Literary Representations of Epitaph and Burial from the Nineteenth Century Through the Great War

CEMETERY PLOTS FROM VICTORIA TO VERDUN: LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF EPITAPH AND BURIAL FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY THROUGH THE GREAT WAR by HEATHER J. KICHNER Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Athena Vrettos Department of English CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY August, 2008 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the thesis/dissertation of Heather J. Kichner candidate for the PhD degree.* (signed) Athena Vrettos (chair of the committee) Kurt Koenigsberger William Siebenschuh Renee Sentilles (date) May 7, 2008 *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. DEDICATION For my darlings, Ladybug Becca and Medabot Bennett, and for Sweet William, who understands what it means to be patient and wait for good things to happen. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………... 2 Abstract…………………………………………………………………………… 3 Introduction: Arriving at the Cemetery…………………………………………… 5 Chapter I: Grave Concerns: Novel Responses to Nineteenth-Century Cemetery Reform…………………………………………………………. 26 Chapter II: Of Tomes and Tombstones: Altering People and Plots……………… 69 Chapter III: Cemeterial Déjà vu: War Writing and the New Cemetery Problem…. 123 Epilogue: Absence, Silence, Anonymity and the Changing Role of the Epitaph…. 180 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………….. 211 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not exist were it not for my advisor, Athena Vrettos, who pushed me to think harder and write better than I imagined I could. I am grateful for her direction, patience, and dedication during this process. Kurt Koenigsberger’s brilliance is behind much of the project. Even though we communicated infrequently, he was able to spark big ideas with few words. William Siebenschuh provided consistent cheer and support. Renee Sentilles, along with Chris Flint, co-chaired our Dissertation Fellowship Seminar; that experience helped to shape the second chapter of the project, the part that shines the brightest. Renee made me see that I truly do have hands that write. Finally, I owe a wealth of gratitude to Roger Salomon, Professor Emeritus, who played a key role in the formative stages of this dissertation. Without him, there would be no World War I component of this dissertation, and I would not be the confident writer that I am today. I imagined his gentle visage and kept his thoughtful guidance in mind while I wrote. I must thank the graduate students with whom I sweated, fretted, and chuckled, especially Jenny Swartz, Mahli Mechenbier, Brian Reed, and Liz Sirkin Mason. I appreciate the advice from Leslie Kaplansky, Brad Ricca, and Kristen Olson. Dr. Mary- Jo Arn deserves immeasurable gratitude for her mentorship. I thank my grandparents for the gift of their legacies, especially Grandfather Hummel for treating everything I wrote on the old “Smith & Corona” like a masterpiece. Thanks to my parents, Donna and Gary Kichner, for their unwavering lifelong encouragement, and to my loyal friends, Maria Miller, Diane Welsh, and Tara Bohner who anchor me. I owe thanks to my children, Becca and Bennett, who relinquished many moments so I could write. Finally, to my husband, Will: thank you for loving me even when I was impossible. This is for us. 2 Cemetery Plots from Victoria to Verdun: Literary Representations of Epitaph and Burial from the Nineteenth Century through the Great War Abstract by HEATHER J. KICHNER Cemetery Plots considers the rhetoric of burial reform, cemeterial customs, and epitaph writing in Great Britain from the mid-nineteenth century through the Great War. The first half of the dissertation studies mid- and late-Victorian responses to death and burial, including epitaph collections, burial reform documents, and fictional representations of burial and epitaph writing, especially in the novels of Charles Dickens. It traces expressions of cultural anxiety about individuality and the preservation of identity through an examination of Victorian mourning customs and literary representations of memorialization. The second half of the dissertation studies this same discourse of burial, epitaphs and mourning in the fiction, memoirs, diaries, correspondence, and poems produced in response to the First World War in order to understand how writings about individual memorialization changed in post-war British literature and culture. By examining how authors such as Charles Dickens, Ivor Gurney, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, and Virginia Woolf wrote about cemeteries, epitaphs, and burial practices, the dissertation demonstrates how the exaltation of individual identity in nineteenth-century memorialization practices gave way to an increasing