VICTORIAN FICTION AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-CONTROL, 1855-1885 by ANNE E. RYAN Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Adviser: Dr. Athena Vrettos Department of English CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY August, 2011 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the thesis/dissertation of Anne E. Ryan ______________________________________________________ Doctor of Philosophy candidate for the ________________________________degree *. Athena Vrettos (signed)_______________________________________________ (chair of the committee) Jonathan Sadowsky ________________________________________________ William R. Siebenschuh ________________________________________________ Christopher Flint ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ June 2, 2011 (date) _______________________ *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. Table of Contents Introduction: Framing Mid-Victorian Models of Self-Control ........................................... 4 Chapter One: Energetic Self-Control as Self-Destruction in Little Dorrit and The Emotions and the Will ................................................................ 34 Chapter Two: Far From the Madding Crowd, Victorian Theories of Consciousness, and the Role of Attention in Self-Control ......................................................................... 72 Chapter Three: Emotion-Driven Self-Control in Daniel Deronda and Problems of Life and Mind ....................................................... 116 Chapter Four: Unconscious Self-Determination: Embryology and Psychological Development in Samuel Butler’s Life and Habit and The Way of All Flesh ......................................... 166 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 201 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 212 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my dissertation advisor, Athena Vrettos, for introducing me to the fields of Victorian literature and psychology and for her generous direction and encouragement throughout this project. I would also like to thank the members of my committee, Chris Flint, William Siebenschuh, and Jonathan Sadowsky, for their time, advice, and crucial support. I would like to thank all of my professors in the English Department at Case and to acknowledge the support of the Arthur Adrian Dissertation Fellowship. Brandy Schillace read my chapters in their messiest stages and offered invaluable insight. Kristina Ryan provided countless hours of babysitting. John, Natalie, and Zoe made the last few years so happy and full. 1 Victorian Fiction and the Psychology of Self-Control, 1855-1885 Abstract by ANNE E. RYAN The fact that Victorians in general were keenly interested in the practices of self- control—from emotional restraint to diligent work habits—and in the relationships between self-control, self-culture, and economic self-determination—is a critical commonplace well supported by popular nineteenth-century advice literature. However, literary scholars have also noted that advances in the study of psychology in the period tended to emphasize the physiological basis of the mind, which increasingly undermined confidence in a rational, controlling ego. Through analysis of novels by Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and Samuel Butler, in tandem with psychological literature by Alexander Bain, William James, George Henry Lewes, and Samuel Butler, this dissertation considers the parallel efforts of novelists and psychologists to reconcile this tension between highly valuing self-control and recognizing the physical and psychological obstacles to cultivating this control. Novelists and physiological psychologists alike responded to growing concerns about the scientific validity of traditional notions of self-control by creatively exploring alternative models of control enabled by energy, attention, emotion, and unconscious memory. This dissertation uncovers a dialogue between the realist novel and the emerging scientific field of psychology about the necessity of physiological energy for self-control and its potential 2 to warp the mind, the power of attention to mediate the stream of consciousness and the mind-body relationship, the cognitive aspects of emotion and their role in psychological development, and the promise of unconscious memories to drive the evolution of both individuals and the species. 3 Introduction: Framing Mid-Victorian Models of Self-Control If you have ever wished (I know you must have done so some time) for a chance of rising out of your sad life, and having friends, a quiet home, means of being useful to yourself and others, peace of mind, self-respect, everything you have lost. I am going to offer you, not the chance but the certainty of all these blessings, if you will exert yourself to deserve them. You must resolve to set a watch upon yourself, and to be firm in your control over yourself, and to restrain yourself; to be gentle, patient, persevering, and good-tempered. Above all things, to be truthful in every word you speak. Do this, and all the rest is easy. —Charles Dickens, “An Appeal” This dramatic appeal forms Charles Dickens’s invitation to Urania Cottage, a home for fallen women that he helped to found in 1847. What is most striking in this passage is Dickens’s guarantee that the women who sincerely follow the rehabilitation program at Urania Cottage will certainly gain a quiet home and a secure new life. Throughout this letter, which was designed to be given to women in police custody or coming out of jail, Dickens emphasizes the self-control that prospective residents will have to cultivate in order to improve their lives, yet he encourages these desperate women that once they attain self-control, they will easily overcome all other obstacles. Such confidence in the power of self-control was pervasive throughout the nineteenth century, as is evident in the work of many self-help and advice authors who considered self-control to be the foundation of self-improvement, empowering aspiring men and women to turn their lives around, educate themselves, manage their homes well, achieve financial stability, and contribute to society. As Samuel Smiles, author of the international best-seller Self-Help (1859), exhorted a group of young working class men at a lecture series for “mutual improvement” in the 1840s, “their happiness and well- being as individuals in after life, must necessarily depend mainly upon themselves—upon their own diligent self-culture, self-discipline, and self-control—and, above all, on that 4 honest and upright performance of individual duty, which is the glory of manly character” (7). A generation later, he reports that many of those young men took his advice and “now occupy positions of trust and usefulness” (7). Throughout Self-Help, Smiles extols the value of self-control in all aspects of life, including time management, money, leisure activities, the formation of habits, moods, and the attention. Above all, he stresses the importance of self-denial in cultivating self-control: “The worst education which teaches self-denial, is better than the best which teaches everything else, and not that” (243). Like Dickens, Smiles expresses great optimism not only about the results of self-control, but also about his audience’s potential to achieve self-control through diligent discipline and devotion to duty.1 Yet underlying Dickens’s and Smiles’s confidence in the transformative power of self-control is a recognition of just how unruly the self can be, which is evident in their emphasis on constant watchfulness, firmness, thoroughness, diligence, and the heroic nature of self-denial. As this dissertation 1 These examples confirm what everyone already knows about the Victorians: they were keenly interested in the practice of self-control. As Walter Houghton explained over fifty years ago in his discussion of earnestness in The Victorian Frame of Mind, “By an elaborate practice of self-discipline, one had to lay the foundation of good habits and acquire the power of self-control” (234). More recently, Roger Smith succinctly expresses the prevailing (and mostly accurate) stereotype: “the word ‘Victorian’ conjures up a British literature of order and disorder that stressed individual control and the individual’s duty to society” (27). In Inhibition, Smith summarizes the importance of regulatory control in nineteenth-century discussions of behavior—from child-rearing to politics to self-help to popular physiology to sexuality to a prevailing fear of the loss of control (27-41). As twenty-first century readers, our approach to the Victorian discourse on self-control has also been shaped by Michel Foucault’s challenge to the “repression hypothesis.” In The History of Sexuality, Foucault shows that the characteristic Victorian emphasis on the repression of lower energies and “(highly prolix) directives enjoining discretion and modesty” corresponded not to a widespread repression of sex but rather to a proliferating scientific discourse that sought to categorize and regulate the diverse behaviors of individuals (22). Thus, the Victorian emphasis on control in general created an intense awareness of the countless