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ProQuest Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. FLOWERS OF RHETORIC: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY IMPROVISATRICE TRADITION

DISSERTATION

Presented in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Melissa Joan Ianetta. M.A.

* * * * *

The Ohio State University 2002

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Nan Johnson. Adviser

Professor Kav Halasek Advis Professor James Fredal Department 0f English

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT

Nineteenth-century literature played a central role in shaping rhetorical paradigms

for Englishwomen. Examining the development of one construct of the woman orator,

the improvisatrice. in conjunction with George Campbell's The Philosophy o f Rhetoric

(1776) and Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1784). reveals how-

imaginative literature was a site for the production and circulation of rhetorical theory .

With the 1807 publication of Germaine de StaeTs Corrine. or Italy, the

improvisatrice became a well-recognized representation of the private woman bringing

her role as moral guardian into the public sphere. De Stael's notion of the improvising

woman quickly became popular not just as a literary figure but as a supposedly authentic

representation of women's oratorical processes as well. As the improvisatrice w as thus

seen as an enactment of a rhetorical theory, this dissertation reads w orks in the

improvisatrice tradition alongside the rhetorical theories of Campbell and Blair. Such an

approach foregrounds the manner in which the discourse of power was used to recognize

woman’s widening role even as it established her newly-recognized rhetorical abilities as

innately inferior to man's.

The inventional process of the improvisatrice rhetoric feminized Blairian

belletrism and Campbellian epistemology. Reading Corinne alongside these rhetorical

treatises therefore reveals a system of persuasion founded on imagination and innate ii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. taste, two key components of nineteenth-century rhetoric. Likewise, the treatment of

style in the improvisatrice rhetoric reiterates related precepts from Campbell's

Philosophy and Blair's Lectures. The poems of so-called English Improvisatrice Letitia

Landon illustrate well the redeployment of the rhetoricians' discussion of the relation of

style to musicality and the moral sublime.

As demonstrated by the waning of Landon's reputation, the improvisatrice

rhetoric increasingly lost popularity as the century progressed. While Charlotte Bronte's

juvenilia reveal an infatuation with this system, she later critiques itThe Professor and

Villette. George Eliot is likewise critical of the improvisatrice rhetoric, an opinion which

informs The Mill on the Floss but also "Erinna" andDaniel Deronda. As indicated by

Bronte and Eliot's treatments, then, by the century's end. the improvisatrice rhetoric had

fallen out of favor.

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. For my father, Lawrence James Ianetta, always the '‘good man speaking well”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The personal and intellectual debts incurred in the writing of any dissertation have

been magnified in this case by geographical distance. I thus gratefully acknowledge the

assistance of my adviser. Dr. Nan Johnson, not only for her intellectual support but also

for her seemingly endless patience with the obstacles incurred by my proximity, or lack

thereof. Dr. Kay Halasek has provided a model of commitment and integrity influential

on this dissertation as well as my own professional development. Dr. James Fredal's

participation has been crucial to this project from its earliest inception.

Along with the efforts of my committee. I wish to recognize those individuals

whose contributions were more informal but no less crucial. Thanks first to those

colleagues willing to read countless drafts: Tara Pauliny. Dana Oswald. Kristine Risely.

Emma Perry Loss and Lisa Tantonetti enriched this project through their scholarly

expertise. I am also thankful to Kathleen Gagel. w ithout whose good humor and

professional efficiency this dissertation would have been immeasurably less.

By providing both time and resources. Ohio State has greatly facilitated this

project. I would like to thank the Graduate School for a Graduate Alumni Research Grant

and the Department of English for a Summer Fellowship.

Finally. I wish to thank Iain Crawford for his unending support. To him I owe a

debt that can never be repaid. v

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. VITA

August 6. 1969...... Bom - Salem. Massachusetts

1997 ...... M.A. English. Bridgewater State College

1993-1995...... Graduate Assistant. Bridgewater State College

19995-2001...... Graduate Teaching Associate. The Ohio State University

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: English

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page Dedication ...... iv

Acknowledgements ...... v

Vita...... vi

List of Figures...... viii

Chapters:

1. Introduction...... 1 2. "Look Upon Corinne:" Invention and Corinne. or Italy...... 42 3. "To Elevate. I Must Soften: Letitia Landon. Sublimity and Style...... 90 4. "Force Without A Lever:" Charlotte Bronte and the Improvisatrice ...... 128 5...... "She Will Do Me No Good:" George Eliot and the Improvisatrice ...... 168 6. Conclusion...... 207

Bibliography ...... 231

vii

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Figure Page 6.1 The Lillie Improvisatrice by Simeon Solomon ...... 223

viii

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INTRODUCTION

There remains to be treated of. another species of Composition in prose, which comprehends a very numerous, though in general, a very insignificant class of Writings, known by the name of Romances and Novels. These may. at first view, deem too insignificant to deserv e that any particular notice should be taken of them. But I cannot be of this opinion. [. ..] For any kind of Writing, how trifling soever in appearance, that obtains a general currency, and especially that early preoccupies the imagination of the youth of both sexes, must demand particular attention. Its influence is likely to be considerable, both on the morals, and taste of a nation. Hugh Blair Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. 1783

[T]owards the end of the eighteenth century, a change came about w hich, if I were rewriting history . I should [...] think of greater importance than the Crusades or the War of the Roses. The middle-class woman began to write. For if Pride and Prejudice matters, and Middlemarch and Villette and Wuthering Heights matter, then it matters [...] that women generally, and not merely the lonely aristocrat shut up in her country house among her folios and flatterers, took to writing. Virginia Woolf. .4 Room o f One s Own. 1929

The purpose of this project is to explore the creation and influence of the

improvisatrice tradition, a strand of British nineteenth-century rhetorical theory that

previously has been overlooked. By focusing upon imaginative literature as the cultural

transmission of rhetorical theory . I examine the improvisatrice - a popular fictional

character - as an embodiment of nineteenth-century women's rhetoric in England. In so

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. doing. I demonstrate that, despite twentieth and twenty-first century claims to the

contrary.1 women have in fact participated in the shaping of rhetorical theory, although

much of their contribution lies outside the readily recognized rhetorical treatise that has

typically served as the site of inquiry for histories of rhetoric. Specifically. I argue that

the increasing attention to the definition of woman's sphere in nineteenth-centurv

England and the paradigmatic shifts in communication theory led to new models of the

persuasive means available to women. One such example is the improvisatrice tradition

in which the extemporizing woman rhetor is used to illustrate feminized epistemic and

belletristic rhetorics. Ultimately, then. I look for theories of rhetoric in literary works

where none has thus far been recognized and. by doing so. help document the

participation of women in the rhetorical tradition.

Rhetoric and rhetoric

In discussing the debate among historians of rhetoric concerning the historical

validity of Aspasia" James Fredal (2002) observes that feminist rhetoric "has been

hampered by its implicit acceptance of a traditional paradigm for proper rhetorical

activity: the single, named public figure who composed (or is composed through)

speeches and texts" (590-1). In order to more fully account for the rhetorical history of

women, as well as other historically disenfranchised groups, he argues, "we might begin

1 As representative examples of this argument, see Connors. Biesecker and Gale. ' Perhaps the most readily accessible articulation of this debate has taken place in the pages of College English, where Xin Lu Gale (2000) criticized the postmodern historiographical methods of feminist rhetoricians such as Cheryl Glenn and Susan Jarratt. In the following issue. Glenn and Jarratt responded to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. by thinking about those symbolic resources and media for expression available to

potential rhetorical agents behind or beyond the verbal. We might look for the possible

opportunities, moments of access, or venues for expression through which individuals or

groups could carry out rhetorical acts or practices" (Freda! 593). In answer to Fredal's

call, this dissertation moves beyond the construction of "the single, named public figure"

by examining fictional multiple representations of a single type of woman rhetor. This

focus also moves beyond the verbal by considering one of those "venues of expression"

available to nineteenth-centurv Englishwomen: imaginative literature. This dissertation

thus contributes to recent efforts to broaden the province of rhetoric.

A consideration of genre exposes the gender bias that has long characterized the

discipline of rhetoric. As Andrea Lunsford describes in her Introduction toReclaiming

Rhetor ica (1995). "the realm of rhetoric has been almost exclusively male, not because

women were not practicing rhetoric - the arts of language are. after all. at the source of

human communication - but because the tradition has never recognized the forms,

strategies and goals used by many women as 'rhetorical"' (6). These excluded forms

Lunsford here cites include those imaginative genres populated by women authors, such

as sentimental novels and verse. Retrieval of these neglected forms by historians, then,

will foreground the manner in which theories of woman's eloquence reckoned with the

discourses of power represented by the dominant rhetorical tradition. In a like manner.

Cheryl Glenn's Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity' Through the

Renaissance (1997) calls our attention to the ways women's rhetorical acts have been

Gale's position and reaffirmed their commitment to postmodern historiography. See Gale. Jarratt. and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. labeled as something other than the ’‘rhetorical” and describes how a lens constructed

from gender studies enriches our understanding of the power-laden interdependencies of

the terms comprising the rhetorical situation, claiming that ”[i]f we understand the

particular and specific ways gender and society (or culture) interanimate one another, we

can more knowledgeably chart and account for those gendered limits and powers as we

take a specific route along the borders of rhetorical history” (14). In other words,

considering the gendered assumptions of the rhetorical situation reveals ways in which

cultural forces have erased women's participation by either deleting it from the historical

record or by defining it as something other than rhetorical theory and/or performance.

Both Glenn and Lunsford demonstrate, then, that to study women in the rhetorical

traditions is to (re)construct the category "rhetorical." To gain a fuller, more accurate

picture of women's history, today's rhetoricians must revise our notion of the rhetorical

act itself to include, for example, those persuasive acts incorporated in imaginative

literature and those rhetorical theories embedded in other non-scholarly texts.

For the purposes of this project. I thus define rhetorical theory as those

philosophies of public persuasion that regulate the participation of individuals within the

public sphere. The examination of non-traditional sites of rhetoric requires a further

distinction between Rhetoric with a capital "R“ - institutionally sanctioned theories that

were culturally recognized as a part of the discipline of Rhetoric and were so propagated

in the schools and treatises - and rhetoric with a lower-case ”r” - theories of discourse

which, like their institutionalized counterparts, regulated the public speech of individuals

Glenn "Truth." 4

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. but were not overtly named as Rhetoric and which circulated outside the regularizing

force of the educational system.

This relationship between "Rhetoric" and "rhetoric” is an important point to

consider when dealing with historical notions of women's proper sphere of discourse.

While arbitrators of woman's speech may not intentionally respond to the theories that

comprise Rhetoric when constructing new models of women's persuasive acts (i.e. when

creating a rhetoric), the perv asiveness of rhetorical treatises such as George Campbell's

The Philosophy o f Rhetoric (1776) and Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles

Lettres (1783) helped define what possibilities of the woman rhetor could even be

imagined^. In other words, the popularity of these theories helped to define even the

hypothetical possibilities for women's speech and so to create an informal disciplinary

context. The rhetorics of Campbell and Blair are at least partially embedded in

nineteenth-century women's rhetorics. Whether or not individual authors are mindful of

the theories of Campbell or Blair at the moment they theorize or illustrate w omen's

rhetoric, then, is less important than the ways in which these fictions respond to prevalent

theories. While the historical record confirms that many of the authors under

consideration in this dissertation were familiar with the rhetoricians of the Scottish

Enlightenment, even those authors for whom no such evidence exists are responding to

the paradigms of Campbell and Blair, for these men shaped cultural notions of

J The improvisatrice tradition might be read profitably alongside other aspects of nineteenth-century rhetorical culture, such as the elocutionary movement. This dissertation does not include the elocutionary movement for two reasons, however because its focus was more exclusive than the scope of the theory of Campbell and Blair: most nineteenth-centurv theorists "regarded elocution as an ancillary art" and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. persuasion. Thus, the division between Rhetoric and rhetoric is permeable, permitting

influence to pass from one genre to the other.

Rhetoric and Literature

While the boundary between Rhetoric and rhetoric can be blurred, the rhetorics

contained in the imaginative literature featuring the improvisatrice are examples of

persuasive theories that existed outside Rhetoric yet exhibit the discipline's influence.

Nineteenth-century cultural prohibition defined the scholarly treatise as unfeminine, yet

women had access to the genres of fiction and poetry as both authors and readers4. The

improvisatrice tradition - whose creators largely were women - accordingly was

constructed in novels, periodicals and volumes of poetry rather than in rhetoric textbooks

or monographs. These representations both expressed one possibility for the woman who

wished to address a public audience, and shaped public expectations for women who

spoke from this rhetorical position. Hence, in order to unearth those theories of women's

rhetoric that gained the largest female readership, we must expand the scholarly gaze to

include fictional as well as non-fictional texts.

By attempting to broaden the category of texts suitable to histories of rhetoric, this

dissertation thus employs w hat Jacqueline Jones Roy ster terms a "kaleidoscopic view"

(6). That is. according to Royster's Traces o f a Stream: Literacy and Social Change

“declined to include it in their analysis of rhetorical principals on the basis that it relates only to oral expression and not to the laws of discourse in general" (Johnson Sineteenih-Century 148). i As Cross notes, approximately one third of nineteenth-centurv woman writers England were entirely or predominantly novelists, half were children's writers, and fourteen percent were poets. Only three percent wrote works of history, philosophy or economics (Cross 167). 6

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Among African American Women (2000). ”[t]o interpret evidence more fully, we need not

just a long view, but a kaleidoscopic view. We need a sense of landscape, certainly, but

simultaneously, we need close-up views from different standpoints in the landscape”’ (6).

Likewise, in order to gain a multi-perspectival picture of improvisatrice rhetoric. I

examine the "different standpoints" of four major contributors to the improvisatrice

tradition - Germaine de Stael. Letitia Landon. Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot -

whose work spans a seventy-vear period. Also, by incorporating imaginative works, as

well as biographical materials, critical texts and rhetorical treatises. I attempt to place the

rhetorical theories embodied by the improvisatrice fictions in the theoretical landscapes

they inhabited in the nineteenth-century.

Not all feminist rhetoricians would agree with the inclusion of literary texts as

rhetorical theory, nor do they all advocate working within/beside the dominant tradition

as does this dissertation. In the recent anthology Rhetorical Theory' by Women Before

1900: An Anthology (2002). for example. Jane Donawerth limits her scope to

"nonfiction”” texts (xv). although she does include a selection from Hannah More's mock-

epic poem. "The Bas Bleu. or. Conversation" (1783). While she does not offer her

rationale for either the exclusion of imaginative texts from her anthology or its

association of the mock epic genre with nonfiction, she does explain that verse, "from

Lucretius on has often been used for scholarly nonfiction material" (xv). By associating

verse with "scholarly nonfiction material" Donawerth excludes imaginative literature

from her construction of the history of women's rhetoric.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Donawerth is not alone in this exclusion of fiction from the history of rhetoric.

In the Introduction to Available Means: An Anthology' o f Women's Rhetoric(s) (2001). for

example. Joy Ritchie and Kate Ronald further narrow the texts to be considered in

"rhetorical history” by omitting all "literary" genres:

[E]xcluding any form of "literature” was our conscious choice. [. ..] We do not mean to suggest that we can draw a clear line between literature and rhetoric: in fact we think that many of the selections here could easily appear in a collection of literary writing. Some do. But our focus remains on the gathering of rhetorics, and we rather arbitrarily define rhetoric by form, excluding poetry and story and concentrating on nonfiction prose. Our tentative definition of rhetorics here also involves the writer's purpose - most often to persuade or inform - although many works blur the boundaries between "teaching" and "delighting." (xxi)

While their definition is admittedly rather arbitrary , a close examination of Ritchie and

Ronald's definitions of "literature" and "rhetoric" reveals the problematic nature of

excluding imaginative works from histories of rhetoric. According to their discussion,

one possible dividing line between "literature" and "rhetoric" might be purpose. Rhetoric

"teaches" while literature "delights": while rhetoric answers an "urgent need to

communicate." by implication, presumably, literature does not. This boundary' appears

permeable, however, for Ritchie and Ronald claim that the works in their anthology blur

the difference between "teaching" and "delighting." This dissertation argues that this

ambiguity of purpose holds true for texts in the literary as well as the rhetorical canon.

Not only do texts in the improvisatrice tradition describe occasions on which an eloquent

woman spontaneously created oratories that delighted and instructed their audience, but

the imaginative works in w hich these improvisatrices appear introduced the reader to this

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. model of women's rhetoric. As described in the following pages, then, imaginary

literature can play a pivotal role in constructing histories of rhetoric.

Just as Ritchie and Ronald detail their reasons for excluding literary material.

Diane Helen Miller argues in "The Future of Feminist Rhetorical Criticism" (1997)

against literary methodologies. Locating feminist rhetorical theory within the

communication department. Miller argues that, when earlier theorists modeled feminist

rhetorics on their literary counterparts, a step was missed. Using Elaine Showalter's

taxonomy of feminist literary criticism, she argues that feminist theories of rhetoric

ignored the foundational first step of the Showalter schema: that in which the scholar

examines the systemic suppression of women's participation. Showalter establishes this

stage as the beginning of feminist literary studies. Miller claims, but rhetoricians jumped

directly to gynocriticism. in w hich scholars examine the activ ities of those women who

do manage to break cultural prohibitions against women's engagement in public speech.

She argues it is time for feminist rhetoricians to go back to the first step, focusing on the

means by which women's voices were silenced by dominant theories of rhetoric.

Otherw ise, we run the risk of distorting the actual opportunities for women to engage in

public discourse by myopically focusing on the aberrant few. It is only by reestablishing

the foundations of feminist rhetorics. Miller concludes, that we can build a truly feminist

rhetoric. Thus. Miller advises against the appropriation of contemporary methodologies

from literary studies.

Some feminist rhetoricians would go so far as to dispose with traditions, be they

literary or rhetorical, altogether. In her 1992 article "On Recent Attempts to Write

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Women into History of Rhetoric." for instance. Barbara Biesecker argues against

attempts to utilize the theories and methodologies of the dominant tradition to create

feminist rhetorics. Biesecker claims the attempt to unearth women in the history of

rhetoric comprises a '"tokenist" approach that denies the basic facts about the obstructions

historically facing women attempting to participate as rhetors and rhetoricians. Thus, she

argues, a straightforward application of traditional rhetorical theories to the activities of a

few women distorts our understanding of the true situations of historical women. The

result of such an approach, she asserts, is a history comprised of The Great Ladies of

Oratory: a few unrelated stories about the anomalous achievements of individuals, not a

rhetorical history' in which events can be connected in meaningful ways. Only by

disrupting the concept of traditions, she claims, will feminist rhetoric will achieve its

ends.

I share many of the same goals as Miller and Biesecker. including the

examination of systemic oppression of women by the notion of a monolithic rhetorical

tradition, the consideration of the larger historical contexts, and the formulation of a

method that is firmly grounded in rhetorical theory. 1 depart from Biesecker. however, in

my belief that feminist rhetorics can productively engage the dominant tradition w ithout

denying the cultural prohibitions facing women. Tracing the history of influence seen in

a tradition such as that of the improvisatrice substantially erodes Biesecker's claim

regarding the absence of rhetorical traditions of women. While examining women's

persuasive acts solely in the light of the dominant tradition distorts the historical

situations of women, ignoring traditional theories would similarly warp any attempt at 10

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. historical analysis. Rather, retrieval projects call for a consideration of the rhetorical

tradition alongside cultural prohibitions against women's participation in Rhetoric. As

Nan Johnson says in Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life 1866-1910 (2002).

to understand the rhetorical narrative "about how convention, rhetorical expectations, and

the lines of cultural power converge [...] requires first the acknowledgment of the

institutional role that rhetorical pedagogies play in inscribing discursive practices that

maintain rather than destabilize status-quo relationships of gender race and class" (1).

Following Johnson's observation, this dissertation examines the history of woman's

rhetoric that is inscribed in the literature of the improvisatrice tradition alongside

institutional theories of rhetoric. Such a combination reveals in Anglo-English women's

rhetoric that maintenance of the status quo w hich Johnson describes in North America.

Thus, this dissertation considers both traditional rhetorical texts as well as alternate

traditions.

Further, in contrast to Miller's call for a feminist methodology that is removed

from the methods of English studies, this project not only draws upon literary texts and

methods but also argues that the challenge Miller offers to feminist scholars can be

accomplished through an approach that builds from those very methods Miller wishes to

abandon. Examining the means by which individual authors shape and are shaped by

prevailing rhetorical theories, we can simultaneously examine the silencing of women as

a w hole and indiv idual employments and adaptations of the dominant rhetoric.

While there has yet to be a study of fiction's influence on rhetorical theories

bv/for women, some studies of nineteenth-centurv literature have concerned themselves 11

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. with the influence of the contemporary rhetorics on literature. As women's rhetoric is a

relative newcomer to the disciplinary field, it should come as no surprise that the majority

of these literary analyses that deal with rhetorical theory have focused on canonical

authors, however. "Wordsworth and Hugh Blair" (1927). E.C. Knowlton's early study,

seems to have set the tone for much of the work concerning this sort of literary-rhetorical

relationship: the literary text generally is treated an example of a rhetorical premise. In

this vein, rather than portraying fiction as a means of assimilation and transmission of

theory . William Covino's "Blair. Bvron. and the Psychology of Reading" (1981) argues

for Blair's influence on Byron's representation of the interpretative act. but does not

examine Byron's adaptation of these rhetorical principles to his own ends. Byron's

poems are read as an illustration of Blair's belletristic principals, rather than as an

articulation of rhetoric theory themselves. Similarly, the essays in Rhetorical Traditions

and British Romantic Literature (1995) deal with the relationship of rhetoric to the

poetics of canonized authors and only one. Jane Stuevner's "The Conversable World:

Eighteenth-Century' Transformations of Rhetoric." concerns fiction at all. Again.

Stuevner reads Austen's works as an illustration of the Enlightenment model of taste

found in Blair, rather than exploring the means by which Austen revises these theories to

the culturally precarious position of a middle-class female author.

Thus, this project builds on earlier scholarship in the relationship of rhetorical and

literary studies, but by incorporating a perspective derived from feminist rhetoric. I

examine the means by which literature could both transmit and regulate women's

rhetoric. One of the rhetorics that functioned in this codify ing fashion was the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. improvisatrice tradition, a rhetorical genre that emerges from a series of texts that

successively idealize, romanticize, problematize. and. ultimately, dispose of this figure.

Examining this history exposes junctures and discontinuities in literary and rhetorical

histories of the nineteenth century. In the following chapters. I first use the rhetorical

canons of invention, arrangement, and style to foreground the rhetorical theory that

contributes to the construction of the improvisatrice during the first part of the

nineteenth-century. In my final two chapters. I look at critiques of the improvisatrice in

later works in order to trace the waning power of this construct.

The Fiction of History: Women's Rhetoric and Imaginative Literature

The popularity of the improvisatrice tradition was due in no small part to its

reification of conservative gender ideologies: while women's sphere of public speech was

expanded under its rubric, it largely replicated cultural gender norms'. In this adherence

to dominant ideology, the improvisatrice tradition stands in sharp opposition to many of

those texts often celebrated as avatars to contemporary feminist rhetoric, for the feminist

rhetorical scholarship of the past twenty-five years has primarily focused on those woman

rhetors who called for a reconsideration of social roles and who advocated a woman's

rhetoric considered proto-feminist by contemporary standards. Recent treatments of

5 This emphasis upon the replication of gender norms, and the attendant truncation of masculinist rhetorics discussed below does not invalidate the improvisatrice rhetoric as a site of historical inquiry, however. That this rhetoric presents itself as inferior to the aesthetic and political power of male rhetoric, and that it ultimately exhausts itself as a rhetorical tradition does not cancel out its role in rhetorical culture. Rather, it contributes to our understanding of feminized rhetorics that functioned within and contributed to the gendering of rhetorical culture, and so reads the history of available rhetorical roles into the history of rhetoric. For more an expansion of this position, see "Noble Maids and Eloquent Mothers. Off the Map (Johnson Gender 146-172). 13

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication o f the Rights o f Women (1792). for example, focus

on the possible influence of Blair on her treatise6 or her feminist rhetorical strategies7

rather than the reception of her work or its influence on her contemporary rhetorical

culture. Likewise, recent feminist revisions of Margaret Fuller's rhetoric as expressed in

her teaching and writing privilege the strategies she enacted8 rather than their historical

reception and influence on the development of women's rhetorics. Book-length studies,

such as Glenn'sRhetoric Retold (1997). and anthologies, such as Molly Meijer

Wertheimer's Listening to their Voices (1997). focus in the main on individuals who

broke with cultural conventions and discuss how their texts attempted to refute those who

would silence women's voices. By thus emphasizing textual content rather than the

historical context, such studies better serve as examples of rhetorical analysis than as

histories of rhetoric. In order to vvTite a rhetorical history of Vindication, for instance, one

would need to consider not only its rhetorical virtuosity, but the furor with which it was

received and the means by which the discourses of power invalidated this text. Including

a consideration of such texts' suppression in our valorizations will help to better

understand the true scope of women's rhetorical history . Thus, in order to contextuaiize

the improvisatrice to the larger historical picture, this dissertation considers not only

reinscriptions of the improvisatrice. but their receptions as well.

It is not only in the consideration of rhetoric's interaction with the discourses of

power, however, that we have an opportunity to enlarge our historical understanding.

° See Allen and Huber. See Barlowe. s As rhetorical analyses of Fuller's work, see Fiesta. Kolodnv. and Rouse. 14

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Scholarship that emphasizes proto-feminist ideologies mostly has ignored those rhetorics

that largely reified gender ideologies. These essentially gendered rhetorics do not

attempt to remove women from a culturally inferior role, but instead work to construct

this role as a podium from which women can speak while maintaining their supposedly

feminine nature. The improvisatrice tradition stands as this sort of feminized rhetoric:

rather than presenting a theory that is revolutionary, the improvisatrice is evolutionary , an

enlargement of woman's role, not an attempt to disrupt nineteenth-centurv gender codes.

Despite this reification of existing ideologies, this tradition nevertheless deserves an

important place in our rhetorical history', not only for what it can tell us about dominant

theories of woman's discourse but also because the improvisatrice tradition stands as a

model of the non-disciplinary circulation of a rhetorical theory dealing with a

marginalized group.

The Improvisatrice

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the improvisatrice is. quite simply, a

"woman who improvises." Originally an Italian term for a woman who composed

extemporaneous verse, in nineteenth-century British fiction this figure embodied some

highly specified connotations related to rhetorical practice. For example, the inventional

process of the improvisatrice. which consists of a spontaneous rendering derived from her

audience's needs, is clearly differentiated from the premeditated crafting of discourse.

which was the substance of the formal discipline of Rhetoric. Likewise, the qualities of

mind that granted the improvisatrice her creative gift - such as sympathy, imagination

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and a high moral standard - were traits that could be linked to her feminine nature rather

than any unseemly oratorical mastery.

Indeed, a key motif of the improvisatrice is a series of classical allusions that

establish her in a history that could be distinguished from the male-dominated rhetorical

tradition. Through references to and comparisons with notable classical women both real

and fictional, such as the poets Corinna. Sappho, and Erinna: prophetesses Pvthia and the

Delphic oracle: and the pictorial and textual representations of Domenichino's Sybil.

Raphael's Saint Celia, and the Volumnia and Valeria of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. the

imaginative texts in improvisatrice tradition builds a history that combines the poetic, the

prophetic and the political in a manner that constructs a new history of rhetoric for

women. By historicizing the improvisatrice through a series of representations that

function outside the dominant rhetorical tradition, the classical motif that characterizes

the improvisatrice tradition doubly sanctions women's participation in rhetoric. The

construction of such a tradition normalizes the improvisatrice by establishing a precedent

that reaches back into antiquity, and. by framing a history that finds its roots in the poetry

of Sappho and the prophecy of Pvthia. these figures distinguish this tradition from the

male dominated discipline of Rhetoric that looked to rhetoricians such as Aristotle and

Cicero as its forefathers. Nevertheless, the improvisatrice tradition also incorporates

elements of the discipline of Rhetoric by consistently representing a woman rhetor

attempting to affect the actions of a public audience. Whether presented as a spontaneous

creator of verse, music, or prose oratory, the improvisatrice figure combines qualities of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the (implicitly male) rhetor with a hyper-femininity that separates the improvisatrice from

masculine rhetoric.

With the publication Germaine de Stael's Corinne, or Italy (1807), the

improv isatrice quickly became an embodiment of the ideological conflicts surrounding

the private woman engaged in public modes of written and oral discourse. As this figure

gained popularity in England, many women w riters of the period were identified w ith -

and self-identified as - the improvisatrice. These authors became associated with the

rhetorical theory signified by the improvisatrice. and so this literary creation was taken

from the page and circulated in British culture, influencing widely accepted notions of the

woman who addressed a public audience. Thus, a fictional notion became the theoretical

underpinnings of a culturally accepted image of the woman rhetor.

George Campbell, Hugh Blair and the Improvisatrice Tradition

Before examining the rhetorical theory encapsulated in the improvisatrice. it is

necessary to understand both the rhetorical theories of George Campbell and Hugh Blair,

as well as the role of Rhetoric in nineteenth-century British culture. The context of the

improvisatrice tradition and the opportunities and restrictions it offered women can be

more fully understood by connecting Rhetoric's association with the public, explicitly

masculine, world outside the home with the rising popularity of fiction among a middle

class Anglo audience and then examining the improvisatrice in the light of Campbell and

Blair's theories.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In England, the nineteenth-century saw reading imaginative literature as an

increasingly popular pastime for middle-class women. As Stephen C. Behrendt describes

in "The Romantic Reader" (1998) decreasing printing prices led to an attendant drop in

the prices of books and periodicals. Print literature thus became available to a larger

segment of the British population, a demographic that included middle-class Anglo

women. Therefore, as Behrendt summarizes women readers "already numerous at the

beginning of the period became ever more so" (94). This trend in the expansion of the

middleclass woman readership lasted throughout the century. As Dorothy Mermin

describes in Godiva s Ride: Women o f Letters in England (1993). there was an "apparent

predominance of women as [...) audience” for imaginative literature (45). Attendant to

this rising notion of the woman reader were texts written with a female readership in

mind (Behrendt 94). A theory of rhetorics, interpolated in a popular work of literature

therefore might reach a larger female audience than would be otherwise possible.

While nineteenth-century women may have enjoyed increased access to such

examples of the belles lettres. the availability of rhetorical treatises was far more

restricted9. As Miriam Brody argues in Manly Writing: Gender. Rhetoric, and the Rise o f

Composition (1993). the formal discipline of Rhetoric in both theory and practice has

been seen as the province of men since the time of Aristotle. In the nineteenth century.

accordingly, the three most readily recognized sites of rhetoric - the pulpit, the senate.

'* Blair and Campbell's treatises attempted to "reconcile the principals and practices of rhetoric with the theories of the mind, logic, and language that emerged from the Baconian-Lockian tradition" (Johnson Sineteenth-Ceniury• 19). As such, through these rhetorical treatises, the improvisatrice tradition can be connected to other influences on nineteenth-century rhetorical culture, such as John Locke's theory of the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and the bar - were forbidden to women by cultural norm. Instead. Rhetoric was seen as a

man's domain, a separation reflected in the educational system. Boys and young men

with access to an upper- or middle- class education were not only taught the vernacular

rhetorics but were also, particularly in the case of the upper classes, given an education in

the classical languages and introduced to such rhetoricians as Plato and Quintilian in the

original Greek and Latin. As Jane Purvis describes inA History o f Education in England.

the education offered to Anglo girls of the middle to upper class emphasized their future

roles as wives and mothers and usually eschewed the classical training considered

fundamental for boys.

Nevertheless, the nineteenth-century did see an increased access to rhetorical

training for women, as evidenced in the period's educational reforms, which afforded

many women a first access to systemic training in rhetoric. The curricula of the two most

important higher learning institutions for Englishwomen -- Queen's College, founded in

1848. and Bedford College.10 founded in 1849 — included the study o f texts from the

rhetorical tradition. Women's access to the institutionalized discipline of rhetoric was a

truncated experience, limited to only those rhetorical skills needed to enhance their status

as domestic ornaments and to instruct the young, both in schools and at home. Therefore,

although the nineteenth century saw an increasing access to rhetorical training for

women, this education was meant for their future educational roles as mothers and

teachers, not for public practice.

mind or David Hume’s notion of taste. Rhetorical treatises, however, contain a pedagogical emphasis that distinguishes them from their philosophical counterparts.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Even in these limited educational venues, the rhetoric accessible to women

consisted of theories created by and for men. Predictably, then, these texts ignore gender

and thereby ignore the woman who engages a public audience. And yet, by adapting

these theories to cultural notions of womanhood, texts in the improvisatrice tradition

created a rationale for a women's rhetoric that incorporated elements both from

conservative ideologies of womanhood as well as from the popular rhetorical texts of the

period. Reading a poem in the improvisatrice tradition, such as Letitia Landon's "A

History of the Lyre" (1828) alongside George Campbell’s Philosophy o f Rhetoric (1776)

and Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783) demonstrates this

juxtaposition of cultural ideologies and theories of persuasion.

Campbell and the Improvisatrice

Campbell's Philosophy has been cited repeatedly as one of the most influential

texts on late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century rhetorical thought.11 In his attempts to

wed the practices of classical rhetoric to inductive theories of the mind and faculty

psychology. Campbell reconstructs the epistemology of rhetoric by emphasizing the

auditor's interiority rather than focusing on the audience as an external homogenous

mass. This inward shift is developed in Campbell's descriptions of the ends of rhetoric

and the means by which persuasion is achieved.

10 For a discussion of the nineteenth-century curricula at Queen's College and Bedford College, see respectively GryHis and Constance. 11 For discussions of Campbell's influence, see JohnsonSineteenth-Century. Howell, and Bitzer.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Campbell focused on the effects of communication upon the individual auditor,

distilling the effects of rhetoric to four, "every speech being intended to enlighten the

understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passions or to influence the will”

(1). Any speech may attempt to engage only one of these faculties as its primary goal,

although the other faculties might be involved on a secondary level. Each faculty

responds to a different appeal. For example, the appeal to the understanding can be based

on perspicuity or argument, whereas an appeal to the imagination is based on the

"exhibiting to it a lively and beautiful object" (3). Related to an appeal to the

imagination, an appeal to the passions can be achieved through the invocation of the

sublime, "those great and noble images, which, when in suitable colouring presented to

the mind. do. as it were, distend the imagination with some vast conception, and quite

ravish the soul” (3). While the two appeals to the imagination and the passions are thus

similar, the appeal to the imagination is more superficial in that it "terminates in the

gratification of some internal taste: a taste for the wonderful, the fair, the good: for

elegance, for novelty, or for grandeur” (3). On the other hand, although still engaging the

"creative faculty” the appeal to the passions "assumes denomination of the pathetic" to

"awaken all the tenderest emotions of the heart” (3. emphasis original). Although the

appeal to the passions is potent, the most complex form of rhetoric influences the will and

by so doing, "persuades to a certain conduct” (4). In other words, to motivate an auditor

to take action necessitates the movement of the will. Engaging the will, however, also

mandates the engagement of the other three faculties to some extent, for it requires one to

"convince the judgment” and "interest the passions" (4). To achieve his ends, therefore.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. a rhetor must consider all the faculties, and since one must understand the entire mind in

order to design the appropriate appeals, a philosophy of rhetoric is a philosophy of the

human spirit.

Just as every mind consists of identical faculties, so too all minds process

information in a like fashion. Hence. Campbell argues that the mind is associative,

relying upon sense data and the connections made among sensory experience and

memories to verify the truth of statements. To persuade, the claims made by a rhetor

must align with the auditor's previous experience. If the rhetor establishes this

connection. Campbell claims, he is well on his way to success, for this common sense is

universal: "no human creature has been found originally and totally destitute of it. who is

not a monster of his kind: for such doubtless are all idiots and changelings" (40). In other

words, all audiences are the same because the mind processes information in one way:

the only differences will be found among those who are mentally defective.

In order to employ successfully the associative powers of the mind, the rhetor

must achieve a correspondence between what he claims and what the audience member

already knows. Campbell argues that the connection between any two ideas, such as that

uttered by the orator and that contained in the mind of his hearer, can be forged through

three relationships: causation, similarity, and contiguity. Only when the audience

member is convinced through these bonds will he accept a statement and. by extension,

move towards accepting a larger argument.

The monolithic model of the human mind upon which Campbell's theory is based

does not account for gender differences, so a woman in this model, if not absent

- n

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. altogether, is at best classed with male orators or. at worst, ranked with “idiots and

changelings*’ (Campbell 40). because she is a member of that group whose performance

as a rhetor or audience member deviates from the norm and so is devalued as aberrant.

The rhetorical performances of women, particularly as they are constructed by

nineteenth-century ideology, fall outside the realm of commonly accepted rhetorical

practices. Simply by nature of her sex. she will not be able to achieve the ethos of a male

rhetor, and any differences between a woman's performance and that of a male

counterpart would be attributed to a shortcoming on her part. Further, the eighteenth-

century empiricism that Campbell uses to explain rhetorical workings gives a patina of

objectivity to a system that privileges this ideology of universal identity. By basing his

system on a "scientific"’ model of persuasion. Campbell's system inadvertently adds

seemingly factual support to the construction of women's supposed mental differences as

innately lesser to those of a male rhetor. In other words, any perceived variance between

the sexes would automatically make women's rhetoric inferior.

The limitations imposed by Campbell's epistemologv did not prevent the

circulation of his theory, however. Despite his broad generalizations regarding the

persuasive process. Campbell’s conception of the mind proved foundational to

nineteenth-century theories of rhetoric (Johnson Nineteenth-Century• 20). Campbell's

impact manifests itself throughout the nineteenth century- in the enduring influence of his

construction of the faculties on the modes of discourse, the continuing dominance of his

notion of the qualities of style, including perspicuity (clarity) and vivacity throughout the

century, and the nineteenth-century representation of invention as a "process of selecting

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. content and managing form” (Johnson Nineteenth-Century 23). Likewise, the

pervasiveness of Campbell's influence can clearly be seen in the improvisatrice tradition.

Thus, when reading one of Letitia Landon's improvisatrice poems, such as "A History of

the Lyre” (1828). through the conceptual framework provided by Campbell, a rhetorical

system emerges that reinscribes and revises foundational Campbellian concepts.

Landon's "A History of the Lyre” concerns the triumphs and tragedies of the

mysterious Eulalie. her debates with the poem's unnamed male narrator, and her untimely

death, attributed to the hollow life that accompanies woman's fame. Eulalie's name can

be traced to the Greek lalia. meaning "beautiful speech” or "good conversation" (with an

emphasis on conversation, as opposed to logos, speech as argument or reason). As the

poem unfolds, this name becomes increasingly apt: not only is she an improvisatrice.

whose abilities draw an admiring crowd, but. as depicted throughout the poem, in private

conversation, her gifts for "beautiful speech" are apparent.

Despite her seeming virtuosity, however, when reading Eulalie's story in light of

Campbell's theory , her rhetoric's ultimate failure is evident from the opening lines: ""Tis

strange how much is marked on memory / In which we may have interest, but no part"

(1-2). Drawing from John Locke's principles. Campbell believed the most effective

rhetoric used w ords to imitate the direct experience of the sense. While Eulalie may have

amused the auditor: she did not make this word-sensation link: he had "no part" in her

discourses. Hence, w hile she may have moved some of this auditor's faculties, she did

not achieve the involvement of all four that Campbell believed necessary to persuade an

audience. As seen in the dispassion of Eulalie's interlocutor, this truncation of the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. improvisatrice rhetoric is its greatest weakness. While the relationship of Eulalie and the

nameless male narrator may demonstrate the ultimate failure of her rhetoric, however, on

all other rhetorical occasions, her eloquence carries the day. Thus while the

improvisatrice rhetoric may meet with long term failure, its ephemeral success is

extremely potent.

A clearer picture of the improvisatrice's rhetoric emerges as the poem unfolds: in

a Campbellian framework, this rhetorical model emphasizes the faculty of imagination

while often neglecting the understanding. Eulalie's public appearances manifest this

predominance: for example, in her first public she herself is described as what Campbell

would term a "lively and beautiful object" (Campbell 3):

Her robe was Indian red. and work'd with gold. And gold the queen-like girdle round her waist. Her hair was gathered up in grape-like curls: An emerald wreath, shaped into vine leaves, made Its graceful coronal. Leant on a couch, whose converse light Made a fit element, in w hich her wit Flash'd like lightening: -- on her cheek the rose Burnt like a festal lamp: the sunniest of smiles Wander'd upon her face. (95-103)

Eulalie here embodies key elements of Campbell's notion of imagination. Among

imagination's qualities. Campbell names vivacity, beauty and novelty (Campbell 73).

each of w hich Eulalie displays in abundance. Her beauty, implicit here, is attested to at

her first appearance in the poem, w hen the narrator claims, he "never saw more perfect

loveliness" (Landon "Lyre" 68). Eulalie's novelty similarly is mostly visual, as seen in

various exotic associations, such as the poem's Eastern imagery. More important to her

persuasive abilities, however, is Eulalie's vivacity, which Campbell cites as a key

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. element in engaging the imagination. As Lloyd Bitzer notes in his introduction to the

Philosophy. Campbell never precisely defines vivacity but instead uses such terms to

signify vivacity as "liveliness, force, energy, brightness, brilliancy, steadiness and luster"

(xxxii). Descriptions of Eulalie echo these luminary terms: "her wit7 Flash'd like

lightening" while she wore "the sunniest of smiles." and her performances are likened to

"diamond sunshine" (Landon "Lvre” 12-3: 14). When she spoke. "The light flash'd in

her eyes” (Landon "Lyre" 136). Eulalie too establishes this link between her rhetorical

performances and a Campbellian notion of vivacity, naming her inspiration the "electric

throb within the mind." Similarly, the "Eastern Tulip" (Landon "Lyre" 194). which she

names her "emblem.” (Landon "Lyre" 194) is. she claims, "redolent with sunshine"

(Landon "Lvre" 197). This use of imagery associated with light and energy foregrounds

the improvisatrice's vivacity and. by extension, her ability to engage the imagination.

While Eulalie has a natural gift for appealing to the imagination, she has no such

connection to the faculty of understanding as Campbell constructs it. Indeed, she

articulates a distrust of reason that may explain her disregard for appeals to this faculty:

We have proud words that speak of intellect: We talk of mind that magnifies the world. And makes it glorious * * * but within How mean, how poor, how pitiful, how mix'd With base alloy. (Landon "Lyre" 262-264: 274-276)

Here Eulalie voices a critique of appeals to understanding that reverses classical

criticisms of the emotions. Aristotle, for example, denigrates pathos as a base pandering

to the lowest element of one's audience while he elevates logos as the finest form of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. rhetoric. By contrast. Eulalie portrays appeals to the intellect as the appeal to man's

'"base alloy." lacking the visceral authenticity of pathos. In the context of a nineteenth-

century woman's educational opportunities, the preference o f pathos to logos seems

understandable. A woman rhetor, after all. would have better access to the pathetic than

to the institutionalized form of logic and reason associated with intellectual methods of

persuasion. While Eulalie may scorn the appeal to reason as a logos-based sophistry,

however, the reason her rhetoric fails to have a lasting effect can be accounted for by this

very shortcoming. That is. as the male narrator remonstrates, her improvisations "sink on

the ear / And there they die / A flower's sweetness, but a flower's life" (Landon "Lyre"

148-9). While her works are thus striking, they lack the force of argument to render them

effective in the long term. Thus. Eulalie's neglect of this persuasive element can be seen

as the tragic flaw of her rhetoric.

It is not only in this revision and truncation of appeals that Landon's text can be

profitably read alongside Campbell's. The association of ideas, which was foundational

to the epistemology o f Campbell's system, is evident in Landon's text. Indeed, in his

first sighting of the improvisatrice. the narrator declaims: "I saw EULALIA: all was in

the scene / graceful association" (Landon "Lvre" 26-7). After invoking the term, the

speaker goes on to describe the means by which his initial vision of the improvisatrice

associates her with a classical (albeit mythical) tradition in which women were allowed

access to public speech. Her antique setting - a "fallen place" (Landon "Lyre" 34) in

moonlight-bathed classical ruins - and her Hellenistic appearance - "her robe / Was

white, and simply gather'd in such folds / As suit a statue" (Landon "Lvre" 70-71) define

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. her as a "young Pythoness'* (Landon "Lyre" 78). Campbell identified the resemblance of

two ideas as one of the means by which we discern the validity of an idea, and here we

can see resemblance to a classical tradition rendering the improvisatrice intelligible to

one of her male contemporaries.

