Geniuses, Addicts, and Scribbling Women: Portraits of the Writer in Popular Culture 1793620601, 9781793620606

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Geniuses, Addicts, and Scribbling Women

Geniuses, Addicts, and Scribbling Women Portraits of the Writer in Popular Culture Edited by Cynthia Cravens

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cravens, Cynthia, editor. | Northeast Modern Language Association (U.S.). Conference (48th : 2017 : Johns Hopkins University)   Title: Geniuses, addicts, and scribbling women : portraits of the writer in popular culture / edited by Cynthia Cravens.   Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.  Identifiers: LCCN 2022014747 (print) | LCCN 2022014748 (ebook) | ISBN 9781793620606 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781793620613 (ebook)   Subjects: LCSH: Authors in popular culture. | Authors in literature. | Authors in motion pictures.  Classification: LCC PN151 .G46 2022  (print) | LCC PN151  (ebook) | DDC 809/.93357--dc23/eng/20220605  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022014747 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022014748 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Introduction: Geniuses, Addicts, and Scribbling Women: Portraits of the Writer in Popular Culture Cynthia Cravens Chapter One: Finding Their Way: Coming of Age as a Writer in John Irving’s The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year Megan A. Anderson C ‌‌‌‌‌hapter Two: Traveling with Writers: Gender, Genre, and Creativity in Bleaker House and Less Julie M. Barst Chapter Three: The Narrating Serpent: Two Distinct Representations of Authorship in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller Sarah Briest Chapter Four: Public Personas of Dangerous Men: Killing Constructed Identities with Suicide by Sequel Christopher Burlingame Chapter Five: Follow the Lead: The Evolving Story of Lois Lane and Her Writing Sandra Eckard

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Chapter Six: Scribbling Pleasure: Undertaking the Sentence of Desire 121 Amy B. Hagenrater-Gooding Chapter Seven: Jane-as-Fanny: Patricia Rozema’s Woman Writer in Mansfield Park Melanie D. Holm v

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Contents

Chapter Eight: From Silly Lady Novelists to Celebrity Male Modernists: Gender and the Representation of Authorship in Fiction 1850–1949 Elizabeth King Chapter Nine: Re-Gendering Genre: Self-Conscious Supernaturalism in Muriel Spark’s The Comforters Alexandra Oxner



Chapter Ten: The Evolution of Daredevil’s Karen Page: From Damsel-in-Distress to Writer-Hero Gian Pagnucci Index

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About the Contributors



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Introduction

Geniuses, Addicts, and Scribbling Women Portraits of the Writer in Popular Culture Cynthia Cravens

The idea for this volume originated in 2017, at the Northeast Modern Language Association’s (NeMLA) annual conference for which I had organized a panel of a similar name. After we concluded our session, one of the panelists, Julie Barst, and I approached the Lexington Books table in the exhibition room and pitched a nascent proposal: a collection of work examining the representation of writers in literature and film. The difference in the titles from that panel to this volume is slight, but the scope of the work that is finally presented in this collection belies it. “Literature and film” seems a broad enough parameter, but, as the contributors here show, there are ways to complicate and expand it. The editor we spoke to, long having since moved on, was immediately enthusiastic about the idea and urged a formal prospectus which I immediately set out to do, using as samples a few revised chapters from the panel. There were three panelists that day: Julie, Amy Hagenrater-Gooding, and Elizabeth King. Once the idea for the collection was encouraged, I put out several calls for chapters. The result was both heartening and a wake-up call. It was heartening because the ten responses to the CFP showed research that had such depth and breadth that it was clear I would have to expand the original title. It showed also that there were scholars doing serious work in this field, who were committed to the importance of representation and its implications, and who saw, like me, particular value in the role of the writer 1

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in society—something literature departments may propose as essay topics for a survey course once in a while, but, in my experience, don’t embrace as a research agenda. Thus, the theme of this collection—the representation of writers, or the depiction of writers, or the portrayal of writers (all different versions of the title at one time or another)—is true to its original impetus to examine rigorously what exactly these representations mean for the contributors and for our ever-expanding cultural universe, but simultaneously resists the embodiment of The Writer as peculiar to the realms of literature and film. There are a lot of these latter examples, of course, but there are also out-of-the-box texts to consider as well: streaming content, for instance, comic books, and blogs. Inherent to the topic and equally important was the conundrum of whether to limit the focus to texts that featured only fictional writers or invite memoir-type depictions of real-world writers as a balance. The latter won out. The result was simultaneously a wake-up call because after the original ten proposals stemming from the CFP, there was . . . nothing. Even after repeated updates to the CFP. I confess I had imagined fielding so many proposals that I would have to pitch Volume 2 (and frankly, 3) and fancied a decade or more of work emanating from this first title. So while it seems that the kind of critics who are drawn to this topic find truly diverse arguments to make about the cultural significance of writers, there are not many of us. It was a wake-up call as well because, as much love as I have for the contributors and their fascinating array of work (and I am still delighted by the range even after four years of compiling this project), I can’t not speak about the gender and race overrepresentation. That is, our collection skews white and our contributors skew female. Part of the reason for the long journey to publication was the question of how to mitigate that. Or whether to mitigate it. One unsurprising reality for the reason it skews white is that popular culture, as we know, produces exponentially more texts that are white-oriented than BIPOC-oriented just in general; extract from that texts that explicitly feature BIPOC writers as main characters and the percentage dwindles precariously. As a whimsical example, I Googled the phrase “books about writers” and got back a count of 320,000,000 results (as of June 2021) featuring anodyne listicles like “50 Must-Read Novels About Writers,” “Fiction Books About Writers (249 books),” “Writers Writing About Writers,” “8 Books About Struggling Writers,” etc. When I Googled “books about Black writers,” however, no count of the results popped up at all—perhaps because no page quite matched the search words. But I did get a different type of listicle: “44 Books by Black Authors to Read [in] 2020,” “33 Books by Contemporary Black Authors,” “38 Best Books by Black Authors,” “17 books by Black authors that are shaping our conversation . . . ” and so on (all emphases mine). I by no means make an assertion here that listicles are the new research. But

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I do make the point that while Black authors are experiencing something of a renaissance (again), it requires a deep effort to locate texts that set out to portray Black writers. This is so even though Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published in 2013 her award-winning novel Americanah about a Nigerian-born blogger, Percival Everett published two novels about black writers in 2011 and 2013 (Erasure and Percival Everett by Virgil Russell: A Novel, respectively), and John Edgar Wideman published one in 2008 (Fanon: A Novel). Not to mention two lesser known novels that sprung from the Harlem Renaissance: Infants of the Spring by Wallace Thurman and Nigger Heaven by Carl Van Vechten. So right there are at least six with which to start a list. And as I write this introduction, a new novel by Jason Mott, Hell of a Book: A Novel, has just been released by Dutton—so, seven. This underrepresentation points to two things: 1) historically, Black writers have been less preoccupied with representing the labor of their writing than their white counterparts (this makes sense considering their long-enforced prohibition from the profession); and 2) readers aren’t Googling “Black writers as characters.” Or rather, listicle makers aren’t making lists of them (this, to me, doesn’t make sense). This isn’t to say that Black writers haven’t historically been interested in writing about writing. They emphatically did write about it—about the purpose of writing poetry, for example, or of how critically important it was for writers to represent Black lives authentically vs. aesthetically depending on one’s politics. James Weldon Johnson, a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote in his preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry in 1922, “[t]he world does not know that a people is great until that people produces great literature and art. No people that has produced great literature and art has ever been looked upon by the world as distinctly inferior.” Johnson’s mission for collecting and releasing the anthology as a corrective for the injustice that “the public, generally speaking, does not know that there are American Negro poets” (ibid.; emphasis mine) clearly argues for the weight that the volume carries: that the literary and artistic production of Black Americans, in this case almost sixty years post–Civil War, was aesthetic empowerment as well as social and political. For Johnson, though, the portrayal of Black writers was not so much the priority as was proving their existence. In the ensuing years of the decade, writers, critics, and especially journalists moved beyond Johnson’s attempt to merely present Black writers to white America toward fierce debates over the racial duty and obligation of Black writers to present Black characters in compelling and authentic ways to white America. In the midst of those debates, Carl Van Vechten (a white man) wrote his controversial 1926 novel Nigger Heaven and Wallace Thurman (a

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Black man) his 1932 novel Infants of the Spring—both about the struggles of Black (male) novelists trying to make a living during the Jazz Age while questioning the whole time whether it was their responsibility to portray the best characteristics or the worst of their own characters. While this introduction is not intended as a critique of the origins and legacy of Black writer-characters, it bears pointing out that 1926 marks the earliest we find a work of fiction that features a storyline incorporating Black writers as characters. Contrast this with the early modern text featured here in Sarah Briest’s chapter on The Travelling Serpent in which two (male) sixteenth-century characters pontificate on the virtues of the writing life, and we return to my point about the preponderance of white writer-characters in literary history and the absence of Black. That there were extenuating circumstances for this almost goes without saying, not the least of which was that Black writers were still disproving the notion of their inherent illiteracy to a frankly hostile world as late as 1922. That was inarguably a more pressing matter than agonizing over the vulgarity of writing for money vs. the ecstasy of writing for art. I acknowledge that, ultimately, my whimsical listicle search is more of a superficial and predictable lesson on the analytics of a Google algorithm than a meaningful data point. But I linger on it a moment longer because it exemplifies the premise of this collection: there are significant implications to the impact that images of writers, or the absence of those images, exert over the culture of their own time and that of future readers. When we read biographies of writers, particularly those brief sketches preceding their texts in a literature anthology, we get a glimpse of their social conditions and family life, of their first successes, and the circumstances of their death. Once in a while we learn about the publishing practices of their time and the odd jobs or alternate careers they had while trying to write. From these, we piece together an understanding of the writing life, of writing as work, as labor, and as a career, for those who were fortunate enough to support themselves, or as misery for those who weren’t. The purpose of those sketches is to understand, and to teach students that texts are created by a person—a writer—who has lived through a series of events that have shaped the perceptions that appear on the page. That texts, therefore, are always already filtered through a consciousness that is a product of its time. In literature classes, we are taught to engage with the text, to question it, examine it, dissect it, even to align it with the great social or political movements of its day, but not to examine the writer’s life in our critique. Perhaps this makes sense in order to avoid falling too deeply into fandom or its opposite, or perhaps this even makes sense to demarcate the practice of textual studies from biographical studies.

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What we’re left with, however, is the autonomy of the text and the absence of the writer. This, more than anything else, may account for the proliferation of novels, memoirs, television shows, and movies about writers (try Googling “Movies About Writers”—297,000,000 results!) and the dearth of scholarship about those portrayals of writers. For the contributors of this volume, depictions of writers in all forms of popular culture provide the basis for diverse methodological frameworks and critical approaches to the study of authorship. From early modern prose texts to Netflix streaming series, the texts in these chapters collectively develop an argument not only for the significance of writers and their representations, but also, indirectly, for the importance of studying those representations, and unpacking complex and diverse relationships between form and content, reality and artifice, art and commodity, and private and public spheres. Megan A. Anderson’s “Finding Their Way: Coming of Age as a Writer in John Irving’s The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year” explores how the film adaptions of Irving’s novels The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year deal with writers and writing through contradictory binaries. In the film version of Garp, the title character, T. S. Garp, and his mother, Jenny Fields, both aspire to be writers, but there are dramatic differences in how they go about the process and the work they produce. The film and the characters themselves debate the value of creative writing versus autobiographical writing and the virtues of being a literary author compared to a popular author. The film The Door in the Floor, an adaptation of Irving’s novel A Widow for One Year, also delves into the differences between contradictory qualities associated with writing. Through Ted Coles, an alcoholic, womanizing author, and his relationships with his soon-to-be ex-wife, his assistant, and his daughter, viewers see a blurring of lines between the oppositional ideas of truth and fiction, and life and art. As part of their exploration through the world of writing, both works also consider the dichotomies of love and hate, as well as triumph and tragedy. Julie M. Barst’s “Traveling with Writers: Gender, Genre, and Creativity in Bleaker House and Less” highlights two recent additions to the tradition of writers depicting writers: the creative nonfiction of Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World by Nell Stevens, published in March of 2017, and the fictional world of Less: A Novel by Andrew Sean Greer, published in July of 2017 and winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Barst argues that the genre of travel literature offers authors writing about writers a valuable space to analyze how individual facets of identity intersect with one another and with the creative process. Anyone who travels is offered a heightened sense of self via removal from one’s everyday lived reality; for writers, across differences such as real or fictional, male or female, gay or straight, young or old, travel provides an even more powerful opportunity to

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explore their identities and creativity. Through travel, they simultaneously detach from their own lives while engaging more deeply with themselves, and in the process, they often discover a fresh perspective on their identity and their art that allows them to explore significant issues such as gender stereotypes, writer’s block, and intercultural communication in unique, rich, and compelling ways. Sarah Briest, in “The Narrating Serpent: Two Distinct Representations of Authorship in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller,” examines two vastly different conceptions of what it means to be a writer—embodied in two characters who share a compulsion to write but are divided in their motivations and convictions, their social standing, and the kinds of literature they produce. Wilton (the prose writer) assumes female roles in thought and action, always flexible to the point of contortion, while Surrey (the poet) is permanently stuck in the typically masculine—but paradoxically also emasculating—role of the courtly lover. Wilton uses the fallen language of Eve and her descendants, while Surrey, a kind of Adam, aspires to the prelapsarian (but not without sometimes exposing the gap between aspiration and reality). On the one hand, Nashe praises poetry and denigrates prose through Wilton and Surrey; on the other hand, he also turns both judgments upside down, allowing lowlife Wilton to make credible points and mocking Surrey’s idealism as quixotic folly. Christopher Burlingame’s “Public Personas of Dangerous Men: Killing Constructed Identities with Suicide by Sequel” looks at transgressive authors Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk and the ways in which they are uniquely positioned to attempt to control and, in many cases, to reclaim how they are perceived. Burlingame argues that this process shares some hermeneutic parallels to reading and interpreting the characters in their fiction. Both writers have claimed that their works are often misunderstood by critics while persistent claims of misogyny and shock for the sake of shock have been leveled against their works as an excuse for dismissing them out of hand. Additionally, critical responses often conflate the author with the author’s characters and the transgressions the characters commit. Ellis’s instincts for provocation as a means to keeping his name out there in an ever-swirling information maelstrom are evident in the way he pokes and prods through interviews, social media posts, and his weekly podcast. Palahniuk has opted to often let his fans play a more active role in defining his public persona, initially with his website chuckpalahniuk.net, The Cult. Even in its most careful form, Palahniuk’s decision to promote a persona through his fans as a kind of revolution against power structures like the publishing industry and its critics seems to be in line with Ellis’s cultivation of his persona. Other transgressive authors include Hubert Selby Jr. and Irvine Welsh.

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Sandra Eckard, in “Follow the Lead: The Evolving Story of Lois Lane and Her Writing” points out that each generation has several female models that stand out as highly visible representatives of that generation. During wartime, there was Rosie the Riveter, a cultural icon of the late 1930s and early 1940s that represented women’s power and the first strands of modern feminism. In the 1960s, there was Gidget and, then, the 1970s introduced Mary Tyler Moore and other pop culture icons that we still recognize today, like Charlie’s Angels. However, what is really interesting about these images of women, these pop icons, is that while they are all still recognizable as a monumental part of our pop culture history, they are each linked solely to one generation of women; they are frozen within a time period. Lois Lane, however, has been around since 1938—and despite the changing times, she has been one character that has morphed into different incarnations of herself, representing different roles that women could have, different beliefs, and all the while changing in her appearance both in comics and on screens. Lois Lane has a unique role, then, as a mirror to the evolution of women and their changing roles in society. This chapter traces the evolution of Lois Lane to provide some insight into her work as a writer, spotlighting five different versions of Lois: early Action Comics, “The Adventures of Superman,” “Lois and Clark,” the recent young adult book series, and several big-screen movie versions such as Superman: The Movie and Justice League. By focusing on Lois Lane as a writer, we can see how not just the character and her profession has been crafted to fit each generation, but we can also learn more about how women writers are portrayed in popular culture. Amy B. Hagenrater-Gooding’s “Scribbling Pleasure: Undertaking the Sentence of Desire” begins with feminist critic Hélène Cixous’s work “Laugh of the Medusa,” which instructs women to write, saying “Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it.” Cixous speaks on the danger of “censor[ing] the body” as it simply “censor[s] breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard.” Hagenrater-Gooding thus examines how women write desire, the messy, oft-conflicted source of want. She asks, How can women write sexual desire, desire to be heard, and desire to give voice to the juxtaposition of welcomed and unclassified emotions that reside in a self? Fictional women writers Midge Maisel and Chris in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and I Love Dick, respectively, attempt to write the body as a means of mediating female sexuality and desire, not as a means to exclusively obtain the object of desire, but rather as a means of obtaining entrance into the self. While creating through their columns, stories, or letters, these writers can, and do, write a “feminine sentence”: linguistically and literally through their unique feminine experience and emotionally and metaphorically through exploration of the “sentence” of feminine desire within patriarchal confines.

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Melanie D. Holm, in “Jane-as-Fanny: Patricia Rozema’s Woman Writer in Mansfield Park,” argues that the image of Jane Austen furtively scribbling artful sentences under her embroidery in a Regency sitting room is as famous as it is false. Nevertheless, the romantic/repressive imagery of a novel written both at leisure and by stealth has become an iconic representation for the mythos of the woman writer and the woman writer par excellence, Jane Austen. Readers have come less to think of Jane Austen as the creator of her characters, and instead fondly imagine the author as a real-life version of her most popular and likable character, Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennett. The depictions of Elizabeth on film have had to bear the double duty of simultaneously representing a character, and in that character, the imagined personal proxy of Jane Austen the person (rather than real writer). Patricia Rozema’s film Mansfield Park (1999) attempts an extraordinary reversal of this tendency by rewriting Austen’s least likable character, the dour Fanny Price, as a spirited, opinionated, satirical, and, above all, literary version of the author herself. This depiction of the female writer shows the writing process at work while foregrounding a self-conscious reflection on the peculiar and problematic status of the female author—and for Rozema, female auteur. Intertextual and allusive indexes of influences on Austen’s writing punctuate the film, complemented by a continuous meditation on the double status of female writer as outsider and parodist of a male tradition. Elizabeth King’s “From Silly Lady Novelists to Celebrity Male Modernists: Gender and the Representation of Authorship in Fiction 1850–1949” asserts that authors have been populating their novels with fictional members of their profession for almost as long as the novel has been considered a distinct literary genre. But for what aesthetic or polemic purposes do real-life writers create these fictional counterparts, and what can fictional representations of authorship tell us about the real-world cultural and critical climates from which they have emerged? Based on an analysis of a corpus of two hundred texts containing novelist characters published between 1850 and 1950, this chapter focuses on the role gender plays when writers choose to sketch the figure of the artist. In fiction written by men toward the end of the nineteenth century, the corpus reveals a horde of unflattering depictions of female writers in the form of frivolous populist novelists who lack artistic merit: essentially, the “Silly Lady Novelists” ridiculed by George Eliot in her 1856 essay. At the same time, when male writers create male author-characters, they overwhelmingly present us with struggling aesthetic purists unable to make a living—thus offering a highly gendered critique of the Victorian literary climate, in which pecuniary concerns were increasingly outweighing artistic scruples for authors and publishers alike. In a surprisingly similar move, however, a significant number of female writers working after 1900 represent authorship in the form of the successful and highly masculine male

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modernists, using satire and caricature to question both the aesthetics of high modernism and the overrepresentation of men at the elite levels of the literary hierarchy. This chapter argues that the author-character functions as a weather vane for changes in the literary climate, and as a means for authors to transmit their critiques of these changes—along with their own paradigms of authorship—directly to their readers. Alexandra Oxner, in “Re-Gendering Genre: Self-Conscious Supernaturalism in Muriel Spark’s The Comforters,” posits that, by challenging definitions of the natural and the human, supernatural texts raise fundamental questions: Which subjectivities are considered natural within patriarchal hierarchies? Do women who exhibit otherworldly abilities automatically cede their positions within the real or themselves as real? Oxner argues that women writers self-consciously foreground the literary apparatus in ghost stories, thus participating in apparently metafictional discourses but ultimately generating what Oxner calls a genreflexive fictional mode. This formal distancing technique enables women writers to embrace the seeming paradox of the supernatural as itself a mode of realism and, in this way, they preserve space for the supernatural to become the natural. By the end of novels such as Muriel Spark’s The Comforters and Maryse Condé’s Crossing the Mangrove, which each feature a woman writing her way through supernatural events, the reader is left with no doubt as to the reality of the authors’ occult images. They thus craft narratives that subvert “natural,” or expected, interpretations of their female characters’ powers, such as Caroline Rose’s supernatural voices being viewed as mental illness or Francis Sancher’s death being limited to biological causes. By fusing realism and supernaturalism, women’s supernatural experiences are naturalized rather than relegated to a realm of mere fantasy. Bringing José Esteban Muñoz’s queer performance theory into conversation with Judith Butler’s notion of gender performativity, Oxner further contends that genreflexive fiction produces a kind of feminist formalism designed to call attention to narratives as narratives, thereby rendering mimetic versions of “reality” highly suspect. And finally, Gian Pagnucci’s “The Evolution of Daredevil’s Karen Page: From Damsel-in-Distress to Writer-Hero” explores the development of the character Karen Page over the three seasons in which she appeared in the Netflix hit television show Daredevil. When we first meet Karen in the show, she is screaming in terror in the middle of a bloody murder scene. She appears to be a standard damsel-in-distress with the only update being the grisliness of the scene. But Karen quickly throws off her damsel-in-distress mantle through the process of becoming a writer. Pagnucci uses a Post-Process Theoretical writing analysis to look at how Karen’s identity evolves over the course of the series. In season 1, Karen does suffer in the role of victim as she is the target of a conspiracy by the criminal mastermind Kingpin. In this

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phase, Karen’s actions can be understood through the Post-Process lens of situated experience. This second phase of Karen’s experience can be understood through the Post-Process lens of interpretation. During her earlier character phases, Karen does very limited writing, but in this final phase she comes to view herself as a writer, with help from her mentor Mitchell Ellison, the crotchety editor-in-chief of the New York Bulletin. The Post-Process lens is useful for understanding how Karen’s embracing of a writing life transforms her from onetime damsel-in-distress to a powerful twenty-first-century heroine. As season 3 of Daredevil begins, Page’s confidante sums up her development saying, “You’ve changed, Page. You’ve changed.” And, indeed, she has, into a heroine who is a model for the transformative power of writing. The personae of geniuses, addicts, and scribbling women listed in the title of this collection hail from yet more representations of writer-characters. The writer as a genius preponderates in Romantic literature, but a very powerful indictment of it scaffolds Edith Wharton’s 1929 Hudson River Bracketed, a coming-of-age-of-an-artist and a critique of main character Vance Weston’s series of unfortunate decisions as he sets out to become a member of the New York literati. Similarly, the writer as an addict is a recurring trope in Victorian literature, with a very compelling and updated rendition of it appearing in Showtime’s Californication (2007–2014), in which “troubled” writer Hank Moody cycles through benders of the alcoholic, narcotic, and sexual kind throughout this seven-season show. And the infamous “scribbling women” denigration comes from a letter penned by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1855 to his publisher: “America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash—and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed,” a not-exactly-shocking dismissal of that mid-century flourishing of women writers’ ability to support themselves and their families. Given such an eclectic range of literary, visual, and social texts, what then can we say about the cultural significance of writers? Certainly in many of these representations the writer-characters are satirized, mocked, scoffed at, and in many cases utterly dismissed for whatever combination of personal flaws and moral bankruptcies. Yet as a trope throughout literary history, the figure of the writer persists. It may not be too much of a stretch to suggest that writers are a writer’s favorite subject to write about. But judging from the prevalence of this subgenre, readers, viewers, and content consumers seem in their own way enthralled enough by the portrait of a writer to maintain its continued presence in popular culture. More to the point, though, what can we say about the cultural significance of the images of writers we consume in all their incarnations whether as artists, reformers, geniuses, failures, fantasies, or myriad other forms? Each contributor in this volume examines the power of representation implicit

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in their respective texts and of representation more broadly; but one theme that undergirds this diverse collection is the work of writing: be it via a fever-inducing passion, a hard-nosed profession, a mental illness, or quixotic folly, writer-characters produce their work largely in solitude, unbothered and unregulated by even an organizing body such as a union, or the exchange of an hourly wage (putting aside the interference of a Perry White for now). The nature of their work conditions thus puts them outside traditional paradigms of labor, which, for one thing, roots a worker in a designated place, and, for another, requires a worker to report to a supervising worker. In our contemporary gig-economy culture, we recognize this status as both liberating and precarious—there is autonomy and freedom in determining our own work schedule and comings and goings, but there is also income insecurity and powerlessness. Add to that perception of autonomy and freedom the promise of celebrity and public veneration, and the writer-character blooms into a near-mythological image of the unfettered life—in its most depraved incarnation (such as a Hank Moody), he says what he thinks, does what he wants, drinks while he works, and often doesn’t work at all, preferring for inspiration to hit with little to no impunity. Occasionally he is called out for his bad behavior, but the show (or the novel) gently chastises him in the form of a scolding friend or an exasperated ex-wife, and ultimately forgives his pedantic outbursts. But, pointedly, he is not homeless or penniless; he is not responsible for the well-being of a family or a pet; he has a nice car, nice clothes, enough money to procure alcohol and drugs; and he has the leisure time to enjoy all of these things without the stress of reporting to work at a certain time in a certain place. Aside from the gendered and racialized privilege originating this image—or maybe because of it—it is almost a perfect realization of a twenty-first-century fantasy of work: a job that confers complete autonomy, supports the right to transgress, and necessitates self-centeredness. To what extent these fictional narratives actually influence real-life decision-making, however, isn’t so clear. In the absence of valid data, speculation tells us that the preponderance of images in the popular culture we consume at least informs our beliefs and personal values, even though the images might not confirm them. It’s reasonable for the contributors of this volume and those of us researching the significance of writers in society to be concerned with the ways in which portrayals of writers influence and possibly distort the expectations of those claiming to be writers, or those seeking to become writers. How might the depiction of a Hank Moody–esque writer, for instance, motivate applications to MFA programs in creative writing? Knowing that problems with diversity still haunt the publishing industry, what consequences might that exacerbate?

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With this in mind, we are all aware that the future production of content is not only contingent upon who publishes it, but on who writes it in the first place. Be it traditional literature and film, digital streaming content, or all the other forms of narrative including video games, writers have and will continue to have inordinate sway in our consumption of culture. Consequently, the portrayals of writers we consume tell us more about our values than, say, portrayals of lawyers or police officers, both of which exist on a continuum of good vs. evil; portrayals of doctors and nurses, who trade in life vs. death; or portrayals of billionaire media moguls which depcit aspirational vs. despicable. In all these examples, the conflict is clear; emotional; and. most importantly for the respective franchises, understandable and relatable, even if the supposed “good guys” are corrupt and the presumptive “bad guys” are sympathetic. For portrayals of writers, however, the values inherent in narratives that dramatize their work hinge on whether we relegate that work as entertainment, lionize it as art, critique it as ideology, or dismiss it as irrelevant. In other words, there is no discernible oppositionality around which to build a narrative—there is no “vs” other than that which writer-characters see themselves already in. That is, writer-characters aren’t necessarily struggling with someone; they’re struggling with their own sense of where they fit in the different societies that make up their world. Even in the very pronounced “good-vs-evil” plotline of a Lois Lane narrative, over the course of her evolution, Lois has been pointedly at odds with the expectations of the different societies in which she has existed. And this, I think, more than anything, is the unspoken purpose of the writer-character. To return to the quandary mentioned in the opening paragraphs of how or whether to mitigate the gender and race imbalance of our contributors and our texts, the unresolvedness of the matter still plagues me. Where once this might have gone undernoticed, it is hardly feasible to not wrestle with it today. But ultimately, I’ve embraced the brilliance of this collection as it stands. I still believe there are vastly more texts, authors, and issues to research in this area, and quite a few more questions about the status of writers in our culture and the role of writers in a society, particularly when we factor in those writers who are imprisoned for opposing political administrations or silenced for questioning cultural or religious regimes. The nonprofit organization PEN America runs a searchable catalog of persecuted writers, journalists, and public intellectuals around the world with their “Writers at Risk Database.” To date, there are seventy pages, cataloging nearly seven hundred writers, some of whom were tortured or killed for their acts of writing. This is far from a twenty-first-century fantasy of work. It is, instead, a lethal reminder of how

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powerful single acts of writing can be, and how threatening individual writers can be perceived to be. In the end, the visibility of writers is a benchmark of the cultural, political, and aesthetic advancements of a democratic society, to paraphrase James Weldon Johnson. The scholarship represented by these ten contributors—writers, let’s not forget—demonstrates not just that benchmark but the complexities at the heart of representation itself. In this case: writers writing about writers having written about writers writing.

Chapter One

Finding Their Way Coming of Age as a Writer in John Irving’s The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year Megan A. Anderson

While writing fourteen popular novels over a span of almost fifty years, American author John Irving has developed a reputation for the absurd. He is known for long, linear narratives; plots with sudden shifts and skips; dark, dramatic humor; and a preoccupation of certain motifs, such as bears, prostitutes, and injuries related to the male genitalia. While he frequently focuses on topics such as rape, murder, abortion, and terrorism, Irving still finds balance and has seemingly perfected the tragicomedy: work that contains tragic and comedic elements. Another word frequently used in connection with Irving’s character and plot-driven novels is Dickensian. In a review for Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, Francine Prose provides the adjective the perimeters of “a large cast of vividly drawn characters, some of them grotesques with comically descriptive names and odd tics of speech and behavior; a plucky orphan who overcomes a childhood blighted by humiliating poverty or simple lower-class misery; numerous and ingeniously interconnected subplots; panoramic shifts of location; a narrative that makes the reader finish each chapter eager to begin the next.” While perhaps overused, Dickensian is an appropriate term for such Irving absurdities as A Prayer for Owen Meany, a novel set in New Hampshire, as well as Canada, that describes how a diminutive boy forced to yell because of an underdeveloped larynx accidentally kills his best friend’s mother during his first successful at bat in a Little League game. The plot sounds far-fetched and the main character unbelievable, but neither stand out in Irving’s works. 15

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When considering Irving’s oeuvre from a more macro perspective, it becomes clear that while his characters are eccentric and his plots are exaggerated, they are also repetitive and predictable at the same time. Like his Victorian literary predecessor, Irving contains his sprawling, spacious narratives within the specific framework of the bildungsroman, as Dickens does in David Copperfield and Great Expectations. Taken from the German words bildung, meaning education or formation, and roman, or novel, the term describes a “novel of formation.” Exact definitions differ, but examples of this genre generally follow a three-part structure that includes the setup or introduction of the main character, shaping experiences that impact their development, and, finally, a culminating event that shows a conclusion has been reached. Jerome Hamilton Buckley defines the essential qualities for these coming-of-age stories in Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding as “childhood, the conflict of generations, provinciality, the larger society, self-education, alienation, ordeal by love, the search for a vocation and working philosophy” (18). Many of Irving’s novels incorporate these elements as they tell the formation story of a major character, almost always a young man, leaving home to find his way through the world. A number of repeated details—characters from his hometown of Exeter, New Hampshire; references to Phillips Exeter Academy or similar boys’ prep schools; a focus on wrestlers and wrestling; a missing parent; a difficult academic struggle—suggest that Irving’s novels mimic his own period of coming of age. But Irving still manages to devise different stories and scenarios for his characters. While they generally all go on some sort of narrative journey in search of something, their experiences are still diverse and distinct. Some of Irving’s characters come of age in the traditional sense as they travel through adolescence toward adulthood, while others take a more abstract trajectory from naive to worldly. As the coming-of-age process creates much of the story’s plot in Irving novels, the characters are an essential element of the equation. Like Dickens, Irving uses a significant number of orphans, or characters with parents who are physically or emotionally absent. Whether literally or metaphorically orphaned, these characters represent significant opportunities for character development as they are the equivalent of blank slates. Not having an intact family unit means a protagonist only has a partial understanding of their identity. If these characters do not fully know who they are, it is more difficult to determine where they are going in a metaphorical sense. Irving uses this loss, this sense of incompleteness, to address a central focus of the bildungsroman. The earliest examples of the German genre, such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, revolved around an act of apprenticeship as the uninitiated honed skills and learned life lessons before determining their place in society. Irving’s contemporary characters

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experience the same idea of education and training, although they all share the same vocation: telling stories. Though there are variations in terms of style, success, and significance of these characters, each novel features at least one, if not multiple, characters who tell stories or do some form of writing. Beginning with his first novel in 1969, Irving has been creating creative characters who have a way with words. Setting Free the Bears describes the friendship of two Viennese college students, Hannes and Siggy, who share a motorcycle ride through Austria together while plotting the release of the animals in the Heitzinger Zoo. While Hannes, the narrator, is concerned with storytelling, contained within the novel are parts of Siggy’s writings, “The Zoo Watch” and “The Highly Selective Autobiography of Siegfried Javotnik.” In The Water-Method Man (1972), Fred “Bogus” Trump, a doctoral student in comparative literature, keeps a diary that includes his conflicts with dating and his chronic struggle with his unusually narrow urinary tract that could be treated with abstinence, surgery, or the water method. The 158-Pound Marriage (1974) explores the relationships between two couples who enter a foursome. The unnamed novelist narrator and his wife, Utchka, co-mingle but ultimately clash with Severin Winter, a German professor, and his wife, Edith, an aspiring writer. Irving’s fourth novel, The World According to Garp (1978), portrays the mother-son relationship between Jenny Fields and T. S. Garp, as they take different paths to becoming best-selling novelists. Following the immense popularity of Garp, Irving released The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), a story about the Berry family: husband and wife Win and Mary, and their children, Frank, Franny, John, Lilly, and Egg. John, the middle son of five children, narrates the family’s failures in the hotel business, but Lilly, who never grows above four feet tall, ends up writing the family story before the pressures of writer’s block lead her to take her own life. The Cider House Rules (1985) shares the life of Homer Wells, a lifelong orphan, and his relationship with Dr. Wilbur Larch, an obstetrician and abortionist, who is also the author of A Brief History of St. Cloud’s and a diary-journal. A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) focuses on Owen, a small boy with a large voice, and his best friend, John Wheelwright, who narrates his childhood in diary entries after becoming a schoolteacher in Toronto. A Son of the Circus (1994) features Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla, a Toronto orthopedic surgeon who also secretly writes scripts for detective films on the side. A Widow for One Year (1998) captures a diverse family of writers: the father is a well-known children’s storyteller and illustrator; the mother, a mystery novelist living under an assumed name in Canada; and the daughter who grows up to be a well-known novelist. Irving’s novels in the twenty-first century follow the same pattern. The Fourth Hand (2001) describes how Patrick Wallingford, a popular journalist who lost his hand after an accident with a hungry lion, falls in love with

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Doris Clausen, a Green Bay Packers fan who trades her late husband’s hand for a child. The novel also features a subplot revolving around Dr. Nicholas M. Zajak, a hand surgeon, who slowly earns the affection of his son Rudy through stories. The plot of Until I Find You (2005) revolves around Jack Burns, the son of a church organist and a second-generation tattoo artist, and his search to find his father after only hearing stories about him. His friend and first “lover,” Emma Oastler, becomes a best-selling novelist, and uses her talents and death to help him become a screenwriter. In Last Night in Twisted River (2009), Daniel Baciagalupo and his father, Dominic, are forced to live a decades-long life on the run after a tragic accident, but Daniel still becomes the author of a number of best-selling books. In One Person (2012) is the bisexual coming-of-age story of William Francis Dean Jr., or “Billy” to his friends, a novelist who spends years liking the “wrong people.” Irving’s most recent venture, Avenue of Mysteries (2015), features Juan Diego as a middle-aged writer and teacher with an identity crisis. After experiencing a childhood of poverty in Mexico—he learned to read by saving books out of the dump his father manages—and for the rest of his life in Iowa after being adopted, he experiences somewhat of an identity crisis as he does not know if he is Mexican or American. While the details vary drastically from book to book, from plot to plot, and from character to character, the essence remains: John Irving writes novels about characters moving toward maturity as they find themselves in the world and the large majority of these characters embark on this journey, or more accurately, finish this journey, as someone who can tell a story. Some of these characters become best-selling professional authors while others practice medicine or teach and do more personal forms of writing on the side. Regardless of how much writing they produce or what level of success they find as authors, Irving consciously connects coming of age to writing again and again in his novels. Realizing they are supposed to become a writer or even just realizing the value of writing is a part of these characters’ identities. As orphans—literal or metaphorical—these characters are missing or searching for something. For these stray souls struggling to understand their origins, the act of becoming a writer or storyteller offers them an aspect of control in that they now have a vocation and an individual identity. As these writing protagonists become successful in their craft, they discover themselves, learn lessons, begin to have relationships with others, and fully come of age. Written twenty years apart, two of Irving’s novels, The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year, seemingly have the most to say about Irving’s interests in coming of age and author characters as they deal with generational protagonists who end up as writers. Both novels are an exploration into the world of writing, and with the inclusion of numerous excerpts of writing by the fictional characters, even the structure of these novels is

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shaped by writing. With such an emphasis on writing and writers, these two novels could better be defined as examples of the Künstlerroman, a term used to describe the formative years of an artist. In this variation of the bildungsroman, “the protagonist is an artist struggling . . . toward an understanding of his or her creative mission” (Harmon 289). In the case of The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year, the main characters are on a creative mission to understand the craft of writing. The World According to Garp, the life story of T.S. Garp from conception to death, is a formation story. Through an interrupting, omniscient narrator, readers see this character—not an actual orphan but a bastard—come of age as he moves through the normative milestones of attending school, deciding upon a career, getting married, and becoming a father. The serpentine novel is weighed down by heavy themes of sex and feminism, and there is a significant amount of violent absurdity; Garp, in fact, contains “three rapes, two assassinations, two accidental deaths, the loss of an eye, the loss of an arm, a penis bitten off, and a whole society of women with amputated tongues” (Wood 69). Like many of Irving’s other titles, Garp could also be described as being about a protagonist who struggles to find his identity as a writer. His literary efforts—“a fine first story, a promising first novel, a disappointing second novel, and a shocking best-seller”—are connected to his struggles with balancing the idea of imagination with using moments of his memory, but also to the trauma and tragedy he experiences (Wood 70). He cannot complete his first story, “The Pension Grillparzer,” until he loses someone he cares about, and it is not until a car accident leaves him and his wife badly injured, his son Duncan without an eye, and his son Walt dead that he is capable of producing something undisputedly successful with The World According to Bensenhaver. Despite the suggestive title of The World According to Garp, there is an argument to be made that Garp’s mother is an equally significant character. As a twenty-two-year-old at the start of the narrative, Jenny is not yet fully experienced in terms of exposure to the world. A member of a widely known footwear empire, she is not an orphan, but a misunderstood outsider when it comes to her absentee parents and older brothers. The first chapter of the novel offers a very vivid description of Garp’s origin story: without an interest in men or sex, his unconventional mother impregnates herself with the help of a gravely wounded airman at the hospital where she works as a nurse. The brief moment between an alienated, misunderstood woman and an orphaned ball turret gunner also marks a new beginning for Jenny. As readers see both protagonists grow up, though they differ in age, interests, and experiences, they could both be classified as incomplete or misfits until they find their purpose and identity as writers.

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In the style of the bildungsroman, as Garp moves through his educational experiences, he identifies his career calling. When he goes out for the wrestling team as a high schooler, he falls in love with both the sport and Helen Holm, a voracious reader and the daughter of his coach. When asked about writing, she admits she does not have any personal aspirations of being a writer herself, but her declaration, “If I marry anybody, I’ll marry a writer” (89) serves as enough of a motivation for Garp to decide on the profession. He diligently applies himself and begins writing a short story every month until he graduates the Steering School, at which point he expresses an interest in gaining some perspective as a writer by traveling to Europe. Since his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, Irving has been sending characters to Europe as an extended educational opportunity. In Irving’s words, “I attempt in writing . . . to use the experience of someone else’s history, another country’s history even, to make someone painfully aware of his own meager grip on his or her surroundings” (Miller 181). By changing locals, Irving sends his characters on a literal and metaphorical trip to complete their coming-of-age process. But Irving plays with format, sending Jenny on the same literal and metaphorical trip to Vienna as her son. After raising her son in the sheltered environment of a New England prep school, Jenny wants to take him abroad to help him develop his “authorial voice” but as plans are being made, she casually announces, “I was thinking of writing something myself” (107). The idea of having a voice, something she has never had before, is appealing to her. With two writers in the family, Irving is able to be creative with the different paths his writers take. Garp follows a more traditional route of having a teacher as a mentor and traveling for inspiration, but as Jenny’s is not a traditional coming of age, she does not pursue writing in a conventional way either. Her nonconformist approach to writing allows for an interesting juxtaposition on the writing process that begins with the idea of inspiration. Jenny wants her son to be inspired by his travels, but she sees no value in looking at the sights herself. “I don’t have the time to be a tourist at this point in my life,” she says to Garp. “But you go ahead, soak up the culture. That’s what you should be doing” (120). At forty-one years old, she comes to the conclusion that she has enough experience to become a writer herself. With much of her life already behind her, she feels ready to write her own memoir. A new environment provides almost too much stimulation for Garp, who struggles to find something to say. Jenny, however, quickly finds her voice in the foreign city. Garp struggles with procrastination and is plagued by questions, such as what should his characters do? and where should they go?—literally and metaphorically—while Jenny just starts at the very beginning. Without the need for creation or imagination, before long she produces a manuscript of 1,158 pages.

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There is much to unpack in Irving’s The World According to Garp, but a common theme is the ongoing debate on the artistic value of writing. Having two characters living in a tiny pension in Vienna together while trying to figure out what it means to be a writer allows Irving to explore the craft of writing through oppositional forces. He carefully uses these two characters and a number of inner-texts—writing produced by his fictional characters—to debate the value of creative versus autobiographical writing and the virtues of being a literary author compared to a popular one. An initial difference of genres between the mother and son leads to a number of other discovered dissimilarities, such as the levels of thinking required for their writing. While “her typewriter never paused for thought” (124) as it was not something necessary to tell her own story, Garp found himself lost in his head and imagination for days at a time. The two also took varied approaches on the subject of lust (a feeling Garp encounters), the idea of revision (an exercise Jenny does not practice), and the idea of success (something found easily for Jenny, but not Garp). His experiences in Vienna lead him to write “The Pension Grillparzer,” while Jenny becomes a household name with A Sexual Suspect, her autobiography describing how she was perceived for wanting independence and a child, but without the conventions of men or sex. With the publication of Jenny’s accidental feminist manifesto comes Irving’s exploration into how to define successful writing. Garp’s short story is deemed “only mildly interesting” (181) by a publisher but with lines like, “in this dirty-minded world, you are either somebody’s wife or somebody’s whore—or fast on your way to becoming one or the other,” A Sexual Suspect receives critical acclaim with women and the media (157). Despite his mother’s significant and immediate success, Garp has no appreciation for her work, describing it as having “the same literary merit as the Sears, Roebuck catalog” (13). While “The Pension Grillparzer” is not immediately successful, its completion is enough for Helen, who as a freshman in high school had stated she could see herself marrying a “real writer” (89) one day. With the mother and son having such drastically different styles and successes in writing, it is difficult to determine Irving’s exact thoughts on what it takes to become a writer. Despite both characters being assassinated by extremists—her by a man who hated women, him by a woman who despised men—readers are able to see Jenny and Garp experience growth and achieve maturity through their writing. The continuation of the novel after their deaths in an epilogue called “Life after Garp” shows that Irving has more to say about writing. Maybe he is making commentary on the world of writing through his more minor characters. Jenny and Garp’s publisher, John Wolf, suggests finding literary success is somewhat connected to luck, explaining, “You’re either going to be taken as the right voice at the right time, or you’re

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going to be put down as wrong” (185). The well-read Helen has a more optimistic understanding of good literature, though. In describing her future mother-in-law’s manuscript, she admits to Garp that while it may not be a “literary jewel,” it is a “very compelling story” (168). Helen’s reference to literary versus popular, and Irving’s use of other binaries, such as fiction and autobiography, effort and ease, amateur and professional, and appearance and reality, to describe writers and writing could show that he believes all types of writing are valuable and valid. More importantly, though, he seems to be suggesting that as a writer develops, they need to strive for balance, taking aspects from each oppositional element. Twenty years after the success of Garp, Irving published A Widow for One Year, another story about a family of writers with a similar theme and structure. Parents Marion and Ted Cole, and their daughter, Ruth, are all connected to the world of writing in various ways, and like Garp, this novel also delves into the differences between contradictory qualities associated with writing. Through Ted, an alcoholic, womanizing children’s book author and illustrator, and his relationships with his soon-to-be ex-wife, his assistant, and his daughter, viewers see a blurring of lines between the oppositional ideas of truth and fiction, and life and art. While long and layered, A Widow is more contained than many of its counterparts. Being told in three parts associated with time periods (summer 1958, fall 1990, and fall 1995) allows it to be held together by a focus on the passage of time. In Part I, Ruth, the eventual protagonist, is just four years old. As is the case in Irving’s coming-of-age stories, the novel starts with her conception story. After a tragic car accident takes her two older, teenaged brothers, Ted and Marion conceived Ruth as a replacement child. Though Ruth did not know sixteen-year-old Thomas and fourteen-year-old Timothy before they died, the two boys affect her life in serious and significant ways. With dead siblings and absent parents, she is, in effect, an orphan. Since both of her parents are still dealing with such a loss, neither is fully emotionally available to their toddler, and in the summer of 1958 the two become more physically absent after deciding on a trial separation. Ted is a larger-than-life character throughout most of the novel, but the story is ultimately Ruth’s. The novel’s three parts correspond to captured moments in thirty-seven years of her life: her as a four-year-old child, her as a thirty-six-year-old writer, and her as a forty-one-year-old widow. Like most Irving works, the novel takes its structure from the bildungsroman, or in this case, a Künstlerroman. Those same time periods represent Ruth in the beginning, middle, and final stages not of her life, but of her journey as a writer. As a young girl, Ruthie was not ready to write yet but two experiences from her childhood shaped her eventual career as a writer. Like her brothers before her, Ruth loved to listen to her father tell stories. She was not like other children

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in this manner: her “innumerable toys—mostly dolls and dollhouses . . . were largely ignored by the four-year-old. Ruth preferred to draw, or to have stories read to her” (56). She also began to develop her imagination in these early, formative years. When her mother leaves the family at the end of the summer, she takes all of the photographs of her sons with her. Seeing the dozens of hooks on the walls forced Ruthie to try to re-create their placement: “That Thomas and Timothy were killed before she was born was another part of the reason Ruth Cole became a writer; from her earliest memory, she was forced to imagine them” (6). Her mother’s absence has a similar effect on her, but her ability to imagine and re-create serve her well, as Part II of the novel shows her as “that rare combination of well-respected literary novelist and an internationally best-selling author” (6). With Irving playing with the passage of time with his use of three parts, readers see less of Ruth’s writing process as compared to Garp’s and Jenny’s. More time, instead, is spent on Ruth’s movement to happiness, and the connected idea of healthy relationships, both of which elude her through most of the book. Though it is Ruth’s story, as the narrator reminds us, A Widow for One Year features a number of writing characters. With a focus on so many writers, Irving has room to explore different genres of writing (children’s stories, mysteries, romances, journalism) and different types of writers (popular, aspiring, one-dimensional, talented). Of particular interest to him is the idea of various writers finding their voice. The deaths of Thomas and Timothy are painful to both Ted and Marion, but Marion felt more sadness and sorrow in the years after the accident. Her personality changed and the profound loss changed her plans of writing. She “was just getting ready to be a writer” when their sons were killed; after losing the boys, “she couldn’t allow herself to imagine freely, because her imagination would inevitably lead her to Thomas and Timothy” (62). It is not until years later, after leaving her family and an unhappy marriage, that Marion finds her voice, a new name, and a new life as Alice Somerset, a mystery writer in Canada. With her mother gone, Ruth is most impacted by seeing her father as a writer. While Ted started off writing novels, the narrator explains they “aren’t worth mentioning” (6). He found a more receptive audience, and immediate fame, when he switched to authoring and illustrating books for children. His works, such as The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls and A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound, are cautionary tales for children that sell millions of copies across the world. A Widow for One Year is also, in a small way, Eddie O’Hare’s coming-ofage story. Brought on as Ted’s writer’s assistant, Eddie ends up playing a small role in the end of the Cole’s marriage. At sixteen, he was “suspended somewhere between childhood and adulthood” (13). His trip to stay with the Coles in the Hamptons marks his first job, his first time leaving home, and his first awareness about the real world. His moments of learning take place

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the moment he leaves the safety of Phillips Exeter and steps onto the ferry to Long Island. With the realization that he was wearing a T-shirt and sweatshirt from his prep school, Eddie was embarrassed: “Only then did it occur to him why some of the seniors at the academy were in the habit of wearing their Exeter sweatshirts inside out; his new awareness of this height of fashion indicated to Eddie that he was ready to encounter the so-called real world” (39). As part of his encounters with the real world, Eddie has his first sexual experience with the much older Marion. When she leaves that summer, he, like Ruthie, feels a significant absence in his life: “It was losing her that had given him something to say. It was the thought of his life without Marion that provided Eddie O’Hare with the authority to write” (112). As a writer he lacks imagination, but his memory of Mrs. Cole is so strong and significant to him that years later he becomes the author of several books about May-December relationships. While it is the family business, writing is particularly important to Ruth and her development. In keeping with the theme of the bildungsroman, like Garp and Jenny going to Vienna, Irving also sends Ruth to Europe to finish her maturation process. While doing research for her next novel in Amsterdam, she witnesses a prostitute being brutally murdered. Though traumatic, the event, and the subsequent suicide of her father, serve as catalysts in Ruth’s life. After experiencing pain herself—not merely feeling the pain of her parents—she is able to write her first autobiographical novel. The publishing of that novel not only represents a professional breakthrough, but a personal one as it eventually leads to a new, deeper love for her. By stepping back and looking at Ruth’s life as a whole, her identity as a writer is the constant thread. As the narrator explains, Ruth occasionally feels like she has a dual role as a creator and a character: “[t]he more Ruth made an effort to involve herself in the story she was writing, the more she was delaying or avoiding the story she was living. For the first time, she knew what it felt like to be a character in a novel instead of the novelist” (339). As Ruth matures, she learns there is value in both roles. By making her a writer, Irving provides her the opportunity to work through the confusion associated with coming of age. Michael Priestly explains, “[a] writer subdues the chaos and confusion which is reality by creating order and structure within a world of fiction” (19). Being a writer gives Ruth the power to construct a new, imagined life for herself. Her short story, “The Red and Blue Air Mattress,” describes how Jane Dash, a recently widowed writer, finally decides to find her way into the world again. Though she did not know it at the time, the story about Jane becomes Ruth’s story when her first husband, Allan, suddenly passes away. When Ruth’s childhood and adult family units disappear in literal and metaphorical ways, the idea of just being a character instead of the creator is also appealing to her. The structure

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of the novel as an extended bildungsroman—she is forty-one years old at the conclusion—provides her the opportunity to figure out the balance between these roles as she matures as a woman and a writer. As one matures, they learn from their mistakes, and in this story about writers, the idea of editing and revising is the final moment of learning for Ruth. When she finds herself in an unhappy marriage, that does not mean she is doomed to be unhappy forever. Rather, a second marriage, a year after the death of her first husband, allows her to redo things. In looking at The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year side by side, there are obvious commonalities between these two broad, situational tragicomedies. Both are partially set at boys’ prep schools, feature educational experiences in Europe, and deal with absent parents, as well as complicated parent and child relationships. Both books feature fractured family members on some sort of journey to find their role in society and their way as writers. Though the plots and individual characters are uniquely unusual, Irving provides his audience with a similar experience in both titles. Readers do not witness just moments of a character’s life; rather, they follow an expansive examination of a character as they transition from childhood and adolescence to adulthood and a career as a writer. Because these are examples of the Künstlerroman, these novels portray artistic maturity in terms of writing. As the creator of these characters, Irving helps his main characters, specifically Garp, Jenny, Eddie, and Ruth, develop skills that will serve them as writers and in life. In The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year, Irving has his young writers learn how to develop their senses of imagination and invention. Never knowing his own father, a World War II flyer who was shot down over Burma, led Irving to envision all sorts of possible fathers for himself. As a child, his mother never let him ask about John Wallace Blunt Sr., his biological father: “She gave my imagination a gift,” he explains, “just by saying ‘This is a closed door. If you want to know something about it, you imagine it’” (Kirschling). While Irving downplays any autobiographical connections with his novels, he has his characters hone their imagination skills. For young Garp, Helen’s standard wardrobe of a grey sweat suit helped him develop this skill. He describes the effect her drab, wrestling room outfit had on him by saying, “I had to imagine her body; there was no other way to see it” (Garp 89). In A Widow for One Year, Irving features Eddie’s discovery of the skill as a teenager. Before he consummates his relationship with the older woman, Eddie, and eventually Marion herself, begin an imaginary affair by placing her pictures and garments in a sexually suggestive way so that he could imagine being with her: “She had left the buttons unbuttoned and the long sleeves of the sweater pulled back, as if an invisible woman in the cardigan had clasped her invisible hands behind her invisible head” (59). Irving takes

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the idea of imagination further in A Widow for One Year. When Eddie is reintroduced as an adult in Part II, readers see that the imagined moments with Marion have had a lifelong effect on him. When she leaves, his memory and his imagination of being with her are all he has, as his adult writing efforts show. These scenes suggest that writers are not just born being creative; there needs to be some sort of impetus to creativity. As part of Irving’s pattern of creating characters who have to learn their craft, once a writer has developed their imagination, he then has these writers-in-training practice the act of revision. Garp does this in small ways. When his mother’s celebrity status as a feminist becomes too much for him, Garp learns he can invent through the act of revision. Annoyed, he reimages and creates an almost opposite matriarch in his novel, Procrastination. Like Jenny, the protagonist’s mother has no partner, but Garp’s fictional creation “cherishes her private life” and is “unconcerned with politics” (193). Learning that he has the skill to create something new through invention is something that Garp boasts of. In an interview with a critic, he challenges her to test his abilities: “Tell me anything that’s ever happened to you,” he begs. “[A]nd I can improve upon the story; I can make the details better than they were” (457). In A Widow for One Year, Ruth was significantly affected by Marion’s act of taking all the photos of her late sons. Creating new narratives led the young girl to play with the idea of reconstruction as she reimagined who her brothers must have been. The narrator explains, “For years after her mother left, Ruth would try to remember which of the photographs had hung from which of the hooks. And, failing to recall the actual pictures of her perished brothers to her satisfaction, Ruth began to invent all the captured moments in their short lives, which she had missed” (5–6). The idea of being able to create a revisionist history was an important lesson Irving learned as a teenager. In Trying to Save Piggy Sneed, a memoir, he describes how the death of his town’s garbage man affected him. When Piggy, a man with developmental disabilities, died in a fire, Irving was struck by his ability to create a revisionist history of sorts. Not yet a writer, he began telling an alternative version of the man’s death: “I imagined that if I could have invented well enough—if I could have made up something truthful enough—I could have (in some sense) saved Piggy Sneed” (20). These various moments of creating new outcomes through revision give Irving and his characters both a sense of power and the feeling of having a voice. Armed with these writing skills, Irving’s protagonists also learn to apply life skills as they make their way through the world. In describing his fictional values, the author says that they go “back to the sentimental intentions of the nineteenth-century novelist: Create a character in whom the reader will make a substantial emotional investment and then visit upon that character

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an unbearable amount of pain” (Haller). To Irving, a self-described realist, that pain involves a degree of violence but not all readers appreciate Irving’s insistence on violence. In a review of The Hotel New Hampshire, James Atlas complained that Irving’s “obsession with grotesque and violent death is so persistent that after a while it begins to seem hostile, punitive—another form of authorial aggression” (qtd. in Davis and Womack 14). Having The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year both contain an incident of sexual assault, the trauma of losing a son in a freak automobile accident, and the dramatic death of a prostitute does seem over the top, but Irving somehow makes these violent, almost absurd scenes work within the context of his novels. Some of the situations he creates should feel implausible, but as Greil Marcus explains, “One accepts what happens to Irving’s characters, even though what happens may make one squirm, protest, or feel real grief. One accepts it because one has come to accept Irving’s characters: as people, as friends, even though they too may be grotesque, perverse or sensational” (4). While Marcus is describing how Irving’s readers should respond to violence, the repeated use of the word “accept” suggests a moment of learning for how Irving’s characters should respond as well. Hardships are a part of life, but Irving makes things bearable for characters by showing them balance: “To complement the plot twists that carry his characters from fortune to misfortune, Irving juxtaposes the tragic with the comic” (Reilly 7). To even out the difficult moments, he adds absurd ones, like having a young Garp bite a dog’s ear off after it bit part of his off or Mrs. Vaughn, one of Ted’s jilted lovers, frantically attempting to run the children’s author over with her oversized Lincoln. Navigating through such highs and lows is part of Garp’s, Jenny’s, and Ruth’s journeys toward maturity. These moments of extremes place the characters in a fraught landscape, but by making them writers, Irving has given them the skills they need to survive and thrive: “We tell stories, [Irving] suggests, to come to terms with the chaos around us—to subdue it, to make sense of it” (Kakutani). Chaos, as one learns as they work their way through the world, is very much a part of life. With triumphs come tragedies, but Irving gives his characters a coping mechanism by creating them with the ability to put pen to paper. As writers, they have a voice to be heard and the power to control things others cannot. Irving himself sometimes struggles to control his layered and looping narratives, but his use of the bildungsroman provides a specific structure for his writing. As an author he uses art to his advantage: “The nature of the novelist, however, is to interfere—that is, to impose an order on life by structuring it into novelistic form” (Walker). The form’s focus on beginnings, middles, and endings imposes a structured order for him and for the lives of his writer characters. Irving is a planner; since he always writes the last line of his novels first, he knows how all of his novels will end before he starts writing the

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first page. His protagonists do not have the luxury of knowing how their lives will turn out, but as they grow and evolve, make mistakes and recover, these characters become a living and breathing example of a text themselves in that their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood serve as the beginning, middle, and ending of their individual story. These characters are in a very real way authors of their own lives as they plot out what happens next and revise when things do not go according to plans. Since they have the ability to imagine, invent, and revise, as they come of age, they can craft a new chapter, rewrite their story into something different, or construct something entirely new. WORKS CITED Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding. Harvard University Press, 1974. Davis, Todd F., and Kenneth Womack. The Critical Response to John Irving. Praeger, 2004. Haller, Scott. “John Irving’s Bizarre World.” Saturday Review, vol. 9, September 1981, pp. 30–32, 34. Harmon, William. A Handbook to Literature, 10th ed. Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2006. Irving, John. Trying to Save Piggy Sneed. Ballantine, 1997. ———. A Widow for One Year. Ballantine, 1999. ———. The World According to Garp. Ballantine, 1998. Kakutani, Michiko. “‘A Widow for One Year’: Randomness and Luck, but Whew, No Bears.” New York Times, 1 May 1998, archive.nytimes.com/www​.nytimes​.com​ /books​/98​/04​/26​/daily​/irving​-book​-review​.html. Kirschling, Gregory. “John Irving Comes Clean.” Entertainment Weekly, no. 830, July 2005, p. 40. Marcus, Greil. “Garp: Death in the Family,” in John Irving, edited by Harold Bloom. Chelsea House Publishers, 2001, pp. 3–10. McCaffery, Larry, and John Irving. “An Interview with John Irving.” Contemporary Literature, vol. 23, no. 1, 1982, pp. 1–18. JSTOR, www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/1208139. Miller, Gabriel. John Irving. Ungar, 1982. Priestly, Michael. “Structure in the Worlds of John Irving,” in John Irving, edited by Harold Bloom. Chelsea House Publishers, 2001, pp. 19–31. Prose, Francine. “After Great Expectations.” The New York Review of Books, 9 January 2014, www​.nybooks​.com​/articles​/2014​/01​/09​/after​-great​-expectations​/. Reilly, Edward C. Understanding John Irving. University of South Carolina Press, 1992. Shindler, Dorman T. “In High Gear: John Irving Is Writing More Than Ever and Loving It.” The Writer, vol. 115, no. 1, January 2002, pp. 28–31.

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Thompson, James R., and Carol C. Harter. John Irving. Twayne, 1986. Walker, Nancy et al. “John Irving.” Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition, January 2010, pp. 1–15. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true &db=lfh&AN=103331CSLF13220140000211&site=eds-live&scope=site. Wood, Michael. “‘Nothing Sacred,’” in The Critical Response to John Irving, edited by Todd F. Davis and Kenneth Womack. Praeger, 2004, pp. 69–71.

