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The Museum and Victorian Literature 1830-1914 Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2015 Collecting SubjectsObjects: The Museum and Victorian Literature 1830-1914 Kayla Kreuger McKinney Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Kreuger McKinney, Kayla, "Collecting SubjectsObjects: The Museum and Victorian Literature 1830-1914" (2015). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 7103. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/7103 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you must obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in WVU Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports collection by an authorized administrator of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Collecting Subjects/Objects: The Museum and Victorian Literature 1830-1914 Kayla Kreuger McKinney Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Science at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English John Lamb, Ph.D., Chair Dennis Allen, Ph.D. Marilyn Francus, Ph.D. Ryan Claycomb, Ph.D Donald Hall, Ph.D. Department of English Morgantown, West Virginia 2015 Keywords: museum, natural history, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Henry Mayhew Copyright 2015 Kayla Kreuger McKinney ABSTRACT Collecting Subjects/Objects: The Museum and Victorian Literature 1830-1914 Kayla Kreuger McKinney This study argues that the museum wielded enough cultural capital to shape not only the content of literature (which picked up themes like collection, hoarding, display, and organization) but also the formal arrangement of such literature into catalogues, taxonomies, and the dense material-based descriptions for which the Victorian novel is often criticized. The museum, it is shown, is far more central to Victorian thought than has been recognized, and its presence in literature has been misread or overlooked in contemporary criticism. This study also provides a narrative of the Victorian preoccupation with the museual, especially as regards the natural history movement and the natural history museum. 1 While there have been studies of the nineteenth-century museum and its appearance in literary texts, there has until now been no sustained account of the reach of its influence, nor has there been an attempt to represent Victorian views on the museual and its reach into everyday life. This study draws on the criticism of museum scholars such as Sharon Macdonald and Tony Bennett to examine the influence of the museum on key works of Victorian literature such as Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop and Our Mutual Friend , Henry Mayhew’s 1851 and London Labour and the London Poor , and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White . 1 The museual, in my reading, encompasses the institutions that surround and share methods with the museum (fairs, human zoos, menageries, etc.) as well as aspects of the museum that travel into other cultural arenas. [Type text] Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: The Instructive Wax Girl and the Grotesque Imp: The Foundations of the Victorian Natural History Museum .......................................................................................................................................... 19 Chapter Two: Crystal Fragments: Museum Methods at The Great Exhibition, in London Labour and the London Poor and in 1851 ........................................................................................................................... 48 Chapter Three: “In that Bony Light”: The Museum Economy of Our Mutual Friend ............................... 79 Chapter Four: ‘So Glad to Possess You:’ Museual Echoes in Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White .... 106 Coda: Return to the Crystal Palace? ......................................................................................................... 137 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................. 142 [Type text] Introduction In 1851, Punch looked ahead and reported that “We shall be disappointed if the next generation of London children are not brought up, like cucumbers, under glass” (63). In making such a prediction, Punch testified to the current influence of the Crystal Palace, itself a world enshrined beneath glittering panes of glass and predicted that this influence would be strong enough to shape Victorian building practices, aesthetic tastes, and even bodies. While it may not be immediately evident, Punch’ s predictions would prove sound throughout the nineteenth century as the cultural influence of the museum came to touch upon almost every aspect of Victorian life. In 1851 as a proto-museum, the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, introduced Victorian visitors to the basic elements of museum culture and museum etiquette. The Exhibition and the cultural and material products associated with it (speeches, guidebooks, commemoratives, etc.) familiarized sight-seers with such museual tactics as display, spectacle, catalogue, evaluation, and taxonomy. Museum spaces also sought to discipline the bodies that entered them. What began with concerns about crowd control at the Exhibition developed into a philosophy in which the museum became a mechanism of social uplift and a place where the working classes could be instructed in middle class virtues and behavior. This study examines the importance of the museum’s influence on Victorian culture and traces the impact of that influence on and within literary works. It argues that the museum wielded enough cultural capital to shape not only the content of this literature (which picked up themes like collection, hoarding, display, and organization) but also the formal arrangement of such literature into catalogues, taxonomies, and the dense material-based descriptions for which the Victorian novel is often criticized. The museum, it is shown, is far more central to Victorian 1 thought than has been recognized, and its presence in literature has been misread or overlooked in contemporary criticism. This study does not offer a history of the museum’s influence but, instead, provides a narrative of the Victorian preoccupation with the museual, especially as regards the natural history movement and the natural history museum. The museual, in my reading, encompasses the institutions that surround and share methods with the museum (fairs, human zoos, menageries, etc.) as well as aspects of the museum that travel into other cultural arenas. My argument is built on a study of Victorian engagement with the museum and its related institutions and practices, its connection to broader ethical, institutional, and national questions, and the ways in which these questions are reflected or explored in the literature of this period. One of the concerns of this study is how the Victorians moved from museum-making to cultural valuation, or the ways in which the methods of the museum migrated into the larger culture. One of the primary modes of this migration is in the pages of Victorian literature, especially the novels of Charles Dickens. Both within and outside of fictional worlds, the museum gave support to social Darwinism and the production of social taxonomies (as discussed in chapter two). The museum also taught Victorian viewers to extract lessons from objects and to read hierarchies of gender and of race (as discussed in chapter four). Finally, the museum’s methods were promoted by a host of peripheral institutions from the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the freak shows and human zoos of the fin de siècle. While there have been previous studies of the nineteenth-century museum and its appearance in literary texts, there has until now been no sustained account of the reach of its influence, nor has there been an attempt to represent Victorian views on the museual and its impact on everyday life. 2 Before discussing the critical framework of this study, it is important to note that there is no direct intersection of museum studies and the rise of the novel or literary culture. In attempting to address this lack, this study draws on a large body of recent criticism to discuss the museum as a cultural phenomenon that inflected and shaped Victorian literature and culture. The primary figures who underwrite and inform this project are Michel Foucault, Tony Bennett, and Barbara J. Black. Although the work of philosopher Michel Foucault is varied and defies easy categorization, it has had wide influence on museum studies for thirty years. Foucault’s ideas about disciplinary power, panopticism, and governmentality have also been applied to the development of the public museum in the nineteenth century. Victorian museums can be seen as Foucaultian spaces aimed at both improving the populace as a whole and instructing citizens in methods of self-regulation and self-policing. As disciplinary venues,
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