Melissa J . Ganz | Marquette University (original) (raw)

Books by Melissa J . Ganz

University of Virginia Press, 2019

Articles and Book Chapters by Melissa J . Ganz

Law, Equity, and Romantic Writing: Seeking Justice in the Age of Revolutions, 2024

The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Literatures in English, Feb 9, 2024

Daniel Defoe in Context (Cambridge University Press), May 11, 2023

Critical Analysis of Law, 2022

This essay examines the contributions of Lisa Siraganian’s Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate... more This essay examines the contributions of Lisa Siraganian’s Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons (2021) to our understanding of the historical development and philosophical underpinning of United States corporate law as well as to broader studies of law and literature. The first part of the essay considers Siraganian’s analysis of problems related to corporate agency, intention, and responsibility. The second part considers the book’s implications for other types of collective social entities. In particular, the essay reads Ida Fink’s The Table (1970) and Charles Reznikoff’s Holocaust (1975) through the lens of Siraganian’s study, examining their treatment of the challenges posed by the collective nature of the Nazi genocide. The essay suggests that Siraganian’s book not only offers strikingly new insights about modern literature, thought, and culture but also gives us the resources to think better about corporate accountability broadly conceived.

Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2022

The Review of English Studies, Feb 9, 2022

This essay reads the promises that permeate Sense and Sensibility (1811) in the context of late e... more This essay reads the promises that permeate Sense and Sensibility (1811) in the context of late eighteenth-century discussions about the nature and value of voluntary obligations, probing Austen's engagement with ideas advanced by thinkers including David Hume, Adam Smith, William Paley, William Godwin, and Edmund Burke. In doing so, the essay contributes to long-standing debates about Austen's ethical vision, highlighting her simultaneous commitment to and critique of the individualist ethos structuring modern life. Austen's approach to promises, the essay argues, is broadly aligned with that of Hume, Smith, and Paley: like these philosophers, Austen suggests that one is bound by a pledge whenever one knowingly raises another's expectations concerning the existence of an obligation even if one does not intend to be bound. Yet Austen is less optimistic than these thinkers are about men's willingness to honour their pledges. She uses the resources of fiction—in particular, experiments with third-person narration and point of view—to examine the problems that result from the unequal power relations between men and women as well as the tendency of individuals to conflate desire with expectation. Even as Austen attempts to shore up a sense of individual responsibility in her society, she implicitly acknowledges that, in some cases, breaking a promise may result in more happiness than keeping it would.

Approaches to Teaching Austen's Persuasion, 2021

Nineteenth-Century Literature, 2015

Melissa J. Ganz, “Carrying On Like a Madman: Insanity and Responsibility in Strange Case of Dr. J... more Melissa J. Ganz, “Carrying On Like a Madman: Insanity and Responsibility in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (pp. 363–397) This essay reads Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) alongside medico-legal debates about the nature and scope of insanity, arguing that the novel seeks to shore up the idea of individual responsibility in Victorian society. The cognitive test of insanity that emerged from the M’Naghten case of 1843 deemed a person legally irresponsible for his acts if, due to a defect of reason resulting from mental disease, he was unable to perceive the nature and quality of his acts or to know that they were wrong. Alienists such as James Cowles Prichard and Henry Maudsley, however, argued that this test failed to acknowledge the existence of affective and volitional disorders such as moral and impulsive insanity. In their treatises, they urged judges to adopt a more permissive standard—an “irresistible impulse” test—that deemed acc...

The Eighteenth Century, 2013

In Book VII of Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), Frances Burney's heroine receives an une... more In Book VII of Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), Frances Burney's heroine receives an unexpected visit from her admirer, Mortimer Delvile. Mortimer rushes from Bath to Suffolk in order to speak to Miss Beverley one last time before going abroad. He plans to leave England because of a "cruel clause" in her uncle's will, making her inheritance conditional upon her husband's adoption of her surname. 1 Mortimer knows that his proud parents will never permit him to marry her and give up the family's ancient moniker; hence, he prepares to flee her society in a desperate effort to repress his love for her. When he overhears her expressing concern and affection for him, though, he forms a new plan. The next morning, when she receives him again, Mortimer nervously tells her that "all his hopes of being ever united to her, [rest] upon obtaining her consent to an immediate and secret marriage" (555). It proves difficult for him to gain her assent to such a union, however. Although her twenty-first birthday is just three days away and Mortimer is already of age, his parents' approval, in her mind, is crucial to the match. In the heated discussions that ensue, Burney reprises many of the arguments concerning clandestine unions that appeared in speeches, essays, and treatises leading up to and following the passage of Hardwicke's 1753 Marriage Act. Revising the canon law's approach to marriage, the Act required couples to solemnize their unions in formal, public ceremonies and required minors to obtain their fathers' assent before they could receive licenses to wed. The law deemed invalid all unions that failed to comply with these rules. 2 Not everyone approved of the Act's stringent requirements. While M.P.s like Edmund Burke and Richard Brinsley Sheridan supported the measure, those like Henry Fox and Charles Townshend vociferously opposed it. 3 In their view, the law wrongly privileged social and familial stability over individual freedom and desire, while undermining women's agency. Fox and other critics attempted to repeal or modify the Act on numerous occasions, nearly succeeding in 1765 21801.TX_ECTI_TheoryInterp_54_1.indd 26 2/7/13 12:57 PM

