes, however, in this “opera” for the upper and middle classes, reading is useless for everyone as a social good. As Lynch suggests, deeper reading as an ethical exercise is negated in The

Beggar’s Opera, dismissing even the existence of such a thing.

It follows that the authority invested in those textual objects is, if not entirely

188 absent, then significantly diminished. While not all texts in eighteenth-century England were considered authoritative, the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and English law were recognized as the most binding. For Gay to dismiss all of them would be a powerful, even heretical statement were it not softened by humor and buried in an incongruous romance gone awry. The absence of these real-world cultural authorities within the play, combined with Gay’s continual siege against whatever authority might be invested in texts (such as his play, or court evidence, or novels) sets up a paradox in which he dares his readers and audience to take his work seriously in the face of all evidence to the contrary. At the same time, however, he warns them of the consequences to the greater community if they do not, by withholding “poetical Justice” (Gay 69) for

Macheath and exposing the artificiality of restored order.

By undermining the authority of texts, Gay eliminates the primary means of protection from authority for the characters of his play. Without legal texts, the law has no limits to its actions; without religious texts, there can be neither ecclesiastical intercession nor relief from the criminal life that flows through the entirety of the play.

The state and its punishments are inevitable; only the timing of dire events can be manipulated, and that primarily by Peachum and Lockit. The authority they represent seems blind and mechanical; its agents are corrupt and tyrannical, though eventually they too are subject to the judicial machine they tend. Until that time, however, both assume the authority of the state as their own. They make choices about crime and punishment with authority that should belong to the head of state, but the application of that authority to his subjects is so far removed that his power may be usurped without notice.

In that authoritative absence, Gay turns to the character who most resembles the

189 king in power: Peachum. London did not have an active police force until the 1750s with the establishment of the Bow Street Runners (Gallagher 108). The closest figure to law enforcement Gay provides us is Peachum, the erstwhile fence, recoverer of stolen goods, and thief-taker who works to represent private interests. The constables work for him, not for the state. Based on the criminal career of Jonathan Wild, Peachum effectively fences stolen goods, either putting them back into circulation or providing information on how to recover the items to their original owners for a fee. He also impeaches, or turns over, thieves to the prison system in exchange for a reward, thus playing both sides against each other (109).

At the same time, in keeping with Gay’s multiple associations, Peachum mimics

Sir Robert Walpole, whom Swift characterized as Gay’s “firm enemy in the Ministry,” responsible for ensuring that Gay was passed over for an important position at court in

1727 when he was writing The Beggar’s Opera (McIntosh 419). Sir Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister of Great Britain, was regularly referred to as a highwayman in the press, and comparisons between him and Jonathan Wild were frequent in Tory newspapers during the height of the latter’s infamy, including during his final trial and hanging in 1725.

With the Peachum-Wild-Walpole triangle of associations in play, Gay takes the play’s most authoritative figure and hollows him out. Wild’s authority held for some time, but was eventually revealed as a fraud, at which point his criminal empire collapsed. Peachum’s authority within the play is likewise tenuous, and the two taken together cast Walpole as a charlatan by association. The three are portrayed jointly as undermining (but ultimately being subject to) the real political and social authority in the

190 play — the power of the king to punish crimes against the state. The absence of the king’s person or any vested representatives, however, leaves the authoritative force of the play inert.

As an example, Peachum collects the “lost” objects from the thieves he hires to steal them in the first place and returns them to their original owners for a fee. Although largely interchangeable, these objects en masse act as cause and effect;66 their valuation and placement determines life and death for the thieves and beggars who make up the characters of the play. The law at the time considered both possession of stolen goods and theft of items worth 20 shillings or more as capital offenses (Silver). To that end,

Peachum tracks the value of the goods that come to him, as well as who delivers them. At the same time, he rates the thieves according to how much income they provide him according to both the number of items and their value. Those who are worth more in goods than the reward for turning them remain free; those who fail to turn a profit are

“peached,” or taken to the prison to be tried. Peachum’s office, like Wild’s and

Walpole’s, becomes the conduit through which the prisons are fed, selectively channeling the crown’s punitive powers to his own ends. It follows, then that the most authoritative text in the play is not the Bible or the law, but the “large Book of Accounts” that

Peachum is reviewing when the play begins (Gay 5).67

Gay places the play’s authority in Peachum’s oversized account book, a larger- than-life literary object on the stage. The opening conversation in Act I, Scene ii between

Peachum and Filch illustrates the power inscribed in the account book’s pages. As Filch brings news of which local thieves are being tried and what the outcomes are, Peachum decides their fates. For one man, Tom Gagg, Peachum writes down an expected reward

191 of forty pounds for information leading to his arrest and conviction.68 For Betty Sly, he offers to save her from transportation to the American colonies. At last, in Scene iii,

Peachum decides which thief to set up for execution in order to keep the other thieves in line, reading a list of criminal gang members and comparing each to the goods that person has acquired in his or her career. Peachum’s book thereby records the measure of a person’s life, according to the number and value of objects returned to circulation.

As with other sources of textual authority within the play, however, the power within Peachum’s book is ultimately spurious. It is a work in progress, amended throughout the first scenes as decisions are made, with no final version to suggest a finished whole. Second, the book is a record of illegal transactions, interpreted arbitrarily by Peachum to come to a final decision. The data it contains influences his decisions and eventually records them, but he bases his choices as much on personal convenience and his personal knowledge as on the object transactions in his book. Its authority instead lies in its interaction with Peachum, which means that alone it provides no system of control; it is effectively more tool than text, unlike other textual objects, whose meanings can be read, understood, and acted upon even if readers misinterpret what they find. Gay illustrates the book’s threat as Peachum consults it, but then undermines that threat by showing how incapable Peachum is of controlling Polly and Macheath — particularly when the Beggar intercedes and changes the ending in Act III, Scene xvi, preserving

Macheath’s life “to comply with the Taste of the Town,” thus blaming the change on the audience. All Peachum’s efforts come to naught in the face of the fictional author, who may ostensibly change the play as he sees fit at any time, thus showing that Peachum has no power after all. He is merely a character in a play; his book is likewise just a prop,

192 allowing the audience and reader to dismiss it entirely.

The Beggar’s Opera is a resistant work, in that it challenges both readers and viewers to meet it on deliberately shifting terms, pushing back against easy understanding or definition.69 In writing about the ballads and poetic justice in The Beggar’s Opera,

Steve Newman observes that Gay criticizes the social order through revealing that everyone is “equally made by texts,” whether those texts are the common street ballads that stand in for arias in an opera, or historical romances, or the 51st Psalm, or the accounts in Peachum’s record book (Newman 18). Through his textual literary objects,

Gay highlights the texts that are important in the daily lives of his audiences and readers, and then confronts the essential emptiness of those texts. He uses this moment of contradiction to interrogate the authority invested in texts in British society and the ease with which people like Peachum, Macheath, and Filch subvert that authority for their own benefit.

Gay’s textual literary objects serve to point out that a published text’s meaning is culturally determined and may thus be empty and meaningless. The ways in which those same documents determine personal identity, whether by separating criminals from good citizens or sinners from the righteous, is therefore likewise suspect.70 The Beggar’s

Opera’s satirical approach to culture and class encourages both the audience and readers of the play to reassess the metrics by which identity is culturally formed. Taking a cue from the Beggar and “the rabble,” Gay seems to suggest that resistance in sufficient numbers can change the relationship between art and the ruling classes, encouraging a reconsideration of these central texts in order to resist them.

Literary Objects and Identity: Shakespeare and Passports in Sterne’s A Sentimental

193 Journey

While Gay’s satire encourages audiences and readers to be suspicious of culture and authority, Laurence Sterne’s relationship to these concepts is more lightheartedly subversive. Sterne’s presentation of textual literary objects also focuses on the arbitrariness of textual objects of authority. Rather than creating his texts as a fixed point for the reader, he seems to delight in resisting stasis, creating works that convey the impression that meaning and context is always in motion. Rather than being imbued with false authority, Sterne’s texts simply defy any authority they have been given. His textual literary objects are multilayered. Unlike Gay, however, Sterne does not work to make those meanings oppositional and thus forcibly negated.

Sterne’s texts do not lack authority because they are ultimately meaningless; his texts lack authority because they are ultimately personal. They focus on day-to-day, even minute-to-minute activities and stories that eventually combine to addressing larger concerns over the novel as a whole. Sterne’s presentation gives the reader the option to read deeply or lightly, creating a to-the-moment sense of interaction with his texts. A textual literary object’s larger cultural significance is almost irrelevant in Sterne’s

Shandean reality; the immediacy of the interaction between text and individual takes precedence over any authoritative meaning it might possess. Sterne’s novel A Sentimental

Journey through France and Italy provides a clear example of this textual irrelevance in the first half of Volume II, with the story of Yorick’s quest for a passport.

Despite a comic approach to the bureaucratic confirmation of identity and permission that passports provide, Sterne offers a keen understanding of social

194 dysfunction and how it affects the individual in general. His observances about unstable identity are reflected in the textual literary objects in his works, which continually prove to be more problematic and complex than the characters and authors realize.71 A

Sentimental Journey embodies Sterne’s explorations of the nature of texts in a number of ways, not least of which was that the work was an expansion of The Life and Opinions of

Tristram Shandy, Gentleman with a focus on Yorick detailing his trip abroad. But it is also a fictionalized memoir about Yorick as Sterne’s alter ego, including events that were similar to those that occurred during Sterne’s own trip to France in 1762 (Letters of

Laurence Sterne 151).72 His desire to explore the form of the novel and its possibilities led him to create a textual object (A Sentimental Journey) that intentionally tells two stories at once. He practiced this feat in Tristram Shandy and used that experience to create a closer parallel in A Sentimental Journey, allowing for a clearer overlap between himself and his character Yorick and their experiences and beliefs.73 As a result of

Yorick’s highly personal narration, Sterne can distance himself from his work’s narrative voice despite the overlap between the fiction and his own experiences. In doing so, Sterne negates the possibility of deriving an agreed-upon authoritative meaning.74 While he allows for the possibility that texts can have cultural authority, he ultimately shows that authority to be secondary to the human experience, as shown in Yorick’s effort to belatedly obtain his French passport.

Sterne’s new form of prose fiction, testing the limits of the form, was influenced by oral conversation and storytelling. The stops and starts, the pauses for responses, the repetition of presumed addresses, the abrupt changes in topic: all approximate the nature of conversation and extemporaneous thought. The resultant texts express improvisation

195 and whimsicality, creating the impression that the events in the pages to follow are as yet undetermined. Sterne’s style remains tightly focused on the moment by using first-person narration that addresses the reader as though he or she were a close friend, which has the added effect of heightening Sterne’s moments of emotion and surprise. Sterne in this way plays with Yorick’s position as a clergyman — ostensibly a position of moral authority and the source of the extremely popular eighteenth-century genre of published sermons.

At the same time, A Sentimental Journey is presented as such a personal narrative, including Yorick’s sentiments, emotions, and bodily feelings as he travels, that global application of its precepts seems impossible. The role of the text as an authority is undermined by its very particularity.

It would be an error, however, to claim that Sterne ignores the authoritative potential in texts. In fact, in the story of the passport Sterne sets up a competition between personal, social, and cultural texts to see which exerts the most authority. Yorick himself as an empathetic, sentimental man travels to Versailles in order to gain permission to stay in France. His story takes the form of the personal text. Yorick’s neglected passport forms the social text, being the official document that prevents him from arrest and allows his continued travels in France — without it, he is persona non grata. Finally,

Sterne incorporates a cultural text in the form of an English set of Shakespeare’s works that Yorick seeks to purchase in Paris, but which is bound for the Count de B**** at

Versailles as is he, since the Count is the person he needs to authorize a passport for him.

The paths toward Versailles for Yorick as narrator and character, Yorick in the form of the necessary passport, and Yorick (Hamlet’s former court jester) in the form of the volumes of Shakespeare (a cultural passport of sorts) converge finally in the Count’s

196 office. The three textual representations of Yorick, then, vie against one another to determine which one represents the “real” Yorick, a mystery further compounded by

Sterne’s use of Yorick as an authorial persona. Sterne sets up a competition to determine which text will ultimately prove authoritative: the personal (Yorick’s journal, or the overarching narrative text), the political/social (the passport), or the cultural

(Shakespeare).

Of the three literary objects, Sterne devotes the most description to the bureaucratic document and its odd situation. As Yorick says, once he gets to Dover,

“there was no getting [to France] without a passport” (Journey 192). Since a passport cannot be obtained in Dover, his hasty decision to travel means that his opportunity to arrange for an official document that would enable him to take ship to France had passed unnoticed.75 During the eighteenth century, a passport was not proof of identity issued solely to a nation’s citizenry, but rather a guarantee of safe passage (“passport, n.1”). For a British citizen traveling to France during the Seven Years War, it would have been necessary not only to cross the English Channel, but also to travel through the land.

Failure to present the documentation could result in the individual’s arrest on suspicion of espionage, imprisonment in “the Bastile or the Chatelet, au moins” (Journey 194), and even execution. To be without a passport or safe passage, then, was a serious offense.

Through the textual object of the passport, Sterne distills French social authority down to perhaps the ultimate expression of the authority of the state: an exemption from the right of a monarch to defend his realm against intruders.

At the same time, Sterne diminishes the practical authority of the document, reducing the passport to an afterthought. Yorick forgets that he needs a passport and

197 bypasses it entirely, entering the country without impediment. Through this oversight,

Sterne not only diminishes the importance of passports, but of the entire clash of states.

Thomas Keymer refers to Sterne’s work as a “cultural barometer” of the 1760s (86);

Carol Watts argues that if Keymer is right, then Sterne’s commentary on the world and culture is “the business of state imagining” (18). Sterne’s imagining of states from

Yorick’s perspective is largely irrelevant, a minor obstacle to be overcome. Through his omission of the passport, Yorick also dismisses the entities that require him to provide proof of safe passage. To demonstrate this, he declares “the king of France is a good natured soul—he’ll hurt no body,” only to have La Fleur reply in a whisper “That no body could oppose the king of France” (Journey 194).

As Yorick talks about the king, he speaks of him as a physical, embodied person no different from anyone else. When La Fleur mentions the king, he speaks of the political entity and the power of the monarchy to which he is subject. The two approaches point out a significant difference between the English and French and their views of monarchial power. Le Fleur’s response suggests a Hobbesian outlook where the sovereign is the only bulwark between civilization and constant war and is thus endowed with absolute power to enforce the covenant that is the state. Yorick, on the other hand, hews more closely to a Lockean view, in which the relationship between sovereign and subject has accountability in both directions. Yorick’s public characterization of the King of France as “a good natured soul” is itself bordering on social rebellion in a Hobbesian state, justifying La Fleur’s concerns and yet sowing doubt when Yorick goes unpunished.

Nonetheless, Yorick takes La Fleur’s concerns to heart once he is alone, comparing himself to a starling he sees in a cage. His fears hold no more weight than the

198 document seems to, however, as Yorick goes on to evade the Paris police and travel to

Versailles, where he meets with the Count — coincidentally, the owner of the set of

Shakespeare’s works in English that Yorick had wanted to purchase (Journey 209).76

The Count’s rooms serve as the nexus of the three textual objects and the arena within which they compete for final authority. Yorick enters to find the volumes of

Shakespeare already present on the Count’s desk, and jokes about Shakespeare as the countryman who will make his introduction (Journey 215). He first acknowledges the cultural authority of Shakespeare and associates himself with the text as a way of indicating his country of origin, pressing the books into service as his representative with the Count. Yorick relies on both the Count’s reported fondness for the English and the book’s status as the foundation of English literature to put him in the Count’s good graces, appealing to its cultural authority and popularity.

While Yorick then tells the Count the story of his needed passport (again) he seems to dismiss the authority of the document. Instead he focuses on a connection between himself and the Count as individuals. Yorick conveys his desire to connect with the people of France, and “spy” on their hearts so that he could know them, rather than spying on the state and its secrets. “But I could wish, continued I, to spy the nakedness of their hearts, and through the different disguises of customs, climates, and religion, find out what is good in them, to fashion my own [heart] by—and therefore am I come”

(Journey 217). Yorick’s envisioned state consists of people, not power, as he explains when he says, “I conceive every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and see the original drawings and loose sketches hung up in it, than the transfiguration of Raphael itself)” (218). Because Yorick and the count are speaking specifically of women at the

199 start of this exchange, the text leaves room for a broader interpretation that makes individuals far more interesting and worthwhile to Yorick than cultural icons or political power. Even as he petitions for help in obtaining a passport, he indicates his lack of concern regarding temporal institutions. He wants the document as a matter of form, not because he greatly fears its lack. In doing so, the journal (the text of A Sentimental

Journey itself) becomes the third textual object in the scene, championing personal connection as a form of authority that is equally compelling as either of the other forms.

