Gothic, Queer and Intertextual Labyrinths in the Novels by Louise Welsh
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UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE MADRID FACULTAD DE FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS DEPARTAMENTO DE LINGÜÍSTICA GENERAL, LENGUAS MODERNAS, LÓGICA Y FILOSOFÍA DE LA CIENCIA, TEORÍA DE LA LITERATURA Y LITERATURA COMPARADA WITH DARK, ROSE-COLOURED GLASSES: GOTHIC, QUEER AND INTERTEXTUAL LABYRINTHS IN THE NOVELS BY LOUISE WELSH PhD THESIS Author: Eduardo García Agustín Supervisor: Julia Salmerón Cabañas May, 2014 I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. (H.P. Lovecraft, “Dagon”) PRIOR. Butch. You get butch. (Imitating.) ‘Hi Cousin Doris, you don’t remember me I’m Lou, Rachel’s boy.’ Lou, not Louis, because if you say Louis they’ll hear the sibilant S. (Tony Kushner, Angels in America) Soft kitty, Warm kitty, Little ball of fur. Happy kitty, Sleepy kitty, Purr, purr, pur-r-r. (The Big Bang Theory) INDEX INDEX OF FIGURES 7 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 9 INTRODUCTION 11 PART ONE. LOUISE WELSH, WITH DARK, ROSE-COLOURED GLASSES 21 Louise Welsh, now and here 23 1. WITH DARK GLASSES 35 2. WITH ROSE-COLOURED GLASSES 75 PART TWO. INTO THE LABYRINTHS 117 At the entrance to the labyrinths 119 3. THE GOTHIC LABYRINTHS 131 3.1. Gothicising time 144 3.2. Gothicising space 147 3.3. Gothicising selves 157 3.3.1. Lovecraftian characters 159 3.3.2. Ghosts 161 3.3.3. Doppelgängers 167 3.3.4. Vampires 175 3.3.5. Demons and magic 182 4. THE QUEER LABYRINTHS 191 4.1. Queering gazes 198 4.2. Queering couples 222 4.3. Queering femininities 237 5. THE INTERTEXUAL LABYRINTHS 251 5.1. Intertexting language 280 5.2. Intertexting signs 293 5.3. Intertexting photography 301 CONCLUSIONS 315 LOUISE WELSH, THEN AND THERE 333 WORKS CITED 361 INDEX OF FIGURES Figure 1: Todorov’s linear model of the fantastic (Todorov, 1973: 44) 44 Figure 2: Brooke-Rose’s circular model the fantastic, (Brooke-Rose, 1983:84) 45 Figure 3: Cornwell’s model of the fantastic (Cornwell, 1990: 39) 46 Figure 4: The paraxial area. (Jackson, 1981: 19) 49 Figure 5: Kern’s labyrinth (Aguirre, 2002: 22) 122 Figure 6: The map of William Wilson’s World. (The Bullet Trick, n.p.) 156 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The first person I would like to mention in these acknowledgments is Dr Julia Salmerón, whom I deservedly admire as a scholar and a person. In her, I have found both scholar and personal support, advice and encouragement. I feel deeply proud of her having been my supervisor in this PhD thesis. It has been a pleasure to have traversed so many labyrinths together since we embarked on our closeted journey in that gothic bar near the British Council… and those still to come. Another person I would like to mention in this section is Louise Welsh. It was a pleasure to meet her in Glasgow and to enjoy the incredible conversation that eventually became the section titled “Louise Welsh, Then and There.” I hope we can soon share a glass of Rioja. I would also like to thank Dr Eulalia Piñeiro, Dr Antonio Ballesteros, Dr Ana González-Rivas, Dr Juan Antonio Suárez and Dr Lucas Platero for agreeing to be part of my Doctoral Thesis Tribunal. This PhD thesis would have lacked its rose-coloured touch had it not been for my stay at the University of Toronto in 2008 thanks to a Graduate Student Scholarship of the International Council for Canadian Studies and the sponsoring letters by Dr Terrie Goldie and Dr Linda Hutcheon. There, I also had the chance to meet John Greyson, Stephen Andrews, Richard Fung, Tim McCaskell and Kerri Sakamoto. All of you have also been present in the writing of this research. This final version would not have been possible without the patient proof- reading of Callum McHardy, my first link with Scotland and, without any doubt, my best friend. Even though it is difficult to summarize in a few lines what they mean to me, I would like to thank my family for many things; among others, their love, support and faith in this thesis. I also know it is not a very riojana thing to say, but I do love all of you. To my parents, Berta and Primitivo, because I know for sure that most of the things I have achieved and done in my life have only been possible because they have always been there and I cannot thank them enough. To my brother, Óscar, because he has always been an unconditional support in my life and an example of how dreams can be chased and made true. To my aunts and uncle, Juli, Rosa and Antonio who have always been present in my life, in hard times as well as in good times, and I know they will always be there. To my grandmother Julia, whom I have been missing 9 so much for so many years. To Lise, the opening of my world to a new language. To my niece Kira and my nephews Marcos and Linus, new stories that are to be written. Last, but not least, to Rafa, for all those weekends at home that will be rewarded. 