Voyeurism and Reading: Narrative Strategy in Anthony Powell's

Home , Anthony Powell

Voyeurism and Reading: Narrative Strategy in Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time submitted by Alexis Thomson English Department McGill University Montreal July 1991

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. @)Alexis Thomson

i ASSTRACT

This thesis will argrue that Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of rime is a work that can tell us much about our reading process. Powell uses a homodiegetic narrator to tell the stories of a vast array of characters over a large span of time. This narrator, Nicholas Jenkins, is, in the non sexual sense of the word, voyeuristic. He watches and remembers the actions of others while only participating minimally. Widmerpool, the oIlly other character to appear in aIl twelve volumes, is a voyeur in the sexual sense of the

word. The defining faat~re of voyeurism is its fundamental asymmetry: the voyeur watches whilst remaining hidden and unseen. It will be argued that the reader is also involved in acts of voyeurism due to his/her asymmetrical relationship w th the text. Although this equation of voyeurism and reading may seem to contradict recenl reader-response critics, it will be argued that voyeurism is an apt description for the primary stage of reading.

(

ü RESUME

La présente thèse soutient que A Dance to the Music of

Time d'Anthony Powell est une oeuvre qui nous aide à comprendre le processus de lecture. Powell se sert d'un narrateur hcmodipgetique qui raconte les vies d'une multitude de personnages pendant une periode de plusiers années. Ce narrateur est un voyeur dans le sens non-sexuel du terme. Il observe et il se renlémore les actions des autres personnages en ne prennant pas que très peu à l'action. Widmerpool, le seul autre personnage à apparaître dans les douze volumes est un voyeur dans le sens sexuel du mot. Il est proposé que le lecteur est aussi un voyeur à son tour due à sa relation inévitable avec le texte. Même si la relation ~ntre le voyeurisme et la lecture semble contredire les récents critiques litteraires "reader-response", cette thèse soutient toute fois que le voyeurisme illuste correctement le processus du lecture.

üi TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... " ... ii

Resume ...... , .. iii

Table of Contents ...... i v

Acknowledgement ...... v

List of Abbreviations ...... " iv

Introduction ...... • .. ,,1

Chapter 1 ...... G

Chapter 2 ...... 2:\

Chapter 3 ...... 49

Chapter 4 ...... 78

Bibliography ...... 109

iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Before l can proceed further it is necessary to thank those who helped me in this endeavour. First and foremost l must thank my advisor Professor Ron Reichertz for his help, patience, wit, and enthusiasm. l would also like to express my gratitude to Professor Paisley Livingston, who helped for mulate my ideas or narratology and reading; my father who

introduced me to the wonderful Music of Time ; and to friends

Chris Forbes and Patrick Ashmore for their thoughts on

Powell. Finally l want to thank Neal Herbert for teaching me

how to use a computer, and to Becky Sandler for translating

my abstracto

v LIST OF ABBREVIATIQNS USED IN THESIS

QU . •••.•.....•...... •...... A Question of Upbringing

BM ...... •...... A Buyer's Market

AW ...... The Acceptance World

LM ...•...... At Lady Molly's

CCR ...... •. Casanova' s Chinese Restaurant

KO . ..••.•...•...••....•...... •• The Ki ndly Ones

VB • .•••••..•.•••..••.....•••..... The Valley of Eones

SA . •••...•.••....••.•...•••.••... The Soldier's Art

MP ••••••••••••••••••••••••• •••••• The Military Philosophers

BFR ....••••.....•...... •...... Books Do Furnish a Roo!!'!

TK ...... • Temporary Ki ngs

HSH ....•...... •...... Hearing Secret Harmonies

KBR • .....•..•..•.•••.•..••.••..• To Keep the BalI Rolling

• 1

INTRODUCTION 2

In this thesis l will focus on the uses and incidents

of voyeurisnl in Anthony powell's A Dance to the Music of

Time. Before any real work can be done, then, it is first

necessary to define voy~urism as it is to be used throughout

this paper. Chambers English Dictionary defines a voyeur as:

one who desires gratification from surreptitiously watching sexual acts as objects: a Peeping Tom: one who takes a morbid interest in sordid sights. (1656)

As one would expect, the psycho-sexual definition again hinges

or the sexual side of voyeurism. In "Voyeurism: A ~eview of

Literature" the definition given to begin the article is "d ( pathological indulgence looking at sorne form of nudity as a source of gratification in place of the normal sex act" (Smith,

586). Powell, however, in his memoirs, definitely defines voy-

eurism as a manner of being, regardless of the pathology or

sexuality of the watcher. He states that there is an

important division of the human race between voyeurs and exhibitionists. In such a crude appointment of temperament (in life rather than sex) l should, for example, grade myself as a voyeur, though say, most of my Oxford contemporaries as exhibitionists. (KBR 4: 79)

Powell's idea, that voyeurism can be either sexual or

non-sexual, is the one used in this thesis. One reason for

this is that literary criticism does seem to have accepted

the non-sexual sense of the word "voyeurism" over the last

fort y years. For example, Phyllis Greenacre's bvok, Swift and l 3

Carroll, uses the word "voyeurism" in an attempt to define

Alice's general relationship with Wonderland. Furthermore,

Joel Rudinow claims that in the "voyeuristic project" the

"crux is neither the visual nor the sexual, but asymmét-ry:"

The voyeur seeks a spectacle, the revelation of the object of his interest, that something or someone should be 0pt:n to his inspection and contemplation; but no reciprocal revelation or openness is con ceded, for the voyeur requires; at the same time to remain hidden. (176)

"Voyeurism" is an accepted word in the literary community to describe the idea of excessive watching. Perhaps the real problem is that no other synonym can be found: "spying" has too many political connotations, and "watching" remains too nebulous and common an occurrence. At the same time, both

"spying" and "watching" do have a fair amount of importance in

The Music of Time. Widmerpool's intrigues and Trapnel's assertion that the novelist i~ like the spy (BFR 243) are examples of political voyeurism. Sight and watching are also privileged in the work: one of Dr. Trelawney's famous axioms is "The Vision of Visions Heals the Blindness of Sight"(KO

67) .

The Music of Time is a work which helps open this idea of voyeurism up, as it contrasts two thorough-going voyeurs,

Nicholas Jenkins, and Kenneth Widmerpool. Of the two, Wid- merpool is far more obviously a sexual voyeur. In the eleventh volume, Temporary Kings, Pamela, his wife, openly accuses him of "watching through the curtain," while she is 4

"being screwed"(TK 266). However, Jenkins is also a voyeur,

although, generally in the non-sexual sense of the word. His

narrative stance emphasizes his interest in the lives of

others, at the expense of self-revelation. As he controls

the narrative voice, he is able to "remain hidden", as Rudi-

now says, fram the reader, while observing the actions of

others. Jenkins continually tells us about the lives of those

around him, while often remaining silent about his own place

in the action. His continual passivity, but acute observa-

tions stress his asymmetrical relationship to those around

him. Jenkins' narrative stance down plays his own desires,

needs, and life, while focusing on his external reality. In

fact, Jenkins, in many ways mirrors the actions of the ( reader: the reader also stands outside the action in reading

the text. The reader, in being in an asymmetrical position,

also is a voyeur.

Theorists such as Roland Barthes have already noted the

parallels between narrative structure and the sexual act.

From this observation jt is just a small step to making the

parallel between reading and voyeuris~. William Gass is one

critic who has made this step and insists that what the

reader wants is "the penetration of privacy" (84) . He also de-

scribes words as "one-way mirrors"(84) which allow the reader

to observe while remaining hidden. And Marriana Torgovnick

specifically sees the reader of The Music of Time as being

implicated in this process of voyeurism. Furthermore, Powell

is not the only novelist to establish this analogue between s reading and voyeurism: Alain Robbe-Grillet, also, on numer ous occasions, accuses the reader of being a voyeur. So, by using the actions of Widmerpo0l and Jenkins, two very differ ent kinds of voyeurs, there will be a refining of the idea of how voyeurism relates to reading. It is possible to see

Jenkins as R parallel reader: just as he observes those around him, the reader observes the text.

And lastly, l will accept the challenge of the reader response critics, most notably Stanley Fish and Wolfgang

Iser, who claim that the reader is inside textuality, and therefore cannot be a voyeur. These critic3 see reading as a process which brings about a subject/ object mergeri if this merger actually happens there can be no asymmetry and no voyeurism. Conversely, l will argue, that reading is not a

single unified acti rather there are three stages of the

reading process -- "reading", "interpretation", and "crit

icism"(Scholes ,1985,20) -- and voyeurism is essential to the

first stage. By seeing how Widmerpool and Jenkins reRd life

differently, both beginning by ob5erving the world around

them, or by being voyeurs, it i5 possible to understand more

clearly how they function in The Music of Time, and how we

function as readers. Essentially, what is to be studied is

the space where The Music of Time intersects with the reader

response critics' thoughts. By looking at Jenkins' voy

euristic narratorial stance and realizing that he is also a

"reader", it is possible to understand the reading process

better. 6

CHAPTER 1

(.. 7 ,.

In this chapter l will examine precedents of voyeuristic narration. AlI three of the novels chosen to be studied have been read by Powell, and in each case there is ample reason

to suspect that they have affected him(KBR). By voyeuristic narration it is meant that a first person narrator tells the story of a tnird party. Interestingly enough, the three works chosen to illuminate Powell's process all come from a differ ent country and a different period of time, showing that nothing is quite as original as one might think. The first of these novels chronologically is Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero

of Our Time. The next work chosen is F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. And lastly this chapter will look at Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Proust will not be examined sinee "Proust's eye is on his narrator's development ('the goal is in my heart' as Swann's Way has it); Powell's is not" (Tucker 4). Proust's narrative stance is not voyeuristic sinee Marcel is intensely introspective.

A Hero of Our Time is a novel which Powell praises very highly. He describes it as an "overwhelming Russian revela tion"(KBR 2:117). In 1928 Powell read Lermontov's book three

times, en ding with the conclusion that "here was a writer,

and a book, in a very high class indeed" (KBR 2:117). What is of particular interest is Powell's almost disparaging doubts about Lermontov's work, after his first reading. Speaking speeifically about the format Powell admits that he could not "understand why this disjointed collection of short stories, ,

( loosely linked only by the appearance of the 'hero' Pechorin -- bored, heartless, Byronic -- should be regarded as one of Russia's seminal works"(KBR 2:117). Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that sorne readers find "The Music of Time lacking in core, and perhaps in impetus: sorne readers feel a

gap, an emptiness, or even a wet~ess, at the centre of the

novel"(Tucker 103). ~his lack of central unit y is a factor in common to both Powell and Lermontov. In Powell's case the lack of a central character accounts for the centrifugality of the work; whereas with Lermontov the lack of any conven tional framework is to be held accountable. The Great Gatsby does not come in for such high praise as that accorded to Lermontov, but at the same time Powell, ( in an indirect manner, does manage to convey an admiration for Fitzgerald. While this fact may seem unremarkable in

itself one might do well to remember the difficulty British and American authors and audiences have in understanding each other -- a difficulty which would have been greater sixt Y years ago -- as well as the low levels to which Fitzgerald's reputation is capable of sinking. Powell confesses that "t'ather surprisingly" even though "The Great Gatsby" was

"published in England in 192f l did not hear of Scott

Fitzgerald until recommended by Connolly six or seven years

later"(KBR 2:111). And later he states that even in 1937 the name of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a novelist was scarcely at all ( known in the United Kingdom"(KBR 3:61). All the same, he describes Fitzgerald ~'3 a "novelist for whom l at once felt r

enthusiasm"(KBR 3:62). In Hollywood in 1937, whilst unsuc-

ce$sfully looking for ~ job as a script-writer, Powell arranged to meet Fitzgerald. Powell describes the American author as "that rare phenomenon, a 'bad' writer who made himself into a 'good' writer," and attributes his loss of popu- larity to the fact that "he had begun to produce immeasurab1y

better novels than his early wo~k"(KBR 3:62).

Brideshead Revisited is a novel which Powell has certainly read, although in his memcirs he fails to praise it: the only mention of Brideshead is when Powell disparages the realism of its picture of Oxford life in the twenties(KBR 1:167). However, there can be no denying certain narrative similarities between Brideshead and The Music of Time. Hum- phrey Carpenter goes as far as to suggest that Brideshead may have served as a model for Powell:

Powell has claimed that a first-person narrator was a necessity in a long sequence, because it would avoid the "artificiality of the invented 'hero', who l speaks for the author." Yet there seems no reason 1 why a first-person narrator should be more or less •t artificial than any other character. The suspicion r ;: arises that Powell chose to narrate in the first r ~ person, in an expansive and reflective manner, ,f because Waugh had done so in Brideshead Revisited > with considerable popular success. (417)

.i~ ~ A Bero of Our Time, Gatsby, and Brideshead all have 1 overt retrospective narratives; in each case the narrator is f~ ~ ~ aware that he is repeatiüg a story which has happened in the t ,i pasto Perhaps this should come as no surprise since the use 1 ~ r of the past tense is symptomatic of almost all novels. What ~ 1 ~ ~ l 10

1 ... is of interest to us here is that aIl three of our narrators are extremely aware of the fact that they are reminiscing. Lermontov's nameless narrator tells the reader as she moves into the section of the book entitled "Pechorin' s Journal":

Not long ago l heard that pechorin had died on his way back from Pe~sia. l was delighted, since it means that l can print his notes, and l readily take this opportunity of putting my own name to somebody else's work. l only hope the reader won't blame me for this innocent deception. (75)

So Pechorin, our hero, the hero of the title, of the time, and of the novel is announced dead before the novel has

reached its midpoint. We read P~chorin's journal, including his most famous adventure, "Princess Mary", weIl cognizant that the great man has finished his lifA in sorne inglorious way: "on the way back from Persia," as our narrator would have it. Similarly, in Gatsby, the title character is dead before the narrative is written. Although the death is not stated explicitly, it is obvious that the story has finished at the time of Carraway's writing. And Carraway is most definitely described as the writer of Gatsby. "Reading over what l have

written 50 far ... "(56). Carraway, like the nameless compila- tor (narrator) of A Hero of Our Time, is fully aWdre of the conclusion of the story. He is in the position of knowing more than the reader, or the character "Carraway". As Genette says: "the narrator almost always knows more than the hero, even if he himself is the hero"(1980,194). While Carraway's •

" .. position is perfectly normal, usually first person narrators use their extra knowledge to their advantage through the use of introspection. That is to say that Carraway naturally knows more about himself than we do; however, in these instances of retrospective voyeuristic narration the narrator knows more about others than the reader. In fact, ta a large degree this is the point of this kind of story: the narrator tells us, "1 witnessed something quite remarkable, and 1 must tell you aIl about it ... "

This is also the case in Brideshead. Set inside a framework, Ryder's present, like Carraway's, begins and ends the novel. In the army, during the second world war, Ryder, as the title explains, revisits the old home of friends of his: "Yes Hooper ... I've been here before" (21) . Ryder confesses that these words "seemed to ring me back enriched from the vaults of my dungeon"(21). And in terms of the novel these words quite literally do recall Ryder back to a previous time. The flimsy frame ends and suddenly we have made the

great leap of tWènty years back in time:

"1 have been here before, " 1 said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were white with fool's-parsley and meadowsweet and the air heavy with aIl the scents of summer; it was a day of particular splendour, such as our climate affords once or twice a year, when leaf and flower and bird and sun-lit stone and shadow seemall to proclaim the glory of God: and though 1 had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this my lat est. (25) 12

( This opening technique, perhaps best described as Proustian, is not necessarily new in itself. However, Ryder, like Car- raway, remembers his past through others, and not specifically through himself. To step back briefly, now it is possible to see what this device of retrospective voyeuristic narration does. By having a narrator who is also a character in the novel describe the life of a third party, the reader is introduced

to a polarity of e~perience. There is, firstly, the narrator and his world, and secondly, the character and his world. It is not nece5sary that these two worlds are mutually exclu- sive, nor i5 it at aIl likely that they are; however, it must be remembered that they are very different. The two poles of ( content are added to the first binarism of tirne. The narrator

is narrating in the present, events of the pasto These two binarisms add to the centrifugaI nature of the novels. Lermontov's narrator meets pechorin only once and their

exchange is banal and short:

"If you'd care to wait a litt le longer you'll have the pleasure of meeting an old friend." "Ah, that's right," he answered hastily. "1 was told about him yesterday. But where is he?" (69)

This relationship of narrator to subject is essential, and yet handled very differently by each of our authors. Carra- way, like Lerrnontov's narrator, has a strong admiration for the titular subject of his book, but he is much closer to ( Gatsby. He, in fdct, feels that he is the only one who can 13

truly understand Gatsby. Eis almost solitary attendance at Gatsby's funeral is but one example of this feeling. rurther- more, his description of his attendance at a party at Gatsby's house is an explicit statement of how he differs from the majority of society:

l believe that on the first night 1 went to Gatsby's house I was Olle of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited -- they went there. (41)

In fact, Gatsby turns into the story of Carraway's quest to

know and understand Gatsby. Carra~ay feels the need to jus- tif Y his interest in Gatsby: but he also feels compelled to record the misunderstood life of the romantic parvenu. He "found" himself "on Gatsby' s side and alone" (165). He then states that "it grew upon me that l was responsible, because no one else was interested -- interested, I mean, with that

intense personal interest to which everyone has sorne vague

right at the end" (165). Both Gatsby and A Hero of Our Time

have something in common with Heart of Darkness: a narrative

quest to discover the romantic hero, the outsider, someone who has seen so clearly "the horror", or even the glory.

