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‘What is fashionably termed ennui’: Maria Edgeworth Represents the Clinically Bored

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Disease and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture

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Abstract

In 1809 Maria Edgeworth published her first three volumes of Tales of Fashionable Life, the first volume of which contained the novel Ennui. Edgeworth’s compilation of tales, which was extended by a further three volumes in 1812, exposed the vices of the fashionable world, from gambling to adultery. Edgeworth was capitalizing on the recent ‘commercial success’ of fashionable scandal novels such as Thomas Skinner Surr’s 1806 bestseller A Winter in London; or, Sketches of Fashion. As Anthony Mandal has observed, the ‘scandal fictions’ of novelists such as Surr, the pseudonymous Charles Sedley and ‘the enigmatic “Mr Lyttleton”’, alongside the ‘polite Evangelical tale’, dominated the literary market towards the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century and ‘sought voyeuristically to paint a lurid portrait of upper-class fashionable life, while paradoxically (and not quite convincingly) taking the moral high-ground’.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See G. Kelly (1989) English Fiction of the Romantic Period (London and New York: Longman), p. 8.

  2. 2.

    (2007) Jane Austen and the Popular Novel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 18–19.

  3. 3.

    (1809) ‘The Preface’ to M. Edgeworth, Tales of Fashionable Life, 3 vols (London: J. Johnson), I, p. iv. Subsequent references to Tales of Fashionable Life are to this edition and volume and are given in parentheses following quotation.

  4. 4.

    E. Kowaleski-Wallace (1991) Their Fathers’ Daughters: Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, and Patriarchal Complicity (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press), p. 159. W. J. McCormack notes that the Tales of Fashionable Life were enormously successful, making Edgeworth £1050 in total. See (January 2008) ‘Edgeworth, Maria (178–1849), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online at: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8476?doc (accessed 17 September 2015).

  5. 5.

    (1995) ‘“Completing the Union”: Critical Ennui, the Politics of Narrative, and the Reformation of Irish Cultural Identity’, Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism, 18:3, 41–77 (p. 49).

  6. 6.

    Butler emphasises Cullen’s endorsement of travel in her introduction. See M. Butler (1992) ‘Introduction’, in Maria Edgeworth (ed.), Castle Rackrent and Ennui (London: Penguin), pp. 1–56 (p. 32).

  7. 7.

    I. Beesemyer (1999) ‘Romantic Masculinity in Edgeworth’s Ennui and Scott’s Marmion: In Itself a Border Story’, Papers on Language & Literature, 35:1, 74–96 (p. 78).

  8. 8.

    (1805–07) MS Eng. misc. e. 1463 (Bodleian Library, Oxford), pp. 69–71 (p. 71).

  9. 9.

    See T. S. Surr (1806) A Winter in London; or, Sketches of Fashion, 3 vols (London: Richard Phillips), I, 250.

  10. 10.

    See (2005) ‘Reclothing the Female Reader: Dress and the Lady’s Magazine’, Women’s History Magazine 49, 11–20.

  11. 11.

    (July 1812) ‘A Brief Abstract of Miss Edgeworth’s New Work “Tales of Fashionable Life”’, La Belle Assemblée, 5, 12–18 (p. 12). See also (June 1813) ‘A Fashionable Character’, Lady’s Magazine, 44, 263 and (July 1810) ‘Maria Edgeworth’, Lady’s Monthly Museum, 9, 2–4.

  12. 12.

    (March 1812) ‘Benedict; A True History’, Lady’s Magazine, 43, 99–103 (p. 102). For estimated figures of readers, see J. Hunter (1977) ‘The Lady’s Magazine and the Study of Englishwomen in the Eighteenth-Century’, in D. Bond and W. R. McLeod (eds), Newsletters to Newspapers: Eighteenth-Century Journalism (Morgantown: West Virginia University), pp. 103–17. Copeland asserts that ‘“everybody” read the Lady’s Magazine.[…] That is, everybody prosperous enough to afford a ticket to the local circulating library where current issues and copies of back years in bound volumes could both be obtained.’ See E. Copeland (1995) Women Writing About Money: Women’s Fiction in England, 1790–1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 119.

  13. 13.

    (1996) Jane Austen’s Letters, D. Le Faye (ed.) (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn), p. 90.

  14. 14.

    Lord Chesterfield (1755–57) The World by Adam Fitz-Adam, 6 vols (London: R. and J. Dodsley), VI, p. 90. Also quoted in H. Greig (2006) ‘Leading the Fashion: The Material Culture of London’s Beau Monde’, in A. Vickery and J. Styles (eds), Gender, Taste, and Material Culture in Britain and North America 1700–1830 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), pp. 293–313 (p. 297).

  15. 15.

    C. La Bossière (1999) ‘Finessing Indolence: The Case of Edgeworth’s Ennui’, The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 25:1–2, 414–26 (p. 416).

  16. 16.

