City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 1994 The Spectacle of Suffering: Repetition and Closure in the Eighteenth-Century Gothic Novel Rebecca E. Martin The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1636 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] 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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Contact UMI directly to order. University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Order Number 9417491 The spectacle of suffering: Repetition and closure in the eighteenth-century gothic novel Martin, Rebecca Ellen, Ph.D. City University of New York, 1994 Copyright ©1994 by M artin, Rebecca Ellen. All rights reserved. UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, M I 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE SPECTACLE OF SUFFERING: REPETITION AND CLOSURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GOTHIC NOVEL by REBECCA E. MARTIN A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 1994 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ii ® 1994 REBECCA E. MARTIN All Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. h fiy /ff3 [signature] Date [signature] DateeT ' [signature] Rachel M. Brownstein [signature] [signature] THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Abstract THE SPECTACLE OF SUFFERING: REPETITION AND CLOSURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GOTHIC NOVEL by Rebecca E. Martin Adviser: Professor Rachel Brownstein Since the publication of The Castle of Otranto in 1764 initiated the genre of the gothic novel, critics have claimed that gothic endings are bland, inadequate, or otherwise unsatisfying. Analyzing works written in the period 1764 to 1820 by Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, Charlotte Dacre, Mary-Anne Radcliffe, Mary and Percy Shelley and Charles Robert Maturin, this dissertation demonstrates that the focus on endings has blinded critics to the reader's source of pleasure in the gothic. I have drawn upon a representative sampling of novels to present a model of the interaction of reader and gothic text focused on the reader's engagement with spectacle, defined here as insistently visual scenes of suffering framed and set apart from the text. This engagement is shown to be the controlling factor in the reader's reaction to closure. The theoretical framework of this discussion is provided by curi’ent feminist film theory, based in the psychoanalytic Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. V work of Freud and Lacan, which shares with the gothic an interest in the act of looking as an expression of the desire to know. Evidence from the texts, viewed from this perspective, suggests that the encounter with spectacle acts as a switchpoint for an exchange of roles between reader and text. This engagement stimulates the reader's desire to continue reading while simultaneously promising the fulfillment of that desire. The intermittent but frequent repetition of the spectacle of suffering involves the reader in a paradoxical, seemingly endless pursuit of the satisfaction, through spectacle, of a desire whose stimulus lies within spectacle. The intense engagement with spectacle, in which the reader is both aggressor and victim, relegates a novel's ending to the level of secondary interest. The reader's enjoyment is based on the repeated experience of spectacle within the text and across the genre; the end of one novel promises the beginning of another. The dynamic created by spectacle produces in the reader a desire to continue that is stronger than the desire for the end. Models of closure which focus on endings misinterpret both the gothic and its readers. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgments So many have helped for so long that these thanks can only begin to acknowledge my debts: to my advisor, Professor Rachel Brownstein, for her many valuable suggestions and for pointing me toward clarity; to the Dean and staff of the Dyson College of Arts and Sciences at Pace University for the time and encouragement, with a special thanks to Dr.. Ruth Anne Thompson; to faculty and friends at Pace, especially Dr. Priscilla Denby, for their advice and interest; to Maxine Dakins for the original push and for so much more; to my parents, Harold Martin and Bettye Martin, for never doubting me. My debt to Bernice Houle for the tangible and intangible help she has so cheerfully given is profound. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 1. The Castle of Otranto: The Spectacle of Suffering 17 2. Spectacle: Shifting the Subject 55 3. Repetition: The Structure of Desire 130 4. Closure: Interrogating Failure 164 Conclusion 193 Works Cited 198 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 INTRODUCTION With few exceptions, critics of the gothic from Coleridge to our contemporaries have identified the endings of gothic novels as problematic. In a 1794 review of Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Coleridge states, "Curiosity is raised oftener than it is gratified; or rather, it is raised so high that no adequate gratification can be given it; the interest is completely dissolved when once the adventure is finished, and the reader, when he is got to the end of the work looks about in vain for the spell which had bound him so strongly to it" (357). Current criticism refers to this as a problem of closure, focusing not on the final acts and scenes of plot but on that general feeling of interpretive insufficiency the gothic leaves its readers. Nearly two centuries later, critics sound variations on the theme initiated by Coleridge: gothic novels raise expectations that are not sufficiently satisfied by the endings provided. This study will argue that this insufficiency is the effect of what I will call the "spectacle of suffering." In the process of demonstrating this idea, I will interrogate the "failure" of closure as it is identified in the gothic. It will become clear that any model of narrative that gives primacy to closure as an organizing principle is not best-calculated to explain the gothic's appeal for readers. The focus on endings renders their reading experience invisible and does not account for their pleasure in such narratives. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 Repeated spectacle is the controlling feature in the reader's response to closure in the gothic and it is in spectacle that the contradictions in and the contradictory appeal of the gothic for its readers are foregrounded. The characteristic difficulty in concluding that has been so widely commented upon is inherent in the genre for a number of reasons; most pertinent to this study is that those heightened points of suffering that are presented not only temporarily arrest the reader's experience of the narrative, but also entice the reader to experience