Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century

375 Pages·2000·19.95 MB·English

by  John Kucich

V i c t o r i an
a f t e r l i fe
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John Kucich and Dianne F. Sadoff, Editors
V i c t o r i an
V i c t o r i a n a f t e r l i f e
a f t e r l i fe
Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century
University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis / London
Lines from "A Postcard from the Volcano," by Wallace Stevens, from The Palm at
the End of the Mind, edited by Holly Stevens (New York: Vintage Books, 1972),
page 127, are reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright 2000 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
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Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Victorian afterlife : postmodern culture rewrites the nineteenth century /
John Kucich and Dianne F. Sadoff, editors,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8166-3323-1 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-8166-3324-X (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. English literature—19th century—History and criticism—Theory, etc.
2. Literature and history—Great Britain—History—19th century. 3. Literature
and history—Great Britain—History—20th century. 4. Great Britain—
History—Victoria, 1837-1901—Historiography. 5. English fiction—Film
and video adaptations. 6. Great Britain—Civilization—19th century.
7. Great Britain—Civilization—20th century. 8. Postmodernism.
I. Kucich, John. II. Sadoff, Dianne F. III. Title.
PR461 .V5 2000
820.9'008—dc21
00-008492
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
We approach the final stage in the conditions of historical learning.
Lord Acton, Lectures on Modern History (1895)
One of the most popular genital piercings today, the Prince Albert—in
which a ring is inserted through the urethra and out the underside of the
head of the penis—is named after Queen Victoria's consort. The prince
reportedly got the piercing to tether his penis to his leg, in order to fit into
the tight pants that were the fashion of the day.
Marilee Strong, A Bright Red Scream:
Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain (1998)
The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.
Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, by Oscar Wilde (1890)
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contents
Introduction
Histories of the Present
Dianne F. Sadoff and John Kucich ix
myst if i cations
Modernity and Culture, the Victorians and Cultural Studies
John McGowan 3
At Home in the Nineteenth Century: Photography, Nostalgia,
and the Will to Authenticity
Jennifer Green-Lewis 29
The Uses and Misuses of Oscar Wilde
Shelton Waldrep 49
Being True to Jane Austen
Mary A. Favret 64
A Twentieth-Century Portrait: Jane Campion's American Girl
Susan Lurie 83
Display Cases
Judith Roof 101
engagements
Found Drowned: The Irish Atlantic
Ian Baucom 125
The Embarrassment of Victorianism: Colonial Subjects and the
Lure of Englishness
Simon Gikandi 157
Hacking the Nineteenth Century
Jay Clayton 186
Queen Victoria and Me
Laurie Langbauer 211
Sorting, Morphing, and Mourning: A. S. Byatt Ghostwrites
Victorian Fiction
Hilary M.Schor 234
Asking Alice: Victorian and Other Alices in Contemporary
Culture
Kali Israel 252
Specters of the Novel: Draculaand the Cinematic Afterlife of
the Victorian Novel
Ronald R.Thomas 288
Postscript
Contemporary Culturalism: How Victorian Is It?
Nancy Armstrong 311
Contributors 327
Index 331
Introduction
Histories of the Present
Dianne F. Sadoff and John Kucich
A scene from Clueless, Amy Heckerling's campy 1995 film version of Emma,
handily identifies the crisis of postmodern historiography that Victorian
Afterliaddresses. From the backseat of a car, Cher watches Josh and his intel-
lectual poseur girlfriend critique their university creative-writing class. "Like
Hamlet said," the long-haired, beret-wearing girlfriend proclaims, "to thine
own self be true." Cher pipes up: "[Hamlet] didn't say that. That Polonius
guy did." Girl laughs: "I think I remember Hamlet accurately"; Cher: "Well,
I remember Mel Gibson accurately."1 Tongue in cheek, Clueless follows Cher
in undoing literary history and placing twentieth-century cultural icons in
the position of textual originals. Heckerling's allegorical scene, in which the
19905 meet the 19505, flaunts a manic historical insouciance, like Cher's, that
foregrounds the dysfunctions of cultural memory in the construction of post-
modern identity. What leverage does the concept of periodization provide for
cultural self-awareness in this film? Heckerling suspends the question by
charming us with a heroine who has no sense of history at all. Named after a
"great singer . . . of the past who now does infomercials," Cher lives in a
Beverly Hills mansion with pillars that date "all the way back from 1972";
when asked if she likes Billie Holliday, Cher replies, with a teasing glance at
the camera, "I love him." Heckerling speaks to and seemingly for Cher's
contemporaries in her audience, who presumably have no sense of how a
historical moment represents itself to itself. At the same time, Heckerling
trumps such ignorance by burying within her film enigmatic "clues" about
ix