This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Breathing Spaces and Afterlives: The Colonial Literary Canon and Joseph Conrad’s Female Characters Alice M. Kelly Doctor of Philosophy The University of Edinburgh 2018 ii Abstract In his introduction to the fourth Norton Critical Edition of Heart of Darkness, Paul Armstrong argues that the text has ‘become part of the cultural air we breathe’ (ix). If Heart of Darkness has been memorialised as a ubiquitous marker of late nineteenth century imperialist literature, so pervasively influential that its consumption has become inevitable and unquestioned, it is also specific bodies that have been marked as the expected inhabitants of cultural history. The Conrad that has been canonised is one whose work is exclusively populated by angst-ridden, ambivalent white male colonial agents wringing their hands about Empire and masculinity, so that it is the experiences of straight white men that are the ones given space and capital in the cultural archive. Yet Conrad’s work is not exclusively populated by white men at all, it has only been recorded as such by a body of scholarship that has invested in the perpetuation of Conrad as writer of and for white men. In this thesis, I consider the breathing spaces in Conrad’s writing in which women of colour become the speaking, thinking, mobile protagonists, who discuss the ways Empire and masculinity have affected their lives. I look at the desires of these female characters and the relationships between them to argue that sexually active and/or queer female bodies take up space in the oeuvre of a dead white man, because they took up space in the world in which he wrote. I argue that their disappearance from the Conrad canon is a symptom of ongoing discriminatory discourses that insist on the able body of the straight white man as the only legitimate subject for power. To counter this critical negligence, I use my thesis to stage the afterlives of Conrad’s female characters of colour, analysing the ways in which these characters have materialised in visual media alongside and after the publication of Conrad’s texts. I take Conrad’s Lingard Trilogy ̶ Almayer’s Folly (1895), An Outcast of the Islands (1896) and The Rescue (1920) ̶ as the central corpus around which I structure my work. Spanning the course of Conrad’s writing career, populated by vibrant, intelligent, complicated women, but memorialised in Conrad scholarship in relation to a male character (Tom Lingard), the trilogy emblematises the cultural codes that inform the way Conrad’s texts and characters have been remembered. Each section of my thesis probes first the breathing space offered by the female characters that I believe dominate these texts, then the afterlife they have been afforded (or denied) in illustrations, paratexts and adaptations. In Part 1, I argue that the sexually charged moments of intimacy between Edith and Immada in The Rescue, and Freya and Antonia in Conrad’s ‘Freya of the Seven Isles’ (1912), deserve to be recognised as textual spaces of lesbian desire. This reading is juxtaposed with an analysis of the illustrations that accompanied the periodical serialisations of the texts, that have taken on new life as digital objects in the periodical archive Conrad First. In Part 2, I contend that An Outcast of the Islands counters iii clichés of imperial sexuality with the eloquent expression of desire from Aïssa, a Malay-Arab woman who falls in love with a white man. Exploring Aïssa’s depiction on the covers of 1950s- 60s American mass market paperback editions, I propose that she materialised in pulp form in ways that trouble both Conrad’s highbrow status and the racial politics of the text. In Part 3, I posit Almayer’s Folly as a story that is centred around female characters of colour ̶ Nina Almayer, Mrs Almayer and Taminah ̶ who galvanize the plot, and articulate virulent anti- imperialist critiques. That these women are not as well-known as the white men of Heart of Darkness is a symptom of what Susan Jones has described as the ‘masculine tendency of Conrad criticism’ (2001, 37). I see Chantal Akerman’s film adaptation La Folie Almayer as a counterpoint to this critical neglect, as Akerman’s direction and Aurora Marion’s performance reposition Nina as the text’s central protagonist. Ultimately, I argue that the women of colour that populate Conrad’s works, as women with desires, voices, political beliefs, agency and power, matter to the formation of the colonial literary canon, because when prioritised properly they reflect a historical archive that is more representative of the varying bodies that populate our own world. By examining the material spaces these characters occupy, I offer this thesis as another afterlife, and a breathing space from the Conrad scholarship that has denied them. iv Lay Summary This thesis is concerned with the way certain narratives of human experience are recorded in literature as default. Packaged in anthologies, placed on bookshelves marked ‘classics’ in Waterstones, and listed as prescribed reading on University curricula, Heart of Darkness is probably Joseph Conrad’s best-known work. This exemplifies the way dead white men who wrote books about dying white men still occupy a position of authority in terms of cultural history. Conrad wrote many more texts, a substantial number of which featured articulate, brave and nuanced female characters of colour, but it is most often his texts that centre on narratives of white men that are most widely studied. In this thesis, I concentrate on his lesser-known works and devote my attention to those underread textual moments in which desiring female characters are the focus of the narrative, rather than white men. I argue that the presentation of Edith and Immada in Conrad’s The Rescue (1920), Freya and Antonia in his short story ‘Freya of the Seven Isles’ (1912), Aïssa in An Outcast of the Islands, and Nina, Mrs Almayer and Taminah in Almayer’s Folly all reflect different kinds of racial and sexual politics to the ones we might expect to find in late nineteenth and early twentieth century imperial literature. Within these texts, there are moments where we see issues of race, sexuality and Empire from traditionally marginalised perspectives of traditionally marginalised women, such as from women of colour and women who desire women. This is significant because so much of Western cultural history has been remembered as something that happened to and through the bodies of straight white men, and this has legitimated the power straight white male bodies have today as expected, ‘natural’ leaders. Much of my experience writing this thesis has been influenced by the politics of what we are allowed to say about established literary figures like Conrad, and who is allowed to say these things. In order to shake off the associations of Conrad with the ‘classics’ bookshelf, to move beyond thinking of his work in terms of highbrow worthiness that perpetuates the idea of creative genius residing in the body of the straight white man, I look at moments when Conrad’s work has been transformed into other types of media. I examine the illustrations that accompanied his fiction when it was serialised in early twentieth century magazines (that are now online), the book covers of cheap 1950s and 60s American paperback editions, and a recent feminist film adaptation from the avant-garde Belgian director Chantal Akerman. I imagine the different versions of these female characters, drawn on cheap paper, projected on the cinema screen or accessible through a digital archive on my laptop, as ways in which these characters have outlived their author. Given that Conrad has been remembered as belonging to a type of literary history dominated by white men, I think of the textual moments that are focused on his female characters, moments where they speak, think, look, move and yearn for each other, as breathing spaces in that literary history. I think of their recurring v images appearing in illustrations, on book covers and in film alongside or years after the texts were originally published as a kind of afterlife for these characters. I want my own work to be another afterlife for them, a space in which we can remember them as representing something more than the dead white man who wrote about them. vi Declaration I declare that this thesis has been composed solely by myself and that it has not been submitted, in whole or in part, in any previous application for a degree. Except where states otherwise by reference or acknowledgment, the work presented is entirely my own. Signature: Date:05/09/2018 vii Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the financial support of the Wolfson Foundation who have funded this project. Special thanks also go to the Department of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, with notable mentions for Penny Fielding and Carole Jones for their incredible support throughout my academic career, and to Simon Cooke whose feedback on early versions of chapters 1 and 3 was invaluable.