BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE ANTIREVOLUTIONARY NOVEL: NINETEENTH- CENTURY BRITISH NOVELS ABOUT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
by
Patricia Cove
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
at
Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia November 2012
© Copyright by Patricia Cove, 2012
DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
The undersigned hereby certify that they have read and recommend to the Faculty of
Graduate Studies for acceptance a thesis entitled “BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE
ANTIREVOLUTIONARY NOVEL: NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH NOVELS
ABOUT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION” by Patricia Cove in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Dated: November 16, 2012
External Examiner: ______
Research Supervisor: ______
Examining Committee: ______
______
Departmental Representative: ______
ii
DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY
DATE: November 16, 2012
AUTHOR: Patricia Cove
TITLE: BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE ANTIREVOLUTIONARY NOVEL: NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH NOVELS ABOUT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
DEPARTMENT OR SCHOOL: Department of English
DEGREE: PhD CONVOCATION: May YEAR: 2013
Permission is herewith granted to Dalhousie University to circulate and to have copied for non-commercial purposes, at its discretion, the above title upon the request of individuals or institutions. I understand that my thesis will be electronically available to the public.
The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the thesis nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author‟s written permission.
The author attests that permission has been obtained for the use of any copyrighted material appearing in the thesis (other than the brief excerpts requiring only proper acknowledgement in scholarly writing), and that all such use is clearly acknowledged.
______Signature of Author
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS viii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1
“A WELL-DIRECTED GUN”: NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH IDENTITIES, THE ANTIREVOLUTIONARY NOVEL AND THE VIOLENCE OF REPRESENTATION 1
CHAPTER OUTLINE 21
CHAPTER 2: “IT IS NATURAL TO BE SO AFFECTED”: THE AFFECTIVE NATIONAL FAMILY AND THE EMOTIONAL BODY POLITIC IN EDMUND BURKE’S REFLECTIONS AND HIS OPPONENTS 27
“MY FRIEND, I TELL YOU IT IS TRUTH”: HISTRIONICS AND THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 30
“OUR DEAREST DOMESTIC TIES”: THE REVOLUTIONARY FAMILY ROMANCE AND BURKE‟S AFFECTIVE STATE 42
“REAL HEARTS OF FLESH AND BLOOD”: THE BODY POLITIC AND THE PROBLEM OF SENSIBILITY FOR BURKE, PAINE AND WOLLSTONECRAFT 65
CHAPTER 3: “THE RIGHT PATH”: DISCIPLINE, THE ILLUSION OF CONSENSUS AND THE POST-REVOLUTIONARY BRITISH COMMUNITY IN ELIZABETH HAMILTON’S MEMOIRS OF MODERN PHILOSOPHERS 83
“AN EXCELLENT ANTIDOTE TO THE POISON”: HAMILTON‟S ANTI-JACOBIN FORM 84
“A DANGEROUS EXCURSION”: DIDACTIC CONSERVATISM AND THE THREAT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 113
“GO HOME TO YOUR MOTHER, MY BIDDY”: DOMESTIC DISCIPLINE AND THE RE-EDUCATED NATIONAL COMMUNITY 124
CHAPTER 4: “AN ALIEN TO MY COUNTRY”: INSULAR PREJUDICE, TRANSNATIONAL BELONGING AND CONFIGURATIONS OF DOMESTIC POWER IN FRANCES BURNEY’S THE WANDERER 142
iv
“WITHOUT NAME, WITHOUT FORTUNE, WITHOUT FRIENDS!”: ELLIS‟S FRAGMENTED SUBJECTIVITY AND THE GROWTH OF SOCIAL SYMPATHY 145
“CAST UPON HERSELF”: GEOGRAPHY, GENDER AND ELLIS‟S MARGINALISATION 158
“DOCUMENTS, CERTIFICATES”: THE POLITICAL FAMILY ROMANCE AND ELLIS‟S RECONFIGURED COMMUNITY 177
CHAPTER 5: BRITISH REFORM AND FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1815- 1848 201
“REFORM OR REVOLUTION”: BRITISH POLITICS AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONS OF 1830 AND 1848 203