The association of ideas as an operative epistemological principal manifests itself

in Eulalie the male narrator. Eulalie's composition process is based in associationism. as

the improvisation recounted in the poem illustrates:

some one bade her mark a little sketch I brought from England of my father's hall: Himself was outlined leaning by an oak. A greyhound at his feet. "And is this dog Your father's sole companion?" -- with these words She touched the strings: — that melancholy song. I never may forget its sweet reproach. (Landon "Lvre" 107-113)

Eulalie's invention process here represents the improvisation as a form of immediate

associationism in which the improvisatrice's text is produced by the emotions conjured

up through reflection on her audience. This almost supernatural ability to establish

connections between an audience and a theme into an immediate performance relates the

improvisatrice's abundance of vivacity to her immediate success, for it "seems to be

Campbell's view [...] that not only do the laws of association govern or describe the

behavior of ideas, but they also provide routes for the transfer of energy or vivacity"

(Bitzer xxxiv-xxxv). Not only does her facility with the association of ideas allow

Eulalie to spontaneously create her text, but it also relays the vivacity that gives her text

its appeal. The improvisatrice herself describes her inventional process in similar terms.

saying "All was association with some link / Whose fine electric throb was in the mind"

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (Landon "Lyre'* 214-215). Here, we can hear echoes of Campbell's juxtaposition of

vivacity with the association of ideas. This use of associationism is not only visible to a

twenty-first century reader mindful of Campbell's text but was available to a nineteenth-

century reader as well. In her 1841 Landon monograph. Sarah Sheppard notes that

Landon's poems "peculiarly exemplify those primary laws in the philosophy of human

nature,associationism and generalization" (47. emphasis mine). Thus, looking at

Landon's poem in light of Campbell's Philosophy foregrounds the manner in which

Eulalie both describes and enacts the improvisatrice rhetoric, a paradigm that emphasizes

imagination and the association of ideas as persuasive means available to women.

Blair and the Improvisatrice

Campbell is not the only influence on the rhetoric of the improvisatrice; in order

to understand the ways in which Eulalie's rhetoric is responding to nineteenth-century

theories of communication, it is necessary to look at her performance in terms another

major influence at the beginning of the nineteenth-centurv: Hugh Blair'sLectures on

Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783). While looking at Campbell's text gives a new insight

into how the improvisatrice's rhetoric works from an epistemological perspective, the

belletristic project forwarded in Blair's text affords an understanding into the rhetorical

purpose that unifies representations of the improvisatrice figure.

The Lectures made several contributions to nineteenth-century rhetoric and. by

extension, to the rhetorical tradition of the improvisatrice. Blair broadened rhetoric's

definition, for example, to include all "the arts of speech and writing" (1:13). He not

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. only incorporates literature into his rhetorical system but also further expands rhetoric to

include both the study and the production of eloquence (1:5). Blair's emphasis on

appreciation as a key element of rhetoric's study expanded women's access to rhetoric.

While longstanding cultural prohibition may forbid women access to the practice of

formal oratory, in a Blairian framework the cultivation of one's appreciation of great

works is considered the means to self-improvement for both sexes. The inclusion of a

more critical role in the discipline Rhetoric afforded women a point of entry .

Blair's text is notable for its synthesis of literature and rhetoric in the education of

the taste, which he defines as "the power of receiving pleasure from the beauties of nature

and art" (Blair 1: 23). Taste springs from a faculty composed o f'’natural sensibility to

beauty and of improved understanding" (Blair 1:21) and is composed of two constituent

faculties: Delicacy and Correctness. Of the former. Blair claims that it is '’principally the

perfection of that natural sensibility on which taste is found. It implies those finer organs

or powers which enable us to discover beauties that lie hid from a vulgar eye" (Blair 1:

23-4). Delicacy is natural and allows us to appreciate beauty: by contrast. Correctness

seems to focus more on detecting the faults in a work of art: ’’The power of Delicacy is

chiefly seen in discerning the true merit of a work: the pow er of Correctness, in rejecting

false pretensions to merit. Delicacy leans more to feeling. Correctness more to reason

and judgment. The former is more the gift of nature: the latter the gift of art" (Blair 1:

25). It is this latter power. Correctness, which the aspiring rhetor can improve and. by so

doing, improve his faculty of taste.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In the Lectures, one of the primary means by which to cultivate the power of

Correctness is through imitation, "attention to the most approved models, study of the

best authors, comparisons of lower and higher degrees of the same beauties" (1: 20).

Imitation reflects not only rhetorical excellencies but moral ones as well, for

”[b]elletristic rhetorical theory insists that the great works illustrate not only tasteful

rhetorical effects but also the admirable ideas and elevated sentiments that the would-be

writer or speaker should aspire to express" (Johnson Nineteenth-Century 37). Imitation

makes one not only a better rhetor but a better person as well.

According to nineteenth-centurv English cultural ideologies. Delicacy, the more

instinctual component of taste, was an innate part of women’s nature. In the well known

and well received Strictures on the Modern System o f Female Education (1799).12 for

example. Hannah More argues the superiority of woman's taste as one of the "natural”

differences between the sexes, claiming that women innately "possess in a high degree

that delicacy and quickness of perception, and that nice discernment between the

beautiful and the defective w hich comes under the denomination of taste” (275). This

emphasis on women's instinctual sensibility long remained a common cultural

assumption in nineteenth-century England. As John Ruskin's "Of Queen's Gardens”

(1865) details:

The man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer [...]. His intellect is for speculation and invention: his energy for adventure, for war and conquest [...]. But the woman's power is for rule, not for battle, and her intellect is not for invention or recreation [...]. She

More's text sold over 19.000 copies and was influential throughout the first half of the nineteenth century.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. sees the qualities of things, their claims and places. Her great function is praise; she enters into no contest, but infallibly adjudges the crown of contest. (128)

The power of women's taste here is somewhat reduced from More's treatise, for as the

gender binary is constructed by Ruskin. man’s nature endows him with superior

correctness of taste. The critical intellect of "the doer, the creator, the discoverer" seems

a natural fit for that quality of mind that leads us to seek deficiencies. By contrast, natural

woman's ability to see the finer "quality of things." which Ruskin equates with her "great

function" of praise, inclines her towards the aspect of taste that solely discerns goodness.

Thus, woman's taste is innate and only "discoverfs] beauties" (Blair 1: 23) and so relies

upon Delicacy. By contrast, man's superior intellect -- and superior education — would

prov ide him with a greater Correctness of taste. The combination of Blair's notion of

taste with nineteenth-century spheres ideology creates a rhetorical position for women.

then - albeit a highly restrictive one in which her discourse sprang from instinctual

femininity rather than erudition or premeditated reasoning.

As Blair's theory is concerned with the improvement of the taste as well as its

identification, the Lectures provide a belletristic rationale for women's moral leadership.

Blair holds that appreciation of tasteful models improves the taste "[fjor such

disquisitions [. ..] necessarily lead us to reflect on the operations of the imagination, and

the movements of the heart; and increase our acquaintance with some of the most refined

feelings which belong to our frame" (Blair 1: 10). Through appreciation, study and

imitation one can improve the faculty of taste, and this improvement makes one a better

orator, a better writer and. in fact, a better person. Emphasis on imitation as a means of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. moral improvement provides a rhetorical justification for literature penned by women.

Just as Blair advocated the improvement of the individual moral sensibility through

imitation, so too do nineteenth-centurv ideologies represent women as the guardians of

morality. As Sarah Ellis argues in her phenomenally popular conduct manual The

Women o f England: Their Habits and Duties1 (1839). J the role of middle-class women

was to provide a moral example worthy of imitation in the home:

How often has man returned to his home, with a mind confused by the many voices, which in the mart, the exchange or the public assembly, have addressed themselves to his inborn selfishness, or his worldly pride: and while his integrity was shaken, and his resolution gave way beneath the pressure of apparent necessity, or the insidious pretenses of expediency, he has stood corrected before the clear eye of woman, as it looked directly to the naked truth, and detected the lurking evil of the specious act he was about to commit. Nay. so potent may have become this secret influence that he may have borne it about with him like a kind of second conscience, for mental reference, and spiritual counsel, in moments of trial: and when the snares of the world were around him. and temptations from within and without have bribed over the witness in his own bosom, he has thought of the humble monitress who sat alone, guarding the fireside comforts of his distant home, and the remembrance of her character, clothed in moral beauty, has scattered the clouds before his mental vision. (Ellis 31)

Ellis encapsulates women's idealized role as defined by nineteenth-centurv British

bourgeois culture. Woman is not only represented as innately tasteful, possessing that

"clear eye" which allows her to ”loo[k] directly to the naked truth, and detec[t| the

lurking evil of the specious act." but she is also the object that improves man's taste, for

her "moral beauty" functions as a "second conscience" for man. involved in the larger

world outside the home. In this manner, women's domestic role is tied to masculine

taste's improvement: not only does her morality provide an inspiring model for man but

lj During the nineteenth century.Women of England went through twenty-four editions and was followed by three sequels.

j j

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. also, due her "natural” qualities, she can act as an externalized agent of his sense of

Correctness.

Just as Landon’s improvisatrice reinscribes Campbell’s epistemology in the

emphasis of the imaginative faculty, so too does she articulate this feminized form of

belletrism in which woman’s natural eloquence is used for man's betterment. Eulalie

describes woman's nature in terms of its Delicacy and. related to this, its morally

ameliorative effects:

The lily of the valley - mark how pure The snowy blossoms. -- and how soft a breath Is almost hidden by the large dark leaves. Not only have those delicate flowers a gift Of sweetness and beauty, but the root - A healing power dwells there: fragrant and fair. But dwelling still in some beloved shade. Is this not woman’s emblem? (Landon "Lyre" 179-186)

Eulalie's speech here echoes Blair’s discussion of taste and predicts Ellis's articulation of

woman’s mission. Delicacy, which Blair defines as the natural component of taste, is

well represented in the lily of the valley. Like these blooms, the "gift / O f sweetness and

beauty" shared by the "delicate flowers" of womanhood is the ability to provide moral

"healing" within the home through their beauty and innate tastefulness. Eulalie. too. can

claim woman’s gift, but her supply of Delicacy is used for the public good - at a great

sacrifice to the improvisatrice herself:

Again I'll borrow summer’s eloquence Yon Eastern Tulip - that is emblem mine: Ay! It has radiant colours - every leaf Is as a gem from its own country's mines. *Tis redolent with sunshine: but with noon It has begun to wither: — look within.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. It has a wasted bloom, a burning heart: It has dwelt too much in the open day. And so have I: and both must droop and die! (Landon ”Lvre" 193-201)

By using her belletristic gifts for the public good. Eulalie depletes her own physical and

spiritual reserves. Thus her performance is not an unfeminine assertion in the public

sphere but an extension of her woman's role as moral guardian. That these gifts are. in

fact used for the good of her auditors is made clear in the improvisation on the narrator's

father, left behind in England: "She ask'd me how I had the heart to leave / The old man

in his age: she told me how lorn / Is solitude” (Landon "Lyre" 114-116). Reminded of

his filial duty, he quickly returns to England and his father's home. The improvisatrice's

sensibility thereby improves her auditor's taste, an aesthetic experience that recalls him to

his higher moral self.

The “Lady Writer” and the Belletristic Rational

By tying the improvement of morality to rhetorical performance. Blair's notion of

taste provides a rhetorical purpose for the improvisatrice apart from the quest for self-

glorv or assertion of one's will that is a part of much traditional rhetorical performance.

By linking woman's oratorical performance to the public good, the improvisatrice

connects public performance to woman's sphere and so enlarges her rhetorical space

while reiterating dominant gender ideology. This belletristic rationale is not limited to the

performance of the fictional improvisatrice. however. Many women writers were

identified with a similar rhetorical position. In the similarities between the improvisatrice

tradition and nineteenth-centurv's constructions of the woman author as the Lady Writer.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. we can see the conflation of these personae and how belletristic and epistemic rhetorics

facilitated their construction. Nineteenth-centurv cultural assumptions about the woman

?"thor's abilities, her rhetorical exigency and the resilience of her work epitomize the

rhetorical construction of the fictional improvisatrice demonstrating the means by which

an imaginative figure can embody a rhetorical theory.

With the nineteenth-centurv rise of the professional woman writer in England,

belletrism served to simultaneously sanction and regulate women's participation as

authors. There certainly had been women writers earlier, but this period saw the growing

acceptance of the woman writer as a middle-class literary professional: many women

were supporting themselves through their writing, and their economic exigency fueled

their attempts to formulate a rhetoric that would make their participation in the literary

marketplace palatable to a popular audience. According to cultural ideologies, middle-

class women were only to work if it was absolutely financially necessary. Put another

way. as W.R. Greg wrote in an 1859 review essay for the Xational Review: "There are

vast numbers of lady novelists for the same reason there are vast numbers of

sempstresses. Thousands of women have nothing to do and yet are under the necessity of

doing something" (144).

With the increasing importance of economics in the position of the woman writer.

we see her emergence as a professional figure in a variety of genres. As both Angela

Leighton and Isabel Armstrong have argued, the early decades of the 1800s saw the

advent of "the woman poet as [...] a self-professed writer" (Leighton 2). That is. the

nineteenth century witnessed a growing sense of self-identity among women writers, a

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. movement that included a questioning of what it meant to be a "Lady Writer". And it

was not only the women authors themselves that question the role of women in literature.

As Lyn Pykett asserts, for nearly every decade of the 1800s "and certainly from the late

1840s onwards, both male and female commentators on the literary scene regularly

pronounced this was the age of the female novelist" (153). This rising notion of the

professional woman writer and the attendant increasing female presence in the public

sphere of literary business, called for rhetorics that not only explained the new success of

the so-called feminine pen. but also controlled this expansion of woman's sphere. One

such rhetoric was the improvisatrice tradition

As reflected in nineteenth-century literary' periodicals, a belletristic approach

simultaneously praises women's authors for their femininity while dissuading them from

"manly" writing. T.H. Lister articulates this attitude in an 1830 review essay for the

Edinburgh Review, when he speculates that women may be better novel writers because

they are "[n]aturally endow ed with greater delicacy of taste and feeling, w ith a moral

sense not blunted and debased by those contaminations to which men are exposed" (459).

Like the fictional improvisatrices. women authors have a Blairian claim to the public

discourse represented by the novel and. in fact, due their "natural" purity , may produce

works more worthy for the kind of study improving to the taste. This combination of

upstanding morality and tasteful insight likewise defends women's participation in the

literary marketplace. In fact, as George Henry Lewes' 1852 essay “The Lady Novelists."

describes it. woman's innate characteristics are responsible for any literary merit she may

achieve:

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the Masculine mind is characterized by the predominance of the intellect and the Feminine by the predominance of the emotions. [. ..] Woman, by her greater affectionateness, her greater range and depth of emotional experience is well suited to give expression to the emotional facts of life, and demands a place in literature corresponding with that she occupies in society [...] The joys and sorrows of affection, the incidents of domestic life, the aspirations and fluctuations of emotional life, assume typical forms in the novel. Hence we may be prepared to find women succeeding better infinesse of detail, in pathos and sentiment, while men generally succeed better in the construction of plots and the delineation of character. (131-13)

Here we see a representation of the woman writer that can be observed usefully through

the improvisatrice's revision of Campbell and Blair. As the masculine mind is dominated

by the intellect, male authors are able appeal to the will and so have access to nonfiction

genres. Women, by contrast, are generally restricted to imaginative works, and the Lady

Novelist w ith her "predominance of emotion.” "range and depth of emotional

experience.” and her "affectionateness” constructs texts that appeal to the imagination

and the passions as they are described by Campbell. Building from Campbell's notion of

faculty psychology. Blair's theories expand the potential for woman's "natural" rhetoric.

for Blair argues "the imagination serves reason in a special way [...] that cannot be

directly apprehended by the understanding" (Johnson Nineteenth-Century• 36). Thus, as

women's writing has a special emphasis on the imagination, it also has an access to a

truth that is unavailable to the understanding. Or. as Lewes puts it. women have two

strengths when it comes to writing: observation and sentiment (141). Not only do women

excel in creating emotional appeals (sentiment) but also their ability to observe the

minutiae of the everyday allows them to achieve a verisimilitude and a delicacy in their

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. work that is contrary to man’s nature. Like Landon's description of the fictional Eulalie.

women authors were purported to have a particular appeal to the imagination.

Women’s "natural" rhetorical talents are not the gifts they may first appear,

however: for due to these qualities of sensibility and observation, the feminine literary

text is marked by its innate ephemerality. That is. as Lewes argues when discussing the

work of Landon herself, a "quick emotive nature, trembling with sensibility enabled her

to write passages of exquisite beauty, which were not. however, more durable than mere

emotion is" (Lewes 138). In other words. Lewes argues that the pathos-driven prowess

that enabled women to write works of such force ultimately led to the demise of these

texts. Likewise women's natural talent for observation fares no better, for the delicate

specificity of their w ork renders it only momentarily pertinent, for "in proportion as these

expressions are the forms of individual, peculiar truths, such as fleeting fashions or

idiosyncrasies, the literature is ephemeral. [.. .] Nevertheless even idiosyncrasies are

valuable as side glances: they are aberrations that bring the natural orbit into more

prominent distinctness" (Lewes 140). Despite his championing of woman writers seen in

his essays and correspondence and his mentoring of Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot.

Lewes is here the voice of popular opinion in his belief that women's nature makes her

discourse morally powerful and so suits it for the public sphere of the literary

marketplace but at the same time guarantees its perishability. Or. as the unnamed male

narrator "A History of the Lyre" tells Eulalie. these w orks have a "flower’s sweetness,

but a flower's life" (149).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As the beiletristic resonances among Lister. Lewes, and Landons constructions of

the women's rhetorical abilities and weakness imply, the fictional character of the

improvisatrice embodies many of those feminine qualities associated with the nineteenth-

century conception of the Lady Writer. Thus, women authors such as Germaine de Stael.

Letitia Landon. and Felicia Hemans embraced the fictional composing process of the

improvisatrice as a representation of their own rhetorical strategies. By associating their

personae with a well-received fictional character, they differentiated their texts from their

male counterparts, sidestepping any transgressions into the masculine realm of Rhetoric.

More importantly these woman authors thereby associated themselves with a theory of

woman's writing that had met with wide acceptance, as demonstrated by the popular and

critical success of the improvisatrice tradition's inaugural text.Corinne. or Italy, which

articulated a beiletristic and epistemic rhetoric that is contextualized to nineteenth-

century notions of femininity.

As seen in the relationship between the fictional improvisatrices and real-life

women authors, the improvisatrice rhetoric circulated in the real world as an accepted

representation of an appropriately feminine composing strategy. In twenty-first century

rhetorical studies, then, we can read the improvisatrice tradition not only as a reflection of

the rhetorics of Campbell and Blair, but as a revision of these theories, a new New

Rhetoric that not only adopted prevalent theories of gender and rhetoric but adapted them

into a widely-accepted paradigm. Thus, by looking at fictional texts, we gain insight into

non-fictional rhetorical practices.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Working from Campbell's Philosophy and Blair's Lectures. the next chapter will

establish the framework for the investigation of the improvisatrice tradition by examining

Corinne, or Italy. In it and succeeding chapters I examine the use of faculty psychology

and belletrism in the synthesis of a rhetoric constructed to meet the problems of women

emerging into public discourse. By emphasizing the means by which Corinne*s

composing process feminized such premises of the New Rhetoric as imagination,

understanding and sympathy, as well the foundational tenets of Blair's beiletristic

rhetoric, this chapter defines a version of invention tailored to the nineteenth-centurv

ideology of separate spheres. It also looks at biographies of Stael herself and the way in

which her inventional process is likened to that of her fictional creation by writers

throughout the nineteenth-century. In preceding chapters. I trace the evolution of the

improvisatrice tradition by examining a range of its forms, including the works of Letitia

Landon. Germaine de Stael. Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot. By examining rising

popularity of the improvisatrice in the works of de Stael and Landon. and its critique in

the works of Bronte and Eliot, this dissertation explores the creation, appropriation and

abandonment of one non-institutional theory of rhetoric and so contributes to the history

of women's rhetoric.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 2

"LOOK UPON CORINNE:”

INVENTION IN CORINNE. OR ITALY

I am not Corinne. but if you like I shall be. - Germane de Stael1

Of central importance to the improvisatrice tradition in England was Germaine de

Stael's novel Corinne. or Italy. Published in 1807 and immediately translated into

English, de Stael's text was an overnight success. Corinne's success w as of a peculiar

kind: it had mass appeal, demonstrated by the more than forty editions published

between 1807 and 1872. and it won critical appreciation, represented by the nearly-

universal acclaim that greeted the novel’s publication.2 Further, from the onset of its

popularity, the novel was associated with women writing and reading. With respect to

the former, several studies document the influence of de Stael's heroine on a diversity of

1 Qtd. Gutwurth 264. 2 For discussions of the reception of Corinne. see Gutwurth 259-309 and Moers 263-319.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. women writers including sentimental poetesses4 such as Letitia Landon and Felicia

Hemans. Victorian novelists, such as George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte, and essayists,

such as Margaret Fuller and Anna Jameson.4 Clearly, women authors found a viable

model for themselves in de Stael's Italian improvisatrice. Less documented in twentieth-

and twenty-first century scholarship, but perhaps more important to the enduring success

of de Stael's novel throughout the nineteenth century, however, was its appeal to a

broader female audience. Given the vast numbers the novel sold, the bulkCorinne of 's

readership was made up of middle-class readers. Corinne offered something to women in

the parlor as well as to those who participated in the literary market. Looking at the

novel's characterization of women's rhetoric and the responses this representation incited

not only demonstrates the means by which rhetorical models could circulate via

literature, but also shows how such rhetorics are approved or invalidated by other public

discourses.

Although I am reading Corinne as primarily a rhetorical treatise its critical history

has not focused on this aspect of the text. Indeed, while this novel has long been

recognized as a precursor to Romanticism' and as one of the first literary representations

of the woman of artistic genius6, scholars have yet to fully understand how Corinne

' While the contemporary viability the term "poetess" is contested, this project uses it to designate that popular woman author of sentimental verse whose ethos was predicated on a model of hyper-femininitv. For discussion of political implications of this term, see Leighton. Mellor and Stephenson. 4 As representative examples, see Moers 173-210 and Peel and Sweet. 5 For further information, see Porter. Naginski. Kelley and P. Blanchard. bSee Moers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. articulates a rhetoric based in the figure of the improvisatrice7. This novel thus stands as

the foundation of a tradition that feminized the dominant theories of persuasion as

articulated by Campbell and Blair. Corinne may not be specifically attempting to

synthesize woman's role in public and private discourse with prevailing institutional

rhetorical theories, but the nineteenth-century currency ofThe Philosophy o f Rhetoric and

Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres nevertheless constructs these treatises as two of

the primary articulations of public and private speech against which a new rhetoric would

define itself. The canonical status Campbell and Blair had achieved in describing the

persuasive process would place them as a key part of the theoretical framework for any

new discussions of rhetoric — be it those nineteenth-century textbooks that show' the

imprint of Campbell and Blair's theories or a non-institutional rhetoric such as that of the

improvisatrice.8 It should come as no surprise, then, that the inventional process of the

improvisatrice echoes elements of Blair and Campbell's discussions.

Isabel Hill, English Translation andCorinne

Due toCorinne' s multiple translations, when discussing the novel it is necessary

to determine which Corinne is under consideration. While there were private and pirated

translations of the French novel, as Avriel Goldberger points out in "Germaine de Stael's

Corinne: Challenges to the Translator" (1990). the most popular nineteenth-century

English version of de Stael's novel was by far the 1833 translation (Goldberger 801).

While scholars such as Ellen Moers. Madelyn Gutvvirth and Simon Bayle have acknowledged the link between Corinne and Anglo w omen authors, there has yet to be a sustained study of the transformations of the improvisatrice in British and American literature.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Translated by nineteenth-century dramatist Isabel Hill with verse translations by Letitia

Elizabeth Landon. this edition remained in print for over a hundred years. Even when the

1833 Corinne went out of print, it remained the standard translation until Goldberger's

own 1987 translation. During the much of the nineteenth-century, then, the Hill text was

the dominant translation of Corinne in England.

Along with documenting the widespread popularity of Hill's text. Goldberger also

acknowledges its superiority to other English versions. That is. in "Challenges to the

Translator." Goldberger offers an extensive critique ofCorinne 's nineteenth-century

translations. Her only critique of the Hill translation, however, is that "it is often

slavishly literal" and "sounds hopelessly outdated to the contemporary ear with its ‘ere's'

and 'methought’s'" (801). Later in her essay, she critiques Landon's contributions to the

volume by claiming that she "attempted to put the volume's improvisations into verse,

with unfortunate results, for she was no poet" (808). This last comment appears ironic in

the context of the improvisatrice tradition: as described in Chapter Three. Landon w as a

sensationally popular poetess of the period, and w as in fact known as the "English

Improvisatrice." The 1833 translation is thus doubly-authorized as a primary text of the

improvisatrice tradition. Not only does it carry an association with the English

Improvisatrice. but. as Goldberger describes, it was the most faithful and popular

translation of de Stael's novel. This project therefore uses the 1833 text.

8 For a discussion of Campbell and Blair's influence in nineteenth Century England, see Miller. Chapters 7

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Corinne, or Italy

Before turning to a rhetorical analysis of the text, however, it may be useful to

review its narrative. Corinne, or Italy, tells the story of the doomed relationship of

Englishman Nevil. Lord Oswald and the mysterious Italian improvisatrice. Corinne.

Oswald, thrown into a Byronic gloom of filial self-recrimination by the death of his

father, has traveled to Italy in an attempt to revive his spirits. One of the first sights that

greet him in Rome is the crowning of Corinne at the Capitol, w here she is receiving the

laurea capitolina* of Tasso and Petrarch. As a part of the ceremony. Corinne performs

an improvisation whose eloquence touches the British Lord, causing him to seek out the

company of the enigmatic poetess.

As their first interview indicates, the attraction between Oswald and Corinne is

mutual, initiating a bond that is strengthened by their journeying together through Rome

and the surrounding country side. Corinne offers to show Oswald the local sights in the

hope that a better understanding of Rome w ill lead her suitor to a better understanding of

Corinne herself. Her endeavor is at least partially successful: during their time together.

Oswald becomes increasingly enchanted with Corinne while enjoying her varied abilities

in both public and private. In public. Corinne displays her talent not just by

improvisation, but also: by singing, performing in a comic opera: by dancing, performing

the tarantella: by painting, producing heart-rendering pictures: by writing, translating

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet into Italian: and by acting, performing in the same. In

private. Corinne evinces abilities that complement her public talents as she conducts

and 8. For discussion of their influence in North America see Johnson.Sineteenth-Century.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. conversation with a level of "enthusiasm" and "vivacity" Oswald has never before seen,

and explains the sights of Italy to him in a manner that inspires his finest sensibility.

Oswald is unable to declare himself, however, until he learns the secrets of

Corinne's past and. in turn, shares his own history. For his part. Oswald tells Corinne that

the depression that drove him to Italy was instigated by his father's death, which he

believes was hastened by Oswald's ill-advised romantic liaison with a treacherous

Frenchwoman. Further. Oswald explains, he is tom between his desire for Corinne and

his duty to marry the bride his father had selected before his untimely demise.

In return for Oswald's tale. Corinne writes him a letter that offers her own story.

She is the daughter of a noble English father and an Italian mother. After the death of her

mother. Corinne's father returned to England, remarried and sent for his daughter. His

second wife typified English womanhood. Corinne claims, in her dedication to social

rules and her aversion for emotional display. Thus. Corinne's natural vivacity was stifled

and her creative gifts were suppressed. When her father died, she fled England, changed

her name to Corinne. and rose to fame in Italy for her many talents. Before his death,

however, her father had attempted to arrange a marriage between herself and the son of

his oldest friend. Ironically, this friend was Oswald's father. He originally supported the

match, but upon meeting Corinne. found her too unconventional and instead moved his

preference to Corinne's half-sister, the thoroughly English Lucy.

Oswald is horrified to leam his now-dead father had specifically censured what

has now revealed itself as his true love. Nevertheless, after promising to marry Corinne.

9 An honorarv laurel crown presented at Rome's Capitol in acknowledgement of artistic excellence. 47

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. he returns to England in the hopes of effecting reconciliation between Corinne and her

stepmother, thereby restoring her tainted name. Once in England, however, he

experiences doubts about Corinne's fidelity and suitability for English domestic life.

Through a series of melodramatic plot twists, he becomes enamored of Lucy, and when

Corinne learns of his affections, she releases him from his marriage promise. He marries

Lucy, and Corinne retires from public life to die of a broken heart.

This is not the end of the story, however. Once married to Lucy. Oswald becomes

aware of the charms that Corinne possesses that Lucy lacks. Due to his pining for his lost

love, his health declines. On his doctor's orders, he returns to Italy with his daughter.

Juliet, and his wife, who has become aware of his growing dissatisfaction. When in Italy,

she seeks out her half sister to confront her about Oswald's feelings. Instead of engaging

in an angry scene, the two sisters share a tearful reunion in which Corinne begins to tutor

her sister in the ways to enchant Oswald. Likewise. Corinne begins to teaches her niece

Juliet Italian and recitation. She refuses, however, to see Oswald.

When it becomes obvious that she does not have long to live. Corinne arranges a

performance of her last poem and invites Oswald and Lucy to attend. Shortly thereafter,

on her deathbed, she forgives Oswald, w ho returns to England with the improved Lucy to

live out his life as an exemplary husband and father. The reader is never told how he

feels after Corinne's death, however. In fact, the book closes with an unresolved image

of Oswald: "Lord Oswald's domestic life became most exemplary, but did he ever pardon

his past conduct? After the fate he had enjoyed, could he content himself with common

life? I know not. nor will I on that head either absolve or condemn him" (382). Thus, the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. reader is left to decide if the tale ends happily for its English hero.

“Look Upon Corinne:” Blair, Invention and Morality

From Corinne's first appearance, the novel links her improvisational talents to the

beiletristic connections among literature, rhetoric and morality at the heart of the

rhetorical climate of the era as articulated particularly in Hugh Blair'sLectures on

Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Like the Lectures. Corinne constructs the improvement of

the taste, and thus of morality as the primary rhetorical function of the belles lettres. In

so doing, de Stael's novel defines the improvisatrice's performance as a moral corrective

and. as such, positions it not only as a form of speech appropriate to women, but also as

an example of the highest degree of eloquence. Examining Corinne's inventional process

alongside the theories of Blair, then, demonstrates the manner in which the

improvisatrice's rhetoric reinvents belletrism for a woman rhetor.

Throughout the novel. Corinne's very phvsicality manifests the connections

among rhetoric, morality, and taste that serve as the core of her inventional process.

During her first appearance in the novel, the procession to the crowning at Rome's

Capitol. Corinne's image works to unite seemingly disparate elements of the private

woman and public serv ant:

Attired like Domenichino's Sibvl10. an Indian Shawl twined among her lustrous black curls, a blue drapery fell over her robe of virgin white, and her whole costume was picturesque without sufficiently varying from modem usage to appear tainted by affectation. Her attitude was noble and modest: it might, indeed

10 Italian painter Domenicho Zampier (1581-1641) painted three pictures of the Cumaen Sibyl, de Stael saw two of them prior to writing Corinne. After the novel's publication, de Stael was painted in manner calculated to unify the images of sibyl. Stael. and Corinne in a well-known picture by Elisabeth Vigee- Lebrun. For a further discussion of these paintings, see Sheriff. 49

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. be perceived that she was content to be admired: yet a timid air blended with her joy and seemed to ask pardon for her triumph. [...] Her arms were transcendently beautiful; her figure tall and. as we frequently see among the Grecian statues, rather robust, energetically characteristic of youth and happiness. [...] She gave you at the same time the idea of a priestess of Apollo advancing toward his temple and a woman bom to fulfill the usual duties of life with perfect simplicity — in truth her every gesture elicited not more wondering conjecture, than it conciliated sympathy and affection. (20)

Here, in her early moment of triumph. Corinne has uttered not a word but nevertheless

evinces her combination of beauty and morality. First, her classical attitude — represented

by the references to Domenichino's Sibyl. Greek statuary and the priestess of Apollo --

initiates a novel-long connection between the improvisatrice and a history of women's

civic rhetoric that is distinct from the oratorical tradition that comprises the masculine

rhetoric. The "Sibyl” and the "priestess of Apollo" represent the improvisatrice's heritage

as a guardian of public morality: they are concerned with the world of the spiritual, not

those actions of men that comprise the realm of masculine orators-. These classical

references also suggest Corinne's connection to the world of sacred and mysterious

wisdom and chthonic power: the words of the sibyl and the priestess were based in divine

power not rhetorical expertise. This passage foreshadows the spontaneous power that the

novel later associates with the improvisatrice's eloquence.

The description of Corinne's ascension to the Capitol not only connects her to the

Classical tradition but also permits the reader to witness Corinne's purity by representing

it as a visually discernible quality. This virtue is represented not just by her "noble and

modest” attitude but also by the colors she wears: her "blue drapery” and "robe of virgin

white” invoke the typology of the Virgin Mary, that ultimate role model for w omen

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. throughout the Christian world. Employing both Classical and Christian myth, the image

of Corinne links her to a feminine role that connects her public display to upright

morality and service to the public good.

In this first sighting. Corinne has provided the reader with a clue as to the

rhetorical exigency to which the improvisatrice speaks. Like the Sibyl or the priestess,

her words will be in the service of society and it is this civic role that allows her to

paradoxically appear as the priestess and ”a woman bom to fulfill the usual duties of life

with perfect simplicity" (20). This association reflects the beiletristic rationale of

Corinne's improvisations. As Blair argues, it is the duty of each individual to develop

his moral virtue by improving his taste, and the improvisatrice enables this improvement

through her performances or. as seen here, through her very existence. Corinne's

appearance thus sanctions Corinne's taste and thus in turn her rhetorical role as a moral

guide. The mere sight of her functions as a corrective to civilization's evils, so her ability

to shape public morality is not only culturally permissible, but. as she mutely exudes this

spiritual quality, it is natural as well. Her rhetorical performances, which are an extension

of her visual appearance, are in this way defined as simply another facet of her purity, a

verbal expression of her spiritual nature, not the attempt to control the audience or gain

personal glory that characterizes agonistic rhetoric.

While the end of this descriptive passage marks Corinne's arrival at the site of her

performance, the novel further reinforces the connections among morality, eloquence and

taste before she utters a word. Before Corinne speaks, there is a series of oratorical

performances that, when read in relation to Blair's discussion of the '‘three kinds, or

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. degrees of Eloquence" (Blair 2: 5). furthers the beiletristic connections among taste.

rhetoric and morality. The first prelude to Corinne's performance is the recitation of

"odes and sonnets" (de Stael 21) written in her honor by some of the poets of Rome.

While these may be well written, the narrator states, "all praised her to the highest: but in

styles that described her no more than they did any woman of genius. The same

mythological allusions must have been used from the days of Sappho to our own” (21).

Here, de Stael not only establishes the improvisatrice as a historical type by connecting

"such beings" to Sappho but also she implicitly differentiates improvisation from the type

of epideictic poetry seen here. The Roman poets' verses are "composed for the occasion"

(21). yet their rehearsed generalities contrast with the context-driven effusions that

characterize improvisation. In their emphasis on rhetorical form rather than specific

qualities of the exigency, the Roman poets of Corinne's crowning resemble that degree of

Eloquence that Blair rates the least:

The first, and lowest, is that which aims only at pleasing the hearers. Such, generally, is the Eloquence of panegyricks. inaugural orations, addresses to great men. and other harangues of this sort. This ornamental sort of composition is not altogether to be rejected. It may innocently amuse and entertain the mind: and it may be mixed, at the same time, with very useful sentiments. But it must be confessed, that where the Speaker has no farther aim than merely to shine and to please, there is great danger of Art being strained into ostentation, and of the composition becoming tiresome and languid. (2: 5)

Here Blair cautions against art that has no higher purpose than to please, and de Stael too

represents this caveat as one of the chief dangers of epidictic poetry. be it improvisational

or prepared. Thus, later in the novel, the narrator says of an Italian improvisadore. that he

“improvised verses that might have suited any other husband wife or child, just as truly:

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and so exaggerated, that the speaker seemed to think that poetry ought to have no

connection with the truth" (Blair 5). With this improvisadore. as in the performance of

the Roman poets at the crowning of Corinne. de Stael illustrates the dangers of speech in

which the "[s]peaker has no farther aim than merely to shine and to please." Indeed

Oswald's reaction on each of these occasions where no higher rhetorical intention is

evident confirms that such epideictic verses are often as tiresome as Blair claims: in each

situation Oswald is a member of the audience the speaker wishes to please, and both

times he is only irritated by the fawning generalities. These performances, then, show the

dangers of empty form lacking the lively and tasteful spirit of the improvisatrice. These

verses lack interest as well as virtue, for they are driven by the desire to "shine" (Blair 2:

5) rather than by the moral context in which they are performed.

Blair's commentary on the degrees of Eloquence reveals the connection between

morality and epideictic rhetoric when considered in relation to the next speech at the

Capitol as well. When introducing the improvisatrice. the Prince Castel-Forte. Corinne's

cavalier servante prior to the arrival of Oswald, "riveted the audience" by reading "some

pages of unpretending prose" (24). His speech, however, excels in that it accurately

describes Corinne and the moral lesson she offers the people of Italy, rather than relying

on a rhetorical model to move the auditors. While his "unpretending prose" lacks the

stylistic niceties seen in the performances of the Roman poets, its attention to Corinne's

true character (24) and attempt to use her as a model of morality (25) mark it as clearly

superior to the high-flown poems written in Corinne's honor. In this effect, it resembles

w hat Blair terms the second degree of Eloquence: "when the Speaker aims not merely to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. please, but also to inform, to instruct to convince: when his Art is exerted, [to] dispos[e]

us to pass judgment, or embrace that side of the cause, to which he seeks to bring us" (5).

As in Blair's description. Castel-Forte desires his audience not just to be pleased but also

to understand Corinne's virtues. When contrasted with the audience's reaction to the

performance of Corinne. however it is clear that Castel-Forte has not reached the upper

levels of rhetorical skill. His listeners are entertained and rightly informed, for he does

justice to the subject of the improvisatrice Corinne. but they are not moved as they will

be when Corinne herself takes the podium. Castel-Forte has the moral grounding the

Roman poets lack, but his "unpretending prose” lacks the imaginative skiil seen in the

works of the poets and Corinne. As we progress through the speakers at the Capitol,

then, we move nearer to the highest model of eloquence.

Before introducing the improvisatrice. Castel-Forte offers a description of

Corinne's eloquence that parallels Blair's discussion of the highest degree of rhetorical

excellence:

Castel-Forte dilated on her talent as an improvisatrice as distinct from everything that had been known under that name in Italy. "It is not only attributable.” he continued, "to the fertility of her mind but to her deep enthusiasm for all generous sentiments: she cannot produce a word that recalls them, but that inexhaustible source of thought overflows at her lips in strains ever pure and harmonious [...] such as alone can embody the fleeting and delicate reveries of the heart.” (23)

In this first explanation of Corinne's oratorical gifts. Castel-Forte links her abilities to her

moral sensibilities, that "deep enthusiasm for generous sentiments" that instigates her

"pure and harmonious” improvisations. Corinne has knowledge of the "fleeting and

delicate reveries of the heart.” According to Blair, "authority in matters of taste" comes in

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. part from "consulting our own [...] heart, and from attending to the feelings in others"

(Blair 1: 32). Corinne’s expertise in this area allows her to reach what Blair terms the

highest degree of eloquence:

wherein a greater power is exerted over the human mind: by which we are not only convinced, but are interested, agitated, and carried along with the Speaker, our passions are carried along with his; we enter into all his emotions: we love, we detest, we resent, according as he inspires us: and are prompted to resolve, or to act. with vigor and warmth. (2: 6)

The ability to "carry along" the audience is the hallmark of Corinne's performances.

Thus the reader is told that her audience "mutely awaited her words, which they trusted

would make them participate in her feelings" (224). As demonstrated by this "trust.”

Corinne's ability to enrapture an audience gives her access to the highest degree of

Eloquence as Blair describes it. Further, those adjectives Castel-Forte uses to describe

the inspiration for Corinne's inventional process - "pure." "generous" and "delicate" -

assure the reader that her gift will be used to create improvisations that are true to the

context and the audience and so are morally improving.

In the terms that he selects to describe Corinne's beiletristic excellence. Castel-

Forte connects her persuasive ability to her "womanly" virtue. The "generous

enthusiasms" that make her a model of womanhood also allow her to excel at

improvisation. By extension, the mastery of improvisation she displays w ill prove her

morality to Oswald — and to the reader. Corinne's virtue and rhetorical excellence, then.

argue for each other: she has great virtue, which is proven by her eloquence. This highest

eloquence, in turn, can only spring from great morality, thus proving her rhetorical skill.

This circular logic strategically demonstrates how a young, attractive single woman.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. mysteriously living alone in an independent public life, can be thought to possess the

same refined sensibilities that were usually reserved for an Anglo middle-class woman

who kept to the domestic realm. This connection between morality and eloquence inverts

the longstanding connection between a "loose woman" and a loose tongue. In thus

breaking with the age-old connection of a woman’s silence to her chastity. Corinne’s

introductory scene uses belletrism to forge a connection between feminine eloquence and

virtue.

This reinvention of belletrisim as a particularly feminine form of speech is carried

throughout the novel. Corinne's own description of her inventional process, for example.

echoes Blair's text. While Blair discusses rhetoric as a process "wherein a greater power

is exerted over the human mind” of the auditor (6). Corinne describes a similar force at

work on the speaker:

[W]hatever produces that degree of interest in my hearers which most infects myself: and it is to my friends that I owe the greater portion of my talents in this line. Sometimes while they speak on the noble questions that involve the moral condition of man -- the aim and scope of his duties here -- mine impassioned excitement carries me beyond myself: teaches me to find in nature and my own heart such daring truths and forcible expressions as solitary meditation could never have engendered. Mine enthusiasm then seems supernatural: a spirit speaks within me far greater than my own: it often happens that I abandon the measure of verse to explain my thoughts in prose. Sometimes I quote the most applicable passages from the poets of other lands. These dim apostrophes are mine while my soul is filled by their import. Sometimes my lyre, by a simple national air may complete the effect which flies from the control of words. (44)

Here, in brief, is the explanation of Corinne's inventional process. She derives her matter

from spirit, friends, and poetry, not her own opinions and views. The "noble questions"

confronting others move her mind, providing the civic morality that is the basis of her

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. words. Corinne's right-mindedness and moral vision, her "impassioned excitement” and

her enthusiasm that seem "supernatural." carry away the womanly reticence that has been

attributed to her from her first appearance in the novel. In explaining the art of

improvisation. Corinne represents the inventional process as a force outside the control of

the speaker's will. Not only, as Corinne says, does a "spirit speak inside [her] greater

than [her] own but. more importantly, it is "to [her] friends that [she] owes the great

portion of [her] talents" (44). In other words. Corinne as a "proper” woman possesses a

supposedly womanly modesty, reflected in her "timid air" (20) and her experiencing "so

violent a tremor that her voice trembled as she asked what theme she was to attempt" (25)

prior to the improvisation at the Capitol. But by attributing her inventional process to an

exterior entity, be it the audience or a supernatural force. Corinne maintains her

improvisational talent as something apart from the masculine rhetorical tradition.

