The English Novel in History 1895 - 1920 by David Trotter

On the home run with this book now. After covering Disgust and Henry James' Odd Women last month, it is time to move on to the penultimate 2 chapters.

This month it is chapters 16 and 17 that I will make notes on.

Chapter 16 - Irony and Revulsion in Kipling and Conrad

This chapter examines, through many references to the novels of both of these authors, the use of irony and revulsion together, which was typical of the time. Revulsion, either in the characters or the reader can isolate and destroy 'social cohesiveness', whereas irony, with its 'mutual understanding' binds characters, or reader and characters together. The use of both can not only balance a piece of writing, but make it much more interesting.

Kipling wrote many books about torture, examining detachment and in particular the torturers point of view. Descriptions of the victims deliberately arouse disgust, and beyond any irony, isolating them further, reducing them to nothing. Clearly this can evoke powerful feelings in the reader (I found some of the passages very difficult to read). How detached can the reader be? At the time, some of the passages in his books were considered to be 'excessive' and Kipling himself described as 'rather nasty' a scene involving a leper in 'The Mark of the Beast', in a collection called Life's Handicap written in 1891. Kipling continually identifies with the torturer in the numerous torture scenes he writes about. In other stories revulsion is imparted through mixed race relationships, something Kipling felt strongly about.

Conrad concentrates more on using physicality to evoke revulsion, particularly 'fat greasy men' (p253) of which there are many in his books, and are afforded long distasteful descriptions that centre on the blurring of physical identity, generically, culturally or otherwise, by the conditions of obesity.

Conrad also writes about torture on occasion, but unlike Kipling, he includes the victims point of view.

Chapter 17 - Waiting: James's Last Novels

Kipling, Conrad and James all wrote about impurity and exclusion, but whereas Kipling and Conrad continued along this vein, James changed direction and in his last novels and wrote about lives changed by desire and the vulgarities that he saw therein.

In all of these novels run themes of waiting, lateness, being held up, at railway stations, for meetings etc., 'because everyone must learn to wait in a book about desire' (p268). The theme of delays and waiting are used to high effect in The Ambassadors where a male character struggles with his sexuality, missing encounters with women in a novel where 'He will always be too late' (p271). Self-suppression becomes the only way for him in an exploration of desire. It is here that his secret homosexuality is disgusting to him and waiting itself is the meaning and the point.

In The Golden Bowl we have a female protagonist who keeps herself waiting for the Prince's return, an endless wait that she chooses, and that James uses to convey feelings of desire and frustration.

Contemporary works that illustrate the above points include...

By Rudyard Kipling -

Traffics and Discoveries

Life's Handicap (particularly 'The Mark of the Beast')

Plain Tales from the Hills

A Diversity of Creatures (particularly 'Sea Constables')

Weir of Hermiston

By Joseph Conrad -

Nostromo

Almayer's Folly

An Outcast of the Islands

Lord Jim

The Secret Agent

Heart of Darkness

By Henry James -

The Wings of the Dove

The Ambassadors

The Golden Bowl

Look out for the last 2 chapters from this excellent Literary Theory book next month.

