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DIALOGUES OF DESIRE: INTERTEXTUAL NARUTION IN THE WORKS OF MARY SHELLEY AND WILLIAM GODWIN Ranita Chatterjee Department of English Submitted in pzrtial fulfilrnent of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Graduate Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario December 1997 O Ranita Chatterjee 1998 National Library Bibliothèque nationale 1*1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie SeMces services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence dowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distniute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microfom, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfichelnlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thése ni des extraits substantiels may be p~tedor otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent êeimprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. ABSTRACT Using Julia Kristeva's concept of intertextuality and Lacan's theories of desire, this study ârgues that there is a dialogic process that generates and circulates an "excess" of meaning that conscripts the desires of future readers in and between William Godwin's and Mary Shelley's fictional and non-fictional writings. Beginning with a critique of the predominantly psychobiograpnic readings of the literary output of this father-daughter pair, my study posits the notion of "psychonarration," A term of my own invention, psychonarration describes the intertextual connections that arise from within an intimate collective, such as the father-daughter relationship of Godwin and Shelley, to produce varied emergent discursive identities for each member. Psychonarration foregrounds the psychic, yet collective and dialogic constructions of identity through narratives. 1 frame my study with readings of what 1 argue are Godwin's and Shelley's most personal, yet textually constructed works: the former's recollections of and tribute to Mary Wollstonecraft in Memoirs of the Author of "A Vindication of The Riahts of Wornan" (1798), a work that publicly wrestles with the literary, political, and emotional legacies of a lover, wife, and mother that significantly provides Shelley with the only details of a mother she never knew; and the latter's originally unpublished fictional autobiographical confession of father- daughter incest in Mathilda (cornposed in 1819). 1 suggest that while Memoirs transposes Mary Wollstonecraft from historicsl existence to discursive construction through the operation of Godwin's desire for public sympathy for his loss, this particular rendition of Wollstonecraft is revisited both in his later domestic novels and in Shelley's fiction. Through readings of the repetition of narrative iii patterns, structures, characters, themes, and diction, my study suggests that Godwin's Caleb Williams, Mernoirs, Fleetwood, and his last novei Deloraino, and Shelley's Frankenstein, Mathilda, "The Mourner, " and her last novel Falkner, engage in different textual dialogues that contest and confirm the portrayal of familial relationships, especially of father-daughter intimacy in a family without a mother. In so doing, 1 suggest that there is a complicated, libidinal interaction between the historical iives of authors and the textual inscriptions of these histories. Keywords: Romanticism, Romantic literature, Gothic novels, Godwin, Shelley, Wollstonecraft, Kristeva, Lacan, Freud, Foucault, Feminist Theory, Psychoanalysis, Queer Theory, Intertextuality, Desire, Autonarration, Homoeroticism, Incest, Father-Daughter Relationships. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS With deep gratitude and respect, I thank my supervisor Professor Tilottama Rajan and my second reader Professor Elizabeth D. Harvey for their guidance, insignt, and unfailing enthusiasm and patience for a project that survived arduous dislocations. 1 am also grateful for a doctoral fellowship in the early stages of this dissertation from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 1 am indebted to my parents, sister, and brother who through their own examples of academic excellence sustained my desires to see this project to its completion. Finally, 1 thank Tomo Hattori not only for inspiring me with his academic success, but also for pxoviding astute criticism, intellectuâl conversations, and personal support from the beginning. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Certificate of examination ii Abstract iîi Ac knowledgements v Table of Contents vi Introduction: Intertextuality, Psychonarration, and Desire in the Godwin-Shelley family "The Most Hurtful Performance": Shelley's Mernories and Godwin's Memoirs of Wollstonecraft 18 Political Anxiety: William Godwin, Caleb Williams and Masculine Desire 85 "A mummy again endued with animation": The (Re)production of Desire in Shelley's Frankenstein Conclusion: "An eternal mental union": Mathilda and the Circulation of Desire in Shelley's and Godwin's Writings Works Cited and Consulted Vita Introduction Intertextuality, Psychonarration, and Desire in the Godwin-Shelley family' Among the Godwins and the Shelleys, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley has only recently begun to enjoy the scholarly attention she deserves.: Significantly, with the critical rediscovery of her writings, especially those published after Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818, 1831), Shelley's relationship to her father William Godwin is once again being examined. There is much available biographical and autobiographical material on the lives of Godwin and Shelley, as well as many critical l Unless otherwise stated, "Shelley" will be used to refer to Mary Shelley throughout this study. Although there has always been a steady critical concern with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, there are now book-length appraisals and critical essays on her other writings. 1 believe, along with critics such as Tilottama Rajan ("Mary Shelley's" 43), that the republication of Mathilda and the reissuing of The Last Man have contributed to this renewed interest in Mary Shelley and her corpus. Mathilda has been reprinted in two anthologies: see Bennett's and Robinson's The Marv Shellev Reader, and Todd. In addition to the Hugh Luke edition of The Last Man that has been reissued by Anne K. Mellor, there are two new editions of this novel: Morton D. Paley's 1994 and Anne McWhirts 1996 editions. For some of the more influential criticism on Mary Shelley see: William Veeder's 1986 Marv Shellev and Frankenstein: The Fate of Androavnv, Anne Mellor's 1988 Marv Shellev: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters, Jane Blurnberg's 1993 Marv Shellev's Earlv Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Miserv," the 1993 collection of essays The Other Marv Shellev: Bevond Frankenstein, and Katherine C. Hill-Miller's 1995 "Mv Hideous Proaenv": Marv Shellev. William Godwin, and the Father-Dauahter Relationshi~. The recent 1997 collection of essays Iconoclastie ûe~artures: plam Shellev after Frankenstein: Essavs in Honor of the Bicentenarv of Marv Shellev's Birth attests to the growing interest in Mary Shelley's entire corpus and includes a useful biographical census of Shelley's fiction other than Frankenstein. readings at least of Godwin's Thinas As Thev Are; or The Fdventures of Caleb Williams (1794, 1797, 1816, 1831) and Shelley's Frankenstein.' Nevertheless, there have been no full-length studies that consider the relationship between the father's and the daughterfs texts. With the influential publication in 1988 of Anne Mellor's Marv Shellev: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters, Shelley's persona1 relationships, especially with Godwin, became the foundation for criticism of her fictional works in highly suggestive ways. For both in uncovering the vast range of Shelley's corpus and in rejuvenating her literary reptation, Mellor constructs Mary Shelley as a literary daughter and a woman writer, albeit one who is committed to "the preservation of the bourgeois family" because of her own "childhood deprived of a loving nuclear family" (xii).' This acknowledgement of the relevance of Mary Shelley's familial context for her literary production, particularly of the influence of her father, has also contributed to the recent study by Katherine C. Hill-Miller, "Mv Hideous Proaenv" : Marv Shellev, Wil1.iarn Godwin. and the Father- In fact, while studies of Godwin's entire corpus are rare, there are several recent biographies of him. See Don Locke's 1980 A Fantasv of Reason: The Life and Thouaht of William Godwin, Peter Marshall's 1984 William Godwin, and William St Clair's 1989 The Godwins and the Shel levs: The Bioara~hvof A Familv, which, despite its title, is a biography primarily of Godwin. ' Because Mellor's study was the first major discussion of al1 of Shelley's writings, some subsequent critics of Mary Shelley have felt compelled either to acknowledge or to refute Mellor's readings of Shelley's works within and through her life experiences. Hence, for instance, Kate Ferguson Ellis in a chapter on Frankenstein in her study The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideoloav (1989) persuasively argues that far