It is not only in her quality of eloquence that Corinne appears to extend the

beiletristic project as articulated by Blair. Her explanation of the inventional process

inverts Blair's description of the highest eloquence. While Blair claims that eloquence

causes the auditor to be "carried along with the Speaker." to be "interested" in all his

words, and. in fact, to "enter all his emotions." Corinne uses similar language to describe

the production rather than the reception of discourse. She too is "carried beyond herself':

but her process is based in the “interest" of her hearer. Thus she characterizes her

oratorical experiences as phenomena similar to Blair's description of the audience's

experience. That Corinne's mode of production resembles Blair's description of

appreciation corresponds to a beiletristic framework. As Blair argues throughout the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Lectures, appreciation and production are mutually refining forces: the cultivation of

one's taste through appreciation of great works will lead one to become a better writer or

speaker. Thus. Corinne produces her text through the taste, which, according to Blair, is

the same faculty that leads to others appreciation of her works. Corinne's description of

her inventional process, then, illustrates the notion that the production and reception of

rhetoric are mutually constitutive. Both eloquence and appreciation spring from the same

quality of soul. By connecting taste with eloquence. Corinne also explains her rhetorical

ability as a feminine force. As described in Chapter One. a persistent cultural assumption

in nineteenth-century England attributed women a natural refinement of taste11. In

Corinne. this sensibility is so great that it results in her improvisations. Her

performances, then, are an effusion of womanly delicacy12 that rework beiletristic

principles.

Just as a consideration of Blair's theory reinforces and illuminates Corinne's

rhetorical excellence, so to it explains why "noble and modest" Corinne would perform in

a public arena. Specifically, her assertion that she can only find those "daring truths and

forcible expressions as solitary meditation never could have engendered" (44) in a public

forum echoes Blair's first claim:

One of the most distinguished privileges which Providence has conferred upon mankind, is the power of communicating their thoughts to one another. Destitute of this power, reason would be a solitary, and. in some measure, an unavailable principle. Speech is the great instrument by which man becomes beneficial to man: and it is to the intercourse and transmission of thought by means of speech that we are chiefly indebted to the improvement of thought itself. Small are the

" See Chapter One. pages 29-32. '■ Blair defined Delicacv as the natural component of taste. See Chapter One. pases 28-29. 58

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. advances which a single unassisted individual can make towards perfecting any of his powers. (1:1)

Blair’s description of speech as an essentially communal act supports Corinne’s

description of her improvisational process, and comparing the two foregrounds the

implicit morality of Corinne’s act. Together, the texts emphasize the ability of speech to

work for the good of the community and thereby create a rationale for women's

participation in public speech. If public speech, as Blair posits, has the ability to improve

both the individual and society, there is a civic responsibility to participate in the

rhetorical arts for the good of the self and society. By extension, an individual who has a

natural ability to create public discourses that excel in the manner that Blair describes

would be under a moral imperative to contribute to the good of society through her

improvisations. Thus, in that it contributes to the civic good. Corinne's speech is not just

sanctioned by Blair's theory but is. in fact, mandated.

These beiletristic qualities of Corinne's speech - morality through taste, the

power of eloquence over the speaker as well as the audience, and rhetoric in the service

of the civic good - are illustrated in Corinne's improvisation at the Capitol. After Castel-

Forte finishes his panegyric, the reader is at last allowed to hear Corinne speak. Her first

words in the novel illustrate these beiletristic relationships:

She asked them what theme she was to attempt. "The glory and welfare of Italy!” cried all near her. "Ah. yes!" she exclaimed, already sustained by her own talents: "the glory and welfare of Italy!" Then, animated by her love of country , she breathed forth thought to which prose or another language can do but imperfect justice. (25)

As the subject matter of her improvisation suggests. Corinne takes the morality of her

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. audience as her theme. Civic duty, her "love of country." provides her primary

inspiration, and exemplifies the connection between the improvisatrice's morality and her

rhetorical performance. Further, this instant of preparation foreshadows the description

of her inventional process: it is only when she is supplied a theme by others and animated

by virtue that she can begin her performance. As the need for an assigned topic signifies.

Corinne's role in the invention of her improvisations appears largely passive. This

illustration of he improvisational process predicts her description of invention when she

describes the manner in which her "friends" provide "the greater portion of her talent"

(44). As does the way she receive her topics, so too does the manner in which she

"breathed forth thought" makes it clear that the rhetor's intentions are not a primary part

of the creation of an improvisation. Rather, it is an instinctual process that comes

naturally to Corinne due to her refined sensibility and gift of eloquence. The rhetorical

process of the improvisatrice is thus differentiated from the premeditated crafting of

discourse.

From the first lines of her improvisation, the qualities that Corinne associates with

the glory and welfare of Italy comprise an articulation of the beiletristic project as seen in

Blair's text: "Cradle of Letters! Mistress of the World! / Soil o f the Sun! Italia! I salute

thee!” (25). Corinne invokes an immediate connection between Italy's literary' culture

and its status as the "Mistress of the World." Building from this introduction, she then

goes on to describe the finest men of Italy — who are. incidentally, all poets -- and

enumerates the qualities that made them great. She lauds Petrarch. Tasso, and Dante as

individuals who brought eternal fame to their country through their writings.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Maintaining the beiletristic emphasis on art’s morally improving effects, however.

Corinne emphasizes spirituality rather than fame. When speaking of Dante, for example,

she claims:

All upon earth to change to poetry Beneath his voice * * * Poetry's divination, which reveals All nature's secrets, such as influence The hearts of men. (26-7)

What Corinne says here of Dante could easily be said of the Italian improvisatrice

herself. As the enthusiastic reaction of her audience indicates. Corinne's performance.

like Dante's poetry will "influence / The hearts of men." "Poetry's divination" is a talent

in keeping with Corinne's image as Sibyl and priestess. Therefore, while this

improvisation ostensibly argues for the power of poets such as Dante and Tasso, the

arguments contained within it argue for the morally ameliorative powers of the

improvisatrice as well.

The improvisation's Tasso passage creates a further link between the power of the

belles lettres and the mind of the hearer:

[Tasso] could yet console -- The beautiful, the chivalric. the brave Dreaming the deeds, feeling the love he sung. (27)

With Tasso, as with Dante, literature moves the audience members to action through their

faculty of taste. Tasso's words inspire the "beautiful, the chivalric and the brave." And.

like Corinne. they too fulfills Blair's notion that the highest degree of eloquence when

Tasso's audience ”enter[s] into his emotions and love[s] according he inspires them"

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (Blair 6) or. as Corinne puts it. when they ”fee[l] the love he sung" (de Stael 27). Like her

comments on Dante. Corinne here claims that poetry's inspiration affects men's actions

and so restates the connections among persuasion, literature, and morality.

The examples of Tasso and Dante are illustrative of the theme throughout

Corinne's improvisation. Italy may have lost secular power, but thanks to the great

works of literature it has produced, it still holds a place of pride in the world. By looking

to the examples offered by these poets. Corinne claims. Italy can stir her nascent sense of

civic pride and re-energize her citizens who have grown lazy and morally lax under

despotic rule. In this emphasis on its moral power. Corinne's characterization of poetry

resembles Blair's dictum that the poet "ought to have it in his view to instruct and

reform" (Blair 2: 312). Thus Corinne bears out Castel-Forte"s claim that:

w hen strangers, pitiless of the faults borne of our misfortunes, insult the country whence have arisen the planets that illumed all Europe, still we but say to them, 'look upon Corinne. Yes: we will follow in her track, and be such men as she is a woman, if indeed men can like women make worlds in their hearts [...] (24)

In sum. Corinne embodies beiletristic rhetoric, as evidenced here as well as in her first

rhetorical performance. Looking upon Corinne or hearing her speak inspires the

refinement of taste that will lead the Italian citizenry to moral and aesthetic improvement.

Improvisation, in sum. is a context-driven performance that elevates the hearer's soul by

taking his morality as its theme. Thus, by reading Corinne through a lens constructed

from Blair's rhetoric a new creation emerges, the beiletristic woman rhetor who ministers

to man's spiritual needs through the belles lettres.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This use of belletrism as a frame for the improvisatrice gives rise to a woman

rhetor whose goal is moral improvement, not agonistic competition: whose tools are

refinement and purity, not sophistical wizardry or Aristotelian reasoning: and whose

abilities spring from an instinctual faculty, not from any insight gained from the classical

rhetorical tradition. Belletrism thereby enabled theoretical frameworks for women's

rhetoric that created new possibilities for women's speech, but which reinforced

conservative notions of womanhood.

Corinne and the Epistemological Rationale

It is not only Blair's rhetorical theories that help us understand the

improvisational rhetoric represented in Corinne. Examining Corinne's rhetoric alongside

George Campbell's discussion of the mind's faculties reveals the ways in which an

essentialized femininity privileges the improvisatrice's ability to engage select faculties

and so constructs her rhetoric as remarkably potent. Simultaneous to revealing the

improvisatrice's rhetorical excellences, however, the Campbellian model foregrounds the

neglect of foundational appeals in the improvisatrice rhetoric, an imbalance that

differentiates female improvisation from masculine oratory. In his Philosophy o f

Rhetoric. Campbell combines rhetorical study with theories of the mind, using

Enlightenment science to construct an epistemic rhetoric. Campbell names four faculties,

understanding, imagination, passion and will, and explains the manner in which a rhetor

can appeal to each. Under this rubric. Corinne's improvisations appeal to the passions,

and. to a lesser extent, the imagination, while largely ignoring the reason.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. According to Campbell, the appeal to the passions:

by some secret, sudden and inexplicable association. awaken[s] all the tenderest emotions of the heart. In this case, the address of the orator is not ultimately intended to astonish by the loftiness of his images, or to delight by the beauteous resemblance which his paintings bear to nature: nay it will not permit the hearers even a moment’s leisure for making the comparison, but. as it were by some magical spell, hurries them, ere they are aware, into love. pity, grief, terror, desire, aversion, fury or hatred. (4)

In language that resembles Blair's later definition of the highest degree of eloquence.

Campbell’s description of the passions predicts the characteristics of Corinne’s

improvisational talent. Just as Campbell claims that the appeal to the passions "awakens

all the tenderest emotions of the heart." so too does Castel-Forte tell us that Corinne’s

performances "embody the fleeting reveries of the heart" (de Stael 23). Also, just as

Campbell associates this appeal with an "inexplicable" "magic spell." Corinne is likened

to an enchantress throughout the novel, and the powers of her words to magic spells.

Thus. Oswald wonders. "Were her spells those of poetry or of magic? Was she a Sappho

or an Armidalj ?" (de Stael 38). Unbeknownst to the perplexed British lord. Corinne

combines magic with poetry through her oratorical skill. That is. as the Philosophy

argues andCorinne illustrates, the orator exhibits this "magic" in the ability to compel

the audience into an emotional response. Just as Campbell says the appeal to passion

"hurries them [the audience] away ere they are aware, into love. pity, grief.” so too does

Corinne make her audience "participate in her feelings." Corinne excels, then, in the

appeal to the passions.

In Tasso's I6,h-centurv epic poem of the First Crusade. Armida. niece of the King of Damascus, lures Christian soldiers into her garden where she then magically imprisons them. It is only when Crusader Rinaldo resists her spell and frees the enchanted soldiers that Armida recants her sorcerous powers for the love of Rinaldo. 64

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The particular ability to engage this faculty is explained in a Campbellian

framework by Corinne's abundance of morality and sympathy. In regard to the former.

Campbell draws a special relationship between morality and an appeal to the passions:

[W]ithout entering into a discussion of the difference which would be foreign to our purpose. let it suffice to observe, that they [virtues] have this in common with passion. They necessarily imply an habitual propensity to a certain species of conduct, an habitual aversion to the contrary: a veneration for such a character, an abhorrence of such another. They are. though not passions, so closely related to them, that they are properly considered as motives to action, being equally capable of giving impulse to the will. (Campbell 80)

Due to this close connection between virtue and the passions. Corinne's superior morality

gives her greater rhetorical insight into human passion. Through her refinement of spirit

she can discern the finest qualities of her hearers and incorporate them into her

improvisations and thereby inspire her audience to their higher selves. She is able thus to

rouse their passions through this faculty's access to their finest sensibilities.

This access can be attributed to Corinne's well-developed sympathy as well as to

her virtue. As defined by Campbell, sympathy "is not a passion, but that quality of soul

which renders it susceptible of almost any passion, by communicating it to the bosom of

another" (Campbell 131). This characteristic is the cornerstone of Corinne's inventional

process as demonstrated by her improvisation at the Capitol. During her improvisation.

she sees Oswald for the first time:

Corinne observed him: and from his features, the color of her hair, his dress, his height — indeed from his whole appearance — recognized him as English. She was struck by the mourning he wore, and his melancholy countenance. [...] She entered into his thoughts and felt a wish to sympathize with him. by speaking of happiness with less reliance and consecrating a few verses to death in the midst of a festival. With this intention she again took up her lyre [...]. (29)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Here. Corinne's faculty of sympathy works on two levels. First, it allows her to divine

instantaneously Oswald's situation as a foreigner and mourner. Once she has assessed

Oswald's character, her ability to “look into his thoughts” allows her to create an

improvisation based on his spiritual malaise. In case the reader has any doubts as to the

efficacy of this performance, the narrator states “Oswald was so enchanted by the stanzas

that he testified his transport with a vehemence unequaled by the Romans themselves"

(30). This “transport” echoes Campbell's claim that the appeal to the passions “hurries [.

..] away” the auditor. Despite Oswald's alien nature. Corinne's superior sense of

sympathy allows her to use his position as material for her improvisation. Just as the

Romans' cries for an improvisation on the glory of Italy provide her subject matter, so

Oswald's spiritual needs prompt the improvisatrice.

Thus Corinne's abilities are no less successful with the English lord than with the

Romans. Indeed, the acclaim she receives from both her laraerw audience and the British

expatriate speaks to her oratorical excellence at manipulating the passions. That is.

appeals to the passions, according to Campbell, generally work well with the common

crowd, but it takes an orator of refinement to engage the passions of the discerning

gentleman (Campbell 78). Corinne's ability to move the Englishman therefore testifies

more to her virtuosity than the ability to move thousands of Romans, who are represented

as a debased people14. In other words. Corinne's faculty of sympathy has depth as well

as breadth.

14 See. for example. Castel-Forte's comments on the Romans' “faults bom of our misfortunes" (de Stael 24). 66

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. It is not only through sympathy, however, that one appeals to the passions, as

Campbell associates the appeal to the passion with that to the imagination:

A passion is most strongly excited by sensation. [...] Next to the influence of sense is that of the memory [...]. Next to the influence of memory is that of imagination: by which here is solely meant the faculty of apprehending what is neither perceived by the senses, nor remembered. [...] [I]t is this power of which the orator must chiefly avail himself [...]. (81)

As this description of the rhetorical powers of imagination suggests, the rhetor who will

appeal to the passions must also appeal to the imagination, and Corinne's faculty of

imagination is described as exemplary throughout the novel. She herself repeatedly

underscores its importance, claiming that it always precedes reason (146). that it gives

Italy a paramount role in world culture (25) and. perhaps most intriguingly. she claims

that "Imagination is more nearly allied to morality than is believed” (76). In positing this

relationship, she is thereby establishing a claim between two qualities she possesses in

superabundance: morality and imagination.

When read through Campbell's epistemological rationale, the rhetoric of the

improvisatrice clearly favors the faculties of the imagination and the passion. But while

this imbalance gives Corinne's improvisations their powers, it is also the source of their

weaknesses. As a truncated rhetoric that neglects the understanding and. ultimately, the

will, this form of improvisation does not have a lasting effect on its audience: while the

Italians may respond enthusiastically to her during the performance, she effects no lasting

moral change. Likewise, although Oswald may be "transported" during her performance.

he ultimately abandons the improvisatrice — and the passionate emotions she arouses --

for the sterile comfort of his native land.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Campbell's scheme helps to understand the improvisation's shortcomings as well

as its excellence. According to Campbell, appeals to the passions are often antithetical to

the understanding, for "an address to the passions never fails to disturb the intellectual

faculty" (Campbell 2). The disquieting effect of passion on reason helps to explain the

power of Corinne's words over Oswald, who comes from "a country where reason

predominates over fancy" (de Stael 168): unfortunately, it also explains why her words

ultimately fail. Corinne's denigration of the power of reason puts her directly at odds

with the foundational concept of Campbell's theory. While Corinne's premise

differentiates her rhetoric from the dominant, implicitly masculine tradition, it also

constructs a woman's rhetoric that is secondary in efficacy to the primary tradition.

According to Campbell, the attempt to persuade an audience is cumulative. While

the rhetor will focus his persuasion on a single faculty, all must be engaged to some

extent in order to successfully move the will. Further, he claims there is a set order in

which one best appeals to the faculties:

Know ledge, the object of intellect, fumisheth the materials for the fancy: the fancy culls, compounds and by her mimic art. disposes the material so as to affect the passions, and the passions are the natural spurs to volition or action, and need only be right directed. (2)

While passion may be the crowning faculty that incites the will. then. Campbell puts

reason (intellect) as the foundation of the rhetorical process. Corinne. by contrast.

positions imagination as the basis for her theory, positing “fancy must ever precede

reason" (de Stael 146). While Corinne thus proclaims the ascendancy of imagination, she

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. is aware that her appeal to reason is weak. Hence, when Oswald leaves Italy, she

worries:

She felt that she owed her power to her charms, and what is that power in absence? What are the memories o f imagination to a man encircled by all the realities of social order, the more imperious from being founded on pure and noble reason? (254; emphasis mine)

While Corinne's rhetoric may work to spellbind an audience during an improvisation, the

memories of the imagination, she fears, will be destroyed by the "pure and noble reason"

that is the basis of English culture. In a Campbellian framework. Corinne’s fears seem

well founded. The sense impressions gained directly from reality are. Campbell claims.

the most compelling forms of proof and least compelling are the memories of

imagination. When Oswald leaves Italy, then, and the improvisatrice's persuasion is

remote, it should come as no surprise that Corinne's appeals ultimately fail when he

returns to the land of reason: despite her lover's vow that "I lived but in my heart: you

have kindled my imagination" (85). he leaves Corinne for a thoroughly English bride.

Examining Corinne in the framework of Campbell's epistemologv constructs the

improvisatrice's paradigm as both different from and inferior to masculine rhetoric.

While Corinne's displays may be dazzling because of her appeals to the imagination and

the passions, her womanly disinclination to reason means that she does not engage this

key faculty. Thus, this representation of the woman orator is doomed to fail in her

attempts to move an audience to action. Her words are most effective when recalling her

auditors to their higher selves or when momentarily enchanting her beloved. Since

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Oswald leaves her and her audience forgets her. the power of her rhetoric is as ephemeral

as an improvisation itself.

The rhetorical theory described by Corinne and illustrated by her performance

resonates with the paradigms of Blair and Campbell. Like Blair. Corinne argues that

oratorical excellence should be used in the service of the state and that there is a

connection between rhetorical ability and moral virtue. Like Campbell, she demonstrates

the uses of appeals to the imagination and to the passions when attempting to move a

crowd, such as the Roman throng, or an individual, such as her eternally-moping British

Lord. While it may expand woman's public roles, however, this is far from a libratorv

rhetoric. In its reliance on cultural notions of woman's virtue and its use o f only those

faculties constructed as feminine, the improvisatrice's rhetoric largely reified notions of

woman's rhetoric as a secondary mode of communication that was less potent than the

dominant tradition. Nevertheless, as Corinne circulated, the model of the improvisatrice

and the belletristic and epistemic concepts it embodied became the theoretical

underpinnings of a rhetorical tradition applied to women who addressed a public

audience. The earliest and most enduring instance of this phenomenon was the conflation

of Corinne with her French creator. Germaine de Stael.

Corinne de Stael

That de Stael based her improvisatrice to some extent on her own person is

accepted in contemporary Staelean studies1". This was even more true in the nineteenth

15 For a discussion of the relationship of Stael to her heroine, see Hoasett and Lara. 70

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. century, when Corinne was seen as a thinly-veiled description of its author. Thus, during

her visit to England in 1813. "Stael and Corinne were regularly conflated in English

reports" (Peel and Sweet 207). In America, too. de Stael was equated with her heroine16.

What is interesting about this phenomenon for a consideration of the improvisatrice

rhetoric, however, is the extent to which critics throughout the nineteenth-centurv

recreated the inventional process of de Stael in the image of her fictional character, de

Stael came to be characterized in rhetorical terms similar to those used in her novel.

Once the description of the improvisatrice was applied to its creator, these fictional

qualities took on the appearance of reality, and so a rhetoric that was originally a literary

creation circulated as the "real" composition strategy of. arguably, the most famous

woman author of the first half of the nineteenth-centurv. This connection, then, added to

the cultural credibility of the improvisatrice rhetoric.

The most striking resonance between the inventional process of Corinne and that

attributed to her creator is in the emphasis on spontaneity that separates womanly

effusion from manly efforts. During the nineteenth century, it was supposed thatCorinne

was written in a manner akin to the fashion in which its title character improvised

(Goldberger "Introduction" xxxviii). Thus in her Memoir o f Madame de Stael (1828).

Madame Necker Suassure claims "Corinne is the fruit of inspiration. It was a picture that

had taken such strong hold of the imagination of the author that she could not help tracing

it" (133). This claim for the spontaneous nature ofCorinne's creation resembles those

"words breathed forth" (25) that characterize Corinne's performance. Improvisation is

16 For descriptions of Stael's reputation in America, see Whitford. P. Blanchard, and N. Miller. 71

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. not a conscious attempt to persuade hearers' minds and thereby it is differentiated from

the masculine discipline of rhetoric. By extension, when a supposed improvisation takes

the form of a novel that circulates in the marketplace, such as Corinne. it is distinguished

from the exertion for money that is the work of the professional author. Thus, de Stael’s

status as improvisatrice distinguishes her exuberant outpourings from those who write for

money, thereby separating her from both "manly" labor and those low-prestige women

who work.

Nor is de Stael’s writing "work” as were, for example, the premeditated attempts

of the Roman poets of Corinne. whose verses were oratorical exercises calculated to

display their talents. Like her creation, de Stael was instead associated with a rhapsodic

creation process. "[a|n exertion without example, if the copiousness and facility of this

vein did not exclude the idea of exertion, to impress us w ith that of miracle" (Saussure

125). The improvisation is not exertion but effusion, and a natural outpouring is not a

premeditated search for self-glorv but unself -conscious display lacking in intent. As

might be expected, while this effusive description of the inventional process

characterized the improvisatrice. it is not an accurate portrayal of de Stael’s writing

process. Simon Balaye’s studies indicate, for example, that there were three total

revisions of Corinne. Nevertheless, the reality of de Stael the writer was subsumed by

the notion that, as Edward Lvtton claims in The Student Writes, her "writing was but an

episode of her conversation" (rpt. in Thompson 157).

This model of de Stael-as-improvisatrice emphasizes other rhetorical principles

already familiar from the novel as well as the spontaneous act of creation. The facility of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. imagination, which for Campbell could rouse the passions, was attributed to de Stael

herself in a manner reminiscent of Corinne's abilities. In a lengthy review of the novel.

for example, one nineteenth-centurv American reviewer claimed. "Her imagination, vivid

as it was. was little superior in power to her great intellect” (383). The same reviewer.

however, points to the weakness in de Stael's character and connects them to her virtues:

Madame de Stael found the original of Corinne in herself. She had the same brilliant imagination, powers of reasoning, command of language, versatility of talent and extent of acquirement: and there can be little doubt that her sensibility and independence led her into similar imprudences. (378)

This passage alludes to the great difficulty in reconciling personal biography with the

ethos of the improvisatrice. As de Stael had a notorious series of lovers, it was difficult

to reconcile her life with the sort of Blairian equation of taste and morality for which her

heroine stood. Her supporters refute the biographical record and often attribute any

appearance of impropriety as an excess of passion. It seems to be just such an excess to

which renown British critic. Sir Francis Jefferies refers when he says "her great

characteristic was an excessive movement of the soul -- a heart overcharged w ith

sensibility, a frame overcharged with spirit and vitality” (739). While this excess of

passion may have occasionally led her to the limits of propriety, her supporters held, it

also accounted for the emotional power of her novel. What it did not mean, they claimed.

was that she had actually committed any of the indiscretions associated w ith her name.

To critics including Grace Wharton. Senex. Lydia Marie Childs and Maria Norris, de

Stael w as the victim of calumny. For the belletristic rationale for women's authorship to

operate, the woman under consideration must have the high morals to produce those

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. works of art that will elevate her audience's taste. Thus Thompson is representative of

many nineteenth-century critics when he claims to "admire her first as a French woman

who, though leading society, was free from all its vices; secondly, as the first authoress of

her day; thirdly, as a woman of great and good heart” (169). The same circular logic that

is used to protect Corinne from imputations of immorality functions for de Stael as well:

both women must be moral, for only moral women could extemporaneously compose

such eloquent texts.

The belletristic connections among eloquence, morality and civic duty that form

the basis of the improvisatrice rhetoric characterize many public accounts of de Stael as

well. Indeed, due to her activities during the French Revolution and her mutually

antagonistic relationship with Napoleon, her reputation inevitably engaged the civic

realm. A staunch enemy of Napoleon's empire and therefore exiled from Paris, de Stael

was destined to appear to a British audience as a role model of responsible citizenship.

Thus, in the introduction to a nineteenth-centurv translation of de Stael's "On Literature.”

Bolieau speculates that during the French Revolution, "armed with a lively disposition

and anxiously wishing for the return of order and tranquility. Madame de Stael frequently

armed herself with all her eloquence to animate her friends, in those disastrous times, to

put an end to troubles that were continuously renewed” (5). Of the enmity with

Napoleon, he similarly attributes its source to her importuning the First Consul of his

intentions "to provide for the good of France" (6). Isabel Hill takes this link between de

Stael's eloquence and sense of civic duty even further by claiming that were it not for

Napoleon's persecution. "Madame de Stael would have come down to us as little more

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. than a precocious child, a brilliant conversationalist, an unsexed woman and a factious

politician" (xxi). As Hill's comments on de Stael's status as an "unsexed female’*

indicate, not all individuals accepted the connection between de Stael's eloquence and

her morality. Yet Hill's criticism still rightfully emphasizes the connection between de

Stael's popularity and the English perception of her as one of Napoleon's most eloquent

foes. Like her creation, then, de Stael w'as perceived as using her rhetorical abilities for

the public good and as thus aligning with belletrism's focus on the rhetor's civic

responsibility.

Nineteenth-centurv' constructions of de Stael therefore legitimized her authorship

using many of the same rhetorical principals that were illustrated by the fictional Corinne.

In de Stael's correlation with her heroine, the rhetoric of the improvisatrice appeared to

be grounded in fact and presented Anglo society a representation of the woman author

that would operate for the rest of the century. Thus, in the many biographies, rev iews

and analyses of de Stael that circulated in England during the nineteenth century', we can

see the beginnings of one application of the improvisatrice tradition: to explain women's

authorship by feminizing the period's most influential rhetorical theories. But many

more than those relatively few women who aspired to authorship read Corinne. and the

rhetorical possibilities offered by this novel were not limited to purv eyors of imaginative

literature. By turning to the representation of women's private rhetorics in the novel -

and the specific criticism of English restrictions on woman's speech -- we can see a

second rhetorical theory emerge from Corinne. one which attempts to bring the rhetoric

of the improvisatrice into the domestic sphere.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “My Love for You Inspires Me:” Corinne and the Domestic Realm

Corinne’s relationship with Oswald and her legacy to his wife and daughter

represent the improvisatrice rhetoric of the domestic sphere. This method of persuasion

is based in the same epistemic and belletristic appeals as those of the public

improvisatrice. but for the private woman this rhetoric operates in a narrower scope that

adheres much more closely to the nineteenth-century norms of womanhood.

Corinne’s primary enactment of improvisatrice rhetoric in the private realm

centers on her relationship with Oswald. After all. their Italian travels are ultimately her

attempt to seduce his will via his taste. By sharing the best the Rome has to offer, she

hopes to convince him to fall in love not just with Italy but with her. As the

improvisatrice herself puts it. "I think persons become most endeared to each other while

participating in the admiration of works which speak to their soul by their true grandeur"

(54). It is through this exercise of taste that Corinne forges the "singular, all-powerful

sympathy" that we are told exists between her and Oswald. Here is a use of the

improvisatrice’s talent that falls well within the feminine sphere: by tutoring Oswald in

the belles lettres. Corinne not only fulfills woman’s role as guardian of public morals but

also attempts to engage the affections of a most desirable husband.

Corinne’s education of Oswald parallels taste’s improvement as articulated by

Blair. Early in their touring, for example. Corinne tells Oswald:

It appears to me that to perfect a sense of the fine arts one should begin by contemplating the objects which awaken the deepest and most lively imagination. This once felt, reveals a new sphere of thought and renders us capable of loving and judging w hatever may. even in a humbler quality, revive the first impressions we receive. (56)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Here. Corinne not only reinforces the imagination's primacy to her rhetorical scheme but

also connects the belletristic education of taste to the capacity to love. Admittedly, the

use of term ”love" in this scene applies to the sights of Rome that they are sharing, but. in

a larger sense, it applies as well to Corinne's determination to win the British Lord

through her finely attenuated aesthetic sensibility.

This strategy is ultimately unsuccessful. While she does win a proposal of

marriage from her beau, he ultimately weds her sister. Along with thus losing her lover.

she also loses her rhetorical talents. From the moment she sights Oswald at her

improvisation at the Capitol, the object of her rhetorical abilities shifts from refining the

moral sensibilities of the masses to a singular focus on her lover. Early on in their

relationship. Corinne sees this exclusive connection with Oswald as a sign of their

relationship's intensity, exultingly asking "If I display any talent, is it not my love for you

that inspires me?" (285). As time progresses, however, she realizes that improvisation

and womanly love are mutually exclusive, and her love for Oswald "stifled all the gifts

heaven granted me. w ith w hich I ought to excite the sympathy of kindred minds” (335).

Improvisational ability, then, is a shadow romantic love, a talent that quickly fades once

the real thing appears.

Even more tragic for the improvisatrice Corinne. once she loses Oswald, she loses

the belletristic excellence that comprised extraordinary persona's basis. As she tells her

lover as the date for his departure draws near

I have not a thought that is not wedded to thee: if I write aught in w hich my soul expands, thou art my inspiration. I address myself to thee, as I shall my latest sigh. What. then, is my asylum if thou leavest me? The arts will retrace thy

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. image, music thy voice. Genius, which formerly entranced my spirit is nothing now but love, and unshared with thee must perish. (285)

Here then is the conservative crux of the improvisatrice's conundrum: an excess of

feminine tastes and faculties provides her with the gift of improvisation. These same

gifts, which render her entrancing, also make her an unsuitable companion for a domestic

life. Thus, while Oswald may love her. ultimately he does not marry her. However, the

same overabundance of sentiment that provides her oratorical excellence makes it

impossible for her to recollect her original identity after Oswald leaves her. Her love.

then, leads to her destruction.

When public persona collides with private life. then. Corinne's version of the

improvisatrice rhetoric leads to a dead end. While this tradition theorizes how woman's

talents could allow her to be a persuasive speaker and writer, it still denies that a woman

could simultaneously be a public rhetor and a fulfilled private citizen. In this manner.

nineteenth-centurv stories of the improvisatrice are unerringly tragic and therefore

reinforce the notion that woman's place - at least her safest place -- is in the home. The

improvisatrice tradition may have accorded woman's rhetoric a position of some power.

but this strand of rhetoric was highly regulatory as well, only permitting women this

power at a tremendous price. Hence, while this tradition was influential, it was not

finally libratorv.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “Be Lucy and Corinne in One:” Improvisation and the Englishwoman

While the rhetoric of the improvisatrice seems to offer no happy endings for the

woman who occupies a public role, it does constitute itself as a means of enlarging the

sphere of the woman who remains within her "natural" domestic sphere. A major theme

in Corinne - which inspired much controversy among the Anglo readership - is the

depiction of the Englishwoman's sphere of discourse as narrow and sterile. However.

through the description of Corinne's tenure in England and the example she offers her

verbally repressed half-sister, the novel offers one possibility for expanding the subjects

and style of woman's speech as long as a conventional context was maintained.

Corinne's stay in England proves to her the paucity of the Englishwoman's world

and her own unsuitability for this environment. From her first night at her father's British

home - during which she receives an icy reproof from her stepmother for speaking too

freely at the dinner table — it is impressed upon her that that the scope of woman's

speech in England, "an assembly of gossips, this depository’ of disgusts at once

monotonous and varied” (234). is strictly, miserably, domestic. As she relates to Oswald:

Births, deaths, and marriages composed the history of our society: and these three events here differed not the least from what they are elsewhere. [...] Every quarter of an hour some voice was raised to ask an insipid question which received a lukewarm reply: and ennui fell back with redoubled weight on those poor women, who must have thought themselves most miserable, had not habit from infancy taught them to endure it. (234-5)

While Corinne finds in this repressive environment that her "mind grew dull and [...]

full of trifles" (236). her talent, which she "had feared to lose, had increased" due to her

"constant study of English literature" (242). Belles letters, then, represent for Corinne the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. saving grace of life in England, and through them she can also refine her aesthetic

sensibility. Corinne thus possesses •'the advantages of a double education and two-fold

nationalities” (de Stael 242). Admittedly, the double threat posed by a woman with a

belletristic education and the gift of improvisation proves untenable, as seen in the tragic

demise of Corinne. But these ingredients in a different mix bring the improvisatrice's

belletristic mission to a more satisfactory conclusion for Corinne's half-sister Lucy

Edgarmond.

Just as Oswald's first sight of Corinne at the Capitol resolves the improvisatrice's

esoteric attractions into a visual image, so too does the first sight of Lucy substantiate the

moral and physical beauty engendered by the strict English upbringing that was so

antithetical to her sister:

[T]hrough the foliage [on the Edgarmond estate] he beheld a youthful and elegant figure reading with much attention.[... ] Lucy had just entered her sixteenth year: her features were extremely delicate: she had little outgrown her strength, as might by judged by her gait and mutable complexion. Her blue eyes were so downcast that her countenance owed its chief attraction to these rapid changes of color, which alone betrayed her feelings. Oswald, since he had dwelt in the south, had never beheld this species of expression. (290)

The contrast of English rose Lucy with Italian Sibyl Corinne is readily apparent: Oswald

first espied Corinne at her greatest moment of public triumph, but here he intrudes on

Lucy’s natural realm of privacy. Likewise, while Corinne's passionate eloquence is

lauded throughout Italy, the only of the indication of the silent Lucy's emotions are her

delicate blushes. This epitome of English maidenly virtue speaks very little, yet what she

says is overwhelmingly modest and unwaveringly proper, if not precisely insightful, as

Oswald privately notes: “'No one.* thought he 'could be more candid than Corinne but

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. then no one better knew herself or others. Lucy had all to learn. Yet this charm of a day.

could it suffice for a life?'" (de Stael 298). Lucy then, illustrates the limitations of

English decorum: the women of England may be paragons of virtue but. unlike the

improvisatrice. they cannot continually enchant. The character of the girlish Lucy

implicitly argues for an expansion of woman's rhetorical possibilities on the conservative

grounds that greater conversational variety will allow middle-class women to better fulfill

their primary function -- the comfort of man and the adornment of the home.

Despite his initial misgivings about Lucy's inteilectual depth. Oswald

nevertheless finds himself increasingly drawn to Corinne’s half sister in a manner akin to

his attraction towards the improvisatrice herself: '"One must have [...] either the genius

of Corinne that surpasses all one could imagine or this pure unconscious mystery, which

leaves every man to suppose whatever virtues he prefers” (de Stael 292). The

Englishwoman's rhetoric of silence, like Corinne's artistry’, spurs the fancy; but while

Corinne's gift excites the imagination to ever greater heights. Lucy's mute beauty allows

the spectator to transpose all those virtues of womanhood he can recollect onto the object

of desire.17 Oswald's first flush of emotion seems to argue that the best rhetorical

approach for a woman wishing to be wed may be a sort of tabula rasa on which her suitor

may inscribe his own desire.

The progression of their relationship, however, refutes this first impression.

Oswald pierces the veil of Lucy's mystery and is inevitably disappointed, for he leams

1 For a related discussion of nineteenth-centurv Anglo-American women's rhetorics of silence, see Johnson Rhetoric, pas. 48-76. 81

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that Lucy's silence is not to be broken with those she loves; indeed, her restraint

interpolates all her relations:

all she said was so nobly natural that Oswald approved her every word, and yet he felt a void beside her. Their conversation consisted but of questions and answers; she neither started nor prolonged any subjects; all went well but without the exhaustless animation with which it is so difficult for those who have enjoyed it to dispense, (de Stael 347)

If there is deficiency in the "exhaustless animation" of the Italian improvisatrice whose

foreign ways and free engagement in public discourse have driven away her lover, then

the reserved domestic speech of the English maiden is intrinsically lacking as well. This

"void" creates a chasm in Oswald and Lucy's marriage; he thinks she loves him "but

feebly" (351). while she believes her "affection unprized" (354). If an excess of

virtuosity has doomed Corinne. a dearth of expertise in this arena has similarly rendered

her sister miserable.

Not all is lost, however, for the improvisatrice tradition offers Lucy a species of

woman's rhetoric able to transcend the nihilism seen in the contrast between Corinne and

her sister's unhappy states. At the end of the novel. Lucy and Oswald have returned to

Italy to see Corinne. who is rumored to be dying of a broken heart. Married life has not

treated Lord and Lady Oswald kindly, and their estrangement, combined with his guilt

over Corinne's impending death has caused Oswald to slide into a deep depression.

Guessing the cause of Osw ald's ennui and jealous of his affections for her half-sister.

Lucy seeks out Corinne to determine the exact nature of her relationship with the

melancholy English Lord. Lucy's motives notw ithstanding, the sight of her half-sister

effects immediate reconciliation:

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The sisters embraced in tears. Corinne then set an example of frankness it was impossible for Lucy not to follow. Such was that mind’s ascendancy over everyone that, in her presence, neither dissimulation nor constraint could be preserved. [...] She entered very simply on this delicate subject [the Nevil’s estrangement]; her perfect knowledge of the husband's character enabled her to point out why he required to find spontaneously in those he loved the confidence which he could not solicit [...]. She described her past self impartially, as if speaking of another, and showed how agreeable it must be for a mind to find, united with moral conduct, that desire to please which is often inspired by a wish to atone for a loss of virtue, (de Stael 375)

Urging her sister "to be Corinne and Lucy in one." (376) the dying improvisatrice

instructs Lucy in a mode of rhetoric that will combine the best of Lucy's decorum and the

improvisatrice’s spontaneity and thereby combine rhetorics in a manner calculated to

afford maximum pleasure to Oswald. By not permitting its women some freedom of

language. Corinne implicitly argues. Englishmen rob not just their women but also

themselves by denying the primary pleasure that the weaker sex can afford their

protectors, the comfort of a spontaneous understanding. Unlike Corinne's discourse.

which was awesome in its beauty and effects, the model for the average Englishwoman

seems to be a British restraint commingled with the improvisatrice’s taste and

understanding. Corinne’s advice has an immediate effect on Lucy, as seen in Oswald’s

observation that "Her address [...] was more animated than usual and every day its

warmth, its interest increased" (de Stael 375). In this manner. Lucy offers her husband

some solace for the loss of his true love and thus carries the primary goal of the

improvisatrice’s rhetoric - maintenance of the moral virtue of the civil state - into the

domestic sphere. Thus, when compared with Corinne's dazzling display at the Capitol.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the rhetorical possibilities of the improvisatrice terminate anticlimactically in Lucy's

rhetorical ministrations to her endlessly ambivalent spouse.

Woman’s Rhetoric and the Reception Corinneof

While twentieth-century critical reactions equateCorinne with a proto-feminist

agenda.18 the novel's original reception was characterized by startlingly conservative

interpretations. While critics varied in their assessment of Corinne. their responses often

focused on the models offered by the improvisatrice paradigm. One of the earliest

notices of the novel, a lengthy review of the original French text that appeared in an 1807

edition of the Edinburgh Review, for example, casts Corinne as a morality tale:

From the history and fate of the amiable and accomplished Corinna. the reader may learn to watch over a passion, which, if left to itself, may become one of the worst distempers of the mind, blasting and consuming even the noblest of faculties. One may learn, too. the necessity of conforming to those rules that restrain the intercourse of the sexes, and that are not to be rashly dispensed with, even where no immediate danger is apprehended. (194)

Here. then, is the conservative message of Corinne. Despite the efficacy of passion in

persuasive appeals, its use can become "one of the worst distempers of the mind” (194)

without the interventions of "those rules that restrain the intercourse of the sexes." The

novel which one twentieth-century critic has claimed "works to unsettle the legitimacy of

paternal authority" (Miller 196) was then viewed as an illustration of nineteenth-century

gender "rules."

Nor was the Edinburgh Review an abnormality in its assessment of Corinne s

meaning. An 1807 review in the Satirist, for example, finds the moral of the book to be

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "that although the vivid blaze of an Italian imagination may dazzle for a while, it is only

the milder but more permanent luster of his virtuous countrywoman that can give

satisfaction to the affections of an Englishman" (310). The Satirist review seems to be

echoing the earlier assessment rendered in the Edinburgh Review: Corinne is a novel

about the allure and ultimate destruction of a woman who deviates from cultural codes.

Reactions such as these, combined with the overwhelming popular success of de Stael’s

novel, make it appear that Corinne owed much of its popularity to a supposed support of

the status quo.

There is another side to Corinne's nineteenth-centurv' reception, however. As

Perry Miller notes, when '’Isabel Hill's translation of Corinne [...] appeared it promptly

became a troubling intrusion into all Anglo-Saxon communities. It was perpetually-

denounced from middle-class pulpits and assiduously read by middle-class daughters at

night" (ix). While the historical record shows that Miller may have overstated his claim

somewhat, texts such as Mrs. E. M. Foster's The Corinna o f England, and a Heroine in

the Shade. Hannah More's "Sketches of Foreign Manners." as well as a selection of those

reviews that came after the novel’s first success, comprise a cultural defense against the

widening of woman’s sphere called for in Corinne.

Although lauding the novel, the majority of nineteenth-centurv- reviews criticized

de Stael for her harsh depiction of Englishwomen’s discourse. Translator Isabel Hill was

compelled to refute de Stael's claims, indignantly responding to the novelist in a series

of footnotes that read, for example. “What a flattering picture of female society, at the

18 As representative examples, see N. Miller. Peel and Rosters. 85 “

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. county house of an intelligent English peer, not fifty years since" (235). Even the

Edinburgh Review, whose review of the novel was largely favorable, claims the

"coldness of manner in the English ladies, the reserv e and want of animation, are painted

too harshly, even though a large share of understanding and accomplishment is allowed

them" (193). Most interestingly, the review does not seem to dispute the existence of

Englishwomen's "coldness of manner." "reserve and want of animation" (193). but takes

exception only to the degree of severity with which they are represented. This review,

then, seems to support the argument of the novel in that both de Stael and the reviewer

agree on English womanhood's qualities, just not on the light in which to view these

characteristics. Similarly, the Review critic does not attempt to refute de Stael’s narrow

picture of the Englishwomen's world but instead holds it up as a proof for their

superiority:

In what respects conversation, however, and cultivation of mind, we must be permitted to say. that we believe the women [of England] are often superior to the men. The very circumstance of not being destined for active of public life, renders their conversation more intellectual, more connected with general principals, and more allied to philosophic speculation. Their taste is often more cultivated [...].(193)

These words affirm the liveliness and intellectualism of woman's conversation for which

Corinne explicitly calls. These qualities are. however attributed to a source opposite that

presented in de Stael's novel. Here, in direct opposition to the communal fund of

rhetorical excellence cited by Blair and Corinne, woman's seclusion from the world of

ideas gives her speech its superiority. Without the clutter of intellectual and political

specifics, apparently, women naturally grasp those "general principals" which, combined

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. with their "cultivated" (Review 193) taste, supply all the conversational excellence that de

Stael could desire.