The English Novel in History 1895 - 1920 by David Trotter

Steaming through this Literary Theory book that I found unread at the beginning of the year, it is time for the next two chapters.
We covered Awakenings and Sex Novels in September. We now move on to chapters 14 and 15...
Chapter 14 - Disgust
While sex was being used to sell books, feelings of disgust were also being used in literature of the day to provoke reaction in the reader, particularly in the popular genre of detective stories. Disgust is an involuntary reaction, complete and spontaneous, and often influenced by cultural parameters. Different cultures find different things disgusting.
A good example is the description of an open wound on the drivers leg as he transports Tess and Angel to their wedding in Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. It is deliberately placed by the author, especially as Tess and Angel cannot see it, but we as readers are made to think on it as something out of place. We instantly react to it, and Hardy clearly uses it as a literary device.
Disgust was also used to distinguish class, with lowly work having its own sights and smells giving rise to reaction, and a certain elevation of feeling in the higher classes. Revulsion can also signify change of character for the worst, or as a reaction by another character. We cannot control our feelings of disgust and this gave authors a 'point of entry into the subconscious'. (p217).
Reactions of disgust come into their own in detective novels, describing violence, death or bad character. Death was central to these novels instead of sex, and the physical disgust of a corpse is mirrored by the moral disgust of a murder, and these are powerful emotions to use. Murders are messy, hinting at violence, inciting horror and also fascination. Corpses are dirty and the detective has to sift through the dirt to solve the murder. The detective, in contrast, like Sherlock Holmes, is emotionally unattached, clinically precise and very British. The epitome of deduction and control, and therefore the antithesis of the chaos of crime.
Chapter 15 - Henry James's Odd Women
Henry James wanted to expand his literary prowess by attempting to write from the point of view of characters most unlike himself. So during 1896 and 1899 he wrote a series of novels from a womans viewpoint.
An obvious example of these novels is The Turn of the Screw, a ghost story provoking horror and revulsion, and told through the point of view of the governess employed to take charge of two children in a seemingly haunted house.
There are arguments that this is not a ghost story, but one of hysteria and sexual repression, but James' own notebooks concentrate on the feeling of evil and corruption from across a divide. The devil is duplicitous and the 'two devils' in James' novel replicate this. Also there is the repetition of possession as the children become the medium for the two ghosts. Horror can be connected to disgust and James was clearly intrigued by this.
In The Turn of the Screw and also What Maisie Knew both used social and sexual vulgarity, of 'classes mingling promiscuously' (p241) to evoke feelings of disgust. The women in these novels are vulnerable because they stand at the gate through which vulgarity pours. Their strength in this position does not count. Other than their refusal of desire and revulsion they are denied their own identity. This makes them unique in the fiction of the period.
Contemporary works that illustrate the above points include...
Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Sherlock Holmes novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
What Maisie Knew by Henry James
The next two chapters will be covered in November.

The English Novel in History 1895 - 1920

After a little break during August I am back on schedule with this Literary Theory book that I have been making notes on each month.

We covered Englishness and Spies in July so it is time to cover chapter 12 in Part II and chapter 13 in Part III.

Chapter 12 - Awakenings

Books that sold a minimum of 50, 000 copies were known as a bestseller but this was not always a good label. They did however promise more than entertainment, and this could have been in the form of spirituality or instruction of faith. Sexuality could sell books as long as it was presented as regenerative. Regeneration could be acheived if the character was saved from a kind of inertia resulting in lack of character. In the female character this was the bland condemnation caused by marriage or spinsterhood. Awakening of desire in females was considered to be powerful and essential at the same time, but more dangerous and less contained within the bounds of social and literary decency.

As the numbers of female readers grew the liberation of modern young women in fiction ensured a bestseller. Desert romances became popular, telling the stories of violent sexuality and mysticism in the French Sahara. The muscular desert men will make the city female all woman. Acknowledgement and celebration of desire are where these novels are closest to serious fiction. E M Forster and D H Lawrence both explored the awakening of desire in women. and exploit the romantic stereotype to this end, exploring as well as denigrating it. Romance needed to be broken to acheive sexual awakening in women. Mystycism supercedes romance.

There are parallels between Freuds studies on the sexual fantasies in women and Lawrence's novels, particularly The Rainbow and Women in Love, polarities of character which develop sexual maturity. There is also a lot of imagery involving horses, being broken in violently, like the women, or stallions being ridden by women. Lawrence criticises 'half-heartedness' or a 'sort of rottenness in the will' in womens characters. This degeneration can be reversed by a sexual awakening.

Part III The Psychopathology of Modernism

Chapter 13 - Sex Novels

There were 2 preoccupations in fiction at the end of the 19th century, desire and disgust, and the Edwardians were no strangers to either. There was however more attention being bestowed upon these elements at this time. The prominence of regeneration theories ensured an equal amount of attention given to 'rottenness' and 'images of monstrosity' (p197), Mr Hyde, Moriarty, Count Dracula, the picture of Dorian Gray and Kurtz in the jungle, are just some examples. However Edward Garnett (a literary advisor) advised that sex novels were valuable because they challenged the norm.

There were two movements of this type of novel: the first being New Woman novels of the 1890's which were seen as a threat to the institution of marriage. The second wave was linked to the suffrage movement around 1905. Sex novels should not be too closely allied with the womens movement however, but the exploration of women's sexuality was prominent, and causing a lot of controversy.

The most ambitious and influential novel regarding a female character, who not only found herself in sexually charged situations and consequences, but also elicited a sexual response from every male character and the narrator as well, was Tess from Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

Another contraversial book at the time was The Blue Lagoon by H de Vere Stacpoole, about an adolescent boy and girl shipwrecked on an island. Sexual gratification takes place, unusually, before any real desire, being a mechanical instinct in the first instance. Desire and exploration comes later, making this novel a departure from convention.

