Table Of ContentAtlantic Worlds in the Long
Eighteenth Century
Atlantic Worlds in the Long
Eighteenth Century
Seduction and Sentiment
Edited by Toni Bowers and Tita Chico
Palgrave
macmillan
atlanticworldsinthelongeighteenthcentury
Copyright©ToniBowersandTitaChico2012.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-10867-7
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DOI 10.1057/9781137014610
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Atlanticworldsinthelongeighteenthcentury:seductionand
sentiment/editedbyToniBowersandTitaChico.
p. cm.
1. Literature,Modern—18thcentury—Historyandcriticism.
2. Seductioninliterature. 3. Sentimentalisminliterature.
4. Literature,Modern—17thcentury—Historyand
criticism. I. Bowers,Toni. II. Chico,Tita,1970–
PN751.A762012
809(cid:2).033—dc23 2011034794
AcataloguerecordofthebookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary.
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Firstedition:March2012
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
IntroductionAtlanticWorldsintheLongEighteenthCentury:
SeductionandSentiment 1
ToniBowersandTitaChico
Part I ScandalandtheFateofDreams
1 AdulterousSentimentsinTransatlanticDomesticFiction,
c.1770–1805 17
EveTavorBannet
2 GenuineSentimentsandGenderedLiberties:Migrationand
MarriageinGilbertImlay’sTheEmigrants 33
JulietShields
3 “Heavendefendusfromsuchfathers”:PerezMortonandthe
PoliticsofSeduction 49
BryanWaterman
4 Charlotte:ATaleofTruth,APremonitionofAmerican
Revolutions 65
MichaelZuckerman
Part II ActsofBelongingandRenunciation
5 “SheStraightnessontheWoodsBestows”:Protestant
SexualityandEnglishEmpireinMarvell’s“UponAppleton
House” 81
MelissaE.Sanchez
6 “Sparehislifetosavehissoul”:EnthralledLoversand
HeathenConvertsin“TheFourIndianKingsGarland” 97
LauraM.Stevens
vi ● Contents
7 “Omyducats,Omydaughter”:SeductionsandSentimental
ConversionsofJewishFemaleCharactersintheEarly
AmericanTheater 115
HeatherS.Nathans
8 BewaretheAbandonedWoman:EuropeanTravelers,
“Exceptional”NativeWomen,andInterracialFamiliesin
EarlyModernAtlanticTravelogues 135
CarolynEastman
Part III BodiesofKnowledgeandDoubt
9 Bewitched:TheJournalofaVoyagetoLisbonandthe
SeductionofSentiment 151
JayneElizabethLewis
10 TheBoudoirinPhilosophy,orKnowingBodiesinFrench
Fiction 171
ThomasDiPiero
11 Seduction,JuvenileDeathLiterature,andPhillisWheatley’s
ChildElegies 189
JenniferThorn
12 SeducedbytheSelf:SusannaRowson,MoralSense
Philosophy,andEvangelicalism 205
GideonMailerandKarenCollis
13 TheAmericanizationofGothicinBrockdenBrown’s
Wieland 221
GeorgeE.Haggerty
ListofContributors 235
Bibliography 239
Index 265
Acknowledgments
The Editors thank the editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan, Brigitte Schull
andJoannaRoberts,fortheirinterestinthisprojectandfortheirsupportin
bringingittoprint.WealsoappreciatethecopyeditingprovidedbySandhya
Ghoshal.
Our greatest thanks go to Alyssa Connell, whose scholarly engagement
andgoodjudgmentprovedinvaluablethroughoutthevariousstagesofpro-
duction. We thank her warmly for her intelligent attention to all matters of
formandcontent,andforherunfailinggoodsenseandgoodhumor.
Introduction
Atlantic Worlds in the Long
Eighteenth Century:
Seduction and Sentiment
Toni Bowers and Tita Chico
I. Seduction,Sentiment,AtlanticWorlds
This book sets out to make vivid certain telling moments of interconnec-
tion among a variety of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century phenomena
that might be assumed to have inhabited separate cultural spaces: seduction
plots,sentimentalnarratives,andtheeconomic,social,credal,andideologi-
cal imperatives of what has become known as “the Atlantic world.” Literary
and largely (though not exclusively) anglophone in orientation, the essays
here work together to offer new ways to understand the interdependence of
this complex set of discursive and historical phenomena and to challenge
the perpetuation of disciplinary boundaries that limit scholars’ imaginative
engagements,bothwithtextsandwitheachother.
Recentscholarshiphasdemonstratedthattherootsofthesensibilitymove-
ment, which critics used to locate in the late eighteenth century, took hold
earlier (much earlier in some contexts1) and that seduction stories played
pivotal roles in the negotiation of affective political relations.2 Even a cur-
sory look at foundational imaginative works with Atlantic influence across
the period bears out these critical insights. We might consider, for exam-
ple, Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves (1678), Samuel
Richardson’s Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded (1740), and Susanna Rowson’s
Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth (1791; 1794). All hinge on the complex
entanglementsofseductiontalesandsentimentalstories.Theprincessstrug-
gles to prevent her tender feelings for the Duc du Nemours from seducing
her from conjugal obligation and duty (even, famously, after her husband’s
death).Pamelausesseductionandsentimentaltopoisimultaneouslytochart
2 ● ToniBowersandTitaChico
the increasingly complex relationship between the heroine and her master,
complicating the stakes of familiar seduction plots and domesticating them
into a kind of litmus test for proper exercises of sensibility. And Charlotte
Templeexploresthesentimentalnarrativesavailablewithinaseductionstory,
as the abandoned heroine gives birth to a daughter and reconciles with her
father before she dies. These examples show the sometimes unappreciated
degree to which the rubrics that organized tales of seduction and of senti-
mentfunctionedsynergisticallytocreatemeaningfulnarrativesforreadersof
the long eighteenth century—a period that in this book spans the decades
between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries at a variety of
“Atlantic”sites.(Thetermwilloccupyusshortly.)