As the century progressed, the assessments of Corinne seem to have become

increasingly pejorative. Perhaps the most stinging evaluation is that offered by Hannah

More in 1819's “Sketches on Foreign Manners." In this essay. More devotes the section

entitled “French Opinion of English Society” to refuting de Stael's criticism. More's

defense takes two tactics. First she differentiates the notion of British eloquence from

that of the French:

if they [the English] are not incessantly producing all they are worth to every comer: when called out in public situation, in the senate, the pulpit, or at the bar. we see all the energies of genius in all its opulence and variety. We see the most powerful reasoning, adorned by the most persuasive eloquence. With these ample materials for conversation, they are not perhaps driven, like some of their more volatile neighbours, to talk for the sake of talking. They are more disposed to consider conversation as the refreshment than the pabulum of life. (32)

In this passage. More redefines the notion of English eloquence before moving to her

defense from de Stael's specific attack on women. The English, as More describes them.

consider speaking but a single part of eloquence, for the British include silence as one of

the communal pleasures of rhetoric: they consider "society as a scene in which rather to

repose their minds, than to keep them in full exercise” (More 32). In other words, while

the French may have nothing better to do than engage in frivolous if pleasurable

conversation, the English have an empire to run.

Once More establishes the secondary role of speech in English life, it is easy to

explain the quality of woman's speech. Like the Edinburgh Review. More seems to have

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. little commitment to refuting de Stael’s impression of British womanhood, but instead

contends the effects:

Our only fear on this subject is. lest they should not always remain what the writer in questions represents them as being at present. If. indeed, we were sent into this world only to be entertaining; if we had nothing to do but talk, nothing to aim at but to shine; nothing to covet but admiration, we should more readily coincide in opinion with this sprightly lady. [... ] Perhaps this lady did not know that the English educate, or rather did once educate, women of fashion for the home. (33. 35. emphasis original)

Aside from her curmudgeonly remarks about the declining state of woman's education.

More's strategy here is reminiscent of that represented in the Edinburgh Review. Again.

she does not dispute the representation of woman's discourse but the effect attributed to

these words. Likewise. More does not quarrel with the representation of woman's

circumscribed domestic world but sees this as one of woman's virtues, not her

limitations. As seen in these examples, then, the conservative backlash against Corinne

does not argue with her representation of woman's rhetoric but with her analysis of its

effects.

There was one other reoccurring point in the nineteenth-centurv criticisms of

Corinne. namely its pernicious effect on young women. As one reviewer put it near the

end of the century.

It may be said that none will imitate her. Perhaps not. if we refer to exact imitation, but what will be the tendency with the ardent and imaginative, already galled by restraints perhaps a little too heavy, and conscious of their own innocence? The spark of resistance to prudent custom may be smothered under ordinary circumstances, but will blaze out when fanned by the breath of temptation. (Senex 381)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Like More, this reviewer see a conflict between the emulation ofCorinne and adherence

to social custom. In a reversal of the belletristic mandate that literature can elevate the

soul, this fear ofimitatio was a concern from the first publication of Corinne. Thus in

1809. Mrs. E.M. Foster publishedThe Corinna o f England, and a Heroine in the Shade:

A Modern Romance, which tells the story of a foolish young Englishwoman who comes

under the influence of de Stael's novel, a connection that encourages her poor judgment

and eventually leads to her death. Just as de Stael's Corinne argued for the influence of

literature upon society, so too do her detractors, but with a decidedly pejorative cast.

Much of the critical reaction to Corinne. then, focused on the rhetorical models it

put forward. The representation of an Anglo woman's rhetoric and the persuasive power

of the woman's passion appear to be accepted by her most vociferous detractors. Yet.

British critics continuously either readCorinne as a moral tale lauding English virtue or

condemned it as a dangerous and derogatory example of woman's rhetorical power used

wrongly. In either interpretation, however, the vehemence of the reaction deemed the

improvisatrice rhetoric a model with which to reckon. This assessment of Corinne's

influence was supported by the endurance of this paradigm of woman's speech

throughout the century.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 3

TO ELEVATE. I MUST SOFTEN**:

LELITIA LANDON. SUBLIMITY AND STYLE

The question which Landon's texts confront us with [...] is essentially the same as that which troubled Germaine Greer in the early 1980s: how do we want to understand the politics of femininity? What do we do with a woman who chose to negotiate with rather than repudiate the dominant accounts of femininity of her period? What do we do with a woman whose claim to a place in the "public sphere" relied on her endorsement of the discourses of the "private sphere"? -- Emma Francis1

A study of/im r and where works of imagination have been produced would often be more extraordinary than the works themselves. - Letitia Landon-

As described in the previous chapter, reading Corinne in the context of Campbell

and Blair reveals the improvisatrice's composition process to be a truncation of the

rhetorical canon of invention. Using Campbell's framework foregrounds the

improvisatrice's reliance on the feminized faculty of imagination and her disdain for the

faculty of reason. Similarly, the critical lens provided by Blair connects the

improvisatrice's rhetoric to an abundance of natural taste and minimizes taste's reliance

upon erudition. As demonstrated through the improvisatrice's development of invention.

‘ Pg 105 : Qtd. In Blanchard 78-9. 90

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. then, her rhetoric reads as a re-gendered but abbreviated persuasive system that is

contextualized to the position of the middle-class Anglo Englishwoman.

The rhetorical contributions of the improvisatrice are restricted to neither the

novel Corinne nor the canon of invention, however. When read in conjunction with

Campbell and Blair, other improvisatrice texts yield similarly curtailed and feminized

rhetorics. Accordingly, this chapter examines Letitia Landon's improvisatrice poems in

conjunction with Campbell and Blair's discussions of style to demonstrate Landon's

abridgement of the canon of style and her feminization of the sublime experience that

comprises another key feature of the improvisatrice rhetoric.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The biographical myths surrounding Letitia Landon are as an important

contribution to the improvisatrice tradition as were her poems. As the studies of Landon

by Glennis Stephenson. Sara Sheppard. Germaine Greer and Angela Leighton have

shown, her work and her life are difficult, if not impossible, to separate. Indeed, there

has never been a study of Landon that does not take a biographical approach, not only

because Landon's unprecedented lifestyle invites comparison with her fictional

improvisatrices. but also because Landon herself manipulated both her fictions and her

biographical facts to construct herself as an “English Improvisatrice." Thereby Landon

muddied any historical record with her fabricated self-representations. An examination

of Landon's contributions to improvisatrice rhetoric, therefore, must draw from

biographical fiction and fact as well as imaginative works.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Landon was bom in 1802 in Chelsea. England. While her literary career is

exceptional for a middle-class woman bom at the beginning of the nineteenth-century,

her level of education was not unusual for a young girl of this period. Early in Landon's

life, her father had been a successful partner in the army agency of Adair & Co.. but

Napoleon's defeat and her father's bad investments brought a serious decline in family

fortunes. Thus, after a year at Francis Rowden's school3, six-year old Landon was

brought home to Brompton. where the rest of her education was carried out. At this

point, her schooling appears to have been taken over by an elderly neighbor who taught

Landon to read through the novel means of spreading cards with letters upon the floor

and rewarding Landon for picking up the letters that formed specified words. Later

stories of Landon's education told by her nineteenth-century biographers seem

apocryphal of the improvisatrice who puts her literary talents in the selfless serv ice of

society, such as her teaching her family's gardener to read, which led to his lifelong

success, or her accomplishment of scholarly tasks set by her father in order to give her

merited rewards to younger brother. Whittington Henry4. From these early stories, we can

see the construction of Landon as an exemplary child who used her literary gifts for the

betterment of others, thus laying the youthful foundations for a later would-be

improvisatrice. one who would present her rhetorical role as the improvement of other

people through the espousal of the belles lettres.

' Rowden's school at 22 Hans Place is noted for its well known students - Lady Caroline Lamb and Mary Russell Mitford. as well as for the literary activities of Rowden (later Countess St. Quentin) herself. i Both of these stories were originally published in Blanchard and then repeated by later authors such as Thomas and Sheppard. Landon published a collection of children's stories. Traits and Trials o f Early Life (1836) which included similar incidents that she claimed to be autobiographical.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. When Landon was seven, her cousin Elizabeth was put in charge of her education.

As Laman Blanchard recounts, the scope and seriousness of her education at this time

would have satisfied even Corinne's model of English matriarchy, the redoubtable Lady

Edgarmond:

The works read at this period were precisely those that happened to be at hand, or most readily procurable. The list opens, of course, with grammars and catechisms, glances at geography. Rollins' Ancient History. Hume and Smollett: then come Plutarch's Lives, the Fables of Gay and Esop. Life o f Josephus. Montesquieu'sSpirit o f the Laws. Life o f Petrarch and many others, more or less adapted to the young reader. ’I always." remarks the thoughtful cousin, "made it my particular care never to allow of her reading any novels, knowing it would only weaken her mind, and give it a distaste for more serious reading.' (10)

Given the place of rhetoric in the British educational system, it seems probable that

Landon would have at this time been exposed to the dominant rhetorical paradigms along

with grammar. Plutarch and .Esop. Considering the scope of the curriculum her cousin

devised and its emphasis on nonfiction, it appears likely that it would include at least a

portion of Blair's much-reprinted Lectures. While the historical record cannot confirm

this speculation', it does, however, prove her governess' failure to keep imaginative

literature from her young charges. As her brother recounts later in life, they read "from a

hundred to a hundred and fifty volumes ofPoets and Xovelists" (Blanchard 10). Thus.

along with the formal education she received from her cousin. Landon was well supplied

with models for imaginative literature, a resource on which she would draw throughout

her authorial career, such as in her essays analyzing the heroines of Sir Walter Scott's

5 The only evidence we have of Landon’s familiarity with the work of Campbell or Blair, is a letter written in 1831 in which she complains that she is so bored during a countryside visit that she has been reduced to reading Blair's Sermons for enjovment. 93

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. novels, or in her many review essays for the literary periodicals, which included both

previously published books and new titles.

Whatever the effects of her formal schooling, the fiction Landon read appears to

have had a great effect on her writings. Her most obvious debt is to de Stael: throughout

Landon's poetic career, she returned repeatedly, even obsessively, to the figure of the

improvisatrice. Not only did Landon write a series of improvisatrice poems but she

translated Corinne' s improvisations for the 1833 Hill translation of de Stael's text. This

lifelong interest in the figure of the improvisatrice was heralded by the 1824 publication

of The Improvisatrice. With this volume. Landon achieved both commercial and critical

success: not only did her she win acclaim in many of the period's important literary

reviews, but she also cleared a profit of approximately £6006. At the beginning of her

career, at least, the figure of the improvisatrice offered the young Landon a viable

representation of a woman addressing a public audience.

The content of the volume's title poem. "The Improvisatrice." play upon the

Corinne narrative, using the story' of a nameless Italian improvisatrice and her ill-fated

love for one of her country men as the frame-tale for a series of poems concerning

doomed lovers. Yet. considering that at 1.578 lines. "The Improvisatrice" stands as

Landon's longest contribution to this tradition, it adds surprisingly little to the rhetorical

theory' contained in Corinne. Indeed, this text's primary result was the creation of a

popularized, inoffensive version of de Stael's unique heroine. As Daniel Reiss has

pointed out. in "The Improvisatrice.'* "Landon removed or nullified the controversial

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. elements of the original novel*’ (816). For instance, rather than presenting the conflict of

woman's engagement in public and private spheres or illustrating a theory that shows

how woman may navigate her murky rhetorical waters. Landon's '’Improvisatrice'' gives

us a romance doomed from the start: the title character’s true love. Lorenzo, is already

promised in marriage, and thus the conflict between her private and public roles is never

examined. Moreover, while Corinne's Oswald foregrounds the crisis of gender roles the

improvisatrice faces when he articulates the fear that Corinne's rhetorical talents would

prevent their domestic happiness. Landon's Lorenzo states that the improvisatrice's

talents only add to her attractions, telling her he "Worshipped thee as a sacred thing / Of

Genius' high imagining" (1420-21). The conflict that is at the heart of the

improvisatrice’s rhetoric in Corinne is eschewed here in favor of a straightforward tale of

star-crossed lovers.

Further, in this text we are told little of the improvisatrice’s composition process.

All we leam is that her superior taste was the result of spending her childhood in Italy

"'mid radiant things / Glorious as hope’s imaginings." (9-10) such as:

Paintings whose colours of life were caught From the fairy tints in the rainbow wrought: Music whose sights had a spell like those That float on the sea at evening's close: Language so silvery, that every word Was like the lute’s awakening chord. (13-18)

With belletristic models such as these, it is unsurprising that, although her "power was

but a woman's power / In that great and glorious dower / Which genius gives [she had a]

6 According to John McCusker. £600 in 1824 would have purchasing power of £30.586.81 in 2002.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. part" (26-7). This unnamed improvisatrice's childhood had been filled with models of

aesthetic excellence, thus rationalizing her innately excellent aesthetic faculty. Or. to

express this improvisatrice's gifts in a Blairian paradigm, her upbringing gave her great

Delicacy, if not Correctness of taste. Hence, the belletristic connection between

refinement of the feminine taste and the abilities of the improvisatrice that was seen in

Corinne is established in Landon's text as well. But. aside from commentary on the

improving effects of her love for Lorenzo on her improvising (739-742). we are told little

else about rhetorical invention or the style that allows the improvisatrice to reach such

rhetorical heights as Lorenzo describes. Landon's most popular representation of the

improvisatrice. then, is a cautious one: we cannot see how or why her rhetoric works: we

are simply told that it does. As the narrator tells us:

She looked a form of light and life. All soul, all passion, and ail fire: A Priestess of Apollo's, when The morning beams fall on her lyre: A Sappho, ere love had turned The heart to stone where once it burned. (Landon ’'Improvisatrice" 1567-72)

In this manner. ’’The Improvisatrice" invokes all the panoply of the improvisatrice

without examining its rhetorical foundation. Therefore, this text does not significantly

revise or expand the rhetorical function of the improvisatrice tradition as a paradigm for

women's speech.

Where we can see a marked expansion of the improvisatrice rhetoric at this stage

of Landon's career, however, is in her audience's immediate association of Landon with

her creation, and the equation of her rhetorical style with her moral virtue, or lack thereof.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As all her nineteenth- and twentieth-century biographers have pointed out. Landon was

immediately connected to her literary creation by reviewers and the reading public alike.

a conflation Landon herself encouraged. In an undated letter to publisher Alaric Watts.

for instance. Landon defines her own fluidity of verse as an improvisational style:

I like to show how much 1 can do in a little time. 1 wrote the '’Improvisatrice" in less than five weeks, and during that time. I often was for two or three days without touching it. I never saw the MS. till in proof-sheets a year afterwards, and I made no additions, only verbal alterations, (qtd. Watts 254)

Landon's adoption of the improvisatrice mode did not stop at this representation of her

composing process, which reiterates the notion of the improvisatrice text as a natural

spontaneous outpouring devoid of reflection or revision. Around the time ofThe

Improvisatrice's publication in 1824. Landon also appropriated the visual image of the

improvisatrice by affecting the blue-and-white attire associated with de Stael's creation.

and the ornate conglomeration of curls that was considered wearing one's hair a la

Sappho. More provocative, however, was her decision as nineteenth-century

bibliographer Grace Wharton describes. ”to live as certain esprits forts did. alone, to be a

Corinne" (Wharton 274). In other words, the move out of her familial home in 1826

served to heighten the connection between Landon and the fictional heroine.

The title of The Improvisatrice. Landon's intentional invocation of the

improvisatrice ethos and. above all. the incredible popularity of both author and creation.

made it inevitable that Landon quickly came to be considered the epitome of the English

Improvisatrice. The text was reviewed fifteen times in the year following its production.

and reviews commonly equated Landon with her fictional creation, lauding both for their

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. impassioned style and fluidity of verse. In 1824. a favorable review of The Improvisatrice

in the New Monthly Review, for example, claims:

There is a kind of poetry which seems the result not of thought but of feeling, the creation not of the head, but of the heart. [... ] In elevated thought and dignified expression, they do not equal the compositions of Mrs. Barbauld or Mrs. Joanna Baillie. nor in some respects can they compete with the delightful productions of Mrs. Hemans: but in ardent and impassioned feeling, clothed in a language most befitting, "The Improvisatrice" and the poems which follow it have been seldom surpassed. (365)

Like other woman authors, then. Landon’s text is “the creation not of the head but of the

heart": however, while such figures of maternal authority and comfort as the period’s

foremost married woman writers - Hemans. Barbauld. and Baillie7 -- may write texts

with a feminine gravitas. the youth and attractiveness attributed to Landon creates an

obstacle to this kind of experience. Thus the identifying quality of Landon’s style

becomes associated with this distinction between the moral virtue contained in the works

of married woman authors, such as Felicia Hemans and Joanna Baillie. and the "ardent

and impassioned feeling" that characterizes the style of The Improvisatrice. This equation

of style and sexuality is a theme throughout critical reactions to Landon’s collection.

"Noctes Ambrosianae.” for example, claimed "there was a certain feminine elegance

about the voluptuousness of this book, which to a certain extent, marks it w ith an

individual character of its own" (Lockhart 238). Here, as in The Monthly Review, the

style of "The Improvisatrice" is seen as being marked by a feminine sexuality.

Felicia Hemans (1793-1835) provided for her five sons through her poetry. Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743- 1835) was popular as a writer of children's books, although she drew criticism for the ”unfeminine” nature of the war poem Eighteen Hundred and Eleven. now considered by most critics to be her best work. Joanna Baillie ( 1792-1851) was a poet and dramatist. 98

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ironically, in many of the plaudits of her work at this stage in her career, we can

discern a focus on the same stylistic qualities that were the basis of those criticisms that

would later be levied against Landon. Even admirers of her Improvisatrice associate its

style with voluptuousness and passion, emotions which are not quite appropriate to young

Letitia Landon and. as reaction to her later work would demonstrate, would be even less

suitable for a mature woman.

This equation ofThe Improvisatrice with a style arising from female sexuality is

reflected in its more mixed assessments as well as its favorable reviews. For example.

after censuring the praise with which Landon's volume has been hailed in other

periodicals as an act of unabashed 'puffery.8* a critic for theLiterary Magnet claims:

far be it from us to w ish to repress the outpourings of a fond and youthful fancy, or to check the impassioned accents of a Muse, whose strains are devoted to love and all his soft endearments. We are no hermits, nor have we reached that sober decline of life, when the heyday of the blood attends upon the judgment: and. indeed, if we had. the verses of our "English Sappho" would go far in heating us again. (294)

While in terms more mixed than those used by her most enthusiastic supporters, the

Literary Magnet attributes qualities to Landon's verse that resemble those described in

more laudatory counterparts. Landon appears as the improvisatrice. whose verse consists

of "outpourings" of "impassioned accents." The highly eroticized image of the "English

Sappho" heating the blood of the male reviewer also adds to the image of the Landon-

improvisatrice soliciting a passionate response from her male auditor. An even more

s During the literary periodical’s heyday, puffery was a common criticism, for authors associated with a particular periodical would typically receive the highest praises in its pages. Landon was frequently a target for these charges, both because of her professional ties and the obvious partiality with which publications such asThe Literarv Gazette would treat her books. 99

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. critical reviewer in the Universal Review took Landon to task for the “indecorous" nature

of her "Fiery phraseology" (182. emphasis original). As can be seen in this survey of

initial reviews, then, while Landon's morals had yet to be explicitly questioned at the

time of The Improvisatrice's publication, the supposedly passionate style of her verse

seems to lead some reviewers to be dubious of her perfect moral purity.

Morality: A Matter of Style?

In a belletristic framework such as Blair's, the sensuality of style that was Landon's

trademark would be seen as a reflection of her own character. For. as Blair argues in the

Lectures, style gives the audience a window^ into the rhetor's soul:

The best definition I can give [of style] is. the peculiar manner which a man expresses his conceptions, by means of Language. It is different from mere Language or words. [....] Style has always some reference to an author's manner of thinking. It is a picture of the ideas which rise in his mind, and of the manner in which they rise there; and hence, when we are examining an author's composition, it is. in many cases, extremely difficult to separate style from sentiment. The Asiatics, gay and loose in their manners, affected a style florid and diffuse. (Blair 1:184)

Style relates to more than a text's aesthetic effect, because of the relationship between

words and an author's habit of mind: style quite literally makes the (wo)man. A pure

mind will write in a pure style, and a less than pure mind will likewise reveal itself as did.

for example, the Asiatics' with their “style florid and diffuse." Because of this posited

transparency of style, a rhetor who can invoke a moral style demonstrates her own

morality. While Blair applies his dictum unilaterally, this connection would particularly

be true of an improvisatrice. for the spontaneous outpouring of her text would prevent

100

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. any conscious attempt to manipulate style: like the improvisation itself, it would be a

natural reflection of her mind. Thus, any purity of style attributed to Landon's

improvisatrices vouchsafes their moral purity. By the same token, any perceived

indecorousness of style can be used as evidence of not only the fictional improvisatrice's

immorality but also that of Landon’s herself. This equation of style with morality is

therefore a double-edged sword, a dynamic that can either prove a woman's right to

speak or indicate her essentially unwomanly nature.

Improvisational Music

The sensuous quality attributed to Landon's verses, and by extension, to the

author herself represents the stylistic quality that Campbell termed "music" and Blair

refers to as "melody.'' An examination of the characteristics attributed to this term by

each rhetorician reveals a connection between the ethos of female rhetor and the

persuasive possibilities - and dangers - of this quality. Campbell, for example, describes

the music of words as

an excellence of which language is susceptible as an audible object, distinct from its aptitude for conveying the sentiments of the orator with light and energy into the mind of the hearers. Now as music is to the ear what beauty’ is to the eye. I shall, for want of a more proper term, denominate this excellence in style its music, though I acknowledge the word is rarely used with so great latitude. (216)

In brief, music is the audible beauty of words. This equation of visible beauty and

audible music establishes music as one of the stylistic qualities particularly available to

woman, whose attractiveness was considered a natural component of her persuasive

appeal. Indeed, as Anne Mellor argues in Romanticism and Gender. "Landon's poetry

101

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. was designed to be feminine beauty, a beauty of both the body and of the heart" and so

was written in '"a voice of sweetness, softness, clarity and harmonious musicality”

(Mellor 113. emphasis original). Musicality. as it is defined by Campbell and Blair, is a

rhetorical quality of style particularly appropriate for use by the hyper-feminized

improvisatrice.

Elsewhere in the Philosophy. Campbell says little else about the music of style,

save when he cautions that the '"harmony of numbers" should not distract through its

jarring sound nor appear so ornate that it reveal "the evident marks of address and study”

(Campbell 121). The improvisatrice. at least, was safe from this last criticism. Since her

outpourings were thought to be spontaneous by definition, an abundance of music in her

words could not be construed as evidence of premeditation. Therefore, improvisation

seems well placed to reach the highest levels of stylistic excellence, in which "sentiments

and style and order appear so naturally to arise out of the subject, that every hearer is

inclined to think, he could not have thought or spoken otherwise himself* (Campbell

121). If. as Campbell claims, the best style makes an oration appear a natural response to

the rhetorical occasion, the innate gift of improvisation by definition fulfills these stylistic

criteria, and the music of the improvisatrice's words is evidence of her rhetorical

excellence, not sophistical ornament.

Blair echoes Campbell's assertions regarding "music." but terms this quality

"harmony" and "melody." insisting that sentence structure should strive to provide the

pleasures of "melody" through words of “smooth and liquid sounds" and "musical

arrangement” (Blair 1: 248. 252). Nineteenth-century' reviewers often cite this sense of

102

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. aural pleasure in the "The Improvisatrice." which is described as containing "harmony. "

(Madden 267) and "natura[l] harmony in the verse." (Blackwood's 1824 191). Landon

herself is thought to possess "an ear tuned to the varied melodies of the language"

(Blackwood's 1824 191). This notion of music's suasory effects was built into the

fictional construct of the improvisatrice as well, for a lyre or a lute is often her accessory.

As de Stael’s Corinne explains. "Sometimes my lyre, by a simple national air. may

complete the effect which flies from the control of words" (de Stael 44). All of Landon's

improvisatrices also play the lute or lyre, and their words frequently are associated with

musical images. The protagonist of "The Improvisatrice." for example, uses "Language

so silvery, that every word / Was like the lute's awakening chord" (13-18) thereby

establishing the connection between language and music. This link of speech and music

follows Landon's nameless improvisatrice to the grave: after she dies, her grief-stricken

lover is said to have a memorial image of her which contains "such life / You almost

heard the silvery words" (1564-1565). This parting image of the improvisatrice connects

the pathos of her image to the musical "silvery " language of the poem's opening

statement. Likewise, the epigram to "Erinna." describes title character's voice as "the

echo to a lute" ("Epigram to Erinna" 18). Not just literary' reviews, then, but Landon's

own revision of the improvisatrice foregrounds the musicality of the improvisatrice's

rhetorical style.

This critical association of Landon's verse with the quality Campbell termed

"music" and Blair "harmony" has had a surprising endurance. Even contemporary

descriptions of Landon's improvisational style continue to cast their discussion in terms

103

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of rhetorical features enumerated by Campbell and Blair. In fact, most recent criticism

has cited the mellifluous nature of Landon's poetry as one of her stylistic hallmarks.

Angela Leighton, for example, constructs a relationship between Landon's

improvisational style and the ecriture feminine described by Helene Cixous. Leighton

claims that Landon’s style is Cixous-like in its "fluency and endlessness” (58) and that

her poems' "very language sounds improvised, and [...] very structureless length mimes

the notion of woman's unstoppable flow of creativity” (Leighton 58. emphasis original).

Echoing Blair's notion of the "smooth and liquid sounds" (Blair 1: 245). the "fluency"

and "flow" that Leighton associates here with women's language generally and the

improvisatrice rhetoric unexpectedly ties the rhetorical theories of Campbell and Blair to

French feminism through the example of stylistic music that is Landon's hallmark.

Contemporary scholars, then, have cited the same feminine surface features as did

nineteenth-century critics, although today's critics have not acknowledged the connection

to the belletristic and epistemic rhetorics of Campbell and Blair, which offer longstanding

rhetorical rationales for these supposedly "womanly" qualities of verse.

Yet not all modem stylistic analyses of the improvisatrice's musical style are so

esoteric. With a focus more attenuated to prosody than a uniquely feminine excess, for

example. Glennis Stephenson's study of Landon includes as components of the

improvisational style anaphora, use of cliche, an energy of excess, and a sensual

overload. While this list of characteristics gives a more empirical slant to what we are

defining here as the improvisatrice's style, it still reiterates that sense of abundance and

sensory effusion that has been used to characterize this supposedly feminine

104

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. improvisational style since the first publication of The Improvisatrice. Even Germaine

Greer's Slip-Shod Sibyls (1995). which ranks Landon's poetry as third-rate at best,

identifies qualities that can be traced back to the audible beauty termed "music.*' Greer's

assessment of Landon's style locates itself somewhere between the womanly music

discerned by Leighton and the formalist rationale Stephenson provides. Although

dismissive of this work's aesthetic value. Greer too associates Landon's style with the

innately feminine:

Without [Landon's] slipshod improvisation with its haphazard assonances and liquid syntax, in which the clauses simply run into each other to make a seamless whole with no irritable adversities of coordination, we could not have had the language of that essentially female form, the verse novel, of which Aurora Leigh is the greatest but by no means the only example. (Greer 22-3)

According to Greer. Landon's style captures an "essentially feminine form." The

qualities of this form refer back yet again to the musicality of the verse: its "liquid

syntax" and “seamless" clauses rename the "smooth and liquid sounds" of Blair's

discussion of style. Musicality of verse, with its emphasis on pleasing beauty, then, was

not only associated with the improvisatrice's feminine style when Landon first composed

her works, but is still part of the assessment of her work today. Thus, the association of

music with the rhetorical style of the improvisatrice has proven a longstanding effect of

this tradition.

The Improvisatrice Out of Tune

As seen in Greer's assessment of The Improvisatrice. not all those who have

heard the music of Landon's verse have been laudatory. Like Greer's contempt of

105

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Landon's slipshod yet essentially feminine style, critics from the nineteenth century

onward have associated Landon's style with her womanly nature, and not always to her

benefit. Rumors of Landon's supposed licentiousness began to circulate in 1826 when

The Wasp, a scandal-sheet specializing in literary and theatrical personalities, started to

publish rumors about Landon and one of her primary publishers.Literary Gazette editor

William Jerdan. At around this time. too. the Sun newspaper also attacked her. and. for

the first time, the “immoral tendency'' of her poetry was criticized (qtd. Greer 290). Thus.

Landon wrote to a friend with some asperity about the changes in her critical reputation:

When my 'Improvisatrice* came out. nobody discovered what is alleged against it. I did not take up a review, a magazine, a newspaper but if it named my book, it was to praise 'the delicacy.' 'the grace.' 'the purity of feminine feeling' it displayed, (qtd. Stephenson 154)

The same "feminine voluptuousness" that had been lauded by critics only two years

earlier was now the source of suspicion. John Arthur Roebuck's particularly savage

review of The Troubadour (1825) and The Golden Violet (1826) reflects a growing trend

in Landon reviews when he suggests "We would advise L.E.L. to trust in future less to

her reader's ear and more to his understanding" (309). Roebuck strikes not just at the

qualities of Landon's verse but at the rhetorical system for which it stood: he is not

denying the appeal of her verse, but questioning its ultimate value. Landon may delight

the reader's ear. but she cannot move the faculty of understanding: thus her reader

remains unmoved and unconvinced. Even more prescient of Landon's reputation later in

the century is his remark. "We shall not examine how great may be the influence these

writings are likely to exercise over the feelings and opinions of her readers: but we fear

106

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that if they exercise any. that influence may be more pernicious than useful" (318). This

allusion to Landon's "pernicious" effect on readers is expanded upon in a later review of

The Venetian Bracelet, a volume which contained another poem of the improvisatrice

tradition "History of the Lyre9." Here, the anonymous reviewer warns against the

sophistry that hides moral degeneracy, a danger he sees at the base of many Landon texts:

In her present volume she has shown [...] a disposition to deal with remarkably artificial and corrupt states of feeling, both in men and women. We dare not say that there is truth in this part of her book: we dare not say it because it is the part that seems most true. [...] Where she paints something quite unnatural, there is a universal cry [...] "how clever is that!" [.. .| But we do entreat Miss Landon [.. .] by the love of truth which should not be so much implanted in female nature as part of its very existence [...] to resist and scorn this temptation. The poems which we are most anxious Miss Landon should reconsider with reference to these observations [include] "History of the Lyre." ("Rev. of Venetian Bracelet." Athenaeum 318).

Here. Landon is being judged using concepts which the improvisatrice tradition has thus

far cited to normalize woman’s rhetorical performance. The Athenaeum review supports

Landon's ability to appeal to the imagination, for the most fantastic parts of her work are

those that "appear most true." However, while Landon may argue for her verse as

softening society's "heartlessness" and selfishness" (102). this critic argues to the

contrary, claiming that her appeal to the imagination actually erodes the moral faculty

through the perversion of truth, the love of which "should not be so much implanted in

female nature as part of its very existence" (318). By subverting women's supposed

natural faculties. Landon may convince her reader that the "unnatural" is delightful, but

this ability is misused, for she is forwarding "remarkably artificial and corrupt states of

, For an extended discussion of "History of the Lyre." see Chapter One 23-35 .

107

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. feeling” as models for imitation. The belletristic rationale for women's authorship is not

a straightforwardly libratory rhetoric, then. In 1824. Landon’s improvisatrice rhetoric

was considered "most befitting” (New Monthly Review 1824 365) and the product of

"spontaneous and sweet union"{Literary Gazette 1824 292). Five years later, her verses

dramatizing the improvisatrice Eulalie are deemed artificial and corrupt.

These changes in Landon's critical reception are a result of changes in public

perception of her personal and professional life. From the standpoint of Landon's

womanly ethos, the five years between the publication of The Improvisatrice and the

Athenaeum's review of The Venetian Bracelet were full ones. While the author ofThe

Improvisatrice was styled a "child of song." a girl still in her teens10 whose verse was the

product of natural enthusiasm.The Venetian Bracelet was written by a w oman with an

established literary reputation. Landon was now the author of five books of poetry and

the possessor of the independent means to contribute to her mother's support, finance her

brother's education, and establish a household of her own. apart from her family's

residence. It was around the time of this last event, the taking of lodgings at 22 Hans

Place, that "the first of a series of slanderous attacks on her character appeared

anonymously in the press, where it was suggested that she had been involved in a

romantic liaison" with her publisher William Jeredan (McGann and Reiss 12-13). As

Landon points out in a letter to Katherine Thomson in June 1826. her social position gave

her little protection from and no means of retaliation against such claims:

10 While Landon was described by her publisher as a girl in her teens at the time of The Improvisatrice's publication, she was actually 22. 108

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. It is only because I am poor, unprotected, and dependent on popularity, that I am a mark for all the gratuitous insolence and malice of idleness and ill-nature. And I cannot but feel deeply that had I been possessed of rank and opulence, either these remarks had never been made, or if they had how trivial would their consequence have been to me. (qtd. in Blanchard 50)

Thus when Landon's life operated within the parameters of cultural ideologies, her verse

was seen as the reflection of a sheltered young mind, whose outpourings functioned

within the conjunction of belletrism and gender that sanctioned and regulated middle-

class woman's assumption of the author's role. At that point, her style purportedly

inspired the noblest sentiments, and her improvisatrice embodied that soul of femininity.

But when Landon violated the rule of custom, improvisatrice Eulalie of "A History of the

Lyre" was damned in the same terms used to praise Landon's earlier work, and the

stylistic markers of the improvisatrice are transformed from the exuberant outpourings of

an innocent to unnatural excesses whose influence is "pernicious" ("Rev. ofVenetiain

Bracelet." Athenaeum 318). Thus the relation of style and morality that was used to

praise Landon could also be employed to censure her. When she was thought to be a

young, innocent girl, her verses were read with this persona in mind, and they were

considered as "outpourings of fresh and natural thoughts" ("Rev. ofThe Improvisatrice."

Literary’ Gazette 292). Once her personal life made her appear unconventional, however.

her style of writing was deemed immoral. In brief, the Blairian association of rhetorical

style with the mind of the rhetor could be used to laud or damn women authors.

While we can see the waning of Landon's critical approval in the Athenaeum s

lengthy condemnation of her work, her popular appeal continued, albeit diminished, until

her death in 1838. Despite the growing dissatisfaction that is documented by the British

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. literary reviews of the nineteenth-century. Landon's work continued to sell, as evidenced

by her prolific production of texts. From 1828 to her death in 1838. Landon published

three more books of poetry, three novels, a collection of children's stories and countless

poems in literary periodicals. As this catalog evidences, her work may have not been

held in critical esteem, but it continued to be commercially profitable.

In the combination of critical failure and financial success, we can see a

debasement of the improvisatrice figure. Although maintaining the qualities with which

French aristocrat Germaine de Stael had endowed it - a gender-based appeal to the

faculties of imagination and passion, a particular emphasis on the rhetorical component

of taste, and a suasory style based in the belletristic model of didactic imitation -

Landon's permutations of the improvisatrice also associated this figure with a morally

suspect author and "a middlebrow readership, the younger part of the fair sex"

(Athenaeum. 1828 303).

The Improvisatrice’s Sublime

The effect of Campbell and Blair's theories of style was not entirely deleterious to

the improvisatrice tradition, however, for their discussions rationalized more than the

stylistic link to morality that eventually proved so disastrous to Landon's personal and

literary reputation. Incorporated into both theorists' consideration of style is a discussion

of the sublime that offers a profitable perspective of the improvisatrice's performance.

Both authors revise the sublime experience by emphasizing its rhetorical function and

thereby offering an alternative to the Burkean sublime which was unavailable to women.

110

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Campbell and Blair’s version of this experience gave the sublime a civic function by

associating it with elevation rather than terror and so making it available to women

rhetors. Campbell and Blair therefore offer an alternative to the sublime/beautiful

dichotomy commonly associated with nineteenth-century literature, a rubric in which

woman was inexorably connected to the beautiful and so dissociated from the sublime.

The Sentimental Sublime

Since the composition of Longinus'11 On the Sublime. 12 the pragmatic

relationship between rhetoric and the sublime experience has been a vexed one:

Longinus, for example, claims that the articulation of the sublime rests upon inspiration

as much as rhetorical mastery. Yet. his extant text primarily focuses upon sources of the

sublime that are to be found in the rhetorical arts, namely, pathos, figures and tropes,

nobility of diction, and elevated style. While the articulation of the sublime therefore

rests upon “elevation of mind" in Longinus' treatise (IX. 1). it is nevertheless an

experience invoked at least partially through the proper use of style. Hence, the

connection between style and sublimity embodied by the improvisatrice has roots in the

classical tradition.

In fact, when On the Sublime is read alongside that text most influential on

eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English theories of sublimity. Edmund Burke'sA

11 While the name Longinus has traditionally been associated with the author of "On the Sublime." its veracity is dubious at best, tor the actual author cannot be historically verified. Nevertheless, this dissertation retains Longinus as author for clarity's sake. For discussion of the true author's identity, see Roberts.

I l l

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin o f Ideas o f the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757),

the rhetorical emphasis of the classical text becomes even more apparent. As his use of

the term "philosophy" indicates. Burke is interested in the general principles of nature

responsible for the sublime and thus is not interested in the means by which a rhetor may

achieve the sublime. Instead, he is concerned with the universal qualities of the sublime

object and their effects on the mind. As Burke observes in the conclusion to his treatise.

Words were only so far to be considered [in this work] as to shew upon what principle they were capable of being the representatives of these natural things, and by what power they were able to affect us often as the thing they represent, and sometimes, much more strongly. (Burke 199)

As this passage accurately indicates. Burke's focus on the relation of words to the

sublime experience is more concerned with philosophical universals than the specifics of

a single rhetorical context. Rather than giving the reader a summary of what sorts of

qualities in language can invoke the sublime experience. Burke's treatment of words

focuses on the universality of the epistemological effects of words not the rhetorical

means by which they are to be chosen. Given the focus and brevity of Burke's treatment

of words versus Longinus' extensive interest in style, the influence of the latter on

George Campbell's and Hugh Blair's rhetorics is unsurprising.

Campbell and the Sublime

Unlike Hugh Blair's later text. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. which, as

we will see. explores the sublime in great detail. George Campbell's Philosophy of

'* The publication date of "On the Sublime" is uncertain but common conjecture places it in the first centurv AD. 112

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Rhetoric displays only minimal interest in this rhetorical effect. What little Campbell

has to say about this term is nevertheless important because not only does Campbell's

commentary signal a break with the Burkean sublime, but it also describes the sublime

experience from an epistemological point of view that can substantiate how the

improvisatrice's rhetoric might reach that pinnacle of eloquence denied to woman under

the Burkean paradigm.

According to Campbell, the sublime consists of "those great and noble images,

which, when in suitable colouring presented to the mind. do. as it were, quite ravish the

soul” (3). In this emphasis on nobility and "suitable colouring." Campbell’s construction

of the sublime seems closer to that expressed in Longinus' treatise than to Burke's

theory, which was so influential on many of Landon's male peers.lj While Burke recasts

the sublime in emphatically masculine terms. Campbell emphasizes the elevation that

was Longinus' focus. By returning to Longinus' notion of the sublime. Campbell

weakens the connection between masculinity and sublimity forged by Burke and so

creates a theoretical space that, hypothetically, rationalizes the articulation of the sublime

in the improvisatrice tradition.

According to Longinus, the sublime experience is one in which "our soul is

uplifted:" "it takes a proud flight and is filled with joy and vaunting" (78). While this

noble elevation predicts Campbell's description, it stands in notable contrast to the

sublime described by Burke:

|J For a classic study of Burke's influence on nineteenth-century literature, see Monk. For a more recent evaluation, see Curran. Mellor. Freeman. 113

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say. whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source o f the sublime; that is. it is productive of the strongest emotions which the mind is capable of feeling. (Burke 305)

A far cry from the "great and noble images” cited by Campbell. Burke's terror-filled

sublime would be considered a rhetorical experience difficult for women to invoke. As

Nicola Trott has summarized, the Burkean sublime was unavailable to woman writers

due to its association with "’masculine" qualities of strength and size (those capable of

invoking admiration, fear or terror)” (81). Women were restricted to Burke's category of

the beautiful associated w ith feminine' qualities of smallness, smoothness delicacy"

(Trott 81). Trott here argues, as have other critics such as Stuart Curran. Anne Mellor

and Isobel Armstrong, that the Burkean sublime, with its emphasis on terror, pain and

danger, would be the province of manly writing14.

It is not only in the experience of the sublime experience that Campbell's theory

can be distinguished from Burke's; the means by which the sublime is achieved is

different as well. In fact. Campbell's description of how the sublime affects the spectator

reads as a direct contradiction of Burke's views. According to Burke, the sublime affects

the passions through such emotions as terror, astonishment and self-preservation.

Contradicting this notion of the passion as the locus of sublimity, among Campbell's first

claims in the Philosophy is the statement that the sublime does not appeal to the passions

but "distends the imagination" (3). This appeal to the imagination was the particular

province of the improvisatrice rhetoric, whose beauty, vivacity, and novelty were primary

14 For discussions of woman writers and the Burkean sublime, see Curran. Mellor. Freeman. 114

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. components of her persuasive process15. As in the description of the sublime as a morally

uplifting experience, the emphasis on the role played by imagination in the invocation of

the sublime differentiates the Campbellian sublime from Burke's earlier theory.

While the awesome masculinity of the Burkean sublime would be unavailable to

the hyper-feminized figure of the improvisatrice. Campbell's association of nobility with

the sublime creates an appropriate rhetorical space for the woman rhetor. In this vein.

Isobel Armstrong has described the transcendent experience available to Landon's

improvisatrices by commenting: "It is if she [Landon] has taken Burke's category of the

'beautiful.* which he saw as an overrefmed and 'feminine" principle in contradistinction

to the strenuous labor of the 'sublime.' and reappropriated it as a moral category which

can dissolve overcivilised hardness” (328). In other words, the improvisatrice's sublime

as Landon articulates it redeploys the beautiful by imbuing it with a force distinct from

Burke's use of this term. While Armstrong rightly cites the moral power associated with

Landon's creations, her correlation of this force with the Burkean category of the

beautiful is misleading. Landon disrupts the Burkean notion of the beautiful, for. as

Barbara Freeman describes inThe Feminine Sublime (1995). Burke's paradigm cannot be

imbued with the sort of force Armstrong here cites - in fact, the two are opposed:

The sublime amalgamates such conventionally masculine qualities as power, size ambition, awe and majesty: the beautiful collects the equally conventional feminine traits of softness, smallness, weakness, docility, delicacy and timidity. The former always includes intimations of power, majesty and brute force. — a storm at sea. a raging bull, a ruler or sovereign, greatness of dimension - while the latter connotes smallness, delicacy and serenity [...] Beauty, like femininity is inseparable from a certain weakness. (Freeman 48-9)

15 For an extended discussion of the improvisatrice's association with the faculty of imagination, see 115

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As Armstrong rightfully notes. Landon's improvisatrices employ a moral force. They

therefore represent a category that does not align with the Burkean sublime/beautiful

dichotomy but one which instead can be more profitably read with a notion of the

ethically-focused sublime, for this phenomenon would allow womanly eloquence to

incite the sort of ecstatic state that the improvisatrice arouses in her audience, such as that

"shout which bore / To the blue mountains and the distant and the distant heavens /

Erinna's name” (Landon "Erinna" 27-29).

This association of the sublime experience with noble emotions and the faculty of

imagination appears in several of Landon's improv isatrice poems. In "The

Improvisatrice.” for example, our nameless narrator connects her sublime experience

with "the beautiful, the grand / The glorious of my native land"(171 -2). Florence, "that

land / Where the poet's lip and the painter's hand / Are most divine" (3-5) not only

inspires her sublime experience, but leads her to offer noble examples for her audiences

as well. Through improv isations and paintings that accentuate the nobility of such lofty

national figures as Sappho and Petrarch, the improv isatrice uses her imaginative faculty

to incite that of her audience with "her sweetest minstrel power" (203). Thus the

improvisatrice combines a Campbellian notion of the noble sublime with civic duty: the

improv isatrice uses her sublime experience to appeal to the nobility of her audience.

