Literary Evasions of the English Nation in the Twentieth Century
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Literary Evasions of the English Nation in the Twentieth Century Author: Nicholas Robert Parker Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/617 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2009 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of English LITERARY EVASIONS OF THE ENGLISH NATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY a dissertation by NICHOLAS PARKER submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2009 © copyright by NICHOLAS PARKER 2009 Literary Evasions of the English Nation in the 20th Century Nicholas Parker – Prof. Marjorie Howes and Prof. Andrew Von Hendy ABSTRACT This dissertation seeks to engage with some of the complex means by which English subjects in the twentieth century envisage their relationship with the concept of nation, and with their own nation in particular. These are deeply ambivalent relationships, which present simultaneously seemingly contradictory and irreconcilable characteristics. In some ways the nation seems hegemonic and repressively conditioning to many English writers over the last hundred years. It is also deeply embedded in our ways of conceiving of ourselves, and is an irresistibly enticing means of understanding the world around us. It pushes individuals towards resistance and yet strongly resists evasion. At times the nation enables the establishment of identity in opposition to other ideological forces; at other moments, it becomes the problematic ideological structure in itself. These and other dichotomies will be examined in the course of this study. In chapter one I consider examples of writing between the wars, and comparable ways in which two authors render the subjectivity of the English individual as an untenable balancing act between living inside and outside the nation’s literal and metaphorical territory. Woolf and the little known C. E. Montague narrate their changing engagement with England during and between the World Wars. Wartime is a moment of profound reification of the nation, where failure to fully commit to support it is potentially punishable by death. Both Mrs. Dalloway and Montague’s Rough Justice narrate, in their differing ways, just such a death. Both authors share a developing sense of the frailty and decrepitude of England in the period, but both also develop a clear model for the recasting, rather than the casting out, of England into more enduring and politically palatable terms. In the second chapter I turn to the nation as it attempts to reproduce itself abroad. In the 1930s colonial English abroad are rendered in a state of dislocation from their home nation by Orwell and Mary O’Malley. They are cast as “ambassadors” for the English nation, proxies who are expected to prove themselves the most respectable of exemplars for their home. However, in the course of Burmese Days and O’Malley’s Peking Picnic these central characters prove unqualified to maintain the impossible ideals of the nation they are expected to represent. They are instead aliens, in relation to both their home nation and their new “home” abroad. Chapter three ranges from the 1930s to 1960s, and to English regional narratives in which characters actively attempt to evade their nationality. The conceptual center of the chapter is the Angry Young Men movement of the 1950s, quintessentially represented by Alan Sillitoe and Keith Waterhouse. Beyond manifesting a rebelliousness towards the English nation in general, these two writers outline characters who employ a technique of fantasizing other lives as an attempt to liberate themselves from the pressures of an English nation with which they cannot, or will not, align themselves. They daydream visions of empowerment, glory and power. In so doing they momentarily disrupt the direct influence of the nation over them. Phyllis Bentley, a Northern English writer from an earlier decade, renders in her novel Environment a comparable desire to break from the influence of the English nation by dint of daydreaming another, independent existence. The relatively obscure Arthur Wise, writing in the late 1960s, enacts this fantasy in the most extreme terms in his 1968 novel The Day the Queen Flew to Scotland for the Grouse Shooting, a text that depicts the dream of bloody revolution and complete fragmentation of England, North and South. In my final chapter I turn to writing from later in the century, in which ambivalence about national affiliation leads to an extreme skepticism towards the nation as a concept in general, and to all other ideological constructs along with it. William Golding and Ian McEwan, in their novels Free Fall and Black Dogs, create willfully nihilistic characters that fear all hegemonic forces and struggle to gain and retain independence from investment in nation. Neither of these central protagonists can remain dislocated from allegiances for long however – the need for alignment with