UNIT 2- EXERCISES Unit 2- Textbook DORIS LESSING

Study questions
1. Comment on the way form and content reflect on each other in The Golden Notebook. Form And Content In The Golden Notebook English Literature Essay The Golden Notebook is Doris Lessings most famous novel and it was published in 1962. This novel is also considered one of the major works of twentieth-century literature. Many feminists of the 1960s have seen it as an influential work that revealed the experience of women in society. The novel is about Anna Wulf, a writer and single woman, who keeps four different colored notebooks where she writes about her life. In black notebook she writes about her experiences in Africa, before and during WWII, which inspired her for to write her first novel. In red notebook she writes about her experience as a member of communist party. Yellow notebook is an ongoing novel that is being written based on the ending of Anna's own love affair and in blue notebook she writes her own memories, dreams in a form of a diary. All four notebooks and the frame narrative cover themes of Stalinism, the Cold War and the threat of nuclear conflagration, and women's struggles with the conflicts of work, sex, love, maternity, and politics. In The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing explores the theme of breakdown, mental and societal breakdown, that sometimes when people crack up it is a way of self-healing, of the inner selfs dismissing false dichotomies and divisions. (Lessing, 1989: 8) It also has a powerful anti-war and anti-Stalinist message, an analysis of communism, and examination of the up-coming sexual and womens liberation movements. Relationship between form and content is a subject that must be raised when it comes to analyzing The Golden Notebook. This paper begins with depiction of the novels major themes and then it explains its form, bringing these two topics into connection later on. It is almost impossible to discuss this novel without explaining its form because the form of the novel supports its central theme. This will be analyzed in the chapter dealing with form but also in the chapter that explains relationship between form and content in the novel. This novel has been translated into a number of other languages. In 2005, The Golden Notebook was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present.

Major themes Doris Lessing stated that major themes in her novel The Golden Notebook are theme of breakdown and theme of unity. But most of the criticism of the novel after it was published and written articles about The Golden Notebook even in our time focus attention on other themes that are elaborated in the frame novel and in the four notebooks. These themes are the situation of women, relationship between men and women, motherhood, sex, creativity, work, belief and politics. The situation of women in the novel is presented through its central character Anna Wulf. She is a writer who got her financial independence after publication of her first and only novel Frontiers of War and is faced with writing block because she feels incapable of writing the only kind of novel which interests me: a book powered with an intellectual or moral passion strong enough to create order, to create a new way of looking at life. It is because I am too diffused. I have decided never to write another novel.(Lessing, 1989: 76) Anna feels like everythings cracking up because she struggles to reconcile her own life with the political and philosophical atmosphere of her age, to make sense of the chaos she feels all around her. Theme of creativity is explored through Anas writing block and it is connected with the theme of unity that has its victory over the theme of breakdown in the fifth gold colored notebook where Anna finally gets capable of writing a novel as in one piece not to diffuse it into four aspects. Besides being a writer Anna is also a divorced woman and a mother. Doris Lessing discussed theme of motherhood in the novel describing relationship between Anna and her girl Janet. Lessing writes about the conflicts between the maternal and the erotic life, of the responsibility that can keep a suicidal mother alive in the midst of breakdown, of the efforts (sometimes disastrous) to conduct a career while rearing a child. She has never had any time for would-be women writers who complain that pregnancies silenced them or reduced their output: get on with it, that was her bracing advice. She did see the problems women writers face as being different from those faced by men, and although she vehemently rejected the feminist label, of course we read her as a feminist. (www.guardian.co.uk) Anna is shown as a woman emotionally self-sufficient and committed to her lifestyle of passionate politics and frequent affairs at the same time she feels empty and hates herself for craving the security of love, for she sees it as giving in to all that feminine sentimentality that she wishes to be above. Men are shown like unfaithful, polygamous, unsatisfactory, and rude to their wives, unable to give pleasure, bullying, selfish, and indifferent to their children. But Anna is obsessed with them treating her terribly. The worse they behave to her, the more sexually excited she becomes. So it is uncertain if this is really a social commentary or a personal story. Sexual relations in the novel are characterized with cruelty, betrayal and emotional numbness. This novel reflected on such subjects which were taboos in the time it was published and later on. These subjects like menstruation, orgasm and frigidity were masterfully confronted with literary decorum. As for political theme the novel describes a world in which Stalin is being exposed for his crimes in the Soviet Union, the British Communist Party is collapsing, and in the States Senator McCarthys

Red Terror is decimating the left wing intelligentsia. Form in The Golden Notebook The Golden Notebook has autobiographical layers: the character Anna reflects elements of author Doris Lessing's own life, while Anna writes an autobiographical novel about her imagined Ella, who writes autobiographical stories. The form of the novel also interlaces the political conflicts and emotional conflicts in the characters' lives. Rejection of traditional form and structure in art and literature can be seen in examination of The Golden Notebook. This rejection is also characteristic of feminist theoretical viewpoint; it is often that feminism and postmodernism overlap as in this novel. Skeleton, or frame of the novel is a short novel, realistic narrative of the lives of Molly and Anna, and their children, ex-husbands and lovers-called Free Women- and it could stand by itself. But it is divided into five sections and separated by stages of the Annas four notebooks, Black, Red, Yellow and Blue. The Notebooks are kept by Anna Wulf, a central character of Free Women. She keeps four, and not one because, as she recognizes, she has to separate things off from each other, out if fear of chaos, of formlessness- of breakdown. Pressures, inner and outer, end the Notebooks; a heavy black line is drawn across the page of one after another. (Lessing, 1989: 7) Each notebook is returned to four times, intermixed with episodes from Free Women, creating nonchronological, overlapping sections that interact with one another. This post-modernistic styling, with its space and room for "play" engaging the characters and readers, is among the most famous features of the book. When notebooks are finished, their fragments are tied to form something new The Golden Notebook. In the inner Golden Notebook, things have come together, the divisions have broken down, there is formlessness with the end of fragmentation-the triumph of the second theme, which is that of unity.(Lessing, 1989: 7) In its form this novel is different from the other experimental novels of the 1960s in its grappling with narrative, identity, tone, and truth. Form is important in The Golden Notebook because it elaborates its main theme of breakdown and helps readers to understand Annas attempts to stay sane in a world that seems to be falling apart. Relationship between form and content in The Golden Notebook This novel, then, is an attempt to break a form; to break certain forms of consciousness and go beyond them. While writing it, I found I did not believe some of the things I thought I believed: or rather, that I hold in my mind at the same time beliefs and ideas that are apparently contradictory. Why not? We are, after all, living in the middle of a whirlwind.(www.dorislessing.org) The Golden Notebook depicts behaviors, ambitions, concerns and the particular problems of the times in which we live. That is accomplished through portrayal of a central character in the novel writer Anna Wulf who deals with some kind of a block which prevented her from creating. Depicting reasons for the block Doris Lessing also made the criticism about entire society. In Annas notebooks Doris Lessing made another book, a book about literary criticism, using different literary styles in a way that the shape of the book and juxtapositions of the styles would provide the criticism. In doing so through the criticism of literature Mrs. Lessing made a criticism of life, and wrote about problems of alienation. Doris Lessing defines this process of writing a book inside another book as fusing these two books into one, keeping the shape of the book enclosed and claustrophobic-so narcissistic that the subject matter must break through the form.

(www.dorislessing.org)

There are four different colored notebooks Black, Red, Yellow and Blue to affirm the novels themes of compartmentalization and breakdown.

These notebooks represent the strain to personality of unintegrated consciousness, and it remains as characteristic of (female) experience now as then that what Lessing calls the existence of "false dichotomies and divisions" the self as fragmentary and compartmentalised and thus as potentially dishonest in and of itself damages individuality and its status in culture. The artificial-personal supplants the universal-personal; truth becomes intermittent and fractured, calling for madness, breakdown and disintegration of personality in order for division and falsehood to be swept away. (www.guardian.co.uk) The novel is centered around these four notebooks; each notebook is different, the black one where she speaks of her early years in Africa, the red one where she speaks of her positions on Communism, a yellow one where she has a "novel within a novel", and finally the blue one where she has a personal diary. These four notebooks deal with various themes: sex, parenthood, creativity, work, belief and politics. Doris Lessing has insisted that despite extensive inclusion of issues of social, political, sexual, and psychological import in The Golden Notebook, its real meaning, is not in its content but in its shape. In an interview with Florence Howe she said that in the Free Women section, the envelope, she was really trying to express her despair of writing a conventional novel. She described this section as an absolutely whole conventional novel and the rest of the book as the material that went into making it. She also remarked in an introduction to the novel The Golden Notebook that her major aim was to shape a book which would make its own comment, a wordless statement: to talk through the way it was shaped. Although framed by a conventional novel called Free Women, the point of the novel, according to Lessing, is the "relation of its parts to each other." By viewing her life from these different angles, going over her experiences, gauging her responses, and carefully probing her intertwined layers of consciousness, Anna eventually manages to unify her identify in one notebook. As she does so, she comes to terms with her growing disillusionment with communism, the trauma of emotional rejection and sexual betrayal, professional anxieties, and the tensions of friendship and family.(www.readinggroupguides.com)

Relationship between form and content is most clearly shown in the relationship between yellow notebook and blue notebook in the last section of notebooks. In the yellow notebook Anna offers nineteen possible forms for writing a novel/story, these possible forms, all nineteen of them, are used for writing story that makes the blue notebook. For example first possible story to write is about a woman who has an affair with a man younger than herself. In the blue notebooks story Anna has an affair with a man who is younger than herself knowing that this is just as she suggested in the first possible story another love affair merely. (Lessing, 1989: 467) Second possible story offers theme of a man who uses the language of emotionally grown people to gain a woman. This is what happens in the blue notebook between Anna and Saul. Third possible story is about women falling in love with men unworthy of them. In Annas and Sauls story that is referred to in Mollys warning that any woman who gets involved with Mr. Green is out of her senses , and that he is a man to go to bed with for one night and to lose his telephone number afterwards. Conclusion In one of her quotes Doris Lessing suggests to writers that they should write first of all to please themselves, and not to care about anybody else. In Lessings opinion writing cant be a way of life because important part of writing is living; a writer must live in such a way that writing emerges from it. This is the best possible description for her novel The Golden Notebook published in 1962, her most famous novel is written in a manner that reflects real life. This novel emerges from life of its author; the character Anna reflects elements of author Doris Lessing's own life, it is like she has poured every experience she had ever had into her characters. The Golden Notebook is a story about a writer Anna Wulf who has some kind of block which prevents her from creating. Through describing the reasons for the block Doris Lessing made a criticism of society. Novel is shaped in order that its form can stand itself as a statement and it presents novels central theme of breakdown. Anna Wulf keeps four different colored notebooks where she writes about her life as if it was divided into four segments: her early experiences as a young woman and artist are written down in the black notebook, her political beliefs and activities in the communist party in England are in the red notebook, an ongoing novel about her alter ego Ella is in the yellow notebook and her memories and dreams are written in a form of a diary in the blue notebook. The notebook of the title is a fifth, gold-colored notebook in which Anna attempts to tie these notebooks together to emphasize other important theme that is theme of unity. This novel also has a powerful anti-war and anti-Stalinist message, an extended analysis of communism and examination of up-coming sexual and womens liberation movements. It has been translated into number of languages and it was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the one hundred best English language novels from 1923.

2. Discuss the change in style along the five volumes of Children of Violence. This is the 5 book series: Children of Violence The individual volumes are: Book 1: Martha Quest Book 2: A Proper Marriage Book 3: A Ripple from the Storm Book 4: Landlocked Book 5: The Four-Gated City Martha Quest style From the book jacket: In this full-scale portrait of a girl from adolescence to womanhood, Doris Lessing does for her sex what D. H. Lawrence and Arnold Bennett did for theirs in Sons and Lovers and Clayhanger. To feminine sensibility and perception Miss Lessing adds an unusual directness, vigour and energy to produce a remarkable combination of talents. Martha Quest is essentially the story of a rebel. When we first meet her, she is a girl of fifteen living on an impoverished African farm with her parents; a girl of passionate vitality, avid for experience and for self-knowledge, bitterly resentful of the conventional narrowness of her home life. From this background she breaks away to take a job as a typist in the local capital, and here, in the world of the +big city,, she begins to encounter the real life she is so eager to experience and understand. The background to Martha,s story is the Africa that was Doris Lessing,s birthplace: the tough, spacious and yet circumscribed life of the veld farms; the all-pervading, corrosive atmosphere of racial fears and antagonisms; the superficial democracy and sophistication of city life. As a picture of colonial life Martha Quest fascinates by the depth and realism of its insight; but always at its centre is the figure of Martha, a character in the grand manner, conceived in sympathetic understanding but drawn with an unerring objectivity.

A Proper Marriage style From the book jacket: Although it can be read and fully enjoyed as a separate novel, A Proper Marriage does in effect carry on the story which Doris Lessing began so promisingly in Martha Quest. In that novel Martha, then in her mid-teens, left the South African farm on which she was brought up to seek the excitement and experience she craved in 'the big city'. Although rapidly disillusioned, she was inescapable drawn into the hectic life of the smart set and soon found herself married. A Proper Marriage shows how Martha's rebellious temperament reacted to her new life. We read of her growing discontent with the young married set to which she and her husband Douglas now belong; of the arrival of her baby, which seems another threat to her freedom; of the outbreak of war and Douglas's departure with the army; and later, of the hard decision she has to make about their life together.

A Ripple from the Storm style From the book jacket: Doris Lessing's new novel, the third volume of the series of five 'Martha Quest' novels to be known collectively as Children of Violence, describes how a Communist group blew into existence in a small town in Central Africa, as a result of the general mood of optimism, enthusiasm and admiration for the Soviet Union current in the years 1942, 1943 and 1944. Martha Quest, now divorced from her husband, becomes involved with this group and marries the leader of it, a German refugee. A Ripple from The Storm is an attempt to describe the psychology of the group organised against society, the psychology of the individual in an individualistic society trying to behave as 'communal man.' By the end of the book it is apparent that the group has failed. When Martha Quest appeared C. P. Snow wrote of Doris Lessing in the Sunday Times: 'She is one of the most powerfully equipped young novelists now writing," and of A Proper Marriage (the second Children of Violnce novel) John Davenport wrote in The Observer: 'Miss Lessing is extremely gifted. Her book combines sympathy and objectivity to a remarkable degree.' A Ripple from the Storm is of the same high standards, both in artistic achievement and in its humanity. Landlocked style

From the book jacket: Doris Lessing's new novel - her first for some years - magnificently captures the mood of a time and place. The scene is Southern Africa in all its contradictions: rich, despoiled land and underbred cities. On one hand, a parody of European standards; poverty, cunning and patience on the other. The time is the last few months of a war that had not only ruined Europe but had flooded a message of equality even into this backwater. Some of the white people have already sensed the imminence of change: they could never again unthinkingly hold down this corner of Africa for themselves and their heirs. The blithe ones continue the active, provincial 'society' game but unease and fear have added a note of hysteria to their lives. The land is redeemed from waste by some of the forward-looking spirits who respond to the war's savage lessons. It is on these people, notably on Martha Quest, that hope seems to be placed. Yet, with the richness of Mrs Lessing's understanding and irony, the failure of 'a way of life' affects and, in turn, is affected by the personal qualities of her characters. Whether they are good or bad, conservative or hopefully liberal, they have scarcely come to terms with an Africa that has begun to flex itself. Between the demands for ruthless courage and their own social weakness these people have no assured future. The sun still shines, the cities are brightly lit, but the shadows are closing in upon them and all their works.

The Gour-Gated City style From the book jacket: This book concludes the five-volume series, Children of Violence, a major literary achievement which has been nearly twenty years in the workblock. The series as a whole develops the central character, Martha Quest, from birth in Southern Africa at the end of World War One, through an adolescence, youth and marriage shaped by the savageries of the Second World War. With The Four-Gated City Martha is in London as the Fifties begin. This volume then is set in post-war Britain, and with Martha is integrally part of the social history of the time - the Cold War, the Aldermaston Marches, Swinging London, the deepening of poverty and social anarchy; and the minuteness, the painful insight of Mrs Lessings treatment of her characters is, as always in her work, due to her vision of them as creations and embodiments of huge impersonal forces. The series virtually covers the twentieth-century: The Four-Gated City ends with the century in the grip of World War Three, a conclusion like space fiction. For Doris Lessing does not believe in our current mental habits which put "the novel", "the family novel", "space fiction", "journalism" and "autobiography" into separate compartments, and in this extraordinary novel, which is as unexpected as The Golden Notebook, she dissolves familiar categories. This book is bound to create disquiet and controversy. For one thing, her view of recent politics is not everyones. And her view of the future is that it is the present: we are all hypnotised waiting for cataclysms that in fact we are living through now in the bloody end of an epoch. But this painful time is also creative: humanity is in the process of rapid evolution, we are mutating fast but cant see it - the chief characteristic of the race we belong to being an inability to see what is under its nose. Relentlessly and acutely exposing facts and ideas which are often found too raw to face, Mrs Lessing takes on the medical profession, which she believes is destroying (recently through imprisonment, currently through the use of drugs) that part of humanity which is in fact most sensitive to evolution, those people we label as mentally sick or unbalanced: and, criticising the scientists who have created and perpetuate a climate in which "rationalism" has become a new God, she claims that everyone has "extrasensory perception", in varying degrees, but has been brainwashed into suppressing it, and that schizophrenia is the name of our blindest contemporary prejudice. No one can read this visionary, troubling, thoughtful book and remain unchanged by it.

3. What are the features of classic realism Lessing discards in her experimental fiction? Give a few examples. The Crisis of Realism in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing, one of the most important post-war writers in English, was born in Persia (presentday Iran) in 1919. In her writing, she explores a wide range of issues concerning race, politics, gender and the role of individual in society. With the publication of her novel, The Golden Notebook (1962), Lessing became firmly identified with women's position in the 20 th C. Anna Wulf, the main character of the novel, faces a personal and artistic crisis, seeing her life shattered and divided into various roles. That is, she is separately a woman, a lover, a writer, and a political activist. Anna eventually suffers a mental breakdown and it is only through this disintegration that she is able to discover a new 'wholeness' which she writes about in the final notebook. The writerly dimension of Lessing's fiction puts her in a complex relation to Realism, for she is simultaneously one of the great realist writers of the 20 th C and a writer who chafes against the assumptions of Realism. Yet, The Golden Notebook unmasks the conventions of Realism, challenging the assumption that literary and linguistic forms are innocent reflections of reality and this tension between the form and its deconstruction is part of the novel's fascination. Realism is a literary movement that began in France in the 19 th C. During the last part of the century, Realism was a definite trend in European literature. Fundamentally, in literature, Realism is the representation of life with fidelity. On the whole, one tends to think of realism in terms of the everyday life, the normal and the pragmatic. It is, thus, not concerned with idealization, the supranormal and the transcendental. It is in strong opposition to unrealistic, fantastic and improbable works. In addition, Realism rejects Classicism and Romanticism since a realist artist is concerned with the here and now, with everyday events and with his own environment including the movements of his time such as political, social, etc. Naturalism, in literature, is an approach that copy nature, and reveals to us the literature of truth. It is said that the invention of photography in 1839 and the concepts of precision, scene, fact and episode had a great effect on the way people looked at the world and existence in general. In addition, the realist novelist paid particular attention to exact documentation, and to getting the facts correctly. Later, Realism was considered to give too much emphasis on external reality. As a result, many turned to a psychological realism that examined the complex workings of the mind and the analysis of thought and feeling. The use of the stream of consciousness method is fundamental in psychological realism. It is believed that Realism is an art that can be compared with life. However, from The Golden Notebook emerges the notion that Realism has not a so deeply relation to nature. It is, as a result, a convention like any other. Lessings novels dilemma is that the scene it tries to capture has already been harboured in our minds by television programs and newspaper photographs. The book relates to images that journalist and reporters have often delivered. As a result, words are not the most noteworthy form to project images of disorder and chaos.In The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing adopted a new style of narrative form abandoning the realist form used in her previous works

Critics interest in The Golden Notebook relies on the way this work questions the assumptions of Realism that Doris Lessing has always proclaimed, perform and deny. For instance, in early productions such as The Grass is singing, Children of Violence, and A Proper Marriage, among others, Lessing displayed a traditional realism. On the other hand, The Golden Notebook is one of the first novels of the seventies, in England, to have incorporated to the narrative speech the problematic nature of the contemporary novel. The structure of the novel reflects the fragmentation of the industrialized modern societies. Anna Wulf, the main character of the novel, divides her experience into the short story Free Women and four books: 1) The Black Notebook covers the part of Annas life related to Africa; 2) The Red Notebook contains her experience as being part the Communist Party; 3) The Yellow Notebook shows Annas own experience as a writer in the creation of the novel; 4) And finally the Blue Notebook which is Anna's personal diary. Since the publication of The Grass is singing in 1950, the themes of Doris Lessings works have been related to four essential points: 1) The racial issue within an English colony in Africa (Zimbabwe). 2) Feminism. 3) And mental imbalance. In The Golden Notebook, she introduces a topic that has been predominant throughout the production of the author: The Nuclear Warning. In her Blue Notebook, Anna Wulf, gathers press cuttings with news about nuclear weapons and about other warlike and military topics. From a formal and thematic standpoint, the central matter lies in the connection between the different experiences and the literary presentation of the complex and contemporaneous reality. In The Golden Notebook, Anna Wulf, is incapable of writing another novel after the success of Frontiers of War because she has not found the narrative form that expresses the reality. In this way, her diary is a reflection of her chaotic experience. In The Golden Notebook different narrative resources become assimilated without abandoning the mimetic realism. These narrative resources are the parody, pastiche, the diary, the essay and the tale within the tale. In The Golden Notebook there is a parody on the realist obsession for the detail. Thus, Anna Wulf makes a meticulous recount of her everyday activities in her diary. The postmodern novel presents the difficulty of writing about contemporary life according to the rules of Realism. When a writer wants to reflect some visions pertaining to the end of the world in the last decades of the 20th C, the realist method results inadequate. The fragmentation of the novel's narrative form not only reflects Anna's inability to integrate her identity, but also the unattainable task to write a realist novel within a divided world. As regards this fragmentation, Doris Lessing considers that:

everything is cracking upIt had been falling apart since the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima I feel as if the Bomb was gone off inside myself, and the people around me. Thats what I mean by the cracking up. Its as if the structure of the mind is being from inside. Some terrible thing is a happening (Lessing, 1977:56) By the mid 20 th C, Realism was deeply altered because realist fiction marks a seizure between the individual and the society. In the 1960s, British society was not homogenous any more due to the immigration and the consciousness arising that was generated by the Women's Liberation. Although Doris Lessing's intention was not to write a feminist novel, she seems to have been moved by the Women's Liberation quest for a more equal society where women do not feel marginalized or treated as second-class citizens. Lessing does not share the Marxist's idea that society is made up by two groups determined by economic status namely the exploiting class and the working class. On the contrary, she believes that society is far more complex having multicultural dimensions including too different groups: men and women. By means of Anna's four notebooks in which she divides her experiences, Lessing represents the chaotic and fragmented reality which is comprised in the different societies within The Society. Thus, integration is only possible by disintegrating the narrative form. According to Gayle Greene; Lessing shows how both male and female behavior are clipping adjustments in a destructive society. By the use of metafiction, Lessing enables Anna to increase the degree of self-consciousness by the revision of her own experience. Thus, instead of Lessing narrating upon her protagonist's experiences, the fictional writer Anna Wulf, narrates and examines her experiences directly. The narrator of a metafictional work calls his or her attention to the writing process itself.Explicit use of metafictional technique stems from the modernist questioning of consciousness and reality. According to Patricia Waugh, metafiction can be defined as fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. All in all, Realism is a literary movement that depicted objects and subjects as they appear in everyday life. However, Realism portrayed the reality of those in power, usually man, white and privileged. On the other hand, the reality of those without power such as women, people of color and people of lower economic means was often marginalized and ignored. In The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing expresses her dissatisfaction with the conventional novel and she expresses this dissatisfaction by making her protagonist a novelist who is similarly dissatisfied. Being centered on a female experience, the novel is based on the experience of both the novelistic form and the crisis of the 20th C society. In addition, we can conclude that The Golden Notebook is a feminist novel since it chronicles the psychological journeys taken by women who come to a gradual understanding of the way in which gender prescribes their lives.

4. Read the short story To Room Nineteen (in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. II) and analyse it in the light of the information provided above.

Destabilisation of the Framework of the Real on To Room Nineteen and The Memoir of a Survivor
As I have mentioned previously, following Woolfs nullification of the border between past and present and fiction and reality through such narrative devices as the tunnelling process in Mrs. Dalloway and the pageant in Between the Acts, Lessing similarly uses the novels form to oscillate either side of the same border in her Golden Notebook. In 1963, just a year after The Golden Notebook was published, Lessing wrote a story To Room Nineteen where she sticks to a realist mode throughout, keeping exclusively the protagonists point of view in the thirdperson narration, in marked contrast to the complicated form of The Golden Notebook. In 1974, eleven years after that short story and following some further experiments in form, she wrote The Memoir of a Survivor in which she unfolds a topographical schema, juxtaposing the realistically described world on this side of her living room wall and the fantastic one beyond it. In this chapter I will highlight the way in which Lessing shows that what we call reality is not fixed, exposing again the intertwined relationship between collective history and the individuals mind; the analysis will focus on two of the extremely different modes of narrative that she developed after The Golden Notebook, looking first at her short story, To Room Nineteen, and then at The Memoir of a Survivor. I examine these two works in order to see how Lessing employs various styles to convey the ambiguity of the framework of reality, thereby disclosing the interpenetrative relationship between the individual and the collective, and past and present, which surfaces in an apparently personal situation. First, in the first section, I will discuss To Room Nineteen, focusing on how its persistent and exclusive point of view exposes paradoxically the protagonists unknowing entrapment by a logocentric discourse that is repeated throughout history and is epitomised also in Marys state of mind in The Grass Is Singing. Then, moving on to The Memoir of a Survivor, in the second section, I argue that the topographical juxtaposition of the world on both sides of the wall shows the individual in the process of becoming; a process in which as is exemplified by Mrs. Dalloway, Between the Acts, and The Golden Notebook they are constantly moving and intertwining with other people or things. I will accentuate that, both in the urge towards collapse in To Room Nineteen and in the juxtaposition of the two worlds in Memoir of a Survivor, we find not only the self in flux but also the everchanging condition wrought by its interaction with the individual or collective past. In the third section I focus on how ones perspective can be confined to only one version of interpretation of human reality, which is effected in both in The Memoir of a Survivor and in To Room Nineteen, after examining Lessings attitude towards politics, which is critical for understanding her way of involving human society.

To Room Nineteen is a story about a woman named Susan Rawlings who, in spite of her favourable and seemingly happy family life, commits suicide after more than ten years of married life. It is never mentioned explicitly in the story what drives her to do so. The story was published in the early 1960s, as a reaction to the devastation of a post-war society where it was thought that women should find contentment in a traditional marriage and family structure; the womens movement that would come to dispute this had not yet emerged and it was hard for women to ignore or challenge the happiness that was expected of them. Besides, in the case of Susan who belongs to the middle-class, where nothing is more admirable than respectability self-restraint binds her not to question the conventional idea on women or marriage. However, one must not overlook the fact that Susans agony is an example of the struggle facing humanit y in the modern world, where it is difficult for a person to realise their whole identity in an environment saturated with the huge and complicated network of capitalism. Perhaps this universality in the novel explains why the reviewers have persistently argued about it since its publication. Janina Nordius explores Susans route to emancipation as an independent individual, relating it to the social discourse she is immersed in. Lysa Tylor, paying attention to the devil Susan sees in her garden and which appears also in other works by Lessing, maintains that it embodies her own self-hatred her self-denial which grows as she feels increasingly suffocated by society. Theresa L. Crater, meanwhile, compares the story to both George Eliots The Mill on the Floss and Virginia Woolfs The Voyage Out. Crater insists that after examining the defamiliarising of Susans words that arises because she does not articulate what she wishes to express her death is anything but defeat, since she never renounces her own world. My intention here, however, is not to unmask the devil, nor to speculate on the meaning of Susans death. Although the story provides the possibility of abundant interpretations, its main theme is in my opinion the question of what constitutes the self; an aporia that has been explored for more than a hundred years ever since Freud brought it to the foreground from such diverse points of view as the socio-pathological, the psychoanalytic, and the psychiatric. The everincreasing availability of information as well as ever more confusing social conditions makes the problem of self even more complicated today. Before embarking in earnest on such an argument, I will first introduce some salient points of the plot. The story begins by defining the characteristics of Susans marriage: This is a story, I suppose, about a failure in intelligence: the Rawlingses marriage was grounded in intelligence (352). Phrases relating to the concept of intelligence and situations grounded in intelligence are omnipresent and recur insistently throughout the story: their sensible discrimination (352), this balanced and sensible family (353), their infallible sense for choosing right (353), the inner storms and quicksands were understood and charted. So everything was all right. Everything was in order. Yes, things were under control (355). In other words, the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings is grounded in intelligence, they choose right through their sensible discrimination and succeed in building up a balanced and sensible family with a handsome husband, four fine children and an ideal house in the suburbs. This well-constructed married life seems nothing less than the ideal marriage, admired by both themselves and their friends; for, [n]ot only they, but others, felt they were well matched: their friends delight was an additional proof of their happiness (352). Nevertheless, while their happy marriage receives approbation, it is suggested that something is missing in their lives. It is, they consider, lacking in purpose: But there was no point about which either could say: For the sake of this is all the rest . . . . Their love for each other? Well, that was the nearest it. If it wasnt centre, what was? . . . . And if one felt that it simply was not strong enough, important enough, to support it all, well whose fault was that?

(354) Although their love for each other seems to be the dominant part of their life, Susan comes to discover about Matthews, her husbands, extramarital affair. Yet they agree that this divergence is simply what is likely to happen in an ordinary married life, and that they should manage to go on without quarrelling, and without tears or recrimination. Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings who have joked with one another even before his extramarital affair that it could be impossible to be faithful throughout ones life decide to do what any sensible people would do; that is, they put the thing behind them (357), and consign the word faithful to the savage old world (356) to which they think it belongs. Though Susan is sometimes pierced as by an arrow from the sky with bitterness (357), feels as if life has become a desert, and is more often threatened by emptiness (358), it does not matter except in her moments of aridity (357) because her intelligence continued to assert that all was well (357). Their intelligence dictates that: There was no need to use the dramatic words, unfaithful, forgive, and the rest: intelligence forbade them. Intelligence barred, too, quarrelling, sulking, anger, silences of withdrawal, accusations and tears. Above all, intelligence forbids tears. (358) Thus she adheres to her principle of giving first priority to intelligence, not merely in her relationship with her husband but in every relationship in her life. She acknowledges the incongruous emotion inside her, but decides to ignore it. Consequently, though she is embarrassed and annoyed on sending the youngest of their children off to school that she does not feel as free as she expected to, she can confide in her husband neither her fear nor her irritation because intelligence dismisses the existence of her uncontrollable and inscrutable emotions as irrational and unreasonable. As a result of her selfrestraint, the enemy whose existence she senses from then on appears; she says to herself, the enemy irritation, restlessness, emptiness, whatever it was (360). Even after she shouts abruptly at her twin children in spite of herself, she merely whimpers before her husband without telling him her suffering and her fears. She feels as if she were another woman; she does not understand why she contributes to her family. She cannot let him know any of these embarrassments, since her mentor intelligence forbids her on the basis of their irrationality. Thus, Susan feels a devastating agony when she has to suppress what she is fully aware of; that is, an ambiguous but insurmountable anxiety.

Failing to express or articulate what she feels, she begins to retreat gradually at first from her husband and her family, and then from her real life entirely. After allotting a small room upstairs in her house as her shelter, and wandering in the mountains in Wales, she at last finds room nineteen in a shabby hotel in Paddington; it becomes the only space where she does not feel threatened by anything. By this time their marital intimacy is gone, and she is sure she is going mad. Nevertheless, she keeps on suppressing her emotion to the last, continuing to converse on apparently familiar terms with her husband. When she finds that he not only suspects her of having an affair in the hotel but also wish[es] her to do so, she makes up the story he wants never giving any thought to confronting him with her deeper feelings. Eventually, driven into a corner by this fabricated story, she cannot do anything but kill herself in room nineteen. As stated within the novel, Susan always exalts intelligence as her guiding principle above all else, and intends to decide everything in her life based on it. She does so voluntarily, not through any external compulsion. Susan and Matthew are linked together voluntarily from their will to be happy together (355). Indeed, she loses her integrated personality not because things go wrong against her will but because everything goes well as she hopes. What, then, is her will? Is what she chooses not what she really wants? The problem here is what is implied by her will based on intelligence. Intelligence is closely connected to language whose signification Anna in The Golden Notebook is skeptical of. Susan almost never doubts signification that language is supposed to mean; what she thinks she has to observe is rational and ordered reality that language can always articulate correctly. She never thinks of the need to know aforesaid mmoir involontaire or to imagine amorphous reality. Here I take Erich romms idea of schism between conscious and unconscious because he tries to explicate it in the simple terms, and because he always sees human mind with regard to the modern capitalism. While Freud introduced into psychology the systematic idea of the unconscious as a deeper part of self, Erich Fromm who both respects Freuds ideas and develops them critically argues, in The Greatness and Limitations of Freuds Thought, that Freuds tendency to regard all psychological phenomena as the result of sexual repression represents a psychology belonging to the bourgeois middle-class and grounded in Victorian ethics. However, sexual relationships in the modern world, Fromm insists, are no longer the main object of repression; the contradictions that are now virtually inescapable, but regarded as far less significant than the sexual problem, are those such as consciousness of freedom unconscious unfreedom, conscious feeling of happiness unconscious depression, and conscious honesty unconscious fraudulence (26).

These binary phrases seem applicable to Susans unstable state of mind: her panic, when she finds herself not as free as she supposed, might be the consequence of her inner contradiction of consciousness of freedom unconscious unfreedom; conscious feeling of happiness unconscious depression corresponds to her restless mentality in which she is often threatened by aridity or emptiness in spite of her seemingly satisfactory married life; conscious honesty unconscious fraudulence suggests her struggle in which she tries when her husbands affair is disclosed to suppress her irritation by persuading herself that it is too tiny a problem for her to be upset by it, and that they have discussed it honestly anyway. It is Fromms insight on the alleged freedom of modern men that is most significant to my argument. He states, in Escape from Freedom, that while capitalism freed man from traditional bonds contributing tremendously to the increase of positive freedom, and to the growth of an active, critical, responsible self (108) it also made man a cog in service to a network of capitalism greater than himself, whose purpose is to acquire wealth and produce a profit; a capitalist circle of production that includes but exceeds the individuals participation in it and undermined mans responsibility and pride. In other words, though man acquired freedom from something, he could not lay his hands on freedom to something in order to realise his individuality. As for the self of modern man, Fromm writes: The self . . . which is essentially constituted by the role the individual is supposed to play and which in reality is merely the subjective disguise for the objective social function of man in society . . . . While modern man seems to be characterized by utmost assertion of the self, actually his self has been weakened and reduced to a segment of the total self intellect and willpower to the exclusion of all other parts of the total personality. (116-17) It would be quite a significant function for intelligence to understand and accept what Fromm calls the role the individual is supposed to play or the objective social function of man in society, though the terms objective and subjective are overshadowed by Cartesian epistemology. This role or function might be necessary for us to live. As a matter of fact, we have to adapt ourselves to society using intelligence and willpower; yet if we always give priority to adaptation, our total self will be reduced to a segment intelligence and willpower only, excluding all other parts, as Fromm points out. Therefore, if Susan places an undue emphasis on intelligence and willpower, she at the same time suppresses such other aspects as quarrelling, sulking, anger, silences of withdrawal, accusations and tears (358). Fromm also questions the validity of conscious will power from different standpoint from Freuds: Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs . . . . But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort. (Escape 197)

According to this argument, what Susan thinks she does voluntarily is not what she really desires but what she does unconsciously to conform to the expectations of others; she is driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to . . . life, freedom, and comfort and has only, as it were, a culturally defined desire. Thus the gap between her voluntary choice and her real desire makes her feel that she was a prisoner (363) a 172

status that is also suggested by the following description, in which she uses the word bondage: The good marriage . . . depended just as much on his voluntary bondage as it did on hers . . . . And the word bondage why had she used it? She had never felt marriage, or the children, as bondage. (365) It might be what Fromm calls a segment of the total self intellect and willpower that confronts Susan when she is supposed to feel free for the first time in the absence of her youngest children. She acquires freedom from children but not freedom to do what she wants. For, if her self is then reduced to just a segment of total self, she never knows what she wants as it were, what her total self wants which turns her freedom into an unfathomable emptiness. It is noteworthy that Fromm suggests that this state of mind is the preserve of modern people, and that he connects it to the foundations for the rise of fascism. He explains the anxiety of modern man in the context of human history as follows: The particular difficulty in recognizing to what extent our wishes and our thoughts and feelings as well are not really our own but put into us from the outside, is closely linked up with problem of authority and freedom. In the course of modern history the authority of the Church has been replaced by that of the State, that of the State by that of conscience, and in our era, the latter has been replaced by the anonymous authority of common sense and public opinion as instruments of conformity. Because we have freed ourselves of the older overt forms of authority, we do not see that we have become the prey of a new kind of authority. We have become automations who live under the illusion of being self-willing individuals. (Escape 252) 173 Emancipated from visible authorities, we are still nevertheless the prey of the invisible authority represented by the social discourse of the anonymous authority of common sense and public opinion as instruments of conformity. The modern phenomenon of fascism utilises this aspect of human automation, based on the illusion of being self-willing individuals and consolidated by will-power. As I have mentioned in Chapter 2, the military procession that Peter sees in Mrs. Dalloway which Woolf depicts as a precursor to fascist pageantry are walking as if one will works legs and arms uniformly (MD 44). Indeed, [t]he despair of the human automation is fertile soil for the political purpose of Fascism (Escape 255). Therefore, one might say that Susans adherence to a purportedly happy family life with a nice husband, nice children, and a nice house could be taken advantage of by the discreet machinations of some political power. Fromms concept of the role the individual is supposed to play is similar to the Others desire named language suggested by Lacan. Lacan argues that, via the mirror stage, a human being enters the Symbolic the world of language by which he tries to establish his own self incrementally. Entrance into the Symbolic necessitates an acceptance of language and the social and cultural system of discourse, which is grounded in language and established even before one acquires it. Therefore, when one enters into the Symbolic without knowledge of what ones own self is, one gets inescapably involved in the predetermined system of language or logos; the individual is thrown into the already established system of language or rather, the already framed value-system of the Others desire. What is real, however, can never be adequately represented by language and it is absolutely impossible for the self to be identified with language because of the 174 unbridgeable gap between language and the real. Intelligence, which Susan always counts on, belongs to the aforesaid system of language or logos. Susan tries to be so

perfectly subject to language to, as it were, the Others desire and gets so exhaustively entangled in logocentrism that she undergoes a serious inner split between her whole self and her intelligence, or the system of language. In relation to this Anika Remaire refers, in Jaques Lacan, to Lacans idea of the subjects conflict. The subject, according to Remaire, builds himself up at the suggestion of his illusions or dreams. In so doing, however, the subject eventually deludes himself as well as others. Once he begins to go in this direction, he can no longer alter course, and as a result, the distance between the subject he builds up and the original subject gets wider as time passes. This process is fatal for human beings, and yet whether or not a person is sane depends on the magnitude of this distance. Susan considers her illusion to be so perfectly intelligent that she has no need to stop and wonder what it means to be intelligent, despite the fact that she is subtly aware of her own inner split. When Susan is occupied with her daily chores, she feels as if the essential Susan is in abeyance, as if she were in cold storage, and questions herself, [W]hat, then, was this essential Susan?(359). She secludes herself in room nineteen without finding an answer. R.D. Laings argument is useful to explain Susans inner condition, though he takes the existentialist standpoint. He states in The Divided Self subtitled An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness that both Shakespeare and Kafka describe the cruel irrationality of the conditions of human life. Yet, according to Laing, while Shakespeare depicts characters who evidently experience themselves as real and alive and complete, Kafka in our time has to make efforts to communicate what being alive 175 is like in the absence of such assurance (40). Those who cannot experience their own being as real, alive, and whole and therefore suffer the inward split, as is the case with the modern man are said to be in an ontologically insecure condition. For them, communicating with others seems nothing but a threat to their own autonomy and identity. Laing explains implosion as one of the forms of their anxieties: Any contact with reality is then in itself experienced as a dreadful threat because reality, as experienced from this position, is necessarily implosive and thus . . . in itself a threat to what identity the individual is able to suppose himself to have . . . . In fact, we are all only two or three degrees Fahrenheit from experiences of this order. (45-46: original italics) In such a condition, [T]he self then seeks by being unembodied to transcend the world and hence to be safe, but in addition to that [the self] becomes a vacuum and nothing is here, inside so that, the constant dread of all that is there, of being overwhelmed, is potentiated rather than mitigated by the need to keep the world at bay, because in participation the individual fears that his vacuum will be obliterated, that he will be engulfed or otherwise lose his identity(80). Laing represents this relationship between the self and body by distinguishing between the integrated self where the self and body are identical, in contradistinction to the others and a pseudo-duality where the self is dissociated from the body which is linked to the others. In the latter case the self cannot make to use Fromms words even the subjective disguise for objective social function of man in society. When Susan fails to detect what she wants, she feels Im a different person. Im simply not myself (364). According to Laings argument, Susan might after all communicate not with her real self but with another alienated self, since her real self is 176 not embodied. In other words as a consequence of her adherence to intelligence she is seriously distressed, when confronted with nothing but a vacuum in place of what Laing and Fromm call the self, or what Lacan calls the subject. Then, fearing implosion by communicating with others or reality, she confines herself in room

nineteen and lets only her alienated body maintain contact with her family or society. Inside room nineteen is part of her whole self, which is detached completely from her social roles as a mother, a wife, and a housekeeper. Whoever is playing such roles, she can no longer accept and endure these culturally defined selves that intelligence instructs her towards. That is why she yearns for a space where she can be anonymous and stay or at least feel free from social and cultural definitions of selfhood; that is, from the function of the system of language. Lessing refers in her second autobiography, Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography, 1949-1962 to the affair that became her motive to write this story. A woman named Kate Rawlings who had a husband and four children and a large house gassed herself in a borrowed room in Paddington. Although the outline of the story is actually suggested by this incident, Susan remains Lessings creation and she has often written about characters from Mary in The Grass Is Singing to Lynda in The Four Gated City that are frightened to communicate with others, and suffer from split selves. Lessing articulates her own fear concerning the story: To Room Nineteen is a quite terrible story, not least because I dont understand it, or rather the region of myself it comes from. (Walking in the Shade 268) This sense of terribleness emanates from the story; it is the fear of modern people whose 177 self is reduced to a segment of the total self, resulting in the deceptive dependence on the illusion of being self-willing individuals. When things are at their worst, the individual can do nothing but detach their self from their body, as Laing puts it. Therefore, one could find a serious anxiety characteristic of modern times in the mental process of an ordinary and seemingly happy middle-class woman. Trapped by an intelligence or logocentrism which excludes amorphous reality, comprising of such incongruous emotions as upset and anger, modern people repeatedly reinforce the cultural grounds for fascism. Lessing, not dispensing with the realist mode and sticking to Susans point of view, delineates the tragedy of a woman who adheres to visible and logocentric reality without knowing that such a reality is only one version among amorphous and multifarious interpretations of reality, and that what she thinks is her desire is already invaded by the system of language that, as I discussed in Chapter 1, historically constitutes masculine-centred society. In The Memoir of a Survivor published in 1974 Lessing deploys a totally different form to that of To Room Nineteen. In The Memoir of a Survivor it is an anonymous narrator, a survivor of the near-future and presumably a middle-aged woman, who recollects and narrates her life thus far. In the story she narrates she is made aware, when living in a devastated society in the near-future, of another world which seems to exist beyond the wall of the living room of her flat a world that she begins to visit sometimes. In that other world there unfolds scenes from the childhood of Emily her roommate as well as a variety of rooms and gardens. In the end the 178 narrator leaves for that world, together with almost all the other characters. Here, in Lessings tenth novel, two significant spaces are juxtaposed and contrasted: one is on this side of the wall, a real everyday life, described in a detailed realistic style; the other is on the other side of the wall, an ever-changing space described like a fantasy world. Many critics have examined this enigmatic novel from various points of view. Ellen Cronan Rose defines the world beyond the wall as a deeper part of life, which

cannot be revealed on the surface, and insists employing Jungian theory that the fusion of the two worlds is critical for spiritual integration. Betsy Draine argues that the world on this side of the wall represents the occidental and materialistic vision of Marx and the one beyond it the oriental and spiritual vision of Jung. Therefore, she disputes the ending, which being roughly and abruptly pulled together in the Jungian world should provide both the destruction of the narrative frame and an escape from it. Roberta Rubenstein, meanwhile, adopts the epigraph of the first version an attempt for autobiography and regards the novel as a compensatory fantasy where the narrator restores her own past by aligning her own mother with herself as a substitute mother of Emily in the present. My purpose here will not be to focus on the plot of the novel, nor to define the respective sides of the wall as representing a particular type of zone. I will explore, rather, how the coming and going between both sides of the wall conveys together with what happens in and out of the flat the existence of the individual. It shows, in other words, the process of becoming of an individual, in which the individual is constructed repeatedly through the interpenetration of him/herself with other people or things, and between the present and past or his/her memory; these movements constitute 179 a considerable part of human reality. I will also investigate how this evanescent and changing reality is restricted and reduced to only one version. In the novel the narrator and the city she lives in are given no name, and there are no details about her personal history, her career, or her private life. What is implied is that she belongs to the middle-class as she has lived in the building ever since it was built for just such a stratum of society. Now, however, many people from various ethnicities or social backgrounds live there as a result of the frequent departures of the residents. The area she lives in belongs to a decaying city of the near-future. Though there is still an institution called a government, it can hardly function in an almost anarchic society where the social infrastructure is on the verge of breaking down completely. People rely on candles for lighting, on firewood for heat, and on occasional bartering for food or goods. They can no longer use transport facilities without bribes. News comes, informing them of the gradual breakdown of services in the city in the southern and eastern areas. Throngs of people, who are moving to the northern and western areas, pass frequently through the city the narrator lives in. Since the window of her flat faces the street, she often witnesses those drifting citizens passing by who, losing their houses, stay for a little while on the street in front of the flat and then leave presumably for the northern or western areas. One day strangers unexpectedly appear in her living room, a girl and a man, who after saying simply she is your responsibility leaves behind his female companion, Emily. After that the narrator lives with Emily and her pet Hugo, a dog with a cats face. From that day forth she begins to be aware of another space beyond the wall of her living room, which faces the corridor in the building. Her sense that some space is there gets stronger each day: 180 . . . the consciousness of that other life, developing there so close to me, hidden from me, was a slow thing, coming precisely into the category of understanding we describe in the word realize, with its connotation of a gradual opening into comprehension. (7) Thus the narrator feels a gradual opening into comprehension of that other life, though she cannot enter it by design. However, in due course she sometimes finds herself regardless of her own intention on the other side of the wall, which has two characteristics. The world beyond the wall is never static and fixed, but fluid and evanescent. The rooms and gardens there are never in the same condition as when she

has visited the previous time. Whilst they are neat and tidy on one of her visits, all of the furnishings are broken or overturned in the next. In one visit the rooms whose ceilings are gone are filled with fallen leaves, and in another, the walls that partition off the rooms have got higher or have collapsed. These walls never remain the same, and disappear as easily as does the wall of her living room. And there for backdrop was the ambiguous wall, which could so easily dissolve, dissolving, too, all this extraneous life, and the anxieties and pressures of the time . . . and behind us that other indefinite region, shifting and melting and changing, where walls and doors and rooms and gardens and people continually re-created themselves, like clouds. (75-76) Thus in the midst of ever-changing circumstance lies this world, removed from the restrictions of linear time or material existence, where everything is amorphous and changeable like a cloud. This amorphousness seems to be the counterpart of that of the throngs in the street, who gather and scatter alternatively and never settle anywhere. Another feature of this world beyond the wall is that characters occasionally 181 appear there, and re-enact scenes from the past as if in a play or a film. Most of these characters are Emilys family her father, her mother, her baby brother, and a nurse whose everyday life in the past the narrator is permitted to view. She calls these scenes personal, contrasting them with the aforesaid rooms and gardens which she calls impersonal. According to her description, she can discern personal by its tight and limited air and impersonal by its lightness, freedom, and feeling of possibility as well as by its own inherent problems (41). The narrator comes and goes between Emilys past and her present life with Emily, which suggests that the wall not only represents a spatial partition between her living room and the corridor outside and, in another dimension, between the real world and her fantasy world but also functions as a temporal boundary which separates past and present. Therefore, her spatial move through the wall could be considered a temporal move at the same time. On the other hand, if as the narrator realises the scenes behind the wall shows those from her [Emilys] memory, or her history, which had formed her (45), the move between the two areas could imply the way ones past and present interact with one another, as was delineated in Mrs. Dalloway. Moreover, the fact that the narrator discovers Emilys past memories inside her own deeper self discloses the uncertainty of the corporeal frame of the individual as an existence confined to one body. She cannot even decide whether what is shown is Emilys memory or her own memory, recollecting what she felt in the first time she has gone beyond the wall; I knew these sofas, these chairs. But why? From what time in my life did they date? . . . . Yet it seemed that they had been mine, or an intimate friends . . . . Yet I knew everything in it (24). When she watches the infant Emily in a 182 personal scene with her baby brother, her mother and a nurse, she finds herself both as an adult observer and at the same time as the infant Emily: . . . and two females joined in a ceremony of loving while the baby wriggled and responded and cooed. And the little girl watched. Everything around her was enormous: the room so large, warm, and high, the two women so tall and strong and disliking . . . . I saw it as a small child might that is, enormous and implacable but at the same time I kept with me my knowledge that it was tiny and implacable because petty, implacable . . . (43) Her mother, the nurse, and all the furniture look huge and overwhelming to the infant. Her mother, who makes Emily feel threatened, complains that her life is too busy with

daily chores and child-raising for her to enjoy her own life and that Emily her first child is the most distressing of all. This complaint haunts her and induces a heavy depression which the narrator, who shares her perspective, also suffers. The world beyond the wall, as could be inferred from that shared viewpoint and the aforesaid dja vu, begins to seem like a past world that the narrator and Emily share. If so, one could hypothesise that the narrator and Emily are the same person and that Emily is not only the narrators roommate but also her younger self. In other words they could be one person, and yet each has a separate body. That possibility leads to another question about the anonymity of the narrator, that is, whether or not a boundary can be established between oneself and others. The narrator, in her third and fourth visit to the past, holds a crying baby Emily and suspects that this is not Emily but her stout and much frustrated mother: Who else could it possibly be but Emilys mother, the large cart-horse 183 woman, her tormentor, the worlds image? It was not Emily I took . . . . I knew I was seeing an incident that was repeated again and again in Emilys? her mothers? early life. It was a continuing thing; had gone on, day after day, month after month. (149-50) The suggestion that the crying baby is both Emily and her mother at the same time foregrounds the universality of the relationship between a mother and a child. The narrator describes the relationship between an ever-complaining mother and a child who is distressed by her mothers grumbling as something that can go on, day after day, month after month. Thus Emilys, or the narrators, past could be also that of Emilys mother implying that a persons experience is not peculiar to him or her, but one shared with others. The individuals experience, memory or past is therefore also that of other people a collective as is recollected in an earlier part of the novel that gives a foretaste of the collapsed division between the personal and the impersonal: I . . . certainly did not know how much of my own personal experience was common, was shared: this is what looking back, we acknowledge first our similarities, not our differences. (4) Perhaps the most significant point, however, about the world on the other side of the wall is the correlativity it establishes with its antithesis. One day the narrator becomes aware, during one of her visits, that the fluidity of that world has some correlation with the shift of this world: It was about then I understood that the events on the pavements and what went on between me and Emily might have a connection with what I saw on my visits behind the wall. (40) The more the condition on the street worsens and the more its degeneration infringes on 184 the private life or mind, the more the rooms in that world become disordered and the sense of disturbance and suffocation is intensified. The real world on this side of the wall, the narrator begins to sense, has a considerable connection with the world beyond the wall. This connection seems to get stronger and stronger. At first the two worlds exist distinctly, with the narrator never conscious of the twos co-existence. However, the boundary between the two, which seems to exclude one from the other initially, gradually blurs. The narrator begins to hear the cry of the child she meets in the other world even when she stays in her living room in the real world: I could hear it in the day, in my real life . . . when I was in one world . . . the ordinary logical time-dominated world of everyday did not exist . . . . But now began a period when something of the flavour of the place behind the wall did continuously invade my real life . . . two sounds [the sobbing

of the child and the complaint of the mother] went on side by side, theme and descant . . . (145) The narrator hears constantly, even in this real world, the infant Emilys cry and her mothers grumbling, which Emily in this world can not hear. In the other world the impersonal area is being affected by a sense of suffocation in the personal area, corresponding to the devastation of this world where inhabitants begin to abandon the city partly because uncanny and incongruous children who kill people at a whim begin to emerge from underground. In addition to the fusion of the two worlds, the superiority of the real world is subverted. One day, when the boundary between the personal and the impersonal as well as that of the two worlds is utterly destabilised, the narrator considers the space 185 beyond the wall whilst actually looking out of the window of her flat in the real world: . . . and though it was hard to maintain a knowledge of that other world . . . . I did hold it. I kept in mind . . . intimations of that life, or lives, became more powerful and frequent in ordinary life, as if that place were feeding and sustaining us, and wished us to know it . . . as I came to the window after an escape into the space behind the wall, there would be a moment of doubt; my mind would sway and have to steady itself as I reassured myself that no, what I was looking at was reality, was real life . . . ( 159-60) Here the narrator calls into question the hierarchy that presupposes the ascendancy of the real world. In ordinary circumstances one expects to visit the world of fantasy only occasionally, and to have the real world as ones base. However, the narrator begins to suspect that it is that other world rather than this real one that forms the neglected foundation of experience. Whilst looking out of the window, therefore, she has to persuade herself, [N]o, what I was looking at was reality, was real life (159). The nullification of the wall, the fusion of the two worlds, and the destabilisation of the ascendancy of the real world are the events that converge into the storys ending where the characters go away together into the other world and the wall disappears. What is described here is an ever-changing yet correlative relationship; the interactive movement between the individual or the self and its past, or the collective. If, as Bergson argues, as I have quoted in Chapter 1, the self is in fact memory and a real entity that experiences continuous growth by reabsorbing and reinscribing the whole of its experiences and perceptions at any single moment (Gillies 104), then the subject as an individual who lives in the present real world is an entity who, at any 186 single moment, is inspired by memory and, inversely, reinterprets and reconstructs his memory and the past. This is the process of becoming. The individual is an existence with a body that functions in the everyday world yet at the same time his experiences always involve a community of others, whose effect leaves an inerasable inscription on the process of the selfs becoming. Therefore, the individual has two bilateral vectors both in to and out from the self; he maintains this interactive and interpenetrative relationship between the inside and the outside being inspired and inspiring, or being suppressed and suppressing. The individual absorbs his experiences in external society into his inner self and inscribes them on his memory or unconscious, and then that memory or unconscious inspires or suppresses the self, through which he is projected to the external world. When this interactive movement repeats itself, the present of the individual is posited in the front line of the accumulated past. In the novel this movement of the self is displayed spatially, as if adopting Freuds topographical image, and by juxtaposing it with the life on the street the relationship between inside and outside the individual is

made visible. What is more, by emphasising the evanescence and amorphousness of every area, the novel portrays an indescribable movement where the individual in the process of becoming is decided and re-decided incessantly. The societal anxieties of Britain at the time when the novel was published pervade its tale. From the 1960s to the 1970s the acute decline of the British Empire, though already in the process of shrinking that I referred to in Chapter 3, began to become more obvious with the successive loss of its colonies. The worse the economical stagnation of the post-war period became, the more the rate of the 187 unemployment increased which induced a distrust of politics, resulting in the collapse of the two-party system. Its collapse inflicted further political instability, the state falling into a vicious circle. The societal situation in the novel has a connection, it seems, with these overall suffocation or deterioration of British society where the governmental institutions remain yet do not function properly. It is, however, true that culture was ironically activated in this decayed society; or rather, the meaning of the word culture was transformed, and this cultural flow is omnipresent in the novel where the city is on the verge of collapse. Britain could not be immune to the political tide in Europe from the late 1960s to the 1970s traditional morality was condemned, and so was the conventional sense of values, from the diverse standpoints of women, young people and homosexuals; those, that is, who had hitherto felt marginalised. The throng, whom the narrator observes as an emblem of social movement in the novel, is reminiscent of hippies a popular movement at the time in their casual wear, their youth and their unconventional behaviour. In the same way a small band of girls (165) on the street reminds one of the womens movement. Such expressions as out of date, old fashioned words (29) and their old wartime songs, or revolutionary songs that seemed as inappropriate as sex songs are to old age (82) frequently appear in the novel and the narrator states as follows: Styles in morals had changed so sharply and so often in my lifetime, and were so different in various sections of the community, that I had learned long ago to accept whatever was the norm for that particular time and place. (154) Here I need to digress a little, back to the 1950s, not only because Lessings involvement with British culture and politics underwent some critical phases in this 188 period, but because the general culture in the 1960s and the 1970s was substantially affected by what had happened in that decade. Whichever period the narrators lifetime takes place in, the radical changes of the late 1960s and the 1970s had their origin in the 1950s as Carole Klein points out, in Doris Lessing: A Biography, where she refers to the New Left Review, of whose editorial board Lessing was a member: New developments in capitalism were exploding in the fifties: television and mass consumerism chief among them. Economic lines were blurring, as working-class people bought television sets and shopped in the supermarkets that were beginning to open, stocked with some luxuries as well as staples. They were unknowingly involved in a cross-class experience, and their dreams and expectations became newly middle-class. Where was the old working-class culture? Where would this sense of classlessness lead? (170) As the conglomerate mass culture and its activity developed on a larger scale in post-war society, the divisions between the classes and between the centre and the marginalised began to blur, and consequently the very definition of the word culture began to be questioned. Consonant with this societal and cultural vacillation, Lessing herself in this

period wavered in her commitment to the Communist Party, as is detailed in The Golden Notebook. I will examine briefly Lessings involvement with politics, especially left-wing, since her involvement is a key factor in understanding her attitude towards life and novel-writing. Klein considers that: The year 1956 is considered a watershed for the British left. The invasion 189 of part of Egypt and the Suez Canal by the British and French was shocking to many English people, particularly those of a leftist bent. Even more horrifying for the staunch Communist was the invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union to quell a popular uprising. (156) Perhaps with the intention of avoiding a media fuss, Lessing as Klein goes on to state simply neglected to renew her Party card for 1957 (156). Before these events the historian Edward Thompson and the economist John Saville, both of whom were then members of the Communist Party, issued independently a mimeographed news sheet called the Reasoner. After the 1956 revelation they officially quit the Party, and started a larger, independent journal called the New Reasoner (168) whose editorial board Lessing served on. The New Reasoner join[ed] forces with another publication begun in 1957 by Oxford undergraduates called the Universities and Left Review, whose four editors included Stuart Hall, and these two journals were united under the name New Left Review. Clearly, however, Lessing was not much interested in the New Left Review; this can be inferred from several facts. For one thing, while Lessing always attended New Reasoner board meetings, she appeared at editorial sessions of the New Left Review only intermittently (169). In addition to this, Stuart Hall remarked her absent-minded attitude in meetings. Remembering her as not participating in the discussions but just watching them, Hall decided that it was just clear that what was going on in her mind wasnt any of our business (169). Then she began to retreat from political activities, except those such as the Aldermaston march for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament around 1960, while she wrote novels of various forms to evoke the cultural upheaval in the 1960s. 190 These acts of hers do not, however, prove her complete change of heart and mind concerning communism, nor a radical shift from pro-politics to anti-politics as is sometimes indicated by some readers or reviewers. She declares in the first volume of her autobiography, Under My Skin that she joined the Communist Party not because she approved of Marxist theory or the political world, but because the Party was the only place where she could talk about the colour bar, or racial discrimination: In my case it was because for the first time in my life I was meeting a group of people . . . who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read, and among whom thoughts about the Native Problem I had scarcely dared to say aloud turned out to be more commonplace . . . (259) Growing up in the veld in Southen Rhodesia, the young Lessing could not rid herself of the suspicion that there was something extremely contradictory, or something terribly inhuman, in the relationship between white people and black people; yet she could not articulate her feelings, being suppressed by the tacit acceptance of it in the colonial society. Then she found in the Communist Party what she had yearned for a place where she could share and discuss the question with other people. Her rather straightforward motivation testifies her love for other human beings; she announced, in a letter to Edward Thompson of February 1957, her affection for people as well as her loss of faith in politics:

What I feel is an immense joy and satisfaction that the world is going so fast, that the peasant in China no longer starves, that people all over the world care enough for their fellow human beings to fight for what they feel, at the time, to be justice. I feel a sort of complicated gigantic flow of 191 movement of which I am a part, and it gives me profound satisfaction to be in it. But what has this got to do with political attitudes? (Walking 216) She realises that she is a part of complicated gigantic flow of moment, and what offers her an immense joy and satisfaction is that people all over the world care enough for their fellow human beings to fight for what they feel, at the time, to be justice. She refers to the gigantic flow also in Afterward to The Story of an African Farm, saying that human beings are small things in the grip of gigantic forces, and yet they cry out and fight and struggle to understand the incomprehensible (104). This endeavour, a kind of hunger, that passionate desire for growth and understanding Lessing admires as the deepest pulse of human beings (Afterward 100), and it is exactly what occupies Anna in The Golden Notebook. When Anna hopes to acquire the pleasure of recognition through a rescuing of the formless into form (GN 414) as I cited in Chapter 3 this rescuing is synonymous with the struggle to understand the incomprehensible and the passionate desire for growth and understanding leads to the pleasure of recognition a pleasure that Woolf calls the strongest pleasure known to me when putting [reality] into words (A Sketch of the Past 72). In other words, what Lessing terms the deepest pulse of human beings is something also recognised and admired by Woolf. For Lessing, and perhaps for Woolf as well, it is not political activity in a narrow sense that matters most, but the pleasure that persists as the deepest pulse of human beings. This attitude leads her to declare, in an interview with Nissa Torrents in 1980, that I have never thought that politics resolved anything, nor have I ever defended any definite political position. I have simply limited myself in writing about people who are active politically (Conversations 8). Lessing has written novels, it seems, to express her concern for the deepest 192 impulse of human beings no matter if they are left-wing or right-wing, committed or uncommitted politically, religious or unreligious and, consequently, political matters are for her nothing more than an unavoidable aspect of life. What matters for her, and for Anna, is how as writers they can express the reality of human beings who embrace the deepest pulse for desire for growth and understanding. Lessings sense of purpose in this respect is present in almost all of her works. In The Four Gated City the last book of the Children of Violence series published in 1969, just before The Memoir she seems to jump from a realist novel into an apocalyptic one, with the last part recounting the outbreak of nuclear war as if betraying the readers expectation about the ending of an autobiographical novel. In Briefing for a Descent into Hell from 1971 to which I referred in my Introduction the dialogue between the protagonist, a schizophrenic patient, and the doctor in the real world is defamiliarised with the effect that the real and hallucination appear to be reversed. In The Summer Before the Dark, published in 1973, the metamorphosis of Kate the protagonist in her real life corresponds with the transition of her dreams. Thus Lessing, by manipulating literary forms, calls into question the established, real world; for her human reality is not framed by the visible world and linear time but an ever-changing conglomeration as is adumbrated by Between the Acts, where past and present are intertwined with each other. As a matter of fact, in The Memoir of a Survivor in spite of its multiple references to the rapidity of changes in social values from the late 1960s to the 1970s the novels setting in the near-future implies the cyclical nature of history: any historical event, it suggests, could come back at any

time. The collapse of the wall suggests a challenge to the real world as does its ending, where Lessing seemingly escaping into fantasy and discarding realism 193 defies the dominance of the established real world. In this section I discuss how Lessing makes clear the mechanism by which Susan or Emilys mother unwittingly grants privilege to just one version of reality. For this purpose Althusserian theory of ideology will prove a useful conception for the elucidation of this mechanism, or the interpenetrative relationship between the individuals inner state and the outer society that is critical to Lessings novels. According to Althusser, ideology designates the system of representation worked up in specific material practices, which helps form individuals into social subjects who freely internalise an appropriate picture of their social world and their place in it (Kavanagh 310). Although Althusser constructs his theory of ideology based on Marxism, it offers now, Kavanagh argues, not narrowly political ideas but a fundamental framework of assumptions that defines the parameters of the real and the self; it constitutes what Althusser calls the social subjects lived relation to the real (310). This fundamental framework of assumptions is realised through what Althusser calls state apparatuses. According to Paul Ricoeur, there are two kinds of state apparatuses; the first is the repressive and coercive state apparatuses: government, administration, police, courts, prisons, and so on, and the second is the ideological state apparatuses: religion, education, the family, the political system, communications, culture, and so forth (Ricoeur 51). It is through the latter ideological state apparatuses that the individual or the social subject is, in his/her unconscious, inscribed unknowingly with a fundamental framework of assumptions. Ricoeur goes on to refer to what Althusser calls interpellation, quoting Althussers remarks: 194 Althussers interesting analysis of what he calls interpellation demonstrates more specifically the relationship between ideology and the subject. As a first formulation, I shall say: all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject (Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, London: New Left Books, 1971. 162). We are constituted as subjects through a process of recognition . . . . In its ability to interpellate subject, ideology also constitutes them. To be hailed is to become a subject. The existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing (Lenin 163). (Ricoeur 64) This function of ideology and its interpellation is epitomised by Susans case. Obviously a fundamental framework of assumptions for Susan is the discourse rife in the early 1960s that womens happiness comes from having a handsome husband and nice children along with a beautiful house and a fine garden in the suburbs. When she is interpellated through one of the ideological apparatuses designed to engender a concrete subject in this case the concept of family, which makes of her a magnanimous wife, a caring mother, and an efficient housekeeper she internalises the aim of interpellation to play a role in society, to live her lived relation to real, without knowing that her will is no more than the result of what Fromm calls the subjective disguise. Besides, if ideology is constituted by a predetermined system of language, here again the system of language is waiting along with the framework of ideology for Susan to be incorporated within it. In Memoir of a Survivor, a fundamental framework of assumptions or interpellation is explicit in the remarks of Emily and her mother, and the descriptions of them. In the personal room behind the 195

wall Emilys mother complains to her husband of her irritating everyday life with an over-demanding child. She grumbles: Im not what I was I know that only too well, I am afraid(69), on which the narrator comments: She was trapped, but did not know why she felt this, for her marriage and her children were what she personally had wanted and aimed for what society had chosen for her. Nothing in her education or experience had prepared for her what she did in fact feel, and she was isolated in her distress and her bafflement, sometimes even believing that she might perhaps be ill in some way. (69) Like Susan, Emilys mother has internalised the direction of interpellation through one of the ideological apparatuses family. Yet in reality what she personally had wanted and aimed for is no more than what society had chosen for her, a fact which she is vaguely aware of. In this respect her remark, Im not what I was, has precisely the same significance as the description of Susans condition being as if the essential Susan is in abeyance, as if she were in cold storage; neither of them can sneak away from a fundamental frame of assumptions, though feeling subtly their entanglement with it. Emilys mother is not, however, only a victim of assumptions, but herself conveys them when she dictates to Emily: You are this; and this and this this is what you have to do, and not that (92: original italics). Then Emilys turn comes, and she orders in the farm the children under her care to do this and not that (130). It is never a matter of individual bias, but of something in the system of human society. What, therefore, is the real world for Susan, who is entangled by a fundamental framework of assumptions and interpellated through an ideological 196 appratus? Regarding the constructed reality created by ideology, I will refer to Graeme Turners argument in British Cultural Studies: An Introduction and Stuart Halls essay, The rediscovery of ideology: return of the repressed in media studies. Turner maintains that Halls essay is presumably the most comprehensive attempt at describing chronologically the theories around ideology within cultural studies, emphasising Halls contribution to analysing the ideological function through and in the media one of the ideological apparatuses. Hall states that the repressed i.e., ideology returned to the agenda of media studies after the end to ideology that was pronounced by mass communication theorists, in which the natural and spontaneous formation of the general consensus is based on the tolerant acceptance of differences in society. When ideology returned, however, obviousness and presupposed credibility of the consensus approach was questioned and, consequently, its groundlessness was revealed. Thereafter the idea, not of the reflection upon, but of construction of the real became the main topic in critical media research. Drawing on post-Saussurean structuralist appropriations of semiotic models, Hall goes on to present the question of the politics of signification that is, the ways in which the social practice of making meanings is controlled and determined (172). He points out that the roots of ideology are much deeper than those of social practices like the media: . . . it [ideology] structures the most basic systems of cultural organisation . . . . Every culture has its own forms of episodic thinking that provide its members with taken-for-granted elements of their practical knowledge (p.73). This common sense is rarely made explicit, and is often in fact unconscious, but it too is built upon a comprehensive foundation of ideological premises. (172) 197 The effect of ideology on the process where forms of episodic thinking offer taken-for-granted-elements of practical knowledge (Hall 73), or where it

signif[ies] events in a particular way (Hall 69), is to erase the trace of ideology itself making itself inconspicuous so that the message is regarded as a natural and spontaneous representation of the real; this effect Hall terms the reality effect, by which one recognise a particular representation as obvious, natural, and spontaneous. Hall states that this recognition effect was not a recognition of the reality behind the words, but a sort of confirmation of the obviousness, the taken-for-grantedness of the way the discourse was organised and of the underlying premises on which the statement in fact depended (Hall 75). Indeed, as Turner puts it, [t]he circle closes, as this recognition effectively validates the representation (Turner 172). It is this reality effect that sways Susan; when it legitimates and fixes just one of the diverse representations of the real as the only natural and spontaneous premise, it offers no alternative real for Susan. Therefore, Lessing delineates in To Room Nineteen exclusively from Susans point of view the predicament of a woman who is suffocated by a fundamental framework of assumptions and constant interpellation closing herself within the circle, without knowing any other meaning of her role in society. By unfolding, through Susans eyes, a fixed and confined representation of the real world, Lessing calls into question what the real is. In The Memoir of a Survivor she destabilises the boundary between the real world and the non-real world, juxtaposing the inner self and external society which is similarly considered to be real; it is, above all, the books ending in which almost all the characters go away into the non-real world beyond the wall that implies a rejection of the hierarchal dominance of this real world, which is shown to be nothing but one 198 version of other possible representations. When Hall referring to the polysemy of language indicates that the same set of signifiers could produce different meanings and thus made the effect of naturalisation something to be worked at, produced, his argument is exemplified by the narrators recollection at the very beginning of Memoir: We all remember that time. It was no different for me than for others. Yet we do tell each other over and over again the particularities of the events we shared . . . as if we are saying, It was like that for you, too? Then that confirms it, yes, it was so, it must have been, I wasnt imagining things. We match or dispute like people who have seen remarkable creatures on a journey: Did you see that big blue fish? Oh, the one you saw was yellow! But the sea we travelled over was the same . . . (3) The narrator knows that the same signifier the fish produces different meanings; it means the blue fish for one, and also the yellow one so that they have to tell each other over and over again to confirm what is real. In reality, however, the one meaning or the one signified is legitimated and established as the predominant one or as a fundamental frame of assumptions whereas the others are dismissed and marginalised as inappropriate in order to preserve the concept of common sense, normality or sanity. Hall, asking himself how this process of attribution of the predominant meaning is structured, suggests that the process is a property of the system of relations involved, rather than the overt and intentional biases of individuals (85). Susans and Emilys mothers predicament is therefore, as mentioned previously, not necessarily their own fault; the central assumptions vary, depending on time and areas, and are each time conveyed repeatedly. We close the circle again and 199 again. Lessing challenges this closing of the circle that reduces versatile reality to only one version; her notion is condensed in the subtitle of The Memoir of a Survivor An Attempt at Autobiography which was somehow omitted after the second version.

Lessing states about the subtitle as follows: When I wrote Memoir of A Survivor I called it, An Attempt at an Autobiography, but no one was interested. Foreign publishers simply left it off the title page, and soon no one remembered to put it on reprints in English. People seemed embarrassed. They did not understand it, they said. For thousands upon thousands of years, we humankind have told ourselves tales and stories, and these were always analogies and metaphors, parables and allegories; they were elusive and equivocal; they hinted and alluded, they shadowed forth in a glass darkly. But after three centuries of the Realistic Novel, in many people this part of the brain has atrophied. (Under My Skin 28) For Lessing human reality includes not only the tangible world (Conversations 148), but also the world of the imagination that using this part of the brain can express itself through analogies and metaphors, parables and allegories. This method of storytelling is what humankind has done for thousands years; it is not Lessings original but the historically accepted style. It is natural, therefore, for her to juxtapose the two worlds in her autobiography, since reality and dream, marked off by the wall, complement each other to give an all-encompassing vision to the narrators past (Conversations 148). For her it is not a question of whether realism is appropriate or not, but a question of how she can convey this amorphous and miscellaneous reality through 200 the inherently limited system of language the same problem whose gravity Anna also confronts. Lessing mentions during the interview that, Memoirs of a Survivor is the direct result of my meditating about the inadequacy of language. I write as in legends or in fairy tales, by means of metaphors and analogies, but it is necessary to be careful, because what is not realistic is slippery ground. One must accumulate enough daily details in order that the reader isnt lost, since he requires the presence of mundane details so that he can then respond to the irrational. (Conversations 67) While she admits the inadequacy of language and the necessity of forms like legends or fairy tales, she warns against being too slippery at the expense of the readers comprehension. What Lessing has tried to achieve throughout her career is the expression using the intrinsically qualified system of language and without adhering to realism nor discarding it thoroughly of a state of human reality in which the individual is always intertwined with others, and with their past memory or history. She offers as one of her attempts the fixed and limited representation of the real conveyed, in a realist style, through the eyes of a middle-class woman in To Room Nineteen; through this culturally confined perspective one can discern the aporia in modern man that contributed to the rise of fascism. In the case of The Memoir of a Survivor, the other of her attempts, Lessing unfolds spatially and visually the existence of an individual who is never completed nor fixed, but ever-changing and in the process of becoming. Both novels ultimately unsettle the authenticity of the material and visible world consistent with social trends at the time and suggest its connection to history through the medium of the individuals perspective. It is tempting to say, therefore, that 201 any currents of the past may come back at any time in the future. History may repeat itself and events may take place again to anyone at any time. However, if the novel conveys a perennial sense of crisis in relation to time, in doing so it represents aesthetically as is the case with Woolf the spirit of the time which characterises the everyday life of the individual.

5. If you have seen the film The Hours based on Michael Cunninghams novel of the same title, you may recall that there is a woman character (whose role is played by Julianne Moore) who, unable to feel love for her husband and young child, and expecting a new baby, goes to a hotel and thinks of committing suicide. Significantly, she is given the key to room nineteen. Both the novel and the film share the fragmentary quality of Lessings most experimental novels. Moreover, Cunningham plays with juxtaposing Virginia Woolfs life and fiction, by yoking fragments from Mrs Dalloway with episodes from Woolfs diaries. The insertion of Lessings short story is, in this vein, a tour de force, linking two different kinds of experimental novels and authors. Watch the film, available in DVD, and discuss it in the light of what you remember of Virginia Woolfs fiction and of Doris Lessings short story in the larger context of her literary, thematic and formal concerns. Analysis While writing a fiction novel, I would think that the writer would have to dig deep into their mind and into their heart in order for them to convey realistic emotions through their characters. This process could almost be related to hypnosis where the writer relies on his or her inner thoughts and feelings to effectively add depth to their novel's fictitious characters. In the novel Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf used a technique called stream-of-consciousness in which she attempted to write the novel in the same patterns as her brain's thought process. In doing this, Woolf gave birth to a piece of art that contained some of her deepest emotions and desires. Her novel has such a prolific substance that I do not believe that the work could be redone or adapted to any other forum of art, even through the magic of the silver screen. I must compliment Michael Cunningham in his loose adaptation of the Mrs. Dalloway story and the historical revisiting of Virginia Woolf in his novel The Hours. The many adaptations that had to occur in order to capture the very substance of Mrs. Dalloway are the subjects of this work; From the actors and directors in the film The Hours to the writings of Cunningham's adaptation of Mrs. Dalloway in The Hours, and finally to the source of it all - the mind of Virginia Woolf.
"Many people, including Michael Cunningham, didn't think the novel could be turned into a movie" (Ansen 21). The process of writing a screen play to ultimately accomplish the essence of a novel such as The Hours can be quite a challenge. A novel, as a piece of literature, contains inner thoughts and feelings that are felt by the characters of the novel. A work of literature also may consist of an array of emotional tones and characteristics that can only be portrayed in a piece of literature. For example, David Hare, the screenwriter for the film version of The Hours, felt that "the biggest challenge in creating the film was to convey what the three heroines were thinking without resorting to voice-overs" (Ansen 21). Eventually, the pair of Hare and director Stephen Daltry found a way to solve this problem. The film incorporates different transitional devices to keep up with the different actions of the three heroines whose stories are told simultaneously through different time periods. One of such device is the use of the third person narrative and another is the flawless performances of the primary actors.

Nicole Kidman, who plays the role of Woolf in the film, makes it a habit to do large amounts of research into the historical character that she actively takes on. She luckily had some help from the long deceased Woolf herself through her many published autobiographical journals that delve into her sordid life. "Kidman says she got involved with The Hours for the best of reasons: She wanted to make a movie of real substance" (Butler 1). Kidman successfully chose a meaningful and challenging role to play for this film. Woolf was a very innovative writer who successfully differentiated herself and her writing from other forms of literature of her time. While writing Mrs. Dalloway, although Woolf was at a high point in her stint of novel writing, she seemed to have been struggling with the approach in which she took the novel. I am sure that Woolf's life was a little more than perpetually composed during this time of dealing with the constraints of being out of the city which she loved so. Kidman seems to have done her research well thus she gives a truthful performance of Woolf as a figure who finds herself fraught with the complex issues of her life while attempting to depict her inner feelings through characters in her novel. Woolf comments on Clarissa's thoughts of life in the novel: "She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible, unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway" (11). Julianne Moore acts the role of Laura Brown in the film The Hours. Mrs. Moore's choice to play the role in the film is "perhaps a little more systematic" than Kidman's (Butler 1). Moore attempts to balance her work with a soft and sometimes easy role next to a more challenging role such as Laura Brown. Laura Brown's character is in the midst of reading Mrs. Dalloway twenty years after it was written. While she finds herself experiencing the same doubts about her life as does the Clarissa Dalloway character in the novel. Laura Brown's character is also loosely based on a short story by Doris Lessing called To Room Nineteen in which a confused mother leaves her family to commit suicide in a hotel room. The two characters, Laura Brown and Susan Rawlings share similar exasperations about their lives, particularly because of their entrapped feelings of playing the roles of mother and wife. I believe that Cunningham chose to model Mrs. Brown after Lessing's character due to other parallels between the two authors. Critic Clair Sprague once wrote on the similarities of both characters Anna Wulf in Lessing's 1969 book The Golden Notebook and Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs. Dalloway. Speaking of both authors, Sprague states that "like Woolf, Lessing has developed a unique multi-personal mode, a new time strata, a new way of disrupting narrative viewpoint and the continuity of exterior events"(Sprague 5). The choice of such fine actors as Kidman and Moore plus the addition of Meryl Streep as the New York editor Clarissa Vaughn is definitely one Hollywood device that could effectively turn any literary conversion into a great film. Not only does the film shine as a remarkable screen translation of Cunningham's novel, it also inhabits the same spirit as the writer felt while trying to do the same for Mrs. Dalloway. "Michael was incredible," Hare says, "He told me, 'I inherited it from Virginia Woolf, and now you must go off and alter it as freely as I adapted Mrs. Dalloway'" (Ansen 20). I can only guess that the 'it' that Cunningham was supposedly innate is the true essence in which Woolf successfully captured in her novel. The personal issues within Woolf became apparently clear through the lives of the characters in Mrs. Dalloway (namely the literary correspondence of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith). In his novel, Cunningham stunningly enacted this unnamable Woolfian force into characters that are used in an attempt to clarify such a literary and emotional phenomenon as the meaning behind the words in Mrs. Dalloway.

In actuality, Cunningham's book pays homage of sorts to the strong feelings that Mrs. Dalloway captures. He knew that the Woolf's novel was too great a work for him to touch, as far as trying to develop his novel as an accurate retelling of Mrs. Dalloway. He even shows the true power that the Woolf novel possesses in The Hours by having the book relate to three different women in three different time periods. This relation of the three women through Woolf writing the novel, Laura Brown obsessively reading the novel and Clarissa Vaughn eerily more or less living the novel proves to the reader that the work itself is something of great importance and of a scope that has not yet been taken on by any other writer. Such magnitude could never be conveyed in any other fashion except through the means that Cunningham finds suitable in writing The Hours. Ultimately, the only way for the true mindset of Woolf's novel to be released as a film was for it to be twice adapted. There would have been no way for the novel and all of its essence of that true Woolfian relationship to be placed upon the medium of film unless it was done this way. Stanley Kaufman once said of Virginia Woolf and the substandard first film adaptation of Mrs. Dalloway: "This is not remotely to argue a fixed superiority of literature over film, but it is to suggest that some novels resist adaptation to the core of their beings" (28). Mrs. Dalloway is undoubtedly one of those novels. Within the pages and through the characters of the novel, Woolf openly questions her purpose and existence to the point of no return. Through Clarissa Dalloway the reader witnesses Woolf going through pains and disparities of questioning life. Through the character Septimus Smith we see her seeking out that possible answer; we see through him the horror that Woolf has had to endure in her life. Clarissa finds herself confounded by the looming air of the presence of Septimus in the novel, "Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here's death, she thought" (183). The novel consists of those perplexing questions of life swirling inside Woolf's head, being asked and answered on the pages right before the reader's eyes. At one point in the novel, Septimus has obviously lost all sense of reason and his inner thoughts are shown to prove this: "Lolloping on the waves and braiding her tresses, she seemed, having that gift still; to be; to exist; to sum it all up in the moment as she passed; turned, caught her scarf in some other woman's dress, unhitched it, laughed, all with the most perfect ease and air of a creature floating in its element." (MD 174) Again, the novel proves to be a powerful tool to be able to account for the inner emotions of someone's mind and for this is why Mrs. Dalloway shall always be one of the supreme novels in modern and literary history. And although there is no mistaking the fact that the whole novel The Hours is written by Cunningham as an honest tribute to Woolf, "still it is remarkable to watch him demonstrate that there is no area of Woolf's extraordinary consciousness that, for reasons of modesty, he might shy away from attempting to recreate" (Dee 4). The Hours effectively serves as an account of how one piece of literature can ultimately survive as an implementation of destiny and how one author can successfully capture the true feelings of the mind and the heart and continue to affect readers for generations to come. We never understand each other; neither complete clairvoyance nor complete confessional exists. We know each other approximately, by external signs, and these serve well enough as a basis for society and even for intimacy. But people in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed as well as the novelist themselves.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham The Hours follows three women through one day in their lives. One of the narrative strands explores the day in 1923 when Virginia Woolf begins to write Mrs. Dalloway. Another centers around a day in the life of Laura Brown, an American housewife, in 1949, in which she spends part of her time reading Mrs. Dalloway. The third narrative takes place on a day in the late twentieth century, in which Clarissa Vaughn hosts a party for her poet-friend Richard. The chapters alternate with rough regularity between these three main characters.