The eponymous improvisatrice of Landon's later poem "Erinna." ennobles the

sublime experience in a manner similar to the nameless improvisatrice of the earlier

work. Erinna's sublime experience consists of "fine impulses" those "lofty thoughts /

Chapter One pes. 2 1 -7. 116

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Burning with their own beauty" (224-5). Like the unnamed improvisatrice of Landon's

earlier poem. Erinna too puts this experience to use for the public good, for she pledges

her talents "To our nature's finest touches / That waken sympathy" (54-5). Even Eulalie

in ”A History of the Lyre." acknowledges the nobility of her sublime vision, although she

admits to debasing her talent by pandering to the masses. She acknowledges that her

mission is to raise others through the communication of the sublime experience, for "Our

words live on others' lips: our thoughts / Actuate others. Can that man be dead / Whose

spiritual influence is on his kind?" (140-3). Eulalie believes that her improvisational

talent should be used to stir the "knight whose deeds were stainless at his crest" or the

"patriot. / Whose eloquence was power" (340: 344-5). In reality, however, she has used

her gift for the superficial entertainment of "gay cavaliers who make the dance / Pleasant

with graceful flatteries" (350-1). The improvisatrice neglects her role at her peril:

Eulalie's death is connected to her shallow lifestyle; hers is the "heart/ That fed upon

itself' (448-9). An improvisatrice who neglects her civic duty to communicate this

sublime vision, then, does so at great peril.

In brief, the sublime experiences articulated in Landon's major improvisatrice

texts articulate a sublime experience that is aligned with Campbell's neoclassical notion

of the sublime as an uplifting experience rather than the overw helming terror of the

Burkean sublime. Whether the improvisatrices fulfilled their role, as does Landon's

nameless first improvisatrice. or rejected it. as does Eulalie. both their experiences and

articulations of the sublime were meant to be an appeal to the imagination.

117

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Blair and the Belletristic Sublime

Campbell is not the only rhetorician who contributes to the understanding of the

improvisatrice's sublime; indeed, his brief comments on the nobility of the sublime laid

the foundation for the more extensive belletristic sublime described by Hugh Blair. Like

Campbell. Blair distinguishes his notion of the sublime from that of Burke, but unlike the

earlier treatise. Blair's Lectures explicitly articulates this departure:

The Author of ”a Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Notion of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757).'* to whom we are indebted for several ingenious and original thoughts upon this subject, proposes a formal theory upon this foundation. That terror is the source of the sublime, and that no objects have this character, but such as produce impressions of pain and danger. [. ..] But though this is very properly illustrated by the Author (many of whose sentiments on that head I have adopted), yet he seems to stretch his theory' too far. when he represents the Sublime as consisting wholly in modes of danger, or of pain. [...]. [Tjhere does not occur to me any Sublime Object into which the idea of which, power, strength, and force, enter not indirectly [....] However. I do not insist upon this as sufficient to found a general theory. (1: 55-6)

Clearly. Blair's theory' offers some flexibility in its co-option of the Burkean sublime.

According to Blair. Burke's association of the sublime with terror and pain can be

replaced by '‘power, strength, and force'* and Blair only tepidly champions even these

masculine terms. Moving away from a theorizing of the sublime based on emotions

inappropriate to the feminine pen - terror and fear -- Blair erodes one of the primary

obstacles between women authors and the ability to invoke sublimity. By claiming that.

although he cannot think of any examples of the sublime that do not incorporate these

qualities, he does "not insist upon this as sufficient to found a general theory" (1: 55-6).

Blair clears a rhetorical space for an alternative to Burke's misogynist model. While in

118

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. this section of the Lectures he is not positing such an alternative, he is acknowledging the

possibility that such a sublime may indeed exist.

Were Blair's discussion of sublimity to conclude with simply defining the

possibility for alternate experiences, it would offer little by way of a rhetorical paradigm

beyond the discussion in Campbell. But Blair does not only balk at founding a "general

theory" of sublimity on these masculine qualities: elsewhere he offers an expanded

taxonomy of sublimity. In his discussion of "Sublime Objects." for example, he

describes:

the moral, or sentimental Sublime, arising from certain exertions of the human mind: from certain affections and actions of our fellow-creatures. These will be found to be all. or chiefly, of that class, w hich comes under the name of Magnanimity or Heroism: and they produce an effect extremely similar to what is produced by the view of grand objects in nature. [.. .| High virtue is the most natural source of this moral sublimity. (1: 53-4)

Unlike Burke, whose sublime experience is strictly based on qualities associatedwith

nature such as ruggedness and vastness (Burke 306). Blair is positing a sublime

experience that is bound by the social context, a moral sublime that is based on dominant

societal ideologies of virtue. Indeed, the Burkean sublime, tied as it is to an absolutist

vision of nature, is seemingly asocial in its reliance on universal forces. The Blairian

moral sublime, by contrast, is a socially constructed notion that rests on cultural ideals of

virtue. Not only does this moral sublime signal a break with Burke, it also creates a

sublime moment accessible to woman rhetors such as the improvisatrice.

In the Blairian moral sublime, we have an experience appropriate for the

documentation of a 'womanly' pen. Describing a sublime based in "affection."

119

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "Magnanimity." and "virtue." Blair mitigates the sexist standards of the Burkean

aesthetic hierarchy by positing a sublime experience that resonates with moral standards

and thereby makes the highest levels of aesthetic excellence available to women authors.

While broadening the categories of eloquence, however. Blair is not advocating any

violation of gender norms, for the moral sublime experience would appear to be

appropriate to woman's civic role as guardian of the public good. Women's poetry was

supposed to refine the reader just as woman's love was to refine the object of her

affections, thereby extending woman's domestic role into the literary realm. In this way.

woman's artistic mission is associated with the belletristic project and disassociated from

what Jerome McGann has described as the "familiar argument of Romantic and

Romantic-influenced works: that poetry, and art in general, has no essential relation to

didactic or doctrinal matters. Poetry transcends these things" (1983. 69). Manly verse

may thus communicate an iconoclastic inner vision, but the performance of the

improvisatrice works to uphold those moral values already established by society. Her

rhetoric ostensibly reinforces the dominant culture's values and by so doing, persuades

the reader, first, of the continued value of such ideologies and. second, that woman is the

appropriate public mouthpiece of these "didactic and doctrinal matters." Blair's

belletrism thus offered woman an experience both ideologically comfortable and sublime

while it expanded the range of woman's writing, it also reaffirmed the boundaries of

social ideology in which such writing could take place.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Letitia Landon, Suffering and the Moral Sublime

Letitia Landon's contribution to the improvisatrice tradition feminizes the moral

sublime articulated by Blair. While Landon’s improvisatrices employ the rhetorical

purpose of inciting moral virtue established by de Stael’s Corinne. Landon emphasizes

woman's unjust suffering as a means to rhetorical eloquence, and thereby revises the

moral sublime in a paradigm that combines the moral sublime with womanly tragedy: the

woman suffers so that others will not. Inevitably, this suffering is not only a source of

Landon's pathos-driven rhetorical power but also the proof of her moral virtue, a quality

associated with her purity of style.

The improvisatrices of such Landon poems as •The Improvisatrice" (1826).

•Erinna" (1826). "A History of the Lyre" (1828). and "Corinne at the Cape of Misena"

(1838) display the moral sublime through their personal grief. More precisely, in each of

these cases, the woman's expression of the moral sublime is associated with her

experience of love and melancholy. While Blair opened a door to a sublime experience

that could be invoked by woman rhetors. Landon claimed such a phenomenon

specifically for women. As Erinna says of her performance:

My songs have been the mournful history Of woman's tenderness and woman's tears: I have touch'd but the spirit's gentlest chords. - Surely the fittest for my maiden hand: - And in their truth my immortality. (349-353)

In this '*touch[ing] of the spirit." Erinna creates a feminized moral sublime that elevates

her audience. And. as she says, this sentimental sublime not only achieves her

"immortality" but is also gender appropriate, "fittest for my maiden hand." By invoking

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the pathetic extremes of woman’s experience - "woman’s tenderness and woman's tears"

- Landon offers a feminized version of the "magnanimity" and "heroism” that Blair has

cited as components of the moral sublime. The sublime experience for woman is not

terror as for Burke, but suffering.

This feminized form of the moral sublime as a transcendent form of womanly

suffering is a reoccurring motif of Landon's improvisatrice figures. The "sweet

reproach" of Eulalie’s performance in "A History of the Lyre" recalls her audience to his

familial duty by reminding him of the pain his absence causes his father: "She ask’d me

how I had the heart to leave / The old man in his age: she told me how lorn / Is solitude"

(114-116). This ability to awaken a feeling of responsibility, if not outright guilt, springs

from the improvisatrice’s personal tragedy: immediately following this performance our

nameless male narrator is told. "Eulalie is an orphan!" (117). Her ability to convey the

suffering caused by her listener's thoughtless acts is in fact based in her own personal

loss. As in "Erinna.” the improvisatrice's eloquence is based in her suffering, which in

turn allows her to elevate her audience by invoking a Blairian moral sublime.

In "Corinne at the Cape of Misena." Landon spells out the sublimity of woman's

suffering. Written to accompany Francois Gerard’s representation Madame de Stael as

Corinne playing the lyre, this poem claims.

Ay. perished long the music of those chords. They had but life from sweetness, so they died. Not so the words! - for. even as the wind. That wafts the seeds which afterwards spring up In a perpetual growth, and then subsides. The song was only minister to the words Which have the immortality of pain. (23-29)

122

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Landon here neatly summarizes the power of the moral sublime for the improvisatrice.

Unlike audible beauty, which only offers her words a momentary appeal, this sentimental

sublime allows her to transcend the moment, giving her words endurance: this

improvisatrice's emotional pain gives her words their power, which insures their

immortality.

Landon elaborates on this feminized form of the moral sublime in her critical

writings as well as in her poetry. In the preface to her 1828 poetry collection. The

Venetian Bracelet, for example. Landon casts romantic love as the special topic of

woman's moral sublime. She writes:

[F]or a woman, whose influence and whose sphere must be in the affections, what subject can be more fitting than one which it is her peculiar province to refine, spiritualize and exalt? I have always sought to paint it self-denying, devoted, and making an almost religion of its truth: and I must add. that such as I would wish to draw her. woman actuated by an attachment as intense as it is true, as pure as it is deep, is not only more admirable as a heroine, but also in actual life, than one w hose idea of love is light amusement, or at worst of vain mortification. (103)

When read alongside Blair's description of the moral sublime. Landon's comments

illustrate an alternate vision of the ‘•magnanimity" cited in the Lectures. By painting a

woman who is self-denying and devoted. Landon offers a moral vision of the sublime.

The “high virtue" that Blair cites as the “most natural source" of this sublimity is a

quality attainable by women, albeit in an apparently masochistic paradigm (Blair 1: 54).

Along with describing her notion of woman's subject, in the “Preface" Landon

details the means by which she attempts to reach her rhetorical goals. She states:

Aware to elevate. I must first soften, and that if I wished to purify I must touch. I have ever endeavoured to bring forth grief, disappointment, the fallen leaf, the

123

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. faded flower, the broken heart, and the early grave. Surely we must be less worldly, less interested from this sympathy with sorrow in which our unselfish feelings alone can take part. (Landon '"Preface" 103)

Landon thus elaborates on the moral sublime posited by Blair. Not only does she identify

the self-denying virtue as the subject of a sublime experience particularly suited to

women, she also identifies a melancholy pathos as the means by which she intends to

move an audience to the unselfish sympathy associated with this state. As in the

improvisatrice poems, woman's suffering leads to her ability to move an audience.

Landon constructs a similar feminized moral sublime of suffering in the 1832

essay "On the Ancient and Modem Influence of Poetry." Here. Landon gives her most

detailed defense of her poetry, albeit without mentioning either herself or the

improvisatrice. Nevertheless, this essay reveals Landon's co-option of that feminized

Blairian sublime enacted by her improvisatrices and. by extension, by her own author

persona. In this critical essay. Landon roots all poetry in the imagination and connects

this relationship to civilization. She emphasizes poetry 's belletristic function by arguing

that its primary function is to civilize. It accomplishes this goal by concerning itself with

three subjects exclusively: religion, war and love. The first two she treats briefly . The

last. love, she explores in detail, and in so doing invokes the Blairian moral sublime.

Landon claims that all "poetry makes its appeal to the higher and better feelings

of our nature" (165). The most popular16 love poetry therefore is that w hich gives

expression to love's "spiritual and better part - constancy kept like a holy thing -

16 In this essay, there is an explicit equation of the most popular poetry with the best poetry. Specifically. Landon asks "who will deny that our best and most popular (indeed in this case best and most popular are equivalent terms) poetry makes its appeal to our higher and better feelings of our nature [...]? “ (165). ~124

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. blessing on the beloved one. though in that blessing we ourselves have no share: or sad

and affectionate regrets in whose communion our own nature grows more kindly from its

sympathy” (Landon "Poetry” 163-4). In her assertion that all poetry appeals to our

"spiritual and better part." and her claim that poetry leads to moral improvement - "our

own nature grows more kindly from its sympathy" - Landon aligns poetry's rhetorical

function with a Blairian moral sublime rather than the terror-filled Burkean sublime.

Likewise, in the examples she selects to describe her subject matter, regrets and selfless

"blessings on the beloved one." Landon invokes a theoretical framework reminiscent of

the one she used four years earlier in the Preface to The Venetian Bracelet. In both

essays, there is an association of the melancholic with the inspiration of the audience's

sympathy and through this sympathy, their moral exaltation.

This construction of poetry's ability to "soften" (Venetian Bracelet) becomes

increasingly explicit in the second half of "On the Ancient and Modem Uses of Poetry."

Here. Landon argues:

The influence of poetry has two eras - first, as it tends to civilize: secondly as it tends to prevent that civilization from growing too cold and too selfish. Its first is a period of action: its second is that of feeling and reflection: it is that second period which presently exists. (165)

In this association of nineteenth-centurv poetry with the prevention of society's "growing

too cold and too selfish." we can hear echoes of Blair's moral sublime of which "high

virtue is the most natural source" (Blair 1: 53-4). As with Blair's moral sublime, the

poet here represents a moral force that provides a model of virtue for the audience.

Moreover, the exigency that Landon constructs - the softening of over-hard civilization -

125

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. lies at the intersection of belletristic rhetoric and the hypothetically innate feminine

ability to rule the emotions. As George Lewes summarizes this view in his 1852 essay

“The Lady Novelists" the emotions were long considered a womanly province, for "the

Masculine mind is characterized by the predominance of the intellect and the Feminine

by the predominance of the emotions [...] Woman, by her greater affectionateness, her

greater range and depth of emotional experience, is well suited to give expression to the

emotional facts of life” (41). As Lewes rightly notes, women were thought to excel in

appeals to the emotions. Thus, in her taxonomy of poetry. Landon provides a forum in

which woman can use her "natural” gifts to invoke a Blairian moral sublime.

Building from notions articulated by Blair's belletristic rhetorical theory, then.

Letitia Landon articulated an improvisatrice's sublime that sanctioned this performance

as moral, for if the improvisatrice did not offer a model of virtue, she would not be able

to move her audience into such an ecstatic state. Simultaneous to this attempt to

regularize women's public rhetoric by founding it in morality, however. Landon's theory

supports the inferiority of the improvisatrice's rhetoric established in Corinne. for

Landon's improvisatrices are represented as persuading the audience through the rhetor's

genuine and intense personal suffering - an appeal that could hardly be construed as

radically empowering.

Like the rhetorical category' of music, then, the sublime available to the

improvisatrice broadened her rhetorical options, but at a price: while the music of her

words could make her virtue suspect, the improvisatrice could only achieve the sublime

through noble self-sacrifice. As with Chapter Two's discussion of the production and

126

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. reception of de Stael Corinne. in which rhetorical theory was tied to conservative notions

of gender. Landon's improvisatrices simultaneously claimed new rhetorical space even

while reinforcing existing notions of the limitations of woman's rhetoric. It is

specifically this idealized notion of woman's speech as an expression of feminine nature

against which later authors such as Charlotte Bronte would rebel.

127

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"FORCE WITHOUT A LEVER":

CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND THE IMPROVISATRICE

Her indefatigable craving for knowledge tempted Miss Wooler on into setting her longer and longer tasks for examination: and towards the end of the two years she remained as a pupil at Roe Head, she received her first bad mark for an imperfect lesson. She had a great quantity of Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres to read: and she could not answer some of the questions upon it: Charlotte Bronte had a bad mark. Miss Wooler was very sorry, and regretted that she had over-tasked so willing a pupil. Charlotte cried bitterly. But her school-fellows were more than sorry - they were indignant. They declared that the infliction of ever so slight a punishment on Charlotte Bronte was unjust - for who had tried to do her duty like her? - and testified their feelings in a variety of ways, until Miss Wooler. who was in reality only too willing to pass over her good pupil's first fault - withdrew the mark [...]. Elizabeth Gaskell. The Life o f Charlotte Bronte. 1857

As seen in the previous chapter, the improvisatrice tradition was not only marked

by an inventional process rooted in Campbellian imagination and Blairian taste, but the

rhetorical style of the improvisatrice tradition was informed by these theorists as well.

That is. Campbell and Blair's discussions of style foreground both the musicalitv and the

morality of the improvisatrice. Letitia Landon's middle lass metamorphoses of this figure

were not its only nineteenth-century transformation, however. Charlotte Bronte engaged

the improvisatrice figure as well. Examining Bronte's rhetorical construction of the

128

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. improvisatrice in light of Campbell and Blair's theories not only foregrounds the manner

in which she reinscribed key theoretical elements but also highlights her abandonment of

rhetorical concepts that were crucial to earlier constructions of the improvisatrice.

Specifically, reading Bronte's improvisatrice figures against the rhetorics of Campbell

and Blair reveals her adoption of a Blairian model of taste and her reliance upon

Campbell's notions of the imagination and vivacity in her construction of the

improvisatrice rhetoric. While she continues these components, however, she moves

away from the constructions of the improvisatrice rhetoric that emphasized only the

natural component of taste, which Blair termed Delicacy. Contrasting this monologic

model of feminine taste, from her earliest juvenilia through the apprenticeship of her

academic essays to her mature novels. Bronte's work both deploys that feminine

Delicacy familiar from earlier constructions of the improvisatrice and illustrates a need

for formal rhetorical education by exploring that informed taste which Blair terms

Correctness. This chapter thus traces Bronte's evolution away from the improvisatrice

rhetoric as it was constructed by her predecessors towards a more fully developed

rhetorical model.

In both style and theme. Charlotte Bronte engaged the improvisatrice tradition as

did her predecessors, although the influence of this rhetorical paradigm on the

development of her fiction has received scant attention. Given the importance of rhetoric

as a discipline in the Bronte legend, the omission of not just the improvisatrice tradition

but the role of rhetorical theory altogether is surprising. That is. as indicated in this

chapter's epigram, taken from the ur-text in the thriving nineteenth-century industry of

129

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Brontemania.1 Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life o f Charlotte Bronte.2 the place of Rhetoric in

the Bronte myth was fixed from the start, a connection to which both Bronte's personal

life and fiction contributed. While Bronte's juvenilia indicate an early fascination with

improvisatrice rhetoric, her novels show her critique and revision of this theoretical

construct. Further, as with the examination of Letitia Landon's contribution, the study of

Bronte's transformation of the improvisatrice tradition must consider not only her texts

but her biographical history as well, for Bronte's relationship with her own professor of

Rhetoric. Constantine Heger. was instrumental to her movement away from an

improvisatrice model and towards a rhetoric that emphasized a Blairian Correctness.

Comparing two of Bronte novels - her first and her last - articulates this conflict between

her early espousal of improvisatrice rhetoric and the more critical stance that informs her

later works. Her first novel. The Professor, presents us with the repressed improvisatrice

Frances Henri, while Villette's Vashti disrupts the improvisatrice rhetoric by-

transforming this model into a subversive, primal rhetoric. Both novels, however,

represent the improvisatrice rhetoric as an unrealistic model for woman's speech. Thus

Bronte moves from an initial enthusiasm for the improvisatrice rhetoric to a critique and

revision that complicates the idealism inherent in the paradigm of the woman rhetor

offered by the improvisatrice.

1 That popular enthusiasm for Charlotte Bronte that began shortly after her death and continued throughout the nineteenth-century- was termed "Brontemania." As with nineteenth-century Janeites (Jane Austen aficionados), or bardolators (Shakespeare devotees), this interest was more hagiography than scholarly study. For a discussion of Brontemania. see Malone. ; Elizabeth Gaskeli's The Life o f Charlotte Bronte was a popular sensation that went through three editions in its first three months. For a description of its enduring influence on public attitudes towards Bronte, see Barker pas 798-830. 130

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In order to establish the influence of the improvisatrice rhetoric on Bronte’s

novel, we must first look at her earlier writings. Like the biography of Letitia Landon.

Bronte’s early work also provides an example of an individual attempting to enact an

improvisatrice rhetorical theory. Examining Bronte’s apprentice works, the juvenilia, and

her essays written while under Heger’s instruction not only demonstrates the influence of

the improvisatrice tradition on her novels but also evidences Bronte's break with this

tradition as a method of composition.

Bronte and the Improvisatrice

In recent years, the juvenilia of the Bronte children - Charlotte. Emily. Ann and

Branwell - have received increasing scholarly attentionJ. Most often, criticism has

focused on the manner in which the male protagonists of their stories prefigured Byronic

antiheroes such as Wuthering Heights’ Heathc 1 i ff or Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester.

Examining the female characters of Charlotte's contribution to the collaborative

narrative, however, forms a basis to trace her evolving attitude towards that feminization

of rhetorical theory represented in the improvisatrice tradition.

The juvenilia not only are an important element in Charlotte Bronte’s identity

formation as an author but also document the influence of de Stael’s improvisatrice.

From 1826 to 1839. when Bronte was between the ages of 10 and 23. she collaborated

with her siblings on the Angria saga, which consisted of mythical tales of a West African

empire in which charismatic and amoral men waged war with one another and destroyed

' See. for example. Alexander (1983). Alexander. (1993) Barker, and Lonoff.

131

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the women who loved them. One of Bronte's most prominent female characters. Zenobia

Ellrington Percy, is modeled on Corinne in both her physical presence and her talent for

eloquence. Bronte's waxing and waning enthusiasm for the character of Zenobia predicts

her later criticisms of the improvisatrice rhetoric in her novels.

Zenobia makes her first appearance in an Angrian short story' written in 1830.

when Bronte was fourteen. From Zenobia's first appearance, she is connected to de

Stael's improvisatrice. Moers first described this connection between Zenobia and

Corinne:

[I ]n Charlotte Bronte's youthful imagination. Corinne herself had stalked

untrammeled and unrepressed in the person of Zenobia [. ..]. [W]ith her velvets,

plumes and crowning turban. Zenobia is "the prima donna of the Angarian Court,

the most learned woman of her age.' [....) At eighteen [sic] Bronte wrote the

figure into her Angria tales, those fantasies which served to nourish her mature

fiction and also to exercise from it such perilous stuff as the myih of Corinne.

(178)

While Moers is correct in the citing the influence of the improvisatrice on the juvenilia,

developments made in Brontean studies since the publication of Moers' landmark study

call for a reconsideration of the improvisatrice tradition's influence on Bronte's fiction,

particularly on her examination of women's relation to the dominant rhetorical tradition.

Not only are more of Bronte's juvenilia available to scholars today than was the case at

the time Moers was writing4, but increasing critical attention to Bronte's first novel. The

4 According to Hoeveler and Jadwin (1997): "Formal study of the juvenilia has been inhibited by the sheer volume of the manuscripts and bv the unavaiiabiiitv until recentlv of reliable scholarly transcriptions and *132

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Professor, also provides a foundation for tracing the transformation of the improvisatrice

rhetoric.

As Moer argues, the juvenilia exhibit the influence of de Stael. In her initial

appearance in the novel. Zenobia displays many of the motifs associated with the

improvisatrice tradition. Most obviously. Bronte draws a comparison between Zenobia

and de Stael herself: "For some time she entertained him with a discourse of the most

lively eloquence, and indeed Madame de Stael herself couldn't have gone beyond Lady

Zelzia in the conversational talent" (Bronte "Albion and Marina" 203). Along with this

connection to Corinne's creator. Bronte establishes a link to its eponymous

improvisatrice. For example. Zenobia's physical appearance recalls de Stael’s heroine:

"In figure she was very tall, and both it and her face were of a perfectly Roman cast. Her

features were regularly and finely formed, her full and brilliant eyes jetty black, as were

the luxuriant tresses of her richly-curled hair" (Bronte "Albion and Marina" 203). Like

de Stael's Corinne. Zenobia is set apart by her Italian heritage and coloring. Also

reminiscent of Corinne is Zenobia's national renown for her learning and eloquence:

"She was the most learned women in Glass Town, and [Albion] was pleased with this

opportunity of seeing her. [...] On this occasion she exerted herself to the utmost, as she

was in the presence of so distinguished a man. and one w hom she seemed ambitious to

please" (Bronte "Albion and Marina" 203). As Corinne's attraction to Oswald roused her

greatest rhetorical talents, so too does the presence of Albion inspire Zenobia to her best

editions” (17). The "reliable scholarly transcriptions” to which they refer would be collection Francis Beer's 1986 collection of excerpted stories, and Christina Alexanders 1987 and 1995 volumes of the Angrian manuscripts. I

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. display of eloquence. In both looks and rhetorical ability, then. Bronte's heroine recalls

Corinne and her creator.

As with other members of the improvisatrice tradition. Zenobia engages in a

mode of improvisation, albeit a modified version:

At length one of the guests asked her to favour the company with a song and tune on the grand piano. At first she refused, but. on Albion seconding the request, rose and taking from the drawing room table a small volume of poems, opened it at one by the Marquis of Targus.5 She then set it to a fine air and sang as follows, while she skillfully accompanied her voice upon the instrument [...] The full rich tones of Lady Zelzia's voice did ample justice to the subject, and he expressed his sense of the honour she had done him in appropriate terms. (Bronte "Albion and Mariana" 203-4)

Zenobia's use of Albion's text recollects Corinne's distinction between the borrowings of

an improvisatrice and common plagiarism. As Corinne says. "Sometimes I quote the

most applicable passages from the poets of other lands. These dim apostrophes are mine

while my soul is filled by their import. Sometimes my lyre, by a simple national air may

complete the effect which flies from the control of words" (de Stael 44). Because she

possesses such a refined taste. Corinne enters into the meaning of the words of others and

understands them like her own. Zenobia likewise demonstrates her superior taste by co

opting Albion's verses. Admittedly, while Corinne only borrows fragments. Zenobia

appropriates the entire text of another. Zenobia's reformulation nevertheless

demonstrates the improvisatrice's virtuosity, if not her virtue. While the improvisational

talent she display s is musically-oriented, it still reveals that Blairian taste upon which the

improvisatrice rhetoric is founded: if she did not have a strong faculty of appreciation,

she would not be able to instantaneously understand and enhance Albion's poem.

5 Albion 134

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Although she does not write the words to her improvisation, then. Zenobia still

demonstrates the fluency and taste of an improvisatrice in her performance.

The influence ofCorinne can be seen in more than this initial depiction of

Zenobia. however: in the juvenilia Bronte herself appears to have played the role of the

improvisatrice. for she composed it extemporaneously in a "trance like state”6 without

revision. Thus, in a footnote to the first Angarian story of Zenobia. Bronte states. "I

wrote this in four hours. -- C.B." (Bronte "Marian v Zenobia” 378-9. n2). Recollecting

the self-proclaimed fluidity of verse that was the hallmark of Letitia Landon.7 Bronte's

comment here places her in a similar role. Moreover, as described in her journals and

letters of this period, her own rhetorical process truly was akin to that of the

improvisatrice. As Winifred Gerin describes. Bronte wrote the juvenilia "like a medium

through whom a spirit worked without control" (16). and an examination of the Angrian

manuscripts substantiates the claim that Bronte wrote without revision. The juvenilia

quite literally left no room for revision, for they were written in a minute print which

scholars often have had to use microscopes to decipher. Not only the format but also the

mechanics of the juvenilia attest to their improvisational nature. As Gerin notes.

the impression made by any one of these manuscripts is that it was written at a

feverish speed which nothing was allowed to impede, even to the detriment of

sense. Paragraphing is minimal, capitalization is eccentric and haphazard (not

even new sentences call for the use of a capital), spelling aberrations are frequent,

the punctuation (where it exists) consists very largely of dashes. (23)

0 See Hoeveler and Alexander pgs 19-20 for another description of Bronte's composing process. For a discussion of Landon's supposed facility, see Chapter Three pas. 98-9. 135

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The composition process of the young Bronte, then, exhibits a model of invention similar

to "English Improvisatrice” Letitia Landon. In both instances, extreme fluency in writing

is accompanied by syntactical laxity. During this early stage of her apprenticeship, then.

Bronte aligns more closely with Germaine Greer's notion of the improvisatrice as a

"slipshod sibyl” than with the careful plotting and studied character development that are

a hallmark of her later novels.

Even at this early period in her development as an author, however. Bronte does

not present the improvisatrice as perfectly successful. Unfortunately for Zenobia. she.

like her French predecessor, is endowed with a romantic rival: Angria's Marion Hume

recalls Corinne's half-sister Lucy in both her blond good looks and her quiet, retiring

affect. Accordingly, while Zenobia's musical improvisation temporarily enchants the

handsome Albion. Marquis of Targus. he. likeCorinne 's Oswald, marries the

improvisatrice’s pale rival. Thus, the "Verdopolian de Stael” (Bronte "Peep" 228) shares

not just Corinne's rhetorical talents but also her personal tragedies.

While plainly based on the Corinne story, however. Zenobia's narrative diverges

from the de Stael's novel in several ways that predict Bronte's abandonment of this figure

in her later works. First, unlike Corinne. Zenobia does not accommodatingly die of a

broken heart when jilted. Quite to the contrary , she instead marries Albion's arch-rival

Rogue, and in later stories of Angria. she alternates between saving her husband's life

and making it miserable. Ironically, in her last mention in the juvenilia, the once-

beautiful and sexually magnetic Zenobia has grown stout while managing an

achievement distinct from other texts of the improvisatrice tradition: Zenobia. Lady

136

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ellrington lives to see middle age. Further separating Zenobia from the prototype of the

improvisatrice. the aging Zenobia becomes a Figure of vengeance in the Angrian tales,

endlessly, if not successfully, plotting against Albion’s life and political fortunes. Even

in this earliest improvisatrice. we can see Bronte’s abandonment of a foundational

element of the improvisatrices’ belletristic rationale: unlike improvisatrices such as

Erinna or Eulalie. those good (wo)men speaking well, whose eloquence is based in their

upstanding principles. Zenobia’s unscrupulousness seems to have no derogatory effect on

her eloquence. Here. then, is an early example of Bronte’s departure from the

improvisatrice tradition up to this point: Zenobia’s rhetorical ability and morality (or lack

thereof) are unrelated, and she therefore breaks the link between virtue and virtuosity that

was previously foundational to improvisatrice rhetorical theory . Apart from

distinguishing Zenobia from her predecessors, this revision has little effect on the

improvisatrice narrative of the juvenilia: like those before her. she still loses the man she

loves. As a continuing component of Bronte’s career-long engagement with the

improvisatrice rhetoric, however, this rupture of morality and eloquence ultimately

results in a figure far more subversive than the sweetly suasory Erinnas. Corinnas. and

Eulalies that populate the earlier tradition. Even in her Bronte's works, then, we can see

the departure from Blairian belletrism that will later characterize her final contribution to

the improvisatrice tradition. Vashti of Villette.

This attempt to flesh out the improvisatrice - physically and metaphorically - by

extending her life span and incorporating additional qualities of character beyond

belletristic goodness and romantic sensibility predicts Bronte’s later condemnation of the

137

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. improvisatrice as both impractical and impracticable. Read in the improvisatrice

tradition, Zenobia's middle-age appears to be Bronte's first attempt to deal with the

primary problem of the improvisatrice: if, by definition, an improvisatrice is a young and

virtuous girl, aside from dying a melodramatic death, where can she locate her ethos

when she is no longer so young or virtuous? As Zenobia fades into the background of the

Angrian tales once she loses Albion, however, her interest as a character appears to be

lost with her improvisatrice status.

o Francis Beer has rightly argued that Zenobia is one in a series of heroines in the

Angrian tales who are abandoned when Bronte reaches the limits of their characters.

Although she remains as a peripheral character, once Zenobia plays out the Corinne

narrative, she is largely discarded. Rather than appearing as a character with her own

plotline. she is instead used as means of furthering the primary story line of the Angrian

tales, the rivalry between Rogue and Albion. The improvisatrice therefore may have

originally caught Bronte's imagination, but once the Corinne myth is enacted, the author

found little use for her improvisatrice. Zenobia's decreasing importance may predict the

total abandonment of the improvisatrice in her later fiction, and Bronte's youthful

attraction to and later abandonment of the improvisatrice are re-enacted in both The

Professor and Villette.

The Improvisatrice and the Professor

Both The Professor and Villette narrate the love affair between a professor of

Rhetoric and his female student. It is accepted among Bronte scholars that these figures

138

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. are modeled on Bronte's own Rhetoric professor. Constantin Heger9. although the degree

to which these portraits are drawn from reality consistently has been a source of

contention since Gaskell first published her biography. Regardless of the accuracy of

these portraits, the instruction Bronte received from Heger was pivotal in her own

abandonment of the extemporaneous model of composition associated with the

improvisatrice and so presages the critique of the improvisational and premeditated

rhetorics that is rehearsed in both The Professor and Villetie.

In 1842. Bronte and her sister Emily traveled to Brussels to broaden their

education, in the hopes that doing so would improve their opportunities for positions as

governesses. They studied with Madame Claire Zoe Heger and her husband Constantin

George Heger. who together ran a boarding school for girls. A distinguished professor of

Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the Athenee Royal. Monsieur Heger taught the girls at the

school. In their twenties, the Bronte sisters were older than most of the school's pupils,

and so they received private lessons in Rhetoric and French from Heger. His comments

on Charlotte Bronte's compositions demonstrate his role in moving her away from the

improvisational style of the juvenilia into a more orderly and focused composition

process.

Unlike the extemporaneous composition process that characterizes the juvenilia.

Bronte's writing under Heger*s tutelage emphasized revision in a manner akin to much of

s See Beer 21. q As LonotTpoints out. early critics tend to describe Bronte's time in Brussels as turning point in her development as an author without offering any evidence. See for example. Chadwick. Reid, and Swinburne. More recently, critics have made similar arguments for Heger importance based on Bronte's essays and extant accounts of the Heger's school. See. for example. Barker. Hoeveler and Jadwin (1997). Maynard. Williams. 139

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. today's composition pedagogical theory. As Fredrika Macdonald, one of his later

students, described:

[H]e would either himself suggest, or allow his pupils to select, a subject for composition [...] The pupil was supposed to write in her own note-book a rough copy of the composition, leaving a wide margin for corrections. The fair copy of the exercise given Monsieur Heger was also to have a wide margin [...] when the corrected exercise was returned, the pupil was held to verify the remarks made, and to re-write the composition for her benefit only, with the improvements suggested. (Macdonald 184-5)

As Juliet Barker details in her landmark biography10 The Brontes (1994). while these

essays were written in French, this pedagogy had a profound effect on Bronte’s prose in

English by "releasing her from the verbiage of Angria and setting her feet firmly on the

road to spare and elegant prose'* (384). The physical description of Bronte's juvenilia

and novel manuscripts in Sue Lonoff s 1989 study. "Bronte's Belgian Essays'" supports

Barker's claim:

The holograph copies of her four adult novels do not look, or read, like texts conceived on impulse. As a group they differ from the juvenilia manuscripts, whose fine print flows across the page, uncensored. All are penned in script that is eminently legible. All contain revisions of various kinds, ranging from replacement of a single word, or phrase, through the additions of deletions of long passages. These signs of attention connect them with the devoirs she prepared and revised for Heger. (398)

Echoing Barker's assertion that Heger's tutelage led Bronte away from a diffuse

improvisatrice style. Lonoff rightly places Bronte's Brussels experience as the crucial

stage in her development of a revision process. And. as both Barker and Lonoff note, the

10 Along with presenting the most extensive biographical account of the Bronte family to date. Barker's study is also invaluable for those archival materials it reproduces that were previously difficult or impossible to attain in the United States. As Lonoff (1989) rightly notes, such inaccessibility illustrates "the importance of a scholarly edition of the manuscripts" (388. n2). 140

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. extant physical evidence provided by these essays demonstrates that Heger* s process

emphasized revision, a quality antithetical to the improvisatrice rhetoric.

Heger’s comments on Bronte’s extant compositions confirm this assertion. For

example, in response to an essay she wrote on April 30. 1842 entitled "The Nest.” Heger

commented11:

How very much importance you must give to your details as you unfold your subject! You must sacrifice without pitv. everything that does not contribute to clarity, verisimilitude and effect. Look with great suspicion upon everything which sets off the main thought, so that the main impression you give is highly coloured, graphic: It is sufficient if the rest remain in its place but in the background. This is what gives to prose style, as to painting, unity, perspective, and effect, (qtd. and trans. Dessner 216. emphasis original)

The qualities for which Heger here criticizes Bronte, namely, excess of detail and lack of

revision, echo the writing style associated with the improvisatrice by twentieth-century

critics. Glennis Stephenson’s study of Letitia Landon. for example, includes as

components of the improvisational style anaphora, energy of excess, and a sensual

overload (154). Heger's comments take Bronte to task for just such imagistic layering.

As Barker summarizes, this emphasis on precision at the expense of excess is a theme

throughout Heger’s comments on Bronte’s academic essays:

Wooly phrases are tightened up: men ‘destined to be’ instruments of great change are ‘predestined:’ an irrelevant phrase incurs a marginal note ‘why this expression?' [... ] an adjectival phrase about an illusion ‘which he never could attain' is cut with the words ‘unnecessary when you say illusion': an elaborate metaphor about the nature of certain men who. like Samson can break the cords that bind them even when sleeping, is also cut. this time with the forcetul comment *vou have begun to talk about Peter, you are into the subject, go straight to the end. ’ (Barker 391)

' 1 Both Bronte's essavs and Heaer's comments were oriainallv written in French: in each case the parenthetical citation names the translator. 141

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The improvisatrice*s use of imagistic layering and excess, it would seem, would not be

welcome in Heger*s classroom.

Heger urges Bronte towards the rhetorical effect that Campbell terms

■'perspicuity” and Blair terms ''precision** of language. As Campbell claims and Blair

later echoes, this quality refers to the stylistic clarity that aids apprehension and allows a

rhetor to move his audience's faculty of understanding (Campbell 216; Blair I 190-191).

Earlier texts in the improvisatrice tradition, such as de Stael's Corim e and Landon's "A

History of the Lyre**12 had eschewed appeals to understanding as the sort of worldly

knowledge that was outside a woman's sphere. Accordingly, their style could neglect

precision and. as described in Chapters One and Two. instead focused on appeals to the

supposedly feminine faculty of imagination through an overabundance of detail and

imagery . Contrasting de Stael and Landon's implicit rejection of appeals to this faculty.

Bronte's rhetorical education increasingly encouraged her to reject the improvisatrice

rhetoric's singular reliance on the faculty of imagination and by appealing to the reason

to focus on the understanding as well. Heger*s pedagogy had the desired effect, for

Bronte ''learned to control her runaway imagination** and "impose discipline on her pen**

(Barker 391). Dessner discerns a similar effect from this instruction, and rightfully notes

that Heger "stressed aesthetic economy, distance, unity and verisimilitude, and insisted

upon logic and precision in diction, epithet and metaphor" (215). As described in these

images of rhetorical control - both Heger's of ongoing control of Bronte, and Bronte's

12 In critical essays as well, de Stael and Landon emphasized the emotive as woman's authorial sphere. See de Stael's “On Literature" and Landon's "On Ancient and Modem Poetrv." 142

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. increasing control of her own text — the Brussels years read as the story of a

Landonesque improvisatrice nipped in the bud by Heger's meticulous rhetorical training.

Not all Heger's instruction was formalistic, however. While Heger encouraged

Bronte to reject the extemporaneous style associated with the improvisatrice tradition, he

reinforced the key elements of belletrism in a paradigm that opposes the formulation of

the improvisatrice rhetoric. Admittedly. Heger's commentary emphasized the didactic

nature of the rhetorical arts and the role of imitation in improving one’s rhetorical

abilities.1-5 as does the improvisatrice tradition. However, his theoretical approach

emphasizes the educated faculty of taste over its natural component. This bifurcation of

taste resonates with the model put forward by Blair’s Lectures. According to Blair, taste

has two components: Delicacy, that natural source of taste with which one is bom. and

Correctness, that component of taste gained though study and imitation of the best

models. Put in these Blairian terms. Heger emphasized Correctness at the expense of

Delicacy and thereby, albeit inadvertently, eroded the foundation of the improvisatrice

rhetoric as it had been formulated by de Stael. Landon and the young Bronte. Heger's

rhetorical instruction was to exert great influence over the rhetorical theory that Bronte

later enacts and depicts. The extant texts of Bronte's Brussels experience reveal not only

Heger's theory , but Bronte's shifting of her own rhetorical paradigm as well.

1 ’ Imitation, in particular was an important feature in Heger's approach to rhetorical theory and instruction. Most notably, the subject of his 1843 speech at the annual prize giving at the Athenee Royal was the imponance of imitation in the life of a student. It was privately printed, and he presented Bronte with a copy. 143

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Bronte’s analysis of Millevoye’s poem "La Chute des Feuilles14," and Heger's

response reveal the tension between the innate and learned components of taste that were

to inform her later rhetoric. In her essay, dated. March 30. 1843. she writes:

I believe that genius[...] has no need to seek out details, that it never pauses for

reflection, that it does not think about unity. I believe that details come naturally

w ithout the poet having to seek them, that inspiration takes the place of reflection

and as for unity. I think that there is no unity more perfect than that which results

from a heart filled with a single idea [...]. The nature of genius is like that of

instinct: it is both simple and marv elous: the man of genius produces without

labour[...] (qtd. and trans Bentley 381)

As Lonoff rightly notes, in this essay Bronte attempts to defend her own extemporaneous

composing process from Heger’s criticisms ("Belgian" 366). In so doing, she echoes

many of the foundational notions of the improvisatrice rhetoric: it is unreflective in its

spontaneity; it is natural: it comes from the heart rather than the head: and its naturalism

distinguishes it from work. While Heger's marginalia on this essay are generally

approving of its local effects, at its end he writes an extensive comment that is worth

quoting in full as an articulation of his notion of taste:

Work does not make a poet: man does not make his own genius, he receives it from heaven - that is indisputable. Machinery does not create force: it rules its employment, it multiplies its effect a hundredfold. Man does not know what genius is. it is a gift from heaven, it is something one might call divine. It is the same as force. But imagine two men of the same strength, one without a lever, one with a lever. The first will lift a thousand pounds, the second, in making the same effect, will uproot a plane tree. Is a lever worth nothing?

u Trans: “The Fall of Leaves." 144

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Without a voice there is no singer, undoubtedly - but there will be no singer either without art. without study, without imitation. Nature makes a painter, but what would he be without study of perspective, of the art of colour. -- CH1" How much would his pictures be worth, how much would they be desired. [sic] Without study there is no art: without art. there is no effect on men. since art is the epitome of all that the centuries bequeath us. of all that man has found beautiful, of that which has had an effect on man. of all that he has found worthy of saving from oblivion. Genius without study and without art. without the knowledge of what has already been done, is Force without a lever, it is Demosthenes, a sublime orator, who stammers and makes himself booed, it is the soul which sings inside and which cannot express its interior songs except in a rough and uneducated voice: it is the sublime musician, finally, who has only an out of tune piano to make the world hear the sweet melodies which he hears ringing out inside him. Certainly, the gem-carver does not make the diamond, but without him the most beautiful diamond is a pebble. Poet or not. you should study form - if you are a poet you will be more powerful - your works will live - if not. you will not produce poetry, but you will savour its merit and charm, (qtd and trans Barker 415)

Ironically. Heger's observations, like the improvisatrice rhetoric, operate within a

belletristic framework. By emphasizing different elements, however, the theory espoused

by Heger and the improvisatrice rhetoric stand in opposition to one another. On the one

hand, the improvisatrice tradition presumes the primacy of the natural element of taste -

what Blair termed Delicacy - in the inventional process. Bronte's "La Chute des

Feuilles" champions a similar idea. In a manner reminiscent of the composing processes

of de Stael and Landon's improvisatrices. it describes a process in which "inspiration

takes the place of reflection." "details come naturally." and the resulting text is

"producefd] without labour." On the other hand. Heger's lengthy response to this essay

posits the educated taste - w hat Blair termed Correctness -- as the foundation of

15 As he signed his initials. Heger apparently originally intended to end the comment here, then changing his mind, composed the rest of his belletristic defense. 145

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. rhetorical excellence. He concedes that talent is innate, that “Nature makes a painter" but

argues that without education it is “Force without a lever.” According to his comments,

the improvisatrice could not sing her “interior songs except in a rough and uneducated

voice."

