Forming Person: Narrative and Psychology in the Victorian Novel by Anna Marie Gibson ...

314 Pages·2014·4.98 MB·English

by  Anna Gibson

Forming Person:
Narrative and Psychology in the Victorian Novel

by
Anna Marie Gibson
Department of English
Duke University

Date:_______________________

Approved:

___________________________
Nancy Armstrong, Co-Supervisor

___________________________
Kathy Alexis Psomiades, Co-Supervisor

___________________________
Rob Mitchell

___________________________
Charlotte Sussman

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy in the Department of
English in the Graduate School
of Duke University

2014
ABSTRACT

Forming Person:
Narrative and Psychology in the Victorian Novel

by
Anna Marie Gibson
Department of English
Duke University

Date:_______________________

Approved:

___________________________
Nancy Armstrong, Co-Supervisor

___________________________
Kathy Alexis Psomiades, Co-Supervisor

___________________________
Rob Mitchell

___________________________
Charlotte Sussman

An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy in the Department of
English in the Graduate School
Of Duke University

2014
Copyright by
Anna Marie Gibson
2014
Abstract
This dissertation argues that the Victorian novel created a sensory self much like
that articulated by Victorian physiological psychology: a multi-centered and process-
oriented body that reacts to situations and stimuli as they arise by mobilizing
appropriate cognitive and nervous functions. By reading Victorian fiction alongside
psychology as it was developing into a distinct scientific discipline (during the 1840s–
70s), this project addresses broader interdisciplinary questions about how the interaction
between literature and science in the nineteenth century provided new ways of
understanding human consciousness. I show that narrative engagements with
psychology in the novel form made it possible for readers to understand the modern
person as productively rather than pathologically heterogeneous. To accomplish this,
fiction offered author and reader an experimental form for engaging ideas posed and
debated concurrently in science.
The novels I read – by authors including Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens,
Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and George Eliot – emerge as narrative testing
grounds for constructions of subjectivity and personhood unavailable to scientific
discourse. I attribute the novel’s ability to create a sensory self to its formal tactics, from
composites of multiple first-person accounts to strange juxtapositions of omniscience
and subjectivity, from gaps and shifts in narrative to the extended form-in-process of the
serial novel. My side-by-side readings of scientific and literary experiments make it clear
that fiction is where we find the most innovative methods of investigation into
embodied forms of human experience.

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For Rosie
And for my Dad
For encouraging me to begin

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Contents
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv

List of Figures ............................................................................................................................. viii

Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... ix

INTRODUCTION Form, Person, and Experiment ................................................................... 1

The Form of the Person .......................................................................................................... 5

Strategy and Tactics .............................................................................................................. 16

Overview of the Dissertation ............................................................................................... 23

Literary Experiments ............................................................................................................ 27

CHAPTER ONE The First Person in Jane Eyre and Villette .................................................... 33

I. Mind and Body: Brontë and Nineteenth-Century Personal Identity ......................... 40

II. Jane Eyre’s Narrative Strategies ..................................................................................... 54

III. Lucy Snowe’s Tactics ...................................................................................................... 66

IV. The Dancer and the Archivist ....................................................................................... 86

CHAPTER TWO Our Mutual Friend and Network Form ..................................................... 101

I. Serial Form ........................................................................................................................ 103

II. Seriality, Character, and Life in Aggregate ................................................................ 122

III. Victorian Networks: Dickens and Science ................................................................. 128

IV. The Novel as Network ................................................................................................. 134

V. Network and Affect ....................................................................................................... 145

VI. Hallucinatory Dickens .................................................................................................. 157

CHAPTER THREE Sensation and Detection ......................................................................... 162

I. Sensation and Detection in Combination ..................................................................... 168

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II. Sensation Debates and the Science of Psychology ..................................................... 178

i. Scientific Detection and Objectivity ........................................................................ 181

ii. Sensation and the Sensory Consciousness ............................................................ 191

III. Detective Narrative, Sensational Narrative ............................................................... 201

IV. Detective Fever and Lady Audley’s Secret ................................................................... 217

V. Detection and Excess ..................................................................................................... 222

CHAPTER FOUR Daniel Deronda’s Experiments in Life ...................................................... 228

I. Eliot, Psychology, and the Novel .................................................................................. 234

II. Narrative Knowledge .................................................................................................... 240

