Feminine Singularity: The Politics of Subjectivity in Nineteenth-Century Literature

224 Pages·2022·3.772 MB·English

by  Ronjaunee Chatterjee

Feminine Singularity
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F E M I N I N E
S I N G U L A R I T Y
The Politics of Subjectivity in Nineteenth-Century Literature
Ronjaunee Chatterjee
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
©2022 by Ronjaunee Chatterjee. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system
without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free,
archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Chatterjee, Ronjaunee, author.
Title: Feminine singularity : the politics of subjectivity in nineteenth-
century literature / Ronjaunee Chatterjee.
Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2021051788 (print) | LCCN 2021051789 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781503630802 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503632318 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Femininity in literature. | English literature—19th
century—History and criticism. | French literature—19th century—
History and criticism. | Subjectivity in literature. | Women in literature.
Classifi cation: LCC PR468.F45 C53 2022 (print) | LCC PR468.F45
(ebook) | DDC 808.8/03522—dc23/eng/20220427
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021051788
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021051789
Cover design: Susan Zucker
Cover illustration: Shutterstock
Typeset by Newgen North America in 10/15 Sabon LT
For my parents, Drs. Ratna and Ramananda Chatterjee
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
1
chapter 1
Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books and the Ones and Twos of Femininity
26
chapter 2
Charles Baudelaire and Feminine Singularity
56
chapter 3
Precarious Lives: Christina Rossetti and the Form of Likeness
90
chapter 4
Seriality, Singularity, Sociality: The Case for
Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White
124
Epilogue
156
Notes 163
Bibliography 181
Index 203
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Acknowledgments
I could not have written this book without the fi erce emotional and
intellectual support of friends, family, and multiple scholarly com-
munities. My initial ideas took shape at the University of Califor-
nia, Los Angeles, under the supervision of Joseph Bristow, and I am
deeply grateful for his ongoing mentorship. My heartfelt thanks, too,
to Jonathan Grossman and Kenneth Reinhard, to Giulia Sissa, and
to Helen Deutsch for guidance, inspiration, and encouragement. This
book has additionally benefi ted from those very early stages of fi nd-
ing my voice at Cornell University, and I have Roger Gilbert, Jona-
than Culler, and Douglas Mao to thank for it.
In Montreal, I’m grateful to be in scholarly company with Nathan
Brown, Marcie Frank, Stephen Ross, Danielle Bobker, Michael Nar-
done, Jason Camlot, Katherine McLeod, Jesse Arseneault, Michael
Nicholson, Sina Queyras, Natalie Kouri-Towe, and Jonathan Sachs.
Many people read and engaged parts of this manuscript, offered
valuable advice and support, and made my scholarship sharper and
infi nitely more thoughtful. My deepest thanks to Elaine Freedgood,
Tricia Lootens, Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb, Rebecca Colesworthy,
Rachel Ablow, Anna Kornbluh, Sonya Posmentier, Naomi Levine,
Eugenia Zuroski, Greg Ellerman, Michael Cohen, Dustin Friedman,
S. Pearl Brilmyer, Beatrice Sanford Russell, Myra Bloom, Mairead
Sullivan, Manu Chander, Grace Lavery, Nasser Mufti, Ryan Fong,
Petar Milat, Julie Beth Napolin, Emily Ruth Capper, Michael Gal-
lope, Amanda Holmes, Alexi Kukuljevic, Zarena Aslami, Justine
Pizzo, Renee Hudson, Carolyn Betensky, and Paul Barrett. I should
also like to thank the UCLA Nineteenth-Century Group and the
ix
Acknowledgments
Center for Expanded Poetics for allowing me to present work from
the manuscript at various stages.
Faith Wilson Stein took an early interest in the project, and the
fi nal version would not have happened without her bold shepherd-
ing through the multiple stages of publication. I cannot thank her,
and Caroline McKusick, enough. I am also tremendously grateful to
the anonymous readers of the manuscript who engaged this book so
rigorously and generously.
I couldn’t imagine my life without Jacquelyn Ardam, who has
read and talked through this material more times than I can count.
I am lucky to have met Ilana Papir, Will Clark, Joyce Men, Tanaz
Faghri Dietz, Vel Jones, Cristina Richieri Griffi n, and Ethan Pack
in this lifetime. I’m so grateful for the singular friendship of Alicia
Mireles Christoff and Amy R. Wong, and I am constantly in awe of
their brilliance, patience, and generosity.
Finally, my thanks to my family for their love and support: my
extraordinary parents Ratna and Ramananda Chatterjee, as well as
Ranita Chatterjee, Rupak Chatterjee, Tomo Hattori, and Syontoni
Hattori-Chatterjee. For over ten years, my dog Nickel has shown me
the sweetness and joy of ordinary care and companionship. Owen
Weiss became family at a moment when the world turned upside
down, and I am immensely grateful for his humor, compassion, and
stubborn belief in me.
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