Dominant, Dormant and Emergent Tendencies in the Twentieth Century Working-Class Novel by Sabujkoli Bandopadhyay A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies University of Alberta © Sabujkoli Bandopadhyay, 2015 ii Abstract My doctoral dissertation entitled Dominant, Dormant, and Emergent Tendencies in the Twentieth Century Working-Class Novel studies twentieth century working-class novels as a transnational and trans-historic category. I analyze and explore the Marxian revolutionary subject from a subaltern point of view and show that the global political economy constantly reshapes and reconstitutes the working-class. My research traces how the genre has evolved throughout the twentieth century; the dissertation demonstrates how questions of gender, race, ethnicity, (dis)ability, ecojustice and post-colonialism are associated with class politics and its representation in the genre of the twentieth century working-class novel. In order to outline the dominant, dormant and emergent trends within the genre of the working-class novel, I have divided the study into three clusters. First, I study representative Anglophone proletarian novels from the decade of the 1930s to identify the established tenets of the genre. The second cluster focuses on South Asian novels of the 1930s that integrated class politics with colonial crisis. I demonstrate that while the US novels of the Great Depression, the Soviet Socialist novels and the industrial novels of Great Britain are studied as dominant texts of proletarian culture, texts with peripheral status within World Literature, produced by subcontinental writers like Mulk Raj Anand, Premchand and Manik Bandopadhyay extend the boundaries of revolutionary literature by introducing the subaltern’s crisis. The third cluster consists of texts by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Mohammed Choukri and Mahasweta Devi. I study these novels as emerging texts of revolutionary resistance and show how class struggle remains a continual theme in the latter half of twentieth century World Literature. iii The dissertation deploys a comparative methodology for studying working-class novels from Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. Revisiting the perception of the ‘literary’, this research demonstrates that the working-class novel is essentially an international entity. Integrating Marxist theories on literature and representation, with questions of body/disability, Post-colonial criticism and Ecocriticism, I advocate for interdisciplinary and comparative approaches towards the study of working-class novels as an indispensable part of twentieth century World Literature. This research proposes that working-class literature cannot be comprehended thoroughly if we restrict its limits within national literary studies and specific historical periods. Instead, I urge for an alternative methodology that addresses the subject as a transnational category that is constantly evolving. Literary representations of class-conscious political struggles indicate that twentieth century class identity and ideology is embedded within discourses of modernity and modern identity. iv Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter One .............................................................................................................................................. 17 The Working-class Novel as a Category in World Literature ................................................................... 17 What is working-class literature? .......................................................................................................... 17 Working-class literature as an international continuous practice in world literature ............................. 20 Journalism and the Working-class Novel .............................................................................................. 28 How does the genre of the working-class novel resist reification and evoke class consciousness? ....... 39 Conclusion: Why did the working-class novel emerge as a genre of international class struggles? ...... 46 Chapter Two ............................................................................................................................................. 52 Dominant Trends in the Genre of the Proletarian Novel: Transnational Narratives of “Western-White- Heterosexual Able-bodied” Working-class Members ............................................................................... 52 Proletarian Novels in the English Context and Love on the Dole as a Typical Proletarian Novel ......... 55 Waste Heritage and its Atypical Tenets ................................................................................................ 76 The Grapes of Wrath: A Popular Proletarian novel of the 1930s .......................................................... 85 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................ 103 Chapter Three ......................................................................................................................................... 105 South Asian Working-class Novels of the Late Colonial Period: Dormant Tendencies within the Genre ................................................................................................................................................................ 105 Background to the introduction of the working-class novel in the subcontinent ................................. 110 Premchand and Godaan ...................................................................................................................... 118 Mulk Raj Anand’s Coolie ................................................................................................................... 132 Working-class identity in Padma Nadir Majhi ................................................................................... 146 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 159 What does the inclusion of 1930s subcontinental novels add to the study of Working-class Literature? ............................................................................................................................................................ 159 Chapter Four ........................................................................................................................................... 162 Emergent Trends in the Genre of Working-class Novel.......................................................................... 162 Section A. Writing about and for working-class in the ‘third world’ in the postcolonial era .............. 164 Adivasi working-class communities in Mahasweta Devi’s novels .................................................. 164 Petals of Blood as an example of African Working-class Novel ..................................................... 185 v Section B............................................................................................................................................. 206 Working-class narratives by working-class members in late twentieth century .................................. 206 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 214 Concluding Remarks............................................................................................................................... 217 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................................ 224 1 Introduction No, the bourgeois intellectuals tell us, there can be no such thing as proletarian literature. We answer briefly: There is. Then they say, it is mediocre; where is your Shakespeare? And we answer: Wait ten years more. He is on his way. We gave you a Lenin; we will give you a proletarian Shakespeare, too; if that is so important. To us the culture of the world’s millions is more important; the soil must be prepared; we know our tree is sound; we are sure of the fruit; we promise you a hundred Shakespeares. — Mike Gold, 1930 This dissertation aims to establish the historicity of the genre of the working-class novel by presenting a comparative study of texts from the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, colonial and post-independence India, ‘post-colonial’ Kenya and Morocco. Novels from ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ origins will be juxtaposed to show that the working- class novel is a transnational and trans-historic literary genre. While the dominant trends of the genre are set by 1930s ‘western’ literary works, texts from ‘non-western’ geo-linguistic provenances provide dormant and emergent tenets to the genre. The genre’s international spirit can be traced back to the Vsemirnaia literatura (World Literature) Publishing House, which was established in 1918 under the leadership of Maxim Gorky. This publishing house attempted to synthesize Goethe’s idea of world literature and the Marxian idea of universal literature to form a notion of (Soviet) Proletarian World Literature. This short-lived project aimed to produce Russian translations of the masterpieces of world literature