False economies
Subtitle: forgery and other illegitimate issue, 1837--1895.
Published: 2004
Language: eng
Number of pages: 249
Description: The third chapter situates forgery in Collins' The Moonstone  and Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde in relation to contemporary economic and imperial contexts, first the opium trade and, in regards to Stevenson, the gold standard debate and gold discoveries in South Africa. In these novels, the forger's association with foreign exploits shows how such activity at once bolstered and threatened the position of English wealth and identity as pure standards of value.This thesis examines how legislative change, economic unrest, and shifting notions about genealogy, inheritance, and reproduction informed the representation of forgery in Victorian literature and culture. It considers the lasting effects of forgery's treatment as a capital crime until the 1830s and, in particular, addresses the recurrent intersection of forgery and illegitimacy in a range of Victorian fiction. The ongoing literary alignment of these forms of "spurious production" reveals the challenge that forgery posed to cultural understandings of individuality, identity, and origins and illustrates how, for the Victorians, forgery was persistently implicated in questions about the integrity of bodily and economic relations.The first chapter examines the resonance of forgery executions in the works of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Dickens' Barnaby Rudge  and Collies' The Woman in White especially register the impact of earlier forgery trials, as well as forgery's ongoing conceptual connection to economic and bodily violation, particularly that represented by the bastard.The final chapter examines the increasingly conscious treatment of forgery by Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde, as the forger acquires a specialized criminal mind, one analogous to that of the artist. The forger gains a heroic status, his crimes bearing a resemblance to the emerging modern novel, as each represents a challenge to conventionally "authorized" texts.The second chapter considers how, into the mid-century, the rise of the money market, the expansion of the banking system, arbitrary economic fluctuations, and vast white-collar fraud undermined former measures of trustworthiness. Novels such as Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford and Ruth and Dickens' Little Dorrit show how legitimacy thus became a highly precarious social category, as individual and institutional history and "credit" became increasingly unreliable.
Notes: Adviser:  Jill L. Matus.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2004.

Electronic version licensed for access by U. of T. users.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-10, Section: A, page: 3815.