"Precious States of Mind": The Aesthetic Encounter in Victorian Literature by Meghan A Freeman This thesis/dissertation document has been electronically approved by the following individuals: Adams Jr.,James Eli (Chairperson) Bogel,Fredric Victor (Minor Member) Shaw,Harry Edmund (Minor Member) “PRECIOUS STATES OF MIND”: THE AESTHETIC ENCOUNTER IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Meghan A. Freeman August 2010 © 2010 Meghan A. Freeman “PRECIOUS STATES OF MIND”: THE AESTHETIC ENCOUNTER IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE Meghan A. Freeman, Ph.D. Cornell University 2010 This dissertation investigates literary representations of the scene of viewership in Victorian literature in order to interrogate how the narrative rendering of the “aesthetic encounter” brings to the fore the social and material realities of such moments that contemporary philosophical treatises on the subject often overlook, obscure, or repress. I am interested in the ways in which the scene or environment of the aesthetic encounter—be it in a private gallery or public museum space—structures power relations grounded in notions of taste, cultivation, and civility. Because the nineteenth-century philosophical aesthetic treatise does not avow the material conditions of viewing art, the narrative representation of such moments is particularly important in revealing that aesthetic experience is not and cannot be an intensely private moment, but is rather one that is thoroughly social and highly performative. Narrating the scene of aesthetic encounter in the nineteenth century was part of a larger cultural effort to represent sociality, to comprehend the vast network of circumstances and contingencies that determines one’s relation to and perspective on the world and the other people in it. Depicting individual subjectivities in the act of aesthetic experience, writers such as Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Walter Pater, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry James demystify the ideologies at work—and the ideologies being naturalized—in the viewing of paintings, the contemplation of sculpture, and in the admiration of cameos and antique coins. Throughout the dissertation I argue for renewed attention to how the increasingly experimental representations of the aesthetic encounter found in nineteenth-century literature rendered viewership an inherently self-conscious performance, paving the way for the novelistic portraits of artists as young men that were to dominate the literary landscape of the early twentieth century. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Meghan Amanda Freeman was born in 1978 in Evanston, Illinois, to Timothy and Deborah Freeman. At the age of eight, she moved with her parents and her sister, Meredith, to Hong Kong, where she quickly developed a yen for, among other things, British accents and dim sum. The family eventually moved to upstate New Jersey, which, if not quite Walden, has forests and bookstores enough to satisfy the most meditative of wanderers. Meghan’s meditative wanderings were given direction in her high school English courses, and she went on to study literature at Williams College. Her experience as a visiting student at Oxford University influenced her decision to specialize in nineteenth-century British literature, while the dreaming spires of the city, more specifically, inspired her senior thesis on Victorian medievalism, a project incomparably helmed by Professor Alison Case. After graduation, Meghan moved to New York City to work at Swann Galleries in the Posters Department. She left the auction house to begin her graduate work at Cornell, where her interest in British literature was quickly revived and deepened through seminars directed by Professor James Eli Adams, Professor Fredric Bogel, and Professor Harry Shaw. However, that year spent in the working world among beautiful objects sparked an interest in art culture that ultimately shaped her dissertation project, which considers the intersections between literature, aesthetics, and material culture in the nineteenth century. Meghan received her M.A. in 2005 and her Ph.D. in 2010. She is currently an adjunct assistant professor in the English Department at Tulane University, and she resides in uptown New Orleans with her husband, Dwight Codr, and their standard poodle, Le Baron. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As I enter into the final stages of completing my Ph.D., there seems to me no more important or enjoyable task than that of expressing my tremendous gratefulness to all of the individuals who have aided me along the way. First of all, I must thank my family for their love and support throughout the writing of this dissertation. To my parents, Timothy and Deborah, I cannot begin to say how appreciative I am for the myriad ways in which they continually have buoyed up my flagging spirits and, at crucial moments, given me the encouragement I needed to continue. Their constant example of hard work coupled with an enthusiastic pursuit of new experiences provides me with a standard towards which I continue to aspire. In my sister, Meredith, I am privileged to have a friend on whom I can always depend for uncompromising honesty, boundless sympathy, and humorous camaraderie in the face of life’s many absurdities, and I am so glad that she has found in Stephen Wu a companion as intelligent and engaging as she is. My grandparents have my affectionate gratitude for all they have taught me, in the case of Louis and Dorothy Rust, about strength of character and in that of Isabelle Freeman, about the sustaining power of books. I am also extremely blessed as regards my extended family. Very few people can boast in-laws like Josef and Pearl Codr, who are as unfailingly generous as they are knowledgeable about nineteenth-century furniture and bric-a- brac. In their home and in the home of Stacie Codr and Jason Miller, I am always reminded of how antique objects are given a newfound beauty and vitality from the kindness, hospitality, and good taste of their current owners. I am also pleased to have the chance to thank the many excellent teachers from whose mentoring I have benefited over the years. Thank you to Beverly Porrazzo, formerly of Randolph High School, whose English courses gave me my first exposure to some of the authors featured in this dissertation and whose rigorous standards for iv and thoughtful criticism of my writing helped me begin to think critically about literary analysis. Thank you to Professor Thomas Kohut of Williams College, whose intellectual generosity in and out of the classroom had a momentous and lasting impact on what I strive for in terms of academic discourse and collegiality. Professor Alison Case, my thesis advisor at Williams, encouraged me in my first extensive survey of nineteenth-century literature and gave me every kind of assistance in the writing of it; more importantly, she provided me with a scholarly model that greatly motivated my decision to pursue a graduate degree. Thank you to my dissertation committee, especially. Rick Bogel’s Augustan wit and clear-sightedness provided an invaluable corrective to Victorian excesses of earnestness and emotionality, pairing instruction with amusement in ways that were always to the benefit of my arguments. Molly Rothenberg, of Tulane University, kindly stepped in as my committee member at a crucial moment, and her gracious giving of her attention and critical acumen to this project was to its very great improvement, particularly as regards its overall coherence and integrity of structure. Harry Shaw also merits my sincere appreciation for taking time out of a busy administrative schedule to lend my dissertation in its final stages the advantage of his superior knowledge of nineteenth-century narrative. Finally, I must thank James Eli Adams, whose outstanding seminars on Victorian literature and culture nurtured this project in its infancy and whose unstinting efforts as my committee chair supported it throughout the occasionally tumultuous voyage to completion. There is no chapter of this dissertation that was not materially improved by his meticulous and deft touch, and like the mariners of Tennyson’s poem, I found in his inspiring counsel the confidence “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” I would like to thank Cornell University for a Sage Fellowship and a Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Thanks also to the English Department at Cornell for a Summer Research Travel Grant. The writing of this dissertation would v not have been possible without the time and freedom granted by these fellowships. I am also grateful to the staff of the English Department, particularly Michele Mannella, for all the help I received navigating various bureaucratic complexities, especially once I had relocated to New Orleans. Like any solitary endeavor, the writing of a dissertation can be lonely work, and for that reason, I am especially thankful for the friends who have assisted and encouraged me along the way. First among them, I would like to thank Meredith Prithviraj, with whom I’ve always discussed books, movies, and everything else of importance. At Cornell, I have profited immensely from the friendship of Angela Naimou and David Coombs. David, I would like to thank for his helpful comments on various chapter drafts and for his hilarious readings of particularly pathetic scenes from minor Victorian texts. Angela, my partner in associational thinking, has been my staunchest advocate