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Lehigh Preserve Institutional Repository The True God Slays: Secularization and Ethics in the Postwar British Novel Fine, David J. 2016 Find more at https://preserve.lib.lehigh.edu/ This document is brought to you for free and open access by Lehigh Preserve. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of Lehigh Preserve. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “The True God Slays” Secularization and Ethics in the Postwar British Novel by David J. Fine A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate and Research Committee of Lehigh University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Lehigh University 23 May 2016 © 2016 Copyright David J. Fine ii Approved and recommended for acceptance as a dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy David J. Fine “The True God Slays”: Secularization and Ethics in the Postwar British Novel 28 April 2016 Defense Date Amardeep Singh, Ph.D. Dissertation Director Approved Date Committee Members: Suzanne Edwards, Ph.D. Elizabeth Dolan, Ph.D. Michael Raposa, Ph.D. iii IN MEMORIAM BEVERLY ALDA LAW PROVERBS 31:10 KJV iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS At Lehigh, I have collaborated with many talented students, whose conversations have challenged my thinking, teaching, and writing. I am especially indebted to Cohorts VII, VIII, IX, and X of the Global Citizenship Program for their willingness to seek justice in interconnection. Their pragmatism, idealism, and commitment to praxis will sustain me, and the model of intellectual community they offered will ground me. Without the energy of the classroom, this project would never have materialized. This includes the graduate seminar and, in particular, the cherished members of my dissertation writing group. Emily Shreve engaged in every aspect of this project from its conception in coursework to its final Works Cited page. This dissertation would be a very different one without her knowledge of British modernism and religion. Her friendship, conversation, and humor have structured my time at Lehigh, and I simply cannot articulate my gratitude. But I will say this. In a world of uncertainty, I know that, in the end, I’ll be telling the whole thing to Emily like Dora does to Sally. That’s saying something. I also owe immense gratitude to Katie Burton, whose attentive feedback to each chapter helped to strengthen my intervention and articulate my argument’s stakes. This criticism pales in comparison, however, to her clam pizza: the single most substantive contribution to this endeavor, bar none. Like Emily and Katie, this project would not have been possible without Nancy. In some ways, the dissertation did not begin until it was properly discussed in that one- room flat in London. I will cherish those days of Murdoch and pies. Of course, Nancy has provided me with a model of teaching, scholarship, and service that I admire, but, more importantly, she makes me food and takes me to New York City to spend money recklessly. Her friendship was a surprise addition to my time at Lehigh, and I look forward to many more trips and a lot more communion bread. I am grateful, as well, for the support of the English department. My graduate student colleagues over the years have sharpened my skills and sustained my passion. Jenna Lay has provided insightful guidance as Director of Graduate Studies, and her comments on article revisions and job letters made their way into this draft. She is the best reader I know: of texts, too. Jenna’s professional and academic support is invaluable and builds on the previous example of Dawn Keetley. Dawn’s presence throughout my graduate career is hard to capture concretely, so I will simply note how grateful I am to have had her help in the earliest stages of the first chapter. In this spirit, I must also thank Mary Foltz and Seth Moglen for their assistance in queer theory and American modernism, respectively. Their viewpoints framed my approach to the dissertation, and collaboration with them during the exam phase strengthened the context in which I worked. Their commitment to theory and practice will motivate me as I move among future towns and gowns. On that note, I am fortunate for the intellectual partnership I found in collaboration with Sarah Stanlick. v I also have had friends. They are very dear to me, and they know who they are, because they are few. I especially wish to thank Carolyn Laubender for her insight. She appreciates Michael’s drive with Toby, as any student of Eros worthy of the name would. Her spirited intellect infuses this dissertation. I also must thank Rebecca Martin, for whom this project is a trip down memory lane. She was there with Stephen Whittaker, who set the stage for the project at the University of Scranton. I owe my intervention to Mary Engel, to whom I dedicate the third chapter. Sister Mary Anne Foley, Linda Ledford-Miller, and Sharon