Having laid the groundwork with all three, Sterne then tests each textual object in turn. In doing so, he reveals which one has the most embodied authority and thus which type of authority he sees as most powerful, all through a somewhat convoluted case of mistaken identity. Sterne first notes the problems with a textual cultural authority in this situation, with the Count’s reply that despite Shakespeare’s “introduction,” the book did not give Yorick’s name (a necessity for the bureaucratic document of the passport), and thus did not perform an introduction properly. Yorick intervenes and uses Hamlet to introduce himself, turning to the gravediggers scene and showing the book to the Count, proclaiming “Me, Voici!” or “here I am!” (Journey 221).

Yorick’s definitive statement does nothing, however, to explain his name. The text of Hamlet, which does carry an authority of sorts, is forced into mediation between

Yorick and the Count, ostensibly serving as a common reference. Both men have such different experiences, backgrounds, and languages, though, that the text is unable to fully bridge them. The assumed shared cultural references do not exist, underlining that even

Shakespeare is not universal, but rather particular to English culture and thus limited in potential influence despite its role in Danish history. Since the two men cannot have the

200 same interpretation of the text based on the foundations of their understandings of

Shakespeare, each misunderstands the other, highlighting Sterne’s focus on the particularity of textual interpretation. While Yorick feels that referring to Yorick’s skull in Hamlet will explain his name, the Count interprets his gesture as indicating his job, that of a court jester.77 The social translation that Yorick hopes the textual object will provide instead only creates misunderstanding.

Yorick’s name and lineage are lost in the textual literary object’s mediation — the

Count sees Yorick’s behavior and his implied court position as a favorite of the king as all-important. He hastens to act because of that connection and the promise of temporal gratitude, while Yorick wishes to convey his personal identity, reinforcing the previous conversational miscommunication and tracing out the eventual misunderstanding.78 By the time the Count returns with the passport, he and Yorick are so far from understanding one another that even the volumes of Shakespeare, portrayed by Sterne as perhaps the most culturally authoritative books in the English language, are unable to bridge the gap.

Sterne thus limits the role that cultural authority can successfully play in mediation, leaving open the question as to whether even those from comparable backgrounds and languages can use cultural textual objects in this way. While the Count may admire and purchase a full set of Shakespeare’s works (having them bound to match his library), his skill and attention at reading is attuned to an entirely different purpose than Yorick’s: the

Count is demonstrating his skill and taste, as Deidre Lynch describes, thus admiring

English language and culture through literature as a sign of his refinement; Yorick, on the other hand, is placing a premium on knowing the characters and developing intimate relationships with them, much as Marianne in Sense and Sensibility admires. Two

201 different forms of literacy are therefore also in play, confusing the situation further.

As for the passport, representing the authority of the state, Sterne likewise conveys the inability of that document to have any real relation to the person it purportedly represents. It serves its bureaucratic purpose, but it is inherently invalid as a means of identifying Yorick and granting him the necessary permissions to pass unmolested. While it is addressed to “all lieutenant governors, governors, and commandants of cities, generals of armies, justiciaries, and all officers of justice,” the passport in the end misidentifies Yorick as “the king’s jester” despite his assertions to the contrary (Journey 228). The passport that should have identified and legitimized him during his time in France instead is false. If it became known that he was not the French king’s jester, it might in fact work against him rather than guaranteeing him safe conduct.

The textual literary object that is the passport is in danger of being subverted from its original purpose, obliterating its authority entirely unless used under false pretenses; its power, as represented by Sterne, is based on an initial misunderstanding that becomes a knowing lie for everyone’s convenience.

Finally, Sterne’s representation of the events takes place in Yorick’s fictional memoir of his travels, related as the personal experience of a fictional character. His last textual literary object is the novel itself, the source through which we witness the discussions and understand how the mistaken identity happened — and was in fact made possible by the personal connections between the Count and Yorick before the set of

Shakespeare’s works is forced to intercede and provide Yorick’s name.

At the same time, the accord between Yorick and the Count is imperfect at best; while Yorick attempts to introduce himself and discuss his nature as an innocent traveller,

202 the Count suggests he would be motivated by an interest in French women. The Count is attempting to socially connect with Yorick, but instead of feeling comforted or amused,

Yorick is distressed and moved to explain himself. He instead creates a situation that is suddenly more intimate than the Count seems to reciprocate, who answers simply with “a great many civil things” (Journey 219). Yorick’s far more successful personal connection is with the reader, to whom he explains all his thoughts, impressions, and feelings.

Yorick’s efforts at personal connection as a form of authority regularly fail when he engages in conversation, but as recorded within a textual literary object such as A

Sentimental Journey, they form the ultimate Shandean authority, establishing connections with untold numbers of readers. At the same time, personal authority is ultimately limited in effect both within the fiction and as a means of connection with readers. Sterne’s portrayal of personal authority is intended to move individuals to action on behalf of both themselves and others, but only within their own sphere of control. Personal authority as

Sterne represents it has the potential to stand apart from both cultural and state authority, granting a form of autonomy (if not freedom). In the end, however, its limits are the limits of personal action and power granted by culture and society. Sterne’s examples of human connection and sentimental understanding are powerful examples, but are unable to free Yorick from the need for a passport, for example, or make up for the difference in cultural interpretation.

Because none of Sterne’s textual objects are ultimately able to exert authority successfully, his portrayals are all deliberately confusing. His devotion to sentimental writing leads him to work at conveying sensation and emotion through text, but in the end, no text in Sterne can be an authority;79 he delegitimizes texts along with the reader’s

203 temptation to invest in a given work and grant it cultural authority through shared evaluation, instead creating an experience that potentially inspires individuals to seek emotional connections in their daily lives. In doing so, he creates a sense of flow and movement that pushes readers past the text itself into a connection with Yorick/Sterne and their own emotional lives. He grants his readers a limited personal authority over his text, redirecting them toward interactions in their own lives much as a pastor such as

Sterne might aspire to do with one of his sermons. As Yorick continues his journey,

Sterne guides his readers along, encouraging them to engage with the world as Yorick does by focusing on people rather than political states. He prioritizes the larger community of individuals and their connection to one another, and in doing so, attempts to elevate his readers beyond questions of state or status.

Conclusion

The Female Quixote, The Beggar’s Opera, and A Sentimental Journey Through

France and Italy all dramatize complex struggles with printed texts and authority in their own ways. Together, they show a pattern of questioning not simply the role of print in eighteenth-century British culture, but the level to which printed material conveys or embodies authority. As access to print becomes more common and less expensive, printed materials can reach further (both throughout the nation and beyond) due to increased effectiveness of transport, the growth of literacy across all classes, and the growing market of both periodicals and pirated and lower-priced books. The authors whose works I have examined in this chapter all remain skeptical of the role of printed

204 material as representative of either cultural or social authority, each exploring a different perspective. At the same time, none of them can entirely dismiss the place of print as a cultural and social force; nor do they necessarily seem to want to, even as they suggest using discretion when reading and relying on the inherent authority of print.

Charlotte Lennox, for example, humorously warns against trusting examples set out in books, particularly in models of behavior. Potentially critiquing the numerous self- improvement books and behavior guides for women, Lennox uses The Female Quixote to point out the dangers of relying solely on texts as guides and educators. She stresses the importance of personal communication and engagement with the world to learn first hand rather than trusting one’s education to an author one can never meet. In The Beggar’s

Opera, John Gay emphasizes that people compose and share texts in self-interested ways, such that any authority invested in those texts is voided. He makes the argument that authority mediated by objects (such as print) is meaningless, as the objects cannot guarantee correct interpretation, particularly by those who stand to gain through misinterpretation. Lastly, in A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, Laurence

Sterne examines whether printed media can effectively embody any sort of authority, whether personal, social, or cultural. In his work, all forms of authority invested in printed texts repeatedly fail because of the vagaries in readers’ responses and cultural contexts — in other words, their social, personal, and cultural literacies. As an authoritative source, an author will ideally convey information that is true, accurate, appropriate, helpful, and perfectly understood. That situation, however, requires an imagined reader able to fully understand the information being conveyed. All these examples are comedic works, and thus their authors treat authority lightly, luring in

205 readers and audiences who might resist a more direct discourse. At the same time, the authors’ engagement with the reach of textual authority reveals potentially dire results, underlying the importance of their stories.

The three representative works examined in this chapter provide examples of the ongoing questioning of authority and print media in literature during the eighteenth century. The concern with trusting authorial privilege is one side of the problem, but by no means the only one. Although approaching the problem from different aspects, all three works collectively suggest that readers could misuse texts as a means of creating illicit or improper community and establishing dubious authority, effectively usurping authorial privilege in the process. Arabella’s misinterpretation of her romances;

Macheath’s use of a romance to persuade Polly; Yorick’s attempt at using Shakespeare to explain his identity: all of these comic problems revolve around individuals using texts to explain and mediate situations beyond the scope of the original texts. Even legal documents, such as Yorick’s passport, are not immune to these problems; in the end, the relationship between an author, the created textual object, and the reader is tenuous, at risk of erasure and misinterpretation at every step. The author must be clear about the literacies being used; the reader must be equally conversant.

At the same time, however, print could create a lasting object that could carry information beyond the authors’ immediate reach to readers separated by time, distance, class, or culture, far beyond authors and their anticipated literacies. Printing was a technological advancement that was increasingly indispensable throughout eighteenth- century British culture. Publishers, authors, and readers together created authoritative influences through print that were easy to create but difficult to contain. The caution

206 demonstrated by the authors in this chapter indicates an underlying concern about the uses and misuses of print, and the authority obviously present in these textual objects

(and their literary representations): this was a critical debate that ran concurrently throughout the early eighteenth century and was eventually ended by the Court of

Chancery with the Donaldson v. Becket decision in 1774. Their decision simultaneously put an end to the practice of perpetual copyright in England by booksellers and publishers, and yet also created new opportunities for investment in the textual objects and their contents. This legal milestone revived formerly published works, transforming the eighteenth-century world of printing and creating new complications in the relationship between authority and textual objects.

207 Chapter Four

Illustrations and Authorial Control: Harrison and Cooke

In earlier chapters of this work, I have first examined the ways literary representations of objects (or “literary objects”) both indicate social and cultural boundaries and subvert those same boundaries, effectively acting as walls and doors for the characters that encounter them. I then explored the role of print referenced within a text as “textual literary objects.” Textual literary objects allow authors to explore matters of authority and agency by proxy. They can use the idea of print and reading to challenge the cultural and social boundaries indicated by books and letters, as well as the cultural and social roles of print culture.

In this chapter, I unite these aspects in a case study that analyzes representations of objects, authorial influence, reader interpretation, and the social and cultural effects of literary objects as represented in late eighteenth-century illustrated reprints of earlier popular novels. In particular, this study explores how the addition of illustrations and new formatting to the reprints of the novels Henrietta by Charlotte Lennox and The History of

Pompey the Little by Francis Coventry not only changed the reading experience of those novels, but also allowed the reprint publishers to lay an authorial claim to the novels for their own ends.

Specifically, the inclusion of illustrations highlights the authorial use of literary objects and endows them with particular meanings, resulting in a new perceptual filter for readers. These booksellers exploited the print ideology that the preceding chapters show to be happening diegetically. Through paratext, the bookseller leverages the implied rhetorical and associative meanings of the objects pictured within the illustrations to

208 enact a level of authorial control over the readers’ experience of their version of a previously published text.

From frontispieces to print ornaments, authors reminded readers that format and function were inextricably linked in these and other published works. Authors in eighteenth-century Britain from Swift and Sterne to Richardson and Coventry experimented with the form of their works to highlight the complex narrative experiences they wished to create. They employed such techniques as frontispieces and suggestive asterisks to thwart (or amplify) the expectations of the print form and explore the limits of narrative forms of print. Sterne’s refiguring of the novel form with Tristram Shandy stands out, retaining its intriguing affect on readers even in the modern day, but before that other works tested similar textual boundaries. Swift’s A Tale of a Tub, for example, took aspects of pamphlets and fables and combined them with a tongue-in-cheek understanding of the niceties of print and its impact on readers, from the bookseller’s dedication forward through the text (Tale [vi]). Authors employed these paratextual techniques to deliberately highlight the fraught relationship between authorial property and the marketplace, often using these factors to stake a claim to otherwise anonymous publications or as a mark of authenticity against competing pirated versions of their work.

Authors were not the only ones to experiment with how the form and function of the physical book imparted layers of meaning within a text. Typeface, type size, text density, printers ornaments, titles pages, frontispieces, bindings, and illustrations all play a role in establishing an identity, or brand, for the bookseller or printer in the minds of their customers. In the London publishing scene of the eighteenth century, most decisions about the final physical presentation of a book belonged solely to booksellers. They

209 regularly chose the printer, artists, and binders. While some authors with a particularly close relationship to the bookseller or easy access to a given printer might exert influence over aspects of the printed book in cooperation with a bookseller, particularly if they retained some shares of copyright in the work, those authors who sold their rights altogether, lived outside of London, or submitted anonymously to publishers had far less control over the final product. With or without the oversight of the author, the input of booksellers and printers was a constant; without it, the book would not have a retail conduit to potential buyers. Scholars have rarely explored the effects of printer and bookseller choices on the final product and its sales, however, particularly once the original authors of a text died or the work fell out of copyright protection.

With the importance of these aspects clearly in mind, then, this chapter examines the eighteenth-century novels Henrietta and The History of Pompey the Little from their initial publication to their illustrated part-issue reissues by Harrison & Co. in The

Novelist’s Magazine in the 1780s, and then as part of Cooke’s Pocket Edition illustrated novel series in the late 1790s. Differences in illustration and other design elements in these editions reveal how publishers were able to add interpretations of literary objects to an existing work and reinterpret it to their own ends, creating visual branding and suggesting customized interpretations of the text to readers. This study demonstrates that literary objects are not simply informational references, but also tacitly recognized mediators between authors and readers. The information conveyed by literary objects is authoritative and is recognized as such, and can even be usurped by later publishers and printers through the addition of interior or paratextual literary objects such as editorial corrections, chapter headings, or illustrations.

210 Although there were a number of booksellers post-1774 who engaged in reprinting popular British novels, John Harrison and John Cooke were two of the most successful. Both issued affordable illustrated versions of classic British novels, but while

Harrison focused on part-issue periodicals and later collected versions of the same,

Cooke produced sets of matching, pre-bound illustrated “pocket” novels in duodecimo format. Both publishers commissioned new illustrations for their versions of reprinted novels, bringing something new to the printed work. Both publishers also participated in a historical moment of market growth, selling affordable books to a new group of print consumers, who had previously been priced out of the book market. These booksellers in particular created their brands by using illustrations and formatting, exerting authority over the text and influencing readers to interact with the printed objects in ways that would build brand loyalty and benefit the booksellers in the end. In doing so, the reprint booksellers effectively created a place for themselves as cultural gatekeepers who welcomed poorer customers into the world of print, from which they had previously been excluded from participation. At the same time, their role in creating a sense of the British literary canon, intentionally or not, took on the additional step of cultural curation by making authorized lists of “select” (as Cooke called them) British literary works.

In moving forward with reprint publishing, Harrison and Cooke each reprinted a significant number of novels as part of their respective projects. I have chosen two of these novels to illustrate the changes they made from the original editions. These two works were initially published in the 1750s and were well received. They were sold by

Harrison and Cooke respectively in illustrated versions, thus giving us three versions of each novel for comparison.

211 Andrew Millar published Henrietta as a new work in 1758, while Pompey the

Little was first published by Mary Cooper in 1751. Both were chosen by Harrison & Co. for inclusion in the illustrated periodical The Novelists’ Magazine, published in 1785 and

1787 respectively; John Cooke also published both novels as part of his Cooke's Pocket

Edition of Select Novels in 1798 and 1799. By tracing the use of illustration in the novels through their incarnations, we can access how booksellers used visual aspects of a text to create brand identities for readers. As a result, these booksellers co-opted a portion of authorial privilege, changing the content of the work and to some degree supplanting the original author and his or her intentions with their own.80

These eighteenth-century booksellers created consumer-facing brands through additions to previously written works, combining and manipulating the presentation of literary objects to create a new, real-world effect. They understood the use of art and graphic design not only as techniques to create a text-dense, inexpensive printed book, but also as methods of conveying unspoken meaning to a theorized customer. The role of object references, both illustrated and text-based, as mediators in the consumer culture of the late eighteenth century is therefore shown to be not only known, even if tacitly, but also manipulated for individual benefit, thereby demonstrating the importance of literary objects in forming impressions for readers and conveying information.