Brideshead clearly branches from this search for the romantic hero, although early in the novel it often appears that Sebastian may become sorne type of malignant anti-hero. As the focal character he is supplanted by his sister Julia, although this description states the case far too clearly. - The rather ubiquitous Anthony Blanche, somewhat like a Shake- 14

spea~ian fool, has the wittiest and most meaningful descriptions of the novel's subject matter. His thumbnail sketches of the Marchmain family are only the first indications of the book's true subject. He describes the family as follows:

l forget if you know his family. Now the~e my dear is the subject for the poet -- for the poet of the future who must be also a psychoanalyst and perhaps a diabolist, too .... They're all charming, of course, and quite, quit~ gruesome .... There's Brideshead ... a learned bigot, a ceremonious barbarian, a snrwbound lama .... Well anything you like. But not Julia, oh not Lady Julia. She is one thing only, Renaissance Tragedy .... There's another sister, too, l believe, in the schoolroom. Nothing is known of her yet except that her governess went mad and drowned her self not long ago. l'm sure she's abominable. So you see there was really very little for poor Sebastian to do except be sweet and charming. lt's when one gets to the parents that a bottomless pit opens. (54-5)

In the penultimate chapter of ':he novel an exchange between Cordelia, the yOllnger daughter, and Ryder, shows the exact truth of Blanche·s words:

"l once had a governess who jumped off this bridge dnd drowned herself." "Yes, l know." "How could you know?" "It was the first thing l ever heard about you - before l ever met you."(280)

It is obvious Ryder is directing the reader's response: we

too should realise that Blanche has the vision to cut through the beauty of the Marchmains and see the truth. The novel itself is the testament of Ryder re-reading life and accept-

" ing Blanche's opinions. ... Blanche's description of Ryder is, for this reason, of 15

the utmost importance, and reveals how the reader is to view the narrator. Blanche states:

You see, my dear Charles, you are that very rare thing, An Artist .... r have seen those little draw ings you keep hidden away ln your room. They are exquisite. And you, dear Charles, if you will under stand me, are not exquisite; but not at all. Artists are not exquisjte. r am; Sebastian, in a kind of way, is exquisite; but the Artist is an eternal type, solid, purposeful, observant -- and, beneath it all, p-p-passionate, eh, Charles? (53)

Ryder is, as Blanche notes, "observant" but not "exquisite". Sebastian also notes Ryder's powers of observation, going so far as to call him a spy: "You're spying on me for my mother ... tell her from me that 1'11 choose my friends and she her spies in the future" (124). X. Trapnel of The Music of Time "says there's a resemblance between what a spy does and what

a novelist does" (BFR 229). And Ryder, as far as his self-(:on- scious narration goes, his overt reflective stance, would have us believe that he is writing Brideshead. This question

of spying definitely ties in with voyeurism. It is not an attempt to directly link the narrator to the author, but it

must be remembered that one of the effects of this type of retrospective narrative is to have the narrator claim to be writing the story himself. One final aspect of Ryder's focus on the Marchmain family that must be noted is his love for Sebastian and Julia. Of aIl the family members they are the primary focus of the .. novel. Book One, "Et in Arcadia Ego", and Book Two, liA Twitch Upon the Thread" are divided in one sense, as the displace- 16 ment of Ryder's love from Sebastian to Julia. But what makes this displacement aIl the more unified is the acute physical resemblance between the siblings. Ryder's description of Julia stresses the proximity of appearance and mannerism of the siblings: "I recognized her at once. I could not have failed to," "her voice was Sebastian's and his her way of speaking;" and finally, "she so much resembled Sebastian that, sitting beside her in the gathering dusk, I was confused by the double illusion of familiarity and strange- ness"(73). This question of family similarity brings Brides- head to have a tighter unit y than may at first appear. The similar final fate of the family members, the "twitch upon the thread" as Waugh would have it, furthe.c emphasizes this unity. This question of inner unit y is stressed because it demonstrates how each author has employed retrospective voyeuristic narrative to focus upon a character, or characters, of transcendent proportion. The protagonist(s) is what holds the book together. There can be no doubt of Waugh's admiration of the Catholicism of the Marchmains; nor of Fitzger- ald's for the romanticism oi Gatsby; nor of Lermontov's for the Byronism of pechorin. However, having the tale ii\ediated thro1.lgh a first person narrator may well question the worth of the experience of the protagonist. The question that must be asked is why each tdle is told from a point once removed from the protagonist. Why does the reader find a fi.cst person, or homodiegetic narrator? One rather banal answer to this question is that a homo- l 17

diegetic narrator, or a narrator who is also a character, is a more realistic narrator. That is to say that we perceive reality from the first person, and not from a third-person, or cinematic view. Subjectivity is the only way we can know the world, and therefore it is possible that it is the way these authors chose to portray it. AIso, when the narrator claims to actually be writing the novel another layer of realism is added: there is actually an explanation of how the book comes to be written. But ta do the question more justice it i8 possible to look at what the "I" in a story does. What the narrator does is to present a weltanschauung different from the protagonist's. Although this can be done by a subtle third person narrator, or \ihat Booth calls the "implied author" (71-6) it follows much more naturally from a first person narrator. And in our stories there i5 a dichotomy set up between the narrator and the protagoniste Generally the protagonist is an outsider whose views can only be glimpsed through the veil of societal convention. The question of the outsider in the novel is a weIl documented case. In his work called The Outsider, Colin Wilson states:

The Outsider's case against society is very clear. AlI men and women have these dangerous and unname able impulses, yet they keep up a pretense, to them selves, to others; their respectability, their phil osophy, their religion, are aIl attempts to gloss over, to make look civilized and rational somethjng that is savage, unorganized, irrational. He is an -- Outsider because he stands for Truth. (23) 18

Our narrators aIl search for "Truth", but none can find it except in the figure of the protagonist who is the true out sider. Our narrators are far more tied to conventional soci etaI norms than the romantic protagonists of the novels. One advantage of having a homodiegetic narrator is precisely so the novelist can leave gaps in the novel. With a homodiegetic narrator the author is excused from the difficult task of stating what this capital "T" Truth is. The reader can only see the shadows of it. Lermontov's narrator is dull even ln comparison to Maxim Maximych, the friend whom pechorin snubs so mercilessly in passing. The narrator is enchanted by Maxim, the frontier soldier, and prods, "You must have had lots of adventures?" (25). since he knew these old "Caucasian veterans liked to spin a yarn" (26). Carraway, similarly, is morally inferior to Gatsby, and although he learns a great deal and is a

changed man in the framework, for the duration of the story itself, he lacks Gatsby's active strength. Continually Car raway is shepherded around by people he can barely stand. Tom convinces him to visit Catherine, Myrtle Wilson's sister, against his better judgement. His movements are constantly

curtailed by his compallions: "The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into that room eludes me" (126); "At this point Jordan and l tried to go, but Tom and Gatsby insisted with competitive firrnness that we remain" (131); and "Jordan and l were pushed suddenly inside"(139). This constantly passive attitude makes Carraway's physical

- 19 return to the West aIl the more important a move. Ryder's inferiority to the Marchmains is almost purely religious in base. His unabashed melancholy and sentimentality speak vol- urnes for what he lacks compared to the novel's Catholics. Whilst the Marchmains aIl suffer from angst too, they at least have the Kingdom of Heaven to fall back upon in death. This fact is brought home to Ryder when Lord Marchmain dies:

Lord Marchmain made the sign of the cross. Then l knew that the sign l had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition. (307)

This scene convinces Julia that now she can never live with Ryder; never, in fact, see him again. It may also convert the avowed agnostic Ryder. We do weIl to rernember the first sentence of Book One, in which aIl of nature proclaims "the glory of God" (25) . In aIl three cases the narrator has a glimpse at the

"Truth" of the outsider, and this is what drives the narrative. pechorin's badness is glorified by the narrator: "You will say that no man can be so bad, and l will ask you why, after accepting aIl the villains of tragedy and romance you refuse to believe in pechorin" (19-20) . Gatsby's romanticism is what drives Carraway:

Gatsby turned out aIl right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what fouI dust floated in the wake of his dreams that ternporarily closed out rny inter est in the abortive sorrows and short-winded ela tiens of men. (2)

And it is the Marchrnains' Catholicism, an aberration of great 20

historical importance in England, and of personal importance to Waugh, which drives Ryder. And this glimpse at "Truth" puts the narrator in as a middle term between society on the one hand, and the outsider on the other; between the reader and the protagonist.

In The Music of Time the question of the dichotomy between the narrator and protagonist is compounded by the fact that no protagonist emerges. This lack of a protagonist, whilst hardly conventional, is far from unheard of; but in Powell's case it does beg the question as to what holds the work together. Consider this: throughout a twelve volume work, with over 500 characters, there is no single character who emerges as the central figure. Nicholas Jer.kins, the nar rator, is an obvious favorite for the role, but he fails to be acceptable due to his inactivity and reticence. Not sur prisingly, at Sir Magnus' dinner party, when each guest is to play one of the Seven Deadly Sins, Nick is the unanimous

choice for Sloth. John Russell points out that when Powell describes John Aubrey as "scarcely counting himself as one of the actors on the stage he was describing eminently elassical tendeneies in himself which his novels bear out"(3). It is not so important to ascertain powell's specifie personality, but the words on Aubrey do weIl to describe Jenkins. Neil Brennan describes

the narrator of The Music of Timei it is "almost as if he ( personified a history of modern science, with mind and ears open to a fault, by a euriosity that is never tempered by 21 boredom" (135) . James Tueker goes so far as to say, "Jenkins is not in any simple sense the hero of the novel. He is an observer more than a participant; much more ... Many first person narrators do this, it is true, but not on the same scale" (109). The scale here is both in the degree of Jenkins' passivity and length of the work. Lynette Felber searches for another charactcr who eould perhaps be perceived as the protagonist. She sees that the only possible alternative to Jenkins is Widmerpool, the awkward megalomaniae. Widmerpool, it is true, is the only eharacter, other than Jenkins, to appear in aIl twelve vol-

urnes of The Music of Time. However, in sorne of the indivldual

volumes, sueh as Casanova's Chinese Restaurant and The Valley

of Bones, his appearances are brief and peripheral. Felber ends with a rather ambivalent attitude to Widmerpool:

It is never evident who (if anyone) will emerge as protagonist, an uncertainty whieh remains unresolved throughout the entire twelve volumes. Widmerpool, who might be regarded as the protagonist (or antago nist) of the roman-fleuve ... is an elusive character, neither hero nor villain. (58)

One might attempt to make a case that Charles Stringham is set up as an early potential protagonist in the work. How- ever, despite the fact that his ghost continues to haunt the pages he is absent from, he stops being a major factor by At

Lady Molly's, the fourth volume. It is best just to aecept,

as Felber does, that this roman-fleuve has no protagonist.

Hopefully this chapter has shown that Powell was not 22

working in a vacuum; that his originality is in degree, not invention. What he may have learned from Waugh, Lermontov, and Fitzgerald was a technique of overtly mediating a story through a first person narrator. Whether he uses this tech nique to the same end, to mediate the view of the outsider, remains to be seen. Certainly many of the major characters of The Music of Time have quirks which separate them from the

common run of humanity: Widmerpool, the clownish man of will, and Stringham, who is somewhat similar to the charming but destructive Sebastian, are but two examples. And yet String ham and Widmel:pool are able to integrate themselves into society for the most part. The Music of Time seerns to take a step away from the capital "T" Truth that Wilson clairns the outsider stands for, in a manner that is syrnpathetic with contemporary skepticism. Interestingly enough, characters as

different as the house-rnaster Le Bas and the industri~l Mogul Sir Magnus both postulate the waxim, "It takes aIl sorts to

make the world" (QU 217,BM 208). It should be obvious at chis stage that relativisrn runs rampant in The Music of Time: the next chapter will show, by looking at narrative technique, how Powell holds this relativism together through twelve volumes.

- 23

CHAPTER 2 24

, t In this chapter l will look at the narrative stance of Nicholas Jenkins in The Music of Time. Firstly, l will argue that Jenkins' refusaI ta become the hero and accept centre stage in the story he tells has a powerful decentralizing effect. Then it will be demonstrated that despite recent thought in narratology, a first persan narrator does indeed affect the story. Lastly, there will be a few brief examples of other techniques Powell uses to decentralize the story. At this point there will be a summary of aIl these decentralizing techniques. From here it will be shown why in fact the narrative does succeed, and how Powell manages to retain a loose unit y throughout the work. One of the problems inherent in this chapter is that it has to justify itself in its use of the terms "first" and "third person narrators". Current critical opinion holds that these concepts are more meaningless and confusing than actually helpful. So apart from the analysis of Jenkins and his stance there will also be brief forays into the realm of nar- ratolo?y. Other concepts that also need explanation, and are explained in the course of the chapter are the idea of the hero and the idea that unit y is a necessary aesthetic value in the novel.

The hero, although not necessary in a novel, is nevertheless a concept that is far more firmly rooted in contemporary ideas of it than is thought at first. AlI novels have ( characters, whether these are anthropomorphic animaIs, androids, or the proverbial person next door. Mieke Bal 25

states the case clearly: "Characters resemble people. Lit- erature is written by, for, and about people. That remains a truism, sa banal that we often tend ta forget it, and 50 problematic that we often repress it with the same ease"(80). Given that characters do exist, resembling people, it is easy to note how often one character dominates a novel. This character is often called the "hero"of the work, or less con- notatively, the "protagonist". The fact remains that the majority of novels do have heroes of one kind or another, and even contemporary narrative critics are willing to deal, ta a certain extent, on this level. Genette refers ta Proust's Marcel as the "hero" of his story. Bakhtin in Problems of Dostoevski's Poetics entitles his second chapter, "The Hero in Dostoevski".And Mieke Bal, bravest of all, takes the time ta grapple with what this word "hero" actually means:

If the title of the hero or his or her explicit denomination does not clinch a decision, we can try to discover whether any one character distinguishes itself from the other characters in the following ways:

qualification: comprehensive information about appearance, psychology, motivation, pasto distribution: the hero occurs often in the story, his or her presence is felt at important moments in the fabula. independence: the hero can appear alone or hold monologues. function: certain actions are those of the hero alone: s/he makes agreements, vanquishes opponents, unmasks traitors etc. relations: s/he maintains relations with the largest number of characters.

A distinction should be made how~ver, between the active successful hero, the hero-victim, and the passive anti-hero .... The anti-hero will hardly dis- 26

tinguish him or herself by function, because s/he is passive. S/he will, however meet aIl of the other four criteria. (93)

There is no character in The Music of Time who fits these criteria. Furthermore, due to the limitations of first person narration, the narrator as character is privileged to the degree that it is almost impossible for her not to be the hero, by Bal's definition. The narrator as charact.er will almost always distinguish herself in "distribution" and "independence". Also, in the question of "qualification", the narrator as character has a great advantage; it is easiest to explain "psychology" and "motivation", internaI functions,

from a perspective inside the character. In a first person novel the implicit limitation is that the narrator as character is the only character whose psyche the reader can see directly, or see through. To return briefly to the works discussed earlier, one does weIl to understand that what Lermontov, Fitzgerald, and Waugh did was to allow their narrators to be privileged in

the case of "distribution", but te try to give the other heroic qualities te the novels' protagonists. Certainly, we witness Gatsby, actually for the first time, standing alone, looking across the water (42). We read Pechorin's journal, and thereby have an embedded and unmediated vision of him. Ne have embedded narratives of Sebastian in North Africa, from

different sources, in Brideshead. In this manner, by using ( voyeurism, the leoking at another's life, aIl three authors were able to escape the first person narrative stance which 2',

implies that the narrator be the hero,

In The Music of Time Nick certainly distinguishes him-

self from other characters through "distribution" and "rela-

tions", but where he truly fails to qualify as "hero" is in

"qualification". Jenkins' appearance, psychology, and moti-

vation are in many cases withheld from the reader. One way

Powell achieves this withholding of "qualification" is in his

use of direct speech. Jenkins rarely has many long speeches

and often plays the role of questioner. For exam?le, as he

and Bracey watch a soldier with a bandaged hand walk between

two MPs Jenkins assails his father's servant with this bar-

rage:

"Who are they?" "Prisoner and escort." "What are they doing?" "Exercising a bloke under arrest." "What's he done?" "Chopped off his trigger finger." "By accident?" "Course not." "How then?" "with a bill." "On purpose?" "You bet." "Whatever for?" (KO 28)

This exchange continues in much the same vein for several

more lines. My point is that absolutely nothing i~ learned of

Nick. One can, of course, infer that he is extremely curious,

innocent, and young, but beyond that his speech tells us lit-

tle. When the shoe is on the other foot, which happens far - less frequently, and Nick is being questioned, we find his responses aga in tell us little. Bob Duport, someone Nick has 28

.. met once before, and disliked, tries to find out what kind of a man Jenkins is, but meets with resistance. Duport, knowing the bartender at a seaside tavern, offers to set Jenkins up "with a girl." Jenkins responds:

"Not tonight." "Why not?" "Not in the mood." "Sure? " "Certain. " "Dop't make a decision you'll regret later." "I won' t . " "Do you play poker?" "Not a great hand at it." "Bores you?" "Never seem to hold a card." "Golf?" "No."(KO 174)

In this passage we learn more about Jenkins than in the previous one, but again much is being withheld. Jenkins does not play golf, and does not want a girl that particular night:

that is all that is definitely stated. His other answers~ while they serve to define him negatively also refuse to define him positively. For example, he does not want a girl that particular night, but refuses to state explicitly that he is faithful to his wife. The majority of readers of The Music of Time may well feel that Nick is faithful to his wife, but this fa ct is an inference. Nick is very cagey and refuses to make specifie statements about his own life. In

this particular conversation he aggressively ~uts up a screen. Jenkins tends te keep his direct discourse curt, but he also often uses his narratorial position to respond to direct 29

discourse indirectly. While others are allowed their say in full, and in their own veiees, Jenkins cuts his remarks off and summarizes them, 50 as to diminish the effeet of his presence. An example of this technique is when Jenkins is applying for a post as a liaison offieer with the Free French, he is asked about his military past:

"What have you been doing s~nee you joined the army?" Reduced to narrative forro, my military career up to date did not sound partieularly impres sive. (SA 94)

Jenkins' answer, his tone, even, perhaps, the hint of desire in his voiee are all lost to us because he withholds his direct speech from us. Also, the reader has gone through almost 400 pages of Jenkins' military career at this stage. But still we know little of his actual duties: we have seen him with Gwatkin and Kedward, on leave with his family, watching Bithel's st range dance, and re-meeting his old friend Stringham. The point being, that Jenkins keeps much of his life and actions a mystery through paralepsis. The reader is left to infer, to rnake explicit what the text leaves implicit. Our relationship to Jenkins is very similar to our relationship to the text: to see Jenkins' character we are

forced to infer much about our nar~ator. Sirnilarly, in ail reading, we are forced to infer a great deal; the method of narration forces this realization upon us. Although we can learn rnuch about Nick from his narrative voice there are still innumerable gaps which remain blank for 30

us. The subject of his own marriage is glossed over and never

fully explained or described. Jenkins realizes this, telling

the reader upon first meeting his future wife:

Would it be too explicit, too exaggerated, to say that when l set eyes on Isobel Tolland, l knaw at once that l should marry her? Something like that is the truth; certainly nearer the truth than merely to record those vague inchoate sentiments of interest of which l was so immediately conscious. (LM 137)

perhaps in explanation for this omission, Jenkins later says

of marriage: "Its facts can perhaps only be known by implica-

tian. It is astate from which aIl objectivity has been

removed" (LM 202). In the next volume, Jenkins offhandedly

remarks. "Not long after, perhaps a year, almost equally unexpectedly, l found myself married"(CCR 58). One cannot be more objective than that. But subjectivity is the order of the day. More than once Jenkins almost seems to claim that he

is some hybrid of an unrp.liable narrator. Spea~ing of an

autumn trip to France he comments on the illusion of the blossoms: "What you see conditions feelings, not what is.

