Street Urchins, Sociopaths and Degenerates: Orphans of late-Victorian and Edwardian Fiction

Street Urchins, Sociopaths and Degenerates

Street Urchins, Sociopaths and Degenerates

Orphans of Late-Victorian and Edwardian Fiction

David Floyd

CARDIFF

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS

© David Floyd, 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permis­sion of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.

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ISBN 978-1-7831-6010-5

978-1-7831-6081-5

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Contents

1  Introduction

2  Renfield’s ‘Agonized Confusion’

3  Rebellious Orphans

4  The Orphaning Island

5  Orphans of Empire

6  Orphans in Haunted Arcadia

7  Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

1

Introduction

‘Get thee gone. Get thee gone. Thy mother dwells not in this city.’

Oscar Wilde, ‘The Star Child’

Intentions and definitions

The ‘long nineteenth-century’ might also be called ‘the century of the orphan’.¹ From the notable emergence of orphan figures in late eighteenth-century literature, through early- and middle-period Victorian fiction, and, as this book argues, well into the fin de siècle, this potent literary type is remarkable for its consistent recurrence and its metamorphosis as a register of cultural conditions. The remarkable ubiquity of orphans in the literature of these periods encourages inquiry into their metaphoric implications and the manner in which they func­tion as barometers of burgeoning social concerns. Despite the consistency of their appearance in works of these periods, the cultural elements to which they are literary responses alter significantly towards the century’s end. The overwhelming majority of criticism focusing on orphans centres particularly on the form as an early-to middle-century convention, primarily found in social and domestic works; in effect, the non-traditional, aberrant, at times Gothic orphan of the fin de siècle has been largely overlooked, if not denied outright. This oversight has given rise to the need for a study of this potent cultural figure as it pertains to preoccupations characteristic of the turn of the century. This book examines the noticeable difference between orphans of genre fiction of the fin de siècle and their predecessors in works including first-wave Gothic and the majority of Victorian fiction, and the variance of their symbolic references and cultural implications.

I have chosen to examine genre fiction specifically, for it offers non-traditional depictions of orphans that are not present in domestic and social narratives, which tend to express a preoc­cupation with the ‘feminine’ concerns of the home, the concept of the nuclear family and parental influence. Furthermore, orphans of realistic social and domestic works typically allude to economic concerns and notions of social class that are not an issue with the fin-de-siècle orphan. Likewise, realist and domes­tic texts predominantly present the ideal family as the reliable emblem of stability to the orphan aspired for its promise of security both financial and psychological. Late-century genre fiction, however, whether in the form of second-wave Gothic, science fiction, imperial romance or children’s fantasy, instead is disruptive and anxious, offering orphan narratives bereft of the stable home and dealing with ‘male’ concerns of action and adventure, and is notable for its allusions to cultural factors particular to the fin de siècle such as degeneration, sexual ambi­guity and imperial enterprise, which were notable threats to notions of patriarchy and masculinity.²

These variations in conception and depiction of orphan­hood were the result of several factors. For one, deviations emerged in literary representations of the family, that unit to which the orphan is intrinsically linked; the ideal family, that attrahent to which the orphan drifted so frequently and natu­rally in earlier texts, gradually declined as a realistic notion, and even became targeted and maligned by some authors. In addition, the consideration of other previously marginalized figures, such as females, criminals and foreigners, altered the presentation of the different and outcast.

The years 1880–1911 form the parameters of this book for several reasons. 1880 marks the period when anxieties particular to the fin de siècle begin to manifest themselves, with genre literature of the period being particularly symp­tomatic of their development. The earliest text I examine is Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure novel Treasure Island, published in 1883, which reveals that those anxieties had already begun to loom on the period’s psychic landscape. The decade examined in Holbrook Jackson’s 1913 study of the fin de siècle, The Eighteen Nineties, falls into the centre of my own. Jackson notes that the final ten years of the decade were ‘remarkable for a literary and artistic renaissance’ and ‘a new sense of patriotism’ that degenerated respectfully into deca­dence and jingoism.³ How portraits of orphans relate to these factors is part of this book’s focus. It is important to consider the trajectory of this development of the orphan figure beyond the turn of the century as well; therefore, the book extends into the Edwardian period, where I place particular emphasis on the era’s children’s fantasy, in which renditions of the orphan are particularly salient and revealing. 1911 is the year of publication of the latest narratives I consider, Francis Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. This year was chosen as well at the suggestion of Juliet Nicolson’s The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm. Nicolson discusses England in the summer at the end of the Edwardian period, just prior to the advent of the Great War, a period that compelled Ben Tillet to claim that the country was on the verge of collapse, and Winston Churchill to write in his diary, ‘all the world is changing at once’.⁴

