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New Considerations of Identity, Genre and Authorship in the Fiction of Sarah Waters

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New Considerations of Identity, Genre and Authorship in the Fiction of Sarah Waters Appropriating, adapting and performing Item Type Thesis Authors Bishton, Joanne Download date 29/09/2021 02:34:38 Item License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10545/623022 Appropriating, Adapting and Performing: New Considerations of Identity, Genre and Authorship in the Fiction of Sarah Waters. Joanne Bishton University of Derby PhD Thesis, 2016 Acknowledgements My thanks go first to Sarah Waters who found time in her busy schedule to make herself available for an interview for this thesis. Her generosity in this regard helped to set the tone of this thesis and the kindness she showed in providing details of the personal and political motivations behind her writing, have helped widen the theoretical dimensions of this thesis. Thanks also to Waters’ publisher at Virago, Lennie Goodings, who set aside time within her busy schedule to provide an interview for this thesis. She offered a commercial perspective on Waters that has enriched this thesis in a different way. Her assistance enabled this thesis to consider Waters alongside a broader set of trajectories. My sincere and heart-felt gratitude goes to my husband Andrew and son Joseph. Their support has sustained me through the small hours of the day, their humour has lightened the load and their love has made it possible. I am dedicating this thesis to them for their unwavering faith in me. This thesis would not be complete without the guidance I have received from my Director of Studies Professor Neil Campbell and second supervisor Dr Christine Berberich. I am immensely grateful for your experience, patience and guidance. Other members of my family, friends and colleagues deserve my thanks. A special mention to my father Joseph and my mother-in-law Margaret, whose constant supply of teacakes and beetroot has kept me sustained. My dear friend Catherine Gill who became my muse, providing coffee and conversation throughout. My appreciation goes to the ICR research centre and its members who listened to my papers and provided useful and helpful feedback and discussion. In Loving Memory My mother Christine, step-father Bob and father-in-law Bill. Always in my heart and never forgotten. Joanne Bishton Appropriating, Adapting and Performing: New Considerations of Identity, Genre and Authorship in the Fiction of Sarah Waters. Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1 - 24 Chapter One: 25 - 74 Second Authorial Self Chapter Two: 75 - 115 “These Memories Within” Chapter Three: 116 - 148 Re-Imagining the Romance Chapter Four: 149 - 181 “Queering the Gothic” Chapter Five: 182 - 221 Hypotext, Hypertext and Transtextuality Conclusion 222 - 227 Bibliography 228 - 244 Appendices: Interview Material Abstract This thesis is an interdisciplinary study of the lesbian fiction of Sarah Waters and it will demonstrate through a series of theoretical trajectories how her work creates new historical and cultural spaces for the representation of working- class female same-sex desire. Waters’ work exposes the fissures and instability of constructed social narratives, as her stories present women who have traditionally had their meaningful place in society denied to them. In response, this thesis illustrates how Waters’ work unearths the hidden histories of lesbians and shows them as meaningful participants in society. This thesis considers how it has been difficult for contemporary lesbians to locate a sense of their subjectivity with Sapphic icons of the past. Traditional literary representations of the lesbian-figure present a spectral and waif-life form. Such ethereal manifestations have helped ensure that lesbians are denied a visible legacy within society, because in many respects they are idealised forms, which are unattainable for women from ordinary backgrounds. In other words they have become a middle-class-specific form of identification. In this regard, this thesis demonstrates how Waters uses the concept of proximity to introduce alternative ways of meaning making into the text. For example, proximity enables the reader to experience in greater depth the relationship between space and place, whereby the social position of lesbians has been used to restrict the cultural spaces lesbian lived existence has conventionally had access to. In this way, paying attention to proximity enables the reader to challenge cultural assumptions of gender. Moreover, the closeness that Waters has to her subject matter, through the author-figure, gay activist and as public intellectual means that her function in the author role brings into being a series of authenticated examples of lesbian lived existence which come about through Waters’ own intention. Waters writes from a place that feels very intuitive to her. When she writes she says it feels very instinctive. In this regard her writing houses an interiority that other writers of marginal existence