1960S Travel Fiction and Englishness During the Postimperial Turn
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University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Spring 2012 1960s travel fiction and Englishness during the postimperial turn Matthew J. Hurwitz University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation Hurwitz, Matthew J., "1960s travel fiction and Englishness during the postimperial turn" (2012). Doctoral Dissertations. 669. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/669 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1960S TRAVEL FICTION AND ENGLISHNESS DURING THE POSTIMPERIAL TURN BY MATTHEW J. HURWITZ B.A., University of New Hampshire, 1998 M.A.T., University of New Hampshire, 2000 M.A., Arizona State University, 2003 DISSERTATION Submitted to the University of New Hampshire in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English May, 2012 i UMI Number: 3525077 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI 3525077 Published by ProQuest LLC 2012. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 This dissertation has been examined and approved. Dissertation Director, Robin Hackett, AssociateProfessor of English Nicoletta F. Gullace, Associate Professor of History Martin McKinsey, Associate Professor of English Ramfadanovic, Associate Professor of English Sandhya Shetty, Associate Professor of English V/ I \/ I ~2- Date/ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank Robin Hackett, for all of her help and support, and all of the members of my committee - Nicoletta Gullace, Martin McKinsey, Petar Ramadanovic, and Sandhya Shetty - for their willingness to guide me along this long and difficult journey. I also want to thank everyone who helped me to maintain my sanity and my priorities throughout this process: my family, my friends, and my love, Julie. And thanks, Charlie, for just being you when I needed you the most. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii ABSTRACT v CHAPTER PAGE I. TRAVEL AND ENGLISHNESS DURING THE POSTIMPERIAL TURN 1 II. EXILED IN GREECE: BRITISHNESS, ENGLISHNESS AND AN ANGRY YOUNG MAN IN JOHN FOWLES'S THE MAGUS 51 III. ENDLESS TRAVELER: THE FAILED SEARCH FOR NATIONAL BELONGING IN V. S. NAIPAUL'S THE MIMIC MEN 101 IV. WIDE SARGASSO SEA'S ROUGH VOYAGES: FORCED MIGRATION AND MYTHS OF IMPERIAL TRAVEL 152 CONCLUSION 199 BIBLIOGRAPHY 205 ABSTRACT 1960S TRAVEL FICTION AND ENGLISHNESS DURING THE POSTIMPERIAL TURN by Matthew J. Hurwitz University of New Hampshire, May, 2012 British travel writing has for centuries helped to construct English identity in relation to its others. The traditional function of travel narratives to define Englishness, however, faced a fundamental crisis of meaning when the British Empire starting falling apart after WWII. This crisis emerged as an explicit literary subject in several key 1960s novels: John Fowles's The Magus (1965), V. S. Naipaul's The Mimic Men (1967), and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). In these three novels, Fowles, Naipaul and Rhys critique British imperialism by engaging and reinventing the travel narrative form. Although many British writers publishing during the 60s were using travel tropes and the generic conventions of travel narratives in their fiction, they were rarely doing so to question how the connotations of travel had changed with the end of empire or to investigate in self-critical fashion the role of travel in endorsing imperial versions of English national identity. Fowles, Naipaul, and Rhys, on the other hand, argue against nostalgic travel narratives of the 60s by demonstrating the generic limitations of those narratives in representing Englishness after empire and by interrogating the very notion of travel itself. They illustrate how typical elements of the genre such as the gentleman traveler, the freedom and agency of travel, the containment of the other, the trope of travel as a journey of self-discovery, and the use of literary realism inadequately address the emerging postimperial order. In rethinking the role of travel narratives after empire, v these three novels help constitute the crisis in meaning for British travel fiction during the postimperial turn of the 1960s, vi CHAPTER ONE TRAVEL AND ENGLISHNESS DURING THE POSTMPERIAL TURN British travel writing has for centuries helped to construct English identity in relation to its others. A long and complex tradition of travel writing extends back to the earliest narratives of exploration, continues in a myriad number of traveler's tales and literary genres, including Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), and then explodes with the increase in Britain's imperial activity. Travel writing during the height of the British Empire includes such infamous texts as Sir Henry Morton Stanley's Through the Dark Continent (1878) and James Anthony Froude's The English in the West Indies (1888), as well as novels such as Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899). In Heart of Darkness, for example, Marlow describes himself in contrast to the African natives he encounters: [S]uddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling [...]. The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us - who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. (1,916) At this moment, Marlow describes the natives as fragmented, irrational, undifferentiated, and primitive. In contrast, Marlow, one of the "sane men," suggests that he is whole, rational, self-possessed, and modern - that is, an Englishman and not an African. Conrad raises the specter here of an Englishness defined against its colonial others - however, he deeply problematizes that narrative by illustrating its breakdown and its reliance on 1 imperial discourses of difference. Heart of Darkness thus serves as a crucial pivot point in literary depictions of Englishness; it represents a critical intervention in British travel narratives by challenging the genre's traditional function of clearly demarcating English identity. Heart of Darkness helped to initiate a larger crisis in the meaning of British travel writing which intensified when the British Empire starting falling apart after WWII. This crisis, as I argue in the pages that follow, emerged as an explicit literary subject in several key 1960s novels: John Fowles's The Magus (1965), V. S. Naipaul's The Mimic Men (1967), and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). In these three novels, Fowles, Naipaul and Rhys critique British imperialism by engaging and reinventing the travel narrative form. Although many British writers publishing during the 60s were using travel tropes and the generic conventions of travel narratives in their fiction, they were rarely doing so to question how the connotations of travel had changed with the end of empire or to investigate in self-critical fashion the role of travel in endorsing imperial versions of English national identity. Fowles, Naipaul, and Rhys, on the other hand, argue against nostalgic travel narratives of the 60s by demonstrating the generic limitations of those narratives in representing Englishness after empire and by interrogating the very notion of travel itself. They illustrate how typical elements of the genre such as the gentleman traveler, the freedom and agency of travel, the containment of the other, the trope of travel as a journey of self-discovery, and the use of literary realism inadequately address the emerging postimperial order. In rethinking the role of travel narratives after empire, these three novels help constitute the crisis in meaning for British travel fiction during the postimperial turn of the 1960s. 2 Furthermore, I have chosen these three authors because each of them wrote explicitly about Englishness in other genres as well as in their fiction and were particularly interested in and reflective about what it meant to be English - ideologically, culturally, racially, anthropologically - during the break-up of the empire. The reasons for their interest differed dramatically: Fowles wanted to revive an archaic Englishness that predated empire, Naipaul hoped to assert his personal claim on English identity as a non- white colonial subject, and Rhys intended to expose the xenophobia and misogyny of an England where she felt she never belonged. In trying to assert their visions of Englishness in a uniquely self-reflective manner, all three locate their fiction within a particular literary tradition of travel writing: Fowles responds to the modernist