In this case study, I first recount the historical situation regarding illustration in eighteenth-century British print culture. I examine paratexts such as illustration, printers ornaments, typeface, paper, and bindings to trace the effects of bookseller intervention in original and reprinted editions over the last forty years of the eighteenth century. I analyze the printing choices made in the first editions by the booksellers Andrew Millar

212 and Mary Cooper respectively. From there, I evaluate the Harrison & Co. reprints of both texts for The Novelist’s Magazine, giving specific attention to choices in format and illustration composition and subject matter. Finally, I take Cooke’s versions of the same two texts and observe the different ways Cooke integrates illustrations along with choices in format and materials with the text. In analyzing interventions these booksellers made, I highlight the role literary objects play in mediating real-world literacy in a print culture.

The Role of Illustration in Late Eighteenth-Century British Print Culture

Unlike the Continent, Britain was comparatively late to widely adopt illustration in publishing. For example, differences between English and French illustration practices reach back to the seventeenth century. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,

French booksellers regularly illustrated their works, whether novels, tales of court life, religious tracts, scientific treatises, or manuals for sport. While Louis XIV took personal interest in the arts and provided patronage, Cardinal Richelieu established the Impremerie

Royale in 1638, providing oversight and official government support for printing and book production (Harthan 113). Such interest in printing and illustration in France continued into the eighteenth century, with the Regent Philip, Duke of Orleans and the

Marquise de Pompadour taking sufficient interest to personally learn copperplate engraving (142).

Meanwhile, political instabilities from the English Civil War and Cromwell’s

Protectorate to the Restoration and the rule of William and Mary meant that officially recognizing and patronizing illustration and printing as its own art form was far from the

213 minds of English monarchs, as well as Protestant church and government officials. Until mid-century, English illustration therefore lagged behind that of the continent; with the exception of the use of mezzotint, a method of metal engraving used primarily for the reproduction of paintings and creation of prints rather than books, illustration was primarily a continental practice (Clayton, “Book Illustration,” 241). This in turn created a dearth of skilled British engravers, leaving only a handful of individuals to do the rarely required work. Their skills were typically reserved for frontispieces, which were regularly used throughout British printing for authors who were already well known or for books on popular themes. Illustration in British publishing was therefore uncommon until the mid-1800s.

Despite the lack of government support and patronage, British booksellers still turned to engraved illustrations for specific types of projects. Engravings during the eighteenth century were used primarily for three types of published projects: private commissions (often with scientific illustrations, city maps, or images of the primary patron's estate), “classic” works of literature (such as Shakespeare, Milton, and Bunyan), and pirated works. Private commissions were often commemorative pieces, dedicated to a specific patron. Topographical illustrations and portraiture were some of the most common types of illustrations in these works, many of which were published by subscription or commissioned with small print runs. The subscription model essentially paid for the book’s printing in advance, thus offsetting the costs and enabling booksellers to create far more elaborately decorated and constructed books.

While woodcut designs and ornaments could be printed as part of a block of type using a letterpress, finer work required metal plate engravings, which needed a separate

214 rolling press for intaglio printing (Twyman 42). Commissioning artwork, converting it to metal engravings, and running a separate press operation (or hiring another firm to create the images) were all expensive processes (16). In addition, the extra steps involved in printing illustrations separately and then pasting (or “tipping in”) the illustrations at the correct places introduced extra possibilities for errors in the process. The additional steps required more time to complete the finished books. All these factors combined to make the use of illustration a prohibitive expense in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Without specific patronage, British booksellers were hesitant to commit to the extra effort and cost if profit could not be guaranteed, particularly in works of literature

(Clayton, “Book Illustration” 241).

When publishing for the public, booksellers were rarely moved to invest heavily in production extras, such as illustrations, unless it was clear the expense would be recouped. Books with ongoing popularity, particularly works of literature, were the exceptions to the rule. The Bible, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Paradise Lost, and

Shakespeare’s plays and poetry were mainstays of British publishing with continuous sales and no real control over who was allowed to sell them. As foundational works for almost any British library, these works were regularly printed in both cheap duodecimo formats for the masses and more expensive illustrated octavo, quarto, or folio versions for discerning consumers. The first illustrated edition of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, for example, was published in 1688 by subscription, with five hundred backers (Harthan

119), but it was far from the last. John Pine’s fashionable two-volume illustrated set of

Horace (published 1733-37) was likewise an expensive publication with the Prince of

Wales at the top of the subscriber list (152). Illustration served to add value and

215 distinction to a product that might otherwise be lost in a sea of competitors, in addition to raising one’s business profile and attracting wealthy or socially ambitious clientele, much in the same way Roxana wields her clothing and carriages to increase her perceived status.81

The third category of illustrated works stands in sharp contrast to continually popular texts or expensive signature publications, though the market strategies were similar. While the first two types of projects focused on expensive (or even exclusive) books, publishers who specialized in pirated literary works specifically flooded the market with cheaper knock-off copies of current popular works owned by other creators.

Relying on the established market association between illustration and expensive well- made books, pirating booksellers regularly used illustration to heighten the appeal of their products. Some of these booksellers limited themselves to woodcuts and relief printing, thus streamlining the process and avoiding the need for more expensive craftsmen.

Occasionally, however, the potential profit justified the greater expense of copperplate engraving and the intaglio printing that came with it.

For example, Samuel Richardson published Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded anonymously in 1740. Thomas Keymer and Peter Sabor estimate that by the end of 1741, over 20,000 copies of authorized editions of the novel were produced and sold. In addition to Richardson’s legitimate copies of the book, though, there were multiple pirated versions available: abridged versions, serializations in newspapers, and Dublin editions (Keymer and Sabor 20), let alone the sequels, rebuttals, and parodies that came later. Both the 1741 serialized Life of Pamela (with illustrations by John Carwitham) and the serialized copycat Pamela published by Mary Kingman around the same time feature

216 copperplate engravings. While most of the images depict scenes from Richardson’s novel, additional spurious chapters inspired others and allowed the pirated editions to claim an “improved” version of the original text (146).

The pirated versions were successful enough to prompt Richardson to release his own illustrated version of Pamela, which finally came out in 1742 — at least six months after the pirated versions by Carwitham and Kingman. Richardson’s illustrated edition was a success, even winning over a number of critics of his first edition, but so were the piracies; Keymer notes that by mid-1742, there were a number of illustrated versions of the novel available from booksellers in London. Clearly authenticity alone did not drive sales, and illustrations benefitted multiple publishers despite variations in both print quality and artistic ability.

Keymer and Sabor note that Richardson was considering an illustrated version as early as December of 1740, believing that engravings and new introductory material would give the product greater dignity and appeal (152). If Richardson felt that way, however, why didn’t Pamela have illustrations in the first edition, or even Clarissa or Sir

Charles Grandison, which were published later? Richardson might have been concerned about the return on his investment, but as a successful printer, he understood the labor, costs, and economies extremely well. When also taking into consideration his position as an insider among the printing and bookselling communities as well as his ability to negotiate favorable terms for his works with the booksellers, it seems unlikely that concerns about recouping the costs of illustration would be the deciding factor. For that matter, why weren’t new works of literature regularly illustrated from the beginning of the eighteenth century onward?

217 One likely answer is that the social infrastructure to support illustration as an art form in England was simply not in place. Without any form of cultural patronage for illustration, copperplate engravings were viewed as primarily a means to entice readers rather than as an integral part of a text. Booksellers were unwilling to add expensive processes to what was already a financial risk; readers were far more interested in illustrations when they had a sense of what the content of the book was; and authors during the period were concerned that their new books might either be thought pretentious or mistaken for pirated work. Instead, as James Raven notes, the development of graphic design, in terms of typography, ornaments, borders, and so forth, was just as important in book illustration as it was for paintings and copperplate. This was particularly true when looking for a reasonable way to create “the book as a beautiful product” priced within reach of middle class incomes (270).

All of these forces surrounding illustration created a stable market expectation in

British print culture from roughly the 1710s until the end of the 1760s. Woodcuts were replaced by engravings at an accelerating pace following the arrival of additional craftsmen from the continent, particularly France and Saxony due to the Seven Years

War. The influx of skilled talent effectively increased the labor pool of artists, making commissions less expensive for publishers, printers, and booksellers. The biggest change in the market, however, occurred in the last three decades of the eighteenth century, bringing about a sea change for the use of illustration in British literature.

From the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695, agreed-upon customs regarding copyright among booksellers and the legalities of copyright grew more lax. Instead of registering titles with the Stationers’ Company, as legal remedies against piracy grew

218 more difficult to pursue with any success, London booksellers increasingly turned to the informal ledgers of the Chapter Coffee-House on Paternoster Row to list their titles, holding to a professional agreement that each bookseller would keep to the shares they were entitled to (Raven 128). This gentleman’s agreement, however, did not extend much beyond Paternoster Row and the surrounding streets. The printing circles in Edinburgh

(and in the American colonies, to a lesser and later extent) focused on reprints of English novels and miscellanies more than on publishing original material, as they did not abide by the same copyright laws. The Edinburgh printers were able to sell their product at half the price thanks to cheaper materials, hidden abridgments to the texts, and closer-set type.82 Those books then often found their way into both the countryside and London, undercutting legitimate sales (252). Copyright-owning London booksellers grew more frustrated and brought multiple court cases over the decades with varying levels of success until the House of Lords’ ruling in the appeal to the 1774 Donaldson v. Beckett case, which found in favor of the Scottish booksellers and against perpetual copyright.

The Lords’ ruling effectively established a limited copyright state, closer to the version of copyright used today (231).

With that groundbreaking decision, older popular works whose copyright had elapsed became openly profitable resources for London booksellers. As Kathryn

Sutherland observes, the result of the initial trade dispute between Edinburgh and London printers was a view of literature as “a set of significant works from the past which would gain cultural value (and extend booksellers’ profits) by their freer circulation” (668).83

Owning shares of a book’s copyright no longer guaranteed a monopoly on legitimate

London printings once copyright elapsed. Competition for sales now took the form of not

219 only new books competing for consumers’ attention, but also reprinted popular books vying against alternate versions of the same text. In response, illustration and graphic design became tools to attract readers and establish brand recognition for the booksellers.

Freed from longstanding monopolies on popular texts, booksellers (particularly those new to the trade, or who did not own many profitable copyright shares) took advantage of the wealth of proven material now at hand. John Bell, John Harrison, and

John Cooke all released affordable versions of works that became cornerstones of British literature for the middle-class consumer, both in sets of ready-bound books and serially published in magazines (and then again in collections from those magazines) (Sutherland

668). By placing what could later be considered “classics” of British literature within reach, publishers like Harrison, Bell, and Cooke transformed bookselling and even the way we perceive literature in the current day, effectively creating a canon out of British fiction that had run out of its copyright protections (Taylor 629). These publisher/booksellers acted to capture ready sales, but at the same time created niches and visual brand identity so that customers would become attached to their versions of previously published texts. Illustration, graphic design, and binding all gained in prominence, becoming decision points for buyers. The visual aspects of a book became tools designed to increase the cultural value of the object and shepherd readers into future purchases from the same booksellers.

First Editions of Henrietta and The History of Pompey the Little

When both Charlotte Lennox and Francis Coventry first published Henrietta and

220 The History of Pompey the Little, they published with respected booksellers who were fixtures of the market. Andrew Millar was among the best known and best regarded of the London publishers. Mary Cooper was the widow of another prominent bookseller,

Thomas Cooper, and took over the business after his death, running it for another nineteen years (Fuderer 12). Both printers were respected participants in London print culture throughout the mid-eighteenth century (1729 to 1767 for Millar, and 1743-1761 for Cooper).84 They had different areas of specialization in published material, but were well known among both customers and the bookselling community. From these two representative publications of theirs, we can therefore begin to sketch out how a book might be constructed to appeal to a middle-class book purchaser during this period.

Upon initial publication, Lennox’s Henrietta was printed in duodecimo format

(12mo) using the Caslon typeface, just as most English printers used for the main body of a book during this period. It appeared in two volumes. Millar used “Small Pica” size type, which roughly equates to 11 pt font by current standards (Knopp). The book uses laid paper of good quality and moderate opacity, perhaps indicating Millar’s willingness to expend resources on this book with the expectation it would be profitable.85

221

Figure 3. Charlotte Lennox, Title page of Henrietta, first edition, 1758.

Millar also printed the second edition in 1761, this time with Lennox’s corrections and a dedication to the Duchess of Newcastle. Again in a two-volume set, the type and font size are the same except for the dedication, which is double-spaced and printed in the next largest size of text, highlighting its intended importance. The only

222 ornamentations in the text for either Millar edition are designs consisting of printer’s ornaments on the title pages (see fig. 3) and the final pages of text in both first volumes, and on the title pages of the second volumes. Images from both copies of the 1761 printing that I was able to examine had single gilt fillet framing on covers of seemingly speckled calfskin, potentially indicating ready-bound covers of moderate skill and aesthetic appeal: presentable for a library and general use, but without the additional expense of more complicated decorative elements (Bennett 51). Neither of the Millar editions of Henrietta had any engravings, as was typical for print editions of fiction at that time, since Lennox was insufficiently popular to justify a frontispiece. Millar was likely also keeping in mind the widespread negative reaction to Eliza Haywood’s frontispiece in the 1720s (Barchas 22).86 Given Millar’s established reputation and catalog, no frontispiece would have been necessary or recommended for Henrietta.

Coventry’s The History of Pompey the Little, on the other hand, was published by

Mary Cooper, a well-regarded bookseller but one whose catalog appealed to a different customer base. Cooper was the widow of Thomas Cooper, a bookseller who published a popular reading book for children called A Child’s New Play-thing in 1742. She continued publishing for children, and in 1744 brought out the earliest known book of nursery rhymes, Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book (Stevenson 188), which featured engravings throughout and was printed partially in red ink. Children’s literature made up only a small portion of her publications; Cooper regularly published sermons, medical books, what we now term “self-help” books, political pamphlets, and some fiction along with sensationalized accounts. Illustrated or special printing accounted for a higher percentage of the works she published than of Millar’s, though still not a substantial

223 percentage of her catalog as a whole. Regardless, she was experienced in commissioning appealing illustrations and using design elements to heighten the impact of a text.

Figure 4. Francis Coventry, First page of The History of Pompey the Little, first edition (1751).

The first edition of Coventry’s The History of Pompey the Little, for instance, took advantage of Cooper’s familiarity with the use of illustration and design in print.

224 The text is printed in duodecimo format (12mo) using the Caslon typeface in the

“English” and “Pica” sizes, equating to roughly a 14 pt font in modern font size for the dedication and 12 pt font for the body of the text (Knopp). She uses a larger font size than

Millar does for Henrietta, which stretches the length of the book to 282 pages. The first page of the text features a printers decoration taking up the top quarter of the page, in the style that often served as a unique identifier of printer and therefore bookseller (see fig.

4).87 This one in particular is composed of vine work surrounding a central Romanesque bust of a man. The main body text begins with an illustrated dropped capital as the first letter, a “V” with a background of vines. That alone is significantly more decoration than used in Henrietta, creating an inviting first page for Pompey, alongside with a larger, easier-to-read type size. The attention to the format also creates a highly dignified appearance for the text, ironically at odds with the nature of the subject.

Cooper’s embellishment of Coventry’s text does not stop with its decorative first page. When Cooper published Pompey, she also included an engraved frontispiece of the title character, Pompey the lapdog. Through the frontispiece, Cooper makes a number of statements about the novel’s status. As Janine Barchas notes, by the eighteenth century, frontispieces had become a “caste label,” not evident in either cheap publications from

“Grubstreet” booksellers or new writers with experimental works (22). Cooper was not a publisher that dealt extensively with expensive prints. Her use of a frontispiece is well within expectations for her position within the trade, but why use it on a first novel by an unknown author? Cooper was generally sparing in where she used illustrations. The answer may have to do partly with the authorship of the novel, and partly to do with the type of book Pompey turned out to be.

