Since the early nineteenth-century when Americans began recording their short history in earnest, European explorers have held a central role in the nation's historical narrative, standing alongside the Founding Fathers as symbols of American ingenuity, determination, and fortitude. The nineteenth century also saw an explosion in the number of representations of first contacts between native populations and European and Euro-American explorers. These works range from fine art examples to illustrations in the popular media and were produced by artists across the artistic spectrum. Despite the popularity of the First Contact subject and its longevity within American art history, the importance of these images has, as of yet, been unexplored. This dissertation examines First Contact images created in America during the nineteenth and early twentieth-century by artists Robert Walter Weir, George Catlin, Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, and Charles M. Russell. I argue that the subject's popularity can be attributed not just to their importance as depictions of epic moments of transition in national and cultural history, but to the openness, or the mutability, of the subject itself. The first meeting of two people is an event of great possibility and potential, but, as this extended examination of the subject demonstrates, it can also be transformed to communicate vastly different messages at different moments in history. As Americans simultaneously struggled to create a past, understand the present, and visualize the future, the First Contact subject, with its focus on the ambiguous meeting of two cultures, allowed a site in which to grapple with central questions and anxieties of the period, even as it depicted the past. They are thus complicated paintings that speak not to the facts of contact, but to the purposes served by these constructions and corrupted histories. Reading these First Contact paintings can help to illuminate a nineteenth-century understanding of history and also begin to elucidate the troubled legacy of Native/white relations since Columbus first encountered the New World.

This thesis, “Make-Believe: Uncertainty, Alterity, and Faith in Nineteenth-Century Supernatural Short Stories,” illustrates the confluence in nineteenth century America of a philosophical investment in uncertainty and the emergence of a genre suited to its expression. I argue that supernatural short story collections, characterized by stories with explicit fantastical elements or which leave open that possibility, helped voice and explore uncertainty as a critique of prevailing master narratives of both Enlightenment rationalism and religious orthodoxy. My study examines Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse (1846), Herman Melville’s The Piazza Tales (1856), Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman, and Other Conjure Tales (1899), and Mary Wilkins Freeman’s The Wind in the Rose-Bush (1903), whose fantastic elements question the confident subjectivity shored up by rationalism and the sense of totality it projects. The genre’s insistent uncertainty conditions a reader into an alternative posture of openness to possibilities—an openness which, at its most ethically effective, describes a means to approach alterity without the totalizing certainty which so often reduces the other. The terms of faith are crucial here, as a means to lend numinous or transcendent meaning to the world beyond the reach of, and therefore setting limits on, rational materialism. But faith also functions on an ethical and interpersonal level, in the act of believing the testimony of an other despite the assumptions of the self. As the century progresses, this genre was taken up by authors with identities more vulnerable to society’s master narratives and the power structures they uphold. My final two chapters demonstrate how the supernatural uncertainty in these collections provided not just a theoretical model for approaching otherness but a specific articulation of the oppressions which certainty enables and the openness which the supernatural helps to found.

My dissertation tracks the production of "common sense" about female sexuality and psychology in nineteenth-century sensational British literature. I move from the sensation novel's heyday, represented by Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868) and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862), through the fin-de-siècle Gothic literary revival with Bram Stoker's Dracula(1895), and conclude with a reading of the representation of aberrant female sexuality in the emergent science of nineteenth-century sexology. For Victorian readers, few things could have seemed further removed from sensation literature--from lurid crime novels to sordid news stories to sexualized science--than common sense. Yet, my project illustrates the role of sensational literature in provoking the dark millennial fantasies that passed as common sense and often animated theories of femininity expressed in late-Victorian science. Common sense retains its rhetorical force through the assumption that its premises arise naturally and apply universally. But if we take a historical view, a troubling pattern emerges: common sense has often worked to preserve reactionary views of femininity. For example, in the nineteenth century, common sense led medical professionals to the belief that a woman's reproductive system left her constitutionally more susceptible to "hysteria." define common sense as the product of the frequent iteration of a particular train of associative logic that results in the naturalization and legitimation of claims about reality, even if those claims are both sensationalized and arbitrary. The rhetorical force of common sense requires the perpetual obscuration of its origins. The elusive and frustrating quality of common sense as a cognitive category derives from its ability, in Stuart Hall's words, to "represent itself as the 'traditional wisdom or truth of the ages,' [when] in fact, it is deeply a product of history, 'part of the historical process'" ("Gramsci's Relevance" 431). Hall describes this type of associative relationship between disparate figures often exemplified in the logic of common sense as "an articulation." What Hall refers to as an "articulation" might also be called, when viewed through the lens of literary theory, a "metonymic chain," wherein the literal term for one thing is applied to another with which it becomes linked, articulated. Both terms—articulation and metonymic chain—effectively describe the illusion of necessary correspondence in mere arbitrary association. My translation of this cultural phenomenon into the framework of literary analysis allows for a precise description of the rhetorical transformations involved in conjuring common sense. With frequent iteration, metonymic association may appear to be based on some more substantial similarity—not circumstantial, but necessary; not the product of sensationalism, but the inevitable conclusion derived from and constituting common sense. Common sense regarding female sexuality has frequently been preserved through sensationalism; but paradoxically, sensationalism is often most effective when its characteristic paranoia seems somehow self-evidently justified, even rational. In other words, sensationalism works best to consolidate the paranoid patterns of associative logic informing the nineteenth-century figuration of femininity when it appears not to be working at all—when sensationalism takes on the weight of common sense.

