Gordon, Katherine H. (2000) Voices from the 'cauld east countra' : representations of self in the poetry of Violet Jacob and Marion Angus. PhD thesis http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6928/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Voices from the 'Cauld East Countra': Representations of Self in the Poetry gf Violet Jacob and Marion Angus Katherine H. Gordon University of Glasgow Department of Scottish Literature April 2000 © Katherine H~ Gordon 11 Abstract This dissertation examines the representations of self in the poetry of Violet Jacob (1863-1946) and Marion Angus (1865-1946), two Scottish poets who wrote primarily in Scots in the inter-war years. Until recently, many critics have dismissed the work of Jacob and Angus as 'minor' in its themes or significant only as it anticipates the Scots poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid. The general absence of their work from print, and the narrow range of their poems appearing in anthologies, support the impression that their poetry is limited in scope; This dissertation suggests that in fact their poetry makes a significant contribution to the development of Scottish poetry. Their work builds upon Scottish literary traditions, interp·olating balladic form and language into their lyrics; and drawing upon the rich folksong and dramatic monologue traditions as models for representing voice and self. Folk belief, too, informs their work, providing a symbolic background for many poems. To indicate the depth to their work; the thesis considers their poetry in a range of broader, interrelated contexts. By situating their poetry within historical, sociological, and literary milieus, and by placing their poems within a continuum of Scottish writing; one can discern key tensions underlying and informing their work As the predominance of first-person speakers in their poetry indicates; Jacob and Angus shared an interest in the psychology of the poetic self. Each poem offers a different representation of self, highlighting what the poetic self utters (or omits) in response to the world around it. Drawing upon a range of contemporaneous commentary and contemporary critical theory, the thesis analyzes how both poets portray the self in relation to its interior sense of time, its conception of space, and its interaction with other selves. The thesis falls into two parallel halves - the first devoted to an investigation of the self in Jacob's work, the second in Angus's. Key similarities and differences in each author's technique become evident in comparing their work. Their treatment of the self in particular establishes them more convincingly as modern (and in the case of Angus, proto-modernist) poets whose work builds upon ;-" ..... : ..... ,; ... earlier literary traditions and revitalizesit'.ra~!~()~~:limodels of self. Using dramatic , - . -:. ·.r.~ :;'" " ... ) III monologue and ballad forms; their poetry illuminates the seWs inner world; limning its peripheries and borders. Specifically, their work gives eloquent utterance to voices of marginalized selves - older women, unmarried mothers, labourers, and travellers - in an innovative and non-judgemental way~ Their poems compassionately portray the lives of rural women, quietly critiquing the societal mores limiting women to narrow domestic roles. Time is a key issue in the work of the two poetsi both show how the self'.s inner sense of time exists in counter-distinction to external time. In Jacob's poetry, the self struggles to re-inhabit the past but finds it cannot. In many poems, the speaker is an exile estranged from his actual surroundings by a desire to return 'hame\ Loss occupies a tangible presence in these poems - lost places and people populate the narratives with spectral presences. Considered in terms of contemporaneous time theories; Jacob's often dark poems demonstrate how time 'rins forrit' continuallYi the self can return to its past only in dreams or memory. The self in Angus's poetry, by contrast, recurs in time. Time is bi-directional: the self moves among past, present, and future~ Read with reference to J W, Dunneand Henri Bergson; Angus's time poems illustrate how memory and perception blur as the self moves backwards in time to meet an earlier version of itself Dual time narratives underlie Angus's work: the self both acts; and observes itself actingsimultaneou:sly. Integrally connected to the seWs sense of time in the work of these poets is its equally complex understanding of space. Their