As in the belletristic rationale for the improvisatrice's rhetoric. Heger's comments

implicate the morality of the rhetor, but while the improvisatrice tradition defines the

woman rhetor's purity through her uneducated naivete. Heger privileges an educated

morality, for ”[w]ithout study there is no art: without art. there is no effect on men.” For

Heger. then, it would seem the moral responsibility of the rhetor / artist / poet /

improvisatrice to be educated in what has come before. Similarly, the rationale of the

improvisatrice is based in another belletristic tenet, imitation, in that the improvisatrice's

text inspires her audience to their higher selves through modeling a virtuous life. Heger's

argument redeploys imitation by constructing it as the means by which innate talent

becomes rhetorical art: •[w]ithout a voice there is no singer, undoubtedly - but there will

be no singer either without art. without study, without imitation." In Heger's reasoning,

natural talent is not sufficient for excellence and imitation is but the means by which

Delicacy acquires correctness. Thus. Heger constructs a belletrism that refutes the

improvisatrice rhetoric.

Reflecting the influences of Heger's instruction. Bronte's essays document her

shift away from her initial privileging of Delicacy. In her October 17. 1843 essay “Letter

from a Poor Painter to a Great Lord." for example, she not only articulates talent's need

146

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. for training but also represents imitation as a necessary part of the apprenticeship process.

In the persona of a poor but brilliant artist seeking patronage, she writes:

I suffered much in Florence. Venice and Rome and there I gained what I wanted to possess: an intimate knowledge of all the mechanical mysteries of Painting, a taste cultivated according to the rules o f art.[...] [W]hen 1 saw the works of the great masters of my art. I felt myself truly despicable: but the fever of emulation came to drive away that momentary demoralization and from that profound consciousness of inferiority. I drew new strength and for work. (qtd. and. trans in Lonoff "Artist" 376)

Through this fictionalized persona. Bronte explores the ideas to which Heger had

exposed her without committing to them personally. In an echo of Heger's earlier

comments, her fictional impoverished artist George Howard articulates the importance of

Correctness of taste. He has studied the best models, using them to acquire the technical

intricacies of his art. In this adherence to Heger's doctrine of emulation. Bronte

demonstrates that she has absorbed, if not fully accepted. Heger's rhetorical framework.

in which neither the fictional construct of the improvisatrice nor the spontaneous

composition style favored by Bronte prior to her Brussels sojourn would have any

standing. Bronte's first novel - The Professor - and her last - Vi lie tie - interrogate the

conflict between the primacy of Delicacy and Correctness, which reflects Bronte's

struggle between the improvisatrice tradition and Heger's emphasis on erudition.

“A Secret, Inward Wound”

Bronte's first novel.16 The Professor. marks the initial attempt to integrate the Brussels

material into her imaginative works. Contrasting the purple prose and melodrama of the

Angrian tales. Bronte claimed her novel's purpose, was to create a hero who "should

147

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. work his way through life [...] as real men work theirs [...] no sudden turns should lead

him in a moment to wealth and high station [...] that he should not marry a beautiful girl

or lady of rank" (Bronte Professor 37). Given Bronte's concern with the "plain and

homely" in this work, and her attendant rejection of the "ornamented." it is unsurprising

to see a rejection of the improvisatrice in this novel - indeed, given this figure's

association with the melodramatic and the pathetic, it is more surprising that a novel

dedicated to such a brand of realism features an improvisatrice at all.

In brief. The Professor tells the story of William Crimsworth. a poor Englishmen

who goes to Brussels to teach English language and literature. Here, he meets and falls in

love with the similarly penniless lace maker and nursemaid Frances Evans Henri while

giving her instruction in rhetoric and belles lettres. The two marry and establish their

own school, and after years of modest success, they return to England and retire to a

country home where they raise their young son. Victor, and enjoy frequent visits from

Crimsworth's misanthropic friend. Yorke Hunsden. a wealthy manufacturer.

As with Zenobia in the juvenilia. Frances Henri Crimsworth nee Evans reads as a

revision of the improvisatrice. even though Frances is one who gives up the public sphere

for the classroom and the home. That is. as Elizabeth MacIntyre1 argues. Frances reads

as a "new Corinne." albeit one who employ s her rhetoric in the home and classroom

rather than at the Capitol. The parallels between Frances and Corinne are varied: like the

16 Although it was written in 1846. The Professor was published posthumously in 1857. 1 McIntyre rightly connects the improvisatrice to The Professor Frances Henri and Lucia. While the argument of this chapter is indebted to her work in establishing the long-neglected correlations between these two novels, she is primarily concerned with establishing the novel's connections to Corinne and arguing that "for the full ironic import of The Professor to be understood. Crimsworth's [story ] [...] must be read alongside France's history" (35) rather than with the implications for this figure for rhetorical historv. 148

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Italian-English improvisatrice. Frances is only half-English, rendering her exotically

other yet still comfortingly familiar to Crimsworth. Also, recalling the naturalistic images

associated with the way Corinne "breathed forth thought” in her improvisation at the

Capitol (de Stael 25), the art of writing comes easily to Frances: "Composition, too. she

delighted in. Such occupation seemed the breath of her nostrils" (Bronte Professor 174).

For both women, then, the extemporaneous process is as natural as breathing.

Just as Corinne's improvisation was what initially drew Oswald to her. so too we

are told that Frances's extemporaneous essays exhibit a high degree of "taste and fancy.”

(Bronte Professor 165) which is her initial attraction for her future husband. By

substituting essays in the classroom for improvisations at the Capitol, however. Frances

moves the improvisatrice's gifts into a new. although more circumscribed, forum. Despite

this change in locale. Frances* rhetoric operates in a manner reminiscent of the

improvisatrices who came before her. Crimsworth's reaction to her first assignment, for

example, an essay on "the trite little anecdote of Alfred18 tending cakes in the herdsmen’s

hut to be repeated with amplifications" (Bronte Professor 160). is indicative of the

belletristic connection between the text and the aesthetic faculty of its author. Echoing

Blair's claim that sty le "has always some reference to an author's manner of thinking."

(Blair 1:184). Crimsworth makes a connection between Frances' quality of rhetorical

performance and her quality of mind. Thus, as he settles down to read Frances' first effort

in his class. Crimsworth exults. "Now . .. I shall catch a glimpse of what she really is: I

shall get a glimpse of the nature and extent of her powers [... ] if she has any mind, here

149

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. will be a reflection of it" (Bronte The Professor 161). Like earlier figures in the

improvisatrice tradition, then. Frances' rhetorical performance is to be the yardstick by

which her value is to be judged. Luckily for her. she is not found wanting by her teacher:

There were errors of orthography, there were foreign idioms, there were some faults of construction, there were verbs irregular transformed into verbs regular: it was mostly made up [...] of short and rude sentences, and the style stood in great need of polish and sustained dignity; yet such as it was. I had hitherto seen nothing like it in the course of my professional experience. The girl's mind had conceived a picture of the hut. of the two peasants, of the crownless king, she had imagined the wintry forest, she had recalled the old Anglo-Saxon ghost legends, she had appreciated Alfred's courage under calamity, she had remembered his Christian education, and shown him. in the rooted comfort of those primitive days relying on the scriptural Jehovah for aid against the mythological Destiny. This she had done without a hint from me: I had given the subject but not a word about the manner of treating it. (162-3)

Crimsworth's reaction to Frances' essay emphasizes both Frances' natural rhetorical

power and her need for formal instruction, and his assessment of her strengths recalls de

Stael's articulation of the improvisatrice rhetoric. Like Corinne's reliance on the faculty

of imagination in her inventional process (de Stael 26: 76: 146). Frances' essay takes its

power from her ability to "conceive a picture" and impart it to her reader in vivid detail.

In a Campbellian framework, this essay not only pleases Crimsworth's faculty of

imagination "through the gratification of some internal taste" (Campbell 3). but it also

moves the passion: that Frances thus ”awaken[s] all the tenderest emotions of the heart"

(Campbell 3) is demonstrated by the romantic interest that ensues from this essay.

Clearly. Frances has that natural appeal to the imagination and the passions that serves as

a defining element to the improvisatrice tradition.

18 In this story. British folktale. King Alfred of Wessex agrees to mind cooking cakes in a herdsmen's hut. The king, absorbed in thoughts of state, forgets the cakes and they bum. The moral is that the mighty cannot understand the cares of the lowlv. 150

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As Crimsworth testifies. Frances' essay demonstrates the Blairian qualities of the

improvisatrice as well. In his usual curmudgeonly fashion he says. "As to the substance

of your essay. Mdlle Henri, it has surprised me [...]! saw in it some proofs of taste and

fancy. Taste and fancy are not the highest gifts of the human mind, but such as they are

you possess them - not probably in a paramount degree, but in a degree beyond what the

majority can boast” (Bronte Professor 165). Due to her relatively uneducated state at this

point in the story, the quality of taste Crimsworth here lauds would be termed Delicacy

by Blair, referring to that natural component of taste that is the woman rhetor's special

province. Therefore, although damned with faint praise by her Rhetoric professor.

Frances nevertheless demonstrates both the excellence of the faculties and the refinement

of taste associated with the improvisatrice.

Along with thus evidencing the excellence of Frances' imaginative faculty and

her quality of taste, this essay also proves her moral virtue in a manner that echoes de

Stael's improvisatrice: not only does she focus her readers' attention through his

imagination, but she infuses her essaywith Christian sentiment by focusing on Alfred's

"Christian education” and his reliance on the "scriptural Jehovah.” Like Corinne at the

Capitol. Frances has picked "the manner of treating” the subject set to her: hence her

gravitation towards a morality tale prove her own goodness as well as providing a raison

d'etre for woman's writing. She thereby reinforces the belletristic rationale for the

improvisatrice*s rhetoric by offering a spiritual model to her reader.

This transfer from the Capitol to the classroom, however, marks an evolution of

the improvisatrice rhetoric. Harkening back to Heger's focus on the importance of

151

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. training. Crimsworth emphasizes the deficiencies in Frances' essay as well as its merits.

In both his initial reaction quoted above and his first comments to Frances herself, he

emphasizes her need for formal study, cautioning ”it will take several years of careful

study before you are able to write English with absolute correctness" (BronteProfessor

164). As she writes and does not speak her compositions, spelling, punctuation and faulty

mechanics are obstacles that she must overcome, and she does so with Crimsworth's aid.

Ostensibly, then, while according to Crimsworth she naturally possessed the talents of the

improvisatrice. she would nevertheless require the tools offered by the formal study of

rhetoric: innate ability alone was not enough.

Not all the compositions of this proto-improvisatrice are essays, however. Indeed,

most interesting of all Frances" composition is her oral recitation of her own poetry. The

reader is only introduced to Frances' creative bent in the moments before she engages

herself to her English admirer. Prior to Crimsworth's proposing, he hovers outside

Frances' door, apparently working up the nerve to enter. As he stands there, he overhears

her reciting her own poetry. These verses, as McIntyre notes, conflate Corinne at the

Capitol the with woman in the schoolroom. Frances tells the story of Jane. who. like

Frances herself, has fallen in love with her schoolteacher. This infatuation leads Jane to

pursue academic success, a quest that gamers her scholarly honors that are bestowed in a

manner recollecting Corinne's crowning at the Capitol in de Stael's novel:

At last our school ranks took their ground: The hard-fought field I won: The prize, a laurel wreath, was bound My throbbing forehead on. Low at my master's knee I bent. The offered crown to meet:

152

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Its green leaves through my temples sent A thrill as wild as sweet. The strong pulse of Ambition struck In every vein I owned; At that same instant bleeding broke A secret, inward wound. (BronteProfessor 245)

In this image of woman on bended knee to receive her honors and the attendant

combination of victory, ambition and doom. Jane's story recollects other works of the

improvisatrice tradition, such as Landon's Erinna who on "bended knee/[...] received

thy laurel crown” (Landon "Erinna” 29-30). The crowning of Jane, however, is not

occasioned by her natural effusions, but by the excellence of her academic performance.

This poem, like the novel itself, thus privileges Correctness over Delicacy. Jane is not

lauded for her innate qualities but her extrinsic accomplishments.

Jane is distinguished from the improvisatrices of Landon and de Stael by more

than her scholarly accomplishments, however. Unlike those figures in the improvisatrice

tradition who die spumed by love "Jane” ends with her "master" of this poem declaring

his ardor but sending her into the world:

"They call again; leave then my breast; Quit thy true shelter Jane; But when deceived, repulsed, opprest; Come home to me again" (Bronte Professor 246)

In the conclusion to this poem. Frances fantasizes about a man who would permit his

lover to experience firsthand the supposedly hollow fame the world has to offer. What

she cannot imagine, however, is a man who would accept a woman who occupied the

public sphere represented here by "Ambition." The limits of Frances' imagination

represent the limits of the novel as w ell: like the speaker of the poem "Jane." whose lover

153

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. supported her foray into the public realm. Crimsworth allows Frances to go on teaching

after their marriage. The married woman, however, seems to leave no room for the proto-

improvisatrice. for as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar have pointed out (331). the reader

learns of no more poems. Narrator Crimsworth seems insensible to his wife's restricted

world: in fact, he exults in the bifurcation he causes in Frances' personality:

In the daytime my house and establishment were conducted by Madame the directress, a stately and elegant woman, bearing much anxious thought on her stately brow; much calculated dignity in her serious mien[...]. At six o'clock p.m. my daily labors would ceased. [...] I then came home, and Frances Henri, my own little lace-mender. was magically restored to my arms. (274: 276)

Frances, apparently, deals with her dichotomous roles by becoming separate people.

Reminiscent of Corinne's dictum "to be Lucy and Corinne in one" (de Stael 376).

Frances reserves for her husband those elements of her personality that can be associated

with the improvisatrices of de Stael and Landon:

The faculties of her nature, already disclosed w hen I married her. remained fresh and fair: but other faculties shot up strong, branched out broad, and quite altered the external character of the plant. Firmness, activity, and enterprise were covered with grave foliage, poetic feeling and fervour: but these flowers were still there, preserved pure and dewy under the umbrage of later growth and hardier nature: perhaps I only knew the secret of their existence, but to me they were ever readv to vield an exquisite fracrance and present a beautv as chaste as radiant. (274)

Apparently, "poetical feeling" and "fervour" are the special province of this thwarted

improvisatrice. as they were for Erinna and Corinne. Indeed Frances' choice seems to

have taken her down the path recommended by Landon's Eulalie. Just as Crimsworth

invokes approvingly the "pure and dewy" nature of Frances' "feeling and fervour" and

claims that they always "present a beauty as chaste as radiant" in their floral sweetness.

154

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Eulalie's description of woman's role and woman's sphere predicts exactly this sort of

flowery articulation:

The lily of the valley - mark how pure The snow blossoms - and how soft a breath Is almost hidden by the large dark leaves Not only have those delicate flowers a gift Of sweetness and of beauty, but the root - A healing power dwells there; fragrant fair. But dwelling still in some beloved shade. Is this not women’s emblem? (Landon "History" 179-186)

Unlike Eulalie. "who has dwelt too much in the open day." and so "must droop and die"

(200. 201). Frances has sensibly pursued the domestic route, choosing to "dwell in some

beloved shade" (Landon "History" 179) and take cover under that "grave foliage"

(Bronte Professor 274) which results from her marriage with Crimsworth. Accordingly.

unlike her improvisatrice predecessors. Frances does not exhaust her powers in public

performance and so saves her flowers of rhetoric to adorn the home.

Frances is not the only evidence of the improvisatrice influence in the novel.

however. The unexpected and. in terms of plot development, unnecessary appearance of

an improvisatrice figure late in the novel supports the reading of Frances in a

improvisatrice framework. In the last six pages of the novel. Crimsworth and Frances'

close friend, perennial bachelor Yorke Hunsden. shares with them a picture of the love of

his life. Crimsworth's description of this picture recalls the physical appearance

associated w ith the other women of the improvisatrice tradition. Looking at her portrait.

he opines:

I thought it represented a very handsome and very individual-looking female face, with, as he had once said 'straight and harmonious features.' It was dark: the hair

155

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. raven-black [....]. The Italian eye looked straight into you [...] On the back of the miniature was gilded "Lucia." (284)

The dark. Italianate Lucia physically recollects Zenobia. the "Verdopolian de Stael"

(Bronte "Peep" 228). as does the biography of her life created by Frances. That is. in an

ironic twist, the reader is never offered an authentic version Lucia's story. What we

receive instead is Frances' hypothetical narrative:

What do you think?' [Hunsden] asked of my wife [....] *1 am sure that Lucia once wore chains and broke them.' was the strange answer. I do not mean matrimonial chains.' she added, correcting herself, as if she feared misinterpretation, 'but social chains of some sort. The face is that of one who has made an effort, and a successful and triumphant effort, to wrest some vigorous and valued faculty from insupportable constraint: and when Lucia's faculty got free. I am certain it spread wide pinions and carried her higher than [....] "les convenances"14 permitted you to follow.' (284)

This spontaneously composed tale of Lucia not only echoes the plot of Corinne: it also

connects Frances herself to the improvisatrice tradition. Her imaginary Lucia may have

"WTest some vigorous and valued faculty from insupportable constraint" but. as seen in

that bifurcation of her public and private selves Crimsworth finds so entrancing, the

pragmatic Frances herself allowed such social constraints to dictate her behavior. Her

reason for such a compromise can be inferred from her conclusion of Lucia's story:

’Lucia has trodden the stage.' continued Frances. ’You never seriously thought of marry ing her: you admired her originality, her fearlessness, her energy of body and mind: you delighted in her talent, whatever that was. whether song, dance, or dramatic representation: you worshipped her beauty, which w as of the sort after your own heart, but I am sure she filled a sphere from whence you would never have thought of taking a wife.' (Bronte 285)

Frances inscribes Hunsden's Lucia into the improvisatrice tradition. This supposed Lucia

displays Campbellian vivacity in her "energy of body" and. as w ith Corinne at the

|l) Proprieties 156

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Capitol, provides a Blairian means for the improvement of the taste through her "beauty,

which was of the sort after your own heart." Nevertheless. Lucia's story is The

Professor's ultimate critique of the improvisatrice tradition. Corinne can never find a

husband: just as Oswald marries Lucy rather than her half-sister, the exotic

improvisatrice. so too Hunsden rejects Lucia because of the sphere she fills. Even the

speaker of Frances' poem ”Jane" will ultimately have to choose between the public world

and her romantic attachment: the "master" of the poem tells her to return to him after she

has seen through the shallow trappings the world has to offer. It is no wonder, then, that

Frances embraces the rhetorical role of the dignified Directress in order to marry the man

she loves.

Frances' choice comes at some cost, however, for the discussion of Lucia

concludes with the pointed and taunting question from Hunsden: ”[D]on't you feel your

little lamp of a spirit wax very pale, beside such a girandole20 as Lucia?" to which

Frances offers a single-word answer. "Yes" (Bronte 285). While echoing those luminary

terms used to describe the vivacious energy of the improvisatrice. Hunsden's question

and Frances' terse reply reinforce her image as a failed improvisatrice. a Corinne who

married her Osw ald instead of ascending to the Capitol. That she reckons the bargain a

good one. however, is made clear in the happiness of her marriage and the financial

prosperity it brings to her and her husband.

Bronte would appear, then, to have disposed of the improv isatrice in the character

of Frances, and to have silenced her before she speaks a word, a fate almost shared by the

novel in which she appears. Repeatedly rejected for publication in Bronte's lifetime. The

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Professor was published by Bronte's husband after her death. In comparison to her other

novels, it was greeted by mediocre sales21 and unenthusiastic reviews, which either

subsumed it into a discussion of Gaskell's best-selling biography of Bronte's life, had

been printed three months earlier.22 or treated The Professor as a literary' curiosity and an

early draft of the last novel Bronte herself had published. Villette.2j> Reading The

Professor in the improvisatrice tradition more profitably portrays it as part of Bronte's

reaction to the rhetorical development. In Villette she would continue to expand on this

model by offering a radical revision of the improvisatrice construct.

“A marvelous sight... a spectacle low:” Vashti and the Improvisatrice

Since Bronte never accepted the assessments of those publishers who rejected The

Professor. Villette is often seen as an attempt to revise this material into a more

acceptable form. Given the plot of Villette. the comparison seems inevitable: both tell the

story of destitute natives of England who seek work in a Belgian girls' school where they

fall in love with another member of the school. Also reminiscent of Bronte's first novel,

the romance between teacher and student is first inspired through essays a young woman

composes for her Rhetoric teacher.

The contrasts between the two novels are as readily apparent as the similarities,

however. Most notable is the change in gender roles: stodgy Englishmen William

:o Chandelier 21 Only 2.500 copies were originally printed of The Professor. By comparison. 25.000 copies of Jane Eyre were reprinted in July of 1857. 22 For examples of reviews which affixed a discussion of The Professor to one of The Life o f Charlotte Bronte, see "Charlotte Bronte” Dallas, and Roscoe. ~ For comparisons with Bronte's earlier works, see Dallas. "Rev. of The Professor" Critic . and "Rev. of The Professor’ Economist. 158

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Crimsworth is replaced by the plucky if perverse Lucy Snowe. while the thoroughly

foreign, and thoroughly irascible. Monsieur Paul Emmanuel replaces the half-Swiss /

half-English Frances Henri. While gender roles and nationalities are changed, however,

classroom roles are not: just as Crimsworth instructed Frances in Rhetoric and Belles

Lettres in English, so M. Paul gives similar lessons to Lucy, albeit in French. Unlike

Frances, however. Lucy demonstrates no direct link to the improvisatrice tradition. What

Villette does depict, however, is an expansion of the rhetorical model of the

improvisatrice described in The Professor. Specifically, in the chapter ''Vashti." Bronte

not only depicts an extreme of the rhetorical power associated with the improvisatrice:

she underscores the failure attributed to this model Thein Professor.

Protagonist Lucy Snowe encounters the woman she calls Vashti in a theatrical

performance.24 Dr. John Bretton. Lucy's cousin and her first romantic interest in the

novel, appears at her school one day to ask her to attend the theater to see a renowned

actress, whose true name the reader never learns.The reaction of the normally

phlegmatic Lucy Snowe foreshadows the power of this performance: "he mentioned a

name that thrilled me - a name that in those days could thrill Europe. It is hushed now:

its once restless echoes are all still: she who bore it went years ago to her rest: night and

'4 In Esther 1-22. Vashti is a queen famous for her beauty . When her husband. King Ahasuerus summons her to a feast to display her beauty for all and sundry, she refuses. In his anger, the King declares that "every man should bear rule in his own house" and casts her off. :5 Although the actress is never named in the text, she is in fact modeled on Elisa Felix a.k.a. "Rachel." the most famous French actress of the period. Bronte saw her perform in 1851. an occasion that affected the author greatly. For a discussion of Rachel, see Barker (1994) 677-9 and Hoeveler and Jadwin (1997) 123- 4. This intersection of the improvisatrice with the actress - a professional role that was newly available to w omen in the nineteenth-century' - foregrounds the problematic relationship of amateurism and professionalism in the improvisatrice tradition.

159

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. oblivion long since closed above her: butthen her day - a day of Sirius - stood at its full

height, light and fervour" (337).

In this initial description of Vashti. we can see residual motifs of Bronte's early

infatuation with the improvisatrice tradition. Like Corinne. whose true name we never

learn, and Landon's unnamed improvisatrice. the actress Lucy calls Vashti was

celebrated at the height of her powers, but goes down to a forgotten grave. Similar to de

Stael's Corinne and Landon's Eulalie and Erinna. Vashti's rhetoric power is ultimately

ephemeral. Again, too. in Bronte's Vashti we see a woman whose powers at their full

height are associated with luminous metaphors recalling Campbell’s notion of vivacity.

That is. as discussed in Chapter One26. Campbell associated vivacity with images of

’’liveliness, force, energy, brightness, brilliancy, steadiness and luster" (Bitzer xxxii) and

attributed to it a particular appeal to the faculty of imagination. When watching the

performance. Lucy herself confirms Vashti’s use of vivacity. In describing her own

reaction, she says. ’’The strong magnetism of genius drew my heart out of its wanted

orbit: the sunflower turned from the south to a fierce light" (BronteVillette 340). and thus

combines the lustrous images of vivacity with her own movement as an audience

member. Like her improvisatrice predecessors, then, this initial description of Vashti

foreshadows a particular connection between the actress’s rhetorical power and the

Campbellian faculty of imagination. The improvisatrice tradition claims just such a

connection as an emphatically feminine appeal, making vivacity and imagination the

epistemic conduit of this rhetoric. Vashti thus shares the rhetorical means of the

improvisatrice.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As with the echoes of Campbellian vivacity we see in Vashti. the actress* initial

appearance onstage invokes other motifs familiar from the improvisatrice tradition. As

Lucy describes. "She rose at nine that night; above the horizon I saw her come. She

could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star verged already on its

judgment-day. See near, it was a chaos - hollow, half-consumed: an orb perished or

perishing - half lava, half glow” (Bronte Villette 339). Not only does this description

predict the incandescent imagery with which Lucy later describes the theatrical

performance, but it also recollects other descriptions from the improvisatrice tradition,

such as the "lightening" and "diamond sunshine" of Eulalie's speech (Landon "History"

14) or the "bright armor that drew down the lightening'* which was Corinne's

performance (de Stael 282). Like the improvisatrices ofde Stael and Landon. Vashti’s

rhetorical abilities also come at a great cost, seen in her "hollow, half-consumed

appearance." This wasting form is reminiscent of Eulalie; both women evidence "the

weary and beating heart / that fed upon itself* (Landon "History of a Lyre" 448-9).

Vashti’s neo-classical dress, too. recollects the improvisatrice tradition: "She stood, not

dressed, but draped in pale antique folds long and regular like a sculpture" (Bronte

Professor 339-40). In attire as well as attitude, she recalls improvisatrices such as

Corinne. whose attire consists of a "blue drapery [.. .and a] robe of virgin white." and

whose figure resembles "Grecian statues" (de Stael 20). Vashti. then, appears to be a

revision of the improvisatrice on stage.

While evoking the improvisatrice. Vashti is nevertheless a clear departure from

earlier figures: she may share Corinne's epistemic means, but not her belletristic ends.

:f> See pages 22-23. 161

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. While Vashti's performance appeals to the same faculties as does the improvisatrice

rhetoric, however, its effects are far from similarly benign:

For a while - a long while - I thought it was only a woman, though a unique

woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By and by I

recognized my mistake. Behold! I found in her something neither of woman nor

of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the

tragedy, kept up her feeble strength - for she was but a frail creature: and as the

action rose and the stir deepened, how they shook her with the passions of the pit!

They wrote HELL on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note

of torment. They writhed her face to a demonic mask. Hate and Murder and

Madness incarnate she stood. (Bronte Villette 339)

The force that gives Vashti's words their effect would seem a world away from the

divination of the audience's emotional state that inspires the improvisatrice. While the

morally pure improvisatrice such as Corinne reinforces the status quo by rearticulating

social mores in her improvisations. Vashti. a woman, an actress. “Hate and Murder and

Madness incarnate” subverts the order that her more docile predecessors supported.

Vashti's voice is not tuned to the melodious effusions of the improvisatrice but to a

demonic note of torment.

Despite this contrasting rhetorical purpose and effect, however. Vashti's

performance nevertheless reinforces the rhetorical theory of the improvisatrice tradition

as seen in Lucy's belletristic connection between Vashti's rhetorical power and her

quality of soul. Admittedly, when compared to the stainless improvisatrices. this

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. relationship is a perverted one: as Lucy tells the reader. “Vashti was not good. I was told.

and I have said that she did not look good: though a spirit, she was a spirit out of

Tophet."27 and she names this performance proof that "unholy force can arise from

below" (Bronte Professor 340). While this connection between Vashti's own moral

degeneracy and the power of her performance reinforces the notion that the quality of a

person's speech reveals the quality of her soul, it substantially erodes the notion of the

good (wo)man speaking well that is at the root of the improvisatrice tradition. That is.

starting w ith Corinne. the improvisatrice tradition has argued that the words of these

women could only be so powerful if the speaker was virtuous. An effective woman

rhetor must therefore be a virtuous woman rhetor. Vashti. however, stands this Blairian

notion on its head: her words are so powerful precisely because she is so wicked. While

she thus reinforces the connection between morality and rhetoric, she troubles the notion

that an effective woman speaker must be morally correct.

As with the relationship of morality and rhetoric, the epistemic faculty that Vashti

affects in her audience similarly subverts the improvisatrice tradition. The improvisatrice

has a particular appeal to the faculty of imagination, which she feminizes in her attempt

to appeal to her audience's finer sentiments. According to Lucy. Vashti also appeals to

the imagination, but not in the uplifting manner of Corinne:

I had never seen anything like this [...] which instead of merely irritating my imagination with the thought of what might be done, at the same time fevering the nerv es because it wasnot done, disclosed power like a deep swollen winter river thundering in cataract, and bearing the soul, like a leaf, on the steep and steely sweep of its descent. (341)

2 In the Bible, a place of torment, ostensibly located near Jerusalem. See Kings. ll.xxxiii.IO and Isaiah xxx.33. 163

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Unlike the sweetly suasory improvisatrices. Vashti's appeal to the imagination is an act

of violence and power. She does not recollect her auditors to their higher selves but

instead inflicts her own emotionally wrought state upon them. This. then, is the dark side

of woman's rhetorical power: she overwhelms her helpless victim in an act of rhetorical

dominance. In this manner, the demonic Vashti demolishes the angelic Corinne's claim

that "Imagination is more nearly allied to morality than is believed" (de Stael 76).

Given the manner in which she subverts both the connection between virtue and

virtuosity as well as the feminization of imagination that forms the foundation of the

improvisatrice tradition, it follows that Vashti's sublime would likewise revise the

suffering sentimentality associated with the improvisatrice's sublime. While the

improvisatrice invokes what Blair terms a moral sublime by suffering nobly, patiently.

and selflessly. Vashti refuses such a passive role: "Suffering had struck that stage

empress: and she stood before her audience neither yielding to. nor enduring, nor in finite

measure, resenting it. She stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance" (Bronte Villette

339). Vashti's reaction seems the polar opposite of her improvisatrice foremothers, then:

she does not meekly submit, she struggles: she does not selflessly suffer for the good of

others, she resists - an activity never seen as possible in the improvisatrice tradition.

Later in the performance. Lucy expounds on Vashti's suffering in a manner that

throws her troubles and the sentimental sublime into high contrast:

I have said she did not resent her grief. No: the weakness of that w ord w ould make it a lie. To her. what hurts becomes immediately embodied: she looks on it as a thing that can be attacked, worried down, tom in shreds. Scarcely a substance herself, she grapples to conflict with abstractions. Before calamity, she is a tigress: she rends her woes, shivers them in convulsed abhorrence. Pain for

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. her has no result in good: tears water no harvest of wisdom; on sickness, on death itself, she looks with the eyes of a rebel. (340)

As described by Lucy. Vashti contradicts the sentimental sublime. Vashti's

representation of suffering is an active, painful event to engage, struggle with and

ultimately conquer. She has rejected the noble elevation of misery' that frequently formed

the milieu of the improvisatrice's sentimental sublime. Indeed. Lucy's statement "[p]ain

for her has no result in good, tears water no harvest of wisdom" reads as an explicit

rejection of the claim that "the mournful history / Of woman's tenderness and woman's

tears" (Landon "Erinna" 349-50) is the most suitable material for the improvisatrice.

Instead. Vashti has taken the improvisatrice's appeals and put them to a radically

different use.

Given this subversion of the improvisatrice rhetoric, the reaction of Lucy's escort

for the evening. John Bretton. seems inevitable. Dr. John, as he is referred to in the

novel, reacts to all things as the "cool young Briton" (342) Lucy names him: throughout

the novel he is the voice of benign middle-class English culture. His reaction to Vashti.

then, can be liked to that of a bourgeoisie version ofCorinne 's Oswald:

[H]e was watching that sinister and sovereign Vashti. not with wonder nor worship, nor yet dismay, but simply with intense curiosity. [.. .]The pale cliffs of his own England do not look down upon the tides of the channel more calmly than he watched the Pythian inspiration of that night. (341)

While Vashti's performance may strike Dr. John as a curiosity , he seems immune to the

ravishment of the soul that is indicative of Lucy's reaction and Vashti's fame. When

Lucy inquires into Dr. John's response, or lack thereof, in "a few terse phrases he told me

his opinion of. and feeling towards, the actress, he [sic] judged her as a woman, not an

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. artist: it was a branding judgment" (Bronte 342). Regardless of her subversive power and

her fame. Vashti cannot transcend Dr. John’s notion of her gender. Despite Bronte's

revision of the improvisatrice tradition in Villette. then, this novel remains true to the

judgment that The Professor's Frances offered of Lucia: a man might admire "her

originality, her fearlessness, her energy of body and mind [. . .] delighted in her talent, but

I am sure she filled a sphere from whence you would never have thought of taking a

wife” (Bronte The Professor 285). Bronte may have maintained her childhood

fascination with the improvisatrice rhetoric, but her opinion of its impracticability does

not seem to have wavered in the nine years between The Professor and Villette.

While fascinating as a subversion of a figure long used to support the status quo.

Vashti's presence in the improvisatrice tradition substantially erodes this figure' practical

uses. In disposing of the connection between morality and eloquence that had been

foundational to improvisatrices prior those of Bronte. Vashti disrupts the notion of that

culturally-sanctioned feminine eloquence which the improvisatrice had previously

represented. Breaking with Blair's notion that "speech is the main instrument by which

man is useful to other men." Vashti's performance is. at best, spiritually agitating and. at

worst, morally repugnant. Clearly, this is no model for a women's rhetoric looking to

gain broad acceptance. By reorganizing the improvisatrice's epistemic appeals into a

rhetoric that challenges bourgeois notions of femininity rather than supporting them.

Bronte's last contribution to the improvisatrice tradition creates a rhetoric that is gripping

but unnatural, and thereby does not offer women an acceptable rhetorical alternative.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Instead, this figure challenges that very connection between morality and eloquence that

had been the foundation of the improvisatrice rhetoric.

From the success of de Stael's original figure to Landon’s middle-brow revisions

to Bronte's radical restructurings, we can see the enduring influence of the improvisatrice

and her variations. Throughout her developments, however, the improvisatrice has been

consistently marked by her natural taste, vivacity and appeal to the imagination as well as

her effusive nature. As Vashti shows, despite any variations, this system is also marked

by its innate failure - an overarching theme of this rhetoric's effects is its ephemeral

nature. Given this fundamental flaw, it is unsurprising, that George Eliot would attempt

to discard this figure entirely and emphatically in Mill on the Floss. What is more

surprising, however, is the resilience of this tradition regardless of its weaknesses or

Eliot's critique.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 5

•SHE WILL DO ME NO GOOD":

GEORGE ELIOT AND THE IMPROVISATRICE

Erinna was a poetess from her cradle, and she only lived to the completion of her eighteenth year. - Of Erinna very little is known; there is in the Grecian Anthology a sepulchral epigram by Anitpater on this young poetess."[...] There seemed to me just enough known of Erinna to interest; and I have not attempted to write a classical fiction; feelings are what I wish to narrate, not incidents [...] The feelings that constitute poetry are the same in all ages, they are acted upon by similar causes. Erinna is an ideal not a historical picture - Letitia Landon "Introductory notice to 'Erinna.*” 1826.

"Erinna died in early youth when she was chained by her mother to a spinning-w heel. She had as yet known the charm of existence through imagination alone. Her poem called "The Spindle" - ’HXaicdTTi - containing only 300 hexameter verses, in w hich she probably expressed the restless and aspiring thoughts which crowded on her youthful mind as she pursued her monotonous work, has been deemed by many of the ancients of such high poetic merit as to entitle it to a place beside the epics of Homer.” Miiller. Hist. Gr. Lit. Four lines of tj/.aKdrn are extant. The dialect is a mixture of Doric and the .-Eolic spoken at Rhodes where Erinna was bom; the date about B.C. 612. - George Eliot. "Preface to •Erinna.'” 1875.

The contrast betw een George Eliot's construction of the improvisatrice Erinna

and the idealization of this figure that had been popularized by authors such as Germaine

de Stael and Letitia Landon is well illustrated in the epigrams above. As described in

Chapter Three. Landon's improvisatrices emphasized the rhetorical power of women's

emotions and used idealized representation of English notions of middle-class femininity

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. as the basis for a theoretical expansion of woman's rhetoric that co-opted the institutional

epistemic and belletristic rhetorical theories articulated by George Campbell and Hugh

Blair. Thus, her improvisatrices Erinna. Corinna. Eulalie. and Corinne were idealized

figures rather than an attempt to give a realistic representation of a woman endowed with

superior rhetorical talents. By emphasizing a Campbellian faculty of imagination and

Blairian Delicacy of taste, the improvisatrices of Landon and de Stael enacted a rhetoric

that was contextualized to woman's supposed "natural" faculties. The improvisatrice’s

rhetoric, however, truncated the system described in the Philosophy and the Lectures by-

emphasizing only those rhetorical components that could be considered appropriate to

middle-class Englishwomen. The imaginative literature examined thus far therefore

romanticizes those rhetorical abilities discussed by Campbell and Blair that align with

popular notions of femininity. As discussed in Chapter Four, even the revisions offered

by Charlotte Bronte's improvisatrices were far from pedestrian reality; neither Vashti nor

Lucia were an attempt to give a psychological portrait of the struggles that would actually

face a woman endowed with the rhetorical talents of an improvisatrice. Rather. Bronte's

subversive Vashti enacts a belletristic rhetoric, albeit a perverted one. She is so

rhetorically effective precisely because she is so wicked.

As seen in the above Preface to her unpublished poem "Erinna." however. George

Eliot's approach contrasted with earlier contributions to the improvisatrice tradition.

While Landon frankly admits that the only know ledge she has about Erinna came from a

popular play of the period. Eliot cites the extant text of Erinna's poem "The Spindle" in

both the original Greek and her own translation. While Landon defends her elision of the 169

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. historical record through her ethos as poetess by claiming that the feelings behind poetry

are timeless. Eliot concerns herself with historical precision by examining the real

Erinna's dialect and place of birth. Building from the theoretical framework of her

Preface. Landon's poem details the fantastic fame and glory of the improvisatrice. while,

as we shall see. Eliot's poem concerns an improvisatrice with these selfsame gifts quite

literally shackled to a domestic role. In contrast to the melodramatic scenes represented

by Landon. then. Eliot places her Erinna in a grimmer reality where the tragedy does not

spring from a melodramatic death but from the weary monotony of living as a woman of

extraordinary abilities in a drearily ordinary world. Thus, rather than providing moral

elevation to the exulting accolades of those around her. Eliot's Erinna spends her life in

lonely drudgery. The talents of an improvisatrice do not lead her to acclaim but merely

to the realization of how miserable her state truly is.

The interest in the improvisatrice tradition that Eliot's poem "Erinna'' denotes is

representative of a belletristic critique that informs her work over a twentv-year span. The

scathing satire of woman's belletristic excellence in her critical essay "Silly Novels by

Lady Novelists" (1856). like the critique of belletristic education inThe Mill on the Floss.

(1860) opposes Blair's notion of the development of taste as civic duty. Similarly, the

revision offered in "Erinna" (1875)1. like the contrast of would-be improvisatrice

Gwendolyn Harleth and the unnatural yet eloquent Lenora Halm-Eberstein inDaniel

Deronda (1875). contrasts the romanticized notion of woman's rhetoric with a less

savory and far more sinister reality. Throughout her imaginative literature. Eliot's

1 Although "Erinna" was never published durina Eliot's lifetime. Hiaaonet dates it to 1875. 170

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. dismissal of the rhetorical paradigm of the improvisatrice is indicative of her larger

censure of an essentially feminine rhetoric. Although the critiques offered in Eliot's

fiction have different foci, they are nevertheless variants on the theme that undermines

both the notion of feminine Delicacy and that of the civic function enacted by the

improvisatrice which Blair described as part of belletristic rhetoric. Similarly, the

Campbellian imagination, that ability to precisely construct an idea in the mind and

impart it to an audience, which is the particular conduit of the improvisatrice's rhetorical

appeals in earlier versions of this figure, is replaced by a imprecise faculty filled with

vague longings or inaccurate ideas. Eliot's illustrations of women's rhetoric therefore not

only critique the improvisatrice tradition but directly contradict the feminization of

rhetorical theory for which it stands. That she continually returns to this figure in her

fiction, however, shows the durability that this model had achieved by the period spanned

by Eliot's writing career. Paradoxically, then, her perpetual condemnation of this figure

and the belletristic rhetoric in which it operates indicates this paradigm's resiliency, even

as it calls that paradigm into fundamental question.

“Foolish Facility”: Improvisation and “Silly Novels”

Before moving to Eliot's imaginative contributions to the improvisatrice tradition, it is

useful to examine her 1856 essay on women's fiction. "Sillv Novels by Lady Novelists."

for while not exclusively aimed at the improvisatrice tradition, this essay stands as one of

the most renowned invectives against the feminization of the belles lettres represented by

the improvisatrice. Also, as Kathryn Hughes argues, since "Silly Novels" immediately 171

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. preceded the beginning of Eliot's career as a fiction writer2, this critical essay stands as a

"literary manifesto for her style of fiction" (177). Thus. "Silly Novels" not only revises

the belletristic theoretical paradigm that informs the improvisatrice tradition, but it also

anticipates the uses to which this figure would be put inThe Mill on the Floss. "Erinna"

and Daniel Deronda.

In a taxonomy of trashy writing. "Silly Novels.” systematically demolishes much

of the women's fiction that was popular at the time of the essay's composition. While the

figure of the improvisatrice is never specifically named, it clearly inhabits that subspecies

of silly novels Eliot terms the "mind-and-millinery" novel:

Silly Novels by Lady Novelists are a genus with many species, determined by the particular quality of silliness that predominates in them - the frothy, the prosy, the pious or the pedantic. But it is a mixture of all these [...] which we shall distinguish as the mind-and-millinery species. The heroine is usually an heiress [...]. Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling: her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity: she has a superb contralto and a superb intellect [. ..]. Rakish men either bite their lips in impotent confusion at her repartee, or are touched to penitence by her reproofs, which on appropriate occasions rise to a lofty form of rhetoric: indeed, there is general propensity in her to make speeches [...] In her recorded conversations, she is amazingly eloquent, and in her unrecorded conversations, amazingly witty. She understood to have a depth of insight that looks through and through the shallow theories of philosophers, and her superior instincts are a sort of dial by w hich men have only to set their clocks and watches and all will go well. [...] She is the ideal woman in feeling, faculties and flounces. (Eliot "Silly Novels” 1461-2)

The "heroine" as defined here with the "dazzling" eyes and wit. superior morality.

eloquence, and intellect, touching reproofs and clever repartee easily recollects the

spiritual and rhetorical merits attributed to de Stael's Corinne. Landon's Eulalie or

' With the 1857 publication of the short story "The Sad Fortunes of Rev. Amos Barton." Eliot began the serialization that would comprise her first book. Scenes from Clerical Life. 172

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Bronte's Zenobia. In particular, the effects of her eloquence from which "rakish men

either bite their lips in impotent confusion at her repartee, or are touched to penitence by

her reproofs." ironically echo the belletristic rationale for the improvisatrice rhetoric. Just

as the improvisatrice speech has been associated with the betterment of her auditors, so

too when Eliot's heroine speaks, "men have only to set their clocks and watches and all

will go well." The "superior instinct” of the mind-and-millinery heroine thus appears a

satire of a Blairian Delicacy of taste that gives the improvisatrice her rhetorical prowess.

Eliot, it appears, would have difficulty accepting the "feelings, faculties, and flounces" of

Corinne or Eulalie as potential paradigms for women's rhetoric.