For me the country was in blossom"(MP 162). Similarly, Jen-

kins, more than once muses on the problem of knowing anyone:

"One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the

important things about even the people with whom one has been

from time to time in the closest intimacy"(KO 218). Jenkins,

leading us, tends to admit his short-comings as a narrator,

thus throwing us into the position of knowing almost less

with every page. 3 l

If Jenkins repudiates the role of hero, and casts doubt on his qualifications for the job of narrating, there are no other real focal points. We have seen that no other hero appears. We do well to realize that "the problem of the hero has ideological relevance, if only because of the conneta- tions of the very concept" (Bal, 93). Bal is quoted here rnerely to show the extent of Powell's relativisrn. By denying the figures of both the hero and the third person narrator, with its irnpljcations of objectivity, he has truly created a world with very few fixed values. This stance may well be to dernonstrate and irnitate the complexity of life. One last way to look at how The Music of Time differs radically from the rnajority of narratives is to look at Jen- kins' function as a character, and the use of desire. Bal tentatively expounds a theory of narrative in which, in essence, any story can be broken down te the formula "an actor x aspires towards goal y. X is a subject-actant, y an object-actant" (27) . Of this theory, "it is indeed likely that in very rnany if not dll fabulas, a similar scheme can be pointed to"(Bal 27). Furtherrnore:

in sorne fabulas there are actors who have no func tional part in the structures of that fabula because they do not cause or undergo functional events. Actors of this type may be left out of con sideration. (Bal 25)

l would like to try to schernatically analyze The Music of Time on this level. Bal set out her schernatic analysis in the following man- 32

ner. The first three examples are hers, the rest dre mine

(27) :

açtant/subjeçt funçtion açtant/object

Simenon: Maigret wants to know who the murderer is Simenon: the murderer wants to avoid Maigret's discovery Arélbian Nights: Scheherazace wants to pre vent the king's killing her Proust: Marcel wants to become an artist The Music of Time: Jenkins remembers (7) his past QU,i: Stringham wants to rag Le Bas QU,ii: Stripling wants to fool Farebrother QU,iii: Widmerpool wants to reconcile the Scandanavians QU,iv: Stringham wants to go down from Oxford

The noint here is that for the most part Nick has no functional role in any of the minor fabulas, In the first three chapters of A Question of Upbringing he merely observes the ( actions of others. In the fourth he is actively enlisted to help Stringham in his quest to leave Oxford, but his actions are of little or no consequence. One could attempt to re- write the function of these fabulas with Jenkins as the subject/actant, but it would leave the essence of each chapter untouched. It is true that:

QU, 11: Jenkins desires Jean Templer QU, iii: Jenkins desires Suzette

but these statements digress from the main narrative. Nick is not wholly without desire, but his des ire is not central to the main or subsidiary fabulas. The most revealing fact is that in the frame of the ( work, the overall fabula, there is no question of des ire or 33 direction from Jenkins. He remembers, his mind is called back to the past, but at the same time, this is done without any positive action on his part. In the opening section of the frame, only twice does Jenkins refer to himself, and in both cases he is the abject of the sentence:

For sorne reason the sight of snow descending on fire always made me think of the ancient world legionaries in sheepskin warming themselves at a brazier .... (QU 5) Classical associations made me think, too, of days at school, where 50 many forces, hitherto unfamil iar, had become in due course uncompromisingly clear. (QU 6)

~his type of denial of authority, responsibility, even self- determination emphasizes how the reader must view the frame fabula. ls one to revise one's thoughts to state: "The snow (actant/subject) makes Jenkins (actant/object) remember"? Surely, neither the "snow" ner "classical associations" can be held fully responsible for the long chain of memories which is The Music of Time. It is for this reason that the description of the overall fabula already given is "Jenkins rernembers his past." At the sarne tirne it is hoped that it is understood that this act of memory is weIl outside the conventional realm of desire in the fabula. The problem of desire in The Music of Time has been noted before, specifically by Lynette Felber in her article "A Text of Arrested Desire". She speaks mostly about metaphors linking narrative to the sexual act, and less about Nick's actual character(576). AlI the same her conclusion is 34

relatively similar to the one expounded here:

The cumulative effect [of the work] is that of inconclusiveness: the sequence of prototypes sub verts resolution, tantalizing the reader with the ambiguous possibility of either another example or the long awaited termination of the sequence. The narrative progression of the roman-fleuve is char acterized as much by frustrated des ire for a cli mactic outcome as by frustrated curiosity about that eventuality. The same pattern of frustration is present in the individual volumes: each purports to offer a conclusion only to be undermined by the appearance of a new volume. (582)

Felber is also aware of Jenkins' evasiveness and "lack of

participation as a character and his inability as a narrator

to arrive at conclusions" (584). Neatly, she points out that

"in Poussin's painting the circle is empty at the centre; it

( ha~ no hub, and Jenkins at the centre of The Music of Time

may lack the force of personality to centre the narrative"

(584).

The fact that many read and enjoy The Music of Time

seems to suggest that many of Felber's descriptions of the

narrative which use harshly connotative words should be

tempered slightly. However, leaving these strictly aesthetic

questions aside, one aspect of desire which Felber leaves

untouched is the question of Nick's desire. It has been said

that for the most part Jenkins withholds such information

from the reader, or deliberately down plays its significance.

However, on the rare occasions when one could make what Bal

calls "functional statements" about Nick, one discovers that

Nick's desire is rarely the motivating force for change. For 35

example, as The Kindly Ones closes Jenkins is desperately trying to join the army. He goes as far as to ask Widmerpool for help. In the end, a chance encounter with Stanley Jeav ons, Ted's brother, never before met, opens these new pos sibilities for Jenkins. The novel enàs with Stanley promlsing to do what he cano The Valley of Banes, the next volume, begins with Nick already in uniform. Desire is presented, in

Jenkins' case, as astate through which one passes, but over which one has little control.

Hopefully, it is understood at this stage how a first person narrator does radically affect a novel, particularly in attempting to ascertain who the heroine or protagonist may be. However, current critics tend to feel the terms "first and third person narrators" confuse the issue without solving anything. Certainly, the distinction that Genette and Bal make concerning focalization and narration is an important one. The narrator is who speaks: the focalizor who sees: the narration is what is said; the focalization is the perspec tive (external, internal, through a character's eyes, etc,) from which events are perceived.

Genette prefers to use the terms "homodiegetic" and

"heterodiegetic" rather than first and third person narra tion. Essentially, he thinks it is more accurate to describe a Iirst person narrator as a character as narrator. A third person narrator would therefore be a figure outside the story who narrates it. He states: "The narrator almost always

'knows' more than the hero, even if he is the hero, and 36

( therefore for the narrator focalization through the hero is a restriction of field just as artificial in the first person as in the third" (1980,194). This point emphasizes the fa ct that even in first person narratives the story is being told by an older narrator who can focalize through either his present or past self. However, Genette's broad statement seems to deny many of the real differences between first and third person narratives. To begin, the important fact to realize is that in our reading conventions the pronouns "1" and "shen have a very different effect upon the reader. Take for instance the following sentences:

1. Stopping on the yellow line, 1 bent to tie my lace. A green convertible came screaming up the street. 2. Stopping on the yellow line, John bent to tie his lace. A green convertible came screaming up the street.

In the first selection the reader will assume that the character "1" looks up at the sports car bearing down on her. However, in the second selection there are many possibilities. Within a first person narrative one of the conventions that is accepted is that aIl focalization takes place through the perceptual faculties of the narrator, at sorne point in time. A third person narrative is free to switch the place of focalization as well as the time. There will be no attempt to argue that it is impossible { for a first person narrator to describe the thoughts of others, or even to see through their eyes. Rather, it is 37 argued that conventionally first person narrators have a restricted view of the world around them: restricted to their perspective, and the time limitations that perspective entails (ie. their life). If one were to read a sentence such as:

The driver of the green sports car was thinking about Elvis, hurnming "Hound Dog" under h.:is breath, even as he plowed into me, and left me for dead.

one would have the right to feel uneasy. One would realize that there had been sorne transgression of the conventions of narrative. Of course, first person narrators often profess to knowa great deal about other characters' thoughts. Genette is by no means unaware of this facto He states:

Since Spitzer, critics have often noted the fre quency of these modalizing locutions (perhaps, undoubtedly, as if, seem, appear) that allow the narrator to say hypothetically what he could not assert without stepping outside internal focaliza tion; and thus Marcel Muller is not wrong in look ing at them as 'the alibis of the novelist' impos ing his truth under a somewhat hypocritical cover, beyond all the uncertainties of the hero and per haps also the narrator. (1980,204)

What Genette is careful to note is that the first person narrator must explain explicitly where his information cornes from, or cage his information in hypothetical language. By the time of the publication of Narrative Discourse Revisited Genette seems even more willing to accept the a priori differences of first and third person narrative:

As for the homodiegetic narrator, he is obliged to 38

justify ("How do you know that?")the information he gives about scenes from which "he" was absent as a character, about someone els~'s thoughts etc .... We could therefore say that homodiegetic narrative as a consequence of its vocal selection, submits a priori to a modal restriction, one that can be side-stepped only by an infraction, or perceptible distortion. (1988,76)

AlI the same, those "alibis of the novelist" so vital to first person narrative, hardly "impose truth under a somewhat hypocritical cover." The very question of truth is undermined by the "modalizing locutions" words which can suggest

possibilities, but not assert def~~~te statements. Third person narrators need not use these "alibis of the

novelist". Therefore, the statement that focali~ing through

~he first and third person narrator i8 equally artificial is true only on a certain level. Both are artificial in the sense that both are contrived and both withhold information because the narrator "knows" more than the hero or the reader. However, focalization through the hero is less artificial in the sense that as individuals we can only know what we know; we can only speculate on the thoughts of others. We perceive life through our senses. In this respect first person narrative, whatever its contrivances, is more mimetically true to our experience in the world than third person narrative. Still, for aIl this, Genette's distinction between the character and narrator does have sorne real significance. The Jenkins who narrates is older, wiser, more mature, and more ( cognizant of the fates of the characters, than the young r 1 39

scheel-boy who watches Widmerpool swim through the fog. We know it is this older Jenkins who is the primary narrator because the novel begins with a frame. Further, this position of standing outside the time of the events of the novel is made explicit on numerous occasions; phrases such as

"although this did not occur to me at once"(QU 74), "years

late~ when 1 came to know ... "(QU 78), and, he "passed out of

my life for sorne twenty years" (QU 105) aIl explicitly show that there are two Jenkinses functioning in the novel. On the final pages, as story tirne has moved on, these two Jenkinses merge into a single person. One last aspect of relativism and subjectivity that must be talked about is Jenkins' use of litotes and understatement. A litotes is "a special form of understatement," which His the assertion of an affirmative by negating its contrary:

'He's not the brightest man in the world' meaning 'He is stupid'"(Abrams 78). Examples of variations on this figure

are fairly prevalent in The Music of Time:

... while duties anywhere else might prove less innocu ous. (MF 45) He looked rather guilty, not without reason. (MF 210) ... it would be undesirable to arrive unduly early. (MP 177) He was partly angry at hirnself, partly unable not to laugh. (MP 96)

Although these examples are not aIl pure litotes, one can easily see the confusion Powell's negatives are capable of

creating. For the twentieU'·-century, The Music of Time helds

substantial nurnber of these figures. One does weIl to remem- 40

ber George Orwell, a contemporary and friend of Powell's, calling for clear and simple writing, asking all to avoid statements such as "A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field" (90) . Powell often actually turns the litotes into a larger figure, often asserting one thing only to, a sentence later, throw doubt upon it. Of Pamela's sexual promiscuity, many stories are toldi Jenkins reports these in one paragraph,only to conclude:

These were only sorne of the tales one heard. No doubt most of them were greatly inflated in the telling, if not positively untrue, but they indi cated her range, even if you discounted ones like pouring the wine on the floor when Howard Craggs, the left-wing publisher, now civil-servant of sorne standing, had given her dinner at an expensive black market restaurant. (MP 78)

The general conclusion that cornes from this passage is one of ambiguity. There is a sense that "where there's smoke there's fire", although at the same time there is almost an individual denial of each story. Litotes in the fiction of "a modern writer in the ironie mode, like Hermann Melville or Henry James" are used to "reveal hesitations, qualifications, uncertainties, and ambiguous complications in the consciousness of a narrator or major character"(McCutcheon 273). This point accepted, it should also be noted that strictly speaking a litotes defies ail assertion: for example, "not unhappy" does not mean "happy". Rather, there is an entire range of humours which one may pass through. While Abrams rnay insist that a litotes is an "assertion of an affirmative", in the strict grammatical sense, the construction asserts very little. In Powell it seems that again we are left in a very unstable world, one which is in sorne ways defined negatively, or limited, but which is often too overwhelming or cornplex to be described positively. One commen- tator has described "perhaps" as "the farnous Powellian word" (Russell 92) . Here it is best to stop and re-evaluate exactly what Jenkins i8 as a narrator and a character, and how this affects the novel. Concerning The Music of Time the following points are particularly relevant: 1. The Music of Time is a retrospective frame narrative told in the first person by Nicholas Jenkins. 2. Jenkins' primary characteristic is curiousity, an interest in others. For the most part, his own desires are down played, understated, withheld, or frustrated. So, generally we have a vision of his world, mediated through his eye8, but not dominated by his presence. 3. Jenkins' attention (or curiousity) i5 held by no one sin gle character, nor plot strand. The episodes which forrn the narrative are in rnany ways disparate and unconnected. Mathe matically one might describe the episodes (or individual chapters) as a series of sets, all of which intersect with at least one other set: this aescription is in opposition to a narrative such as Gatsby, which outside of the frame i5 best represented by sorne kind of linear schemata, with allowances for atemporal events to occur through importance. 4. The use of litotes, or negative definition is prevalent in The Music of Time and is a distressing and disorienting device. To define something negatively is to limit it, but not to define it.

This brief summary suggests that there i8 really very litt le holding The Music of Time together. In p.any ways this l 42

assertion is correct; however, the remainder of this chapter will concentrate on that which unifies the work. For those who beJieve unit y to be an archaic ideal of a bygone aesthetic, it is important to note that without sorne unifying features, Powell's work would be similar to Damon Runyon's: there would be a common narrator and randomly recurring characters for a large nurnber of short stories. In The Music of Time this is not the case: he is most definitely writing a series of novels, not independent short stories. One of the primary unifying features is time. Despite Powell's complex use of time, one can say that for the most part a rough chronology is adhered to. Beyond the idea of chronology, there is also the sense that one can date the majority of events that take place in the work. Although calen- dar dates are generally eschewed, the many references to his- torically significant events allow one to estimate times with sorne certainty. Casanova's Chinese Restaurant takes place around the Abdication Crisis, and Pam and Widrnerpool marry close to the time that the A··bornb is dropped on Japan. When the story line deviates from a chronological order, one can re-establish it with relative ease. Hilary Spurling has managed to very precisely date aIl of The Music of Time in her Handbook to The Music of Time. Another way in which Jenkins keeps the novel together is by constantly keeping us in touch with those characters who are not directly involved in the action. Apart from the rather obvious technique of having characters gossip about

- 43

each other, by reporting the actions of those off-stage, there are also a wide range of other techniques. These are possession, comparison, quotation, focalization, and pseudo- iteration. Comparison is a favorite device of Powell's, and while not startlingly original, brings about strange results. Odo

Stevens, first met in The Valley of Bones ls successively compared to a vast array of characters. At first:

There was somethlng of Kedward about hlm; something too l could not define, of my brother-in-law, Chips Lovell. He did not have a smudqy moustache like Kedward's, and his personality was more forceful, more attractive too. (VB 122)

Then:

He spoke with a North County or Midland intonation, not unlike that Quiggin used to assume in his ear lier days, when, for social or literary reasons, he chose to emphasize his provincial origins and unvarnished, forthright nature. (VB 122)

Jenkins narrates; he is in control and entitled to make these comparisons, none of which will unduly concern a reader who has corne this far, but it is interesting to note the disparate nature of the four men spoken of. Stevens is a young swashbuckler; Kedward a rather dull but ambitious Sergeant Major; Quiggin a university acquaintance of Jenkins', who now makes a livjng as a left-wing man of letters; and Chips Lov- ell has worked in both film 2nd journalism before the war...... Nor does 1:his web stop here: Odo Stevens will be compared to

