THE ART OF ALLUSION IN VICTORIAN FICTION THE ART OF ALLUSION IN VICTORIAN FICTION Michael Wheeler ©Michael D. Wheeler 1979 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1979 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1979 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LT O London and Basingstoke Associated companies in Delhi Dublin Hong Kong Johannesburg Lagos Melbourne New York Singapore Tokyo Photoset in Great Britain by Vantage Photosetting Co., Ltd, Southampton The Gresham Press, Old Waking, Surrey British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Wheeler, Michael The art of allusion in Victorian fiction 1. Allusions 2. English fiction -19th century History and criticism I. Title 823'.8'09 PR830.A/ ISBN 978-1-349-03905-0 ISBN 978-1-349-03903-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-03903-6 This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the Net Book Agreement For Viv Contents Preface ix 1 Allusion 1 2 Victorian Novels and Readers 9 3 The Heroine as Reader: fane Eyre 27 4 Dives versus Lazarus: Mary Barton 44 5 Apocalypse in a Mechanical Age: Hard Times 61 6 The Spectacles of Books: Middlemarch 78 7 The Bower and the World: The Egoist 100 8 Mapping the Victorian Age: Robert Elsmere 116 9 The Defects of the Real: The Return of the Native and Tess of the d'Urbervilles 137 10 Conclusion 159 References 167 Index 177 Preface My aim in this book is to argue that the use of literary and biblical allusion should be recognised as an important conven tion in Victorian fiction, and that the modem reader can under stand the fiction more fully if he understands the convention. The first two chapters are introductory, examining the aesthetics of allusion, Victorian habits of quotation and reference in various contexts, such as religious worship, and the functions of allusion in the fiction. The next seven chapters are new readings of famous novels which have been chosen to illustrate what I consider to be the most important and interesting ways in which allusion is used in the period. These novels vary in type, and their dates of publication range from the 1840s to the 1890s. Yet each highly individual writer works within the same convention of allusion, developing themes and images, plot motifs and the portrayal of character around clusters of quotations and refer ences. Whereas the earlier novelists quoted or referred to works which were familiar to a wide range of readers, thus helping them to understand the fiction, later novelists used allusions more self-consciously and less directly. In the last chapter I touch on certain developments in early twentieth-century fiction before making some general concluding remarks on the art of allusion in Victorian fiction. In tackling a subject as large and comparatively unexplored as this my initial problem was one of selection, and I hope that the reader will go on to consider other texts by other novelists, applying and perhaps modifying the principles I attempt to define. The following editions of the selected novels are quoted: Charlotte Bronte, fane Eyre, edited by Jane Jack and Margaret Smith, Clarendon Edition (Oxford, 1969). Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton and Other Tales, vol.I of The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, edited by A. W. Ward, 8 vols (Lon don, 1906). ix X THE ART OF ALLUSION IN VICTORIAN FICTION Charles Dickens, Hard Times, edited by George Ford and Sylvere Monod, Norton Critical Edition (New York, 1966). George Eliot, Middlemarch, edited by Gordon S. Haight, Riverside Edition (Boston, 1956). George Meredith, The Egoist, vols XV and XVI (1897) of the Works of George Meredith [De Luxe Edition] 39 vols (London, 1896-1912). Mary [Mrs Humphry] Ward, Robert Elsmere, edited by Clyde deL. Ryals, Bison Edition (Lincoln, USA, 1967). Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and The Return of the Native, vols I and IV (1912) of The Works of Thomas Hardy in Prose and Verse, Wessex Edition, 24 vols (London, 1912-31). References to these novels are by chapter or by book and chapter, in roman and arabic numerals respectively, immediately after quotations in the text. Obvious and unimportant misprints have been silently corrected. Initial letters are capitalised and final full stops inserted in inset quotations, irrespective of the case and punctuation used in the original. Italicised words in quotations are thus in the original, unless otherwise stated. In order to keep annotation to a minimum, further references to works cited at the end of the book are given in abbreviated form after quotations in the text. Passages from chapters 1, 3 and 4 have appeared in The British Journal of Aesthetics, 17 (1977), and Bronte Society Transactions, 17 (1976). They are reprinted here by kind per mission of the editors. I am grateful to the British Library for permission to quote