NOVEL GIFTS: THE FORM AND FUNCTION OF GIFT EXCHANGE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND by MEGAN BENNER VASAVADA A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of English and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2013 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Megan Benner Vasavada Title: Novel Gifts: The Form and Function of Gift Exchange in Nineteenth-century England This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of English by: Deborah Shapple Spillman Chairperson Elizabeth Bohls Member Richard Stein Member Aletta Biersack Outside Member and Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President for Research and Innovation; Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2013 ii © 2013 Megan Benner Vasavada This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (United States) License. iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Megan Benner Vasavada Doctor of Philosophy Department of English June 2013 Title: Novel Gifts: The Form and Function of Gift Exchange in Nineteenth-century England This dissertation draws on studies of gift exchange by cultural anthropologists and social theorists to examine representations of gifts and gift giving in nineteenth-century British novels. While most studies of the economic imagination of nineteenth-century literature rely on and respond to a framework formulated by classical political economy and consequently overlook nonmarket forms of social exchange, I draw on gift theory in order to make visible the alternate, everyday exchanges shaping social relations and identity within the English novel. By analyzing formal and thematic representations of gifting over the course of the nineteenth century, in novels by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, I consider the way that gift exchange relates and responds to the emergence of capitalism and consumer culture. I trace two distinct developments in nineteenth-century gift culture: the first, the emergence of an idealized view of the gift as purely disinterested, spontaneous, and free, and the second, the emergence of a view of charity as demoralizing to the poor. These developments, I contend, were distinct ideological formations of liberal economic society and reveal a desire to make the gift conform to individualism. iv However, I suggest further that these transformations of the gift proceeded unevenly, for in their attention to the logic and practice of giving, nineteenth-century writers both give voice to and subvert these cultural formations. Alongside the figure of the benevolent philanthropist, the demoralized pauper, and the quintessential image of altruism, the selflessly giving domestic woman, nineteenth-century novels present another view of gift exchange, one that sees the gift as a mix of interest and disinterest, freedom and obligation, and persons and things. Ultimately, by reading the gift relations animating nineteenth-century novels, I draw attention to the competing conceptions of selfhood underlying gift and market forms of exchange in order to offer a broader history of exchange and personhood. In its recognition of expansive conceptions of the self and obligatory gifts, this dissertation recovers a history of the gift that calls into question the ascendency of the autonomous individual and the view of exchange as an anonymous, self-interested transaction. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Megan Benner Vasavada GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, English, 2013, University of Oregon Master of Arts, Humanities, 2001, University of Chicago Bachelor of Arts, English and Anthropology, 2000, The Johns Hopkins University AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Nineteenth-century British literature and culture The English novel Gift theory and theories of object relations PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, University of Oregon, 2005–2010 Assistant Director, Center for Teaching Writing, University of Oregon, 2008- 2009 Full-Time Faculty, Department of English, Community College of Baltimore County, Essex Campus, 2004-2005 Adjunct Instructor, Department of English, Community College of Baltimore County, 2002-2004 Adjunct Instructor, Department of English, Harford Community College, 2003- 2004. Writing Intern, University of Chicago Writing Program, 2001-2002 Coordinator, Humanities Core Colloquium, University of Chicago, 2001-2002 Co-editor of Corerelations, the Humanities Core Colloquium journal, University of Chicago, 2001-2002 vi GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Oregon Humanities Center Graduate Dissertation Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2010 Graduate School Research Award, University of Oregon, 2008 Graduate Student Travel Grant, North American Victorian Studies Association, 2008 General University Honors, The Johns Hopkins University, 2000 Honors in Humanistic Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, 2000 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study of gifts would not have been possible without the support, guidance, and generosity of many individuals. First, my heartfelt thanks go to Professor Deborah Shapple Spillman for being a discerning reader and an encouraging mentor throughout this process. Her careful editing and our many long conversations have made me a better scholar. I wish also to thank my committee, Professors Liz Bohls, Richard Stein, and Aletta Biersack, for their encouraging and thoughtful advice along the way. Thanks to my fellow graduate students for sharing their humor and insight over the years. I am grateful to the Oregon Humanities Center for financial support and for giving me the opportunity to engage in stimulating interdisciplinary dialogue. Finally, I wish to express my warmest thanks to my family, especially to my parents for their love and encouragement and for instilling in me a love of reading, to my husband, Zubin, for his unwavering love and support and for always knowing how to make me laugh, and to my sons, Quinn and Milo, whose bright smiles make every day a happy one. viii For Zubin, Quinn, and Milo ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: THE CULTURE OF THE GIFT IN NINETEENTH- CENTURY ENGLAND ........................................................................................... 1 Gift Books and the Ideology of the Altruistic Gift ................................................ 4 The Gift of Charity and the Invention of the “Deserving” and “Undeserving” Poor ........................................................................................................................ 16 Reading Novel Gifts .............................................................................................. 19 II. JANE AUSTEN’S POLITE FICTIONS: THE PRICE OF GIFTS IN MANSFIELD PARK ................................................................................................. 36 The Polite Fictions of Patronage ............................................................................ 40 The History of Amelioration: From Overt Violence to Gentle Domination ......... 46 The “Benevolent Plan” .......................................................................................... 54 “‘Heaven’s Last Best Gift’”: Mansfield Park’s Exchange of Women .................. 58 III. THE “PIOUS FRAUD” AND PUBLIC PATRONAGE: THE INDUSTRIOUS GIVER AND THE GIFT OF FICTION IN LITTLE DORRIT .............................. 75 The Industrious Giver and Portable Domesticity................................................... 77 The Gift of Fiction, or, Little Dorrit’s “Pious Fraud” ............................................ 89 The Professional Author and Public Patronage ..................................................... 95 “The Golden Age Revived”: Pastoral Songs and the Magnanimity of the Poor ... 104 Doyce and Clennam and Dorrit ............................................................................. 122 IV. “INCALCULABLY DIFFUSIVE” GIFTS IN MIDDLEMARCH ........................ 133 Eliot’s Art of Sympathy ......................................................................................... 136 The “General Economy” of Middlemarch ............................................................. 142 Gifts-that-take ........................................................................................................ 159 x Chapter Page Currents of Generosity ........................................................................................... 170 Eliot’s Novel Gifts: Manifold Selves and “Incalculably Diffusive” Effects ......... 191 V. SOME MORAL AND ECONOMIC CONCLUSIONS ......................................... 199 On the Political Economy of the Gift ..................................................................... 199 Toward a Utopian Gift ............................................................................................ 204 REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................................ 209 xi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: THE CULTURE OF THE GIFT IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND And when from the husband, the lover, or friend, You receive, as a proof of affection, The Offering, oh, say what emotions must blend With the gift, and cement the connection! —“Introduction: Addressed to the Ladies,” The Offering