Narrative Topography: Fictions of Country, City, and Suburb in the Work of Virginia Woolf, W. G. Sebald, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ian McEwan Elizabeth Andrews McArthur Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 Elizabeth Andrews McArthur All rights reserved ABSTRACT Narrative Topography: Fictions of Country, City, and Suburb in the Work of Virginia Woolf, W. G. Sebald, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ian McEwan Elizabeth Andrews McArthur This dissertation analyzes how twentieth- and early twenty-first- century novelists respond to the English landscape through their presentation of narrative and their experiments with novelistic form. Opening with a discussion of the English planning movement, “Narrative Topography” reveals how shifting perceptions of the structure of English space affect the content and form of the contemporary novel. The first chapter investigates literary responses to the English landscape between the World Wars, a period characterized by rapid suburban growth. It reveals how Virginia Woolf, in Mrs. Dalloway and Between the Acts, reconsiders which narrative choices might be appropriate for mobilizing and critiquing arguments about the relationship between city, country, and suburb. The following chapters focus on responses to the English landscape during the present era. The second chapter argues that W. G. Sebald, in The Rings of Saturn, constructs rural Norfolk and Suffolk as containing landscapes of horror—spaces riddled with sinkholes that lead his narrator to think about near and distant acts of violence. As Sebald intimates that this forms a porous “landscape” in its own right, he draws attention to the fallibility of representation and the erosion of cultural memory. The third chapter focuses on Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, a novel in which a cloned human being uses descriptions of landscape to express and, more often, to suppress the physical and emotional pain associated with her position in society. By emphasizing his narrator’s proclivity towards euphemism and pastiche, Ishiguro intimates that, in an era of mechanical and genetic reproduction, reliance on perspectives formed in past and imagined futures can be quite deadly. The fourth chapter analyzes Ian McEwan’s post- 9/11 novel, Saturday—a reworking of Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. In reading these two novels side-by-side, it reveals how London, its suburbs, and the English countryside might be imagined differently in the contemporary consciousness. Together these chapters investigate why novelistic treatments of the English landscape might interest contemporary readers who live outside England (and/or read these works in translation), especially during an era in which the English landscape has ceased to function as the real or metaphorical center of empire. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………….……………………………1 Chapter One: “No one ever suffered so acutely from atmosphere as I do”: Fantasies of English Space in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Between the Acts……..…………………….……………………………………21 Chapter Two: Sinkholes to History: The Porous Landscape and Unstable Narrative of W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn………………….……………80 Chapter Three: “Wherever it was I was supposed to be”: Perilous Pastiche in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go…………………………………………143 Chapter Four: Revising the Topography of Woolf’s London: Ian McEwan’s Saturday…………………………………..……………………………………192 Conclusion: “A last glimpse of the land now being lost for ever”….………….211 Bibliography of Works Cited……………………...……………………………229 i LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Page shot. The Rings of Saturn. 1998. Trans. Michael Hulse. (New York: New Directions, 1999) 4-5…………………………….………….……………………120 Figure 2: Page shot. Ibid. 54-5………………………………………………………………123 Figure 3: Page shot. Ibid. 56-7………………………………………………………………124 Figure 4: Page shot. Ibid. 58-9………………………………………………………………126 Figure 5: Page shot. Ibid. 58-9, detail………………………………………………………..126 Figure 6: Page shot. Ibid. 60-1………………………………………………………………128 Figure 7: Page shot. Ibid. 62-3 …………………………………..……….…………………129 Figure 8: Page shot. Ibid. 156-7………………………………….……….…………………131 Figure 9: Page shot. Ibid. 154-5………………………………….……….