Depreciating Social Capital in Victorian Marriage Plots Catherine Clair England-Plisiewicz University of South Carolina

University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 1-1-2013 The Attraction of Imperfection: Depreciating Social Capital in Victorian Marriage Plots Catherine Clair England-Plisiewicz University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation England-Plisiewicz, C. C.(2013). The Attraction of Imperfection: Depreciating Social Capital in Victorian Marriage Plots. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/1064 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Attraction of Imperfection: Depreciating Social Capital in Victorian Marriage Plots by Catherine Clair England Bachelor of Arts Wofford College, 2005 Master of Arts University of South Carolina, 2007 ----------------------------------------------- Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2013 Accepted by: Rebecca Stern, Major Professor Anthony Jarrells, Committee Member Thomas Jackson Rice, Committee Member Amy Lehman, Committee Member Lacy Ford, Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies © Copyright by Catherine Clair England, 2013 All Rights Reserved. ii DEDICATION To the memory of my grandmother, Anna Christine Rogers Davis 1911-2012 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project could not have been completed without the help of many individuals. I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude toward my committee. Dr. Amy Lehman’s positive support bolstered me as I completed this dissertation. Dr. Thomas Rice’s revision comments were critical to polishing my final drafts. Dr. Anthony Jarrells’s continuous support of my project, which was first inspired in one of his classes, was a true gift. I am also especially indebted to Dr. Rebecca Stern whose intellectual guidance has improved my work in countless ways. Throughout graduate school, I have been very lucky to receive the kind support of my family, friends, and alma mater, Wofford College. I would like to give a special thanks to my sister, whose optimism about my progress was endless; my mother, a fellow English major, who during my early years always let me finish reading chapters before bedtime; and my father, whose support of my studies at the University of South Carolina helped me successfully complete my doctorate. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Paul Plisiewicz, because he has heard more about this project, read more of its drafts, and answered more of my questions than any other person. Thank you for loving your imperfect bride. iv ABSTRACT My dissertation examines the importance of social capital in British marriage plots. While most people imagine heroines of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels embody virtue, I argue that many of the most innocent heroines speculate that sacrificing good assets can produce better marriages. These marriage plots demonstrate that a heroine’s reputation must be somewhat damaged before she receives her reward of marriage. In other words, these novels do not uniformly represent, or recommend, the preservation of a heroine’s good reputation; rather, they implicitly suggest that some spoiling occur before the consummation of marriage. I study how this curious freckling of heroines’ reputations is desirable and financially advantageous. My first two chapters discuss how depreciated reputations become eroticized in early marriage plots including Pamela and Northanger Abbey. I focus on heroines who damage their reputations through flirtation, and I use Pierre Bourdieu’s and Georg Simmel’s theories to analyze social behaviors and the relationship between flirtation and value accretion, respectively. While early marriage plots often assume that a man who proposes to a woman with low social capital possesses a selfless love, by the Victorian period novels such as Jane Eyre and Daniel Deronda are more suspicious of men who desire to marry their social inferiors as well as more critical of the eroticization of feminine vulnerability. In my third chapter on Victorian novels, I connect society’s growing awareness of marital abuse to fictional investigations of how loneliness renders v women both appealing and especially susceptible to dangerous suitors. My fourth chapter considers the particularly troublesome capital that celebrity offers women, and I discuss the lives of real celebrities, such as Queen Victoria, and offer a reading of Trollope’s Miss Mackenzie. My dissertation concludes by exploring how the patterns in established marriage plots survive in popular culture phenomena such as Downton Abbey. This dissertation contributes to the critical conversation in three ways. First, my claim that the heroine’s speculation of social capital is characteristic of the marriage plot is one that brings novels into contact with the credit economy of their time. Although standards for modesty prevent women’s speculations from being clearly viewed, they were important players in non-monetary exchanges. Secondly, this project highlights a unique period during which women undergo a trial of solitude that prepares them for an affective marriage (or indicates their readiness for that state). While this period of social exile has deathly connotations, the possibility of future happiness imbues even this dark phase with a certain pleasure, especially for readers. Lastly, this project brings a new focus to the significance of flirtation in British fiction and develops our understanding of the history of desire. While many scholars have written on fallen women and unrelenting flirts, there has been less interest in the flirtation of heroines who are not ultimately condemned. Old models of femininity create a space for play, romantic gambling, and even slightly bad behavior that can harm a woman’s reputation. Thus, the concept of erotic femininity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not simply virtuously staid but flawed, daring, and lively. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ................................................................................................................. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. iv ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2: THE ECONOMICS OF FLIRTATION IN NORTHANGER ABBEY ...... 32 CHAPTER 3: “THERE IS NO ONE TO MEDDLE, SIR”: THE DANGERS OF ATTRACTION IN JANE EYRE .............................................................. 75 CHAPTER 4: SLIPPING INTO CELEBRITY: ANTHONY TROLLOPE’S MISS MACKENZIE ......................................................................................... 129 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ...................................................................................... 162 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 173 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Let me begin with a basic correction: since Samuel Richardson first rewarded virtue in his 1740 novel Pamela, many critics have characterized marriage plots as stories of good women who eventually receive the reward of matrimonial happiness. For instance, according to Utter and Needham’s Pamela’s Daughters, Richardson’s novel produced in fiction “a generation of prudes” who followed Pamela’s example (43), and who evolved into the Victorian domestic ideal of the “good girl,” who is modest, obedient, and self-sacrificing (Rowbotham Good Girls Make Good Wives 23). Later writers such as Mark Canuel acknowledge the imperfections of nineteenth-century heroines while still maintaining that eighteenth-century marriage plots, such as Pamela, feature protagonists who embody perfect virtue (The Shadow of Death 90). Yet, what happens to marriage plot novels when we look, not at the virtues they reward, but at the misbehavior they endorse? How do their heroines participate, consciously or not, in the social economy? The first thing we might notice is that neither Pamela nor her literary descendents are as “good” as generations of critics have suggested. In fact, heroines’ imperfections are frequently the source of their attractiveness. They, like the beautiful women Edmund Burke describes, “learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness, and even sickness,” because “[b]eauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty” (A Philosophical Enquiry 100). In this dissertation, I argue that many of the most innocent 1 heroines speculate that sacrificing good assets can produce the best rewards. Specifically, heroines in marriage plots speculate with their social capital as they wager that a damaged reputation may be worth more on the marriage market than a pristine one. This form of gambling is prevalent, because a depreciated—but not ruined—reputation is one of the most valuable and erotic assets a heroine can possess. As heroines spend their social capital in order to appear attractively imperfect, they become important risk takers in the social economy. Pamela, for instance, is “so deservedly distinguished”—so properly rewarded for her “virtue”—not

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