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UMI® u Ottawa L'Universitd canadienne Canada's university nm FACULTE DES ETUDES SUPERIEURES 1^=1 FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND ET POSTOCTORALES U Ottawa POSDOCTORAL STUDIES F.'University ainadienne Canada's university Martha Musgrove AUTEUR DE LA THESE / AUTHOR OF THESIS Ph.D. (English Literature) GRADE/DEGREE Department of English FACULTE, ECOLE, DEPARTEMENT / FACULTY, SCHOOL, DEPARTMENT Women and the City in Novels of the Romantic Period TITRE DE LA THESE / TITLE OF THESIS Ian Ferris DIRECTEUR (DIRECTRICE) DE LA THESE / THESIS SUPERVISOR CO-DIRECTEUR (CO-DIRECTRICE) DE LA THESE / THESIS CO-SUPERVISOR EXAMINATEURS (EXAMINATRICES) DE LA THESE/THESIS EXAMINERS Frans De Bruyn April London Deidre Lynch Keith Wilson .Gary W-..SJater Le Doyen de la Faculte des etudes superieures et postdoctorales / Dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Women and the City in Novels of the Romantic Period Martha Musgrove Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements For the PhD Degree in English Literature Department of English Faculty of Arts University of Ottawa © Martha Musgrove, Ottawa, Canada, 2009 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-59536-7 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-59536-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. •+• Canada 11 CONTENTS Abstract / iii Acknowledgements / v Preface / vi Chapter 1: "The London Everyone Delights to See": The City in the Romantic Period /1 Chapter 2: City Practitioners in the Novels of Mary Brunton and Jane Austen / 50 Chapter 3: The Semi-Detached Fldneuse: Feminine Spectatorship in Prose Works by Mary Robinson and the Countess of Blessington / 113 Chapter 4: Something To Do With Politics: The Public Sphere in Maria Edgeworth's Urban Drawing Rooms / 169 Epilogue / 211 Select Bibliography / 214 iii ABSTRACT "Women and the City in Novels of the Romantic Period" investigates how women writers used the novel to explore a dynamic relationship between femininity and urban space. To provide an historical context, the thesis begins by summarizing contemporary accounts of how rapid urbanisation affected the lives of middle-class women. These records suggest what is also reflected in fiction of the period: by careful negotiation of social codes, women were able to find considerable latitude in the city for experimenting with different kinds of femininity. Turning next to selected novels of the Scottish writer Mary Brunton and Jane Austen, the thesis examines the evolution of a distinctive version of "domestic woman" shaped by urban influences. In Brunton's work, this new figure serves as a mediator between traditional and modern economies; in Austen's novel, the heroine unsettles images of the gentry estate as stable, enclosed and enduring. Next, the thesis identifies in the prose works and fiction of Mary Robinson, the Countess of Blessington, Elizabeth Inchbald and Elizabeth Hamilton, the presence of a "semi-detached fldneuse," a trope encapsulating feminine urban experiences. Taking pleasure in being part of the London scene, the fldneuse also justifies her presence in the city through the reformative functions she undertakes. Finally, the thesis looks at three London novels by Maria Edgeworth which depict heroines training themselves to take part in the political life of the nation by engaging in public sphere critical discourses. Moving into the foreground the largely overlooked relationship of women and the city, this dissertation shows that women's fiction developed new constructions of femininity, uniting the nurturing values of the ideal domestic woman with the rationality and agency born of modern urban experience. The novel of sentiment thus iv emerges as more layered and complex than often charged, capable of confronting large themes and registering the transition of Britain from a homogeneous, settled, rural society to a diverse, mobile urban one. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have had the immense good fortune to work under the supervision of Dr. Ina Ferris whose enthusiasm, discernment, and exacting editing were invaluable in helping to transform a vague hunch into a firm conviction that middle-class women must be considered in discussions about Romantic London. The supportive but challenging responses to my work from examining panel members Dr. Deidre Lynch, Dr. April London, Dr. Keith Wilson and Dr. Frans de Bruyn were invaluable in helping me toward a better articulation of my project and in pointing to ways in which my argument might be expanded. I am also grateful to the faculty of the Department of English at the University of Ottawa for their inspired and inspiring teaching, kind interest in my work and support during difficult periods. My appreciation goes out also to Diane Corcoran, Marie Chenier and Nadine Mayhew who smoothed out for me the administrative wrinkles of graduate life. The cheerful scepticism and careful proof reading of Dr. Terry Pratt helped me to refine my writing, and The Oak Circle (Dr. Rosemary Daniels, Dr. Reginald Webber, Morgan Rooney and Phil McKnight) provided a congenial forum in which to escape temporarily the pressures of completion. Finally, I extend my warmest appreciation to Michael Hatfield whose emotional, practical and material support made this dissertation possible. I am pleased to acknowledge the financial support I have received from the Department of English, the University of Ottawa Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Fund and the Canada Graduate Scholarship program of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. PREFACE Writing from London to her sister Cassandra in 1813, Jane Austen described a day of riding about the city in a carriage, visiting shops and making calls. She reported, "I liked my solitary elegance very much, & was ready to laugh all the time, at my being where I was. — I could not but feel that I had naturally small right to be parading about London in a barouche."1 Austen's reaction to her expedition — a mixture of delight and unease — is echoed in a number of novels written by women during the Romantic period (circa 1780- 1830), works that depict their middle-class heroines testing the possibilities of urban experience even while acutely aware that their claim to a place in the city might be challenged. My dissertation, "Women and the City in Novels of the Romantic Period," considers how the conjunction of feminine body and metropolitan space helped shape women's writing at a pivotal moment in the history of all three categories named in its title: women, the city, the novel. It looks at representations of women negotiating the metropolis spatially and socially in selected British fiction in order to investigate how writers used the novel not only to express an understanding of the centrality of the city within modern life but also to explore a dynamic relationship between women and urban space. Critical analysis of fiction written at the turn of nineteenth century tends to assume an essential opposition between women and the city. Gary Kelly, for example, has identified the novel as an important weapon in a cultural revolution whereby the professional middle- class joined with rural gentry to supplant an aristocratic court culture and establish a new 1 Jane Austen, Jane Austen's Letters, ed. Deirdre Le Faye, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 213-14. vii model of national community.2 Central to this construct was "domestic woman," a figure dissociated from rationality, civic life and — especially — the alien city. Kelly further argues that writing about feminine domesticity and its gendered associations with emotion, the intimate realm and nature,