225 Francis Coventry was not a well-known author; he was a vicar at Edgware whose only previous published work was a poem titled Penshurst in 1750, which was printed for

R. Dodsley, but sold in Mary Cooper’s shop.88 He published The History of Pompey the

Little anonymously, perhaps because Pompey is a worldly social satire, not a religious tale or sermon, and thus may have been considered inappropriate for someone who had been appointed to a perpetual living by his uncle, the Earl of Coventry (Hudson 8).

Mary Cooper made the most of the opportunity provided by Coventry’s choice to publish anonymously and arranged to have Louis Peter Boitard, a well-known satirical designer, create the frontispiece in the style of an authorial illustration (Clayton). Boitard included an illustrated portrait frame and plaque bearing the “author’s” name (see fig. 5), with the portrait of the eponymous lapdog, “Pompey the Little.”89 The illustration plays with conventions, as instead of a bust or statue, Pompey is portrayed as a small white spotted lap dog sitting on a pillow, who stares out at the viewer.90 The pillow on which

Pompey sits extrudes from the frame of the portrait, the decorated corner tassel draping over the lower right of the oval and thus breaking the frame (and the fourth wall), suggesting that not everything in this book is as it first appears.

226

Figure 5. Louis Peter Boitard, Frontispiece for the first edition of The History of Pompey the Little (1751)

Commissioning a frontispiece for this novel defies conventional wisdom in both expense and investment in an unproven quantity. By doing so, Cooper quietly announced that this book was out of the ordinary; in flouting the conventions of the frontispiece by featuring a dog rather than a person and having the pillow of the image overlap the frame,

Cooper announces to the prospective reader that the book will likewise ignore reader

227 expectations. Through the illustration, Cooper encourages consumers to wonder what type of book they hold — children’s literature, non-fiction, satire — and investigate beyond the title page. She uses the advertising capacity of the frontispiece to challenge viewers and draw them into the novel with a bit of trompe l’oeil and a cute dog.91

In examining first editions of both Henrietta and Pompey, then, it is clear that

Millar and Cooper position themselves very differently toward both the books and their readers. Millar’s accessible but standard format and font size, combined with a lack of decoration, serve to distance Millar from the text. By relying on similarity across his products, Millar leaves any direct authorial statement to Lennox (even when anonymous) and instead takes a neutral position; he guarantees a level of literary quality to his customers without making any statements regarding content. Cooper, on the other hand, wrests a measure of authorial privilege away from Coventry by accentuating the fashionable nature of the book’s content through printer’s ornaments and the frontispiece.

She places the readers’ focus firmly on Pompey, specifically as a lap dog moving within upper-class society, and thus sets her readers’ expectations for the novel’s content.

Cooper sells the book through that frontispiece and her portrayal of its “hero” as a literary object, and in doing so interposes herself between author and reader in a remarkably modern way.

The Novelist’s Magazine: Harrison and Co.’s Part-Book Approach

The first editions of Henrietta and The History of Pompey the Little, both published in the 1750s, provide a reasonable baseline for how mainstream literature was

228 presented and sold in London from those two booksellers. After the Donaldson v. Beckett decision of 1774, however, many booksellers changed their approaches in search of better, more profitable arrangements that mitigated risk and did not rely on holding a copyright. When the House of Lords denied the booksellers’ appeal, effectively killing perpetual copyright as common law, popular content over twenty-eight years old was available for reprinting by anyone, not just the people who held shares in the original copyright (Raven 231). 92

Following John Bell’s example in the late 1770s with his Bell’s British Theater series, multiple publishers began reprinting and releasing popular literature in cheaper formats (Raven 243). Of particular interest is James Harrison, who made reprinting popular works his primary business model. Harrison published roughly 120 titles in the latter part of the eighteenth-century, including several weekly magazines and part-book periodicals. Among the first of these was The Novelist’s Magazine, which first saw print in November 1779, and which had weekly sales of 10,000 copies or more at its peak, with twenty-three volumes printed by the end of its run in 1788 (245).

Consumers could personalize purchased items to express their own personality and values, as seen in Robert Ferrars’ preoccupation with the details of his toothpick case in Sense and Sensibility. Harrison’s consistent choices in page layout and appearance likewise express the values he wished to emphasize in his product. Harrison’s advertisements for The Novelist’s Magazine speak in glowing terms of the product, describing it as a “Gentleman and Lady’s elegant and entertaining Miscellany. To consist entirely of the most approved Histories, Adventures, Anecdotes, Memoirs, Tales,

Romances, &c. Which have at any Time appeared in the English Language” (“A Pleasing

229 Publication”). He puts a premium on perceived respectability and material to attract a wide range of customers’ interests.

Beyond respectability, Harrison emphasizes value for the customer. He does not simply refer to his magazine as inexpensive, but rather as a considerable value for the money specifically because of the quality and beauty of the included illustrations, all for

6d. per purchase. Each issue of Novelist’s contained a portion of a reprinted novel combined with a commissioned illustration. In the advertisement, Harrison goes on to list the artist and engraver for the just-printed issue: in this instance “designed by Dodd, and engraved by Heath” (“A Pleasing Publication”), noting in other advertisement copy that these novels “are in general published without any Copper-Plates, though there is not perhaps a Subject which furnishes the ingenious Designer with a better Opportunity of displaying his Ability to produce an agreeable Picture” (“To the Public”). Back issues bound into volumes were available at booksellers as well, “with some beautiful

Impressions of the matchless Engravings with which they are Embellished, and which, on a moderate Computation, are lone worth five Times the Purchase Money” (“A Pleasing

Publication”), guaranteeing that his customers need never miss an offering.

At only sixpence per issue, most working-class individuals could afford to purchase it, while paying far more over time for that book than they might be willing or able to do all at once. His emphasis on the quality and expression of the included art highlights the magazine’s decorative aspects, adding potential use value through the illustrations rather than focusing solely on the cultural value provided by the reprinted text. Harrison’s advertisement copy from the first collected volume (and thus likely from the first issue as well) likewise emphasizes the value of his publication: “That the

230 Neatness of the Print, Paper, and Engravings, as well as the Quantity of delightful

Reading, will be well worth more than three Times the Purchase-money, must, the

Publishers flatter themselves, be readily allowed by all” (“To the Public”). His focus on paratextual elements as part of his brand encourages customers to focus on the additions booksellers might make to a text, rather than the text itself.

Harrison’s advertisements illuminate the business strategy he pursues with The

Novelist’s Magazine; using tested popular fiction, he divides each novel into portions and commissions one illustration per section from top artists and engravers, whose names he expects to be recognized. The text is inexpensive, as there is no copyright share to be paid or corrections to be made. The content can be copied from previous editions of the book

(Henrietta’s text comes from the 1761 second edition), and the end result will have a familiar appeal to even the most conservative consumers. Harrison’s adherence to this formula, including recognizable title pages and page layout, created a type of product branding (Raven 223). In this way, he ensured that his products would be recognized and sought after by his target customer demographic: lower-to-middle class British readers with a modicum of disposable income who had no library of their own to speak of, but wished they had, who could also put the illustrations to practical use, hanging them in their homes as art, thus capitalizing on the craze for fiction-inspired illustration that was sweeping the city at this historical moment.

In order to make money and build his brand (which would extend through numerous different periodicals during his years in business), James Harrison had to create value and place an authorial stamp on his republished works. In The Novelist’s Magazine, he did so through page layout, design, and his choice of illustrations. By comparing his

231 periodical treatments of both Henrietta and The History of Pompey the Little to their previous editions, we can determine how he altered and customized the experience of reading the text for consumers.

Henrietta

Henrietta appeared in the last volume of The Novelist’s Magazine, Volume

XXIII, published in 1787. For all Harrison’s advertised quality and “Neatness,” the quartos (8mo) were printed on thin paper using double columns and close-set type, allowing Harrison to economize on printing costs. Harrison used Caslon type in

“Brevier” size, which equates to roughly a modern 8 pt font. His choices for format and paper indicate efforts to economize on costs at the expense of ease of reading.

Henrietta in particular took up four individual issues (two per volume) and thus had four illustrations commissioned, which together set the tone for the Harrison edition.93 All four were designed by Edward Francis Burney, who was a favorite cousin to Fanny Burney and one of the foremost illustrators of the period (Simon). The illustrations were likewise all engraved by Anker Smith, one of the foremost and most prolific engravers of the time (Maxted 207). It is therefore clear that while Harrison skimped on his overall printing costs, he sought out recognizable craftsmen and artists who not only were familiar with print illustration, but whose work was admired. His artists and engravers were selling points and helped to establish his brand identity as giving value for money spent — particularly since the illustrations could be neatly removed and repurposed as art within middle-class homes, providing additional value for consumers unable to afford more expensive prints or original art.94

232 If context for the illustrations in Henrietta establishes them as commissioned and designed with intent to build Harrison’s brand as well as give value to the consumer, the content of the illustrations can likewise reveal Harrison’s authorial impact on the works he publishes. The first illustration in Henrietta portrays the title character, Henrietta

Courteney, fashionably dressed and standing in front of a large tree by the side of the road (see fig. 6). She is unaccompanied and alone in the woods, with a stagecoach in the distant background and two roguish men hiding in shadow behind her.

Figure 6. Edward Francis Burney, Illustration 1 for Henrietta, 1787.

233 This illustration combines two different scenes in the novel. First there is the initial description of Henrietta in the opening lines of the novel, in which we see her waiting by the road: “a young woman genteely dressed, with a small parcel tied up in a handkerchief, hastily bolted from the shelter of a large tree near the road” (Henrietta

[2008] 7). Henrietta narrates the second scene after her arrival in London, as she tells her entire life story to Miss Woodby:

“I sat down under the shade of a large tree, at some distance from the road … I had scarce enjoyed this comfortable shelter three minutes, when I perceived two ill looking fellows, as I thought them, making towards me with all speed they were able. I started up in inconceivable terror, looking round me to see if any help was near if they should assault me” (Henrietta [2008] 79).

Between the two scenes, Burney not only effectively illustrates the first quarter of the novel with one image, but also creates a heightened sense of drama and intrigue with the first illustration that might pique customer interest.

Burney sets up a pattern here of illustrating Henrietta as almost a negative space in the image, defined more by the darkness of her surroundings than the details of her person. She is innocent and unsullied compared to her environment, drawing the reader’s eye. The contrast between light and dark heightens the drama of the image and also works toward a second pattern, in which Henrietta’s antagonists are darkened, surrounding her in shadows and creating a feeling of unease. Burney’s choices work to heighten the impression of Henrietta as a damsel in distress, a characterization largely unfounded by Lennox’s text.

The second illustration shows Henrietta seated at a desk, supporting her head in her hand as she reads by candlelight, heedless of her surroundings (see fig. 7). Her reading absorbs her entire attention, possibly acting as a warning about the dangers of

234 novel reading for young women. This illustration shows the scene in which Lord B—,

Henrietta’s downstairs neighbor in Mrs. Eccles’s rooming house, hides in a closet and spies on her (Henrietta [2008] 94).

Figure 7. Edward Francis Burney, Illustration 2 for Henrietta, 1787.

Again, Burney puts Henrietta’s white figure against a darkened background, creating contrast. Opposite her on the left side of the image (the side closest to the gutter of the page) a well-dressed man appears from the shadows. Burney here makes his figure difficult to see except for the pale face and lace cuffs, indicative of his social status and

235 wealth, echoing the threat of the dark figures from the first image. The placement of the mirror and candle creates a vertical separation between the characters, specifically between light and dark, which again heightens the emotional resonance in the image.

The third illustration features Henrietta’s entry into domestic service (see fig. 8).

The scene from the novel highlights how Miss Cordwain assumes “an imperious air and an insolent accent” upon realizing Henrietta was not an honored guest, but there to interview for a position as her servant (Henrietta [2008] 137).

Figure 8. Edward Francis Burney, Illustration 3 for Henrietta, 1787.

236

Henrietta is standing on the right side of the image; her eyes are downcast, looking at the floor and indicating her status. On the left side of the image, we see Miss Cordwain and her friend seated in the shadows, having tea as they stare openly (and rudely) at

Henrietta. Burney uses the column facade of the doorframe and the chair leg to provide another vertical separation, creating a mirror effect between Henrietta and Miss

Cordwain. The similar appearances of the two women, primarily distinguished by attitude and accessories, represent differences in behavior as well as class and status, while their exaggerated postures create diagonal sight lines in the image that increase visual drama.

The fourth and final illustration of the Harrison edition depicts Henrietta, now dressed in traveling clothes with a much more fashionable hat, traveling to Paris as a friend and paid companion to Miss Belmont, who is inside ahead of her and only partially visible (see fig. 9). This scene introduces the most important characters for the last third of the book. It shows the first encounter between the Marquis (whom she eventually marries), his friend Charles (her long-lost brother), and herself, as she follows her friend into the inn, leaving the Marquis to declare “‘my fatal hour is come’” (Henrietta Team

2008] 204).

237

Figure 9. Edward Francis Burney, Illustration 4 for Henrietta, 1787.

Henrietta is on the left side of the image, framed in the doorway of a French inn as she half-glances back over her shoulder.95 Behind her, on the right side of the illustration, are the two men talking over the back of a saddled horse. The one in the foreground, the

Marquis, is leaning back against the horse as though swooning with his eyes cast up toward the heavens, while his companion, Charles, looks at him with concern. Henrietta’s gaze matches the Marquis’s, creating diagonal lines between the two figures and spotlighting their relationship. Burney additionally connects the two figures by using

238 white for the Marquis as well, signifying a matched pair. By thus crossing the vertical division in the illustration, the two figures create visual tension.

As a group, the illustrations manipulate the literary objects of the novel to heighten the impression of Henrietta as an imperiled heroine. In each image, she is divided from everyone else by a strong vertical element, heightening the impression of her as being alone in a dangerous world. Henrietta is continually under observation by someone with an acquisitive interest in her (with only the Marquis potentially meriting a similar interest from her). In two of these images, Henrietta is spied on unawares, casting her as a potential victim and creating a voyeuristic effect for the reader. Henrietta is demure and retiring, never meeting the gaze of anyone in the images, much less the viewer; she is continually half-turned away from the observers in the images, forcing people (including herself, when she observes others) to crane and look over shoulders and around doors to see the object of their gaze. Only the reader has an unobstructed view of

Henrietta, mirroring the reader’s status as a privileged observer of her story.

The illustrations accomplish this emotional resonance by taking minor scenes from the novel and presenting them as parts of a thematic whole. For example, the potential robbers appear once in the text and are dismissed as quickly, having taken no action against Henrietta. Lord B—’s intrusion ends with an apology, and she changes her residence the next day without further incident. Her initial meeting with Miss Cordwain is not representative of their relationship, nor is it more important to the story than when

Henrietta is accused of stealing her mistress’s bracelet. Even the first meeting between the Marquis and Henrietta is far from the most emotionally resonant scene between them in the novel. Taken together, however, Burney’s illustrations create a melodramatic

239 interpretation of the novel that encourages comparisons to Pamela upon first glance, adding tension to Lennox’s novel that the text alone does not convey.

The History of Pompey the Little

In contrast to Burney’s dramatic, romanticized images for Henrietta, Harrison took care to create a charming, humorous impression for Coventry’s The History of

Pompey the Little. Harrison only commissioned two illustrations for Pompey, which was a much shorter novel. He did not republish Cooper’s frontispiece but instead placed one of the new pictures directly before the title page, in effect replacing it. He hired Richard

Corbould to be the artist for both images, a well-known book illustrator who was valued for his skill and judgment. He regularly drew images for classic literature, children’s literature, and non-fiction (Cust). The engraver for the images was William Walker, known for neatness and attention to detail who regularly worked on both portraits and historical views (Worms). In both of these cases, there is already a sharp distinction between the artists Harrison hired and the known satirical artist Boitard, who designed the original frontispiece for Cooper’s Pompey. At the same time, Corbould was likely familiar with the Boitard image, as he drew Pompey as a King Charles Spaniel rather than as a Bolognese lap dog as described in the text.

The first illustration depicts Pompey as a young dog being held by a periwigged man in a coach (see fig. 10). Corbould places Pompey near the center of the image, ensuring he gets the viewer’s immediate attention. He is the most clearly detailed figure, drawing the viewer’s eye back to him and away from the people in the image.

