Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics, 1716-1818

321 Pages·1995·20.62 MB·English

by  Elizabeth A. Bohls

British readers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
turies eagerly consumed books of travels in an age of imperial
expansion that was also the formative period of modern
aesthetics. Beauty, sublimity, sensuous surfaces, and scenic
views became conventions of travel writing as Britons applied
familiar terms to unfamiliar places around the globe. The
social logic of aesthetics, argues Elizabeth Bohls, constructed
women, the laboring classes, and non-Europeans as foils
against which to define the "man of taste" as an educated,
property-owning gentleman. Women writers from Mary
Wortley Montagu to Mary Shelley resisted this exclusion from
gentlemanly privilege, and their writings re-examine and
question aesthetic conventions such as the concept of disinter-
ested contemplation, subtly but insistently exposing its vested
interests. Bohls's study expands our awareness of women's
intellectual presence in Romantic literature, and suggests
Romanticism's sources might be at the peripheries of empire
rather than at its center.

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM 13
WOMEN TRAVEL WRITERS AND
THE LANGUAGE OF AESTHETICS,
1716-1818
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM
General Editors
Professor Marilyn Butler Professor James Chandler
University of Oxford University of Chicago
Editorial Board
John Barrell, University of York Paul Hamilton, University of Southampton
Mary Jacobus, Cornell University Kenneth Johnston, Indiana University
Alan Liu, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jerome McGann, University of Virginia
David Simpson, University of Colorado
This series aims to foster the best new work in one of the most challeng-
ing fields within English literary studies. From the early 1780s to the early
1830s a formidable array of talented men and women took to literary
composition, not just in poetry, which some of them famously trans-
formed, but in many modes of writing. The expansion of publishing cre-
ated new opportunities for writers, and the political stakes of what they
wrote were raised again and again by what Wordsworth called those
"great national events" that were "almost daily taking place": the French
Revolution, the Napoleonic and American wars, urbanization, industrial-
ization, religious revival, and expanded empire abroad and the reform
movement at home. This was a literature of enormous ambition, even
when it pretended otherwise. The relations between science, philosophy,
religion, and literature were reworked in texts such as Frankenstein and
Biographia Literaria; gender relations in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
and Don Juan; journalism by Cobbett and Hazlitt; poetic form, content
and style by the Lake School and the Cockney School. Outside
Shakespeare studies, probably no body of writing has produced such a
wealth of response or done so much to shape the responses of modern
criticism. This indeed is the period that saw the emergence of those
notions of "literature" and of literary history, especially national literary
history, on which modern scholarship in English has been founded.
The categories produced by Romanticism have also been challenged by
recent historicist arguments. The task of the series is to engage both with
a challenging corpus of Romantic writings and with the changing field of
criticism they have helped to shape. As with other literary series pub-
lished by Cambridge, this one will represent the work of both younger
and more established scholars, on either side of the Atlantic and else-
where.
For a list of titles published in the series, see back of book.
WOMEN TRAVEL WRITERS
AND THE LANGUAGE
OF AESTHETICS,
1716-1818
ELIZABETH A. BOHLS
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge GB2 IRP
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia
© Cambridge University Press 1995
First published 1995
Reprinted 1996, 1997, 1999
Printed in Great Britain by Woolnough Bookbinders Ltd, Irthlingborough, Northants.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data
Bohls, Elizabeth A.
Women travel writers and the language of aesthetics, 1716-1818 / Elizabeth A. Bohls.
p. cm. - (Cambridge studies in Romanticism: 13)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN o 521 47458 2 (hardback)
1. Travelers' writings, English - Women authors - History and criticism.
2. Women travelers - Great Britain - Biography - History and criticism.
