UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Sentiment and Laughter: Caricature in the Novel, 1740-1840 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6mw7s9rz Author George, Leigh-Michil Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Sentiment and Laughter: Caricature in the Novel, 1740-1840 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Leigh-Michil George 2016 © Copyright by Leigh-Michil George 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Sentiment and Laughter: Caricature in the Novel, 1740-1840 by Leigh-Michil George Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Jonathan Hamilton Grossman, Co-Chair Professor Felicity A. Nussbaum, Co-Chair This dissertation examines how late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British novelists—major authors, Laurence Sterne and Jane Austen, and lesser-known writers, Pierce Egan, Charles Jenner, and Alexander Bicknell—challenged Henry Fielding’s mid-eighteenth-century critique of caricature as unrealistic and un-novelistic. In this study, I argue that Sterne, Austen, Egan, and others translated visual tropes of caricature into literary form in order to make their comic writings appear more “realistic.” In doing so, these authors not only bridged the character-caricature divide, but a visual- verbal divide as well. As I demonstrate, the desire to connect caricature with character, and the visual with the verbal, grew out of larger ethical and aesthetic concerns regarding the relationship between laughter, sensibility, and novelistic form. ii This study begins with Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742) and its antagonistic stance towards caricature and the laughter it evokes, a laughter that both Fielding and William Hogarth portray as detrimental to the knowledge of character and sensibility. My second chapter looks at how, increasingly, in the late eighteenth century tears and laughter were integrated into the sentimental experience. Sterne’s readers wept sentimental tears for Tristram Shandy’s (1759-1767) heartbroken Maria, but they also sought “delicate laughter” in the verbal and visual caricature of Dr. Slop. In the third chapter, I explore how Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1818) mocks Sternean sensibility and its problematic idealization of fragile, female bodies by adapting tropes of visual caricature into literary form. The fourth chapter examines Pierce Egan’s Life in London (1821), rarely read today, but hugely popular in the 1820s. Egan’s protagonists are “men of feeling” who thrive on the thrills of “real life,” which in the novel is best exemplified by caricature. The novelist follows in the comic realist tradition of Fielding, but embraces Sternean sensibility and its enthusiasm for caricature. Egan sees caricature and sensibility as interconnected, rather than opposed. iii The dissertation of Leigh-Michil George is approved. Emily Anderson Helen E. Deutsch Jonathan Hamilton Grossman, Committee Co-Chair Felicity A. Nussbaum, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………….vi Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….ix Vita………………………………………………………………………………………xii Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter 1 “[A] very proper object of laughter”: Realism and the Ridiculous in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews…………...…….……........................................……42 Chapter 2 Sterne, Bunbury, and the Sentimental Journey of Laughter……………………..65 Chapter 3 “Unbecoming Conjunctions”: The Comforts of Caricature in Jane Austen’s Persuasion………………………………………………………………………103 Chapter 4 “Real Life” in Caricature: Pierce Egan’s Life in London………………………142 Conclusion “The Last Days of Coarse Caricatures”………………………………………...184 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………196 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: William Hogarth, Characters and Caricaturas (1743)………………………....3 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 2: Simon François Ravenet after William Hogarth, [Frontispiece to volume one of Tristram Shandy](1760s?)………………………………………………………...7 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 3: James Gillray, Detail from The New Morality (1789)…………………………21 Courtesy of the British Museum Figure 4: After Henry William Bunbury, A Family Piece (1794)…………………….....25 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 5: Francis Grose, Rules for Drawing Caricaturas, Plate I (1788)……………..…34 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 6: Elizabeth Bridgetta Gulston, A Character (1772) …………………………….38 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 7: After Pier Leone Ghezzi, Dr. Tom Bentley (c.1700-1760)……………………46 Courtesy of the British Museum Figure 8: William Hogarth, The Bench (1758)…………………………………………..47 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 9: John Bretherton after Henry William Bunbury, The Overthrow of Dr. Slop (1773)…………………………………………………………………………....67 Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-102363 Figure 10: Thomas Rowlandson, A Kick-Up At a Hazard Table! (1790)………………86 Courtesy of the British Museum Figure 11: After Henry William Bunbury, The Propagation of a Lie, Plates 1 and 2 (ca. 1815)………………………………………………………………………..88 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 12: After Henry William Bunbury, The Propagation of a Lie, Plates 3 and 4 (ca. 1815)………………………………………………………………………...88 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 13: After Henry William Bunbury, Evening, or, The Man of Feeling (1802)…...89 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University vi Figure 14: Sir Joshua Reynolds, The Infant Samuel (c. 1776)…………………………91 Courtesy of the Tate Britain, Available under CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) license, http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/reynolds-the-infant-samuel-n00162 Figure 15: After Henry William Bunbury, Misery (1788)……………………….….…98 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 16: Charles Williams, Fat and Lean (1806)……………………………………109 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 17: Hugh Thomson, “He attended to her large, fat sighings” (1898)…………..113 Figure 18: William Heath, 1812 or Regency a La Mode (1812)…………………….....117 Courtesy of the British Museum Figure 19: James Gillray, Dido in Despair! (1801)…………………………………….125 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 20: Richard Earlom after George Romney, Sensibility (1789)………………….127 Courtesy of the British Museum Figure 21: James Gillray, From A New Edition Considerably Enlarged, of Attitudes Faithfully Copied from Nature: and Humbly Dedicated to all Admirers of the Grand and Sublime (1807)……………………………………….......................128 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 22: Friedrich Rehberg, From Drawings Faithfully Copied from Nature at Naples (1797)…………………………………………………………………….…......129 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 23: James Gillray, Following the Fashion (1794)………………………………130 Courtesy of the British Museum Figure 24: Thomas Rowlandson, Dropsy Courting Consumption (1810)…...…………133 Courtesy of the British Museum Figure 25: Thomas Rowlandson,“Dr. Syntax and Bookseller” (1813)….…………..…137 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 26: Life in London, Title Page (1821)…………………………………………..143 Figure 27: A real Character P—O (1777)………………………………………….......148 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 28: A Real Character in St. Helena by Lootho (1781)……………………….....149 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University vii Figure 29: George and Robert Cruikshank, “Tom & Jerry, Sporting their bits of blood among the Pinks in Rotten Row” (1820)……………….……………….……..152 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 30: Edward Topham, The Macaroni Print Shop (1772)……………………….153 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 31: James Gillray, Very Slippy-Weather (1808)……………………………….155 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 32: Caricature Shop (1801)…………………………………………………....156 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 33: After G.M. Woodward, Caricature Curiosity (1806)………………….…..158 Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-30755 Figure 34: Isaac Cruikshank after G.M. Woodward The Caricature Magazine, vol.1, Title Page (c. 1808).……………………………………………………………...…..160 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 35: Robert Cruikshank, Dandies Dressing (1818)…………………………...…162 Courtesy of the British Museum Figure 36: George Cruikshank, “The Dandy of Sixty” (1819)…………………..….…164 Figure 37: Theodore Lane, Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense (1821)……………………..…168 Courtesy of the British Museum Figure 38: George and Robert Cruikshank, Life in London, Frontispiece (1821)……...171 Courtesy of the British Museum Figure 39: George and Robert Cruikshank, “Highest Life in London” (1821)………...173 Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Figure 40: George and Robert Cruikshank, “Lowest ‘Life in London’” (1821)…...…..175 Courtesy of the British Library Figure 41: Robert Cruikshank, Finish, Frontispiece and Title Page (1871[?])…….......179 Courtesy of the British Library Figure 42: Robert Seymour, Mr. Pickwick Addresses the Club (1836)…………..........191 Scanned image and text by Philip V.