Enchanting and Disenchanted Narratives: Fairy Tales and the Short Fiction of Katherine Mansfield and DH Lawrence

TESE DE DOUTORAMENTO Departamento de Filoloxía Inglesa e Alemá Universidade de Santiago de Compostela “Enchanting and Disenchanted Narratives: Fairy Tales and the Short Fiction of Katherine Mansfield and D.H. Lawrence” Doutoranda: María Casado Villanueva Directora: Dra. Laura Mª Lojo Rodríguez Santiago de Compostela, 2013 Resumo: O obxectivo desta tese é examinar o papel desempeñado polo conto de fadas tradicional na narrativa curta de dous autores modernistas, Katherine Mansfield e D.H. Lawrence, como parte dunha práctica intertextual que enriquece o significado dos seus textos. Pártese da hipótese de que tanto os modelos narrativos coma os motivos recorrentes do chamado “conto de fadas literario” proporcionaron un sistema de referencias fértil para Mansfield e Lawrence a pesares da intención explícita de moitos autores modernistas de desvincular o relato curto de formas tradicionais de narración. Atendendo ás interpretacións que enfoques estructuralistas, psicanalíticos, feministas e historicistas fan do conto de fadas, esta tese analiza unha serie de relatos de ambos autores demostrando que Mansfield e Lawrence usan elementos herdados do conto de fadas a través de estratexias discursivas diferentes que revelan preocupacións éticas e estéticas individuais. Mansfield amosa ser consciente dos valores ideolóxicos inscrito nos contos, que critica mediante a parodia, mentres que Lawrence explota as súas imaxes e dimensión fantástica para articular a súa complexa visión das relacións humanas e do lugar do individuo no universo. Resumen: El objetivo de esta tesis es examinar el papel desempeñado por el cuento de hadas tradicional en la narrativa breve de dos autores modernistas, Katherine Mansfield y D.H. Lawrence, como parte de una práctica intertextual que enriquece el significado de sus textos. Se parte de la hipótesis de que tanto los modelos narrativos como los motivos recurrentes del llamado “cuento de hadas literario” proporcionaron un sistema de referencias fértil para Mansfield y Lawrence a pesar de la intención explícita de muchos autores modernistas de desvincular el relato breve de formas tradicionales de narración. Atendiendo a las interpretaciones que enfoques estructuralistas, psicoanalíticos, feministas e historicistas hacen del cuento de hadas, esta tesis analiza un corpus de relatos de ambos autores y demuestra que Mansfield y Lawrence usan elementos heredados del cuento de hadas a través de estrategias discursivas diferentes que revelan preocupaciones éticas y estéticas individuales. Mansfield demuestra ser consciente de los valores ideológicos inscritos en los cuentos y los critica mediante la parodia. Lawrence explota las imágenes y dimensión fantástica de los cuentos para articular su compleja visión de las relaciones humanas y el lugar del individuo en el universo. Abstract: This dissertation aims to explore the relevance of intertextual references to the fairy tale in the short fiction of two modernist authors, Katherine Mansfield and D.H. Lawrence. This study’s point of departure is the hypothesis that both the narrative models and the recurrent motifs of the literary fairy tale provided both authors with a rich system of references despite the fact that most modernist authors attempted to detach the short story from traditional forms of narration. This dissertation analyses a corpus of short fairy tale-related narratives taking into consideration structuralist, psychoanalytic, feminist and historicist approaches to the study of fairy tales. The evidence that the textual analysis provides shows that Mansfield and Lawrence deploy fairy tale elements with different discursive strategies which reveal individual ethic and aesthetic concerns. Mansfield shows an awareness of the ideological values inscribed in the tales and criticises them through parody, whereas Lawrence tends to exploit their imagery and fantastic dimension to articulate his complex views on human relationships and the place of the individual in the universe. Acknowledgements: I have benefited from the support and advice of many people during the process of writing this thesis. I specially want to express my gratitude to Dr. Laura María Lojo Rodríguez, for her expert guidance and sustained encouragement and to Dr. Jorge Sacido Romero for his academic input. Finally, I would also like to thank Dr. Laura Marcus of the University of Oxford, thanks to whom I was able to benefit from an extended research stay in the UK. i TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... iii PART I: CRITICAL, LITERARY AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ............. 1 Chapter 1- Fairy Tales: History and Critical Approaches ..................................... 2 Chapter 2- The Fairy Tale and the Modernist Short Story .................................. 18 Chapter 3- Intertextuality, Modernism and the Fairy Tale ................................. 43 3.1 Intertextuality: An Overview ........................................................................... 43 3.2 Modernism and Tradition ................................................................................. 57 3.3 Parodic Uses of Intertextuality ......................................................................... 70 3.4 The Politics of Modernism ............................................................................... 77 Chapter 4- Katherine Mansfield, D.H. Lawrence and the Fairy Tale ................. 84 4.1. Katherine Mansfield and the Fairy Tale. The Notebooks and Letters. ........... 84 4.2. D.H. Lawrence: Novellas, an Early Legend and Some Fables ..................... 103 PART II: TEXTUAL ANALYSIS ............................................................................ 116 Chapter 5- From Ritual to Romance: Different Appropriations of Cinderella 117 5.1 From the Ashes of an Old Self: D.H. Lawrence’s “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter”. ............................................................................................................ 117 5.2 Princeless Cinderellas: Katherine Mansfield’s “The Tiredness of Rosabel”, “Her First Ball” and “The Child who was Tired” ................................................ 137 Chapter 6- Across Dangerous Woods: Parodying Little Red Riding Hood ....... 158 6.1 “The Little Red Governess”: Mansfield and the Gender Ideology of Fairy Tales .............................................................................................................................. 158 6.2. Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf: D.H. Lawrence’s “The Princess” .................... 179 ii Chapter 7- Lessons from the Nursery: the Abandoned Child ........................... 201 7.1. Children and Fairy Tales ............................................................................... 201 7.2 The Romantic Image of the Child .................................................................. 212 7.3. The Death of the Child .................................................................................. 224 7.4. A New Image of the Child ............................................................................. 229 7.5. “Sun and Moon”, “A Suburban Fairy Tale” and “The Rocking Horse Winner” as Anti-Tales ......................................................................................................... 244 Chapter 8- Unexpected Awakenings: the Motif of Sleeping Beauty .................. 252 8.1. Bare Fingers and Sleeping “Beaus”: D.H Lawrence “The Thimble” and “The Lovely Lady” ........................................................................................................ 252 8.2. Sleeping Beauty Dreams about the Distaff: Katherine Mansfield’s “Sleeping Characters” ........................................................................................................... 283 CONCLUSIONS ......................................................................................................... 301 Works Cited ...………………………………………………………………………...311 iii INTRODUCTION The delight we experience when we allow ourselves to respond to a fairy tale, the enchantment we feel, comes not from the psychological meaning of the tale […] but from its literary qualities — the tale itself as a work of art. (Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment 1976) The captivating power of fairy tales which Bruno Bettelheim extols in his landmark study on the topic seems evident in contemporary culture, both in the profusion of popular manifestations of the fairy tale (such as films, television series, and the visual arts) and in the significant position that these occupy in present academic research and university syllabuses. In recent decades, rewriting fairy tales and reutilising their conventions has become an increasingly common practice associated with the aesthetics of postmodernism: Angela Carter, A.S. Byatt, Margaret Atkinson, Jeannette Winterson, Rikki Ducornet, Robert Coover, Alison Lurie, Joan Aitken, Tanith Lee and Ursula Leguin are just a few of the contemporary authors who have recurrently engaged in the task of fairy tale writing and re-interpretation. An unprecedented amount of recent criticism assesses the role of these postmodern fairy tales, while also discussing those texts which, in most cases, constitute the primary source of these re-elaborations: the work of Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm Brothers among other writers and compilers has also become the object of current evaluation and research. Thus, many folklorists today attempt to examine formal and ideological features present in the oral versions of these narratives which the first fairy tale writers reproduced and transformed, and they do so from a variety of perspectives which transcend the traditional structuralist approaches. From the nineteen sixties onwards, iv psychoanalysis, new historicism and feminism have supplemented and often also amended the thesis of the former, and most current research is characterised by a poststructuralist scepticism on notions like “universality” or “authenticity”. Nowadays, Christina Bacchilega, Jack Zipes, Maria Tatar and Marina Warner, to name a few, are among the most renowned critics who have devoted a number of studies to the fairy tale and its postmodern manifestations. A large number of these studies primarily rests upon the idea that intertextuality is a significant feature of the postmodernist text, as well as upon the notion that reinterpreting, rewriting, subverting, and parodying are eminently postmodern practices. Departing from the attention which recent critical discourse has paid to rewriting as a postmodern practice, this dissertation aims to use those methodological approaches to analyse the work of two modernist authors who shared a fascination for “enchanting” images and plots drawn from the traditional fairy tale: Katherine Mansfield and D.H. Lawrence. The point of departure and the general hypothesis which has guided our research is the assumption that the analysis of fairy tale elements opens up new critical possibilities in reading and reassessing the literary practice of these authors. In view of this, our analysis aims to prove that the High Modernist short narratives by Katherine Mansfield and D.H. Lawrence cannot be fully understood if the relevance of fairy tale elements core to them is neglected. In this sense, this dissertation foregrounds the significance of the textual interplay between the fairy tale, commonly intertwined with forms of oral and popular discourse, and the Modernist story—most often associated with high brow literary experimentation. Indeed, the early twentieth century was a convulsive historical moment which witnessed a general concern to challenge authority and the values of Western culture, as well as most tenants which had formerly articulated Victorian thought, as Virginia v Woolf put it in “Hours in a Library” (1916), whose essay title both draws and departs from the Victorian inheritance which her father, Leslie Stephen, represented: “No age of literature is so little submissive to authority as ours, so free from the dominion of the great; none seems so wayward with its gift for reverence, or so volatile in its experiments” (1987:59). Modernist aesthetics entailed an awareness of the need of new forms of art to represent a new understanding of time and space, as well as a new appraisal of the individual as fragmented subject, which psychoanalytic studies have more recently brought to the fore. Initially, the alleged elitist concern of Modernism with formal experimentation seems to be at odds with the use of traditional narratives like the fairy tale, which stems from oral story telling to subsequently become a didactic tool for children and young women in need of moral counsel and instruction, configuring narratives which are most often produced and/or voiced by female narrators, as Marina Warner observes: “‘Mere old wives’ tales carry connotations of error, of false counsel, ignorance, prejudice and fallacious nostrums —against heartbreak as well as headache; similarly, ‘fairy tale’, as a derogatory term, implies fantasy, escapism, invention, the unreliable consolations of romance” (1994:19). In this sense, Jaqueline Rose distinguishes the style of fairy tales from what she calls “modern adult writing”, highlighting the fact that fairy tales hold more similarities with the Victorian Novel in their “realism of character”, and “the non-obtrusiveness of the narrative voice” (1993: 65). For Rose, both fairy tales and Victorian novels represent the type of writing which modernist experiments seek to destroy, since “above all, they are the supreme embodiments of a ‘sense of story’” (1993:65). How then can the tendency of the modernist narrative towards inner action, towards the implied, the invisible and the unsaid, be combined with the epic character which Max Lüthi defined vi as characteristic of fairy tales, and which “strives for visibility” ? (1976: 56) How can the modernist penchant for subjective portrayal and inner projection in descriptions and settings coalesce with the fairy tale’s eminently narrative character? Which role does a traditional genre like the fairy tale play within this turmoil of aesthetic renewal? These are some of the questions this dissertation aims to answer by looking into Mansfield and Lawrence’s fairy tale-inspired narratives. By no means does my work suggest that the borrowing and re-elaboration of fairy tale motifs and conventional folk plots is as significant in the so-called “High Modernism” as in what is widely understood as Postmodernism. However, this dissertation aims to highlight that the practice of intertextuality, parody and re-interpretation which the rewriting of fairy tales entails is also deeply ingrained in the essence of some modernist texts, and that fairy tales play a relevant role in the process of the cultural appropriation of the modernists. Paradoxically, the intertextual practice entailed in the utilisation of ancient and classical myths which James Joyce’s and T.S. Eliot’s works epitomise has been widely acknowledged as part of the modernist literary practice and has received large critical attention. Similarly, W.B. Yeats’ return to the Irish folk tradition has been often regarded as intrinsic to his literary ethos and to his quest for a national identity. In a similar vein, the textual evidence which this dissertation entails proves that the classical fairy tale —those plots with which almost every individual in the Western world has become familiar since early childhood— reverberates as a key influence in the work of Mansfield and Lawrence. Moreover, and as the title of the dissertation suggests, it is our stand that fairy tale motifs are especially apt to convey a general feeling of disenchantment which pervaded the beginning of the twentieth century, as Max Weber summarised in 1918: “The fate of our times is characterised by rationalization and intellectualization, and, xiii are here deployed to draw formal connections between well-known fairy tale plots and the modernist narratives under inspection. However, Lawrence’s reliance on the symbol to put forward his philosophical ideas is articulated, in many cases, through the use of fairy tale motifs which can be fruitfully interpreted in the light of psychoanalysis. The socio-historical approach to the ways folk oral tales had been discursively shaped to suit a civilising function is also crucial to understand the authors’ awareness of the ideological content inscribed in the hypotexts deployed. Similarly, approaches to the fairy tale provided by some feminist scholars prove apt to analyse Mansfield’s deliberate subversion of fairy tale plots to lay bare the social mechanisms which perpetuate gender difference. The second chapter addresses issues concerning the short story genre, a narrative form which was consolidated over the modernist period as a suitable means to express the experience shaped by new modes of perceiving and accounting for the world, as Valerie Shaw (1992:5) and Dominique Head (1992:1), among others, have pointed out. As is widely known, many modernist writers used the short story as a field for literary experimentation, and such practice often predates similar achievements in novel form, as is the case with James Joyce’s Dubliners (1914) or Virginia Woolf’s Monday or Tuesday (1921), to name just a few. In addition to this, this chapter also revisits samples of critical discourses which regard Modernist fiction as completely detached from traditional narrative forms, and questions such views by discussing the short story’s suitability for textual interplay with the fairy tale. The chapter also reassesses the features of the short story genre as defined by early critics such as Edgar Alan Poe (1842) and Brander Mathews (1901) in the light of the ideas of contemporary critics such as Adrian Hunter (2007) or Paul March-Russell (2009). xiv The third chapter focuses on Julia Kristeva’s notion of intertextuality and on its related literary strategies, which we take as closely related to a particular understanding of modernist literary practice. As a result, intertextual theory and practice prove essential to understand the textual relations established between the chosen corpus of modernist texts and the fairy tale. Thus, some of the premises exposed by Julia Kristeva, Mikhail Bakhtin, Gerard Genette, and Roland Barthes will be used in order to determine the different ways in which Lawrence and Mansfield’s short stories integrate fairy tale elements. Bakhtin’s general appraisal of the notion of intertextuality, conceived of as the confluence of several ideological discourses within a text, will help to show how the deployment of fairy tale conventions creates a number of implicit expectations and contributes to complicate the interpretation of a text. In close connection to this, Barthes’s notion of doxa and of its counterpart paradoxa (1977b:157–158) are essential to understand how the inclusion of opposing discourses contributes to question assumed conventions, while also helping the authors to articulate their critical views. Furthermore, Genette’s classification of text relations (1997a:26), although sometimes limiting, will be relevant, for he provides a technical tool to methodically approach the integration of fairy tale elements in modernist stories. The critical production of Deborah Tiffin (2009), Jack Zipes (1991) and De Caro and Jordan (2004) —more specifically those works focusing on textual connections between traditional tales and various literary genres— will complement and concretise the general perspectives on intertextuality above mentioned. This section will also reflect on the role of intertextuality during the modernist period, and on the relevant notion of “tradition” as understood by T.S. Eliot and reassessed by Harold Bloom, concluding with some considerations on the subversive capacity of parody and its significance in the context of modernism. To this particular xv purpose, Margaret A. Rose (1993) and Linda Hutcheon’s (1985) views will not only provide a useful critical tool for the analysis of the chosen texts, but will also imply an assessment of the potentially subversive dimension of modernism in the light of George Lukàcs, Frederick Jameson and Ástráður Eysteinsson’s views. The final chapter of the first section will comment on the significance of fairy tales in Mansfield and Lawrence’s life and literary development, as well as in some of the works which fall out of the scope of the textual analysis. The chapter also places the chosen corpus of texts within the wider context of each author’s work, and shows how the relevance of fairy tale elements in Mansfield and Lawrence’s literary production varies according to different stages in their personal and aesthetic development. The second section of this dissertation offers a detailed analysis of the selected texts. Since one of the aims of this dissertation is to throw light on the relationship between Mansfield and Lawrence’s writing, we have favoured a structure which allows a comparative approach by distributing the short stories under inspection into four chapters according to a dominant fairy tale motif borrowed by both authors. The “motif” has been selected as an organising criterion among other fairy tale conventions of formal or stylistic nature, since it works as a flexible notion comprising “situation[s], incident[s], idea[s], image[s], or character-type[s]” (Baldick 2008: 215) which can be easily recognised by readers. Specifically, four “character types” have been selected as major organising motifs to classify the stories under examination. These have been drawn from the most widely anthologised corpus of classical western fairy tales and have become identifiable cultural symbols: Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, the abandoned child and Sleeping Beauty. Nevertheless, this four-fold division must not be regarded as a clear-cut classifying principle, but as a helpful organising pattern which xvi will allow drawing similarities and differences between Mansfield and Lawrence’s deployment of fairy tale elements. Thus, the fifth chapter explores several stories which draw on the Cinderella or the rags-to-riches motif. We hold that Lawrence elaborates a particular version of this tale in “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” (1922) by presenting a modernist adaptation of the same plot, which primarily revolves around a change of status and an instance of spiritual regeneration. In “The Tiredness of Rosabel” (1908) and in stories such as “Her First Ball” (1921) or “The Child who was Tired” (1911), Mansfield overtly uses plot elements of the Cinderella tale, and criticises through parody some of the gender-biased values inscribed in the best-known versions of this tale. In the sixth chapter, the Little Red Riding Hood motif informs a reading of Mansfield’s “The Little Governess” (1915) and Lawrence’s “The Princess” (1925). It is our view that this motif, which epitomises the traditional plot of “virtue seduced” (Zipes 1993:125), was consciously borrowed and transformed by Mansfield to express a concern with the state of helplessness which some women suffered, as well as to denounce the tale’s ideological bias. As will be argued, Lawrence’s “The Princess” parodies the same plot by presenting a character whose prude “virtuousness” hinders her spiritual development. Both stories deal in different ways with a traumatic unwanted sexual encounter, and present a female character whose tendency to interpret the world around her in fairy tale terms brings about her downfall. The seventh chapter focuses on the treatment of the fairy tale motif of the abandoned child, which in the tales is often paired with plot developments relating to parental neglect, greed and gluttony. Lawrence’s “The Rocking-Horse Winner” (1926), and Mansfield’s “A Suburban Fairy Tale” (1919) and “Sun and Moon” (1920) are analysed in the light of the authors’ depiction of the child and their rapport to the adult xvii world. A brief survey of the literary treatment of the trope of the child and of its implications informs our reading. In their stories, Mansfield and Lawrence partly draw from traditional representations of the child inherited from the romantic period, where the child is representative of innocence in contrast to the world’s corruption. However, in these stories the regenerating power of the romantic child is lost, and little hope is left for the adult. Moreover, Mansfield, and particularly Lawrence, influenced by psychoanalytical theories on child sexuality, complicate their appraisal of the child by resorting to a new vision of children as sexualised beings capable of mirroring adult corruption. The last chapter of this dissertation deals with the Sleeping Beauty motif; the enactment of the awakening of the enchanted protagonist is used recurrently as a metaphor to articulate two notions considered fundamental in the discussions concerning the modernist short story: “paralysis” and “epiphany”. The first term —used by James Joyce to refer to the aboulia, spiritual slumber and inability to take action common to the characters of Dubliners (1914)— could be extended to the practical totality of characters in Mansfield and Lawrence’s stories at a given moment in their narratives. The second term, “epiphany”, was also used by Joyce to refer to those moments of realization and spiritual revelation brought about by seemingly inconsequential events, which render the characters’ previous understanding of the world narrow and limited. Thus, Lawrence’s “The Thimble” (written in 1915) and “The Lovely Lady” (1927), and Mansfield’s “Bliss” (1921), “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” (1922), “Psychology” (1921) and “The Garden Party” (1922) are read according to this pattern of lethargy, awakening and spiritual illumination. In both Mansfield and Lawrence’s narratives the dialogue with fairy tales takes place at several levels: from relatively obvious reinterpretations of a well-known plot — xviii as is the case with Mansfield’s “The Little Governess” or Lawrence’s “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter”— to more subtle references, such as the imagery deployed in “Sun and Moon”, “The Thimble”, or “The Garden Party”. Furthermore, some of the narratives under inspection also draw on a representation of the wonderful and fabulous, as is the case with “A Suburban Fairy Tale” or “The Rocking Horse Winner”. In most of these cases, the fabulous works a projection of the perception of a given character, for often time and space are realistically defined but idealistically perceived by a character’s subjectivity. In addition to this, many stylistic conventions of fairy tales —language, registers, vocabulary, phraseology or syntax— may also be present in the narrative. These conventions, however, will receive attention within the reading and interpretation of each particular narrative. In discursive terms, we will pay special attention to the ways in which fairy tale formulae combine with modernist techniques, thus endowing these narratives with a unique texture in Modernist writing. Mansfield and Lawrence’s treatment of the different fairy tale motifs above exposed underscores individual ethic and aesthetic preoccupations. Thus, Katherine Mansfield shows a profound knowledge of classical and literary fairy tales, as well as an awareness of their educational function and their powerful instructional nature. Mansfield often resorts to satirical rewriting as a means to counteract this dimension of the fairy tale. In this transformation of traditional fairy tale plots Mansfield seems to find a suitable means to question traditional gender roles and the object position of women in society, while also giving a more complex appraisal of reality than the one offered by the realist narrative mode. D.H Lawrence makes conscious use of the imagery and the fantastic dimension of fairy tales to articulate his complex view of human relations, the conflicts between the individual and society, as well as the xix relationship between man and nature. By digging into the mythical meaning of fairy tale tropes, Lawrence addresses obscure psychological tensions, subtly concealed in the narrative’s association with romance. His deployment of folk and fairy tale elements can be read as part of a wider project to elaborate a new mythopoeia, appropriate to the modern world. Finally, in all the stories chosen, there is a common motif which cross-cuts all chapters and which brings us back to the title of this dissertation: the moment of disenchantment or the breaking of a spell. Metaphorically speaking, spellbound characters abound in the stories under examination, and the motif is used in numerous ways. As in the Cinderella tale, a spell may be broken to the character’s dismay, who would find him or herself returning to an unpleasant world. In these cases, the reality of materialism and social inequality contrasts with an idealised perception of a beautiful, magical world. In other instances, like in the case of Sleeping Beauty, characters struggle to destroy the spell which keeps them prisoners by preventing them from leading fully satisfactory lives. In those cases, it is the materialistic society, governed by its cult of appearances, what casts a spell on the characters by confining them to a superficial existence. As this study aims to prove, fairy tale elements may be included in a story for a number of different —and often even contradictory— purposes, but the work of Lawrence and Mansfield tends to mirror a process of painful realization by recurrently presenting instances where enchantment must give way to the recognition of a modernised world which has lost part of its beauty. Thus, through the examination of the proposed motifs, this dissertation also aims to unveil Mansfield and Lawrence’s position regarding the dominant discourses of economic materialism and social xx convention by exploring how these writers articulate their criticism of society when breaking the atmosphere of enchantment which fairy tales bring to mind. In view of the above said, it is our view that both Mansfield and Lawrence use fairy tale elements to articulate a common feeling of disenchantment and a pessimistic view of their time and society. The disillusion created by these social circumstances frequently manifests itself in inconclusive narratives, which diverge from the round, happy endings which are characteristic of most fairy tales. At the same time, both Mansfield and Lawrence found the aesthetic possibilities of the fairy tale particularly appealing, especially the lyricism of its language and the multidimensionality of its symbols. By resorting to fairy tales, these writers suggest alternative forms of captivating the reader through embellishing perspectives in narratives which are both enchanting and disenchanted. PART I: CRITICAL, LITERARY AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 2 CHAPTER 1 FAIRY TALES: HISTORY AND CRITICAL APPROACHES This chapter aims to offer an overview of the various theoretical approaches to the fairy tale from the moment it became the object of scholarly concern at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This concern responded to an interest in comparative studies which sought to establish similar patterns in narratives across cultures Discussions about fairy tales comprise a wide range of conceptual perspectives and methodologies which are not only contingent on the varying socio-cultural and critical backgrounds where they are formulated. They are also determined by ideological and philosophical assumptions about the socialising role of literature, the relationships between language and the individual and between text and reader. This complexity is precisely what renders the task of defining fairy tale extremely difficult. Moreover, there seems to be a certain reluctance on the part of fairy tale readers to exhaustive analyses of the genre, may be because “by dissecting the fairy tale, one might destroy its magic, and it appears that this magic has something to do with the blessed realm of childhood and innocence” (Zipes 2000: xv). Before outlining some of the features which have served to define the genre known as “fairy tale”, a brief exposition of the approaches which have contributed to the development of the academic study of the fairy tale is justified since their tenants will be essential for our reading of the selected corpus of modernist texts. The exhaustive study of oral tales, together with other aspects of culture, was the object of many folklorists during the nineteenth century. The striking similarities found in the folk and fairy tales of very different literary traditions led scholars to wonder about the cause of such coincidences. Two hypothesis were considered: the “independent invention”, which would suggest the spontaneous emergence of certain plots in contexts 9 versions and which could serve as defining features of the genre. The first is the central role of a process of transformation inscribed within the plot. This transformation may refer to instances of social mobility, changes in the status and economic situation of the characters, or the fulfilment of the wish or lack which triggered the action of the fairy tale. These transformations may also be accompanied by physical metamorphoses. In general, success is dependant on the protagonist’s ability to “retain a belief in the miraculous condition of nature” (2000: xviii-xix), a capacity related to naïveté and humbleness. As will be shown throughout this dissertation, transformation is a key concept in terms of character development for most of the stories under inspection. At times, transformation is literal, like little B’s metamorphosis into a bird, in Mansfield’s “A Suburban Fairy Tale” (1921); other times it is metaphorical, like Pauline’s physical decay in Lawrence’s “The Lovely Lady” (1923), and sometimes it is an inner or psychological process, as undergone by the Hepburns in “The Thimble” (1917). The second element which the fairy tale inherited from the oral folktale is the motive of the pursuit of a homely place which endows the tales with a “utopian spirit”. Although both features, transformation and “utopia”, may seem to instil fairy tales with a liberating power allowing peasants to become kings and tailors to marry princesses, Zipes’ socio-historical perspective also focuses on the acculturating value ascribed to the oral folk tales. They often represent “initiatory ordeals” and are samples of “responsible adventures” (1994:2). Zipes takes up Mircea Eliade’s idea that folk tales are secular versions of initiation myths (1963), and explores the implications of this assumption. Thus, according to Zipes, folk tales, like myths, would contribute to the processes of “repression” and “sublimation” necessary to establishment of culture (1994:4). 6 This relation between fairy tale and myth will be important to analyse the 6 Repression and sublimation are key concepts borrowed from Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. They are defence mechanisms of the mind necessary to live in a civilised society. They entail, 10 work of D.H. Lawrence, whose approach to fairy tales is in many cases governed by a desire to divest them from flowery romance and a Manichean interpretation of the world. Thus, Lawrence opposes the artificiality of the fairy tales to the authenticity of the arcane symbols provided by the myth. Nevertheless, according to Zipes, folk tales also represent an alternative expression to the authoritative voice of the myth: “Individual imaginations were countering the codified myths of a tribe or society that celebrated the power of gods with other ‘non-authoritative’ tales of their own that called upon and transformed the supernatural into magical and mysterious forces which could change their lives” (1994:3). Therefore, at the very core of the oral folktale lays an ambiguous combination of both subversive and socialising potential which is not completely obliterated in the transformation from the oral to the literary. This paradoxical nature of the fairy tale needs to be taken into account in our analysis of fairy tale allusions. Moreover, in the process of collecting and writing down oral tales, the authors tended to complicate their plots and embellish their language as well as to introduce references to religion, literature and social customs (2000:xx). Zipes insists on the relativity of fairy tale meaning and their dependence on those social institutions which have appropriated the genre through history. Giving a Marxist turn to the theories of Nitschke (1976–7), Kahlo (1954), and Scherf (1961, 1982, 1986), who had focused on the functions of the folk tale in precapitalist societies, Zipes examines the changing ideologies that fairy tales convey in different socio-historical contexts. 7 Politics and class struggle have determined the historical origin of both folk and fairy tales. One of respectively , the control an channelling of sexual drives into the achievement socially acceptable goals, in art, science, poetry, etc. (Freud 2004 [1930]). 7 August Nitschke (1976–7) underlines the significance of time perception and self-arrangement for the organization of societies and communities through history. This temporal-corporeal arrangement determines a dominant activity which derives in specific attitudes towards work, education, social organization or death. Folk tales reflect if the status of such arrangements was regarded immutable or if possibilities of social change were possible. 