A hole in the whole of the familial narrative: Dickens' and Freud's intrusive servants. Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Hess, Natalie. Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 07/10/2021 14:17:39 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/186211 INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. 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MI 48106 A HOLE IN THE WHOLE OF THE FAMILIAL NARRATIVE DICKENS' AND FREUD'S INTRUSIVE SERVANTS by Natalie Hess A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 199 3 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Final Examination Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by____ N_a_ta __ l~_·e __ H_e_s_s ______________________ __ entitled ___A__ H_O_L_E __IN__ T_H_E __ W_H_O_LE_'_O_F_'_T_H_E __ FA_M_I_L_I_A_L __ N_A_RR_A_T_I_V_E ______________ __ DICKEN'S AND FREUD'S INTRUSIVE SERVANTS and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of ___D_o_c_t_o_r_o_f_-_P_h_i_l_o_s_o~p_h~y ____________________ ~ /2-11 -72 ~-----~----:=---------------------- DaLe ///J?/~ )1' / h-;y ;?:?72) 12-((-97 Date ( 2 -( ( ~ 92 Date Date Date Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate's submission of the final copy of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. f.. 2 - {I- 9-?- Diss Zwinger Date 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advance degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgments of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interest of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtaine~ from the author. SIGNED:--E.t-=J,;..:..;~_·~~~~ ____ 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS With appreciation to my inspired, helpful, energetic, compassionate, and always brilliant advisor, Professor Lynda Zwinger. 5 DEDICATION To John, my very dearest friend, who thirty years ago dedicated his Ph.D. dissertation to me--for everything. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT . 8 CHAPTERS I. LIMINALITY AND SERVITUDE • • 9 The Dirty Cleaners • • • • • • • 10 Liminality--A Meta-Mode For In-Betweeners 11 Why Bark Yourself If You Have A Dog That Can Do It? • • • • • • • • • • • • 17 Between Power and Impotence . • • • • • • 26 "Pas Devant La Bonne Cherie" •••••• 37 II. BETWEEN THE WORLD AND "MATREM NUDAM": SERVANTS IN THE FREUDIAN CANON • • • •• ••••••••• 59 A Little Jewish Prince • • • • • • • • • 60 The Servant Problem And The Jewish Question. 63 Who Is Nannie? • • • • •.••••••• 68 The Case Of Dora--A Detective Story Of The Soul In Which The Servants Are The Guilty Party • • • • • • • • • • • . • • 77 A Rat, A Pear And A Wolf Tree • • • . • • 90 III. SECOND HAND SEDUCTIONS: FEMALE SERVANTS IN THE DICKENSIAN CANON • • • • • 109 Analogous Lives • . •. •••••••• 109 The Necessary Allure • • • • • • 119 To Aid And To Abet . • • • • • • 128 Displaced Person • . • • • • • • •• 137 A Story About Myself . • • • • • •• 145 Dombey's Defiant Domestic 149 IV. THE LADY'S LADY--THE OTHER'S OTHER: HORTENSE, THE MURDEROUS MAID OF BLEAK HOUSE • • • • •• 178 The Outlandish Animal 179 Pursuit Of Selfhood • • 190 The Persecution Story • 202 The Lethal connection • • . 212 7 V. IN SERVICE OF THE MATERNAL: PEGGOTTY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 222 Servants As Seducers • • • • • • • •• 223 First Homes--Somewhere To Hide; Something To Be Afraid Of • • • • 232 VI. COtJCLUSION 256 VII. REFERENCES • . 261 8 ABSTRACT Using the tools of feminist literary criticism, this dissertation examines the female domestic servant in the writings of Charles Dickens and Sigmund Freud. I have read the female retainer in the Dickensian canon as one of the domestic ideal's most useful signifiers. Although Dickens certainly writes from the assumptions of his own time and posits over-determined gender assignments, his texts, as do those of Sigmund Freud, frequently erupt with what Julia Kristeva has dubbed the messy semiotic (Kristeva 1986, 99). Both Freud and Dickens speak through intriguing circumlocutions, in which the very ideologies seemingly sustained are subverted. The female servant in the works of both Freud and Dickens often signs repressed desire. She is the liminal figure between lower class earthiness and bourgeois decorum. She may assume positions between the maternal and the paternal. She may function as as either chastising adult or naughty child. She is an outsider in the familial cell, yet she is part of the most private and intimate spaces. For the twentieth century reader, who oscillates in code switching and social placement, the female servant of the Victorian novel is a relevant and stimulating hermeneutic configuration. 9 CHAPTER I LIMINALITY AND SERVITUDE "What is socially peripheral is often symbolically central." Barbara Babcock The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversions in Art and Society, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1978. The family never was in any of Freud's texts, completely closed off from questions of economic class. And the most insistent locus of that intrusion into the family circle (intrusion of the symbolic into the imaginary) is the maid/governess/ nurse ••• she is the hole in the social cell. Jane Gallop The Daughter's Seduction, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1982. "Wife and servant are the same But only different in name.1t Lady Chudleigh in "To The Ladies." "No man is good enough to be another man's master." Old anarchist slogan. 10 Teach me my God and King In all things thee to see And what I do in anything To do as if for thee A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine Who sweeps the room as for thy laws Makes that and the action fine The Handy Book for the Young General Servant The Dirty Cleaners Servants proliferate in Victorian fiction. They figure as a sea of unofficial non-persons and constitute an entire captive population within the victorian novel. I believe that their presence is intensely intriguing and that their textual vitality is both diverse and extensive. They function as comic relief. They work as extensions of their mistresses, and as devoted feudals they profit from the benevolence of the mistress or master figure. Frequently they mirror readerly aggression. They are sources of paranoia as they exercise power inappropriate to their station. As insistent watchers of the master class, they provide an unsettling level of voyeurism and make up an inverted police force in the victorian household. The most interesting signifying traces left by female servant representations in the novel 11 of the Victorian era, are, it seems to me, those in the liminal places hinted at in the fault lines between erotic and social content; between surface level and 'psychic economy; between conscious logic and unconscious intensities. Female servants in Victorian novels walk through established categories in ,order to become the manipulators of plot structure--as does Nelly of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights or Esther of Bleak House. Through hypergamy, they challenge the organization of patriarchal order--as does Richardson's Pamela. As the "invisible" and silent supports of a social system in which they cannot partake, in the fuzzy state between taxonomies, they can be read as both victims and as sinister agents of power. 1 Unclean and often polluting members of the lower orders they are the ones who whiten the front step of the bourgeois home (Huggett 106) and separate the home-as- romantic-refuge from the anxieties of the ruthless and competitive mercantile world.