Revolutionary Narratives, Imperial Rivalries: Britain and the French Empire in the Nineteenth Century Author: Matthew William Heitzman Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:104076 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2013 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of English REVOLUTIONARY NARRATIVES, IMPERIAL RIVALRIES: BRITAIN AND THE FRENCH EMPIRE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY A Dissertation by MATTHEW WILLIAM HEITZMAN submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2013 © copyright by MATTHEW WILLIAM HEITZMAN 2013 Revolutionary Narratives, Imperial Rivalries: Britain and the French Empire in the Nineteenth Century Author: Matthew William Heitzman Chair / AdVisor: Professor Rosemarie Bodenheimer Abstract: This dissertation considers England’s imperial riValry with France and its influence on literary production in the long nineteenth century. It offers a new context for the study of British imperialism by examining the ways in which mid- Victorian novels responded to and were shaped by the threat of French imperialism. It studies three canonical Victorian noVels: William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1846- 1848), Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) and Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and argues that even though these texts deal very lightly with the British colonies and feature Very few colonial figures, they are still Very much “about empire” because they are informed by British anxieties regarding French imperialism. Revolutionary Narratives links each noVel to a contemporary political crisis between England and France, and it argues that each novelist turns back to the Revolutionary period in response to and as a means to process a modern threat from France. This project also explains why Thackeray, Brontë and Dickens would return specifically to Revolutionary history in response to a French imperial threat. Its first chapter traces the ways in which “Revolutionary narratives,” stories about how the 1789 French ReVolution had changed the world, came to inform and to lend urgency to England and France’s global, imperial riValry through their deployment in abolitionist writings in both countries. Abolitionist tracts helped to fuse an association between “empire” and “ReVolution” in the Romantic period, and recognizing this helps us to understand why Victorian writers would use ReVolutionary narratiVes in response to imperial crisis. HoweVer, this dissertation ultimately asserts that Vanity Fair, Villette and A Tale of Two Cities revive Revolutionary history in order to write against it and to lament its primacy in popular discourse. In the mid nineteenth century, public discussion in England and France tended to return quickly to the history of the ReVolutionary period in order to contextualize new political drama between the two countries. This meant that history often seemed to be repeating itself when it came to England and France’s rivalry. Thackeray, Brontë and Dickens use Revolutionary history in their novels as a way to react against this popular use of history and in an effort to imagine a new path forward for England and France, one not burdened by the weight of the past. “There is no present or future, only the past, happening oVer and oVer again, now” -Eugene O’Neill A Moon for the Misbegotten CONTENTS Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………………………..ii Introduction “There is No Present or Future, Only The Past”: Writing the Revolution in the Age of Empire…………………………………………………………………………………..………..1 Chapter One “The DeVil’s Code of Honor”: French Invasion and the Return of History in William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair…………………………………………...………………45 Chapter Two “Vous ne voulez pas de moi pour voisin”: Charlotte Brontë, Villette, and the Rise of Napoleon III……………………………………………………………………...………….84 Chapter Three “A Long and Constant Fusion of the Two Great Nations”: Charles Dickens, the Crossing, and A Tale of Two Cities……………………………………….…………………..136 Epilogue Literature and History…………………………………………………….......…………………179 Notes……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….186 Bibliography……………………………..………………………………………………..……………………208 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It’s easy to know who to thank, but impossible to know how to thank. Writing a dissertation can be a lonely endeavor, particularly when writing about isolated souls such as Charlotte Brontë or when tracing a dark period in Charles Dickens’s life. I’ve been able to follow, but not inhabit, their loneliness because of my remarkable family and friends, and because of the tremendous support I’Ve been blessed to find in Boston and beyond. Thank you first to my committee. Thanks to Alan Richardson for shepherding me through my exams and for finding the kernel that would become this dissertation. Thank you to Beth Kowaleski Wallace for being a constant champion of my work and teaching, and for being the Voice in my head as I wrote, always