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Criminal Masculinities and the Newgate Novel

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Criminal Masculinities and the Newgate Novel Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 3-28-2019 11:00 AM Criminal Masculinities and the Newgate Novel Taylor R. Richardson The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Bruhm, Steven The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Taylor R. Richardson 2019 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Richardson, Taylor R., "Criminal Masculinities and the Newgate Novel" (2019). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 6076. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/6076 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract This dissertation builds upon the seminal work of Keith Hollingsworth in his The Newgate Novel, 1830-1847 and expands analysis of the contentious Victorian subgenre into the realm of studies in masculinities. Outside of critical opinion that the novels were defined by the reactionary and conservative reception of Victorian reviewers who saw the novels as morally outrageous and socially dangerous, the genre, as this dissertation argues, was markedly concerned with specifically male readerships. Victorian critics were concerned about the effects reading criminal literature had on boys becoming men, and, accordingly, this dissertation argues that the reformative political and social climate of the 1830s and 40s was also a great period of examination and literary reflection upon the growth of the boy into the man. This dissertation considers the major canon of Newgate novels identified by Hollingsworth and includes chapters on William Godwin’s Caleb Williams and Fleetwood, Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Paul Clifford and Eugene Aram, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and Barnaby Rudge, and William Harrison Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard. The dissertation examines how and why each of these texts is concerned with depicting, in often meticulous detail, the growth of a young male protagonist into manhood in a society that demands or necessitates his transformation into criminal. As masculinities and crime are conflated, masculinities are often essentially criminal, and criminalities often masculine. The dissertation engages with James Eli Adams’ and John Tosh’s writings on Victorian masculinities, ultimately discovering that the various masculinities depicted in Newgate novels were against established programs of self-discipline and “gentlemanliness”, instead favouring zones of literal and figurative illegality, alternative gender expression, queerness and excarceration. The novels dramatise criminal dress, male bodies, homosocial bands/bonds and societies, the penal spectacle, father-son relationships, and ii jailbreaking, demonstrating a need for the expression of masculinities that transcend programs of discipline and heteronormativity into the often fraught and dangerous realms of criminal- masculine excarceral jouissance, as feats of excarcerality become expressions of alternative masculinities. Keywords Newgate novel, masculinities, gender, criminology, Victorian novel, Victorian masculinities, queer theory, excarceration, William Godwin, Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, William Harrison Ainsworth iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank Steven Bruhm, whose kindness, patience, and expertise was felt throughout the entire process of writing. I would also like to thank Matthew Rowlinson for his instrumental help in smoothing out writing and theoretical glitches, and for a lovely course that inspired my forays into Victorianism. Thanks to Jan Plug for early bibliographical guidance, and to Mary Helen McMurran, whose professionalism, teaching methods, and approach to academia continue to inspire me today. And thanks to Leanne Trask—forever making the process easier— and the wonderful faculty, staff and students at Western University. This project would not have been possible without the support, of all kinds, of my loved ones. Thank you. iv Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgments iv Table of Contents v Introduction: “A rope so charming a zone” 1 Chapter 1: Proto-Newgate Enquiries in Masculinities: Godwin’s Caleb Williams and Fleetwood 31 Chapter 2: Towards Criminal-Masculine Glamour: Bulwer’s Paul Clifford and Eugene Aram 85 Chapter 3: Surrogacy, Hunger, and the Imperiled Boy: Dickens’ Oliver Twist 147 Chapter 4: Escapes into the Sign: Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard 181 Chapter 5: Male Essence and the Firing of the Prison Walls: Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge 228 Coda: Considering Foucault and Considering the Death Drive 286 Bibliography 298 Curriculum Vitae 306 v 1 Introduction “A rope so charming a zone” Highwaymen: the very term implies transit. It conjures moonlit images of movement on open roads and the criminal danger inherent in travel. It paints images, more specifically and fancifully speaking, of moustachioed bandits armed to the teeth, disguised thugs and gangs of men halting carriages and stealing cargo, while the passengers inside shriek or are forced into submission by a deftly-handled pistol. The idea of the highwayman is rife with transition and transgression. Criminal men, disguised by darkness of night or alias, or merely riding boldly through the brush on horseback by light of day to threaten and steal, or even murder, could be riding the great variable unknowns of transit. And the backways and alleys, hideaways and undergrounds of the urban labyrinth— when those are revealed to be just as treacherous and fraught as the highway, there is no place of transit safe for the citizen, no path or byway safe from the shadow of the thug or the bandit. Transit into urban shadow or country lane is personal and legal risk, the possibility of theft and harm. These criminal men haunt the shadow and the lane, passing more deftly and more capably than subjects without crime, subjects who remain outside the transgression—and the pure capability and knowledge of transition on which criminality is founded. The highwayman, or the simple thug, knows these shadows and lanes, the maps to the urban labyrinth and the certain danger of the twilit countryside, better than any other, and these are the ideas that underlie the highwayman, the robber, the fence, the bravo and the murderer. Because there are so many subsets and terminologies legal, literary, gendered and cultural like the above into which “the criminal” can expand, the idea of the highwayman, or really the criminal in transit, also relies on a fracturing and multiplication of ideas about men. Victorian 2 fictional depictions of the specifically male criminal rely on an array of ideas and conceptualisations of which the highwayman is only one example. The highwayman can be dashing and handsome, an object of readerly and female heteronormative desire whose well- dressed exploits are conceived as romantic and (not unproblematically) heroic. The highwayman can also be a ruthless plunderer and murderer interested only in financial gain. There are thick- necked, bullish drunkards, singing flash ditties at the village tavern while swains, prostitutes and readers delight in the hearing and the jovial enjoyability of the picaro. There are errant apprentices whose neglect of their ordained craft destines them for no use whatsoever but to hang at the scaffold. There are orphan boys forced into gangs for survival. These orphans may be victims of an unbalanced society and economy and the sightless legal system that creates and punishes them, or they may be deliciously handy at their profession, little thugs-in-training who delight in the chase and the conquest of theft. Criminals—shockingly—can be gentlemen masquerading in high society who retire from the ball to their den where they are hailed by their rambunctious low-born comrades. There are noble sons cut off by perversions of inheritance by evil uncles and half-brothers, cast into a life of misery and crime from which they will escape, blazingly, at the behest of the perfectly-timed narrative, though they will have never lost that innate nobility and gentlemanliness of comportment and action all through their criminal life. The criminal-masculinity argues that “gentlemanly” comportment can facilitate both success in the criminal band and the revelation of high-class birth and wealth, two otherwise contradictory class- and gender-based currents. Early Victorian typologies of criminal men rely on transgression and transition in social roles, professional tasks and personal identities ascribed to men and the understanding of masculinities in the context of the era. The orphan boy ensnared by gang activity is in transition 3 to criminal man. The highwayman, really the lost highborn son cut off from rightful inheritance, is in transition to the revelation of his true high-born identity. The apprentice with the certain talent for crime is on his way to Newgate and death at the noose. The criminal is incarcerated and excarcerated, imprisoned or escaping. His freedoms and identities are constantly in flux. These fictional criminal typologies, and the texts in which they circulate, rely on narrativisations of male biography, inheritance, profession and identity. Cultural, literary and theoretical ideas about Victorian masculinities reveal themselves in
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