11 Zipes’ main concerns is how the fairy tale attained an important socialising value; he points out how “almost all critics who have studied the emergence of the literary fairy tale in Europe agree that educated writers purposely appropriated the oral folktale and converted it into a type of literary discourse about mores, values and manners” (1991:3). Zipes is especially interested in who writes down the fairy tale and with which intention, as well as in the reasons which made certain fairy tales recur more than others in rewritings up to our time. 8 The fairy tale is, from this perspective, viewed “as a symbolic act infused by the ideological viewpoint of the individual author” (1991:3). For Zipes, the most crucial process of appropriation and adaptation of folk material to serve specific socialising aims took place at the beginning of the eighteenth century in France. The cultural influence exerted by this country over the period of the Enlightenment explains that French models were adopted all over Europe by fairy tale writers (2000: xiii). Already by the end of the seventeenth century, through publishing and diffusion in the literary salons, the works of Charles Perrault and female writers such as Mme d’Aulnoy, Mme d’Auneuil and Mme de Murat among others contributed to legitimise the genre as proper for the educated classes. These stories drew on material from the oral folk tradition but also from the Italian literary fairy tales such as Giambattista Basile’s Lo cunto delli cunti (1634-6), and later from stories from the Far East popularised through the translation of The Arabian Nights by Antoine Galland (1704–17). In these French authors’ endeavour there was an explicit attempt to vindicate the validity of the fairy tale as a “modern 8 In his later work, Zipes analyses the reasons why specific versions of specific stories are deeply ingrained in the social discourse. He takes up Richard Dawkins’ (2006) notion of meme as “cultural artefact that acts as cultural replicator or adaptor and manages to inhabit our brains” (Zipes 2009: 88). Thus, fairy tales act as memes in that they “indicate[s] something about our genetically and culturally determined behaviour and our adaptive interactions with our environment within a historical process” (115). 12 genre” as opposed to classical myths (xxii). 9 Indeed, contemporary scholars have started to look back at the literary quality of the fairy tale work developed at that stage, what Jean-Paul Sermain has called “the most advanced literary venture of the period” (2005:8). It was also at that time that the newly institutionalised genre started to be known as conte de fees or fairy tale, even if fairies were not always involved in the plot. The work of these authors also paved the way to the instrumentalization of the genre with educative purposes, a role which it still performs today. These developments go in line with a new consideration of childhood and the child characteristic of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. The publication of Le Magasin des Enfants (1743) by Mme le Prince de Beaumont, contributed to the popularization of the fairy tale for children as narratives which served to illustrate a moral reflection and served to “reinforce notions of property, especially proper sex roles” (Zipes 2000:xxiii). Debates over the propriety of fairy tales and fantasy in literature for the formation of the child’s soul did not affect the popularity of the genre. Moreover, collection and publication of folk and fairy tales proliferated all over Europe, becoming a celebration of national character in countries like Germany, whose contribution to the genre was especially significant over the Romantic period. 10 The work of the brothers Grimm, fuelled by the romantic belief in 9 The texts produced over the period, often neglected by the critics for being considered marginal in relation to French canonical literature, are currently receiving scholarly attention also in terms of their poetics (Citton 2006: 549). Thus, Jean-Paul Sermain (2005) focuses on the status of the literary fairy tale as a genuinely modern genre with specific literary and linguistic properties whose ambivalent meaning renders a completely “original worldview that the other fictional genres cannot express” (184). 10 The work of the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, linguists and cultural researches, is the most popular in the terrain of fairy tale collection and transformation among German romantic intellectuals. The brothers published a collection of 86 German fairy tales in a volume titled Kinder- und Hausmärchen in 1812 and a second volume in 1814 with a total of 156 stories. A second edition, published between 1819 and 1922, added fourteen stories. Zipes states: “When the second edition of the tales […] was published, and Wilhelm assumed complete charge of the revisions, the brothers had established the form and manner through which they wanted to preserve, contain and present to the German public what they felt were profound truths about the origins of German culture and European civilization” (2002b:32). Five more editions appeared during their lifetime altering the number and quality of the stories. Often the changes were due to negative reviews from those who considered the tales inappropriate for children. 13 the need of collecting the “voice of the folk” as a manifestation of national identity, was just the beginning of a trend which spread throughout the whole of Europe. 11 Besides, the fairy tale of this period fulfilled different functions according to the audiences it was addressed to, manifesting in different ways its ambivalent character. Fairy tales for adults started to be used as vindications of the power of imagination against the tyranny of Reason represented by the Enlightenment, and as exaltations of the individual against society (Zipes 2000:xxiv). Although fairy tales for children were sanitised of bawdy elements (the differences found between the various editions of the Brothers Grimm’s tales are a paradigmatic example of this process), towards the beginning of the nineteenth century bourgeois society progressively started to accept the use of fantasy and wonder as something enriching in education. From the eighteen thirties the genre for children was fully developed and combined morals with entertainment. By the middle of the century, the subversion of the best-known fairy tales, including their motifs and structure was not a rare practice (xvii). One of the examples of fairy tale subversion with which both Mansfield and Lawrence were familiar was Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice Found There published in 1865 and 1871 respectively. Carroll’s fairy tale parody, crowded with political and philosophical references exploiting the aesthetics of the “nonsense” literature, became extremely popular in its time and it continues to be a source of inspiration for books and films as well as material of scholarly interest. Juliet Dusinberre in Alice to the Lighthouse: Children’s Books and Radical Experiments in arts (1987) holds the view that there is a 11 In Norway Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe published their Norske Folkeeventyr (Norwegian Folktales) between 1841 and 1844. Jospeh Jacobs gathered and published a number of collections of English and Celtic fairy tales between 1890 and 1912. Between 1860 and 1862 the Scottish and specialist in Celtic culture John Francis Campbell edited Popular Tales of the West Highlands. More than six hundred Russian tales were collected and edited by Aleksander Afanasiev in Russia between 1855 and 1863. Similarly, Vuk Stefanoviĉ Karadjiĉ’s efforts contributed to the conservation of the oral tales in Serbia, and in Romania Petre Ispirescu gathered and published in 1874 his Legende sau Basmele Românilor. 14 dialogue between these innovative narratives and the modernist and avant garde literary culture: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries children’s books and writing about children provided the soil from which Sons and Lovers, À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, and My Ántonia, The Voyage Out, To the Lighthouse and The Waves all sprang. […] Radical experiments in the arts in the early modern period began in the books which Lewis Carroll and his successors wrote for children (5). Subsequently, the turn of the century witnessed the full integration of the fairy tale in the capitalist market. Thus, Ann Martin states that: In the modern era […] [f]airy tales are present in almost every textual form imaginable: chapbooks, bound collections, scholarly anthologies, novels, paintings, pantomimes, scripts, libretti, jokes and popular metaphors […] These versions are augmented in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries by films, cartoons, comics, mass produced books, and advertisements. (Martin 2006:15) 12 Nevertheless, this period also saw the fairy tale rise in importance as an instrument of contestation both for adults and children. From then on “the aesthetics of each literary fairy tale will depend on how and why an individual writer wants to intervene in the discourse of the genre as institution” (Zipes 2000: xviii). Therefore, new critical approaches to the fairy tale proliferated. From the seventies, feminist theory explicitly pointed at the patriarchal ideology inscribed in most fairy tales and the relevance of their function in the configuration of gender at an early age. This is the case of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s readings (1979). For Christina Bacchilega the fairy tale is a “powerful discourse which produces representations of gender” (1997:9). However, most of these authors also focus on a liberating dimension associated with the genre. Marina Warner highlights the ambiguous power of the fairy tale focusing on the role of women as story-tellers and therefore creative agents in the narrative process (1994) and Bacchilega underlines the subversive power of rewriting: “While this play of 12 In the thirties began what Zipes calls “the most significant ‘revolution’ in the institution of the fairy tale”: Walt Disney’s animated versions (2000:xxx). 15 reflection, and framing might produce ideologically ‘destructive’, ‘constructive’ and ‘subversive’ effects, the self-reflexive mirrors themselves are questioned and transformed” (1997: 23-4). Current readings of the fairy tale also put an emphasis on the subversive role of magic and wonder. The fantastic element, directly inherited from the folk tale, contests the world of reality. As Warner observes, “all the wonders that create the atmosphere of the Fairy Tale disrupt the apprehensible world in order to open spaces for dreaming alternatives” (1994: xvi). Bacchilega points out that “the tale of magic produces wonder precisely through its seductively concealed exploitation of the conflict between the normative and the subversive wonder which magnifies the powers of transformation” (1997:7). Furthermore, as we mentioned above, magic helps to make of the fairy tale a suitable narrative for the expression of the unconscious. This gives rise to psychoanalytic insights beyond those of Freud and Bettelheim. As Rosemary Jackson points out, fantasy hints at the absences within the social as well as the symbolic order (1981:4). Lucie Armitt underlines how behind the seemingly happy endings of the fairy tales there is something uncanny, expression of the unknown and unknowable (1996:39). Similarly, Zipes observes that although Freud had ruled out fairy tales as expressions of the uncanny because they require an assumption of an animistic system of beliefs (2003[1919]:153), in the fairy tale the uncanny is present in and manifests itself in the “very act of reading” since “it separates the reader form the restrictions of reality from the outset and makes the repressed unfamiliar familiar once again” (Zipes 1991:174). Ceri Sullivan and Barbara White (1999) make a historical reading of fantasy highlighting how “forms of the fantastic are contingent on the historical and political circumstances surrounding human agents” (2). As Zipes puts it: “All fantasies, by virtue 16 of the secondary worlds they conceive, contain and implicit socio-political critique or confirmation of the world in which we live” (1984–5:90). A very productive concept for our study is that of “anti-tale”, first formulated by André Jolles in Einfache Formen (1930). 13 For Jolles, the moral governing fairy tales does not follow an ethic of behaviour but what he calls “die naive Moral” (the naïve moral), a form of pure ethics neither utilitarian nor hedonistic, nor determined by religion: an instinctive ability to differentiate good from bad. This is in contradiction with the rules operating in the immoral world of reality. He defines this world as “tragic” on those occasions when “it should be what cannot be, or when it cannot be what should be” [translation mine]. 14 Jolles conceives the world of naïve morality and the tragic world as two spheres in opposition and thinks that: Therefore, one can expect that two [narrative] forms may derive from these two conceptions and that, besides the narrative in which the things are in order, and in which the principles of the naïve moral are followed, we could find another narrative in which the immoral world, the world of the tragic, is intensified —to put it shortly: there must be an Antitale. In fact, that is the case. (Jolles 1968:241-242 [translation mine]). 15 Jolles highlights the fact that the antitale is not a modern invention but is contemporary to the oldest known examples of fairy tale collections (242). Initially, the term antitale, was used to refer to those stories which have a tragic ending instead of the traditional happy one, but the term is nowadays often used to refer to more modern rewritings of fairy tales that “stress the more negative scenes or motifs, since they appear to be more realistic reflections of the problems of modern society” (Haase 2008:50). This concept proves especially useful because it does not refer to a form in 13 Under the term “einfache Formen” or “simple forms” Jolles categorises eight simple or preliterary forms of folk narrative which include myth, the saga, the legend, the joke, the “memorabile”, the case and the fairy tale. 14 “…wenn sein muß, was nicht sein kann, oder: wenn nicht sein kann, was sein muß.” 15 “Man könnte nun erwarten, daß aus dieser zweifach gerichteten Wirksamkeit der Geistesbeschäftigung sich auch zwei Formen ergeben würden, daß wir neben der Form, in der der Lauf der Dinge so geordnet ist, daß sie den Anforderungen der naiven Moral völlig entsprechen, eine Form finden würden, in der die naiv unmoralische Welt, die Welt des Tragischen, sich verdichtet - kurz es muß ein Antimärchen geben. In der Tat ist dies wirklich der Fall.” 17 outward opposition to what is understood as traditional fairy tale. It rather borrows some aspects of the genre and modifies them with a variety of purposes. Tragic endings, parody, satire, subversion and inversion are some of the variations to be found in the anti-tale as well as in most of the stories we will analyse here. 18 CHAPTER 2 THE FAIRY TALE AND THE MODERNIST SHORT STORY We have witnessed the evolution of the “short story”, which has removed itself from oral tradition and no longer permits that slow piling up, one on top of the other, of thin transparent layers which constitutes the most appropriate image of the way in which the perfect narrative is revealed through the layers of various retellings. (Walter Benjamin, “The Story Teller” 1936) The quotation above brings to the fore the alleged detachment between twentieth century short fiction and the fairy tale. This section attempts to explore some of the ways in which short stories and fairy tales can interact productively, and discusses the role of the former within the context of the early twentieth century. As Brander Matthews stated, the short story is “something other and something more than a mere story which is short” (1901:4 emphases mine). The subordinate position of the short story at the turn of the twentieth century in relation to major forms of fiction, first and foremost the novel, evidences a need to analyse those aspects of the genre which differ from longer narrative forms and which contribute to nuance the significance of the relations it establishes with other texts. The short story as a genre shows several qualities which make it especially suitable for the reformulation of fairy tales or for the inclusion of fairy tale motifs. One of the features which make the interplay between the literary fairy tale and the short story especially interesting is the obvious fact that both narrative forms are relatively short. The implication of their shared brevity is that the boundaries between a short story using motifs or language characteristic of the fairy tale and a story conceived as a fairy tale are not so clear. Thus, Katherine Mansfield’s “A Suburban Fairy Tale”, or D.H Lawrence’s “The Rocking-Horse Winner” for instance, occupy an ambiguous 25 violent outburst of World War I, a global conflict with lasting traumatic effects which Whitworth regarded as a shaping element of modernist culture (2007:6). The October revolution signalled the birth of soviet Russia, for many, a model of an alternative society which further evidenced the failure of bourgeois politics to solve social inequality (Sanders 2000:506-7). In the field of thought, the influence of psychoanalysis shattered the ideal of a unified, coherent self unveiling its darker, uncivilised facets. 19 The renewal in the arts as an attempt to respond to this new understanding of the individual is also essential. In music and dance, the Slavic Renaissance, meant a blatant challenge to the barren sophistication and manners of urban aristocracy with its ineffectual tradition. 1910, the year in which Virginia Woolf locates a change in social consciousness (1996 [1924]:26), coincides with Roger Fry’s exhibition of impressionistic painting, the epitome of the pictorial expression of disjointed perception. This would entail a whole new conception of art and of the artist, as well as of their ability to represent reality. Thus, as Fry had it, “the correspondence between art and life which we so habitually assume is not at all constant and requires much correction before it can be trusted” (1956 [1920]:3). Fry further observes that “the artist of the new movement is moving into a sphere more and more remote from that of the ordinary man” (15). 20 Thus, 19 Psychoanalysis is a conforming cultural narrative of the twentieth century and particularly important for the development of modernism. Valentine Kylie holds that psychoanalysis and modernism “emerge form the same cultural quakes” and that therefore, “the aesthetic practices and thematic concerns critically important to modernism —decentring of the subject, crises in narratives of the self, biological and scientific knowledge, classicism, sexuality, embodiment— are also those of psychoanalysis” (2003:31). Freud’s ideas and writings had started to spread in England over the first decade of the twentieth-century. The Hogarth Press printed the first English edition of Freud’s complete works, edited by James Strachey. The British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology was founded in July 1914 and D.H. Lawrence became familiar with the idea of the Oedipus complex (the articulating plot of many of his writings) through his wife’s interest in psychoanalysis. Leonard Bloom read and reviewed several of Freud’s works and in general “Bloomsbury with its intense cultural openness, provided an ideal setting for the dissemination of Freud’s ideas” (Ward Jouve 2000:252-3). 20 Formalism is another of the century-shaping cultural discourses. As Jane Goldman points out, the formalist ideas which Fry and Bell developed within the circle of Bloomsbury may be appraised as a main preoccupation with “form for form’s sake”, as well as with “an emotional and spiritual investment in form”. Their formalism developed mainly in relation to the visual arts, but it also relates to the literary 26 Whitworth assumes that a new conception of art governs the modernist understanding to the world. Any approach to Modernism, he holds, needs to take into account its stance concerning eight fundamental issues: The justification of art in a rational world, the representation of an adequate model of the self, the relation between the work of art and its creator, the notion of value in art, the relation between art and criticism, the accounts of recent human history, the relation between the art of the present and the art of the past and the position of the writer in society (2007:6–7). Moreover, modernist literature in general, and the short story in particular, developed in a context pervaded with new ideas: such as Albert Einstein’s claim for the relativity of time and space; Henri Bergson’s philosophical concern with conscience, memory and interiority and Friedrich Nietzsche’s heralding of God’s death. In the literary attempt to render this new understanding of time, perspective and subjectivity the short story became a suitable field for innovation. 21 Its brevity seems to emerge as an obvious materialization of a “nervous, curious, introspective age” (Canby 1909:338 qtd. in Shaw 1992:17). In the same vein V. S. Pritchett states: “The modern nervous system is keyed up. The very collapse of standards, conventions and values, which has so bewildered the impersonal novelist, has been the making of the story writer who can catch any piece of life as it flies and make his personal performance out of it” (1953:113). formalism which, rooted in Ferdinand Saussure’s structural linguistics, conformed the embryonic field of English studies (2004:41). As Newton highlights, it also holds connections with the Russian formalist developed over the same period which evolves from Viktor Shklovsky’s theory of “defamiliarisation”, according to which the main function of art is to “defamiliarise” usual perceptions of reality (Newton 1990:6). 21 The emergence of the British short story during the modernist period is also closely related to the development of the magazines and periodical publications of the moment. Evaluations on the extent to which the short story narrative technique was determined by factors related to inch limitation or editorial choice and the implication that the accessibility that this market provided could negatively affect the literary quality of the tales has often resulted in an unjust negative consideration of the genre (Shaw 1992:7). The modernist short stories would be more productively assessed as “interactions between the creating imagination and the material, ideological and technological conditions prevailing at that historical moment” (March-Russell 2009: 46). 27 As Georg Lukács understands it, the modernist refusal to narrative conventions leads to an imitation of the surrounding alienating forces which it depicts (1963:17- 26). 22 Not by coincidence, Elizabeth Bowen (1936) compared the short story with the new artistic form also emerged from modernity, cinema, on their basis of their shared capability to aesthetically exploit those features of fragmentation, and estrangement. Given these contextual conditionings, the modernist short story seems to share little less than the feature of limited extension with the traditional and literary fairy tale. Indeed, the fairy tale shows a tendency to have a unique plot-line arranged according to chronological and causal laws with few instances of temporal alterations. As has already been commented on, Vladimir Propp in his Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928) had exhaustively analysed the limited number of functions present in folk tales, and their potential sequence of appearance. 23 Jack Zipes observes that “during its long evolution, the literary fairy tale distinguished itself as genre by ‘appropriating’ many motifs, signs, and drawings from folklore, embellishing them and combining them with elements from other literary genres” (2000:xvi). Although the transformation from folk narrative to literary fairy tale entailed profound changes regarding artistic concern and an awareness of the acculturating possibilities of the new genre (Zipes 2002a:4), the temporal and causal linearity of folk narratives was normally preserved in the literary form. 24 However, the modernist short story challenges this narrative convention. Clare Hanson establishes a difference between two forms of short narrative, which she terms 22 Georges Lukàcs’s Marxist perspective evaluates the modernist artistic manifestations in negative terms as he understands that they are mere reflections of the chaotic reality of modernity without any attempt to articulate any resistance in the form of social critique. Other critics (cf.: Eysteinsson 1992) provide arguments to hold the opposite. The question of the ideological and ethical implications of modernism is a complex issue which will be addressed in subsequent sections. 23 Zipes insists on the need to be cautious about Propp’s approach since the reality of the folk tale is simply too various to be accounted for within a few models (2000:xvii). 24 One of Lewis Carroll’s great achievements in his subversive fairy tales Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871) is precisely the reversal of the casual and temporal laws which govern traditional fairy tales. As mentioned in the previous section Juliet Dusinberre points at the temporal/causal fragmentation found in the “Alice books” as precursors of modernist experimentation (1987). 28 “short story” and “short fiction”. “The first type of story”, she holds, “with a primary emphasis on plot, is that most closely linked to the traditional oral tale”. The subject of a “short story” is some sort of estrange situation, “extraordinary, bizarre, extreme in some way” which a normal person has to face. The characters tend to be schematically designed, having commonly “only a generic name such as the child, the prince and so on”. The action may be located in exotic settings and include “marvellous and fantastic” elements. The central event triggers off a response in the character which comes to show his or her hidden potential. This type of narrative contrasts with the “plotless short fiction” which does not openly address the fabulous, but attempts to disclose the “marvellous” which lies behind the everyday banal events, unnoticed in an existence governed by monotony and sensorial and intellectual numbness (1985: 5–7). During modernism the latter form became a suitable means to render the complexity of modern life. Modernist narratives reveal a conscious distancing from the perfectly closed and coherent narrative since experience, and in particular, modern experience is simply to various to be rendered through such absolute narrative structures (55). This new understanding of narrative deeply modifies the status of the short story in relation to the novel: “Whereas in the eighteenth century short fiction consistently treated the same subjects as novels, the modern short story tends to reflect the diversity of ‘component parts”’ (Shaw 1992:5). The latter allows for gaps, discontinuities, incoherencies and reluctance to closeness. This does not mean that modernist authors systematically engaged in experimental narratives. D.H. Lawrence’s stories fluctuate between the slice of life stories of realistic tendency, enigmatic tales and also stories which follow a more conventional development. However, he tends to privilege inconclusive endings; even when events are resolved and the plot shows apparent cohesion, there are certain elements which allow for indeterminacy. Katherine Mansfield’s stories showed from the 29 beginning a reliance on “mood, rhythm, and sensory impressions” (Kaplan 1992:82) and from her childhood on “began, through the dominant influence of the symbolists and decadents, to write fiction committed to the possibilities of narrative experimentation” (82–83). Nevertheless, although in modernism the short story becomes the vehicle of literary experimentation with an explicit concern for liberating the genre from its popular roots, Paul March-Russell revealingly foregrounds an obvious fact which is often glossed over: in the genesis of any type of fictional narrative there is an underlying form of traditional story-telling (2009:12). Dominic Head’s assumption that modernist stories “derive from a tension between formal convention and formal disruption” (1992: 26) is highly relevant in this context as it underscores both the innovative elements introduced in the modernist short story as well as in the role of inherited tradition. Similarly, for Valery Shaw the alleged emphasis traditionally put on the “newness and autonomy of the short story” had always been exaggerated, obeying to an attempt to legitimise the role of the story teller in the context of the turn of the century (1992:4): “The permanent capacity of short fiction to return to its ancient origins in folktale and legend; its ability to make completely new uses of apparently unsophisticated literary conventions; its recurrent concern with an audience, thought of as an intimate group or community, and its frequent tendency towards the instinctual rather than the intellectual” (1992:vii). The integration of folk and fairy tale formulas and elements in modernist short stories may constitute, therefore, a conscious attempt on the part of short story writers to make explicit a way of appropriating traditional narrative structures. Moreover, when Mansfield and Lawrence adopt elements belonging to this genre or even engage themselves in the production of fairy tales, their stories carry implications related to 30 their understanding of the modern experience. Ann Martin points out that the use of fairy tales by modernist authors shall not be seen as a simple juxtaposition of genres but that they serve “to portray a participatory model of modernity and modernist literature” (2006:7). 25 It is through the contrast between old and new narrative forms, the evocation of values of the past, and the superposition of the experience of the present that the stories articulate their meaning. Thus, even if it is widely acknowledged that the modernist phenomenon means a radical literary renewal, recent criticism tends to amend the thesis by stressing the fact that the emergence of the modernist short story did not mean an abrupt break with traditional forms of narrative but rather another way of giving expression to a continuing interest in the unexplainable which had characterised earlier short-story writing. The early cultivators of the modern short story often used to build their narratives around some mystery and provided apparently closed endings where the enigma was untangled. Such interest persist in modernist narratives; but they would focus on what Clare Hanson calls “that quality of the marvellous which is hidden within the mundane, obscured by habit or by dullness of perception” (1985: 5–7). However, already in Dickens’s and Hardy’s use of fantasy and the supernatural there was a 25 Donald Haase (2008) acknowledges the influence of fairy tales in the work of Joyce, Woolf and Djuna Barnes, which Ann Martin further explores in her study Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in Bed: Modernism’s Fairy Tales (2006). Haase also points out the fact that the appropriation of fairy tale elements was common practice for surrealist writers later in the century such as Dorothea Tanning (694– 5). In this sense, Leonora Carrington was another surrealist writer and painter for whom fairy tales provide a resource of both literary and pictorial images. Although traditionally modernism has been seen as a separate trend from those artistic forms of expression which have come to be known under the general term of “avant garde” the relation between them is highly complex. Earlier criticism tended to draw a line between the radically critical approach of the avant garde, which sought to both shock and condemn society and the elitism of modernist practice (c.f.: Bürger 1984). More inclusive considerations of modernism, however, tend to focus on the relations between modernism and other aesthetic movements or even consider the various movements as faces of the same phenomenon (cf.: Calinescu 1987). Thus, Nicholls (1995) considers that “high modernism” is one of the many “modernisms” developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, which include Futurism, Cubism, or dadaism. Similarly, Levenson regards English modernism as embedded in a process in which “it slowly assumed coherence, as aesthetic concepts received new formulation, as those concepts were worked into doctrine. Among the concepts were image, symbol, tradition, expression, objectivity. The doctrines were successively called Impresionism, Imagism, Vorticism and Classicism” (1986:vii). 31 resistance to the utilitarian ideology which started to govern the English scene during the period of the industrial revolution. Yet March-Russell acknowledges that in these stories “the only things that remain inexplicable […] are the forces of coincidence or supernaturalism that intervene in human affairs” (2009:16). In later authors, such as Kipling, Hunter perceives an inconsistency which paves the way to the modernist story (2007: 23). In the same vein, Leitch seems to see in Poe’s interest a modernist concern, for he thematises the “problems of interpretation in a mysterious and often deceptive world” (2007:31). For Leitch Poe is a precursor of later story tellers since “even the most apparently reassuring detective stories endure on the margin of the mystery the modern short story thrives on as well” (46). Similarly, Paul March- Russell argues, this type of early modern short story, which he calls ‘art-tale’, also “tended to be multi-layered and ambiguous”, echoing the traditional form of the riddle yet tending to leave always something unsolved, “[bridging] the gap between the folk tale and the short story” (2009: 12). The modernist short story, therefore, represents a new way of articulating an old interest in the mysteries of human existence, an interest which had already been expressed in the old folk wonder tales; in the literary fairy tales— the folk tale artistic counterpart—and later, in the early modern short stories of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, at the heart of modernism lies a particular concern with the mysteries of human consciousness. One of the challenges that the early experimentalists of the short story had to face had been “how to bridge the gap between romance conventions, in which characters embody physic states, and realistic conventions, in which characters possesses real psyches” (March-Russell 2009: 205). 26 The translations of Anton Chekhov’s and Guy de Maupassant’s work have often been described as the 26 Clare Hanson acknowledges the debt of the modernist short story to the “psychological sketch” developed during the eighteen nineties. The interest in depicting psychological states in detriment of physical action would influence narrative technique during the modernist period (1989: 3). 32 turning point for the emergence of the English innovative modernist story. However, as March-Russell observes, “Chekhov’s example can be seen as affirming the directions in which modernist writers were [already] taking short fiction” (93). 27 One of the main features of the modernist short story is the displacement of physical action in favour of thought and feeling (Ferguson 1982: 14). Plot becomes a secondary element and the “symmetry of design” alluded to by Matthews is considered to be contingent on the organization of all narrative elements around a “single moment of crisis”, which James Joyce termed “Epiphany” (1963:211). Hanson puts the relevance of the short story during modernism down to this general concern with a “significant moment” (Hanson 1985:55). 28 27 During the first decades of the twentieth century, a “Russophilic” interest emerged among British intellectuality, “a collective infatuation not only for Russian literature but for other arts as well, notably painting, music, and ballet. All through the decade between 1912 and 1922, Russia was the “rage” in England” (Rubenstein 2009:2). The efforts of Constance Garnett to translate some of the works of the major Russian authors into English allowed many of the writers of the period access to Russian new narrative strategies. The critical works of Virginia Woolf, Arnold Bennett and E. M Forster among many others extolled the merits of Russian literature. The Russian authors were a very important influence in Virginia Wolf’s writing, especially concerning the rendering of inner states, and the treatment of time and character (4). Of all Russian writers Chekhov became the most influential within British circles: “In both subject matter and narrative method, Chekhov contributed to the seismic formal and stylistic shifts of British Modernism” (60). His capacity to render human consciousness, his focus on the inconsequential and his vagueness of characterization fascinated readers and writers alike: “Chekhov, the great master of the short story, perfected the forms’ ability to present spiritual reality in realistic terms by focusing on the essentially mysterious and hidden nature of the basic human desire to transcend the everyday and live in the realm of spiritual reality” (Hunter 2007: 210). His influence was especially important in the work of Katherine Mansfield (cf.: Schneider 1935, Franklin 1992). However, it is also significant how within the frame of Chekhov’s realist accounts there are relevant allusions to the fairy tale, a genre which enjoys a preponderant place within Russian culture and with which Chekhov was very familiar. References are profuse in his work, and he entitled his first collection of stories The Fairy Tales of Melpomene (1884), although they dealt with the life in the theatre. One of his stories is also entitled “A Fairy Tale” (1889). 