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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Weather ex Machina: Climatic Determinism and the Fiction of Causality in the Twentieth- Century Novel Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/051567m4 Author Miller, Sydney Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Weather ex Machina: Climatic Determinism and the Fiction of Causality in the Twentieth-Century Novel A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Sydney Miller 2018 © Copyright by Sydney Miller 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Weather ex Machina: Climatic Determinism and the Fiction of Causality in the Twentieth-Century Novel by Sydney Miller Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Michael A. North, Chair Weather ex Machina charts a pattern of the weather as a plot device in the twentieth-century novel, where its interventions have been overlooked and understudied. According to the prevailing critical narrative of the topic, the ubiquitous and overwrought weather that characterizes the notoriously dark and stormy novels of the nineteenth century all but disappears in those of the twentieth, its determinative force in fiction diminishing with the advancement of a science that secularized the skies. This dissertation pushes against that narrative, arguing that is precisely because modern meteorology seemingly stripped the weather – so long assumed to be divinely sourced – of its mythological associations that the trope becomes available for co-opting as the makeshift deus ex machina of the modern novel: the believable contrivance that, in functioning deterministically while appearing aleatory, replaces the providentialism of the nineteenth-century novel and resolves the crisis of causality in the twentieth-century plot. For E.M. Forster, whose works are marked by an anxiety about formlessness and a belabored adherence to causal chains, the weather becomes a divine scapegoat, its inculpation imposing a predictable but passably accidental order onto his plots. Virginia Woolf, in contrast, ii turns to the weather not as a determinant but for its apparent indeterminacy, using the cloud as an organizing trope to forestall her plots and to project a sense of nebulousness onto even her most conventionally structured narratives. In Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s weather becomes anachronistically over-determined, as his dramatic stagings of supposedly coincidental lightning strikes and thunderstorms illuminate the bars of Humbert’s artistic cage. While in the novels of Salman Rushdie, the heat-induced blurring of cause and effect finally amounts to an inversion of climatic determinism itself, his hyperbolically humanist texts offering us fantasies of magically determined climates that ultimately prefigure the nightmarish reality of our current anthropocenic moment. Less a matter of physics than of metaphysics, the meteorological aberration that is literary weather not only signifies a distinctly formal problem in the twentieth-century novel, but is itself the quintessentially chaotic form that these four writers are trying to represent in the constitution of their necessarily deterministic narratives. Used as a mode of emplotment to naturalize the fiction of strict causality, the weather thus emerges as the means through which the modern author is able to reckon with an increasing ambivalence towards classical theories of plot in a world that no longer believes in traditional laws of intelligible cause and effect. iii The dissertation of Sydney Miller is approved. Yogita Goyal Louise E. J. Hornby Kathleen L. Komar Michael A. North, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 iv This one’s for me. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... vii Vita ...................................................................................................................................................................... ix Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One .................................................................................................................................................... 26 Acts of God: E.M. Forster and the Natural Disastrousness of Emplotment Chapter Two .................................................................................................................................................... 79 Reading the Clouds: Weather as (Anti-) Plot in Virginia Woolf Chapter Three ............................................................................................................................................... 129 The Man Who Loved Lightning: Vladimir Nabokov and the Tragedy of Coincidence Chapter Four ................................................................................................................................................. 196 What Blurs Best in the Heat: Salman Rushdie and the Muddling of Cause and Effect Coda ................................................................................................................................................................. 254 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................................... 266 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As we all must, I had to write this dissertation by myself; but not for one moment was I doing it alone. There are four people who have read this document in its entirety, graciously taking the time to give me feedback on each and every inordinately long paragraph. It is my great privilege to acknowledge the incredible debt I owe to my first and finest reader, Michael North, who always seemed to understand what I was trying to do with this project before I did, and gently guided me as I found my own way there (or, somewhere in the vicinity). I will never not be awed by the incisiveness of your questions, the efficiency of your responses, and the constancy of your professionalism. Yogita Goyal has been my stalwart advisor since my earliest days in this program, listening to countless ramblings, offering endless resources, and modeling a balance of passion and pragmatism to which I can only aspire. Thank you for challenging me when I needed to be challenged, and for championing me when I needed that more. I cannot overstate my appreciation for Kathy Komar, who generously agreed to be my outside reader, and whose encouraging words and enthusiastic emails bolstered my confidence as a scholar and writer. And of course, I am forever grateful to Louise Hornby, who helped me find the shapes in the chaos of my haziest ideas. Thank you for pouring over every detail of this dissertation with me as if it were of the utmost importance; but more than that, thank you for never letting me lose the sense of perspective to remember that it isn’t. I am beyond humbled by this committee’s continued investment in this project and in me; and if you are the only four people to ever read this document, that will be enough. Others have seen the scraps and fragments of these chapters, contributing valuable advice. I am particularly grateful to Tim Fosbury and the EGU for inviting me to present my work on Virginia Woolf and her clouds at the Athenaeum, and to Kristen Cardon and the 20/21 Reading Group for their keen insights on Nabokov and his lightning. It has been my great fortune to be a part of the UCLA English department community, where I have been surrounded, all these years, by the very friendliest faces and the most sympathetic ears. Chief among them are those of Jeanette Gilkison and Mike Lambert, whose willingness to be of service knows no bounds. Chris Mott is a pedagogic force to be reckoned with, and I’ve been unspeakably lucky to have him in my corner. Anahid Nersessian and Allison Carruth opened their doors to me to share their ecocritical expertise. A.R. Braunmuller indulged me with heartening conversation during countless hallway run-ins. And Helen Deutsch has been a continual source of comfort and motivation, even from a distance. There is no quantifying my gratitude for the inspiring intellects and immeasurable goodwill of my fellow students, each of whom has done more than their part to sharpen my mind and to vii soften the inevitable blows of grad school. Special thanks to Katie Charles for her wit and words of wisdom, and to Jackie Ardam for leading by example, paving the way of getting a PhD while remaining committed to watching excessive amounts of television. Caitlin Benson and Kathryn Cai’s blind faith in me helped me believe in myself. When I was at my weariest, Elizabeth Crawford emerged as my personal deus ex machina, and for that I cannot thank her enough. To Medaya Ocher, Sarah Nance, and Lindsay Wilhelm, who were there from the start, and to Will Clark and Eric Newman, who are here with me at the finish: it has been an honor and (at times!) a joy to share this experience with you. This grueling, absurd, inexpressibly rewarding experience. That this document exists is a testament to my friends and family, whose vim has sustained me throughout this process, and whose vigor reminded me of the life that needed living outside
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