The prologue details the suicide of Virginia Woolf. She leaves notes for her husband and sister, then walks to a nearby river. She selects a large stone from the bank, places it her pocket, and wades into the water. The next group of chapters retells the early mornings of the three main characters. Clarissa Vaughn leaves her New York apartment to buy flowers. She is hosting a party that evening in honor of her best friend Richard, a poet and novelist dying of AIDS, who is receiving a prestigious literary award for his lifes work. As she walks, she bumps into her old friend Walter Hardy and catches a glimpse of a movie star peeking outside of her trailer. The story turns to Virginia Woolf on a morning nearly twenty years before she commits suicide. She wakes up thinking about how to begin her new novel, which will detail a day in the life of a woman named Clarissa Dalloway. Virginia greets her husband as he corrects proofs, and she skips breakfast to avoid dealing with her temperamental cook. After returning to her room, she settles in to write. The attention turns to Laura Brown, a mother living in Los Angeles after World War II as she lies in bed reading Mrs. Dalloway. She does not have the energy to go downstairs and say happy birthday to her husband, Dan, or to make breakfast for her young son, Richie. After reading for an hour or two, she finally goes downstairs. Dan leaves for work and she is alone with her son. In what is now late morning, Clarissa Vaughn stands on the street outside the flower shop trying to catch sight of the movie star who came out of the trailer. She gives up and continues walking, passing the corner where she and Richard broke up many years ago. She visits Richard in his messy apartment, brightening the kitchen with fresh flowers as she asks about his health. They must go uptown that night to collect his prize and then go to the party, but despite Clarissas reassurances, Richard protests that he does not deserve the prize. Virginia Woolf feels the first strains of a crippling headache and sets down her pen after writing for two hours. Because of her health, Leonard has moved her from London to the suburbs, even though she desperately wants to return to the city. Virginia finds Leonard in the printing room chastising his assistant, and she smoothes over the argument. Laura Brown bakes a birthday cake with her sons help, deciding that the cake must be a perfect work of art. Before lunch, Virginia takes a walk and thinks about her character Clarissa Dalloway. She decides that Clarissa will have once been in love with a woman and that she will kill herself. Upon returning to the house, she speaks to her cook, who has become angry with Virginia for not organizing lunch. The situation worsens when the cook finds out that Virginias sister Vanessa will be bringing her family for tea that afternoon, and the cook must commute to London to pick up special ingredients.

Clarissa Vaughn bumps into her live-in lover Sally on the way back to their apartment. Sally plans to have lunch with a movie-star friend of hers. As Clarissa puts flowers into water, she thinks about her disappointment over not getting an invitation to this lunch. She feels alienated from her own house and her life, and reminisces about the happy summer she spent with Richard in Wellfleet when they were still romantically involved. Clarissa thinks that summer may have been the only perfect time in her life. Laura Brown finishes the cake and feels disappointed that it does not attain the standard of perfection she had hoped for. Her neighbor Kitty stops by to tell Laura that she must enter the hospital for tests on her uterus. The two women embrace and kiss momentarily, an experience that moves Laura. After lunch, Vanessa Bell surprises her sister Virginia by arriving early for tea. Vanessas three children find a dying bird in the garden and make a grass bed for the bird with Virginias help. Clarissa Vaughn receives a visit from her old friend Louis at her apartment. A former lover of Richards who lived with them at Wellfleet, Louis now teaches in San Francisco and has begun an affair with a young student. As they talk, Clarissas rebellious daughter Julia shows up at the apartment, and Louis leaves. Laura Brown has thrown away the first cake and baked another. Bored, she feels the need to escape and leaves Richie at a neighbors house. She checks into a hotel to read Mrs. Dalloway for two hours, thinking about the concept of suicide and deciding that she could never kill herself. In the mid-afternoon, Vanessa and Virginia sit in the kitchen drinking tea. Virginia feels happy and decides that Clarissa Dalloway will not commit suicide after all. Nelly storms in from London, and when she turns her back, Virginia leans in and kisses her sister on the lips. Meanwhile, Clarissa chats with her daughter, Julia, who has brought her difficult friend Mary Krull to the apartment. Clarissa clashes with Mary, who finally leaves to go shopping with Julia. Virginia Woolf feels depressed after her sister leaves and attempts to write but decides to take a walk to clear her head. After passing the dead bird in the garden, she wanders to the train station, where she contemplates taking a train to London. As she waits, Leonard shows up and brings her back to the house. The story turns to Clarissas lover, Sally, as she eats lunch with Walter Hardy and Oliver St. Ives, the movie star. After lunch, Sally shops with Walter as he buys a gift for his lover, which prompts Sally to stop and buy roses for Clarissa on the way home. Before dinner, Laura drives back to the babysitters house to pick up her son. Clarissa Vaughn goes over to Richards apartment to pick him up for the party to find him sitting on the windowsill. He tells her he loves her and jumps out of the window to his death. Laura Brown watches her husband and her son eat the cake that she has made and thinks about her dissatisfaction with her pictureperfect life. The last group of chapters follows the women as they prepare for bed. Virginia Woolf has convinced Leonard to move back to London. She thinks of the kiss she shared with Vanessa and decides that Clarissa Dalloway will have shared a similar kiss with a lover when she was young. After some thought, she decides that Clarissa will not commit suicide, but that someone insane and sensitive will do so instead. Laura Brown gazes into the mirror as she brushes her teeth. Detached from her body, she thinks about the fact that Dan will want to have sex with her. In the final chapter, an older Laura comes to stay at Clarissas apartment in the wake of her son Richards death. After they speak, Clarissa reflects on the meaning of the passage of time.

To room Nineteen by Doris Lessing Summary and Analysis

Part 1
The story begins with a description of the history of Susan and Matthew Rawlings's marriage, which has been a very practical union. They married in their late twenties after having known each other for some time and after having experienced other relationships. They, and their friends, consider them to be "well matched." Before their children came, Susan worked in an advertising firm while Matthew was a sub-editor for a London newspaper. They began their family in a house in Richmond, a suburb of London, and they eventually had four children. Their life together was happy but rather flat. They privately began to wonder about the central point of all of the work they didMatthew outside the home and Susan inside. They did, however, love each other and were determined to have a successful marriage. As a result then, they convinced themselves that "things were under control." One night Matthew comes home late and admits that he has been with another woman. Both he and Susan determine that the event was not important and would not damage their relationship. Yet, they both become irritable. Susan begins to wonder about her importance to Matthew and thinks about the ten years of her fidelity. Eventually, they determine that the sensible thing to do is to forget the entire incident. Matthew continues his infidelities, however, prompting Susan to consider the emptiness of her life and her lack of freedom.

Part 2
By the time they are in their early forties, Susan begins to think about what she would do when all of her children go to school. On the day that she drops the twins, her youngest, off for their first day of school, Susan returns home and spends a restless morning, not knowing quite what to do with herself. The restlessness evolves into a state of panic until she convinces herself that her feelings are quite normal and that it would take time to discover her own needs after caring so long for others' needs. Yet, she spends the day helping their maid take care of the house. This pattern continues until the school holiday, when she feels resentment that she will no longer have any freedom, even though she has carefully avoided freeing herself from her domestic duties. She experiences a growing sense of restlessness and emptiness but hides her feelings from Matthew, because they are not "sensible." On the fourth day of the holiday, her irritation grows to the point that she snaps at her children. Matthew's understanding and comfort help her regain control of herself, but the sense of restlessness returns when the children go back to school. In an effort to find a place where she can be alone and gain some measure of freedom, which has become increasingly important to her, Susan takes a spare room in the house for her own where she can enjoy some privacy. Matthew and the children respect her time there and determine not to take her for granted in the future.

Susan's restlessness, however, is not abated by the time in her room. Her increased impatience and anger frighten her, especially one afternoon when she thinks she sees a man in her garden, stirring a snake coiled at his feet. As she determines that this devilish man has brought on the emotional turmoil she is caught up in, he disappears.

Part 3
One afternoon, Susan decides to rent a room in London for a day so that she can be truly alone. Yet when the hotel's proprietress will not leave her in peace, Susan leaves, feeling defeated. At home, her maid complains that she did not like having the responsibilities of the house fall on her for the entire day while Susan was gone. When Susan takes a holiday in Wales, she feels no relief since her husband and children call her each day with their questions and concerns. Returning home, she insists to Matthew that they need an au pair to help run the house. Recognizing that Susan has already spiritually removed herself from her family, Matthew reluctantly agrees. Sophie, the au pair, becomes a great success in the household, embraced by all of its members. As a result, Susan feels that she will not be missed if she spends time away from home. Three days a week, she rents a shabby room in London where she sits alone, reveling in her freedom. Her time in the room allows her to endure her domestic roles at home. Soon the three days turn into five. One night, assuming that she has taken a lover, Matthew asks her whether she wants a divorce. Susan dodges the question. The next day she discovers that Matthew has found out about her room, and as a result, she feels her freedom slipping away. When she returns home, she sees her daughter Molly being consoled by Sophie, and "blinks tears of farewell" in response. Later, while trying to explain to Matthew what she was doing in the room, she decides that it would be easier to tell him that she does have a lover. This relieves Matthew, who admits that he is having an affair as well with a friend of theirs. The next morning, Matthew proposes that the four of them meet with each other and get everything out in the open. Susan panics, blurting out that her lover, "Michael Plant," is out of town. Determining that suicide will be the only way to quiet "the demons" in her head and achieve the freedom she so desperately needs, Susan returns to Room Nineteen, turns on the gas, and drifts "off into the dark river."

JEAN RHYS 1. The following text is an extract from Good Morning, Midnight that gathers together Jean Ryhss idiosyncratic themes and style. Identify the main features of both.

... The room at the Steens. It was crowded with red plush furniture, the wood shining brightly. There were several vases of tulips and two cages with canaries, and there were two clocks, each trying to tick louder than the other. The windows were nearly always shut, but the room wasn't musty. When the door into the shop was open you could smell drugs and eau-de-Cologne. On a table at the back there was a big pot of tea over a spirit-lamp. The little blue light made it look like an altar. In that room you couldn't think, you couldn't make plans. Just the way the clocks ticked, and outside the clean, narrow streets, and the others talking Dutch and I listening, not understanding. It was like being a child again, listening and thinking of something else and hearing the voices endless, inevitable and restful. Like Sunday afternoon. Well, London. ... It has a fine sound, but what was London to me? It was a little room, smelling stuffy, with my stockings hanging to dry in front of a gas-fire. Nothing in that room was ever clean; nothing was ever dirty, either. Things were always half-and-half. They changed one sheet at a time, so that the bed was never quite clean and never quite dirty. Thinking: Ive got away from all that, anyhow. Not to go back, not to go back.' I liked Tonny; she was gentle. But I hated Hans Steen. He had a blustering look. He didn't bluster, he was very polite. But his pale blue eyes had that look, and his hands. Narrow streets, with the people walking up one way and down another. So tidily. In the park, the Haagsche Bosch, the trees upside-down in the ice green water. We go every day to the Centraal for an apritif. We eat at a little place where the violinist plays sentimental tunes very well. ('Will you play Le Binyou for madame? ...') I haven't any money. He hasn't any either. We both thought the other had money. But people are doing crazy things all over the place. The war is over. No more war - never, never, never. Aprs la guerre, there'l1 be a good time everywhere. ... And not to go back to London. It isn't so fine, what I have to go back to in London. But no money? Nix? ... And the letter in my hand bag: 'I think you must be mad, If you insist on doing this.' A tall vase of sprawling tulips on the table. How they give themselves 'Perhaps it's because they know they have nothing to give,' Enno says. Talking about Paris, where he has lived since he was eighteen. He was a chansonnier, it seems, before he became a journalist. He enlisted during the first week of the war. From 1917 onwards a gap. He seemed very prosperous when I met him in London, but now no money - nix. What happened? He doesn't tell me. But when we get to Paris the good life will start again. Besides, we have money. Between us we have fifteen pounds. All the same, I never thought we should really get married. One day Ill make a plan, Ill know what to do.... Then I wake up and it's my wedding-day, cold and rainy. I put on the grey suit that a tailor in Delft has made for me on tick. I don't like it much. Enno comes in with a bunch of lilies-of-thevalley, pins it in my coat and kisses me. We get a taxi and drive through the rain to the town-hall and we are married with a lot of other couples, all standing round in a circle. We come out of the town-hall and have one drink with Tonny and Hans. Then they go home to look after the shop. We go on to another place. Nobody else is there - it's too early. We have two glasses of port and then another two. 'How idiotic all that business was! 'Enno says. We have more port. It's the first time that day that I have felt warm or happy. I say: 'You won't ever leave me, will you?' 'Allons, allons, a little gaiety,' Enno says.

He has a friend called Dickson, a Frenchman, who sings at the Scala. He calls himself Dickson because English singers are popular at the moment. We go to his flat that afternoon and drink champagne. Everybody gets very gay. Louis and Louise, tango dancers, also at the cabaret, do their show for us. Dickson sings In These Hard Times: That funny kind of dress you wear Leaves all your back and your shoulders bare, But you're lucky to be dressed up to there In these hard times. Enno sings: Quand on n'a pas de chaussures On fait comme les rentiers, On prend une voiture, On ne vous voit pas les pieds! Parlons donc de chaussettes: Faut pas les nettoyer, On les retourne, e'est pas bte, Puis on les change de pied! I sing: 'For tonight, for tonight, Let me dream out my dream of delight, Tra-la-la. ... And purchase from sorrow a moment's respite, Tra-la-la. Mrs Dickson reads aloud excitedly from a theatrical paper. Two girls they know are mixed up in a murder case. She reads about Riri and Cricri, rolling her 'r's'. Rrrirrri, Crrricri. ... I am a bit drunk when we take the train to Amsterdam. . . .. The room in the hotel in Amsterdam that night. It was very clean, with a rose-patterned wallpaper. 'Now, you mustn't worry about money,' Enno says. 'Money's a stupid thing to worry about. You let me do. I can always get some. When we get to Paris it'll be all right.' (When - we - get - to -Paris... .) There's another bottle of champagne on the table by the bed. 'Love;' Enno says, 'you mustn't talk about love. Don't talk.. ..' You mustn't talk, you mustn't think, you must stop thinking. Of course, it is like that. You must let go of everything else, stop thinking. . . . (Good Morning, Midnight 95-98)

Good Morning, Midnight Themes and Style Psychological Realism in Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys Good morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys presents a narrative on the life of its main character Sasha Jensen. In the story Sasha Jansen comes to Paris using borrowed money to reminisce the past and purge the pain that haunts her. Jean Rhys expertly employs her own brand of tragicomedy in this story. Tragicomedy is when the boundaries of comedy and tragedy dissolves. This she employs to portray psychological realism of Sashas life which many believes is a story of her own life. Rhys has the distinctive style of dry humor and quick wit which she utilizes on her characters. Rhys is very adept in injecting funny moments in somber scenes. For instance, she writes of Sasha Jensen observing a group of women, fifteen women in a queue, each clutching her penny, not one bold spirit to dash out of her turn past the stern-faced attendant. Thats what I call discipline (10). The same way that James Joyce employs internal monologues in his characters, Rhys also uses similar style. Helen Carr notes that there is a melancholy haze through which her work is often read (77). Rhys novels are filled with irony, farce and internal conversations of a character and Good Morning Midnight is of no exception to her brand of narrative style. Rhys also employs flashbacks in the past. In the book one can see the main character Sasha Jensen constantly looking back to her past as she walks through the streets of Paris. Here this happened, here that happened (Rhys 15). People and places serve as painful and constant reminder of what she left behind. These flashbacks and internal monologues are used by Rhys to better illustrate and understand the inner workings of Sashas mind. These techniques, of course, lend psychological realism to the story. The rooms and street she passed by recalls her past like a film rolling before her eyes. This damned room its saturated with the past. . . . Its all the rooms Ive ever slept in, all the streets Ive ever walked in. Now the whole thing moves in an ordered, undulating procession past my e yes. Rooms, streets, streets, rooms. . . . (109). The story may be told in first person and serves as a recollection of Sashas past but there are some doubts as to the veracity of her accounts. This is largely because her narrations are clouded by the use of alcohol and luminal ( sleeping pill). This reveals Sashas uncertainties particularly on her very own identity. Sasha describes herself, through the imagined perception of other perople, as an old woman or la vieille [sic] (41).

Her indecisiveness extends to her views in life. As the story unfolds, one can understand the reason why Sasha is depressed. She recalls all that has transpired while she lived in Paris her job as a mannequin and shop assistant, the death of her love Enno and the death of her baby son. There's a flashback when looks at her dead baby. She simply says, 'no wrinkle' as if she doesnt care. Sasha does not have a truly positive encounter with men as all of the men in her life disappointed her. For instance, the love of her life, Enno, and her father, both left her which made her feel empty and abandoned. She does not trust men, to the point that she does not trust herself to trust men. Sashas emotions fluctuate quickly. Rhys makes use of short paragraphs and sentences to demonstrate this. The whole idea of the book is like a documentation of inward reflection of Sashas uneventful life. The story does not have major climaxes. Later, Sasha meets Rene, a young gigolo who offers her hope. She likes him a lot but Sashas low self-esteem leads her to reject his advances. As the novel ends, one finds Sasha seeking comfort in the arms of her strange neighbor whom she, ironically, dislikes. The beauty of Sasha is she just doesnt tell her story, she actually lives it. In her mind, she dwells in the past. She merges the present with what happens in the past. Rhys depiction of female consciousness and experiences is flawless. Sashas life may be depressing but there is one redeeming quality in her which is her sense of humor. She sees funny things even in the most difficult circumstances. She understands the comedy and tragedy of life. That is why the end of the story may appear quiet terrifying to some but not to Sasha because she understands lifes ironies.

2. In what ways does Jean Rhys rework her personal experience into her literary works? Discuss the autobiographical elements in Wide Sargasso Sea. Wide Sargasso Sea contains many autobiographical elements, and it is worth noting that Antoinette's mother and father seem to be based at least loosely on Rhys's own parents. Critic Anne B. Simpson writes that Rhys's father, like Old Mr. Cosway, "flirted playfully with women other than his wife, and spent money improvidently"; Rhys's mother, meanwhile, was "frigidly inaccessible" much like Annette. As a result, Rhys, like Antoinette, spent her most of her childhood in solitude.

3. In the light of the information provided, discuss the postmodern features of Wide Sargasso Sea. 1. Introduction As a work of postcolonial fiction, Wide Sargasso Sea captures the pathos of a society undergoing deep and bitter change. Jean Rhys chooses to relate the essence of this conflict through the relationship of the white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway, and her English suitor Edward Rochester. Their relationship is set against the backdrop of extreme racial tension in nineteenth century Jamaica: the harrowing animosity that grows between white plantation owners and newly liberated black slaves, and the suspicion and hatred felt for natives of different Caribbean islands. Even more complex is the position of people of mixed race within this ethnic crucible, people such as Antoinette, who is European to the eye, but who identifies with the culture of black Jamaica. She will never be accepted by the people who view her as a white cockroach, a remnant of colonial cruelty, and she stands even less chance of acceptance into the sphere of elitist British society. Her birthplace dually condemns her. As a postmodern novel, Wide Sargasso Sea exemplifies the literary ideals of the period. Rhys use of varied narrative voices is one of the most striking aspects of the novel, and this in turn promotes a beautifully expository style, capable of disclosing the personal perspectives of both central characters. This feature becomes of paramount importance as we analyse the relationship between Antoinette and Rochester, two characters who come from diametrically opposing cultures, and yet who exhibit many biographical parallels. As Rhys allows us into the minds of Antoinette and Rochester, we see that they struggle with a sense of belonging, both culturally, as well as within their families. In a sense, they are each islands, each a representative of the island culture that they consider theirs, and each a lonely body adrift in a sea of strangers. Rhys employs a lush palette of imagery to bring the Caribbean to life, and the metaphorical implications within the text create a direct and indelible bond between the geographical world and its human inhabitants. It is this connection to place, to the landscape and to the natural world that will be explored in this essay the fundamental interconnectedness of biology and the reflection of humanity upon it. Through luxurious descriptions of tropical beauty and sinister desire, Rhys creates a vibrant and vital counterpoint between the natural world and elemental human sexuality; this juxtaposition is expressed through natural imagery and setting, character psychology and themes of colonization and cultivation. These aspects intermingle to accentuate the fragile connection between Antoinette and Rochester, and their relationship with the world around them. 2. Natural Parallels Two central pillars of Rhys narrative foundation focus on the connection between people and their natural environment. The first of these is the metaphor of island topography and human isolation, and the second is the significance of skin colour and the prevalence of colour in Rhys depiction of the natural world.

The first theme is expressed through the comparison of the geographical and cultural features of England and Jamaica with the characters Edward Rochester and Antoinette Cosway, respectively. From a theoretical standpoint, the roles that Rochester and Antoinette play serve to impress Glotfeltys point that all ecological criticism shares the fundamental premise that human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it (qtd. in Cohen 14). The interplay between environmental and cultural elements exposes the conflict that Rochester and Antoinette experience, both individually and as a couple. Their physical and psychological attributes can be real or simply perceived, but nevertheless, these characteristics greatly affect how each views the other. 2.1 Island Topography Landscape of the Soul Rochester is depicted as an almost stereotypical English gentleman, greatly at odds with the Caribbean islanders at this period in time; he is cool, emotionally remote and insufferably formal. He refuses island hospitality and has a degrading view of local customs and behaviour. He is the embodiment of the English colonizing spirit. Rochesters sense of superiority and disdain grows because he associates the wilderness of his surroundings with excess and danger, because he constantly contrasts it with Englands landscape (Mardorossian 82). Rochesters increasingly chill and distant demeanour certainly seems to mirror the literally cold, isolated shores of Britain that haunt Antoinettes thoughts throughout her marriage to him. Rhys foreshadows Antoinettes discovery of the drastic difference between England and Jamaica through Rochesters behaviour, but also through subtle comments woven into her memory. Somewhere in Antoinettes mind is Aunt Coras sentiment that another English winter will kill her (Rhys 58). Has this instilled the grain of an idea the cold that kills? Antoinette struggles with Rochesters behavioural and cultural climate; his inability, or unwillingness, to understand her culture makes it impossible for him to understand her heart. Antoinettes idealized notions of life in England are destined to dissolve into disillusion. She cannot thrive in the conditions Rochester creates, and if she goes with him to England and is transplanted there, it will signify her end. Friedman explains that for Antoinette, geographic allegorization, is a central constituent of [her] identity (Friedman 18).

Rochester is never actually called by the name Rochester in Wide Sargasso Sea, and as a character with almost no physical description dedicated to him, it is conceivably perilous to try to link English geography with his physiology. However, Rochester helps to define himself through his own thoughts and actions, and it is his estrangement from his family that presents him as a metaphorical island within his own culture. He bitterly imagines the letter he will write to his father in England, thinking: I will never be a disgrace to you or to my dear brother the son you love (Rhys 70). Such a phrase encapsulates Rochesters emotional anguish and deep personal shame, and the exclusion he feels from his family is further compounded by his physical removal to Jamaica. Rochester struggles as Antoinette does with a sense of belonging. In her case, it is that hybridity sometimes configures identity as the superposition of different cultures in a single space often imagined as a borderland, as a site of blending and clashing (Friedman 20). Antoinette is caught in this borderland, and although she is ostracized within it, it is the only cultural home that she knows. For Rochester, a migration through space materializes a movement through different cultures that effectively constitutes identity as the product of cultural graftingsuch grafting often takes the form of painful splitting, divided loyalties, or disorienting displacements (Friedman 20). Problematically, Rochester finds himself unable to graft or integrate himself with Caribbean culture, and so the isolation he feels is not remedied by the adoption of a new life with Antoinette. It seems that after feeling unloved by and extraneous to his family, the pride that he has left will not allow him to accept a life that he considers culturally inferior. It does not help when his fears seem to be confirmed by the residents themselves: This is a very wild place not civilized. Why you come here? (Rhys 68). Both Antoinette and Rochester can be strongly identified with their respective island nations, although it is the internal expression of cult ural identity that links them thus. Antoinette is an outsider on many levels, and Friedmans proposal that the idea of identity exists at the intersection of a variety of cultural constructs such as race, gender, class, and ethnicity shows how an identity can actually be formed through multiple perceptions, rather than a singular definition. Despite being disadvantaged by her race, class and gender, Antoinette is able to feel a connection to her land deep within herself, and this is perhaps the way in which she escapes the torments of social isolation. She is a child of nature, and Rhys reveals this to her readers through Antoinettes affectionate observance of the world around her. Even in times of turmoil, Antoinette is able to take notice of subtle details, mentioning: there was a smell of ferns and river water and I felt safe again (Rhys 33). It is no coincidence that the first time [Rochester sees] her smile simply and naturally (Rhys 71), she is standing in the jungle at the perimeter of Granbois, about to drink pure mountain water out of a leaf-cup. Antoinette is at home in the very wilderness that makes Rochester uneasy. It could be that the natural world, although indifferent to human suffering, provides her with a place to belong, a place to merge into the profusion of flora and fauna and disappear.

In contrast, Rochesters refusal to merge with the world around him causes psychological friction that eventually prevents any mutual understanding between him and Antoinette. Both characters struggle in the emotional climate of the other, as they are each so attached to the landscape and customs that they are familiar with. The significance of an island metaphor ultimately transcends geography and reveals the reality that both Antoinette and Rochester are adrift between two or more worlds ... they have little to anchor them either socially or economically (Adjarian 205). 2.2 Colour and Colouredness - The Surface of the Skin The literary utilization of colour and colouredness is of primary importance in a novel that is focused on racial strife. Despite the superficial nature of the colour of the skin, in Rhys novel it is nonetheless condemnatory. The conflict between black and white is part of the universal clash between opposites, and in Wide Sargasso Sea Rhys produces a text that questions the very oppositions that structure it (Winterhalter 215). Antoinette discovers this polarization at the convent school: everything was brightness, or dark. The walls, the blazing colour of flowers in the garden...Thats was how it was, light and dark, sun and shadow, Heaven and Hell... (Rhys 57). Even when the similitude of humanity is acknowledged by a character in the novel, it is with cruelty: So black and white, they burn the same, eh? (Rhys 44). Such a comment by a black labourer in light of Pierres horrific injury and subsequent death in the Coulibri fire shows that although the underlying bond of humanity cannot be denied, personal prejudices can be dangerously entrenched. This hatred is indicative of what Anderson describes as conflicting inner statesexacerbated by the forces of povertyand violence (Anderson 60). To the black labourer, white skin is representative of years of colonial cruelty, abuse and oppression. To a British occupier like Rochester, black skin denotes an inferior race; a source of ethnic contamination. Antoinettes psyche, however, dwells on either side of the colour boundary, creating a complicated ethnic overlap that she is unable to escape or deny. This hybridity means that physical and psychic ambivalence is [her] natural dualistic state (Anderson 60). Antoinette has an inherent attraction to colour partly based on her upbringing amidst rich Caribbean wildlife, but also because she is acutely aware that she lacks the skin colour that would admit her into Jamaican society. She establishes her distinct Creole heritage by placing herself outside the white colonials and relies on Christophines analysis of the motives for her cultural rejection (Winterhalter 218).

Antoinette is so conflicted that only Christophines wisdom rings true for her. As a child, Antoinette responds sensitively to the beauty of bright natural colours. She notices the fine nuance of various hues as she [lies] in the shade looking at the pool deep and dark green under the trees, brown-green if it had rained, but a bright sparkling green in the sun (Rhys 23) and recollects fondly that the water was so clear that you could see the pebbles at the bottom of the shallow part. Blue and white and striped red. Very pretty (Rhys 23). Antoinette relies on a spectrum of colours to express herself, perhaps because she feels that she is so obviously white against a bright canvas. She identifies herself as coloured; that is, as Jamaican, and in reality, much of the meaningful affection she has received in her life has been from people like Christophine and Tia. Despite the discrimination she suffers, it could be that Antoinette has only ever been able to truly rely on the affection of a very few black people. Antoinettes character reflects the life experience of Rhys herself, whose closest and most influential [childhood] relationships were with black servants. Through them she learned that women could be strong, active and powerfulShe learned to see a weak, idle world of white women through the eyes of these servants (Ochshorn 28-29). Paradoxically though, Antoinettes unacknowledged racist feelings prevent her from entirely devoting herself to a coloured culture. Both learned prejudice and a distinct self hatred contribute to her feelings of disgust when, for example, she describes one of her childhood tormentors: ...he had a white skin, a dull ugly white covered with freckles, his mouth was a negros mouth and he had small eyes...most horrible of all, his hair was crinkled, a negros hair, but bright red... (Rhys 48-49). The boys features give evidence to racial blending, and this seems most repugnant to Antoinette. Although she herself exists in a sort of ethnic statelessness, she reveals a visceral opposition to miscegenation. Is it the racial impurity she objects to so strongly? Perhaps it is difficult for her to see a physical representation of her own blended soul, knowing that both she and this bully will always share the experience of being outsiders, no matter where they are. Adjarian suggests that both Antoinette and the boy will mingle with those who live in each culture, though not without being scorned by both groups for [their] difference (Adjarian 204). Colour is also a strong factor in Rochesters experience in the Caribbean. He is introduced to a wider spectrum of colour than he has ever experienced before, both in the humanity he sees around him, and in the islands landscape. While initially appreciative, and perhaps even awed by the natural beauty he sees, he cannot help exclaiming: what an extreme green... as if nature has somehow unwittingly exceeded the boundaries of decorum (Rhys 69). He continues the journey to Granbois noticing too much blue, too much purple, too much green...the flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near (Rhys 70). Such self-talk can hardly be dismissed, and seems indicative of a mentally unstable person undergoing a sensory overload. As Adamson points out, an individuals response to the natural world is intrinsic to human life, regardless of culture and such responses contribute in profound ways to our identities as individuals and communities (Adamson 10).

Rochesters response reveals his obsession with control, no matter how illogical it may be in this situation. He seems to be systematically noting the elements of his surroundings that are especially foreign, that are exaggerated and overdone, like Antoinettes disconcertingly large eyes. His impressions of the island are tainted by his preconceived prejudice, and Antoinette is simply lumped together with the rest of his unfamiliar surroundings: and the woman is a stranger (Rhys 70). The ominous sensation Rochester evokes with his comment about the hills which are too near feeds into his overall suspicion and mistrust of an environment which is fundamentally neutral as well as fundamentally natural. This mistrust carries over to Antoinette, who like the forest around her is simply in her natural state. Rochesters disoriented response to the foreign habitat he finds himself in clashes with Antoinettes affection for the wilderness at Granbois, and gives more evidence of the contradiction between the two characters. This theme of basic and universal opposition is revealed beautifully in Rhys explication of the natural hues that colour both skin and landscape. 2.3 Fire and the Phoenix: The Symbolism of Birds and Caged Women Wide Sargasso Sea is permeated with natural imagery, and Jean Rhys very effectively uses elemental opposites to emphasize the psychological experiences of her main characters Antoinette and Rochester. The role of fire in the novel is the most arresting example of Rhys use of an elemental force. It represents destruction, foreshadows tragedy, and yet offers purification. Interestingly, Rhys links the allconsuming power of flame with airy avian imagery at key points in the story, and this combination adds a deeper meaning beneath the surface of the narrative. The Coulibri fire is the first instance of Rhys literary warning her metaphor for what awaits Antoinette both physically and emotionally. Coulibri represents Antoinettes root structure; as her childhood home, it provides her with a room of her own, a garden to hide in and a centre for the tenuous family life of her youth. Unfortunately, it cannot shield any of its residents from the wrath of the former slaves who come to burn it down.

With the importance of fire in mind, Rhys makes a significant connection between Antoinette, Annette and the family parrot Coco. Antoinette remembers that the parrot was called Coco, a green parrot. He didnt talk very well...After Mr. Mason clipped his wings he grew very bad tempered... (Rhys 41). This recollection mirrors Mr.Masons relationship with Annette, who, after her marriage to him, finds herself earthbound and feeling trapped in Coulibri. You have lived alone far too long, Annette. You imagine enmity which doesnt exist (Rhys 32) he laughs dismissively. Annette is not deterred despite her clipped wings, and continues to speak about going away...Persistently. Angrily (Rhys 33). The subsequent trauma she endures in the Coulibri fire drives Annette to a mental breaking point. Her sense of foreboding is proven correct, and her fears are realized as she loses everything she cares for in the fire. Her horror is shared with household and attackers alike when they see Coco on the glacis railings with his feathers alight. He made an effort to fly down but his clipped wings failed him and he fell screeching. He was all on fire (Rhys 43). Cocos death symbolizes Annettes fate, trapped and grounded by the disregard of an English man. Anderson claims that Antoinettes mother is Rhys portrait of the person who has seen the apocalypse, the changing of an era, a world and a society. Our and Antoinettes last vision of her is one of mental decay and sexual abuse (Anderson 61). Annette lives at a decisive period in history, and she is destroyed by the dissolution of the social and economic institutions she is accustomed to. Sadly, her torment is met with indifference by those around her, and she becomes mad at the moment her grief was transformed, via rumor, into mental illnessher experience is transformed by the name she receives (Winterhalter 227). In much the same way, Antoinette has her wings clipped by Rochesters derogatory treatment and she is emotionally crippled long before she is physically imprisoned by him. Antoinette suffers deeply, emotionally and psychologically, and Rhys seems to draw comparisons between women and birds in her narrative in an effort to contrast the inherent innocence of the natural world with the deceitful machinations of foreign colonizers that is, colonizers of a fertile country, and colonizers of the heart. As Antoinette watches her home being consumed in flames, she realizes that she will never see Coulibri again. Nothing would be left, the golden ferns and the silver ferns, the orchids, the ginger lilies and the roses...the jasmine and the honeysuckle... (Rhys 44-45). She mourns not only for the house itself, but for the garden and plants that made Coulibri so especially beautiful. Most significantly, though, Antoinette realizes that in the loss of Coulibri, she has also effectively lost her mother: She was part of Coulibri, that had gone, so she had gone (Rhys 47). Both Annette and Antoinette prove Rhys point that the human connection to the landscape and to the spirit of a place is a deep and vital one.

The image of a burning home appears again at the end of Wide Sargasso Sea, a conclusion that is as dramatic as it is heart-rending. Rochesters ancestral home is destroyed by fire, and Winterhalter argues that by creating parallels between the fires at Coulibri and Thornfield as well as between the deaths of the parrot Coco and Antoinette, Rhys shows that both Jamaican and English landscapes can be hostile (Winterhalter 221). Winterhalter continues with the idea that despite the fantasies of perfection that Antoinette and Rochester have about their respective homelands, the aligned imagery of fire proves that neither character will find respite where they had hoped they would (Winterhalter 221). The balance of destruction is shared by Antoinette and Rochester, but whereas fire was once purely a destroyer, in the blacks burning of Antoinettes early island home (Anderson 59), Antoinette now chooses to use its catastrophic power to gain her own freedom. Adjarian believes that Antoinette employs the fire imagery and its associations to express the rage she feels at having been used (Adjarian 204) and in the implied burning of Thornfield, Rhys gives Antoinette the opportunity to rid herself of her mental torment and helplessness and obtain release from her physical and psychological prison. In a final, proactive act, Antoinette sails from the roof of the inferno like a Phoenix reborn from the ashes of her former pain. At the end, she dreams of Coulibri, and Rhys makes it clear that Antoinettes choice is finally that between death by fire and the non-life which is in such painful opposition with that life of freedom, pantheistic union with luxuriant, even lush, nature, a life of total participation in all the dualistic continuities of existence. Hers is no act of despair but a final aggressive act of assertion, reaffirmation, and self-liberation. (Anderson 60) With flame in hand, Antoinette has written her name in the fire red colour that has always reminded her of home. Although the fire kills her, it also resurrects her, and her spirit as a Phoenix finds liberty at last. 3. The Intoxicating Exotic The natural parallels that have been discussed thus far include the metaphor of humans as islands, the role of colour in Rhys narrative and the symbolism of fire and birds in connection with the experiences of Annette and Antoinette in literal and figurative captivity. Turning to Rochesters relationship with Antoinette, an analysis can be formed using the continued idea of fire as a textual undercurrent. Three distinct aspects of this unhappy union can be established; the first is the natural but ultimately destructive sexual desire that grows between Antoinette and Rochester. Second is the transformation of Rochesters desire into feelings of fear and suspicion, which intensify into loathing for all things he deems strange and exotic. The third stage focuses on Rochesters response to this drastic change in sentiment and the effect his mental state has on Antoinette. His initiation of psycho-sexual warfare is the beginning of a battle that Antoinette can never hope to win. As their sexual relationship carries them into dark and perilous psychological territory, the ravaging effects of the intoxicating exotic become painfully clear.

3.1 Love and Lust: Destructive Appetites In this essays previous section, Rochester and Antoinettes arrival at Granbois is discussed, and it is at Granbois that the newlyweds experience their first night together as man and wife. According to custom, frangipani wreaths have been left for them in their bedroom, reflecting the symbolic boundaries that persist between their cultures (Winterhalter 224). The disregard Rochester shows for the ceremonial aspect of the flowers is highly symbolic; in destroying the wreath he claims right over the names that are applied to cultural symbols (Winterhalter 224). Rhys uses this incident to foreshadow Rochesters symbolic crushing of Antoinette through his misunderstanding of her character and all the cultural differences that comprise her ethnic history. However, in crushing the flowers, an intoxicating scent is released the incarnation of lust which, as Winterhalter describes, [overpowers] them both with a heady and sensual fragrance (224). It is clear that Rochester does not enter into his marriage with deep feelings for Antoinette, but for a moment it seems that the power of his lust might actually tip him over an emotional edge into a real state of love. He admits that Granbois [is] a beautiful place wild, untouched, above all untouched, with an alien, disturbing, secret loveliness (Rhys 87), and it seems most likely that Rhys intends this statement to refer to Antoinette as well. Antoinettes secret loveliness allures Rochester. Rochester in turn has made Antoinette want to live (Rhys 92), but as their relationship progresses, she begins to realize that his lustful desires simply mask the emptiness of his heart. Slowly, the fire of their lust becomes damaging instead of enjoyable. Rochester remarks that he watched her die many times and that she was as eager for whats called loving as [he] was (Rhys 92). With distorted logic, Rochester brushes off the consequences of allowing Antoinette to mistake his lust for love, easing his guilt for the destructiveness of his desires for Antoinette because her desire for him exceeds the bounds of flattery (Winterhalter 224). Antoinette loses doubly in the impossible situation Rochester has created within their marriage. If she were to refuse his sexual advances or play a disinterested part in their lovemaking, Rochester would doubtless have grounds to complain about her as a frigid and unaffectionate wife. Antoinette avoids this potential situation only to be condemned by the natural pleasure she takes in sex as a young newlywed. This frustratingly incongruous state of affairs is directly caused by Rochesters prejudice and all too-willing suspicion. Aizenberg argues that sexuality and miscegenation play an essential role in this incendiary mix, since Rochester comes to perceive Antoinettes honeymoon pleasure-in-sex as the crazy nymphomania of a dark alien, a white nigger too dangerously imbued with an eroticized Caribbean Africanness (Aizenberg 464). The colonial and racist attitude Rochester carries in his heart applies to sexual possession as well. Although he knows he does not love Antoinette, his patriarchal and colonizing inclinations drive him to claim this untouched woman for his own. Winterhalter claims that his relentless need for categorical sexual exclusiveness urges the wildness of his narration (Winterhalter 223), and this is evidenced by Rochesters increasingly suspicious and disjointed narrative voice. In a short time, the fractures within Rochesters marriage to Antoinette become evident, and the letter that arrives from Daniel Cosway cements Rochesters already unbalanced assumptions. Rochester uses this unreliable information to project his anxieties onto Antoinette and turn her into someone altogether different in his mind. With encouragement from Daniel Cosway, Rochester paints his own misperceptions across Antoinettes psychological landscape with wide strokes, only to later condemn the image he is responsible for creating. 3.2 Fear and Loathing Rochesters narrative voice never disguises the unease and apprehension he feels as he journeys into the foreign world of Antoinettes Caribbean life. His willingness to believe the untruthful letter from Daniel Cosway is not a testament to Cosways persuasive power, rather it is an indication of the deep-seated fear that rests in Rochesters heart,

making him overly eager to accept any form of justification for it. Much of Rochesters insecurity springs from the cultural disjunction between his English world and the Caribbean one he comes to inhabit. Winterhalter suggests that because Martinique does not capitulate to his preconceptions, he remains committed to, although tormented by, his persistent beliefs about gender and cultural difference [and] his beliefs are inadequate to explain his present experience (Winterhalter 223). Rochester is also unable to escape his discriminatory views, at one point considering the servant Hildas braided hair savage (Rhys 72) and greatly underestimating Christophines sagacity. He even admits to Antoinette that if Christophine were taller...one of these strapping women dressed up to the nines, I might be afraid of her (Rhys 74). Rochester feels threatened both by the wilderness and the perplexing islanders. Cosways letter finally tips Rochesters mental balance, causing him to flee distractedly into the forest around Granbois, where he eventually discovers he is lost and afraid among these enemy trees (105). He has become completely vulnerable to the forces of nature and magic that the islanders fear themselves. This unfamiliar vulnerability is one of the instigating factors behind his vindictive anger. Just as he must denigrate the topography when the exotic landscape does not fulfill his sensuous preconceptions (Winterhalter 220), Rochester finds that he must also disparage what he does not understand about Antoinette. His idealism is frustrated by her otherness, and this extends to her sexuality as well. Fear, in Rochesters case, evolves into a hatred for all things beyond his control, and his relationship with Antoinette encapsulates this with grim perfection. Winterhalter argues that Rhys has purposely structured Wide Sargasso Sea upon a potential geography of sexual difference, in whichthe civilized world of England is symbolized as masculine and the island paradise of the Caribbean aligns as feminine (Winterhalter 220). Indeed, the sexual dynamic between Rochester and Antoinette adheres to the polarized gender structure described by Winterhalter, and quickly becomes so oppositional that despite other fundamental conflicts, it is Rochesters ingrained sexism that effectively destroys Antoinette. As Rochester loses control of his gentlemans faade, he can no longer hide the discriminatory beliefs that reside within him. In particular, Daniel Cosways insinuation that Antoinette is aless than pure woman only strengthens Rochesters mistaken conviction that she thirsts for anyone not for me (Rhys 165). This is a surprisingly ungallant attitude from a member of the English upper class; where is the chivalry that ought to accompany his social rank? In reality, Rochester is willing to believe the aspersions cast on Antoinette simply because his own prejudices anticipate them. Laura E. Ciolkowski explicates Rochesters internal struggle thus:

The exotic excess Rochester records in his narrative promises to spill over into and infect the innocence of the English body. Rochester must, therefore, not only enter into the struggle to fix the commonsense logics of Englishness on the terrain of an utterly maddening colonial intransigencehe must also attempt to manage the danger to English cultural identity that is introduced by a degenerate past. (Ciolkowski 344) As Rochesters narrative reaches a close, it attains also a fevered intensity, and although he claims that all the mad conflicting emotions had gone and left [him]sane (Rhys 172), it is evident that he has instead become frighteningly disturbed. The disjointed quality of the narrative at this point shows an almost crazed internal dialogue as Rochester decides how Antoinette will be dealt with. Theyve got to be watched he thinks, for the time comes when they try to kill, then disappear(172). Rochesters equilibrium is in serious doubt as his section of the novel comes to an end, and Rhys lends perspective to the nature of madness by allowing Rochester to expose his wild thoughts. He has succumbed to some form of psychosis brought on by disappointed dreams and an insular mind; but although he professes: above all I hated her(172), it is clear that he will remain haunted by the love he had lost before [he] found it (172). 3.3 Corruption of Nature While Rochester undergoes a serious personal crisis in the exotic jungle of Granbois, Antoinette likewise struggles to find her bearings in the psychological wilderness of her mind. Her tragic navet has laid her open to Rochesters mercenary intentions, and much like the uncharted territory she lives in, she is innocent, misunderstood, and vulnerable to capture. Her inexperience leads her to internalize the European ideal of femininity-as-passivity, causing her to [drift] blindlyand fatalistically, into an obviously ill-fated marriage (Anderson 61). Her innocence is her excuse (Anderson 61), and it is also her downfall. As she tries to comply with what she believes are Rochesters wishes, she proceeds to lose touch with her source of strength her connection to the land. Winterhalter elaborates upon this, explaining that Antoinettes fantasy of untrammeled lands cannot create a sanctuary for her. She too must recognize that values are projected upon, not discovered within, landscapes (Winterhalter 221). Antoinette begins to see her surroundings differently through her relationship with Rochester, and she realizes that her perception of a once sacred landscape has been corrupted by Rochesters projected fear and ignorance. The damage that Rochester has done is made clear when Antoinette says: but I loved this place and you have made it into a place I hate (Rhys 147). Granbois, for her, is now a place of intense sorrow - her thoughts of it hereafter will be dominated by memories of heartbreak. How painful it must be for her to lose emotional ownership of Granbois, the place that she has loved for so long. Her loss is a heartbreaking repetition of her mothers loss of Coulibri, and we see that as Antoinettes emotional bond with the country around her is shaken, she becomes a distinctly lost soul. Antoinette has relied all her life on the mysterious beauty of the Caribbean to comfort and hide her, and she has always been able to trust this attachment to the natural world. Her relationship with Rochester changes this, however, and it seems that as he disinherits her financially, he is able to alienate her from her only safe haven, emotionally and then physically as well. Rochester achieves the corruption of Antoinettes natural, spiritual self by his assertion of a hypocritically dual morality and a sexual patriarchy which functions without respect to emotion. It would be difficult for him to deny that his intentions have always been driven by financial greed, and therefore it is grotesque that he tries to disguise his manipulation of Antoinettes heart with English propriety and animalistic lust. Christophene says scathingly:

Everybody know that you marry her for her money and you take it all. And then you want to break her up, because you jealous of heryou make love to her till she drunk with ittill she cant do without it (Rhys 153); Rochester knows that this is the truth. It is fairly plain then, that Rochester is able to endure a considerable level of his own hypocrisy. Knowing that he has seduced Antoinette and created in her an appetite for sex, he mocks her for her willingness to join him in their marital bed, thereby implying that the very desire he fostered in her is an abnormal one. Even worse is the way in which he reviles her in his mind for sexual impropriety, and then vindictively beds Amlie in a room right next to Antoinettes. Andersons analysis of Rochester reveals a man who Notices that his wealthy wifes eyes are too large only after he has married her and inherited her land, and who minds how negroid are the features of Amlie, the servant girl with whom he has laughing sexonly after he has used this black woman in callous revenge against the white woman whom he can neither fully hate nor truly love. (Anderson 61) Rochester and Antoinettes relationship has consequently been re-examined as the enactment of a colonial as well as a sexual encounter (Mardorossian 81), and it seems that since he discovers himself incapable of fully possessing Antoinette, he sexually claims Amlie to maintain his white masculine dominance and bolster his ego. He knows that while Antoinette may be beyond his understanding, he can still inflict pain upon her, and his dalliance with Amlie is specifically intended to deprive Antoinette of the physical intimacy he knows she longs for. Although Rochester goes so far as to hurt and humiliate Antoinette out of spite, he refuses to leave her behind in the Caribbean to her own devices. He feels proprietarily compelled to take her with him to England against her wishes, and against the desires of his own heart as well. Strangely, Rochesters only strategy to deal with the inconvenience of his wife is to have her sealed away in the attic of his grand ancestral home. This idea seems all the more monstrous because of the sense of fateful inevitability that accompanies it as if neither Rochester nor Antoinette can subvert the predestined course of action that will assuredly torment them both.

Carson claims that Rochester wishes to defy the universality of the ecological complexity of nature, the impossibility of its control by human beings (qtd. in Cohen 11). Rochesters efforts to destroy the bond between Antoinette and her land is proof of this need for control, and shows how far removed he is emotionally from the natural world. Corruption of nature can occur in the context of literal destruction of the landscape, but it also occurs here on a primal human scale, where Rochesters emotional abuse of Antoinette disfigures her psyche and permanently corrupts her natural state of being. Aizenberg proposes a compelling idea which adds perspective to this issue, stating that to gain control over her as masters gained control over slaves Rochester zombifies Antoinette: covering her face with a sheet as though she were dead, renaming her, defining her as mad, transporting her overseas, keeping her under lock (Aizenberg 464). This concept not only reflects the colonial/racial tensions barely hidden beneath the surface of their relationship, it also refers to obeah, and the way Rochester unconsciously assumes this power to neutralize Antoinette psychologically. Bertha is not my name Antoinette weeps, You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name. I know, thats obeah too (Rhys 147). Zombification it seems, can be carried out by anyone with power over anothers heart. In order to become zombified, however, Antoinette as the victim has first to submit to the process of zombification. As Ochshorn has shown earlier1, Rhys personal experience led her to view the world of aristocratic white women as weak and idle, and although Rhys main character Antoinette has always associated herself with black Caribbean culture, it becomes evident that she still values a version of formal European femininity and the luxury of idleness. Antoinette enjoys a degree of aristocratic leisure in her marriage, but it is somehow merely a distasteful semblance of whiteness to Rochester, and a show of selfindulgence to the other characters around her. In this sense, Antoinette is vulnerable to Rochesters criticisms, as she desires to please him with her sophistication and feminine charm. Sadly, Antoinette lacks the grit of black women like Christophene who would walk out on a man who treated her badly. She urges Antoinette to leave, saying: A man dont treat you good, pick up your skirt and walk out Go from the house, I tell you (Rhys 110). Antoinette simply cannot apply Christophenes advice, and, as Herman suggests, she escapes from her situation not by action in the real world but rather by altering her state of consciousness (qtd. in Linett 441). Antoinette makes herself an accomplice in her own zombification by choosing to remain helpless at crucial points in her life. She should have refused to marry Rochester, refused to accept his infidelity, refused to go to England and refused to ignore her own heart. The fact that she chose otherwise supports Linetts interpretation of Antoinettes behaviour as a helpless acceptance of the repetition of trauma (Linett 458). Antoinette has not been able to come to terms with the trauma she has experienced in her life, and this has led her to expect abuse because she sees it as part of the pattern of not only her own life but her mothers as well. Linett claims that helplessness is a condition of trauma in that the fewer means a victim has to try to save herself from a life- or body-threatening experience, the more likely she is to be traumatized by that experience (Linett 439).

This definition is relevant to Antoinettes situation specifically because her early life has left her so bereft of the skills and psychological means necessary to combat abusive treatment. Antoinettes relationship with Rochester is therefore the climax in a life full of exceedingly traumatic events. His corruption of her reveals how perfectly positioned she is for her downfall. Ochshorn as quoted on pg.6. 4. Cultivation and Colonization The previous chapter outlined the progression of Rochesters emotional and psychological imbalance, and the effect his growing psychosis has on Antoinettes own frame of mind. As Rochesters feelings turn from indifference to lust, and from fear to aggressive hate, Antoinette blossoms and then quickly withers as her own psyche disintegrates under the weight of extreme emotional trauma. As each reels from the effects of their traumatic experiences, a new phase in their relationship develops. Rochester adopts a proactive hatred towards Antoinette, and his attempt to cultivate what he sees as Antoinettes primitive nature forms the basis of this chapter. Also central to the theme of cultivation and colonization is the way in which both Rochester and Antoinette represent and are symbolized by invasive species in the Caribbean environment. Finally, the use of gardens and cultivated nature to represent social status and sexuality in England and the Caribbean is contrasted with the wider social reaction to plantation owners in England in the nineteenth century. The development of new moralities in nineteenth century England conflicts with deeply ingrained prejudices and a social hierarchy that struggles to maintain relevance, and these issues provide a wider cultural backdrop for the strife between Antoinette and Rochester. The microcosmic details Rhys provides about their relationship are symbolic of the global scope of imperial domination and the struggle between commerce, politics and national identity in England and its empire. 4.1 Psychological Cultivation In Adjarians words, Rochester sees Antoinette as a beautiful and exotic player in a drama of barter and exchange (Adjarian 203). He is unable to accept the loss of his marriage, not because of sentimental attachment, but because he views Antoinette as part of his property, and her liberty would mean both failure and emasculation for him. Instead, Adjarian argues, he controls what Antoinette comes to represent for him the island, its inhabitants and the threat they pose to him and his self-conception as an all-powerful, all-knowing European (Adjarian 206). Rochesters insistence on calling her Bertha is his attack on the centre of Antoinettes foreign identity, and he continues to use the name in reference to her despite her protests. He clearly wishes to sanitize the aspects of Antoinettes character that seem to him to be overly exotic or influenced by black culture. Ciolkowski explains that Rochester is determined to resolve Antoinettes ambivalence first into the singular tones of English womanhood, and second, once his failure to cast Antoinette as the chaste mother of English sons is totally clear, into the equally singular tones of a savage Otherness. (Ciolkowski 343)

Conflict only arises because Rochesters schemes meet with resistance from Antoinette and Christophene. Although it has been established that Antoinette resorts to helpless indecision when faced with bitter choices, she nonetheless possesses within her a core of defiance and justified indignance at the suffering her family has experienced. The embers at her core continue to burn though she is dulled by heartbreak, giving evidence to Ciolkowskis belief that Antoinette has come to stand for a form of native resistance to English patriarchal power (Ciolkowski 340). It is strange that after finding himself unable to fit into Caribbean society, Rochester attempts to force Antoinette into an English image, knowing from personal experience how difficult (if not impossible) this might be to accomplish. Antoinette has simply ceased to be a person in Rochesters eyes, and his actions give evidence to the fact that he feels he must neutralize her in order to deal with his own existential confusion. Anderson consequently remarks Equally and horribly clear is the final revenge which the colonizing husband will enact upon his innocent wife whose only crime has been to be a part of an overwhelmingly beautiful environment, an overwhelmingly sensuous sensibility. The victim of her own navet, Antoinette becomes her husbands victim for committing a sin she cannot comprehend the sin of being herself. (Anderson 61) Rochester finally achieves dominance through capture, dealing with Antoinette like a safari hunter might treat wild prey. Instead of literally killing her, though, or abandoning her to her misery in the jungle after the thrill of the hunt, he chooses to keep her like an exotic trophy animal in captivity. Antoinette becomes a wild woman on display in a foreign country, a zombie in conjunction with enslavement by a villain (Aizenberg 464). While one option might have been to allow her some freedom in England and have her treated as a kind of peculiar objet, Antoinette is instead imprisoned in Thornfields attic. She is, in a sense, placed in a museum archive, where she can gather dust and die forgotten as a relic of past conquests. There is unmistakable injustice in Antoinettes imprisonment in Wide Sargasso Sea, and Anderson criticizes the rightness of a mans being free to incarcerate on one floor of his house, the wife who he judges as crazy, on some nebulous basis (Anderson 58). Rochesters own words add tragedy to Antoinettes situation, as he broods: Shell not laugh in the sun againshell have no lover, for I dont want her and shell see no other (Rhys 165). This dialogue can only be seen as abusive in the most insidious sense. To wish an end to anothers happiness, to keep someone separate from any chance to move on from their suffering can only be interpreted as selfish and hateful. However, as victimized as Antoinette has been throughout the novel, Rhys does not make her a martyr. Instead, she gives Antoinette the strength to change the direction of her fate in a bold, final way. Rhys offers the possibility that Antoinettes suicide is in fact, as Anderson says, an aggressive act of self-assertion and will, the affirmation of the claims of the self in the face of the life-in-death of solitary confinement in Thornfield Hall (Anderson 59). The way in which Antoinette dies allows her to escape the fate of a sexualized, hybridized zombie woman like her mother (Aizenberg 464), rejecting once and for all Rochesters psychological conditioning and the prejudicial, cultivated image he propounds.

4.2 Invasive Species Along with aspects of familial exclusion and a struggle for identity, Antoinette and Rochester also share in common the fact that they represent colonizing forces. Although Antoinettes place of birth and her psychology identify her as Jamaican, her European genes foster the resentment of native black islanders. Her complex situation means that although Antoinette is technically a native of Jamaica, she can only claim a limited familial history in the Caribbean. She is essentially a transplanted European, and no length of residence in the West Indies will ever prove her to be otherwise. In this case of racial territorialism, identity is much less about psychological connection to the land and assimilation into the culture; rather, identity becomes

proprietary, and those who exhibit genetic variation are summarily excluded from the cultural group. Friedman explains that There is the erection of boundaries between people, ever more intent on difference, on distinction between selves and others, whether based on history or biology or both, as a form of dominance or resistance. (Friedman 15) The social climate in the Caribbean in the late nineteenth century shows a reversal of fortune for wealthy white plantation owners, and the weakening of their status gives former black slaves the opportunity to revenge themselves. As Anderson observes, the whites, once powerful, now become unpleasant reminders to the blacks of their own horribly powerless past; as such they are contemptuously termed white cockroaches (Anderson 60). Antoinette and her family experience the hatred and resentment of the black islanders around them and are forced into an inferior social role precisely because they represent a formerly dominant, invasive breed of people. A small girl once taunted Antoinette, singing go away white cockroach, go away, go away (Rhys 23), and the insult places painful focus on the actuality that biological facts are stronger than emotional ties. Antoinette learns from a young age that her society does not accept her. The nature of Antoinettes familys settlement in the Caribbean can be seen as part of a calculated political attempt by European colonial powers to supplant the native residents who already inhabit the island, placing emphasis on what Hayashi describes as the historical link between the social and the natural realms in relation to such processes as immigration and acculturation (qtd. in Adamson 10). It is Rhys intention to compare the cultural differences between Antoinette and Rochester against a natural backdrop, while especially taking into account how immigration and acculturation (or the lack thereof) affect their responses to the natural world. Vital reminds us that none of this analysis can be carried out independently of the economic barriers inherited from worlds influenced by European colonial activity (Vital 89), and these multiple levels of intersecting influence create a convoluted web that Antoinette and Rochester must try to navigate, all the while searching for their true selves.

In the eyes of islanders in Jamaica and Martinique, Rochesters image is perhaps a simpler one than Antoinettes. Whereas Antoinette knows the land and the language, and is by birth part of the islands, Rochester is from the start a figure of colonial aggression a white man with an air of superiority and sense of disapproval for non-English culture. Antoinette is attacked because she has grown up amongst Jamaican people like a noxious weed, embodying the political trickery of European domination. Rochester, though, is recognized as an enemy from the moment he arrives. His biology is easily determined. As opposed to Antoinettes image of a type of European vegetation transplanted to the Caribbean, Rochester seems distinctly to be an invasive species of another kind. Rats are well known denizens of watery locales, of ports, harbours and islands, and they are known for their ingenious survival skills. Although Rochester ultimately fails to thrive in the Caribbean, he shows considerable similarity to another character with unsavoury intentions. Ciolkowski smartly points out Rochesters parallels with the Iago-like Daniel Cosway, explaining that the gentleman and the rat of Wide Sargasso Sea may appear to occupy the opposite poles in a spectrum of segregated colonial bodies but they ironically share the same fixations and dream the same dreams (Ciolkowski 348). Although Rochesters disgust with Cosway is evident throughout their communications, he nonetheless accepts what Cosway says about Antoinette as the truth. Does this then reflect some form of mutual understanding? Does Rochester see his own financial desperation in Cosways scheming interference? Interpretations may vary, but Ciolkowskis point draws an uncanny resemblance between the two men while also lending support to Rhys use of natural symbolism and imagery. It is interesting to consider the role of rats as a natural metaphor that Rhys uses to link Rochester and Cosway to their environment, but ultimately what she explains to her readers is that a hatred of difference exists within the hearts of all people, from the victimized to the dominating. Even the persecuted Antoinette, remembering a confrontation with her childhood bully reflects: it was then that hate came to me and courage with the hate (Rhys 49). Perhaps Rhys is saying that personal experience does not always mitigate personal prejudice. 4.3 Cultivated Natures The importance of cultivated nature in Wide Sargasso Sea is profound. The duality of meaning inherent in this concept permeates Rhys entire novel and allows for considerably deep interpretation. Both Antoinette and Rochester appear at times as cultural puppets, hung stiffly on strings of gender stereotype, social etiquette, and national identity, but their manufactured behaviour is a superficial performance that fails to conceal the dark and very real desperation each character feels. Social convention can also be evidenced through cultivation of the natural world, and the comparison of the green spaces at Coulibri and Granbois with nineteenth century English morality exposes a variety of insights into the status and sexuality of the novels main characters. A point central to the relationship between nature and morality is Alstons comment that both postcolonial theory and environmental criticism acknowledge that Western notions of nature or the natural have been conceived as the antithesis of culture and civilization (qtd. in Adamson 9). This idea is fundamental to understanding how an Englishman like Rochester might view Caribbean culture, and how a former colonist like Antoinette might be received into English society. Throughout Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette is most identified with the early nineteenth-century Caribbean setting of gardens, pools, and wildlife (Ochshorn 32). She revels in luxuriant nature, feeling most at home in the garden at Coulibri and in the forested surroundings of Granbois. Antoinettes ease amongst nature is noted by Rochester, who slowly begins to formulate the idea that because she is so comfortable in a natural setting, she herself must be of a particularly primitive character. His private doubts about Antoinettes lineage have bothered him since they were married. As he recalls her large, dark eyes, he thinks: Creole of pure English descent she may be, but they

are not English or European either (Rhys 67). Rochester is convinced on a deep, subconscious level that Antoinette is somehow genetically contaminated somehow she has been infused with the blackness that he so despises. Mardorossian adds perspective, stating that Coulibris Edenic garden grown wilddisplaces one of the Wests founding myths by portraying what stands for the idyllic setting of paradise as wild and corrupted (Mardorossian 81). This allusion to Eden makes Antoinette into an Eve-like figure, helplessly defined by Rochesters suspicions. The biblical story of Eve, the weaker, more susceptible person who is corrupted by an element of nature and who in turn becomes a corruptor, provides the filter through which Rochester views all of Antoinettes actions. In his mind, she is not an innocent creature living in harmony with her surroundings; rather, she is a tool used by menacing supernatural forces to attack his moral purity. Antoinettes description of the garden at Coulibri contains an ominous note, one that foreshadows the advent of Rochesters suspicion. She says: our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell (Rhys 19). Even Antoinette is sensitive to the idea that the wildness and decay have a sinister implication, but for her, the interpretation of decay more likely refers to that of mental decline and the frequent insinuation that her mothers insanity might be hereditary. She is thrilled nonetheless to go to Granbois, and her affection for the place is perhaps an indication that Granbois, once her mothers property, has become an emotional replacement for Coulibri. Contrarily, Rochesters impressions of Granbois seem unnecessarily belittling, as he thinks to himself that it looked like the imitation of an English summer house...at the top a badly cut, coarsegrained lawn and at the end of the lawn a shabby white house (Rhys 71). Would he have been more forgiving if the lawns had been perfectly manicured? Would a superficial semblance of control over the vegetation have convinced Rochester of the moral quality of the people living there? Clearly, Rhys compares each characters response to Granbois to emphasize how emotional attachment to nature, or lack thereof, polarizes them psychologically. It seems though that an objective viewpoint is difficult to find. Rhys own experience of England is reflected in her writing, and as Ochshorn notes, her England is cold, sordid, full of hypocrites(Ochshorn 29). Adjarian points out that the way Rhys depicts Thornfield Hall also serves to suggest that the green and tranquil English landscape of which the mansion is part holds its own share of dark secrets about its inhabitants (Adjarian 206). There is, in reality, no ideal place for either Antoinette or Rochester. In every location and natural space, some hostile spirit can be discerned, if only because the psyche of the character seeks it out. The natural world in Wide Sargasso Sea is essentially neutral, and the interplay between Antoinette, Rochester and the environment serves to illuminate the terrible power of disturbed minds. Although the connection between unrestrained wilderness and a lack of moral principle has been touched upon, it is appropriate to analyze this contrast in relation to the expectations of women in nineteenth century England. Wide Sargasso Sea is arguably autobiographical, and Ochshorn believes that Rhyss Dominica girlhood permeates [her] novels, which involve rejection of the traditional role of white women and a nostalgia for a sensual and vibrant past full of emotional vitality. Rejecting proper British society, she recalls the knowing, passionate black women of her youth who were alive to the world of sex and love. (Ochshorn 30) 24 As a product of this more liberal, passionate society, it is understandably hard for Antoinette to accept that her loving and affectionate nature has been so bitterly misinterpreted by her husband. But as Rhys herself experienced, a womans sexuality is treated quite differently in nineteenth century England versus the Caribbean. Rochester is disturbed by the openness of Antoinettes sexuality, her absence of

shame and her obvious enjoyment of lovemaking. His attempt to change her into a mad, primitive oddity is a consequence of his masculine need to retain control over sexual enjoyment and reproduction. Ciolkowskis interpretation goes even further, suggesting that Rochesters reinvention of Antoinette as the red-eyed, wild haired stranger who was my wife attaches the local interests of an English domestic economy that is dependent on the stigmatization of female self-indulgence and sexual appetite to the global interests of an English empire that is dependent on the very same elements of female bodily management for the successful reproduction of power. (Ciolkowski 343)

In addition to the political manipulation suffered by women in Englands colonies, ignorant condescension also had a damning effect on the way women of differing ethnicities or cultures were perceived. Englands early feminist movement failed to accommodate the rights of non-English women, and according to Burton, most [late nineteenth-century English] feminists believed in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, frequently citing possession of empire as evidence of a superiority that was not just racial, but religious and cultural as well (qtd. in Ciolkowski 353). Evidence of these widespread beliefs in the population of a global power provides Rochester with a minor excuse for his misguided behaviour. Though public opinion in the late nineteenth century began turning against wealthy Caribbean plantation owners, Rochester repeats the sexual vices of the very plantocrats who he claims to despise (Ciolkowski 349). Clearly, the prejudicial and dualistic beliefs that he carries into his relationship with Antoinette have been cultivated for a long time, and are part of his cultural heritage. This same strain of racial intolerance appears in Antoinette from time to time, referencing her familys European background. Sadly, Antoinette is unable to distance herself from Rochesters idea that she is a woman of unrestrained urges, influenced only by the voodoo spirit of her jungle home. The time she spends imprisoned in England is devoid of compassion, and she is not only discarded as a woman, but is dehumanized altogether due to the stigma of her island roots. 5. Conclusion Wide Sargasso Sea is an astute work of post-colonial fiction that encapsulates many complex and large-scale issues. Jean Rhys presents these issues within a text of startling beauty and disarming honesty, weaving into her narrative metaphors for the struggle between man and nature, and between the differing natures of people. Rhys central arguments are concentrated into three core issues as analysed in this paper. These main points as discussed are the metaphorical connections between man and nature, especially in conjunction with natural imagery and ethnicity, the changing nature of love and fear in light of differing cultural values, and finally the traumatizing effect of cultivation and colonization on personal and cultural identity. The interplay of sexual politics and psychological deterioration adds an additional layer of complexity to Rhys juxtaposition of humanity with the natural world. Jean Rhys addresses in Wide Sargasso Sea the compelling link between humans and their environment, and what she reveals in her novel is an unsettling picture of acceptance and denial of identity. The experiences of Antoinette and Rochester show how deeply affected humans are by their natural and urban surroundings, and even more so by the societal beliefs and expectations that grow out of different geographical locations. Both Antoinette and Rochester are shocked by the drastic cultural differences they encounter within each other, but Rhys shows that the ingrained beliefs and expectations that neither character is willing to compromise are even more extreme. Rhys creates within the novels conflict a disturbing duality that leaves a sense of lasting irresolution. Her work emphasizes the inherent compulsion of nature to resist control, both in the wild and within the human soul.

4. Postmodernism, as Linda Hutcheon argues, is politically ambivalent, for it is doubly coded - both complicitous with and contesting of the cultural dominants within which it operates. (Hutcheon 1989: 142) Discuss this statement with regard to Wide Sargasso Sea.

"Myself yet not quite myself" : Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, and a third space of enunciation ; and, "Being herself invisible, unseen, unknown" : Mrs. Dalloway, the Hours, and the re-inscribed lesbian woman
In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys gives voice to the creole woman and provides a space for the others enunciation by creolizing Jane Eyre. Rhys creates a place that is at once both Jane Eyre and not Jane Eyre, an ambivalence that captures the struggle of Bertha and Janes identity. Wide Sargasso Seas relationship to Jane Eyre as a revision/ rewriting is a third space that allows, I argue, for the enunciation of the other. While a postcolonial/racial foundation prompts the rewriting of Jane Eyre, the gender of both women relates to their status as subaltern. Rhys re-vision is a complicated act of subaltern agency, in which the author locates a third space of ambivalence to reiterate the feminist struggle of Jane Eyre as well as revoke and then reinscribe critically the racial and feminist struggle of Bertha Rochester. MYSELF YET NOT QUITE MYSELF: JANE EYRE, WIDE SARGASSO SEA, AND A THIRD SPACE OF ENUNCIATION So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.Wide Sargasso Sea As a revisionist movement, postmodern rewriting attempts to directly address minority issues by recovering their untold stories, and more to the point by retelling [their] history from a previously buried or provocatively transformed viewpoint (Geyh, Leebron, and Levy 291). Adrienne Rich describes this phenomenon as re-vision, the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction (35). Writing thus becomes a mode of inscribing formerly silenced or unheard voices, of filling gaps left by the dominant discourse. Jean Rhys takes on the task of such revisionary inscription in her final novel Wide Sargasso Sea, in which the madwoman in Edward Rochesters attic narrates part of her own story. Bertha Rochester, in fact, Antoinette Cosway, tells of her childhood growing up in the West Indies, where her neighbors stood about in groups to jeer at her [mother] and eventually burnt down her family home, Coulibri Estate (18). In this novel we hear for the first time of Berthas experiences before being locked in the attic at Thornfield Hall. She becomes more than a hindrance to Jane and Rochesters marriage or the psychological double of Jane that critics like Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar discuss; she speaks for herself.

In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys gives voice to the creole woman and provides a space for the others enunciation by creolizing Jane Eyre, by telling Janes story in a different racial context. In translating the Victorian womans feminist struggle to a West Indian context, Rhys creates a place that is at once both Jane Eyre and not Jane Eyre, an ambivalence that captures the struggle of Bertha and Janes identity. This paper will first discuss Wide Sargasso Seas relationship to Jane Eyre as a re-vision/rewriting, a third space that allows, I argue, for the enunciation of the other. I will then examine the postcolonial/racial foundation, which prompts the rewriting of Jane Eyre, and the gender of both women as it relates to their status as subaltern. After establishing the connection between ambivalence of identity, I will analyze Jane and Berthas feelings of displacement seen through the metaphor of the looking-glass and then connect the metaphorical reflection of character and identity to the act of rewriting. Rhys re-vision is a complicated act of subaltern agency, in which the author locates a third space of ambivalence to reiterate the feminist struggle of Jane Eyre as well as revoke and then reinscribe critically the racial and feminist struggle of Bertha Rochester. I Describing her own reaction to the undercurrent of racial difference and struggle, Rhys comments, When I read Jane Eyre as a child, I thought, why should [Bront] think creole women are lunatics and all that? What a shame to make Rochesters first wife, Bertha, the awful madwoman, and I immediately thought Id write the story as it might have really been. She seemed such a poor ghost. I thought Id try to write her a life. (Vreeland 235) Thus, Rhys as a reader and a writer changes or rather imagines the life of the ghost in the attic. Rhys sets out to re-envision Antoinettes story, extending her and her readers understanding of this closeted woman. In granting the other a life outside the attic, Rhys provides a background and a more complete understanding of Antoinettes portrayal. More importantly, Antoinette gains agency in Rhys text; she has a voice and a history. Her story, told by Rhys in Wide Sargasso Sea, interprets Jane Eyre through the lens of otherness. The narrative of Berthas childhood experiences and the presentation of her marriage to Rochester provide a re-vision of her final act of rebellion in Jane Eyre. In Rhys postmodern vision of a Victorian past, Bertha experiences life in much the same way as Jane Eyrethey both struggle to create a space for themselves in a world of restrictions. Janes life is a constant negotiation of place, and her struggle ends in an opposite space to Berthaswith the world, home, and family open to her in new ways. Berthas movement through life leaves her, in the end, with nothing but a small place in the secret, ulterior passages of Thornfield Hall and ends with a sacrificial act that enables Janes acquisition. In the disparate endings of similar lives, the mirrored reflection reveals the inequality of these womans lives. Through inscription of semblance, Wide Sargasso Sea reveals problematic elements in the story of Jane Eyre, highlighting, specifically, the privilege of racial difference.

Hidden behind the walls of Thornfield Hall and the lies of Edward Rochester, but more strikingly beneath the story of the struggle of the white working-class woman, Berthas presence undermines the covert feminist strain in Jane Eyre by reminding the reader that the equality established at the end of the novel in the marriage of Jane and Rochester is a victory of one woman at the expense of another woman. In Jane Eyre the feminist struggle is almost negated by the presence of an imprisoned woman. We see a mirror image of Jane in Bertha and notice the difference of race. By engaging the absence of the West Indian woman, Wide Sargasso Sea points to the paradoxical nature of the progressive movement in Jane Eyre and works towards the act of a progressive racial movement and mindset. Rhys re-vision is also what Christian Moraru terms rewriting because the novel includes elaborate narrative parallelisms (19). Though Wide Sargasso Sea does not restructure Janes story or adopt a completely similar structure to Jane Eyre, it deliberately borrows images and themes from Bronts text to enhance our understanding of both women. The fire that kills Antoinettes brother recalls the nursery fire of Janes early years at the Reeds, and Antoinettes loss of her childhood friend Tia alludes to Janes loss of Helen Burns. The novel completes Jane Eyre by providing a place for Antoinette to tell her story but also always mimics the previous novel by presenting the domination of a male discourse. Though Jane narrates her own story throughout the novel, the reader is constantly reminded of her position of inferiority as a woman. Rhys complicated reworking of Charlotte Bronts Jane Eyre at once grants Antoinette space to speak and violently splits itself with the interjection of Rochesters words. Not far into the novel Edward Rochesters voice silences Antoinettes narration. Antoinettes husband actually narrates more of the novel, taking control of the story in the second section once they are married. The first time Rochester is present as a character, he speaks, leaving us to consider the power structure of relationships and their base in race and gender. The white male robs Antoinette of agency. This usurpation of voice appears to contradict the act of subaltern speech set forth in the re-vision but instead only further emphasizes colonial and patriarchal domination, opening an ambivalent space of negotiation. Though Rochester narrates a large portion of the novel, his discourse is split, which both acknowledges its power and reveals its lack of power. Veronica Gregg argues, [Rochesters] narrative appears to be dominant, yet it is his nothingness that the novel insists upon (100). Rochester cannot affect the situation in the West Indies; it is its magic that controls him, but he takes Antoinette to Britain. The empowered powerless is representative of the ambivalence in authoritative discourse. As Homi Bhabha explains, Consequently, the colonial presence is always ambivalent, split between its appearance as original and authoritative and its articulation as repetition and difference. . . the presence of power is revealed as something other than what its rules of recognition assert (107-12, original emphasis). In establishing his authority, Rochester reveals his lack of controlthat his authority is split. His in-between state also admits the hybridity of Antoinettethat she, though marked powerless, has the ability to act. In recognizing this space, the third space, Antoinette will enact her ultimate powerthe destruction of Thornfield Hall. Wide Sargasso Sea opens this third space by capturing the ambivalence of rewriting.

The parallel plot structure of the stories creates a complicated space in which Jane Eyre is always already an active force in the reading experience, posing the constant awareness of Janes life, and thus, producing a new reading of Jane Eyre in the reading of Wide Sargasso Sea. The text bears out Romita Choudburys suggestion that postcolonial intertextuality is ambivalent; it is both completing and problematizing the canonical text, because the novel fills the void of Berthas history but refuses to deny Janes feminist movement (318). Rhys is not simply negating Jane Eyre; she is overtly directing our attention to the preceding text in almost every image, every scene. The displacement Antoinette experiences throughout her life mirrors the crisis of identity Jane

undergoes. Both texts critique the hegemony of their relative cultures and build a bond that unifies the experiences of Antoinette and Jane. Elizabeth Baer argues, [Antoinette] and Jane are not polar opposites, nor a handy dichotomy, but sisters, doubles, orphans in the patriarchy (147). Rhys has clearly constructed the text to follow Antoinette through her struggles in patriarchy, but because racial depiction inspires the novels rewriting, we cannot ignore the outcome of the womens lives. In fact, Wide Sargasso Sea is always split and doubled as it affirms the prior text, an action Laura Donaldson calls the Miranda Complex, a refusal to rank oppressions and the recognition of one anothers struggles (71). Though Wide Sargasso Sea points to racial oppression, it never negates Janes experience with oppression; it simply legitimizes the differences of the racial and feminist battles. Antoinettes experiences reflect those of Jane to the extent that both texts become mirrors of each other, and the metaphor of the looking-glass provides an understanding of Rhys re-vision. The displacement for both women centers on each of their moments in front of a mirrormaking the metaphoric dichotomy represented in the characters duality a literal moment, a time spent in front of a reflective glass in which each character sees herself. In the looking-glass, the symbolic splitting and doubling of the self reflects an ambivalent space of identity, which is a product of their subaltern status in their relative cultures. Each woman is always [her]self yet not quite [her]self through reflection as each novel is independent but yet dependent upon the other (108). Essentially, the rewriting establishes a multi-layered mirror metaphor by isolating Janes ambivalence of identity as seen in the mirror, expanding the image by inscribing the looking-glass literally as a presence in Wide Sargasso Sea, and then mimicking the reflection of characters with one another and their own selves in the act of rewriting. Wide Sargasso Sea becomes the mirrored reflection of Jane Eyre, both splitting and doubling its predecessor, and breaks open an ambivalent third space that allows the other to speak, act, and enunciate her own identity and place within the text.

II
Rhys rewriting uncovers Berthas story, specifically in order to explore the life of the West Indian creolethe mysterious other hidden away under the orders of the hegemonic, in this case, the white male. Berthas madness, central to Jane Eyre, serves to draw attention to the almost supernatural form, the ghost, that is never quite knowable.

Her race disturbs our reading further, frustrating our ability to simply read Antoinette as Janes psychological double. This enigmatic figure is a precursor to Jane and constantly hides and reveals the truth to Rochesters life. Berthas dwellingthe atticbecomes a haunted space marked by the presence of the mad creole woman and extends through the house, affecting Janes mind. Berthas influence cannot be contained and, in fact, must be present in order to legitimize Rochesters actions throughout the novel. The subjugated woman is reminiscent of the colonial context and is always at once present and absent, reflecting what Bhabha calls the ambivalence of colonial discourse. Discussing the presence of imperialism in nineteenth century British texts, Patrick Brantlinger suggests, while the India of Jane Eyre might be dismissed as incidental background, pertinent only to St. John Rivers, Mr. Rochesters West Indian ties, including his marriage to Bertha Mason, suggest the centrality of the imperial context (12, my emphasis). While Jane Eyre sets out to negate the authoritative discourse of patriarchy, instances of allusion to the colonial situation outside England problematize our reading of Janes resistance or rather the resistance of the novel the challenge to hegemony. Bronts act of writing, inscribing the womans journey, is itself an attempt to dispute the male claim to dominance. Because patriarchy and colonialism are products of the same mindsetthe privileging of certain persons at the expense of others based on arbitrary physical traitsJanes movement is always haunted by Berthas imprisonment.

In fact, Janes enunciation of identity is, at times, described in colonial terms, as we will see later. The constant presence of the absent colonial authority and subject prompts the need for re-vision. Berthas race is of particular importance in both novels, because the contrast of the British landscape and British characters with a hidden West Indian woman recalls British imperialism, the racist mindset, and practices that stem from colonialism. Though the West Indies are not the only postcolonial reference in the text, Berthas non-native status demands attention because her race is stereotypically associated with delinquency and uncivilized behavior. Representation is key in understanding the rewriting. As Said asserts, the history of Orientalism has both an internal consistency and a highly articulated set of relationships to the dominant culture surrounding it (22). Thus, the representation of the Orient, or in this case, the West Indies, through the Wests interpretation in political, social, and literary texts directly affects the culture taking part in the digestion of those texts. The mad creole comes to stand in for all West Indian women, and this representation is similar to colonial discourse at large in its association of race with inadequacy. Jane Eyre becomes part of the dominant discourse through inscription of the West Indian creole and mimics the colonial discourse of England, which employs stereotypes of the other to justify colonial rule.

The similarity between the images of delinquency, madness, and infancy ascribed to colonial subjects and those used to represent Bertha engage the same discoursea rhetoric of subjugation. Bhabha argues that this discourse is crucial to the binding of a range of differences and discriminations that inform the discursive and political practices of racial and cultural hierachization, that the hegemonic power structures discourse by inscribing symbolic associations that come to rule the real object and create the dichotomy of superiority/inferiority (67). The discourse changes black skin into a symbol of incompetence and fills the colonizer with fear and pity. As Sander Gilman explains, The anxiety present in the self concerning its control over the world directly engenders a need for a clear and hard line of difference between the self and the Other (27). In this case, the hard line is skin color, but stereotypes, like commonplaces, carry entire realms of associations with them, associations that form a subtext within the world of fiction (Gilman 27). Dark skin stands in for a recognizable standard of difference, by which the hegemony defines and qualifies the dark person, a symbol that comes to represent the various associations of personality and psychology used to subjugate the dark person. Darkness becomes the signifier of stereotype. The stereotype is the mode of inscribing and reinscribing incompetence or madness onto the colonial subjects skin in order to align the two until they become one constantly highlighting the difference between the colonizer and the subject. Bhabha argues that this association is essential in understanding colonialism: The objective of colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction (70). The construction of the other as degenerate involves repetition of stereotype that establishes hierarchical systems. Patriarchy uses gender as a physical difference signifying power relationships to create semblance of order, which merely subjugates half of the population. In Jane Eyre, Bertha is both woman and creolerace sets her apart from the other characters, and her madness is the stereotypical association of degeneracy with blackness. Berthas madness is the Rochesters excuse for locking her in the attic, for ignoring her presence, and for courting another woman while he is married. The association of delinquency with race and the justification for Rochesters actions are products of the discourse of colonialism. A large part of the need to justify the presence of the exterior colonial context, something existing on the borders of the novel and England, resides in Berthas own role in the narrative. Jane hears Berthas voice the first day she arrives at Thornfield Hall, While I paced softly on, the last sound I expected to hear in so still a region, a laugh, struck my ear. It was a curious laugh; distinct, formal, mirthless. I stopped: the sound ceased only for an instant; it began again louder: for at first, though distinct, it was very low. It passed off in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every lonely chamber; though it originated but in one, and I could have pointed at the door whence the accents issued. (114, my emphasis) This moment outlines Berthas effect on Janes life. Just as Berthas laugh and her madness disrupts Janes solitary moment in the hall, it enters into every room, every part of her life. In the back of her mind, as well as the readers conscience, Berthas fragmented uttering foreshadows a coming out, of sorts, a revelation of the truth. Janes perception of the noise as accented, though harmless in reference to distinctness, indicates a noticeable difference in the voice, something foreign to Janes ear. Mrs. Fairfax may blame Grace Poole for the interruption, but Jane suspects another source: I really did not expect any Grace to answer; for the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard (114). As the ghost in the attic, Bertha is at once present and absent; she enters into a liminal space of identity that both informs and reflects Janes experiences in Thornfield Hall. Her preternatural laugh suggests that she is out of reach; she speaks yet Jane cannot understand her words. Jane is aware of a presence, of some hidden knowledge but never quite understands it until much later when Rochester speaks to

her about his past. Berthas liminality creates a space for enunciation because it paves the way for her articulation. Bertha is in-betweenshe is Rochesters wife yet not his wife. This liminality posits a question of legitimacy that both Rochester and Jane must acknowledge. Bhabha suggests that this in-between space is essential for the others act of rebellion and is a constant in colonial discourse. Bhabha asserts, Being in the beyond, then, is to inhabit an intervening space, as any dictionary will tell you. But to dwell in the beyond is also, as I have shown, to be part of a revisionary time, a return to the present to redescribe our cultural contemporaneity; to reinscribe our human, historic commonality, to touch the future on its hither side. In that sense, then the intervening space becomes a space of intervention in the here and now. (7,original emphasis) Rhys breaks open this space in her rewriting, by expanding the knowledge of Antoinettes relationship with Rochester through an utterance that rejects and accepts Jane Eyre, one that acknowledges the feminist struggle but represents the racial discrepancy in the novel. Thus, Bertha may never speak but her presenceher voiceis always a factor at Thornfield Hall, and when Rochester confesses his secrets in section three, her race overrides her madness. She is no longer the pale ghost that haunts the mansion but the other. Antoinettes origin is of issue in England and in the West Indies, but in Jamaica she is not subaltern, nor is she unable to speak; instead, she is an outsider. As Gayatri Spivak explains, she is caught between the English imperialist and the black native (269). She exists in a liminal space, somewhere between native and non-native, assimilated neither into her West Indian neighbors nor into her English husbands world. As a white cockroach, she belongs neither to the colonizer nor the colonized and obtains freedom from the binary established in the colonial situation. Each group defines her as other, leaving her no space to claim in either collective. Her half-black, half-white selves negate each other, separating her from the ability to adopt group identity. Although this is sometimes distressing, as in her relationship with her childhood friend Tia, it allows her to escape the colonial dichotomy. Nonetheless, she remains gendered: being woman places her in another system of dominationpatriarchy. Whereas Jane seeks independence and a relationship of equality, Antoinette loses her freedom when her stepfather sells her to Rochester. Though her race is the issue in Bronts text, Antoinettes gender is the important factor in Rhys novel. Antoinettes struggle in patriarchy and feelings of displacement mirror Janes feelings of belonging.