28 Morris Beja attempts a definition of epiphany as a “sudden spiritual manifestation, whether from some object, scene, event, or memorable phase of the mind—the manifestation being out of proportion to the significance or strictly logical relevance of whatever produces it” (1971:18). From this definition he lays the stress on the spiritual nature of the discovery—which sets it apart from the rational anagnorisis characteristic of nineteenth century works —and on the relative insignificance of the event which triggers of the epiphanic experience, which only matters to a particular character in a particular moment a relativism which is a manifestation of the modern condition: “In this quality lies one of the principal roots of the increasing use of epiphany in modern literature. For as men have found themselves putting less and less trust in the truths and absolutes of the past, they have more and more come to stress the trivia of existence” (16–18). Modern notions on “the meaning of experience” as well as on “the nature of reality” or the means of “salvation” and “enlightenment”, together with an interest in the processes governing the movements of the human mind determined a complex approach to the characters, and emphasised the power of this “banal events” in contrast to apparently more important ones (20–1). 33 It is remarkable how recent approaches to the short story tend to show a reticence to consider this moment in terms of “singularity”, since mystery always prevails, rendering a single interpretation of inner revelation impossible. Epiphanies, far from revealing any transcendental truth, serve the thematization of an epistemological problem: the impossibility of accessing truth since its perception is always contingent on conscience. Thus, Hunter takes up Dominic Head’s idea that the defining criteria of the “epiphany” might have been useful to characterise certain nineteenth-century stories. In modernism, however, what governs the narrative organization is an “uncertainty principle”, for the short story has primarily an “interrogative function”. Epiphanies are often just apparent or, in Joyce’s stories, even mocked (Hunter 2007: 51–53). They are mainly moments in which not a single impression, but different, often contradictory, impulses converge and no single solution is possible. Therefore, symbols and visual metaphors rather than revolving towards a unique central meaning would divert the reader’s interpretation creating ambiguity. This uncertainty is formally rendered through innovative portrayals of human consciousness and discourse becomes an essential device in this process. The decentralization of the point of view, traditionally ascribed to the omniscient narrator, complicates the interpretation of climatic moments; the free indirect discourse, with its shift of perspectives, contributes to the disunity of the text and the newly theorised stream of consciousness seeks to pursue the meanderings of the real mind. Stories recurrently draw upon the oneiric and the fantastic recalling Freud’s examination of the unconscious. Although all these features depart from the narrative characteristics of the fairy tales, Max Lüthi revealingly points out that “in modern art, fascination with the fairy tale is everywhere evident. The turning away from descriptive realism, from the mere description of external reality in itself, implies an approach to the fairy tale” (1976: 34 145–6). Significantly, at the very moment in which the modernist short story is trying to render innovatively the complexities of the human mind, psychoanalytic theory starts a consistent process of reinterpretation of old myths and fairy tales according to its own tenants. Thus, the inclusion of fairy tale elements in modernist short stories may be regarded not as a simple return to a traditional form of narrative, but as a way of addressing contemporary concerns about the unconscious. In this line of thought, Clare Hanson focuses on a characteristic capacity of the short story to evoke subconscious meanings. The short story could itself be considered a form of literature which favours the tangential articulation of repressed realities. The short story’s interest in the mysterious is seen as a pursuit of the unknown, which must, however, be necessarily absent; in the short story the “image of that which is desired” is “continually displaced”. The short story tends, therefore, to set the focus on a number of elements or details whose meaning cannot be retrieved from the text itself and which are often characterised by their “anomalous” nature (1989: 23). Unlike in the novel, where details have a meaning within the universe of the reality that the narrative creates, in the short story the reader must go beyond the text to attempt an interpretation. The short story then becomes “an extreme image of desire which violates the ‘natural’ relationship of antithesis between absence and presence” (22). This openness to reality is not just a consequence of the story’s brevity, which would not allow the recurrence of certain events creating relations between the elements within the text: [It is rather] The result of what Roman Jakobson would call a fundamental difference in the set of the two forms of the short story and novel. Within the novel, images function metonymically, though the novel is not itself metonymic in relation to “reality”. Each image as it appears resumes something of what has preceded it in the text. In the short story foregrounded details or “images” tend to resist such interpenetration and integration —which is why they disturb us in a peculiar, a distinctive an distinctly non-novelistic way. (23) Moreover, the words in the short story posses a very strong evocative power. Hanson takes up Jacques Lacan’s notion that the choice of a word is guided not just by 41 world or of human nature), a similar capacity to express unconscious desires and a suitability to articulate the visions of the subaltern. However, the well-wrought structures of the fairy tale and their happy endings are clearly at odds with the notions and experiences which modernist writers attempt to convey. G.K.Chesterton already acknowledged how “our modern attraction to the short story is not an accident of form; it is a sign of a real sense of fleetingness and fragility; it means that existence is only an impression, and, perhaps, only an illusion […] We have no instinct of anything ultimate and enduring beyond the episode” (2007 [1906]:36). Often this awareness of existential eventuality is during the modernist period formally translated into open-ended stories which question the possibility of the ‘happily ever after’ characteristic of fairy tales. Thus, it seems that fairy tale phrasing or motifs are frequently used to raise expectations about how the plot should develop (indirectly, making assumptions about how the world should be) only to deflate them, foregrounding the illusive aspect of modern human experience to which Chesterton refers, as Valery Shaw has observed: “Many short stories ask questions put aside by novels with ‘happy endings’: how does married life differ from ‘marriage’ as a personal and social ideal? What is the sequel to the novelistic ending which radiates social hope through the symbolism of weddings? Failed marriages abound in the short story” (1991:221). Katherine Mansfield and D.H. Lawrence’s stories show this tendency to subvert traditional fairy tale plots by offering surprising endings which disturb rather than reassure readers and their expectations, as the textual analysis of the chosen stories will show. As Kaplan observes, Mansfield had always been “aware of the socially determined imperatives of narrative conventions, especially as embodied in the dominant narrative pattern of romantic love” (1991:84). This pattern, so common in the fairy tale, is evoked in her story “The Tiredness of Rosabel”, where the young 42 protagonist dreams about being rescued, like Cinderella, from her unsatisfactory life and hardships of her job by a charming prince. However, Rosabel’s aspirations prove to be nothing but a dream and the story abruptly ends when she becomes aware of that fact in the coldness of the room. D.H. Lawrence’s “The Horse-Dealer’s daughter” also recalls the Cinderella plot and, although it presents a more hopeful scenario, the story finishes with Dr. Fergusson’s very inconclusive declaration of love. In the case of both authors, the quality of the snap-shot which characterises the modernist short story productively combines with elements of the fairy tale to emphasise the contrasts between reality and illusion, and to underline that modern experience requires modern narrative models. 43 CHAPTER 3 INTERTEXTUALITY, MODERNISM AND THE FAIRY TALE 3.1 Intertextuality: An Overview “Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them: so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer meant”. (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland 1868) The previous chapters offered an introduction to the fairy tale as a genre, its origins, the approaches to its study and the complexity of its nature. They have also provided an insight into the genre of the short story, its main features and its role over the modernist period. This chapter seeks to explore the implications of the use of fairy tale elements within a modernist text by resorting to several theoretical frames related to textual interaction. It opens with a brief discussion of major assets of intertextuality which will prove useful for the subsequent reading of the selected texts. Subsequently, the chapter will provide an exploration of the role of tradition in the context of modernism as an attempt to determine the potential implications of the use of fairy tales within modernist texts. This chapter concludes with a reflection on the notion of parody and its subversive capacity, as well as on the relevance of its role within the politics of modernism. To approach the first of these aspects—related to intertextuality and its implications— it is convenient to keep in mind the fact that fairy tales are recurrent sites for allusion and rewriting, and that their characteristic motifs and structures underlie many twentieth-century literary works. The relevance of fairy tale motifs in modernist texts is contingent on the genre’s status of social discourse loaded with cultural codes related to class, gender and communal behaviour. Most significantly, fairy tales prove to 44 be especially rich narratives when integrated within other texts because they are themselves complex constructs which fluctuate between the oral and the written and have undergone innumerable changes throughout history. Infused with the subversive powers of fantasy and transformation as well as with the elements which serve the purpose of acculturation, fairy tales constitute intricate sources for textual interplay. Cristina Bacchilega underlines their liminality, as a “borderline, transitional genre always bearing the traces of orality, tradition, and socio-cultural performance” (1997:3). Significantly, Merja Makinen points out how the understanding of the fairy tale has considerably changed in the last decades and contemporary readings have foregrounded its multi-layered nature and varied meanings. She explains that “many have perceived it as a fixed, didactic fable in order to rewrite it through parody” and advocates the need of a new critical approach to textual interplays involving fairy tales, “a new way of discussing this complex, multiple reconception of its pre-text” (2008:155). In Twice upon a Time: Women Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale (2003), Elizabeth Wanning Harries also emphasises the complex and mutable nature of fairy tales which cannot operate as fixed intertexts. In the process of establishing the fairy tale substratum of a modernist text one should therefore take into account the multiplicity of discourses comprised in what we call fairy tale and, if possible, elucidate the implications of the uses of a fairy tale motif or structure. As Ann Martin points out, “the reader must determine which version out of the dozens of available adaptations of a fairy tale has been made intertextual in the first place, and which interpretation best relates to the work in which it has been used” (2006: 8). An analysis of the implications of the elusive concept of intertextuality is, therefore, central to our endeavour to explore the complex dimensions in which fairy tales relate to the chosen corpus of stories. 31 31 Most critics agree in foregrounding the instability and conflictive nature of the critical concept of intertextuality when facing the task of its definition (cf.: Allen 2000:2–3, Lachmann 1984:133, Angenot 45 The recurrent use of the term in contemporary criticism, justifies an insight into some of the theories which contributed to make this notion essential for most of the current approaches to any literary text. It is equally necessary to clarify in which ways the term intertextual will be used, as well as what it means to establish an intertextual relation to a fairy tale and how this relation can function. In very broad terms, the word intertextuality conveys the idea that the meaning of any text is always contingent on the meaning of previous and simultaneous discourses. In other words, the meaning of a text does not only emerge from the author’s intention to communicate a single idea but from the linguistic, literary, and historical systems in which the text is located. As Roland Barthes puts it, a text is “a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture” (1977a: 146). The analyses of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin are crucial for the theoretical development of the notion of intertextuality. Building on Saussure’s linguistic theory, Bakhtin’s considerations transcend both formalist and structuralist perspectives and focus on the relationship between language and the social situation in which it is generated. 32 Bakhtin observed that meaning is context-dependant, bound up with the participants of the communicative process and the social situations in which the process takes place. As such, meaning is “unique” (Bakhtin and Medvedev 1978:120). Nevertheless, and for Bakhtin, language does not simply convey evaluations on the 1983:120–21, Arrivé 1988:13–6, Juvan 2008:4–5, Mai 1991:30–3, Holthius 1993:1–3, Samoyault 2001:5–14, Schahadat 1995:366). Part of the difficulty entailed resides in its association to a number of practices and notions such as “dialogism, polyphony, heteroglossia, polylogue, paragram, transposition, semiosis, differance, trace, iterability of sign, writing, influence, revisionism, renovation, allusion, citationality, vertical context system, subtext, extratextual connections, text within text, literary implication, literary reference, palimpsest, architextuality, transtextuality, intersemioticity, intermediality interdiscursivity or metacommunication” (Juvan 2008:5). For Heinrich F. Plett it would be more accurate to talk about “intertextualities” (1991). 32 Two concepts of Saussurian theory are essential to Bakhtin understanding of texts: “arbitrariness” and “differentiality”: Saussure regarded the relationship between a signifier and its signified as arbitrary, therefore nothing inherent to a signifier makes think of its associated signified (Saussure 1978 [[1916]: 100–1). Bakhtin, like Saussure, also considered that a linguistic sign was not defined by its positive qualities but by opposition in relation to all other signs of the same system. However he saw important limitations in this synchronic approach to language since it failed to explain the social dimension of meaning (Bakthin/Voloshinov 1986:60–1). 46 social reality in which it is generated, it is also charged with a potential to transform it. This potential resides in its dialogic nature: at the heart of Bakhtin’s philosophy lies a conception of language as well as of individual conscience which revolves between the poles of two forces in an unequal dialectical struggle. On the one hand, the “centripetal” unifying forces, which aim at coherence, and the “centrifugal” forces, which lead to fragmentation and heterogeneity in language. The struggle is unequal because: Unitary language constitutes the theoretical expression of the historical processes of linguistic unification and centralization, an expression of the centripetal forces of language. A unitary language is not something given but is always in essence posited —and at every moment of its linguistic life it is opposed to the realities of heteroglossia. (Bakhtin 1981: 270) These forces are at work regardless of the speaker’s/writer’s intentions, and thus a total appropriation of language is impossible: “Language for the individual consciousness lies on the borderline between oneself and the other, the word in Language is half someone else’s” (1981:293). Such a view endows the concept “heteroglossia” not only with the meaning of variety but also with the notion of “hetero” as “other”, since in the discourse of the individual are also involved the discourses of “others”. 33 In a letter to John Middleton Murry, Mansfield critically reflects on this dimension when she writes about the protagonist of her story “Bliss” (1920): “What I meant […] was Bertha, not being an artist, was yet artist manqué enough to realise that these words and expressions were not and couldn’t be hers. They were, as it were, borrowed [...] Yet she’d none of her own” (O’Sullivan and Scott [eds.] 1987:121). Bakhtin’s conception of language has important implications when applied to the literary text since it undermines the power of the author to control the meaning of their work: 33 Twentieth century philosophy, deeply concerned with the role of language as constitutive of identity, appropriates the Hegelian idea of the “configurative other”, or the idea that identity is also defined according to what the Other represents. As an example, Jacques Lacan describes the unconscious as a discourse of “the Other” (Homer 2005:70–72). 47 At any given moment of its historical existence, language is heteroglot form top to bottom: it represents the coexistence of socio-ideological contradictions between the present and the past, between different epochs of the past, between different socio-ideological groups in the present, between tendencies, schools, circles and so forth, all given a bodily form. These “languages” of heteroglossia intersect each other in a variety of ways forming new socially typifying “languages”. (1981:291) The dialogical nature of language is inherent to its nature but it is made explicit when allusions to previous discourses (either written or spoken) are included in a text. In the corpus proposed for this study the authors establish conscious relations with the tradition of the classical fairy tale and both intended and unintended meanings derive from this textual interplay. Bakhtin applies the concept of “heteroglossia” to the novel, in contrast to other genres like poetry, where “monoglossia” predominates. Although traditional criticism on the short story has related the techniques of short fiction composition and its organization to those of the poem on the bases of the principle of “unity of impression” (cf.: Matthews 1901), the previous section showed how later critics have put an emphasis on the misleading character of this alleged unity. Thus, for some critics Bakhtin’s theories provide an appropriate point of entry for the analysis of short stories. Dominic Head considers the modernist story as a dialogic site where different discourses compete: Bakhtin’s concept of dialogics is employed to show how the modernists frequently cultivate a dialogized style – involving a conflict of voices – as an integral part of their disruption and complication of narrative. This understanding of dialogics differs from some applications in which the dialogized text is merely one which contains a variety of coexisting voices. I place an emphasis on the idea of conflicting voices, which is a crucial aspect of Bakhtin’s writings about narrative. This concept of dialogized narrative provides a further challenge to any simplistic notion of short story unity, and supplies a rigorous way of interpreting the modernists’ ambivalent portrayal of character. (1992:33–34) In the same vein, Adrian Hunter understands the epiphanic moment, often the climax of modernist short stories, as an instant comprising a variety of contradictory feelings: The epiphanies do not function as unifying, determinate moments of insight or closure but rather as spaces in which a variety of voices blend in and in which every utterance enters into what M.M. Bakhtin elsewhere characterizes as a “tension-filled environment” of alien words, value judgements and accents. (Hunter 2007:58). 48 In this dissertation, concepts such as “heteroglossia” and “dialogism” will prove especially useful for the analysis of the narrative mode of the chosen texts. Head has observed how these notions are illuminating to interpret the effects of free indirect speech, where an omniscient narrative voice entwines with the individual perspective of the characters’ consciousness. This technique challenges the authority of the omniscient narrator, which would be the representative of an official discourse, allowing marginal discourses to inform the narrative (Head 1992:68). In D.H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse Winner”, for instance, the perspective of an apparently neutral narrative voice, which adopts the tone of a fairy tale narrator, deceivingly mixes with the characters’ vision complicating the narrative interpretation. David Lodge has noticed how in Lawrence’s writing the voice of the authorial narrator is “the dominant discourse in his fiction, and a formal characteristic that sets him somewhat apart from the modernist movement”. However, Lodge also perceives a development in his narrative, from Sons and Lovers (1913) to Women in Love (1920) which progresses towards the heteroglossic kind of fiction that Bakhtin described as “doubly-oriented or doubly-voiced speech” (1981: 325–354), a kind of speech which “refers to another speech act by another addresser” (Lodge 1990:59). 34 This notion includes the practice of parody, which we will analyse at a later stage in this section. This is very relevant to understanding how the fairy tale narrative techniques are mimicked and subverted in stories like “The Rocking Horse Winner”, “The Princess” or “The Lovely Lady”. Katherine Mansfield’s mastery of free indirect speech has also been seen as a manifestation of the heteroglossic quality of her work (cf.: Day 2011). Often the voice of a third person 34 Avrom Fleishman attributes this evolution to the influence of the Italian short story writer Giovanni Verga, whom Lawrence read and translated (1985:164) and defends that Lawrence is “a grand master of the oral, dialectical, parodic, and polyglot manner that Bakhtin has established for Dostoyevsky” (169). Fleishman insists that reading Lawrence’s work in the light of Bakhtin’s theories allows a better appraisal of “the novelist’s unique achievement”, relieving Lawrence of what some have considered “his stylistic embarrassment” and acknowledging his narrative mastery, “[f]or in his novels, the language of fiction is deployed to foreground and criticize the human uses of language, particularly those of modern Western culture” (1990:110). 49 narrator verbalises the thoughts of a character, as in “The Little Governess”. The analysis of this story will show how the protagonist’s naïve point of view serves to focalise the events, which she regrettably misinterprets. In other cases the characters express themselves through conventional phrasing, evoking fixed social discourses, as the protagonist of “The Tiredness of Rosabel”. Rosabel’s mental digressions while she imagines that she will be rescued by a “charming prince” recall the language of fairy tale and romance literature (Rodríguez Salas 2009: 202). Thus, to read the texts in the light of Bakhtin’s ideas may provide an innovative insight into some aspects of these stories. During the nineteen sixties a group of theorists expressed their disagreement with Saussure’s structuralism and articulated a new theoretical approach which came to be known as poststructuralism. Their views on intertextuality will also prove useful for this study. Their tenant was a questioning of the one-to-one stable relationship between signifiers and signifieds which had allowed the semiotic study of cultural expressions (such as myths, traditions or literature) from an allegedly scientific approach. These theorists understand that the ways in which the dominant ideology exerts its power resides in the structuralist notion that form and meaning are steadily and unquestionably bound up with each other. Among the poststructuralist thinkers, Julia Kristeva coined the term “intertextuality” in Théorie d’ensamble (1968) and brought together Saussure’s theories on semiotics with Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism. In “Word, Dialogue & Novel” (1966), Kristeva emphasises the twofold dimension of the literary word: the writer and the reader are located and relate to each other in a horizontal dimension. The vertical axis is constituted by the relations established between the text and all previous and simultaneous literary texts. Locating Bakhtin’s theories in a psychoanalytical context is 50 one of Kristeva’s main contributions. 35 She states that “[a]ny text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another. The notion of intertextuality replaces that of intersubjectivity, and poetic language is read at least as double” (1980 [1966]:66). 36 Kristeva’s idea of the “bounded text”, introduced in an essay of the same title (1966–7), is especially relevant for our study. For Kristeva no text can be original since authors necessarily rely on pre-existing social, institutional and cultural discourses for their compositions. As a result any text necessarily conveys two meanings, what Kristeva calls ideologemes (1980 [1966–7]: 36–63). Through the ambivalent, unstable meaning of words, the text expresses the ideological and social struggles, including those ideas which threaten dominant ideology and are therefore representative of “otherness”. 37 Kristeva’s appraisal of Bakhtin’s idea of “doubleness” 35 Kristeva’s ideas are based on a Lacanian, psychoanalytically-inspired understanding of language. For Jacques Lacan, the appropriation of a linguistic system imposes on the individual a perception of himself/herself as a unified subject immersed in a symbolic order of social rules and relations. Before entering the symbolic order the individual inhabits a pre-linguistic realm of pulsions, drives and a total identification with the mother’s body (Lacan 1992) which Kristeva identifies with the “semiotic”. The socalled “thetic phase”, according to Kristeva, signals the initiation in the social order through language and puts an end to the semiotic. However, this is never completely obliterated causing an ontological split in the subject between the symbolic and the semiotic. At the core of the semiotic lies the chora, a hollow related to the maternal body, “unnameable, improbably, hybrid, anterior to naming, the One and the Father” (1980:133). In Revolution in Poetic Language Kristeva states that it is precisely through poetic language that elements of the semiotic self emerge shaking the grounds on which the symbolic order rests and disclosing the impossibility of a unified subject. Because the semiotic must necessarily be expressed within the symbolic Kristeva uses the term Phenotext to denote the textual dimension related to the thetic, the linguistic; and Genotext to that dimension linked with the pre-linguistic and the chora. The Genotext is “recognizable in terms of phonematic devices, rhythm, intonation, melody, repetition and narrative arrangements”. Kristeva focuses on the ‘signifiance’ of a text, that is, on the ways the text’s meanings transcend the meaning of its constituent linguistic structures (1984a: 86). Kristeva’s theories also endorse Freud’s theories of dreams. According to Freud, dreams work through condensation and displacement. In the first case a sign stands for several meanings and in the second it has just one meaning but this meaning belongs to other area of signification (Freud 2007 [1900]: 220–2). For Kristeva, intertextuality is a further step in this semiotic process since it implies a transposition of previous textual units from one sign system into another thus transforming them and “giving them a new thetic position”. This procedure also involves the speaking subject, whose position is closely related with desire (1984a:54–111). 36 Intersubjectivity is a concept used in philosophy, psychology, sociology and politics, which refers to an intermediate position between subjectivity and objectivity. It describes the subjective experience of a phenomenon by more than one subject. “An intersubjective porperty is one on which the opinion of different subjects does or can coincide” (Blackburn 2005:189). In literature intersubjectivity “concerns the relations a text has with wider or vaguer spheres of knowledge, which the reader must also draw upon for interpretation...” (Wales 2001:221). 37 “Otherness” was a central notion to deconstruction and has become essential to contemporary critical thought. It refers to what “is opposed to, or absent from, some more familiar subject, but the acknowledgement of which is necessary for the full understanding of the familiar subject” (Proudfoot 2010:102). 57 Frank de Caro and Rosan Augusta Jordan (2004) establish a differentiation in the deployment of folkloric materials which is also relevant for this study. They state that folk material or, for the purposes of this dissertation, fairy tale material may be used as either the “exoskeleton” or the “endoskeleton” of the text. If the fairy tale elements configure the exoskeleton of the work, this work will function as “a formal or stylistic framework, using a generic structure as model”; this happens when the work itself is conceived as a fairy tale (7). The folk material works as the endoskeleton of a given text when it is used only “to allude to contexts, ideas, and values; to provide ironic reference; to expand thematic understandings” (8). This happens when the text can be defined as a different kind of narrative from the folk or fairy story, but makes use of fairy tale elements. As Tiffin understands it, the story “is not in itself a fairy tale —it functions as a short story with a fairy-tale theme” (26). Thus, in Mansfield’s “The Green Tree: A Fairy Tale”, the fairy tale elements have been used as an exoskeleton since it is a story written as a modern fairy tale. “The Little Governess”, however, develops around the plot of “The Little Red Ridding Hood”, but it is not a fairy tale. It is a realistic account and in narrative terms, on the basis of its technical innovations, is clearly a modernist short story. The fairy tale material is deployed as an endoskeleton. Also Lawrence’s stories present a variety of ways of including fairy tale motifs and structures which will be analysed in further chapters. 3.2 Modernism and Tradition This dissertation attempts to elucidate the reasons which led Mansfield and Lawrence, two modernist authors whose writing oriented the English prose towards innovative directions, to deliberately engage with a traditional narrative genre as the fairy tale. In order to approach their possible motivations it is necessary to comment on 58 the role that literary narratives of the past, as well as traditional forms of story-telling play in the modernist period. In fact, the way modernist texts relate to previous texts and social discourses must be analyzed in the light of the relevance ascribed to the notion of tradition, an essential concept within in the context of early twentieth century literary theory. T.S. Eliot’s seminal essay “Tradition and Individual Talent” (1920) is an attempt to delimitate the boundaries of originality and poetic value reconciling the role of the creative individual with that of the literary tradition. Thus, Eliot states: No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical, criticism. (2005 [1919]: 153) Eliot’s concept of tradition was contingent on a synchronic approach to history in which past is continuously influencing the present. In a similar way, Ezra Pound held that anyone trying to produce modern art needs knowledge of what has been previously produced (1968[1913]: 91–93). In the previous section the alleged independence of the modernist short story from traditional forms of narrative was discussed through an exploration of their shared features. Valerie Shaw stated how an “exaggeration of both the newness and the autonomy of the short story” had followed the attempts to endorse the practice of short story writing (1992:5). Although such a strong dependence on the past may seem contradictory for a movement which claims to be the expression of a new subjectivity and a new understanding of the world Edwin Muir argues that: If modernism be a vital thing it must need have roots in the past and be an essential expression of humanity, to be traced, therefore, in the history of humanity: in short, it can only be a tradition. The true modern is a continuator of tradition as much as the Christian or the conservative: the true fight between progress and stagnation is always a fight between antagonistic traditions. (1920 |1918]:138) In the same vein, Whitworth also points at a paradox inherent to modernism’s claim for innovation since, as he states, “cultural legitimacy depends upon a connection 59 to the previous generation” (2007:22–23). 45 Terry Eagleton (2000) also dwells on the contradictory nature of a movement which lies between tradition and innovation: modernism in its attempts to overcome literary tradition it necessarily evokes it (39), thus becoming a “highly traditional crisis of tradition” (41). Harold Bloom has brought to the fore the close relationship between intertextuality and tradition (1997). It is Bloom’s main argument that new literature can only imitate existent texts. Thus, the initiative to write derives from two seemingly opposed impulses: imitation versus innovation. 46 Bloom’s theories are useful in order to understand the inescapability of surrounding literary traditions, but his appraisal of tradition is limited. He refers only to the influence exerted by texts belonging to the socalled “high literature” and a set of authors which he considers canonical. This dissertation focuses on fairy tales, texts belonging to a different tradition, commonly associated with popular rather than highbrow culture. However, the tensions provoked by traditional and innovative narratives are meaningful. Here four relevant 45 Recent criticism pays special attention to those contradictions inherent to the modernist. Thus, for Tim Armstrong, modernism is precisely characterised by contradiction. He points out at the contrasts between modernist rejection of tradition and the “fetishization” of certain moments of the past. Similarly, the apparent admiration for the primitive coexists with a defence of civilization; and technological innovation produces both fascination and fear (2005:5). In the same vein, in his analysis of the contradictions of Modernism, Terry Eagleton aptly observes how “modernism seeks to go beyond realism [...] but like any transgression it is dependent on the very norms from which it deviates. If modernism parodies realism, disfigures it, puts the skids under it, shatters it to bits, it can do all this only by continually reminding us of the realism it seeks to transcend, and so undoing itself in that very act. There is no fragmentation without the idea of integrity” (2000: 35). 46 For Bloom the meaning of a text is always a previous text written by a precursor figure that the new text transforms and interprets. This occurs even if the writer of the new text (the ephebe) has never read the work of the precursor, which may lead to the mistaken belief that no influence was received from it (Bloom 1997:69–70). However literature is a “relational event” and all texts are necessarily intertexts. The work of certain writers (Shakespeare among others) unavoidably operates as an intertext. This provokes on the ephebe an “anxiety of influence” which may affect the desire to write and that can only be overcome by the (unrealizable) desire of becoming an influence himself (1997:58). Bloom takes up Freud’s concept of psychological mechanisms of defence to explain how writers attempt to confront anxiety. These mechanisms are nevertheless inscribed within the text and from its recognition depends a successful appraisal of the text’s meaning (1997:83). There are two ways of establishing the necessary intertextual relation between text and intertext: finding the elements within the text that point to that intertext or deciding arbitrarily (1997:105). Although Bloom’s ideas are also an acknowledgement of the plurality of meaning affirmed by Barthes and Kristeva, his theories seem to obliterate the relevance of the social and cultural context for the interpretation of the text (Allen 2000:144). 