“GO AND DO OTHERWISE”: THOMAS CARLYLE‟S THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 223
CHAPTER 6: “NOT ... GREATLY MISREPRESENTED”: MELODRAMATIC EXCESS AND HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN ANTHONY TROLLOPE’S LA VENDÉE 232
“IT IS KNOWN TO EVERY ONE”: HISTORY AND REVOLUTION 237
“I KNOW THAT I HAVE BEEN A TRAITOR”: DEFERENTIAL CULTURE AND THE PRAGMATICS OF THE MELODRAMATIC MODE 250
“THE BLOOD OF OUR POOR PEOPLE”: HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND INCIPIENT NATIONAL IDENTITY 273
CHAPTER 7: “WITH NOT A TRACE OF THIS DAY’S DISFIGUREMENT”: AFFECTIVE COMMUNITIES AND REPRESENTATIONAL VIOLENCE IN CHARLES DICKENS’S A TALE OF TWO CITIES 295
“PUTTING TO DEATH”: OLD-REGIME SPECTACLES OF POWER 297
“A MULTITUDE OF PEOPLE, AND YET A SOLITUDE!”: DISCIPLINE, SURVEILLANCE AND THE MODERN STATE 317
“A VERY HARBOUR FROM THE RAGING STREETS”: DOMESTIC MANAGEMENT, THE REVOLUTIONARY THREAT AND BRITISH NATIONALISM 329
v
“A HAUNTING SPIRIT”: SYDNEY CARTON‟S SENTIMENTAL DEATH AND REPRESENTATIONAL VIOLENCE 343
CHAPTER 8: “FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE OTHER THING”: CHARLOTTE M. YONGE’S DYNEVOR TERRACE AND BRITISH COMMUNITIES AT THE END OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ERA 359
“THAT INFANT YELLOW MOUSTACHE”: DOMESTIC POLITICS, INVASION SCARES AND MILITANT PATRIOTISM IN THE 1840S AND 1850S 366
“THE FEATHER-BED FORTRESS”: DISMISSING THE REVOLUTIONARY ERA 387
“THE PLACE OF EXILE”: HOME, COMMUNITY AND TRANSATLANTIC BRITISH IDENTITIES 402
CHAPTER 9: CONCLUSION 427
BIBLIOGRAPHY 432
vi
ABSTRACT
Between Edmund Burke‟s 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France and Charles Dickens‟s 1859 A Tale of Two Cities, a cluster of antirevolutionary British works depicting the French Revolution that bridges periodisation divisions and often challenges the conventionally recognised political affiliations of the authors in question appeared. Recent work in recovering neglected Romantic and Victorian-era texts about the French Revolution has typically focused on radical and liberal works or the literary output of the 1790s, while disregarding the long-term antirevolutionary tradition my dissertation examines. I analyse canonical and well-known texts such as Burke‟s Reflections, Thomas Carlyle‟s The French Revolution (1837) and Dickens‟s Tale with understudied and sometimes utterly neglected antirevolutionary novels, including Elizabeth Hamilton‟s Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800), Frances Burney‟s The Wanderer (1814), Anthony Trollope‟s La Vendée (1850) and Charlotte M. Yonge‟s Dynevor Terrace (1857), in order to reconstruct the political and representational contests surrounding the French Revolution that occurred across seventy years of British literature. My work reveals that by representing the Revolution as inherently and unavoidably violent, the antirevolutionary writers in this study take up their own violent positions against it. These writers are primarily concerned with the French Revolution‟s impact on British communities and identities, and construct their own versions of Britishness in the context of, and usually in opposition to, revolutionary violence and the French revolutionary state. These texts all politicise the family and the domestic community as models or microcosms of the broader national community, although they do so in diverse ways: Burney and Trollope turn to the political family romance to test out versions of the state modelled on patriarchy, fraternity or the heterosexual marriage contract. By contrast, Burke, Dickens and Yonge use middle-class domestic ideology to promote a national community rooted in private, social affections. However, as the home comes under threat by revolutionary violence in all of these works, each writer commits some kind of representational violence against revolutionary symbols, ideals and narrati