1 Historiography, Identity and Gender in the Works of Anna Eliza Bray. A
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Historiography, Identity and Gender in the Works of Anna Eliza Bray. A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of PhD in the Faculty of Humanities. 2011. Diane Elizabeth Duffy. The School of Arts, Histories and Cultures. 1 LIST OF CONTENTS Title Page 1 List of Contents 2 Portrait of Bray 3 Abstract 4 Declaration 5 Copyright Statement 6 Abbreviations 7 Introduction: A woman’s History 8 Chapter One: Presenting the self: history or fiction? 29 Chapter Two: Domesticating Travels in France: Bray's Early Travel Writing. 76 Chapter Three: Historiography, Identity and Gender in Eliza Bray’s Mediaeval Romances. 122 Chapter Four: Domesticity and the National Tale 174 Conclusion: Bray’s Literary Legacy 226 Bibliography 231 Word Count, 82, 110 2 DECLARATION No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. DECLARATION No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. 3 Abstract Diane Elizabeth Duffy, The University of Manchester, PhD., 2011. Historiography, Gender and Identity in the Works of Anna Eliza Bray This study addresses the writings of Anna Eliza Bray in three different areas, which illustrate her main literary interests: her autobiographical works, her travel writing and her contribution to the historical romance. I begin with an examination of Bray’s autobiography, exploring the ways in which the editorial processes reduced Bray’s three volume manuscript to one, and examining how socially constructed gender roles impacted on Bray’s construction of her own public image and the image constructed for her by the male members of her family. I also examine how Bray appropriates the language and devices of fiction to idealise the past and as a form of concealment. Finally Chapter One explores Bray’s desire to memorialise the past, which includes her own. Chapter Two addresses the development of travel writing after the resumption of continental travel following Waterloo. The changing epistemological conventions in historiography and travel writing provided opportunities for women to publish works on continental journeys and thereby address a real lack of published works by women in that genre. Bray’s work comprised a collection of letters to her mother which allowed her to inscribe the publication within a domestic framework and a female discourse of family relations. Within this frame, however, Bray addresses some political issues on revolution, conservation and gender politics, concerns that become central to her romances. In order to establish some of Bray’s stylistic strategies I make a detailed textual analysis of her work and that of Helen Maria Williams. The fact that Williams and Bray both wrote about Rouen, but with a very different style and perspective serves to identify aspects of style and ideology that are specific to Bray. The final two chapters focus on Bray’s historical romances. I choose to separate these into two sections, the early romances set in France and Flanders during the fourteenth century, and her later regional romances set in Devon and Cornwall. These works fall neatly into two types, those that are largely lifted from Froissart, and those which Bray deems original, that deal specifically with local history and tradition. In Chapter Three I examine how the changing epistemological conventions noted above impacted on Bray’s as a writer whose subjects are history and antiquarian studies, but I also examine how Bray appropriated her subject matter to suit a personal and political agenda, using the Middle Ages as a model for what she believed would be a more desirable society, a belief that was commensurate with the nineteenth century political belief in paternalism. I also examine how Bray appropriated this period to re-vision and control her own history. As in her travel work Bray inscribes her political comment in a domestic framework of family relations, a model which she develops in her local romances, which I argue in Chapter Four, can be read as examples of an English national tale. 4 DECLARATION No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. COPYRIGHT STATEMENT i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns any copyright in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester the right to use such Copyright for any administrative, promotional, educational and/or teaching purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts, may be made only in accordance with the regulations of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Details of these regulations may be obtained from the Librarian. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of any patents, designs, trade marks and any and all other intellectual property rights except for the Copyright (the “Intellectual Property Rights”) and any reproductions of copyright works, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property Rights and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property Rights and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and exploitation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property Rights and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available from the Head of School of ( insert name of school ) (or the Vice-President) and the Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences, for Faculty of Life Sciences’ candidates. 5 Abbreviations Used All of Bray’s romances used in this study are taken from The Novels and Romances of Anna Eliza Bray, 10 Vols., Revised Edition (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1845-6), unless otherwise stated. The editions of Scott’s works cited in this study are The Waverley Novels Centenary Edition, 25 vols. (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1886), in order that they include Scott’s later prefaces. AEB David Kempe, Anna Bray: the Life of an Early Victorian Writer (Bridport: Imprint –academic.com, 2006) A Bray, Autobiography. CW Bray, Courtenay of Walreddon. DF Bray, De Foix. DS Bray, A Daughter’s Sacrifice. FC Froissart, Sir John, Chronicles of England, France and Spain, and the adjoining Countries, from the Latter Part of the Reign of Edward II to The Coronation of Henry 1V , translated by Thomas Johnes, 2vols. (London: William Smith, 1839). FF Bray, Fitz of Fitz-ford. I Scott, Ivanhoe (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1886) LMM Lady Morgan, Lady Morgan’s Memoirs: Autobiography, Diaries, Letters and Correspondence, 2 vols. (London: Wm. H. Allen and Co, 1862). LN Bray, Letters Written During a Tour Through Normandy, Brittany and Other Parts of France in 1818: Including Local and Historical Descriptions: with Remarks on the Character and Manners of the People (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1820) M Bray, Memoirs Including Original Journals, Letters, Papers, and Antiquarian Tracts, of the Late Charles Alfred Stothard, F.S.A, with Connective Notices of his Life, and Some Account of a Journey in the Netherlands (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1823). MS Autobiographical manuscript. RR Edmund Burke, Reflections on the R evolution in France (London: Dodsley, 1790). TH Bray , Trials of the Heart. W Bray , Warleigh. WH Bray, White Hoods. WLY Scott, Waverley (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1886). 6 Acknowledgements I would like to thank a number of people for their help with this thesis. The first is my supervisor, Professor Jacqueline Pearson for her invaluable help, support and inspiration over the many years that I have been a student at the University of Manchester. I would also like to thank Sylvia and Bryan Harlow for their friendship and their tireless help in supplying both obscure texts and vital information for my work. Finally I would like to thank Peter Wilkinson, the archivist at West Sussex Records Office, for kindly opening the sewn sections of Bray’s manuscript, without his co-operation I would have been unable to pursue my line of enquiry for Chapter One. 7 A Woman’s History: an Introduction. My first introduction to the writings of Anna Eliza Bray was through her marginalia, in this case her annotations to a five-volume edition of Amelia Opie’s tales, published in 1846-7. Volume one of this collection has Bray’s name and address on the front endpaper, with the date 1851, suggesting they were from her extensive library where, as John Kempe notes in his introduction to Bray’s Autobiography , ‘not a book was uncut, or unmarked by her appreciative pencil’ ( A. p. 17), a statement supported by the fact that every one of these five volumes is carefully sidelined. Sometimes her markings are further referenced on the back endpapers of each volume, where she gives the page number, and a brief note on the theme or a personal response to the content. One significant passage was from Opie’s tale ‘The Mysterious Stranger’. It referred to an ‘ exemplary wife, and well principled widow, who had borne her husband’s faults, while living with dignified and affectionate forbearance, [...] screen[ing] his memory from reproach’(p. 100). 1 This whole section is sidelined and on the back endpaper Bray writes what appears to be ‘like’, although the final ‘e’ runs into a long wavy line which finishes as a dash.