Age, Gender and Existentialism in the Late-Life Bildungsroman

1'!' \ ~.~ \ ' \ (", " 1 ,/j '_-./.".' J AGE, GENDER AND EXISTENTIALISM IN THE LATE-LIFE BILDUNGSROMAN by LAURIE COLLEEN PETROU B.F.A., Queen's University, 1999 M.A. Ryerson and York Universities, 2003 A Dissertation presented to Ryerson University and York University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Program of Communication and Culture Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2010 ©(Laurie Petrou) 2010 PROPERTY OF RYERSON UNfVERSITY LIBRARY Author's Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis or dissertation. I authorize Ryerson University to lend this thesis or dissertation to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. I further authorize Ryerson University to reproduce this thesis or dissertation by photocopying or by other of scholarly research. I ii Age, Gender and Existentialism in the Late-Life Bildungsroman / PhD 2010 Laurie Colleen Petrou Communication and Culture Ryerson University Abstract This dissertation aims to reveal the echo of modernist existentialism in postmodern late-life fiction. In a close reading of works by Alistair MacLeod, Nick Hornby and Michael Chabon, as well as my own creative work, I have explored the continually shifting models of gender and age, as characters progress towards development and navigate questions of the self. Issues of modes of masculinity from the rural to the urban, as well as female masculinity are investigated in this sample of varying works of fiction. Grounded in an analysis of the philosophy and fiction of Soren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir, with reference to traditional Bildungsroman (coming-of age, or education novel), I hope to have demonstrated the similar, but newly interpreted existential trajectory of self-development in contemporary narrative. This is reflected in postmodern and contemporary narratives that challenge existing conventions while prizing modernist philosophical tenets. Combining theoretical and creative acumen, this work aims to contribute to age and gender studies, while offering a fresh approach to scholarly work. iii / Acknowledgements To my supervisor, Dr. Dennis Denisoff, I am extremely grateful. His attentiveness, rigorous standards, and appreciation for the evolution of ideas enabled me to grow as a scholar and create a work that continues to interest me. I would like to thank the supportive faculty at Ryerson's School of Radio and Television· Arts. I am fortunate to work with such fine scholars and educators. I am indebted to my husband, Jay Johnston, and to my parents, Judy and Phil Petrou, whose encouragement and unflinching support made this a reality. iv / For Judy and Phil Petrou For Jay, Eli and Leo v / Table of Contents Introduction .......................................................................................... 1 Chapter I. The Philosophical Writing of S0ren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in Relation to Late Life ................................................ 15 II. Gendering Self-Development: The Existential Fiction of Albert Camus, Jean- Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. ...............................................52 III. Alistair MacLeod and Postmodern Gender Flexibility ........................... 93 IV. In Defense of Old Boys: The Men of Michael Chabon and Nick Hornby.... 134 V. Conclusion ............................................................................ 170 Works Cited ........................................................................................ 199 vi / Introduction: Age, Gender and Existentialism in the Late-Life Bildungsroman Loneliness, Alvin Toffler writes, "is now so widespread, it has become, paradoxically, a shared experience" (384). Since he made this claim in 1980, many others have arrived at a similar diagnosis of the condition of late twentieth-century society, amassing a wealth of evidence for the claim that we have entered an age of isolation and alienation. Robert Putnam's influential Bowling Alone (1995), for example, cites the decline of organized bowling leagues as one of many signs of the erosion of community involvement in contemporary social life. Americans still go bowling, Putnam observes, but they do so outside of the formal communal structures that once organized individuals' sense of their place in society (111). The ensuing angst, moreover, is no longer characteristic only of adolescents in the process of crafting their identities, but also of middle-aged and late-life adults who appear, in many forms of popular culture, to be suffering from existential crises of the self. Contemporary fiction has become increasingly populated with characters who, despite being well into adulthood, are grappling with existential questions of self and identity. This dissertation explores the influence of modem existentialism on a new form of education narrative. The late-life Bildungsroman, I propose, demonstrates the role that existential concerns play in life-long development. I am interested in particular in the way fiction writers have employed the narrative trajectory of the education story to challenge cultural conventions, harnessing the existential struggles of their protagonists to a revised understanding of gender and age. In the late-life individualist narrative, the existential 1 preoccupation with the self is still at the center of development, reflecting the cultural climate of transition and loneliness to which Toffler refers. In contemporary fiction, however, these existential concerns take on new dimensions in the context of shifting cultural models of age and gender identity. This work aims to identify some of the ways in which writers continue to prize the values of a modernist philosophy, while moving towards new models of gender and age. I wish to contribute to the fields of aging and gender studies an understanding of the existential underpinnings of the aging and gendered experience as manifested in contemporary narrative. A new form of existentialism values the modernist tenets of the philosophy while adapting to continually shifting modes of age and gender. Situating the Contemporary Late-Life Bildungsroman The term "late-life Bildungsroman" references the tradition of the youthful development story, literally the "education story" of an individual. My approach relies on an analysis of the traditional Bildungsroman structure as a basis of comparison with current stories of late life. Studies of the traditional genre tend to address conventional adolescent coming-of-age tales, outlining the kinds of crises or changes that the characters experience in a typical Bildungsroman: sexual, romantic, and educational.1 Many current studies on the traditional Bildungsroman tend toward feminist explorations or criticism that falls outside the white, Anglo-Saxon canon.2.While taking thi~ scholarship into consideration, my comparative research builds primarily on traditional approaches to structure and character within the Bildungsroman. 2 / Compared to its traditional counterpart, scholarship examining the education or development of people in a later stage of their lives is notably scarce. There are, however, some studies in this field that are particularly insightful. Margaret Morganroth Gullette has done a great deal of research into the role of the middle-aged person in culture and in literature. Her study Declining to Decline (1997) details what she calls the "middle ageism" of a culture preoccupied with youth, while her Aged by Culture (2004) exposes the suffocating nature of self-imposed fears of age within North American society. Meanwhile, in Safe at Last in the Middle Years (1988), Gullette explores texts of "late life progress," comparing traditional Bildungsroman and recent late-life stories with regards to structure and character development. The central characters of Bildungsroman texts, she observes, generally experience a change or crisis in which they each learn something about themselves. In the conventional structure, this change often takes the form of something dramatic, such as love, death or near-death. The character goes from an initial stage of confusion, loneliness and questioning, to a self-knowledge and life knowledge, a kind of transition into awareness. In late-life novels of the same structure, the crisis tends to be subtler and the change takes place over a longer period of time. As I aim to demonstrate, contemporary characters experiencing a second coming-of-age tend to posit the questions "What have I done with my life?" and "What will I do next?" There is a form of guilty self-admonishment and awareness of responsibility that is characteristic of an existential preoccupation with the development of the individual. There are few scholarly works that address existentialism in contemporary fiction. Those t~a! do analyze existentialism in contemporary literature are preoccupied mainly with narrative structure or with overarching themes of negativity and alienation. An 3 / example of scholarship that analyzes what came to be understood as the existential hero is Colin Wilson's 1956 text The Outsider. Providing more current literary analyses, scholars such as Kim Worthington, Steven Connor and Stephen Baker discuss the concerns of the individual in contemporary fiction, some of which relate to tenets of existentialism. David Lodge's most recent text, Consciousness and the Novel (2003), provides perhaps the most compelling support for the notion of an emergent existential late-life

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