60 dimensions of the use of fairy tales will be discussed: in the first place fairy tales provide a template of structural organization and a repertoire of well-known motifs through which to express new ideas. These elements work as patterns to organise texts and create a sense of order which is positively regarded in the context of surrounding chaos. Secondly, modernist art tended to view in primitive societies and their cultural manifestations a liberating force to escape the corruption of the Western world. In a similar way, story-telling is often view as a practice which enhances the sense of community in face of modern alienation. In the third place, the fairy tale seems also apt to symbolically reflect on the fragmentariness of human identity, like fantastic fin-de- siècle literature had done before. Finally, as was argued in the previous section, the type of fantastic tales evoked by the genre of the fairy tale and its status of marginal narrative help to contest the imposed values of dominant culture, thus helping to channel a criticism of contemporary society. Concerning the first of these issues —the fact that fairy tale in modernist writing may provide an easily recognizable narrative frame and set of motifs to articulate new texts—Susan Sellers aptly observes that “[w]hat we write as individuals cannot so easily achieve […] resonance. We need to deploy myth’s power, weaving our own versions onto its potent templates to attain the maximum effect” (2001:32 [emphasis mine]). Seller emphasises how the use of models confers certain strength to what one writes, thus foregrounding the idea of myth as a form of narration which encompasses a collection of images with a relevant position in the collective unconscious. As Terry Eagleton puts it, “recycling mythology is one way in which modernism finds itself excavating the very old just at the point where it thought it was discovering the very new” (2000:41). These notions are relevant because, as Jack Zipes (1994) has suggested, the mythical tropes of a given culture are also at the core of its pagan 61 variants, the folk and fairy tales. Thus, and throughout the modernist period, fairy tales had the potential of being recycled in the same way as mythology was. Zipes underlines the fact that ever since the late eighteenth century “most writers in the West, whether they wrote for adults or children, consciously held a dialogue with a fairy-tale discourse that had become firmly established in Europe and embraced intercourse with the oral story telling tradition and all other kinds of folklore that existed throughout the world” (2000:xxiv). Zipes further argues that already by the end of the previous century a set of stories clearly stood out from the rest to constitute a “canon of ‘classical’ fairy tales” determining the accepted “structure, motifs and topoi” to be expected from the genre (xxix). In this sense, these recognizable patterns work as an organizational criterion which structures the stories of Mansfield and Lawrence, core to the present dissertation. However, the patterns can also be subverted or transformed with particular intentions. The idea of myth and fairy tale as providers of underlying structures for modernist narratives partly contradicts those views which hold that modernist art tends to mimic the confusion of the socio-historical moment that generates it. However, for T.S. Eliot, tradition is not just something inescapable but has the power of acting as a source of order. Reeves foregrounds Eliot’s pursuit of political, literary and social unity and order and affirms that it matches a general modernist concern: “The need of stability and coherence in what many experienced as a disintegrating post-war world and collapsing culture” (2006:108). This stability is to be found in the ideal of an orderly past which illuminates the present, always determining its ways and therefore imposing a certain meaning upon the dominant chaos. Marjory Perloff underlines that a contrast between orderly past and chaotic present is one of the main features of modernism. Moreover, Perloff explicitly refers to the deployment of “mythic allusions” and “patterning” as “organising structures” (1992:158). This concept is related to the 62 modernist belief that art has the capability to bring order into the world, a “compensatory idea”, which makes up for the uncertainties of the surrounding context. These notions led Terry Eagleton to nuance the alleged confusion which characterises the modernist work: If the surfaces of life seems random, arbitrary, chaotic, it’s also true that lurking beneath them is some inexorable form of determinism, some far deeper structure (whether you call it language or mythology or the unconscious or pure form or mental categories or whatever) which is secretly organising and manipulating all this apparently random stuff we observe around us. A curious combination, then, of the inexorable and the arbitrary […]. (2000:40) Thus, the modernist interest in depicting fragments of common life combines with an attempt to re-utilise mythical narrative patterns. In this way, as Slavoj Žižek holds, modernism “asserted the metaphysical potential of the most common and vulgar bits of our daily experience” and the myth works “as the interpretative frame of reference for its contemporary narrative” (2001: 29–30). Hence, for Fredric Jameson the modernist text performs an essential function by making the readers feel “increasingly at home in what would otherwise [...] be a distressingly alienating reality” (2002:225). 47 In Lawrence’s narratives a transcendental dimension behind the narrated events and the characters’ destinies can often be seen, and a belief in cosmic forces, alien to modernity, can be traced in much of his writing. As for Mansfield, Eduardo Rodríguez Salas, foregrounds a development in her writing from confidence in the capability of fairy tales to symbolise certain aspects of human life to an ironic attitude towards them (2009:144). In her later stories she shows some scepticism towards her characters’ attempts to seek a transcendental meaning for common events. In fact, some of these characters (The little governess in the story of the same title or Bertha Young in “Bliss”) 47 The conception of the urban space as potentially degenerative and the processes of human concentration as threatening to individual development is reflected in many works of the period. The end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth were pervaded by an anxiety about “social dissolution” being inextricably part of “the very process of aggregation” as Raymond Williams noticed (1973:216). 63 tend to look for meanings which go beyond what can be seen and make the mistake of misinterpreting reality. Yet, she uses well-known narrative patterns in order to create expectations which are reversed as the stories unfold. Furthermore, the inclusion of fairy tale motifs in modernist writing in general, and in the work of Mansfield and Lawrence in particular, relates to the cultural relevance that traditional forms of culture acquire during the modernist period. Recalling what has been commented on in the first section, at the turn of the century the fairy tale, like the myth, becomes the object of study both at schools and by the literary academy; the object of expurgation, politization and experimentation. In fact, during this period, ideas related to folklore narratives and myths were very much discussed in anthropological and cultural circles. Ann Martin emphasises how the fairy tale became an inescapable source of reference and allusion for most writers, not only due to its significant role as a very important aspect of their childhood experience, but because references to the fairy tale were also present in some of the most relevant critical and scientific texts of the period (2006:35). Thus, the publication of From Ritual to Romance (1920) by Jessie Weston, and the last volumes of The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer—a seminal anthropological approach to comparative mythology and religion— were extremely influential over the intellectual circles of the period. 48 Lawrence writes to Bertrand Russell in 1915: I have been reading Frazer’s Golden Bough and Totemism and Exogamy. Now I am convinced of what I believed when I was about twenty —that there is another seat of consciousness than the brain and the nerve system: there is a blood-consciousness which exists in us independently of the ordinary mental consciousness, which depends on the eye as its source connector. (Zytaruk and Boulton [eds] 1981: 470) 48 James Frazer’s The Golden Bough was published by the first time in two volumes in 1890, the complete twelve-volume edition was published between 1906 and 1915. John B. Vickery foregrounds its influence on modern writing and observes that “what is most striking is the depth to which it has permeated the cultural strata of our time. In literature alone it touches nearly everything from the most significant to the most ephemeral works” (1973:3). He understands that for myth to become an object of literary interest, the role of historical and scientific research was crucial. The Golden Bough is, Vickery holds, part of the “loose, variegated, and often contradictory intellectual tradition that shapes the modern spirit” (4). 64 The interest in traditional expressions of culture and the “primitive” influenced many expressions of modernist art. Criticism has attempted to explain the attraction exerted by these cultural forms in the context of rapidly changing society. The mythic and also the folkloric past projects an image of “natural wholeness” for which people longed. Regarding the experience of modernity Marshall Berman explains: “People who find themselves in the midst of this maelstrom are apt to feel that they are the first ones, and may be the only ones, to be going through it; this feeling has engendered numerous nostalgic myths of pre-modern Paradise Lost” (1987: 15). The reassessment of the mythic past which The Golden Bough brought to the fore also led to a new consideration of the communal against the alienation of the modern world. Over the modernist period a number of anthropological studies showed myth as a way of understanding a pre-Enlightened world view. Later in the century Michel Foucault would theorise in The Order of Things (1966) the ways in which rationalist approaches to the world which were imposed over the seventeenth century altered the human conception of the world from recognising similarity and connection to a system of isolated rigidly demarcated elements. Ann Martin aptly resorts to the essay by Walter Benjamin, “The Story Teller” (1936), and his appraisal of story telling as a communal activity opposed to novel writing, to make the argument that the use of the fairy tale in modernist period evokes a form of narrative which connects individuals in a context where “the modern subject is disconnected from community and tradition” (2006:4). 49 On the other hand, the use of fairy tales also evidences the isolation of the individual in modern times: the contrast between fairy tale formulae and tone— 49 Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Story Teller, Reflections on the Work of Nicolai Leskov”, published in 1936 is also a consideration on the role of the story teller and the activity of story telling in contrast to other forms of narration. Benjamin explores the activity of story telling as a means of recovering the memory of the past and by means of repetition linking the communities to their past: “Memory creates the chain of tradition which passes a happening on from generation to generation. It is the Muse-derived element of the epic art in a broader sense and encompasses its varieties. In the first place among these is the one practiced by the storytellers” (2006:371). 65 evocative of the Classical locus amoenus— and contemporary urban settings contributes to accentuate this feeling of dislocation “especially in relation to the modern city and its gendered, classed spaces” (Martin 2006:39). Fairy tales, even in their literary, written version, tend to be associated with narrative forms of the past as well as with expressions of the popular, pure and innocent. The use of fairy tales to evoke a realm of endangered childhood innocence can clearly be seen in Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse Winner”, and in Mansfield’s “A Suburban Fairy Tale” and “Sun and Moon”. These stories stage the victimization of children under the pressures of parental greed and capitalism. The two first instances follow traditional fairy tale structures but the tragic or at least dissonant endings reinforce the contrast between an ideal, and reality. Isolation prevails even if the fairy tale tone might have anticipated a happy ending. “Sun and Moon” is more fragmentary in structure but in all cases the stories convey a deep feeling of nostalgia and disenchantment with the outcomes of capitalist society. In addition to what has been previously argued, modernist authors may have turned to the fairy tale as a result of an interest to explore hidden facets of the self. As discussed in the previous section, modernist writing conveys an awareness of the complexity of the human mind and the individual (Perloff 1992:158), in tune with the highly influential discourse of psychoanalysis and its focus on fantasy. Already in finde-siècle Britain, as Nicholas Ruddick observes, questions concerning the ambivalent essence of the individual, stranded between the human and the animal, tended to be articulated resorting to fantasy, as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) demonstrates. Ruddick further suggests that the fairy tale, whose status had begun to rise, was similarly used to articulate this kind of binary oppositions. New literary fairy tales, such as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), but also 66 traditional ones, such as “Beauty and the Beast”, already established within the canon of “classical fairy tales” are examples of this motif (2007:191). In the modernist text these preoccupations are rendered in less literal ways, the relationship established with fairy tales is subtler, whereas the notions conveyed become complex in the light of the newly acquired knowledge on the functioning of the human mind. However, an interest in the human mind in its “primitive state” is evident. Fin-de-siècle literature depicts the primitive, dark side of human nature as something to be feared, a vision which also pervades Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). Yet modernism also offers examples in which human pre-civilised state is celebrated as a “relief form enervating rationality” (Perloff 1992:158). Thus, Mansfield’s “The Green Tree” reflects through the marvellous symbiosis between child and tree a primitive state of communion with nature. Similarly, in “The Garden Party” the protagonist resents the gardeners’ attempts to control the exuberant vegetation of New Zealand. Lawrence’s works—novels, novellas and stories—profusely celebrate these primordial states, often embodied in outcast figures (the Native American, the gypsy, or the Welsh). Indeed, the contrast between an authentic form of existence in contact with nature and the artificiality of life in society becomes an essential motif in his work. Both authors occasionally use the fairy tale to articulate these notions. Finally, and within a modernist context, fairy tales may embody instances of rebellion and disobedience opposite to these narratives’ alleged acculturating intention. In fairy tales, examples of hybridity and transformation counteract the precepts of stability and clear categories imposed by the dominant order. This feature of the fairy tale relates to an ambivalence rooted at the heart of modernist writing: the longing for order combines with an intention to contest the Victorian aesthetics of harmony by foregrounding the anomalies of society and the individual by “leaning towards the 73 Rose also draws a distinction between specific and general parody. The former refers to the deployment of parody as a device within a text whereas in the latter parody functions as a structuring element of the parodistic text. 53 Furthermore, she distinguishes two attitudes on the part of the parodist: contempt, which inspires imitation in order to mock the original work; and sympathy, which leads to the imitation of the admired text. This does not imply that the author does not desire to change or modernise it (45–46). 54 Linda Hutcheon’s approach to parody focuses precisely on the variety of attitudes encoded in the parodistic text. She attempts to find a “neutral” definition of the word “without the nuances of amelioration that the formalist’s ideas have” (1985:36). She insists on the fact that the Greek prefix para does not only mean counter or opposite, as most theories on parody have noticed but also “beside”, and insists on divesting the term from humorous connotations: There is nothing in parodia that necessitates the inclusion of a concept of ridicule, as there is, for instance, in the joke or burla of burlesque. Parody, then, is its ironic “trans-contextualization” and inversion, is repetition with difference. A critical distance is implied between the backgrounded text being parodied and the new incorporating work […]. The pleasure of parody’s irony comes not from humour in particular but from the degree of engagement of the reader in the intertextual “bouncing” […] between complicity and distance. (32) This is true for Mansfield and Lawrence’s stories, where irony often encloses a sense of tragedy, subverting the characteristic happy ending. In “The Tiredness of Rosabel”, Rosabel’s real life ironically contrasts with the life she dreams of in fairy tale terms. In “The Rocking Horse Winner”, Paul’s frantic attempts to save his family lead 53 Dentith also takes into account the notions of specific and general in relation to the target text. Specific parody is directed towards a particular text whereas general parody is aimed at a genre, text type or discourse (2000:7). 54 Lutz Röhrich holds that the attitude of mockery often derives from the author’s awareness of his condition of “epigone”: “The widely spread belief that one can only parody that which one loves is only partially true. Parody is much more frequently the symptom of satiation. Parodies are determined by a negative tendency towards the transmitted text. They have a tendency towards opposition. A protest is made against that which has been transmitted. Boredom, satiation, or lack of belief unburden themselves in laughter” (1967:215 qtd. in Rose 1993:46). 74 to his tragic self-destruction; he magically gets what he wished for but at the cost of his own life. For Hutcheon, irony plays a crucial role in the development of parody. In fact, it is an element which may set it apart from other imitating devices: “While the act and form of parody are those of incorporation, its function is one of separation and contrast. Unlike imitation, quotation, or even allusion, parody requires that critical ironic distance”. Parody goes beyond the textual domain: like irony, parody works on two spheres, a superficial and an “implied or backgrounded one” whose meaning must be inferred from the context within which it is located. Because of this parallel structure irony is a “preferred, even privileged, rhetorical mechanism” of parody. To be able to interpret irony and parody both levels must be recognised (1985: 34). 55 Thus, according to Hutcheon, irony functions on a “microcosmic”, semantic level whereas parody functions on a “macrocosmic”, textual level. In other words: “[i]rony’s patent refusal of semantic univocality matches parody’s refusal of structural unitextuality” (54). Hutcheon also makes an interesting differentiation of parody and satire on the grounds of their ethos or intention inferred by the decoder of a text. She holds that both genres are often confused because they both make use of irony, which is “a trope and not a genre” (56). Irony functions both semantically (by contrasting meanings), and pragmatically, since it implies a judgement or evaluation (55). Parody and irony, as has been mentioned, are structurally similar: they create contrasts either semantically or textually. Satire and irony share the pragmatic function: both have a target which is not 55 Hutcheon also observes how “this doubleness of both form and pragmatic effect or ethos […] makes parody and important mode of modern self-reflexivity in literature” (1985: 34). The idea of parody’s metafictional implications was also suggested by Margaret A. Rose and developed by Robert Phiddian (1995) drawing on Barthes’ and Derrida’s ideas. Parody, according to Phiddean, makes obvious the fact that all writing is necessarily intertextual which questions the role of the author and reinforces our dependence on language much as we judge it inadequate: “Phiddian extends the argument from one in which the parodic text is a fiction about other fictions to an argument which suggests that parody throws some of the very fundamentals of writing into doubt” (Dentith 2000:16). 75 textual but which it is to be found in the empiric world. Thus, the main difference between satire and parody is that the former is “extramural (social, moral)” aimed at the improvement of society and mankind, and parody is “intramural”, its target is in all cases another “discursive text” (43). Although satirists may deploy the parody of well-known texts as instruments to increase the ironic contrasts and critical effect of their satire, this does not mean that the parodied text is ridiculed: “the ethos of parody [may not be] negative even if that of the satire was” (58). On the contrary, the precursor text may be used as a standard for the examination of contemporary circumstances (57). 56 Thus, Mansfield and Lawrence also use fairy tale tropes with a variety of intentions, not necessarily critical towards the genre of fairy tales. Mansfield and Lawrence often exploit the symbolic possibilities which fairy tales offer. At times the fairy tales serve to create some expectations which are not fulfilled and this articulates a criticism of contemporary circumstances. In “A Suburban Fairy Tale” or in “The Rocking Horse Winner” the critical intention is aimed not at fairy tales themselves but at an instance of unjust social reality. At times, however, the parodic force seems to be aimed at criticising some of the values inherent in the genre. This is what Mansfield does in “The Little Governess” and Lawrence in the “The Thimble” where he shows certain contempt towards the notions of romantic love transmitted through romance literature and fairy tale and which contribute to falsify human feelings. Although Hutcheon acknowledges the potentiality of parody to be “threatening, even anarchic force, one that puts into question the legitimacy of other texts”, she also sees parody as inherently paradoxical since it implies a transgression of norms but such transgression entails an acknowledgement of the norm it challenges: 56 Hutcheon mentions the poetry of two modernist authors, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, to illustrate this non-mocking but critical deployment of parody, where it is suggested an “almost respectful or deferential ethos” (1985:57). 76 Parody is normative in its identification with the Other, but it is contesting in its Oedipal need to distinguish itself from the prior Other. This ambivalence set up between conservative repetition and revolutionary difference is part of the very paradoxical essence of parody; so, it is not surprising that critics should disagree on the intent of parody.[…] In any case…the very act of parodying invests the Other with both authority and an exchange value in relation to literary norms. (77) This goes in line with the inherent paradox of modernist writing analysed at the beginning of the section: the need of a break from tradition implies acknowledging its importance. The practice of parodying alleged old-fashioned forms of art in order to criticise them also ensures the survival of these forms. In this way, the parodistic use of fairy tales sometimes invites to dissect several of its aspects and intrinsic values but also contributes to assert its relevance as a social discourse. In later decades of the twentieth century, parodying fairy tales became a common literary practice. Jack Zipes makes a useful distinction for the purposes of this research drawing a line between two practices related to fairy tale reproduction that he terms “duplication” and “revision”. The former serves the perpetuation of the mainstream ideology which is a structuring element of our lives, whereas the latter entails a qualitative change of the original, implying that “there is something wrong” with it, although not necessarily changing it for the better (1991: 8–10). Zipes also distinguishes two ways of rewriting fairy tales. The first requires a transfiguration of the original which without “obliterate[ing] the recognizable features or values of the classical fairy tale […] cancels their negativity, showing how a different aesthetics and social setting relativizes all values”. Thus, the stories “liberate the reader from the contrived and programmed mode of literary reception”. The second involves a “fusion” of “traditional configurations with contemporary references, with settings and plotlines unfamiliar to readers” (1991: 180). The aim of such rewritings is to provide alternative points of views disclosing the artificial, constructed character of stories which tend to be considered universal. 77 Zipes’s ideas are conceived in the context of postmodern rewriting of fairy tales. However, these terms are also useful to understand the ways in which Lawrence and Mansfield deploy fairy tale elements. The textual analysis of the stories will show how, Lawrence’s “The Thimble” transfigures the Sleeping Beauty motif, showing how the conventions of fairy tale romance do not suit the context of the aftermath of World War I. In “A Suburban Fairy Tale”, however, Mansfield fuses motifs of the traditional fairy tale, like the metamorphosis of the hero into an animal but gives the story a contemporary setting and an unexpected development. 3.4 The Politics of Modernism Whereas for Linda Hutcheon parody is a key concept to delimit a poetics of postmodernism because postmodernism finds a critical weapon in parody’s metafictional edge, Ástráður Eysteinsson emphasises that modernism’s “distrust of any preestablished order led many modernists [...] to find in parody the pre-eminent form of aesthetic expression”(1992:138). Parody’s potential for subversion undermines the understanding of high modernism “as the culmination of a trend initiated by Schiller and Kant which considers art and beauty to occupy a realm separated from common life” (Sheppard 2000:4). 57 To understand the relevance of parody in modernist practice means to acknowledge that modernist writing has a critical dimension, a fact that some critical approaches to modernism have glossed over. Eysteinsson aptly analyses the 57 This is the approach of Peter Bürger in his Theory of the Avant-Garde (1984). Stephen Ross states regarding the conflictive position of modernist writing in its cultural context: “The cultural and institutional pressures that saw modernism rise to prominence in the middle of the century thus transformed its fiery, subversive, avant-garde pronouncements into hardened dogma; that is, into precisely the kind of conventional wisdom they were initially articulated to disrupt. Just as the Enlightenment celebration of reason ultimately produced the counter-enlightenment and its ideology (against which modernism reacted in the first place) so modernism’s dogmatism produced countermodernism and gave rise to the putative ideology of modernism against which theory reacted. But as with the Enlightenment his is not to say that modernism was totally bereft of its capacity for critique. Many of the conditions it challenged persisted even as modernism was canonized, and its texts continued to confront them eloquently. Likewise its avant-garde dimension continued to produce new challenges to accepted orthodoxies, including institutional modernism” (2009:8). 78 tensions between modernism as an artistic movement and the surrounding historical conditions in which it was generated in his seminal work The Concept of Modernism (1992), analysing retrospectively the diverse paradigms which have predominated in the understanding of modernism Eysteinsson brings to the fore the twofold dimension of modernism as an “aesthetic project” and as a “cultural force” (16). The former facet is linked to the interpretations made by the formalists and the New Critics, which put an emphasis on modernist formal innovation and legitimate the idea of the autonomy of art. Their views go in line with an idea discussed above, namely that modernism is an artistic movement which faces the chaos of the modern world by imposing its own, independent principles of order. 58 This position is also endorsed by some Marxist interpretations which criticise the movement’s lack of political commitment and detachment from social problems. Georges Lukács’ hostile assessments of modernism, for instance, were based on an appraisal of the movement as obsessed with the pathological, representing permanently distorted worlds and lacking the perspective of what is “normal” which is necessary to articulate social critique (Lukács 1963:17–26). Nevertheless, Eysteinsson holds the view that this position does not account for the portraits of social anomalies, the fragmented depictions of reality and the linguistic manipulation inherent to modernist representations of reality. For him, the boundaries between modernist’s aesthetic concerns and its attempts at cultural subversion are not clear-cut. Therefore, the idea of a modernist art which exists independently from the socio-historic reality is not valid. The facet of modernism as a cultural force presupposes a relation between this artistic 58 Baudelaire had seen in beauty a combination of two aspects, one is “invariable” and “eternal” and the other “relative” and “circumstantial”. The transient, momentary element of art would mirror the multifolded reality of modernity. He implies that there are two ways of facing the radical change in sensibility brought about by modernity: take refuge into what seems timeless and immobile or assert the flowing and temporal (1995 [1863]:3). 79 movement and the circumstances of modernity. The terms of such relation have been differently assessed. Eysteinsson observes that for some critics, modernism is the “dialectical counterpart of social modernity” (1992:22). However, any direct analogy between social context and artistic manifestation suggesting that art is a mimetic response to reality would mask the problematic nature of such relation. Thus, some critics have foregrounded how modernism’s reaction towards the socio-historical reality is a critical one, which presents “its otherness, its negativity, that which is negated by the prominent modes of cultural production” (Eysteinsson 1992:22). As an example, Lionel Trilling coined the term “adversary culture” to refer to the fact that literature is always more than a passive representation of the circumstances which surround its production. Moreover, literature can confront such circumstances; he understands that modern writing is in fact characterised by a “subversive intention” and highlights its threatening dimension. William Chace explains: “[Trilling] believed that the spirit of alienation and disenchantment characteristic of literary modernism was a profound example of culture working against its own premises” (1980:3 [emphasis mine]). For Trilling, modernism puts forward an awareness of the rapid changes of mentality which brought about a pervading feeling of meaninglessness and an acute realization of the illusory character of social conventions and understanding of human relations (Chace 1980: 3). This has relevant implications, which Trilling points out: Any historian of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing—he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produced him. (1966:xiii) 59 In his treatise “All That Is Solid Melts Into Air” (1982), Marshall Berman described the experience of modernity as a sense of disorientation resulting from the 59 Trilling explains: “What I am calling the modern period had its beginning in the latter part of the eighteenth century and its apogee in the first quarter of the twentieth century” (1966:xiii). 80 loss of previous references. The essay takes its title from a famous passage of the Communist Manifesto (1848): “All fixed, fast-frozen relationships with their train of vulnerable ideas and opinions are swept away, all new-formed ones become obsolete before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned” (Marx 1972:476) and, according to Trilling, modernist writing underlines this sense of dislocation. Significantly, this sense of sudden awareness is sometimes rendered in modernist writing through the fairy tale trope of the broken spell. Lawrence’s novella St. Mawr (1925) illustrates this point. Its protagonist, Lou Witt, after having found the powerful horse St. Mawr, uses a set of fairy tale based metaphors to refer precisely to this phantasmagoria of falsified and highly conventional social behaviour and human relations: Since she had really seen St. Mawr looming fiery and terrible in an outer darkness, she could not believe the world she lived in. She could not believe it was actually happening, when she was dancing in the afternoon at Claridge’s, or in the evening at the Carlton, slid about with some suave young man who wasn't like a man at all to her. Or down in Sussex for the week-end with the Enderleys: the talk, the eating and drinking, the flirtation, the endless dancing: it all seemed far more bodiless and, in a strange way, wraith-like, than any fairy story. She seemed to be eating Barmecide food, that had been conjured up out of thin air, by the power of words. She seemed to be talking to handsome, young, bare-faced unrealities, not men at all: as she slid about with them, in the perpetual dance, they too seemed to have been conjured up out of air, merely for this soaring, slithering dance business. And she could not believe that, when the lights went out, they wouldn't melt back into thin air again and complete non-entity. The strange nonentity of it all! Everything just conjured up, and nothing real. “Isn't this the best ever!” they would beamingly assert, like wraiths of enjoyment, without any genuine substance. And she would beam back: “Lots of fun!”. (1983:41 [emphases mine]) Through the fairy tale imagery deployed by Lou, Lawrence criticises the emptiness which characterises the common existence of many men and women of his age. In this novella, Lawrence opposes this vain, “fairy tale” way of life to the powerful existence which can only be reached through the close contact with the forces of nature, represented by the horse, St. Mawr, as well as by semi-savage characters: Phoenix —the half native American— and the Welsh horseman. These forces are, in the story, referred 81 to as the spirit of the mythological figure “Pan”. 60 Therefore, here, Lawrence is associating the fairy tale with a kind of sugary discourse which masks the reality of human nature and life. The myth of Pan, however, provides a metaphor of what is authentic. The horse is a celebration of this immense power which is neither god or bad, just pure life. The Manichean understanding of the world that fairy tales present is no longer valid. He advocates an abandonment of romance conventions and a search for authenticity. Paradoxically, the story itself rests heavily on fairy tale elements and structure. As Barker states in her article “Fairy Tale and St. Mawr”: “I do not believe that Lawrence wrote St. Mawr as a fairy tale, but I intend to show that the form provides a framework which helps us to analyse straightforwardly the complex, often obscure, relationship between man and nature in Lawrence’s novella” (1984:76). The idea presented in St. Mawr, as the reading of the short stories will show, also recurs in Lawrence’s shorter writing. The image of the broken spell can also be found in many of Mansfield’s stories such as the widely anthologised “Bliss” or “The Garden Party”. They present a similar view of the meaninglessness of social existence in terms which recall a fragile enchantment. However, as will be argued in later chapters, her writings lack the confidence of Lawrence’s belief in an authentic self which must be liberated from the slumber imposed by social convention. Mansfield’s notion of self remains fragmentary 60 In his fantastic tale “The Story of a Panic” E.M. Forster deals in the same terms with the conflict of society versus civilization. The story narrates the strange experience of a group of well-off British tourists who spend a summer in Italy. Among them is the indolent and irritable teenager Eustace, who is unexpectedly possessed by the spirit of Pan some time after another member of the company had stated that “The great God Pan is dead” (2005 [1911]:14). In the middle of the night Eustace, full of new life and unable to bear the rules of the vain and corseted society he lives in, escapes to live in the forest, laughing crazily. This is also the motif which articulates J.M. Barry’s famous play Peter Pan, the child who refuses to grow (It was staged for the first time in London in 1904 and later adapted into a narrative form). The similitude between the protagonist of the story and the traditional images of the god Pan are apparent, beginning by the name. However, as we will discuss in further sections, Barry’s perspective is characterised by a nostalgic view of childhood and a sentimentalism which contrasts with the powerful images offered by Lawrence and Forster in their stories. Thus, these authors exploit in different ways the metaphorical potential of the fairy tale: whereas Lawrence opposes the authenticity of the spirit of Pan to the falsified “fairy tale” existence of society, Barry makes Pan the king of a fairy tale world which contrasts with the materialism of the real world. 