UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title "Through the Eyes": Reading Deafened Gestures of Look-Listening in Twentieth Century Narratives Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4h17630k Author Cardinale, Cara Lynne Publication Date 2010 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE ―Through the Eyes‖: Reading Deafened Gestures of Look-Listening in Twentieth Century Narratives A Dissertation Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Cara Lynne Cardinale June 2010 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Katherine Kinney, Chairperson Dr. Kimberly Devlin Dr. Traise Yamamoto Copyright by Cara Lynne Cardinale 2010 The Dissertation of Cara Lynne Cardinale is approved: ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgments In ―A Room of One‘s Own‖ Virginia Woolf writes: ―For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of people so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.‖ This revelation—forged in a twinned hammered steel bangle I wear around my wrist as a reminder— has made completing this dissertation possible. Five years, seven countries and one birth later I have found my voice depends on a larger body of support. Academically, I have been supported by a tremendous dissertation committee. Katherine Kinney, an enduring and encouraging chair, trusted in my vision of language and the body even as an eclectic masters portfolio looking at Beowulf and Brando. Her willingness to travel the scenic route with me through draft after draft and encourage the birth of this dissertation has been indispensible. Kimberly Devlin‘s graduate seminars were crucial to my understanding of literary modernism; her close and careful readings of key figures have been a helpful model for both exams and the dissertation. Traise Yamamoto, whose inextricable language of poetry, theory and memoir inspire the very best writing, first asked me what a deafened feminist discourse might look like; her challenging questions and rigorous readings in our independent study on feminisms is the theoretical backbone of this dissertation. iv I started this project with generous support from the UC Riverside Department of English via a Dissertation Fellowship. I am thankful both for this formative support as well as my community of graduate peers—particularly my favorite beat boys Matthew Snyder and Richard Hishmeh; my office mates Kimberly Turner and Oceana Callum; and my astute reading partner Jasmine Payne. I thank Tina Feldmann, our ubiquitous Graduate Student Advisor, for making sure I made it every step of the way—from fellowship deadlines to exam protocols to the final signature page. I especially thank Drennan Spitzer for persevering beyond peer and for being a daily muse, the best colleague, and my bff. Without her support I would have never arrived at the next page. Outside of UCR I thank Jennifer Stoever-Ackerman for early critical input and organizing the Dissertation Mavens writing group. I am indebted to my mentors from University of Redlands: Ivonne Gordon Vailakis for poetry and caffenio, Juli Anna Ávila for insisting I read more poetry and fiction, and Cristina Gomez for insisting I am a writer. I thank my husband Michael Fidler for ten years of coffeehouses and always letting me fill our suitcases with books. I thank him for being an objective reader, a supportive partner and a father who moved his desk into the closet so that everyone in the house could have a corner, if not a room, of one‘s own. This dissertation is dedicated to our son Owen who has literally been beside me page by page and who inspires me to ask harder questions and to use prettier words. I am grateful to have been raised in a family that never set a limit on library books and who have unquestioningly supported my education. The contribution of my parents, Lynette and Mike Cardinale, are impossible to measure. Sign language, the v intimate language of our family, is the foundation of this dissertation but my parents instilled in me the courage to use this language forcefully and beautifully. Pragmatically, as Nana and Papa they also made it possible to write with the door closed. Mary Ann Sultan, more family than friend, was also important to early writing. Of my family circle I want to acknowledge the support of my brother Salvatore Cardinale, his wife Jennifer Medlin Cardinale and my niece Lily June—they make life an art; my extended family Kenn and Connie Fidler; and my Aunt Edyth Henrickson for riding out of South Dakota on the back of a motorcycle in search of books and sunshine in California. For the change in sea air that allowed this dissertation to take a new path, I thank our friends in Ålesund, Norway—particularly Rose Mari for mokka cake and a table at the Nomaden café. I would like to acknowledge Lauri Ellyn Klobas (October 28, 1954 – April 15, 2010), not only for her formative love and work with sign language and the Deaf, but as