1 Post-Authenticity: Literary Dialect and Realism in Victorian and Neo-Victorian Social Novels By: Suzanne Pickles A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sheffield Faculty of Arts and Humanities School of English July 2018 2 Abstract This thesis considers what a post-authenticity approach to literary dialect studies should be. Once we have departed from the idea of literary dialect studies being engaged in ascertaining whether or not the fictional representation of nonstandard speech varieties can be matched with those same varieties in the external world, how should we study the dialect we find in novels? I argue that literary dialect studies should be placed within critical work on the realist novel, since the representation of speech, like the broader field of realism, aims to reflect an external world, one with which the reader can identify. This, as yet, has not been done. My approach is to place greater emphasis on the role of the reader. I consider the ways in which writers use literary dialect to manage readers’ responses to characters, and the nature of those responses. I give a close reading of Victorian and neo-Victorian novels to show that, whilst the subject matter of these works has changed over time to suit a modern readership, the dialect representation – its form and the attitudes to language usage it communicates – is conservative. Referring to recent surveys, and through my own research with real readers, I show that nonstandard speakers are still regarded as less well-educated and of a lower social class than those who speak Standard English. This, I argue, is why writers encode such attitudes into their works and are able to manipulate readers’ responses to characters. I argue that it is the interplay of text, reader, and the broader cultural context in which the work is both written and read, that gives meaning to the literary dialect and brings it within the scope of studies of the realist novel. 3 Contents Introduction 1. Two Types of Authenticity 4 2. Literature Review: Literary Dialect 12 3. Section Summaries: Case Studies and Methodology 21 Section One: Literary Dialect and Realism 1. Introduction 25 2. Literature Review: Literary Realism 26 3. Frances Trollope, Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy (1840) 37 4. George Gissing, Workers in the Dawn (1880) 53 5. Howard Spring, Fame is the Spur (1940) 67 6. Conclusions 82 Section Two: New Historicism and Neo-Victorianism 1. Introduction 85 2. New Historicism 86 3. Neo-Victorianism 92 4. Sarah Waters, Fingersmith (2002) 97 5. Michel Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White (2002) 114 6. Lynn Shepherd, Tom-All-Alone’s (2012) 126 7. Conclusions 140 Section Three: Sympathy and Empathy: Reader Response to Fiction 1. Introduction 141 2. Literature Review: Readers’ Emotional Response to Fiction 141 3. Attitudes to Language in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries 150 4. Fingersmith: Working With Real Readers 163 5. Conclusions 182 Conclusions 184 Appendices 193 Bibliography 196 4 Post-Authenticity: Literary Dialect and Realism in Victorian and Neo-Victorian Social Novels Introduction 1. Two Types of Authenticity A Memoir of Robert Blincoe (1832) recounts the story of Blincoe’s early years when he was sent, at the age of seven, from the St. Pancras workhouse to the mills of Nottinghamshire and then Derbyshire.1 It details the appalling conditions of the factories and the systematic abuse and neglect suffered by children on so-called apprenticeships. By the 1830s there was an established genre of working-class autobiography, written in the first person by the subject.2 A Memoir of Robert Blincoe is, therefore, perhaps an unusual publication in that the memoir was not written by Blincoe himself but by John Brown who writes in the third person. Brown’s narrative often includes lengthy quotations from Blincoe. The first of these is entirely Standard English with sophisticated lexis and phrasing: “If I could penetrate the source of my exemption from the sorrow and consternation so forcibly expressed by my companions, it would probably have been resolved by the peculiarity of my destiny, and the privation of those endearing ties and ligatures which cement family circles. When the friends, relatives, parents of other children came to visit them, the caresses that were sometimes exchanged, the joy that beamed on the faces of those so favoured, went as daggers to my heart; not that I cherished a feeling of envy at their good fortune; but that it taught me more keenly to feel my own forlorn condition.” (15) This seems to be remarkable language from an uneducated man, even though by this time he has matured and is reflecting on his past: the speech reads like a fictional first person narrative and has a poetic quality to it. The use of high-register Latinate vocabulary such as ‘exemption’, ‘consternation’ and ‘ligatures’, as well as sentences containing several clauses including a lengthy initial subordinate clause, marks this as a written rather than a spoken text. Brown’s subsequent supposed quotations, some of which are very short, are also written in Standard English. Given that Blincoe’s words appear inside quotation marks, readers are likely to expect Brown to attempt to repeat exactly what Blincoe said. Ruth Finnegan explains that despite great complexity in the development and use of quotation marks, by the seventeenth century they were 1 John Brown (1832), A Memoir of Robert Blincoe (Sussex: Caliban Books, 1997). 