Table of Contents Introduction: …………………………………………………………………………………..1 The Question of Identity in Harold Pinter’s Drama Chapter One:………………………………………………………………………………….26 Strong Arm Her: Gendered Identity in Harold Pinter’s A Kind of Alaska (1982) Chapter Two:…………………………………………………………………………………79 The Indelible Memory: Memorial Identity in Harold Pinter’s Ashes to Ashes (1996) Chapter Three:……………………………………………………………………………..129 Eroded Rhetoric: Linguistic Identity in Harold Pinter’s One for the Road (1984) and Mountain Language (1988) Chapter Four: ……………………………………………………………………………….188 Chic Dictatorship: Power and Political Identity in Harold Pinter’s Party Time (1991) Chapter Five:…………………………………………………………………………………240 The Ethic and Aesthetic of Existence: Sexual Identity in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal (1978) Chapter Six:…………………………………………………………………………………..294 Crumbling Families: Familial and Marital Identity in Harold Pinter’s Celebration (2000) Conclusion:……………………………………………………………………………………350 Bibliography:…………………………………………………………………………………359 I II Acknowledgment I would like to express my special thanks and appreciation to my principal supervisor Dr. Christian M. Billing, who has shown the attitude and the substance of a genius. He continually and persuasively conveyed a spirit of adventure in questioning everything and leaving no stone unturned. You have been a tremendous mentor for me. I would like to thank you for your incessant encouragement, support, invaluable advice, and patience without which the completion of this work would have been impossible. Thank you for allowing me to grow as a researcher. Your advice on both research as well as my career have been priceless. I would also like to thank Dr. K.S. Morgan McKean without which this work would not have been completed on time. A special thanks to my family. Words cannot express how grateful I’m to my sweet and loving parents Mandy Khaleel & Hasan Ali who did not spare the least effort to support me throughout my study. Your sacrifices, unconditional love, emotional and financial support, and your encouragement and patience is what sustained me thus far and will always do to set higher targets in future. My sister Noor Hasan Ali and my dear friend Amal Abdul- Raheem have never left my side, and are very special. My deepest appreciation also goes to my very special friend and companion Faisal Farah who always showed enough enthusiasm and readiness to read and edit my work. Faisal, thank you for believing in me. Your constant encouragement and believe in my potential capabilities have come to fruition upon the completion of this project. Many thanks are extended to my friend Renfang Tang whose friendship which developed over the past three years has proved invaluable to my research. I’m also thankful to all the staff members in the School of Drama, Music, and Screen. Your help and support throughout my Ph.D. journey have been enormous. A special thanks is offered to Prof. Pavel Drabek for his support and encouragement during the first steps towards my Ph.D. In addition, thank you to the efforts and help extended by the staff of the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull, and The British Library. Their punctuality in providing the necessary resources have been remarkable. Finally, I dedicate my thesis to everyone who still believes in the spirit of humanity, and that this world which is fixated on libelling people according to their gender, race, colour, religion, nationality and sexual orientations will, one day, change to become a better place for everybody. Humanity will win. Abstract In a world brimming with upheavals our individual identities are threatened with annihilation, every social eruption carries seeds of change. The word change is pregnant with both positive and negative possibilities, one hand, it allows human beings a chance of tremendous progress or on the other, it constrains human progress. Harold Pinter, once described as the ‘a master of Uncertainty’, 1 provided valid situations and formulas in his dramas in which the identities of his characters are deployed in two different categories: (i) those who stick to their identities to the extent of destroying the Other, thus creating oppressors out of themselves, and (ii) those who desperately fight to preserve their different identities in the face of the shifting landmarks created by the oppressors. Therefore my study is an attempt to develop a new conceptualisation of the term ‘identity’, to see how it has been employed in seven selected works of Harold Pinter. My thesis is not concerned with following the evolution of Harold Pinter dramas as much as the representation of his characters and the fluctuation of their identities in the face of the totalitarian powers. The hegemonising policies of these powers come in different shapes in public or private spheres, therefore the treatment of identity in my thesis takes different categories, and