Victorian Environments: Acclimatizing to Change in British Domestic and Colonial Culture (Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture)

This collection will draw attention to new ideas in both Victorian studies and in the emerging area of literature and the environment. Adopting a broad interpretation of the term ‘environment’ the work aims to draw together new approaches to Victorian texts and cultures that conceptualise and are influenced by environments ranging from rural to urban, British to Antipodean, and from the terrestrial to the aquatic.With the pressures of industrialism and the clustering of workers in urban centres, the Victorians were acutely aware that their environment was changing. Torn between nostalgia for a countryside that was in jeopardy and exhilaration at the rapidity with which their surroundings altered, the literature and culture produced by the Victorians reflects a world undergoing radical change. Colonization and assisted emigration schemes expanded the scope of the environment still further, pushing the boundaries of the ‘home’ on an unprecedented scale and introducing strange new worlds. These untamed physical environments enabled new freedoms, but also posed challenges that invited attempts to control, taxonomize and harness the natural world. __Victorian Environments__ draws together leading and emerging international scholars for an examination of how various kinds of environments were constructed, redefined, and transformed, in British and colonial texts and cultures, with particular attention to the relationship between Australia and Britain. Acknowledgements 6 Contents 8 Notes on Contributors 11 List of Figures 15 Chapter 1: Victorian Environments 16 Part I: Acclimatization 32 Chapter 2: The Environmentally Modified Self: Acclimatization and Identity in Early Victorian Literature 33 Acclimatization-Anxiety 35 Cold Climes and a “New Picturesque” 41 Tennyson’s “Mariana” and Acclimatization 43 Chapter 3: Rabbits and the Rise of Australian Nativism 52 Rabbit-Proof Fence 52 “A Touch of Home” 55 Blaming the Rabbits 58 The Great Australian Silence 63 Chapter 4: “Our Antipodes”: Settler Colonial Environments in Victorian Travel Writing 70 Settler Environments and Colonial Cities 73 Imperial Writers and Colonial Readers 77 Mr “Fraude” and His Colonial Readers 79 Part II: Mapping 89 Chapter 5: Ubiquitous Theft: The Consumption of London in Mayhew’s Underworld 90 Enmeshed Worlds in Urban Locations 93 Moral Codes, Social Legitimacy and Domestic Invasion 98 Chapter 6: “Mountains might be marked by a drop of glue”: Blindness, Touch and Tactile Maps 107 “We have made these ourselves”: Adapting the Map 108 “As essential to the blind as the seeing”: In Touch with Geography 113 “Feeling the Way”: Navigating Change 118 Chapter 7: Exhuming the City: The Politics and Poetics of Graveyard Clearance 124 Clearing the Air: The Body as the Source of Pollution 126 Repetition, Revenants and Restitution 129 A Body at Your Disposal 133 Final Mourning 139 Chapter 8: Speculative Viewing: Victorians’ Encounters with Coral Reefs 144 Darwin’s View of Coral Reefs 147 Marking Space and Tracking Time: Alexander Agassiz’s “Connected Account” 150 Experiencing the Tropics: William Saville-Kent’s Romantic Extroversion into Nature 157 Part III: Environmental Aesthetics 170 Chapter 9: The Nature of Sensation Fiction: Botanical Textuality in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Doctor’s Wife (1864) and Rhoda Broughton’s Red as a Rose Is She (1870) 171 “The Highest Blossoms in the Flower-Garden of Fiction” 173 “The Velvet Rose-Leaf of Her Cheek” 181 Chapter 10: Craft and the Colonial Environment: Natural Fancywork in the Australian Album 192 Victorian Natural Fancywork 194 Craft in the Colonies 198 The Bingle Albums 201 Part IV: Food, Hunger, and Contamination 221 Chapter 11: Inorganic Bodies, Longing to Become Organic: Hunger and Environment in Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution 222 Digestion in the Carlylean Environment 224 Reading for Hunger 228 Hunger and Digestion in The French Revolution 230 Hunger and the Revolutionary Environment 234 Chapter 12: “Yet Was It Human?” Bankim, Hunter and the Victorian Famine Ideology of Anandamath 241 The Famine Ideology of Victorian Officialdom 246 Famine and Governance 250 Bankim and Disasters 253 Chapter 13: Adulteration and the Late-Victorian Culture of Risk in Jude the Obscure 263 The Discourse of Risk 264 Purity and Adulteration 268 Bibliography 285 Index 310 Front Matter ....Pages i-xv Victorian Environments (Grace Moore, Michelle J. Smith)....Pages 1-16 Front Matter ....Pages 17-17 The Environmentally Modified Self: Acclimatization and Identity in Early Victorian Literature (Roslyn Jolly)....Pages 19-37 Rabbits and the Rise of Australian Nativism (Alexis Harley)....Pages 39-56 “Our Antipodes”: Settler Colonial Environments in Victorian Travel Writing (Anna Johnston)....Pages 57-75 Front Matter ....Pages 77-77 Ubiquitous Theft: The Consumption of London in Mayhew’s Underworld (Lesa Scholl)....Pages 79-95 “Mountains might be marked by a drop of glue”: Blindness, Touch and Tactile Maps (Vanessa Warne)....Pages 97-113 Exhuming the City: The Politics and Poetics of Graveyard Clearance (Haewon Hwang)....Pages 115-134 Speculative Viewing: Victorians’ Encounters with Coral Reefs (Kathleen Davidson)....Pages 135-160 Front Matter ....Pages 161-161 The Nature of Sensation Fiction: Botanical Textuality in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Doctor’s Wife (1864) and Rhoda Broughton’s Red as a Rose Is She (1870) (Kirby-Jane Hallum)....Pages 163-183 Craft and the Colonial Environment: Natural Fancywork in the Australian Album (Molly Duggins)....Pages 185-213 Front Matter ....Pages 215-215 Inorganic Bodies, Longing to Become Organic: Hunger and Environment in Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution (Hayley Rudkin)....Pages 217-235 “Yet Was It Human?” Bankim, Hunter and the Victorian Famine Ideology of Anandamath (Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee)....Pages 237-258 Adulteration and the Late-Victorian Culture of Risk in Jude the Obscure (Tim Dolin)....Pages 259-280 Back Matter ....Pages 281-317 This collection will draw attention to new ideas in both Victorian studies and in the emerging area of literature and the environment. Adopting a broad interpretation of the term 'environment' the work aims to draw together new approaches to Victorian texts and cultures that conceptualise and are influenced by environments ranging from rural to urban, British to Antipodean, and from the terrestrial to the aquatic. With the pressures of industrialism and the clustering of workers in urban centres, the Victorians were acutely aware that their environment was changing. Torn between nostalgia for a countryside that was in jeopardy and exhilaration at the rapidity with which their surroundings altered, the literature and culture produced by the Victorians reflects a world undergoing radical change. Colonization and assisted emigration schemes expanded the scope of the environment still further, pushing the boundaries of the 'home' on an unprecedented scale and introducing strange new worlds. These untamed physical environments enabled new freedoms, but also posed challenges that invited attempts to control, taxonomize and harness the natural world. Victorian Environments draws together leading and emerging international scholars for an examination of how various kinds of environments were constructed, redefined, and transformed, in British and colonial texts and cultures, with particular attention to the relationship between Australia and Britain.