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A STUDY of SUFFERING and SELF in the NOVELS of PATRICK WHITE Albert Pieter Brugm

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"TORTURE IN THE COUNTRY OF THE MIND": A STUDY OF SUFFERING AND SELF IN THE NOVELS OF PATRICK WHITE Albert Pieter Brugman A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor Litterarum. Supervisor: Professor A.G. Ullyatt Date: 30 November 1988 For: LIRIA SANDRA ALBERT KATRIENA MY PARENTS - IN LOVING MEMORY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank: my supervisor, Professor A.G. Ullyatt, for his inspired and painstaking guidance as well as for his encouragement; my wife and children for their patience and understanding; the staff of the Fryer Library of the University of Queensland; the staff of the Sasol Library of the University of the Orange Free State; the Transvaal Education Department for generous leave and a bur­ sary; the Potchefstroom Teachers' Training College and Sanlam for financial aid to study at the University of Queensland; Riana Pieterse and Erna van Eyk for their typing and preparation of the manuscript; Herman Klingenberg for his assistance. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 The Nature of Suffering 2 2 . HAPPY VALLEY 22 2.1 Oliver Halliday 25 2.2 Hilda Halliday 29 2.3 Clem Hagan 30 2.4 Sidney Furlow 32 2.5 The Moriarties 34 2.6 Alys Browne 36 2.7 The Children of Happy Valley 39 2.7.1 Rodney Halliday 41 2.7.2 Margaret Quong 42 3. THE LIVING AND THE DEAD 44 3.1 Elyot Standish 48 3.2 Catherine Standish 53 3.3 Eden Standish 56 4. THE AUNT'S STORY 62 5. THE TREE OF MAN 90 5.1 Stan Parker 92 5.2 Amy Parker 105 5.3 Doll and Bub Quigley 116 6. voss 120 6.1 Ulrich Voss 120 6.2 Laura Trevelyan 142 6.3 Palfreyman 153 6.4 Frank Le Mesurier 155 6.5 Rose Portion and Alfred Judd 160 7. RIDERS IN THE CHARIOT 164 7.1 Mary Hare 167 7.2 Mordecai Himmelfarb 173 7.3 Alf Dubbo 181 7.4 Ruth Godbold 185 7.5 Haim Rosenbaum (Harry Rosetree) 189 8. THE SOLID MANDALA 194 8.1 Waldo Brown 197 8.2 Arthur Brown 205 9. THE VIVISECTOR 212 9.1 Hurtle Duffield 216 9.2 Nance Lightfoot 233 9.3 Rhoda Courtney 238 9.4 Hero Pavloussi 240 9.5 The Courtneys 242 10. THE EYE OF THE STORM 245 10.1 Elizabeth Hunter 248 10.2 Sir Basil Hunter 257 10.3 Dorothy De Lascabanes 264 10.4 Flora Manhood 273 10.5 Mary de Santis 276 11. A FRINGE OF LEAVES 280 11.1 Ellen Roxburgh 287 11.2 Austin Roxburgh 307 11.3 Jack Chance 310 12. THE TWYBORN AFFAIR 312 12.1 Eddie Twyborn 317 13. CONCLUSION 335 14. ABSTRACT 344 15. BIBLIOGRAPHY I 1.0 INTRODUCTION "To talk of suffering is not to talk of an academic problem, but of the sheer bloody agonies of existence, of which all men are aware and most.have direct experience." (Bowker) "It is impossible to do away with the laws of suffering; which is the one indispensable condition of our being. Progress is to be understood by the amount of suffering un­ dergone _ the purer the suffering the greater the progress." (M. Gandhi - epigraph to Happy Valley) X X X • The aim of this thesis is to show that some form and degree of suffering as well as individuation of the Real Self are not only fundamental issues in White's novels and Wel­ tanschauung, but are also prerequisites for the eventual state of grace and understanding of being of his elected characters: "His subject is the suffering that is related to the most intimate affections, aspirations and guilts of the soul, which are almost invisible to the eye of the casual observer. He is concerned with the suffering of ruptured relationships, thwarted affections and failures of communication" (Beatson, 1976 25). Patrick White's solicitude with human suffering is also a concern for truth : "the truth of our subjection to neces­ sity and separation from the God who appears as the 'Divine Vivisector' ___ the power beyond this world who is ul- timately responsible for a universe in which human beings exist as vulnerable and mortal" (Brady, 1978 : 113). 1 What does Patrick White write about? Mark Scharer in his essay on technique supplies an acceptable answer: " modern fiction [as in the case of White's novels] achieves as its subject matter not some singleness, some topic or thesis, but the whole of modern consciousness. It dis­ covers the complexity of the modern spirit, the difficulty of a personal morality, and the fact of evil - all the intractable elements under the surface which a technique of the surface alone cannot approach" (1967 83 my addition). 