The Contemporary English Country House Novel After 2000
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Resurgence and Renovation: The Contemporary English Country House Novel after 2000 Submitted for examination for the degree of Ph.D. in English Literature by Barbara Williams 080782814 School of English Literature, Language, and Linguistics Newcastle University August 2015 Abstract This thesis examines the resurgence of the English country house novel since 2000 as part of the growing popularity of the country house setting in contemporary British culture. In the context of economic recession, growing English nationalism, and a Conservative-led government accused of producing a ‘Downton Abbey-style society’, country house texts are often dismissed as nostalgic for a conservative social order. This study reclaims the English country house novel from this critical dismissal, stressing the genre’s political ambivalence. While readings of the country house resurgence are mostly played out through the media’s reaction to television programmes, my research provides a detailed and comparative examination of literary texts currently missing from the debate. I situate Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001), Sally Beauman’s Rebecca’s Tale (2001), Toby Litt’s Finding Myself (2003), Wesley Stace’s Misfortune (2005), Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale (2006), Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger (2009), and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child (2011) within a wider body of discourse on the country house, exploring the contemporary relevance and cultural value of the setting. It is my contention that the English country house novel self-consciously negotiates its growing popularity in contemporary culture. In chapter one, I argue that the recent shift from material to textual inheritance in the genre is a way of reclaiming voices traditionally excluded from the canonical house of fiction. In chapter two, I examine the ideological significance of detail in the country house aesthetic. In chapter three, I explore how the generic preoccupation with authenticity is used to negotiate cultural value. Finally in chapter four, I assert that the trope of ruin signifies an evaluation of the contemporary currency of the country house setting. As such, I suggest that the genre, like the houses it depicts, is undergoing reformation. i ii Dedication This thesis is dedicated to my Granda, who sadly died before it was completed. He was a lifelong champion of education, though his family could only afford to send his eldest sibling to university. He was instrumental and inspirational to my academic career, and to his memory I dedicate my biggest academic achievement to date. iii iv Acknowledgements This thesis is the product of a wider support network to whom I am endlessly grateful. First and foremost, I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my research. Through their generosity I have been able to dedicate myself to research full-time, a kindness I hope I have repaid in my timely submission of this project. I will always be grateful for their endorsement of my work, and that of the selection panel at Newcastle University. I would like to extend my gratitude to my supervisors, Dr James Procter and Dr Melanie Bell, whose insightful feedback has been invaluable. They have encouraged me to challenge myself as far as possible, and their guidance has been instrumental in developing not only my thesis but my independence as a researcher. I am also grateful to my wider postgraduate community at Newcastle University, particularly Faye Keegan, Katie Cooper, Marie Stern-Peltz, Dave Spittle, Claire Irving, Sadek Kessous, Tom Langley, Bea Turner, Helen Stark, and Dr Stacy Gillis. Their support, sympathy, and humour have been the silver lining to any difficult days. I wish them all well with their academic careers. Finally, I owe a depth of gratitude to my friends and family, whose unwavering belief has sustained this three-year project. To my Inaudible and STAMP families I owe my sanity – thanks for prising me from the laptop to dance and laugh with you all. Thank you to Christopher Perry and Richard Ludlow in particular for their endless kindness, humour, and understanding. Thanks to Mam, Dad, and Stephen for a lifetime of support and daily demonstrations of an incredible work ethic; I owe you everything. In my sister, Helen, I have not only a best friend but an academic inspiration; thank you for finding time in your crazy schedule to read and comment on whatever I’ve sent you. And thank you to my fiancé, Nick, for keeping me fed, watered, and happy when the thesis has eclipsed these priorities. To you I am grateful for more than I can begin to express. And finally, thank you to my Nanna and Granda; I hope this makes you proud. v vi Contents List of Figures ......................................................................................................................... ix General Introduction A Recent Resurgence................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1 Literary Heritage: Lineage, (Inter) Textuality, and the House of Fiction ............................... 47 Chapter 2 Part of the Furniture: Country House Aesthetics and the Ideology of Detail.......................... 85 Chapter 3 Self-Conscious Showcases: The Value of the Work of Writing ........................................... 133 Chapter 4 Ruin and Renovation: Rewriting the Wrongs of the English Country House Novel ............ 179 Conclusion A Decadent Genre? ................................................................................................................ 221 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 229 vii viii List of Figures Figure 1 ‘Please No Second Series’: Unite poster ......................................................................... 11 Figure 2 ‘Downturn Abbey’, Private Eye cover ............................................................................ 12 Figure 3 The Swallowcliffe family tree in Shelter from the Storm ............................................... 58 Figure 4 The Loveall family tree in Misfortune ............................................................................ 59 Figure 5 A scrappy textual inheritance and family tree in The Thirteenth Tale ............................ 63 Figure 6 Camp cross-dressing on the hardback, paperback, and French covers of Misfortune .. 109 Figure 7 Constructing authenticity in ‘Upstairs Downstairs Abbey’ on Comic Relief................ 150 Figure 8 Engineering authenticity in ‘Downton Sixbey’ on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon ....... 151 Figure 9 Power dynamics in Finding Myself ............................................................................... 161 Figure 10 A novel within a novel ................................................................................................ 161 Figure 11 The Loveall family crest in Misfortune ....................................................................... 171 ix x General Introduction. A Recent Resurgence The emphasis is upon literature, for literature has been pre-eminently both the carrier of values from generation to generation between the writers and readers of books, and the creator of their values. But houses too may be “read”. They are icons. Written sign and architectural sign reflect one another. Writers interpret what they see, and the way in which things are seen is conditioned by how they are described. There is no firm division between the visual arts and literature. Nor is there a clear divide between what might be called “high culture” and the everyday. – Malcolm Kelsall1 Since the turn of the century, the English country house has become increasingly prominent in British cultural forms. While the setting has previously enjoyed periods of popularity in individual forms – the country house novel of the 1920s and 1930s, for example, or the heritage films of the 1980s and 1990s – the current resurgence across literature, film, television, and radio marks a striking stage in the setting’s cultural diffusion.2 While readings of the country house resurgence are mostly played out through the media’s reaction to television programmes, this thesis fills a critical lacuna through its literary focus and detailed, comparative examination of a range of texts. As the first sustained study of this setting in the contemporary English novel, I reclaim the literary country house from critical dismissal and argue that the genre deserves more serious attention in terms of its negotiation of the contested significance and meanings of the country house. Emerging in the context of growing English nationalism, economic recession, and a Conservative-led government accused of producing a ‘Downton Abbey-style society’, country house texts are often dismissed by cultural commentators as products of nostalgia for a 1 Malcolm Kelsall, The Great Good Place (Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), pp. 7-8. 2 Drawing on the work of Patricia Kelly from the 1980s, Vera Kreilkamp suggests that the Big House novel has also undergone a ‘renascence’ (Patricia Kelly, ‘The Big House in Contemporary Anglo-Irish Literature’, in Literary Interrelations: Ireland, England and the World, ed. by Wolfgang Zach and Heinz Kosok (Tübingen: Guntar Narr Verlag, 1987), pp. 229-234, (p. 231), cited in Vera Kreilkamp, The Anglo-Irish Novel and the Big House (Syracruse: Syracruse University Press, 1998), pp. 1-2). 1 conservative social order.3 As John J. Su notes, ‘sweeping condemnation