Colin Manlove states that the protagonist of the eighteenth-century novel ‘often finds out what he or she is, while in the nineteenth-century novel the process is one of learning what one may become’.⁵ This assessment applies as well to the role of the orphan, who in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature is often in pursuit of his or her true identity, or is in the service of a reform moral aimed at societal improve­ment, in either case signalling the fulfilment of some potential. Later versions of the orphan tend toward a more ominous nature, frequently portending some form of psychological malleability, degeneration both moral and physical, or the reality of an unreconciled orphan condition, a disquieting implication of ‘what one may become’. The orphan of fin-de-siècle genre fiction becomes less a contrasting referent to ensure family validity or a convention speaking to social reform, as was often the case in earlier manifestations, and more a potentially wildly unstable entity or permanently unparented casualty. Whereas in earlier texts the orphan is a sympathetic character, parentless or abandoned, the late-century orphan is sometimes relentlessly autonomous, dangerously individualistic and capable of metaphorical and even literal acts of patricide. Orphanhood in earlier narratives is a result of wretched adult figures or of a mechanized and impersonal society, but in later texts it emerges instead to speak to crises particular to the end of the century. And, while in earlier fiction orphanhood often proves a temporary predicament capable of reparation, fin-de-siècle genre fiction often presents it as an unalterable state, a persisting and at times even desired condition.

While much criticism has been written concerning various interpretations of the orphan of the late eighteenth century and particularly the early to middle periods of Victoria’s reign, virtually no consideration has been made of the way fin-de-siècle conditions produced portrayals of this figure, particularly in the later genre literature upon which this book will concen­trate. Indeed, the majority of criticism concerning orphans focuses on the aspect of the secular moral that they provided, for instance, in regard to the oppression of women or the wretched conditions of the poor. But, once the urgency of that moral seems diminished, and emphasis shifts instead, for example, to the threat posed by the New Woman or the impli­cations of the evident degenerative potential of the lower classes, the symbolic import of the orphan shifts as well. Perhaps it is the radical nature of this shift that has led some criticism to claim that orphans lose their significance, and virtually vanish, during the nineteenth century’s final decades, only to resurface in the early twentieth century.⁶ While this claim may be somewhat true for the late century’s domestic and social literature, orphans remain relevant, vital figures of significant consequence well through the close of the 1800s as they are rendered in the period’s genre literary forms; furthermore, with their unremedied orphanhood and troubling, even monstrous nature, they come to signal very different aspects of British culture than did their forebears.

By way of demonstrating the notable manner in which late-century genre fiction’s treatment of the orphan differs from the same period’s social and domestic works, I would like to consider first Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1895). While notorious for its modern examination of marriage and sexuality, the novel is nevertheless a typical social work in respect to its rendering of the orphan, addressing the class system, inequality of educational opportunity and effects of industrialization. Jude’s lofty aspirations to study at Christminster are frustrated by his orphanhood, which decrees his station as stonemason. That relegation determines his class affiliation, ‘a wall [that] divided him from those … men who had nothing to do from morning till night but to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. Only a wall – but what a wall!’⁷ Similarly, in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Jack’s intentions of marrying Gwendolen are jeopardized precisely because of the revelation of his status as foundling and its attending questions of origin and class affiliation. Though he is not afflicted with the poverty typically experienced by the orphan, Jack’s domestic happiness is threatened by Lady Bracknell’s disapproval of the potentiality of his low birth.

