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Note to Users NOTE TO USERS Copyrighted materials in this document have not been filmed at the request of the author. They are available for consultation at the author's university library. Appendix A & B This reproduction is the best copy available. UMI 'Dying, in other words": Discourses of dissase and cure in the last works of Jane Austen and Barbara Pym S. Jane Staunton Department of English McGill Univenity, Montreal June 1997 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial lulfilment of the requifernents of the degm of Master ot Arts O S. Jane Staunton 1997 National Library Bibliothèque nationale 1*1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliogaphic Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OîtawaON K1A ON4 Otfawa ON KIA ON4 Canada Canada Your hie Vafre teterence Our fi& Narre relerence The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microfonn, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copy~&$t in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts hmit Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Table of Contents A bs tract Résumé Acknowledgments C hapter -Title 1 Introduction 2 Austen and 'M hi-Austen' 3 The uInfirmitiesof III Heaith" and 'Pictures of Perlrectiona 4 lllness and Cure in Jane Austen: Purging and lrnproving 5 Inoculation and Resistance to Invasion in Barbara Pym's Worlds 6 The Dying Work of Sanditon 7 Faith-healing and Other Last Resorts in A Few Green Leaves 8 The Recuperated Text 9 Conclusion Works Cited Appendix A Appendx 6 Abstract The last works of Jane Austen and Barbara Pym, written Mileeach was knowingly dying, both continue and transfomi a discourse of illness and cure traceable through their canon. lllness figures both literally and rnetaphorically in their narratives; in Austen as failures in wholeness and in Pym as failures in love. Atter undergoing the metaphorically medical treatments of purging and vivitying in Austen and inoculating in Pym, their fernale protagonists achieve conditions of health and wholeness by closure of the narrative. In the dying worb, individual metaphorical illnesses become a general societal condition of fragmentation, and cure becomes more elusive. The shared use of a village undergoing profound change retlects each writer's own bodily transformation as certain death approaches, and the restoration of health to the village-as-body becomes one of achieving balance or homeostasis. This is effected in the narrative by the hinted-at curative powers of nature in Sanditon and of restored faith in A Few Green Leaves. On a theoretical level, boa texts reflect their narratives of dis-ease and cure. Pym's last text rernained unpublished More her death and therefore 'illmbecause not lunctioning, but second opinions and faith in her reputation confirmed its public heaith. Austen's Sanditon as a fragment embodies its own discourse of dis-ease, or failure of wholeness, and requires a curative act on the part of the reader to restore it to some sense of ideal wholeness or healai. ii Résume Les dernières œuvres de Jane Austen et Barbara Pym, toutes deux écrites pendant que I'auteure se savait a l'agonie, s'inscrivent dans la continuité et la transformation d'un discours sur la maladie et la guérison, décelable dans leurs principes directeurs. La maladie figure à la fois littéralement et métaphoriquement dans leurs récit. Chez Austen, à titre de fragmentation de I'entiereté et chez Pym, comme un échec amoreux. Après des traitements médicaux métaphoriques de purification et de revivification chez Austen et d'inoculation chez Pym, les personnages pricipau féminins recouvrent l'état de santé et d'entiereté en concfusion du kit. Dans les œuvres des mourants, les maladies métaphoriques individuelles deviennent un état de société général de fragmentation, et la guérison devient plus inraisissable. L'évocation commune d'un village connaissant de profonds changements reflète la propre transfomation physique des deux écrivaines, dont la mort certaine approche, et la restauration de la santé du vilfage-corps se manifeste comme l'atteinte de l'équilibre, de l'homéostasie. Cette atteinte est transposée dans le récit par l'allusion aux pouvoirs curatifs de la nature dans Sanditon et par la foi retrouvée dans A Few Green Leaves. Sur le plan théorique. les deux textes participent du récit de la maladie et de la guérison. Non publié avant sa mort, le dernier texte de Pym est « malade « puisqu'il ne * fonctionne a pas, mais la foi en la réputation de I'auteure en confirme ta santé publique. Fragmentaire, le Sanditon d'Austen incorpoie son propre discours de maladie, ou & manque d'entibnté, exigeant