The Power of Lies. Transgression in Victorian Fiction PDF
Preview The Power of Lies. Transgression in Victorian Fiction
LIES or ~wr jgr §L 1 o ran stress urn 1 o ictoriaM Si V John Kroic ir Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from The Arcadia Fund https://archive.org/details/powerofliestransOOkuci The Power of Lies Also by John Kucich Excess and Restraint in the Novels of Charles Dickens Repression in Victorian Fiction: Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Charles Dickens The Power of Lies Transgression in Victorian Fiction W John Kucich CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London uni/ 3 < m Copyright © 1994 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1994 by Cornell University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kucich, John. The power of lies : transgression in Victorian fiction / John Kucich. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8014-2842-4 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 0-8014-8089-2 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. English fiction—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Truthfulness and falsehood in literature. I. Title. PR878.T78K83 1994 823'.809353—dc20 94-11987 Printed in the United States of America © The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 PART I The Boundaries of Bourgeois Culture 1. Trollope and the Antibourgeois Elite 41 2. Competitive Elites in Wilkie Collins: Cultural Intellectuals and Their Professional Others 75 PART II Sexual Inversion 3. Lying and Impulsiveness in Elizabeth Gaskell 121 4. The Professional and the Mother: Moral Disempowerment in East Lynne 158 PART III Transgression in Late-Victorian Fiction 5. Moral Authority in Hardy’s Late Novels: The Gendering of Art 199 6. Feminism’s Ethical Contradictions: Sarah Grand and New Woman Writing 239 Afterword 280 Index 285 Acknowledgments M y education in lying has been advanced by a great many people, in both private and professional life—people whose exemplary mendacity has been far more enlighten¬ ing for me than academic study. At the risk of appearing overeamest, I will respect taboos and leave all these most important of mentors nameless. In purely scholarly terms, I am indebted to John McGowan, more than to anyone else, for his advice at crucial stages of this project. His comments on both the first chapter I wrote and on the Introduc¬ tion—as well as his friendship and intellectual support over the past twenty years—have been invaluable. It has been my great good fortune to be on the same wavelength with someone so generous with his time and ideas. Many others have given me detailed commentary on sections of the manuscript. Individual chapters have been carefully read and improved by Margaret Higonnet, J. Hillis Miller, Dianne Sadoff, Paul Sawyer, Bob Super, and Martha Vicinus. Comprehensive read¬ ings have come from Ina Ferris, David Riede, and Harry Shaw. I am grateful as well to those who read various parts of the book and lent me their encouragement, especially James Eli Adams, Austin Booth, Jerome Bump, Bob Caserio, Sheila Emerson, Jonathan Freedman, viii Acknowledgments Wendy Jones, Kerry Larson, Joseph Litvak, Erin O’Connor, Adela Pinch, Hilary Schor, and Athena Vrettos. I also received special help and advice at the outset from Nancy Armstrong, Patrick Brantlinger, and George Levine. Both Charles Baxter (who alerted me to, among other things, Napoleon’s famous “perfidious Ah bion!”—a phrase I could never figure out how to use until now) and Anne Herrmann helped me considerably without even knowing it, by being stimulating and supportive in many different ways. My debt to a number of anonymous readers at various journals, whose insightful reports guided me in the revision of early drafts, is also very deep. On the technical side, Austin Booth made my work much easier with her expert research assistance and a steady flow of reliable advice. The librarians at the Bath Reference Library made a short stay immensely useful, and I had a great deal of help from the staffs of the British Library and the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library in Ann Arbor. I also thank the University of Michigan, in general, and Bob Weisbuch, in particular, for research funding and precious leave time. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has my eternal gratitude for the yearlong Fellowship that enabled me to get the project started. No one, however, has given me more unwavering support (both intellectual and emotional) during the writing of this book than Katie Marien, and I hope she thinks—at least occasionally—that it was all worth it. Some day I’ll have the courage to ask her, since, over the years, I’ve found that I could always count on her for the truth. Finally, I thank Melody Pentz—the physical therapist with an answer for everything—whose boundless creativity and responsive^ ness kept me sane enough, during a very difficult time in my life, to keep working. W Permission has been granted by the Johns Hopkins University Press to reprint revised portions of an earlier version of Chapter 1, which appeared as “Transgression in Trollope: Dishonesty and the Antibourgeous Elite,” ELH 56 (1989), 593-618. The University of Texas Press has granted permission to reprint revised portions of an
The list of books you might like
