Theatrical Weddings and Pious Frauds: Performance and Law in Victorian Marriage Plots Adrianne A

Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations (2009 -) Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Projects Theatrical Weddings and Pious Frauds: Performance and Law in Victorian Marriage Plots Adrianne A. Wojcik Marquette University Recommended Citation Wojcik, Adrianne A., "Theatrical Weddings and Pious Frauds: Performance and Law in Victorian Marriage Plots" (2018). Dissertations (2009 -). 767. https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/767 THEATRICAL WEDDINGS AND PIOUS FRAUDS: PERFORMANCE AND LAW IN VICTORIAN MARRIAGE PLOTS by Adrianne A. Wojcik, B.A., B.S., M.A., J.D. A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, Wisconsin May 2018 ABSTRACT THEATRICAL WEDDINGS AND PIOUS FRAUDS: PERFORMANCE AND LAW IN VICTORIAN MARRIAGE PLOTS Adrianne A. Wojcik, B.A., B.S., M.A., J.D. Marquette University, 2018 This study investigates how key Victorian novelists, such as Anne and Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy, emphasize performativity in their critiques of marriage. Given the performative nature of weddings ceremonies, this project focuses on wedding descriptions in select novels by the aforementioned authors. Such a focus highlights an interesting dilemma. Although we often think of Victorian novels as overwhelmingly concerned with marriage, the few wedding descriptions found in Victorian fiction are aborted, unusually short or announced after the fact. Those Victorian novelists who do feature weddings often describe them as grotesquely theatrical to underscore the empty performativity associated with contemporaneous wedding rituals that privilege form over substance, and to stress deception and inauthentic play-acting in marriage. In these ways, the key Victorian novelists draw attention to a gap between the empty formalism of marriage as a legal, religious and social institution, and the reality of many Victorian marriages. Nevertheless, many of the same novelists who show their general distaste for the empty performativity of weddings acknowledge that theatricality itself plays a more complex role in their marriage plots, raising questions about authenticity, fraud and pious deceptions in marriage. For example, Wilkie Collins complicates the argument about theatrical weddings by stressing that quiet weddings, performed without much pomp and ceremony, may also signify deceptive marriages. Moreover, Thomas Hardy emphasizes the value of festive public weddings, which solidify the spouses’ connection to their community. Additionally, both the realist and sensation novelists discussed here, especially Anne Brontë, Dickens, Braddon, and Collins, condone temporary play-acting and deception, which extend beyond weddings, if such performances allow their characters to circumvent inflexible and unjust marriage laws. In sum, this dissertation analyzes how key Victorian novelists redefine courtship and marriage by focusing on the performative aspects of marriage as a legal and social institution. Those redefinitions are, at times, non-linear, contradictory, and rooted in the continual enmeshing of two primary modes of Victorian narrative, realism and sensationalism, which complicate the view of performative marriages as purely artificial or authentic. i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Adrianne A. Wojcik, B.A., B.S., M.A., J.D. Completing this dissertation has been unusually difficult for reasons better left unsaid. It is largely due to these unique circumstances under which I undertook this project that I feel immensely grateful to all my teachers, mentors, and supporters who have helped me to complete this study. I would especially like to thank Dr. Christine L. Krueger, my dissertation director, whose knowledge of and passion for Victorian literature and culture, as well as her overall wisdom and kindness, have been essential in the completion of this project. She has touched my life in more ways than I can count— both as a scholar and as a person—and for that, I will always be grateful to her. I would also like to thank Dr. Melissa J. Ganz, who has read this dissertation at various stages and always offered me thorough, constructive criticism. Her time, advice, encouragement, and moral support have also been indispensable in the development and completion of this study. Finally, I would also like to thank Dr. Thomas L. Jeffers for teaching me about Victorian literature, reading this dissertation, offering his feedback, and inspiring me to become a better writer. I will always appreciate his time and kindness towards me. I could not have been privileged with a more ideal committee in terms of its members’ scholarly accomplishments and intellectual interests. However, what I am most grateful for is their patience with me throughout this long and arduous project as well as their willingness to consider my ideas about Victorian literature. In terms of financial support, I remain forever grateful to the Arthur J. Schmitt Foundation that awarded me a generous, annual fellowship between Fall 2016 and Spring 2017, which propelled my work on this dissertation forward. Additionally, I also thank the English Department at Marquette University, particularly Dr. John E. Curran, for the approval of a departmental scholarship, which provided me with vital financial assistance during one of the final semesters of my study. More generally, I am grateful to all my professors and mentors, the English department faculty and staff, members of the Graduate School, as well as many graduate students at Marquette University with whom I have had the pleasure to study and work during my years at the university. There are too many colleagues to thank individually, but all of them have helped me in some way throughout my graduate studies and fueled my passion for an academic life. Last but not least, I wish to express love and gratitude to my dear family. To my Dad, Marek, and my brother, Tom, who supported me and cheered me on throughout this entire project, in good times and in bad. Above all, many thanks to my dearest Mom, Irena Hawran Wojcik, to whom I dedicate this dissertation. Thank you, Mommy, for reading Dickens and discussing him with me. Thank you for spending years driving me for miles to Marquette and back home. Thank you for supporting me in countless ways and for believing in me more than anyone else did. I have reached this page because of you. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................... i I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 1 Contributions............................................................................................... 9 Historical Context ..................................................................................... 12 Definitions................................................................................................. 18 Organization .............................................................................................. 23 II. UNMASKING COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE IN CHARLOTTE BRONTË, ANNE BRONTË, AND ELIZABETH GASKELL............................ 35 Jane Eyre (1847) ....................................................................................... 42 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) .......................................................... 53 North and South (1855) ............................................................................ 61 Wives and Daughters (1864) .................................................................... 66 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 74 III. THEATRICALITY IN DICKENS’S MARRIAGE PLOTS .......................... 76 Nicholas Nickleby (1839) ......................................................................... 83 David Copperfield (1850) ......................................................................... 91 Hard Times (1854) .................................................................................... 99 Our Mutual Friend (1865) ....................................................................... 102 Conclusion .............................................................................................. 108 IV. ACCLAIMING FEMALE PERFORMANCES IN THE SENSATION NOVEL ............................................................................................................... 110 The Woman in White (1860) .................................................................. 118 No Name (1862) ..................................................................................... 129 Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) .................................................................. 135 Aurora Floyd (1863) ............................................................................... 141 iii Conclusion .............................................................................................. 146 V. GEORGE ELIOT’S REALIST REVISIONS OF SENSATIONALISM AND THEATRICALITY IN THE MARRIAGE PLOT ............................................. 148 Romola (1863) ........................................................................................ 156 Middlemarch (1872) ............................................................................... 169 Daniel Deronda (1876) ..........................................................................

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