Feeling Capitalism: the Victorian Novel As Affective Response to Social Transformation
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Feeling Capitalism: The Victorian Novel as Affective Response to Social Transformation by Thomas Anthony Laughlin A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Thomas Anthony Laughlin 2016 Feeling Capitalism: The Victorian Novel as Affective Response to Social Transformation Thomas Anthony Laughlin Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto 2016 Abstract This dissertation argues that Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1860-1), and George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-2) constellate the affective dimensions of life under advancing capitalism around three dominant emotions: desire, guilt, and disappointment. In each case, the focalizing emotion, I argue, is not only specific to this or that character, but also a dominant structuring affect of the work as a whole, which, in turn, has historical specificity to the decade of the novel’s production. Chapter 2 relates Brontë’s depiction of Heathcliff and Catherine’s insatiable desire to the romantic-libertarianism of the 1840s and the autonomization of desire in the newly privatized space of the bourgeois family, which, I argue, widened its symbolic valences, making it available for Brontë’s mythologization of history as the struggle of desire against repression. Chapter 3 explores Dickens’s sense of society’s inexorable guilt in relation to the “liberal guilt” that followed in the years after the failed proletarian revolutions of 1848, attaching negative connotations to individual “great expectations,” which now appear to be necessarily at the cost of the less fortunate. Such negative connotations ironize Dickens’s title providing it with its ii dominant “structure of feeling.” Chapter 4 connects Eliot’s sense of inescapable disappointment and resignation to the lowered expectations of the 1870s, when the millenarian spirit of the former decades subsided into what, for many, felt like a Victorian “end of history.” Disappointment, however, comes with a new clarity—a realism that now grasps society as an evolving historical totality. Against theorists like Brian Massumi, who posit affect as ahistorical and nonrepresentational, this dissertation argues instead for the centrality of affect to a historicizing literary criticism that attempts to forge a connection between a novel’s narrative style and what Fredric Jameson calls its “political unconscious.” In so doing, I put forward a theory of affect as a mediatory category, bringing together novelistic representations and lived historical experience in such a way that allows us to interpret Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, and Middlemarch as three affective responses to social transformations wrought by capitalism in the nineteenth century—three different ways of feeling capitalism. iii Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge financial support received while writing this dissertation from a Ruth E. and Harry E. Carter / Ontario Graduate Scholarship; a University of Toronto Fellowship; a Dorothy Louise Ellison, 4T8 / Ontario Graduate Scholarship; and a Joseph- Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships, Doctoral Scholarship. This dissertation has had many comrades. In many ways it began before it started. If it weren’t for meeting Duncan Clegg, Zach Gaviller, and Joel Irwin at Trent University, where I did my Bachelor’s degree, I likely would not have continued on to graduate studies. Our conversations, which spilled over from the classroom to the Pig’s Ear Tavern and then often into the wee hours of the morning, made it clear to me that I could not live a life that did not have intelligent conversation and serious question-asking in it. Later Tristana Rubio became a vital part of this conversation and helped us carry on the dialogue in Toronto. I still see myself as trying to understand and formulate adequate answers to the questions we were asking ourselves back then. And, in that sense, all of you, despite the borders that divide us, are still my interlocutors and, of course, for this and other reasons, my dear friends. I am also indebted to the many friends I have had while at the University of Toronto, too many in fact to list all of them. But I do want to single out Tara McDonald, Miriam Novick, Abi Dennis, Dave Ritter, Tim Harrison, Jason Peters, Alpen Razi, Noa Reich, and Corey Ponder for being buds in various ways. Whether it was helping me with my writing, going to the gym and reading Heidegger together, going to shows, staying at the pub for “one more” after everyone else left, helping me move, or simply offering a kind word when sometimes it all seemed like too much, it was always much appreciated. Being a Teaching Assistant for Nick Mount was a formative part of this intellectual journey as well; I hope I have been able to put some of the spark and vitality that he puts into his lectures into the pages of this dissertation. I want to thank especially Alexander Eastwood and Simon Reader for their particular flair for conversation and their support and encouragement throughout this whole thing. You both really kept me going. I am, of course, indebted as well to my brilliant supervisory committee: Audrey Jaffe and Christine Bolus-Reichert. Without their expert feedback, the dissertation would not be what it is now, in either form or content. Particularly iv inspiring for this project was a course I took with Franco Moretti on the figure of the bourgeois and a chance to meet (very briefly) Fredric Jameson and see him speak on a few occasions. Elaine Freedgood was my external examiner and Paul Downes my internal examiner; both offered generous commentary on the final product that has left me with much to think about, especially should I find myself reprising any of these ideas in the future. An extra special thank you is in order for my supervisor, Cannon Schmitt, who read over countless drafts of this project, from its most inchoate and nonsensical articulations to its present form. Whatever clarity it has is thanks to his help. The errors, however, are all my own. I met my “co-bro” Malissa Phung well over halfway through this degree, but she’s been one of my biggest champions ever since (we started from the bottom, now we’re here!). When my confidence and motivation were starting to wane, I got an incredible boost from the amazing friends and colleagues I was able to meet through the Marxist Literary Group: Norman Mack, Brent Bellamy, Jeff Diamanti, Melissa Macero, Kate Lawless, David Janzen, Jen Phillis, Teresa Jimenez, Emilio Sauri, Nicholas Brown, Maria Elisa Cevasco, Imre Szeman, Ericka Beckman, Anna Kornbluh, and so many more. If it wasn’t for the Hen House and Unlovable, my time writing this would have been a much more somber affair, more work and less play. Dr. Kasra Koochesfahani helped me stay mentally healthy when times were tough. Anyone who has written a dissertation knows that it’s basically impossible to do if you don’t have good things in your life and, in that sense, Cassel Busse provided the conditions of possibility that made completing this dissertation a reality. Thank you for everything. The camaraderie of the Robarts 13th-floor crew—Dhruv Jain, Parastou Saberi, and Erin Mandzak—also helped enormously with the final push that got this done (let’s go Raptors!). This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Jenna Schick and Ted Laughlin, who have supported and encouraged me now through many years of education. I am grateful for everything you have given me. Love you both. I also dedicate this dissertation to the members of the Teaching Assistants’ union, CUPE 3902, who went on strike in 2015, and to the ideal of a university that is free and accessible to everyone, where education, not administration, is the priority. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... vi 1. Introduction: How to Historicize Affects ........................................................................1 1.1 Desire .........................................................................................................................5 1.2 The Liberal Subject ....................................................................................................8 1.3 Guilt .........................................................................................................................13 1.4 Disappointment ........................................................................................................14 1.5 Affect: Immediate or Mediated Phenomenon? ........................................................16 1.6 Sianne Ngai and the Subjective/Objective Dialectic of Emotions ..........................21 1.7 From the Particular to the General: Lauren Berlant and Cruel Optimism ...............24 1.8 Breaking with the New Historicism: Affect Against the Linguistic Turn ..............28 1.9 Fredric Jameson, Narrative, and the Desire for History .........................................32 1.10 Affect and the Political Unconscious ....................................................................37 1.11 Raymond Williams: From Mediation to Structures of Feeling ............................39 1.12 Character, Theme, Worldview ...............................................................................44 2. History