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University of Florida Thesis Or Dissertation Formatting MEMORY AND LEGAL TESTIMONY IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE By J. STEPHEN ADDCOX A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2014 © 2014 J. Stephen Addcox To Anna ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The work that went into this dissertation would have been diminished if not for the generous support and guidance of Pamela K. Gilbert, who has offered insightful and thoughtful criticism throughout my time at UF. The Victorian dissertation reading group has provided an invaluable space for me to hash out ideas and refine my argument. I will miss the robust and engaging academic community that we have shared over the years. Thanks also to my committee, Chris Snodgrass, Judith Page, and Danaya Wright, for helping to refine and shape this project in its early stages. I am also thankful for the support of the Kirkland Dissertation Fellowship, which provided financial support at a crucial time in my research and writing process. My family has been my constant foundation through the years that have led to this moment. My parents Jim and Anne have never ceased to offer abundant love and encouragement during my graduate studies. My in-laws, Kent and Jennifer, have also been generous with their interest in my work and have graciously provided additional support to make this dissertation possible. My children, James and Lily, are my delight, and I hope that they will continue to grow in their love of stories and storytelling. Finally, and most of all, I must thank my wife Anna, who has been a steady and unwavering source of love and joy. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................9 Memory and Testimony ............................................................................................................9 Psychology and the Legal System in the Nineteenth Century ................................................15 Memorial Acts and Literary Representation ...........................................................................25 Summary of Chapters .............................................................................................................28 2 COLLECTING TESTIMONY AND MANAGING FAMILY MEMORY ...........................33 The Woman in White and the Novel as Inadmissible Affidavit ..............................................34 Laura’s Inheritance ..........................................................................................................41 The Date of Laura’s Death ..............................................................................................45 The Identity of Sir Percival Glyde ...................................................................................50 The Moonstone and Narrative Construction ...........................................................................55 Witness Selection and Organization ................................................................................58 Editorial Commentary .....................................................................................................65 Imagination and the Testimony of the Dead ...................................................................70 3 OF HEIRLOOMS AND INHERITANCE .............................................................................76 Information and Fragmentation in Bleak House .....................................................................76 Family Connections and Family Secrets .........................................................................81 Chancery and Personal History .......................................................................................88 The Eustace Diamonds and Public Secrets .............................................................................93 Memory As Property and Possession ..............................................................................95 The Oath and Social Testimony ....................................................................................105 4 RELIGION, LAW, AND TESTIMONIAL WRITING .......................................................116 Religious Memoir and Confession .......................................................................................120 Editing the Faithful and Faithfully Forgetting ......................................................................125 The Law and its Discontents .................................................................................................131 Rendering Judgment .............................................................................................................143 5 CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE AND THE MEMORY OF THINGS ...........................147 Circumstantial Evidence in Law and Literature ...................................................................147 The Villainy of Circumstantial Evidence .............................................................................154 5 The Memory of the Gun in Mary Barton .............................................................................162 Susan Hopley and Women Detectives ..................................................................................173 6 THE HOLISTIC TRUTH OF MEMORY AND TESTIMONY ..........................................182 The Truth of Force ................................................................................................................182 Guido and Truth in the Law’s Failure ..................................................................................192 Critique of Law ..............................................................................................................193 Critique of the Church ...................................................................................................199 Memory Exposed and Concealed .........................................................................................203 Holistic Truth ........................................................................................................................215 7 EPILGOUE ...........................................................................................................................218 LIST OF REFERENCES .............................................................................................................223 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................234 6 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy MEMORY AND LEGAL TESTIMONY IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE By J. Stephen Addcox May 2014 Chair: Pamela K. Gilbert Major: English This project shows how literary representations of legal testimony in the nineteenth century consistently underscore social and cultural anxieties about the relationship between memory and testimony. Such literary narratives place testimony and memory at the center of their exploration of narrative collection, testimonial record-keeping, and communal memory, suggesting a vision of memory and testimony that is about more than simply evaluating facts; instead, the literary works position literature itself as the communal memory, the better story, that people will remember in the future. Such narratives, therefore, offer imaginative solutions for the growing anxiety during the nineteenth century that the legal system was ill-equipped to address scientific advances that revealed the complexities (and fallibilities) of memory, and the ways in which such advances might undermine legal testimony. This project examines the works of a variety of authors—Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, James Hogg, Elizabeth Gaskell, Catherine Crowe, and Robert Browning—and demonstrates how their texts sought to address the ways in which individual testimony was joined together with other forms of evidence in the legal system to become part of a wider community narrative of an event. Nineteenth-century literature often positioned itself as offering restorative narratives in which communal identity and memory are preserved in spite of the legal system. By establishing the 7 extent to which memory and legal testimony were central concerns in Victorian literature, this project suggests how these concerns functioned either to stabilize or undermine the existing social and legal status quo. Literary representations of both criminal and civil cases feature pervasive tension over whether the legal system can adequately arrive at accurate decisions, and as a result, these works offer literature as a solution to the problems with which the legal system is struggling. 8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Memory and Testimony During the nineteenth century, British literature took a particular interest in the relationship between testimony and memory as science and the legal system began to complicate cultural understandings of the reliability and accuracy of human memory and testimony. This literary interest is reflected in the increasing proliferation of novels, stories, and even poems in which courtrooms, lawyers, legal documents,
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