240

Figure 10. Richard Corbould, Illustration 1 for The History of Pompey the Little, 1781.

The scene depicted occurs in the second chapter of the novel, as Pompey leaves his first home in the arms of Hillario, the English suitor of a Bolognese courtesan (and Pompey’s former owner). “From whence looking up with a melancholy Shrug to her Window, and shewing the little Favorite to his forsaken Mistress,” Hillario is interrupted by the coachman asking where he wants to go (History of Pompey the Little [2008] 46).

Corbould keeps the viewer focused on the dog, just as Coventry does within the text. In doing so, both Corbould and Coventry create a contrast with Hillario and the courtesan;

241 Pompey is ever present and unique, while the characters are fickle, faithless, and ultimately interchangeable — a world turned upside down.

The second illustration depicts a scene from Chapter VIII, in Book 2. Pompey is in the arms of a slender, bewigged man, Mr. Rhymer the writer, who stands behind a table facing toward the reader (see fig. 11). Across from Rhymer stands an indignant woman in ragged clothes facing away from the viewer. In the scene, Mr. Rhymer is introducing Pompey to his wife. She is angry that he has brought a dog into the house to feed instead of money or food for his family. The two figures argue, with the poet claiming that the dog is an “emblem of fidelity,” while his wife snaps back, “You have ruined your Family by your senseless Whims and Projects” (History of Pompey the Little

[2008] 183), contrasting the solid wisdom and virtue of the dog with Rhymer’s behavior as a husband and father.

242

Figure 11. Richard Corbould, Illustration 2 of The History of Pompey the Little, 1781.

Pompey is again in the center of the illustration, a spot of white in a darkened, dingy setting. The image’s strong diagonal lines — the black shadow in the background from top left to bottom right, and the upward right slant of shadow across the bottom third of the image — work to draw the eye back toward the center of the image despite the detailed setting. Another strong diagonal from the woman’s outstretched arm runs parallel to and mirrors Pompey’s body in the image, creating visual tension while again

243 redirecting the viewer back to the dog.

The two images emphasize that while Pompey’s position within this novel (and the illustrations) is central, his place in the human world is marginal. Corbould moves away from the satirical presentation in the Cooper edition, instead evoking a sympathetic, almost sentimental impression of the novel and its characters. Pompey is shown as moving from riches to rags, evoking pity from readers at the change in his circumstance and the sufferings of his human owners — a stance largely out of keeping with the tone of Coventry’s writing, but easy to achieve with the presence of a cute dog. Corbould also visually references previous travel narratives through his inclusion of literary objects from the text: the coach in the first image and the very different city location in the other.

In recalling other sentimental travel narratives, such as Sterne’s Sentimental Journey

Through France and Italy, Corbould creates a visual appeal to a more popular work, potentially creating additional sales through that allusion.

With these two sets of illustrations, Harrison stages an intervention between the reader and the text by commissioning these specific works from these specific artists. The images are thematically consistent with each other; the designers he chose are not only well known, but also reputed for the types of work he wants to emphasize. Each set of illustrations hearkens to a particular recent and more popular novel (Pamela and

Sentimental Journey, respectively), and casts scenes from the novel in a more sensationalized or emotional manner. It is likely that Harrison is attempting to convince potential buyers who might skim the work and purchase it based on the images. In either case, the argument that Harrison was intentionally exerting a form of authorial privilege is strong. His position as a bookseller lets him enlist the material forms of the book along

244 with the text of the novel to create a new interpretation in line with his business model.

By focusing on the quality of the presentation and links between lesser-known novels and more recent popular works, Harrison reaffirms his brand as guaranteeing quality and value, rather than seeking to exert a claim of ownership over the works he published.

Cooke’s Editions: Building a Brand

While John Harrison was building his catalog and creating The Novelist’s

Magazine among others, John Cooke of Paternoster Row was establishing a trade based heavily on compilations and omnibus titles of joke books, religious works, and how-to manuals, all sold in parts with engravings — essentially a non-fiction version of the model Harrison and others used (Bonnell). After he retired, his son Charles Cooke took over the business. In doing so, he changed to a model pioneered by bookseller John Bell: sets of “classics” sold in series, ready-bound with matching bookseller-labeled bindings, for sixpence each — all with copper plate illustrations. Although he had more expensive volumes available with hand-painted engravings and superior materials, his sixpence books were his primary trade (Bonnell).

Cooke’s Editions were published as duodecimo format (12mo). They used cheaper (but newer) wove paper rather than laid.96 Each volume had multiple printings over time, but as Cooke did not include the year on the title page, it is difficult to say when any specific book was printed.97 The type is close-set, maximizing the amount of text on a given page. The margins are 1/2” wide on the outer edge and 1/2” top and bottom, while the text itself is again in Caslon, using “Brevier” size type, roughly

245 equivalent to modern 8 pt font.

Cooke’s customers, consisting of those who desired a matching library but were unable to afford expensive bindings or printed books, found their delight in Cooke’s

Editions. As Leigh Hunt reflected in his autobiography, “I doted on their size; I doted on their type, on their ornaments, on their wrappers, containing lists of other poets, and on the engravings from Kirk. I bought them over and over again, and used to get up select sets, which disappeared like buttered crumpets; for I could resist neither giving them away, nor possessing them” (Hunt, Autobiography 77). Cooke’s Editions were published while Hunt was in school at Christ’s Hospital as a boy; he was able to purchase them with pocket money, an example of the new demographic of consumer to which Cooke appealed.98 The books were inexpensive, moderately attractive, and contained a number of original illustrations per volume; it is not surprising that Charles Cooke managed to enlarge his fortune with these efforts.

Cooke’s Editions represents an effort to push the profession of bookseller toward something closer to our current understanding of publisher. While these reprinted works of fiction could be obtained from any number of booksellers, Cooke was the leading source for matching books that could be acquired over time as a set. As Hunt notes,

Cooke’s customers could collect his wares, choosing the volumes they preferred to customize their library or purchasing the entire set a bit at a time. They could afford to trade or give away the books to acquaintances and purchase more to replace them, even on small incomes. Because Cooke established sets for multiple genres, customers could mix and match books at will and still have a sense of completion and continuity to their assembled purchases.99

246 As Charles Knight observes, Bell, Harrison, and Cooke all exploited a largely untapped market, creating an unusual attachment to not just the books, but also the publishers themselves through “nicely-printed small volumes, with embellishments by first-rate artists.” Knight himself was an avid supporter of Cooke’s publications: “What wealth of fancy; what fertility of humor; what truth of characterization, do these cheap embellishments present to me!” (Knight 249). Along with these other offerings, Cooke’s

Editions effectively functioned as a class leveler, by which expensive illustrated volumes previously available only by subscription were brought within the reach of the rising middle class, erasing the cultural link between literacy, wealth, and aristocracy.

Henrietta

Cooke’s edition of Henrietta contains four illustrations, all designed by Richard

Corbauld, whose work we previously examined in the Harrison edition of Pompey the

Little. The engraver was Richard Woodman; he specialized in stipple engraving but was otherwise largely unremarked (Smith).100 While the names of the engravers such as

Woodman were recorded, the lack of historical information about them as opposed to other contemporaries in their field suggests they were not at the top of their trade, and that their names were not a selling point to the reader. Corbauld, on the other hand, was widely recognized, thus his name added value to the book.

All four images are stipple engraved, making for a striking difference from the line-engraved Harrison illustrations.101 For example, Corbauld draws Henrietta with dark hair throughout the series; the greater tonal range of the engravings makes her hair stand out, particularly in contrast with her white gowns. In addition, while the Harrison pictures

247 all use similar “frames” around the images, topped with a floral garland and a radiant feminine mask, Cooke’s images use far more fanciful frames that include content

(specifically groupings of objects) coded to the scene being depicted. Through the themed object collections at the top of the frames, Cooke highlights both the humor of

Lennox’s text and its satirical tone for the reader, establishing his books as a friendly, authoritative interpreter of British fiction. The engravings are also far more tied to the text in Cooke’s Editions, in that each image features the book, chapter, and page number of the scene pictured. The engravings direct the reader back to the text to check their veracity for themselves, intervening in and directing the reading process. The attention to the relationship between illustration and text conveys a sense of authority to the book as a whole, indicating that the images are faithful and characteristic of important moments in the plot.

The first image acts as a frontispiece, appearing opposite the title page (see fig.

12). It depicts a scene from the latter half of the book and is captioned “Henrietta’s surprize at Lady Autumn’s familiarity upon entering her service” (Henrietta [1798] [1]).

The frame above depicts a monkey gazing vainly into a hand mirror in a pose similar to

Lady Autumn’s depicted below. The pedestal at the bottom of the illustration displays a basket full of bottles clearly intended to be cosmetics and a folded hand fan, all among garlands of roses.

248

Figure 12. Richard Corbould, Illustration 1 for Henrietta, 1798.

The detail shows Henrietta’s discomfort at the situation, while carefully delineating the short sleeves, ruffles, hair feather, and unattractive features of Lady Autumn. The two figures are uncomfortably close to one another, with Lady Autumn and her chair blocking part of Henrietta’s body and throwing a shadow over her, pushing her into the background. The use of the image as frontispiece ties the series of images closely into the text and establishes its authority within the text (visually reinforced by the monument- styled image framing).

249 The second image presents the courtship of Henrietta’s parents (see fig. 13). In particular, it shows the moment when Mr. Courteney asks Miss Carlton for her hand in marriage. Mr. Courteney’s family renounces the lovers upon hearing of their engagement, leaving them all penniless, and setting the stage for Henrietta’s current difficulties.

Henrietta’s mother bears a strong resemblance to her, making the juxtaposition between this and the first image striking in terms of relative social position and wealth between mother and daughter.

Figure 13. Richard Corbould, Illustration 2 for Henrietta, 1798.

250 Miss Carlton is kneeling on the floor next to her mother’s sickbed, holding the old woman’s hand as she looks back over her shoulder to Mr. Courteney. A maid stands behind him, looking on. A vertical space separates Courteney from the two Carlton women, but he is reaching across it, looking at Mrs. Carlton as he does so. He is fashionably dressed while all the women’s dresses are plain, demonstrating the difference in their financial circumstances. The frame around the image is reminiscent of a gravestone, with an anchor, an hourglass, a scythe, and a crown at the top, representing

Mrs. Carlton’s life as the widow of a naval officer, her impending death, and her eternal reward.

The third image features Henrietta sitting at a writing desk and reading a book, as

Lord B—— spies on her from inside her closet (see fig. 14). This is the only image of the three that is also illustrated by Burney for the Harrison text. Henrietta’s placement in the image is similar to the Burney version of this image, but the rest of the image is significantly different.

The Burney version depicts an elegant vanity doubling as a reading table; in that earlier illustration Henrietta holds the book at a distance, her eyes all but closed and barely holding up her head. Her room is dark except for a candle placed in front of the mirror. The presence of Burney’s Lord B—, pale and ghostly in the dim light, seems particularly jarring when compared to the later Corbauld engraving.

251

Figure 14. Richard Corbould, Illustration 3 for Henrietta, 1798.

In Corbauld’s version, Henrietta seems pleasantly engrossed in her book. Lord B— is across the room with her writing desk solidly between them, his pleasant face dimly lit as he naturally leans into the room. In the background, however, we can see Henrietta’s bed, a detail not present in Burney’s design, suggesting Lord B—’s prurient intentions. While

Burney heightens the sense of a sudden threat in his image, Corbauld’s image thoughtfully shows us both the gentle absurdity of the situation and the potential threat to

252 Henrietta’s reputation. As with the other Corbauld images, the frame provides a clue for the viewer as to the scene’s context. In this instance, we have a Roman column with a bundle of rods at the bottom, symbolizing strength, and rows of oak leaves for steadfastness and laurel leaves for victory at the top. Corbauld is showing Henrietta’s triumph, not her danger, thus turning away from the eroticized voyeurism of the reader perspective in the Harrison edition. Corbauld’s Henrietta is an example of womanly virtue and strength, not weakness.

The fourth image features Henrietta spurning Lord B—— as he attempts to tell her he is in love with her (see fig. 15). Corbould clearly shows us Lord B——’s surprise at her reaction, as she turns away, pulling her hand from his. She effectively pushes him behind her, her arm forming a diagonal line across his body and cutting him off.

253

Figure 15. Richard Corbould, Illustration 4 for Henrietta, 1798.

The frame consists of a fallen curtain swagged across the bottom of the image, while the top features a remorseful Cupid tossing away his bow and arrows and holding up an offering, while bags of coins lay discarded to his right. Again, Henrietta resists the lure of wealth and improper advances, teaching even Love a lesson in virtue.

The final illustration is that of Henrietta’s reunion with her brother, in which he shows her the miniature portrait of his mother that he carries with him (see fig. 16). In

254 this image, Corbauld again focuses on family. When Henrietta’s brother is restored to her, her troubles end and she is no longer alone in the world. Her long struggle to find her family has ended and she is safe.

Figure 16. Richard Corbould, Illustration 5 for Henrietta, 1798.

Both brother and sister are happy in this image; if the viewer needs context, the top of the frame shows a bow with a loosened string, a quiver with a broken arrow on top, a miniature portrait, a bird (possibly a dove) sitting next to that, and the smoke from an extinguished torch billowing behind it all. Strife has ended and peace has come: it is a

255 fitting resolution for the series of engravings.

Taken as a series, the images focus on Henrietta’s relationships with her family and her own self-reliance, leaving out her romance with her brother’s friend, the Marquis.

Henrietta is not a foolish damsel in distress, although she does act without thinking and requires some assistance over the course of the story. She is always active and engaged, however, in the choices she feels are right given her beliefs and her cultural role.

Corbauld’s engravings present Henrietta as a heroine rather than a near-victim, as she is often portrayed in the Burney illustrations. These literary objects boldly support the original narrative, even requiring familiarity with the text to fully understand the scene portrayed, rather than attempting to change the emotional resonance of the narrative. The

Corbauld images for Henrietta establish the Cooke brand as not only a reliable narrator of the existing text, but also as a moral, respectable source for reprinted literature.

The History of Pompey the Little

As with Harrison’s printing, the Cooke’s Edition version of The History of

Pompey the Little published in 1795 contains only two illustrations. It likewise does not use the Cooper frontispiece, but it does provide the dedication to Henry Fielding, albeit in even smaller type. In this book, the images are also by Richard Corbauld, making this the second time he designed images for this novel (and also likely accounting for Pompey’s similar appearance). J. Smurters and Charles Warren engraved the images, and the latter regularly worked for Cooke and was well known among booksellers for his work

(Hunnisett).102 This book uses line engravings instead of stipple work.

The first illustration of the book is captioned “Pompey the Little. The miserable

256 treatment of Pompey by the children of Captain Vincent” (History of Pompey the Little

[1795]). Just as with Henrietta, the chapter and page number direct the reader to the scene in the text, and the top of the page reads “Cooke’s Pocket Edition of Select Novels”

(see fig. 17).

Figure 17. Richard Corbould, Illustration 1 for The History of Pompey the Little, 1795.

The picture portrays Pompey surrounded by three children, two girls and a boy. One girl is holding a book for Pompey, one girl is holding a doll, and the boy is holding Pompey up in a begging position in front of the book. Scattered about the room we see a stool

257 upside down next to a small whip, a doll on the floor, a bird outside its cage, and a cat about to pounce on another animal (possibly also a cat), which is on its back with four legs straight up in the air. The frame for the image is likewise customized, just as it was in the Cooke’s version of Henrietta: the top of the frame portrays a child’s face surrounded by ivy, while the bottom of the image depicts a number of scattered toys, including a doll, toy baby basket, drum, pull-horse, and the pennant on which the caption is written, with leaves and weeds grown up among them. These objects suggest both the fickle natures of children and Pompey’s status as a toy soon discarded and forgotten.103

The second illustration features an older man and woman sharing a mirror at a dressing table, both only half groomed for the day; the man has shaving cream still on his face, and the woman’s chest is largely bare (see fig. 18). Their daughter, a young woman fully dressed, holds Pompey in her arms, showing him to her otherwise preoccupied parents. The caption for the image is “Pompey presented to the notice of Sir Thomas and

Lady Frippery” (History of Pompey the Little [1795]).

258

Figure 18. Richard Corbould, Illustration 2 for The History of Pompey the Little, 1795.