Representing the body in new ways was another angle that the Edwardian writers took. Erotic detail came out of minute detail. The Victorians had become preoccupied with scars in description, expressing moral identity. The Edwardians developed this as a provocation to desire giving 'bodies a new presence in fiction' (p203). There was also the offence caused by H G well's Ann Veronica because a woman made advances to a man.

Morality was increasingly being regulated by the state, with many initiatives being born to clean up any influences that were thought to be amoral. Criminal law was being used to reform public morality and erotic fiction became a target with lots of outcry and bannings. Censorship was not a government concern so pressure had to be exerted by the public.

It seems that passages were taken from books and paraded as amoral, but many of these were taken out of context. Lesbian undertones, alluded to in The Rainbow by Lawrence for example, were assumed by the author to be explainable by characteristic context, but the opposition did not see the passages in this way.

Any writing that included sexual activity as a means of procreation were seen as justified, it was recognition of sexuality that was frowned upon. Sex was not to be equated with pleasure. Terrorism, spies and perversion were all seen as social decay and therefore a threat to society and the human race.

Contemporary works that illustrate the above points include...

A Room with a View by E M Forster

Women in Love and The Rainbow by D H Lawrence

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

The Blue Lagoon by H. de Vere Stacpoole

Ann Veronica by H G Wells

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Look out for the next 2 chapters in October!

The English Novel in History 1895 - 1920

Time for the next 2 chapters of this literary theory book that I rediscovered unread earlier on this year and hope to comment on each month.

Last month we covered Declension and Frontiers. We now move on to chapters 10 and 11 of Part II on Nation and Society.

Chapter 10 - Englishness

England had a strong sense of itself, its own identity, and it had emerged from its national attributes, 'political, legal and administrative stability, and a widely intelligible vernacular.' (p154) With the expansion of England into Britain and a rapidly growing industrialisation, cultural images and narratives of a sense of nation became more important. It is believed that this emphasis on Englishness was responsible for a decline in 'entrepeneurial spirit' and a rise in literary criticism at the time.

The Boer War was blamed for a change in perceptions away from country born intelligence to city based intelligence. Urban life was destroying the race and only a return to living off the land would reintroduce our identity. In literature, historical depth was needed, and Rudyard Kipling explored this along with a return to ancient dialects and regional language patterns to continue nationality. Language was seen to be degenerating with the loss of Anglo Saxon. William Barnes, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Ezra Pound all championed the return of Anglo Saxon vigour.

Barnes thought that Latin and French words had weakened the English language, and the purest English was in Wessex, the furthest from international influence. Hardy and Kipling embraced the Wessex dialect to authenticate characters.

Along with connections to ancient speech patterns was a fascination for ancient architecture. Stonehenge, Avebury, Silbury Hill and other ancient places enhanced a feeling of understanding of an old, wise knowledge that belonged to England, and authors used them to create an accessible magic.

Englishness was beginning to enter the realms of fantasy, no more so than in those who adopted the act of being English. A famous example of the time was Ford Madox Ford, author, poet and editor of literary journals. He spoke with a pronounced precision, claimed a connection with the land and the simple life, medievalism, adopted Toryism, became a cricket enthusiast and the ways of the old school tie. Yet his origins were German, his real surname was Hueffer. It was a performance, validating itself in an emphasis on tradition over the new. It shook up perceptions of being English. Hueffer wrote extensively about Englishness but warned about 'the Heart of England' being an illusion developed by people in cities seeking a more traditional source of national identity.

Chapter 11 - Spies

Patriotism continued in the form of the popular spy novels but here the emphasis is on protecting the national identity from outside influences. The genre replaced the imperial adventure stories as anxieties moved from frontiers to Great Power rivalry.

It is not coincidence that spy novels arose at the same time as the British Secret Service, and its leader was convinced of an invasion by the Germans. To reaffirm his suspicions literature came to his aid. Popular caricatures can often be mistaken for real people. These novels also became heavily didactic as the secret agent became a 'symbol of stability' in a world that was quickly changing.

Where the sensation novels of the 1860's emphasised anxieties of bigamy, or wrongful incarciration in lunatic asylums, the 1880's brought terrorism in the form of the Fenian bombings. Terrorism was international and brought to the fore the fact that Britain was part of a big scary world and not an isolated island bubble. Terrorists were secretive and once a member you could not leave. They were driven by ancient grudges and insults, killing for revenge. Any invasion would be impossible without an influx of spies, living among us, ordinary lives waiting for instruction to wreak havoc. Such a situation, emphasising enigma rather than battles, needed a new type of hero, a sleepy Englishman thrown into an extraordinary situation, having to save not just himself but his country too. Luxurious and high up places provided sophisticated settings for these novels. The threat to England widened as paranoia grew, and E Phillips Oppenheim as well as other authors, became interested in secret societies as the spy novel gained influence.