3. English prose literature - 18th century - History and criticism. 4. English prose
literature - 19th century - History and criticism. 5. Women and literature - Great Britain
- History - 18th century. 6. Women and literature - Great Britain - History - 19th
century. 7. Aesthetics, British - 18th century. 8. Aesthetics, British - 19th century.
9. Landscape in literature. 10. English language - Style. I. Title. II. Series.
PR778.T72B64 1995
910.4^082 - dc20 95-43861 CIP
ISBN o 521 47458 2 hardback
Contents
List of illustrations page viii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction i
1 Aesthetics and Orientalism in Mary Wortley Montagu's 23
letters
2 Janet Schaw and the aesthetics of colonialism 46
3 Landscape aesthetics and the paradox of the female 66
picturesque
4 Helen Maria Williams' revolutionary landscapes 108
5 Mary Wollstonecraft's anti-aesthetics 140
6 Dorothy Wordsworth and the cultural politics of scenic 170
tourism
7 The picturesque and the female sublime in 209
Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho
8 Aesthetics, gender, and empire in Mary Shelley's 230
Frankenstein
Notes 246
Select bibliography 291
Index 306
Vll
Illustrations
1 Richard Earcom after Johann Zoffany, page 4
"The Founding Members of the Royal Academy," 1768.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London/Art Resource,
New York.
2 Titian, "Danae." Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, 32
Naples. Alinari/Art Resource, New York.
3 Raphael, "The Three Graces." Musee Conde, 33
Chantilly, France. Giraudon/Art Resource, New York.
4 Ingres, "The Turkish Bath." Louvre, Paris. 34
Giraudon/Art Resource, New York.
5 Charles Jervas, "Lady at the Clavicytherium." 43
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
6 J. Taylor, "Fences Called Invisible," in 84
Humphrey Repton, Fragments on the Theory
and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816). Rare
Book Collection, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
7 S. Alken, aquatint, "Corfe Castle," in William Maton, 98
Observations relative chiefly to the Natural History,
Picturesque Scenery, and Antiquities of the Western Counties
of England made in the years ijg4 and ijg6 (1797). Rare Book
Collection, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
8 J. B. Cipriani del., F. Bartolozzi sculp., "A view 194
of the Indians of Tierra del Fuego in their Hut,"
in John Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages
Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty for Making
Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere (1773). Rare Book
Collection, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Vlll
Acknowledgments
Many people have generously contributed to the making of this
book. I wish to thank those who have read and responded to parts
of the text, including Amanda Anderson, Susan Z. Andrade, Nina
Baym, John Bender, Bliss Carnochan, Greg Colomb, Syndy
McMillen Conger, John Dussinger, Allen Hance, Nely Keinanen,
Harry Liebersohn, Deidre Lynch, Janet Lyon, Paul Mattick, Jr.,
Paula McDowell, Carol Thomas Neely, Clifford Siskin, Jack
Stillinger, Zohreh T. Sullivan, David Wellbery, and members of
the University of Illinois History Department Cultural Studies
reading group. I am grateful to Margaret Bohls, Marilyn Booth,
Ramona Curry, Amy Farmer, Sonya Michel, Jane Sherwood, and
Charles Wright for specific references, and to my students, espe-
cially the members of English 297 and 427 (Fall 1990) and English
463 (Fall 1993), for stimulating discussions. Terry Burke, Leon
Chai, Alma Gottlieb and Philip Graham, Charles Kimball,
Jonathan Lamb, Bob Markley, Paula McDowell, Robert Dale
Parker, Nancy Roberts, Cliff Siskin, and Zohreh T. Sullivan gave
me advice and support at crucial moments and over the long haul.
Terry Castle's teaching and scholarship first inspired me to study
the eighteenth century, and she encouraged this project in its early
stages. I owe another major intellectual debt to John Bender, an
astute and dependable mentor. Bliss Carnochan's patient and gen-
erous guidance helped me through graduate school and beyond,
earning my deepest gratitude. The University of Illinois English
Department, in particular its Head, Richard P. Wheeler, Associate
Head Jan Hinely, and Business Manager Rene Wahlfeldt, provided
support and assistance of many kinds; the Campus Research Board
and the Program for the Study of Cultural Values and Ethics at the
University of Illinois provided released time and fellowship sup-
port. Kurt Austin's help in checking references was invaluable, as