..b r' others, i...i.:"hers in turn will be compared to him. l

•:' 1 44

Living through art, a favorite theme in literature, although treated very diffeIently here, is what l have called possession. Characters the reader has met often return through their works. There are many and varied artists in The Music of Time: Moreland, Barnby, Mr. Deacon, Matilda, Mem- bers, etc. In the army, Rithel remarks, at a point after the death of the novelist: "1 love a good book when l have the

time ... St. John Clarke's Match Me Such Marvel, that sort of

thing" (SA 16). Although nothing is made of this at the time, Clarke is a familiar figure. The reader may go on, or may stop to remember Members and Quiggin fighting over Clarke, or even the fact that Erridge was the beneficiary of Clarke's will. Even in the army this name is capable of setting off a ( long train of memories of previous years. Several of the characters are heard more than seen. Jen- kins expresses things he sees, or even tidbits of philosophy in their words. This use of another's voice, and in sorne cases perception is what l call quotation. Before even meeting Templer or Stringham in the work, their voices describe

Widmerpool:

[Widrnerpool] wore boots more often than what Stringham used to calI IIWidrnerpool's good sensible shoes". (QU 8) ... and Templer, for example, would sometimes say: III am afraid l'm wearing rather Widmerpool socks t.oday" or "rIve bought a wonderfully Widmerpool tie to go home ":'n." (QU 9) f, These statements are acceptable without being obtrusive, but 45 they are really only the beginning of a vast array of voices which comment from all directions in the novel. Often the characters whose voices comment on sorne aspect of life are almost wholly physically excluded from the world Jenkins uses them to comment on. Walking ta Jean's apartment on a misty day, Jenkins sees Mona and Quiggin walking side by side in a pacifist rally. Intuitively he knows that something is "on" between these two. Still his thoughts turn ta Jean, his lover. Then the reader is given a second opinion, perhaps encapsulating these thoughts:

"Women can be immensely obtuse about all kinds of things," Barnby was fond of saying, "but where the emotions are concerned their opinion is always wor thy of consideration." (AW 143)

Barnby has a minimal connection with the figures walking, Mona and Quiggin, and even less with the anticipated Jean. Ail the same he is brought into the passage to express an opinion on the subject at hand. Even those characters, de ad and gone can be summoned back by Jenkins, in the guise of their voices. Another interesting feature of this system of direct quotation is that it allows Jenkins to disperse the job of focalization. By quoting a second character we are shown a perspective other than that of Jenkins. As Jenkins is self- effacing about his personal life, one can also see that he is capable of absorbing multiplicity and subordinating his voice to others' voices. No comment is made on Barnby's pronounce- 46

( ment and so one is left vaguely wondering exactly where Jen kins stands on the issue. Obviously, the focalization is first through Jenkins (ie.,Jenkins hears and remembers this judgement of Barnby's) but essentially, direct speech excuses Jenkins from being specifically tied to the idea. In this manner, along with the wealth of dialogue in the work, one often has the impression of reading what Bakhtin would call a "polyphonie" novel. However, l hesitate to assert this case too strongly because one of the undeniable facets of the work is the strength of Jenkins' narrative voice. As a first per son narrator he does control the voicing of the narrative. If the novel was to be seen as a Bakhtinian dialogue, it would be overburdened and dominated by Jenkins' voice. For that ( matter it is interesting to note that polyphony in the first person is a problematic concept: all of Dostoevski's major novels were written in the third person. However, Nick does his best to be self-effacing, and give others their say. One of the most interesting ways he does this is to Lypothetically focalize through another's psyche. This technique is different from what we earlier saw as "alibis of the novelist": Jenkins is not speculating at others' thoughts, rather, he is imagining himself perceiving through their minds. Tucker correctly notes that Uncle Giles is the character through whose eyes Nick most often looks. Tucker says: "The truth about life cannot be set down by a ( novelist in simple cut-and-dried terms. Giles represents sorne of the doubts" (113) . Furthermore: 47

If anything Powell actually emphasizes the unrelia bility of his narrator's perception; and the con tinuaI eruption of comment from Giles, Barnby, Sillery and others is to stress limitations and partialities. (Tucker 116)

For his own part, Jenkins, preparing to see through Giles eyes, says:

This concept of regarding one's own affairs through the medium of a friend or relative is not, of course a specifically profound one; but, in the case of my uncle, the field of vision surveyed was always likely to be so individual to himself that almost any scene contemplated from this point of vantage required, on the part of another observer, more than ordinarily drastic refocusing. He would, for example, have dismissed the Huntercombes' dance as one of those formal occa sions... (BM 103-4)

This idea of forming a counterpoint from which to view the world is extremely interesting, notwithstanding Jenkins' own

dubious discounting of the effect. l shall return to it in chapter four, when William Gass claims that the majority of the reading of fictior. is essentially so one can see the world through others' eyes. For now, it is pointed out as another technique Jenkins uses to hold the novel together. For while it undoubtedly, in sorne ways, disrupts the single line of Jenkins' thoughts, it also brings Giles into a scene he is absent from. Again, it must be stressed that in a work of this length, the ability to bring characters into scenes

from which they are absent, is essential 30 as to give the reader a reminder of the familiar; a review of those already met. 48

One last manner in whjch the entire work is held togeth er may a1so be the most important. This facet of the work is what l cal1 the "pseudo-iterative", which is to say that the novel is replete with patterns, with events that repeat them selves in a simi1ar manner, but are not identica1. These events are simi1ar at best, and in no sense fully iterative, like Proust's "For a long time l "sed to go to bed early" (1:1). In many cases, particular1y fûT a reader on his first trip through the novels, the connection or pattern is made by Jenkins. These pseudo-iterative themes are diverse in nature: there is the dance motif, the repetition of Widmerpool being pelted with objects, the question of sexual and non-sexual voyeurism, the appearance of naked people at unlikely times, and many others. As is often true, the differences are more interesting than the similarities in these repetitions. l will hold back on commenting specifically on any single case of the pseudo-iterative, since the next chapter will deal specifically with the motifs of voyeurism and nudity. Never theless, the pseudo-iterative does provide a chance to tie disparate events together, to unify the twelve volumes, and to solidify the loose structure of the work. 49

CHAPTER 3 50

In this chapter l will examine three facets of voyeurism

in The Music of Time. Firstly, there will be an examination of Jenkins' thoughts on others' sexual lives to discover just where he stands on the issue. Secondly, there will be a study of those passages of the text where naked people are encoun tered, to demonstrate powell's use of the pseudo-iterative, and also to examine what these encounters suggest about voy eurism. Thirdly, there will be a detailed study of sorne of the specifie and indubitable passages concerning voyeurisme As cited in the introduction, Joel Rudinow sees asymmetry as the main quality of voyeurism(176). The voyeur watches, but remains hidden. Keeping Rudinow's thoughts, which do weil to describe Jenkins' narrative, in mind, it is possible to move

to the question of voyeurism in the The Music of Time. Apart from Jenkins' voyeuristic narratorial stance, described in

the previous chapter, there are are numerous incidents of voyeurism in the texte By cornparing these actual instances with Jenkins' narrative strategy l will show how the reader himself becomes implicated in the voyeuristic entanglement. Jenkins' asyrnrnetrical position is made extremely clear

from the very beginning of The Music of Time. Obvious exam

pIes can be seen in the first two chapters of A Question of

Upbringing. In ~he first chapter, for a lark, Stringham has Le Bas arrested. Although he starts the process in action he does not witness the arrest. AlI the same, Le Bas never dis ( covers who played this prank on him. Stringham, Templer, and Jenkins are the only three who ever klOW. The second chapter 51

.. centres on a prank piayed by Stripiing on Farebrother. How

ever, on this occasion Farebrothe~ outfoxes Stripling, and the joke is never cornpleted. But Jenkins, positioned at the end of the hall, is able to witness Stripling pass by "through a chink in the door"(QU 97). Another instance of asyrnmetry is Jenkins' conversation with Duport, at the sea side resort, in which Jenkins knows far more about Duport's life than he ever lets on(KO 74); or when he attends Mrs. Foxe's party, given for Moreiand, and she asks him ta "keep

the srnallest eye"(CCR 167) on Stringham who has arrived drunk. In keeping an eye on Stringharn, a situation remarkably similar to Ryder's and Sebastian's, he ends up spying on Stringharn, and also witnessing the early flirtation between Moreland and Priscilla. One la st example of this asyrnmetrical watching is when he sees Widmerpool splashed by paint, thrown by the Quiggin twins, on television(HSH 44-5). For obvious reasons of plot development Jenkins has to be in the right

place at the right time: he has to see these events. Nev ertheless, it is important ta note how often his position places him directly outside the arena of action. So we can see that Jenkins' watching is a prevalent fea ture of his character, but he aiso seems to take an uncommon interest in others' sexuality. Although he does not go as far as Sir Magnus Donners or Widmerpool in his quest to satisfy his interest, his thoughts hover around the sex lives of others. Both Magnus and Widmerpool are characterized as sex ual voyeurs. Acta reports to Nick that Pam "kept on taiking 52

( about Donners, implying that he was a voyeur"(TK 157). Sim- ilarly, Bob Duport had earlier concluded, "Donners never minded people getting off with his girls. l've heard he's a

voyeur"(TK 159). Pam, Widmerpool's wife, also accuses Widmer- pool of sexual voyeurism, stating, that he was "watching through the curtain," seeing his "wife being screwed. Natur- ally it wasn't the first time"(TK 226). Suffice to say that Jenkins' attentions do not lead him to s1milar entanglements. At the same time, however, he does somehow manage to hear aIl these staries. On the one hand, Jenkins does actively seek this information out; whereas, on the other hand, he is the perfect confidant: people seek him out to tell their stories to him. Nick says of Widmerpool:

Now l can see he wanted only to discuss his own situation with someone he had known for a long period, who was at the same time not too closely associated with his current life. (LM 59)

Jenkins does possess an intense curiosity that extends to aIl facets of life. lt is possible to characterize his curiousity as greater than the curiousity of others. When he

is watching, along with the other officers of his company, Bithel's st range and charged dance, Jenkins is entirely caught up in the erotic performance. Once boredom begins, Nick thinks of leaving, contingent on what the other people watching wish to do: "l was wondering what would happen next, when l realized that he and l were alone in the room"(VB 32). ( Jenkins has stayed and watched what has already bored or dis- r 1

gusted the others. In a later volume he cornments that:

few subjects are more fascinating than other peo ple's sexual habits from the outsidei the tangled strands of appetite, tenderness, convenience or sorne hope of gain. (MF 114)

It is Widmerpool who has prompted these thoughts, and Jenkins does not end them in their genesis. Nick goes on to ask Wid-

merpool about r"~ sexual life, because, "in the light of what he had been saying, a direct question could not seem un rea-

sonably inquisitive" (MF 114). However, Jenkins is not always so innocent in his appeals to discover exactly how others' sexual lives are run. Apart from his own curious nature, theLe are also actual moments when he forces his usually passive self into action

ta discover how the rest of the world lives. Walking th~ough the garden behind Castlemallock with Rowland Gwatkin, the two

hear a man singing. "The singing stopped abruptly. A woman

began giggling and sq'Jeaking" (VB 239). The two pause until

Jenkins puts forward the suggest ion: "Let' s have a look" (VB 239). For someone generally so passive, this is an interesting way to express action.

It is made aIl the more interesting by the fact that on

the few occasions when Jenkins discovers others watching him he is extremely uncomfortable. When entering into Widmer- pool's office, after a transfer during his army career, Jen-

k 4 ns is surprised to discover that Widmerpool knows his identity: 54

"How did you know it was me when 1 came into the room?" Widmerpool indicated a small circular shaving mirror; which stood on his table, almost hidden by piles of documents. (VB 250)

As this volume ends Jenkins realizes "I was now in Widmer- poolls power. This fur sorne reason gave me a disagreeable

sinking feeling within"(VB 250). This knowledge of Widmer- poolls, combined with his position of power, falls in directly with what Rudinow has to say about asymmetry. Similarly, when Nick meets Bob Duport, Jean's husband, at a seaside resort, after having a clandestine affair with Jean years earlier, he is unnerved:

I began to feel decidedly uncomfortable. So far as I knew, neither Duport, nor anyone else, had the smallest reason to guess anything of what had passed between Jean and myself. (KO 179)

Duport begins to tell Jenkins about Jeanls affairs. As time goes on it appears that Duport may weIl possess information connecting Jenkins and Jean. This situation is obviously uncomfortable for Jenkins, especially when Duport claims to have seen this mysterious lover and Jenkins "at the same

time"(KO 180). Jenkins is forced to admit that "the situation was odious"(KO 180). He greatly "regretted having ...I.greed to come out drinking with Duport"(KO 180). Most telling is the reason Jenkins finds for being in this situation: his "curiosity had put" him "in this position"(KO 180). Jenkins pre- ( fers hi. own sexual life to remain hidden; he pre fers to be the watcher rather than the watched. One of the ironies of 55

this particular passage is that Duport actually has no idea

about Jenkins' affair with Jean; aIl this tirne he has be.:m

talking about her affair, which took place sirnultaneously,

unknown to Jenkins, with Jirnrny Brent. Even when told this

Jenkins feels no better: in fa ct he states, "1 felt as if

sorneone had suddenly kicked my legs out from under me"(KO

180). Information about others' affairs may be fascinating,

but when this information also concerns one's own life, the

stories become less amusing.

Much of The Music of Time is spent chronicling the

love-affairs of others. In fact, these clandestine meetings

seem far more interesting to Jenkins than the actual mar-

riages that take place. As we saw in the last chapter, mar-

riage is an institution which, for sorne reason, Jenkins

refuses to attempt to describe. Instead, he is far happier

looking at marriage gone wrong, and love which exists outside

the conventions of society. A post-card of two lovers sets

Jenkins to thinking of these affairs doomed to last for a

short time only:

l had enacted such scenes with Jean: Ternpler with Mona: now Mona was enacting them with Quiggin: Barnby and Umfraville with Anne Stepney: Stringham with her sister Peggy: Peggy now in the arms of her cousin: Uncle Giles very probably with Mrs. Erd leigh: Mrs. Erdleigh with Jimmy Stripling: Jirnrny Stripling, if it came to that, with Jean: and Duport, too. (AW 221-2)

This passage cataloguing lovers in an endless dance of chang- ...... lng partners brings up one last point about Jenkins and the 56

love lives of others. Jenkins is somehow strangely culpable for many of the abortive affairs in the work. When Rowland Gwatkin confesses his love of Maureen to Jenkins, Jenkins suggests he should take steps towards seduc- ing her. Gwatkin is "astonished", and Jenkins feels "rather ljke Mephistopheles"(VB 200). This allusion to Mephistopheles is extrernely relevant because in a work full of allusions Jenkins is only ever cornpared to two figures: the aforernen- tioned Mephistopheles, and Alice from Wonderland. Mephi- stopheles aside, one does well to remember Greenacre's reading of Alice as a voyeur. However, as Mephistopheles, Jenkins does tempt Gwatkin to take sorne steps towards achieving an affair with Maureen: only to have Gwatkin discover her in Gwylt's arrns in the park. Similarly, Jenkins also encourages, introduces, or offers advice to several of the other disastrous couples in the work. A list of them runs as follows: Quiggin to Mona, Widmerpool to Gypsy, Priscilla to Moreland, Odo to Priscilla, X to pam, Pam to Gwinnett, and Gwatkin to Maureen. Of that group, not one of the affairs ever cornes to marriage; and in every case but one, one of the two people is married. This last paragraph is in some ways unfair to Jenkins. At the same time, his manner of narration always stresses the distance he has from the actual events, and so it is di ffi- cult to state with certainty just how closely he may be ( involved. Is he, like Milton's Satan, jealous of the lovers? In the cases of the image of the naked body that recur 57 throughout the work Jenkins often has no personal or sexual interest himself. That is to say, that for the most part Jen kins either sees or hears of these naked people, without any thing but his curiousity being affected. l will catalogue the sightings of these naked bodies, for the rnost part fernale, in chronological order, to demonstrate both how the pseudo-iter ative works, and how the voyeurist/exhibitionist conflict is portrayed. In France, as a schoolboy, Jenkins finds a caricature of Widmerpool etched on the wall of a toilet. A day or two later

"appendages" are added to the picture "in pencil"(QU 157). After Mr Deacon's funeral, Jenkins returns to see Barnby's flat, and finds Gypsy Jones. His first "impression was that she had stripped herself stark naked"(BM 226). In fa ct Gypsy is dressed in a flesh coloured bathing suit, preparing to go to a fancy dress party as Eve. Jenkins' first sexual encoun ter follows. At the Ritz, where Jenkins is to meet Mark Mern bers, a statue of a "stark naked" nymph "looked immensely re spectable; less provocative than sorne of the fully dressed young women seated below her"(AW 38). Later in the same novel, in answer to Jenkins' knock on the door, Jean answers wearing "nothing but a pair of slippers"(AW 145). On being first introduced to Matilda, backstage in her dressing room, Jenkins and Moreland see the actress through a screen which "scarcely at all concealed" her "long angular body": "in any case, she continually reappeared on the floor of the room to rescue garments belonging to her"(CCR 51). As a boy, Jenkins' 58 ( parents' parlour maid Bilson has an acute attack of nerves

and enters the room naked. Jenkins later hears the story from

his parents. His father's only comment is "She was stark ...

absolutely stark"(KO 62). At Stourwater, acting out the Seven

Deadly Sins, Anne Umfraville, helping Templer enact Lust,

"had constructed sorne sort of a ballet skirt, but was wearing

by then little else"(KO 134). At a time of crisis in the

army, Jenkins awakens Gwatkin whose "pyjama trousers fell

from him, revealing sexual parts and hairy brown thighs"(VB

218). In The Military Philosophers, Jenkins, working as a

liaison officer, cornes across "two Italian officers" who have

two sets of regulations: one "that forbade them in Great Bri

tain to wear uniform; another that forbade them to wear

civilian clothes"(MP 144). Bagshaw is rumoured to have been

given his nickname by stating "Books do furnish a room" as he

"stark naked ... approached the sofa on which lay, presumably

in the same state, the wife of a well-known drama critic" (BFR

38). X.Trapnel wears an "emerald green tie patterned with

naked women" (BFR 115).