Two long feather plumes top the frame and overlap the top heading text of “Cooke’s

Pocket Editions of Select Novels.” It suggests ostentatious decoration that is out of place and lacking taste or refinement, referencing the social aspirations of Lady Frippery, Sir

Thomas’s wife. The lower portion of the frame shows the sash and medallions of Sir

Thomas’s knighthood draped carelessly across the box holding the caption, reinforcing his slovenly nature and his unworthiness of his title.

The two images together return to a more satirical view of the novel, placing the

259 focus on Pompey’s encounters with the wild children of Captain Vincent and on Sir

Thomas Frippery and his wife and daughter, none of whom have any sense of responsibility or care for themselves or others. Coventry’s focus on the fickleness of human nature is highlighted through the choice of scenes, neither of which were illustrated in the original printing or the Harrison editions. The addition of material in the frame to provide context clarifies the images’ relation to the text, guiding the reader to the intended impression and redirecting to the text for more information.

While the images Cooke commissioned corroborate the advertised “first-rate” description, his engravers were not chosen with the same care that Harrison used. This demonstrates that Cooke’s goal is less about creating art-level prints and more about creating illustrations that function as an integral part of the text. Through the inclusion of art, Cooke attempts to create authoritative versions of these reprinted novels. His intervention between the novel and the reader is intended to facilitate the reader’s understanding of the original author’s work and thus claim, if not an authorial position, an authoritatively critical position. Even the inclusion of “vide” (meaning “refer to” in

Latin) before the book, chapter, and page locations of the scenes demonstrates an educated mastery of each work; Cooke’s Edition editions thus presents themselves as authoritative versions of the novels presented. Cooke does not reinterpret the text, but rather establishes a paratext and visual reference indivisible from the text as written and supportive of the original author’s narrative. In doing so, Cooke’s brand as a literary standard was strengthened and became recognizable on its own merits.

260 Conclusion

From 1750 to 1800, the role of illustration in British print culture underwent a significant shift in both frequency of use and associated value. In the mid-eighteenth century, adding engravings to a book was expensive in money spent and the time and complication that the process added to publication. Illustrations were therefore restricted to very expensive (often subscription model) books or very cheap pirated copies dashed off in hopes of luring potential buyers. With the loss of perpetual copyright in the 1770s, however, the free availability of older, popular works that had left the protection of copyright spurred a new effort on the part of some publishers to capitalize on proven popular works by republishing them. Booksellers such as Bell, Harrison, and Cooke took up reprinting whole texts, part-issues, and serialized versions as their primary business model. In doing so, they tapped into a largely underserved market: the literate but poorer section of the middle classes who desired to own their own books but did not have the wealth to regularly purchase books at traditional prices. Without the cost of copyright shares, editing, or revisions to deal with, these publishers sought methods of adding value to their versions of these texts to distinguish them in the eyes of potential buyers, including making cheaper ready-bound volumes and commissioning illustrations to be included with the texts.

John Harrison’s work, as examined in his part-book periodical The Novelist’s

Magazine, took previously published novels with expired copyright and republished them as part-issues, each with its own illustration. The art was commissioned from artists and engravers with name recognition so that Harrison’s advertisements capitalized on their

261 fame to build his brand. The illustrations were a central draw, along with the price and the unspoken potential reuse of the illustrations as decorative prints, given the larger page size of his periodicals. Cooke’s work, on the other hand, focused on publishing out-of- copyright British novels as a curated ready-bound series at low prices. Cooke also commissioned recognizable artists to design the illustrations, but he promoted the series as a whole rather than artists he commissioned, looking to promote his overall line of books rather than any individual title, image, or artist.

Both Harrison and Cooke used illustrations in ways that built and promoted a specialized brand. Harrison commissioned illustrations that created allusions to recent prominent novels. His images not only persuade buyers to pick up the rest of the issues for that novel, but it also acts as a promise for future readers regarding the type of novel they are reading part of, even if the implied relationship between the novels is barely accurate.104 Cooke, on the other hand, used his illustrations to create an authoritative presence for his publications, making them seem authoritative and recommending their books above others. James Raven suggests that booksellers were practicing product branding with great proficiency (223); he mentions title page and topographic styles, even bindings in a house style, but not the role illustrations played. Cooke and Harrison clearly both put thought, time, and money into their choices, however, creating an end effect that appealed to the booksellers’ chosen demographics and supported their larger brands.

In each of these cases, the booksellers re-interpreted literary objects within the text through illustrations, which created an intercession between readers and the original authors. The objects carried meanings (in this case, brand-specific context and

262 interpretations) that the text alone did not provide as it was first published. Whether or not the illustrations were essential to the text as initially written, they were integral to the

Harrison and Cooke editions respectively. The Harrison illustrations assume a shared understanding of novels and “popular culture,” so that their visual references to

Richardson’s Pamela and Sterne’s Sentimental Journey would be understood, conferring a brief visual synopsis of the type of events a reader could expect to find in the larger work. The Cooke illustrations make use of shared references to imply motivations, backgrounds, and personalities of the characters portrayed, but they function inclusively through the use of narrative captions and visual references to provide context for unfamiliar readers. If the image alone is insufficient to convey meaning, the frames can offer sufficient interpretive guidance along with the book and page reference for readers to judge for themselves.

The ways in which Cooke’s images assist interpretation is crucial when looked at in light of Cooke’s chosen demographic: a portion of the community that was largely considered outside the legitimate reading public prior to the 1780s in both wealth and shared cultural experience. To drive his brand, Cooke commissioned illustrations that function as interpretive assistants to a social class and culture about which his readers may have been largely unfamiliar. They demonstrate a tacit understanding of not only the role of objects in transferring information as a shorthand within a novel’s text, but also the necessity of that understanding in order for a reader to fully engage with a text.

Cooke’s great success can arguably be traced back to how images convey an understanding of non-textual information to those outside the initially intended readers, potentially more so than the affordable price point of his books. By making literacy

263 accessible in both purchase and understanding, Cooke helped increase the readership for fiction beyond its authors’ initial expectations.

Harrison and Cooke understood the importance of illustrations to their publishing goals; both made use of art to promote their brands and define the works they published as superior. In their efforts, they demonstrate a tacit acknowledgement of the importance of literary objects as a means of conveying information not only for authors, but also for subsequent publishers (and even merchants of other types of goods) to reach readers that the original author could not have foreseen. Illustration of literary objects served as a customizable avenue of engagement for readers, booksellers, and admirers (in the case of artist Joseph Highmore and his Pamela-inspired paintings, for example), allowing them to insinuate their own interpretations of a work and, in doing so, appropriate some portion of authorial privilege.

In using literary objects to create their brands and promote sales, both Harrison and Cooke demonstrated an advanced understanding of cultural and textual literacy. They repackaged text in easily accessible forms with appealing benefits: Harrison’s art prints could be repurposed by the consumer while building Harrison’s own entertainment brand, and Cooke’s re-envisioning of an affordable collection of British literature carried book ownership into the middle and lower classes, helping to cement Britain’s cultural sense of itself as essentially literary. Both booksellers used literary objects to create points of access, opening doors for themselves and their targeted customers through extant popular literature. They turned texts into specific collectable real-world objects by modifying those texts through the addition of literary objects, taking what had previously been a marker of wealth and social privilege — ownership of printed literary texts and a

264 resultant broad knowledge of literature — and turning novel ownership into a signifier of

British identity and shared culture.

Thanks to Harrison, Cooke, and their late-century competitors, we can observe a clear chain of social and cultural mediation and modification through literary objects.

They reprinted previously published works with the intent to make alterations that subtly assert, if not ownership of an original text, then stewardship of it through their roles as booksellers and proto-publishers. Through their efforts, written works moved from a close public association with the author and original publisher to a movable idea, embodied in any one of a number of customized editions, each offering some form of added value in the form of illustration, printers ornaments, type setting, paper type, binding, or price. The physical aspects of books become as important as the text itself for even (or perhaps especially for) low-status consumers.

Literary objects in the form of object references and allusions took their place alongside physical aspects of print in growing importance and effect on consumers. They gave a wide variety of readers a shared understanding of an imagined world, assisting to lay the foundation for a more fully integrated consumer presence in British society and culture. Eventually, the nature of literary gatekeeping changed as a result, from monitoring who could participate in print ownership, to what authors should be included in a collection of national British literature, based on publisher and consumer evaluation.

These interventions allow us a glimpse into how literary objects can mediate and interrupt the eighteenth-century experience of literacy, channeling it into a much larger shift in the cultural landscape.

265 Chapter Five

Conclusion

Throughout this project, I have focused on the ways in which authors used literary objects to convey unwritten information about British society and culture during the eighteenth century. The embedded meanings and associations that accrued around objects during the rise of consumer culture, as well as the rise of the middle classes, meant that object references within a narrative became more than just plot devices. The references conveyed a level of inferred meaning about characters that interacted with the literary objects that would be difficult to state directly. These literary objects held the key to a vast repository of social and cultural meaning that could be accessed by readers who understood the setting and cultural backgrounds in a given piece of fiction and ignored by those who did not, with very little of the narrative lost in the process. Authors were able to create a layered narrative that deepened when read carefully with knowledge of the setting, creating new depth in British literary works.

Stories with layers of meaning were known before the advent of more realistic fiction and widespread usage of literary objects. The genre of secret histories, with their classical allusions and “keys” to decipher the alleged truth behind the tales, were popular from the Restoration through the 1720s, at which time they began to gradually merge with novels. Secret histories were different, however, in that readers could rarely bring their own life experience to bear in order to decode the authors’ meanings. The use of familiar literary objects meant that the reader’s own experience and knowledge acted as the key to the text. The resultant elevation of the reader in the interpretive process

266 revealed social and cultural boundaries and points of potential access, creating a more egalitarian form of literacy that supported the growth of the reading public and vice versa.

In addition, the ability of literary objects to carry information regarding society and culture gave authors the opportunity to engage in difficult discussions about British society and culture without direct confrontation. Given the highly politicized nature of eighteenth-century British culture, the ability to pose questions and concerns about controversial topics without immediately drawing negative attention was important. One of the most effective and broadest means of considering significant cultural and social change was therefore Britain’s literature, using literary objects as proxies and substitutes for concepts and power hierarchies that could not easily be otherwise addressed and weighed against the status quo.

The role of objects in creating the British perception of a person as an individual apart from class or culture is evident from early in the eighteenth century, as we see in

Robinson Crusoe. Defoe’s use of literary objects to explore personal boundaries of identity and spirituality recognizes a new significance to the relationship between human and nonhuman in British culture. Henry Mackenzie’s work The Man of Feeling later in the century goes further and examines literary objects as an economic identifier that indicates not only identity, but legal and cultural personhood as well. His efforts to raise awareness of the cost of that economic signification on people, families, and communities garnered mixed results, but the truth of his analogy was largely accepted without comment. At the end of the long eighteenth century, Austen’s Sense and Sensibility showed how the relationship between people and objects had advanced, revealing how

267 society now categorized individuals according to not only their possessions, but how those possessions were used culturally. All three of these works use literary objects to reveal how social and cultural boundaries (or “walls”) were increasingly constructed out of object associations, first in terms of personally imbued significance and later out of the objects’ roles and meanings in the larger cultural landscape. By calling out these boundaries through easily visualized references, authors were able to lead even less sophisticated readers through complicated theoretical ideas within fiction and thus increase social and cultural literacies as well. By drawing on the largely shared “memory storehouse,” as Cynthia Wall terms it, authors could reliably reach their primary contemporary readers.105

As readers improved their understanding, authors at the same time were able to reveal how individuals could circumvent or subvert those embodied boundaries. Defoe uses literary objects in Roxana to show how permeable class and cultural boundaries can really be; while objects can carry strong significance for their owners, in the end they are moveable property, unable to affect internal personal change on the people associated with them. Goldsmith's play She Stoops to Conquer goes a step further with its literary objects (and associated stage costumes) to elaborate on how objects in fact stand in for their owners from a cultural perspective, obfuscating individual identity. Haywood's The

History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless turns not just to objects, but to the cultural and social spaces where object acquisition takes place. Haywood draws attention to the difficulties society has distinguishing between people and commodities within sites of economic exchange, such as shops, creating a dangerous, liminal space for individuals whose personhood may be easily compromised. The three novels together demonstrate an

268 increasing overlap between human and nonhuman in British society and culture. The new hybrid entities allow individuals to slip across signified boundaries, but also put individuals at risk of commodification as well, as fiction of the period continually reminds us.

Individuals are not the only eighteenth-cultural hybrids revealed through fiction.

The role of text takes on new precedence as authors use textual literary objects to explore how these works stand in for social and cultural institutions, even as characters seek to capture and exert the authority of these institutions through textual interpretation. The

Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox explores textual literary objects as the embodiment of a misunderstood cultural and familial authority in Arabella's beloved “histories.” The texts enable Arabella to create an alternate form of authority that challenges accepted social reality, ultimately endangering her and putting her personhood in question. John

Gay's The Beggar's Opera posits that while people are willing to recognize social and cultural authority in printed materials, only their belief in that authority provides meaning; if characters misread or misinterpret textual literary objects, that misapprehension reveals the inherent emptiness of the entire exchange. In A Sentimental

Journey through France and Italy, Laurence Sterne magnifies the complexity of the issue by staging a competition between personal, social, and cultural textual literary objects to discover which one most accurately represents Yorick. Through ongoing conversation,

Yorick’s textual representations explore the social and cultural hybridity of identity and what those various hybrids indicate about the human condition, including the potential cost to human connections when objects mediate personal interactions. Among these texts, the role of the printed object is presented as inherently authoritative even if that

269 authority is unearned or even nonexistent, due to its persistent physical state across location and time, ease of reproducibility, and consistent presentation of data to multiple users.106

The final case study applies my arguments to historical publications, in which illustrations function as an intercession between the reader and the text. Booksellers commissioned illustrations that took advantage of the meaning (and even authority) inherent in those literary objects and the ways access to meaning can be manipulated through object representation. The illustrated reprints of Lennox's Henrietta and

Coventry's The History of Pompey the Little illuminate how British booksellers in the late eighteenth century used paratext to exploit literary objects intended to help readers visualize story content as an effective publishing strategy aimed at increasing sales, creating a new form of literary gatekeeping for authors in the process.

Altogether, the project suggests that within eighteenth-century British society, authors, readers, and booksellers understood and depended on a complex relationship with literary objects, reflecting the growing importance of physical objects in an increasingly consumer-based culture. The conceptual boundary between an object and a person associated with that object diminished over the course of the 1800s. The result was a social and cultural expectation of object association in order to be fully “seen” and accepted. Characters without associated objects effectively lacked sufficient descriptive signifiers to indicate position and status to readers. Authors were therefore encouraged over time to include human-object associations in their fiction, mirroring the way status was judged in the real world. The resulting requirement for human-object associations reshaped British fiction, which then changed further as small, close-knit communities

270 became larger and subject to economic pressures. Human relationships, particularly family lines of descent and marriages, were no longer sufficient to indicate someone’s identity. Understanding a person’s place in society and culture required signifiers with an associated economic value. Individualism became more visible and prized in importance as the meaning invested in communal identifiers faded, replaced in part by object distinction and ownership as a means of personal expression and cultural signification.

The use of literary objects in eighteenth-century British fiction, then, mirrors the changes in British culture and society in regards to the rise of consumerism during the period and the cultural and personal anxiety at potential erasure that accompanied it.

271 Notes

1 The 1687 publication of Newton’s Philosophae Naturalis Principia Mathematica contributed to this shift as well. Newton’s scientific observations on the effect bodies have on one another, both living and nonliving, helped to create a discursive space in British culture for the idea of objects as invested in meaning and relevance. 2 As Wolfram Schmidgen observes, eighteenth-century Britain does not firmly differentiate persons and things in its cultural imagination, resulting in permeable boundaries between the two concepts that only later become firmly established (1). 3 Personhood is the contemporary term for this concept, but in the eighteenth- century we see a similar thought expressed through the word “personality,” which was defined during the period as “The quality, character, or fact of being a person, as distinct from an animal, thing, or abstraction; the quality which makes a being human” (“personality, n. and adj.”). Here we have a clear distinction between human and object, but also between human and slave (as a form of property). The status of personhood is not simply binary, but can be granted in part or whole through laws and social recognition.

