1 Becoming Gentlemen: Women Writers, Masculinity, and War, 1778-1818. Submitted by Megan Woodworth, to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English, October 2008. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. .......................................... (signature) 2 Abstract In Letters to a Young Man (1801) Jane West states that “no character is so difficult to invent or support as that of a gentleman” (74). The invention of that character, determining what qualities, qualifications, and behaviour befits a gentleman, preoccupied writers and thinkers throughout the eighteenth century. This thesis traces the evolution of the masculine ideals – chivalry, republican virtue, professional merit – that informed what it meant to be a gentleman. Because gentlemanliness had implications for citizenship and political rights, Defoe, Richardson, Rousseau, and the other men who sought to define gentlemanliness increasingly connected it and citizenship to gendered virtue rather than socio-economic status. Women writers were equally concerned with the developing gentlemanly ideal and, as I will show, its political implications. This thesis brings together masculinity studies and feminist literary history, but also combines the gendered social history that often frames studies of women’s writing with the political and military history traditionally associated with men. Doody (1988) suggests that novels are influenced by three separate histories: “the life of the individual, the cultural life of the surrounding society, and the tradition of the chosen art.”1 With the feminocentric novel, however, the historical context is often circumscribed by a concern for what is ‘feminine’ and what polite lady novelists might be responding to. With the exception of women’s participation in the 1790s debates, eighteenth-century women writers have been seen as shying away from divisive political topics, including war. However, I will show that masculinity is central to re- evaluating the ways in which women writers engaged with politics through the courtship plot, because, as McCormack (2005) stresses, “politics and the family were inseparable in Georgian England.”2 Furthermore, as Russell (1995) observes, war is a cultural event that affects and alters “the textures of thought, feeling, and behaviour.”3 Focusing on late-eighteenth-century 1 Frances Burney: The Life in the Works (1988). p. 9. 2 The Independent Man (2005) p. 13. 3 The Theatres of War (1995) p. 2-3. 3 wars, this thesis will explore how political and military events influenced masculine ideals – particularly independence – and how these changes were negotiated in women's novels. Beginning with Frances Burney, this thesis explores the ways in which women writers offered solutions to the problem of masculinity while promoting a (proto)feminist project of equality. By rejecting chivalry and creating a model of manliness that builds on republican virtue and adopts the emerging professional ethic, women writers created heroes defined by personal merit, not accidents of birth. Burney begins this process in Evelina (1778) before problematising the lack of manly independence in Cecilia (1782). Charlotte Smith and Jane West take the problems Burney’s work exposes and offer alternatives to chivalric masculinity amidst the heightened concerns about liberty and citizenship surrounding the French revolution. Finally, Maria Edgeworth’s and Jane Austen’s Napoleonic-era novels promote professionalism as a path to gentility but also as a meritocratic alternative to landed and aristocratic social models. Though the solutions offered by these writers differ, in their opposition to chivalric masculinity they demonstrate that liberating men from the shackles of feudal dependence is essential to freeing women from patriarchal tyranny. 4 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 5 Dedication 6 Introduction: “He is just what a young man ought to be”? Being or Becoming Gentlemen. 7 Part I. In Whose Image? Fashioning Men in the Eighteenth Century. 34 Chapter 1. Creating “the MAN”: Re(de)fining Masculinity, 1660-1775. 35 Part II. Frances Burney, the American Revolutionary War, and the Cultural Revolution, 1778-1782. 71 Chapter 2. “Un Jeune Homme comme il y en a peu”: Evelina and the Masculine Empire. 72 Chapter 3. “If a man dared act for himself”: Cecilia and the Family Romance of the American Revolution. 98 Part III. Charlotte Smith, Jane West, and the War of Ideals, 1789-1802. 136 Chapter 4. “The best were only men of theory”: Masculinity, Revolution, and Reform, 1789-1793. 137 Chapter 5. From “men of theory” to Theoretical Men: Smith, West, and Masculinity at War, 1793-1802. 173 Part IV. From Ennui to Meritocracy: Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth, and the Redefinition of ‘Gentleman.’ 