The Victorian Novel of Adulthood. Rebecca Rainof

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      THE VICTORIAN NOVEL OF ADULTHOOD

      Series in Victorian Studies

      Joseph McLaughlin, series editor

      Katherine D. Harris, Forget Me Not: The Rise of the British Literary Annual, 1823–1835

      Rebecca Rainof, The Victorian Novel of Adulthood: Plot and Purgatory in Fictions of Maturity

      The Victorian Novel of Adulthood

      PLOT AND PURGATORY IN FICTIONS OF MATURITY

       Rebecca Rainof

      OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS • ATHENS, OHIO

      Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

       ohioswallow.com

      © 2015 by Ohio University Press

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      25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 5 4 3 2 1

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Rainof, Rebecca Elise, 1979–

      The Victorian novel of adulthood : plot and purgatory in fictions of maturity / Rebecca Rainof.

      pages cm. — (Series in Victorian studies)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-0-8214-2178-9 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8214-4538-9 (pdf)

      1. Adulthood in literature. 2. Middle age in literature. 3. English fiction—19th century—History and criticism. 4. English fiction—20th century—History and criticism. I. Title.

      PR878.A375R35 2015

      823'.809354—dc23

      2015022080

      ISBN 978-0-8214-4538-9 (e-book)

      This book is dedicated to my family with love.

       Contents

       List of Illustrations

       Acknowledgments

       INTRODUCTION

       The Belly of Sheol

       CHAPTER ONE

       “Strange Introversions”

       Newman, Mature Conversion, and the Poetics of Purgatory

       CHAPTER TWO

       George Eliot’s Winter Tales

       CHAPTER THREE

       The Bachelor’s Purgatory

       Arrested Development and the Progress of Shades

       CHAPTER FOUR

       Odd Women and Eccentric Plotting

       Maturity, Modernism, and Woolf’s Victorian Retrospection

       CODA

       Descent and Tradition

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Index

       Illustrations

       FIGURE 2.1. “La Pia of Siena,” Canto V, Le Purgatoire, Gustave Doré, 1868

       FIGURE 2.2. “The Earthly Garden of Bliss,” Canto XXVIII, Le Purgatoire, Gustave Doré, 1868

       FIGURE 2.3. “The Late-Repenters,” Canto IV, Le Purgatoire, Gustave Doré, 1868

       FIGURE 2.4. La Pia de’ Tolomei, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1868–80

       Acknowledgments

      I am delighted to thank the many people who fostered this book’s maturation. I thank Deborah Nord and Maria DiBattista of Princeton University for their generous insight and inspiring kindness. They helped support this book and its author at every turn. This book also benefitted from the kind comments and guidance of Susan Stewart, Jeff Nunokawa, Uli Knoepflmacher, Bill Gleason, Diana Fuss, Esther Schor, and many other members of the Princeton Department of English over the years.

      To my colleagues at the Catholic University of America I owe special thanks. Ernest Suarez, Taryn Okuma, Daniel Gibbons, Tobias Gregory, Christopher Wheatley, Steven Wright, Pamela Ward, Joseph Sendry, Gregory Baker, Lilla Kopar, and the whole English Department—thank you for helping this book grow and for sharing your wit and wonderful company. I am lucky to have such fine colleagues and good friends.

      Numerous institutions and individuals further supported this book’s development and completion. The Catholic University of America gave crucial research support in the form of grants. Early work on this manuscript was funded by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Princeton University and the Josephine de Kármán Foundation. Librarians at Princeton’s Firestone Library and Marquand Art Library and at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, invaluably aided this book from beginning to end. The members of the Birmingham Oratory in Birmingham, England, provided archival assistance and the most generous hospitality. It has been a great pleasure to work with everyone at Ohio University Press, and I thank the editors and two anonymous readers whose comments provided essential guidance. Jacky Shin lent her expertise as a friend and scholar. Rosalind Parry was an excellent research assistant.

      I would also like to acknowledge the publishers who have given me permission to reprint parts of this book. An earlier version of chapter 1 first appeared as “Victorians in Purgatory: Newman’s Poetics of Conciliation and the Afterlife of the Oxford Movement,” Victorian