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19 -Century Women Poets and the Dramatic Monologue

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19 -Century Women Poets and the Dramatic Monologue “IMPOSSIBLE SPEECH”: 19TH-CENTURY WOMEN POETS AND THE DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE by Helen Luu A thesis submitted to the Department of English in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada June 2008 Copyright © Helen Luu, 2008 ISBN: 978-0-494-44330-9 Abstract This study seeks to redress the continued exclusion of women poets from the theorization of the dramatic monologue. I argue that an unacknowledged consensus on the definition of the dramatic monologue exists, in spite of the oft-proclaimed absence of one, and that it is the failure to recognize this consensus which has in part debarred women poets from the theorization of the form. In particular, the failure to acknowledge this consensus has led recent feminist critics attempting to “rethink” the dramatic monologue, such as Cynthia Scheinberg and Glennis Byron, to reinscribe the very model they are attempting to rewrite by admitting into their analysis only those poems which already conform to the existing model. In consequence, these critics inadvertently repeat the exclusion they are attempting to redress by reinscribing a model which is predicated—as both Scheinberg and Byron acknowledge—on the exclusion of women poets. In order to end this cycle of exclusion, my project begins from a different beginning, with Hemans instead of Browning, and traces her innovations and influence across the dramatic monologues of two key dramatic monologists of the 19th-century, Augusta Webster and Amy Levy. In the hands of all three women poets, the dramatic monologue develops into a form which calls into question not only the nature of the self, as is characteristic of Browning’s model, but more crucially, the possibility of the subject. Their poems persistently dramatize what Judith Butler calls “impossible speech”—speech that is not recognized as the speech of a subject—and thereby challenges the model of authoritative speaking which underpins both men’s dramatic monologues and the prevailing theory of women’s as a clutch for linguistic freedom, power and authority. This project therefore has dual aims: to complicate our current conception of the dramatic monologue by placing the women’s dramatic monologues in conversation with the larger tradition of the form; and to complicate our understanding of 19th-century women poets’ conception and constructions of female subjectivity by re-theorizing their poetic strategies in the development of the dramatic monologue. ii Acknowledgements I am grateful for the funding that supported this project provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and Queen’s University. In particular, the Dean’s Travel Grant for Doctoral Field Research from Queen’s made possible my research at the National Library of Scotland, to whom I am grateful for granting permission to quote from Felicia Hemans’s letters. I am especially grateful to my advisors, Maggie Berg and Catherine Harland, for being both critical and considerate in all their responses to my work and for their encouragement at every stage of its development. To Maggie, especially, I am deeply indebted for being a model supervisor and teacher whom I strive to emulate in my own professional life. I wish to thank Nanora Sweet for taking interest in this project at an early stage and for her support at critical stages of its development. I am grateful to my thesis examiners, Jill Scott and Robert Morrison, for their insightful and stimulating contributions at the defense. This project owes a further debt to Rosemary Jolly, who introduced me to Butler’s notion of “impossible speech” many years ago and who has inspired me in many ways as a critic and scholar. Kathy Goodfriend deserves special thanks for her invaluable support throughout my degree. My deepest thanks, however, go to those furthest removed from the project: first, to my parents, who may not understand the nature of the doctoral degree, but who modeled for me the strength and determination required to survive it; second, to my “sibstas,” Lynn Algra, Laura Luu, Nicole Oliveros, Ann Rumsby, and Tim Luu, whose own successes and feats of perseverance both humbled and inspired me; most importantly, to Scott Cashol, the only one who knows what blood, sweat, and pride went into this project. At my most challenging times, you never questioned this endeavor or made any demands about it. You simply trusted me. For that—for your boundless patience and unwavering support—I continue to be grateful. iii Table of Contents Abstract…. ….................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................iii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................1 Chapter 2 Re/membering Ophelia: The Dilemma of Gender and Genre...................................................5 I. The Dilemma of Genre..............................................................................................11 II. Unmasking the Dramatic Monologue .......................................................................19 III. The Dilemma of Gender............................................................................................25 Conclusion: Rewriting History, Re/membering Ophelia..................................................32 Chapter 3 Fantasies of Woman: Subjectivity, Speaking and Survival in Felicia Hemans’s Dramatic Monologues ...................................................................................................................................35 I. Fantasies of Subjectivity ...........................................................................................38 II. Spectacles of Woman................................................................................................48 III. Fantasies of Femininity .............................................................................................59 IV. Fantasies of the Self ..................................................................................................64 V. Fantasies of Speech ...................................................................................................81 VI. Fantasies of Survival .................................................................................................87 Conclusion: Fantasies of Agency......................................................................................98 Chapter 4 Augusta Webster’s Ambiguous Auditors: Rewriting Browning, Reprising Hemans..........100 I. Rewriting Browning................................................................................................107 II. Reprising Hemans ...................................................................................................120 III. Rereading Webster ..................................................................................................130 Chapter 5 Speaking Impossibility: Amy Levy’s Dramatic Monologues.................................................144 I. Speaking Like Browning.........................................................................................144 II. Speaking Like Women Speaking Like Men............................................................157 III. Speaking Impossibility............................................................................................164 Conclusions and Further Questions: The Question of Difference.........................................171 Works Cited................................................................................................................................178 iv Chapter 1: Introduction In 1993, Isobel Armstrong challenged critics to rethink the traditional narrative of the dramatic monologue, which begins with Robert Browning (1812-1889) and Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), by provocatively asserting: “it was the women poets who ‘invented’ the dramatic monologue” (326). The response was astonishing. In the ensuing fifteen years, only two critics take up the challenge: Cynthia Scheinberg, in her essay, “Recasting ‘Sympathy and Judgment’: Amy Levy, Women Poets, and the Victorian Dramatic Monologue” (1997), and Glennis Byron, in “Rethinking the Dramatic Monologue: Victorian Women Poets and Social Critique” (2003). Rather than rethinking the traditional narrative of the dramatic monologue, however, both critics reinscribe it, either by skirting the question or by denying the claim. While Scheinberg refuses “to claim generic ‘invention’ for either sex” (“Recasting” 187), Byron concludes that “women poets did not invent the form,” though “they did play a primary role in establishing and refining that line of development which has proven most enduring: the use of the monologue for the purposes of social critique” (“Rethinking” 84). This study investigates this critical reluctance to re-theorize fully the dramatic monologue through women poets, asking: what is at stake in maintaining the traditional narrative of the dramatic monologue’s development? More precisely: what is at risk for women poets when we do so? In chapter two, I examine the history of women poets in the dramatic monologue’s theorization in order to uncover the barriers enforcing their continued exclusion. While the dramatic monologue’s seeming openness suggests the absence of any such barriers,
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