Though Reginald Watson attempts to make Bront personally responsible for the novels images of blackness, Rhys more subtly comments, Charlotte Bront must have had strong feelings about the West Indies because she brings the West Indies into a lot of her books, like Villette (Vreeland 265). One expects the rewriting, especially because it is based on the inadequacy of racial depiction, to saturate the story in the colonial context. In fact, to a large extent, gender relations dominate the theme of racial difference in the text, much like its predecessor. Discussing the role of gender in the novel, Rachel DuPlessis argues that a woman from a colony is a trope for the woman as colony, implying that the colonial context in the novel is parallel to nineteenth-century arranged marriage (46). The re-vision sets out to correct racial depiction but adopts parallels to such an extent that it always points to sexual difference. Though a charge of her stepfather, Antoinette is able to act for herself on some level before her stepfather arranges her marriage to Rochester. Once her husband has possession of her estate, Antoinette is in a position of subalterity. Though separate systems, colonialism is a metaphor for patriarchy in both these novels. In Rhys novel, the history of the West Indies provides a background to Antoinettes life, but her position in patriarchy robs her of freedom.

III

Frantz Fanon suggests that in the colonial context the black man is constantly met by the gaze of others, judging his condition and personhood. When encountering the black man on the street, the young white boy remarks, Dirty nigger! Or simply, Look, a Negro! (109). The boys declaration of racial inferiority, both distinguishing physical difference and applying the stereotype related to his skin color, changes the way the man views himself. This being through others challenges the real dialectic between [the black mans] body and the world (111). Whereas the self exists before in its own imagined schema, it is now entering a historio-racial schema founded in the inventions of the white man to represent the black man (114). Bhabha explains that envisioned stereotypes used to label the other are ambivalent, representing both the recognition and negation of difference (75). The gaze of others reveals a neurotic splitting and doubling of both the observer and the observed. In the case of Bertha Rochester and Jane Eyre, the observed must question her existence when others define her in a way which conflicts with her previous understanding of self. Even though Janes identity is often characterized through gendered and economic difference rather than racial difference, her being through others plays out throughout Jane Eyre as she seeks a place to belong. In fact, both Antoinette and Jane internalize this gaze and begin to interrogate their own identity. Jane finds herself utterly alone when she leaves Thornfield Hall and comes to Whitcross: I am alone. . . . Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet; it is but a stone pillar set up where four roads meet: white-washed, I suppose to be more obvious at a distance and in darkness (317). Whitcross, though, is not the first place where Jane experiences a moment of identity crisis. As the four arms of the road sign indicate, Jane has already left the Reeds, the Lowood dormitory, Mr. Rochester, and St. John of Marsh End, each representing collectives in which she must negotiate her selfhood. As an orphan, Jane lacks family background, which establishes a foundation for identity and a place in the collective. Throughout the novel, Jane is always struggling to find this missing part of her life. Her displacement begins when she is an outcast of the Reed family. Mrs. Reed banishes her from the drawing room, and John violently confronts her, sending her fleeing to the red-room, where we see her stand before a mirror for the first time: Returning I had to cross before the looking-glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessies evening stories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travelers. (26-7) Driven by the gaze of others to a position outside the family, Jane sees herself through a new filter that splits her identity, a situation that Bhabha terms the otherness of self (44). The literal looking-glass in the text can be read as the figurative mirror of Lacan and Bhabha, a location, which is simultaneously alienating and hence potentially confrontational (77). Here, Jane is at once herself and the mirrored image of herself. She sees herself as Mrs. Reed views her, as a dependent, selfish orphan, adopting the words that Mrs. Reed uses to define her; she becomes unable to recognize the self she has known before. The projection of a degenerative person usurps her understanding of her privileges as an individual and forces her to re-conceive of her place in the Reed home. The repetition of Mrs. Reed and Johns verbal and physical violence, the constant redefining of Jane, pushes her further and further outside of the family. Once contented reading in the window seat, in the depths of her own identity, Jane must reexamine herself after Mrs. Reed and Johns rejection and labeling. Her own image actually gazes out of the mirror onto her body in reality, forming a real spirit, a hybrid of self and

other. Throughout the passage above, perspective oscillates between the visionary hollow and reality, between her own view to that of others. The image in the looking-glass leads to a doubling of Janeshe is both her real self and her imaginary selfand ends in a splittingshe is the half fairy of Bessies stories and the half imp of Mrs. Reeds inventions. This ambivalence transforms her attitude from that of a satisfied Turk (20) to the mood of the revolted slave (27). The use of colonial references to describe Jane acknowledges the colonial context within the text and reveals that the interrogation of identity exists in systems of oppression. In fact, this discourse through association with Jane reveals the attitude of the colonizerviewing the subjects of colonialism as children, as dependent beings.

Fanon explains that colonizers inscribe an inferiority complex on the colonized to justify colonial ruleNegroes are savages, brutes, illiterates. . . . a myth of the Negro (117). O. Mannoni, describing his observations of the colonial situation, says, The fact that when an adult Malagasy is isolated in a different environment he can become susceptible to a classical type of inferiority complex proves almost beyond doubt that the germ of the complex was latent in him from childhood (Fanon 84). Colonial discourse situates the colonized as ignorant or dependent before the presence of the colonizer and justifies the colonizers role as educator or administrator. This discourse translates into Jane and Berthas lives as they are assumed incapable of caring for themselves. Just as Jane is the charge of the Reeds, Bertha becomes the charge of Rochestera disturbing act of both colonialism and patriarchy. Both women, in different contexts, are defined through their position of suppression. Excluded from the Reed family, Jane does not even find a lasting connection with the familys employees, such as Bessie, who declares, you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep (24). The class binary established in the Reed home, master and servant, excludes the orphan. Like Antoinette, she is an outsider. Though she gains no collective identity, the gaze of others forces her to redefine her schema and provides a space of negotiation, where she can negate the images Mrs. Reed, John, and Bessie create to represent her. Describing this process of identification, Bhabha declares, The emergence of the human subject as socially and psychically authenticated depends on the negation of an original narrative of fulfillment, or of an imaginary coincidence between individual interest or instinct and the General Will (51, original emphasis). Janes conception of self must be reexamined when she faces the images that Mrs. Reed and Bessie create to represent her and justify discrimination. The ambivalent space of being through others allows Jane to interrogate her position in the Reed home and articulate that presence throughout the rest of the novel, to the extent of demanding a marriage of equality with Mr. Rochester. At this stage, Janes displacement sets her outside the borders of both collectives; she is, at once, a child and a stranger in the Reed family, both a master and a charge of the servants. Thus, the class binary, which categorizes family interaction, excludes Jane and forces her into an ambivalent space. Through the stereotypes employed by the two opposing groups, she becomes a hybrid of the authoritative discourse and finds the beyond for which Bhabha calls. She is in a third space but not that which includes cultural difference. This prompts the question of whether forced exclusion from the collective, a puesdo-independence, allows Jane to continue to find a favorable outcome and overcome the position of the outsider in general. Through its final resolution of marriage, Jane Eyre suggests a happy ending, in which Jane rises to a position equal to that of the Reeds, a conclusion made possible through the sacrifice of Bertha. Though economically dependent as a female, Jane is able to move forward, claiming her rights as an individual once her rejection releases her from the association of the General Will.

IV
When we encounter Bertha locked up at Thornfield Hall, filling the house with neurotic laughter, she appears as the subaltern, an oppressed racial other imprisoned in her masters house. Describing Thornfield Hall, Bertha says, There is no looking-glass here and I dont know what I am like now. I remember watching myself brush my hair and how my eyes looked back at me. The girl I saw was myself yet not quite myself. Long ago when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her. But the glass was between ushard, cold, and misted over with my breath. Now they have taken

everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I? (180) Berthas selfhood is largely connected to her ability to see her own reflection; thus the literal looking-glass becomes the symbol of self-identification. The mirror is the place where she and her mother look for confirmation of their identity and where they find freedom from the collective. In Thornfield Hall, not only has Rochester taken her freedom, he has taken her mirror, a physical possession that is the extension of herself. Essentially, her existence has been taken from her by her husband. Rochester is often depicted as the white colonizer in critical studies, such as Spivaks Three Womans Text, and also in conflicting colonial terms. Elsie Michie argues that colonial references in the novel suggest that, at times, Rochester represents both the Irish native and Oriental despot. Nonetheless, Rochesters position of authority and ownership, his ability to grant possession and take it away, clearly raise him to the status of colonizer who wields control over the subaltern. In changing Antoinettes name to Bertha, he employs the authoritative discourse to separate her from her past, her home, and her identity; he attempts to re-define who she is. Rhys solidifies this position in Wide Sargasso Sea as Rochester gains control of Antoinette and her inheritance and narrates most of the novel. On the other hand, Antoinettes position of subaltern is more complicated in Rhys text; her creole heritage places her outside both the ranks of subalterity and the position of authority. Rhys borrows the crisis Jane undergoes and translates it to a West Indian context. As an orphan and an individual with two racial identities, Antoinette struggles to find her place in a collective. Much like Jane, she is outside the binary established to maintain order. Being through others and the mirror image outline Antoinettes displacement. The looking-glass is an ambivalent place of hope and fright for Antoinette and her mother. The gaze of others causes fear, and the mirror offers a consolation of continuity. Annette uses the mirror to see herself complete and solidified; the mirror is a stable, knowable reflection of herselfa confirmation of her identity. When each collective rejects Antoinette and her mother, they look to themselves to reconfirm their existence. Describing her mother, Antoinette says, I got used to a solitary life, but my mother still planned and hopedperhaps she had to hope every time she passed a looking-glass (18). Antoinettes mother yearns for companionship, and the mirror reminds her of the presence of others. The looking-glass is a constant part of Antoinettes life. Even when she has no mirror at the dormitory and later at Thornfield Hall, she remarks on the absence. The figure in the looking-glass becomes a companion in their displacement.

Their split creole selves are doubled through reflection. Antoinettes childhood friend Tia becomes a reflective image that serves to symbolically outline the effects of the creole self. Because Antoinettes father was a wealthy slave owner, the natives of Jamaica ostracize her and her family. After the black people burn down the family estate, her companion Tia denies their friendship by maintaining rather than bridging the space between them: Then, not so far off, I saw Tia and her mother and I ran to her, for she was all that was left of my life as it had been. We had eaten the same food, slept side by side, bathed in the same river. As I ran, I thought, I will live with Tia and I will be like her. . . .When I was close I saw the jagged stone in her hand but I did not see her throw it. I did not feel it either, only something wet, running down my face. I looked at her and I saw her face crumple up as she began to cry. We stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was as if I saw myself. Like in a looking-glass. (45) Though Antoinette exists as an outsider, it is not until after the fire and the rejection of Tia that this becomes clear in her mind. The creole child and the black child have played together as companions, and, now, with identification with their parents and their history, the younger generation enters into the colonial existence, separated by a gulf. Gregg asserts, Instead of being an erasure of history, the relationship between Tia and Antoinette is a direct engagement with the roles that have been historically and discursively assigned to black and white people in the West Indies. The relationship exposes the previous, unstable, yet powerfully destructive mechanisms of the colonial structure (91). The General Will takes hold of Tia, and she follows the example of her elders, acting out in violence. Tia resembles the young white boys crisis depicted in Fanon. The children, whether oppressed or oppressor, assimilate into the collective. Nonetheless, Antoinette, at the end of this passage, still identifies with Tia, as she describes her experience through the looking-glass. Gregg points out, There she is part of [Antoinettes] life, her mirror image, her other. She needs Tia as the mirror to reflect her self-identity back to her in whole, in tact (95). As previously discussed, the mirror represents the doubling and spitting of the self. Even after the racial war pushes Antoinette and Tia apart, they continue to recognize one another as friends. Their history is in opposition to their mothers past. They are doubledboth members of conflicting groupsand splithalf of a pair. At this point, the collective does not negate but only complicates their friendship. The mirror is the ambivalent space of two opposing historiesthe past of their ancestors and their personal past.

Antoinette projects an image of her double identity even when no mirrors are present at Thornfield Hall. In the moments before the final fire, Bertha says, It was then that I saw herthe ghost. The woman with streaming hair. She was surrounded by a gilt frame but I knew her (188-9). Antoinette has heard the stories of the ghost in Thornfield Hall but does not know that she is this phantom. When she steps out into the hall, she, for the first time in England, comes face to face with the stereotype created to hide her from existence. The invention is ambivalent because it both acknowledges her existence and denies it, asserting that the noise in the attic is real but the person making the noise is merely a spirit. During the time surrounding this recognition, Berthas consciousness oscillates between her projections of the pastAunt Cora and Christophineand the immediate experiences of escape and inferno. Bertha projects her past experience of identification through the mirror into the present moment, condensing her temporal existence. The ghost in the frame is a memory of her childhood obsession with the mirror, always needing to identify herself. The past displacement is split with the present displacement, and she fully recognizes that she will always be an outsider and realizes why [she] was brought here and what [she had] to do (190). Her connection with her history leads to her act of rebellion. In the symbolic splitting and doubling of past/present, Antoinette locates a third space that allows her to embrace the power she has over her own lifeshe resists her captivity. Embracing her identity, she takes on agency and rejects Rochesters control, burning down her prison and blinding her captor. V Like Antoinette and Janes looking-glasses, Wide Sargasso Sea is a mirror to Jane Eyre. Rhys novel opens a third space of articulation, by representing the life of the unknown, by entering the unhomely and signifying the beyond. Bhabha calls this act presencing, which captures something of the estranging sense of the relocation of the home and the worldthe unhomeliness that is the condition of the extra-territorial and cross-cultural initiations (9). For Bertha, the attic is the space where unhomeliness solidifies for her, the dwelling where she becomes Rochesters ghost and remains Antoinette of Jamaica. Thornfield Hall is her home and her prison. Bertha is Edwards wife, a title that justifies his care and possession of her, and she is the mad native, which is an excuse for her imprisonment. This ambivalencewife/chargeis the necessity of colonial discourse and also its flaw. In acknowledging this third space, the subaltern is able to find agency. As Bertha embraces and rejects her dual identities, she moves into the in-between. She is both wife/chargeand neither, and in this space, something begins its presencing (Bhabha 9). Bertha breaks the silence through an act of denunciationfreeing herself from her imprisonment and destroying the power it has over her life. Berthas being and non-being creates a space for her to act, to avenge herself and her mother. She burns down Thornfield Hall and kills herself. Through the act of enunciation, Wide Sargasso Sea is also an assertion of denunciationan insistence upon revision of a historical void. The novel acknowledges the necessity of seeing literature and culture with fresh eyes by forming a parasitic relationship with Jane Eyre and capturing the in-between within the pages of its own text.

The text reflects what Geyh, Leebron, and Levy suggest about the postmodern understanding of the past, The postmodern fascination with history lies in the belief that the past or some version of itremains an active and transforming force in the present 293). Rhys denounces the dichotomous understanding of Victorian culture, by borrowing the female struggle of Jane and by inscribing the racial battle of Antoinette into the same pages. The novel is at once the mirror and the mirrored reflection and acts in line with the postmodern revisionist movement acknowledging the boundaries of hegemony and crossing over the borders of historical universalizing identities. The hybridity of the novel and of the characters breaks open the binary structure of us/other and brings forth the self-asserting creole woman.

5. Prolepsis is the Greek word for anticipation. In narrative works it is a flashforward by which a future event is related before it actually happens. In the following text Antoinette has a dream which stands in proleptical relation with the burning down of Thornfield in Jane Eyre. Write a short commentary of the text in the light of the information provided. There were more candles on a table and I took one of them and ran up the first flight of stairs and the second. On the second floor I threw away the candle. But I did not stay to watch. I ran up the last flight of stairs and along the passage. I passed the room where they brought me yesterday or the day before yesterday, I don't remember. Perhaps it was quite long ago for I seemed to know the house quite well. I knew how to get away from the heat and the shouting, for there was shouting now. When I was out on the battlements it was cool and I could hardly hear them. I sat there quietly. I don't know how long I sat. Then I turned round and saw the sky. It was red and all my life was in it. I saw the grandfather clock and Aunt Cora' s patchwork, all colours, I saw the orchids and the stephanotis and the jasmines and the tree of life in flames. I saw the chandelier and the red carpet downstairs and the bamboos and the tree ferns, the gold ferns and the silver, and the soft green velvet of the moss on the garden wall. I saw my doll's house and the books and the picture of the Miller's Daughter. I heard the parrot call as he did when he saw a stranger, Qui est la? Qui est la? and the man who hated me was calling too, Bertha! Bertha! The wind caught my hair and it streamed out like wings. It might bear me up, I thought, if I jumped to those hard stones. But when I looked over the edge I saw the pool at Coulibri. Tia was there. She beckoned to me and when I hesitated, she laughed. I heard her say, You frightened? And I heard the man's voice, Bertha! Bertha! All this I saw and heard in a fraction of a second. And the sky so red. Someone screamed and I thought, Why did 1 scream? I called 'Tia!' and jumped and woke. Grace Poole was sitting at the table but she had heard the scream too, for she said, 'What was that?' She got up, carne over and looked at me. I lay still, breathing evenly with my eyes shut. 'I must have been dreaming,' she said. Then she went back, not to the table but to her bed. I waited a long time after I heard her snore, then I got up, took the keys and unlocked the door. I was outside holding my candle. Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do. There must have been a draught for the flame flickered and I thought it was out. But I shielded it with my hand and it burned up again to light me along the dark passage. (WSS, 123-24)

Prolepsis and Foreshadowing in Wide Sargasso Sea: the future becomes the present Wide Sargasso Sea is the haunting tale of a woman with deep-seated psychological problems who, married to a thoughtless and distant husband, eventually goes over the edge into the abyss of insanity. The next several pages will look at prolepsis and foreshadowing by focusing upon the manner in which both devices point us towards the tragic end that awaits Antoinette. To commence, a prophetic dream illuminates the unhappy marriage that will destroy the remaining shreds of Antoinettes dignity; this bit of prolepsis suggests something dark and malevolent about Rochester and also says something most unpleasant about the entire colonial experience. From there, the paper will briefly discuss the foreshadowing that occurs when Antoinette is struck with a sharp stone cast by a so-called friend: the looking-glass image that is crafted by Rhys in this scene foreshadows Antoinettes own tragic end. Additionally, the essay will stop to look at the instance of prolepsis that arises when Antoinette is taken to the convent by her aunt and comes across the boy and girl who mock her terribly; the girl, in particular, insists that Antoinette is crazy like her mother. Suffice it to say, we do not yet know that Antoinette is crazy but the muttered insults of the tormenting girl fast-forward us to the future, for Antoinette really does end up crazy. Not to be overlooked, the paper also explores the foreshadowing which occurs when Antoinette is doing needlepoint and thinks to the hotness of her classroom and thinks also about scrawling her name in fire at the bottom of her work; such

foreshadowing anticipates the fire that will destroy her life and also brings into sharp relief how her entire life and family have been largely consumed by the flames of hatred and intolerance. As well, the use of prolepsis comes into being a second time when Antoinette has her second chilling dream about the forest and about the strange man who leads her to her prison cell; the future is depicted in the present tense and the future really does come true. Last of all, foreshadowing emerges a further time when Antoinette, in the second section of the book, and just after she has been engaged to the mysterious English suitor Rochester, encounters the looking-glass once again and finds herself simultaneously staring at two enormous rats on the sill. When all is said and done, Rhys alternately uses prolepsis and foreshadowing to capture the desperation of the heroine and also the inevitability of her tragic fall into the abyss. There is always the danger that one will confuse prolepsis with foreshadowing when discussing a novel that oscillates between the present, past and future as Wide Sargasso Sea does. For example, Antoinettes frightening dream near the beginning of the novel, a dream in which she envisages herself in a dark forest with someone who hates her, can arguably be dismissed as being more foreshadowing than anything else insofar as it is merely a dream (Rhys, 26-27). However, a closer look reveals that this dream, however fleeting, is actually prolepsis insofar as it serves as a prophecy: Someone who hated me was with me, out of sight. I could hear heavy footsteps coming closer and though I struggled and screamed I could not move (Rhys, 26-27). As we

know, this dream is prophetic and unerring for Antoinette can ultimately not escape her fate- which involves being trapped in a loveless relationship with a man who cannot bring himself to love her. The power of this simple image is that it casts a tragic pall over the story and makes us aware that Antoinettes alreadyunhappy life is not going to end well. An excellent instance of foreshadowing that shows what awaits Antoinette happens early in the text in the immediate aftermath of her brother Pierres horrible death. The family home in Coulibri evidently falls victim to arson and Antoinette and the rest of her immediate family are forced to flee. As she flees the burning wreckage of the family estate, she runs to her old friend, Tia but her old friend is really not her friend at all: as Antoinette approaches her, Tia turns and throws a jagged rock at Antoinette that cuts her badly (Rhys, 45). It is at this juncture that foreshadowing thrusts itself to the forefront: We stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was as if I saw myself. Like in a looking-glass (Rhys, 45). In the view of this writer, this is foreshadowing insofar as it hints at something still to come as opposed to portraying an event still to come as if that event is actually occurring in the present-day. In any case, the blood on Antoinettes face foreshadows her own tragic death just as the burning estate foreshadows the fire that will eventually claim her own life. The looking glass image that Rhys evokes is a way of transporting us to the future so that we may look at what ill fate awaits the luckless Antoinette. It is arguable, but another instance of prolepsis emerges in

part one when Antoinette comes into contact with the bullying boy and girl during her first day at the convent. Here, the girl taunts Antoinette, calling her crazy and saying that she is just like her crazy, demented mother, mocking Antoinette by mentioning how her mother walks with no shoes and stockings on her feet (Rhys, 49). Were it so that the excerpt only described Antoinettes mother, then we could argue that it is a bit of foreshadowing that indirectly points to what Antoinettes future is going to be. However, when the girl describes Antoinette as being crazy, she is taking an event that occurs in the future for Antoinette really does end up crazy, as we shall see and describing it as if it was taking place in the present tense (Rhys, 49). In that regard, a proleptic moment unfolds that reveals Antoinettes eventual psychological debasement. Without question, the proleptic prophecy of that initial dream, coupled with the ominous taunts of the young girl, show us the ill-fated destiny that Antoinette must endure. Moving forward, it is plain perhaps because it is the first section of the book and the foundational starting point for all that follows that various instances of foreshadowing crop up in the initial stages of the text that help to give it its sombre undertones. When Antoinette is doing needle-point shortly after she has arrived at the convent, there is a striking passage that casts into sharp relief what the future holds out for her: The hot classroom.the heat of the bench striking up through my body, along my arms and hands.underneath I will write my name in red fire. (Rhys, 53). Of course, this moment cannot properly be

called prolepsis because it is not speaking directly of the fire that will claim her life; rather, it is a moment of foreshadowing insofar as the not-so-subtle references to the heat of the bench striking up through Antoinettes body portend the fire that will consume her and bring a close to her unhappy existence. When one looks on the work, one of the things that cannot be overlooked is that it hints at the future, often darkly, again and again and again. There is thus a sense that the end and the beginning are inextricably bound together and that Antoinettes life is a sort of tragic loop that is perhaps not much different from the tragic lives of other creoles who find themselves hated by both black and white because of the colour of their skin. As we move along, we come to the second of Antoinettes haunting dreams. In this dream, Antoinette, now at the convent and with her mothers demise a well-established fact and with the audience increasingly certain that Antoinette is fated for a sad denouement imagines herself in the forest once again: I am walking towards the forest. I am wearing a long dress and thin slippers, so I walk with difficulty, following the man who is with me and holding up the skirt of my dress.I follow him, sick with fear, but make no effort to save myself; if anyone were to try to save me, I would refuse. This must happen. (Rhys, 59-60). Clearly, the dream is reality, it is fate, and Rhys passage makes it abundantly clear that all which remains to be discovered is what the name of that fellow is who beckons Antoinette and leads her to her demise. In any case, we see the future in the present and we shudder at what we see.

Momentarily, a few moments must be set aside to looking at some of the other stark images that present themselves in Antoinettes dark dream. Rhys does not stop with simply describing the inevitability of Antoinettes marriage with the gentleman who ends up being less than a gentleman: she also delves into the enclosure, the dark space, that will be Antoinettes cell on earth until the end of her days. To elaborate, Rhys writes the following: we are no longer in the forest but in an enclosed garden surrounded by a stone wall.there are steps leading upwards. It is too dark to see the wall or the steps, but I know they are there. (Rhys, 60). Anyone who is familiar with the original story of Jane Eyre knows full-well that Antoinette was confined to a miserable life as a trapped animal in an upstairs bedroom; this dream brings all of that to light and makes the future seem suddenly oppressively real and unavoidable. There is, throughout this work of Rhys, an impending sense of doom that is inescapable. Last of all, there is an occasion early in the second section when Rhys shows Antoinette awakes to find to huge rats staring at her from the sill: it was so hot that my night chemise was sticking to meand then suddenly I was awake. I saw two enormous rats, as big as cats, on the sill staring at meI could see myself in the looking glass the other side of the room, in my white chemise with a frill round the neck, staring at those rats (Rhys, 82). It may seem like a minor thing, but what we have here is the future of Antoinette Cosway being brought into relief via indirect mention of her mental illness and of the fire that will ravage her. As

she grows older, her visions and moments of dementia will grow worse and worse and this harrowing scene captures the visions and anxiety that steadily drags Antoinette under the waves. In closing, we have in this story a classic instance of an author endeavouring to make it clear to one and all that Antoinette is trapped trapped by her own genetic predisposition to madness, trapped by her husband, trapped by the colour of her skin, trapped by her society, and trapped by the lack of love in a loveless relationship. Reviewing the text, we see that Rhys alternates between prolepsis and foreshadowing: at times, she starkly portrays the future as it will unfold; at other times, she merely darkly hints at what is to come. In the end, however, she crafts a book of great power.

JOHN FOWLES

Study questions
1. Read the following excerpt from The French Lieutenants Woman and comment on the function of parody: And so ends the story. What happened to Sarah, I do not know - whatever it was, she never troubled Charles again in person, however long she may have lingered in his memory. This is what most often happens. People sink out of sight, drown in the shadows of closer things. Charles and Ernestina did not live happily ever after; but they lived together, though Charles finally survived her by a decade (and earnestly mourned her throughout it). They begat what shall it be - let us say seven children. Sir Robert added injury to insult by siring, and within ten months of his alliance to Mrs Bella Tomkins, not one heir, but two. This fatal pair of twins were what finally drove Charles into business. He was bored to begin with; and then got a taste for the thing. His own sons were given no choice; and their sons today still control tbe great shop and all its ramifications. Sam and Mary - but who can be bothered with the biography of servants? They married, and bred, and died, in the monotonous fashion of their kind. Now who else? Dr Grogan? He died in his ninety-first year. Since Aunt Tranter also lived into her nineties, we have clear proof of the amiability of the fresh Lyme air. It cannot be all-effective, though, since Mrs Poulteney died within two months of Charles's last return to Lyme. Here, I am happy to say, I can summon up enough interest to look into the future-that is, into her after-life. Suitably dressed in black, she arrived in her barouche at the Heavenly Gates. Her footman - for naturally, as in ancient Egypt, her whole household had died with her - descended and gravely opened the carriage door. Mrs Poulteney mounted the steps and after making a mental note to inform the Creator (when she knew Him better) that His domestics should be more on the alert for important callers, pulled the bellring. The butler at last appeared. 'Ma'm ?' 'I am Mrs PouIteney. I have come to take up residence. Kindly inform your Master.' 'His Infinitude has been informed of your decease, ma'm. His angels have already sung a Jubilate in celebration of the event.' 'That is most proper and kind of Him.' And the worthy lady, pluming and swelling, made to sweep into the imposing white hall she saw beyond the butler's head. But the man did not move aside. Instead he rather impertinently jangled some keys he chanced to have in his hand. 'My man! Make way. I am she. Mrs Poulteney of Lyme Regis. 'Formerly of Lyme Regis, ma'm. And now of a much more tropical abode.' With that, the brutal flunkey slammed the door in her face. Mrs Poulteney's immediate reaction was to look round, for fear her domestics might have overheard this scene. But her carriage, which she had thought to hear draw away to the servants' quarters, had mysteriously disappeared. In fact everything had disappeared, road and landscape (rather resembling the Great Drive up to Windsor Castle, for some peculiar reason), all, all had vanished. There was nothing but space - and horror of horrors, a devouring space. One by one, the steps up which Mrs Poultney had so imperially mounted began also to disappear. Only three were left; and then only two; then one. Mrs Poulteney stood on nothing. She was most distinctly heard to say 'Lady Cotton is behind this'; and then she fell, flouncing and bannering and ballooning, like a shot crow, down to where her real master waited. (FLW, 325)

Parody in The French Lieutenant's Woman

IMITATION AND PARODY OF THE VICTORIAN NOVEL IN JOHN FOWLESS THE FRENCH LIEUTENANTS WOMAN
INTRODUCTION John Robert Fowles (1926-2005) is rightly considered to be one of the most significant of English writers. His novels won the popular and critical acclaim. He was born on March 31, 1926 in Leighon-Sea, a small town located about 40 miles from London in the county of Essex, England. He loathed his suburban background and recalled it as oppressively conformist and his family life as intensely conventional. Fowles was the son of a prosperous cigar-merchant, Robert J. Fowles, and a school-teacher, Gladys Richards. Fowles attended Bedford School, a large boarding school designed to prepare boys for university from ages 13 to 18. After briefly attending the University at Edinburgh, the future writer began compulsory military service and within two years was promoted to lieutenant. However, World War II ended before he saw combat. Then Fowles spent four years at Oxford where he was much influenced by the writings of the French existentialists. In particular he admired Albert Camu and Jean Paul Sartre whose writings corresponded to his own ideas about conformity and the will of individual. He received a degree in French in 1950 and began to consider a career as a writer. Several teaching jobs followed: a year lecturing English literature at the of Poiters, France; two years teaching English at Anargyrios College on the Greek island of Spetsai; and finally, between 1654 and 1663, teaching English at St. Godrics College in London, where he ultimately served as the department head. The time spent in Greece was of great importance to Fowles. There he began to write poetry and between 1952 and 1960 he wrote several novels but offered none to a publisher, considering them all incomplete in some way and too lengthy. Although he started writing novels from the age of 26 he was in no hurry to publish them and his first novel The Collector appeared when he was 37. The book was published in the spring 1963 and was an immediate best-seller. The critical acclaim and commercial success of The Collector allowed Fowles to devote all his time to writing. So, Fowles stopped teaching and started a literary career. The narrator of the novel, Freddie Clegg, is in his middle twenties, an orphaned child and a collector of butterflies. After winning a national football lottery he uses his winnings to purchase a secluded Tudor mansion with a fotresslike cellar. He kidnaps and imprisons a young woman, Miranda Grey, a lively art student. The strong-willed Miranda keeps a diary, records their conversations and plans her escape, while Clegg wants to win her respect. She gains small victories but never her freedom and dies of pneumonia. At the end the collector plays with the idea of repeating his performance.

The Aristos, a collection of philosophical thoughts and musings on art, human nature and other subjects, appeared the following year. It was a book about the writers personal philosophies. Fowless second novel The Magus (1966, revised in 1977) followed. This novel has become something of a cult novel, particularly in the USA. In the novel Fowles uses elements from William Shakespeares play The Tempest (1623). The book was inspired by the writers brief time on the Greek island of Spetsai. The Magus is a story about the Englishman, Nicholas Urfe, who escapes his latest love affair on the Greek island of Phracos. There he meets the demonic millionaire Maurice Conchis, the Prospero of the tale, and falls in love with Lily, Conchiss dead fiancee or an actress portraying her. Conchis is the master of magic and hallucinations in the Godgame, which lead Urfe to deeper self-knowledge and re-birth. Fowles interweaves in the story Greek myths, psychoanalysis, Nazis and stuffing explanations of the mysterious events. Finally, Urfe breaks free from Conchiss power. However, when Fowles published the revised version of the novel twelve years later, this point was left more ambiguous. In 1966 Fowles moved to Dorset. He lived first at Unerhill farm and then settled in a cliff-top house by the sea on the southern coast of England in the small town called Lyme Regis. For a period the writer was a curator of a local museum. Fowles even published several non-fiction books about Lyme-Regis. He also used Lyme-Regis as the setting for the novel The French Lieutenants Woman, one of his best novels which is still spoken of for many years after as the most important event of the period. In the 1970s Fowles worked on a variety of literary projects including a series of essays on nature and in 1973 he published a collection of poetry Poems. He also worked on translations from French literature, including adaptations of Cinderella and the novella Ourika. His translation of Marie de Frances 12th story Eliduc served as an inspiration for the book The Ebony Tower (1974), consisting of a novella and four short stories. The novel Daniel Martin (1977) was about an English screenwriters search for himself in his past. The work is also full of observations on aesthetics, philosophy, cultural history, the difference between Britain and the United States, archeology and myth. Daniel is engaged to Nell but he realizes that he loves her sister Jane. In the murder mystery Maggot (1985), which combines science fiction and history, Fowles returned to the layered structure of The Magus. A group of five people travels in Devon in 1736. After a nights lodging they continue their journey and disappear. An investigation starts, three members of the group are found, but their testimonies lead to a miracle and disturbing vision of a contact with travellers from the future. The novel is a beautiful recreation of the eighteenth century mind. The novel Mantissa, a fable about a novelists struggle with his muse, was published in 1982. It tells the story of a writer who awakes in hospital suffering from amnesia. He has several apparently imaginary dialogues with Erato, his muse, who assumes various forms throughout the novel.

Fowles also wrote short fiction, essays and poems and did translations. A range of his non-fictional texts are to be found in introductions to other writers books, periodicals and academic journals. Wormholes: Essays and Occasional Writings was published in 1998. This anthology of writing includes journal entries, literary essays and musings on Englishness, religion, the environment and many other topics written during four decades. The Tree (2000) also offers us his reflections on his life, art and a variety of personal concerns. It contains recollection of Fowless childhood and explores the impact of nature on his life and work. In 1999 the writer was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature. His every novel is a big event in the literary world. All his fictional work sells out very quickly and the paperback versions have sold millions of copies. In addition to the commercial success Fowles remains an important figure in contemporary literature, both as a contributor to current discussions and an influence on readers and other novelists. Critical studies about him continue to be published and his work remains at the forefront of academic and popular debate on contemporary literature. Fowles is described as a postmodern writer by such critics as G. Bauyt, M. Bradbury, L. Hutcheon and many others. He is to a high degree original and he is always striking new paths in literature. Malcolm Bradbury considers Fowles to be one of our great writers, both because of his in many ways traditional virtuosity and his willingness to see there is a new encounter to be made between the conditions and options of modern existence and the form of art (Bradbury, 1995, p. 293). He is a complex, celebrated writer, interested in manipulating the novel as a genre. Fowless place in literature as a precursor of postmodernism in the English novel is singular and durable. He gave a new direction to the English novel and is rightly considered to be the father of the English postmodernism. The writer shows a preoccupation with a fictionality of his texts. His novels are self-consciously reflexive, questioning the nature of the text. He experiments with the variety of writing to explore the meaning of human behaviour. For the most of his narratives the writer uses the salient motif of quest for self-knowledge, for freedom, for love. Fowles remains distinguished by his attention to ideas: in particular, existentialism, the relationship of man to nature and the role of the artist. G.Bauyt points out that Fowless main themes are the aim of art and the artists responsibility (Bauyt, 1995, p. 49). Fowles believes that the writer of serious fiction commits himself to altering the society in which he lives. He feels that he may have helped a little in altering peoples view of life. Fowless main social concerns are with the conditions of man whom he sees trapped in a role that denies his individual freedom, thereby denying self-knowledge. Thus, his central philosophical preoccupation is the conflict between the doctrines of free will and determinism. Fowless writing career spanned more than 40 years, but his most famous work remains The French Lieutenants Woman (1969) which was made into an Oscar-winning film starring Jeremy Irons and Meril Streep in the title role. The novel finally established the writers reputation so much that he was awarded with the Silver Pen Award the following year. It is also the most commercially successful of Fowless novels. The French Lieutenants Woman is the book that todays casual readers seem to associate with Fowles. The novel grew out of a dream the author had of a woman standing at the edge of a quay and looking out to the sea. When the novel The French Lieutenants Woman was published in 1969 it was at once recognized as a brilliantly innovative and complex book. The appearance of the novel was a bombshell because it had an incredible double ending. It was the first example of postmodern playfulness anyone had seen. The book was an immediate bestseller and has still remained the most commercially successful novel because the surface story, that of a passionate love affair, could be readily enjoyed without having to engage deeply with the philosophical ideas underlying it, but those postmodern ideas and techniques that the writer uses to convey them make the novel so remarkable. The French Lieutenants Woman, being a complex, innovative novel of an outstanding English author, certainly, allows different interpretations. As M. Bradbury rightly puts it: We might regard it as a brilliant novel of recuperation, displaying the availability of the Victorian

tradition for the modern writer It is a story of emancipation through history, where Victorian hypocrisy, prudishness, ignorance and sentimentality give way to modern truth and authenticity, good faith and freedom, and Sarah is set free from the imprisonment that as a woman and a social alien constrains her. Alternatively, we might take it as a very modern novel, about two characters, and above all Sarah, discovering their modern emancipation in a world that it is framed, by a learned and well-read author with a great gift for a pastiche and imitation, with the dress of Victorian experience and the background of Victorian society. Or more obliquely, we might take it as a postmodern meta-text, a commentary on writing itself, a work where the consciousness of the fictional nature of all fictions is made clear, and attempt to seek their freedom from it (Bradbury, 1995, p. 281-282). Another postmodernist critic, Linda Hutcheon, cites The French Lieutenants Woman as an example of postmodern historiographic metafiction, that it is an example of doubled narrative (Hutcheon, 1995, p. 84). She writes about the novel the specificity of Victorian social and literary theory is evoked (in tandem with both the fictional narrative and the metafictional commentary). Through footnotes which explain details of Victorian sexual habits, vocabulary, politics, or social practices. Sometimes a note is used to offer a translation for modern readers, who just might not be able to translate Latin quite as easily as their Victorian forebears could. This is in clear (and ironic) contrast to Laurence Sternes assumptions in Tristram Shandy that readers and commentators shared a certain educational background. Obviously, part of the function of these postmodern notes is extra-textual, referring us to a world outside the novel, but there is something else going on too: most of the notes refer explicitly to other texts, other representations first, and to the external world only indirectly through them (Hutcheon, 1993, p. 84). Hutcheon also speaks about another role of footnotes: they function as self-reflexive signals to assure the reader as to the historical credibility of the particular witness or authority cited, while at the same time they also disrupt our reading that is, our creating of a coherent, totalizing fictive narrative (Hutcheon, 1993, p. 85).

Fowless novel The French Lieutenants Woman shows how thoroughly this form of postmodern fiction, a historiographic metafiction, depends upon intertextual practice. Being double-coded, it exploits the tension between fact and fiction, between the constructed and the real. There are a lot of textual references in the novel, for example, references to modern theoretical ideas, including those of Barthes, or the notes explaining aspects of Victorian society in comparison to the twentieth century. These references disrupt historical realism. The French Lieutenants Woman is a retrospective twentieth century examination of the Victorian novel of the nineteenth century. The writer presents us with the realistic picture of the nineteenth century compared with the twentieth century. In the novel Fowles uses postmodern techniques and strategies to produce the parody of historical fiction. As M. Bradbury puts it, The French Lieutenants Woman is both a formal imitation of the Victorian novel and an elegant endeavor at assessing the historical and mental difference between such a story and a modern reader involving the construction of the consciousness of the world of a hundred years ago and the consciousness underlying the whole society and producing a kind of cultural unity between the inner and the outer world (Bradbury, 1995 p. 284). The novel The French Lieutenants Woman is considered to be an excellent imitation and parody of the Victorian novel (Bauyt, 1995, p. 49). The aim of this paper is to prove this by analyzing the novel. In my paper I will use Genettes theory of narrative discourse. Gerard Genette (born in 1930) is a French literary theorist, associated with poststructuralist movement. He has written several critical books about the practice of reading literature and about the relationship between literature and critique. His most important work is a four-part Figures but he has continued teaching and writing up to this day. Narrative Discourse: An essay on Method (1972), a section of Figures, is both a classic text of French structuralism and the central reference for all the studies in literary domain of narratology. 1. THEORETICAL PART In critical works The French Lieutenants Woman is rightly considered to be an outstanding parody and imitation of the Victorian novel. It is a good example of the writers extraordinary gift as an imitator and a literary stylist. Fowles uses works of earlier artists as material for his own novel; he takes up subjects from history of English literature. This reflects the postmodern thinking in which art is seen to mirror other arts (texts), not life or reality. Fowles breaks away from the realist convention by foregrounding intertextual position of his novel. The French Lieutenants Woman is also one of the best-known examples of postmodernist metafiction (Bauyt, 1995, p. 36). This kind of writing deliberately breaks fictive illusion and comments directly upon its own fictive nature or process of composition. Because of the inevitability of textuality of our knowledge of the world and history, imitation is no longer seen in negative terms because it is considered to be the essence of true literature. The idea of the past partly forms the present. However, all these ideas are newly formed and new significance is given to them.

Before finally moving to the actual discussion, it is necessary to comment on two central concepts of this paper: (1) postmodernism and (2) intertextuality. These notions are used differently by different theorists, and consequently are not without some conceptual ambiguities. Hence their brief elaboration is presented. 1. 1. Postmodernism Postmodernism is a complicated term which is highly debated among postmodernists themselves. Most theorists have their own working definition. Whatever the conclusion - one thing is certain postmodernism is not easily definable. Many philosophers and theorists have added something to the discussion, but no one has come with a satisfactory definition. It was first used in reference to architecture in 1974 to describe a movement that rejected a modernist passion for the new and wanted to return to the reassuring classical forms of the past. Literary critics began to use the term in the 1960s to describe the experimental fiction of the postWorld War II period which reacted against the perceived norms of the classical modernism. Other critics see postmodernism as the continuation and development of modernist ideas since it extended many of its fundamental techniques and assumptions, while still others view past literature and culture retrospectively through postmodern eyes and claim that certain much earlier works are postmodern. There are many similarities between modernism and postmodernism. Postmodernism ignores the distinction between high and low forms of art. Postmodernism also favors reflexivity and selfconsciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity, ambiguity, simultaneity and an emphasis on the fragmented, dehumanized subject. Both modern and postmodern literatures represent a break from the nineteenth century realism in which a story was told from an objective or omniscient point of view. They also explore subjectivism, turning from external reality to examine inner states of consciousness, in many cases drawing on modernist examples in the stream of consciousness styles of Virginia Wolf and James Joyce. However, there are crucial differences between modernism and postmodernism in the attitude to tradition. Postmodernism, many argue, emphasizes pastiche and parody of earlier forms and styles. Postmodern art rejects notions of originality and modernisms desire to Make it New. Unlike modernist writers, who created works out of pure imagination, postmodernist artists work with cultural givens trying to manipulate them in various ways. They very often use parody and pastiche for this purpose. Postmodernism involves not only a continuation of the modernist experiments, but also attempts to break away from modernist forms as well as to overthrow its high art by recourse to the models of mass culture in film, television, newspaper cartoons and popular music. An undertaking in some postmodernist writings is to subvert the foundations of our accepted modes of thought and experience so as to reveal the meaninglessness of existence and the underlying nothingness. Postmodernism has sought to explain many uncertainties, ironies, contradictions and multiple points of view that animate the world. Postmodern literature is often self-consciously reflexive, questioning the nature of the text, the authority and existence of the author. It uses techniques like pastiche, metanarrative, nonlinear constructions, absurdity and irony.

1. 2. Intertextuality The term intertextuality is crucial in an attempt to understand the notion of postmodernism in this sense. It is one of the most commonly used terms in contemporary critical vocabulary, but it is not a transparent term. In postmodern epoch, theorists often claim, it is not possible any longer to speak of originality or the uniqueness of the artistic object, since texts are always built from existing cultural codes and norms and traditions established by previous works of art. The text can be called the intertext, and thus the term intertextuality foregrounds notions of relativity, interconnectedness and interdependence in modern literature and culture. The term intertextuality emerges from the complex history of modern literary theory. It is

associated with the names of M. Bakhtin, J. Kristeva and R. Barthes. Intertextuality has its origin in the twentieth-century linguistics, particularly, in the seminal work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. His emphasis on the systematic feature of language establishes the relational nature of meaning and thus of texts. However, intertextuality also emerges from other theories which are more concerned with the social context within which words are exchanged. The work of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) is crucial here. Bakhtin thought Saussurean system was devoid of social context, and he argued that a speakers utterances were always directed at others, who in turn, would produce countering utterances, as in dialogue, hence in dialogism. His ideas helped others articulate theories of intertextuality. For Bakhtin the relational nature of the word stems from the word existence within specific social sites, specific social registers, specific moments of utterance and reception. Julia Kristevas attempt to combine Saussurean and Bakhtinian insights and major theories produced the first articulation of intertextual theory in the late 1960s. In her work intertextuality suggests the interdependence of texts, the continual deferment of meaning through and between texts. It is possible to assume that a literary work is not simply the product of a single author, but of its relationship to other texts and to the structures of language itself. So, intertextuality subverts the concept of the text as self-sufficient totality. Thus, writing is always a re-writing which foregrounds the trace of various other texts. Postmodernism recognizes the value of tradition. It understands present culture as the product of previous representation and it exploits and comments on the past using irony and parody. Bakhtin traced the polyphonic character of the novel back to its historical roots in popular carnival practices. He characterized the formal features of carnivalized literature which is heterogeneous, mixed with different styles and registers. Where the official genres are typically unitary, carnivalized literature interrupts the text with a multiplicity of inserted genres letters, essays, theatrical dialogues, and novels-within-the-novel, and so on. Carnivalized literature, in other words, is characterized by stylistic heteroglosia and recursive structure features which postmodern literature also has. In the polyphonic novel, according to Bakhtin, there is no objective narratorial voice to guide us through the vast array of voices, interpretations, world-views, opinions and responses. The critic does not seek to announce the death of the author, but the author does not enter the novel as a guiding authoritative voice and much of his speech exists as reiteration of existing speech genres, utterances, class and other distinct and cultural positions.

The polyphonic novel presents us with the world which does not support only one official point of view, one ideological position, but with the world which is literally dialogic. It is important to note that dialogism does not simply concern the clash between different characters central discourses; dialogism is also a central feature of each characters own individual discourse. This is what Bakhtin means by double-voiced discourse and with this notion we began to come to a major theory of intertextuality, that is all utterances depend on or call to other utterances; no utterance itself is singular; the word is always permeated with traces of other words, other uses. This can be called intertextuality. Influenced by Bakhtins ideas, Roland Barthes (1915-1980), one of the most famous exponents of poststructuralist theory, also states that the origin of the text is not a unified authorial consciousness, but a plurality of other voices, other words, other utterances and other texts. According to him, there are no emotions before the textual description of emotions, no thoughts before the textual representation of those thoughts; no significant actions which do not signify outside of already textualized and encoded actions. The modern writer arranges and compiles the always already written or spoken. In his famous polemical 1968 essay The Death of the Author Barthes employs intertetextual theory to make a strong argument of the figure of the author in the production of meaning and the

very nature of literary meaning itself. This essay is widely known for its displacing the author from the centre of critical art. The essay provides a short and useful introduction to some of the significant themes developed in postructuralism. For him, literary meaning can never be fully stabilized by the reader, since literary works intertextual nature always leads the readers on to new textual relations. Authors, therefore, cannot be responsible for the multiple meanings readers can discover within literary texts. Barthes views such a situation as liberation for readers from the traditional power and authority of the author who is now dead. This idea, which is expressed in a much quoted phrase the death of the author is the birth of the reader, is one of the most widely known features of intertextual theory (Barthes, Modern Literary Theory, 1996, p.122). We should accept that the authors control over the text is limited, that the text is available for more plural interpretation and the readers are free to read more meanings according to their own predilections, ideologies and political convictions. The phrase Death of the Author is used to convey the idea that texts have meaning and an independent existence outside that intended by the author, depend on the context and reader. The theory of the death of the author states that the intentions of the author are meaningless to the interpretation of the text. According to this theory, any given text consists not of one authorial voice but of multiple genres, outside influences, subconscious drives and preexisting texts that constantly shape and inform communication. There has, however, been another approach to the relationship between readers and literary texts they read which uses intertextuality to argue for critical positions at times diametrically opposed to those of Bakhtin and Barthes. The French literary critic Gerard Genette employs intertextual theory to argue for critical certainty, or at least for the possibility of saying definite, stable and incontrovertible things about literary texts. Literary works, for him, are not original, unique, unitary wholes, but particular articulations of an enclosed system and the function of criticism is to rearrange the work back into its relation to the closed literary system. In his studies, Genette tries to redescribe the entire field of poetics from a perspective of transtextuality, which is his version of intertextuality. Transtextuality for him is the textual transcendence of the text which can be defined as all that is set in the text in the relationship with other texts. It includes issues of imitation, transformation and so on. According to Genette, transtextuality covers all the aspects of a particular text. In order to illustrate this point and clear it up somewhat, Genette proceeds to present four subcategories of transtextuality as he defines them. The first kind of transtextuality is termed intertextuality which he defines as the presence of a text within another text. The French critic reduces intertextuality to issues of quotation, plagiarism and allusion. The second type of transtextuality is paratextuality which will be discussed in the paper later. The third type is styled metatextuality: that is, when a text takes up a relation of commentary to another text. The fourth kind is hypertextuality. What Genette calls the hypotext is a text that can be definitely located as a major source of signification for a text for instance, Homers Odyssey is a hypotext for Joyces Ulysses. The last type, architextuality, includes generic, modal, thematic and figurative expectations about texts. Linda Hutcheon, one of famous contemporary critics, has promoted a greater understanding of postmodern literature. Being a major theorist of the relationship between postmodernism and intertextual theory, she argues that postmodernism is contradictory and double-coded, since it paradoxically manages to legitimize culture (high and mass) even as it subverts it (Hutcheon, 1993, p. 15). In her approach, modernism can never be simply opposed to postmodernism since the latter movement continually relies on and exploits the former styles, codes and approaches, just as it relies on and exploits those of other historical periods. The postmodernisms employment of the codes and forms of the past are viewed in terms of the concept of parody, which is the key term in Linda Hutcheons theory of postmodernism. She writes: Parody often called ironic quotation, pastiche, appropriation, or intertextuality - is usually considered central to postmodernism But this parodic reprise of the past of art is not nostalgic; it is always critical. It is also not ahistorical or de-historicizing; it does not wrest past art from its original historical context and reassemble it into some sort of presentist spectacle. Instead, through a

double process of installing and ironizing, parody signals how present representations come from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from both continuity and difference (Hutcheon, 1993, p. 93). This citation shows that Hutcheon even considers that parody is closely related to intertextuality. By using frequent quotations and parody, postmodernist authors often indicate that every text is embedded in other texts and the emergence of the term intertextuality in contemporary literary criticism is used to emphasize this. Linda Hutcheon also states: Postmodern parody is a kind of contesting revision or rereading of the past that both confirms and subverts the power of the representations of history (Hutcheon, 1993, p. 95). In other words, parody allows writers, on the one hand, to subvert the dominant literary tradition, but, on the other hand, to negotiate their own place in literature. So, parody is unavoidable in postmodernism.

Obviously, parody is not a literary strategy which is restricted to contemporary literature. Take for instance, Cervantess Don Quixote, which parodies the chivalric romance, and Henry Fieldings An Apology for the Life Mrs. Shamela Andrews or Shamela (1741) which attacks the middle class morality of Samuel Richardsons Pamela or Virtue Rewarded. Shamela is written as a shocking revelation of the true events which took place in the life of Pamela (whose true name turns out to be Shamela) is in fact a wicked and lascivious creature, scheming to entrap her master, Squire Booby, into marriage. Another novel by Fielding parodying Pamela is The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his friend, Mr. Abrahams Adams (1972), more commonly known as Joseph Andrews. Postmodern novels dealing with historical subjects, which Hutcheon calls postmodern historiographic metafiction, show that no historical narrative of events records or represents those events. Historical events themselves only come to the historian through what Hutcheon, following Genette, calls paratexts. History is only available to the contemporary historian through a network of prior texts. History exists as a vast web of subjective texts, the new historical account being one more authors struggle to negotiate a way through an intertextual network of previous forms and representations. 2. THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE USED IN THE NOVEL THE FRENCH LIUTENANTS WOMAN BY J.FOWLES The plot of the novel The French Lieutenants Woman by J. Fowles focuses on the love affair between a Victorian gentleman and a poor governess. A wealthy amateur paleontologist Charles Smithson falls in love with Sarah Woodruff. Charles is a noble young man who expects to inherit his uncles fortune. Sarah is a passionate and imaginative governess who claims to have lost her heart and good name to a French lieutenant whose wounds she took care of while he was a guest of the family that formerly employed her. It has scandalized the polite society of Lyme Regis and has ostracized her from this society. She is generally held to be the French Lieutenants Woman. Fowles depicts Sarah as a nonconformist who struggles to keep her individuality. In doing so, Sarah captures the attention of Charles and in turn brings about change in him. Another woman in Charless life is Ernestina Freeman, who is ten years younger than he. She is a superficial, spoiled child and her conformity contrasts to Sarahs rebelliousness. These two characters make the dark-light opposition. Ernestina represents the light, predictable and respectable, whereas Sarah appears the dark and mysterious. It is possible to assume that the main characters of the novel, Sarah, Charles and Ernestina, present the reader with different attitudes towards life. They each illuminate one of the basic facets of the human personality: the individual, the compromiser and the conformer.

The novel seems initially a story of Charless difficult choice between Ernestina and the outcast Sarah. Sarah becomes the outright heroine and refuses, in turn, to remain in her Victorian fictional place, transgressing the novel frame and carrying with her the intimation of a past history, so that she can be read as an early twentieth century new woman or a feminist persecutor. It is possible to say that Sarah is an existentialist before her time and persuades Charles to become one. He must understand what she already knows about the trapped world in which they live and the necessity to seek freedom. To be free, he must break out of the conventional society where he is well-placed, break the engagement with Ernestina and suffer the consequences of freedom of choice. Charles develops a sense of independence through realizing that his love for Sarah is worth more than his shallow attachment to Ernestina. Thus, the two main characters, especially Sarah, think and act in a twentieth century way and Fowles explores the evolutionary progress of mans thinking from the religious authoritarianism of the Victorian era to the frightening existential freedom of the twentieth century. Postmodern culture, in general, is often characterized by a compulsion to return to past texts and artifacts through allusions and quotations, the re-writing and re-viewing of past texts. In the case of Fowless novel The French Lieutenants Woman this return is dominantly ironical and subversive. It should be noted that in the 1960s in the British literature there was a strong tendency to experiment with new forms of writing. Contemporary writers were greatly indebted to this movement, either by opposing it or by subverting the heritage of the past. Fowless novel appeared at an interesting time, when many British writers were rethinking their relationship to their tradition (Bradbury, 1995, p. 282). The writers constantly questioned their own texts and used parody and intertextuality as new techniques. The French Lieutenants Woman is an example of postmodern historical metafiction, because it widely employs intertextual references and allusions. The novel is also a highly unconventional postmodern narrative in which Fowles widely experiments with writing techniques, such as self-conscious authorial intrusions, duality of presentation, dislocations of time and multiple endings. Fowles skillfully uses the historical background of the period. His choice of time is very deliberate because the Victorian Age in Great Britain is considered to be the height of British industrial revolution and the full effects of industrialization made themselves felt. This is reflected in the words that are used by Fowles as an epigraph to the third chapter of the novel. Here the writer takes as an epigraph the phrase from Portrait of an Age by G. M. Young: Of all decades in our history, a wise man would choose the eighteen-fifties to be young in(Fowles, 1969, p. 11). It was also a significant period of social reform, when the second reform Bill was passed, when the new ideas were bubbling to the surface from Karl Marx, Charles Darwin and others. These new scientific theories particularly Darwins theory of evolution - raised religious and philosophical doubts. The tendency to look with critical eyes on man, society and God was becoming the dominant mode of thought. This period is often regarded as a time of many contradictions. There was a clash between the widespread cultivation of outward dignity and restraint and the widespread presence of many deplorable phenomena, such as prostitution, child labor and having an economy based largely on exploitation of colonies.

All these events undermined the celebrated Victorian optimism, confidence and even complacency of the early days of Victorias reign which were caused by scientific and economic progress made in the nineteenth century. It should be noted that the term Victorian is very often used to denote a strict set of moral standards, usually applied hypocritically. The term shows negative qualities of smug narrow mindedness, conformity, morality and an overwhelming need to be respectable. Thus, the novel reflects the crisis of Victorian faith, the twists and turns of belief of the period. Literary activity in Victorian England was intense and prolific and much of the writing concerned with social problems. It was the great age of the English novel. Charles Dickens, William M. Thackeray, George Eliot, George Meredith, Charlotte Bronte, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy and many other famous writers and poets were working at that time. Victorian literature pretended

to mirror reality in a sincere way and to educate the audience with plain truths; the moral message was that as long as the hero stuck to the right principles, even in harsh circumstances, God or Divine Providence would recompense him and punish the wicked. Fowles knew Victorian literature thoroughly. He studied in detail its plots and characters and he skillfully used this knowledge to write a Victorian type of novel using the conventions of the period but from a twentieth century view-point. 2. 1. Paratextual Level The study of paratextuality acknowledges that the artifice that surrounds the text can be as important as the text itself. Paratextuality plays a significant role in narrative production a text and helps to direct the readers reception of a text. Genette has made important contributions to analysis of paratext. According to him, paratext consists of those elements which lie on the threshold of a text. Genette further divides it into two smaller units: a peritext and an epitext. Peritext is relatively closely associated with the text itself. Examples of the epitext are titles, chapter titles, genre indications, prefaces, notes, epigraphs, footnotes, colophons, dedications, typefaces and type of paper. The epitext, on the other hand, consists of statements about the book beyond the boundaries of outside the text. The epitext includes interviews, publicity announcements, reviews by and addresses to critics, private letters and other authorial and editorial discussions. Paratextuality is extremely important in The French Lieutenants Woman as Fowles, like many other postmodernist writers, blurs the lines between text and extra-text. In the paper I will analyze only mottoes and epigraphs that Fowles uses before each chapter of the novel. The writer moves freely between past and present, adds footnotes, quotations from Darwin, Marx and the great Victorian authors and comments on Victorian politics and customs. Linda Hutcheon tells us that epigraphs in historiographic metafiction move in two directions at once: to remind us of the narrativity (and fictionality) of the primary texts and to assert its factuality and historicity (Hutcheon, 1993, p. 85).

In Victorian tradition, each chapter of the novel has at least one epigraph, taken mainly from Victorian literature. Many of them are from works of Thomas Hardy, Alfred Lord Tennyson, A. H. Clough, Matthew Arnold, Charles Darwin, George Eliot, William Makepeace Thackeray, Jane Austen and some others. Fowless knowledge of Victorian writers is amazing. He also quotes papers of the time. The way the writer chooses his quotations shows sharp sensibility and a remarkable intelligence which throws very clear light upon the author referred to. However, Fowles does not blindly follow the Victorian authors who widely use epigraphs and mottoes. The purpose of them is to set the tone for the chapter which follows and to comment on the events of the chapter, for example, on the situation and character. The epigraphs also serve as foregrounding. First of all, Fowles uses epigraphs from Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), who speaks about love. For instance, the epigraph for the first chapter of the novel is taken from T. Hardys poem The Riddle. This epigraph and the title of the poem itself emphasize the enigmatic figure of Sarah Woodruff who is presented as a riddle not only to Charles but for the narrator as well. Stretching eyes west Over the sea, Wind foul or fair, Always stood she Prospectimpressed; Solely out there Did her gaze rest, Never elsewhere Seemed charmed to be. THOMAS HARDY, The Riddle (Fowles, 1969, p. 3) It should be noted that Sarah in the chapter is described in similar terms and she remains such a mysterious figure throughout the novel. The reader learns about Sarahs actions, her position in society and what other characters think of her. But her own thoughts are never presented in the novel and Fowles does not give explanations for her behaviour, as he does, describing other characters of the novel, for instance, Charles. Or lets take the epigraphs to chapter 58 where the results of Charless search for Sarah are described. They show what is going on in Charless mind, his spiritual growth and the tragic fate of the two main characters of the novel: I sought and sought. But O her soul Has not since thrown Upon my own One beam! Yes, she is gone, is gone. HARDY, At a Seaside Town in1869 (Fowles, 1969, p. 425) The epigraph highlights Charless mood. In fact, he is desperate because he has failed to find Sarah. He has checked agencies for governesses, advertised all without success. Charles has also visited the United States of America and advertised there.

The penultimate chapter, containing a happy ending, has the epigraph with the name of the main characters child Lalage: Lalages come; aye Come is she now, O! HARDY, Timing Her (Fowles, 1969, p. 438)

The chapter describes Charless and Sarahs passion reunion and their daughter Lalage serves as the healer of breach. The child seems to be the main reason for characters to be together. The second much cited in The French Lieutenants Woman poet is Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892). Fowles refers to his poems In Memoriam (1850) and Maud (1855). The first poem Memoriam was devoted to the poets best friend, Arthur Henry Hollam, who had died in Vienna in 1833 aged 22. The different moods, thoughts, beliefs, recognition and overall terrible sense of loss reflect both the individual suffering and some of the main concerns of the period as well. Maud is a morbid story, because its theme is that shedding blood is a cure for disappointed love. Like Charles, the narrator goes abroad but becomes mad. The epigraph to chapter 6, where Sarahs history is presented, emphasizes again that she is strange and mysterious and she is difficult to be explained: Ah, Maud, you milk-white fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife. TENNYSON, Maud (1855) (Fowles, 1969, p. 31) This chapter contains Sarahs history which the vicar tells to Mrs. Poultney, her future employer. The vicar told that Sarahs conduct led to scandal because she had behaved without propriety in leaving her job and running after a Frenchman, Mr. Varguenness. In Victorian time a lady could not do something like that and remain a lady. The reader learns Sarahs history but Fowles does not give us explanations for her behaviour. The second encounter between Charles and Sarah in chapter 10 is also highlighted by the epigraph from this poem: And once, but once, she lifted her eyes, And suddenly, sweetly, strangely blushd To find they were met my own TENNYSON, Maud (1855) (Fowles, 1969, p. 66) Here Charles discovers Sarah sleeping and must apologize when she awakes and sees him, observing her. The reader can guess that something significant will happen between them. The epigraph to chapter 12, taken from Tennysons poem In Memoriam, makes us think more deeply about the relations between Charles and his fiancee Ernestina described there. On the surface there is a strong attraction between them. However, Charles does not mention his meeting with Sarah to Ernestina and the epigraph also shows that their relations have a break off: And was the day of my delight As pure and perfect as I say? TENNYSON, In memoriam (1850) (Fowles, 1969, p. 84) Chapter 13, where Fowles speculates about the artists role in a modern society, has somewhat a vague epigraph, reflecting the tone of this chapter, also taken from Tennysons poem Maud: For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil (Fowles, 95) Lets take one of the two epigraphs to chapter 20 where Sarah tells her story to Charles. They show that we mustnt blame Sarah for her position in society. The epigraph, taken from Tennysons poem In Memoriam, makes her innocent in the readers eyes: Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life TENNYSON, In memoriam (1850) (Fowles, 1969, p. 163) Sarah asks Charles to meet once again, when she has more time, so that she can tell him the truth about her situation and obtains his advice. In their meeting, described in this chapter, Sarah revealed to Charles that she indeed became infatuated with the French lieutenant when he was recovering from an injury in the house, where she was a governess. She followed him when he left for France.

Charles is surprised to find out that she seems to be proud of her status as an outcast, for it differentiates her from the society she considers unjust. In chapter 25 Charles receives a note from Sarah and decides to go to her; however, the epigraph states that Charles will not be with her and they will part: O young lord-lover, what sights are those, For one that never be thine? TENNYSON, Maud (1855) (Fowles, 1969, p. 205) The epigraph to chapter 45 is also taken from Tennysons poem Maud. In this chapter Fowles rejects his first traditional ending, explaining that it is just one possibility, a hypothetical future for his characters. Charles recognizes his freedom of choice and decides to put up at Exeter for the night. Then he visits Sarah at the hotel. The epigraph clearly shows Charless ability to act in another way: And ah for a man arise in me, That the man I am may to be! TENNYSON, Maud (1855) (Fowles, 1969, p. 339) The third much cited in the novel poet is A.H. Clough (1819-1861). His poetry is often experimental in form, expressive in love, doubt, duty. That is why the mottoes from him in some ways reflect the doubts and uncertainties of Charles. For example, lets take the epigraph to chapter 44 which speaks about duty. It highlights the first fake ending. It is the conventional Victorian ending in which virtue triumphs. In it Charles arrives in Exeter, goes to Lyme and confesses to Ernestina. They are reunited. The narrator recounts that they go on to marry, have seven children and live well into the twentieth century. However, this ending should not be the right one because, according to the epigraph, duty is not always the best way out:

Duty thats to say complying With whaters expected here With the form confirming duly, Senseless what it meaneth truly Tis the stern and prompt suppressing, As an obvious deadly sin, All the questioning and the guessing Of the souls own soul within: Tis the coward acquiescence In a destinys behest A.H.CLOUGH, Duty (1841) (Fowles, 1969, p. 334) The epigraph to chapter 54, taken again from Cloughs poetry, has the mood of despair that somehow predicts the future relations between Charles and Sarah: My wind is turned to bitter north That was so soft a south before A.H.CLOUGH, Poem (1841) (Fowles, 1969, p. 399) In this chapter Charles finds out that Sarah has gone without trace after their passion encounter at the hotel. He writes a letter to Sarah, telling her how much she means to him and promises her

marriage. Unfortunately, Charles never learns that his servant Sam has not delivered his letter. Another cited poet is Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), epigraphs from whom also have a connection with the situation of Charles and Sarah. Thus, chapter 9 gives some information on Sarah. The reader learns more about her character. Sarah can see through people, including her employer, Mrs. Poultney. She influences the Poultneys house despite Mrs. Poultneys obvious malevolence. Sarah is popular with the servants, except Mrs. Fairley. The following epigraph taken from Arnolds poem A Farewell emphasizes Sarahs originality, her ability not to be an ordinary woman: this heart, I know, To be long lovd was never framd; But something in its depths doth glow Too strange, too restless, too untamed. MATTHEW ARNOLD, A Farewell (1853) (Fowles, 1969, p. 51) The epigraph to chapter 21 from Arnolds poem Parting makes the reader foresee the tragic fate of Charles and Sarahs relations: Forgive me! forgive me! Ah, Marguerite, fain Would these arms reach to clasp thee: But see! tis in vain. In my void air towards thee My straind arms are cast. But a sea rolls between us Our different past. MATTHEW ARNOLD, Parting (1853) (Fowles, 1969, p. 178) The sad tone of the poem and its name Parting somehow predict that the main characters of the novel, Charles and Sarah, will part forever and their efforts to be happy together will be vain. The epigraph to the next chapter reflects Charless struggle with himself, his wish to be indifferent to Sarah: I too have felt the load I bore In a too strong emotions sway; I too have wished, no woman more, This starting, feverish heart, away, I too have longed for trenchant force And will like a dividing spear; Have praised the keen, unscrupulous course, Which knows no doubt, which feels no fear. But in the world I learnt, what there Thou too will surely one day prove, That will, that energy, though rare, Are yet far, far less rare than love. MATTHEW ARNOLD, A Farewell (1853) (Fowles, 1969, p. 188) There are epigraphs from other sources which also reflect the Victorian climate. All the epigraphs make our understanding of the novel deeper. Here are some more examples. For instance, chapter 3, which describes Charless background, has two epigraphs foreshadowing this story. It should be noted that Charles in the novel is described more openly than Sarah. The reader learns not only facts from his biography, but his thoughts and motives of his behaviour. Explanations of Charless actions are also presented while there are no explanations of Sarahs behaviour and only facts are presented. The first epigraph to this chapter is taken from Charles Darwins work The Origins of Species (1859) which somehow makes the reader think about the main characters origin:

But a still more important consideration is that the chief part of the organization of every living creature is due to inheritance; and consequently, though each being assuredly is well fitted for its place in nature, many structures have now no very close and direct relations to present habits of life (Fowles, 1969, p. 11). The second epigraph to this chapter is taken from G.M. Young Portrait of an Age. It states that the time of the Queen Victoria is the best time to be young in (Fowles, 1969, p. 11). This epigraph, already mentioned in the paper, is used deliberately to show Charles as a lucky young man who has all grounds to be happy because of his privileged position in the society, of his future marriage with Ernestina, a daughter of a rich man. The epigraphs help the writer to describe Charles as a conventional nineteenth-century gentleman whose outlook and attitudes are typical of the age in 1867. He is presented as an intelligent idler, but he is not stereotyped beyond hope of that age. The ironical tone of chapter 8 concerned with the description of Charles on the fossil hunt is emphasized by the epigraph from Leslie Stephen Sketches from Cambridge (1865): But if you wish at once to do nothing and be respectable nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study (Fowles, 1969, p. 44) The given epigraph highlights the writers satirical tone of an observer, describing the Victorian amateur collector.

Chapter 4 presents Mrs. Poultney, Sarahs employer. She is depicted as a black villain, representing only evil and hypocrisy. Mrs. Poultney is a caricature of Victorian responsibility, her Christianity is only surface. In this chapter Fowles skillfully imitates the style of Charles Dickens. Two epigraphs to this chapter add more details to the description of the character of Mrs. Poultney, the atmosphere in which Sarah has to live. The first epigraph is taken from a famous Victorian poem written by Mrs. Norton: Whats DONE, is what remains! Ah, blessed they Who leave completed tasks of love to stay And answer mutely for them, being dead, Life was not purposeless, though Life be fled. MRS. NORTON, The Lady of La Caraye (1863): (Fowles, 1969, p. 18) The second epigraph is from E. Boyston Pike Human Documents of the Victorian Golden Age: Most British families of the middle and upper classes lived above their own cesspool (Fowles, 1969, p. 12) These epigraphs, without doubt, make us to think more thoroughly about the things described in this chapter. Chapter 14, which describes Charless visit to Mrs. Poultney, is marked by the epigraph taken from Jane Austens novel Persuasion: My idea of good company, Mr. Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company. You are mistaken, said he, gently, that is not good company that is the best. Good company requires only birth, education, and manners, and with regard to education is not very nice. (Fowles, 1969, p. 100) In this chapter Fowles truthfully depicts the social pretence and bigotry of the Victorian time. The epigraph helps us understand the type of the society where Charles has to make visits. Having read it the reader looks at the society of Lyme Regis with a critical eye, tries to make his or her own decision according to the given epigraph. It should be also noted that Fowles not only skillfully uses epigraphs but he takes a lot of care to interest the reader in them. For example, first the reader is introduced to the poem of Mrs. Norton The Lady of La Caraye in the epigraph and, later, in another chapter the reader is reminded of the poem. Here Ernestina reads the poem to Charles who, however, falls asleep during the reading. The reader learns the writers attitude to the poem. Fowles says that The Lady of La Caraye is a typical poem of that time: It is a best seller of the 1860s: the Honorable Mrs. Caroline Nortons The Lady of La Caraye, of which The Edinburgh Review, no less, has pronounced: The poem is a pure, tender, touching tale of pain, sorrow, love, duty, piety and death- surely as pretty a string of key mid-Victorian adjectives and nouns as one could ever hope to light on (and much too good for me to invent, let me add) (Fowles, 1969, p. 114). Once again we feel that the novel is written by our contemporary. Then Fowles describes the biography of the author of the poem, the content of it and gives interesting facts about that time. The narrator again cites some passages from The Lady of La Caraye in the novel. They not only explain why Charles has fallen asleep but show the atmosphere of the Victorian evening at home. Or lets take another example where the writer openly discusses his epigraphs of the novel. Thus, in the last chapter, which represents the last existential ending, Fowles directly confesses to the reader that he uses epigraphs to reflect the air of that time. In the last ending Charles leaves Sarah without realizing that the child he notices on the way out is his. The narrator ends the novel by noting that Charles has at least begun to have some faith in himself. There are two serious epigraphs to this chapter which help us understand Charles and Sarahs interior motives and thoughts, to think more

deeply about the essence of human relations in general. The first epigraph is taken from The Ambidextrous Universe by Martin Gardner: Evolution is simply the process by which chance (the random mutations in the nucleic acid helix caused by natural radiation) cooperates with natural law to create living forms better and better adapted to survive (Fowles, 1969, p. 461). The second epigraph is taken from Notebooks by Matthew Arnold: True piety is acting what one knows (Fowles, 1969, p. 461). At the end of this chapter Fowles calls the readers attention to these epigraphs: For I have returned, albeit deviously, to my original principle: that there is no intervening god beyond whatever can be seen, in that way, in the first epigraph to this chapter; thus only life as we have, within our hazard-given abilities, made it ourselves, life as Marx defined it the actions of men (and of women) in pursuit of their ends. The fundamental principle that should guide these actions, that I believe myself always guided Sarahs, I have set as the second epigraph. A modern existentialist would no doubt substitute humanity or authenticity for piety; but he would recognize Arnolds intent (Fowles, 1969, p.466-467). In this passage of the novel Fowles not only deliberately reminds the reader that he or she is reading fiction but hemakes us think about serious life problems, about the existential idea that we are entirely responsible for our own lives. There is no God to be blamed when things go wrong and at the same time we exist in a world which has its own laws, morals and traditions and we cannot separate ourselves from it. Therefore every decision we make has to be remade or reassessed and we constantly have to change our lives because we are never free of the necessity of making choices of which we are unable to predict the outcome. Nor can we share or pass on the choice we must make, for we alone bear the responsibility for shaping our own lives and futures. In conclusion, it should be mentioned that mottoes and epigraphs, being one of the kinds of paratextuality, are very important in The French Lieutenants Woman. In Victorian tradition, Fowles gives one or even two epigraphs to each chapter of the novel. However, the writer does not blindly follow the tradition of the Victorian novel in using epigraphs to each chapter. The epigraphs, taken from different Victorian sources, are used to set the tone for the chapter, to comment on its contents, and to serve as foregrounding. In addition to their function of reflecting the air of the Victorian Age, the epigraphs also break the fictive illusion and remind the reader that he or she is reading fiction, that i. the novel which describes the people, events that have never existed in reality.

2. 2. Duality of Presentation The novel is set in Lyme Regis in the1860s but with a contemporary narrator who lives in the twentieth century; in other words, the plot of 1867 is seen through the interpretations and perspectives of a hundred years later and our twentieth century perspectives are reinforced by the duality of presentation. Fowless method of dealing with narration is something new in the book. The novel is characterized by different modes of narration. In the form of his narration and his choice of narrators the writer was obeying his own verdict, written as a memorandum to himself where he warned himself against pretending that he lived in 1867 and insisted on making sure the reader knew it was pretence. This is why the reader is constantly, almost in every chapter, reminded of the time the novel is set. There are also a lot of authorial intrusions where Fowles directly discusses with his reader the modern issues of the twentieth century or compares the two ages. The novel gives a brief but right description of the Victorian epoch. In the novel Victorian customs and traditions are depicted from the twentieth century perspective. So, there are two perspectives, the one from the Victorian point of view and the other from the modernist twentieth century novel. The writer allows the reader to experience Victorian England through the eyes of a stereotypical young lady, Ernestina, an educated young refined gentleman, Charles, and an outcast woman, the mysterious Sarah. The novel is concerned with the spiritual growth of Charles under the influence of Sarah. Fowless novel is characterized by its frequent use of deliberate anachronisms, that is chronological errors that place a person, event or object from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. They help to show associations and differences between the two distinctive periods. Fowles spends much energy juxtaposing the then - the Victorian age and the now - the twentieth century. In critical literature anachronisms are used as a prominent element of postmodernism. Fowless narrator attributes to Sarah the attitudes and psychology of a modern, that is latetwentieth-century woman. The projection of a 1960s mentality back into 1860s is realistically motivated: Sarah, we are told, represents the first glimmerings of modern sensibility in Victorian culture, the historical opening wedge of modernity. Charles, on the other hand, is described as a man who has always asked too many questions (Fowles, 1969, p. 11). In another place of the novel Fowles asks the reader to see Charles for what he is: a man struggling to overcome history. And even though he does not realize it (Fowles, 1969, p. 295). The book gives a good impression of the Victorian romance and the world of Thomas Hardy. Fowles comments on Victorian customs, the theories of Charles Darwin and the poetry of the Victorian authors. The writer emphasizes that he does not write in the Victorian era but he writes in the twentieth century. He uses the conventions and stylistic concerns of the Victorian era but he also uses those of the twentieth century. Fowles admires the works of those writers he imitates but he sometimes adds his own thoughts and ideas. All great Victorian novelists (Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy and others) use their own voices so much that they often succeed in becoming a character in their own novel. The same can be said about Fowless twentieth century narrator who briefly turns into a character in chapter 55. The narrator appears as the overdressed impresario who enters a train carriage with Charles and turns back the watch and thus narrative time. His description resembles the writers appearance: a massively bearded face a man of forty or so (Fowles, 403). The narrator sits in his protagonists first-class apartment on his railway journey to London and asks himself what the devil I am going to do with you? (Fowles, 1969, p. 405) Ultimately, he decides not to decide but to give the reader two possible versions of the ending and not allow him to choose between the two endings. Dickenss use of his voice varies greatly, but for the most part it is heard in social and moral condemnation of the evils of society. Certainly, the reader can find this voice in The French Lieutenants Woman where the writer discusses social problems of the Victorian Age. Fowles also adopts Thackerays tone in ironic comment on character and situation in Vanity Fair. But Fowles goes farther in Thackerays puppet dialogue with the created characters and he writes about the courses the characters have taken when in fact they havent clear demonstration of his control and

manipulation. In the true spirit of the Victorian novel the reader is drawn into the discussion of the characters. It should be noted that one of Fowless favourite devices is to tease the reader by suggesting what his characters did do and then having them to do the reverse. It serves to remind that we are reading fiction, which holds up the mirror to reality but can never be reality itself. Fowles also picks up George Eliots moral comments and indicates the alternative lives his characters might have led. The novel is a third-person narration. The writer employs different subclasses of the third-person point of view. He, certainly, uses the most common Victorian type of narrator that is the omniscient narrator, who knows everything that needs to be known about the characters, actions and events; he reports the characters thoughts, feelings and motives. Within the omniscient point of view, the intrusive Victorian narrator is also used, who does not only report but also comments on and evaluates the actions and motives of the characters and sometimes expresses personal view on humanity in general. In this mode a lot of great Victorian novelists wrote and Fowles skillfully uses the best examples of the fiction of that time. The narrator can be also objective, in other words, he presents facts without any comment. In the first chapter it is emphasized by expressions the local spy and the telescopist. After describing the Cobb the narrator addresses the reader, as it was common in Victorian fiction: I exaggerate? Perhaps, but I can be put to the test, for the Cobb has changed very little since the year of which I write; though the town of Lyme has, and the test is not fair if you look back towards land. However, if you had turned northward and landward in1867, as the man that day did, your prospect would have been harmonious (Fowles, 1969, p. 4). It is one of the first numerous passages where the two epochs are compared. So, from the first pages of the novel we meet the narrators double vision and double voice. The narrators voice is doublecoded because there is a shift from the Victorian narrator to the modern narrator who looks at the described events from the twentieth century perspective. Fowles uses different modes of narration in The French Lieutenants Woman. The narrative structure of the novel is highly traditional or Victorian as well as self-conscious or postmodernist. He combines both the omniscience of the Victorian novel with a freedom of action and expression for his characters which postmodernist writers see as paramount. Fowles, as a highly selfconscious postmodernist artist, constantly breaks fictive illusion and comments directly on the action, the characters motives and possibilities and explains how things might have been different. For instance, the first chapter of the novel already introduces different types of narration. The omniscient nineteenth century narrator, having a wide-range vocabulary and vast knowledge of political and geographical history, describes the main characters of the novel: Charles Smithson, Ernestina Freeman and Sarah Woodruff, standing on Cobb, Lyme Regis harbour quay. This narrator resembles Victorian intrusive narrators, when he remarks that Charles had severely reduced his dundrearies, which the arbitres of the English male fashion had declared a shade vulgar that is, risible to the foreigner a year or two previously (Fowles, 1969, p. 5). In the next sentence we hear the modern narrator, who juxtaposes then and now. This narrator describes how the colors of the young ladys clothes would strike us today as distinctly strident (Fowles, 1969, p. 5). The word today deliberately emphasizes the difference between the time the novel is set and the time it is written in. Then the narrator gives an extended commentary on the comparison between the two centuries: but the world was then in the first fine throes of the discovery of aniline dyes. And what the feminine, by the way of compensation for so much else in her expected behavior, demanded of a color was brilliance, not discretion (Fowles, 1969, p. 5). The reader will find a lot of such comparisons of the two ages, revealing that the novel is written by the twentieth century narrator who does not pretend that he lives in the nineteenth century. Thus, from the outset of the book the reader understands that the novel is written by the writer living in the twentieth century. Like the writers of the Victorian period, Fowles uses a number of learned references. Like them, he comments on the important events of the day the influence of

Darwins theory, the Second Reform Bill of 1867, of J. S. Mills attempts to raise the status of the women. The narrator converses with the reader informally, comments on the described events using modern knowledge and ironically compares the two different epochs. Fowles manages us to sink into Victorianism with the twentieth century minds. Leaving outside the actual plot, one learns more about life and society in those times from The French Lieutenants Woman than from reading the whole library of learned histories. The narrator imitates a Victorian style in many chapters, yet he is clearly a late-twentieth century thinker and he often intrudes with his own viewpoint, judging the characters with the hindsight as, for instance, in the third chapter where the modern nineteenth century narrator writes about his main character. He comments on Charless outlook on life and on the attitudes that were typical of the age in 1867 and, as usual in the novel, compares them with 1967. The reader is introduced to a very interesting observation on the attitude to time in the two centuries:

Though Charles liked to think about himself as a scientific young man and would probably not have been too surprised had news reached him out of the future of the airplane, the jet engine, television, radar: what would have astounded him was the changed attitude to time itself. The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time; our sense of that, not a disinterested love of science, and certainly not wisdom, is why we devote such a huge proportion of the ingenuity and income of our societies to finding faster ways of doing things as if the final aim of mankind was to grow closer not to a perfect humanity, but to a perfect lightning flash. But for Charles, and for almost all his contemporaries and social peers, the time signature over existence was firmly adagio. The problem was not fitting in all that one wanted to do, but spinning out what one did to occupy the vast colonnades of leisure available (Fowles, 1969, pp. 11-12). Such a deep and truly comparison can be only written in the twentieth century because notions of this time are presented here. Certainly, the airplane, jet engine, television and radar did not exist in the nineteenth century. The observation about the lack of time in the twentieth century appeals to the modern reader, who experiences this himself. It is one of the numerous passages of numerous of the novel where Fowles juxtaposes the two centuries. Fowles goes on comparing the two centuries, showing his wonderful knowledge of Victorian England: One of the commonest symptoms of wealth today is destructive neurosis; in his (Charles) century it was tranquil boredom. It is true that the wave of revolutions in 1848, the memory of now extinct Chartists, stood like a mountainous shadow behind the period; but to many and to Charles the most significant thing about those distant rumblings had been indisputably prosperous; an affluence had come to the artisanate and even to the laboring classes that made the possibility of revolution recede, at least in Great Britain, almost out of mind. Needless to say, Charles knew nothing of the beavered German Jew quietly working, as it so happened, that very afternoon in the British Museum library; and whose work in those somber walls was to bear such bright red fruit. Had you described that fruit, or the subsequent effects of its later indiscriminate consumption, Charles would almost certainly not have believed you and even though, in only six months from this March of 1867, the first volume of Kapital was to appear in Hamburg (Fowles, 1969, p. 12). Here Fowles again juxtaposes the two time periods, comparing their symptoms of wealth: boredom of the nineteenth century and neurosis of the twentieth century. Victorian revolution and Chartist movement are opposed to Marxism and socialist revolutions happened in the twentieth century. The scene where Sarah first looks at Charles when the latter has advised her to return from the end of the Cobb to a safer position contains the narrators observation about her behaviour which is not typical to a Victorian woman and, as usual, the reader feels that it is written from a twentieth century perspective:

She turned to look at him - or as it seemed to Charles, through him. It was not so much positively in that face which remained with him after that first meeting, but all that was not as he had expected; for theirs was an age when the favoured feminine look was the demure, the obedient, the shy. Charles felt immediately as if he had trespassed; as if the Cobb belonged to that face, and not to the Ancient Borough of Lyme. It was not a pretty face, like Ernestinas. It was certainly not a beautiful face, by any periods standard or taste. But it was an unforgettable face, and a tragic face. Its sorrow welled out of it as purely, naturally and unstoppably as water out of a woodland spring. There was no artifice there, no hypocrisy, no hysteria, no mask; and above all, no sign of madness. The madness was in empty sea, the empty horizon, the lack of reason for such sorrow (Fowles, 1969, p. 10) It goes without saying that this description of Sarah is presented by a twentieth century narrator who has a deep knowledge of Victorian time. He emphasizes that in Victorian times women should be obedient and shy. In the novel the position of Victorian women is opposed to the position of women in the twentieth century. Throughout The French Lieutenants Woman the reader is constantly reminded that this Victorian novel can be written only in the twentieth century. For this reason the year 1867 is very often repeated in the novel purposely to remind the reader of the difference between his and the Victorian time. In the fourth chapter, for example, the year 1867 is repeated in the description of Mrs. Poultneys house, Sarahs employer: The basement kitchen of Mrs. Poultneys large Regency house, which stood, an elegantly clear simile of her social status, in a commanding position on one of the steep hills behind Lyme Regis, would no doubt seem today almost intolerable for its functional inadequacies. Though the occupants in 1867 would have been quite clear as to who was the tyrant in their lives, the more real monster, to an age like ours, would beyond doubt have been the enormous kitchen range that occupied all the inner wall of the large ill-lit room (Fowles 1969, p. 18). Or we may take another example where the year 1867 is mentioned. In the second chapter of the novel the intrusive narrator gives a full account of Charless state of mind after the incident on the Cobb, where Charles met Sarah for the first time: After all, it was only 1867. He was only thirty-two years old and he always asked life too many questions (Fowles, 1969, p. 11). As usual, Fowles does not miss the chance to mention the year when the novel is set, stressing that the novel is double-coded. In the fourth chapter Mrs. Poultney, the Victorian lady, is described using the Gestapo notion which, certainly, belongs to the twentieth century: There would have been a place in the Gestapo for the lady; she (Mrs. Poultney) had the way of interrogation that could reduce the sturdiest girls to tears in the first five minutes. In her fashion she was an epitome of all the most crassly arrogant traits of the ascendant British Empire. Her only notion of justice was that she must be right; and her only notion of government was an angry bombardment of the impertinent populace (Fowles, 1969, p. 20). This description again shows that the writer consistently reminds the reader of the difference between the time of the novel and the time of writing. Fowles uses the notions of the twentieth century to indicate the time he writes in: one of the most significant notions of the twentieth century, the Gestapo notion, is used to describe a nineteenth century lady. Describing Charless walk along the wooded Undercliff in search for the fossils, the author again stops the narration to converse with the reader about the difference between the two centuries; he invites us to smile at Charless inconvenient equipment: He (Charles) would have made you smile, for he was carefully equipped for his role. He wore stout nailed boots and canvas gaiters that rose to encase Norfolk breeches of heavy flannel. There was a tight and absurdly long coat to match; a canvas wideawake hat of indeterminate beige; a massive ashplant, which he had bought on his way to the Cobb; and a voluminous rucksack, from which you might have shaken out an already heavy array of hammers, wrappings, notebooks, pillboxes, adzes and heaven knows what else (Fowles, 1969, pp. 46-47).

