Scrivenography: A Study of the Material Culture of Writing in Victorian Britain

Abstract

The tools and situations authors use while they work, such as their choice of writing implement, the places where they work, such as at a purpose-built writing desk or a repurposed kitchen table, and the spaces that surround them while they work, such as a dedicated study or a corner carved out of a dining room, all influence the material performance and output of authorship. Furthermore, these technologies, places and spaces can leave discernable imprints on the text produced, both in terms of its initial material creation and through references to writing things in the work itself. Writing technologies often became gendered during the Victorian era. Gendered marketing of writing tools, such as women’s workboxes coming already fitted with implements for both writing and sewing, affected women’s authorship both positively and negatively. On one hand, the conflation of writing and sewing could be seen as reinforcing patriarchal notions of domesticity that subjugated women authors’ work and influenced the degree of agency, power and control they had over their writing and its publication. Conversely, combining writing and sewing such that women had the necessary tools of authorship ready at hand put women’s writing on an equal footing with their needlework, which was already long recognized as a valuable contribution to British Victorian society and economy. Further, references to the materiality of writing in published works, such as a fictional character who interacts with writing technologies, can also indicate and be used by literary critics to analyze the degree of agency, power, and control that a character has in situations throughout the narrative. This dissertation develops a specific critical approach to study and interpret these influences on the material text.