Where Love Happens

Grøn, Helene; Østermark-Johansen, Lene; de Rijke, Victoria

Where Love Happens

Changing Social Practices of Love in the Long Nineteenth Century

by Helene Grøn (Volume editor) Lene Østermark-Johansen (Volume editor) Victoria de Rijke (Volume editor)

English Studies

Open Access

Series: Cultural Interactions: Studies in the Relationship between the Arts, Volume 51

Summary

Some decades ago, Jean-Luc Nancy asked, ‘Has not everything been said on the subject of love? … Could we perhaps be exhausted?’ The question is a pertinent one; why devote yet another book to the subject? Grounding love in the realm of the concrete by querying, where does love happen?, the essays address hitherto under-researched aspects and aesthetics of love, like the love of the child, same-sex love, love of country, love for machines, controversial relationships, love of the dead, love of the past, and networks of relationships revolving around love and intimacy. Here, leading scholars suggest that changing social practices, developed in the course of the long nineteenth century, determined new spaces and places for love to happen, to unfold, develop – and break up. Thereby, the much-debated claim that romantic love is an invention of European Romanticism is challenged, asking if romantic love might not be less and other kinds of love far more romantic than at first imagined.

Excerpt

Cover
Half Title
Cultural Interactions
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1: Relationships at the Margins: Love as Alibi
Chapter 1: Reading with the Heart: Tracing Love and Human Rights across Ellen and William Craft’s Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860) and Mary Louisa Gordon’s Chase of the Wild Goose (1936)
Reading love, reading rights, or, reading with the heart
‘Boy, do you belong to that Gentleman?’: Marriage, law and the language of love and ownership
‘Novelising the Narrative’: Genre, collaboration and co-writing for abolition
‘Sketched by many hands’: Celebrated virgins, celibacy and a romantic friendship
Describing the world from the top of a staircase: The lineage of rights and love in Chase of the Wild Goose
Continuing to read with one’s heart
Bibliography
Chapter 2: The Homosexual World of Love and Ritual: Love and Painting in Britain, 1860–1920
The promise and failure of love’s grounding: Simeon Solomon
The reality of love’s grounding: Clare ‘Tony’ Atwood
The task of the least: Love and the history of art
Bibliography
Chapter 3: Fairy Tale Love: Little Red Riding Hood and Photography, 1820–1920
Prologue
Once upon a time, fairy tale
Unfixed conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 4: Corners of Love and Death: Probing into a Modern Obsession
Preamble
Rococo corners
A female foot, and a girl, in the corner
Corners of creation
Hot and cold corners
Purging the (female) corner
Bibliography
Part 2: Reconnecting Love: Thresholds of Communication
Chapter 5: Owd Friends: Victorian Working-Class Poetry and the Love of Things
Bibliography
Chapter 6: ‘There Is No Death’: Familial Love, Loss and (Re)connection in Nineteenth-Century Spiritualist Literature
‘[A]ctual, irrefragable proof’: Florence Marryat, There Is No Death and The Dead Man’s Message
‘[S]entiment is not excluded’: Oliver Lodge and Raymond
‘[A] family-party, met for family-purposes’: The Brownings and ‘Mr Sludge’
Bibliography
Chapter 7: From the Linden Trees to the Willows: Female Mourners of Goethe’s Werther in Eighteenth-Century England
Bibliography
Chapter 8: Intimate Communication: Romantic Love as a Social Practice in Bettina von Arnim’s Clemens Brentano’s Frühlingskranz and Die Günderode
‘Love is only divine dialogue’
‘First sibling love’
‘Cries of my heart for you’
Conclusion
Bibliography
Part 3: Love Illuminated: Transforming ‘Cold Philosophy’
Chapter 9: Fairy Lights: Light and a Changing Paradigm of Love at the End of the Nineteenth Century
Dance, surge and flash: The aesthetics of ‘becoming’ over ‘being’
The electricity fairy’s protective magic in a ‘war on risk’
Night lights
Domesticating the electric fairy
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 10: ‘Wherefore Flout / the Silent Blessing Fate’: Love, Fate and Metaphysics in John Keats and His Legacy
Love and fate in Keats’ work
Bibliography
Chapter 11: Teleoaffectivity: Love in Casa Guidi Windows
Teleoaffectivity in Casa Guidi Windows
Bibliography
Chapter 12: Coda
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
Cultural Interactions: Studies in the Relationship between the Arts

Cultural Interactions

Studies in the Relationship between the Arts

Edited by J.B. Bullen

Volume 51

Dedicated to those we love.

