FEMALE PROTAGONISTS USING MASKING STRATEGIES IN LATE-VICTORIAN FICTION: FROM FAILING TO SUCCEEDING By RACHEL SLIVON A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2016 © 2016 Rachel Slivon To my Gram ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank my Director, Dr. Snodgrass, who has encouraged, guided, and supported me throughout my graduate career. I thank my committee members, Dr. Gilbert, Dr. Kershner, Dr, Bryant, and Dr. Newman, for their useful, thoughtful feedback. I also thank my family, partner, and friends for their support, encouragement, and enthusiasm. I thank the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for a travel grant award. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: REASSESSING LATE-VICTORIAN FEMALE CHARACTER ...... 8 Rigid Character and Its Discontents ....................................................................... 10 “The Pleasure Pilgrim” (1895) by Ella D’Arcy .......................................................... 12 Paula (1896) by Victoria Cross ............................................................................... 21 2 SELF-SUPPRESSION AND ITS DISCONTENTS: FROM SACRIFICE TO RUIN ....................................................................................................................... 33 Jude the Obscure (1895) by Thomas Hardy ........................................................... 33 The Story of an African Farm (1883) by Olive Schreiner ........................................ 52 Anna Lombard (1901) by Victoria Cross ................................................................. 72 3 ROMANTIC LOVERS MASKING: FROM INTRIGUE TO ENDURANCE............... 84 “The Invisible Prince” (1897) by Henry Harland ...................................................... 85 “Merely Players” (1897) by Henry Harland ............................................................ 105 The Cardinal’s Snuffbox (1900) by Henry Harland ............................................... 112 Some Emotions and a Moral (1891) by John Oliver Hobbes ................................ 117 4 MARRIED WOMEN MASKING: FROM SUFFERING TO SUCCEEDING ........... 139 Diana of the Crossways (1882) by George Meredith ............................................ 139 The Heavenly Twins (1893) by Sarah Grand ........................................................ 152 The Daughters of Danaus (1894) by Mona Caird ................................................. 166 5 WOMEN OUTCASTS MASKING: FROM SURVIVING TO THRIVING ............... 177 “A Light Sovereign” (1893) by Henry Harland ....................................................... 177 The Eustace Diamonds (1871) by Anthony Trollope ............................................ 183 The Portrait of a Lady (1880–1881) by Henry James ........................................... 214 6 MASKING IN MODERNISM: THE SHIFT TO MODERNIST FEMALE IDENTITIES .......................................................................................................... 234 The Golden Bowl (1904) by Henry James ............................................................ 234 The Good Soldier (1915) by Ford Madox Ford ..................................................... 247 Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf ................................................................ 260 5 To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf .......................................................... 273 7 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 283 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 285 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 301 6 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy FEMALE PROTAGONISTS USING MASKING STRATEGIES IN LATE-VICTORIAN FICTION: FROM FAILING TO SUCCEEDING By Rachel Slivon August 2016 Chair: Chris Snodgrass Major: English This dissertation explores a pattern that emerges in late-Victorian literature: multi-faceted female characters enact masking strategies to successfully accommodate their complex characters. Female characters who suppress parts of themselves or who are suppressed by others or by society experience detrimental consequences, including death and deformity. On the other hand, female characters who enact masking strategies, representing themselves differently in various situations to various characters, are able to create the realities and futures they desire, leading to fulfilling relationships and secure futures. Several Modernist female characters both extend and break with this masking strategy pattern as they attempt to find stability and community in a chaotic, new world. 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: REASSESSING LATE-VICTORIAN FEMALE CHARACTER Despite the emphasis Victorians routinely put on honesty, rectitude, absolutes, and a basically essential character, their fictional works frequently argue that life, at least “modern” life, requires a much more nuanced and flexible and roundabout path to success. What is required are namely strategies or mechanisms, both offensive and defensive, that disguise, or that present a provisional persona. These strategies or mechanisms reveal value and even truth to be not a “thing in itself” but something inseparable from the rhetorical process of its presentation—the representation, personal stance or “language” conveying it—in short, its strategic mask or masking process. Characters frequently must execute such maneuvers (masking) even to the point of presenting a “reality” opposite to what the user of it believes or the customary interpretation of “truth” is. The path to truth and value becomes simultaneously a deception as well as a revelation. The ostensibly deceptive mask necessarily becomes the means to achieving value or truth successfully; there is frequently no probable or satisfactory success without it. It has been well recognized that in much late-Victorian fiction, the traditional Victorian female character of wife and mother is narrowly defined and excludes the flexibility to adapt to different circumstances and to fulfill different facets of character that exist outside of the traditional role. Victorian female characters are often shown trying to escape or cope with this one-dimensional existence. Likewise, in much late- Victorian fiction, including proto-New Woman fiction and New Woman fiction, women protagonists generally share many qualities such as intellectual vigor, an interest in politics and education, and rebelliousness against the status quo, to the exclusion of 8 other facets, namely wifehood and motherhood. These feminist characters are often portrayed as suffragists who advocate equality between the sexes and grapple with several aspects of the Woman Question, including marriage and motherhood. These characters also try to escape or cope with their narrow, rigid albeit “new” existence. Similar exclusionary logic emerges in the conception of the traditional Victorian female character and in the conception of the New Woman character. This recognition of the need for flexible self-representation—strategic masking— reaches perhaps its extreme Victorian formulation in the fin de siècle with Walter Pater’s conflations of ethics and aesthetics—morality as fundamentally aesthetic, such as a beautiful effect, perception, interpretation, or representation. Oscar Wilde relates a similar understanding of life in his various renderings to the effect that “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth” (Wilde 127). Masking creates conditions in which societal conventions and expectations fall away. It frees one to divulge certain revelations and participate in truth-telling that would otherwise remain concealed for fear of breaking social conventions and being subsequently ostracized. After the Victorian Age but growing out of the fin de siècle, Yeats will amplify this understanding into a virtual Modernist manifesto with his view that the man and the mask, the mask and the self, are necessarily inseparable and function dialectically in tandem, such as in his poem “The Mask.”1 For Yeats the inseparability of the person and the mask allows the person to create and maintain his or her own truths and value as he or she simultaneously and 1 I am viewing Yeats’ term “man” generally as “man” or “woman.” 9 successfully participates and functions in society by maintaining society’s values and truths. Victorian conceptions of identity as one-dimensional, stable, and knowable are often profoundly different from Modernism’s conceptions of identity as multiple, chaotic, and unknowable. Victorian society had codifiable systems with strict rules; organization and categorization abounded, providing stability and certainty, and society had clear expectations and roles for people. Modernist society did not. Instead, Modernist society challenged the “old” Victorian systems, rules, and roles. But in certain key respects, differences between Victorian and Modernist conceptions of identity