Nature is always cultural. Nature more properly describes various configurations of human and nonhuman entanglement than precultural environments. As such, any narrative that purports to recount the march of civilization simultaneously tells the story of the creation of various kinds of nature. Nature does not recede before human labor and institutions; it takes on different shapes and meanings. Understanding nature this way can help humans build more resilient environmental futures that do not solely benefit specific groups of human beings. This process begins by letting go of outdated and romanticized conceptions of nature and recognizing that social justice is integral to responsible environmentalism. Sound environmental policy necessarily means just social policy, and vice versa. Hand tools in nineteenth-century American literature help to illustrate this more dynamic conception of nature. More specifically, the axe in the historical romance, the hoe in the village sketch, and the shovel as it figures in the subgenre of sentimental fiction known as “woman’s fiction” not only show how natures are produced, but also alert readers to relationships with the environment—both productive and destructive—that challenge traditional nature-culture binaries. These tool-genre pairings simultaneously chronicle the transformation of environments into different types of nature and participate in that construction. Chapter One, “Republican Nature: The Axe of Exclusion in the Historical Romance,” demonstrates how masculinist, white-supremacist nature emerges through axe use in the historical fictions of James Fenimore Cooper, Lydia Maria Child, and Catherine Maria Sedgwick. Despite their different approaches—a confrontational conservation ethos in Cooper and a deliberate revisionist Puritan history in the works of Child and Sedgwick—axes in the historical romance construct what I call “republican nature,” which describes environments built by and for white men and closed off to women, Native Americans, and nonnormative domestic arrangements. Chapter Two, “Westward Hoe: Domestic Nature in the Village Sketch,” examines how village sketch writers challenge the core tenet of domestic ideology: that the home constitutes a separate sphere outside of public life. Caroline Kirkland, Fanny Forester, and Alice Cary show that there never was a clear distinction between women’s work and men’s work, between the private and the public—or between domestic interiors and the nonhuman environment. The resulting “domestic nature” rejects domestic ideology, reveals the interplay between the environment and the home, and suggests alternatives to anthropocentric development and management regimes—a domestic ecology, so to speak. “Sentimental nature,” the nature theorized in Chapter Three, “Sentimental Nature: Digging for Justice in ‘ Woman’s Fiction,’” also hinges on the inevitable interpenetration of so-called women’s work and the environment—and further adds the dimension of social justice. Maria Susanna Cummins and Louisa May Alcott insist that social justice is impossible without equal access to environmental “goods,” such as clean air and green spaces, and equal protection from environmental “bads,” such as pollution and unsafe living and working conditions. They imagine shovel labor—especially collective shovel labor that brings marginalized people together and puts them into contact with the nonhuman environment—as one means of redressing a host of social ills, including poverty, the exploitation of labor, sexism, and racism. Caroline Lee Hentz attempts to defend slavery by drawing on the tenets of sentimental nature, but she inadvertently constructs a “lachrymose nature” founded on coerced rather than voluntary collaborative shovel labor—and therefore motivated by profits and the desire to discipline working bodies rather than justice.