Give me a mind in unison with my own and I’ll find the way of happiness – without it, I should feel alone among multitudes; and all the world would seem to me a desert.

—Anne Lister in Muriel M. Green, ed, Miss Lister of Shibden Hall: Selected Letters 1800–1840 (Lewes: The Book Guild Ltd., 1992), 87.

Which owes the other most? my love was long,

And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;

I loved and guessed at you, you construed me

And loved me for what might or might not be –

Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Helene Grøn, Lene Østermark-Johansen and Viktoria de Rijke

Introduction
Part I Relationships at the Margins: Love as Alibi
Part II Reconnecting Love: Thresholds of Communication
1. Kirstie Blair
  
  5 Owd Friends: Victorian Working-Class Poetry and the Love of Things
2. Emily Vincent
  
  6 ‘There Is No Death’: Familial Love, Loss and (Re)connection in Nineteenth-Century Spiritualist Literature
3. Lene Østermark-Johansen
  
  7 From the Linden Trees to the Willows: Female Mourners of Goethe’s Werther in Eighteenth-Century England
4. Alexander Knopf
  
  8 Intimate Communication: Romantic Love as a Social Practice in Bettina von Arnim’s Clemens Brentano’s Frühlingskranz and Die Günderode
Part III Love Illuminated: Transforming ‘Cold Philosophy’
1. Joanna Beaufoy
  
  9 Fairy Lights: Light and a Changing Paradigm of Love at the End of the Nineteenth Century
2. James Dowthwaite
  
  10 ‘Wherefore Flout / the Silent Blessing Fate’: Love, Fate and Metaphysics in John Keats and His Legacy
3. Jerome Wynter
  
