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The Hero As Woman of Vocation: Thomas Carlyle's THE HERO AS WOMAN OF VOCATION: THOMAS CARLYLE’S TRANSATLANTIC INFLUENCE ON NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN WRITERS by BILLIE E. BENNETT (Under the direction of Tricia Lootens and Kristin Boudreau) ABSTRACT The Hero as Woman of Vocation examines the ways in which Carlyle’s development of the notion of the Romantic individual (or hero) in Sartor Resartus influenced Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Augusta Jane Evans (Wilson), Louisa May Alcott, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (Ward) in their versions of the female Bildungsroman: Aurora Leigh, St. Elmo, Little Women, and The Story of Avis. I contend that Carlyle’s definition of the individual and his vocation becomes—perhaps unexpectedly—liberatory and useful for these women, and that Diogenes Teufelsdröckh serves as a model for the exceptional female characters they develop. Aurora Leigh, Beulah Benton, Edna Earl, Jo March, and Avis Dobell are ideal visionaries, and though the authors rely on their own experiences to depict them, their status as characters in their own right offers much in the way of theorizing about the position of the woman intellectual/artist. This study provides a better understanding of the impact of Carlylean thought and offers a new approach to reading the figure of the woman artist and her vocation. INDEX WORDS: Thomas Carlyle, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Augusta Jane Evans (Wilson), Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (Ward), Women writers, Transatlantic studies THE HERO AS WOMAN OF VOCATION: THOMAS CARLYLE’S TRANSATLANTIC INFLUENCE ON NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN WRITERS by BILLIE E. BENNETT B.A., The University of Virginia, 1992 M.Ed., The University of Georgia, 1994 M.A., The Florida State University, 1998 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2007 ©2007 Billie E. Bennett All Rights Reserved THE HERO AS WOMAN OF VOCATION: THOMAS CARLYLE’S TRANSATLANTIC INFLUENCE ON NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN WRITERS by BILLIE E. BENNETT Major Professors: Tricia Lootens Kristin Boudreau Committee: Roxanne Eberle Barbara McCaskill Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2007 iv DEDICATION For my father, Bob Bennett, who taught me what true heroism is. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project has been many (long) years in the making, and I have been fortunate to encounter wonderful people who helped me through—many of them in ways they probably didn’t even realize. First and foremost, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my family. My parents taught me the value of education and have supported me all the way. My sister and nieces have always been there to listen to me whine or to make me laugh (or both). I love you all and am forever thankful for you. Kris Boudreau and Tricia Lootens have been the best advisors I could have asked for. Thank you for your patience, kindness, encouragement, careful editing, and most of all for not settling for less than my best work. Roxanne Eberle and Barbara McCaskill rounded out a wonderful committee. I also owe sincere thanks to Rosemary Franklin, who advised me through comprehensive exams and inspired my interest in the writing of nineteenth-century American women. I am also very fortunate to have a family of friends who have supported me through this process. For many years, Rebecca De Haas was stuck sharing an office with me; fortunately, she was always willing to give of herself as well. Thanks for all those marathon phone calls, the ice cream sundaes, and the laughs. Willy Williams has been my fellow sufferer and confidante as both a teacher and a graduate student for many years. Thanks for all the phone calls and venting sessions. Now it’s your turn, Studly! Joe Feinberg and I shared innumerable meals and a lot of laughs together (many of them at DePalma’s). Thanks for all the laughs, Loser, and for showing me it could be done. In Atlanta, the trivia gang helped me to escape once a week but also pushed me to get it done—Scott Johnson, Peggy Still Johnson, Katherine Hanemann, and Steve Horn, vi you were a wonderful support system for me, and I love you guys. I “made it happen,” Scott! Jason Mosser, Colleen Donovan, Greg Timmons, and Fred Dolezal helped me to pass many a weekend in Athens with a beer in my hand and a smile on my face (and, if we were lucky, a football game on the TV). I wouldn’t have made it through without you. Paul Quick always believed in me and was there to listen to me vent over a cup of Jittery Joe’s coffee; you’ll never know how much of a help you were. Judith Ortiz Cofer has been a mentor and friend without peer; through the years you always seemed to think I was helping you, but you never seemed to know just how much you do for me. Thanks for believing I could do anything and for