TWILIGHT OF THE TOFFS: FALL OF A CASTE, RISE OF A MYTH Carlos Sanchez Fernandez M.A. by Research University of East Anglia - UEA Faculty of Arts and Humanities School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing (LDC) Submission Date: January 2013 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived therefrom must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. 1 Carlos Sanchez Fernandez Submission Year: 2013 Thesis Title: Twilight of the Toffs: Fall of a Caste, Rise of a Myth Dissertation ABSTRACT: This dissertation deals with the representation of the interwar upper classes (above all, the aristocracy) in the contemporary English novel. I have chosen three novels for my study: Ian McEwan‟s Atonement (2001), Kazuo Ishiguro‟s The Remains of the Day (1989) and Evelyn Waugh‟s Brideshead Revisited (1945). My main critical perspective is a structuralist one, namely that of Roland Barthes in his Mythologies (1956). I show how, notwithstanding the period in which they were written, their aesthetic orientation, or their authors‟ personal stand concerning their society, the chosen novels, spanning six decades, can be analyzed by applying the same „figures of myth‟, according to Barthes‟s terminology. To facilitate a better understanding of this literature, I have also connected it with a common historical and ideological background, that of the interwar period. Moreover, as Barthes‟s ideological stand is a Marxist one, if heterodoxically so, I will be relating the novels to a number of Marxist concepts, such as hegemony, dominant and residual cultures, or false consciousness. Concepts from other fields of contemporary intellectual history, such as psychoanalysis, will also be featured for the same purpose. Finally, I have also given a prominent role to social history in my analysis. My main conclusion will be that myth has superseded factual representation of the traditional landed aristocracy, turning it into a category that is still operative in the domain of fiction, informing the international reading public‟s views of British society and culture, even after the historical demise of that social class. 2 - GERALD: Harfords, Lord Illingworth? - LORD ILLINGWORTH: That is my family name. You should study the Peerage, Gerald. It is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done. Oscar WILDE: A Woman of no Importance, iii1 1 Oscar Wilde, A Woman of no Importance, in The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, ed. by Peter Raby, Oxford World‟s Classics, Oxford English Drama Series (Oxford and New York: OUP, 1998; first publ. 1995), pp. 93-157 (p. 134, emphasis mine). 3 Table of Contents LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 8 INTRODUCTION 10 A Modern Mythology 11 Nature Imitating Art 13 The Inter-War Period: Nostalgia, Suspicion, Doom, Spectacle 14 Upstairs, Downstairs 16 Chapter 1 - Ian McEwan‟s ATONEMENT 18 Structure: Form and Ethics 18 Briony Tallis: Authorial Ethics and Myths of Order 21 Literature as Myth, 1: Naturalization 24 Literature of Void and Blindness 25 Literature as Myth, 2: The Poverty of Literature 27 Figures of Myth 30 Literature as Myth, 3: Self-Mythologies 32 The British Nurse 32 The Unknown Warrior: A Privation of History 34 Flagrant Constructedness, Prefab Narratives 35 Violence and Suffering: That‟s Entertainment 37 Pastiche: Plato‟s Cave and the End of History 41 Social Cohesion and History as Myths 45 Fake: Country House and Fatherhood 49 Social Change: Love and Sex 52 4 Higher Education, Women‟s Emancipation 53 Of Forerunners and Holy Fools 55 Chapter 2 - Kazuo Ishiguro‟s THE REMAINS OF THE DAY 57 Introduction. Structure 57 Lord Darlington, Gentleman: The Mythical Superiority of the Ruling Classes 60 Lord Darlington, Traitor: Myth and Para-Fascism 63 Lord Darlington, Toff: Disillusion and Delusion 65 Soul-Colonialism, 1: Dignity as Submission 69 Soul-Colonialism, 2: Order, Obedience, Renunciation 71 Soul-Colonialism, 3: Power, Knowledge and Identity 72 False Consciousness, 1: Hegemonic Alienation 74 False Consciousness, 2: The Conservative Party and the Great Chain of Being 74 False Consciousness, 3: Pomp and Circumstance 76 Identity: Self-Mythologies of Order and the Unconscious 78 Bad Faith 80 Repression, 1: Love and Sex 81 Repression, 2: Self-deception, Little White Lies, Treachery 83 Repression, 3: Politics 84 Waste and its Antidotes: Bantering 86 Mythical Englishness and Nostalgia 88 5 Chapter 3 - Evelyn Waugh‟s BRIDESHEAD REVISITED 91 Introduction. Structure 91 Charles Ryder: Moral Paralysis and Spiritual Longing 95 Oxford: a Toff‟s Privilege 96 Another Oxford: The Waste Land 97 Brideshead as Ideology: The Mythical Discourse of the Stately House 98 Venice and the Loss of Innocence: Heterosexuality and Exile 100 Psychoanalysis, 1: The Labyrinth of the Imaginary 102 Psychoanalysis, 2: The Symbolic, or Desire 105 Psychoanalysis, 3: The Inspiring Semiotic, or Charm 106 Love between Men, 1: The Freudian Paradigm. Homosexuality 107 Love between Men, 2: Homoeroticism, or in Plato‟s Way 109 Love between Men, 3: Homosocial Desire, or a Man‟s World 112 