In the final two volumes of the work the frequency of

this pseudo-Iterative pattern is increased. Looking at the

Tiepolo ceiling, the group visitir.g Jacky Bragadin's palace

sees two naked figures, the King and the Queen, watched by a

third. This is actually a painting, from Powell's imagina

tion, of the st ory of Gyges and Candaules. Later in the same ( novel "a naked woman" is discovered by Bagshaw's father, walking in the hallway of Bagshaw's house. This woman is Pam- 59 ela, involved in an obscure relationship with Russell Gwin- nett, Trapnel's American biographer. Later Pamela reveals the strange circumstances of Ferrand-Sénéschal's death. She states, "He croaked in bed with me," and furthermore, that Widmerpool "thought l didn't spot he was watching through the curtain"(TK 266). Pamela will not stop, even at this stage. and continues wildly:

You might think that enough. Watching your wife being screwed. Naturally it wasn't the first time. It was just the first time with a blubber-lipped Frenchman who couldn't do it, then popped off. Of course he had arranged it all with Leon-Joseph beforehand -- except the popping off. (TK 266-7)

In the same tirade Pamela brings up the idea of Widmerpool's spying, Tl1roughout the series Widmerpool is constantly characterized as one who is intriguing, whether it be in busi- ness, politics, or sex. The la st volume, Hearing Secret Harmonies, unites two of the most pervasive pseudo-iterative themes: the dance motif, and the idea of nudity. One of Jenkins' neighbours witnesses several figurei:3 dancing "naked as the day they were born" (HSH 147) around the Devil's Fingers, a minor pre-historie monu- ment. Jenkins is to discover that actually this dance was enacted by Widmerpool, Murtlock, Barnabas, Fiona, and Rusty, the mernbers of a small but dedicated cult. Gwinnett had been invited along as an observer. The rites that take place involve sexual relations "ail with all, each with each, within the sacred circle" (HSH 156). One last instance of 60

nakedness worthy of mention is Jenkins' descriptions and comparison of Ariosto's Time and Poussin's Time. Despite the large number of differences between these two personifica- tions, they share the common lack of clothes: they are

"equally hoary and naked" (HSH 33).

The reaso~ for this labori0us cataloguing process is to show both the diverse nature of these naked figures, and the diverse way in which they are perceived. Of the sixteen exam- pIes listed, only ten are directly perceived by Jenkins. The others including many of the most jmportant examples, are from information received in embedded narratives told by other characters. Jenkins never sees Bilson walk into the parlour nakedi his mother narrates this story to him. Pam's two naked appearances are both retold by different parties. In the case of her entanglement with Ferrand-Sénéschal, she, in a fit of fury, announces this to those who care to listen. Both Moreland and Odo Stevens hear, and individually tell Jenkins of these events. AlI the same, the story is mediated through Pam, through Odo and Moreland, through Nick, to the

reader. This complex "epistemology of gossip" (104) as Tap- scott has called it, certainly obscures the reader's view of Pam's naked figure, if not actually clothing it. Similarly, Pam's appearance at Bagshaw's house is also clouded by a convoluted narrative. The only person to see Pam naked is Bagshaw's father: "He saw a naked woman standing in the passage or the hall. Here again the narrative lacks absolute ( positiveness"(TK 192). The problems of the "veracity" of this 61 embedded narrative continue. Bagshaw Sr. is "short-sighted"i he mistakes the figure for "one of his son's step-children"; he may "have observed the lady's hair was grey"(TK 193). AlI that can be said in the end is that Pam "was not present by the time Bagshaw ... joined the party"(TK 195). Unlike many twentieth-century novelists who have made use of the freedoms afforded writers since the Lady Chatter- ly's Lover's case, Powell does not take advantage of this fact to actually describe the bodies seen in any way. His interest lies not in the actual description, but in the act of perceiving. The only adjective used to describe these bodies is "stark", which in itself is only a re-affirmation of what the reader already knows to be true. In fact "stark" does more to describe the surprise of the perceiver than the state of the perceived. On the other hand, it is only fair to point out that there is only one instance in the entire text when Jenkins actually sees a fully naked figure. This event occurs when Jean opens her door for Jenkins wearing "nothing but a pair of slippers"(AW 145). She disappears to the sitting room. When he joins her, the text immediately moves to direct discourse: "Why are you wearing no clothes?" etc. (AW 145). While it is not always easy to understand why these descriptions are withheld from the reader, it is necessary to realize the extreme difficulty that description poses. Michel Beaujour states:

When it is described in sorne detail, an everyday object becomes defamiliarized, and as it ceases to 62

be taken for granted, it assumes the enigmatic aura of things in dreams and fantasy. The more micro scopically detailed the description, the more delayed may be the reader's recognition of the familiar things and 0f course the more allegorical meanings may be loaded anto the defamiliarized sig nifier. (36)

What this quotation points to is that description can only take the reader away from the object described. To describe the object in and of itself is almost impossible, at lea~t, in the medium of word3. The appearance of a naked body is merely the appearance of a naked body. At the same time, the repetition of these naked bodies, the intensification of the frequency of their appearance as the work approaches its end, aIl point to the fa ct that they do contain another level of meaning. One way to approach this level, since it is not described, is to try to understand, conversely, what clothes represent. During the war Jenkins insists that he "saluted the uniform, as one was always told, rather than the man" (MF 117). In a similar fashion, at the beginning of The Soldier's Art Jenkins goes to buy a great- coat in the "neighbourhood of Shaftesbury Avenue" (SA 5). Here, the salesman is convinced that the garment in question is for a theatrical performance. When Jenkins explains that the coat is for "the war", the clerk persists, "Ah ... The War"

(SA 5). These two examples seem to definitely suggest the theatrics of life, as well as the split between any individual and the garment he wears.

One last character who must be examined in this light is Widmerpool, who, on the strength of an "overcoat gained a 63 lasting notoriety which his otherwise unscintillating career at school could never wholly dispel"(QU 10). In many ways this lack of style i5 a determining feature of Jenkins' view of Widmerpool. In later stages of the work Jenkins i5 often at a loss to understand both Widmerpool and others' reactions to him, as he still has, to a certain extent, Widmerpool classified by an earlier fashion statement. Jenkins cornes to accept that there 1s a place in the world for Widmerpool, even that ambition can lead to success, but it is not easy for him to truly shake his image of the uncouth sChoolboy.

Jenkins' last meeting with Widmerpool, now dressed in the blue robe of the cult is only further confirmation that clothes do not determine the person within. The robes give

Widmerpool "something never achieved before, a kind of suit-

ability, almost dignity" (HSH 197). However, under these

clothes, beyond the superficial, things are very different:

"it was not this kind of bath robe that made the strong im-

pression ... it was the man himself. Widmerpool looked ill,

desperate, worn out" (HSH 197).

One way of approaching this recurrent image of nakedness

is to understand that it displays a person without the con-

ventional trappings of society; that clothes act as a shield

or barrier, perhaps concealing the true self. Scorpio Murt-

lock's cult strips te the skin "as a sign of humility and

poverty" (HSH 129). Cardinal Fenneau points out:

that worship sheuld take place unclothed -- in the manner of Adam -- was a familiar heresy in the Mid- 64

dle Ages. If Scorpio practised such rites, they are ones l cannot approve. (HSH 129)

One does well to remember Gypsy Jones, dressed as Eve. Cer-

tainly in the Christian tradition the idea of nudity as

Edenic is a tempting parallel. The implications of truth and

honesty, the desire to hide nothing, and the ability to

freely share one's self seem to be most prominent. Widmer-

pool, in the cult, "began to understand the way, for example,

that nakedness removes impediments of aIl sorts"(HSH 207).

More than just ailowing one to see "the body", the impIi-

cation appears to be that in this disrobed state, on sorne

sort of a numinous Ievel, one can "see" sorne sort of spir-

ituai truth. ( Although this interpretation may seem to push too far too quickIy, the question of truth (even its very existence)

is in many ways central to The Music of Time. One does weIl

to remernber that Norman Chandler sells Edgar Deacon an imita-

tion of Bernini's Truth Unveiled by Time. This statue por-

trays a naked wornan, her robes flying off her. Apart from

this concrete image, the title of the statue airnost defines

the action of The Music of Time. And yet the statue is a mere

replication of the "true" Truth Unveiled by Time, posing the

question: can truth be imitated or replicated, or even rep-

resented? CertainIy, the loose equation of "truth" to

"nudity" seems to be culturally encoded in our society.

Roland Barthes is perfectly comfortable in seeing the two

hand in hand: 65

Every narrative (every unveiling of the truth) is a staging of the (absent, hidden, or hypostatized) father -- which would explain the solidarity of narrative forms, of family structures, and of pro hibitions of nudity, all collected in Our culture in the myth of Noah's sons covering his nakedness. (1975, 10)

Jenkins also muses often on truth, and what it may mean.

Thinking about a post-card depicting loyers, which Jean has

sent him, he states:

So much of the truth remains finally unnegotiable; in spite of the fact that most pers ons in love go through remarkably similar experiences. Here, in the picture, for example, implications were mis leading, if not positively inaccurate. The matter was presented as aIl too easy, the twin flames of dual egotism reduced almost to nothing, so that there was no pain; and, for that matter, al~ost no pleasure. A sense of anxiety, without which the condition could scarcely be held to exist, was altogether absent. (AW 221)

Despite the fa ct that this card is kitsch and low-brow, it is

nevertheless, as Jenkins is well aware, a form of art. This

question of the truth va~ue of art i8 almost as old as the

notion of art itself, but Jenkins is making no traditional

defense. As an artist himself he often appears to despair

that any truth can be conveyed; particularly, as l stated

earlier, over the status of his own marriage. Nevertheless,

the glimpses of these naked figures continue ta flash across

the canvas of the work like bursts of truth disappearing as

quickly as they appear.

This type of interpretation, of course, poses the ques-

tion of exactly what the several voyeurs in the novel are 66 doing, and how they relate to this idea of nudity. The most obvious example of voyeurism in the text cornes as the schol- ars at the conference in Venice view the Tiepolo ceiling, which depicts the story of Gyges and Candaules. Powell has, himself, "always found the relationship of Candaules and Gyges of peculiar fascination. At one moment" he had "planned to attempt a playon the subject"(qtd. in V. Powell, 8). The story of Gyges and Candaules, as told by Powell, cornes from Herodotus. The King, Candaules, insists that his "bodyguard", Gyges, "contrive to see" the Queen "naked" (Herodotus 44). Despite Gyges protests, the King insists:

"There is nothing to be afraid of" he said, "either from me or my wife. l am not laying a trap for you; and as for her, l promise she will do you no harm. l'Il manage so that she doesn't even know that you have seen her. Look: l will hide you behind the open door of our bedroom. My wife will follow me into the bed. Near the door there's a chair -- she will put her clothes on it as she takes them off, one by one. You will be able to watch her with per fect ease. Then, while she's walking aw~y from the chair towards the bed with her back to you, slip away through the door -- and mind she doesn't catch you." (Herodotus, 44)

But the Queen, a nameless figure in this story, does see Gyges. The next day she presents him with an ultimatum: either he must accept his own death, to secure his blindness, or he must kill Candaules and marry her, thereby making proper what he has seen. Gyges asks the Queen how he can kill the King. "We will attack him when he is asleep," is the answer; "and on the very spot where he showed me to you naked" (Herodotus, 45). The plan follows through to perfec- 67 tion.

Plato, in The Republic t.ells the story in a different form. Although the scene represented on the Tiepolo ceiling is most definitely from Herodotus, it is worthwhile recount- ing Plato's version briefly as it will return in the ideas of

William Gass in the next chapter. As Plato tells it, Gyges, a shepherd, finds a golden ring. He discovers that if "he happened to twist the bezel of the ring towards the inside of his hand ... he became invisible" (Plato, 90-91). When he went to the palace he "seduced the queen and with her help attacked and murdered the king and seized the throne" (Plato,

91). Although there is no voyeurism per se in Plato's version, the idea of invisibility points directly at Rudinow's idea of asymmetry. In Herodotus' narrative the asymmetry is not maintained, the Queen does see Gyges, but this is the motivating force behind the narrative. Having established the story, it is now time to turn to Jenkins' description of it.

Jenkins the scholarly Dr. Emily Brightman, Pam, and the

American tycoon Glober turn their gaze upwards to look at the ceiling. Jenkins describes:

The scene was enigmatic. A group of three main fig ures occupied respectively foreground, middle dis tance, background, aIl linked together by sorne intensely dramatic situation. These persons stood in a pillared room, spacious, though apparently no more than a bed-chamber, which had unexpectedly managed to float out of whatever building it was normally part -- sorne palace, one imagined -- to remain suspended, .. meanwhile an attendant team of intermediate beings -- cupids, tritons, sphinxes, chimeras, the passing harpy, loitering gorgon negligently assisted stratospheric support of the 68

whole giddy structure. (TK 89-90) ,.. The foreground figure, "an unclothed hero, from his appurte- nances a king, reclined on the divan or couch that was the

focus of the picture"(TK gO}. The middle-distance figure is

the "lady perhaps the Queen, perhaps a mistress" (TK 90). The Queen "had noticed an untoward happening in the background

of th~ bedchamber" (TK 90). She had seen the last figure: "a cloaked ,nd helmeted personage was slipping swiftly, unosten- tatiously, away from the room towards a curtained doorway behind the pillars"(TK 90). Glober responds to the tale by

calling it "David and Uriah the other way round"(TK 94) allud- ing to the Biblical case of voyeurism, which also ended in death for one of the parties. Pam, alternately, changes the question from one of simple voyeurism, of seeing a naked body, and brings new elements into the scene: "What the king wanted was to be watched screwing"(TK 95). Here the emphasis is

shifted in several ways: first, the act is stressed over the

object, and secondly the King is portrayed as an exhibitionist. Dr. Brightman takes this idea and links it to legends

of kingship and sacrifice. Through this multiple perspective the reader is left with little clear idea as to what the focus of the painting actually is: voyeurism or exhibitionism, the

body or the act. The rest of the conference has by now joined our group

of four in the room. As they crowd around and stare at the ceiling the scene is almost complete. One last unexpected guest arrives. It is Widmerpool. He and Pam begin one of

- 69 their arguments, and not surprisingly the only witness to these events is Jenkins:

What had taken place between the Widmerpools had attracted no attention from surroundlng members of the Conference, nor Bragadin guests. (TK 118)

Here, as in the painting on the ceiling, the reader witnesses a third party watching a married couple interact. This analogy is not one l wish to press, but it does seem to tell us something about the Widmerpools and how they interact, as weil as something about Jenkins. The more interesting analogy is described by Marianna Torgovnick:

The picture of intellectuals gaping at the ceiling suggests a playful metaphor for the open-ended and incapacitatinq nature of the mind and the process of interpretation. Nor is this ail. For regarding the four voyeuristic pageants is the reader, whose very engagement in the act of reading becomes implicated in the voyeuristic circle. Voyeurism, the subject of the seemingly arbitrary Tiepolo ceiling, becomes an inescapable analogue to the process of viewing a work of art, and becomes an apt metaphor, too, for the act of reading nov els. (222)

However, before we can try to understand this rnetaphor

better it is necessary to look at one last twist in the story

of Gyges and Candaules. Throughout this eleventh volume,

Temporary Kings, there have been rumours connecting Pam to

Ferrand-Sénéschal, who died rnysteriously in a London hotel.

In the final pages of the novel, Pam makes it clear that

Ferrand-Sénéschal died during intercourse with her, whilst

Widrnerpool looked on. This gives the story an extremely 70

"Powellian" twist: our author is quite capable of misleading us and warping any archetypal myth. Despite the fact that the husband is the voyeur on this occasion, the one notable simi larity is that on both occasions it is the male lover who is the sacrificial victim in the triangle. If, instead of trying to understand this st ory in terms of the power dynamic of the myth of Gyges and Candaules, we look at it solely in terms of voyeurism, the story remains almost entirely unchanged. The watcher and the watched, assuming that Pam is the watched, both survive. The third party is the one whose life i5 lost. In the case of Candaules, his death is arranged; whereas Fer rand-Sénéschal's death appears quite accidentaI, if not wholly innocent. Regardless, there are two corpses. To follow what appears to be the logical path, we, as

Torgovnick states, as readers, are al 50 voyeurs. And if we engage in voyeurism, it is through our perception of the text. This kind of equation is going to lead us to speculate that the author is the Candaules figure: he is exclaiming "Look at this which in sorne ways l have created, is in sorne ways mine, and in other ways is something wholly different and new: something you have never seen the likes of before." The text is then equated with the female figure, the naked

Queen. The Queen is somewhat of a mystery throughout the pro cess. She is both the perceived and a self-conscious per ceiver. She does not miss the fact that others are looking at her, and in fact takes the initiative once the voyeur has been spotted. Our last figure, the voyeur, is to be, in this

.. 71 triangle, equated with the reader. Thus we are left with two sets of three figures in this parallel arrangement:

Queen Text /\ Candaules~ ~Gyges Author----~/\ ~Reader

Here we fall, in this mass of metaphor, into the conclusion that nud~ty is text is truth. Obviously this type of reading is far too overt and not wholly fair: The Music of Time is far more subtle. All the same, the equation of truth and text is not wholly new. In traditional ideas of aesthetics one need go no further than Keats' "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" ("Ode on a Grecian Urn" 1.49). But, to return to the story, the most remarkable event is the one that follows. The Queen (text) forces Gyges to decide between the life of himse1f (reader) and the life of Candaules (author). What must be asked is if all texts work in this waYi do they demand that the reader take them explicitly into the f01d of his psyche and accept them as that regardless of the author? Or, may the reader reject the text and author in a single suicidal gesture? Berore these metaphors dissolve completely it is best to turn to others who have thought on this subject before. The most obvious work previously done in this direction is Roland Barthes' "Death of an Author". Here are two quotations from this essay: 72

Writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where aIl identity i8 lost, starting with the very identity of the body of writing. (1977, 142) Thus is revealed the total existence of writing: a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dia logue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not as was hitherto said, the author. (1977,148)

Both these quotations stress the power dynamic, one might say almost say fight, that takes place between the reader and the author for the text. Barthes clearly cornes down on the side of the reader, Just as clearly as Gyges will now sleep, live and be one with the Queen, and Candaules will die. That Powell appears to concur with current critical theory really does not take us any closer to a greater understanding of art. One way to see how his ideas may differ i5 to examine how the triangle involving Widmerpool may differ. One way in which it certainly differs is in the fact that Widmerpool's brand of voyeurism is to watch the sexual act rather than Just the naked figure. This fact is made explicit by the text, and prompts Pam to speculate that the Gyges/ Candau les affair hinges on the same issues "What the king wanted was to be watched screwing." This speculation, and the

Widmerpool/Ferrand-Sénéschai entanglement both hinge, not on the perception of a "text" (ie.in this case the female body), but on the perception of an act. This complicates this issue, 73

but at the same time does not invalidate former arguments.

