UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Seeing Double: The Victorian Virtual and Projections of Female Subjectivity Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/65w07189 Author Gover, Maggie Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Seeing Double: The Victorian Virtual and Projections of Female Subjectivity A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Margaret E. Gover June 2012 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Joseph Childers, Co-Chairperson Dr. Toby Miller, Co-Chairperson Dr. James Tobias Copyright by Margaret E. Gover 2012 The Dissertation of Margaret E. Gover is approved: Committee Co-Chairperson Committee Co-Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements: The research presented in this dissertation would not have been possible without the support of many individuals and institutions. Much of this research was completed at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. The Dibner Library collection in particular provided a wealth of nineteenth-century science and technology texts. I must also thank the University of California, Los Angeles Special Collections archive and the UCLA Film and Television Archive, Research and Study Center. These collections were instrumental in forming my knowledge in the field of nineteenth-century science and British film and motion picture prior to 1905. Additionally, these institutions have graciously granted permission to me to publish materials and images housed in their archives. There are many other images in the dissertation which I feel greatly enhance the reading experience. Many of the images of Victorian British paintings are in the public domain and are being used under the “fair use” code of the U.S. copyright law, section 107. I thank the Houghton Library at Harvard University, The Pre-Raphaelite Trust in London, The Fine Arts Society in London, The Tate Gallery in London, The Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Dr. Stephen Herbert of www.victorian-cinema.net, and the City Art Gallery in Leeds for graciously making the images available to the public. Additionally, Stijn Desmedt, Avril White, Malgorzata Maj, and Urzula Ciolkowska have granted me permission to use their art works for analysis. Their contemporary art pieces have added a richness to the analysis of the continuing cultural relevance of the Lady of Shalott and for that I am truly grateful. iv This work was supported by a dissertation fellowship from the University of California, Riverside which greatly helped me complete my project. I am also greatly indebted to my advisors, Dr. Joseph Childers, Dr. Toby Miller, and Dr. James Tobias who guided my thoughts, encouraged my research, and supported me throughout the project. The English Department at UC Riverside was very supportive during my writing and I am thankful to many of my colleagues, especially Rory Moore, who let me use them as a sounding board. I would also like to show my gratitude to my mother, Maria Gover, who patiently listened to me as I worked through ideas and who proofread every page of this manuscript! Without her, I fear the dissertation would have an enormous number of typos. The completion of this project was made possible by a host of friends and family who supported me in a variety of ways as I was writing. I thank them all for keeping me sane and ensuring that I never experienced the isolation that many dissertation writers face. v This dissertation is dedicated to my loving mother and father, Maria and Chuck Gover, my understanding roommate, Kristen Pinta, and my supportive partner, John Purnell. vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Seeing Double: The Victorian Virtual and Projections of Female Subjectivity by Margaret E. Gover Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, June 2012 Dr. Joseph Childers and Dr. Toby Miller, Co-Chairpersons This dissertation interrogates nineteenth-century subjectivities and visual cultures which were necessary precursors of what is now called the virtual. In the project I utilize a variety of nineteenth-century optical science texts in order to question how understandings of vision and the illusory nature of the virtual focus contributed to explanations of subject formation in female characters. The title, “Seeing Double,” references theories of stereoscopy and binocular vision. The knowledge that human three-dimensional vision is composed of two distinct views from two individual eyes within one seeing body, and that impressions of a three-dimensional physical world could be artificially produced, was a powerful idea for Victorian texts. Authors draw on the idea of composite vision in their narrative structure, allowing readers to glimpse multiple views of the world which may or may not be “actual.” Authors such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Lewis Carroll use visual technologies as metaphors for the woman’s body in order to