Lord Baden Powell likened spying to scouting, adventure for anyone tired of life. The thrilling occupations of a spy were a national regenerator and John Buchan's character Richard Hannay embodied that. He was 'nomadic, protean, occasionally violent, a symbol of the instability needed to revitalize a complacent, suburbanized society'. (p180)

Contemporary works that illustrate the above points include...

She and Kim by Rudyard Kipling

The Secret Places of the Heart by H G Wells

England, My England by D H Lawrence

The Heart of the Country and The Spirit of the People by Ford Madox Hueffer

The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace

The Mysterious Mr Sabin and The Great Impersonation by E Phillips Oppenheim

Just to let you know this post has come out later than planned because after spending 2 hours composing it some days ago, on publishing it something happened and the entire post was wiped with no trace. Gutting!

Please look out for the next 2 chapters some time next month

The English Novel in History 1895-1920

Here are the notes on the next 2 chapters from this book that I found earlier this year and am serialising throughout 2011.

Last month we covered The Relevance of Ulysses and Degeneration. We now move onto chapters 8 and 9 in Part II of the book about Nation and Society.

Chapter 8 -Declension

The short era of the slum novel was coming to an end by the 1890's, leaving Zola behind for the 'romance' of Dickens and his depictions of the more 'cheerful' aspects of the poorer classes. At the same time a new class was emerging from the areas quickly becoming the suburbs, spreading out from London's centre and the major industrial centres, as well as coastal resorts now easily accessible by railway. This new 'tribe' of city dwellers was of special interest to the cultural anthropologists, and was also composed of avid novel readers, too leading to a flourishing fictional genre that 'celebrated or gently mocked suburban lifestyles and values', (p129). The characteristic most obvious from such writing was the monotony of suburbia, the elimination of variety, producing a certain type of person that denied differences, or sense of community. We no longer seemed to witness a society united by common human bonds, but one that thrived now on individual capacity and desire. This uniformity could be viewed in 2 ways, the Dickens view of benevolence, or the Ruskin view of pettiness and destruction.

Authors Arnold Bennett and Virginia Woolf took opposing views about characterisation at this time. Woolf embraced the new concepts of identity and their depiction in literature, Bennett felt that she neglected depth of character while trying to be clever in her writing. Woolf rejected the traditional tools and conventions of portrayal, preferring to convey character through 'poetic awareness'. In Modern Fiction, the more aware someone is of their own identity, the more representable they become. Modernism itself has been said to be a 'poetic of awareness' (133).

Bennett on the other hand preferred to use the differences between people as essential to their portrayal. These differences, particularly between gender, were key to Bennett's characters.

Where there is awareness of character, there must also be unawareness. Bennett championed the right to a characters unawareness. This required a new type of plot. Traditional English novel writing had included revelations throughout as a character develops, and prejudice and habits make way for a when the 'naked self confronts a naked world' (p135). Layers of character needed to be stripped away to reveal the truth, the final transformation. Bennett found himself between 2 traditions, so a new plot was formed, to illustrate a personality that does not develop, that is stuck in a kind of inertia and unable to progress. Bennett called this type of personality, one 'not shaped by development or degeneration' (137), as 'declension', and few people in his novels escaped it. 'Declension involves a gradual loss of energy, will, presence, significance.', (p137).

Hysteria during the 19th century was considered to be a serious disablement, mainly in women, due to hormonal attributes that could run genetically through families, as portrayed in Zola's novels regarding members of the same family's degenerational characters. Whereas Zola would portray Nana's degeneration into hysteria, Bennett took the Freudian stance in his novels, of hysteria brought on by a traumatic incident, in the form of declension instead. Sinclair, Joyce, Lawrence and Mansfield all use this basis for their stories of declension.

Chapter 9 - Frontiers

In opposition to realism came romance and during our modern era of writing romance had new territories, that of empire. Anxieties about society and degeneration were explored in naturalist novels, anxieties about the decline of Empire were explored in romance. Imperialism was having to reassert itself amongst so much competition from other countries wanting the same resources. This regeneration was the source of a lot of reproduction in our culture.