This thesis studies the progressive nature of women’s writing and the various factors that helped and hindered the successful publication of women’s written works in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The thesis interrogates culturally encoded definitions of the term “success” in relation to the status of these women writers. In a time when success meant, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “attainment of wealth or position”, women could never achieve a level of success equal to the male elite. The dichotomous worldview, in which women were excluded from almost all active participation in the public sphere, led to a literary protest by women. However, the male-privileged binary system is seen critically to affect women’s literary success. Hence, a redefinition of success will specifically refer to the literary experience of these women writers and a long-lasting recognition of this experience in the twentieth century. An examination of literary techniques used in key works from Catherine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen suggests that there was a critical double standard with which women writers were constantly faced. The literary techniques, used by the earlier writers, fail in overcoming this critical double standard because of their emphasis on revolution. However, the last two women writers become literary successes (according to my reinterpretation of the term) because of their particular emphasis on amelioration rather than revolution. The conclusion of the thesis suggests that despite the “unsuccessful” literary attempts by the first three women authors, there is an overall positive progression in women’s journey toward literary success. Described as the ‘generational effect’, this becomes the fundamental point of the study, because together these women represent a combined movement which challenges a system of patriarchal tradition, encouraging women to continue to push the gender relations’ boundaries in order to be seen as individual, successful writers.

This thesis examines the Ballarat Female Refuge, the first such institution on the Australian goldfields, as a case study of the interrelationship between charity and power. Established in 1867 by a group of twenty-six Protestant women with the intention of reforming prostitutes, the Refuge became a shelter for single mothers. An analysis of its history over the period 1867 to 1921 highlights attitudes towards female sexuality, and demonstrates how moral authority was exercised through this highly-gendered institution. The thesis locates the Ballarat Female Refuge within both an international history of female refuges and the network of voluntary charities which developed in nineteenth-century Ballarat. It argues that such charities were influential in the consolidation of class barriers in the goldfields city. While they were founded as a result of both evangelical religious fervour and humanitarian concern, they sought to impose middleclass moral values on their inmates, simultaneously conferring status and prestige on their committee members The thesis analyses the Protestant Ballarat Female Refuge through an examination of its committee, staff and residents in order to identify aspects of both power and mutuality in the charity relationship. It also looks at the symbolic systems operating at the Refuge, in particular the meanings of the wall and the laundry in the processes of exclusion and reformation. Drawing on narrative, biographical, statistical and genealogical sources, it details the ways in which moral authority was exercised through the Ballarat Female Refuge.

An analysis of the correspondence between Charles Lyell and Gideon Mantell from 1821 to 1852, in conjunction with other manuscript material, highlights the contrasting backgrounds and geological careers of the two men. It is also characterised by two underlying themes: the nature and timing of their geological work; and the influence of various social factors on their career plans and desire to achieve high social and scientific status. In turn, these points raise several wider issues and inter-related questions concerning the following aspects of English geology in the first half of the nineteenth century. When, why and how did an elite group of geologists emerge in England during this period? Who were its members and what were their characteristics in common? What was the nature and scope of the geological work carried out by the identified elite? In what way did it differ from Mantell's? What social and other barriers did Mantell encounter in his search for scientific and social status? What were the critical factors? In this thesis these issues are examined on a decade-by-decade basis, in three main chapters, as a prelude to examining the central question of why Mantell, unlike Lyell, did not achieve the status of an elite geologist. First, an elite group of English geologists is identified through a series of prosopographic and 'screening' analyses of all members of council of the Geological Society of London (GSL). Geologists who did not meet the prescribed criteria are taken into account. Thirteen geologists are identified in the penultimate and final stages of screening over the four decades. Mantell was the only provincial identified, but he did not attain a position in the final list, which consisted exclusively of a distinctive group of 'gentleman-specialists'. Second, the concept of a geological 'domain' is introduced to analyse the nature and scope of the geological work carried out by the identified group. A critical finding is that all members identified in the final 'screening' list established a 'domain' in one of four categories of the concept and were recognised as the leading authority or exponent of the domain they had fashioned. Finally, the impact and relative importance of specific social and other factors on the careers of Lyell and Mantell are examined. When the findings from each decade of the three chapters are brought together it is shown that by the end of the 1820s it was necessary for a future elite geologist to be so 'positioned' in terms of basic geological experience, location, income and available time that he was able to identify and subsequently fashion an appropriate geological 'domain'. 'Gentleman-specialists', such as Lyell, who were able to follow this strategy, constituted a clearly defined elite that dominated the GSL in the 1830s and 1840s. Mantell's failure to achieve elite geological status stemmed from the fact that he placed too much emphasis on fashioning his image and social status, rather than his scientific career. In doing so, he let the opportunity slip of establishing a major domain - British fossil reptiles - in the early 1830s.

