Literature, Religion, and Postsecular Studies Lori Branch, Series Editor for Ori at Ten Years
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Literature, Religion, and Postsecular Studies Lori Branch, Series Editor For Ori at ten years אם אין אני לי מי לי וכשאני לעצמי מה אני ואם לא עכשו אימתי If I am not for myself, who is for me? And when I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, when? —Pirkei Avot 1:14 Jerusalem Tishrei 5773 September 2012 Victorian Sacrifice Ethics and Economics in Mid-Century Novels p ILANA M. BLUMBERG The Ohio State University Press Columbus Copyright © 2013 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blumberg, Ilana M., 1970– Victorian sacrifice : ethics and economics in mid-century novels / Ilana M. Blumberg. p. cm. — (Literature, religion, and postsecular studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-1226-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8142-1226-3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-9328-7 (cd) 1. English literature—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Religion and literature— Great Britain—History—19th century. 3. Self-sacrifice in literature. 4. Altruism in litera- ture. 5. Ethics in literature. 6. Economics in literature. I. Title. II. Series: Literature, religion, and postsecular studies. PR468.R44B58 2013 823'.809382—dc23 2013005436 Cover design by Janna Thompson-Chordas Cover image “The Visible Madonna” by Frederic Leighton, from Romola by George Eliot Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Sabon Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 The Heir of Redclyffe and the Heiress: Men, Women, and Christian Self-Sacrifice 32 CHAPTER 2 Suicide, Sin, and Self-Sacrifice inA Tale of Two Cities 62 CHAPTER 3 “Love Yourself as Your Neighbor”: Guilt and the Ethics of Personal Benefit inAdam Bede 99 CHAPTER 4 “Unnatural Self-Sacrifice”: Trollope’s Ethic of Mutual Benefit 139 CHAPTER 5 Collins’ Writerly Sacrifice 173 CONCLUSION Robert Elsmere: The “True, Best Self” and the Ideal of Mutual Service 207 Works Cited 227 Index 240 ACKnowleDGMENTS t is a pleasure to acknowledge those who have encouraged me and I improved this work. First, I am grateful to an exemplary scholar and writer, Linda Dowling. Her uncommon standard of excellence and honesty of evaluation have been great gifts. Though she has borne no insti- tutional link to my work since teaching me as a visiting faculty member at the start of my graduate education, she has assisted me at each turn of my scholarly career, offering me the generosity I associate with the Victorian conviction that wisdom is a collective property increased from generation to generation. I am indebted to my dissertation advisors at the University of Pennsyl- vania, Nina Auerbach, Erin O’Connor, and Peter Stallybrass, who guided me through my initial consideration of economics and narrative. In my first teaching position at the University of Michigan, Martha Vicinus and Jonathan Freedman responded helpfully to evolving formulations of this study; I am also grateful to the U of M Nineteenth-Century Forum and the First Draft Group where I shared versions of my chapter on Collins. John Kucich, always a model of scholarship for me, has shown himself over the years to be a sensitive and astute reader and advisor. Joe Bristow helped see one of my first essays into print, making the world of scholarly publi- cation seem a navigable and pleasant place to be. His conviction that my subject was relevant was all-important. Rosemarie Bodenheimer and Elsie Michie generously read sections of this manuscript and improved them • vii • viii Acknowledgments with their questions and suggestions. Rachel Ablow and Thomas Dixon participated with me at a MLA panel on Victorian Altruism and Egoism, and their work has continued to be highly interesting to me. I am very appreciative that Jan-Melissa Schramm introduced herself to me transat- lantically, in order to exchange work on our intersecting topics. I would be remiss not to acknowledge some of my professors at Bar- nard College from 1989–1993, who taught me about the nineteenth century, introduced me to literary criticism and theory, and opened the possibilities for interdisciplinary study: Mary Gordon, the late Barbara Stoler Miller, Celeste Schenck, Timea Szell, Mark Carnes, and Nancy Ste- pan. I am more grateful than I can possibly say to these teachers and to Barnard College, where I learned a usable feminism and experienced the ethical intelligence that can be fostered in the best of classrooms. I strive to produce such results for my students. I am fortunate to teach now at James Madison College, Michigan State University, under the leadership of Dean Sherman Garnett, who was quick to grant me leave time to work on this book and support to