C ‌‌‌‌‌hapter Two

Traveling with Writers Gender, Genre, and Creativity in Bleaker House and Less Julie M. Barst

Charles Dickens employed a female narrator only once in his enormous oeuvre, and even then only in a shared capacity: Esther Summerson speaks directly to readers in about half of the chapters that comprise his novel Bleak House, first published in book form in 1853, and the remainder of the novel employs an anonymous third-person narrator. Robert Donovan calls Esther “just the right point of view character for the first-person portion of the novel,” her voice a significant reason he identifies Bleak House as “the greatest of Dickens’s novels because it represents the most fertile, as well as the most perfectly annealed, union of subject and technique he was ever to achieve” (44). Many critics agree with this assessment: that through his dramatic experiment in narration, Dickens is able to highlight significant themes about and problems within his society via two very distinct voices. Esther writes at one point, “It seems so curious to me to be obliged to write all this about myself! As if this narrative were the narrative of my life” (Dickens 20). Esther’s first-person voice in these lines raises interesting questions about what it means to be a writer and live the writer’s life, and about how much of the self is embedded in everything they write, even narratives that are not ostensibly about them. Nell Stevens incorporates Esther’s words in her own book Bleaker House, which was inspired by Bleak House and published 164 years later, and adds that “so much of Bleak House is the narrative of her life. Even when she doesn’t know it, the story she is telling is her own” (Stevens 207). Stevens traveled to the opposite side of the globe and began writing what was supposed to be a novel about someone else; she didn’t know it 31

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either, but the story she was telling was her own. In her case, though, it was the journey itself that inaugurated her career as a writer. Contemporary literature is rife with writers agonizing over various aspects of the writing life; readers, whether they are writers themselves, dream to be writers, or are simply interested in what it takes to be one, love to revel in the peculiar challenges and that sometimes mysterious magic that leads one to want or even need to write. This chapter highlights two of the most recent additions to the tradition of authors depicting writers: the genre-bending juxtaposition of memoir, fiction, and more in Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World by Nell Stevens, and the fictional world of Less: A Novel by Andrew Sean Greer, both published in 2017. Focusing on these two recent, compelling additions to contemporary literature, I argue that literature about the act of travel offers authors a valuable space to make visible both writing and the writing life and, in doing so, to analyze how individual facets of identity intersect with one another and with the creative process. Travelers are offered a heightened sense of self via removal from their everyday lived reality and thus their quotidian distractions; across differences such as gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, or even fictional vs. real, travel provides writers with an incredibly powerful opportunity to explore their identities and creativity in rich and insightful ways, which in turn can lead to creative acts of defiance as they break away from the traditional expectations of storytelling in both genre and narration. Although the genre of travel literature, as Susan Bassnett writes, already includes many examples of “self-reflexive texts that defy easy categorisation as autobiography, memoir, or travel account” (225), these two recent works showcase unique contributions to the tradition of genre-bending journey narratives. Focusing on these texts allows us to understand how travel literature offers authors the opportunity to analyze stereotypes of gender and sexuality, highlight the intersection of creativity and mental health, and experiment with the conventions of genre and narration, in order to craft rare and valuable perspectives on not only what it means to be a writer, but also what it means to be a human in our contemporary moment. Bleaker House presents readers with the experiences of a new writer struggling to find her voice amidst a harsh, uninviting environment. British student Nell Stevens earns her MFA from Boston University and qualifies for their Global Fellowship, a program that offers most new graduates the chance to live up to three months in the location of their choice, anywhere on earth. Hoping it would provide her with the solitude she would need for “effortless concentration” (5), she chooses the Falkland Islands, an archipelago of nearly eight hundred islands off the southern tip of South America, a locale that offers a chilly, windy climate and unique wildlife. Stevens travels there in the winter of 2013 in the hopes of writing her novel, set in the Victorian period and inspired by Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, yet things do not exactly

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work out as planned. What she ultimately pens instead is the genre-bending text Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the Ends of the World, which innovatively blends memoir, novel, short story, and travelogue. I argue that her book highlights the visibility of the writing life through two main issues: by subverting conventions of gender in several significant ways, she ultimately creates a text that defies conventions of genre and threads the narrative with the anxieties that often accompany a writer’s life, especially one who has taken to the road. Stereotypes about gender are ubiquitous and powerful in our contemporary society, beginning with the moment a parent finds out the sex of their expected or newborn child. Babies are immediately inaugurated into the world of gender-appropriate colors, clothing, toys, and behavior, and the pressure of these expectations does not decline as they grow into teens or even adults. As Judith Lorber writes, most people “voluntarily go along with their society’s prescriptions for those of their gender status, because the norms and expectations get built into their sense of worth and identity as a certain kind of human being and because they believe their society’s way is the natural way” (54). Although she never characterizes herself as rebelling against gender roles, Nell Stevens defies those stereotypes and expectations in many ways, the most obvious as a woman on a journey of endurance to a wild, isolated, and challenging place. Many women have written incredibly brave or robust travel narratives, but when Americans think of women as travelers (either real or fictional), they most likely think about tales such as Eat, Pray, Love or Under the Tuscan Sun—journeys associated with sunshine, plenty of wine and pasta, and various romantic entanglements along the way. Many of the most popular female-centered journeys focus mainly on or at least end with the female traveler in a serious relationship with a man, buttressing the stereotype that all heterosexual women, whether independent travelers or not, need male partners to be completely fulfilled. Stevens’s journey breaks all of these gender-based stereotypes: she prepares for and then lives almost completely alone for three months on the frozen outskirts of civilization, without even a single bottle of wine. Her creative writing professor in Boston is shocked at her choice of locale, and asks why she would not choose a place in western Europe, like so many of her peers. But Nell more than anything wants to spend this time alone, in order to figure out, as she tells her mother, “how good at life I can be in a place where there are no distractions” (5). At the age of twenty-seven, she is certain she wants to be a writer, but doesn’t quite know what she wants to say. She writes, “I am scared that the life I want to lead, the life of a writer, is inevitably built on loneliness, and I need to know if I can hack it. If I can teach myself the art of loneliness, then perhaps the art of writing will come more easily to me. If I can break my habit of being distracted, maybe I’ll also break my habit of writing novels that

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don’t work” (17). So she chooses one of the most isolated places on earth: the Falkland Islands lie some three hundred miles east of the southern coast of South America and the nation is home to fewer than 3,400 people. But even that does not provide her with the level of solitude she desires: zeroing in further on her options, she chooses to spend most of her three months on Bleaker Island, population two part-timers, which means she will spend an entire month absolutely and completely alone in a frigid winter environment, characteristics which are certainly the direct opposite of a stereotypical contemporary female travel narrative. On the plane to Santiago, she shares the cabin with a Chilean soccer team, and on the flight from Santiago to the Falklands, she is literally the only woman on board, the remaining seats taken by a Chilean fishing crew; here she is inaugurated into the life of a solitary female writer who breaks away from traditional gender stereotypes. After spending a few days on the outskirts of civilization in a settlement called Darwin, she settles in for a month in the Falkland capital of Stanley, population 2,100, in order to research her new island home for the Victorian-era novel she plans to write. Stanley’s residents fear outsiders, especially journalists, who they assume are there to misrepresent their intelligence and culture to the wider world, so most visitors are treated as spies. Ironically, although Nell has defied gender expectations by traveling there solo, and is actually writing about the islands, she is viewed as less threatening because she is a young woman. After several days of “meditative panic” (34) over the pressure to begin writing, a protagonist for her novel-to-be finally arrives in her mind and she happily begins to write his story while also researching the Falkland Islands for backstory. After a month in Stanley, she arrives at her final destination: the small, aptly named Bleaker Island, characterized as “eight square miles of rock and mud” (98), having no roads and no trees, but plenty of penguins, sheep, and vaguely threatening birds of prey called caracaras. The two residents own the farm where Nell stays in a guest house, and even they are only present for the first and final weeks of her six-week stay; thus, she spends an entire month completely alone with her thoughts and her goal to depart with a fully drafted novel. Her “room of one’s own,” as Virginia Woolf once wrote was essential for female writers, quite literally becomes an island of her own. Her micro environment also allows her to defy gender stereotypes in myriad ways, most notably via the issues of communication, routine, grooming, and nutrition. Her house is not only void of other human beings, but also lacks phone service and has a spotty Internet connection, making communication with any part of the outside world unreliable and sporadic at best. Women are stereotypically associated with a stronger need to remain connected to others and a stronger desire to synchronously highlight their experiences on social media, yet Stevens purposefully chooses a location that will isolate her from

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nearly all contact with her loved ones and the outside world so that she can focus solely on her novel. She also defies gender stereotypes by adhering to a strict, regimented routine in the attempt to erase distractions and ensure a successful creative process; beginning each day with Canadian Air Force exercises she found in an old pamphlet, she then dedicates herself to the task of writing 2,500 words, come what may in terms of health, weather, or other problems. After finishing her words for the day, she explores the cliffs and caves of the island for hours at a time on solitary walks in the oftentimes windy, icy, freezing conditions. She also lacks standard grooming supplies from home; hoping that her body would change in conjunction with her emotions and her writing, she brought only some basics such as soap, shampoo, and deodorant, but not conditioner, lotion, lip balm, or a razor. She eventually sprouts furry legs, underarms, and eyebrows, and bemoans her prickly heels and sore lips, all symbols that her stereotypically feminine appearance was not of crucial importance during this season of her life. In addition, because of the strict weight restrictions on the tiny plane to Bleaker, she also lacks the nutritional sustenance her body requires. She has rationed only 1,085 calories worth of food per day, including instant porridge for breakfast, powdered soup for both lunch and dinner, a tiny handful of raisins and almonds, and a single Ferrero Rocher just before bed. This restrictive meal plan leads to dramatic weight loss, which also works to defy gender stereotypes; she is shedding pounds not because of society’s beauty standards and expectations for the female body, but because of her career-driven, self-imposed isolation and lack of supplies. Sparked in part by her lack of daily sustenance and the pressure of working on a novel that refuses to take flight, Nell experiences anxieties that also work against traditional stereotypes about women. The most common mental health issue traditionally associated with women is hysteria, a word that comes from the Greek for uterus. The Ancient Egyptians and Greeks were the first, but certainly not the only, to believe in the “wandering womb”: that the uterus could roam around inside women’s bodies, causing various diseases and physical and emotional problems such as anxiety, insomnia, and irritability. In the Medieval and Renaissance periods, various cures meant to return the uterus to its rightful place and therefore reduce women’s hysterical reactions included scent therapy and sexual intercourse (with husbands only, of course). If nothing proved successful, women could and were sometimes forced into mental institutions. It wasn’t until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the source of so-called hysterical behavior was more attributed to the brain than the wandering uterus, although the disorder was still much more commonly associated with women and blamed on a lack of sexual activity and/or a failure to enact traditional, stereotypical feminine behavior, which society then attempted to correct in various oftentimes harmful ways. This

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long history of hysteria functioned as a patriarchal tool to control women’s bodies, emotions, and sexuality, as well as their performance of gender roles via rules about appropriate attire, mannerisms, etc. Even though hysteria is no longer considered an actual disorder, plenty of evidence demonstrates that this negative connection between women and emotions lives on as a means of justifying sexist behavior and control of women, in realms such as politics, education, business, the media, and even within the family unit.1 Alone on Bleaker Island, Nell suffers from anxieties related to her living arrangement, the physicality of her body, and her novel-in-progress. She chooses that location to avoid distractions and focus on her writing, but as Emily Dziuban writes, “With only wind and penguins for company, she devolves into anxiety, defined by raisin counting and decreased productivity” (11). Yet even the source of her anxieties defies gender-based stereotypes: instead of focusing on traditional sources of female anxieties related to family problems or sexuality, Stevens’s anxieties are centered upon her career as a novelist, which sparked her desire to self-impose such brutal isolation. She also defies the long history of patriarchal control threatening women with the specter of hysteria by being honest about the mental health challenges that she faces. The very first sentence of the novel in her own words is a description of the landscape that surrounds her island guesthouse: “This is a landscape an art-therapy patient might paint to represent depression: grey sky and a sweep of featureless peat rising out of the sea” (1). She chooses this location to write her first novel and launch herself into a career as a writer, but the combination of depressing landscape, relentlessly cold weather, lack of adequate nutrition, and crushing solitude seems bent on making that impossible. Together these circumstances and pressures spark not only hunger pains, but also various anxieties in her mind, including feeling “untethered” (27) to the world without phone or Internet service, fearing that the wind turbine might decapitate her, and obsessing that a flaky patch of skin could be cancer. But her biggest fear during her six weeks on Bleaker Island is that her novel will be a failure; even when she is successfully completing the planned minimum number of words per day, she worries about their coherence as a single, intriguing, publisher-worthy story. Instead of experiencing stereotypically feminine anxieties about romantic relationships, sexuality, family, or friends, Nell’s razor-sharp focus on her desired career, which led her to impose this exile in the first place, weighs most heavily on her mind, offering further evidence of her break from standard gender roles and expectations. She not only survives her time in the Falkland Islands, but ultimately leaves satisfied with her time there, which offers evidence of the courage required for solitary female travelers to focus on their goals and for female writers to connect with their creativity.

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By eschewing traditional expectations of gender, Stevens’s time on Bleaker Island contrasts dramatically with many popular female travel narratives. In that sense, within the tradition of women writers taking to the road, her story is more closely related to Robyn Davidson’s Tracks, a memoir of her independent journey across the scorching Australian desert, or Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild, which recounts her hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. Emily Dziuban writes that both Strayed and Stevens “present women on solitary journeys that test their physical endurance, and from which they emerge transformed as people and writers” (11). Stevens’s story showcases the attempt made by many writers to avoid all distractions and focus solely on their art, a task that often proves much more difficult for women writers to accomplish due to many factors, including their more common role as caregivers to children, the sick, and the elderly, and their still-unequal share of other domestic duties. Yet her story is unique from many popular female traveler narratives because of the extreme conditions she places herself in, both physically and mentally, in order to do so. Along the way, she learns that while shutting down all of life’s regular distractions does not magically lead to crafting the perfect novel, it does allow her to investigate herself and her creativity in unexpected ways. Kelly Blewett writes, “Despite her rigid plan, the act of writing proves as unpredictable and brutal as the weather. Her isolation compels her to ponder the process of composing. How does one make something beautiful from a string of words and longings, from memories and imaginings and, more practically, from computers and books and piles of almonds?” (26). She subverts gender stereotypes and expectations in myriad ways as a woman living alone in the middle of nowhere, yet by doing so, she forges a path toward defying expectations of genre as well. When there are just four days left on the island, with the resolution to her novel eluding her, and her protagonist feeling silly and unrealistic, Stevens suddenly comes to a dramatic realization: the “book is no good” (199). She understands that her “recipe for good writing” (200) was foolish and naïve. Heading out into the wind and snow to escape her agony, she decides to finally visit a place called Long Gulch that has intrigued her on island maps. Arriving at the crevice in a flurry of hail and snow, she stares down at the waves pounding the cliffs and suddenly experiences her second burst of recognition that day: in coming to this island to write her novel, and surviving so many obstacles and challenges, she has in fact been living a much more compelling narrative than what she could ever craft for her protagonist. Her writing while on this trip has not been confined solely to the Victorian novel; along the way she’s also been taking copious notes about the island itself and her entire journey, and she realizes, like Esther Summerson, that her story is the one she should be telling. Her defiance of gender expectations within the

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context of travel sparks a unique opportunity to create an innovative text that breaks away from traditional conventions of genre and narration. The book has several components that are stitched together in a sometimes-disjointed but overall unique and interesting way. Most of the text is a memoir of her journey to and stay at the Falklands, but interspersed throughout is the Dickens-inspired novel-in-progress-that-never-was, entitled Bleaker House; as many reviewers have pointed out, these chapters showcase why she did not try to publish it as a standalone novel. The text also includes a few short stories that have nothing to do with the memoir or the novel, and reflections on past events in Stevens’s life, such as failed relationships, failed career moves, and a failed but still alarming attempt to portray a sex worker in the name of research for a short story. She also creatively interjects snippets of documents to help the reader understand the context of her academic situation and decision-making process, including part of the Global Fellowship summary from Boston University, and a portion of the application that she submitted for that program. One chapter, entitled “A Very Short Employment History,” details her short-lived first “real job” working for a human rights organization, and offers examples of expense spreadsheets inside which she would type fragments of fiction during her workday. Taken together, these elements combined into a single text explode traditional boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, and therefore between reality and imagination, and present a book that interrogates the very notion of a requisite boundary space between life and art. Through the act of travel, Nell challenges the conventions of gender and therefore genre in many compelling ways, yet her narrative misses important opportunities to highlight the ways that travel intersects with other facets of a writer’s personal or national identity, in this case colonization and class. The book could have included more detail about the history of the Falklands and their current status as a British territory, especially given the importance to the native inhabitants of the 1982 war between Argentina and the United Kingdom for control of the archipelago. Precious little space is devoted to describing the cultural identity of the people who live there; it would have been fascinating to read more about their social customs and political viewpoints, and come away with a greater understanding of the islands as a whole as well as the differences between Stanley and the less-inhabited regions.2 The narrative also lacked a frank assessment of the class privilege that made not only the MFA itself but also the Global Fellowship and three-month journey accessible to Stevens and her peers. She does mention some past jobs and briefly notes that she will need to find a job to support herself after this trip concludes, but these moments seem like missed opportunities to present a fuller, more honest assessment of socioeconomic issues and the ways that

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class identity intersects with the ability for someone who dreams of writing to find the time, space, and silence to nurture their creativity. Many who dream of writing do not have access to these crucial elements at any point in their lives, and it is a marker of privilege that Stevens is able to devote a year to study creative writing overseas and three additional months pursuing her dream of writing a novel. But the narrative of her journey, told in such a fascinating genre-bending style, makes the writing life visible in many important ways, especially the mental and physical struggles that often accompany new and emerging writers, and portrays the writing process as rich and layered through frank discussions of writer’s block, fears and anxieties, gender issues, and the dramatic revelations that can transform life and work. Charlotte Heathcote writes that the book is a “confiding, edgy and ever-so-slightly horrifying book which I enjoyed so much I wolfed it in one sitting,” and “an enthralling reflection on writing: how it is taught and how you learn to do it.” By defying stereotypes of both gender and genre, Nell Stevens highlights the myriad ways that travel removes writers from their everyday lives while simultaneously connecting them to their own interiority, helping them discover previously unrecognized facets of themselves and the layers of their creative powers.3 Another contemporary text showcasing a writer on a literal and metaphorical journey is entitled Less: A Novel, by American author Andrew Sean Greer, a comedic novel that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 2018. The protagonist, Arthur Less, has published several novels to only mediocre success and is currently struggling with three main anxieties: writer’s block, his looming fiftieth birthday, and an invitation to the wedding of his ex-boyfriend of nine years, Freddy. Faced with the equally distasteful options of attending the wedding or staying home defeated, Less instead accepts every invitation he’s received to participate in literary events around the world, including attending conferences, interviews, and prize ceremonies; teaching a fiction class; visiting a restaurant to write an article for an in-flight magazine; and staying at a writer’s retreat to finish his novel. He journeys from his home in San Francisco to New York City, Mexico, Italy, Germany, France, Morocco, India, and Japan. As in Bleaker House, the protagonist struggles with loneliness, anxiety, and lack of creative spark, yet in vastly different ways and in very different settings. By showcasing his trip around the world via the genre of fictionalized travel literature, the novel illuminates important aspects of the writing life and the ways that Less breaks traditional stereotypes related to gender and sexuality. As a result of these important intersections, Greer’s novel defies conventions of both narrative and genre in unique and compelling ways. While Bleaker House centers on a new, younger, female writer, Less showcases the challenges and anxieties associated with being an experienced,

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middle-aged, gay male author, but one who is seen only as a “minor novelist” (143), someone who lacks the genius and creative spark required to become a raging success story in the writing world. Arthur Less has published several novels; the first was a moderate success and was reviewed in the New York Times, but since then, he has received little recognition. The narrator tells us that Less is “an author too old to be fresh and too young to be rediscovered, one who never sits next to anyone on a plane who has heard of his books” (8). His income has been insecure; he “has had to live on desert rains alone” and “the rest he has patched together, that crazy quilt of a writer’s life: warm enough, though it never quite covers the toes” (30). Less is continuously searching for literary success as a means of coalescing an identity beyond how most see him: as simply the ex-partner of a world-famous, Pulitzer-winning poet. He was Robert’s partner for fifteen years, from the age of twenty to his midthirties, and knew that he was in a relationship with a genius. Flashbacks that illuminate Robert’s daily life as a writer, in which everyone orbiting around him must sacrifice themselves for his artistic process, are contrasted sharply with the present-day journey Less embarks upon throughout the novel, where he is constantly compared to Robert’s brilliant mind and always reminded that he comes up far short. When he interviews a famous writer on stage at his first stop in New York City, he realizes that man has changed the lives of thousands of people in the audience, and he, Less, “is inconsequential; he will not be remembered; no one will know, or even wonder, who he is” (42). In New York City he also learns that his most recent novel, Swift, was rejected by his publisher. His ex-partner, Freddy, had called the novel nothing but a “gay Ulysses” (30) and his agent tells him it was rejected because it is “Too wistful. Too poignant” (32). He’s called a mediocrity in Mexico and asked how he finds the strength to go on, knowing he will never be a genius like Robert. Events and memories in France lead him to self-identify as a “midlist homosexual” (141). He is thrilled to finally meet a woman in Morocco who loved his first novel, but when she asks about the rejected work and he summarizes it, she asks, It’s about a “white middle-aged American man walking around with his white middle-aged American sorrows?” He replies, “Jesus. I guess so.” Her response summarizes the attitude of many of his readers, “Arthur. Sorry to tell you this. It’s a little hard to feel sorry for a guy like that.” Less replies, “Even gay?” and she retorts, “Even gay” (170). Greer’s protagonist’s protagonist has failed to capture the imagination of his publisher or even his devoted reader, and Less has failed to measure up as a successful writer in the eyes of society. He has also failed to meet society’s expectations for a man; he feels the pressure to conform, but often falls short of or rejects the traditional stereotypes and socially constructed ideologies about masculinity. Robert Jensen describes “the dominant conception of masculinity” as follows: “Men are

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assumed to be naturally competitive and aggressive, and being a real man is therefore marked by the struggle for control, conquest, and domination. A man looks at the world, sees what he wants, and takes it. Men who don’t measure up are wimps, sissies, fags, girls. The worst insult one man can hurl at another . . . is the accusation that a man is like a woman” (131). And then there is Arthur Less, who is perceptive, self-effacing, mild mannered, and very far from aggressive. Ron Charles describes him as possessing a “fragile optimism,” and writes, “Everyone else seems to have weathered the usual professional and romantic disappointments and developed the leathery hide of adulthood, but not Less” (“Do We Really”), who remains incredibly anxious about his career, his relationships, his body, his clothing, and his everyday movements through the world. Greer’s narrator utilizes the simile “like a person without skin” (6) to describe his protagonist’s vulnerable emotional state and extreme sensitivity to the vibrancy of life around him, and writes that Less is afraid “of almost everything in the world. Strange, though; because he is afraid of everything, nothing is harder than anything else. Taking a trip around the world is no more terrifying than buying a stick of gum” (45). He defies society’s expectations that he be a competitive, controlling, and dominating man, desiring instead to simply be at ease and satisfied with his life choices, but his constant anxieties prevent even that much contentment. As a gay man, Less must also contend with complicated ideologies and expectations at the intersection of masculinity and sexuality. The social construction of gender roles dictates that men must function in the traditionally masculine ways noted above, which also include compulsive heterosexuality; therefore, gay men are often faced with a type of identity crisis when they fail to juxtapose the expectations of their gender and sexuality. In addition, where stereotypically feminine behavior used to be more accepted within the gay male community, Anne Fausto-Sterling writes, “Among gay men, there has been a move away from femininity, as evidenced by the new gay macho, leathermen, and websites such as www​.straightacting​.com (‘your masculine gay guy hangout,’ ‘a site for guys who like sports and change their own car oil’)” (28). The unique pressure to conform to these norms of masculinity as a gay man, and the failure to meet those expectations, can lead to mental health issues. In “Reported Effects of Masculine Ideals on Gay Men,” Sanchez et al. write that “greater conflict with certain masculine ideals is associated with lower self-esteem and greater depression and anxiety among gay men. Furthermore, gay men who are concerned with conforming to traditional masculine ideals are more likely to experience body dissatisfaction if their bodies do not meet the ‘physically powerful masculine ideal’ as compared to gay men less concerned with adhering to masculine ideals.” Less seems to feel this pressure to maintain his physical appearance, given that he always packs his rubber bands to work out in hotel rooms as he travels: “he always

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imagines, when he coils them into his luggage, how toned and fit he will be when he returns” (84) even though “his anxiety has kept him almost as lean as in his college years” (91). However, the narrator tells us that after the first vigorous workout, he normally completes the routine only halfheartedly an additional time or two before completely abandoning the bands for the remainder of the journey. As a gay man, Less understands the pressure to conform physically to the standards of traditional masculinity, but this adherence to gender expectations is clearly not his top priority on the journey, much like it was not an important factor for Stevens. This does not prevent him from feeling anxiety, however; during the Italian leg of his journey, Less feels ashamed at the idea of teenagers watching him swim in the hotel pool, imagining their judgment when gazing at “the horror of his middle-aged body” (91), evidence that at least in his mind, he has failed to conform to the standards of masculinity. Here readers witness the intersection of his age, gender, sexuality, and mental health as this middle-aged gay male traveler faces anxieties stemming from the social construction of multiple facets of human identity. Perhaps most poignantly, at the doorstep of age fifty, Less must confront all of those social expectations while facing the future as a gay man who is entering middle age after the apex of the AIDS crisis, which claimed the lives of over 690,000 people by 2016 (“HIV and AIDS”). As the narrator tells us, “Arthur Less is the first homosexual ever to grow old. That is, at least, how he feels at times like these” (Greer 34). Having never met a gay man over the age of fifty besides Robert, he imagines his generation standing at the border of uncharted territory, attempting to navigate their way through a wilderness with no wise elders to guide them. This situation sparks numerous anxieties in Arthur as it raises many questions related to the stereotypes of age, masculinity, and sexuality: How are they meant to do it? Do you stay a boy forever, and dye your hair and diet to stay lean and wear tight shirts and jeans and go out dancing until you drop dead at eighty? Or do you do the opposite—do you forswear all that, and let your hair go gray, and wear elegant sweaters that cover your belly, and smile on past pleasures that will never come again? Do you marry and adopt a child? In a couple, do you each take a lover, like matching nightstands by the bed, so that sex will not vanish entirely? Or do you let sex vanish entirely, like heterosexuals do? Do you experience the relief of letting go of all that vanity, anxiety, desire, and pain? (34)

His gender and sexuality also intersect in interesting ways with his creativity and identity as a writer. An acquaintance in Paris named Finley asks Less if he understands why he hasn’t won any awards, and why the gay press doesn’t

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review his books. Less guesses that it’s because he’s a bad writer, but Finley tells Less he has been boycotted by the gay canon not because he is a bad writer, but because he is a “bad gay” (144). Less is speechless, and Finley continues the attack by noting that Less makes his “characters suffer without reward. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were Republican.” He tells Less that, instead of showcasing self-hatred and gloom, his job is to inspire the gay community with more hopeful characters and events, to “show something beautiful from our world” (144). Less is shocked by this pronouncement, thinking that he only suspected himself of being “a bad writer. A bad lover, a bad friend, a bad son. Apparently the condition is worse; he is bad at being himself” (145). This critique, following so closely on the heels of his novel’s rejection, begets an identity crisis that highlights important intersections among gender, sexuality, and creativity, as he struggles to figure out not only what his novels lack, but also what he apparently lacks as a member of the gay community. But it is only by navigating the choppy waters of this identity crisis that Less arrives at a revelation about both himself and his creative powers. At the end of his Moroccan adventure, Less is standing on his hotel room balcony thinking about how even he can no longer feel sorry for his yet-unpublished protagonist in Swift, when he experiences a life-changing moment much like Stevens did at the end of her stay on Bleaker Island. Less suddenly realizes that Swift shouldn’t be a sad, poignant novel about a depressed gay man wandering the streets torturing himself (and his readers), but instead, it should be a comedy about a fool on a fool’s journey, a hilarious look at what could and would happen to a mediocre, middle-aged gay man who is just like him. In a flash, he understands that he should write not what he knows, but who he knows best. Interestingly, in Bleaker House Nell Stevens’s most significant realization was to reject her Victorian novel in favor of a book about her own journey chasing her novel; in Less, the protagonist of this fictional tale realizes he needs to insert himself and the hilarity of his own life’s challenges into the tale, thus transforming the genre completely into a comedy meant to entertain, a comedy that mirrors the novel that Andrew Sean Greer produced. In fact, Greer himself experienced the same revelation about a year into writing Less, which he had initially begun as a serious look at gay men and aging. He said in an interview that after a year of working on the novel, “what I was writing about was so sad to me that I thought the only way to write about this is to make it a funny story. And I found that by making fun of myself, I could actually get closer to real emotion—closer to what I wanted in my more serious books” (Rivieccio). By highlighting the process he went through as the author of Less through the character of Less, Greer produces “a lyrical, moving essay on the rewards of creativity and perseverance in the second half of life” (Miller).

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The act of travel provides a space for Less to reflect on and engage with numerous facets of his identity, but also, like Stevens, finally find a distraction-free space to write, away from the noise of everyday life. Arthur’s penultimate stop is in India, at a writer’s retreat that he plans to depart with a completely revised, finished novel. He says that “boredom is essential for writers; it is the only time they get to write” (204). But he is initially far too distracted by everything new around him, including the Christian retreat center he’s accidentally reserved, his ripped blue suit that needs mending, the picnickers making too much noise, the overbearing heat, and later, the dog he sees running off with a chunk of his favorite suit. Finally, only after fracturing his ankle is he sent to a quiet, dull hotel room where he cannot do anything but revise his novel. Ironically, in both Stevens’s memoir and Greer’s novel, the lack of distraction that these writers find while traveling is ultimately what allows them to delve deeper into themselves and write, not about their original protagonists and original ideas, but about their own experiences and their own identities. In doing so, both writers (the real Stevens and the fictional Arthur Less, as a stand-in for Greer) make important discoveries about themselves and find more success as authors and as artists of life. While Nell Stevens broke gender stereotypes during her journey that allowed her to write the genre-defying Bleaker House, Andrew Sean Greer’s rejection of stereotypes about gender and sexuality ultimately leads to a novel that defies conventions of narration. Greer’s narrative structure incorporates an interesting twist that connects how the story is told to an important facet of the protagonist’s identity. From the beginning, readers recognize that Less himself is not telling the story; the first-person narrator mentions that he’s met Less before, but then fades into the background of a seemingly third-person narration. Most readers then simply ease into that comfortable assumption that we are reading from the perspective of an omniscient narrator. But there are interesting personal details about Less presented at various times throughout the narrative, as well as sporadic moments when the first-person narration is briefly resumed, that lead readers to question who the narrator actually is and how well he knows Less. At the end, readers discover that it is actually someone intimately connected to our protagonist: our narrator, the person writing the story of Less, is his ex-partner of nine years, Freddy, the one whose marriage prompted Less to voyage around the world, and who ends up on Arthur’s doorstep at the end of the novel. The revelation of his identity presents a unique twist to this story of an author: the writer’s ex becomes an author himself, crafting the story of his partner’s physical and emotional journey, but from an omniscient perspective, and in real time, a technique that thwarts the conventional boundaries of narrative. In choosing this technique, Greer seems to suggest that this same-sex relationship involves a full understanding of the other in a way that defies all boundaries of knowledge

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and all capabilities of storytelling, and offers a deeply connected partnership that defies heterosexist stereotypes of same-sex couples. In spite of Arthur’s fear of “almost everything” (45), his partner, Freddy, had once said that “Arthur Less is the bravest person I know” (44), and the motivation behind that statement remained a mystery to Less for many years. But by the end of the novel, readers come to understand that Freddy sees impressive courage in Arthur’s everyday actions: even though Less faces anxieties related to criticism, heartbreak, sorrow, and torn suits, he insists on continuing to pursue creativity, love, adventure, and snappy dressing at every possible turn. There is a type of magic in this partnership, and in the end, both Less and Freddy are authors making the writing life and the human spirit visible in new and exciting ways to readers. The genre Greer employs, a work of comedic fiction, ties together all of the novel’s most significant elements: travel literature, the writing life, and a focus on facets of identity such as age, mental health, gender, and sexuality. As with Stevens’s text, it misses some opportunities; in this case, a deeper dive into the class struggles of the protagonist would have helped readers better understand how Less could remain so devoted to the writing life even as a mediocre, midlist author, and the novel could have offered a closer look at the customs and cultures of the many fascinating places that he visits. However, the text is successful in taking to task in hysterical fashion the hallowed halls of academia, the entire book publishing industry, and, of course, the hilarious moments that can happen when one is traveling or dating or just being a vulnerable, emotional human being in this unpredictable, sometimes brutal world. Greer’s focus on the comedic side of life makes his Pulitzer Prize win even more incredible; as Ron Charles writes, “Pulitzers are endowed on funereal novels like Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ or cerebral books like Marilynne Robinson’s ‘Gilead,’” yet Less is “an unabashed comic novel,” which makes it, in his opinion, a “unicorn” of a Pulitzer Prize winner (“Book World”). He then moves into a serious, important description of the role that the genre of comedy plays in our society today, noting that there is a problem, ironically, with the fact that we don’t take comedy more seriously. Of course, we love comedic films and TV shows, but comedic novels are not well respected: “A comic novel” has become a suspect designation, as though creating laughter were some sub-craft, like decoupage. We used to know better. Shakespeare’s comedies are as classic as his tragedies. The light that humor shines on the human condition may be a different frequency, but it’s just as illuminating as its calamitous twin. . . . This is a problem, America. Our critical resistance to comic novels attracts fewer writers to the form and leads to less interest from publishers. And that grim bias trudges out across the culture and gets

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disastrously reinforced in schools. We may all start off by reading the zany antics of Dr. Seuss, but by high school, the message is clear: “Abandon all mirth, ye who enter here.” Ennui and despair are the province of the Great American Novel. But if ever an era needed a good chuckle and a sweet laugh, it’s ours . . . the kind of self-deprecating, warmhearted, give-me-a-hug laughter that Greer provides in “Less.” (“Book World”)

By defying conventions of gender and sexuality, and injecting the story with both humor and heart to create a tale that leaves readers “with much to ponder afterwards” (Green), Greer crafts a novel that defies traditional expectations of both genre and narration and creates more space on our shelves, in our minds, and on our Pulitzer lists for the hilarious to coexist with the poignant. In many ways, Bleaker House and Less could not be more different, including the age, experience, and gender of writers Nell Stevens and Arthur Less, the types of journeys they embark upon, and the genres of the texts themselves. But in some crucial ways, these works of art are strikingly similar. They both highlight journeys whereby writers simultaneously detach from their own lives while engaging more deeply with themselves and their identities; in the process, they reject stereotypes of gender and sexuality, discover a fresh perspective on their art, and break the traditional boundaries of storytelling. Partway through Less, when our protagonist is in the middle of the Moroccan desert, a sandstorm begins whipping their tents and ruining their travel and sightseeing plans for the coming days. One of Less’s friends, Lewis, notes, “We are being given an opportunity for a different experience than the one we were expecting” (185). This is a perfect encapsulation of what so often happens when one is traveling—plans need to be abandoned, and the flexible traveler will try to make the best of whatever situations arise instead. But it’s also an apt description for writing, and in the case of these two works, for writing about writers. In Bleaker House, Nell Stevens completely rejects her original plans of writing a novel set in the Victorian era and instead discovers the opportunity for something different, choosing to write about her own life, her struggles and her unique journey toward becoming an author. And in much the same way that Esther Summerson described it via Charles Dickens so long ago, Less also discovers that in order to write a successful novel, he needs to inject much more of himself and the hilarity of his own life and journey into the narrative. Although it happens in vastly different ways, both writers, real and fictional, across differences in age, experience, gender, and sexuality, “chase their novels to the end of the world,” and ultimately find themselves and the writers they were meant to be at the end. They present readers with two insightful and compelling portraits of the writer’s life and the opportunities of travel, from the perspectives of a woman and a gay man; in other words, they offer insight into what it means to experience

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all of the challenges, delights, anxieties, and joys of simply being a human being in this contemporary moment. NOTES 1. For more on hysteria and its connection to women, see Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993). 2. For more analysis of travelers through the lens of postcolonial history and theory, see Bassnett’s “Travel Writing and Gender” in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing and Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. 3. Nell Stevens penned a follow-up to Bleaker House, published in 2018 and titled The Victorian and the Romantic: A Memoir, a Love Story, and a Friendship Across Time. This text offers another example of the ways in which contemporary travel literature offers a space for authors to write about other authors by defying conventions of both gender and genre. Stevens intertwines her first-person contemporary memoir highlighting her love story and pursuit of a PhD in Victorian literature (which takes her on numerous journeys from London to places such as Paris, Boston, and Austin) with the fictionalized biography of Elizabeth Gaskell narrated in the second person. Although the connections between the two women’s love stories are spotty at best, the text offers an interesting look at the writer’s life and the different roles of women in both Romantic and contemporary societies, and showcases Gaskell’s fascinating trip to Rome, interaction with other writers and artists, and lifelong friendship (and perhaps unrequited love) with Charles Henry Norton.

WORKS CITED Bassnett, Susan. “Travel Writing and Gender.” The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. Ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs. Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 225–41. Blewett, Kelly. “Bleaker House.” BookPage, March 2017, p. 26. Gale General OneFile, https:​//​link​.gale​.com​/apps​/doc​/A483701859​/ITOF​?u​=umuser​&sid​=ITOF​ &xod​=4705c848. Accessed 18 December 2019. Charles, Ron. “Book World: Finally, a Comic Novel gets a Pulitzer Prize. It’s About Time.” Washington Post, 17 April 2018. Gale In Context: Biography, https:​ //​link​.gale​.com​/apps​/doc​/A535029362​/BIC​?u​=umuser​&sid​=BIC​&xid​=6ffebd71. Accessed 18 December 2019. ———. “Do We Really Need Another Novel about a Novelist? Yes—This One Is Delightful: Andrew Sean Greer’s Witty ‘Less’ Stars a Lovable Writer Trying to Outrun Heartbreak.” Washington Post, 12 July 2017. ProQuest, https:​//​ proxy​.lib​.umich​.edu​/login​?url​=https:​//​search​.proquest​.com​/docview​/1918771239​ ?accountid​=14667. Accessed 19 December 2019. Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Ed. Morton Dauwen Zabel. Houghton Mifflin, 1956.

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Donovan, Robert A. “Structure and Idea in Bleak House.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of Bleak House: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Jacob Korg. Prentice Hall, 1968, pp. 31–44. Dziuban, Emily. “Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World.” The Booklist, vol. 113, no. 11, 2017, pp. 11. ProQuest, https:​//​proxy​.lib​.umich​.edu​ /login​?url​=https:​//​search​.proquest​.com​/docview​/1863955091​?accountid​=14667. Accessed 19 December 2019. Fausto-Sterling, Anne. “Frameworks of Desire.” Queer: A Reader for Writers. Ed. Jason Schneiderman. Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 23–37. Green, Charles. “Arthur Less Hits the Road.” The Gay and Lesbian Review, vol. 25, no. 2, March/April 2018, p. 44. Greer, Andrew Sean. Less: A Novel. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. Heathcote, Charlotte. “Book Reviews: The Husband Hunters and Bleaker House.” Express (Online), 6 June, 2017. ProQuest, https:​//​proxy​.lib​.umich​.edu​/login​?url​ =https:​//​search​.proquest​.com​/docview​/1906291179​?accountid​=14667. Accessed 19 December 2019. “HIV and AIDS in the United States of America (USA).” Avert, 10 October 2019. www​.avert​.org​/professionals​/hiv​-around​-world​/western​-central​-europe​-north​ -america​/usa. Accessed 15 February 2020. Jensen, Robert. “The High Cost of Manliness.” Gender: A Reader for Writers. Ed. Megan L. Titus and Wendy L. Walker. Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 130–34. Lorber, Judith. “‘Night to His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender.” Gender: A Reader for Writers. Ed. Megan L. Titus and Wendy L. Walker. Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 29–54. Miller, Andy. “Clutching at Straws.” Spectator, 30 June 2018, p. 39+. Gale OneFile: News, https:​//​link​.gale​.com​/apps​/doc​/A547491468​/STND​?u​=umuser​&sid​=STND​ &xid​=6cab430d. Accessed 18 Dececember 2019. Rivieccio, Genna. “Why Is Literature Always So Serious in Order to Be Taken Seriously? On Andrew Sean Greer’s Less Winning the Pulitzer.” The Opiate, 19 April 2018. www​.theopiatemagazine​.com​/2018​/04​/19​/why​-is​-literature​-always​-so​ -serious​-in​-order​-to​-be​-taken​-seriously​-on​-andrew​-sean​-greers​-less​-winning​-the​ -pulitzer​/. Accessed 15 February 2020. Sanchez, Francisco J. et al. “Reported Effects of Masculine Ideals on Gay Men.” Psychology of Men & Masculinity, vol. 10, no. 1 (2009): 73–87. doi:10.1037/ a0013513. Accessed 12 February 2020. Stevens, Nell. Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World. Doubleday, 2017.

Chapter Three

The Narrating Serpent Two Distinct Representations of Authorship in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller Sarah Briest

Thomas Nashe’s shape-shifting prose tract The Unfortunante Traveller (1594) chronicles the wild escapades of first-person narrator Jack Wilton as he ventures through early sixteenth-century Europe,1 merrily entrapping the gullible in his schemes until he, too, falls victim to treachery and misfortune. Wilton’s ultimate announcement of conversion to a righteous life, as abrupt as it is implausible, brings the narrative to an end but does not suggest a genuine reformation of character: Wilton remains a mischief-maker as well as a producer of narratives and both pursuits continue to be intimately linked. While Jack Wilton represents one version of the early modern writing life, the chivalrous Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey—who features prominently as a character in Nashe’s text—embodies very different conceptions of authorship. Whereas Wilton is characterized by his youthfulness, his prevarication (for pleasure and profit), but also, notably, by his frequent assumption of qualities which are traditionally gendered feminine, Surrey takes no joy in equivocation but earnestly cultivates his role as a poet knight, eternally devoted to his imperious Lady Geraldine, while financial and worldly matters little concern him. Though this ideological abnegation of the worldly is, of course, facilitated by his wealth and status, Surrey’s decorum in matters of money is contrasted by Wilton’s determination to wear his own deprivations merrily on his sleeve. The Unfortunate Traveller and its protagonist-narrator Jack Wilton have held a firm grip on the imagination of scholars of early modern literature since Nashe’s “proto-novel” was reprinted by Alexander B. Grosart in 49

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1883–1884—for the first time since the 1590s.2 Yet scholars have been divided in their opinions on whether Wilton may best be regarded as a coherent character or as a mere textual function designed to fuse together highly disparate narrative episodes and rhetorical styles. To Alexander Leggatt, Wilton “is not a coherent character, but a series of effects—a practical joker, a preacher, a thief, a penitent” (37), to Patrick Morrow he “functions as a continuity device” (640), and Ann Rosalind Jones argues that Wilton is “less a character than a linking device” in the estimation of many readers since “his adventures add up neither to verisimilitude nor to any moral overview” (63).3 Critical readers have wondered, too, just how much of Thomas Nashe himself there is in Jack Wilton, whether regarded as a coherent character or an amalgamation of traits, and if it is possible to distinguish the voice of the author from that of his creation. Pondering this question, John Wenke has emphasized “the difficulty of distinguishing between Wilton’s inconsistent dual function as a wild, madcap, antic actor and perpetrator of fictions, on the one hand, and as a mouthpiece for Nashe’s intrusive moral commentary, on the other” (20); Paul Salzman has noted how heavily shaped the text is by “Nashe’s individual style and personality” (88), while Richard Lanham concedes that Wilton “may be Nashe, he may be a persona, he may be first one, then the other” (203), but also confidently posits “Jack Wilton’s personality as the central form of the novel” (201). Wilton’s voice is indeed dominant throughout the entire text and while it is prone to frequent deliberate shifts, adapting to circumstances and latching on to various contemporary discourses, it persistently expresses Wilton’s self-conception as a writer. As he sets forth his views on literary production and producers, it certainly becomes true—in more ways than one—that “[n]arrator will become subject” (203). As a character Wilton is a smart-mouthed rogue and trickster with a keen financial interest whose advanced skills in the art of lying not only serve his pranks and schemes but are also the foundation of his authorial undertakings. He may be “a disenfranchised opportunist, more concerned with survival than with virtue” (Ann Rosalind Jones 64), a penniless rascal who “lives by his wits” (Lanham 205), but it is the sheer enjoyment of roguery which is ultimately more important than any economic necessity. True that throughout it all Wilton “does not commit a major crime that would forfeit our sympathy entirely,” but just as true that “it is only by accident that he does not” (ibid.). Wilton experiences neither remorse nor pity for his victims even when his schemes come perilously close to claiming the lives of those he preys on. He recounts his gambits with relish and shows pride at having been able to turn them into marketable print media after the fact. One scam can thus be made to pay twice over.4 Wilton presents himself as a liar for money, both on the story level (as a character) and beyond that as a creator and mediator of entertaining fictions (in his function as narrator)—thereby confirming Plato’s

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famously uncomplimentary beliefs about the moral and epistemological uprightness of poets. In his function as a narrator Wilton not only stresses his cunning and wit but also his youthfulness, which, combined with his penchant for female impersonation, produces an image of the prose writer as a quick-witted entertainer but also a mercenary and transgressor. “[A] PRINCOX BEARDLESS BOY” Both Nashe and his narrator, Wilton, noticeably dwell on the topic of their own youth. Already in the dedication of The Unfortunate Traveller to Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton,5 Nashe refers to his own supposed “infancy” (207), while in the main body of the text Wilton stresses his young age and boyish appearance repeatedly, referring to himself as “an ingenious infant of my age” (210), “childish” (213), and a “knight-arrant infant” (237). Yet Wilton’s youth is not an innocent quality, mitigating any threat that he may pose to others. Instead it is linked to his cleverness and trickery, his mobility and penchant for role-playing and disguise. The narrative opens with Wilton as a page with the English army, encamped in the north of France prior to the capture of Tournay and Thérouanne (1513) under Henry VIII. Here Wilton gulls his first victim, a merchant and publican who sells cheese and cider in the camp. Wilton immediately plays up the innocence of his youth to the merchant while simultaneously undermining any such innocence by his dishonest intent. He tells the merchant of certain made-up “dangers that have beset you and your barrels” (212), which spring from the king’s doubts (all made up) about the merchant’s loyalty to the crown. Subsequently Wilton advises the merchant that extreme generosity with his goods may be the most effective way to assuage these purported royal misgivings. While construing the initial lie Wilton refuses to disclose whether these fabricated allegations of treason are likely to result in a death sentence for the merchant with the excuse that his, Wilton’s, “well meaning lips [. . .] have but lately sucked milk” and should therefore not “so suddenly change their food and seek after blood” (214). Wilton claims for himself a nearness in spirit to the innocence of suckling infants in the midst of enacting an elaborate deception. Admittedly, in this instance he seeks free cider rather than blood but should blood be spilled as a consequence of his self-serving jest it seems highly unlikely that Wilton would lose any sleep over it. At a later point in his travels, having made it to Rome, Wilton falls into the hands of one Zadok—by a literal fall into the latter’s basement shop, which Wilton describes as a fall into hell. Zadok, it so happens, is a Jew (portrayed following contemporary tropes in the style of anti-Semitic caricature), who refers to Wilton as “a young man [. . .] of the age of eighteen” (289). His

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youth and health (rare in the midst of a plague epidemic in the city) prompt Zadok to sell Wilton to his fellow Zachary, “the Pope’s physician” (289), who is eager to experiment on a fit body. Wilton narrowly escapes vivisection through the intercession of Juliana, the Marquess of Mantua’s wife; but Juliana herself soon poses a new threat to Wilton. The marchioness initially spots Wilton in the street and is at once taken with his tender “age and beardless face” (289). She engineers Zachary and Zadok’s downfall (resulting in the banishment of all Jews from Rome) with the express purpose of having Wilton transferred into her hands. However, she is not unlike Zachary in that she is interested only in the commodity of a young body. Although Juliana initially pretends otherwise, she strongly lusts after her “princox6 beardless boy” (293) and proceeds to keep Wilton captive as a personal sex slave. Wilton keeps the tone of his narrative light and humorous throughout these vicious and violent episodes but admits to feeling the strain of Juliana’s constant amorous assaults. Not only Jack Wilton presents as a “beardless boy”; his creator, Thomas Nashe, too, was well known for his unconventional, beardless look, which advanced his boyish image and led to some speculation (cf. Nicholl).7 Nashe himself referred to his lack of facial hair in multiple publications and Cambridge barber Richard Lichfield published a pamphlet titled The Trimming of Thomas Nashe Gentleman (1597), in reply to a slight by Nashe. In his pamphlet Lichfield wonders “why thou [Nashe] hast so much haire on thy head, and so thinne or rather almost none at all on thy face” and surmises that syphilis may be the cause of Nashe’s beardlessness or else that he may be “too effeminate, and so becomst like a woman” (cf. Nicholl). The smooth, milksoppy faces of both author and first-person narrator—and the comment they attract—suggest a deliberate degree of identification between Nashe and Wilton which not only calls into question the possibility to firmly separate author from narrator but also bolsters the conceptual triad of youth, deception, and professional (prose) writing. Wilton again highlights his youth in the context of his encounter with John of Leiden (also referred to as Jan van Leiden) and the Münster Anabaptists.8 In 1534 the German city of Münster came under the sway of Anabaptism, a Protestant movement spearheaded locally by Dutchmen Jan Matthys and John of Leiden. The resultant conflict with Franz von Waldeck, Prince-Bishop of Münster, Osnabrück, and Minden within the Lower Rhenish-Westfalian Circle of the Holy Roman Empire, led to a siege of the city which ended the Anabaptist interregnum. Leiden himself, Bernd Knipperdolling, and Bernd Knechting, all mayors in the Anabaptist regime, were tortured, killed, and their remains displayed in the town, in cages attached to the tower of the Church of St. Lambert (Lambertikirche) in January 1536. Arriving at Münster in time to witness the utter defeat of the Anabaptists by von Waldeck’s

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men, Wilton describes Leiden’s ludicrously underprepared followers as they stumble into battle and then rails against radical Protestantism. As he embarks on his diatribe, Wilton refers to himself as “so young a practitioner in divinity” (230), who makes “under-age arguments” (232).9 On the one hand, these statements allude to Wilton’s lack of experience in the field of theology—though this by no means makes him tread carefully—while, on the other hand, they indicate that the folly of radical sectarians is such that even a young mind like Wilton’s, untrained for the purpose, can recognize their obvious and serious failings. Wilton propounds that Anabaptists selfservingly renounce what they do not have access to anyway (233) and take a “hammer” to the Bible to force it to support their arguments (232). However, in his condemnation of the Anabaptists’ misguided handling of the language of scripture, Wilton himself uses “elaborately figurative language” and so, one might argue, makes himself as guilty as the sectarians of linguistic double-dealing (Suzuki 361). After all, in his own usage he “underscores that property of language which makes such manipulation of meaning possible” (ibid.). Wilton’s criticism, which itself takes the form of an impromptu sermon, is infused with angry satire and thrives on ambiguity, double entendre, and violent metaphors (cf. Nashe 231). Moreover, the classical quotations Wilton makes use of in this passage, far from supporting his points organically, are as “hammered” to suit his purposes as any “erroneous,” far-fetched interpretations of Bible lore (Suzuki 361–62). Honing in on the contradictions immanent in Wilton’s verbal conduct, Anja Müller-Wood has pointed out that while the Anabaptists “manipulate meaning for their own purposes” and in doing so unbalance the reliability of representation (170), Wilton engages in the same process. For example, while abusing dissenters, he eloquently glosses over the fact that political and religious dissent underlie the foundation of the Anglican Church in the first place, an institution which he now deems beyond reproach. Müller-Wood argues that this parallel between Wilton and the Anabaptists “hints at the fundamentalist potential inherent in all thinking” (174). It certainly suggests the precariousness of language and Wilton’s complicity in the matter. Leiden and Wilton but also other characters in The Unfortunate Traveller, such as Tabitha and the murderous Spaniard Esdras of Granada, are all “immoral fiction-makers [who] create to advance selfish demands that seek to extend control over the world” (Wenke 18).10 Wilton, as a narrator, is undoubtedly a destabilizing force whose skill at manipulation and equivocation is not only employed to his own benefit and the detriment of “gulls” but has wider implications about the potential unreliability of language.

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“[T]HE FOX’S CASE” Wilton’s penchant for trickery is in evidence from the outset: as mentioned above, the narrative opens with Wilton attached to the English army in France and using his cunning to supplement his income. He styles himself “sole king of the cans and blackjacks, prince of the pigmies” (210),11 and voices his pride at being able to manipulate the soldiers to such an extent that he becomes “prince of their purses” and can commandeer their “liquid allegiance” in the form of free drinks (210). This, so says Wilton, puts him in a position superior even to that of the king since the latter only commands his soldiers to bleed for him on the battlefield, whereas Wilton is in command over their finances between engagements (ibid.). Yet, once all money has been spent, Wilton is at an impasse. Not even the king could wring money from his destitute soldiers, so Wilton endeavors to come up with a plan worthy of a wily fox rather than a royal lion. As Wilton notes, “the fox’s case must help when the lion’s skin is out at the elbows” (211). His first scheme, the duping of the cider merchant, produces a payoff in cider and cheese for himself and others but forces the unfortunate victim out of business. With this first “prank” Wilton teeters “on the edge of harmlessness and [is] about to step over” (210).12 Wilton himself is “pitifully whipped” (216) for his lies on this occasion but does not let this deter him from gulling the “ugly mechanical captain” he is made to serve next (ibid.), whose main fault is his extraction of funds from Wilton. In order to put a stop to this inconvenient drain on his own finances, Wilton persuades the captain (by eloquent flattery) to take on a covert mission at which he is guaranteed to fail, that is, to infiltrate the enemy camp (and assassinate the French king). Once there, the captain is immediately found out. He is questioned, tortured, and finally whipped out of the camp, lucky to escape with his life (222). Before his arrival back at the English encampment, however, Wilton has already denounced him to the English marshal general (221). Back with his compatriots the captain is promptly “turned on the toe” (223), the exact meaning of which has been a point of uncertainty among scholars although most prefer to read it as “flogged” rather than “hanged,” if only because it reflects better on Wilton. Following this incident Wilton immediately decides to play “God’s scourge” once more and to take on himself the “punishment” of some overly officious clerks (224). Taking advantage of the faintheartedness of these “goosequill braggadocios” (224), Wilton tricks them into abandoning their workplaces with a false alarm which leaves him and his followers free to steal—or, as he puts it, “reclaim”—money from their desks. As these episodes demonstrate, Wilton—though his financial means may be limited—“uses his wits more for pleasure and less for food” (205). While

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he employs his skills in the service of material profits, necessity is not his only, nor even his main driving force. Far from suffering pangs of conscience, Wilton is proud of his deceptions—of the skill involved in carrying them out in the moment as much as of their retrospective anecdotal or literary value.13 To Wilton, indeed, honesty is not so much virtue as defect, since “[m]any are honest because they know not how to be dishonest” (253).14 He, on the other hand, can always rely on “the excellence of my wit” (223) to foist his designs on duller or more honest types. Furthermore, it is not only characters in the story who come under his spell. His readership, too, is “at the mercy of Nashe’s [or Wilton’s] clever rhetoric” (Morrow 639–40). As a protagonist Wilton delights in duping people he takes a dislike to, such as the merchant and his second victim, the foolish captain; as a narrator he preys on his (implied) readers, of whom he demonstrates constant awareness (cf. Salzman 90). At times he politely addresses them as “gentle”—yet adds the pointed admonition “to be gentle now since I have called you so” (216)—and at other moments he imagines them to be at odds with him and promptly takes an “aggressive position” (Ann Rosalind Jones 77). Yet, while the stance Wilton adopts toward his readers fluctuates, he consistently displays confidence in his ability to entertain and manipulate, with language as his tool to achieve both the former and the latter.15 While his narratorial stance is ambivalent, there is no doubt of Wilton’s belligerence on the story level, in however whimsical terms he couches it. Richard Lanham’s description of Wilton as “free-floating aggression looking for a target” (206) may be harsh but it is not off the mark. To some extent, Wilton’s resentment of his own relative obscurity may account for his “pleasure in fooling and controlling others” (Harrington and Bond 245), but it does not at all justify it.16 Wilton takes distinct “pleasure in punishment” (Lanham 212), and he takes it upon himself to choose who deserves punishment— often for very minor offenses. This means that modern readers, at least, must experience ambivalent feelings toward Wilton. Grating against his droll self-assessment, “Jack is too eager to strike, too senseless and indiscriminate in his targets to be a humorist” (206). At the end of the narrative Wilton and his paramour, Diamante, arrive at Bologna in time to witness the execution of Cutwolf, a man condemned to death for avenging his brother’s death at the hands of his criminal associate Esdras of Granada. This “truculent tragedy of Cutwolf and Esdras” (308), Cutwolf’s public torture and death, supposedly moves Wilton to give up his roguish ways in favor of an honest life. Post-execution, he gives a very brief glimpse into this new and reformed existence: it commences with marriage to Diamante and a return to the English troops in France, just as they are about to experience the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and—should there be a market for it—it is likely to include a continued career in writing.17

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All things considered, Wilton’s reformation on the basis of Cutwolf’s scaffold performance is by no means a credible development. For one thing, Cutwolf’s death is a good death. He is punished horribly for killing Esdras but he accepts his fate almost eagerly and even celebrates vengeance in his final speech. Cutwolf does not at all rue his crime. On the contrary, he pronounces that “[t]here is no heaven but revenge” (305–6), and he has achieved that heaven. Cutwolf offers no example of a penitent sinner to be imitated by Wilton but of a man at peace with himself and his acts, defiant of the world and conventional morality to the last. Philip Schwyzer argues that Wilton does learn from Cutwolf’s fate (237), and that his offer of penning a sequel to his adventure story merely makes the point “that reformation does not mean the end of history” (247).18 Yet, with the connection between writing, in Wilton’s vein, and roguery firmly established, Wilton’s intention of continuing to supplement his income through writing and selling prose tracts equals his continued adherence to a roguish life—particularly since he does not signal that his future writing will in any way differ from his current writing. Moreover, with Wilton rejoining an English camp in France the narrative comes full circle and things look set to start all over again. Even on a microlevel, Wilton’s writing is prickly. A steady stream of irreverent puns upsets established moral and linguistic conventions. Wordplay is his “smallest unit of attack” (Stephanson 24). For instance, when Wilton confesses to being “inclined to mercy (for indeed I knew two or three good wenches of that name)” (213), and later links “effeminate eyes” with feelings of mercy (236), he undermines the quality of mercy and ridicules the system of morality which renders (lip) service to it. When he describes John of Leiden as a “botcher,” as an inept theologian and reformer who foolishly misconstrues scripture, he exploits the association with the near-identical “butcher” to set nonconformity in a context of crude violence. Wilton further accuses the Anabaptists of hanging on to “desires of revenge and innovation,” which, to Wilton, indicates that “they took not up their cross of humility and followed him [Christ], but would cross him [. . .] if he assured not by some sign their prayers and supplications” (235). Wilton puns on the term “cross” by using it, first, to refer to the Christian symbol of virtuous self-sacrifice and, immediately afterward, in its meaning as “to defy” or “to thwart.” This results in a strained confrontation of meanings with Wilton actually hinting that the false believers would crucify Christ themselves should he not prove amenable to their purpose. Continuing the theme of theological mockery, Wilton is highly unimpressed when he witnesses a public argument between Luther and Carolostadius (Karlstadt) in Wittenberg. While most of the high-caliber debate is forgettable to Wilton, he recalls that a “mass of words I wot well they heaped up against the mass and the Pope” (244). This equation of “mass” as a great—and often disorderly—quantity of anything and the eucharistic

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liturgical service deconsecrates the latter, while simultaneously demonstrating irreverence toward both reformers, whose arguments are reduced to an unshapely lump of words. Wilton’s puns also highlight the material presence of his writing in the world and affiliate the writer closely with his product. This product exists in the form of printed pages—to be handled, read, or otherwise put to pragmatic use. According to his fictional editor, Wilton hopes that those who come into possession of these pages would “honour them in their death so much as to dry and kindle tobacco with them,”19 or, if need be, to wrap “velvet pantofles” in them. If absolutely necessary mustard pots may be stopped with them but on no account should grocers use them to wrap mace (208). On the heel of these tongue-in-cheek instructions, the editor refers to Wilton as the “King of pages” (209), praising the writer (a king) while keeping him in his place (a mere page) and simultaneously conflating him with his product. At the same time Wilton himself states his desire for “seigniory over the pages”—which is not granted him—and thereby also identifies with the work while admitting to a lack of absolute mastery over his medium. At a later point in the text the Earl of Surrey refers to Wilton as “my little page” (238), continuing the pun and charging it further with the implications of affection (the diminutive), writerly hierarchy (Wilton is merely “little”), and creative lineage (Wilton is a page derived from Surrey’s book, a leaf growing on his tree). This emphasis on the “multiple significance of words,” according to Suzuki, contributes to a “crisis of authority” since it reveals “the lack of that authority which gives a word its proper [and only] sense” (49).20 By eagerly indulging in wordplay, and using puns to disturb serious discourses, Wilton undermines the widely accepted contemporary “Christian/Platonic notion that essences are built into words” (Ann Rosalind Jones 72). With his “willful distortions of language” (Stephanson 24), Wilton utilizes the potential of language to obfuscate and deceive rather than accurately represent. “[T]he problem of form and meaning” (ibid.) is that the former often has very little to do with the latter—that meaning may be absent entirely. This conundrum produces—through Wilton—“a universe that is inconsistent, ambivalent, and absurd” (ibid.), in which “[e]very anticipated sense of reality, order, cause and effect, and decorum is challenged, violated, and broken down” (23–24). At the same time the rocky relationship Wilton finds and cultivates between form and meaning also means that readers are “forced to pay more attention to the stylistic surface of the narrative, to its virtuosity, than to what is being described” (Salzman 97). Wilton frequently manages to hold his audience in thrall with vivid descriptions or impassioned arguments and has moved on to new topics before readers have caught up with the meaning of his words or the lack of meaning.

