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Hudson, Elaine C. (2015) Writing the Author: Sylvia Plath, Henry James

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WRITING THE AUTHOR: SYLVIA PLATH, HENRY JAMES, VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THE BIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL ELAINE CLAIRE HUDSON, BA(Hons), MA. Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2015 2 Abstract This thesis explores the effect produced when contemporary novelists write about fellow authors. Since the mid-1990s, the biographical novel, which fictionalises the lives of real-life historical authors, has become an increasingly popular literary genre in Britain and the United States. This contemporary exploration of authorial subjectivity, viewed here through the lens of life-writing, provides a reengagement with debates surrounding the crisis of the author-figure (exemplified by Roland Barthes), and the unreliability of biography as a discourse of subjectivity at the turn of the twenty-first century. Through its inherent self-reflexivity (with its exposure of both the author-biographer alongside the author-subject), I consider how the biographical novel succeeds in reconciling the author-figure with the literary text in new ways. While critical interest in the biographical novel has tended to focus on a limited number of texts, little attention has been paid to their status as an emergent sub-genre of life-writing. Through the exemplary figures of Sylvia Plath, Henry James and Virginia Woolf and their corresponding biographical novels, I draw together a core body of texts to demonstrate their unity as a literary form. With an emphasis upon the role of life-writing in the construction of authorial subjectivity, I consider how each of the three author-subjects have cultivated — and been cultivated by — particular recurrent motifs: firstly through their own texts (whether fictional or biographical), then as they become manifest once again in the writing of the contemporary biographical novelists. Modernist developments in biographical modes, particularly Woolf's revision of the relationship between the biographer and his or her subject, provide both context for the biographical novel, and a rich framework upon which to build contemporary forms of life-writing and authorial subjectivity. Taking these as a starting point through which to view the 'author question', my thesis reveals how the genre of the biographical novel offers a redefinition of both the author as a multiple, progressive and changing figure, and a highlighting how the reinterpretation of life- writing in fictional form both enhances and supports the future of biography and autobiography as an equally evolutionary form. 3 Acknowledgements To all in the School of English at the University of Nottingham who have supervised my research and the writing up of this thesis, I owe a wealth of gratitude. To Dr Sean Matthews I wish to offer my thanks for encouraging me to pursue a research degree at a point in my life when I had otherwise considered it no longer an option. Dr Neal Alexander brought a new and invigorating perspective to my research at a time when it was most needed. For this, as well as his support throughout his supervision of my research, I offer much thanks. Dr Abigail Ward stepped into Neal's shoes at a critical point in the writing-up phase of this thesis; her watchful eye and considerable moral and practical support have proven to be invaluable to me in this crucial stage of the process. The greatest debt of thanks, however, goes to Dr Leena Kore-Schroder; for guiding me through each of the eight years of this research degree. I am infinitely grateful to Leena and the exceptional qualities that she has shown me as my PhD supervisor: astuteness, kindness, wisdom and humour (as well as the ability to know when to stop talking about research and to start talking about the therapeutic merits of baking). For everything she has done for me over the past eight years (and especially for uttering those two crucial words: "read Orlando!" at our very first meeting): thank you. I would also like to express my thanks to Lydia Wallman, the Research Administrator in the School of English, for taking all of the worry out of practical matters that really need not be stressful. I would also like to thank my mother, Teresa Hudson, for her belief in me, for her love, and for allowing me to turn my attention to this thesis when I have most needed to do so. Her inspiring ability to face considerable emotional and practical challenges of her own has motivated me to tackle the comparatively modest task of undertaking this thesis. Abundant thanks also go to Halina Pasierbska, and Iza and Paul Sainthouse for their invaluable support in allowing me to pursue this degree. Finally: for all of his love, his understanding (of what I needed to do and where I needed to be) during my research and the writing of this thesis, I wish to give my wholehearted thanks to James Brown. Giving everything that I have needed — and being all that I have needed — he has given me more support, encouragement and love over the past seven years than I can describe on this page. 4 Contents Title Page ……………………………………………………………………………1 Abstract …………………………………………………………………………….. 