The Female Enthusiast: Nineteenth-Century Women and the Poetics of Inspiration
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THE FEMALE ENTHUSIAST: NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN AND THE POETICS OF INSPIRATION Rachael Isom A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2019 Approved by: Jeanne Moskal Janice Hewlett Koelb Laurie Langbauer Eliza Richards Beverly Taylor © 2019 Rachael Isom ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Rachael Isom: The Female Enthusiast: Nineteenth-Century Women and the Poetics of Inspiration (Under the direction of Jeanne Moskal) By tracing the evolution of the female enthusiast across generic and disciplinary boundaries, this project enacts a postsecular rethinking of women’s writing about inspiration and genius in the first half of the nineteenth century. Enthusiasm’s religious inheritance lent authority to Romantic-era women in a literary marketplace skewed toward masculinized expressions of feeling, but linking their writing to prophetic zeal also compromised its legitimacy. Departing from early female Romantics’ more politicized claims to rhetorical power, many second- generation women aimed to renovate enthusiasm by emphasizing its association with feminine restraint and by linking it to a safer version of female genius: the Italian tradition of improvisation most famously exemplified in fiction by Germaine de Staël’s Corinne, or Italy (1807). Women writers avoided the condemnations often hurled at their literary foremothers, and at Methodists and Jacobin radicals, by marrying these religious and secular enthusiasms. But combining the improvisatrice model with the heretical prophetess had costs of its own: in attempting to wed these two discourses by supplementing religious vocabulary with secularized poetics, these women often lost their most apparent claim to self-authentication under the historical category of Christian enthusiasm. My dissertation charts important successes, failures, and complications in this development of female enthusiasm across the 1820s and 1830s in order to reevaluate the professionalization of women’s inspired poetics in the Victorian age. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project has been the work of many hours, but it would not exist without the support of so many generous minds and hearts. I hope to thank a small number of those here. First, the faculty in English at Murray State University helped me discover this field I love and provided me with training to pursue it. I owe special thanks to Barbara Cobb, Timothy Johns, Danielle Nielsen, and Kevin Binfield for supporting my application to the Ph.D. program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. To Kevin, in particular, am I indebted for guiding my early efforts in conducting primary research on Romantic-era women’s writing. Several fellowships and institutions have been instrumental in realizing this project. I am grateful for the Graduate Innovation Assistantship from the Provost’s Office at Murray State, as well as the Evan Frankel Dissertation Fellowship from the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC. The Department also funded my participation in a course on “The Eighteenth-Century Book” at Rare Book School, where I learned from Michael Suarez and Mark Dimunation about print culture (especially political cartoons) related to my interests. I thank the staff of UNC’s Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library—especially Emily Kader and Liz Ott—for sharing their expertise and their stellar nineteenth-century holdings. Looking forward, fellowship support from the New York Public Library, the Armstrong Browning Library, and the Huntington Library will be invaluable as this project grows. I also want to recognize the many generative conversations that have shaped my ideas. The International Conference on Romanticism and the British Women Writers Conference, along iv with meetings of the North American Victorian Studies Association and American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, hosted trial runs of many chapters. At UNC, I thank the faculty in English and Comparative Literature—especially Inger Brodey, Florence Dore, Heidi Kim, Clayton Koelb, Tim Marr, Megan Matchinske, Tom Reinert, Kim Stern, James Thompson, and Joe Viscomi—for coursework, conversations, and feedback that have informed my scholarship. It has been my greatest privilege to work with the amazing women scholars who have not only fostered my ideas through service on my committee, but who have also become role models in this profession. From her Victorian Poetry course my first semester at UNC to her guidance on the last chapter of my dissertation, Beverly Taylor has eagerly shared her expertise. She and Laurie Langbauer wrote many references for fellowships that are crucial to this project’s development. I thank Laurie, also, for the opportunity to learn from her in the classroom as a Teaching Assistant and Graduate Research Consultant. To Jan Koelb and Eliza Richards I am grateful for sharing knowledge that helped me consider this topic’s connections to other national literatures and poetic genres. Every meeting with this committee was a thoughtful, productive conversation about my research. I can’t imagine a more supportive group. The foremost advocate of this project and of my career has been my director, Jeanne Moskal. After all, this dissertation began as a conference paper I wrote for her course on Mary Shelley. Jeanne patiently guided me in transforming that paper into an article, and that article into what is now my second chapter. But Jeanne’s influence far surpasses the work of these pages. Through her outstanding mentorship, I have learned to relish the moments when authors flout my expectations, to value well-crafted prose and the skillful editing behind it, and, perhaps most importantly, to appreciate the humanness of our work and of the people who do it. For these lessons and so many more, I thank Jeanne as my teacher, my mentor, and my friend. v The work of these past six years would never have been possible—or nearly so enjoyable—without the encouragement of dear friends. I’m grateful to Suzanna, Sarah, and Doreen for sharing materials that helped me find my way. I thank Michele and Katie for providing feedback on an early version of Chapter 3. I cannot thank Vera enough for sharing models and citations, reading multiple chapter drafts, and lending her ear to many nascent ideas that eventually made it into this document. To Dwight I’m grateful for hours of caffeinated co- working, pages of thoughtful feedback, and one rain-soaked half marathon to remind us that grad school isn’t the only difficult thing we’ve attempted. And finally, to the group of remarkable women with whom I’ve shared a home and a career over the past six years—to Mary, Katherine, Ani, and Kimmie—I am forever in awe of your brilliance as scholars, your ingenuity as teachers, and your generosity as friends. Thank you for sharing all of these with me. My sister, Morgan, has been a constant source of positivity, energy, and assurance. My parents, Becky and Jimmy, have provided unfailing support since before I can remember, but I date their enthusiasm for my writing to the fictional female biography I composed in the fourth grade. (We all should have known I’d research women writers someday.) From that time, their confidence has sustained me when my own has faltered, and for that I am ever grateful. Finally, I owe my deepest debt to John, though he is far too generous to call it debt at all. As my chief interlocutor and perpetual encourager, he has seen me through every stage of this endeavor (and many others) with a patience bordering on the superhuman. As a musician, he has taught me about improvisation in ways that theory simply couldn’t. And as my partner and best friend, he has filled this time in our lives with inspiration, with love, and with a great deal of fun. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................................ix CHAPTER 1: Romanticism and the Paradox of Female Enthusiasm ............................................1 I. Postsecularism, Feminism, and Re(-)viewing Enthusiasm .............................................3 II. British Methodism and the Distrust of Zeal ...................................................................7 III. French Radicalism, the “Female Enthusiast,” and the “Man of Feeling” ...................13 IV. Romanticism and the Problem of Enthusiasm ............................................................18 V. Nineteenth-Century Women and the Female Enthusiast .............................................23 CHAPTER 2: Prophetic Enthusiasm and Feminine Restraint in Mary Shelley’s Valperga ........31 I. Valperga’s Composition: Contexts and Pre-Texts ........................................................40 II. Valperga’s Prophetesses ..............................................................................................50 III. Regulating Female Enthusiasm ...................................................................................59 IV. Percy Bysshe Shelley Redressed ................................................................................74 CHAPTER 3: Dramatic Enthusiasm and the Monologues of Letitia Elizabeth Landon ..............80 I. Framing Female Enthusiasm: Landon and The Improvisatrice .....................................87 II. A Singular Voice: Landon’s Later Monologues ........................................................105