As w ith this description of the mind-and-millinery novel. Eliot's definition of a

truly educated woman can be read as an implicit critique of the fictional improvisatrice -

or the flesh-and-blood woman who would try to imitate her:

A really cultured woman, like a really cultured man. is all the simpler and the less obtrusive for her knowledge [...]. She neither spouts poetry nor quotes Cicero on slight provocation [. ..]. In conversation, she is the least formidable of women, because she understands you. without wanting to make you aware youcan t understand her. (Eliot "Sillv Novels" 1466)

One can easily apply this censure to improvisatrices such as Corinne whose

extemporizations are a pastiche of poetry , prose and "the most applicable passages from

the poets of other lands" (de Stael 40). Unlike Corinne. whose voluminous knowledge of

literature w as a sign of her belletristic excellence, however. Eliot here argues for a model

of taste in which the woman rhetor, although well-versed, speaks simply and concisely.

"Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" therefore takes issue with the idealized notions

associated with the improvisatrice. Blairian Delicacy may be a virtue, but too many 173

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. women authors incorrectly assume it is a virtue they possess. Indeed the foundation of

Eliot's lambasting of "Lady Novelists" calls into question Blair's claim that all

individuals possess Delicacy and can acquire Correctness. The average Lady Novelist:

mistakes vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and affectation for originality: she struts on one page, rolls her eyes on another, grimaces on a third, and is hysterical on a fourth. She may have read a great deal of writings of great men, and a few writings of great women: but she is as unable to discern the difference between her own style and theirs as a Yorkshiremen is to discern the difference between his own English and a Londoner’s: rodomontade is the native accent of her intellect. (Eliot "Silly Novels" 258)

Eliot's argument here attacks the foundation of belletristic rhetoric. Not only do these

Lady Novelist lacks the native ability - Delicacy - to distinguish their own affectation

and true eloquence, but reading " a great deal of writing of great men. and a few writings

of great women" does nothing to improve their scanty or absent critical faculties. These

authors are not only lacking in the super-refinement of Delicacy that the improvisatrice

tradition purports to be women's particular province, but they in fact cannot even attain

Correctness, lacking even the bare minimum of natural taste necessary to be educable in

aesthetics. Such "Lady Novelists" lack both components of the Blairian construct of

taste, and so are unable distinguish between their own prosaic style and the stylistic

excellence of the truly "great" writers. In this way. Eliot's censure of women writers

attacks that belletristic rationale for women's authorship which the improvisatrice

embodies.

Eliot connects this lack of taste to the spontaneous composition that is the

defining activity of an improvisatrice:

174

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In the majority of women's books you see that kind of facility which springs from the absence of any high standard; that fertility in imbecile combination or feeble imitation which a little self-criticism would check and reduce to barrenness; just as with a total want of musical ear people will sing out of tune, while a degree more melodic sensibility would suffice to render them silent. (Eliot "Silly Novels 262)

Women do not write because of their excellence of belletristic taste: they write because of

their total lack of this quality. In this theoretical framework the improvisatrice's fluency

is no evidence of virtue or virtuosity: she appears a hack at best, an imbecile at worst.

Or. as Eliot says in the essay's penultimate sentence, such individuals mistake "foolish

facility for mastery'' (Eliot "Silly Novels" 263). Given Eliot's thorough condemnation of

the feminization of belletrism and the facility for verse that is at the heart of this critical

essay, the presence of the improvisatrice tradition in Eliot's later fiction cannot be

expected to expand women's rhetorical sphere. Indeed, given the tenor of "Silly Novels

by Lady Novelists." it is a testimony to the endurance of this construct that the

improvisatrice is found in Eliot's fiction at all.

Dodsons, Egarmonds and Tullivers: Maggie’s Family Tree

Despite Eliot's thorough censure of the mind-and-millinery" genre in "Silly

Novels." the improvisatrice tradition exhibits a recurring presence in her career as a

novelist. In her earliest and most explicit engagement with this figure, a concern with the

improvisatrice tradition can be attributed at least partially to verisimilitude: asThe Mill

on the Floss is the coming of age tale of Maggie Tulliver. a young English girl growing

up in the 1830s and 40s. the influence of the improvisatrice tradition on the novel is

175

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. unsurprising. Not only did Letitia Landon. the "English Improvisatrice" reach the height

of her popularity during this period, but the best-selling English translation of de Stael’s

Corinne was published in 1833. Thus, when Maggie rejects de Stael’s novel with a

playful cry of "Take back yourCorinne" (Eliot Mill 432). the reader can safely

conjecture that she refers to the recently published English translation that her

unsuccessful suitor has lent her. As this historical exactness implies, however, the

improvisatrice's presence in this novel does not indicate a belletristic idealization of the

power of woman's speech, but instead a realistic examination of this rhetorical paradigm.

In brief. The Mill on the Floss tells the story of Maggie Tulliver's unhappy

childhood and tragic adolescence. When the novel begins, nine-vear-old Maggie, an

uncommonly intelligent and sensitive young girl, suffers from vague longings for

something other than her physically comfortable if emotionally unfulfilling life as the

daughter of a prosperous mill owner. As the narrative progresses, her indifferent

education does nothing to improve her emotional state and at the age of thirteen, this

alienation and dissatisfaction is exacerbated by her family's sudden decline in fortunes.

During this period, her only solace comes from her suitor, the meek Phillip Wakem.

whose conversation exposes her to new books and ideas. Although she finds Phillip

companionable, she feels nothing but friendship for him. When she turns eighteen.

however, she meets and is attracted to her cousin Lucy's fiance. Stephen Guest, and

spends a night with him awav from home. Although nothing untoward happens.

Maggie's reputation is ruined, and her beloved if stodgy brother Tom disowns her. They

are reunited during a flood, and in the moments after this reconciliation brother and sister 176

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. drown together. Like many of her improvisatrice predecessors, then. Maggie's conflict is

not resolved but simply ends in death.

The link between Corinne and The Mill on the Floss that connects Eliot's novel to

the improvisatrice tradition has been documented by literary scholarsJ. Ellen Moers. for

example, reads Eliot's novel as a revenge fantasy in which Maggie has "both practically

and morally, her ugly revenge on blondes" (Moers 175). While Maggie's death by

drowning and her blonde cousin's eventual romantic triumph problematizes her ultimate

argument. Moers correctly identifies a connection between the novels: Maggie, who is

described as a “Pythoness'' (Eliot Mill 79) appears a descendant of the improvisatrice

tradition both physically and emotionally. We are told repeatedly of her dark skin and

eves4 as well as her brunette hair. The unruly nature of the latter feature provides the

young Maggie with terrific trouble until she begins to wear it in a coronet, a hairstyle

reminiscent of the improvisatrice's laurel crown (Frith 226).

This physical connection to the improvisatrice tradition is reinforced by the

Staelean-inspired contrast between Maggie and her fair-haired cousin Lucy Deane. That

is. just as Italianate Corinne's foreignness was emphasized by her half-sister Lucy's pale

English looks and her adherence to social norms, so is Maggie's difference foregrounded

by her cousin's looks and orthodox comportment, both of w hich recall Lucy Edgarmond

of de Stael's novel. Moreover, just as Corinne's mixed Italian-English heritage renders

her unsuitable to assume a role in English society. Maggie's unorthodoxies likewise are

' For discussions of the relationship of Mill on the Floss to Corinne see Moers. Frith. 4 For descriptions of Maaaie's dark eves and skin, see paaes 60. 253. 260. 177 ~

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. attributed to her mixed blood. In Maggie's case, however, her genetic shortfall is not

attributed to any Mediterranean heritage but to the dilution of her mother's proud English

ancestry, the Dodsons with her father's less refined genetic material:

the Dodsons were a very respectable family indeed - as much looked up to in their own parish or the next to it. [...] There were particular ways of doing everything in that family: particular ways of bleaching the linen, of making the cowslip wine, curing the hams and keeping the bottled gooseberries, so that no daughter of that house could be indifferent to the privilege of being bom a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. [...] In short, there was in this family a peculiar tradition as to what was the right thing in household management and social demeanour, and the only bitter circumstance was a painful inability to approve the condiments or the conduct of a family ungovemed by the Dodson tradition. (Eliot Mill 96-7)

The Dodson family members, as the personification of a narrow minded provincial

morality, are country cousins toCorinne's Lady Edgarmond. And just as Corinne was

seen as a mix of exoticism and British propriety. Maggie commingles her Dodson

qualities with those of her rude and rural Tulliver father. Indeed, as her Dodson kin claim

throughout the novel'. "Tulliver blood did not mix well with Dodson blood [...]. And

Maggie always looked twice as dark as usual when she was by the side of Lucv" (Eliot

Mill 116). Lucy. then, is the "true" Dodson, whose orthodoxy makes Maggie's

nonconformity all the more apparent. Maggie does not just share Corinne's dark

features: these physical attributes mark her separation from the safety of conventionality.

Occupationally as well as physically. Maggie resembles earlier improvisatrices.

While she has neither a fortune nor the authorial talents to support herself. Maggie's

"wish to be independent'* (Eliot Mill 503) leads her to take employment in a "third-rate

5 For other passages in which the Dodson sisters denigrate Maggie's status as a “true" Dodson, see 126. 165.612. 178

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. schoolroom” (Eliot Mill 494). Maggie's family disapproves her decision to work: as her

brother notes, he was willing to take care of her until she was "well married” (Eliot Mill

503). Despite this familial disapproval, like all the improvisatrices before her. Maggie's

spirit leads her. as nineteenth-centurv biographer Grace Wharton said of Letitia Landon

"to live as certain esprits forts did. alone, to be a Corinne” (Wharton 274). As she has

neither the wealth nor the talent of the more fantastic members of this tradition, however,

Maggie, like Frances Henri of Charlotte Bronte's The Professor, has to seek gainful

employment. Maggie has an improvisatrice's independent spirit, then, but not the means

to enjoy it.

Emotionally as well as physically. Maggie resembles the improvisatrice.

particularly as a child. Not only is she described as "'cute.” that is "acute.” by her

parents and her Dodson relatives, but as Phillip Wakem remarks, her childhood was

marked by improvisatrice-like qualities; albeit they are dulled by her life experiences:

"You were so full of life when you were a child - I thought you would be a brilliant

woman - all wit and bright imagination. And it flashes out in your face still, until you

draw that veil of dull quiescence over it” (EliotMill 428). Phillip's comments imply that

Maggie has talents reminiscent of the improvisatrice. The "w it and bright imagination”

that characterized Maggie's childhood recall the predominance of the faculty of

imagination in the improvisatrice's rhetorical power. Similarly, the luminescent images

of her imagination's brightness and the wav in which it "flashes” out of her face recollect

the improvisatrice's reliance on vivacity, that quality of "energy, brightness, brilliancy.

steadiness and luster” (Bitzer xxxii) that George Campbell claimed was the conduit of 179

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. imagination. Repeatedly, the strength of Maggie's imagination is cited in her childhood

ability to create an ideal world in her imagination characterized by "fondness” and

"indulgence” (Eliot Mill 319), but it is also evident in her continued ability in adulthood

to "make dream worlds of her own” (Eliot Mill 183). This ability to create a utopic state

through the power of imagination recalls improvisatrices such as Landon's nameless

improvisatrice. who made her "dreams of beauty / visible” (Landon "Improvisatrice" 30-

1). Thus Maggie exhibits the inclination towards the faculty of imagination that

characterized this improvisatrice tradition.

While Maggie may have an improvisatrice-like predominance of imagination, an

examination of this quality in Maggie reveals a significant departure from Campbell's

construction of this faculty. In Campbell's scheme, the imagination persuades the

audience through a connection between two ideas. Due to the associative nature of the

mind, the rhetor who can make a clear connection between the already-believed and his

argument will have the greatest chances for success. By contrast. Maggie's imagination

is inarticulate, even to herself. Repeatedly she is described as possessing inarticulate

"yearnings” (Eliot Mill 320. 381. 382. 482) and an unspecified "longing" for something

unknown (EliotMill 482. 514). Maggie thus revises the faculty of imagination associated

with the improvisatrice. While she. like her predecessors, is attributed a preponderance of

this faculty, for Maggie it is not a sign of her rhetorical prowess but. instead, her lack of

eloquence. Her imaginative shortfall draw s attention to a weakness of the

improvisatrice's reliance on imagination. Due to her narrow range of experience.

180

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Maggie's imagination has little material to draw upon, and her desires thus remain mute,

even to herself.

The reason for the inarticulate nature of Maggie's imagination relates to the

novel’s revision of belletrism. for along with this predominance of imagination. Maggie

possesses a sensibility of taste that recollects the improvisatrice's reliance upon Blair's

belletristic rhetoric. In light of her indifferent education, her deep appreciation for

poetry, fiction, and music demonstrate a natural taste that recalls the other great source of

the improvisatrice's rhetoric. The narrator, for example, describes her as " a creature full

of eager passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad" (Eliot Mill 320). and

portrays her deep appreciation of music as "only one form of that passionate sensibility

which belonged to her whole nature" (Eliot Mill 514). Similarly, her desire to see Phillip.

whom she knows her family would disapprove of. is not based on any "the slightest

promise of love" for him (Eliot Mill 403) but instead on "books, converse and affection"

(Eliot Mill 424). Her love of literature, like her love of music, testifies that she has the

excellence of taste suitable for an improvisatrice.

But. as the narrator is at pains to tell us. Maggie is nothing as grand as an

improvisatrice. and her inarticulate longings and ultimate destruction constitute a

damming critique of the improvisatrice rhetoric. As the narrator observ es. Maggie'

natural gifts do not lead to her happiness: on the contrary they lead to her misery. This

unhappiness is predicated by her aesthetic sensibility:

[Maggie possesses] an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her: with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life and give her 181

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. soul a sense of home in it. [...]. A girl [...] who will never be a Sappho or a Madame Roland6 or anything else that the world takes notice of. may still hold forces within her, as the living plant-seed does, which will make way for themselves, often in a shattering, violent manner. (Eliot Mill 320)

At first glance. Maggie appears to combine a natural Delicacy of taste with a desire for

Correctness. That is. she possesses a natural aesthetic sense, but no way to sate her

craving for aesthetic experience. Through these longings. Maggie’s example argues

against the notion of Delicacy as a sufficient source for rhetorical invention. The sense of

taste that expresses itself in "blind unconscious yearning” not only does not lead to the

spontaneous outpouring of a Corinne. but it also makes its possessor miserable, pining for

something she cannot name. As Maggie’s example attests. Delicacy may allow us to

vaguely appreciate the arts, but it is not sufficient for rhetorical production. This novel.

then, differentiates between belletristic taste as it is constructed by Blair, that ability to

appreciate and produce eloquence, and a belletristic inclination, that desire to satiate the

aesthetic sense, without the ability to do so. Recollecting Heger's comments on Bronte’s

essay, here too taste without training can be like "force without a lever” (qtd. and trans.

Barker 415): albeit for Maggie it is an impotent force for much of the novel. Blair's

construction of the appreciation (taste) and the production (eloquence) as two sides of the

same coin is thus bifurcated. Maggie can neither appreciate the finer things nor attain

them. In a cautionary note more akin to the demonic Vashti’s rhetoric than to that of the

pragmatic Frances, however, once she encounters the educated and attractive Stephen

0 Madame Jeanne Roland (1754-93). the wife of a French politician who died under the guillotine, was a contemporary of de Stael. 182

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Guest. Maggie's imaginative talents and delicacy of taste, lacking a proper channel,

threaten to overwhelm her in a "shattering, violent manner'' (Eliot Mill 320).

“Take Back Your Corinne”: The Repudiation of the Improvisatrice

The novel's references to Maggie's improvisatrice heritage are not always as

oblique as these descriptions of her Campbellian imagination and Blairian taste might

indicate, however. In conversation with her would-be lover Phillip. Maggie herself

explicitly repudiates de Stael's novel, saying "Take back your Corinne [.. .]. You were

right in telling me she would do me no good. But you were wrong in thinking I would

wish to be like her'' (Eliot Mill 433). As Phillip has claimed and Maggie here agrees, the

improvisatrice would indeed do Maggie no good. In order to understand fully this

enigmatic comment, however, one must not only consider Maggie's criticisms of de

Stael's novel but also the repudiation of belletristic rhetoric that perv ades The Mill on the

Floss.

By focusing on the improvisatrice's unrealistic nature and ultimate failure.

Maggie's comments articulate the novel's critique of the improvisatrice rhetoric. In

answer to Phillip's teasing question. "Wouldn't you really like to be a tenth Muse. then.

Maggie?"

'Not at all.' Maggie claimed, laughing. 'The Muses were uncomfortable goddesses. I think - obliged always to carry rolls and musical instruments around with them. [...] As soon as I came to the blond-haired lady in the park. I shut it up and determined to read no further. I foresaw that the light complexioned girl7

Lucy Edgarmond 183

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. would win away all the love from Corinne and make her miserable. I‘m determined to read no more books where the blond haired women carry away all the happiness. (Eliot Mill 432-3)

Like Frances* story of Lucia in Bronte’s The Professor. Maggie's playful assessment of

Corinne emphasizes the improvisatrice's fantastic nature as well as the flaw built into the

rhetorical system: regardless of Corinne's monumental rhetorical talents, the meek and

mediocre "light complexioned girl" eventually makes her miserable. It is the orthodox

woman who is destined for true happiness if not for the improvisatrice's brilliant

eloquence. Ironically, despite her protestations here. Maggie herself is fated to enact this

cycle with her own fair-complexioned girl. Just as Corinne loses her rhetorical gifts and.

ultimately, her life when her lover abandons her for her half-sister, so too does Maggie

lose her reputation and attendant station in life through her attraction to Stephen Guest.

her cousin Lucy's fiance. Indeed, in Maggie's last conversation with Lucy, in which she

entreats her cousin "Forgive him - he will be happy then ..." (Eliot Mill 642) we can

hear echoes of Corinne's selfless deathbed advice that Lucy Edgarmond should mend her

husband's broken heart by being "Lucy and Corinne in one" (de Stael 376). Despite her

denigration of de Stael's heroine, then. Maggie is condemned to live out the narrative for

which she criticizes Corinne. Using Germaine Greer's term. Maggie appears to be a

"slipshod sibyl."" one who has the imagination and taste of the improvisatrice and whose

life follows the now familiar arc of the Corinne narrative. Given these affinities with the

improvisatrice tradition, then, why Maggie does claim and Phillip agree that Corinne

would do her no good?

184

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Blair’s Rhetoric: Belletrism and Other Ineffectual Notions

To answer this puzzle, one must look at the representation of belletrism

throughout the novel, for interpolated into Maggie's story is the notion that the belletristic

rationale and attendant primacy of the imagination and the taste are no use when facing

life's harsh realities. Notwithstanding Maggie's delicacy and imagination, belletrism in

this novel -feminized or otherw ise — concerns only production, not consumption.

ThroughoutMill, the belletristic paradigm that Blair had forwarded as model by which

one could become a better rhetor, citizen and human being is cast as the educational

model for the idle rich. Given this sense that belletrism is generally useless, the

improvisatrice's truncation and feminization of this rhetorical system would indeed do

the financially and educationally straightened Maggie "no good."

Emphasizing Mill's rhetorical focus Blair's Lectures is used as a symbol of

belletrism's failure. After his father's financial ruin. Maggie's brother Tom turns to his

uncle. Mr. Deane, for advice. When asked what he had been learning during his time at

school. Tom hesitantly responds, "a good deal of Latin [...] and Greek and Roman

History and Euclid [...] English Poetry. Horae Paulinae and Blair's Rhetoric, the last

Half' (Eliot Mill 312). Tom's education has been just such a mixture of contemporary

belles lettres and classical texts that Blair himself might have advocated. Unfortunately.

such an "exposure" to the right authors has done nothing for Tom's practical abilities. As

the narrator claims "his ear and tongue had become accustomed to a great many words

and phrases which are understood to be signs of an educated condition. [...] the lessons

had left a deposit of vague ineffectual notions" (Eliot Mill 264). Reaffirming the 185

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. construction of Tom "ineffectual" education, in which Blair’s rhetoric has played a part.

is his uncle’s comment that such an education is "all very well for a young fellow like our

Mr. Stephen Guest, who’ll have nothing to do but sign checks all his life” (Eliot Mill 314)

but that it will serve the impoverished Tom poorly indeed. This notion of rhetoric as the

entertainment of the idle rich makes a sharp contrast to Blair’s own notion of rhetorical

participation as a man’s civic duty8 and the improvement of taste as the means of

becoming a better citizen9. Tom's education, then, portrays the rhetorical arts as an

effete hobby based in passive appreciation, a thing apart from the working world.

Maggie's thwarted growth as an improvisatrice similarly constructs belletrism as

useless in the everyday world. In fact, when read in conjunction with the myth of Letitia

Landon’s childhood. Maggie’s childhood endeavors read as a satire of the making of an

improvisatrice. That is. as recounted in Chapter Three, an often-repeated story10 of

Landon's childhood is that she taught her parents’ gardener to read, which directly led to

his lifelong success as an independent businessmen. Nine-vear-old Maggie likewise tries

to teach Luke, her parents’ employee, to read, but with radically different results:

'I think you never read any book but the Bible, did you Luke?’ 'Nay. Miss - an' not much o’ that.’ said Luke, with great frankness. ’I’m no reader. I aren’t.' ‘But if I leant you one of my books. Luke? I've not got anyvery pretty books that would be easy for you to read: but there's “Pug’s Tour of Europe ''' - that would

s See Blair 1:1. 9 See Blair 1:2. 10 Both of these stories were originally published in Blanchard and then repeated by later authors such as Thomas and Sheppard. Landon published a collection of children's stories. Traits and Trials o f Early Life (1836) which included similar incidents that she claimed to be thinly fictionalized. 11 Pug's Tour o f Europe: or the Travell 'd Monkey: containing His wonderful Adventures in the Principal Capitals of the greatest Empires. Kingdoms and (London. Slates 1824) was xenophobic children's book, in which drawings of various nations are accompanied by doggerel verse. 186

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. tell you all about the different sorts of people in the world, and if you didn't understand the reading, the pictures would help you [...] "Nay. Miss Tn got to keep 'count o' the flour an' the com - 1 can't do wi' knowin' so many things besides my work. That's what brings folk to the gallows - knowin' everything but what they'n got to get their bread by.' (Eliot Mill 81)

Rather than illustrating the socially ameliorative effects of belletrism. as did Landon's

purported efforts. Maggie's attempt here to educate her family's gardener underscores the

differences between the belles lettres and that which one "got to get their bread by." Like

Landon. Maggie urges Luke to read a children's book and innocently offers instruction in

reading by claiming "if you didn't understand the reading, the pictures would help you"

(Eliot Mill 81). Nevertheless, the efforts of proto-improvisatrice Maggie are frustrated by

the novel's distinction between the practical knowledge that allows one to gain one's

bread and "ineffectual" knowledge, a category that includes thebelles lettres. be they

Blair's Rhetoric or "Pug's Tour of Europe." Maggie has the instincts attributed to the

proto-improvisatrice Landon. but Maggie's reality is far more grim than the world of

romanticized melancholy that Landon had portrayed in History o f A Child (1836).

Maggie's exposure to the ineffectual nature of belletrism does not end with her

childhood, however. The ironic contrast between the literature that informs Maggie's

taste and the world in which she lives continues throughout the novel. For example, after

her father's downfall. Bob Jankins. who was also once a family employee, hopes to cheer

Maggie by bringing her a gift:

'I lighted on these books, and I thought they might make up to you a bit for them as you've lost: for I heared you speak o' picturs - an* as for picturs. look here!" The opening of the red handkerchief had disclosed a superannuated 'Keepsake' and six or seven numbers of a 'Portrait Gallery.' in royal octavo: and 187

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the emphatic request to look referred to a portrait of George the Fourth in all the majesty of his depressed cranium and voluminous neckcloth. [... ] '[T]he man at the book-stall. he said they banged everything for pictures - he said they were a fiist-rate article.” (Eliot Mill 375)

Ironically, the literary periodicals that Bob has brought Maggie would have very likely

feature the work of "English Improvisatrice”" Letitia Landon. While the year in this scene

is 1842: the "superannuated”’ (i.e. outmoded) state o f theKeepsake makes it probable that

it dates from the 1830s. when Landon was prolific in the literary periodicals generally

and in the Keepsake specifically. During this period. Landon contributed to at least six of

the ten Keepsake annuals that were published, a range that includes the years 1829-1833.

1836. and 1837. Further, although it is not documented, it is likely that Landon's work

appeared in other issues anonymously, as was often the custom in periodicals of the

period. Regardless of Landon's presence in their pages, however, both the Keepsake and

the Portrait Gallery represent a shallow gentrified belletrism in keeping with the novel's

distinction between "ineffectual education” and useful knowledge. By the time Eliot was

writing Mill, the literary annuals had largely gone out of style: the gift book, which was

once considered a viable means of not only improving one's taste but also of

demonstrating one's refinement to others, had become a symbol of outmoded middle-

class tastelessness and crass commercialism.

Bob's own reaction to these magazines satirizes the improvement of taste through

appreciation that is at the heart of the belletristic rhetoric. In one sense, his behavior does

bear out Blair's theory that all men are endowed with a natural faculty of taste, as

indicated by his own reaction to the volumes. Bob says. "I sot up till the clock was gone

188

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. twelve last night a-lookin’ at 'em - 1 did - till they stared at me out o’ the picturs as if

they’d know when I spoke to em. But. lors! I shouldn’t know what to say to 'em.”

They’ll be more fittin company for you. Miss (Eliot Mill 375). Bob’s behavior espouses

belletrism only to denigrate it. On the one hand, he does indeed have some sort of taste:

he has responded to these texts: and they have stimulated his imagination, as

demonstrated by his careful perusal of these pictures and his visualization of

conversations w ith these people. On the other hand, the outdated nature of these

volumes, combined with the narrator’s condescending description of these texts, along

with Eliot's own derogatory view of the giftbook genre makes it clear that these are

inferior models to peruse. As seen here. then, belletristic inclination is not a natural

Delicacy of taste, for it does not naturally lead us to seek correct models: Bob thinks

these gift books to be the "bettermost books” (EliotMill 375). Along with thus

illustrating a lack of innate taste that opposes the Blairian paradigm. Bob’s concluding

remark - ''They’ll be more fitting company for you. Miss” — again connects belletristic

rhetoric to the leisured classes, a station to which Bob would ascribes Maggie throughout

the novel, regardless of her occupational or fiscal condition.

Maggie’s aesthetic sense, or lack thereof, is like Bob’s in that it does not

differentiate belletristic inclination from true Delicacy. While Maggie has had more

education than Bob and has a stronger natural faculty of taste, she nevertheless suffers

from a similar inability to discern cheap romances from great works of art. For Bob. the

only consequence of his lack of Delicacy was money wasted at the booksellers: for

Maggie the results are far more dire. Upon Maggie’s first meeting with Stephen Guest: 189

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. [S]he was conscious of having been looked at a great deal in a rather furtive manner from beneath a pair of well-marked horizontal eyebrows [...]• 1° P°or Maggie's highly-strung, hungry nature - just come away from a third-rate schoolroom, w ith all its jarring sounds and petty round of tasks - these apparently trivial causes had the effect of rousing and exalting her imagination in a way that was mysterious to herself [...] she felt the half-remote presence of a world of love and beauty and delight, made up of vague mingled images from all the poetry and romance she had ever read, or ever woven in her dreamy reveries. [...] The music was vibrating in her still - Purcell's music with its wild passion and fancy [...]. She was in her brighter aerial world [...]. (Eliot Mill 494-5)

Like her improvisatrice predecessors. Maggie is exalted by love, and her already

developed faculties of imagination and Delicacy are further intensified by her feelings for

Stephen. By using language that echoes the improvisatrice tradition - "exalting the

imagination." "a world of love and beauty and delight." and "music vibrating in her" -

Maggie's first encounter with Stephen Guest evidences the stimulation of the

improvisatrice-like qualities that Phillip had seen in her as a child. With Corinne. then.

Maggie could say "My love for you inspires me" (de Stael 285). When Corinne made

this claim, however, she was citing Oswald's improving effects on her improvisations.

For Maggie, the "inspiration" Stephen provides reawakens those improvisatrice qualities

of mind that cause her to want what she cannot have. Rather than leading to an out

pouring of eloquence. Maggie's faculties lead to romantic improprieties. Like Bronte's

Vashti. then. Maggie breaks the belletristic connection between eloquence and virtue

cited in Blair's Lectures that has been strategically employed in the improvisatrice

tradition. While the super-refinement of Corinne or Eulalie's taste and imagination lead

to morally ameliorative effusions, the fact that Maggie has a quantity of taste and

imagination leads to personal indiscretion, not the elevation of public morality.

190

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In The Mill on the Floss, then, the rhetorical gift of the improvisatrice is turned

into a curse when Eliot revises the Blairian construction of taste. In her alterations of this

rhetorical paradigm. Delicacy is not innate rhetorical ability as in the improvisatrice

tradition, but simply a yearning for the beautiful. Correctness of taste, which Maggie

lacks, is likewise reduced: rather than a quality of erudition that improves one’s own

rhetorical ability, it is merely a passive faculty of appreciation. It is thus "ineffectual" as

seen in both Tom and Maggie’s experiences. Not only the improvisatrice but also the

epistemic and belletristic rhetorics upon which it is founded are thus denigrated in Eliot’s

first contribution to the improvisatrice tradition.

“Spin the byssus drearily”: Eliot and Erinna

Considering Eliot's treatment of the improvisatrice tradition in The Mill on the

Floss, it is surprising to see her return to this figure in "Erinna” andDaniel Deroncla. In

the former, particularly, she represents the improvisatrice rhetoric as untenable. Eliot's

unpublished poem five-stanza "Erinna” revises the story of the Greek poet by placing her

in a dreary and menial role. Rather than performing for adoring audiences, this Erinna is

chained to her spinning wheel, presumably until her "youthful death" (Eliot "Preface to

Erinna’’327). Eliot first describes Erinna. then her process of invention, and concludes

with two stanzas spoken by Erinna. in which she laments her fate and asks Athena for

"steadfastness” (Eliot "Erinna" 51). As this summary' indicates. "Erinna” not only

evidences Eliot's incorporation of the improvisatrice but also documents another of her

revisions to this tradition. In this poem. then, rather than using the improvisatrice to 191

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. examine the failure of belletristic rhetoric, she examines the ways in which a woman

possessing the gifts of an improvisatrice would nevertheless be bound - and gagged - by

the constraints of society.

Despite Eliot's pessimistic view of the improvisatrice rhetoric articulated in Mill.

its presence in "Erinna" is nevertheless central. Admittedly, she departs from the

sentimentalizing of this figure seen, for example, in Landon's poem of the same name.

Nevertheless. Eliot retains both the physical and rhetorical motifs of the improvisatrice

tradition. In regard to the former, our first vision of Erinna recalls the Italianate looks of

previous improvisatrices:

She held the spindle as she sat. Erinna with the thick-coiled mat Of raven hair and deepest agate eyes. Gazing with a sad surprise At surging visions of her destiny. (Eliot "Erinna" 4-8)

Not only does the Greek origin of the Erinna story recall the classical motif of the

improvisatrice tradition but Erinna's "raven hair and deepest agate eyes" also recollect

the appearance of previous improvisatrices. such as Corinne's "black curls" and sibylline

attire (de Stael 20). Distinguishing this Erinna from other members of the tradition,

however, the "sad surprise" of her destiny is not a broken heart, but "To spin the bvssus

wearily / In insect labour, while the throng / Of Gods and men wrought deeds the poets

wrought in song" (Eliot "Erinna" 9-11). Clearly, this is not an improvisatrice who will be

crowned at the Capitol a la Corinne. Condemned to spend her life at the spinning wheel.

Erinna's fate is far more mundane than the theatrical deaths of earlier improvisatrices.

although certainly no more pleasant. 192

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. More important than her physical appearance. Erinna has the rhetorical abilities of

an improvisatrice as well. Like such improvisatrices as de Stael's Corinne and Landon’s

Eulalie. Erinna's suffering leads to her spontaneous outpouring of verse, although its

effects are distinct from the belletristic amelioration associated with earlier figures in this

tradition: “Hark the passion in her eyes / Changes to melodic cries / Lone she pours her

lonely pain” (Eliot "Erinna” 25-31). Here. Erinna's "passion" is converted into her

rhetorical performance. As with Landon's improvisatrices. this Erinna's extemporaneous

effusion is marked by a quality that Campbell would term "harmony" and that Blair

called "music." that audible beauty associated with the pleasure engendered by words.

Her cries are "melodic:" they are termed "song" and "speech / Harmonious" (Eliot

"Erinna" 30-1). In this identification of Erinna's performance w ith the musical

spontaneity of the improvisatrice. our first glimpse into Erinna's improvisation process

connects her to this tradition.

While Erinna herself may thus be associated with the rhetorical music of the

improvisatrice. the poem's prosody breaks with this tradition. As Glennis Stephenson

rightly notes, the productions attributed to Landon's improvisatrices - and. by extension.

to the poems of Landon herself - are characterized by anaphora, use of cliche, energy of

excess, and a sensual overload (Stephenson 154 ). Landon's use of anaphora, as well as

other repetitive devices, for instance, contributes to her overwrought and unnatural style.

as seen in her own "Erinna":

I gave my soul entire unto the gift I deem'd mine own. direct from heaven: it was The hope, the bliss, the energy of life. 193

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I had no hope that dwelt not in my lyre. No bliss whose being grew not from my lyre. No energy undevoted to my lyre. (Landon "Erinna” 81-86)

Admittedly, this use of repetition adds a monotony far less euphonious and artistic than

Landon attributes to her own Erinna. Nevertheless the anaphoric use here of "lyre.” and

of "1.” "hope." "bliss." and "energy" as repetends. combined with the inversions of lines

84 and 85. give the verse an archaic, ritualistic feel appropriate to the improvisatrice's

construction as a classical Sybil, that "priestess of Apollo" originally described in

Corinne (de Stael 20). Further. Landon's repetition here represents that imagistic

layering that characterizes the appeal to the imagination that is the improvisatrice's

special rhetorical province: her repetition of the image of the lyre, for example can be

read as an appeal to the reader's imagination. That is. according to Campbell, the

primary means by which we appeal to the imagination is by exhibiting to it a "lively and

beautiful" representation (Campbell 3). an effect that is achieved in part through the

energy of vivacity. Repetition would appear to be one stylistic manifestation of this

quality, for Campbell argues that repetition can make a speaker appear "impassioned”

and that it can "add to the energy of the expression" of one's thoughts (Campbell 340:

409). Landon's use of this stylistic device can be read as an enactment of the

improvisatrice rhetoric described in much of her poetry.

Eliot's poem likewise opens with an overblown image that recollects the

inversions and imagistic layering of the earlier improvisatrices:

Twas* in the aisle that Helios saw Uprising from the sea a flower-tressed bride

194

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. To meet his kisses - Rhodes, the filial pride Of god-taught craftsmen who gave Art its law. (Eliot “Erinna" 1-4)

The inverted diction of the first line as well as the elaborate descriptions of Rhodes in this

passage may lead the reader to expect an improvisatrice poem firmly rooted in the

stylistic tradition of excess. The abruptness of the next two lines, a couplet with a hard.

masculine rhyme, however, disrupts this notion: "She held the spindle as she sat / Erinna

with the dark coiled mat" (Eliot "Erinna" 5-6). As these lines indicate, rather than

employing repetition as the prosodic reinforcement of the improvisatrice rhetoric, the rest

of Eliot's poem uses rhyme scheme to revise this construct. By using a highly-structured

modified sonnet form in the first two verses, as well as predominantly masculine rhymes.

Eliot imparts a sense of repetition through the poem’s rhythm. Unlike Landon's

employment of anaphora, howev er. Eliot's use does not emphasize the improvisatrice

appeal to a Campbellian imagination, but instead imparts the monotony of Erinna's

existence. This is not a Lockean repetition of key images intended to appeal to the

imagination but an audible pattern. While the style of Eliot's poem uses a form of the

repetition identified as a characteristic of the improvisatrice style, she revises this quality

from word repetition to rhyme scheme, and in so doing moves from imparting a sense of

improvisatorial effusion to one of weary monotony.

While less histrionic than the misery that is the improvisatrice's lot in the works

of Landon and de Stael. this tedium connects Erinna to the earlier tradition thorough the

suffering it causes. Similar to Landon's Erinna whose “songs have been the mournful

history / Of woman's tenderness and woman's tears." "lonely pain" (Eliot "Erinna" 27)

195

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. provides material for Eliot's Erinna. Unlike earlier improvisatrices. however. Erinna

breaks with the Blairian moral sublime which arises from "certain exertions of the human

mind: from certain affections and actions of our fellow-creatures" of which "high virtue

is the most natural source" (Blair 1: 53-4). As described in Chapter Three of this

dissertation, the improvisatrice invoked this Blairian sublime through her womanly

virtue, usually occasioned by her unjust misery. Eliot's Erinna suffers as well, however.

but her pain is not for the belletristic betterment of others. Here instead

The god within us plies His shaping power and molds in speech Harmonious a statue of our sorrow. Till suffering turn beholding and we borrow. Gazing on Self apart, the wider reach Of solemn souls that contemplate. (Eliot "Erinna" 29-34)

In other words, while suffering might lead to individual eloquence, its ultimate purpose is

not the persuasion of one's auditors, but self-knowledge. Therefore. Erinna's pain is not

for the good of an immediate audience, or even for those potential latter-day readers of

"The Spindle." Instead, her suffering serv es to reconcile her to fate. Unlike other

improvisatrices. Erinna does not lead others to a Blairian moral sublime: her experiences

only achieve her own acquiescence.

This Erinna. too. differs from other improvisatrices in her lack of a romantic

interest: Stael's Corinne had Oswald. Bronte's Frances had Crimsworth and Landon's

improvisatrices had an undifferentiated and unremarkable series of lovers. Even

Landon's unattached Erinna gives up poetry in the hopes finding true love. Eliot's Erinna

however, never expresses any interest in romance. Admittedly, such a lack of interest is

196

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. understandable: since she is chained to a spinning wheel, her chances of meeting

available young men are slim. Nevertheless, by concerning herself with her own

suffering rather than the betterment of others or romantic love, this Erinna radically alters

the subject matter of the improvisatrice.

Given that Eliot's Erinna never has her heart broken, her death also diverges from

the narrative of the improvisatrice. Unlike the operatic death of de Stael's heroine, for

example. Eliot's Erinna is still alive at the end of the poem. This continued survival does

not signal her break with her improvisatrice role, as it does for Bronte's Frances or

Landon's Erinna. or some new triumph over that punishment which serv es as an

identify ing characteristic of the improvisatrice tradition. Rather. Erinna's final state

indicates the monotony of her life: just as her life does not change from the beginning of

the poem, so too that reader can assume that she will continue her "insect labours" until

she dies. This text does not end in death or marriage, then, and Erinna's existence lacks

the heights of fame or depths of heartbreak that characterize many other figures in this

tradition.

By moving the rhetorical space of the improvisatrice from the adulation of the

Capitol to the drudgery of the home. "Erinna" thus radically alters the rhetorical context

in which this improvisatrice was seen in Landon's poem of the same name. Unlike

earlier constructions of the improvisatrice. Eliot's poem is less about the rhetorical

process by which a supposedly feminine woman could invent, arrange and deliver

discourses, and more concerned with the futility of such efforts given the cultural

restrictions on woman's role. Like proto-improvisatrice Maggie in The Mill on the Floss. 197

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "Erinna" argues that even a woman of superior faculties would find it impossible to

escape her role.

Not all Eliot's improvisatrice figures are mute, however. In her last revisions of

the improvisatrice. seen in the characters of Gwendolyn Harleth and Lenora Halm-

Eberstein ofDaniel Deronda (1875). Eliot summarizes those critiques of the

improvisatrice rhetoric seen in her earlier works while presenting a woman successful in

the public sphere. That is. in the character of Gwendolyn Harleth. the reader is presented

with a girl with the romantic notions of the improvisatrice with none of her rhetorical

talent, while Lenora Halm-Eberstein represents the power of the improvisatrice rhetoric

stripped of its romantic notions and so breaks the connection between eloquence and

morality that is at the heart of the improvisatrice tradition.

Incapable Oratrixes and Reptilian Rhetors:Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda charts the intersecting narratives of the title character, who is on

a quest to discover his parentage, and Gwendolyn Harleth. a girl who makes an unhappy

marriage after her family's financial ruin. During his quest to learn his own origins.

Daniel serves as a spiritual mentor to the unhappy Gwendolyn. She falls in love with

Daniel, and the death of her tyrannical husband makes marriage between the two a

possibility. After the revelation of his Jewish birth, however, he marries Mirah Lapidoth.

another woman he has mentored. The novel ends with their marriage and Gwendolyn's

reconciliation to her own loss of Deronda.

198

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Gwendolyn’s unhappy marriage is the means by which she solves her family's

financial troubles. Prior to accepting her tyrannous husband, however, she hopes to find

another solution to her dilemma. And. in an echo of "Silly Novels.” her own lack of

talent makes her think of turning to the stage. Recollecting the triumph she had achieved

"in wearing Greek dress" (Eliot Deronda 213) during an evening of charades in happier

times, she recollects the admiration her performance elicited from Klesmer. the famous

music teacher. She sends for him to inform him of her plan and solicit his help: "I must

get my own bread and provide for my mama, so as to save her from any hardship. The

only way I can think of - and I should like this better than anything - is to be an actress —

to go on the stage. But of course 1 should like to take a high position" (Eliot Deronda

215). As Moers points out. Gwendolyn "wants to be a Corinne and thinks it will be an

easy and delightful way of life" (Moers 199). That is. the ease with which Gwendolyn

thinks such fame is to be achieved recollects the spontaneous nature of the improvisatrice

rhetoric:

[I]t seemed but the affair of a year or so for her to become the most approved Juliet of the time: or if Klesmer encouraged her idea of being a singer, to proceed by more gradual steps to her place in the opera, where she won money and applause by occasional performances. Why not? At home, at school, among acquaintances, she had been used to have her conscious superiority admitted: and she had moved in a society where everything, from low arithmetic to high art. is of the amateur kind politely supposed to fall short of perfection only because gentlemen and ladies are not obliged to do more than they like - otherwise they would probably give forth abler writings and show themselves more commanding artists than any the world is at present obliged to put up with. The self-confident visions that had beguiled her w ere not of a highly exceptional kind. (Eliot Deronda 223-4)

199

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In her dreamy plans for the future. Gwendolyn imagines her innate taste - her Blairian

Delicacy - to be of a far greater degree and importance than it is in reality, and in so

doing scripts herself into the improvisatrice narrative established in Corinne. That is. in

de Stael's novel, because she has such excellent taste. Corinne excels in all expressive

arts, performing not only as an improvisatrice and lecturer but also as a singer of comic

opera and as an actress in the lead role of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. As with the

fictional Corinne. Gwendolyn believes her Delicacy of taste will suffice for her to

achieve renown in these arenas, or indeed, whatever expressive venue she selects. Like

other members of her class, she believes her taste would allow her to “put forth abler

writing" or be a more "commanding artist" than those presently available. Until her

interv iew with Klesmer. then. Gwendolyn accepts the foundation of the improvisatrice

rhetoric: that belletristic taste automatically leads to eloquence.