The major complication i5 in how one is to view the

relationship between the text and the author. To a large

degree, one might suppose that these terms, "text" and

"author", are now wholly meaningless: that what is actually

being witnessed is better described as performance. Cer-

tainly that is how Moreland would view it. In Temporary

Kings he tells Nick one of his favorite modern myths:

The other st ory concerns a man ... who is accosted by a beautiful girl, again late at night, no one about. He thinks her a tart, though her manner does not suggest that. She says she wants not money, but love. At first he declines, but is at last per suaded by assurances that something about him attracted her. They adjourn to her fIat, conve niently near. The girl leads the way up sorne stairs into a room, unexpectedly large, hung with dark curtains up to the ceiling. Set in the middle of the floor is a divan or bed. On it, in one form or another, perhaps several, they execute together the sexual act. When aIl is ended, the man, still incredulous, makes attempt to offer payment. The girl again refuses, saying the pleasure was its own reward. The man is 50 bewildered that when he leaves, he forgets something -- umbrella, hat, overcoat. Whatever it is, he remembers at the foot of the stairs. He remounts them. The door of the curtained room is shut -- locked. Within, he can hear the babble of voices. A crowd of people must have emerged from behind the curtains. His sexual activities -- possibly deviations -- have been the object of gratification for a concealed clientele. (TK 278)

Here it must be assumed that it is the act which is interest-

ing to the audience. It is again a situation that seems far

more similar to the theatre than to reading: a collective

,..., audience watches a "performance". However, unlike the the-

atre, one of the performers, the man, is unaware of his play- 74

ing a role. In this way he re3embles an author, who cannot know, see, or respond to his audience. Also, like an author, once the work is finished, the audience is empowered and he is helpless. On the other hand, this modern myth's very existence as a form of art is questioned by X. Trapnel, the young ill- starred, but emin€ntly talented novelist. Talking about a work of criticism he has planned, to be called The Heresy of Naturalism, Trapnel states:

What l'm getting at is that if you took a tape recording of two people having a grind it might truly be called Naturalism, it might be funny, it might be sexually exciting, it might even be beau tiful, it wouldn't be art. It would just be two people having a grind. (BFR 228)

This statement is problematic as it ultimately depends on Trapnel's definition of art. However, Moreland seems to be weIl aware of where much of the interest in his story lies, when he speaks of the possible deviations of sexuality which the voyeurs would have witnessed.

Again asyrnrnetry is the prevalent feature of voyeurism. The voyeurs who watched the performance of the lovers in Moreland's story aIl know something about the man in question that he does not know about them. They aIl carry with them the secrets that it is unlikely he would divulge to other strangers. In essence, the voyeurs have been enabled to see

, the inside of the psyche of a total stranger. Along with 1 their seeing of the direct physical act, they also see the 75 psyche of the man stripped bare. Moreland insists that no payment cou Id take place, "To make sure" the man "agreed. The appeal to male vanity may have added to lhe audience's fun. If he swallowed the declaration that she thought him so attractive, the display would not be over too quicklY"(TK 278). It is essential to the story, from Moreland's point of view, that the man be made to feel that he i5 the object of the woman's affections, and hopefully he will reciprocate. The voyeurs are to watch "love" and not just "sex" which will perhaps increase the realisrn or aesthetics of the situation. Another reason Moreland's story is particularly useful in this study is that it leads us away from the potentially politically dangerous concept of the fernale body as text. In sorne instances in The Music of Time, as we have seen, Powell points us directly to this conclusion, and for the rnost part it i5 the normative image, given our cultural coding. How- ever, it is not always the case that this sexual voyeurism is at the female figure, nor that it even involves heterosexual love. Moreland's story is the best example of prizing the act, and more irnportantly, the "ideas" over the body. But, another exc.ellent example of this idea i5 the dance Murtlock and his cult perform around The Devil's Fingers. Here, as stated earlier, the rnembers dancing shall be "aIl with ail, each with each." Gwinnett watches the five dancers. Widmer- pool participates anà takes pictures. But this image, again emphasized by the watching Gwinnett, and the photographing Widmerpool, stresses the act and the pattern over the mere 76

, appearance of the naked bodies. The societ~l norms fall away as heterosexual love is no longer prized as the only form of the act. Further, in this scene, at The Devil's Fingers, another power struggle takes place, as in the Gyges and Candaules story. At the end of Moreland's story, the male lover is locked outside the room where he had Iain. He is excluded

from the babble of voices of his audience. Although th~re is again the idea that the triangular formation must collapse, leaving only two terms. In the scene at The Devil's Fingers the view is much confused by the number of participants. Although it is never made exactly clear how this happens, Murtlock slashes Widmerpool with a knife. This act begins Widmerpool's end. He is now fully in the clutches of Murt-

lock. One last twist to this story is that Fiona, one of the members of the cult, leaves, and eventually marries Gwinnett. Again we have an example of the watched, irrevocably severing lies with a past "family" to take up with the watcher. Inter- estingly enough, one of the most prominent of the reader- response critics, Stanley Fish, uses the idea of the dance as a metaphor to describe the reading process:

No one would argue that the act of reading can take pl3ce in the absence of sorne one who reads -- how can you tell the dance from the dancer?(1980,22)

And the last chapter of this thesis will explicate the ideas of these critics, looking to see what would happen if and when the act is prized over the object. , 77

But one last point that must be stressed is that Jen kins, throughout the novel, in many ways mirrors our actions.

He, although a character, is also, more simply put, d voyeur, usually in the non-sexual sense of the word. As he watches the world around him, we watch the characters in the novel through his eyes; as he remembers his past, perhaps in an attempt to make sense of his life, we read the novel attempt ing to make sense of the words on the page; as he looks for mythic patterns, and unifying features, we too, with his guidance, look to see what holds the work together; as he searches for glimpses of truth, so do we. In this way much of our reading process, a process which definitely involves sorne element of voyeurism, is made explicit by the narrator who guides us. On the other hand, it must be asked why the reader

is not similar to Widmerpool, the novel's other great voyeur.

Are we, as readers, flattering ourse Ives to think that we are

like Jenkins, but unlike Widmerpool? 1s this trace of voy

eurism in each of their personalities what holds these two

unlikely partners together in the dance of life? Or is there

a fundamental difference, other than merely sexual and non

sexual, in their aspects of voyeurism? These questions will

aiso be answered in the final chapter It will be shown that

Widmerpooi remains caught in strict voyeurisrn, the first

stage of reading, whereas Jenkins is able to retain indepen

dence, and interpret and criticize for himself. 78

CHAPTER 4

• 79

Powell is not the only novelist to show an interest in the parallels between voyeurism and reading. Alain Robbe

Grillet went 50 far as to cali one of his novels The Voyeur.

It is the story of an unsl:~cessful watch salesman who spends a day on an island attempting to market his wares door to door. In the course of action, which is never wholly clear, the salesman, Mathias, may be guilty of raping and slaying a thirteen year-old girl. Mathias misses his boat off the

island: before he can catch the next ferry he i8 arrested in connection with the rape and murder of the young girl. The point is that there are really no incidents of voyeurism in the fabula itself. But in producing the story by reading there is a case of the reader witnessing a horrifie sexual

slaying. AIl this leads one to speculate that the title, The

Voyeur, refers direetly and solely to the reader.

Similarly, Jealousy, also by RObbe-Grillet, i8 another

instance of a story which places the reader in an uncomfort

able position. Jealousy is a minimalist work that focuses on

an isolated plantation and the plantation's owner's wife. The

wife, A ... , is forever entertaining Franck, the elosest, but

still distant, neighbour. The hU8band of the story is neither

mentioned nor seen. But as time moves on, one is forced to

speculate that the entire novel i8 focalized through the

unseen husband's eyes. What the reader is reading, or wit

nessing, or being a part of, is a prolonged proeess of waLch

ing and spying. This time, by being forced to see through the

eyes of the husband, the reader is forced to join him in his 80

voyeuristic activities. Witness:

The first bedroom window opens. The upper part of A ... 's body is framed in it, as weIl as her waist and hips. She says "Good morn ing" in the pIayful tone of someone who, having siept weIl, wakes up in a good mood -- or of some one who prefers not to show what she is thinking about, always flashing the same smlle on principie. She immediately steps back inside, to reappear a little further on a few seconds afterwards - perhaps ten seconds, but at a distance of at least two or three yards -- in the next window -- opening where the blinds have must been opened. (125)

Robbe-Grillet's work is obviously very different from Pow-

ell's, but on the level of implicating the reader as a voyeur

there seems to be an affinity. Still, the great difference

between the two is that as a voyeur in Robbe-Grillet's work,

the reader is forced to identify with sexual deviants, rap-

ists and murderers. In Powell's work our realization of voy-

euris~ is Iess uncomfortable. We are left understanding that

although Widmerpooi and Magnus are voyeurs, 50 is Jenkins; we

need not include ourselves with the deviants.

In fact, of the two prominent voyeurs in The Music of

Time, Jenkins and Widmerpool, the reader is almo~t certain to

identify with Jenkins. This is because, Widmerpool, whatever

other unpleasant traits he may have, is presented as one of

the great Philistines of literature. "Widmerpool remained

totally unimpressed by the arts. He was even accustomed to

show open contempt for them" (CCR 101). So, how can we, in

the act of reading, having an aesthetic experience, identify

with Widmerpool, the Philistine? Widmerpool has a complete

• 81 aesthetic void. In this manner Powell differs radically from

Robbe-Grillet who is in sorne ways literally implicatiilg the reader in sorne crime. Widmerpool is more like Robbe-Gril- let's voyeurs than Jenkins is. Widmerpool, in his lack of appreciation of the arts, lacks the energy to interpret, question, or criticize art. His lack of ability to read books and other forms of art is mirrored in his disastrous reading of his own life.

However, the very idea of identifying with a character or reading in a voyeuristic fashion is under a fair amount of critical attack at the moment. Jon Stratton states:

The reader of fiction is always determined as male, and usually as passive, in relation to the female fetishised text. The passivity of the reading pro cess in our society ensures both relief from repression and further repression as the female reader constitutes herself as male as she voyeuris tically consumes the text. Anna O. 's rebellion against Freud's recuperation 8f her dreams into male bourgeois ideology may be equated with the action which occurs when a person "reads criti cally" that is to say preserves the distance between him/herself and the text, which is exactly not what is expected of the bourgeois reader. (58- 9)

From what Stratton says it is fairly obvio~s that Powell has

fallen into the heresy of political uncorrectness. Yet, at the same time St rat ton is speaking specifically about a dif-

ference between what is seen as an ideal reading, and what is the conventional, practiced, bourgeois, patriarchal reading.

Stratton would agree that Powell's metaphors for reading do

describe the process as we know it, but would also maintain 82 that this process must be changed. Sorne of Stratton's best work is his attempt to show that voyeurism in reading is a construct of the bourgeois world. Using the story of Lady Godiva Statton traces the roots of voyeurism in reading:

The story as originally told by Roger of Wendover in the thirteenth cent ury does not appear to have included Peeping Tom, who seems to have entered the story in the seventeenth cent ury a hundred years after Richard Graf ton had intraduced a new element into the story. This was Godiva's summoning of aIl the magistrates and officials from Coventry to order them to ensure that during her ride aIl the inhabitants of the city stayed indoors with their windows shuttered .... Peeping Tom ... is a replication of the reader or auditor of the story. Tom estab Iishes the existence of the repressed, the invisi ble, and becomes a commentary on the reader or Iistener's own voyeuristic engagement with this story of a woman displaying her nakedness in the public domain. (69)

This example is used to show that as bourgeois society began to become stronger, nakedness came to be identified with sexuality. From this, Godiva's march came to be taboo, and hence the introduction of a voyeur into the story, te represent the reader or auditor. Stratton explicitly links voyeuristic reading to bourgeois culture:

The ideologically male reader of the (asexual) novel also is not overtly a voyeur. Nevertheless, the ultimately charged nature of the bourgeois reading process makes him/her so. (70)

Again Stratton's point seems to hinge on the difference between utopian reading and bourgeois reading. Perhaps the use of "utopian" may seem unfair to Strat- 83 ton, who is striving towards a more complete reading process.

The word "utopian" does suggest that Stratton's goal is one which can never be reached. Without going into detail it 15 important to note that several of the new schools of criti cism fall into this trap of waiting for a new and perfect society, so that our reading can become new and perfecto Tony

Bennett in Formalism and Marxism states that Marxist Criti cism His still in the stages of its 'ideological prehistory', firmly caught in an orbit around the concerns of bourgeois criticism and aesthetics"(lOO). Bennett thinks that one day this criticism can gain a "genuine independence"(lOO), but one is forced to ask, under what conditions. The majority of contemporary political scientists scoff at Marxism, or Cornmu nism as an utopian ideal which can never be reached. But still, the majority of literature departments persist. This sentiment is not meant to deride ail Marxist criticism, but merely to temper the idealism of the endeavoll':". How is it possible to escape bourgeois aesthetics while living in a bourgeois society?

Other critics have varying opinions on the worth of voy euristic aesthetics in reading. Roman Ingarden sees that a reader "who is interested only in the fate of the characlers represented" can turn "weil shaped works of art into cheap aesthetically irritating tittl~-tattle"(qtd.in Iser,1978,

172). Generally, Ingarden seems to have a similar position to

Stratton; voyeuristic projection does happen in the reading process, but it happens at the expense of a kind of reading 84

that is superior. Whereas Stratton speaks of "critical reading", Ingarden's alternative would be sorne form of higher aesthetic appreciation. Again there is a split between actual and ideal reading. This is not to point out that "critical reading" and higher forms of aesthetic appreciation never take place, but to show that perhaps there is a diverse split between reading and academic reading. It is, after all, in the interest of academic institutions to teach a secondary, or higher, type of reading to those who are already literate. For this reason, it is interesting to note that one of the cha.mpions of "voyeuristic reading" is not from the Eng- lish Department, but rather a philosopher and a novelist.

William Gass, in On Being Blue seems to prize what others have seen as u low-brow kind of appreciation of art. As l stated earlier, Gass brings up the example of Plato's Gyges: "Imagine for a moment that l have gained possession of the famous talisman of Gyges, a ring (as Plato tells) which con- fers invisibility upon its wearer" (79). As the thought exper- iment continues Gass moves into the neighbours' house, invisible, to see what is happening there:

She is still preparing salad at the sink Not very interesting. What is fatso doing? Reading the paper? My shoes squeak. l am too nervous to pay attention. What have they to say to one another? Nothing. Not very interesting. (80)

.. Gass' point is that voyeurism per se, as it might happen in the real world is actually a rather boring thing: that life 85

is nat exciting enough. But he does not reduce voyeurism to samething which should be avaided or denied. He rather turns the question on its head and states that we should watch something exciting:

Perhaps l should come back at bedtime to bathe in the dusk-blue light of the set, chew potato chips and other crunchies as they slowly sink ... sag ... settle like their pillows into grace ful sleep. No. l should go to a play. The characters will enter with their entrails showing ... Whole lives will be compressed into a gesture ... and then another. Or l should slip into a novel. My invisi bility's complete. (83)

Two very important ideas come out here. The first is that real life is dull: that art somehow manages to transcend this dullness. This idea is not particularly new; we saw it, for example, in Trapnel's pronouncement that "if you took a tape- recording of two people having a grind ... it wouldn't be art"

(BFR 228). Trapnel continues: "Human beings aren't subtle enough to play their part. That's where art cornes in"(BFR 228) . The second point which Gass makes that is of particular relevance is that immersing oneself in art does truly make one invisible. That is ta say that the Gyges figure in his neighbours' house is ln danger of being heard, of having his feet tripped over, of any number of accidents which could determine his whereabouts. In art this is not the case. There .... i5 a fundamental asymmetry between the text and the reader: the reader need never respond to the text, and the text need 86 , l never be aware that it is being read. Although neither of these possibilities has to be true, both can be. This thesis is itself a response to Powell, Gass, and many others. On the other hand, one can remain silent about what one has read.

The text requires no outward re~ponse; nor is there any danger of the text discovering the reader. Roland Barthes continually harps on "the asocial character of bliss: it is the

abrupt 10ss of sociability" (1975,39). Furthermore, "Criti-

cism always deals with the text of pleasure, never with the

text of bliss"(1975,21). This last observation definitely implies the limits of criticism; that the greatest moments of aesthetic satisfaction can neither be shared nor explained. The text is not a conscious entity: it can give information, but not receive it. And the reading of a text, while it need not be a solitary activity is one that provokes individual,

subjective responses. Barth~s, and others, deny the possibil-

ity of sharing these moments, or analyzing them. This is one of the reasons that there is a calI for a new aesthetic, including new methods of studying art. This type of thinking tends to further divide reading from academic reading, but Gass is not afraid to speak of purely subjective reading. He claims that what the reader wants is:

the penetration of privacy. We want to see under the skirt. And while we are peering at the page, though invisible to Prudence who is scratching her thigh, we are not invisible in fact -- again an improvement over the ring which costs us the sight of ourselves. Words are one-way mirrors, and we can 87 safely breathe, hoot, holler aIl we like to assure ourselves of our existence. (84)

This description of reading again stresses the subjective and individual nature of reading. Also it may lead one to speculate on what reading narratives gives to people. There is the penetration of privacy, but it need not have anything to do, as Gass states, with "Prudence". One thing that the novel does do is to allow human beings to "focalize" through another's vision, mind, and perspective. Obviously, this

focalization takes place on a highly artificial level, par-

ticularly in the case of third-person narrators: no one can

claim to have even partial omniscience. However, this artifi-

ciality may have much to do with the appeal of the novel: one

can from a safe and comfortable distance witness the

thoughts, actions and dreams of another. Although the debate

about the aesthetic value of mimesis and realism is one which

will likely never be completed, it is, on this level, a very

important one. Human characters need to be presented as

"real" so that the reader can penetrate their privacy with

interest.

