Architectural Structures in the Victorian Novel
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“ALL MEN ARE BUILDERS”: ARCHITECTURAL STRUCTURES IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL ________________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board ________________________________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ________________________________________________________________________ by Joann D. Griffith May 2015 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Peter Logan, Advisory Chair, English Dr. Talissa Ford, English Dr. Therese Dolan, Art History Dr. Kate Thomas, English, Bryn Mawr Dr. Jill Rappoport, External Member, English, University of Kentucky ABSTRACT Nineteenth-century Britain experienced a confluence of a rapidly urbanizing physical environment, radical changes in the hierarchical relationships in society as well as in the natural sciences, and a nostalgic fascination with antiquities, especially gothic architecture. The realist novels of this period reflect this tension between dramatic social restructuring and a conservative impulse to remember and maintain the world as it has been. This dissertation focuses on the word structure to unpack the implications of these opposing forces, both for our understanding of the social structures that novels reflect, and the narrative structures that novels create. To address these issues, I examine the architectural structures described in Victorian realist novels, drawing parallels with their social and narrative structures. In Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit (1855), George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859), and Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) and Jude the Obscure (1895), descriptions of houses and barns, churches and cathedrals, shops and factories, and courthouses and schools are thematically important because they draw our attention to the novels’ interest in the social structures that underlie the fictional worlds they represent. Buildings provide spaces where members of a community may work towards a shared purpose; they also embody that community’s common knowledge, values, and ideals. These novels take up the thematic concern with structure through their own formal narrative structuring work. Much like an architect builds a physical structure, novels build a narrative structure by carefully arranging patterns, sequences, proportions, and perspectives. An examination of a novel’s description of a building reveals moments of self-reflexive consideration of the narratives it constructs. These are moments that interrogate the building materials of narrative and how their arrangement becomes ii meaningful, that consider what the narrative structure can accommodate and what it excludes, and that invite us to attend to the ways in which the act of structuring a narrative situates it in time, in relation to the past, present, and future. The choices an architect makes about ornaments and materials, the way a building integrates the surrounding environment, and the way its proportions compare to a human scale, all constitute a kind of language; moreover, the way people interact with, in, and around these built spaces suggests it is a dynamic and evolving language. Preeminent Victorian art and social critic John Ruskin’s architectural treatise, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) serves as a master key to interpreting the Victorian understanding of architectural language in the novels under investigation. Because Ruskin’s writings pervaded mid-century artistic discourse, and because he turned his critical gaze on such a wide range of the mid-nineteenth century’s most important aesthetic, social, philosophical, and ethical concerns, his work provides an invaluable bridge between the physical, social, and narrative structures in these novels. Each of Ruskin’s “lamps” represents a specific architectural principle; each chapter in this project pairs a novel with a lamp with thematic and formal resonance. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I feel very fortunate to have landed at Temple University for my doctoral program. The University, the College of Liberal Arts, the Center for the Humanities at Temple, and the English Department have all provided me with the support of fellowships, grants, and assistantships that have enabled me to pursue my studies. I am also grateful for the opportunity to participate in various formal and informal groups of students and faculty, including the Center for the Humanities at Temple Fellows Seminar and the British Writers Works-in-Progress Group; they have provided engaging conversations and insightful feedback. Thank you to Dr. Petra Goedde, Dr. Peter Logan, and Dr. Priya Joshi for their leadership in these groups. I also want to thank the remarkably collegial group of fellow students I have found here at Temple; their friendship and support have made even the most challenging times enjoyable. Above all, I want to thank Beth Seltzer, my fellow Victorianist and kindred spirit, for generously sharing her own work, for reading countless drafts of mine, for always responding with astute comments and questions, and for joining me in regular lunchtime conversation. I’ve been inspired over the years by her talent and perception, and I am ever appreciative of her patience and humor. I owe a debt of gratitude to the faculty of the English Department; I spent many happy hours in stimulating classes taught by gifted professors. I also want to thank those professors who support students through their administrative roles, especially Dr. James Salazar, who served as the director of Graduate English for many of my years in the program and helped me navigate the University’s procedures. Similarly, I’m very grateful for the leadership of Dr. Rachael Groner and Dr. Eli Goldblatt in the First Year Writing Program. Their support helps us all balance the demands of our dual roles as teachers and iv students. I appreciated the opportunity to work with Eli as a teaching mentor for the Practicum—I have learned so much about teaching and learning through his example. The laborious process of writing this dissertation was made easier by the encouragement and guidance of my dissertation committee: Dr. Kate Thomas, Dr. Talissa Ford, Dr. Therese Dolan, and Dr. Peter Logan. I’m also grateful that Dr. Jill Rappoport, who guided me through my M.A. thesis at Villanova, has been able to participate in my dissertation committee as well. Most importantly, I want to thank Peter Logan for serving as my advisor through every stage of my time at Temple. I thank him for believing in me, for always making time for me, and especially for challenging me to become a better thinker and better writer. I never could have made it through this challenge without the love and help of my family. I thank my parents, Joann and Tim Griffith, and the entire Griffith clan, for many years of practical and emotional support. My family has always encouraged me in whatever path I’ve chosen to follow, and always believed in my potential to reach my destination. Most of all I thank my husband, Peter Schmidt, for his inspiring example of creativity and perseverance, for his patience and countless trips to the bookstore, and for helping to open up space in our lives for my pursuits; I am humbled and grateful. Finally, I thank Alex and Nathaniel for always inspiring me to see the world with curiosity and wonder: they always want to know more, so I do too. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION: “ALL MEN ARE BUILDERS” ........................................1 2. WITHIN THE WALLS: FREEDOM AND OBEDIENCE IN LITTLE DORRIT ...................................31 3. CONSTRUCTING NOVEL TIME IN ORDINARY TIME: THE ARCHITECTURAL STRUCTURE OF ELIOT’S REALISM ..............79 4. “AS WE LAY STONE ON STONE”: MEDIATING THE PAST IN THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE .............125 5. “MODERN THOUGHT… IN SUCH DECREPIT AND SUPERCEDED CHAMBERS”: DISINTEGRATING STRUCTURES IN JUDE THE OBSCURE ..................................................................................178 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................221 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................223 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: “ALL MEN ARE BUILDERS” Thomas Hardy’s novel Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) famously depicts the Everdene barn where farmers and farm hands gather to shear their flock of sheep. The description emphasizes that this small community has assembled for a purpose that is common, not just to these particular individuals in this barn, but also to the generations who have come before them: …the old barn embodied practices which had suffered no mutilation at the hands of time. Here at least the spirit of the ancient builders was at one with the spirit of the modern beholder. Standing before this abraded pile, the eye regarded its present usage, the mind dwelt upon its past history, with a satisfied sense of functional continuity throughout—a feeling almost of gratitude, and quite of pride, at the permanence of the idea which had heaped it up…. The lanceolate windows, the time-eaten archstones and chamfers, the orientation of the axis, the misty chestnut work of the rafters, referred to no exploded fortifying