RECONSTRUCTING IDENTITY IN PETER CAREY'S JACK MAGGS SUSANNA ISOBELLA VILJOEN DISSERTATION for the degree MASTER OF ARTS in ENGLISH at the NORTH-WEST UNIVERSITY Supervisor: Prof. M.J. Wenzel 2007 Potchefstroom Campus TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication Acknowledgements Abbreviations iii Abstracts Chapter 1: Literature and identity Contextualization Cultural contexts Context and identity 1.3.1 Cultural identity 1.3.2 Personal identity 1.3.3 Narrative identity Culture and literature Methodology Chapter 2: Narratology 2.1 Narrative aspects 2.1 .I Plot 2.1.2 Context: place, space and time a) Place, space and time 2.1.3 Characterization 2.1.4 Focalization Literary conventions 2.2.1 Text and intertextuality 2.2.2 Metafiction Literary construction and interpretation 2.3.1 Author and authority 2.3.2 Reader response and interpretation Chapter 3: Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 3.1 The Victorian social context 3.2 Realism and Victorian literature 3.3 Analysis of Great Expectations 3.3.1 Plot 3.3.2 Context 3.3.3 Characterization 3.3.3.1 The Victorian Gentleman 3.3.3.2 Dickens's female characters 3.3.3.3 Dickens's children 3.3.4 Focalization 3.4 Literary conventions 3.4.1 Allusion Chapter 4: Jack Maggs - Peter Carey 4.1 Socio - historical context 4.2 Postmodernism, postcolonialism and literature 4.2.1 Postmodernism 4.3 Analysis of Jack Maggs 4.3.1 Plot 4.3.2 Context 4.3.3 Characterization 4.3.3.1 The Victorian Gentleman 4.3.3.2 Carey's female characters 4.3.3.3 Carey's children 4.3.4 Focalization 4.4 Literary conventions 4.4.1 lntertextuality 4.4.2 Metafiction Chapter 5: Dickens and Carey: a comparison 5.1 Dickens's social criticism and vision 5.2 Carey's social criticism and vision 5.3 Suggestions for further study 5.4 Conclusion Bibliography DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my husband and children Jozua, Jan-Hendrik and Kobus Viljoen who have made it possible for me to be more than I could ever have imagined. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my thanks to my supervisor, Prof. Marita Wenzel. This dissertation would not have been completed without her expert advice and considerable patience. I wish to acknowledge the financial contribution received from the National Research Foundation of South Africa, which has enabled me to do research and to attend a conference abroad. I would also like to thank Ms Gerda van Rooyen of the Ferdinand Postma Library for her assistance in searching for sources. A special thanks to my friends and colleagues who patiently listened to my ideas, frustrations and complaints. I am extremely grateful to my mother who helped with the referencing, cooking and all the other chores that I could simply delegate to her. Finally, a special word of thanks to my husband and children for their support and unfailing faith in my abilities. You are worth more than any degree could ever be. ABBREVIATIONS All references to novels by Charles Dickens and Peter Carey will relate to the editions specified in the bibliography and will be given in the following abbreviated form: Charles Dickens DC David Copperfield GE Great Expectations LD Little Dorrit 0 T Oliver Twist PP The Pickwick Papers SbB Sketches by Boz Peter Carey BS Bliss JM Jack Maggs KG The True History of the Kelly Gang ABSTRACT The formation of identity is closely integrated with contextual, temporal and spatial dimensions. Perceptions about personal, cultural and historical identities are created within literary spaces through authorial and literary representation. As a postcolonial writer, Carey questions modernist authors who assume that they are accurately recording reality, as well as the representation of the identities of peripheral characters and contexts found in Victorian fiction. By revisiting Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations, Carey addresses socio-historical; cultural, identity and literary issues within a postcolonial context. In his novel, Jack Maggs, he succeeds in subverting and appropriating the authorial authority and historical and narrative spaces as they are perceived to be in Victorian fiction, by the manipulation of narrative aspects and by the use of literary conventions such as intertextuality and metafiction. He also succeeds in creating alternative methods of identity formation. ldentiteitsvorming is ten nouste verweef met kontekstuele, temporale en ruimtelike dimensies. Persepsies van persoonlike, kulturele en historiese identiteite word binne literere ruimtes geskep deur die wyse waarop litergre voorstelling plaasvind. As 'n postkoloniale skrywer, bevraagteken Peter Carey die veronderstelling dat modernistiese skrywers se werke 'n akkurate weerspieeling van die realiteit is. Hy bevraagteken ook die voorstelling van die identiteite van marginale karakters en ruimtes soos