Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1999–2009

336 Pages·2010·5.052 MB·English

by  Ann Heilmann, Mark Llewellyn (auth.)

Neo-Victorianism
Also by Ann Heilmann
FEMINIST FORERUNNERS
THE LATE-VICTORIAN MARRIAGE QUESTION
NEW WOMAN FICTION: Women Writing First Wave Feminism
NEW WOMAN HYBRIDITIES (co-edited with Margaret Beetham)
NEW WOMAN STRATEGIES: Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, Mona Caird
Also by Mark Llewellyn
CONFLICT AND DIFFERENCE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
(co-edited with Dinah Birch)
Also by Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn
THE COLLECTED SHORT STORIES OF GEORGE MOORE: Gender and Genre
METAFICTION AND METAHISTORY IN CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S WRITING
Neo-Victorianism
The Victorians in the Twenty-First
Century, 1999–2009
Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn
© Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn 2010
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-24113-8
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First published 2010 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-31685-4 ISBN 978-0-230-28169-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230281691
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10
In memory of Hazel Irene Van-Gasse, 1923–2009
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Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgements x
Introduction: Neo-Victorianism and Post-Authenticity:
On the Ethics and Aesthetics of Appropriation 1
1 History, literature, and criticism 8
2 N eo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the
twenty-first century 28
3 Going forward, looking backward 32
1 Memory, Mourning, Misfortune: Ancestral Houses
and (Literary) Inheritances 33
1.1 Meta-morphoses: Classical, (early)modern, and
neo-Victorian echoes in Wesley Stace’s Misfortune (2005) 37
1.2 ‘My mother not my mother; myself not myself’:
The mother (as) text in Sarah Blake’s
Grange House (2000) 41
1.3 ‘Tell me the truth’: Trauma, witnessing, and authorship
in Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale (2006) 47
1.4 ‘There was something unheimlich about it’:
Familial/textual legacies and spectral returns in
John Harwood’s The Ghost Writer (2004) 55
1.5 Conclusion 63
2 Race and Empire: Postcolonial Neo-Victorians 66
2.1 Hybridity and resistance in Amitav Ghosh’s
Sea of Poppies (2008) 70
2.2 Voices across borders: Laura Fish’s Strange Music (2008) 81
2.3 Orientalism and transculturalism: Ahdaf Soueif’s
The Map of Love (1999) and Kate Pullinger’s
The Mistress of Nothing (2009) 91
2.4 Conclusion 104
3 Sex and Science: Bodily and Textual (Re)Inscriptions 106
3.1 Scopophilia and paratextuality 110
3.2 Subaltern subversions: Jane Harris’s
The Observations (2006) 116
vii
viii Contents
3.3 Race, science, and the gaze: Barbara
Chase-Riboud’s Hottentot Venus (2003) 120
3.4 Reclaiming the (textual) body: Belinda Starling’s
The Journal of Dora Damage (2006) 131
3.5 Conclusion 140
4 Spectrality and S(p)ecularity: Some Reflections in the Glass 143
4.1 ‘[L]ights and shadows moving on the inside of
the windows’: Charles Palliser’s The Unburied
(1999) and Jem Poster’s Courting Shadows (2002) 150
4.2 ‘When Alice stepped through liquid glass’:
A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book (2009) 156
4.3 ‘A pure-Victorian half-made window’: Rachel Hore’s
The Glass Painter’s Daughter (2008) 163
4.4 ‘[T]here may be some truth in those tales’:
John Harwood’s The Séance (2008) 167
4.5 Conclusion 172
5 Doing It with Mirrors, or Tricks of the Trade: Neo-Victorian
Metatextual Magic 174
5.1 ‘Are you watching closely?’: Christopher Nolan’s
The Prestige (2006) 178
5.2 The conjuror in the closet: Sarah Waters’s Affinity (1999) 184
5.3 Simulation and consciousness: Mind travel in Scarlett
Thomas’s The End of Mr Y (2006) 190
5.4 Death, resurrection, and cinematography in
Neil Burger’s The Illusionist (2006) and Steven
Millhauser’s ‘Eisenheim the Illusionist’ (1990) 201
5.5 Conclusion 209
6 The Way We Adapt Now: or, the Neo-Victorian Theme Park 211
6.1 Victoriana World: TV, theme parks, and the object of
authenticity 213
6.2 ‘Memory fatigue’: The great (neo-)Victorian collection 220
6.3 From Lark Rise to Cranford and back again 226
6.4 ‘I’m not sure how much of a Dickensian I am really’:
The adaptive affinities of Andrew Davies 236
6.5 Conclusion 244
Notes 246
Bibliography 288
Index 311
List of Illustrations
2.1 John Frederick Lewis, The Reception (1873), oil on panel
© Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection,
USA / Paul Mellon Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library 101
2.2 John Frederick Lewis, The Siesta (1876) © Tate, London 2009 102
3.1 Paperback cover of Belinda Starling’s The Journal of Dora
Damage (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), reproduced by
permission of Bloomsbury Publishing 109
3.2 Hardback cover of Jane Harris’s The Observations
(London: Faber and Faber, 2006), reproduced by
permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. 112
3.3 (Paperback) jacket cover of Hottentot Venus by Barbara
Chase-Riboud (New York: Random House, 2003),
used by permission of Doubleday, a division of
Random House, Inc. 113
3.4 ‘Les Curieux en extase ou les Cordons de souliers’,
colour print showing Sarah Baartman ‘on show’ in
France. Original engraved by J. Hopner (1814?),
reproduced by permission of Museum Africa,
Johannesburg, South Africa (Museum Africa
Accession No. MA1974–625) 114
3.5 Frederick Christian Lewis, ‘Sartjee the Hottentot
Venus, Exhibition at No 225, Piccadilly’ (1811)
© The British Library Board (C.191.c16) 115
3.6 Venus Anatomica, Felice Fontana Workshop, Florence,
1780s, painted wax figure © The Semmelweis Museum,
Library and Archives of the History of Medicine,
Budapest, Hungary 137
5.1 Paperback cover of Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth
Tale (London: Orion, 2006), reproduced by
permission of the Orion Publishing Group 177
5.2 Paperback back cover of Diane Setterfield’s The
Thirteenth Tale (London: Orion, 2006), reproduced by
permission of the Orion Publishing Group 179
ix