“Unhappy Endings” explores dynamics of novelistic closure by examining Victorian texts that come to a halt in a way that invites subsequent continuation. Each chapter of this dissertation confronts a different fact pattern: a different kind of incompletion and subsequent continuation. “Unhappy Endings” investigates texts left explicitly unfinished, texts left ambiguously unfinished, the impact of the Victorian serial form on the concept of “finishedness,” and the perceived kinds of finishedness, of a text.
These Victorian texts that question the concept of finishedness are taken up and continued in several different ways: continued by the original author, by an author’s family member, by an editor or publisher, by some other author or writer, or even by the reader-public. Thus, as the factual circumstances that create the “unfinished” and “continued” status of my exemplar texts vary from chapter to chapter, the working standard for what qualifies as “unfinished” and “continued” necessarily alters accordingly.
The following questions are inherent in my focus here on continuation and completion: What is an ending? What is “whole”? What makes a whole complete? Must a novel have a discernible ending to be complete? To be a whole? What can we learn when a novel, abandoned for whatever reason by one author, is “continued” and completed by another author? I use close reading, digital humanities, and biographical criticism to identify the ways that literature of the Victorian era was, and still is, particularly susceptible to continuation. This continued susceptibility paves the way, perhaps, for Victorian literature’s sustained impact on modern literature and media.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/sb89-w798 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Foster, Emily Anne |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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