skepticism about the delineation and preservation of individuality in the early twentieth century, as war writers altered and even disregarded Victorian notions of the individual 3 when they wrote to remember. The Victorians’ consumption of epitaphs, social novels, and reform documents like Edwin Chadwick’s Sanitation Report provided the chance to develop new ideas about the individual, as well as mourning customs, social standing, and definitions of middle-class identity. By the time Woolf wrote Jacob’s Room , however, the power and centrality of cemeteries and individual epitaphs had been called into question. Because of the Great War, writers had come to doubt the stability of both language and identity, and their fiction, poetry, and memoirs effectively challenged the ability of individualized burial practices, lengthy epitaphs, or other traditional forms of memorialization to capture the identity of the dead. 4 Introduction: Arriving at the Cemetery Here in this grave there lyes a Cave, We call a Cave a Grave; If Cave be Grave and Grave be Cave, Then, reader! judge, I crave, Whether doth Cave lye here in Grave, Or Grave doth lye in Cave? If Grave and Cave here buried lye, Then Grave where is thy victorie? Go, reader, and report here lyes a Cave Who conquers death and buries his own Grave. —Charles Northend, Churchyard Literature (1874) Charles Northend includes this ten-line epitaph for a man named “Cave” in his 1874 collection of epitaphs called Churchyard Literature or Light Reading on Grave Subjects . Northend’s book is one of many collections of epitaphs published during the nineteenth century. This epitaph raises particular questions about the presence and absence of bodies and the audience for memorializing writing. The writer of this riddle emphasizes his proximity to the tombstone and beckons the reader to look “here” in “this grave,” although reading this epitaph on the pages of Northend’s book would have had quite a different feel than reading the text on the tombstone itself. The reader could, however, imagine himself standing next to the grave stone in the cemetery; indeed, the 5 opening lines invite intimacy, drawing the reader into the riddle. The if-then question posed in the next four lines presents a common epitaph request: the voice from the stone directly addresses the reader and asks for judgment and consideration. The author makes a Biblical reference, Chapter 15, Verse 55 of First Corinthians, but substitutes “Grave” for “Death” when asking, “Then Grave where is thy victorie?” The spatial impossibility invoked by the epitaph seeks rhetorical power over death. If the Grave holds Cave but the two words represent similar vacant spaces, then how can one hold the other? It questions the act of burial itself and concludes that if both Cave and Grave are buried, then death loses its grip. Again using a popular epitaph tactic, the writer engages the reader to go forth as a witness to "report" this victorious conclusion. In this, as in many similar epitaphs from this period, the reader is invited to play significant yet shifting roles as interpreter, judge, and reporter. The “Cave” epitaph raises many issues that are central to this dissertation, which addresses the changing relationship between acts of burial and acts of writing about burial from the mid-nineteenth-century through the First World War. Like the dissertation, the “Cave” epitaph questions how writing can represent the human body; it demonstrates how memorializing writing can become highly intertextual, and how writing and remembrance are interrelated. Both the “Cave” epitaph and this dissertation are concerned with the words we use to “name” bodies and graves, and both scrutinize the relationship between epitaphs and burial that became particularly charged during the nineteenth century. During the eighteenth century, the poetic epitaph, made popular by writers like John Donne, John Dryden, and Robert Herrick during the seventeenth century, continued 6 to increase in popularity. 1 During both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the English poetic epitaph became “a vital literary genre” (Scodel 5). Yet during this period, scant attention was paid to the writing of actual, useful epitaphs that might decorate tombstones, especially for the middle classes, because individual plots with gravestones for any but the wealthiest citizens were yet uncommon. Instead, most churchyards housed communal graves, and, although a few social critics questioned this practice, little action took place to address the situation. Connections were not yet being made between burial practices, public sanitation, and good health, though these associations eventually shaped the burial reform movement in the nineteenth century and helped to transform popular assumptions

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