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Many of Wilton’s jumbled, incoherent metaphors also add to the proliferation of “malfunctioning signs” in The Unfortunate Traveller (Ossa-Richardson 946). Where multiple metaphors are crowded together they are frequently incompatible with one another, while many single metaphors demonstrate a “relentless dislocation between signified and signifier, tenor and vehicle” (ibid.).21 The message is ambiguous at best when what a metaphor purports to express and the means by which it attempts to do so refuse to work together. This phenomenon is evident, for instance, in the abundance of metaphors used in the descriptions of Surrey’s tournament for Geraldine (to be discussed in more detail below) and the executions of Zadok and Cutwolf (Stephanson 35).22 Zadok is first described as an animal carcass to be roasted on a spit; then he becomes a bizarre human torch, as his head is pitched, tarred, and set alight, and fireworks are tied to his “privie members” (298). Before the execution is done he is turned into a tailor’s shop window display (with pins shoved under his nails). Cutwolf, in his turn, is likened to a carpentry project as the executioner takes a wood knife to his person. Then he is transformed into a dish of porridge (from which a plum may be picked like a heart from a human body), and his neck becomes an egg about to be cracked. There is no moral insight to be gained from Zadok’s gruesome—but unlikely—punishment and the procedure is memorable only through the absurd but disturbing series of images it creates. In the context of the inanity of Zadok’s drawn-out execution, Philip Schwyzer has made the wry comment that the fact “[t]hat nothing like this execution ever actually took place testifies less to a limit on human cruelty than to the limits of human anatomy” (235). Wilton’s penchant for bizarre conceits, this “yoking together” of incongruent objects and images, very much in evidence in the execution episodes, has prompted Stephanson to associate the novel’s narrative mode with the grotesque and the surreal (28).23 While “yoking together” ostensibly incongruous ideas is identified as the special forte of the metaphysical poets, one difference between them and Wilton is that for the latter the technique is never in the service of generating a surprising insight—unless the insight is that there is no insight, no deeper meaning, no coherence to be achieved.24 Wilton’s system of classical quotation also reflects troubling semiotic uncertainty (cf. Ossa-Richardson 946; Suzuki 349). Almost inevitably, Wilton’s use of Latin phrases reflects neither their original context nor meaning, which undermines not only the classical authorities he references but the entire semiotic process, as well as the orderly, conventional relationship between the past and the present.25 For instance, Wilton’s praise for the cider merchant early in the narrative “rephrase[s] Ovid’s ‘Tendit in ardua virtus’ [virtue strives for what is difficult] as ‘Tendit in sydera virtus: Ther’s great vertue belongs, I can tell you, to a cup of sider’” (Ann Rosalind Jones 72), casually mocking both the original author and the contemporary characters he

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applies the quotation to. Here as elsewhere the citation “involve[s] a shift of register: a grand or tragic sentiment in Ovid’s text is transposed into an ignoble context, and vice versa” (Ossa-Richardson 952). Like his use of wordplay and metaphor, Wilton’s strategy of quotation is characterized by a split between form and meaning, or between original meaning and new meaning. It is the site of another “disruption of tenor and vehicle, related to the distortion of signs found elsewhere in the work” (951).26 While the classical wisdom of the past should serve to guide and illuminate the present, in Wilton’s world it absolutely fails to do this. Wilton’s present may be a realm of grotesque degeneracy but the voices of the past do not hail from a contrasting golden age, either. They are as human, as ambiguous, as prone to misinterpretation, as ridiculous, as potentially pointless as their modern counterparts. Wilton, as demonstrated, is a capable rhetorician in his manipulations of those less shrewd than himself—despite (or because of) the fact that he is working with a faulty (and fallen) medium. In this, he reveals not only “a strong sense of himself as a persuader” but “also an ardent disregard of classical virtue in the uses of his persuasive abilities” (Haas 30).27 As an excellent example of the disconnect between rhetoric and virtue, Wilton may be seen as an embodiment of Peter Ramus’s contemporary argument that a bad person can certainly be a good rhetorician (cf. Haas 26–28). This is another disturbance which Wilton shares in: not only does he upset the ideal relationships between form and meaning, tenor and vehicle, past and present, he demonstrates the potential schism between rhetoric and virtue, between skill and morality. “[W]ITH A RAVISHING TALE” Wilton refers to the biblical serpent as a storyteller that “with a ravishing tale [. . .] gathers all men’s hearts unto him” (220), while he himself is in the midst of manipulating the gullible captain with “a ravishing tale.” This forges an obvious connection between fork-tongued Wilton and the storytelling snake in the garden of Eden. Those who would be drawn in by him, the consumers of his fiction, within and beyond the story, correspond to postlapsarian (or about to lapse) humankind—credulous, eager for the pleasure of corruption. Suzuki analyzes Wilton’s invocation of the serpent in terms of the writer’s own equivocality, and the contrast between Wilton’s and Surrey’s art: In light of Jack’s later presentation of Surrey’s art and the summer banqueting house as embodiments of the prelapsarian, the insistence here on the image of serpents, particularly in the pun “tail”/“tale,” points to the “fallen” nature of Jack’s subversive rhetoric which exploits such double senses. (357)

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Wilton’s “fallen” rhetoric, discussed above, also puts him in a position akin to Eve, who is understood as the root cause of postlapsarian linguistic ambiguity. Indeed, Eve’s sin also “generates writing” (Jager 233), since “the writing of history and the history of writing both begin with the Fall” (249). Wilton’s kind of writing is certainly associated with Eve. His “exploitation of double senses” in his manipulative language use is “figured in terms of the serpent’s invasion of Eden” (Suzuki 371), and since this invasion functions through Eve, the serpent and the woman become so intimately connected as to almost become one and the same.28 In point of fact, Wilton picks up traits not just of the serpent but of the serpent and the woman. His wit, as much as his wordplay, is proof of his knowledge of corruption. This, at least, is suggested by an English earl, banished from his home for undisclosed reasons, who saves Wilton from execution (for a crime he did not commit) on the Italian leg of his journey. The earl fervently advises Wilton to return to England as traveling abroad supposedly brings the traveler into contact with foreign vices, feeds his immoral curiosity and thereby hones his wit.29 Wit, thus, grows through contact with corruption and serves as an instrument to corrupt others. After all, the earl reminds Wilton that “[t]he first traveler was Cain, and he was called a vagabond runagate in the face of the earth” (283). Wilton is grateful to his savior but does not feel obliged to take his advice to heart since wit, roguery, and the itinerant lifestyle are precisely those qualities which define him as a character. David Kaula recognizes— and puts succinctly—that, to the earl, travel “represents spatially what the fallen condition signifies temporarily, exile from one’s true home or original state” (46). Wilton’s unfortunate travels are thus a figuration of exile from paradise, embroiled “with a kind of primal guilt” (Gohlke 405; cf. Suzuki 371), and they further substantiate his affiliation with the serpent, Eve, and her errant offspring. The exiled earl is also critical of travelers much more recent than Cain whom he accuses of relying on servile flattery to ensure peaceable relations with their foreign hosts. In this way, the travelers’ wit and eloquence are mere instruments of misrepresentation. However, the quotation which the earl employs to underline his point—“Ulysses the long traveler, was not amiable but eloquent” (284)—rather undermines it. The phrase, a partial translation from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, links travel and eloquence. Yet, eloquence is here to be equated with the aphrodisiac potential of Ulysses’s legendary aptitude for storytelling. In consequence, the earl compliments Wilton rather than admonishes him. Still, Wilton self-identifies as following in the tradition of Eve by contrasting his own endeavors with Surrey’s art, which, according to Wilton, epitomizes “Adam’s Paradized perfection.” The resultant double bind locks Wilton and Surrey in a hermeneutic circle of mutually dependent definitions. Wilton’s

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authorial performance can only really be understood when read against and in light of Surrey’s and vice versa. While no location in the narrative is firmly associated with Wilton, except maybe his places of incarceration, he being an itinerant expatriate, the location that is most closely associated with Surrey (next to Geraldine’s birthplace) is the summer banqueting house which Wilton visits in Rome and admires at length. Like Surrey, the house invokes a state of paradise (Suzuki 365; Leggatt 32). Still it must always remain an ingenious, mechanical imitation and can never itself be what it represents (Leggatt 33), which, in turn, is a reflection on Surrey’s art. Wilton’s kinship with Eve—and his status as a postlapsarian carrier and purveyor of original sin—is reinforced by his not infrequent assumption of feminine roles. At one point, Wilton disguises himself as “a half-a-crown wench” (223), in order to seduce a Swiss army captain, take his money, and bolt. This gender-fluid performance does not incur any sense of shame in Wilton but, on the contrary, it ties in to his conception of what a good writer should be and it leads him to raise the rhetorical question, “what good poet is or ever was there who hath not had a little spice of wantonness in his days?” (257). At the same time, the episode is to his economic advantage, an aspect that is likewise characteristic of his literary undertakings. Wilton writes for money and he becomes a woman for money—and possibly some personal enjoyment of mutability and misrepresentation. Elsewhere in the text Wilton indulges in fantasies about sexual relations between man and woman in which he places himself in the role of the woman. Musing on the Petrarchan trope of the cruelly unavailable maid and the desperate lover, he comes to the conclusion that he would “if I were a wench make many men quickly immortal. What is’t, what is’t for a maid fair and fresh to spend a little lip salve on a hungry lover?” (255). The type of immortality which he sees himself as willingly bestowing on his male lovers in this scenario, by way of an exchange of bodily fluids, mocks the Petrarchan ideal of noncarnal but spiritually ennobling love, while simultaneously affirming the material world in which mortals can carry out the “immortalizing” act.30 This is in accordance with Wilton’s general preference for the tangible and pragmatic over the ideal. Yet, when Wilton is forced into the role of the sexually objectified woman at the hands of the predatory Juliana, he finds it significantly less pleasurable than anticipated. Wilton’s plight here—“cloyed” by the countess every few hours (299)—is not dissimilar to Diamante’s troubles, that is, imprisonment facilitated by her controlling husband and later abduction by the murderous Esdras of Granada and his associate Bartol. Wilton’s multiple incarcerations and victimizations put him in the position of Diamante specifically (who, like Wilton, makes the best of a string of bad situations and keeps narrowly escaping the worst of fates) and women generally (cf. Simon 31). Even the tragic case of Heraclide, a Roman

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citizen’s wife brutally raped in her own plague-infected house, is echoed to an extent by Wilton’s hardships. In another episode Wilton pretends to be the Earl of Surrey, who is his temporary traveling companion in the second half of the book. Surrey is not well pleased by Wilton’s ploy and so, on being reunited with Surrey, Wilton formulates an analogy designed to placate Surrey and to frame his impersonation of the earl in a positive light. By asking Surrey, “What is the glory of the sun but that the moon and so many millions of stars borrow their light from him?” (259), he likens Surrey to the majestic, constant (male) sun, while Wilton himself adopts the role of the mutable (feminine) moon. As the changeable moon—the charge of female Selene—is illuminated by the sun— the domain of powerful Apollo—so Wilton can only hope for some reflected glory from Surrey.31 “NONE COME SO NEAR TO GOD” Wilton encounters Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey—a previous “much adored” master (237)—during a brief stay in Middleborough, England, sandwiched between his central European sojourns of the first half of the book and his more personally trying Italian adventures. Wilton is happy to be reunited with Surrey and to share firsthand in the new and spectacularly entertaining phenomenon that is the earl’s undying devotion to his “stately” lady Geraldine (238). Surrey explains to Wilton that he has been called on by Cupid, the “sole king and emperor of piercing eyes and chief sovereign of soft hearts” (ibid.), and now must do as love would have it. This offers a stark contrast to Wilton’s own self-description as “sole king of the cans and blackjacks [emphasis mine]” (210), and his distinct aversion to bow to any authority higher than himself—in life and in art. Surrey, on the other hand, bows down deeply before the god of love and before his beloved Geraldine and it is his devotion to her which inspires his poetry. Surrey’s verse—as represented through Wilton—is of an “idealizing and self-referential” kind (Suzuki 354), whereas Wilton’s writing is “‘authorized’ by the actual” (ibid.), but also devalued by “his own authorial haste and carelessness” (Lanham 207). Wilton’s writing, therefore, can never attain the timeless transcendence—which he does not seek for himself in any case—that he attributes to Surrey. Wilton is in awe of Surrey’s art and character, of his “stern precepts of gravity and modesty” (239), but his hero-worship is tempered by a persistent though generally benign mockery of Surrey’s investment in notions of chivalry and fin’amor—a reflection of Nashe’s own teasing but undeniable admiration for Philip Sidney (Lanham 208; Duncan-Jones 3).

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Wilton’s tongue-in-cheek idealization of Surrey is based on Surrey’s own idealism: he is not of the corrupt, material, “real” world, as is Wilton with every fiber of his being. Surrey is not tempted by its snares and traps, not thrown by its ambiguities and complications. To Wilton, Surrey is “a poet without peer” (237). Quintessential poets, to Wilton, are semi-divine creatures, in a complicated relationship with reality: “None come so near to God in wit, none more contemn the world” (ibid.). The thoughts of poets “are exalted above the world of ignorance and all earthly conceits” (ibid.). The flip side of this is that they may find themselves “[d]espised [. . .] of the world because they are not of the world” (ibid.). Surrey, like all great poets, has received a “double soul” from God. Whereas one might be tempted to regard Wilton as all material substance,32 Surrey is (almost) all soul. A belief in the primacy of the idea and the spirit is ingrained in Surrey and informs his poetry. The “more than celestial Geraldine” (238), his love and his muse, certainly remains remote from associations with corporeality and worldly shortcomings. She is “the soul of heaven” (260). She is “clear sunbeams” contained in a “cloud of flesh” (260), and these very sunbeams, enclosed in but transcending mortal flesh, “have set the phoenix nest of [. . . Surrey’s] breast on fire” (238). Indeed, Geraldine “inflame[s]” the world with her beauty (l. 8, 261), and Surrey’s “admirable airy and fiery spirits” (237) respond to that celestial blaze in supernatural ways. Surrey’s “double soul” attunes him to Geraldine’s divine charms and generally makes him immune to greed and profanity. In Wilton’s opinion, My heroical master exceeded in this supernatural kind of wit. He entertained no gross, earthly spirit of avarice, full of freedom, magnanimity, and bountihood. Let me not speak any more of his accomplishments for fear I spend all my spirits in praising him and leave myself no vigour of wit or effects of a soul to go forward with my history. (237)

While Wilton praises Surrey’s character and poetry his own frame of mind is vastly different from Surrey’s. Lacking the ethereal genius of God’s own poets, Wilton depends instead on the pragmatic and the contingent for creative stimulus. While at first glance Wilton’s materialism may appear more socially aware than Surrey’s idealism, the true picture is more complicated. Wilton does indeed portray “grisly and protracted death scenes,” on the scaffold and on the battlefield, whereas Surrey holds to “dreamy fantasies of dying for love” (Leggatt 36). Yet Wilton is no more a speaker for the downtrodden, a conscientious voice against violence, than is Surrey. Wilton is, by and large, more entertained than outraged by the slaughter he witnesses and he converts

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what he sees into a spectacle of gratuitous violence for a wider audience. Consequently, it is not only Wilton who gets implicated in the violence he represents; his “voyeuristic” readers also play a part in the matter (cf. Hyman 33–34), especially in light of the “forced intimacy” Wilton inflicts on his readership (Sulfridge 9). Thus, while Surrey ignores the real problem of violence, Wilton turns the pain of others into dubious printed entertainment and benefits from it. Never mind the fact that he also causes harm to people through his schemes directly.33 Although Surrey may not be interested in writerly explorations of violence, his infatuation with Geraldine means that he cannot help but produce poetry for her and about her, and he channels his literary impulses into the compact fourteen-line formula of the Petrarchan love sonnet. This format was famously introduced to the English language by Thomas Wyatt and subsequently adopted and adapted by the historical Earl of Surrey. As a genre that channels masculine expressions of desire and frustration—while generally not allowing the female objects of said desire any voice or agency—the Petrarchan sonnet has long invited speculation on the schism that opens between the subjectivity of a dejected, emotionally overwrought lover which orients the sonnet and the poet behind the voice. The conventional understanding of the relationship between persona and author is one of hierarchy and separation. The persona is subsumed under, adjusted, and deployed by a more dispassionate craftsman: while “the lover might be slave to his mistress,” the author is untouched by this indignity, since “the poet is king” and “master of his text” (Bates 7, 11).34 Thus, Surrey-the-persona may know and feel the “depe dark hel” (l. 10) that engulfs one who “follow[s] where my paines were lost” (l. 14), but Surrey-the-author can remain at a safe distance.35 However, Wilton (himself of course Nashe’s persona) erases this distinction in his narrative. The Surrey of Wilton’s description is wholly in the throes of his chivalric devotion and the poetry he produces is not an exercise in craftsmanship but a “second mistress” (239), and a powerful one. When Wilton encounters Surrey, the latter has just acquired the blessing of his first mistress, Geraldine, to embark on a tour of Italy, since “Fair Florence was sometime her ancient seat” (239). He intends to make a pilgrimage of sorts to her ancestral home and birthplace.36 There, Geraldine expects Surrey to announce a challenge in her honor and to defend her claim to being the most beautiful woman alive (239). Wilton decides to accompany Surrey to Italy for lack of other plans; for the opportunity to spend time with the earl; and, not least, for the pragmatic benefits of traveling “with such a good pursebearer” (238). As they travel together Surrey constantly fantasizes about Geraldine. Even when occult philosopher Cornelius Agrippa makes a cameo in the text and baffles the travelers with spectacular magic tricks at the court of Emperor Maximilian I, Surrey is most delighted by a vision of Geraldine

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which Agrippa creates for him (246–47). To the besotted Petrarchan lover, the discourse he shares in is certainly a literary “cause [. . .] larger than the self” (Wenke 18).37 Wilton, meanwhile, has no identifiable cause beyond himself, though, arguably he is large enough to contain multitudes. Once they have embarked on their southbound journey Wilton and Surrey make the decision to assume each other’s identity on the road. Surrey adopts the role of page while Wilton impersonates the earl. This apparent reversal of high- and low-status roles for a proscribed period of time mimics “the carnival ritual of decrowning the legitimate king and crowning a mock king” (Ann Rosalind Jones 69). Yet for Wilton, whose “mock king”—“king of the cans”—routine is a permanent life choice, the carnival season is not securely bounded and so it is no surprise that Wilton eventually opts to extend the role reversal beyond the stipulated period. In Venice, Surrey and Wilton come into contact with a courtesan known as Tabitha the Temptress who promptly entraps them in an evil plot. She concocts a murderous scheme which would allow her to murder Surrey with the help of his page and later frame the page for the deed. However, she is unaware of the role reversal between Surrey and Wilton and her scheme fails (248–49); still, she bribes Wilton with counterfeit gold (which the latter is happy not to examine too scrupulously), which causes both Wilton and Surrey (as an accessory to Wilton’s crime) to be arrested. In prison, they meet Diamante, a wealthy citizen’s wife who has been incarcerated by her husband on suspicion of adultery. While Surrey, addled by the stress of the penal experience, mistakes Diamante for Geraldine and frantically throws himself into sonneteering, Wilton sees and likes the lady for who she is. An affair commences between them and though Diamante, on Wilton’s testimony, “was immaculate honest till she met with us in prison” (254), predictably the prison system hardens them and she is soon pregnant by Wilton. The love sonnet which Surrey composes in prison, in “his entranced mistaking ecstasy” (254), is a bizarre mixture of Petrarchan idolization and (very thinly veiled) sexual fantasizing. Invoking the trope of orgasm as death (Dorothy Jones 50), Surrey implores: “Suck out my soul with kisses, cruel maid, / In thy breasts’s crystal balls embalm my breath, / Dole it all out in sighs when I am laid” (ll. 2–4). He hopes to be metamorphosed into “a loathsome swine” by his Circe-like beloved (l. 11), only to conclude with a couplet that posits meditation on the saintly beloved as a ladder of ascent by which to reach heaven. To Ann Rosalind Jones “[t]he contradiction between its grotesque sexuality and its lofty Neoplatonic couplet exposes not only the earl’s confused lust but the failure of Petrarchan poets in general to harmonize the claims of conflicting modes of love lyric” (72). Whether or not Surrey himself finds humor or contradiction in his frantically composed poem, once he has left the agitation of imprisonment behind, Wilton does not report.

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Surrey and Wilton’s release from prison is secured through the intercession of yet another English aristocrat abroad. This time Wilton’s benefactor goes by the name of John Russell (the historical Earl of Bedford who makes a brief cameo here). Russell’s testimony turns the tables on Tabitha, who is executed for her crimes. When Diamante, newly widowed, is freed as well she opts to join Wilton in his peregrinations. They leave Surrey behind though Wilton, once more, dons the earl’s mantle without the latter’s knowledge, reasoning that “the state of an Earl he had thrust upon me before, and now I would not bate him an inch of it” (258). In his own travels Surrey hears reports of his double. Alarmed, he hurries after Wilton but when he does catch up with him, he is more amused by his ingratiating excuse (discussed above) than offended. At the Florentine site of Geraldine’s birth, Surrey, wildly “impassioned” (260), is about to break into a recitation in the middle of the street when Wilton intercedes in the manner of a nurse or caretaker calming a patient. However, inside Geraldine’s erstwhile home Surrey can contain himself no longer. He composes a sonnet on the spot which describes the location as a place of divine light (Geraldine herself is constantly equated with light, flame, or soul) and frames his own conduct as religious devotion. To the room he addresses himself in the following terms: “Prostrate as holy ground I’ll worship thee, / Our Lady’s chapel henceforth be thou named” (ll. 5–6). He then proceeds to write some “body-wanting mots” of Ovidian origin—“Dulce puella malum est [. . .]” (261)—with a diamond on a glass pane, in recognition of the stressful but inevitable nature of his romantic pursuit. Surrey finally issues a challenge “against all comers (whether Christians, Turks, Cannibals, Jews, or Saracens) in defence of his Geraldine’s beauty” (261). “[T]HE WHOLE ART OF TILTING” At the ensuing tournament the earl confronts his opponents on a horse dressed as an ostrich.38 This itself does not single him out, however, since the jousting chevaliers and their mounts are all extravagantly costumed in the tradition of the impresa (also known as a “device”), a kind of spontaneous coat of arms, which combined a visual element with a particular slogan, thus presenting an interesting but ideally decipherable tension between word and image. Surrey and his competitors, however, represent defunct 3D imprese since their chosen mottos do little to elucidate the overly complex imagery displayed by horses and riders. Surrey’s helmet is “round proportioned like a gardener’s water-pot from which seemed to issue forth small threads of water” which feed the lilies and roses but also the nettles and weeds depicted on his armor (262). The water from the helmet-pot, according to Wilton’s gloss, represents the lover’s tears which not only feed his lady’s glory but also her disdain.

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The written slogan “thereto annexed was this: ex lachrimis lachrimae [tears produce tears]” (ibid.). Not only is this partially applicable at most to the eccentric imagery, there is also humor in the absurdly forced relationship between imagery and motto (when, according to Paolo Giovio’s famous midsixteenth-century tract on imprese, the relationship between motto and image should be balanced and pose a solvable riddle). The earl’s ostrich-horse has wings attached to its sides—as if it were “some other Pegasus” (ibid.)—and sharp diamonds attached to them (inset into painted eyes) function as spurs. The motto accompanying the horse is “Aculeo alatus: I spread my wings only spurred with her eyes” (263). There is added meaning, according to Wilton, in the fact that the ostrich (supposedly) eats iron and Surrey, in a supposedly similar fashion, would “refuse no iron adventure, no hard task whatsoever” in the service of his lady (ibid.). Once more the motto is only an arbitrary and partial elucidation of the fanciful ostrich costume in its entirety. Additionally, Surrey carries a decorated shield, framed like a burning-glass, beset round with flame-coloured feathers, on the outside whereof was his mistress’s picture [. . .]; on the inside a naked sword tied in a true love knot, the mot Militat omnis amans [all lovers are fighters], signifying that in a true love knot his sword was tied to defend and maintain the high features of his mistress. (263)

The motto and image are plainly ridiculous, with Surrey’s naked sword in a knot evoking a plethora of interpretations that the Latin phrase is unequal to. Surrey, like the other contestants in the tourney, is a bearer of three separate devices (all combining a visual component and a motto). Each one of them is in itself semiotically problematic but as an ensemble they lack all coherence. Other knights, like “the knight of the storms,” “the infant knight,” or “the knight of the owl” (with a helmet like an owl sitting on ivy, an armor like a tree trunk with birds at its root, a horse dressed like a cart scattering grain to hogs, and a shield with a bee entangled in wool), compete against Surrey, while bewailing and celebrating the cruelty of their own mistresses. Their bizarrely complex costumes, which “reproduce the real world mechanically” (Leggatt 33), are in some ways reminiscent of the intricate devices found inside the Roman banqueting house but, most importantly (and in contrast to the banqueting house), their only communicative purpose is parody. Not only Surrey, the ostrich knight, but all of his competitors in the tiltyard are colorful exemplars of communicative nonperformance. The seventh knight to arrive has chosen to imitate a Greek titan, with “a mount overwhelming his head and whole body. His bases outlaid with arms and legs which the skirts of that mountain left uncovered” (264–65). He is like “a man desirous to climb to the heaven of honour, kept under with the mountain of

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his prince’s command” (265). The motto affixed to his costume, “Tu mihi criminis author [Metamorphoses xv] (alluding to his prince’s command): thou art the occasion of my imputed cowardice” (265), makes little sense of the scenery he wears on his person and, furthermore, it establishes no connection whatsoever with the design of his shield and the costuming of his horse. The eighth contestant carries on his shield “the picture of death doing alms-deeds to a number of poor desolate children. The word Nemo alius explicat, no other takes pity on us” (265). This refers to the macabre nature of Death’s ministration to the children, in the absence of other caregivers, but at the same time it alludes to the thoroughly unintelligible chaos and confusion presented by the costumes of the jousting cavaliers (cf. Ossa-Richardson 950). According to Wilton these knights demonstrate “the whole art of tilting” (267). Yet it is hard to imagine how they even manage to move, encumbered as they are, and indeed some of them make an undignified spectacle of themselves, thrusting their lances in inappropriate places or “tilt[ing] backward, for forward they durst not” (ibid.). In this melee only Surry “observed the true measures of honour” (ibid.). The awkward spectacle invites a comparison between the knights and the Münster Anabaptists which, by association, heightens the farcicality of the former and their ultimate (communicative) impotence. The knights appear almost as hapless and grotesque as the doomed and deluded creatures stumbling into battle against the bishop’s forces, in armor cobbled together from mismatched bits and pieces of household and farm equipment. The predicament shared by Anabaptists and knights in the throes of courtly love, Wilton’s narration suggests, is that they have each fallen for a fundamentalist creed which allows them no flexibility of thought or behavior when reality fails to align with their beliefs. Yet, while the Anabaptists are regarded as a real danger by Wilton and stir his ire, the knights are seen as amusing in their folly but essentially harmless. The comedy created by the entire procession of bizarrely styled knights toting obtuse slogans hinges on “a precise distortion of sign-functions” (OssaRichardson 950), whereby signs and referents are shown to be in neither organic nor systematic relation. The tournament as such becomes a “catalogue of meaningless imprese” (948), in which “vehicles [. . .] have become dissociated from tenors, signs [. . .] have ceased to refer” (947). The representation of communicative failure witnessed here is characteristic of Wilton’s approach to language throughout the narrative and reflects his outlook rather than the earl’s, who is not himself aware of the absurdity of the tournament. The matter is serious to him and he comes out of it victorious: “So great was his glory that day as Geraldine was thereby eternally glorified” (267). While Wilton mocks Surrey’s single-minded Petrarchan devotion to Geraldine by presenting many of his actions as comically deranged—the

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prison sonnet, his tournament attire—there is also genuine affection and respect in his portrayal of the earl, who, along with Diamante, holds the distinction of being an actual companion for Wilton and not merely a (potential) victim. There is also the fact that, once upbraided for his unsanctioned impersonation by the earl, Wilton, not repentant but compliant, admits to the fraud and happily resumes his previous role (though he does insist on keeping Diamante with him against the earl’s wishes). He tells Surrey obediently, “thus challenged of stolen goods by the true owner [. . .] into my former state I return again; poor Jack Wilton and your servant am I, as I was at the beginning, and so will I persevere to my life’s ending” (260). The high regard he holds the earl in is never entirely undermined—neither by stolen identities nor by his ridicule of Petrarchan conceits. Wilton’s persistent but gentle mocking of the admirable Surrey, “compatible with affection for its object” (Duncan-Jones 5), may indeed be “the only really harmless jest in the work” (Lanham 213).39 Ultimately Surrey and Wilton are both writers who embody their craft and yet they could hardly be more different. Wilton is a materialist—and a “writer-showman” (Croston 96)—while Surrey is an idealist. Wilton is funny, flippant, and a cheat while Surrey is an earnest and honest soul. Wilton assumes female roles in thought and action, always flexible to the point of contortion, while Surrey is permanently straitjacketed by the typically masculine—but paradoxically also emasculating—role of the courtly lover. Wilton uses the fallen language of Eve and her descendants, while Surrey, a kind of Adam, aspires to the prelapsarian (but not without sometimes exposing the gap between aspiration and reality). Importantly, Wilton is a prose writer, while Surrey is a poet, with his overindulgence in alliteration—for example, the “funeral flame of my folly” (238)—just one indication of his lyric temperament. On the one hand, Nashe praises poetry and denigrates prose through Wilton and Surrey, and, on the other hand, he also turns both judgments upside down, allowing lowlife Wilton to make credible points and mocking Surrey’s idealism as quixotic folly. Throughout the entire narrative, of course, we experience Surrey through Wilton’s (and ultimately Nashe’s) distorting lens. A courtier, poet, and soldier like Surrey, Philip Sidney, in his The Defence of Poesy, famously considered poetry the precondition and inspiration for all other arts and sciences (the “serving sciences,” 14). By means of poetry, argued Sidney, men might come to “as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, can be capable of” (12). Poetry is more heavenly than earthly; it has “divine force in it” (6), and only those who have “earth-creeping” (58) minds can fail to realize this. This position very much echoes Surrey’s appreciation of poetry as a divine pursuit (as portrayed by Wilton/Nashe) while it is at odds with Wilton’s more “earth-creeping,”

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materialist attitude. Poets in Sidney’s mold create not what is but “what may be and should be” (10), while writers like Wilton do not aim at (re)creating “a golden [world]” (8)—like Sidneyan poets—but are happy enough dealing with the shades of grey infusing this “brazen” and fallen one (ibid.).40 Indeed, Sidney explicitly singles out Surrey (along with Edmund Spenser) as one of the few English “versifiers” within living memory “that have poetical sinews in them” (47). Moreover, Surrey’s verse is indicative “of a noble birth, and worthy of a noble mind” (ibid.). Wilton, however, is not of noble birth and while his mind might truthfully be described as agile, whimsical, and sharp, to call it noble would strain any definition of the term. Surrey, therefore, is a poet after Sidney’s own heart, a true “maker” who creates his own poetic cosmos in defiance of ugly and impure reality. Wilton, on the other hand, deliberately sidesteps the pure, the ideal, the divine, and denigrates it even as he yearns for it.41 Surrey’s noble endeavor is the glorification of his lady in word and in deed, a pursuit of religious importance to him, while Wilton’s motives are profit and the pleasure he derives from trickery—both of which Wilton associates with prose writing in particular.42 This places him squarely in the tradition of “the long association of the novel with low life, crime, and the demi-monde of society” (Rehder 246). As a courtier, Surrey is largely unencumbered by the economic challenges Wilton faces and which compel him to write for the marketplace. Approximating his “avatar” Wilton, Thomas Nashe cultivated an image of himself as a continuously scribbling writer, a prostitute to popular tastes (Mentz 414), and a prolific “slave of the press” (Schwyzer 225). Yet, according to Schwyzer, this does not quite ring true since Nashe, who habitually promised sequels to his publications, never actually wrote any, and in point of fact only produced one title per year on average (225–26). This is the same ratio of productivity for which Ben Jonson, according to himself, incurred the reputation of being “slow” (To the Reader l. 193). Still, the precarious standing of the first generation(s) of professional writers would certainly not have been alien to Thomas Nashe, whose “life, like the lives of many of his contemporaries [. . .] confirms that the new profession was highly insecure” (Ann Rosalind Jones 63), and whose frustration that a classical education had failed to gain him social and financial security was likewise shared by numerous contemporaries. Nashe had memorably voiced the complaint of an impoverished commercial writer in his popular booklet Pierce Penniless His Supplication to the Devil (1592), and a decade and a half later he was portrayed by Thomas Dekker, in the latter’s A Knight’s Conjuring (1607), as bemoaning stingy patrons (cf. Ann Rosalind Jones 62). Nashe was dead by then, having died in his mid-thirties circa 1601, but while he was alive, he faced the conundrum of turning the production of popular fiction for the marketplace “into something less ignominious for a learned man than

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other kinds of labor” (Ellinghausen 100). For Wilton, however, unlike his creator, there is neither shame in his writerly nor in his more directly fraudulent pursuits. He is an outsider, “a page at the court, a mercenary in France and Germany, an Anglican among the Anabaptists, and an Englishman in Italy” (Ann Rosalind Jones 75), but he is also robust enough to not let this discourage him from anything and vindictive enough to get back at actual or perceived detractors.43 In that way it is easy to see Wilton as “a direct projection of Nashe’s understandable frustrations and wishful thinking onto a freer and more powerful narrator/hero” (Lanham 216); to see him as an embodiment of, or an outlet for, a writer’s social and economic frustrations. Wilton may be Nashe’s “free-floating aggression”—to reutilize Lanham’s phrase—channeled into a character for target practice. Surrey, meanwhile, might be considered the distillation of a professional writer’s romantic dream of the writing life—a dream that Nashe does not believe in anymore but that he cannot quite give up. NOTES 1. Anthony Ossa-Richardson has helpfully drawn up an itinerary of Wilton’s travels (arranged from stations A to I) which demonstrates the nonchronological time jumps it contains: “(A) 1513 Capture of Tournay and Therouanne. (B) 1517 Outbreak of sweating sickness in London. (C) 1515 Battle of Marignano. (D) 1534 Insurrection of Anabaptists at Münster. (E) 1525 Battle of Frankenhausen. Jack meets Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (born in 1517). (F) 1508 Erasmus meets Sir Thomas More at Rotterdam: former decides to write Encomium Moriae (1509), latter is to write Utopia (1516). (G) 1572 Performance of Gulielmus Gnapheus’s comedy Acolastus at Wittenberg. (H) 1519 Disputation of Carolostadius and Luther at Wittenberg. (I) 1520 Festival at the Field of the Cloth of Gold (between Ardes and Guines)” (946–47). 2. Andrew Hiscock notes that “the text of The Unfortunate Traveller appears to have not been printed between 1594 and Grosart’s edition in 1883” (18). While only two printings occurred in Nashe’s lifetime (a low number compared to, for instance, prose titles by Deloney or even Nashe’s own Pierce Penniless) circa twenty reprints since the late nineteenth century testify to the popularity of the text among modern scholars (Ann Rosalind Jones 61; Salzman 88). Ann Rosalind Jones attributes this trend to the prevalent contemporary interest in Mikhail Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, and the professedly demystifying properties of the polyphonic novel (67; Ryan 7). In this vein, Kiernan Ryan sees Nashe’s work, unstable and incoherent as it is, as “a paradigmatic breakthrough rather than an eccentric failure” (15); Paul Salzman more critically stresses the present-day “over-emphasis of certain features which bear some resemblance to the concerns of modern novelists” (88). Cynthia Sulfridge comes to the interesting conclusion that Nashe’s confrontational stance toward his readers in The Unfortunate Traveller is to blame for the work’s unpopularity following its original publication: “It is a text which, in victimizing the reading audience upon whom its

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own success depended, paradoxically became itself the ultimate victim of its author’s peculiar humor” (14). 3. Jones defines the text itself as “a series of exercises in various sixteenth century genres, linked on the level of representation by Jack’s Continental wanderings and on the level of authorial performance by Nashe’s plunges, one by one, into the oral and written forms of his time” (64). For Werner von Koppenfels the perspective of “Wilton-the-page” links the different episodes and subgenres featured in the text but stops short of achieving real unity (Zur zeitgenössischen Aufnahme 361). 4. In spite of Wilton’s conduct, literary and nonliterary, Robert Rehder argues that Wilton is no rogue and the work therefore no picaresque (249). Contrarily, to Hyman (and others), “the picaresque mode is a crucial part of The Unfortunate Traveller’s ideological framework” (26). 5. Hyman points out that Nashe’s irreverent, twofold dedication (firstly, to the earl, and, secondly, to a readership of servants) is “a precocious turn away from the patronage system and toward the emerging public literary marketplace” (29). 6. According to the OED “a pert, saucy, vain, or insolent boy or young man [. . .]” (n. pag.). 7. In Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost “an impudent, diminutive page-boy” called Moth is generally assumed to be a parodistic rendering of Nashe (Nicholl). 8. Jennifer L. Andersen speculates that Nashe may have been influenced in his presentation of Leiden by “the contemporary English self-proclaimed messiah, Frantick Hacket, who instigated a bizarre conspiracy in 1591” (49). Hackett, too, was arrested and executed. Certainly, “Nashe’s reference to Frantick Hacket in Have With You to Saffron Walden (1596) shows that he knew of the false prophet, which makes the connection between Nashe’s John of Leiden and the Frantick Hacket episode less far-fetched” (ibid.). Not unlike Hacket, who had announced the Second Coming, Dutch Anabaptist Jan Matthys predicted Christ’s arrival in the city of Münster for Easter Sunday 1534. Matthys was killed outside the city walls soon after his prophecy had failed to come to pass and the leadership of his religious movement passed to John of Leiden. 9. Though Wilton may claim inexperience in the field, Nashe had written pamphlets, in support of Archbishop John Whitgift and his successor Richard Bancroft, countering the Puritan attacks on High Church Anglicanism which had been put forward with wit and vigor in the anonymous Martin Marprelate tracts of 1588–1589 (cf. Nicholl; Andersen 44). 10. Wenke identifies the devil as the “first immoral fiction-maker” (26), while pointing out that Jack indeed compares Petro and Tabitha to the devil (27). Wilton is supposedly different “from other fiction-makers in that Wilton never loses sight of the fact that he is creating fictions” and because he “decide[s] at the end of the story to give up fiction-making” (30). However, it is by no means clear that he does so; neither is it a given that Petro and Tabitha are unaware of their fiction making. 11. To Suzuki, Wilton’s invention of these bogus titles for himself demonstrates his eager undermining of royal authority (cf. 355–56). Thomas Dekker made use of the same strategy with the intent of satirizing prodigal young aristocrats: “[Y]our excellent drunkard, is your notable Gallant, and he that can passe away cleare without

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paying the Host in the Chimney-Corner, he is the king of Cannes, and the Emperour of Ale-houses” (Dekker, Meeting of Gallants 126; emphasis mine). 12. Despite their occasional drastic consequences, Harrington and Bond also refer to Wilton’s exploits as “relatively innocent” (244), while they acknowledge that “his humor [. . .] is based on pleasure in domination and manipulation” (ibid.). 13. Madelon S. Gohlke also points toward this: “There is a considerable degree of pride in Jack’s wit” (402). Compare also Allyna E. Ward’s evaluation: “Nashe’s protagonist, the reader quickly learns, is a gamester, one known at home for playing tricks” (86). 14. The sentiment is echoed by the prostitute Birdlime in Dekker and Webster’s Westward Ho, who argues that, in general, men are honest only “because they have no wit” (1.1.89–90). 15. Constance C. Relihan has pointed out that “the conventions of popular prose genres written for the marketplace were at a [. . .] nascent stage” (142), and that “a new stance toward readers therefore ha[d] to be found” (143). While Harrington and Bond have pointed toward Wilton’s presumption “that his audience, like the men he is able to swindle and humiliate, is susceptible to his superior wit” (245), Kiernan Ryan refers to “the reflexive stress on the narrative as narrative” (14), and observes “Nashe’s deliberate incorporation of the reader into the narrative in order to elicit a new kind of reading” (ibid.). David Kaula, too, considers “the effect of close reciprocal contact between speaker and audience” created by Wilton (48). Cynthia Sulfridge regards The Unfortunate Traveller as “a double first-person narrative [Wilton and Nashe]” which construes a “complex narrator-reader relationship” (2), in the context of which the “incurable rogue” Wilton initially addresses his readers as confidantes, then as victims (12–13). 16. In the anonymous trilogy of Parnassus plays performed as Christmas plays at St. John’s College, Cambridge, from 1597 to 1601, Nashe is probably represented by the character of Ingenioso, who, according to Laurie Ellinghausen, “deploy[s] resentment as a rhetorical tool and the basis for a new identity” (110), motivated by “scholars’ displacement within marketplace culture” (97). 17. To Wenke characters like Esdras and Cutwolf “come to a sticky end because when they lose the fiction they have no private self to fall back on, as does Wilton” (31), who still retains his love of England and Anglicanism when he allegedly turns his back on a writing life fueled by vice (cf. 31–32). 18. Schwyzer sees a parallel between Cutwolf’s speech and Christ’s lamentation in Nashe’s Christ’s Tears Over Jerusalem (cf. 250–51); Cutwolf may then be seen as a precursor to Nashe’s version of Christ, who surpasses the latter as “the true scourge” (258). 19. Conversely, Thomas Dekker, in his 1603 plague pamphlet The Wonderfull Yeare, is ill-amused at foreseeing the attempts of “some smoakt gallant, who at wit repines, / To dry Tabacco with my holesome lines” (21). Yet in the epistle dedicatory to Newes from Graves-end (1604) Dekker himself, feigning dissatisfaction with his writing, “condemns” his “paper to the drying and inflaming of Tobacco” (69).

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20. In Suzuki’s reading, “Jack defies and appropriates authority” in the first section of the narrative (356). Subsequently, “what is dramatized is the absence of genuine moral authority to rule human conduct” (367). 21. A. K. Croston has argued that “the metaphorical possibilities of language form the essential subject-matter” of Nashe’s prose (90), and noted that “rapid transitions” between images (92), a “stress on movement” (92), and a preference for physicality (93–94, 99) characterize his figurative language. With an eye toward physical images, Kaula argues that Nashe renders in writing the “physical anguish and grotesque deformity” of sinners in hell as visualized by artists like Bosch and Brueghel (44–45). In a similar vein, Hyman has written of “Nashe’s amoral, brilliant, obsessively carnal prose” (37). 22. Charles Larson has pointed out that “[t]he physical destruction in the last third of the narrative has a somewhat different focus in that Nashe turns from mass disaster to individual acts of aggression” (21). 23. Neil Rhodes also classifies Nashe’s text as grotesque in his 1980 monograph Elizabethan Grotesque (Routledge and Kegan Paul), and Charles Larson refers to Nashe’s “sensibility toward life,” as exhibited in this work in particular, as “painfully—though comically—grotesque” (19). Larson further argues that Nashe shares a sense of humor and a taste for grotesque physical violence with François Rabelais (26), while Kaula refers to Nashe’s inclination toward “Rabelaisian [. . .] creatural realism” (57). Philip Schwyzer describes the work as “grotesque fantasy” (229), and Croston has written of “Nashe’s grotesque purposes” (91). According to Millard grotesque elements in much English prose fiction published between 1579 and 1600 are constituted by “[t]he combination of crude joke and terrible detail” (483), by an uncomfortable fusion of “mirth and horror, seriousness and mockery” (484). Cf. also Philip Thomson’s The Grotesque (Methuen, 1972). 24. The similes which Wilton uses to describe casualties of the 1515 Battle of Marignano (the injured flop like fish on dry land, they roll in gore like cattle in their own excrement, with fallen horses serving as horrifying tombstones) not only function as a distancing device, according to Charles Larson, but “make [. . .] possible an intellectual pleasure in the perception of unexpected similarities between tenor and vehicle” (20). However, one might equally argue that this string of bizarre comparisons adds up to nothing but a callous and ultimately vacant caricature of injury, pain, and death. 25. Ossa-Richardson has found that thirty-two of Wilton’s quotations, out of a total of forty-two, are drawn from Ovid and that, while “we expect [. . .] the phrases in Nashe’s text to be the same as those in Ovid’s, [. . .] we find the Roman author often deliberately misquoted, and his words existing at a peculiar distance from their original meanings” (951). 26. Wendy Hyman has commented on this disruption that “[n]owhere, with the possible exception of some of the most daring seventeenth-century metaphysical conceits, do we find this degree of strain between tenor and vehicle” (24). 27. On the episode of Jack and the cider merchant, Haas argues, “We couldn’t be given a clearer example of the notion that the efficacy of rhetoric has little relation to the nobility of its purpose” (31). On Ramus’s conception of the representative value of language Haas says, “Ramus still believes that knowledge can be generated in and

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through language, but that the proper home of such generation is in the art of dialectic. In a sense, he has simply moved around the classifications” (30). 28. Stephen Greenblatt’s account of the historical reception of Genesis reveals that “[l]earned commentators remarked that the Hebrew name Eve was related to the Aramaic word for snake” and that therefore, to some Christians, “it is the woman who is the real serpent” (131). 29. The earl, who may or may not be a Catholic exile, echoes Roger Ascham’s trepidation about the moral risks of travel, that is, the possibility of “being infected by Italian vice” (Hadfield 252). Laurie Ellinghausen points out the “common representations of displaced learned men as wanderers or vagrants” (110), which may draw a connecting line between the scholar Nashe and his vagabond alter ego Wilton. 30. In the text which prompted Gaston Paris’s original description of “courtly love,” Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot: Le Chevalier de la Charrette (The Knight of the Cart), the lovers, Lancelot and Guinevere, share a love that is both physical and spiritual. Yet, Lancelot’s love is greater than Guinevere’s and, indeed, functions as the catalyst for multiple heroic feats that save many of King Arthur’s subjects. 31. In Nashe’s poem “Choice of Valentines”—also widely known as “Nashe His Dildo”—gender roles are subverted in a different way: Francis, a female prostitute, is cast in the role of the sun, leaving Tomalin, her male visitor, “sucking in the influence of the sunbeams” (Moulton 349). 32. A notably amusing facet of Wilton’s materialist outlook is caught by Philip Schwyzer, who comments on the episode in which the imprisoned Wilton fears that a swelling on his skin may represent his soul’s attempt to escape from his body: “Jack really has no idea what it means for the soul to be free of the body. His attempt to imagine his own incorporeal part is a hilarious example of being unclear on the concept” (239). Yet, John Donne not only articulates the notion that blood is the seat of the soul in a sermon, in his “divine” poem “Good Friday, 1613: Riding Westward,” he muses that Christ’s sacrifice was to spill “that blood which is / The Seat of all our souls, if not of his” (l. 25–26). 33. Harrington and Bond observe accurately, “We have been listening to Jack speak with relish about his youthful exploits, but we never hear him connect the violence and manipulation he has witnessed and experienced to the violence and manipulations he has perpetrated himself” (249). 34. Yet Catherine Bates is critical of this “recuperative narrative” (12), that is, of the common interpretation of the lover’s subordination in Petrarchan love poetry as merely the flip side of his poetic/literary dominance and mastery. This stance—found in influential works of scholarly criticism from C. S. Lewis’s Allegory of Love to Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning and beyond (10, 15)—is, to Bates, overly and self-servingly invested in “the masterly and masculine writing subject” (16). 35. The excerpts are from Surrey’s “Description of the Fickle Affections, Panges, and Sleights of Love” first published posthumously in Tottel’s Miscellany (1557) (Howard 9–11). 36. Hiscock points out that Nashe’s text actually served to implant the image of “Surrey in Italy as knight errant and/or lovesick pilgrim” in the popular imagination

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although it never happened (10). Werner von Koppenfels refers to two texts that draw on Nashe’s presentation of Surrey in Italy: “Draytons Heroidenepisteln von Surrey und Lady Geraldine (1597/99) und eine Episode aus Scotts Lay of the Last Minstrel” (“Zur zeitgenössischen Aufnahme” 362). 37. Wenke identifies three “kinds of fiction” in the book: (1) told by individuals for individual purposes, this is flexible and multiple; (2) a kind that is in the service of “causes larger than the self,” told by the Anabaptists and German Lutherans but also by Surrey (chivalry) and Cutwolf (revenge) (18); (3) the last kind is characterized by amoral artificiality (e.g., the summer house) (ibid.). 38. Surrey’s ostrich-horse may owe something to the steed of Argalus, dressed as an eagle in book three of Sidney’s New Arcadia, which also offers the template of a tournament in defense of a woman’s beauty (Duncan-Jones 3–4; Koppenfels, “Two Notes” 20–21). Notably the wings of Surrey’s courser move and “make a flickering sound such as eagles do” (262). C. G. Harlow points out that Nashe probably drew on Samuel Daniel’s The Worthy Tract of Paulus Iovius (1585), Daniel’s translation of Paolo Giovio’s Dialogo dell’ Imprese Militari et Amorose (1555), for his ostrich lore, while Shakespeare, in turn, drew on Nashe for descriptions of Prince Hal and companions in 1 Henry IV (cf. Harlow 172). 39. This leads Dorothy Jones to deem it “unlikely that Nashe is mocking the poetry of the real Surrey, but rather those attitudes and conventions of which his verse had been so great an exemplar” (50). Kaula interprets Wilton’s stance toward Surrey as suggesting that “if the world must have folly, a quixotic, other-worldly one is far preferable to the malicious varieties” (45). To Wendy Hyman, “Nashe clearly admires his predecessor” even while “Surrey typifies the beneficiary of the very patronage system against which the text postures” (36). 40. Yet Sidney himself does not categorically distinguish between the poetic and didactic potential of prose and verse: “Which I speak to show that it is not riming and versing that makes a poet—no more than a long gown makes an advocate, who, though he pleaded in armor, should be an advocate and no soldier—but it is that feigning notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with that delightful teaching, which must be the right describing note to know a poet by” (11). Satire and comedy can also perform this “delightful teaching” (53) unless they are “abused” by bad poets. 41. Philip Schwyzer comments on the difference between Nashe’s and Sidney’s perspectives on writing in the following way: “Nashe’s idea of professionalism stands opposed to the amateur code of Philip Sidney, who presented his work as the fruits of idleness, circulated his poetry in manuscript, and scorned those who wrote for print” (225). For Nashe, writing is “day labor,” a craft, whereas for Sidney it is like giving birth, that is, the experience of a different kind of labor altogether (Mentz 413). To Hyman, Nashe experiences an “agon with courtly and traditional models of literary production,” embodied by people like Sidney and Surrey, while also engaging in “ambivalent self-promotion as the progenitor of a radical, new idea of authorship” (25). 42. Ironically a shift away from verse toward prose across all genres of writing occurred in France around the year 1200 because prose had become increasingly

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associated with truth and facticity while verse accrued an aura of artificiality and inaccuracy (Haug 80–81). 43. Cf. Lanham on Wilton’s outsider status: “Wherever he finds himself, he occupies an ambivalent, indeterminate place. He is a page, but certainly not one of the pert small boys who delighted the Elizabethan theatre audiences; neither is he a commoner, nor yet is he treated like a gentleman. He is a traveler in a foreign land. He is a Falstaff who gets mixed up in the wars. He is a Protestant in Catholic Italy, an orthodox Anglican among the Anabaptists” (207).

WORKS CITED Andersen, Jennifer L. “Anti-Puritanism, Anti-Popery, and Gallows Rhetoric in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 35.1 (2004): 43–63. Bates, Catherine. Masculinity, Gender and Identity in the English Renaissance Lyric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Brown, Georgia, ed. Thomas Nashe. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011. Croston, A. K. “The Use of Imagery in Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” The Review of English Studies 24.94 (1948): 90–101. Dekker, Thomas, and John Webster. Westward Ho. 1607. The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker. Vol. 2. Ed. Fredson Bowers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955. 311–403. Donne, John. John Donne: The Complete English Poems. Ed. A. J. Smith. London: Penguin, 1973. Duncan-Jones, Katherine. “Nashe and Sidney: The Tournament in The Unfortunate Traveller.” The Modern Language Review 63.1 (1968): 3–6. Ellinghausen, Laurie. “The Uses of Resentment: Nashe, Parnassus, and the Poet’s Mystery.” Brown 95–120. Fleck, Andrew. “Anatomizing the Body Politic: The Nation and the Renaissance Body in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” Modern Philology 104.3 (2007): 295–328. Gohlke, Madelon S. “Wits Wantonness: The Unfortunate Traveller as Picaresque.” Studies in Philology 73.4 (1976): 397–413. Greenblatt, Stephen. The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve. London: The Bodley Head, 2017. Haas, Kurtis B. “The Unfortunate Traveller and the Ramist Controversy: A Narrative Dilemma.” Quidditas 24 (2003): 25–37. Hadfield, Andrew. Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Harlow, C. G. “Shakespeare, Nashe, and the Ostrich Crux in 1 Henry IV.” Shakespeare Quarterly 17.2 (1966): 171–74. Harrington, Susan Marie, and Michal Nahor Bond. “‘Good Sir, Be Ruld By Me’: Patterns of Domination and Manipulation in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” Studies in Short Fiction 24.3 (1987): 243–50.

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Haug, Walter. “Das Land, von welchem niemand wiederkehrt”: Mythos, Fiktion und Wahrheit in Chrétien’s Chevalier de la Charrete, im Lanzelet Ulrichs von Zatzikhoven und im Lancelot-Prosaroman. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1978. Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte 21. Hiscock, Andrew. “‘Blabbing Leaves of Betraying Paper’: Configuring the Past in George Gascoigne’s The Adventures of Master F.J., Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller and Thomas Deloney’s Jack of Newbury.” English 52.202 (2003): 1–20. Howard, Henry (Earl of Surrey). “Desciption of the Fickle Affections, Panges, and Sleights of Love.” Tottel’s Miscellany: Songs and Sonnets of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Others. Ed. Amanda Holton and Tom Macfaul. London: Penguin Classics, 2011. 9–11. Hyman, Wendy. “Authorial Self-Consciousness in Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 45.1 (2005): 23–41. Jager, Eric. “Did Eve Invent Writing? Script and the Fall in ‘The Adam Books.’” Studies in Philology 93.3 (1996): 229–50. Jones, Ann Rosalind. “Inside the Outsider: Nashe’s Unfortunate Traveller and Bakhtin’s Polyphonic Novel.” ELH 50.1 (1983): 61–81. Jones, Dorothy. “An Example of Anti-Petrarchan Satire in Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” The Yearbook of English Studies 1 (1971): 48–54. Jonson, Ben. Poetaster. 1601. Ben Jonson. Vol. 4. Ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson. First ed. 1932. Oxford: Clarendon, 1954. 185–325. Kaula, David. “The Low Style in Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 6.1 (1966): 43–57. Lanham, Richard. A. “Tom Nashe and Jack Wilton: Personality as Structure in The Unfortunate Traveller.” Studies in Short Fiction 4.3 (1967): 201–16. Larson, Charles. “The Comedy of Violence in Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” Cahiers élisabéthains 8 (1975): 15–29. Leggatt, Alexander. “Artistic Coherence in The Unfortunate Traveller.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 14.1 (1974): 31–46. Lichfield, Richard. The Trimming of Thomas Nashe Gentleman. 1597. EEBO. Mentz, Steve. “Day Labor: Nashe and the Practice of Prose in Early Modern England.” Brown 411–25. Millard, Barbara C. “Thomas Nashe and the Functional Grotesque in Elizabethan Prose Fiction.” Brown 483–92. Morrow, Patrick. “The Brazen World of Thomas Nashe and The Unfortunate Traveller.” The Journal of Popular Culture 9.3 (1975): 638–44. Moulton, Ian Frederick. “Transmuted into a Woman or Worse: Masculine Gender Identity and Thomas Nashe’s ‘Choice of Valentines.’” Brown 329–60. Müller-Wood, Anja. “‘Revenge and Innovation’: Thomas Nashe’s Enduring Vision of Fundamentalism.” Writing Fundamentalism. Ed. Axel Stähler and Klaus Stierstorfer. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2009. 155–76. Nashe, Thomas. The Unfortunate Traveller. 1594. An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Oxford World’s Classics.

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Nicholl, Charles. “Nashe, Thomas (bap. 1567, d. c. 1601),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, January 2008 http:​//​www​.oxforddnb​.com​/view​/article​/19790. Accessed 19 July 2017. Ossa-Richardson, Anthony. “Ovid and the ‘Free Play with Signs’ in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” Modern Language Review 101.4 (2006): 945–56. Rehder, Rober. “Realism Again: Flaubert’s Barometer and The Unfortunate Traveller.” Narrative Strategies in Early English Fiction. Ed. James Hogg and Holger Klein. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1995. 241–58. Relihan, Constance C. “Rhetoric, Gender, and Audience Construction in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” Framing Elizabethan Fictions: Contemporary Approaches to Early Modern Prose. Ed. Relihan. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996. 141–52. Ryan, Kiernan. “The Extemporal Vein: Thomas Nashe and the Invention of Modern Narrative.” Brown 3–16. Salzman, Paul. English Prose Fiction 1558–1700: A Critical History. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985. Schwyzer, Philip. “Summer Fruit and Autumn Leaves: Thomas Nashe in 1593.” Brown 223–59. Sidney, Philip. The Defence of Poesy. Ca. 1579. Publ. 1595. Ed. Albert S. Cook. Boston: Athenaeum Press, 1890. Simon, Louise. “Rerouting The Unfortunate Traveller: Strategies for Coherence and Direction.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 28.1 (1988): 17–38. Stephanson, Raymond. “The Epistemological Challenge of Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 23.1 (1983): 21–36. Sulfridge, Cynthia. “The Unfortunate Traveller: Nashe’s Narrative in a ‘Cleane Different Vaine.’” The Journal of Narrative Technique 10.1 (1980): 1–15. Suzuki, Mihoko. “‘Signiorie Ouer the Pages’: The Crisis of Authority in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” Studies in Philology 81.3 (1984): 348–71. von Koppenfels, Werner. “Two Notes on Imprese in Elizabethan Literature: Daniel’s Additions to The Worthy Tract of Paulus Iovius; Sidney’s Arcadia and the Tournament Scene in The Unfortunate Traveller.” Renaissance Quarterly 24.1 (1971): 13–25. ———. “Zur zeitgenössischen Aufnahme des elisabethanischen ‘Romans’: Nashes Unfortunate Traveller in der Literatur der Shakespeare-Epoche.” Anglia 94 (1976) 361–87. Ward, Allyna E. “An Outlandish Travel Chronicle: Farce, History, and Fiction in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” The Yearbook of English Studies 41.1 (2011): 84–98. Wenke, John. “The Moral Aesthetic of Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.” Renascence 34.1 (1981): 17–33.

Chapter Four

Public Personas of Dangerous Men Killing Constructed Identities with Suicide by Sequel Christopher Burlingame

They are bad men. They’re immoral. They’re dangerous. They’ve been called enfant terrible, been accused of engaging in “miserablism,” “challenge[d] the conventions of decorum” and “restraint,” and been charged with writing for people “who don’t normally read novels” (Christensen; Morace 36; Giles 1; Newman). They’ve given us nightmare sequences that leave both the characters and audiences wanting to curl into the fetal position (Selby, Requiem; Aronofsky). They’ve written “the most shoplifted book” in British history and mocked audiences about their willingness to engage in “washing machine culture” and desire to “Choose Life” (MacLeod 89). They’ve continued to be misinterpreted and co-opted for having created aspirational cult figures of serial killers and fascist alter egos. They’ve published works that have entered into the cultural lexicon an awareness that the first rule of fight club is “you don’t talk about fight club” and the second rule of fight club is . . . well, you get it. They’ve been the subject of critical derision and dismissal over both style and content, and have faced book boycotts, bans, obscenity trials on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, even death threats, but they’ve also each had at least two of their works adapted to films for mainstream audiences. This metric is not insignificant, especially in light of critical efforts in both mainstream publications and traditionalist academic circles to discredit the artistic merits and sociopolitical relevance of the works and their authors.

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Between 1996 and 2000, what I will refer to as the golden age of adapting transgressive fiction, Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk, Bret Easton Ellis, and Hubert Selby Jr. saw the most profitable and culturally impactful adaptations of their works produced and distributed with Trainspotting, Fight Club, American Psycho, and Requiem for a Dream, respectively. Even if slightly delayed due to limited releases, underwhelming publicity campaigns, negative reviews, or poor box office performance, the success of these adaptations elevated the status of each author and directed a greater scrutiny to both their work and the identities of the authors. However, having such culturally significant adaptation legitimized them to the extent that they could begin efforts at challenging the narratives that had been created about them, especially the propensity of critics to conflate author and character in such a manner that it seems to be intended to damage the credibility of the transgressive writers as true artists. Each of these authors, who have since been linked together under the banner of writing transgressive fiction, have been slow to attain legitimacy in literary studies primarily because their novels, which unapologetically present extreme examples of sex, drug abuse, and violence, have faced persistent claims of misogyny and employing shock for the sake of shock. Too often reviewers and academic scholars whose views tend to reflect a more traditional or conservative ideal of what “Literature” should be were quick to call these books dirty or immoral and promote the idea that they were without any redeeming qualities or artistic merit because they include explicit content. I do not ignore the presence of extreme content and its potential to be off-putting to many readers, but I prefer to attempt to understand what the inclusion of the content means. For me, transgressive fiction deploys representations of explicit acts for the purpose of exposing injustices to promote a change to thought patterns that have the potential to inspire systemic changes. Sonia Baelo-Allué is very much at the forefront of challenging some of the early negative or dismissive assessments of transgressive fiction with her 2011 monograph, Bret Easton Ellis’s Controversial Fiction: Writing Between High and Low Culture, but Robin Mookerjee’s 2013 book Transgressive Fiction: The New Satiric Tradition and Kathryn Hume’s 2012 Aggressive Fictions: Reading the Contemporary American Novel, as well as several books about each of these individual actions, all aim to complicate the oversimplified traditionalist that suggests it is not worthy of being a part of the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century canon, if even such a thing exists. Fixating on the author’s biography is a lazy approach to assessing any form of art, but especially art that challenges the very norms that inform the efforts for dismissing them out of hand as subliterary trash. Efforts by establishment publications at maintaining antiquated standards for what can and cannot or should or should not be considered literary and worthy of

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audiences are presumptuous and reflect a subtle condescension toward large swaths of society. More importantly, these critical responses to transgressive fiction that can be found in mainstream media outlets like the New York Times regularly conflate the author with the author’s characters and the transgressions the characters commit in order to Other or vilify the writer and divert attention away from the anti-patriarchal capitalist messaging of their work. Sonia Baelo-Allué’s observation about the response to Ellis’s first novel, Less Than Zero, which also seems to persist through the assessment of his oeuvre, could easily be applied to any of the writers in this study in that “some critics just focused on his persona and the biographical details that connected Ellis with the characters in the novel, ignoring his style and the quality of the book” (45). While some readers may take the representations of violence, sexism, racism, and misogyny at face value and take offense or stop reading, which is their prerogative, especially because the authors do not insert a point of view that enables any condemnation, I would prefer to not have readers who may be receptive to challenging the status quo not be prematurely biased against a work by critics because it contains explicit content. I think transgressive fiction has the opportunity to be didactic but not in the sense that it is teaching the reader how to behave. Instead, what is being taught is how to look for how or why the transgressions could escalate to such an extreme. From there, transgressive fiction seems to hope the reader will be able to see beyond the horror of the transgression being presented in graphic detail to the root cause. Transgressive fiction aims to show how a rotted tree has absorbed its disease from the forest in which it sprung up. Transgressive fiction wants readers to be outraged not by the graphic description of bodily mutilation and genitalia but by the reality that there were not safeguards to protect against the consequences of transgression or even worse that the supposed safeguards against this kind of horror were only ever an illusion that has been employed to keep them complacent and easily managed by those benefiting from their suffering or the suffering occurring on the page in from of them. The dismissals found in major media outlets are problematic because of the immediacy with which they can be released and consumed. The hot-take responses preempt with a bias the reflection and scholarly research that would enable academic writers, like myself and Baelo-Allué, Robin Mookerjee, Kathryn Hume, and Douglas Keesey, to look beyond their fixation of the spectacle of transgression and what it potentially says about the writer rather than look to what the writer may be using the spectacle for in an effort to make a comment about the society that produces the necessity for transgression as a reaction to systemic injustices. It’s far easier to suggest that someone is bad and punish them because they do bad things than it is to address that the system that calls them bad is complicit in the first place. The irony of the tactics being used against

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the transgressive writers is that they precisely prove the transgressive writers’ point about how social stratification and systemic injustices are intentionally disadvantaging those without the means or agency to fight against them. As so often happens, the first impressions and projection of author identities constructed by Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times and other writers for major media outlets are hard to shake, especially when they direct their analysis and speculation toward formulating identities of the authors that seem all too convenient to these outlets’s role in preserving the status quo as tastemakers. The impact of how mainstream media outlets can tip the scales against authors can be seen in the pre-publication leaks of some of American Psycho’s most violent scenes to Time and Spy magazines which caused it to be dropped by Simon & Schuster and provoked calls for boycotts of the novel when it was picked up by Knopf in 1991. In this particular instance, prominent feminist activists, including Gloria Steinem and Andrea Dworkin, viewed the novel as a threat to the social and moral fiber of society for being too real in creating a “how-to book on the torture and dismemberment of women,” and “the sexism, racism, selfishness, and narcissism of the book were attributed to its author and treated as uncritical expressions of Ellis’s own values (or lack thereof)” (Mandel 9). Because of this type of conflation, attacks against characters in later novels by these authors can also be read as the default form of ad hominem attacks taking the place of more thoughtful and nuanced criticism. In response to feminist critics, who called for a boycott of American Psycho on the grounds that it was “a snuff book,” Ellis used a 1991 interview with the New York Times’s Roger Cohen to retort, “Bateman is a misogynist. In fact, he’s beyond that, he’s just barbarous. But I would think most Americans learn in junior high to differentiate between the writer and the character he is writing about” (Califia). While media appearances with the same outlets constructing the narratives against them are one opportunity the writers have for rebuttal, Ellis will become so fed up with having to separate himself from his characters that he will write an entire novel, Lunar Park, with a character of his exact namesake and, in 2010, he will write a sequel to his breakout 1985 novel, Less Than Zero, in which he challenges the very identity and credibility of its author himself. With Lunar Park and 2010’s Imperial Bedrooms, which will be discussed at greater length later, Ellis gives the tastemakers who sought to discredit him exactly what they’ve claimed all along but on his terms. He reclaims some of his own identity by leaning into and complicating the identity the media outlets constructed and have repeatedly attempted to foist upon him. The presumed blurring of author and character may be due to the tendency of the writers of transgressive fiction to “not favour dense plots and elaborate styles but a flat, affectless, atonal prose” and employ first-person narration as well as stream of consiousness and even second-person direct address

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(Baelo-Allué 33). These approaches to style and point of view do not naturally create opportunities to “condemn the morally despicable acts described, which is the most criticized aspect of this fiction” (Baelo-Allué 33). I want to argue that the moral outrage over the spectacle of transgression, showing the needle in the vein or the dismemberment of a human body, without an explicit judgment by the author in the novels is actually a diversion from following the threads of each act back to the systemic racism and sexism as well as the increasingly intentional aggravation of income inequality that necessitates the escape from oppression through drugs, sex, and violence. Often the physical body is the lone part of reality over which marginalized groups can exert any sense of agency or control. I would not go so far as to suggest a conspiracy among a wealthy cabal and the underling writers they employ; however, the repeated returns to these tactics is rather coincidental, especially with regard to writers of transgressive fiction whose works employ a style and point of view that create empathy for the characters engaging in the transgressions. In particular, what will take the form of voice-over in three of the four film adaptations from the golden age, first-person inner monologue reveals how characters like heroin addicts (Trainspotting), serial killers (American Psycho), and individuals with dissociative identity disorder (Fight Club) are shaped by and respond to the world that produces them and either triggers or enables their transgressions. In Trainspotting, Renton’s infamous “Choose Life” diatribe about consumer capitalism is repurposed as a voice-over and framing device for the film to offer insight into how consumerism as a totalizing and internalized ideology is reflected in how heroin addicts rationalize their drug use: “Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin? . . . People think it’s all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pure pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it. After all we’re not fucking stupid. . . . Take the best orgasm you ever had and multiply it by a thousand and you’re still nowhere near it” (Hodge). In this sequence, the first-person narration/inner monologue complicates the prevailing narrative about drug addicts by offering the perspective of a user rather than what those in power have told society to believe about users as being criminals and morally depraved individuals. This in turn offers the potential for audiences to recognize how systems of power, especially patriarchal capitalism as it has manifested under and since Reagan and Thatcher, are oppressive and create the conditions and shape the individual weltanschauungs that necessitate extreme and transgressive responses to that oppression. Patriarchal capitalism is a term first employed by second-wave feminists like Carol A. Brown and Zillah Eisenstein. Later, bell hooks offered a more nuanced and representative term in her essay “Understanding Patriarchy.” In articulating the intersections of institutions,

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narratives, and norms that govern a patriarchal capitalist society, hooks refers to an “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (1). When updating patriarchal capitalism to be more inclusive, the concept demands recognition of the way women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and other marginalized groups have and continue to be scapegoated and kept in economically and socially disadvantaged positions. In the context of transgressive fiction, patriarchal capitalism is meant to account for the ways in which society is conditioned to accept how straight, white, wealthy “males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain dominance through psychological terrorism and violence,” and it seems necessary to add legislation (hooks 1). Not passing judgment on the characters for their transgressions creates opportunities for the audiences to experience empathy or at least promotes a kind of understanding for the why behind the transgressions. Transgressive fiction endangers the status quo of a power elite that depends on the delineation of clear and simplistic boundaries such as the ability to suggest a behavior, person or group of people who are either in or out, good or bad, ally or enemy. The extreme representations of sex, drugs, and violence that occur without any explicit commentary by the author regarding morality are perceived to be problematic by those who depend on and employ narratives to serve as teaching tools that preserve the current order of the society that keeps them in positions of power. Transgressive fiction and its writers are dangerous because they complicate the simplistic good and evil binary. While revolutionary literature of the past may serve as propaganda against those in power and can serve as a call to action, transgressive fiction, especially the particular brand of postmodern transgressive fiction being discussed here, does not presume to tell audiences what to think but instead attempts to get them to think freely. There is a near journalistic objectivist ideal at work in transgressive fiction where authors show behaviors and characters that defy and even flout social norms, but they present them in such a matter-of-fact manner that the reader, in that intimate one-on-one engagement with the text, will have the opportunity to evaluate the world as it is and pick sides. Systems of power like patriarchal capitalism depend on this type of “us versus them” mentality to construct and enforce the norms, narratives, and myths that the “power elite” use to insulate themselves from anything that could endanger their position of power like critical thought and reflection among the much larger middle and lower classes (Loewen 305). In patriarchal capitalist societies, the power elite would be comprised of mostly white males of wealth and power, such as politicians, business executives, and others, who either dictate or perpetuate an interconnected system of governmental, legal, and socially constructed norms to which members of society must conform.

