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Invisible Links, Abject Chains: Habit in Nineteenth-Century British Literature" (2010)

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Invisible Links, Abject Chains: Habit in Nineteenth-Century British Literature View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Louisiana State University Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2010 Invisible links, abject chains: habit in nineteenth- century british literature Daniel R. Mangiavellano Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Mangiavellano, Daniel R., "Invisible links, abject chains: habit in nineteenth-century british literature" (2010). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2685. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2685 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. INVISIBLE LINKS, ABJECT CHAINS: HABIT IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Daniel R. Mangiavellano B.A., Michigan State University, 2000 M.A., American University, 2003 May 2010 © Copyright 2010 Daniel R. Mangiavellano All rights reserved. ii DEDICATION For Linzey and Lucy Larks at break of day arising iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS William James has said that habituation leads to an “old fogyism [that] begins at a younger age than we think…in the majority of human beings it begins at about twenty-five.” It is a pleasure to acknowledge the thoughtful assistance of faculty, friends, and family who have helped me grow beyond my own early onset “fogyism,” and who have dedicated much time and effort to helping me pursue new connections between habit, creativity, and nineteenth-century British literature. Dr. Robert Hamm first drew my attention to the importance of Shakespearean allusion in eighteenth and nineteenth-century medical literature. Conversations with him gave shape to much of my analysis of Coleridge, Hamlet, and the psychological paralysis of habit in Chapter 2. The lively conversations and debates in Dr. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman’s engaging “Victorian Life Writing” seminar (during a turbulent Fall 2005 semester) influenced how I’ve made sense of De Quincey’s bravado when he spins tales about his own opium habit. Robert and Sharon have been encouraging members of my dissertation committee and have both been sounding boards for early ideas developed throughout this dissertation. Three scholars have given shape to my career as a critic and an educator. My interest in British Romanticism began with a presentation on the Romantic lyric in Dr. Richard Sha’s poetry seminar at American University in 2001. Richard has been a tireless advocate for my work and has encouraged my active participation among a community of Romanticists. He has drawn my attention to primary and secondary materials included in every chapter of this dissertation. The co-chairs of my dissertation committee have invested an extraordinary amount of time, good cheer, and thoughtful attention to the growth of this dissertation from its earliest stages. This project began as a seminar paper on Joanna Baillie, “sympathetic curiosity,” and addiction in Dr. Daniel Novak’s “Romanticism and the Gender of Language” seminar at Louisiana State University in 2004. I turned my attention from “addiction” to “habit” after iv discussions with Dan about the language nineteenth-century writers used to understand addiction—these and so many other conversations with Dan continue to influence how I interpret literature and teach in the undergraduate classroom. From day one, Dr. Elsie Michie has seen the larger implications of my work on habit. She has helped me develop the kind of critical attentiveness that allowed me to identify moments in nineteenth-century British literature when poets and novelists talk about habit without knowing it. Elsie has always had faith in the integrity of this project, and her welcome suggestions on my writing have always pushed me to make connections between habit and creativity. Richard, Dan, and Elsie remain my mentors and models for professional engagement—not to mention most valued friends. There isn’t an ounce of Jamesian “fogyism” in the bunch. Tanja Stampfl, Marianne Bessy, Joseph Brown, Ilana Xinos, Casey Kayser, and Gentry Hanks have all read drafts of this project at various stages of completion, with Anna Meyer providing valuable editorial assistance. My friends and officemates Aaron Bady (at AU) and Lisa Moody (at LSU) have each provided a level of interest and encouragement in my work that has supported and encouraged me more than they can know. Many discussions with Aaron and Lisa are represented in this dissertation, and I hope each will see the ways they have influenced how I read and interpret literature. Thanks go to David and Denise Powers for their unwavering support of my graduate studies. I owe a debt of gratitude to my parents, Michael and Kathryn Mangiavellano, for their continued love and encouragement. My mother began proof-reading my essays in high school. Many of her early lessons about clear prose are, I hope, evident in this dissertation. My father introduced me to the works of Jane Austen and has encouraged my interest in literary criticism from its earliest stages at MSU. My wife, Linzey, and my daughter, Lucy, share the dedication of this dissertation. Linzey has graciously sacrificed many lunch hours reading drafts of sections and spent countless evenings talking with me about habit and British literature. She is one of the v best writers I know and my most trusted reader. Her patience, sense of humor, and friendship (coupled with Lucy’s curiosity and playfulness) remain the most cherished things in my life. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………………………iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………………........iv ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………….viii INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER ONE ‘A SOURCE OF FIRST PRINCIPLES’: HABIT, EDUCATION, AND MOLDING THE IMAGINATION………………………. ………………………………………………………..15 CHAPTER TWO HABIT AND THE ROMANTIC PSYCHE………………………….………………………….47 CHAPTER THREE DE QUINCEY, COLERIDGE, AND THE LITERARY MODEL OF HABIT…………………72 CHAPTER FOUR HABIT, LITERARY CREATION, AND THE ‘MAGNETIC SLUMBER’ OF WILKIE COLLINS……………………………………………………………………………………….106 EPILOGUE……………………………………………………………………………………..126 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………………..131 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………………145 vii ABSTRACT “Invisible Links, Abject Chains: Habit in Nineteenth-Century British Literature” argues that habit is a central characteristic of both Romantic and Victorian theories of imagination, originality, literary production, and subjectivity. Certainly, nineteenth-century culture often treats habit with suspicion, invoking language of bondage, slavery, and dangerous unconscious imitation to apply to everything from reading habits to opium use. However, by tracing a discourse of habit from association theory to pragmatism and drawing from philosophical, educational, medical, and psychological texts, I foreground how Romantic and Victorian texts redeploy habit as a paradoxical form of imaginative agency. In nineteenth-century culture, habit makes possible what seems to be its opposite—invention, authenticity, and imagination. The variety of activities, attitudes, and behaviors characterized as “habitual” in nineteenth-century discourse intervenes in how we understand issues such as Romantic genius, the mechanics of creativity and memory, automation and spectatorship, and addiction. Reading key instances in the writings of William Wordsworth, Joanna Baillie, Coleridge, De Quincey, Lamb, William James, and Wilkie Collins, I show how alternative discourses of habit challenge our understandings of the (often self-fashioned) myths inscribed within Romantic and Victorian subjectivity. viii INTRODUCTION In this dissertation, I examine the connection between habit, literary production, and creativity in nineteenth-century British literature. Associating habit with literary invention and creativity may appear to constitute a troubling counterintuitive claim; we tend to think of habit strictly in relation to engrained cycles of automatic, repetitive behaviors. But throughout this dissertation I show that quite the opposite was true for Romantic and Victorian writers—the desires embedded by repetition in the unconscious mind make possible creative impulses in writers as diverse as William Wordsworth, Joanna Baillie, Thomas De Quincey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Wilkie Collins.1 I focus exclusively on “habit” in this dissertation because it was the specific term nineteenth-century writers used to describe behaviors in contexts ranging from childhood educational experience to opium consumption. The OED definition of “habit” foregrounds the conditions by which it strengthens and embeds itself as a mental and physical agent: A settled disposition or tendency to act in a certain way, esp. one acquired by frequent repetition of the same act until it becomes almost or quite involuntary; a settled practice, custom, usage; a customary way or manner of acting (9a). This definition incorporates the principal aspects
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