Post-Authenticity: Literary Dialect and Realism in Victorian and Neo-Victorian Social Novels

and Neo-Victorian Social Novels
Suzanne Pickles
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
School of English
This thesis considers what a post-authenticity approach to literary dialect studies should
be. Once we have departed from the idea of literary dialect studies being engaged in
ascertaining whether or not the fictional representation of nonstandard speech varieties
can be matched with those same varieties in the external world, how should we study
the dialect we find in novels? I argue that literary dialect studies should be placed within
critical work on the realist novel, since the representation of speech, like the broader
field of realism, aims to reflect an external world, one with which the reader can identify.
This, as yet, has not been done.
My approach is to place greater emphasis on the role of the reader. I consider the ways
in which writers use literary dialect to manage readers’ responses to characters, and the
nature of those responses. I give a close reading of Victorian and neo-Victorian novels
to show that, whilst the subject matter of these works has changed over time to suit a
modern readership, the dialect representation – its form and the attitudes to language
usage it communicates – is conservative. Referring to recent surveys, and through my
own research with real readers, I show that nonstandard speakers are still regarded as
less well-educated and of a lower social class than those who speak Standard English.
This, I argue, is why writers encode such attitudes into their works and are able to
manipulate readers’ responses to characters. I argue that it is the interplay of text, reader,
and the broader cultural context in which the work is both written and read, that gives
meaning to the literary dialect and brings it within the scope of studies of the realist
novel.
3
Contents
Introduction
3. Section Summaries: Case Studies and Methodology 21
Section One: Literary Dialect and Realism
1. Introduction 25
3. Frances Trollope, Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy (1840) 37
4. George Gissing, Workers in the Dawn (1880) 53
5. Howard Spring, Fame is the Spur (1940) 67
6. Conclusions 82
1. Introduction 85
4. Sarah Waters, Fingersmith (2002) 97
5. Michel Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White (2002) 114
6. Lynn Shepherd, Tom-All-Alone’s (2012) 126
7. Conclusions 140
1. Introduction 141
2. Literature Review: Readers’ Emotional Response to Fiction 141
3. Attitudes to Language in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries 150
4. Fingersmith: Working With Real Readers 163
5. Conclusions 182
4 Post-Authenticity: Literary Dialect and Realism in Victorian and Neo-Victorian
Social Novels
1. Two Types of Authenticity
A Memoir of Robert Blincoe (1832) recounts the story of Blincoe’s early years when he was
sent, at the age of seven, from the St. Pancras workhouse to the mills of
Nottinghamshire and then Derbyshire.1 It details the appalling conditions of the
factories and the systematic abuse and neglect suffered by children on so-called
apprenticeships. By the 1830s there was an established genre of working-class
autobiography, written in the first person by the subject.2 A Memoir of Robert Blincoe is,
therefore, perhaps an unusual publication in that the memoir was not written by Blincoe
himself but by John Brown who writes in the third person. Brown’s narrative often
includes lengthy quotations from Blincoe. The first of these is entirely Standard English
with sophisticated lexis and phrasing:
“If I could penetrate the source of my exemption from the sorrow and consternation so forcibly expressed by my companions, it would probably have been resolved by the peculiarity of my destiny, and the privation of those endearing ties and ligatures which cement family circles. When the friends, relatives, parents of other children came to visit them, the caresses that were sometimes exchanged, the joy that beamed on the faces of those so favoured, went as daggers to my heart; not that I cherished a feeling of envy at their good fortune; but that it taught me more keenly to feel my own forlorn condition.” (15)
This seems to be remarkable language from an uneducated man, even though by this
time he has matured and is reflecting on his past: the speech reads like a fictional first
person narrative and has a poetic quality to it. The use of high-register Latinate
vocabulary such as ‘exemption’, ‘consternation’ and ‘ligatures’, as well as sentences
containing several clauses including a lengthy initial subordinate clause, marks this as a
written rather than a spoken text. Brown’s subsequent supposed quotations, some of
which are very short, are also written in Standard English. Given that Blincoe’s words
appear inside quotation marks, readers are likely to expect Brown to attempt to repeat
exactly what Blincoe said. Ruth Finnegan explains that despite great complexity in the
development and use of quotation marks, by the seventeenth century they were
1 John Brown (1832), A Memoir of Robert Blincoe (Sussex: Caliban Books, 1997). 2 James Richard Simmons Jnr, ‘Working Class Autobiography and Middle Class Writers: Fictive Representations of the Working Classes in Nineteenth Century British Literature’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of South Carolina, 1997), p.1-2, in Database of ProQuest Dissertations Online <www.proquest.com> [30th December, 2016]. The autobiographies Simmons references are written by the subject.
