Conclusion Outline The Romantic

Conclusion

Outline • • • The Romantic novel Castle Rackrent Mansfield Park Waverley Frankenstein The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

The Romantic novel • The Romantic era of the late 18 C and early 19 C constitutes a remarkably fertile period for fiction • The story of the rise of realist fiction from the 18 C can be told as being like a story within realist fiction itself – a movement from fragmentation to unity

The Romantic novel • Realism’s account of its own rise to dominance represents a case of ‘history written by the winners’ • What gets suppressed in the realist narrative of realism’s triumph in the development of fiction? • Answer: the remarkable diversity, hybridity and adventurousness of novel-writing in the Romantic era

Castle Rackrent • CR (1800) – fiction in a ‘wild’ state • The story of the Rackrent dynasty as told by Thady Quirk – ‘quirkily’, more like a chronicle than a work of fiction • This ‘chronicle’ is supported by a complicated set of apparatuses: Preface, footnotes, a postscript, an Advertisement, a Glossary

Castle Rackrent • Specific formal aspects of the novel here appear underdeveloped – plotting, characterization, dialogue, etc. • Narrative voice as a specific formal aspect appears highly developed by contrast • . . . ME shows that she can ‘speak like a man’; the honesty of ‘honest Thady’s’ narrative proves subversive; and the Editorial apparatus fails to check this (in fact, the ‘critique’ is sharpened)

Castle Rackrent • Symbolically speaking, CR is the last 18 C novel and the first 19 C novel • We discover the 18 C wildness of fiction plus the 19 C innovativeness in novelwriting (CR as the first Irish novel, etc. ) • ME stands as the most celebrated novelist in the early 19 C prior to the publication of the Waverley Novels

Mansfield Park • The inner hybridity of CR has an outward manifestation in terms of the novel’s ‘dialogic’ relation to MP (1814) as a further instance of the country house novel • MP appears a properly 19 C novel – well developed in terms of all its formal aspects (plotting, characterization, dialogue, etc. )

Mansfield Park • What also is ‘nineteenth-century’ about MP is the emergence of realism as the dominant genre in fiction • JA practises ‘the art of copying from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life, … presenting to the reader … a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him’ (Scott)

Mansfield Park • From the point of view of genre, JA in MP brings together romance, country house fiction, regionalist fiction, and satire within a structure that positions realism – a picturing of daily life – as dominant • Also, via her protagonist Fanny Price, JA articulates MP as a call for a renewal of the idea of tradition which the landed gentry appears to be struggling to uphold

Mansfield Park • The emergent dominance of realism also brings to light one of the problems of realism itself – is it really a representation of daily life, of ‘things as they are’? • If MP is a representation of things as they are, then one might expect some treatment in the novel of the contemporary reality of colonialism

Mansfield Park • The issue of slavery is ultimately a ‘dead silence’ here, despite (and because of? ) English tradition resting on the material productivity of the colonies • Said: ‘it is genuinely troubling to see [with regard to great novels like MP] … how little they stand in the way of the acceler-ating imperial process’

Mansfield Park • Thus, realism as a representation of things as they are begins to appear, as suggested previously, a case of history being written by the winners • . . . things are as realism says they are when realism itself is in a position to determine their reality • In short, early 19 C realism assimilates other genres within itself, arguably much as the British empire assimilates other cultures • . . . it is all a case of governing through native customs rather than despite them

Waverley • W (1814) is precisely that novel that tells the story of realism becoming a dominant force in modern British politics and culture • From the end of the Jacobite rebellion (1745 -46), realism proceeds to become the order of the day: the Highlands (romance) are defeated by the Lowlands (realism) • See Waverley’s abortive relationship with Flora (romance) and subsequent marriage to Rose (realism)

Waverley • W is thus a form of metafiction – a novel about other novels, as well as about the novel’s own historical development • In this way, it tells the story of what proves to be the realist novel’s rise to dominance, beyond the Romantic era, into a full-blown 19 C age of empire • Correspondingly, W is also claimed as the first historical novel – it makes historical events and historical change its specific subject-matter

Waverley • WS’s historicism captures the imagination of the contemporary reading public • This ‘historicism’ appears an aspect of WS’s strategic masculinization of the novel as a literary form • The novel has previously been regarded as a women’s form and, by the same token, valued as second-rate

Waverley • Thus, the newly masculinized novel (realist, rational, respectable) is re-positioned as dominant within the hierarchy of genres of writing • WS emerges as the major novelist of the early 19 C

Frankenstein • What happens to the diversity, hybridity and adventurousness of novel-writing after the ascendancy of the Waverley Novels and of realism? • The ‘wild’ writing that preceded WS becomes constituted as an undercurrent in British fiction • F (1818) appears a symbol of the existence of this undercurrent

Frankenstein • F is not regarded by contemporary critics as a novel of the first order • Quarterly Review (1818): ‘[the novel] will not even amuse its readers unless their taste has been deplorably vitiated’ • Criticism of the novel is remarkably strong – why?

