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On Paying Attention: Particularity in Victorian Fiction ON PAYING ATTENTION: PARTICULARITY IN VICTORIAN FICTION AND EMPIRICAL THOUGHT by Catherine Day B.A., Bryn Mawr College, 2000 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of University of Pittsburgh in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2009 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Catherine Day It was defended on December 9, 2008 and approved by Eric Clarke, Associate Professor, English Department Ronald Judy, Professor, English Department James Lennox, Professor, History and Philosophy of Science Dissertation Advisor: Jonathan Arac, Andrew W. Mellon Professor, English Department Dissertation Advisor: Paul Bove, Distinguished Professor, English Department ii Copyright © by Catherine Day 2009 iii ON PAYING ATTENTION: PARTICULARITY IN VICTORIAN FICTION AND EMPIRICAL THOUGHT Catherine Day, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2009 This dissertation is an examination of particularity in Victorian fiction, biological science, and empirical philosophy. Focusing on works by Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, and Walter Pater, this study shows how Victorian writers sought to engage their readers with the seemingly insignificant details of ordinary life—as a way of troubling conventions and habits of thought that deaden human existence and as a means of inciting human capacities of thought, feeling, and imagination. These writers, I argue, shared a common conviction that the challenges of modern social, political, and intellectual life could only be met through a closer engagement with the unnoticed specifics of everyday life. In some cases, these texts bring a heightened attention to the aesthetics of material life (as we see in Bleak House, Marius the Epicurean, or even The Origin of Species). In other cases, it is a greater sympathetic notice of the details of human nature (as in Bleak House and Daniel Deronda). In still other cases, it is a matter of bringing intellectual notice or scientific analysis to the seemingly irrelevant specifics of social and natural life (as we see in On Liberty or The Origin of Species). Recent literary critical scholarship on the Victorian period, shaped by twentieth-century poststructuralist thought, has shown a lack of interest in the era’s own self-estimation—in a sense of purposefulness integral to the major literary, scientific, and philosophical works of the day. In correction to this criticism, I read the primary texts of this dissertation as purposive, as iv seeking to have some effect upon the minds of their readers and the conditions of their historical present. At the same time, I read these works as textual performances, and argue that their discursive form is a central component of the moral, intellectual, or political interventions they aim to make in their contemporary moment. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE....................................................................................................................................IX 1.0 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 VICTORIAN REFORMS OF MIND ................................................................ 3 1.2 LIVING IDEAS ................................................................................................... 5 1.3 CONNECTIONS.................................................................................................. 9 1.4 METHOD AND CRITICAL ORIENTATION............................................... 13 1.5 CHAPTERS........................................................................................................ 19 2.0 CHAPTER ONE: THE DISCRETE DETAILS OF BLEAK HOUSE ................. 22 2.1 DICKENS AND REALISM.............................................................................. 25 2.2 BLEAK HOUSE ................................................................................................ 37 2.3 IN CHANCERY................................................................................................. 40 2.4 IN FASHION...................................................................................................... 45 2.5 THE SURFACE OF CHARACTER................................................................ 49 2.6 COLLECTING .................................................................................................. 55 2.7 ESTHER AS CONNECTOR............................................................................ 58 2.8 CONCLUSIONS................................................................................................ 61 3.0 CHAPTER TWO: THE PECULIAR FACTS OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 64 3.1 INDUCTION AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES........................................... 67 vi 3.2 THE FAMILIAR EXAMPLE .......................................................................... 74 3.3 HABITS OF MIND............................................................................................ 81 3.4 IMAGINARY ILLUSTRATIONS................................................................... 84 3.5 THE INDEPENDENT LIFE OF FACT.......................................................... 89 3.6 CONCLUSIONS................................................................................................ 94 4.0 CHAPTER THREE: GEORGE ELIOT’S HISTORY OF THE UNHISTORICAL ....................................................................................................................... 96 4.1 NATURAL HISTORY OF HUMAN LIFE..................................................... 97 4.2 DANIEL DERONDA....................................................................................... 105 4.3 TRANSFORMATIONS OF SYMPATHY.................................................... 107 4.4 MIXED NARRATIVE .................................................................................... 122 4.5 MIXED MIND ................................................................................................. 130 4.6 CONCLUSIONS.............................................................................................. 133 5.0 CHAPTER FOUR: JOHN STUART MILL’S MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF ATTENTION............................................................................................................................. 137 5.1 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SOCIAL CRITICISM ........................................ 138 5.2 SOCIAL INATTENTION............................................................................... 142 5.3 QUIRKS OF CHARACTER .......................................................................... 146 5.4 HISTORICAL MISFITS ................................................................................ 152 5.5 HISTORICAL RELICS.................................................................................. 157 5.6 HISTORICAL POSSIBILITY ....................................................................... 164 5.7 CONCLUSIONS.............................................................................................. 167 vii 6.0 CHAPTER FIVE: WALTER PATER AND THE ART OF PAYING ATTENTION............................................................................................................................. 170 6.1 THE MODERN RELATIVE WORLD ......................................................... 172 6.2 ECSTATIC EXPERIENCE, OR THE ART OF PAYING ATTENTION 177 6.3 MODERN HUMANISM................................................................................. 183 6.4 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN......................................................................... 186 6.5 OBJECTS ANIMATED.................................................................................. 190 6.6 A REVISION OF MIND................................................................................. 195 6.7 A REFORM OF SYMPATHY ....................................................................... 199 6.8 CONCLUSIONS.............................................................................................. 204 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................... 207 viii PREFACE Acknowledgements: I would like to thank my dissertation co-chairs Professors Jonathan Arac and Paul Bove, and committee members Eric Clarke, Ronald Judy, and James Lennox for their careful reading and input throughout the various stages of this dissertation. I would also like to thank the administrative staff of the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh, especially Connie Arelt. ix 1.0 INTRODUCTION “And in the process something new and elemental appeared: nothing less than the wealth of reality and depth of life in every moment to which we surrender ourselves without prejudice.” -Erich Auerbach The central texts of this study are educations in noticing, in paying attention. They are works that seek to intervene in their Victorian moment, to act upon their audience, to make some difference in their reader’s relationship to reality. Awakening their readers to the unnoticed details of life in time, they aim to make everyday life educational, in the broadest sense of the word. Each of the diverse texts of this dissertation attends to the social or natural world at the level of the particular: to the peculiarities of individual character, the minutiae of material existence, the slight irregularities of plant and animal life, or the singular feelings of a moment in time. Each exhibits and encourages an attunement to the specifics of life that are left
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