Contrasting remarkably with these two examples is Mary Louis Stewart Molesworth’s children’s mystery The Palace in the Garden (1887), wherein the orphan functions to subvert typical perceptions of the family in ways that question traditional patriarchal paradigms. The child narrator, Spanish-born Gussie, orphaned at an early age and therefore unacquainted with the notion of the ideal family, provides an alternative vantage dissimilar to customary patriarchal assumptions and insinuative about the fragmentary potential threatening to undermine the family. Gussie’s antithetic perception permits traditional types to achieve unaccustomed nuances, sanctioning what Frank Rigg calls ‘new terms for family validity’.⁸ In addition, there is the disturbing and destructive orphan of Wilde’s fantasy ‘The Star Child’ (1888), whose mysterious protagonist is taken in by a poverty-stricken but virtuous woodcutter. Despite this adoption into an accepting and loving family, typically the remedy for the orphanic condition, the ethereal and beautiful star child is shockingly remote from sympathetic types such as Oliver Twist, spurning his biological mother and denying his surrogate parents, claiming, ‘I am no son of thine to do thy bidding’; furthermore, he not only ‘grew proud, and cruel, and selfish’, mocking the afflicted and ridiculing the less fortunate, becoming ‘foul as the toad, and loathsome as the adder’, but he literally transforms into a reptilian creature due to his wickedness.⁹ While Wilde’s depiction is clearly a tale for moral instruction for children, the subversion of the conventions typically associated with the usually moving and pitiful orphan character attests to the metamorphosis portraits of orphanhood underwent in late-century genre fiction in a way they did not in social and domestic fiction.

Before addressing the criticism surrounding the Victorian orphan, I will provide an idea of the types of orphans discussed in this book. Whereas the notion of orphanhood typically evokes images of children, the majority of orphans discussed in this book are notably adults. Once beyond a certain age, even if one has lost both parents, one is not usually considered an orphan per se. However, one of the remarkable aspects of fin-de-siècle genre fiction is its adoption, and even subversion, of conventions associated with the child orphan’s condition – lack of family, questions of identity, exile from social constructions –in a way that clearly emphasizes and perpetuates the adult’s orphan status and underscores that status’s particular resonance with fin-de-siècle anxieties. For a period wherein foundational and traditional paradigms were challenged if not altogether lost, the parentless adult served as a cultural emblem – an entity bereft of ancestral counsel, affection and guidance whose predicament represented the sense of loss, disorientation and uncertainty characteristic of the fin-de-siècle. The adult-as-orphan images the turn-of-the-century British psyche, severed from the ideologies and traditions intrinsic to a past from which fin-de-siècle culture found itself increasingly disconnected. Thus, for instance, the tragic nature of Renfield’s fawning, even panicked, adulation of the parental Seward and the dread father figure, Dracula; Ignosi’s constant demeaning appeal for Quatermain’s patriarchal approval; the unsettling opposition and denial Hyde and Griffin exact against their respective sires; or Captain Hook’s endeavor to make Wendy Darling a mother for him and his pirates in a land characterized by the desperate contrivance of alternate, substitutive domestic spaces.

Indeed, the term ‘orphan’ typically may initially elicit images of the ‘Dickensian’ type of popular imagination, the working-class child or the lower-class outcast waif so prominently featured in early- and middle-century middle-class fiction, and on which nearly all criticism focuses. It is, therefore, important to designate the peculiarities of the kinds of orphans with which this book is concerned. As the nineteenth century neared its end, the confidence and self-reliance of the mid-Victorian period were supplanted by anxieties concerning such topics as sexual ambiguity, moral and physical degeneration, and the practicality and ethicality of the imperial mission.

Attending this cultural shift was the waning of sentimental portrayals of childhood. According to Marah Gubar, Victorian and Edwardian childhood was constructed as an idyllic period offering escape from the complications of modernity. She also examines the bewilderment authors experienced insofar as how exactly to render the child when the notion of absolute innocence was no longer the only alternative, and that they furthermore were somewhat self-conscious about the issue of depiction of, engaging with and composing for children.¹⁰ Children’s fiction of the late 1800s became more introspective and less realistic.¹¹ The child protagonist of the turn of the century frequently displayed a notable incredulity and confidence, and tended to depend less on the intervention of a miraculous adult saviour figure and more on his or her own exertion of will and creativity. Seth Lerer notes at this time the simultaneous concern with children’s welfare and a burgeoning preoccupation with ‘the occult, the fantastic, and the supernatural’.¹² The child furthermore tended to formulate alternate realities or imaginative realms in collusion with other suffering children, ultimately affecting a kind of healing, order and assimilation notably without adult supervision.¹³