10 INTRODUCTION In his article, “Writing Reading,” Roland Barthes points out a way of reading a novel, a “book” as he writes, that differs widely from the image people have of being immersed in the act of reading or having their attention absorbed in the reading process: “Has it never happened, as you were reading a book, that you kept stopping as you read, not because you weren’t interested, but because you were: because of a flow of ideas, stimuli, associations? In a word, haven’t you ever happened to read while looking up from your book?” (Barthes, 1989: 29, italics in the original). Rather than focussing on the book and being immersed in the act of reading, he proposes a completely different way of reading: one where reading is not a continuous action from the beginning till its end but an active approach to reading in which the reader’s mind is triggered by the text itself. Thus, readers feel forced to connect the book with that “flow of ideas, stimuli, associations” which does not necessarily need to be literary references, but images, films, TV programmes, music or even one’s own personal experiences. Were Barthes still alive, he would have experienced first-hand how ICT has managed to change people’s reading habits: in the case of e-books and tablets, readers can stop their reading action and, for example, look up any word they do not know by just clicking on it, opening the corresponding menu and clicking on the options of “definition” or even “translation.” Furthermore, there are some texts, namely blogs and wikis, where some of the key concepts, names of relevant people to the subject, places and so on become hyperlinks that, once clicked on, open new texts that, in turn, are open to other new texts by means of their own hyperlinks. This new type of reading has become so widely spread and entrenched in contemporary society that it is also difficult to read a text – or even a proper book – without feeling the need to google certain terms in order to get a better picture of settings, literary references or proper names that catch a reader’s attention and makes them look up from their book. Obviously, readers can make use of their imagination and picture in their mind settings such as the island of Lismore in Louise Welsh’s Naming the Bones. However, if they google “island of Lismore,” one of the settings in that novel, and click on the option “images,” they can see photographs of a sunny, green, idyllic place dominated by its overwhelming castle and surrounded by a calm, deep blue Loch Linnhe. These photographs of the real Lismore conflict with the island of Lismore portrayed in Louise Welsh’s novel. Whereas these photographs, which are thought to reflect reality 11 as it is and to construct signs that stand for reality, show these sunny landscapes, Murray – the main character in the novel – experiences a different Lismore. In his walking back to Mrs Dunn’s Bed and Breakfast, “Murray fell twice on the way down the hill, […] the rain came on as Murray had known it would […] the wind seemed to attack him form all sides, the rain swirling around him, blowing into his face, clouding his vision” (NTB, 220, 221). Furthermore, the island is a place where some people feel an inevitable need to commit suicide; there are buried bones of a baby girl sacrificed in a ritual act while those who performed it were high on drugs; its limekilns hide some valuable archaeological remains but they also engulf people that accidentally tread on them. Readers are well-aware that the latter depiction is a fictional, literary description of the island. On the other hand, this fictionalized island of Lismore becomes, in the readers’ mind, more realistic than the one shown in the photographs up to the point that the darker, windier and rainier island constitutes a more realistic portrayal of the island for readers. Even Louise Welsh herself is so conscious of this that she writes in the acknowledgments to her novel that Lismore “is a beautiful island, rich in wildlife and archaeology, situated in Loch Linnhe on the west coast of Scotland. The islanders are friendly, the B&Bs are well kept and welcoming” (NTB, 391) and she provides the official webpage of the island for any reader interested in discovering the real Lismore. Both are versions of the same place, though Louise Welsh’s focuses on its dark-side rather than on the bright one.