dit in die Victoriaanse konteks gevind word. Deur te verwys na Charles Dickens se Great Expectations, fokus Carey in sy roman Jack Maggs, op sekere sosiaal- historiese; kulturele, identiteits- en literere kwessies binne 'n postkoloniale konteks. Carey slaag daarin om die Victoriaanse skrywer se outoriteit, asook die historiese en narratiewe ruimtes - soos dit in Victoriaanse fiksie weerspieel word - te ondermyn en aan te pas deur die manipulasie van narratiewe aspekte en die gebruik van litergre konvensies soos intertekstualiteit en metafiksie. Hy slaag ook daarin om alternatiewe metodes vir identiteitsvorming daar te stel. CHAPTER 1 : Literature and Identity 1.I Contextualization This dissertation attempts to trace and foreground the significance of postcolonial texts in the re-writing of realist Victorian master narratives' as exemplified in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (1860 - 1861). Great Expectations is used as a matrix in comparison with the postcolonial text, Jack Maggs (1997) by Peter Carey, who constructed this novel as a counter- narrative. From a postcolonial perspective, the heterogeneity of original texts and their historical contexts prevents us from making general assumptions about such texts as different societies "had experienced very different forms of colonialism" (Thieme, 2001:2). This study illustrates how revised texts produce an alternative interpretation and understanding of identity formation and contributes towards its postmodern perception. This perception of identity as a fluid and constantly changing process is determined by changing historical, cultural and socio-economic contexts. Consequently, the comparison of Great Expectations with Jack Maggs also focuses on the socio-historical contexts of Victorian England and Australia as a postcolonial society. Great Expectations is a predominantly realist novel and formulated in the style of a Bildungsroman but it also contains strands of the gothic (mystery), mystery and the fairy tale that are indicated in the idea of a dual ending cleverly anticipating and fusing the realist and fantastic traditions. Davis (1999:27) defines Bildungsroman as being the story of a young person from the provinces who, dissatisfied with the social an intellectual restrictions of provincial life, leaves home to make his way in the city. There he is initiated into the truth about the 1 Klein (1995:275) states that "[nhe phrase master or meta narrative has grown popular for describing stories which seem to assimilate different cultures into a single course of history dominated by the West" (my italics). Kvale (1992:32) asserts that 'Postmodern thought is characterized by a loss of belief in an objective world and an incredulity towards meta-narratives of legitimisation." world, often through painful love affairs, and he loses his illusions and accommodates himself to the newly discovered reality. In Great Expectations, the narrative involves the story of a young boy who is dissatisfied with his life and prospects as an apprentice to a blacksmith. He is given unexpected hope and expectations through a mysterious benefactor and, as a result, moves to the city only to find that he had drawn the wrong conclusions about his benefactor and that the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. Dickens's complex narrative structure and characterization in Great Expectations are depictive and representative of the Victorian notion that identities are fixed. Victorian ideologies2 and beliefs are reflected in characters such as Pip, the protagonist of the novel, who strives to become the archetypal Victorian gentleman; Joe. Pip's brother-in-law; the Pocket family; Jaggers and Wemmick, and in the female characters' dispositions that range from the cruel (Pip's sister and Estella) and manipulative (Miss Havisham) to the traditional, sweet and wholesome home maker (Biddy). Magwitch, the returned convict who longs to be an English gentleman by proxy, is portrayed as the archetypal picaresque child and peripheral character whose destiny is sure to be a life of crime, disaster and, eventually, exile and death. Pip's life is intertwined with those of convicts, criminals and crime. Pip is an internal character-focalizer (first person narrator), whose life is tumed upside down on more than one occasion because of the interference and involvement of the convicted criminal, Magwitch, who (after his exile) returns to England to claim Pip as his creation. Great Expectations is not the only fictional work of Dickens with the theme of a convict who returns home from exile. In one of his earlier works, The Pickwick Papers (1836 - 37), Dickens includes the story of "[Tlhe convict's return" (PP, 76-83). 2 I understand ideologies to include political, social, religious and cultural values, beliefs and practices.