Animal bodies: Corporeality, class, and subject formation in The Wide, Wide World

Nineteenth-Century Literature

Volumn 54, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 503-533

  Mason, Jennifer ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949966963     PISSN: 08919356     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2903015     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870 1820-1870 (Ith-aca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1978), p. 141
2. Readings of horses and horsemanship figure prominently in Joanne Dobson, Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Women's Novels "The Hidden Hand: Subversion of Cultural Ideology in Three Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Women's Novels," American Quarterly, 38 (1986), 223-42
3. G. M. Goshgarian, To Kiss the Chastening Rod: Domestic Fiction and Sexual American Renaissance Ideology in the American Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1992), pp. 76-120
4. Catharine O'Connell, "'We Must Sorrow': Silence, Suffering, and Sentimentality in Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World," Studies in American Fiction, 25 (1997), 21-39
5. and Marianne Noble, "An Ecstasy of Apprehension: The Gothic Pleasures of Sentimental Fiction," in American Gothic: New Interventions in a National Narrative, ed. Robert K. Martin and Eric Savoy (Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1998), pp. 163-82
6. See also Mary P. Hiatt, "Susan Warner's Subtext: The Other Side of Piety," Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 8 (1987), 257
7. Jane Tompkins, "Afterword" to The Wide, Wide World by Susan Warner, ed. Tompkins (New York: Feminist Press, 1987), p. 600
8. Isabelle White, "Anti-Individualism, Authority, and Identity-Susan in The Wide, Wide World Warner's Contradictions in The Wide, Wide World," American Studies, 31, no. 2 (1990), 33
9. Susan S. Williams, "Widening the World: Susan Warner, Her Readers, Authorship and the Assumption of Authorship," American Quarterly, 42 (1990), 572
10. and Erica R. Bauermeister, "The Lamplighter, The Wide, Wide World, Recipes for Nineteenth-Century American Women's Novels and Hope Leslie. Reconsidering the Recipes for Nineteenth-Century American Women's Novels," Legacy, 8 (1991), 22
11. The phrase is Isabelle White's (see "Anti-Individualism, Authority, and Identity," P. 33
12. In her afterword Tompkins explains the novel as "a kind of bildungsroman in reverse and claims that the ideal to which the novel educates its heroine and its readers is the opposite of self-development and self-realization bildungsroman in reverse" and claims that "the ideal to which the novel educates its heroine and its readers is the opposite of self-development and self-realization, it is to become empty of self" (p. 598). According to O'Connell, "There is fundamental narrative tension between the sentimental construction of Ellen Montgomery's subjectivity through her passionate emotional life and the directive from every authority figure in the novel to abandon her sense of self and live for the will of others" (p. 24). Even though O'Connell suggests that Ellen does achieve subjectivity through her expression of her suffering, her essay rings with nostalgia and lament for a former, untamed, and unoppressed self. These assumptions about subject formation infuse a range of Warner criticism, reaching an apex perhaps in Veronica Stewart's "The Wild Side of The Wide, Wilde World," Legacy, 11 (1994), 1-16, in which Stewart argues that "Nancy, as trickster, specifically as Ellen's suppressed nature, reveals the heroine's internalized predisposition to escape oppressive social conventions by tapping a sense of connection with nature's beauty" (p. 7)
13. Williams uses this term as she summarizes critical consensus on John Humphreys. p Humphreys. See Williams, "Widening the World," p. 572
14. See Hiatt, p. 257
15. Dobson, pp. 227, 231-32
16. Goshgarian, pp. 104-11
17. O'Connell, pp. 29-33
18. and Noble, pp. 174-78
19. O'Connell succinctly explains how central a negative evaluation of John is to the argument that Warner opposed domestic ideology. The Wide, Wide World, she writes, "undercuts its own endorsement of female submission by subtly rendering grotesque the moral features of its primary patriarchal authority figure, John Humphreys" (p. 22); "The delegitimation of John Humphreys is crucial to the novel's validation of Ellen's perspective and experience. . . . if the novel is seen as depicting his control as right and good, then the ending appears definitively to settle all questions of appropriate female behavior" (p. 29)
20. For a discussion of class (but not horsemanship) in The Wide, Wide World, Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America see Richard H. Brodhead, "Sparing the Rod: Discipline and Fiction in Antebellum America," in his Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 13-47
21. Thomas Blundeville, The Arte of Ryding and Breakinge Greate Horses (London, 1560; rpt. New York: Da Capo Press, 1969) Book 3, Cir-v
22. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), pp. 3-6
23. The Art of Riding, Set Foorth in a Breefe Treatise. . . (London: Henrie Denham, 1584; rpt. New York: Da Capo Press, 1968), p. 6
24. For examples in Shakespeare's poetry of the paralleling of horse/human passion on the one hand and horseman/restraining reason on the other, Venus and Adonis, 11. 390-400, and sonnets 50 and 51 . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ,709-10, 1,758. passion on the one hand and horseman/restraining reason on the other, see Venus and Adonis, 11. 390-400, and sonnets 50 and 51, in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), pp. 1,709-10, 1,758
