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The Ill-Fated Women of Arthur Machen's Fictive UNFIT TO LIVE: THE ILL-FATED WOMEN OF ARTHUR MACHEN’S FICTIVE UNIVERSE A Thesis Presented to the faculty of the Department of English California State University, Sacramento Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in English (Literature) by Angela Elisa Schoch SPRING 2020 © 2020 Angela Elisa Schoch ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii UNFIT TO LIVE: THE ILL-FATED WOMEN OF ARTHUR MACHEN’S FICTIVE UNIVERSE A Thesis by Angela Elisa Schoch Approved by: __________________________________, Committee Chair Jason Gieger, Ph.D. __________________________________, Second Reader Nancy Sweet, Ph.D. ____________________________ Date iii Student: Angela Elisa Schoch I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format manual, and this thesis is suitable for electronic submission to the library and credit is to be awarded for the thesis. __________________________, Graduate Coordinator ___________________ Doug Rice, Ph.D. Date Department of English iv Abstract of UNFIT TO LIVE: THE ILL-FATED WOMEN OF ARTHUR MACHEN’S FICTIVE UNIVERSE by Angela Elisa Davidson Welsh gothic writer Arthur Machen (1863-1947), born Arthur Llewellyn Jones, is undoubtedly best known for his 1894 novella The Great God Pan, a text that has received a fair amount of scholarly consideration. Conversely, many of Machen’s other fin de siècle era works have received little attention from scholars despite the fact that they often engage with similar themes as the Pan novella. “The White People,” written in the 1890s and published in 1906, makes a striking companion piece alongside The Great God Pan: while both tales involve women who interact with supernatural forces, they are told from radically different points of view and betray Machen’s interest in engaging with a wide variety of moral and spiritual perspectives. More curiously though, both of these stories end with the destruction of their female occultists; in fact, many of Machen’s tales feature women who are made “unfit” to exist in the material world through their occult dabblings. The author himself spent much of the 1890s exploring the occult, and it has been said of Machen that he was “a longtime” seeker for a spirituality that satisfied his own burning certainties about the presence of wonder all around us” (Freeman 248). How do we understand Machen’s literary treatment of v female occultists in light of his own explorations? Engaging with a variety of frameworks, including Machen’s biography and non-fiction writing on occult topics, this thesis unpacks the narrative structures of these tales while also revealing a tapestry of influences that likely impacted Machen’s writing. This thesis looks to the conventions of Celtic folklore and gothic literature while also detailing contemporary interest in Roman antiquity and gender theory in the Victorian period. The inclusion of a wide variety of contexts helps provide a nuanced reading of the many tensions inherent in Machen’s work. _______________________, Committee Chair Jason Gieger, Ph.D. _______________________ Date vi DEDICATION To Sam, my love, who chooses me every day. And to Radagast, who, although not ours, still chooses us every once in a while, when it is too cold to sleep in his flower bush. Actually, he mostly chooses us in winter—which only highlights Sam’s constancy. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Here I would like to acknowledge my never-ending gratitude to my thesis advisors for their willingness to guide me through this oh-so-terrifying journey. To Dr. Jason Gieger, for inspiring me to go in this direction during his “Monstrous Britain” seminar; for his energy, unique expertise, and punctilious attention to my grammar. To Dr. Nancy Sweet who, in addition to advising my thesis, also acted as my faculty advisor for the California Pre-doctoral Program. Her guidance during that program was invaluable and my ability to participate in that program provided me with a number of resources, both material and immaterial, that facilitated my completion of this thesis. I would also like to thank Dr. Sweet for her time and attention to academic rigor; time, as we all know, is a very finite resource. Dr. Doug Rice also deserves my gratitude for his tireless work in coordinating all of this, and for his attention to my perhaps-too- frequent emails. Also deserving of acknowledgement are Shaun Kirby and the staff of Sacramento State’s English department for helping me navigate the horrors of bureaucracy. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Dedication ......................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1. INTRODUCING ARTHUR MACHEN’S FEMALE OCCULTIST …………………… 1 2. ARTHUR MACHEN AND THE OCCULT: IN SEARCH OF WONDER ................... 