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The Travel Writing and Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley

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The Travel Writing and Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2020 The Picturesque and Its Decay: The Travel Writing and Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley Gabrielle Kappes The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3571 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] THE PICTURESQUE AND ITS DECAY: THE TRAVEL WRITING AND JOURNALS OF DOROTHY WORDSWORTH, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, AND MARY SHELLEY by GABRIELLE KAPPES A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2020 © 2020 GABRIELLE KAPPES All Rights Reserved ii The Picturesque and Its Decay: The Travel Writing and Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley by Gabrielle Kappes This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________ _______________________________ Date Alexander Schlutz Chair of Examining Committee _______________________ _______________________________ Date Kandice Chuh Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Alexander Schlutz Alan Vardy Siraj Ahmed THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT The Picturesque and Its Decay: The Travel Writing and Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley by Gabrielle Kappes Advisor: Alexander Schlutz This project puts forth the argument that when the late eighteenth century’s taste for nature and picturesque tourism had peaked, writers following in the picturesque tradition grappled with the limitations and confines of these aesthetic categories. In the chapters that follow, I present three authors, Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley, who are all dissatisfied with the conventions of the picturesque. Dorothy Wordsworth’s Alfoxden Journal (1798) demonstrates the nuances of the picturesque instability where distinctions between nature and the cultural production of nature have become muddied. I then examine three tour narratives in order to draw attention to how this moment of picturesque fatigue incites writers to complicate existing aesthetic tropes and establish new ways of representing nature. Dorothy Wordsworth’s Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A.D. 1803 encodes the landscape with a multi-representational topography, including her hand-drawn maps as an alternative medium of representing the Scottish Highlands. Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796) reveals an ethical inquiry into the affective representation of the ill effects of human industry, including ecological disaster and cultural catastrophe. Mary Shelley’s Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 illustrates the tour narrative’s ultimate departure from traditional aesthetics, where a landscape inflamed with history’s violence and shaken by the belated shock of trauma cannot be measured or controlled by the picturesque. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply indebted to my readers, Alan Vardy and Siraj Ahmed, who have been generous with their time and suggestions and whose encouragement has been invaluable. Taking Alan’s seminars challenged and inspired me to become an engaged participant of the Romantic community, and I am thankful for the support and kindness he has shown me whether we are in New York, Cold Spring, or the Lake District. Siraj’s uplifting encouragement and thoughtful advice has always provided me with motivation and intellectual fortitude. My director Alexander Schlutz made this project possible with his enthusiasm, guidance, and compassion. Working with Alexander has left a profound impact on my emerging method as a scholar and my understanding of what scholarship can accomplish. My work at the Graduate Center has been supported by an Enhanced Chancellor’s Fellowship and Doctoral Student Research Grant, which enabled me to conduct archival research at The Wordsworth Trust. Thank you to Jeff Cowton for his courtesy while in Grasmere and for his permission to publish Dorothy Wordsworth’s hand-drawn maps. The seeds of this project were planted in Keswick, when I attended the Southey Conference and presented an early draft of Chapter 1 to an audience that included Pamela Woof, a scholar to whom I show the utmost deference and whose canon of scholarship and archival studies has shaped the way I research, teach, and write about Dorothy Wordsworth. I am grateful for the warm and supportive community that I have been part of at Lehman College. The completion of this project would not have been possible without the steadfast support of Paula Loscocco, whose flexibility in arranging my teaching schedule gave me the time to complete this dissertation and whose high-spirited praise I am humbled to receive. I am grateful to Dean James Mahon for his support of a Travel Award, which has allowed me to v present an excerpt of this project at the University of Leuven in Belgium. I hold Jessica Yood in the highest esteem as a role model scholar, instructor, and critical thinker. And my unfaltering admiration goes to my Lehman College students whose vibrancy, intellectual prowess, and courage brighten my days. This project is in memoriam of two mentors I will always cherish. I was a fellow in Cindy Lobel’s Writing Across the Curriculum program, and Cindy’s mentorship, rigorous scholarship, and always-sunny personality transformed me personally and professionally. Meena Alexander’s Women in Romanticism is what initially drew me to the Graduate Center, and I will never forget the optimism and grace that Meena showed me. Nothing I do would be possible without the love of my parents, Harry and Maureen. Dad, your strength to never give up, boundless creativity, and laughter always lift my spirits. Mom, your endless affection toward me, eye for beauty, and picturesque gardens forever inspire and delight my imagination. And Daniel, thank you for your unwavering love. vi Table of Contents Introduction 1 1. A Prelude: What is “Lost to us” in 14 Dorothy Wordsworth’s Alfoxden Journal 2. Maps, Lochs, and Streams: Visual Culture in 40 Dorothy Wordsworth’s Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A.D. 1803 3. Earth, Alum, and Fire: Ecological Disaster in Mary Wollstonecraft’s 68 Letters Written During a Short Residence in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark 4. In the Wake of Wreckage: Aestheticizing Trauma in 98 Mary Shelley’s Rambles in Germany and Italy Works Cited 125 vii Figures Fig. 1. “The Foot of Loch Ketterine.” Dorothy Wordsworth. 51 Fig. 2. “Loch Etive and Loch Awe.” Dorothy Wordsworth. 54 Fig. 3. “Untitled.” Dorothy Wordsworth. 55 Fig. 4. Untitled.” Dorothy Wordsworth. 58 Fig. 5. “Windings of River Tummel.” Dorothy Wordsworth. 61 viii Introduction The Paradox of the Picturesque “Seldom art Can emulate that magnitude sublime, Which spreads the native lake; and failing there, Her works betray their character, and name; And dwindle into pools” (259) “FROM scenes of art, let us hasten to the chief object of our pursuit, the wild scenes of nature – the wood, – the copse, – the glen – and open-grove.” (263) -- William Gilpin, Remarks on Forest Scenery (1791) Champions of the picturesque aesthetic, like William Gilpin, encourage the traveler to re- assemble the various features of a natural scene into a more pleasing whole. Though these lines relate to park scenery – the gardener’s artfully trimmed hedgerows and polished plots – also apparent is the ambiguous territory planted in the traveler’s artistic rendering, known as the picturesque paradox: the traveler wishes to discover a wild and authentic nature, yet is faced with the task of representing this natural world; and in this creative process – whether in writing, sketches, or watercolors – the traveler’s imagination inadvertently changes it.1 Therein lies the tension at the heart of this aesthetic form; how can the landscape-seeker reconstruct a natural world that adheres to a specific set of categories, but also reveals nature’s original, untamed state? The instability of this picturesque paradox, expressed by Gilpin in his writings, is also apparent in many of the works of British Romantic writers who adhered to picturesque principles. In the subsequent production of travelogues that followed in the wake of this variety of tourism, the challenges and frustrations of rendering a natural scene in its uncultivated form 1 Malcolm Andrews in The Search for the Picturesque elaborates on this picturesque paradox and also offers another: the touring traveler of the landscape inadvertently perpetuates a sense of Englishness. 1 are highly visible. When picturesque tourism had reached its apogee, and the late eighteenth century’s taste for nature had peaked, writers grappled with the limitations and confines of these aesthetic categories. This project puts forth the argument that this moment of picturesque fatigue incites writers to complicate existing aesthetic tropes and establish new ways of seeing and representing nature. I present three authors who are all dissatisfied with the conventions of the picturesque because they seek to capture specific
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