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Rebels, Wanderers, and Castaways: Characterizing Small Social Groups

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Rebels, Wanderers, and Castaways: Characterizing Small Social Groups Rebels, Wanderers, and Castaways: Characterizing Small Social Groups in the Literature of Empire, 1849-1914 by Katherine Magyarody A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements of the for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Katherine Magyarody, 2016 Rebels, Wanderers, and Castaways: Characterizing Small Social Groups in the Literature of Empire, 1849-1914 Katherine Magyarody Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto 2016 Abstract This project uses pivotal texts belonging to several nineteenth-century literary subgenres—adventure fiction, school stories, the historical novel and spy fiction—to argue that literary representations of small social circles create distinct narrative shapes and modes of characterization. The small groups that shape these texts generate an ambivalent dynamism of small circles that offers modes of resisting, renegotiating or extending models of authority in the age of empire. While studies of the literature of empire often focus on the figure of the solitary “imperial man” or the consolidation of large imperial bureaucratic systems, the scalar scope of this project considers what lies in between. While the Bildungsroman and the love-plot dominate accounts of nineteenth-century narrative trajectories, small group narratives structure the shape of key genres concerned with empire-building or empire-breaking. The groups I analyze include the castaways of the Robinsonade adventure in Catharine Parr Traill’s Canadian Crusoes (1852); the schoolboy tribes in the school fiction of Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857), Tom ii Brown at Oxford (1861) and the stories comprising Rudyard Kipling’s The Complete Stalky & Co. (1897-1929); the quadrangle of lovers and friends in Charlotte Brontë’s historical romance Shirley (1849); and the revolutionary circles of Joseph Conrad’s spy novel Under Western Eyes (1911). The small group lends itself to a narrative form in which the character of imperial culture is debated and renegotiated. The interlocking metaphors of kinship and friendship in small-group narratives emphasize the inextricability of individuals from the social. I show how the representations of social interactions within groups are used to challenge racial hierarchies, ideals of national character, and individual agency. Rather than hierarchical patterns of imperial cultural transmission, my readings find that, even in pro-imperial texts, the small group establishes private codes of conduct that run alongside or even against the rules of larger social organizations. The narrative representation of a group’s ability to create networks with other groups models the process of creating cultural change (or, in some cases, maintaining cultural stasis). My analyses demonstrate that the small group form articulates the complexities of governance within imperial space. iii Acknowledgments This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, University of Toronto Fellowships, the Department of English’s Graduate Student Conference Travel Award and a School of Graduate Studies Conference Grant. My work benefited immensely from the support of my committee. Cannon Schmitt gave prompt, shrewd advice, close readings, and an ability to relate the part to the whole. Christine Bolus-Reichert offered her insightful support and eye for misbehaving footnotes. Alan Bewell has provided many years of sound humour, and at the end of the day, pushed for better articulations of ideas. Hao Li was thoughtful, direct, keen. As my external examiner, Eddy Kent provided invaluable analysis in identifying the strengths, limitations and future possibilities of my project. At the English Department, I also greatly appreciated the help of Deirdre Baker, for letting me learn more of children’s literature, and the sixth-floor sages, Marguerite Perry, Tanuja Persaud, Sangeeta Panjwani, Debra Burrows, and Clare Orchard. Many people listened to my ideas, including Joanne Leow, Nathan Murray and Melissa Auclair, Elissa Gurman, Noa Reich, Cristina D’Amico, Sarah Star, Yoam Yoreh, and the folk of JHB 916. Thank you to the ChLRG-ers Christine Choi and Joanna Krongold, and to Maria Robson, Melissa Walter, and Arden Hegele, who kept Cranford alive. És köszönöm a cserkészeket, kik sok éven keresztül irányitották gondolatjaimat az őrsi rendszer felé. I could not have thrived without the support of my family, the expanding Magyarody- Jeney-Sigal-Meret network. My parents first read to me, read my work, and asked “What do you mean?” My sister always provides balance, wisdom, and laughter. My life and work has been enriched by the unflagging support of Iliya Sigal. A fuller account of my love is a .aitäh, thank you ,תודה ,project in itself, so I will just say köszönöm, благодарю, рәхмәт iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. iv Introduction ........................................................................................................................6 Scalar Analysis and the Small Group ..................................................................................7 Metaphors of Kinship and Friendship..................................................................................9 Linking the British Empire with Other Empires ................................................................16 Chapter Summary ..............................................................................................................20 Chapter 1 “Sacred Ties of Brotherhood”: The Social Mediation of Imperial Ideology in The Last of the Mohicans and Canadian Crusoes .................................29 The Robinsonade ...............................................................................................................31 The Last of the Mohicans and the North American Robinsonade .....................................36 Canadian Crusoes: Experiments in Female and Native Agency in the Robinsonade ........45 Friendships, Fraternity and the Problem of Sisters: Gendered and Spatial Conventions ..50 “We could not even speak to them in their own language”: Preparing for Friday ............54 Indiana’s Alternate Histories .............................................................................................64 “Woman … Choose!”: Reconciling Individual and Group Interests .................................71 Contexts and Consequences ...............................................................................................75 Chapter 2 Boy Republics, Rebels, and the Education of an Empire in Thomas Hughes and Rudyard Kipling’s School Fiction ........................................................83 Tom Brown’s Education: Combination, Collusion, Compromise .....................................93 Stalky & Co.: Mastering the Small Group .......................................................................115 Jingoism and “Real Friends” ...........................................................................................128 Chapter 3 The Narrative Construction of Intimacy in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley .132 Brontë’s Narratorial Style ................................................................................................137 v “A Triangle of Visits”: Colonizing Curates .....................................................................140 Historical Embeddedness .................................................................................................143 Building the Group: The unstable representations of Shirley, Caroline, Louis, and “that six feet of puppyhood” ................................................................................................149 Other Brother: The Elusive Uses of Louis Gérard Moore ...............................................153 Secrets, Imperious Individuals, and the Quadrumvirate ..................................................158 Breaking the Marriage Plot ..............................................................................................166 Chapter 4 Autocracy, Fraternity, and Kinship in Under Western Eyes ....................177 The Russian Empire, Russian Autocracy, and Russian “Character” ...............................179 Government and Blood Ties ............................................................................................182 Comrades, Classmates, Brothers......................................................................................188 The “Shadow of Autocracy”: Community Formation in the Russian Diaspora ..............197 Creating Alternate Networks ...........................................................................................204 Coda ................................................................................................................................221 Works Consulted ............................................................................................................224 vi 1 Introduction While reading Heart of Darkness, it is easy to forget that Marlow’s famous pronouncement on individuality and imperial experience, “We live, as we dream—alone,” is addressed to a group of close friends (97). Although the experiences Marlow recounts take place far away from the four men aboard the Nellie, it is only through relating to them “what happened
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