1 Formal Education: Early Children's Genres, Gender, and the Realist
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Formal Education: Early Children’s Genres, Gender, and the Realist Novel Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Cecily Erin Hill, M.A. Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2015 Dissertation Committee: Robyn R. Warhol, Advisor Jill Galvan Sandra Macpherson Clare Simmons 1 Copyright by Cecily Erin Hill 2015 2 Abstract Early children's literature took the forms of complex, distinct genres that, much more than the novels being published contemporaneously with them, were employed in the didactic effect of literary structures. These works, published roughly from 1750-1850, do not assume a simple, one-to-one relationship between fictional worlds and the real world. They are aware of the complexities of representation, and, written and read predominantly by women and girls, they are especially aware of representation's effects on gender. Early children's fiction, I argue, treats literary and social forms alike as structure-at-work in the world, and this treatment had a substantive impact on fiction that shares its interest in the subtleties of gender formation and the disparate treatment of gendered beings in fiction and in fact: the nineteenth-century realist novel. From one perspective, this project is a straightforward, genre-study of early children's fiction and its influence on the Victorian realist novel. I focus on four major genres, selected for their numerousness and their continued though adapted use in fiction, and I think carefully about the bids they made on readers. Rather than teach simple morals, I argue that these works teach people to analyze in culturally- prescribed ways: to see a situation in the world, understand what it means, and react to it accordingly. By emphasizing analysis as a response to structure, this fiction signals the construction of social categories. By adopting and adapting these forms, novelists like Dickens and the Brontës engage children’s fictions’ educational goals and emphasize the degree to which reality is defined by social, material, embodied, and familial forms. Ultimately, I demonstrate that that the didacticism which we have for so long assumed was simple and straightforward is, in fact, a kind of formalism, one that codifies structures of response and embodiment that belie its reputation as pure content. ii After all, the other story this dissertation tells is that of the Realist novel. It complements arguments like Ian Watt's in The Rise of the Novel, Michael McKeon's in The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740, and Nancy Armstrong's in Desire and Domestic Fiction. To these theories of the novel, I add a history of realism (and particularly nineteenth-century realism) that is by and large anti-realist. By demonstrating that the most canonical of Victorian Realist novels—novels like Jane Eyre, Villette, Bleak House, Wuthering Heights, and Middlemarch—rely on children's literary forms in addition to those written for adults, this dissertation demands that historians of the novel take childhood reading as seriously as they take that of adulthood. In place of a history of the novel that emphasizes novel form as it develops from the mid-eighteenth century onward, I offer a genealogy that, while by no means meant to supersede those provided by Watt, McKeon, and Armstrong, nonetheless demonstrates that the nineteenth-century novel, for all its realist impulse, makes strategic and frequent use of literary genres notable for their rejection of realist form. iii Acknowledgments Of all the things early children’s stories teach, the most important and most consistent is the degree to which we are dependent on and subject to others. In Dorothy Kilner’s The Adventures of a Pincushion, the heroine finds herself wedged under a cabinet and, however much she struggles to get out, she is only able to turn and turn, going nowhere quickly until a servant comes to her aid. Without so many people and organizations, I would still be like that Pincushion—working, but to no avail. This dissertation could not have been completed without generous funding from Indiana University’s Lilly Library, the Children’s Literature Association of North America, Coca-Cola, and numerous units from within The Ohio State University, including Alumni Grants for Graduate Research and Scholarship, the Department of Women’s Studies, and my home Department of English. Nor could it have been completed without the support of many, many people. I am grateful to the people who housed and tolerated me during my numerous research trips: to Philip Dixon for accompanying me to museum after museum full of old children’s things; to Sarah and Jonathan Murphy for making me comfortable in their home and with their family; to my sister Suzanna Hill and Sandy Beall for providing me with a fabulous writing-retreat weekend in Devon. It cannot be fun to listen to someone ramble on and on about the intricacies of libraries and old stories, but these people persevered. When I joined The Ohio State University’s Department of English, I joined a program known for their collegiality and for their liberality toward one another. I am thankful to Kate Novotny Owen and Erica Haugtvedt for reading and commenting on early drafts of Chapter One—and for reading many research applications, conference, and seminar papers over the years. I am grateful to Meghan Burke-Hattaway and Colleen Kennedy for letting me eavesdrop on their iv projects and learn from their examples. Much of what is good in my work was modeled after theirs. When I count my blessings, I count among them my wonderful committee members. Jill Galvan, Sandra Macpherson, and Clare Simmons carefully responded to and met with me about every chapter draft. They dazzled me with their insights; they helped me think and write more carefully and clearly; and they gave me much of their precious time. Above all, I am thankful for my advisor, Robyn Warhol. Robyn has carefully and attentively commented, not just on my dissertation, but every thing I have sent her for the past five years. She has supported my writing and my research as she has supported me in every aspect of my life: with unflagging enthusiasm and boundless generosity. Last but by no means least, I owe endless thanks to the people who have loved me and sustained me, who believed in me even and especially when I didn’t believe in myself; My dear friend Krista Bryson, with whom I started and am finishing this program, for making me eat and helping me work; my parents, Dan Hill, and Andy and Rosemary Kaiser for their love and constant support; and my husband, Michael Presley. To my mother and Andy I am especially indebted—they have supported me through every stress and no few of the financial crises that seem to be inevitable parts of graduate school. My mother has cooked and cared for me both at her home and in mine. She has eased my stress and soothed my spirit. And as for Michael, he has made it possible for me to go away for long research trips and taken the burden of household responsibilities when I haven’t felt up to it. He has been gracious and uncomplaining when I have been otherwise. He has been a constant reminder that the little things are, in fact, everything. v Vita 2006 .......................................................................... B.A. English, University of Southern Mississippi 2009 .......................................................................... M.A. English, University of Southern Mississippi 2010 to present .................................................... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University Publications “Consuming Cultures: The Politics of Food in Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby.” Midwest Quarterly 53.2 (2012): 283-298. (Review) Newlyn, Lucy. William and Dorothy Wordsworth: ‘All in Each Other.’ Women’s Writing 21.2 (2014): 278-279. (Review) Solomon, Rakesh H. Albee in Performance. Valley Voices 10.2 (2010): 134- 136. Fields of Study Major Field: English vi Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................................... iv Vita .................................................................................................................................................................. vi Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................................... vii Introduction: Children’s Literary Forms and the Realist Novel ............................................ 1 Chapter 1: Reading Method, the School Story, and Villette ................................................... 27 Chapter 2: Useful Things: It Narratives and Novels ................................................................. 87 Chapter 3: Pleasurable Suffering: Harm Narratives and Wuthering Heights ............. 138 Chapter 4: Everyday Life: Family Narratives and the Gender of Reality ...................... 192 Endnotes ................................................................................................................................................... 255 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................................