THE CONSTRUCTED SELF: A STUDY OF THREE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVELS Emma Jane Walkers University College London PhD September 2002 ProQuest Number: U643478 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U643478 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract This thesis focuses on three major nineteenth-century European novels which are considered ‘realistic’, namely Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Theodor Fontane’s Ejfi Driest and Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. Central to the project are notions of ‘construction’ and ‘constructedness’. Through close textual analysis I examine the ways in which the principal characters ‘construct’ themselves and those around them and how they in turn are constructed both by other characters and by the social norms and conventions of the particular world that they inhabit. I try to demonstrate how each of the novels functions not merely as a simple depiction or reflection of the social world but reflects profoundly upon the ways in which that world functions and is allowed to continue to function and upon the ways in which the society is as much a part of the individual as the individual is a part of society. I relate the process of the construction of the self to the more theoretic issue of the constructing processes practised by the narrating voice. My argument is that the deceptively ‘solid’ realistic narrative can actually, in these three instances, be shown to be anything but stable, coherent and rhetorically uncomplicated. Whilst the third person narrative voice in each text may function at one level as the impersonal, authoritative, chronicling presence that we might expect from a novel under the ‘realistic’ rubric, that voice simultaneously employs techniques at odds with our ideas of such an authority. These techniques contribute to the sense of construction and constructedness already established at the level of story or plot. The narrative mode, then, becomes part of the thematic indeterminacy, with the text itself implicated in the mechanisms of constructedness which are so central to the characters’ experience. Table of contents Forew ord ............................................................................................................ page 4 Acknowledgements page 5 The Constructed Self: A Study of Three Nineteenth-Century Novels Introduction ....................................................................................................... page 6 Chapter 1; Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary: Characters ................... page 11 Chapter 2: Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary: N arrative ..................... page 44 Chapter 3: Theodor Fontane’s Ejfi Briest: Characters ................................ page 79 Chapter 4: Theodor Fontane’s Ejfi Briest: N arrative page 122 Chapter 5: Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure: Characters page 150 Chapter 6: Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure: N arrative ....................... page 193 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... page 224 Bibliography...................................................................................................... page 227 Foreword This thesis focuses on three of the great canonical works of nineteenth-century European literature, three works which, comfortably or uncomfortably, often bear the label of ‘realist novel’. This study makes no claim to offer radical new readings of these works which depart substantially from the almost infinite wealth of secondary literature devoted to them and their authors, nor does it endeavour to approach the texts from the specific agenda of a particular slice of critical theory. At the same time, it is to be hoped that fresh perspectives on hitherto less foregrounded moments in the texts will open up along the way, with close textual analysis playing a crucial role in the proceedings. Comparative studies looking at Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Fontane’s Ejfi Briest frequently, and quite rightly, take the issue of ‘the adulterous heroine’ as a key starting point. This study, however, brings in Hardy’s Jude the Obscure - a text which, although it outraged the contemporary reading public does not contain a single adulterous moment. It seeks to move beyond this focus on transgression and the female to a wider consideration of individual selfhood as such - and not just that of the eponymous protagonist. The link developed to unite the three texts is the issue of ‘construction’ or ‘constructedness’. Through an exploration of this theme the thesis seeks to combine an analysis of two specific strands. Firstly, there is, for each text, a consideration of character, looking at how the characters in the novels construct themselves and are constructed. The study tries to understand what makes the characters tick and offers an unashamedly traditional examination of characters as people, rather than mere ciphers, lifeless black marks on a white page. Secondly, the study shifts to a more theoretical focus on narrative, on the multitude of techniques that narrative uses to achieve its effects, on the idea of text as text, as carefully constructed artefact. A central contention of the study is that the narrative within each of the three novels conceals an unexpected complexity which is at odds with traditional assumptions of the ways in which the nineteenth-century realist novel ‘works’. This complexity exposes a depth of self-reflexivity which shatters our expectations of solid, unambiguous narrative authority and this results in a questioning of the way we, as readers, read, and the way we, as readers, both individually and collectively, construct texts. Acknowledgements I would like to use this space to thank the AHRB for the funding award made for the three years of this PhD. Money isn’t everything, but it certainly helps. There are many people who deserve mention, but I would like particularly to thank Wendy Mercer for her unfailing support and encouragement, despite having far more genuinely pressing concerns, and Martin Swales, for his indefatigable enthusiasm, many years of inspirational teaching and guidance, and his sheer lunatic blind faith. Thanks also to my family, for always being there, and to Chris, for repeatedly picking up all the pieces and somehow sticking them back together again. THE CONSTRUCTED SELF: A STUDY OF THREE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVELS INTRODUCTION ‘Irony is one of those words, like love, which are best not talked about if they are to retain any force of meaning - other such words are sincerity and authenticity.’^ Thus writes Lionel Trilling, with obvious ironical intent, approximately half way through a book which grapples with these very notions of sincerity and authenticity and their significance for, and indeed in, literature. Focusing on specific literary texts in a largely chronological approach. Trilling charts the development and intensification of a sense of personal identity and suggests that this development arises almost concurrently with the growth of the notion of something called ‘society’. The self comes to understand - or at least to be conscious of - itself as ‘individual’ and with this new awareness arrives the consciousness of the problematical nature of the individual’s relationship with what Trilling terms ‘the external power of society’ Trilling regards society as something which is both necessary for the individual’s survival and simultaneously, paradoxically, extremely damaging in that it corrupts the very life that it fosters. From this perspective, he goes on to discuss the problems faced by the increasingly urban and increasingly alienated individual, who, he writes, is subject to the constant influence, the literal in-flowing, of the mental processes of others, which, in the degree that they stimulate or enlarge his consciousness, make it less his own. He finds it ever more difficult to know what his own self is and what being true to it consists in.^ Trilling finds - in accord, as he points out, with Rousseau - that it is society that is ultimately responsible for the individual’s loss of authenticity. He maps the growing doubt expressed within literature as to the feasibility of the positing or survival of the authentic self and registers the deep anxiety which accompanies the awareness of the dehumanising but apparently ineluctable slide into the inauthentic. ’ Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 120. ^ Trilling, Sincerity, p. 36. ^ Trilling, Sincerity, p. 61. wryly quoting Oscar Wilde’s typically cynical epigram: The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible.’"^ What Trilling effectively does, then, is to suggest the existence of a clear dichotomy. On the one hand we find big, bad (but regrettably wholly indispensable to civilisation) society, with all its corrupting machinations at the ready to destroy the individual’s integrity. On the other hand we find that same blameless individual, forced by circumstances to relinquish