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The literary and social criticism of transgressive fiction attempts to impose the binary hierarchy of high and low, and these transgressive writers have, themselves, been bestowed with a label that connotes outsider or Other status, and they seek to reveal the injustice of how “[h]istory seen from above and history seen from below are irreducibly different and they consequently impose radically different perspectives on the questions of hierarchy” (Stallybrass and White 4). The ad hominem attacks, in essence, create personas or caricatures of the authors that have been constructed by those in power, and the authors must transgress in order to regain control of their own identities. The act of naming or caricaturizing groups of people for the sake of making them easier to vilify is a common tactic of the power elite in patriarchal capitalist societies. In the works of Welsh, Palahniuk, and Selby, marginalized groups that although they are often, but not always, white are still attempting to escape the strictures placed on them by society. These characters must violate the norms used by the power elite to perpetuate oppression against those marginalized groups without the power or means to ascend from their downtrodden social position. Despite the manner in which their whiteness may seem to associate the characters in transgressive fiction with the status quo, some or multiple elements of their identities place them in the marginalized categories of Otherness such as being poor, drug users, prone to extreme violence, and/ or sexually fluid and promiscuous. Some of these norms and myths that they violate include what Adrienne Rich describes as “compulsory heterosexuality” or the “methods by which male power is manifested and maintained . . . ranging from physical brutality to control of consciousness,” and the assertion is that individuals who have achieved wealth and success have done so due to their superior moral character, and most notably, the American Dream (633; 640). This particular group of transgressive writers seeks to undermine the Reaganite brand of patriarchal capitalism that posits that marginalized Others are in that position due to moral failings rather than unjust systems of power that restrict their access to the financial, social, and emotional resources necessary to achieve progress, let alone equality. For four examples, in Trainspotting, heroin use and criminality are a reaction against a socioeconomic system and set of behavioral norms that have proven to be restrictive to the members of working-class Leith residents in Edinburgh, Scotland. In Fight Club, the unnamed narrator engages in physical violence and creates a hypermasculine alter ego to overcome his sense of being numbed by a consumerist society to the point that he feels emasculated and unable to experience anything authentic. Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream are both populated with characters trapped in cycles of poverty and middle-class delusions of social mobility propagated by the myth of the American Dream. So, they engage in drug overdoses, nonheterosexual

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sex, prostitution, pedophilia, and violence under the belief that if they just make that next score by violating a norm they’ll be on their way to the good life, where they will not have to make those compromises anymore. Ellis traffics in the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum to unravel the illusion about how having attained wealth and power is synonymous with moral superiority. He reveals how being at the top actually enables individuals to disregard and even flout the norms their class created en route to indulging their worst impulses such as rape, torture, and murder. When the narrator in Less Than Zero, Clay, who claims to “need to see the worst,” attempts to stop his friend from gang-raping a twelve-year-old girl by suggesting it is not “right,” his friend challenges him by saying, “What is right? If you want something, you have the right to take it. If you want to do something, you have the right to do it” (Ellis 175; 189). Ellis unveils how the wealthy and powerful feel entitled to commit heinous acts against the physical bodies of themselves and others because it is the last threshold of possession and consumption; however, their money and power also mean they will not face the same kind of consequences for engaging in these transgressions as the characters in Welsh’s, Palahniuk’s, and Selby’s works. Because Less Than Zero was Ellis’s first novel and his characters are always of his same age and social class, this was the first opportunity for Kakutani to suggest how Ellis’s “slick, first person narrative . . . encourages one to read the novel as a largely autobiographical account” and Terry Teachout to dismiss the novel as “a piece of journalism” (Baelo-Allué 41). Baelo-Allué also documents how Ellis’s decisions to be featured in profiles with People magazine have contributed to affirming the conflation made by mainstream media critics, but American Psycho took the premise of the insider look at how the rich abuse their position of power to the next level by making the narrator a serial killer who, despite his confessions, gets away with torture and murder. This frustration over being defined by the subject matter and characters about which they write is a direct response to the most persistent tactic employed to detract from a fair assessment of their work and how it challenges the preservation of the status quo. Ellis in particular has a long-running effort at reclaiming his own identity as separate from the characters in his fiction. According to Sonia Baelo-Allué, After Less Than Zero, he was seen as one of the jaded California kids who populate his novel; after American Psycho, he seemed to endorse serial killing, at least according to some feminists, as well as a type of serial consumer obsessed with partying and eating out. After Glamorama, he was a fatuous celebrity interested in superficiality and trivia. In Lunar Park it is Ellis himself who turns the narrator of the novel into a version of himself, mocking the usual confusion between narrator and author present in many reviews of his novels. (10–11)

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Although much emphasis has been placed on Ellis’s decision to name the protagonist of Lunar Park Bret Easton Ellis, I would instead like to focus my analysis on the parallels between how he and Palahniuk will write sequels to their breakout novels, Imperial Bedrooms and Fight Club 2, respectively, which should be read as efforts to dispel the narratives propagated about them that conflate them with their characters and how both authors will attempt to kill off some version of themselves in the process. I argue that the sequel, as a product for rebuffing the persistent conflations, is far more effective than the cameo appearances made by Selby and Welsh where they appear as characters who antagonize the protagonists with whom they’ve been conflated. These white male transgressive authors, especially Ellis, Palahniuk, Selby, and Welsh, are uniquely positioned to correct the perception that they are as monstrous as the characters and actions about which they write or at the very least challenge the conflation tactic. The novel-to-film adaptations of their work should be viewed as a tool or signal of endorsement by hegemonic forces, and as a result, outside of the four golden age films, the other novel-to-film adaptations of transgressive fiction typically de-fang or tame the most transgressive elements of the source material and end up reflecting the norms and narratives of patriarchal capitalism. The golden age adaptations are the result of a perfect sociopolitical, pop-cultural, and historical moment toward the end of the Clinton administration, with its many scandals, when the mainstreaming of punk and alternative rock, gangsta rap, and other transgressive forms of entertainment were fulfilling audience demands to find something authentic, raw, and real. However, after the 9/11 attacks, the golden age had to come to an abrupt end because of the need to circle the wagons around the institutions of patriarchal capitalism to ensure that power stays in the hands of those at the top. Although a simple answer would be to point directly to the numerous adaptations of works by these authors—The Rules of Attraction (2002), Choke (2008), The Informers (2009), Filth (2013), T2:Trainspotting (2017)—and how badly they seem to subvert the anti-patriarchal messaging through stylistic choices, tonal shifts, and overall alterations to the plot, but that is a much longer discussion for an alternative venue, my dissertation “Taming the Terrible? Transgressive Novels, Adaptation, and the Illusion of Legitimacy.” In the films produced and released post–9/11, especially during the Obama administration, the choices made in the films seem to reflect the efforts to restore a sense of order to a world forever changed by the United States’ vulnerability to terrorist attacks, the exposure of political corruption and scandals, a failed war, and an economic crisis that all seemed to counter the narratives of American exceptionalism upon which the power elite depend. The source novels for each of these adaptations each expose a broken system at a time when it was not tenable to have the general public

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lose anymore faith in the system, and so the films were altered in a way that affirms the conventional narrative tropes. The repeated attempts to profit from works of transgressive fiction being adapted to major motion pictures suggest an odd tension between the authors, the audiences, and the tastemakers in the culture-industrial complex. By disentangling this tension, with a particular focus on the efforts by the literary establishment to attack the writers and discredit their works, I endeavor to see through the diversionary tactics of moral outrage initiated by literary and film critics and reflected in the sociocultural backlash to these works, their adaptations, and their sequels to understand and legitimize the work of transgressive writers in order to expand the literary canon of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. By doing so, I aim to foster opportunities for more diverse writers of transgressive fiction to be able to be considered in the context of a subcategory of literature that appears to have predominately been the prerogative of men who, at least initially, present as the straight, white status quo. I argue that the initial perception of these transgressive works as having been written by straight white men grants them entrée to being adapted for broader audiences, because society seems to be more accepting and tolerant of all forms of transgressions by straight white males—both real and imagined—and this same opportunity must be extended to authors who write transgressive fiction but who are often categorized or Othered by some element of their identity—that is, Black writers are perceived of as telling stories for Black audiences, LGBTQ writers for LGBTQ audiences, etc., thereby causing studio executives to be concerned about a limited profitability due to the work only appealing to a specialized audience. Although this premise from the tastemakers is spurious at best, the lack of representation from writers who come from traditionally marginalized backgrounds, especially when they produce transgressive art, seems to enable or perpetuate the flawed premise upon which much of the decision-making takes place. This perception about more diverse writers of work that should be classified as transgressive, and the subsequent pigeonholing that results, means they are excluded from the transgressive fiction to studio film adaptation progression afforded white male writers like Ellis, Selby, Welsh, and Palahniuk. Although transgressive content by non-white, non-male writers is being adapted for streaming platforms and television, the benchmark of having a major motion picture adaptation still seems to be an aberration rather than a regular practice for more diverse writers of transgressive content. Furthermore, having these adaptations seems to signal a kind of legitimization of the transgressive source material and its author. Although adaptation should not be necessary to achieve legitimization, it would go a long way in bringing in Othered writers of transgressive fiction to be considered in the academic context they and their works deserve. In an effort to clear a pathway

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for future transgressive artists, I will expose the tactics used by mainstream critics in an attempt to dismiss these transgressive writers by constructing narratives about the authors that conflate them with their characters and will explore to what degree the authors were able to push back against these narratives to reclaim their own identities. The next generation, and even those minority writers whose work has already been Othered, can benefit from the aggressive tactics to challenge the oversimplified narratives foisted upon them by mainstream media and academics. While Selby and Welsh, in addition to their interviews in various media outlets, opted to complicate their assigned identities by appearing in cameo roles that actively thwart the protagonists with whom they are often conflated, Ellis and Palahniuk resort to metafiction and sequels to kill off the conflation with their characters that has been the crux of mainstream media critics’ and some scholars’ efforts to discredit them. THE CAMEO CURE? HUBERT SELBY JR. AND IRVINE WELSH Selby’s first novel, Last Exit to Brooklyn, was published in 1964 and adapted in 1989. The most acclaimed and culturally impactful adaptation of his novel, 2000’s Requiem for a Dream, was released more than twenty years after it was published. Both novels significantly precede the publications of the other transgressive writers, making Selby seem like an outlier even among transgressive writers. Prior to its publication as one of the novel’s central episodes or chapters, “Tralala” was the subject of controversy when the editor of the Provincetown Review was arrested and put on trial “for selling pornographic literature to a minor” (Gontarski 114). Although the case was thrown out upon appeal for being a setup, the novel was later censored in the United Kingdom and banned in Italy, developing “a reputation as an ‘underground classic’” (Giles 12). Time referred to Last Exit as “Grove’s dirty book of the month” (Giles 9). Since then, Tony Tanner has accused Selby of making “realism too crude” by engaging in “behavioral sink,” and Joyce Carol Oates dismissed “‘the frantic naturalism’” for removing any humanity from the characters. Even in a more positive review of Last Exit in the New York Times, Selby is charged with having produced a “brutal book” that is “shocking, exhausting, depressing” and “simply repulsive” because “[t]he degree of violence, the amount of blood and goae [sic] and semen, the sheer grotesqueness, sometimes nullifies or engulfs belief.” The Times’s reviewer adds that it is “not a book one ‘recommends’—except to writers.” Many of the critiques against Selby’s works make presumptions about who he is as a person in relation to his characters, and it is not uncommon for critics to fixate on

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the spectacles of transgression like Harry’s crucifixion or Tralala’s death by gang rape and presume, especially because of Selby’s stylized prose with its Brooklyn-ese vernacular, that he is one and the same as his characters—most commonly he is associated with being Harry because the name is attached to major characters in almost all of his fiction. Through a 1992 interview, two cameo appearances in the film adaptations of Last Exit and Requiem, and his participation in Michael Dean’s documentary, Hubert Selby Jr.: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow, Selby engages in efforts to correct the assumptions made about him, his relationship to his characters, and his legacy. In a 1992 interview with Allan Vorda for the Literary Review titled “Examining the Disease,” Selby responded to the criticism of his giving “a largely unmediated voice to psychotic characters driven by all-consuming rage and hatred” by saying he seeks to put his readers through an “emotional experience” of the pain and suffering of “real people” (290). This interview is one of the few outlets through which Selby explicitly tried to counteract the attempts to discredit him and his contributions to American letters, saying, “I have to assume they are frightened by something. . . . That’s the attitude of the literary establishment toward me in this country” (Vorda 290). Many critics have accused Selby of projecting his own rage and hatred of God through his characters, but Selby is quick to point out that what many readers have told him they’ve taken away from Last Exit is an awareness of his compassion for his characters (18; Vorda 291). Furthermore, his sympathetic treatment of the trans character, Georgette—“a hip queer”—“had the unexpected result of making many readers assume that he was himself gay,” and Selby said, “[i]t depends on how well the reader communicates with themselves. If they insist on denying there is a bit of Georgette in them, then I guess they would have to attack Georgette. . . . Perhaps my attitude is a little different, but I can see the terrible hunger for acceptance motivating and perverting Georgette’s behavior” (Selby 23; Giles 19; Vorda 293). This awareness challenges the assertions of critics like Oates and Tanner who suggest Selby removes the humanity from his characters because he is literally humanizing a trans woman and addict who would have been perceived as a monstrous, subaltern Other at the time of his writing the novel and even into the time of the 1992 interview with Vorda. Although Georgette’s death sequence is altered in the film adaptation, it is Selby’s cameo roles that complicate his relationship to the characters he has created in both Last Exit and later in Requiem. In Selby’s novel, Georgette dies in the street of an overdose on morphine after a horrifying and grotesque consummation of her relationship with a local hoodlum (79). But in the film, after Georgette awakens from having taken drugs and not consummated her relationship with the same character, she flees the apartment in pursuit of him and is run down by a car driven by Selby (Edel). Rather than playing the role

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of one of his own characters, as the ad hominem attacks and assumptions about the conflation of author and character would suggest, Selby instead opts to take on the role of literally destroying his characters. This dynamic is repeated in Requiem where Selby plays the role of a racist prison guard who harasses and mocks Tyrone in the southern work camp by telling him to “put his back into” his work and saying, “That’s the trouble with you New York dope fiends. You got a rotten attitude” (Aronofsky). With both of these film roles, Selby is actively distancing himself from his characters and instead making a different and interesting comment about the role of the author as being a destructive one. In Last Exit, after his car mangles Georgette’s body, Selby crosses himself after saying, “Oh my god,” and the camera cuts to Georgette’s body, bloody and bathed in light (Edel). Not only is his role in killing his own character a departure from expectations, but his invocation of religious iconography subverts the seemingly anti-religious commentary that pervades the novel and extends to critiques and presumptions of Selby’s personal beliefs. This could be read as Selby distancing himself from the rage and anti-religious sentiment from his earlier work, in effect redefining his persona or public identity as separate from what has been read into his novels. Irvine Welsh is the only other author in this chapter to appear in film adaptations of his work. Like Selby, Welsh is attuned to the importance of complicating some of the initial assumptions about which character from his novel he most resembles. Rather than portray any of the four main characters the film highlights—Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie, or Spud—in Trainspotting, Welsh appears as Renton’s last resort for a drug fix, Mikey Forrester (Boyle). While Mikey is not a main character in the novel, he is also not well liked among the central social group of the novel. Welsh playing the bit part of Mikey decenters him from how he had previously been perceived. In the chapter titled “First Day of the Edinburgh Festival,” which chronicles one of Renton’s attempts to kick heroin by taking one last hit before locking himself into his apartment to withdraw, Renton describes Mikey as “an ugly talentless cunt” who plays a “humiliation game” before giving Renton opium suppositories instead of the promised hit of heroin (Welsh, Trainspotting 17–22). It is likely that Welsh adopts this role due to both its limited significance to the overall plot as well as how it positions him as being irredeemable even in the eyes of the addict and schemer, Renton. In the film, Welsh plays the role with a kind of sneering and knowing smugness that is as much directed at Ewan McGregor’s Renton as it is at the audience. Author Will Self wrote a critique of the adaptation of Welsh’s Trainspotting, and his cameo appearance in it, in an article in the Observer titled “Carry On Up the Hyperdermic” (Morace, Irvine 69). Self attempts “to discredit Welsh both for giving his ‘imprimatur’ to the film and for claiming to be what Self, speaking from on

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high and playing the more-drugged-than-thou card, says Welsh never was: an IV drug-user” (Morace, Irvine 69). While Self and others have challenged Welsh’s street cred as an addict, the truth is that much of Welsh’s early biography and timeline is a bit hazy, so this may have contributed to the speculation and efforts at conflation. Some of the critiques of the novel presume that Welsh’s engaging in “Scottish miserablism” and portraying Edinburgh as “the HIV capital of Europe” most closely aligns him with Renton and his disgust with “Scotland’s collusion in its own subjugation” (Morace, Irvine Welsh 37; 36; Schoene 2). Berthold Schoene describes Renton, and by extension, Welsh, as “undeniably Scottish, working class and a drug user at the same time as he remains a shape-shifting borrower of identities, successfully mimicking both Anglo-Britishness and yuppie professionalism,” all while remaining “a rebel without a programme or plot, a rebel even without a hope” (5). Schoene also acknowledges that Renton is “[i]dentified by some as Welsh’s alter-ego” (emphasis his), and Robert Morace explains how a Jekyll and Hyde myth developed around Welsh that ran parallel to how many perceived Renton, as “something of an autodidact . . . [but] the press played up the Mr. Hyde side, duly noting [Welsh’s] every arrest for being drunk and disorderly and instance of boorish behavior” (5; Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting 12–13). While the parallels or attempts at noting parallels between Welsh and his characters created fodder for the mostly positive reviews of his first novel, that positivity was not universally held nor would it persist in response to subsequent publications. Although Trainspotting has often been referred to as “the fastest selling and most shoplifted novel in British publishing history,” the fact that it stalled out on the long list for the Booker Prize amid protest from judges who threatened to resign if it made it to the short list is a pretty good indicator of the attitude of the literary establishment toward Welsh (Morace, Irvine Welsh 36; Schoene viii). This is not dissimilar to how Selby believed he was treated by the American literary establishment. Despite achieving early critical and commercial success with Trainspotting, the elevated status of that novel and the film adaptation would lead to harsher critical assessments of his later works. Furthermore, “the fact that it took Trainspotting less than five years to become a classic course text in Scottish schools, others may regard this canonisation as a deliberate attempt to neuter a radically subversive text” (Hines). In the film adaptation sequel, T2: Trainspotting (renamed from the novel sequel, Porno), Welsh reprises his role as Mikey; however, Mikey has moved up in the world of criminal enterprise and buys goods stolen by another main character from Welsh’s Trainspotting universe, Begbie. In the sequel, Mikey’s wealth and elevated social status from formerly being a last-resort drug dealer to appearing in a more comfortable and stable position in life seems to parallel Welsh’s

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biographical trajectory toward financial prosperity in the wake of positive book sales, several adaptations of his work (film and stage), and a transAtlantic move away from his home country. As much as Welsh’s cameo in the original film can be seen as smug and winky, his reprisal of the role seems to be a nod verging on being a middle finger to the complaints by some that he’s sold out and lost touch with the grittiness and realness that made him famous. For all the need to read between the lines with Welsh’s cameo in T2: Trainspotting, he continues to write and publish about the characters from Trainspotting with entries in the universe including 2002’s Porno (sequel), 2012’s Skagboys (prequel), 2016’s The Blade Artist (Begbie-specific sequel), and 2018’s Dead Men’s Trousers (sequel). Regardless of whether Welsh is who he says he is or who the mainstream critics want him to be, he’s never afraid to wink at the audience. PERSONA SUICIDE BY SEQUEL: CHUCK PALAHNIUK AND BRET EASTON ELLIS Whether it’s on Twitter; on the fan site dedicated to all things Palahniuk, The Cult; or in the meta-fictional elements of the graphic novel sequel, Fight Club 2: The Tranquility Gambit, fans have been an integral part of Palahniuk’s route to identity reconstruction. Later editions of the novel that launched his career and began the conflation of the author with his characters, Fight Club, include a short essay titled “There Was a Book.” In the essay, Palahniuk chronicles all of the instances of fiction-come-to-life with the emergence of literal fight clubs as well as the co-opting and appropriating of his book and his characters by fans who took snapshots of their fight club battle wounds or asked him where to find the fight club in their area or revealed that they’d partaken in food sabotage like that which occurs in the novel. In the essay, Palahniuk also acknowledges the misreadings and misinterpretations of the novel, but whether fans come to Palahniuk because they aspire to engage in transgressions like his characters or they view Palahniuk as Tyler Durden’s alter ego or vice versa, their role in carving out the opportunity for him to reclaim his identity is hard to argue with. Palahniuk’s fans have been as much of a target of critical derision as the author and his works. In Understanding Chuck Palahniuk, Douglas Keesey claims “Palahniuk’s readers are subjected to condescension and mockery by critics who describe them as an ‘army of disenfranchised Everymen’ . . . or ‘fan boys, wild with rage, choked by love and loyalty (like Ayn Rand devotees but with tattoos and tire irons)’” (5). The Guardian’s Christopher Tayler posits, “Palahniuk is one of those writers who gets punished by critics for making them feel embarrassed about the eagerness with which their adolescent selves might have joined the writer’s

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fan base” (as cited in Keesey 5). Despite his advocacy for critical engagement with Palahniuk’s work, Keesey cannot seem to avoid parroting some of the most prominent affronts to Palahniuk’s fans such as “[h]e connects with working-class people, many of them young, who do not usually read fiction—and who may not regularly read anything at all,” yet “Palahniuk’s books sell briskly, regularly making the New York Times bestseller list” even though “[n]ewspaper, magazine, and web reviewers often pan his fiction” (3). Palahniuk is not aloof to the fact that he has “a cult following” and “that cult is large” and at the ready to defend him. Along the lines of embedding fans as integral to his art, both Palahniuk, as an illustrated caricature of himself, and his legion of fans figure heavily into the conclusion of Fight Club 2. Palahniuk’s illustrated likeness first appears in the sequel when the unnamed narrator, who “calls himself Sebastian these days” in the sequel, shows up to the Paper Street house in search of his kidnapped son but in the disguise of a badly beaten, wannabe Tyler Durden space monkey (Palahniuk et al. 9). In this first appearance, Palahniuk seems to be emulating some of Tyler Durden’s greatest hits by talking about the role of fathers and “a generation of apprentices without masters,” but he is interrupted by a phone call and replaced by Tyler. The suggestion here is that Palahniuk is leaning in to the presumptions about him that led reviewers to conflate him with his characters; however, the cognitive dissonance of Palahniuk breaking the fourth wall will quickly disrupt the reality of who he is and who reviewers, critics, and academics have presumed him to be. At varying points in the graphic novel, the narrative involving Tyler Durden, Marla, and the unnamed narrator is halted to cut away to Palahniuk’s writing group that is reading the draft of the graphic novel as it unfolds before the readers (Palahniuk et al. 242–51). At one point, Marla, who is married to Sebastian and is in search of their kidnapped son, shows up at the writing group meeting on Palahniuk’s cue, “We see Marla enter,” and one of the members of the writing group says, “This borders on being too meta” (Palahniuk et al. 89). Palahniuk gives Marla his phone number and says, “Don’t call unless the plot lags” (Palahniuk et al. 89). Here Palahniuk seems to be acknowledging critical complaints about his writing style, pacing, and the absurdity to which some of his plots extend. At one point, his writing group seems to be workshopping Palahniuk’s own struggles with resolving a character, in Tyler, who is “some infectious mental virus” (Palahniuk et al. 188). Palahniuk slams his head on the desk, seeming to give up on being able to resolve Tyler and saying, “I can’t. Try removing Santa Claus from the cultural landscape” (Palahniuk et al. 188). In many regards, these cutaway scenes are as much about Palahniuk pushing the boundaries of the graphic novel form as they are about him wrestling with his identity and legacy and the way it has become so entwined with his first novel.

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As the graphic novel progresses, the members of the writing group critique his narrative decisions and their meeting is interrupted by a swarm of fans who are waiting outside the house where the meeting is taking place. The disgruntled fans have materialized to protest the end of the graphic novel, and with their input (while also mocking their investment in Tyler’s catchphrases, which they wear on buttons and have tattooed on their bodies), Palahniuk sets about rewriting the ending as a character breaking the fourth wall with literal winks to the audience. Palahniuk and Tyler walk away together down the beach, and Tyler asks, “What’s next, Chief?” Palahniuk imagines Marla going to an abortion clinic and reminds Tyler of a line Brad Pitt asked to have removed from the film: Marla telling Tyler, “Someday, I want to have your abortion” (Palahniuk et al. 261). Here Palahniuk seems to be bragging by saying, “Just a little something we in the writing biz like to call a pay-off,” but when Tyler asks if he’s written the scene yet and Palahniuk replies, “No, not yet,” the illustrated Palahniuk is literally (spoiler) assassinated by Tyler Durden, leaving the image of his exploded head smoking on the last page (Palahniuk et al. 262). A blue square box on the last page reads, “All his secondhand set-ups, his yard sale pay-offs and cheap IKEA plot twists . . .” (Palahniuk et al. 262). Palahniuk has responded to the complaints about both his writing and his identity by being responsible for killing himself in his own graphic novel sequel. The premise is trippy and very meta and seems to be a renewed effort to distance himself from being conflated with his own characters. With Fight Club 2, Palahniuk is both giving a “voice” to his devoted fans while also acknowledging and thumbing his nose at the criticism against his work, his fans, and the presumptions about his identity that have followed him throughout his career. It will be interesting to see where Palahniuk can go from here, especially with his graphic novel sequel to the sequel, Fight Club 3, having been released in April 2020. Either way, the insertion of Palahniuk as a character in his own metafiction is both transgressive and has a transgressive precedent set by Ellis nearly ten years earlier in his novel Lunar Park and expanded upon with a slightly different form of character assassination or suicide in a sequel twenty-five years in the making, Imperial Bedrooms. According to Naomi Mandel, “The uneasy straddling of the past and the present, the familiar and the strange, characterizes Ellis’s 2005 novel Lunar Park . . . a ghost story in the style of Stephen King’s early work, and its narrator is and is not Bret Easton Ellis” (12). Mandel suggests that the novel’s “epistemic instability . . . extends from the novel’s relationship with its status as fiction to the plot, many elements of which are disbelieved or disavowed” (13). Regardless of whether the novel was hailed by some as Ellis’s finest work or panned, the “gestures toward the autobiographical proved irresistible to reviewers, who treated the book as an opportunity to present a retrospective evaluation of Ellis’s career to declare the author of Less Than Zero damned

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or saved by his most recent product” (Mandel 113). What is interesting in the context of identity reclamation is that Ellis is complicating the exact source of what he and others have suggested resulted in facile and unfair treatment of both his work and himself. Mandel adds, “the novelist who vehemently dissociated himself from the narrator of American Psycho . . . reaffirms his commitment . . . to problematize it further, blurring the boundaries between author and character and writer and work” (115). In chapter 1 of Lunar Park, “The Beginnings,” Ellis seems to offer critics a challenge by not only rehashing his own novels, including Lunar Park, but also by highlighting and calling out their responses to his body of work. It creates a dizzying effect if one were to attempt to sort out each fact from the fiction, and that is his point. Where the other authors in this study have sought to clarify or modify how they are perceived by constructing a preferred persona or identity, always the contrarian, Ellis instead chooses to blow up any possibility of stability or clarity. But rather than dive too deeply into Lunar Park, what more closely aligns with the suicide by sequel found in Palahniuk’s Fight Club 2 can be found in what some suggest may be Ellis’s last fiction offering, having moved on now to being more of a podcast provocateur and a nonfiction writer whose 2019 collection of essays, White (original working title: White Privileged Male), is his first book-length publication in ten years (Roth). Much like his fiction, Ellis’s public persona in both his podcasting and nonfiction is full of contradictions; however, what his nonfiction is lacking is precisely what gives his fiction the power to be transgressive, which is its polish and control. So, beyond having toyed with his own identity by naming his protagonist Bret Easton Ellis, five years after Lunar Park, Ellis explodes his own legacy and the source of all the ad hominem attacks that have followed him throughout his career, with a sequel to Less Than Zero, Imperial Bedrooms. In it, a refictionalized version of Clay disavows “the writer” (without explicitly naming Ellis) of Less Than Zero as someone “who floated through our lives and didn’t care how flatly he perceived everyone or that he’d shared our secret failures with the world . . . glamorizing the horror of it all” (Ellis, Imperial 3–5). Imperial Bedrooms opens with the lines, “They made a movie about us. The movie was based on a book written by someone we knew. The book was . . . for the most part an accurate portrayal. It was labeled fiction but only a few details had changed and there was nothing in it that hadn’t happened” (Ellis, Imperial 3). From the opening, Ellis, as the reimagined Clay, seems to be playing right into the critiques he faced from Kakutani and others, but the Clay narrating in Imperial Bedrooms is not the Clay who narrated Less Than Zero. So, the dissonance about what is real and not real is much like what Palahniuk is doing, yet it is more complex because Clay is actually Ellis disavowing himself. Much like the instability created by Lunar Park, Imperial Bedrooms seems to find pleasure in destroying any sense of what one thinks

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he or she knows about the world. The Clay of Imperial Bedrooms says, “I became the handsome and dazed narrator, incapable of love or kindness. That’s how I became the damaged part boy who wandered through the wreckage, blood streaming from his nose, asking questions that never required answers” (Ellis, Imperial 3–4). Over the next few pages, the Clay of Imperial Bedrooms explains how his biography diverges from the writer of Less Than Zero and how he took pleasure in how “the sheer hypocrisy” of the way the book was adapted to a 1987 film “must have made the author blanch” (Ellis, Imperial 7). The irony of Ellis’s effort to use his sequel to kill the legacy of his constructed media identity and the book that launched his career is that he is still an author defending himself, making it even harder to draw the line between Ellis and the Clay of Imperial Bedrooms, when Clay says, “The book was something I simply couldn’t disavow. The book was blunt and had an honesty to it, whereas the movie was just a beautiful lie” (Ellis, Imperial 7). And later, Clay goes even further in defending the book (and Ellis’s) legacy in the same way Ellis has discussed in several interviews that the film adaptation missed the mark, saying, “The reason the movie dropped everything that made the novel real was because there was no way the parents who ran the studios would ever expose their children to the same black light the book did. The movie was begging for our sympathy whereas the book didn’t give a shit” (Ellis, Imperial 8). Although this kind of killing off of a part of himself is not as dramatic or graphic as Palahniuk’s exploding head on the final page of Fight Club 2, Ellis’s complex destruction of many of the narratives that had been constructed about him since the release of Less Than Zero seems like the perfect hand grenade twenty-five years later. As a fan of transgressive fiction, I hope this is not Ellis’s last novel; however, it certainly has a mic drop quality to it despite being published at a time that predates that very expression becoming cliché. The best way to describe Ellis’s evolution as a provocateur is that he drops a controversial line or statement and waits for the turmoil to ensue because he seems to thrive on fomenting chaos. The only limitation to his current formats as a podcaster and nonfiction writer is that he often loses control of the chaos he’s creating. The measured language and sometimes frustratingly controlled commitment that characterizes his fiction is often lost due to the spontaneity of his persistent role as a cultural figure and critic. As of 2019, the three living authors seem to have settled into the respective identities that they’ve spent nearly as much of their career cultivating and reclaiming as they have invested in producing new works. Palahniuk and Welsh are the most active when it comes to conventional publications, but Ellis makes sure to keep himself close to the news cycle by making offhanded and intentionally inflammatory comments either in interviews, essays, or on his Patreon podcast. Despite where these writers now find

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themselves, perhaps what is more important is what their journeys can offer writers currently toiling with producing the next transgressive tome. Each of the authors in this chapter has offered a road map with various routes highlighted like varicose veins to guide the next transgressive voices around the traps laid by the literary establishment and other cultural tastemakers. The response to their work, the success of the golden age adaptations, and their ongoing efforts to establish public personas of their own making has carved out a niche for them and those who will follow in their footsteps in the literary discourse around transgressive fiction. Furthermore, storytelling avenues beyond the control of traditional patriarchal capitalist oppressors like the publishing and film industries such as streaming services, graphic novels, and video games may be the next places where the previously marginalized transgressive storytellers can break through and take control of a label that has for so long been both a boon and a curse. WORKS CITED Aronofsky, Darren, director. Requiem for a Dream. Performances by Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans, and Christopher MacDonald. Artisan, 2001. Baelo-Allué, Sonia. Bret Easton Ellis’s Controversial Fiction: Writing Between High and Low Culture. Continuum, 2011. Boyle, Danny, director. Trainspotting. Performances by Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, and Robert Carlyle. Lion’s Gate/Miramax, 2011. ———. T2: Trainspotting 2. Performances by Ewan McGregor, Kelly Macdonald, and Jonny Lee Miller. Cloud Eight Films, 2017. Brown, Carol A. “Patriarchal Capitalism and the Female-Headed Family.” Social Scientist, vol. 4, no. 4–5, 1975, pp. 28–39. JSTOR, doi: 10.2307/3516119. Accessed 2 June 2019. Califia, Pat. “Beyond the Pale: What Does American Psycho Have to Do with Us?” Lambda Book Report, vol. 2, no. 11, 08, 1991, pp. 12. ProQuest, https:​//​libdb​ .mtaloy​.edu:​2443​/login​?url​=https:​//​search​-proquest​-com​.libdb​.mtaloy​.edu:​2443​/ docview​/236956071​?accountid​=12600. Accessed 22 July 2015. Cohen, Roger. “Bret Easton Ellis Answers Critics of American Psycho.” New York Times, 6 March 1991. http:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/1991​/03​/06​/books​/bret​-easton​-ellis​ -answers​-critics​-of​-american​-psycho​.html​?pagewanted​=all. Accessed 1 May 2018. Dean, Michael, uploader. Hubert Selby Jr.: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow. 22 February 2017. YouTube, https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=cvDJNEcUxfs. Accessed 10 January 2019. Edel, Uli, director. Last Exit to Brooklyn. Performances by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stephen Baldwin, Stephan Lang, and Jerry Orbach. Summit/Lion’s Gate, 2011.

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Eisenstein, Zillah. “Constructing a Theory of Capitalist Patriarchy and Socialist Feminism.” Insurgent Sociologist, vol. 7, no. 3, 1977, pp. 3–17. doi: 10.1177/089692057700700301. Accessed 2 January 2019. Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. Vintage, 1991. ———. Imperial Bedrooms. Vintage, 2010. ———. Less Than Zero. Vintage, 1985. ———. White. Knopf, 2019. Gardner, James. “Transgressive Fiction.” National Review, vol. 48, no. 11, 1996, pp. 54–56. Giles, James R. Understanding Hubert Selby, Jr. University of South Carolina Press, 1998. Gontarski, S. E. “Last Exit to Brooklyn: An Interview with Hubert Selby.” The English Department. Florida State University, n.d., https:​//​english​.fsu​.edu​/interview​-hubert​ -selby​-s​-e​-gontarski. Hines, Nico. “The Movie ‘Filth’ Is Fun!” Daily Beast, 11 June 2017. https:​//​www​ .thedailybeast​.com​/the​-movie​-filth​-is​-fun. Accessed 11 May 2019. hooks, bell. “Understanding Patriarchy.” Imagine No Borders, Louisville Anarchist Federation, n.d., https:​//​imaginenoborders​.org​/pdf​/zines​/UnderstandingPatriarchy​ .pdf. Accessed 1 July 2019. Hume, Kathryn. Aggressive Fictions: Reading the Contemporary American Novel. Cornell University Press, 2012. Jensen, Kurt. “The Way of All Flesh.” Los Angeles Times, September 20, 1998, pp. 7. ProQuest, https:​//​libdb​.mtaloy​.edu:​2443​/login​?url​=https:​//​search​.proquest​.com​/ docview​/421283569​?accountid​=12600. Accessed 7 July 2019. Keesey, Douglas. Understanding Chuck Palahniuk. University of South Carolina Press, 2016. Loewen, James. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Touchstone, 1996. MacLeod, Lewis. “Life Among the Leith Plebs: Of Arseholes, Wankers, and Tourists in Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting.” Studies in the Literary Imagination, vol. 41, no. 1, 2008, pp. 89–106. Mandel, Naomi, ed. Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho, Glamorama, Lunar Park. Continuum, 2011. Mookerjee, Robin. Transgressive Fiction: The New Satiric Tradition. Palgrave, 2013. Morace, Robert. Irvine Welsh. Red Globe Press, 2007. ———. Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting: A Reader’s Guide. Continuum, 2001. Newman, Sandra. “Make Something Up Review—Chuck Palahniuk at the Height of His Powers.” Guardian, 10 June 2015. https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/books​ /2015​/jun​/10​/make​-something​-up​-chuck​-palahniuk​-review​-short​-story​-collection. Accessed 14 March 2019. Palahniuk, Chuck, Cameron Stewart, Dave Stewart, Nate Piekos, and David Mack. Fight Club 2: The Tranquility Gambit. Dark Horse, 2016. Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Signs, vol. 5, no. 4, 1980, pp. 631–60. JSTOR, https:​//​www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/3173834. Accessed 5 September 2019.

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Roth, Eli. “The People vs. Bret Easton Ellis.” Interview Magazine. 11 April 2019. https:​//​www​.interviewmagazine​.com​/culture​/the​-people​-vs​-bret​-easton​-ellis. Accessed 12 April 2019. Schoene, Berthold, ed. The Edinburgh Companion to Irvine Welsh. Edinburgh University Press, 2010. Selby, Hubert, Jr. Last Exit to Brooklyn. Grove, 1964. ———. Requiem for a Dream. Da Capo, 2000. Stallybrass, Peter, and Allon White. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Cornell University Press, 1986. The Herald. “Irvine Welsh’s Novel Filth Provokes Capital Anger.” The Herald, 9 June 1998. https:​//​www​.heraldscotland​.com​/news​/12261285​.irvine​-welshs​-novel​-filth​ -provokes​-capital​-anger​/. Accessed 8 July 2019. Vorda, Allan. “Examining the Disease: An Interview with Hubert Selby, Jr.” Literary Review, vol. 35, no. 2, Winter, 1992, pp. 288. ProQuest, https:​//​libdb​.mtaloy​ .edu:​2443​/login​?url​=https:​//​libdb​.mtaloy​.edu:​2466​/docview​/222070399​?accountid​ =12600. Welsh, Irvine. Filth. Norton, 1998. ———. “Irvine Welsh—American Psycho Is a Modern Classic.” Guardian, 10 January 2015. https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/books​/2015​/jan​/10​/american​-psycho​ -bret​-easton​-ellis​-irvine​-welsh. Accessed 3 January 2019. ———. Trainspotting. Vintage, 2004. Widmyer, Dennis, principal ed. The Cult: The Official Fan Site of Chuck Palahniuk. n.d. https:​//​chuckpalahniuk​.net​/. Accessed 3 January 2020.

Chapter Five

Follow the Lead The Evolving Story of Lois Lane and Her Writing Sandra Eckard

When you think of famous fictional writers, it’s not hard to imagine Lois Lane in all her forms: horrible speller, diligent investigator, dedicated truth-seeker. In the beginning, Lois Lane was one of the rare career women who was crafted to have agency, who—at least at first—had a voice, and independence, that radiated from her own desire to make a difference as a reporter and writer. Throughout time, we are presented with many different versions of this character, ones that reflect society’s view of women and their power, and what is quite fascinating about her character is that through each version, and the many writers who present her on the page and on screens big and small, Lois Lane is always a writer. Tracing her journey from 1938 to the present reveals the struggles of women and different moments in time where women—and women writers— struggled, were frustrated, or were sidetracked by society’s expectations. However, Lois Lane is a born leader, and we can see how her character shines through to the present, growing in depth of purpose and changing with each new moment in time. Despite all her incarnations on page and screen, one fact remains true: Lois loves writing as much as, or maybe more than—depending on the decade—her hero Superman.

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IN PRINT: BIRTH TO 1978 The character of Lois Lane was born in 1938, the brainchild of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, and she was “a firecracker right from the start” (DC Comics, Lois Lane 6). Physically, she was based on a model named Joanne, after whom Shuster crafted her hair and features. It remained all in the family, as Joanne ended up marrying Jerry Siegel, and their daughter, Laura, penned in her Los Angeles Times obituary that Joanne “not only posed for the character, but from the day he [Jerry Siegel] met her, it was her personality that he infused into the character” (Janeczko). Most people know Lois Lane from Margot Kidder’s depiction in the 1978 feature film Superman, which eclipsed most other versions in mainstream pop culture, as she was popular with both men who wanted to date her and women who wanted to be her. However, her start was even more focused on writing and her career. When we first meet Lois in 1938’s Action Comics #1, she is almost modern in her construction, at work, in a male-dominated field, typing up a story. It’s Clark who interrupts her work, asking her to go on a date. Either to get rid of him so she can finish her story or because she was distracted by writing, Lois caves and says, “I suppose I’ll give you a break . . . for a change.” It’s interesting that she really doesn’t get excited over a man paying attention to her, and she really doesn’t move, merely tilting her head up to answer him with a vague response—not really the “yes” we as readers would expect. While on their date, Clark asks her why she avoids him at the office, and her response provides additional insight into her career-focused character: “Please Clark! I’ve been scribbling ‘sob stories’ all day long. Don’t ask me to dish out another.” While these two exchanges only take up two panels in the comics, they reveal much about Lois’s character and her perception about herself and her writing. She is focused at work, and she sees dating as less important than her career. Even back in 1938, she is a career gal, and she evaluates her writing assignments as less than the hard-hitting journalism that she would rather be doing—and this dissatisfaction can be traced down through modern times in both comic and media forms. This career focus continued in the 1940s, as Lois worked hard to get the scoop on Superman—and best her rival for the story, Clark Kent. In Superman #29, “Lois Lane: Girl Reporter: The Bakery Counterfeiters” (Cameron), her desire to “show up the guys” is evident when she arrives at work to find out she has been assigned a puff piece interview of a bake shop owner. Lois, naturally, doesn’t think the assignment is as humorous as her male colleagues do, fuming as she walks to the interview: “Imagine! ‘Write a nice cozy, home-body article,’ says the chief. What am I—a reporter or a

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fuddy-duddy?” She doesn’t want to be seen as less than a stellar, hard-hitting reporter, so she dons large sunglasses to disguise herself, mumbling to herself, “I may be vain, bringing along these dark glasses—but I don’t want to be recognized . . . I’ve had enough kidding about this assignment already!” While the comic does start with the other writers having a laugh at her expense—being assigned a writing job that focused on a women’s column that none of the men would want—she uses her instincts to uncover a ring of criminals who were stuffing loaves of bread with their loot. Further, this comic is interesting in that Superman is nowhere to be found. Lois investigates her suspicions on her own, figures out the con, and even apprehends a criminal by whacking him with her purse. When the police arrive, he heartily commends her, “Good work, Miss Lane. Superman himself couldn’t have done neater!” And, in the end, as everyone holds up the pages of her write-up for The Daily Planet, everyone is proud of her skills. “Don’t be too modest in the way you write it. Great work!” exclaims her boss, Perry White. Fellow reporter Bard—the one ribbing her on getting assigned this story at the beginning—exclaims, “Gosh! Miss Lane sure gets results!” In an about-face, Perry White then tacks on in the last panel, “Hey, Bard, get a wiggle on, and cover that ‘Housewives’ assignment for the next edition. Miss Lane’s busy.” Early on, then, this first incarnation of Lois Lane—as a woman, as a writer—“showcased the ambition that would be the core of the character” for every version to come. Her great passion was to be a writer, and “the second she got wind of a big story, she pounced” (Hanley 6). At the time, working women were a rarity, and if they did work, it was in a more female-approved position, like housekeeper or nanny. Instances like these, where Lois saves the day, were scattered throughout the issues of Action Comics and Superman, but more often than not, she was seen pining for a husband, not writing an article. Pretty soon, and for many decades to come, Lois became the damsel-in-distress, present only as a way to uncover trouble or be the one who needed saving. “She wasn’t there to be a well-rounded character, with her own skills to display and goals to be achieved”; instead of writing her own stories, she became the plot device or love interest in Superman stories (Hanley 7). Superman #58, “Lois Lane Loves Clark Kent,” is a pointed example of both of these facets to Lois: damsel-in-distress and love interest. Written in 1949—more than ten years after her ambitious entrance in the first Action Comics—Lois almost seems like a new character. She still works at The Daily Planet, but she isn’t focused on work. Readers pick up after she has “finished her latest assignment,” and she is distracted, thinking about Supes. The text bubble reads, exactly, “{Sigh} Perry White liked my latest reporting job on Superman! Why not? Superman is wonderful! It’s thrilling to write about

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him!” The next panel has her so worked up over thoughts of her hero that she actually faints: “Superman! {Sigh} Ohh . . . Suddenly I feel so faint . . .” After a doctor suggests that she cool her obsessive thoughts for Superman by transferring her love to another—which seems like bad advice—she decides to ask out Clark and, now, her writing consists not of columns, assignments, or hard-hitting journalism, but, rather, anonymous love notes. Although, in the end, Clark deliberately scoops a story that was rightfully hers—making her angry with him—the only writing we “see” in the panels is of her as a lovesick caricature of the independent Lois we got a glimpse of in the initial issues. She does declare at the end of the story that “newspaper writing is my first love . . . and Superman was my second,” giving us hope that she can, once again, find her voice as a writer rather than just as a love interest. In Showcase #9 (Binder), a new comic line emerged: Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane, which on the outside seemed like it would focus on Lois, but, as the title suggests, truly captured the glossy 1950s with her focus on being Superman’s girlfriend. Her writing and investigative journalism, then, were focused on singing his praises and figuring out who Superman was. This was the time frame after World War II, and, “her identity as The Daily Planet’s star reporter was deemphasized. She still reported for the paper, but instead of seeking headline-grabbing assignments to expose social ills, the scoop she wanted most was to uncover Superman’s secret identity” (Baskind 640). In 1957’s “The New Lois Lane,” our ambitious reporter doesn’t write—and doesn’t even investigate. In contrast, she actually covers up clues. The opening preface poses this question: “Can you imagine prying, curious, inquisitive Lois Lane suddenly changing her character and giving up all attempts to learn Superman’s secret identity?” The first panel shows Lois, at her desk, tearing up a piece of paper that is labeled “The other side of this photo reveals Superman’s Secret Identity.” Her face is turned away, and she is averting her eyes as she proudly declares, “I don’t want to know who Superman is!” What is interesting about this opening panel is her writer’s desk. Usually, you would see files, papers, writing equipment, and other messy items for a busy day at work. Instead, there is no pencil cup, no notes, no notebook, and, perhaps most telling, no typewriter. She spends the entire comic metaphorically patting herself on the back for covering up clues and not following Superman’s well-placed clues—as he wants to give her a second alternative identity, Allen Todd, a salesman, to throw her off the trail of Clark Kent. Eventually, the second fake identity works, and Allen reveals he is Superman, stating now that she knows, he will have to find another secret identity. At the end, Lois has regained her curiosity about Superman and ends by saying, “Just think . . . a brand-new secret identity of Superman for me to track down! I’m all excited!” Most of the issues of

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Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane followed a similar format, either by focusing on her quest to uncover his secret or simply focusing on making him fall in love with her. During this time frame, the comics lost the initial spark of the original firecracker that was our fearless reporter, reflecting interestingly her farthest distance from her initial role as an independent, driven writer. Although it does take a while, by the 1970s, Lois is back in focus—following leads that don’t always have to do with Superman and tackling issues that were both important and sometimes controversial. One of the most famous—or infamous—comics in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane kicked off the 1970s with “I am Curious (Black),” and though perhaps cringeworthy, this comic begins with what Lois deems “the assignment of my life”: interviewing residents of Metropolis’s Little Africa for, as she hopes, “telling it like it is . . . the nitty-gritty no newspaper ever printed before!” However, the black community doesn’t readily welcome her, a nosy white woman, and eyes her with suspicion. However, her boyfriend is Superman, after all, and he can use a gadget in The Fortress of Solitude to turn her skin black for twenty-four hours. Though the plot device is awkward, Lois’s goal as a reporter is admirable—she wants to learn the truth so she can help bring light to the social issues of the time. When a neighborhood leader is shot, he needs an emergency blood transfusion; as Lois is the same blood type, she offers her blood. Her “reporter’s curiosity” helps her better understand that “we are all alike where it really matters” (Foster). This shake-up to Lois’s adventures continues, and by 1972, Lois is no longer the plot device. After her sister Lucy is killed while undercover, Lois uses her investigative skills and clues from Lucy’s diary to figure out what happened to her. However, in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #121, her passion for uncovering the troubles of the world are reignited, and she states, “It’s time I started taking a good look at this muddled world around me . . . and tried to help people in trouble!” Her new awareness propels her to quit her job at The Daily Planet for a spell, working as a freelance writer, “focusing only on the stories she cared about” (Hanley, “Lois Lane’s Feminist Revolution”). Once again, Lois’s character returns to her center, with a focus on writing as her first love, her greatest passion; here she uses words not to obsess over Superman, but rather reflect on, and change, the world around her. She does freelance work for a while, but she continues to orbit The Daily Planet, and she does return to her job.

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CELLULOID REBIRTH: 1978 Lois was adapted for the silver screen in the 1970s, with a well-known version that made her a household name with Superman: The Movie. We get a sneak peek of Lois as a child—even then, she was curious and interested in stories when we see her on a train with her parents. She catches a glimpse of a teen Clark Kent (before the suit) running at the pace (or faster) of the train. Only Lois is paying attention, but she wants to bring this moment to everyone’s attention: Lois: “Golly! I saw a boy out there, running [as?] fast as the train! Faster, even!” Her mother, affectionately: “Lois Lane, you do have a writer’s gift for invention. I’ll say that for you.”

We don’t meet grown-up Lois Lane until forty-eight minutes into the film, and she is introduced to us first as a writer—not as a love interest or a damselin-distress in need of Superman to save her. She is sitting at her typewriter, working on a story. She pauses to ask Jimmy, “How many ‘t’s’ in ‘bloodletting?’” It’s clear from this first moment that Lois is not writing the same kind of “sob stories” that the Lois Lane from 1938 suffered with; she is finally writing hard-hitting journalism and is the star of the newsroom. Jimmy, right away, points this fact out with his comment to Lois: “Golly, Miss Lane, how come you get all the great stories?” Confidently, Lois replies, “A good reporter doesn’t get great stories, Jimmy. A good reporter makes them great.” In addition to this zinger about her journalistic prowess, this scene—where Clark meets Lois—also reveals that, unlike the 1950s and previous versions, she is definitely focused more on career than anything else. She opens the door to Perry White’s office, not even realizing that someone else is in the room. Right away, she hands him the pages of her story and, not realizing she is even interrupting a conversation, starts describing her article, framing it as the start of a series she titles “Making Sense of Senseless Killings by Lois Lane.” Gwenda Bond, in “Margot Kidder, Woman of Steel,” herself a fiction writer, focuses on this scene as life altering to her as both a young woman and as a writer: I’m not sure how old I was when I first saw Margot Kidder as Lois Lane barreling into her editor’s office to argue her latest story deserved a front-page byline. I only know it changed my life. Superman: The Movie was a cultural revelation, and Kidder as Lois felt like a personal one. As a young girl, I latched onto her immediately, missing all the romantic subtext, but glued to her professional acumen—the way she refused to back down, how she was ready to return a barb

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that won a conversation game, set and match before what she’d said even registered with the adorably awkward Clark Kent. She was the first woman I saw on screen introduced foremost as being good at her job, a professional woman surrounded by men and succeeding anyway.

Delving in further, this scene continues to show Lois is solely focused on her work, on the story in her hands that she can’t wait to show her editor. A whole comedic subplot ensues while Lois stands and proofreads her work, eyes focused on the pages in her hand. It’s only when Perry says, “Lois, why don’t you take Kent out to meet everybody, huh? Just introduce him around. He’s starting at the paper today—I’m giving him the city beat.” Clark had been practically invisible before that moment, but now that he would become competition, she clearly is miffed, and her excitement over her latest article is deflated, much like a balloon—but not for long, as Superman arrives on the scene as the newest story that every reporter wants to get the scoop on. As Perry teases, “I want the real story . . . whichever one of you gets it out of him is going to wind up with the single most important interview since God talked to Moses.” And, of course, Lois Lane is the one that Superman chooses for his first interview, meeting her on her patio for what might be the most sexually charged PG-rated interview, where we as viewers can feel her nervousness battle with her curiosity. She has prepared questions, and after some flirtatious questions, her journalistic nature takes over and she peppers him with questions as quickly as she can think of them. It’s here that we get to see a version of Lois Lane that is truly multifaceted and modern in design. She can’t spell, and she always seems a bit frazzled, like part of her mind is already working on writing up the story that she hasn’t even been assigned yet. She values—loves even—being a journalist. She is both a writer and a woman; this version of Lois now doesn’t have to be simply a plot device or a love interest. She gets to be herself and analyze the world, and we get to watch her process life in human ways just like we would. She scoffs at Superman’s pure motto of truth, justice, and the American way, chuckling as she responds candidly, “You’re going to end up fighting every elected official in this country!” As Sonia Saraiya adds, It’s not exactly that Lois is a pure cynic; her dedication to journalism suggests otherwise. Instead, it’s that Kidder’s Lois Lane doesn’t have much faith in men. Her romance with Superman requires her to believe in the goodness of one particular person (well, alien)—even, and especially, because he has power that could crush her. The sequence when Superman takes Lois flying plays out from her perspective, allowing the camera to interpret the wonder of his power through her human eyes. But first, she has to let herself be carried. She purposefully withdraws her hand from his grasp—and of course falls, and of course has to be rescued again. It’s coquettish, maybe, but Kidder plays the whole thing

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sincerely, like she’s trying to figure out the answer to a question. The scene reveals coy flirtation as the battleground where women can test men’s integrity.

This Lois Lane, then, doesn’t just see herself as a journalist, as that label implies that writing is a job. Instead, we see that she is constantly trying to figure out Superman, the world, and her life by writing, whether that is in her head or at the typewriter. ON THE SMALL SCREEN: LIGHT ROMANCE AND TEEN DRAMA Lois Lane was reinvented again on screen in the 1990s—this time for television with 1993’s Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. From the title of the show, it’s clear what the focus of the show will be: Superman is actually last in the trilogy of main characters. True to this focus, the opening scene of the pilot episode features only Lois, dirty and incognito, dressed as a homeless man. The shot reveals her cluttered writer’s desk, and she has awards and plaques for her writing hanging prominently in her space. Jimmy finds her there early in the morning as she begins shedding layers of the outfit so that she can just be Lois. Once her mustache and beard are removed, her first line is, “I nailed him cold!” She proudly holds up a canister of film which will implicate the car thieves. In the next scene, as Lois emerges dressed as herself, Jimmy proudly proclaims, as champagne is poured and the newsroom claps, “To Lois Lane, still going where no reporter has gone before!” Not only is she juggling stories, celebrating a successful front page, typing up copy, stressing about getting an interview with the elusive Lex Luthor, and starting an investigation on a tip from a stranger, she is always talking about writing in this episode. In an homage to 1978’s Superman: The Movie, Lois barges into Perry White’s office as he interviews seemingly green small-town reporter Clark Kent. Despite his, “Lois, can’t you see I’m in the middle of something here?” she is focused solely on her idea, and she frustrates Perry with her interruption, causing him to exasperatedly tell Clark, “If that woman wasn’t the best damn investigative reporter I’ve ever seen.” Lois has already left the room in a hurry, barely acknowledging Clark or even Perry in her rush to follow a hot lead. While this show can easily be categorized as light romantic fare more than a true Superman adventure, the fact that it centers—especially in the first two seasons—on Lois as a career-focused journalist helps reinforce that women in the workplace have come far since the struggles of the 1938 Lois, who was often frustrated at being pigeonholed into stories for housewives. Teri Hatcher’s Lois not only succeeds as a female reporter, she is treated with

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respect and admiration, and “her institutional power surpasses that of Clark, despite his supernatural talents he uses when they are investigating stories” (Durden 184). An “equal or superior Lois may be a reflection of its postfeminist mid-1990s airing,” but throughout the show, from her awareness of Superman’s true identity to her valuable investigative skills, this Lois was shown to be a powerful woman who valued her work. Despite the show’s light tone, “we see this dichotomy between the traditional woman who only needs a man to be complete and a woman who’s an accomplished person in her own right and that really should be enough for society” (DeCandido). By season 2, the show’s creator was replaced, perhaps because she wrote the story too much around Lois and not enough around Superman, and although “the character didn’t change so much as the show changed around her,” Lois continued to write her stories and, perhaps more importantly, have her name first in the title (Hanley 192). Lois’s adventures on television continued with the teen drama Smallville. Centered on high school Clark’s experiences growing up in his hometown, the show began with Clark’s first love, Lana Lang, as the central love interest. Filling the shoes of intrepid reporter was Chloe Sullivan—a fan favorite at the time—who just happened to have a cousin named Lois Lane. In the finale of season 3, it appears that Chloe has died in a mysterious accident, and in the season opener, Lois arrives in the town of Smallville and irritates Clark Kent while trying to uncover clues to Chloe’s death. While her introduction isn’t in the offices of The Daily Planet, this four-episode arc in season 4 was designed to introduce her, add some tension to the Lana-Clark relationship, and spark some new storylines. However, since the show was popular, their relationship remained like annoyed siblings for several seasons, teasing the inevitable pairing. Lana, like the audience, could see their chemistry in Lois’s second episode, “Gone”: Lana: “It’s funny, isn’t it? After everything we’ve been through . . . I thought it would take us longer to get over it.” Clark: “Us?” Lana: “You and Lois.” Clark, incredulous: “Lois? She’s bossy. She’s stuck up, she’s rude . . . I can’t stand her!” Lana, chuckling: “The best ones always start that way.”

Her writing was a slow-burn dish as well. Though she was overly curious and had investigative skills, in “Façade,” she has to enroll in Smallville High because, though she had finished her senior year, she was short a few credits

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to enroll in college. Chloe offers up a position for the newspaper, and Lois quickly replies, “The last thing that I want to be is a reporter!” However, as the actress moved from guest star to full-time cast member, her arc as a reporter began, and as we saw Chloe get a job at The Daily Planet first, Lois’s fate was sealed when her cousin, once again, got her a job, allowing her to move from tabloid to mainstream news writing in season 7’s second episode, “Kara.” Lois visits Chloe and presents Chloe with her latest story, sharing the details with dramatic flair. Chloe’s editor, Gabriel Grant, hears Lois’s tale and joins in on the conversation. While the chat humors Chloe at first, it is foreshadowing the fact that the mythology of Superman includes Lois as a famous reporter from The Daily Planet and not Chloe. Envious, and perhaps a bit jealous of the attention that Lois is getting, Chloe scoffs at the idea of the Planet publishing an outlandish story. However, Gabriel Grant is curious about Lois and states, “I’ll tell you what: you deliver me your spaceship story, a story that will sell papers, and you’ve got yourself a job here.” While Lois had been doggedly investigating the strange events in Smallville up until now, this moment is important in that it provides her with the motivation and confidence to see herself not at a tabloid, writing unsubstantiated pieces, but rather at the world-famous, iconic newspaper as a real reporter. She pursues the story, and turns it in, impressing Grant. While investigating, she presents him with photos to support her idea and challenges him by asking, “Does that sound like smoke and mirrors to you?” He replies in a way to push her buttons: No—it looks like passion. That’s what separates you from the rest of the pack. This is the fork in your road, Lane. In a dozen years, you’ll either be ‘Lois Lane, star reporter,’ whose name is synonymous with The Daily Planet, or ‘Lois Fill-in-the-Blank,’ married to an insurance adjuster in the sticks, with four kids and forty extra pounds, and you won’t even be able to look at a newspaper because it will always remind you of what could have been. Which road sounds better to you?