15 3. THE GREAT GOD PAN: ON NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE, FIN DE SIECLE ANXIETY AND THE TRAGIC(?) CASE OF HELEN VAUGHN .............................. 31 4. PATRIARCHAL CONSTRAINT AND THE INFLUENCE OF FOLKLORE IN MACHEN’S WORKS ................................................................................................. 63 5. ON “THE WHITE PEOPLE”: FEMALE AGENCY, NARRATIVE STRUCTURE, AND THE PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIC LAYERING OF LANDSCAPE ........................ 76 6. CLOSING THOUGHTS AND UNBEARABLE TENSIONS: THE “UNSTORYABLE” LIVES OF MACHEN’S WOMEN ............................................ 109 Works Cited ................................................................................................................... 118 ix 1 I. Introducing Arthur Machen’s Female Occultist Arthur Machen, author of gothic and supernatural fiction, was born Arthur Llewellyn Jones in Caerleon in the Welsh county of Monmouthshire on March 3rd, 1863. In 1883 Machen would leave Wales for London as he searched for writing work. It has been written of Machen that the London cityscape and the Welsh countryside constituted the “binary landscape of his imagination” (Worth xi). These two spaces dominate his supernatural tales and take on a variety of meanings based on Machen’s chosen narrative perspective. Over the years, Machen’s fiction would evolve and change, and he would keep writing almost until his death in 1947. However, it is the curious and sometimes confounding fiction he wrote in the 1890s which continues to fascinate both lay readers and gothic scholars alike. Despite praise from modern readers and scholars, it is interesting to note that his reception among other “supernatural” writers is much more mixed. M.R. James (1862-1936), Machen’s close contemporary, classified him as having “rather a foul mind” (Aaron 71). Conversely, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) highly praised Machen’s works in his early study of the genre, a long essay entitled Supernatural Horror in Literature (90). Literary merit and individual taste are, of course, open to interpretation though Lovecraft’s assessment is more in touch with current popular consensus. Both of these evaluations refer to Machen’s work of the fin de siècle, and I will likewise limit my scope to works written in that period. Machen’s ever-evolving interests, themes, and beliefs make for a fascinating though complex study. Nicholas Freeman notes that while Machen’s 1890s fiction exhibits a willingness to engage with “evocative paganism,” the author later becomes intensely interested in the Sangrail, 2 discarding much of his early interest in pagan mysteries; Freeman also refers to the author as both “radical and traditional,” “idiosyncratic and dogmatic” (243). This thesis will analyze two of the pieces he wrote while he was still engaging with pagan mysteries: The Great God Pan (1894) and “The White People,” which was published in 1904 but written in the late 1890s. Importantly, the works of Arthur Machen have seen something of a revival in the past few years; Gothic scholarship on Machen has swelled at the same time that Machen has increasingly been understood through the lens of Welsh writing in English1. 2019 saw the publication of a lovingly annotated collection focusing on Machen’s horror stories, edited by Aaron Worth. I’ll be using this edition throughout this thesis, not just for the context it provides but because of Worth’s choice to include a few harder-to-find short stories; due to their thematic similarities, I feel these shorter works will complement my analysis of The Great God Pan and “The White People.” In the past few years, quite a few texts have been released that also provide context for some of Machen’s more obscure publication ventures. This year, The Friends of Arthur Machen published Arthur Machen’s Occult Catalogues. This compilation of Machen’s catalogue work illuminates a fascinating period in the author’s life while also offering some insight about the specific occult books Machen may have found influential in his writing. At the very least, this 1 Jane Aaron’s book-length study Welsh Gothic situates Machen’s writing within the realm of gothic fiction while at the same time highlighting issues related to Welsh writing in English. Kirsti Bohata’s article “Apes and Cannibals in Cambria: Images of the Racial and Gendered Other in Gothic Writing in Wales” analyzes Machen’s use of the Other in The Great God Pan and puts that in conversation with a number of other English-language texts by Welsh authors. 3 publication helps the modern reader understand the nature of fairly obscure nineteenth century occult texts. Assessing
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