5 ‘understood as a way of directly marking an exact quoted passage by opening and closing
signs’; then, in the eighteenth century, ‘they acquired their modern role of identifying a
demarcated written excerpt as someone else’s words.’3 Nineteenth century readers
would therefore be familiar with this convention and the literary style of Blincoe’s
supposed speech may come as a surprise.
Brown acknowledges, ‘I dare not aver, that such were the very words Blincoe used, but
they faithfully convey the spirit and tendency of his language’(16). Brown is aiming for
authenticity, but not the ‘authenticity’ of a faithful reproduction of Blincoe’s actual
words: Brown wishes to give an authentic representation of Blincoe’s thoughts and
feelings; to do so he has chosen to rewrite Blincoe’s words for the benefit of the reader.
We might question this choice, particularly if we are familiar with nineteenth century
novelists’ attempts to represent direct speech according to the conventions described
by Ruth Finnegan, but we accept Brown’s presentation of Blincoe’s thoughts and
feelings and the events detailed in the narrative. In other words, Brown does not attempt
to achieve a surface linguistic authenticity but he does provide an authentic
representation of the factory system and the feelings of those involved.
Charles Dickens’s literary career began very shortly after the publication of Brown’s
memoir of Blincoe. Dickens is arguably the most enduring novelist of the Victorian era
and his works, for all their artistry and entertainment value, are very much ones which
seek to present the reader with a view of real life social problems. His representation of
speech has been given considerable critical attention. The direct speech that he gives to
his characters is a significant factor in the continued appeal of his work and is generally
accepted as reflecting external reality. Norman Page considers this idea:
The epithet ‘Dickensian’ hardly carries very precise associations; but if one were to try to identify a characteristic by which Dickens could be seen to differ from other novelists of his time, his commitment to the spoken language and his attempt to render some of its richness and subtlety through the written word, has a strong claim for consideration.4
Critics generally praise Dickens, arguing that his work as a short-hand reporter in the
law courts, and as a journalist, combined with his early experiences amongst the poorest
in society and a love of the theatre, helped to give him a keen awareness of linguistic
differences, and the ability to represent these in writing. Raymond Chapman points
out that amongst all the contemporary reviews of Dickens’s work, and Victorian fiction
in general, there were relatively few complaints about unrealistic dialogue. Page cites
3 Ruth H. Finnegan, Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2011), p.96. 4 Norman Page, Speech in the English Novel, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 168.
6 contemporary reviews in The Edinburgh Review, The Athenaeum, The Monthly Review and
The Quarterly as praising the accuracy of Dickens’s presentation of lower-class speech.5
Some of the events in his novel Nicholas Nickleby (1838), like the memoir of Blincoe,
take place in the north of England. An initial comparison of the way in which the two
different writers represent direct speech shows a stark contrast, with Dickens aiming to
convey a sense of the ‘richness and subtlety’6 of the regional variety. In the following
example, from Chapter Nine, Yorkshireman John Browdie is first introduced both into
the novel and to Nicholas:
‘Old woman awa’, bean’t she?’ said Mr Browdie with his mouth full.
[…]‘Ye wean’t get bread and butther ev’ry neight, I expect, mun,’ said Mr Browdie[…]
‘Ecod,’ said Mr Browdie, laughing boisterously, ‘they dean’t put too much intiv’em. Ye’ll be nowt but skeen and boans if you stop here long eneaf. Ho ho! Ho!’ (107)7
Dickens has tried to convey a sense of the sound of the diphthongs in the northern
pronunciation of words such as ‘neight’ (night), ‘boans’ (bones) and ‘wean’t’ (won’t).
There is also the nonstandard verb form ‘bean’t’ as well as the nonstandard lexical items
‘nowt’ (nothing) and ‘mun’ (man) and elided lexical forms such as ‘awa’’ (away). The
heavily marked nature of John Brodie’s speech could not be more different from that
of Blincoe as represented by Brown. Whilst it is important to remember that Blincoe is
a person in actuality and Browdie is Dickens’s creation, both writers share, to some
extent, the aim of presenting the reader with an authentic view of external reality to
draw attention to social injustice: Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby functions, in part, as a
critique of the school system; Brown was a journalist from Bolton in Lancashire who
sought to advance the campaign to protect children working in factories.8 Yet it appears
that only Dickens, the novelist, seeks to present the reader with the phonology,
grammar and lexis of the speech of the working-class people living in the region in
which he sets his story.