III. Consciousness of Self .................................................................................................... 247

IV. Gwendolen’s “Subjection to a Possible Self” ............................................................ 259

V. Daniel “Transforming Influence” and Gwendolen’s “New Consciousness” ....... 266

VI. What Becomes of the “Bird’s-Eye” Perspective ........................................................ 274

VII. “A Set of Experiments in Life” .................................................................................. 280

Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 285

Biography .................................................................................................................................... 304

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List of Figures
Figure 1: [O.S. Fowler], A phrenological chart of the head divided into over thirty images,
mostly of individual people performing the faculties. (London: Straker, c. 1845);
Wellcome Collection, 27921i .......................................................................................... 49

Figure 2: Image from Dickens’s working notes for the fifth installment of
Our Mutual Friend. ................................................................................................... 108

Figure 3: Image from Dickens’s working notes for the seventh installment of
Our Mutual Friend. ................................................................................................... 112

Figure 4: Pages 10 and 3 of Dickens’s Book of Memoranda .................................................... 116

Figure 5: Galton, Prevalent Types of Features Among Men Convicted of Larceny, 1880 ......... 222

Figure 6: Galton, Criminal Composite (New York Public Library/Science Photo Library
http://sciencephoto.com) ............................................................................................... 223

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Acknowledgements
This dissertation owes its existence to the support of so many mentors, friends,
and family members. My first thanks must go to my first mentors. To Rosie Davis, who
taught me how to read a novel and to whom this dissertation is dedicated, and to Anne
Wallace, my college advisor, whose clear-eyed passion for Victorian novels inspired me
from my first week in a university classroom to keep on reading them.
I have been lucky to have two incredible dissertation directors and mentors at
Duke. In particular, this dissertation has been profoundly shaped by the always-
generous guidance of Nancy Armstrong, whose support, determination, and attention to
detail never cease to amaze me. Thank you for always pushing me one step further, for
always being available, and for reading (and re-reading, and re-re-reading) these pages
so thoroughly. I have learned so much from you. Kathy Psomiades has been a mentor
in every sense of the word from my first day as a graduate student at Duke, providing
structure when needed and sympathetic kindness at all times. Thank you for
shepherding me through the stages of an early academic career and for reading my
work so carefully – with that purple pen – always with an eye to what I’m trying to say.
To Rob Mitchell and to Charlotte Sussman I offer my gratitude for encouraging me to
broaden my perspectives and for the time you have both taken to read my work with
such generosity and insight. I’m also indebted to Priscilla Wald, who reminds me every
time I see her to love this work. I would like to thank the American Council of Learned
Societies (ACLS)/Mellon Foundation for their generous support of my work with a
2013-14 Dissertation Completion Fellowship.

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My family has surrounded me (often from afar) with loving support and care
throughout this long process. I owe so much to my wonderful Mum, whose text
messages from across the ocean punctuated my writing with smiles, laughter, and
encouragement: “Motivate, motivate!” I also dedicate this dissertation to my Dad, not
just because he has supported me in every way possible for so many years, but also
because he has always made it his mission to help me believe the sky is (not quite) the
limit: “Onwards and upwards!” To my “little” brother Dave, who is usually flying
around that sky, and to my brothers Chris and Phil, I offer my love and thanks, as well
as to Mary, CJ, Josh, Beth-Rheanna, and Ava. To my American family, Kathy and Bob,
English and Rob, and, especially, James and Charles Knowles – thank you for
welcoming me and for supporting me.
I have been blessed to have a circle of friends in Durham always ready to pick up
the phone or share a cup of coffee and talk through (or read through) the difficult parts.
Thanks, especially, to Lindsey Andrews, the best reader I’ve ever had, because her
comments always renew my interest in and dedication to my project. It is because of
conversations I have shared with Lindsey, Layla Aldousany, Astrid Giugni, Maggie
Zurawski, Calina Ciobanu, Jessica Jones, and Allison Curseen that I feel inspired to do
this work. Many of these friends have read and re-read drafts and listened while I talked
through ideas. A list is a poor form of gratitude, but it will have to do.
Jim Knowles, although you might try to convince me that medieval literature is
far more exciting than the Victorian novel, you always remind me that you really do
understand what I’m working towards and that we are working towards it together.
Your love and support remind me every day that this is all worth it. This is for you too.
.

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