UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Literature and Feminine Singularity: 1850-90 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/26d6v997 Author Chatterjee, Ronjaunee Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Literature and Feminine Singularity: 1850–90 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Ronjaunee Chatterjee 2015 © Copyright by Ronjaunee Chatterjee 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Literature and Feminine Singularity: 1850–90 by Ronjaunee Chatterjee Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Joseph E. Bristow, Chair “Literature and Feminine Singularity: 1850–90” argues for the emergence of a mathematically-defined and serially-oriented vision of femininity that is singular in nineteenth- century literary texts. My project calls attention to feminine singularity as irreducible and not beholden to the structures of liberalism, capitalism, and bourgeois patriarchy that typically frame gender in binary oppositional terms. Singularity has been part of the language of philosophy, physics, and mathematics since Kant’s aesthetic theories. In nineteenth-century literature, singularity vitalizes the political urgency of femininity beyond the limited agenda of suffrage movements. The works I analyze—Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, Christina Rossetti’s poetry and short fiction, Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, and Charles Baudelaire’s poetry and prose— imagine a form of feminine radicalism that is an explicit counterpoint to emerging Continental ii theories of liberal individualism and the modern citizen-subject. My project thus concentrates on the ways in which lateral affiliations of likeness (such as the minimal, non-reproductive difference between sisters) and numerical lines of thinking generate feminine singularity. In participating in alternative conceptions of counting a “one,” or conceiving of the many, these works consider femininity outside the oscillation between particulars and universals that has been the defining paradigm for understanding the self and the other. Drawing on the work of feminist political theorists such as Bonnie Honig and Linda Zerilli, and literary historians of liberalism such as Elaine Hadley, my dissertation observes that femininity is on the outer limit of nineteenth-century democratic thought. But as the literary imaginary attests, femininity is also capable of articulating a different vision of human freedom. My first chapter begins by discussing a photograph of Alice Liddell that appears in Carroll’s manuscript bracketed by the hand-drawn symbol for infinity. I argue in this chapter that the Alice stories imagine her girlhood as a number in a series moving toward infinity, rather than an uneasy precursor to Victorian womanhood. My second and third chapters, on Rossetti’s Speaking Likenesses and Goblin Market, and Collins’ The Woman in White, respectively, propose that relationships between sisters generate forms of likeness that bypass restrictive notions of gender difference. For my fourth chapter, I consider how counting produces femininity in Baudelaire’s prose and poetry. I argue that counting – in a manner that recognizes the limitations of nineteenth-century ideas of the individual – requires Baudelaire to dissolve the masculine poetic self and engage in a poetics of feminine singularity. iii The dissertation of Ronjaunee Chatterjee is approved. Jonathan Hamilton Grossman Kenneth Reinhard Giulia Sissa Joseph E. Bristow, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction | 1 I. Lewis Carroll and the Ones and Twos of Femininity | 26 II. “Golden Head by Golden Head”: Christina Rossetti and the Form of Likeness | 77 III. Brothers and Sisters: Liberalism’s Horizontal Imaginary and Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White | 122 IV. Charles Baudelaire and Feminine Singularity | 168 V. Conclusion: In Search of Difference: The Salpêtrière, Hysteria, and the Beginnings of Psychoanalysis | 197 Bibliography | 215 v LIST OF FIGURES I. Lewis Carroll, Photograph of Alice Liddell | 28 II. Arthur Hughes, “The Apple of Discord,” from Christina Rossetti’s Speaking Likenesses | 87 III. Arthur Hughes, “Mouth Boy,” from Christina Rossetti’s Speaking Likenesses | 97 IV. André Brouillet, Un leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière, 1887 | 208 vi Acknowledgments Many years spent laboring over singularity—the topic of this dissertation—has yielded in practice what I finally arrived at in theory: that thinking the singular is more than just being alone or being solitary; rather, it has everything to do with communities, affiliations, and relations that sustain such thinking. With this in mind, I extend my deepest gratitude to Joseph Bristow, who encouraged the seeds of this project and saw it through to the finish line, as well as to Jonathan Grossman and Kenneth Reinhard for their kindness and invaluable mentorship. Many thanks also go out to Giulia Sissa, Helen Deutsch, Eleanor Kaufman, Rachel Ablow, and Louise Hornby for their encouragement with this project. Early versions of Chapter 1 were presented at UCLA’s Nineteenth-Century Group, and I thank the members and organizers for their insight. A version of Chapter 4 is forthcoming in the journal French Studies, and I am grateful to the editors for their rigorous and helpful commentary. Numerous colleagues and friends deserve my heartfelt thanks for years of conversation and camaraderie: Jacquelyn Ardam, Christina Richieri Griffin, Renee Hudson, Amy Wong, Ilana Papir, and Ethan Pack. My sister Ranita Chatterjee, has been an exceptional interlocutor, friend, and mentor. Thanks to my brother Rupak Chatterjee, and my brother-in-law Tomo Hattori. Imaginative freedom—coupled with the assurance that I could take risks and be supported—are what carried this project forward, and for that I thank my parents, Ratna and Ramananda Chatterjee. vii RONJAUNEE CHATTERJEE EDUCATION University of California, Los Angeles PhD Candidate, 2015 C.Phil in English, June 2011 M.A. in English, June 2010 Cornell University B.A. in English, Minor in French Literature and Language, June 2007 Magna Cum Laude: Distinction in all subjects PUBLICATIONS Peer-reviewed Publications (cid:1) “Charles Baudelaire and Feminine Singularity.” Forthcoming, French Studies, April 2016. (cid:1) Book Review: Multimedia Archaeologies: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Belle Époque Paris, and the Total Artwork by Andrea Mirabile. Forthcoming, Comparative Literature Studies. Selected Other Publications (cid:1) Book Review: A Life with Mary Shelley by Barbara Johnson. The New Inquiry, 14 October, 2014. (cid:1) “The Sins of the Fathers: Élisabeth Roudinesco’s Lacan in Spite of Everything.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 1 June 2014. (cid:1) “Alain Badiou in Southern California: A Politics of the Impossible.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 6 February 2014. (cid:1) “Hitting on Infinity: Mari Ruti’s The Singularity of Being.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 27 August 2013. (cid:1) Book Review: Calcutta by Amit Chaudhuri. The Rumpus, 25 April 2013. FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS (cid:1) UCLA Graduate Division Dissertation Fellowship, 2014–2015 (cid:1) UCLA Department Dissertation Research Fellowship, 2012–2013 (cid:1) UCLA Dean’s Fellowship, 2007–2008, 2010–2011 (cid:1) UCLA Department Travel Grant, 2012, 2010, 2009 (cid:1) Cornell University Dean’s List, 2003–2007 CONFERENCES AND PRESENTATIONS Co-organized (cid:1) Roundtable on Internet Criticism and Para-Academic Writing, UCLA, May 2015 (cid:1) “Negation and Negativity.” Friends of English Southland Graduate Conference, UCLA, June 2011 viii