each category is approached with relevant set of theories to cut to the bone of Pinter’s philosophy of the individual as an independent and free human being in this world. The hegemonic powers do not emerge out of the vacuum, they stealthily encroach on governing systems progressively be they democratic or undemocratic. They create small incisions in our moral code, a ‘slow morphing of our social landmarks’,2 that results in a brainwashing process with different techniques and targets that are set against any individual who shows symptoms of non-conformity. My thesis highlights such processes, and examines those individuals who accept to be brainwashed as well as those who do so under duress in light of the suggested theories. Although draconic measure in Pinter dramas include everybody, a subaltern feminist theme is running in parallel with the theme of subduing the identity of the Other by focusing on the position of women in his dramas. 1 Brigitte Gauthier (ed.) Viva Pinter; Harold Pinter’s Spirit of Resistance, (Bern, Peter Lang,2009),p.4 2 Ibid.,p.13. 1 By following different representations of characters in different circumstances, my thesis is an attempt to add another layer to the concept of identity as seen from my own experiences and as represented in Pinter dramas. It does not offer solutions or alternatives as much as representing situations in which the concept of identity is at stake. Words such as power, violence, and hegemony are part and parcel of this process. Moreover, by spotting the weaknesses in any given system or social model, I’m diagnosing the inadequacies that need to be negotiated, or addressed in order to protect our identities as free individuals who are not in need of more restrictions to regulate our lives as much as we need to break away from them to establish ourselves with only one identity: humanity. 2 Introduction The Question of Identity in Harold Pinter’s Drama ‘I do have a strong sense that we are all being betrayed, all the time, in fact by the power, people who run our lives, who run the life of the society in which we live.’ 1 I A closer look at characters in Pinter’s plays reveals the historical, political and social issues that had left their mark on him. In every play tackled in this thesis, there are historical, social, or political references present in the lines uttered by the characters. It is exactly by spotting these situations that this thesis is investigating the evolvement of their identities. The central theme of his work is also one of the dominant themes of the 20th century, and I believe it is still an on-going process in our own moment, half way through the second decade of the twenty-first century. It is the struggle for identity of the individual human subject, who is forced to exist in a fragmented, unfathomable world; always looking for self-validation, often jockeying for dominance and isolated moments of individual power and social agency. Virtually all of Pinter’s characters are at times uncertain of who or what they are; their identity is either compromised, incomplete or they exist in situations in which others seek to impinge upon it, or take it away altogether. Living in such a state of uncertainty in relation to identity politics has pushed some of Pinter’s characters to be aggressive, suspicious, to regard both their familiars and strangers with trepidation, to become overprotective of their possessions, territory, and space, seeing control of such material objects and social realities as a means to assert sovereignty. As Victor L. Cahn claims: ‘These possessions may range from the trivial (the cheese roll in The Homecoming or the knife in The Collection) to the extravagant (Deeley’s home in Old Times)’.2 In short, ‘[Pinter’s] whole work [can be seen as] a veritable rehab tool in Human Values’.3 1 Robert Ando, ‘ Ritratto di Harold Pinter’, in Viva Pinter: Harold Pinter’s Spirit of Resistance, ed. By Brigitte Gauthier (Bern: Peter lang, Switzerland, 2009), p.208. 2 Victor L. Cahn, Gender and Power in the Plays of Harold Pinter (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), p.2. 3 Viva Pinter: Harold Pinter’s Spirit of Resistance, ed. by, Brigitte Gauthier (Bern: Peter Lang, Switzerland,2009), p.3. 1 One of the most important ‘human values’, in my opinion, is individual identity and freedom. When the atmosphere brims with uncertainty, as is the case in most Pinter plays,4 an individual’s identity becomes surrounded by danger. The threat can range from annihilation, fragmentation, or destruction to what appears on the surface to be less intrusive and destructive, but which is, in reality the worst of all: reconstruction and remoulding according to a certain prevailing hegemony, orthodoxy or rule. Locating Pinter in his historical context can be illuminating in trying to ascertain and understand why this should be the case: concern over this issue grew bigger and bigger after the Second World War.