UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations 1-1-2007 "Perpetual movement, and a border of mystery": The transatlantic imagined community and Henry James' "The Golden Bowl", Nancy Cunard and "Negro: An Anthology", and Jean Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea" Oliver Quimby Melton University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/rtds Repository Citation Melton, Oliver Quimby, ""Perpetual movement, and a border of mystery": The transatlantic imagined community and Henry James' "The Golden Bowl", Nancy Cunard and "Negro: An Anthology", and Jean Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea"" (2007). UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations. 2796. http://dx.doi.org/10.25669/yy3y-2fvh This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). 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For more information, please contact [email protected]. “PERPETUAL MOVEMENT, AND A BORDER OF MYSTERY”: THE TRANS­ ATLANTIC IMAGINED COMMUNITY AND HENRY JAMES’ THE GOLDEN BOWL, NANCY CUNARD AND NEGRO: AN ANTHOLOGY, AND JEAN RHYS’ WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Oliver Quimby Melton Bachelor of Arts, cum laude University of Georgia December 2000 Master of Arts University of Nevada, Las Vegas December 2003 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree in English Department of English College of Liberal Arts Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas May 2008 UMI Number: 3319136 Copyright 2008 by Melton, Oliver Quimby All rights reserved. INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. 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Eisenhower Parkway PC Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Copyright by Oliver Quimby Melton 2008 All Rights Reserved Dissertation Approval IJNTV The Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas April 14 08 .20___ The Dissertation prepared by Oliver Quimby Melton Entitled “perpetual movement, and a border of mystery”: The Transatlantic Imagined Community and Henry James’ The Golden Bowl, Nancy Cunard and Negro: An Anthology, and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea is approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Examination Committee Ch Dean, o f the Graduate College Exam in Comnn om m it raduate College Faculty Representative 11 ABSTRACT “perpetual movement, and a border of mystery”: The Transatlantic Imagined Community and Henry James’ The Golden Bowl, Nancy Cunard and Negro: An Anthology, and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea by Oliver Quimby Melton Dr. Beth Rosenberg, Examination Committee Chair Associate Professor of English University of Nevada, Las Vegas Many modernist writers attempted to transcend nationality but are ultimately unable to do so because of an unyielding fact of post-eighteenth century existence; namely, that a person possesses a nationality is an unavoidable, requisite donnée of modem life. This dissertation argues that this paradox was effectively resolved in the Atlantic world, an especially active locus of modernist meta-nationality, where a dialogic, unfinalizable transatlantic “nation” or, using Benedict Anderson’s term, “imagined community” formed. This study examines three particular writers and works that frame and contribute to the development of this imagined community. First, I argue that the ideal “Anglo-Saxon total” Henry James identifies in an 1888 letter to his brother William is his vision of this transatlantic imagined community and that The Golden Bowl represents James’ most concentrated literary expression of this community. Second, I argue that Nancy Cunard finds her most appropriate national identity as a member of the transatlantic imagined community and that the text for which she is arguably most 111 remembered, Negro: An Anthology, is itself an intensively dialogic textual space that sets up an unfinalizable interaction of European, American, African, and West Indian national groups. Negro's set of unfinalizable elements, therefore, collectively suggest that the text, like Nancy Cunard, is comprehensively unfinalizable in terms of Atlantic world national identity. For this reason, I argue it is a textual representation of the transatlantic nation. Finally, I argue that Wide Sargasso Sea is a paradoxical representation of transatlantic community and colonial opposition: an incongruity that lends Wide Sargasso Sea a precise sense of historical accuracy. Representing the transatlantic nation in the late 1830s and early 1840s, Wide Sargasso Sea focuses on the Atlantic world as it developed from Empire into community, from prescribed, hegemonic, and ideologically homogeneous imperialism into self-proclaimed, populist community made up of diverse, dialogic, and unfinalizable regional constituencies. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................................iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................ vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: “NOT REAL BUT REALLY THERE” ..................... 1 CHAPTER 2 HENRY JAMES’ “BIG ANGLO-SAXON TOTAL” AND THE GOLDEN BOWL ................................................................................... 66 CHAPTER 3 “CUNARD ... UNFINISHED”: THE TRANSATLANTIC UNFINALIZABILITY OF NANCY CUNARD AND NEGRO: ......................................................................................... 135 CHAPTER 4 “WHERE IS MY COUNTRY AND WHERE DO I BELONG”: JEAN RHYS’ WIDE SARGASSO SEA AND THE EMERGENCE OF TRANSATLANTIC COMMUNITY................................................. 196 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION: TRANSATLANTICISM BEYOND ANGLO-SAXON TOTALS AND INTERNATIONAL STATES OF M IN D ....................................................................................................... 254 WORKS CITED ..................................................................................................................... 273 VITA ......................................................................................................................................... 301 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The title of this dissertation eomes from a 1908 letter Virginia Woolf wrote to her brother-in-law Clive Bell while she was drafting an early version of The Voyage Out: a letter brought to my attention by Loma Sage’s introduction to the edition of the novel listed in the references. The full quotation of the passage from which the title comes reads as follows: “Ah, it is the sea that does it! perpetual movement, and a border of mystery, solving the limits of the fields, and silencing their prose” (Woolf, The Voyage Out xii; Woolf to Clive Bell 356). As for love and thanks, they stand alongside this project as they stand alongside everything I do. Since coming to UNLV in 2001, I’ve worked closely with many in the Las Vegas community, several UNLV officials, and a good number of the UNLV English Department faculty all of whom, I fear, must have found our relationship one-sided for all the ways they’ve helped me along my way. Most generally, then, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude toward the UNLV English Department, the university at-large, and the Las Vegas valley. Having come West in 2001 at the tender age of twenty-two, these groups all help me form my own sense of place and personal identity so that now I can’t avoid thinking of this much maligned and misunderstood place as home. In short, these groups helped me imagine my own community and facilitated the transformation of unheimlich neon, dust, and social flux into the heimlich of my everyday. Special thanks are due Joseph McCullough for bringing me into the department seven years ago and for his assistance throughout my tenure here, Christopher Hudgins for his assistance in VI numerous endeavors, and Professor Dave Hickey for helping me see my way more clearly. My thanks are also due my PhD committee: Nicholas LoLordo for his peerless classroom instruction and his help with this project and Kelly Mays and Michele Tusan for their insightful comments as readers and examiners. My committee chair Beth Rosenberg has served as my advisor through two degrees now, my professor in three modernism seminars, and helped me find my way through the many rigors of graduate study as teacher and friend. In Georgia, love and thanks are due my mom and dad; my grandmother and grandfather; and my brother