This thesis seeks to examine the nineteenth-century art collections and architectural style of the original buildings at the University of Sydney in order to demonstrate ways in which visual material may be employed to shape public perception of an institution. I shall argue that the architectural style of the original university buildings was specifically chosen with particular aims which extended beyond the mere establishment of a tertiary institution for the colony. I will also argue that the style shaped the character of the institution, contributed to the maintenance of law and order in the colony, linked the colony more firmly than hitherto to the mother country and provided social benefits for the founders of the institution. The instant history and character thus imposed upon the institution was reinforced by the assembly of a portrait collection in emulation of other collections of portraits at leading institutions of the colony and the mother country, including the Oxbridge universities. Once the building proclaimed that the institution was comparable with the great universities of the world, the subjects of the portraits at the university could be placed in the class of founders of a great historical institution, thus at the same time enhancing the reputation of the institution and the individuals. The construction of an indentity through visual images was extended by the benefactions of Sir Charles Nicholson, the principal donor of works of art to the university in the nineteenth century. I argue that his intentions in relation to his collections were didactic but were also concerned with the entrenchment of the imperial hegemony over the colony, and again with the enhancement of his personal repuatation. This analysis shows how, by a complex of personal ambition and aspiration for the colony, the style of the buildings and the art collections formed were used to establish the colony as civilized and the new university as a bastion of English tradition.

This thesis presents a feminist genealogy of ideas concerned with male violence against women from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century. The thesis has two components: the first examines feminist, psychotherapeutic and socio-legal literature, examining how knowledge about female victims of male violence has been constituted; the second analyses memory work conducted with two groups of women exploring personal meanings about victims and violence. Each chapter describes pivotal moments in the history of women and violence showing how seemingly disparate ideas emerged to become precursors of contemporary knowledge which have given rise to a range of institutional responses to violence. Late nineteenth-century feminists created new ways of speaking about violence against women, however, their ideas were incongruent with prevailing discourses of the era. The advent of Freudian thought also brought about a new language with which to talk about violence placing the victim of violence firmly under the therapeutic gaze. During the 1930s and 1940s the founders of victimology utilised Freud's work as evidence for their proposition that female victims were often complicit in their own victimisation. In the1970s feminists challenged victim blaming ideology and redefined violence as a social and political issue. Twentieth century psychotherapeutic discourses tended to position victims of violence within discourses of psychopathology. However, more recently survivors have been defined in terms of traumatisation, constituting alternative possibilities for subjectivity following victimisation. The memory work used in this study enabled a consideration of the relationship between discourse and women's understandings of violence. Although remnants of all the discourses could be found in the women's narratives, some resonating with more authority than others, no one discourse operated deterministically to totalise subjectivity. Rather, it is evident that identities associated with survival are complex, dynamic and fluid. The legacy of the discourses described in this thesis continues to be apparent in community attitudes, institutional responses to violence and survivors' concepts of self. This thesis considers the potential implications of these discourses for women's subjectivity.

Ilha Formosa, meaning the ‘evergreen resplendent isle’, today known as Taiwan was named by passing European navigators in the sixteenth century. Although it had never been officially a part of the British Empire, the island – like a large portion of the world, was influenced by Great Britain, its activities, and policies. The aim of this thesis is to explore the development of the British concept, or image, of Formosa through the second half of the nineteenth century. During this period, British influence in Formosa picked-up significantly due to British commercial interests. Under British influence in the second half of the nineteenth century, Formosa started to produce and export famous Taiwanese tea on a much larger scale. The popularity of Oolong tea brought Formosa into the sphere of British public interest and the British community in Taiwan grew as a result. As time went on, more missionaries and their wives, officers, and merchants visited and lived in Taiwan. Their interactions with the Chinese and indigenous populations were carried back to Britain through visitors´ journals, letters, photographs, and stories, all of which effected the British public perception of Formosa. The popularization of Taiwanese tea together with other commercial and political interests played an important role in the British public reflection of Formosa, which evolved from the opening of the Taiwan seaports to foreign trade at the end of the 1850s and the beginning of the 1860s until the end of the nineteenth century, when the Japanese began its colonization of Taiwan.