  11 Teleoaffectivity: Love in Casa Guidi Windows
4. Helene Grøn, Lene Østermark-Johansen and Viktoria de Rijke
  
  12 Coda
Notes on Contributors
Index

Figures

Figure 1.1. Photograph of William Craft in Locket. From William and Ellen Craft’s photograph album, ca. 1850s, jewellery. Craft and Crum families’ collection.
Figure 1.2. J. Andrews & S. A. Schiff, Ellen Craft, the Fugitive Slave, 1856, illustration. New York Public Library Digital Collection.
Figure 1.3. Newspaper article on Ellen Craft from The Illustrated London News, 1851, image. Craft and Crum families’ Collection, open domain.
Figure 1.4. William and Ellen Craft, 1872, The New York Public Library Digital Collection.
Figure 1.5. Richard James Lane, The Rt Honble Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby ‘The Ladies of Llangollen’, 1840, illustration. The British Library.
Figure 1.6. Cambrian Pottery and the Glamorgan Pottery, Plate. Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby out riding, ca. 1813–1839. Earthenware, glass, 16 cm. Amgueddfa Cymru National Museum Wales.
Figure 2.1. Simeon Solomon, A Prelude by Bach, 1868. Pencil, watercolour and bodycolour on paper, 432 x 650 mm. Private collection. Photo: © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images.
Figure 2.2. Clare Atwood, The Dining Room at Smallhythe, c. 1920. Oil on canvas, 550 x 495 mm. Smallhythe Place, Kent, UK. National Trust Photographic Library/Bridgeman Images. © Estate of Clare Atwood.
Figure 2.3. Simeon Solomon, The Bride, the Bridegroom, and Sad Love, 1865. Pen and ink on paper, 250 x 194 mm. © Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Figure 2.4. Simeon Solomon, Love in Autumn, 1866. Oil on canvas, 840 x 660 mm. Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK. Photo © NPL-DeA Picture Library/Bridgeman Images.
Figure 2.5. Simeon Solomon, Front cover, A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep, 1871. Book bound in blue cloth with gilt decoration, 260 x 200 mm. © Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Figure 2.6. Clare Atwood, The Terrace Outside the Priest’s House, c. 1919. Oil on canvas, 595 x 495 mm. Smallhythe Place, Kent, UK. National Trust Photographic Library/Bridgeman Images. © Estate of Clare Atwood.
Figure 2.7. Clare Atwood, John Gielgud’s Room, 1933. Oil on canvas, 635 x 764 mm. Tate Britain. © Estate of Clare Atwood.
Figure 3.1. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, le Gras, France, 1827, the earliest saved photographic image, heliograph on pewter plate, open domain.
Figure 3.2. John Thomas Peele, Little Red Riding Hood, 1851, oil on canvas, 49 x 38 in, Private Collection.
Figure 3.3. Anon., Roodkapje klopt op grootmoeders deur [Little Red Riding Hood knocks on grandmother’s door] 1853–1863, hand-coloured stereograph, 85 mm x 173 mm, open domain.
Figure 3.4. Anon., When the little girl knocks, he says, ‘open the latch and come in’, 1898–1903, hand-coloured photograph, L’éditeur Künzli Frères (Paris), 141 x 93 mm, open domain.
Figure 3.5. Lewis Carroll, The Little Red Riding Hood 1857, one of only three images Carroll allowed the public to see in his lifetime (at the 5th Annual Exhibition of the Photographic Society, South Kensington Museum, 1858) 650 x 963 mm, open domain.
Figure 3.6. Henry Peach Robinson, Little Red Riding Hood Arrives at the Door of Her Grandmother’s House, 1858/9, Albumen print, 23.3 x 18.7 cm, open domain.
Figure 3.7. Lewis Carroll, unknown child as Little Red Riding Hood, May 1868, Albumen print, Badcock’s Yard, Oxford, open domain.
Figure 3.8. Fitz W. Guerin, Child sleeping on wolfskin rug, ca. 1900, photographic print, open domain.
Figure 3.9. Still from the American film Little Red Riding Hood, 1922 featuring Baby Peggy, aka Diana Serra Cary, from Universal Weekly, 7 October 1922, open domain.
Figure 3.10. Advert for the film with Baby Peggy, Universal Weekly, 11 November 1922, open domain.
Figure 4.1. Émile Bernard, Brothel Scene, 1888, reed pen and brush and ink and watercolour on paper, 31 x 20 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).
Figure 4.2. A Summer Corner, from J. E. Panton, Nooks and Corners, London 1889. Figure 5, 53.
Figure 4.3. A Winter Corner, from J. E. Panton, Nooks and Corners, London 1889. Figure 8, 60.
Figure 4.4. Frank Millet, A Cosey Corner, 1884, oil on canvas, 92.1 x 61.6 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of George I. Seney, 1887, public domain.
Figure 4.5. James Wyatt and James Thornton, Belvoir Castle, 1799–1832. David P. Howard.
Figure 4.6. Bonaventure-Louis Prévost after Charles-Nicolas Cochin, Frontispiece to Diderot and d’Alambert’s Encyclopédie, 1772, etching and engraving. 37 x 24 cm. Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago, public domain.
Figure 4.7. Augustin de Saint-Aubin after Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Le Baiser Envoyé, 1807. (*Reverse*) Mezzotint. 57 x 40.4 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1960, public domain.
Figure 4.8. Pierre Chenu after Juste Aurèle Meissonnier, Projet de l’angle d’un Sallon portatif pour le Roy en 1730. [Design for a corner of a room for the King in 1730], 1748, etching and engraving, 45.7 x 33.7 cm. New York, Cooper Hewitt Museum, public domain.
Figure 4.9. Bernard II van Risenburgh, Corner Cabinet (encoignure), one of a pair, ca. 1745–49, oak veneered with ebony and Coromandel lacquer, cherry wood, and purplewood; gilt-bronze mounts; brocatelle marble top, 91.1 x 86.0 x 66.4 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 1983, public domain.
Figure 4.10. François Boucher, Madame de Pompadour, 1756, oil on canvas. 205 x 161 cm. Bayerische Staatsgemäldesamlungen – Alte Pinakothek München, public domain.
Figure 4.11. Edgar Degas, Portrait of an Artist in his Studio, ca. 1878, oil on canvas, 41.5 x 27.3 cm. Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon.
Figure 4.12. Albert Bentley, Miniature Armchair, 1860–80. 32.5 x 20 cm. Frames: softwood and mahogany. Feet: brass. Upholstery: glazed linen and wadding under upholstery, with silk damask and trimmings. London, Victoria and Albert Museum. Given by Miss F. Bentley.
Figure 4.13. Horace Castelli, Là, là, disait Laurent d’une voix terrifiée, illustration to Émile Zola, Thérèse Raquin; suivi du Capitaine Burle (Paris: Marpon and Flammarion, 1883), 233. Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF Non-Commercial.
Figure 4.14. Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior, 1899, oil on canvas, 64.5 × 58.1 cm. Tate Gallery, Presented in memory of Leonard Borwick by his friends through the Art Fund 1926.
Figure 5.1. Sam Fitton, ‘My Owd Case Clock’, Gradely Lancashire (Stalybridge: George Whittaker & Sons, 1930), 64.
Figure 6.1. Portrait of Florence Marryat from The ‘Two Worlds’ Portrait Album of Spiritual Mediums, Workers, and Celebrities (Manchester: Labour Press Society Ltd., 1897), 18. IAPSOP.
Figure 6.2. Frontispiece of Raymond Lodge in Raymond, or Life and Death by Oliver Lodge (New York: George H. Doran, 1916). Internet Archive.
Figure 6.3. ‘Un prodige de Dunglas Home (Page 635)’ illustration from Les Mystères de la Science by Louis Figuier (Paris: Librairie Illustrée, 1880). Wellcome Library.
Figure 7.1. John Raphael Smith, after Emma Crewe, Charlotte at the Tomb of Werter (1783), stipple engraving, 40.2 x 35.5 cm. British Museum London.
Figure 7.2. Embroidered picture, depicting a mourning female figure leaning on a tomb surmounted by an urn under the shade of a weeping willow. The tomb bears the inscription: Sacred to the memory of Dr Robt Rogerson. obt. 1 April 1806, AE 49 y’s. Lucy Rogerson. obt. 4 March 1807, AE 39. Danl. H. Rogerson. obt., 25 March 1808, AE 14. Lucy H. Rogerson. obt. 1803, AE 11 months. Embroidered in tan silk on silk foundation with toned watercolour washes. (ca 1810), 41 x 39.5 cm, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Gift of Anonymous Donor from the Fraser/Martin Collection, <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mourning_Sampler_(England),_ca._1810_(CH_18482639).jpg>.