4 Of course, Swift’s impartiality is by no means determined, as seen in Lady Mary Montegu’s “The Reasons That Induced Dr. Swift to Write a Poem Called the Lady’s Dressing Room” (Montegu 2593). 5 This style of using lists of objects forms a link to the lists in Robinson Crusoe, which Schmidgen argues removes any sense of physicality from the objects thus ordered (108). In Swift, however, and I’ll argue in Defoe as well, the listing is in fact reinforcing not only a physicality to the objects in the list but layering an additional body connection to, in this case, the person who uses them. 6 Swift’s identification of the multi-object / human hybrid that is Celia’s social persona is similar to Bruno Latour’s discussion of modernism. Latour sees modernism as a social constitution that completely separates nature and society by ignoring the ways they work together to create our knowledge of the world. Latour’s argument is that by acknowledging the hybrid nature of our world, we realize that there is no separation. Only by doing so can we focus on the existence of hybrids and take them seriously (We Have Never Been Modern 46). 7 Tita Chico in Designing Women: The Dressing Room in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Culture details how British dressing room culture embodied female privacy far more than in France, particularly for young unmarried women who might invite female friends of a similar status and age into a dressing room, but would be dissuaded from inviting male guests. To do otherwise would be to eroticize the space, as Swift does through Strephon’s eyes, and invite comparisons with an actress’s tiring-room. Strephon’s intrusion is therefore illicit and serves to sexualize and objectify Celia.

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8 Swift’s adoption of Petrarchan mode of idealization further links Celia’s belongings with that of her ungoddesslike body, subverting the Petrarchan ideal though a body made up not of idealized parts but gross material objects and effluvia, as Wendy Weise points out (710). 9 Many of the products were, of course, facilitated by eighteenth-century Britain’s participation in the slave trade, particularly in the case of Brazilian sugar plantations, West Indian spices, and tobacco from North America, artificially lowering the price of these goods and making them plentiful enough to be commodities. 10 For more information, see Maxine Berg’s overview of the changing definition of luxury in the eighteenth century in Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth Century Britain (2005). 11 “Individual identity” here refers to a person’s understanding of who he or she is within society as a whole. Throughout this work, I will also be referring to “interiority,” which indicates the presence of mental and emotional processes not always visible to an outside observer, and “self” which refers to a sense of individual autonomy and ownership. These terms represent the conception of subjective experience as it would have been understood by eighteenth-century readers and authors, many of whom were responding to philosophers such as Hume, Locke, and Smith. 12 Cynthia Wall’s work on description in eighteenth-century British fiction underlines the cultural disdain during that period for dwelling in particulars that, it was felt, readers already understood. She refers to the perception that eighteenth- century fiction is “visually barren” and lacking in description an effect of “the collapse of the memory storehouse.” Through both the rise of mass production and a growing diversity in readership, lived experiences in readers at the beginning of the 1800s were no longer homogenous in the ways they once were at the beginning of the 1700s. As Wall says, “what is no longer shared is no longer familiar, assumed, a priori visible” (39). Diversity in this instance weakened the cultural universal knowledge of the material world, driving a rise in description in fiction into the nineteenth century. 13 In perhaps the most notable case of literary praise ever written, Jean-Jacques Rousseau went so far as to suggest that Robinson Crusoe should form the entirety of a boy’s educational curriculum in his work, Emilius and Sophia: or, A New System of Education (London, 1762). Rousseau suggests that every Emilius will learn the value of both objects and manual arts, as well as coming to appreciate the labor that makes his life possible, as well an ability to judge by utility rather than opulence (262). 14 Rebecca Bullard’s analysis of Crusoe’s breadmaking reveals his Lockean view of rulership in his society of objects (Bullard 90). His Lockean sympathies are carried forward in that as a sovereign, he is constantly concerned about rebellion, whether by wild animals, once-domesticated escapees, or other men. Crusoe’s realization that his right to rule depends on cooperation and support holds true

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even amid a non-human society, explaining his ongoing anxiety and frustration when faced with elements he cannot overtly control. 15 The books Crusoe turns to in order to learn about God are competing versions of the Bible that he finds on the ship, namely three English bibles (Anglican and Protestant) and some “Popish prayer-books” (Roman Catholic) (Crusoe 49). In a similar fashion, Crusoe’s attempt to treat his illness with tobacco and rum brings about the religious vision that completes his conversion. 16 The island in Crusoe is commonly referred to as a “stage,” noting its artificial nature as a setting. Cynthia Wall observes Defoe’s overall tendency to treat his settings like a “little stage” (112), static except for the main character. Wolfram Schmidgen goes further in calling it “terra nullius” (46), indicating it acted as a blank slate. Neither of these interpretations are appropriate for this argument, however, because they both dismiss the objects as little more than placeholders. The objects may be fictional, but their meanings and associations are all the more important because of it, and thus must be given weight nearly equal to that of Crusoe as we examine his character. 17 As a merchant, Crusoe equates boats with prosperity and wealth; Defoe shows, however, that other characters have very different relationships with ships. The Sallee Captain uses his vessels for war, personal gain, and pleasure. The Portuguese Captain uses his ship to maintain a livelihood. The Spaniards desire a ship that can take them home, and Crusoe’s father sees nothing associated with sea-going craft but misfortune, predicting that if Crusoe goes to sea he will be “the miserablest Wretch that was ever born” (Crusoe 7). 18 Defoe’s pattern of naming of characters for conditions or objects continues with Wells, who represents an average Brazilian planter who does not purchase a servant, and thus falls behind Crusoe in both production of his estate and wealth. Wells’ convoluted history as “a Portuguese of Lisbon, but born of English parents” (Crusoe 27) to justify the name is thrown away on a single use. It indicates a playful determination on Defoe’s part to set up a counterpoint for Crusoe, showing what might have been had he stayed in Brazil in the “middle State,” thus quietly justifying his actions. 19 By transformation, I specifically mean the power to change one thing into another, whether through trade, as in buying or selling, or by physical means, such as turning clay into a jug. Crusoe particularly emphasizes the ability to create change in others as important to his character. 20 While Crusoe speculates about the providence of these occurrences, he continually circles back to practical reasons for the occurrence alongside the blessings of the Divine. He then takes the knowledge he gains and applies it to his plans moving forward. 21 The items Crusoe makes are all plain and functional, in keeping with both masculine gender expectations of the period and a common Nonconformist aesthetic of plainness. For more on this topic, see Amanda Vickery’s work on

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gender and class differences in Georgian England as expressed in furniture and personal objects. 22 Defoe amusingly acknowledges the gulf between political theory and practical application with the next few lines, in which Crusoe demands proof of the Spaniards’ oaths in writing along with their signatures. “How we were to have this done, when I knew they had neither Pen nor Ink; that was indeed a Question which we never asked” (Crusoe 179). 23 Defoe wrote a number of pamphlets on the Prohibition Act, as well as on other trade restrictions. For an example of his views, see Chapter XXIII, “Of the Inland Trade of England, its Magnitude, and the Great Advantage It Is to the Nation in General” in Defoe’s The Complete English Tradesman (1726). 24 “It-narratives” or “novels of circulation” were often concerned with money or currency, which were then in turn often referenced within sentimental novels creating a link between circulation of coin and circulation of people. As Deidre Lynch notes, “in this venue thinking about what is personal very often becomes intertwined with thinking about money. And when sentimental novels do that thinking, they turn to citing the books they jostled with on mid-century circulating library shelves, the narratives of circulation” (“Personal Effects” 73). 25 Mackenzie’s choice to present the novel as a series of fragments breaks narrative continuity, encouraging use of the work as a type of commonplace book, even as readers are also encouraged to create a type of narrative flow between the chapters for themselves. The struggle between the two approaches creates an low- level sense of discomfort that destabilizes the customary reading experience, forcing the reader to concentrate on the particular moment rather than seeing each event as part of a larger narrative arc. 26 The scene where the two men commiserate over Emily’s body is echoed in the exchange of snuffboxes in Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey. Both the box and Emily become property highly coded and saturated with homosocial emotional resonance that is passed between men as a token of shared esteem (Sterne 59). 27 Defoe does include women in The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, featuring both “savages” and European women, all of whom are presented as in need of marriage and religion in order to become useful parts of society. In each case, a woman required the intercession of a man to achieve either condition, leaving the women as tertiary characters at best. 28 We see similar pianofortes in Emma with Jane Fairfax’s present and in Pride and Prejudice as an object of Mary’s focus, a stage for exhibition at Lucas Lodge, and as curiously unused objects at Rosings Park. The implied meanings associated with pianofortes are even confirmed by other characters within Austen’s novels, as with Emma’s many discussions as to who might have given Jane a pianoforte and what it might mean. Even in Pride and Prejudice, when Mr. Darcy stands at the instrument and talks with Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam, it is not Elizabeth’s skill

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alone he refers to when he says “We neither of us perform to strangers” (Pride 117). 29 I will be exploring the importance of competing literacies and their meanings within a text in Chapter Three. 30 The Stamp Tax of 1712 declared a duty on newspapers of a halfpenny per sheet of paper, moving over time from strictly news to opinion papers as well, contributing to the cessation of many early eighteenth-century periodicals. The remaining newspapers were sufficiently expensive that even a weekly paper at a few pennies each is still an exorbitant expense for a family of four on a severely limited income. 31 The impact of reprinting titles on British print culture is discussed in more detail in Chapter Four. 32 Austen offers a scene in Sense and Sensibility of Mr. Robert Ferrars shopping for the perfect toothpick case. He takes extra care regarding its specific ornamentation and composition, far beyond what any toothpick case alone would require. Her example shows that Thorstein Verblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption, which he observes from the 1860s forward, can actually be shown to exist much earlier. 33 Arjun Appadurai’s work here of course stretches back to Heidegger and his focus on “the thing itself”, but it also builds significantly on Walter Benjamin’s discussion of reproduction and art. Appadurai’s theory of the social life of things discusses what certain goods as a class or group mean in society, and how individual items can transfer from commodified reproductions to individual things through a process he calls “singularization,” in which the commodity is made unique through the investment of time and social ritual. Those items can still carry the social meaning invested in them as incarnated signs, but then become redefined through their relationships with individuals. 34 Authors used that knowledge to show what might happen if characters crossed into otherwise unavailable social and cultural categories, creating challenges to sociocultural boundaries (sometimes unintentionally). The response to Richardson’s Pamela as calling for greater social mobility and interaction between classes is an example of this unforeseen reaction. 35 Sir Robert Clayton (1629-1707) was a banker, politician, and a lord Mayor of London. Defoe disliked Clayton and skewered him in the satirical poem Reformation of Manners, accusing him of avarice and being willing to sell his wife if he could profit from it (Reformation 12). For Defoe to have Clayton advise Roxana on her life as a courtesan takes what seems a sound, sensible economic strategy and turns it into a sordid lesson on profit from the sex trade. 36 If we take it that Roxana was born in 1673, as she claims, then she would have met the Foreign Prince in Paris in 1701. Since the timeline in Roxana is notably unreliable in terms of its claims, however, little more can be determined except that the meeting was likely after both the silver levy and the production of

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domestic porcelain in France, making these items even more significant to readers. 37 The Turkish slave woman’s plight calls up reminders of Crusoe’s situation when taken captive by the Sallee Captain. Again, Defoe addresses the criteria of ownership — can a slave own anything, or does the act of possession necessarily render one a person and thus meriting recognition in the eyes of society? 38 The reader is likewise included in this double interpretation, not because of the veiled aspects, but because Roxana takes pains to inform the reader that her outfit came from a slave. The secret adoption of a subservient role for the pleasure of masked men holds a different but not dissimilar erotic charge that simultaneously reinforces British cultural superiority. 39 In the conclusion of his book, Paratexts, Gerard Genette notes other types of paratextual practices he was not able to fully examine, such as translation, serial publication, and illustration, alluding to the importance of these largely non- textual yet nonetheless significant influences on and mediators of the meaning of their associated texts. A performance of a dramatic work and the artifacts of that performance, such as props or costumes, are equally valid as paratexts for the meaning of a given play if those items are included in the manuscript as envisioned by the author. 40 This practice differs from the incognito disguises in Roxana in that the lords never traded in luxury-associated objects for plainer, lower-status ones. They desired to be recognized as wealthy with an elite status, but not to have the social formality associated with their ranks and titles. Individuals going incognito are typically assumed to dress for their actual social class, rather than putting on a full disguise and adopting objects that signal a different class altogether. 41 The confusion between public expectations and private behavior is likewise seen in Toby’s prank, where Marlow and Hastings are led to believe Hardcastle’s home is instead a rural inn, thus setting up a conflict between Hardcastle’s expectation of homosocial intimacy from the man who has come to woo his daughter, versus Marlow’s expectation of public class differences and deferential, reserved hospitality on the part of the “inn’s landlord” (Hardcastle’s mistaken identity). In using that prank to set the characters at odds with one another, Goldsmith is laying the groundwork for a larger discussion of the overlap between public and private expectations, and how that overlap affects the people caught within conflicting codes. 42 James Evans suggests that Marlow and Hastings were in fact young London dandies, or “macaronis,” whose practiced masculinities were heavily influenced by European and London fashion and thus at odds with Hardcastle (54). Viewing Marlow as a would-be fop also brings his ability as a consumer into question, pointing out both his inability to purchase wisely and his dedication to the economic health of both his family and his country. His view of clothing as a means to impress rather than adhere to social norms also explains his inability to read Kate’s clothing correctly.

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43 This is also evident with Tony’s prank, backed up by an older home without fashionable furnishings or trinkets. Hardcastle’s lack of participation in consumerism marks him as below Marlow’s social class, simply because of the lack of objects to indicate his status and mediate interactions. 44 Marlow’s foil, Hastings, has no such problem, as shown by his willingness to marry Constance without her only fortune, that of her jewels. 45 Not everyone agrees with this assessment. Deidre Lynch sees in Miss Betsy Thoughtless an adaptation of Fielding’s Tom Jones that emphasizes the gendered differences in how “agreeableness” is treated in a commercializing society (Economy 101). Christine Blouch calls Miss Betsy Thoughtless the “first real novel of female development in English” (16), and Katheryn King agrees that it presents a young woman as an “ethical subject capable of reflection, growth, and integration into the social order” (204). 46 A review of Miss Betsy Thoughtless from the Monthly Review in October 1751 called the novel “the history of a young inconsiderate girl … whose character and conduct are neither truly amiable nor infamous, and which we can neither admire, nor love, nor pity, nor be diverted with” (Monthly Review 394) 47 Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace notes that women were continually viewed by retailers as “powerful agents, capable of subverting the retail scene” (87). The semi-hostile, semi-welcoming environment this creates undoubtedly plays into the threatening aspect of retail spaces in British fiction in the period. 48 The sole exception to Betsy’s rational consumption is the miniature portrait of Mr. Trueworth, the man she loves. In that instance, she consciously takes what does not belong to her, as she falsely impersonates his fiancé and claims the miniature as her own (thus surreptitiously claiming him). 49 Covent Garden in London was a bustling neighborhood with a market, shops, pubs, theaters, churches, public debates, book shops, coffeehouses, pickpockets, and prostitutes (Ackroyd). The location of the shop and the fact that Lady Mellasin took her daughter and ward there hints at not only her irresponsible nature, but also at some of her blackmail troubles that would arise later in the novel. In addition, it explains why Mr. Saving believed that the shop would be a safe meeting place for an assignation. 50 In 1710, The Tatler refers in No. 166 to “Tom Modely” as a fashionable but otherwise ruinous individual with no real redeeming qualities (Aitken 273). Haywood’s use of the same name here references that association, possibly among others. 51 The same struggle impacts the Dashwoods in Sense and Sensibility when Willoughby chooses Miss Grey and her dowry over Marianne; Miss Grey’s function in the story is as an object with a significant value, while Marianne is a person who owns herself and little else, and is consequently of very little value culturally because she brings no economic value to a prospective husband. The women in The Man of Feeling likewise suffer from society’s determination to

