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An Analysis of Selected Works by George Orwell, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and Virginia Woolf

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An Analysis of Selected Works by George Orwell, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and Virginia Woolf Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1996 The Literary Study of Non-Fiction: An Analysis of Selected Works by George Orwell, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and Virginia Woolf Kenneth S. Rogers Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Rogers, Kenneth S., "The Literary Study of Non-Fiction: An Analysis of Selected Works by George Orwell, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and Virginia Woolf" (1996). Dissertations. 3628. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/3628 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1996 Kenneth S. Rogers LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO THE LITERARY STUDY OF NON-FICTION: AN ANALYSIS OF SELECTED WORKS BY GEORGE ORWELL, RICHARD WRIGHT, ZORA NEALE HURSTON, AND VIRGINIA WOOLF A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH BY KENNETH S. ROGERS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS MAY 1996 Copyright by Kenneth S. Rogers, 1996 All rights reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS While recognizing that two paragraphs cannot properly acknowledge those people who made this work possible, I feel some words of gratitude are in order at the outset. Of the numerous contributions of my committee, Paul Jay's patience, Pamela Caughie's challenging comments, and Joseph Epstein's faith have stood out most clearly. This project would not have been conceived if it were not for the guidance of several outstanding teachers: Allen Frantzen, Edmund Perry, Stuart Small, and Theresa Stanton. Joby Berman's patience and generosity were also important contributions. And I must especially thank my wife Debbie for her encouragement, patience, and insistence. The impersonality of this page cannot convey my feelings for my parents, Ed and Rae, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. iii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................... iii Chapter 1. THE CURIOUS HISTORY OF NON-FICTION STUDIES ..................... 1 2. ORWELL AS SOCIAL EXPLORER: THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER ............ 49 3. HURSTON, HOODOO, AND ANTHROPOLOGY: MULES AND MEN ............. 84 4. VOICES AND FACES: WRIGHT AND THE PICTORIAL TEXTS OF THE 1930S ................................................. 118 5. THREE GUINEAS: WOOLF'S BOMBSHELL ............................ 159 6. THE HOPEFUL FUTURE OF NON-FICTION STUDIES .................... 200 WORKS CITED .......................................................... 206 VITA ................................................................. 224 iv CHAPTER 1 THE CURIOUS HISTORY OF NON-FICTION STUDIES I begin with a statement which I believe to be, and trust will be accepted as, self-evident: non-fiction texts do not receive serious attention from literary critics and scholars. The quantity of non- fiction analyses is not only strikingly low compared to that of fiction and poetry, but the quality of what few analyses do exist also does not 1 approach the sophistication of fiction and poetry analysis. My primary goal in this study is to compensate in part for these inadequacies by performing an extended analysis of four works of non-fiction: Richard Wright's Twelve Million Black Voices, George Orwell's The Road to Wigan 1 Should the terms "non-fiction," "fiction" and "poetry" be used, as I seem to be using them here, as boundaries demarcating self­ contained literary categories? Literary scholarship in the past several decades has questioned the validity of such categorization, and this effort (part of the general trend toward eliminating long-standing scholarly barriers across the academy) offers an obvious strategy for the attempt to energize non-fiction studies. Denying the distinction between non-fiction and other forms of writing more privileged by the literary world, and subsequently applying fictional and poetic analysis to works of non-fiction, is one possible solution to the current dearth of non-fiction studies. For a number of reasons, however, I have chosen not to follow this strategy, perhaps the most compelling reason being the status of this strategic approach in the literary academy. While the impact of non­ traditional scholarship on literary studies cannot be denied, neither can the continuing influence of traditional academic paradigms in research, historical criticism, pedagogy, the canon, and a number of other institutions--including the division of texts into neat categories such as non-fiction, fiction and poetry. By not challenging these categories in this study, I intend neither to indict contemporary scholarship for its "failure" to transform literary studies (indeed, my desire to study non-fiction has been strongly motivated by nontraditional academics) nor defend traditional literary categories from the onslaught of contemporary scholarship, but rather to demonstrate how a non-traditional literary approach can be derived using the assumptions of traditional literary study. 2 Pier, Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas, and Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men. Some preliminary questions must be answered, however, before analyzing these texts. Even if the above generalizations about non- fiction studies are taken at face value, it is still necessary to examine how non-fiction has come to be studied (or not studied) in the manner that it has. And the most practical way to begin this examination is with a selective look at the reception history of the four non-fiction works mentioned above. Richard Wright's Twelve Million Black Voices (1941), a prosaic history of African-American life from slavery to the New Deal accompanied by over a hundred photographs, generated almost as much critical controversy as had his novel Native Son, published earlier that year. Several writers objected to the bitter tone of the narrative and, more significantly, the deliberate exclusion of the African-American upper classes, whose success did not, in Wright's estimation, fairly represent the experience of the majority of his people. Most critics, however, praised the quality of Wright's prose, and Twelve Million Black Voices sold very well. After this initial response, however, the text has met with "a curious critical reception,u according to Jack B. Moore, who claims that Twelve Million Black Voices "has not elicited the kind of in-depth analyses--with a few notable exceptions--that a popularly conceived major work by a major writer deservesu (415). Moore's comment is supported by even a casual glance at the body of criticism which the text has generated over five decades--brief mentions in Wright biographies, a citation here and there in the popular press, a few comments from the discipline of photographic criticism, and perhaps a dozen articles in literary journals. 3 Margaret Walker's comments on the text in Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius illustrate the type of critical response Twelve Million Black Voices has generated. Walker prefaces a lengthy quote from the text with the declaration that it is "one of Wright's best prose statements, showing his imaginative powers at their best. It is reminiscent of his poetry. Stylistically, it is not only poetic and deeply lyrical, it evokes emotion and empathy for the disinherited and the dispossessedu (107). What makes Walker's commentary noteworthy is not so much its content but rather its brevity. No further comments are offered in analysis of Twelve Million Black Voices, and while this fact is partially attributable to the fact that Walker's text is primarily biographical, Native Son and other Wright novels receive a great deal more critical attention in Walker's text. This paradoxical attitude-- enthusiastic appraisal combined with relative inattention--typifies the use of the text in Wright biographies. "There were other, exciting projects in the five-year interval between Native Son and Black Boy,n writes Dan McCall; "--his text for the photo-collection of 12 Million Black Voices, stories to write, reviews to get in, speeches to deliver-­ but his autobiography was slowly taking shape in his mindu (103). An exciting project, perhaps, but somehow also uninteresting; McCall makes no further reference to the text in his work. The critical response to Twelve Million Black Voices can easily be read in its entirety in a day, and at the end of that day one would appreciate the number of favorable responses it has generated. In the field of Wright studies, then, Twelve Million Black Voices stands out as a text worthy of praise, but not worthy of attention. A curious reception, indeed. The enduring popularity of Native Son may partially explain the lack of attention given to Twelve Million Black Voices, yet a similar 4 explanation cannot be provided for the critical reception of George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier (1937). The author of four critically well-received but commercially unsuccessful novels, Orwell nearly overnight became a controversial figure, especially among English left intellectuals, through his text on working and living conditions in the industrial north of England. In addition to making Orwell a recognized literary figure, the text arguably determined the direction which
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