2 Acknowledgments …………………………………………………………………. 3 List of Contents ……………………………………………………………………. 4 List of Illustrations ………………………………………………………………… 5 1. Chapter 1 – Introduction ………………………………………………………. 6 2. Chapter 2 – Writing Sylvia, Sylvia Writing: The Voices of Plath in Ted and Sylvia and Wintering ……………………………………….. 47 2.1. Plath: Biographical Representations ..………………………………… 48 2.2. The Silenced Man: Ted Hughes ………………………………………. 60 2.3. The Dialogic Plath ……………………………………………………. 67 2.4. Plathian Appropriations in the Biographical Novel ………………….. 72 2.5. The Voices of Ted and Sylvia ………………………………………… 78 2.6. Rewriting Plath in Wintering ………………………………………… 90 2.7. Speaking Plath ……………………………………………………… 102 3. Chapter 3 – The Spoils of Henry James: Figuring the Author in the House in The Master and Author, Author …………………………………………… 105 3.1. James and 'The Birthplace' ………………………………………….. 113 3.2. The Celebrity Writer and the Celebrity Home ……………………… 123 3.3. Tóibín, Lodge, and the Literary Pilgrimage ………………………… 134 3.4. James's Uncanny House …………………………………………….. 145 3.5. Lamb House in The Master and Author, Author ……………………. 151 3.6. Tóibín, Lodge and James in the House of Fiction ………………….. 159 3.7. Locating the Author in the House ………………………………….. 177 4. Chapter 4 – Woolfian Portraits: Writing, Painting, and the Visual Image of the Author in The Hours and Vanessa and Virginia …………………….. 179 4.1 Reading Woolf, Writing the Author ………………………………….. 187 4.2 The Visual Biographer ……………………………………………….. 208 4.3 Painting Woolf in Vanessa and Virginia ……………………………… 218 4.4 Visual Representations of Woolf in The Hours ………………………. 238 4.5 Woolfian Afterlives …………………………………………………… 256 5. Chapter 5 – Conclusion: The Biographical Novel: Afterthoughts and Afterlives …………………………………………………………………….. 258 6. Bibliography …………………………………………………………………. 263 5 List of Illustrations 1. Figure 1: Front page of 'Mr. Henry James at Home' ………………………….. 129 2. Figure 2: Second page of 'Mr. Henry James at Home' ………………………... 132 3. Figure 3: a page from 'Kew Gardens' illustrated by Vanessa Bell (1927) ……. 231 4. Figure 4: Virginia Woolf in a Deckchair, Vanessa Bell (1912) ……………….. 233 5. Figure 5: Self-portrait, Vanessa Bell (1952) …………………...……………… 236 Chapter 1 – Introduction This thesis examines the effect produced when novelists write about fellow authors. Since the mid-1990s, an increasing number of novels have been published, predominantly in Britain and North America, in which the lives of real-life authors have become the subjects of fictional interpretation. I refer to such texts throughout this thesis as 'biographical novels', a term which I believe accurately reflects the balance of biographical emphasis and fictional embellishment that they convey.1 The novelist and critic David Lodge (himself the author of two novels on the lives of Henry James and H. G. Wells respectively) first utilises the term 'biographical novel',2 when he acknowledges this emergent literary genre: the biographical novel — the novel which takes a real person and their real history as the subject matter for imaginative exploration, using the novel's techniques for representing subjectivity rather than the objective, evidence-based discourse of biography — has become a very fashionable form of literary fiction in the last decade or so, especially as applied to the lives of writers.3 When referring to the popularity of the biographical novel, Lodge also highlights many of the assumed binary oppositions that, drawn together, comprise the qualities of the literary form. The term 'biographical' evokes traditional perceptions of 'real', 'history', 'objective, evidence-based' on the one hand, while the idea of 'novel' conjures a sense of the 'imaginative', 'exploration', and 'subjectivity' respectively. The 1 As my research focuses on a comparatively small number of biographical novels and a specific group of author-subjects, it is not able to reflect the volume of such texts produced during this period. A more comprehensive list of more notable examples is incorporated into the bibliography. 2 Lodge's novel on Henry James, Author, Author, is given further critical attention in Chapter 3 of this thesis; however I do not discuss his later novel on H. G.Wells, A Man of Parts (2011) as part of my study. 3 David Lodge, 'The Year of Henry James: or, Timing Is All: the story of a novel' in The Year of Henry James or, Timing is All: the Story of a Novel (London: Harvill Secker, 2006), pp. 03-103 (p.8). Further references are to this edition and will appear in parenthesis in the text. 7 literary theorist Linda Hutcheon identifies the postmodern trend of 'historiographic metafiction' in The Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (1988), in which she argues that the narration of history can no longer be considered as 'objective', but exists as a subjective form of storytelling.4 The popularity of the biographical novel, with its combination of biographical detail and fictional license, is testament to the belief that biography can now be considered in the same terms that history is perceived by Hutcheon: as an imaginative construct.
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