Meagher formed the feminist sensibility that continues to search for social justice. Without Sharon’s mentorship, I would never had made the professional decisions I have made: for better or worse, they bear her stamp and her cut. I am very grateful. My dissertation committee—Amardeep Singh, Suzanne Edwards, Beth Dolan, and Michael Raposa—continues to challenge me to think clearly and to write persuasively. Their support only deepens as I move through this project, and I am exceedingly grateful for their time, excitement, and patience. All else I owe to my broken home. vi “The false god punishes, the true god slays.” ~ Iris Murdoch * * * “But we cannot cling to the old dreams anymore; no, we cannot cling.” ~ The Smiths vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abbreviations of Primary Texts vii Abstract 1 Introduction: Late Capitalism, Advanced Narcissism 2 Chapter 1 ANAMNESIS: Rebecca West’s Mystical Inheritance 15 Chapter 2 CONTRA MUNDUM: Evelyn Waugh’s Rebuff of Secularism 94 Chapter 3 PAX AMERICANA: Graham Greene’s Catholic Cosmopolitanism 169 Chapter 4 CONTRA NATURAM: Iris Murdoch’s Streams of Conscience 227 Chapter 5 PAIDEIA: Muriel Spark’s Pedagogies of Mass Destruction 290 Conclusion: Moses and Modernism 356 Works Cited 364 Vita 383 viii ABBREVIATIONS OF TEXTS When a single chapter cites multiple texts by the same author, I have abbreviated the title by prominent first letters; e.g. “Greenhouse with Cyclamens I” as (GC), etc. A list of the major text’s abbreviations appears below. B: The Bell BC: A Burnt-Out Case BR: Brideshead Revisited CV: Curriculum Vitae EA: The End of the Affair EM: Existentialists and Mystics H: Helena LA: Love and Saint Augustine LO: The Loved One LG: “A Letter to a Grandfather” MGM: Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals PMB: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie QA: The Quiet American RS: The Return of the Soldier SA: Saint Augustine SG: The Sovereignty of Good SL: A Sort of Life SN: “The Strange Necessity” WE: Ways of Escape ix ABSTRACT Religion plays an essential role in the fiction produced in England after the Second World War: Catholic writers like Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Muriel Spark have come to define the midcentury novel, while spirituality infuses the work of prolific writers like Rebecca West and Iris Murdoch. Placing the moral philosophy and fiction of these authors together, “The True God Slays” demonstrates that these religious writers, whom one might be tempted to categorize as marginal figures because of religion’s decline in post-1945 England, are centrally important both to one’s understanding of religion’s contested place in the modern nation-state and to an enriched appreciation for how literature works in the late modernist period. Focusing on literature produced during the years between Hitler’s rise and Eichmann’s trial (1933-1961), I argue that religion supports these writers ethical response to the horrors of the Second World War and the emergence of global capitalism but also structures their transfiguration of high modernism’s aesthetics. In “The True God Slays,” I identify the formal strategies these authors implement in order to effect ethical awareness and to engender right action, while also exploring these novelists’ relevance to contemporary issues surrounding economic globalization, religious tolerance, and social change. 1 INTRODUCTION Late Capitalism, Advanced Narcissism With Moses and Monotheism (1939), Sigmund Freud returns to religion. In what will prove his final work, Freud laments the negative effects religious superstition continues to wreak on a credulous, crumbling civilization. He insists that at monotheism’s heart lies the Jewish people’s misidentification of Moses as a Hebrew, and this mistake continues to haunt their subconscious minds. And yet, one too easily passes over Freud’s subtext: Moses and Monotheism not only retells the Hebrews’ escape from imperial Egypt but also narrates Freud’s personal flight from fascist Europe. Freud’s exodus gives the present study its genesis: for when Freud leaves Vienna, he reaches England. On 28 January 1939, he meets Virginia Woolf, to whom he gives a narcissus flower. Woolf, soon after, begins reading Freud’s work, in her words, “to enlarge the circumference, to give my brain wider scope, to make it objective; to get outside” (MB 108). In London, Freud finishes Moses and Monotheism, while Woolf, a few miles away, pens what will prove her last novel, Between the Acts (1941). There they sit; there they wait. The specter of Hitler looms. As British imperialism crumbles and Nazi expansionism solidifies, Freud and Woolf revisit nationhood, ethics, and subjectivity. Religion confronts both thinkers as history forces them to reconcile the Enlightenment’s project to another war. A blood-red sea of reeds stands between modernism and its milk and honey. * * * Freud’s gift of the narcissus flower is prescient.