Narrative Intimacy: the Confidante in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel a Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Gradua

Narrative Intimacy: The Confidante in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Department of English John Plotz, Advisor In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy by Abigail Arnold May 2020 This dissertation, directed and approved by Abigail Arnold’s Committee, has been accepted and approved by the Faculty of Brandeis University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of: DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Eric Chasalow, Dean Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Committee: John Plotz, English Ulka Anjaria, English Aeron Hunt, English, Boston College Copyright by Abigail Arnold 2020 Acknowledgments Just as the heroine needs the confidante to help her tell her story, I needed many other people to help me complete this dissertation. Firstly, I want to extend my thanks to my committee. John Plotz, my advisor and chair, guided me through all stages of this project, from developing the idea to preparing for the defense. His ideas for texts and scholars to explore helped me to develop my understanding of this rich field and to incorporate new points of view into my work; his encouragement to present and participate in scholarly events sparked my intellectual development; his questions and suggestions pushed me to take my thoughts further, to explore new concepts, and to make smaller points into something greater. Ulka Anjaria helped me to expand on parts of my project that were underdeveloped and was instrumental in guiding me to articulate and express the larger stakes of this dissertation. Her advice and aid as Director of Graduate Studies was also a great help to me in navigating my experience at Brandeis and my plans for the future, as was her guidance in teaching. Aeron Hunt’s generous work as my third reader helped me to develop and improve my analysis. She also pointed me towards new resources and was a great person with whom to discuss Victorian literature. Thank you to all of my committee for helping me make this project what it is. Other Brandeis faculty and staff also helped me towards the development of this project. Lisa Pannella and Leah Steele always had answers to my questions and made this entire process a lot less overwhelming. They were also extremely helpful in figuring out the logistics for what turned out to be a dissertation defense in the time of coronavirus. Laura Quinney, as a member of my field exam committee, greatly helped me to improve my understanding of nineteenth-century poetry and its connections to other literary genres; she was always helpful in talking me through iv new ideas. Sue Lanser, whose graduate seminar I took in my first semester at Brandeis, influenced the direction of my studies immeasurably; she has always provided help and resources, guided me towards exploring women’s intimacies, and gave me the opportunity to sit down and read Clarissa. My Brandeis peers and colleagues have been wonderful resources and friends over the course of my time in this program. Paige Eggebrecht, my fellow nineteenth-century scholar, recommended texts, read my writing, and helped me prepare for my field exam. My PhD cohort, consisting of Diana Filar, Seolji Han, Pyunghwa Lee, and Reza Pourmikail, were wonderful people with whom to share this experience. I have enjoyed many hours talking with all of them about a wide range of topics, including but not limited to coursework, scholarship, favorite books, future plans, time-wasting television suggestions, seafaring tales, and the number of l’s in life. They have made my graduate school experience an enjoyable and memorable one. Finally, I would like to thank my family, who have always supported me through my scholarly endeavors. My extended family has cheered me on the whole way. My parents, Ann Carol Grossman and Geoffrey Arnold, have encouraged me in pursuing this degree and listened to me talking through my ideas, struggles, and triumphs. They have always been there for me when things were challenging and celebrated with me when things were good. I truly could not have completed this dissertation without them. v ABSTRACT Narrative Intimacy: The Confidante in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel A dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts By Abigail Arnold “Narrative Intimacy” argues that the figure of the confidante plays a major role in the nineteenth-century British novel through her foregrounding of two factors: the vital importance of female intimacy and the interpersonal development of narrative. Although the confidante is usually a socially marginalized figure—a woman of a lower social class, frequently disabled, who participates in the marriage plots of others rather than her own—she takes a central place in the form of the novel’s narrative through her reception of others’ confidences, which she in turn helps to convey to the reader. Through readings of novels including Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Harriet Martineau’s Deerbrook, Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, Amy Levy’s The Romance of a Shop, and George Paston’s A Writer of Books, I show how the confidante’s relationship to her confiding friend troubles the centrality of the heterosexual marriage plot. Instead, these novels emphasize women’s intimacies with each other and thus queer the marriage plot, leading to such conclusions as a non-traditional found family (as in Bleak House) or a woman finding refuge with a female friend after the collapse of her marriage (as in A Writer of Books). Furthermore, the confidante serves to facilitate the telling of the novel’s story. Her presence allows other characters to express their thoughts, feelings, and secrets, which the reader then receives access to, usually through the confidante’s own perspective or narration. vi This study builds on scholarship on both nineteenth-century women’s relationships and narrative theory in order to illustrate how the two combine: how the novel’s narrative is built on the passing along of confidences between intimates and thus foregrounds that intimacy. The conclusion of the confidante plot varies from text to text and develops over time. In Mansfield Park and Deerbrook, while the form of the novel emphasizes female intimacy, its ending returns to the heterosexual marriage plot; Bleak House, by contrast, presents a continuum of relationships in which queer female intimacy and heterosexual marriage exist in non-hierarchical harmony. The Romance of a Shop and A Writer of Books portray female intimacies developed in the world of work, and their heroines must choose between this realm and the domestic space. While these conclusions present alternate fates for the confidante, I argue that she remains central to the reader’s understanding, both for her foregrounding of alternate queer intimacies and her shaping of the novelistic form. vii Table of Contents Introduction The Development of Confidences .................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One The Margin Plot: Narrative Positioning and Disability in Mansfield Park and Deerbrook ......... 26 Chapter Two The Confidante’s Self-Expression in Bleak House ....................................................................... 80 Chapter Three Confidantes at Work in The Romance of a Shop and A Writer of Books ................................... 130 Conclusion Emotional Labor and Later Confidantes ..................................................................................... 179 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 192 viii Introduction The Development of Confidences Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady (1747-1748), one of the earliest English novels, is likely best known for its fraught pairing between the virtuous heroine Clarissa and the wicked Lovelace. Their battle between goodness and sin occupies much of the text, culminating in the deaths of both. While their interactions are central to the novel’s content, another relationship governs its form: that between Clarissa and her best friend, Anna Howe. Through the device of the novel’s epistolary form, Clarissa constantly confides in Anna about what is happening to her; their separation and exchange of letters allows the story to unfold.1 Thus, in this formative early novel, Anna Howe, the confidante, takes a central position. As confidante, she has an important place in both the novel’s story and its form, prefiguring the many later confidantes who appear in the novels of the nineteenth century. The intimacy between the two women both helps sustain Clarissa through her trials and serves to shape Clarissa’s progress, affecting our understanding of the narrative’s movement, the players in its marriage plot, and its expectations of femininity. The confidences between the two friends drive the novel’s narrative. Readers are able to know what happens to Clarissa because Anna exists: she provides a way for Clarissa to express not only what happens to her but how she feels about it. Anna performs vital work, not only by reading Clarissa’s letters, but by providing counsel in her responses; even when Clarissa does not listen to Anna, the letters suggest possible alternate paths 1 Mary A. Favret examines the traditional construction of epistolary forms as feminine and private, arguing that they also

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