highlight the interpretive female gaze. In the vii burgeoning British cinema British filmmakers, such as Cecil B. Hepworth, James Williamson, and George Albert Smith, reproduced the literary technique of at once crediting and discrediting sight. Their works all depict women as translucent, changeable bodies who must be scrutinized but can never be wholly understood. Both literary and cinematic narratives allow for the possibility of a virtual world of experience where an individual female character’s interpretation is juxtaposed against a network of experience which constitutes the “actual.” Analyzed within the context of nineteenth-century optics texts, all of these visual experiences are understood as valid interpretations of the external world. “Seeing Double” adds to current discourses about the virtual by forwarding the Victorian woman’s visual experience as a site of such virtuality. viii Table of Contents Acknowledgements iv Abstract vii List of Figures ix Introduction 1 Vision Bears All Chapter 1 30 Shedding Some Light on Sight Chapter 2 69 Shadows and Light: Reflecting on the Lady of Shalott Chapter 3 108 Size Matters: Alice’s Body and Her Curious Visual Experience Chapter 4 162 A Thousand People Looking: Subjectivity and Late Nineteenth-Century Technologies of Image-Making Coda 201 New Technologies, Old Stories ix List of Figures Figure Description Page Number i.1 Illustration of Lacan’s theory of the image screen and the 8 creation of subjectivity 1.1 Illustration of the virtual image produced by the virtual and 32 real focuses 1.2 Mathematical expressions for the reflection of light. Henry 46 Coddington, 1798-1895. A Treatise on the Reflexion and Refraction of Light. 1829. pp 196-97. RB 710094. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. 1.3 Images of a boat as seen on the horizon. Society for the 56 Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. 1826-1848. Optics. 1830. pp 57. RB 700804. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. 1.4 Illustration of light rays which produce the impression of a 57 boat as seen on the horizon. Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. 1826-1848. Optics. 1830. pp 57. RB 700804. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. 1.5 Illustration from the title page of David Brewster’s Treatise on 59 Optics. David Brewster, 1781-1868. A Treatise on Optics. 1831. Title Page. RB 710008. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. 1.6 Illustration of the virtual focus in a concave mirror. John 61 Badcock. 1816-1830. Philosophical Recreations… 1824. Illustration Plates. RB 422178. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. 2.1 Walter Crane, Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 1858-59. 103 Watercolor. 2.2 Sidney Harold Meteyard, “I am half sick of shadows,” said the 104 Lady of Shalott, 1913. Oil on canvas x 2.3 Arthur Hughes, The Lady of Shalott, 1873. Oil on canvas. 104 2.4 John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888. Oil on 105 canvas. 2.5 John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott Looking at 106 Lancelot, 1894. Oil on canvas. 2.6 John William Waterhouse, “I am half-sick of shadows,” said 106 the Lady of Shalott, 1915. Oil on canvas. 4.1 Drawing of a praxinoscope. Hopwood, Henry V., 1866-1919. 176 Living Pictures: Their History, Photo-production and Practical Working. 1899. P 26. Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA. 4.2 The inner workings of a mutoscope. Hopwood, Henry V., 177 1866-1919. Living Pictures: Their History, Photo-production and Practical Working. 1899. P 37. Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA. 4.3 A diagram of the inner workings of a kinetoscope. Hopwood, 178 Henry V., 1866-1919. Living Pictures: Their History, Photo- production and Practical Working. 1899. P 75. Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library. UCLA. 4.4 A man using the earpieces for a kinetophone. 192 C.1 Avril White, The Lady of Shalott, 2006. Photomanipulation. 205 C.2 Malgorzata Maj, Shalott, 2007. Photomanipulation. 206 C.3 Stijn Desmedt, The Lady of Shalott, 2010. Photograph. 207 C.4 Urzula Ciolkowska, The Lady of Shalott, 2008. 208 Photomanipulation. xi Introduction: Vision Bears All In 2011, HBO premiered the television series Game of Thrones, an adaptation from a popular series of fantasy books. Along with many other mediaphiles, I began to watch. The show is very popular, partially due to its pre-existing literary audience. However, as I continued to watch, I noticed something interesting; the show trades in images of women’s bodies. Every episode is sure to flaunt the bodies of naked women. While there are instances of male full frontal nudity in the first season of the series, two in the entire season, the instances of female nudity far out-number those of men. As I was revising the existing chapters of my dissertation, I began to wonder if anything had changed in the last two hundred years.