82 and she emphasises the protagonists’ loss of a sense of reality derived from the shattering of the spell of their banal existences. Like Lionel Trilling, Eysteinsson holds that Lukàcs failed to acknowledge that modernist distortion must necessarily work upon some normal perception of reality, which is not necessarily a desirable condition, and that indeed the disorder generated by the modernist text would shake the foundations of such perception. Thus, Eysteinsson highlights modernism’s paradoxical position between “mimetic notions of modern chaos” and “chaotic subversion of the norm” (1992:23–4). In Mansfield’s stories, the fragmentary structures and depictions of human identity are indeed attempts to reflect the general sense of social and personal disintegration; however, it also subversively calls for a revision of preconceived notions of reality, identity and social institutions. Lawrence’s stories show a resistance to conclusion which must be seen as expression of his intention to depict life realistically, as real events do not show coherent resolutions, and an invitation to distrust the consistence of some ideas normally taken for granted. Eysteinsson considers that a reinterpretation of modernism in the light of Theodor Adorno’s theories and poststructuralist ideas contributes to conciliate the aesthetic and the social aspects of the movement. Adorno’s concept of artistic “noncommunication” refers to the art’s capacity to oppose society through aesthetic form (1984:7). Taking up the formalist notion of aesthetic language as a means of defamiliarising normal speech, he attributes a social power to such defamiliarization. Poststructuralist concerns about language, representation and the fragmentation of the subject also illuminate the interpretation of modernism. Modernism’s concern with the “word” as the surface of language contributes to create texts in which meaning is elusive and which conceal as much as they reveal. Through the form one can derive meanings which relate to social reality in ways which transcend mere mimesis. Re- 89 the traditional story-teller, inviting the young audience to listen what will come: “Let us come closer to the fire, dear children, and be glad that you did not live in the time that Motorua did” (9). One of her untitled stories ―written in 1903 when Mansfield was a student in London― pays an ambiguous homage to the narratives of childhood. The piece, hardly longer than a page, opens with the musings of a young mother, a reflection which will prove, in view of the following events, highly ironical: “I am afraid I must be very oldfashioned. I used to pride myself upon being quite a Modern woman, but, within the last week I have had a rude awakening” (Scott [ed.] 2002:19). The fact which makes the protagonist question her sense of “modernity” is her attendance at a lecture on “Physical Culture”, where she is shocked by the appearance of women. Confronted with their eccentric looks, she would expose her traditional views of womanhood: They seemed to be seized with a mania to appear masculine. Men’s boots, men’s gloves, men’s hats, men’s coats […] Poor benighted dears, I am sure in their heart of hearts they were very sorry for themselves. They had a hungry look in their eyes. I longed to take them home and show them my babies and make their hair soft and fluffy, and put them in tea gowns and then cuddle them. I think they would never have gone back to their Physical Culture or their Society for the Promotion of Women’s Rights. (19–20) The protagonist will be further scandalised by the lecture itself. However, the opinions of the lecturer, the feminist Miss Mickle, are also ridiculed by the narrator. She holds that traditional children’s literature is useless: “Why teach an infant the entirely foolish and senseless rhyme of Jack Hornet”, she wonders. She would further argue: “How much better it would be for him to learn the position of his heart and the Circulation of the Blood” (20). Her speech is reminiscent of Mr. Gradgrind’s positivist views in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times (1854): “Now, what I want is facts”, Mr Gradgrind states in front of a class at the beginning of the novel (Dickens 2007:9). Miss Mickle advocates pragmatism in education, while the horrified protagonist considers that this woman “pulled down, and cast into the fire, all the little things that seem to be 90 part of our childhood. And where the little rose-covered summer-houses had stood for so long, she erected great dull stone buildings and parallel bars”(Scott [ed.] 2002:20). She mentally makes an appeal to the mothers of her generation to “impart the babes Little Jack Horner and all his contemporaries”. If the sketch were to be read literally, it would be a statement in favour of women acting as angels of the house, whose duty is to instil mores and values through good old moralising tales. However, irony informs a reading where the narrator is obviously scorned by the implicit author. The ending, lays bare the greatest of all ironies since, once at home, her children ask their dad to tell them a story and he, with “his feet on the mantel-piece”, begins: “Once upon a time there was a dear little boy and his name was Little Jack Hornet” (20). Thus, it seems clear that he has attended the meeting just to gain some knowledge of the tools feminists handle to be able to combat them better. Since the tale mocks both the protagonist’s conservatism and Miss Mickle’s pragmatism, it is difficult to work out Mansfield’s position on the issue of children’s education. Mansfield, aged fifteen at the moment of writing the episode, had been a child not long ago, and she had been raised according to Victorian standards. Through the views of the young mother, she seems to both articulate and make fun of her own feeling of nostalgia for a Victorian conception of childhood. This sketch conveys Mansfield awareness of the fact that there is an ideal of childhood innocence which belongs to a reactionary imaginary towards which she, nevertheless, feels compelled. In the same way, Mansfield makes fun of feminists although most of her writing shows a concern with the situation of women. Possibly, Mansfield would even agree with Miss Mickle on the view that Victorian taboos related to the body (particularly the female body) have negative consequences for women. This conflict between an attempt for social change and nostalgia for past values is also materialised in some of her mature tales: in “The Garden Party” (1922), for 91 instance, Laura Sheridan would struggle between her realization of social inequality and her appreciation of high class refinement. The episode of “the modern woman” also brings to the fore Mansfield’s awareness of the socialising value of fairy tales, which is apparent in the fact that she often parodies fairy tales in order to make a point. “Two Ideas with One Moral” provides an obvious instance of this practice: Mansfield deploys the motif of “the thoughtful child”, which recurs throughout her notebooks, and refers to an outspoken bookish little girl who does not fit into the expected behaviour of a young lady. Thus, “Two Ideas with One Moral” are two parallel sketches which, by parodying the style of fairy tales, show that thoughtful girls are rarely appreciated. The first sketch opens: “Once upon a time there was a nice, sweetie, chubby little girl”. In contrast, the second starts: “Once upon a time there was a nasty, thoughtful, thin little girl” (Scott [ed.] 2002:28). Whereas the first of the girls never wished for “wholly unnecessary knowledge” the thoughtful girl does precisely that. Eventually both of them fall off the stairs and die. In the first of the sketches the undertaker in charge of the burial thinks to himself regarding the sweet girl: “Well, she was a dear…”. In the second sketch, the same man says the following about the “thoughtful child”: “Well, she was a horror…” (28). A similar contrast but devoid of bitter sarcasm can be found in the poem “Opposites”. This poem was part of a series addressed to children, and celebrates spontaneity and freedom in the behaviour of girls in contrast to the refined education which turns them into little ladies. In the poem, “The Half-Soled-Boots-With-Toecaps- child” is presented against “The Patent-Leather-Slipper-child”. Whereas the first protagonist has dirty hands, likes playing outside, splashing in the puddles, hugging and kissing noisily her mother, the second child has snow white hands, sits quietly at home, and just offers her cheek to be kissed twice a day. In the last stanza, the poetic voice of a 92 fictional mother addresses the second child with the words: “O Patent-Leather-Slipper- child - ,/ My dear, I’m well content/ To hold my daughter in my arms/ And – not an ornament (Scott [ed.] 2002: 183). Katherine Mansfield would later write a story entitled “The Thoughtful Child, Her Literary Aspirations” for her friend and illustrator Edith K. Bendal, which was also intended as part of a collection of stories for children. The story mixes the thoughts of a mother and the voice of her little daughter to expose the radical differences between people with and without children. Mother and child aspire to write a book to teach childless people how they should deal with little children. Among other things they explain that “there are times when you cannot be called ‘young lady’, or ‘child’ or ‘little girl’, when there is a pain in you that will not get better until someone says ‘Chick-a- bidee’ or ‘Toddle-ums’ or ‘Precious Poppet’, or ‘Dear-my-sweet’” (203) and “that there are no such things as dolls —they are fairy babies living for a little time with Thoughtful Children to be treated ever so kindly…” (204). In this story Mansfield regards tenderness and affection as essential in child rearing. In a similar vein, Mansfield wrote another story in which a father tells his daughter an amusing anecdote which happened when she was a small child. He begins his account with the formula “once upon a time” and narrates how in her fourth birthday she rejected to have the party that had been organised because she has already eaten the icing of the cake. Eventually the father would help her to conceal her secret (Scott [ed.] 2002:33–34) “The Thoughtful Child” reappears in a story found in typescript among Mansfield’s unbound papers, and it is reminiscent of the brothers Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel” (1812). It is entitled “She and the Boy; or, The Story of the Funny-Old-Thing”. It narrates the inconsequential adventure of a boy and a girl (again “The Thoughtful Child”) who, on a walk on the forest, found a little house called “Step-Inside-and-Find- 93 Out”. There they meet “The Funny-Old-Thing”, a character which the narrator does not describe but which acts and speaks like a very old woman. However, the tale does not follow a traditional development expected from this relatively traditional beginning, since the plot does not progress eventfully. After some nonsense talk reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the old creature offers a cup of sea foam to the children and, afterwards, they simply go back home. In the words of the Funny-Old-Thing, however, there is a reflection on the transience of youth and the passing of time which would contain a pessimistic moral: “People are so careless about their youth. They leave it behind just like you do on hankies at parties, and toothbrushes when you’re visiting […] and you only have one, so nobody else’s fits you at all. How sad it does seem. Bear that in mind” (Scott [ed.] 2002:125). Thus, through what appears to be a tale for children Mansfield expresses her own version of the tempus fugit topic. Mansfield would later write, in the same vein, a short allegorical narrative were two characters, Youth and Age, converse (203). “The Thoughtful Child” is also the voice of a poem entitled “Evening Song of the Thoughtful Child”. It presents the inner world of the child as inhabited by imaginary “shadow children”, with whom she enjoys playing: “Let us make a Fairy Ring/Shadow children, hand in hand/And our songs quite softly sing/That we learnt in Fairy Land” (188). Also, under the title “The Thoughtful Child” Mansfield narrates a story concerning fraternal jealousy and early death. The protagonist is a small girl who “knew ’most everything about Fairies” since “[s]he had been one herself once, and lived in a crocus on the lawn” (127), like Andersen’s “Thumbelina” (1835). Putting her arms around a woman’s neck the girl wilfully abandons her fairy status and lives as a normal child with her mother and father. They are happy until the arrival of a little brother, which the girl regards as an intrusion. Soon, however, the brother dies of a short illness. 94 Although the little girl gets their parents’ attention back, they are so depressed that life cannot resume its normal course. After being ill herself for a long time, the Thoughtful Child goes out in the garden and sees her little brother singing together with the ethereal Shadow Children. She joins them in their games and, afterwards, gets happily home and announces to her parents that their son lives in the garden. Since the little girl is the focaliser of the story, the fairy tale-like beginning seems to be a projection of the child’s own narcissistic self-perception as the joy and centre of the household. After the death of her brother, the fantasy of the Shadow Children helps her to overcome guilt and sadness. As will be shown, these kinds of fantasy projections abound in Mansfield’s mature writing. “The Thoughtful Child” is not the only story dealing with death. Probably influenced by Oscar Wilde’s and especially by Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, Mansfield wrote several stories on this topic, often in connection with childhood. As early as 1903, aged twelve, Mansfield wrote “His ideal”, which would later be renamed “She”. The narrative lacks the formulaic expressions of fairy tales but its conversational style is reminiscent of traditional story telling. This emphasises rather than diminishes a subtle narrative lyricism, articulated through short condensed sentences and the singsong tone of a child narrating. “His Ideal” begins: “He was but a child when he first saw Her. Such a wee child, and, ah, so ill, so very ill. It was night” (Scott [ed.] 2002:7). The notion of people having early encounters with death and delaying them is not unusual in folk tales (often in the type of tales under the heading “Religious Tales”, according to the Aarne-Thompson classification [Thomson 1978:484]). However, unlike those folk tales where the hero manages to trick death or the devil until he is very old, Mansfield’s story emphasises the protagonist’s death-drive, which is portrayed as an intense form of amorous passion. The child protagonist of this narrative is in love with Death 95 (personified as a beautiful lady) from their first encounter, and he will live alienated from humankind and longing to see her again. He manages to do so as a young man after a terrible horse accident, but it will not be until he is an old man that the woman finally embraces him and takes him with her. At the story’s denouement, the narrator addresses the reader to reveal the identity of the lady: “And her name was —Ah! How well we know her you and I. She, who came with her forefathers, and will stay while this little Universe remains. Her name was Death” (Scott [ed.] 2002:8). In a similar story written later, “Les Deux Etrangers” (1906), a little sickly girl, Fifi, also receives the visit of Death. This time, however, it wears its traditional dark cloak and mower, and is accompanied by a weak little winged creature. Both of them want to share the girl’s bed but she wisely chooses the smallest of them, even if the other promises to show her “wondrous things”. It is sympathy for the pathetic little person, which seems even feebler than herself, that leads Fifi to reject the dark figure and embrace the other. The story ends with the creature wrapping the child’s heart with its little wings: “I shall creep into your heart […] and stay there always, always” (Scott [ed.] 2002:39) it murmurs. The story concludes with the statement: “and Fifi was happy”. The ambiguity of the ending makes the reader wonder if Fifi’s refusal to accept the offerings of Death has saved her life or, on the contrary, if she has just chosen a sweeter form of death represented by the little creature. It seems, however that the lovedeath tension which was synthesised in the figure of the woman in the previous story is here split into two figures, and the girl chooses the latter. The notion of a decision with a moral implication is a traditional motif in legends and tales, and in this case there seem to be traces of a Christian message: compassion, not greed, leads to salvation. The emphasis on the insignificance of the child in an indifferent world is also reminiscent of 96 Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” (1945), which narrates the death of a little homeless orphan on Christmas Eve, while the passers-by ignore her suffering. In addition to this, several of Mansfield’s poems are either inspired by fairy tales or fairy tales in verse. Many of them deal with childhood themes and were used by Murry in a section of Poems by Katherine Mansfield (1923) headed “Child Verses 1907”. Scott underscores their interest since, in her view, they reflect Mansfield’s “conception of a Victorian childhood” (2002:178 n.186). The style of these poems ranges from nursery rhyme-like simplicity to more complex compositions, but for all of them Mansfield seems to have had a very young audience in mind. Mansfield’s “Song of Karen the Dancing Child” is based on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Red Shoes” (1845). Andersen’s tale narrates how Karen, a peasant girl adopted by a rich woman, grows vain and so proud of her red shoes that, as a punishment, they would keep her dancing without stop until she has her feet cut off by a wood-cutter. Mansfield gives voice to Karen’s complains in a simple poem of five fourlined stanzas with two refrains between brackets. The last stanza also pays tribute to Edgar Alan Poe’s “The Raven” (1845), a fact which emphasises the already sordid connotations of Andersen’s tale: “(O little white feet of mine)/ Children —children open the door!/ (Red shoes the colour of wine)/ And the wind shrieks ‘never more’” (Scott [ed.] 2002:183). In “The Candle Fairy” Mansfield creates an allegory portraying the flame upon a candle as a dancing fairy, whose light announces the presence of the mother: “It’s only just for Mothers that/ The candle fairy comes/ and if you play with it —it bites/Your fingers and your thumbs” (184). A much nostalgic and idealised view of the child is also manifest in the poem entitled “A Fairy Tale”, whose structure and symbolism is analysed by Rodríguez Salas (2009:158–163). The poem elaborates on the tale of little 97 Olaf, who was “partly fairy” and led a lonely life on top of a mountain. Olaf longs for a friend and, on a winter night, a fairy comes to bring him a fiddle which made the boy “happy at last”. Addressing its audience, the poetic voice concludes: “So perhaps, on the quietest of evenings/ If you listen you may hear him soon/ The child who is playing the fiddle/ ’Way up in the cold lonely moon” (Scott [ed.] 2002:191). Among Mansfield’s unbound papers there was a poem entitled “The Sea Child”, reminiscent of legends dealing with the so-called Merfolk. Probably inspired by Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” (1837), this composition addresses the topic of a woman living in the sea, who takes her child to land and leaves her there so that the girl may have a better life. In order to make a living, the girl must sell the corals and foam with which her mother had adorned her and, broken-hearted, attempts to go back to the sea. However, the mother pleads for her to go back to land: “Daughter, go back to the darkling land;/There is nothing here but sad sea water, /And a handful of shifting sand” (Scott [ed.] 2002:235). In this poem Mansfield elaborates on the popular motif of the “changeling” but the story’s message reverses the terms of the refrain of W.B. Yeats poem “The Stolen Child” (1889): “Come away, O human child!/To the waters and the wild/With a faery, hand in hand/For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand” (Yeats 1996 [1889]:18). One of Mansfield’s more elaborate fairy tales is “The Green Tree: A Fairy Tale”. Found among Mansfield’s unbound papers, the date of its composition is unknown, although it is thought to belong with her earliest material (Scott [ed.] 2002:114 n.113). The narrative responds fully to the conventions of the literary fairy tale in structure, style and imagery. Its content, however, is open to complex philosophical interpretations, as is the case of, for example, Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales. “The Green Tree” narrates the obsessive relationship which links a boy with a tree he 98 has planted. The beginning of the tale seems inspired by the popular tale “Jack and the Beanstalk”: “Once upon a time the Boy planted a seed in a little plot of ground that his Father had given him for his very own” (114). Against the child’s will, and while he is away, his parents have one of the branches of the tree cut to sell the wood and be able to survive the winter. However, the branch falls off over their cottage killing them all. Significantly, the boy does not feel sorry for the fate of the family, but feels, however, an intense pain in his arm, until the wound left by the cutting of the branch is healed. The boy’s spiritual bond with the tree deranges him: he fancies that the tree has a golden fairy for a soul to whom he starts singing songs. A Wandering Minstrel, impressed by the boy’s sensitive lyrics, writes them down with the boy’s own blood and sings them around the world. Worried that he might have no offspring to take care of the tree once he has died, the boy accepts to take in a girl, who has travelled to the village impressed by the boy’s songs, and they live together. However, when she asks him to abandon the tree for a while and travel around, he is deeply offended and sends her away. One day, he glimpses a golden fruit at the top of the tree and climbs up to reach it. Just when the fruit seems to be closer, it disappears and the boy falls off the tree and dies. Rodríguez Salas highlights the imagery inspired by James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890– 1915) and interprets the boys insane fixation with the tree as a criticism towards the attitude of aesthetes, in love with their own artistic creations (Rodríguez Salas 2009: 167–8). As was the case with “His Ideal”, Mansfield presents desire as a deadly drive which does not only lead the boy to a social death, confining him to isolation but also leads him, in the end, to physical death. The tree as the object of the protagonist’s desire is a recurrent motif in Mansfield later writing, notably in her widely anthologised story “Bliss” (1921). 105 Rainbow (1915) already puts forward the importance of childhood stories in the development of individuals and human relations. Thus, Lawrence opposes the emotionally intense folk narratives that Mrs. Brangwen tells to her daughter Anna to the playful tales with which her husband entertains the child. Tom Brangwen builds a close relationship with his stepdaughter through infantile play which involves non-sense story-telling and nursery rhymes. The child appreciates the teasing nature of these games which contrast with the distressing tales told by her mother: For these two made a little life together, they had a joint activity. It amused him, at evening, to teach her to count, or to say her letters. He remembered for her all the little nursery rhymes and childish songs that lay forgotten at the bottom of his brain. At first she thought them rubbish. But he laughed, and she laughed. They became to her a huge joke. Old King Cole she thought was Brangwen. Mother Hubbard was Tilly, her mother was the old woman who lived in a shoe. It was a huge, it was a frantic delight to the child, this nonsense, after her years with her mother, after the poignant folk-tales she had had from her mother, which always troubled and mystified her soul. (Lawrence 1995:68) In that same novel, the narrator expresses Will Brangwen’s anxiety over the possible loss of the newly found happiness in marriage in the following terms: “He was afraid all would be lost that he had so newly come into: like the youth in the fairy tale, who was king for one day in the year, and for the rest a beaten herd: like Cinderella also, at the feast” (125). Lawrence’s incursions into literary genres shorter than the novel led him to explore a form at least so difficult to define as the short story: the short novel, long story or “novella”. While some of these narratives are clearly longer than what is normally understood under the term “short story”, in other cases there is no critical consensus. Thus, the same narrative may be defined by some critics as a novella, while others refer to it as a short story. In many cases, the term short narrative avoids having to discriminate between genres. Although Lawrence’s novellas fall out of the scope of our corpus, it is worth pointing at the fact that the novella as a narrative form also holds important connections with the fairy tale. Moreover, many of the fairy tale motifs we 106 will examine here are also developed in Lawrence’s novellas, and in some cases, these novellas have emerged as further elaborations of shorter stories, keeping common symbols and motifs. The first problem which must be faced when dealing with the novella is that the lack of solid critical principles for its definition is even more apparent than for the short story. Małgorzata Trebisz observes that “critics involved in the study of the modern novella inevitably plunge into the area between the short story and the novel” (1992: 16). Indeed, the novella comprises a combination of features characteristic of both genres. Judith Leibowitz points out that the purpose of the novella is “a double effect of intensity and expansion” (1974:16), and identifies two distinctive technical features which favour such a purpose: the theme-complex and the repetitive structure, which operate simultaneously to condense the narrative material and to multiply its meanings. The theme complex refers to the condensation of closely related motives; however, the implied meaning of these motives is only hinted at, and not developed, which expands the interpretation of the narrative (Trebisz 1992:17). “This outward expansion from a limited focus”, Leibowitz explains, “is the effect of a typical plot construction of the novella” (1974:16). The repetitive structure, on the other hand, allows the recurrence of the limited number of themes and situations through the reappearance of symbols, images or moral attitudes (1974:39) and “the function of repetition is intensification and not progression” (Trebisz 1992:18). This reiterative structural construction is also commonly found in fairy tales. In her classification of fairy tales, Kready acknowledges the relevance of what she calls “accumulative” tales, where the same words or structural patterns are repeated with or without variation (2008 [1916]: 142). 64 64 Valerie Shaw, however, points out the potential inaccuracy of Trebisz’s definition: “When, for example, one theorist describes the ‘generically distinct’ aesthetic effect produced by the novella as simultaneous ‘intensity and expansion’, many people will feel that hey are actually being offered a classic definition of the short story’s aim” (1992:20). 107 The ideas of Mary Doyle Springer (1975) help to further connect the novella with the fairy tale by establishing a typology of the novella based on Sheldon Sacks’ idea that there are three principles which inform narratives: apologue, action and satire (1969). Those novellas following the principle of the apologue hold important associations to folk and fairy tales. In them, “characters are represented in complex relationships in a narrative manner and choice of style designed to alter our attitudes toward or opinions of the world we live in […] In an apologue all elements of the work are synthesised as a fictional example that causes us to feel, to experience as true, some formulable statement or statements about the universe” (1969: 276–277). According to Trebisz, Lawrence’s novellas can be productively analysed as apologues which articulate his complex philosophical ideas (1992:59–70). Similarly, Lüthi holds that “the European folk fairy tale has this tendency to be universal” (1976:70). Thus, the fact that in the apologue, characters are simplified to a cluster of easily identifiable traits and presented from a distance “by not naming him or by using some generic epithet, by making him less human or even animal-like” (Trebisz 1992:18) is also true of fairy tales. Plot progression is in the apologues replaced by a sequence of events chronologically organised. Furthermore, the apologue’s aim at universality, catered for by a particular treatment of time, “the general statement is in fact timeless, or better, ‘time-free’” (19) is at best illustrated by the fairy tale undetermined formula ‘once upon a time’. Finally, Trebisz holds that the exploitation of myth and ritual contributes to endow the narrative with this sense of universality (19) and the relation between myth and fairy tale was already pointed at in previous sections. In the novella the apologue is often realised as an “example apologue” (Trebisz 1992), investing the narrative with realism, giving them a specific time and setting but, nevertheless, aiming at communicating what is considered a universal truth. The 108 example apologue “depicts realistically a selected example” (19). In such cases, features of the realistic novel mix with characteristic structures of the apologetic fairy tale giving rise to interesting samples of textual counter-feeding. Thus, it is not surprising that a number of critics have approached Lawrence’s novellas from their connections to fairy tales. Trebisz, for instance, reads Lawrence’s St. Mawr (1925) in this light, as a “sample-apologue of Sleeping Beauty” (1992). In the same vein, Anne Darling Barker acknowledges that the fairy tale form constitutes a useful framework to clarify the Lawrence’s depiction of the intricate relationship between man and nature in St. Mawr: “Fairy tales are deeply seated in the Anglo-Saxon literary tradition”, Barker argues, “[w]riters who are part of this tradition reckon, consciously or unconsciously, with the elements of the fairy tale every time they write a story with familiar patterns” (1984:76). Although Lawrence shows a great ability to depict complex character development in his novels, in this novella, like in fairy tales, he chooses to resort to “simple natural forces” to resolve his characters’ dilemmas. However, for Barker, Lawrence’s novella departs from the well-wrought endings characteristic of fairy tales: “Fairy tales answered the needs of listeners in a time when problems had simpler solutions. Because Lawrence knows there are no such answers for the complexities facing his generation he preaches rejection” she concludes (83). Oscar Ibáñez Muñoz also presents Lawrence’s The Virgin and the Gipsy (1930 [written in 1926]) as holding strong structural and thematic similarities with classic fairy tales. Lawrence’s novella, Ibáñez Muñoz holds, is a response against the socialising elements ingrained in classical fairy tales. Instead, he seeks to re-establish the validity of the mythical substratum of the narratives, which proposes a “neat, original relationship between man and nature” without the artificiality which romance infused to classical fairy tales (2000:362). Suzanne Wolkenfeld (1977) reads 109 Lawrence’s The Fox (1922) in similar terms, using the Sleeping Beauty motif as a productive way to approach the structural complications which the different versions of the novella manifest. The Ladybird (1923) develops the same motif, elaborating further the theme of an earlier, uncollected story: “The Thimble” (1917). This story will be analysed in subsequent chapters of this dissertation, along with the relevant connections with the novellas. As previously stated, Lawrence’s first stories tend towards realism. However, early in his writing career, D.H. Lawrence wrote a story where fairy tale elements mix with legendary and religious motifs. In 1907 Lawrence submitted a narrative titled “A Legend” to a Christmas Story contest, which he would later revise to be published as “A Fragment of Stained Glass” in 1911. He endowed the second version with a more complex narrative frame where a first person narrator becomes the listener of a story embedded in the primary narration. Thus, in the narrative two historical periods intersect: the present and the fifteenth century. Disregarded by some critics as “a feeble juvenility, with its laborious but pointless narration and its absurd attempt at historical evocation” (Hough 1957:169), this early tale provides an insight on some of the issues which Lawrence develops in later narratives. The story opens with a description of Mr. Colbran, the vicar of a small contemporary village of the Midlands. The narrator relates how in one of the visits to the vicarage Mr. Colbran tells him about a project he has in mind. He intends to compile a “Bible of the English people—the Bible of their hearts—their exclamations in presence of the unknown” (Lawrence 1983:89), and he has found a parchment with material for his work. The parchment contains the account of a supernatural event written down by the monks who lived in the abbey four centuries before: While the monks where chanting in pray, a creature —none doubted that it must have been the 110 devil—was seen at the other side of the stained window behind the altar, and carved a hole by taking away a piece of glass. Just on time, the statue of the saint on the façade of the building precipitated itself making the devil fall down before it could penetrate the holy place, thus saving the scared monks. When the monks went out the following morning they found blood on the snow and the figure of the Saint broken on the floor. When the vicar ends this account, the narrator scorns the story in disbelief and both attempt to find a logical explanation for the allegedly demonic event. Then, the vicar makes up an elaborate story, which he narrates in first person in a “sing-song, sardonic” voice (Lawrence 1983:89): a young boy works at the stables of a manor and, enraged by the behaviour of one of the horses, kills it. He is beaten almost to death by his master as a punishment, and to take revenge sets fire to the manor. He runs for his life for days and arrives at a farm where a young red-haired girl whom he knows provides him with food and shelter. Helplessly attracted by each other, they agree to escape together. They painfully run over the snow and, suddenly, the lights projected by the stain window of the abbey call the children’s attention: We came directly on a large gleam that shaped itself up among flying grains of snow. Ah! she cried, and she stood amazed. Then I thought we had gone through the bounds into a faery realm, and I was no more a man […]. We found ourselves under a door of light which shed its colours mixed with snow. This Martha had never seen, nor I, this door open for a red and brave issuing like fires. We wondered. “It is faery,” she said, and after a while, “Could one catch such—Ah, no!” Through the snow shone bunches of red and blue. “Could one have such a little light like a red flower—only a little, like a rose-berry scarlet on one’s breast!” (94) Thus, to satisfy the girl’s wishes, the boy climbs up the façade of the abbey and with his knife takes off a bit of stained glass from the window. In the process, the statue he is leaning on collapses and the boy falls down wounded. This would account for the event the monks witnessed from the inside of the chapel. The children hurriedly get away with their treasure. When they think they are safe, they make a fire and lay down on the snow admiring the magic glass and engaging in sensual playing. The girl is both 111 afraid and attracted by the boy’s wildness: “Give it me,” she pleaded. I gave it her. She held it up, she smiled, she smiled in my face, lifting her arms to me. I took her with my mouth, her mouth, her white throat. Nor she ever shrank, but trembled with happiness” (97). However, the beasts are lurking in the dark and the children are not as safe as they believe to be: “What woke us, when the woods were filling again with shadow, when the fire was out, when we opened our eyes and looked up as if drowned, into the light which stood bright and thick on the tree-tops, what woke us was the sound of wolves…”. At this moment in the narration the vicar abruptly interrupts his account: “‘Nay,’ said the vicar, suddenly rising, ‘they lived happily ever after’”, to which the narrator concludes: “‘No’, I said” (97). The world that the fictional children of the vicar’s narration inhabit is savage and full of cruelty, and the children themselves are portrayed as passionate creatures who often lose control of their emotions. Their ultimate desire for beauty, magic and love is thwarted by the arrival of the wolves, of which they will become an easy prey. The vicar, however, in an effort to turn tragedy into fairy tale, concludes with the traditional “happily ever after”, thus granting the protagonists of his made up tale a chance to survive. However, this ending does not seem convincing enough, and the narrator rejects it. Paul G. Baker (1980) identifies the main source of this story as Walter Pater’s “Denys Lauxerrois”, a tale of Imaginary Portraits (1886). Baker also recognises traces of Browning’s The Ring and the Book (1868–9) and Dante G. Rossetti’s Hand and Soul (1849). However, echoes of “Hansel and Gretel” and “Little Red Riding Hood” also resonate in this complex narration, and are emphasised in the vicar’s attempt at ending the story in a fairy tale-like fashion. It is my view that through the narrator’s rejection of 112 this seemingly unauthentic ending Lawrence advocates an abandonment of fake illusions and celebrates the powerful, even if destructive, forces of the universe. Moreover, according to Joseph Baim, the meaning of “A Fragment of Stained Glass” resides in the tension between two historical moments: a legendary past, where men fully obeyed their passionate instincts, and a decadent present in which humanity fails to connect with the universe around: “The theme that derives from this construction is the prototypically Laurentian one: the need in the modern world for a rebirth of the will to resist de-humanization, and man’s need to cast off his mind-forged manacles if he is to save himself” (Baim 1971:323). Thus, there is an effort on the vicar’s part to restore part of the magic and passion absent in contemporary society. Ironically, Baim states, when Mr. Colbran starts narrating the tale, “he comes to substitute for the monks’ story a story of profane passion, no more logical, no less passionate, than the one he glosses” (324). Besides, when the vicar suddenly gives his narrator a happy ending “he is apparently unwilling to admit what the story has brought him to: an imaginative relationship with the passionate, non-rational energy — sometimes benign, sometimes bestial— of life itself” (325). In this early story Lawrence anticipates a deployment of fairy tale allusions to articulate his personal views of the relation of the individual and the natural world around him. The story combines a disenchanted view of the present and the intention to re-enchant the modern world through story-telling. The textual analysis provided in subsequent sections shows how fairy tale and mythic symbolism combines with realist settings and character depictions to put forward similar views. Towards the end of his career, Lawrence wrote several narratives in which time, place and character are presented in schematic ways, recalling the fabulous world evoked in folk and fairy tales. Bibhu Padhi states: 113 Lawrence lets his fables absorb many of the characteristics which are more commonly found in other narrative forms, the chief among which are: the element of “quest” (of the traditional romance; the supernatural and the uncanny (of fairy tales and gothic narratives); the magic rites and rituals (that occur frequently in the eastern epic narratives). (1985:240) Some of Lawrence’s narratives belonging to this period deserve a brief mention in this study, for their meaning rests upon allegory and they resemble traditional narrations both in their style and their allegorical dimension. As Bibhu Padhi observes, “it cannot […] be said that he worked entirely within the essentially self-conscious world of the traditional fable. We do, however, find him using, especially in some of his late narratives, a style which very often brings to one’s mind the world of a fable” (1985:239). Indeterminate titles such as “The Woman who Rode Away” (1925), “The Man who Loved Islands” (1927) or The Man who Died (1927) clearly recall those of traditional tales. Lawrence wrote “The Woman who Rode Away” at an interval in the composition of The Plumed Serpent (1926). For most critics (cf.: Hough 1957, Moore 1954), the story could be read as a sketch of the second part of the novel, where the narrative moves from realism to abstraction, both in style and content. The “Woman” of the tale abandons her house and family compelled by a desire of freedom and an attraction towards the “timeless, marvellous Indians of the mountains” (Lawrence 2002a:42). As the story progresses, the American landscape enchants her to the point of completely annulling her will. She is taken by the Indians Chichui and becomes involved in one of their rituals, being fed, massaged and treated in a special way. The woman comes progressively to understand the sacrificial nature of this ritual which will entail her death. This realization, however, has no consequence, for she has accepted death as her destiny. “The Woman who Rode Away” has been discussed in the light of the motive of Little Red Riding Hood, together with Leslie Silko’s “Yellow Woman” and Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves” (cf.: Sterling and Yerkes 2000). 