Here Fowles, as usual, makes the reader pay attention to the difference between the two ages. He writes: Nothing is more incomprehensible to us than the methodicality of the Victorians; one sees it best (at its most ludicrous) in the advice so liberally handed out to travellers in the early editions of Baedeker. Where, one wonders, can any pleasure have been left? How, in the case of Charles, can he not have seen that light clothes would have been more comfortable? That a hat was not necessary? That stout nailed boots on a boulder-strewn beach are as suitable as ice-skates? Well, we laugh. But perhaps there is something admirable in this dissociation between what is most comfortable and what is most recommended. We meet here, once again, this bone of contention between the two centuries: is duty to drive us, or not? (Fowles, 1969, p. 47) This ironical comment on the Victorian custom contains the authors serious footnote to the word duty where the writer discusses the differences between mid-Victorian agnosticism and atheism. This footnote clearly proves that Fowles is rightly considered to be the writer who demands a lot of from his reader and this passage, as many other places in the novel, clearly shows that this statement is true. Or lets take another example where the narrator talks about Mary, Ernestinas servant, whose future can be certainly predicted because it is also the narrators present: Marys great-great-grandmother, who is twenty-two years old this month I write in, much resembles her ancestor; and her face is known over the entire world, for she is one of the most celebrated younger English film actresses (Fowles, 1969, p. 75). In the next sentence Fowles again uses the chance to remind the reader of the difference of the two epochs: But it was not, I am afraid, the face for 1867 (Fowles, 1969, p. 75). Or one more example, which also serves to remind that the novel is written in the twentieth century. The narrator describes the penny which Charles pays for milk in the following way: A penny, one of those charming heads of the young Victoria that still occasionally turn up in ones change, with all but that graceful head worn away by the centurys use, passed hands (Fowles, 1969, p. 85). In this description Fowles again juxtaposes the time of the novel and the time it is written in. In chapter 9 more information on Sarah is given. She is also characterized from the twentieth century viewpoint: She had some sort of psychological equivalent of the experienced horse dealers skill - the ability to know almost at the first glance the good horse from bad one; or as if, jumping a century, she was born with a computer in her heart. I say her heart, since the values she computed belong more there than in the mind. She could sense the pretensions of a hollow argument, a false scholarship, and a biased logic when she came across them; but she also saw through people in subtler ways. Without being able to say how, any more than a computer can explain its own processes, she saw them as they were and not as they tried to seem (Fowles, 1969, p. 52). The computer, certainly, did not exist in the Victorian age. The mention of the computer, the notion of the twentieth century, clearly shows that this Victorian novel can be written only in the twentieth century. The reader is reminded of the computer in Sarahs heart in chapter 14 when Mrs. Tranter, Ernestinas aunt, invites Sarah to come and see her: That computer in her (Sarahs) heart had long before assessed Mrs. Tranter and stored the resultant tape (Fowles, 1969, p. 103). This is one of the numerous examples where the reader is deliberately reminded of the differences between the two centuries. Existential ideas, the notion of the twentieth century, are also mentioned directly in the book, for example, when the narrator talks about Charles: After all he (Charles) was a Victorian. We could not expect him to see what we are only just beginning and with so much more knowledge and the lessons of existentialist philosophy at our disposal - to realize ourselves: that the desire to hold and the desire to enjoy are mutually destructive. His statement to himself should have been, I possess this now, therefore I am happy,

instead of what it so Victorianly was, I cannot possess this forever, and therefore I am sad (Fowles, 1969, p. 69). Here the writer again invites the reader to think about the two time periods, the differences in their perception of life. For the same purpose of juxtaposing the two epochs Fowles mentions the cinema and television which people did not certainly have in the nineteenth century. Thus, in chapter 16 there is a very interesting narrators comment on Victorian evenings: And the evenings! Those gaslit hours that had to be filled, and without benefit of cinema and television! For those who had a living to earn this was hardly a great problem: when you have worked a twelve-hour day, the problem of what to do after your supper is easily solved. But pity the unfortunate rich; for whatever license was given them to be solitary before the evening hours, convention demanded that then they must be bored in company (Fowles, 1969, p. 113). Again Fowless narrator makes an important distinction between the two centuries, showing a wonderful knowledge of the Victorian age. The reader is reminded of the absence of cinema and television without which it is difficult to imagine a present life. One more example of the juxtaposition of the two ages is presented in chapter 17. Here the narrator states that the people in the Victorian Age do not have a common language and it is difficult for them to communicate. Then Fowles explains that this difference in communication of the people of the two centuries is now rubbed by technological advances of the twentieth century:

It is difficult to imagine today the enormous differences then separating a lad born in the Seven Dials and a carters daughter from remote East Devon village. Their coming together was fraught with almost as many obstacles as if he had been an Eskimo and she, a Zulu. They (Sam and Mary) had barely a common language, so often did they not understand what the other had just said. Yet, this distance, all those abysses unbridged and then unbridgeable by radio, television cheap travel and the rest, was not wholly bad. People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free each of other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more. But I am a heretic, I think our ancestors isolation was like the greater space they enjoyed: it can only be envied. The world is only too literally too much with us now (Fowles, 1969, pp. 130-131). This authorial comment makes the reader not only to understand the difference between the two time periods, but to think more deeply about the problems of communication in the twentieth century. Much of the time Fowles tells the reader openly about the ideas that lie behind his novel, although he often introduces them with self-deprecatory humour. In the famous chapter 13 the narrator even stops the story and speaks directly to the reader. He confronts us with a fact that he has created the illusionary reality of the fictional world: This story I am telling is all imagination. These characters I create never existed outside my mind (Fowles, 1969, p. 95). This is known as the self-conscious narrator. Fowles reveals to and reminds the reader that the narration is a work of fictional art by shattering any illusion that he is telling something that has really happened. The novel proves that, as it has been mentioned earlier in the paper, that postmodernist fiction has brought the author back to the surface that is free to break upon the fictional world. Then, in the same chapter, the writer jokingly announces that perhaps I am trying to pass off a concealed book of essays on you (Fowles, 1969, p. 95) and gives some spoof essay titles, such as On the Horizontality of Existence, The illusions of Progress, The History of the Novel Form and some others. Despite his humour Fowles shows that he is aware of the philosophical currents of his time. The French Lieutenants Woman was composed in the late 1960s when Roland Barthes

published his long-influential essay The Death of the Author and Fowles certainly was familiar with his idea that the author was no longer a privileged source of textual meaning, as he had been in traditional literary criticism. Through its references to Barthes and some other critics, the novel becomes not only a parody of a Victorian love story, but also a thoughtful examination of the act of the authorship and the role of the artist. In the novel the narrator goes on discussing the difficulty of writing a story when characters behave independently. Charles, he complains, did not return to Lyme Regis, as the narrator had intended, but went to Dairy to ask about Sarah. In this chapter the narrator refuses to be a god-like Victorian narrator who knows the past, present and future, secret thoughts and feelings of his characters. Instead Fowles says that he does not know what his characters will do, but determines the plot by chance. He contrasts himself to Victorian omnipotent narrators and declares he is a new kind of author-God, with freedom his first principle, not authority: The novelist is still a god, since he creates (and not even the most aleatory avant-garde modern novel has managed to extirpate its author completely); what has changed is that we are no longer the gods of the Victorian image; omniscient and decreeing; but in the new theological image, with freedom our first principle, not authority (Fowles, 1969, p. 97). It is clear that the intrusive narrator plays an extremely significant role throughout the novel. In Victorian manner, he continually interrupts the Victorian narrative with comments on his characters, bits of social history, erudite discussions, comparing Victorian Society with the time the novel is written in. These authorial intrusions and comments remind the reader that he or she is reading fiction and emphasize the duality of presentation. It should be noted, that the novel The French Lieutenants Woman is double-coded. As it is common in postmodern literature, the writer takes a skeletal form of another kind of work (in this case the form of the Victorian novel) and places it in a new context with new contents. Fowles uses the twentieth century narrator that allows him to present the Victorian Age from the twentieth century perspective. He constantly reveals to the reader that he or she is not reading a traditional Victorian novel. For this purpose Fowles mentions the year 1867, when the novel is set, a lot of times in the book; he also discusses the differences between the two ages and talks about the modern issues of the twentieth century in numerous authorial intrusions. This complex mixture of past and present gives the novel much of its appeal. 2. 3. Multiple Endings of the Novel and Their Function The novel The French Lieutenants Woman is also famous by its multiple endings, a technical trick which could only belong to a novel of our century. As Fowles points out, the convention of Victorian fiction allowed no place for the open, the inconclusive ending (Fowles 1969, p. 405) but he overtly challenges this convention. The use of multiple endings is a common postmodern device and Fowles uses it to avoid closure and to make the reader choose one of the given versions or make of his own interpretation. The first ending, a traditional happy resolution to the Victorian love story, comes improbably in the middle of the book. Here Charles makes the right, if not altogether happy, choice of turning his back on Sarah and marrying Ernestina. He decides not to see Sarah but rather do his duty to Ernestina. Charles arrives in Exeter, goes on to Lyme and confesses to Tina. The narrator recounts that they will have seven children and live well into the twentieth century. This is a conventional Victorian ending. In the next chapter Fowles, however, explains that this traditional ending is just one possibility, a hypothetical future for his characters. The other two endings are more complex. Fowles shifts back at the moment of choice. Now Charles orders Sam to stop at Exeter to visit Sarah. Charles has a passionate encounter with Sarah and discovers to his shock that she is a virgin. The story of her seduction by the French lieutenant was a lie. So, doctor Grogans opinion of her as a plotter seems to be true. Charles leaves Sarah thinking her to be false and himself to be duped.

In church he, however, realizes the fundamental truth, that true freedom is the casting off of hypocrisy. Charles decides to go back to Sarah, but first he must confess to Ernestina. He returns back to Lyme Regis and horrifies Tina and her relatives by breaking off the engagement. In the meantime he orders Sam to deliver a letter to Sarah in which he promises marriage. But Charles cannot find Sarah when he hurries back to Exeter because Sam has not delivered the letter. Sarah has gone to London having left no forwarding address, not knowing that Charles has made up his mind to marry her. Charles resolves to find her. At this point, Fowless narrator appears in the story. As Charles follows Sarah by train, a bearded figure sits opposite him and watches him. This is the narrator himself, who is wondering what exactly to do with Charles. He proceeds to structure two equally valid endings. Because the last ending will seem privileged by its final position, he flips a coin to determine which ending to give first. The appearance of the writer himself in a figure of the bearded impresario serves as a reminder to the reader that he or she is reading a fiction. Furthermore, we are left to make up our minds about which ending we will accept as the right one. After an intensive search for Sarah through detective agencies fails, Charles travels abroad for two years. He is beginning to believe that he has been duped. Only two years after Sarahs disappearance Charles gets a cable from his solicitor saying that Sarah has been found. Charles hopes that Sarah has decided to answer the ad, but the narrator explains that Mary has seen Sarah enter a house and that it is Sam who remorsefully lays anonymous information about the whereabouts of Sarah. When Charles arrives at Sarahs house, he finds her surprised to see him and not apologetic about having left him not knowing her address. She seems to have no need of Charles. Now she lives in a house of a pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rosetti. Charles accuses her of implanting a dagger in his breast and twisting it. She decides not to let Charles leave without revealing that she has had a child by him named Lalage. The penultimate chapter ends with the three of them on the threshold of some kind of future together. The last chapter provides another ending. It begins with the bearded narrator in the front of Sarahs house with a watch, which he sets fifteen minutes back and drives off. The appearance of the writer himself in the figure of the bearded impresario serves as a reminder to the reader that he or she is reading fiction, composed by the author and the events he writes about have never existed. It is a typically postmodern device that serves to break the fictional illusion. The narrative resumes with the same piece of dialogue from the previous chapter about twisting the knife. However, this time there is no understanding, nor is there any love between them. Charles is outraged at the discovery that she has no intention to marry him. I cannot love you as a wife must, Sarah declares (Fowles, 1969, p. 467). Charles leaves without realizing that the child he notices on the way out is his. So they separate for ever and Charles is left with an atom of faith in himself (Fowles, 1969, p. 467). He feels dejected but in his desperate loneliness he senses that he is reborn to a new life.

Two possible concluding chapters have been provided and the reader can choose either according to taste. If freedom of the individual is the goal then why should the writer determine the conclusion. Better leave it to chance, because chance determines many things in life. Fowles says that we cannot determine even the present, let alone the future. So why not open up the different possibilities and let the reader conclude in his own way. Giving two alternative endings in the end, Fowles leaves the reader no alternative but to move towards existentialism. The reader must exercise individual freedom of choice how to end the novel. Once again Fowles shows his existential philosophy. The writer presents us with the existential story of a man who must exercise his free will by making a choice. Charles finds his lady but the main mysteries of existence, of freedom, of love, of creativity of the role of the past, of death remain unsolved. At the end, Sarah stands for a mystery of the river of life, of mysterious laws and mysterious choice (Fowles, 1969, p. 467). The imagination itself seems to grant greater power than the orders that narrative organization requires. To sum up, the use of multiple endings in The French Lieutenants Woman also gives Fowles the opportunity to break fictive illusion and remind the reader once again the fact that he or she is reading fiction, in which the author is free to think of any ending he likes. It should be also taken into consideration, that the use of multiple endings is a postmodern device that self-consciously breaks fictionality of literary texts. The first, typically Victorian, ending parodies the conventions of the Victorian novel, in the form of which The French Lieutenants Woman is written. Fowles makes the reader think that this ending is not very probable in real life. The second two endings allow the writer to appear in the novel as one of its character. The appearance of the author in his literary work is also a typically postmodern device. Fowles does not miss the chance to converse with his reader, discussing the most probable ending of the novel. He invites the reader to think more deeply about the fate or the main characters of the novel and to choose the ending he likes. It is certainly not common in the Victorian literature. Multiple endings also show that the novel is double-coded, that it is written in the twentieth century using the conventions of the Victorian novel of the nineteenth century. CONCLUSIONS The novel The French Lieutenants Woman by John Robert Fowles (1926-2005), a prominent postmodern English writer, is one of his most famous works. It is a brilliantly innovative and complex book. The novel is an example of postmodern playfulness. It is a highly unconventional postmodern narrative in which Fowles widely experiments with writing techniques such as selfconscious authorial intrusions, duality of presentation, dislocations of time and multiple endings. The book is also a commercial success because the surface story, that of a passionate love affair, could be readily enjoyed without having to engage deeply with the philosophical ideas underlying it, but those postmodern ideas and techniques, that the writer uses to convey them, make the novel so remarkable. The writer presents us with the realistic picture of the nineteenth century compared with the twentieth century. In the novel Fowles uses works of earlier artists as material for his own novel; he takes up subjects from the history of English literature. This reflects the postmodern thinking in which art is seen to mirror other arts (texts), not life or reality. The French Lieutenants Woman, being one of the best-known examples of postmodernist metafiction, deliberately breaks fictive illusion and comments directly upon its own fictive nature or process of composition. In the Victorian tradition, each chapter of the novel has at least one epigraph, taken mainly from Victorian literature. The epigraphs do not only reflect the Victorian climate but they make our understanding of the novel deeper. The purpose of them is to set the tone for the chapter which follows and to comment on the events of the chapter, for example, on the situation and character. The epigraphs also serve as foregrounding. They prove once again that The French Lieutenants Woman belongs to postmodernist metafiction because epigraphs break the fictive illusion, remind the reader that he or she is reading fiction.

Fowless method of dealing with narration is something new in the book The novel is set in Lyme Regis in the1860s but with a contemporary narrator who lives in the twentieth century; in other words, the plot of 1867 is seen through the interpretations and perspectives of a hundred years later and our twentieth century perspectives are reinforced by the duality of presentation. There are two perspectives, the one from the Victorian point of view and the other from the modernist twentieth century. The reader is constantly, almost in every chapter, reminded of the year the novel is set. There are also a lot of authorial intrusions where Fowles directly discusses with his reader the modern issues of the twentieth century or compares the two ages. The complex mixture of past and present gives the novel much of its appeal. The novel The French Lieutenants Woman has multiple endings, a technical trick which could only belong to a postmodern novel. It is a common postmodern device which gives the writer the opportunity to stress fictionality of his literary text. Multiple endings remind the reader once again of the fact that he or she is reading fiction, in which the author is free to think of any ending he likes and even give more than one ending to his work. The first, typically Victorian, ending parodies the conventions of the Victorian novel, in the form of which The French Lieutenants Woman is written. Fowles makes the reader think that this ending is not very probable in real life. The second two endings allow the writer to appear in the novel as one of its characters. The appearance of the author in his literary work is also a typically postmodern device which breaks fictive illusion. Fowles does not miss the chance to converse with his reader, discussing different endings of the novel. He invites the reader to think more deeply about the fate of the main characters of the novel and to choose the ending he or she likes. Multiple endings once again show that the novel is double coded, that it is written in the twentieth century using the conventions of the Victorian novel of the nineteenth century. In conclusion it should be stated that the epigraphs, duality of presentation and multiple endings of the novel make The French Lieutenants Woman an outstanding parody and imitation of the Victorian novel. It is a retrospective twentieth century examination of the Victorian novel of the nineteenth century.

2. In the light of the information given above, comment on the ways the author intrudes on the novel.

Techniques
Fowles playfully uses the techniques of the Victorian novelist in his so-called Victorian novel to advance the action and comment from a "god-like" authorial perspective. At the same time, he breaks the mold of the Victorian form by giving not one absolute (and predictable) ending, but three. In the first ending, which comes improbably in the middle of the book, Charles makes the right, if not altogether happy, choice of turning his back on Sarah and marrying Ernestina. In the typical Victorian novelist's world view, Charles and Ernestina's life is played out along with the lives of Dr. Grogan, the servants Sam and Mary, Mrs. Poulteney, and others. Having given the Victorian ending, Fowles then steps in to inform the reader that it was a myth. So saying, he returns Charles to the pivotal moment of choice, and this time he chooses to spend the night in Exeter so as to see Sarah. Charles thus chooses life, but then he must learn to deal with hazard or chance. Thus, after many more pages, which provide a description of the next several years of Charles's life, Fowles once again arrives at an ending, but here he gives a choice of two: one in which the couple is happily reunited through the intercession of their daughter Lalage, and the other in which they part. To give both choices, Fowles stops the action through the introduction of a persona of the author as a dandy who drives up to the scene in a carriage and gets out to examine his watch. He then turns the watch back one-quarter hour, and the scene is played again to a different conclusion. In this last ending, the existential responsibilities of freedom of choice are revealed. Charles is not reunited with Sarah but instead is reborn into a higher state of consciousness in which he can choose life rather than become "fossilized." In using this technique of authorial intrusion, which borrows from the Victorian conventions but breaks them, Fowles not only demonstrates his theme of freedom of choice but also practices it himself as a novelist.

3. Discuss the objectives of metafictional novels. In what sense could The French Lieutenants Woman be included in this subgenre? Metafictional novel Metafiction, also known as romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, uses selfreference to draw attention to itself as a work of art, while exposing the "truth" of a story. "Metafiction" is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection. It can be compared to presentational theatre, which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play; metafiction does not let the reader forget he or she is reading a fictional work. Metafiction is primarily associated with Modernist literature and Postmodernist literature, but is found at least as early as Homer's Odyssey and Chaucer's 14th century Canterbury Tales. Cervantes' Don Quixote, published in the 17th century, is a metafictional novel and so is James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner published in 1824. The novels of Brian O'Nolan, written under the nom de plume Flann O'Brien, are considered to be examples of metafiction. In the 1950s several French novelists published works whose styles were collectively dubbed "nouveau roman". These "new novels" were characterized by the bending of genre and style and often included elements of metafiction. It became prominent in the 1960s, with authors and works such as John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse, Robert Coover's "The Babysitter" and "The Magic Poker", Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and William H. Gass's Willie Master's Lonesome Wife. William H. Gass coined the term metafiction in a 1970 essay entitled Philosophy and the Form of Fiction. Unlike the antinovel, or anti-fiction, metafiction is specifically fiction about fiction, i.e. fiction which self-consciously reflects upon itself.[1] Various devices of metafiction Some common metafictive devices in literature include: A story about a writer creating a story; e.g. Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds, Stephen King's Misery and Secret Window, Secret Garden, Ian McEwan's Atonement, Andr Gide's The Counterfeiters, John Irving's The World According to Garp, Michael Morpurgo's Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Paul Auster's Oracle Night, Kenn Nesbitt's More Bears!, and Cy Coleman's 1989 Tony Award best musical, City of Angels. A story about a reader reading a book; e.g. Michael Ende's The Neverending Story, Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, and William Goldman's The Princess Bride. A story that features itself (as a narrative or as a physical object) as its own prop or MacGuffin; e.g. Cornelia Funke's Inkheart (which also plays a role in the sequels) and C. S. Lewis's The Dark Tower. Ira Levin's play Deathtrap is an extreme example. A story containing another work of fiction within itself; e.g. The Laughing Man, The Dark Tower, The Iron Dream, The Crying of Lot 49, Sophie's World, A Clockwork Orange, Pale Fire, The Princess Bride, Houdini Heart, The Island of the Day Before, Steppenwolf, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Man in the High Castle, Heart of Darkness, The World According to Garp, The Fault in Our Stars, and Percival Everett's Erasure. A story addressing the specific conventions of story, such as title, character conventions,

paragraphing or plots; e.g. John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse and On with the Story, Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn, Ursula K. Le Guin's classic short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", and Stephen Sondheim's musical Into the Woods. A novel where the narrator intentionally exposes him or herself as the author of the story; e.g. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Razor's Edge, Mister B. Gone, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Breakfast of Champions, The Plague, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, The BFG, O Tempo e o Vento, The Museum of Innocence, Ishmael Reed's Japanese by Spring, The French Lieutenant's Woman, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Samuel R. Delany's Nova. A book in which the book itself seeks interaction with the reader; e.g. William H. Gass's Willie Masters' Lonely Wife, Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, Bernard Werber's Le Livre du Voyage and Mo Willems's Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!. A story in which the readers of the story itself force the author to change the story; e.g. Kenn Nesbitt's More Bears!. Narrative footnotes, which continue the story while commenting on it; e.g. Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Alan Moore's From Hell, Fabian Nicieza's Cable & Deadpool, John Green's An Abundance of Katherines, Jeff VanderMeer's Shriek: An Afterword, many books by Robert Rankin, and Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. A story in which the characters are aware that they are in a story; e.g., John Scalzi's Redshirts, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, the Henry Potty parody series, and various works by Robert Rankin.

Films which use metafictive devices include Adaptation, which wraps metafictively around the realworld non-fiction book The Orchid Thief, and Barton Fink, as well as the thrillers The Usual Suspects, Memento, and Inception. Examples of other media which take part in metafictiveness are Al Capp's Fearless Fosdick in Li'l Abner, the Tales of the Black Freighter in Watchmen, or the The Itchy & Scratchy Show within The Simpsons, as well as the computer game Myst, in which the player represents a person who has found a book named Myst and been transported inside it. The theme of metafiction may be central to the work, such as in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759) and in Chapter XIV of Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man, in which the narrator talks about the literary devices used in the other chapters. As a literary device, metafiction has become a frequent feature of postmodernist literature. For example, Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, "a novel about a person reading a novel", is an exercise in metafiction. Paul Auster has made metafiction the central focus of his writing and is probably the best known active novelist specialising in the genre. Often metafiction figures for only a moment in a story, as when "Roger" makes a brief appearance in Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber. It can be used in multiple ways within one work. For example, novelist Tim O'Brien, a Vietnam War veteran, writes in his short story collection The Things They Carried about a character named "Tim O'Brien" and his war experiences in Vietnam. Tim O'Brien, as the narrator, comments on the fictionality of some of the war stories, commenting on the "truth" behind the story, though all of it is characterized as fiction. In the story chapter How to Tell a True War Story, O'Brien comments on

the difficulty of capturing the truth while telling a war story. In Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, King himself appears as a pivotal character set with the task of writing The Dark Tower books so that the main characters can continue their quest. Other Stephen King books, and characters from them, are mentioned in the narrative. In an afterword to the series finale (The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower), King details why he chose to include himself in his novel. And in James Patterson's Alex Cross series, Along Came a Spider is both the book written by Patterson and a book written by Cross about the events depicted in the book. One of the most sophisticated[citation needed] treatments of the concept of the novel in a novel occurs in Muriel Spark's debut novel, The Comforters. Spark imbues Caroline, her central character, with voices in her head which constitutes the narration Spark has just set down on the page. In the story Caroline is writing a critical work in the form of the novel when she begins to hear a tapping typewriter (accompanied by voices) through the wall of her house. The voices dictate a novel to her, in which she believes herself to be a character. The reader is thereby continually drawn to the narrative structure, which in turn is the story, i.e. a story about storytelling which itself disrupts the conventions of storytelling. At no point does Spark as author enter the narrative however, remaining omniscient throughout and adhering to the conventions of third-person narration. According to Patricia Waugh "all fiction is . . . implicitly metafictional," since all works of literature are concerned with language and literature itself.[2] Some elements of metafiction are similar to devices used in metafilm techniques.

The French Lieutenant's Woman Metafiction French Lieutenant Woman as a Metafiction Metafictional means literally, fiction about fiction. To a certain extent the term overlaps with metanarrative, because any work of fiction which contains a meatnarrative, will contain a metafictional element. It is generally used to indicate fiction which includes any self referential element. Even thematic patterning can also contribute to the formation of metaficaionl effect in any work. The term can well be compared with metalanguage; a language used to describe another language. If we applied the above mentioned definition of metafiction in John Fowel's The French Lieutenant Woman, the novel can be well compared with the qualities of metafiction. The novel highly includes the qualities of metafiction. It on the one hand talks about the functionality of fiction and on the other hand talks about the structuralism of its narrative structure with the same token. There are a lot of metafictional qualities in the novel from beginning to the end of its formulation. Sometimes the narrator says about what his position in a particular situation and what actually he is going to do. The narrator himself is one of the fictional characters and he himself gives the information about the fictional quality to the reader which is one of the most important metafictionl qualities in the novel. The narrator no longer is narrator in some of the parts of the novel. The narrator himself says that he is narrating; he himself is author in the fiction. His technique of giving his own identity being inside the whole fiction is one of the most important aspects of the quality of metafiction. He also says that he is free to take his character wherever he goes and lies. The speaker says that he is the creator of his own character and he can control his character according to his own interest. It is also another metaficional quality of the novel. Not only there are so many metaficional qualities in the novel. As a writer John Fowels says that he has to stop his hero from moving closer to Sarah emotionally. It is an example of writer's commendation about his own novel. This sort of commentation by the writer about his own fiction being inside the fictional world is another srtiking elements discussed in this novel as metaficationl level. Another metafictional element is that John Fowel's hero Charles sometimes goes beyond the control of the author. As the situation demands he moves on so author sometimes loses his control over his own hero. This sort of information has also been given by the author being in the fictional world. One of the most striking techniques used in the novel is an omniscient narrative in which the main narrator knows the detail about the position and situations of his/ her characters. This technique has highly served the aspects of metafictional quality in the novel.

His use of perspective of literary omniscience becomes evident when he says in chapter 13. I am free to let my characters do whatever they like to do.I am free to let them go with whatever they like to go. This statement of Fowles in chapter 13 shows that John Fowles is making caution use of literary omniscience unlike his contemporaries. Like his contemporaries Fowles makes an experimental use of more of impersonal narration. But he says no novelists, however experimental in his writing continue to stand in the perspective of an authorial detachment delimits the narrative vigor of the novelist. Hence the perspective of authorial detachment should be avoided for the time being because no novelist can make its use continuously. Having avoided the limitations of the modernist mode of impersonal narration, the novelist has to intrude into the narrative structure. Thus according to Fowles a novelist has to make a simultaneous use of an intrusive authorship and the literary omniscience. Since The French Lieutenant's Woman's is centered primarily round this major debate in the chapter 13, it is a brilliant example of a successful metafiction. He interrupts into the narrative progression. He says that narrative progression can end in the line of happy ending to cater to the taste of Victorian readers if Charles Smithson marries Ernestine. But later on he rejects this line of narrative progression thinking it as a too naive ending. Then he makes Charles break his engagement with Ernestine. Having broken his engagement with Ernestine he moves towards Sarah. At this moment on the path of narrative progression Fowels intrudes into the narrative structure and offers a set of endings. He proudly says his novel has two endings. One ending satisfies the longing of the Victorian readers. In this ending Sarhah accepts Charles as her husband. There is another ending, which is shocking to Victorian readers, but pleasing to postmodern readers. In the second ending Sarah does not accept him and leaves him in the world of eternal loveliness so that he could evolve and asserts his existential self more vigorously. The novel The French Lieutenant's Woman is framed with an open and because Fowles is tentatively indecisive in giving the final conclusive ending. Influenced by this age and radical thoughts in circulation, John Fowles admitted finally that it is risky and ridiculous for a writer to live in the throne of omniscience. The concept regarding the death of the author has become so relevant and practical that authorship has to reject the objective, omniscient point of view. Foucauldian and Barthian concept has enabled to claim for further position. That is why John Fowles has provided multiple endings. He abstained from imposing a monolithic and single ending. By providing more than a single ending John Fowels has experimented with nature of the ending. He wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman to discuss the traditional nature of ending in fiction. Therefore The French Lieutenant's Woman is a brilliant piece of metafiction. John Fowles sets The French Lieutenant Woman in Victorian time. He, surprisingly enough, employees a heroine Sarah Woodruff, who has a typical postmodern cast of mind. By employing a postmodern heroine Sarah in a novel set in Victorian time, John Fowles is actually producing a postmodern version of a Victorian novel. To produce an experimental version of a traditional novel is analogous to writing a metafiction. So The French Lieutenant's Woman is metafiction.So there are different elements of metafiction throughout the novel. The different narrative mode of fiction has presented the novel in the context of 20 th century mode of narration. The used technique of narration has kept the novel in the position of a brilliant example of metafiction. Fowel's mode of narration has presented the novel as the metafiction by interring the writer into the world of fiction. After all Fowel's novel The French Lieutenant Woman is fiction about fiction, metafiction.

4. What do you think are the reasons for the hostility to realism shown by postmodernist writers? Developing realistic philosophy: from critical realism to materialist dialectics By Andrew Brown, University of Leeds

Abstract
This paper compares the (relatively little known) materialist dialectics of E.V. Ilyenkov to the critical realism and dialectical critical realism of Roy Bhaskar. The latter author specifies an ontology of emergence and stratification. He demonstrates that, not only a critique of postmodernism, but an outflanking of much contemporary Marxist work can be achieved on the basis of such an ontology. For example, the new dialectics interpretation of Marx and Hegel (Arthur 1993) remains largely silent on the emergence of thought from material body; yet, critical realism shows that a specification of the mind-body relation is of utmost importance. Not despite, but because of its great strength, the paper undertakes an immanent critique of the critical realist ontology. Drawing upon Ilyenkovs interpretation of Spinoza, the paper argues that the critical realist articulation of stratification and emergence collapses into (essentially Humean) scepticism. The underlying reason for this collapse is argued to be the non-identity of thought and being generated by the critical realist theory of mind. On Ilyenkovs interpretation, Spinozas articulation of mind and body sustains the materialist identity, as well the opposition, of thought and being. Through this identity-of-opposites, the notions of stratification and emergence are preserved but raised to a new conceptual level. Ilyenkovs novel interpretation of Spinoza has far reaching implications. These are illustrated via a brief re-examination of the Marx-Hegel relation.

Introduction
Scepticism and relativism, in the form which will generically be referred to as post-modernism below, dominate much of contemporary academia. Both a basic scepticism as to the possibility of knowledge and a milder scepticism as to the possibility of any grand theory of the modernist type, such as Marxism, is common within the arts, humanities and social sciences. A correspondingly relativistic ethics is also prevalent. Critical realism provides one approach towards a critical appreciation of post-modernism. On the critical realist view, post-modernism is correct to embrace diversity and to recognise the theory-ladeness of observation. Yet, according to critical realist tenets, post-modernism fails to recognise that a mind-independent reality (fallibly knowable) is a necessary presupposition of observation. Indeed, according to critical realism any human act presupposes a reality independent both of concepts and of the senses. Having established the necessity to base philosophy, against post-modernism, upon a firm conception of the mutual irreducibility of subject and object, critical realism claims to overcome all conceptual problems, such as that of scepticism, engendered by that distinction. To make good this claim, critical realism is led to specify, in contradistinction to any reductionist ontology, an ontology of emergence and stratification. Critical realism demonstrates that, not only a critique of post-modernism, but an outflanking of much contemporary Marxist work can be achieved on the basis of such an ontology. To take one example, the recent growth of a new dialectics interpretation of Marx and Hegel remains largely

silent on the emergence of thought from material body, yet critical realism shows that a specification of the mind-body relation is of utmost importance (see Bhaskars comments on Tony Smith in Bhaskar 1993 [Henceforth Dialectic], p. 184 and p. 245). Despite these great strengths of critical realism (or even because of them) the bulk of this paper undertakes an immanent critique of the critical realist ontology. The critique has a negative and a positive aspect. On the negative side, the paper develops the critical realist articulation of emergence and stratification into a flat contradiction. The critical realist emergence theory of mind is shown to be untenable given the fluidity and generality of human action; more generally, the critical realist notion of stratification is shown, as a result of the non-identity of thought and being generated by the flawed theory of mind, to lead to (essentially Humean) scepticism. On the positive side, the basic contradiction of critical realism is overcome: a materialist theory of the identity, as well as the opposition, of thought and being is presented; based on this theory the notions of emergence and stratification are preserved but on a new and higher level than critical realism (this is a fundamental development, supersession or transcendence of critical realism). The materialist and dialectical philosophy that emerges as the positive aspect of the critique (and that inspires the negative aspect) is not well known. Though a materialism, the philosophy does not embrace the reductionist identity theory of mind labelled materialism and adopted by mainstream philosophy (see Searle 1992, Burns 2000 and Bhaskar 1989, ch. 3). Though a materialist dialectics, the philosophy has nothing to do with, indeed is utterly hostile towards, the Stalinist orthodox philosophy which served to give the term dialectical materialism a very bad name. Instead, both the negative and positive aspects of the critique stem from the materialist dialectics developed by the Soviet philosopher E.V. Ilyenkov. In particular, the paper draws heavily upon Ilyenkovs interpretation of Spinoza as providing the abstract foundation of materialist dialectics (Ilyenkov 1977, Essays 1 and 2). Ilyenkovs ideas are little known because he draws upon distinct and isolated debates amongst post-war East European philosophers; debates that flourished under the temporarily relaxed regime of Kruschev, only to be choked when orthodoxy reasserted its rule (Bakhurst 1991; Pilling 1980; Banaji 1979).

Critical Realism and Dialectical Critical Realism: Presentation and Critique

Critical realism is not a settled term and the development of dialectical critical realism has caused controversy amongst critical realists. Having outlined the relevant context of the controversy, and the basic tenets of critical realism, this section goes on to suggest a resolution to the controversy. From the vantage point of the proposed resolution, a critique of the essence of critical realism and dialectical critical realism is then put forward.

The Origins and Theoretical Location of Critical Realism

Critical realism is located by Bhaskar within a loose hierarchy of realisms: realism; scientific realism and critical realism. The terms are ordered by the generality of their meaning so realism includes but is not exhausted by scientific realism which in turn includes but is not exhausted by critical realism. As used by philosophers the term realism does not refer to any particular school or position. Rather, it has a very broad meaning, connoting any philosophy that includes some significant degree of mind-independence of things. Scientific realism is a term pertaining to the philosophy of science (both natural and social). It refers to all positions that assert the independence of the objects of science from scientific practice. Often the criterion for the independence and reality of these objects is their causal power: if a thing causes some effect then it is real. Important authors within this category, from the critical realist perspective, include Hanson (eg. 1963), Harre (eg. 1970) and Hesse (eg. 1974). The origins of critical realism, a subset of scientific realism, will be explained below. The most prominent advocate of critical realism, and author responsible for its original systematisation (though not its sole creator), is Roy Bhaskar. Bhaskar offers a particular realist account of natural science in his A Realist Theory of Science (1975; second edition 1978 [henceforth RTS]) which he terms transcendental realism. He views this account as a synthesis (RTS, p. 9) or systemisation (PON, p. 2) of two strands within the philosophy of science: a scientific realist strand exemplified by the work of the authors mentioned in the previous paragraph and a strand, possibly more widely known, associated with such authors as Kuhn, Popper, Lakatos, Feyerband, etc., emphasising the social character of science and the process of scientific development (these strands are not intended as precise or exhaustive distinctions). He advocates a suitably qualified version of transcendental realism, labelled critical naturalism, to account for social science in his second key book, The Possibility of Naturalism (1979; second edition 1989), drawing upon social theory literature; Althusser being an important influence. Critical naturalism and transcendental realism are now usually drawn together as critical realism (RR, pp. 190-191) which, in turn, has come to designate basic critical realist tenets evident in Bhaskars work, rather than all the detailed arguments of his seminal texts and of his subsequent work (see below). A group of critical realists can be discerned who share, to a greater or lesser extent, these tenets, some of whom may be characterised as directly following Bhaskar (Collier 1994, Lawson 1997, Pratten 1998), others at least clearly engaged in the same research programme within which Bhaskar has become most prominent (Outhwaite 1987, Sayer 1992, Jessop 1995). Some of this group are, or have been in the past, associated with the Radical Philosophy journal around which critical realism first came to prominence in the 1970s (the introduction to Mepham and Ruben 1979 is a useful guide to the journals discourse at the time). There is no hard and fast distinction between scientific realists who can be labelled critical realist and those who cannot. Moreover there is not total agreement within the critical realist group. Rather, there is a continuum of opinion within critical realism which forms part of the wider continuum which is scientific

realism.

Critical Realism and Dialectical Critical Realism

If the foregoing raises the question of just what the basic tenets of critical realism are, given that it is not simply whatever Bhaskar writes, then the development of Bhaskars work from his seminal texts into what he now terms dialectical critical realism (Dialectic; Bhaskar 1994) makes an answer to that question of urgent importance. This is because dialectical critical realism has been given a mixed reception not only outside of critical realism but also within the critical realist community. For one thing, dialectical critical realism is not widely incorporated into contemporary critical realist discourse. An example is provided by Tony Lawson and other critical realist economists, such as Steve Pratten, Steve Fleetwood and Clive Lawson, who mention dialectical critical realism only rarely. Furthermore, there is explicit unease, even hostility, towards dialectical critical realism amongst some critical realists: Joseph (1998) provides a recent and relatively mild example. The presentation below will, in a very stripped down way, affirm Bhaskars own view of the nature of critical realism and of dialectical critical realism. In short, the basic tenets of critical realism are two-fold: positively, the ontological notions of stratification and emergence; negatively, the critique of Western thought in terms of the so called epistemic fallacy. The basic tenet of dialectical critical realism is the notion of real absence (this provides a second critique of Western thought in terms of ontological monovalence which is simply refers to the lack of a concept of real absence). With Bhaskar, it will be argued that the notion of real absence is implicit in the basic tenets of critical realism. The notion crystallises and clarifies those tenets; its development deepens and extends them to yield dialectical critical realism. Thus dialectical critical realism is indeed the deepening and enrichment of critical realism that Bhaskar declares it to be (Dialectic, p. xiii).

Basic Tenets of Critical Realism: Stratification and Emergence

The key notions for the critical realist ontology are that of emergence and stratification (Collier 1989, 1994 provides important discussions of emergence additional to those scattered throughout Bhaskars work). These notions provide an answer to a simple question: what is the relation between the different objects of science such as sub-atomic entities, atoms, molecules, cells, neurons, minds and social structures? One prominent answer to this question is that defining reductionism. On the reductionist view, only one set of objects of science truly exist such that all other objects are completely reducible to these ultimate entities and so do not really exist. Given the list above, then the ultimate entities are sub-atomic; all the other objects listed are no more than an agglomeration of sub-atomic phenomena and so have no real or causal status. Another answer, particularly associated with dualist theories of the relation between mind and body, is that

two (or more, in which case the answer could be deemed pluralist) of the objects listed above (such as mind and body) both exist but do so entirely independently of one another such that they have no necessary relation. The critical realist notions of stratification and emergence reject both the reductionist and the dualist or pluralist conceptions. On the critical realist view, the different objects of science are real; established as such by their causal power. Thus reductionism is rejected. At the same time, necessary relations hold between the different objects such that dualism or pluralism is rejected. The relations between different objects of science are characterised by critical realism in terms of strata. Take the important example of the emergence of mind from body (see PON, ch. 3). According to critical realism, some, as yet little understood, (presumably neurological) structure of the brain and central nervous system [CNS] exists at one stratum of reality. Thoughts exist at another stratum of reality. Although science, as yet, understands little of the processes involved, the relation between the (little known) neurological stratum and that of thoughts is one of emergence. Thought is a real and emergent power of some complex neurological structure of the brain and CNS. This means that, without the brain and CNS, thoughts would not exist but that, at the same time, the brain and CNS are not identical to thoughts. Rather, thoughts emerge from some (as yet unknown) neurological structure; this structure is the real essence of thought. In critical realist terminology the stratum of thought is emergent from the (presumably) neurological stratum below it, and yet rooted in that stratum. Bhaskar dubs his theory of mind synchronic emergent powers materialism [SEPM]. The notions of rootedness and emergence hold for all strata. The basic conception of stratification and emergence outlined above is intuitively appealing, especially since the invocation of any such stratified ontology is conspicuous by its absence from the mainstream philosophy and philosophy of science literature most familiar to social scientists. The absence is explained by critical realism in terms of an adherence by the mainstream to the epistemic fallacy. This is the negative defining tenet of critical realism. Bhaskar claims that, in general, Western philosophy has tacitly, or otherwise, considered statements about reality to be identical with or, at least, reducible to, statements about knowledge of reality. The irreducible difference between knowledge and its object, substantiated by SEPM, reveals such a view to be fallacious. The fact that knowledge is constituted by concepts and sensations does not mean that all of reality is so constituted. Any ontology must refer to more than just sensations and concepts, it must also refer to the real objects outside of thought. SEPM establishes that the real essence of thought is some (presumably neural) structure of the brain and CNS. This is an essence very different to that of the objects of thought such as electrons, atoms, molecules, etc. In this almost trivial and yet fundamental way, thought is non-identical with, or non-isomorphic to, its object (a reflection theory of knowledge is ruled out). Thus, the objects of thought are essentially independent of the process by which thought attempts to grasp them (though, crucially for this process, they may causally interact with thought). Therefore, statements referring to real objects (ontological statements) are not the same as, nor derivable from, statements referring to the process of knowledge acquisition (epistemological statements). It is an epistemic fallacy to consider otherwise.

Having outlined the defining tenets critical realism, it remains to compare these tenets to the defining tenet of dialectical critical realism. Firstly, it will be helpful to elaborate upon the critical realist notion of stratification. Then it will be possible to show how the basic tenet of dialectical critical realism - the notion of real absence - actually crystallises and clarifies the basic tenets critical realism. Finally, a consideration of the general dialectical critical realist understanding of processes, will introduce the new terrain that the notion of real absence encompasses. Thus dialectical critical realism will be argued to preserve and develop critical realism.

The External Relation of Strata in Critical Realism

On the basic critical realist conception a lower stratum, such as the neurological stratum, provides the condition of existence of the stratum above it. As such the higher or emergent stratum is necessarily related to the root stratum. On the other hand, the root stratum can exist without the higher stratum; it is not necessary for the entities at the lower stratum to produce the higher stratum - neurons do not necessarily come together to produce thought; equally, hydrogen and oxygen do not always combine to produce water. Thus, from this perspective, the relation between an emergent and a root stratum is asymmetrically internal. The higher stratum is necessarily (internally) related to the lower stratum but the lower stratum is only contingently (externally) related to the higher stratum. In fact, a move beyond this basic critical realist understanding of stratification reveals that the relationships between critical realist strata are subtle and complex. Collier, for example, distinguishes three different types of possible relationship (ontological presupposition, vertical explanation and composition). Below, a sense in which a higher stratum can be considered external to the stratum from which it emerges will be developed. Clearly, this is a different sense of external to that employed above. The two senses of the term external are complementary to one another, in this case, despite the apparent contradiction between them. This subtle development of the critical realist conception opens the way for the subsequent presentation of dialectical critical realism, and of the relationship of dialectical critical realism to critical realism. It is helpful to start from a familiar type of relationship, as exemplified by the landlord - tenant relationship. This is an oft used exemplar of social relationships in critical realist literature (other typical examples include wage labour - capital and husband - wife). In this type of relationship one pole of the relation implies the other pole: thus, the notion of a landlord implies the notion of a tenant and the existence of a landlord implies the existence of a tenant. Note that the implication holds for both thought and reality. It is possible to consider the notion of landlord without explicitly recognising the necessary relation to a tenant but that notion must be at least implicit. In other words, it is impossible to grasp adequately one pole of this type of relationship without grasping the other pole adequately. The critical realist conception of the relationship between strata (most clearly, natural strata) can be understood in contrast to the type of relationship just outlined. On the critical realist view, a set of powers at a higher stratum, such as, for example, the powers of water (eg. boiling at 100 degrees,

transparency, ability to quench a thirst, etc.) can be understood adequately without any knowledge implicit or explicit - of the structure, at the stratum below, that generates these powers (H2O as it turns out, in the case of water). Thus, the notion of a molecular structure, such as H2O, is, initially, no more than a scientific hypothesis competing with other hypotheses to explain observed powers such as those of water. Water, its powers (transparency, boiling point, etc.), has first to be grasped adequately before the stratum below is uncovered (before H2O is brought to light). There is nothing explicit or implicit in the adequate notion of powers at the higher stratum that enables the scientist to single out a unique underlying structure defining a new stratum. Instead, it is the task, ultimately, of scientific experiment to evaluate alternative hypotheses; hypotheses that may, without experiment, remain equally plausible. In this specific sense the higher stratum can be said to be external to its root. This sense follows from the basic non-identity or non-isomorphism between concept and object, outlined above. For, this non-identity entails a view of the fallibility of knowledge that precludes an explicitly or implicitly necessary (one-to-one) connection between current knowledge and new knowledge.

The Stratified Ontology of Dialectical Critical Realism

The subtlety of the critical realist notion of stratification is well captured and developed by dialectical critical realism; or so it is argued below. The sense in which the relation between a higher (emergent) and lower (root) stratum is external gains suitably nuanced recognition through the following closely related features of dialectical critical realism (all recurrent themes in Dialectic): the emphasis on difference over unity; the stress on totalities which are subordinate, partial, open or incomplete; the non-linearity of the critical realist dialectic; the corresponding polemic against Hegel and cognitive triumphialism; more generally, the notion of real absence as the keystone of dialectical critical realism. These related features are considered in turn below. It is well known that the relation between unity and difference is granted some considerable importance within the dialectical tradition. The critical realist stratified ontology provides a particular slant on this aspect of dialectics. The notion of stratification gives substance to the dialectical notions of unity and difference. On the one hand, as equal members of the same hierarchy, strata have an aspect of unity (dualism or pluralism is rejected). On the other hand, the strata are not the same as, nor reducible to, one another; they have an aspect of difference (reductionism is rejected). The question then arises: is unity or difference of greater weight or significance? The discussion above emphasised that there is nothing explicitly or implicitly present in an adequate conception of the emergent stratum that connects it uniquely to the conception of the root stratum. Each stratum is constituted by its own sui generis causal powers (and liabilities) which are, as detailed above, adequately conceptualised in isolation from any concept of the root stratum. This is a matter of ontological significance. For, if an adequate concept of the emergent stratum does not require the presence of a concept of the root stratum, then, in reality, there is nothing present in the emergent stratum connecting it to the root stratum. Because of this then it is the aspect of difference that requires emphasis within the critical realist ontology. At the same time it is clear that the

dialectical critical realist emphasis on difference is just that: an emphasis rather than an absolute dichotomy. This stress upon difference is counterposed by Bhaskar to Hegels alleged overemphasis on unity arising (according to the interpretation of Bhaskar offered here) from Hegels failure to recognise that the sui generis emergent powers can be comprehended adequately in relative isolation. A second well known and much contested theme within the dialectical tradition, closely related to that of unity and difference, is that of totality. Once again the critical realist stratified ontology lends itself to a particular slant on this issue. Whereas Hegel allegedly champions a notion of one single, all-encompassing and complete totality, Bhaskar argues for a conception of multiple totalities which may be subordinate, partial, open or incomplete. The critical realist conception of stratification contributes to Bhaskars argument in at least two ways. Firstly, the sense in which a higher stratum is externally related to a lower stratum entails that there could, in principle, be an infinite number of strata below any given strata; these strata could be related in all manner of different ways and there is no reason why their character should be shaped primarily by the totality of their relations. Indeed, given that they can be grasped adequately in relative isolation then an all encompassing totality must be of secondary significance. Secondly, the point that a lower stratum is externally related to a higher stratum ensures that there is always the possibility, indeed likelihood, of newly emergent strata (most importantly, the possibility of new social structures brought about by human agency), so that the real totality is forever incomplete and open. The question of the linearity or otherwise of the dialectic is most easily grasped in terms of epistemological issues regarding the nature of the development of knowledge. Does knowledge display a single line of development or is it inherently multifaceted and uneven? Such epistemological considerations are addressed below. It is specifically ontological notions that are under consideration here. In ontological terms, the critical realist and dialectical critical realist stress on difference - the sense in which a stratum is such that it can be grasped in relative isolation - lends itself to the view that the relation between strata is not that of a linear development of one single thing or substance rather it is non-linear; it is a leap from one thing to another, reflected in the leap from a concept of a higher stratum to the concept of its root. Finally, the keystone of dialectical critical realism, the notion of real absence, expresses with precision the subtle nature of the relation between strata within critical realism as elaborated above. The term absence is germane because it expresses precisely (and in contradistinction to Hegel) that there is, or need be, nothing explicitly or implicitly present in a given stratum that is intrinsically connected to the lower stratum. The complementary sense in which a higher stratum is necessarily related to its root, despite the emphasis on difference, is expressed through the dialectical critical realist view that the absence of lower or higher strata is itself a matter of ontology; absences are real. Bhaskar expresses this idea most succinctly - if apparently contradictorily - in the view that the absence from a given stratum of the lower and higher stratum is a case of the presence of an absence. As in the case of linearity, the motivation for the notion of real absence can best be understood from the perspective of the critical realist epistemology.

This is because the move to epistemology entails consideration of the process of scientific development and the notion of real absence is key to the dialectical critical realist understanding of any process (in terms of dialectical critical realism, the move from a focus on the notion of stratification to a focus upon the notion of process is a move from the first moment of dialectical critical realism to the second edge of dialectical critical realism). Once epistemology has been considered it will be possible to present the broader features of Bhaskars polemic against Hegel and to summarise critical realism and dialectical critical realism.

The Critical Realist and Dialectical Critical Realist Epistemology

The critical realist notion of stratification yields a conception of the nature of science and scientific progress (a conception first developed in RTS). On the critical realist conception, the process of scientific development consists in the theoretical move from an effect, at one stratum, to its cause at the stratum below. The sharp distinction between each stratum entails that new knowledge is not intrinsic to current knowledge; instead, new knowledge requires the effects of new strata to be perceived, at first indirectly. It is the task of scientific experiment to isolate these effects (creating a closure). Once isolated, then old knowledge does become important. It is not the intrinsic meaning of old knowledge which is of use. Rather, old knowledge provides the scientist with analogies and metaphors and the like. In the face of unexplained phenomena, scientists borrow concepts and models from established fields and stretch, distanciate or distort their meaning in order to produce hypotheses of fundamentally new strata to be, in turn, empirically tested. This process is retroduction in critical realist terminology. Dialectical critical realism retains the critical realist conception of scientific method and progress (see, especially, Dialectic, ch. 1). The dialectical critical realist epistemological dialectic is little more, in this case, than a gloss on the critical realist analysis. The dialectical critical realist notion of absence, highly flexible in its meaning, is introduced to stand in for both the absence from knowledge (explicit or implicit) and for the corresponding absence from actual events and the perception of those events, of deeper strata. It is thereby possible to view the process of science as driven by absence. Scientists are driven to overcome (to absent) the anomalies, surprises and the like that arise at a particular level of stratification - these anomalies must themselves be conceived of as absences from knowledge, and from actuality, of deeper strata. The process of science thus provides one instance of the general dialectical critical realist comprehension of process in terms of absence and of, in particular, human development as the absenting of absence. The crucial point Bhaskar makes is that, given this view, absences must have ontological status and not just epistemological status, ie. absences must be real; any other way, the reality of processes in general would have to be denied and they would have to be considered as no more than constructions of the mind. Scientific development provides also an example of the non-linearity of the dialectical critical realist dialectic. The non-linearity of the epistemological dialectic is reflected in the continual

distanciation and stretching of old concepts and models indicating that the development of new knowledge is by no means a smooth and intrinsic development of old knowledge.

Summary
Critical realism and dialectical critical realism are usefully summarised through Bhaskars critique of Hegel. Bhaskar, in Dialectic, finds a catalogue of philosophical errors in the Hegelian dialectic. Hegel is alleged to overemphasise unity; absolutise totality; linearise the dialectic; identify thought and being; and ultimately to deny the reality of absence. Hegel is further castigated by Bhaskar for his alleged anthropomorphic view that totality of strata are known or fully knowable. Such cognitive triumphialism must, according to critical realism, be scotched: the non-identity of subject and object ensures that there is no reason why all being must be conceivable being, let alone why all being must be conceived of already; the open totality ensures that there is always the possibility, indeed likelihood, of newly emergent strata (most importantly, the possibility of new social structures brought about by human agency), so that reality is forever incomplete and inherently impossible to grasp fully. There is not, it has been argued, any great gulf between critical realism and dialectical critical realism. On the contrary, dialectical critical realism clarifies, deepens, enriches, broadens and develops critical realism. The notion of real absence is key to this argument. Below, critical realism and dialectical critical realism will be subjected to an immanent critique which is simple and yet, it will be argued, fundamental.

Immanent Contradiction of the Critical Realist Notions of Stratification and Emergence

One simple possibility serves to lead the critical realist open stratified ontology into contradiction. The ontology must embrace the possible existence of a structure (or force) which will cause, at some future date, the characteristic behaviour or defining tendencies of other structures to change. In other words the ontology opens up the possibility of a structure (or force) that will cause present scientific laws to cease to exist. This possible structure can be termed, metaphorically, a time bomb. The time bomb structure envisaged here does not destroy objects in accordance with the known laws of nature as would a literal time bomb, rather it destroys the world as known to science, by ending the laws of nature known by science. Though not yet discovered, the time bomb could be located at a deeper stratum than hitherto uncovered by science; or it could be newly emergent; or it could be simply an isolated and, as yet, undetected entity. Bhaskars entire polemical argument for an open totality and his stress on difference provides no coherent response to the sceptical consequences of the time bomb possibility, as will be explained below. An intuitive critical realist response would be to argue that a time bomb structure is possible but unlikely. The existence of such a peculiar structure would seem a remote possibility given that all fundamental laws have, apparently, not changed in the past, and no structure likely to bring about

such change has ever been discovered. Now, it should be stressed that the validity of this basic response as such is not what is at issue. Rather, the question is whether or not the critical realist (or dialectical critical realist) notion of a stratified ontology can validate the response. The answer is, quite simply, that it cannot. There is nothing within the critical realist notion of stratification that requires a finite set of strata to exist; nor is their anything that entails that all strata should be knowable (nor even potentially knowable) the stress on openness and difference entails quite the contrary. Therefore there is no basis in the critical realist notion of stratification to even deem unlikely the existence of a time bomb structure and no basis, if such a structure does exist, for science to ascertain when it might go off until the structure is actually discovered. The fact that a time bomb has not yet been detected, and has not gone off, has no bearing on the possible existence of such a structure, given that there could always exist as yet undetected structures. Science must, on this view, admit ignorance. But if science can have no idea regarding such important matters then it cannot claim anything but ignorance as to the future nature of reality. Science is helpless to affirm or deny the proposition that all the laws currently known could cease to exist at any moment. In these circumstances the claim that science currently, if fallibly, grasps some of reality - real objects, structures, natural causes or natural necessity - must be considered bogus; current knowledge merely staves off our ignorance (Hume); science does not access fundamental causes and scientific knowledge has no rational justification. Present knowledge that is entirely ignorant of the nature of the world (its underlying structures and mechanisms) in the immediate future is not knowledge at all. In the face of this immanent contradiction a critical realist response might be to rule out any time bomb structure on the grounds that the possibility of such a structure generates scepticism. It is well known that any attempted statement of scepticism is inconsistent since statements are based on reason and scepticism undermines reason (RTS). However, a move to rule out any time bomb would lead the critical realist and dialectical realist ontology into a self-contradiction of a different nature. For, SEPM (from which the whole stratified ontology was derived above) entails that the relation between real causal structures and thought is non-isomorphic and causal, ie. structures are independent of, and causal upon, the subject. This mind-independence ensures that the nature of structures is entirely independent of the (epistemological) question of whether, and to what extent, they are knowable by humans. In other words, mind-independence entails that all being is not necessarily conceivable contra the alleged cognitive triumphialism of Hegel (see above). Yet, to rule out a time bomb structure is to assert that all being is, not only conceivable, but actually conceived of, if only in a negative sense, ie. it is an assertion that (somehow) scientists know that no aspect of being is a time bomb structure. Furthermore, such a contradictory move would raise the question of just what it is that prevents the time bomb. Given the critical realist ontology, then some mysterious and omniscient force would be needed to ensure that a time bomb does not form anywhere in the universe; God being the only candidate. The fact that science has, in fact, taken place, and continues to do so, does not constitute evidence against the existence of a time bomb. The apparent fact of scientific practice up until now implies, at most, that a time bomb has not been discovered or gone off up until now. This provides no

rational warrant for invoking the God-like force preventing a time bomb from existing and going off in the future (this point echoes Hume once again). In sum, critical realism cannot escape the contradiction at its very heart. The non-isomorphic and causal relation between thought and its object leads to the self-contradictory notion that a time bomb structure could exist somewhere in the universe. The attempt to rule out the time bomb structure, on the ground that it leads to scepticism, flatly contradicts the non-isomorphic and causal relation of thought and its object. There is no way out for critical realism. Spinozas view, by upholding an isomorphism of thought and object, overcomes the contradiction of critical realism and dialectical critical realism and, in so doing, provides coherent notions of emergence and stratification, as will be explained below.

Spinozas Transcendence of Critical Realism and Dialectical Critical Realism

This section draws upon Ilyenkovs interpretation of Spinoza (Ilyenkov 1977, Essays 1 and 2) in order to transcend Bhaskars philosophy. It is argued that, in effect, Spinoza reconstructs SEPM fundamentally so as to overcome self-contradiction and provide a materialist identity of thought and being. Furthermore, Spinozas view is shown to develop so as to sustain notions of emergence and stratification on higher level than critical realism, such that the Humean critique is overcome. Finally, Marxs and Hegels respective critical developments of Spinoza are discussed briefly and, from this discussion, new light is shed on the vexed question of the Marx-Hegel relation.

Immanent Contradiction of SEPM

Bhaskar provides a criterion of mind, drawn from analytical philosophy, that bolsters SEPM by indicating that thought does indeed generate a distinctive activity: An entity x may be said to possess a mind at time t if and only if it is the case that it possesses at t the capacity either to acquire or to exercise the acquired ability to creatively manipulate symbols (PON, p. 81). However, consideration of the essential features of the distinct activity generated by thought - features recognised within critical realism but not explicitly considered as part of Bhaskars discussion of SEPM - reveals a contradiction. The distinctive feature of the thinking body is that it modifies its schema (mode) of action so as to accord with the activity of other objects. In other words, the thinking body must choose to act upon ideas that, as Sayer (1992) puts it, are practically adequate. Though uncontroversial, this distinctive feature of human activity contradicts the notions of emergence and stratification that are tied to SEPM. For, the distinctive activity associated with the stratum of thought is not, in an important sense, distinctive at all; instead, thought essentially generates a schema of activity which accords with, or mirrors, the schema of other objects so of other strata; a mode of activity which is not fixed to any particular schema of its own but continually and fluidly transforming so as to accord with the many diverse activities of other objects. The critical realist view that, for every stratum, there is a unique structure and correspondingly unique activity, is contradicted; thought generates activity in accordance with,

rather than distinct from, all other strata. This contradiction is no mere peculiarity, rather it has ramifications that lead the very notion of SEPM into contradiction. For, the activity of the thinking body is not fixed to a limited range of objects. Rather, the thinking body continually strives to embrace any object that it may come into contact with. The activity of the thinking body thus has a universal character in contradistinction to the particular activities of non-thinking bodies. This means that the search for some inner structural essence of thought must be fruitless because the associated activity is, precisely, not fixed and so can have no fixed structural determination (limitation). Any structural essence of thought, as postulated by SEPM, would have to be Godlike; a miracle structure, containing equivalent structural complexity to all other strata - a structure equivalent, in the limit, to the universe, packed somewhere within one brain (and central nervous system); a structure that would, in other words, contradict the very principle of structural determination. It was the impossibility of any inner structural essence that led Descartes (on Ilyenkovs interpretation) to argue that thought instead belongs to a separate substance, viz. mind. In this way, Ilyenkov makes Descartes a far more formidable opponent of Bhaskar (and other contemporary thinkers) than is often recognised. Still, and as is well known, Descartes could not explain how two things with nothing essential in common, mind and matter, interact and accord with one another. So in the final analysis Descartes could not provide an account of mind and body any more rational than SEPM. He ultimately took refuge in God to connect what cannot conceivably be connected. On Ilyenkovs interpretation it was Spinoza who first overcame rationally the contradiction of SEPM and of Cartesian dualism.

Transcendence of SEPM
The simple point Spinoza makes is that what has emerged in the case of thought and human activity is not a power underlain by a fixed structure. Rather, the complex structural constitution of the thinking body is characterised by the ability of self-transformation. The activity of the thinking body is not forever fixed by its structural constitution because its structure is just so designed as to be capable of self-transformation over time. The (as yet little understood) inner bodily structural constitution associated with thought is forever changing itself in order to produce activity in accordance with more and more external objects. This immediately raises the question of how this self-transformation can be directed so as to produce such activity. Spinozas answer to this question is presented below. Firstly, it is instructive to consider the critical realist notion of the real essence of thought in the light of the argument thus far. The self-transformation of the inner bodily structure associated with thought entails that the mode of activity generated by thought is not delimited by this inner structure. Rather, the mode of activity generated by thought is delimited only by the objects of thought. In order to disclose, and explain, the characteristic behaviour generated by thought it is to the relationship between human activity and that of the real objects of the universe that the scientist (or philosopher) must turn. In contrast to the case of non-thinking bodies, the characteristic mode of activity of the thinking body, the true

potential and power of thought, cannot be comprehended in isolation from the rest of the universe. The powers of thought cannot be delineated fully at one relatively isolated stratum, as can the powers of non-thinking bodies such as water. Rather, the full powers of thought are far from our current comprehension (given that the real objects so far encountered by humanity are few in number relative to the infinite universe). Nor, therefore, can the move be made to some determinate underlying structure from which thoughts emerge. There is no real essence of thought analogous to H2O, as the real essence of water. Critical realism is correct to view thought as enabled by some underlying structure of the brain and CNS. But critical realism is incorrect to view thought as in any way constrained by that underlying structure. For, the underlying structure is itself subordinate to the imperative of self-transformation over time so as to accommodate real objects. In no sense is the underlying inner structure the real essence of thought. How, then, is the inner structural transformation directed so as to enable activity in accordance with external objects? Spinozas answer is again simple. The thinking body must have the emergent faculty of self-awareness. The significance of self-awareness is not as some sort of inner tap to knowledge (as in the common interpretation of rationalist philosophy) rather the thinking body is aware of its own (outer) spatial bodily activity. Such self-awareness entails a profound shift in the understanding of the relationship between ideas and human activity, as compared to SEPM, to be explained below. The thinking body is an active material body, amongst other active material bodies, and so, through its spatial activity, the thinking body comes into direct contact with other objects. The faculty of self-awareness of spatial activity is the key that enables the thinking body to turn such direct contact into direct acquaintance with the object. It is well known that the senses, on their own, do not provide such direct acquaintance (this is the theory-ladeness of observation). By acting spatially and transforming its schema of action when external objects intervene it is possible for the thinking body to achieve and recognise an identity between its own spatial activity and that of external objects. To give an elementary example: by describing a circle in space with its hand the human body achieves a direct identity between itself and all external objects in the shape or trajectory of a circle. According to Spinoza, an adequate idea of an object is then nothing but the self-awareness of the spatial activity of the body identical in shape (isomorphic) to the object. In effect, Spinoza provides a fundamental reworking or reconstruction of SEPM demanding a profound reorientation on the part of any adherent of SEPM. On Spinozas reworking, the spatial mode of activity of the thinking body is not caused by the ideas of that body. It is true that, without ideas, intentional human activity would not be possible but this does not justify Bhaskars view that ideas are a distinct stratum causal upon human activity; on this road the contradiction raised above is inevitable. Rather, the ideal consists in awareness of the spatial mode of activity of the body. It follows that the spatial and ideal are two different expressions of the mode of activity of the thinking body. In other words the mode of activity of the thinking body has a double expression; an inner expression in ideas and an outer expression in the mode of spatial activity of the body. This being characterised as a mode of activity in accordance with, potentially, any object. It is important to note that Spinoza has introduced no element that is wholly new or absent from SEPM;

both Spinoza and Bhaskar employ concepts such as emergence, ideas, self-awareness, practical adequacy, language, sensation, etc. All Spinoza has done is reworked or reconstructed these elements so as to fathom their interconnection and to overcome the contradiction into which Bhaskar falls. To clarify the argument it may help to couch it in the terminology of dialectics and so relate it specifically to dialectical critical realism. In the language of dialectical critical realism, SEPM is the foundation for the general non-identity - most fundamentally of thought and being - which is the starting point of dialectical critical realism (see Dialectic, p. 3 and, also, section 2, above). In dialectical terms, the critique of SEPM presented above shows that Bhaskar does not push the nonidentity of thought and object to the absolute opposition between universal (mode of activity of the thinking body) and particular (activities of external bodies). He therefore fails to recognise the contradiction of a particular structure (that underlying thought) generating potentially universal activity (activity in accordance with all external objects) - the contradiction noted, but not overcome, by Descartes. Spinoza achieves the transcendence of this contradiction by rationally reconstructing the aspects of SEPM to demonstrate the identity of thought and the objects of thought. Thus Spinoza demonstrates an identity of opposites no more difficult to grasp than the identity that holds between a circle described by hand and all external objects in the shape or trajectory of a circle. Far from being idealist, the identity of thought and being arises through the materialist transcendence of the contradiction harboured within SEPM.

Spinozas Notions of Emergence and Stratification

As outlined above, thought is, for Spinoza, a fully material mode of activity that accords with, in the limit, all objects in the universe. Though human thought is, of course, a very long way from reaching this limit and according adequately to the whole universe (it is imperfect in Spinozas terminology) it consists, nevertheless, in a continual striving towards this limit and embraces fluidly any object which it may come across. Thought has, then, a universal character or potential; a universalising drive. This distinguishing feature of thought presupposes that the diverse objects of nature, according to which the thinking body acts, must have a universal and essential aspect. If it is true that the thinking body acts in accordance with any object, and also according to a unified schema, then all objects must have an underlying unity; a unity that is manifested, or exists, in their very diversity and plurality. For, it is only if objects have an essential unity that thought as such (thought as a single universalising mode of activity as opposed to merely a set of different activities or a single, isolated mode of activity like any other) is possible at all. Notice that, without a universal aspect to objects, thought could not display the flexibility and fluidity that it does in fact display. The explanation of the structural constitution of thought as selftransforming would fail and Cartesian dualism would indeed be impossible to overcome. For, this explanation requires that the thinking body moulds or transforms its current mode of activity in order to accommodate new objects; the thinking body does not start from scratch every time a new object is encountered, rather it adapts the modes of activity that it has already learnt. The universal principles of thought can, then, be nothing but the reflections of the universal essence (called

substance by Spinoza) of the diverse objects of Nature (the universe). Clearly, the argument above is preliminary and in need of elaboration. In particular, the argument begs the question: as what are the manifestly diverse objects of the universe somehow united? The self-transformation of thought can only be understood to reflect Nature if unity exists in Nature; but does such unity exist and in what does it consist? Spinozas answer to this question arises as a corollary of his overcoming of the Humean critique of natural necessity (a critique which, it was argued above, Bhaskar fails to overcome). It is to natural necessity, and a little known or understood basis for, and conception of, the notions of stratification and emergence that the argument below turns.

Natural Necessity
Critical realism makes the correct and profound observation that the objects of science are (stratified) structures and their corresponding modes of activity. Accordingly, critical realism goes on, apparently quite plausibly, to identify necessity (natural necessity) with each individual structure (and corresponding mode of activity), or more generally, with each stratum. Necessity, on this view, is comprehended once the underlying structure and mechanism is uncovered and defined. Yet, as shown in section 2, above, this conception is ultimately derailed in Humean fashion. For, to argue that necessity resides in a specific structure is to beg the question of how the structure itself arises; to fail, in fact, to show that the structure necessarily exists at all and to leave out of view any necessary development further to its necessary process of formation. It is to leave the scientist as merely describing structures and modes of activity rather than explaining them; their necessary origins, development and possible demise. The critique in section 2, above, demonstrated, through the invocation of the time bomb possibility, that the result of this lack of necessity turns out to be no knowledge of the immediate future and so no natural necessity of the sort accessible to human knowledge at all. But wherein can necessary existence be conferred on an object or strata? Can Hume be overcome? Given the basic principle that critical realism recognises, but fails to uphold, the principle of structural mode of activity (in essence the principle of matter-in-motion), then consideration of structural interaction over greater and greater stretches of space and time reveals a greater and greater likelihood of definite strata existing. Definite strata must exist, with absolute necessity, not everywhere, nor for all periods of time, but somewhere, at sometime. Take, for example, the key issue of the existence of thought. Any given thinking body has, quite clearly, arisen from masses of chains of cause and effect which could equally have produced, say, a tree or a stone. Thus each thinking human being, indeed, the human species as a whole, has no necessity to arise; its origin was, in fact, determined step by step but this is just a chance occurrence that may just as well not have happened and need never happen again. However, though it is true that any particular person, or indeed human thought in general, does not of necessity arise, it is reasonable to assume that thought as such, rather than the specific form of human thought, is necessarily produced by the infinite Real totality. It is not necessary, given the complexity of thought, that thinking bodies take the precise form

(structural constitution) of humanity, but it is necessary that, through some or other structural constitution, a thinking body - a body capable of reflection to the same or to a greater degree than humans - will occur. Thus necessity, absolute necessity, resides in the fact that space and time are infinite. Formally, and conceptually, the probability of strata existing somewhere, at sometime, in the infinite universe has a magnitude of, precisely, one (signifying absolute inevitability). This is because the magnitude of probability is defined as a (mathematical) limit as a number of trials or experiments approaches infinity. For this reason, Real infinite Nature is the notion upon which Spinozas concept of necessity hinges. Spinoza calls this all embracing totality, substance or God and the finite things within it, forms of matter.

The Relation Between Strata

Spinozas recognition of substance entails a different concept of the relation between strata to that of critical realism. In contrast to the critical realist view, strata are unambiguously (and symmetrically) internally related; they are necessary developments or transformations of one another. A higher stratum is a necessary development of a lower stratum. A lower stratum necessarily develops into a higher stratum. Though it is quite clearly not necessary that a lower stratum, such as defined by chemical elements, should always and everywhere develop the structures underlying the powers at the higher stratum, such as the powers of water, it is absolutely necessary that somewhere, sometime, in the infinity of the universe, a lower stratum will develop all the powers of the higher stratum. So, taking three broad ranges of strata, it can be said that the structures and modes of behaviour of inanimate bodies will necessarily, somewhere, sometime, develop into the structure and modes of behaviour of living bodies; furthermore, these emergent bodies - their structures and modes of behaviour - will necessarily develop into thought; not everywhere but somewhere at some time. With Spinoza, as with critical realism, there is a clear distinction of real structures, together with their characteristic modes of behaviour (mechanisms), from any actual and conjuncturally determined object or event. In turn, there is a clear distinction of actual events from their observation by humans (underpinned by the reworking of SEPM elaborated above). The chasm between critical realism and Spinozas conception lies in their distinct respective views of natural necessity and the corresponding understanding of stratification. Critical realism and dialectical critical realism stress multiple essences, anti-foundationalism, open, incomplete, partial and subordinate totalities, and stress difference over unity (see above). All this is counterposed by Bhaskar to Hegels alleged closure and over emphasis on unity. Yet Bhaskars position collapses to Humean scepticism (if the critique above is accepted). Moreover, this collapse occurs, it can now be seen, just because of the failure to recognise one single, infinite Reality, ie. the failure to recognise what Spinoza calls substance. With every word of his critique of the notion of all encompassing totality, Bhaskar simply hammers another nail into the coffin of (his notion of) natural necessity and so of rationality. Spinozas notion of stratification overcomes both Humean scepticism and Bhaskars (in any case self-contradictory) critique of the notion of an all encompassing unity. Just as Bhaskar recognises

that objects and events are a contingent conjunctures of strata, so does Spinoza. Only, Spinoza is actually able to sustain his philosophy without collapsing to Humean scepticism because, unlike Bhaskar, he recognises that strata are necessary developments of one another and, as such, eternal potentia (attributes) of a single unified totality (substance). Any object is a contingent conjuncture of necessarily related strata and, as such, must be comprehended as a specific form of matter. As matter objects are identical, united; as specific forms of matter they are different. Unity and difference are inseparably bound up in any object such that unity and difference require equal emphasis in contradistinction to dialectical critical realism: any object is, then, precisely a unity of unity and difference. What does the above imply for the dialectical critical realist notion of absence? It has been shown above that, unlike dialectical critical realism, Spinoza understands objects, and their concepts, as having an implicit aspect of unity, as being internally related to the Real infinite totality. Thus the infinite totality is not completely absent from a given stratum. Neither the critical realist view that a stratum can be grasped in isolation from the stratum below nor the view that the existence of one stratum must everywhere imply the existence of the emergent stratum (as the existence of a landlord must everywhere imply the existence of a tenant), is entailed in Spinozas conception. Spinoza recognises that a lower stratum can exist without developing into a higher stratum, as does Bhaskar, but, unlike Bhaskar, Spinoza also recognises that the lower stratum must develop into the higher stratum somewhere, at sometime. In this sense, the higher stratum is implicit in the lower stratum, both conceptually and in reality. Thus strata are always inherent potentia of the present; they are implicit in the present and not absent from it. The dialectical critical realist notion of real absence would destroy the crucial features of Spinozas view, the implicit and eternal presence of all attributes of substance (strata).

Epistemology
Spinozas epistemology can usefully be presented in terms of the litmus test for philosophy proposed by critical realism. From RTS onwards, Bhaskar, and many other critical realists have staked the worth of their view on its ability to sustain an intelligible conception of science (Lawson 1997, pp. 58-61, provides a particularly clear statement to this effect). The challenge for alternative views has always been to better the critical realist conception of the ontology presupposed by scientific practice (an ontology that Bhaskar claims in Dialectic to be presupposed by any human act whatsoever). And, while modestly holding out the possibility, indeed likelihood, that critical realism may one day be superseded, critical realists remain convinced that at least something like the basic critical realist stratified ontology must be true, given the nature of scientific practice. If the foregoing shows the critical realist ontology to be untenable so failing the litmus test, and that Spinozas philosophy may, at first sight, appear to be something like critical realism but is in fact on an altogether higher level, then it still remains to be demonstrated that Spinoza can pass the litmus test and uphold scientific practice. This demonstration is carried out below. As detailed in section 2, above, critical realism conceives of scientific progress in terms of the process of retroduction. Scientists borrow models from established fields elsewhere and stretch, distanciate or distort their meaning in order to produce hypotheses of fundamentally

new strata to be empirically tested. Spinozas conception does not deny that a process such as retroduction is highly evident in science and that analogy, metaphor, etc., is a ubiquitous scientific phenomenon. The success of critical realism lies in part, no doubt, on its detailed description of these surface features of science. However, the notion of dialectical logic opened up by Spinozas view is most emphatically not merely a logic of analogy and metaphor; it is a mistake to view scientists as being led by such a logic - however they themselves understand their activities (as Bhaskar often points out, the best of scientists often misconstrue the methodology implicit in their own work). Dialectical logic penetrates beneath these surface features of science in order to provide a relatively little known yet challenging comprehension of epistemology and so of scientific practice. The isomorphism of thought and object upheld by Spinoza means that knowledge is not reliant on (tested against) the effects of objects where those effects are non-isomorphic to their cause. On the contrary, even before scientific practice begins, the scientist has learnt to act in accordance with a great many objects (actions mirroring, or isomorphic to, objects); her ideas are thereby inner expressions of an isomorphism of human spatial bodily activity with the activity of a great many objects. And through the practical activity of science, practical intervention to trigger mechanisms (to create closure), the scientist learns to further develop her mode of activity to accord with the specialised objects of science (strata). Furthermore, the ontology outlined above demonstrates that these strata are unambiguously internally related to eachother, and to strata yet to be discovered by science. Specifically, known or unknown strata are necessary developments of one another. A higher stratum is a necessary development of a lower stratum. A lower stratum necessarily develops into a higher stratum. Thus the fundamental task for the scientist is not to take old knowledge, externally related to unknown strata, and stretch, distort or distanciate its meaning to reach a model or hypothesis of an entirely new (absent) entity. Rather, the task is to interconnect the real strata; to fathom their relation in a hierarchy of necessary development. Only through such a hierarchy can either the unity of, or the difference between, real objects be grasped. Of course, only a small portion of the universe is open to scrutiny by humans so that that the process of fathoming interconnection in terms of necessary development must entail an attempt at comprehension that (however imperfectly) goes way beyond the actually encountered strata; an attempt to achieve knowledge of all strata. From this follows the Spinozist understanding of the nature of human error; the manifest and high degree of imperfection of finite, human thought as Spinoza puts it. Error does not lie fundamentally in a failed analogy, with respect to effects non-isomorphic to their cause. That is to say, error does not lie in a lack of objectivity. This is because concepts are isomorphic to their object and therefore quite objective. Instead, error lies in a lack of interconnection, a lack of recognition of the true necessary development of strata, rooted in a failure to grasp the truly universal aspects of given objects (and their concepts) and a corresponding overextension of partial truths. Error is, then, an elevation of a merely contingent phenomenon into a universal attribute of substance (a universal truth). On this view, all concepts are true (isomorphic) to their object - the crucial question concerns just what aspect of the object is comprehended (acted upon): is it a truly universal aspect or merely a contingent occurrence?

Of vital importance, and in contrast to critical realism (and other well known philosophies) is Spinozas recognition that the objects of science do have an aspect of universality, and that this aspect consists in their being an instantiation of strata (form of matter), where the various strata constitute a single hierarchy of necessary development. Thus the task to fathom this universal aspect of objects, hence their differences also, is a difficult but not impossible task. It follows that the fundamental advances in science entail a reworking, or reconstruction, of the necessary development of given concepts according to a principle that had previously remained implicit but had not been explicitly comprehended. To illustrate this view, consider the time bomb scenario, shown above to be so damaging to critical realism. For Spinoza, such a scenario is easy to dismiss because, quite simply, the invocation of a time bomb - an entity or force that will at some future date abolish the laws of Nature - is an invocation of something that is not an intrinsic development of current knowledge or currently encountered strata. Unlike the critical realist view, the scientist is not at liberty to concoct just whatever notion of new strata that she pleases; still less to concoct a self-contradictory notion of a time bomb; rather, the task is to fathom the inner connection of phenomena more and more deeply and adequately. As more and more objects are embraced by thought (so spatial body activity), then a more and more deep and adequate grasp of the inner development of things is achieved. Apparent jumps of thought are no more than reworkings of old knowledge to reveal new strata, new laws, etc., previously implicit. The development of knowledge is, in this sense, linear in contradistinction to the critical realist view. It is worth referring back to what created the whole difficulty for critical realism regarding the notion of a time bomb and the resulting collapse to scepticism: the conception of the relationship between thought and being. It was shown above that critical realism is absolutely precluded from ruling out a time bomb structure due to the non-isomorphism of thought and object (non-identity of thought and being) generated by SEPM. Yet, no self-contradiction is entailed in ruling out a time bomb given the isomorphism of thought and object upheld by Spinozas reworking of SEPM. Rather, the notion of such a time bomb can be ruled out consistently by Spinoza, for it is inconsistent with, indeed quite alien to, his philosophy. From this flows the more general point that, at the heart of any philosophy, must lie some conception of the relation of thought and being, and an argument that only a materialist identity theory of this relation is, ultimately, rational.