It would be difficult to argue that the difference between the two writers’ representation
of direct speech is the result of the passage of time and the development of literary
dialect in the nineteenth century, as Dickens’s literary career began within a few years
of the publication of the memoir. It might, perhaps, be easier to argue that Dickens, as
a novelist, has superior artistic skills which allow him to achieve this apparent
5 Raymond Chapman, Forms of Speech in Victorian Fiction (London: Longman Press, 1994), p.142. 6 Norman Page, Speech in the English Novel, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 168. 7 Wordsworth Classics (2000) edition. 8 John Waller, The Real Oliver Twist, Robert Blincoe: A Life That Illuminates a Violent Age (Cambridge: Icon Books, 2006), p.244.
7 verisimilitude. However, the difference is not quite as clear-cut as it first seems. Brown
does represent nonstandard speech in the memoir. Firstly, there is one exception to
Brown’s use of Standard English to represent his subject’s speech, which appears when
Blincoe has left the mill. He is quoted as using some nonstandard English when he faces
two ‘suspicious looking fellows’ who ask ‘ “What have you got in that bundle?” ’(86),
with a view to stealing it. There is an accompanying metalinguistic comment as they are
described as speaking ‘in a stern voice’ and this, along with the Standard English, gives
them an air of authority. This is their only utterance. Blincoe’s response follows
immediately: ‘ “I dunna know, Mester, but if you’ll ask the gentleman on horseback,
that is coming on the horse road, at the other side of the hedge, he’ll tell you” ’(86).
What was actually said during this, or any other situation referred to in the memoir,
cannot be known, as Brown quotes Blincoe using his own (Brown’s) words. However,
Brown’s choice of the marked term Mester, reveals that he can and does use direct speech
more subtly than might first appear. Joseph Wright’s The English Dialect Dictionary lists
mester as one of a number of variants of master. The term is found in West Yorkshire,
Cheshire, North West Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and South West Lincolnshire.
Given that this incident took place in North Derbyshire, Brown is using a legitimate
regional term. Many different meanings of master or mester are listed but the ones which
could apply in this case are ‘a term of address to a superior or stranger, Sir’ or ‘a
respectable, well-dressed man; a gentleman’.9 Thus both the form and meaning of the
term put Blincoe in a position of inferiority to his interlocutor, emphasising his
vulnerability. The syntax of this utterance is also much simpler than that in the previous
example. Although there are subordinate clauses, the sentence begins with a short main
clause and the subordinate clauses are also very short. Lexical choices throughout are
Germanic. Thus Brown can and does use more speech-like language.
Unlike the previous lengthy quotation in which a mature man is speaking
retrospectively, here Blincoe is a young boy caught in a difficult and potentially
dangerous situation. It seems logical that Brown would want to represent his speech
differently at this point. Immediately after the first quotation and Brown’s disclaimer,
he states that ‘Blincoe is by no means deficient in understanding: he can be witty,
satirical, and pathetic, by turns, and he never showed himself to such advantage, as when
expatiating upon the desolate state to which his utter ignorance of his parentage had
reduced him’(16). Thus Brown is characterising his subject for the reader: the lexical
choice and grammatical structures Brown chooses to represent Blincoe’s speech are
designed to reflect the qualities he sees in the man. Furthermore, at this point, Blincoe
is a grown man, reflecting on past experiences and the speech Brown gives him may be
9 Joseph Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary, vol. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903), p.50-1.
8 designed to capture that reflective mood. Considering the two examples together, it
seems that, although this is a non-fiction text, Brown, to some extent, creates a character
for his subject in much the same way as a novelist works. He uses the representation of
speech and direct comments on his subject to influence the reader’s view of Blincoe.
