George Eliot and the Gothic Novel

Royce Mahawatte

Description

Royce Mahawatte critically compares the frightening, startling and melodramatic moments in George Eliot's fiction with excerpts from Gothic and sensation novels and in doing so argues that suspenseful plotting, and Gothic figures and tropes, play a role within Eliot's ambitions for the Victorian novel.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Idioma inglés
• English
• Romance
• Gothic
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 30 mars 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780708325773
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Gothic Literary Studies
George Eliot
and the Gothic Novel
Genres, Gender, Feeling
Royce Mahawatte
University of Wales Press
Demy cover Gothic Lit St template copy.indd 1 21/02/2013 15:44:32Demy cover Gothic Lit St template copy.indd 2 21/02/2013 15:44:32GEORGE ELIOT AND THE GOTHIC NOVEL
00 Prelims GeorgeEliot 2013_2_12.indd 1 2/12/2013 1:26:12 PMSERIES PREFACE
Gothic Literary Studies is dedicated to publishing groundbreaking
scholarship on Gothic in literature and flm. The Gothic, which has
been subjected to a variety of critical and theoretical approaches, is
a form which plays an important role in our understanding of
literary, intellectual and cultural histories. The series seeks to
promote challenging and innovative approaches to Gothic which
question any aspect of the Gothic tradition or perceived critical
orthodoxy. Volumes in the series explore how issues such as gender,
religion, nation and sexuality have shaped our view of the Gothic
tradition. Both academically rigorous and informed by the latest
developments in critical theory, the series provides an important
focus for scholarly developments in Gothic studies, literary studies,
cultural studies and critical theory. The series will be of interest to
students of all levels and to scholars and teachers of the Gothic and
literary and cultural histories.
SERIES EDITORS
Andrew Smith, University of Sheffeld
Benjamin F. Fisher, University of Mississippi
EDITORIAL BOARD
Kent Ljungquist, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Massachusetts
Richard Fusco, St Joseph’s University, Philadelphia
David Punter, University of Bristol
Chris Baldick, University of London
Angela Wright, University of Sheffeld
Jerrold E. Hogle, University of Arizona
00 Prelims GeorgeEliot 2013_2_12.indd 2 2/12/2013 1:26:12 PMGeorge Eliot and the Gothic Novel
Genres, Gender, Feeling
Royce Mahawatte
UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS
CARDIFF
2013
00 Prelims GeorgeEliot 2013_2_12.indd 3 2/12/2013 1:26:12 PM© Royce Mahawatte, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material
form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic
means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of
this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner.
Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce
any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales
Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library CIP Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-7083-2576-6
e-ISBN 978-0-7083-2577-3
The right of Royce Mahawatte to be identifed as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Typeset in Wales by Eira Fenn Gaunt, Cardiff
Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire
00 Prelims GeorgeEliot 2013_2_12.indd 4 2/12/2013 1:26:12 PMContents
Acknowledgements vii
Note on Names ix
List of abbreviationsxi
Prologue1
Introduction: ‘half-womanish, half-ghostly’: George Eliot
and the Inheritance of the Gothic 3
Part I Reimagining the Genres of Feeling
1 ‘as if there was a demon in me’: ‘Janet’s Repentence’
and the Evangelical Gothic 33
2 ‘with two names written on it’: Sensation Narratives
in Adam Bede 55
3 ‘of one texture with the rest of my existence’:
‘The Lifted Veil’ and the Tale of the Supernatural 74
Part II Uncanny Women, Fearing Men
4 Counterfeit Gothic Heroines in The Mill on the Floss
and Middlemarch 99
5 Romola and Felix Holt, The Radical: The Pursuits of
Paranoid Men 135
6 Finale: Daniel Deronda: Sensationalized Society,
Gothicized Self 167
Epilogue 197
Notes201
List of Works Cited and Consulted 229
Index 249
00 Prelims GeorgeEliot 2013_2_12.indd 5 2/12/2013 1:26:12 PM00 Prelims GeorgeEliot 2013_2_12.indd 6 2/12/2013 1:26:12 PMACknowledgements
This book has been in development for a long time and has been a
part of so many conversations, that it would be impossible to thank
everyone who has contributed to its making. A number of people
have been particularly vital during this long gestation however.
I would like to thank my supervisors of the original research: Dinah
Birch, for her encouragement, ideas and support: Patricia Ingham,
for her invaluable consolidation, and Helen Small for her construct -
ive comments. I am also grateful for the fnancial assist ance from
the British Academy, the Pilkington Trust, and the Meyerstein Fund;
to Trinity College, Oxford for awarding me the scholarships I
received at this early stage; and to Virginia Murray at the John Murray
Archive. In addition, I am also grateful to Richard Proudfoot, Paul
