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Cocktail Party UNIVERSITY OF JYVÄSKYLÄ “AND THEN THEY FOUND HER BODY” T. S. Eliot’s corporeal Cocktail Party A Pro Gradu Thesis by Maili Öst Department of English 2003 JYVÄSKYLÄN YLIOPISTO Tiedekunta Laitos HUMANISTINEN Kielten laitos Tekijä Maili Öst Työn nimi ”And then they found her body”: T. S. Eliot’s corporeal Cocktail Party Oppiaine Työn laji Englannin kieli Pro gradu –työ Aika Sivumäärä elokuu 2003 215 sivua TIIVISTELMÄ – ABSTRACT Tutkin työssäni ruumiillisuuden representaatioita ja rakentumista T. S. Eliotin näytelmässä Cocktailkutsut (The Cocktail Party, 1949). Tahdon selvittää voiko ruumiin paikallistaa näytelmän keskeiseksi kipupisteeksi ja millaisia heijastumia tämä saa tekstin eri tasoilla. Samalla hahmotan ruumiista analyyttista työkalua, jolla raottaa näytelmän rakenteellisia rinnakkaisuuksia ja selittää sen ratkaisemattomia jännitteitä. Ruumis on näin ollen sekä työni matkamittari että sen tuntematon määränpää. Työni pyrkii olemaan löyhästi fenomenologinen löytöretki ruumiiseen ja ruumiillisuuteen. Väi- tän Maurice Merleau-Pontyn ruumiinfenomenologiaa myötäillen, että Cocktailkutsujen ruumis poh- jimmiltaan määrittyy eräänlaisena välitilana. Keskiöön nousevat tällöin ruumiin rajat ja rajanylityk- set. Rajoja rikkova ruumiillisuus sukupuolittuu näytelmän puitteissa pitkälti naiseksi. Työni poltto- pisteeseen nousee näin Eliotin kokonaistuotannossa harvinainen naismarttyyri, Celia. Näytelmät ovat Eliot-tutkimuksen runsaaseen kenttään suhteutettaessa pitkälti yhä aliedustettu alue ja lähestymistavat luutuneita. Toisaalta myös ruumiillisuuden tarkastelu Eliotin tuotannossa on aivan viime aikoihin asti ollut lähinnä satunnaisen sivujuonteen asemassa tai korostetun biografista. Cocktailkutsut on tutkimuksessa usein nähty jäykän dualismin ilmentymänä, jossa suhtautuminen ruumiiseen on yksioikoisen kieltävää tai vähintäänkin väkinäistä. Ruumiskäsitteen problematisoi- minen haastaa tällaisia lukutapoja ja paljastaa näytelmässä myös polyfonisia säröääniä. Työssäni pyrin intratekstuaalisten huomioiden kautta luomaan pohjaa ruumiillisen luentatavan mahdolliselle laajentamiselle Eliotin teosten kokonaisuuteen. Koska tarkoituksenani on ehdottaa erilaisia näkökulmia ruumiiseen, työni teoriakenttä on laajan poikkitieteellinen. Hahmottelemani ruumiin kartta saa biologian, maantieteen, kulttuurintutkimuk- sen ja narratiivisen yhteisöruumiin kosketuspintoja, mutta se myös kyseenalaistaa ja muuntaa niitä. Ruumis asemoituu useilla akseleilla Simone de Beauvoirin tai Luce Irigarayn määritelmien mukai- seksi toiseudeksi. Samalla se kurkottaa siltana dikotomioiden yli. Cocktailkutsujen ruumiskokemus on kaoottinen ja muuntuva, dynaaminen. Näin se asettuu myös haastamaan lineaarisen ja kronologisen ajan ja tilan mittasuhteet. Pohdin cocktailkutsuja kaksois- valotettuna kulttuurikudoksena, jonka rituaaleissa ruumis on sekä keskeinen rakennuspuu että kät- kemisyritysten kohde. Katson, että ruumiin lähes anorektinen kahlitseminen cocktailkutsujen ke- hyksiin saa vastapainon näytelmän runsaslihaisena ja toisteisena ryöppyävästä puheesta. Näkö- kulmani on näin ollen pitkälti tekstilähtöinen. Ratkeava ruumis avaa samalla tien runokielen ja arkirupattelun välille sekä genrenylitysten tulkintaan. Tekstissä eri tasoilla ilmenevä väkivalta liittyy elimellisesti ruumiin rajojen rikkomiseen. Näy- telmän kannalta keskiöön nousee syömisen ja syödyksi tulemisen aaltoliike. Kieli ja puhe näyttäy- tyvät tällöin cocktailkutsujen ravintona ja lihana. Samalla kietoutuvat yhteen keskeiset teksti- analyyttiset lähestymistapani: elliptinen poissaolo (askeesi) sekä ahnehtivan ritualistinen toisteisuus (ylensyönti). Väkivallan riitteihin sisältyy lisäksi itsetuhon elementti, koska ruumista syövä ruumis voidaan käsittää kannibalistiseksi. Ruumiin kaoottiseen diskurssiin kätkeytyy toisaalta myös ruumis karnevalistisena nauruna. Asiasanat: text-based literary analysis. phenomenology. drama. Eliot,-T.-S. The Cocktail Party. body. gender. alterity. transgression. Säilytyspaikka: Muita tietoja: 2 CONTENTS ENTRANCE 4 BACKBONE TO THE CORPOREAL COCKTAIL PARTY 8 Invitation to Eliot and The Cocktail Party 8 Eliot’s Organic Oeuvre 8 The Basic Anatomy of The Cocktail Party 13 Critics at The Cocktail Party 16 The Corporeal Cocktail Guide to Reading Eliot 22 The Core Corporeal Ingredients 22 The Body/Bodies/(Corpo)(Reality) 22 Gender 27 Alterity/The Other 30 Body-Talk at The Cocktail Party 33 The Physical Fast 33 The Verbal Feast 38 BODY BUILDING: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BODY IN SPACE 43 The Evasive Human Body 43 The Body as Corpse 43 The Missing Body/Corpse 50 The Party-Body in Parts 57 The Non-Human Body 59 The Body as Beast 61 The Untamed Urban Jungle 61 The Rat- and Bat-Body 65 The Simian Body 70 Insect Imagery 76 The Body as Artefact 83 The Abject