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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Organization of Organizations: Bureaucratic Administration and Domestic Comfort in the Victorian Sequence Novel Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4gp5j6hc Author Dubord, Matthew Andre Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Organization of Organizations: Bureaucratic Administration and Domestic Comfort in the Victorian Sequence Novel A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Matthew Andre Dubord 2015 © Copyright by Matthew Andre Dubord 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Organization of Organizations: Bureaucratic Administration and Domestic Comfort in the Victorian Sequence Novel by Matthew Andre Dubord Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Jonathan Hamilton Grossman, Chair Victorian bureaucracy had its own brand of fiction. In this dissertation I argue that the long novel sequences of Anthony Trollope and Margaret Oliphant describe the development of modern systems of administrative and domestic organization. In mid-century England, writing about organization and administrative bureaucracy gained in importance in the wake of the Northcote-Trevelyan report as a cluster of sequence novels sprang up and explored the links between fiction and organization. By 1890, however, the sequence novel returned to obscurity as the art-object novel of Henry James began its ascent. Sequence novels are novels connected in sequence. They contain hundreds of characters and chronicle social processes that persist for years. The dissertation treats them as single works ii whose disparate narratives provide a coherent engagement with organization. Sequence novels show that novels and social institutions alike manufacture both intimacy and organization. The dissertation begins with Trollope’s Barsetshire novels and his descriptions of administrative ecologies—Church, civil service, legal system—and the people who inhabit them. From decisions, to the clerks and clerics who make them, and finally to the environments that house them, this chapter shows how individual decisions translate into the bureaucratic organization characteristic of large administrative institutions. When translated into the domestic sphere, organization produces comfort. Oliphant’s Carlingford Chronicles popularized a modern form of domestic organization that requires women to direct their attentions toward producing comfort. In this form of organization, women work in the medium of form (sewing and socializing, redecorating and relating, according to pattern) and produce a domestic world that is not so much a haven from the official world as a copy of it. From novelistic worlds replete with institutions, the final chapter turns away from official organization and the sprawling sequence novel to the individual novel with the individual at its center. Henry James’s The Tragic Muse sketches a late-Victorian world of “little systems,” constituted by and around the individual. This is a world without administrative decision, without comfort, but not therefore without organization. James substitutes for the ubiquitous organization of Trollope and Oliphant a ubiquitous network of personal interactions and individuals deciding. iii The dissertation of Matthew Andre Dubord is approved. Jonathan Furner Mark I. Seltzer Jonathan Hamilton Grossman, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iv Dedicated to my parents, for insisting that I push pencils for a living, and to my children for letting me read to them “Is Piglet organdized too?” “We all are,” said Rabbit, and off he went. A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION The Organization of Organizations: Bureaucratic Administration and Domestic Comfort in the Victorian Sequence Novel Introduction ................................................................................................................................1 Organization and Sequence ........................................................................................................11 Chapter Summaries ....................................................................................................................17 CHAPTER 1 Decisions, Dog Collars, and Sainted Enclosures: The Organization of Anthony Trollope’s Barsetshire. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................25 Decisions, or Transforming Contingency ..................................................................................35 Clerks and Clerics, Gentlemen and Civil Servants ....................................................................46 Observing Systems, or All In a Day’s Work ..............................................................................58 The Great Indoors, or Patterns of Asymmetry Across the Sequence .........................................68 CHAPTER 2 The Coffee and the Curate: The Comforts of Organization in Margaret Oliphant’s Carlingford Introduction ..............................................................................................................................82 The Female Trollope ..................................................................................................................92 Particular Little World .............................................................................................................104 Pens and Needles, Carpets and Laces, or the Medium of Form ...............................................116 CHAPTER 3 The Anti-Sequence Novel: Henry James’s The Tragic Muse and the Systematic Production of Individual Choice Introduction ............................................................................................................................123 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................155 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The characters of the novel sequences that this dissertation takes up number in the hundreds. Fortunately for my readers, the players in this dissertation are a much more manageable dozen or so. Over the years, Jonathan Grossman invested a lot of time in this dissertation and my writing in general. He is a great advisor, a great scholar, and a friend. Mark Seltzer, one of my readers, taught me to think in terms of systems. Thanks to Joe Bristow for his guidance and mentorship during my first years in graduate school and at the beginning stages of this project. Jami Bartlett will most likely not remember telling me early on that the real promise of this project lay in organization, but I thank her for the insight. That one word changed the project for the better. Several people have generously given their work, their time, or suggestions. Markus Krajewski sent me a draft of his book Paper Machines. Suzanne Keen provided an early draft of her chapter on the history of series fiction. Katherine Isokawa, Susan Lewak, Alex Milsom, Justine Pizzo, Josie Richstad, and Chris Sanchez read very early drafts of this work, and to them I am both apologetic and grateful. William Flesch suggested a book on ants that helped me to understand ecologies and organization. Robert Mockler and Kelly Howick provided clarification about legal terminology. Julie Revilla and Myron Wolfe provided critical technical resources at a time when they were most needed. Anne Austin, Anna Kornbluh, and Mia McIver gave thoughtful feedback on the ideas presented herein. I want to extend a special thank you to Pam Weinberger and Professor Tom Wortham for endowing the George Chavez fellowship, which provided crucial financial support during the writing of Chapter 1. Most of all, thank you to Jessica, Sidney and Clara, for living through all of this. vii VITA 1992-1993 Hampshire College, Amherst, MA 1993-1996 B. A., English and American Literature Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 2004-2009 Teaching Assistant/Associate University of California, Los Angeles 2007 M.A., English Literature University of California, Los Angeles 2007-2008 Teaching Assistant Consultant University of California, Los Angeles 2009-2011 TA Training Program Coordinator Office of Instructional Development University of California, Los Angeles 2011 Lecturer Mount St. Mary’s College PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS Dubord, Matthew. “Playing with Marlowe: Sovereignty, Spectacle, Subversion”, (dis)junctions Graduate Conference, UC Riverside, 2003 --------. “Code Calvino: Italo Calvino Reconstructed,” with Peter Cho. Digital media project in Java with SQL database. http://www.typotopo.com/projects.php?id=calvino. 2004-5. --------. “‘Romantic Stories, Prosaic Findings’: Work in The Hound of the Baskervilles,” UCLA Nineteenth Century Working Group, 2006 --------. “Built: An Installation on the Architectures of Narrative.” Digital media project in Macromedia Flash and HTML. Presented at the UCLA New Media Colloquium, May 2006. --------. “All art is one”: The Systematic Production of Individual Choice in Henry James’s The Tragic Muse, SSNL Narrative Conference, University of Texas at Austin, May 2008 --------. “Institutions of Intimacy: Anthony Trollope’s Parliamentary Sequence,” Institutions: the 20th Annual UCLA Southland Graduate Conference, 2009 --------. “The Plot of Institutions: Trollope’s Barsetshire Novels,” ISSNL
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