1.1 THE NATURE OF SUFFERING The opening chapters of Genesis explain the origin of suf­ fering from a Christian point of view. Man's post­ lapsarian state is characterised by negative and spiritually disruptive thoughts and passions that have their source in man's separation from the will of God. These demonic forces have influenced the quality of his being ever since. (The word being is used to denote every­ thing that man is, thinks and experiences.) Most .quests, including that of Bunyan's Pilgrim, reveal man's longing to regain his former paradisal state at the same time depicting the spiritually destructive morality of a "fallen" world. Man, aware of his loss of beatitude and confined by his un­ natural surroundings, intuits the mysteries of being when he finds himself confronted in a marginal situation by an experience or event totally unfamiliar to him. When the enigmatic situation encroaches upon and fuses with his own existence, man becomes ·fully aware of its influence upon 2 his psyche and consciousness. It is the fact that White's elect go in search of such new, illuminating marginal ex­ periences that distinguishes them from other lesser beings. The unexpected experience usually takes the form of a sud­ den and serious illness, the death of a loved one or a professional trauma. In White's canon the psyche's "unfamiliar" situation, is being a male or female separated from God as Source, and being thrust involuntarily into life. His elect's agony frequently takes the form of a conflict between the esoteric and exoteric selves1 , inten­ sified by the psyche being "housed" in a body not suited to its gender as in the case of Eddie Twyborn in The Twyborn Affair. Awareness of another dimension of being as a mar­ ginal situation can also promote the person involved to a renewed awareness of God. The psychic impact of the unfamiliar, especially when of a transcendental nature, brings, as a result of introspec­ tion, an awareness of guilt and judgment. Simone Weil (1979 : 94) postulates that no other state of being is lower than that of a person enveloped in a cloud of guilt. 1. John Koore (1984 58) gives the following definitions: The eioteric self: "is the part of our selfhood with which one is ordinarily the aost faailiar. It is the aspect of ourselves with which we outwardly re­ late to the world, the part we live through. It is the outer aechanisa for traffic with others and it is on account of it that they coaaonly recognize us. It is responsible for public perforaance in the group and we becoae par­ ticularly aware of it with the inception of self-consciousness." The esoteric self: "Esoteric is defined as [the] 'private, confidential' self". The sign of its having becoae aature is the intervention of a further level of consciousness which could be called 'consciousness-of-self'. 3 The assassin is, for example, never free of guilt until the moment of death. In A Fringe of Leaves, Jack Chance is a convicted murderer who cannot bear the thought of returning to a community which will continually remind him of his guilt. He prefers returning to a naked, savage existence (an analogue for hell) instead of experiencing loss of freedom and continued punishment. Confession is the generally accepted mode of easing guilt towards a denied God. Its effect is usually short-lived unless it is accompanied by a change of heart and be- haviour. White's elect find themselves in such a subor- dinate position to God as soon as they, by chance or inter­ vention, have shed their material interests and have become intuitively aware of another existence, so fundamentally different from the essentially hostile and exoteric one they are familiar with. Human beings must look for true reality, grace and the Real Self 2 within themselves. Patrick White shares Paul Eluard's belief that, "there is another world, but it is in this one." Meister Eckhart, who has influenced White's point of view and stance as a novelist, writes: "It is not outside, it is inside! Wholly within." God does not ap­ pear in White's novels, but nothing can be explained without belief in the reality of God (Beatson, 1976 : 9). 2. The Real Self: John Moore (1984 161, 162) gives the following defini- tion: "For example, in the experience recognized as consciousness-of-selves in which then is an awareness of both the exoteric and esoteric aspects of oneself - it can be deduced that, since they are both under observation, there must be a further element of the self witnessing the activities of the other two. This transcendent witness, the essence of come of selfhood, is the Real Self." 4 The marginal influences White's elect experience are for­ bidding. In their youth they fondly believe they are en­ tirely self-sufficient.
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