Studies on colonization have revealed that far from moving the colonizers identity abroad, as was often the intention, the reality was a new identity formed out of survival in the colonies and adapting to the new conditions. Renewal or regeneration of identity was also seen as a threat, reinforcing the conviction of the West in decline. Colonial experience however, was to provide writers with fascinating new angles and comparisons to use in their work, even for an anti-Imperialist writer like Henry James.

America had already embraced the regeneration of individual and collective identity with its own frontier myths. In 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner read his paper to the American Historical Association, stating that 'American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character.' (p145). As the Americans have had to readapt to the new conditions of the perpetually moving frontier, so must Europeans adapt to influences as they march across continents with their own frontiers. However, the British novels, unlike the American writing, illustrate the process of renewal, strength out of weakness. This renewal can be emotional as well as political.

Writers were now taking their characters, exhausted and purposeless, who would have descended into degeneration, to new territories where they can find new identities through emotional and political commitment. The only way to complicate this narrative was to mix up the two in one novel, as A.E.W. Mason did in The Four Feathers.

Contemporary works that illustrate the above points include...

Howards End by E M Forster

Clayhanger and Hilda Lessways by Arnold Bennett

Nana by Emile Zola

Kim by Rudyard Kipling

The Half Hearted by John Buchan

The Great Amulet by Maud Diver

The Tragedy of Korosko by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope

The Four Feathers by A E W Mason

Look out for the next two chapters from this fascinating book in a post next month.

The English Novel in History 1895 - 1920

It is time to fill you in on 2 more chapters from this really interesting literary theory book that I am making notes on as I read it throughout the year.

Last month saw chapters 4 and 5 on Thresholds and Interiors. This month sees the last chapter of Part One: Economies and Styles, and the first chapter in Part 2: Nation and Society.

Chapter 6 - The Relevance of Ulysses

If ever a book was thought to be the most prominent of the Modernist era, it is James Joyces' Ulysses, 'a novel which turned the whole genre inside out', p95. Difficult to market because of its 'peculiarity' it was to use this as part of its marketing ploy. It was rejected by mainstream publishers, but played upon its own 'uniqueness', with Joyce even producing a readers guide to help with its level of difficulty. All of this singled out readers who would invest time and energy in their reading, imbuing the book with a certain kudos and its readership as a literary elite, at least in the world of contemporary novels. 'Ulysses was defined by its difficulty' p97, even its title inferred a knowledge of Homer, to be going on with.

The first 10 episodes of the book are written in what is known as 'initial style', combining dialogue, first-person present-tense monologue, and third-person past-tense monologue. All pretty normative. This style evolves into a periodic structure, with the use of adverbials, descriptive words or passages which mean nothing as they are read and demand patience from the reader to be remembered for a later part of the book. These adverbials support inferences, and it is with this knowledge lies the art of decoding the narrative. Relevance of narrative is often layered and not laid bare. Joyce deliberately complicates his linguistic structure to avoid meaning.

This style of writing and form of communication exemplifies Modernist writing. Readers had to abandon all previous codes of reading and understanding novels. In later episodes technique overrides content and the story loses emphasis to expression. Huge amounts of effort in the reader produce small amounts of information. As the book progresses, the book becomes more difficult to process, with relevance seeming to be abandoned. As the reader strives to make connections, it can appear as if 'the joke is on us' p107.

PART II - Nation and Society

Chapter 7 - Degeneration

During the second half of the 19th century people became obsessed with the degeneration of the race. The theory of degeneration emerged from the natural and medical sciences. The 'decline of the white races', p112, included documentation of regression, an 'organic process' that was hereditary. This social theory was seen as the cause of crime, poverty and disease. Connecting to the 'age-old anxiety about the end of the world', p112, it reinforced theories regarding decadent lifestyles and the arts in general. This theory, as the new century got under way, became a habit of mind and was referred to often. Any social problem could be connected to it.

Naturalist fiction encorporated plots of decline, physical and moral exhaustion. Emile Zola's early novels, following strands of the same family from novel to novel, illustrated downward spirals through the generations of alcoholism, disease, poverty or madness.

Zola was not hugely popular in Britain, but he was notorious and Henry James noted a pessimism had descended upon the British writing of the time. Zola's grimy plots and downwardly mobile characters provided a stage for social comment. This led the way for 2 new genres, slum fiction and the New Woman novel.

