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The Fallen Woman and the British Empire in Victorian Literature and Culture Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English Spring 5-11-2015 The alF len Woman and the British Empire in Victorian Literature and Culture Ellen Stockstill Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Stockstill, Ellen, "The alF len Woman and the British Empire in Victorian Literature and Culture." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2015. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/142 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE FALLEN WOMAN AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE by ELLEN J. STOCKSTILL Under the Direction of LeeAnne Richardson, PhD ABSTRACT This dissertation focuses on the triangulated relationship among female sexuality, patriarchy, and empire and examines literary and historical texts to understand how Britons increasingly identified as imperialists over the course of the nineteenth century. This project, the first book-length study of its kind, features analyses of canonical works like Mansfield Park, David Copperfield, and Adam Bede as well as analyses of paintings, etchings, conference proceedings, newspaper advertisements, colonial reports, political tracts, and medical records from Britain and its colonies. I challenge critical conceptions of the fallen woman as a trope of domestic fiction whose position as outcast illustrates the stigmatization of female sex during the nineteenth century, and I argue that the depiction and punishment of fallen women in multiple genres reveal an interest in protecting and maintaining an imperial system that claims moral superiority over the people it colonizes. My critical stance is both feminist and postcolonial, and my work complicates readings of fallen women in Victorian literature while also adding significantly to scholarship on gender and empire begun by Anne McClintock and Philippa Levine. I claim that during the nineteenth century, the fallen woman comes to represent that which will threaten patriarchal and imperial power, and her regulation reveals an intent to purify the British conscience and strengthen the nation’s sense of itself as a moral and exceptional leader in the world. My investigation into fallenness and empire through a wide range of texts underscores the centrality of imperialism to British society and to the lives of Britons living far removed from colonial sites like India or East Africa. INDEX WORDS: Victorian Literature, British Imperialism, Imperial Literature, Fallen Women, Female Sexuality, Gender Studies, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Sarah Grand, William Booth, Rudyard Kipling THE FALLEN WOMAN AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE by ELLEN J. STOCKSTILL A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2015 Copyright by Ellen Justine Stockstill 2015 THE FALLEN WOMAN AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE by ELLEN J. STOCKSTILL Committee Chair: LeeAnne Richardson Committee: Paul Schmidt Randy Malamud Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2015 iv DEDICATION For Drew—in gratitude of your unwavering love and support. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project is the result of many hours of reading, research, and writing, and I must thank my committee for their encouragement over the last two years while I have worked on this dissertation. Special thanks go to LeeAnne, in particular, who consistently provided helpful feedback along the way and who always answered questions and requests for recommendations and advice. I am also grateful for Sarah Higinbotham, Katy Harrison, and Molly Livingston who answered questions, read drafts, listened to ideas, and offered motivational speeches when needed. My friends and family have been wonderfully supportive and understanding during these five years of graduate study. I am especially grateful for Drew whose support of my career I could not do without. This spring we will welcome a baby girl into our family, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to complete this project while preparing for her arrival. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................... v LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................... vii 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 British Identity, Narrative, and Imperialism ................................................................ 2 1.2 Deviant Female Sexuality, Patriarchy, and Empire ..................................................... 6 1.3 Fallenness and Imperial Identity Formation ................................................................ 8 1.4 Focus and Structure of Study ....................................................................................... 10 2 THE OTHER AND THE FALLEN IN JANE AUSTEN’S MANSFIELD PARK ............ 16 3 RELEGATING SIN TO A DISTANCE: NORMATIVE MALE BEHAVIOR AND THE EMIGRATION OF FALLEN WOMEN .............................................................................. 38 3.1 Realism, Assimilation, and the Fallen Woman ........................................................... 40 3.2 Discipline and Maturity in David Copperfield ............................................................. 47 3.3 Discipline and Relegation in Adam Bede ..................................................................... 71 4 COMPETING NARRATIVES OF FALLENNESS, DISEASE, AND EMPIRE ............. 82 4.1 Medicine and Morality: The CD Acts as Public Health Initiative and Moral Grounding of Imperialism ............................................................................................ 86 4.2 The Exposure of Male Hypocrisy and Its Threat to Empire ................................... 100 5 A CONSOLIDATED IMPERIAL VISION IN WORKS BY WILLIAM BOOTH AND RUDYARD KIPLING ......................................................................................................... 119 5.1 Booth’s In Darkest England and the Way Out ......................................................... 124 5.2 Kipling’s The Light that Failed .................................................................................. 137 6 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 159 WORKS CITED ....................................................................................................................... 165 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4.1 “The Massacre at Delhi,” Narrative of the Indian Revolt: From its Outbreak to the Capture of Lucknow, 1858. .............................................................................................. 98 1 1 INTRODUCTION The sentiment of empire may be called innate in every Briton. If there are exceptions, they are like those of men born blind or lame among us. It is part of our patrimony: born with our birth, dying only with our death; incorporating itself in the first elements of our knowledge, and interwoven with all our habits of mental action upon public affairs. W.E. Gladstone, England’s Mission, 1878 This dissertation aims to reveal the ways Britons in the nineteenth century came to see themselves as imperialists. While at first glance it might not seem that the identity formation of people who lived over one hundred years ago would have much bearing on the world we inhabit today, understanding this past, in fact, has great importance in a new era of global dominance. The United States’ sense of exceptionalism and military, economic, and cultural power certainly share characteristics with Britain’s global supremacy in the Victorian period, and understanding how the Britons saw themselves and their duty to the larger world can help explain or, at least, provide context for how today’s global powers interact, seek to exert influence, and protect their interests. Many historical studies of the British Empire have provided an overview of how this world power developed and some have looked at the role of women in the Empire’s geographical expansion and in the formation and preservation of imperial identity. My dissertation seeks to remedy a gap in scholarship by focusing on a particular group of women whose experiences intersect with imperial expansion in fascinating ways in both historical and literary texts. These women, described during the period as “fallen” because of their sexual behavior, are the recipients of disciplinary action meant to purify the British conscience and strengthen the 2 country’s sense of itself as a moral leader in the world. This project incorporates primary material, historical studies, literary criticism, and critical theory in order to better understand the formation of British imperial identity, and it shows that empire building was not just a man’s game but a complex discursive process in which fallen women played a vital, though unrecognized, role. I build upon scholarship that
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