a lifetime mentor who would have actually checked this dissertation out from her local library. Finally, I am grateful to my ―eternal mom pair,‖ Bridget Dawn Hoida—who wears the twin of this double Woolf bangle and has made this voice possible. Together we have taken turns at Virginia and Vanessa (and occasionally Carson). I thank her for driving the bus through the uh-oh-sea and for forging a reading, writing, frolicking path out of postage stamps and sea spray. I am thankful for West who always reminds us which way to drive and for my fairy goddaughter the fierce Stella Dalloway for sprinkling these words with pixie dust. vi Dedication For Owen, my first and most important reader. vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ―Through the Eyes‖: Reading Deafened Gestures of Look-Listening in Twentieth Century Narratives by Cara Lynne Cardinale Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, June 2010 Dr. Katherine Kinney, Chairperson Voicelessness is arguably the endemic trope of modernist literature. Writers began to push language out of shape; experiment with the visual and the aural; invoke the silent and the explosive—all in an effort to access a voice that could speak articulately above the din of modern violence and mechanization. ―Through the Eyes‖ examines the ways in which women writers in particular attempted to address the failure of language to talk about trauma, illness, war and the body. Borrowed from a moment of communicating ―through the eyes‖ between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, I deploy the theoretical trope look-listening as a critical strategy engaging rather than censuring the body. As such, I utilize sign language—the literal and visual language of the Deaf—critically in order to evoke a reassessment of the fragmented paradigm of modern language and literature through a realignment of expressive and receptive modalities. Building on the burgeoning fields of Disability and Deafness viii studies, Feminist discourses, Queer theory, and linguistic anthropology, I suggest a new narrative of vocalized bodies. Beginning with an examination of William James‘ stream of consciousness alongside the cherology, or syntax, of signed languages this dissertation reveals the ways that sign‘s iconicity, movement, and multiplicity are ideal vehicles for sketching the life of the mind. Virginia Woolf‘s experimental novels, then, reveal ―moments of being‖ as ―moments of deafness.‖ Carson McCullers‘ literal deployments of deafness underscore distinctions between hearing and listening, between speech and speaking, and the violent consequences for failed communication. Joy Kogawa‘s Obasan, a narrative in which ―voice‖ has been obliterated by government mandate, is revealed as a traumatic narrative that can only be told through a language that doesn‘t involve telling. I conclude with Monique Truong‘s Book of Salt, a re-telling of modernism from an outsider‘s perspective, to show how the potential for look-listening works in a critical modality of deaf-blindness. Such a conclusion reconceptualizes the expressive and receptive modalities of the hands and tongue to offer a more active look-listening that serves as a counternarrative and a companion to seminal modernist narratives. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: Recontextualizing Modern Voicelessness 1 CHAPTER ONE: “Visual Impressions”: Stream of Consciousness 26 and Sign Language in Virginia Woolf ―She Parted the Curtains; she Looked‖: Clarissa Dalloway 40 ―Listening With his Hand up‖: Septimus 48 ―Her own Eyes Meeting her own Eyes‖: Mrs. Ramsay 53 ―A Shred of Chintz‖: Bernard 61 CHAPTER TWO: “I Seem Strange to You”: Carson McCullers’ Deaf Gestures 67 ―The Phrases Shaped from her Fingers‖: 77 Carson McCullers‘ Short Stories ―The Shape of her Hands‖: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter 87 ―A Curious Lapse of Sensory Impressions‖: Reflections in a Golden Eye 101 CHAPTER THREE: “You do not Speak or Write”: The Tongueless Word in 110 Joy Kogawa’s Obasan CODA: Blindly Look-Listening 128 Notes 140 Works Cited 157 x INTRODUCTION: RECONTEXTUALIZING MODERN VOICELESSNESS The age demanded that we sing/and cut away our tongue. —Ernest Hemingway, “The Age Demanded” Crowds of people moved through the street with dream-like violence. As he looked at their broken hands and torn mouths he was overwhelmed by the desire to help them. —Nathaniel West, Miss Lonelyhearts She put her hand against his chest and pushed him, she looked frightened, she opened her mouth but no words came. He stepped back, he tried to speak, but they moved aside from each other saying nothing. —Djuna Barnes, Nightwood Voicelessness is arguably the endemic trope of modernist literature. The narratives engaged in this dissertation are the progeny of an era afflicted with ―broken hands and torn mouths,‖ and I read modernism as a struggle to find voice in what seemed an increasingly vacuous era.