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Intertextuality and the Transformation of Gender Identity, 1677-1759

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Intertextuality and the Transformation of Gender Identity, 1677-1759 APPROPRIATING THE RESTORATION HERO(INE): INTERTEXTUALITY AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF GENDER IDENTITY, 1677-1759 BY MARILYN MARIE HOLGUIN DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Robert Markley, Co-Chair Associate Professor Anthony Pollock, Co-Chair Associate Professor Catharine Gray Associate Professor Lisa Freeman, University of Illinois, Chicago II ABSTRACT My dissertation considers how and why representations of female suffering in Restoration tragedy had a profound impact on the development of mid-eighteenth century novels and plays, focusing primarily on the work of Aphra Behn, Thomas Southerne, John Dryden, Samuel Richardson and David Garrick. Previous scholarship on Restoration “she-tragedies” has tended to emphasize how their heroines’ descent into hysteria, madness, and death implies a total loss of female agency and power. My project challenges this reigning interpretation: through detailed readings of Richardson’s and Garrick’s adaptations of Restoration tragedy, I argue that these influential mid-century authors transform the spectacle of female suffering into a resource for female empowerment and authority over the public sphere. My four chapters analyze Restoration tragic female characters as strongly influencing eighteenth-century writers, who appropriated and adapted them in relation to changing cultural tastes, especially as regards more restricted representations of female sexuality and the heightened desire to promote a seemingly less complex version of female virtue. Scholarship in the long eighteenth-century has suffered from a tendency to emphasize distinctions between the “licentious” culture of the Restoration and the “reformed” tastes of mid-eighteenth-century readers and audiences; by allowing these two cultural moments to speak to one another, my project challenges those distinctions and considers the more nuanced ways mid-eighteenth century’s writers like Richardson and Garrick were informed and influenced by Restoration drama. III ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As I finish the final edits to a project that consumed the better part of my twenties, I find myself thinking back to what originally inspired my interest in adaptation. I was in my second year of graduate work, taking Prof. Curtis Perry’s course on Seneca and Shakespeare; interested in Oedipus and Hamlet (as one is), I gravitated towards researching Restoration adaptations of both, eventually stumbling upon Dryden and Lee’s version of Oedipus. My goal was to figure out these plays’ obsession with memory and to then argue about how the desire to remember becomes immediately self-defeating when met with the equal desire to forget—a double-bind resulting in a constant revision of the past to accommodate the present. My focus on how the eighteenth-century adapted, appropriated, revised, reworked, edited, and enjoyed the plays from the late seventeenth-century is really an exercise in how any current culture decides to archive a collective past into a present restored memory. I see now my own fears of forgetfulness manifesting themselves throughout my chapters but also a larger concern for our culture’s amnesia when it comes to current events and history. This larger occasion for my dissertation related to my acknowledgments page in a much smaller way in that I’m concerned I also might forget to thank someone who might have helped me over the years, and so here I’d like to acknowledge and thank all the people that might have helped me with my graduate work and dissertation over the years. I must first thank my two advisers and the co-directors of my research project, Prof. Robert Markley and Prof. Antony Pollock. Bob and Tony’s seminars were so inspiring to me that I changed my specialty from American modernism to focusing on Restoration drama and novels in the long eighteenth-century in British literature. I remember that the micro-research projects we did in Bob’s seminar on The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe largely influenced my leaning towards cultural-historical criticism along with introducing me to doing archival research IV at UIUC’s Rare Books Library. Bob’s enthusiasm and breadth of knowledge in eighteenth- century studies continued to motivate me to work harder and explore new topics. Tony’s seminar also pushed me to change fields—his book list alone (Addison, Haywood, Habermas, to name a few) made me fully realize my interest in canon formation and the importance of revisiting non- canonical texts. Tony and Bob, you have been incredibly patient and kind throughout the years of reading my drafts and providing me with much needed criticism and feedback. It’s so rare when brilliant men are also communicative and generous with their time. Thank you both for all you’ve done with this project and for me. I would also like to thank my committee members, Catharine Gray and Lisa Freeman, for their incredibly helpful ideas during both my Special Field Exam and my defense. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees but I feel like I understand where I want to take these chapters now that I’ve heard your insights. Lisa, your questions in particular during the defense have made me think about my methodology in general, and specifically in terms of queer theory and close-reading Venice Preserved and The Fair Penitent. Catharine, thank you for helping me articulate precisely how to explain the larger concepts of my project as I continue to work on job materials. I really had a terrific committee and I thank you all for working with me. I would like to thank my friends and colleagues who have supported me, given me feedback on my work, praised me, critiqued me, guided me, argued with me, and made me so grateful to be a part of the academic community. I would particularly like to thank: Alaina Pincus, John Claborn, Dave Morris, Tania Lown-Hecht, Claire Barber, Wendy Truran, Kathy Skwarzceck, Michael Shetina, Sarah Bubash, Alexandra Patterson, and Michelle Sauer. I must especially thank my best friend, Kathryne Starzec, for years of incredible conversation over early morning coffee talks, late evening discussions, and mid-day therapy sessions. V Getting through graduate school was more difficult than I could have imagined and I’m delighted to be on the other side of it now. I know how lucky I am to have such a supportive family. I’m so grateful to my grandparents, Rosa Holguin, Marilyn and Ray Gerhart; thank you all for sending me letters of encouragement over the years, bragging about me to your friends, and loving me so unconditionally. Thank you to my little brother Joey for making me laugh whenever I see you—thank you for listening to me on the phone, visiting me, and just being you. Finally, to my parents, Mico and Karen Holguin: you are the reason I was able to complete my dissertation. Thank you for believing in me when I doubted myself. I would like to dedicate this dissertation in memory of my grandfather, Mico Holguin, who would have been over the moon for my academic achievement. VI TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: ADAPTING TO THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY…………………….....1 CHAPTER 1: ADAPTING BEHN’S NUN: WIDOWHOOD AND FEMALE AGENCY IN SOUTHERNE AND GARRICK………………………………………………………………...12 CHAPTER 2: RICHARDSON’S “LION-HEARTED LADY”: CLARISSA AS RESTORATION TRAGIC HERO…………….……………………………………………………………………66 CHAPTER 3: RICHARDSON’S LOVELACE AND THE SPECTACLE OF FEMALE SUFFERING……………………………………………………………………………………108 CHAPTER 4: PERFORMANCES OF POWER AND VIRTUE: CLEOPATRA AND OCTAVIA, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO GARRICK………………………..………………..154 BIBLIOGRAPHY:……………………………………………………………………...………197 1 INTRODUCTION: ADAPTING TO THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY In Spectator No. 40 (April 16, 1711), Joseph Addison expresses his great disdain toward Restoration critics’ reductive definitions of tragedy as a genre. For Addison, the “ridiculous Doctrine” of “poetical Justice” has given English dramatists the mistaken notion that “when they represent a virtuous or innocent Person in Distress, they ought not to leave him till they have delivered him out of his Troubles, or made him triumph over his Enemies.” Following Aristotle, Addison argues that modern writers “defeat [the] great End” of tragedy—the goal of producing “Terror and Commiseration in the Minds of the Audience”—to the extent that they “make Virtue and Innocence happy and successful.” Indeed, Addison points to recent trends among English audiences to bolster his case, claiming that “more of our English Tragedies have succeeded, in which the Favourites of the Audience sink under their Calamities, than those in which they recover themselves out of them.” Addison’s sharp criticism of English tragedies foregrounds the idea that we derive pleasure from the pain of watching the good suffer, from the catharsis elicited by vicariously “sink[ing] under” our favorite characters’ “calamities.” Elsewhere in the essay, Addison also grumbles about the hero-lover hybrid, as he is unable to accept the fluid gender roles implied by the “Swelling and Blustring” of men on stage. Indeed, Addison pokes fun at how women particularly enjoy tragedies that allow for this kind of slippage between masculinity and femininity. In Addison’s account, “the fair Part of [the] Audience” are quite pleased to see heroes fluctuate wildly between boldly “insulting Kings” and “affronting the Gods” in one scene, only to throw themselves “abjectly” at the “Feet of [a] Mistress”
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