25. See Stephen Bucliansky, The Nature of Horses: Exploring Equine Evolution, Behavior Intelligence, and Behavior (New York: Free Press, 1997), pp. 61-74
26. Charles Chenevix Trench, A History of Horsemanship (Garden City, N.V.: Double-day, 1970), p. 101
27. See Vladimir S. Littauer, Horseman's Progress: The Development of Modern Riding, ed. Eugene V. Connett (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1962), p. 42
28. Writers offered instruction to gentlemen on horsemanship both in books devoted exclusively to riding , London: J. C. for Richard Smith,); devoted exclusively to riding - such as Markham Gervase's A Discource of Horsemanshippe (London: J. C. for Richard Smith, 1593)
29. and Nicholas Morgan's The Perfection of Horsemanship, Drawne from Nature, Arte, and Practise (London: E. A. for Ed. White, 1606)
30. - and in more general works, such as Georges Guillet de Saint-Georges's The Gentleman's Dictionary (London: H. Bonwicke, 1705)
31. and Richard Blome's The Gentleman's Recreation (London: S. Roycroft, 1686)
32. Hope, quoted in Littauer, p. 32
33. The History and Art of Horsemanship, 2 Vols. (London: Printed for T. Davies, 1771), II, 19
34. A. H. Rockwell, The Improved and Practical System of Educating the Horse (New York: Fisher, 1872), pp. 6, 52
35. The Tribune reporter's remarks are quoted by Rockwell, p. 11
36. Colonel J. C. Battersby, The Bridle Bits: A Treatise on Practical Horsemanship (New York: Orange Judd Co., 1886), pp. 138, 5
37. Anthony Dent, The Reign of the Horse: The Horse in Print, 1500-1715 (Washington, D.C.: Folger Library Publications, 1991), p. 8
38. See Thomas Wise, The Newest Young Man's Companion . . . , 13th ed. (London: J. and H.Taylor, 1782)
39. Harry Hieover [Charles Brindley], Practical Horsemanship (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1850), p. viii
40. See Lida Fleitmann Bloodgood, The Saddle of Queens: The Story of the Side-saddle (London:J. A. Allen, 1959), pp. 1-47
41. Susan Warner, The Wide, Wide World (1850; rpt. New York: The Feminist appear in the text. Press, 1987), p. 385. Further references to this work appear in the text
42. Home Fronts: Domesticity and Its Critics in the Antebellum United States (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1997), p. 46
43. The American Lady (Philadelphia: Hogan and Thompson, 1836), pp. 66-67
44. Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Principles of Domestic Home Colleges Science; As Applied to the Duties and Pleasures of Home. A Text-Book for the Use of Young Ladies in Schools, Seminaries, and Colleges (New York: J. B. Ford and Company, 1870), p. 222
45. As an advertisement printed in the back of Beecher and Stowe's 1869 The American Woman's Home (New York: J. B. Ford, 1869)
46. Ghislani Durant, Horse-back Riding, from a Medical Point of View (New York: Cassell, Petter and Galpin, 1878), p. 111
47. The American Horsewoman (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1884), p. v
48. The Young Horsewoman's Compendium of the Modern Art of Riding (London: James Ridgway, 1827), p. vi
49. The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual (London: Whitehead and Company, 1838), p. vii. p. vii
50. See [Mrs. J. Stirling Clarke,] "Hints on Equestrianism for the Fair Sex," Godey's Lady's Book, 37 (1848), 45-48; 108-9; 169-71; 240-41; 303-4; 361-62
51. See Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987), p. 8
52. My insistence on the decidedly corporeal dimension of Ellen's development marks another point of departure from Marianne Noble, whose reading of the novel is premised on the claim that domestic ideology called for an "erasure of the female corporeality" ("An Ecstacy of Apprehension," p. 166)
53. Alice Hayes, The Horsewoman: A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, ed. M. Horace Hayes (London: W. Thacker and Co., 1893), pp. 2, 185
54. Mrs. J. Stirling Clarke, The Habit and the Horse: A Treatise on Female Equitation (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1857), pp. 25-26
55. Many critics ignore Alice's speech; others, such as Catharine O'Connell, credible character witness (see). But is it within Alice's character to lie on any - or anyone's - account? Has Alice not proven herself both an accomplished horsewoman and a lover of animals - especially by her decision to save Captain Parry in the snowstorm, at risk to her own life? have charged that Alice's estimation of John disqualifies her as a credible character witness (see "'We Must Sorrow,'" pp. 30-31). But is it within Alice's character to lie on any - or anyone's - account? Has Alice not proven herself both an accomplished horsewoman and a lover of animals - especially by her decision to save Captain Parry in the snowstorm, at risk to her own life?
56. See Home Fronts, pp. 50-51
57. See Anna Sewell, The Annotated "Black Beauty, "ed. Ellen B. Wells and Anne Grim-shaw (London: J. A. Allen, 1989)
58. For an example of the argument that Ellen fails to keep herself right, see Gosh-garian, pp. 100-111
59. Romero quotes this passage as she argues that Stowe's use of domestic ideology as resistance was not a transcendence of power relations but rather an engagement with them (see Home Fronts, p. 87). ideology as resistance was not a transcendence of power relations but rather an engagement with them (see Home Fronts, p. 87)