VISUALITY IN NINETEENTH CENTURY BRITISH REALISM by AMANDA L. CORNWALL A ...

219 Pages·2015·4.86 MB·English

THE TENSION OF THE REAL: VISUALITY IN
NINETEENTH CENTURY BRITISH REALISM

by

AMANDA L. CORNWALL

A DISSERTATION

Presented to the Department of Comparative Literature
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

June 2015
DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE

Student: Amanda L. Cornwall

Title: The Tension of the Real: Visuality in Nineteenth Century British Realism

This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Comparative
Literature by:

Professor Forest Pyle Chairperson
Professor Kenneth Calhoon Core Member
Assistant Professor Heidi Kaufman Core Member
Associate Professor Martin Klebes Institutional Representative

and

Professor Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School

Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School.

Degree awarded June 2015
ii
© 2015 Amanda L. Cornwall
iii
DISSERTATION ABSTRACT

Amanda L. Cornwall

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Comparative Literature

June 2015

Title: The Tension of the Real: Visuality in Nineteenth Century British Realism

This dissertation begins from the problem that is built into realism as a literary
genre: its commitment to capturing the unfiltered circumstances of human life will
always be at odds with the artifice of its representational constructs and its fiction. In this
study, I consider visuality as a central, productive part of this problem and seek intensely
visual moments within realist novels where realism wages its own struggle with itself as
it attempts to navigate its limitations and push forward its possibilities. These moments
pause the narrative as they prioritize picture over action. As descriptive moments work to
render visual images through words on the printed page, they are fraught with realism’s
struggle to use the artifice of fiction as a means for approximating an ostensible reality.
Facing this difficulty, realist practitioners take up vastly different strategies. In this
project, I investigate why and how visuality is deployed so differently by those who
chose to write in this mode.
I seek that which is piercing in the nineteenth-century realist novel by locating
moments of crisis and tension, both within the plot and also within the strategies of the
stories’ delivery. These are moments where the novel becomes troubled by the visual,
revealing the potential and limit of the image. In realism, visuality encompasses a broad
and varied array of strategies, including instances of enargeia and ekphrasis, passages that
iv
seek to evoke a sense of place or milieu through a rich catalog of visual detail, expressive
self-renderings in the dialog and inner monologs of the characters, explorations of the
embodied act of seeing, and moments where perception fails or visual description
exposes itself as insufficient. I consider a small group of canonical authors: George Eliot,
Thomas Hardy, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad, who are of critical importance to this
genre and to nineteenth century realism, as it moves towards modernism. By examining
moments in their novels where descriptive imagery is at its most acute, I seek to explain
how moments of intense visuality are crucial nodes where each author, using unique and
distinctive methods, negotiates the problem of realist representation.

v
CURRICULUM VITAE

NAME OF AUTHOR: Amanda L. Cornwall

GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:

University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
Emerson College, Boston, MA
Rockport College, Rockport, ME
Willamette University, Salem, OR

DEGREES AWARDED:

Doctor of Philosophy, Comparative Literature, 2015, University of Oregon
Master of Arts, Writing and Publishing, 2003, Emerson College
Bachelor of Fine Arts, English, 1997, Willamette University

AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:

Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Novel
Nineteenth-Century Fine Art
Visual studies
History of Photography

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of Comparative Literature, 2006-2015

vi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my advisor, Professor Tres Pyle, for his patience and
invaluable guidance throughout this project. Professor Kenneth Calhoon has been an
essential mentor to me throughout my years at the University of Oregon, and I feel
extremely fortunate to be a part of the community that he leads, with great wisdom,
equity, and foresight, in the Department of Comparative Literature. I am thankful for the
gracious support of Professor Heidi Kaufman and Professor Martin Klebes, who I am
very honored to have had as members of my dissertation committee. Professor Lisa
Freinkel has provided unfailing encouragement and wisdom from the very first, and
Professor Leah Middlebrook’s generously shared perspectives, especially regarding
pedagogy, influence every part of my professional identity. It has been a privilege to be
guided by Professor Richard Stein and Professor Michael Allan. Cynthia Stockwell’s
impeccable attention to detail, far-sighted organizational maneuvers, deep kindness, and
boundless enthusiasm are gifts that make so much possible; she is irreplaceable. Thanks
are especially due to my extraordinary friends: Ying Xiong, Jenny Odintz, Monica Zikpi,
Chet Liesecki, Baran Germen, Mona Tougas, Anna-Lisa Baumeister, Susi Gomez,
Ahmad Nadalizadeh, Amy Leggette, Corey Borgman, Yelena Ablaeva, Ryan Hull, Dora
Parys, Jennifer Faust, Katy Phillips, and Sándor Paulay. Craig Nicholas, Noemi Razso
and Kristy (and Ray and Linda) Thompson are at this point not friends but family, and I
thank them along with my wonderful family: J.C. Milne, Victoria Milne, Emily McCobb,
and Cody and Fiona Byrne. I would like to thank the fairy godparents of this project,
Kara Barnette and Andrew Grace, the Ninja and the Butterfly, who have helped me more
than they know. Finally, I gratefully remember the faith and luminous positivity of
vii
Lauren Shannon Cornwall, (1987-1997), who always believed that one day I would
achieve this goal.

viii
For my mother,
Vicki Howie Cornwall

ix
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page

I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1
Visuality and the Problem of Realism ................................................................... 6
The Image in Context ............................................................................................. 8

II. “STRAINING TOWARDS THAT PICTURE”: THE AGENCY OF THE
IMAGE IN GEORGE ELIOT’S MIDDLEMARCH .............................................. 21

III. THOMAS HARDY AND THE CONSTRAINT OF VISION .............................. 59
The Marygreen Well: Jude’s Vision from the Depths ........................................... 59
Marlott and the Vale of Blackmoor: Tess’s Constrained Horizons ....................... 61
The Constraint of Vision ........................................................................................ 63
Tess’s Blighted Star.............................................................................................. 65
Jude and “the Grind of Stern Reality” ................................................................... 90

IV. RENDERING ISABEL ARCHER: HENRY JAMES’S THE PORTRAIT OF
A LADY .................................................................................................................. 99
Enter Isabel ............................................................................................................ 102
Henry James’ Realism............................................................................................. 105
Isabel Reconsidered................................................................................................. 114
Literary Portraiture and Ekphrasis.......................................................................... 123

x