Realism and Fantasy in Victorian Literature Benjamin Jude Wright University of South Florida, [email protected]
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University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School January 2013 "Of That Transfigured World" : Realism and Fantasy in Victorian Literature Benjamin Jude Wright University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Scholar Commons Citation Wright, Benjamin Jude, ""Of That Transfigured World" : Realism and Fantasy in Victorian Literature" (2013). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4617 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “Of That Transfigured World”: Realism and Fantasy in Victorian Literature by Benjamin Jude Wright A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Co-Major Professor: Marty Gould, Ph.D. Co-Major Professor: Pat Rogers, Ph.D. Laura Runge, Ph.D. Hunt Hawkins, Ph.D. Date of Approval: December 4, 2012 Keywords: Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, Epistemology Copyright © 2013, Benjamin Jude Wright Dedication To Erika, who continually transfigures my world. Acknowledgements I must thank Marty Gould for all of his tremendous work. This dissertation truly began in his 19th-Century novel class and I am so grateful for his continued support throughout this process. His guidance, gentle (and not so gentle) corrections, and occasional wrangling were tremendously helpful. I also must thank Pat Rogers for all of his insight and commentary throughout my time at USF and in response to my dissertation. My heartfelt appreciations go out to the remaining two members of my committee, Laura Runge and Hunt Hawkins. In addition to reading this dissertation Laura Runge has been a tremendous graduate director and has been instrumental in fostering a program centered on both learning and teaching. I am grateful that Hunt Hawkins found time in his very busy schedule as department chair to serve as my fourth reader, and I thank him for all of his continual encouragement. I wish to thank the English Department as a whole for all of their inspiration and commiseration. There are too many faculty members, fellow graduate students, and tremendous support staff to name here, so I will just extend a general “thank you” to everyone. I also would like to thank the Graduate School for the generous Presidential Doctoral Fellowship I received upon admission to USF; it made this work far less onerous and I hope they feel their confidence in awarding me this fellowship was justified. Finally I must thank my family. My parents Ed and June Wright have always been encouraging and supportive of my educational endeavors. I am also grateful for the love of my brothers Rob and Ed. Most importantly I must thank my wife Erika who braved the Florida swampland for five long years in order to make this possible. Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. ii Chapter One: Transfiguring the World ................................................................................1 Chapter Two: Romantic and Familiar: Dickens on Topos and Chora ..............................31 i. A Christmas Carol, Fantasy, and the Function of Realism ................................31 ii. The Train and the Sea: Imagination and Empathy in Dombey and Son ............43 iii. “What Connection Can There Be?” : Bleak House ..........................................58 Chapter Three: Composing Chora: Dramatizing Meaning-Making in Charlotte and Emily Brontë ...............................................................................................................87 i. Snowe Amidst the Tempest: Storm and the Fantastic Representation of Trauma in Villette ............................................................................................88 ii. “Is He a Ghoul or a Vampire” : The Choric Layers of Wuthering Heights ...........................................................................................................116 Chapter Four: A Story “Properly Told” : Walter Pater, Aesthetic Subjectivity, and Truth .................................................................................................................................140 i. “Of That Transfigured World”: Walter Pater’s Choric Aesthetics ...................141 ii. “His Own Nearer Household Gods” : The Choric Religions of Marius the Epicurean .................................................................................................157 Chapter Five: Art Influencing Life: The Dangerous and Liberating Potential of Wilde’s Aesthetics ...........................................................................................................180 i. The Voice of the Prophet: Salome and the Failure of Language ......................182 ii. Painting Dorian and Christening Jack: Fantasy and Identity in The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest.....................199 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................227 Works Cited .....................................................................................................................232 i Abstract “Of That Transfigured Word: Realism and Fantasy in Victorian Literature identifies a generally unremarked upon mode of nineteenth-century literature that intermingles realism and fantasy in order to address particular epistemological problems. The works of Charles Dickens, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde maintain a realist core overlaid by fantastic elements that come from the language used to characterize the core narrative or from metatexts or paratexts (for instance stories that characters tell). The fantastic in this way becomes a mode of interpretation in texts concerned with the problems of representation and the ability of literature to produce knowledge. Paradoxically, each of these authors relies on the fantastic in order to reach the kinds of meaning nineteenth-century realism strives for. My critical framework, established in chapter one, is derived from the two interrelated discourses of sacred space theology and cultural geography, focusing primarily on the terms topos and chora which I figure as parallel to realism and fantasy. These terms, gleaned from Aristotle and Plato, function to express two interweaving concepts of space that together construct our sense of place. Topos, as defined by theologian Belden C. Lane, refers to “a mere location, a measurable, quantifiable point, neutral and indifferent” whereas chora refers to place as “an energizing force, suggestive to the imagination, drawing intimate connections to everything else in our lives” (39). In ii the narratives I examine, meaning is constructed via the fantastic interpretations (chora) of realistically portrayed events (topos). The writers I engage with use this dynamic to address strategically pressing epistemological concerns relating to the purpose of art and its relationship to truth. Dickens, the subject of chapter two, uses choric elements in order to more expediently demonstrate the moral connections that realism seeks to locate. I examine this dynamic in A Christmas Carol, Dombey and Son, and Bleak House. Of these texts Bleak House provides Dickens’s most sustained example of this dynamic as he shapes mundane phenomena such as fog and smoke into conduits of cosmological significance. Stories that characters tell, such as that of the Ghost Walk at Chesney Wold, are used to shape readerly interpretation of events, and prompt particular moral judgments regarding the necessity of social responsibility. Employing this fantastic hermeneutic allows Dickens to link together the diverse social strata of Victorian Britain in a cosmological way which is unwarranted in a strictly realist text. I argue that in doing so, Dickens fulfills the purpose of realism as defined by Ioan Williams: to present the world as organically unified, by relying on a non-realistic strategy. Chora, for both Charlotte and Emily Brontë (the subjects of chapter three) operates as a product of particular characters’ psychological states. Whereas in Dickens chora stems from the author’s investment of a particular topos with choric significance— a significance that is then recognized or ignored by characters—for the Brontës chora is related directly to the individual narrator’s act of narration. I begin by examining how Charlotte’s novel Villette uses this choric overlay in order to represent trauma that is unrepresentable in realist terms. This perspective places trauma as the center of the text, iii focused in a specific though unnamed event referred to only in metaphor, present primarily in its absence. Drawing on recent discourses related to the problems of representing trauma (by Cathy Caruth, Ann Kaplan, and Jill L. Matus), I ague that Lucy Snowe’s traumatic experience finds expression in the fantastic (choric) imagery of personified storms as well as the image of the ghostly nun. Chapter three also interrogates the narrative structure of Wuthering Heights and