Epistolary revelations: Reading letters in nineteenth-century British novels.

摘要

The importance of letters can be seen in almost every nineteenth-century novel from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to Charles Dickens's David Copperfield to Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm; the range reveals the multiple uses of letters and their influence on narrative form. In appropriating the culture of letter writing, novelists set up a tension between everyday life and texts that record daily experiences; in doing so, the social function of novels and the social function of letters become intertwined, creating a dialogue between the two. Fictional letters push the boundaries of letter-writing etiquette, allowing novelists to critique social constructions of behavior by incorporating their views on societal concerns in the letters written by fictional characters.; This study is relevant for readers whose interests lie in the social aspects of letter writing, including the use of letter-writing manuals as a tool to read fictional letters. I have selected texts in which the authors use letters to comment upon and critique socially constructed behavior, allowing the readers to interact not only with the fictional characters via their letters, but also with society's expectations of their manner and conduct that they might not have realized they can modify.; In Chapter One, I examine how Jane Austen uses letters to critique class, identity, and education in her six main novels. In the second chapter, I discuss how fictional letters embedded within novels advocate for the acceptance of fallen women by analyzing the letters in Charles Dickens's David Copperfield (1850), Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth (1853), Felicia Skene's Hidden Depth (1866), and George Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1876). I analyze Charles Dickens's Bleak House (1853), Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862), and Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868) in my third chapter to illustrate how the letters subtly mock the fumbling nature of detectives, critiquing the relatively new system of social control. By the end of the century, the letters in Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883) and George Gissing's The Odd Women (1893) contribute to the novels' call for a change in patriarchal society, issues I explore in Chapter Four.