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Gothic Modernism: Revising and Representing the Narratives of History and Romance

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Gothic Modernism: Revising and Representing the Narratives of History and Romance University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2012 Gothic Modernism: Revising and Representing the Narratives of History and Romance Taryn Louise Norman [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the American Literature Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Norman, Taryn Louise, "Gothic Modernism: Revising and Representing the Narratives of History and Romance. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2012. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1331 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Taryn Louise Norman entitled "Gothic Modernism: Revising and Representing the Narratives of History and Romance." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Lisi Schoenbach, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Mary Papke, Amy Billone, Carolyn Hodges Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Gothic Modernism: Revising and Representing the Narratives of History and Romance A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee Taryn Louise Norman May 2012 Copyright © 2012 Taryn Louise Norman All rights reserved. ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Valerie and Graham, for their unwavering support and love, and to the memory of my Grandfather, Denys, who is missed everyday. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my entire committee, Dr. Lisi Schoenbach, Dr. Mary Papke, Dr. Amy Billone, and Dr. Carolyn Hodges. I am grateful to my dissertation director, Dr. Lisi Schoenbach, for her enthusiasm and commitment to the project. Your guidance and feedback have been invaluable. Special thanks are due to Dr. Mary Papke for generous donation of her time and her continual mentorship. I have immensely enjoyed our many hours of discussions, and I thank you for all of the wonderful opportunities that you have opened up for me. Your mentorship and friendship have helped shape me into the scholar I am today. I would also like to thank Dr. Tom Haddox for his guidance and thorough feedback. Thank you to the University of Tennessee and the Department of English for the many fellowships, assistantships, and teaching opportunities over the past five years. Thank you to Dr. Laura Rattray, my undergraduate advisor at Hull University, without whom I would have never considered applying to graduate school in the USA. Thank you, also, to Dr. Tony Brinkley, the University of Maine, for your continual support and mentorship. I am also thankful for the guidance of the late Dr. Burt Hatlen, the University of Maine, and for the many hours of time he spent working with me on my Ph.D. application materials. Thank you to all of my friends who have supported me throughout this process, especially Kelli MacCartey and Harry Newburn. Special thanks go to Teresa Saxton for organizing the dissertation study group and for your generous mentorship, and to Steve Sparks for our many hours of discussions about all things Gothic. Last, but certainly not least, I’d like to thank my family, especially my parents. Mum and Dad, I never would have made it this far without your love and encouragement. iv ABSTRACT Gothic Modernism: Revising and Representing the Narratives of History and Romance analyzes the surprising frequency of the tones, tropes, language, and conventions of the classic Gothic that oppose the realist impulses of Modernism. In a letter F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about The Great Gatsby, he explains that he “selected the stuff to fit a given mood or ‘hauntedness’” (Letters 551). This “stuff” constitutes the “subtler means” that Virginia Woolf wrote about when she observed that the conventions of the classic Gothic no longer evoked fear: “The skull-headed lady, the vampire gentleman, the whole troop of monks and monsters who once froze and terrified us now gibber in some dark cupboard of the servants’ hall. In our day we flatter ourselves the effect is produced by subtler means” (“Gothic Romance” 133). This project, therefore, identifies a “Gothic Modernism”—a strain of Modernism that makes use of the well- established language and conventions of the Gothic terms in order to express recognizably Modernist concerns about the nature of subjectivity, temporality, language, and knowledge. But, I argue, though these texts call upon and refer to the language and conventions of the classic Gothic, they also find ways of transforming and adapting them for a new historical era. In chapters covering ghosts and hauntings, and other revised conventions of the classic Gothic, I continue the work begun by John Paul Riquelme’s Gothic and Modernism that begins to reveal how “history, as part of the condition of modernity, [has] become Gothic” (1). This project analyzes the gothicization of two narratives through which humans are expected to make sense of their lives—history and romance. Despite more than a century separating the classic Gothic from Modernism, the Gothic continues v to be so useful to Modernist writers because, while these genres’ authors represent the nature of their anxieties as a result of specific socio-historical circumstances, there is a striking continuity between the types of anxieties expressed. Thus, this project contributes to Modernist Studies by expanding the boundaries of our conventional understanding of the genre’s thematic concerns and stylistic commitments, and the way in which it frames key narratives. vi PREFACE The skull-headed lady, the vampire gentleman, the whole troop of monks and monsters who once froze and terrified us now gibber in some dark cupboard of the servants’ hall. In our day we flatter ourselves the effect is produced by subtler means. It is at the ghosts within us that we shudder, and not at the decaying bodies of barons or the subterranean activities of ghouls. Virginia Woolf, “Gothic Romance” vii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTON “The Subtler Means”: The Evolution of Gothic Conventions and Language .................... 1 CHAPTER ONE Gothic History: Framing Devices and Double-Haunting in Heart of Darkness and The Great Gatsby ..................................................................................................................... 29 Gothic (Modernist) Framing Devices ........................................................................... 34 Double-Haunting: The Nature and Experience of Collective and Personal History ..... 54 CHAPTER TWO Gothic Stagings: Surfaces and Subtexts in the Popular Modernism of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot Series ........................................................................................................ 82 Christie’s anti-Gothic Gesture or Gothic Parody .......................................................... 86 Modern Psychology and Performing Subjects .............................................................. 96 The Gothic and Christie’s Aesthetics of Absence ....................................................... 104 Curtain ......................................................................................................................... 121 CHAPTER THREE Gothic Romances: The Trouble with Love and Deconstructing Romantic Ideology in Gothic Modernism .......................................................................................................... 134 [T]o love you must be free”: Self-Knowledge and Romantic Ideology ..................... 144 Grieving the Death of Romantic Ideology .................................................................. 155 ‘“Love, that terrible thing”’ ......................................................................................... 167 AFTERWORD .............................................................................................................. 179 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................... 186 VITA............................................................................................................................... 207 viii INTRODUCTON “The Subtler Means”: The Evolution of Gothic Conventions and Language The skull-headed lady, the vampire gentleman, the whole troop of monks and monsters who once froze and terrified us now gibber in some dark cupboard of the servants’ hall. In our day we flatter ourselves the effect is produced by subtler means. It is at the ghosts within us that we shudder, and not at the decaying bodies of barons or the subterranean activities of ghouls —Virginia Woolf, “Gothic Romance” This project takes its cue from Virginia Woolf’s review, in 1928, of Edith Birkhead’s The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance (1917), and several short essays she wrote about Henry James’s ghost
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