Economies of Things: Material Attachments in British Romantic Literature by Adrienne Todd A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Adrienne Todd, 2019 Economies of Things: Material Attachments in British Romantic Literature Adrienne Todd Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto 2019 Abstract Romantic literature reveals a persistent attention to everyday material things, such as a sheepfold, a house, and a spinning wheel. Romantic texts indicate that Britons used these things as anchors to build their identities, memories, and relationships. Yet, while recognizing the importance of mnemonic and emotional ties between people and things, these texts nonetheless portray these bonds as increasingly unstable. In late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain, changes in two areas of the economy—paper money and the rise of consumerism—transformed the ways in which Britons understood their relationships to things, fostering more indirect, fleeting interactions with the material world, creating a gap between people and things. While some writers depict this new distance from things as tragic, Economies of Things does not portray this gap solely as a loss. As authors mobilize aesthetics to address the problem of detachment from things, their responses inspire some of the central aesthetic concerns of Romanticism. Tracing these literary responses to economic change—taking as primary case studies the writings of Austen, Burke, Wordsworth, and De Quincey—I uncover strong connections between aesthetics and economics in Romantic-era literature. While aesthetic inventions become ii solutions for an economic problem, economics becomes a discussion ground for aesthetics. Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century conversations about economy take on a peculiarly “Romantic” character by taking up concerns such as imagination, creativity, and aesthetics. The gap between people and things inspires two theories of the imagination: Wordsworth’s portable creativity, adapted to the transience of consumerism, and De Quincey’s grotesque, consumer imagination, founded on the destruction rather than the production of material things. This gap also shapes theories of the sublime and the grotesque. To prevent the powerful infinity of paper money from being interpreted as sublime, Burke theorizes an alternative infinity: the infinite grotesque. Based in bodily processes that dissolve formed, solid material things into endless streams of organic matter, this aesthetic category reappears in the works of De Quincey, Wordsworth, and the caricaturists Gillray and Newton. From the stories of lost bonds between people and things emerge aesthetic theories that shape the movement we call Romanticism. iii Acknowledgments I am greatly indebted to the excellent guidance of my supervisor, Alan Bewell, who not only oversaw this dissertation but also provided the inspiring coursework that led to the earliest formulation of this project. His guidance played a particularly crucial role in inspiring my work on consumerism, as well as the grotesque from Milton to Burke. This thesis has also benefited a great deal from the helpful feedback of my committee members, Angela Esterhammer and Dan White. Angela’s comments helped me think through the important distinctions between the different types of material things in this dissertation, from commodities to mountains and trees. Dan enriched my discussion of debt by suggesting the concept of interest and helped me formulate the connection between economic discourse and the aesthetic concerns of Romanticism. In her role as external examiner to my defense, Judith Thompson offered a fascinating perspective on this dissertation through her comments on Thelwall and materialism, as well as gender and conceptions of textual labour. Terry Robinson’s feedback also enriched the late stages of my project by pointing to eighteenth-century precursors for concerns about paper money, such as the South Sea bubble. Paul Downes provided insightful comments about how Marx’s labour theory of value could enhance this project. Many of the key ideas in this thesis emerged from productive conversations with my partner, Jonathan Kerr, to whom I’m also indebted for his diligent editing. I am immensely thankful for the constant support of my family, particularly my parents and brother, who also provided careful proofreading. The graduate student community of University of Toronto has been immensely supportive of this project. I am grateful for feedback from my dissertation writing group, including Philip Sayers, Katherine Shwetz, Margeaux Feldman, and Joel Faber. This research was supported by the Christopher Wallis/Ontario Graduate Scholarship in the Department of English, the Thomas and Beverley Simpson/Ontario Graduate Scholarship at the Faculty of Arts and Science, the Social Sciences and Humanities iv Research Council of Canada Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, the Avie Bennett Award, and the Viola Whitney Pratt Memorial OSOTF (Ontario Student Opportunity Trust Funds) Scholarship in English. v Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….iv Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………vi List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………vii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 1 Bonds, Credit, and Reciprocity: Social Relationships as Debts in Romantic Credit Economies………………………………………………………………………..24 2 Gigantic Economies: Paper Money, Aesthetics, and the Infinite Grotesque…….62 3 Living “with objects and with hopes”: Consumerism and the Portable Imagination……………………………………………………………………..103 4 Creative Destruction: Towards a Grotesque, Consumerist Imagination……….129 Works Consulted………………………………………………………………………..157 Copyright Acknowledgements………………………………………………………….183 vi List of Figures Fig. 1 James Gillray, “Smelling out a Rat; or The Atheistical Revolutionist disturbed in his Midnight ‘Calculations’”……………………………………………………..78 Fig. 2 James Gillray, “Midas, Transmuting all into Paper”…………………………….94 Fig. 3 James Gillray, “Sin, Death, and the Devil Vide Milton”………………………...95 Fig. 4 Richard Newton, “The Inexhaustable Mine” [sic]…………………………….....98 Fig. 5 Richard Newton, “The New Paper Mill or Mr. Bull Ground into 20 Shilling Notes”……………………………………………………………………………97 vii Introduction This dissertation studies how material things, circulating in economies within late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain, shape some of the most central aesthetic concerns of Romanticism: namely, theories of the imagination, the sublime, and the grotesque. Romanticism reveals a persistent attention to simple, everyday things, as unassuming as a pile of stones, a portrait, a spinning wheel, a basket. These texts demonstrate a profound awareness of the ways in which Britons looked to these material anchors to build their identities, memories, relationships, and systems of morality. Yet Romantic literature, while recognizing the importance of mnemonic, emotional, and moral bonds between people and things, nonetheless portrays these bonds as increasingly unstable. During the period, changes in two areas of the economy—paper money and consumerism—transformed the ways in which Britons understood their relationships to things. In the eyes of many commentators, these twin economic developments fostered more indirect, fleeting interactions with the material world, threatening emotional and mnemonic bonds with things. This perceived distance between people and things appears throughout Romantic literature. While this dissertation focuses primarily on the works of Jane Austen, Edmund Burke, William Wordsworth, and Thomas De Quincey, other telling examples include the works of John Clare, Thomas Love Peacock, and Charles Lamb. John Clare describes his powerful attachment to his home, Helpstone: “Hail scenes obscure so near and dear to me / The church the brook the cottage and the tree” (47-9). Clare’s poems pay careful attention to particular things—the church, brook, cottage, and tree—in which he has invested the memories and emotions of his youth. A simple thing such as a stone has the power to invoke strong feelings: “e’en a post old standard or a stone / Moss’d o’er by age and branded as her own / Would in my mind a strong attachment gain / A fond desire that there they might remain” (89-93). The human mind, Clare implies, develops “strong attachment[s]” to material things through specific experiences that took place in their presence, embedding in these things the history of an individual’s life. These affective, mnemonic bonds between people and things form over long durations of time, becoming part of a “[d]ear native spot which length of time endears” (51-2). Yet, while Clare cherishes these “strong attachment[s],” he also finds them threatened by recent economic changes. In 1807, land 1 2 enclosures had radically altered the landscape of Helpstone. Parliamentary acts had permitted the enclosure of land to make it more profitable; landowners added fences, altered the paths of streams, and converted common grounds shared by the community into individual, geometrical plots of land with straight edges (Paulin xix). Clare highlights the economic motives of enclosure by linking it to “[a]ccursed wealth oe’r bounding human laws” (123-7). Enclosure was intertwined with consumerism because these changes to the landscape enabled the larger English economy, which was