Thisvolume’sgenesiswasapanelcalled“SeductionandSentiment,”orga-
nized by Tita Chico and for which Toni Bowers served as respondent, at
the 2008 annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century
Studies. That event was intended to highlight the productive and persistent
connectionsbetweenseductionstoriesandsentimentalnarrativesinaBritish-
French frame. In the expanded forum of a published collection, the essays
herepresentaconsiderablyelaboratedexplorationofthoseconnections,one
that, while still shaped in large part by the editors’ own specialization in
Britishliterature,exceedsboththepanel’soriginalframeworkandourearliest
purposes.TheessaysofAtlanticWorldsintheLongEighteenthCentury:Seduc-
tion and Sentiment demonstrate precisely how, in specific instances across
morethanacentury,talesofseductionandsentimentfunctionednotmerely
as representational counterparts, but as mutually constitutive productions.
Whilestoriesofseductionandsentimentaltalesdidoccurdiscretelybetween
thelateseventeenthandearlynineteenthcenturies,whatwefindmoreoften
arerepresentationsofwhatwemightcall“seduction-and-sentiment,”aswrit-
ersexperimentedwithvarioussubject-andobject-positionswithinandacross
mutuallyconstitutiveAtlanticworlds.
Astheessaysinthisvolumemakeclear,seduction-and-sentimentelements
in eighteenth-century texts revealed operative assumptions about the rela-
tions those texts depicted, and, particularly, assumptions about the varying
kinds and degrees of power distributed to specific groups and individu-
als.Seductionstories,sentimentalnarratives,andtheirfrequentimbrication
in representations of seduction-and-sentiment were all concerned with sex,
power, and feeling; they foregrounded contests over authority across shift-
ingandunevengeographic,political,economic,andreligiousterrains.Such
narratives allowed writers to use established language and conventions to
imaginealternativestoculturalcategoriesthatwerebeingactivelyconstructed
at the same time—for instance, the supposed binary consent/resistance and
thefixedboundariesthatwereassumedtodividephysicalsensation,emotion,
andrationalthought.Narrativesofseduction-and-sentimentthroughoutthe
Introduction ● 3
periodmakevisiblemomentsof(sometimeshesitant)revisioninthearticu-
lationandmediationofnewformsofrelation;theyattesttothesignificance
ofliminalplaces,whethergeographicalorimaginative.
The engagements across difference that eighteenth-century texts anato-
mize, it is important to remember, all took place somewhere. An interac-
tion between a male European traveler and a Native American woman,
to take just one example considered in this book, is not simply a rela-
tionship between two individuals; that interaction also takes place in a
series of specific moments and at particular sites, and those coordinates
necessarily inform—and reform—the literary conventions available for rep-
resenting the interaction. That fact points to one goal of this volume:
to locate the rubrics of seduction and sentiment within a more expan-
sive geographical context than has been usual in literary studies. Narratives
of seduction-and-sentiment were circulated, translated, and adapted well
beyond the national borders of their composition, and are inadequately
understoodmerelyasexpressionsemanatingfromparticular,discretenational
formations.
The publication histories of the three examples above—Lafayette’s,
Richardson’s, and Rowson’s novels—illuminate. They indicate some of the
diasporicpathspossible—routesmarkedbypracticesoftransmission,adapta-
tion,andtranslationthatcharacterizedseventeenth-andeighteenth-century
written discourse more generally.3 In the midst of the quarrel that erupted
in France following the publication of Lafayette’s novel, an English trans-
lation, The Princess of Cleue (1679), appeared in London, and, two years
later,NathanielLee’sdramaticadaptationwasperformedatLondon’sQueen’s
Theatre; both English-language versions rendered self-consciously reshaped
adjustments of Lafayette’s narrative for British metropolitan audiences.4
Pamelanotoriously“inspiredatidalwaveoftextsandobjects,ariotofcon-
sumeristic exploitation” across Britain, the Continent, and North America,
indicatingthesimultaneousresilienceandflexibilityofRichardson’snarrative
asit wasadapted tonew contexts and fornew readers.5 And Charlotte Tem-
ple was first published in England but became a best seller upon its North
American publication in 1794, and is still most often taught in American
literaturecourses.Thecirculationandproliferationofthesetexts(andmany
others6)throughouttheAtlanticworldsofthelongeighteenthcentury,with
theirpublicationandperformancehistories,suggestnotonlythatnarratives
of seduction-and-sentiment had an especially powerful resonance for myr-
iad writers and readers. Even more significantly, as the essays in this book
demonstrate,themigratorypathsofseductionandsentimentalnarratives—
narratives that appeared in many genres, including novels, poems, plays,
and travel accounts—also give historic specificity to literature’s potential to
challengenationalistpresuppositionsduringtheperiod.7