Kenny and Leone Ormond, whose inspiring teaching set the scene
for my interest in George Eliot and Victorian literature in general.
This publication would not have been possible without Benjamin
Franklin Fisher and Andrew Smith, who believed in the project; the
reviewers whose comments helped me to push this study further.
Parts of this book have been reproduced with kind permission from
Manchester University Press and Taylor Francis Journals, for which
I am grateful; as I am for the permission from the estate of Steven
Spurrier for the use of ‘Janet on the doorstep’ on the cover; and to
Panter and Hall for their assistance here. I would like to thank my
parents, sister, family friends and colleagues for their support and
encouragement, and all my students, for talking to me in different
ways about literary forms, abstractions and exponents. I would also
like to thank especially Marina Angadi, John Bryden, Hilary Cave,
Hilary Edwards, Mina Gorji, Kitty Hauser, William Hughes, Joy
Lo Dico, Patrick O’Malley, Wendy Piatt, Catherine Spooner, and
Christian and Anne Ward.
00 Prelims GeorgeEliot 2013_2_12.indd 7 2/12/2013 1:26:12 PMAcknowledgements
Finally, I thank Luke Robinson for his care and love which have
made so many things possible.
Material from this book has been published as the following: ‘“life
that is not clad in the same coat-tails and founces”: the silver fork
novel, George Eliot and the fear of the material’, Women’s Writing,
special issue: Silver Fork Novels, 19/1 (2009), 323−44 (www.tandfonline.
com); ‘“Beautiful lips kissing holy skulls and other emptinesses
ecclesiastically enshrined”: thecounterfeit Gothic heroine in Middlemarch’,
Gothic Studies, 10/2 (2008), 121−36; and ‘Daniel Deronda’s Jewish
panic’, in W. Hughes and A. Smith (eds), Queering the Gothic
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009).
viii
00 Prelims GeorgeEliot 2013_2_12.indd 8 2/12/2013 1:26:12 PMnote on nAmes
Throughout her life, Mary Anne Evans used a range of different
names to refer to herself. For scholars researching into her life and
work, this presents a problem of nomenclature. In this book, ‘George
Eliot’ denotes the novelist and the letter-writing, literary persona.
‘Marian Evans’ will be used to refer to the individual, the translator,
the journalist for the Westminster Review, and the woman who,
throughout her life, read and responded to a range of Gothic genres.
When the difference between these personae is unclear, I have used
‘George Eliot’ for convenience. In the notes, I have followed Gordon
Haight’s convention of calling the writer of the letters ‘George
Eliot’ even when Marian Evans was not corresponding as an author.
00 Prelims GeorgeEliot 2013_2_12.indd 9 2/12/2013 1:26:12 PM00 Prelims GeorgeEliot 2013_2_12.indd 10 2/12/2013 1:26:12 PMAbbreviAtions
Letters: The George Eliot Letters, ed. Gordon S. Haight, 9 vols
(New Haven; Yale University Press, 1954−78)
Essays: Essays of George Eliot, ed. Thomas Pinney (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963)
Haight, George Eliot: Gordon S. Haight, George Eliot: A Biography
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968)
ELH: English Literary History
NCF: Nineteenth-Century Fiction
NCL: Nineteenth-Century Literature
PMLA: Publications of the Modern Languages Association of America
DNB: Dictionary of National Biography
n.d.: No date shown
00 Prelims GeorgeEliot 2013_2_12.indd 11 2/12/2013 1:26:12 PM00 Prelims GeorgeEliot 2013_2_12.indd 12 2/12/2013 1:26:12 PMTheodora: . . . As for the Jewish element in Deronda, I think it a very
fne idea; it’s a noble subject. Wilkie Collins and Mrs Braddon would
not have thought of it, but that does not condemn it. It shows a large
conception of what one may do in a novel.
Henry James, ‘Daniel Deronda: A Conversation’
It was Tito who felt that clutch. He turned his head, and saw the face
of his adoptive father, Baldassare Calvo, close to his own head.
The two men looked at each other, silent as death: Baldassare, with
dark ferceness and a tightening grip of the soiled worn hands on the
velvet-clad arm; Tito, with cheeks and lips all bloodless, fascinated
by terror. It seemed a long while to them — it was but a moment.
The frst sound Tito heard was the short laugh of Piero di Cosimo,
who stood close by him and was the only person that could see his
face.
‘Ha, ha! I know what a ghost should be now.’
George Eliot, Romola
‘You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will
see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane,
and call things by the same names as other people call them by.’
George Eliot, Middlemarch
I believe I was held to have a half-womanish, half-ghostly beauty;
for the portrait-painters, who are thick as weeds at Geneva, had often
asked me to sit to them.
George Eliot, ‘The Lifted Veil’
So many strange thoughts have crossed my mind every day, that
events which would make a life-lasting impression on others, pass like
shadows before me, while thoughts appear like substances. Emotions
are my events—
Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer
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