Lois pursues the story and presents her article to him to high praise. He raves, “It’s absurd how good it is. Your prose leaps off the page like a Bengal tiger. I was riveted!” Although it doesn’t have enough proof to warrant publishing it, he gives her a job anyway, as he approves of her discipline and writing talent, concluding by saying, “Welcome to The Daily Planet, Lois Lane. You play your cards right, you’ll be out of this basement quicker than your cousin!” Erica Durance, Smallville’s Lois Lane, commented in an interview with IGN that what she was most proud of was showcasing Lois as a writer passionate about her job: “I love that Lois is really getting to delve into the

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journalism and show her intellect.” In the New York Post, she adds, “I know that Superman was the one who did all the big stuff, but Lois Lane was always in there, she wasn’t just this female waiting for someone to help her.” In short, this television show is a coming-of-age story not just for Clark Kent, but arguably for Lois as well. She finds her voice as a writer and as a woman over several seasons, and author Hirmer suggests, “Indeed, Smallville turns Lois Lane into a hero in her own right,” a woman whose writing changes her and the world (252). MODERN LOIS: FROM DEDICATED REPORTER TO ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE The latest incarnation of Lois Lane has already found her writer’s voice in the Zack Snyder trilogy that begins with 2013’s Man of Steel. A major film series, this modern take on Lois Lane is of a mature, established journalist who is confident in her abilities and willing to do what others won’t. The opening scene for Lois is as she arrives in the Arctic to pursue a story about a rare ship found in the ice. In this scene, she has her own camera and supplies for a rough stay in inhospitable conditions. After greeting the military escort, her first line is “Well, what can I say? I get writer’s block if I’m not wearing a flak jacket!” This scene shows that her work is known all over, and she knows how to investigate and get what she wants: “Look, let’s get one thing straight, guys, okay? The only reason I’m here is because we’re on Canadian soil, and the appellate court overruled your injunction to keep me away. So, if we’re done measuring dicks, can you have your people show me what you found?” She can sense that the military is hiding something, so camera in hand, she explores the site, and upon getting attacked by a droid from what we, the audience, know is from a Kryptonian ship, a “stranger,” our hero Clark Kent, steps in to use his heat vision to seal her wound. Ever the journalist, this experience fuels Lois, and she is determined to follow the leads to figure out who the mysterious, helpful stranger could be. Lois writes up the tale of her experience, and this version of Perry, much like the editor from Smallville, refuses to print the article: “I can’t print this, Lois. You might have hallucinated half of it. . . . I’m not running a story about aliens walking among us. Never going to happen!” Not to be deterred, she gives the story to a rival tabloid newspaper to print: Lois: “I’m sending you the original article. My editor won’t print it, but if it leaked online . . .”

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Woodburn: “Got it. But didn’t you once describe my site . . . as a creeping cancer of falsehoods?” Lois: “I stand by my words, Woodburn, but I want this story out there.” Woodburn, curious: “Why?” Lois, determined: “Because I want my mystery man to know I know the truth.”

Lois’s writing takes center stage at several points in the film, as she reads aloud her work, and the character often serves as a narrator to transition from scene to scene and move the plot of the film forward: “How do you find someone who has spent a lifetime covering his tracks? You start with the urban legends that have sprung up in his wake . . . all of the friends of a friend who claimed to have seen him. For some he was a guardian angel; for others, a cypher—a ghost who never quite fit in. As you work your way back in time, the stories begin to form a pattern.” What is very interesting in this setup—all of this happens within the first hour of the film—is that Lois’s investigative instincts, her skills as a writer/reporter, are on display, and there’s no whiff of “love at first sight” or school-girl crush on Superman. Zack Snyder takes a bold step here with the mythology, changing up that she meets Clark Kent, a mysterious man who just might have superpowers, before she even knows what a “Superman” is or could be. In most every interpretation, Clark and Superman are two different people to Lois—and the world. Clark is often a sidekick or a work rival at first. However, here, it is just one man (or alien) that intrigues Lois. Her infatuation, then, is with solving the puzzle and figuring out the mystery much more so than having a crush on Superman. Her first words when she realizes her mystery man is standing behind her: “I figured if I turned over enough stones, you would eventually find me.” She turns around and gushes in one breath, “Where are you from? What are you doing here? Let me tell your story.” This Lois Lane isn’t flustered or intimidated or even fearful of Superman; instead, she’s focused on learning more about what makes him tick so that she can write up the exclusive. However, more importantly, to her credit, once she hears his story, she chooses to respect his wishes and not write the piece. Therefore, this Lois Lane knows now—and for the remainder of the Zack Snyder trilogy—who Superman is and, despite this knowledge, chooses to keep the secret. In “What Man of Steel Gets Right About Lois Lane,” writer Erbland posits that “it’s always been dunderheaded that Superman’s perennial love interest, Lois Lane, is consistently in the dark as to who is who. The main issue with the lovely Lois not seeing the obvious is that she is not only a highly intelligent woman, she is a woman who investigates things for a living. Rooting out truths and seeing beyond the status quo is not only what Lois does, but

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it’s who she is.” However, “the basic truth is that, traditionally speaking, Lois can’t tell that Clark Kent is just Superman wearing glasses.” In Man of Steel, though, this whole traditional plot device is proverbially tossed on its head, and she is smart enough to trace the story and figure out the truth—and loyal enough to keep the secret. He doesn’t have to do a memory wipe because she’s too fragile or in danger. As Erbland concludes, “The decision to clue Lois in to the reality of things immediately fits her character in a way that her inability to recognize someone just wearing glasses never did. Lois Lane is a smart lady; let’s just keep her that way.” In the two subsequent films, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League, Lois does have a few moments as a writer, though her character takes a backseat to the multiple superheroes—Aquaman, Batman, Cyborg, Flash, and Wonder Woman—yet she still uses her writer instincts to propel the plot forward and use her strengths to help Superman. In 2016’s Batman v Superman, we get a great Lois one-liner in her first scene, when her interviewee says, surprised, “They did not tell me the interview was with a lady.” She promptly replies matter-of-factly, “I’m not a lady; I’m a journalist.” Sadly, in Justice League, her role was reduced to, for most of the film, a weepy widow. Her first scene in the third film of the trilogy opens with Martha Kent visiting Lois over a cup of coffee at The Daily Planet. They are both mourning their loss, as Superman died at the end of BvS saving the world. Though Lois is physically at the Planet for this scene, she has lost her writer’s voice, her passion, as a result of the traumatic events in the previous film. A fellow reporter inquires after her source for a hot story, and although Lois has a source, she makes no attempt to use her own version of sleuthing superpower to follow the lead. When Martha questions her about it, she dejectedly responds, “I’m not ready yet. I’m perfectly happy doing fluff pieces about kitten grooming . . . for a while. It was hard coming back here at all.” However, Martha stirs the pot a bit by reminiscing about what Clark had told her about Lois’s instincts, adding, “He said you could smell a story farther away than he could hear.” Lois’s inquisitive side, always in overdrive when she had Superman around, finally shines through when Clark returns from the dead. She can’t stop asking questions: “Are you okay? What was it like . . . coming back?” In this scene, she realizes that she has been living only part of a life, as she was denying the writer inside while mourning. “I wasn’t strong . . . I wasn’t Lois Lane, dedicated reporter.” Finding her voice, then, she adds, “I was hoping it was going to take you longer to recover because now I have to send you away . . . but no dying. And, I get the exclusive.” In interviews, Amy Adams defends her version of the reporter as an empowering character, and a good role model for young girls, stating, “What I love about Lois Lane is that she’s been consistently strong, successful, and

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independent. . . . You don’t have to be a man to be powerful. You can be a powerful woman” (Davidson). Though she doesn’t get much screen time in Justice League, she does return to being the narrator of the film, book-ending how her words narrated parts of Man of Steel. She has found her writer’s self, become whole, and found the inspiration to write about life, and hope, again: Darkness. The truest darkness . . . is not about the absence of light. It is the conviction that the light will never return. But the light always returns . . . to show us things familiar. Home. Family. And things entirely new. Or long overlooked. It shows us new possibilities. . . . And challenges us to pursue them. This time, the light shone on the heroes coming out of the shadows to tell us we won’t be alone again. Our darkness was deep and seemed to swallow all hope. But these heroes were here the whole time to remind us that hope is real. That you can see it. All you have to do is look . . . up in the sky.

The most recent print character of Lois Lane embraces—perhaps more so than any other iteration—herself as a writer. In 2019’s Lois Lane: Enemy of the People, the first item that readers notice is that something is missing in the title. This story is not a Superman tale; she is headlining her own comic, and even when she had her own series earlier, “Superman’s Girl Friend” was a prominent part of every cover as the title. Now, though, this miniseries is completely focused on Lois, her writing, and her pursuit of the truth—so much so that Superman/Clark is relegated to the “boy toy” who only shows up in part one in two ways. First, a hotel housekeeper mentions to Lois the tabloid story of “Superman kissing a married Lois Lane,” which Lois quickly dismisses, saying, “I’m happily married.” Alejandra, the housekeeper, with a smile says coyly, “Of course, of course” but it’s implied that perhaps the reason why Lois is staying in a hotel in Chicago is because she and her husband, meek Clark Kent, are having issues over Lois’s well-publicized kiss with the awesome Superman. The only other appearance of Superman, aka Clark Kent, is when he shows up in the middle of the night for a quick, secret booty call. Even the next morning, post-steamy shower scene, Clark tries to pull information from Lois about her story, bluntly interrupting their bland conversation with, “When are you going to tell me about it?” This comic, then, is not about Lois as a damsel-in-distress, a love interest, or even a rival at The Daily Planet. This story is about Lois as a writer. Lois—sans Clark or Superman—pursues truth in clandestine meetings, accumulating facts and sending work to her boss despite the fact that she has left her position at the newspaper. Before sending it to print, he worries, stating, “We run this, they’re gonna come at you hard, Lois. And they’ve got the

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ammo. I can byline it as Daily Planet Staff.” However, Lois is proud of the work and simply responds, “My piece, Chief. I stand by it.” This version of Lois Lane is capable of filling out a whole series on her own, even in the current climate where even the truth can be classified as “fake news.” Writer Greg Rucka posits in the Washington Post that this update of Lois, a reporter who feels pressure as she pursues her story, is how the character would feel in real life: “I don’t think you can tell an honest story about Lois if you’re not reflecting the state of journalism and also hostility to journalism in the world today. . . . The danger in telling truth to power and the fear that power has of truth being told, is in and of itself, a worthy story” (Betancourt). Matt Morrison’s review of the twelve-issue series reflects on how far Lois Lane has come, both as a character and as a reporter: Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel created Lois to be more than just a damsel in distress. Modern writers have maintained that mission, turning Lois into a journalistic paragon who never backs down in the face of a bully. And through the power of the press and her personality, accomplishes things Superman would never dream of attempting.

LOIS LANE, SUPERWRITER Lois Lane has always been deserving of a space to call her own, as she has been an influence on many young girls who were inspired to pursue writing and journalism because of the grit that they found in the many versions over the years on both page and screen. This latest comic was both critically acclaimed and well received, showcasing that Lois is more than just a plucky heroine—she can be Superman’s wife and a world-class journalist. Other incarnations show that her character suffers by not fully embracing herself as both a woman who loves a man who has superpowers and a woman who has her own special powers, albeit not flying or deflecting bullets. In the beginning, we meet a woman ahead of her time, an independent, career-focused reporter who just wants the same chance as a man to fully realize her potential. She has confidence in her abilities and is strikingly modern in construction. Over time, she chases bad guys, thwarts crime, investigates topical social issues of the time period such as communism or racism, and helps Superman keep his secret from the world. Although many non-comic readers might say that Lois Lane is a love interest, she is truly so much more: she is a leader. In addition, she is worth studying to see the struggle that women in the workplace—and in society as a whole—face, for when she

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struggles, it reflects how women were—or are—treated in the workplace or are written in other popular culture as well. Though she often does get herself into trouble, Lois isn’t only a damsel-in-distress; she can be an inspirational character that sets a bar for both young girls to aspire to or for writers to emulate. Lois Lane might not have superpowers, but her gift helps her stand out as a writer who can make change happen. Her best incarnations are those where she is fully realized as a writer, understanding that her way to affect the world is with her words. She can follow leads to unearth a story, but she’s also a leader—a writer—worth following. WORKS CITED Baskind, Samantha. “Plain Dealing Women: Lois Lane and the Origin of the Comic Book Heroine—A Conversation with Laura Siegel Larson.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, vol. 9, no. 6, 2018, pp. 634–44. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition. Directed by Zack Snyder, Warner Bros., 2016. Betancourt, David. “Lois Lane Is Now a White House Reporter—and an ‘Enemy of the People.’” Washington Post. 13 September 2019. https:​//​www​.washingtonpost​ .com​/arts​-entertainment​/2019​/09​/13​/lois​-lane​-is​-now​-white​-house​-reporter​-an​ -enemy​-people​/. Accessed 7 June 2020. Binder, Otto (w), Ruben Moreira (p), and Al Plastino (i). “The New Lois Lane.” Showcase #9 (August 1957). 75 Years of Lois Lane, DC Comics, Inc. 2013, pp. 78–85. Bond, Gwenda. “Margot Kidder, Woman of Steel: Her Lois Lane Was a Hero, Too.” Salon.com. 20 May 2020. https:​//​www​.salon​.com​/2018​/05​/20​/margot​-kidder​ -woman​-of​-steel​-her​-lois​-lane​-was​-a​-hero​-too​/. Accessed 1 June 2020. Cameron, Don (w), Ed Dobrotka (p), and George Roussos (i). “Lois Lane, Girl Reporter: The Bakery Counterfeiters.” Superman #29 (July 1944). 75 Years of Lois Lane, DC Comics, Inc., 2013, pp. 48–51. Davidson, Danica. “Lois Lane Is ‘A Powerful Woman’ Says Amy Adams.” MTV.com. 31 March 2011. http:​//​www​.mtv​.com​/news​/2598546​/amy​-adams​-lois​ -lane​-superman​/. Accessed 3 January 2020. DC Comics. Lois Lane: A Celebration of 75 Years. DC Comics, 2013. DeCandido, Keith R. A. “I Just Want You to Meet a Super Guy—Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.” Tor.com. 22 March 2019. https:​//​www​.tor​.com​ /2019​/03​/22​/i​-just​-want​-you​-to​-meet​-a​-super​-guy​-lois​-clark​-the​-new​-adventures​ -of​-superman​/. Accessed 3 June 2020. Dockterman, Eliana. “Wonder Woman’s Epic Introduction Is Undercut by a Perpetually Helpless Lois Lane.” Time. 27 March 2016. https:​//​time​.com​/4269943​/ batman​-v​-superman​-wonder​-woman​-lois​-lane​/. Accessed 4 January 2020.

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Durden, Mary E. “It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s Lois Lane: The Construction of a Super(ior) Woman in Lois and Clark.” Examining Lois Lane: The Scoop on Superman’s Sweetheart, edited by Nadine Farghaly, Scarecrow Press, 2013, pp. 171–88. Erbland, Kate. “What Man of Steel Gets Right About Lois Lane.” Film School Rejects. 13 June 2013. https:​//​filmschoolrejects​.com​/what​-man​-of​-steel​-gets​-right​ -about​-lois​-lane​-c8dd3207d0c8​/. Accessed 4 June 2020. “Façade.” Smallville. Writ. Holly Harold. Dir. Pat Williams. Warner Bros., 2004. DVD. Foster, William H. III. “Indeterminate Racial Identity in Comic Books.” BlackSciFi.com. 12 August 2015. https:​//​blacksci​-fi​.com​/indeterminate​-racial​ -identity​-in​-comic​-books​/. Accessed 12 May 2020. Goldman, Eric. “Smallville: Erica Durance on Being Lois Lane.” IGN. 12 May 2012. https:​//​www​.ign​.com​/articles​/2008​/09​/13​/smallville​-erica​-durance​-on​-being​-lois​ -lane. Accessed 4 June 2020. “Gone.” Smallville. Writ. Kelly Souders. Dir. James Marshall. Warner Bros., 2004. DVD. Hanley, Tim. Investigating Lois Lane: The Turbulent History of The Daily Planet’s Ace Reporter. Chicago Review Press, 2016. ———. “Lois Lane’s Feminist Revolution.” Atlantic. 13 March 2016. https:​//​ www​.theatlantic​.com​/entertainment​/archive​/2016​/03​/lois​-lane​-dorothy​-woolfolk​ /472959​/. Accessed 14 May 2020. Hirmer, Karin. “Smallville’s Lois Lane: From New Woman to Female Hero.” Examining Lois Lane: The Scoop on Superman’s Sweetheart, edited by Nadine Farghaly, Scarecrow Press, 2013, pp. 235–60. Janeczko, Jane. “A Brief History of Lois Lane in Comics.” 28 June 2013. https:​ //​www​.bitchmedia​.org​/post​/a​-brief​-history​-of​-lois​-lane​-in​-comics​. Accessed 21 April 2020. Justice League. Directed by Zack Snyder, Warner Bros., 2017. Kanigher, Robert (w), Werner Roth (p), and Vince Colletta (p). “I am Curious (Black)!” Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #106 (November 1970). 75 Years of Lois Lane, DC Comics, Inc., 2013, pp. 115–29. Man of Steel. Directed by Zack Snyder, Warner Bros., 2013. Morrison, Matt. “Lois Lane Takes on Trump Border Camps in New DC Comic.” ScreenRant. 6 July 2019. https:​//​screenrant​.com​/lois​-lane​-dc​-comic​-trump​-border​ -camps​/. Accessed 8 June 2020. “Pilot.” Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Writ. Deborah Joy Levine. Dir. Robert Butler. Warner Bros., 1993. DVD. Rucka, Greg (w) and Mike Perkins (p). “Enemy of the People.” Lois Lane #1 (September 2019). Saraiya, Sonia. “Why Margot Kidder Was the Definitive Lois Lane.” Vanity Fair. 14 May 2018. https:​//​www​.salon​.com​/2018​/05​/20​/margot​-kidder​-woman​-of​-steel​-her​ -lois​-lane​-was​-a​-hero​-too​/. Accessed 29 May 2020.

Chapter Six

Scribbling Pleasure Undertaking the Sentence of Desire Amy B. Hagenrater-Gooding

THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL In 2017’s Amazon Prime show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, we are introduced to Miriam Maisel. From the very first of the eight-episode series, we are given Miriam’s, or Midge as she is called by her loved ones, voice. It is her wedding day and she begins by giving a glib and comedic toast about how she got there. She queries, “Who stands up and gives a toast at their own wedding?” and then answers “I do” (“Pilot,” 10:30). Her voice sets the tone for the story, establishing her authenticity of self. Her simple assertion and reiteration of the marriage vows in conjunction with scripting her own toast at the beginning (“I do”) reinforces the theme for the series: this pledge to live as an authentic life and have her voice heard. Miriam is ultimately a writer and a comic and she will express that, although it takes the rest of the series for her to get there. When the story begins, we see Midge and Joel at the Gaslight, the downtown New York club where he performs stand-up. Midge’s role, at this point in the narrative, is to persuade the bookers to give him a better time slot (through an offering of her famous brisket), to encourage his performance (through excessive adoration and praise), and to jot down notes about his delivery. What we later learn in their cab ride home is that Midge is the author of these jokes. As a writer, she is bound by her journal, and while viewers think, for the first fifteen minutes of the show, that this is devoted to Joel, we quickly see that she is the author, and she is the one writing his humor. On 121

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their way home from Joel’s performance, after he falls asleep in the cab, we hear her scripting jokes that would work best if she delivered them, lending to a further emphasis on her voice. She writes, “All that applause for me? What am I putting out after?” She continues with “One standing ovation and everyone goes home pregnant” (“Pilot,” 15:32–15:40). As she writes in her journal, it is important to note that she is mediating her identity through Joel’s voice. Her embodied, sexually referential jokes are safe because they are seemingly for Joel, but also because they are cloistered in her notebook, diary-like, only given voice through Joel, should he deem them worthwhile. The conflict in the series comes soon after when Midge, watching The Ed Sullivan Show, sees Bob Newhart performing what she calls “Joel’s act” and we as viewers see the first glimpse of her anger; she is irate that he has taken what she thinks are Joel’s words, his authorly contribution, and turned them into a successful, televised skit when she works hard to produce her words, her comedy, albeit for him. When Joel reveals he “borrowed” the skit, that it is no big deal, that everyone does it and “she’ll learn,” we hear Midge retort, “Really, when I found out June Freedman used my meatloaf recipe, I almost stabbed her in the eye with a fork” (“Pilot,” 22:30–23:10). Midge’s anger is temporarily mitigated until Joel flops. Midge encourages him to do his own observational humor, but after his failure, he decides to leave her, blaming her for his failures and, incidentally, revealing he is having an affair with his secretary. Miriam’s authorship comes out once Joel leaves and her father tells her she can’t survive this (life with children, life as a woman) on her own. Midge’s anger and defiance, fueled by some wine, enables her to enter the Gaslight and deliver her own authentic skit (the first of what will be many, many more). Propelled by anger, Midge gives a show-stopping performance that voices her frustration about being the “mad divorcee of the Upper East Side,” about giving her husband two children only to have him leave her for Penny Pan. Her skit not only ridicules her situation (and the situation of women who are rendered invisible, voiceless without and alongside their husbands), but it is also embodied, using her body as a site of humor. In one part of the skit, she covers up her head and her “bloated” abdomen, focusing on her breasts, saying, “Who wouldn’t want to come home to these?” At another point, she exposes her breasts, noting they can stand up on their own and “there is no way Penny Pan can compete with these tits” (“Pilot,” 46:40). Her narrative, her language, and her ownership of her body are all means by which Miriam comes to herself. Although she is arrested for indecency, it is Susie, the female booking agent, who bails her out. What is pivotal in this exchange is both Susie’s support of her authenticity and Miriam’s reluctance to believe it. When she leaves Susie to take a cab home because, as she says, “I’m a mom, not a comic,” she realizes she doesn’t have any money to pay for the

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ride home; upon reaching in her coat pockets she does realize she has her notebook, and the words—her words and comedy sketches—become the only currency she needs as she embarks on writing her own unique sentence (“Pilot,” 50:15–51:20). Miriam’s journal writing is not just a place of “self-recording, self-exploration, and self-expression, although it is all of these. It is also a channel of self-creation. We create ourselves in the very process of writing about ourselves and our lives” (Schiwy 234). It is this creation that is the focus of the show. Miriam doesn’t come easily into her voice. Susie tries to coach her and encourage her note-taking and scripting, but Miriam retorts, “That woman last night was not me” (“Ya Shivu v Bolshom Dome Na Kholme,” 23:24). She vacillates between her identity as passive wife and mother and outspoken comic/author, and it is at the family dinner for Yom Kippur where she puts on the “red dress” to play the part of dutiful daughter and wife when Joel’s father reveals that Joel doesn’t have any money, that they are broke and his job is only through his uncle, that her anger, the catalyst for her creativity, is again ignited. Miriam finds herself again at the Gaslight delivering another authentic and passionate comedic performance, this time stemming from her realization that her home she shared with Joel was never their home, but instead belonged to her father-in-law. On stage, Midge quips, “Later you find out the prince’s father owns the castle, the prince’s secretary knows shorthand, and Sleeping Beauty is screwed” (47:30–47:37). She continues to mock the “shorthand girls” who hold as their specialty “not writing full sentences,” another dig at Penny Pan, but also a way of differentiating herself and defining who she is, a woman who majored in Russian literature and is just beginning to write her own sentences with her comedy and within the parameters of what her life can encompass. Anger is the inspiration, the muse, for Miriam, but there is also an aspect of self-exploration to her writing, to her comedy. This is intrinsic to her identity and name. She doesn’t want to identify as Miriam Maisel because she is a real person and she disassociates herself from the stories and snippets she tells even though they are her own, both creatively and experientially. When she begins to work with Susie on honing her persona, Susie makes a point of noting, “We don’t even really know who you are yet” (“The Disappointment of the Dionne Quintuplets,” 14:48). Although Susie sees this as much more to do with the craft of comedy, for Miriam it is more so about her identity. She tries out many possible pseudonyms (Tula Raine, Lottie McAllister, Anya Morgenstern), but finally settles on “Fanny Mitch” as her “nom de plume” in episode 5 and she bombs. Miriam is beginning to find her voice, but she compartmentalizes this with her identity. She rejects the idea that the authentic self is the one performing on the stage, writing her fears and desires, and

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giving them voice. She still sees herself as mom, wife, and other, dividing and compartmentalizing her separate selves. Just as she tries to mask her identity with her false names (realizing, too, that her only successful skits were performed when she was drunk or stoned, or, essentially, unbound), she tries to outsource her identity by delegating the writing of her sketches to a man. She finds an advertisement in the paper and calls Herb Smith, comedy writer to help “hone” her act. Herb sends her a bunch of three-by-five-inch cards with inaccurate and unfunny material and she goes on, this time, as “Sadie Morton” and using jokes that aren’t her own bombs again. Susie is apoplectic that Miriam “hired a guy to help” when she thought they were doing this together (“Doink,” 36:27). Miriam is furious that she failed, blaming Susie for pushing her on stage too soon. Miriam rejects Susie’s assertion that she is the comedienne and that sometimes she will bomb. Just as Miriam fractures her stage persona from her personal identity, so, too, she rejects being labeled by what she does, comedy, embracing the more comfortable identity as a B. Altman salesgirl. She “gives” her voice to a man and finds her worth determined by the audience (male) that heckles her. As Andrea Dworkin notes, “Men often react to women’s words—speaking and writing—as if they were acts of violence . . . so we lower our voices. Women whisper. Women apologize. Women shut up. Women trivialize what we know. Women shrink. Women pull back” (viii). Miriam does just that, pulling back as she continues to grapple with the uncomfortable, unforgiving dualities of her identity. At the end of this episode, however, we begin to see them merge as Miriam, at a party with her salesgirl colleagues, begins to “perform” for her friends. It is in this setting, though, the private versus the public, that Miriam commandeers a group of women (italics mine) and leads them in cackles and guffaws as she shares her own stories. As the camera pans out in this episode, we see the divide with the men off to the side in their own collective. Miriam is still mediating her identity and here, within the comfort of the private sphere, among her coworkers, Miriam gives forth her confident, original humor. What Miriam doesn’t yet realize is that it is this “unbound” self, this open and true version of herself, that garners the most authentic appreciation from the audience, largely because it approximates the truest version of Miriam. But the struggle of coming to oneself is a challenge. Feminist critic Helene Cixous in her work “The Laugh of the Medusa” instructs women to write saying “Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it” (876). Further, she speaks on the danger of “censor[ing] the body” as it simply “censor[s] breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard” (880). Miriam exemplifies this mandate. Although she steps away from comedy, she always returns and finds herself on stage at the Gaslight discussing her embodied reality as woman. Further, beyond

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discussing the injustices or infidelity or the realities of sexual or artistic desire, Miriam also gives voices to her anger at how impossible it is to finally acknowledge that her “body must be heard” when societal constraints persist in “censoring [her] body.” Cixous pushes for what she calls ecriture feminine, a writing by women about women’s experience. This writing is often less linear and more circular stream of consciousness (as exemplified by Miriam’s stand-up). It also gives voice to what is repressed; thus, this feminine writing that Miriam does, this riffing on her experience, is Miriam’s attempt to give voice to her emotions: anger and desire, both of which have been cloistered by a society that defines her as a simple housewife. Cixous also dismantles patriarchal mythology, reinterpreting Medusa’s original horrific image as castrator of men, reducing their power, to one who is laughing and delights in her power to disrupt. It is her laughter, her jouissance, which becomes the focus in this interpretation. Interestingly enough, it is through laughter that Miriam disrupts the status quo. Through this idea of jouissance (or play), Miriam comes to find a means by which she can explore aspects of herself she has long quieted. For Miriam, despite Susie’s encouragement, her stand-up and writing is just that: play. She doesn’t yet recognize the value in this play through power whereby she can dismantle and disrupt—but she will. By extension, we can apply the mythology of a vagina dentata and the perpetuated ideal of a woman as castrator and reinterpret that as well. The vagina, a locus of power (albeit here sexual, but also displayed elsewhere) is seen as a means of diminishing the male. The vagina, with its biting lips and teeth has been reclaimed by feminist theorists in much the same way as the Medusa image. Thus, I want to employ Erin Harrington’s reconception of this term. She writes, “I suggest vagina dentata speaks of a body as well as a mode of feminine agency that has power for it and does not need the masculine to sustain or justify it. It pleases and pleasures itself” (55). Harrington notes that vagina dentata can “also be reframed as emancipatory. . . . Perhaps vagina dentata’s inherent agency and implicit violence can be leveraged as a deterrent or a line of defense. Instead, vagina dentata can be reframed as a discursive strategy through which women can reclaim their bodies, resist corporeal colonization, or retaliate against a conceptual framework of masculine sexual prowess” (65). The embodied lips of the vagina are mirrored in the lips of the speaking mouth, and often the two are conflated. Speech and writing are dual modes of expression here and Midge uses both writing and speech to reclaim her embodied space. Although writing about horror, Harrington’s theory can be applied broadly to the very notion of embodied possession of one’s self. As she writes, “Vagina dentata [can be] employed in this sense as a metaphor for sexual self-awareness and self-defence [sic], as well as a means of potentially

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positive sexual embodiment” (65). Moreover, she sees this theory “forecloses the ides of the one Woman who is Other, a necessary and invisible condition of male subjectivity” and instead posits a woman who “unfolds into a kaleidoscopic constellation of erotic, sensual possibilities of becomings” (56). Midge rejects the narrow parameters of her identity and it is through her anger that she speaks and conceives of her desires made manifest through her art, her stand-up. Returning to Cixous and her notes about women’s speech, it is that freedom and embodiment of self that lends to its power. She writes: Listen to a woman speak at a public gathering (if she hasn’t painfully lost her wind). She doesn’t “speak,” she throws her trembling body forward; she lets go of herself, she flies; all of her passes into her voice, and it’s with her body that she vitally supports the “logic” of her speech. Her flesh speaks true. She lays herself bare. In fact, she physically materializes what she’s thinking; she signifies it with her body. In a certain way she inscribes what she’s saying, because she doesn’t deny her drives the intractable and impassioned part they have in speaking. Her speech, even when “theoretical” or political, is never simple or linear or “objectified,” generalized: she draws her story into history. (881)

Miriam’s story is her power. Her embodied, reckless, haphazard, honest speech is her truth. She tries to unleash this voice in the safety of the private sphere, but even here she is hidden, safe, masked. This delivery, albeit tentative, is just one more step to realizing and achieving her own true (self) sentence. While Miriam uses the private sphere as a place to lick her wounds and test out aspects of herself in a safe space (much like she used her pink journal to create jokes for Joel), Susie is quick to remind Miriam that she can’t stay cloistered forever. Susie believes in Miriam and sees in her a strength of voice and depth of humor worth cultivating. In episode 6, Susie removes the kid gloves and tells her, “They are not real gigs. . . . You do not need a goddamned man at your side to do this. . . . You could be an original, but you are fucking it all up with this cockamamie alternate universe party bullshit” (“Mrs. X at the Gaslight,” 39:02–39:30). Susie sees how Miriam masks herself and her talents (with Joel, in the private sphere) and she calls her on it, holding her accountable. She bellows, “Just drop this doe-eyed Bambi thing right now. I’m so sick of you acting all innocent. Oh, I don’t know how the world works cuz I’m a housewife and I wear four layers of petticoats. It is tired and it is weak and you are not tired and you are not fucking weak” (39:58–40:12). She, essentially, unmasks Miriam. This is just the catalyst Miriam needs and again it is anger that pushes Miriam back to the stage, but this time, Susie’s anger at Miriam’s dishonesty with herself. While Miriam surmounts one

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more hurdle, we hear, at episode’s end, her initial improv act and see myriad recording devices playing her words. The out-of-frame listeners call it genius and decide to dub one hundred recordings and see where it goes. They don’t know her name, only that she “is married to some guy named Joel and lives uptown,” so they decide to label the sketch “Mrs. X at the Gaslight.” Her identity continues to be fraught (by how others see her, by how others label her), but it is her sentences, her words, that propel her identity as she continues to shape herself. In episode 7, back in the public sphere, she assumes the mantle of “Amanda Gleason” and gets the opportunity to open for famous female comic Sophie Lennon. This third “fail” occurs when she visits Sophie and realizes Sophie’s “housefrau from Queens” persona is a guise. She learns Sophie wears a fat suit and her crass and brash delivery is an act and it is in this moment Miriam realizes she is no better in faking her performance and obscuring writing her true self. Sophie asks Miriam about her persona, her gimmick, and Miriam says, “I’m just me” (“Put That on Your Plate!,” 37:40). Sophie assures her that her gender is a liability. When Miriam retorts that Bob Hope and Lenny Bruce don’t have characters/personas, Sophie claps back, “They have dicks. Do you have a dick?” (38:10). She continues, “Men don’t want to laugh at you, they want to fuck you. You can’t go up there and be a woman, you have to be a thing. You want to get ahead in comedy, cover up that hole” (38:18–38:28). For Sophie, she performs an inauthentic self and encourages Miriam to do the same. She encourages her to deny her embodied self, only peddling the parts of her that appeal to the masculine crowd. She reduces her to her femaleness, her vagina, and sees her, or her worth, as only a sexualized performance for a male establishment, even, at one point, asking why she would want to do comedy (“Can’t you sing?”). While Miriam has given voice to her sexualized, feminine experience, Sophie wants Miriam to use that, but in silence. “Cover up that hole” denotes silenced, quieted, and unthreatening passivity, both of her spoken experience and her sexualized one. Even though Miriam has vacillated in assessing her own self-worth, she knows this is a charade and it is in her next set that she “outs” Sophie and questions the audience “Why do women have to pretend to be something that they are not” (47:47). She rejects the “character” Sophie plays and, implicitly, the character she has been playing. She knocks it out of the park and commences sharing her voice, her true voice, in the public sphere, employing ecriture feminine. For Miriam, she falters in finding her authenticity, but it is her anger in failing, again and again, that pushes her to finding her identity and her voice, writing her truth. By the series close, she is performing again, this time introduced by her friend Lenny Bruce, who asserts, “I think she’s going to be very big. . . . Welcome to the stage a very classy lady, my friend, uh, I’m going to actually let her introduce herself to you” (“Thank You and Goodnight,”

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53:18–53:30). Lenny, perhaps one of the few redeemable male figures on the show, doesn’t try to supplant or replace Miriam’s voice, simply gives her the space to find, and use, her own. At the end of a very successful set, she introduces herself: “I’m Mrs. Maisel, thank you and goodnight.” She no longer adopts a guise, but proudly assumes her past and owns her anger that has fueled her assent into comedic success. Through her own authentic voice, she recognizes herself as a female comic and a female writer. I LOVE DICK In Amazon’s I Love Dick we are introduced to another couple, but this time one that seems on equal artistic footing. Sylvere is the writer on his way to a prestigious institute in Marfa, Texas, to work with Dick Jarrett while Chris is the filmmaker waiting to go to Venice to showcase her work. Once she arrives in Marfa, however, she receives a call that her film has been pulled because she didn’t pay for the music she used in the score. As she sees part of herself (the artistic aspect of herself that forms much of her identity) silenced, she resigns herself to going to the opening reception, where she introduces herself as Chris but is ultimately defined by her husband’s positionality in the artistic community (as one of “Dick’s new fellows”). When Dick asks about her film over dinner, his privileged position posits him in the role of critic. Without knowing anything about her work other than her assertion that “it’s about a couple, or I’d say the woman in the couple, she kinda represents all women and society’s crushing expectations,” Dick immediately discounts her, saying that the film sounds horrible, that she sounds like she is crushed by something, and, silencing her, turns to her husband to ask, “Is she any good?” (“Pilot,” 18:50–19:13). He continues to issue a verdict on her voice, claiming she doesn’t want to be a filmmaker because she doesn’t have the desire as all it takes is “pure want,” and Chris recoils. Indicting her gendered artistry, he persists, saying, “Unfortunately, most films made by women aren’t that good. See I think it is really pretty rare for a woman to make a good film because they have to work from behind their oppression which makes for some bummer movies” (19:51–20:05). For Chris, her anger propels her not to leave, but to stay and confront Dick by auditing his class and scripting a series of letters. She writes, “I never had someone shatter in one glance the persona that I had spent decades constructing” (23:14–23:18). Much like Midge, Chris is unsure of who she is as an artist, and Dick continues to render her invisible when she shows up to his class proclaiming that all of his students are artists. Implicitly, he doesn’t see her as such, and after viewing a snippet of her film, he says it isn’t his thing. Her voice is much more pronounced as she uses this exchange to berate the “brick” he has on

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display as his art announcing, “I don’t think a straight line equals art” (“The Conceptual Fuck,” 6:26–14:20). For Chris, art is much more kaleidoscopic and not, as Dick pronounces, expressed solely through perfection and his love of a straight line. Just as Cixous criticizes the linear nature of patriarchal writing, Chris sees that how Dick defines art is not how Chris sees it. This speaks to her embodied messiness, her ecriture feminine, and she claims it here, refuting Dick, for the first time. Chris wants visibility from the onset and she is determined to get it. She laments the invisibility of female artists, wondering if there can be a good woman filmmaker when you “are raised to be invisible. I’m invisible. . . . I mean, it’s any wonder that any woman can think of herself as an artist” (14:34–14:45). Ironically, she gives voice to this frustration to her neighbor Devon, who tells her, “I’m an artist, too.” (Chris quips, “Oh, I didn’t realize.”) Even as an artist Chris is oblivious to the artistry of the women who surround her in this town, and this theme of artistic invisibility and the anger of not being seen is reinforced, even by one’s own gender. After writing a series of “Dear Dick” letters, Chris sends Dick a box full of the missives arranged like an accordion and clearly signs her name to the work. Her private means of expression is rendered as conceptual art for his consumption. “Dear Dick. Desire isn’t lack. It’s excess energy. Claustrophobia inside your skin” (“Scenes from a Marriage,” 2:10–2:15). Sylvere is mortified at Chris’s exposure and demands she denounce her exposition as fiction, but instead she tells Dick they are a draft, one that Sylvere knows nothing about. Chris then rescripts the reading of these letters by posting them all over town, demanding even greater visibility by making her desire/anger/want/art viewable for public consideration. Chris, in channeling her anger, her desire to find a mode of expression whereby she is heard, finds a palpable means of expression through her letter writing. This is important to Chris not only as a means of self-expression, but as a means of connecting with others. In an earlier episode where she is conversing with Devon about art, she notes that having an idea for a film is like “in your mind, it’s like—it’s like the whole world, it’s like your whole soul and then you make the movie and suddenly it’s compared to every other movie that’s ever been made. And something that was so big becomes, like, like the tiniest Russian nesting column, like a piece of sand” (“The Conceptual Fuck,” 15:27–16:02). Chris doesn’t want to be rendered invisible and she doesn’t want to be reduced to a simple analogy. That is just another means by which she is constrained and it is through her performance art that she finds a way to be heard. It is episode 5, “A Short History of Weird Girls,” that breaks with the Chris-Dick dynamic and instead explores the notion as set up earlier by Dick of the twin notion of artistry and desire. It is this episode that renders Dick as nothing more than muse, not because of his beauty and sexual energy

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(although that is played upon in almost mocking excess as he sits naked on a couch barely covered by a blanket), but because of the anger he incites in the four artistic women presented in the series. In fact, there is a close correlation between their anger and their desire. As Chris asserts early on in the episode, “I don’t care if you want me. It’s better that you don’t. It’s enough that I want you. Sometimes when I walk down the street I look into the faces of every woman I pass, and I wonder what she sees. I wonder about the history of her desire. Dear Dick, what if we all started writing you letters?” (5:32–5:55). Unlike the traditional narrative of the show, viewers see the women face the camera and present their stories as confessional as their “histories” are displayed as filmography behind them. Each woman’s voice is given singular exposure; Dick is the object of their anger and contemplation, but the subject is much more than that. The subject is the women who recount a trajectory that only marginally intersects with Dick. Their “Dear Dick” is only the entrance into their exploration of themselves. Chris essentially poses the question: What if every woman said what she meant? Devon, the playwright, talks of how she grew up watching and wanting to emulate Dick, his masculinity, his power, and his presence and it is her anger over not having what he has, over being rendered invisible in her relationship with a woman because it isn’t “straight,” that causes her to come home and “figure out who the hell I should become” (10:23). Paula, the art curator, falls for Dick’s art, loving the namelessness of his pieces, which evoke in her a terrifying feeling of boundlessness. While Dick gives Paula power as the art curator for his museum in Marfa, he openly rejects all her ideas for exhibits. She laments that she is “still here, searching for something you’ll say yes to” (14:55–15:02). Toby, the art historian, studies the formalist nature of hard-core porn, but for her, Dick was an inspiration through his own work. Although Dick is a muse in a sense, there is an underlying animosity toward him as she addresses him “dear great man, genius, loner, cowboy” and later “alpha male artist and scholar” who has made his living both showing how valuable Mother Earth is and also demonstrating his power with his giant, concrete phallus (15:33–16:07). Toby, the last of this montage, speaks for herself, but also for the collective of these showcased women artists. Her ending monologue recounts the awards she has received and how she situates herself in relationship to him. She asserts, “I may be nowhere near you, but I am definitely getting closer. . . . You’ve got 30 years on me, Dick, but you haven’t made a piece in nearly a decade. Your time is running out. Dear Dick, we are not far from your doorstep” (19:19–19:58). Collectively, these women reject Dick’s (or, collectively, the masculine) presentation of resentment, dismissiveness, and privileged entitlement. They reject Dick as a man, a man who has space always already made for his voice. This episode is one of the most fascinating of the series as all the women write themselves demanding

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that their bodies must be heard. Further, they all set up a space whereby they set out to castrate Dick, the patriarchal representation in the show. This application of vagina dentata is one, at this juncture, of pure vocalization, yet the women move to action as the series continues. Dick may fear their power (silencing and negating them), but they won’t be ignored. The artistry of all the women comes out. Chris posts her letters around town for public consumption, refusing to be silenced or stilled. Eventually they become part of a performance piece that Devon champions and we hear bits and pieces of Chris’s voice mouthed and mediated through others, men and women. We hear, “I am on a mission to obliterate the walls around my desire” and “I will not be muzzled” (“This Is Not a Love Letter,” 8:24–8:40). Devon scripts the “beauty dance” that the men of Marfa help her perform and it is here where she embraces the duality of her identity, both masculine and feminine, both/and, not either/or (“Cowboys and Nomads”). Paula assumes the lead role of the gallery when she threatens to leave for better opportunities, yet it is Dick who quits. Paula then uses this opportunity and “authors” all the new pieces, proudly placing Post-it Notes with famous female artists’ names on the wall of the gallery after taking down the artists only Dick has seen fit to display (“The Barter Economy”). Toby creates a performance piece using her body as spectacle to encourage a discussion about how the oil phalluses ruin the landscape at the site where they drill for Marfa oil insisting viewers “Don’t look away. More importantly look at yourselves. . . . Look at what you do by not doing something” (“This Is Not a Love Letter,” 10:10– 10:20). Each woman uses her body in some capacity to subvert their silence as displayed in episode 5. These women have used their anger at being unseen to find their visibility as artists, as women, and as creative individuals. They have spoken through their bodies, through their words, and through their art. One unifying element in the quest for authenticity between Chris and Midge is that through claiming their visibility and linking their anger as catalyst for self-exploration is the assertion of their unique name, quite literally. Chris proudly signs her letters, declaring her voice, and Midge must work to find hers, yet does so by series end. Further, these women are both mothers, or identify themselves as such. For Miriam, her maternity is a source of contention within her identity. Her father inquires where she has been when she returns at night, saying, “You left your baby here alone,” completely ignoring the fact that as the grandparent he was placed in charge for the evening (“The Disappointment of the Dionne Quintuplets,” 50:52). For Miriam, she feels tremendous maternal guilt at not being the “right” kind of mother. One of her comedic sketches involves rifling through her purse and noting she has “two lips, three lipsticks” but no pictures of her children. She wonders in her monologue about the kind of mother she is because she doesn’t have a photo of her kids and if she was supposed to be

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a mother (“Because You Left,” 35:16–36:43). Although she jokes about this, she is grappling with her identity as a mother and a creative artist. She comes to realize it isn’t either/or but rather both/and. For Chris, she defines herself as a thwarted mother, and in the last episode of the series, we see her in a pool spread out almost Christ-like with a mirage of two men who would have been her children categorized as her miscarriage on one side and her abortion on the other. They inquire of her, “Did you do everything you wanted?” Chris retorts, “No . . . but I’m not dead yet” (“Cowboys and Nomads,” 1:41–1:51). When Sylvere and Chris get into a spat over her public display of the letters, and Chris asserts she gave up a family to support him and his art, Sylvere hurls forth the attack, “You don’t even like kids,” criticizing her creativity at even this most basic level as mom (“Scenes from a Marriage,” 9:20). Both of the women end on a creative high note. Miriam pronounces her name, her identity, proudly at the series close. Although she still claims the “Mrs.,” it is a part of her creating and accepting all facets of herself, a part of her past identity that is ongoing and continuously developing. For Chris, as she heads toward consummating the sexual tension with Dick, he takes ownership of her body, declaring he is the one making her wet, proclaiming that it is all him. Humorously, it is revealed that she has started her period. While Dick retreats to the bathroom, Chris surveils the situation, grabs her boots and Dick’s hat, and leaves. As she leaves Dick’s ranch and walks through the desert menstruating visibly, the last scene shows us a woman able to create on her own, showcasing embodied acceptance. Dick, humorously “castrated” by her exit, is seen looking around, forlorn, after he returns from the bathroom to find her gone, needing him no more. Her body, her embodiment, is independent of Dick. She has seen her creativity through Dick, not because of him, and has come out on the other side. We are left with her last words: “Dear Dick, I’m going to write you one last letter” (22:27). Viewers find triumph not in consummation with Dick, but consummation of her identity through finding her voice through letters to Dick; this last letter is ultimately because she doesn’t need a mediating force any longer. She knows who she is and owns it on her own. Although some critics see the televised I Love Dick as weak compared to the novelistic, experimental creation of Chris Kraus’s work, Chris here, played by Kathryn Hahn, creates on her own terms, just as the other women do, and although the medium might be different, the message of artistic exploration persists. Here it is less about one woman’s journey, and more about the collective journey of female artists as they script their own means of expression, their ecriture feminine. This women’s writing isn’t necessarily a clear sentence (Margaret Atwood’s “a word after a word after a word is power”), but instead manifests itself through performativity. Miriam’s journey is much more individualistic, but both women find through their unique means of

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expression a way to use their anger, channel their desire, and embody all aspects of themselves. Coming back to Cixous and returning to the concept of vagina dentata, these women use their bodies and their sexuality to reject the masculine ideal of woman and come to their own individualized, uniquely defined feminine artistry. As Cixous writes: If woman has always functioned “within” the discourse of man, a signifier that has always referred back to the opposite signifier which annihilates its specific energy and diminishes or stifles its very different sounds, it is time for her to dislocate this “within,” to explode it, turn it around, and seize it; to make it hers, containing it, taking it in her own mouth, biting that tongue with her very own teeth to invent for herself a language to get inside of. And you’ll see with what ease she will spring forth from that “within”—the “within” where once she so drowsily crouched—to overflow at the lips she will cover the foam. (Cixous 887)

Miriam and Chris both reject being within the confines of a society that defines for them who they are. They reject having their behavior regulated solely because of their gender. They both reject channels that try to render them mute. These characters use anger as a means of fueling their artistry. They use their experiences and their sexuality as fodder for their artistry. Their desire to find themselves through their art, whether creating through letters or experiential comedic sketches, enables them to write a “feminine sentence”: linguistically and literally through their unique feminine experience and emotionally and metaphorically through exploration of the “sentence” of feminine desire and its ability to fuel their artistry. By creating their own language of expression, through comedy and through written performance art, respectively, they each ultimately succeed in writing a very personal, simmering and significant sentence of desire. WORKS CITED “A Short History of Weird Girls.” I Love Dick, written by Annie Baker and Heidi Schreck, produced by Kimberly Peirce, performance by Kathryn Hahn, season 1, episode 5, Amazon Prime, 12 May 2017. “Because You Left.” The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, written and directed by Daniel Palladino, season 1, episode 3, Amazon Prime, 29 November 2017. Cixous, Helene. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Signs, vol. 1, no. 4, Summer 1976, pp. 875–93. “Cowboys and Nomads.” I Love Dick, written by Sarah Gubbins and Heidi Schreck, produced by Andrea Arnold, season 1, episode 8, Amazon Prime, 12 May 2017.

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“Doink.” The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, written by Daniel Palladino, directed by Amy Sherman-Palladino, performance by Rachel Brosnahan, season 1, episode 5, Amazon Prime, 29 November 2017. Dworkin, Andrea. Intercourse. Simon and Schuster, 1987. Harrington, Erin. Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film. Routledge, 2018. “Mrs. X at the Gaslight.” The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, written by Sheila Lawrence, directed by Scott Ellis, performance by Rachel Brosnahan, season 1, episode 6, Amazon Prime, 29 November 2017. “Pilot.” I Love Dick, written by Sarah Gubbins, directed by Jill Soloway, performance by Kathryn Hahn, season 1, episode 1, Amazon Prime, 19 August 2016. “Pilot.” The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, written and directed by Amy Sherman-Palladino, performance by Rachel Brosnahan, season 1, episode 1, Amazon Prime, 17 March 2017. “Put That on Your Plate!” The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, written and directed by Daniel Palladino, performance by Rachel Brosnahan, season 1, episode 7, Amazon Prime, 29 November 2017. “Scenes from a Marriage.” I Love Dick, written by Heidi Schreck, directed by Andrea Arnold, season 1, episode 3, Amazon Prime, 12 May 2017. Schiwy, Marlene A. “Taking Things Personally: Women, Journal Writing, and Self-Creation.” NWSA Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, 1994, pp. 234–54. “Thank You and Goodnight.” The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, written and directed by Amy Sherman-Palladino, performance by Rachel Brosnahan, season 1, episode 8, Amazon Prime, 17 March 2017. “The Barter Economy.” I Love Dick, written by Dara Resnik, produced by Andrea Arnold, season 1, episode 7, Amazon Prime, 17 March 2017. “The Conceptual Fuck.” I Love Dick, written by Sarah Gubbins, directed by Kimberly Peirce, performance by Kathryn Hahn, season 1, episode 2, Amazon Prime, 12 May 2017. “The Disappointment of the Dionne Quintuplets.” The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, written and directed by Amy Sherman-Palladino, performance by Rachel Brosnahan, season 1, episode 4, Amazon Prime, 29 November 2017. “This Is Not a Love Letter.” I Love Dick, written by Esti Giordani and Diona Reasonover, produced by Jim Frohna, season 1, episode 6, Amazon Prime, 12 May 2017. “Ya Shivu v Bolshom Dome Na Kholme.” The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, written and directed by Amy Sherman-Palladino, performance by Rachel Brosnahan, season 1, episode 2, Amazon Prime, 29 November 2017.

Chapter Seven

Jane-as-Fanny Patricia Rozema’s Woman Writer in Mansfield Park Melanie D. Holm

The image of an arch Jane Austen furtively scribbling artful sentences under her embroidery in a Regency sitting room is as famous as it is false. Nevertheless, the romantic imagery of a novel written both at leisure and by subversive stealth has become an iconic representation for the mythos of the “woman writer” as it is for the woman writer par excellence, Jane Austen. Readers over the last two hundred years and filmgoers from the previous century have come less to think of Jane Austen as an author who creates characters and more to imagine her fondly as an amplified, real-life version of her most famous and perhaps most likable character, Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennett. I use the term “version” here with heavy emphasis because every adaptation is, of course, an interpretation, and Elizabeth Bennet has emerged in popular culture, despite the measured work of Austen scholarship, as a feminist heroine reflective of modern desires for female autonomy as well as riposte to the patriarchy of the past and present. Depictions of Elizabeth on film have also had to bear the double duty of simultaneously representing a literary character as the imagined personal proxy of an idealized Jane Austen, serving as something like modern feminist wish fulfillment. Representations of Austen in film, such as Becoming Jane (2007), require that the novelist emerges as a satiric, feminist heroine—a rebel—who reflects if not exaggerates the most desirable characteristics of her famous heroine as she has come to be known. It is therefore unsurprising that the official trailer for the film opens with Maggie Smith as cantankerous dowager Lady Gresham demanding, “What is she [Austen] doing?” “Writing” is the reply. 135

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She protests, “Can anything be done about it?” The voice-over that follows celebrates its Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway) as a sexy, scandalous, Regency rebel—“When everybody else was trying to fit in, Jane was the only one who stood out”—teasing with clips that mirror the banter of Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy while suggesting that Jane Austen skinny-dipped. This type of anachronistic and frankly hyperbolic fantasy is the stuff of fun, escapist historical costume drama but, inevitably, a rewriting of whatever may have been the reality of the author.1 Such departures are commonplace and arguably fundamental to the tradition of Jane Austen consumption. As Devoney Looser argues in her book The Making of Jane Austen, Highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow culture makers, whether working together or at cross-purposes, collectively changed Austen’s persona from that of a marketable author of sensational domesticity to an apolitical Christian-spinster moralist to an inspirer of women’s suffrage protesters to a flirtatious gender-role-bending demure rebel to the hyper-heterosexual creator of the sexiest fictional man alive [Mr. Darcy]. (11–12)

But if we have become accustomed to conflating contemporary constructions of Elizabeth Bennett and Jane Austen, then Patricia Rozema’s Mansfield Park (1999) attempts what may be construed as a critical revision of this tendency by rewriting Austen’s least likable character, the dour, judgmental, and unsexy moralist Fanny Price, as a spirited, satirical, flirtatious, and, above all, literary—which is to say writing and reading—version of Austen herself, or at least Austen as Rozema would have her. As writer and director of the film, Rozema creates her Austen-made-Fanny not to replicate or capitalize on the existing Austen myth, but to make a case for the generative artistry of departing from the text. Foregrounding her departures in a post-modern framework, Rozema boldly recasts her vision of Jane Austen as the heroine of a film that rewrites Austen’s novel in order to argue that being a woman writer—be she Jane Austen, the innovative author of Mansfield Park; Jane-as-Fanny, who writes stories as well as her own story in the film Mansfield Park; or Rozema herself, writer and director of the film—necessarily requires subjective departure from original and authoritative texts, tacit or explicit. Her argument unfolds in a parallel presentation of her woman writer, Jane-as-Fanny, as a “partial and prejudiced historian” who writes with explicit subjectivity and invention, and as a woman locked like a bird in a cage of cultural confinement who must reject and rewrite social scripts in order to get out. For both, she demonstrates that narrative fidelity or faithful imitation of “the text” is inevitably a losing strategy in a woman’s battle between writing or being written upon.