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treat them as commodities whose purpose is to be traded between men. 52 The meaning of this quote rests on the unclear antecedent for the pronoun “her,” which could refer to either Betsy or Lady Mellasin. If the former, then Betsy simply doesn’t like it. If the latter, then Lady Mellasin is using her influence to purchase inferior goods for Betsy, so as to give her daughter an advantage. 53 This scene foreshadows the choice of Mr. Munden as a husband, wherein peer pressure on the part of Betsy’s family is used to “over-perswade” her to marry Mr. Munden rather than stay single. Being therefore compared to an unsuitable silk that seems fine at first but then grows more and more detestable over time, Mr. Munden’s role as a test for Betsy’s self-valuation becomes clear. 54 In keeping with the view of a shop as a space where people as well as things may be advertised and perhaps purchased as commodities, de Roquelair’s semi- public display of singing in a mercer’s shop might also be a means of advertising her growing availability as a mistress. Her choice of song suggests as much: an Italian aria whose lyrics translate to “Love teaches me deceit / Takes away my cares / Love gives me boldness / Love gives me boldness” (History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless 533). While the choice of a mercer’s shop might seem strange, it is both an excuse for her to be in public and a chance to attract older, wealthier men who might be shopping with wives or daughters. 55 As Stobart et al. note, shoppers walked a fine line with leisure/window shopping between browsing, which was encouraged, and taking up the shopkeeper’s time and effort, which was considered rude and impolite (165). Haywood’s language suggests that Lady Mellasin and Flora leaned more toward the latter designation, which clearly shows the moral danger Betsy’s unhappiness has placed her in. 56 According to this theory, the affordable reprinted novels discussed in Chapter 4 would be the inevitable product of social and economic forces, creating a low- status product to meet demand and simultaneously providing a means to signal that status in old reprinted 6d. novels. 57 Arabella’s obsession with romances mirrors Cervantes’ Don Quixote and the title character’s obsession with chivalric romances. Lennox took much of her basic plot and inspiration from Cervantes’ classic work, setting Arabella to continually invent grand adventures while her cousin Glanville acts as a culturally proper Sancho Panza analogue, protecting her from the social consequences of her actions. 58 Carole Patemen writes about the differences between “self-ownership” and Locke’s “property in the person” (or “person”) as concepts, defining each one. The former indicates personal agency and autonomy, while the latter indicates one’s civil rights and legal standing based on labor value. Throughout this section, I will use both these terms as relates to Arabella’s struggles. 59 As Akihito Suzuki notes, from 1660-1850, only 33.2% of commissions of

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lunacy were brought against women; of those, however, only 2.8% (or 31) were listed as “wife,” in part because married women in Britain during this period rarely had property. For an unpropertied married woman, a commission of lunacy (arguably to protect their property) was unnecessary. 87.6% of those women were listed as spinsters, single women, or widows, indicating women in the very situation Arabella finds herself in (23). While women were a minority of those subjects brought before the commission, Arabella’s situation in terms of relations and ownership can be taken as representative of those who were. 60 As was the custom, popular plays were published and sold following their successful theater runs. While The Beggar’s Opera opened to audiences in 1728 and was published and available for sale that same year; by 1729 it was already in its third edition. 61 The play’s satirical origins run deep; Jonathan Swift originally suggested the idea for the play in a letter to Alexander Pope in 1716, as a “Newgate pastoral” to be written by Gay (McIntosh 416). 62 Julie Stone Peter’s work Congreve, the Drama and the Printed Word highlights the struggle between the theater, where spontaneity and the nature of live drama mean that nothing is ever perfectly realized, and print, which is seen as a fixed moment that can be revised to the author’s liking (181). Gay’s work plays to both, as any confusion or improvisation on the part of the actors only reinforces the inherent emptiness of understanding, while the print aspect of his work allows him to present his ideal script, to the extent that he admitted any actual authority to print. It seems clear he wrote for both, keeping the two different media in mind. 63 While there is nothing clearly linking Gay to the final choice of decorations in the manuscript, the publisher would have been aware of the play’s success. In keeping with my arguments in Chapter Four, it is not unreasonable to suggest that it was purposefully used. Illustrations, including frontispieces, were rare in playbooks prior to 1709 and not commonly found until the late eighteenth century (Milhous and Hume 34), including decorations. 64 Gay’s use of ballads prevents his audience from distancing itself from his politics, changing lyrics to both play against the meaning of the original songs and confront the hypocrisy of the characters. It mirrors his use of the romance with Polly and Macheath, as Macheath takes popular culture and uses it to bend Polly to his desires (Newman 27). 65 It is possible that Mrs. Peachum meant that she would prevent her husband from turning Filch in for the reward money, but that reason by itself would be out of keeping with her command that he study. 66 As Sean Silver notes, the items Wild returned were advertised in the newspapers as lost, not stolen, so as to shield him from prosecution for holding stolen goods (much less taking a hand in their initial acquisition). The advertisements Wild placed add another level of textual object to Gay’s drama, in which even the transactions masquerade as something else (Silver).

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67 In The Beggar’s Opera, it is very clear that the fate of objects is continued circulation. Objects may express status or the owner’s aesthetic choice when new, but eventually someone else will own that object and buy or sell it again, thus forming a circulation of commodities created out of once-individualized items. Peachum’s book serves as a reminder of the flow of goods that keeps both London society and the play’s community functioning. 68 Given the move toward capital punishment as the default sentence in any number of crimes as of the early 1720s, Peachum’s decisions to intervene for or against individuals carries a significant weight, almost more than the judge as there is a chance of clemency from Peachum, if one is sufficiently productive. For more information on the rise in capital punishment and benefit of clergy, see Arthur Lyon Cross’s “The English Criminal Law and Benefit of Clergy during the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century.” 69 The provocative stance of this opera that is not an opera, written by a beggar who is not a beggar, can be seen in the songs as well, in which the lyrics were set to well-known popular melodies that audience members may have hummed along with. Gladfelder’s appendix “The Sources of Gay’s Airs” in the Oxford World Classics edition serves as a concise reference to the songs, but a fuller treatment can be found in Jeremy Barlow’s 1999 work The Music of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. 70 Gay seems to be promoting a Hobbesian view of both knowledge and culture. His view of culture is that of a series of arbitrary contracts that surrender sovereign rights in order to holding back a warlike natural state. His cynicism, though, shows through in his implication that there is no monarch to wield that power, making not only the state, but also the entire idea of the Hobbesian social covenant — and thus all textual authority — meaningless. 71 In The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, the biggest core issue for the text is that Tristram takes so long to write up even what occurs in a few minutes that he will never finish writing about his life. The entire text, therefore, is a metatextual exploration of the impossibility of conveying an individual’s life fully to others, as well as the impossibility of ever representing a complete experience. 72 As Stout notes, Sterne’s chronology regarding Yorick is inconsistent between Tristram Shandy and Sentimental Journey. Ostensibly Yorick died in 1748 (Tristram Shandy 126), but Sentimental Journey takes place in 1762, the same year of Sterne’s own trip to France. Stout notes that it is possible this is no accident, but rather a joke on Sterne’s part given his writing about Yorick's ghost and newspaper reports that Sterne had died during his first trip abroad (Journey 192). The fact that the difference is equally plausible as a mistake or a joke is indicative of the multiple layers of meaning in Sterne’s texts, as well as how difficult he makes it to assign any one meaning to an aspect of his work. 73 In 1761, Sterne writes to his daughter Lydia and describes the new work A Sentimental Journey as “something new, quite out of the beaten track” (Howes

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184). This concern with novelty and innovation corresponds with Tristram’s despair in Vol. 5, Chp. 1 of Tristram Shandy, published in 1768, where he asks “Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another?” (Tristram Shandy 309) 74 As Thomas Keymer notes, the individuality of the marbled pages make each copy of Tristram Shandy unique up until the modern day and photographic reproductions (Keymer 80). The marbled pages (and the blank pages, used to customize one’s own version of the Widow Wadman) point to Sterne’s acute awareness of not merely a general audience of readers, but of a specific as-yet- unknown reader, who would be unique from any other. By recognizing and encouraging such particularity, Sterne dismisses the possibility of agreement among his readers-to-be to any meaningful degree. 75 Yorick’s trip to France in 1762 mirrors Sterne’s first trip abroad. After Sterne reached Paris, he had to obtain a French passport granting him permission to enter and remain in France, which he did with the help of a number of French officials and men of letters who vouched for him (Journey 192). In writing A Sentimental Journey, Sterne projects his experiences onto Yorick, who is sought by the Paris Police seeking proof of his permission to be in France, a nation with whom his homeland is still technically at war. 76 Sterne offers counterpoints in the story of the Chevalier de St. Louis, where the king’s personal attention rescues a man and his wife from poverty by granting a pension, and the story of the Marquis d’E***, who used the law to set aside his nobility to enter a trade and then to reclaim it later in life, when he was able to financially support it. Here we see the king acting with authority in his own person, and we see a regional law (found only in Brittany) separate from that of the king’s law that the rest of France was subject to. Both stories have happy endings, but only because the authority of the state as written is circumvented: first by the king’s personal intervention, and second by an ancient regional law. 77 An additional reason behind the confusion, as Yorick explains, is that the British court no longer had jesters as of the Restoration and Charles II, while the French court had unofficial jesters up until the French Revolution (Doran 297). It does not occur to Yorick that anyone would think of jesters, while it doesn’t occur to the Count that anyone would not (Journey 227). Yorick’s bent toward philosophical humor, of course, makes the Count’s misunderstanding that much more reasonable. 78 Sterne notes in Tristram Shandy that Yorick is descended from “Hamlet’s Yorick” and his ancestor served in the court of Horwendillus, King of Denmark (Tristram Shandy 23). 79 Sterne regularly declared his attachment to writing sentimental work, believing that such writing fulfilled an important purpose. Of A Sentimental Journey he remarked, “I told you my design in it was to teach us to love the world and our fellow creatures better than we do—so it runs most upon those gentler passions and affections, which aid so much to it” (Howes 187). His focus on emotions and

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relationships demands prioritizing the individual and his or her relationship to others. 80 While the illustrations discussed in this chapter were commissioned by these booksellers, I was unable to locate textual evidence to prove conclusively that Millar, Cooper, Harrison, or Cooke personally chose the images, the designs, or the personnel involved. Nevertheless, they were all significantly involved in their businesses, and it seems unlikely that any of them were completely divorced from the process, even if only in general directions for the artists and approvals of finished designs. Future research that more thoroughly documents the processes by which illustrations were commissioned by eighteenth-century booksellers would be useful, but is beyond the scope of the current project. 81 The mid-eighteenth century was host to a book-collecting craze, with fashionable modern literature crowding out antiquarian volumes. Illustrations appealed to that demographic, both for the owners of domestic personal libraries and for subscribers to local library societies. For more on this, see James Raven, The Business of Books (195). 82 Not mentioned are the difficulties with Irish and Dutch reprints, as there were no international copyright agreements in place at the time. They were viewed as legitimate versions everywhere except in Britain, where they were considered piracies (“Reprint” 701). 83 This convergence of nationalist pride in English cultural heritage with the potential for financial gain laid the groundwork for establishment of a particularly British literary canon in the late 1770s-1780s, which in turn contributed to a sense of book ownership as a matter of national pride. 84 Millar and Cooper also employed Robin Lawless at different times as their assistant, a man who was a fixture of bookselling in the latter eighteenth century. Thomas Cadell, whom he worked for after Millar’s retirement, esteemed him so highly that he reportedly had Sir William Beechey paint Lawless’s portrait to hang in his drawing-room (Aldine 249). As these sources note, any establishment connected with Lawless had a good reputation. They can thus be considered at least partially representative of publishing trends for middle-class consumers. 85 Lennox had likely been introduced to Millar through her husband’s contacts, and he served as her primary publisher for prose during the 1750s and 60s, from the second edition of The Female Quixote onward. Among the other works that Millar published are her Shakespear Illustrated and Memoirs of the Countess of Berci. 86 As Janine Barchas notes, the backlash against Eliza Haywood’s portrait frontispieces as presumptuous and premature is indicative of the cultural weight frontispieces were given in the 1720s. Frontispieces changed as the century moved on, becoming more closely tied to the content of the book as with The History of Pompey the Little by Francis Coventry (Barchas 22, 50). 87 These printers decorations were particularly useful in cases of piracy to identify

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authentic works, as the patterns were sufficiently complex to make copying unsuccessful with the technology of the period. They also served to form a record, later, of the printers involved with specific books and booksellers. 88 Nor would Coventry publish much afterward, dying in 1754 from smallpox at the age of 29 (Oakleaf). 89 Boitard’s credit comes from the signature at the bottom right of the piece, which reads, “Boitard fecit,” or “Boitard made [this].” 90 Though the text states Pompey is a Bolognese lap dog, the image is much more reminiscent of a spaniel; given the rarity of Bolognese dogs, it is likely Boitard used a more easily available reference for the image. 91 Trading on a combination of cuteness and artistic style is, of course, a time- honored tactic; while Cooper’s frontispiece is one of the earliest print examples, multiple instances can be found from the nineteenth century to the present, perhaps culminating in the appeal of the social media website Pinterest. 92 While reprints had been ongoing in Scotland, Ireland, and abroad for decades given a lack of any treaties on copyright anywhere beyond the borders of England, London publishing still led Britain in sales and importance (Raven 232). 93 When released as part of Harrison’s English Classics line in 1787, the novel was again split into separately bound and sold volumes. 94 Harrison was also able to reuse these prints in his British Classics edition of Henrietta in 1787, thus getting extra value for his investment. 95 The artist makes clear the inn is in France through the cross on top of a church spire in the background, the words “Poste Royale” over the door, indicating that it was a station for the French Royal Post, and the heraldic device over the door featuring three fleur-de-lis in a triangle, the French royal coat of arms. 96 While the paper is still handmade, the lack of chain lines makes it difficult to determine format absolutely. For the copy of Pompey I was able to access, there are watermarks visible at the bottom of pp.103-104, for example, which would normally be out of place for a duodecimo. It is bound in sixes, however, and there is nothing that absolutely contradicts a duodecimo format determination. 97 Fortunately, the illustrations include the date they were originally printed, giving a rough origin date for a given work within his editions. 98 According to Leigh Hunt, “Cooke realised the old woman’s beau ideal of a prayer-book,—“A little book, with a great deal of matter, and a large type:”—for the type was really largo for so small a volume. Shall I ever forget his Collins and his Gray, books at once so “superbly ornamented “and so inconceivably cheap— Sixpence could procure much before’ but never could it procure so much as then, or was at once so much respected, and so little Cared for” (Hunt, “My Books,”) His love for Cooke’s editions was based as much on the literary objects of illustration, ornamentation, and font size as on the work itself, particularly for the price.

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99 In this way, Cooke’s presence in the market is not unlike twentieth-century sports trading cards, or modern collectable card games. 100 His son, also named Richard Woodman, went on to become an engraver and artist of some renown in the early nineteenth century (Smith). The fourth image was engraved by “Granger,” whom I have been unable to trace. 101 The Henrietta illustrations used stipple engraving, which provided tonal quality similar to mezzotint, a more expensive engraving method used to make prints of paintings. Stipple engraving withstood the stresses of printing far better and allowed for many more impressions to be made from a single plate (Griffiths 88) 102 The last name may be misspelled; the copy I have is not printed clearly. It may be worth further investigation. 103 This same fickleness and disloyalty was likewise demonstrated in Mrs. Betsy Thoughtless when Mr. Munden kills Betsy’s pet squirrel in a fit of anger. His actions toward the animal are not only shocking because of their cruelty, but they foreshadow his willingness to ignore and abandon his wife by starting an affair with Mademoiselle de Roquelair, his wife’s houseguest. 104 James Raven notes that Harrison promoted his magazines specifically to a female readership; he does not mention the illustrations, but the reminders of both Pamela and Sterne’s Sentimental Journey would seem to support his point (274). 105 While modern authors may expect secondary and even unknown readers who do not share their cultural touchstones, prior to Donaldson v. Beckett, it was uncommon for novels printed in London to see multiple printings unless they proved to be very popular. With Henrietta and The History of Pompey the Little, for example, both works would have been largely unavailable from booksellers for at least fifteen years, thus being new to a generation of readers who shared most of the cultural knowledge the authors referenced, but potentially not all. Losing the shared memory storehouse Wall references would not have been a significant concern prior to that time. 106 Latour’s exploration of “immutable mobiles” touches on a number of these issues as well, arguing that print and its modern electronic equivalents exert incredible amounts of power, particularly in science studies. “By working on papers alone, on fragile inscriptions which are immensely less than the things from which they are extracted, it is still possible to dominate all things, and all people. What is insignificant for all other cultures becomes the most significant, the only significant aspect of reality. The weakest, by manipulating inscriptions of all sorts obsessively and exclusively, become the strongest. This is the view of power we get at by following this theme of visualization and cognition in all its consequences” (Visualization 30). I suggest that the power in the eighteenth century was no less powerful, but potentially easier for authors to identify due to the rise of the novel genre and the growth of both printing sales and the reading public.

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