Dramatic audition: listeners, readers, and women's dramatic monologues, 1844-1916【翻译】

DRAMATIC AUDITION: LISTENERS, READERS,
AND WOMEN’S DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES, 1844-1916
by
Laura Capp
An Abstract
Of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in English
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
December 2010
Thesis Supervisor: Professor Florence Boos
1
ABSTRACT
The “dramatic monologue” is curiously named, given that poems of this genre often
feature characters not only listening to the speakers but responding to them. While “silent
auditors,” as such inscribed characters are imperfectly called, are not a universal feature of
the genre, their appearance is crucial when it occurs, as it turns monologue into dialogue.
The scholarly attention given to such figures has focused almost exclusively upon dramatic
monologues by Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and other male poets and has
consequently never illustrated how gender influences the attitudes toward and outcomes of
communication as they play out in dramatic monologues. My dissertation thus explores how
Victorian and modernist female poets of the dramatic monologue like Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, Augusta Webster, Amy Levy, and Charlotte Mew stage the relationships between
the female speakers they animate and the silent auditors who listen to their desperate
utterances. Given the historical tensions that surrounded any woman’s speech, let alone
marginalized women, the poets perform a remarkably empathetic act in embodying primarily
female characters on the fringes of their social worlds—a runaway slave, a prostitute, and a
modern-day Mary Magdalene, to name a few—but the dramatic monologues themselves
end, overwhelmingly, in failures of communication that question the ability of dialogue to
generate empathetic connections between individuals with radically different backgrounds.
Silent auditors often bear the scholarly blame for such breakdowns, but I argue that the
speakers reject their auditors at pivotal moments, ultimately participating in their own
marginalization. The distrust these poems exhibit toward the efficacy of speaking to others,
however, need not extend to the reader. Rather, the genre of the dramatic monologue offers
the poets a way to sidestep dialogue altogether: by inducing the reader to inhabit the female
speaker’s first-person voice—the “mobile I,” in Èmile Benveniste’s terms—these dramatic
monologues convey experience through role-play rather than speech, as speaker and reader
momentarily collapse into one body and one voice. Such a move foregrounds sympathetic
2
identification as a more powerful means of conveying experience than empathetic
identification and the distance between bodies and voices it necessitates.
Abstract Approved: ____________________________________
Thesis Supervisor
____________________________________
Title and Department
____________________________________
Date
DRAMATIC AUDITION: LISTENERS, READERS,
AND WOMEN’S DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES, 1844-1916
by
Laura Capp
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in English
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
December 2010
Thesis Supervisor: Professor Florence Boos
Copyright by
LAURA CAPP
2010
All Rights Reserved
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
_______________________
PH.D. THESIS
_______________
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Laura Capp
has been approved by the Examining Committee
for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy
degree in English at the December 2010 graduation.
Thesis Committee: ___________________________________
Florence Boos, Thesis Supervisor
___________________________________
Garrett Stewart
___________________________________
Teresa Mangum
___________________________________
Mary Lou Emery
___________________________________
Mary Trachsel
ii
For Jennie,
whose voice I will forever miss listening to,
and for Josh,
who has heard me as no one else could.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Although this project explores dissatisfying connections between self and other, I am
humbled by and endlessly grateful for the kindness and aid coming from so many quarters
throughout my writing process. I am exceptionally grateful to the University of Iowa
Graduate College for the Presidential Fellowship, especially for the 2008-2009 year, and to
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the “Story in Theory” Dissertation Seminar Summer
Fellowship, awarded by Garrett Stewart. The time, freedom, and stimulating discussions to
come from these opportunities have been unaccountably beneficial to this work.
Institutional support would have been for naught, however, without the guidance
and assistance of my advising committee. Florence Boos was there from the beginning: this
project grew out of an essay I wrote for her course on Victorian Women’s Poetry, and in the
years since, Florence has been an invaluable mentor and director. From her exhaustive
knowledge of women poets to her generosity with her time and resources to her sensitivity
to the emotional dimension of my experience in graduate school, Florence has far surpassed
all of my expectations of a professor. I owe equal thanks to Garrett Stewart, whose
enthusiasm gave the project momentum and force and who always knew far better than
search engines what books I should add to my reading list. In addition to offering incisive
feedback on a draft of the dissertation, Teresa Mangum helped to give life to this
undertaking in a completely unique way: through her support for and help planning
“Celebrating Victorian Women’s Lives: An Evening of Recitations and Music,” I was able
to see Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point,” along with a
number of other works by nineteenth-century women and composers, performed. I am
especially grateful, too, to my co-organizer, Joanne Janssen, and to Connie Winston for her
exquisite performance of EBB’s monologue. Mary Lou Emery’s uncanny ability to pinpoint
the areas of my writing I am most anxious about and ask penetrating questions has been eyeopening,
and Mary Trachsel’s willingness to join my committee and her unique
iv
understanding of the challenges involved in the tandem responsibilities of finishing the
dissertation and mothering twins could not have been more welcome and appreciated.
