Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1999 Reawakening Sleeping Beauty: Fairy -Tale Revision and the Mid -Victorian Metaphysical Crisis. Cynthia Lynn Demarcus Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Demarcus, Cynthia Lynn, "Reawakening Sleeping Beauty: Fairy -Tale Revision and the Mid -Victorian Metaphysical Crisis." (1999). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 7077. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/7077 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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REAWAKENING SLEEPING BEAUTY: FAIRY-TALE REVISION AND THE MID-VICTORIAN METAPHYSICAL CRISIS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Cynthia Lynn DeMarcus B.A., University of Kentucky, 1980 M.A., University of Kentucky, 1989 December, 1999 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number 9960048 UMI* UMI Microform9960048 Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work is dedicated to Barbara DeMarcus Mostert, my mother, for her tremendous encouragement and support. Not only has she determinedly helped me in many ways throughout my graduate studies— financially, emotionally and intellectually— but she is the ultimate source of my scholarly interest in fairy tales. Mother opened up the treasuries of childhood lore for my sister and me, reading aloud to us, acting and pretending with us, and spinning stories of the Blue Fairy in which she made us the heroines. Thank you, Mother, for nurturing my imagination and awaking me to the delight of words with the musical cadences and poetic phrasings of nursery rhymes, children's poems and fairy tales. Besides my mother, several other individuals have my deep gratitude for their contributions to this dissertation. Foremost among these is Dr. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman, my dissertation director, who allowed me to pursue my interests and endured with great patience the various metamorphoses of this project. Though her rein was gentle for most of my journey, it drew tighter as my project neared completion. However, the result of her guidance is a considerably better argued contribution to literary scholarship. Dr. Weltman's high standards for critical ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. analysis and engagement with current scholarship will, I believe, serve me well as I expand this study into a book. Murphy Toerner was most directly instrumental in my completion of this project, providing me, over the past two years, with a quick and active mind with whom to share and discuss numerous chapter drafts. Her sensitivity to psychological depths and literary nuances, her continued enthusiasm for this work, and her faith in my capabilities sustained and inspired me throughout the dissertation doldrums. I also wish to acknowledge the encouragement and advice of my stepfather. Dr. Paul Mostert. Though a mathematician and software genius, Paul is also a great respecter of the humanities who draws inspiration from the large self-portrait of Rembrandt he keeps close to his computer. Paul's carefully chosen comments over the course of my project have proven extremely valuable. Other thanks are due to the members of my dissertation committee. Dr. Jim Borck, Dr. Rebecca Crump, Dr. Rita Culross and Dr. Frank de Caro. All of these LSU faculty members have provided encouragement and valuable advice at various stages of my project, and I am very grateful. I also owe a continuing debt to Charles Dickens scholar Dr. Jerome Meckier of the University of Kentucky, the director iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of my master's thesis on fairy-tale elements in George MacDonald's Alec Forbes of Howcrlen. Not only was my thesis research foundational to my dissertation work, but Dr. Meckier has remained ever supportive of my projects in my interactions with him over the past few years. I have many other debts to fellow graduate students and other friends in Louisiana and elsewhere who have encouraged me to pursue my dream and helped me to achieve it, sometimes simply by the pleasure of their company but also through philosophical discussions, phone calls, cards and prayer. These include Dr. Sara Anderson, Dr. Maggie Banai, Jerry, Tristan and Andrea Boyd, Garnet Branch, Dr. Mary Carruth, Dr. Charlene Collins, Bettejean Cramer, Lisa DeMarcus-Eyckmans and family, Amy Dougherty, Connie Gerardot, Rebecca Ourso Haan, Holly Hale, Jennifer Hillman, Diane Hunt and family, Angelle Jackson, Kevin Matthews, Dr. Ron May, Dr. Beverly Moon, Peter O'Neill, Maria Smith, Brenda Thomas, Shirley Tullier, Marylu Warwick and Sarah Wright. I owe a special acknowledgement to Virginia K. Shehee, member of the LSU Board of Supervisors, as well as her most able administrative assistant, for awarding me a tuition scholarship earlier this year, which helped me to survive while I completed my dissertation. I also owe a special iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. thanks to Terri Boyd for getting me through the feverish days and nights of my final deadlines, bringing me food, solving document format problems, running off copies and, most helpfully, motivating me by comparing my trials to the painful labor of birthing a baby. True to her analogy, the outcome is joy. v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................... ii ABSTRACT .............. vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION................................ 1 2 METAPHYSICAL FAIRY TALES: THE CULTURAL CONTEXT ........................ 15 3 DICKENS AND THE "BEAUTIFUL DORMOUSE": SUBLIME TRANSFORMATION OF SLEEPING BEAUTY SPECTACLE IN GREAT EXPECTATIONS........... 71 4 CHRISTINA ROSSETTI'S RADICAL ORTHODOXY: "GOBLIN MARKET," SLEEPING BEAUTY AND THE METAPHYSICS OF DESIRE ..................... 110 5 AWAKENING TO FAIRY LAND: GEORGE MACDONALD'S "THE LIGHT PRINCESS" ...................... 141 6 CONCLUSION ................................. 175 WORKS CITED AND CONSULTED............................. 181 VITA .................................................. 191 vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT Despite growing scholarly recognition of subversive social and political content in Victorian fairy tales, their significance in relation to the oft-cited Victorian "spiritual crisis" remains largely unexplored. This interdisciplinary study addresses that critical gap by examining three literary revisions of Sleeping Beauty from the early 1860s as pointed efforts to enter the intensified religious debate following the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species. The three revisions— Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations (1860-61),