un acte curatif de la du lecteur qui doit le remettre dans un tout idW. lui redonner la santé. iii Acknowledgments I wish to acknowledge the unfailing support and helpful suggestions of my Mesis supervisor, Professor C. Abbott Conway of the English Department of McGill University, whose intellect and insight always challenged me to push my work to higher levels. I also wish to thank McGill Psychology graduate student, Marc Fournier, for locating the Suedfeld study for me and for recognizing its relevance to my study of dying works; and his mother, Jean, for the gitt of the Miller and Tanner texts and her constant support and interest. To my family, I say thank you for bearing with me. Chapter 1 introduction I live in a constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of il1 health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every Sme a man smiles, - but much more so when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of Life. - Laurence Sterne, 1760 Laurence Sterne wrote out this personal prescription ot mirth in his dedication to Tristram Shandy. There is lime doubt that he intended it to apply not only to living well in this 'Fragment of Life,' but also to the state of health of those other 'fragments of Life," his novels. Aptly, the quoted words also define a certain comic view of life which links one chah of the many strands connecting the English novel from Sterne to the present day. This particular chein takes in the greatest mistress of aie comic-ironic novel, Jane Austen, and continues on, with loops and knots through the peihaps more dour and moralizing nineteenth century, to join up wiHi a twentiethtentury writer of similar comedic gifts, Barbara Pym. The common link these two writers share with Sterne is the use of mirth as an effective defence against the 'infirmities of il1 health, and other evils of Me." One does not initially think of either Austen or Pym as primarily concerned with illness per se, but both writers deal with variow types of 'illness' in al1 of their works. lllness as the absence of healai and soundness figures literally and metaphorically in the individuals and in the small closed societies they both depict And white both authors 'treatn or 'cure" this condition in differing thematic ways, it is always, stylistically, with their characteristic intelligent and ironic humour. In facf aieif last woiks, Sanditon and A Few Green baves, respectively, were written Mile each wss ûnowingly dying, yet neither 'dying' woik lacks Stwne's healaihil mirth. Prescriptive mirth aside, the conjunction of medicine and literature can be! a fruithl - @ one, yielding metaphorical resonations of enormous repercussionary potential for the study of each. The conviction that 'medicine protects life and literature interprets it, that both are in some sense diagnostic and therapeutic" (Roberts, 1) is raison d'etre enough for explorhg their special affinity; but as many writers have discovered,Tolstoy and Thomas Mann paramount among them, 'medicine's accounts of the mechanisms of sickness and the process of health constitute... the ideal natural language for exploring emotion, personality and social intercourse" (Roberts, 1). Virginia Woolf concurs in her essay 'On Being III," and adds: Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed... , it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy arnong the prime themes of literature (Woolf, 14). 1 plan to demonstrate that illness is indeed a 'prime theme' in the works of Jane Austen and Barbara Pym, but illness linked always in a dialectic with cure. In tact, critic DA. M Iller has called Austen's novels 'stofles of recovery"and that, when il1 himself. the cures implicit in thern '...nursed me as eflectively... as Miss Taylor nursed little Emma, who grew up into 'the cornpiete pictute of grmm up health' " (Miller, 55). Writer Jilly Cooper also rernaiks on the cheering eflect of Pym's novels: '1 pick up her books with joy, as though I were meeting an old friend who cornforts me, extends my vision and makes me roar with laughterm(GB, cover). However, when a wiiRr becornes ill herseIf-and, most particulatly, terminally ill--is this aitered state reflected in her narratives? A partiai answar is piovided by Miller's continuing words that when ill himself ha 'never dmamt at such times of nading Sanditon, the novel that Jane Austen, unkigneâly ill, dieâ kfom completinga The distuibing and (iagmentmy Sanditon remains in too ill a condition itselt to be a stocy of 3 recovery I s thir an effect of or a reflection of Austen3 own final incurable illness? Barbara Pym also write a last work while knowingly dying.
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