Housing Identity: Re-Constructing Feminine Spaces
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HOUSING IDENTITY: RE-CONSTRUCTING FEMININE SPACES THROUGH MEMORY IN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S THE YEARS AND DAPHNE DU MAURIER’S REBECCA by Stephanie Derisi A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida May 2012 HOUSING IDENTITY: RE-CONSTRUCTING FEMININE SPACES THROUGH MEMORY IN VIRGINIA WOOLF'S THE YEARS AND DAPHNE DU MAURIER'S REBECCA by Stephanie Derisi This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Eric Berlatsky, Department of English, and has been .approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment for the requirements for the degree ofMaster ofArts. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: (2: Eric BerlatskY:Pill Thesis Advisor Taylor Andrew Furman, Ph.D. Interim' Chair, Department ofEnglish ~~ I-Ieather Coltman, D.M.A. Interim Dean, The Dorothy F. Schmidt College ofArts & Letters' Dean, Graduate College ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without the fundamental assistance of Eric Berlatsky and Jennifer Low. The candidate could not have achieved this academic goal without the continual support and encouragement from Taylor Hagood. The candidate wishes to express her sincere thanks and patience to Deryck Lance throughout the writing of this manuscript. iii ABSTRACT Author: Stephanie Derisi Title: Housing Identity: Re-Constructing Feminine Spaces through Memory in Virginia Woolf’s The Years and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Eric Berlatsky Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2012 This thesis represents a study of The Years by Virginia Woolf and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Both novels attempt to redefine the role of women in patriarchal society during the 1930s. The domestic role women had to fill within a masculine household constrained their ability to form an independent “self,” apart from fathers and husbands. I argue that these novels articulate the possibility for women to access an independent self by examining the meaning behind domestic objects in and of the house. Lucy Irigaray asserts that women were, and still are, associated with being valued as a desirable “commodity.” Since women have no choice but to work within the symbolic order and are already labeled as “object,” women writers have manipulated the system by examining the subject/object dichotomy. The relationship women have with inanimate, and particularly domestic, objects shows how time (the past and the future) manipulates freedom in the present moment. Woolf’s reflection on how “moments of being” function as gateways to a heightened sense of awareness is iv prevalent in her last published novel, The Years. I invoke Friedrich Nietzsche to consider notions of how an antiquated past hinders identity in du Maurier’s Rebecca. In the literary texts of Woolf and du Maurier, women have a unique relationship with material objects in relationship to subjectivity. By examining the spatial constructs of the home, women are able to construct themselves as free “subjects” in a male dominated world. v DEDICATION I dedicate this thesis to my mother and father, Anne and Ben Favazza. HOUSING IDENTITY: RE-CONSTRUCTING FEMININE SPACES THROUGH MEMORY IN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S THE YEARS AND DAPHNE DU MAURIER’S REBECCA LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................... viii INTRODUCTION. A FRAGMENTED HISTORY: THE SUBJECT/OBJECT DICHOTOMY .................................................................................................................. 1 Escaping Madness: The Shadow of the Object .................................................... 9 Theoretical Possibilities: Framing the Subject ................................................... 11 Ornamental Obsession: Woolf’s and du Maurier’s Role ................................... 14 CHAPTER 1. LIBERATED MOMENTS: THE PAST RECYCLED IN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S THE YEARS ................................................................................................. 16 Social Atmosphere surrounding The Years ........................................................ 22 The Pargiters ....................................................................................................... 24 The Domestic Environment: The Significance of Inanimate Objects ................ 30 Time: The Circularity of a Repetitious Past and the “Now-ness” of the Present ................................................................................................................ 37 Freedom and Identity- What Does the Future Hold? ......................................... 48 Conclusion: The Dawn of the New Day ............................................................. 54 CHAPTER 2. IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK?: DECONSTRUCTING DOMESTIC ROLES IN DAPHNE DU MAURIER’S REBECCA ............................... 56 Dark Halls and Haunted Corridors: The Mysteries of the House ...................... 56 A False Representation of History: The Narrator’s Counterfeit Past ................. 67 vi A Sense of Place ................................................................................................. 73 The Gothic Element ............................................................................................ 79 Time Recycled: A Repetitious Past .................................................................... 79 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 85 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 88 Erasing Boundaries: The Androgynous Mind .................................................... 88 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 97 vii LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1. Menabilly ............................................................................................................ 58 Fig. 2. Manderley. .......................................................................................................... 60 viii INTRODUCTION A FRAGMENTED HISTORY: THE SUBJECT/OBJECT DICHOTOMY Society often views women as objects, defining them by their roles as wives and mothers, but many times, not as independent subjects. If women are labeled as objects, it is through a history that has been dominated by masculine thought and power. How do women redefine their subjectivity in order to break out of patriarchal constraints? Many women writers of the twentieth century tried to write their way out of patriarchal representation to present new ways for women to revise their own history. Women have been struggling to find a space where they can write their own narrative, where freedom can be gained without having to live within the strict boundaries of societal expectations. Men are often the creators of historical narratives, and they often construct subjectivity around them. One continuously debated issue is women’s role within patriarchal society. Two prominent women authors who explore women’s roles through their writing are Virginia Woolf and Daphne du Maurier. In their novels, they attempt to redefine the role of women in patriarchal society during the 1930s. The domestic role women had to fill within a masculine household constrained their ability to form an independent “self” apart from fathers or husbands. According to Carol Dyhouse, “many feminists have adopted Kate Millett’s term ‘sexual politics’ to indicate their understanding that power determines the structure of private, sexual, and familial relationships and is not only contested in the public, more conventionally delegated 1 ‘political’ arenas of social life” (6). Not only do “sexual politics” construct the domestic environment, power struggles also affect female subjectivity. Michel Foucault offers an intricate view on the notions of power and the subject in The History of Sexuality. He asserts that the power behind a society’s structure determines the means for constructing an identity. The power structure that Foucault discusses is almost always male- dominated. I concentrate on the space that society constructs for women and how women work within that space to designate a new subjectivity in order to prevent patriarchal intrusion. To attain their goals, women writers explored the spaces surrounding those that women were allowed to occupy. By investigating the inner working of the home, we can see that the possibility for women to assert independence is often linked with inanimate objects in and of the domestic environment. To begin, one way of exploring women’s position within society is to focus on how they are viewed within a contemporary capitalist world. Material objects are viewed purely as commodities: things of use or advantage in order to make a profit (OED). Throughout history, women were and still are often valued as a desirable “product” and/or object. According to Luce Irigaray, “the passage into the social order, into the symbolic order, into order as such, is assured by the fact that men, or groups of men, circulate women among themselves” (174). Women are always “put on display.” In advertising, women are used as “bodies,” marketing tools, to sell more than just the product. They use women deemed by society