attend con- ferences that improved it. As a scholar of humanities, I teach among peo- ple who work in such diverse fields as forestry and fisheries, international relations, comparative politics, and constitutional democracy; my students come out of their classrooms into mine. The interdisciplinarity I encounter daily challenges me to speak to a wide audience of thinking people and I hope this book has risen to the high level of conversation and commitment I encounter in my workplace. I am particularly grateful to Allison Berg, Lisa Cook, Ross Emmett, Eric Petrie, Colleen Tremonte, and Ken Waltzer, as well as the wonderfully helpful college staff. I would like to acknowledge the American Association of University Women. The Association supported me with a postdoctoral fellowship that allowed me to concentrate on this book without the necessity of teaching at the same time. I am also grateful to the Jewish Book Council and the Sami Rohr Prize community. While this book is not a Jewish book per se, any book I write has the benefits of their strong support. I have been gifted with wonderful colleagues and friends, near and far, who have helped in various and vital ways, coming at my subject with what feels like an overwhelming force of super-intelligence! Thank you particularly to Zarena Aslami, Ariela Freedman, Sheila Jelen, John Parker, and Jill Rapoport. Another dear friend, Lori Henderson, enabled me to finish this book by taking care of our youngest child, Tzipora, with loving enthusiasm and endless resourcefulness. Acknowledgments ix Sandy Crooms has been a lovely and smart editor and I appreciate the efforts of her entire staff at The Ohio State University Press. My thanks also goes to the journals Studies in the Novel, Victorian Lit- erature and Culture, and Nineteenth-Century Literature, where portions of chapters 3, 4, and 5 were previously published. Finally, I want to thank my parents, Tzivia Garfinkel and Paul Blumberg, as well as my siblings, Jonathan and Naomi, their spouses, Rayli and Joey, and my terrific nieces and nephews: Jessica, Emily, Will, Alyssa, and Simon. I am grateful to the whole of my extended family for their support. My three children, Priya, Shai, and Tzipora, are the delights of my life. With them, the challenge of balancing the claims of the self and others somehow feels not only manageable, but a blessing. This book is for Ori who understands that the heart of ethics is not only about the how of action, but the when, which is always now. I am grateful to be in the present with him. INTRODUCTION any things are difficult and dark to me—but I see one thing “M quite clearly—that I must not, cannot seek my own happiness by sacrificing others” (Mill on the Floss 571). With these words, Maggie Tulliver, the heroine of George Eliot’s 1860 novel, Mill on the Floss, steadies herself at a moment of overmastering desire. Confronted with the chance to escape the narrow boundaries of her life with a passionate lover, Maggie nonetheless chooses to turn back because pursuing her own happiness will surely hurt others. As she reaches for the certainty of the medieval Catholic monk, Thomas à Kempis, whose Imitation of Christ first taught her to think beyond her own pleasures and sorrows, Maggie tells her lover, “There are things we must renounce in life,” and proceeds to do so, at lasting cost to herself and others (571). Maggie Tulliver can imagine no ethical alternative to self-sacrifice. For Maggie’s creator and other major mid-nineteenth-century novel- ists, however, the Victorian imperative of self-sacrifice posed a challenge to the ethical imagination. They sensed in conventional notions of sacrifice an exhaustion and moral inefficacy that frequently bred positive harm. Yet what alternative could there be to a self-denial sanctioned both by ancient Christian tradition and by the latest impulses of evangelical Protestantism? This study will argue that mid-century novelists sought to commandeer the cultural and religious potency of the Christian ideal of self-sacrifice in order to negotiate a transition from the conventionally religious English • 1 • 2 Introduction past to a secularizing but still faithful modernity.1 In a context shaped by the competing forces of a residual moral demand for selflessness and an emerging laissez-faire economic order understood by many Victorians to enshrine self-interest and individual profit, major novelists questioned and transformed the sacrificial ideal, seeking a new model for the relation between self and other that could stand the double test of moral rectitude and economic realism. In place of painful, solitary self-sacrifice in service of another’s good, these writers narrated an ethical realism suggesting that virtuous action could serve the collective benefit of all parties involved.