Pioneered in the 1880's by Gissing and Besant, slum fiction took the French pessimism and incorporated women protagonists who, following failed relationships, plummed the depths of existence, with violence, abandonment, prostitution or death. These plots differed in blaming external circumstances for their downfall, rather than a hereditary malfunction. The women start off spirited, but have the life beaten out of them by circumstance.

Deformed children, illustrating the degeneration of bloodlines, was popular in naturalist fiction, as was hysteria in women. Professor Moriarty of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Count Dracula were all examples of the degeneracy that people feared and these characters were described as such. 'Parasites, outcasts and madmen' p118.

Another off shoot of these theories was the continuation of race, in order to halt degeneration, through preservation of bloodlines. Women should mate with racially sound men, and this came into the fiction of the time. Examples can be found in the novels of D H Lawrence where the characters discuss racial purity, as well as E M Forster.

Contemporary works that illustrate the above points include...

Ulysses by James Joyce

The Time Machine by H G Wells

Germinal, L'Assomoir and La Terre by Emile Zola

A Mummer's Wife by George Moore

The Unclassed by George Gissing

Women in Love by D H Lawrence

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Look out for the next two chapters which will be covered some time in June.

The English Novel in History 1895 - 1920

A train journey to and from Hull during one day last week provided an excellent opportunity to read and make notes for this months installment from this literary theory book.

Last month we covered chapters 2 and 3, about Labour and Gold Standards. Here are another 2 chapters for this months installment...

Chapter 4 - Thresholds

Earlier in the 19th century novels had been available in 'three-decker' form, that is in 3 volumes. This made novels expensive and out of the range of many peoples income. However, with the advent of serialisation in popular journals, there was a new format for writers to make use of. With the new one-volume novels at the end of the 1880's, at 6 shillings, the demise of the 3 volume novel came in 1895. Circulating and public libraries remained the main buyers of fiction, but to secure individual sales meant more profits for the publishers. The desires of the reader -consumer were now key, leading to the rise of the modern bestseller. This also led to a new diversity in writing.

To acheive bestseller status and the mass market, there needed to be recognition of the smaller groups of people within that mass market. W D Howells, Henry James's American mentor and friend, identified 2 markets for the novel. There was one type of fiction 'which was the equivalent of the circus or the variety theatre' which was 'essential to the spiritual health of the masses' (p66). The 'cultivated classes' demanded a different type of writing, one that was determined by fashion. This impacted on the way authors wrote. Modernism became 'the literary equivalent of the theory of marginal utility' (p67).

A new purpose drove the writing style of the Modernist period. The metaphor became the mode of choice when representing the world in fiction. It was argued that the Modernist writer did not want to experiment with the 'free-play' of language, so much as 'test our powers of inference', how a reader processes the text, making us dig deeply into our own emotions and experiences of the world, challenging our assumptions and generating rich contextual effects. Relevance theory 'analyses communication in terms of effort and effect'. Previous works had kept attention, memory and reasoning to a minimal effort. However the writers of the Modernist period could not be put into this category, that is James, Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce or Woolf could not be described as writers whose work required little effort in the reader. Many writers, especially James, stretched their readers by their use of syntax. 'Disturbances of linguistic structure alert us to the possibility that we may have to work very hard indeed in order to understand what the writer might mean us to infer' (p70). Lawrence employs a loose sentence structure devoid of any anticipatory devices. In Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow the awakening of the characters as they develop in the novel is portrayed as a negative experience, 'an awakening from an old life, rather than to a new life.' (p78). These new stylistic devices illustrate a new kind of change where the change remains unexplained.

Chapter 5 - Interiors

Expanding the theory of Modernist writers using established styles and then disrupting them, to stretch the experience of the reader by making them work for the meaning in the writing, we examine descriptions of rooms in various fiction to define relevance in the work.

In the popular fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle, we can compare Holmes and Watsons descriptions of a room as a crime scene to illustrate relevance and irrelevance. Watson describes the room using stereotype to convey meaning, whereas Holmes describes the seemingly irrelevant details with his superior obsevant eye to deduce the rooms secrets. 'Holmes embodies the Principle of Relevance, the guarantee that effort will be adjusted to effect.', (p82). Richard Hannay from The Thirty Nine Steps was the same, ignoring stereotypes to arrive at alternative scenarios.

Many authors set out to examine the 'condition of England' in their writing. Rooms represent the people who own them, providing excellent material to examine the condition of England. Rooms, houses, dwellings and establishments were endlessly used to represent the wider society within them. H G Wells in In the Days of the Comet uses description sparingly, using seemingly irrelevant items to provide an absence of relevance to enhance a world governed by irrelevance. Wells is at his best when forcing us 'to confront a surplus of information we cannot make sense of,' thus commenting on the condition of England'.

