Moral-Domestic Fiction, 1820-1834
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Domesticating the Novel: Moral-Domestic Fiction, 1820-1834 by Rachel Howard Ph.D. Thesis Cardiff University September 2007 UMI Number: U584275 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U584275 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Thesis Declaration and Statements DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. 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($.. * Rachel Howard PhD Thesis, 2007 Department of English, Cardiff University Summary Domesticating the Novel: Moral-Domestic Fiction, 1820-1834 Since the late 1960s, the marginalised status of women within literary studies has been addressed. Critics such as Kate Millett set the standard for studies of male- authored fiction that read them for signs of their oppressive, patriarchal assumptions. Somewhat differently, Elaine Showaiter’s 1977 text A Literature of Their Own proved seminal for its shift in focus towards women’s writing, and the aim of detecting female experiences of society. The effort to retrieve lost or neglected fiction by women mobilised many critics, such Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, yet of most significance for the subject matter of this thesis is Ellen Moers. Moers’s Literary Women (1976) essentially suggests an expansion of the types of female-authored fiction that should be recovered. For Moers, women’s writing does not have to be about isolated, feminist rejections of male-oriented society in order to be worth retrieving. Female novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were taking advantage of one of the few outlets available to them to make money, and their works were defined by intertextuality. Moers writes about a ‘sounding board’ of mutual awareness and resonance that exists between women writers across periods and genres; a female tradition of writing is formed by the ‘many voices, of different rhythms, pitches, and timbres’ by which women writers are encircled.1 Collectively, existing works such as those by Showalter and Moers offer justification for retrieving a range of lesser-known, seemingly mundane female-authored works from the past, as these contain connections with surrounding works as well as a narrative on women’s experiences of society. Currently, however, there is a critical hiatus in which this opportunity is not being satisfied, and many women writers remain neglected. The gap in our knowledge of the female literary tradition can be filled in part by increased familiarisation with the Moral-Domestic genre of the 1820s and 1830s. This genre relates to fictional forbears such as Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, as well as later Victorian authors. It also offers a female perspective on a publishing scene whose significance is arguably yet to be fully realised. In this way, the female-authored, Moral-Domestic novels that proliferated in the late-Romantic period represent one, as yet unrecognised voice in Moers’s ‘sounding board’. 1 Ellen Moers, Literary Women (London: Women’s Press, 1978), p. 65. V TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION Rediscovering Women’s Moral-Domestic Writing, 1820-1834 1 Hannah More, Evangelicalism, and the Birth of Moral- Domestic Fiction 6 Moral-Domestic Fiction and Existing Criticism 11 Introducing Moral-Domestic Fiction 18 II. BARBARA HOFLAND’S MORAL-DOMESTIC CAREER, 1809-1834 Life and Writing 29 Barbara Hofland and the Moral-Domestic Heydey, 1809-1817 32 Barbara Hofland and Moral-Domestic Diversity: The Early 1920s 51 A Break in the Story: Barbara Hofland and Moral-Domestic Fiction in the Mid-1820s 65 Accomplished Diversity: Barbara Holland’s 1828-1830 Novels 73 Concluding Moral-Domestic Trends: Barbara Hofland, 1830-1834 82 III. THE POST-AUSTENIAN SUB-GENRE OF MORAL-DOMESTIC FICTION Moral-Domestic Fiction and the Female Literary Tradition 87 Jane Austen and the Moral-Domestic Genre of the 1820s 90 Mary Ann Kelty 95 Laeticia Matilda Hawkins 115 Anne Raikes Harding 126 Susan Edmonstone Ferrier 140 Concluding the Post-Austenian Sub-Genre 158 IV. THE CONVERSON SUB-GENRE OF MORAL-DOMESTIC FICTION Constructing Britain’s National Tale: Women’s Late Romantic Writing A Short Story of Conversion Writing The Evolution of the Conversion Novel: Mary Jane Mackenzie The Fruition of the Conversion Novel: Grace Kennedy Diversity in the Mid-1820s Conversion Novel: Charlotte Anley A Conversion Career: Amelia Bristow