The Henry James Review, 2006

Toward the end of The Portrait of a Lady (1881), after Isabel Archer confides to Henrietta Stackp... more Toward the end of The Portrait of a Lady (1881), after Isabel Archer confides to Henrietta Stackpole that she feels trapped in her marriage to Gilbert Osmond, Henrietta advises Isabel to "[l]eave [her] husband before the worst comes" (549). When James's heroine recoils at "the off-hand" manner in which Henrietta speaks of withdrawing from the bonds of matrimony, the outspoken American journalist proceeds to justify her position: "'Well,' sa[ys] Henrietta as if she were beginning an argument, 'nothing is more common in our Western cities, and it's to them, after all, that we must look in the future.'" The reader hears no more of Henrietta's ideas, however; the narrator swiftly silences her. "Her argument," he tells us, "does not concern this history, which has too many other threads to unwind." Henrietta's argument, of course, has everything to do with James's novelwhich is why the narrator so noticeably and anxiously quiets her. Henrietta threatens to articulate what remains ever present but always implicit in the text: an argument in favor of divorce. This legal remedy for ill-matched couples was extremely controversial in nineteenth-century America. While figures such as Robert Dale Owen and Elizabeth Cady Stanton argued in favor of easing restrictions on divorce, others-such as New York Tribune Editor Horace Greeley and Yale College President Theodore Woolsey-railed against the frequency with which Americans were dissolving their vows. 1 Serialized in the Atlantic Monthly the year that Woolsey helped found the New England Divorce Reform League and that Congress authorized the gathering of national statistics on marriage and divorce, The Portrait of a Lady both responds to and participates in heated debates about the permanence of the conjugal tie. Scholars have examined James's portrait of matrimonial misery, but they have generally overlooked the novel's treatment of divorce. Insisting upon James's commitment to the sanctity of marriage, critics have dismissed the idea that the text considers divorce as an alternative for Isabel. Allen F. Stein, for Portrait of a Lady and the Divorce Debates 157 example, asserts that divorce is "out of the question as both [Isabel] and James see it" (139). In a similar vein, Alfred Habegger observes that "[d]ivorce as a topic is strangely absent from Isabel's life and mind" ("Woman" 163). Debra MacComb devotes closer attention to the question than most critics do, but she, too, concludes that the novel emphatically rejects this possibility. Constructing a sharp contrast between English and American attitudes toward marriage, she maintains that the novel criticizes Americans' "celebrated tendency" to elevate individual liberty over social obligation and to resort to radical breaks such as divorce in order to secure such liberty ("Divorce of a Nation" 129, see also Tales 53-77). 2 James's treatment of divorce is more complicated than these critics have recognized. At the same time that the novel insists upon the sanctity of the conjugal bond, it highlights the costs of remaining in a miserable marriage and it reaches toward a remedy for Isabel. At many moments the novel imagines the possibility-indeed, desirability-of dissolving the conjugal tie. The argument that Henrietta introduces fairly late in the novel is, in fact, woven through the text from the very beginning. Although the novel ultimately resists Henrietta's suggestion, it articulates some of the central arguments in favor of liberal divorce. In its close examination of both sides of the divorce debates, The Portrait of a Lady occupies an important place in the tradition of American divorce fiction. 3 To understand the implications of Henrietta's suggestion to Isabel, we need to consider the legal context of the novel. Henrietta wisely advises Isabel to turn to American courts, rather than to English or Italian tribunals, as English and Italian law did not permit a woman in Isabel's position to dissolve her vows. With certain limited exceptions, divorce remained illegal in Italy throughout the nineteenth century (Phillips 405-07). In England, after the passage of the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, a husband could obtain a divorce if he provided evidence of his wife's adultery, but a wife needed to show proof of an "aggravating factor" such as incest, bigamy, cruelty, or desertion for two years, in addition to adultery, in order to obtain the same remedy. If she showed evidence only of her husband's adultery or cruelty or desertion for two years, she could obtain a judicial separation enabling her to live apart from her spouse but barring her from remarrying (Shanley 35-44; Stone 378-82, 388). 4 Compared with English and Italian law, American divorce law was generally more liberal, but the specific provisions varied from state to state. 5 New York, Isabel Archer's original abode, was one of the stricter jurisdictions. New York courts recognized only one ground-adultery-as the basis for an absolute divorce, and they permitted only the "innocent" spouse to remarry after receiving such a decree (Blake 64-66; Hartog 72-73). The courts granted limited divorces, or separations "from bed and board," which enabled spouses to live apart but not to remarry, for three reasons: cruel and inhuman treatment by one spouse toward the other; conduct that might render it unsafe and improper for one spouse to cohabit with the other; and abandonment, coupled with refusal or neglect to provide for the other spouse. The courts interpreted "cruelty" as meaning only physical brutality (Blake 66; Griswold 128-29). In other states, such as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Nevada, and Utah-the notorious "Western states" to which Henrietta alludes-spouses could take back

Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 2005

H alfway through Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe's eponymous heroine receives a marriage proposal fro... more H alfway through Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe's eponymous heroine receives a marriage proposal from a bank clerk. A cuckold, the clerk has won a decree of separation from his wife and now seeks to make good on his promise to marry Moll. Moll, however, raises "some Scruples at the Lawfulness of his Marrying again" and advises her friend to "consider very seriously upon [this] Point before he resolv'[s] on it." Moll's objection, of course, is richly 2 For discussions of marriage, see David Blewett, "Changing Attitudes toward Marriage in the Time of Defoe: The Case of Moll Flanders,"

Yale JL & Feminism, 1997

Melissa J. Ganzt I. INTRODUCTION "[Flor the sake of the noble men and women who have stood by me ... more Melissa J. Ganzt I. INTRODUCTION "[Flor the sake of the noble men and women who have stood by me through all revilings... and for his [sake] who lost his life in my behalf, I wish to tell the whole story of my life," Abby Sage Richardson wrote in the New York Daily Tribune on May 11, 1870.1 "When I was once advised to do so and hesitated," Abby explained, "a good woman said to me, 'Do not be afraid to tell your story once to all the world. Tell it once exactly as you would tell it to your Maker, and then keep silence forever after.' 2 Abby listened to the woman's advice, penning a statement that spanned more than eight columns in the newspaper, six of which filled the entire front page. 3 Abby's story began with her marriage to Daniel McFarland in 1857. 4 Nearly twice her age, McFarland dazzled her with boasts of a flourishing law practice and brilliant political prospects, only to reveal a few weeks into their honeymoon that he had long given up the practice of law in favor of an unsuccessful career speculating in land. 5 Less than three months after their wedding, McFarland

Shorter Essays by Melissa J . Ganz

Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Literature, 2025

Keats-Shelley Journal +, 2024

Book Reviews by Melissa J . Ganz

University of Virginia Press, 2019

Law, Equity, and Romantic Writing: Seeking Justice in the Age of Revolutions, 2024

The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Literatures in English, Feb 9, 2024

Daniel Defoe in Context (Cambridge University Press), May 11, 2023

Critical Analysis of Law, 2022

Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2022

The Review of English Studies, Feb 9, 2022

Approaches to Teaching Austen's Persuasion, 2021

Nineteenth-Century Literature, 2015

The Eighteenth Century, 2013

The Henry James Review, 2006

Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 2005

Yale JL & Feminism, 1997

Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Literature, 2025

Keats-Shelley Journal +, 2024

Journal of British Studies, 2016

Cox reminds us, the strangeness of this poem for Barbauld's contemporaries (as well as for schola... more Cox reminds us, the strangeness of this poem for Barbauld's contemporaries (as well as for scholars today) was its unconventional mixture of satire and prophecy. Interestingly, Percy Shelley's Esdaile notebook, copied out in late 1812, explores many of the same issues as Barbauld's text, paving the way for his own satirical and prophetic works, such as Queen Mab (1813) and Prometheus Unbound (1820). Satirical prophecy was not solely the province of the poets, however. As Cox points out, Mary Shelley also engaged in satirical prophecy in Valperga (1821) and The Last Man (1826), deploying the genres of the historical novel and science fiction to trace the historical trajectory of the rampant chauvinism of the Napoleonic War years and to predict the dire consequences of the present-day imperialistic urge. Romanticism in the Shadow of War concludes with an exploration of Leigh Hunt's Dantesque The Story of Rimini (1816), penned during Hunt's time in prison, as a foundational text in the subsequent turn to Italian literature and culture by Keats, Byron, and the Shelleys, among others. Hunt's experimentation and national border crossing was, like the previous examples, a reaction to a specific historical moment-Napoleon's exile after Waterloo-and the cultural exhaustion experienced by Britons after a long era of bloodshed and violence. Cox argues convincingly that the explicit eroticism of The Story of Rimini was posited by Hunt as an antidote to the psychological drain of the Napoleonic War years. In the final chapter Cox argues that the Cockney appropriation of Italian literature was an attempt to acquire a cultural authority across national lines that undercut class biases and liberated language for those who were traditionally denied access to high literature: the lower classes and women. In sum, Romanticism in the Shadow of War provides a historically nuanced and thoughtful discussion of the emergence of a new literary radicalism and artistic experimentation during the Napoleonic War years that continues to reverberate down to the present day.

Law, Culture and the Humanities, 2012