The Indissoluble Knot ? Public and Private Representations of Men And
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The Indissoluble Knot ? Public and Private Representations of Men and Marriage 1770-1830 Submitted by Michael John Fielding to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in February 2012. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material, and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all the material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified, and that no material has been previously submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. 1 Abstract Men have been largely absent from the literature of eighteenth-century matrimony, their role and performance being inferred from examination of female experience. The aim of this thesis is to remedy that omission by exploring two representational forms: the public - contained in fiction, advice literature, periodical, newspaper and adultery case reports; and the private, a range of unpublished correspondence and diaries, almost all of which are being cited for the first time. Together, the two bodies of material reinforce the cultural history of developing affectivity which has been one of the principal trends of work within both history and criticism over the last 40 years. They focus attention on the domestic environment increasingly occupied by men, and the effect of this emphasis on perceptions of masculinity. In these respects they support the drive of historians such as Amanda Vickery and Karen Harvey to “write men back into a history from which they have been written out”. Critical reflections and the place of fiction and other literature as sources of social history comprise a second strand of the thesis. A third area of concentration will be the influence of public media on personal behaviour. Historical research into various aspects of contemporary culture – including domestic violence, prostitution, children’s upbringing – have explored what people did without exploring the rhetorical influences that might explain why people did things. Direct evidence of reading practices and therefore of these effects is limited but nonetheless important. With its focus on marriage and after an Introduction that sets out some of the key issues, the thesis is divided into two parts: Before Marriage and After Marriage. Within each part there is further division into chapters devoted respectively to considerations of relations between men and women to be found in the public prints and those available through correspondence and diaries archived in a number of local Record Offices. 2 Acknowledgements This thesis is dedicated to Keith Williams (1947-2011) whose untimely death robbed me of a good friend, and the world of a gifted family historian. My sincere thanks go to: Professor Jane Spencer, who first encouraged me to work on this project and has, ever since, been a source of knowledge, support and unfailing patience and encouragement. Without her, as they say, it might never have happened, and I am very grateful. Dr. Henry Power whose incisive comments about literature taught me a great deal. The staff in all the Record Offices I visited who were unfailingly polite and supportive and knew their archives so well. They displayed genuine expertise as well as enthusiasm for the project and made the business of research endlessly enjoyable. The many family and friends who have continued to enquire about my progress, and appear not to be bored by my explanations. My partner, Sue Pygott, who has encouraged, cajoled and supported just when it was needed and has revealed herself as a very thorough proof reader. The mistakes are mine, not hers. 3 Table of Contents Title Page 1 Abstract 2 Acknowledgments 3 Table of Contents 4 Abbreviations 5 Introduction 6 P a rt 1 Before Marriage Chap 1 Wooing and Winning – Published 55 Chap 2 Wooing and Winning – Unpublished 110 Part 2 After Marriage Chap 3 Having and Holding – Published 163 Chap 4 Having and Holding – Unpublished 229 Conclusion 270 Appendix 282 Bibliography 286 4 Abbreviations Newspapers and Periodicals Consulted and Abbreviations where Used The Athenaeum The Belfast Monthly Magazine Cabinet Edinburgh Weekly Magazine The Edinburgh magazine, or literary miscellany The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle The Lady’s Monthly Museum. The Literary Journal The Lounger The Matrimonial Magazine The Matrimonial Preceptor The Monthly Panorama New Universal Magazine The Oxford Magazine Sentimental Magazine The Scourge, or, Literary, Theatrical, and Miscellaneous Magazine. Town & Country Magazine Universal Magazine The Universal Repository Walker’s Hibernian Magazine The Weekly Entertainer 5 Husband and wife are always together and share the same society. It is the rarest thing to meet the one without the other. The very richest people do not keep more than four or six carriage horses, since they pay all their visits together. It would be more ridiculous to do otherwise in England than to go everywhere with your wife in Paris. They