Galsworthy, Forster and Walpole all gave us houses with descriptions of relevant details to convey the owners character. Woolf and Lawrence identified the limitations of this. Wells invites new possibilites by using irrelevance, demonstrating the need for change in writing. Conrad destabilises characters identities by describing interiors from the outside, shattering their own illusions of themselves. Woolf also plays with expectations of narrative in Jacob's Room by describing the contents of Jacob's Cambridge University room being devoid of anything informative within. Jacob is simply not present in his possessions. His only presence is ghostly, and this is only in the minds of those who search his room after his death.

Contemporary works that illustrate the above points include...

Ulysses by James Joyce

Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence

The Rainbow by D H Lawrence

The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan

In the Days of the Comet by H G Wells

Howards End by E M Forster

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Victory by Joseph Conrad

Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf

Look out for the next installment from this literary theory book which will be posted on this blog some time in May.

The English Novel in History 1895 - 1920

It is the middle of March (already, I know), and time for this months summary of the Literary Theory book that I found earlier in the year, and challenged myself to read and blog about it. Following on from last months summary about the rise in consumerism during 1895 - 1920, and its influence on writing at the time, I am covering another 2 chapters today.

Chapter 2 - Labour

With the rise in consumerist tendancies there had to be a work force producing the items fantasised about and desired by the buying public. Hand in hand with production lines was the need for electoral reform addressing injustices in the conditions of the working classes. Socialist fiction found a voice during this time. Political representation for working people came to the fore in fiction, as a huge advance in trade union membership took place during the period. The 2 main political parties of the day spent a lot of effort courting the working class vote. Socialism was on the rise with many organisations springing up to fight the workers cause, and although their memberships were not huge, their rallies, pamphlets and journals prompted new thought and consideration.

Writers were now promoting anti-bourgeois theories using the literary field which was mainly regarded as bourgeois. The working classes had little or no time for the leisurely pursuit of reading, that is if they could read at all.

Did the largely middle-class writers have the resources to represent accurately the working classes? Many writers chose to get around this by not highlighting the work so much as the anxieties that came with casual and unstable employment. This is famously addressed in Robert Tressle's novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

Authors needed to recognise the anxiety in the working classes caused by the conflict between earning and working to provide, and desiring the things advertised in shop windows and the media, and how this affected identity.

In contrast, working class writers, who had gained an education and moved up the social scale, tended to use their writing to justify their social mobility, concentrating on 'voyages of self-discovery', or the Bildungsroman (novel of development). This category of writing is typified by Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, where Jude longs for the University Spires and the aspirations of learning to take him from the labours of being a journeyman Mason. Freedom through knowledge was a widespread ambition. Hardy also uses descriptions of the workers and the toll that this has on their bodies and physical appearance in The Woodlanders. Work affects identity, 'To live and work is to deteriorate, until you are your deteriorations.' (p35). Likewise, Arabella in Jude is entirely defined by her work.

During the late 19th century there was an increase in the number of working middle-class women. This was not only a means of survival, but also identity, 'paid public work would give them dignity and independence' (Vicinus 1985, p.6), p39. New opportunities included journalism and literature. This lead the way for female pioneers such as the Suffragettes and the Land Girls.

The First World War managed to dilute any bitterness regarding politically active women because they had to take on a wide variety of jobs while the men were fighting, proving their ability beyond the home. There are many novels that take on the subject of womens work during this period.

By the end of the war, writing was exploring individual consciousness instead of work and community, now explored using stream-of-consciousness techniques.

Chapter 3 - Gold Standards

During this historical period the English Sovereign had a talismanic symbolism equating to solidity, being made of solid gold. Solidity was seen as a virtue, the English hero being its embodiment. Descriptions of 'solid', or 'mint' as a compliment were rooted in the reputation of the British Sovereign being the same. The shilling however is seen as a mere 'token' and the banknote as completely unreliable.

Imaginary money, bank notes, cheques, exchange bills etc., although used more and more, were eyed with suspicion. The gold standard was 'a defence against irresponsible expansions of credit' (p51). This monetary hierarchy was used to describe reliability and this imagery was widely used in writing. 'Mint' equalled quality and everything that was perceived of in the English Gentleman. Hallmarks guarantee origin and purity. When Tarzan meets Jane, he kisses her hand and betrays the 'hallmark' of good breeding, despite living years in the jungle.