114 “The Man who Loved Islands” evokes the “formalized world of the fairy tale” from the first sentence (Moynahan 1972:185–186): “There was a man who loved islands”. It narrates the anonymous protagonist’s quest for an ideal place. He moves three times from one island to another, each place being smaller than the previous one. As Padhi holds, “this fable at times appears to be a story for young readers—a sort of fairy tale in three parts” (1985:250). Indeed, in tone and structure resembles traditional tales, including, as Padhi has highlighted, frequent addresses to the reader. These combine with an impersonal style which creates tension in the audience, who debates between involvement and distance. In the protagonist’s successive abandonment of one place and settlement of another there is also a movement which sets him progressively apart from the human world. On the first island, which had a perimeter of four miles, the man establishes a small society as the master of a Manor with a number of servants. The costs of keeping everything in order are too large to be assumed and the man must move to a smaller place taking in only five people. Finally, he is not able to bear the pressure of the relationship he has initiated with one of them (the daughter of a widow) and moves to a yet smaller island, barely a rock in the ocean. Alienated from all human contact, even the animal noises become unbearable to the man, who abandons himself to an existence estranged from all sense of time and place. Thus, Lawrence deploys the frame of a traditional narrative in three movements to articulate an allegory of human existence, of human relations and of the bond between man and nature. The opening of The Escaped Cock —alternatively published under the title The Man who Died (1929)— also recalls traditional narratives. The beginning seems to draw on those folk tales in which humble people meet Christ and help him, such as “The Little Old Man made Young by Fire” by the Brothers Grimm (1884). It opens with a man who meets the Resurrected Saviour while looking for an escaped rooster; the man 121 Significantly, and recalling Zipes terminology, “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” “transfigures” the Cinderella tale (1991:180) and at the same time thematises the process of “transfiguration” itself, for it is central to the story’s plot. Fairy tale elements function both as an endo- and exoskeleton in terms of De Caro and Jordan’s classification, since Cinderella provides an underlying pattern for the story, which is also an instance of modern fairy tale. Moreover, D.H. Lawrence borrows elements of Cinderella and combines them with other fairy tale motifs (like the scene of the awakening of Sleeping Beauty), as well as with biblical and classical myths, which makes the intertextual quality of this story overt. 67 The dialogue which “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” establishes with traditional texts highlights the value of the latter as sources of inspiration for modernist writing. Lawrence attempts to illustrate an instance of sudden spiritual renewal in the context of a decadent world and to do so he performs an act of literary renewal himself, as is the rewriting of a classic fairy tale. The result is a modern Cinderella which in some sense subverts the original while also bringing to the fore the pertinence, at the turn of the twentieth century, of some of the human values inscribed in it. Moreover, Lawrence deploys some characteristically modernist techniques. “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” begins in medias res, with Mabel’s brother Joe’s direct question: “Well, Mabel, what are you going to do with yourself?” (Lawrence 1990:137). Temporal arrangement is mostly lineal, except for a flash-back which establishes the antecedents of the Pervin family. The action, however, takes place in a few critical hours, and the expanded time of the story allows the narrator to dissect the internal development of the characters. This narrative could be considered an instance of what 67 In his article “D.H. Lawrence and Tradition” (1989), Jeffrey Meyers emphasises the intertextual nature of Lawrence’s literary practice. Meyer notices how “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” draws on fairy tale motifs but also borrows elements from a variety of sources as varied as Worthsword’s poem “Tintern Abbey” (date), Goethe’s “The Selective Affinitites” (date), George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (Date), Shakespeare’s Hamlet (date) or the biblical myth of Adam’s creation in Genesis. 122 Helen Baron and Rick Rylance have termed as “interactive consciousness”, meaning “[t]he internalisation of the attitudes of others through the skilful manipulation of point of view and free indirect speech produces a subtle account of how identity is formed interpersonally” (Rylance 2001:27). As mentioned with reference to Bakhtin’s theories in the third chapter, dialogy is a term which can be aptly applied to certain short stories, and “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” is illustrative of this dialogism. The third person narrator penetrates the consciousness of Mabel, and then Fergusson. In the final scene their actions, words and thoughts alternate in a dialogue which is both verbal and nonverbal, and which brings about Fergusson’s transformation. The discourses of the individual characters conflict at one level; while, at another level, the textual discourses of myth and fairy tale, which are evoked and transformed, also contribute to make of this short story a heteroglossic domain. A closer examination of some of motifs from Cinderella in “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” leads to a deeper understanding of how Lawrence deploys literary tradition —and particularly fairy tales— in his writing. The reasons which had led the character of Cinderella to her status of mistreated housemaid vary according to the different versions of the tale. 68 However, Perrault and the Grimm brothers, whose versions Lawrence is more likely to have been familiar with, present a young protagonist who has been relegated by her stepmother and sisters to live in the kitchen and to be in charge of all household chores after the death of her father. This initial state of affairs is very similar to the situation from which “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter’s” plot develops. Mabel sits at breakfast with her three bothers while they discuss what to do in the near 68 Marian Roalfe Cox (1893) individualises a set of Cinderella stories sharing the motif of a protagonist who becomes a “Cinderella” after leaving her home, escaping from an “unnatural father” (a father who wishes to marry his own daughter). Another category of stories present what she called “The King Lear Judgement”, a father who thinks that his daughter does not love him enough and casts her out, and she must work somewhere else as a Cinderella. 123 future. They are all abandoning the house after the money left by their late father’s business has come to an end. As is the case in many fairy tales, the action starts when a death or abandonment triggers a change in the status quo. The atmosphere evoked in the first paragraphs of “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” suggests a dramatic transitional moment, the end of an era after a period of decadence. Mabel’s brothers “were all frightened at the collapse of their lives, and the sense of disaster in which they were involved left them no inner freedom” (Lawrence 1990: 137).Thomas Gullason observes how the brothers “signal the world of change separation, disaster and ‘death’” (1973:349). The eldest, Joe, sees their last horses being taken away with a “certain stupor of downfall” (Lawrence 1990:137), and the animals mirror the siblings’ situation, “tied head to tail”, moving with a “massive slumberous strength and a stupidity which held them in subjection” (138). Joe himself had been described, some lines before as “broad and handsome”, but with a “stupid” bearing (137). Although he is engaged to be married this is not seen as a new beginning: “His life was over, he would be a subject animal now”. The second brother, Fred Henry, “was an animal like Joe” but none to be controlled (138). The youngest is finer than his brothers but he is also described in animalistic terms, as showing a “jaunty mouseau” (139). Lawrence’s portrayal of the brothers in these terms “suggest[s] motion and fertility” however, “they are really motionless and sterile”(Gullason 173:349). Mabel’s impassibility, as the story unfolds, will prove to hide a great resolution and spiritual strength, but when the narrative opens the narrator’s insight into the past recalls the change of status of Cinderella after her father’s death: The stables had been full of horses, there was a great turmoil and come-and-go of horses and of dealers and grooms. But of late things had declined. The old man had married a second time, to retrieve his fortunes. Now he was dead and everything was gone to the dogs, there was nothing but debt and threatening. For months, Mabel had been servantless in the big house, keeping the home together in penury for her ineffectual brothers. (Lawrence 1990:142) 124 Fred Henry, the second brother, even suggests that she should start working at someone’s house as a “skivvi” (a servant girl) after leaving the house (139). During the morning discussions, however, Mabel remains silent and refuses to answer when questioned about her future plans, although they all assume she will go to London to live with her older sister. Mabel’s sullenness brings about the anger of her brothers; they all interpret the firmness of her expression as “bulldog” face (138) and one of them refers to her as “the sulkiest bitch that ever trod” (141). That morning they receive the visit of Sam Fergusson, the village doctor, ironically suffering from a terrible cold. He will later perform the role of Prince Charming but at this stage he is still unable to recognisee Mabel as his princess. Mabel, on her part, has already made up her mind about what she wishes to do after abandoning the house. In a few traces, Lawrence’s portrayal of the character reveals her firmness and determination. She had suffered badly during the period of poverty. Nothing, however, could sake the curious sullen, animal pride that dominated each member of the family. Now, for Mabel, the end had come. Still she would not cast about her. She would follow her own way just the same. She would always hold the keys of her own situation. Mindless and persistent, she endured from day to day. (143) F.R. Leavis notices how “there is no pathos of feminine charm or feminine helplessness about the girl” (1955:149). Since most of the versions of Cinderella which circulate nowadays are based on Perrault’s version, the Cinderella model with which most readers are familiar is that of a subsumed character and a personification of goodness. She even forgives her sisters’ mistreatments and shares her fortune with them. However, older versions show instances of much more active Cinderellas. Jack Zipes holds that “Perrault ridicules the folk version while projecting [a] model of passive femininity which was to be taken seriously by the audience for which he was writing”. The Grimm brothers drew more on earlier versions of the tale and endowed 125 Cinderella with a stronger personality. Indeed, in literary versions preceding Perrault’s, Cinderella “rebels and struggles to offset her disadvantages. In doing so she actively seeks help and uses her wits to attain her goal, which is not marriage but recognition”. Lawrence’s portrayal of Mabel is more evocative of a Cinderella in charge of her destiny, for whom “the recovering of the lost leather slipper and marriage with the prince is symbolically an affirmation of her strong independent character” (Zipes 1991:30). The plot of most versions of Cinderella focuses on the element of fraternal rivalry. Bruno Bettelheim’s examination of the relevance of the tale for child development is based on the idea that it helps the child to overcome the fear of not being as good, or as beloved as his or her siblings. However, one of the most relevant aspects of the folk versions of the Cinderella tale is the role of Cinderella’s late mother. This is an aspect which Perrault’s version glosses over but to which the Grimm brother’s version devote much attention, as the narrative’s opening shows: A rich man’s wife fell ill and, feeling that her end was approaching, called her only daughter to her bedside and said, “Dear child, remain devout and good; then dear God will ever be with you, I’ll look down on you from Heaven and be near you”. Then she closed her eyes and passed away. Every day the girl used to go out to her mother’s grave and weep and remained devout and good. (1960:86) Similarly, the life of the protagonist of “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” revolves around the absent maternal figure, and the incomprehension of her brothers only serves to make Mabel’s spirituality stand out against their animalistic existence. Lawrence’s story emphasises the transcendence of a moment in which her situation of emotional deprivation is aggravated by economical shortage: [Mabel] lived in the memory of her mother, who had died when she was fourteen, and whom she had loved. She had loved her father, too, in a different way, depending upon him, and feeling secure in him, until at the age of fifty four he married again. And then she had set hard against him. Now he had died and left them all hopelessly in debt. (Lawrence 1990: 142) 126 In Perrault’s version, the role of the helper, which provides Cinderella with a dress and a carriage to go to the ball, is performed by an anonymous godmother, a surrogate mother figure which later versions transformed into a “fairy godmother”. The Grimms’ version, however, records an episode present in many previous oral versions of the tale: Cinderella’s father goes on a trip and asks his daughters what they would like him to get as a present for them. The eldest sisters ask for dresses and laces but Cinderella says: “Father, bring me the first twig that brushes against your hat on your way home. Break it off for me”. Cinderella’s father does as he is told and brings the branch home: She thanked him, went to her mother’s grave, planted the twig, and wept so bitterly that the tears fell down on it and watered it. It grew and became a fine tree. Three times a day Ash girl would go down there, weep and pray, and every time a little white bird would light on the tree, and every time she uttered a wish, the bird would throw down to her what she had wished. (Grimm 1960: 87) Bruno Bettelheim emphasises that in this tale “the helping animal and helping tree are joined by a third helping power: the love of the deceased mother”. Unlike in legends, the departed of fairytales are not “ghostly”; they are part of the forces governing life and are, therefore, consoling (1991: 60). This episode of Cinderella is not only significant because it shows a Cinderella actively making decisions and working to change her fortune; in the Grimms’ version a substratum of oral tales which gave a central position to the female experience of the mother-daughter relationship can also be perceived. Zipes explains that “[i]n Cinderella, it is important to recall that the different oral folk versions emanated form a matriarchal tradition which depicted the struggles of a young woman (aided by her dead mother as the conserver of society) to regain her stature and rights within society” (1991: 30). Significantly, in “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter”, Mabel’s relationship with her mother is central for the development of the story since Mabel’s resolution, the reader 127 progressively discovers, is not to go to London or anywhere else, but to kill herself and join her mother: “She thought of nobody, not even of herself. Mindless and persistent, she seemed in a sort of ecstasy to be coming nearer to her fulfilment, her own glorification, approaching her dead mother, who was glorified”. Mabel’s longing for death lacks the pathetic resonance of Andersen’s The Little Match Girl, who dies on Christmas Eve, neglected by everyone, to join her grandmother in heaven. Dying is Mabel’s decision, she “would always hold the keys of her own situation” (Lawrence 1990:143) and she sees suicide as a necessary self-sacrifice to reach an existence more authentic than the possibilities that life offers to her. In this sense, the conclusions of August Nitschke’s inquiries into the social meaning and evolution of tales are very illuminating (1976). Nitschke places the origin of the Cinderella plot sometime at the closing of the Ice Age, when human figures begin to replace animals in the oral accounts. The tale, Nitschke holds, reflects the beliefs of a society of hunters and collectors where women occupied a central position. These societies regarded death as a necessary step in the cycle of eternal existence, and human, particularly female sacrifices were performed believing that they would return transformed into some living being to aid and protect children (qtd. Zipes 2002a:192). Lawrence’s story suggests a similar cosmovision, where death represents only a transitional stage towards a different form of existence and underlines the power of a female transgenerational relationship. Moreover, devoting to the cult of the dead mother, and the caring of the grave, also crucial in the tale of Cinderella, provides also for Mabel a peaceful haven, far from the turmoil and savagery of the male dominated house. Death seems to be the expression of longing to return to a pre-oedipal realm and comes to signify that, 128 although she is alive, Mabel already inhabits a liminal space between the living and the dead: Once under the shadow of the great looming church, among the graves, she felt immune from the world, reserved within the thick churchyard wall as in another country. Carefully she clipped the grass from the grave, and arranged the pinky white, small chrysanthemums in the tin cross. When this was done, she took an empty jar from a neighbouring grave, brought water, and carefully, most scrupulously sponged the marble headstone and coping-stone. It gave her sincere satisfaction to do this. She felt in immediate contact with the world of her mother. She took minute pains, went through the park in a state bordering on pure happiness, as if in performing this task she came into a subtle, intimate connection with her mother. For the life she followed here in the world was far less real than the world of death she inherited from her mother. (Lawrence 1990:143) In the fairy tale the protagonist’s association with the ashes, from which she gets her name, is a central motif which relates to the longing for the dead mother (Bettelheim 1991:253). 69 In some versions the girl is forced to sleep amongst the cinder whereas some others indicate that this was her preferred place. Bettelheim questions Cinderella’s position by the fireplace as “degraded”. He points out that to paint one’s body with ashes used to be a sign of mourning and underlines the meaning of the hearth as a symbol of the maternal. Bettelheim further argues that in antiquity, to take care of the hearth had been a highly regarded female task, attributed to the Vestal Virgin priestess. This position often granted the possibility of important marriages after some time, “thus, innocence, purity, and being guardian of the hearth go together in ancient connotations” (Bettelheim 1991:254). In the tale, Cinderella’s attempts to return to the lost mother must turn into something productive to avoid spiritual stagnation, hence the growing of the tree and her projection of her love for the mother towards the prince. In “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” Mabel is at a dead end, and death becomes the only possible movement to 69 Regarding the naming of the fairy tale protagonist Bruno Bettelheim points out that the name in English is an “all-too-facile and incorrect translation of the French ‘Cendrillon,’ which like the German name of the heroine, stresses her living among ashes. ‘Ashes’ and not ‘cinders’ is the correct translations of the French cendre […] This is important in regard to the connotations that attach themselves to the name of ‘Cinderlla,’ since ashes are the very clean powdery substance which is the residue of complete combustion; cinders, to the contrary, are the quite dirty remnants of an incomplete combustion” (1991:253n.4) 129 free her from her current existence. Significantly, she chooses to die by drowning herself in the waters of a lake, an action which Clyde de L. Ryals defines as “a mythological enactment of the desire to return to the maternal depths” (1988:156), since water often operates as another symbol of the mother. Moreover, death by water also implies spiritual renewal and continuity, growth to eternal life, as both Christian and pagan rituals show. The direction of Mabel’s destiny, however, is changed by the rescuing action of Sam Fergusson, and like in the fairy tale, her longing for the mother is channelled towards a new object of desire. Nevertheless, D. H. Lawrence alters the traditional plot by dwelling on the prince’s experiences prior to the rescuing moment and showing that Dr. Fergusson’s life also lacks any future perspective. His existence does not even have the meaning that for Mabel provides the memory of her mother and the possibility of being reunited with her. He was “a slave to the countryside” (Lawrence 1990:143), his life was “nothing but work, drudgery, constant hastening from dwelling to dwelling among the colliers and the iron-workers” (144). Contact with the working people is the only thing that awakens his otherwise numbed senses. This character shares his enslaved condition with Cinderella but he is also sunk in spiritual slumber like Sleeping Beauty. His feeling of physical weakness, further emphasised by his lengthy illness, is a symptom of a spiritual need: “[B]oth Mabel and Sam physically exhibit their soul’s malaise. Mabel’s look is set, impassive, blank. Sam is pale, perpetually coughing scarcely able to make his rounds” (Harris 1984:126). Significantly, imagery related to ash and cinder is used to depict his desolate perspective of the landscape, as he moves towards the village “following the black cinder track” while he sees “the small town […] clustered like smouldering ash” ([emphasis mine] Lawrence 1990: 144). Thus, in “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” Lawrence duplicates the role of Cinderella through the prominence of two 130 characters who need to be mutually rescued. This fact does not only subvert the gender roles inscribed in the traditional versions of the fairy tale, but also sets Lawrence in a complex position regarding his gender politics. 70 The stories collected in England my England were written in the period between Women in Love (1920) and the so-called “leadership novels”. 71 At this moment the equilibrium between genders he had postulated in previous writings begins to move progressively towards an assertion of male domination. “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter”, however, is still an instance of harmonious alliance between the sexes. One of the motifs which define all versions of Cinderella is the recognition of the princess in rags through a shoe lost at the ball. The shoe distinguishes her from her wicked siblings and allows the prince to identify the woman he is in love with. In “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” mutual recognition is also an articulating element of the narrative and its enactment is described through the fairy tale motif of the spell. When Sam Fergusson and Mabel met at the beginning of the story he “looked at her but did not address her. He had not greeted her”, only later and out of politeness he inquires about her future plans. However, when after he has finished his work their eyes cross while she tends her mother’s grave they both grow aware of the powerful presence of the other. Dr. Fergusson is particularly taken aback by this experience: She seemed so intent and remote, it was like looking into another world. Some mystical element was touched in him. He slowed down as he walked, watching her as if spellbound. She lifted her eyes, feeling him looking. Their eyes met. And each looked away again at once, each feeling, in some way, found out by the other. There remained distinct in his consciousness, like a vision, the memory of her face, lifted from the tombstone in the churchyard, and looking at him with slow, large, portentous eyes. It was portentous, her face. It seemed to mesmerize him. There was a heavy power in her eyes, which laid hold of his whole being, as if he had drunk 70 In the Nordic tradition many stories present a male version of “Cinderella”. Espen Askeladden, (Espen the ash-lad) is the protagonist of many Norwegian folk tales. He is the youngest among three siblings and he is also disregarded as useless, and sleeps by the ashes. By tricking trolls and performing various heroic aided by his wit and good luck he manages to marry the princess and get half of the reign (Nikolajeva 2000:436). 71 Aaron’s Rod (1921), Kangaroo (1923), and The Plumed Serpent (1926) are often considered together under the label “leadership novels”. They are an attempt to articulate Lawrence’s philosophical ideas offering a male-centred approach to social organization. 233 pessimistic attitudes. In her letters and journals she often recalls memories of her brother as a child in New Zealand. Little B’s portrayal as extremely small and breakable recalls Walter Benjamin’s description of a new conception of human experience brought about by the Great War: “in a field of force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body” (2006:362). “A Suburban Fairy Tale” can be read as a nostalgic longing for childhood purity, but also as an acknowledgement of its impossibility. Like Peter Pan, who was taking away by the birds as a baby, Little B flies away, for he is not made to comply with the ways of society. However, the use of children characters or the child’s point of view in some modernist texts does not necessarily imply a celebration of “the consciousness of children” (Goodenough and Heberle 1994:184). As mention earlier in this chapter, for Hope Howell Hodgkins, modernism’s antiauthoritarianism can be attributed to the “adolescent” character of the movement, which also implies a rejection of a latest childish past. She claims that modernism “in its peculiar aloofness from childhood makes an island between Victorian sentimentality of the Golden Age and postmodern interest in children” (2007: 357). 122 Nevertheless, and as shown above, the explicit interest of some of the modernist authors for the world of childhood cannot be disregarded. 123 122 Hodgkins points out that modernist coldness towards children may also be rooted in personal circumstances “since children in the house interrupt genius.” As an example, Hodgkins cites one of Woolf’s letters which reflects the writer’s annoyance at her nephew’s intrusion: “A child is the very devil,” and “I doubt that I shall ever have a baby. Its voice is too terrible […] Nobody could wish to comfort it, or pretend that it was a human being” (2007:358). 123 Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves (1931) clearly illustrates a modernist interest in rendering literarily the movements of human consciousness. Interweaving interior monologues, the novel follows the development of its six protagonists from childhood to adulthood. However, the author puts focuses on perception and sensation rather than on emotion: the first section of the novel is a discontinuous account of the impressions of the outer world in the children’s mind. Significantly, expression is poetic and elaborate without any intention to reproduce infantile diction (Coveney 1957:264–5). The meandering of the children’s thoughts serves to literary experimentation but does not seek a realist depiction of a child’s mental processes. 234 As Thacker and Webb have pointed out, the feeling of confusion which pervaded the first decades of the twentieth century implied a separation of child and adult experience and “indicated a growing perception of children as ‘other’”. As a consequence of the anxieties generated by the impervious needs of the modern world, and the echoes of psychoanalysis revealing the complexities of the human mind, the child emerges as a mysterious creature inhabiting a sphere of action of their own, but also as the mirror of the adult’s faults (2002:101). “These children”, they state, “recall the image of the romantic innocent but this innocence now uncovers a threatening, rather than transcendent, knowledge of the adult world” (106). This variation of the trope of the romantic child which combines redemption with menace is what Reinhard Kuhn identifies with the trope of ‘the enigmatic child’, or “the child as an enigma that no amount of speculation can resolve” (1982: 20). Similarly, Briggs observes “as childhood came to be seen as a state distinct from and potentially opposed to being ‘grown up’... it came to be figured as ‘other’, with all the idealization, horror, and projection that such a status implies” (1995: 168). The portrayals of Sun, Little B and Paul partake of this new conception of the child. In many of her stories, such as “The Little Girl” or “The Doll’s House”, Mansfield dwells on the depiction of children’s mental processes in an attempt to render their way of thinking and perceiving the world of adults. Although apparently there is little psychological insight in the portrayal of Little B, his physical appearance works as a metaphor to highlight the contrast between his perception of the world and his parents’. Rodríguez Salas notices how, although the parents are the focalisers of the story, the child’s perspective is privileged in the story (2009:197). The fairy tale structure contributes to articulate the disjunction between the two visions of the world here presented. As a premonition of Little B’s final transformation into a sparrow, the 235 first image of him we have is “perching” between his parents. The subsequent description of Little B foregrounds the physical dissimilarities between him and his parents. Mr. B. was “a stout youngish man” and Mrs. B had a “youngish, plump little body” (649). Their son, however, “was no fat little trot, no dumpling, no firm little pudding”. Little B’s alienation is foreground through an insistence on his inadequate size: “For some strange reason everything in life seemed the wrong size for Little B. — to big and too violent. Everything knocked him over, took the wind out of his feeble sails and left him gasping and frightened” (650). The imagery deployed favours a perspective where the surrounding world acquires enormous proportions. The animalistic features attributed to Little B, who already looks like a fledging before his metamorphosis, do not only emphasise his vulnerability but also bring to the fore his strangeness, his “otherness” with respect to his parents. There is something uncanny in his big eyes and his straight forward questions which shakes the established order of the B’s household. 