letting me know when I wasn’t actually making a point and being so pleased when I was. Thank you foremost to Rosemarie Bodenheimer. Ti, I’m staggered by the energy and attention you give to your teaching, your research, and your advising. Thank you for having such patience and faith in this project, and for giVing me so much guidance and support since it started. Thank you to Paula Mathieu and Lad Tobin. Lad, I’m so grateful that you thought to hire me as a teaching mentor years ago. Paula, thank you for trusting me to do so much in your writing program. Thank you as well for your unflinching support throughout my time at B.C. To my Burns Library family: DaVid Horn, Shelley Barber and Amy Braitsch. I haVen’t worked under the Ford Tower for years, but the Burns is still my home on campus. Thank you to David in particular for sparking my passion for archiVal work, for so many heated and exasperated discussions about the Red Sox, and for being a role model of the kind of person and teacher I want to be. I’Ve been so fortunate in my friendships in our graduate community. Thank you to Alison Van Vort and Wendy Cannella Matthews for saVing my sanity with our wonderful weekends in York. Thanks to Alison Cotti-Lowell and Katie Daily- Bruckner for stressing oVer setbacks and celebrating breakthroughs with me. Thanks to the amazing members of my Ph.D. cohort: Nick Gupta, Alex Puente, and Ali. You are all such amazing teachers, and I loVe knowing how many liVes you’Ve changed since we started together at B.C. Thanks finally to Kristin Imre for being my teaching mentor. Kristin, I will teach my entire career and neVer haVe your instinct for it. Thank you to Stephanie Loomis Pappas and Staci Shultz for two remarkable friendships that grow deeper and more important to me eVery year -even at a distance. Thank you to Steph for making me an honorary Loomis with all its attendant nerdiness and love. ii Thank you to Sara Stenson, my first and closest friend in Boston, for so many meals, so much laughter, and so much loVe since we started here. Thank you to Elizabeth Heisner for sharing my wanderlust and for such a remarkable and eVer-changing friendship. Thanks to jeff Bornino for taking what I do seriously but not letting me take it too seriously. Alyssa Connell. Eight years ago, I awkwardly smiled at you and you skeptically glared at me –not the most auspicious beginning. I neVer would haVe guessed how important you’d become in my life. Thank you for eVerything. Thank you for getting me through this. To my grandparents: Elizabeth and Charles Kehoe; joanne and Ralph Bell; Louis Heitzman, and Roger Binkley. You haVe all shaped who I am, eVen those of you I never knew. Thank you in particular to Papa for fostering my loVe for literature, history and travel. To my siblings, Mary and Michael Heitzman, and their beautiful children –thank you for all of your loVe and support as I finished this project. I’m amazed at the remarkable liVes you lead and the wonderful families you’Ve started. Finally, and most importantly, this dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Robert and Dottie Heitzman. There are no words to thank you for how completely you’Ve loVed and supported me on the long path to becoming Dr. Heitzman. Your three children haVe followed three different liVes, and you’Ve celebrated all of them equally. You always knew this day would come, eVen when I did not. iii INTRODUCTION “There is No Present or Future, Only The Past”: Writing the ReVolution in the Age of Empire Less than two months after the Battle of Waterloo, Sir Walter Scott traVeled to Belgium, joining the flood of British pilgrims flocking to the site of Wellington’s Victory oVer Napoleon’s forces. He chronicled his journey in his memoir, Paul’s Letters to His Kinsfolk (1816), an epistolary account of his time in Europe just after the war. His narration offers a fascinating glimpse into life in the immediate wake of Napoleon’s defeat. Scott reached Waterloo in early August 1815, and found that the battlefield had already been transformed into a popular shrine for British tourists, complete with an ad hoc market for relics from the war. What stands out in Scott’s description is the speed with which English civilians began to treat Waterloo as sacred historical ground, as well as the degree to which they evinced a personal connection to the history that had taken place there. The civilians who reach Waterloo comb the battlefield with the aVidity of impatient archeologists, frantically searching or bartering for any artifact from the war. Scott confesses: The eagerness with which we entered into these negotiations, and still more the zeal with which we picked up eVery trifle we could find upon the field, rather scandalized one of the heroes of the day, who did me the faVour to guide me oVer the field of battle, and who considered the interest I took in things which he was accustomed to see scattered as mere trumpery upon many a field of Victory, with a feeling that I belieVe made him for the moment heartily ashamed of his company.