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I: THE FANNY PROBLEM That the Fanny Price of Austen’s novel is unlikable is a sticky point for Austen readers and literary scholars. Austen’s contemporary readers were unusually quiet on the event of Mansfield Park’s publication, and “unlike Austen’s first two published novels, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, it did not enjoy the benefit of any reviews” (Galperin 154). As one critic points out, “On record is the fact that Jane Austen’s mother liked all of her novels except Mansfield Park” (Halperin 20). Adaptations of the book for television and the big screen replicate this aversion. Pride and Prejudice, for example, has been adapted to the small screen ten times, beginning with the BBC in 1938, and to the big seven times, starting in 1940. It is also a source of significant intertextual references in modern films and inspired the celebrated web series The Lizzie Bennett Diaries (2012–2013). By contrast, Rozema is the first writer/director to make a feature film of Mansfield Park, and there have been only one TV miniseries (BBC 1983) and one made-for-TV movie (2007).2 The source of this disparity is not hard to locate: no one likes Fanny Price, or at least she is not as readily attractive a heroine as Austen’s best-known and better-loved characters, Elizabeth, Eleanor, or Emma. As one critic notes, she is “an especially odious figure who continually serves notice that the masochist, in her unrivaled capacity to endure pain will invariably prevail in a given situation,” while another describes her as “morally detestable” and lacking “self-knowledge, generosity, and humility” (Galperin 156; Amis 16). Lionel Trilling adjudicates, “No one, I believe, has ever found it possible to like the heroine of Mansfield Park” (128). She is a “silent emotional sufferer,” a “timid mouse” and “has nothing to learn,” which makes developing a compelling interest in her as a film heroine an implausible challenge (Troost and Greenfield 188; Duckworth 124; Nokes 413). Rozema echoes these evaluations in her reflections on the character’s viability for the big screen. She rationalizes transforming Jane Austen’s Fanny Price into her Jane Austen as Fanny Price because the original is “annoying,” and “would be too slight and retiring and internal and perhaps judgmental to shoulder a film” (Herlevi; Mousa 257). “Mansfield Park without any alteration would make a lousy film. I knew that. But I thought if I could include just a few things I knew about the period and about the author, it would be fascinating. That was the goal” (Mousa 257). In her reading, “It was clear that Mansfield Park was a hugely autobiographical work so I thought I’d add some of the ‘teller into the tale.’ I would include Austen, as I understood her, into the character. . . . I just allowed the audience into a privileged place inside her mind by making her a writer” (257). It is far from a scholarly commonplace that Mansfield Park is “hugely biographical”; rather, the link pertains

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to Jane Austen’s acceptance and then refusal of a marriage proposal in real life and Fanny’s in the novel. But Rozema is clear that she is not an Austen biographer or scholar; rather, she is an inspired reader-writer who constructs a portrait of the artist as Fanny Price based on “Austen, as I understood her.” So different is her vision of Fanny and her story at Mansfield Park that one critic referred to the film as an act of “creative vandalism” (Le Faye 9). It could also be said that “the few things [Rozema] knew about the period” also produce a creatively vandalized image of Austen. Indeed, In the process of imbuing Fanny Price with some of Austen’s satiric wit, portions of Austen’s oeuvre, and an episode of Austen’s biography, Rozema still finds herself having to recast the heroine as more than just a hybrid. For neither Fanny nor Austen can provide the image that Rozema needs for the romantically shaped picture of the author-heroine. Indeed, Austen herself has invited reformulation or addition much as the heroine of this particular novel does. (Troost and Greenfield 189)

Yet, if we take seriously Looser’s argument that Jane Austen and her books have always been adapted and rebranded for the marketplace, then we must accept that there is no definitive “Jane Austen,” but many “Jane Austens.” The same holds for her texts, and not least because the vicissitudes of publishing and political history, alongside the stage and the screen, have supplied us with enough commentaries on and adaptations of her texts that they have departed from anything that might mimic the author’s authentic vision or the authentic author herself. Rozema’s departure, then, is only problematic if we are more concerned with vandalizing the “aura” surrounding the inaccessible originals than we are with what self-conscious adaptation creatively accomplishes. Rozema’s controversial adaptation of “the most controversial of Jane Austen’s novel” engages in a complex, meditative, mise-en-abîme of female authorship by having Fanny seize the authorial voice (Monaghan 59). This Fanny absorbs the role of narrator and critic of her own story diegetically: she makes direct contact with the camera, sharing her opinions about the fictional world of the film. In so doing, she both writes and tells her own story, acting as post-modern commentator who refutes and replaces the traditional male gaze of film.3 She is the one who sees, or when we see her, we see her from her position as the writer of the story, a move that replicates the free indirect discourse of Austen’s novels. Yet Fanny is also positioned as a writer of Austen’s texts, reading aloud selections from Austen’s juvenilia and more well-known works as though they were her own. In this way, the bildungsroman of Jane-as-Fanny becomes a fantasy representation of the female author

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in becoming, where “author” extends metaphorically to writing the narrative of one’s life story. This formative depiction of the female writer illuminates the writing process at work while foregrounding a self-conscious reflection on the peculiar and problematic status of the female author—and for Rozema, the female film auteur. Intertextual and allusive indices of influences on Austen’s writing punctuate the film, complemented by a continuous meditation on the double status of the female writer as outside of and dependent on a male tradition and power. Provocatively and imaginatively, the film represents this double status visually and aurally through a lush symbolic tapestry of starlings and other songbirds who are themselves doubly represented as proxies of slavery and freedom. Against this backdrop, Rozema’s Fanny-as-Austen (hereafter, Fanny) unpacks an inheritance of attitudes and anxieties about the female author, the female agent, and the resisting female reader. By emplacing authorship and narrative control within the text, her work posits the woman writer as a site of the elastic possibility that resists discursive desires for simplification, imitation, and social projection. As Claudia Johnson argues in her forward to the script of the film, “Rozema’s Mansfield Park is about getting free” (9). The female author is she who cannot and will not be caged. II: THE WRITER, THE BIRD, AND THE SLAVE Many critics have noted the presence of birds, and the themes of writing and reading, and slavery in the film.4 Yet, although they are the most original and productive departures from the novel Rozema makes, the complex relationship between them has gone unexplored. Troost and Greenfield propose an initial insight into the relationship between literature and the caged bird trope in their commentary on the opening and closing scenes of the film: “The idea that freedom for this caged bird comes through literature derives, not just from that opening picture of the quill, but also from the constant identification between Fanny and literature and the nature of the reward she finally achieves as heroine,” which takes on more force when contextualized in a larger network of symbolic relationships in the film (200). In this network, however, it is not literature alone that is emphasized but also female authorship. Rozema marks the interplay between writing one’s own story and being written upon—understood as living out a role as written or socially constructed—with the voices, imagery, and iconography of birds and slaves. She aligns caged birds and feathers worn as ornaments with being written over and contained by cultural forces, and free birds and the feather quill with writing one’s own independent story. Birdsong, birdcalls, and birds themselves,

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as well as synecdochic feathers punctuate moments in which these two modes are in tension. The opening credits display the production of a writing quill and paper in a nineteenth-century context, promising an elevation of authorship and signaling the avian metaphor. There are long, lingering shots of a feather as it is delicately carved and maneuvered, paper cut slowly, and writing begun, then, at last, the paper that has been written upon. The cumulative force of this visual spectacle introduces writing as the central theme of the film: it will be a meditation on the creation of narratives and the possibilities of writing, both literally and metaphorically, rather than a mere romantic costume drama. Rozema’s emphasis on the quill, the sensual curves and silky texture of the feather’s vane and the delicate carving of the shaft, links feathers with writing, but also with something feminine. At the same time, the care taken with crafting the instrument of writing in these credits indexes the caution and delicate discernment needed to “write” one’s experience and self-narrative well. The opening credits end with the voice of a young girl telling a story in medias res, and the shot shifts to a view of the young Fanny (Hannah Taylor Gordon), telling a story to her sister (Talya Gordon) moments before she leaves for Mansfield. As a segue between the credits and the journey ahead, the scene establishes a connection among quills, feathers, writing, and this character’s storytelling: this will be a story about a young woman who writes stories and will write her own story. The network of symbolic connections expands to birds and slaves as her journey from her home to Mansfield Park begins in a scene Rozema invents for the film. We first see a bird from young Fanny’s perspective as she leans out the coach door on her way to Mansfield, as she is driven on the shoreline past a cove, and sees a ship from which a haunting singing emerges. A seagull flies across the sky above, crying out as the camera pans upward. The singing is revealed as the song of slaves when Fanny asks the coachman if he heard “that.” It is not clear whether she means the song or the seagull cry, and the ambiguity may purposely serve to highlight their relation as destinies for Fanny as she moves forward: will she be a captive slave or a free bird? The coachman replies, “Black Cargo,” emphasizing the sound of the slaves over the bird, a foreboding suggestion that she is moving toward a form of slavery rather than freedom. Peacocks perched atop Mansfield Park at her arrival enhance this suggestion with a particularly feminine note. In contrast to the flying seagull, these birds are merely decorative, and like Fanny and the slaves, they have been taken far from home. Symbolic cues such as these populate the film, communicating an analogy between the captivity of birds and slave, and the cultural entrapments of female and feminized characters to communicate how cultural narratives ensnare characters, particularly female and feminized characters. Unlike birds or slaves, however, these characters

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have the (limited) power to resist and even escape by writing themselves out of culture’s cages, unmasking them as oppressive fictions. Concern for the issue of slavery in the novel’s narrative is in itself not new; it has been popular in Austen studies at least since Edward Said’s essay “Jane Austen and Empire” in his influential book Culture and Imperialism (1993). Said argues that Austen’s novel models the separation between the colonies and the colonizer, a version of the separation of the country and the city made famous by Raymond Williams. The splendor of the one depends on the subjugation and services of the other, and that the city-colonizer can only attain this splendor by effacing the realities and role of the country and colony. Everything we know about Austen and her values is at odds with the cruelty of slavery. Fanny Price reminds her cousin that after asking Sir Thomas about the slave trade, “There was such a dead silence” as to suggest that one world could not be connected with the other since there simply is no common language for both. (Said 96)

Rozema has shared that Said, in particular, and post-colonial scholarship on the novel more generally impacted her thinking about the text and its meanings. “I was very influenced by him. I don’t think, however, that Austen was as unaware of her imperialism as he suggests. I do agree with him that Mansfield Park is more about Antigua than it is about England” (Mousa 258). To say that Mansfield Park, the novel, as she understands it, is about Antigua illuminates the degree to which her film breaks out of the fantasy of what Roger Sales calls the “heritage version” of Austen where “soft elegance . . . is contrasted with what are taken to be the harsher realities of the present” (17–18). Such productions luxuriate in nostalgic visions of the past that invite viewers’ eyes to linger on opulent historical splendors of material wealth and titillating historical bodies. “One of the first laws of heritage television,” Sales wryly notes, “is that ratings soar if necklines plunge” and, in testimony to the gender ambivalence of the nostalgic gaze, he gleefully reminds that “[i]t was confidently claimed by The Times on 20 November 1995 that a million women, no more and no less, wanted to unbutton the damp white shirt that was worn by Colin Firth when he played Mr. Darcy” (Sales 230). Breaking out of the heritage fantasy paradigm by “foregrounding the troubling elements of Austen’s world,” particularly slavery, enables Rozema’s Fanny to articulate how her financial and sexual precarity cage her in the symbolic position of slave (Johnson 2). Emerging as an author whose ability to imagine beyond the fictitious fantasies her culture imposes, she writes her own story while history absorbs others into those it has already written. As David Monaghan notes, “As a young girl she uses her writing as a means of at least mentally escaping the

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oppressive situations with which she is faced first in Portsmouth and then at Mansfield Park,” and it plays “an integral role in her development towards a position of personal autonomy” (61). The sequence of scenes that bridge the development from the child to the adult Fanny depicts how her nascent autonomy entangles with anxieties of gender, dependence, and captivity. The first scene opens with Fanny alone in her garret crying and uses a voice-over to share the letter she mentally composes to her sister that communicates her loneliness and depression as a liminal member of the Bertram family. A tween Edmund Bertram (Philip Sarson) tenderly interrupts to ask whom she misses and offers to get her paper to write to her sister Susy. The voice-over letter resumes as we see Edmund bringing paper to Fanny—enough paper, she notes to Susy, “for more letters and stories than you shall ever want to receive.” The scene introduces Edmund’s sensitivity to Fanny’s authorial voice as her free, authentic expression. It is an understanding and patronage that continues, albeit unevenly, throughout the film. To emphasize the importance of his gift, a beautifully filmed sequence follows that displays the art of preparing writing materials, recalling the opening credits: cutting of paper, careful drawing of lines with a ruler, sprinkling of powder on the sheets from a censor, and rubbing it in softly. A close-up focuses on a feather quill whose shaft we watch sharpening to a point. The medley is slow and soft, verging on dreamlike to convey the experience—the comfort, escape, and romantic beauty—of writing for Fanny. This is what writing feels like to her. Alongside the affective, the sequence also emphasizes the materiality of writing. As closure for the larger scene-sequence, the narrative freedom of writing carries the residue of the economic: Fanny cannot write unless she has paper—paper given to her by Edmund, paper purchased by the labor of slaves. The next scene features Fanny addressing the camera to share her latest tale and illuminates the extent to which she inhabits mentally and bodily the position of the author. Midway through telling a story plucked from Austen’s juvenilia, she looks at the camera from across a desk, holding a paper in her hands with a large feather quill to the viewer’s left. In the self-fashioned authorial attitude, she shares with the camera the story she is writing. As she reads, the shot shifts briefly to her young sister Susy with the letter containing the story and then returns to Fanny, who begins to write her History of England. Importantly, the sound of a seagull from Susy’s window carries from the end of Susy’s brief scene into Fanny’s next, connecting the scenes and paradigmatically linking her writing to the free voice of the native bird. A series of connected voice-overs and direct addresses to the camera that vocalize the History of England that she writes bridges Fanny’s childhood and Fanny’s emergence into early adulthood, where she remains for the rest of the film. The continuity of place and narrative through the different actresses emphasizes that writing—imaginative, opinionated writing—is consistently

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a feature of the character and her maturation. For Fanny, writing provides solace in the isolation at Mansfield Park, connection to the self displaced from home, and contact with her sister, who had been her first audience and encouragement. Her narrative of England’s history moves from Henry VI and the burning of Joan of Arc to the reign of Elizabeth, spanning the end of the medieval period through to early modernity. The maturation of England in the narrative, as she tells it, reflects her character’s maturation on the screen, which is depicted in three stages, ending with Frances O’Connell as Fanny in her early twenties. Importantly, the narrative is a critical one that increases in sophistication as historical and narrative time move forward: “They should not have burned her [Joan of Arc], but they did” to “And then that disgrace to humanity, that pest of society, Elizabeth, who murderess and wicked queen that she was confined her cousin, the lovely Mary Queen of Scots for NINETEEN YEARS and then brought her to an untimely, unmerited, and scandalous death. Much to the eternal shame of the monarchy and the entire kingdom.” (Rozema 30)

The text is taken from Austen’s The History of Fanny by a Partial, Prejudiced, and Ignorant Historian (1791). The story of England she tells shows her writerly wit and prowess (after all, she is reading Austen’s words) and operates as an allegory for the story that she is crafting of herself and for herself. The passage begins and ends with meditations on women in captivity and condemnation of their fates, illustrating that both men and women can be oppressors. Additionally, the final passage emphasizes the relationship of cousins, glancing toward the main relationships in the film, namely, Fanny and her cousins Tom, Edmund (a love interest), Maria, and Julia Bertram; and her potential cousins-in-law, Mary Crawford and Henry Crawford (also a love interest). Seeing Fanny across time in the same location, a small garret of Mansfield, watching her get bigger as the setting stays small, visually echoes the text’s emphasis on the unjust captivity of women. The scene also demonstrates the nuances of her captivity and potential paths for escape, leaning on the undecided role of Edmund as either a mere patron or the romantic lead. The camera pans out to the now mature, mid-twenties Edmund (Jonny Lee Miller), who though unseen in the previous montage is now retrospectively implied to have been there all along supporting and encouraging her. It is her writing that facilitates the attachment between her and Edmund. Significantly, Fanny’s writing retains the character of Austen’s playful subtitle: partial, prejudiced, and ignorant (which is to say not presuming to omniscience). She writes versions of events in her own autonomous, critical, authentic style that enacts the vision of “woman writer” that frames the film. When Fanny finishes reading her work, a bird’s cry echoes in the background, reiterating

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the link between freedom of writing and the bird’s freedom of flight. In an extended signification, Fanny becomes the bird Edmund might uncage—a romantic structure repeated throughout the film in her considerations of life with either Edmund or Henry. Edmund’s ability to inhabit this role is marked as ambiguous at this point, however, when he laughs at the subtitle’s irreverence, suggesting in jest that he will have to “bend [her] supple mind in a more strict fashion.” He calls for Shakespeare, making it unclear whether he wants to inspire or limit her independence—a question he too struggles with throughout the film. III: PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A STARLING, A SONGBIRD, A SEAGULL Rozema’s coupling of symbolic proxies—the writer, the bird, the slave— draws from a famous episode in a famous (and famously proto-postmodern) eighteenth-century comic novel to which Austen alludes in her novel and that Rozema incorporates directly into the film: “The Starling” of Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768). In this novel, the sentimental hero Yorick’s meditation on possible imprisonment in the Bastille, and thus the nature of captivity, is interrupted by what he takes to be the voice of a child calling, “I can’t get out.” Alarmed, he follows the plaintive cries to discover they are not the words of a trapped child but a caged starling that has been taught by a previous, darkly humored owner to remark unknowingly on its captivity. It doesn’t understand the song it sings. Yorick recognizes the irony and elevates the caged bird into both a sentimental symbol of slavery and a skeptical symbol of affectation and the marketplace. Austen alludes to the starling scene with Maria Bertram at the gate of her fiancé Rushworth’s estate. Henry teases her for her dreary mood, to which she replies, “Yes, certainly, the sun shines, and the park looks very cheerful. But unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, gives me a feeling of restraint and hardship. ‘I cannot get out,’ as the starling said.” As she spoke, and it was with expression, she walked to the gate: he followed her. “Mr. Rushworth is so long fetching this key!” “And for the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr. Rushworth’s authority and protection, or I think you might with little difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance; I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited.”

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“Prohibited! Nonsense! I certainly can get out that way, and I will.” (Austen 116)

Defensiveness turns flirtatious as the cage moves from the literal—the locked gate of the park, to which Rushworth holds the key—to the figurative—the gilded cage of marriage to a fool, the key to which is an affair with Henry. One of many jokes for Austen is that Maria speaks words that she doesn’t fully understand but that nonetheless circumscribe her situation. She thinks she is speaking of escape through secret sexual freedom, not understanding that everything a caged bird does can be seen. Austen’s Maria thinks sexual attraction will facilitate some kind of rescue by a man who holds the key; this belief and its error follow her from Austen’s novel into Rozema’s film. While this is a brief episode in Austen, Sterne’s starling trope and its imbrication with the cultural slavery of women and the problem of imitation are central to the film’s action and imagery. In her adaptation of the scene to which Said attended, Rozema has Fanny attempt to open up a discussion with Sir Bertram of whether or not slaves are property universally, or whether they are free in England. The question is an allusion to the Mansfield Judgment, a 1772 verdict that ruled slave owners had no power over their slaves from the colonies if they brought them to England: in England, they were free. The judge, Lord Mansfield, ruled that “The state of slavery is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law. We cannot say that the cause set forth by this return, is allowed or approved by the laws of the kingdom and therefore the man must be discharged” (Poser 296). The yield is that while men may be enslaved elsewhere, that relationship does not hold in Britain. But, if colonial slaves are free in England, what of English women in a country manor such as the aptly named Mansfield Park? A sequence of scenes that revolve around Sterne’s starling sharply provoke this question.

Sir Bertram dismisses Fanny as speaking nonsense she doesn’t understand, not unlike Sterne’s lamenting starling. He recommends she read a book on the subject and inform herself—all the while visually appraising her sexual attractiveness as though she were a slave at the market. Rozema’s Sir Bertram is far cruder than Austen’s, and this scene displays his gentry vulgarity in full. The undisguised, public leering leads to the proposition of a ball to bring Fanny out into society, that is, to put her on display for potential suitors—a metaphorical slave auction. The prospect drives her out of the room in claustrophobic desperation. She seeks freedom by riding out into the night rain but can only ride in circles in a cruel mimicry of a bird flying in a cage. Edmund catches up to her as she saddles her horse, “Shakespeare,” but instead of stopping for him, she declares, “I will not be sold off like one of your father’s

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slaves.” His assertion as she rides out, that she must get used to “the idea of being worth looking at,” marks his attraction to Fanny and his embeddedness in the culture that makes women decorations to delight the male gaze. Rozema briefly juxtaposes the freedom Fanny seeks in her ride against that which she is seeking freedom from. The camera turns from Fanny to look through a window to see Mary (Embeth Davidtz) performatively laughing and fawning over Sir Bertram (Harold Pinter) in an evident attempt to secure his favor as they lay the groundwork between her marriage to Edmund and Fanny’s to Henry. Notably, the window grill frames the action with bars that make the window resemble a cage and the house a prison. We see Fanny again after a scene beginning with an exterior, daytime shot of the park where birds chirp brightly. This switches sharply to a darker interior shot of Sir Thomas’s library, where she sits, reading A Sentimental Journey. The effect is an abrupt shift from her plea for freedom to her lived emplacement in the social order. Her suitor, Henry, walks in behind her. The smallness of the room becomes more apparent with a second person, and the dominance of his presence emphasizes her powerlessness. Isolated bird chirps continue in the absence of dialogue until Henry (Alessandro Davidtz) asks to read aloud from Fanny’s book—performing a dramatic reading of Sterne’s starling scene. The entirety of the text is reproduced through his performance. Both Fanny and the viewer, as well as an eavesdropping Maria (Victoria Hamilton), become the audience for his evocative reading. “I was interrupted . . . with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained it could not get out. I looked up and down the passage and saw it was a starling hung in a little cage.—‘I can’t get out! I can’t get out,’ said the starling” (Rozema 66–68). Birdsong returns as Fanny compliments Henry’s sensitive reading of the text, marking a critical moment for Fanny in her own sentimental journey: “Will she choose to be read to, or choose to write? Will she have faith that he can set her free, or will she free herself?” In a striking parallel, the next scene finds Maria put to the same question. Birdsong accompanies the beginning of Maria’s éclaircissement with Sir Thomas concerning her doltish fiancé. Despite Sir Thomas’s discouragement, she decides to persist. While not a love match, it is an excellent financial trade, and the best deal she thinks she can get as it becomes clear that Henry has moved his attentions away to Fanny. A parallel between Maria’s marriage and the stakes of Fanny’s evolving romantic dilemma is extended in another of the direct addresses to the camera in which Fanny reads aloud a letter to Susy. The scene switches to a voice-over of Maria’s wedding, a miserable affair, to which Fanny adds one of Austen’s scathing critiques of marriage. Notably, in the ceremony, Maria wears a feather in her hair, marking her status as a willingly caged, decorative bird. The caged starling motif follows Fanny throughout the trials of the Crawford courtship it inaugurates. After his first declaration of love to her,

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which she rebuffs as a mere romantic convention, a bird call, perhaps a crow, sounds on her exit. The scene switches to show her alone at her desk, writing, and firmly, if not smugly, secure in her witty rejection of a rake’s frivolous vanity. Her levity crumbles into fear as Sir Bertram enters her room to command her acceptance of Crawford’s proposal. He dismisses her arguments for refusal as the effect of having read too many novels—a female and feminized genre. He discounts her self-signifying status as a writer, preferring to cast her as an impressionable female quixote. She refuses the insult and defends her authority as a woman and a writer through the proxy of reading: “I am an unabashed novel reader, sir, but I do not think it has clouded my judgment.” The scene moves to a shot of birds flying over the skyline of Mansfield Park against a backdrop of dark clouds. The imagery reaffirms the relation among birds, women, and slaves, foreshadowing that freedom from marriage at Mansfield Park will come at a steep price, the grey despair of poverty, which is a cage of its own. After a series of scenes tied together by a voice-over of Sir Bertram’s harangues, Fanny’s departure scene suggests a victory for her autonomy through passive resistance. However, the spectacle communicates a false hope for an immediate happy ending: it is sunny, and birds delightfully chirp, as though only happiness could await her as she returns home. Edmund and Mary (a friend and rival, though unarticulated, for Edmund’s love) promise to write, and the volume of bird talk swells. A “bird’s-eye view” of her carriage returning cross-country shifts to show the same cove where she had previously seen the slave ship and the seagull. Significantly she recollects only the sound of the slaves, not the call of the bird. Indeed, there is not a bird in sight. An increasing number of visual cues remind that her family sent her to Mansfield because they couldn’t support her, and her new freedom will be an old slavery. On arrival, Portsmouth is loud, dirty, and indifferent. As she drives through the muddy streets, a mostly mute seagull flits in and out of the shots, watching her movement. Neither the Mansfield she left nor the home to which she returns offers the freedom the seagull had signified. When she enters her family’s home to see squalor and want, she is faced with the vulgarity of her father ogling her in much the fashion of Sir Bertram; we hear birds calling again, voicing her outrage at the suggested reification and resistance to a renewed captivity. She continues to write stories and letters as a way of retaining the confident, autonomous self that she has developed. This effort is demonstrated in a pairing of scenes that transition from Fanny crying in the night to reading aloud joyfully with her sister the next morning. In the latter scene, an overhead (bird’s-eye) view looks down on Fanny and her sister laughing in bed. Pages of writing fan across Fanny like feathers that provide a delicate shield, behind which she creates a different however fanciful story for herself and her sister.

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The arrival of Mary’s self-described “pretty letter” juxtaposes Fanny’s productive narrative building against a more frivolous form, marking the contrast between them both as women and writers. Recalling that Maria first wears a feather in her hair at her wedding, signifying her fate, Mary nearly always appears as an ornament, a feather atop her perfectly styled, chic hair. As her letter unfolds through voice-over, both she and Maria appear with ornamental feathers. The symbolism draws together the two characters whose names bespeak a similarity, Mary and Maria. The display of frivolity further undermines the value of what comes from Mary’s feather pen, which indeed is mere manipulation. Birdsong returns at the letter’s conclusion as the camera resumes its focus on the sisters. In the brief exchange to follow, Fanny communicates that Henry, Mary’s brother, for whom the letter pleads, is a rake. To dispel her sister’s fanciful illusions, she notes that “rakes amuse more in literature than in life.” As a coda to the distinctions between types of feathers and between types of writing, Fanny’s remark warns against reading life through the “pretty” lens of literary romance. In a perfectly cued challenge to this assessment, Henry calls upon literature to amuse Fanny in a spectacular way. A young boy draws her out from the Price household to surprise her with an extravaganza planned by Henry. Five hundred birds are released from their basket-cage with fireworks and accompanying music from a second boy with a hand organ. The birds are tracked with a slow-motion shot as the crowd of neighbors watch in awe. The boy herald then recalls, “I was supposed to say something he said about . . . starlings flying or something, some romantic thing, but I can’t remember exactly.” Fanny responds, “I have got the general idea, thank you.” In the literary starling symbolism, the “general idea” is that Henry intends to release Fanny from her cage as the sparks of their romance fly. Yet the spectral deception of the starling’s empty mimicry lingers, though Fanny is not yet attuned to its meaning. Henry appears in the next scene, waiting for her at church, an aspiring groom. As they walk together along the seaside, seabird calls punctuate his repetition of the proposal, signifying that a choice is upon her between slavery and freedom: what is slavery and what is freedom is not entirely clear. It becomes even less clear when she receives a letter from Edmund. To read the letter, she goes outside to escape noise and harassment from multiple younger siblings. Poverty doesn’t offer privacy—let alone a room of one’s own. Birds chirp as she reads the letter, which is as desired a token of affection as the message is undesirable: Mary, he says, is the only woman he could ever think to marry. Having always secretly hoped that Edmund would rescue her as he once did in miniature by giving her paper as a girl, she now recognizes that the story she had privately written for herself was a fantasy, a cliché, and not to be. She will need to write a new one. It is in this context that she entertains Henry’s proposal. This possibility is made more attractive

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by the good nature he demonstrates at the Price table where he must wipe filth off of a fork before proceeding to eat an unappetizing scoop of mystery stew. He merely smiles at Fanny, who laughs in return. In response to such interclass gallantry, her mother comes to her while she is writing to advise, “just remember Fanny, I married for love”—a marriage that only led to poverty and disgrace. Fanny is not in love with Henry, but she is even less in love with poverty. The scene ends with this battle of antipathies: Fanny stops writing and looks out the window, as though wondering, “Where should my story go from here?” A shot of the sun bursting through the clouds conveys the attractive fiction of happily ever after in the ensuing proposal acceptance scene, that a simple “yes” was the answer to that question. A slave ship in the background signals that she is not writing herself but giving into an attractive deception. Before accepting the proposal, she articulates to Henry that a woman’s poverty is a type of slavery. Yet it would seem that she is hedging her bets, like Maria, and making the best deal she can while forgetting that rescue, especially by a rake, is just a fiction. A brief shot of her awaking anxiously in the night follows, and the return of birdsong the next morning indicates that she has realized her error. She withdraws from the engagement. Moving toward a new direction of freedom and self-authorizing, she begins to write again. We might call this the opening scene of a new life she chooses to write. In this context, her refusal acts as a “revision” of her narrative path in real time. Rejection of marriage has left her in poverty, as her mother reminds her with the scold, “Who will pay for all of this paper?!” but she no longer feels caged. Birds continue to chirp in support, and mere moments later, Edmund arrives to take her back to Mansfield Park to help nurse his older brother, the dissolute Tom Bertram. That Edmund’s arrival follows upon the threat of paper running low recalls that their bond rests not on a promise of rescue, but support and sympathy. His return asks those very qualities of her, positing something of a sentimental equivalence between them. As they return to the park, the camera takes a bird’s-eye view of the carriage again, switching to intermittent shots of their hands slowly coming together with bright bird songs accompanying. His presence displaces the slave ship of her last two journeys. The cove is neither pictured nor the slave song remembered, which differentiates this journey as altogether new. The representation complements Fanny’s different structural position in this journey. She is requested rather than sent off, and arrives with an entirely different, self-constructed role than she did as a refugee of poverty. She comes to save the Bertrams, starting with Tom, whose search for freedom in art offers a dark complement to Fanny’s steps toward self-authorship.

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ART AND ARTIFICE Birds twitter when Fanny enters Tom’s sick room as a new figure of desire and salvation for Mansfield Park and its scion. This reversal inverts the previous power relationship and reversals to come. She has rewritten her character. She is now poised to execute a full revision of Mansfield Park. The same symbolic birdsong follows into the next scene, announcing her entrance into a hall where she encounters Henry and Mary below on the stairs. Behind her are birds in cages, as if to remind her of what she has thus far escaped. Mary, by contrast, has feathers in her hair, marking where her understanding lies. Fanny stands above them, and her downward looks dominate, pushing against Henry’s and the male gaze. When we do see through his eyes, we watch Fanny disappear up the stairs, suggesting his recognition of her as “the one who got away.” With Fanny out of reach, he reaches for Maria, who had so eagerly wanted and waits for him to unlock her marital cage. A succession of scenes follows that facilitate a series of crises and resolutions centered around the motifs of the starling, cages and captivity, and writing. That this progression begins with a scene of Fanny reading a novel recalls her fortitude against Sir Bertram, who used this activity as a weapon to discredit her. Tom’s cough prompts her to leave the book and the room. What of course we realize in hindsight is that while she has been reading, Maria and Henry have been sexually engaged rooms away. The contrast is significant insofar as it separates Fanny Price from Maria in terms of morality. It also contrasts them through links with Sterne’s starling in the earlier scene of reading and sentimental predation in Sir Bertram’s study. When we last saw Fanny reading alone, she was interrupted by Henry, who took the book out of her hands to court her. The connections with reading fiction here rest upon recognizing the separations between diverting fiction and autonomous narrative, and recalls her earlier warning: “Rakes amuse more in literature than in life.” Further, in opposition to Sir Bertram’s discounting of novel reading, here it serves as a symbol of clarity or penetration. The sequence of events it initiates reveals that she has, for the most part, read people correctly since coming to Mansfield and can separate authenticity from fiction. Just as Mansfield is a beautiful party fueled by viciousness of slavery, the roles played by the many inhabitants of the house are steady social tropes that are paid for by the vices and hypocrisies of self-interest. Following the scene of reading, Fanny enters Tom’s room to discover a cache of his etchings depicting the atrocities of slavery, some of which are copies of drawings originally done by William Blake and other period artists. These depictions move from brutality of punishment to sexual abuse, including a tableau of Sir Bertram forcing oral sex from an enslaved woman. As soon as

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Sir Bertram becomes identifiable in the drawing, he manifests in the room, violently knocking the papers aside and declaring his son mad. Horrified, Fanny flees one depiction of male sexual license only to enter into another, finding Henry and Maria naked in bed together. Her horror redoubles as she rushes off. Edmund discovers her distress and investigates to find Henry getting dressed and Maria naked in bed. It is here that we get the fulfillment of the starling allusion taken from Austen and the logic underlying the spectacle of Henry’s sentimental, avian proposal. Maria, tear-filled and nude but for a bedsheet and thereby far more vulnerable than her clothed accomplice, pleads to her brother, “Rushworth is a fool, and I can’t get out, I can’t get out.” But Edmund cannot rescue her, and Crawford won’t, leaving her to lie in the bed she has made. Tom’s artistry, reintroduced by the etchings, offers a parallel for thinking through the juxtaposition of Fanny as a writer and Maria as written into the cage, albeit half by her own hand. At the beginning of the film, when Fanny arrives at Mansfield, she encounters Tom intoxicated to the point of incapacitation at five in the morning. Later she sees his Fuseliesque self-portrait, which Mrs. Norris superficially dubs “very modern.” Rozema departs from the text here, using her authorial prerogative to rehabilitate Tom as a traumatized, Byronic artist. As others have noted, this version of Tom is a complete invention by Rozema, but I contend that it is for this reason that it deserves attention.5 His self-portrait shows death in the background with his hand on his shoulder. Posed with his paints and standing a quarter behind his canvas, his free hand is outstretched. The family views this as mere decoration, yet it becomes increasingly clear that it reflects an interiority Tom cannot verbally communicate. Importantly, in their theatrical performance, he puts on blackface, marking his enslavement in a social role, one that is, as the portrait suggests, already in the process of killing him. It is a death of self-destruction, to be sure, yet it is also a reaction to the terrible truths that are hidden by the luxuries and comfort of the family that he stands to inherit along with the family’s wealth: slavery, imperialism, patriarchy, and the contemporary traffic of women through marriage. Like his image in the painting shadowed by death, he too cannot get out. Tom’s slavery etchings complement his self-portrait act as a deferred revelation of the painting’s absent and mortal horror. Poignantly, we are given access to this vision via his art while he lies in a sickbed of self-destructive excess as a traumatic response to the human devastation of Antigua’s plantations. Tom uses his painting and his etching to communicate, to unmask, and dismantle the dark truths of Mansfield. Rozema thereby aligns him closely with Fanny in terms of narrative resistance and artistic production in a careful analogy with Austen and her contemporaries. Tom is framed by the idiom of the Romantic (male) poets, who sat, as Tom does, in a very different position

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of power than the female author who is socially, culturally, and materially disadvantaged. The male heir is not in the same position as the impoverished female cousin, but both turn to art to assuage their suffering and expose that which the cultured gentility of the park would hide. Before Tom’s recovery, Sir Bertram tells Fanny that Tom used to pretend to be a knight, asking his father to send him on errands: “All he wanted was a noble task,” as opposed to the ignobility of slaveholding. Like Fanny as a child, young Tom turns to imaginative play to escape. Yet, in an irony of privilege, he is able to turn to art and alcohol while young Fanny persists with her literary and self-authorship. It is, therefore, fitting that the film’s reversals put her in a position where she can help him recover, as they are the most alike. Both see the horrible truths their world masks, and both try to craft identities in defiance of it. By contrast, Maria’s starling admission suggests that she has only just discovered that she is trapped and has willingly trapped herself in a cage. But if Fanny and Edmund’s discovery of Henry and Maria exposes Maria’s ill-fated affectations, it also shows Henry’s. We are left to wonder if Henry had been reformed and loved Fanny or if that too was an act, though perhaps a role in whose performance he may have believed himself. FICTIONS AND THEIR DISCONTENTS In what Rozema dubs the “Family Conference” scene, Fanny refers to Henry as “an actor, a charming, inscrutable actor.” The characterization affirms what the discovery of him with Maria reveals: we don’t know if his love for Fanny was authentic, but we do know that he has been and continues to play roles that suit his purposes. With a feather in her hair, Mary defends her brother only to reveal her passion-driven affectations. If Henry and Maria are motivated by vanity and lust, then she is driven by greed and prestige, which she inadvertently displays by building her hopes of a wealthy life with Edmund with hopes for Tom’s death. In this scene of disclosures, Sir Bertram has a revelation regarding Maria—“I do not feel that I know my own children”— intimating that they have been playing roles for him. In parallel, Edmund discovers the Mary he thought he would marry was merely a character which she had played: “The person I’ve been apt to dwell on for many months past has been a creature of my own imagination, not you Miss Crawford. You are a stranger. I don’t know you and I’m sorry to say I have no wish to.” Sir Bertram and Edmund demonstrate how implicit and explicit cultural scripts affect perception, expectation, and social performance and thereby facilitated the persuasiveness of Maria, Henry, and Mary’s earlier performances. Edmund draws attention here because we find that through a blind faith in social norms, he has written a perfect woman for himself in Mary,

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rationalizing away any observed deviation. The family conference contrasts actors who perform for advancement and self-authoring artists who expose social narrative and naiveté. Throughout the film, Edmund teetered between the two, eventually emerging as an independent and sincere clerical voice that sees through duplicity and recognizes Fanny as his authentic feminine ideal. The film begins its final resolution with the scene of Tom’s recovery, signaling the moral redemption of Mansfield Park. The camera moves from him waking to a shot of birds flying outside and then retreats into the room to show Fanny watching them through his window as a symbolic confirmation of their mutual attainment of narrative autonomy. Rozema argued of the film that she couldn’t resolve slavery in the movie but couldn’t let it stand unresolved either. She thereby uses Tom as a proxy, suggesting that as heir, he will shift the course of Mansfield Park. The epilogue portrays this as a reparative resolution by depicting him managing repairs to the ruined wing of the house. If Tom is the symbolic recovery, then Fanny holds power to set the rest of the household to rights. In the epilogue scenes, she does just that, dictating the fates of different characters as the camera zooms up and down like a swooping bird between close-ups of characters and overhead shots of the property. In her voice-over, she quips, “It could have all turned out differently I suppose, but it didn’t,” suggesting that this ending was not inevitable. It is the one she has created. Fanny is an agent who has made the choices leading to this moment critically and conscientiously, and a writer who brings the story she tells to a satisfying end. The ending she describes for her own character doesn’t conclude with a proposal or marriage, but with the publication of her book. Rozema does include a proposal scene, one that is wholly rewritten from the tepid transaction of the novel, but she demotes its traditional value by emphasizing the significance of Fanny’s narrative authority and independent gaze. We are meant to see Fanny the woman writer, not Fanny the blushing bride-to-be. The scene opens with birdsong and shows Fanny holding a book and a quill, reinforcing that she has reached this point because she has been writing her own story both metaphorically and, in the narrative frame, quite literally. Her subjective control dominates and displaces the engagement kiss. As the camera shifts to Fanny, she looks back at us with an ironic smile and smug satisfaction. She has gotten the ending she has wanted and deserves in the economy of poetic justice. This justice is then dealt out in the ensemble ending with her voice-over backed by birdsong: Tom is recovered and reconstructing, Sir Bertram is moderating his slaveholding, Maria and Mrs. Norris are sentenced to life with each other, Henry and Mary meet manipulative matches, and Susy and Julia are fast friends at the park with bright futures of their own making.

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In the final tableau, Fanny returns to her own story. The scene opens with an aural frame of birdsong to show the happy couple, Fanny and Edmund. He communicates that he facilitated the publication of her book, The History of England, but suggests a new subtitle: “Effusions of Fancy in a Style Entirely New by a Very Young Girl.” She laughs at the title he proposes, and playful banter ensues that echoes their conversation when she had told him the title of her earlier work—The History of England by a Partial, Prejudiced, and Ignorant Historian—earlier in the film. She replies to his suggestion that his title is “interesting,” communicating rejection and her appreciation of Edmund’s humor. The scene depicts an idealized modern marriage discourse which departs, quite intentionally, from the real politics and cultural situation of women at the time. In this story, in her story, Fanny gets the last laugh as the birds cheer on, but the status of “story” is kept in the foreground by its post-modern frame. Rozema writes a new Mansfield Park that gives Fanny the authorial, narrative voice throughout the film, and our gaze is always in sympathy with her. The film depicts a story about becoming a woman writer through a process of self-authorship that departs from traditional conventions. The film itself is also simultaneously one woman writer’s vision of the woman writer ideal embodied in the image of Austen and a rewriting of Austen’s novel by a woman writer/filmmaker. If Fanny triumphs both in literature and life by being a partial, prejudiced historian, then Rozema’s triumph in this film must be construed in much the same way. Her vision of Jane Austen neither played roles nor others in her texts or her life. Nor does she when cast as the heroine Fanny in Rozema’s film. Nor does Rozema. As author of the film, she departs from the text by Austen to deploy the character of Austen as Fanny in a parable of female authorship. In this film and for this film director, female authorship is always a revision, always a departure, and always partial and prejudiced. These are not deficits but strengths, as well as the necessary condition for the woman writer writing her own story. Anything else would be the empty mimicry of a caged bird. NOTES 1. In fact, what we do know of Austen suggests quite the opposite. As Dickson explains, “Indeed, Jane Austen and her friends and relatives complied with early nineteenth-century expectations of women. In general, they were submissive to the wishes of their fathers, husbands, and/or brothers, and always behaved with careful attention to the impressions they made on others” (Dickson 48). See Also Kaplan 17–61. 2. Giles, David, director. Mansfield Park. BBC, 1983; Jones, Jon, director. Masterpiece Theatre: Mansfield Park. PBS, 2007.

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3. See discussion of post-modern, feminist filmmaking in Mansfield Park in Despotopoulou, Anna. “Girls on Film: Postmodern Renderings of Jane Austen and Henry James,” The Yearbook of English Studies, 36, 1, 2006, pp. 115–30. 4. See Troost and Greenfield 196–98; Monaghan 59–60, 62; Duckworth 564–66, 570; Johnson 4–6. 5. See Troost and Greenfield, 121; Byrne 251–52.

WORKS CITED Amis, Kingsly. What Became of Jane Austen? And Other Questions. Cape, 1970. Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park, edited by John Wiltshire. Cambridge University Press, 2005. Becoming Jane. Dir. Julian Jarold. Miramax, 2007. Byrne, Sandie. “Film Adaptations,” in Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, edited by Sandie Byrne and Nicolas Tredell. Macmillan, 2004. Despotopoulou, Anna. “Girls on Film: Postmodern Renderings of Jane Austen and Henry James,” The Yearbook of English Studies, 36, 1, 2006, pp. 115–30. Dickson, Rebecca. “Misrepresenting Jane Austen’s Ladies: Revising Texts (and History) to Sell Films,” in Jane Austen in Hollywood, edited by Linda and Sayre Greenfield. University Press of Kentucky, 1998, pp. 44–57. Duckworth, Alistair M. The Improvement of the Estate: A Study of Jane Austen’s Novels. New York: Routledge, 1994. Galperin, William. The Historical Austen. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Halperin, John. Jane Austen’s Lovers—And Other Studies in Fiction and History from Austen to Le Carré. St. Martin’s Press, 1988. Herlevi, Patty-Lynne. “Mansfield Park: A Conversation with Patricia Rozema.” Nitrate Online—Movie Reviews and More, 2000. https:​//​nitrateonline​.com​/2000​/ fmansfield​.html. Accessed 14 December 2019. Johnson, Claudia L. “Introduction,” in Rozema, Patricia. Mansfield Park: A Screenplay. Talk Miramax Books, 2000, pp. 1–10. Kaplan, Deborah. Jane Austen Among Women. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Le Faye, Deirde. “Newsletter of the Jane Austen Society.” 1998. Looser, Devoney. The Making of Jane Austen. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017. Mansfield Park. Dir. Patricia Rozema. Miramax, 1999. Monaghan, David. “In Defense of Patricia Rozema’s Mansfield Park.” Persuasions, 28, 2006, pp. 59–65. Mousa, Hiba. “Mansfield Park and Film: An Interview with Patricia Rozema.” Literature and Film Quarterly, 32, 4, 2004, pp. 255–60. Nokes, David. Jane Austen: A Life. University of California Press, 1997. Poser, Norman S. Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013. Rozema, Patricia. Mansfield Park: A Screenplay. Talk Miramax Books, 2000. Sales, Roger. Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England. Routledge, 1994.

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Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. Oxford University Press, 1984. Trilling, Lionel. “Mansfield Park,” in Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Ian Watt. Prentice-Hall, 1963, pp. 124–40. Troost, Linda, and Sayre Greenfield. “The Mouse That Roared: Patricia Rozema’s Mansfield Park” in Jane Austen in Hollywood, edited by Linda Troost and Sayre Greenfield. University Press of Kentucky, 2001, pp. 188–201.

Chapter Eight

From Silly Lady Novelists to Celebrity Male Modernists Gender and the Representation of Authorship in Fiction 1850–1949 Elizabeth King

It is not merely a critical commonplace to state that men’s writing and women’s writing are judged and valued differently; it has also become an observable fact: the many recent audits of the publishing industry, prestigious literary reviews, and the backlist of award winners have all revealed the dominance of men at the highest levels of literary achievement.1 To paint this picture in very broad brushstrokes, men’s writing has typically been associated with social and cultural relevance, artistic value, and literary immortality, while women’s writing has often been thought of as irrelevant, valuable only as a commodity, and essentially ephemeral. A long list of scholars have made mention of this tendency, with some offering explanations—cultural, critical, commercial, and otherwise—as to why and how men’s writing has become associated with literary quality, and women’s writing with shallow commercial success. And yet, few have looked to the role that fiction itself may have played in shaping, disseminating, and even contesting gendered notions of literary value. What might fictional renderings of authorship have to tell us about the ways and means by which male literary genius has been enshrined, while women’s writing has been marginalized? Through a survey of a corpus of 281 novels and short stories containing author-characters and published between 1850 and 1949, I argue that although men’s fiction provides the foundations for these gendered stereotypes and largely upholds them, the paths open to women writers when it came to representing authorship in 157

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their fiction were not as clear-cut: although many author-stories by women actively contested and deconstructed the reigning stereotypes applied to male and female authorship, just as many, it would seem, either replicated them or affirmed them in other, less obvious ways. Rather ironically, the exclusion of women’s writing from the upper echelons of the literary hierarchy was explicated in 1923 by Virginia Woolf—one of the relatively few women writers who has achieved unquestioned canonical status. In A Room of One’s Own, she argues that whether we look to the literature of the nineteenth century or the twentieth, it is the masculine values that prevail. Speaking crudely, football and sport are “important”; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes “trivial.” And these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction. This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room. A scene in a battle-field is more important than a scene in a shop—everywhere and much more subtly the difference of value persists. (111)

Scholars have tended to agree with Woolf’s assessment. Nina Baym’s groundbreaking article “Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors” (1981) laid bare the ways in which literary criticism and theory have historically upheld “masculine” ideas and qualities as universal ones, while Nicole Diane Thompson’s Reviewing Sex (1996) demonstrated how mid-century Victorian book reviews equated literary value with masculinity. Sociologists Gaye Tuchman and Nina Fortin have argued that as the novel began to gain in prestige during the nineteenth century, an increasing number of men entered what had previously been a femaledominated literary field, effectively “edging women out” in a process akin to urban gentrification. By the 1870s, they argue, “men of letters were using the term high culture to set off novels they admired from those they deemed run-of-the-mill. Most of these high-culture novels were written by men” (3). This tendency to associate artistic value with masculinity, as Andreas Huyssen noted in After the Great Divide, was part of a much broader cultural phenomenon around 1900, a period which was arguably a flashpoint regarding gender and culture: “The political, psychological and aesthetic discourse around the turn of the century consistently and obsessively genders mass culture and the masses as feminine, while high culture, whether traditional or modern, clearly remains the privileged realm of male activities” (47). And yet, if these associations between women and mass or “low-brow” culture have been rendered explicit by scholars from the 1980s onward, this has not altered the position of women writers today as much as may have been

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hoped: as Julieanne Lamond writes, “Our associations of literary value with masculinity are deeply held and very hard to shift.” It would seem, then, that contemporary scholarship has come to much the same conclusion as Woolf. Yet what no one seems to have considered is how fictional representations of authorship may have registered or even contributed to the processes by which women’s contributions to literature have been maligned and undermined. This oversight is somewhat surprising given that writers have been using novels and stories about novelists to explore precisely these kinds of problems from as early as the eighteenth century. As I have argued elsewhere, novels about novelists, or “author-stories,” can act as a kind of barometer for the condition of the literary climate. What I mean by this is that author-stories not only offer a way for writers to address the changing sociocultural and economic conditions of authorship, they also enable them to engage in sophisticated ways with critical debates and theories of the novel and authorship, particularly in times of flux or upheaval. In this chapter, I argue that the fifty years on either side of 1900 constitute one such period of upheaval, during which gender was increasingly at issue in author-stories.2 Although there are almost as many types of author-characters as there are authors to write them into being, this chapter will focus on assessing the most pervasive stereotypes. As with any stereotype, when it comes to authorcharacters there are both “good” stereotypes and “bad” ones, or, in other words, types of author-characters that are endorsed by their creators, and types which are not. Endorsement can be understood as the extent to which an author-character’s literary values appear to align with those of the implied author, or the literary values which undergird the text itself. We do not need to know the views of a writer to make a decision regarding whether an authorcharacter they have created is endorsed: a comparison of the kind of work the character produces and the kind of work in which he or she is represented is enough. For example, a character who is a writer of wildly popular historical romances is quite likely to be endorsed when he or she appears in a novel of that same genre, but unlikely to be endorsed if he or she appears in a work in the naturalist or realist tradition. In terms of endorsement, it is the kind of work a character admires and produces—as well as the means and methods by which they produce it—which is relevant, with endorsement hinging on whether this work aligns or does not align with the literary values upheld by the text in which they appear. The value in categorizing author-characters in this way is that it allows us to see which literary values—which genres, styles, methods, and motivations for writing—are most highly valued, which are most heavily critiqued, and by whom, at any given time. More significantly for the present investigation, tracking endorsement in a large number of texts makes it possible to see more clearly the relationships between literary value and gender, and how these

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change over time. When novelists create endorsed author-characters, are they more likely to be male or female? What kinds of endorsed and unendorsed stereotypes become attached to each gender, and which of these persist (or vanish) with the passage of time? In what follows, I provide tentative answers to these questions. 1850–1899: SILLY LADY NOVELISTS AND STARVING ARTISTS Although novelists occasionally appeared as characters in fiction prior to 1850, such figures were relatively few and far between until the latter half of the nineteenth century. Prior to this, literary characters were generally poets, playwrights, journalists, or simply “men of letters” who worked across a range of genres. Yet after 1850, representations of author-characters who identified as novelists increased markedly. From Charles Dickens’s enduring David Copperfield (1850) to Mary Cholmondely’s wildly popular Red Pottage (1899), the second half of the nineteenth century was a period during which, Peter Keating notes, “the novelist became a familiar character in fiction of every type and quality” (80). Looking at a selection of 120 author-stories published between 1850 and 1899, just over half (56 percent) were written by men, with the remaining texts being written by women. The gender of the author-characters represented within these texts also reveals only a slight bias in favor of male characters, who make up 57 percent of the author-characters found in this sample. As Tuchman and Fortin claimed, women writers had dominated the literary field—at least in terms of publication figures—prior to 1840, but faced increasing competition from male authors as the century came to a close, making this period something of a turning point during which more men were entering and competing in the literary field. However, this is where the parity appears to end. When we look at who is representing who, and how they’re choosing to do it, we can see that while women writers created slightly more characters of their own sex—with 58 percent of their characters being female—male writers have a more pronounced preference: three quarters of their author-characters are male. Of course, all we can really conclude from this is that male authors seem to have a strong preference for writing about male author-characters: hardly groundbreaking. This is where the idea of endorsement becomes useful. In the corpus, the female authors represented endorse 74 percent of their female characters and 69 percent of their male characters, once again slightly favoring their same-sex characters. This suggests that women writers generally represented in their fiction a literary world in which men and women were more or less equally likely to produce the kind of work they valued themselves—whether

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this happened to be gritty realist fiction, sensation novels, or anything in between. Victorian male authors, on the other hand, endorsed 84 percent of their male author-characters, but only 40 percent of their female ones. Male writers appear to have been representing fictional literary spheres in which women were far less likely than men to produce “good” work—that is, the kind of writing which the composing author regarded as valuable. But in order to understand how this played out on the page, it is necessary to look at how male and female authors were actually portrayed in fiction from this period, and by whom. The most prevalent and pronounced stereotype of female authorship is one I will call the “Silly Lady Novelist.” George Eliot’s 1856 essay “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists” encapsulates several of the perceived faults of the female novelist of this period which we see replicated in fiction. The essay—written before Eliot’s identity and gender were widely known—also draws our attention to the fact that it was not only men who perpetuated gendered stereotypes of authorship. Women writers often condemned their literary sisters in what some might interpret as internalized misogyny, and others may see as an attempt to distance themselves and their writing from pervasive stereotypes about women writers. Eliot, for example, chides the novels of Silly Lady Novelists for their “want of verisimilitude,” “improbable incident” and “impossible” characters; she describes their writing as marred by “faulty” English; and she reduces their motivations to “vanity” and “idleness.” And it is these same traits that are ascribed to female author-characters from about 1870 onward, particularly—although not exclusively—in texts written by men. Anthony Trollope’s Lady Carbury of The Way We Live Now is one striking early example. Separated from her wealthy but tyrannical husband, Lady Carbury writes reviews about “very thoughtful book[s] in a very thoughtless fashion,” publishes a historical volume riddled with inaccuracies, and when approaching the task of writing a novel reduces the effort to payment per word: “What fewest number of words might be supposed sufficient to fill a page? The money offered was too trifling to allow of very liberal measure on her part.” Although she is an amusing and even endearing character, the reader is led to believe that the literary world is better off after her editor, Mr. Broune, convinces her to stop writing novels and marry him. As for male authorship, the most pervasive stereotype seen in the corpus is an equally familiar figure, “The Starving Artist,” whose original we can find in Thomas Carlyle’s essay “The Hero as Man of Letters” (1840): He, with his copy-rights and copy-wrongs, in his squalid garret, in his rusty coat; ruling (for this is what he does), from his grave, after death, whole nations and generations who would, or would not, give him bread while living—is a rather curious spectacle! Few shapes of Heroism can be more unexpected.

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In this passage, poverty and obscurity in life is implicitly linked to literary immortality, and the struggling, Starving Artist is represented as an uncompromising hero. Likening the writer to a priest guiding his flock, Carlyle argues that the literary profession is based on the same principles as Christianity, which he suggests was “founded on Poverty, on Sorrow . . . every species of worldly Distress and Degradation” (197). For Carlyle, suffering and poverty are indicators of artistic integrity. An early example of this type which appeared around the same time as Carlyle’s essay is Honore de Balzac’s Daniel D’Arthez, who appears in Lost Illusions. D’Arthez lives in monk-like isolation, believing that “[a]ny man who means to rise above the rest must make ready for a struggle and be undaunted by difficulties. A great writer is a martyr who does not die; that is all.” Although D’Arthez ultimately succeeds to the status of a literary lion, many others of his ilk do not, and the story of the struggling artist often ends in death—as with the suicidal Harold Biffen of George Gissing’s New Grub Street (1891)—or a close brush with it, as in the case of the literally starving narrator of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger (1890). The Silly Lady Novelist and the Starving Artist are often found together in a single novel. In Thomas Hardy’s 1873 novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, Elfride Swancourt—the owner of the title’s blue eyes—is the author of an appalling historical romance novel. When Mr. Knight—a brilliant yet impecunious critic—reviews her novel, he immediately sees through what he calls Elfride’s “silly” choice to use a masculine pseudonym, concluding that the novel has been written by “some young lady, hardly arrived at years of discretion.” He proceeds to pillory her novel for chapters “devoted to impossible tournaments, towers, and escapades,” and for scenes which are “palpably artificial.” Unlike the well-to-do Elfride, who has written her novel in a leisurely fashion on scraps of paper while horse-riding, Knight himself has never had the time to write a novel, because, he says, his “energy has been leaked away week by week, quarter by quarter” by writing criticism to keep himself afloat. Here, a brilliant and intelligent artist with high ideals is forced to write criticism on women’s “silly” fiction, effectively preventing him from writing more serious stuff himself. Elfride’s writing—which is indeed partly the result of her boredom and idleness, just as Eliot contends—is positioned by Hardy as a threat to the future of literature and to the survival of the Starving Artist. Henry James’s 1892 short story, “Greville Fane,” offers up a similar story. The unnamed narrator is a journalist charged with writing the obituary of an elderly widow named Mrs. Stormer who produces “ridiculous, romantic fictions” under the male pseudonym of Greville Fane. The narrator describes her characters as “puppets” and notes with scorn that Mrs. Stormer “couldn’t write a page of English. She went down to her grave without suspecting that though she had contributed volumes to the diversion of her contemporaries she had not contributed a sentence to the language.” James, via his narrator,

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also uses a slew of mercantile metaphors to reduce Mrs. Stormer’s novels to the status of mundane and saleable commodities: she is like an “old sausage-mill” churning out fiction from the “verbal scraps” she collects; like a haberdasher’s fabric her fictions come “by the yard”; and she is described as the literary equivalent of “a common pastrycook, dealing in such tarts and puddings as would bring customers to the shop. She put in plenty of sugar and of cochineal, or whatever it is that gives these articles a rich and attractive colour.” The narrator, although he modestly admits to having “perpetrated a novel” in his younger years, was clearly unable to produce something to the public taste, and—like Hardy’s Mr. Knight—has had to fall back on a career in criticism and journalism. The suggestion here is that novels such as those produced by Mrs. Stormer create a literary market in which only sensational and artificial stories colored with the “cochineal” of scandal and high society are saleable. In other words, the oversupply of this artificial stuff has given the public a kind of literary sweet tooth which renders the more wholesome fare offered by writers like James and his narrator unappealing.3 Leonard Merrick’s 1896 novel, Cynthia, likewise features a frustrated and, in this case, destitute male novelist. The endorsed Starving Artist, Humphrey Kent, is seduced by Eva Deane-Pitt, the work’s unendorsed Silly Lady Novelist, a famous author who convinces him to ghost-write for her in order to help her pay her dressmaker’s bills. Devoid of literary scruples, she tells Kent, “I don’t want introspection and construction, and all that. . . . You should knock off a story at your top speed. I don’t care a pin what it’s like; only turn me out a hundred thousand words!” (277). Eva knows that her name and reputation will suffice to sell anything, and has no qualms spitting out formulaic plots for Kent to work from—romantic tales which are the antithesis of Merrick’s own well-wrought story of artistic abasement: “A mercenary girl jilts her lover because he is poor, and then her new fiancé loses his fortune, and the jilted lover succeeds to a dukedom!” (315). Kent only agrees to this arrangement because although his own first novel has been highly acclaimed by critics, it sold poorly, and no publisher will touch his latest offerings. The writing Kent produces for Eva is described in terms which insinuate filth and decay: it is “slovenly” work (287), “muck” and “unmitigated rubbish” (315–16), and Kent is thoroughly “ashamed” of it (312). Over time, Eva—once desperately desirable to Kent—becomes a sort of succubus in descriptions that conflate illicit sex and literary production: she is “insatiable,” always “coaxing him for ‘two little stories more’” (316), leading Kent to the realization that “a day must come when the imagination that she was squeezing like an orange would be sterile, or fruitful of nothing better than the literary abortions with which his mistress was content” (317). The metaphor of illicit sex differs from James’s imagery of confectionary and consumerism, but the suggestion is the same: women’s fiction is

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mass-produced, unwholesome, and corrupting, a guilty pleasure likely to have negative consequences. Merrick’s book, like James’s story, links the kind of writing produced and read by women like Eva to vapid materialism, reinforcing the gendered dichotomy of (male) artistic purity which is aloof and isolated from the marketplace, and a vulgar, inartistic (female) production and consumption whereby cheap and dirty goods change hands among the masses. Such a dichotomy instructs readers that purchasing and reading women’s writing is merely mindless consumerism—as emblematized by Eva’s fashion addiction, or Mrs. Stormer’s literary confectionaries—while seeking out the serious work of destitute artists might constitute a kind of noble patronage or sacred tithing, a way of correcting the injustices of the literary marketplace.4 Although silly women like Elfride, Mr. Stormer, and Eva—who write scandal, romance, historical fiction, and high-society novels—were often the target of these kinds of fictional attacks on female authorship, women who wrote on topical issues pertaining to gender also came increasingly under fire toward the end of the nineteenth century. A subspecies of the Silly Lady Novelist—whose femininity typically goes unquestioned due to her performance of the womanly roles of daughter, wife, mistress, or mother provide a contrast to her literary abortions—the “New Woman Writer” emerged during the fin de siècle and was consistently harangued for her manliness and failure to perform domestic duties. The literary incarnation of the much-debated New Woman phenomenon of the 1880s and 1890s, these “New Women Writer” types—both in fiction and in reality—were viewed as more serious and better educated than their sillier literary sisters, with their work invariably taking the form of “sex problem novels”—novels which deal with the oppression of women. In the hands of male writers, however, the New Woman Writer generally has one of two fates: either she gives up her writing, or she gives up her life. Arguably the most famous example, the Cambridge-educated Herminia Barton of Grant Allen’s The Woman Who Did (1895), gives up both. In William Pett Ridge’s A Clever Wife (1896), Cicely, the clever wife in question, writes a novel entitled A Man’s Disaster, which sells more than 500,000 copies and is much discussed in the press. But because the novel is critical of marriage and pushes the boundaries of propriety, Cicely’s husband, Henry—a bohemian painter who describes himself literally as “a struggling artist”—burns his wife’s book without reading it (271). Henry sees his wife’s writing as an unwelcome attempt to change the status quo as well as a distraction from her wifely duties, causing him to briefly separate from her, only to be mortified and emasculated upon discovering that he is being referred to in the newspapers as “the husband of Mrs. Halliwell” (142). A Clever Wife illustrates a pervasive fin de siècle fear, that feminist thinking and writing would lead women to disdain their traditional roles of wife and mother and

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attempt to usurp men’s rightful position in the public sphere as workers, owners, legislators, and so on. The novel therefore attempts to neutralize this threat by suggesting that women’s serious feminist novels (just like their silly romances) are not true art due to their perceived didacticism. Pett Ridge is at pains to give us damning reviews of Cicely’s second novel from publications the narrator deems “fair,” with one critic describing it as “a strained, artificial piece of work, which would deserve emphatic condemnation, even though it were written by a girl at school” (232). Another argues that “[i]f the womenfolk can give us nothing better than this, for goodness’ sake let the Home Secretary, or the Commissioners in Lunacy . . . step in and compel them to cease” (232). It is strongly suggested that the attention devoted to such topical fictions as A Man’s Disaster is due to their transgressive nature and direct appeal to the zeitgeist as opposed to any lasting literary value. Meanwhile, the work of genuine (male) artists like the hardworking painter, Henry, fails to gain even a modest public viewing because it does not revolve around the issues of the day. Significantly, however, it was not only men who produced and reproduced these stereotypes. Many women writers committed Silly Lady Novelists to the page, or produced their own New Woman Writer characters: the good, the bad, and the ugly.5 A year before Pett Ridge’s novel came out, Elizabeth Robins—an actress, novelist, and later a feminist and suffragette—very much beat him to the punch with her debut novel, George Mandeville’s Husband, which she published under the more masculine pseudonym of C. E. Raimond. The titular George Mandeville is in fact Lois Carpenter, another ambitious New Woman whose name plainly informs readers that she is not a true artist but a mere tradesman. The hideously masculine and unmotherly Lois, like Pett Ridge’s clever wife, marries a mild-mannered painter, Ralph Wilbraham, whom she promptly neglects. Ralph is the epitome of the true artist: “Painting was to him a vehicle for the expression of what he called spiritual ideas,” and he believes that “[n]o art work is excusable except the very best, or what promises to become the very best’” (78–79). But when Ralph’s pictures are slow to win him fame and fortune, his dissatisfied wife takes the nom de plume George Mandeville—an homage to Marian Evans—and begins writing novels. While Lois constructs a literary salon and goes about “getting to be known” because she believes that “[y]ou must be known, and then people read you,” her husband shies away from these social events, contending that it should be “the other way about”—that artists should only ever become “known” by and through their work (12–13). In Robins’s novel, female authorship is depicted as publicly performed and artificial, whereas male artistry (once again represented through the figure of the painter) is pure in its intentions and occurs far away from the marketplace: when Lois takes over her husband’s studio so that she can host bigger parties,

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he retreats to a tiny attic because he feels—several decades before Virginia Woolf expressed the same yearning—“an irrepressible longing to possess a room—a den—of his own” (43). Perhaps understandably, this turn of events causes Ralph to discourage the couple’s daughter from a career in painting, telling her, No woman will ever see the harm of corrupting taste and lowering standards. Just so a woman may air her vanity she is content, and art is lost in a deluge of amateurism. . . . No woman understands the patient, inexhaustible joy of work for the sake of the work. That’s masculine, my child. The woman’s nature asks at every step, “What shall I get for it?” It “pleases” them? Not a whit—till they’ve translated it into gold or gush. (82)

Although Robins would later take to feminist campaigning and essentially renounce this harsh view of women expressed by her creation, her unforgiving portrayal of George Mandeville nevertheless reflects the argument of that other George: that when female novelists produce inferior art “it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against the more solid education of women.”6 Women writers were quick to call out their literary sisters for their failings, launching attacks against Silly Lady Novelists and new woman writers alike. Although they were not as numerous as men’s renderings, or as enduring, they were often just as nasty, if not more so. One explanation for this, perhaps, is a genuine belief that the majority of women were indeed writing poorly and for the wrong reasons, giving “serious” women writers a bad reputation. Another possible explanation is more strategic: by positioning themselves as firmly against the reigning negative stereotypes of female authorship, women writers may have hoped to be accepted by male authors, or better yet, be considered as honorary members of the boy’s club—a desire, perhaps, suggested by the fact that both Eliot and Robins chose to adopt masculine pen names in publishing their attacks on women writers. Whether she is a naïve and silly child, a talentless old crone, a vile and unscrupulous seductress, or a frumpy feminist, these representations of female authors have one striking thing in common: they all support narratives in which talented and hardworking male artists are ground down and pushed out of the cultural marketplace by the inferior fictions of women. Both numerically speaking and in terms of their lasting impact on literature, the struggling male artist and the talentless lady novelist are the most significant stereotypes represented in the corpus. Their shadowy opposites—the male author who produces commercial trash, and the poor woman genius—are harder to come by, although they are not without representation. For example, Mary Cholmondeley’s hugely popular Red Pottage (1899) contains a cameo portrait of a successful male novelist referred to mockingly by the narrator

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as “Mr. Harvey, the author of Unashamed” and “Mr. Harvey (the great Mr. Harvey).” Harvey pontificates on the failings of books “written by persons entirely ignorant of the life they describe,” and yet presumes to write a novel about the emancipation of women. At the other end of the spectrum, James Payn deserves some kind of medal for being one of the only male authors of the period to dub his literary heroine a genius. Elizabeth Dart, the incredibly clever yet somewhat unworldly novelist and essayist of Payn’s The Heir of the Ages, however, was considered an unconvincing character by at least one contemporaneous reviewer, who remarked, “[T]here is a touch of extravagance, we might almost say of farce, in the story of the literary triumphs of Miss Elizabeth Dart” (27). This points to a very particular problem with representing women writers. While male genius was widely accepted and celebrated, female genius was apt to be scrutinized and questioned. Perhaps in order to avoid this kind of backlash, many late Victorian women writers tempered the brilliance of their literary heroines by emphasising their hardworking attitudes and gradual improvement, rather than presenting their stories as cases of innate genius cruelly ignored. Moreover, some of these texts implicitly affirm women’s association with the lowbrow: Charlotte Riddell’s The Struggle for Fame, Ella Hepworth Dixon’s The Story of a Modern Woman, George Paston’s (Emily Morse Symonds) A Writer of Books, among others, concern endorsed heroines with serious literary aspirations and considerable talents who are nevertheless forced, at one point or another, into writing frivolous romances, gossip columns, and sensation fiction at the behest of male editors and publishers. In the act of revealing the structural inequality that left men in charge of what women were allowed to write, these authors may have inadvertently contributed to the association between women and commercial fiction, especially since, unlike the starving male artists who would rather die than debase themselves, these heroines capitulate to the demands of the market in order to survive.7 Exceptions aside, several things are apparent from this survey of the late Victorian texts represented in the corpus: first, that female author-characters are far more likely to be negatively associated with commercial or popular fiction than their male counterparts, and secondly, that—in men’s novels particularly, and in the corpus overall—female author-characters are less likely than male author-characters to be endorsed. Conversely, the male artist (whether literary or not) is consistently linked with a kind of artistic purity which renders his work appealing only to a small elite audience—a quality which is highly, although not universally, endorsed by both male and female writers of the period. What effect, if any, did fifty years of such stereotyping have on the author-stories of the next fifty years?

