Secondary Heroines in the Nineteenth-Century Novel
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THE OTHER WOMAN: SECONDARY HEROINES IN THE NINETEENTH- CENTURY BRITISH AND AMERICAN NOVEL DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School at The Ohio State University By Jennifer Bonnie Camden, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2005 Dissertation Committee: Professor Susan Williams, Adviser Approved by Professor Marlene Longenecker Professor Amanpal Garcha ______________________________ Professor Elizabeth Hewitt Adviser English Graduate Program ABSTRACT In a recurrent pattern in the nineteenth-century novel, authors introduce two female characters, only to focus on one and appear to forget the other. My dissertation examines this other woman: the “secondary heroine.” The protagonists of Romantic novels are written to embody stable national identities, suggesting a transatlantic history of the Romantic novel in which both British and American authors equate the primary heroine with a cultural ideal of femininity. Yet both traditions challenge that cultural ideal through the figure of the secondary heroine. My dissertation demonstrates how authors initially deployed the “other woman” to suppress alternative images of womanhood and nationhood, but eventually embraced the secondary heroine as the centerpiece of the Realist novel. In the first three chapters, I pair British and American novels and examine the secondary heroine as a challenge to generic and nationalist constraints. I divide the Romantic novel into three separate subgenres: the epistolary novel, as exemplified by Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1747-8) and Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette (1797); the Gothic and its inheritors in the cult of sensibility, represented by Ann Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance (1790), Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811), and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers (1823); and the historical romance in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1820) and Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie (1827). By pairing ii British and American texts of similar genres, I underscore the secondary heroine as a site of difference who reveals anxieties over unstable national identities. The Realist novel reversed the roles of “primary” and “secondary” heroines, preferring dangerous women to conventional heroines. My fourth chapter traces the role of the secondary heroine in theories of Realism. I argue that the Realist novel works to contain dangerous women through two narrative strategies: acculturation and resistance. My final chapter turns to the heroines of Henry James’s The Golden Bowl (1904). Situated at the cusp of Realism and Modernism, James’s novel provides a fitting endpoint for my study: the construction of national identity via multiple marriage plots anticipates the fragmentation of identity and multiple narrators that characterize the modernist novel, erasing the distinction between primary and secondary heroines. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the generous support and advice of my dissertation committee and the English Department. I wish to thank my adviser, Susan Williams for her encouragement as a scholar, teacher and friend. Her careful readings of my work and her tireless support for this project have given me a model of scholarship that I will always strive to emulate. I am indebted to Marlene Longenecker, my first mentor at Ohio State, who introduced me to the novels of Ann Radcliffe and helped me to navigate the slightly less Gothic landscape of my first literature classroom. Her guidance has been invaluable and her support, irreplaceable. I wish to thank Elizabeth Hewitt for introducing me to Early American fiction and for her trenchant commentary; this is a stronger work because of her insightful critiques. I am also grateful to Amanpal Garcha, whose comments have consistently challenged me, but also reminded me why I began this project in the first place. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the support, friendship and careful readings provided by the Dissertation Writing Workshop. I must particularly thank Dana M. Oswald, who read every page of this dissertation countless times and with ceaseless good will. Finally, I would like to thank my mother, Bonnie G. Camden, my partner, Eric E. Landen, and all of my family and friends for their love and support. iv VITA June 12, 1978 ..........................................Born in Memphis, Tennessee 2001..........................................................M.A. in English, The Ohio State University 2001-present.............................................Graduate Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS 1. “Review of Henry James and the Suspense of Masculinity.” Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations. Online, April 2004. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements............................................................................................................ iv Vita.......................................................................................................................................v Chapters: Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 1. The Secondary Heroine as Advisor: Epistolary Coquetry in Clarissa and The Coquette ................................................................................................................17 Mapping Geographies of Wealth: Inclination and Obligation in Clarissa............26 Corresponding Coquettries....................................................................................47 Marriage Market: Wealth, Obligation and Female Friendship..............................64 2. Money, Matrimony and Memory: Secondary Heroines in Radcliffe, Austen and Cooper....................................................................................................................68 Domestic Sense and Italian Sensibility in A Sicilian Romance .............................75 A New British Domestic: Sense and Sensibility....................................................89 Remembering the Rival: Louisa Grant ..................................................................99 Conclusion: Who Can Afford Sensibility? ..........................................................110 3. New Nationalisms: Ivanhoe and Hope Leslie......................................................114 vi The Fair Jewess and the Less Interesting Rowena: Race, Femininity, and History in Ivanhoe.............................................................................................................121 Magawisca’s Missing Arm: Absence and Replacement in Hope Leslie .............148 Why Does the Historical Romance Make Us Want What We Can’t Have? .......174 4. The Secondary Heroine in Theories of Realism..................................................178 5. Transatlantic Exchange in The Golden Bowl.......................................................212 “Blood! You’ve that of every race”: Legible Femininity, Illegible Nationality.214 “Nothing short of obscene”: Charlotte as Secondary Heroine.............................224 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................244 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................252 vii INTRODUCTION There was a mad disorder in my thoughts – a tumult unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be the living Rowena who confronted me? Could it indeed be Rowena at all – the fair- haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine? Why, why should I doubt it? The bandage lay heavily about the mouth – but then might it not be the mouth of the breathing Lady of Tremaine? And the cheeks – there were the roses as in her noon of life – yes, these might indeed be the fair cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin, with its dimples, as in health, might it not be hers? – but had she then grown taller since her malady? What inexpressible madness seized me with the thought? One bound, and I had reached her feet! Shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and there streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of long and disheveled hair; it was blacker than the wings of midnight! And now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me. “Here then, at last,” I shrieked aloud, “can I never – can I never be mistaken – these are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes – of my lost love – of the lady – of the LADY LIGEIA!” (1534) So ends Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short story, “Ligeia,” but the transformation of the Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine into Ligeia raises more questions than Poe’s conclusion answers: how has the Lady Rowena been transformed into the Lady Ligeia? What were those ruby drops that appeared in the air before falling into Rowena’s drink? Did our narrator poison Rowena? Is this all an opium dream, or has Ligeia truly been able to conquer death? Who – or what – is the Lady Ligeia? These questions have haunted readers since Poe’s story first appeared in the September 1838 issue of The American Museum and will undoubtedly continue to haunt readers for as long as Poe’s text remains in print. But let me tell you the