Likewise, the same imagery is used when exposing a fake and dubious character, 'He looked as genuine as a new sovereign, but there was some infernal alloy in his metal', from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad.

Contemporary works that illustrate the above points include...

Workers in the Dawn by George Gissing

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressle

A City Girl by Margaret Harkness

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The 39 Steps by John Buchan

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

Look out for the next installment from this Literary Theory book, exploring the age of Modernism and its influence on writing, in April.

The English Novel in History 1895-1920

You may remember my recent post about reading this book, The English Novel in History 1895-1920, throughout the year, as a personal challenge for 2011, and blogging about it as I went, writing summaries about the major points and notes on what it covered. This post will cover the introduction and first chapter.

Introduction

The author Henry James, a contemporary of the era in question, examines the rise in the popularity of the novel. He saw this as a profitable time for writers and an opportunity for writers to expand and embrace diversity.

James divided the mass of material into high, middle and lowbrow works. Highbrow meaning James, Conrad, Lawrence,Joyce and Woolf. Middlebrow included Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy and Forster. Lowbrow authors were too many to mention.

James claimed that 2 things had stunted the growth of the novel, prohibition restricting content and style, and recycling the same stories and style over and over again.

Another influence of the time was the ideology of production being replaced by the ideology of consumption (see below for chapter one where this is explored).

James and Woolf insisted that 'consciousness should be represented from within' (p3), bringing about the emergence of Modernist writing characterised by reforming the relationship between the writer and the expectations of the reader and pushing innovation. This led to the view of Modernism as the 'literary response to a breakdown in social order and continuity' (p3).

Chapter One: Consuming Passions

During this era we see a major shift in priority, from production to consumerism, the acquirement of items to help living standards and boost status and self esteem, especially in the middle classes. This was taking place in Great Britain, USA and Europe primarily at this time. This chapter examines this change in society and how it was reflected in contemporary writing.

'Age of demand, ...abundance, ...luxury, retail revolution, consumer capitalism' (p11) are all terms used by social and economic historians to describe the period. There was still dire poverty but living standards improved, especially for the working classes compared to earlier in the 19th century.

Consumerist tendencies were fuelled by the elements of choice available, the promotion of desire, to want things or a particular image to attain a projection of a desirable life. Lawrence Birken, who wrote a study on 19th century consumerist ideology brings attention to the 'symbolic badge of individualism' (p13) which also fed the need to acquire certain things.

There was a definite move from the necessary to the luxury of the desired item during this era.

Other things that promoted this shift was the popularity of technology which altered patterns of life. Scientific discoveries such as the telephone, aviation and the automobile added to the acquirement of desirable objects, and the literature of the time is littered with references to these new technologies.

Shopping changed as an experience. Stores with fixed prices became popular, leading to window shopping, and shopping as a leisure activity rather than a chore. This in particular affected the experiences of women, getting them out of the home, inhabiting a more public space, asserting independence, indulging desires as well as entering new forms of employment in department stores and sales environments.

On the back of all of these changes advertising flourished, perpetuating the dream with manipulative and utopian devices. Advertising served to arouse desire.

'Purchases now satisfied desire rather than need' (p22).

In the writing of the time, this newer level of consumerism altered conceptions of identity.

Contemporary works that illustrate the above points include...

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Ulysses by James Joyce

The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman by H G Wells

Howards End by E M Forster

This wraps up my first bulletin from this book. Look out for the next one some time in March.

Another project for this year...

I came across this book today, a course book from my Uni days. I hardly read any of it at all at the time, it is practically new. So I have decided to read it chapter by chapter and share what I learn throughout the year. It would be such a waste if it went unread.

I quite like reading literary theory and I enjoyed writing about 2 articles I read for a challenge during 2009, one by Helene Cixous about Feminism, and another by Edward Said about Culture and Imperialism, so I want to include regular posts during this year that dissect what I read along the way.

This book covers an exciting time during novel writing, the period known as literary Modernism, looking at the way writers responded to "contemporary preoccupations such as the spectacle of consumption and the growth of suburbia, or to anxieties about the decline of Empire, racial 'degeneration' and 'sexual anarchy' "and covering mass-market genres as well as classics.

I am looking forward to revisiting this historical period and maybe learning about and exploring some more about the influences and writing evolutions of the time. Writing about it in stages on this blog will help me retain it and I hope will provoke interest in those of you who join me.

Look out for future summaries based on the chapters of this interesting book.