124 Khun states that the universe of the enigmatic child “represents a self-enclosed, non referential system”, which does not find a counterpart in the adult world and menaces its sense of order (1982:61). In this sense, the Bs feel uneasy looking at their big-eyed little boy whose smallness reflects their own spiritual trimness. Little B’s wide open eyes are the only feature referred to with the adjective “big”. The eyes, a symbol traditionally associated with “thought and feeling” (Ferber 1999:71), relate to Little B’s quality as an “enigmatic child”, also in tune with Little B’s visionary powers. Unlike a fairy tale hero, who “is gifted in the literal sense of the word” (Lüthi 1976: 142) (for he receives gifts from the helpers), Little B has been endowed with an 124 “Unhomely” is a literal translation from the German Unheimlich, which in psychoanalytic theory has been translated as the “Uncanny”. Freud defines it in his 1919 essay as “that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar” (Freud 2003:148). It is normally caused by “nothing else than a hidden familiar thing that has undergone a repression” and which occurs “when primitive beliefs we have surmounted seem once more to be confirmed” (639). In this sense, Gina Wisker has analysed the gothic aspects of “A Suburban Fairy Tale” in which “disturbance and dis-ease exist in the midst of the everyday comforts of an ordinary house” (2012:26). 236 insight into the spiritual which gives him access to a reality beyond his parents’ narrow concerns. As Kuhn observes, the figure of the enigmatic child is also related to the notion of the puer senex, the child “wise beyond his years”. Significantly, Little B is addressed by his parents as “old man” and “little man” (Mansfield 2006:549,551). His wisdom, which is not acquired but intuitive, leads Little B’s steps towards affection and spirituality through a path different than the one his parents offer. 125 The parents’ world is limited to the comfortable house interior, whereas Little B is able to project his sight out of the window to the wider, wilder world. The hungry sparrows he sees through the window, later transformed into little children, are unnoticed by the bigot Bs, only concerned with Little B’s finishing his huge breakfast. He perceives the suffering outside and feels the need to abandon parental comfort and join the wretched instead. Despite its uncanny features, however, Little B is still a quite traditional portrayal of innocence assailed. 126 In “Sun and Moon” there is a parodic revision of the trope of the child as embodiment of innocence. By calling them “lambs”, “ducks” or “angels”, the adults of the story project upon the children their own idealised concept of innocence but they ignore completely their real needs. Moreover, Mansfield’s interest in reflecting the functioning of the child’s mind goes beyond the treatment of child characters as mere representatives of menaced purity. Thus, Sun’s alienated perspective contrasts with his 125 In 1897 Henry James began to publish in instalments his novel What Maisie Knew, showing a clear interest in the rendering of a child’s consciousness by featuring a child who, although realistically depicted, finds the way to keep integrity intact in an environment of adult depravation. The figure of the enigmatic and perverse child is to be found in his 1898 work “The Turn of the Screw”. 126 The little girl protagonist of Mansfield’s story “The Child who was Tired” (1910), discussed in the previous section, would offer a clearer instance of uncanny child than Little B. Although presented as the victim of oppression and mistreatment, her murderous act destroys the ideal of innocence and portrays the girl as an evil creature able to conceive and carry out the murder of a little baby: “And she suddenly had a beautiful marvellous idea. She laughed for the first time that day, and clapped her hands. ‘Ts-ts-ts!’ she said, ‘lie there, silly one; you will go to sleep. ‘You’ll not cry any more or wake up in the night. Funny, little, ugly baby’ […] And then gently, smiling, on tiptoe, she brought the pink bolster from the Frau’s bed and covered the baby’s face with it, pressed with all her might as he struggled, ‘like a duck with its head off, wriggling’, she thought” (Mansfield 2006:639). 237 sister Moon’s undifferentiating vision and there is an attempt to present a particular perception of the world where reality and fantasy are often blurred: And then the flowers came. When you stared down from the balcony at the people carrying them the flower pots looked like funny awfully nice hats nodding up the path. Moon thought they were hats. She said: "Look. There's a man wearing a palm on his head." But she never knew the difference between real things and not real ones. (Mansfield 2006:120) Moon’s playful compliance with the adults (“She always did the same as other people” [Mansfield 2006:121]) signals that she has not yet reached the complex and fearful stage her brother is entering. Sun considers himself more mature than his sister, yet he is also tragically disconnected from a grown-up world which he cannot understand. His attempts at total independence from other people manifest themselves in his refusal of physical contact, even with his sister. Although still very young, he seems to be experiencing the nostalgic “loss of an earlier, unified consciousness” which his sister still enjoys (Dunbar 1997:150), and projects this nostalgia upon the ice-house. This sense of loss finds a dramatic outlet in Sun’s painful outburst when he faces the scene of destruction brought about by the group of adults. Nevertheless, Sun’s vision, like his sister’s, is not totally discriminating for he also lives in a world more terrifying than amusing, where objects become alive and people behave like animals. “Sun and Moon” opposes adult depravation to infantile innocence but instead of idealising childhood presents it as a fearful period. Delphine Soulhat aptly relates the treatment of this infantile perspective to Lewis Carroll’s Alice Adventures in Wonderland (1865), where Alice struggles to make sense of an absurd world which is presented as a fantastic, yet often as a frightening, distortion of reality (2011:105). The story’s pattern is similar to Carroll’s for Sun’s experiences, which start like a wonderful dream turn into a nightmare. As Soulhat points out: “For the landscape of childhood to become close to a Wonderland, there should be possibilities for disturbing as well as enchanting experiences, and ‘Sun and Moon’ stages an upsetting and disquieting 238 episode” (2011:105). However, Alice flees into Wonderland escaping an adult world which is too boring for her. Sun and Moon are ushered into a fascinating world by the adults themselves, but they must also witness its destruction. Moreover, Sun seems to be mature enough to observe judgementally his parents’ vicious conduct. The adults’ reaction to Sun’s painful response to the destruction of the cake is to push the child out of the room, for he is a reminder of their own improper behaviour: Suddenly he put up his head and gave a loud wail. “I think it's horrid–horrid–horrid!” he sobbed. “There, you see!” said Mother. “You see!” “Off with you,” said Father, no longer jolly. “This moment. Off you go!” And wailing loudly, Sun stumped off to the nursery. (Mansfield 2006: 125) Sun himself is not uncanny, but his projection of inner thoughts and vision gives a disquieting image of the reality around him. The child’s point of view defamiliarises the adult world and emphasises its absurdity. Like Little B, Sun stands for the impossible prevalence of innocence among corruption. However, whereas Little B is an example of abnegation, refusing to take any food himself, “Sun and Moon” presents the children as desiring subjects. Soulhat points to the fact that “Mansfield’s children —like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, who is depicted with hunger and thirst— also expose themselves to the very perils of desire” (2011:105). At the sight of the Little House, and the miniature nut-handle, Sun feels dizzy and “ha[s] to lean against the Cook” (Mansfield 2006:121). Moon succumbs to gluttony and finds it hard to resist touching the little house but Sun sublimates his impulses, and for him the house comes to represent the ideal of a home which must not be spoiled. The sensual moment when the father bites the mother’s shoulder preludes the destruction of the ice-house and, in psychoanalytic terms, echoes the primordial scene which marks the irruption of the Father as the object of desire of the mother. Whether 239 the house is representative of a lost pre-oedipal bond with the mother or of the recently and apparently satisfying sense of order which comes to substitute it, Sun is devastated by its annihilation. By the end of the story, Moon behaves like one of the adults, whereas Sun looks broken-hearted at the true nature of desire and at its destructive potential. The protagonist of “The Rocking Horse Winner” is a more extreme example of the modern representation of this type of eerie children and seriously challenges the image of innocence they traditionally represent. Paul tells his mother that his ability to provide luck comes directly from God, a notion which recalls the romantic conception of the child as closer to the divinity. However, he realises that Hester “did not believe him; or rather, that she paid no attention to his assertion” and “this angered him somewhere, and made him want to compel her attention” (1982a:446). Although his actions are ridden by a desire to help his mother, her lack of response angers and obsesses him in an uncanny way. The statement that God has talked to him evokes a religious or mystic experience but also suggests derangement or the presence of demonic forces as if the child could be hearing voices. Since the story was initially conceived to be published in a volume of ghost stories, the representation of the protagonist departs from the ideal of the innocent redeeming child and gives him some attributes characteristic of the possessed child in the gothic tradition. This image brings to the fore the questioning of the child as innocent, in line with the scientific and psychological discourses of the moment. Indeed, most descriptions concerning Paul’s appearance highlight the disturbance which pervades those who look at him. When his sisters “were playing dolls in the nursery, he would sit on his big rocking-horse, charging madly into space, with a frenzy that made the little girls peer at him uneasily”, and when, “[w]ildly the horse 240 careered, the waving dark hair of the boy tossed, his eyes had a strange glare in them. The little girls dared not speak to him”. Similarly, before knowing the result of the Derby races Paul “was very frail and his eyes were really uncanny [emphasis mine]”. Even the horse is presented in similar terms: “Its red mouth was slightly open, its big eye was wide and glassy-bright” (446). 127 Thus, Paul is the perfect embodiment of “the enigmatic child”: His secret activity is only known by his uncle and his powers are beyond comprehension. Paul’s frenzy to ride his rocking horse in order to reach the ecstasies of revelation is also tinged with sexual implications which respond to a post-freudian conception of children. 128 His portrait shatters the ideal of the innocent redeeming child: “The boy’s trance like ecstasyechoes Lawrence’s description of masturbation, physical and psychic in Pornography and obscenity” (Harris1984:227). Once again, Lawrence uses fiction to illustrate his views on children’s development theorised in Fantasy of the Unconscious (1922). Lawrence conceives of the child as divided into two planes of being, a lower or sensual plane and the superior or spiritual plane. This acknowledgement of the importance of the sensual is very relevant to locate Paul as a modern child, since the modern child is no longer the bodiless angel but a complex 127 Regarding the ridding-horse as an uncanny object, Robert Gorham Davis (1969) observes how Paul’s practice recalls the activity of some witches, who were said to rock themselves wooden horses in order to reach states of prophetic trance. Moreover, Jessica Tiffin (2009) explores the cross-pollinations of fairytales and the gothic, especially on reworkings of the trope of the vampire in contemporary fiction. Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse winner”, conceived as a ghost story should be considered as an instance of this intersection. Not only the horse and the child acquire unsettling connotations but Hester could herself be interpreted as a vampire figure whose insatiable thirst for money ends up sucking up her own son’s life. The figure of the mother vampire will be explored in the next chapter. 128 In E.M. Forster’s “The Celestial Omnibus”, although the boy is portrayed as the visionary/archetypal child, Forster also articulates complex notions of desire which set the character apart from the romantic image. When the third person narrator describes the effects that sight of the street cutting outdoors provokes in the child he does it in the following terms: “Had first stirred desires within the boy – desires for something just a little different, he knew not what, desires that would return whenever things were sunlit, as they were this evening, running up and down inside him, up and down, up and down, till he would feel quite unusual all over, and as likely as not would want to cry” (2005:56–57). Some critics have argued that fantasy was in that case use to articulate Forster’s silenced sexual condition. (cf.: Hai 2008) 241 being with needs and desires. 129 For Lawrence, the healthy development of the child is contingent on a healthy rapport with the parents. However, he states, in modern times there is a common familiar dysfunction which leads to an infatuation for one of the parents: And this is the fatality. Long before puberty, by an exaggeration and an intensity of spiritual love from the parents, the second centers of sympathy are artificially aroused into response. And there is an irreparable disaster. Instead of seeing as a child should see, through a glass, darkly, the child now opens premature eyes of sympathetic cognition […] the deeper sensual centers [are] aroused, but finding no correspondent, no objective, no polarized connection with another person. There they are, the powerful centers of sex, acting spasmodically, without balance. They must be polarized somehow. So they are polarized to the active upper centers within the child, and you get an introvert. (1971:118–9) As a result, “you get various mild sex perversions, such as masturbation, and so on” (119). For Lawrence, masturbation is perverse because it obliterates the other; it is a destructive form of introspection which hinders self development. As Snodgrass observes, “Lawrence believes that man’s isolation is an unavoidable part of his definition as a human being —yet he needs all the contact he can possibly find”. Snodgrass holds that in Fantasia of the Unconscious Lawrence gives his vision on sex as “man’s closest link to other human beings and to the ‘unknown’, his surest link into humanity” (1958:198). When it loses its function of providing a connection with another human being, it turns into something negative. Similarly, for Harris the education provided for Paul has been damaging because he “has been taught to ride himself, his revelations lead to no consciousness of other and reduce his field of intercourse to a vanishing point” (1984:124). Curiously enough, Paul’s obsession with pleasing his mother is not an excess of motherly love, but of total indifference on her part. The result, nevertheless, is the same. 129 However, Lawrence’s views depart from the notion of an infantile sexuality as put forward by Freud: “It is obvious there is no real sexual motive in a child, for example. The great sexual centers are not even awake. True, even in a child of three, rudimentary sex throws strange shadows on the wall, in its approach from the distance. But these are only an uneasy intrusion from the as-yet-uncreated, unready biological centers” (1971:108). 242 Paul assumes the responsibility of a virtually absent husband, and therefore between Paul and his mother there is “the bond of adult love: the love of man for man, woman for woman, or man for woman”. This, Lawrence explains, “is fatal. It is a sort of incest. It is a dynamic spiritual incest, more dangerous than sensual incest, because it is more intangible and less instinctively repugnant” (1971:118). In fact, despite Hester’s disaffection, the mother-son relationship is depicted as a complex bond but it is always determined by economic profit: the intimacy grows when the dates of the Derby approach and “he secrets which their mystical oneness reveal to him are the secrets of winning money disclosed in a mystified greed, and not the rewarding mysteries of life that motherly love would have opened up” (Koban 1978:394). Paul is also a significant child figure because he subverts the romantic tradition, since the knowledge he possesses is pernicious. In this story knowledge is neither equated to experience nor does it give an access to a true realm of authenticity. Thus, Paul acquires knowledge from riding his horse, but his divination does not bring about spiritual growth or maturation. In fact, Snodgrass has suggested that “The Rocking Horse” deals precisely with self-annihilation in its desire of knowledge, Paul being a character who “has chosen to live by intellection” (1958:194). Snodgrass further argues that many readings of the narrative point to the resemblances between this story and those fairy tales where the hero negotiates with the devil for personal benefit, becoming entangled into a Mephistophelian deal which can only lead to tragedy. 130 In a letter to Ernest Collings, Lawrence puts it in the following way: “The intellect is only a brit and bridle … a man’s body as a kind of flame… and knowledge is just the light that is shed on to the things around [emphasis mine]” (Moore [ed.] 1962:180). Snodgrass foregrounds the relationship of the emphasised terms with the world of horses. For 130 Snodgrass obliterates the fact that this tale lays also at the heart of the myth of Genesis, where greed for forbidden knowledge brings about tragedy. 249 brothers Grimm’s story it is Gretel who takes the lead at rescuing her brother from the malicious witch. In “Sun and Moon”, the girl falls into her parents’ trap and Sun cannot do anything to avoid it. Furthermore, and as mentioned above, Mansfield also turns round the terms upon which Hänsel and Gretel rests regarding the deeper meaning of the tale. According to Bettelheim’s psychoanalytical reading, the tale is an expression of the child’s anxiety when the time comes to control his “primitive incorporative and hence destructive desires. The child must learn that if he does not free himself of these, his parents or society will force him to do so against his will” (1991:160). “Sun and Moon”, however, suggests how this destructive primitivism underlies a fragile social order, and how any attempt to overcome it is doomed to failure. The witch, according to Bettelheim, is expression of the child’s own oral greed. In Mansfield’s story, however, greed is the parent’s vice: they behave like the little sister, while the older son remains isolated in a liminal terrain, refusing to give in to desire. For Bettelheim, “the children’s experience at the witch’s house has purged them of their oral fixations; after having crossed the water, they arrive at the other shore as more mature children, ready to rely on their own intelligence and initiative to solve life’s problems” (1991:160). In “Sun and Moon” Sun’s attempts at independence only mark him as an outcast. The function of the parents in the story is the opposite as expected, for they lure the children into the world of primeval instincts which they were supposed to abandon in order to mature. “A Suburban Fairy Tale”, “The Rocking Horse Winner” and “Sun and Moon” could be regarded as modern anti-tales which subvert the reader’s expectations associated with the genre and reflect a common concern with the vision of the child as neglected victims of a society of consumerism. To put forward this idea, Mansfield 250 resorts to an idealised notion of childhood which draws from the romantic and Edwardian imaginary. The ambiguous ending of “A Suburban Fairy Tale” is pervaded with a feeling of nostalgia which finds a parallel in literary tales with a Christian message. However, the irony which informs Mansfield story, her portrayal of the adults and the hyperbolic fragility of the child make the story also a parody of these tales. This story does not simply subscribe the convention of the motif of “endangered innocence” but consciously vindicates its validity in the contemporary world. “Sun and Moon” questions further this motif by parodying the adult hypocritical behaviour towards children. They pretend to admire them as pure creatures while they help to destroy the innocence they appear to long for. In this bitter parody of Hänsel and Gretel there is no possibility of growth or rescue, for corruption is pervasive. Moreover, the story offers an image of the child as a desiring subject, with a complex conscience, and attempts to render an individual child’s fearful experience of the adult world around him. Lawrence’s story does not debunk traditional fairy tales just because of its tragic ending. The fairy tale tone clashes violently with the image of the child the story presents, with its gothic and sexual undertones. Paul’s uncanny features, and the allusions to his sexual drive set him apart from the almost incorporeal Little B. The latter has angelical qualities whereas Paul seems a demonic creature. Little B is somehow untouched by the influence of his parents, whose sin is more the neglect of his child’s spiritual needs than the exertion of a pernicious influence. Paul’s infatuation with his mother and his desire to satisfy her material greed rob him of his childhood, and eventually kill him. Ultimately these stories question the possibility of the idea of childhood in a post-war world and this effect is got through the use of fairy tale discourse traditionally associated with the domain of children. These stories seem to show how the materialism 251 that the modern way of living imposes either pushes away or exterminates childhood. 131 For the adults of the stories, the children did not exist before their departure. Little B is too small to be perceived, and described as animal from the beginning, like Sun and Moon, who seem to be part of the party’s decoration. Paul, on the other hand, is not left to be a child, is exploited for benefit, and as such, treated as an adult. His riding the horse is a grotesque emulation of playing which only mirrors this exploitation. Thus, despite analogies with the previous oversensitive representation of the child, the images which these stories offer are also imbued with a modern understanding of the problematic of childhood. All three stories can be aptly considered as “antitales” since they subvert the traditional happy ending, present characters who are dubious heroes, intertwine marvel and horror and revert the educational dimension of traditional tales by emphasising a need to educate adults in their consideration of children. The evocation of fairy tales, along with the idea of childhood often associated with the genre, must not be simply regarded as a projection of a nostalgic longing for a lost, orderly past. The deployment of fairy tale motifs and structure helps to emphasise the contrast between the stability of the values that traditional tales offer and the social illness of the modern world. 131 The disappearance of the child, as Margarida Morgado has highlighted, is a topic of social and literary relevance all throughout the twentieth century. Although she focuses on the phenomenon in the late decades on the century she poses a series of questions which can be revealing when considering these texts: “When we speak of the disappearing child it is never quite clear whether the child does not exist or that it is we who do not see him/her. Do children disappear from culture because there is nothing to see (since children have become similar to adults) and nothing to know (because it is always adults who speak for and interpret the meanings of children), or because there is nothing to say about them due to the fact that we have ceased to care?” (2002:245). 252 CHAPTER 8 UNEXPECTED AWAKENINGS: THE MOTIF OF SLEEPING BEAUTY 8.1. Bare Fingers and Sleeping ‘Beaus’: D.H Lawrence “The Thimble” and “The Lovely Lady” A queen, they’ll say, Has slept unnoticed on a forgotten hill. Sleeps on unknown, Unnoticed there until Dawns my insurgent day. (D.H. Lawrence, “On That Day” 1916) The motif of Sleeping Beauty recurs in D.H. Lawrence’s narratives and also, in less overt ways, in Katherine Mansfield’s stories. The present section explores the meaning and significance of this fairy tale motif in the work of these writers. More specifically, it deals with the relevance of the use of references to Sleeping Beauty in D. H. Lawrence’s early story “The Thimble” (1917) (which would be later developed into the novella The Ladybird [1923]) and his later “The Lovely Lady” (1927), as well as in a number of Mansfield’s mature stories. Despite the obvious differences between the two author’s treatment of their subject, the motif of Sleeping Beauty is often deployed when a character’s existence is presented as a state of spiritual lethargy from which they are awoken by a significant event. Therefore, the idea of the metaphorical awakening as an articulating element in many of these narratives is also closely associated with the Joycean notions of paralysis and epiphany. Joyce explained that in his short story collection Dubliners (1914) he intended “to betray the soul of that hemiplegia, paralysis, which many consider a city” (1966:55). In this case, also Lawrence and Mansfield tend to present paralysed characters, although in their narratives urban spaces tend to be substituted by the 253 confinement of domestic environments such as rooms, houses or gardens. Moreover, as already explained in the chapter devoted to the genre of the short story, often modernist short fiction is articulated around a moment of spiritual anagnorisis where characters make a transcendental discovery about their lives. Frequently, the epiphanic moment discloses the illusory nature of a character’s perception of the external world he or she inhabits, which could provide a way out of paralysis. Lawrence’s narratives often present a belief in the characters’ possibility of rebirth into a new and more authentic existence. However, as we reflected upon in the chapter on the short story, some contemporary criticism tends to question the traditional association between epiphany and the idea of the revelation of a hidden truth in modernist short stories. Indeed, in Joyce’s Dubliners, the epiphany is more a realization of the characters’ condition of paralysis than a way out of it. Thus, according to some views, the moment of revelation brings about a frightful disarray of the characters’ assessment of reality; yet a clear resolution is not always provided. This is the case of Mansfield’s stories, which often depict “thwarted awakenings” (Cushman 1975:35) and tend to be open-ended and inconclusive. H. T. Moore has underlined the fact that D.H. Lawrence’s narratives are often re-elaborations of the plot of Sleeping Beauty (1959:263). Therefore, an insight into the origins and evolution of this fairy tale can illuminate an understanding of Lawrence’s preference for this motif and its centrality in the context of his “mythopoetic” project, the elaboration a new set of myths adapted to modern times. Although the tale is best known through the literary versions of Charles Perrault and the brothers Grimm, the motif of the sleeping woman is already present in the episode of the sleep of Brynhild in the Volsunga Saga, when the maiden is magically laid to sleep and awakened by Sigurd (Mackenzie 2004: 322). The motif also appears in the “Tale of Troïlus and 254 Zellandine”, included in the Arthurian fourteenth century romance Perceforest (Warner 1994:220). The version upon which Perrault based his own was Giambaptista Basile’s “Sun, Moon and Talia”, published in the Pentamerone in 1634. Talia (like Zellandine) is raped by a married king while she is sleeping under the effect of a spell, and from the intercourse she gets pregnant with twins. One of Talia’s babies, trying to reach her mother’s breast, gets Talia’s finger by mistake and sucks away the magic splinter which kept her asleep. The account extends to the lady’s awakening, and relates the queen’s attempts to get rid of her husband’s illegitimate children, Sun and Moon. The queen eventually falls into one of her own traps and dies, and the tale ends with Talia marrying the King. Since some of these motifs where not appropriate to bourgeois audiences, Perrault transformed the tale in his “La Belle au Bois Dormant” (1697). He introduced an evil fairy who casts the spell upon the baby princess. Perrault also substitutes sexual intercourse with a chaste kiss and the married king becomes a young prince. The evil queen is the prince’s mother, an ogress who wants to eat her own grandchildren, Morning and Day. The Grimm brothers eliminated altogether the princess’ adventures after her awakening, and their version has become the most popular today. As mentioned in previous sections, Lawrence was fond of the work of the Grimm brothers. Besides, being one of the most popular fairy tales, Lawrence was probably familiar with Sleeping Beauty through a variety of sources. During the author’s childhood, Perrault’s version was used as reading practice for students of French, and a shorter translation was also popularised in Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book (1889). This trope also informed Henry James’ story “Flicker-bridge” (1902), as well as many post-romantic poems well known to Lawrence: [The Sleeping Beauty motif] came to him not only by fond reading of Grimm (and probably Perrault) but also, doubtless, through the popular Victorian tradition of Sleeping Beauty paintings and poems with which, as a young “Pagan” student of Tennyson and the Pre- Raphaelites, Lawrence was familiar. (Farr 1990:195) 255 As Judith Farr (1990) argues, Lawrence often associates the motif of Sleeping Beauty with the figure of his mother, Lydia Bearshall Lawrence. During her life, Mrs. Lawrence was a source of inspiration for many of Lawrence’s writings and after Lydia’s death, Lawrence resorted even more steadily to this fairy tale episode: Tormented by loss upon his mother’s death, however, it was precisely that scene from Grimm, Perrault, and the Victorian poetic and painterly tradition that Lawrence chose to depict. Or, rather, he chose, no doubt, to evoke a moment in his own life with the rich assistance of these inherited metaphors. (195) Many critics acknowledge that the most popular versions of Sleeping Beauty are pervaded with patriarchal ideology for they condemn female curiosity and assign women a passive role (Zipes 2002b, Warner 1994). Nevertheless, one of the reasons which might have made of Sleeping Beauty one of Lawrence’s favourite textual sources is the tale’s particular capacity to evoke mythic and utopian notions despite having been literarily stylised and transformed. The mythic substratum resonates more clearly in Sleeping Beauty than in other tales similarly altered: “Sleeping Beauty” is not only about female and male stereotypes and male hegemony; it is also about death, our fear of death, and our wish for immortality. Sleeping Beauty is resurrected. She triumphs over death. As the eternal brier rose, she rises from the dead to love and to fulfil her desires. The rising form the dead is an uprising, an attack on the borders of mortality. After her uprising, Sleeping Beauty will know how to avoid danger and death, as indeed she does in the aftermath of the first sequence in the Perrault version. Once awakened, Sleeping Beauty is the knowing one, and we know too. (Zipes 2002b:215) Many of Lawrence’s narratives are accounts of a process of spiritual awakening, often rendered through an allegorical enactment of the myth of resurrection. Fairy tale imagery, especially allusions to Sleeping Beauty, provides a source for metaphors in these stories. “The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter” (1922), examined in previous chapters, showed the centrality of the notion of rebirth: the protagonists must face and overcome death in order to be born again into a new form of existence. Dr. Fergusson’s apathy kept him in a death-in-life condition, and Mabel was willing to submit to actual death to escape a life which could offer her nothing. Their mutual rescue, however, brings them 256 back to a more intense experience of life than ever before. “The Princess”, previously discussed, also illustrates the protagonist’s failure to wake up to a world of tangible, physical and sexual human beings. Domingo Romero is a failed prince, unable to break the spell which keeps Dolly in a state of perpetual slumber. The motif is also deployed in Lawrence’s novels and novellas, and he often manipulates the source narrative by altering gender roles and subverting the patriarchal ideology of the fairy tales. In Lawrence’s 1912 novel The Trespasser, the female protagonist Helena is described as belonging to a class of “dreaming women” whose desire “was accomplished by a real kiss” (1955:23). His lover Siegmund, is also presented in terms which evoke Sleeping Beauty, for he “awoke with wonder in the morning” and reflected: “‘It is like the magic tales,’ he thought, as he realised where he was, ‘and I am transported to a new life, to realise my dream. Fairy tales are true after all’” (1955:30). St. Mawr (1925) also contains clear references and structural similarities to the tale of Sleeping Beauty. The novella narrates the encounter of young Lou with a horse of wild appearance which will spur her passive spirit and push her beyond her meaningless existence. Lou’s mother, a strong American woman, longs for a return to the American wilderness; and Lou herself, fascinated by the violent power she perceives in the horse, ends up desiring the same. Lou’s husband, Rico, at first depicted as a prince charming, will prove to be a representative of an emasculated generation of men, quintessence of a superficial society and blatantly opposed to the rude authenticity of Phoenix, a half-native American; and Lewis, the rustic Welsh horse carer. As commented before, Małgorzata Trebisz argues that St. Mawr is illustrative of “The Sleeping Beauty example apologue” (1992: 59-61). In the same line of thought, Anne Darling Barker holds that the novella “can be seen as an inversion of the tale of the enchanted princess who awakens only with the kiss of a prince” (1984:76): “In St 257 Mawr”, Barker explains, “Lou is the princess, Rico the wicked prince, Mrs Witt a combination of mother, stepmother, fairy and witch, Phoenix and Lewis the helpers, and St Mawr the embodiment of the nature spirit who helps the heroine (80)”. However, no satisfactory resolution is achieved in this story. Lou, who has voluntarily confined to “a sleepy, narcissistic, self-restoring, solitary existence in a remote ‘castle’ on a mountain surrounded by cacti (with thorns) and guarded by pack-rats” (80), will expect in vain a prince to wake her. 132 Similarly, Suzanne Wolkenfeld holds that the basic structure of Lawrence’s novella The Fox (1922) can be understood in terms of “a mythic source: ‘The Sleeping Beauty’”(1977: 375). Lawrence wrote three versions of the story and the first (written in 1918) is the one which more accurately “corresponds in its complacency and inevitability with the ethos of the fairy tale” (376). Lawrence re-elaboration of the motif, Wolkfend argues, brings to light some elements latent in the fairy tale. Thus, the topic of infertility, with which the best-known versions of Sleeping Beauty begin, is addressed in Lawrence’s novella through the homosocial relation between the two young spinsters March and Banford. 133 Their barren lives are suddenly changed by the intrusion of a man, Henri, who comes to stay at their place. The man’s arrival had been symbolically anticipated by the sudden presence of a fox, which makes a great impression on March. The fox, like the evil fairy in Sleeping Beauty, raises on the woman a new feeling of desire. She is “spell-bound” by the sight of the animal (Lawrence 1992:11). Later, she dreams about this encounter, and touching the fox is like pricking her finger with the distaff (Wolkenfeld 1977:347): [S]he wanted to touch him. She stretched out her hand, but suddenly he bit her wrist, and at the same instant, as she drew back, turning round to bound away, he whisked his brush across her 132 In both Perrault’s and Grimm’s version of Sleeping Beauty, the prince has to gone through a thornyhedge in order to rescue the princess. 133 Both Perrault and Grimm open their tales with a King and Queen grieving upon the fact that they cannot have any children. 