TENDENCIA THATCHERITIS OR ENGLISHNESS REMADE The Fictions of Julian Barnes, Hanif Kureishi and Pat Barker by Heather Ann Joyce A thesis submitted to the Department of English In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen‘s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (July, 2011) Copyright © Heather Ann Joyce, 2011 Abstract Julian Barnes, Pat Barker, and Hanif Kureishi are all canonical authors whose fictions are widely believed to reflect the cultural and political state of a nation that is post-war, post-imperial and post-modern. While much has been written on how Barker‘s and Kureishi‘s early works in particular respond to and intervene in the presiding political narrative of the 1980s – Thatcherism – treatment of how revenants of Thatcherism have shaped these writers‘ works from 1990 on has remained cursory. Thatcherism is more than an obvious historical reference point for Barker, Barnes, and Kureishi; their works demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of how Thatcher‘s reworkings of the repertoires of Englishness – a representational as well as political and cultural endeavour – persist beyond her time in office. Barnes, Barker, and Kureishi seem to have reached the same conclusion as political and cultural critics: Thatcher and Thatcherism have remade not only the contemporary political and cultural landscapes but also the electorate and consequently the English themselves. Tony Blair‘s conception of the New Britain proved less than satisfactory because contemporary repertoires of Englishness repeat and rework historical and not incidentally imperial formulations of England and Englishness rather than envision civic and populist formulations of renewal. Barnes‘s England, England and Arthur & George confront the discourse of inevitability that has come to be attached to contemporary formulations of both political and cultural Englishness – both in terms of its predictable demise and its belated celebration. Kureishi‘s The Buddha of Suburbia and ―The Body‖ speak to an alteration that has taken place in which historical Englishness and Thatcherism have become complementary rather than contrasting discourses. What Barker‘s Border Crossing and Double Vision offer against this backdrop is a subtle interrogation of how renewal itself comes to be a presiding mode of cultural reflection that absorbs revolutionary possibility. ii Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the Department of English, the Faculty of Arts and Science, and the School of Graduate Studies at Queen‘s University for the support and funding with which they have so generously provided me during my studies. I would also like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Asha Varadharajan, and my second reader, Dr. Chris Bongie, for their insightful guidance. The encouragement of my parents, Raymond and Sylvia, and of my sisters, Denise and Wendy, has proved to be invaluable. I am also indebted to dear friends Ellen, George, Brooke, Shaun, and Danielle for their unwavering support. Finally, I would like to thank Craig for his endless patience. iii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………….iv Chapter 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 Anger and After: Crisis and Possibility in the England Novels of Julian Barnes ......... 43 Chapter 3 Englishness Remade or the Thatcherism of the Soul: Hanif Kureishi and the New Britain .......................................................................................................................................... 107 Chapter 4 English Idioms: Pat Barker and the Politics of Cultural Reflection ............................ 160 Chapter 5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 214 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................. 233 iv Chapter 1 Introduction 1979, Labour Leader and Prime Minister Jim Callaghan proclaimed in his New Year‘s message, would be the year ―‗of decision and advance‘‖ in which ―the British people ‗will be asked to choose the path they intend to follow in the 1980s‘‖ (―Callaghan‖ 3). His declaration was surprisingly prescient although it is unlikely that anyone would have predicted Thatcher‘s dominance in the decade that followed. The previous year had lived up to his prediction that it would be ―‗the year of recovery‘‖ (3). Consequently, the people would make their electoral decisions in the coming months ―‗in a calmer atmosphere and against a background of greater stability than seemed possible only a few years ago‘‖ (3). In addition to accomplishing the decrease in inflation and accompanying rise in living standards, Britain had also made gains as a nation in the past year: ―‗our steadiness and our recovery‘‖ he affirmed ―‗has [sic] won a renewal of respect for the British people among the other nations of the world‘‖ (3). Cultivating national unity would nevertheless be of the greatest necessity in the upcoming years: ―‗We in Britain have no one to fear but ourselves. We are capable of doing anything that we set our hands to. And as we prepare for the coming decade, let us resolve to act and to work together as one people‘‖ (3). Callaghan‘s optimistic message, which strategically highlighted Labour‘s achievements in the past year, was no doubt crafted with the upcoming election in mind. His speech was more suited to that of a leader addressing a nation that was on the verge of being under siege from within than to a nation notable for its regained internal stability. The reality facing Britain, which Callaghan sought to skirt in his address, could not be contained. Whether or not the existing government should declare a state of emergency to deal 1 with widespread strikes and shortages became a hotly contested issue that had to do not only with Britain‘s socio-economic condition but with its cultural well-being as well. The ―industrial and social chaos of 1978-9,‖ as Andrew Marr observes, ―stuck in the people‘s memories, as few political events do – the schools closed, the ports blockaded, the rubbish rotting in the streets, the dead unburied‖ (History 373). Conservative backbencher William Whitelaw‘s argument for declaring a state of emergency was typical of Tory rhetoric which emphasized national vulnerability and which sought to gain political favour by confronting the crisis that Callaghan refused to acknowledge: ―‗an emergency is declared when the life of the community is threatened. We believe it is threatened‘‖ (White and Aitken 20). Although ―Callaghan himself‖ would come to describe 1978-9 as the ―‗winter of discontent‘‖ (Marr, History 373), his response to the electorate‘s growing anxieties regarding the cumulative effects of unemployment and successive and widespread strikes was tame: ―‗Please don‘t run down your own country by talking about mounting chaos. If you look at it from the outside you can see that you are taking a rather parochial view‘‖ (Aitken and White 1). In the lead-up to the election a few months later, his attitude was similarly dismissive. ―Although the undeniable unemployment figures and the findings of the opinion pollsters, had put him on the defensive,‖ according to political correspondent for the Times, George Clark, ―there was no sign of lost confidence‖ early in the campaign. In fact, ―in the first week he was so ebullient that he made up a campaign song . to the jingle of a television advertisement: ‗Labour shows the better way! Vote Labour on the third of May!‘‖ (Clark 2). Despite Callaghan‘s optimism, a Tory victory was thought to be likely but it was far from certain who would prevail in the days leading up to the May 1979 decision. In the immediate run up to the election, polls indicated that Margaret Thatcher had been able to capture the confidence 2 of the public which had been lacking just a few months before. In October 1978, a poll had shown that ―the Conservative party would be fourteen points ahead‖ if Heath were still leader (Jenkins 52-3). Still, as late as May 1 newspapers reported that after ―recording a 6% lead for the Tories‖ in the preceding two weeks, the Daily Mail‘s NDP poll indicated that Labour had ―a 0.7% edge over the Conservatives‖ (Aitken 1). Two days later, a modest Tory victory, if not the strong majority that the Conservatives expected, again seemed possible and this would in fact prove to be the case. The election results that led to Thatcher‘s tenancy of No. 10 Downing Street had the distinction of being ―the most diverse . of any British election since 1945‖ (McKie 1). They had ―a distinct smack of ‗two nations‘ about them‖ (McKie 1), one political commentator observed, and it seemed as though Thatcher would be ―faced with ruling a divided nation‖ (Aitken 1). The strong division between North and South that the election results at first appeared to indicate drew the strength of Thatcher‘s mandate into question. A more complicated picture unfolded, however, when political analyses in the days following the election revealed Thatcher to have made surprising inroads into large towns