Documents of Culture, Documents of Barbarism
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DOCUMENTS OF CULTURE, DOCUMENTS OF BARBARISM: GOTHIC LITERATURE, EMPIRICISM, AND THE RISE OF PROFESSIONAL SCIENCE by ANDREW BIORN GRACE A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of English and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2013 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Andrew Grace Title: Documents of Culture, Documents of Barbarism: Gothic Literature, Empiricism, and the Rise of Professional Science This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of English by: Deborah Spillman Chairperson Elizabeth Bohls Member Forest Pyle Member Kenneth Calhoon Outside Member and Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President for Research and Innovation Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded March 2013 ii © 2013 Andrew Biorn Grace iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Andrew Grace Doctor of Philosophy Department of English March 2013 Title: Documents of Culture, Documents of Barbarism: Gothic Literature, Empiricism, and the Rise of Professional Science The trope of the discovered manuscript, in which a narrator or character finds a document and presents it to the readers or other characters, has been a part of the Gothic genre since its inception. The discovered manuscript trope persists, despite criticism and satire, in part because it enables Gothic stories to situate their readers. In the nineteenth- century, as the presence of lawyers, doctors, scientists, journalists and other experts grew in society, Gothic novelists drew upon their methodologies and their records to revise the discovered manuscript trope. This project examines the trope of the discovered manuscript throughout Gothic literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in order to discuss how the Gothic functions as a literature of terror and how its techniques evolved in response to the epistemologies espoused by empiricist philosophers and professional scientists. I draw upon Jacques Rancière’s theories about the representative and aesthetic regimes for the identification of the artistic image to support three central, interrelated claims about the role, and evolution, of the discovered manuscript trope within Gothic fiction: 1) Gothic literature responds to an epistemological problem in the empiricist tradition revolving around the connections between sensory uncertainty and linguistic iv gaps; 2) reading and interpreting documents play vital roles in the Gothic tradition; and 3) examining documents in Gothic fiction as image operations illuminates how they participate in a story’s epistemological drama. In order to support these claims, this project presents four chapters that discuss a broad range of Gothic texts from Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto to Stoker’s Dracula. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Andrew Biorn Grace GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Gustavus Adolphus College, Saint Peter, MN DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, English, 2013, University of Oregon Master of Arts, English, 2010, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, English, 2004, Gustavus Adolphus College AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Nineteenth-Century British Literature Gothic Literature PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: ELL Specialist, Academic Advising, Gustavus Adolphus College, 2010 - Present Graduate Teaching Fellow, University of Oregon, 2006 - 2010 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Mark H. Anderson Diversity Award, Gustavus Adolphus College, 2012 PUBLICATIONS: “Rendering the Vampire’s Reflection: Documents as Images in Stoker’s Dracula.” Studies in Gothic Fiction. 2.2 (2012): 14-26. Web. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to my advisor, Deborah Spillman, who never objected to the additional obstacles that my decision to live in Minnesota created and consistently provided rapid and insightful feedback on all of my material. Without her encouragement and challenging questions, this project could have collapsed in on itself at any moment. Likewise, I am grateful to my committee—Liz Bohls, Tres Pyle, and Ken Calhoon—for their willingness to respond quickly to my inquiries after months at a time of total silence. Furthermore, I would like to thank Mike Stamm for his diligent attention to the details of my status with the University. I would also like to thank Brian Psiropoulos for six years of stimulating conversation about nineteenth-century literature, the Gothic, comics, and life. Likewise, I am indebted to the numerous alumni of the Dickens Universe who keep me up-to-date on the rest of the field. Finally, I cannot thank Kara Barnette enough. Without her love and support, I never would have gotten past the first blank page. vii For Kara viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: THE GOTHIC STYLE............................................................. 1 i. Empiricism and the Problem of Communication ............................................... 9 ii. Documents as Empirical Records in Gothic Fiction.......................................... 16 iii. Documents as Images in Nineteenth-Century Gothic Fiction .......................... 22 II. HAUNTED TEXTS AND BAD READERS IN GOTHIC FICTION FROM THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO TO FRANKENSTEIN ............................................. 36 i. Early Gothic ........................................................................................................ 40 ii. High Gothic ....................................................................................................... 47 iii. Late Gothic ....................................................................................................... 60 iv. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 80 III. CURSED LEGACIES AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL AUTHORITY IN JANE EYRE AND UNCLE SILAS ........................................................................ 83 i. Gothic and Legal Images in Jane Eyre and Uncle Silas ..................................... 88 ii. Jane Eyre ........................................................................................................... 94 iii. Uncle Silas ........................................................................................................ 108 iv. Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 121 IV. HAUNTING PASSIVITY AND THE INCOMMUNICABILITY OF EXPERIENCES IN THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL AND IN A GLASS DARKLY ................................................................................................................. 125 i. Epistemological Dilemmas in Wildfell Hall and In a Glass Darkly ................... 127 ii. Document-Images and Medical Discourse in Wildfell Hall and In a Glass Darkly .................................................................................................................... 134 iii. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall .............................................................................. 138 ix Chapter Page iv. In a Glass Darkly .............................................................................................. 150 v. Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 160 V. HYPER-REAL MONSTERS IN THE MORNING EDITION: REPORTING SCIENCE IN “THE GREAT GOD PAN” AND DRACULA ........ 164 i. Hyper-Resemblances in the Fin de Siècle .......................................................... 172 ii. “The Great God Pan” and Dracula as Scientific Texts ..................................... 176 iii. Newspaper Clippings as Hyper-Resemblances ................................................ 189 iv. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 199 VI. CONCLUSION: “NOT EVEN THE DEAD ARE SAFE” ................................... 203 REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................................ 211 x CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: THE GOTHIC STYLE In the nineteenth century, Gothic protagonists professionalized. The minor aristocrats from eighteenth-century Gothic novels, who were forced by family circumstances into amateur sleuthing, transformed into experts—lawyers, doctors, scientists and journalists—drawn into mysteries by their occupations. This transformation occurred gradually, staying apace with the growing role of experts in British society.1 Between Isabella’s flight from Prince Manfred and Dr. Van Helsing’s analysis of Count Dracula, Mason hired a lawyer to thwart Rochester’s attempt at bigamy and expose Bertha as the source of Thornfield’s mysteries, Helen Graham feared for her husband’s soul while diagnosing his body, and Rev. Jennings sought consolation from a metaphysical physician. Incorporating professional characters and practices into Gothic stories affected many traditional Gothic tropes, and the growing presence of professionalism within British Gothic fiction is particularly evident in the evolving role of the discovered manuscript. The trope of the discovered manuscript, in which a narrator or character finds a document and presents it to the readers or other characters, has been a part of the Gothic genre since its inception, when Horace Walpole wrote a fictional preface claiming the manuscript for The Castle of Otranto had been written by