from the manuscripts of Middlemarch and Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and from the Gladstone Papers, and to the library of University College, Dublin, for permission to quote from the manuscript of The Return of the Native. I would also like to thank friends at Lancaster who have helped me in various ways, including Susan Auty, Tess Cosslett, Anne Dal ton, Joy Turvey and Christopher Walsh, and especially David Carroll and Richard Dutton, whose advice has been invaluable. August 1978 MDW 1 Allusion Every reader of literature must have noticed that writers often quote the works of others. In most readers' minds, however, quotations and references, the two basic types of allusion, are usually lumped together with such things as book illustrations, chapter titles, and 'arguments' which head chapters or cantos, all of which are ignored too easily, or dismissed as virtually redundant elements of a literary text. Some critics who have written on allusion have helped to perpetuate misconceptions which tend to place the subject in the curio category. For example, E. E. Kellett wrote as if spotting the allusions in literature were a game designed for the educated gentleman, as quoting the Classics was in the Houses of Parliament at one time. For him the best allusions are the 'natural overflow of a rich and well-stored mind', and the best reader can respond to 'veiled quotations' which give him a 'slight titillation of the memory'.1 Although classical scholars have long recognised that allusion is a crucial indicator of the relationship between a given work and a literary tradition, the aspects of allusion on which students of English literature focused attention in the past tended to be merely curious or titillating. However, serious interest in the functions of allusion in a literary text, and the theoretical issues which those functions raise, has begun to develop in recent years. Herman Meyer's study, The Poetics of Quotation in the European Novel (1968), translated from the original German version of 1961, remains the most valuable critical discussion of allusion in fiction. After an excellent introductory discussion of the 'poetics of quotation', he sets about inquiring 'what the literary quotation signifies and achieves as a structural element in the novel from Rabelais to the present', 2 examining the 'Great Humorists' (Rabelais, Cervantes and Steme) and the'A rt 1 2 THE ART OF ALLUSION IN VICTORIAN FICTION of Quoting in Germany' from Wieland to Mann. Of the numer ous critics who have discussed allusion in poetry, particularly in relation to poetic tradition, Harold Bloom stands out as the most challenging and provocative. In his books on literary influence and poetic tradition, Bloom discusses allusion as one means of Freudian defence by which poets have tried to maintain their literary identities in the shadow of their precursors. For example, he states that Milton's 'handling of allusion is his highly indi vidual and original defense against poetic tradition, his revisio nary stance in writing what is in effect a tertiary epic'.3 Ziva Ben-Porat, another modern scholar who has examined the 'Poe tics of Literary Allusion', defines literary allusion as' a device for the simultaneous activation of two texts', and, adopting Jakob son's terms, distinguishes between 'metaphoric' and 'metonymic' allusions. Ben-Porat's article is an important con tribution to literary theory, offering a detailed analysis of the ways in which the 'alluding text' and the 'evoked text' are 'activated'. 4 Whereas both Bloom and Ben-Porat have a penchant for elaborate critical terminology, Meyer tends to use rather broad terms when discussing allusion. In the absence of received critical terms I must suggest certain definitions before proceed ing further. One of the problems involved in attempting such definitions is posed by the universality of quotation-source relationships between individual examples of categories or types. Emerson wrote: 'Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all ancestors.'5 As we turn to specifically literary matters we must bear this state ment in mind, for it is often extremely difficult to trace the boundaries between generic affinities, such as vague stylistic similarities in a large number of Victorian tracts, and specific allusions to literary texts. Suffice it to say for the moment, however, that my subject is strictly literary, and that the follow ing definitions all apply to novelists' allusions which establish some kind of relationship with earlier or contemporary literary works. An adopted text is a work or part of a work from which material is borrowed in the act of quoting or referring, and an adoptive text is a work in which that material is placed. A quotation is an identifiable word, phrase or passage taken from an adopted text. A marked quotation is one whose nature is