    K. Brundan (2005) ‘Cosmopolitan Complexities in Maria Edgeworth’s “Ennui”’, Studies in the Novel, 37:2, 123–40 (p. 125).

  17. 17.

    Brundan, ‘Cosmopolitan Complexities’, p. 125.

  18. 18.

    Myers, ‘“Completing the Union”’, p. 49. On allegory, see in particular La Bossière, ‘Finessing Indolence’, p. 415; D. Weiss (2013) ‘The Formation of Social Class and the Reformation of Ireland: Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui’, Studies in the Novel, 45:1, 1–19 (p. 3). See also B. Hollingworth (1997) Maria Edgeworth’s Irish Writing: Language, History, Politics (Basingstoke: Macmillan), pp. 127–28.

  19. 19.

    J. Moran (2003) ‘Benjamin and Boredom’, Critical Quarterly, 45:1–2, 168–81 (p. 173). See A. Phillips (1993) On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life (London: Faber and Faber), p. 71.

  20. 20.

    See ‘boredom, n’, sense 2 in Oxford English Dictionary, online at: www.oed.com (accessed 28 August 2015).

  21. 21.

    (1995) Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press), p. 12.

  22. 22.

    B. D. Pezze and C. Salzani (2009) ‘The Delicate Monster: Modernity and Boredom’, in B. D. Pezze and C. Salzani (eds) Essays on Boredom and Modernity (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi), pp. 5–33 (p. 10).

  23. 23.

    (1992) Jane Austen and the Body: ‘The Picture of Health’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 11.

  24. 24.

    H. More (1799) Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, 2 vols (London: Cadell and Davies), II, p. 156. Subsequent references are to this edition and are given in parentheses following quotation.

  25. 25.

    Phillips, On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, p. 82.

  26. 26.

    La Bossière, ‘Finessing Indolence’, p. 416.

  27. 27.

    (February 1797) ‘Derwent Priory; A Novel’, Lady’s Magazine, 28, 60–5 (p. 64).

  28. 28.

    La Bossière, ‘Finessing Indolence’, p. 416.

  29. 29.

    J. Mullan explores the distinct meanings ascribed to the ‘hypochondriac’ in eighteenth-century medical texts in his chapter ‘Hypochondria and Hysteria: Sensibility and the Physicians’. See (1988) Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth-Century (Oxford: Clarendon), pp. 201–40.

  30. 30.

    (2012) From Melancholia to Prozac: A History of Depression (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 90.

  31. 31.

    (December 1800) ‘The Old Woman’ Lady’s Monthly Museum, 5, 425–31 (p. 436).

  32. 32.

    (2009) Camilla, Edward A. Bloom and Lillian D. Bloom (eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 465.

  33. 33.

    (2008) Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, 2 vols (New York: Springer Pub.), I, p. 419.

  34. 34.

    (2008) Mansfield Park, J. Kinsley (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 224.

  35. 35.

    (2005) Ugly Feelings (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press), p. 269.

  36. 36.

    (1954) The Collected Papers of Otto Fenichel, H. Fenichel and D. Rapaport (eds), First series (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), pp. 292–302 (p. 292).

  37. 37.

    S. Jordan (2003) The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture (London: Associated University Presses), p. 155.

  38. 38.

    H. Berry situates Rasselas alongside George Cheyne’s The English Malady (1733) to suggest that it offers an allegorical representation of ‘jaded eighteenth-century consumers’. See (2014) ‘The Pleasures of Austerity’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 37:2, 261–77 (p. 274).

  39. 39.

    S. Johnson (2009) The History of Rasselas Prince of Abissinia, Thomas Keymer (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 72, 102.

  40. 40.

    D. McNally (2000) Bodies of Meaning: Studies on Language, Labour, and Liberation (Albany: SUNY Press), p. 202.

  41. 41.

    (1983) ‘Commercialization and the Economy’ in N. McKendrick, J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb (eds) The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London: Hutchinson), pp. 9–194 (p. 54). Copeland discusses the terms ‘consumer revolution’ and ‘evolution’ as they are used by historians in Women Writing About Money, p. 7.

  42. 42.

    (1992) Fashion, Culture, and Identity (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press), p. 109. Davis also asks if fashion cannot be seen as a ‘device for relieving boredom’ (p. 16).

  43. 43.

    Moran, ‘Benjamin and Boredom’, p. 175.

  44. 44.

    (1987) The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Oxford: Blackwell), p. 158.

  45. 45.

    (1990) A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, A. Phillips (intro.) (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press), p. 29.

  46. 46.

    (December 1794) ‘Art XIV: Count Roderic’s Castle; or, Gothic Times, a Tale’, Analytical Review: Or, History of Literature, 20:4, 488–89 (p. 488).

  47. 47.

    Analytical Review, 488–9.

  48. 48.

    Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, I, p. 76.

  49. 49.

    (1996–2003) Selected Writings, M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings (eds), 4 vols (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), IV, p. 179.

  50. 50.