(Tentative) Illustration
The move which can loosely be referred to as a development from a Newtonian to an Einsteinian conception of the universe appears to provide an illustration of the above themes. Most obviously, the view of error is illustrated, firstly, on a quantitative basis, by the approximation to a Newtonian world by Einsteins equations at a limited range of magnitudes of relevant variables. The Newtonian world view thus incorrectly takes a limited, partial truth (an equation that is approximately true within a given range of magnitudes) as holding universally (as holding outside the given range of magnitudes). On a qualitative basis, it is also clear that Newtons notions of absolute space and time, and so the law that matter is at rest unless acted upon by an external force, has no place in Spinozas

conception. Again, Newton reflects how the world partially appears, rather than its truly infinite nature (of course, Spinoza and Einstein were very far from being the first to argue this case against absolute time and space). Even more significantly, Einstein is led to supersede Newtons notion of the force of gravity. The notion of this force as existing externally to matter and being causal upon it (a notion that has more than once been used to criticise Spinozas view) is superseded by the view that gravity is no more than the curvature of space-time. For Spinoza, the notion of force must refer to a mode of activity of matter and cannot be considered as existing externally to matter. To label a recognised mode of activity as caused by an external force is not to explain that activity at all. Rather, as argued above, explanation lies in interconnecting the structures and modes of activity of Nature; revealing their inner development and unity. From this perspective, the developments within the physical sciences towards a unification of the recognised physical forces into one single force is in no way surprising.

Developing Spinoza
The presentation of Spinozas position above, as that position is interpreted by Ilyenkov, is remarkable in that Spinozas work appears as the fundamental basis for materialist dialectics; a view of Spinoza that is little recognised. At least three questions are raised by this presentation. Firstly, there is the question of just how it is possible that Spinoza could be invoking notions of strata, SEPM, etc. at all, given that he wrote centuries ago: is not the account guilt y of anachronism? Secondly, Spinozas view has been presented in a purely positive light yet Hegel and Marx are much more than mere Spinozists, hence the question of where they find fault with Spinoza. Thirdly, if Spinoza does indeed provide the basis for materialist dialectics then his view should speak to the vexed question of the nature of the Marx-Hegel connection. The first question has a straightforward answer. Ilyenkovs exposition of Spinoza translates the salient features of Spinozas philosophy into contemporary terminology. The exposition above is an attempt to develop Ilyenkovs account so as to present it in critical realist terminology. In this process of translation it is possible that Spinozas view has been developed beyond Spinozas own position but this is a minor price to pay if the content and critique above are of any merit at all. As for the second and third questions, then it should be made clear that Spinozas view can provide only the most abstract fundamentals of method, it being left to Hegel, Marx and Engels to elaborate dialectics. Furthermore, both the Hegelian and Marxian dialectic does contain, on Ilyenkovs interpretation, a profound development of Spinozas position that reveals its great limitations at anything but the most abstract of levels. Hegels critique of Spinoza is summarised by Smith (1993) and need not be presented below. Instead, Marxs (related) critique is presented. Given this context, an argument is put forward that Spinozas quite correct conception of substance at an abstract level, despite its failings at more concrete levels, sheds new light (relative to the still ongoing debate) as to the sense in which Marx legitimately accuses Hegel of idealism.

Marxs Development from Substance to Labour

Marx, on Ilyenkovs interpretation, goes beyond Spinoza by noting that the mode of human activity is not merely one of accordance with the object; humans transform not only themselves but also the object in the course of their labour i.e. in the process of social production. According to Marxs view, the social individual varies according to a historical process, Labour, where that individual is equally as important as the totality (which Spinoza had termed substance) of which she is part. On Marxs conception, it is through Labour that nature (substance) transforms itself, given that humans are as much part of nature as are the objects of their labour. The exposition of Spinoza remains very important because it reveals clearly the true significance of Marxs well known remarks on Labour and nature. Most importantly, it reveals that the notion of Labour incorporates an isomorphism of thought and the object of thought. Note that critical realism is also able to uphold a notion of Labour, or social production, through the so called transformational model of social activity. Yet the critical realist notion is fundamentally different to that of Ilyenkov since it is based on SEPM (so on a non-isomorphism of thought and the object of thought).

The Marx-Hegel Connection

The precise relation of Marx and Hegel has been a perennial source of debate within Marxism. The debate shows no signs of letting up. To take an important recent example, John Rosenthals book (1998) provides a vehemently anti-Hegelian reading of Marx, including an attack on the current trend towards a new dialectical reading of Marx and Hegel. Various new dialecticians have responded strongly to Rosenthal (Williams 1999, Smith 2000, Arthur 1999). Within this debate the range of interpretations of Hegel are spread from outright and mistaken idealism (Rosenthal) to basic and correct materialism (Smith 2000; see also Fraser 1998). It can be noted also that none of the prevailing interpretations actually sustain Marxs own well known statements to the effect that Hegel must be turned right side up so as to reveal the rational kernel in the mystical shell of the Hegelian dialectic (Bhaskar too, in Dialectic, eschews the metaphor of inversion). What, then, does the above interpretation of Spinoza contribute to the debate? Firstly, the interpretation defends Hegel, as well as Marx, against the charge of idealism on a great many counts. For it shows, as argued above, that there is nothing idealist or anthropomorphic about a linear dialectic and related themes (contra Rosenthal and Bhaskar); indeed Ilyenkovs interpretation is congruent with the cogent defence of Hegel against such criticisms made by Tony Smith (2000) and others (see Ilyenkovs very similar, though little known, interpretation and defence of Hegel made in Ilyenkov 1977, Essay 5). Secondly, the interpretation reveals a sense in which Hegel is an idealist and must be turned right side up just as Marx recommends. The basic point made against Hegel by Ilyenkov, a point which holds against even the most robust of defenders of Hegel such as Tony Smith (2000) and Ian Fraser (1998), is that Hegel does not make fully explicit the materialist identity theory worked out by Spinoza. To be specific, Hegel is ultimately silent on the precise specification of the mind-body relation and so on the emergence of

thought from matter. In consequence, and despite the great gains of the Hegelian dialectic, Hegel is, in the last instance, idealist, because he cannot specify the origin of thought in matter and so ideas ultimately dominate matter in his philosophy (note that this is intrinsic to Hegels philosophy and not simply a mistaken application of that philosophy as in Tony Smiths interpretation). Rather than ideas expressing spatial bodily activity, the reverse relation is, ultimately, sustained by Hegel whereby spatial bodily activity expresses the ideal. Hence, the ideal is the prime moment of human activity. The isomorphism of human activity with objects for that reason cannot be interpreted as a materialist identity of subject and object by Hegel. Thus, for Marx, it is necessary to retain the Hegelian dialectic but turn it right side up by basing it on a materialist rather than idealist identity of subject and object. This means stripping the Hegelian dialectic of all the idealist tendencies it inherits from the idealist identity theory upon which it is based. Such a task remains to be completed.

Conclusion
The key argument of this paper, drawn, for the most part, from Ilyenkovs interpretation of Spinoza, can be summarised succinctly. Building his philosophy upon the sharp distinction between thought and its object, Bhaskar claims to offer a third way: he condemns any fundamentalist notion of a single essence, or totality, underlying all phenomena, for its alleged blotting out of difference, and he condemns the anti-essentialism of empiricism for its failure to comprehend the real world of multiple essences. Yet (i) the non-identity of thought and object leads his third way to collapse into the empiricism of Berkeley and Hume; (ii) Spinoza sustains the materialist identity, as well as opposition, of thought and being. Spinozas notion of an all-encompassing substance is able, thereby, to overcome empiricism whilst emphasising unity and difference in equal measure. There is, in other words, no third way but, instead, as Ilyenkov puts it, "two polar and mutually exclusive solutions of one and the same problem - the problem of the relation of the world in consciousness ... to the world outside consciousness ... For here a choice must be made: either nature, including man as part of it, must be understood through the logic of the concept of substance, or it must be interpreted as a complex of ones sensations." (Ilyenkov 1977, p. 66) The lessons of Ilyenkovs argument (if it were to be accepted) are two-fold. Firstly, the argument suggests that scepticism is a harder nut to crack than either critical realism and its development into dialectical critical realism, or contemporary Hegelian Marxist thought recognises. To point out the self-contradictory nature of scepticism, as does Bhaskar, is, of course, easy. Hume never once claimed to overcome the self-contradictory nature of his philosophy. Just because of this, Hume relegated reason to a secondary role in human affairs and held that custom, habit and the passions hold ultimate sway over human thought and action (Dow 1998 and forthcoming). From Ilyenkovs perspective, it does not appear that Hume would have had great difficulty in refuting either Bhaskar or contemporary Hegelian Marxists. Critical realism cannot overcome the non-isomorphism of thought and object at its very heart. Hegelian Marxism cannot justify an identity of thought and being. In neither case is a rational warrant provided for rationality itself, ie.

self-contradiction is not, finally, overcome. The paramount importance of Spinozas notion of substance (as interpreted by Ilyenkov), and related notions lies, it has been argued, in the upholding of a materialist identity theory and, hence, of rationality itself. Secondly, the argument suggests that it is impossible to understate the philosophical damage wrought by (i) the so called dialectical materialism of Stalinist orthodoxy; (ii) those who can see only Stalinist orthodox philosophy, or some equal crudity, as soon as the term dialectical materialism is invoked (and the term is very little invoked in contemporary Western academia). Criticisms along the lines of the idealism of matter; the conflation of intension and extension; technological determinism; reification of universals or of some mystical absolute; the dismissal of any form of teleology; and many other such criticisms do not remotely grasp the arguments above (most significantly they do not address the materialist identity theory put forward). If Ilyenkovs position has any merit at all, then it is thus vital that the position receive genuine criticism. The heart of any such criticism would lie in the critique of the materialist identity theory put forward. Accordingly, the ultimate aim of this paper is to illicit critique of Ilyenkov, where such critique is based upon an understanding of a philosophy that is admittedly difficult, but also rewarding and, it has been argued, robust.

5. Explain what Lennard Davis means when he says that narrative representation depicts not life but life as it is represented by ideology. The interpretive metaphor for this relationship is not dependence, whereby one of the two discourses relies on the other for elaborating the epistemic instruments it needs, but osmosis. A continuous stream of ideas and tools circulates through archives and novels, a flow of theoretical and practical notions that springs from their participating in one cognitive enterprise: the hoarding of knowledge on society and its preservation in the form of written paper. In 1924, Arthur G. Doughty, as quoted by Hugh Taylor, argued, Of all national assets archives are the most precious. They are the gift of one generation to another, and the extent of our care of them marks the extent of our civilization. By documenting society's endless development, archives become its structured memory, a heritage that is passed across generations so as to tie together the dead, the living, and the unborn. As for the novel, it is common knowledge that one of its keenest interests, too, is the narration of society, or better, the narration of the discourse that presides over a given society. As Lennard J. Davis wrote, novels do not depict life, they depict life as it is represented by ideology. Just as in the novel teh representation of a given ideology becomes most effective when it takes place at the level of the text's narrative and symbolic structure (the ways the text tells its story and organizes an experience of the world), so too in the archive, where it is the order that enables archivists and researchers to make sense of records that conveys ideology. The system for arranging an archive invariably bespeaks the world vision, the attendant power structures, and the cognitive projects of the archivist, which in turn are a function of those dominant in society at large.

JULIAN BARNES 1. Reread Unit 1 and explain in your own words the crisis of representation in literature and painting. Substantiate your argument with examples from the chapter discussed above.

Diffractions. Graduate Journal for the Study of Culture Issue 1 (2013): Crisicism The Cultural Discourse of Crisis www.diffractions.net 1

Crises of Representation, Representations of Crisis: Historical Consciousness in Contemporary Latin American Art and Literature
DANIEL MANDUR THOMAZ (UTRECHT UNIVERSITY)
Abstract | The late 1970s and the 1980s were crucial years for the emergence of a new form of historical consciousness in Latin American art and literature, especially concerned with questions of collective memory and identity. The aim of this article is twofold. The first aim is to map the main strands in the debate surrounding the relationships between history, art, and literature in this period, focusing on the current discussions on the epistemological crises that led to the rise of this new historical consciousness. The second aim is to address the question of Latin American specificity. I will take into consideration several theoretical contributions in order to outline a standpoint that not only considers Latin American specificity but also its contribution to think the articulation of art, history and politics. Key-words | Latin America, Contemporary Art, Latin American Literature, Neobaroque, Theory of History, Historical consciousness, Democratic Transition

The last decades of the 20th Century were marked by a new rise of historical themes
in literature and the visual arts. History, in its most different meanings, became a kind of leitmotif in novels, paintings, and movies.1 In Latin America the late 1970s
1 History

is a term that can refer to both past events themselves and to the discourse that

and the 1980s were crucial years for the emergence of this new form of historical consciousness, especially concerned with questions of collective memory and identity. Although this resilient presence of the past has been theorized as one of the main characteristics of the paradigmatic change vaguely labeled as postmodernity, it has undoubtedly assumed specific configurations in Latin America. The notion of historiographical meta-fiction, coined by Linda Hutcheon, refers to critical and parodic historical references in contemporary novels (Hutcheon, 1988) and finds parallels with terms such as Latin Americas new historical novel (Menton, 1993), or the revisited concept of Neobaroque (Carpentier, 1995; Kaup, 2006; Sarduy, 2010)

which stress the particularities of the Latin American phenomenon. In the field of visual arts, the 1980s were characterized by the influence of Transvanguardia which brought about the so-called return of painting (Canonglia, 2010). Received as a postmodernist influence, Transvanguardia, and its most important theorist Achille Bonito Oliva (1982) found both sympathy and hard criticism in the region. In Brazil, for instance, critics were divided between those who considered Transvanguardia and postmodernism as new conservative vogues, such as Ronaldo Brito (2001), and those that saw in it a different type of political debate (Canonglia, 2010). Naum Simo de Santana considered that the volubility of contemporary art and the overcoming of modernist concerns with style made postmodernist art present itself as an event, intervening not only in a formalistic manner but also ideologically, which pointed to a new way of political intervention (Santana, 2006). Concerns with the Eurocentric misconception that deems Latin American art as merely derivative of the main European trends have led critics such as Marcio Doctors (2001) to reaffirm the connections between the art of the 1980s and the project of Latin American modernists. He stresses the process of hybridization between multiple influences and particular characteristics, and highlights the efforts of local artists to create an alternative pathway through postmodernist tendencies. In this sense, the notion of Neobaroque and other variations, such as Ultrabarroque, have been applied to underline the specificity of the Latin American experience in literature, and also in the case of visual arts.2
describes and analyzes such events. It can also refer to the academic discipline dedicated to study and produce historical accounts. 2 The term Neobaroque refers to a set of aesthetic characteristics present in Latin American

Given the predominance of novels and visual artworks which deal with historical themes from the late 1970s onwards, and especially through the 80s (Hutcheon, 1988; Menton, 1993), the aim of this article is twofold. The first is to map the main questions in the debate on the relationships between history, art, and literature in this period. I will focus on the discussions surrounding the epistemological crises that led to the rise of this new historical consciousness. The second is to tackle questions regarding Latin American specificity as to bring forward a perspective that can take into account not only Latin American specificity, but also its possible contribution to discuss the articulations between art, history, and politics at that time. 1) The Crises of Representation: Theory and its discontents The 1990s were a bewildering period for many professional historians as they realized that a profound crisis was already installed at the heart of their discipline. The core of this disciplinary crisis emerged in the scope of what is called the Linguistic Turn of historiography, a process that occurred during the 1970s and 1980s. The germ of this crisis could already be found in the important considerations raised by post-structuralist philosophers, particularly in Foucault's and Derrida's readings of Saussure (Kleinberg, 2007: 113-120). The discursive nature of our relation with knowledge had important implications for historians' work, as this conception not only points to the textual nature of historical documents but also affects the process through which historians produce meanings about the past. It highlights the discursive nature of history and stresses the political and ideological implications of historical accounts. Therefore, the idea that history is a discourse operating not over the past itself, but rather through other texts (documents, letters, maps), is crucial when considering the referentiality of accounts of the past, especially in light of the Foucauldian articulation between discourse, knowledge and power.3
art and literature and theorized by Sarduy (2010), Carpentier (1995) and other artists and theorists. I will discuss the idea of Neobaroque in depth in the second part of this article. The term Ultrabaroque was used in an exhibition that took place in 2001 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego: Ultra-baroque, aspects of post-Latin American art. Although the title of the exhibition uses the term with an hyphen (Ultra-Baroque), this article drops the hyphen (Ultrabaroque) as a way to stress the idea that the term is a variation of the expression Neobaroque.

3 Michel

Foucault wrote extensively about historical reconfigurations of knowledge in what would now be called Humanities and Social Sciences. He frequently argued that these reorganizations of knowledge also constituted new forms of power and domination. See,

Another important question that had great relevance to the crisis of history as a discipline was posed even before this debate about referentiality.4 I am referring to the crisis of representation of historical events, raised in the aftermath of the Second World War, which placed the question of how to deal historically with a tragedy of such proportions as the Holocaust. The Holocaust is often invoked as a limit case that challenges our ability of making history.5 Many different thinkers, from Theodor Adorno to Franois Lyotard, and more recently Dominik LaCapra, tackled the question of how to represent the Holocaust, sharing the claim that after such an event we cannot write history in the same way. According to these authors, the (positivist) idea that history is the story of humanity's upward progress was completely and irremediably destroyed by this event. Adorno raised the moral and aesthetic question of how to make art after the failure of western culture in Auschwitz, considering the Shoah an event that installed a deep crisis of representation at the core of western cultural tradition (Adorno, 1973). George Steiner also made important contributions to the discussion of the Holocaust as a limit and radical case of representation, sharing with Adorno the dilemma of how to speak about the unspeakable, or to represent the unrepresentable (Steiner, 1970). For these intellectuals, language in itself is not capable of conveying the deeply tragic dimension of such an event, thus all efforts to represent it will be inevitably subjugated to reduce its power, diminishing its reach and mitigating its catastrophic aspect. Nevertheless, Adorno claims that perenial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream (1973: 363), therefore putting the crisis of representation in terms of an aporia: an irresolvable impasse between the imperative to represent the egregious crimes and the impossibility of doing so.6 Lyotard addressed the question by asserting the importance of Auschwitz in the
for example, Foucault,M (1995). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage. 4 Here we consider referentiality as a term to designate the match between reality (event, person, thing, process) and its description (linguistic expression), as well as representation by any sign, word, sentence, discourse, picture, sound or action intended to depict or characterize an event, person or process. 5 For contemporary discussions regarding the (un)representability of the Holocaust, see Friedlnder, Saul (1992). Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the Final Solution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. See also LaCapra, Dominick (1994). Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 6 About the aporia in Adorno see: Martin, Elaine. (2006) Re-reading Adorno: The afterAuschwitz Aporia. Forum, Spring (2): 1-13. See also: Steiner, G (1988). The long Life of Metaphor: An Approach to the Shoah. In: Berel Lang (ed) Writing and the Holocaust. New York: Holmes & Meier.

decline of modern master narratives, and even in the project of modernity:

At Auschwitz, a modern sovereign, a whole people was physically destroyed. The attempt was made to destroy it. It is the crime opening postmodernity, a crime of violated sovereignty not regicide this time, but populicide (as distinct from ethnocide). How could the grand narratives of legitimation still have credibility in these circumstances? This is not to suggest that there are no longer any credible narratives at all. By metanarratives or grand narratives, I mean precisely narrations with a legitimating function. Their decline does not stop countless other stories (minor or not so minor) from continuing to weave the fabric of everyday life (Lyotard, 1984: 19).

Following Lyotard's argument about the relation between the post-Auschwitz era and the postmodern condition, or Auschwitz as the crime opening postmodernity, Gabrielle Spiegel sees an intimate relation between post-structuralism and the Holocaust post-traumatic era, especially in the case of Derridian deconstructivism. In her words:
Both for those who survived and for those who came after, the Holocaust appears to exceed the representational capacity of language, and thus to cast suspicion on the ability of words to convey reality. And for the second generation, the question is not

even how to speak but, more profoundly, if one has a right to speak, a delegitimization of the speaking self that, turned outward, interrogates the authority, the privilege, of all speech. Which, of course, is precisely what Derrida and deconstruction do in the attack on logocentrism (Spiegel, 2007: 11-12).

According to Spiegel, the development of post-structuralism by the generation that matured in the 1960s and 1970s is a displaced, psychological response to the Holocaust and its aftermaths marked by the awareness about the impossibility of sustaining the belief in the enlightenment and in the progressive character of Western European civilization, a development subsequently reinforced by the emergence of postcolonial theory, which exposed the brutal and dehumanizing aspects of European imperial ventures (Spiegel 2007: 17). Andreas Huyssen (2009) sees resonances of Holocaust memories circulate beyond the European context, emerging within the context of politically and historically different events and situations such as post-dictatorship Latin America or post-apartheid South Africa. He points to a globalization of Holocaust memory (2009: 6) while recognizing some disputes in the field of memory: The most difficult and contested of such memory competitions is the one between Holocaust memory and the memory of colonialism which seem separated today by what W.E. Dubois in another context once called the color line (Huyssen, 2009:12). This color line refers to the idea of the exceptionalism of the Holocaust, which neglects many centuries of massacres and genocides against Black and Indian people throughout European history, claiming priority of one kind of traumatic memory over another, and creating a problematic hierarchy of suffering.1 It is important to note that this crisis of representation and referentiality of language was posed by different traditions of what became known as the Linguistic Turn in Philosophy, as mapped by Martin Jay (1982). It emerged from Foucault's and Derrida's reading of Saussure in France; from Wittgenstein, J.L. Austin and Gilbert Ryle in the English tradition; and from the Frankfurt School in the case of German tradition. In this sense, the link established by Gabrielle Spiegel between the Holocaust and post-structuralism, or between the post-Auschwitz era and the unfolding of what Lyotard named postmodern condition, points to the psychological background that allowed for the development and circulation of such radical ideas in an intellectual context of post-traumatic crisis. These questions of representation and referentiality were also addressed by Latin American artists and thinkers in an intellectual context of post-traumatic crisis, the post-dictatorship period, and the responses to those questions emerged in the field of art and literature rather than in the field of philosophy. The main reason for this artistic response, I argue, is related to what Walter Mignolo (2002, 2011) has called the geopolitics of knowledge, allowing Latin America responses to come in a different moment and from a different point of view, marked by its historical subaltern relation with European (and Euro-centered) epistemology.2 The work of Hayden White in the 1970s, and its reception throughout the 1980s (Vann, 1998), brought to the field of theory of history the same questions that had a
1 Dominick

LaCapra sees in this debate around the uniqueness of the Holocaust the same kind of Aporia present in Adornos argument about the possibility of representing the Holocaust. He tends towards the aporetic argument that the Shoah was both unique and comparable. See: LaCapra, Dominick.(1998) History and Memory after Auschwitz. Ithaca: Cornell UP. 2 Walter Mignolo argues that colonial difference is the loci of enunciation of the subalterns, and states that a geopolitics of knowledge must be taken into account in the process of critique of the Eurocentric epistemology. Once he considers that coloniality is indissolubly linked with modernity, the knowledge produced from the 16th century onward is also deeply marked by a colonial aspect (the coloniality of power) which is deeply connected with the discourse of Western epistemology, produced from an Eurocentric point of departure that systematically obliterate the contribution of non-European/ non-Western thought. See Mignolo, Walter (2002). The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference. The South Atlantic Quaterly 101(1): 57-96; Mignolo, Walter (2011). The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Duke University Press. See also Grosfoguel, Rmon (2008). Transmodernity, Border Thinking and Global

Coloniality: Decolonizing Political Economy and Postcolonial Studies. Revista Crtica de Cincias Sociais 80 (1): 1-23.

relative fermentation in the field of philosophy, opening controversial debates about the relations between history and literature, and about the literary nature of historical writing, thus problematizing points that were taken for granted in the operation of historical discourse. Therefore, the crisis of referentiality, or the suspicions about the arbitrary relation between the significant and the signifier posed by Saussure (2001), is extended to the relationship between a historical narrative and the set of events it describes, or the relationship between the real past and the narrative that describes and analyzes it. In addition, the problem of representing the Holocaust is now extended to the representability of the past in more general terms, raising critical discussions on the strategies historians recur to in order to convey past events through narratives. The arguments of Hayden White, first published in Metahistory (1973) and later elaborated and restated in the collection of articles Tropics of Discourse (1978), pointed to history as a verbal structure which shared the same problems of referentiality and representation. According to White, historical discourse can be separated into different components (White, 1978). At the core of any historical account is its basic chronicle, which organizes the events of the unprocessed historical field by placing them into simple chronological order. Nevertheless, a collection of events organized in a chronological manner has no meaning at all. Indeed, the meaning is endowed to the events being described by the historian's decision to emplot them within a structure which refers to a form that already exists in the general cultural context where the historian is immersed. Thus, the meaning of a historical event relates to the way a historian arranges it in a set of events that forms a historical narrative, which is the result of an emplotment. However, this emplotment is more than a mere connection between events, rather being configured by pre-existent literary forms. In other words, the attribution of meaning to historical processes works not only through imputation of causality, as argued by other philosophers of history such as Oakeshott (1983) for instance, but also in the process of setting the narrative within a pre-existent structure that confers meaning by conforming it to a specific story-form. In White's words:
Properly understood, histories ought never to be read as unambiguous signs of the events they report, but rather as symbolic structures, extended metaphors, that liken the events reported in them to some form with which we have already become familiar in our literary culture It functions as a symbol, rather than as a sign: which is to say that it does not give us either a description or an icon of the thing it represents, but tells us what images to look for in our culturally encoded experience in order to determine how we should feel about the thing represented (White 1978: 84).

Once considering history as a verbal structure it is impossible to grasp the past outside of a linguistically-structured configuration. The historical discourse is then intended to constitute ground whereon to decide what shall count as a fact in the matters under consideration and to determine what matter of comprehension is best suited to the understanding of the facts thus constituted (White 1978: 4). It underlines the fundamental literary strategies present in historical writing insofar as it emphasizes the emplotment process alongside the claim on the existence of several modalities of emplotment, all of which are equally plausible because of their aesthetic foundation. Thus, White puts the literary procedure at the very heart of historical accounts, claiming that writing history requires the same type of linguistic operation that is applied to writing fiction. In making this point, White is not arguing that history and fiction are the same thing, but rather that historical accounts do not operate over the past but instead over language. Therefore, he finds it crucial that historians be aware of their modus operandi because the recognition of the constructed nature of historical narratives could serve as a potent antidote to the historian's tendency to become captive in ideological preconceptions. This theoretical awareness may enable historians to recognize their tropic position, thereby allowing them to choose an emplotment based on a clear-sighted understanding of their cultural and disciplinary

context (White, 1978). Although White's arguments had different receptions among historians, from astonishment to hostility (Vann, 1998), a very interesting implication emerged about the place occupied by the historian himself as the subject of enunciation. Thereby, it becomes impossible to write history without taking an active stance on institutional and personal value systems. The arguments proposed by Hayden White had a broad reach in the field of history during the 1980s, and as a result the 1990s were characterized by a crisis of history that can be understood as a crisis of representation. As Peter Burke questioned:
Is it possible to know the past? Is it possible to tell the truth about what actually happened, or are historians, like novelists, the creators of fiction? These are topical questions in the 1990s, both inside and outside the historical profession, though they are questions to which different people offer extremely diverse answers (Burke, 1998: 6).

It is important to keep in mind that Hayden White played a determinant role in the emergence and unfolding of this epistemological crisis. Peter Burke goes further, stating that this crisis led to a transgression of the boundaries between history and fiction, also identifiable in the way contemporary literature began dealing with historical events, in novels such as Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (1980), Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark (1982), Vargas Llosa's Historia de Mayta (1984) and Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor (1985). According to Burke (1998), these boundary transgressions were an indicator of what he calls a crisis of historical consciousness, as the title of his article, Two Crises of Historical Consciousness (1998), suggests. The article argues that this crisis is articulated with postmodernity and with the critique of Cartesian assumptions, and tries to describe a far older crisis of historical consciousness that took place during the seventeenth century, at the time when the development of the modern epistemological paradigm, that postmodern theory contests and deconstructs, emerged. Burke claims that the emergence of skepticism towards historical knowledge in the seventeenth century, which he refers to as pyrrhonism, was part of a quarrel about the limits and foundations of historical discourse.3 According to Burke, pyrrhonists addressed two chief criticisms against the activity of historians: that of bias, and that of forgery. The first accused historians of never representing things as they are, but instead of masking them according to the image they wish to project (Burke, 1998:3).4 The second argument, which was even a stronger blow to historians, charged them for basing their accounts of the past on forged documents, and of accepting characters and events that were pure inventions. This skepticism was part of a complex web of cultural and intellectual changes: Historical pyrrhonism clearly depended on the systematic doubt of Descartes and his followers (Burke, 1998: 11). Moreover, this paradigmatic shift - to use Thomas Kuhns notion (2012) even though Burke does not mention it - is connected to progresses made in philological techniques, which were helpful in the process of detecting forgeries, and to the emergence of newspapers in the late seventeenth century, giving readers access to diverse accounts of the same events. Burke states that even the religious conflicts of that time played an important role, stimulating the awareness of bias among different contenders.
3 The

term pyrrhonism is a reference to the epistemological skepticism of the ancient Greek philosopher Pyrrho of Elis. 4 Les inclinent et masquent selon le visage qu'ils leur veulent prendre , this phrase of the seventeenth-century French scholar Gabriel Naud is quoted by Peter Burke (1998: 3).

At this point, it is interesting to articulate the argument of Peter Burke on the epistemological crises of the seventeenth century with the ideas of Gabrielle Spiegel about the second half of twentieth century. First, however, it is important to make some remarks about Burke's approach. The author often refers to the two paradigmatic crises (that of the seventeenth century and that of the postmodern philosophers) as crises of historical consciousness, which I do not consider completely appropriate. On doing so, Burke seems to argue that skepticism towards

the historian's capacity of representing the past might be taken as a general crisis of historical consciousness, while in fact it seems more like the emergence of a more accurate consciousness about the nature of historical discourse. Thus, the core of his argument, when comparing the skepticism of the pyrrhonists with post-structuralist linguistic awareness and naming them as two crises of historical consciousness, carries a very subtle trick between the lines. It suggests that contemporary criticism represents a risk to historical consciousness or that it threatens our relationship with the past and with tradition. Indeed, it looks more like a crisis of the legitimacy of the historian's discourse than a general crisis of historical consciousness. The emergence of a new historical consciousness is in fact the result of an epistemological crisis; therefore, because professional historians are not the only source of discourse about history neither about the past, it is not accurate to interpret a crisis of one type of historical discourse as a general crisis of historical consciousness. Instead, other cultural manifestations must be considered as sources of historical consciousness. Literature, visual artworks, music, fashion, and a vast amount of other cultural expressions also refer to the past through a vast repertoire of strategies. All these cultural manifestations can re-present the past, produce meanings about past events, and thus they may be considered instances of historical consciousness, even though none of them aims at explaining the past through causal imputation, neither claim to be the result of a scientific procedure. For these reasons I prefer the term epistemological crisis instead of Burke's crises of historical consciousness. It is very interesting to consider that the very foundation of history as a discipline in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was part of the response to an epistemological crisis that put at risk the legitimacy of a type of discourse about the past. This also helps us to understand the commitment of historians of the nineteenth century, such as Leopold van Ranke (1795-1886), to build a scientific status of objectivity for the discipline of history. It is exactly this discursive configuration that was targeted by the criticism of the second half of the twentieth century. Following the argument of Michel de Certeau, who considers revision as a formal prerequisite for writing history, Gabrielle Spiegel also employs the term revision, in place of the blunter notion of crisis (Spiegel, 2007). Spiegel is especially focused on understanding the rise of the linguistic turn in historiography as an example of this process of historical revision while seeking possible causes for that turn. Whilst searching for the psychological roots of post-structuralism, which she considers a response to the Holocaust and its aftermath, Spiegel explores the possible economic and social transformations in the post-war world that might account for its reception, suggesting that this process of revision is the result of the combined effects of psychological, social, and professional determinations. I would add to these determinations an epistemological demand, a necessity to rethink the foundations of historical discourse as to deal with the paradigmatic crisis raised by the poststructuralist critique. I consider Spiegel's arguments on the psychological role of the Holocaust and its aftermaths to be very adequate, insofar as they point to the broader aspect of this crisis of representation, recognizable in the field of history but also in many other cultural expressions, including movies, paintings and literature. The debates around epistemological questions regarding referentiality, representation, and the role of the subject in the production of knowledge were crucial to the rise of a new kind of historical consciousness in the last decades of the twentieth century, especially from the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. The emergence of this new historical consciousness explains the constant reference to history and history-writing in the art and literature of the last decades of the twentieth century. Linda Hutcheon refers to the contemporary inclination to discuss history as typical of postmodern phenomena:
Today, the new skepticism or suspicion about the writing of history found in the work of Hayden White and Dominick LaCapra is mirrored in the internalized challenges to historiography in novels like Shame (1985), The public Burning (1977), or Maggot

(1985): they share the same questioning stance towards their common use of conventions of narrative, of reference, of the inscribing of subjectivity, of their identity as textuality, and even their implications of ideology (Hutcheon 1988:106).

It is important to highlight the fact that novels of this period (Latin America provides good examples of this) do not discuss these questions as a consequence of a previous debate installed in the field of theory of history. Instead the considerations raised in these novels, as well as in other art works, aimed at contesting a large set of traditional historical procedures at the same time (late 70s and 80s) as they were being discussed by theorists of history. This points to a broader process that occurred through different cultural expressions. Hutcheon coined the term historiographic metafiction to refer to postmodernist novels that incorporate self-awareness, as well as an awareness of history as a human construct, rethinking and reworking the traditional ways of representing past events (Hutcheon, 1988). Parody is the most common procedure in these novels, paradoxically incorporating and challenging the boundaries between fiction and history. They are especially parodical in their intertextual relation to traditions and conventions, as historiografical metafictions always work within conventions in order to subvert them (Hutcheon, 1988: 5). This is similar to the position defended by the Italian art critic Achile Bonito Oliva when defining the historical references present in postmodern art, which he refers to as Transvanguardia (Trans-avant-garde). The presence of the past in the return of painting of the late 1970s and 1980s accounts for how art history can be used in a transverse and eclectic way. For Oliva, instead of the evolutionist conception of successive vanguard movements that characterized the art history of the twentieth-century, contemporary artists were meant to free flow as nomads through different techniques and themes, conciliating contradictory languages and building a intertwined web of methods and expressions. These procedures of free flow, this crossing of boundaries and the use of irony and parody do not aim at turning history into something obsolete, or to destroy historical consciousness, but seek instead to address the textual nature of the past, so crucial in the thought of Foucault and Derrida. Linda Hutcheon analyzes historiographical metafiction in relation to the literary tradition, and states that part of this problematization of history is a response to the hermetic ahistoric formalism and aestheticism that underpinned much of the art and theory of the so-called modernist period (Hutcheon 1988: 88). In this sense, postmodernist historiographic metafiction repositions historical context as significant (or even deterministic), while problematizing the entire notion of historical knowledge: the postmodern enterprise is one that traverses the boundaries of theory and practice, often implicating one in and by the other, and history is often the site of this problematization (Hutcheon 1988: 90). The most interesting implication of Hutcheon's position is deeply anchored in the notion that, while postmodernist art transverses the boundaries of theory and practice it also crosses the boundaries between art and life, thus bringing to the present compelling questions that would otherwise be kept in the past and far from our reach. This suggests that to rewrite, or to re-present, the past (in fiction and in history) is to open it to the present, preventing it from being conclusive or teleological. According to Hutcheon, the difference between nineteenth-century historical novels and postmodern historiographic metafiction is that the latter plays upon the possibilities and limits of reaching historical truth, instead of using history to produce an effect of verisimilitude as the former did. In many contemporary novels, historical details are deliberately falsified to foreground the possible mnemonic failures of recorded history, and also the constant potential for both deliberate and inadvertent errors in historical accounts. Traditional historical novels, as theorized by Lukcs (1976), usually assimilate historical data in order to lend an air of verifiability and dense specificity to their fiction, whereas historiographic metafiction acknowledges the paradox of the reality of the past but its textualized accessibility to us today (Hutcheon, 1988: 114).

Another relevant point, as put forward by Richard Humphrey and Seymour Menton, is the importance of the historical character in these two different types of historical novels (Humphrey, 1986; Menton, 1993). While in traditional historical novels historical characters usually appear in a secondary position, taking part in the plot just as a strategic effort to sustain the historical contextualization of the story, in contemporary novels they are often protagonists, at times part of a strategy to demystify the importance of historical events, and even to raise suspicion on the processes of construction of heroes and national myths. The historical consciousness present in the novels of the late 1970s and 1980s raises a considerable number of specific issues regarding the interaction of historiography and fiction: issues surrounding the nature of identity and subjectivity, questions of reference and representation, the intertextual nature of the past, and the ideological implications of writing about history. According to Hutcheon:
[H]istoriographic metafiction appears to privilege two modes of narration, both of which problematize the entire notion of subjectivity: multiple points of view or an overtly controlling narrator. In neither, however, do we find a subject confident of his/her ability to know the past with any certainty (Hutcheon, 1988: 117).

These novels seem to stress the fact that fiction is historically conditioned and that history is discursively structured. In doing so, they also broaden the debate on the ideological implications of producing meanings about the past. 2) The Representation of Crises: New historical novel, Neobaroque and the Latin American specificity Having considered the emergence of a new historical consciousness in postmodern art and literature, especially through the notions of historiographic metafiction and the idea of Transvanguardia, I will now analyze how this historical consciousness emerges in Latin America. In the field of literature, the work of Seymour Menton is of crucial relevance when considering the phenomena he calls Latin Americas new historical novel. In this context, many theorists have made contributions to discuss Latin America's specificity through the notion of Neobaroque - although this term does not point to a new tendency in Latin American production, but rather to a line of continuity of some formal aspects already present during the modernist period in the region. In this sense, the presence of Neobaroque forms in the novels and artworks of the 1980s, or the presence of a baroque spirit as Carpentier put it (1995:100), can be understood as an affiliation with some objectives and specific configurations of Latin American modernism. However, in other aspects, these novels and art works are also marked by important differences and discontinuities when compared with previous works from the 50s and 60s. As I will argue, one of the main characteristics of Latin American literature and art committed to this new historical consciousness is this capability of playing in-between by using what is considered typically postmodernist strategies while attending to problems and concerns which are usually present in modernist productions. The term Neobaroque has been recurrently used in the last decades to highlight a set of modern and contemporary aesthetic trends, in particular, though not exclusively, in Latin America. In the literary field, a broad set of novels produced during the 1950s and 1960s have been categorized under this rubric. Authors such as Alejo Carpentier, Haroldo de Campos, Severo Sarduy, Jose Lezama Lima, Bolivar Echeverria, and Irlemar Chiampi are the most important references in the debate on the uses of the term Neobaroque as a category of explanation about the specificity of modernism and postmodernism in Latin American literature and art (Kaup, 2006; Malcuzynsky, 2009). Despite some exceptions, such as the case of Omar Calabrese (1992), many authors tend to consider Neobaroque as a specific characteristic of artistic productions developed in the global peripheries (Carpentier, 1995; Kaup, 2006; Sarduy, 2010). Calabrese considers Neobaroque as a formal characteristic of contemporary production in a broader sense, as a kind of formal configuration of postmodern art and mass media. According to this author, the Neobaroque consists of: a search for, and a valorization of forms that display a loss of entirety, totality,

and system in favor of instability, polydimentionality, and change (1992: 11). He tries to identify aesthetic trends that permeate different cultural objects, many of them previously considered within the vague umbrella-term postmodern: To be perfectly honest, our expressive field already possesses a catchall term that has been widely used to define a contemporary trend: the much abused postmodern (1992: 12). Monika Kaup assumes a different position from Calabreses and associates the notion of Neobaroque with an attitude of rebellion against the Eurocentric definition of modern and postmodern experiences, stating that modernity and postmodernity should be understood as having multiple forms:
The "postmodern" marks a bifurcation between parallel critiques of modernity in Europe, on the one hand, and in Latin America and other non-Western regions (such as India), on the other. Indeed, third world critics such as Dussel, Chakrabarty, and GarciaCanclini have charged that the postmodern critique of the violence of modernity and its totalizing grand narratives of rational knowledge is nothing but a "provincial" European analysis that has only limited validity in the global periphery. That is, when the center delegitimizes the modern grand narratives it imposed around the world through colonialism, the periphery seizes this moment as another kind of opportunity unthought of in Europe. Rather than once again mimic Europe as it undergoes yet another (now postmodern) cycle of modernity's development. New World and Indian intellectuals seize the postmodern crisis of the modern as the occasion to challenge the Eurocentric historical consciousness () (Kaup, 2006: 129).

This position and argument are also claimed by other theorists, such as Susan Friedman (2010), who argues that there is an indissoluble link between modernism and modernity: once modernity is understood as a global phenomenon profoundly associated with colonial enterprises (Dussel, 2000), the idea of multiple forms of modernism comes to the fore. As Friedman contends: every modernity has its distinctive modernism (Friedman, 2010: 475). The idea of transmodernity, proposed by Dussel (2000) and developed by Walter Mignolo (2002, 2011) and Rmon Grosfoguel (2008), also implies a decolonial critique of modernity. Mignolo writes that: modernity is not a strictly European but a planetary phenomenon, to which the excluded barbarians have contributed, although their contribution has not been acknowledged (2002: 57). Against this background, the notion of transmodernity offers a liberating reason (razn libertadora) and challenges the Eurocentric notion of one modernity (and postmodernity), thus opening spaces for those once neglected points of view in an effort to decolonize the construction and dissemination of knowledge (Mignolo, 2002). Therefore, Latin American Neobaroque holds a potential for aesthetic counterconquest that derives its strength from the restating of the hybridization and the polydimentionality of Baroque aesthetics. According to Marie-Pierrette Malcuzynsky (2009), baroque is present in the theorization of Carpentier (1995), Campos (1980) and Sarduy (2010) not as a seventeenth-century invention or a historical style, but rather as a type of ontological conception. In this sense, Baroque seems to be an almost transcendent aesthetic form that manifests itself throughout Latin American art. In Carpentier's words:
() all symbiosis, all mestizaje, engenders the baroque. The American baroque develops along with criollo culture, with the meaning of criollo, with the self-awareness of the American man, be he the son of an white European, the son of a black African or an Indian born on continent... the awareness of being the Other, of being new, of being symbiotic, of being a criollo; and the criollo spirit is itself a baroque spirit (Carpentier, 1995: 100).

In a similar way, the ideas of Sarduy are derived from the thesis which defends that today there is a kind of Baroque experience, as he states:
To be Baroque today means to threaten, to judge, and parody the bourgeois economy, which is fundamentally and centrally based on the miserly management of wealth: the space of signs, of language, the symbolic foundation of society, the guarantee of its functioning, of its means of communication. () The Baroque s ubvert the supposedly normal order, like an ellipse - an added value subverts and distorts the shape of a circle, which idealist tradition thought to be the most perfect shape of all (Sarduy, 2010:

99-100).

By presenting the Baroque as an aesthetic experience Sarduy also invokes Baroque as an ontological idea that can reappear in different historical periods. This contemporary form of Baroque (Neobaroque) arises at once as a space of dialog, polyphony, carnavalization, parody, and intertextuality which presents itself as a network of connections marked by an overabundance of forms: superabundance, brimming cornucopia, prodigality, () a mockery of all functionality, of all sobriety (Sarduy 2010: 100). Haroldo de Campos (1980) sees the Neobaroque in the work of Guimares Rosa, an author of the 1950s deeply committed towards the formal experimentation of the Brazilian modernism. Sarduy (2010) sees Neobaroque in works of a wide range of authors, from Miguel Angel Asturias to the Boom writers of the 60s. Nevetheless, some characteristics of the novels of the 70s and 80s, considered as post-Boom novels by critics such as Gustavo Pelln (2008), do not entirely disrupt modernist concerns with formal principles. In fact, the emergence of a new historical consciousness in the novels of the 1980s does not exclude Neobaroque characteristics, but instead uses the Neobaroque attitude of mockery of all functionality, of all sobriety to better de-commemorate the brutality of the Latin American past of colonization, slavery and authoritarianism. It seems part of an effort to deconstruct a history which had traditionally been written as a way to justify corrupted elites and to mystify military heroic bravados. In this sense, the novels and the visual artworks of the 1980s seem to be deeply connected to the processes of democratic transition in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, alongside the struggles against right-wing authoritarian conservatism which were taking place in practically every country in the region during this period. Seymour Menton corroborates this presence of Neobaroque characteristics in what he calls the "Latin Americas new historical novel":
The empirical evidence suggests that since 1979 the dominant trend in Latin American fiction has been the proliferation of New Historical novels, the most canonical of which share with the Boom novels of the 1960s moralistic scope, exuberant eroticism, and complex, neobaroque (albeit less hermetic) structural and linguistic experimentation (Menton 1993: 14).

The use of the term Ultrabaroque to refer to the work of Latin American artists is another expression of a contemporary presence of Baroque aesthetics. In 2001, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego opened an exhibition on Latin American contemporary art with a very suggestive name: Ultra-baroque, aspects of post-Latin American art. The catalog of the exhibition takes up several articulations between Baroque and contemporary trends in Latin American art:
Curatorially speaking, we suggest that the baroque is a model by which to understand and analyze the processes of transculturation and hybridity that globalization has highlighted and set into motion. Given this approach, we propose that the baroque, in all its conflictive reception and reinterpretation, is pertinent today more as an attitude than a style and is interdisciplinary in nature and not restricted to architecture, music and visual arts, the fields to which it has traditionally been confined (Ultrabaroque, catalog of the exhibition, 2001).

Adriana Varejo, a Brazilian who began her career in the 80's, was one of the artists included in the exhibition, celebrated as important and representative of the characteristics of recent Latin American contemporary art that curators wished to highlight. In the catalog of the exhibition, there are also important references to novels of Latin American writers, such as Jos Lezama Lima and Alejo Carpentier, which indicates an effort to reveal aspects of the shared sensibility connecting a range of cultural artifacts. Gustavo Pelln, when addressing the recent developments of Latin American novels, sees a clear change of strategy among writers by the mid-1970s: Their novels drew away from myth towards history (Pelln 2008: 280). Moreover, Seymour Menton considers this notorious concern of Latin American writers with history and frames the emergence of this new trend especially from the late '70s onward. His purpose with this chronological contextualization is to demonstrate the

predominance since 1979 of the New Historical Novel rather than the telluric, psychological, magic realist, or non-fiction novel (...) (Menton 1993: 16). Although Alejo Carpentier is considered to be a precursor of the genre in the twentieth century, with El reino de este mundo (1949), Menton highlights that it was only after 1979 that the presence of what he terms the new historical novel became a predominant trend, even counting around 194 publications between 1978 and 1992. The characteristics of the new historical novel, as outlined by Menton, can be summed up in six points: (1) an attitude of suspicion towards the possibility of ascertaining the true nature of reality or history; (2) the conscious distortions of history through omissions, exaggerations, and anachronisms; (3) the presence of famous historical characters as protagonists; (4) the use of metafiction (or the narrators referring to the creative process of his own text); (5) Intertextuality (or explicit allusions to other books and characters); and (6) characteristics present in the Bakhtinian concepts of the dialogic, carnivalesque and heteroglossia, meaning that most of the novels of the period often contain in the same text conflicting presentations of events and characters (dialogism), resource to parody and humor (carnivalesque) and different types of speech (heteroglossia) (Menton, 1993: 22-25). It is worth noting that these features categorized by Menton and applied to Latin American literary production present similarities with those outlined by Linda Hutcheon when referring to postmodern novels in a broader sense. However, it is important to bear in mind that even though Latin American production has parallels with artists and authors around the world, it presents important particularities which can be seen in light of the specific locus of enunciation of these writers and artists. According to Grosfoguel, peripheral nation-states and non-European people still live today under the regime of global coloniality (2008: 8), due to what he calls coloniality of power, a crucial structuring process in the modern/colonial worldsystem that articulates peripheral locations in the international division of labor with the global racial/ethnic hierarchy (2008:8). The coloniality of power has important implications in what Walter Mignolo calls colonial difference, which he considers to be: the connector that, in short, refers to the changing face of coloniality throughout the history of the modern/colonial world-system and brings to the foreground the planetary dimension of human history silenced by discourses centering on Western civilization (2002: 61-62). Ultimately, the colonial difference underpins the locus of enunciation, the geo-political and body-political location of the subject that speaks (Grosfoguel, 2008: 3). Considering the arguments of Mignolo and Grosfoguel, it is possible to argue that colonial difference is not only crucial to the process of knowledge production but also lies at the center of aesthetic production and distribution.5 Therefore, when considering the process of democratic transition that took place in Latin America during the 1980s it is crucial to reflect on the rise of a new historical consciousness, characterized by the emergence and affirmation of writers and visual artists who were dealing not only with the particularities of the Latin American historical and social processes, but also with the position of the region in relation to Western Culture, as Gustavo Pelln argues: recent writers have grown to distrust a stance that makes Latin American authors into either purveyors of exotism to readers in developed countries or warrantors of long-held stereotypes about Latin America (Pelln 2008: 281). The discourse that presented Latin America as an Other, full of exoticism and sensualism, was part of an Eurocentric trap that was fully embraced by Latin American modernists, such as Brazilians writer Mario and Oswald de Andrade. However, this perspective was deconstructed in the novels and visual artworks of the 1980s, in a critical effort to reject a type of discourse that fostered exoticism as the only way to stress Latin America's originality. In fact, novels and visual artworks of the 1980s are less naive than their predecessors insofar as the artists of this period avoid stereotypes and seem more theoretically and historically aware of the implications regarding the relationship between power and knowledge. As a result, visual artworks and literature produced during the period of democratic transition went through several formal and

5 About

the articulation between colonial difference and aesthetics see: Mignolo, Walter (2010). Aithesis Decolonial. In: Calle14 4 (4): 13-25.

conceptual transformations, a sort of post-traumatic aesthetic transition that pointed to a new perception of historical time, a new sense of social transformation, and a demand to deconstruct the official history. This official history was influenced by the regimes' propaganda that celebrated myths, heroes and moral norms that were taught in schools. This discourse was not capable of representing Latin American countries which were emerging from a past marked by authoritarianism and social inequality, and which were looking to redefine their self-image in order to construct an alternative future with different perspectives. The visual art and literature of the period seem to be more concerned with criticizing the production of a canonical history than with recreating a specific historical setting. In this sense, the authors and artists are not looking for mimetic strategies, but rather focusing on carrying out a (de)commemoration of the past, a deconstruction of tradition, by using strategies that combine elements of different periods and artistic movements in a nonchronological way, as to make clear the aspects of the past that were still operating at the time they were writing their books or painting their canvas. The category coined by Linda Hutcheon (historigraphic metafiction) is very pertinent in her project of a poetics of postmodernism. However, her analysis does not take into account the possibility of different forms of postmodernism. In this sense, the argument of multiple forms of modern and postmodern experience (Kaup 2006; Friedman, 2010), or the perspective of a transmodernity (Dussel, 2000; Mignolo, 2002; Grosfoguel, 2008) is very relevant. Due to the specificity of Latin American modernism, which is marked by the position of Latin America as a subaltern culture in the periphery of Western Civilization, it is evident that the new historical consciousness that emerged in novels and pieces of art of the 80s would take a specific configuration. This configuration is not only historically aware but is politically committed to a cultural and symbolic decolonization of the past. Mentons effort to define what he terms new historical novels offers a narrow perspective on the historical references present in the novels that he takes into consideration. In fact, in his theory Menton casts aside a significant group of novels that discuss history and historical consciousness merely because they are set in the present. When defining what a historical novel is, Menton adheres to the following definition: We call historical novels those whose action occurs in a period previous to the authors (Menton 1993: 16). Such a narrow definition does not allow the consideration of novels such as Vargas Llosas Historia de Mayta, a book that is clearly a parody of the work of historians, although it takes place in a contemporary moment. Even Ricardo Piglias Respiracin Artificial is regarded by Menton as a kind of exception because there are many passages in the plot which take place in the present time. When analyzing visual artworks and novels produced in the 1980s many critics tend to label these productions as postmodern, as new historical novels, or using very schematic (and frequently Eurocentric) denominations in order to fit these artistic expressions in a previously elaborated pattern. Instead of these schematic denominations, we are seeking in these artistic expressions a common aesthetic trend that is in fact a set of tendencies which dramatize the challenges of that specific historical moment, through plots or themes that aim for a kind of historical deconstructionism. Although these artists were exposed to new strategies brought up by postmodern perspectives, their productions do not seek a formal rupture with tradition. These artists were in fact trying to find their place at a very complex crossroads of trends and perspectives. This fact may contribute to understand why some artists of the 1980s, including some who had debuted before this decade, did not align with any clear art history tradition, but instead played between modern and postmodern boundaries. This playing in-between is in accordance with the idea of critical border thinking (Mignolo, 2002, 2011; Grosfoguel, 2008) and points to a particular manner of articulating different aesthetic trends and concerns related to the type of modernity achieved in Latin America under very specific conditions.

According to Rmon Grosfoguel:

Critical border thinking is the epistemic response of the subaltern to the Eurocentric project of modernity. Instead of rejecting modernity to retreat into a fundamentalist absolutism, border epistemologies subsume/redefine the emancipatory rhetoric of modernity from the cosmologies and epistemologies of the subaltern, located in the oppressed and exploited side of the colonial difference, towards a decolonial liberation struggle for a world beyond eurocentered modernity (Grosfoguel, 2008: 16).

The best example of this attitude is the case of Joo Ubaldo Ribeiro's Viva o Povo Brasileiro (1984) whose action develops within different historical periods, thus narrating a wide range of questions and themes, from the 16th Century Portuguese colonization to 20th Century social inequality and corruption among Brazilian elites. The text is constructed in a non-chronological way and uses elements of parody to address historical events, such as Brazil's independence from Portugal in the 19th century, or the Paraguayan War, which are events deeply rooted in canonical history and in collective memory. In Viva o Povo Brasileiro the reader can find characters and confrontations which depict five centuries of Brazilian history and account for popular struggles for better life conditions, efforts of middle-income groups to improve their sphere of influence and upper class strategies to maintain privileges. The author links the fate of characters with different social backgrounds, stressing the violence of social relations in Brazil, the brutality of colonization and the formation of a National State after independence. Furthermore, he scrutinizes the spurious relationship between politics and economic power in contemporary Brazilian society. One of the most striking aspects of the narrative is the effort to deconstruct the way Brazilian history was usually presented during the previous years of dictatorship, as a canonical history full of myths and national heroes meant to support a virtuous version of historical events. Ubaldo Ribeiro discusses the violence of colonization and the continuous brutality of Brazilian elites who at many important historical junctures have preferred to abdicate the freedom of self government in favor of an authoritarian and military regime which would be able to control potential popular uprisings and to perpetuate upper class privileges. His references to historical accounts are always marked by a satirical suspicion, as is the case in this excerpt:
Desde esse dia que se sabe que toda a Histria falsa ou meio falsa e cada gerao que chega resolve o que aconteceu antes dela e assim a Histria dos livros to inventada quanto a dos jornais, onde se l cada peta de arrepiar os cabelos. Poucos livros devem ser confiados, assim como poucas pessoas, a mesma coisa. [Since this day we know that all history is false or only partially true and each generation re-writes what happened before and thus the history from the books is so forged as the news in the papers. Few books are reliable, as well as few people; it's the same thing] (Ribeiro, 1982: 515).

When claiming that each generation decides what is important about what has happened before, Ribeiro highlights the discursive nature of past accounts. In fact, even before the beginning of the narrative the epigraph of the book already postulates its theoretical awareness: O segredo da Verdade o seguinte: no existem fatos, s existem histrias [The secret about the Truth is the following: there are no facts, only histories] (Ribeiro, 1982). Ribeiro resorts to typically Neobaroque aesthetic trends and reveals a hint of postmodern (and post-structuralist) theoretical awareness as he depicts a deeply suspicious attitude towards the possibility of historical truth while stressing the idea of history as a discursive construct. He is also clearly influenced by typically modernist topics regarding nationality and national identity, thus invoking many references to cultural cannibalization, or antropofagia which were leitmotives in the work of Brazilian modernists: one of the characters of the book is a cannibal Indian who feasts on the flesh of the Dutch invaders of the 17th Century: O caboclo Capiroba apreciava comer holandeses (Ribeiro, 1982: 37). The narrative simultaneously contains modernist references, Neobaroque features and postmodern strategies, for this hybridization is one of the main particularities of Latin American literary and artistic productions of that period.

Although many literary critics insist on it (Cunha, 2007; Domingos, 2011), Ubaldo Ribeiro has rejected the label of historical novel for his book. Ribeiros rejection may be due to the fact that the novel does not focus on any specific historical recreation but rather takes part in a vast amount of historical-sociological discussions about Brazilian national identity. In this sense, Viva o povo Brasileiro is much more in line with the long tradition of historical and sociological Brazilian essay writers, such as Paulo Prado, Gilberto Freyre and Sergio Buarque de Holanda, than with any other tradition of historical fiction. Richard Moses pointed to the deeply rooted tradition of essayism among Latin American intellectuals. As the professionalization of social sciences in Latin America did not take place before the 1950s, intellectuals of the region built up a very prolific tradition of essays, characterized by reflections that were historical and sociological in essence, but that frequently made use of literary style (Moses, 1995). Although a commitment to depict social inequality and represent national issues has been a constant concern in Latin American literature (Candido, 2007; Menton, 1993) some novels of the 1980s, especially those frequently considered as new historical novels (Menton, 1993; Cunha, 2007; Domingos, 2011), reveal an effort to carry on this tradition of great Latin American essay writers, such as Jos Carlos Maritegui, Jos Enrique Rod, Jos Vasconcelos, Ezequiel Martnez Estrada, Paulo Prado, Gilberto Freyre and Sergio Buarque de Holanda. The case of Silviano Santiagos Em Liberdade (1981), a novel labeled by Menton as a sample of the new historical novel, was considered by Karl Erik Schollhammer as an example of a novel-essay (Schollhammer, 2009), insofar as it presents a blend of fiction, critical analysis and historical essay. Both Ribeiro's and Santiago's novels express a special concern with the brutality of the historical process and the authoritarian tradition in Brazilian politics and society. They are both interesting samples of narratives which combine modernist themes, postmodernist approaches and a decolonial effort. Thus, I consider that the term novel-essay is more suitable to understand the deconstructive effort of these authors when compared to the generic term historical novel. Moreover, in the case of visual arts, some artists such as Adriana Varejo have also tried to carve an alternative pathway, or at least an approach between tendencies, by appropriating techniques and strategies which had been taken up by postmodernist trends while still working on themes from modernist vanguards of the twentieth century. Varejo resorts to historical images which are usually laden with references to the violence of the colonization process. In some sense, Varejos visual artworks also seem to point to the fragility of myths that are rooted in Brazilian social imaginary, as the idea of a society built as a racial democracy, as suggested by Gilberto Freyre in his writings about slavery in Brazil; or the idea of Brazil as an idyllic and peaceful society. In doing so, Varejo takes part in the referred tradition of essayism, attempting to remind the viewer that Brazilian society was built through historical processes marked by brutality and authoritarianism, and that social inequality is still an ongoing problem. Adriana Varejo has a subjective way of tackling the complexity of tendencies that boomed in the 1980s. Her interest in the Baroque, often noted by critics, synthetically incorporates topics related to historical themes as she explores implicit or untold stories, thus creating a type of critical historiography. For instance, in her work Acadmico-Heris (Figure 1), Varejo appropriates small pieces of 19th century's academic paintings, such as Rodolfo Amoedo's O ltimo Tamoio and Almeida Junior's O derrubador brasileiro (Figures 2 and 3). She articulates different dramatic narratives by mixing up canonical paintings and by confronting their theatrical principles of figurative composition. This relationship between history, violence and representation permeates her entire body of works. in a rough state (Figure 4). Beyond the presence of flesh-painting, a symbolic meaning is enhanced to appropriate a visual memory at once strange and familiar. The artist's intervention strategies play with the symbolic construction of visuality, building layers of signification permeated by tension and struggle. According to Luiz

Camilo Osrio (Osorio, 2009) the creation of illusion and enchantment implies giving up a certain modernist tendency that legitimized itself through an alleged selfreferentiality of expressive media. Varejo overcomes it in a way that the contamination of form by image did not bring back the illustrative nature of figuration. Many critics refer to the paintings of Adriana Varejo as driven by a desire for theatricality (Osrio, Santiago, Schuarts, Shoolhammer, 2009). Bringing back Baroque references to contemporary representation, through the themes of Lusitanian azulejarias that pervade her works, Varejo revives a painting style that is unafraid of artifice, illusion, or a delirious and sensual game of appearances. Opposed to the idea that art has definitely divorced from politics, as many critics have argued, this form of art seems to point to a redefinition of the terms of this relationship, or as put by Osrio: Once the revolutionary dream and the hangover of disenchantment had ended, it was up to artists and to art to review the forms of interaction with history and society (Osrio,2009:234). The paintings of Adriana Varejo assume the uneasiness of a simultaneous dereferentialized and re-enhanced figuration (Figure 5), destabilizing conventional iconographic regimes through the approximation of heterogeneous elements. In her work both figuration and history return as a parody, suspending a predetermined narrative order. One important aspect of her work is the way she mixes layers of memory, redefining unfinished historicities according to a contemporary gaze. It is a strategy of exposing a temporality disturbed by combinations and juxtapositions of materialities and imaginations, creating an Other temporality drawn from its place in the past in response to its relation with the present. In Adriana Varejo there is a type of coexistence of modern and postmodern perspectives. According to Luiz Camilo Osrio:
It is a matter of affirming the modern aesthetics regime without modernist teleology and its succession of ruptures. The tradition of rupture was important in establishing new horizons of possibility for making and thinking about art, thus fully deploying them for an utopian colonization of the future. () Just as there is no longer a historicity based on revolutionary logic that points to an ideologically defined horizon of expectations, there is no reason why all of art's possibilities should be reduced to a hegemonic formal or iconographic model (Osrio, 2009: 235).

The work of Adriana Varejo problematizes many aspects of the Baroque, sometimes appropriating and inverting its stylistic and rhetorical elements. The semantic density of her images confers a critical sense to history. Although Varejo was among the artists who were received as postmodernists in the 1980s, her work seems to stress an undoubted link with modernism. As the author herself has claimed:
I am interested in verifying in my work dialectical processes of power and persuasion. I subvert those processes and try to gain control over them in order to become an agent of history rather than remaining an anonymous, passive spectator. I not only appropriate historic images, I also attempt to bring back to life processes which created them and use them to construct new versions.6

These new versions of historic images are usually full of references to the violence of colonization and of the post-colonial historical process. She appropriates references from different periods of time without being ahistoric. Instead, she seeks to uncover the most painful and bloody aspects of the images, aspects that rest beneath the thin layer of surface, as the flesh that emerges from the inner part of her canvas. Observed both in literature and in visual arts, this decolonial tendency points exactly to the specificity of Latin America's new historical consciousness, which is part of a broader cultural, social and political process of transition. It is important to reiterate that these novels and visual art works also have an important epistemological dimension, in the sense that they criticize historical knowledge through an aesthetic approach and as such confer an even more powerful decolonial potential to these artistic manifestations. Seymour Menton argues that the tendency towards history in Latin American

literature can be associated with certain factors. First, he refers to the forthcoming of quincentennial celebrations of "discoveries" as an event that has triggered an evaluative effort regarding the course of Latin American culture. However, according to Menton, the renewed interest towards history is linked to an escapist impulse, when faced with the political and economic crisis that marked the 1980s: the increasingly grim situation throughout Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s is responsible for the popularity of what is essentially an escapist subgenre (Menton 1993: 29). In the opposite direction to that pointed out by Menton, I understand that the new historical consciousness in Latin American novels like Respiracin Artificial (1980) by Ricardo Piglia, La Guerra del fin del mundo (1981) and Historia de Mayta (1984) by Vargas Llosa, Em Liberdade (1981) by Silviano Santiago, Viva o Povo Brasileiro `(1984) by Joo Ubaldo Ribeiro, as well as in a series of paintings like
6 Quoted

in Carvajal, Rina (1996). Travel Chronicles: the work of Adriana Varejo. In: Gangitano L and Nelson S (eds). New Histories. Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art, p. 16.

Barroco or Acadmicos by Adriana Varejo, is part of an effort to vent a deeplyrooted identity crisis, related to the Latin American colonial heritage and in the context of the traumatic and post-traumatic years of dictatorship, followed by the subsequent democratic transition. The flourishing of this new historical consciousness and its popularity among writers and readers is not part of an escapist pursuit but rather the opposite: a radical effort to deconstruct and decolonize the discourse about the past, a symbolic guerrilla war fought in the field of memory. The quest, amongst artists and writers, to cope with the very complex crossroads of tendencies and possibilities of the 1980s was articulated through the necessity to re-signify history and self-image, at a time marked by deep political and social transformations. The dilemmas of the collective construction of democracy after the grisly years of dictatorship in the region added a potent fuel to the uncertainties of a period when modernism was declared moribund although the issues queried by Latin American modernists were still, in many senses, pertinent and relevant. Therefore, the tendency towards historical themes in Latin American art and literature bloomed in response to a difficult task, which was to find a particular way of tackling the new challenges whilst dealing with long-term rooted problems. The specificity of Latin America emerges exactly from this dilemma, and through the strategies these artists and writers have applied to walk between old and new, past and future, coloniality and liberation, tradition and transition. Therefore, the process of democratic transition occurred parallel to a profound re-thinking of self-representation in the region; an aesthetic transition aimed at redefining the way the past had been rendered in order to reformulate the way a desirable future could be envisioned and achieved.

2. Explain the double meaning of the Kings comment Monsieur Gericault, your shipwreck is certainly no disaster. The Raft of the Medusa This article is about the painting. For the oratorio, see Das Flo der Medusa. The Raft of the Medusa French: Le Radeau de la Mduse Thodore Gricault Artist 18181819 Year Oil on canvas Type Dimensions 491 cm 716 cm (193.3 in 282.3 in) Louvre, Paris Location The Raft of the Medusa (French: Le Radeau de la Mduse) is an oil painting of 18181819 by the French Romantic painter and lithographer Thodore Gricault (17911824). Completed when the artist was 27, the work has become an icon of French Romanticism. At 491 cm 716 cm (193.3 in 282.3 in),[1] it is an over-life-size painting that depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Mduse, which ran aground off the coast of today's Mauritania on July 5, 1816. At least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft; all but 15 died in the 13 days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation and dehydration and practiced cannibalism. The event became an international scandal, in part because its cause was widely attributed to the incompetence of the French captain perceived to be acting under the authority of the recently restored French monarchy. In reality, King Louis XVIII had no say in the captain's appointment, since monarchs were not directly involved in appointments made to vessels like a naval frigate. The appointment of the vicomte de Chaumareys as captain of the Mduse would have been a routine naval appointment, made within the Ministry of the Navy.[2] In choosing the tragedy as subject matter for his first major workan uncommissioned depiction of an event from recent historyGricault consciously selected a well-known incident that would generate great public interest and help launch his career.[3] The event fascinated the young artist, and before he began work on the final painting, he undertook extensive research and produced many preparatory sketches. He interviewed two of the survivors, and constructed a detailed scale model of the raft. His efforts took him to morgues and hospitals where he could view, first-hand, the colour and texture of the flesh of the dying and dead. As the artist had anticipated, the painting proved highly controversial at its first appearance in the 1819 Paris Salon, attracting passionate praise and condemnation in equal measure. However, it established his international reputation, and today is widely seen as seminal in the early history of the Romantic movement in French painting. Although The Raft of the Medusa retains elements of the traditions of history painting, in both its choice of subject matter and its dramatic presentation, it represents a break from the calm and order of the then-prevailing Neoclassical school. Gricault's work attracted wide attention almost immediately from its first showing, and was subsequently exhibited in London. It was acquired by the Louvre soon after the artist's early death at the age of 32. The painting's influence can be seen in the works of Eugne Delacroix, J. M. W. Turner, Gustave Courbet and douard Manet.

Background Main article: French frigate Mduse (1810) Plan of The Raft of the Medusa at the moment of its crew's rescue[4] In June 1816, the French frigate Mduse departed from Rochefort, bound for the Senegalese port of Saint-Louis. She headed a convoy of three other ships: the storeship Loire, the brig Argus and the corvette cho. Viscount Hugues Duroy de Chaumereys had been appointed captain of the frigate despite having scarcely sailed in 20 years.[5][6] The frigate's mission was to accept the British return of Senegal under the terms of France's acceptance of the Peace of Paris. The appointed French governor of Senegal, Colonel Julien-Dsir Schmaltz, and his wife Reine Schmaltz were among the passengers. In an effort to make good time, the Mduse overtook the other ships, but due to poor navigation it drifted 100 miles (161 km) off course. On July 2, it ran aground on a sandbank off the West African coast, near today's Mauritania. The collision was widely blamed on the incompetence of De Chaumereys, a returned migr who lacked experience and ability, but had been granted his commission as a result of an act of political preferment.[4][7][8] Efforts to free the ship failed, so, on July 5, the frightened passengers and crew started an attempt to travel the 60 miles (97 km) to the African coast in the frigate's six boats. Although the Mduse was carrying 400 people, including 160 crew, there was space for only about 250 in the boats. The remainder of the ship's complementat least 146 men and one womanwere piled onto a hastily-built raft, that partially submerged once it was loaded. Seventeen crew members opted to stay aboard the grounded Mduse. The captain and crew aboard the other boats intended to tow the raft, but after only a few miles the raft was turned loose.[9] For sustenance the crew of the raft had only a bag of ship's biscuit (consumed on the first day), two casks of water (lost overboard during fighting) and a few casks of wine. According to critic Jonathan Miles, the raft carried the survivors "to the frontiers of human experience. Crazed, parched and starved, they slaughtered mutineers, ate their dead companions and killed the weakest."[4][10] After 13 days, on July 17, 1816, the raft was rescued by the Argus by chanceno particular search effort was made by the French for the raft.[11] By this time only 15 men were still alive; the others had been killed or thrown overboard by their comrades, died of starvation, or thrown themselves into the sea in despair.[12] The incident became a huge public embarrassment for the French monarchy, only recently restored to power after Napoleon's defeat in 1815.[13][14]

Description The Raft of the Medusa portrays the moment when, after 13 days adrift on the raft, the remaining 15 survivors view a ship approaching from a distance. According to an early British reviewer, the work is set at a moment when "the ruin of the raft may be said to be complete".[15] The painting is on a monumental scale of 491 716 cm (193.3 282.3 in), so that most of the figures rendered are lifesized[16] and those in the foreground almost twice life-size, pushed close to the picture plane and crowding onto the viewer, who is drawn into the physical action as a participant.[17] Detail from the lower left corner of the canvas showing two dying figures The makeshift raft is shown as barely seaworthy as it rides the deep waves, while the men are rendered as broken and in utter despair. One old man holds the corpse of his son at his knees; another tears his hair out in frustration and defeat. A number of bodies litter the foreground, waiting to be swept away by the surrounding waves. The men in the middle have just viewed a rescue ship; one points it out to another, and an African crew member, Jean Charles,[18] stands on an empty barrel and frantically waves his handkerchief to draw the ship's attention.[19] The pictorial composition of the painting is constructed upon two pyramidal structures. The perimeter of the large mast on the left of the canvas forms the first. The horizontal grouping of dead and dying figures in the foreground forms the base from which the survivors emerge, surging upward towards the emotional peak, where the central figure waves desperately at a rescue ship. Diagram showing the outline of the two pyramidal structures that form the basis of the work. The position of the Argus is indicated by the yellow dot. The viewer's attention is first drawn to the centre of the canvas, then follows the directional flow of the survivors' bodies, viewed from behind and straining to the right.[16] According to the art historian Justin Wintle, "a single horizontal diagonal rhythm [leads] us from the dead at the bottom left, to the living at the apex."[20] Two other diagonal lines are used to heighten the dramatic tension. One follows the mast and its rigging and leads the viewer's eye towards an approaching wave that threatens to engulf the raft, while the second, composed of reaching figures, leads to the distant silhouette of the Argus, the ship that eventually rescued the survivors.[3] Gricault's palette is composed of pallid flesh tones, and the murky colours of the survivors' clothes, the sea and the clouds.[21] Overall the painting is dark and relies largely on the use of sombre, mostly brown pigments, a palette that Gricault believed was effective in suggesting tragedy and pain.[22] The work's lighting has been described as "Caravaggesque",[23] after the Italian artist closely associated with tenebrismthe use of violent contrast between light and dark. Even Gricault's treatment of the sea is muted, being rendered in dark greens rather than the deep blues that could have afforded contrast with the tones of the raft and its figures.[24] From the distant area of the rescue ship, a bright light shines, providing illumination to an otherwise dull brown scene.[24]

Execution

Research and preparatory studies

Gricault's Study for "The Raft of the Medusa", pen and brown ink, 17.6 cm 24.5 cm, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France Gricault was captivated by accounts of the widely publicised 1816 shipwreck, and realised that a depiction of the event might be an opportunity to establish his reputation as a painter.[25] Having decided to proceed, he undertook extensive research before he began the painting. In early 1818, he met with survivors Henri Savigny and Alexandre Corrard, and their emotional descriptions of their experiences largely inspired the tone of the final painting.[15] According to the art historian Georges-Antoine Borias, "Gricault established his studio across from Beaujon hospital. And here began a mournful descent. Behind locked doors he threw himself into his work. Nothing repulsed him. He was dreaded and avoided."[26] Earlier travels had exposed Gricault to victims of insanity and plague, and while researching the Mduse his effort to be historically accurate and realistic led to an obsession with the stiffness of corpses.[7] To achieve the most authentic rendering of the flesh tones of the dead,[3] he made sketches of bodies in the morgue of the Hospital Beaujon,[25] studied the faces of dying hospital patients,[27] brought severed limbs back to his studio to study their decay,[25][28] and for a fortnight drew a severed head, borrowed from a lunatic asylum and stored on his studio roof.[27] Cannibalism on the Raft of the Medusa, crayon, ink wash, and gouache on paper, 28 cm 38 cm, Louvre. This study is darker than the final work, and the positions of the figures differ significantly from those of the later painting. He worked with Corrard, Savigny and another of the survivors, the carpenter Lavillette, to construct an accurately detailed scale model of the raft, which was reproduced on the finished canvas, even showing the gaps between some of planks.[27] Gricault posed models, compiled a dossier of documentation, copied relevant paintings by other artists, and went to Le Havre to study the sea and sky.[27] Despite suffering from fever, he travelled to the coast on a number of occasions to witness storms breaking on the shore, and a visit to artists in England afforded further opportunity to study the elements while crossing the English Channel.[22][29] He drew and painted numerous preparatory sketches while deciding which of several alternative moments of the disaster he would depict in the final work.[30] The painting's conception proved slow and difficult for Gricault, and he struggled to select a single pictorially-effective moment to best capture the inherent drama of the event. Among the scenes he considered were the mutiny against the officers from the second day on the raft, the cannibalism that occurred after only a few days, and the rescue.[31] Gricault ultimately settled on the moment, recounted by one of the survivors, when they first saw, on the horizon, the approaching rescue ship Argusvisible in the upper right of the paintingwhich they attempted to signal. The ship, however, passed by. In the words of one of the surviving crew members, "From the delirium of joy, we fell into profound despondency and grief."[31] Sailors of the Mduse detained by the British after the sinking. Lithograph by C. Motte, after Thodore Gricault.

