• WAKERS AND SLEEPERS: THE DYNAMICS OF CHRISTINA STEAD'S 'DRAMA OF THE PERSON' by __Denise Brown in the Arts faculty, Department of English Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Tasmania November 1988. To my father and the memory of my mother. This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any higher degree or graduate diploma in any tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, this thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made in the text of the thesis. ABSTRACT This thesis begins with an introductory survey of the various influences which shaped Christina Stead's vision of life and her interest in drama is identified as an important aspect influencing her work. Her kinship with Balzac, Henry James and others in the European tradition of the dramatic novel is evident. Her concerns as a dramatic novelist are then examined briefly and some of the criticisms of her ability to create character successfully are dealt with. From the outset, Stead uses both drama and dream as metaphors through which to express the illusory quality of life. The thesis demonstrates that in many ways these terms become interchangeable. It explores Stead's use of myth and legend and of the drama and fiction of the past to reinforce her conception of the theatricality of her characters and their lives. The emphasis of her 'drama of the person' is upon character rather than plot. Since she sees life as drama, a struggle, the forms of her novels reflect the flux or process of her characters' lives as they struggle to realise their dreams. Dialectic, manifested in character, imagery, style and theme, operates over the corpus as well as within each individual novel, contributing to the impression of flux or dynamic movement that is essential to drama. In keeping with Stead's use of the metaphor of life as dream or drama, her characters fall into the categories of '1,vakers' and 'sleepers' according to the strength of their will to direct their lives. The ‘wakers' are those strong—willed characters whose aspirations are brought to fulfilment as they actively shape and direct their lives. Their dramas are marked by a narrative movement from entrapment towards their ultimate destiny. The 'sleepers' are those characters whose lives are marked by the aimlessness of inertia as they fail to break free iv from the forces of stasis and they succumb as victims of fate. A consistent pattern of imagery associated with these different categories augments the psychological dramas of the characters. Stead's method of characterisation is a process of unmasking as each aspect of the multi—faceted personae in her dramas is revealed in the different roles they enact. Speech, in dramatic monologues and dialogue, exhibits a strong theatrical bias. Her characters are represented as actors in their plays of life and their actions, speech and gesture accord with this. Stead's dramatic method combines detached naturalistic observation of and close engagement with her characters and their situations. Her presentation allows her characters to expose themselves directly in their ironic predicaments. In using this method, Stead has much in common with the dramatist. The principles of her 'drama of the person' operate throughout the novels making her work an ongoing drama. The major novels are examined, for the most part chronologically, as a demonstration of this ongoing drama. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my supervisor, Dr Ruth Blair, for her helpful comments and guidance throughout the preparation of this thesis, and Dr Elizabeth Lawson, who gave her assistance during Dr Blair's absence. Thanks are also due to my Head of Department, Professor Adrian Colman, for his comments in relation to the preparation of Chapter One. Special thanks are given here to Professor Ron Geering for giving his time and enjoyable company in the long discussions we had concerning our mutual interest. His advice and comments upon the drafts of the early chapters are much appreciated. He also gave his kind permission to copy and quote from material in Christina Stead's collection of unpublished papers at the National Library of Australia (NLA MS 4967) and his permission is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks to the staff at the Manuscript Library, NLA, for their assistance in putting MS 4967 at my disposal during my limited time at the NLA. Without the patient understanding, constant encouragement and very generous help in setting up the word—processing facilities given by my husband, Kerry Burns, I would not have completed this thesis. The financial assistance of the Post—Graduate Research Award given by the Department of Education, Employment and Training made possible the research and writing of this thesis. Thanks are also due to friends and colleagues: Margot Hallam, Steve Holden, George O'Farrell, Ralph Crane, Gail Friesen, Jennifer Livett and Carol Cranston, for their help in proof—reading the manuscript in its final stages. CONTENTS page Abstract iv Chapter One 'Introduction and Background' 1 Chapter Two 'Age of Storm and Stress' 41 Chapter Three 'Family Power Play' 76 Chapter Four 'The Stuff of Dreams' 116 Chapter Five 'The Comedians on the Hill' 147 Chapter Six 'Come Into My Parlour . 