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© Copyright 2013 Caitlin R. Hansen © Copyright 2013 Caitlin R. Hansen The Infant Phenomenon: Shakespeare, the Mimetic Child, and Nineteenth-Century British Literature Caitlin R. Hansen A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee: Charles LaPorte, Chair Gary Handwerk Joseph Butwin Herbert Blau (honorary) Program authorized to offer degree: English University of Washington Abstract The Infant Phenomenon: Shakespeare, the Mimetic Child, and Nineteenth-Century British Literature Caitlin R. Hansen Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Charles LaPorte English This dissertation defines the figure of the mimetic child and traces its progression and development from the works of Shakespeare through the nineteenth century. The power of the mimetic child depends upon the striking historical parallelism of anxious reactions to the theater and to the figure of the child; both are inherently mimetic, holding a mirror up to nature, but in these imitative processes of representation and creation, both become their own sometimes disturbingly individual entities. This suspicion of the mimetic capacities of the theater and of child’s play is found in Plato, but is most provocatively explored in Shakespeare’s plays, and in their subsequent cultural reverberations. This work therefore, traces the intersections of children, theatricality, and Shakespeare, guided by the figure of the mimetic child, through the nineteenth century—a period anxiously concerned with the purpose, presentation, and propriety of all three. The opening study of Shakespeare’s child characters as mimetically empowered extends into an argument for the parallelism of the developing figures of the child and of Shakespeare himself, as they secure social significance and inspire comparable reactions of both delight and anxiety through their imaginative and mimetic powers. These kinds of responses, and the related division of approaches to juvenile educational practices into encouragement of fancy and didactic promotion of morality, leads to analysis of nineteenth-century adaptations of Shakespeare for children (and, more broadly, “domestic” audiences), and eventually to the generic shift which allows for consideration of Frankenstein’s monster, and other characters from nineteenth-century novels, as defining their narratives through their status as mimetic children and their related links to Shakespeare. The final chapter looks first at the development the mimetic child from literary motif and novelistic incarnation to living breathing body in the study of nineteenth-century child actors, before moving into analyses of theatricality, generic variation, and Shakespearean influence in the Peter Pan narrative. By recognizing and examining the figure of the mimetic child across such a broad temporal and generic range, both within and outside of literary texts, this dissertation argues for the ongoing significance of the interrelations of Shakespeare, children, and (anti)theatricality to understanding the development over the course of the nineteenth century of each of these areas, as well as larger questions of education, parenting, genre, and mimesis. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: THE MIMETIC CHILD 1 CHAPTER ONE: CHILDREN AND SHAKESPEARE 21 SHAKESPEAREAN CHILDREN ......................................................................................................................................... 26 MIMETIC CHILDREN AND THE FIGURE OF SHAKESPEARE! ......................................................................................40 IMAGES ........................................................................................................................................................................... 52 CHAPTER TWO: “YOU TAUGHT ME LANGUAGE”: FAMILY SHAKESPEARES 56 LIE THERE, MY ART: SUBDUING THE MIMETIC CHILD................................................................................................58 MARK ME: PARENTING AS PERFORMANCE................................................................................................................... 71 GATHERING THE FLOWERS OF KNOWLEDGE: FANCY VS. MORALITY IN CHILDREN’S SHAKESPEARES ....................75 FRONTING MATTERS / DESIGNED FOR THE USE OF YOUNG PERSONS ......................................................................... 86 SHE’LD COME AGAIN, AND WITH A GREEDY EAR / DEVOUR UP MY DISCOURSE”: GENDER, STORYTELLING, SHAKESPEARE ................................................................................................................................................................99 DECONTEXTUALIZING SHAKESPEARE’S HEROINES .................................................................................................... 108 CHAPTER THREE: OF MIMICRY AND MONSTERS: THE MIMETIC CHILD AND THE 19TH- CENTURY NOVEL 137 SHELLEY AND SHAKESPEARE ...................................................................................................................................... 151 ALMOST THE SAME BUT NOT QUITE.............................................................................................................................157 ACTORS IN THE BUSY SCENE: THE THEATRICALITY OF VICTOR, HIS CREATION, AND THE NOVEL........................169 THINGS GREAT AND SMALL: SIZE, PERSPECTIVE, AND CHILDHOOD IN FRANKENSTEIN AND BEYOND ...................191 CHAPTER FOUR: THE INFANT PHENOMENON: VICTORIAN PERFORMING CHILDREN AND THE CASE OF PETER PAN 209 AN AERY OF LITTLE EYASES....................................................................................................................................... 213 “BETWIXT-AND-BETWEEN”: PETER PAN’S GENERIC INSTABILITY ...........................................................................227 WHERE PETER PAN LANDED ....................................................................................................................................... 231 PETER PAN FLIES INTO THE ROOM................................................................................................................................238 WE ARE DOING AN ACT..............................................................................................................................................247 IF WE SHADOWS HAVE OFFENDED .............................................................................................................................256 THINK BUT THIS (CONCLUSION) 267 BIBLIOGRAPHY 268 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to the hardworking staff and faculty of the department of English at the University of Washington, including of course my own dissertation committee members, Herb Blau, Gary Handwerk, and Joseph Butwin, with particular thanks to my chair Charles LaPorte, whose approach to academic mentorship perfectly balances intellectual rigor, pragmatism, and good-humored enjoyment of life and literature, and perfectly suits my own approach to scholarship; thanks for your patience with and accommodation of my unfortunately simultaneous tendencies toward perfectionism and procrastination. This work would also be incomplete without thanks to my friends: Justin, for years of support and comfort; Lee, for being there from the beginning; Curtis, for steadfast amiability and being a model grad student; Traynor, and others I’ve always enjoyed chatting with around the office; Lauren and Lennon, for being there and being home; Erik, for the final push; the Adlers, for providing me with inestimable models of academics and parenting and with every kind of support, as well as ongoing entertainment and delight; and Lauren, for strength, humor, company, and fun, and reminding me that I’m here because I love to read (and for sharing your home and family— thanks also to Kevin and L&H). And finally, thanks to my family, without whom I would not have written this: to Dan and Kristian, endless sources of entertainment, joy, inspiration, and pride, and to my parents, who know “how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” for a lifetime of love and encouragement and teaching us that “it’s wanting to know that makes us matter.” For Mom, to making better and for Herb: “Nothing will come of nothing.” 1 Introduction: The Mimetic Child Book II of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile (1762) states that it is in the nature of the child “to want to create, imitate, produce, give signs of power and activity. It will not take two experiences of seeing a garden plowed, sowed, sprouting, and growing vegetables for him to want to garden in his turn” (98). In this passage, Rousseau, who is generally held responsible for the creation of the modern notion of childhood, both isolates and synthesizes the defining characteristics of this study’s governing figure: the mimetic child. The urges highlighted here— juvenile impulses toward creation, imitation, and production, each of these being tied up with innate desire, an active mind and body, and ultimately, with power—are precisely those which coincide in this child figure who appears in literary works from Shakespeare through the twentieth century, and whose trajectory is explored in this dissertation. Generally, Rousseau situates the child in relation to his educator, and to society more broadly, and promotes educational practices which recognize the innate power of the child’s natural mimetic urges and redirect them towards conventional social functionality. These external authoritative presences persist throughout my study, both as characters
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