258 face, and it seemed his brush was on fire, for it seared and burned her mouth with a great pain. (Lawrence 1992:20) Drawing on Marie-Louise von Franz interpretation of the evil witch as “an embodiment of feminine sexuality, the dark aspect of the mother-goddess that has been neglected in our civilization”, Wolkenfeld holds that the fox symbolises the repressed principle of male sexuality which suddenly irrupts in the girls’ lives (1977:577). In the second version, Lawrence transforms the character of Banford, the pusillanimous spinster, into a “malignant witch” (348). The triumph of Henri, in this version, depends on the killing of Banford, which constitutes “the climax of both the primitive love hunt and the fairy tale quest” (349). The final version contains an added appendix which “deals with the intrinsic difficulties of the sexual relationship. [The appendix] constitutes his judgment on the traditional ending of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’” (350). The motif of Sleeping Beauty is also recurrent in Lawrence’s shorter fiction and a close reading of “The Thimble” and “The Lovely Lady” will illustrate further uses of this fairy tale motif in his work. The short story “The Thimble” was written in 1915 and published in The Seven Arts two years later. In 1921 the ten-page story was reelaborated into a seventy-page novella entitled The Ladybird. Since both “The Thimble” and The Ladybird share a common core in terms of plot development, both can be considered instances of Lawrence’s reworking of the Sleeping Beauty motif. This dissertation focuses on instances of shorter narrative; therefore, the analysis will focus on “The Thimble”, a story which has received little or no critical attention even by scholars who have specialised on Lawrence’s shorter narratives (cf.: Widmer 1962, Thorton 1993). Others have considered it a mere draft of the more elaborated novella The Ladybird, and have concentrated on the ways the novella presents a wider perspective and more complex philosophical concerns (cf.: Scott 1978). The author himself 265 heavy thimble of tarnished gold, set round the base with little diamonds or rubies. Perhaps it was not gold, perhaps they were only paste” (Lawrence 1990:195). Once again, the woman is dashed by the object’s appearance, even if it is not authentic. The thimble further represents the convention of romance within which Mrs. Hepburn seeks refuge to avoid facing a harder but more authentic experience: She put it on her sewing finger [...] She was pleased [...]. It must have been some woman’s embroidery thimble, some bygone woman’s perhaps some Lady Ambersyth’s. At any rate, it belonged to the days when women did stitching as a usual thing. But it was heavy; it would make one’s hand ache. She began to rub the gold with her handkerchief. There was an engraved monogram, and Earl’s and then Z, Z, and a date 15 Oct.1801. She was very pleased, trembled with the thought of the old romance...Who would give the gift of a gold thimble set in jewels, in the year 1801? Perhaps it was a man come home from the wars: there were wars then (Lawrence 1990: 195). The effect of the thimble is that of a spell which sinks Mrs. Hepburn deeper in her metaphorical sleep. Bettelheim explains in the following terms the tendency to recoil from potentially harmful experiences as presented in Sleeping Beauty: A natural reaction to the threat of having to grow up is to withdraw from a world and life which impose such difficulties. Narcissistic withdrawal is a tempting reaction to the stress of adolescence, but, the story warns, it leads to a dangerous, deathlike existence when it is embraced as an escape from the vagaries of life. The entire world then becomes dead to the person; this is the symbolic meaning, and warning of the deathlike sleep into which everybody surrounding Sleeping Beauty falls. The world becomes alive only to the person who herself awakens to it. (1991:234) The arrival of Mr. Hepburn interrupts his wife’s reverie and forces her to awake to a new reality. The first encounter is awkward, and signals at a progression from small talk to physical contact. At the end of the story, the touch of her husband, like the fairy tale kiss, has the regenerative power to bring the characters together. This development is described in terms of a movement from sleepiness to awakening: “Her mind was in a trance, but as if she were on the point of waking, for the first time her life, waking up” (Lawrence 1990:196). Mrs. Hepburn’s look moves upwards until she faces the dreadful wound in her husband’s face. The presence of Mr. Hepburn accentuates the woman’s 266 existential disorientation and she loses grip on reality. Slumber involves her like a metaphorical placenta, and she feels the need to be, like a baby, delivered into a new life: [H]er whole existence feels accidental. It was all accident, accident had taken possession of her very being. All she was, was purely accidental. It was like a sleep, a thin, taut, overfilming sleep in which the wakefulness struggles like a thing as yet unborn. She was sick in the thin, transparent membrane of her sleep, her overlying dream-consciousness, something actual but too unreal. (195–6) When the man asks to see the thimble his wife is holding, she calls it “a treasuretrove” and hands it to him. This scene seems to parody J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1911), when the children awkwardly exchange tokens, for Peter is unprepared to understand romantic love: She [Wendy] also said she would give him a kiss if he liked, but Peter did not know what she meant, and he held out his hand expectantly. “Surely you know what a kiss is?” she asked, aghast. “I shall know when you give it to me,” he replied stiffly, and not to hurt his feeling she gave him a thimble. (2008:32) Gradually, the conversation moves on and Mr. Hepburn expresses his firm belief in the possibility of resurrection. In this sense, he is a step beyond his wife. The accident he has suffered has made him aware of death (“He was like one dead. He was within the realm of death” [Lawrence 1990:197]), and he now requires of his wife to overcome her feeling of existential serendipity so that both of them can be reborn. Like Mabel in “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter”, he inhabits a liminal space between life and death, and attempts to pull his wife out of her death-in-life existence. What follows is their gradual awakening from the state of limbo they inhabit: “She lowered her eyelids, and for a second she sat erect like a mask, with closed eyes, whilst a spasm of pure unconsciousness passed over her. It departed again, and she opened her eyes. She was awake” (197). Bettelheim explains that “[t]he kiss of the prince breaks the spell of narcissism and awakens a womanhood which up to then has remained undeveloped. 267 Only if the maiden grows into a woman can life go on” (1991:234). In the same way, Mr. Hepburn states that both himself and his wife are “helpless babies” who should respectively grow into a “man” and a “woman” (Lawrence 1990: 197). The thimble still stands as a symbol of the shield of appearances of which they need to get rid in order to truly love each other. The last movement of the story signals at the couple’s final refusal to take refuge behind convention: Again he stretched forward and touched her hand, with tips of his fingers. And the touch lay still, completed there. Then at length he noticed that the thimble was stuck on his little finger. In the same instant she also looked at it. “I want to throw it away”, he said. Again she gave a little jerk of laughter. He rose, went to the window, and raised the sash. Then, suddenly, with a strong movement of the arm and shoulder, he threw the thimble out into the murky street. It bounded on the pavement opposite. Then a taxi-cab went by, and he could not see it anymore. (199–200) Mr. Hepburn has learnt from his experience that the human being is desperately helpless, and only by acknowledging such helplessness, and by fully committing to others, resurrection to an authentic form of existence can be accomplished. Unlike the Prince Charming, he also needs to be rescued. Disfigured, he has come back from the dead in search of the resurrecting power of human love and forced his wife to see beyond external looks. His touch, like the Prince’s kiss, performs the miracle. In this story Lawrence draws on imagery of the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty in order to illustrate the protagonist’s development from a life of superficiality, governed by the cult to physical beauty, to an existence based on sincere emotional commitment. The accident which results in the disfiguration of her husband’s face shatters the world of appearances and shakes the grounds of Mrs. Hepburn’s sense of reality. Like in previously analysed stories, “The Thimble” foregrounds the idea that the characters are under the influence of a spell which needs to be broken for them to reach a superior state of being. In this case, the allegory of sleep emphasises Mrs. Hepburn’s spiritual lethargy before her husband’s arrival. The thimble emerges as a central symbol of her 268 attempts to protect herself from any intrusion in the domain of her intimacy, attempts which must be abandoned to be reborn into a new life. “The Lovely Lady” is another story which both alludes to and parodies the Sleeping Beauty motif as well as other fairy tale elements. It was written as a contribution for a book of murder stories in 1927 (Worthen 2005: 358). However, the story is “hardly a murder story in the ordinary sense” (Ellis 1998:343). Lawrence mixes two apparently incompatible literary traditions, the fairy tale and the murder mystery, ironically subverting the conventions of both (Harris 1984: 230). 137 “The Lovely Lady”, like “The Rocking-Horse Winner”, could be considered a modern fairy tale, despite the absence of marvellous elements in a strict sense. The story narrates the seclusion of Robert Attenborough under the control of his wicked mother Pauline, and his liberation by his cousin Cecilia. The characters of “The Lovely Lady” fit into the fairy tale character categories defined by Propp (1968: 25-66): the villain or aggressor impersonated in a witch (Pauline Attemborough), the princess or recipient (Robert Attemborough) and the hero or trickster (Cecilia). The initial situation (α) corresponds with the presentation of the pattern of conviviality and daily routine of these three characters. However, Pauline’s villainy (A) is disclosed when the narrator —always verbalising Cecilia’s thoughts— presents the influence of Pauline over her son Robert in terms which recall the casting of a spell. Pauline’s control over Robert renders impossible for him and his cousin Cecilia to declare their mutual love (prohibition γ). Cecilia decides to take action (C) 137 Lady Asquith asked Lawrence for a contribution to a volume entitled The Black Cap: New Stories of Murder and Mystery. Allegedly, Asquith would have asked Lawrence to shorten the story he submitted and make some changes (Harris 1984:225). The original version was published for the first time in 1995 but this analysis will focus on the second, since it is the one in which the fairy tale pattern is more obvious. N.H. Reeve examines the differences between both versions and states that the second favours a more Manichean treatment of the characters, treating them with a greater “fairy-tale distance” (2000:16). This version leaves out details of Pauline’s life which would otherwise humanise the woman and make her portrayal more realistic. For the revision Lawrence also eliminated some elements of the rivalry between the woman and her niece Cecilia. Notwithstanding, as other critics have noticed, some of these notions can still be read between the lines of this second version (cf.: Díez-Medrano 1996). 269 and, realising the possibilities offered by a water pipe (F), manages to liquidate the wicked mother (K) and to rescue the prisoner (Rs). Once Pauline has died, the cousins are free to get married (W). Indeed, the emphasis put on Robert’s passivity, his psychic slumber and subsequent awakening after the intervention of his cousin Cecilia particularly evokes the development of Sleeping Beauty. If “The Thimble” already presented an alteration in the gender patterns of the traditional tale, “The Lovely Lady” subverts gender roles even more clearly. Janice Hubbarb Harris notices how this story “draws richly from fairy tale images reversing the motif of the prisoner princess and the prince rescuer (1984:228)”. 138 Bruno Bettelheim’s disregard for the relevance of the distribution of gender roles in “The Sleeping Beauty” has been largely contested by the critics, especially by those with a feminist slant. Arguably, he holds that the therapeutic effects of the tale are aimed at pacifying the teenager’s (boy or girl indifferently) impatience by showing that a period of inactivity will eventually lead to sexual awakening and self-fulfilment. In his opinion the inventory of fairy tales offers sufficient instances of female rescuers to attach any consideration about gender to this tale (1991:226). 139 Although tales about enchanted princes recur in classical collections, Sleeping Beauty puts an emphasis on passivity and submission as desirable qualities for a woman, absent in those tales where the prince is the captive. In “The Lovely Lady”, however, the change of roles appears to respond to 138 Harris considers Lawrence’s early narrative “Daughters of the Vicar” (1911/1914) as “the first of Lawrence’s tales of the sleeping prince” (1976: 426). In this story, the youngest daughter of the vicar, Louise, helps a young collier out of the state of paralysis he is in after the death of his mother by challenging social conventions and proposing to the man. Louise determination and sincerity are similar to those of Mabel Pervin in “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter”. 139 In line with Bettelheim’s arguments, Maria Tatar observes that the fact “[t]hat Russian folklore has a male Sleeping Beauty reminds us that we must show caution in drawing generalizations about female developmental patterns on the basis of the plot” (Tatar 2003:47). Indeed, the motif of the woman who has to disenchant her lover is already present in Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius’ tale book The Golden Ass (IIc. AD). Within the Scandinavian tradition it appears in the popular fairy tale “West of the Moon, East of the Sun”, and even better-known in all the variants of “Beauty and the Beast”. In all these cases, however, the woman also carries responsibility for the man’s situation. 270 Lawrence’s interest in depicting specifically the paralysing effect generated by the mother’s excessive control over her male offspring. In this sense, “The Lovely Lady” could be considered another elaboration of the mythic subtext which resonates behind many of Lawrence’s works: The Oedipal narrative. 140 According to Bruno Bettelheim this primeval narrative underlies most fairy tales (1991:24). This could explain Lawrence’s choice of a well-known fairy tale storyline (that of the individual prisoner of an evil power and who needs help to be liberated) in order to articulate a recurrent theme of his fiction: the mother-son relation dealt with in many of his narratives. “The Lovely Lady” contrasts with the subtle and detailed explorations of the topic as he elaborated it in his novel Sons and Lovers (1913). Whereas in the novel Lawrence presents deeply individualised characters and a complex narrative development, in this short story the same conflict is given a universal dimension by means of archetypal characterization, symbolism, an improbable storyline and a “fairy tale tone” (Harris 1984:229). Virginia Hyde explains how in some occasions Lawrence “diffuses”, and dynamically “expands” the “typological figures” he uses so that the characters often drift between the type and the archetype (2008:40). In fact, in this story, the author deploys archetypal figures to project a seemingly simplified vision of the notions he attempts to convey. The concept of mental archetypes was developed by Carl Jung and, although allegedly Lawrence refused to read his works, he might have been familiar with his ideas, which were discussed in the intellectual circles he moved in (La Chapelle 1996:4). In his introduction to The Dragon 140 Lawrence’s fascination with his own mother is an issue which has raised considerable critical interest. Daniel Weiss (1962) focuses on Lawrence rapport to his mother. Mark Spilka (1955) dwells in the biographical component of the relationship between Paul and Mrs. Morel in Sons and Lovers. Ross C. Murfin (1983) studies the everlasting influence of Lydia Lawrence over his son’s work. Sandra M. Gilbert study (1972) considers Lawrence’s poetry as an exercise of “self-psychoanalysis”, or an attempt to channel his complex feelings towards his mother. Judith Ruderman (1984) states that “Lawrence’s work throughout his career [...] shows evidence of unresolved pre-oedipal conflicts beneath the oedipal overlay” (8), and also that his personal and literary writings “underscore the importance of the ‘devouring mother’ figure for understanding [his] life and art” (186). 271 of the Apocalypse by Frederick Carter (1930), Lawrence opposes allegories to symbols and shows his scepticism with the unequivocal sense of allegories, which is always “didactic”. In contrast, he underlines the power of the “dynamic symbol” and its incontrollable capacity to produce meaning. “No man can invent symbols,” he explains acknowledging the importance of cultural tradition. They are always “embedded in the soul and ready to start alive when touched” (Lawrence 2002b:49). Therefore, Lawrence seems to concur with Jung in his consideration of symbolic images as non-prescriptive (Jung 1928: 53). Symbols are crucial elements in Lawrence writing and are the crystallization of images of myths, which do not “mean” but “stand for human experience” (Lawrence 2002b:49). Fairy tale images, finding their origin in pagan versions of the myth, provide an inventory of multilayered symbols even if the tales as such have been being made into carriers of didactic meaning. An examination of “The Lovely Lady’s” main characters in the light of some of Lawrence’s theories about the relation of mother and son reveal that his reliance on archetypes to articulate inner conflicts is not dissimilar to Jung’s interpretation. According to Jungian theory, fairy tale characters are often impersonations of archetypes. Thus, this form of characterization contributes even further to the fairy tale quality of “The Lovely Lady”. This story focuses on the character which gives title to the narration. The “lovely lady” is Pauline Attemborough, an old, charming and manipulative woman, embodiment of the archetypal figure of the witch, or negative mother. Although the story is devoid from marvellous elements, the characterization of Pauline is made in terms which recall the mysterious magic of witches: she has the ability to change her looks and become astonishingly alluring. From the narrative’s inception, Pauline is presented as a woman endowed with supernatural powers. Through an initial hyperbole the narrator states: “At seventy-two, Pauline Attenborough could still sometimes be 272 mistaken, in the half-light, for thirty” (1982b:481). Pauline’s case is presented as an extreme version of Dolly Urquhart’s, the protagonist of “The Princess”, who “had that quality of the sexless fairies, she did not change. At thirty-three she looked twentythree” (1971:30). The narrator dwells on the physical portrayal of the Pauline, but the description is full of irony, for he seems to literally x-ray the woman: She really was a wonderfully-preserved woman, of perfect chic. Of course it helps a great deal to have the right frame. She would be an exquisite skeleton, and her skull would be an exquisite skull, like that of some Etruscan woman with feminine charm still in the swerve of the bone and the pretty, naïve teeth. (Lawrence 1982b:481) The allusion to her skull anticipates the fatal destiny of the Lady, who dies at the end of the story. The supernatural quality of Pauline’s appearance is rendered more obvious when the narrator adds: “She really had the secret of everlasting youth; that is to say, she could don her youth again like an eagle” (481). Pauline has the chameleonic ability to transform herself changing her physical aspect in order to charm the people she wishes to, as in possession of a secret elixir which must be well administrated: “She was wise enough not to try being young for too many people”, the narrator explains. Her alluring visage is that of a “lovely and changeless self” (481) unaffected by the pass of time. Her laugh, like a “mocking Bacchante[’s], is extremely ambiguous, at the same time wise and innocent, and significantly she was tolerant of “both of virtues and vices” (482). Like the reference to the lady’s skull, the allusion to the mythological Bacchante departs from a traditional conception of an innocent and harmless old lady, and suggests a savage and not altogether virtuous spirit. The artificiality of this façade is made the more obvious when the narrator describes the metamorphosis as triggered off by the movement of a “mysterious little wire that worked between Pauline’s will and her face” and as result she emerges as “the real lovely lady, in all her charm” (481). The word “real” is used ironically in a context which brings to the fore Pauline’s lovely image as an effect of deceit. She also uses the distorting light of the candles to get the effects she 273 desires and, like witches, uses the night is her ally: “She was inclined to fade rather rapidly, like a flower without water, in the daytime. Her hour was the candle hour” (485). Thus, already in the first paragraphs of the story, the irony implicit in the title is disclosed: loveliness is pure appearance. Although Pauline is not referred to as an “old witch” until later in the story, her metamorphic ability enhances the reader’s association of the character with a witch for their capacity of mutation, a common trope in fairy tales. Nonetheless, the depiction of Pauline as an evil character is further elaborated through the pernicious influence that she exerts on her son Robert, which reduces him to a state of childish retardation. The power of this influence is described in terms of a spell which only his cousin Cecilia will be able to break. In this sense, the lady recalls the effects of Mr. Urquhart’s education on his daughter Dolly in “The Princess”. As the narrative unfolds, Pauline’s possessive nature is progressively revealed. Robert is Pauline’s only son after the death of his elder brother in mysterious circumstances. Robert works as a barrister, yet he does not earn enough money and he depends economically on his mother. Moreover, his pathological shyness, ultimately caused by Pauline’s suffocating control, renders him also emotionally dependant on her. Robert’s cousin, Cecilia, has been living with the family for five years and knows that Robert was “more confused than shy”. The harmful effect of the mother over the son is described as a numbing spell which keeps both of them in a state of paralysis: “He was worse than she [Cecilia] was”, explains the narrator verbalising with a humorous tone Cecilia’s thoughts, “Cecilia’s own confusion dated from only five years back. Robert’s must have started before he was born. In the lovely lady’s womb he must have felt very confused” (483). 274 This state of chronic pusillanimity makes Robert unable to articulate what he feels for his cousin because he paid “all his attention to his mother, drawn to her as a humble flower to the sun” (483). Paradoxically, although Pauline had been presented as creature of the crepuscule, the character is recurrently associated with the sun. The story presents a young man emasculated by the powerful presence of his mother, and the tradition which associates the sun with the male principle is subverted. In fact, Pauline acknowledges that sunbathing is one of her strategies to preserve youth; she seems to absorb her vital energy from the sun rays in the same way she draws it out from her own son, an intended pun. Pauline’s hypnotic power completely defeats Robert’s defences and Celia impotently sees how Robert fixes his eyes on his mother, “fascinated yet humiliated, full of shame. He was ashamed that he was not a man. And he did not love his mother. He was fascinated by her. Completely fascinated. And for the rest, paralysed in a lifelong confusion” (485). Through Pauline, Lawrence articulates his particular concern with the danger of excessive motherly attention which he theorises in Fantasia of Unconscious: 141 The unhappy woman beats about for her insatiable satisfaction, seeking whom she may devour. And usually, she turns to her child [...] He is a medium to her [...] so she throws herself into [...] a final and fatal devotion, that which would have been the richness and strength of her husband and is poison to the boy. (1971:125) “The Lovely Lady” seems to illustrate this notion, and the idea is further developed when Cecilia wonders about Robert’s future after his mother’s death. He would be “just a shell” she thinks, “the shell of a man who had never lived” (484). 142 141 As mentioned in previous sections the overcoming of the Oedipal complex, was central in Freud’s understanding of child development and was, according to Bettelheim, and articulating narrative of many fairy tales. 142 John Worthen has seen in the action depicted in “The Lovely Lady” biographical echoes: “Lawrence is unquestionably recreating his elder brother Ernest; the woman to be murdered, Pauline Attenborough, is another reworking of Lydia Lawrence” (2005:158). Similarly, David Ellis sees in the story “that hardening of Lawrence’s heart against his mother [...] It suggests that he was now blaming Lydia 281 fight for Robert’s love. In their analysis of the notion of feminine contention in Snow White, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (2000) underline the pervasive role of the patriarchal discourse in fairy tales, an argument which Diez-Medrano aptly applies to her reading of “The Lovely Lady”. Gilbert and Gubar state: The Queen’s husband and Snow White’s father [...] never actually appears in this story at all, a fact that emphasizes the almost stifling intensity with which the tale concentrates on the conflict in the mirror between mother and daughter, woman and woman, self and self. At the same time, though, there is clearly at least one way in which the King is present. His, surely, is the voice of the looking glass, the patriarchal voice of judgement that rules the Queen’s —and every woman’s — self-evaluation. For the Queen, as we come to see more clearly in the course of the story, is a plotter, a plot-maker, a schemer, a witch, an artist, an impersonator, a woman of almost infinite creative energy, witty, wily, and self-absorbed as all artists traditionally are. On the other hand, in her absolute chastity, her frozen innocence, her sweet nullity, Snow White represents precisely the ideal of “contemplative purity” [...] and ideal that could quite literally kill the Queen. (Gilbert and Gubar 2000:38–9) “In the Lovely Lady” Pauline does not hate Cecilia’s “innocence” and “nullity” but despises the girl as unworthy of attention. 147 Cecilia, on the other hand, envies the old woman’s physical appearance and seeks to replace her. Gilbert and Gubar underline the fact that in Snow White both Queen and Princess are prisoners, for they have respectively been locked in “a magic looking glass”, and “an enchanted and enchanting glass coffin” (36). Read in this light, Pauline is as much a villain as a victim. The development of the Lawrence’s story, Díez-Medrano further argues, obstructs the reader’s initial sympathy towards Cecilia and also towards Robert, who progressively appears less as a victim and more a self-enslaved man partly moved by material interest. Moreover, Robert and his mother often sit and look together at manuscripts, and “Robert, solid, rather quiet and subdued, seemed like the elder of the two: almost like a priest with a young girl pupil. And that was rather how he felt” (Lawrence 1982b: 484). In these moments, Pauline would project over her son Robert an unfulfilled desire for her dead-father “a devoted collector of beautiful exotic things” 147 Reeve insists that the original version of “The Lovely Lady” more clearly shows a mutual contempt between Cecilia and Pauline (2000:16). 282 (488). Pauline strives for a perfect appearance in an attempt to become herself a “work of art”. In this sense, Díez-Medrano holds that “‘The Lovely Lady’ is a subtly conducted denunciation of ‘the lesson of the Master,’ that is, of the ‘lesson’ which teaches women to obliterate themselves behind a mask of beauty for the pleasure of a male spectatorship” (1996:97). The breaking of the spell has as much to do with Cecilia’s switching on the light as with Robert’s realization of his mother’s real appearance, “the narration powerfully elucidates that ‘the lovely lady’ is in fact the artistic creation of Robert, the glance that inhabits the ‘mirrors’ which Pauline asks to have ‘taken away from her room’ at the end of the narrative” (100). Pauline’s final design to found a museum would respond to a subversive attempt on her part to actively participate in a cultural process, not just by becoming herself a passive object of art. In this sense, Díez-Medrano understands the story as a way of disclosing the truth that Gilbert and Gubar express “women almost inevitably turn against women because the voice of the looking glass sets them against each other” (Gilbert and Gubar 2000:40). As shown in the analysis above, the Sleeping Beauty motif stands out in D.H. Lawrence’s work as a recurrent metaphor for self-regeneration. Both “The Thimble” and “The Lovely Lady” deploy and transform elements of this fairy tale in order to highlight an instance of spiritual awakening. Whereas in “The Thimble” the Sleeping Beauty narrative works as a provider of imagery to depict the Hepburns inner development, from a superficial to a meaningful and profound existence; “The Lovely Lady” is a fairy tale-like account which parodies and questions some of the notions inscribed in Sleeping Beauty. Unlike “The Thimble”, “The Lovely Lady” is an unrealistic story which both deploys and problematises fairy tale’s archetypal figures. Like many of Lawrence’s narratives, “The Lovely Lady” explores the mother-son relationship and presents it in extreme terms, through the archetypal character of the 283 devouring mother. However, it also shakes the grounds upon which archetypes are founded and ironically subverting the patriarchal ideology inscribed in the fairy tale. 8.2. Sleeping Beauty Dreams about the Distaff: Katherine Mansfield’s “Sleeping Characters” “The world to me is a dream and the people in it are sleepers” (Mansfield to Koteliansky, 19 Oct. 1922) As Susan Reid (2011) has recently argued, Mansfield shared Lawrence’s interest in the Sleeping Beauty motif. Indeed, like Lawrence’s “The Thimble” and “The Lovely Lady” above analysed, many of Mansfield’s stories present characters who long to be rescued from a state of spiritual stagnation. These stories usually narrate the characters’ difficulty to come to terms with reality, a struggle which, in most cases, is depicted as painful. Reid’s reading of Lawrence’s and Mansfield’s work focuses on a “realization of the body, particularly the male body” (2011: 156) as a catalyst for the character’s awakening. In the following pages, however, a number of Mansfield’s stories will be analysed paying attention, above all, to Mansfield’s recurrent depiction of the socially, spiritually and sexually dormant woman, and to the ways she describes her awakening, often in very ambiguous terms. In this sense, Keith Cushman has pointed at Mansfield’s tendency to narrate “thwarted awakenings” (1975:35). It must be stated that none of the stories analysed below are conceived as fairy tales. They could be, in fact, considered perfect instances of modernist short story writing: the setting is detailed and contemporary; there is very little external action, and the focus is on the characters inner 284 moves, depicted through a variety of narrative strategies. Unlike stories such as “The Little Governess” or “The Tiredness of Rosabel” previously analysed, most of these narratives establish no obvious intertextual dialogue with the fairy tale genre, or an obvious rewriting of the Sleeping Beauty motif. However, the notion of the spell or enchantment is sometimes referred or alluded to as a metaphor to describe the condition of the protagonists, whose personal development is constrained by figures that represent institutionalised forms of authority. Moreover, the imagery deployed often contributes to portray the idealised realm which the characters inhabit as similar to a fairy land. Some of these characters struggle to escape from their confinement while others desperately refuse to abandon it. This section does not attempt to draw farfetched parallelisms between Mansfield stories and Sleeping Beauty, but tries to show how the literary convention of the captive woman waiting to be rescued, as epitomised in the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, is recurrent and very significant in Mansfield’s treatment of the female condition (although it occasionally may also refer to men). “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” (1922) narrates the failed attempts of two sisters, Constantia and Josephine, to release themselves from the memory of an extremely authoritative father. The influence of the Colonel on his daughters has degraded them to a state of “childish retardation” (Kleine 1978:423), but he is presented to the reader through the daughters’ memories and perceptions of him once he has died and has been buried. The story brings to the fore the ways in which the absent paternal authority continues to exert control over these women to the point of completely suffocate any expression of their personal will. The sisters’ sickly dependence on the memory of their father is shown in their inability to imagine him dead, and in their irrational fear that he will somehow come back from death to restore the order whenever it could be menaced: 285 Neither of them could possibly believe that father was never coming back. Josephine had had a moment of absolute terror at the cemetery, while the coffin was lowered, to think that she and Constantia had done this thing without asking permission. What would father say when he found out? For he was bound to find out sooner or later. (Mansfield 2006:216) When alive, the Colonel’s presence used to be announced by the terrible sound of his “thumping stick” in the same way the giant of “Jack and the Beanstalk” anticipates his arrival with the sing-song “Fee-fi-fo-fum” (Jacobs 2009:67). Later in the story, Constance rejoices in the music of the street organist which used to disturb her father, and sings in with the tune: “It will never thump again/ It will never thump again” (Mansfield 2006:226). Thus, as is the case of fairy tale heroines, the early death of the mother had left the girls at the expense of a father who is presented like an authoritarian ogre. Although at the beginning of the story, Josephine, in her bed, “arched her spine, pulled up her knees, folded up her arms so that her fists came under her ears, and pressed her cheek hard against the pillow” mimicking the foetal position as if trying to recoil into the “mother’s womb” (211), in this story the longing for a dead mother, however, lacks the positive outcomes presented in Lawrence’s “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” (1922), previously discussed. By the end of the story Josephine concludes that nothing would have changed had her mother lived longer (227). Although no overt fairy tale references are to be found in this story, Josephine and Constantia could be considered two virgin Sleeping Beauties past their prime, unable to wake from an everlasting slumber. They confine themselves in a world dominated by the ghostly presence of the Colonel and, although the sisters dwell on the possibility of future happiness, no materialization of their potential freedom is derived from their father’s disappearance. The sisters are terrified when they are forced to enter their father’s room in order to organise and pack its contents, for they are certain that he “would never forgive them for it” (217). This scene is humorously reminiscent of the 286 unforgivable intrusion of Bluebeard’s wife’s in her husband’s bloody chamber: “It was dark in the hall. It had been a rule for years never to disturb father in the morning, whatever happened. And now they were going to open the door without knocking even…Constantia’s eyes were enormous at the idea; Josephine felt weak in the knees” (217). They expect to see their father coming out from an old wardrobe in the room, and when Constantia “march[es] over to the wardrobe, turn[s] the key, and [takes] it out the lock”, the sisters are symbolically trying to shut in it the haunting memory of their father. Incapable to face the situation of their own independence, the sisters choose surrogate figures of authority and postpone the moment when they shall be free and truly themselves. Kate, the maid, becomes a menacing presence, a substitute figure of authority, custodian of the ladies imprisonment. Moreover, the sisters are not only obsessed with their father’s return, but they are forced to follow a set of social conventions after this decease (such as informing of his death or receiving the visit of the priest), which further delays freedom. The effects of the Colonel’s authoritative upbringing work as a paralysing spell, which recalls Mr. Urquhart’s speech in Lawrence’s “The Princess” (1925). Dolly, following her father’s instructions, has learnt to consider herself above most men and women around her. Josephine and Constantia, however, do not think too high of themselves: on the contrary, they are unable to think by themselves. Having always been prevented by their father from making their own decisions they are not capable of making a necessary move towards liberation even after the man’s death. If, as fairy tales suggest, romance is a way to wake up a sleeping spirit, there is little chance for Josephine and Constantia to abandon their sleep. When the father was alive, any possibility for the girls to initiate a sentimental relationship had been thwarted [Document text truncated for crawler view.]