To a public well-versed in the particulars of the disaster, the scene would have been understood to encompass the aftermath of the crew's abandonment, focusing on the moment when all hope seemed lost[31]the Argus reappeared two hours later and rescued those who remained.[32] The author Rupert Christiansen points out that the painting depicts more figures than had been on the raft at the time of the rescueincluding corpses which were not recorded by the rescuers. Instead of the sunny morning and calm water reported on the day of the rescue, Gricault depicted a gathering storm and dark, heaving sea to reinforce the emotional gloom.[27]

Final work Gricault, who had just been forced to break off a painful affair with his aunt, shaved his head and from November 1818 to July 1819 lived a disciplined monastic existence in his studio in the Faubourg du Roule, being brought meals by his concierge and only occasionally spending an evening out.[27] He and his 18-year-old assistant, Louis-Alexis Jamar, slept in a small room adjacent to the studio; occasionally there were arguments and on one occasion Jamar walked off; after two days Gricault persuaded him to return. In his orderly studio, the artist worked in a methodical fashion in complete silence and found that even the noise of a mouse was sufficient to break his concentration.[27] Study c. 18181819, 38 cm 46 cm, Louvre. This preparatory oil sketch nearly fully realises the positions of the figures in the final work. He used friends as models, most notably the painter Eugne Delacroix (17981863), who modelled for the figure in the foreground with face turned downward and one arm outstretched. Two of the raft's survivors are seen in shadow at the foot of the mast;[30] three of the figures were painted from lifeCorrard, Savigny and Lavillette. Jamar posed nude for the dead youth shown in the foreground about to slip into the sea, and was also the model for two other figures.[27] According to Hubert Wellington, Delacroixwho would become the standard-bearer of French Romanticism after Gricault's deathwrote, "Gricault allowed me to see his Raft of Medusa while he was still working on it. It made so tremendous an impression on me that when I came out of the studio I started running like a madman and did not stop till I reached my own room."[33][34]

Gricault painted with small brushes and viscous oils, which allowed little time for reworking and were dry by the next morning. He kept his colours apart from each other: his palette consisted of vermilion, white, naples yellow, two different yellow ochres, two red ochres, raw sienna, light red, burnt sienna, crimson lake, Prussian blue, peach black, ivory black, cassel earth and bitumen.[27] Bitumen has a velvety, lustrous appearance when first painted, but over a period of time discolours to a black treacle, while contracting and thus creating a wrinkled surface, which cannot be renovated.[35] As a result of this, details in large areas of the work can hardly be discerned today.[17] This diagram illustrates the main 16 colours used for the painting[27] Gricault drew an outline sketch of the composition onto the canvas. He then posed models one at a time, completing each figure before moving onto the next, as opposed to the more usual method of working over the whole composition. The concentration in this way on individual elements gave the work both a "shocking physicality"[20] and a sense of deliberate theatricalitywhich some critics consider an adverse effect. Over 30 years after the completion of the work, his friend Montfort recalled: [Gricault's method] astonished me as much as his intense industry. He painted directly on the white canvas, without rough sketch or any preparation of any sort, except for the firmly traced contours, and yet the solidity of the work was none the worse for it. I was struck by the keen attention with which he examined the model before touching brush to canvas. He seemed to proceed slowly, when in reality he executed very rapidly, placing one touch after the other in its place, rarely having to go over his work more than once. There was very little perceptible movement of his body or arms. His expression was perfectly calm ....[27][36] Working with little distraction, the artist completed the painting in 8 months;[22] the project as a whole took 18 months.[27]

Influences The Raft of the Medusa fuses many influences from the Old Masters, from the Last Judgment and Sistine Chapel ceiling of Michelangelo (14751564) and Raphael's Transfiguration,[37] to the monumental approach of Jacques-Louis David (17481825) and Antoine-Jean Gros (17711835), to contemporary events. By the 18th century, shipwrecks had become a recognised feature of marine art, as well as an increasingly common occurrence as more journeys were made by sea. Claude Joseph Vernet (17141789) created many such images,[38] achieving naturalistic colour through direct observationunlike other artists at that timeand was said to have tied himself to the mast of a ship in order to witness a storm.[39] Michelangelo. Detail of The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. Gricault said, "Michelangelo sent shivers up my spine, these lost souls destroying each other inevitably conjure up the tragic grandeur of the Sistine Chapel."[40] Although the men depicted on the raft had spent 13 days adrift and suffered hunger, disease and cannibalism, Gricault pays tribute to the traditions of heroic painting and presents his figures as muscular and healthy. According to the art historian Richard Muther, there is still a strong debt to Classicism in the work. The fact that the majority of the figures are almost naked, he wrote, arose from a desire to avoid "unpictorial" costumes. Muther observes that there is "still something academic in the figures, which do not seem to be sufficiently weakened by privation, disease, and the struggle with death".[24] The influence of Jacques-Louis David can be seen in the painting's scale, in the sculptural tautness of the figures and in the heightened manner in which a particularly significant "fruitful moment" the first awareness of the approaching shipis described.[23] In 1793, David also painted an important current event with The Death of Marat. His painting had an enormous political impact during the time of the revolution in France, and it served as an important precedent for Gricault's decision to also paint a current event. David's pupil, Antoine-Jean Gros, had, like David, represented "the grandiosities of a school irredeemably associated with a lost cause",[41] but in some major works, he had given equal prominence to Napoleon and anonymous dead or dying figures.[31][42] Gricault had been particularly impressed by the 1804 painting Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Victims of Jaffa, by Gros.[7] Pierre-Paul Prud'hon. Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime, 1808, 244 cm 294 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles. The darkness and the sprawling naked figure was an influence on Gricault's painting.[35] The young Gricault had painted copies of work by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (17581823), whose "thunderously tragic pictures" include his masterpiece, Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime, where oppressive darkness and the compositional base of a naked, sprawled corpse obviously influenced Gricault's painting.[35] The foreground figure of the older man may be a reference to Ugolino from Dante's Infernoa subject that Gricault had contemplated paintingand seems to borrow from a painting of Ugolini by Henry Fuseli (17411825) that Gricault may have known from prints. In Dante, Ugolino is guilty of cannibalism, which was one of the most sensational aspects of the days on the raft. Gricault seems to allude to this through the borrowing from Fuseli.[43] An early study for The Raft

of the Medusa in watercolour, now in the Louvre, is much more explicit, depicting a figure gnawing on the arm of a headless corpse.[44] Several English and American paintings including The Death of Major Pierson by John Singleton Copley (17381815)also painted within 2 years of the eventhad established a precedent for a contemporary subject. Copley had also painted several large and heroic depictions of disasters at sea which Gricault may have known from prints: Watson and the Shark (1778), in which a black man is central to the action, and which, like The Raft of the Medusa, concentrated on the actors of the drama rather than the seascape; The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 1782 (1791), which was an influence on both the style and subject matter of Gricault's work; and Scene of a Shipwreck (1790s), which has a strikingly similar composition.[31][45] A further important precedent for the political component was the works of Francisco Goya, particularly his The Disasters of War series of 181012, and his 1814 masterpiece The Third of May 1808. Goya also produced a painting of a disaster at sea, called simply Shipwreck (date unknown), but although the sentiment is similar, the composition and style have nothing in common with The Raft of the Medusa. It is unlikely that Gricault had seen the picture.[45]

Exhibition and reception

The Raft of the Medusa was first shown at the 1819 Paris Salon, under the generic title Scne de Naufrage (Scene of Shipwreck), although its real subject would have been unmistakable for contemporary viewers.[27] Gricault's Raft was the star at the Salon of 1819: "It strikes and attracts all eyes" (Le Journal de Paris). Louis XVIII visited the Salon three days before the opening, and reportedly said "Monsieur, vous venez de faire un naufrage qui n'en est pas un pour vous",[46] freely translated as "Monsieur Gricault, your shipwreck is certainly no disaster".[47] Critics were divided: the horror and "terribilit" of the subject exercised fascination, but devotees of classicism expressed their distaste for what they described as a "pile of corpses," whose realism they considered a far cry from the "ideal beauty" incarnated by Girodet's Pygmalion and Galatea (which triumphed the same year). Gricault's work expressed a paradox: how could a hideous subject be translated into a powerful painting, how could the painter reconcile art and reality? Marie-Philippe Coupin de la Couperie, a French painter and contemporary of Gricault, was categorical: "Monsieur Gricault seems mistaken. The goal of painting is to speak to the soul and the eyes, not to repel." The painting had fervent admirers too, including French writer and art critic Auguste Jal who praised its political theme, its liberal position (the advancement of the "negro", the critique of ultraroyalism), and its modernity. For French historian Jules Michelet, "our whole society is aboard the raft of the Medusa [...]."[3] Nicolas Sebastien Maillot's Raft of the Medusa shown in Salon Carr of the Louvre, 1831, Louvre, shows Gricaults Raft hanging alongside works by Poussin, Lorrain, Rembrandt and Caravaggio[48] The exhibition was sponsored by Louis XVIII and featured nearly 1,300 individual paintings, 208 sculptures and numerous other engravings and architectural designs. The contemporary critic Frank Anderson Trapp suggested that the volume of work shown and the sheer scale of the event indicates the ambition behind the exhibition. Trapp notes that the fact that "100 grandiose history paintings [were included] in itself proclaimed a munificent government patronage", for aside from a few affluent competitors like Gricault, only those favoured by a major commission could afford the outlay of time, energy and money necessary for undertakings of this kind.[7] Gricault had deliberately sought to be both politically and artistically confrontational. Critics responded to his aggressive approach in kind, and their reactions were either ones of revulsion or praise, depending on whether the writer's sympathies favoured the Bourbon or Liberal viewpoint. The painting was seen as largely sympathetic to the men on the raft, and thus by extension to the anti-imperial cause adopted by the survivors Savigny and Corrard.[15] The decision to place a black man at the pinnacle of the composition would have been controversial, and was an expression of Gricault's abolitionist sympathies; the art critic Christine Riding has speculated that the painting's subsequent exhibition in London was planned to coincide with anti-slavery agitation there.[49] The painting was a political statement; the incompetent captain was an inexperienced sailor, but a politically sound anti-Bonapartist. According to contemporary art critic and curator Karen Wilkin, Gricault's painting acts as a "cynical indictment of the bungling malfeasance of France's post-Napoleonic officialdom, much of which was recruited from the surviving families of the Ancien Rgime".[21]

In 1820, Gricault successfully exhibited the painting in the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London. It was seen by around 40,000 visitors and received more positive reviews than when it was shown at the Salon.[50][51] The painting generally impressed the viewing public, although its subject matter repelled many, thus denying Gricault the popular acclaim which he had hoped to achieve.[27] At the end of the exhibition, the painting was awarded a gold medal by the judging panel, yet they refrained from giving the work the greater prestige of being selected for the Louvre's national collection. Instead, Gricault was awarded a commission on the subject of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which he clandestinely offered (along with the fee) to Delacroix, whose finished painting he then signed as his own.[27] Gricault retreated to the countryside, where he collapsed from exhaustion, and his work, having found no buyer, was rolled up and stored in a friend's studio.[52] Gricault arranged for the painting to be exhibited in London in 1820, where it was shown at William Bullock's Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, from June 10 until the end of the year, and viewed by about 40,000 visitors.[51] The reception in London was more positive than that in Paris, and the painting was hailed as representative of a new direction in French art. In part, this was due to the manner of the painting's exhibition: in Paris it had initially been hung high in the Salon Carra mistake that Gricault recognised when he saw the work installedbut in London it was placed close to the ground, emphasising its monumental impact. There may have been other reasons for its popularity in England as well, including "a degree of national self-congratulation",[53] the appeal of the painting as lurid entertainment,[53] and two theatrical entertainments based around the events on the raft which coincided with the exhibition and borrowed heavily from Gricault's depiction.[54] From the London exhibition Gricault earned close to 20,000 francs, which was his share of the fees charged to visitors, and substantially more than he would have been paid had the French government purchased the work from him.[55] After the London exhibition, Bullock brought the painting to Dublin early in 1821, but the exhibition there was far less successful, in large part due to a competing exhibition of a moving panorama, "The Wreck of the Medusa" by the Marshall brothers firm, which was said to have been painted under the direction of one of the survivors of the disaster.[56] Copy of the work by Pierre-Dsir Guillemet and tienne-Antoine-Eugne Ronjat, a full size copy, 185960, 493 cm 717 cm, Muse de Picardie, Amiens[57] The Raft of the Medusa was championed by the curator of the Louvre, comte de Forbin who purchased it from Gricault's heirs after his death in 1824 for the museum, where the painting now dominates its gallery.[13] The display caption tells us that "the only hero in this poignant story is humanity."[3]

At some time between 1826 and 1830 American artist George Cooke (17931849) made a copy of the painting in a smaller size, (130.5 x 196.2 cm; approximately 4 ft 6 ft), which was shown in Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C. to crowds who knew about the controversy surrounding the shipwreck. Reviews favoured the painting, which also stimulated plays, poems, performances and a children's book.[58] It was bought by a former admiral, Uriah Phillips, who left it in 1862 to the New York Historical Society, where it was miscatalogued as by Gilbert Stuart and remained inaccessible until the mistake was uncovered in 2006, after an enquiry by Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, a professor of art history at the University of Delaware. The university's conservation department undertook restoration of the work.[59] Because of deterioration in the condition of Gricault's original, the Louvre in 185960 commissioned two French artists, Pierre-Dsir Guillemet and tienne-Antoine-Eugne Ronjat, to make a full size copy of the original for loan exhibitions.[57] In the autumn of 1939, the Medusa was packed for removal from the Louvre in anticipation of the outbreak of war. A scenery truck from the Comdie-Franaise transported the painting to Versailles in the night of September 3. Some time later, the Medusa was moved to the Chteau de Chambord where it remained until after the end of the Second World War.[60]

Interpretation and legacy

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates 1787, 129.5 cm 196.2 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art. David represented the Neoclassical style, from which Gricault sought to break. In its insistence on portraying an unpleasant truth, The Raft of the Medusa was a landmark in the emerging Romantic movement in French painting, and "laid the foundations of an aesthetic revolution"[61] against the prevailing Neoclassical style. Gricault's compositional structure and depiction of the figures are classical, but the contrasting turbulence of the subject represents a significant change in artistic direction and creates an important bridge between Neoclassical and Romantic styles. By 1815, Jacques-Louis David, then in exile in Brussels, was both the leading proponent of the popular history painting genre, which he had perfected, and a master of the Neoclassical style.[62] In France, both history painting and the Neoclassical style continued through the work of Antoine-Jean Gros, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Franois Grard, Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Pierre-Narcisse Gurinteacher of both Gricault and Delacroixand other artists who remained committed to the artistic traditions of David and Nicolas Poussin. Antoine-Jean Gros, detail from Napoleon on the battlefield of Eylau, 1807, Louvre. Like Gros, Gricault had seen and felt the exhilaration of violence, and was distraught by the human consequences.[7]

In his introduction to The Journal of Eugne Delacroix, Hubert Wellington wrote about Delacroix's opinion of the state of French painting just prior to the Salon of 1819. According to Wellington, "The curious blend of classic with realistic outlook which had been imposed by the discipline of David was now losing both animation and interest. The master himself was nearing his end, and exiled in Belgium. His most docile pupil, Girodet, a refined and cultivated classicist, was producing pictures of astonishing frigidity. Grard, immensely successful painter of portraits under the Empiresome of them admirablefell in with the new vogue for large pictures of history, but without enthusiasm."[33] The Raft of the Medusa contains the gestures and grand scale of traditional history painting; however, it presents ordinary people, rather than heroes, reacting to the unfolding drama.[63] Gricault's raft pointedly lacks a hero, and his painting presents no cause beyond sheer survival. The work represents, in the words of Christine Riding, "the fallacy of hope and pointless suffering, and at worst, the basic human instinct to survive, which had superseded all moral considerations and plunged civilised man into barbarism".[15] The unblemished musculature of the central figure waving to the rescue ship is reminiscent of the Neoclassical, however the naturalism of light and shadow, the authenticity of the desperation shown by the survivors and the emotional character of the composition differentiate it from Neoclassical austerity. It was a further departure from the religious or classical themes of earlier works because it depicted contemporary events with ordinary and unheroic figures. Both the choice of subject matter and the heightened manner in which the dramatic moment is depicted are typical of Romantic paintingstrong indications of the extent to which Gricault had moved from the prevalent Neoclassical movement.[21] Hubert Wellington said that while Delacroix was a lifelong admirer of Gros, the dominating enthusiasm of his youth was for Gricault. The dramatic composition of Gricault, with its strong contrasts of tone and unconventional gestures, stimulated Delacroix to trust his own creative impulses on a large work. Delacroix said, "Gricault allowed me to see his Raft of Medusa while he was still working on it."[33] The painting's influence is seen in Delacroix's The Barque of Dante (1822) and reappears as inspiration in Delacroix's later works, such as The Shipwreck of Don Juan (1840).[61] Eugne Delacroix, The Barque of Dante, 1822. The Raft of the Medusa's influence on the work of the young Delacroix was immediately apparent in this painting, as well as in later works.[61] According to Wellington, Delacroix's masterpiece of 1830, Liberty Leading the People, springs directly from Gricault's The Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's own Massacre at Chios. Wellington wrote that "While Gricault carried his interest in actual detail to the point of searching for more survivors from the wreck as models, Delacroix felt his composition more vividly as a whole, thought of his figures and crowds as types, and dominated them by the symbolic figure of Republican Liberty which is one of his finest plastic inventions."[64]

The art and sculpture historian Albert Elsen believed that The Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's Massacre at Chios provided the inspiration for the grandiose sweep of Auguste Rodin's monumental sculpture The Gates of Hell. He wrote that "Delacroix's Massacre at Chios and Gricault's Raft of the Medusa confronted Rodin on a heroic scale with the innocent nameless victims of political tragedies ... If Rodin was inspired to rival Michelangelo's Last Judgment, he had Gricault's Raft of the Medusa in front of him for encouragement."[65] Eugne Delacroix, Massacre at Chios, 1824, 419 cm 354 cm, Louvre. This painting springs directly from Gricault's The Raft of the Medusa and was painted in 1824, the year Gricault died.[66] While Gustave Courbet (18191877) could be described as an anti-Romantic painter, his major works like A Burial at Ornans (184950) and The Artist's Studio (1855) owe a debt to The Raft of the Medusa. The influence is not only in Courbet's enormous scale, but in his willingness to portray ordinary people and current political events,[67] and to record people, places and events in real, everyday surroundings. The 2004 exhibition at the Clark Art Institute, Bonjour Monsieur Courbet: The Bruyas Collection from the Musee Fabre, Montpellier, sought to compare the 19th-century Realist painters Courbet, Honor Daumier (18081879), and early douard Manet (18321883) with artists associated with Romanticism, including Gricault and Delacroix. Citing The Raft of the Medusa as an instrumental influence on Realism, the exhibition drew comparisons between all of the artists.[68] The critic Michael Fried sees Manet directly borrowing the figure of the man cradling his son for the composition of Angels at the Tomb of Christ.[69] The influence of The Raft of the Medusa was felt by artists beyond France. Francis Danby, a British painter born in Ireland, probably was inspired by Gricault's picture when he painted Sunset at Sea after a Storm in 1824, and wrote in 1829 that The Raft of the Medusa was "the finest and grandest historical picture I have ever seen".[70] J. M. W. Turner, A Disaster at Sea (also known as The Wreck of the Amphitrite), c. 183335, 171.5 cm 220.5 cm, Tate, London. Turner probably saw Gricault's painting when it was exhibited in London in 1820. The subject of marine tragedy was undertaken by J. M. W. Turner (17751851), who, like many English artists, probably saw Gricault's painting when it was exhibited in London in 1820.[71][72] His A Disaster at Sea (c. 1835) chronicled a similar incident, this time a British catastrophe, with a swamped vessel and dying figures also placed in the foreground. Placing a coloured figure in the centre of the drama was revisited by Turner, with similar abolitionist overtones, in his The Slave Ship (1840).[71] Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream, 1899, 71.5 cm 124.8 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art The Gulf Stream (1899), by the American artist Winslow Homer (18361910), replicates the composition of The Raft of the Medusa with a damaged vessel, ominously surrounded by sharks and threatened by a waterspout. Like Gricault, Homer makes a black man the pivotal figure in the scene, though here he is the vessel's sole occupant. A ship in the distance mirrors the Argus from Gricault's painting.[73] The move from the drama of Romanticism to the new Realism is exemplified by the stoic resignation of Homer's figure.[74] The man's condition, which in earlier works might have been characterised by hope or helplessness, has turned to "sullen rage".[73]

In the early 90's, sculptor John Connell, in his Raft Project, a collaborative project with painter Eugene Newmann, recreated The Raft of the Medusa by making life-sized sculptures out of wood, paper and tar and placing them on a large wooden raft.[75] Remarking on the contrast between the dying figures in the foreground and the figures in the midground waving towards the approaching rescue ship, the French art historian Georges-Antoine Borias wrote that Gricault's painting represents, "on the one hand, desolation and death. On the other, hope and life."[76] For Kenneth Clark, The Raft of the Medusa "remains the chief example of romantic pathos expressed through the nude; and that obsession with death, which drove Gricault to frequent mortuary chambers and places of public execution, gives truth to his figures of the dead and the dying. Their outlines may be taken from the classics, but they have been seen again with a craving for violent experience."[37] Today, a bronze bas-relief of The Raft of the Medusa by Antoine tex adorns Gricault's grave in Pre Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.[77]

3. Point out one of the instances of the narrative in which the apparent transparency of language is in fact mediated by ideological presuppositions.

Freedom in The French Lieutenants Woman

AbstractJohn Fowles (1926-2005), an outstanding English writer of 1960s, published The French Lieutenants Woman in 1969. Freedom is the motif of John Fowless fiction writing, one of his strategies, the important information that he wishes to disseminate to the readers who are expected to absorb, understand profoundly and comprehensively. As a postmodernist experimental writer, John Fowless works infuse a new current for both English and American literature. This paper tries to c ombine the postmodernist and existential critic method with the element of freedom in Fowless novel and wri ting process, although many researches and studies have been carried out by critics and scholars both home and abroad, the combination of postmodernism, existentialism and freedom element is a new perspective. Reading this paper, the readers are expected to gain a comprehensive knowledge of freedom, make their choice freely in their daily life as well as deepen their understanding of The French Lieutenants Woman. Index TermsJohn Fowles, freedom, postmodernism, metafiction, multiple ending

I. INTRODUCTION John Fowles was born on 31 March, 1926, in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, a suburb of London at the mouth of the Thames River. During the Second World War, the Fowles moved to southwest of England, living in the Village of Ipplepen, South Devon. It was at that time that young Fowles was attracted by the mysterious nature and fell in live with it. After the war, John Fowles entered into Oxford University, majoring in French and German. Therefore, he was deeply influenced by French literature and existentialism, respectively represented by Flaubert (1821-1880) and Sartre (19051980), Camus (1913-1960). John Fowles is an amateur naturalist, admiring universal love and individual freedom. Once he said that he advocated fraternity, especially individual freedom due to English, French and Greek culture. In 1966, he moved to Underhill Farm near Lyme Regis, Dorset, which became the background of his The French Lieutenants Woman. John Fowles and his wife, Elizabeth, often walked along the beach, roamed around the forests, enjoying the tranquility and freedom provided by nature. Here, we can learn the reason why John Fowles regards freedom as an important element in his writing, especially in The French Lieutenants Woman, where he expounds that There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedom to exist.( John Fowles, 1992, P82) In the 1940s and 1950s, the English writers worshiped their predecessors of the 18 th and 19th century, which is an extreme in order to protest the Modernism. Traditional realistic narrative techniques designed to produce an illusion of reality and the related willing suspension of disbelief were widely felt in the 1960s and 1970s to be not only inadequate but falsifying in presenting life. Meanwhile, after the Second World War, there were new literary current and various schools in both Europe and American. For example, Nouveau Roman budded in France. Many critics censured the postwar England literature for their conservative, parochial sight and lack of creation, innovation. John Bath was the first in 1967 to announce that the traditional novelistic resources have been exhausted. Read his important essay The Literature of Exhaustion and there will be no doubt that change and innovation was inevitable. Under this circumstance, many English writers including John Fowles, was influenced by the new current abroad and began with their experimental works. After the publication of his three novels, The Collector, The Magus, The French Lieutenants Woman, John Fowles received many reviews and criticism. Quite a few critics labeled him as the postmodernist novelist. So, what is a postmodernist novel? It is a general term hard to define, mainly consisting of the novel of the absurd, metaficton, avant-gardism, black humor, the Beat Generation and Magic Realism. Here, metafiction undermines the authority of the author, for unexpected narrative shifts to advance a story in a unique way, for emotional distance, or to comment on the act of storytelling. It not only describes the plot and character, but explains how the novel is made. Take The French Lieutenants Woman as an example. John Fowles reproduces the Victorian novel by employing proper language, dialogues and style. While unabashedly copying the traditional writing, John Fowles ridicules and pokes fun at that and announces his novel a lie. In this sense, The French Lieutenants Woman is a typical postmodernist work.

The story took place in Lyme Regis, England, in 1867. Charles Smithson, a Victorian gentleman, and his fiance Ernestina Freeman, a traditional Victorian lady, were walking along the Cobb, a breakwater jutting into Lyme Bay, when they met a mysterious woman in black. This woman, Sarah Woodruff, was called by the residents of Lyme, the Frenc h lieutenants woman. Charles was a man of 32 years old, an amateur paleontologist and a Darwinist; Ernestina, a successful drapers daughter, revealed to be a pretty but conventional young Victorian woman; Sarah was just Ernestinas opposite, who was a penniless governess and an outcast, reputed to be pining for the French lieutenant who had jilted her. Due to several encounters, Charles was drawn by Sarahs mysterious, melancholy, sexy, and wild quality. Thus, his passion towards her amounts to obsession. Charles was torn between his duty to Ernestina and his addiction to Sarah. One day Charles learnt that his aged uncle Robert was going to marry a widow young enough to produce him an heir. This marriage created the possibility of depriving Charles of inheriting the family estate, Winsyatt, and the baronetcy title. Therefore, Charless future father -in-law, Mr. Freeman pressured him to join his retail business, which was what Charles considered vulgar. Then comes the first ending of the story: Charles accepted his fate passively and submissively, married Ernestina and entered into the business field. However, in the second ending, things happen in quite another way. Submitting and following to his passion, Charles headed for the Endicotts Family Hotel where Sarah inhabited at that time. He made love with her and found that she was actually a virgin. After that, Sarah disappeared; Charles broke up his engagement with Ernestina and began his two-year search for Sarah. Finally, it was through his former servant Sam that Sarah was found in London. As Sarah revealed their daughter, Lalage, the three were reunited and lived happily ever after. The last ending resumes from Charles turning angrily to leave. This time, Sarah did not reveal their daughter, but just stopped him, suggesting a Platonic friendship; however, Charles chose to reject Sarah, walking away alone in anguish and bitterness. The whole novel then comes to the end. II. METAFICTION A. What Is Metafiction Postmodernism is characterized by contradiction, permutation, discontinuity, randomness, infinite regress, overobtrusive narrators, explicit dramatization of the reader, critical discussion of the form of narration, intertextuality, self-reflexive, parody, and soon. The common and frequent used techniques of postmodernism include irony, black humor, playfulness, intertextuality, and pastiche. Here, pastiche can be seen as a representation of the chaotic, pluralistic, or information-drenched aspects of postmodern society. It can be a combination of multiple genres to create a unique narrative or to comment on situations in postmodernity. Though pastiche commonly refers to the mixing of genres, many other elements are also included, for example, metafiction is common in the broader pastiche of the postmodern novel. Matafiction is essentially writing about writing or "foregrounding the apparatus", as its typical of deconstructionist approaches, making the artificiality of art or the fictionality of fiction apparent to the reader and generally disregards the necessity for "willful suspension of disbelief". That means that, according to Professor Chang Yaoxin, metafiction is a form of writing about fiction in the form of fiction. It is a style of fictive narrative that tries to tell the readers that fiction is fiction and is not an illusion of reality as the realists have tried to deceive into believing. For metafiction writers, traditional realists try to make their fiction look like reality, while metafiction writers feel differently about the idea of authentic representation of reality. They hold that all writing is a fabricated text manipulated by the author in accordance with his own values, and subject to the reading of the readers who have access of the work, already heavily saturated with their backgrounds and cultures. Therefore, novels are no more to raise and meet the traditional expectations of traditional readers and critics, but to shock and subvert those presuppositions and envisagements based on the willing suspension of disbelief as traditional realism has so far succeeded in generating. In this connection, they tend to employ burlesque and anachronism as a means of subverting the readers sense of complacency. These two methods in metafiction are widely employed and we will deal with them in the next two chapters. B. Metafiction Method in the Text Within the first twelve chapters, the story moved on naturally in the Victorian manner, when the author suddenly inserts his own opinion about modern writers and their authority, principles, and capacity. Here, readers are jotted ruthlessly from the story and made to face, confront the false, deceitful reality. In Chapter Three, when giving description of Charles, John Fowles writes as thus, Though Ch arles liked to think of himself as a scientific young man and would probably not have been too surprised had news reached him out of the future of the airplane, the jet engine, television, radar Charles may not be surprised, but we readers are shocked by those objects belonging to 20th century. After Charles encountered Sarah at Ware Commons, he did not go back straightly to Lyme Regis. Instead, he went to the Dairy and met Sarah once more. The impotent narrator says as thus I ordered him to walk stra ight back to Lyme Regis. But he gratu itously turned and went down to the Dairy (John Fowles, 1992, P81). And the author even gives his own reason for failing in controlling Charless behavior: but I that it might be more clever to have him stop and milkand meet Sarah again. That is certainly one explanation of what happened; but I can only report and I am the most reliable witness that the idea seemed to me to come clearly from Charles, not myself. (John Fowles, 1992, P81) Here, Charles became the decision-maker and has his own freedom of choices. The story moved forward partly depending on the characters choice instead of the plan of the author.

After having an affair with Sarah who then disappeared, Charles decided to find out Sarah and boarded on a train. He came across the disguised narrator in their shared train compartment. The latecomer muttered a Pardon me, sir and made his way to the far end of the compartment. He sat, a man of forty of so, his top hat firmly square, hid hands in his knees regaining his breath. (John Fowles, 1992, P317) No doubt, this middle -aged man is John Fowles himself. The author suddenly shows up in the story and becomes a character of it. It is a fantastic change from a narrator to a participating character. The author at that time did not what to do wi th Charles, and he asked what the devil am I going to do with you? (John Fowles, 1992, P317) Then, at the end of this chapter, Fowles tells his readers how story was continued: he toke a florin from his purse and flicked it, which has terminated Charless fate. Judging from the traits of the narratives, The French Lieutenants Woman is a metafiction. Here, we get the conclusion that John Fowles is a pioneer of metafiction writing in which he constantly and in time reveals and derides the falseness and deceiveness of his narrative. While showing his fictive method, Fowles excavates the inherent values of narrative, making literature turn into a game of dallying with readers as well as reality and literary rules. Through this method, John Fowles has succeeded in protesting, revolting reality and thus, gained sufficient freedom. III. BURLESQUE A. About Burlesque Burlesque or parody is a manner of writing where an effort is made to imitate original in order to poke fun at it or to reveal t he discrepancy between the imitation and the original. Obviously, The French Lieutenants Woman is a burlesque of the traditional Victorian realistic narrative method. At the beginning, the readers may fell at ease to follow the author and try to find the real story. However, when the author feels it is time to jerk his readers back, he mercilessly tells the readers that his novel is no more than a game of words. For example, at the end of chapter 12 and in the whole chapter of 13, the author confesses th at who is Sarah? Out of what shadows does she come? I do not know. This story I am telling is all imagination. (John Fowles, 1992, P80) Fowles deploys burlesque and parody to reject the traditional referential of art so that they become self-referential of self-reflexive. John Fowles jumps freely between the proceeding attractive story and his rational comments, between the previous century and the modern time, between a third-person narrator and a character involved in the novel. In this sense, the author has the freedom of choosing material and events in his fiction, which is an essential trait of postmodernist writing. B. The Victorian Age in the Novel In the novel The French Lieutenants Woman, John Fowles makes a stunn ing yet admirable story in the method of Victorian realism. His language, dialogue, style and detail description, such as historical events, attire, decor, and furniture, convince us that the novel must be written by a Victorian writer. It is a vivid, graphic, and touching story took place one hundred years ago, about a triangle romance in England. The writer successfully employs the Victorian style and language from the height of a modern writer in 1960s. By using the conventions as a Victorian novelist might have, brief authorial comments, footnotes, essay materials and epigraphs foreshadowing the chapters they precede, John Fowles connects the past and the present. He compares the Victorian time and the modern time, in order to display the backwardness and hypocrisy of the former. On one hand, Fowles purposely make his narrator imitate the traditional realistic narrative, and on the other hand, he punctures and derides the falseness of this method. By burlesque, John Fowles display the Victorian time and two women characters to his readers. Among them, one was a conventional woman and the other was one who violated the conventions. Now this paper will get a closer observation of the Victorian time described in The French Lieutenants Woman. The Victorian society was declining for the moral, religious, aristocratic traditions were fading away. The British Empire was losing its leading position in the world. While the bourgeoisie was ascending, the aristocracy was descending. Therefore, in order to keep the station in the society, the aristocrats had to form an alliance with the bourgeois, and the common form of the alliance was marriage as the betrothed Charles and Ernestina in the novel. According to Sarah, I live among people the world tells me are ki nd, pious, Christian people. And they seem to me crueler than the cruelest heathens, stupider than the stupidest animals. (John Fowles, 1992, P116) The society was declining and peoples religious belief is loosing and slackening. Usually, they did not believe in God, but would resort to Him when they shouldered the burden of sin and crime. Take Mrs. Poulteney as an example. On one hand, she was a very rich widow and donated a small sum, but on the other hand, she hoped God would never find her spurious behavior and bless her to go to paradise after her death. Besides, she is fussy about everything, extremely strict and cruel to her staff. If the mistress was defective in more mundane matters where her staff was concerned, she took exceedingly good care of their spiritual welfare. There was mandatory double visit to church on Sundays; and there was also a daily morning service(John Fowles, 1992, P50 -P51) It seems that she adopts Sarah out of kindness and sympathy. As a matter of fact, she does that for sake of redeeming herself from the sin and crime that she has committed to the poor. In addition, she was vehemently eager to supervise and control Sarahs behavior as well as her thoughts.

In terms of morality and ethic, there was a dismal and foul pi cture: the sanctity of marriage (and chastity before marriage) was proclaimed from every pulpit, in every newspaper editorial and public utterance; and where never or hardly ever have so many great public figures, from the future king down, led scanda lous private loves Where the female body had never been so hidden from view; and where every sculptor was judged by his ability to carve naked women and where the output of pornography has never been exceeded Where it was universally maintained that women so not have orgasms; yet every prostit ute was taught to simulate them (John Fowles, 1992, P211) The Victorians were no longer serious about their norm, belief, and values. While pretended to be a gentleman or a lady, they indulged in their private life that they themselves regarded vulgar, obscene. In Victorian England, a woman should be a demure, elegant lady who is expected to be a future good mother as well as a good wife. Therefore, they suffocate the desire for sex and will never talk about it on formal, public occasion. They are the female wounded in the battle for universal masculine purity. But, they will imagine the caress of the male or stealthily make love with their lovers. Ernestina even secretly admires her nude in the mirror in her bedroom. There were many recreational places where undone girls and women usually went to. And girls like Mary, although only nineteen years old, knows much about intercourse. E.g. The hardI would rather call it soft, but no matter fact of Victorian rural England was that what a simpler age called tasting before you buy(premarital intercourse, in our current jargon) was the rule, not the exception. (John Fowles, 1992, P214) The Victorian women regard delicate, fragile, arched eyebrows as beautiful. If they are flattered by some gentlemen or shocked by some news, they will feign to faint. A man should be a gallant and chivalric gentleman: to please, protect ladies, to control their temper and emotion, to be loyalty to their love. But the reality is that gentlemen are bored and annoyed by the shallow, pretentious ladies and they actually are not faithful to their love. They just have no other choice but endure the torture. Many a gentlemen will seek the prostitutes as a way of outlet. Here is the description in the novel An age where woman was sacred; and where you could buy a thirteen-year-old girl for a few pounds a few shillings, if you wanted her for only an hour or two. Where more churches were built than in the whole previous history of the country; and where one in sixty houses in London was a brothel (the modern ratio would be nearer one in six thousand). (John Fowles, 1992, P211) Now, through John Fowless burlesque of the previous age, we see that both men and women in the Victorian time had no freedom. Because of the hypocritical morality and practices, everyone should constrained, twisted their instinct and reasonable need. C. ErnestinaSymbol of Victorian Time Apparently, Ernestina Freedom and Sarah Woodruff are respectively symbols of the two times. Firstly, there is a detail analysis of Ernestina Freeman. She was a lady of Victorian, of declining Victorian, a product of that age, a spoiled daughter of a rich but contemptuous draper. She was the ideal, irresistible girl for a gentleman: young (only twenty-one years old), beautiful, tam e, obedient, delicate. Ernestinas icy attitude and demeanor attracted Charles at the party where they met for the first time. Charles thought that he found the right girl and engaged with her within a short time. Ernestina tried her best to be an elegant lady; however, she was proved a selfish, shallow, secular girl. As mentioned in the previous text, Ernestina desired for sex so anxious that she admired her own body in the mirror. Whenever the physical female implication of her body, sexual, menstrual, parturitional, tried to force an entry into her consciousness, she always said to herself I must not. But, she would do it in her private room. In her room that afternoon she unbuttoned her dress and stood before her mirror in her chemise and petticoatsshe raised her arms and unloosed her hair, a thing she knew to be vaguely sinful, yet necessaryshe suddenly stopped turning and admiring herself in profile (John Fowles, 1992, P29) As the other girls, she needed a husband (That was Charles). She felt there was a wolf of lust howling outside her heart. Through contact with Sarah, Charles found he did not like Ernestina. And yet once again it bore in upon him, as the concert, that there was something shallow in her that her acuteness was largely constituted, intellectually as alphabetically, by a mere cuteness. Was there not, beneath the demure knowingness, something of the automaton about her, of one of those ingenious girl- machines from Hoffmanns Tales? (John Fowles, 1992, P122) Ernestinas acuteness, intelligence, derived from her cuteness, physical beauty instead of her own minds and thoughts. She was only the rigid product of that age. She could not keep her air of a lady nor prevent from being selfish. After Charles told her that his uncle would marry a widow young enough to bear him a son as his heir, which meant that Charles would be deprived of the right to inherit the baronetcy title and the estate of Winsyatt, Ernestina became extremely angry, and cursed Charless uncle. This was the behavor of unladylike, lacking of the imperturbability that fine aristocratic refusal to allow the setbacks of life ever to ruffle ones style. Ernestina and her like behaved always as if habited in glass: infinitely fragile, even when they threw books of poetry. The y encouraged the mask, the safe distance (John Fowles, 1992, P119) Ernestina was fragile not only physically but mentally and emotionally. When Charles decided to broke up their engagement, she could not endure the pain and beseeched him to think twice. It seemed that she could not live without the comp any and protection of him. Perhaps I am just a child. But under your love and protectionand your education I believe I should become better. I learn to please you, I should learn to make you love me for what I had become. (John Fowles, 1992, P296) Charles, I beg you, I beg you to wait a little. (John Fowles, 1992, P297) Ernestina orientated herself as the appendage, subsidiary of a man as if her life would mean nothing if Charles abandoned her. She did not live for herself, for her own freedom but the others influence, protection, even control. Sarah Woodruff was exiled from normal Victorian society, but she exemplifies the growing breed of women gaining

emancipation during the late 19th century. She suffered male discrimination, education isolation from native class. Her ancestor were nobles, but in her fathers generation, they declined to the under world. In order to gain dignity a nd nobility, her father sent her to school in hoping of producing an educated, well-bred lady. However, Sarah had been ever since thrown between the lower and the upper class; she was reluctant to go back to her former social station and at the same time she was refused by the upper class, for her education was relatively poor and she has no money. After her fathers death, she became an orphan. She has to take the job as a humble governess. But Sarah had her own consciousness and self-awareness. In this novel, she was thoroughly a modern character, and John Fowles strengthens her contemporary quality, along with her mystery and undedidability, by making her the only one whose mind he will not enter. In the Darwinian sense, she was the cultural missing link between the centuriesmore modern than Victorian. In the story, she has made three essential choices revealing her own definition of freedom: actively receiving the nickname of the French Lieutenants Woman and the insult, bias, isolation of the local people in Lyme Regis; chasing after and imploring the love of Charles; refusing decisively the proposal of Charles. 1. The First Choice Sarahs infamy was widely spread among the local people. It was said that she once nursed a French lieutenant, who was spared in a shipwreck, and had affaires with that foreign man. But, she did not care it and kept roaming and tarrying near the sea. She was adopted by Mrs. Poulteney out of charity, who is the most conventional and strictest, the most cunning and hypocritical mistress in the little tow n. Regardless the ban of her mistress, Sarah went to the forests Ware Commons, which ws the Eden for courting couples every summer. It is sufficient to say that among the more respectable townsfolk one had only to speak of a boy or a girl as one of the Ware Commons kind to tar them for life. The boy must thenceforth be a satyr; and the girl, a hedge- prostitute. (John Fowles, 1992, P77) Therefore, in the eyes of the others, Sarah was a licentious and shameless woman. In fact, she was a woman born with sharp insight, loving poems and novels. Although she was proud of her own aloofness, she seriously remained her chasteness. Sarah knew exactly what she was doing and what she wanted. Why I sacrifice a womans most precious possession for the transient gratification of a man I did not love. I did it so that I should never be the same again. I did it so that people should point at me, should say, there walks the French Lieutenants WhoreWhat has kept me alive is my shame, my knowing that I am truly not like other women. I shall never have children, a husband, and those innocent happinesses they have. I th ink I have a freedom they cannot understand. No insult, no blame, can touch me.(John Fowles, 1992, P142) Here, Sarah explains her philosophical reason to Charles for bearing the nickname and shame. She is not the conventional Victorian woman who toes the line. Prostitute or whore is an identity Sarah designs for herself. By use of this unique, circuitous, indirect method, she lets out her dissatisfied, resentful emotion resulting from the unfairness of the society. It is not only the silent protest to the secular environments, but the wise strategy to realize her freedom. Under the cover of the infamy, Sarah was able to be spared of the moral rules of that time, to shake off all kinds of bondages and pressures of the upper class, to become a total expatriate. 2. The Second Choice Sarah fell in love with Charles at the first sight and she began her painstaking pursue of love. At the very beginning, she prese nted herself as a figure from myth, standing motionless and staring at the sea. Charles, he found that There was no artifice there, no hypocrisy, no hysteria, no mask; and above all, no sign of madness. Therefore, she was, to some extent, attractive to Charles and she aroused his curiosity. Then, Sarah arranged carefully every meeting with Charles. She learnt that Charles was an amateur paleontologist, interested in collecting fossils. So she wandered in the forests where Charles sought for his precious fossils. Sarah depended on her sexual magnetism and took advantage of Charless sympathy. In their first encounter, Charles inadvertently saw her sleeping under a cliff, and he was addicted in watching her. There was something intensely tender and yet sexual in the way she lay; it awakened a dim echo of Charles of a moment from his time in Paris.( John Fowles, 1992, P61) Charles had been to the continent and lived a rake life, so having intercourse with some young lady or prostitute was not uncommon. But, when he came back home and got engaged with Ernestina, he decided to be a gentleman. Howe ver, now Sarah was irresistible from carnal respect. Presently, Charles regained his rightness and showed his fraternity. and overcome by an equally strange feeling not sexual, but fraternal (John Fowles, 1992, P62) Sarah kept silent and remained her m ysterious characteristics. Later, while Charles dropped at the Dairy on the way home, Sarah appeared on purpose put of the trees above him and the host of the Diary. She was successful, for Charles could never believe that Sarah was a whore. In their second encounter, she still seemed very icy, but she slipped on her knees, showing her fragility. She was totally like a wild animal, unable to look at him, trembling, dumb. Charles now is concerned about her safety and reputation. In addition, he admired, at least did not detest her intelligence and independence, because he was a Darwinism (this point will be discussed in the next chapter). He could not help thinking of Sarah or some emotion, some possibility she symbolized when he felt bored and frustrated by Ernestina. At the third time, Sarah sought for Charles and got him into communication. She divulged part of her story and implored Charles another meeting to listen to her tragic story. Charles promised her although with reluctance. He imagined himself a savor for the miserable, unfortunate of which Sarah was one.

In the following meeting, Charles was guided by Sarah onto a dell surrounded by dense thickets, where a make-up story

as well as her reason to stay at Lyme as a whore was expounded. By that time, he could not resist or restrain any more. After Sarah was fired by Mrs. Poulteney, he was eager to find her. With the help of the address sent by some anonym, Ch arles met Sarah at the Endicotts Family Hotel. Sarah had prepared for his arrival, hav ing feigned a sprained ankle so that the landlady sent Charles up to her room instead of calling her down. She was even wearing a newly bought shawl and nightgown for the occasion. Before he arrived, she had built a fresh mound in the coalgrate, and during their halting reunion, coals fell out and ignite the blanket around Sarahs legs. When Charles had smothered the fire and was replacing the blanket, she touched his hand. From that point on, nature took over Charles carried Sarah to bed. Until that moment, Charles realized he actually loved Sarah and he made up hid mind to breach his engagement and propose Sarah for a life-long marriage. Unlike Ernestina, Sarah is a bold, brave woman who follows her will and pursues her love openly, indomitably. Regardless the Victorian conventions, she gives herself to Charles out of pure love. Here, we see a modern woman enjoying freedom. 3. The Third Choice Sarahs third choice may disappoint those who expect a traditional happy ending. On the contrary, she chose to re fuse Charless proposal in order to continue her state of freedom and independence. After two years, Charless love had turned into bondage for Sarah. She could not bear the man-chauvinist family life in which Charles would protect her and their daughter Lalage. Through their contact, Sarah helped Charles to realize his own being, his self-identity, to pursue his love, to explore the true meaning of life and freedom. After that, she did not want Charles to interfere in her life, nor did she want to interfere in Charless life. Therefore, she even did not reveal their daughter Lalage (following the third ending) in the hope of a total separation. Here, Sarah instructed Charles to understand the meaning and importance of freedom. All that Sarah has done indicates that freedom is part of justice and equality of the society, is a process of protesting and resisting the unfairness and persecution. In a word, Sarah is an independent modern woman with super insight, discernment. She regards the modern maxim of I possess this now, therefore I am happy. as her motto. Every minute for her is counted; every decision for her is choice at her own will; every step for her is happy. IV. ANACHRONISM A. The Limitation of Freedom Here is a diagram advocated by American narratologist Seymour Chatman: Real author Implied author (Narrator) (Narratee) Implied reader Real reader. In this diagram, since the real author and real reader are real people, represented by the implied author and implied reader respectively, they are actually excluded from the narrative structure. The real author is the person living his worldly life; the implied author id the person with a certain emotion , idea, and belief while writing his works. Moreover, the implied author is constructed by the readers imagination and made present in the text by the very components of fiction itself. The implied reader is the ideal reader in the eyes of the implied author or the fore-constructed reader whose thought conforms with that of the implied author and who can totally understand the work. The narrator differs from the implied author who has no direct means of communicating. It is the narrator who enunciates the narrative and disseminates the information. The narrator participating in the story is the homodiegetic narrator; the narrator not participating in the story is heterodiegetic narrator. The narratee is the person receiving the information of the narrator. Here, we can learn that the novel is manipulated by the implied author, and his readers have only one access of reading and understanding the novel that is from the view and voice of the narrator. In The French Lieutenants Woman, John Fowles, represented by the implied author, is a man in the 20 th century who has witnessed the history of the new time. Besides, he owns the technique of anachronism in writing. Therefore, the novel readers see is a product out of the authors manipulation. The reader and the characters have no freedom in this sense, at least only having the relative freedom. It seems that anachronism has broke the continuity of reading as well as the traditional narrative view about time and space, which enables the readers take an active part in the writing process of the narrative during the reading time. But, the narrative and the effect are still controlled by the implied author. After all, anachronism is a new method in postmodern narrative composition and it breaks the enclosure pattern of time and space, providing the readers a broader space of thinking and meditating. B. About Anachronism The postmodernist term anachronism that is a chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of persons, events, objects, or customs from different periods of time. Often this item misplaced in time is an object, but it may be a verbal expression, a technology, a philosophical idea, a musical style, a material, a custom, or anything else associated with a particular period in time so that it is incorrect to place it outside its proper temporal domain. The narrator in the The French Lieutenants Woman connects both centuries and constantly travels from one time to the other without any restrictions. The anachronism is embodied through installing, transplanting modern subjects into Victorian story. John Fowles gathers the story time and the narrative time in a entity, and alternatively employs them according to his own idiosyncrasy. Therefore, the author gains the freedom of narrating, making his story overlapping and leaping. Here are some examples:

Ernestina is introduced in Chapter 5, the narrator says that shedied on the day that Hitler invaded Poland (John

Fowles, 1992, P28) The reader know that the invasion took place in 1939, an element of the 20th century. When talking about the insight and discernment of Sarahs, the narrator says, she was born with a computer in her heart. (John Fowles, 1992, P47) When narrating Sarahs sleeping with Millie, the narrator says that: I doubt if Mrs. Poulteney had ever heard of the word lesbian. (John Fowles, 1992, P128) The narrator proclaims that he has bought the Toby cup. the Toby was cracked, and was to be recracked in the course of time, as I can testify, having bought it myself a year or two ago for a good deal more than the three pennies Sarah was charged.(John Fowles, 1992, P220) After their lovemaking, the narrator says Charles felt like a city struck out of a quiet sky by an atom bomb. (John Fowles, 1992, P275) Also, in chapter fifty-seven, when Mary, the ex- maid of Ernestinas aunt, came into the spot, Fowles explains I am sure the young woman whom I should have liked to show pushing a perambulator (but cant, since they do not come into use for another decade) had never heard of Catullus, The narrator knows clearly that some objects or scenes are impossible in the Victorian time, but he still insists their presentation at his free will. By taking the reader with present thought back to the 1860s, the narrator breaks the novels Victorian features and jounces the reader into viewing the action historically, by revealing his novel is just a fictive work. Thus, the readers should not regard the novel as the reality, but the fiction. Fowless narrator is part Fowles himself and part device. Since he is a modern novelist who slips his own created past, his time-linking effects appear deceptively anachronistic. V. MULTIPLE ENDINGS A. About the Multiple Endings in the Novel Postmodernism is also featured by without the neatly tie- up endings or with multiple beginnings. Apparently, The French Lieutenants Woman is furnitured with multiple endings. From its ancient beginning in magic, then religious, ritual and drama, fiction was characterized by closed endings: Victories, sacred marriages, births, and deaths. For centuries, fictions closed endings assured the accomplishment of divine justice. Even well into the Victorian Age, the novels closed ending remained a function of the writers divine intervention. The novelist in that e poch had no qualms about intervening in his story to affect the closed ending of his choice. To make his ending happen, they frequently relied upon the most improbable of coincidences. For instance, Lalage, the child of Charles and Sarah is such an improbable device to make the protagonists denounce their first decision. Being no longer the fixer of the novel, Fowles gives his readers three endings for them to choose according to their own taste and conjecture. The first ending occurs in chapter 44 where Charles left Sarah, married Ernestina, and entered her fathers business. It epitomizes the rejection of freedom, the obedience to duty and Victorian ideology. But this false, traditional ending is rejected by the narrator in chapter 45. The second ending occurs in chapter 60. Having broken his engagement with Ernestina, Charles returned to Sarah and reunited with her. This ending represents Charless choice of freedom by uniting with Sarah, but Sarah herself refused to be inscribed, dominated by him. In other words, it is a kind of wish- fulfillment of Charless fantasies of a happy life with Sarah. The third ending, in chapter 61, embodies Sarahs existential freedom: the two protagonists both rejected each other and Charles was left alone. It is in fact appropriate to the theme of freedom. Charles was left alone, but he was capable of change and could understand the implications of existentialism that Sarah tried to teach him. The novels open ending is a form of freedom to the readers, a fact that undermines authority in the narrative. The readers are free of manipulation, in the sense that they can maneuver their own position and stance in the narrative. In The French Lieutenants Woman, the narrator treats his readers as intelligent, independent beings who deserve more than the manipulative illusion of reality provided by a traditional novel. In the novel, the first ending has been toppled by the narrator; however, the second and third are of equal possibility. The readers have the freedom of adding more possible endings as well as choose one according to their own experience. This kind technique of ending a novel breaks the omniscient, omnipotent role of the narrator, provides the readers with the right of decision-making, expands the textual space. Also, John Fowles stimulates his readers self-consciousness and invites them to compose the narrative with him. In this sense, readers are no longer passive consumers but co-authors with freedom. The third ending is true to Fowless biological view, in conformed to his sense of mystery. This thoroughly contemporary ending is the one supported by the vast thematic network which has woven into the novel the concepts of mans isolation and his survival through the centuries by evolving. Even we readers must choose whether to evolve: if one accepts the final ending, he has chosen evolution; if he takes the happy ending, he must take along with its Victorian intervening omnipotent, omniscient God, its biological, psychological improbability, and its heavy-handed rendering. B. Existential Freedom and the Third Ending As having been referred in the introduction part, John Fowles is influenced by French existentialism that he has employ in his writings. From the year 1947 to 1950, the French existentialism was in vogue when John Fowles was in Oxford University. The novelist was deeply influenced by that theory system, especially the theory of freedom, developed by Sartre. By combining the existentialism with his own unique understanding of freedom, Fowles inserts and saturates his thoughts into his works. When being interviewed, John Fowles declares that he has read almost all the works of Sartre and Camus.

Existentialism, which has gained momentum by invading virtually every form of human thought and expression, including the novel, theater, poetry, art, and theology, emerged in its contemporary form in Paris following the Second World War . In the sheer scope or its influence a far wider response than any other mode of philosophy in current times has been achieved by existentialism, and this influence does not appear to be waning. Rejecting systematic and schematic thought, existentialists concentrate their attention on human situation, in favor of a more spontaneous mode of expression in order to capture the authentic concerns of concrete existing individuals. They probe into the meaning of being through the deep recesses of mans anxious and restless soul and their concern is about mans active role in forging his own destiny and help cope with a given situation. Individual responsibility, according to Sartre, is that man is what he makes of himself; he has no one to blame for what he is except himself. Freedom means that there is nothing forcing me from behind to behave in any given way, no r is there a precise pattern luring me into the future. There are no guidelines gua ranteed to us in this world and no rule of general morality can show us what we ought to do I am the only thing that exists and I am totally free. In addition, for Sartre, each agent is endowed with unlimited freedom. Freedom is not defined by an ability to act. Freedom is rather to be understood as characteristic of the nature of consciousness, i.e. as spontaneity. As an existential writer, Fowles in concerned about how an individual under pressure keeps his own freedom, unique characteristics in order to materialize his self-identity. According to John Fowles, existentialism enables an individual to react, take actions against the odds, pressures, and ordeals around him. Fowless novels are all devoted in how to realize the existing, potential freedom, especially self-awareness and the spirit of suspecting. Frequently, Fowles emphasizes the importance of pursuing limited freedom in quandary, and the positive aspects, such as searching, exploring, and improving. Sartre says that man first of all exists, confronts himself, emerges in the world and defines himself afterward. Both the main characters in The French Lieutenants Woman, Sarah and Charles, are created according to this theory. At the beginning, they had to remain their roles in the society, a prostitute and a gentleman. Sarah had to confront the censure, curse of the others; Charles had to face the infamy and mental torture of breaking the marriage. At the end, the two of them both rejected each other: Charles chose to live alone after his two-year searching for Sarah, for the meaning of freedom in the world, especially in the US; Sarah, though still mysterious, chose to live in the community of the PreRaphael as a modern woman dressed in fashionable clothes, to raise her daughter, Lalage, alone if there were such little girl. Here they defined themselves in accordance with the philosophy of existentialism, avoiding being the object of the others. Charles achieved freedom through the violation of his age, ancestry, class, and country. Sarah promoted freedom though her sexuality, femininity, and psychological impact upon Charles, accepted her sexuality, as we have learnt because it led him to self-realization and to achieving whole sight. Sexuality embodies freedom, particularly when Sarah did not demand marriage from Charles after their sexual intercourse and refused his proposal after they met two years later. By putting his existential philosophy into the figure of Charles, Fowles tries to enlighten readers how to arise from the social norms and convention to obtain an existentially free and happy life. Charles declared himself a Darwinist, but he indeed did not understand the meaning of Darwins theory of evolution just as the Victorians around him. Instead, he was rescued by existentialism. In the third ending, Charles was at the typical existential feeling of void, alienation, and isolation and he was totally free and responsible to decide where he was to go. By h aving Charles in The French Lieutenants Woman as a model for readers, Fowles enables readers gain an inspiration for their own life. Charless struggling to maintain his individuality and to pursue freedom, struggling to achieve a measure of self-realization amidst the undirected or misdirected masses, is an important unifying theme through out the entire novel. The choices Charles is facing, in a large extent, reflect the various choices that readers must face in their life. A different choice can make life all the difference, just as in Charless case. In fact, the whole novel is trying to enlighten readers that human beings are free and should have the endurance to pursue their own freedom, no matter how hard it is to obtain; otherwise their life will be fossilized. This existential theme of life- long quest of freedom is flowing out through the novel. For John Fowles, existentialism is not a philosophy, but a way of looking at, and utilizing other philosophies.

4. Compare the process of painting a picture with that of telling a story with regards the issue of representation. Telling a Painting's Story One of the greatest qualities of art is the way it "speaks" to each one of us: People may share opinions about a work of art and even feel similar emotional responses, but ultimately our reactions to art and our interpretations of it are as individual as we are. In this activity your students can express their unique responses to art by writing stories inspired by paintings in an art museum. Before they put their imaginations to work, each person will have a chance to get to know a painting by observing it closely, making a list of its details, and writing a description of it. Such an exercise will help them understand the value of careful observation as a precursor to descriptive and creative writing. It may also help them learn how to look at and truly see a work of art for the first time.

5. Analyse from a postmodern perspective the following excerpt of the chapter Shipwreck:
And there we have it the moment of supreme agony on the raft, taken up, transformed, justified by art, turned into a sprung and weighted image, then varnished, framed, glazed, hung in a famous art gallery to illuminate our human condition, fixed, final, always there.

A Postmodern Approach to History One of the major postmodernist concerns is that this reality is after all a construction. History is fiction, and fiction is reality. Postmodernist fiction is driven by an impetus to portray the lack of authoritative truths, it attempts to analyse the relations between past and present to raise questions about truth, history, and knowledge.

The history of the world "arrives in the form of texts and textualized remainders memories, reports published writings, archives, monuments, and so forth". This was stated by the historian, Dominick LaCapra, but is precisely what is foregrounded in Julian Barness "A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters". The novel is a collection of extracts, fragments, "voices echoing in the dark", all with their different styles and contradictory or overlapping perceptions. History is rewritten, textualized, foregrounding the fact that there are alternative ways of rewriting it and that "there always appear to be two explanations for everything". In "A History", Barnes subverts traditional historical events turning them into parodies that ultimately shed light on the human condition. The multitude of voices taken from fact and fiction, recount a history of the world from a plurality of perspectives, but yet seem to come all into a unity of focus to foreground the fact that history does not yield "hopeful conclusions", but is "a series of salon pictures, conversation pieces whose participants we can easily reimagine back into life, when all the time its more like a multi-media collage". What "A History" offers to the reader is petits recits rather than the history of authoritative truths because "the God-eyed version" of truth is simply "a charming, impossible fake". What "A History" proposes in its stead is the "imaginative sympathy [] to see the world from another point of view". In Julian Barness "A History", the narrator of the inset story "Shipwreck" poses the question: "How do you turn catastrophe into art?" The story is divided into two parts; the first part details the wrecking of the Medusa and the subsequent rescue of the fifteen men who survived thirteen days at sea on a fatal and originally overladen raft. The second part of the story is an analysis of the Gericault painting "The Raft of the Medusa" delineating the catastrophe. Catastrophe is turned into art: "Nowadays the process is automatic. A nuclear plant explodes? Well have a play on the London stage within a year. A president is assassinated? You can have the book or the film or the filmed book or the booked film. War? Send in the novelists. A series of gruesome murders? List for the tramp of the poets. We have to understand it, of course, this catastrophe; to understand it, we have to imagine it, so we need the imaginative arts. But we also need to justify it and forgive it, this catastrophe, however minimally." The account considers what art chooses to convey and what it omits in the process of transforming history into art. Gericault rendered the image of hope and despair in his painting, but "is that what happened?" The narrator engages in vibrant discussion ranging from factual information to the finished work of art, which outlived the survivors:

"It begins with truth to life. [] Truth to life, at the start, to be sure; yet once the process gets under way, truth to art is the greater allegiance. The incident never took place as depicted; the numbers are inaccurate; the cannibalism is reduce to a literary reference; the Father and Son group has the thinnest documentary justification, the barrel group none at all. The raft has been cleaned up as if for the state visit of some queasy-stomached monarch: the strips of human flesh have been houswifed away, and everyones hair is as sleek as a painters new-bought brush." The representation of the event belies the actual catastrophe. It begins with the correspondence theory, but ultimately it becomes an art which is solely committed to the idea of art. Is catastrophe justified by art? "Well, no. People die; rafts rot; and works of art are not exempt". Art attempts to portray the human condition, to "shift us through currents of hope and despair, elation, panic and resignation", but more importantly it is an attempt at understanding why "this mad act of Nature, this crazed human moment" happened. We want to see "how things turned out", we want "to have the world explained", and so we turn to the storyteller to find a reason for the atrocities of human history, believing what we want to believe and go on believing it: "History isnt what happened. History is just what historians tell us. There was a pattern, a plan, a movement, expansion, the march of democracy; it is a tapestry, a flow of events, a complex narrative, connected, explicable. One good story leads to another [] but all the time its connections, progress, meaning, this led to this, this happened because of this. And we, the readers of history, the sufferers from history, we scan the pattern for hopeful conclusions, for the way ahead." But "weve got to look at things how they are; we cant rely on fabulation anymore. Its the only way well survive", otherwise "myth will become reality", and "then we merely surrender to the history of the world and to someone elses truth". "A History" may give the impression of a bleak novel in its denunciation of history as soothing fabulation and "love and truth", which are offered as the hope for redemption appear to fail, because "our love has gone, and it is the fault of the history of the world". In actual fact however, it is a highly moral novel that celebrates plurality and honesty, and advocates the necessity to seek the truth despite the awareness that historical truth is hopelessly elusive: "We all know objective truth is not obtainable, that when some event occurs we shall have a multiplicity of subjective truths which we assess and then fabulate into history, into some God-eyed version of the what really happened. [] But while we know this we must still believe that objective truth is obtainable; or we must believe that it is 99 per cent obtainable; or if we cant believe this we must believe that 43 per cent objective truth is better than 41 per cent. We must do so, because if we dont were lost, we fall into beguiling relativity, we value ones liar version as much as another liars, we throw up our hands at the puzzle of it all, we admit the victor has the right not just to the spoils but also to the truth." What Barnes is suggesting is that the truth exists, it may not be what the "God-eyed version" of the truth wants us to believe, but we must still search for the truth, because the alternative is "falling into beguiling relativity", failing to distinguish between truth and falsehood. And this is the aim of postmodernism, to portray not one universal and unquestionable truth, which is "someone elses truth", but other possible truths that challenge hegemonic discourses, and in so doing rather than

portray fictional events as factual, these novels foreground the daily experience of making sense of the worlds around us and in the process comes the awareness of the differing and conflicting perceptions of truth that contest the validity of the grand narratives. Postmodernism makes us question not what the truth is, but rather whose truth is told. Similarly, Jean-Francois Lyotard argued that the recognition of the world as multicultural has brought about a general disaffection with the authoritative truths of totalising grand narratives, be they history, religion, politics, and so on, and promoted the awareness of local histories that were not paid their dues. The questioning of universal truths coincides with Michel Foucaults contention that knowledge does not yield absolute truths. Foucault was influential in challenging our concepts of universal truths by equating knowledge with power. He was primarily concerned with the ways modern societies construct meaning and make use of knowledge to secure power over the population. According to Foucault, power structures deploy the human sciences to condition the way we perceive society, and through their underlying structures and hidden codes, they portray their own constructed version of history as given. In his genealogies, Foucault challenges the power structures that construct truth in what he calls totalising discourses, and following Nietzsche he attempts to "bring the past to the bar of judgement, interrogate it remorselessly", to prove that there are no universal truths, but truth is merely what counts as true in a discourse at a particular time. Foucaults exposition of the lack of universal truths does not however contest the very existence of truth, but rather reasserts the plurality and particularity of different realities pertaining to different cultures. Postmodernism challenges the normative assumptions of the real, and turns the "given" into the "constructed" highlighting the notion that "what we so valued is a construct, not a given, and in addition, a construct that occupies a relation to power in our culture".

ANTONIA S. BYATT

Study questions
1. Explain the meaning of names in Possession, especially taking their etymologies and literary connotations into consideration. How are the characters typified by their names in the book? Do some of them contribute to the parodic effects contrived by Byatt? Possession is the story of two romances, a twentieth century one, and a nineteenth century one. It is one of my favourite books. Ronald is a young research associate working on the life and writing of a nineteenth century poet, Randolph Ash. He finds a fragment of a letter from Ash which suggests the beginnings of a previously unknown relationship between him and a female poet, who Ronald soon discovers to be Cristobel La Motte. He meets Maud Bailey, a feminist academic who is working on La Motte, and together they discover letters between the two, revealing their growing passion. Interspersed with the modern account of discovery, we are treated to some of what actually happened between Ash and La Motte. There are of course complications in both romances. Roland already has a girlfriend, Val, and Maud is avoiding relationships with men after an unhappy experience with one of Rolands colleagues. Ash is married, and La Motte lives with a woman companion, and it has been assumed till now that she was a lesbian. And there is Cropper, the American collector of Ash memorabilia, who gets wind of the existence of the letters, Leonora, the feminist academic, and a whole cast of supporting characters. Together, they make an intricate and satisfying story. This was a book, Byatt says, that had been germinating in her mind for years. When I first recognise a thought as the germ of a novel or story, I form a shape, or file, in a corner of my mind, to which I add things that seem to belong to it, quotations, observations. She had a rich background from which to accumulate such things. An acknowledged expert on the works of Iris Murdoch, she had also read and written widely on the thought and literature of the nineteenth century. She was intimately familiar with the work of Austen, the Brontes and George Eliot. She had also written about more popular romances, such as those of Georgette Heyer and Barbara Pym. Over a number of years, Byatt added new ideas about possession that her novel should contain. There would be relations between living and dead minds; did the scholar possess knowledge of the writer, or did the writer possess the scholars imagination? This question determined that the story would take place in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Then she had the idea that the word possession involved both the daemonic and the economic, so the book could include Victorian ideas about spiritualism, but also twentieth century realities about physical ownership of literary artefacts. Possession has a sexual meaning suggesting male dominance; feminism of course had to play a part. Then there was the fascinating fact that the love letters of George Eliot had been buried with her, and there were now proposals to dig them up; something based on this would add a Gothic touch. And there were the letters between the poets Robert and Elizabeth Browning; much of the nineteenth century story would be told through such letters, and also poems. She wanted there to be a detective element, so the twentieth century characters would be trying to find out about the nineteenth century ones. Byatt believes that the pleasure of fiction is narrative discovery, so the book must tell a compelling story. And It should learn from my childhood obsession, Georgette Heyer, to be a Romance. The book is sometimes called a pastiche; it contains a mixture of ordinary modern narrative, mostly from Rolands point of view, nineteenth century style narrative, letters, journal entries, a

fairy story, poetry and chunks of feminist literary criticism and theory. The story provokes questions such as when is a writer copying, when is it legitimate for an author to step outside the story, and even what is the nature of fiction? Ashs poetry is an interesting example of the role of the writer. The poetry is a copy of the style of Robert Browning. Byatt initially agonised over her ability to copy effectively. When she began writing it, she says I found I was possessed it was actually quite frightening the nineteenth-century poems that were not nineteenth-century poems wrote themselves, hardly blotted, fitting into the metaphorical structure of my novel, but not mine, as my prose is mine. La Mottes poetry is modelled on that of Christina Rossetti though more fierce than hers. Some people dont read the poems, and the story can be followed without them. Byatts American publisher initially suggested that they be abridged for the American edition, but they werent, and American readers dont seem to have minded. Most readers feel the poems, and all the other different forms and the questions they raise, add to the pleasure of the book. One of the times when the author intrudes into the story is in a Postscript. This tells the reader something about the nineteenth century lovers situation that the researchers never found out, and makes for a happier ending to their story at least from Ashs perspective. Some commentators dont like this; they say it is unrealistic, possibly even meant to be a fantasy of Ashs in his last illness. Others say it is a forced happy ending, just because romances have to have happy endings. But Byatt makes it clear that she intended to let the reader into a secret at the end; There is a nice irony about this she says; - the writer and reader share what the critics and scholars cannot discover. Sometimes Byatts fascination with ideas can be a bit overpowering, but I dont think this is the case here. Possession is a deeply satisfying story, and a most worthy winner of the Booker Prize for 1990. A film has been made of the book, in which, unaccountably, Roland has been made an American researcher. Despite its good cast, (Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle), the film disappointed. But see it anyway.

2. How and why does Byatt criticize the academic writing of biography in Possession? Substantiate your answer with significant examples taken from the novel. HABITABLE WORLDS AND LITERARY VOICES: A.S. BYATTS POSSESSION AS SELF-CONSCIOUS REALISM

Merja Polvinen

In a 1979 essay on realism in contemporary British fiction, A.S. Byatt writes about the seemingly self-contradictory attitude portrayed in many novels to the ontological status of fiction. Works by authors such as Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch and Angus Wilson reveal, she argues, a formal need to comment on their fictiveness combined with a strong sense of the value of a habitable imagined world (Passions of the Mind 181). Writing about her own short story Sugar she identifies a similar attitude in herself: . . . what Proust taught me . . . was that it was possible for a text to be supremely mimetic, true to life in the Balzacien sense, and at the same time to think about form, its own formation, about perceiving and inventing the world (Passions of the Mind 22-23). If these two quotations provide us a sense of her aims as a writer, a further comment clarifies her opinion of the ethical responsibilities of the reader: Modern criticism is powerful and imposes its own narratives and priorities on the writings it uses as raw material, source, or jumping-off point. It may be interested in feminist, or Lacanian, or marxist, or post-colonial narratives and vocabularies. Or it may play forcefully with the words of the writer, interjecting its own punning meanings. . . . Such secondary cleverness distresses both the reader and the writer in me. As an innocent reader I learned to listen, again and again, to texts until they had revealed their whole shape, their articulation, the rhythms of their ideas and feelings. (On Histories and Stories 45-46) In this passage texts appear simultaneously as abstract shapes and as speaking voices; things which manifest a rhythm and a pattern of thought. Taken together, these three comments serve to illustrate Byatts view of the nature of narrative fiction: that it is both a world which its reader can enter and a voice which its reader should listen, even while both author and reader are also perfectly conscious of the conventions of the imaginative process in which they partake. In her critical writings Byatt has formulated a self-conscious realism (Passions of the Mind 4), in which she attempts to balance formal and ontological self-consciousness with a belief in the fictional world created by the literary work. In this article I discuss Byatts 1990 novel Possession: A Romance as a realisation of Byatts theories on self-conscious realism, and in doing so I hope to clarify some of the ambiguities of the novels ontological position.

For that purpose, I shall treat Byatts fiction and her critical writings as expressions in two different genres of a single vision of the nature of literature. This approach does beg the question of how fair it is to read a novel simply as a repository of an authors theoretical position. However, so prevalent

are the connections between Byatts novels and her theoretical writing that the intertextual references and metaphorical structures she discusses in an essay very soon appear in her next piece of fiction, or vice versa.1 Though aware of the many different foci that a reader may concentrate on in reading Possession, my interest lies in the way it is a novel about abstract ideas at least as much as it is about experiences and emotions, and thus ignoring the novels intellectual context, expressed in the authors critical essays, would feel contrived. The plot of Possession traces an illicit love affair between two fictitious Victorian poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. Their story is gradually revealed in a narrative which follows the research of two twentieth-century literary scholars, the Ash expert Roland Michell, and Maud Bailey, an authority on LaMotte. The novel portrays various kinds of possession: material, spiritual and sexual. Most importantly, the readers depicted in the novel are driven to possess the texts they read in the sense of comprehending them, while at the same time they find themselves channelling the voices of those texts. These two kinds of textual possession, when combined with the desire to experience a habitable imagined world, form the intuitive and emotional base of Byatts view of literature, on which the intellectual structures of her novels are built.

Much has been written about Byatts novel from the point of view of its presentation of postmodern literary scholarship (Lundn), the marginalised voices of Victorian women (Todd) and the nature of postmodern desire (Jeffers). Susanne Becker draws attention to the gothic elements in the novel, and her point that Byatt is taking a step away from postmodernism is well worth making. Beckers view is also shared by Ivana Djordjevic, whose article examines many of the allusions and symbols in Byatts novel, particularly her use of Giambattista Vico. Christian Gutleben, on the other hand, has seen Possession as an instance of a strong tendency in contemporary British fiction to use the Victorian age for a setting for ambiguous attitudes to the relationship between fiction and reality, a tendency which he sees as a step back towards tradition (Nostalgic Postmodernism 10). In Possession Byatt has certainly utilised aspects of nineteenth-century realism, but combines them with the metafictional techniques of postmodernism, thus creating a re-invigorated view of realism as the literary form which makes it possible for readers to encounter both a believable fictional world and abstract structures of ideas and metaphors. Self-Conscious World-Making In her essay People in Paper Houses: Attitudes to Realism and Experiment in English Postwar Fiction Byatt discusses how some writers of the 1960s and 1970s abandoned nineteenth-century realism because they believed it to be a convention now leading novelists into bad faith (Passions of the Mind 165). In the essay she looks for a synthesis between the two traditions of realism and experiment, and locates it in a realism spiced with both a formal imagination and a curiosity concerning the real objects of the world. For Byatt, realism has the particular value of providing the reader with an easy access to a fictional world, whereas formal play satisfies a more abstract pleasure in the shapes and structures of literary works. Being a novel about poets and literary critics, most of the characters in Possession are authors, readers or both. As such, the novel is replete with literary pastiches of Victorian poetry and postmodern literary criticism, experiences of reading, theoretical discussions between characters,

and typically for Byatt very consciously crafted structures of metaphors, historical references and narrative conventions which draw readers attention to the formal aspects of the novel and its status as fiction. As is clear from its subtitle, Possession defines itself as A Romance, and it does draw much of its form from the medieval romance quest. In addition to self-conscious comments by the characters (particularly Ash and LaMotte) who frequently compare their situation with the conventions of romance (e.g. 193, 456, 500), the general interest felt during the Victorian era towards the chivalric romance permeates the novel. There is a quest to be fulfilled (328), there are women viewed as princesses in towers (277) and men as devouring dragons (503). One of the epigraphs is a quotation from Nathaniel Hawthorne defending romance as a valid literary genre. Romance has, Hawthorne writes, fairly a right to present [the truth of the human heart] under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writers own choosing or creation, whereas the realist novel is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of mans experience. The exclusion of all things improbable and imaginary to the realm of romance gave the early proponents of realism the chance to take their theories of fictions ability to imitate real life to the extreme: even to the point of claiming that since the purpose of the novel as a genre was to imitate human experience it should abandon the conventions of form and plot. An anonymous critic writes in the North British Review in 1864: . . . the realist in fiction is careless about plot. His sole object is to describe mens lives as they really are; and real life is fragmentary and unmethodical (cited in Stang 151). Similar ideas can be seen in the writings of many late twentieth-century theorists. David Cowart, for example, points out how art is still expected to hold a mirror up to nature, how life or nature has been redefined as something fragmented, indeterminate, and absurd and art now is expected to reflect that fragmentation, indeterminacy, and absurdity (Literary Symbiosis 42). Similarly, Byatt suggests that many contemporary authors feel that modern reality as opposed to nineteenth-century reality, is chaotic, fluid, random, and that consequently the realist novel should reflect such undifferentiated reality (Passions of the Mind 178). By consciously siding itself with romance and against the logical conclusion of realist fiction, Possession draws attention to the discarded qualities of romance, and by returning to the point where that path began Byatts novel is searching for a new beginning to realism: a way to re-incorporate the metaphorical qualities assigned to romance and thus produce a way of writing about reality that would not lead to the overly fractured narratives of the postmodern novel and the resulting loss of mimesis. Byatts use of both medieval and modern romance conventions and her adoption of Hawthornes defence of romance as a genre which tells human truths veiled in fantastic circumstances remind the reader that this novel is representative neither of Victorian realism nor of postmodern intertextual play in their most common forms, but a combination of the two, or, as Lynn Wells puts it, Byatts fantasized redemption of postmodernity (672). It is precisely Byatts mixing of the realistic and the fantastic or romantic in Possession which lifts this work above her other novels, in which the conventions of realism alone are unable to support her complex metaphorical structures and still maintain a mimetic effect.2 In Possession the intersecting worlds of ghosts, geology, lovers and fairies, along with their various symbolic meanings, merge happily in a literary detective story which affords its reader both the pleasure of abstract play and the satisfaction of fulfilled curiosity.

Byatts aim in combining abstract structure with habitable worlds is to achieve in fiction a unique kind of epistemological access to reality. As Hilary M. Schor has shrewdly observed, Byatts continued interest in fiction suggests not the love of story making per se, but some sense that the novel is a kind of organizational structure, some way of knowing and naming material, some way of resurrecting interest, available nowhere else . . . as if she thought (and this is an instinct much more akin to the Victorian than the postmodern novelist) that the novels form was at its heart to invoke everything else. (237) Schors use of the word invoke recalls Byatts own abundant use of spiritualist symbolism in her attempt to describe the relationship between fiction and reality. Without wanting to claim that fiction is directly referential, Byatt nevertheless suggests that literary forms can become fictional worlds in which reality is resurrected or summoned into a ghostly existence. Indeed, as Schor argues, her use of the novel form is, above all, a series of strategies for the deployment of and the debate over matter (238; emphasis original). In Possession Byatt mercilessly parodies those literary theorists who see language and literature as self-referring systems, and an untrammelled curiosity about things other than literature (Passions of the Mind 188) fuels the plot of the novel. Possession begins with Rolands discovery made while chasing down yet another elusive textual reference in Randolph Henry Ashs poetry of letters written by Ash and tucked away in a book that used to belong to him. The letters, addressed to an unknown woman, have an almost shocking physical presence (20-21) and turn Roland from a purely textual scholar into both a thief and a detective, waking in him a new curiosity about objects and their existence beyond textual references. During a field trip to Whitby the two scholars discuss the ubiquity of metaphor sexual metaphor, in particular in their world-view: Do you never have the sense that our metaphors eat up our world? Roland asks Maud. I mean of course everything connects and connects all the time and I suppose one studies I study literature because all these connections seem both endlessly exciting and then in some sense dangerously powerful as though we held a clue to the true nature of things? I mean, all those gloves, a minute ago, we were playing a professional game of hooks and eyes mediaeval gloves, giants gloves, Blanche Glover, Balzacs gloves, the seaanemones ovaries and it all reduced like boiling jam to human sexuality. . . . We are so knowing. And all weve found out, is primitive sympathetic magic. Infantile polymorphous perversity. Everything relates to us and so were imprisoned in ourselves we cant see things. (253-254) Roland struggles between a pleasure felt at the endless game of references and a fear of losing his connection to real, physical objects things which would not be defined exclusively through his own language and culture. Like Umberto Ecos Casaubon in Foucaults Pendulum (1989), Roland is equally frightened and attracted by the connections which can be formed between the different expressions of human culture, the game which feels both endlessly exciting and dangerously powerful. Yet, despite the undeniable thrill of the chase from one reference to the next he is also disappointed with the result, the reduction of the complexity of ideas and objects to a single reference network: himself.3 Thus human experience of both art and life must not be limited to a postmodern play of fictions,

Byatt believes. Rather, she suggests, whilst it was once attractive (sduisant?) to think that whatever we say or see is our own construction, it now becomes necessary to reconsider the idea of truth, hard truth, and its possibility (Passions of the Mind 24). What she proposes is that fiction at its best is formed from metaphorical structures which are also true reflections of the reality beyond the text. Without this relationship with reality and its attendant emotional engagement of the reader in the story, fiction will lose one half of its gestalt-like character and become pure symbolic structure more argument than fiction. The emotional crux of Possession lies in the tragic discovery that Ash died believing LaMotte had murdered at birth their love-child, his only progeny. But the postscript of the novel paints a different picture for the reader. There are in the novel only three sections where the events of the nineteenth century are omnisciently narrated, rather than inferred from pastiche poems and documents, or focalised through the imaginations of the twentieth-century researchers. The last of these describes a meeting between Ash and a little girl he obviously recognises as his own daughter. Having just experienced along with the twentieth-century characters the revelation that the child survived, but that the message of her existence never reached Ash on his death bed, the readers of the novel are thus let into a secret the contemporary protagonists of the novel will never know. This not only creates a gap between the readers and those characters right at the moment when the empathetic link between them is at its strongest, but it also undermines the initial sense of closure created by the original revelation, and the certainty readers have already settled on. On the other hand, the novel as a whole is a celebration of just the kind of certainty, based on a combination of diligent search for facts and an intuitive leap, which the ending momentarily undermines. Byatts construction of an initial false ending, undermined by another real ending, does not leave the reader with a feeling that the closure of the story has been undercut, quite the contrary. Byatts readers are taken through a moment of narrative vertigo where the foundation of an already experienced closure gives way. That feeling, however, is immediately replaced by an even stronger sense of closure as the shattered puzzle of the narrative rearranges itself in a different, but even more emotionally satisfying and poetically true picture. Such a technique is very different from the multiple endings of many other postmodern novels, and as Byatt notes concerning The French Lieutenants Woman (1969) by John Fowles, though they might seem a move towards narrative freedom, an ending which denies the reader closure can also undermine the empathetic connection altogether: His theory of freedom leads to the experimental alternative endings to the novel, which painfully destroy the narrative reality of the central events, which have happily withstood authorial shifts in style, interjections and essays on Victorian reality. Fowles claims he did not control his characters, but his projected endings do not suggest a plurality of possible stories. They are a programmatic denial of the reality of any. (Passions of the Mind 174) Whereas Byatt sees Fowless technique as a programmatic denial of the reality of fictional worlds, she herself breaks the readers initial sense of certainty only to cement the mimetic effect of the final ending of Possession. The reality of fiction, she argues, is dependent on the emotional reaction of the reader to the story, and by denying his readers closure Fowles also undermines the poetic truth of his own novel (which, it could be argued, is his intention all along). This belief is

reflected in Byatts own choices for the narrative structure of Possession. The most notable of these must be the inclusion of the three sections during which the Victorian world is narrated directly to the reader, as well as one direct commentary by the narrative voice on the experience of reading. But unlike Fowless narrator, who causes a jolt between the realms of the fiction and the readers reality, Byatts narrator either sidesteps from one era to another within the fictional world, or echoes a particularly self-conscious experience of a character. The effect of these techniques is to heighten, not undermine, the readers imaginative entry into the world of the work. My instinct as a writer of fiction, she claims, has been to explore and defend the unfashionable Victorian third-person narrator who is not, as John Fowles claimed, playing at being God, but merely the writer, telling what can be told about the world of the fiction (On Histories and Stories 102). Thus, though it would seem natural to include Possession and The French Lieutenants Woman in the same genre of British rewritings of the Victorian era, Fowless novel is part of an earlier deconstructive paradigm which seeks to perform critical readings of texts in order to reveal their ideological bases. Where Fowles encourages his readers to question the text and the pronouncements made in it, Byatt puts more emphasis on the creation of a habitable imagined world and the kind of reading which makes the existence of such a world possible. In another of her essays Byatt recounts her attempt to write the novel Still Life (1985) without the networks of interleaved references, without metaphor, concentrating purely on the accuracy of description. During the process she finds that her mind-set simply sees metaphor everywhere and that in attempting to forgo its influence on her writing she was doing violence to her own mental constitution (Passions of the Mind 14). The novel finally emerged as a combination of metaphors and a characteristic she found and valued in Van Goghs painting: an intention of accurate rendering (15; emphasis original), with the movement between words of simple denotation and those she calls mental icons (19) becoming central both to the novels theme and its structure. Thus, rather than abandoning the constructed networks of metaphors and interlocking references in favour of transparent language, Byatt accepts them as one of the most successful ways of invigorating our sense of the independence of reality from our thought. In Possession the rewards of the combination of metaphorical structures and accurate rendering or invoking appears particularly in Rolands growth into a poet. Since playing the academic game seems to lead him repeatedly to the same disappointing result, he finds himself reaching beyond the framework within which the game takes place. Towards the end of the novel, Roland turns to writing lists of words that resisted arrangement into the sentences literary criticism or theory: He wrote: blood, clay, terracotta, carnation. He wrote: blond, burning bush, scattering. He annotated this: scattering as in Donne, extreme and scattering bright, nothing to do with scattergraphs. . . . He rejected wooden, point, link, and other ambivalent words, also blot and blank, though all these sprang (another word he hesitated over) to mind. (431) The conspicuous physicality of the first four words (moving from blood and earth through the blood-coloured clay to the flesh-coloured flower) emphasises the connection between words and the things they represent, but also the words themselves as things with a history and a presence which resists individual users manipulation. Rolands discarded, ambivalent words shift too easily

between word-classes and between literal and metaphorical meanings to satisfy his longing for things. This search for the indivisible, basic elements of language extends also to the level of narrative. Byatt has an abiding fascination with myths and old tales and the way they retain their essence from one telling to the next. Commenting on the writing of one of the pastiche fairy stories for Possession she notes: The pleasure of writing it was in handling the old, worn counters of the characterless persons, the Fate of the consecutive events, including the helpless commentary of the writer on the unavoidable grip of the story, and a sense that I was myself partaking in the continuity of the tales by retelling them in a new context in a way old and new. Christabels commentary was knowing about inevitability; my own writing was knowing about Freud. But the story was primary and had its own life. (On Histories and Stories 131; emphasis original) Again we find in her thinking the idea of poetry and narrative as methods of arranging and ordering objects, whether individual words, metaphors, or entire tales. The same theme also surfaces in one of the poems Byatt wrote for Ash, The Garden of Proserpina. The poem compares several different mythical gardens and asks whether they are all shadows of one, true, original garden; whether the quest for the essence of stories is also a search for their referentiality. At the end of the novel, Rolands re-reading of this poem with its presentation of creation myths and Giambattista Vicos views on the materiality of the first words of men sets off an epiphany during which his thoughts about language, expression and truth all coalesce into an experience which sparks his own gift for poetry. Having been taught that language was essentially inadequate, that it could never speak what was there, that it only spoke itself (473), Roland now connects the independent presence and materiality of words with the networks of metaphor in Ashs poetry, and realises that he had things to say which he could say about the way shapes came and made themselves (475). Words are things, yet, at the same time, they are also about things. A crucial step in the process to this discovery has been the distance which has grown between Roland and Ashs poetry, even as the life of the poet has become more familiar to the scholar. He has over the years come to regard Ashs words as part of himself, but the process of discovering the poets relationship with LaMotte has both peaked Rolands interest in things beyond the texts and has made the presence of the author in the poetry much more pronounced. In the silence of Rolands flat two portraits of the poet almost seem to come to life, emphasising the sudden otherness of Ash from Roland: he saw them as wholly distant and separate, not an angle, not a bone, not a white speck of illumination comprehensible by him or to do with him (467). But through the acknowledgement of difference comes an understanding of the ways in which a reader brings the work to life, even though he or she does not comprise it. Rolands re-reading of Ashs poem opens up a vision of words and literary works functioning as repositories, as whole worlds of objects which are simultaneously already in existence and created in the act of reading. As he experiences the otherness of the poem encounters it as though the words were living creatures or stones of fire (472) Roland gains an almost mystical understanding of how it is possible to know a work of literature without imposing subjective meanings on it. The work, Roland realises, is different to each reader and created anew each time it is read, yet it has an existence and an autonomy that

extends beyond the single reading. During such an encounter, a sense that the text has appeared to be wholly new, never before seen, is followed, almost immediately, by the sense that it was always there, that we the readers, knew it was always there, and have always known it was as it was, though we have now for the first time recognised, become fully cognisant of, our knowledge. (471-472; emphases original) Byatts novel as a whole is an exploration of how such an experience of reading can be achieved and why readers should attempt it in the first place. Without attempting to explain away the duality, her work emphasises the need for readers consciously to involve themselves with the possibility of encountering the work as an autonomous object which has an existence beyond the single reading, even though the work is also, in part, constituted by that encounter. Literary Work as an Autonomous Voice In a recent essay on the ethics of reading William Paulson argues: To interact sociably with a text is to posit that it is the delegate of a person, even if we are obliged to (or think it wiser to) construct that person entirely from the evidence of the text. Our respect for the ghost and its intentions may enable us to respect the texts resistance, and keep us from taking it as simply an occasion for our own critical or constructive performance. (115) Just as Byatt suggests in the quotation at the beginning of this article, Paulson also sees texts as repositories of voices which are, to an extent, autonomous. The ghost in the text has no power which the reader is not willing to give it, but by allowing herself to be used as the medium through which a work of literature is manifested, a reader may, as Byatt and Paulson would both argue, experience the text as an intellectual, sensual and emotional encounter. In Possession the spiritualist symbolism permeates the relationship between readers and literary works (along with other kinds of relationships, including that of lovers, and biographers and their subjects), and successful reading experiences always involve a kind of humility on the part of the reader. As an author, Byatt herself is constantly mediating works of the past, both by creating pastiches and through including discussions concerning historical works in her own narratives. But unlike the authors of most postmodern metafiction, whose self-conscious use of intertexts is meant to break through the illusion of realism, Byatts own work takes a very different approach to the metafictional and intertextual developments in the postmodern novel itself. The structure of Possession utilises postmodern techniques, but, as Djordjevic has pointed out, it does so in order to hoist postmodernism with its own petard (46); that is, in order to show that the self-conscious use of familiar styles can enrich, rather than explode, realist story-telling. Thus the crucial difference between this novel and most other postmodern intertextual games, or historiographic metafictions, as Linda Hutcheon has called them (295), lies in Byatts attempt to emphasise the honest resurrection of the Victorian voices, and not the idea that our access to the past is merely textual (i.e. readerly or subjective). [W]riting Victorian words in Victorian contexts, in a Victorian order, and in Victorian relations of one word to the next was the only way I could think of to show one could hear the Victorian dead, Byatt argues, denying that past events accessed through texts would necessarily also be textualised in the postmodern sense (On Histories and Stories 46-47). Her aim is to create new works which would evoke the same intertextual context to which genuine

nineteenth-century works refer. This would give readers the opportunity to recreate that context for themselves, even while aware of the fact that they are reading a pastiche created by a postmodern author. The multitude of authorial positions in such a text, including the fictitious poet, the authors on whom his or her work is modelled and, of course, Byatt herself, are the primary positions in a chain reaching towards the birth of language, a chain not of floating signifiers but anchored (as Rolands experience with the word-lists shows him) through words, the names that were also things (472). Byatts novel and her critical writings suggest that granting the work the power to speak for itself is a method which allows readers to connect with past minds. Byatts focus in Possession is on the relationship between a reader and a long-dead author, with the Victorians pondering upon the validity of the historical method and the reliability of Biblical narratives, and the twentieth-century characters facing the problem of understanding the individual lives of the Victorians. Both sets of characters find that encounters with dead authors become possible only with the help of intuition, imagination, and a temporary surrendering of ones own voice. Roland experiences such an encounter at the end of the novel, when the metaphorical structure of Ashs poem and the network of allusions to other works suddenly reveal themselves in his mind. Think of this, says Byatts narrator, - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other. True, the writer may have been alone also with Spensers golden apples in the Faerie Queene, Proserpinas garden, glistering bright among the places ashes and cinders, may have seen in his minds eye, apple of his eye, the golden fruit of the Primavera, may have seen Paradise Lost, in the garden where Eve recalled Pomona and Proserpina. He was alone when he wrote and he was not alone then, all these voices sang, the same words, golden apples . . . (471) The references abound between the words of the work and all the other occasions those words have been used, all referring to images and experiences shared between the reader, the author and all the other authors whose voices echo in this poem. Rather than expecting readers to formulate the meaning of words only in their own, contemporary context, Byatt emphasises the contextual history of expressions: I do believe that if I read enough, and carefully enough, I shall have some sense of what words meant in the past, and how they related to other words in the past, and be able to use them in a modern text so that they do not lose their relations to other words in the interconnected web of their own vocabulary. At a time when certain kinds of criticism and ideological activity are happy to dispense with close attention to the history of words and their uses, it seems somehow important to be able to make coherent texts using words as they were used, together. (On Histories and Stories 94; emphasis original) Such passages make clear Byatts intellectual background and the way it colours her view of how a connection with past minds could be achieved. For she is not attempting to reach the biographical author but the life that was lived in writing. While reading Browning, she wishes to hear the voice of Browning the author (which overlaps, but does not completely match the voice of Browning the man) the voice which was also the unified voice of all the poets and all the authors on natural

philosophy, Christianity and history, whose works Browning had read. Byatts emphasis on the immortality of words over the immortality of the flesh is also clear in the way the discovery of the thoughtful, passionate and literary correspondence between Ash and LaMotte affects the twentiethcentury characters, compared to the much less satisfactory continuity of their flesh in Maud Bailey, who turns out to be a descendant of their love-child. It is clear that the real resurrection of Ash and LaMotte occurs through their writings, whereas the night-time unearthing of the evidence about Mauds blood-line from Ashs grave however dramatic the scene may be does not have an equivalent emotional impact. Thus, in Possession the readings of long-lost manuscripts are presented as moments when the voices of the dead are restored to life through the force of faithful imagining. Djordjevic lists multiple examples from the novel of dead texts which, after having been read, are alive to their readers (56-57). Many of the characters in the novel, however, fail in their readings because they lack the necessary respect for the voice being resurrected. They either read too much of their own interests and desires into the Victorian poems, or, like the American collector Mortimer Cropper, practice a kind of vulgar spiritualism (Djordjevic 51) in their attempts to reach the dead through the material objects they owned during their lifetime. Ashs reply to Croppers ancestress concerning Victorian spiritual practices also serves as a manifesto for true literary resurrection: The Historian and the Man of Science alike may be said to traffic with the dead . . . I myself, with the aid of the imagination, have worked a little in that line, have ventriloquised, have lent my voice to, and mixt my life with, these past voices and lives whose resuscitation in our own lives as warnings, as examples, as the life of the past persisting in us, is the business of every thinking man and woman. But there are ways and ways, as you must well know, and some are tried and tested, and others are fraught with danger and disappointment. What is read and understood and intellectually grasped is our own, madam, to live and work with. (104; emphases original) In this passage the concept of resurrection through language is heavily underlined by the vocabulary of spiritualism; the physical mediation of the power of the spirits. Though he strongly distrusts the methods of bodily mediation and the purely emotional responses of its practitioners, Ash believes that in intelligent and honest reading and rewriting he is lending his breath to the thoughts of the dead an idea for which Byatt confesses her indebtedness to Browning (On Histories and Stories 45).4 Ashs poems are mostly monologues by historical characters in the style of Browning, each with a separate voice and an individual set of beliefs. His interest in the past is thus linked to his passion for the workings of individual minds, and the idea of the resurrection of individual voices from the past is clearly made the central theme of his career in the novel. I find I am at ease with other imagined minds, he writes to LaMotte, bringing to life, restoring, in some sense to vitality, the whole vanished men of other times, hair, teeth, fingernails, porringer, bench, wineskin, church, temple, synagogue, and the incessant weaving labour of the marvellous brain inside the skull making its patterns, its most particular sense of what it sees and learns and believes. (158; emphasis original)

Such lives are simultaneously imagined and physical, parts of Ash himself and yet separate from him. Lynn Wells has suggested that Byatts characters and their relationship to the past are set up as an example of Bakhtinian dialogism, a framework within which the exchange between them and the past allows them to grow beyond the constraints put on their lives by postmodernism (676). While Wells sees this mainly as a way of interpreting the relationship between the different sets of characters of the novel, it can also be seen as a guiding principle of Byatts view of an authors relationship with the characters they create. The dialogue with and respect of the past is certainly present in the intertextual allusions and in the resurrection of the dead in the writings of the living. However, through her metaphorical structuring and self-conscious use of form Byatt gives equal weight to the guiding principle of the implied author; the other half of Bakhtins double-voiced discourse (Bakhtin 324). The balance between these two halves in the creation of literary characters is the central element in Ashs poetry, as well as a principle explicitly endorsed by Byatt: [A] character for me only comes alive when it manages, as a metaphor links two separate things, to link two separate things Ive observed, of which only one must be part of myself, the oth er must be somebody else, or something else, or some other book . . . (Interview cited in Todd 100). In other words, the author must also be a reader of other books and of other people and combine in their writing their own voice with the mediated voices of others.5 Again, it is Rolands epiphany which serves as the most striking example of this theme in Possession. Looking at a photograph of Ashs death mask he experiences the gestalt: You were inside behind those closed eyes like an actor, masked: you were outside, looking at a closure, if not finality (472). Roland himself, as Ashs reader, has been both inside and outside the mask, has been both a medium for the words he has read and the observer of their meanings. And through experiencing this duality he finds his own voice not as a critic but as a poet, finally able to come to terms with the fact that the words he use are ones already worn in use by previous authors, but with which he can still construct and communicate his own thoughts. Again Byatt combines the sense of abstract patterning with the idea of audible presentation of that pattern by an individual voice, as Roland finds himself able to hear, or feel, or even almost see, the patterns made by a voice he didnt yet know, but which was his own (475). Byatts self-conscious realism starts with the same assumption as realism in general: that there is a hard reality, not ourselves, which is not amenable to our planning, plotting and power-strategies (Passions of the Mind 128), and that one of the main purposes of fiction is to talk about such a reality by creating simulations of it. At the same time, her novels display a postmodern selfconsciousness about literary technique and the ways in which authors use unnaturally structured narratives to achieve in the reader the experience of having encountered something real. Bo Lundn has argued that a major theme in Possession is the re-education of the twentieth-century characters to accept a dynamic residue which appears to be operative in all strivings towards knowledge but which, at the same time, still remains on the fringes of intellectual discourse (125). The novel certainly does point to a limit in what analytical language is able to say about the reading experience. Byatt finally has to rely on paradoxical statements (The place . . ./ Is what we name it, and is not in one of Ashs poems on page 465), and expressions which attempt to convey the intuitively grasped, almost material presence of words and their meanings (the repeated, italicised things in Rolands vocabulary). The complexity of her position arises from wanting to read and write narratives in which the reader encounters both a habitable fictional world and a literary voice.

