Fashioning Chastity: British Marriage Plots and the Tailoring of Desire, 1789-1928
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FASHIONING CHASTITY: BRITISH MARRIAGE PLOTS AND THE TAILORING OF DESIRE, 1789-1928 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kate Faber Oestreich, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2008 Dissertation Committee: Professor Marlene Longenecker, Adviser Approved by Professor David Riede Professor Amanpal Garcha ______________________________ Adviser English Graduate Program ABSTRACT England has historically conceived of chastity in two ways: 1) virginity prior to marriage followed by continence—i.e., self-restraint from sexual intercourse—within marriage and 2) simplicity of clothing and ornamentation. This dissertation, Fashioning Chastity: British Marriage Plots and the Tailing of Desire, 1789 and 1928, focuses on a time when these two definitions coexisted. British marriage plots typically concentrate on two female characters: one who overvalues fashion and engages in pre-marital sexual activity (only to make a poor marriage or become a fallen woman) and another who favors conservative dress and guards her chaste reputation (for which she is rewarded with an affectionate marriage). While the fallen women’s scandalous sexuality attracts critical attention, the marriage plot’s heroines—perhaps because they appear to reify orthodoxy—tend to generate less analytical attention. This dissertation examines the latter group: the overlooked, chaste protagonists. By unpacking sartorial motifs in Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796), George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859), Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1895), and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928), I illustrate how these authors use clothing’s symbolic relation to contemporary issues to complicate the appearance feminine, chaste sexuality. ii Ultimately, this dissertation draws upon and contributes to feminist and sexuality studies by helping us to better understand the complexity of female chastity throughout the long nineteenth century. While Enlightenment thinking led contemporary religious, marital, and sartorial discourses to back away from defining husbands as the undisputed rulers of their households, the Marriage Act of 1753 solidified the importance of female virginity, as verbal spousehoods were no longer legally binding. Concurrently, republican and capitalist belief systems deified the pursuit of happiness in marriage and promoted the interests of the rising middle-class, emphasizing women as the emotional and moral center of the home. In novels, then, the ascetically dressed virgin became idealized as the perfect emotional and economic partner for the modern, capitalist, upwardly-mobile man. This dissertation, though, illustrates how these sartorially and sexually chaste characters are not orthodox pawns that promote patriarchy but women whose chastity provides them with an unusual degree of autonomy when securing a marriage. iii To Joe, for everything. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the many people who contributed to making this dissertation what it is today. David Riede’s enthusiasm and incisive criticism inspired and fed this project, from initial flame to completion. Clare Simmons’s course on writing for publication taught me that I was not alone with my writing struggles, thus inspiring me to conquer my worst faults. Aman Garcha illustrated particular aptitude for locating and then solving my most critical issues. Thanks to Ohio State University’s Department of English for honoring me with a summer fellowship and an Estrich fellowship, allowing me to dedicate two quarters to conducting research. Thanks to the G. Micheal Riley International Academic Fund, the Edward J. Ray Travel Award for Scholarship and Service, and the Ohio State’s College of Humanities Graduate Research Small Grant for providing me with funds to conduct research abroad. Thanks to the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies International Conference, The American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, and the Northeast MLA Conference for inviting me to present portions of this dissertation. Thanks to the staff at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library for their warm welcome and assistance. Thanks to Edwina Erwin, Aileen Ribeiro, and Caroline Shenton for providing thorough and thoughtful answers to a complete stranger’s questions. v Thanks to Roberta Malo and Kristen Hartman for struggling through the earliest outlines of my ideas. Thanks to Kathleen Griffin for her boundless energy, unflagging good humor, and resourcefulness. Thanks to William and Margaret Flemington for providing the final bit of funding needed to complete the writing of this dissertation, for which I will be forever grateful. Thanks to Richard Fantina’s refusal to accept no for an answer, an earlier version of Chapter 3 has been published as “Deviant Celibacy: Renouncing Dinah’s Little Fetish in Adam Bede” in Straight Writ Queer: Non-normative Expressions of Heterosexual Desire in Literature. Jefferson: McFarland, 2006. 