Jolene Zigarovich - Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel

Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel

Jolene Zigarovich

PENN

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

PHILADELPHIA

Copyright 2023 University of Pennsylvania Press

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10987654321

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ISBN 978-1-512-82377-6 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-512-82378-3 (Ebook)

In loving memory of Mabeth (Dolly) Bamberger

. Undertaker William Clarks trade card (c. 1739).

. Joseph Highmore, from Mr B. Finds Pamela Writing (17431744).

. Thomas Gainsborough, Maria Walpole, Countess of Waldegrave (c. 1763).

. George Bickham the Elder (c. 16841758), Death is the End of all Men (c. 1721).

. Prince George urn, King Henry VII Chapel, Westminster Abbey (c. 1737).

. Francis Douce Mausoleum, Lower Wallop, Hampshire (c. 1748).

. William Hogarth, Gin Lane (c. 1751).

. Heart urn, Sir Nicholas Crisp (d. 1666).

. William Hogarth, Sigismunda Mourning over the Heart of Guiscardo (1759).

. Title page, English translation of Philbert Guyberts The charitable physitian with the Charitable apothecary (1639).

. Title page, Thomas Greenhills Nekpokhdeia: or, The Art of Embalming (1705).

. Sir Joshua Reynolds, William Hunter (c. 1787).

. Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Hunter (c. 1786).

. Title page, John Cranch, Narrative relating to the real embalmed head of Oliver Cromwell, now exhibiting in Mead-Court, in Old Bond-Street (1799).

. Wax anatomical model, La Specola, Florence (c. 17811786).

. Frontispiece to the descriptive inventory of Mr. Coxs Museum (c. 1774).

. Michael Henry Spang, corch figure in wax (c. 1761).

. Wax death mask, Charles Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury (c. 1718).

. Catherine Andras, Lord Nelson (c. 1806).

. Ticket for the funeral of Lord Nelson with wax mourning seal (c. 1806).

. Johann Zoffany, Mrs. Salusbury in widows weeds, with her spaniel Belle (c. 1765).

. Wax effigy, William III (d. 1702).

. Wax effigy, Edmund Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham (d. 1721).

. Christopher Curtius, The Death of Voltaire (c. 17601795).

. Trade card, Norris Junior, Jeweller (c. 1780).

. Mourning locket, Countess Dowager of Home (c. 1784).

. Hair bracelet with portrait of Constantine Phipps (c. 1770), John Smart, jeweler.

. Mourning ring (c. 1784), engraved gold with hair, late eighteenth century.

. Trade card of Richard Middleton, coffin maker and undertaker (c. 17601818).

. Mourning locket (c. 1775), Charlotte at the Tomb of Werther.

. Joseph Severn, John Keats (c. 1818).

. Mourning buckle (c. 1725).

. Toothpick case (c. 1780).

. William Marshall Craig, Maria, Duchess of Gloucester (c. 18001827).

. Trade card of William Graham, Ivory Bone Hardwood Turner & Worker (second quarter of nineteenth century).

. Princess Charlotte of Wales tortoiseshell gold-mounted snuffbox (c. 1799).

. Georgian ivory toothpick case (c. 1819).

. Richard Cosway, Margaret Cocks, later Margaret Smith (c. 1787).

. Richard Cosway, portrait miniature of Margaret Cocks, mourning her sisters remains (c. 1787).

. William Cheseldens Osteographia, or the Anatomy of the Bones (1733).

. Trade card, skeleton dealer Nath Longbottom (c. 1750).

. Charles Byrnes skeleton (d. 1783; c. 2017).

. Laurence Sternes skull (d. 1768; c. 1998).

If one were to compile a list of British eighteenth-century novels in which the protagonist has an extended, sentimental deathbed scene it would include fewsuch as The Man of Feeling (1771) and Tristram Shandy (1759)especially when compared to a list of nineteenth-century novels. The heroines in Frances Burneys and Ann Radcliffes novels all survive their exploits and travails, and Jane Austens novels, for further example, do not include the death of a major character. In fact, one novel seems to have such a cultural purchase on the good death in the period that it drains the impact of subsequent death scenes in fiction, even spawning parodies and satires. Surely, this would be Samuel Richardsons Clarissa (17471748). Numerous death scenes in eighteenth-century fiction are actually off-scene, or prior to the novels plotting. As with Henry Fieldings Tom Jones (1749), Frances Burneys Evelina (1778), and Charlotte Turner Smiths Emmeline (1788), the period is littered with novels centered on orphans who have experienced the loss of their parents before the novels opening pages. (Though some, such as Tom and Evelina, journey to discover their true parentage and that at least one parent is still living.) While this book isnt a study of deathbed scenes, it seeks to excavate the import of death and the body in fiction and, in particular, to demonstrate the power of fleshly artifacts and secular memorials previous to and often quite distinct from a Victorian cult of mourning. Without extensive deathbed and funeral scenes, these are often embedded in fiction and have received relatively minimal critical attention. To provide a material framework and narrative, each of my subsequent chapters commences with scenes from Richardsons Clarissa that depict literal and rhetorical relics of death: wax, heart, skin, bone, bowel, hair. With this, I argue that as science sought to expose the mysteries of the body in the Enlightenment, the corpse became an emotionally valuable, cherished relic in fiction. And as anatomists dissected, undertakers preserved, jewelers encased, and artists figured the corpse, so too the novelist portrayed bodily artifacts. My larger aim is to demonstrate the eighteenth centurys growing acceptance of contact with human remains in a post-Reformation, Enlightenment culture, an aesthetic practice largely ignored in criticism and that I claim is, amber-like, immortalized in eighteenth-century fiction.

Why are these morbid forms of materiality entombed in the novel? This book attempts to address this complex question. Foremost, it suggests that the body itselfits parts, or its preserved representationfunctions as a secular memento, and it suggests that preserved remains became symbols of individuality and subjectivity. Therefore this project compels us to reassess the eighteenth-century representation of and response to the dead and dead-like body, and its material purpose and use in fiction.

While there are lengthy death studies of the Medieval, Early Modern, and Victorian eras, death in eighteenth-century Britain has not received the same attention. The last three decades have provided noteworthy surveys of English death, such as the work of Ralph Houlbrooke, Ruth Richardson, Esther Schor, Clare Gittings, Peter C. Jupp, Nigel Llewellyn, and Julian Litten, along with historian Paul S. Fritzs work on the eighteenth-century funeral and undertaking trade. But a dedicated volume of the history of death in the eighteenth century is sorely lacking. It is for this reason that historical facts concerning funerary practices and the understanding of this cultures overall relationship with mortality are only beginning to be compiled and assessed. I remedy this critical neglect in part by foregrounding the political work and materiality of dead bodies and uncovering the ways in which fiction embeds cultural attitudes toward death and dying. Scholars such as Elisabeth Bronfen (