Marriage and the Social Contract in British Romantic Discourse

Marriage and the Social Contract in British Romantic Discourse by Robert David Shakespeare A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2014 Robert David Shakespeare 2014 Author’s Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. David Shakespeare ii Abstract This thesis investigates non-domestic discourses of British Romanticism to argue that there is no “outside” of the domestic; its key constituents, family and the marriage that legitimizes that family, are absent presences in the period’s political writings, philosophical poetry, and gothic fiction. A central occupation in the thesis is an analysis of the significance that the wedding ceremony has on cultural, political, and textual levels. Following the Marriage Act of 1753, marriages would only be recognized as legal if they followed the state’s prescriptions, among which were the requirements for parental consent, public banns read for three consecutive weeks prior to the wedding, and authorization of the marriage by an officially licensed clergyman. The increased state control over what constitutes a valid marriage invites the parallel I draw between the marriage contract and the social contract, supported by the conventional analogy between family and state. My argument positions marriage and family as among the most overlooked ideas in Romantic-era discourse because of the rhetorical sublimations, transpositions, and narrative delays of literal marriage. In my first chapter, I investigate political texts of the period, chiefly Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke and Rights of Man by Thomas Paine. My second chapter investigates the substitutions and displacements of literal marriage in texts by William Wordsworth and Lord Byron. Two major gothic novels of the 1790s, Matthew Lewis’s The Monk and Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian, represent variations of the interrupted wedding ceremony in my third chapter, and I close with a conclusion featuring the novels of Jane Austen. I argue that remarriage constitutes a key to understanding representations of marriages that occur after the Marriage Act of 1753: remarriage to the same person is a way for couples to ensure that their vows are more personally meaningful, and, through repeated iterations, more iii significant than the legal mechanisms required by the state. If the analogy between the state and the family is conventional, then this conclusion has a potential application to political theories that consider the renewal of popular consent necessary to the validity of a government. iv Acknowledgements It is my pleasure to thank the many people involved in bringing this dissertation to its present state, and foremost thanks go to my supervisor, Professor Tristanne Connolly, who has provided me with innumerable, and invaluable, advice on the improvement of this project. For their helpful and detailed criticisms, and the time that it has taken them to offer these to me, many thanks must also go to the committee members, Professors Lawson and Tierney-Hynes, whose contributions have led me to reshape this project in substantially improved ways. To Professor Serafini and Professor Miles, I offer thanks for agreeing to take time to participate in this process, and for the critical eyes they have brought to this defense. I would also like to thank the Graduate Chairs, Professor Harris and Professor Morrison, who tirelessly offered their counsel and negotiations to bring this process about, and to the departmental secretaries, Julie- Anne Desrochers, Margaret Ulbrick, and Emily Hudson as well as their predecessors, for making all the arrangements that have brought my degree toward its near conclusion. Thanks also to the Department of English and the University of Waterloo for the many opportunities and funding which I have received, as well as to the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program for its financial awards. I will close these opening remarks by saying how grateful I am for having a very collegial group of graduate students with whom I have journeyed through this program, and especially to have Danila Sokolov and Kevin Ziegler among these peers, for many hours of stimulating conversation and encouragement. To my parents, and in-laws, I thank for continual support and good cheer, and finally, many thanks to my wife, with whom I share a wonderful son and a wonderful marriage. v Dedication This project is dedicated to my wife Jodi and my son Oscar—my two dreams come true. vi Table of Contents Author’s Declaration ....................................................................................................................... ii Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... v Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... vii Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Placing the State in the Bedrooms of the Nation ........................................................ 45 Chapter 2: Marriage, Domesticity, and the Isolated Artist of Romanticism ................................ 99 Chapter 3: Marriage in the Gothic Novel ................................................................................... 165 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 229 Notes ........................................................................................................................................... 244 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 265 vii Introduction “I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed), that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God’s Word doth allow, are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful.” He paused, as the custom is. When is the pause after that sentence ever broken by reply? Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years. And the clergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his book, and had held his breath but for a moment, was proceeding: his hand was already stretched towards Mr. Rochester, as his lips unclosed to ask, “Wilt thou have this woman for thy wedded wife?”—when a distinct and near voice said— “The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment.” (Brontë 376) I began work on this dissertation with the question of why a significant number of well- known British Romantic-era texts feature a couple who, on the point of being legally married, were interrupted in the middle of their ceremony, the feast that follows, or on their wedding night. Examples come from diverse sources: John Keats’s Lamia and Otho the Great; Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer; Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Walter Scott’s Marmion; John Polidori’s “The Vampyre”; Matthew Lewis’s The Monk; Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian; and, perhaps most famously, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Although, as 1 the last example demonstrates, the interruption does not always occur at the moment of marriage, the number and variety of these instances challenge Jane Eyre’s speculation that “[n]ot, perhaps, once in a hundred years” does one hear something breaking the silent pause. Why does such a heretofore unremarked situation appear with such frequency during the Romantic period? In the argument that follows, I analyse and compare concepts from Romantic-era discursive practices to propose an answer to that question. I shall argue that although non- domestic texts appear to sublimate the importance of marriage for other concerns through displacements or substitutions, there is no “outside” of the domestic; rather, political tracts, philosophical poetry, and gothic fiction all rely on the importance of marriage, even if they ostensibly marginalize it. In doing so, Romantic authors’ representations of the meanings of the nuptial lexicon—marriage, matrimony, and wedding are the most prominent of these—displace the importance of marriage. I develop a response to the question of the interrupted wedding ceremony in an argument that finds changes to the practice of marriage enforced by the 1753 Marriage Act to be among the most significant causes of this fictional motif. The Act, also known as the Hardwicke Marriage Act, brought state control to the requirements of a legitimate wedding in England; prior to its inception, as I outline, there was a greater variety of practices based on which a couple who cohabited could be

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