The Tension of the Real: Visuality in Nineteenth Century British Realism
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THE TENSION OF THE REAL: VISUALITY IN NINETEENTH CENTURY BRITISH REALISM by AMANDA L. CORNWALL A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Comparative Literature and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2015 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Amanda L. Cornwall Title: The Tension of the Real: Visuality in Nineteenth Century British Realism This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Comparative Literature by: Professor Forest Pyle Chairperson Professor Kenneth Calhoon Core Member Assistant Professor Heidi Kaufman Core Member Associate Professor Martin Klebes Institutional Representative and Professor Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2015 ii © 2015 Amanda L. Cornwall iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Amanda L. Cornwall Doctor of Philosophy Department of Comparative Literature June 2015 Title: The Tension of the Real: Visuality in Nineteenth Century British Realism This dissertation begins from the problem that is built into realism as a literary genre: its commitment to capturing the unfiltered circumstances of human life will always be at odds with the artifice of its representational constructs and its fiction. In this study, I consider visuality as a central, productive part of this problem and seek intensely visual moments within realist novels where realism wages its own struggle with itself as it attempts to navigate its limitations and push forward its possibilities. These moments pause the narrative as they prioritize picture over action. As descriptive moments work to render visual images through words on the printed page, they are fraught with realism’s struggle to use the artifice of fiction as a means for approximating an ostensible reality. Facing this difficulty, realist practitioners take up vastly different strategies. In this project, I investigate why and how visuality is deployed so differently by those who chose to write in this mode. I seek that which is piercing in the nineteenth-century realist novel by locating moments of crisis and tension, both within the plot and also within the strategies of the stories’ delivery. These are moments where the novel becomes troubled by the visual, revealing the potential and limit of the image. In realism, visuality encompasses a broad and varied array of strategies, including instances of enargeia and ekphrasis, passages that iv seek to evoke a sense of place or milieu through a rich catalog of visual detail, expressive self-renderings in the dialog and inner monologs of the characters, explorations of the embodied act of seeing, and moments where perception fails or visual description exposes itself as insufficient. I consider a small group of canonical authors: George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad, who are of critical importance to this genre and to nineteenth century realism, as it moves towards modernism. By examining moments in their novels where descriptive imagery is at its most acute, I seek to explain how moments of intense visuality are crucial nodes where each author, using unique and distinctive methods, negotiates the problem of realist representation. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Amanda L. Cornwall GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene, OR Emerson College, Boston, MA Rockport College, Rockport, ME Willamette University, Salem, OR DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Comparative Literature, 2015, University of Oregon Master of Arts, Writing and Publishing, 2003, Emerson College Bachelor of Fine Arts, English, 1997, Willamette University AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Novel Nineteenth-Century Fine Art Visual studies History of Photography PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of Comparative Literature, 2006-2015 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Professor Tres Pyle, for his patience and invaluable guidance throughout this project. Professor Kenneth Calhoon has been an essential mentor to me throughout my years at the University of Oregon, and I feel extremely fortunate to be a part of the community that he leads, with great wisdom, equity, and foresight, in the Department of Comparative Literature. I am thankful for the gracious support of Professor Heidi Kaufman and Professor Martin Klebes, who I am very honored to have had as members of my dissertation committee. Professor Lisa Freinkel has provided unfailing encouragement and wisdom from the very first, and Professor Leah Middlebrook’s generously shared perspectives, especially regarding pedagogy, influence every part of my professional identity. It has been a privilege to be guided by Professor Richard Stein and Professor Michael Allan. Cynthia Stockwell’s impeccable attention to detail, far-sighted organizational maneuvers, deep kindness, and boundless enthusiasm are gifts that make so much possible; she is irreplaceable. Thanks are especially due to my extraordinary friends: Ying Xiong, Jenny Odintz, Monica Zikpi, Chet Liesecki, Baran Germen, Mona Tougas, Anna-Lisa Baumeister, Susi Gomez, Ahmad Nadalizadeh, Amy Leggette, Corey Borgman, Yelena Ablaeva, Ryan Hull, Dora Parys, Jennifer Faust, Katy Phillips, and Sándor Paulay. Craig Nicholas, Noemi Razso and Kristy (and Ray and Linda) Thompson are at this point not friends but family, and I thank them along with my wonderful family: J.C. Milne, Victoria Milne, Emily McCobb, and Cody and Fiona Byrne. I would like to thank the fairy godparents of this project, Kara Barnette and Andrew Grace, the Ninja and the Butterfly, who have helped me more than they know. Finally, I gratefully remember the faith and luminous positivity of vii Lauren Shannon Cornwall, (1987-1997), who always believed that one day I would achieve this goal. viii For my mother, Vicki Howie Cornwall ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 Visuality and the Problem of Realism ................................................................... 6 The Image in Context ............................................................................................. 8 II. “STRAINING TOWARDS THAT PICTURE”: THE AGENCY OF THE IMAGE IN GEORGE ELIOT’S MIDDLEMARCH .............................................. 21 III. THOMAS HARDY AND THE CONSTRAINT OF VISION .............................. 59 The Marygreen Well: Jude’s Vision from the Depths ........................................... 59 Marlott and the Vale of Blackmoor: Tess’s Constrained Horizons ....................... 61 The Constraint of Vision ........................................................................................ 63 Tess’s Blighted Star.............................................................................................. 65 Jude and “the Grind of Stern Reality” ................................................................... 90 IV. RENDERING ISABEL ARCHER: HENRY JAMES’S THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY .................................................................................................................. 99 Enter Isabel ............................................................................................................ 102 Henry James’ Realism............................................................................................. 105 Isabel Reconsidered................................................................................................. 114 Literary Portraiture and Ekphrasis.......................................................................... 123 x Chapter Page Isabel Rendered.......................................................................................................132 Function and Form, Vision and Technique.............................................................. 153 V. THE OPTIC TROPE IN JOSEPH CONRAD’S HEART OF DARKNESS............... 155 REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................................ 202 xi LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. “Sunset in the Long Drawing Room at Chesney Wold,” by Phiz ......................... 4 (Hablot Knight Browne) 2. “Tom All-Alone’s,” by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne) .......................................... 5 3. J.M.W. Turner, Sunset on Rouen, 1830-40. ........................................................... 84 4. J.M.W. Turner, Stonehenge, 1827 ......................................................................... 89 5. Honoré Daumier, The Third-Class Carriage, 1862. .............................................. 96 6. Gustave Courbet, The Sleeping Sewer, 1853 ......................................................... 128 7. Gustave Courbet, The Seer, 1855 .......................................................................... 129 8. John Singer Sargent, Mrs. Hugh Hammersley, 1892 ............................................. 130 9. John Singer Sargent, Madame X, 1883-1884 ......................................................... 131 10. Paul Cezanne Monte Sainte-Victorie, 1906 ........................................................... 139 11. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ........................................................................... 147 xii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The passage that opens Chapter Sixteen