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1900–1949: CELEBRITY MALE MODERNISTS AND BURIED WOMEN According to Huyssen, the “gendering of an inferior mass culture as feminine goes hand in hand with the emergence of a male mystique in modernism” (50). If we turn now to the first half of the twentieth century, we can see this male mystique strongly reflected in the corpus. Male authors are responsible for 111 of the author-stories collected for the years 1900–1949, almost double the number produced by women writers, who this time have contributed only 60 to the pool. This is a fairly dramatic shift from the previous period, when male and female authors were responsible for much closer to half of the texts each. When sequels are removed from the equation, the result is even starker: women are the authors of only 36 discrete texts, while men are the authors of 90. Of course, this does not mean that women necessarily wrote fewer author-stories—although this is certainly possible. Rather, the lower proportion of texts written by women is likely due to a confluence of factors. For one thing, Gaye Tuchman has given evidence that women writers faced stiffer odds with publishers after 1900 than they had before it: in “When the Prevalent Don’t Prevail,” she argues that between 1907 and 1917, “men’s values had become universal values” and that, according to Macmillan’s publishing records at least, “[a]lthough they submitted fewer novels than women, more novels by men were accepted” (149). For another, it must be acknowledged that the methods used to find novels about novelists for this study are heavily reliant on the historical and continuing popularity of these works, both with readers and with scholars. Texts by famous authors are far easier to find than those by obscure ones, and women—for all the reasons discussed thus far—are more likely to be obscure. As for scholarship, one could argue that while Victorianists have shown interest in women writers of sensation fiction, new woman novels, and realist fiction alike, Modernists have tended to restrict themselves to those exceedingly few women writers of highbrow repute, such as Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Katherine Mansfield, and Djuna Barnes. Only relatively recently have authors of popular and “middlebrow” fiction such as Stella Gibbons and Anita Loos been recuperated by critics.8 Whatever the cause, women writers are notably underrepresented in the corpus for this period. But it is not only real women writers and their works whose numbers decrease: female author-characters are also far less prevalent in this sample. While 57 percent of the 141 unique author-characters from the Victorian sample were male, between 1900 and 1949 there are 121 male author-characters and only 37 female ones, raising the proportion of male characters to 77 percent. One of the biggest contributors to this shift is the fact that, after 1900, male authors—who were responsible for producing

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the majority of the texts in the corpus—appear to have all but stopped creating female author-characters. An astounding 89 percent of men’s author-characters created during this period are also male, a dramatic shift from the habits of Victorian-era male authors, a full third of whose authorcharacters were female. It seems at least plausible that this decreased interest in representing the female competition might stem from the fact that women writers posed less of a threat after 1900 than they had done before, and thus constituted less appealing or urgent targets. A number of things would seem to support such a reading. For one thing, as Paul Delaney has argued in Literature, Money and the Market: From Trollope to Amis (2002), literary modernism saw the advent of a whole host of new (and renewed) ways to be a successful writer that did not rely on high sales figures of the kind enjoyed by the Silly Lady Novelists and New Woman Writers of the previous half century. Poor copyright laws and exploitative publishing practices during the Victorian period had meant that only high sales or prolific production could guarantee an author’s financial security. However, after 1900, high-culture or “highbrow” writing was increasingly becoming legitimized and even financially viable through the growth of things like “little magazines,” the proliferation of literary agents, a resurgence in the practice of patronage, and the founding of prestigious prizes such as the Nobel Prize for Literature (founded 1901) and the Pulitzer (founded 1917). All of these developments provided authors who did not wish to court the masses with other avenues through which to make a living and build a name for themselves. It seems likely that these changes may have made the realworld “Starving Artists” a little less starving, and a little less hostile to their female colleagues, who now all but disappear from men’s fiction. And yet, male authors clearly did not view themselves as without rivals. During this period, male authors seem to have simply turned their ire on other male writers with whom they were in direct competition: while only 11 percent of the male author-characters created by male writers during the second half of the nineteenth century were unendorsed or depicted as “bad” authors, this figure more than doubles to 26 percent in the modernist era. The enemy in author-stories by male writers is no longer women who produce popular and lucrative works, but rather other men who have impressive reputations, are hailed as artists, or who belong to elite and experimental literary schools and circles. Robert Hichen’s The Green Carnation (1894)—a savage attack on Oscar Wilde and the decadent movement more broadly—is an early exemplar of this trend, in which the unendorsed author-characters often closely resemble famous writers, or overtly reference certain literary schools and styles. H. G. Wells’s Boon (1915), for example, featured so obvious a takedown of Henry James’s late style that it caused a rift between the two writers, who had previously been on good terms. Similarly, Scripps O’Neil,

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the protagonist of Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring (1926), is widely held to be an unflattering portrait of Sherwood Anderson—one of Hemingway’s mentors—and its publication prompted Papa to write what Humphrey Carpenter has called “a semi-apologetic letter” to Anderson. Somerset Maugham, on the other hand, was spared the need to apologize to Thomas Hardy, who died before Cakes and Ale (1930) appeared, with its unkind portrayal of Hardy as a stuffy Victorian author out of step with the new century. In Wyndham Lewis’s sprawling Apes of God (1926), the author takes aim at the cultural elite more broadly, offering in Julius Ratner—a writer who pens “epiphanies”—a portrait of the artist whom David Ayers and Adam Hanna have read as partly inspired by James Joyce (146).9 As has been stated, male authors contributed hardly any female author-characters to the corpus between 1900 and 1950. The few they did produce were surprisingly uniform: almost all of them write romance novels and other ephemeral fiction, from Rosie M. Banks in P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves series, who writes “outstanding bilge” and “heart-throb fiction for the masses” (227), to Maugham’s Norah Nesbit from Of Human Bondage (1915), who has “no talent, and the abominable stuff she turned out by the thousand words was . . . the best she could do” (Ch. 66). Even more nuanced and affectionate renderings such as Mrs. Wannop in Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End tetralogy are presented as either lowbrow or commercially minded: Mrs. Wannop is “a woman of business. If she heard of a reviewer within driving distance she called on him with eggs as a present” (99).10 Miss Thriplow of Aldous Huxley’s Those Barren Leaves (1925) stands out from the crowd in the sense that she styles herself as a highbrow author, but the maudlin writer purportedly based on Katherine Mansfield is heavily lampooned as an author whose work and public persona are insincere and carefully cultivated, despite her espoused desire to remain obscure and aloof, because “[g]enuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery” (Ch.1). Significantly, however, the apparently diminishing number of representations of female authorship in fiction after 1900 cannot entirely be put down to the preferences and habits of male writers, or even to the smaller number of real women writers contributing to the corpus. While it might have been presumed that women would write against the stereotypes of the previous half century by creating a greater proportion of endorsed female author-characters than they had in the previous one, it would appear that, like their male colleagues, women writers actually increased their number of male author-characters. While in the late Victorian sample 39 percent of women’s author-characters were men, after 1900 closer to half (47 percent) are male. Of course, as we have seen in the previous section, wide representation is not necessarily a good thing. As women’s endorsement of their very small

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number of female author-characters increased by 20 percent, their endorsement of their male ones dropped by roughly the same amount. It would seem that as women writers were “edged out”—to borrow Tuchman’s phrase—of the literary sphere by more successful men, they responded to this (whether consciously or not) in precisely the same way that the male authors of the previous century had reacted to women’s prosperity in the Victorian literary marketplace: by creating negative stereotypes of their greatest competitors. In women’s author-stories from the first half of the twentieth century there emerges a strong candidate for a male counterpart to the Silly Lady Novelist. The male author-figure most often portrayed in women’s fiction from the period is a successful, celebrated, and even celebrity author. His original can be found in a 1939 essay by Edmund Wilson on Hemingway, in which he writes that Papa “is occupied with building up his public personality. He has already now become a legend. . . . He is the Hemingway of the handsome photographs with the open neck and the outdoor grin” (41). “And unluckily,” in Wilson’s book, “the opportunity soon presents itself to exploit this personality for profit: he is soon turning out regular articles for well-paying and trashy magazines” (41). Wilson is pointing out what Aaron Jaffe has argued was a key feature of a modernist system in which authors could mobilize elite “imprimaturs”—carefully cultivated public and literary personas—in order to survive economically: [L]iterary celebrity depended less on actual high literary efforts than on facility with promotional apparatus, its institutional agendas, and accompanying discourses. Status was derived not from the quality of their high literary labors per se but from their capacity to stay news, to keep their imprimaturs extant, to keep enough of their durable literary goods in print, and above all, to make the transition to academic institutionalization after the Second World War. (165; emphasis in original)

Much like men’s unendorsed male author-characters of this era, these celebrity characters often resemble the real famous faces of the day; however, in women’s author-stories they also seem to transcend this specificity and paint a picture of the male artist as a species. And just as the Silly Lady Novelist is caricatured as excessively “feminine” in her love of romance, fashion, and scandal, the male celebrity author of the modernist era is often portrayed as robustly (even ridiculously) male: he is generally a macho type who hunts, travels widely or goes to war, and almost invariably gets himself sexually involved with more than one woman. Although there occasionally appears in women’s author-stories an effete, pedantic stylist who might be considered the male version of the masculine New Woman Writer (he is all style and no substance, whereas she is all substance and no style), it is largely

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the ultra-male variety of celebrity author which women writers choose to portray.11 The celebrity, as he appears in women’s fiction, is arrogant in the extreme, referring to his own “genius” and priding himself on aesthetic high-mindedness despite the fact that his success is generally due more to his savvy negotiations with the marketplace than to his talent. He is adept at networking in clubs and coteries, penning works which flout obscenity laws to attract publicity, adopting outlandish publish personas to appeal to the press, flattering patrons and prize givers, or simply following the latest literary trend. If the Silly Lady Novelist—as a result of her silliness—was unable to disguise her desire for fame and fortune, the male celebrity is smart enough to feign an aversion to publicity and even payment, if only as part of a strategy to attract more of it. The male celebrity of women’s author-stories also has another defining feature, and that is his habit of preying on women sexually, intellectually, socially, and financially in ways which advance his career. In the same way that Victorian authors often pitted their Silly Lady Novelists against Starving Artists, there appears to be a somewhat oblique equivalent to the endorsed male artist to be found in women’s writing concerning the male celebrity author. The most striking feature of this figure, though, is that she does not write. She is, in the ever-prescient phrasing of Virginia Woolf, a kind of “Shakespeare’s sister,” one of the many potential woman geniuses who have the talent but not the opportunity of their brothers: She died young—alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to-night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. (171)

This “buried” woman figure may entertain inchoate literary or artistic aspirations, but existing in the male celebrity’s shadow—or indeed, at his beck and call—does not afford her the “opportunity” to develop her own talents and “walk among us in the flesh,” since she often sublimates her own desires in order to assist the celebrity. Whether she is his patroness, amanuensis, rival, muse, lover, wife, or daughter, this female figure usually aids and abets the celebrity’s rise to fame without receiving any credit for services rendered. One celebrity character who unites all the qualities so far described is George Vero-Taylor, the focus of Violet Hunt’s hilarious satire, The Celebrity at Home (1904), and its sequel, The Celebrity’s Daughter (1913).

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George—whom we view through the eyes of his naïve yet perspicacious daughter, Tempe—has entered the literary limelight with the help of his wealthy patroness and lover, Lady Scilly. George, Tempe tells us, “is a genius, he admits it” and is clearly a card-carrying pre-Raphaelite in literary form, modeled on Hunt’s own father, the painter William Holman Hunt. George’s novels—the very opposite of Hunt’s own fresh and modern satires—are set in medieval Italy, with one inspiring a mocking parody entitled The Adventures of Sir Bore and Sir Weariful. Yet with the help of his savvy literary agent, Middleman, and the social clout of his titled mistress, the celebrity manages to sell thousands of copies of these medieval “masterpieces.” George makes a success of himself by rewriting all his interviews before allowing them to be printed, pretending to be a bachelor in order to attract female fans, and buying a fashionable house in which to entertain the literary elite because he knows that “a successful party is more good than fifty interviews.” However, while framing himself as an artist and a genius, George in fact lives parasitically off the labor of women: he relies heavily on a clever amanuensis with her own literary hopes and dreams, who “manages him” marvelously; he gets his two teenage daughters to essentially write his criticism and reviews for him; he uses Lady Scilly’s connections to make himself known; and he allows his loyal wife to provide him a comfortable domestic life while he denies her existence to the world. The Celebrity at Home is a portrait of the artist from behind the scenes, one which reveals the extent to which the famous male author might manipulate the marketplace without seeming to do so, while living upon the unsung and unpaid labor of women. Vance Weston of Edith Wharton’s Hudson River Bracketed (1929) and The Gods Arrive (1932) is another male author-character who rises to public notice with unacknowledged female assistance. The uncouth, uneducated Vance Weston relies on the literary learning and connections of his cultured and sensitive mentor, Halo Tarrant, to kick-start his career. After Halo secures the publication of Vance’s first piece in a highbrow journal edited by her husband, Vance is catapulted into the literary elite, where he discovers that the “[b]unch of highbrows” (189) who judge the “Pulsifer Prize” simply hand it over to whichever young man takes the fancy of its aging patroness. Although he briefly flirts with this Pulsifer Prize patroness, Vance ultimately rejects this crowd and begins to distance himself from Halo, later reframing her vital assistance as distraction: “I was always in a fever for you, and you kept getting between me and my book” (GA, 42). Instead, he falls in with a group of New Yorkers who “read only each other and Ulysses” before leaving them in turn for a salon run out of a Parisian bookshop. These “fishers in the turbid stream of consciousness” inspire Vance’s next work, the decidedly Joycean Colossus: a “big psychological panorama” which exhibits “most of the faults disquieting to the book-seller; it was much too long, nothing

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particular happened in it, and few people even pretended to know what it was about” (468). But Vance’s celebrity status combined with the book’s obscurantist nature attracts the press in droves, and he finds himself “besieged by reporters, autograph-collectors, photographers, prominent citizens and organizers of lecture tours” (442). There is no suggestion in Wharton’s work that being a highbrow modernist experimenter has anything to do with brooding solitude or bold originality: instead, Colossus merely reflects the tastes of Vance’s Parisian colleagues and shows that novelty and obscurity can actually increase an author’s profile. Wharton wryly shows that even bad publicity is good publicity, and that the modernist taste for the unprintable exploits this feature of the market. In a literary world which rewards such showiness there is little space for the self-effacing and demure Halo to develop her own artistic sensibilities: “she could half paint, she could half write—but her real gift (and she knew it) was appreciating the gifts of others. . . . What else was there for her but marriage?” (Hudson 84). In playing the various roles that Vance requires of her—mentor, muse, lover, and finally mother of his unborn child—Halo leaves no time to entertain the thought of producing something for herself. The gender of the mentor/protegée relationship is reversed in Dorothy Richardson’s magnum opus, Pilgrimage. Hypo G. Wilson, an undisguised portrait of Richardson’s erstwhile lover, H. G. Wells, is introduced as a “coming great man” whom “everybody was beginning to talk about” (Tunnels 133). Miriam Henderson, the work’s filtering consciousness, is at first enamored with Wilson and desperate to join his male-dominated literary salon. Yet at these gatherings, Miriam can barely get a word in-between men proposing such things as “Why not write an article about a lamp post?” and “demanding her approval, her sympathy, just on the stretch of her being there” (121). Miriam, however, catches Wilson’s eye and he begins dictating to his new protegée with imperatives: “You shall learn to write, passably, in the interests of socialism” (Revolving Lights 253); “You’ll be a critic” (Revolving Lights 214); “You’ve got to switch over into journalism, Miriam” (Dawn’s Left Hand 235); “You ought to document your period” (Clear Horizon 397). His suggestions of material and genre reflect only his own tastes, offering no scope for what readers come to know as Miriam’s (and Richardson’s) primary interests: the minutiae of everyday existence, the inner lives of women, and the depths of human consciousness. For Hypo, literature must serve a practical purpose, and he tends to write didactically on socialist subjects in a way Miriam will come to criticize. After mentor and protegée engage in a brief affair, Hypo leaves Miriam to deal with a miscarriage that shakes her health—a symbolic still-birth which reflects the fact that their intellectual “collaboration” has not been a fruitful one. This, Miriam ultimately realizes, is because their relationship has never been the equal exchange she imagined:

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“She had been a witness, and was now a kind of compendium for him of it all, one of his supports, one of those who through having known the beginnings, through representing them every time she appeared, brought him to a realization of his achievements” (Dawn’s Left Hand 219–20). Miriam merely reflects Hypo’s glory back at him, acting as a sounding board for the famous author and fulfilling the passive roles of witness, compendium, support. Only after she leaves Hypo does Miriam begin to consider her own art in earnest, although readers will never see what Miriam makes of herself, unless they read Pilgrimage to be an example of her mature work. William Ridley, the antagonist of Storm Jameson’s Company Parade (1936), is another “coming great man” who hasn’t actually published anything yet, but pushes his own ideas about literature on the novel’s heroine, debut novelist Hervey Russel. A young sergeant with literary ambitions, Ridley sees fit to explain to Hervey that she’s been going about novel-writing all wrong: “Are you a writer?” she said at last. “When I get free o’ this uniform I’ll be one quick enough,” was the answer, given with terrific gusto, in a rough voice. “I suppose you’re writing something or other.” “My first novel came out yesterday,” Hervey said. “And I suppose it’s damn bad,” Ridley said, with a broad smile. . . . “Because you’re like all the rest. Out with a novel, before you know how to write, and then write another, and another, and by the time you’ve learned something you’ve written that many rotten books no one takes y’ seriously.” He jerked his head. “Come on, let’s sit down over here and I’ll tell y’ something worth knowing.” (46–47)

With his “terrific gusto” and “rough voice,” Ridley is a master of self-advertisement and has the swagger of male war novelists, travel writers, and journalists who capitalized on their masculinity by writing brave tales of adventure in a colloquial style. Despite having no books to Hervey’s one, Ridley advises her to “Make friends with th’other writers. Get about among’em, get known” before publishing again (47). And this certainly seems to work for Ridley, who has an affair with an older woman—the editor of a literary magazine—because it is widely known that she “only helps young men” (51). This reliance on charm or sex appeal in conjunction with networking was precisely the kind of behavior which Victorian male writers attributed to their female author-characters, and yet Jameson makes it abundantly clear that such forms of self-promotion are far better suited to men. As a single mother low on funds, Hervey cannot exercise the same social freedoms Ridley does; she cannot dress eccentrically or hold dinner parties, she can’t travel or go to war, and she certainly can’t compete in a marketplace

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which rewards extraordinary life experience and jocular self-assurance— qualities unbecoming of a young mother with a son to support. In the novel’s sequel, None Turn Back, Ridley has become a “widely known” and successful writer with a bookcase full of his own novels, “one out of each edition, with the translations, and copies bound in parchment and intended for the British Museum at his death.” Hervey, by contrast, suffers a crisis of confidence, believing that her “books were very bad, emotional in a false way, uncritical, and lying,” and destroys the manuscript of an unfinished novel which she deems “dull, forced, and commonplace.” The buried woman at the heart of Dawn Powell’s Turn, Magic Wheel, Effie Callingham, is doubly used by the two male authors in her life. Her internationally famous erstwhile husband, Andrew Callingham is a “big, hairy, roaring sort of guy,” a hunting and boating enthusiast who leaves a trail of exes around the world, and describes himself as “the best goddam writer this country ever turned out, yes, or France or England too for that matter” (210). These traits have led Sara Kosiba to suggest that Powell’s “dislike of Hemingway’s braggadocio and celebrity” likely inspired Callingham (51). Powell presents Callingham to her readers much as a celebrity is presented to the public: through the media. One chapter consists of a short newspaper profile on Callingham which mythologizes the author as a rags-to-riches success story while skipping over the fact that his marriage to the independently wealthy Effie has not only given him the luxury to write full-time, but funded his international travel for material and helped him hobnob with the right sort of people. The novel’s second author-figure and protagonist, Dennis Orphen, befriends Effie and uses her life for copy, producing a novel called The Hunter’s Wife, which fictionalizes Effie’s abandonment and the fifteen years following it, during which she has lived as though her husband never left: “observe how neatly she rules her life by what would please him. . . . What fragment, then, is left of the person who once lived in this body, before he came—is there one exclamation that comes from the buried woman, or must all be strained through the great man’s cloak?” (12). Despite his genuine affection for Effie, Orphen cannot stop himself from cannibalizing her tragic story for his own gain and he uses Effie’s life to make money, just as Callingham uses her money to fund his life. Yet although the downtrodden and delusional Effie never writes a word, it is she who is the ultimate creator in this novel. Her life is her work, and after realizing that “the Andy I loved was the Andy I made up after he left” she swaps her fantasy of him to live out a new fiction, telling Callingham that the much younger Orphen—whom Callingham has tried to sue for having “lampooned” him—is her latest beau. Pushed into playing this role, Orphen finds himself “wondering at the new Effie that was being born” (228).

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Read together, these stories of male literary celebrity and the buried women who support it have the combined effect of pushing back against the myth of the brilliant, solitary male artist whose social, psychological, and sexual development—as opposed to his literary career—is the subject of many masterpieces of the modernist canon, from Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kroger (1903), to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Proust’s Recherché du Temps Perdue, Wyndham Lewis’s Tarr, Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel, Malcolm Lowry’s Ultramarine, and many more. Unlike these characters—whose brilliance typically develops in brooding isolation and who, in some cases, barely seem to write or publish at all—the celebrity male author of women’s fiction is generally prolific in his output and relies heavily on the unpaid labor and assistance of the women around him. He is thus a fictionalized account of an unspoken truth of modernism which Aaron Jaffe describes: “Despite relentlessly advancing the cult of the singular artist . . . modernism’s existence is repeatedly marked by the need for the unpaid work of others, others who were frequently women” (96). Why is it that women seem to have had such a hard time committing to paper a fully fledged female novelist of genius? Men writing at this time did not seem to have trouble depicting literary geniuses of their own gender—in many cases they modeled their endorsed male artists closely on their own life experience. Joyce, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald all produced self-portraits of aspiring male artists cut from their own cloth, as did many more besides. Yet, as Linda Huf notes in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman, “Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Katherine Anne Porter, and Flannery O’Connor never wrote a portrait-of-the-author novel” (1–2). Dawn Powell’s diaries may point to why this appears to have been the case. When Powell began Turn, Magic Wheel, she had first envisioned a female heroine, whom she later rewrote as Dennis Orphen: “How much sharper and better to have the central figure a man rather than a woman—a man in whom my own prejudices and ideas can be easily placed, whereas few women’s minds . . . flit as irresponsibly as that” (The Diaries of Dawn Powell, 96). Confessing to a “repugnance for the writer heroine” Powell felt that she could not convey her own thoughts and opinions through a female author-character, arguably because she did not take women seriously as writers and suspected that her audience wouldn’t either. Although she clearly considered herself an artist, Powell appears to have subscribed to the same view which persists throughout men’s texts: Women seem to me the greatest opportunists, the most unscrupulous artists in the world—they turn any genius they have into money without a pang—whereas the man artist, supporting his family by distortions of his genius, never ceases to bemoan his lost ideal. . . . I only feel that if I were stronger and not so crippled

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by . . . my domestic panic and responsibilities, I could do bigger stuff than this light lady-writing. (The Diaries of Dawn Powell, 31)

Dismissing women writers as sellouts, Powell does not consider the prospect that if indeed women have sold out, it may well be due to their own “domestic panic and responsibilities,” which sometimes make “light lady-writing” an unavoidable necessity rather than a choice. If women writers have not been hailed as geniuses, perhaps it is because we have not been looking for geniuses among them, and have treated their claims to genius with suspicion. Arguably worse than the simple failure to portray the artistically minded woman writer, many of these novelists attacked other female novelists in their fictions even as they also decried the male celebrity: Lady Scilly, the mistress of Violet Hunt’s George Vero-Taylor, seduces her literary-minded admirers into “collaborating” on a novel which she intends to publish under her own name. Richardson’s Pilgrimage presents Edna Prout—a character based on Violet Hunt, with whom Wells also conducted an affair—whose novels Miriam despises because they are essentially romans à clef about her glittering social circle, a mode which Miriam the modernist finds “an impossibly mean advantage . . . a cheap easy way” of producing fiction (Revolving Lights 173; ellipsis in original). In Wharton’s The Touchstone (1900), Margaret St. Aubyn is a serious, artistic writer of the New Woman variety—she is “a genius” brimming with “intellectual audacity”—but she is hardly a positive image of female authorship: St. Aubyn is so awkward, unattractive, and unlovable that the man she loves rejects her, publishing the love letters she has written to him in order to fund his marriage to another (15–17). Amanda Evans, one of the central figures in Powell’s A Time to be Born (a novel in which both Callingham and Orphen make brief reappearances), is a wildly successful author who has her personal assistant write most of her appalling historical novels and gets her editor husband to publish them. As these examples make clear, women writers often set themselves apart from negative stereotypes by reproducing them: an effective tactic, perhaps, but one which has negative implications for women’s writing more broadly. While the reader may feel certain that Violet Hunt is no Lady Scilly—no Silly Lady Novelist—and that Dawn Powell would rather succumb to her domestic panic than be another Amanda Evans, they may also feel certain that such unscrupulous women writers as these are standard fare in the literary world, and there are exceedingly few fictional examples to contradict this. When women writers did represent female author-characters with serious artistic aspirations after 1900, it seems that they were often met with skepticism or ridicule. Margery Latimer, now known only as the wife of Jean Toomer, wrote This Is My Body, labeled by Joy Castro as one of the very few female-authored Künstlerroman of the modernist period (162). But despite

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largely positive reviews praising Latimer’s talent, the heroine of this novel was mocked by reviewers, Castro points out, as “a frenzied adolescent and definitely neurotic” (163). May Sinclair, one of the more recognizable female figures of literary modernism, also had the nerve to create a “genius” heroine in her novel The Creators. As Michele K. Troy has observed, The Creators was a “resounding failure,” in part because readers and reviewers saw Jane Holland as an analogue for the author. Troy cites a letter written by Sinclair in which she complained, “Reviewers thought they were very clever in identifying me with my ‘successful’ heroine, Jane. . . . Consequently, they hated the book & me for writing it, & the tone of the book reviews was generally something like this: ‘Oh, she thinks she’s a genius, does she? We’ll put her in her place!’” (qtd. in Troy; 64). E. M. Delafield was similarly put in her place by a reviewer for her representation of female authorship in The Way Things Are (1927), which offers in the character of Laura Temple a bored housewife and mother who also happens to be the author of well-regarded short stories published in highbrow literary magazines. A reviewer for The Spectator found Laura’s talent highly suspicious: The mistake in the novel is that the reader is hard put to it to believe in Laura’s success as a writer of short stories. However, as readers of Miss Delafield will readily believe, Laura’s worries are distinctly entertaining, and the account of her inconclusive and rather futile love affair is most convincingly given. (32)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the reviewer raises no qualms about the novel’s celebrated male author-character and mentor figure, Mr. Onslow, who is considerably more successful than Laura and was purportedly based on D. H. Lawrence. The assumption that women were inartistic and wrote for money while men wrote for art was so deeply infused into the fiction and criticism of the period that the highbrow heroine was something of a lightning rod for repudiation. As Huf argues, women writers, concerned about being viewed as arrogant or narcissistic, “have frequently balked at portraying themselves in literature as would-be writers” (1). CONCLUSIONS Men’s portrayals of female authorship in the late Victorian era reveal an anxiety and resentment surrounding women whose writing was more commercially successful than their own, as well as toward women writers who challenged gender norms or sought to destabilize the status quo. In both cases, a lack of artistic merit—a lack of literary value—is given as the primary reason why serious readers should not bother with women’s fiction.

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These high-minded attacks concerning artistic merit have the advantage of not looking quite as much like sour grapes as would admitting to the real offenses which sparked the attacks in the first place: widespread popularity and the desire for gender equality. Women’s representation of male authorship post-1900 demonstrates a collective concern that a literary vanguard which privileged masculinity and masculine ideals as well as experimental forms of writing left very little room for women. Bold and experimental forms of writing were risky and speculative, requiring the support of networks and coteries, many of which excluded or marginalized women writers and artists. While at times women writers demonstrated the ways in which they were disadvantaged by taking aim at the robust authorial imprimaturs of their male colleagues, at others they appear to have resorted to ridiculing female authorship as a way of distinguishing themselves and their work from negative stereotyping. The cumulative picture is one in which male authors have gone from struggling artists to bold successes, while women have continued to be labeled the producers of a torrent of commercial flimflam. Of course, it is by and large the male authors mentioned in this chapter whose works are now best known and read. H. G. Wells’s novels and stories are still widely available and much discussed, unlike those of Violet Hunt and Dorothy Richardson, who are better known as Wells’s lovers than as authors in their own right. Although the term “stream of consciousness” was coined for Richardson’s work, it is Joyce’s which became its most famous exemplar, and he looms as a far larger literary figure than his critic, Edith Wharton, despite the fact that she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize. Ernest Hemingway, who stated in a letter that Dawn Powell was his “favourite living author,” has well and truly outlived her in both print and public memory, despite several attempts by loyal admirers from Gore Vidal to John Updike to bring about a Dawn Powell revival. Many of the other authors who produced negative stereotypes of female authorship, from Henry James and Thomas Hardy through to Huxley, Maugham, and Wodehouse, are all still read, studied, and discussed in scholarship today while women writers who struggled against these same stereotypes are not. It has been not only men’s literature that has been accepted into the canon, but along with it men’s gendered representations of authorship. While some of the texts discussed here by both male and female authors reflect and reinforce the stereotype of the commercial woman writer and the artistic male author, it is clear that women writers faced an impasse in terms of how they could combat it. On the one hand, they exposed much of the hypocrisy surrounding the myth of the aloof modernist artist, but they also contributed to their own marginalization by either leaving female author-characters out of the picture or producing unflattering portraits of their

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literary sisters in what often reads as an attempt to distance themselves and their own writing from negative stereotyping. Studying author-characters enables us to see how cultural assumptions pertaining to authorship are inscribed within and perpetuated by fiction. Decades before literary criticism recuperated Victorian women writers and investigated the links between modernism and celebrity, or between gender and canonization, writers were using author-stories to explicitly work through these concerns within their fiction. NOTES 1. See, for example, the yearly findings of the VIDA count; Natalie Kon-Yu’s article on men’s dominance in literary awards, “A Testicular Hit-List of Literary Big Cats”; and Julieanne Lamond’s essay “A Fool’s Game? On Gender and Literary Value.” 2. To qualify as an author-story for the purposes of this study, a text must be either a novel or a short story containing one or more characters who are professional or aspiring writers of prose fiction. All texts are written in or translated into English and have a publication date between 1850 and 1949. 3. James’s “The Next Time” also dwells on this theme, contrasting the slow decline of highbrow Starving Artist Ralph Limbert with the continued success of Silly Lady Novelist Jane Highmore. 4. Similarly, in George Bernard Shaw’s The Irrational Knot (written in 1880 but unpublished until 1905), Elinor McQuinch is a young female novelist with advanced views whose feminist works are popularly admired. Elizabeth Miller argues that Shaw “presents Nelly’s novel writing not as autonomous feminist expression but as capitalist commercialism masquerading as independent subjectivity” (106) and that “his fictional account of Nelly’s career pinpoints the mercantile mediocrity that he fears” (107). 5. For example, Charlotte Riddell’s The Struggle for Fame contains a very Silly Lady Novelist named Lady Hilda Hicks, and Florence Marryat’s Fighting the Air offers comparisons between the silly Miss Flitters and the struggling Lawrence Fane. Rachel Curtis of Charlotte Mary Yonge’s The Clever Woman in the Family is a New Woman Writer who realizes the error of her feminist ways and is tamed by marriage, while Annie Edwardes’s A Blue Stocking contains in Mattie Rivers an unapologetically masculine New Woman who hopes to emancipate her sex with her writing. 6. A novel in which the female author-character learns precisely this lesson is A Husband of No Importance by Rita (Eliza Margaret Jane Humphreys). In it, the feminist novelist Mrs. Rashleigh comes to realize her own artistic and intellectual weakness when her husband pens a brilliant play that pokes fun at her foibles. 7. This is not to say that male author-characters never give in to the demands of the market. While some, like Gissing’s Harold Biffen of New Grub Street, flatly refuse and die as a consequence, and others, including several of Henry James’s

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author-characters, find themselves actually incapable of producing something trashy enough to win popular favor, male author-characters, such as Merrick’s Humphrey Kent do occasionally bow to pressure and produce work they consider beneath them. The key difference, however, is that while in women’s fiction briefly giving into the market is typically seen as a stepping-stone toward financial and therefore artistic autonomy, in men’s novels it is almost invariably seen as an act of utter desperation and debasement from which there can be no return. 8. See, for example, Nicola Humble’s The Feminine Middlebrow Novel, 1920s to 1950s, and Faye Hammill’s Women, Celebrity, and Literary Culture Between the Wars. 9. Male authors writing during this period also made a mockery of different “types” of writers: in “Men of Letters” (1921) A. A. Milne depicts a young undergraduate named John who is writing a novel about a young undergraduate named John who is writing a novel about a young undergraduate, etc.; in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tale “Financing Finnegan” (1938) a star author borrows enormous sums of money from everyone but never seems to produce any work; and in “The Critical Bookstore” (1916) William Dean Howells does not even bother to name his stereotypes: one is “a woman of seventy” who publishes an appalling autobiographical novel, and the other is a “bestselling author” whose arrogance outweighs his talent. A more general turn toward satire during the modernist period—as has been posited by John Greenberg, among others—could certainly account for the influx of unendorsed male author-characters like these ones, and yet if this were the only factor we might expect to see men creating a comparable number of unflattering satirical portraits of woman writers—something which does not appear to be the case. 10. Although not included in the sample due its status as science or speculative fiction, George Orwell’s 1984 (1948) takes the stereotype of the business-minded woman writer to its furthest extent with Julia, a woman who uses machines called kaleidoscopes to produce reams of novels for The Fiction Department, despite describing herself as “not literary” (pt. 2, ch. 1). 11. One extreme example of this effete figure would be the pathetic Stuyvesant Walrus of Kay Boyle’s story “Dear Mr. Walrus” (1946)—an aging aristocrat who has spent decades perfecting a ten-volume tome on the strength of a publisher’s politely flattering rejection letter while his spinster sisters starve in the crumbling mansion they share.

WORKS CITED Ayers, David. Wyndham Lewis and Western Man. St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Balzac, Honore de. Lost Illusions. trans. Ellen Marriage. Project Gutenberg, 11 August 2004, http:​//​www​.gutenberg​.org​/cache​/epub​/13159​/pg13159​-images​.html Baym, Nina. “Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors.” American Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2, 1981, pp. 123–39.

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Carlyle, Thomas. “The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns.” May 19, 1840. Thomas Carlyle’s Complete Works Vol. XII: Heroes and Hero Worship, Library ed. 30 vols. London, 1869, pp. 133–68. Carpenter, Humphrey. Geniuses Together: American Writers in Paris in the 1920s. Ebook Edition. Faber & Faber, 2013. Castro, Joy. “Margery Latimer.” Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 21, no. 3 (Fall 2001), pp. 151–95. Cholmondeley, Mary. 1899. Red Pottage. Anthony Blond, 1968. Delafield, E. M. 1927. The Way Things Are. Bloomsbury, 2011. Eliot, George. “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists.” 1856. The Essays of George Eliot. New York, 1883. Internet Archive, archive.org/details/essaysgeorgeeli00eliogoog Ford, Ford Madox. Parade’s End. 1924. Alfred A. Knopf, 1961. Internet Archive, arc hive.org/details/paradesend61ford Hammill, Faye. Women, Celebrity, and Literary Culture Between the Wars. University of Texas Press, 2007. Hardy, Thomas. A Pair of Blue Eyes. 1873. Project Gutenberg, 11 July 2008, http:​//​ www​.gutenberg​.org​/ebooks​/224 Huf, Linda. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman: The Writer as Heroine in American Literature. Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1985. Humble, Nicola. The Feminine Middle Brow Novel, 1920s–1950s: Class, Domesticity, Bohemianism. Oxford University Press, 2001. Hunt, Violet. The Celebrity at Home. Chapman and Hall, 1904. Project Gutenberg, 4 December 2012, http:​//​www​.gutenberg​.org​/files​/41556​/41556​-h​/41556​-h​.htm Huxley, Aldous. Those Barren Leaves. 1925. London: Chatto & Windus, 1960. Project Gutenberg, 21 September 2017, https:​//​gutenberg​.ca​/ebooks​/huxleya​ -thosebarrenleaves​/huxleya​-thosebarrenleaves​-00​-h​.html Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Indiana University Press, 1986. Jaffe, Aaron. Modernism and the Culture of Celebrity. Cambridge University Press, 2004. James, Henry. “Greville Fane,” in The Complete Works of Henry James. Kindle ed., Delphi Classics, 2013. Jameson, Storm. Company Parade.1934. Ebook Edition. Bloomsbury, 2012. Jameson, Storm. None Turn Back. 1936. Ebook Edition. Bloomsbury, 2011. Kon-Yu, Natalie. “A Testicular Hit-List of Literary Big Cats.” Overland, no. 233, Winter 2016, pp. 14–20. Kosiba, Sara. “Dawn Powell: Hemingway’s Favorite Living Author.” The Hemingway Review. vol. 29, no. 2, 2010, pp. 46–60. Lamond, Julieanne. “A Fool’s Game? On Gender and Literary Value.” The Sydney Review of Books. 18 March 2019. https:​//​sydneyreviewofbooks​.com​/essay​/a​-fools​ -game​-gender​-literary​-value​/ Maugham, W. Somerset. Of Human Bondage. The Modern Library, 1915. Project Gutenberg, 6 May 2008, http:​//​www​.gutenberg​.org​/cache​/epub​/351​/pg351​-images​ .html.

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Merrick, Leonard. Cynthia. 1896. E. P. Dutton & Co., 1919. HathiTrust, https:​//​hdl​ .handle​.net​/2027​/nyp​.33433074897376 Pett Ridge, William. A Clever Wife. Harper & Brothers, 1896. HathiTrust, https:​//​hdl​ .handle​.net​/2027​/uva​.x000779517 Powell, Dawn. A Time to Be Born. 1942. Steerforth Press, 1999. Powell, Dawn. The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931–1965. Edited by Tim Page, Steerforth, 1998. Powell, Dawn. Turn, Magic Wheel. 1936. Steerforth Press, 1999. Raimond, C. E. (Elizabeth Robins). George Mandeville’s Husband. D. Appleton & Co., 1894. HathiTrust, https:​//​hdl​.handle​.net​/2027​/umn​.31951p00771968l Review of Heir of the Ages by James Payn. The Spectator, 24 July 1886, p. 27. Review of The Way Things Are by E. M. Delafield, The Spectator, 17 September 1932, pp. 32–33. Richardson, Dorothy. Clear Horizon. Pilgrimage 4. Richardson, Dorothy. Dawn’s Left Hand. Pilgrimage 4. Richardson, Dorothy. Pilgrimage 4. Virago, 1979. Richardson, Dorothy. Revolving Lights. Duckworth, 1923. Internet Archive, archive. org/details/revolvinglights00richuoft Richardson, Dorothy. The Tunnel. Duckworth, 1919. Internet Archive, archive.org/de tails/tunneltu00richrich/page Trollope, Anthony. The Way We Live Now. 1875. Project Gutenberg, 10 June 2002, http:​//​www​.gutenberg​.org​/files​/5231​/5231​-h​/5231​-h​.htm. Troy, Michele K. “May Sinclair’s The Creators: High Cultural Celebrity and a Failed Comedy,” in English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920. vol. 4, no. 1, 2004, pp. 50–74. Tuchman, Gaye with Nina Fortin. Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change. Routledge, 2012. VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts. Vidaweb.org Wharton, Edith. The Gods Arrive. 1932. Read Books Ltd, 2013. Wharton, Edith. Hudson River Bracketed. 1929. The New American Library of World Literature, Inc., 1962. Wilson, Edmund. “Ernest Hemingway: Gauge of Morale.” The Atlantic, July 1939, pp. 36–46. Wodehouse, P. G. Very Good, Jeeves! Herbert Jenkins Ltd., 1930. Internet Archive, https:​//​archive​.org​/details​/VeryGoodJeeves​/ Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. 1929. Hogarth Press, new ed., 1935. Internet Archive, archive.org/details/woolf_aroom.

Chapter Nine

Re-Gendering Genre Self-Conscious Supernaturalism in Muriel Spark’s The Comforters Alexandra Oxner

We suspended from a high ceiling a board just large enough to support the forearm, the hand hanging over and holding a pencil. This planchette responded to very slight movements [. . .] . By lightly resting my hand on the board, I could deceive the subject, who sat with closed eyes, as to whether he or I was making the movement, and I could judge also how readily he yielded to a newly suggested movement, or if he resisted it strongly. —Gertrude Stein, “Cultivated Motor Automatism”

As a budding scientist studying at Radcliffe College in 1898, Gertrude Stein conducted a series of experiments in automatic writing to investigate the “second personality” often attributed to hysteric patients. Commonly understood to be a “dual” or “split” portion of one’s identity, this personality was thought to be hidden deep within the psyche. With the aid of the planchette, a tool often used by mediums to communicate with the spirit world, Stein sought to disprove the existence of the second personality. Her experiments operated through a process of dissociation: with a pencil held lightly in hand, the subject would “write” while being distracted by Stein as she spoke with them or told stories. In “Cultivated Motor Automatism,” her resulting article published in The Psychological Review, Stein rejects the second personality and instead posits two different states of experience: a “real personality” and what she terms the “automatic personality.” The latter identity, which 185

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the subject assumes while under Stein’s manipulations, is characterized by a “sense of doubleness, of otherness” that is produced when one’s thoughts and actions are “cultivated” by an external agent (Stein 298). Juxtaposing divergent meanings of “medium,” Stein’s experiment plays with the link between spiritualism and writing that I interrogate in Muriel Spark’s first novel, The Comforters (1957). In this metafictional novel, Spark takes up the idea of an automatic personality. Her protagonist, Caroline Rose, describes the anguish of being self-reflexively aware of her “automatic” position as a female character operating within the confines of a modern novel. Caroline, a writer compiling an anthology entitled Form in the Modern Novel, is struggling to complete the chapter on realism when she inexplicably begins hearing a disembodied “chorus of voices” which are preceded and followed by the characteristic “tap,” “clack,” or “click-tap-click” of typewriter keys. While investigating the origin and purpose of these voices, which she collectively dubs the “Typing Ghost,” Caroline recognizes her role as a character in a novel being written into existence by a ghostly author. As The Comforters progresses, Caroline also learns she can affect the book’s trajectory and thus reject its conventional plot—one which attempts to circumscribe her identity by labeling her a hysteric woman. Metafictional distance thus allows her to understand that she is not “haunting [her]self” through a fit of madness, but is rather under the control of a (Steinian) hand that seeks to “cultivate” her behaviors through this dissociative experience. By the novel’s end, Caroline moves beyond the feminine repertoire supplied to her and instead explores alternative identities, such as independent author rather than anthologist and supernatural medium rather than hysteric madwoman. As Tatiana Kontou, Jane Marcus, and others have noted, spiritualist practices such as the Victorian séance or automatic writing invite us to consider connections between writing and the supernatural owing to their shared emphasis on modes of invention and interpretation.1 But this linkage gains new meaning when considered in relation to literary genres that self-consciously reflect on form itself. Despite its generic boundary-crossing, critics have tended to explore the critical edge of The Comforters primarily through religious readings: Caroline is a recent Catholic convert and Spark herself converted while writing the novel. In an interview about this experience, Spark claims, “the Catholic belief is a norm from which one can depart” (121).2 Caroline is similarly described as “an odd sort of Catholic, very little heart for it, all mind,” and she develops a critical, reflective type of faith (Spark 212). But these readings often overlook the ways in which the form of the novel itself dramatizes such a departure. Metafiction, a genre characterized by its self-reflexive investigation of its own medium, produces precisely the sort of double-ness Stein identified in her dissociative experiment. As

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Patricia Waugh argues, this genre foregrounds “its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and [the] real” (2). Metafictionalists engage in mimetic representation while simultaneously drawing attention to the author’s hand, essentially creating doubled narratives—one composing the world of the novel, the other maintaining ties to that world while also gesturing toward the external factors that conditioned its creation. Genre fiction, in its ready obedience to generic formulas, might be considered the antithesis of the metafictional. Many genre fictions inhabit conventions seamlessly so as not to draw attention to their creation (i.e., to keep readers focused on plot rather than form). But The Comforters foregrounds its status as a fictional text by explicitly referencing and commenting upon its conventionality, particularly through its use of supernatural tropes. In this way, Spark’s novel also works to defamiliarize gendered constructs as metaphysical deviations from the known world inevitably challenging norms of realistic representation. By troubling definitions of the natural and the human, feminist supernatural texts raise fundamental questions about conventionality and gendered constructs: Which subjectivities are considered natural within patriarchal hierarchies and fictions? Do women who exhibit otherworldly abilities automatically cede their positions within the real or themselves as real? I advance the supernatural-as-metafiction model, or what I term “genreflexivity,” to describe twentieth-century women writers’ use of supernatural elements to expose the limits of inherited novelistic forms. Despite the well-documented shift from authorial effacement to self-conscious authorial play in twentieth-century fiction, little work has been done to examine the supernatural as a metafictional form that directly responds to this central tension.3 Recent discussions of self-conscious fiction, such as Linda Hutcheon’s Narcissistic Narratives (2013), Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn’s Metafiction and Metahistory (2007), and Joan Douglas Peters’s Feminist Metafiction and the Evolution of the British Novel (2002), trace metafictional texts from the eighteenth century to the present. I locate genreflexivity specifically within the twentieth century because feminist supernaturalists’ revisions of realist conventions dovetail with the development of self-conscious fiction often associated with modernism and postmodernism but offer a different emphasis. In The Comforters, Spark critiques both masculine, Jamesian strains of realism and the neglected status of women in modern literature. After World War I, once dominant forms of realism, challenged by a wide range of modernist movements (Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, etc.), were joined in the literary marketplace by competing forms of fiction writing. Jesse Matz explains that self-consciously “modern” novelists began to turn from a mimetic model of fiction toward an understanding of fiction as

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a medium for the “mediation or interpretation of reality” (34, emphasis in original). Writers increasingly shared an interest in form itself—a trending toward the metafictional which thematized narration and replaced tendencies to “efface [the] narrators . . . and get rid of any intrusive omniscience” (Matz 13). Moreover, experimental modernist texts often drew on occult discourses “dominant during the period . . . because in them it saw the possibilities for a reconceptualization of the mimetic” (Wilson 1). Spark’s supernatural text participates in this mediational fictional turn while providing new insights by explicitly linking genre conventions to social constructions such as gender. In what follows, I theorize genreflexivity as a kind of feminist formalism designed to call attention to narratives as narratives, thereby rendering traditionally mimetic versions of “reality” highly suspect. Genreflexive women writers utilize otherworldy elements to respond to the legacy of nineteenth-century realist conventions that often reduced or erased women’s experiences in the modern novel. By fusing realism and supernaturalism, women’s occult encounters, rather than relegated to a realm of mere fantasy, are legitimated not only as a form of “serious” fiction but also as ways of being in the world. Genreflexivity, in other words, enables women writers to embrace the seeming paradox of the supernatural as itself a mode of realism. In an interview conducted nearly forty years after the publication of The Comforters, Spark claimed that “realistic novels are more committed to dogmatic and absolute truth than most other varieties of fiction” (“An Interview” 147). In her earliest novel, we can thus glimpse the ways in which Spark crafts a narrative that subverts “natural” or expected interpretations of her female character’s powers, thereby preventing Caroline’s typewriter voices from being read as “madness” and underscoring the provisional nature of realist literary conventions. The formal distance supplied through genreflexivity highlights and challenges the gendered conditions that contribute to the narrative’s creation as Caroline ultimately “authors” the novel in which she is contained. Although the recognition of metafiction as a transgressive mode is not entirely new, I expand this term through the genreflexive category to account for the ways in which the interplay between metafiction and genre fiction operates as a feminist critique of form. Drawing upon Linda Hutcheon’s claim that metafiction is “a process-oriented mode,” Mary Jacobus argues that foregrounding the narrative “exposes [literary] boundaries for what they are—the product of phallocentric discourse” (12). Gayle Greene specifically posits the 1970s as the era in which “feminist metafiction” was developed— or narratives that “enlist realism while also deploying self-conscious devices that interrogate the assumptions of realism, challenging the ideological complicity of the signification process while also basing itself in that signification

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process” (22). Understood in this context, genreflexive texts fuse metafiction and genre fiction to offer explicit challenges to fictional and social norms. In The Comforters, supernatural fiction proves to be simply the first set of genre conventions Spark takes on. As the novel unfolds, she explores how gender expectations play out across a spectrum of genres, including romance, detective fiction, autobiography, and what had come to be known as the Catholic novel.4 In this way, Spark is able to underscore the small discontinuities between generic iterations that may not be visible when they are considered in isolation, or even in the “double-ness” supplied by metafiction. These small moments of discord, in which genre conventions are evacuated of their formerly self-evident coherence, constitute the potential for change. GENREFLEXIVITY: METAFICTIONAL GENRE FICTION Genreflexive narratives self-reflexively emphasize their use of genre conventions to expose the fictions of gender that permeate modern realism. Many scholars have historicized the modern, Jamesian literary tradition as one that was gendered masculine by virtue of 1) its highly crafted and inviolable narrative apparatuses, 2) its attention to primarily male figures and experiences, and 3) its emphasis on a singular point of view that normalizes the male subject.5 In The Craft of Fiction, Percy Lubbock posits Henry James as an example of this modern realist aesthetic: “The recording, registering mind of the author is eliminated. . . . [James’s] own part in the narration is now unobtrusive to the last degree; he, the author, could not imaginably figure there more discreetly” (112, 165).6 This “one-sided vision” is the result of a highly crafted narrative apparatus, one which refuses to violate the character’s consistent point of view by revealing the overarching fictional form created by the author (Lubbock 166). However, critics such as Rita Felski contend such narratives “arise out of a culture of ‘stability, coherence, discipline and world-mastery’” (Gender 11). As a result, Bonnie Kime Scott notes that this era of literature “was unconsciously gendered masculine” (187). Though she does not name any male authors explicitly in The Comforters, Spark inserts her novel into this discussion of modern narrative through Caroline’s profession—she is compiling an anthology on the form of the modern novel with an emphasis on realism, and she is thus exposed to the masculine conventions of this tradition. In contrast to earlier realisms, genreflexive texts borrow from these forms while self-consciously participating in particular generic categories in order to challenge the putative objectivity of shared (male) reality. In Spark’s text, metafiction acts as a rejoinder to the impoverished realist discourse outlined by Felski and Scott; rather than deferring to Jamesian realism, Spark underscores the fictional aspects of her project by revealing

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the decisions she is making as a writer. She is uninterested in the Jamesian level of craftedness in fiction and works to disrupt unified points of view to reveal the performativity of both gender and genre conventions, thus suggesting their transformative potential. For instance, upon becoming aware of her condition as a character, Caroline critiques The Comforters for exploiting the tactics of “‘a cheap mystery piece. . . . I haven’t been studying novels for three years without knowing some of the technical tricks’” (104). While The Comforters critiques masculine realism, Caroline simultaneously critiques The Comforters itself. Her intimate knowledge of the medium of the novel, supplied to her by her work on the anthology, allows her to genreflexively revise the narrative moments in which her subjectivity is delineated by conventions that are debilitating for her as an author and woman. Genreflexivity builds on the definition of metafiction offered by Patricia Waugh in her 1984 book Metafiction: that is, metafiction is “constructed on the principle of a fundamental and sustained opposition: the construction of a fictional illusion (as in traditional realism) and the laying bare of that illusion” (6). Waugh conceptualizes metafiction, then, through its formal self-exploration, which allows us not only to “examine the fundamental structures of narrative fiction,” but to “also explore the possible fictionality of the world outside the literary fictional text” (2, emphasis mine). I argue that this exposure of the potential artificiality of the “real” or naturalized world corresponds more specifically to the recognition of cultural constructs, specifically gender stereotypes, as constructs. That is, the seemingly “real,” or socially legitimated, conditions of gender (and conventions of genre) can instead be viewed, as Judith Butler explains, as “a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time,” producing “the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being” (“Performative Acts” 519). Genreflexive texts work to reveal the instability of genre conventions, particularly those which correspond to the social constructions they purport to represent. These gendered genres then invite subversion as their permeability is exposed. Spark self-consciously rehearses the stylized conventions of Jamesian realism while simultaneously eschewing its masculine qualities, allowing her protagonist to understand herself as both a character within a novel and as a performer of highly gender- and genre-determined identities. In this way, what I term “character-performers”—or characters such as Caroline who identify their status as characters enacting gendered behaviors—become vehicles for interpreting the narrative as a potential site for subversion or transformation. Her character-performance can be understood in relation to José Esteban Muñoz’s “disidentificatory” acts, or subversive performances that enable marginalized subjectivities to transform dominant conventions, even as these structures work to elide or absorb difference. Much like “disidentification,” genreflexivity operates as a means through which women participate in

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gendered performances while recognizing and underscoring them as performances. In Disidentifications, Muñoz outlines the ways in which social actors work to “disidentify” with an inhospitable world in order to perform in a new, adaptable one. He explains that “disidentification is meant to be descriptive of the survival strategies” implemented by those of minority subject positions “in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously . . . punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship” (10). The generic performativity within genreflexive texts allows them to work in similar ways to disidentificatory practice. As Rosemary Jackson notes, fantastic literature “exists . . . [as] a silenced imaginary other. [. . .] Fantasy hollows out the ‘real,’ revealing its absence, its ‘great Other,’ its unspoken and unseen” (180). The supernatural is not simply an escape from reality, it is an often-unrecognized part of reality—or of alternative but co-existing realities. The performer’s disidentification with damaging stereotypes or conventions throughout multiple genres allows them to “recycle” these limitations into “sites of self-creation” while still operating within dominant paradigms (Muñoz 11). Muñoz’s investment in the performances that constitute minority bodies aligns itself with the realm of feminist theory that is concerned with gender performativity, or gender as a cultural construct. For instance, in Gender Trouble, Butler argues that gender is not a stable identity, but is rather constituted “through a stylized repetition of acts” (45). If gender identity is “not a seemingly seamless identity, then the possibilities of gender transformation are to be found . . . in the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style” (192). For Butler, then, the subject can expand the options available to them, but will always be an effect of a repertoire of culturally acceptable or legible acts. The only mode of resistance to the limitations imposed by gendered identities is to call attention to the performance itself in order to capitalize on the productive space of slippage between iterations. By self-consciously recognizing their participation in this social accumulation of learned behaviors, the subject can critically distance themselves from harmful iterations of the constructed performance. GENERIC INSTABILITY: SPARK’S FORMAL FAILURES Spark’s use of the supernatural genre exposes these iterations by foregrounding the ways in which the very genres that constitute The Comforters unwittingly sanction their own forms of conventionality. For instance, when Caroline’s domineering former fiancé, Laurence Manders, learns of the Typing Ghost, he rationalizes that they could “take it for granted that it either

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doesn’t exist or it exists in some supernatural order” (65). Here, he upholds limited definitions of both fantasy and metafiction—the voices are either real or unreal, either a part of the narrative world or an imaginative invention. But if we understand the interplay between metafiction and the supernatural as a form of genreflexivity, we can instead think like Caroline: “It does exist. I think it’s a natural sound” (65). Spark was certainly capable of writing straightforward genre fiction, as evidenced in her short story “The Portobello Road” (1994), which follows the familiar pattern of the ghost of a woman seeking revenge from beyond the grave by haunting the man who murdered her. But The Comforters invokes genre fiction conventions in order to deviate from them. As Elizabeth English argues, genre fiction often “operates on the premise that the reader can know what to expect” and thus “naturalizes . . . sets of conventions” (191). Spark instead holds several sets in suspension, invoking particular ones when it is convenient for her to do so for the purposes of characterization or formal invention. By variously highlighting and subordinating the familiar codes of genre fictions throughout the novel, Spark marshals an expanded repertoire of performances for Caroline. The generic status of The Comforters is odd from the start—before its metafictional and supernatural dimensions are respectively introduced by way of Caroline’s anthology in chapter 2 and the Typing Ghost in chapter 3, Spark begins by inserting the reader into an espionage story. The opening pages introduce Laurence’s investigation of his grandmother, Louisa Jepp, whom he comes to believe is the unlikely leader of a gang of Communist spies running a diamond-smuggling ring. Though common detective tropes continue to appear throughout the novel, Caroline eventually subordinates this genre, calling attention to its failure by noting that Laurence is “allowing [him]self to become an amateur sleuth in a cheap mystery piece” (107). Spark also invokes a less established genre, the Catholic novel, which was popularized in the postwar period by the work of Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Walker Percy.7 Initially invoked through Caroline’s conversion and sustained by speculation that her voices stem from her initiation into Church mysteries, the Catholic novel also bleeds into the detective story in parodic form—Louisa is smuggling diamonds through rosary beads and hollowed Catholic figurines after all. Yet the conventions of the Catholic novel never entirely control the narrative either—they are often conflated with or displaced by competing religious forms, such as spiritualism and mysticism. Even other subsets of supernaturalism (witchcraft, diabolism, bodily transfiguration) appear in the novel while typically being posited as secondary to the ghost story. This generic instability enables Spark to selfconsciously comment upon her use of familiar generic devices, such as the omniscient narration common in Jamesian realism and the clue-driven format

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of detective fiction, even as she refuses to make any one set of conventions entirely dominant. Within the novel, the characters’ understandings of events are based on their relationship to the narrative conventions of genre fiction. Too normative an understanding and too strict an adherence to these conventions solicit receptivity rather than critical reflection. For instance, while Caroline actively challenges generic assumptions, Laurence and her friend, Baron Willi Stock, are presented as naïve readers of both realism and genre fiction through their futile searches for conventionality. Laurence and the Baron each recognize modes such as realism, supernaturalism, and detection in their own lives, but they fall short of understanding them as social artifice. Their inability to reconcile the tensions between these sets of genres furthers their conformity to convention. In this way, Spark demonstrates the ways in which narrative shapes reality as much as reality shapes fiction. Spark satirizes the realist figure through Laurence, who first upholds the tenets of realism through his search for “objective” proof that Caroline’s voices are a delusion. To obtain this evidence, he turns to forms of technology—such as telegrams, telephones, and tape recorders—because, as a radio broadcaster for the BBC, he believes they bear a privileged relation to the real, a privilege linked to the concept of mimetic realism. But Caroline’s own link to technological media through the typewriter undercuts this recourse to realism insofar as this exemplary tool of mechanical production is fused with the supernatural. The typewriter image may appear to be limiting in terms of gender because typing was marketed as distinctly feminine throughout the twentieth century. As Judy Wajcman notes, it is often “difficult to separate descriptions of the machine from those of its imagined and embodied users,” making it “an ideal case study of the process by which technology and a new social order between the sexes are reciprocally shaped” (207).8 But Spark resists this gendered connotation—Caroline’s status as a spiritual medium allows her to revise expected associations, thus destabilizing potential generic categorizations. The “meagre dossier” Laurence compiles in his search ultimately turns objectivity itself into mere appearance, a convention like any other: the dossier is described as having “a merciless look of reality” (Spark 120). Spark mocks Laurence’s attention to detail, a narrative meticulousness that she associates with modern realism. Laurence’s emphasis on limited definitions of realism also predisposes him to conform to genre fictional behaviors, such as those consistent with detective fiction. Spark incorporates familiar tropes, like plot-driven action and convenient clues, to critique the passivity generated through formulaic narratives. As Caroline reveals to Laurence, “If you hadn’t been on the look-out for some connection between the Hogarths and Mrs. Hogg, you wouldn’t have lit on that [clue]. And you wouldn’t have been looking for it if you hadn’t been

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influenced in that direction. I nearly fell for the trick myself” (105). He seeks to “prove” a supernatural plot element (Caroline’s voices) that is unprovable within the isolated realms of either traditional detective fiction or Jamesian realism—genres which often discount the reality of supernatural events. Todorov argues, “the murder mystery approaches the fantastic, but it is also the contrary [to it]: in fantastic texts, we tend to prefer the supernatural explanation; the detective story, once it is over, leaves no doubt as to the absence of supernatural events” (49–50). Ronald Knox clarifies that the detective author only “succeeds” by keeping the reader in “complete mystification over the method, right up to the last chapter; and yet can show the reader how he ought to have solved the mystery with the light given him” (x). Each of these definitions of detective fiction implicitly privilege authorial effacement, even as Knox suggests the reader should be able to retroactively identify the author’s moves by piecing together clues. But through her generic multiplicity, Spark challenges such conventions for their tendency to obscure competing narrative structures, even if only temporarily, and the clues she provides constitute a supernatural tale whose mystery cannot be reduced to or dissipated by any particular generic conventions. To a certain degree, the Baron seems to mirror Caroline’s flexibility as a reader insofar as he combines supernaturalism, realism, and detective fiction, and this generic conflation allows him to glimpse intersecting realities. For instance, through his obsessive hunt for his ex-wife’s former lover, Mervyn Hogarth, he dabbles in the conventions of both supernaturalism and detection: believing Hogarth possesses shape-shifting abilities, he “employs agents” and “compile[s] a dossier. The psychology of the man [becomes his] main occupation” (158). However, the Baron assures Caroline that despite his interests in “relig-ion, poetr-ay, psychology-ay, theosoph-ay, the occult, and of course demonology-ay,” he “participates in none of them, practices none” (157). Because he approaches these conventions only vicariously, through theoretical or academic study, the Baron does not actively reflect on his generic participation. Though, as Rita Felski argues, “women are often seen as especially prone to . . . acts of covert manipulation” and are perceived as suffering from “a disturbing failure to differentiate between fact and fantasy, reality and wish fulfillment,” it is the male figures in Spark’s story who exhibit this “feminine absorption” through their inability to distinguish between reality and conventionality (“Enchantment” 53). Like Laurence, the Baron’s narrow search for expected formulations prevents him from recognizing that he is unwittingly abiding by the conventions of another genre entirely—as Caroline notes of his story about Hogarth’s abilities, it is “a lovely tale, it has the makings of a shaggy dog” (Spark 165).9 But if Caroline’s genreflexive readership is to become the dominant lens for understanding the novel, Spark must guard against the possibility that her

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own authority as author may eliminate at a higher level the very instability she makes fundamental to the narrative. That is, as female metafictionalist, Spark could become a mirror image of the controlling masculine authority she wishes to subvert. One way in which she mitigates this risk is through a subtle yet pervasive technique of narratological stutters that repeatedly undermine narrative hierarchies by collapsing distinctions between levels of utterance. Though Spark is fixated on the power of narration throughout The Comforters, her omniscient perspective continually fails as a viable storytelling format. In one moment of narrative stuttering between Caroline and the assumed omniscient narrator, Laurence and his friend Giles privately humor themselves by speculating about the “large stock of bust-bodices” Mrs. Hogg must collect to contain her “bulging frontage” (138). On the next page, Caroline comments, “‘Bad taste’ . . . ‘Revolting taste.’ She had, in fact, ‘picked up’ a good deal of the preceding passage, all about Mrs. Hogg and the breasts” (139). As the novel continues, characters often repeat themselves as if to supplement ineffectual dialogue, the Typing Ghost provides plot-level information that the omniscient narrator appears to lack, and Caroline usurps control of the very structure of the novel, replacing Spark as author. Ceding authorial control, Spark allows other voices to intervene and highlights the structural failures of the narrative. Spark also relativizes her own authority as author through her careful refusal of the sort of neat closure expected of genre fiction. To some degree, the multiplicity of genre fictions prevents the tidy conclusion of each disparate plot line. As Rachel Blau DuPlessis argues, the traditional fictional form requires an ending which addresses all loose ends, and which therefore offers a prescribed “meaning” to the reader. In this way, the typical move toward closure reinforces a patriarchal aesthetic, particularly since women’s stories often ended in marriage or succumbed to other “processes of gendering” that led to “subordination” (10). In contrast, The Comforters prompts readers to expect multiple endings, foreclosing the possibility of a unified conclusion. The novel, in fact, does not fully conclude at all—in the final pages, Laurence writes a letter to Caroline in which he critiques the notes for her novel and confusedly asks, “How is it all going to end?” (203). Though he later tears up this letter out of frustration, the narrator reveals, “He saw the bits of paper come to rest, . . . some among the deep marsh weeds, and one piece on a thorn-bush; and he did not then foresee his later wonder, with a curious rejoicing, how the letter had got into the book” (204). There is physical evidence of the letter’s destruction as it is not only torn by Laurence, but further pierced and muddied in its resting place. Yet The Comforters gestures toward futurity—toward an understanding that the story does not end here, but lives through Caroline’s continued textual production.