Details

Pages: XXII, 328
Publication Year: 2025
ISBN (PDF): 9781803745510
ISBN (ePUB): 9781803745527
ISBN (Softcover): 9781803745503
DOI: 10.3726/b21993
Open Access: CC-BY
Language: English
Publication date: 2025 (October)
Keywords: Where Love Happens Lene Østermark-Johansen Victoria de Rijke Helene Grøn Victorianism love studies social practices same-sex love race and gender human rights literary tourism spiritualism sculpture painting photography technology and ephemera art history the long nineteenth century applied arts transnationalism romanticism material culture
Published: Oxford, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, 2025. xxii, 328 pp., 35 fig. col., 30 fig. b/w.
Product Safety: Peter Lang Group AG

Biographical notes

Helene Grøn (Volume editor) Lene Østermark-Johansen (Volume editor) Victoria de Rijke (Volume editor)

Helene Grøn holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from the University of Glasgow and is currently a Postdoc at the University of Copenhagen. Lene Østermark-Johansen is Professor of English literature and art at the University of Copenhagen. Viktoria de Rijke is Professor in Arts & Education at Middlesex University in London.

Where Love Happens

Summary

Excerpt

Table Of Contents

Cultural Interactions

Contents

Figures

Details

Biographical notes

Key Subject Areas