Victorian Structures

Jody Griffith

Description

Although Victorian novels often feature lengthy descriptions of the buildings where characters live, work, and pray, we may not always notice the stories these buildings tell. But when we do pay attention, we find these buildings offer more than evocative background settings. Victorian Structures uses the architectural writings of Victorian critic John Ruskin as a framework for examining the interaction of physical, social, and narrative structures in Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, Adam Bede by George Eliot, and The Mayor of Casterbridge and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. By closely reading their descriptions of architectural structure, this book reconsiders structure itself—both the social structures the novels reflect, and the narrative structures they employ. Weaving together analysis of these three kinds of structure offers an interpretation of Victorian realism that is far more socially and formally unstable than critics have tended to assume. It illustrates how these novels radically critique the limitations, dysfunctions, and deceptions of structure, while also imagining alternative possibilities.

This unique interdisciplinary approach emphasizes structure-in-time: while current conversations about structure focus on its static and fixed properties, this book understands it as various forces in tension, producing meanings that are always in flux. Victorian Structures focuses not only on the way structures shape our perceptions and experiences, but also, more importantly, on the processes through which those structures come to be constructed in the first place, and how they change over time.
Acknowledgments

Introduction: "All Men Are Builders": Victorian Structures

1. Within the Walls: Freedom and Obedience in Little Dorrit

2. Constructing Novel Time in Ordinary Time: The Architectural Structure of Eliot's Realism

3. "As We Lay Stone on Stone": Mediating the Past in The Mayor of Casterbridge

4. "Modern Thought . . . in Such Decrepit and Superseded Chambers": Disintegrating Structures in Jude the Obscure

Conclusion: "The Action of the Imagination": Building Perceptions of Truth

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Architecture
• Royaume-Uni
• Great Britain
• Stephen Ireland
• United Kingdom
• Ireland
• Reino Unido

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438478333
• Langue: English

Extrait

Victorian Structures
SUNY series, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century