One of the difficulties of Gass' thoughts on reading is

that he seems to get caught between the concepts of seeing,

and seeing through. Does a reader merely invade the privacy

of the text to see that which he should not, or does the

reader put on a pair of "psychic spectacles" that allow her

an entirely new perspective of the world? "Seeing through"

another's eyes, or perspective is really a kind of reader 88

focalization. Gass claims that the reader can see into any "consciousness" he chooses to. At the same time, aIl Gass' metaphors are tangible noun-based cnes which suggest, as voy eurism would suggest, a subject/object relationship. This question of whether it is the object or the act of perception is in many ways parallel to the question in the last chapter Jf whether The Music of Time's voyeurs were watching the body or the act. Further, of The Music of Time's voyeurs, it is necessary to ask whether it is the voyeurism, or the eventual union with the figure watched which is important. Again, it is not necessarily important to answer this question once it is raised: aIl the evidence points to the fact that different situations (ie, academic, non-academic) and different readers may calI for, or have, different readings. In The Music of Time Jenkins remembers, but questions his memory, often despairing of ever finding the truth. He tries to imagine how others would vlew situations he witnesses. His voyeurism is full of questions and perspectives; he tries to see through others' eyes as weIl as his own. Widmerpool, on the other hand, forges through life with absolute certainty, never questioning anything. It is no surprise that "he has games" with "a tart called Pauline." He "used to photograph her"

(TK 267). Photographs which stop time, frame reality, and do not change, seem to be the ultimate voyeurist tool. They leave very litt le room for interpretation. Both seeing and seeing through are acceptable descriptions of types of read ing. It might be suggested that while seeing is to be equated ,

89 .. with physical voyeurism, seeing through is a type of meta physical voyeurism. One last way to approach this problem is to realize that Jenkins, our narrator, and as we have seen, parallel reader, reads in both these ways. In the last chapter we saw Jenkins' euriosity and voyeuristic nature manifest itself generally by watching others, looking at objects. But what needs more attention is Jenkins' manner of seeing through people, or focalizing. As stated in chapter two, Jenkins uses both quotations and focalization as methods for unifying sueh a grand and sprawling work. What was not said was that these techniques aiso have much in comnl0n wi th our reading proeess. As we read through Jenkins' perspective, and through his eyes, so he, on numerous occasions reads his life through the voices and thoughts of others. One further method which Jen kins uses with increased frequency as the work moves on i8 to have embedded narratives so that characters tell stories in direct discourse, in cheir own words. All these techniques are in many ways self-reflexive, stressing the similarlties between Jenkins and the reader. Although it must be remem bered that the major difference between Jenkins and the reader is that Jenkins lives and acts in his world, whilst we only read about it. When Jenkins runs into Stringham for the first time after they were school friends he muses about his old friend and the recent gossip he has heard about him: 90 l began to feel uncertain whether, in fact, Anne • Stepney had not used the term "pompous" in the usual, and not sorne specialized, sense. Peter TempJer, tao, l remembered had employed the same word years before at school when he had inquired about Stringham's familv. "Well, l imagine it was aIl rather pompous ever, at lunch, wasn't it?" he had asked. At that time l had associated pomposity with Le Bas, or even with Widmerpool, both of whom habitually indulged in mannerisms unthinkable in Stringham. Yet there could be no doubt that he now possessed a personal remoteness, a kind of preoccu pation with his own affairs, that gave sorne prima facie excuse for using the epithet. (HM 109-110)

This passage very clearly shows what focalization through

another can do. There are several levels at work at once.

Firstly, there is the idea that Anne Stepney's prior use of

the word "pompous" may have had sorne special and specifie

meaning. This thought suspends both Jenkins and the reader

between the nominalist and realist positions with regard ta

language; that language is a sub~ective tool used by individ-

uals as weIl as a cornrnon shared tool. Secondly, there is the

memory of Templer's pronouncement on Stringham's family. Tem-

pler's thoughts on the subject force Jenkins to re-evaluate

his own thoughts. Thirdly, there are Jenkins' and the

reader's thoughts on Stringham from previous appearances he

has made in The Music of Time. So there are three separate

opinions open to the reader. LastIy, there is the actual

physicai presence of Stringham before Jenkins. This presence

has its own effects. What actually happens is that in being

forced to re-evaluate his view of Stringham through the

thoughts of Anne Stepney and Templer, Jenkins re-reads his

life, perhaps changing his mind over the question of who and 91 what Stringham is. Further, perhaps the word "pompous" is redefined for Jenkins. Although this example is not, strictly speaking, focalization, as it is in direct discourse, it nevertheless gives us an insight into the working of what it is to "see through" someone elsels mind. Jenkins, in this role of metaphysical voyeur, which we have seen is one way of reading, is both reading and editing the text of his life; memories of people and ideas they have expressed, as weIl as the reappearance of Stringham, aIl force Jenkins to a minor but incontestable change. In the same manner, the reader of a novel may weIl be forced to question her beliefs, ideology and world-view, through the discovery of new and hitherto unexpected occur- rences in the work itself. Roland Barthes expresses this kind of experience in one of his newspaper colurnns, when describing the ballet dancer

Neureyev~

Then l realized that l had just reproduced in 1978 the scene where the Proustian Narrator goes to see Berma act. Everything was there, quite literally: the longing, the murmurs, the expectation, the dis appointment, the conversion, the movements of the audience. l left the theatre amazed by the genius ... of Proust: we never stop adding to the "search" (as Proust kept adding to his manuscripts), we never stop writing it. And no doubt that is what ~eading is: rewriting the text of the work within the text of our lives. (qtd, in Blonsky,106)

Al~ncugh Barthes experience is one of revelation rather than reversion of opinion the act is the same. He is rewriting Proust on a purely subjective level. Other reader-oriented 92

... critics have also noted the great potential novels have for crossing into reality. Wolfgang Iser states:

In reading we think the thoughts of another person. Whatever these th0ughts may be they must to a greater or lesser degree represent an unfamiliar experience, containing elements which at any one moment must De partially inaccessible to us. (1978,126) and: Through gestalt forming, we actually participate in the text, and this means that we are caught up in the very thing we are producing. This is why we often have the impression, as we read, thdt we are living another life. (1978,127)

Seeing through others' eyes and having the illusion of living another's lif leave a potentially lasting impression on the reader. This type of thinking inevitably leads to a blurring of the division between the text and life. However, this very division may be a false one as several critics have pointed out. Robert Scholes is quick to state:

Reading, seen this way, is not merely an academic experience but a way of accepting the fact that our lives are of limited duration and that whatever satisfaction we may achieve in life must come through the strength of our engagemept with what is around us. We do well to read our lives with the same intensity we develop from learning to read our texts. We aIl encounter certain experiences that seem to calI for more than a superficial under standing. (1989,19)

And later in the same book Scholes states that "there is no place for us to 5tand outside or textuality" (1989,27) . These thoughts, taken in conjuncticn with Jenkins' thoughts in The 93

Music of Time bring us to a very interesting conclusion. Scholes seems to be ctescribing the very actions that Jenkins performs. In having this long chain of memories come to him Jenkins is actually reading life. Jenkins' memories are a reappraisal of what has happened to those around him in the span of their lives. If this is the case it is all the more remarkable that Jenkins' memories are so dispersive: he defines the reading of life as the reading of others' lives, not his own. And yet much of the stress of the work is on Jenkins' only partially successful êearch for a historical truth to events that took place in the pasto Continually, the chain of memories fcrces Jenkins to reassess his thoughts on those around him, and hence himself. This idea of the pervasiveness of textuality, that there is nothing outside textuality, and that one may read lives, and memories, as weil as books, seems to question the previously expounded idea that there is a basic asymmetry between a novel and its reader. Put another way: if our friends, lives, and memories can all be viewed as texts, how can a novel differ in its textuality? Scholes has foreseen this problem and states: "Though we read our culture and our lives as we read book, we also act in our culture and our life as we do not in books"(1989,151). It is this lack of action, the impossibility of the reader's action inside a book which fun- damentally accounts for the asymmetry between a book and its reader. This statement is not ~, deny that a reader can have an effect upon a book, but to assert that in the final anal- - 9

94 ysis an imbalance will persist. Whatever else may be said, a book is an ~nconscious, unperceiving object: this accounts for the reader's invisibility. The reader is not invisible in external reality, only with respe~t to the text. Again, the ideas of asymmetry and voyeurism at first signt seem to deny the reader much of the power many reader oriented critics would Iike to see the reader having. How ever, it must be understood that the voyeurist/exhibitionist relationship is far more complex than this. Bergler insists that "every artist unconsciously is a voyeur ('Peeping Tom'), who defends himself against this tendency by means of exhibi tion"(270). He continues to say tnat these urges are "tied up with infantile tendencies" in which the child reasons "1 am not looking at something forbiddeni on the cor.trary, l am pp.rmitting myself to be Iooked at"(270-1). Moving away from purely psycho-analytic thought we can also see that contrary

to one's first impression, voyeurism i5 an active pursuit, whereas exhibitionism is a passive one. The voyeur i5 explic itIya sUbject, (I watch) , whereas the exhibitionist wants to become an object (someone look at me). Here, with the idea of active participation clearly on the side of the voyeur we move back in line with current critical opinion. 'l'he voyeur is invisible, but active: which is to say that while the text is unaware of the reader, the reader can construct her own reading. No study of the reading process could be complete with out the work of Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish, who, at the 95

best of times, do not agree with each other. No doubt, in Fish' s eyes, this paper has already committed th(\ sin of viewing the text as an object. Fish maintains, as is quite logical given his phenomenological clpproach to art, that the text does not exist as a tangible object: readers produce texts. In his famous essay, "Is There a Text in This Class?",

Fish relates the anecdote of the student who asks, "! mean in

this class do we believe in poems and things, or is i~ just us?" (1980,327). Furthermore, "Interpretation is not tMe art of construing, but the art of constructing. Interpreters do not decode poems; they make them"(1980,327). The power over textuality has been removed from the text and given to the reader. Readers produce texts, which have no existence unless reRd. This move seems to open the door for pure subjectivity, but Fish, rather back-handedly, curtails this subjectivity by forming a "community of readers". Now one's subjective, phenomenological reading experience is judged by how it conforms to the norms of academia, and not how it conforms to the "text". From these thoughts it is easy to see where Fish would disagree with voyeurism as an analogy for reading. Voyeurism, by definition, assumes a subject/object relationship between reader and text. On the other hand, the idea of "metaphysical voyeurism" or reader focalization would in sorne ways accord with Fish's proposaIs. Iser and Fish, despite differences, which will be looked

•r at shortly, do agree that the subject/object relationship disappears when the reader produces a text. Iser writes: "We ,

96 always stand outside the given object, whereas we are situ-

ated inside the literary text"(1978,109). Furthermore,

"Image-building eliminates the subject-object division essen-

tial for aIl perception, 50 that when we 'awaken' to the real

world, this division seems aIl the more accentuated" (1978,

140) .

The biggest problem that both Fish and Iser have is the

outright tangibility of a book. A book is a concrete object,

something solid -- with weight. A book is here differentiated

from a text: the book, the solld object which contains the

text, has tangibility, whereas the text remains problematic.

Fish states:

The objectivity of the text is an illusion, and moreover a dangerous illusion, because it is 50 physically convincing. The illusion is one of self sufficiency and completeness. A line of print or a page or a book is so obviously there it can be han dled, photographed, or put away -- that it seems to be the sole repository of whatever value and mean ing we associate with it. (1 wish the pronoun could be avoided, but in a a way it makes my point.) (1980,43)

Regardles5 of whether Fish and Iser are correct or not, one

of the major problems is the lack of a proper vocabulary to

describe this object which can only be an "object" when it i5

merged with our 5ubject, and hence not an object at aIl. This

i5 not meant to be an argument against the phenomenological

approach to art, but a demonstration of the great difficul-

ties that it faces given our linguistic constructions. Ulti-

mately, Fish takes Iser to task for failing to keep the 97

object/non-object status of the text clear; also for failing to choose whether the text or reader has ultimate power. In his scathing, "Why no One's Afraid of Wolfgang Iser" Fish points out that when 15er

is at his most phenomenological it sometimes seems that the very features of the text emerge into be ing in a reciprocal relationship with the reader's activities; but in his more characteristic moments Iser insists on the brute-fact status of the text, at least insofar as it provides directions for the assembling of the "virtual abject". (1981, 6)

Fish is complaining that 15er is having his cake and eating it too: that the text is both an objective given, and that

only the reader has the power to produce the text. Logically these two aspects of Iser's argument are hopelessly incornpat- ible. From this we may conclude that either Fish is correct in his condemnation of Iser, or that reading defies logic, and cannat wholly be described. The latter of these two options is one that has rarely been given any consideration. For both Fish and Iser, and the majority of reader-response critics one of the great battles has been ta deny total subjectivity in the reading process. Fish uses his "comrnunity of readers" to avoid subjectivity, whereas Iser sees that there are sorne givens in the text.

Fish is ultimately the more successful of the two in this argument. Nevertheless, one important fact that must be

remembered is that bath Fish and Iser are teachers as weIl as ( critics. One of the issues at stake in this argument is peda- gogy. As long as literature ls withln the confines of academia it must have some type of objective status: marks must be given, interpretations must be judged, one must be able to say, "This interpretation 1s better/worse than that one." This is why subjectivity is at stake and must be denied. Even today, with the recognition of reader-response criticism past, academics prefer not to see "I" in a scholarly paper: there i5 the attempt to deny this obvious subjectivity. Returning to Barthes, we do weIL ta remember that the aes thetic experience is an "asocial experience". The moment of bliss can neither be shared nor explainen. Perhaps in sorne sense reading is illoglcal; it is certainly subjective. Nevertheless, reading does take place at dn academic level, and it does happen that read1ng experiences are shared. One is quite capable of discussing whether Hamlet had an overwrought Oedipal complex or not. Despite the subjectiv ity and possible diversity of our experiences it is possible to converse on a common ground and ta use specifie ssages to assert our interpretations. Fish would say that this hap pens because readers share cornmon ruIes, assurnptions and con ventions; therefore they can make somewhat common interpreta tions, explanations, and understandings concerning the work read. Is it not still possible that what actually happens 1s that the text does have some objective status? The question seems ta be one of perception rather than ontology. For exam pIe, if x and y see a fire engine and y is colour blind, they

can agree on what was seen whilst disagreeing about the calour. Furthermore, if a Russian friend insists that A Hero 99

of Our Time is a great novel, and lends me his copy, in Rus-

sian, l will have difficulty in experiencing the wealth of the text as l am unilingual. Fish could explain these experiences away by stating that l did not share the same conventions as my Russian friends or that x and y failed to share conventions. AlI the same, this idea of difference, as opposed to community, as a methoù for denying the validity of an experience fails to include aIl that is happening. We do aIl belong to the community of the human race, and it is likely that aIl those reading this paper belong to the community of academia. Nevertheless, these facts do not deny the large differences in aIl of us. Robert Scholes has done excellent work to show how cultural and sexual differences can easily shape aesthetic judgements and values(1985,58-61). Women may weIl prefer novels written by or about women. We must ask how one achieves membership in this community of readers. Is there really only one single, unified community? who is the commu- nit y made up of? Who sets the ruIes? How do you enter? If you disagree are you turfed out?

Scholes points out that the very idea of interpretive communities enslaves readers rather than freeing them. If Fish is serious in stating "it is interpretive cornmunities, rather than either the text or the reader, that produce meanings and are responsible for the emergence of formaI fea- , 1 tures"(1980,14), then there are a lot of questions that must be asked. One fundamental question is how this cornmunity 100

.. cornes up with different and specifie meanings for different

texts. Surely the community must be constructed of individual

readers. Scholes calls this system a "totalitarian vision"

(1985, 155)in which "Fish is the king of the community"

(1985,158). But most important is the idea of difference:

Different, even conflicting assumptions may preside over any reading of a single text by a single per son. It is in fact these differences -- differences within the reader, who is never a unified member of a single unified group -- it is these very differ ences that create the space in which the reader exercises a measure of interpretive freedam. (Scholes, 1985,154)

And lastly, with reference to the text, its power, and its

ability to affect the world "as a real abject":

We care about texts for many reasons, not the least of which is that they bring us news that alters our way of interpreting things. If this were not the case, the Gospels and the teachings of Karl Marx would have fallen upon deaf ears. Textual power is ultimately the power to change the world. (Scholes,1985,165)

One last aspect of the text, and whether it can exist as

an object or not, which must be looked at is the idea that if

the text loses its status as an object, and there is a sub-

ject/object merger, then the ideas of asymmetry and voyeurism

will collapse. Iser is very keen to bring this c0llapse

about. He actually entitles a chapter "Asymmetry Between Text

and Reader". This chapter begins by looking at the asymmetry

between the text and reader, but goes on to show how eventu-

ally the reader is drawn into the text and a balance is 101

achieved. It is precisely the "gaps", "blanks", and "indeter- minacies" which draw the reader into the text. "Whenever the reader bridges the gaps, communication begins"(Iser,1978,

169). Here it is important to point out that communication in this instance must be a one directional process; surely the reader cannot be telling the text anything. "Balance can only be attained if aIl the gaps are filled"(Iser,1978,167).

Indeed, the concept of "gaps" in Iser is a very problematic

one: a "gap" is not a defect, it is "a basic element for the aesthetic response" (Iser,1971,12). Iser sees "gaps" as fun- damentally drawing the reader into the work, thus ending the asymmetrical subject/object relationship:

What is missing from the apparently trivial scenes, the gaps ... this is what stimulates the reader into filling the blanks with projections. He is drawn into events and made to supply what is meant from what is not said. What is said only appears to take on significance as a reference to what is not said; it is the implications and not the statements that give shape and weight to the meaning. (1978,168)

At the same time Iser adroits that these "gaps" "may stimulate", but do not "demand completion"(1978,177). Indeed, it ls difficult to tell if the idea of balance being attained if

aIl the "gaps" are filled is merely an ideal or not. It would

seem questionable whether any two given readers could even agree upon the specifie "gaps" to be fil1ed in.