some form of collective construct outside themselves (like nation, personal love, theological values, etcetera) is overwhelming. I conclude, on the basis of the work of these ten writers, that the English nation is in a deeply unstable position, its authority, and even its substantive existence, challenged in a variety of ways both from without and from within. Its external opponents, both in rival nation-states and sub-national ideological movements (a number of which are violently threatening) are largely manifest. Perhaps more dangerous still, for England’s continued endurance, are the threats which these writers suggest can come from national ‘insiders,’ who resist, evade, question, even attack, the nation from which they purportedly emerge. CONTENTS Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 Chapter One: War, Nation and the Fantasy Space: Woolf and C. E. Montague 14 • Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway • A Shot in the Street • A Ledge and a Cliff • Woolf’s later national perspectives – Between the Acts • Late Essays • C. E. Montague and Rough Justice • Montague’s Ambivalence • Montague and Arnold • Visions of North and South • Rough Justice’s Notion of Nation • Desertion and English Society • Victor, from a Bygone Age • The Fantasy Space Chapter Two: Ambassadors and Aliens: George Orwell, Mary O’Malley and England Abroad 67 • Orwell and O’Malley • Orwell’s thinking on Nation • Laura and John as Ambassadors • Laura Leroy as Alien • John Flory as Alien • Safe Spaces • Conclusion Chapter Three: Dreaming Up the Northern Nation: Bentley, Sillitoe, Waterhouse, and Wise 110 • Regional Angst • The North • The South • Dream-States • Failure to Escape • Afterword i Chapter Four: Interminably Embroiled in Nation: Golding and McEwan William Golding’s Free Fall 151 • Sammy’s Struggle • The Cell • Ian McEwan's Black Dogs—Monumental Stories • National Monuments • Jeremy as Skeptic • Jeremy as Storyteller • The Majdanek story • The Berlin story • The Dogs' Story • Conclusion Appendix 190 • Figure 1.1 • Figure 1.2 Bibliography 192 Footnotes 199 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing this dissertation has been, on many levels, a collaborative effort. I would like to thank a number of people for their invaluable support as I have tried to shape my initial ideas, pull together my argument, write coherently, and, all the while, keep a lid on my doubts and fears. Professor Andrew Von Hendy has been a most diligent and meticulous reader, who has helped me through every stage of the dissertation, not to mention the degree as a whole. Professor Marjorie Howes has been a constant support, shepherding my work towards contemporary critical concerns when it drifted towards the self-reflective, and shaping my ideas into their most clear form. Prof Lisa Fluet has also offered extremely helpful commentary and new directions in my thinking about the topic. My colleagues in the PhD program at Boston College all deserve great thanks for their reading of drafts, generous commitment of time to listen to my concerns, and most of all camaraderie as we labored together on our long projects: Nirmal Trivedi, Jamin Rowan, Patrick Moran and Nikhil Gupta. They are great friends that I will hold onto for the rest of my life. While I have worked on the piece, many other friends have supported me. Some may wonder why their names are here. I hope I can express to them each, in due course, precisely why I couldn’t have completed this work without them: Christopher Ashton, Daniel Lavender, Stephanie Tyburski, Francis Storrs, Nigel Smithson, and Hiten and Jigisha Patel. For their close reading and other helpful advice, I would like to thank Maria Hecht, Cheryl Pyburn, Janet Spiegel, and my father, Dr Noel Parker. I cannot adequately explain the degree of support I have had from my mother, Liz Parker, on every level of this project. I have some regret that I have not made this more clear day by day, so I take this opportunity to state unequivocally that I have only got through this with her help. Above all, my wife Jill has been the motivation I have needed to complete this work, and pass through this often challenging period of my life. This dissertation is dedicated to her, and to our child, his name still unspoken, but his life to be our greatest project. iii INTRODUCTION This dissertation seeks to engage with some of the complex means by which English subjects in the twentieth century envisage their relationship with the concept of nation, and with their own nation in particular. These are deeply ambivalent relationships, which present simultaneously seemingly contradictory and irreconcilable characteristics. In some ways the nation seems hegemonic and repressively conditioning to many English writers over the last hundred years. It is also deeply embedded in our ways of conceiving of ourselves, and is an irresistibly enticing means of understanding the world around us. It pushes individuals towards resistance and yet strongly resists evasion.