…………………133 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation was conceived of and written in a variety of landscapes: the campuses and libraries of Columbia University and the University of Michigan; homes in New York City, Long Island, and outside Detroit; towns, villages, and unpopulated stretches of the English countryside; and the “generalized elsewhere” of cafes, trains, planes and parked cars. Yet this project was motivated less by such landscapes than by the people within them. It is with great humility and gratitude that I acknowledge some of the remarkable individuals who made completing this project possible. I will begin by thanking my dissertation co-chairs: David Damrosch and Jenny Davidson. During my first year at Columbia, I participated in two seminars with David that are, simply put, the reason that I pursued the doctorate. With David, I rediscovered the pleasure of drawing connections between diverse literary texts, of participating in a lively intellectual discourse, and of developing my skills as a critical and an experimental writer. David’s enthusiastic support of my academic career; his patience as this dissertation first came together; his generosity while critiquing early chapter drafts; and his kindness, humor, and intelligence are a continued source of inspiration. When David moved to another university, Jenny Davidson succeeded him as the committee chair. Like David, Jenny is a scholar of extraordinary intelligence, energy, and compassion. After returning from a year’s sabbatical, Jenny asked to see a binder containing all of the chapter drafts that I had produced during her leave. Within a short period of time, she had read all of my materials and emailed me an extensive critique. Since I was living in Michigan at the time, she then offered to conduct a series of appointments over the iii phone. Jenny’s direct, but always kind, challenges to my work; her unflagging encouragement of this project; and her delightful sense of humor gave me the energy to carry on during a period, post-maternity leave, in which I felt that my resources were particularly depleted. For this, I am forever in her debt. I would also like to thank Edward Mendelson, Sarah Cole, and Matthew Hart, who provided helpful feedback on this project during my defense. I have worked with Sarah and Edward in many contexts—when I was a student in their graduate seminars, when I served as their teaching assistant, and when I participated in various professional development seminars. It has been a pleasure to associate with such perceptive and passionate individuals—scholars who manage to keep the things that matter well in sight. I am also indebted to several other professors at Columbia: Rachel Adams, Jonathan Arac, Nicholas Dames, Andrew Delbanco, Ursula Heise, Maire Jaanus, Sharon Marcus, Bruce Robbins, and Maura Spiegel, along with several wonderful administrators: Jan Allen, Joy Hayton, and Virginia Kay. I am also grateful for the support of several colleagues in the graduate program: Jen Buckley, Erika Dyson, Karen Emmerich, Hannah Gurman, Lianne Habinek, Michelle Hardesty, András Kiséry, Sarah Klock, Kairos Llobera, and Jon Williams. I am particularly appreciative of Joanna Scutts, Lauren Walsh and Adela Ramos—three brilliant scholars, smart professionals, and loyal friends who have offered invaluable critiques of the Woolf, Sebald, and Ishiguro chapters that follow (respectively). I am, of course, forever grateful to Columbia University, both for bringing these people together and also for providing me with financial assistance during my time of graduate study in the form of a Marjorie Hope Nicolson Fellowship, a Louis Cornell iv Summer Fellowship, a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences/English Graduate Union Grant, and a Mellon Summer Research Fellowship. I would also like to acknowledge several people beyond the Columbia community who have influenced my work—the Cornell professors who first ignited my interest in writing and literary scholarship: Jonathan Culler, Deborah Fried, Molly Hite, and Stewart O’Nan, and my exceptional secondary school teachers, who started me on this journey. I would also like to acknowledge William and Penny Byrne, who twice hosted me on their Suffolk farm and who helped me trace Sebald’s footsteps through nearby churchyards, along with other friends who have given me feedback and moral support as I worked on this project: Alicia Chin, MaryClaire Delaney, Allison Hamilton-Rohe, Michael Herzig, Alison Ramsay, Alexandra Petschek, and Dino Wu. I would like to close by expressing my profound appreciation of several members of my family—especially Frances and John McArthur, to whom this project has been dedicated. My mother, a teacher of English literature, who has a sense of optimism and adventure that is beyond compare and has always encouraged me to take on this and other new challenges. My father, an engineer by training, is a voracious reader of history as well as the best editor that I know. This dissertation has benefited greatly from their enthusiasm, sensibility and intelligence in their editing the various drafts of each chapter. Of course, this acknowledgment would not be complete if I did not recognize my husband, Dr. Geoffrey Scott Aikens, who provided me with some valuable insights as I formulated the early drafts