BANKRUPTCY‟S DAUGHTERS: THE ECONOMICS OF THE NEW DAUGHTER IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE By LEEANN D. HUNTER A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2010 1 © 2010 Leeann D. Hunter 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project explores daughters in Victorian literature who have been deprived of financial and emotional support. I am fortunate to have received an abundance of support from the people in my professional and personal lives. Pamela Gilbert has been instrumental in my success on this project and her guidance as my dissertation director, friend, and role model has been invaluable. I thank my committee, Judith Page, Susan Hegeman, and Jessica Harland-Jacobs, for their exceptional support and feedback on this project. I am also grateful to the members of my dissertation seminar, including: Sarah Bleakney, Dan Brown, Denise Guidry, Lisa Hager, and Amy Robinson. I am forever indebted to Ariel Gunn, who spent long hours discussing this project with me, helping me work out the major issues of this project, in addition to providing me with friendship and a home away from home. I am also grateful for the financial support of the Kirkland Dissertation Fellowship, which enabled me to complete this work. I am grateful to have the support of my family, including my parents Chris and Annella, my siblings Kim, Charles, Brent, Jason, and Tina, and their kids, Amanda, Jordan, Ethan, Leah, Drew, and Lucas. I also thank my many friends who have supported me on this long journey, including: Michelle Houseweart Sneiderman, Nora Infante, Manny Jaramillo, Trisha Kannan, Jaimy Mann, Cathlena Martin, Kathy McGroarty Torres, Jed Palmer, Benedicto Rodriguez, Rachel Slivon, and Jesse Zeigler. Above all, I could not have finished this project without my partner Roger Whitson, who has engaged in endless conversations with me about my project, in addition to providing me with endless love, support, and affection. Finally, I thank my three special kittens, Templeton, Buddha, and Nemo, who have been teaching me what it means to care for those who are so helpless. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 3 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 8 2 DAUGHTERS IN CIRCULATION: THE ECONOMICS OF GUILT .......................... 26 Personal Credit in Dombey and Son ....................................................................... 32 Social Redemption in Olive ..................................................................................... 50 3 DAUGHTERS IN DEBT: THE BONDS OF INSOLVENCY ..................................... 70 Self-Imprisonment in Little Dorrit ............................................................................. 78 Debt Forgiveness in The Mill on the Floss .............................................................. 95 4 COVETOUS DAUGHTERS: THE ECONOMICS OF MARRIAGE ........................ 114 Self-Effacement in East Lynne .............................................................................. 123 Self-Awakening in Daniel Deronda ....................................................................... 142 5 ENTERPRISING DAUGHTERS: THE BUSINESS OF LIFE ................................. 159 Matriarchal Strength in Hester .............................................................................. 167 Maternal Vocations in The Romance of a Shop .................................................... 183 6 AFTERWORD ....................................................................................................... 199 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 204 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 210 4 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy BANKRUPTCY‟S DAUGHTERS: THE ECONOMICS OF THE NEW DAUGHTER IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE By Leeann D. Hunter August 2010 Chair: Pamela K. Gilbert Major: English Bankruptcy’s Daughters investigates how the Victorian daughter is appropriated by narratives of bankruptcy and the language of care to reimagine the marketplace as a site of exchanges bound by trust, reciprocity, and moral sentiments. In contrast to narratives of bankruptcy, narratives of social mobility often feature self-made men and rags-to-riches plots, in which middle-class and working-class heroes exhibit high ethics and morals that set them apart from the people of their own class. While narratives of the self-made man are often bildungromans that chronicle the passage of a boy into manhood, novels of economic failure present the reversed tale, the one in which the male head-of-household fails to sustain his living—whether due to his own ignorance of financial affairs, his abuse of credit and speculation, or his helplessness amid the systemic failures of the new economy of the nineteenth century. The damaged interiority of these men is often set aside in favor of exploring the impact of bankruptcy on their daughters, who are derailed from their prescribed course of life and presented with new obstacles to overcome. These daughters, like self-made men, are shown to possess “an interiority in excess of the social position” to which their fathers have lowered them. The 5 novels of fathers‟ bankruptcies become a vehicle for embarking upon the female bildungsroman, novels of social mobility for self-made women. Novels of bankruptcy often suggest that the daughter is positively transformed or liberated by their fathers‟ failures, and in literature they comprise a population of female characters who lead the way toward the New Woman. I describe these daughters of bankruptcy collectively as the New Daughter. The New Daughter is a phenomenon in Victorian literature in which the young woman is continually created anew in consequence of her father‟s financial misfortunes. Because of her father‟s financial ruin, the New Daughter is granted a fresh opportunity to establish her identity apart from her father‟s fortunes and failures. Whether she establishes an identity rooted in care to separate herself from her father or embarks upon a profession to support herself, her family, and her community, the New Daughter represents a hopeful revolution in social morality and economic systems of exchange. For most of the century, the New Daughter has little access to financial resources, and so most of her economic dealings adopt nonmonetary forms throughout Victorian novels of bankruptcy. Often these dealings are characterized by personal exchanges that solidify social bonds and obligations. The New Daughter‟s economic interests can be moral in nature—she inspires guilt in fathers who perform poorly in their business affairs and the personal affairs of their families—but they can also be transformative. The New Daughter demonstrates how the healthy circulation of debts, carried on by trust and forgiveness, further strengthens the health of a community, fostering social connection through interdependence on resources. Toward the end of the century, when women increasingly gain access to public employment, the New Daughter proves 6 she can work her way back up in the world, eventually regaining the respectability she maintained prior to her father‟s failures. The New Daughter, like the self-made man who overcomes his adversity, triumphs in response to her family‟s bankruptcy, and paves the way for women to take on powerful roles in the economy. 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION When we contemplate the failure of pecuniary means, as it is regarded by the world, and attempt to calculate the immense variety of channels through which the suffering it produces is made to flow, in consequence of the customs and habits of society, I believe they will be found to extend through every variety of human life, to the utmost range of human feeling. —Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Women of England (1839) Conspicuous consumption is a way of representing wealth or, in a credit economy, the appearance of wealth. During the economic boom of the 1990s and early 2000s, the credit market expanded to include subprime borrowers—individuals who were at high risk for non-repayment of loans—and consequently, more consumers had access to credit that exceeded their incomes.1 They could present the appearance of wealth without the income to afford it. When the subprime mortgage market crashed in 2006, many critics were quick to issue blame on profligate consumers who were determined to buy larger houses than their incomes could afford. While much of this blame has since shifted to banks and investors for their unscrupulous management of loans, the credit economy continues to encourage a culture of individuals who consume more than they can afford. Contemporary consumers are able, and even encouraged, to present themselves according to the wealth, success, and social status they hope to achieve, rather than what their actual incomes afford. Victorian narratives of social mobility often feature self-made men and rags-to- riches plots, in which middle-class and working-class heroes