Carson Mccullers and the Tradition of Romance. Charlene Kerne Clark Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1974 Carson McCullers and the Tradition of Romance. Charlene Kerne Clark Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Clark, Charlene Kerne, "Carson McCullers and the Tradition of Romance." (1974). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 2657. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/2657 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction. 1. The sign or “target" for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is "Missing Page(s)". If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting thru an image and duplicating adjacent pages to insure you complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a large round black mark, it is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. You will find a good image of the page in the adjacent frame. 3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., was part of the material being photographed the photographer followed a definite method in "sectioning" the material. It is customary to begin photoing at the upper left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue photoing from left to right in equal sections with a small overlap. If necessary, sectioning is continued again — beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete. 4. The majority of users indicate that the textual content is of greatest value, however, a somewhat higher quality reproduction could be made from "photographs" if essential to the understanding of the dissertation. Silver prints of "photographs" may be ordered at additional charge by writing the Order Department, giving the catalog number, title, author and specific pages you wish reproduced. 5. PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as received. Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 75-1918 CLARK, Charlene Kerne, 1947" CARSON McCULLERS AND THE TRADITION OF RCMANCE. The Louisiana State University, and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Ph.D., 1974 Language and Literature, modem Xerox University Microfilms,Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. CARSON McCULLERS AND THE TRADITION OF ROMANCE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Charlene Kerne Clark B.A., University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1969 M.A., University of Arkansas, 1970 August, 1974 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I express my deep appreciation to Dr. Otis Wheeler for his wisdom and direction in the preparation of this dis sertation. I thank Dr. John Wildman, Dr. Lewis Simpson, Dr. Lawrence Sasek, and Dr. Nicholas Canaday for their patient and thoughtful reading of this manuscript during their sum mer vacation. I wish also to thank my husband, William Bed ford Clark, whose knowledge and research of miscegenation in Southern fiction indirectly benefited me. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................... ii ABSTRACT ..................................................... iv CHAPTER I. IN SEARCH OF A T R A D I T I O N ........................ 1 II. EROS AND AGAPE IN THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER: TRANSCENDENCE OR» » SALVATION? ................. 29 III. REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE: CARSON McCULLERS’ GOLDEN ICON ......................................65 IV. THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFE: A MODERN TALE OF UNREQUITED L O V E ................................. 96 V. THE CHILD AS AMERICAN ADAM IN THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING ......................................... 120 VI. SELFHOOD AND THE SOUTHERN PAST: A READING OF CLOCK WITHOUT H A N D S ............................ 144 CONCLUSION..................................................169 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................. 176 VITA ........................................................ 179 ABSTRACT Richard Chase, in The American Novel and Its Tradi tion , defines the qualities of a uniquely American genre, the romance-novel: the subordination of verisimilitude to fantasy and melodrama; the dominance of imagery, metaphor, and symbol in a narrative technique that is often mythic; and a Manichaean tendency to polarize experience in terms of light-dark imagery and spirit-body categories. The novels of Carson McCullers belong to this genre. This subordination of verisimilitude to fantasy is apparent in the author's use of settings remote and distant which bespeak loneliness and despair as in Reflections’ in a Golden Eye and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and in her intro duction of such fanciful impish creatures as Anacleto, the frivolous Filipino houseboy in the former and Cousin Lymon, the mischievous hunchback in the latter. These works are further set apart from the tradition of realistic prose fic tion by their distinctive use of figurative and imagistic language indigenous to poetry, focusing on such striking images as the enormous reflecting golden eye of the peacock, the source of the title of the first work, and the "two gray crossed eyes" of the reclusive Miss Amelia in the second. The use of eyes is part of an emerging pattern of images of reflection which assumes symbolic import as the introspective examination of the self in the eternal quest for self-knowledge. Consistent with this theme, other pat terns of imagery, most notably those of the fallen house and the dark journey, arise. In these three symbolic patterns of the self, Mrs. McCullers relies heavily on the use of light and dark imagery (as with the half-painted house of Miss Amelia), a characteristic indicative of her Manichaean tendency to view the quest for self-knowledge, and ultimate ly reality itself, in polar terms of good-evil, reason-passion, and body-soul. This Manichaean sensibility reveals a preoccupation with the darker side of man's nature, particularly as ex pressed in the myth of Eros or lawless passion. Her charac ters are consumed with romantic passion which expresses it self in a bizarre pattern of heterosexual and homoerotic re lationships such as the ludicrous courtship of the manly giantess and the effeminate hunchback in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and the passionate devotion of one mute for another in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Leslie Fiedler points out that the American literary imagination has forged its own variant of the European Eros myth through the transformation of the heterosexual myth of the dark beloved into the homoerotic love of the white man for his dark comrade. The romance-novel has quite clearly inculcated the myth which is readily discernible in McCul lers ' Clock without Hands, in the love of Jester Clane, the v white scion of a Southern aristocrat, for Sherman Pew, the mulatto orphan. Taken together, these romantic proclivities of Carson McCullers should be viewed, not as an attempt on the part of the writer to elude reality, but rather as an effort to con front it by delving below the surface. CHAPTER I IN SEARCH OF A TRADITION In a comprehensive study of the novels of Carson McCullers, one of the most difficult, yet most essential tasks is to define the tradition to which her works belong. Because I believe it has not yet been adequately done, my purpose here is to attempt this definition through analysis of her works.'*' The burden of my argument is that Mrs. McCul lers' outlook as a writer is essentially romantic and that her fiction belongs to the peculiar American romantic tradi tion identified and defined by Richard Chase in The American. Novel and Its Tradition. The objective of this introductory chapter is to re examine the hybrid genre termed the romance-novel by Chase, noting its fundamental characteristics and demonstrating their general application to the novels of Mrs. McCullers. The lat ter half of the chapter will enlarge upon the Chase thesis by examining three motifs indigenous to the tradition of romance, ■*" A number of comprehensive studies on Carson McCul lers including Ihab Hassan's Radical Innocence, Oliver Evans' biography The Ballad of Carson McCullers, Chester Eisinger's Fiction of the Fortres and Irvin Malin's New American Gothic imply an awareness of romantic tendencies without ever re ally confronting the burden of placing her in the romantic tradition. Malin comes closest when he includes her in his New American Gothic tradition which has its roots in Ameri can romanticism. 1 2 Platonic love, erotic love, and brotherly love, considering their origins and specific development in Mrs. McCullers' fiction. The groundwork will then be laid in this chapter for a subsequent in-depth analysis of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Ballad of the Sad / Cafe, The Member of the Wedding, and Clock without Hands. While reading these novels, I was struck by the dif ficulty of identifying their genre. Although they met the standard novelistic criteria with regard to structure, they somehow fell short of my expectations. In place of the usu al sanity and common sense, the expansiveness, and*moral considerations that traditionally dominate the novel, there was evidence of a pervasive poetic sensibility, a decidedly lyrical style, and a highly colored, melodramatic imagina tion.