Pamela K. Gilbert, editor
Victorian Structures
ARCHITECTURE, SOCIETY, AND NARRATIVE
JODY GRIFFITH
Cover art: John Ruskin, Plate III, Traceries from Caen, Bayeux, Rouen, and Beauvais. From The Seven Lamps of Architecture , with illustrations, drawn by the author. Sixth edition. Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, 1889.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Griffith, Jody, 1973– author.
Title: Victorian structures : architecture, society, and narrative / Jody Griffith.
Other titles: Architecture, society, and narrative
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2020] | Series: SUNY series, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019019287 | ISBN 9781438478319 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438478333 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: English fiction—19th century—History and criticism. | Architecture and literature. | Architecture in literature. | Narration (Rhetoric)—History—19th century. | Literature and society—England—History—19th century.
Classification: LCC PR878.A7 .G75 2020 | DDC 823/.509357—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019019287
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: “All Men Are Builders”: Victorian Structures
1 Within the Walls: Freedom and Obedience in Little Dorrit
2 Constructing Novel Time in Ordinary Time: The Architectural Structure of Eliot’s Realism
3 “As We Lay Stone on Stone”: Mediating the Past in The Mayor of Casterbridge
4 “Modern Thought … in Such Decrepit and Superseded Chambers”: Disintegrating Structures in Jude the Obscure
Conclusion: “The Action of the Imagination”: Building Perceptions of Truth
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
I am very appreciative of the editorial board at SUNY Press, most especially Amanda Lanne-Camilli for her responsiveness and guidance. I wish to thank the administration and English faculty of Penn State Scranton for their support in the final stages of manuscript preparation. I’m also grateful to the writing program faculty at Bryn Mawr College for being so welcoming and collaborative.
At Temple University, the College of Liberal Arts, the Center for the Humanities at Temple, and the English department provided me with the support of fellowships, grants, and assistantships. I am also grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in various formal and informal groups of students and faculty, including the Center for the Humanities at Temple Fellows Seminar and the British Writers Works-in-Progress Group, for their engaging conversations and insightful feedback. Thank you to Petra Goedde, Peter Logan, and Priya Joshi for their leadership of these groups. I have also had encouragement and guidance from Kate Thomas, Talissa Ford, Therese Dolan, and Jill Rappoport. In particular, I can’t thank Peter Logan enough for being an exceptional advisor; he has always been ready with encouraging advice, insightful feedback, and challenging questions.
I also have a million thanks for Beth Seltzer, my fellow Victorianist and kindred spirit, for reading so many drafts of this book that I’ve long since lost count, and for always responding with astute comments and suggestions. I’m grateful to share work with someone of her talent and perceptiveness.
Finally, I thank Peter Schmidt for his inspiring example of creativity and perseverance, for his patience and countless trips to the bookstore, and for helping to open up space in our lives for my pursuits; I am humbled and grateful. I also thank Alex and Nathaniel for inspiring me to see the world, as they do, with curiosity and excitement.
Portions of chapter 2, “ Constructing Novel Time in Ordinary Time: The Architectural Structure of Eliot’s Realism ,” originally appeared as an article with the same title in the Spring 2016 issue of Studies in the Novel .
Introduction
“All Men Are Builders”
Victorian Structures
T homas Hardy’s novel Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) famously depicts the Everdene barn, where farmers and farm hands gather to shear their flock of sheep. The description’s focus on the details of the barn’s physical space emphasizes that this small community has assembled for a purpose that is common, not just to these particular individuals in this barn, but also to the generations who have come before them:
the old barn embodied practices which had suffered no mutilation at the hands of time. Here at least the spirit of the ancient builders was at one with the spirit of the modern beholder. Standing before this abraded pile, the eye regarded its present usage, the mind dwelt upon its past history, with a satisfied sense of functional continuity throughout—a feeling almost of gratitude, and quite of pride, at the permanence of the idea which had heaped it up. … The lanceolate windows, the time-eaten archstones and chamfers, the orientation of the axis, the misty chestnut work of the rafters, referred to no exploded fortifying art or worn-out religious creed. The defence and salvation of the body by daily bread is still a study, a religion, and a desire. (125)
This passage illustrates two important qualities of architecture—temporal presence and communal function. The barn’s “past history” testifies to the “functional continuity” of its purpose through time, illustrating Walter Benjamin’s assertion that architecture, more than other art forms, can lay “claim to being a living force” (Benjamin 687). The physical structures of the barn—its windows, archstones, chamfers, and rafters—are still meaningful, because within this barn, humans labor, as they have always labored, to meet their basic requirements for warmth, food, and shelter. Unlike the “exploded fortifying art or worn-out religious creed” of a fortress or church, the barn still helps fulfill enduring human needs. In addition, a building such as the Everdene barn both produces space where a community may work toward a shared and defining purpose, and “embodie[s] practices” that represent the community’s shared knowledge and values, demonstrating that architecture “has significance in every attempt to comprehend the relationship of the masses to art” (Benjamin 687).
Victorian realist novels often feature lengthy descriptions of houses and barns, churches and cathedrals, shops and factories, and courthouses and schools. These descriptions help situate us in a particular time, place, and class, but we may not give them much thought beyond noticing their rather static contribution to a richly detailed setting. But we should pay attention—not only are these descriptions ubiquitous, they are also often quite striking and revealing; we miss vital information when these buildings blend into the background. The four novels I focus on in this study each feature moments of arresting, memorable architectural images that illuminate their thematic and formal patterns. For example, in Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit (1855), a breathless, climactic scene culminates with the spectacular collapse of the Clennam house, long the site of family and business secrets. In George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859), the narrator pointedly introduces us to the Poyser family by leading us around their home, climbing over fences and peeping through windows, emphasizing the different impressions that each angle of the house creates. In The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), by Thomas Hardy, ancient ruins, including an enormous Roman amphitheater, cast shadows over the otherwise ordinary small town of Casterbridge. In Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1895), the Gothic buildings of Jude’s idealized Christminster turn out to be rotting, crumbling corpses that only survive through perpetual restoration work.
The vividness of the above examples suggests that these descriptions serve important functions beyond just setting the scene; buildings have stories to tell. Because these descriptions emphasize the dynamic social and narrative properties of architecture, they can also be self-reflexive moments that reveal the social and narrative properties of the novels themselves. We take for granted that we can use physical, architectural language to conceptualize the way different parts of a society fit together into a cohesive whole; substituting spatial for abstract concepts is so ingrained in our thinking as to be practically invisible. We talk of social foundations, systems, and, especially, structures, and use similar language to describe our patterns of storytelling, visualizing our arrangement of plot, characters, and point of view as a coherent narrative structure. Paying attention to descriptions of physical structures makes this conflation of spatial and abstract language visible in these novels and illuminates the way they understand their own social and narrative structures.
Therefore, the word structure is the foundation of this study: it is a word with capacious connotations across disciplines, and with changing and sometimes contradictory definitions. First, the starting point for each of the followi