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Metropolitan Dissent in Thomas Hardy's Fiction

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Metropolitan Dissent in Thomas Hardy's Fiction METROPOLITAN DISSENT IN THOMAS HARDY’S FICTION: CLASS, GENDER, EMPIRE A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES 2017 RENA JACKSON SCHOOL OF ARTS, LANGUAGES AND CULTURES CONTENTS List of Figures………………………………………………………………………. 4 Notes on the Text/ List of Abbreviations………………………………………….. 5 Abstract……………………………………………………………………………... 6 Declaration/ Copyright Statement………………………………………………..... 7 Dedication…………………………………………………………………………… 8 Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………............. 9 1. Metropolitan Dissent in Thomas Hardy’s Fiction: Class, Gender, Empire .... 11 1.1. Hardy, Empire and the ‘National Imperial Identity’………………………... 11 1.2. Hardy Studies and Postcolonial Enquiry………………………………….... 26 2. India, Social Mobility and Capital Flows in the Early Fiction……….............. 38 2.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………….... 38 2.2. Biography, India, Social Mobility………………………………………….. 43 2.3. India in the Early Serial Instalments of A Pair of Blue Eyes……………..... 56 2.4. Capital Flows and the Alienation of Labour……………………………...... 60 2.5. India in the Late Serial Instalments of A Pair of Blue Eyes……………....... 72 2.6. Transpositions in ‘Destiny and a Blue Cloak’…………………………........ 79 2.7. Conclusion………………………………………………………………...... 82 3. African Adventure, Exploration and Hunting in the Middle Fiction……….. 84 3.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………….... 84 3.2. Africa, History, Biography……………………………………………….... 88 3.3. Tyranny by Distance and Female Dissent………………………………….. 97 3.4. Wider Impacts and Class Dissent………………………………………….. 106 3.5. Uneven Perceptions of ‘Africa’………………………………………......... 116 3.5.1. Uneven Perceptions of Non-Native Spaces and Places……………... 119 3.5.2. Uneven Perceptions of African Space and Race……………………. 130 3.6. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 137 2 CONTENTS 4. The Settler Regions of Empire and the Alienation of Rural Labour in the Late Fiction………………………………………………………………………….... 139 4.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………….... 139 4.2. ‘The Dorsetshire Labourer’: Rural Suffrage, Imperial Inclusion and ‘Peripheric Resistance’……………………………………………………... 145 4.3. A Survey of Emigration in the Late works.………........................................ 154 4.4. Hardy’s ‘Facts’ Notebook and the ‘Watershed’ Theory.…………………... 163 4.5. Regional Dissent in The Mayor of Casterbridge..............……………...….. 170 4.6. ‘Failed’ Emigration and Violence in the Closing Works…………………... 176 4.7. Conclusion………………………………………………………………….. 191 5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………. 192 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………….. 200 79,962 words 3 LIST OF FIGURES Map 1. Imperial Circuits in A Pair of Blue Eyes………………………………….71 4 NOTES ON THE TEXT EDITIONS OF NOVELS The thesis uses the Penguin editions of Thomas Hardy’s novels, which tend to select first editions as copy-texts. The logic for choosing the first editions lies in the project’s historicist approach and in its frequent concern with biographical details surrounding the original publication. In the interest of biographical accuracy, however, this study takes care to flag up any important changes made from earlier versions, for example holograph and serialised forms, to first editions (usually in volume form) that might further illuminate the findings of this study. As the project is also interested in perceptual changes over the course of the author’s life, it pinpoints any relevant subsequent revisions in later editions of the novels. ABBREVIATED FORMS (IN FOOTNOTES AND ‘WORKS CITED’) • UP: University Press • Oxford UP and Cambridge UP in references are not preceded by place of publication ABBREVIATED REFERENCES (IN FOOTNOTES ONLY) CH R. G. Cox, ed., Thomas Hardy: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970) CL Thomas Hardy, The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, ed. by Richard Little Purdy, Michael Millgate and Keith Wilson, 8 vols (Oxford UP, 2012) ECS Thomas Hardy, The Excluded and Collaborative Stories, ed. by Pamela Dalziel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) FN Thomas Hardy, Thomas Hardy’s ‘Facts’ Notebook: A Critical Edition, ed. by William Greenslade (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004) LN Thomas Hardy The Literary Notebooks of Thomas Hardy, ed. by Lennart A. Björk, 2 vols (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1985; repr. 1988) LW Thomas Hardy, The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy, ed. by Michael Millgate (London: Macmillan, 1984; reissued 1985) PV Thomas Hardy, Thomas Hardy’s Public Voice: The Essays, Speeches, and Miscellaneous Prose, ed. by Michael Millgate (Oxford UP, 2001) 5 ABSTRACT This thesis departs from a critical tradition in Hardy studies that has so far tended to interpret empire in the fiction in terms of the colonisation of Wessex. Instead, my project focuses on the entanglement of Wessex with overseas imperial spaces, arguing for multiple, varied and, more importantly, deeply uneven forms of contact with the empire in the fiction. It explores the particular linkages in Hardy’s texts between empire and the tripartite class structure (upper, middle and lower) that, as Hardy critic Roger Ebbatson has argued, became ‘progressively stabilised’ in Britain following the industrial and agricultural revolutions. I identify a shift in Hardy’s fiction from elite- to labour-focused conceptions of empire. Whereas in the early fiction (1871-1882), India and Africa are more prominent imperial destinations for overseas movement, in later works (1883-1897), the settler regions of empire, including Canada, New Zealand, Brazil and Australia, become principal areas of relocation for Wessex emigrants and exiles. A cultural materialist approach is employed to explore this shift. To that end, I avoid reading the presence of empire in Hardy’s fiction through allegorical strategies that create congruence or equivalence between gender, class and colonial oppressions. Each of the core chapters pivots around the imperial aspirations, interests, predicaments and perils of a different representative class. I demonstrate that each of the classes can be identified with a different imperial frontier in Hardy’s fiction. In addition, correlations are drawn between the presence of a given frontier and Hardy’s own specific location within the tripartite class structure. Chapter Two, the first of the project’s core chapters, considers how the relocation of the lower middle classes to India, including ambitions to achieve social mobility and prosperity, connects with Hardy’s own drive in the early fiction to secure an independent income. Chapter Three makes links between upper-class adventure, big-game hunting and the pursuit of imperial celebrity in the African interior and Hardy’s own efforts to introduce ‘fashionable’ spaces into the middle fiction. Chapter Four argues for indissoluble ties between the plights of rural working-class emigration to, and often return from, the settler regions of the empire and the author’s growing antipathy for ‘the business of social advancement’, relocation to his native Dorchester and consequent full immersion in local histories. Despite the changing emphasis on social class and imperial frontier during each of the three core phases (early, middle and late) in Hardy’s prose years and an evident preoccupation with both elite and labour frontiers across those phases, the thesis maintains that the kind of critique that emerges throughout is working-class in orientation. In other words, all works ultimately challenge, through a range of formal devices, the exploitation of empire in order to oppress or deracinate class and gender. Out of these two principal points of dissent emerge other vital working-class critiques that ultimately humanise and affirm native colonial cultures and practices. The project strives to engage and influence two strands of criticism. It aims to contest notions of global ‘interconnectedness’ across Wessex and the empire in Hardy studies. It also challenges foundational ideas within postcolonial studies arguing that regional and class antagonisms were harmonised into a ‘national imperial identity’ during Britain’s era of High Imperialism. 6 DECLARATION No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning COPYRIGHT STATEMENT i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions
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