Gothic Taxonomies: Heredity and Sites of Domestication in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction

GOTHIC TAXONOMIES: HEREDITY AND SITES OF DOMESTICATION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH FICTION By Elizabeth M. Pellerito A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY English 2012 ABSTRACT GOTHIC TAXONOMIES: HEREDITY AND SITES OF DOMESTICATION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH FICTION By Elizabeth M. Pellerito This project reads the ways in which systems of taxonomy and gothic novels, when read together, chart the history of nineteenth-century theories of heredity. By pitting Enlightenment empiricist and rationalist thought against gothic novels, literary critics have posited the two fields as diametrically opposed entities. However, I argue here that the gothic novel translates naturalists’ and taxonomists’ questions about species, applying them to the social, political and biological structure of the human family. The central term of the project, “gothic taxonomy,” refers to the moments in each of these disciplines, and in the exchanges between them, that describe failed systematizations, the simultaneous necessity and impossibility of nineteenth- century attempts to encapsulate the laws of hereditary transmission in a single set of natural laws. By reading taxonomy as a process with social and political consequences, this project provides much-needed nuance to the often reductive critical debates about hereditarians and their foes during the nineteenth century. Revising and complicating these notions forces us to rethink the gothic as a discourse that is merely oppositional in nature, existing only to challenge the narratives of Enlightenment. Reading the gothic as an interpretive model that actively unpacks the inconsistencies of systematization, rather than simply as a reactionary celebration of the irrational or the subconscious, allows us to read it as a discourse with a real contribution of its own to make to scientific debates about the biological and social role of heredity during the period. These readings posit the domesticized gothic as an interpretive mode that challenges the logic of inclusion and of social boundedness promulgated in the nineteenth century realist novel. In each chapter, I examine the conversations about heredity that occur at four different iterations of the domestic: the home, the farm and the garden, and the nation. The first chapter uses Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Jean Baptiste de Lamarck’s Zoological Philosophy in order to argue that the novel uses the space of the home and its boundaries in order to first provoke a series of misleading and inaccurate versions of the family tree, and then to force the reader to redefine notions of enclosure, belonging, and the family itself. Chapter two positions Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall against the Romantic-scientific poetry of Erasmus Darwin; I argue that Brontë reclaims and reformulates debates about “breeding” and education in order to construct a model of heredity which favors maternal influence, in spite of the economic and legal legacies of the patriarchal conventions of the time. The third chapter places Charles Darwin’s The Variations of Plants and Animals Under Domestication in conversation with the novels of Wilkie Collins, arguing that post-Origin thinking about heredity relied on an invisible materialism rooted in much older notions of invisible fluid matter, notions which allowed contemporaries to paradoxically straddle the boundary between determinism and autonomy. In the final chapter, I argue that Mona Caird’s The Daughters of Danaus (1894) returns to Anne Brontë’s earlier logic of “breeding” in order to sketch out the complicated relationship between women’s bodies and nationalism; Caird revises Walter Bagehot’s gendered notions of a hereditary basis for the nation and embraces a mythic matriarchal past which allows her to subvert biologically-based arguments about the New Woman without denying the importance of heredity for the individual and the nation. Copyright by ELIZABETH M. PELLERITO 2012 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the personal and professional support of a great many people who shared their time, intelligence, wit, and friendship with me throughout my journey through graduate school. My co-chairs, Judith Stoddart and Scott Juengel, spent countless hours reading my drafts, listening to my ideas with open minds, and patiently offering their guidance at every point during this arduous process. Zarena Aslami and Justus Nieland have been the most diligent and thorough readers a writer could hope for; and John Waller graciously agreed to join the project at a later stage in order to share with me his expertise on the history of science. I have grown as a thinker, a writer, a scholar, and a teacher thanks to this committee, and I am sincerely grateful for their investment in me. I owe great thanks to the Department of English, the College of Arts and Letters, and the Graduate School at MSU for providing funding during this project. Benjamin Dettmar has been family as much as friend, and I can’t thank him enough for his support. Whether making a curry or making me laugh, climbing mountains with me or sailing the seas, his constant encouragement and love have kept me going. I also owe particular thanks to Sarah, Julia, Lindsey, the Smyth family, Ana, Micha, Mike and Lisa for their generous friendship over the years. I’m truly lucky to be surrounded by so many incredible and wonderful people. My writing group, Christi, Shannon and Inna, has challenged me in all the best ways. And to the activists and leaders of the Graduate Employees Union, especially Jacque Lloyd, I wish to impart my gratitude for years of inspiration and hard work. Last not but not least, I wish to thank my family for their incredible emotional support throughout my life. My parents, Joe and Grace Pellerito, believed in me and taught me from a young age to value education. Christopher, Matthew and Maelee Grace have always been able to v bring a laugh and a smile to my face. Andrea, the other Dr. Pellerito, has been friend as much as family; her phone calls and care packages, her guidance and confidence in my abilities, have meant the world to me. My grandmothers, like my mother and sister, have taught me how to be a strong and proud woman; they, along with my grandfathers, who taught me to say ja and to cast a fishing pole, have been with me during every step of this long process. Finally, I offer my thanks to Shadow, Maestro and Dodger for keeping me company during many long writing days, and for their unconditional love and purrs. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: FAMILY PORTRAITS AND POSTHUMOUS CHILDREN: THE SOCIAL IMPORTANCE OF HEREDITY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN ................................1 CHAPTER ONE CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HEREDITARY CHANGE IN EMILY BRONTË’S WUTHERING HEIGHTS ...............................................................................................................29 I. The “family mind:” The Brontës and the sisterhood of authorship ................................29 II. Constructing family narratives in Wuthering Heights...................................................40 III. Heathcliff as agent of Lamarckian permeable heredity ...............................................58 CHAPTER TWO DOMESTICATING THE CHILD: MATERNALIST RESPONSES TO THE DISCOURSE OF BREEDING IN THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL .................................................................71 I. Theories of nurture: The curiously parallel lives of Erasmus Darwin and Anne Brontë .............................................................................................................................72 II. Darwinian geometries: On parental contributions to offspring and the “golden” chains” of society ..........................................................................................................82 III. Eradicating the weeds: Helen’s maternalist campaign against mental contamination ............................................................................................................100 IV. Conclusions: The meanings of motherhood .............................................................110 CHAPTER THREE THE SPACE BETWEEN IDEA AND MANIFESTATION: DETERMINISM IN DARWINIAN PANGENESIS AND WILKIE COLLINS ..................................................................................116 I. Introduction: Mid-Victorian theories of individual agency and determinism ..............116 II. Thinking outside the tree: Darwinian pangenesis and the crises of materialism and metaphor ..............................................................................................................127 III. Crises of authority: The debate over sensation fiction ...............................................143 IV. The “Shadow of the Past” meets the “Shadow of the Future:” Determinism and metaphor in Armadale ...............................................................................................153 V. “Such contradictory conclusions:” Legacy of Cain and the sensational breakdown of heredity ...............................................................................................174 CHAPTER FOUR NATIONAL DOMESTICITY AND THE NEW WOMAN GOTHIC: CELTIC NATIONALISM IN MONA CAIRD’S THE DAUGHTERS OF DANAUS ............................................................187 I. Introduction: The New Woman and the old heredity at the fin de siècle ....................187 II. A brief history of domestication:

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