Conclusions: Oxford as the Ephebate; Effete Aristocrats, Virile Mesocrats 113 The Recusant Instinct: Martyrs for God and Country; A Neo-Feudal Ideal 117 Residual Cultures 120 (Anglo-) Catholicism and the Radical Right 122 Catonism 124 The 1926 General Strike: Charging in Cheerfully against the Rabble 126 Hooperism: The Rule of the Middle Classes 128 Saint Sebastian Flyte: The Lordly Drunken Boat 129 Encounters of the Ineffable Kind: Lord Marchmain and Conversion 132 Nostalgia 136 CONCLUSION 138 6 BIBLIOGRAPHY 141 Primary Sources 141 Secondary Sources 141 1- Books 141 2- Book Extracts, Book Chapters, Articles, Reviews, Interviews 144 3- Entries in Reference Works, Online Didactic Sources 150 Other Works, Films, TV Series and Webpages Cited 154 7 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS - ACR Spurr, „Anglo-Catholic in Religion‟: T.S. Eliot and Christianity - Aton. McEwan, Atonement - BF Linehan, British Fascism - BR Waugh, Brideshead Revisited - BR60 Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, rev. edn, 1960 - CH Stannard (ed.), Evelyn Waugh: The Critical Heritage - CUP Cambridge University Press - DAF Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the English Aristocracy - EKS Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire - FII Film Index International - HEART Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team - JIM Jameson, „Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan‟ - JPM Jameson, „Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Capitalism‟ - KI Wong, Kazuo Ishiguro - KIRD Wong, „Kazuo Ishiguro‟s The Remains of the Day‟ - LM&F Louvel, Ménégaldo, and Fortin, „An Interview with Ian McEwan‟ - MUP Manchester University Press - MW’sC Kermode, „Mr Waugh‟s Cities‟ - Mythol. Barthes, Mythologies - NATC Leitch (ed.), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism - OD Felluga, „On Desire‟ - OSP Felluga, „On the Structure of the Psyche‟ 8 - ODNB The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - ORO Oxford Reference Online - OUP Oxford University Press - POH Blake, „The Proverbs of Hell‟ - RD Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day - RFC Cannadine, The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain - RPL Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language - SEP The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 9 INTRODUCTION A box-office hit in 2007-2008, the film Atonement, directed by Joe Wright after a screenplay based on the novel by Ian McEwan, may be considered the latest major title in the British upper-class, period film.2 This cinematic genre and its impact on the public, known by some as the Ivory Merchant syndrome, had as its initiator the Oscar-awarded Chariots of Fire, released in 1981.3 That very same year, British audiences could enjoy the Granada TV production of Brideshead Revisited, an adaptation of the novel by Evelyn Waugh, now a legend (Childs, „Heritage‟, 212).4 Since then, this kind of cinema and TV series has captured the imagination of massive audiences the world over, inevitably attracted by a bygone world of caste and privilege: the world of the English ruling classes of the late Victorian, Edwardian, Georgian and inter-war periods. Starting to recover from the troubled 1970s, the British public seems to have developed a fascination, partly out of nostalgia, partly out of sensationalist allure for this still relatively recent, but by then seemingly defunct world of the traditional ruling upper classes, the toffs. Overseas, especially in America, the young, democratic society without an aristocracy proper, a strong demand has made it possible for these fictional accounts of the toff world to develop into a characteristic genre with its own distinctive iconography and discourse.5 2 Peter Childs, „The English Heritage Industry and Other Trends in the Novel at the Millennium‟, in A Companion to the British and Irish Novel 1945-2000, ed. by Brian W. Shaffer, Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture (Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 210-24 (pp. 211- 12). Atonement. Dir. Joe Wright. Universal. 2007, in FII <http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88- 2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:fii&rft_id=xri:fii:film:00821062> [accessed 28 June 2012] 3 Susie O'Brien, „Serving a New World Order: Postcolonial Politics in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day‟, Modern Fiction Studies, 42.4 (1996), 787-806 (p. 787). Chariots of Fire. Dir. Hugh Hudson. Enigma Productions, 20th-Century Fox, Allied Stars. 1981, in FII <http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88- 2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:fii&rft_id=xri:fii:film:00060706> [accessed 29 May 2012] 4 Brideshead Revisited. Dir. Charles Sturridge. Granada TV. 1981. 5 See, e.g., Martin Stannard, „Waugh, Evelyn Arthur St John (1903–1966)‟, in ODNB, ed. by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004), online edn by Lawrence Goldman, May 2011 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36788> [accessed 28 May 2012] [para.