As in The Mill on the Floss, where belletristic rhetoric was connected to the

moneyed classes, here too belletrism is a class issue. As businessman Mr. Dean points

out to Tom Tulliver inMill, works like "English Poetry. Horae Paulinae and Blair's

Rhetoric, the last Half' (Eliot Mill 312) may be suitable for gentlemen such as the

wealthy Stephen Guest, but they are not beneficial to those who work for a living. In

Daniel Deronda. this separation between those who work and those with preoccupied

with taste similarly exists. Although "gentleman and ladies [...] do no more than they

like." it is supposed that they are naturally abler than the masses. In both novels, then,

taste is not the civic issue that it is in Blair's rhetoric, but an elitist concern for the idle

rich. 200

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. But while Gwendolyn may believe her status as a lady vouchsafes the Delicacy of

taste that can win her acclaim. Klesmer informs her otherwise, in terms that recollect the

distinction between belletristic inclinations and that true Delicacy:

You are a beautiful young lady - you have been brought up in ease - you have done what you would [...] you have not been called upon to be anything but a charming young lady, whom it is an impoliteness to find fault with [...]. You have exercised your talents from the drawing-room standpunkt. My dear Fraulein, you must unlearn all your mistaken admirations. You must know what you have to strive for. and then you must subdue your mind and body to unbroken discipline. (Eliot Deronda 216. 218)

While Gwendolyn recalls that mind-and-millinery author, who lacks the ability to discern

her mediocrity from genius. Klesmer echoes the critical voice of "Silly Novelists" in his

differentiation of the bourgeois dilettante from the true artist. Gwendolyn, the would-be

improvisatrice not only lacks the supposed overabundance of womanly taste that supplies

the rhetorical prowess of the improvisatrice. but her position status as a lady, which she

confidently assures Klesmer is her "advantage" on stage (Eliot Deronda 220). is in fact

one of her many liabilities. As Klesmer claims, it is an "impoliteness to find fault" with

young ladies. Gwendolyn's belief in her own talent, then, is unfounded, for it springs

from a cultural system in which all women's efforts are the subject of "mistaken

admirations." Klesmer's critique calls into question the foundation of the improvisatrice

rhetoric. Women do not have excellent taste: it is simply a cultural convention to tell

them so. The easy praise they earn in the private realm not only prevents their

improvement but presents an obstacle to later attempts to achieve excellence due to their

inflated self-worth and lack of self-discipline. Seeing no other alternatives. Gwendolyn

thus abandons her plan to become another Corinne. and marries a cruel but wealthy man. 201

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. While Gwendolyn is a girl with romantic notions suitable for an improvisatrice

who lacks the talent to be the true improvisatrice figure of the novel. Lenora Halm-

Eberstein proves that a woman's ability to affect an audience is not predicated on any

belletristic goodness or abundance of Campbellian imagination. The mother of Daniel

Deronda. Lenora abandoned her infant son to pursue her talents for the stage. While her

decision may have deprived Deronda of a mother. Lenora herself achieved international

renown for her singing and acting abilities. Like Villette's Vashti. Lenora embodies

another inversion of the belletristic rationale underlying earlier incarnations of the

improvisatrice rhetoric.

While Lenora's stage talents may favor the premeditation of the actor's craft over

the effusion of improvisation, the narrator makes it clear that she has these spontaneous

gifts as well. Prior to telling her son the story of her life, she expostulates on the futility

of regretting the past in an impassioned effusion. These extemporaneous words make it

clear her gifts of eloquence are manifest in spontaneous speech as well as in music or

drama:

The varied transitions of tone with which this speech was delivered were as perfect as the most accomplished actress could make them. The speech was in fact a piece of what may be called sincere acting: this women's nature was one in which all feeling - and all the more when it was tragic as well as real - immediately became the matter of spontaneous representation: experience immediately passed into drama, and she acted her emotions. In a minor degree this is nothing uncommon, but in the Princess the acting had a rare perfection of physiognomy, voice and gesture. It would not be true to say she felt less because of this double consciousness: she felt - that is. her mind went through - all the more, but with a difference: each nucleus of pain or pleasure had a deep atmosphere of the excitement or spiritual intoxication that at once exalts and deadens. (Eliot Deronda 539)

202

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Lenora's "sincere acting" revises the improvisatrice's spontaneous rhetorical process.

Like Landon's Eulalie or de S tael's Corinne. Lenora’s eloquence is due to the fact that in

her "all feeling [...] immediately became the matter of spontaneous representation."

Moreover. Lenora too has the improvisatrice's refined sensibility; she feels "all the

more." displaying that excess of Campbellian passion and imagination that are the

hallmark of the improvisatrice’s mental faculties. But while Lenora's eloquence leads to

a "spiritual intoxication” that "exalts." she invokes no Blairian moral sublime, for even as

her words achieve this elevation they simultaneously "deaden." Like Bronte's Vashti.

Lenora may evidence woman's rhetorical force, but it is not belletristic excellence she

extols, rather a power that is amoral at best, immoral at worst.

The story Lenora tells of her life similarly complicates and compromises the

improvisatrice paradigm. As with Corinne. Lenora's mother was Italian and her father

was English. Both women also possessed a creative drive led them to tlee a constrictive

English society when their father died. But while Corinne managed to do so through a

convenient paternal bequest, however. Lenora does so by deserting her son. leaving him

to be raised as an orphan by one of her many admirers. As indicated by this

"unwomanly" act. Lenora does not have a superabundance of feminine emotions. In fact

the opposite emotional state is the case: she repeatedly tells her son Daniel she has no

affection to give.12 In other words. Lenora is devoid of the feminine emotions that the

improvisatrice was said to hold in abundance. Her abilities are not an extension of

12 See pus 536. 541.542. 543. 547 203

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. faculties that make her a superior woman, then: they are instead an alternative to

feminine emotions and thus make her an unnatural woman:

I am not a loving woman. That is the truth. It is a talent to love - I lacked it. Others have loved me - and I have acted their love. I know very well what love makes of men and women - it is subjection. It takes another for a larger self, enclosing this one.' she pointed to her own bosom. *1 was never willingly subject to any man. Men have been subject to me.' (EliotDeronda 571)

Like Landon's Eulalie. who claims that "love [...] doth prefer another to itself' (Landon

"Lyre" 298). Lenora defines love as an unselfish self-annihilating force that "takes

another for a larger self, enclosing this one." Unlike the improvisatrices of Landon and

de Stael. who celebrate this emotion as woman's private role and the public exigency to

which the improvisatrice speaks as ’the fittest subject / for [a] maiden hand" (Landon

"Erinna" 342). love is. by her own admission, a "talent" Lenora lacked. She thus widens

the chasm between natural eloquence and feminine virtue first seen in Bronte's Vashti.

Vashti's rhetorical power degraded gender: she was a "demon" (Bronte Villette 339).

Lenora's eloquence, however, apes the feminization of Blairian Delicacy as rhetorical

power. With her unwitting admirers she has "acted their love." and so made men

"subject" to her will. Her rhetoric is not just unfeminine, then, but duplicitous. In an

about face from the Blairian ideal of virtue leading to eloquence. Lenora's "double

consciousness" allows her to assume rhetorical agency by invoking a false feminine

ideal. Here. then, is Eliot's final condemnation of the improvisatrice tradition: effusion

can spring not just from virtue but from a facility with pretense. Thus, the emotional

manipulation o f Lenora embodies a rhetoric antithetical to the spontaneous moralizing of

Corinne. 204

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Complementing this lack of womanly emotion. Lenora appears devoid of that

Campbellian vivacity that has been the hallmark of earlier improvisatrices. The

eloquence of Corinne, Eulalie, Erinna. and even the subversive Vashti is predicated on

those luminescent images of a womanly sprightliness by which the improvisatrice

engages the imagination of her audience. In notable contrast. Lenora's speech is marked

by its frigidity. In her two interviews with Deronda. the reader is repeatedly told of her

"col[d] tone" "aloofness" (536). "pallid excitement." (538). "frank coldness" (542) and

her "coldly meditative" air (542). Therefore, while Eliot never comments on Lenora's

imagination - Campbellian or otherwise - these descriptors suggest that her lack of

feminine Delicacy is accompanied by a deficiency of those Campbellian faculties upon

which the persuasive appeal of the improvisatrice was based.

While Lenora lacks those qualities associated in the improvisatrice with womanly

eloquence, however, unlike Bronte's Vashti. she is not a construct of the unnatural or

demonic woman. Instead, she calls into question altogether those essentialized notions of

femininity upon which the improvisatrice is based. As she tells her son. "Every woman

is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else be a monster, but I have not felt

exactly what other women feel - or say they feel, for fear of being unlike others" (Eliot

Deronda 539). Unlike "other women" the coolly reptilian Lenora enacts an

improvisatorial rhetoric through the spontaneity of her "double consciousness." but

stands outside the feminized paradigm from which such effusions were purported to

spring. She neither relies upon feminine Delicacy and taste, as do those improvisatrices

that have supported the status quo of gender norms, nor does she reinforce this role 205

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. through a parodic inversion, as does Bronte’s Vashti. Instead. Lenora's eloquence is not

connected to her sex at all. and it thus marks a final break with the feminization of

rhetorical theory for which the improvisatrice tradition stood throughout the nineteenth

century.

In Eliot's work, we can thus see the final stage of the improvisatrice tradition in

England. Throughout her fiction, we see a growing critique of belletristic rhetoric and.

more emphatically, the feminization of rhetorical theory that suggests a womanly

eloquence. Whether it be the sadly lacking Maggie Tulliver of The Mill on the Floss, the

stoic if stagnant Erinna. or the eloquent if unfeminine Lenora Halm-Eberstein ofDaniel

Deronda. Eliot only engages with the improvisatrice tradition to critique its gender-based

assumptions and impracticalities as a system for women's rhetoric. Thus, even though

she will eventually be silenced by social ostracism and the waters of the flood. Maggie

does at least have Eliot's final word on the nineteenth-century improvisatrice tradition:

"Take back yourCorinne."

206

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CONCLUSION

With a glance. The smile rose in his eyes again, and touched The ivy on my forehead, light as air. * * * "Keep to the green wreath. Since even dreaming of the stone and bronze Brings headaches, pretty cousin, and defiles The clean white morning dress." * * * ”1 perceive!— The headache is too noble for my sex. You think the heartache would sound decenter. Since that's woman special proper ache. And altogether tolerable, except To a woman." Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Aurora Leigh. 1856

In the Introduction. I define my intention to focus upon "imaginative literature as

the cultural transmission of rhetorical theory." and so "explore the improvisatrice

tradition, a strand of nineteenth-century rhetorical theory that has previously been

overlooked."1 In succeeding chapters, accordingly. I examine the improvisatrices of de

Stael. Landon. Bronte, and Eliot and so trace the creation, celebration, critique, and

abandonment of a single representation of the woman orator, the improvisatrice. This

1 See pg. 1.

207

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. construct represents an expansion of women’s access to rhetoric in that it theorizes

women’s engagement in public discourses traditionally reserved for men. Indeed, by

linking a woman’s eloquence to her possession of feminine virtue, the improvisatrice

tradition argues that women are eloquent notdespite the fact that they are women, but

because they are women. This rhetorical theory is not simply libratory. however: by

basing feminine eloquence on an essentialist notion of gender, the improvisatrice

tradition reifies conservative notions of sex. including the idea that women - and by

extension, women's speech - is inferior to man. The improvisatrice tradition, then,

expands women’s access to rhetoric but only by preserving the foundational notions of

conservative gender ideology.

Germaine de Stael's Corinne serves as a foundational text for the improvisatrice

rhetoric, for Corinne's persuasive abilities inaugurate the improvisatrice's feminization of

the belletristic and epistemic rhetorics described in George Campbell’s Philosophy of

Rhetoric and Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Letires. The rhetorical

revisions illustrated inCorinne were a success with the English reading public, for

nineteenth-century rev iewers and readers responded warmly to this construction of the

woman rhetor. Scholars familiar with twentieth and twenty-first century interpretations

of Corinne. however, may be surprised at the conserv ative moral draw n from de Stael’s

novel by some of its nineteenth-century reviewers, who read it as an illustration of the

"necessity of conforming to those rules that restrain the intercourse of the sexes”

(Playfair 469) or proof that only a "virtuous countrywoman [...] can give satisfaction to

the affections of an Englishman" (Rev. of Corinne. Satirist 310). Such receptions of the

improvisatrice document her inscription into a paradigm of women’s speech that is 208

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. essentially conservative. Due in part to this association of Corinne's publicly persuasive

acts with a fundamentally conservative model of gender, de Stael’s novel enjoyed

longstanding popular appeal; the Hill-Landon translation, for example, remained in print

for over a hundred years. The duration ofCorinne 's appeal, then, provided ample

occasion for the cultural transmission of the improvisatrice rhetoric.

Not that Corinne was the only means by which the improvisatrice rhetoric was

propagated. The model first popularized in England by de Stael’s Corinne was

perpetuated in Letitia Elizabeth Landon's poems of the improvisatrice tradition, a series

that includes •'Erinna." "Corinna." "The Improvisatrice.” and "A History of the Lyre."

Like de Stael. Landon associated the improvisatrice with a particular appeal to the

imagination and a feminized taste that together comprised a particularly "womanly"

eloquence. At first. Landon’s invocation of an improvisatrice ethos met with great

success; her verse sold well, and she was considered the "English Improvisatrice." a

"child of song" whose verses were the product of "spontaneous and sweet union”

(Literary Gazette 1824 292). As Landon’s career progressed, however, both her

personal and literary reputation became increasingly suspect. Her decreasing popularity

reveals one of the limitations of the improvisatrice rhetoric: as it is predicated on the

feminine ethos of youth, beauty and innocence, a w oman w ho is lacking these things

through age or nature will be considered unable to excel through these rhetorical means.

Accordingly, when Landon aged and rumors of her supposed licentiousness spread, she

was no longer the "child of song" but became a woman whose voluptuous verse was

censured by the same belletristic connection of rhetoric and morality that had been used

to laud her earlier works. As Landon’s waxing and waning critical fortunes prove, the 209

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. reliance upon prevailing nineteenth-century cultural assumptions in improvisatrice

rhetoric is a double-edged sword, for this paradigm only works to normalize woman’s

public speech if the rhetor maintains conservative gender ideologies. Otherwise, the

same belletristic and epistemic rhetorical theories that de Stael and Landon use to

rationalize their texts as appropriately feminine may be employed as evidence of an

"unnatural” womanhood.

As Landon’s example demonstrates, then, the improvisatrice rhetoric was

repressive as well as enabling. Thus, when Charlotte Bronte invokes the improvisatrice

in her first novel. The Professor, she uses it to critique the impracticability of the

improvisatrice rhetoric: as Frances Henri says of improvisatrice Lucia. "I am sure she

filled a sphere from whence you would never have thought of taking a wife" (Bronte

Professor 285). As Frances' comments indicate, a key motif of the improvisatrice

tradition is the rhetor's ultimate choice between rhetorical improvisation and a domestic

role. Bronte's last novel. Villeite. underscores the unsuitability of an improvisatrice for a

domestic role by recasting this rhetoric as a dark, demonic force in the actress Vashti.

whose rhetorical force comes from her perversion of the improvisatrice rhetoric.

Bronte's engagement with the improvisatrice tradition appears to build from Landon's

example, and both authors construct the improvisatrice tradition as a rhetorical system in

which the rhetor will give up or eventually fail.

Echoing and expanding Bronte's critiques. George Eliot's contributions to the

improvisatrice tradition broaden its scope to include failed improvisatrices and invoke

familiar motifs of the tradition only to reject the rhetorical system for which they stand.

In The Mill on the Floss and "Erinna." Eliot represents women who possesses the 210

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. improvisatrice's faculties yet have never found public acclaim or domestic happiness.

Lenora Halm-Eberstein. the single woman in the Eliot corpus who finds success through

her rhetorical talents, is entirely lacking in those feminine qualities upon which the

improvisatrice's eloquence is founded. In Eliot's works, women with the feminine

faculties of an improvisatrice are mute and miserable, while the woman with an

improvisatrice's rhetorical talents is devoid of conventionally feminine qualities. Eliot

thus severs the connection between feminine virtue and eloquence. This critique is part

of an overall failure of the belletristic project in Eliot's novels. That is. she represents

belletristic rhetoric as entertainment for the leisured classes rather than as the means to

civic participation originally intended by Blair. In Eliot, then, we see the ultimate

nineteenth-century critique of the improvisatrice rhetoric, and in this last major treatment

of the improvisatrice in the nineteenth-centurv England, we see the rejection of not just of

the construct but of belletrism itself.

“Too little culture, too little discipline, too low an idear The End of the Improvisatrice Tradition

Bronte's ambiguous revisionings of improvisatrice rhetoric and Eliot's subversive

appropriation of fragments from this tradition contrast with the popularity of Landon's

earlier success in a real-life enactment of the improvisatrice. Such a shift in critical

fortunes raises the question of its causes. Although a variety of factors contributed to the

abandonment of the improvisatrice figure, two primary influences on the improvisatrice's

fall from favor were changes in women's education and the evolving paradigm of the

woman author.

211

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Increasing educational opportunities for middle-class women are one source of

the revision of the improvisatrice tradition seen in Bronte and Eliot. In contrast to Eliot's

legendary erudition, for example. Letitia Landon's education by her cousin and an elderly

neighbor, while not unusual for a girl during the first part of the nineteenth-century, was

haphazard at best. Landon's background, then, lends itself well to an improvisatrice

rhetoric that emphasizes woman's natural rhetorical talents. Indeed. Landon's education

resembles that of Corinne herself, whose education until she was fifteen was conducted

by an aunt (de Stael 230). After that. Corinne's studies were self-directed. Reflecting this

sort of random education, the rhetorical theory espoused in de Stael's novel and Landon's

verse appears well suited to women who find themselves similarly ill-equipped for

participation in formal rhetoric.

With increasing educational opportunities for women, however, the seeming

naturalism of the improvisatrice rhetoric suited to Landon's educational background

becomes increasingly outdated. Reflecting this shift. Bronte moves from an early

enthusiasm for the improvisatrice paradigm to a more critical attitude. Bronte's 1830

portrait of improvisatrice Zenobia is clearly a retelling of the Corinne narrative: Zenobia

is an Italianate beauty renowned for eloquence and learning who falls in love with the

wrong man and loses him to a meek blonde woman. Her later works, however.

complicate the improvisatrice paradigm: The Professor's Frances Henri connects the

improvisatrice tradition to the classroom, revealing the tensions between the

improvisatrice rhetoric and formal education. Frances has the gifts and abilities of an

improvisatrice. but as narrator Crimsworth makes clear, it is her formal education that

leads to her success both rhetorically - as seen in the improvement of her wTiting - and

212

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. professionally - as seen in her promotion from grisette to teacher. Bronte, then, creates

an opposition between the improvisatrice rhetoric and formal education offered in the

classroom.

Bronte’s evolving attitude reflects wider changes in English education. The

years prior to the publication of Villette (1853) and The Professor (1857). for example,

saw the founding of colleges for women. The first of these -- Queen’s College for

women, founded in 1848 - was established as a governess training institution. In the

following year. Bedford College was established in London. While these institutions

were non-degree granting2, they nevertheless offered women formal access to the

discipline of Rhetoric as it was taught at men's colleges. At Queen's College, for

example, the students were taught rhetoric and belles lettres by Charles Kingsley (1819-

1875)J. who was a well-known author and clergymen as well as a professor at Queen’s

College (1848-1859) and Cambridge (1860-1869). Thus, the educational opportunities

offered to Bronte during her years in Brussels function as a precursor to that expansion of

women’s educational venues that characterized the later part of the century .

The tension between education and the improvisatrice tradition that characterizes

The Professor is present in Eliot's interpretations of the improvisatrice as well. In the

years between The Professor and The Mill on the Floss, women's access to education

continued to expand. In 1859. for example. Jessie Bouchette helped to found the Society

Promoting the Employment of Women, which was an attempt to give "a solid English

' In England, college-educated women were not awarded degrees until after World War I. ' In a feminization of rhetorical theory similar to the improvisatrice tradition. Kingsley claimed that belletristic studies were "well adapted to the mind of woman" because they called "into fullest exercise her blessed faculty of sympathy" ((forks 20:258).

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. education to young girls and teach older women to write a letter grammatically, to

calculate rapidly without a slate, and to keep accounts by single- and double entry”

(Anderson and Zinsser 185). The Society's focus on a practical education for women of

the lower classes reflects Eliot’s censure of much more than the impracticality of the

improvisatrice rhetoric for a woman such as Maggie Tulliver. who earns her own living.

In The Mill on the Floss, the improvisatrice tradition is absorbed into a larger critique of

the rhetorical and educational means available to women. This critique reflects the

efforts of the women's education movement, which by the third quarter of the nineteenth-

century had begun advocating an equal education for "at least the most talented” young

women (Anderson and Zinsser 186). The abandonment of the improvisatrice rhetoric,

then, is part of a much larger cultural shift in women's education.

Just as expanding educational opportunities influenced nineteenth-century

revisions of the improvisatrice tradition, so too does the evolution of the Lady Author

into the woman writer. While the construction of women's writing as extemporaneous

effusion was a common cultural notion during the first third of the nineteenth-century4,

women writing later in the nineteenth-centurv attempted to define themselves against

their precursors. As discussed in Chapter Five, in "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists.”

(1856) George Eliot distanced herself from earlier constructions of the woman writer

before she began to publish fiction. Nor was Eliot alone in making such a distinction. In

Aurora Leigh, published in the same year as Eliot’s essay. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

(1806-1861) expresses an attitude towards the improvisatrice paradigm similar to that of

Eliot's toward Lady Novelists. As Linda Peterson notes in her 1999 essay "(Re) Writing

4 See Mellor. Leighton. Peterson. 214

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. a History of the Lyre." Aurora Leigh' explicitly "abandons the model of the female poet

as improvisatrice" (123). The description of effusive verse in the first book of Aurora

Leigh supports Peterson's claim. According to narrator Aurora, such outpourings are the

sign o f a juvenile mind:

Many tender souls Have strung their losses on a rhyming thread. As children, cowslips: - the more pain they take. The work more withers. Young men. ay. and maids. Too often sow their wild oats in tame verse. Before they sit down under their own vine And live for use. Alas, near all birds Will sing at dawn. - and yet we do not take The chaffering swallow for the holy lark. (Browning I: 945-53)

By associating the easy rhyming and sentimentality of improvisation with juvenile verse.

Barrett Browning constructs improvisation as an immature stage in individual

development rather than the pinnacle of feminine rhetorical power. Further. Aurora's

description of effusion as an expression of naivete correlates with Elizabeth Barrett

Browning's opinion of Letitia Landon's verse. In a letter written in 1841 to Mary Russell

Mitford. Barrett Browning compares Landon's poetic power with that of Felicia Hemans.

and concludes "if I had these two powers to choose from [...] I mean the raw bare

powers - I would choose Miss Landon's" (Barrett Browning "Letter" 77-8). Barrett

Browning goes on to expand upon the "rawness" of Landon's ability: "I fancy it would

have worked out better - had itbeen worked out - with the right moral and intellectual

influences in application" (Barrett Browning "Letter" 78). Here, the lack of

5 Aurora Leigh is an II .000 line kunstlerroman that tells the story of its title character, a young woman determined to be a poet. Her pursuit of her dream leads to her rejection of and ultimate reunion w ith her childhood sweetheart as well as her involvement with the social issues of her day. including the reform of prostitutes.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. premeditation that Landon had used as evidence of her own rhetorical eloquence and

personal virtue is recast as "rawness." a deficit that kept Landon from achieving

greatness. In her private correspondence as well as in her poetry, then, the feminine

effusion of the improvisatrice is a rhetorical paradigm against which Barrett Browning

defines herself.

Eliot and Barrett Browning's attitude towards Landon is indicative of the

declining popularity of the improvisatrice as a model for the woman writer. Victorian

woman authors such as George Eliot. Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Barren Browning

had dissociated themselves from the effusive paradigm, and instead defined their writing

as intellectual labor akin to that of men. This distancing of the now-canonical woman

writers from the improvisatrice paradigm contributes to the degradation of this rhetorical

system. Thus, by the turn of the century, theDictionary o f National Biography (1901)

uses the term improvisatrice as it relates to women writers in a strictly pejorative sense:

"as a poetess. Letitia Elizabeth Landon can only rank as a gifted improvisatrice. She had

too little culture, too little discipline, too low an ideal of her art. to produce anything of

very great value” ("Letitia Landon"). In other words, an improvisatrice - even a "gifted”

one - is characterized by a lack of culture, discipline and aesthetic sense.6 Due in part to

the abandonment of the improvisatrice model by women writers, then, its evolution as a

paradigm for women's writing is marked by a steady decline in its respectability.

6 In Henry James (1843-1916) refers to Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) as an improvisatrice with a similarly derogatory' implication. In Notes on Novelists he calls Margaret Oliphant. the "great improvisatrice." stating that this makes her work slightly amusing but essentially without value (347-1916). Oliphant was an extremely prolific writer, best known for her "Chronicle of Carlingford" novels, which describe life in a quiet country town.

216

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Through examining a combination of imaginative and non-fictional texts, then,

we can not only document the emergence of the improvisatrice tradition but its

fragmentation as well. By reading literary texts into the rhetorical tradition we therefore

enlarge our understanding of the history of women's rhetorical practices. The

improvisatrice tradition reveals the permeable nature of the boundary between rhetorical

theory and imaginative literature and so illustrates the need for further study of

imaginative literature's role in the history of rhetoric.

Rhetoric and Literature: Together Again

The synthesis of literary and rhetorical texts that comprises the improvisatrice

tradition not only enriches our understanding of history but also suggests ways in which

scholars might begin to reassess the contemporary relationship of rhetorical and literary

studies. Similarly, in "The Cultures of Literature and Composition: What Could Each

Learn from the Other" (2002). Peter Elbow discusses the development of the relationship

between literature and composition, and reflects upon what each field could usefully

appropriate from the other. In brief. Elbow wishes that "the culture of composition

would learn to give an equally central place to the imaginative and metaphorical

dimensions of language” and that literature would learn "more inherent attention and

concern for students - their lives and what's on their minds” (539). This dissertation

attempts to address a line of inquiry similar to Elbow 's by examining how cross-

disciplinary appropriations can enrich our understanding of rhetorical theory and practice.

It writes the improvisatrice tradition into rhetorical history and so proves that the

217

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. imaginative literature of the nineteenth-century provides a rich source of evidence for

both the theorization and illustration of rhetorical theories by and for women.

Such an approach encourages scholars to examine our notions of disciplinarity

and to interrogate our reasons for the inclusion or omission of literary genres. As

discussed in Chapter One. two recent anthologies of women's rhetoric. Joy Ritchie and

Kate Ronald's Available Means (2001) and Jane Donawerth's Rhetorical Theory by

Women before 1900 (2002). both explicitly exclude those texts they respectively

designate "fiction" and "literature." From a pragmatic point of view, such a decision is

understandable in the construction of an anthology. As Ritchie and Ronald observ e, there

are "many excellent collections of women's writing, most notably The Norton Anthology

o f Women's Literature, and we did not want to reproduce that work" (xxi). While

sensible from an editorial standpoint, however, their decision seems less theoretically

convincing, as their definition of "literature" might indicate:

Sappho is not here because she wTote poetry, and excluding any form of "literature" was our conscious choice. [...] We do not mean to suggest that we can draw a clear line between literature and rhetoric: in fact we think that many of the selections here could easily appear in a collection of literary writing. Some do. But our focus remains on the gathering of rhetorics, and we rather arbitrarily define rhetoric by form, excluding poetry and story and concentrating on nonfiction prose. Our tentative definition of rhetorics here also involves the writer's purpose - most often to persuade or inform - although many works blur the boundaries between "teaching" and "delighting." (xxi)

Here. Ritchie and Ronald appear to want it both ways: literature is not rhetoric for it

delights rather than teaches. And w hile rhetoric teaches, it can also be considered

literature, for it often teachesand delights. In other words, rhetoric is literature but

literature is not rhetoric. Admittedly, their definition is "rather arbitrary." yet reading the

imaginative works of the improv isatrice tradition in light of Ritchie and Ronald's 218

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. discussion foregrounds the hybridity of the nineteenth-centurv texts under consideration

in this dissertation. These works function in both a ‘'literary*' and “rhetorical" manner.

As described in Chapter One. for instance, the belletristic rationale of the improvisatrice

tradition argues that women's best literature is essentially didactic: it refines the reader's

taste thereby improving individual morality and. by extension, society itself. Even a

poem such as Letitia Landon’s “The Improvisatrice." ostensibly aims to instruct its

reader, and thus fulfills Ritchie and Ronald's rhetorical criteria of “instruction.” Basing a

boundary between rhetoric and literature on any absolutist generic distinction reveals the

inherently ambiguous nature of divisions between the two categories.

Nineteenth-Century Theory: Rhetoricand Belles Lettres

In the nineteenth-century when middle-class women were increasingly recognized

as authors and consumers of imaginative works, the use of literature as a site of rhetorical

inquiry is particularly useful. According to Nigel Cross's 1985 statistical survey of the

nineteenth-century literary market in England, approximately fifty percent of nineteenth-

century woman writers were children's writers, thirty-three percent were entirely or

predominantly novelists, and fourteen percent were poets. Only three percent wrote

works of history , philosophy or economics (Cross 167). To omit all imaginative texts

from consideration in histories of the nineteenth-century rhetoric is to discard ninety-

seven percent of women's published writings during this period. This sort of exclusion

would abandon a rich repository of textual evidence of women's rhetorical activities.

Such statistics make a pragmatic argument for the inclusion of imaginative

literature in histories of rhetoric, but there are also theoretical reasons to expand the scope 219

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of rhetorical history. Admittedly, as both Donawerth and Ritchie's and Ronald's

discussions of the "literary" and its relationship to the "rhetorical" indicate, the inclusion

of imaginative texts in rhetorical history appears revisionist by contemporary

conventions. Nevertheless, such a synthesis is a movement towards restoring these

literary works to their original historical context as much as it is a revision of twenty-first

century disciplinary standards. Literature and rhetoric were inextricably connected in

nineteenth-century rhetorical culture, and their severing in contemporary critical studies

obscures the reality of women's rhetoric during that era. Throughout thePhilosophy, for

example. Campbell includes in imagination's scope "narration and description” and cites

poetry as a "form of oratory" that appeals to the imagination. Unlike contemporary

conventions, then, he does not "define rhetoric by form, excluding poetry and story"

(Ritchie and Ronald xxi). Campbell also uses literary examples to illustrate rhetorical

principles and is thereby a nineteenth-century forerunner to the relationship between

literature and rhetoric for which Elbow calls in "The Cultures of Literature and

Composition."

While Campbell thus implies the link between imaginative literature and

rhetorical theory. Blair expressly states it by including imaginative literature not only for

examples of rhetorical principles but as a form of rhetoric in its own right. The Lectures

broadens the definition of rhetoric to include all "the arts of speech and writing" (1.13).

As this definition expands rhetoric to include imaginative literature, it follows that Blair

treats the symbiotic rhetoric-literature relationship explicitly. He specifically names

"oratory, prose composition (essay writing, historical writing, etc.) poetry and fiction" as

the major genres of rhetoric (Johnson "Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric." emphasis mine). 220

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Therefore, to include the improvisatrice literature in our consideration of nineteenth-

century belletristic rhetoric is to restore this tradition to the role Blair originally

designated for imaginative literature.

Not only did Blair count imaginative literature among the rhetorical genres but he

also explicitly identified it as a site of instruction:

[F]ictitious histories might be employed for very useful purposes. They furnish one of the best channels for conveying instruction, for painting human life and manners, for showing the errors into which we are betrayed by our passions, for rendering virtue amiable and vice odious. The effect of well-contrived stories, towards accomplishing these purposes, is stronger than any effect that can be produced by simple and naked instruction; hence we find, that the wisest men in all ages, have more or less employed fables or fictions as vehicles of knowledge. These have ever been the basis for both Epic and Dramatic Poetry . (2:304-5)

As Blair's description indicates, literature serves that purpose of instruction that Ritchie

and Ronald use to distinguish rhetorical •’form." According to Blair's framework, then.

imaginative literature can work as rhetorical theory that instructs the reader.

This view of literature as didactic is not limited to Blair's text, however. Texts in

the improvisatrice tradition were likewise viewed as instructional by readers. A review

of Corime claims, for example, that "from this novel one may learn [...] the necessity of

conforming to those rules that restrain the intercourse of the sexes'* ("Rev. of Corinne."

Edinburgh 194). Not all the instruction associated with the improvisatrice rhetoric was

considered constructive, however. Another review of Corinne from the end of the

nineteenth-century observes:

221

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. It may be said that none will imitate her. Perhaps not. if we refer to exact imitation, but what will be the tendency with the ardent and imaginative, already galled by restraints perhaps a little too heavy, and conscious of their own innocence? (Senex 381)

Even after the improvisatrice rhetoric had fallen out of fashion, it was still seen as a site

of instruction for young girls. In negative reviews. Letitia Landon’s poems were likewise

feared for their "pernicious'’ influence (Roebuck 318) and the ability to persuade the

reader that the "artificial and corrupt” is natural ("Rev. ofVenetian Bracelet 318). For

better or for worse, however, during the nineteenth-centurv the improvisatrice tradition

was considered a pedagogical site.

Simeon Solomon's7 1867 sketch The Little Improvisatrice amusingly illustrates

the "pernicious" effects attributed to the pedagogical element of the improvisatrice

tradition (see figure one). In this image, six women are assembled in a room. One of

them, the "little improvisatrice” of the picture's title, is apparently attempting to impress

three Pre-Raphaelite "stunners."8 Through the neo-classical drapery of her dress, her

ornate conglomeration of curls a la Sappho, and her apparent attempt at eloquence, she

invokes the improvisatrice tradition that had facilitated the popularity of de Stael and

Landon. Her appearance, then attests to the pedagogical element of the improv isatrice

Simeon Solmon ( 1840-1905) was an artist and member of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He is best remembered for his oil painting Bacchus (1867). In 1864 he had painted another picture related to the improvisatrice tradition, the sensuous and homoerotic Sappho and Erinna at Xfytelene. 8 The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of artists and writers that was founded in 1848. It included Christina and Dante Gabriel Rosetti. John Everett Millais. William Holman Hunt. Frederic Stephenson. Thomas Woolner and James Collins. A term originally coined by Daniel Gabriel Rossetti, the "stunners" were beautiful women of the lower classes who modeled for the Pre-Raphaelite artists.

222

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 6.1 Simeon The Little Improvisatrice 1867. Leicester Galleries (rpt. in Nahum).

223

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. tradition. Solomon's "little improvisatrice" appears to have learned Corinne and

Eulalie's lessons in fashion, at least, and she is attempting to use them to persuade her

audience that she shares their iconic status.

The reaction of the Pre-Raphaelite beauties, however, makes it clear that this

improvisatrice does not impress her audience with her eloquence. As Peter Nahum and

Morgan Hilary note, the sketch's title character and her two friends are "pretenders to the

bohemian crown of the Pre-Raphaelite circle" who are "forced to curtsey to the genuine

‘Stunners' who look on disdainfully" (Nahum 131). The action captured in the picture

supports Nahum and Morgan's assertion. Not only is the "little improvisatrice"

curtseying to the Pre-Raphaelite models, but one of her "pretender" friends is attempting

to cling on to a seated "stunner." a woman who in hair and profile strongly resembles

Jane Morris.9 Likewise, the other two Pre-Raphaelite women, one of whom appears

modeled on Elizabeth Siddal.10 watch the "little improvisatrice" dispassionately. While

this sketch represents the pedagogical aspect of the improvisatrice rhetoric, the inclusion

of this tradition in a satirical illustration evidences that the popularity of this construct

had waned by the time of this sketch's composition. As the creation of The Little

Improvisatrice falls between the publication of Eliot'sThe Mill on the Floss and her

composition of “Erinna." it stands as a pictorial representation of the final stage of the

improvisatrice rhetoric. Both Eliot's texts and Solomon's sketch represent the

improvisatrice rhetoric as affected in style and ineffective at persuasion. As the contrast

between the primly neoclassical dress of the three "pretenders" and the sensuously

l) Jane Burden Morris (1839-1914). wife of William Morris, was the subject of several Pre-Raphaelite paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 0 Elizabeth Siddal (1829-1862). like Jane Morris, was one of the best known "stunners."

224

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. disheveled appearance of the "stunners" makes apparent, by the time Solomon sketched

this picture, the improvisatrice tradition had quite literally gone out of fashion and so lost

its effectiveness.

While Solomon's picture focuses on the improvisatrice rhetoric’s outmoded

nature, he also emphasizes its pedagogical element. The woman featured in the picture is

familiar with the improvisatrice tradition and has aped its qualities in an attempt to

appropriate the ethos of Corinne. Unfortunately for her purposes, however, she has

imitated this model too late and fails in her persuasive attempt. This picture nevertheless

illustrates the relationship between rhetoric and literature, for it shows how a fictional

text could be treated as a rhetorical model and so evidences Blair's claim that fiction's

"influence is likely to be considerable, both on the morals, and taste of a nation" (2: 304).

Language and Lenses: Contemporary Histories of Rhetoric

This relationship between rhetoric and literature is not limited to the nineteenth-

century. however. Elbow, for example suggests that any definite boundary line between

literature and rhetoric is problematic:

In one sense, all language is rhetorical: Wavne Booth made it clear that even literature has designs on readers - argues, does business. But the tradition from Nietzsche and I.A. Richards provides the opposite lens to help us nevertheless see that all language is also an instance of poetics: a figurative metaphorical structure that characteristically yields up more meaning or pleasure when we see it as a self-contained or intertextual structure - one that always means more than it purports to mean. (Deconstructive critics - wisely or perversely? -- define rhetoric itself as figurative language or poetics.) Once w e stand back this way it's obvious that neither rhetoric or poetics is better. What's sad is that a discipline devoted to language use should tend to restrict itself to one lens. (593)

225

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Here, the “discipline" to which Elbow refers is literature, for he argues that a rhetorical

focus will better facilitate student learning (539). Nevertheless, his point is equally valid

for scholars of nineteenth-century rhetorical history. No “discipline devoted to language

use should restrict itself to one lens" or. as this dissertation argues, one canon of textual

evidence.

Texts of the canonical rhetorical tradition are crowded with examples of the

overlap of rhetorical and literary studies. As George Kennedy describes in Classical

Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern (1999). Times

the tradition has been characterized by considerable overlap between the two disciplines:

Literary- criticism is found in a variety of contexts in Greek and Latin literature. Early examples include Aristophanes' comedy Frogs, which compares the styles of Aeschylus and Euripides and Plato's dialogueIon. which deals with poetic inspiration. Aristotle, who first defined many of the disciplines of learning, was the author of the first systematic treatise on poetics. In chapter 19 of that work he notes that what has been said about reasoning, i.e.. demonstration and refutation, the use of emotions and arguments about what is important or not important, in his work on rhetoric equally applies to the composition of speeches in tragedy. Conversely, a passage in the Rhetoric (3.2) refers the reader to the Poetics for more information on kinds of words. [...) Overall, poetics can be regarded as overlapping with rhetoric. ( 134-6)

Even from the Aristotelian beginnings of disciplinaritv. then, there has been

“overlapping" between literary and rhetorical studies. Thus, while the use of literary texts

in the construction of rhetorical histories may appear unusual in light of twenty-first

century conventions, this sy nthesis has informed much of the rhetorical tradition.

Admittedly, this assertion contradicts the “traditional paradigm of rhetorical

theory-: the single named author who composes (or is composed through) speeches and

texts" (Fredal 590-1). Nevertheless, such a juxtaposition of literature and rhetoric that

provides the foundation of this dissertation characterizes not just ancient rhetorical texts 226

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. but contemporary histories of rhetoric: Thomas" Conley's Rhetoric in the European

Tradition (1990). George Kennedy's Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular

Tradition (1999), and "A Survey of Rhetoric" in Edward P.J. Corbett and Robert J

Connor’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (1999)11 all commence with an

examination of literary texts by citing the Iliad and the Odyssey as illustrations of

rhetorical theory and practice. In each text, classical literary sources are read as

embodiments of rhetorical theory. Conley's comments on the Book Two of the Iliad are

representative of this approach:

This brief episode 12 is perhaps more instructive about rhetoric in ancient Greece, and indeed about rhetoric in general, than it might first appear to be. It teaches use something, to begin with, about the way the Greeks, from Homer's time onward, conducted public assembles. [...] Second, while the actions of Odysseus may seem at variance with our ideas of public discussion [...] they were not perceived that way by Homer. [...] The tension that appears here is the tension between being right and having the social right to participate in public discussion. (2)

Conley's application of the Iliad illustrates two uses of literature in rhetorical history. On

the one hand, literature can help illuminate the local rhetorical culture in which it was

produced. Conley employs the Iliad to contextualize rhetorical culture by claiming it

"teaches us something [...] about the way the Greeks [...] conducted public assembles."

In a like manner, this dissertation uses the improvisatrice tradition to describe one facet

of women's rhetorical culture in nineteenth-century England. On the other hand, not only

can we use literature to describe its immediate conditions, but it can also enrich our

understanding of the parameters of the field of rhetoric. Thus. Conley also uses the

11 See Conley 1. Kennedy . 5-12. Connor and Corbett 490. 12 In the passage Conley excerpts the Greeks are preparing to retreat from Troy, and Thersites. ‘the ugliest man beneath the walls of Troy" (2.216). chides the troops for cow ardice. Odysseus beats Thersites for his words and for not keeping to his place.

227

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Odyssey to make a larger argument about ’'rhetoric in general.*’ This dissertation's

synthesis of literature and rhetoric likewise makes a larger argument about the need to

reconsider disciplinary assumptions about the materials of rhetorical history. The

improvisatrice tradition, like the Odyssey, adds to our understanding of the history of

rhetoric. Even in supposedly traditional histories of rhetoric, then, we can see the overlap

of rhetorical and literary texts for which this dissertation argues.

It is not only traditional histories of rhetoric that incorporate texts conventionally

considered ’’literary.'' Feminist rhetoricians have argued for the place of Sappho in the

history of rhetoric, for she used her poetry "to celebrate women's education, women's

alliances, and. especially, women's public use of persuasive language’* (Glenn 25).

Likewise, the critical attention given Aspasia argues for the importance of story in the

history of woman's rhetoric. Ritchie and Ronald's Available Means. Donawerth's

Rhetorical Theory by Women before 1900. and Bizzell and Herzberg's The Rhetorical

Tradition all cite Plato's narrative of Aspasia in Menexenus as an inaugural text in the

history of woman's rhetoric. Donawerth. tor example, concisely explains Aspasia’s

importance to the history of rhetoric and. albeit inadvertently, articulates a rationale for

including literature in rhetorical history:

[W]e have no early surviving treatises by women [...] the advice on rhetoric that Aspasia gives in the speech attributed to her could very well be what she taught (even if the speech is not hers), and [...] Aspasia has become too important a figure in feminist scholarship on the history of rhetoric to leave out. (2)

Donawerth's rationale for including Aspasia resembles Conley's analysis of the Iliad.

That is. just as Conley claimed the Odyssey helps to illustrate rhetorical history , so

Aspasia's speech "could very well be what she taught." In other words, as there are "no

228

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. early surviving treatises by women" the Menexenus is the only available evidence of the

local context of the first documented woman rhetorician. Furthermore, just as Conley

uses theOdyssey to enhance our understanding of rhetoric as a whole, so does Donawerth

cite Aspasia*s importance to the larger discipline as a reason for her inclusion in

Rhetorical Theory by Women Before 1900. Aspasia not only adds to our understanding

of Greek culture but she is in fact “too important a Figure in feminist scholarship to leave

out." As a representative of those women active in the history of rhetoric whose

contributions have been lost. Aspasia contributes to the larger disciplinary picture. So too

does studying the improvisatrice tradition use available resources to examine women's

rhetoric in the nineteenth-century.

Just as the study of Aspasia reveals much about the earliest phases of women's

rhetoric so too an examination of the improvisatrice enlarges our understanding of

women's role in the history of nineteenth-centurv rhetoric in Great Britain. By contrast

with Aspasia. however, the authorship of the texts that comprise the improvisatrice

tradition is not in question. Collectively, and as Blair anticipated in 1783. their influence

was "considerable, both on the morals, and taste of a nation" (Blair 2: 304) and. just as

was Aspasia for her era. they are “too important [...] in feminist scholarship on the

history of rhetoric to leave out” (Donawerth 2). The wealth of material these texts offer

can thus provide historians of rhetoric with both greater understanding of women's

rhetorical practice in the nineteenth century and also with broader insight into the larger

rhetorical cultures in which these practices occurred. In this way. study ing the

improvisatrice tradition enlarges the wider understanding of rhetorical history, adding

one more perspective to the charge that Nan Johnson has defined for feminist historians 229

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 'to recover the role of rhetoric in the disposition of power’ and to explore the "highly

gendered struggle over the control of public rhetorical space and its benefits" (Johnson

Gender 9). Not simply mere flowers of rhetoric, then, these improvisatrice figures and the

imaginative texts in which they exist do indeed enable our contemporary efforts to

"remap” the history of rhetoric and recapture that history more fully than has previously

been the case.

230

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