always knowing when I needed a shopping trip. (Yes, a new pair of earrings can solve almost any problem!) I owe special thanks to the Willson Center for the Humanities and Arts at the University of Georgia, whose generous grant gave me the opportunity to travel to Salem and Cambridge, Massachusetts, to conduct primary research on Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Thanks also to the kind librarians at the Houghton Library at Harvard University and the Library at the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, who were extremely patient and helpful with a novice manuscript researcher. Now that I have moved on, I am fortunate to have found a network of supportive colleagues in my new home at the Institute for Teaching, Learning and Academic Leadership at the University at Albany. Thanks to all of you for enduring my whining sessions and mini- meltdowns as the date drew near. Special thanks to Steven Doellefeld for helping me to maneuver the technology necessary to create the electronic version of this document. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………………………………………………………………………v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………..1 2 “A QUITE NEW HUMAN INDIVIDUALITY”: RE-CREATION AND RECONCILIATION IN SARTOR RESARTUS ……………………………… ...14 3 “THE ONLY TRUTH-TELLERS NOW LEFT TO GOD”: AURORA LEIGH AND THE CARLYLEAN TRUE POET………………………………………..54 4 “THE VIGOUR AND ORIGINALITY OF HER RESTLESS INTELLECT”: ST. ELMO AND THE THINKING BELIEVER…………………………………….88 5 “FIND SOME USEFUL, HAPPY WORK TO DO”: DIOGENES TEUFELSDRÖCKH AND “PILGRIMING” IN LITTLE WOMEN…………...121 6 “BUT EVERY ONE IS NOT SO READY TO SEE WHAT IS RIGHT”: CARLYLEAN PROPHECY IN THE STORY OF AVIS……………………….153 7 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………...180 8 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………..185 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In “Carlyle in America,” a story that remained unpublished in her lifetime, Sarah Orne Jewett imagines the Victorian Sage secretly visiting New England in the mid-1840’s. Two “literary gentlemen” who were the last alive to know the secret of Carlyle’s American trip tell Jewett’s narrator, a great admirer of both Emerson and Carlyle, the story of his visit. The situation and the story are both humorous, but beyond their comic effect they serve to reveal a view of Carlyle as iconoclast that may prove useful in considering his impact on his British and American contemporaries. For example, upon visiting Thoreau, “Mr. Thomas” chides him for leaving his cabin at Walden Pond to have dinner with the Emersons, calling his experiment “a sham way of going into retreat” (Tarr and Clayton 109). This episode reveals the man who is Jewett’s Carlyle: an individual who tells the truth at any cost, who is “irascible, excitable, fiery, and brilliant” (McIntosh 78). Moreover, in addition to the importance of integrity, this fictionalized Carlyle reveals one of the central beliefs of the historical one: the sacredness of one’s responsibility to his vocation, whatever it may be. “Mr. Thomas,” even more strongly in his physical manifestation than in his writerly persona, shows his hosts that one should not shirk one’s duty because of difficulties and should not refrain from seeking or telling the truth because it is ugly. The American public, however, does not welcome this individual. When the narrator asks how long “Mr. Thomas” was in this country, he learns that the visit lasted less than two months. Hoping that the American audience who embraced his written ideas would welcome a personal appearance, the writer instead met with rejection. The literary gentleman explains, “He 2 expected too much of us—[. .]—He thought at least that we should listen freely and gladly to the simple truth but he was disappointed; it was quite as dangerous to tell the truth here as anywhere else, if people were not ready for it. What a thankless task it is to be in advance of one’s time!” (109). This imaginary Carlyle possesses a gift for truth so profound that it actually endangers him, and Jewett’s depiction demonstrates one of the important disadvantages of Carlylean individualism: the individual’s sense of truth will separate him from others. While the hero can elevate himself above others, he will often occupy a troubled position. It is difficult not to think how such a portrait may have pleased Carlyle, who took such an interest in his own role as truth-teller and prophet. The New Englanders of Jewett’s tale do not share her enthusiasm for this forwardness, however. They find Carlylean thought threatening when it takes the form of an anonymous (and present) individual rather than a distant writer, and ultimately “Mr. Thomas’s” visit abroad ends with him being hurried to a boat under the cover of darkness. This fictional tale reveals much about the real impact of Thomas Carlyle on the nineteenth-century literary imagination.
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