    McNally, Bodies of Meaning, p. 202.

  51. 51.

    Jordan, The Anxieties of Idleness, p. 105.

  52. 52.

    Campbell, Romantic Ethic, p. 38.

  53. 53.

    T. Beddoes (1802) Hygëia, 3 vols (Bristol: J. Mills), I, p. 72.

  54. 54.

    The Oxford English Dictionary records that ‘brown study’ is defined variously by Johnson as ‘gloomy meditations’ and by Webster as ‘serious reverie, thoughtful absent-mindedness’. See ‘brown study, n’ in Oxford English Dictionary, online at: www.oed.com (accessed 13 April 2015).

  55. 55.

    Fenichel, The Collected Papers of Otto Fenichel, p. 295. Fenichel also considers repetition in terms of sexual pleasure; Beesemyer’s essay explores the sexually charged language of Glenthorn’s boredom (74–96).

  56. 56.

    Moran, ‘Benjamin and Boredom’, p. 179.

  57. 57.

    (1972) Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 365.

  58. 58.

    Weiss, ‘The Formation of Social Class’, p. 4.

  59. 59.

    Moran, ‘Benjamin and Boredom’, p. 179.

  60. 60.

    Fenichel, however, maintains that boredom is stupefying, arguing that in boredom there is ‘a need for intense mental activity’ yet simultaneously ‘an inhibition of that activity’ (p. 292).

  61. 61.

    S. Kierkegaard (1944) Either/Or, David F. Swenson and L. M. Swenson (trans.), 2 vols (London: Oxford University Press), I, p. 234.

  62. 62.

    Beddoes, Hygëia, III, p. 165.

  63. 63.

    Kierkegaard, Either/Or, I, p. 234.

  64. 64.

    C. Salzani (2009) ‘The Atrophy of Experience: Walter Benjamin and Boredom’ in B. D. Pezze and C. Salzani (eds), Essays on Boredom and Modernity (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi), pp.127–54 (p. 136).

  65. 65.

    Phillips, On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, p. 74.

  66. 66.

    Phillips, On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, p. 74.

  67. 67.

    Phillips, On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, p. 80.

  68. 68.

    Campbell, Romantic Ethic, p. 37.

  69. 69.

    Phillips, On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, p. 74.

  70. 70.

    Beesemyer, ‘Romantic Masculinity in Edgeworth’s Ennui’, p. 78.

  71. 71.

    See ‘palsy, n.1 and adj.1’, sense 1b in Oxford English Dictionary, online at: www.oed.com (accessed 28 August 2015).

  72. 72.

    Ngai, Ugly Feelings, p. 261.

  73. 73.

    Ngai, Ugly Feelings, p. 268.

  74. 74.

    See ‘indolence, n’, senses 1 and 3 in Oxford English Dictionary, online at: www.oed.com (accessed 28 August 2015).

  75. 75.

    Spacks, Boredom, p. 1.

  76. 76.

    Spacks, Boredom, p. 1.

  77. 77.

    Edgeworth declares that her work ‘is offered to the public as a Moral Tale—the author not wishing to acknowledge a Novel’. See (2008) Belinda, K. J. Kirkpatrick (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press), ‘Advertisement’.

  78. 78.

    G. Kelly (1996) ‘Jane Austen’s Real Business: The Novel, Literature, and Cultural Capital’, in J. McMaster and B. Stovel (eds), Jane Austen’s Business: Her World and Her Profession (Basingstoke: Macmillan), pp. 154–67 (p. 157).

  79. 79.

    (1845) Memoir and Correspondence of Mrs. Grant of Laggan, J. P. Grant (ed.), 3 vols (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 2nd edn), I, p. 214.

  80. 80.

    I thank Helen Deutsch (UCLA) for recommending the comparison with Johnson’s Rasselas, and for the helpful observations of delegates at the Fashionable Diseases Conference.

Bibliography

  • Anon. (December 1794) ‘Art XIV: “Count Roderic’s Castle; Or, Gothic Times, a Tale”’, Analytical Review: Or, History of Literature, 20 (4), 488–89.

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  • Anon. (December 1800) ‘The Old Woman’, Lady’s Monthly Museum, 5, 425–31.

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  • Chesterfield, P. D. Stanhope, 4th Earl of (1755–1757) The World by Adam Fitz-Adam, 6 vols (London: R. and J. Dodsley).

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  • More, H. (1799) Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, 2 vols (London: Cadell and Davies).

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  • Surr, T. S. (1806) A Winter in London; Or, Sketches of Fashion, 3 vols (London: Richard Phillips).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University College London and Trinity College, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Jane Taylor

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  1. Jane Taylor
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  1. Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

    Allan Ingram

  2. Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

    Leigh Wetherall Dickson

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Taylor, J. (2016). ‘What is fashionably termed ennui’: Maria Edgeworth Represents the Clinically Bored. In: Ingram, A., Wetherall Dickson, L. (eds) Disease and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59718-2_3

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