poems explore how the self shapes, and is shaped by, the landscape around it. Through the lens of contemporary critical work; the thesis teases out the dynamic between space (actual and psycho­ geographical) and self. The two poets ground their poems in the 'actual' world, chiefly in north-east Scotland: Jacob's poems are 'songs of Angus' while Angus's work evokes Angus and Deeside landscapes; Jacob's poetry reveals how the self sees its internal state reflected in the landscape; influenced by memory, it discerns loss through an altered relationship with that space. The self, rather differently in Angus's oeuvre; internalizes the landscape - everything exists within the speaker's mind. Although it may have 'actual' world parallels - like 'Cambus Woods' - space is cerebralized. The self suffuses space with meaning; consequently natural entities - trees; hills; people; or houses - become encoded with specific (but unstated) IV emotional connotation& Ultimately; space; like time; is fluid) the self can inhabit several spaces simultaneously, interpolating itself into future and past spaces while rooted in the present. The two poets diverge most noticeably in their conception of the seWs relationship to other selves, a dynamic underlying their strongest poems. For Jacob, the self exists within a community of others; the self is fundamentally a social entity whose sense of identity is determined by its connections to others. Jacob's finest articulations of self emerge in her late poems in women's voices, where she emphasizes how societally-enforced gender roles limit women's opportunities and damage relationships between women and men. Read alongside feminist theory, Jacob's women's narratives express the desires of numerous unspoken others. By contrast, Angus explores the self within an intimate space in which the self negotiates its peripheries in response to one desired otheL The self's relationship to other is complicated by the pull between self-protective renunciation of, and self­ destructive desire for that other. Unable to reconcile both, the self retreats into isolation or allows the other to subsume it-. In many poems; the absence of gender indicators, concomitant with the recurrent image of other as ghost, encourages the use of contemporary lesbian and gender theories to elucidate Angus's 'covert narratives' of desire·. The thesis concludes with a brief consideration of the influence Jacob's and Angus's poetry had upon MacDiarmid's work, and a reflection upon their contribution to women's writing in Scotland. Table of Contents Abstract 11 Acknowledgements Vlll Notes on the Text IX Introduction: Historical Context 1 Brief Biographies ofJacob and Angus 5 Violet Jacob: 'A Most Aristocratic Person' 6 Marion Angus: 'Nothing if Not Original' 9 Historical Context 13 HIstory In These Wanchancy TImes; 14 Jacob's War Poetry 18 Social History: Self, Time, and Space 20 Self 20 Time 22 Space 24 Introduction! Literary Context 30 Writing Out of Terra Incognita 30 Vernacular Writing and the Scottish Renaissance 32 Scots 33 Vernacular Writing in the Early Twentieth Century 36 Re-evaluating the Renaissance? 37 Modern Voices, Modern Dilemmas 39 Scots in the Work of Jacob and Angus 39 Self in the Poetry ofJacob and Angus 43 The Modernist Self in Literature 43 Earlier Models of Poetic Self 44 The Baiiad seit 44 The Self in Folksong 46 'the Self in Dramatic Monologue 48 Some Notes on Stmcture 50 Chapter One Thrang 0' the Years Ahint Me: Self and Time in Jacob's Poetry 55 Sense and Sentimentality 55 Visions of the Selfin-Time 57 Explanations and a Few Disclaimers 57 'Saddle-back' Vision: Seeing the Past and Future 57 'Recognisably Different': Loss and the Self-in-Time 58 Memory: Connecting 'Two Points of Time' 59 Loss as Presence: Ghosts and Loss-lines in Jacob's Work 61 'Thrang 0' the Yea~ 'Ahint Me~· The Self-in-Time 62 The Water-Hen 62 The Gean-Trees 69 Hallowe'en 74 Come Again No more: Loss-lines and the Self-in-Time 82 Chapter Two Tales of Her Own Country: Self and Space in Jacob's Poetry 87 Visions of the Self-in-Space 89 Word as World: Textual Country, Lexical Selves 89 'To Describe Space': Self, Space, and Language 90 'What Space IS For;: Space, Seif, and Memory 9i Lookingfor 'Lands Unseen~· Vision and the Self-in-Space 93 Craigo Woods ~3 The Brig 99 The BanKS 0' tne ESK 107 Limits of Our Sight: Vision and the Self-in-Space 115 Chapter Three 'Kingdom that Ne'er Was Mine': Self and Other in Jacob's Poetry 121 Within 'Grey Vanished Walls~· Writing the Lives of Women 121