Despite the failures of rational language to describe exactly what such an encounter would entail, Byatt seems to hold this assumption as a kind of faith or creed, while at the same time selfconsciously exploring its validity in her fiction. While Byatts emphasis on realism stems from her belief that fiction can and should create both a world and a voice, and her explicit manipulation of literary form is an expression of an aesthetic pleasure found in the contemplation of abstract structure, in Possession she also re-introduces the themes and techniques of romance in order to allow herself the latitude to express in a non-analytical form her own theory about the nature and purpose of fiction.

3. Comment on the structure of Possession. What is the meaning of the parallel plots? How are the present and the past interrelated in the narrative? Examine the parallelisms established between Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte on the one hand, and Roland and Maud on the other. Mirror-games and Plot-coils in A. S. Byatt's Possession There are many different plots in A.S. Byatt's novel Possession, which all flow together, washing back and forth on each other, getting tangled and confused. There is the modern day plot, the one which the reader partakes in, that of Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey. There is also, running under and parallel to that, the plot of the Victorian poets that each is interested in: Roland's poet Randolph Henry Ash, and Maud's poetess Christabel LaMotte. As the two modern day literature historians unearth the secret passion between Ash and LaMotte, their own lives begin more and more to mirror the plot of the Ash/LaMotte correspondence. Roland himself can recognize this phenomenon: Roland thought, partly with precise postmodernist pleasure, and partly with a real element of superstitious dread, that he and Maud were being driven by a plot or fate that seemed, at least possibly, to be not their plot or fate but that of those others. He tried to extend this aperu. Might there not, he professionally asked himself, be an element of superstitious dread in any self-reflexive, inturned postmodernist mirror-game or plotcoil that recognises that it has got out of hand? That recognises that connections proliferate apparently at random, apparently in response to some ferocious ordering principle, which would, of course, being a good postmodernist principle, require the aleatory or the multivalent or the "free," but structuring, but controlling, but driving, to some -- to what? -- end. Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable. "Falling in love," characteristically, combs the appearances of the world, and the particular lover's history, out of a random tangle and into a coherent plot. Roland was troubled by the idea that the opposite might be true. Finding themselves in a plot, they might suppose it appropriate to behave as though it was that sort of plot. And that would be to compromise some kind of integrity hey had set out with. [p. 456] This mirroring of the Victorian past with the modern plot brings up the issues of how literature relates to both history and to the lives of the modern readers, of the lasting power it might or should have. It also brings up the fact that there is a third plot being mirrored: that of the actual reader, who is in the same position as Roland and Maud. We are placed at their point of view, and follow the unveiling of the correspondence through their eyes. In that sense, we share their plot. But we are also detached, and therefore have the same problem of how our own lives enter into and mirror the text being read. Byatt is bringing up the issue of the relevance of Victorian literature, and even of her own modern literature, to the lives of the readers. Do readers partake in the plots? Are their lives affected by what they read? What should be the relationship between the author and his or her reader?

4. Discuss Possession as a historical novel and as a paradigm of historiographic metafiction. A. S. Byatt -- Historical Themes and Contexts Technological Progress and Victorian Doubt Addressing Victorian conceptions of linear time, Possession suggests that they obscure truth and cause anguish and doubt in its holders. Intimating his weariness, Ash tells Christabel that the truth is -- my dear Miss LaMotte -- that we live in an old world -- a tired world -- a world that has gone on piling up speculation and observations until truths that might have been graspable in the bright Dayspring of human morning are now obscured. (181) Ash suggests that by complicating simple truths, progress can have adverse effects. The linear view of progress, which disregards the past, can cause the inhabitants of the present to feel uncertainty. Calling Ash's feelings "linear exhaustion," Thelma Shinn's article "What's in a Word?" suggests that Byatt consciously introduces this despair into the novel's Victorian period to connect with "the despair which nearly paralyzes her contemporary characters" (168). Inheriting this Victorian view of time, Roland and Maud attempt to escape this despair and rediscover the basic truths that the technological age has obscured. In addition to using Ash and LaMotte's correspondence to produce Victorian progress linearly, Byatt also uses the letters to portray Victorian doubt. Depicting Ash's scientific, dissection experiments, the text portrays the Victorians as living in the age of Darwinism which had the effect of removing "the transcendent, designing, purposive Mind of God from the universe" (Hart). Showing how a scientific view of the world leads to religious doubt, Ash tells LaMotte that they "live in an age of scientific history" (185) and the lovely lines of faith that sprung up in the aspiring towers of the ancient ministers and abbeys are both worn away by time and grime, softly shrouded by the smutty accretions of our industrial cities, our wealth, our discoveries themselves, our Progress. Now, I cannot believe, being no Manichee, that He, the Creator, if he exists, did not make us and our world. (181) Ash suggests that scientific and technological progress have obscured religious faith. Though he ends his sentence affirming God as the creator, he reveals his own religious doubt by wondering "if" God exists. Responding to his letter, Christabel specifically attributes this religious uncertainty to the Victorian period: "doubt is endemic to our life in this world at this time" (182). Without faith in God, the characters must turn elsewhere to find meaning in life. Randolph searches for answers in his experiments and his writing, and Roland and Maud, the inheritors of this Victorian doubt, turn to the past to find meaning in the present.

The Contemporary Legacy of Victorian Progress and Doubt Dedicating more time to the present than do either Waterland or Oscar and Lucinda, Possession an elaborately portrays the ways Victorian progress and doubt affect the present. Close to losing his job and girlfriend, Roland appears stifled in his present environment and an embodiment of modern-day alienation. Roland, who is detached from his girlfriend and his colleagues, works in the Ash factory which Byatt compares to "the Inferno" (31), and he lives in an apartment that smells like "cat-piss" (22). Described as "full of old underwear, open pots of eyepaint, dangling shirts and stockings, sticky bottles of hair conditioner and tubes of shaving foam," (63) Roland's bathroom mirrors the chaos and disorder of the modern world. Furthermore, the novel portrays Roland as stagnating in an almost non-existent job. Describing Roland as having "this thing about this dead man. Who had a thing about dead people" (23), Val characterizes Roland's career interests in terms of a linear time that constructs the past as dead. Trapped, Roland's stagnant life lacks meaning until he finds the letter, and then the past starts to come to life. Possession portrays Maud, its other leading contemporary character, as hiding from the chaotic, modern world that originates from a lack of faith and from technological progress. Maud creates an orderly, clean world for herself in which she can avoid the disorder of reality. Noting the orderliness of her apartment, Roland compares it to "an art gallery or surgeon's waiting room" (58). Describing her as "repressive and cold" (83), Roland reveals that in order to function outside of her created world, Maud must detach herself from others. Signifying her fear of disorder and her "emotional limitation" (Giobbi, 45), Maud covers her hair under scarves; an act that symbolizes her sexual repression. Realizing her emotional detachment, Maud asks herself, after an awkward interaction with Roland why she can "do nothing with ease and grace except work alone, inside these walls and curtains, her bright safe box" (151). Maud wants to find a way to live in the outside world but also to retain a sense of order. Trapped in the modern world, Roland and Maud feel detached from others and desire the "young vitality of the past" (151) which Maud claims feeds her life once Roland and her begin their quest.

Postimperial Decline, the Romance of the Archive, and the Recovered Past Written in a period often characterized as one of postimperial decline and shrinking global status, contemporary British romances of the archive characteristically invoke historical periods in which the British (often English) national story is central and influential. This means neither that romances of the archive celebrate the national past uncritically nor that they adopt a single philosophy of history. Written by a wide array of novelists, including Peter Ackroyd, Kingsley Amis, Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt, Lindsay Clarke, Stevie Davies, Peter Dickinson, Margaret Drabble, Patricia Duncker, Robert Goddard, Robert Harris, Alan Hollinghurst, P.D.James, Penelope Lively, Adam Mars-Jones, Lawrence Norfolk, Charles Palliser, Vikram Seth, Graham Swift, Barry Unsworth, Alan Wall, Nigel Williams, and A.N. Wilson, romances of the archive employ the research quest to connect separate time periods, deeper and nearer pasts. By characterizing the researcher who investigates, and then learns the joys, costs, and consequences of discovery, romances of the archive persistently question the purposes of historical knowledge and the kind of reading that directs the imagination to conceive the past. Perhaps the central romance of these fictions lies in their contention that research into the past does anything at all; rarely do we find a romancer of the archive who ceaselessly reads and searches for documents just for the fun of it -- simply learning for the sake of adding to the store of human understanding. Instead, the fun of research quests lies in their adventure formulae and their exceptionally consequential effects. In romances of the archive, characters are transformed, wrongs righted, disasters averted, villains exposed, crimes solved. [p. 4]

The Suez Crisis and Postimperialist Fiction Events in the 1950s, especially the 1956 Suez crisis, marked British consciousness by dramatizing to a world audience their nation's diminished position in global politics. During the Suez crisis of 1956, Egypt's President Nasser nationalized the canal, after eighty years of British control. American President Dwight Eisenhower chose not to support what appeared to be an imperial adventure. Some Britons felt betrayed by their ally; others were mortified by their leaders' attempt to cling to imperial possessions. Because Suez represents the most shocking blow to British national pride or, alternatively, the most embarrassing recurrence of imperial adventuring, 1956 makes a useful date for pinpointing the start of the contemporary period. Like the range of responses to the Vietnam War, the reaction to Suez marks a generation, not through unanimity, but through the experience of dissent and violently felt differences of opinion. For younger writers, other social changes and historical events (such as the Falklands Islands war) loom larger, but they amplify, as in an echo chamber, the resonance of Suez. Because it transpires over decades, postwar decolonization effects all four generations of contemporary writers. [16]

History, Heritage and Secondary School National Curriculum in the United Kingdom, 19702000 Between the late 1970s and the late 1990s, the teaching of history in British publicly funded schools underwent a series of transformations in which observers can read aspects of the historiographical argument about history and heritage. As in an allegorical drama, 'Old Fashioned History' found itself displaced by a 'New History' invigorated by social-science method-ologies and changes in pedagogical techniques. Separated from traditional narratives of national pride and differing from the facts and dates studied by elder generations, this new history in turn found itself vulnerable to charges of redundancy. Downsizing of history departments and replace-ment by more relevant or practical options ensued. Curricular reform driven at least in part by a conservative nationalist agenda then brought History back as a required subject, though not for students of all ages. The reinstated History owed as much to a memory of traditional history as to the inventive pedagogy of the teachers who implemented the new curriculum. At each stage, teachers, policy-makers, legislators, and even the prime minister have weighed in on curricular matters perceived to be at the heart of Britain's identity and direction as a nation. The 1970s and 1980s saw the spread of the 'New History,' which integrated some of the techniques and topics of social history and social science into the school history curriculum. In part responding to new understandings of developmental psychology, innovators moved away from traditional chronological narration. The teaching of facts and re-ceived knowledge about (primarily) British history yielded some ground to thematically organized units emphasizing the scrutiny of primary source [155].

The Postimperial British Debate over History versus Heritage Romances of the archive often present a past inflected less by academic history than by British heritage. In Jonathan Raban's words, this heritage (so often substituted for history by Margaret Thatcher and her followers) means 'something we have possession of after the death of the original owners' that we are 'free to use ... as we choose' (Mrs. Thatcher 24). The history invoked by romances of the archive is predominantly a usable past, so this book also confronts fictional representations of the past that, from a postmodern perspective, seem conservative, nostalgic, defensive, or insufficiently sceptical about finding the truth. [???].

Imperialism Cultural and Otherwise in A.S. Byatt's Possession The title of A.S. Byatt's novel Possession relates to nearly every aspect of the multiple stories encased in the framework of Roland Michell and Maud Bailey's quest to discover the truth about the love affair between Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. Possession engages in various questions of ownership: Who is entitled to Roland's initial discovery and its aftermath? What does it mean to possess another person in a romantic relationship? Do Roland and Maud have a right to enter Mrs. Irving's so-called private garden in their own backyard? and so forth, encompassing issues both small and vast. One of the most important issues throughout the novel is the idea of cultural imperialism, as Leonora Stern and others term it, and the disputes which arise over whether the correspondence should remain in Britain based on the fact that its authors were British. Roland's quasi-mentor Blackadder and Maud's friend Leonora discuss this dispute in a television interview after the discovery becomes publicized: Shushila sat between her guests and smiled. Blackadder watched the cameras and felt like a dusty barman. Dusty grey between these two peacocks, dusty with face-powder -he could smell himself -- under the hot light. The moment before the broadcast seemed eternal, and then suddenly, like a sprint race, they were all talking very rapidly and as suddenly silent again. He had only the vaguest recollection of what had been said. The two women, like gaudy parrots, talking about female sexuality and its symbols when repressed, the Fairy Melusina and the danger of the female, LaMotte and the love that dared not speak its name, Leonora's huge surprise when it seemed that Christabel might have loved a man. And his own voice: "Randolph Henry Ash was one of the great love poets in our language. Ask to Embla is one of the great poems of true sexual passion. No one has ever really known whom those poems were written for. In my view the explanation advanced in the standard biography always looked unconvincing and silly. Now we know who it is -- we've discovered Ash's Dark Lady. It's the kind of discover scholars dream of. The letters have got to stay in our country -- they're part of our national story." And Shushila: "You won't agree with that, Professor Stern? Being an American?" And Leonora: "I think the letters should be in the British Library. We can all have microfilms and photocopies, the problems are only sentimental. And I'd like Christabel to have honour in her own country and Professor Blackadder here, who's the greatest living Ash scholar, to have charge of the correspondence. I'm not acquisitive, Shushila - all I want is a chance to write the best critique of these letters once they're available. The days of cultural imperialism are over, I'm glad to say . . . " [436].

Victorian Social History Public Health

Nineteen-Century Public Health Overview Chadwick's Report on Sanitary Conditions

Education and the Lives of Children

Victorian Education (sitemap) British Public Schools An Introduction Victorian Universities (sitemap) Ragged Schools State Involvement in Public Education before the 1870 Education Act Science and Mathematics in Victorian Education: A Bibliography The Anti-Technological Bias of Victorian Education and Britain's Economic Decline Death of Children and the Victorian Novel Victorian orphanages Kipling's as Children's Author Duty and Heritage

Conditions of Life and Labor

Victorian Occupations Life and Labor in the Victorian Period (sitemap) Victorian Women's Occupations (sitemap) Crime in Victorian England (sitemap) What was the life of a typical Englishman just before Victoria ascended the throne? Wages, the Cost of Living, and Contemporary Equivalents to Victorian Money Leisure and Amusements Housing for Rich and Poor (sitemap) The Victorian Building Boom Sitemap The Lack of Social Security in Victorian Punch, the Illustrated London News, and England other Victorian Periodicals on Leisure The Life of the Industrial Worker in and Amusements Early Ninteenth-Century England The Development of Leisure in Britain, Slums and Slumming in Late-Victorian 1700-1850 London The Development of Leisure in Britain Child Labor after 1850 Stained Glass and Gaslight Darkness, Technology and Leisure in Britain after Smog, and a Little Light in Victorian 1850 Cities Seaside Resorts and Spas (sitemap) "Nothing Will Beat the Old Times": A From London Coffee Houses to London Victorian Dialogue Clubs Billingsgate (London Fishmarket) at 5 Pantomime am London theaters Clara Collett, Charles Booth, and Urban Sports and Recreation (sitemap) Poverty Needlewomen: Dressmakers, Milliners, Victorian Cities, Towns, and and Slop-workers Countryside The Physical Deterioration of the Textile London: an Introduction Workers London Characters and the Humourous Testimony Gathered by Ashley's Mines Side of London Life (1871) Commission London Buildings and Monuments Life in London (an account from 1871) illustrated in the Victorian Web The Evangelicals' Positive Influence on Other cities English Society Environment and landscape Related Site: The Workhouse The Peak District Related Site: Quintin Bradley's Labour

History Research "for researchers into The Lake District British labour history and early socialist Lancashire movements." Related Site: The Journal of John Daniel Miscellaneous Thompson (1812-93), sometime Staying in touch how people sent manager of the Northumberland Arms, a letters London pub. England as "the European center of Letters from the Past: a collection of suicide" primary sources The Crystal Palace International Victorian Turkish Baths: their origin, Exhibition of 1851 development, and gradual decline Religious Revival and the Transformation of English Sensibilities Race, Class, and Gender Issues Victorian Culture Shock Race and Class (sitemap) The Metropolitan Police Social Class Victorian Political History: An Overview The Gentleman Occupations 1851, 1861, 1871 from the Housing for Rich and Poor and those in Census returns between The Sutton Dwellings and the struggle to create housing for the poor Then and Now: Posh, Toff, and the Economic History Victorians Economics: An Overview Prominent Victorian Members of The Capitalism Athenaeum Club Corn Laws Cotton versus Silk: Social Class and Abandonment and Restoration of the Mechanization Gold Standard Etiquette What aspects of Victorian culture have Sabbatarianism, Sabbath Observance, been lost with decimalisation? and Social Class "Weeping Willow" stands for "Pillow": Victorian Rhyming Slang "Earth Yenneps": Victorian Back Slang Prostitution in Victorian England To taste of Bacchus' blessings now and then: a sampling of Victorian Toasts and Sentiments Anti-Irish Prejudice Contraception in Victorian Britain: A Bibliography of Secondary Materials [Review of] Neil McKenna's Fanny and Stella: The Young Men who Shocked Victorian England Sex, Scandal, and the Novel Women's History

Victorian political History Ah, well! They may write such things [Humpty Dumpty's rhyme] in a book. . .That's what you call a History of England, that is Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass It may be impossible to recover the past tel quel, but it is possible to say true or false things about it, and to draw true or false, humane or cruel, conclusions or morals. The Law and Medicine, for example, both value, and depend on, quite precise case histories as instructive precedents and, sometimes, as awful warnings. The fact that there are variant accounts of a crime, and the possibility of false witness, does not prevent us, in general, from having some faith in the judicial process (even aggrieved radicals regularly call for impartial inquiries). Frederic Raphael, Basse couture, Times Literary Supplement, 15 October 2010

Timelines
A Timeline of British History A Timeline of Victorian Legislation

Miscellaneous
Tory (see also Conservative Party) Whig The Liberal Triumvirate Victorian Liberalism Political Speeches The Poor Law: an overview (80 documents) The Small Size of National Government in the Age of Victoria Nineteenth-Century Riots and Civil Disorders Riots, Disaffection, and Repression, 1811-19 The Anti-Slavery Campaign in Britain Chartism and The Chartist Movement Working-class atheism and materialism Emigration in Victorian Britain Politics and Theology in Victorian Dissent The Protestant Fight for Jewish Civil Liberties in Victorian England The Victorian Legal System: Contemporary Accounts Cities and towns Letters from the Past: a collection of primary sources

Corn Laws
Corn Laws The Campaign for the Repeal of the Corn Laws Richard Cobden and the Corn Laws

Reform Acts
Reform Acts: An Introduction The Reform Act Crisis Terms of the 1832 Reform Act How Did the Tories Recover after the 1832 Reform Act?

Women's Suffrage
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (182791) The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies The Women's Social & Political Union Hastings, England, and the Battle for Women's Right to Vote

Prime Ministers
British Prime Ministers 1760-1901 (an overview of materials on 27 PMs) Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool The Duke of Wellington William Lamb, the 2nd Viscount Melbourne Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, Earl of Derby Sir Robert Peel: An Overview Lord John Russell Benjamin Disraeli: An Overview William Gladstone: An Overview

Socialism, Marxism, and related reform movements in late-Victorian Britain

Sitemap Chronology Socialism The Social Democratic Federation The Fabian Society Why Did England Not Have Revolution The Halvy Thesis

The British Empire and International Relations

British Empire Overview British Empire: An Introduction Why did the British Empire expand so rapidly between 1870 and 1900? Boer War Crimean War: An Overview (200

Other Figures
Queen Victoria Henry Brougham Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts John Bright

Bartle Frere Sir Rowland Hill George Hudson Daniel O'Connell Richard Cobden General Charles Gordon

Economic History
France vs. England: Mid-nineteenthcentury trade and economic theory Economics: An Overview Capitalism Corn Laws Abandonment and Restoration of the Gold Standard

documents) Crimean War: An Introduction The Chinese Opium Wars The People's International League The Role of the Victorian Army Victorian Representations of War The Lost Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage The Risorgimento or Wars of Italian Unification

Related Topics
Victorian Social History: An Overview A Brief History of London The Crystal Palace International Exhibition of 1851 The Railway Mania of the 1840s Religious Revival and the Transformation of English Sensibilities The Metropolitan Police The Victorian Development of the Idea of "the Public Interest" Victorian Jacobites Related Web Resources

Pre-Victorian Political History

Before Victoria: People and Events Discussed in the Victorian Web King George the Fourth (a.k.a. "Prinny") French Revolution An Introduction Victorian Images of the French Revolution Interregnum The Restoration The " Glorious Revolution " Cromwell The New Model Army James I James II Jacobites The Divine Right of Kings Kings and Queens of England from 1485 to the Present

5. Describe the most significant narrative techniques in Possession, paying special attention to the role of narrative voices. Highlight the specific characteristics of the omniscient narrator.

Techniques
Possession is a unique combination of literary techniques in which two separate but related stories are told simultaneously. The Victorian story is told through a variety of Victorian narrative techniques, while the modern story resembles the ever-popular adventure formula. The Victorian story is told primarily through the letters, journals, and literary works of the characters, with occasional omniscient narration. Richard Jenkyns, reviewing the novel for the Times Literary Supplement, particularly praised Byatt's writing of the letters and poems. The epistolary style works well to characterize the lovers and to chronicle the beginning, growth, and end of their relationship. In subtitling the work "A Romance," Byatt was referring not only to the love stories but to the adventure embarked on by Roland and Maud, an adventure which takes them around England and to France as they follow clues. Unlike the other modern characters, who have a variety of reasons for their interest in the Victorian writers, Roland and Maud are on a scholarly quest for truth; they unexpectedly find personal rewards including their relationship with each other. Another technique which adds to Byatt's Victorian world is the frequent mention of real people in association with her fictional characters. As the novel opens, for instance, Roland finds Randolph's drafts of his first letter to Christabel in a copy of a real work, Giambattista Vico's Principles of a New Science of Nations. The letter refers to meeting the lady at the home of Crabb Robinson, a real person; Roland even wonders whether Randolph's mysterious correspondent might be the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti. Putting fictional characters among real people is a technique that works particularly well in this novel.

Z E S Z Y T Y N A U K OWE UNIWERSYTETU RZESZOWSKIEGO SERIA FILOLOGICZNA ZESZYT 51/2008 STUDIA ANGLICA RESOVIENSIA 5

Agata BUDA

NARRATION TECHNIQUES IN A. S. BYATTS POSSESSION AS A MEANS TO PORTRAY A WOMAN

Introductory word
The main purpose set to this paper is to present the influence of this novels composition on the way in which a female character is portrayed. The complexity of Possession by A.S. Byatt enables the author to carry out an indepth analysis of the female figure, both from the Victorian and the 20th century perspective, and at the same time from the male and female points of view, not to mention the way in which the female figure is perceived by people of differing educational standings and various emotional and temperamental structures.

The complexity of narration + plot

To start with, Possession as a literary work is characterised by different narrative techniques and it makes use of various kinds of chronicler. In this case, the role of a typical 3rd-person narrator is very much limited, which might initially give the reader the impression of chaos; however, in effect it creates a unique tool for the portrayal of characters, especially a woman. The starting point for an analysis of the narration techniques employed might be the whole idea of intertextuality, on which the main plot is based. Note that, each chapter is preceded by a quotation from a poem appropriately related to the events described therein. It is somewhat noteworthy that the passages from the poetry are written by characters from the novel itself; that is R.H. Ash and Ch. LaMotte. There are chapters appearing in the form of fragments of a narrative poem, chapters written in the form of the epistolary novel, as well as being presented as passages from diaries. In addition to this mixture of techniques the reader might also become engaged in an analysis of the plot organisation, which is based on two levels, that is the Victorian and the twentieth-century reality. Interestingly enough, the events from those two disparate times are heavily intertwined and become the great analogy to the differences and similarities between the Victorian and modern women.

Narrators
In general, the diversity of narrators corresponds with the characters themselves, as the majority of them are responsible for telling the story. The primary narrator in the 3rd person singular is the most objective of all, and introduces the 20th-century figure of literary scientist named Roland Mitchell. His preoccupation with a Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash makes him present the story of Ashs life, women and poetry. At the same time, Mitchell becomes a narrator himself, following the steps of the Victorian poet and revealing his unknown works and relationships. Mitchell gets to know a literary scientist Maud Bailey, and together they travel back to Victorian times. Their story, which is of an academic character, constitutes the primary plot. Let us point to the fact that while analysing their sources and travelling to places connected with Ash and his women the two academics take the reader on a journey through the 19th century world, which actually is the main core of the secondary plot. It tells the story of Ash and Christabel LaMotte his love, friend and at the same time a poet. Their story is shown through their correspondence, their poetry and diaries. The interdependence of the particular narrators might be portrayed by the following chart:

PLOT MEN WOMEN

19TH CENTURY Randolph H. Ash Christabel LaMotte Ellen Ash Blanche Glover poetry diaries letters NTERTEXTUALITY

20TH CENTURY Roland Mitchell Maud Bailey

TYPE OF NARRATION

traditional 3rd person narration poetry

Note that each of the ways that are utilised to tell the story mix and mingle with each other and the figures of the novel provide the evidence of their own worlds. The representatives of the Victorian England are presented when they are subject to exploration by the representatives of the 20th century. During their search, Maud and Roland paint a subjective picture of Christabel and Randolph These two worlds overlap each other and reveal their unique portrayal of a woman. In other words, the task is completed thanks to the mixture of the types of narrators. According to Hutcheon (1980:35), resigning from the homogenous and harmonious way of narrating the story has its own explanation; it is a commentary on the linear and chronological narration popular in the nineteenth century; so simultaneously it might be perceived as a criticism of the unimaginative, simple Victorian narration, and as a consequence, a criticism of Victorian times themselves.

Subjective narration vs. women

Among the numerous ways employed of telling the story of Ash and LaMotte, Byatt exploits poetry. It is not merely her way of expressing literary values or showing emotions, but not infrequently it is a means of portraying a female. The author exploits the poems by the character named Christabel LaMotte. Her lyrical works frequently begin the chapter, as it is in the case of chapter seven:
Men may be martyred Any where In desert, cathedral Or Public Square. In no rush of action This is our doom To Drag a Long Life out In a Dark Room. (Byatt 1991:112)

All in all, the above poem fulfils several roles in Byatts novel. One of the tasks is to present an example of female poetry. As lyrical poems are perceived as one of the most demanding kinds of literature, the quotation of a female poem is ample proof that women might be good at creating complex art. In addition to this, this poem is composed by a Victorian woman, which makes it more valuable in the eyes of contemporaries; it shows the role females had to play in Victorian society. In short, they were supposed to sit at home, preferably in a dark place, seen by nobody. Even if they were intelligent and had their own opinion, they were hardly ever given the opportunity to show it. The poem presents a woman by contrasting her with the man. One may find the apparent contradictions differentiating a man from a woman, and what is more showing the unequal treatment to which both sexes were subjected. The most striking contrast is the names of the places both male and female might be found:

Public Square Dark Room MAN WOMAN Note that a Public Square is associated with an open space, which is frequently associated with freedom, while the room stands for an enclosed territory, limited by walls, or, in a broader sense, by some social or moral rules. In this case the Public Square exemplifies the possibility for a man to make himself visible, to realise his desires and to use his free will. On the other hand, the Dark Room is the manifestation of the restrictions Victorian society put on females. The names of both of the places are written in capital letters, which has a significant influence on the interpretation of these names. The use of capital letters in the name of Public Square might be the reflection of human craving for some space, and the capitals: P and S might symbolise the space. The letters D(ark) R(oom) might enhance the feeling of alienation in a woman. When she is alone, limited to the four walls, she tends to exaggerate her grief and misery. It is also possible to note the importance of portraying the womans life by the usage of the expression: To Drag a Long Life. The alliterative usage of L consonant while reading aloud might emphasise the idea that female life is slow, uninteresting and dull. Furthermore, the verb Drag, also written with a capital letter, enhances the feeling that a womans life in Victorian times was miserable. By quoting the poem by LaMotte, one of the novels characters, Byatt compares the existence of a nineteenth-century woman to the action of pulling some heavy object with a lot of effort. Such a definition of the verb drag is provided by the Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture (1998:394). Apart from using poetry to portray a woman, the author exploits letters as well. As one may notice, the above quotation is far from being objective, but is seen from a female perspective, so let us have a look at the male point of view, which also refers directly to the figure of a woman. Randolph Ash and Christabel LaMotte were lovers and due to the fact that Mr. Ash had a wife Christabel asked him to send their letters to the poste restante as she was afraid that somebody could intercept them. Nevertheless, Ash did not approve of this idea; this is how he refers to it in one of his letters:
I have addressed this, as requested, to the Richmond Poste Restante. I do not wholly like this subterfuge - I do not like the imputed shady dealing of such a step - I find it inhibiting (Byatt 1991:191).

Despite the fact that Ash was a married man, he did not see the necessity of keeping his correspondence secret. Christabel, not involved in any formal relationship, preferred to cover her affair as if she were committing a crime. And again, this feeling might have been caused by the commonly held belief that a woman, whatever she does has to be exceedingly careful. On the other hand, it proves that a man who commits a betrayal of his wife does not have to keep it in secret. This reference provides an example of the Victorian moral code: a man in contrast to a woman has some kind of tacit social permission for a misdeed, while a woman has to be careful in her doings. In the eyes of Ash, Christabel does not have to be scared of public contempt, because he does not care about it, and he expresses his point of view clearly, nevertheless, he agrees to Christabels request, while simultaneously giving the impression that he did not understand her decision. Dialogues are the next means to be used by Byatt to narrate the story and to portray a female. The twentieth-century academics, Maud Bailey and Roland Mitchell, as well as the other literary scientist, Beatrice, spend many hours discussing the relationship of Christabel and Randolph. Their conversations reflect the position of a Victorian woman. In one of the discussions between Maud and Beatrice the idea of a woman as a writer is shown. It concerns Ashs wife Ellen:
I am very keen to know if the wifes of these so-called great men- He was a great man in my opinion- Yes. If their wifes were content to rest in their husbands glory or felt that they themselves might have achieved something if conditions had been favourable. So many

of them wrote journals, often work, secret work, of very high quality (Byatt 1991:219).

In the above dialogue the woman is seen from the perspective of two twentieth-century females. Because of their gender it might seem only natural that they are amazed by the literary achievements of other women, remaining in the shadow of their husbands. The dialogue is another confirmation of the idea that a Victorian female was less important than a man, even if she was capable of writing excellent works. Maud and Beatrice consider the work by Ellen Ash as a very valuable piece of writing; it gains greater appreciation maybe because the conditions in which it was created were not entirely favourable, as the dialogue suggests. Likewise, the conversation underlines the vast difference between the access to fame for the male community and the development opportunities for female part of society. To present a contrasting point of view on the female let us look at the discussion on Christabels figure between Maud, Roland and Sir George Bailey, a man who in the twentieth century occupies Christabels house. His view on Victorian woman is supported by the idea that only a man is in the position to create something valuable. Sir George defines Christabel as a would-be poetess, because she had never worked, only sat in her room and wasted her time writing. In his opinion, the real poet was Ash, simply because of the fact that he was a man (Byatt 1991:93). The discussion shows Sir Georges tendency to look down on females without any insight into their abilities. Because of his attitude, both Christabels house and grave were in a very poor condition, and both her letters and writings remained undiscovered. As Maud Bailey and Roland Mitchell followed the path of life of Christabel and Randolph, they gradually revealed different aspects of their lives to the public, as they wanted to immortalise their poetry. During one of their academic expeditions they made a rather unusual discovery; Christabel LaMotte not only was a great poet and Randolph Ashs lover, but she also had a close relationship with her roommate, Blanche Glover. Note that her diary provides yet another way to portray the story of a Victorian woman: on the basis of her entries the two contemporary academics assumed that between Christabel and Blanche there existed a lesbian relationship. Blanche was angry with Christabel about her male lover, and what is more she had felt ignored since LaMotte started her love affair. Her diary is the evidence that Blanche was going through her most difficult period when Christabel used to meet with Randolph. She both cried and prayed a lot so as to gain Christabels attention (Byatt 1991:5658). The situation was accentuated by the fact that a Victorian woman could not fight openly for her rights and ideas; Blanches diary is an example of the uncovering the feelings in a very emotional way; it is also an extremely subjective kind of narration. The reader is also provided with narration in the form of a poem by an authentic figure. During one of their long-lasting expeditions Maud shows Roland a collection of some poems, among which there was a work by Emily Dickinson. Her piece concerns the feelings of solitude and alienation typical for a woman. At the same time, it might be an autobiographical poem, as it is widely known that this great American poetess spent her life in one room in her family house. (Byatt 1998: 65) There is a clear reference to the figure of Christabel, who was the representative of a Victorian woman, unable to reveal her poetry and lifestyle to the public, forced to live in a dark room of tight social conventions and all-pervading morality. The poem by Dickinson is further confirmation that a Victorian female was forced to live in the shadow of society, hide her feelings and was doomed to excessive mental suffering.

Not only is the woman portrayed by the usage of different narrative techniques, but rather one is tempted to say that the whole novel is an extended comment on Victorianism. From the very beginning, the Victorian age, seen from the perspective of a twentieth-century academic seems to be dark, gloomy and full of mysteries. The description of Randolph Ashs volume of the poems found by Roland Mitchell in the library is a good symbol of the perception of the nineteenth century:
The book was thick and black and covered with dust. Its boards were bowed and creaking; it had been maltreated in its own time. Its spine was missing, or rather protruded from amongst the leaves like a bulky marker. It was bandaged about and about with dirty white tape tied in a neat bow (Byatt 1991:1).

For a twentieth-century reader the above-mentioned volume of the book might seem to have been long forgotten. It may signify that Ash was a poet underestimated by his contemporaries, as well as by his modern readership. The description unveils the lack of popularity of Ashs works; nevertheless it foretells the quest for the uncovering the great mystery. The book is also a reference to the Victorian age as seen by the twentieth-century representatives: it is unattractive, not worth analysing and dirty, which makes people abhor touching it. In spite of this, Roland Mitchell decides to follow the steps of Randolph Ash and reveal both his intriguing poetry and life. In conclusion one may say that all of the above-discussed narrative techniques introduce a great weight of subjectivity. There is no one type of narration that is totally objective. Namely, in Possession the characters stand for the narrators, and maybe because of the variety of perspectives from which the female is portrayed, her image paradoxically moves closer to attaining objectivity. If we have one narrator who presents the events in a chronological order, the image of the protagonists is based mainly on his comment. The more different techniques of narration the reader gets to know, the more objective he becomes in depicting the events and persons in his mind.

Female symbols
It is necessary to state from the outset that the depiction of a woman is not conducted by narrative techniques alone; it is also done by presenting several symbolic ideas and objects. The names of the characters carry a symbolic meaning. The life of Blanche Glover, Christabels friend, a woman, hiding her true feelings towards Christabel, might be identified with her surname, associated with a glove the object that covers the hand and protects from cold. While carrying out an in-depth analysis of the meaning of this word one might notice that a Victorian woman had to hide herself with her emotions from the outside world like a hand is hidden in a glove from the cold. The same idea of mystery, hidden secrets and limited freedom is represented by the house in which Christabel spent her life. Maud and Roland visited it and were surprised by its look:
[Roland and Maud] walked and walked, at first along tiled and bleakly lit corridors, under electric lighting, and then along dusty carpets in dark shuttered places, and up a stone staircase and then further up a winding wooden stair, cloudy with dark dust () Sir George waved his huge cone of light around the dark, cramped, circular space, illuminating a semi- circular bay window, a roof carved with veined arches and mock- medieval ivy- leaves, felt- textured with dust () (Byatt 1991:81).

The description of Christabels house might be the symbol of a previous poque that had passed away, and looks unattractive in the eyes of contemporaries. The house represents the Victorian poque, forgotten, covered with dust, mysterious and even scary. The description might resemble the places of a Gothic style: dark, gloomy and unpleasant.

Despite the idea that a Victorian female should not express her thoughts openly, Byatts novel shows the womanly world clearly, by the means of their poems, diaries and letters. What could not be openly spoken was written down in secret and survived for years to come. Byatts narration, which is realised on different levels, might be referred to the definition of Linda Hutcheon, who calls the modern kind of narration the mimesis of process in contrast to the Victorian linear narration called the mimesis of product (Hutcheon 1980:5).

6. What is the meaning of literary ventriloquism in Possession? (Remember that Mortimer Croppers biography of Randolph Henry Ash is ironically entitled The Great Ventriloquist, a pseudonym that could also be easily applied to Antonia S. Byatt herself). What role do the Victorian texts provide in the development and evolution of the plot? More specifically, what is the function of the invented Victorian poetry and prose? Do they simply provide a means of embellishing the novel from a formal or stylistic perspective, of affirming the authors superiority over the reader, or do they play other significant roles? If so, explain. Do the poems provide clues for the interpretations of the story? Description of Plot and Characters Contributed by Participants in SeniorLearn's Discussion of Possession Ventriloquism

An Other Voice: Ventriloquism in the Romantic Period

The early nineteenth century was a golden age of ventriloquism. After having been a rare (and rarely discussed) as well as mysterious phenomenon for centuries, ventriloquism rather suddenly developed at this time into a matter of great public interest. Ventriloquists proclaiming their own rareness became, in a mild paradox, mainstays of popular entertainment. [1] While represented only occasionally in literary works, ventriloquism as a dramatic and rhetorical concept became important and prominent in the cultural vocabulary and the literary criticism of the period. Most notably, it widely informs the criticism of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As James Engell and Walter Jackson Bate note, ventriloquism "is one of C's favorite terms." [2] It is also, for Coleridge, a curiously ambivalent one. The term carries a consistently negative import in Coleridge's commentaries on drama and dramatic poetry: for example (writing of Ben Jonson's Sejanus), "Think of Jonson's erudition, and the force of learned authority in that ageand yet in no genuine part of Shakespeare is to be found such an absurd rant and ventriloquism as this. . . ." [3] Yet ventriloquism nevertheless also appears regularly in his other writings as a compelling figure for transcendent voice: "Conscience . . . [is] a perfect ventriloquist" (1795); "Reason [is] a ventriloquist" (1800); "Reason . . . [is] like the voice of an external Ventriloquist" (1809); "truth [is] a divine ventriloquist" (1817); "the Ventriloquist Truth" speaks from various places (1819); God is "a superhuman . . . Ventriloquist" (1824). [4] These very different responses to ventriloquism suggest the gap between real and ideal, performance and theory. 2 The temporary prominence of ventriloquism in this period was in part due to the ambiguity of its character, an ambiguity not unrelated to Coleridge's ambivalence. Was it a genuine phenomenon, or was it illusory; was it natural, or preternatural? With these questions finally resolved to the satisfaction of most critics by the 1830's, and with ventriloquists often and increasingly by their own explicit acknowledgmentfinally categorizable as showmen, ventriloquism assumed the comfortable status of a vaudeville act. This later status, which continues today, has greatly obscured the much greater and more complex significance that the concept of ventriloquism once had. 3 Ventriloquism, as it unsettles both voice and attribution, also unsettles critical boundaries. Consider,

for example, Stephen Dedalus's quick discrimination, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, of the lyric, narrative, and dramatic genres. Stephen presents them as a progression of decreasing authorial immediacy, from the "purely personal" utterance of the lyric poet to the removal of the dramatic author behind the esthetic life of his handiwork, like God behind His creation, invisible, refined out of existence, paring his fingernails. Stephen's musings, as Lynch joyously notes, often have "the true scholastic stink," and he shapes them by trying to answer such aesthetic questions as, "Is a chair finely made tragic or comic? . . . Is the bust of Sir Philip Crampton lyrical, epical, or dramatic?" In something of the same spirit, we might test Stephen's own generic schema with some stinkers of our own: what shall we think, for example, if the dramatist is a puppeteer? Or what againand this time the question is itself progressive and transitionalif the dramatist is a ventriloquist? Both questions, as we shall see, are in fact Coleridge's. 4 In Europe, ventriloquism, as it came to be recognized and then examined, proved to have a long if very obscure tradition: the further back it was pursued, the older it seemed to be. In the early American republic, however, ventriloquism was originally a rumor from a void, the voice of an absence. There was no there there; it was elsewhere, not here. And since this conditionthe disembodied voice, the absent speakercuriously mimics the early condition of ventriloquism itself, the entirely derivative history of ventriloquism in America nevertheless has from the beginning a remarkably self-contained, self-definitive, and autochthonic quality. 5 Ventriloquism as the voice of an absence: we must begin by abandoning our own twentieth-century preconceptions and recovering those of an earlier era. Charlie McCarthy is a badly misleading guide to the practices of his predecessors. Before 1800, ventriloquism almost exclusively implied not a transferred but a disembodied voicethe voice putatively of a spirit, of a ghost, of God, or (once ventriloquism became a popular entertainment) of the performer's hidden or invisible companion. The ventriloquist's is always an other's voice; but the history of ventriloquism during the early Romantic period (ca. 1801-1820) is, like many other Romantic histories, a history of the gradual appearance and embodiment of the other.

I. The Emergence of the Ventriloquist

6 When Charles Brockden Brown published Wieland; or, the Transformation and wrote the Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist in 1798, there had never been a ventriloquist in America. Brown had examples of murderous religious enthusiasm ready to hand in late eighteenth-century America, and relied on one of these as an occasion for his Wieland plot; but his notion of the dangerous human agency manipulating such enthusiasms most likely came primarily from an entry in a contemporaneous encyclopedia. [5] 7 The first ventriloquist in America is usually said to have been "Mr. Rannie," a Scot billing himself as "the European Ventriloquist," who arrived to considerable attention in Boston in late November,

1801 and began performing a few weeks thereafter. [6] This is both true and false. James Rannie who, incidentally, proclaimed himself to be, and probably was, "the [ventriloquist] mentioned in the Encyclopedia," [7] the same encyclopedia that Brown had probably consulted in writing Wieland did indeed begin his American career at that place and time. But James Rannie (he would later begin styling himself "Rannie, Senior," or "Rannie the Elder"), had been preceded to America by his younger brotheralso "Mr. Rannie," naturally enough. The younger brother, John Rannie, also a ventriloquist, arrived sometime in the preceding spring, probably in March or April, and gradually worked his showman's way from Philadelphia across New Jersey and on to New York City. For a while one brother performed in Boston while the other performed in New York; then John traveled on to Boston and the two joined their performances for a few days. Thereafter they moved southward again; an apparently solo stand in New York City (James, this time) was followed by an extensive joint stand in Philadelphia. [8] But then, suddenly, their professional relationship exploded, and the brothers became fierce competitors. For the next several years, they performed an odd, extensive pas de deux through the United States and elsewhere, sometimes apparently seeking to preempt or undercut one another, sometimes dancing carefully around each other's itineraries, sometimes touring in widely separated areas or in greatly divergent directions, and then sometimes again collaborating. At times, the competitor is "his own brother"; at other times, the other Mr. Rannie, "not the Rannie who performed here lately"; at still darker moments, an imposter, "another person, who calls himself Mr. Rannie, a Ventriloquist." [9] Throughout this period, moreover, the Rannies were, as ventriloquists if not as magicians, gymnasts, rope dancers, actors, and stage managers, to touch lightly on but some of their other talentsalmost entirely without competition of any kind. [10] From 1801 until 1809, with only the most trivial and suspect of exceptions, "ventriloquist" in America effectively meant "Mr. Rannie"which is to say, of course, that the term thus had an inevitably double referent, an echo. 8 So for eight years the ventriloquial Rannies had the field and audiences of America entirely to themselves; but each also always worked in the shadow of his other, his brother. This, apparently, was a sufficient competitive spur. In Europe they had been successful, but not unique; in America, not only did they thrive professionally, they also seem to have taken ventriloquism to new levels of dramatic development. Through the Rannies and a few of their contemporaries, we can follow ventriloquism's emergence from the voice of an absence to the voice of a presence, from antiapostrophe to address; we can witness the gradual appearance and embodiment of the other.

II. The Emerging Embodiment of the Other

9 The progress from absence to presencethe progress to natural supernaturalismin these early days of professional ventriloquism passed through many stages of development. Not surprisingly, these greatly overlapped and mingled, often in a single performance. Nevertheless, their progressive tendency is readily apparent. 10 In its beginnings, the ventriloquial voice is bodiless, supernatural. The supposed speaker is a spirit

or ghost, The performances of Carwin the biloquist are representative of this sort; that of the Witch of Endor before Saul in I Samuel is a frequently cited precedent. [11] Almost all of the prenineteenth-century anecdotes of ventriloquism are of this sort, although many have a comic turn, rather than the tragic and somber twist of Wieland. Such performances typically had not audiences, but victims. As such, they constitute a terminus a quo of professional ventriloquism. 11 Closely aligned to these private ventriloquial victimizations were the pranks in which an animal or an infant would seem, like Balaam's ass, to utter pointed or prophetic speech. Rannie was particularly famous for several of these. Most notoriouslyand this anecdote is recounted so widely by so many that it may well have been truehe asked a woman selling fish in the market at Edinburgh when her fish had been caught, and when she told him, the fish suddenly spoke up, "It is false, I am a week older." [12] The result was widespread consternation in the market and a general throwing away of fish. Similarly, in Portland, Maine, he "occasioned a child 12 hours old, to exclaim apparently, that the town of Portland would be swallowed up by an earthquake in three days," leading "great numbers to depart from the city for several days." [13] The point of these feats, however or of the stories about them, which comes to much the same thingwas especially the publicity, the advertising. Like the utterances of a seemingly supernatural voice, they depend upon the unsuspectedness of the ventriloquist for their power. Thus these demonstrations do not take place on stage before a paying audience; their purpose is rather to attract that paying audience. 12 For those who did pay for and attend the performer's exhibitionand in cities there would be hundreds each nightone feature of the show was usually animal imitations. These might include "Dogs, Ducks, Cats, Hens, Chickens, Pigs squealing and Cocks crowing. . . . Birds whistling, viz., the Black Bird, Thrush, Sky-Lark, a Chipart, a Wren, a Quail, and the Robin." [14] These imitations were at once closely associated with ventriloquism and carefully distinguished from it, in a separate although usually adjacent act of the program. The effect, certainly, was to further establish the ventriloquist as a skilled mimic, thereby making more familiarwonderful, rather than dangeroussome of his truly ventriloquial tricks, such as this one: "the notes of a pig's voice were heard to come from a gentleman's pocket; and, on his being asked by Mr. R. to set the Pig at liberty, he said he would do so provided Mr. R. would insure his hand from being bitten." [15] 13 But the featured center of Rannie's performance was his command of the other voice. He possesses by nature the faculty of commanding a voice to answer him from any object he pleases. . . . He will clearly demonstrate that he has an absolute power of commanding the same voice to be heard in any other room. . . . None in Europe or America is possessed with the power of conveying the voice but himself. [16] Rannie would command this other voice to speak "from the pockets of his audience, or from any object present." [17] It might come from a gentleman's hat, from inside a clothes press, or from under a teacup. Once in New York City, he claimed, "when the voice proceeded from a Lady's muff, . . . the lady was so fully impressed with an idea of reality, that she threw the muff away, with

an exclamation of terror and astonishment." [18] 14 The ventriloquial voice, of course, was not, could not be, the ventriloquist's ordinary, usual voice, else his ostensible throwing of it would never persuade or deceive. Rannie's other voice, typically, was the voice of a child, and behaved as such. It answered, "from all parts of the room, ... whatever question [Rannie] propose[d]"; [19] sometimes it called for help, as when it found itself in a teapot, or a gentleman's snuffbox, or a lady's thimble: "let me out, let me out or I shall smother." [20] This was a strangely, unnaturally small child, then; perhaps we can understand the fright of the lady who suddenly perceived it concealed in her muff. But in all these cases, the child's is still the voice of an absence; no child is to be seen. 15 Yet just at this time this absent child, this domestic other, was also acquiring a presence and a body. The advent of the ventriloquist's doll was at hand. 16 Indeed, there had been avatars. As early as 1757 the Baron de Mengen, an Austrian nobleman who often sported with ventriloquism, was using a little puppet or doll [poupee] with a mouth like a kind of nutcracker then common; the lower jaw was moveable by a peg. [21] As ventriloquism was becoming an established dramatic art in England in the late 1700's, however, the doll was scarcely in evidence. Well into the 1830's ventriloquists featured what is now called the distant voice, emphasizing their ability to make a voice seem to come from a point at some significant distance from the performer. [22] So Joseph Askins, the ventriloquist whose triumphant engagements at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London in 1796 and 1797 aroused widespread popular enthusiasm for the art, explicitly advertised "curious ad libitum Dialogues between himself and his invisible familiar, Little Tommy." [23] And Rannie himself frequently emphasized the distance to which he could throw his voice, at various times claiming a range of twelve, fourteen, or even sixteen yards. 17 Yet, very quietly and unobtrusively, an alternative ventriloquial tradition was already developing. An early record of it comes with the stories about one James Burne or Burns, an Irishman who made a living performing in the Nottingham area in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Most anecdotes of Burne's performances feature his distant voice. But John Throsby, in his History of Nottinghamshire, also recounts that Burne carries in his pocket, an ill-shaped doll, with a broad face, which he exhibits . . . as giving utterance to his own childish jargon. The gaping croud, who gather round him to see this wooden baby, and hear, as it appears, its speeches, are often deceived; nothing but the movement of the ventriloquist's lips, which he endeavours to conceal, can lead to the deception. An accompanying illustration shows Burne holding a rigid, somber figurine partly wrapped in a large handkerchief (Figure 1). This would seem to be the first English illustration of a ventriloquist's doll. [24]

Figure 1

Image pleine grandeur 18 In the late 1790's another prominent ventriloquist, Thomas Garbutt, was also, without fanfare, using a doll in his performances. Garbutt's advertisements, typically, stressed his distant-voice powers: He . . . questions in one voice, and answers in another, which he commands to come from any object the Company pleases, from Closets, Presses; from under chairs, Tables, the Floor, the Roof, etc. etc. [25] But while none of Garbutt's advertisements ever alludes to a doll, its presence is confirmed by a striking anecdote dating from his 1797 engagement in Dublin: A curious occurrence took place, at a tavern, last week between Mr. Garbut, the Ventriloquist, and one of the waiters. The former called for dinner which was served up, and he placed at the table with him his little companion, a puppet, he calls Tommy, with which it would seem he converses, at his exhibition, the oddity of which not a little surprized the waiter. Mr. Garbut having dined, he rang the bell, and the attendant appearing, Tommy, as was imagined, demanded what was to pay.The waiter at first could not believe his ears; but the question being repeated, Tommy, saying at the same time, he would pay the billthis so frightened the boy, who could not observe the ventriloquist speaking, he ran down stairs, and swore he would not receive the reckoning in the room he came from, for he was sure the two that were in it in company, were the Devil and some conjurer, and had the Ventriloquist thought proper, he might have come off with dining for nothing, during the consternation the waiter created in the house. [26] Such publicity was surely invaluable, and may well have been planted by Garbutt himself. 19 It is quite probable that Garbutt was James Rannie's mentor in ventriloquism. [27] And while Rannie never once, in more than fourteen years of highly detailed advertising, mentioned the fact, it is also clear that Rannie himself was using a doll, which he too called "Tom" or "Tommy," during his performances. As early as 1803 an eyewitness in Georgia reported, When it came to the performance of what he calls Ventriloquism, the man came with his infant, which he calls Tom, and made appearantly [sic] Tom speak by asking Questions, and Tom answered. [28] The 1798 Encyclopedia also describes the Edinburgh ventriloquist (probably Rannie) as making the voice of a child "appear to proceed . . . from a wooden doll, with which he held many spirited conversations." [29] An 1805 description of Rannie's 1804 appearances in Boston gives a similar account, including the doll's name, Tommy. [30] 20 Rannie was a great pioneer in the use of illustrations in his advertising; and some of his woodcuts provide what would seem to be the first widely disseminated illustrations of the ventriloquist's doll.

The earliest such woodcut, dating from December, 1802 (Figure 2), and a slightly different version, from April, 1804 (Figure 3), show Tommy as a stiff, articulated figure, man-like but child-sized, wearing a ruff and an elaborately plumed broad-brimmed (or possibly tricorn) hat, standing balanced on one leg on the ventriloquist's flat, outstretched palm. [31] A second and quite different kind of illustration, dating again from April, 1804 (Figure 4), shows instead a tiny child, again in a ruff but now hatless. [32] He is again poised on one leg, but poised now on the ventriloquist's supporting index finger, for the child is seemingly but a few inches tall small enough to lose itself in a lady's ruff or a gentleman's pocket indeed, but too small to be effectively visible on stage to an audience of several hundred, so we must perforce regard this figure, I think, as the imaginary child of Rannie's best distant-voice tricks, not the actual Tommy.

21 The introduction of the ventriloquist's doll is, in hindsight, surely the most remarkable single development in the dramatic history of ventriloquism. But one of the most remarkable things about it is how terribly little attention it received at the time. For in fact this development is almost invisible in the records. Neither Rannie ever mentioned it in their years of often quite lengthy and descriptive advertisements. Neither did Richard Potter, the first American ventriloquist, ever mention it in his twenty-seven years of performing and advertising, although he, too, at least occasionally used "a wooden doll, with which we have seen him hold spirited conversations" in his ventriloquial act, as we know from an 1819 account. [33] Were it not for the contemporaneous testimonies of a few eye-witnesses, we would know nothing of these dolls; we would instead have every reason to think, as generally has been heretofore thought, that the ventriloquist's doll first appeared only in the 1830's or 1840's. [34] 22 Such facts suggest inescapably that in these first decades of the nineteenth century the ventriloquist's doll itself was of little significance, surprising though this may seem to us today. Even its recording witnesses take note of it only in passing. Both puffery and audience attention remained strongly focused on the ventriloquist himself: he was the unique and mysterious figure, however gentlemanly, respectable, and upstanding he appeared. The doll, after all, was itself familiar, both from childhood and from Punch and Judy shows; the creating of doll-speech was but child's or puppeteer's play. And these Tommies (unlike Punch and Judy) were docile and respectable dolls; Rannie's Tommy even addressed him as "Papa." [35] The other voice, thus, was not an other's voice. But the fantastic throwing of voice, the commanding of voice from a distant place, the speaking as it were from the bellythese were strange and extraordinary indeed, and the ventriloquist did not hesitate to proclaim them as such. 23 All attention remained on the ventriloquist rather than the doll, this is to argue, because it was still the ventriloquist, and not the doll, that embodied the other. And his personal differentness only reinforced this judgment. The Rannies were foreigners in America, as both their accents and their acts testified, although James eventually became a naturalized American citizen. And the darkskinned Richard Potter, although he hailed from Massachusetts, was the mulatto son of a Guinea

slave. [36] In the early part of his career he sought to ease the burden of this racial identity by advertising himself as a West Indian, [37] in the middle part he passed as white while touring through the slave-holding states for some four years, but in the later part he was often recognized and identified by others as "colored." The lingering strangeness of ventriloquism was thus compounded by the perceived otherness of the ventriloquist.

III. Coleridge and "Ventriloquism"

24 In this historical context, we can see that Coleridge did not always mean the same thing by "ventriloquism," and so not always what we mean by the term today. We can also begin to trace the outlines of his gradually increasing, if incidental, familiarity with the art. 25 Consider, for example, Coleridge's early mention of ventriloquism in Conciones ad Populum (delivered January or February 1795; published November 1795): Lastly, I applied to Conscience. She informed me, that she was indeed a perfect ventriloquist, and could throw her voice into any place she liked; but that she was seldom attended to, unless when she appeared to speak out of the Pocket. Lects 1795 31 The allusion is to a typical early ventriloquist's trickmaking a voice seem to proceed from a gentleman's or lady's pocket or pocket-book, as if from an unseen being hidden therein. (Coleridge humorously suggests that the pocket's or pocket-book's contents seem to speak; "money talks.") [38] It is quite likely, moreover, that at this time Coleridge had observed no other kind of ventriloquial performancehad never witnessed a ventriloquist working with a doll. That may have changed, however, by early 1800, when he writes, If we could dissever from the ideas the ludicrous association, we would personify Reason as a ventriloquist; it is of inferior importance into what uncouth vessel she throws her voice, provided only that it is audible. EOT 1:120 "Vessel" here may be meant literally or figurativelythe early ventriloquists typically threw their voices into any number of actual vessels (wineglasses, teapots, teacups, and the like)but, in context (the "uncouth vessel" to which Coleridge is here alluding is a political faction), would seem to imply a human-like speaker. [39] And by 1803, at any rate, it is quite certain that Coleridge has witnessed a vent-and-doll performancealthough surely no very good one. Writing dismissively of "the vulgar Schoolbooks, histories, & religious Tracts in the dialogue form," he objects, these are not Dialogues, but dull Exhibitions of a sort of Ventriloquism, one man is speaking all the while, but every now & then he alters his Voice into a Semi-squeak and wd. fain make it appear to proceed from some doll or man of Straw at some little distance from it[.] [40] This "sort of Ventriloquism," however crudely realized, differs fundamentally from the earlier sort:

now the voice has its own presence on the stage, and ventriloquism's truly dramatic potential becomes apparent. 26 Clearly ventriloquism made a powerful impression on Coleridge. He was, indeed, one of the very first and one of the very few men of his time even to take note of the ventriloquist's doll. Recognizing ventriloquism's potential relevance to his own concerns, he adapts its ideal as a contemporary figure for vatic possession, most famously in the Biographia: "I regard truth as a divine ventriloquist: I care not from whose mouth the sounds are supposed to proceed, if only the words are audible and intelligible." [41] He brought the word into our critical vocabulary, giving it a currency it retains today. 27 While ahead of his time in all these respects, however, Coleridge was simply of his time in finding no true otherness in the doll's ventriloquial performance. Probably, indeed, he never witnessed anything better than a mediocre performance. Certainly he seems never to have found the illusion of such performance either persuasive or moving: he several times alludes to the doll as a "puppet" or "Straw Moppet" or the like, and to the dialogue as "insipidity." [42] For whatever reason, the gap between the ideal and the performance of ventriloquism never closed for him. 28 The lesson from the history of ventriloquism, as from Coleridge's Shakespeare lectures, seems to be this: dramatic form becomes effective only when the artist projects the other onto the stage. For Coleridge, this ability distinguished Shakespeare from all of his dramatist contemporaries, whose scenes too often "are mock dialogues, in which the Poet Solo plays the ventriloquist, but cannot suppress his own way of expressing himself" (CM 1:402). For ventriloquism, such development finally appears in the 1830's and 1840's, when the ventriloquist's doll becomes, not a respectful child, but a mouthy street kid: suddenly, audiences remember the doll as well as the ventriloquist; suddenly, ventriloquism becomes truly dramatic.

Plot
Roland, looking for sources for Ash's Garden of Proserpina, finds some letters in an old book in the London Library (supposedly however all the letters were returned to Christabel, these are apparently drafts). Lots of gold in this segment, the linking of Proserpina, Aeneas and Hercules. The letters suggest a possible relationship between Ash and Christabel LaMotte, a minor poet, hitherto unknown. This sets Roland on a quest to see if there are more letters from those who might know, Leonora Stern and Maud Bailey. This takes them to Seal Court, the Bailey seat where they find because of a verse on a doll, a hidden cache of letters. but Sir George insists he have somebody advise him on them. Thus endeth Chapter 5.

Dramatis Personae
Roland Mitchell, PhD Expert in Randolph Ash Felt Ash "neither liked nor understood women, that his female speaker were constructs of his own fear and aggression, that even the poem cycle Ask to Embla was the work not of love but of narcissism, the poet addressing his Anima." Page 16. State of somnolence, sick juddering wakefulness, worry about Val, pg 11; Graduate of Prince Albert College, London and PhD from same at 29. Thought of himself as a latecomer. Grew up in a depressed Lancashire cotton town. Father: County official, Mother: disappointed English grad, disappointed in herself, his father and in himself. She drank. Kept changing Roland's schooling. A's at A level. Saw himself as a failure and vaguely responsible for this. Essentially unemployed, part-time tutoring, dogsbodying for Blackadder, and restaurant dishwashing. Compact, clearcut, precise features, soft black hair, thoughtful dark brown eyes. Paid little attention to what people thought of him. Women liked him. Val called him Mole? Met her when 18 years old. Pg 14 Dissertation: "History, Historians and Poetry? A Study of the Presentation of Historical "Evidence" in the Poems of Randolph Henry Ash." Page 11 Roland's index cards - one set of grassy green, the other tomato-red. Page 6 "Oxford Selected Ash" - book Roland carried page 10. Val lives with Roland, works in the city, resists pressure to "specialize" in one type of job or another. Seems bitter. I don't see that she got a degree, did she? Lived in a basement room called a garden flat with Roland. Not allowed to enter the garden. Quarreled seldom with Roland - usually about Val's reserve, refusal to advance opinions. The more success Roland had the less she said. Wrote her required essay "Male Ventriloquism: The Women of Randolph Henry Ash." Examiners had thought wrongly that Roland had done the work. Pg 16 Was from Croydon, mother divorced, drinker. Father in Merchant Navy - hadn't seen him since five. Pg 16 Val left Roland, he was glad, then she came back, took course in shorthand-typing.

Became the breadwinner. Academic typing at home, various temp jobs during the day. Called her work "menial." Two Vals - one sat silent at home in old jeans the other made up for day job. Not constructed to be attractive. She didn't like Fergus. Maud Bailey, PhD Lincoln University professor, has a lot of Christabel's unpublished papers, runs a Women's Resource Centre in Lincoln. Had an affair with Fergus. Pg 39 Expert on Christabel LaMotte. Wrote essay - see below. Most untouchable woman, trustworthy.pg 55 Taller than Roland. Roland thought of her as green and white. Had a Green Beattle car. Green towels, green sheets, white divan. pg 63 Lived at top of Tennyson Towers. Pg 45 Contents of Christabel's desk sent to one of her cousins May Bailey upon her death. Maude is greatgreat-grandaughter of May and great-great-great-great niece of Christabel. Pg 46 Leonora Stern, PhD Tallahassee, PhD, knows all there is known about Christabel along with Maud. Sir George Bailey threatened her with a gun, pg 47. Fergus Wolff, PhD Tells the story of Melusina and its connection with Christabel's poem/ interpretation of the same name. Roland's rival in Blackadder's Ash Factory. Pg 17 Got job Roland had applied for. Roland afraid Fergus might think him resentful., pg 18 Tall, brassy hair cut long on top and short at the back. Bright blue eyes, white teeth. Pleasant enough in general. Roland liked Fergus because Fergus seemed to like him. Pg 37 Writing a deconstructive account of Balzac's "Chef-d'Oeuvre Inconnu. Expert on Christabel LaMotte because of an affair he had with Maud., pg 39 The new feminists "see Melusina in her bath as a symbol of self-sufficient female sexuality needing no poor males." Mortimer Cropper, PhD Stant Collection, working on "The Complete Correspondence of Randolph Henry Ash." Page 4. Trustee of Newsome Foundation page 13. F. R. Leavis Downing College, Cambridge Don: real person, former instructor of Byatt. . Showed the "terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of

any confidence in this own capacity to contribute to or change it." page 32. James Blackadder, PhD Trained in literature by Leaves who "showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to or change it." (32) Wrote his thesis on Randolph Henry Ash's poems. Writing "Complete Works of Ash." Discouraged and liked to discourage others, stringent scholar. Blackadder's Ash Factory, operated from British Museum on a small grant from Newsome Foundation in Albuquerque, charitable trust. pg 11,13. A Scot, pg 13 Thought British writings should stay in Britain and be studied by British. Thought Cropper trying to worm his way into confidence and goodwill of owners of manuscripts lodged within, but not owned by, the British Library, pg 13. 54 years old, Downing College, Cambridge. Saw examples of Ash's ventriloquism - became an expert on Ash. PhD "Conscious Argument and Unconscious Bias: A Source of Tension in the Dramatic Poems of Randolph Henry Ash." Pg 32 Thought often of how a man becomes his job., pg 33. Blackadder allowed himself to see clearly that he would end his working life in this task, that all his thoughts would have been another man's thoughts, all his work another man's work. But he did find Ash fascinating. It was a pleasant subordination, if he was a subordinate., pg 33 Paola Blackadder's clerical assistant. Long colorless hair, huge glasses. Dr. Beatrice Nest "Helpmeets" was her book - doesn't go down well with today's feminists. Studying Ellen Ash. Feminists believe Ash suppressed Ellen's writing. Beatrice spent 25 years wanting to show how self-denying and supporting Ellen was. Found that no one cared - they wanted proof that Ellen was raging with rebellion, pain, and untapped talent. Sir George Bailey Seal Court, Croysant le Wold. Not willing to let anyone look for info on Christabel., pg 47 Joan Bailey Wheelchair incident, pg 81-83 Lives at Seal Court.

Cast from the Past

Randolph Henry Ash Fictional poet, body vanished? Pg 24. Christabel Madeleine LaMotte -fictional poet 1825 Never married. Had house in Richmond in

Surrey shared with woman friend Miss Blanche Glover. Pg 41. She is undertaking a grand Fairy Topic. Tapping spirits, pg 29 Wrote religious poems "Last Things" and children's stories "Tales Told in November". Page 36 Wrote "The Fairy Melusina." Pg 38 Tragedy and romance and symbolism rampant all over it, a kind of dream-world full of strange beasts and hidden meanings and a really weird sexuality or sensuality. Wrote insect poems, pg 43 Wrote "Glass Coffin" pg 52 Birdlike. Pale crimped hair, generic Victorian lady, pg 44 Reputation rests on restrained and delicate lyrics, products of a fine sensibility, a somewhat somber temperament, and a troubled but steadfast Christian faith., pg 42 Lived with Sophie for rest of life after Blanche drowned. Pg 42 Feminists saw her as distraught and enraged. Ellen Ash Gave many of Ash's poems to British Museum, pg 13 Childless, pg 30 Crabb Robinson Real person and Ash met at breakfast at his house. Kept a Diary -had hoped to be a writer but deciding he lacked the ability he kept a diary of interviews he had with famous authors. Recorded breakfast party where Ash and LaMotte met. They had questioned LaMotte about the tapping spirits - she declined to express an opinion. Pg 29 Mr. Isidore LaMotte Born 1801. Cambridge. Mythographer. Wrote "Mythologies indigenes de la Bretagne et de la Grande Bretagne" and "Mythologies francaises." Scholarly comendium of folklore and legends., pg 33 Parents Jean-Baptiste and Emilie LaMotte. Married Miss Arabel Gumpert. Two daughters: Sophie, 1830, wife of Sir George Bailey of Seal Close, Croysant le Wold; Christabel, 1825, never married. Lived with young woman friend, Blanche Glover. Blanche Glover Lived with Christabel LaMotte, artistic ambitions. Oil paintings, wood carvings. Drowned in Thames in 1861, pg 42 Wrote a diary - pg 46 "A Journal of Our Home-Life, In Our House in Richmond." Pg 49 Wrote about Robinson breakfast - read aloud a little of the Faerie Queene. Irritated that Cristabel is spending so much time on letter writing, pg 52 Letters kept from her - I am not a blind mouldiwarp. Not her governess. A prowler? Where is our frankness of intercourse? This Peeping Tom - I know nothing, I never have known very much, but I fear for her. The Wolf is gone from the door. Then the diary ends abruptly. Pg 54 No evidence to connect the Prowler with Ash. Leonora Stern thinks Prowler is Mr Thomas Hearst of Richmond who played the oboe with the ladies. Blanche was jealous. Pg 55 Giovanni Battista Vico (real person) 1668-1744 Italian philosopher, rhetorician, historian and jurist. His magnum opus is titled Principi di Scienza Nuova

The work is explicitly presented as a 'Science of Reasoning' and includes a dialectic between axioms and reasonings linking and clarifying the axioms Vico is often claimed to have inaugurated modern philosophy of history. Relying on a complex etymology, Vico argues that civilisation develops in a recurring cycle of three ages: the divine, the heroic and the human. Each age exhibits distinct political and social features and can be characterised by master tropes or figures of language. The giganti of the divine age rely on metaphor to compare and thus comprehend human and natural phenomena. In the heroic age, metonymy and synecdoche support the development of feudal or monarchic institutions embodied by idealised figures. The final age is characterised by popular democracy or reflection via irony: in this epoch, the rise of rationality leads to barbarism of reflection, and civilisation descends once more into the poetic era. Taken together, the recurring cycle of three ages - common to every nation - constitutes for Vico a storia ideale eterna or ideal eternal history. Vico's work was poorly received during his own life but has since inspired a cadre of famous thinkers and artists including: Benedetti Croce, James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, Bertrand Russell, Samuel Beckett, Isaiah Berlin, Giovanni Gentile, Erich Auerbach, Jose Faur, Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, Julius Evola, Edward Said, Marshall McLuham etc. Jan Swammerdam (real person) (1637-1680) 17th century Dutch microscopist, made major discoveries in medicine and anatomy. Above all, he made a decisive contribution to the development of biology and a materialist understanding of nature. His greatest contribution to biology was his understanding of insect development and his demonstration that the same organism persists through its various stages. Using meticulous dissections and careful experimentation, he showed the errors of spontaneous generation and laid the basis of the modern understanding of development. His science was profoundly marked by his mystical and emotional response to nature, which sometimes entered into contradiction with his avowed "experimental philosophy" and even led him to abandon science for a period. It has also been argued that this led him to put forward the idea of "preformationism".

7. Compare and contrast Byatts novel with the 2002 filmed version directed by Neil LaBute (if you have not seen it, you are strongly recommended to watch it, but always after you have read the book). Point out the analogies and differences between the book and the movie, commenting critically on the artistic advantages or disadvantages of the films innovations.
Possession

A.S. Byatt's 1990 Booker Prize novel is considered by many to be the perfect novel. Byatt wrote all the poetry which displays not only her grasp of excellent fiction and poetry but also her unique creativity. Two of the four main characters are the Victorian poets, Christabel LaMotte and Randolph Henry Ash. Despite that both are written by the same author (Byatt) they show remarkable styles showcasing each poet. LaMotte: "I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed." Ash: "They say that women change: 'tis so: but you are ever-constant in your changefulness, like the still thread of falling river, one from source to last embrace in the still pool ever-renewed and ever-moving on the first to last a myriad water-drop." Mainly the differences exist due to how the poets live their lives. Randolph Henry Ash is a noted poet by the British public as well as Queen Victoria. His wife Ellen is a quite and unassuming woman. Mainly the model of Victorian female propriety. Christable LaMotte however is the complete opposite of Ellen. LaMotte lives a quiet life writing her poetry with her companion Blance who is an artist. Ash and LaMotte meet at a dinner party and proceed to write each other letters. Through the letters they eventually fall in love but in Shakespeare's immortal words, 'the course of true love never doth run smooth.' Ash and LaMotte are only half of the story as they are set in the Victorian period so fast forward to modern time England. Roland Mitchell is a lowly research assistant for Professor Blackadder a self proscribed expert on Randolph Henry Ash. While in the London library Roland finds drafts of letters written by Ash. He then takes the letters and decides to do some research on who is this mysterious lady that Ash is writing to. (I know all academics must have shivered reading that part) Mitchell is hesitant to discuss his find with Blackadder or Fergus Wolf, another research assistant who becomes the villain of the novel. Mitchell eventually deducts that the lady is Christabel LaMotte but no one knows much about her. Enter Dr. Maud Bailey, a women studies professor who is not only a noted author on Christabel LaMotte but also LaMotte's great-great-great grand niece. Mitchell and Bailey then begin a journey throughout England and France trying to discover the connection between Ash and LaMotte. Reading how they make the connections is exhilarating for most people who enjoy mysteries. The romance between Ash and LaMotte and Mitchell and Bailey are wonderful as well! Of course as novels are prone to do occasionally Byatt does go into extreme detail. Sometimes it gets a little much as we, the reader, just want to focus on the main characters rather than going into say Blackadder's history. Despite that it is still a wonderfully moving novel about how the past is never truly known and what choices we make affect future generations.

Can the film recapture the magic?

In a word, 'yes.' Though if you are a purist then you'll find flaws with the film. Of course a film cannot possibly explore all avenues like a novel can, instead it must choose a focus. The film focuses on the four main characters. One of the truly brilliant points of the film are the seemless movements between the Victorian period and the present. Watch the scene at Thomasin waterfall and you'll see what I mean. My favorite parts concern Ash, played by the ever talented Jeremy Northam, and LaMotte, played by the best actress to ever portray Elizabeth Bennet, Jennifer Ehle. The two actors portray Victorian poets with effortless ease. Jennifer Ehle's face is quite beautiful in the classical sense. They perform voice overs to read their poetry and the viewer nearly feels that Northam and Ehle have actually written their own poetry. Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Ekhart portray Maud Bailey and Roland Mitchell. They are quite good as well but somehow they just lack the fire that Northam and Ehle bring to their roles. Unlike the novel the film is much easier to follow. Also watch Toby Stephens play Fergus Wolf with his wicked sneers of glee. The music and cinematoraphy of London and the surrounding countryside of England are spectacular. By the end you desire the pastorial experience that romantic and Victorian writers sought. Nothing seeks to harm you, but then life would never change and where's the story then? The film never had huge commercial success but it is a film that makes you think and enjoy knowing how love can often take on a life of its' own.

MARTIN AMIS

Study questions
1. Discuss the narrative strategies of Martin Amis Times Arrow. What is their purpose? What kinds of genres do they subvert? Give examples from the novel.

Style
Point of View
Time's Arrow is told in the first person. The point of view is taken from an entity, the narrator, who resides in the main character's head and lives his life backwards. Real events are often misinterpreted and misconstrued to mean exactly the opposite of what is really happening. Other life actions take on different, and sometimes important, meanings when viewed in reverse. For instance, the narrator appreciates Tod/John getting younger because he remembers how bad it was being older, slower, and in pain. Tod/John does not have this hindsight.

Setting
The main setting of the story follows the main character backwards from "small town America" to New York City, where John/Tod works as a doctor. He then travels across the ocean to Lisbon and Italy, before returning to Germany as Odilo. The life of a doctor trying to deal with his past while working in the medical field, takes up the second half of the character's life. The first half of his life deals with his work at a Nazi death camp as a "doctor" in that tragic setting.

Language and Meaning

The language and meaning of the story is given through the backwards words and actions of Tod/John/Hamilton/Odilo as witnessed by the narrator. The reader sees the narrator trying to make sense of Tod's twisted life. While the narrator understands many things that are going on, actually appreciating more than his host Tod/John/Hamilton/Odilo at many points in the story, he also misunderstands many events in his backwards context. In this perspective, good often seems bad and visa versa.

Structure
"Time's Arrow" is divided into eight chapters, and an afterword. Chapter one details the death and late-life events of Tod Friendly. Chapter two describes the day-to-day life of Tod, as well as the narrator in his head. Tod Friendly becomes John Young in chapter three. John sails for Europe, lives in Portugal as Hamilton de Souza, and travels back to the war in Germany in chapter four as Odilo Unverdorben. Odilo's work at Auschwitz is detailed in chapter five, and his early military work and marriage were explained in chapter six. Chapter seven describes Odilo's early relationship with his wife, Herta. Odilo finally is born, and the narrator "dies", in chapter eight.

2. Give a brief summary of the plot of Times Arrow in the conventional time logic, that is, starting from the Doctors birth. In this context, explain the narrators stance and role. Substantiate your answer with examples from the text. Plot Summary The narrator of the story is an entity who lives inside a man named Tod Friendly. He is a bystander and cannot control what Tod says or does in any way. The narrator sees Tod's life progressing backwards-from death to birth. He comes into consciousness with Tod's death and learns to translate reverse speech. Most life events confuse him because he sees them occurring backwards. He sees Tod getting stronger and more virile as he recovers and grows noticeably younger. Tod "starts" a long-term relationship with a woman named Irene, which commences with her leaving him for good. Again, the narrator is trying to rationalize the reverse events in the tumultuous relationship. He works as a doctor and his actions to help people are viewed as hurtful by the narrator because people come to him well and leave sick and in pain. Tod seems to be a tortured man; he has nightmares about doctors and babies. He has a sordid past that he is running from. The narrator has an intuitive grasp of this and also knows that life can't be altered because suicide is not possible. Tod's name changes to John Young. John is living in New York and is tipped off by Nicholas Kreditor that the authorities are aware of him, so he changes his identity to Tod. John's life gets better while he is still living quietly in the country. He is a popular doctor and has many friends. He is a womanizer and has many girlfriends, including Irene. The narrator is very disturbed by John's work at the hospital. He works traumatic cases which, when viewed in reverse, are interpreted by the narrator as John hurting people. John leaves for Europe to fight in the war although in actuality, he is fleeing Europe to travel to America. His name changes to Hamilton de Souza while he lives in Portugal for a short time. He then travels through Europe to Italy, and finally back to Germany where his name is Odilo Unverdorben. Odilo works at Auschwitz, where the narrator sees his work as magical. In his view, they are bringing thousands of people back to life. He works closely with a character named "Uncle Pepi" in the experimentation rooms. His wife Herta, does not approve of his work. Their child, Eva dies shortly after birth. Odilo works at "lesser" facilities which "process" unwanted people like the insane and blind. The narrator is upset by the decline in "great work." His relationship with Herta grows more intense as they move towards their marriage, then fades as they get to know each other. Odilo then is back at medical school, where he meets Herta. He moves home with his family and becomes a child. The narrator is upset knowing his life will end at Odilo's birth.

