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Symptoms of Femininity: Novelistic Treatments of Sensibility, 1760-1820

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Symptoms of Femininity: Novelistic Treatments of Sensibility, 1760-1820 Symptoms of Femininity: Novelistic Treatments of Sensibility, 1760-1820 by Laura Marie Stenberg A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto ©Copyright by Laura Marie Stenberg, 2014 Symptoms of Femininity: Novelistic Treatments of Sensibility, 1760-1820 Laura Stenberg Department of English University of Toronto Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 At the end of the eighteenth century in England, the popular discourse of sensibility took a toll on the bodies of literary heroines, disabling them through faints, blushes, hysteria, and other symptoms. At this same time, the reading public had increasing access to medical knowledge through publications advocating self-awareness and preventative medical practices. In this thesis I therefore locate a medical narrative logic and rhetoric in novels by select women authors in order to suggest that these novelists−Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, and Jane Austen−were, in fact, working with varying degrees of success, to treat heroines disabled by the symptoms of sensibility. My thesis reads the medical writings of William Cullen, William Buchan, John Leake, and Thomas Beddoes, among others, alongside the novels of Wollstonecraft, Hays, and Austen. By this means I identify the discursive tools provided by popular medical texts and show how they were employed by these authors to treat the symptoms of sensibility. In Chapter One I examine the case studies Wollstonecraft presents in her novels to illustrate the tragic consequences that result when women are not permitted to maintain authority over their own health and habits. Chapter Two considers the writings of Mary Hays as she sought to diagnose her personal health and habits through her autobiographical novel. Her self-diagnosis in Memoirs of Emma Courtney enables her to optimistically offer preventative suggestions to try and ensure the health of future generations of women. Finally, in Chapter Three I look at Austen’s successful treatment ii of sensibility in Sense and Sensibility, her first published novel. In determining that the symptoms of sensibility did not actually warrant medical treatment, Austen freed her future heroines to engage in a healthier way of feeling, namely for others through feelings of sympathy. All three authors employed the tools afforded them by medical discourse to treat their heroines’ symptoms of sensibility, and to rethink the possibilities for healthier models of female literary heroism. This thesis therefore offers insight into the ways in which romantic-period novels by women were not only informed by, but also engaged with, popular medical discourses during the late eighteenth century. iii Acknowledgments To express my gratitude to all those who have helped with this project is no small thing. The list could easily be as long as the project itself. To start from the very beginning, I was grateful to receive funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, as well as the University of Toronto to undertake this work. My supervisor Deidre Lynch was patient, rigorous, and always challenged me to ask sharper questions and to push for more productive, fruitful answers. I am tremendously grateful to have had her support and insights over the years. Thank you also to Alan Bewell and Thomas Keymer, committee members who provided thoughtful, engaged feedback on my work and who, along with Deidre, were always ready with advice, support, and encouragement. I am also indebted to other University of Toronto faculty members who assisted me throughout the PhD program─Brian Corman, Linda Hutcheon, Jeremy Lopez, Carol Percy, Heather Murray, Will Robins, Paul Stevens, and my various course professors. I also very much appreciate the feedback provided by Professor James Allard from Brock University as my external examiner. Thank you to Margaret Atwood as well, for tips along the way. And I will always be grateful to the University of Guelph’s Susan Brown for teaching me how to research, and to Danny O’Quinn, for showing me the power of reading closely. The administrative and support staff in the English department at the University of Toronto have always been second to none. Gillian Northgrave, Tanuja Persaud, Sangeeta Panjwani, Clare Orchard, and Marguerite Perry number among the truly iv wonderful, kind souls who have provided invaluable, tireless assistance to so many students, myself included, day in and day out. The women in my cohort at the University of Toronto are among the most amazing, intelligent, witty, lovely, and generous people I know, and have helped me shape the ideas for this project and beyond. In particular, to Suzanne Grégoire, Dr. Ceilidh Hart, Dr. Katherine McLeod, Dr. Emily Simmons, and Jackie B. Wylde, thank you for sharing your laughter, brain power, and conversation with me. A special thank you to Dr. Marybeth Curtin without whose determination, perseverance, and thirst for knowledge, I’d have been lost. And thanks also to those who went before and helped to show me the ropes: Dr. Darryl Domingo and Dr. Rory McKeown. Thank you to my many friends around the globe who encouraged me to persevere with this project, and to Mark Ussher, who would have been pleased and proud to see it done. Finally, to my family, to my mother who had me reading before I could talk, and who encouraged me, drove me, helped me, taught me, loved me, I can never say thank you enough. To my father who taught me the value of clear writing (among many, many other things), and to my sister whose pictures often say more than my thousands of words, I love you and am so grateful to all of you. And to my husband, Travis, my partner in crime, and my rock, thank you always, for the easy silence that you make for me, and the way you keep the world at bay for me. v Table of Contents Introduction: ‘Every Woman Her Own Physician’ .................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Mary Wollstonecraft: Rewriting Women’s Habits ................................................................... 41 Chapter 2: Textual Remedies: Diagnostic Memories in Mary Hays’ Memoirs of Emma Courtney ....... 106 Chapter 3: Jane Austen’s Fictional Treatment of Sensibility ................................................................... 158 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 217 Works Consulted ........................................................................................................................ 224 vi vii Introduction: “Every Woman her own Physician” The Ladies Dispensatory, Containing the Natures, Vertues, and Qualities of all Herbs, and Simples useful in Physick. Reduced into a Methodical Order, for their more ready use in any sickness, or other accident of the Body first appeared in 1652.1 The work offered basic remedies to the general reading public and, according to its modern editors, reflected “the major surge during the seventeenth century of public interest in both medicine and preventative health among the literate public, who could be cast in the roles of both lay patients and health-care providers.”2 While the content was not new—its sources included Dioscorides’ Materia Medica, Gerard’s The Herbal or General History of Plants (1597), and the writings of Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566)—there was nevertheless something novel about the text. What was distinct from earlier medical books was The Ladies Dispensatory’s clear address towards female readers. Furthermore, though the volume addressed the afflictions of both men and women, the work’s title suggested that women would be primarily responsible for administering the prescriptions. When the Dispensatory appeared again during the eighteenth century,3 both its title and contents had undergone further significant transformations. Instead of the simple, point-form prescriptions offered in the earlier work, the new volume is written in 1 This is the date most widely given. The OCLC Worldcat, however, lists an edition as having been published in 1651 as well. http://www.oclc.org/worldcat.en.html (accessed October 12, 2008). 2 Leonard Sowerby, The Ladies’ Dispensatory, ed. Carey Balaban, Jonathan Erlan and Richard Siderits (New York: Routledge, 2003). All subsequent notes refer to this edition. It should be noted that while Sowerby is cited as the author for this particular early edition, many of the subsequent editions (including the edition discussed below, that of 1739) were published anonymously, presumably by more than one author. 3 According to the OCLC Worldcat, editions were published in 1739, 1740, 1755, 1769, and 1770. 1 2 fluid prose, offering case studies of conditions contracted and treated. The full title of the 1739 edition is much longer than that of the first version and is worth including in full: The Ladies Dispensatory: or Every Woman her Own Physician. Treating of the Nature, Causes, and Various Symptoms, of all the Diseases, Infirmities and Disorders, Natural or Contracted, that most peculiarly affect the Fair Sex, in all their Different Situations of Life, as Maids, Married Women, and Widows. The work then promises: A variety of proper remedies, in words at length, adapted to each Particular Case, agreeably to the best modern practice: by the help of which any maid or woman, who can read English, may not only come at a true knowledge of her Indisposition, but be enabled to cure it without applying, or even discovering her
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