Orphans of the late period even tend towards a kind of aberration, even monstrousness, or are marked with a grotesqueness that is not present in earlier portrayals. Though a certain sense of exile and ambiguity is attached to all orphan forms, the types of orphans I discuss and which are noted below are distinguished by the extreme manner in which they deviate from earlier depictions and in ways particular to the fin de siècle: (1) the mimic; (2) the rebel; (3) the orphan of island literature; (4) the imperial orphan; and (5) the orphan of childhood fantasy. The mimic, the imperial orphan and the island orphan are types that rely heavily on inspiration from and imitation of others and the assimilation of various environments in order to survive. The rebellious orphan and the orphan of childhood fantasy, meanwhile, function within realms of their own creation, either for selfish aims or out of necessity. The mimic and the rebel typically function, whether intentionally or not, without parental guidance, and, like their ancestor the picaroon, must rely on wit, intelligence and even luck. The imperial orphan and the orphan of childhood fantasy are virtually defined by their relationships to either saintly or malign father or mother figures.

The mimic endeavours to exact some semblance of identity through the imitation of other, less fragmentary entities. Lacking the stability of a realized self, this type, an example of which is Stoker’s Renfield, fully employs the orphanic attribute of malleability. Longing for some measure of inclusion, this type insinuates him or herself into diverse social structures, emulating the behaviours of more fully realized, stable personalities. His or her intent is to surmount the question of the orphan’s intrinsic ambiguity and exile. The rebellious orphan, on the other hand, is characterized by immoderate levels of narcissism, seeking only to serve him or herself with­out any aspirations to assimilation. This type, like Wells’s Griffin, pursues self-serving aims without regard for those with whom he or she comes into contact and even exerts a kind of malicious intent, at times causing harm to others. Rather than pursuing inclusion, this type not only rebels against but at times seeks the ruin of the social or family structures from which he or she is exiled. The orphan of island narratives, a figure like Stevenson’s Jim Hawkins or David Balfour, is likewise removed from the comfort of his domestic space, usually after losing one or both parents, and is hurled into an unfamiliar realm where he is mistreated, abused and exploited for his labour or natural talent. His nemesis is often a malicious elder male, possibly a corrupt family member, who seeks to profit from that exploitation. The orphan’s salvation initially appears to arrive in the form of surrogate father figures whose attributes he learns to emulate; ulti­mately, however, it becomes clear that these father figures are insufficient to remedy, and actually ensure the perpetuation of the orphan’s fatherless condition. The imperial orphan, mean­while, operates within the savage and sometimes fantastic worlds explored in imperial enterprise. Not only orphaned in respect to a lack of parentage, like Haggard’s Ignosi, this type may too be orphaned by the empire itself; he or she may lose his or her familial affiliations due to inter-family violence, or he or she may be displaced by the actions of colonialism. The onus of this type is to address questions of personal and national identity, particularly when assimilation into his or her environment determines survival. This orphan type is typically depicted as somewhat childlike insofar as depen­dence upon and emulation of a more capable, notably British, imperial father figure. At the same time, orphans of British lineage, like many of G. A. Henty’s protagonists, appear remarkably unaffected by their orphanhood, their heritage evidently sufficient to compensate for their lack of nuclear family that debilitates the native orphan. Finally, and display­ing the trajectory of literature’s treatment of the orphan into the twentieth century, the orphan of Edwardian childhood fantasy not only has lost one or both parents, but is intro­duced to an alternate realm wherein he or she assumes a creative, autonomous, even parental role. Within this fantasti­cal space, he or she formulates a provisional family imitative of the paradigm of the Victorian ideal family rarely to be found in the period’s texts otherwise. Whereas social and domestic fiction of the turn of the century challenged the notion of motherhood, Edwardian children’s fiction retains the need for and even exaltation of maternal figures. This perhaps explains why the contrived environment of these texts is typically haunted by the presence, whether imagined, spectral or actual, of an influential mother figure who deter­mines the success or demise of the constructed ‘family’.

In each case, whether overtly Gothic or not, these orphans deviate from previous conceptions of orphanhood in that they exhibit the type of metamorphic alteration typical of late nineteenth-century Gothic narratives. This book’s main focus, then, is on non-traditional orphan forms whose unusualness, apropos to the Gothic convention of irresolution and indeter­minacy which, despite their genres, they emulate, makes them particularly effective as vivid emblems of the fin-de-siècle anxieties to which they correspond.