Frankenstein • Perhaps because it is a work that reflects the extraordinary variety of the contemporary undercurrent in modern fiction • F is a novel that embodies, in the space of a single work, so many of the forms of popular literature that exist within the Romantic era • . . . an epistolary novel, a fictional journal, a Bildungsroman, a romance, a science fiction novel, a Gothic novel, a supernatural tale, a satire, a sentimental novel, a form of travel writing, an epistolary novel again!

Frankenstein • The symbol in MS’s text for all this ‘diversity’ – Frankenstein’s monster assembled from the body parts of other human beings • It is precisely the hybrid nature of the monster that signifies its monstrousness • The more ‘wild’ (hybrid, diverse) the monster is the more it poses a threat to that which is realist, rational and respectable about the realist novel and its ruling ideology

Frankenstein • Thus, F threatens a return of the repressed in relation to realism’s growing dominance over other fictional genres • The very monstrousness of MS’s novel – ‘my hideous progeny’ (MS) – testifies to the vitality of the literature of those whose taste has become ‘deplorably vitiated’ • The degree of hostility expressed in ‘deplorably vitiated’ suggests, perhaps, a certain anxiety about preserving realism’s dominance on the part of the critical establishment

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • JS (1824) – a further instance of the ‘return of the repressed’ in relation to a politically and culturally dominant realism • The novel is damned critically for catering to depraved tastes • JS is another remarkably hybrid work of fiction: the Editor’s narrative, the Confessions proper, the Editor’s postscript

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • Hybridity itself appears imaged in the text in terms of the shape(s) of Gil-Martin • Satan as shapeshifter – not a pantomime devil! • Gil-Martin’s shifting identities correspond to the monstrosity that is Frankenstein’s hybridized creation (and MS’s hybridized novel)

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • Thus, JH works a return of the repressed through his novel as the work unfolds • The above is signified by the presence of the ‘uncanny’ to JH’s text – the figure of the double, making the inanimate, ‘making strange’, etc. • See Sigmund Freud, ‘The “Uncanny”’ (1919)

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • SF: ‘[the uncanny is an experience of] something repressed which recurs’ (Rivkin and Ryan, Literary Theory (1998), p. 166) • SF: ‘[the uncanny may be understood as] something which ought to have been kept concealed but which has nevertheless come to light’ (ibid. ) • In short, JS appears a stranger, even more uncanny work than F, perhaps, due to JH’s deployment of many of the traits of the ‘Freudian’ uncanny

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • The above strong uncanniness of JS seems an index of the repressed coming through the more strongly in JH than in MS • But at the same time, contemporary realism can be seen as acting in such a way as to neutralize the disruptive forces erupting within such works as F and JS

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • E. g. the subversiveness of F appears contained from MS’s use of the frame narrative • Robert Walton’s point of view in the epistolary, beginning-and-ending parts of the work is essentially realist – Walton everywhere assumes he is representing things as they are, and this conditions the ‘truth’ of the novel • What of realism’s corresponding neutralization of a ‘subversive’ JS?

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • Note how the George Colwans are presented as more sympathetic characters than the Robert Wringhams in JH’s novel • What makes them sympathetic in this way is precisely that which is moderate, common-sensical, level-headed about them • In other words, they represent a version of Walter Scott’s middle-of-the-road hero, hence a ‘Waverley effect’

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • In the end, JS is evidently as much about the evils of extremism as W is with its pointed rejection of the passion of Highland romance • (See W’s turning-point: ‘the romance of [Waverley’s] life was ended. . . its real history had now commenced. He was soon called upon to justify his pretensions to reason and philosophy’ (ch. LX) • Interestingly, WS has previously been responsible for discovering JH (the ‘Ettrick Shepherd’) as a writer – is able to exert a degree of controlling influence

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • In sum, despite the challenges from below, realism goes on to strengthen its hegemony as the Romantic era passes into the Victorian era • . . . realist fiction functions as a symbolic model for empire itself within the context of Victorianism’s imperial project • Conclusion: the twenty-nine novels now known as the Waverley Novels (1814 -31) constitute, for good and ill, the single most powerful form of novel-writing in the Romantic era – a total Waverley effect