Object-Body 83 The Mechanical Body 89 The Filmed Body 97 The Body as Ghost 103 The Hellish and Heavenly Body 103 Fictional (Meta)Pyhsicality 108 The Haunted House 111 ARTERY: THE BODILY BONDS BETWEEN SPACE AND TIME 114 The Biological Breakdown 114 The Fall of the Family Tree 114 The Ageing Body 122 The (Patho)Logical Body 130 The Sexual Body 136 The Territorial (En)Trails 141 The (Corpo)Real Compass 141 The Colonial Travelogue 147 The Metropolitan Body 153 3 DIGESTION: SYMBIOSIS THROUGH THE GENDERED BODY 158 The Corporate (Corpo)Reality 158 The Theatrical Body 158 The (Corpo)Real Costume 158 The Buffoon-Body 163 The Buffet-Body 166 The Female Feast 166 The Gendered Food Chain 174 The Polymorphous Body 180 The (Fe)Male Secret(ion) 180 The Transgressive Body 180 The Cannibal (Corpo)Reality 184 The Silent Treatment 189 The Symbiotic Celia 195 RE-ENTRANCE 204 THE BIBLIOGRAPHY 209 4 ENTRANCE ALEX . And then they found her [Celia’s] body, Or at least, they found the traces of it. EDWARD. But before that… ALEX. It was difficult to tell. But from what we know of local practices It would seem that she must have been crucified Very near an ant-hill. (Cocktail 434.) My interest in the corporeal cords of T. S. Eliot’s drama stems from the con- troversial spot in The Cocktail Party (1949) where the body literally vanishes from view. The aim of the present study is to locate this missing body “[o]r at least . the traces of it” and to explore the functions it performs in the play. At the same time, I will use The Cocktail Party for testing the body as an analyti- cal stethoscope to the structural pulsations of Eliot’s dramatic corpus. In the process, a gendered reading of the cocktail-corporeality will increasingly pre- sent itself and build up to a more detailed analysis of the character Celia Coplestone. To borrow Eliot’s lines from ‘Little Gidding’ (1942), “the end of all our exploring” will then hopefully be to return full circle and to scratch deeper into the passage quoted above or indeed “to arrive where we started/ [a]nd know the place for the first time” (Complete 197). The method adopted here is broadly phenomenological in that it trades the body as a firmly established category for a continuous effort to describe corporeality as it presents itself and mutates within the context of the play. The Cocktail Party proves, I contend, a suitable ground for this pursuit, as the body turns out to be a far from unequivocal concept in the play. In my undertaking to trace the (en)trails of the body in The Cocktail Party, I have been struck by the magnitude of physicality found in a play which has often been slighted particu- larly for its virtual purgation of the flesh. In effect, I will attempt to show that the relation to the body may be perceived as one of the core anxieties of the cocktail-community, and that this infiltrates all aspects of the play. A further incentive for my work is that, in view of the vast bulk of Eliot studies, critical presentations of the body in Eliot’s oeuvre have until recently been scarce or tangential. The borders of the body will be (re)traced here on a deliberately broad and multidisciplinary map. From time to time, the discussion will be braided with some of the theoretical frameworks surrounding the body, stretching from 5 comparative literary analysis and narratology to cultural studies, psychoanaly- sis, and feminist philosophy. My goal, then, is not to fit the corporeal dimen- sions of The Cocktail Party into a strict theoretical straitjacket but rather to provide a meeting ground for various approaches to corporeality against the background of Eliot’s play. Similarly, I pretend neither to produce a conclusive anatomical chart of all the cocktail-bodily functions nor to dissect one segment of it in minute detail, but to mirror it from various angles with the intent to find parallels as well as sources of conflict. The objective is to move away from one-way relations of authority in order to incite a dynamic dialogue between the theory and the text. Tackling corporeality from a cocktail-mixture of per- spectives is also intended to avert the risk of overinterpretation entailed in an overly narrow approach. Terminologically, the basic bodily binoculars used here includes the clus- ter body/ (corpo)reality/ secret(ion)/ (en)trails with its retina of gender and al- terity/ othering; the nomenclature is tailored dialectically in relation to, for in- stance, Merleau-Ponty (1962, 1964, 1968) and Irigaray (1984, 1985a, 1985b). A glimpse of the contemporary post-war background and the rising controversy surrounding gender and the female body is provided by de Beauvoir’s The Sec- ond Sex (1949a, 1949b), published in the same year as The Cocktail Party was first performed. Heinämaa (1996, 1997 and 2000), for example, has
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