215 Chapter 6. “A really respectable, enlightened and useful country gentleman”: Men of Fashion, Men of Merit, and the Professionalization of the Gentleman. 216 Chapter 7. “Gentleman-like manner”: Gentlemanly Professionals, Merit, and the End of Patronage.” 253 Conclusion. “You misled me by the term gentleman”: A Final Farewell to “foppery and nonsense.” 294 Bibliography. 325 5 Acknowledgements I’ve incurred many debts in writing this thesis. I would like to thank Professor Jane Spencer, my brilliant supervisor, for her patience and her genius; Dr. Ashley Tauchert, Professor Tom Keymer, Professor Margaret Anne Doody, and Professor Jocelyn Harris who discussed ideas and offered insight at various stages of the project; Morwenna Hussey for keeping me in interlibrary loan vouchers and always knowing the answers; and Professor Claudia Johnson and Dr. Corinna Wagner, my rigorous but very kind examiners. While I incurred many intellectual debts, I was able to keep those of the financial variety to a minimum, and for that I thank the University of Exeter and the English Department. I’d like to thank my parents, Marise and Dale Woodworth, for financial and every other kind of support, as well as my sister, Caitlin Corkum, and her husband, Mark, for helping me to keep my sense of humour about the whole thing. Finally, I want to thank my very dear friends Jenn, Vanessa, Jeannine, Dr. Matte, Cora, Andrew, Sarah, Melanie, Matt, and Izzy, for dragging me out of my hidey hole and reminding that there are things like music and movies and cake and ‘smores. 6 To my irreplaceable parents, Marise and Dale Woodworth. 7 Introduction: “He is just what a young man ought to be”? Being Or Becoming Gentlemen. 1 I want a hero: an uncommon want, When every year and month sends forth a new one, Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant, The age discovers he is not the true one; Of such as these I should not care to vaunt, I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan – We all have seen him, in the pantomime, Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time. 2 Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke, Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe, Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk, And fill'd their sign posts then, like Wellesley now; Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk, Followers of fame, "nine farrow" of that sow: France, too, had Buonaparté and Dumourier Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier. 3 Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau, Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette, Were French, and famous people, as we know: And there were others, scarce forgotten yet, Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau, With many of the military set, Exceedingly remarkable at times, But not at all adapted to my rhymes. 4 Nelson was once Britannia's god of war, And still should be so, but the tide is turn'd; There's no more to be said of Trafalgar, 'T is with our hero quietly inurn'd; Because the army's grown more popular, At which the naval people are concern'd; Besides, the prince is all for the land-service, Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis. 5 Brave men were living before Agamemnon And since, exceeding valorous and sage, A good deal like him too, though quite the same none; But then they shone not on the poet's page, And so have been forgotten: – I condemn none, But can't find any in the present age Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one); So, as I said, I'll take my friend Don Juan. (Byron, Don Juan, 1819, Canto I) Despite Byron’s assertion that the want of a hero is an “uncommon want,” his difficulty in finding a suitable hero echoes the eighteenth-century quest to find a suitable gentleman, a suitable model of masculinity calculated to promote the national interest and national identity. While the hero and 8 the gentleman are not necessarily synonymous, in the context of the eighteenth century the gentleman increasingly becomes the hero – not simply the romantic hero of fiction, but the hero of the nation. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the gentleman is defined and redefined to reflect English society’s movement from its feudal roots into the modern era. Samuel Johnson defines the gentleman as “a man of birth, not noble,” and the adjective ‘gentlemanlike’ as that which is “becoming a gentleman.” However, over the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the grammar of gentility began to shift as it gradually became accepted that a ‘gentleman’ is not born, but something that a man becomes. In this thesis I will explore how Frances Burney, Charlotte Smith, Jane West, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen marshalled this state of masculine and gentlemanly becoming in order to challenge and ultimately posit an alternative to patriarchal domestic and political structures.