Stevenson, Conrad and the Proto-Modernist Novel Eric Massie

UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING Stevenson, Conrad and the Proto-Modernist Novel Eric Massie A Doctoral Thesis Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Stirling February 2002 ©Eric Massie 2002 Abstract This thesis argues that Robert Louis Stevenson's South Seas writings locate him alongside Joseph Conrad on the 'strategic fault line' described by the Marxist critic Fredric Jameson that delineates the interstitial area between nineteenth-century adventure fiction and early Modernism. Stevenson, like Conrad, mounts an attack on the assumptions of the grand narrative of imperialism and, in texts such as 'The Beach of Falesa' and The Ebb Tide, offers late-Victorian readers a critical view of the workings of Empire. The present stud)' seeks to analyse the common interests of two important writers as they adopt innovative literary methodologies within, and in response to, the context of changing perceptions of the effects of European influence upon the colonial subject. Acknowledgements lowe a huge debt of gratitude to my Supervisor, Professor Douglas Mack for his advice and support during the course of the research and subsequent writing up of this thesis. Professor Mack has encouraged my tentative steps in scholarship and has gently curbed my excesses. The debt lowe him is immeasurable. Professor Neil Keeble, Head of Department of English Studies during my period of research at the University of Stirling, has been generous in his support of my work in a number of ways. He encouraged me to develop and to teach an Honours Option: The Fiction ofRobert Louis Stevenson which has proved to be a successful component of the Departmental portfolio. Students taking the course have been generous in their approbation and I thank them here for their interesting contributions to seminars. Professor Keeble supported my application to stage an academic conference on Stevenson at Stirling which laid the foundation for a bi-annual event to continue the re- assessment of Stevenson's literary status. Professor Rory Watson has been a source of much sound advice and great encouragement throughout my time at Stirling and I am most grateful for his support. The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland funded research visits to the Universities of Oxford and Yale. allowing me access to important resources at critical stages in the production of this thesis. I was fortunate to benefit from the encyclopaedic knowledge of Vincent Giroud, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Beinecke Library, Yale University. Steve Jones, Ellen Cordes and Maureen Heher of the Beinecke staff were ever helpful during my stay in New Haven. Tim Holt of Jesus College, Oxford made my visit there Cl wholly enjoyable and productive experience. Bryson Clevenger of the Alderman Library. University of Virginia assisted me during my exchange visit in the summer of 2001. I am indebted to my dear friend Professor Steve Arata of the English Department at the University of Virginia for making the trip possible and for his unstinting support and encouragement in the closing stages of this project. Professor Barry Menikoff of the University of Hawaii has encouraged my research and his generous support has been uplifting in difficult times. lowe a debt of gratitude to William B. Jones, Chair of the Stevenson 2000 Symposium, for inviting me to give a paper at the Little Rock. Arkansas event and for including my paper in efestschrift dedicated to Professor David Daiches. Bill Jones has proved to be a generous host and a good friend. My colleagues in the Department of English Studies at Stirling have been most supportive and eager to offer advice when called upon; they have been a source of encouragement throughout. Pam Brown, Brian Lister, Andy McCafferty, Steve Hart, Tony Hartie and Colin Hamilton have been generous in their support of my endeavours and I am indebted to them. My friend and former colleague Jim Dowds has encouraged my work at times when external pressures threatened to undermine progress: his invaluable advice kept me going when it would have been easier, and more attractive, to quit. The administrative staff of the Department of English Studies at Stirling have been immensely helpful and have been consistently good-humoured when I have been a confounded nuisance. The greatest debt is that which lowe to my wife, Margaret, who has lived with this project from its inception through its vicissitudes to its conclusion. Margaret has been an unflagging source of encouragement and I am looking forward to spending some time in her company once again. Contell ts Introduction 6 'The Beach of Falesa': A Turning Point in Stevenson's Fiction? 