Fiction in the Age of Photography: The Legacy of British Realism

352 Pages·2000·7.2 MB·English

by  Nancy Armstrong

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FICTION IN THE AGE OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
M N
NANCY ARMSTRONG
FICTION IN THE
AGE OF PHOTOGRAPHY
The Legacy of British Realism
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Copyright © 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Second printing, 2002
First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2002
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Armstrong, Nancy.
Fiction in the age of photography : the legacy of British realism
/ Nancy Armstrong.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
isbn 0-674-29930-2 (cloth)
isbn 0-674-00801-4 (pbk.)
1. English ªction—19th century—History and criticism.
2. Realism in literature. 3. Literature and photography—Great
Britain—History—19th century. 4. Literature and photography—
Great Britain—History—20th century. 5. English ªction—20th
century—History and criticism. I. Title.
pr878.r4a76 1999
823′.80912—dc21 99-35660
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
FOR MY PACK,
LEN AND MAUDE
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sections of Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 have appeared in different form in
the journals differences: A journal of feminism and Cultural Studies, Novel:
A Forum on Fiction, Narrative, and Modernism/Modernity, respectively. I
am grateful to the editors of those journals for permission to include
some of this material. Part of Chapter 2 began as a paper for the
English Institute in 1995 and appeared as a chapter in Human, All
Too Human (New York: Routledge, 1996) before assuming its present
form. Lindsay Waters and Mary Ellen Geer took excellent care of the
manuscript during its review and production, and Bill Rice expertly
reproduced many of the prints appearing in the book.
Over the years, a number of colleagues have shared their knowl-
edge of Victorian photography with me. Margaret Homans, Richard
Stein, and Andrew Szegedy-Maszek were especially generous in this
respect. I must also thank Richard Ohmann and Marie Irene
Ramalho de Sousa Santos for their unfaltering support of this project
over the years. It took me quite a while to realize that this project was
about realism, an old bone I had to pick with Lukács, and for letting
me test this insight I am particularly indebted to my graduate stu-
dents at Brown University. To Rey Chow’s coaxing I owe my ªrst clear
statement of what became an enabling conviction: that contrary to
modernism’s view of the Victorians as simple-minded imperialists,
the great novelists of the nineteenth century knew exactly what they
were doing when they presumed to show a mass readership what was
real. Ivan Kreilkamp helped me sift through nineteenth-century
vii
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
journals for the material substantiating this aspect of my argument.
My colleagues at Brown—especially Ellen Rooney, Pierre Saint-
Amand, and Elizabeth Weed—provided the standard to which I con-
sistently held my imaginary reader, while Len Tennenhouse gave
internal coherence and continuity in time to the various fragments of
this book and its author.
Oak Bluffs, 1999
Acknowledgments
viii
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
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CONTENTS
Introduction: What Is Real in Realism? / 1
1
The Prehistory of Realism / 32
2
The World as Image / 75
3
Foundational Photographs:
The Importance of Being Esther / 124
4
Race in the Age of Realism:
Heathcliff’s Obsolescence / 167
5
Sexuality in the Age of Racism: Hungry Alice / 201
6
Authenticity after Photography / 244
Notes / 279 Index / 332
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
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ILLUSTRATIONS
figure 1.1 View from Mr. Repton’s cottage, at Harrestreet, before it was
improved. Humphry Repton, Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape
Gardening (London, 1816). Reprinted in J. C. Loudon, The Landscape Gar-
dening and Landscape Architecture of the Late Humphry Repton, Esq. (London,
1840). / 64
figure 1.2 View from Mr. Repton’s cottage, at Harrestreet, as improved by
him. Humphry Repton, Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Garden-
ing (London, 1816). Reprinted in J. C. Loudon, The Landscape Gardening and
Landscape Architecture of the Late Humphry Repton, Esq. (London, 1840). / 65
figure 2.1 East Hill, Colchester (c. 1860). Gernsheim Collection, Harry
Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin. / 88
figure 2.2 Close No. 193, High Street. Thomas Annan, The Old Closes and
Streets of Glasgow (1868). / 92
figure 2.3 Bluegate Fields. Gustave Doré, A Pilgrimage (London, 1872). / 93
figure 2.4 A butcher’s shop (c. 1900). National Museum of Photography,
Film, and Television. / 97
figure 2.5 The Temperance Sweep (c. 1876). John Thomson. Courtesy of
George Eastman House. / 99
figure 2.6 The Crawlers (1876). John Thomson. Courtesy of George East-
man House. / 100
figure 2.7 Loading up at Billingsgate Market, Cutout Figure (c. 1894). Paul
Martin. Gernsheim Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center,
The University of Texas at Austin. / 101
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College