213 pages

English

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The Marked Body , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - Lynn Shakinovsky , Kate Lawson

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213 pages

English

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Description

The ambiguities and paradoxes of domestic violence were amplified in Victorian culture, which emphasized the home as a woman's place of security. In The Marked Body, Kate Lawson and Lynn Shakinovsky examine the discarded and violated bodies of middle-class women in selected texts of mid-nineteenth-century fiction and poetry. Guided by observations from feminism, psychoanalysis, and trauma theory, they argue that, in these works, domestic violence is a crucible in which the female body is placed, where it becomes marked by scars and disfigurement. Yet, they contend, these wounds go beyond violence to bring these women to a broader state of female subjectivity, sexuality, and consciousness. The female body, already the site of alterity, is inscribed with something that cannot be expressed; it thus becomes that which is culturally and physically denied, the place which is not.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

1 "A FRIGHTFUL OBJECT"
Romance, Obsession, and Death in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birth-Mark"

2 DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, ABJECTION, AND THE COMIC NOVEL
Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers

3 VIOLENCE, CAUSALITY, AND THE "SHOCK OF HISTORY"
George Eliot's "Janet's Repentance"

4 "THE SINS OF THE FATHER" AND "THE FEMALE LINE"
Phantom Visitations and Cruelty in Elizabeth Gaskell's "The Poor Clare"

5 RAPE, TRANSGRESSION, AND THE LAW
The Body of Marian Erle in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh

6 "WILL SHE END LIKE ME?"
Violence and the Uncanny in Wilkie Collins's Man and Wife

CONCLUSION

NOTES

WORKS CITED

INDEX

Sujets

USA

United States of America

Reino Unido

Ireland

United Kingdom

Stephen Ireland

Great Britain

États-Unis

Royaume-Uni

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	01 février 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780791488621
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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THE MARKED BODY

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THE MARKED BODY

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN MIDNINETEENTHCENTURY LITERATURE

Kate Lawson and Lynn Shakinovsky

State University of New York Press

Published by STATE UNIVERSITY

N Y P , A OF EW ORK RESS LBANY

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, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

Production by Kelli Williams Marketing by Patrick Durocher

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Lawson, Kate, 1958– The marked body : domestic violence in mid-nineteenth-century literature / Kate Lawson and Lynn Shakinovsky. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-7914-5375-8 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-7914-5376-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. English fiction—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Family violence in literature. 3. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 1806–1861. Aurora Leigh. 4. Domestic fiction, English—History and criticism. 5. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804–1864. Birthmark. 6. Body, Human in literature. I. Shakinovsky, Lynn, 1955– II. Title

PR878.F29 L39 2002 823'.809355—dc21

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2002021056

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

1 “AFRIGHTFUL OBJECT” Romance, Obsession, and Death in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark”

2 DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, ABJECTION, AND THE COMIC NOVEL Anthony Trollope’sBarchester Towers

3 VIOLENCE, CAUSALITY,AND THE“SHOCK OF HISTORY” George Eliot’s “Janet’s Repentance”

4 “THE SINS OF THE FATHER”AND“THE FEMALE Phantom Visitations and Cruelty in Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Poor Clare”

5 RAPE, TRANSGRESSION,AND THE LAW The Body of Marian Erle in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’sAurora Leigh

6 “WILL SHE END LIKE ME?” Violence and the Uncanny in Wilkie Collins’sMan and Wife

CONCLUSION

NOTES

WORKS CITED

INDEX

VII

105

125

151

159

181

195

With love and gratitude to Hilda and Leo Shakinovsky, and in loving memory of Jean Macdonald Lawson and Francis Lawson