36 Towards Modernism: Conrad's Early Fiction 92 Greed and Degeneration: Proto-Modernist Perceptions of the Empire in Operation 141 The Ebb Tide: Stevenson's Proto-Modernist Critique of Empire 191 Stevenson, Conrad and the Proto-Modernist Novel 294 Bibliography 318 Abbreviations The titles of works cited in this thesis are given in full in the first instance, either in the body-text or in an end-note. Subsequent references to these works are given in abbreviated form, with a page reference, in brackets in the text. Abbreviations are given as in the following examples: TBF 'The Beach of Falesa' CNC Conrad in the Nineteenth Century TETV . The Ebb Tide and Victory' 6 Introduction In an important discussion of Joseph Conrad's significance as an early modernist writer, the critic Fredric Jameson states: Conrad marks, indeed, a strategic fault line in the emergence of contemporary narrative, a place from which the structure of twentieth-century literary and cultural institutions becomes visible as it could not be in the heterogeneity of Balzacian registers, nor even in the discontinuities of the paradigms which furnish materials for what is an increasingly unified narrative apparatus in Gissing. In Conrad we can sense the emergence 110t merely of what will be contemporary modernism (itself now become a literary institution), but also, still tangibly juxtaposed with it, of what will variously be called popular culture or mass culture, the commercialized cultural discourse of what, in late capitalism, is often described as a media society. I Conrad's position on the 'fault line' described by Jameson has resulted Il1 his work being much admired and much studied in the wider context of literary modernism, and justly so. This thesis will argue that Robert Louis Stevenson deserves to be considered alongside Conrad on that strategic fault line and it will argue, furthermore, that the texts that place him there arc his late South Seas works, especially 'The Beach of Falesa'(l893) and The Ehh Tide (1894). The core elements of 'The Beach of Falesa' and The Ebh Tide that allow comparisons to be drawn with Conrad cohere in their willingness to probe and to challenge the assumptions and outlook (the grand narrative) of Imperial fin-de- steele Britain and Europe. This is a feature both texts share with, for example, Ileart of Darkness (1899). However, the full extent of the challenging nature of 'The Beach of Falesa, to cite one Stevenson text, has been concealed until relatively recently. The work carried out by Professor Barry Menikoff in restoring the holograph text of 'The Beach of Falesa ,2 marks a turning-point for Stevenson studies. Menikoff discusses the bowdlerisation of 'Falesa' during the publication process, a bowdlerisation undertaken in response to Stevenson's original text which foregrounds references to miscegenation, criticism of colonial rule and the 7 presentation of whites as an exploitative presence in the South Seas. In short, in its original form, the novel contained enough material offensive to Victorian sensibilities to ensure its censorship. Menikoff's work thus points to the potential significance of Stevenson's contribution in his late fiction to the fin-de-steele debate on Empire, and marks the starting-point for the present study which will explore some of the implications raised in Menikoff's analysis. It will be argued here that Stevenson's principal attack on the values of the British Empire. begun in 'The Beach of Falesa'. is to be found in The Ebb Tide and that, furthermore, The Ebh Tide provides the thematic and structural bases for Conrad's Victory which itself examines similar material. The present thesis will argue that these points of connection between Stevenson and Conrad legitimise the claim that Stevenson should be regarded as occupying a place alongside Conrad on the strategic fault line identified by Jameson. Both Stevenson and Conrad had what may be described as similar 'insider- outsider' relationships to the colonial process, belonging as they did within subordinate components of larger politico-economic structures. As a Scot within the British Empire, Stevenson occupied a similar position to that of Conrad. a Pole in the Russian Empire: neither were unequivocal supporters of the imperialistic ambitions of the greater political partner. This thesis, while generally accepting the thrust of Linda Colley's valuable argument. will modify and develop the position she proposes in Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1873. In her important study. Professor Colley argues that the Scots were. by the nineteenth century, enthusiastic supporters of Empire'. The changes that would take place in the period following 1873 arc alluded to in Professor Colley's Introduction as she states that the 1880s 'witnessed a marked rise in Home Rule 8 sentiment in Wales and Scotland as well as in parts of Ireland. (Though public cults of Great Britain and of Greater Britain were also evident in the self-same period).' [Preface to Vintage Edition, xi]. Colley's argument that a significant number of Victorian Scots were in favour of Empire is accepted: what IS significant is that Stevenson, himself a supporter of Empire, can be seen to undergo a change during his time in Samoa as he comes into contact with the reality of Empire in the South Pacific.

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