always give the appearance of perfect harmony, and the wife in particular has an air of contentment which always gives me pleasure.1 6 Introduction In 1788 Joseph Strutt, Derbyshire manufacturer’s younger son and future philanthropist, wrote to his bride-to-be, Isabella Douglas: I walked with Mrs Bateman by chance a week ago, she told me you was coming to her House for a few days whilst the Militia were here. I own I was surprized & concerned at it - she is far from a desirable companion for a young Woman like you. The impressions you receive now will last as long as you live – it is your duty & will be your ultimate happiness, to guard against receiving any that are bad [...]2 Less than ten years later, Edgar Mandlebert, stuffy and solicitous proto-lover of Fanny Burney’s eponymous heroine Camilla warns against her friendship with a married woman who has rapidly become the centre of male attention during the fashionable season at Tunbridge Wells: Ah my dear Miss Camilla [..] drop, or at least suspend an intercourse too hazardous to be indulged with propriety! See what she may be sometime hence, ere you contract further intimacy. At present, unexperienced and unsuspicious, her dangers may be yours. You are too young for such a risk.3 The significance of the two reproaches lies in their tonal similarity. Both men are demonstrating patriarchal authority in the guise of romantic concern. They will continue to give advice, admonition, and occasional apology for their intrusion throughout both the novel and the correspondence. They exemplify what Eleanor Wikborg has called the ‘Lover as Mentor’, using their superior experience of the world to guide the women they confess to love, and thereby fulfil her perceived psychological need for “The Lover as Father Figure”. 4 It also satisfies their own desire for authority and hierarchically gendered power relations within the pre-marital setting. This behaviour gives some intimation of what might happen in their marriages, but, while we can only guess at the future of Mandlebert and Camilla, we have ample evidence to show that Strutt and Isabella’s subsequent marriage followed the pattern set in their pre-marital correspondence. 7 These excerpts illustrate two important features of this thesis: first, it is focused on men – a new departure for academic discussion of eighteenth-century marriage; second, it is about different representational forms – including published and previously unexamined material - and what they reveal about the male matrimonial experience and reactions to it. Paradoxically, Mandlebert and Strutt also demonstrate attitudes to romantic relations which I shall argue were becoming less prevalent at this period than previously. Whereas, they display no reservations about their right to direct and instruct, the public and private material on which this thesis is based reveals a more restrained version of patriarchal authority. Other literary and historic examples in the thesis represent different characterisations of the lover, husband or father. But substantiating direct or causal correspondence between these requires evidence of discursive influence on personal behaviour that is not available in the private or unpublished material. And yet questions remain about why these resemblances exist: must, for instance, a private correspondent read the public material to be influenced by it or is he succumbing to a pervasive zeitgeist ? Does, alternatively, the public material reflect discursive normativity among the increasingly letter-writing populace? Susan Whyman concludes that by the end of the eighteenth century “epistolary voices had become integral parts of daily discourse”..5 As essential elements of popular culture, love and marriage have the power to endorse the imbrication of letter writing, literature and culture, and, as one of its objectives, this thesis seeks to corroborate the connection. Married men have been almost entirely neglected by cultural historians of the eighteenth-century except by some Early Modern Scholars, although there are now signs – particularly in current work by Karen Harvey and Amanda Vickery – that the balance may be shifting. Vickery published her investigation of the Georgian home in 20096 and Harvey is publishing her cultural history of men and the house later this year. This “reconstructs men’s experiences of the house, examining the authority that accrued to mundane and everyday household practices and employing men’s own concepts to understand what men thought and felt about their domestic lives”.7My project, which started before either book was available or publicised, will contribute to this growing interest in domestic man. Most scholarship has concentrated on women and their subordination within a patriarchal culture.8 In this model, marriage constitutes a sexual exchange in which the father transfers the property rights embodied in his daughter to the husband in return for money, status or the latter’s expressed willingness to support her practically, 8 emotionally and socially.