Other working-class folk, who might be expected to use dialect forms, are also quoted
almost entirely in Standard English. When Blincoe first arrives in Nottinghamshire, the
speech of the local people is written in Standard English, as are the words of the
apprentices who are quoted en masse as having a single voice (23). A person named
Beckka, the ‘witch of Chapel-a-Firth’ is also quoted in standard language but with the
exceptions of the archaic pronoun thou and determiner thy (80). One person who is,
briefly, presented as speaking using dialect forms is a house-keeper named Sally
Oldfield: ‘thou mun never go against thy master’, mun being a form of must (77). Again,
Brown has made a choice: he could easily have chosen to present this speech in Standard
English as is his general practice, but he has not done so. It seems that his sparing use
of dialectal forms in the representation of the speech of Beckka and Sally Oldfield serves
to differentiate them from the rest of the locals. These two voices do more than add a
touch of local flavour to a text which is otherwise full of standard direct speech: as is
the case with John Browdie, the dialect characterises them as being fully integrated in,
and knowledgeable about, the local community, and therefore able to give advice.
Furthermore, Dickens, who initially seems to represent the speech of a specific
geographical area, does not always do so. Firstly, as pointed out by Katie Wales, the
verb form bean’t seen in John Browdie’s speech (above) does not belong to Yorkshire
regional speech. Wales identifies a specific schema which, in Nicholas Nickleby, pertains
only to the characterisation of Browdie (who is the son of a corn-factor and engaged to
a miller’s daughter): the image of a rustic peasant, typically associated with the South (my
italics) in drama and fiction. Here she notes ‘the frequent and consistent occurrence of
what would otherwise be very puzzling verb forms: bean’t she? There be; if she bean’t; thee
be’est; thee bean’t; I be asheamed.’ She argues that Dickens has employed a rural schema;
these are unlikely to be forms he picked up from the Lancashire dialect, especially as his
visit to the area was a brief one.10 He is instead using literary resources. Brown’s use of
Mester, may also have come from literary resources but, unlike Dickens’s use of bean’t, it
can be linked with actual usage in the area.
The characterisation of Sam Weller through the use of direct speech has received much
critical attention and is generally seen to be one of Dickens’s great achievements, partly
10 Katie Wales, ‘Dickens and Northern English, Stereotyping and “authenticity” reconsidered’, in Perspectives on Northern English, ed. by Joan C. Beal and Sylvie Hancil (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2017), pp. 45.
9 because he was able to draw on his personal knowledge of the Cockney dialect, which
is both a regional and a social form. The fact that The Pickwick Papers (1836-7) was
published early in his career, suggests that Dickens had indeed great skill in representing
natural speech in writing. As pointed out by Page (65) and others, Dickens was,
however, drawing on a well-established convention in writing Sam Weller. Raymond
Chapman comments that one of the most distinctive features of Sam Weller’s speech,
the transference of v and w was already considered ‘veritable cockney’ by the time
Dickens was writing Pickwick, adding that in 1762 Sheridan passed comment on this as
a dislikeable feature of Cockney dialect (43). Taryn Hakala also refers to the long
tradition of the literary Cockney which influenced Dickens’s writing, adding that Sam
Weller’s ‘canny Cockney’ later became its own stereotype in late nineteenth century
music hall.11 Similarly, Page finds a literary precedent for the replacement of s or z with
g, as done by Mrs Gamp in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4): Shakespeare’s Mistress Quickly
in II Henry IV (66). Furthermore, it is generally agreed that Dickens is not consistent in
his representation of direct speech as his primary concern is not to present a complete
rendering of a variety of the language; rather, he ‘isolates and emphasises certain
features[…]to signal the presence of the dialect’.12
More significantly, Dickens has Oliver Twist, who grows up in a workhouse and then
lives amongst London thieves, speak Standard English, which is something that critics
are quick to point out. Page accounts for this apparent mistake on Dickens’s part as
follows:
Dickens’s apparent assumption[…is that] it is, if not impossible, at any rate very difficult to create an impression of dignity and moral worth in a character speaking an idiom which departs from standard usage, and [he uses]the convention whereby speech is determined not by environmental factors but by innate moral qualities (104).
Page identifies this elevation of the protagonist’s speech as an established convention
used to signal the moral rectitude of the character, a quality that Oliver Twist has in
abundance. Indeed, Robert Blincoe, the ‘real Oliver Twist’,13 is presented by Brown in
much the same way. However, given that Dickens had already created Sam Weller by
this time, as a moral, reliable person, I do not find this an entirely satisfactory
explanation. Indeed, Page himself offers a better explanation when he states that
Oliver’s speech…