The Final Years of Conversion Fiction: 1830 and Beyond V. CONCLUSION APPENDIX. CHECKLIST OF MORAL-DOMESTIC FICTION, WRITTEN BY WOMEN AND PUBLISHED IN BRITAIN, 1820-1834 BIBLIOGRAPHY i I Introduction Rediscovering Women’s Moral-Domestic Writing, 1820-1834 The 1830s were lacking in first-rate literary achievement. Richard D. Altick1 Early women’s writing needs rediscovering because much of it is still forgotten, because it can prove a delight to read, because without it our notions of literature become misleadingly one-sided, and because it offers insights into the historical condition of women (and therefore obliquely into our own situation) which are unavailable from other sources. Isobel Grundy2 The 1830s is a neglected decade in the history of British literature, falling as it does between the end point of Romanticism and the onset of the Victorian era. Indeed, the critical consensus has for many years sided with the point of view put by Richard Altick, that the 1830s were something of a lost decade, lacking in first-rate literary achievement. The argument of this thesis, however, is that the 1830s are worthy of critical attention as the decade that witnessed the efflorescence of one particular form of popular literature, written mainly by women and addressed primarily to a female readership, namely Moral- Domestic fiction. Moral-Domestic fiction had existed before the nineteenth century in the form of fictionalised conduct literature evident, on the one hand, in Samuel Richardson’s mid eighteenth century novels, and, on the other, in Jane Austen’s novels of manners. But the -l Richard D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas (London: Dent, 1973), p. 6. 2 Isobel Grundy, ‘(Re)discovering Women’s Texts’, in Women and Literature in Britain 1700-1800. ed. by Vivien Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 185-86. 2 type of Moral-Domestic fiction which flourished in the first three decades of the nineteenth century is marked out by a unique emphasis upon sisterly relationships, and the empowering potential for women of the religious, domestic life. This Moral-Domestic fiction also facilitated an authoritative, educating voice for the female novelist. Altick’s claim that the literary culture of the late-Romantic period was relatively ineffectual, and is therefore not worthy of the scrutiny with which other writers and genres are treated, is bom of a bias towards ostensibly unique productions and texts. The Moral-Domestic genre that emerged between the Romantic and the Victorian periods, however, may be used as a correlative to such accounts. The genre may seem incompatible with prevailing conceptions of literary value, yet it can contextualise the phenomena to which Altick refers. Feminist critics, notably Ellen Moers and Isobel Grundy, provide a framework within which to retrieve Moral-Domestic fiction, and reinstate its importance, as they promote the recovery of lesser known female-authored fictions of the past.3 Moers is particularly interested in the creative ways in which apparently minor writers adapt one another’s styles. On closer inspection, Moral-Domestic writing contains unexpected innovations at the levels of style and theme. Thus, in addition to illuminating the rise of the Victorian novel, the elucidation of Moral-Domestic fiction contributes to debates regarding the contested role of the woman writer in the nineteenth century and the nature of her literature. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the works of the Moral-Domestic genre are characterised by their almost exclusive delineation of everyday scenes and uncompromising Christian value system. With this content and tone, they departed from 3 Ellen Moers’s Literary Women (London: Women’s Press, 1978) will be referred to throughout this thesis, for its statement that a feminine history in the novel warrants recovery. Her accentuation of intertextuality in women’s literature is also critical, as it enables a reconsideration of seemingly minor texts. 3 existing styles of writing, including Gothic and society novels. These genres had fallen into disrepute by 1800, as the appearance in 1813 of Eaton Stannard-Barrett’s The Heroine: or, the Adventures of a Fair Romance Reader, a fictional attack on the perceived shallowness of familiar romantic heroines, suggests. The gravity of Moral-Domestic writing picked up on the turn towards moral seriousness by which Britain was gripped in the decades following the French Revolution.