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“Let Us Not Desert One Another”: Women Writing Friendship and Community in the Long Eighteenth Century

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“Let Us Not Desert One Another”: Women Writing Friendship and Community in the Long Eighteenth Century “LET US NOT DESERT ONE ANOTHER”: WOMEN WRITING FRIENDSHIP AND COMMUNITY IN THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY By KADESH LAURIDSEN 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 2014 © 2014 Kadesh Lauridsen To my son, who is my wonder and my world ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In my life, and in the completion of this work, I have been blessed with the support of a strong, vibrant community of women. My mothers—Pamela Foster, Lois Mills, and Frances Jackson—have demonstrated throughout my life the virtues of patience, compassion, and unconditional love. My sisters—Tamara Lauridsen, La-Titia Jackson, and Traci Klass—have been the cheerleaders, the waiting shoulders, and the outstretched hands I’ve needed along the way. My mentor, Judy Page, represents to me the epitome of a true feminist scholar—one whose engagement in empowering women reaches into her teaching, her writing, and her personal relationships. Words are inadequate to express my thanks for her contributions to my understanding of literature, history, gender, and our profession. Most of all, I thank her for giving so selflessly of her time. I owe the greatest debt of gratitude in the completion of this project to my dear friend, spiritual sister, and intellectual twin Randi Marie Addicott. Her encouragement, multiple readings, reviews, suggestions, and availability for impromptu brainstorming sessions have been indispensable. Randi Marie’s natural sympathy and witty charm embody the best that true women’s friendship has to offer. Our world is brighter because of the sunshine she brings to it. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ 7 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................. 8 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: (RE)DEFINING WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIP ................................. 11 Writing between the Lines ....................................................................................... 14 Sympathy among Women ....................................................................................... 21 Blurred Lines: Women’s Friendship, Romantic Friendship, and the “Lesbian Historical Project” ................................................................................................ 23 The Authors ............................................................................................................ 33 Chapter Summaries ................................................................................................ 37 An Invitation ............................................................................................................ 40 2 THE LANGUAGE OF FEMALE FRIENDSHIP—COMPANIONSHIP AND “SCHEMES OF HAPPINESS” ................................................................................ 47 Formal Definitions of Friendship ............................................................................. 48 Dr. Johnson and Frances Burney ........................................................................... 52 The Language of Character .................................................................................... 59 Women in the World – The Language of Masks ..................................................... 69 The Language of Female Friendship – “Schemes of Happiness” ........................... 72 Female Companionship—Sympathy of Mind .......................................................... 75 Female Companionship—Sympathy of heart ......................................................... 78 The Language of Emotion ....................................................................................... 82 Being in the World - Names, Words, and Castles ................................................... 85 3 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP IN JANE AUSTEN’S COMMUNITIES OF WOMEN ...... 98 Failures of Patriarchy—Women and the Estate .................................................... 101 Defining Women’s Friendships ............................................................................. 106 Women’s Sympathetic Friendship ........................................................................ 113 Individual Development within Community ........................................................... 126 False Friends ........................................................................................................ 136 “Think of What She Had Lost” – Absence and Loss of Friendship in Austen’s Later Novels ...................................................................................................... 147 Emma’s “Gentle Sorrow” ....................................................................................... 150 Women’s Friendship in the World ......................................................................... 166 5 4 “PROTECTION AND REGARD”: PARATEXTS AND THE CREATION OF WOMEN’S LITERARY COMMUNITY ................................................................... 168 Community through Friendship ............................................................................. 170 The Paratext as Instrument of Change ................................................................. 175 Frances Burney’s Many Voices and Long Life ...................................................... 182 Private Sorrows and Charlotte Smith’s Communal Public Voice .......................... 200 Community in Crisis .............................................................................................. 211 5 (RE)CREATING THE NOVEL: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT’S REVIEWS, MARIA EDGEWORTH’S LOOSE ENDS, AND FRANCES BURNEY’S LEGACY 214 Wollstonecraft’s Reviews ...................................................................................... 218 The Compliment of Quotation—Wollstonecraft Takes on Charlotte Smith............ 223 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the Evolution of Women’s Novels ...... 236 Writing the Revolutionary Novel – Wollstonecraft’s Prefaces ............................... 247 Edgeworth’s Textual Nexus .................................................................................. 257 Burney’s Wanderer and the Legacy of the Long Eighteenth Century Women’s Novel ................................................................................................................. 281 6 CODA ................................................................................................................... 292 “A Moral—Yes!” .................................................................................................... 302 APPENDIX JANE AUSTEN’S DEFENSE OF THE NOVEL ........................................................... 304 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 306 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 312 6 LIST OF TABLES Table page 1-1 Table of comparative dates of births, publications, and deaths (1740 – 1850) ....... 44 2-1 Relationship between Edgeworth’s publications and Wollstonecraft’s death ........ 260 7 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS A In some places Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of VINDICATION Woman has been abbreviated to Rights of Woman. This is to OF THE differentiate it from Wollstonecraft’s work of a similar title, A RIGHTS OF Vindication of the Rights of Man. WOMAN 8 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 “LET US NOT DESERT ONE ANOTHER”: WOMEN WRITING FRIENDSHIP AND COMMUNITY IN THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY By Kadesh Lauridsen December 2014 Chair: Judith Page Major: English This study considers women’s friendships and community as they are portrayed in the writings of British women in the long eighteenth century. I make use of the literary works of Frances Burney, Charlotte Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen in order to establish the way each woman, in her own way, worked toward revising patriarchal structures—social, literary, and familial—by rewriting masculine definitions of friendship. In their novels, women writers responded to these definitions of friendship by foregrounding the sympathetic bond, and the positive, virtuous, improving influences it had on all who experienced it. Their novels comment on three types of women’s relationships: women’s friendships, the intertextual relationship between the heroines of women’s novels, and the socially discursive relationships among women novelists. Although they were courtship novels, these texts focused a great deal on relationships other than the courting pair, reflecting the realities of women’s lives. Likewise, relationships between the heroines of novels and reflected the lives and friendships of real-life readers. Authors showed solidarity by commending each other’s works in their own. They also interacted with each other and challenged the dominant 9 masculine discourse of the literary marketplace through the paratextual materials of their works (their prefaces, introductions, forewords, etc.) and their literary
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