Considering the various definitions associated with the term ‘Gothic’, and taking into account the attention this book pays to literary categories extraneous of the Gothic, it is important to qualify the manner in which I will be employing the term. My approach focuses largely on the depiction of orphans as characterized by instability, malleability, uncertainty and an unclassifiable nature, in essence, their ‘gothicity’. Some texts I examine, like Dracula and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, have obvious connections with Gothic fiction, while others, such as Treasure Island and Kim, are not traditionally regarded as Gothic, but are peopled by orphans redolent with notably Gothic metamorphic and fragmentary qualities. The Gothic seeks to represent extremes of various kinds, and the severity of emotional and psychic trauma endured and even in some events effected by fin-de-siècle genre fiction’s orphans are often portrayed in Gothic tropes of mutation, subversion, alienation, equivocation and unreality.¹⁴ Other studies articu­late the changeableness intrinsic to late-century Gothic literature and address the manner in which fin-de-siècle Gothic utilizes the human body as the locus of anxiety and transition.¹⁵ Robert Mighall writes of the ‘somatic aspect’ of late-Victorian Gothic, of the monstrous potential for the physical being to be manipulated, degenerated or in some other way altered.¹⁶ Kelly Hurley discusses the ‘abhuman’, representations of that which is only partially human, which imply the plasticity of physical constitution and which ‘served to dismantle conventional notions of the human’.¹⁷

While acknowledging the insights of the studies preceding my own, I wish to go beyond them in considering other aspects of transition and variability as they relate specifically to the depiction of fin-de-siècle orphans. Mighall and Hurley focus largely on the material alterations of Gothic bodies in general, but I want to pursue the psychic applications of malleability as well as they pertain to orphanhood. Figures like Helen Vaughn or Kimball O’Hare display physical char­acteristics that either set them apart or permit their insinuation into a social structure, but the psychological facets of their incertitude interest me as well. The disruption of stable psychic states is consistently presented in the orphan of fin-de-siècle genre literature, featuring the mental extremes of desperation, defiance, instability and questions of identity that are so intrinsic to the Gothic. Furthermore, I would like to argue that the indeterminacy that typifies early portrayals of orphanhood is a quality equally present in later orphan forms. The typical homeless waif in the street is marked by namelessness, lack of association with a specific class and a disconnect from any familial or socially acceptable structure. I want to pursue this evasion of categories as it relates to turn-of-the-century orphans, but with an emphasis on pertinence to concerns less about economic difference and class affiliation and more about the degeneration, sexual ambiguity and imperial enterprise that characterized the fin de siècle. These are qualities that distinguish the orphan of the century’s end from his or her predecessors in the earlier parts of the century.

In my discussion of these types, I do not wish merely to pursue vague interpretations of the concept of orphanhood, in the manner for instance of John Reed, whose analysis I address below and who grants equal treatment to orphans both literal and figurative. As I mentioned previously, my focus is on non-traditional depictions of orphanhood, and this at times engages characters not typically thought of as orphans. One type I examine, for example, is the adult who has either lost one or both parents, or who has, like Haggard’s George Curtis or Wells’s Griffin, intentionally orphaned him or herself by denying filial obligations and severing family ties through self-imposed exile. This type may tend to exhibit a condition of permanent immaturity, potentially wild ranges of emotional disturbance and in some cases either is incapable of or has a disinterest in assimilation. Stoker’s Renfield is a 59-year-old who is never visited by family during his confine­ment in Dr Seward’s asylum; furthermore, Stoker employs numerous conventions associated with orphanhood, such as the death of a parent, exile from a specific class and frustrated aspirations to inclusion, to portray the deranged aristocrat. Stevenson’s Hyde, if not yet an orphan, actually seeks to become one: his goal is to effect a state of orphanhood by destroying the tenuous provisional familial dynamics around him, and by establishing himself in the stead of his father-creator, displacing Jekyll in what is essentially an act of patricide regardless of their shared constitution.

Another type with which I am concerned are actually chil­dren; but, unlike characters like Dickens’s Pip or Brontë’s Jane, orphans who develop noticeably and incrementally, these fin-de-siècle orphan children are unsettlingly erratic, changelings who vacillate rather than mature, and seem to decry the incertitude of their time. In their exceptional Gothic instability, for instance, Kipling’s Kim and Mowgli challenge categories of race and even species, respectively. Barrie’s Peter and Hook elude classification and oscillate between the femi­nine and