2018-04-26 Webster Dissertation
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
ESSENTIAL AND UBIQUITOUS: THE INNS OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH FICTION _______________ A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English University of Houston _______________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy _______________ By Michael Webster May, 2018 ESSENTIAL AND UBIQUITOUS: THE INNS OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH FICTION _________________________ Michael Webster APPROVED: _________________________ David Mazella, Ph.D. Committee Chair _________________________ Ann C. Christensen, Ph.D. _________________________ Sebastian J. Lecourt, Ph.D. _________________________ Irving N. Rothman, Ph.D. _________________________ Catherine F. Patterson, Ph.D. _________________________ Antonio D. Tillis, Ph.D. Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Department of Hispanic Studies ii ESSENTIAL AND UBIQUITOUS: THE INNS OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH FICTION _______________ An Abstract of a Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English University of Houston _______________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy _______________ By Michael Webster May, 2018 iii ABSTRACT In eighteenth-century England, inns stand as transient spaces between traditional, feudal values and a progressive, commercial society. They at once represent inward domesticity and outward society, classical hospitality and commercial enterprise, and class stratification and class amalgamation. Writers throughout the century understood the inimitable role the inn plays in society as a functional and temporary home for travelers, a local hub for regionally isolated communities, and a convening space for all of England, and thus they exploit the space for its utility. Since the space of the inn simultaneously resides outside the class system and yet inside the English social framework, it provides writers a pivotal location in which people across the social spectrum interact. In part, the anonymity afforded at inns also provides a foreign, almost exotic, atmosphere that begs for romance, intrigue, and secrecy. Analyzing works by Penelope Aubin, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett, this work argues that the inn serves an essential function within eighteenth-century English fiction. iv CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 The Inn, Disguise, and Morality in Aubin’s The Life and Adventures of Lady Lucy ..... 27 Moll Flanders and the Commodification of the Home ................................................. 70 Public Discourse, Didacticism, and the Inns of Joseph Andrews .................................100 The Absence of Inns in Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker ......................128 Conclusion .................................................................................................................164 v Introduction There can be little that inspires a reminiscent imagination more than the history of the old Inns of England, which, through centuries, have waved their signs of open welcome to all who passed their way; and wherein men of all classes have met to pass the time of day and to exchange views on matters of immediate interest: great names, perhaps, unwitting each of the other’s identity. (v) Sir Edwin Lutyens, R.A. The inn is a generative topic in eighteenth-century literature. The space of the inn is essential to eighteenth-century writing. This dissertation seeks to explore the indispensable role of the inn in eighteenth-century fiction. The words of Sir Edwin Lutyens, R.A. speak directly to the space of the inn of the eighteenth-century where inns at once provide the vast spectrum of man spaces to congregate, rest, or entertain. The growth of inns across the country during the century reflects the increasing wave of travelers for tourism and commerce. Unique in growth within the eighteenth-century as compared to other centuries, inns stand as transient spaces between traditional, feudal values and a progressive, commercial society. Because of the distinctive function and space occupied, the inn simultaneously represents inward domesticity and outward society, classical hospitality and commercial enterprise, class stratification and class amalgamation. As such, writers exploit the ready-made confines of the inn as a space where social flux is understood. Because its space simultaneously troubles the class system reflecting longstanding features of the English social framework, the inn provides a pivotal location in which varying levels of social strata come into contact with one another. Writers throughout the century understand the inimitable role the inn plays in 1 society as a functional and temporary home for travelers, as a local hub for regionally isolated communities, and as a convening space for all of England. Moreover, as a commercial venture, the inn provides data for satire since, in essence, home and hospitality are up for sale and everyman becomes a lord. In addition to the transient nature of the inn, the anonymity of characters within the walls provides a foreign, almost exotic, atmosphere that begs for romance, intrigue, and secrecy. Under such confines then, this work argues that the inn throughout the eighteenth-century serves an essential, and perhaps chronologically evolving, function within eighteenth-century British fiction. The four primary of Penelope Aubin, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett discussed in the following chapters, explicitly highlight the various functions served by the inn in the fiction of the eighteenth-century. Chapter one examines how the inn readily supplies the needed anonymity and disguise to carry out the clandestine activities of early century amatory fiction, specifically Aubin’s The Adventures of Lady Lucy. Surveying Defoe’s The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, chapter two explores the rise of commercialism and how the emerging middle class finds a home in the inn where domesticity and marriage are bartered. Chapter three examines Fielding’s Joseph Andrews to show how satire thrives in anonymous spaces that encourage affectation, vanity, and deceit. Lastly, in chapter four, Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker shows how travel, when dissociated from the inn, allows landed gentry to (re)establish a conservative ideal. While these texts merely scratch the surface, I argue that inns play an essential function in fiction throughout the eighteenth- century. 2 Nowhere in the literature of the time do characters come together in such a distinctive, shared space where the usual rules of engagement between varying degrees of social class or rank have been suspended. Nowhere in the literature of the time does the setting dictate the activity and movement of the plot like the inn does, and nowhere else in the literature of the time does history and future meet than at the inn—a liminal space between the agrarian past and commercial progress. Long before the eighteenth-century, the inn has consistently served as a key social space in literature. Most obviously, the narrative frame of the Canterbury Tales, for example, stems from an innkeeper who, in the prologue, suggests that the pilgrims tell tales along their travels. Important enough to Chaucer’s narrative, the innkeeper is described as “a large man he was, with eyen stepe; / A fairer burgeis was ther noon in Chepe. / Boold of his speche, and wis, and wel ytaught, / And of manhode him lakkede right naught” (31). A common theme within the literary inn surfaces even in Chaucer as old world hospitality meets commercialization. In this case, the innkeeper only praises the travelers after they “hadden made our rekeninges” (31). As the pilgrimage progresses, the social role of the inn encourages numerous characters to contribute tales. After the religious pilgrimage of Chaucer’s tales, the inn begins to proliferate in literature because interest and participation in travel dramatically increase in the early modern era. Movements of people across England along trade routes become increasingly common, and innovations in travel methods both in vehicles and roadways extend the distance and shorten the time for travelers. Foreign trade and colonial production require travel of agents, fortune seekers, and, in general, the growing merchant class. Further, the rise in wealth among the gentry and merchant class led to a heightened interest in travel as a 3 recreation. As this dissertation shows in part, inns both within England and on the European continent become not only necessary stops along travel routes, but, specifically, centers of social gatherings frequented by multiple layers of social rank. Similar to the Canterbury Tales, The Ingenious Nobleman Mister Quixote of La Mancha also develops the inn as an essential space for fiction that British writers in the eighteenth-century imitate. In Chapter 16 entitled “Of what happened to the ingenious gentleman in the inn, which he imagined to be a castle” and Chapter 17, “Wherein are continued the numberless hardships which the brave Don Quixote and his good squire Sancho Panza underwent in the inn, which he unhappily took for a castle,” Quixote transposes the inn into a castle as part of his adventure seeking. Of interest in the scene, the inn provides the space for a potential sexual intrigue with the servant, Maritones, a brawl amongst the innkeeper, the servant, the carrier, Quixote, and Sancho, and the further