82-93. A very special thanks to Marlene Longenecker for doling out equal doses of encouragement and tough love, for demanding answers to all of the difficult questions, and for providing careful editing. Thanks to my family and friends for propping me up throughout this journey. Last but not least, thanks to Joe Oestreich for reading multiple drafts, obsessing over tiny details, and refusing to let me say “good enough.” vi VITA Born, June 22, 1974 . Columbus, Ohio 2001-2007 . Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University 2003 . M.A. English, The Ohio State University 2007 . Lecturer, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington PUBLICATIONS 1. “Deviant Celibacy: Renouncing Dinah’s Little Fetish in Adam Bede.” Straight Writ Queer: Non-normative Expressions of Heterosexual Desire in Literature. Ed. Richard Fantina. Jefferson: McFarland, 2006. 82-93. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….…..ii-iii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………...........iv Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………...v-vi Vita………………………...………………………………………………...…………..vii Chapters: 1. Introduction: The Fashioning of Female Chastity……….…………………..……1 2. Unveiling Chastity in The Monk………………………………………………………...…44 3. Deviant Celibacy in Adam Bede……………………………………………………………84 4. The Limits of Fabrication: Chastity and Free Unions………………..………...131 5. Conclusion: Pearls of Desire in Orlando ………………………………….…...176 End Notes…….…………………………………………………….……………...……196 Bibliography..………………………………………………………………………..…209 viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: THE FASHIONING OF FEMALE CHASTITY . it is better to marry than to burn. -- I Corinthians 7:9 The seed of this dissertation was planted in my first quarter as a doctoral student. I had elected to devise an independent study on pornographic and scandalous literature of the nineteenth century, and while I was developing the reading list—which included titles such as The Other Victorians (1966), Wicked Victorians (1970), and Poems and Ballads (1866)—my supervising professor suggested I include George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859). Already a fan of Middlemarch (1871), I was intrigued that Eliot—this seemingly proto- “Victorian” author—had written an earlier, bawdier text. Disappointingly, however, the scandal of Adam Bede turned out to be rather, well, Victorian: a pretty but poor dairy maid is impregnated by the local heir apparent. Though many of Eliot’s contemporaries had been shocked by the novel’s sexualized plot, in my reading, almost one hundred and fifty years later, the characters’ sexuality seemed not only tame but also lacking true agency. Hetty was too callow. Arthur: too pliant, Adam: too emasculated, and Dinah: too detached. 1 Adding to my frustration was the irritating consistency with which the characters’ conversations kept returning to Dinah’s ugly Methodist cap. “Who cares?,” I often wondered, pressing the book shut in exasperation. But still, I needed a paper topic. So I would reopen the text and soldier on. As I neared the end of the book, panic set in. What perspective about the sexuality in Adam Bede could possibly be new and interesting enough to sustain a term paper? Then something about that infuriating cap on the epilogue’s first page hooked my attention. I grabbed a pen and paper and scribbled: What’s up with Dinah’s new cap? What was the big deal with the old cap?? Why does Dinah suddenly change her cap and only her cap??? Does this costume change have anything to do with her marriage????? These questions served as the foundation for that paper and, ultimately, for this dissertation. Previous to reading Adam Bede, literary characters’ clothing had never struck me as a worthwhile site of analysis. Occasionally a professor would mention off-handedly that a female character’s suggestive apparel foreshadowed her sexual fall, yet no one seemed to consider clothing a productive source of inquiry compared to, say, phallic symbols. Consequently, especially in the beginning, my research encountered many dead ends. Though many art, history, and psychology scholars and a few religious and literary scholars were writing about concepts near my topic, no one had synthesized a reading of fashion that could help me understand the significance of Dinah’s cap. Writing that first paper, I felt like a cultural theorist working virtually as a New Critic. It was not until after traveling to England, where I visited The Museum of Methodism, that my research started to take off, revealing that Dinah is not the paragon