Acknowledgments

We are indebted to the friends, colleagues, institutions, and families who supported the writing of this book in a variety of ways. We gratefully acknowledge the generous and invaluable support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and also Wilfrid Laurier University. The Wilfrid Laurier University Course Remission Grant and Book Preparation Grant provided invaluable time to write in the early stages of the book and much needed ﬁnancial assistance in its ﬁnal stages. We are deeply indebted to Michael Ross for his generous and careful reading of an early version of this manuscript and also appre-ciative of the constructive and encouraging advice of the anonymous readers at SUNY Press; their suggestions for revisions have made this a better book. We have been fortunate to have the advice and assistance of friends and colleagues at both Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Northern British Columbia. We particularly appreciate the council, wisdom, and friendship of Viviana Comensoli, Eleanor Ty, and Maria di Cenzo; the book has beneﬁted greatly from their guidance. Thanks also to Stan Beeler, Gary Boire, Jane Campbell, Jodey Castricano, Joel Faﬂak, Paul Tiessen, and Lorraine York who have been supportive and caring colleagues. Lynn Shakinovsky also thanks Peter Elder for his unwavering loyalty, support, and belief in the project throughout its long years. We are grateful to our ﬁne research assistants: Sarah Brophy, Carolyn Findlayson, and Jennifer Bell did excellent work; Deirdre Kwiatek kept us in touch with a good research library; and Darlene Shatford’s meticulous work made the ﬁnal preparations of the manu-script a pleasure. Finally, our greatest debt is to our families. Martin Shakinovsky, Bertha Shakinovsky, Keith Lawson, Christy Luckyj, John Lawson, vii

viii

Acknowledgments

and Sue Campbell have been supportive and caring throughout the writing of the book. Kate Lawson deeply thanks Emma, Ariel, Sonia, and Trystan Wyse for constantly reminding her about what is truly important in a loving domestic sphere. She also thanks Bruce Wyse for his unfailing generosity of heart and mind; his largesse in ideas, in books, in argument, and in good food and wine were and are invaluable. Lynn Shakinovsky thanks her son Ben with all her heart. His loving presence, his generosity of spirit, his sweetness of heart and mind make everything possible. And ﬁnally, also Terry Shakinovsky, her earliest and dearest sharer of books.

❧ An earlier version of Chapter 1, “‘A frightful object’: Romance, Obsession, and Death in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Birth-Mark’” was published under the title “The Return of the Repressed: Illiteracy and the Death of the Narrative in Hawthorne’s “‘The Birth-mark’” in ATQ,9, No. 4, December 1995. Reprinted by permission of Volume The University of Rhode Island. An earlier version of Chapter 2, “Domestic Violence, Abjection, and the Comic Novel: Anthony Trollope’sBarchester Towers,” was published as “Abject and Deﬁled: Signora Neroni’s Body and the Question of Domes-tic Violence” inVictorian Review, Volume 21, No. 4, Summer 1995. Reprinted by permission. Cover photo (c. 1857–1864) by Clementina, Lady Hawarden, of Lady and Lord Hawarden, courtesy of the Trustees of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Introduction

THE BODY

In Tolstoy’s epic novelWar and Peace,readers are provided with a piece of passing information about a character, Dolohov. In a discussion between two of his commanding ofﬁcers about the wildness of his temper, one tells the other that “in Poland, if you please, he all but killed a Jew.” The response of the other is a mollifying “yes, yes. . . . Still one must be easy on a young man in misfortune” (133). The reference to anti-Semitic violence is at once mundane and startling; the tone of the conversation informs the reader that this event, although culpable, is commonplace. Yet in the vast social, political, and emotional tapes-try of the novel, in its glittering and compelling portrait of the Russian aristocracy, the “all but killed” Jew is an anomaly, a signiﬁer of the kind of violent experience that isnot part of the novel’s representational ﬁeld. The “all but killed” Jew is the realist text’s marker of the violence and moral degradation of the character Dolohov, but at the same time this single Jewish body also functions as a kind of tear in the fabric of the narrative, momentarily rendering the invisible visible, reminding us of what isnotin this realist text, and opening to us represented brieﬂy the universe of discarded, excluded, and persecuted bodies. This book is a study of discarded and violated bodies of middle-class women in selected texts of mid-nineteenth-century ﬁction and poetry. LikeWar and Peace, most of these texts do not urgently explore the violence visited upon these bodies as pressing social, political, or moral problems, and even in those that focus on these questions, such as George Eliot’s “Janet’s Repentance” where the beaten wife is at the center of the plot, the implications of these questions ﬁnally tend to be evaded, or set aside. These bodies thus partake in some measure of the liminality of the “all but killed” Jew. At the same time, however, what makes the violence explored in these texts startling is that the