2 James Richard Simmons Jnr, ‘Working Class Autobiography and Middle Class Writers: Fictive Representations of the Working Classes in Nineteenth Century British Literature’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of South Carolina, 1997), p.1-2, in Database of ProQuest Dissertations Online <www.proquest.com> [30th December, 2016]. The autobiographies Simmons references are written by the subject. 5 ‘understood as a way of directly marking an exact quoted passage by opening and closing signs’; then, in the eighteenth century, ‘they acquired their modern role of identifying a demarcated written excerpt as someone else’s words.’3 Nineteenth century readers would therefore be familiar with this convention and the literary style of Blincoe’s supposed speech may come as a surprise. Brown acknowledges, ‘I dare not aver, that such were the very words Blincoe used, but they faithfully convey the spirit and tendency of his language’(16). Brown is aiming for authenticity, but not the ‘authenticity’ of a faithful reproduction of Blincoe’s actual words: Brown wishes to give an authentic representation of Blincoe’s thoughts and feelings; to do so he has chosen to rewrite Blincoe’s words for the benefit of the reader. We might question this choice, particularly if we are familiar with nineteenth century novelists’ attempts to represent direct speech according to the conventions described by Ruth Finnegan, but we accept Brown’s presentation of Blincoe’s thoughts and feelings and the events detailed in the narrative. In other words, Brown does not attempt to achieve a surface linguistic authenticity but he does provide an authentic representation of the factory system and the feelings of those involved. Charles Dickens’s literary career began very shortly after the publication of Brown’s memoir of Blincoe. Dickens is arguably the most enduring novelist of the Victorian era and his works, for all their artistry and entertainment value, are very much ones which seek to present the reader with a view of real life social problems. His representation of speech has been given considerable critical attention. The direct speech that he gives to his characters is a significant factor in the continued appeal of his work and is generally accepted as reflecting external reality. Norman Page considers this idea: The epithet ‘Dickensian’ hardly carries very precise associations; but if one were to try to identify a characteristic by which Dickens could be seen to differ from other novelists of his time, his commitment to the spoken language and his attempt to render some of its richness and subtlety through the written word, has a strong claim for consideration.4 Critics generally praise Dickens, arguing that his work as a short-hand reporter in the law courts, and as a journalist, combined with his early experiences amongst the poorest in society and a love of the theatre, helped to give him a keen awareness of linguistic differences, and the ability to represent these in writing. Raymond Chapman points out that amongst all the contemporary reviews of Dickens’s work, and Victorian fiction in general, there were relatively few complaints about unrealistic dialogue. Page cites 3 Ruth H. Finnegan, Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2011), p.96. 4 Norman Page, Speech in the English Novel, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 168. 6 contemporary reviews in The Edinburgh Review, The Athenaeum, The Monthly Review and The Quarterly as praising the accuracy of Dickens’s presentation of lower-class speech.5 Some of the events in his novel Nicholas Nickleby (1838), like the memoir of Blincoe, take place in the north of England. An initial comparison of the way in which the two different writers represent direct speech shows a stark contrast, with Dickens aiming to convey a sense of the ‘richness and subtlety’6 of the regional variety. In the following example, from Chapter Nine, Yorkshireman John Browdie is first introduced both into the novel and to Nicholas: ‘Old woman awa’, bean’t she?’ said Mr Browdie with his mouth full. […]‘Ye wean’t get bread and butther ev’ry neight, I expect, mun,’ said Mr Browdie[…] ‘Ecod,’ said Mr Browdie, laughing boisterously, ‘they dean’t put too much intiv’em.