exhibit. For example, this thesis sees Waters as a co-producer of knowledge and argues that Waters creates a second authorial self that provides a governing consciousness for readers of her work. Waters has a long involvement in LBGT politics and it is shown how Waters’ work is influenced by a combination of her political and public selves. In this regard, this thesis draws attention to the palimpsestic nature of her work in relation to the inner and outer spaces that it occupies. In many respects Waters’ fiction deals with the notion and concept of the queer, emptying these relative positions of their negative stereotype and showing how the term ‘queer’ has been reclaimed by gay culture. In this regard, this thesis shows how the themes and issues that emanate from Waters’ fiction can be read as a series of queerings meant to challenge and intervene in ideas of fixity. Queerness locates textual inconsistencies that are gained from the momentum of revolving and evolving interpretations. In this way, this thesis argues that Waters’ writing exposes the imbricated nature of cultural and social hegemony and releases the pleasures within the text. Joanne Bishton Appropriating, Adapting and Performing: New Considerations of Identity, Genre and Authorship in the Fiction of Sarah Waters Introduction This thesis is not a traditional literary study of an author. Rather it is an interdisciplinary examination of an author who has over a period of sixteen years risen to prominence as a writer who has successfully located lesbian lived existence within the mainstream. Sarah Waters’ position as an award-winning writer of lesbian fiction has projected the marginal experience of female same- sex desire onto the bookshelves of popular fiction. Yet at the same time, the BBC costume dramas of her work have contributed towards her being seen as a writer of classics. In this regard, her success enables Waters to occupy a unique space as a writer, which sees her respected both within the literary establishment and the mainstream, as well as with (outside) minority groups from the LGBT community. Waters seamlessly blends her interior voice, which is shaped by her subjectivity, sense of self, memories and lesbian culture, with an authorial voice that is self-consciously political. Her writing reflects a richness that emerges out of a long held desire to authenticate the lives of working-class lesbians. Before writing for a living, Waters completed a PhD ‘Wolfskins and Togas: Gay and Lesbian Historical Fictions 1870 to present’ (1995) and drew a conclusion that contemporary lesbians have very few iconic referents from the past to call upon. This is because early lesbian icons can be viewed as elitist and are inaccessible to lesbians who fall outside of middle class sensibility (Waters, 1995). The scope of this thesis attempts to address a deficit within lesbian heritage by demonstrating how Waters’ writing creates an alternative cultural model to that of Sappho. During the discussion that follows I consider Waters through a multi- faceted theoretical framework. Queer Theory and black feminism work alongside post-structuralism and are used in order to examine the hidden histories of lesbians from below. They are also used to consider the ways that Waters excavates and talks back to history and culture. I use French feminism 1 and French literary theory to locate the palimpsests in Waters’ fiction as they reveal themselves. Theories of popular culture and adaptation are read alongside Waters’ work in order to explore the destinations of interpretation in her writing. I argue that the notion of queerness is implicated in the literary journeys that Waters has taken in order to situate the marginal in the mainstream. I deliberately refer here to the plural of ‘journeys’, because I believe that she and her writing are both part of a trajectory and both reveal an instinct for evolution. In relation to this, the conceit of queerness is explored in all its multiplicity and is evident throughout this thesis. I argue that Waters queers genre in order to transgress borders of identity and meaning. I show how Waters queers the role of the author in order to provide a guiding presence, and I argue that Waters queers the narrative voice in order to intervene in the textual fabric and reveal new interpretive spaces. I also consider how reading a Waters’ novel can be a queering experience for the reader. In order to substantiate my claims I have drawn examples of queerness from Waters’ fiction and utilize a number of theorists who I believe bring a queered perspective. In this regard, my thesis brings an air of creativity to the study of Waters with claims of originality in a number of ways that will now be outlined. Public Profile and Political Self Waters has become established as one of the most popular writers of lesbian historical fiction and is highly regarded by her fans and reading public for her captivating storytelling. Her recent ranking as twelfth in the New York Times best sellers list for The Paying Guests (2014) is testament to this opinion.
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