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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School SPACES OF PLAY: INVENTING THE MODERN LEISURE SPACE IN BRITISH FICTION AND CULTURE, 1860-1960 A Dissertation in English by Shawna Ross © 2011 Shawna Ross Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August, 2011 The dissertation of Shawna Ross was reviewed and approved∗ by the following: Janet Lyon Associate Professor of English, Women's Studies, & Science, Technology, and Society Dissertation Advisor, Chair of Committee Jeffrey Nealon Liberal Arts Research Professor of English Mark Morrisson Interim Head Professor of English and Science, Technology, and Society Jonathan Eburne Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and English ∗Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. iii Abstract This dissertation seeks to establish the very real and important relationship between British modernist literature and the emergence of the modern leisure space after 1867. At the core of this dissertation is that claim that as leisure spaces spatially, socially, and economically modernized —as the inn became the hotel, the coast became the seaside resort, the natural spring became the spa, and the sailing ship became the luxury liner—they territorialized (both literally and figuratively) the concept of leisure in a way that is both historically unique and significant for the study of literary modernism. In studying this relationship, this dissertation draws from leisure studies, an umbrella term for the study of leisure with roots in late nineteenth-century industrial geography. Literary criticism has largely abstained from these interdisciplinary conversations about leisure, and one of the goals of this dissertation is to disrupt this unproductive silence. Conversely, while a few leisure scholars of the past two decades have identified leisure and its cultural institutions as specifically modern constructions, scholars of literature, and scholars of modernism in particular, have much to contribute to leisure studies in the way of teasing out this fundamental yet neglected relationship between leisure and modernity. In addition to foregrounding the mutual interdependence between scholarly discourses of modernist literature and of leisure studies, this project offers an account of nineteenth- and twentieth-century non-fiction written about the emergence of leisure as a central field of discursive, economic, and social investment in Great Britain. I juxtapose this non-fiction with fiction by James and Forster to emphasize modernist literature’s tendency to play self-reflexively with philosophical and political conversations about leisure. To investigate modernist literary representations of leisure, I focus on two of the chief leisure spaces in modern fiction: the hotel and the ocean liner. One chapter discusses the emergence of the modern hotel in the nineteenth century by way of works by Dickens, Chesterton, and Trollope, while the following chapter presents a survey of modernist hotel fiction, including works by Mansfield, Bennett, Lewis, and Bowen. Finally, two chapters on the cruise ship include a cultural studies style analysis of the ocean liner’s use as a representative figure for modernity, and readings of works by Waugh and Sackville-West situate modernist leisure fiction firmly within contemporary arguments about modernism’s relationship to transnational flows, empire, and mass media technologies. iv Table of Contents List of Figures vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction Modernism at Play 1 Chapter 1 Leisure Theory, Literary Criticism, and Modernist Studies 18 An Introduction to Leisure Studies ........................................................................20 The Economic Critique of Leisure .........................................................................30 Chris Rojek as a Theorist of Modernism ...............................................................47 Modernism as Leisure Theory: Marx, Adorno, and the Dialectic of Work and Play ................................................................................................................................ 66 Chapter 2 From The Leisure Class to Leisure Space: Early Modernism and the Case for Universal Leisure 75 Modern Philosophies of Labor and Leisure: Veblen, Weber, Russell, Pound ........77 Leisure Enters Early Modernism: Vernon Lee and Oscar Wilde ...........................90 High Modernist Aesthetics as Leisure: A Short Introduction ..............................102 Leisurely Authorship: Henry James Writing The Portrait of a Lady ...................109 Leisure and The Production of Eroticism in Daisy Miller ...................................118 Daisy Miller's Two Spaces of Leisure.................................................................. 135 Chapter 3 “Honor the tourist:” Possibilities for Modern Leisure in Edwardian Travel Fiction 139 The Territory Is Not the Baedeker: Vernon Lee's Truce with Mass Tourism .......144 From Travel to Etiquette: The Discursive Production of Leisure in A Room with a View .....................................................................................................................153 v “Unmerciful to the British tourist:” The Modernist Rhetoric of Anti-tourism ....163 Pension Joys Are Not “Flimsy Things:” Forster's Spatialization of Leisure .......172 Leisure as Temporal and Moral Style in The Ambassadors .................................179 Dog-Tired: Waymarsh's Therapeutic Tourism and Strether's Holiday Alibi ........195 Miss Gostrey's Vacation Machine: Tourism and the Mechanization of Freedom 201 Strether's Productive Conscience .........................................................................205 Strether Inside the Painting: Aesthetics as Leisure ..............................................213 Chapter 4 The Hospitality Machine: The American Hotel Model and the Creation of a British Discourse, 1790-1900 227 Part One: The Limits of the Hotel as a Symbol or Microcosm of Modernity .....230 Part Two: The Modernization of Transient Lodgings, 1790-1910 .......................247 Part Three: Strangers in the Lobby: Trollope, Dickens, Chesterton, and the Victorian Distrust of Hotels .................................................................................264 Chapter 5 Modernism at the Grand Hotel: A Survey 288 Modern Hospitality Crosses the Atlantic .............................................................293 The Hotel as Capitalist Creation Myth: English Hours and The Grand Babylon Hotel .....................................................................................................................315 (Not Quite) Universal Hospitality .......................................................................327 Patriot Games: Bowen and Lewis........................................................................ 333 A Feminist Argument Against the Paying Guest: Rhys and Mansfield ...............344 The Philosophic Critique: Woolf and Lukacs ......................................................350 The Rhetorical Fertility of the Modern Hotel: Orwell, Simenon, and “Fancy Milling” ................................................................................................................355 The German Critique: Baum and Kracauer .........................................................367 The Hotelier as Modernist: Imperial Palace .........................................................376 The Hotel Apprenticeship: In a German Pension .................................................389 vi Chapter 6 The Perils of Seagoing Comfort: Joseph Conrad, Evelyn Waugh, and the Metaliner Sublime 404 The Tonnage of Modernity ..................................................................................404 The Queen Mary’s Metaliner Sublime .................................................................417 Evelyn Waugh and the Stella Polaris ...................................................................440 Old Empire, New Media: Hallucinating Past and Future on the Wauvian Ship ..446 “Behaving Like a Film Star:” The Narrativity of Liner Space ............................459 Brideshead, Literary Theory, and the Ship as Hybrid Actor ................................480 Chapter 7 The Uses to Which a Ship is Put: Le Corbusier, Vita Sackville-West, and Transnational Modernism 486 The Supposedly Fun Thing He Did Do Again .....................................................488 Scaling Modernity: Visualizing the Ocean Liner .................................................501 Cruising Transnational Flows: Vita Sackville-West ............................................526 Romance on the High Seas ..................................................................................538 The “Schizophrenic Rift:” Labor and Economics on a World Cruise ..................544 Touring the Empire: Rewriting Heart of Darkness ..............................................557 Conclusion Modern Leisure, Postmodern Spectacle 569 Works Cited 592 vii List of Figures 6.1 The Future Ocean Liner .............................................................................................415 6.2 The Queen Mary Dining Room Map .........................................................................423 6.3 Aluminum Friezes (Maurice Lambert) ......................................................................426 6.4 Cunard Menu Cover I ................................................................................................427 6.5 Queen MaryWood Carving (Bainbridge Copnall) .....................................................428