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University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Order Number 9001943 The interaction of subjectivity and ideology in the novel Ebert, Martina, Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1989 Copyright ©1989 by Ebert, Martina. All rights reserved. UMI 300 N. Zceb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 THE INTERACTION OF SUBJECTIVITY AND IDEOLOGY IN THE NOVEL DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Martina Ebert, M.A it it it it The Ohio State University 1989 Dissertation Committee: Approved By Julian Markels Walter Davis iW-i. 1 Advisor Mark Conroy / Department of English Copyright by Martina Ebert 1989 To the women of my family: my mother, my aunts, and my daughter, Hannah and to the memory of my father ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank The Ohio State University for the award of a University Fellowship in 1983, which enabled me to begin my Ph.D. studies in a concentrated and focused manner, and especially for the Presidential Fellowship in 1987-88, which allowed me to work full-time on this dissertation. My particular thanks go to the members of my dissertation committee, professors Mark Conroy, Walter Davis, and especially to Julian Markels, whose unfailing support and constructive criticism could always be relied upon. A very special thank-you to my husband, Andy, who shared courageously in the daily chaos of family life and changed a great many diapers to make this dissertation possible. Finally, I owe thanks to our children, David, Shawn, and Hannah, for keeping me from straying too far into the realms of theory. I further wish to express my gratitude to Linda Curtin, at the MUCIA Executive Office, whose assistance in preparing this manuscript for submission was greatly appreciated. VITA July 2, 1958 ..................................................... Born - Crailsheim, West Germany 1977 ................................................................... Abitur, Albert-Schweitzer - Gymnasium Crailsheim 1980-1981.......................................................... Teaching Assistant, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts 1983 ................................................................... Staatsexamen and Master's Degree in English and German Literature and Linguistics from the Eberhard-Karls- Universitat in Tubingen, West Germany. 1983-1984........................................................... University Fellow, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1985-198 5........................................................... Teaching Assistant, Department of English, The Ohio State University. 1986-198 7........................................................... Presidential Fellow, The Ohio State University. 1988 ................................................................... Assistant Foreign Student Adviser, Office of International Students and Scholars, The Ohio State University. 1988-1989........................................................... Assistant Project Coordinator, MUCIA, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English Literature Studies in: Literary Theory iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION............................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................................. 11 i VITA........................................................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I. ROBINSON CRUSOE.................................................................................. 16 II. VILLETTE.............................................................................................. 47 III. BLEAK HOUSE.......................................................................................... 105 IV. MADAME BOVARY...................................................................................... 145 V. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE.............................................................................. 192 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................... 235 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................... 247 v INTRODUCTION The debate around subjectivity, the way 1n which human subjects experience and live their selfhoods, has been a heated one in modern literary theory. Interestingly, it has been the "left" literary critics both in Europe and the United States who have been most attracted to this problematic. Such critics as Althusser, Bakhtin, Derrida, and Jameson have made seminal contributions to the cultural and literary analysis of subjectivity. One reason why It has perhaps been easier for left critics to deal with the concept of subjectivity is that they do not readily succumb to the a priori assumption that there is indeed such a thing as subjectivity. This assumption, all too frequent with humanistic critics, typically produces circularity: the critic claims axiomatically the existence of the very phenomenon that he was only going to analyze, and thus closes his eyes to the wide range of theoretical speculation which is opened up when subjectivity itself becomes the subject of analytical inquiry. Critics coming from a left tradition of thought are less likely to commit this mistake: because of the extreme importance Marxists attach to the workings of ideology upon the formation of human subjectivity, the concept of subjectivity has long been an embattled one, and the possibility of an independent subjectivity has often been called into question. 1 2 My reflections on the relationship between ideology and the representation of subjectivity in the novel were spawned by my reading of the works of two theoreticians who put forth diametrically opposed, seemingly irreconcilable theses on the nature of subjectivity in the age of capitalism. The first was The Making of the Modern Family by the Canadian historian Edward Shorter, and the second Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity in/and Hegel. Heidegger. Marx, and Freud by Walter Davis. I will develop in some detail the theses of both these theoreticians because they provided the groundwork for my analysis of the representation of subjectivity in the novel. But first an outline of my methodology and the definition of a few key terms is in order. This study will focus on the impact on the novel of capitalism’s double need both to foster and control human subjectivity—a vital tension which will be analyzed below—and its consequences for the depiction of subjectivity in the novel. However, this is primarily neither a historical, sociological, or political study—it is a literary study which draws on such political-economic terms as "capitalism" merely to denote a historical stage in the development of economic systems without implying any value judgments, and to situate "ideological formations", i.e., unconscious value systems which these economic systems generate and which bear heavily on the formation of human subjectivity. Since "ideology" and "subjectivity" are the dialectical opposites whose interaction is the key issue in this study, it is crucial to distinguish the popular usage of those terms from their meaning inthis study. The term "subjectivity" is defined as a human being’s sense of individual selfhood. Subjectivity 1s characterized by and simultaneously based upon the creation of "Inwardness", an inner space in which critical reflection upon one’s life and the society in which it is lived can take place. It is Important to note that, while sensitivity, intuition and emotion are crucial components of a finely developed subjectivity,