“Her Last Word Was Repeated Again and Again” – Auto-Intertextual Ideas About Women in Isak Dinesen Brian de Graft July 2015 Student Number: 10185283 MA Thesis, English Literature and Culture Supervisor: Prof. Henk van der Liet Table of Contents 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………….2 2. The Works 2.1 The Essays………………………………………………...........................................5 –2.1.1 “On Mottoes of My Life”…………………………………………………….... 5 –2.1.2 “Daguerreotypes”…………………………………………………….…………7 –2.1.3 “Oration at a Bonfire, Fourteen Years Late”………...........................................12 2.2 Seven Gothic Tales………………………………………………………………….16 3. Types of Women……………………………………………......................................18 4. The Relationship Between Man and Woman………………………………………...24 5. Feminism and the “Emancipation of Woman”……………….……………………....29 6. The Symbolic 6.1 The Importance of Symbols………………………………………………………...33 6.2 Women as Symbols……………………………………………………....................38 6.3 The Power of Suggestion – Women and Their Clothes………………..................... 40 6.4 Women as Art……………………………………………………………………..... 42 Conclusion.…………………………………………………………………………..…..45 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………...47 1 Chapter 1 – Introduction Understanding Isak Dinesen is an ongoing process, not a task that can be completed. Part of the pleasure of reading Isak Dinesen is the prospect of stumbling across something new. Her tales can profitably be read over and over again. (Brantly 11) I have chosen to begin this thesis with the above quotation, taken from Susan C. Brantly’s introduction to her book Understanding Isak Dinesen, because it provided me with motivation while faced with the challenging task of contributing, in an original way, to the body of work surrounding an author who has already received a considerable amount of academic attention. Countless books and articles have been dedicated to the life and work of this author who, even though she was close to fifty when her first book Seven Gothic Tales (often abbreviated to SGT from now on) was published in 1934, managed to become one of the most important authors of the 20th century. With scholars who have devoted years of their lives trying to provide us with a better understanding, and appreciation, of Dinesen’s work, “stumbling across something new” academically, as opposed to personally, is not an easy task. However, Dinesen’s tales, which “have been described as puzzles, labyrinths, three-dimensional space, and multi-layered texts embedded with clues to be discovered upon each rereading” (Brantly 11), are so rich and complex that what we can extract from them will never be exhausted; truly an ongoing process. And indeed, when I myself stumbled upon what I believe to be an exciting characteristic of Dinesen’s literature, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this particular aspect of Dinesen’s work has received little to no critical attention. The discovery was that many of the ideas expressed in Seven Gothic Tales can be found in essays that she wrote later on in her career, which were then (posthumously) published in a collection entitled Daguerreotypes and Other Essays (mostly abbreviated to DG from now on) in 1979. Albeit subtly (and perhaps unconsciously by the author), Dinesen’s non-fictive essays refer intertextually to what she has already expressed in her fictive short stories. After briefly providing the necessary context, I shall elaborate on this discovery and its consequent treatment throughout this thesis. When I first proposed to write my thesis about the work of Isak Dinesen to the examination board of the University of Amsterdam’s English literature department, it was declined on the grounds of it being Danish, and not English, literature. This rejection was, of course, unfounded: “Out of loyalty to her dead lover’s language” (Arendt vii), Dinesen wrote most of her work in English first, and would then generally translate – or rather recast1 – the text into her first language, Danish. Therefore, even though she counts as one of Denmark’s most valuable exports regarding its literary tradition, her arguably most important contribution has been to that of the English-speaking world2. 1 “Recasting” is probably a more suitable word for what Dinesen did to the English texts because, rather than simply translating them from one language to the other, she would use the opportunity to add, and make minor changes to, the text (Brantly 2). 