3. Give an outline of the main features of Martin Amis fiction substantiating them with examples from London Fields and Times Arrow.

What's Amis in Contemporary British Fiction? Martin Amis's Money and Time's Arrow
The son of Kingsley Amis, a writer who began his literary life - with John Osborne and John Wain as one of the Angry Young Men, Martin Amis outstripped his father's reputation for offending the literary niceties of his day with his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Amis was twenty four when the book appeared to admiring reviews. Many of the features that characterize Amis's subsequent fiction are already discernible in this book - its scatalogical and satiric treatment of sex, its comic description of the indignities of bodily life (spots, smells, toilet habits, sexual infection and the like), and above all its inventive deployment of language. The protagonist and narrator is Charles Highway who spends the last five hours of his nineteenth year reading over his diaries covering the last year of his adolescence, a year in which he manages to seduce Rachel and gain entry to Oxford University. The diaries reveal a representative cool young man of the swinging early 1970s. What is distinctive about the book is its infatuation with the primacy of writing over experience. Experience only becomes real for Charles when it is written down. He prefers reading about his doings of the last year to spending time with Rachel. She has been subdued by stratagems already recorded in one of his many notebooks, Conquests and Techniques: A Synthesis (the use of italics forming its own comment on Charles' literary pretentiousness). The novel ends: "I refill my pen." The novelist's transformation of life into text is far from over. Although Martin Amis (born in 1949) was brought up in a literary household, he records that he never read anything more serious than science fiction until his father's second wife, the writer Elizabeth Jane Howard, took him in hand in his mid teens and encouraged him to start reading some of the classics of English literature. By then he had passed his early childhood in South Wales where his father was still struggling to make ends meet, spent a year at Princeton where his father taught creative writing, left for Majorca with his mother at the age of twelve after his parents separated, and got kicked out of his grammar school in Battersea on their return to London for absenting himself to appear in the film A High Wind in Jamaica. Altogether he attended about fourteen schools and only won a place at Exeter College, Oxford University, by attending a number of crammers that taught him enough Latin and other required subjects to meet the entry requirements. A late developer, he left Oxford in 1971 with a formal First. Thereafter his career was characterized by early success. He became an editorial assistant for the Times Literary Supplement in 1972, literary editor for the New Statesman in 1976 at the age of twenty seven, and a special writer for the Observer. By 1979 in addition to The Rachel Papers he had published two more widely reviewed novels, Dead Babies (1975) and Success (1978), and became a full-time writer.

Amis established himself as a comic writer with his first novel, but a comic writer whose subject is not the traditional subject of comedy. Charles Highway speaks for his author when he observes: "Surely, nice things are dull, and nasty things are funny. The nastier a thing is, the funnier it gets" (91). Martin Amis appears to be deliberately staking out territory that is unlike that of his father's (Lucky Jim) Dixon who claims that "nice things are nicer than nasty ones." For his younger generation the world had deteriorated so much in two decades that the only possible subject for contemporary comedy was material considered fitter for tragic treatment in his father's time and before. "I'm not really in search of the sordid," Amis has said. Modern life "just is sordid" (Bragg). Prior to recording his first attempt at seducing Rachel, one that has to be aborted when Rachel announces that she is not on the pill, Charles Highway prepares his reader for the coming antiromantic outcome: The final kiss we associate with the conclusion of Shakespearean comedies "is now the beginning of the comic action [. . .]. We have got into the habit of going further and further beyond the happy-ever-more promise: relationships in decay, aftermaths [. . .]" (154). For Amis both relationships and the globe itself are in decay. The only available response for a writer who was born, as he has pointed out, four days before the Russians successfully exploded their first atom bomb and inaugurated the era of nuclear deterrence, is comic (Einstein's Monsters 1). However, he is interested not in light comedy, but in "a wincing laughter, or a sort of funky laughter [. . .]. Sort of a hung-over laughter, where it hurts" (Morrison 96). Many of the stylistic characteristics that have come to be associated with postmodernist writing flow naturally from this conjunction of matter and generic treatment. His matter is ready-made - the sordid, ugly, threatening phenomenon of late capitalist Western civilization, a dying world in which love is also in its death-throws. This view radically affects every aspect of his writing - not just its grotesque content, but his attitude to fiction, his rejection of realism, especially psychological realism, his exuberant use of figurative language, his punning allusiveness and his belief in the moral power of language used creatively. For Amis writing is "black fun" (Ross 24). The modern understanding of comedy enables him to laugh at characters in his novels who "aren't just ridiculous but hideous and sinister" (Bragg). His characters are ostensibly manipulated, frequently by an author figure incorporated in the novel. He dismisses motivation as "a shagged out force in modern life." "I have enough of the postmodernist in me [. . .] to want to remind the reader that it is no use getting het-up about a character, since the character is only there to serve the fiction" (Haffenden 19). Amis encourages the reader to identify with the author of his fiction, not with any of the characters. He is constantly surprised when readers admit to feeling sympathy for one of his more horrific creations such as Keith in Dead Babies (1991). He is in full flight from what he calls "the typical English novel [. . .]. 225 sanitized pages about the middle classes" (Stout 35). His imagination is more excited by the savage contrast in wealth and cultural values that prevails between the British upper and lower classes. His third novel, Success, describes the diametrically opposing fortunes of a wealthy aristocrat and his lower class step brother. The latter's ultimate success in business and bed acts as an ironic commentary on the changing relationships between the classes in late seventies Britain when the trades unions appeared to control the government and the country.

In his fourth novel, Other People. A Mystery Story (1981), Mary Lamb, the female protagonist suffering from amnesia, is made to experience an upward journey through contemporary circles of hell, starting with beggars (one of whom forcibly has sex with her) and ending with her (sexual) victimization of an upper class philanthropist. In this book Prince, the narrator, is also the protagonist's demon-lover and murderer (the Prince of Darkness?). Both narrator and murderer have the power to end Mary's existence. Here Amis gives fictional expression to his conviction that "the author is not free of sadistic impulses. But," he goes on, "it isn't real sadism," because as an author he does not grant any character in his books the reality he accords real people (Haffenden 12). Amis has also made his anti-realist use of time in his fiction more extreme in this novel. It ends as it begins with Mary's awakening into life or death - it is hard to say which in this unconventional mystery story. The entire novel can be seen as a single instant in which her life is reenacted before her murder. Amis has always put language before realist considerations. Even the names he gives to many of his characters contribute to the primacy he places on language over psychological naturalism. In Other People Mary Lamb is both the innocent of the nursery rhyme, innocent also like Charles Lamb's mad sister, while her previous malevolent identity as Amy Hide suggests that Amy hides her past in Mary (almost an anagram), just as Stevenson's villainous Mr Hyde hides in Dr Jekyll. Amis's delight in onomastics is given full rein in his subsequent novels, as is his conjuring with literary allusion which he employs creatively and mischievously. In Success the upper class Gregory opens his diary entry for April (the novel consists of the diary entries of each step brother for the twelve months of one year) with an ironic allusion to T.S. Eliot's already ironically allusive opening to The Waste Land : "April is the coolest month for people like myself. Down comes the roof of my ritzy green car. Out burgeons my spring wardrobe. I have a 20 haircut" (92). Amis's use of "cool" and "ritzy" places his fiction at as a great a distance from Eliot's "cruelest month" as that is from Chaucer's "showres soote." The opposite of his father, Martin Amis considers a plain sentence to be so much wasted opportunity. His father blames the influence of Nabokov on his son for what he calls the "terrible compulsive vividness in his style" (Michener 142). Certainly the son is indebted to Nabokov (especially to Despair ), as he is to Saul Bellow, the only writer to warrant two essays in The Moronic Inferno (1986), his collection of journalistic pieces written about the United States mainly for the Observer. But Amis's at times dazzling manipulation of language - often seen when addressing some of the more revolting aspects of human behavior - is uniquely his own. Reviewers unfairly attributed his depiction of the consciousness of Mary, the amnesiac in Other People, to the influence of Craig Raine's "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home." In fact Amis began this novel a year before the poem appeared. Some of the effects he achieves are quite stunning. Mary's first encounter with children is typical: "they were shrunken, impacted - mysteriously lessened in some vital aspect. They limped in pairs [. . .]. Some were so bad now that they had to be wheeled round in covered boxes, protesting piteously to their guides [. . .]" (16). Amis achieves a similarly powerful impact when describing a tramp's sexual assault on her: "His two wet red points wanted to get as close as they could to her, to get inside. His two tongues wanted her two mouths" (42). That is a typical Amis effect - the use of linguistic estrangement to take you into the (seeming) consciousness of a character.

With the publication of Money. A Suicide Note (1984) American as well as British critics began to see Amis as a major force in contemporary fiction in the English-speaking world. As the novel alternates between London and New York this might well have been part of his intention. Money paints a consciously caricatured portrait of New York. But it avoids adopting that snide condescending stance towards everything American that so many British writers inherit from their insular culture. In fact London and New York become interchangeable centers of rampant greed in the novel. This is the America of Reagan's deficit-making spending spree and the Britain of Thatcher's sale of state assets such as the North Sea oil fields. In both countries the indigent were being thrown onto the streets to swell the number of the homeless. In both countries the rich were getting richer. In Money Amis gives comic fictive life to one financial scam, although this remains small scale compared to the S. and L. or junk bond embezzlements that were concurrently being perpetrated. The novel is set in 1981 and incorporates the Royal Wedding of Charles and Diana, the inner city riots in England and the Polish military coup as symbolic reminders of the new political climate of the eighties. Amis thinks that "the money age we're living through now is a short-term, futureless kind of prosperity [. . .], a 'live now, pay later' thing. Money is a more democratic medium than blood, but money as a cultural banner--you can feel the whole society deteriorating around you because of that" (Stout 36). John Self, the narrator and protagonist of Money, is the epitome of this era - a maker of outrageous television commercials, brought up on junk culture, top of the pops, booze and pornography. His only god is money. It proves a destructive god, which is why Self (and Amis in the subtitle) calls Money a suicide note. Amis has pointed out that "money is always connected with excrement in myth" (Smith 79). Self mirrors the untramelled self, the naked ego (and id), a bundle of appetites. All his actions and relations with others are governed by money. His astonishing consumption of alcohol is, Amis has explained, "more a painkiller than a quest for a good time" (Haffenden 13). His onanistic and pornographic sex life is the product of having seen too many videos and soap operas and too many hardcore magazines, both of which sell sex as a commodity. Describing sex with Selina, his beautiful and faithless English girlfriend, Self writes: "While making love, we often talk about money. I like it. I like that dirty talk" (143). It turns out that Selina herself is marketing her sexual appeal, and Self is not the highest bidder. He is consumed by consumerism, cretinized by television. All of his sexual experiences come already mediated by his immersion in the porn industry. Self is a representative child of the eighties for whom money has to compensate for a total absence of culture.

Since the entire book is narrated by Self this limitation in his background, knowledge and sensibilities might have acted as a severe curb on Amis's descriptive and linguistic potentialities. The solution he adopted in the book is one first suggested to him by Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King. "Henderson," Amis has said, "has the most elaborate and poetic thoughts, but every time he opens his mouth to speak, it's drivel" (McGrath 190). At one point in the book Amis pays Bellow comic homage when his producer offers Self a Rain King cocktail (24). Amis has fun reducing life's polychrome complexities to Self's monochrome vision: "While others look at art or read books or surrender to serious music, my mind just razzes me about money, Selina, hard-ons, the Fiasco. I'm trying, but that's trying too" (301). Both trying is trying (taxing) and his mind is trying to reimpose its debased values on him. The pun anticipates his failure to enculturate himself. Amis also enjoys having Self describe events as he erroneously sees them. Dead drunk at a media restaurant in Manhattan, Self recalls, "I found a woman talking unhappily into a telephone and tried to cheer her up and went on trying even after her boyfriend or husband appeared from somewhere. I disliked his tone. He hurt my feelings. We had an altercation that soon resolved itself with me lying face down in a damp bed of cardboard boxes [. . .]" (175). Even in the descriptive portions of the book Amis will incorporate literary references of which Self is unaware but which cannot help catching the reader's attention: And one, and two, and three, and four. I'm lying on the fourteenth floor of the Ashberry, wearing tagglebag only and wiggling my legs in the air like an upended beetle. What am I doing? I'm exercising[. . .]This is the new-deal me. This is my metamorphosis. (312). Unlike Self we hear the allusion to Kafka's Metamorphosis and compare Self's "improved" state as a beetle to Gregor's deterioration in the same circumstances. Amis has defended his technique of providing characters of severely limited perceptions with poetic thoughts by citing V.S. Pritchett's claim that ordinary people are filled with extraordinary, magical thoughts, but that they have no vocabulary with which to express them (Haffenden 8-9). Ultimately Amis chooses to fly in the face of realism. His antipathy to the whole concept of motivation becomes part of the book itself. Fielding Goodney, the American producer of the projected movie, Money, has Self unknowingly finance the entire hoax operation. Why? For no good reason. As a practical joke. After discovering the truth Self worries away at Fielding's motivation. The character, Martin Amis, dismisses Self's demand for a motive: "It hasn't got what it takes to motivate people any more" (331). Later he adds: "it's an idea taken from art, not from life, not from twentiethcentury life" (341). On the penultimate page Self takes up the argument: "I've settled the motivation question. I supplied it all. The confidence trick would have ended in five minutes if it hadn't been for John Self. I was the key. I was the needing, the hurting artist. I was the wanting artist" (362). What he wanted was confidence, the confidence that a large bank balance is supposed to offer. And confidence is something Amis considers to be "a wildly inappropriate response to present-day life" (Haffenden 5).

When Self draws the character "Martin Amis" into the novel by asking him to rewrite the screenplay of his movie to resolve the actors' conflicting demands while making them behave realistically, "Martin Amis" replies: "we're pretty much agreed that the twentieth century is an ironic age--downward-looking. Even realism, rockbottom realism, is considered a bit grand for the twentieth century" (231). Amis's postmodern rejection of classic realism then is closely related to his feeling that the present era represents a deterioration in the quality of living. This relation between the present age of late capitalism and its cultural expression using anti-realist esthetic modes has been extensively theorized by Fredric Jameson. Unlike Jameson and his own father in his youth, Amis is no Marxist. His is nevertheless a representative artistic response to the postmodern era. Both cities between which the novel alternates show signs of irreversible decay. There is "[b]lasted, totalled, broken-winded, shot-faced London, doing time under sodden skies" (150) (the metaphors building up an apocalyptic image of breakdown and entropy). New York is characterized by its birds that, having "been processed by Manhattan and the twentieth century," "have slipped several links in the chain of being" (199). Money values, Amis maintains, are responsible for having "turned paradise into a toilet" (Morrison 102). How can realism afford the contemporary writer an adequate response to the unreality of humankind's collective madness? By injecting a substitute author figure called "Martin Amis" into the novel Amis is further distancing the reader from Self and the insane lifestyle and values with which he is associated, a distance needed for the satire to be effective. "Martin Amis" lectures a bored Self on the way the modern antihero is so removed from the author that "you can do what the hell you like with him" (229). The most important function "Martin Amis" performs in the plot is to re-write the screenplay of Money so successfully that he foils Fielding's plan of seeing Self torn apart by his outraged leading actors. The irony of this development is that it only serves to prolong Self's state of selfdelusion. As in Other People, Amis confronts his readers with their complicity in the author's sadistic treatment of his main character. At the same time there is a similarity, as he has pointed out, between the "lone gratification" of Self's endless hand jobs and the writer's lone gratification in subjecting his helpless protagonist to such humiliations. As Karl Miller has written, the original Onan of Genesis "is an orphan, and there are two of him" (411). "Martin Amis" acts as Self's cultured alter-ego in London, just as Martina Twain (a feminized twin to Martin?) performs the same role for Self in New York.

Amis employs numerous puns and literary allusions to ironically highlight the gap that separates Self and the world of money from these two cultured alter-egos. One or two of these allusions become more like recurrent thematic motifs. Take for example the allusions to Othello. What possible relation can the events in this novel have to Shakespeare's play? In the first place, the play evokes a world that is patently inaccessible to Self. When Martina takes him to the opera to see Otello Self congratulates himself for knowing the plot from having seen the TV spinoff. His understanding of the story however is a hilarious misinterpretation that stems from the media stereotypes into which he automatically turns the major figures: "The flash spade general arrives to take up a position on some island, in the olden days there, bringing with him the Lady Di figure as his bride. Then she starts diddling one of his lieutenants, a funloving kind of guy whom I took to immediately" (277). In no time Self has converted Verdi's opera into a soap opera. To add insult to injury he identifies with Cassio and assumes that Desdemona must be sleeping around like the rest of the women in his life, especially Selina. Amis keeps Othello in view throughout the book by such devices as calling "Martin Amis's" car Iago, or having Self take a swig from a bottle of Desdemona Cream. His father works in a pub called the Shakespeare. In a climactic scene near the end Self is waylaid by Fielding in drag. After he has delivered a devastating kick to Fielding's jaw Self hears Fielding cry out, "Oh damn dear go [. . .] Oh and you man dog" (322). It takes the educated "Martin Amis" to explain to Self that Fielding was in fact quoting Roderigo's accusatory words directed at Iago after Iago has fatally stabbed him: "O damn'd Iago, O inhuman dog." As "Martin Amis" remarks, this is a remarkable piece of transference on Fielding's part, since Fielding's relation to Self is like that of Iago's to Othello. But Self is no Othello, as Amis has explained: "he's Roderigo, the lecherous spendthrift and gull" (Haffenden 23). He is a pawn that is forced to move at the cost of its own defeat, as occurs in the chess game he loses to "Martin Amis" near the end. "Martin Amis" explains the quotation from Othello to Self towards the end of the game in which he, like Fielding, "zugwangs" Self (i.e. forces him to move and lose). It is ironically appropriate that Self mistakes "Martin Amis's" reference to Iago to refer to "Amis's" old car, convinced that if he wins the author will demand as his prize Self's Italian sportscar, the Fiasco. The truth is that Martin Amis has - just as much as Fielding - acted Iago to Self's Roderigo by subjecting him to 360 pages of humiliation. Amis's invention of a fictionalized alter-ego enables him to embed the device of the intrusive author and his self-reflexive voice firmly within the narrative structure. It is Self, the narrator, not "Martin Amis," who is finally expelled from the novel at its conclusion, expelled from the world of money that has been his undoing. He is also typographically expelled from the book. The final section of his narrative is in italics to draw attention to the different Self to be found there living his life in the present. While he thought he had money he saw himself as an express train rushing through the night: "Though travelling nowhere I have hurtled with blind purpose to the very end of my time." He continues: "I want to slow down now, and check out the scenery, and put in a stop or two. I want some semi-colons" (288). In the final sentence of the book describing the return from work of his new unpretentious girlfriend, Georgina, Amis has allowed the first and only semi-colon in the book to appear. It is a fittingly linguistic touch with which to round off the narrative of a character so reliant for his fictive existence on Amis's brilliant and witty manipulation of language.

Amis's next book was Einstein's Monsters (1987), a collection of five short stories and a polemical introduction in which he denounces the insanity of nuclear deterrence. The stories were widely criticized for being no more than exempla of his stance on nuclear weapons. His next long and ambitious novel, London Fields (1989), is set in 1999 against a backdrop of imminent planetary disaster (not specifically nuclear seeing that glasnost had set in by the time he wrote this book) referred to throughout as the Crisis. Its size and ambitious scope attracted wide attention in the press on both sides of the Atlantic. Once again there is a writer figure in the novel who in this case is dying from the same causes as the Earth. The central character is Nicola Six who seeks her own death by inducing one of two men - a wealthy family man and a working class small-time criminal to murder her. As in Other People the author figure cannot escape complicity in her murder. The novel is burdened by some of the didactic content that marred Einstein's Monsters. Nicola's death wish, for instance, is a direct consequence of the death of love at the end of the century. Yet this novel rivals the ingenuity and wit of Money whenever Amis abandons his high moral tone. After these last two books reviewers were beginning to think of Amis as a writer taken over by a moral platform - displaying, as Martin Harris wrote unfairly in the New Statesman, "the portentiousness of the reborn eco freak and the whine of the nuke neurotic" (Harris 34). Then Amis published Time's Arrow (1991) which restored his reputation among critics and earned a nomination for the Booker Prize. Taking as its central character a Nazi doctor who participated in the horror of Auschwitz and then escaped to anonymity in America, the book traces his life backwards from his death in the United States from an automobile accident to his birth in Germany. This is his only novel to take the past for its subject. The device of reversing the flight of time's arrow is not original in itself. It has been employed, for instance, by numerous science fiction writers including Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick. But the audacious combination of reversing narrative chronology so as to retell the story of the Holocaust is both unique and strangely moving. It is bold enough for an Aryan to try and recount this catastrophic event in the history of the Jews. But to render it as the one healing episode in a senseless world by reversing the order in which we experience life requires literary courage and a command of language that Amis clearly has. The Holocaust is, as Amis has said, "the central event of the twentieth century" (Bellante 16). And the Nazi doctors' role in the death camps was crucial. In an Afterword to the novel Amis acknowledges his debt to his friend Robert Jay Lifton's book, The Nazi Doctors. The perverse story it tells of an entire profession adopting an ideology of killing as a means of healing (their notion of ethnic cleansing striking chilling echoes in the Serbian atrocities against Croatians, Bosnians and Albanians in the 1990s) struck him as "the only story that would gain meaning backwards" (Trueheart B1). By moving the narration in the direction of the Holocaust Amis imparts to this novel the same feeling of apocalypse that London Fields has set in the Crisis of the near future. At the same time to reverse history is to undo it, to return to the innocence of a time before the European Fall - a common theme of Holocaust poetry.

To achieve both effects he introduces as the narrator of the book, not the doctor, but his doppelganger, the doctor's soul, "the soul he should have had," as Amis put it to one interviewer (DeCurtis 146). It is a wholly fictional device that works for the most part and contributes a terrible sense of irony to the historical events we see unfolding in reverse. The doctor and narrator share the same body but otherwise have different identities. The narrator admits that he's slow on the uptake: "It may very well be that I'm not playing with a full deck" (29). He has no memory of the past as does the doctor. So when the doctor seeks to lose his earlier identity the narrator observes: "My presence is never tinier. But it's the same story. Render up your soul, and gain power" (49). The doctor clearly abandoned this "voice of conscience" (47) in the process of becoming a doctor with the doctor's power of life and death over others. Both his wife and later girlfriend tell him he has no soul. His soul which comes to life, which is born at the moment of the doctor's death on the first page of the book, is consequently essentially child-like and innocent of the terrible dreams from which the doctor suffers. Those dreams act for both narrator and reader as anticipations - the narrator talks of "the prophesy of my dreams" (140), of "a terrible secret" he feels he is journeying towards (5). But for the doctor they represent the past that haunts him throughout the rest of his life. So for the narrator there is something deterministic about the way he is forced to experience the doctor's life in strict reverse. As he remarks, "Suicide isn't an option, is it. Not in this world" (25). The doctor's dreams begin on the second page with an image of a male shape in a white coat and black boots. (Doctors preside over the novel, "life's gatekeepers' (4), who give life to the protagonist at the end of the book and deprive him of it at the beginning.) "In his wake, a blizzard of wind and sleet, like a storm of human souls" (8). The souls become stars in the night sky, souls of babies with enormous power. Next come nightmares featuring a wooden shed and implements. Amis is using the doctor's nightmares to prepare the reader for the period late in the book when he works at Auschwitz. The shed turns out to be Room 1 in which prisoners are put to death by injection. The doctor's most horrific dream occurs shortly before he regresses to the death camp. "He dreams he is shitting human bones" (106). The dreams are then replaced by the historical event, the mass extermination of the Jews, played in reverse. The way Amis makes use of the technique of narrative reversal is responsible for the savage irony of this book. It is not surprising that Time's Arrow has been compared to Swift's A Modest Proposal, for it shares with that work an indignation that is all the more powerful for its restraint. Amis maintains a comic tone throughout, although it is "disgusted laughter" he cultivates to "laugh the wicked off the stage" (Trueheart B1-2). David Lehman called the novel "a fictional deconstruction of time" in which history is undone (15). And time, according to Amis, is linked to morality. "Almost any deed," Amis has said, "any action, has its morality reversed, if you turn time's arrow around" (DeCurtis 147). On reading The Nazi Doctors, Amis realized that "[h]ere was a psychotically inverted world, and if you did it backward in time, it would make sense." (DeCurtis 146). The sea change that chronological reversal has on causality and moral responsibility enables Amis to defamiliarize an event the shock value of which has become blunted by reiteration.

In fact it is the very playfulness with which he treats the horror of the death camp that makes it strange, both linguistically, in Shklovsky's definition of ostranenie, and narratively. He spends the first two thirds of the novel acclimatizing the reader to the looking glass world that the narrator inhabits. In his inverted world fire and violence are creative. Earthquakes erect cities in half an hour. Moral acts are reversed. And of course this makes no kind of sense to him. The doctor's attempts to compensate for his past by buying toys for kids on the street when reversed becomes in the narrator's eyes a mean way of taking toys from the children so as to cash them in at the store for a couple of bucks. Kennedy's assassination is triumphantly transformed into a hero's welcome on his return to life in the streets of Dallas. The conversations of lovers told in reverse have an uncanny way of reading just as satisfactorily as when recorded chronologically, just as love affairs seem to work just as well recounted back to front. The boat taking him from Europe to the States in its inverted form leaves "no mark in the ocean, as if we are successfully covering our tracks" (99), which is precisely what the doctor was doing. Above all there is the absurd reversal between the doctor's perfectly ethical medical practice in the United States and his lethal medical procedures at Auschwitz. In America he is called Tod Friendly. "Tod" means "death" in German. Amis explains his last name: "'Friendly' America, forgiving, forgetful America" (Bellante 16). His German name is Odilo Unverdorben. His surname in German means "uncorrupt, innocent," as if original sin were undone. In the perplexed narrator's eyes Dr Friendly performs disfavours to his American patients: The babies get wheeled or carried in here, and they're well enough, and you look them over and say something like "This little fella's just fine." And you're always dead wrong. Always. A day or two later the baby will be back, crimson-eared, or whoofing with croup. And you never do a damn thing for them. (44) By comparison Dr Unverdorben performs miraculous resuscitations for his Jewish patients at Auschwitz. "Our preternatural purpose? To dream a race" (120). They start off as corpses stacked in the Chamber. "Entirely intelligibly, though, to prevent needless suffering, the dental work was usually completed while the patients were not yet alive" (121). Next the poison gas is returned to the vents: "It was I, Odilo Unverdorben, who personally removed the pellets of Zyklon B and entrusted them to the pharmacist in his white coat" (121). After getting dressed, they leave the Sprinkleroom and miraculously are rejoined on the platform by their menfolk who have synchronistically "completed their term of labour service" (123).

The deluded narrator is so happy at this late turn of events that he begins to use the first person pronoun in this section when describing Odilo's apparent acts of resuscitation. And yet ironically the distance at this point between his and Odilo's moral vision is at its maximum. Amis relies on three different perspectives for this section to work. There is Odilo's perverted misinterpretation of the Hippocratic oath. There is the naive narrator's celebration of Odilo's seeming miracles of healing. And there is the modern reader's sinking knowledge of what really went on at Nazi death camps like Auschwitz. The reader, who is expected to identify with the [implied] author, not the narrator, supplies the truth and the tragedy, as Amis has explained (DeCurtis 146). David Lehman has ingeniously suggested that in the Auschwitz section Amis is appropriating the definitive motif of deconstruction - erasure: "The very instrument of revisionist history is put to the service of heartbreaking fiction" (15). Amis has said that he came up with the technical device of narrational reversal before finding the subject suited to this treatment. But Amis, a novelist and not a theorist, is always "looking for [. . .] a way to see the world differently" (Morrison 99). In Time's Arrow he has brilliantly combined a postmodern use of narrative defamiliarization with his recent insistence on the need for moral vision. Powerfully imagined, savagely ironic, strangely moving, the novel is a celebration of the fictive and of what the fictive imagination can wrest from history.

4. In Times Arrow there are various clusters of motives that are eventually integrated into a whole. For instance, the Doctors medical practice, babies, women, love affairs, health, nightmares. Choose one of them and follow it teasing out its meaning in the context of the novel. Themes

Reverse Life
The perception of events occurring backwards by the entity in Tod/John/Odilo's head throughout the novel brings both innocence and a convoluted perception to everything. While the narrator is able to translate simple happenings, like backwards speech, and has a rough feeling that things are in reverse, becoming excited when people walk towards him or read front-toback, he still evaluates most events as "value reversed" based on seeing the cause and effect working backwards and misinterpreting what he sees. The biggest example of this is his life on the German death squads. He imagines, in the most awful real situation where Odilo is directly involved in the deaths and torture of thousands of people, that it is a great, even saintly thing that Odilo, is doing. His reverse view gives him the impression that he is creating life, instead of destroying it. His view tells him that he is taking corpses and magically reanimating them, finally to clothe them and reunite them with their families. He sees patients actually reassembled from parts. The reader realizes that the more in awe the entity is, the more awful the real event. The entity also sees relationships in a reverse view. These would generally follow the short-term pattern: "final" breakup, big argument, sex, and talking. For a long-term overview, a relationship starts almost absurdly fast, with an argument leading very rapidly to sex. But in the end stages, the relationship appears to slowly fade away, just as in forward motion, the people are tentatively getting to know each other. This is very frustrating for the narrator, who doesn't understand how shouting leads to sex and is very hurt when long term partners "pretend" to not know who he is because they don't know him yet.

Passing through History

"Time's Arrow" links many key events into the tapestry of the story. The story begins with the narrator's birth, Tod's death, sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s, and progresses in reverse from there. His actions are placed in context with the happenings going on around him in terms of history and technology, especially since he is a doctor. The regression in technology is considered puzzling by the narrator: the disappearance of cell phones, swapping the color TV for a black and white one, and non-disposable syringes, among other things. Tod's character seems to enjoy the Reagan years. Then it is the Vietnam era, which is considered a "small" war. There are flared pants and short skirts. Tod protests the war because it is the popular thing to do at the time. People know World War II was coming; they talk about it because it has already happened. Gas is cheap and good manufacturing jobs are plentiful. These are the "boom" days after World War II that last up until the early seventies. Cars then become less plentiful and sport fins in the late fifties /early sixties. The cold war gets colder with greater worries about nuclear attack; this is immediately in the shadow of WWII, with the rise of the Soviet Union. With fewer cars, there is less pollution; Tod/John can finally see the night sky from New York City. Then

World War II occurs. Before the war is the rise of Nazism in Germany and the passing of the Jewish Codes.

Self Determination and Redemption

As a helpless passenger, the narrator has no real control over his destiny. The only control he has was in rationalizing events and wishing for how things should be. He does have a sense that events are backwards, but he still can not interpret this into proper cause and effect. He intuitively knows that his course is unalterable. He recognizes that suicide is impossible since his fate is effectively sealed. He eventually realizes that he will die at birth and nothing can stop that. The torment of seeing Tod/John's good actions, which appear bad to him, and the ebb of Odilo's killing, which he sees as life-creating, give him the ability to eventually "tune out" and let life take its course. Odilo, on the other hand does have a choice. The decisions he makes as a relatively young man haunt him the rest of his life. John / Tod, the latter reincarnations of Odilo, have a desire to forget the past. More than that, there seems to be some effort at redemption later in life. There are nightmares about Auschwitz. John/Tod does seem to make a concerted effort to turn his life around and do something for the benefit of society. John tells Kreditor that he just wants to be able to do some good. He donates heavily to the church, gives candy to children, and helps prostitutes and the homeless.

5. Explain in your own words what happens in the following excerpt from Times Arrow (53-55):
Rather as I feared they would, babies have started showing up in Tod's dreams. They've shown up. Or at least, one of them has. Nothing gruesome happens, and I am coping with it fine so far. You naturally associate babies with defencelessness. But that's not how it is in the dream. In the dream, the baby wields incredible power. It has the power, the ultimate power of life and death over its parents, its older brothers and sisters, its grandparents, and indeed everybody else who is gathered in the room. There are about thirty of them in there, although the room, if it is a room, can't be much bigger than Tod's nook of a kitchen. The room is dark. More than this, the room is black. Despite the power it wields, the baby is weeping. Perhaps it weeps precisely because of this sinister reversal - the new and desperate responsibilities that power brings. In the faintest of whispers the parents try to give comfort, try to quieten: for a moment it seems that they might even have to stifle. There is that excruciating temptation. Because the baby's drastic ascendancy has to do with its voice. Not its fat fists, its useless legs, but its voice, the sounds it makes, its capacity to weep. As usual, the parents have the power of life and death over the baby, which all parents have. Now, though, in these special circumstances and in this special room, the baby has the power over them. And over everybody else who is gathered there. About thirty souls. The whole thing is a lot tougher on Tod than it is on me.I'm always awake when the dream happens. And I am innocent . . . The sick shine of imposture and accusation - I don't get that. I know he's only dreaming. I just settle back, with some apprehension, admittedly, and give witness to the late show screened by Tod's head, by his secret mind - by his future. When the time comes to experience the events that Tod's dreams foretell (when we find out, for instance, how the baby came to wield such power), then maybe I will take it harder. Tod himself weeps like a baby before the dreams happen. Occasionally, nowadays, Irene is around to psych him up before he goes in there. On the TV (look) - on the rooftop, on the ledge, high up, the crying man in the dirty white shirt, holding a baby. Near by, a policeman, urgently crouched, all cocked and bunched for this urgent encounter or transaction. The cop is saying through his bullhorn that he wants to take the baby. In effect, he wants to disarm the crying man in the dirty white shirt. The crying man has no weapon. The baby is the weapon.

That's not how things stand in the black room, with its groping carbon, its stilled figures. I just know this. In here, the baby is not a weapon. In here, the baby is more like a bomb.

Chapter 2: You Have to be Cruel to be Kind Summary

There was a new house, followed by a new job and a car. Tod and he were at the hospital when the paramedics suddenly drove them to an accident scene. A policeman put Tod in a vehicle. There were people staring. Suddenly, Tod stomped his foot on the brake and the car lurched off of the fire hydrant it had been perched on and went backwards down the street. Later, a man was telling Tod his "driving days were over." He had started driving more since then, however. Strangely, the car had five reverse gears and one forward gear (marked "R"). Tod always looked where he came from, instead of where he was going, when he drove. It seemed dangerous, but it worked. They drove often to the old house, but it was always empty. He heard someone named Irene on the phone, talking to Tod. She was saying goodbye; she knew he was running from something and had changed his name. Then Tod said, "Yes," and hung-up the phone, only to listen to it ring for a few moments before it stopped. The narrator hoped things with this Irene person would get better. Tod was routinely finding love letters in the trash and putting them in a drawer. Tod went to a party and put on a white coat. Then he started working as a doctor. Things got busier; he was in the city now. Medical books and prescription pads accumulated in the house. Tod took a medical certificate from the trash and put it on the wall. He woke up sick after drinking tea; then he took a lot of pills to feel better. The narrator was very squeamish about medical practices, but Tod wasn't in the least. He tried to avert his eyes, but they were really Tod's eyes after all, so he couldn't. Memories filtered through dreams: a knife blade healed a cut finger; a father slapped a child to stop the crying. Irene called a lot. The narrator thought it was good they were getting to know each other. Irene said that although she was sad and lonely, she didn't blame Tod much. She said that she didn't know why she loved him, but she did. She also said that love was strange. Irene had contemplated suicide, but the narrator realized that wasn't an option. He intuitively knew that life was a ride, and there was no getting off; once you're here, you're here to stay. Tod had started masturbating much more. He was lonely and had more strange dreams. Tod worked at Associated Medical Services, AMS, in gerontology and dealt with a lot of people older than he was. He would take prescriptions from them, work them over, and then ask introductory questions. They usually didn't look happy as they left. The narrator liked Tod and his standing as a doctor; he felt important. They were also feeling much better physically; he didn't understand why Tod didn't seem to appreciate this. Just a few months ago, it was an effort just to cross the room and going to the bathroom could take an hour. Didn't Tod remember this? He also got spare body parts from the trash; like hair, teeth, and fingernails. Tod did more disturbing things when he visited the city. He took money and drugs from hookers and bums on the street, then brought them back to the pharmacy for use. He saw so-called crisis centers that actually caused crisis. Women hid there from men who would eventually save them. Their cuts and bruises got progressively worse until a man showed up to take them back and instantly heal them with his hands. Some of the women were raped in order to be made better. The narrator also didn't understand why Tod never seemed to like pimps. He saw Tod rubbing dirt on bleeding girls, and it was always the pimp who arrived later and fixed them up with his fists. Then

the pimp gave her money and sent her away. Tod was visited by mothers with babies in the middle of the night. The mothers would pay him with antibiotics while Tod checked over their babies. It was very upsetting, they almost always left worse off than when they came in, usually kicking and screaming. The moms always left crying, too. The narrator surmised it was because the mothers were worried about the coming time when their babies would disappear. The children did get smaller and smaller and seemed to cry more and more. A mother would take them to the hospital, to the cold room with the forceps. "Two go in, but only one comes out." He saw how upset the mothers were after what he called, "The long goodbye to babies." Irene still called, but she seemed to be angry most of the time. He didn't know if it was something Tod had said or done. Tod had been looking at more women. The narrator liked it, even though Tod didn't always look where he wanted him to look. He enjoyed having some things in common with Tod. He felt that Tod was wasting his life. There were new love letters to Irene. Tod would take them from a trash bag to read. He found a crushed photograph and straightened it in his fist. He began muttering at night the same word, "shtib." Soon the narrator figured out what it meant. One night Tod prepared the ashtray with butts and ash. Soon Irene arrived. The narrator was shocked to see her walk forward towards the house. She was crying and swearing at Tod. Then she took off her clothes and looked at him. "Bad joke," he said. They talked, had sex and went to a movie. Irene cried at the beginning of the film. People kept giving Tod money throughout the evening. He ended up with $31 extra by the beginning of the night. The narrator was upset because he was in love with Irene, but felt Tod was too "cool" for that. He knew that someday Tod would have a family. He still wondered where the babies went. Tod was having a recurring dream. It was about a person in a white coat with babies around. The narrator thought it was a premonition. Tod worked in the garden and cried because of its disrepair. The narrator thought creation was easy, because most things destroyed quickly in foreword motion were instantly "created" in reverse. Tod seemed to have an opinion about all races, classes, and careers. The narrator saw a Japanese student at AMS who actually read right to left, beginning to end. This stood out in contrast to normal life where water rose, smoke descended, fire created. He noticed that people said goodbye when they left and then felt bad for things they hadn't done yet. He saw so-called garbage men litter the parks in the morning. The narrator coined the phrase, "vomitorium" to describe the act of eating. Tod and a date had been at a restaurant where they just talked and spat piles of food on their plates. Tod was also spending less time on the toilet. The narrator wanted him to be excited about life, but he wasn't. They were dreaming more about babies. Things seemed upsetting and pointless to the narrator, no matter what they did, things always seemed to get worse. Irene still made regular visits, but Tod had started seeing someone else. Dating had become more routine and more worrisome. It always started with Tod paying the waiter just before he caught the eye of a woman walking towards him. She would walk up to Tod and a fight would ensue. Then they would go home to have sex. He noticed that some male/female conversations actually made more sense backwards. After sex, it was always the same. The women, except for Irene, never slept over. The attraction then became less and less until it faded away completely. Soon they didn't seem to know Tod at all; they would pretend they didn't recognize him.

Tod did understand fashion. He had worn flared pants for years when no one else was wearing them. Suddenly, everyone had caught on. Short skirts came into fashion as well. For some reason, cell phones disappeared from everyday life. There was also going to be a war, but not a very big one. The cities changed. More industry came; it seemed that everybody had a job. Gas cost less. Everything seemed better. Tod loved being part of a crowd. This way he could lead while still being anonymous. He protested the Vietnam War, but didn't really care about it. He knew there was a big war coming, set to start in exactly 25 years. Everyone knew about it somehow. Tod still had his dreams. They caused him to fix things in the middle of the night: a broken chair, a cracked mirror, a dented refrigerator. Irene told Tod that he had no soul and that hurt the narrator. He had no real power over Tod, but if he could have somehow, he would have made him be faithful to Irene. The narrator believed in, "one man, one woman." He wished he could say, "Tod may be two-timing, but I'm true to you. I am constant. I am true." Irene asked Tod about his past. She said that she would forgive him if he would just tell her his secret. He always replied, "You don't want to know." He also told her not to trust doctors. Tod was more confident now, more virile and proud of his body. He was handsome, and proud of it. He also was meeting many of his girlfriends at work. They pretended not to know him, then he flirted, asked his roster of questions, which put them off, and they finally left. Tod retrieved a letter from the fire every year from a man named Reverend Nicholas Kreditor. It said that it hoped he was well and that the weather was good in New York. The weather seemed to always be good there. Tod would put the letter on the mat by the door, and it would be gone in the morning. Then Tod started finding brochures to remote locations in the trash. A letter from Nicholas Kreditor described New York weather as "getting better." Then suddenly, everything changed. Tod began selling furniture and destroying the house. He worked on the plumbing and then the faucets didn't work. The narrator didn't understand and felt cheated that all of his comforts were gone. They were suddenly without money. No one seemed to recognize them. Tod met with a realtor and seemed happy. The narrator didn't see how he could sell the place after all of the damage he caused. Abruptly, Tod was demoted at AMS. He was no longer a doctor but he worked the garbage detail. No one knew him at work anymore. The narrator wondered, if they were being punished for some reason. He also wondered why his body was getting better. They took a train and Tod kept saying his name over and over, as if trying to remember who he was. He was nervous and the narrator realized that they were going to the place in the brochures where the weather was always good-New York. He knew that Tod was moving towards his secret and he would find out about it soon.

Chapter 2: You Have to be Cruel to be Kind Analysis

Tod's longtime girlfriend Irene finally leaves him for good after finding out he is on the run after changing his name. This confuses the narrator, because he sees this final argument as the start of the relationship that will, from his point of view, last for years. During this time of many arguments with Irene, he says "shtib" a lot, which is "bitch" in reverse. He relives the final days with Irene backwards and perceives it as the relationship slowly getting better. The narrator also scoffs as Irene's notion of suicide because he knows intuitively that he is living backwards and his life will end at birth. Since it has already happened and he is just reliving events, this cannot be stopped or changed in anyway. Therefore suicide is not possible. Tod has his retirement party and, from the narrator's point of view, returns to work. Tod is angry about retiring; he takes enough pills to get sick and throws his medical certificate in the trash. He also throws his old love letters away; again, the narrator interprets this as Tod picking letters from the trash. Simple actions are fascinating when viewed backwards. The act of eating becomes an act of spitting up food and putting it on the plate. Whenever Tod goes out to buy anything, he is given money. Tod wearing flared pants years after they went out of fashion make it seem to the narrator as if he started a trend. People follow him. When Tod buys his new house and starts renovating it, the narrator sees the already-updated house being systematically dismantled. The chapter ends with Tod being "demoted" because he has just started his job at AMS. People become distant because they have just met him and haven't gotten to know him yet. He leaves for New York and is actually fleeing to the small town to escape the authorities.

IAN MCEWAN

Study Questions
1. In his book Understanding Ian McEwan, Malcolm Davies argues that it is the reader who brings moral attitudes to the stor[ies] for they are absent in the text itself. Discuss this statement with regards to Atonement. Should you not agree, point out the elements that stand for implicit moral commentary. Major Themes Guilt / Atonement The theme of guilt, forgiveness, and atonement should be extremely obvious to anyone who reads the book. The entire plot of the novel centers on a woman who devotes her entire life repenting a crime she committed while still a young girl. Articles of note that are not as obvious to the reader that have to do with this theme are things like, is Briony the only person who should feel guilty? Who else is at fault for the crime committed on that hot summer night in 1935? Where is Lola's guilt for not saying anything? What about Paul Marshall's--the real assailant who gets away with rape and stands silent while an innocent man goes to prison. Then there are all the adults in Part One of the novel. How is it that so many people who are capable of understanding so much more than a thirteen-year-old girl come to rely completely on her testimony? Should more not have been done in the investigation? The question is left open at the end of the book. Does Briony finally achieve her atonement by writing her story and keeping her lovers and allowing their love to survive? The second layer to the guilt theme has to do with the history of literature. Aside from the crime she committed as a child, Briony feels guilty for her powers as a writer. She knows she has the autonomy to write whatever story she so chooses. Just like she could send Robbie to prison, she can make him survive the war. The reliance readers put in Briony to tell them "what really happened" leaves her feeling guilty about her life's work, and she projects that guilt onto the history of the English literature canon. Literary Tradition Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" marked a new literary form in Romanticism literature in that it was a story, inside a story, inside a story. At the very centre of the notable novel, the monster is telling his story in the first person to his creator who is telling his story to a ship captain who is writing his story to his sister who is the author of the book. Ian McEwan's "Atonement" plays with this layeredtradition: a story being told by one of the characters (not revealed until the end) in the third person, that shifts to the first person in the final section of the book when the reader realizes who the narrator is. During this chapter, we learn the story was told through letters between Cecilia and Robbie, and even correspondence between Corporal Nettles and Briony. It leaves the question very open: Whose story is this? That is the exact point Briony (or is it McEwan?) is trying to draw out. Who is capable of telling a complete story about "what really happened?" All authors are subject to their own interpretation of events and it is this in-empirical science that is literature that can cause so much power over other human beings.

Look at all that is misinterpreted in writing. Briony doesn't understand the letter Robbie has sent Cecilia and sees it as a threat. Robbie places the wrong letter in the envelope triggering, and eventually indicting him for rape. The numerous references made to literature in the novel--too many to list. Robbie was a literature major, and has read and understood all the classic English novels and poets. Robbie is also the innocent victim in the book. And the most obvious, Briony admits to making up the happy ending of love in her story. When Briony admits to her reader that it has taken her sixty-four years and countless drafts to complete her book, the reader has to ask him/herself: "Which is the 'real' one?" Before the book even starts, the reader is given a Romantic novel quote--something out of Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey." This sets the tone for a book that will be packed with literary allegory. Even the form of the book walks the reader through some of English lit's historical periods: Part One--Austen'esque Romanticism; Part Two--Historical Fiction War Story; Part Three-Victorian or Modern Memoir; and Part Four--Post Modern speculation and theory. Perception/Misunderstanding What happens in "Atonement" is all created by the imagination to misperceive observation. Briony is at a point where she is too young to fully grasp the adult world she is quickly becoming a part of, yet old enough to presume she understands her social environment on a mature level. This wavering, transient positioning in her psychological development, along with the circumstances she happens to observe (the fountain scene, the letter, the library scene, and the rape) all lead to a misappropriation of her emotions. Briony is still a child, there is no arguing that. Her obsession with order, her fantasizing about playwriting and fencing, and the seriousness with which she takes her play all represent her at a point where she is too young to see the world beyond her own existence. This flaw is not her fault. It is a part of the psychological maturing process. Notice how so much of the action takes place in a state where some senses are obstructed or absent while others are available. Briony can "see" the incident between Cecilia and Robbie at the fountain, but she can't hear it. Briony "reads" the word in the letter, but she doesn't "know" what it means. Briony "sees" the the sex in the library, but nobody "says" anything about it. And finally, Briony "hears" Lola being raped, but can't completely "see" what/who it is because it is dark. Part One is all about perception and misperception. Objects in this section are metaphors that serve as agents to this theme--windows, doorways, light, darkness, etc. Even the narration of the novel plays on this idea. The author is continuously having to go back and repeat the same episode through different eyes so the reader can get the whole picture. By doing this, Briony (as author) is trying her best to make up for what she did not understand as a child and what she struggles with as an author. That is, present the story from every single angle, and not just the writer's point of view. In achieving this, Briony hopes to atone for her misconception of events as a young girl.

Innocence Arguments can be made on where the exact point is that Briony "loses her innocence." There are a few moments in Part One that can be attributed to such a notion:

Was it when she saw the scene at the fountain? When she gives up on her play? When she reads the letter from Robbie to Cecilia? When she mistakenly observes Robbie and Cecilia making love in the library? When she witnesses Lola's rape? Or when she officially accuses Robbie of the assault to authorities? Each one of these is a plausible response. What is certain, however, is that somewhere during Part One of the novel, Briony ceases to exist as a protected child in this world and enters the exposed world of adulthood. The narration of part one, which we learn later to be Briony herself, holds nothing back in informing the reader of this postawareness. Briony the character is too young to realize it at the time. She is caught in between world's. Look at the moment when the search parties take flight after the twins; Briony debates on whether she is old enough to search herself, or if she should stay back under the protection of her mother. She decides on the former and this decision results in something that forever changes her life and the lives of everyone around her. Even following the arrest of Robbie, Briony yearns for her mother's comfort. There is a greater loss of innocence at play here as well. War rips the entire country apart, and eventually the world. The bliss is innocence that was being enjoyed by Europe following "the war to end all wars" (WWI) is about to be stripped away in force. This innocence is represented in Leon Tallis, a character who lives for the weekends in London, doesn't think there will be a war, and feels all people are primitively good-natured. War It is not typical to say that "war" is a theme in any book, but it is a very important part of "Atonement" and something that needs to be addressed as a separate component to the overall themes of the book. Ian McEwan is a known activist against war and as a writer who takes a personal interest in World War Two history. His father was a Major in the British Armed Forces and McEwan grew up in different areas of the world, in Army camps, while his father was serving his duties. There is an irony that Robbie Turner must fight in the war to exonerate himself from a crime he did not commit. This highlights the injustices of any war. As much as the story is a fictional tale, the scenes that involve the war, both in France in Part Two and in the hospitals in London in Part Three, are historically accurate. In particular, the horrors that the British Army faced as they awaited evacuation on the beaches of Dunkirk and the German planes continued their assault, is captured in extraordinary detail in "Atonement." Also, McEwan acknowledges a book he read in 1977 called "No Time For Romance" written by Lucilla Andrews that was the personal account of a nurse who served in the hospitals in London during the war. Briony's experiences in Part Three are directly inspired from that reading (for more information on this, see "Plagiarism" in the Additional Content of this Note). There is not too much to be said on it. The two world wars that took place in Europe in the first half of the 20th century are events that changed the course of human history. Ian McEwan's "Atonement" draws focus on the lasting effects these events had on the British psyche in hopes of assisting in the prevention of it from ever happening again. Social Class

The inequities and injustices of social class appear throughout the novel. The most obvious example is the relationship between Robbie Turner, son of the Tallis charwoman, and Cecilia Tallis, daughter of the ministry-employed and wealthy Jack Tallis. Recall that it is because Briony thinks her older sister is in grave danger of falling beneath her class that she sets out to protect her. Placing social distinction above love is common sense for Briony, and her condemnation of Robbie proves this faculty to hold up in the courts. As for Cecilia, she is the only character in the story to deal with these issues head on. After realizing her unfair behavior towards Robbie while at Cambridge together, Cecilia has the courage to announce her love for him when she defends the letter being passed around the living room for all to read as evidence of Robbie's "sex-maniac" ways. Even when he is arrested, she stands by him, and soon thereafter disowns her family to become a nurse living in a "terrible flat" in north London. The only other person accused of the rape is the other servant, Danny Hardman. And even when his father provides a perfectly suitable alibi, it is not presented without question and doubt. Paul Marshall on the other hand, the filthy rich guest to the home who is actually responsible for the crime, is never even considered or questioned. As part of Briony's self-administered punishment, she joins the nurses in the lower class where she sees herself as a slave. This may be an act of penance and nobility during the war, but it's motives are questionable. Notice how by the end of the novel, Briony is admitted back up the ranks of class, having a chauffeur and a lovely flat in Regent's park. The reader is left wondering how much has really changed in the 65 years the novel has taken place.

Identity Here is a question to ask: Who is Briony Tallis? Is she a child criminal? A repenting nurse? A writer? All of them? Is she a good person? An evil person? Any novel that stretches over a sixty-five year period is going to observe the characters go though periods of change and development. But "Atonement" works on a different level when it comes to identity as a theme. Briony Tallis has the imagination to make herself anything. When the story opens she is Briony the serious child, Briony the famous writer, and Arabella, the star of a play she has just written. Whenever Briony is upset, she wanders by herself to water, where she can daydream into any persona she wishes--a murderer, fencing champion, successful author (notice the water motif for this--a formless element). In Part Three of the book, Briony has become a nurse, but she is given a badge with an incorrect first initial. She has been completely emasculated by the war and her social condition, as well as her guilt. When she sits with the dying French soldier, he thinks her to be someone else, and she goes along with his fantasy out of pity, but she tells him her real name in the end. Other characters in the story too suffer identity problems. What is difference between Jackson and Pierrot; Nettles and Mace? The latter cannot determine if Turner is an educated Cambridge boy or a lower-class prisoner like themselves. Even Robbie himself doesn't know what he wants to be--a literature graduate come landscaper who is considering medical school, who has no father. The confusion of identity points out the confusion of coming into oneself at the golden age of lost innocence as well as what a nation is during war. Cecilia Tallis appears to be the only character who confidently knows her true self. As readers, we even have to question who wrote the book--Briony Tallis or Ian McEwan? Themes of identity are common in coming-of-age novels. The fact that we get Briony at three distinctive points in her life complicates this overarching investigation into what makes up one's own sense of individuality and how confident that person has become with that outpouring image.

2. In the light of the information provided in this Unit, explain how narrative techniques may influence on the morals of a story. Ian McEwan tends to use a 'stream of consciousness' narrative style, where the reader directly follows the thoughts of the narrator, as in 'Enduring Love', and 'Saturday'. His novel 'Atonement' palces a story within a story. 'Saturday', in the style of Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway', JD Salinger's 'Catcher in the Rye' and James Joyce's 'Ulysses', is written within the literary framework of 24 hours as a metaphor for life's events and human development.

3. In what sense do you think that the narrative stance chosen may affect the ethics of a novel? Narrative Ethics

Definition
1Narrative ethics explores the intersections between the domain of stories and storytelling and that of moral values. Narrative ethics regards moral values as an integral part of stories and storytelling because narratives themselves implicitly or explicitly ask the question, How should one think, judge, and actas author, narrator, character, or audiencefor the greater good?

Explication
Characteristic Questions and Positions
2Investigations into narrative ethics have been diverse and wide-ranging, but they can be usefully understood as focused on one or more of four issues: (1) the ethics of the told; (2) the ethics of the telling; (3) the ethics of writing/producing; and (4) the ethics of reading/reception. 3Questions about the ethics of the told focus on characters and events. Sample questions: What are the ethical dimensions of characters actions, especially the conflicts they face and the choices they make about those conflicts? What are the ethical dimensions of any one characters interactions with other characters? How does a narratives plot signal its stance on the ethical issues faced by its characters? 4Questions about the ethics of the telling focus on text-internal matters involving implied authors, narrators, and audiences. Sample questions: What are the ethical responsibilities, if any, of storytellers to their audiences? What are the ethical dimensions of the narratives techniques? How does the use of these techniques imply and convey the values underlying the relations of the storytellers (implied authors and narrators) to their materials (events and characters) and their audiences (narratees, implied readers, actual audiences)? (Schmid Implied Author; Margolin Narrator; Schmid Narratee; Schmid Implied Reader) 5Questions about the ethics of writing/producing focus on text-external matters involving actual authors, film directors, or other constructing agents. Sample questions: What, if any, are the ethical obligations of the constructive agents of the narrative to its materials? For example, what obligations, if any, does a memoir writer have to other people whose experiences s/he narrates? What responsibilities, if any, does a filmmaker adapting a novel have to that novel and its author? What are the ethical implications of choosing to tell one kind of story rather than another in a given historical context? For example, what are the ethics of a fiction writer living under a repressive regime refusing to write about those socio-political conditions? Does developing a narrative about ones own life help one become a better, more ethically sound person? 6Questions about the ethics of reading/reception focus on issues about audiences and the consequences of their engagements with narratives. Sample questions: What, if any, are the ethical obligations of the audience to the narrative itself, to its materials, and to its author? What, if any, are the consequences of an audiences success or failure in meeting those obligations? Does reading narrative help one become a better, more ethically sound, person? (Prince Reader)

7These four kinds of questions roughly correspond to four ethical positions occupied by the main agents involved in stories and storytelling (and again individual investigations vary in how many of these positions they focus on and which ones they make most important): (1) those of characters in relation to each other and to the situations they face; (2) those of the narrator(s) in relation to the characters and to the narratee(s); (3) those of the implied author in relation to the characters, the narrator(s), and the implied and actual audiences; (4) those of actual audience members (and the ethical beliefs they bring to the reading experience) in response to the first three ethical positions. 8These questions and positions shed light on the common claim by ethical critics that their investigations are different from reading for the moral message, since such reading has as its goal extracting a neatly packaged lesson from the ethics of the told (e.g. Macbeth teaches us about the evils of ambition). Attending to these four kinds of question and these four positions opens up the multi-layered intersections of narrative and moral values, even in narratives such as John Bunyans Pilgrims Progress and George Orwells Animal Farm that offer clear answers to questions about the ethics of the told.

Literary Ethics and Narrative Ethics

9Where literary ethics is broadly concerned with the relation between literature and moral values, narrative ethics is specifically concerned with the intersection between various formal aspects of narrative and moral values. Thus, narrative ethics is both broader (including in its domain nonliterary narrative) and narrower (excluding from its domain nonnarrative texts) than literary ethics. At the same time, narrative ethics can be usefully seen as a recent development in the larger trajectory of literary ethics, one beginning in the late 1980s (cf. 3 below).

Narrative Ethics in Relation to Politics and Aesthetic

10The four questions and positions of narrative ethics shed light on how inquiries into narrative ethics can overlap with or be distinct from inquiries in two related domains, the politics of narrative and the aesthetics of narrative. Where ethics is concerned with moral values, politics is concerned with power, especially as it is acquired, exercised, and responded to by governments, institutions, social groups, and individuals. Since, in any given acquisition or deployment of power, moral values will inevitably come into play, ethics can be a lens through which some aspects of politics get examined. In addition, since an individuals or a groups application of moral values in any given situation may well be influenced by issues of power, politics can be a lens through which (some aspects of) ethical behavior are examined. In narrative ethics, then, all four categories of questions can include (but are not limited to) questions about the politics of narrative. For example, in Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice, the ethics of the told include Darcys struggle between his love for Elizabeth and his knowledge that her family is socially inferior to his; the ethics of the telling include Austens decision to convey the action largely through the consciousness of her young female protagonist rather than, say, through the older, wealthier, and more socially powerful Darcy. The ethics of writing include Austens focusing on the adventures of the Bennet sisters in the marriage market rather than on the actions of, say, male characters involved in the deliberations of Parliament; and the ethics of reading/reception include whether and how readers can legitimately claim Austen as a feminist. In terms of positions, the fourth one is where the overlap between ethics and politics will be most immediately evident, as, for example, when an individual readers political stance against marriage as an instrument of patriarchy would lead her to find fault with the ethics of the told in Austens novel. 11Aesthetics is concerned with beauty, or, more generally, the excellence of an art work (or, indeed, of any human construction). The frequent overlap between narrative ethics and narrative aesthetics becomes evident when ethical deficiencies in the told or the telling mar the excellence of a narrative. For example, when in the final chapters of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain has Huck go along with Tom Sawyers Evasion and the various ways it dehumanizes Jim, Twain introduces a deficiency that is simultaneously ethical and aesthetic. The Huck who has come to recognize and respect Jims humanity ought not to condone Jims dehumanization. Because Twain does not signal anything but approval for Hucks behavior, this section of the novel introduces deficiencies in both the ethics of the told and of the telling. These deficiencies simultaneously weaken the aesthetics of the novel because they erode the power of the narratives climactic moment (Hucks decision to go to hell) and verge on making Huck an incoherent character. 12Nevertheless, the overlap between narrative ethics and narrative aesthetics is not complete, as becomes evident in cases where ethics seem deficient but aesthetics do not. For example, many readers find the ethics of the told in Nabokovs Lolita to be abhorrent even as they admire the beauty of the novels style.

History of the Concept and its Study

Literary Ethics in Antiquity
13Although narrative ethics emerged as a clearly identified realm of study only in the 1980s, the interest in literatures capacity to influence its audience for good or for ill goes back to Plato and Aristotle. Neither philosopher explicitly uses the term ethics in his discussion of literature, but each implicitly recognizes ethics as a substantial part of its appeal to audiences. In addition, the commentaries of the two philosophers provide striking examples of how ethics and aesthetics may overlap and of how a theorists understanding of ethics is often part and parcel of a broader philosophical vision. In The Republic, Plato (1998a: Book X) explains the defects of poetry (by poetry is meant lyric, epic, and drama) from the perspective of his ontological theory of forms, but that perspective has implications for the ethics of the told. Plato claims that poetry is twice removed from the truth: poetry imitates objects in the actual world, but these objects are themselves imitations of the ideal forms. A republic that welcomed such imitations would be doing its citizens an ethical disservice. In Ion (1998b), Plato contends that poetry has inherent deficiencies in the ethics of the telling that can lead to deficiencies in the ethics of the told: because poetry appeals to its audiences emotions more than their reason, it can lead its audience to erroneous conclusions about what is good. 14Although Aristotle devoted a separate treatise to Ethics (actually, two treatises,the Eudemian Ethics (1952) and the Nicomachean Ethics (2002), the second a revision of the first), he also implicitly assigned ethics an important role in the Poetics (1920). He defined tragedy with reference to its emotional effect on the audience: an imitation of an action that arouses pity and fear and culminates in catharsis, i.e. the purging of those emotions. Aristotles thinking about each part of tragedy follows from this conception of its overall nature, and that thinking often includes an understanding of the intertwining of aesthetics and ethics, especially the ethics of the told. His discussion of character offers a clear example. The optimal tragic protagonist is a man who is neither extraordinarily virtuous nor extraordinarily immoral and who comes to misfortune not through some major moral failing but as a result of misjudgment. Such a protagonist will evoke fear (because he is like us) and pity (because his misfortune is greater than his ethical character warrants). In this way, Aristotle indicates that the aesthetic quality of tragedy is dependent on the ethical character of the protagonist.

Literary Ethics before The Theory Revolution of the 1970s

15After Plato and Aristotle and before the rise of formal criticism in the 20th century, treatises on literature most often focused on the relation of text to world, as commentators continually returned to the concept of imitation. But many treatises, beginning with Horaces Ars Poetica (1998), and its dictum that the purpose of literature is to instruct and to delight, also found a place for ethics. By linking the two purposes, Horace emphasized the interaction of the ethics of the told (and its role in instruction) and the ethics of the telling (and its role in delight). To take just two more examples in this tradition, Sidney ([1595] 1998) put ethics front and center, as he argued that literature is superior to both history and philosophy because it has the greater capacity to lead its audiences to virtuous action. And Arnold ([1880] 1998) contended that poetry would one day take the place of religion and philosophy because the best poetry skillfully intertwines aesthetics and ethics. 16During the first sixty-plus years of the 20th century, three of the four prominent formalisms Russian formalism, the New Criticism, and French narratologymoved ethics into the background of literary theory/narrative theory, as they highlighted questions about either the distinctiveness of literature (Russian formalism and New Criticism) or about narrative as a system of signification. The fourth formalism, Chicago neo-Aristotelianism, is a notable exception, as will be discussed below. For the Russian formalists, the distinctiveness of literature resides in its ability to sharpen perceptions by defamiliarizing literatures represented objects. As klovskij ([1925] 1990: 5) put it, Automatization eats away at things, at clothes, at furniture, at our wives, and at fear of war. [I]n order to return sensation to our limbs, to make us feel objects, to make a stone stony, man has been given the tool of art. Literature is the art that defamiliarizes through its distinctive uses of language and through other formal innovations. 17The New Critics, whose program became the dominant paradigm in the Anglo-American context between the end of World War II and the late 1960s, identified literariness as inherent in literary language with its capacity for generating complex meanings. More generally, the New Critics conceived of the literary text as an autonomous structure of language, independent of authorial intention and reader response, and they regarded the successful work as a verbal icon whose beauty arises from the balance achieved by artful juxtapositions of linguistic ambiguities and ironies (cf. Wimsatt & Beardsley [1946a] 1954a, [1946b] 1954b); Brooks 1947; Wellek & Warren [1949] 1956). Such balance, the New Critics argued, captures truths overlooked by the denotative language of the sciences. 18Although neither school explicitly addressed questions of ethics, their programs imply some concern with the ethics of the told and the ethics of the tellingand another illustration of overlap between aesthetics and ethics. The effects of defamiliarizationmoving readers from automatization to fresh perceptions of the worldclearly have an ethical dimension, and since those effects depend on techniques of various kinds, this aesthetic program also implies an interest in the ethics of the telling. The New Critics emphasis on the complex truths conveyed by literary language implies a similar double interest in the ethics of the told and the ethics of the telling.

19The French narratologists of the 1960s and 1970s were concerned with neither aesthetics nor ethics, but, as heirs to the Russian formalists, with narrative as an autonomous object of inquiry (Ryan 2005: 344). Working within the scope of Saussurean semiology and adopting structural linguistics as a pilot-science, they sought to explore the modes of signification of narrative in all its forms as an international, transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon (cf. Barthes [1966] 1977: 20) (Meister Narratology). 20Not surprisingly, the Chicago neo-Aristotelians followed Aristotle in making ethics an important implicit part of their approach. Dissatisfied with what they saw as the limitations of the New Critical conception of literature as a special kind of language, they looked back to the Poetics and asked how it would have to be revised in order to account for the very different kinds of literary works that had been written since Aristotles day. Retaining Aristotles interest in the affective components of form, they implicitly gave ethical judgments, arising from the ethics of the told and of the telling and how they positioned the audience in relation to characters, a significant role in the trajectory of emotional responses generated by plots. Thus, Crane (1952) shows how readers expectations and desires in Tom Jones are a function of multiple factors (including Fieldings careful control of the disclosure of the truth about Toms parentage), the general pattern of the action (Tom repeatedly gets in and out of increasingly serious scrapes), and the ethical judgments Fielding builds into his representation of his characters. Through these means, Fielding generates the comic analogue of fear before fulfilling the audiences desires and bringing the ethically admirable Tom to his happy union with the similarly admirable Sophia Western. Building on Cranes work and putting even more emphasis on the positions of authors and readers in relation to each other, Booth ([1961] 1983) began to make the ethical consequences of the neo-Aristotelian approach more explicit. In The Company We Keep (1988), Booth revisited and greatly expanded this early effort (cf. 3.4).

The Theory Revolution as Preparation for the Ethical Turn

21In the 1960s the hegemony of the New Criticism began to wane for both intradisciplinary and extradisciplinary reasons with the result that literary criticism became more interdisciplinary. Critics began to chafe under the limitations of the New Critical commitment to the autonomy of the text, a response reinforced by the political upheavals of the decade. As scholars began to connect literature with multiple aspects of the extratextual world, they brought relevant insights of theoretical work in other disciplines to the work of interpretation. Two aspects of these developments helped prepare the way for the ethical turn of the late 1980s.

22(1) The rise of poststructuralism and its critique of what Derrida ([1967] 1978: 261) called the metaphysics of presence, or the effort to ground understanding of the world in solid foundational principles (e.g. God, Descartes cogito, various binary oppositions such as nature/civilization). Poststructuralism argued that such foundations were either illusory or dependent on erroneously privileging one side of the binary over the other (speech over writing; God over the human; men over women; white over black; mind over body, etc.). This critique gave support to many contextualist, politically-oriented approaches such as feminist criticism, critical race studies, postcolonial criticism, and New Historicism. Practitioners of these approaches argued that what appears to be natural about the status quoand about literary works that support the status quois actually a function of skewed power dynamics that needs to be revised. This emphasis on politics opened the door for attention to ethics, especially the ethics of the told. 23(2) The rise and fall of Anglo-American deconstruction, the movement spawned by the engagement of such figures as Hartman, Miller, and de Man with Derridas analysis of language as a system of signs devoid of any center (Derrida [1967] 1976). In this view, language is a system in which signifieds were determined not by any direct relation to objects or ideas in the world but by the play of signifiers. On the one hand, Anglo-American deconstruction contributed to the breakdown of the New Critical hegemony because its poststructuralist anti-foundationalism undid such valued New Critical concepts as coherence and unity. On the other hand, this development was the logical extension of New Criticism, because it perpetuated the view that literature could be equated with its language and its distinctive ways of signifying. 24Like the New Criticism, Anglo-American deconstruction was initially more concerned with aesthetics (the glory of literary language is its polysemous undecidability) than it was with ethics. Nevertheless, Miller in The Ethics of Reading (1987) identified the important ethical consequences of deconstruction by offering its take on the position of the reader. In a characteristic deconstructive paradox, Miller argued that the readers ethical obligation is to respect the undecidability of the texts language. In other words, the ethical reader will recognize that the nature of language inevitably undermines the search for a determinate ethics of the told. 25But Millers case for deconstructive ethics was eclipsed by the revelation that his deconstructionist colleague at Yale, de Man, had, during World War II, written several anti-Semitic articles for Le Soir, a Belgian newspaper that collaborated with the Nazis. In light of the horrific consequences of Nazi anti-Semitism, the position that de Mans wartime writings do not have a determinate ethics of the told appeared to many to be the outcome not of a disinterestedly rigorous reading but of an effort to absolve de Man of responsibility for his repugnant views. After the de Man affair, literary studies became much less interested in undecidability and much more open to other ways of analyzing the intersections of ethics and literature.

The Ethical Turn: Poststructuralist and Humanist Ethics

26Since the late 1980s, the ethical turn has taken two primary forms: poststructuralist ethics and humanist ethics. Because humanist ethics engages more directly with other work in narratology, it gets more attention here. 27In the wake of the de Man affair, Derrida developed a greater ethico-political emphasis in his own work (Derrida [1993] 1994) and called attention to the philosophical ethics of Levinas ([1961] 1969, [1974] 1981, [1979] 1987) (see Critchley [1999] for a discussion of deconstructive ethics, focusing on Derrida and Levinas). Levinas argues that the essence of ethical behavior is to respect the otherness of the Other. He uses the metaphor of the face and facing to convey this position. One shows respect for the Other by facing his/her otherness. This emphasis on the Other dovetails with the political concerns of feminist, postcolonial, and critical race theory as well with disability studies. As a result, the poststructuralist stream emphasizes the ethics of alterity with special attention to the ethics of the told (representations of the other) and the ethics of reading (obligations to face otherness). Different theorists offered variations on the central themes. Harpham (1999: x) defined ethics as an intimate and dynamic engagement with otherness, while Attridge (1999: 28) maintained that ethics is [] the fundamental relation not just between subjects but also between the subject and its multiple others, adding that this fundamental relation is not a relation and [it] cannot be named, for it is logically prior to relations and names, prior to logic. Hale (2007, 2009), in her meta-analyses of the poststructuralist ethics of the novel, highlighted the recurrent attention to the ethics of reading and its injunctions to respect and to be responsible to the otherness of the text itself. Hale (2007) further noted that on this point poststructuralist and humanist ethics, including the rhetorical ethics of Booth, have much in common. 28Humanist ethics acknowledges otherness as important for ethical engagements with narrative, but it emphasizes the benefits of connecting across difference. Booths The Company We Keep (1988) and Nussbaums Loves Knowledge (1990) were foundational texts for humanist ethics. While neither earned universal acclaim, together they moved ethics to a prominent place in narrative theory and prepared the way for Newtons claim in Narrative Ethics (1995) that the two domains are inseparable. 29To appreciate Booths reflections on ethics and literature, it is helpful to start with his work on the rhetoric of fiction ([1961] 1983). Booth initially focused on the efficacy of overt authorial rhetoric in the novel, arguing that such rhetoric cannot be judged by a priori aesthetic dicta such as true art ignores the audience. Instead, it needs to be assessed according to its effectiveness in advancing the larger purposes of its authors construction. In developing this case, Booth reached two broader conclusions. (1) Since an authors use of any technique has effects on the novels audience, the author cannot choose whether or not to employ rhetoric but only which kind of rhetoric to employ. (2) The effects of rhetoric on the audience include cognitive, aesthetic, affective, and ethical ones, often in close interaction with one another. In a chapter on the ethics of the telling entitled The Morality of Impersonal Narration (Booth [1961] 1983: 37798), Booth noted that Jamesian center-of-consciousness narration and unreliable character narration tend to generate sympathy, even when used in the representation of ethically deficient characters. As a result, Booth pointed out, these rhetorical choices may lead readers to overlook those deficiencies. The upshot of the chapter is not to condemn these techniques, but rather to strike a cautionary note about their

ethical effects. 30In the Afterword to the second edition of The Rhetoric of Fiction ([1961] 1983), Booth expressed some dissatisfaction with this argument, in part because he had let his personal moral commitments influence his rhetorical analyses. Later, Booth (1988) returned to his earlier conclusions and incorporated them into a more explicit discussion of ethics as an integral component of rhetoric. He employed the metaphor of books as friends to convey his view of the ethics of reading. Exploring this metaphor, Booth emphasized three key points: (1) friends are of different kindssome are good for us and some arentand their effects on the individual may vary depending on when, where, and why they are encountered; (2) many of these effects follow from the ways in which these friends guide ones trajectory of desires; (3) one of the key functions of narrative fiction is to expand readers experiences as they follow these trajectories of desire. Booth offers numerous exemplifications of these principles, most notably in extended analyses of ethical virtues and deficiencies in the telling and told of Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel and Twains Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 31Where Booths work arose out of a tradition of literary criticism, Nussbaums arose out of an effort to revise a tradition of philosophical inquiry into ethics. And where Booth was influenced by Aristotles way of thinking about parts in relation to wholes, Nussbaum, a classicist and a philosopher, was influenced by his discussions of ethics. She noted that ethics is that branch of philosophy concerned with Aristotles question of what the good life consists of, but she was dissatisfied with the ways analytic philosophy approached that question. Its style of reasoning, she argued, created a disconnect between its form and its content: how can one adequately discuss, say, an ethical struggle arising out of being in love through the abstractions of analytic philosophy? Novels, by contrast, seek to fit content to form (and vice versa), i.e. to set up mutually reinforcing relations between the ethics of the told and the ethics of the telling. As a result, novels conduct ethical inquiry in ways that are superior to those of analytic philosophy. More specifically, novels explore the concrete particularity of ethical dilemmas faced by fully realized characters, and those explorations harness the cognitive power of the emotions. Nussbaum (1997, 2000) later went on to make a case for the value of the ethical engagements offered by novel reading when we turn to matters of public policy and to widen her scope to basic issues of human rights.

32Newton represents something of a hybrid between Booth and Nussbaum, even as he has some affinities with poststructuralist ethics. Like Booth, he has a sophisticated, fine-grained narratological understanding of narrative fiction, but rather than consider narrative as rhetoric with ethics forming an integral part of that conception, he views narrative as ethics. Like Nussbaum, he grounds his view of ethics in work by other thinkers, particularly Baxtin, Cavell, and Levinas. From Baxtin ([1986] 1993), he borrows the concept of vivanie, or live-entering (empathy with the Other without loss of self); from Cavell (1979), the concept of acknowledging (being in a position of having to respond); and from Levinas ([1974] 1981, [1979] 1987) the concepts of the Said (the told), Saying (performing a telling) and Facing (looking at or looking away). Newton (1995: 11) describes his project as the investigation of the ethical consequences of narrating story and fictionalizing person, and the reciprocal claims binding teller, listener, witness, and reader in that process. He uses his triumvirate of thinkers to good effect as he offers thoughtful, nuanced analyses of the interrelations of the ethics of the telling and the ethics of the told in fiction by Dickens, Conrad, James, Ishiguro, and others. Like Nussbaum, Newton (1998, 2001, 2005) has gone on to expand and develop his approach in later books, and in an essay on teaching narrative theory (2010), he revisits his conception of narrative as ethics by developing the metaphor that narrative and ethics haunt each other. 33Altieri (2003) has objected to what he sees as the excessively rational basis of Booths and especially of Nussbaums ethics. He has thus argued for a mode that can do better justice to what he calls the particulars of rapture, a mode of reading analogous to the sublime, in which affect overpowers rational judgment. Keen (2007, 2011 ed.) has offered another important contribution to work on the relation between affect and ethics (Keen Narrative Empathy). 34Phelan (2005, 2007, 2013) has sought to extend, clarify, and refine Booths work on the integral connection between rhetoric and ethics by highlighting the significance and centrality of ethical judgments in the experience of reading narrative. Phelan argued that, given the variety of ethical thought on display in the worlds narratives, it is valuable to do rhetorical ethics not only from the outside in, as Nussbaum and Newton do, but also from the inside out. That is, rather than privilege the ethical systems of one or more thinkers, the analyst can seek to uncover the ethical values underlying the specific rhetorical exchanges of a particular narrative. As part of his work on unreliable character narration, Phelan has put forth the idea that its ethical consequences can have effects ranging along a spectrum from bonding (Huck Finns naivet leads him to be ethically unreliable in a way that increases the readers sympathy for him) to estranging (Jason Compsons selfishness and pride lead to negative readerly judgments). Phelan (2011) has extended this work on the ethics of unreliability by examining the ethics of deficient narration, i.e. narration that authors signal as reliable but readers find off-kilter, such as Huck Finns narration in much of the Evasion section of Twains novel.

Ethics and the Narrative Identity Thesis

35Questions about the ethics of writing/composing have extended beyond the domain of literary narrative to the domain of identity (Bamberg Identity and Narration). Many philosophers and psychologists (e.g., MacIntyre [1981], Bruner [1987], and Schechtman [1997]) have advanced the view that conceiving of ones life as a narrative is essential to having a self. As Strawson (2004) pointed out in an essay contesting this thesis about narrative identity, the view has both a descriptive psychological component (this is how human beings experience their lives) and a normative ethical component (having a narrative identity enables one to live a better life). Strawson rejected both components of the narrative identity thesis. Although he did not deny that some people experience their lives as narratives, he disputed that all (or even most) people do. Citing his own experience, he distinguished between Diachronics (those who do experience their lives as narratives) and Episodics (those who do not). He objected even more strongly to the ethical component of the narrative identity thesis, arguing that (1) having a narrative of ones life often entails distorting the past and thus taking one further away from accurate self-understanding and (2) that one can live ethically without having a narrative of ones life. 36Strawsons argument did not lead to a wholesale rejection of the narrative identity thesis, and indeed some commentators found fault with his reasoning (Battersby 2006). But both the thesis and Strawsons effort to debunk it point to the high stakes of questions about narrative ethics.

Topics for Further Investigation

37Altieris objections to Booth and Nussbaum indicate that the interrelations between the affective and ethical dimensions of reading deserve further examination. Hales (2007, 2009) work indicates that those doing poststructuralist ethics and those doing humanist ethics could learn from each other without giving up their distinctive projects. The similarities and differences among the ethical dimensions of narrative in different media are also worthy of further study. (For some valuable initial work in this area on film narrative, see Richter 2005, 2007.) Ethics in lifewriting (Eakin 2004), in medical narrative (Charon 2006), in legal narrative (Brooks 2001), and in other domains involved in the narrative turn also deserve further investigation. More generally, as the recent collection Narrative Ethics (Lothe & Hawthorn 2013) indicates, because the domains of narrative and ethics are themselves so vast and their interactions so varied, we can expect that exploration of their intersections will continue to excite much debate and to yield rich results.

4. Discuss the implications of the following quotation: questions of what is known in a given narrative, who by, about whom or what, from what perspective, articulated in what terms, qualified in what manner, all appear as questions with an ethical bearing. (Gibson, 54) From Leavis to Levinas With postmodernity, then, epistemology presses forward as, if not the defining instance of a narrative ethics, at least intimately connected with one. Questions of narratives as modes of knowledge, better, as expressions, even simulacra of modes of knowledge; questions of what is 'known' in a given narrative, who by, about whom or what, from what perspective, articulated in what terms, qualified in what manner, all appear as questions with an ethical bearing. That bearing was largely ignored by a modern theory and criticism of the novel which simply took for granted the meaning and point of the terms like 'omniscience', 'focalization', 'reliability' or 'unreliability' in narration, and so on, as if, at some level, at least, it were self-evident that a stratum of objectivity or given truth could be attriuted to a novel, as if questions of prior determination and therefore of the reduction of and exteriority were not involved. This indifference to the epistemological question in its full scope, along with an indifference to the implications of the linguistic turn for novel theory, were what marked out modern criticism of fiction as specifically modern. But there is a third, related feature which distinguishes a modern from a postmodern theory of fiction. Modern criticism was of course reluctant to problematize the mimetic premise, or problematized it only within certain limits. Of all the unexamined assumptions on the basis of which a traditional ethical criticism of fiction proceeded, one of the most crucial was the assumption that, in fiction, ethics and repreentation are inseparable. Such an assumption makes it impossible for a novel to have an ethical dimension outside its mimetic project. In effect, ethics always appears in a relation between two planes: the plane on which representation takes place, whether understood as the author's, narrator's, reader's or culture's, or a mixture of them; and the plane of the represented. The work of fiction will not be articulated as itself a mode of relation or negotiation. In this account, ethics cannot subsist in a novel other than in relation to the 'world' depicted, a world determined as single and unitary. It is of course the characters who 'inhabit' that world, understood as clearly defined and represented entitites, that are chiefly important. Hence, for example, the dearth, even now, of ethical readings of Beckett's work, where such entitties cannot be imagined to exist, where discourse supervenes upon and destabilizes representation, and where the ethics in question may effectively be considered as a discursive ethics. The issue is one that needs to be addressed on a variety of different levels in a variety of different kinds of text. At the same time, we cannot simply move beyond an ethics tied to the mimetic premise, decisively, all at once. For the mimetic premise is so much a part of our inheritance that an ethics of fiction that sought comprehensively to set it aside would find it immediately reappearing, if only as the necessary point of reference for the new departure. The point is to think the ethical interinvolvement of representation and anti-representationalism, to locate an ethics in their complex interdependences, their engagements, collusions, struggles with one another. Heart of Darkness, for instance, is a predominantly representational text that obstinately insists on the limits to representation and insistively dwells on the significance of those limits. As far as Conrad's text is concerned, the question is: what is the meaning, in a representational text with obviously ethical concerns, of a kind of faltering or failing of its representational project, and does not that faltering or failing recast its ethics far more radically than has often been thought?

5. Comment on the issue of postmodernism and truth. Substantiate your answer with examples from Atonement. Atonement, postmodernism, and questions of truth Ian McEwen's Atonement, like many postmodern novels, questions whether there is a single reality, or many different versions of reality depending on our point of view, and the stories we create to give our lives meaning. Here's a passage which asks the big questions: Was everyone else really as alive as she was? For example, did her sister really matter to herself, was she as valuable to herself as Briony was? Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? Did her sister also have a real self concealed behind a breaking wave, and did she spend time thinking about it, with a finger held up to her face. Did everybody, including her father, Betty, Hardman? If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance. But if the answer was no, then Briony was surrounded by machines, intelligent and pleasant enough on the outside, but lacking the bright and private inside feeling she had. This was sinister and lonely, as well as unlikely. For, though it offended her sense of order, she knew it was overwhelmingly probably that everyone else had thoughts like hers. (pp. 35-6) The moral role of the storyteller is not to describe the battle between good and evil, but to show that every character, every person, has their own perception of reality, their inner story to tell, each as valid and valuable as any other: She could write the scene three times over, from three points of view; her excitement was in the prospect of freedom, of being delivered from the cumbrous struggle between good and bead, heroes and villains. None of these three was bad, nor were they particularly good. She need not judge. There did not have to be a moral. She need only show separate minds, as alive as her own, struggling with the idea that other minds were equally alive. It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value. That was the only moral a story need have. (p.40) And of course, if there is no over-arching narrative, no ultimate reality to which we have access, there are as many versions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, as there are people. Postmodernism undermines the false confidence that we can have a single morality or truth without God. And what of "atonement?" How is it won? I won't give away the story by explaining how. Suffice to say that it is, unsurprisingly, through story. As is our own. For our atonement was won through the supreme Story of God become man, the Word clothed in human flesh, giving up his life that we might live. But unlike postmodernism, not one of many stories, but the Story; not one of many truths, but the Truth.