172 Chapter Seven "Tis Pity' 223 Conclusion 256 Epilogue 272 Bibliography 274 Appendix Thesis Material Already Published: 'Christina Stead's "Drama of the Person"', Australian Literary Studies, 13 (1987), 139-145. (Pocket attached to inside back cover.) CHAPTER ONE 'Introduction and Background' 'Do you ever stop and look at trees and shadows, Edward, or do you only think of your family all the time? Have you any of the mystic in you?' He had at first been puzzled by this because Margot was not a mystic. Once, she had said, 'You, I am sure would only write works of imagination, that is all you have in you. I prefer books of analysis where the writer explains a people's motives. You never understand anyone that I can see. That is the weakness of living all your life in one setting. You get shortsighted.' She knew Edward was shortsighted. She said on one occasion, `On the benches in this park, what do you see?' 'I see a sort of. huddled masses, blocked— out shapes.' 'While I see every detail, what they are wearing, and even their characters from this distance.' She had a bitter idea of people. What she meant by a work of imagination was an adventure story. Christina Stead, The People With the Dogs.' 1 The People With the Dogs (Boston, 1952; rpt. London: Virago Press, 1981), pp. 80-81. 2 i. 'Introduction' Close scrutiny of the above passage from The People With the Dogs provides some insights into the background or tradition of writing in which Christina Stead's dramatic novels can be placed. Margot, the character speaking to Edward, refers to two kinds of novels, 'books of analysis' and 'works of imagination'. The first kind appears to be a translation of roman d'analyse, the term used by Guy de Maupassant in his preface to Pierre et Jean to describe the kind of novel whose aim was close psychological analysis of characters. The modern tradition of the psychological novel flowed from the early French Realists, especially the cercle Flaubert which included Edmond de Goncourt, Turgenev, Emile Zola, Alphonse Daudet and Guy de Maupassant. Stead has claimed that she followed Maupassant as a master of style and his influence can be seen in the particular kind of attention to detail which Stead shares with Maupassant.2 The second kind of novel mentioned by Margot, the vague, all— encompassing category of 'works of imagination', brings to mind a much later writer in the tradition of the psychological novel, who himself owed much to the French Realists and Naturalists, Henry James. James dismisses arbitrary and prescriptive definitions of the novel by saying that the only meaningful distinction between novels is that there are bad ones and good ones. The narrator's enigmatic statement of Margot's equation of 'works of imagination' and 'adventure stories' recalls the question asked by James in his essay 'The Art of Fiction' — 'what is adventure?'.8 Stead would probably agree with James that there is as much 'adventure' in tracing the consciousness of a character as 2 Christina Stead, in the entry under her name in Twentieth Century Literature edited by Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft (New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1942), P. 1329. 8 Henry James, 'The Art of Fiction' (1884) in The Portable Henry James Revised Edition by Lys.11 H. Powers, 1968, Edited and introduced by Morton Dauwen Zabel (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977), pp. 408-09. 3 there is in a work like Stevenson's Treasure Island. Both Christina Stead and Henry James were admirers of Balzac and his literary heirs. Flaubert and Zola. Although it may seem a radical comparison to make, Stead and James share certain characteristics of dramatic intention and of intensity in their treatment of character. Their interest in the psychological novel with its emphasis upon the detachment of the dramatic method may be due to the influence of the European Realists on both writers. A comparison of James and Stead is appropriate and relevant when we consider the 'dialectic intelligence' and the strong moral sense which control the work of both these writers. 4 Margot is revealed in the short passage from The People With the Dogs as being no expert either on the complex subject of the imagination or on literature, but her exposure of Edward's shortsightedness does suggest that his imagination lies dormant since he is unable to see life in the impressions before him.