2 Once I had explained this to the examination board, I was granted the permission to go ahead with the thesis. This, apart from being a great relief, strengthened my ambition to increase 2 The idea for this thesis first came to me while I was reading Dinesen’s essay “Daguerreotypes” shortly after having read Seven Gothic Tales. In this essay, Dinesen describes four types of women: the guardian angel, the housewife, the prostitute (or bayadère as she puts it delicately) and a final, unofficial type: the witch. The descriptions and examples given for each of these types of women reminded me so heavily of one particular character from one of the gothic tales that I had to return to this story to make sure I was not mistaken. Upon rereading the story I was sure: in the second of the seven tales, “The Old Chevalier”, Nathalie, at different times throughout the story, clearly embodies each of the four types. “The Old Chevalier” was published, along with the other six gothic tales, in 1934 – seventeen years before the publication of Daguerreotypes. What this tells us, then, is that the ideas regarding these four different types of women had been apparent to, and expressed by, Dinesen before she describes them in her essay. This realisation inspired me to closely read her book of essays and then again the gothic tales in order to see whether this discovery was a one-off, or if there were more such examples of recurring ideas to be found. What I found was what I had hoped for: many ideas and themes that had been embedded within Dinesen’s gothic tales, albeit subtly, come back, more explicitly, in her essays. Even though a comprehensive overview of all of Dinesen’s auto-intertextual references throughout her career would be ideal, for obvious reasons of time and space an attainable scope of research must be determined for this thesis. Therefore, I have decided to limit the sources I will be analysing and comparing to the following: Seven Gothic Tales will be compared to the three essays from Daguerreotypes and Other Essays that I found the most relevant for my objective. These essays are “Daguerreotypes” (1951), “Oration at a Bonfire: 14 Years Late” (1953), and “On Mottoes of My Life” (1960), the contents of which I will briefly lay out in the upcoming chapter. In addition, the research is limited to Dinesen’s most recurrent subject, one that obviously gave her a lot to think and write about: woman. Though it is a subject I will touch upon, this is not a feminist reading of Dinesen’s work, but rather an exploration of the ideas and opinions expressed on women, and womanliness, in a broader sense. After an overview of the works in chapter two, chapter three will focus on Dinesen’s description of the four types of women already mentioned. Chapter four will examine Dinesen’s words on the relationship between men and women. In the fifth chapter, what Dinesen writes about feminism and the emancipation of women will be discussed. Finally, the sixth chapter will first establish Dinesen’s extensive use of symbols, and then go on to examine how she applied these to her descriptions of women. This will include her descriptions of women as symbols, the symbolic significance of women’s clothing, and women as works of art. Together, these chapters will help me establish an overall proposition on what Dinesen wishes to convey to her readers regarding women and womanliness. people’s awareness of this great author, especially within the English literature field, in which Dinesen often seems overshadowed by her native-speaking contemporaries (Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald, to name a few). 3 Concerning my methodology: even though I will not be using a strict research method, my analyses can be referred to as close readings of the texts. Julien D. Bonn’s Comprehensive Dictionary of Literature defines close reading as follows: “Interpretation begins with close reading. In this process, you note specific uses of language, such as imagery, symbols, repeated terms, patterns of expression, the tone of the speaker, and the main ideas [themes] the writer introduces. Whether it takes the form of writing, discussion, or silent observation, it should be based on a careful questioning of the text” (31-32). This will include bearing in mind that I will be comparing a work of fiction with works of non-fiction. Though interpretative, I will attempt to make my research as unbiased as possible by supporting it with facts and relevant academic sources whenever possible. In the final years of her life, Dinesen wanted dearly to create a book called Albondocani: a work with countless interlocking tales, linked by the common protagonist Albondocani. Even though she never managed to realise this dream, “Dinesen’s entire oeuvre is connected by a network of allusions, so, in a sense, one might argue that she actually completed Albondocani” (Brantly 4). I agree with Brantly and, with this thesis, wish to aid the academic world in mapping this Albondocani. 4 Chapter 2 – The Works 2.1 –The Essays In order for the readers of this thesis to (re)familiarise themselves with Dinesen’s essays, I will now provide a brief overview of the main points expressed in each of the three essays. I feel as though a sound understanding and memory of the essays’ contents will make the upcoming analyses and comparisons a lot clearer, especially because I will be referring to certain parts of them extensively. With her many anecdotes and digressions, it sometimes becomes difficult to understand the essence of what is written by Dinesen in the essays.