Date of Award
1-1-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D. in English
First Advisor
Deanna Kreisel
Second Advisor
Dan Stout
Third Advisor
Scott MacKenzie
School
University of Mississippi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
Selected works of Victorian literature suggest that the Victorian Era ushered in a new understanding and discourse of interrelations, where increased knowledge of ecological cycles and financial relationships underscored the fragile nature of complex webs of interdependencies. Rather than focus on individuals and their growth, truth, and social mobility, influential novels by George Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Bram Stoker emphasize the significance of entangled webs and underscore the conflicting views on whether or not further interconnection should be promoted and valorized or avoided. Indeed, Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Dickens’s Little Dorrit, and Stoker’s Dracula are novels about interconnectivity rather than individuals. While interconnectivity prioritizes the system over the individual, The Mill on the Floss, Little Dorrit, and Dracula point out that interconnections can be manipulated and disrupted to satisfy self-interested desires of greed or survival. These works emphasize a paradox: interconnectivity leads to both the depletion of resources and potential regrowth; in short, interconnection can be detrimental but also necessary for recovery. This paradox is best illustrated in nineteenth-century bankruptcy laws and changes in the financial marketplace, where legislation and its commentators point out that the increasingly interconnected financial and business realm spreads the financial crisis of one to many.
However, these selected novels by Eliot, Dickens, and Stoker suggest that the consequences from interference with interconnected systems can be overcome, at least partially, by the creation of further interdependencies. These works note that webs of interconnected interdependencies can be eternal; sometimes depleting and other times invigorating, the web survives while the isolated decline. Additionally, The Mill on the Floss and Little Dorrit suggest that exploitative acts carried out on interconnected systems, such as economies and ecosystems, are essentially irreversible, and Dracula hints that complete restoration is uncertain even if some regeneration is possible. Therefore, these works hint that attempts to disrupt or manipulate systems should be eliminated as such actions have lasting consequences.
Recommended Citation
PIttman, Sarah Margaret, "Capitalism’s Vampiric Kiss: Bankruptcy, Entanglement, and Extraction in Victorian Literature" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3024.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/3024
