Durham E-Theses Literary Incest: Intertextuality and Writing the Last Taboo in the Novels of Iris Murdoch MILLER, EMMA,VICTORIA How to cite: MILLER, EMMA,VICTORIA (2011) Literary Incest: Intertextuality and Writing the Last Taboo in the Novels of Iris Murdoch, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1400/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 „Literary Incest‟: Intertextuality and Writing the Last Taboo in the Novels of Iris Murdoch Emma Victoria Miller A thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Studies 2011 1 Table of Contents Declaration, statement of copyright and acknowledgements......................................3 Abstract............................................................................................................................4 Introduction.....................................................................................................................5 Chapter One: „A Voice of One‟s Own‟: Possessing the Female Narrative in The Unicorn (1963)................................................................................................................28 i. Iris Murdoch and women‘s liberation.................................................................30 ii. The female myth..................................................................................................34 iii. Christianity and female archetypes.....................................................................39 iv. Oppression, subjugation, and sexuality...............................................................53 v. The Time of the Angels, the Marquis de Sade and the new liberalism of the 1960s................................................................................................................................69 Chapter Two: „The Mad Man in the Attic‟: Playing with Gendered Literary Identity as Object and Muse ........................................................................................83 i. Murdoch‘s imprisoned women: female infantilisation in the twentieth century ............................................................................................................................84 ii. Re-writing the mythic female through Victorian literature: vampire or victim?.............................................................................................................................90 iii. Parent and child narratives and the family romance..........................................103 iv. Re-reading Murdoch‘s The Good Apprentice through A.S. Byatt‘s The Children‘s Book.............................................................................................................118 v. The ‗mad‘ other and the late twentieth century literary imagination...............120 vi. Overcoming the ‗other‘.....................................................................................128 2 Chapter Three: The Philosopher’s Pupil: “The Romantic Side of Familiar Things”?.......................................................................................................................135 i. The Philosopher‘s Pupil, Jane Eyre and Bleak House .....................................135 ii. Gender and narrative style.................................................................................141 iii. Incest and re-writing the nineteenth century.....................................................151 iv. A dual focussed narrative..................................................................................155 v. Morality in The Philosopher‘s Pupil: a novel ‗beyond good and evil‘?.........167 vi. The wider significance of The Philosopher‘s Pupil..........................................174 Chapter Four: The Literary Inheritance of Iris Murdoch‟s „Enchanter Figures‟.........................................................................................................................185 i. Iris Murdoch, Romanticism and the Byronic....................................................187 ii. Iris Murdoch‘s interpretation of the Byronic hero and the buried text...........191 iii. ―Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell‖ (Paradise Lost, Book IV. l. 95): The Murdochian enchanter figure and the conflict between good and evil.........................211 iv. The enchanter figure in Arthurian myth and legend..........................................216 Conclusion: Iris Murdoch and the novel as the “great hall of reflection”.............234 Works Cited ................................................................................................................241 3 Declaration No material in this thesis has been previously submitted for a degree at this or any other University. The work is solely that of the author, Emma Victoria Miller, under the supervision of Professor Patricia Waugh. An excerpt from Chapter Two, in an earlier form, has been published as ―‗The Mad Man in the Attic‘: Playing with Gendered Literary Identity as Object and Muse in Iris Murdoch‘s The Good Apprentice and The Message to the Planet,‖ Play, spec. issue Forum 2 (2008): 1-19. ˂http://forum.llc.ed.ac.uk/si2/miller.pdf˃. An additional excerpt from Chapter Two, in an earlier version, has been published as ―Re-reading H.G. Wells‘ Social Agenda in Ann-Veronica through A.S. Byatt‘s The Children‘s Book: Male Fantasy or Feminist Revolutionary?‖ The Wellsian 33 (2010): 72-85. Statement of Copyright The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author‘s prior written consent. All information derived from this thesis must be acknowledged appropriately. Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Patricia Waugh, and the Department of English Studies at Durham University for their help and guidance. I also wish to thank my family for their support. 4 Abstract Throughout her literary oeuvre Iris Murdoch displayed a preoccupation with the theme of incest, a consideration which has not previously been examined in a full length critical study. Her portrayal of the incest taboo is examined here in relation to incest as an abusive practice, which is the predominant image of the subject throughout her fiction. Examining the changes in scientific and cultural attitudes to incest in the post- war era, this thesis explores Murdoch‘s literary interaction with these developments and how her writing reflects and challenges the social perspective contemporaneous with her individual works. The argument is concerned with the relationship between intertextuality and incest in Murdoch‘s fiction and how she utilises an intertextual approach to confront dominant literary trends within the Western canon, occasioning the reader to reconsider the views presented by well-known literary and cultural narratives and their modes of expression. The examination of other ‗texts‘ is not limited to the written word but to any art object which conveys a culturally recognised narrative and which relates to her presentation of the incest taboo. Incest was brought to the public forum partly by the second wave of feminism and the revelation of incest abuse coincided with the public recognition of child abuse more generally and thereby occasioned concern over the rights of children. Accordingly, therefore, this thesis focuses on the impact of a history of patriarchal domination on the suppression of women and children, and how this has affected the ability for incest victims to find a means of expression within a language, and therefore a literary culture, defined and designed by others. Murdoch is approached here through her concern with gendered stories and gendered means of communication, not in order to privilege one sex over the other but, anticipating third-wave feminism, employing them as a means to dispense with sexual difference and sexual expectations, in order to reach an androgynous narrative. Such literary concerns can be seen to draw not only from a process of the cultural evolution of narratives, but also out of the wider literary sphere, to affect social change. 5 Introduction Iris Murdoch had a prolific writing career, the author of over forty-eight published works of philosophy, literary and social criticism, poetry, drama; and of course twenty- six works of fiction, most of which have received both critical and commercial success. Her novel writing career commenced in 1954 with the publication of Under the Net, and reached its conclusion in 1995 with Jackson‘s Dilemma. Although her fiction considers a wide variety of themes and issues, she repeatedly returns to the theme of incest, a consideration that has been well documented, but never thoroughly analysed.1 Her 1958 novel, The Bell, depicts Nick Fawley, who claims he loves his sister, Catherine, ―with a Byronic passion‖,2 surely referring to Lord