The Subtle Art: Poison in Victorian Literature Cheryl Blake Price

Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2012 The Subtle Art: Poison in Victorian Literature Cheryl Blake Price Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES THE SUBTLE ART: POISON IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE By CHERYL BLAKE PRICE A dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2012 Cheryl Blake Price defended this dissertation on 4/23/2012. The members of the supervisory committee were: Barry Faulk Professor Directing Dissertation Frederick Davis University Representative Meegan Kennedy Hanson Committee Member Eric Walker Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii To Matt, with love and thanks iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project could not have been realized without an intricate network of support, inspiration, and encouragement. First, I would like to thank my committee—Barry Faulk, Meegan Kennedy Hanson, Eric Walker, and Fritz Davis—for their feedback throughout this process and the insightful comments which certainly helped shape this project for the better. In particular, I thank Barry Faulk for his generosity with his time, his mentorship, and his wisdom. The research for this dissertation was supported by an international fellowship and I am greatly indebted to the English department at FSU for funding this award. In addition, my time in London could not have been as productive without the support of the staff and management at FSU’s London Study Centre, and I particularly thank Kathleen Paul and Lisa Bowers-Isaacson for their kindness and guidance. Additionally, the librarians at the British Library more than deserve my gratitude: their help and hard work paved the way for a successful research trip. During the first two years of my doctoral program I worked for FSU’s Advising First, and I can never repay the positive support I received from my colleagues in the division of Undergraduate Studies. Not only did Undergraduate Studies support my coursework financially, but several people—particularly Kathleen Smith, Nikki Raimondi, and Greg Beaumont—gave me invaluable mentorship. Several scholars outside of FSU also impacted this project. I would like to thank George Robb for his thoughtful comments on an early chapter of this dissertation that I presented at the North American Victorian Studies Association. A version of chapter three appeared in The Victorian Review and I thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their suggestions for revision. Finally, sometimes even the smallest encouragement can have a big impact, and I thank Martha Stoddard Holmes for suggesting that I write my dissertation on poison in Victorian literature Finally, I could not have finished this project without the help, support, and love of my friends and family. I deeply thank my parents and parents-in-law for helping to make this dissertation possible. But mostly, I can never thank Matt Price enough for his unending and unconditional love and encouragement—this dissertation is dedicated to him. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... vi 1. CHAPTER ONE: POISON AND THE VICTORIANS .........................................................1 2. CHAPTER TWO: POISONOUS KNOWLEDGE: BULWER’S LUCRETIA AND THE REVISIONING OF L.E.L’S ETHEL CHURCHILL .....................................................................30 3. CHAPTER THREE: PHYSIOGNOMY, SENSATION, AND THE ‘INVISIBLE’ POISONER IN DICKEN’S ‘HUNTED DOWN’ AND ELIOT’S ‘THE LIFTED VEIL’ ...........68 4. CHAPTER FOUR: MEDICAL BLUEBEARDS: GOTHIC MEDICINE AND THE POISONING DOCTOR IN THE FICTION OF ELLEN WOOD.................................................96 5. CHAPTER FIVE: HYPNOTIC POISON: FORENSIC SCIENCE AND UNCONSCIOUS CRIME IN CHARLES WARREN ADAMS’S THE NOTTING HILL MYSTERY AND WILKIE COLLINS’S THE MOONSTONE................................................................................................130 6. CONCLUSION: THE POISONER OF THE FUTURE ..………………………………...157 Works Cited .................................................................................................................................162 Biographical Sketch .....................................................................................................................180 v ABSTRACT “The Subtle Art: Poison in Victorian Literature” rethinks how nineteenth-century crime fiction responds to cultural perceptions about the progress of Victorian science. To this end, this project examines how authors use the poisoner—a figure who adapted empiric methodology for murderous ends—in order to explore criminal applications of cutting-edge science. Indeed, poison rapidly became labeled as the “Crime of the Age” precisely because it represented both scientific innovation and the potential for scientific abuse. The duality of poison is evocative of Jacques Derrida’s work on the pharmakon, a Greek word which simultaneously means both “remedy” and “poison.” Derrida’s theory is useful for understanding how the Victorians employed poison in their literary discourses because poison, like the pharmakon, has a slippery hybridity that collapses binary distinctions. In literature, poison acts as disrupting force that reveals deep anxieties about the scope of scientific influence in everyday life. Derrida, of course, uses the idea of the pharmakon to discuss Western culture’s suspicion of “dangerous” writing. Since “poison” was often used as a metaphor for dangerous texts, this dissertation also uses poisonous works to reexamine the nature of Victorian writing, particularly in relation to generic change. My analysis therefore focuses on critically ignored works from authors such as George Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Ellen Wood in order to reassess these authors’ relationship to science as well as their contributions to generic innovations in crime fiction. Thus, while revealing how authors used the poisoner to challenge the growing power and prestige of nineteenth-century science, my project also provides an alternate history of the development of Victorian crime fiction. For example, my first chapter demonstrates how deeply the male-dominated genre of Newgate fiction was indebted to an earlier tradition of women’s writing by showing how Edward Bulwer’s Lucretia (1846) revises the Romantic writer Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s work Ethel Churchill (1837). Employing similar poisoning figures, these two works engage in a critical dialogue about women, scientific education, and chemistry. Subsequent chapters continue to explore the intersections of science and chemical crimes at moments of generic transformation, revealing that crime fiction is more willing to challenge scientific authority than previously thought. vi CHAPTER ONE: POISON AND THE VICTORIANS Those subtle poisons which made science crime, And knowledge a temptation; could we doubt One moment the great curse upon our world, We must believe, to find that even good May thus be turn'd to evil. —Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Venetian Bracelet1 The poisoner, perhaps more than any other kind of criminal, fascinated the Victorians. In broadsheets, penny dreadfuls, newspapers, poetry, sensation stories, detective series, on the stage and even in realist novels, the Victorians actively consumed narratives about poisoners. The popularity of both real and fictional accounts of this criminal was so great that by mid-century the leading article of The Illustrated Times declared poison to be the “Crime of the Age.”2 The frequent appearance of these criminals in nineteenth-century texts reflects the Victorians’ belief that they were experiencing a poisoning renaissance. Most Victorians would have identified chemical murders with the intrigues of seventeenth-century Italy or France, not modern Britain; but a number of sensational crimes had convinced the public that poison was reemerging as a favored weapon. This belief was fueled by cryptic reports warning readers that “cases of undetected poisoning are of much more frequent occurrence than is generally supposed.”3 Even worse, unlike more brutal forms of murder, poison seemed to appeal to the “respectable classes” as well as the poor. Several shocking cases involving unlikely killers—such as middle-class Scottish maidens and independently wealthy doctors—had occurred by mid-century and were confirming fears about poison’s growing popularity. The Victorians believed that the resurgence of chemical crimes was directly related to changes that were occurring in modern society. Certainly, new technology and advances in chemical production had allowed cheap poisons to flood the market, but the Victorians 1 Landon, Letitia Elizabeth. The Venetian Bracelet, The Lost Pleiad, The History of the Lyre, and Other Poems. London: Longman, 1829: n.p. 2 “The Crime of the Age.” Illustrated Times. 2 Feb. 1856: 64. 3 “Undetected Poisonings.” The Medical Times and Register. 15 Aug. 1871: 419. 1 recognized that there was a more complex interrelationship between modernity and poison. Thus, in their attempts to explain the poisoning “epidemic,” critics often found themselves theorizing about not

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