In fact, in Iser's opinion, "gaps" are what define literature in comparison to other texts:

Sueh total combinat ion and comprehension may be

ft 102 possible in scientific texts, but not in litera ture, where the text does not reproduce facts but at best uses such facts to stimulate the imagina tion of the reader. (1978,87)

Iser here says that understanding may be complete in scientific texts because the language is referential to an exter-

nal reality. X. ~rapnel of The Music of Time believes that

the novel is truer than history for the simple fact that 3 novelist includes everything, whereas a historian cannot possibly include all the relevant details about a subject(HSH 80) . This argument, although beginning at the same point as Iser's reaches a very different conclusion. Essentially, the difference hinges on the very different views of truth and what it is: referential to the world, or as Aristotle would have it,"a general truth" (35) . But one of the large issues at stake here is how literature relates to reality. Fish insists that there is no real difference. He denies "the objectivity of either the text or the world"(1981,10). This may be so, but it is important to realize as Iser does that the initial relationship between reader and book is very different from the relationship between reader and world. One difference is that with the book, the reader is in an asymmetrical position, whereas with the world the reader is in a "face to face"(Iser,1978,167) situation. liA text cannot adopt itself to each reader with whom it cornes in contact," and "the reader ... can never learn from the text how accurate or inaccurate are his views of lot" "', (Iser,1978,167). Fish counters with a long series of argu- 103

( ments showing that "perception itself is an act of ideation"

(1981,10) . That is to say that we are always inL'~rpreting rather than just seeing. He continues to show that misunder standing and indeterminacy are also prevalent states in real

life. His examples, obvio"sly not chosen at !:andom, support his case. However, the simplest way to envisage a face to face relationship is to imagine a conversation. 1 can ask you "Are you happy?" and you can respond "Yes." 1t is true that you might lie, that "happy" is a suitably arnbiguous word, that 1 might not hear your answer, etc. 1t is true that com munication is not always possible or successful, but that

does not mean that it is always impossible. On the other hand, one can think of many questions that one could ask a text which are extremely problematic. 1s Measure for Measure a comedy (a happy text)? This question would require a stren uous effort to corne to any conclusion. Even then, the best

answer may weIl be, "Yes and no." It is not that these tex tuaI questions are unanswerable, it is that definitive answers are lacking.

What colour are Jenkins' socks? Yes, this is a ridicu lous question: but if 1 wanted to know and Jenkins lived in the real world l could take steps to find out. And these steps are precisely the ones which a reader cannot always make. The reader may speculate that because Jenkins cornes from such and such a background that his socks are black. ( Still, this is speculation and not something that is given in the text. For example, it is given that Jenkins buys a great- 104 coat for the war. If one asks the text what Jenkins wears in the war the text will respond. Although these examples are banal, even meaningless, they are important as they do prove that on one level the text is an object, and certain things are given. Both Fish and Iser fail to construct fully working models of reading because they see reading as a single unified function; from there they try to have an all-encompassing explanation of this process. On the other hand, Robert Scholes divides the reading process into a tripartite function: reading, inter pretation, and criticism. "Reading is at least as much a knowledge as it is a skill"(Scholes,1985,21). Scholes contin ues; it His a largely unconscious activity"(1985,21). When we read we do fill in "gaps" to a certain degree. However, "any hitches" in filling in these blanh~ "will cause a shift from reading to interpretation" (1985,22) . Interpretation "depends upon the failure of reading"; this failure "activates the interpretive process"(1985,22). Scholes gives the example that we read a parable for the story, but interpret it for the meaning (1985,23). Criticism, the last mode of reading, "involves a claim that a certain literary work fails to achieve the purely literary norms of its mode or genre" (1985, 23). It His the field of taste"(1985,23), Criticism can also move beyond the purely literary field ta deal with questions of sexism, racism, or socio-political issues. From this one can see that the New Critics and Formalist criticized works on an aesthetic criterion, whereas Feminists and Marxists use ~ 1

105

socio-political criteria. But to return to the three forms of reading, it should be stated that each requires a different power-dynamic between text and reader. Reading privileges the text, although the reader has sorne small power in deterrnining where the gaps are and whether they are problernatic. Interpretation suggests that the reader have more power, and the relationship come closer to a balance. As Iser states, if aIl the gaps are filled a balance can be achieved. But, as seen earlier, it is extremely unlikely that two readers will even agree where aIl the "gaps" are, and therefore this balance is an ideal. Criticisrn, as Stratton says, "preserves the dis-

tance" (59) between the reader and the ~ext. Criticism is the ( cornparison of the text to a set of external norms, perhaps even the world we live in. Further, to be successful it seems necessary to stress that these three reading processes must be enacted in chronological order. Viewing reading as a tripartite process helps lmmeasur- ably. Here we can see on the fjrst level ("reading") that the relationship is essentially one of voyeurism. The reader regards an object. Interpretation is a proces5 in which there ls the potential for a subject/object merger, and for a bal-

ance to be achieved. Although this potential remai~s un ful- filled, this i5 a step where the reader and the text come closest to sharing power. In criticism, the text shares power with both the reader and sorne external model of reality or ( aesthetics. In sorne cases of criticism the power dynamic will 106

shift directly to the reader; the text which has acted as a catalyst becomes of less importance. If in the last chapter we asked whether the voyeur watched the object or the act, and what his final usurpation of the body perceived might mean, it seems that we might now have sorne answers. The split between watching the body or the act seems to parallel the split between two kinds of voyeuristic reading: seeing an cbject, or seeing through someone else's perception (reader focalization). Just as the voyeur might be interested in either seeing the object, or identifying with one of the parties involved, so the reader may choose one of these two options. Furthermore, as Gyges mar-

ries the Queen, and Gwinnett, Fiona, 50 too does the reader (voyeur) have the potential to become one with the object viewed. Marriage is, in sorne ways, a very apt metaphor for this second stage of reading. Interpretation, like marriage, on an ideal scale, has the potential of balance; and although the married couple will not be literally one, there is perhaps, on occasions, the illusion of a subject/object merger. f 1 Lastly, it is important to stress that the ideas expres- \ t f sed here are not meant to fully describe the reading process. f t Reading is a subjective experience, and because of this any t t overall description of it is problematic. Hopefully this t t t paper has explained one small part of the reading process; } ~ and even that part takes place at a primary, although impor- ~ ~ tant level. The Music of Time i5 a work which helped formu- *~ ~ late the5e ideas, as it contrasts two great voyeurs, Jenkins 107

, ... and Widmerpool. Widmerpool shows us the dangers of forever

remaining at the first level of reaàing, and forever regard-

ing the text as an objecte Jenkins shows us that there is a

potential for understanding, interpretation, and personal

growth by progressing beyond this first stage of voyeurism

into a more active, balanced role. Widmerpool is the kind of

reader Stratton warns us against being, whereas Jenkins uses

his own individuality to try to understand the text of his

world. Widmerpool is the kind of voyeur who is similar to

what Robbe-Grillet accuses his readers of being. We know that

Widmerpool never reads his life as Jenkins does from the fact

that Widmerpool continues to make the same mistakes over and

over again. The dominant pseudo-iterative pattern associated

with Widmerpool is that of always being bo~barded with

objects: bananas, peaches, paint, sugar, stink-bombs. Widmer-

pool is aware of this: he can read this much, but he fails to

interpret or criticize these attacks. It is no mistake that

the last time Widmerpool suffers one of these attacks, he

exclaims, "I wouldn't have missed that for a cool million - l

mean if money meant anything to me the se days" (HSH 107) .

Jenkins, on the other hand, is so complete as a narrator

because he parallels our reading process. He makes explicit

how our minds work, and leads us past simple subject/object

relationships into reader focalization and even the realm of

interpretation. It is no surprise that he, in the penultimate

paragraph of the whole work, steps back, removes himself and

his voice, and quotes from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. He 108 has learned that reading life begins with others; it is through the comparison of two worlds that criticism can begin. It i8 this kind of demonstratien that can help us not only te read fiction more clearly, but to read our lives with more clarity. 100

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Selected published works of Anthony Powell:

I. A Dance to the Music of Time

A Question of Upbringing. Glasgow: Fontana, 1951. A Buyer's Market. Glasgow: Fontana, 1952. The Acceptance World. Glasgow: Fontana, 1955. At Lady Molly's. Glasgow: Fontana, 1957. Casanova's Chinese Restaurant. Glasgow: Fontana, 1960. The Kindly Ones. Glasgow: Fontana, 1962. The Valley of Bones. Glasgow: Fontana, 1964. The Soldier's Art. Galsgow: Fontana, 1966. The Military Philosophers. Glasgow: Fontana, 1968.

Books Do Furnish a Room. Glasgow: Fontana, 1971. Temporary Kings. Glasgow: Fontana, 1973. Hearing Secret Harmonies. Glasgow: Fontana, 1973. 110

II: Other Works:

Afternoon Men. London: Dlckworth, 1931.

Venusberg. London: Duckworth, 1932.

From a View to a Death. London: Duckworth, 1933.

Agents and Patients. London: Duckworth, 1936.

What's Become of Waring. London: Cassell, 1939.

John Aubrey and his Friends. London: Heinemann, 1948.

Brief Lives and Other Selected Writings. London: Cresset Press, 1949.

"Introduction." The Complete Ronald Firbank. London: Duckworth, 1961.

Two Plays: "The Garden God." and "The Rest l'Il Whist le. " Boston: Little Brown, 1972.

Ta Keep the Bali Rolling: Memoirs. 4 vols. London: Heinemann, 1976-1982. o How the Wheel Becomes It. London: Heinemann, 1983.

The Fisher King. London: Heinemann, 1986 111 SECONpARY MATERIALS

Part 1: A Selected List of Powell Criticism

Bader, Rudolf. Anthony Powell' s "Music of Time" as a Cyclic Novel of Generations. Bern: Franke Verlag, 1980.

Barber, M. "Art of Fiction." interview. Paris Review 20, (1978), pp. 45-79.

Bergonzi, Bernard. "Antheny Powell: 9 1/2." Critical Quarterly 2, (1969), pp.76-78.

Anthony Powell. Rev. and ed. Ian Scott Kilvert. Harlow: Longman, 1971.

Birns, M.B. "Anthony Powell's Secret Harmonies: Music in a Jungian Key." Literary Review 25, (1981), pp.80-92.

Brennan, Neil. Anthony Powell. New York: Twain Publishers, 1974.

Brown john, Anthony. "Profile of Anthony Powell." New Review 1, (Sept. 1974), pp.21-28.

Davis, Douglas M. "An Interview with Anthony Powell." College English 24, (1963), pp.533-536.

Facknitz, M~rk A.R. "Self-Effacement as Revelation: Narration as Art in Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time." Journal of Modern Literature XV:4, (Spring, 1989),pp. 519-529.

Felber, Lynette. "A Text of Arrested Desire: The Anticlimax of Extended Narrative in Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. Il Style 22, (1988), pp.576-594.

Frankie, Patricia A. The Fictional Memoir as Sensibility and Social History: A Study of the Narrator-Artist in Anthony Powell's A Dance to The Music of Time. Unpublished Thesis at McGill University, 1977.

Gaston, G. L. "This Question of Discipline." interview. The Virginia Quarterly Review 61, (1985), pp. 638- 654.

Hall, James. "The Uses of Polite Surprise: Anthony Powell." Essays in Criticism 12, (1962), pp.167-183.

Harrington, H.R. "Anthony Powell, Nicholas Poussin, and the Structure of Time." Contemporary Literature 24, (1983), pp. 431-438 .

.. 112

Howarth, H. "Discords in the Music of Time." Commentary 53, (1972), pp. 70-75

Jebb, Julian. Il Anthony Powell' s Dreams." Listener 94, (1975),pp. 374-378.

Karl, Frederick R. "Sisyphus Descending: Mythical Patterns in the Novels of Anthony Powell." Mosaic 4, iii, (1971), pp. 13-22.

McLeod, Dan D. "Anthony Powell: Sorne Notes on the Art of the Sequence Novel." Studies in the Novel 3, (1971), pp. 44- 63.

Mizener, Arthur. The Sense of Life in the Modern Novel. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1964.

Morris, Robert K. The Novels of Anthony Powell. Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968.

Powell, Violet. The Album of Anthony Powell's Dance to The Music of Time. London: Thames and Hudson, 1987.

Queensbury, W.D. "Anthony Powell: The Anatomy of Decay." Critique 7, (1964), pp.5-26.

Russell, John. Anthony Powell: A Quintet, Sextet, and War. Bloornington: Indiana University Press, 1970.

Spurling, Hilary. A Handbook to Anthony Powell's Music of Time. London: Heinemann, 1977.

"Heresy of Naturalisrn." Encounter 49, (1977), pp.71-72.

Tapscott, S.J. "Epistemology of Gossip: Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time." Texas Quarterly 21, (1978), pp. 104-116.

Thody, Philip. "The English Proust." in Studies in French Fiction in Honor of Vivienne Milne. ed. Robert Gibson. London: Gant and Cutler, 1988.

Tucker, James. The Novels of Anthony Powell. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.

Wilcox, T.W. "Anthony Powell and the Illusion of Possibility." Contemporary Literature 17, pp.223-239. wilson, Keith. "Pattern and Process: The Narrative Strategies of Anthony Powell' s A Dance to the Music of Time." English Studies in Canada Il, ii, (1985), pp.214-222 .. 113 Part II: List of General Critical Studies

Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 4th ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981.

Allen, David W. The Fear of Looking: or Scopophilic Exhibitionist Conflicts. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1974.

Aristotle. The Poetics. trans. by W.Hamilton Fyfe. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Bakhtin, M.M. Problems of Dosteovski's Poetics. trans by R.W. Rotsed. USA: Ardis, 1973.

The Dialogical Imagination: Four Essays. trans. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.

Bal, Mieke. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. trans by Christine van Boheemen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985.

Barthes, Roland. S/Z. trans by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974.

The Pleasure of the Text. trans. by Richard Miller. New York: Hill, 1975.

Image Music Text. trans. by Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1976.

Beaujour, Michel. "Sorne Paradoxes of Description." in Towards a Theory of Description: Yale French Studies 61, (1981) .

Bergler, Edmund. "Psychoanalysis of Writers and of Literary Productivity." Psychoanalysis and the Social Sciences 1, (1947), pp.247-296.

Bergonzi, Bernard. The Situation of the Novel. London: Macmillan, 1970.

Blonsky, Marshall. On Signs. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.

Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.

Carpenter, Humphrey. The Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and his Friends. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989 .

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Carroll, Lewis. The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Intro by Martin Gardner. Middlesex, England: Penguir. Books, 1987. Colquitt, C. "The Reader as Voyeur: Complicious Transformations in 'Death in the Woods'." Modern Fiction Studies 32, (1986), pp.175-190.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1981.

Eco, Urnbe~to. The Role of The Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana Universtiy Press, 1979.

Fish, Stanley. ls There a Text in This Class? Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1980. "Why No One's Afraid of Wolfgang Iser." Diacritics 11, (1981), pp.2-13.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953.

Freund, Elizabeth. The Return of the Reader. London and New York: Methuen, 1977.

Gass, William. On Being Blue: A Philosophical lnquiry. Boston: David Godine, 1976.

Genette, Gerard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.

Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Greenacre, Phyllis. Swift and Carroll: a Psychoanalytical Study of Two Lives. New York: International Universities Press, 1955.

Hall, James. The Tragic Comedians: Seven Modern British Novelists. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966.

Herodotus. The Histories. trans. by Aubrey de Selincourt. London: penguin Books, 1986. Iser, Wolfgang. "Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction." in Aspects of Narrative. ed. J. Hillis Miller. NYC: Columbia University Press, 1971.

The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. 115

Kellman, Stephen G. Loving Reading: Erotics of the Text. Conneticut: Archon Books, 1985.

Kiell, Norman. Varieties of Sexual Experience: Psychology in Literature. New York: International Universi~ies Press, Inc., 1976.

Ladimer, Bethany. "The narrator as voyeur in A la recherche du temps perdu." Critical Quarterly 19, (1977), pp.5-20.

Lermontov, Mikhail. A Hero of Our Time. trans by Paul Foote. Middlesex: penguin Books, 1987.

Martin, Wallace. Recent Theories of Narrative. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.

McCutcheon, Elizabeth. "Denying the Contrary: More's use of Litotes in the Utopia." in Essential Articles for the Study of Thomas More. ed.and intLo. by R.S.Sylvester and G.P. Marc'hadour. Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1977.

Orwell, George. Shooting an Elephant and other Essays. New York: Harcourt, World and Brace Inc., 1950.

Plato. The Republic. trans by H.D.P.Lee. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1955. , t " Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Pasto 8 vols. trans. by C.K.Scott Moncrieff. London: Chatto and Windus, 1922.

Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London and New York: Methuen, 1983.

Robbe-Grillet, Alain. The Voyeur. trans. by Richard Howard. New York: Grove Press Inc., 1958.

Jealousy. trans. by Richard Howard. New York: Grove Press Inc., ~959.

Rudinow, Joe 1. "Representation, Voyeurism, and the Vacant Point of View." Philosophy and Literature 3, (1979), pp.173- 196.

Runyon, Damon. The Damon Runyon Omnibus. New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1939.

Scholes, Robert and Robert Kellogg. The Nature of Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Scholes, Robert. Textual Power. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Protocols of Reading. New Haven: Yale 116 University Press, 1989.

Smith, R. Spencer. "Voyeurism: a Review of LiteraLure." Archives of Sexual Behaviour 5, (1976), pp.585-608.

Stratton, Jon. The Virgin Text: Fiction, Sexuality and Ideology. Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1987.

Swinden, Patrick. The English Novel of History and Society 1940-1980. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984.

Tompkins, Jane P. (ed.) Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post Structuralism. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Torgovnick, Marriana. The Visual Arts, Pictoriallsm and the Novel. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisited. New York: Dell, 1957.

Wilson, Colin. The Outsider. Londo!1: Picador, 1963.