This dissertation has benefitted not only from faculty members at Iowa but also
from the community of graduate students I have been lucky enough to be a part of during
my time here. Extraordinary thanks go to my writing group partners, Nicki Buscemi, Jessica
DeSpain, and Kate Henderson, who have heroically and perceptively read this dissertation at
each stage. The dissertation owes much to their astute questions as well as to their stylistic
finesse. I am also immensely indebted to Deborah Manion for her shrewd commentary on
several parts of the dissertation and her companionship and humor during countless hours at
the Java House, and to Ann Pleiss Morris, Anna Stenson, Stacy Erickson, Joanne Janssen,
and Heather and Joe Younker for kindnesses ranging from proofreading to pep talks to
baby-sitting.
No piece of writing I will undertake in my life would be possible without my first
teacher of literature—my dad, Doug (who offered his proofreading services as well)—or
without my mom, Karyl, whose pride in me I will spend my life working to deserve. I am
eager to cook for my husband, Josh, for a year to repay him in some small measure for the
time, space, and sustenance he has offered me daily and for his implicit belief in the
significance of my work. Eliza and Hazel may have made the completion of this dissertation
a bit more challenging, but they have also added an unexpected dimension to my thinking
about identification: as identical twins, they have found a fascinating way around many of
the obstacles involved in empathizing with others that I explore in the dissertation. Their
determined grabs at the keyboard have also taught me to save my work frequently, and the
unparalleled joy they have brought to my life is no small gift, either.
v
ABSTRACT
The “dramatic monologue” is curiously named, given that poems of this genre often
feature characters not only listening to the speakers but responding to them. While “silent
auditors,” as such inscribed characters are imperfectly called, are not a universal feature of
the genre, their appearance is crucial when it occurs, as it turns monologue into dialogue.
The scholarly attention given to such figures has focused almost exclusively upon dramatic
monologues by Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and other male poets and has
consequently never illustrated how gender influences the attitudes toward and outcomes of
communication as they play out in dramatic monologues. My dissertation thus explores how
Victorian and modernist female poets of the dramatic monologue like Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, Augusta Webster, Amy Levy, and Charlotte Mew stage the relationships between
the female speakers they animate and the silent auditors who listen to their desperate
utterances. Given the historical tensions that surrounded any woman’s speech, let alone
marginalized women, the poets perform a remarkably empathetic act in embodying primarily
female characters on the fringes of their social worlds—a runaway slave, a prostitute, and a
modern-day Mary Magdalene, to name a few—but the dramatic monologues themselves
end, overwhelmingly, in failures of communication that question the ability of dialogue to
generate empathetic connections between individuals with radically different backgrounds.
Silent auditors often bear the scholarly blame for such breakdowns, but I argue that the
speakers reject their auditors at pivotal moments, ultimately participating in their own
marginalization. The distrust these poems exhibit toward the efficacy of speaking to others,
however, need not extend to the reader. Rather, the genre of the dramatic monologue offers
the poets a way to sidestep dialogue altogether: by inducing the reader to inhabit the female
speaker’s first-person voice—the “mobile I,” in Èmile Benveniste’s terms—these dramatic
monologues convey experience through role-play rather than speech, as speaker and reader
momentarily collapse into one body and one voice. Such a move foregrounds sympathetic
vi
identification as a more powerful means of conveying experience than empathetic
identification and the distance between bodies and voices it necessitates.
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: DRAMATIC AUDITION ......................................................................... 1
CHAPTER I: “(MAN, DROP THAT STONE YOU DARED TO LIFT!—)”:
DEATH-BY-AUDITORS IN ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING’S
“BERTHA IN THE LANE” AND “THE RUNAWAY SLAVE AT
PILGRIM’S POINT” ..................................................................................................25
Silencing Sisterhood in “Bertha in the Lane”...........................................................30
“The Runaway Slave” and the Silence of Fathers....................................................39
Poet and Reader: The Negotiations of Communication .......................................54
CHAPTER II: “MOST WELCOME, DEAR: ONE GETS SO MOPED ALONE”:
AVOIDING AUDITORS IN AUGUSTA WEBSTER’S “SISTER
ANNUNCIATA” AND “A CASTAWAY”............................................................67
The Silent Non-Auditors .............................................................................................72
The Split Subject ...........................................................................................................78
Others and the Ends of Narrative..............................................................................91
Positioning the Reader .................................................................................................96
The Role of the Artist ................................................................................................104
CHAPTER III: “I AM MYSELF, AS EACH MAN IS HIMSELF—”:
REJECTING PEERS IN AMY LEVY’S “XANTIPPE” AND “A
MINOR POET”.........................................................................................................110
Gather ’Round, Insensitive Auditors.......................................................................115
Fate, Fixed Plotlines, and Barriers to Identification..............................................128
Authors, Readers, and the Deceptions of Fiction .................................................133
CHAPTER IV: “I CANNOT BEAR TO LOOK AT THIS DIVINELY BENT
AND GRACIOUS HEAD”: ABANDONING CHRIST AND
DIALOGUE IN CHARLOTTE MEW’S “MADELEINE IN
CHURCH”...................................................................................................................148
Christ, Hear My Prayer ..............................................................................................152
The Hazards of Talk...................................................................................................164
Rejecting Dialogue, Embracing Reading.................................................................173
EPILOGUE......................................................................................................................................189
WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................................197

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