‘Violent Emotion’ and the Nineteenth-Century Realist Novel, 1847–1895

This thesis tracks the elusive yet frequently invoked concept of ‘violent emotion’ in nineteenth-century literature, seeking to articulate what a poetics of violent emotion looks like in the novel between 1847 and 1895. It shows that for novelists such as Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, the problem of affective expression became a career-long preoccupation, reflected in both their compositional processes and their published works. This preoccupation was largely defined by their commitment to the representation of ‘truth’, with each of these writers’ insistence on grappling with the ineffability of intense emotion through the conventions of realist writing becoming crucial to their fictional method. By re-visiting these five canonical writers this thesis demonstrates the important role each played in the evolution of this phenomenon and its corresponding impacts on the novel form throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. The thesis argues that by the mid-nineteenth century, the representational potential of ‘violent emotion’ provides a very particular middle ground: a means of distancing itself from the extreme ‘violent passions’ of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century fiction, combined with the validation afforded by the association of ‘emotion’ with scientific empiricism. In disrupting the long-standing link between women and emotion on the one hand, and masculinity and violence on the other, the novels discussed in this thesis democratise the experience of violent emotion across national, gender and class boundaries. More than this, they affirm these moments of heightened affective intensity as part of a legitimate framework for responding, interpreting and learning from difficult psychosomatic experience. The method combines a history of emotions approach with modern affect theory. Firstly, this thesis traces the medico-literary terminology of violent emotion to better understand the place of intense emotion in the nineteenth-century realist novel. In doing so, it contends that the nineteenth-century novel provides a uniquely productive space for the exploration of narratives of violent emotion which challenge the brief pathology of violent emotion in contemporary scientific writing. Secondly, it takes signposted moments of violent emotion as a starting point in revealing the broader patterns of violence that define the relationship between the individual and the group, a relationship in which the referential mode of realism is notably invested. The first chapter traces the vitality of the Brontës’ depictions of states of violent emotion attendant on the turbulent awakening of sexuality, and the ways in which their novels boldly reject existing discourses on the harmfulness of intense emotional experience. The second chapter brings attention to Eliot’s developing fascination with affective forms of relationship violence, thinking about the ways in which the semantics of trembling allow Eliot to systematise and process the violent emotions engendered by these bonds. The final chapter considers Hardy’s especially pronounced interest in the permeability of the boundaries between physical, emotional, and affective (self-)violence, which allows him to reflect back on the conditions underpinning his violent novel networks.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Krauze, Olivia

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Abbott, Ruth
• Tyler, Daniel

• emotion
• novel
• violence
• nineteenth century
• affect

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/a082d652-3aea-4b5a-a97c-1643dc9799f6/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.111842

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/373430