Coincidence and Class in the Victorian Novel. Beverly Maddox Moon Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1998 Coincidence and Class in the Victorian Novel. Beverly Maddox Moon Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Moon, Beverly Maddox, "Coincidence and Class in the Victorian Novel." (1998). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 6634. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/6634 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. 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COINCIDENCE AND CLASS IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Beverly Maddox Moon B.A., Mississippi College, 1989 M.A., Mississippi College, 1991 May 1998 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9824491 UMI Microform 9824491 Copyright 1998, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is a pleasure to express my gratitude to those individuals who have assisted in my progress through the dissertation process. I extend my thanks to Professors Jim S. Borck, Patrick McGee, Jean Rahier, and Sharon Aronofsky Weltman. In particular, I wish to thank Professor Elsie B. Michie for her guidance and expertise, and the late Professor Josephine Roberts for her unreserved kindness and encouragement. I am also grateful to the many friends and fellow students, too many to list, who have supported my efforts along the way. I must, however, acknowledge by name the particularly supportive friends, Ron May and Sara Anderson, with whom I have shared the master's and the doctoral processes. My family has been, without fail, supportive of my efforts. In particular, I want to thank my sister, Lynda Maddox, who has been a tireless fan and friend. Most of all, I appreciate that my sons and husband have endured and prevailed with me in this endeavor. Thank you, Brandon and Blake, for supporting your mother's effort, and thank you, Rick, for your constant belief that my dream was attainable. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................ ii ABSTRACT ................................................ XV CHAPTER 1 COINCIDENCE, TRADITION, AND CLASS TRANSITION 1 CHAPTER 2 GIVEN A PLACE IN THE SUN: JANE EYRE AND THE IMPERIALISTIC STRATEGY OF COINCIDENCE ....................................... 37 CHAPTER 3 COINCIDENCE IN VILLETTE: LUCY SNOWE AND THE BRITISH MODEL ABROAD ......... 89 CHAPTER 4 COINCIDENCE AND PATRIARCHY IN THE WOMAN IN W H I T E ........................................... 143 CHAPTER 5 COINCIDENCE AND FICTIONAL RESOLUTIONS ........... 197 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................ 203 VITA .................................................... 209 iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT In the Victorian novels of this study, Coincidence and Class in the Victorian Novel, coincidence is an unacknowledged paradigm for class mobility. Its role for the most part unremarked, coincidence moves money and property into the hands of the protagonist, allowing the transition between classes to take place. In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Villette, and Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, coincidence is a paradox in that it accomplishes two very different ends, resolution and conflict, simultaneously. As a narrative device, coincidence camouflages narrative gaps, arranging resolution within the text by allowing improved class position; as a narrative strategy, it conversely exposes contextual, social conflicts, forcing an acausal, ideologically-conforming resolution that demonstrates the unlikelihood of self-determination by a bourgeois protagonist. In these novels, coincidence is variously encoded with imperialism, ethnocentrism, and patriarchy, all of which serve to establish the nationalistic model by which the protagonists are measured. Rather than challenging the unlikely interference of a benevolent Providence that iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. involves itself in human events, these novels have coincidence serve as a catalyst for narrative events that reinforce British nationalism and its existing class system. As a strategy of authority and class reinforcement, coincidence ideologically compromises the nineteenth- century novels since property and money, often obtained in ethnocentric/imperial efforts that feed the nation, are filtered back into society so as to uphold hierarchical divisions of class associated more closely with pre industrial, two-tiered society— aristocracy and non aristocracy— than with the bourgeois myth of an ever- broadening, accessible ruling-class. Lower-class bourgeois ideals and the integrity of the bourgeois novel as a vehicle for the independent protagonist who earns a position in the ruling class, or who earns the right to self-determination, are threatened, as the middle-class protagonist is incorporated into, and feels justified in achieving, a position in the landed gentry. v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1 COINCIDENCE, TRADITION, AND CLASS TRANSITION In the Victorian novels of this study, coincidence is an unacknowledged paradigm for the movement between classes: its role in the process, for the most part, unremarked, coincidence moves money and property into the hands of the protagonist, allowing the transition between classes to take place. In these texts, coincidence is a paradox in that it accomplishes two very different ends, resolution and conflict, simultaneously. As a narrative device, coincidence camouflages narrative gaps, arranging resolution within the text by bringing the possibility of improved class position before the protagonist; as a narrative strategy, it conversely exposes contextual, social conflicts, forcing an acausal, ideologically- conforming resolution that demonstrates the unlikelihood of a self-determined resolution by a protagonist. Coincidences in fiction are verisimilar to events in life and logically should not be considered aberrations interruptive to a narrative's causative integrity. However unrealistic they seem to us when they orchestrate events in fiction, coincidences do happen. We have probably all experienced odd coincidences that have 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 remained unexplained and unexplainable according to rules of cause and effect by which we, and the world as we comprehend it, operate. A loosely Jungian approach to such coincidences would be for us to accept that parallel worlds exist, with different possibilities for our self narratives, and that sometimes one of those other worlds touches the one in which we have prosaically planted our feet.1 If we dismiss physical causality or reduce its primacy as our operating principle, however, we usually invest some force outside of ourselves, outside of our