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GENDERED GENRES: PERFORMING FEMININITY IN THE COMFORTERS In what follows, I outline the ways in which I understand Caroline’s initial characterization, before she is aware of her fictionality, to embody detrimental feminine archetypes, such as the hysteric. Caroline later abides by these traditionally gendered behaviors to render herself intelligible by normative standards when the appearance of the Typing Ghost threatens her social coherence. She is deemed “mad” or hysterical by her companions who begin to “attend to her . . . as one who regards another’s words, not as symbols but as symptoms” (Spark 53). Though they seek to relegate her to a feminine imaginary which they consider incompatible with a symbolic or rational world, Caroline gradually appropriates the liminal space that exists between these realms of experience. Aligning the supernatural with the metafictional enables the Typing Ghost to expose the fictiveness of the narrative—as she ruptures the constructed-ness of genre-determined realities, Caroline understands the ways in which realism often offers a prescribed meaning that does not account for women’s transformative potential. In this way, she can ultimately disidentify from a structure that proves incommensurate with her feminine subjectivity. Perhaps The Comforters has resisted critical attention due to Caroline’s seeming conformity, at the outset, with stereotypes of women seeking autonomy through harmful forms of self-control. In Unbearable Weight, Susan Bordo argues that hysteria and other “female pathologies,” such as agoraphobia and anorexia nervosa, were often interpreted as women’s illusory attempts to enter the male economy of power.10 Gail Finney similarly notes, “Just as the feminist expressed a rebellious, emancipatory, and outer-directed response to the condition of female oppression, so . . . [did] the hysteric exemplif[y] a rejection of society that was passive, inner-directed, and ultimately self-destructive” (qtd. in Felski, Gender 3). Caroline is initially portrayed as a serial invalid who uses her physical illnesses to gain attention and to emotionally connect with Laurence. In this way, the female body is used as a tableau for the damaging violence not only of patriarchal language, but of women’s self-surveillance and circumscription of their own bodies in response to societal pressures.11 Upon first learning of Caroline’s occult experience, Laurence wonders whether it would be possible for him to humor her fantasy indefinitely, so that she could be the same Caroline except for this one difference in their notions of reality; or whether reality would force them apart, and the time arrive when he needs must break with, “Caroline, you are wrong, mistaken, mad. There are

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no voices; there is no typewriter; it is all a delusion. You must get mental treatment.” (94–95)

Laurence’s unsuccessful attempt to reconcile different “notions of reality”— his masculine, rational worldview in contrast to her apparently feminine, hysterical one—underscores the inability of modern realism to accurately portray feminine subjectivities.12 Caroline’s hysteria renders her socially legible to Laurence, seemingly imbuing her with agency over her representation in the world. However, as Bordo notes, illnesses such as hysteria were actually “utilized in the maintenance and reproduction of existing power relations” (168). As Caroline’s voices begin to make her increasingly illegible even to herself, she is decontextualized by the metafictional occult in a way that is self-alienating, allowing her to view her hysteric performances as inconsistent with her actual experiences and to subsequently revise her behavior. For example, Caroline is initially frightened by the Typing Ghost and seeks Laurence’s counsel, only for him to condemn her as a delusional “child.” But over time, she realizes “there is always a certain amount of experience to be discarded as soon as one discovers its fruitlessness” (36). After learning to distinguish between the feelings she is actually experiencing and those which are being forced upon her by Laurence—or those which are fruitless—she begins “to question him as an equal” (78). As Caroline gradually recognizes her status as a character-performer within a novel, she discards negative gendered conventions and rejects external attempts to normalize her femininity, either mentally or physically. Though she at first states that she “knew most of Laurence’s previous neurotic girls; she herself was the enduring one,” the critical agency supplied to her by metafictional distance reveals that “the narrative could never become coherent to her until she was at last outside of it, and at the same time consummately inside it” (80, 190). Caroline mobilizes performances of identity in ways that are best exemplified through a consideration of her character in contrast to Eleanor Hogarth and Mrs. Georgina Hogg, two women who do not achieve character-performer status and are thus evacuated of inner life.13 These women remain confined as mere characters within The Comforters—a novel which, though offering a means of transcending gendered limits, also demonstrates the dangers of complacently inhabiting a narrative that self-consciously rehearses the masculine realist tradition. Through the foil character of Eleanor, Caroline’s friend from her days at Cambridge, Spark explicitly references the performative acts that constitute a legible gendered identity to expose them as social artifice from which only the critically aware character-performer can disidentify. Though Caroline notes that she and Eleanor each had “potential talents unrecognized”— Caroline for writing and Eleanor for mimicry—Eleanor’s pursuits do not

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contribute to her independence.14 Caroline interprets Eleanor’s regressive, “stagey acts” as increasingly distinct from her own performative abilities as an author and character: Caroline was fascinated by Eleanor’s performance. Indeed, it was only an act; the fascination of Eleanor was her entire submersion in whatever role she had to play. [. . .] Caroline was fascinated and appalled. In former days, Eleanor’s mimicry was recognizable. She would change her personality like dresses according to occasion, and it had been fun to watch, and an acknowledged joke of Eleanor’s. But she had lost her small portion of detachment; now, to watch her was like watching doom. As a child Caroline, pulling a face, had been warned, “If you keep doing that it will stick one day.” She felt, looking at Eleanor, that this was actually happening to the woman. Her assumed personalities were beginning to cling; soon one of them would stick, grotesque and ineradicable. (Spark 87)

In this scene, Caroline amends her initial fascination with Eleanor’s behavior to accommodate the disgust that arises from observing her imitations of “grotesque” versions of womanhood. She appropriates the male gaze to scrutinize a female character who has “lost her small portion of detachment,” or the ability to distance her actions from the performative accoutrements deemed acceptably feminine. Here, Butler’s conceptualization of gender as a social accumulation of learned behaviors is usefully extended into the realm of artistic or “literal” performance through Eleanor’s character. She participates in a more conscious, and less socially determined, performativity. In Performance, Diana Taylor challenges scholars who figure artistic performances as ephemeral. Taylor posits performance not as “a discrete, singular act,” but “as an ongoing repertoire of gestures and behaviors that get reenacted or reactivated. . . . If we learn and communicate through performed, embodied practice, it’s because the acts repeat themselves” (10). In Eleanor’s case, she has succumbed to the non-ephemerality of performance and appropriated “acceptable” behaviors rather than subverting them. Her multiple personalities seem to imply that she harbors a rich inner life and has command over the “roles” or identities available to her as a woman who is aware of social conventions. However, she is still choosing from a limited set of options—such as the flirtatious woman, the wife (and, eventually, the divorcee), and “the scatty female who’d been drinking too much” (Spark 87)—rather than cultivating a more dynamic consciousness. Eleanor proves incapable of holding multiple personalities in tandem. Without metafictional distance alerting her to the potential for alternative performances, she adopts internalized conventions that are too entrenched to be eradicated solely from within.

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While Caroline’s character-performer position upholds the possibility of revising gendered literary conventions and Eleanor illustrates the pitfalls of maintaining consistency with the narrative apparatus, the third counterpart of this trio of feminine reactions to dominant discourses—Mrs. Hogg—is representative of the final, disastrous effect of women’s utter complacence with gendered tradition. Mrs. Hogg, who is often relegated to her status as a wife by the title “Mrs.,” is additionally depicted as wholly exteriorized. She is reduced to her physical feminine qualities, especially her ample bosom, which is described at various points in the novel as “colossal,” “tremendous and increasing” in size, and “a pair . . . of infant whales” (138). Attempting to find a garment capable of containing her “was like damming up the sea” (146). When Mrs. Hogg is depicted as harboring interior emotions, they manifest only in the form of embarrassment or jealousy. Each of these reactions works to reinsert her into negative feminine stereotypes. For instance, Spark writes, “Mrs. Hogg’s tremendous bosom was a great embarrassment to her—not so much in the way of vanity [. . .]—but in the circumstance that she didn’t know what to do with it” (67). Mrs. Hogg’s embarrassment signifies her inability to reconcile her excessive feminine embodiment within a masculine sphere, and she is also unable to use her sexuality productively, to gain agency within a male economy of power. Mrs. Hogg thus enjoys only the smallest semblance of an inner life and, in contrast to Caroline’s metafictional voices, the occult elements of Mrs. Hogg’s subjectivity work to further evacuate her character. Caroline’s interiority is so capacious that it operates in excess of the text itself, but Mrs. Hogg’s character is static to the extent that when she sleeps, she vanishes from the text completely. Descriptions of the Typing Ghost itself demonstrate Caroline’s compendious consciousness—the voices are a “concurrent series of echoes,” a “recitative,” both male and female, and collective. In contrast, Helena and Willi, Caroline’s picnic companions, regale her with a terrifying story of Mrs. Hogg “disappearing” after falling “dead asleep” in their car. Upon reaching back to retrieve a cigarette lighter, Helena’s frightened exclamation leads to Mrs. Hogg “suddenly appear[ing] before our eyes . . . sitting in the same position and blinking, as if she’d just woken up” (185). Though Frank Baldanza cites Mrs. Hogg’s disappearing act as a “demonstration of [her] occult powers” and argues that “she is the central figure who binds together all of the complex plot lines of the work” (196), Mrs. Hogg in fact has no control over her seemingly “occult” powers. Her imagination is so deficient that even dreams cannot sustain her being. In contrast, in the only other moment of The Comforters in which sleep is mentioned, Caroline is recovering in a hospital ward she shares with other women. She luxuriates in her “private wakefulness” as they all sleep: “Caroline among the sleepers turned her mind to the art of the novel, wondering and cogitating, those long hours, and exerting an

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undue, unreckoned, influence on the narrative from which she is supposed to be absent for a time” (137). Caroline’s consciousness is too active to enter often into the unconscious space of sleep and she influences the text in its moments of becoming, even without yet being aware of her actions. Though the narrator intervenes here to say, “At this point in the tale she is confined to a hospital bed, and no experience of hers ought to be allowed to intrude,” Caroline begins to usurp even the position of narrator, and condemnations of Mrs. Hogg thus stem from Caroline’s own perspective (137). Ultimately, Caroline and her antithesis, Mrs. Hogg, diverge to such an extent that they can no longer occupy the same novel, and the narrative itself proves untenable. Thus, not only does Mrs. Hogg periodically flicker out of existence in the narrative, she gets pitted against Caroline in a literal battle to the death. When a storm threatens their picnic, Helena, Willi, and Caroline search for Mrs. Hogg and discover that she has wandered to the other side of the large lake which served as the backdrop for their meal. Caroline sails across to rescue her from the storm; however, during their return journey to shore, Mrs. Hogg falls overboard and pulls Caroline with her into the dark waters: Mrs. Hogg lashed about her in a screaming panic. [. . .] Caroline saw the little boat bobbing away downstream. Then her sight became blocked by one of Mrs. Hogg’s great hands clawing across her eyes, the other hand tightening on her throat. Mrs. Hogg’s body, and even legs, encompassed Caroline so that her arms were restricted. She knew then that if she could not free herself from Mrs. Hogg they would both go under. [. . .] The woman clung to Caroline’s throat until the last. It was not until Mrs. Hogg opened her mouth finally to the inrush of water that her grip slackened and Caroline was free, her lungs aching for the breath of life. Mrs. Hogg subsided away from her. God knows where she went. (196–97)

Mrs. Hogg attempts to destroy Caroline in this moment of confrontation between two incompatible figures of womanhood. Mrs. Hogg’s immobility is paradoxically frantic, recalling Caroline’s earlier hysteria, and temporarily engulfs Caroline as “[Mrs. Hogg’s] body, and even legs, encompassed” her. By syntactically isolating Mrs. Hogg’s legs from her body proper, Spark further distances her character from any connotation of mobility. Significantly, this battle of conflicting ideologies takes place on the surface of the water, and it is this very liminality which ultimately overwhelms Mrs. Hogg: “It was not until [she] opened her mouth finally to the inrush of water,” to the fluid in-between, that “her grip slackened” and she vanished. Moreover, her body is “never recovered” despite the police force’s previous success with retrieving victims from the lake (210). The literal moment of drowning thus also serves as an act of fictional expulsion as Mrs. Hogg is banned from returning

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to the narrative in any form while Caroline continues to solidify her authorial status. TEXTUAL HAUNTINGS The occult leanings of Spark’s text lead us to additional questions about the ways in which women authors negotiate the past while working to revise the present: what is the nature of the “ghosts” that haunt women writers, and how do they differ from those that haunt their male counterparts? Spark’s The Comforters, her debut novel, is not an anomalous text in her oeuvre. The link between supernaturalism and metanarrative remained central to her work and enabled her to address and rewrite past realities. Just two years before her death, Spark published a poem entitled “Authors’ Ghosts” (2004) in which she refutes the inviolability of the textual object by portraying authors “haunting” writing of the past: I think that authors’ ghosts creep back Nightly to haunt the sleeping shelves And find the books they wrote. [. . .] Whole pages are added, re-written, revised. How otherwise Explain the fact that maybe after years Have passed, the reader Picks up the book—but was it like that? I don’t remember this . . . Where Did this ending come from? I recall quite another.

For Spark, the act of haunting can be appropriated as it occurs through both a literal revision of written works and the act of rereading, a process that can initiate a transformation of understanding. On the surface, Spark describes dissatisfied authors “haunt[ing] the sleeping shelves” nightly to supply forgotten words, reinterpret passages, and shock readers who encounter material that feels familiar, yet estranged. Though gender does not figure explicitly in this late poem, The Comforters solicits a feminist reading of it. One might understand the “haunting” to represent futile attempts to maintain the marginalization of alternative perspectives. The process of paradoxically haunting texts of the past in order to reveal their gendered limitations in the present generates a form of critical distance that I argue is best exemplified through a genreflexive consideration of form. Though “Authors’ Ghosts” participates in this self-reflexive mode, it is in The Comforters that Spark most expansively works to reinvent a literary

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era dominated by masculine realism. In her seminal essay “When We Dead Awaken” (1972), Adrienne Rich advances her concept of “re-visioning,” or a form of critical reading and writing that aims to enhance and expand the fictional repertoire available to women. She writes, “if we have come to the point . . . when women can stop being haunted, not only by ‘convention and propriety’ but by internalized fears of being and saying themselves, then it is an extraordinary moment for the woman writer—and reader” (20). Nearly fifteen years earlier, Spark anticipated Rich’s revisioned moment of women’s writing and reading in The Comforters. Offering a feminist metafictional rereading of the Steinian double, Spark dispels the “automatic” personality—one who is incapable of “saying themselves” while under the undue influence of the narrative. She uses Caroline’s compendium of consciousness to disidentify from such performative identities and to repair reality. NOTES 1. For instance, see Kontou’s Spiritualism and Women’s Writing and Marcus’s “Alibis and Legends” in Women’s Writing in Exile. 2. Bryan Cheyette argues that Spark’s fiction “illustrates both the authoritarian as well as anarchic potential within the act of conversion” (99) while Gauri Viswanathan figures this act as a model of “dissent” that “crosses fixed boundaries between communities and identities” (21). 3. Few scholars have linked self-reflexivity to the supernatural genre. Katherine Weese argues that women writers use the supernatural as a “middle ground between experimentation and realism” (632) and Mimi Winick examines “realist fantasy.” However, Weese examines contemporary writers’ engagement with Female Gothic novels and Winick focuses on the role of scholarship in “transforming fantasy into realism” (575). Additionally, most examinations of the relationship between supernaturalism and metafiction focus on texts from the 1970s or later. Engaging with this time period, Monika Fludernik describes “mythic” texts which have “come to replace the position of control, objectivity and order” (94). 4. For a definition of this genre, see my discussion of genre fictions. 5. The relationship between gender and modern fiction is a contentious one. Scholars such as Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Alice Jardine appreciate the “subversive linguistic jouissance” afforded by modernist experimentation (Gilbert and Gubar xiv) while Rita Felski, Bonnie Kime Scott, Sandra Gilbert, and Susan Gubar critique formal tenets of the tradition, such as its emphasis on objectivity, documentation, impersonality, and detachment. 6. Though James’s work usefully introduces the tenets of this realist tradition, it is also worth considering his own contribution to the supernatural canon. In some ways, The Comforters essentially reverses the relationship between femininity and haunting portrayed in The Turn of the Screw (1898). In James’s novel, an apparently

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“hysterical” woman is undone by supernatural voices while Caroline constructs the voices herself. 7. Though definitions of the Catholic novel vary widely, Marian Crowe offers a list of its characteristics: “I do not mean simply a novel by a Catholic or one with some Catholic material, but a work of substantial literary merit in which Catholic theology and thought have a significant presence within the narrative, with genuine attention to the inner spiritual life, often drawing on Catholicism’s rich liturgical and sacramental symbolism and enriched by the analogical Catholic imagination” (“Catholic Novel”). For additional considerations of this genre, see Thomas Woodman’s Faithful Fictions (1991), Theodore Fraser’s The Modern Catholic Novel in Europe (1994), and Mary Reichardt’s Between Human and Divine: The Catholic Vision in Contemporary Literature (2010). 8. In Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Friedrich Kittler similarly explores the feminization of the typewriter and argues that “media always already provide the appearances of specters” (12), and Spark thus also draws upon the haunting dimension of media technologies. 9. The “shaggy dog” yarn is a minor subset of humorous fiction that relies upon an anti-climax or red herring structure. A long story is told only to end without a clear resolution, often to direct audiences’ attention toward a meaningless conclusion. 10. Spark arguably incorporates male hysteria into the novel through the figure of the Baron, whom Caroline deems mad because he obsessively stalks Mervyn Hogarth. Laurence also displays mental quirks that the other characters do not fully understand. For instance, commenting on his extreme attention to detail, Helena complains, “It’s the only unhealthy thing about your mind, the way you notice absurd details, it’s absurd of you” (8). However, rather than sincerely diagnosing Laurence, Helena is speaking out of fear that he may stumble upon some of her secrets. The Baron, too, is portrayed sympathetically as his whims are considered the result of his recent divorce from Eleanor. In contrast, Caroline’s apparent hysteria is either fetishized by Laurence or deemed so advanced that it may require medical treatment. 11. Various characters also express concern over Caroline’s unusual eating habits, thereby entering the discourse on anorexia nervosa as another “feminine” malady. For instance, Laurence laments that he “knew Caroline’s nervous responses to food” (66). Though this illness lies slightly outside of the scope of this article, Bordo argues it further circumscribed women’s bodies under a patriarchal medical system. If anorexia is an attempt at control, it is sort of a medicalized version of the larger issue of women’s authorship. 12. In A Room of One’s Own (1929), Virginia Woolf laments that “no sentence had been shaped, by long labor, to express the experience of women” (x). For Woolf, women writers—including Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot—were still working with the “clumsy weapon” that was the traditional “man’s sentence” of the nineteenth century (76). In contrast to these predecessors, Caroline capitalizes on the metafictional possibilities of modernist form itself—affordances that simultaneously offer her an escape from the imprisoning form of the modern novel. 13. In “Modern Fiction” (1925), Woolf similarly critiques male novelists for being materialist writers. Conjuring a nondescript woman traveling by train in “Mr. Bennett

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and Mrs. Brown” (1923), a cipher for the evacuated feminine persona in masculine realism, Woolf further argues that male authors “would observe every detail with immense care. [. . .] One line of insight would have done more than all those lines of description” (14). For Woolf, these authors failed to provide their characters with a rich internal life. Interestingly, she calls upon a feminized supernatural image to intimate the difficulty of characterization: “[Authors spend] the best years of their lives in the pursuit, . . . receiving for the most part very little . . . in exchange. Few catch the phantom; most have to be content with a scrap of her dress or a wisp of her hair” (1). 14. Caroline explains Eleanor’s talent for mimicry, such as her ability to produce exact replicas of paintings. The limits of this talent are self-evident—Eleanor “could have taken up any trade with ease, because all she had to do was mimic the best that had already been done in any particular line, and that gave the impression of the expert” (Spark 82). Adept only at imitation, Eleanor can never hope to be the best. She can only approach this position vicariously.

WORKS CITED Baldanza, Frank. “Muriel Spark and the Occult.” Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, vol. 6, no. 2, 1965, pp. 190–203. Bordo, Susan, and Leslie Heywood. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Tenth Anniversary Edition. University of California Press, 2004. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990. ———. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, vol. 40, no. 4, 1988, pp. 519–31. Cheyette, Bryan. “Writing Against Conversion: Muriel Spark the Gentile Jewess,” in Theorising Muriel Spark: Gender, Race, Deconstruction, Springer, 2001, pp. 95–113. Crowe, Marian. “The Catholic Novel Is Alive and Well in England.” First Things, https:​//​www​.firstthings​.com​/web​-exclusives​/2007​/11​/the​-catholic​-novel​-is​-alive​ -an. Accessed October 2017. DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers. Indiana University Press, 1985. English, Elizabeth. Lesbian Modernism: Censorship, Sexuality and Genre Fiction. 1 edition. Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Felski, Rita. “Enchantment.” Uses of Literature. Blackwell, 2008. ———. The Gender of Modernity. Harvard University Press, 1995. Fludernik, Monika. “History and Metafiction: Experientiality, Causality, and Myth,” in Historiographic Metafiction in Modern American and Canadian Literature, edited by Bernard Engler. Schoningh Press, 1994, pp. 81–101. Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, Vol. 3. Yale University Press, 1994. Greene, Gayle. Changing the Story: Feminist Fiction and the Tradition. Indiana University Press, 1992.

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Hutcheon, Linda. Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013. Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. Routledge, 1981. Jacobus, Mary. Women Writing and Writing About Women. Routledge, 2012. Kittler, Friedrich A. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz. Stanford University Press, 1999. Knox, Ronald. “Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction,” in Best Detective Stories, 1939. Lubbock, Percy. The Craft of Fiction. Project Gutenberg, 1921. Matz, Jesse. The Modern Novel: An Introduction. Blackwell, 2004. Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Peters, Joan Douglas. Feminist Metafiction and the Evolution of the British Novel. University of Florida Press, 2002. Rich, Adrienne. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision.” College English, vol. 34, no. 1, 1972, pp. 18–30. Scott, Bonnie Kime, ed. The Gender of Modernism: A Critical Anthology. Indiana University Press, 1990. Spark, Muriel. “Authors’ Ghosts.” Authors’ Ghosts: Seven Poems. Rees & O’Neill, 2004. ———. The Comforters. New Directions, 1957. ———. “An Interview with Dame Muriel Spark.” By Robert Hosmer. Salmagundi, vol. 146, 2005, pp. 127–58. Stein, Gertrude. “Cultivated Motor Automatism: A Study of Character in Its Relation to Attention.” The Psychological Review, 1898. Taylor, Diana. Performance. Duke University Press, 2016. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Translated by Richard Howard. Cornell University Press, 1975. Viswanathan, Gauri. Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief. Oxford University Press, 2001. Wajcman, Judy. TechnoFeminism. Polity, 2004. Waugh, Patricia. Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. Routledge, 1984. Weese, Katherine L. “Feminist Uses of the Fantastic in Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, the Sea.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 47, no. 3, September 2001, pp. 630–56. Wilson, Leigh. Modernism and Magic: Experiments with Spiritualism, Theosophy and the Occult. Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Winick, Mimi. “Modernist Feminist Witchcraft: Margaret Murray’s Fantastic Scholarship and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Realist Fantasy.” Modernism/ Modernity, vol. 22, no. 3, 2015, pp. 565–92. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Martino, 1929. ———. “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown.” Hogarth Press, 1923.

Chapter Ten

The Evolution of Daredevil’s Karen Page From Damsel-in-Distress to Writer-Hero Gian Pagnucci

When we first meet Karen Page in season 1 of Netflix’s hit series Daredevil, she is on her knees, crying and screaming. The screaming seems justified since she’s covered in blood and there’s a dead body beside her, but what this scene more significantly does is immediately put her into the role of damsel-in-distress, a role for women that we’ve all too often come to expect in traditional comic book narratives. Karen looks terrified, weak, and helpless. But from this position, as the series progresses, she slowly rises to become one of the strongest, smartest characters in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe (the MCU). The key to Karen’s evolution is that she becomes a writer. When Karen begins to write, she finds her voice and, through that act of writing, inner strength and courage. It’s a long and hard road but writing changes Karen. It takes her out of the limitations of damsel-in-distress and turns her into a heroine. And because Karen Page becomes a heroine through writing, it makes her, I will argue, perhaps the most important heroine in the entire MCU. This essay will use a Post-Process Theoretical writing analysis (Kent; Breuch; Dobrin) to look at how Karen’s identity evolves over the course of the first two seasons of Daredevil. I will first provide an overview of Post-Process Theory. In particular I’ll discuss how Post-Process Theory views writing as an indeterminate activity and how the keys to understanding this activity are examining the ways writing is situated, interpretive, and public. Then I will 207

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explain how we can use Post-Process Theory to understand important aspects of Karen Page’s development as a writer. As I discuss Karen’s journey from damsel-in-distress to writer-hero, I will offer suggestions for how we can take these ideas and apply them to teaching students how to write better. I offer this analysis for a number of reasons. First, I believe Karen Page is a valuable role model because of the ways she resists being forced into a helpless damsel role. Karen resists those who try to threaten her or to impose gender limitations upon her, and she also resists her own self-doubts. Those are all lessons that students can benefit from. Second, Karen’s development as a writer is useful for those working to develop effective pedagogy for teaching students how to write better. Both English teachers and non-English teachers can benefit from thinking about how Karen evolves as a writer and as a critical thinker. Third, Karen’s work as a writer focuses on speaking the truth. In an age of fake news, it is vital to show students the importance of working hard to uncover facts and truth. As teachers we need to help our students develop into critical thinkers who seek real answers rather than accepting misleading spin. Fourth, and most important of all, as teachers we can use Karen Page’s story to show our students that their responsibility is to help construct a world of right and justice by resisting the forces that are trying to situate us in a world of greed and corruption. The stakes are high in the world of Daredevil, but they are even higher in our own world. There is much we can learn from watching the evolution of the writer-hero Karen Page. POST-PROCESS THEORY Post-Process Theory is not normally a literary theory used to analyze texts or films. Instead, the theory was developed by composition scholars as a way to better understand the act of writing. However, since the focus of this volume is the representation of writers in popular culture, using a composition theory for analysis is a valuable way to think about the nature of the writing being portrayed on screen. In this particular case, Post-Process Theory can be used to illuminate the development of Karen Page through her writing. Therefore, I offer here a brief discussion of the theory to help tie the comics studies topic of Karen Page to the field of composition studies. One of the great values of comics studies and popular culture studies is their interdisciplinarity (Pagnucci and Romagnoli). Karen Page lives in our world, or at least a near approximation of it (despite the ninjas and evil villains). Although Daredevil does have super senses and a highly honed ability to fight, he is a down-to-earth superhero in a very grim and gritty real world. And Karen Page is a completely ordinary human within that world. Her



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growth through writing models a growth instructors can help their students to pursue. First-year composition is one of the most commonly taught courses in the United States. Almost universally, the teaching of composition has included some focus on teaching writing as a process. That is, rather than focus on just grading the final papers students write, composition teachers guide students through the process of writing, from generating ideas to drafting to revising to editing and finally to publishing. While the pedagogy used in composition courses varies, most writing teachers spend at least some time explaining to students the basic nature of the writing process. Writing Process Pedagogy has been in wide use since its virtues were first extolled in the 1970s by Donald Murray and other composition scholars. Initially, Writing Process Theory was revolutionary and highly useful. But over time, scholars began to question whether the theory had reached a limit to what it could uncover about the nature of composing. This led Thomas Kent to edit a volume called Post-Process Theory: Beyond the Writing-Process Paradigm, which he hoped would guide composition scholars toward new understandings of writing as a more individualized, less generalizable process. As Kent argues in his introduction to the volume, Writing Process Theory had become so commonplace that it was no longer useful to scholars: I suspect that the readers of this volume already know the central tenets of the writing p­ rocess movement about as well as they know the letters of the English alphabet. In our training as composition teachers, most of us cut our teeth on the claims that writing constitutes a process of some sort and that this process is generalizable, at least to the extent that we know when someone is being “recursive” or to the extent that we know when to intervene in someone’s writing process or to the extent that we know the process that experienced or “expert” writers employ as they write. (1)

The problem from Kent’s point of view was that calling writing a process, though originally valuable, had become too simplistic to help composition scholars see new things. So, Kent and other compositionists pushed to move past the focus on process to what they called post-process. While Kent does get much of the credit as the quasi-spokesperson for Post-Process Theory, it’s worth noting that Anthony Pare and John Trimbur actually coined the term Post-Process in separate articles preceding Kent’s book. But Kent is helpful for outlining the central tenets of this school of thought. He says Post-Process Theory endorses the fundamental idea that no codifiable or generalizable writing process exists or could exist. Post­process theorists hold—for all sorts of different reasons—that writing is a practice that cannot be captured by a generalized

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process or a Big Theory. Yet if writing is not a generalizable process, what do post­process theorists think it is? Most post­process theorists hold three assumptions about the act of writing: (1) writing is public; (2) writing is interpretive; and (3) writing is situated. (1)

The central idea of Post-Process Theory is that writing is an act which is dynamic, uncertain, and indeterminate. Writing is not a static body of knowledge; writing is instead an activity. Dobrin explains that “post-process in composition studies refers to the shift in scholarly attention from the process by which the individual writer produces texts to the larger forces that affect the writer and of which that writer is a part” (“Paralogic” 132). Writing cannot be generalized to one specific process because writing is an activity which is always shifting depending on how the act of writing is situated in a specific set of circumstances, how the act of writing is being interpreted, and how the act of writing is being shared in a public context. To understand what it means to be a writer, Post-Process Theorists argue that we must view writers as they act: as they create writing and as that writing is read and interpreted. Using this theory, I will examine how Karen Page develops as a writer over the course of two seasons of Daredevil. Working from a post-process theoretical position means we cannot simply look at an image of Karen Page typing at a computer to understand what it means for her to be a writer. Instead, we must look at the dynamic nature of the acts of writing which Karen performs. Post-Process Theorists argue that we must understand three ways in which the act of writing operates: writing is situated, writing is interpretive, and writing is public. I will explore each of these aspects as I unpack Karen Page’s development as a writer. Thinking of writing as a dynamic act rather than as a static process which can be codified helps us to understand that the activity of writing is always evolving for each writer. There is no one standard way in which all people write. Writers instead all work in their own idiosyncratic ways. Each writer composes through a unique process which has been shaped by their own individual political, social, cultural, ethnic, and gendered histories. While other composition scholars, notably Flower and Hayes, had sought to develop a model of the composing process, the Post-Process Theorists claim that the writing process cannot be codified and therefore models like Flower and Hayes’s are inherently flawed. Post-Process Theorists believe that no two writers ever engage in the act of composing in the same exact way. The specific ways individuals write is always evolving and changing. While this Post-Process understanding of writing as a dynamic activity is helpful for exploring the nature of writing, it does present some challenges to teachers trying to help students learn to write. Kent essentially takes the position that writing cannot be taught because the writing process cannot



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be standardized. And Dobrin (Constructing Knowledge) argues that PostProcess Theory should not respond to the “pedagogical imperative”: Dobrin says not all composition theory must lead to direct pedagogical applications. While there is value in developing a deeper theoretical understanding of how people write, a theoretical understanding of writing which does not also include pedagogical application won’t help all those teachers standing in front of classes of bright-eyed first-year writers. In addition, purely theoretical academic scholarship can have the effect of making academics seem off from the rest of the world. The academy’s consistent use of specialized language and dense theoretical concepts has led scholars to be criticized as elitist and, worse, as irrelevant. We need to be working to create scholarship that impacts the world we live in, especially now when our world is faced with so many challenges that require strong thinkers to find solutions. We need theory that will help us develop the best student writers who go out and make our world a better place. Therefore, my goal for this chapter is not only to show how we can use Post-Process Theory to understand Karen Page as a writer, but also to show how studying a cinematic writer using this theoretical framework can help us learn how to better teach today’s student writers. I believe we can examine Karen Page’s work as a writer to help us develop methods for teaching students how to understand the complex ways that writing is situated, interpretive, and public. One theorist who does discuss how Post-Process Theory can be applied to teaching is Lee-Ann M. Kastman Breuch. In her article “Post-Process ‘Pedagogy’: A Philosophical Exercise,” Breuch explains that Post-Process Theory aims to help us understand writing not as a fixed product or process but instead as a fluid activity: In moving away from writing as a “thing,” post-process theory encourages us to examine writing again as an activity—an indeterminate activity. By ‘indeterminate’ I mean that the writing act cannot be predicted in terms of how students will write (through certain formulas or content) or how students will learn (through certain approaches). (133)

Writing is indeterminant from a Post-Process view. We never know how the act of writing is going to turn out and we often must find our way as we go. There is no strategy or five-paragraph essay formula that can guarantee good and effective writing. There is no perfect method for ensuring that a writer will be able to effectively communicate a desired message to readers. Writing is always shifting terrain. Breuch says that because writing is indeterminate, Post-Process pedagogy must focus on writing as an activity rather than focusing on one specific

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process every student must use. In particular, she says teachers should move away from a drive to teach mastery of content and instead focus on dialoguing with students. Breuch says that the way we can best teach writing is through mentoring and tutoring. We know we learn best from slightly more capable peers (Vygotsky); peer mentors can allow us to make mistakes while teaching alongside us and talking us through things as we go. Karen gets the mentor she needs in New York Bulletin editor-in-chief Mitchell Ellison (played by Geoffrey Paul Cantor). Finally, Richard Fulkerson tries to answer the question, “What would a ‘Post-Process’ Composition Course Look Like?” (114). He admits that he struggles a bit to do this, and that his answer is a bit fuzzy. Fulkerson says that in examining work by Post-Process teachers, he finds no indication from the write-ups of their courses that they try to explain to students, and have them rehearse, such practices as various techniques of invention, principles or tactics of revision, the rhetorical uses of titles and introductions, etc. Instead, the students and instructor read some texts together, usually texts on liberatory topics, often with all the writing being about a single theme for a semester. Then the students write about the readings and their own worlds. There may be peer response groups (because that fits in with the idea that writing is social), and in all likelihood students will be allowed or required to revise papers for a portfolio, because portfolios are seen as less grade-based, less-competitive, and less-hierarchical.

Fulkerson essentially calls this a Social Justice Pedagogy and says he’s been doing that without calling it Post-Process. While both Post-Process teachers and Social Justice teachers might want to critique Fulkerson’s summary, for the purpose of this essay it is enough to think about the idea of writing as situated in a realm of social justice challenges. Karen Page lives in a world in which the villainous Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin of Crime (played by Vincent D’Onofrio), has bribed, threatened, and murdered his way into control of the underworld, the city government, the courts, and the police department. In the real world in which we watched George Floyd killed by a police officer kneeling on his neck, social justice causes are timelier than ever, and Kingpin-style corruption doesn’t seem all that fictional. In sum, then, Post-Process Theory urges us to examine how the act of writing is situated, interpretive, and public. There is a need to better understand how we can teach from this perspective, and that teaching is usefully focused on mentoring and social justice issues. I believe all of this makes Post-Process Theory ideal for examining Karen Page the writer in the world of Netflix’s Daredevil.



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DAREDEVIL The first season of Daredevil (Goddard) was released by Netflix on April 10, 2015. Daredevil was the first of a series of television shows that aimed to explore the MCU in more detail. It was an instant hit and was followed by the similarly themed Marvel series Jessica Jones (Rosenberg), Luke Cage (Coker), Iron Fist (Buck), and later The Punisher (Lightfoot). Marvel has a long history of linking its characters in a shared universe where they can crossover into each other’s stories (Romagnoli and Pagnucci 41–43). Marvel maintained this approach with its Netflix series, bringing all the characters together in the team series The Defenders (Petrie and Ramirez). In case any readers are not familiar with the Daredevil series, the show revolves around a superhero called Daredevil who is a self-appointed angel (or rather devil) trying to aid and protect the citizens of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. Daredevil is really Matt Murdock (played by Charlie Cox), a do-gooder attorney who also happens to be blind. When Matt was a boy, he pushed an old man out of the way of an out-of-control industrial truck, but in the process was doused with chemicals. The chemicals left him blind but augmented his other senses and gave him a kind of radar that he uses to move, much like the radar of a bat. In the television series Matt is trained as a martial arts fighter by a mysterious figure named Stick (played by Scott Glenn). Matt eventually dons first a black ninja-like costume and then a red armored devil costume and wages a one-man war on crime, leading him into conflict with Wilson Fisk. Matt is a partner in the firm Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys at Law. Foggy Nelson is his partner (played by Elden Henson). Their first case is to defend Karen Page from the charge of murdering Daniel Fisher, one of her co-workers at Union Allied Construction and the unfortunate man lying dead beside her in Karen’s opening scene. Karen is played by Deborah Ann Woll, who brings the character to life from the very first episode thanks to her ability to exhibit a broad range of emotions to make the character feel highly believable. Although Karen’s first appearance is in Daredevil, she also had a prominent role in the Netflix show The Punisher (2017–2019) and had a few small appearances in The Defenders (2017). To keep this chapter manageable, I am only focusing on Karen’s appearances in the first two seasons of Daredevil. In the comics, Karen appeared in the very first issue of Daredevil (Lee and Everett), published way back in 1964.

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KAREN PAGE: SITUATED CHALLENGES When we first meet Karen Page in Daredevil, she is not a writer; instead, she is a murder suspect. As I mentioned, the scene opens with Karen holding a bloody knife in her hand as she kneels in front of the body of Daniel Fisher. She looks down, sees the knife, and begins to scream. She has no memory of what has happened because, as we later learn, she has been drugged. As Karen is screaming, the police burst into her apartment and arrest her. It looks like Karen must be the murderer. But, as we will learn many times throughout the series, looks can be deceiving. Fortunately for Karen, her arrest soon comes to the attention of Foggy Nelson. Foggy has a friend on the police department who tips Foggy off about Karen’s case. Foggy and Matt head to the police station to interview Karen. When Matt and Foggy enter the interrogation room, Karen looks haggard, her eyes red and swollen from crying, one tear still glistening on her cheek. At first, she won’t say a word, so Matt and Foggy calmly begin discussing the facts of Karen’s case as she looks on in silence. Incredulous, Karen finally says: Karen: “Who the hell are you guys?” Matt [smiles]: “I’m Matt. He’s Foggy.” Karen: “Who sent you?” Matt [shakes his head]: “No one sent us.” Karen: “So what? You’re just a couple of good Samaritans? This is just my lucky day?” (“Into the Ring”)

Of course, along with being a murder suspect, Karen tells the lawyers she has no money. Foggy greets this news by saying, “Well, it was lovely to meet you, Miss Page” and he gets up to leave, but Matt makes him sit back down. Then they get Karen to tell her story. Karen says she asked Fisher to go for a drink. Karen: “We met at the Three Roads Bar on 49th Street. We had a few drinks. And the next thing I remember is waking up on the floor of my apartment covered in blood. His blood.” [She leans forward, looking intently at Matt and Foggy, and here we see some of the fire inside her.] Karen: “Now I’m not stupid. I know how that sounds. But I am telling you, we met at the bar. We had a few drinks. And I don’t know what happened after that. It wasn’t me. Please. Please. You have to believe me. I didn’t kill him.” (“Into the Ring”)



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Fortunately for Karen, Matt’s superpowers include a heightened ability to hear. As Karen tells her story, Matt listens to her heartbeat. It remains slow and steady. If she were lying, her heartbeat would accelerate. Since it does not, he knows she’s telling the truth. Matt says, “I believe you, Miss Page,” and so Karen becomes a client of Nelson and Murdock. But things go from bad to worse for Karen. We slowly learn that Karen’s plight is connected to a larger criminal scheme. Afraid that Karen will bring this scheme to light, Wilson Fisk’s right-hand man, James Wesley (played by Toby Leonard Moore), blackmails a cop into trying to strangle Karen in her cell. Karen fights off her attacker by gouging his eye, then screams for help. Matt and Foggy have no trouble getting Karen out on bail after that, and Karen goes to stay with Matt for her safety. It is in Matt’s apartment that we begin to get some sense of how out of control Karen’s life is. She wants to go home, but Matt tells her it isn’t safe. She takes a shower and puts on one of Matt’s business shirts because she doesn’t have any of her own clothes. Karen has lost everything: her job, the guy she had a date with, and potentially her freedom if she is convicted of murder. This a no-win situation. Karen is situated in the worst possible place one can imagine. It is this situatedness that Post-Process Theory calls to our attention. Karen is defined by her situatedness at this point in time. She is not yet a writer, so circumstances situate her rather than her being able to situate herself. In order to move forward, Karen must come to terms with this. She must gain not only an understanding of that situatedness, but also control over her situation. In a conventional superhero story/situation, Karen would probably just wait for Daredevil to save the day. That’s the role we found her in: the damsel-in-distress. But this is no ordinary superhero story, and Karen is no simple damsel. She could spend a safe night at Matt’s apartment and then try to clear her name in the morning. Instead, she sneaks out in the middle of the night and goes to her own apartment. She goes to retrieve a flash drive with evidence on it about a money-laundering scheme that Karen knows Union Allied Construction is involved in. Unfortunately, one of Fisk’s men is waiting for her at the apartment and tries to kill her. Luckily, Matt has followed her, so Daredevil bursts into Karen’s apartment just in time to save the day. Daredevil beats Fisk’s henchman and then retrieves the flash drive with the incriminating information about Union Allied Construction. Daredevil [holding the drive]: “I’ll get this into the right hands.” Karen: “No, you can’t. You can’t take it to the police. You can’t trust anyone.” Daredevil: “Then we tell everyone.” (“Into the Ring”)

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They leave the criminal and the flash drive with the evidence on the steps of the building which houses the New York Bulletin newspaper. Ben Urich, a reporter for the New York Bulletin, then writes a cover story about the crime entitled “Union Allied Construction Scandal.” And here Karen learns her first lesson about the power of writing. Situated in a world of corruption and danger, it is writing that saves her. When the news story reveals the truth, Karen is freed from danger. This point about the power of writing is further emphasized to viewers in the next scene, where Wesley and Fisk are talking as they ride in a limousine. Wesley is discussing the steps he is taking to cover up Fisk’s connection to the Union Allied scandal. He asks Fisk if he should have Karen eliminated as part of his efforts to cover up the affair. Fisk replies, “No. Everything she knows is already in the papers.” Writing has resituated Karen, helping her to escape, for the moment, the terrible circumstances that threatened her life. Karen is not yet a writer at this stage of the series but writing already has had the power to impact her life for the better. This also provides an important lesson for writing teachers. Words still have power. The truth still matters. It has become fashionable these days to talk about media bias and fake news. And, in fact, we do live in a world full of misinformation. But that makes it our responsibility to check facts and seek out accurate news stories. We can’t rely on just one news source for information. And we absolutely cannot immediately trust things that are tweeted and retweeted to us. Post-Process Theory argues that all writing is situated. Writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it happens in a specific context. To understand a piece of writing, we must understand the context in which it is situated. We must understand who the writer is and why they are writing what they are writing and what effect they want that writing to have upon us. Karen is situated in a world of evil and corruption. When she and Daredevil gather evidence about that corruption, they are able to get the New York Bulletin to write an expose about the financial scandal at Union Allied Construction. The story, a piece of writing, changes Karen’s situation for the better. In a similar way, teachers must help students to understand that all writing is situated. When a politician says, “I have achieved this accomplishment so you should vote for me,” we need to check to see whether that politician’s claim is true. We need to look critically at what is said and what is written. And we need to check more than one source to make sure we are understanding fully the situatedness of these claims. Do we understand what someone is trying to make us believe and why? Teachers must help students learn that they need to ask critical questions, check sources, and dig deeper to learn the truth. Saying that the media is biased is really just an excuse not to do any thinking or researching on our own, and we can’t let students graduate thinking that’s acceptable. As Williams argues,



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“In the world of fake news and social media blizzards, wouldn’t we all be better served by graduates who can examine ideas from a variety of perspectives and work collaboratively with peers whose personal experiences might be very different from their own?” Post-Process Theory helps us to see how writing is situated. And, in fact, not only writing but all events and actions are situated within a world of competing financial interests and political ideologies. We need to help students understand this. We need to help them look critically at claims and ideas, especially written claims and ideas, so they can see how those claims and ideas are situated. Writing is not neutral. It is situated within people’s agendas. If we can help students to understand this, then they are more empowered to resist having their thoughts controlled by others. Students can assess the information they are given by examining how it is situated within a larger world context. Guided by Post-Process Theory, we can use a character like Karen Page to illustrate the complexities of situatedness to students and thereby help our students resist having their worlds be constructed for them without their knowledge or control. Karen refuses to be left as a damsel-in-distress. She fights back multiple times and goes after the information she needs, even risking her life in the process. Her name is cleared, and Matt and Foggy hire her as their new law firm secretary: Karen: “Well, if it weren’t for you two, I’d still be in that cell.” Matt: “The job’s easy when your client’s innocent. All you did was tell the truth.” Karen: “Yeah, but you listened.” (“Into the Ring”)

Fisk still controls the city. And the corruption has not all been uprooted. But Karen stands up and speaks the truth, and so she stops some of that corruption and helps herself in the process. She rewrites her situation through trusting in the written word and trusting in the readers of those words. KAREN PAGE: INTERPRETING HER WORLD AND HER SELF Karen Page is a complex character—I noted that she very quickly breaks free of the damsel-in-distress role. Toward the end of season 1 (episode 11), however, she crosses into territory few other Marvel heroines have gone. Karen has been researching Wilson Fisk, trying to expose his corruption and criminal activities. So, James Wesley (who is always called Wesley by Fisk) kidnaps Karen. We find the two of them seated at a table in a dark basement.

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Wesley threatens Karen, trying to blackmail her into changing her story in order to clear Fisk’s name: Karen: “I’d rather die first.” Wesley: “But you won’t be the first to die, Miss Page, no. No, I think Mr. Urich [a reporter helping Karen investigate Fisk] will have that honor. Then we’ll go to your place of employment. See to Mr. Nelson; Mr. Murdock. After that your friends, family, everyone you’ve ever cared about. And when you have no tears left to shed, then we’ll come for you Miss Page.” [Wesley’s cell phone rings and he looks down, momentarily distracted by the sound. The instant Wesley looks away, Karen grabs Wesley’s gun off the table and points it at him. She gasps for breath.] Wesley: “Do you really think I would put a loaded gun on the table where you could reach it?” Karen: “I don’t know.” [Cocks the gun’s hammer.] “Do you really think this is the first time I’ve shot someone?” [Wesley smiles, adjusts his glasses, and starts to get up.] Wesley: “Miss Page.” [Karen shoots Wesley once in the chest. He looks down, bewildered. She shoots him five more times. Karen starts to cry as Wesley slumps in the chair dead. She wipes the table clean of her fingerprints, takes the gun, and leaves hurriedly.] (“The Path of the Righteous”)

This is a monumental scene. Even now, watching it again after a couple of years have passed, it is still shocking and hard to believe. Daredevil is a superhero show and Karen is one of the good guys. She’s a heroine. She fights for truth and justice. How can she possibly be justified in killing James Wesley in cold blood? The scene forces us to make what Post-Process Theory says is an act of interpretation. Kent provides some insight on what interpretation means: Writing is a thoroughly interpretive act. By “interpretive act,” post­process theorists in general mean something rather broad, something like “making sense of” and not just exclusively the ability to move from one code to another. To interpret something means more than only to “translate” or to “paraphrase’’; to interpret means to enter into a relation of understanding with other language users. So, understood in this way, interpretation enters into both the reception and the production of discourse. When we read, we interpret specific texts or utterances; when we write, we interpret our readers, our situations, our and other people’s motivations, the appropriate genres to employ in specific circumstances, and so forth. (2)



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As viewers, we must try to make sense of Karen killing Wesley. We must decide if her choice was justified. We must ask ourselves what we would have done in her situation. We must interpret Karen’s action for ourselves. This is an important point from a Post-Process Theory perspective. We normally separate writers from readers. But Post-Process Theory asks us to think about writers and readers together, as actors in motion together, like dancers. That is, writing always involves reading and interpretation. As Kent notes, writing requires interpretation as it is produced and as it is received. Writing is always an interpretive act. This is one of the things we need to help student writers to learn, that they must consider how they themselves interpret what they write and they must also consider how readers may interpret what they write. Such interpretation can be challenging. We can interpret Karen’s actions in multiple ways. For instance, there are many reasons to interpret Karen’s killing of Wesley as justified. Wesley is a very evil man. Karen knows this. Wesley drugged her in order to kidnap her, and he even tells her that he was slightly worried she might not ever wake up from the drug. Wesley also points a gun at Karen before putting it on the table, a loaded gun as it turns out. He threatens to blackmail Karen or to kill her and her friends if she refuses to help him. We also know that Wesley ordered a hit on Karen when she was in jail. She does not have proof of this, but she certainly suspects Fisk and Wesley of this crime. Karen also suspects that Wesley has either killed people or ordered people killed, a fact which we as viewers know to be true. Although Karen again doesn’t have proof, she certainly suspects this. That makes Wesley’s threats against Karen’s friends and family deadly real. And, finally, when Wesley tried to stand up, it was presumably to restrain Karen again. Although he said he was going to let her go, it was not clear to Karen if he really would have freed her, which certainly was one of her motivations for shooting him. So, one way to interpret Karen’s actions is as self-defense. We can use interpretation to make Karen’s killing of Wesley seem justified. But we can also use interpretation to say that Karen’s killing of Wesley was wrong, that it was murder. We see Karen wipe her fingerprints off the table and dispose of the gun. Karen makes no report to the police. Even more telling, in later episodes she is racked with guilt about the murder and has trouble sleeping. Karen’s guilt seems to indicate that she believes what she did was morally wrong. Was Karen justified in killing Wesley? He had said he would let her go, that his plan was to exploit her and not kill her. Wesley was an evil man, but don’t even evil people deserve to live? Interpretation is constantly at play as we watch the decisions Karen makes. In fact, the series never completely resolves the tension over Karen killing Wesley. This is because such real tensions cannot ever be completely resolved.

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Right or wrong, Karen always carries guilt about the killing. Sometimes she is remorseful; sometimes, you see her anger at Wesley. The killing changes her, as it must, and so she carries some darkness inside her. Probably only the Netflix Marvel character Jessica Jones comes close to having to live with this kind of darkness, and just like Karen, Jessica is haunted too (“AKA Smile”). As a viewer, I don’t know that I can ever fully justify Karen’s actions. But then again, I wasn’t there, faced with an evil, threatening man who could, and just might, try to kill me. I do firmly believe that if Wesley had lived, he would have tried to kill Karen later, once her usefulness had ended. That was certainly his modus operandi. So, in the end, I personally choose to believe that Karen did what she had to do. It was a hard choice and the blood on her hands darkened her, but she still did the best she could to help bring some good and justice to the even greater darkness that surrounded her. The world of Daredevil is never black and white; it is always shades of gray (and red). Haunted by killing Wesley, Karen goes on a search to renew her moral compass. It is in season 2 of Daredevil that Karen becomes a full-fledged writer. A vigilante named The Punisher has been killing the members of a range of ethnic crime gangs in New York. Daredevil manages to capture him, and the law firm of Nelson and Murdock is called in to represent him for his criminal trial. The Punisher is really Frank Castle (played by Jon Bernthal), whose family was murdered during a gangland shoot-out. The Punisher has been using high-tech military weaponry and tactics to kill the members of the gangs who murdered his family. Foggy and Karen do a great job trying to defend Frank, but Matt’s life as Daredevil keeps preventing him from being able to help them with the trial. This conflict eventually leads to the partners disbanding their law firm. The trial is the talk of New York, and surprisingly Foggy has Castle on the verge of being acquitted. Then in an unexpected twist, Castle abruptly changes his plea to guilty and is convicted. Later we learn that he has been blackmailed by Fisk. But although the trial ends with Castle going to prison, Karen believes there is more to the story. She goes to the New York Bulletin and speaks to editor-in-chief Mitchell Ellison. She tries to convince Ellison to run with the story. He agrees it’s a great story, but he feels Karen needs to investigate it: Karen: “Case closed. Castle tanked his own case. He got put away. I just feel you should carry the torch on this.” Ellison: “Yeah?” Karen: “Yeah.” [Nodding her head yes.] Ellison: “Ok, so I just want to rewind this informal meeting we’re having by about 30 seconds. You come to me with a lead, with a really good lead and you



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just want to take off, right? It’s sort of like a pitcher going to the 8th inning with a no-hit shutout and just walking away.” Karen: “Look, this, this was supposed to be about saving my law firm.” Ellison: “I get that, at first, yeah . . . So yeah, sure, the case is closed, Frank Castle’s in prison, but this thing ain’t over, not yet, not by a long shot. You know it ’cause you know you’re onto something.” Karen: “Yeah. Ok.” (“Seven Minutes in Heaven”)

Ellison persuades Karen to stick with the story. (Marvel Television doesn’t want viewers asking why Ellison chooses not to use one of his own experienced New York Bulletin reporters to investigate the Castle story, but let’s generously assume he thinks Karen’s personal connection with Castle will be needed to unravel the story. Either that or Ellison just has a great eye for budding new reporter talent.) Like all good writers, Karen then turns to research to support her ideas. Again, looking at the episode with the interpretive lens of Post-Process Theory, although the world thinks Frank Castle is guilty, Karen chooses to interpret the facts using a different perspective that ultimately unveils the police conspiracy which led to Castle’s family being killed. Here it is useful to recall that Breuch has said one of the best ways to teach writing from a Post-Process perspective is through mentoring. In this case, Ellison becomes Karen’s mentor. He praises Karen enough to get her to take on the job of reporter/writer, then guides her along as she investigates the story. It’s also important to note that prior to this, New York Bulletin reporter Ben Urich (played by Vondie Curtis-Hall) had also been mentoring Karen in how to do investigative journalism, though at that time she was still working as the secretary at Nelson and Murdock. Ben, alas, was later killed at Fisk’s orders. Although we are never told why both Ben and Ellison choose to mentor Karen, we are left to assume it is because Karen’s fierce tenacity reminds them of themselves: great reporters never give up on a story. These seasoned reporters can see Karen’s grit, and so they know she won’t quit despite the obstacles: a great writer never stops rewriting until they have said what needs to be said. What also happens as the series unfolds is that Karen begins to see herself in a new way. Becoming a writer changes her interpretation of herself. This is a significant aspect of interpretation that is only hinted at by Post-Process Theory. Post-Process Theory focuses on understanding how writing is interpretive, but we can enlarge this to understand how being a writer like Karen facilitates new interpretations of the self. It’s not just that Karen is writing a story in which she is reinterpreting the facts to show Fisk’s involvement in The Punisher case; she’s also reinterpreting her own life in a whole new way. Researching and then writing this news story gives Karen new levels of

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confidence. While early scenes in the Daredevil series often showed Karen shaking or crying, now she exudes confidence. In fact, she uses her quest for the truth to reassure the people she interviews who are themselves often reluctant to speak. Karen not only finds her voice; she uses it to be a voice for others. This is an important role that writers can take up. Karen uses her writing to help other people. She uses her writing to tell the truth in the face of corruption and lies by the powerful. While Daredevil fights with his fists, Karen uses words to fight, and not just her own words, but the words of others. She learns that someone has to speak up for those who have been silenced, those who are afraid to speak. Again and again, we see the Kingpin use intimidation to try to silence people through fear. This is true in the real world, too. We need writers to speak truth to power. We need writers to uncover lies and trails of coercive money. We need writers to give voice to those who cannot speak for themselves. Writing has this power, and it is writing which turns Karen Page into a hero. Karen is able to fill this role as a voice for other people and the truth because she comes to see herself as a writer. Karen: “It wasn’t just a random gang shoot out; it was a sting. Who knows who’s involved: Cops, D.A.’s office obviously, the mayor? How high does this go?” Ellison: “I don’t know, but I can tell by that look in your eye that you’re not gonna get any rest until you figure it out, so if you want to camp out in here, it’s all yours. Start digging.” [Ellison opens the door to Urich’s old reporter’s office.] Karen: “You serious?” Ellison: “I’m very serious.” [Karen pauses at the door to the office and a small smile crosses her lips. She slowly walks in and sees pictures and framed newspaper stories by Ben on the walls. She also sees a file on the desk full of stories Ben had found about Karen.] Ellison: “Get to work, ok?” (“Seven Minutes in Heaven”)

As the scene ends, Karen sits down at the desk, turns on the computer, gets out a folder of papers, and starts to type. She has received the torch passed to her by her mentors, Ben and Ellison. She has become a writer for real. In again trying to connect Karen Page as writer to students as writers, this Post-Process idea of interpretation is vitally important. During the COVID-19 pandemic, all sorts of misleading and false information has been disseminated. The same is true in connection to racial and justice issues. Systemic racism, sexual harassment, and social injustice persist in large part because



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the reality of these problems is not brought to light. We need to encourage our students to not simply accept the information they receive as fact. Instead, we need to help students learn to interpret the hidden goals and agendas that often shape how a story is told—for instance, why one source might call protestors “peaceful” and another source might call them “terrorists” or “looters.” It’s important, though, to be careful not to impose our own political views on our students. Of course, to some extent, this is impossible. We always carry our politics and ideologies with us into our classrooms (Bizzell). But, at the same time, students need to be given the freedom to write and interpret ideas from their own perspectives. In fact, instructors need to teach students to see that all writing is an act of interpretation and to see the power language has to change how we interpret the world. We might differ about which interpretation is the right one, and instructors have to trust students to make interpretations different from their own, but we also need to help them see that what they are doing is making an interpretation of the facts or reading an interpretation of the facts; we have to help them learn that the interpretation, though, is not the facts. Of course, there are real facts, whether it is the fact that Castle’s family was murdered in a police sting or that six million Jews died in the Holocaust or that people’s use of fossil fuels is changing the climate of our planet. We need to help students learn to see that when people claim to be arguing about scientific facts, they are actually trying to reinterpret those facts to change how we understand them. Critical reading followed by research will show, in the cases of climate change and the Holocaust, that the earth has grown steadily hotter and that millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Those are facts supported by science and historical artifacts, and there is ample proof of both. Karen, through her own research, finds proof of the police’s involvement in the murders of Castle’s wife and two children. What we need to do as teachers is to guide students toward becoming critical thinkers who can identify claims that offer rhetoric rather than fact. Again, this is imperative in an age of false news and misleading claims. Students must learn how to research the facts and how to interpret claims effectively. Just as importantly, instructors also need to help their students see that as they write, students are also interpreting their own lives. In particular, when writing instructors have students write stories about their lived experiences, they are helping students to interpret what those experiences mean and what kind of person they want to be (Pagnucci). When Karen Page uses writing to interpret her life in a new way, she gains a profound sense of power from this act of writing. As she writes, Karen gains confidence and she is able to speak against criminals like the Kingpin through her newspaper articles. Writing helps Karen leave her fears behind and we see her become more and more confident, enabling her to get others to also speak out against the Kingpin so

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that his intimidation and threats can be resisted. Instructors need to give students the same chance to use writing to interpret the meanings of their lives, to find their voices and their confidence and their inner strength. KAREN PAGE: PUBLIC WRITER The final key aspect of Post-Process Theory is that writing is always public. This matches nicely with Karen Page’s role as a reporter for the New York Bulletin. As a writer for a large metropolitan newspaper, Karen has a public forum in which to bring corruption to light. The public nature of Karen’s role as a writer is captured in a scene when she and Ellison interview a doctor who testified at the Frank Castle trial: Doctor: “After what happened at the courthouse, the mayor asked me to step down. I know I sound paranoid, but there have been people following me.” Ellison: “You’re a target because of what you know. So, whatever that is, they want to keep it in the dark. Karen has found something that will bring the truth to light.” Karen: “Here. Is this the body they asked you to make disappear?” Doctor: “I shouldn’t be talking to you.” Karen: “I understand you’re afraid. You can either continue to be trapped by what you’ve done, or you can tell us what you know so that we can go out and expose the real bad guys and then you can get back to living your life because this place . . . this place is not where your story ends.” (“Seven Minutes in Heaven”)

The doctor chooses to trust Karen and reveals that undercover police officers were involved in the shoot-out in which Frank Castle’s family were killed. But exposing the truth is not easy. The Punisher is framed to look like a cop killer, so that he ends up hunted across the city. A shoot-out at the New York wharf leaves twenty people dead including, or so it seems, Frank Castle. Karen survives because The Punisher saves her. She returns to the Bulletin’s offices to pack up her things, but Ellison argues with her not to give up: Ellison: “How’s the um, how’s the story coming?” Karen: “There is no story.” Ellison: “Why not?” Karen: “Because everyone’s dead. That’s why. Rheyes, Blacksmith, Frank Castle. They’re all dead. So, anyone who was involved in the cover up or

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screwed over by it is gone. So, there are no more stakes. There’s no more reason to write it.” Ellison: “So what am I supposed to fill Sunday’s paper with?” Karen [laughs bitterly]: “Crossword puzzles.” Ellison: “Look, look, Karen. I understand that this whole journalism thing is new to you, but a real journalist doesn’t just up and quit.” Karen: “That’s not fair.” Ellison: “That’s exactly fair. Stories don’t disappear. They change. They become different stories.” [Ellison keeps arguing with Karen and finally gets through to her.] Ellison: “So, is this story over?” Karen: “Fine. You’re right.” Ellison: “Yeah, I know. Get used to it.” Karen: “So what? So, it’s not an expose anymore. It’s what? A profile.” Ellison: “Yep.” Karen: “Which means, I need more sources, like personal contacts. Like someone who knew him outside the trial.” Ellison: “Tick tock, tick tock. Sunday’s comin’.” Karen: “I might be able to get someone. Maybe.” [Karen leans over to pick up some of her things.] Ellison: “Ah leave it. It’s time to face the truth, Karen Page. This is your home now. Go.” (“The Dark at the End of the Tunnel”)

Writing becomes Karen’s way of life. Even imagining incorrectly that Frank Castle is dead, she feels compelled to help people understand him better: the good man behind the violence, the father who never stopped grieving for his lost family. It is the drive to communicate with a public that gives Karen a reason to write. And this is not only a central focus of Post-Process Theory, but also the long-held final step in the traditionally understood writing process: publication. Writing for the public is critical to both these theories, interestingly enough. As Daredevil season 2 reaches its finale, we find Karen sitting before a blank computer screen, the cursor flashing. She looks troubled, a pen held in one hand:

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Ellison: “Karen Page, what the hell are you still doing here? It’s Christmas Eve. Shouldn’t you be home celebrating with all that family you can’t stand like everybody else? Oh no, I’m sorry. I must be projecting.” Karen: “I, um, I can’t seem to stop staring at a blank screen.” Ellison: “Writer’s block.” Karen: “Um?” Ellison: “There’s a cure.” [Holds up his drink.] “Scotch.” Karen: “That helps you write?” Ellison: “No. No. It just helps me not care so much.” Karen: “Yeah, well, that’s definitely my problem. I care probably too much about all of it. I don’t even know if I should start with . . .” [Puts her head in her hands with a sigh.] “. . . the hostage crisis or Frank or vigilante justice.” Ellison: “That’s just, that’s just garbage.” Karen: “Well it’s news.” Ellison: “No, it’s not. Not anymore. I mean all of the facts about that have been reported already. Look. If you, if you really want to torture yourself this holiday, go ahead, be my guest, but at least write something new, something different. Something that only you can write.” Karen: “Right. Which should be what?” Ellison: “The truth. Your truth, Karen. All of it. Everything that you’ve been through. Don’t pull any punches. This is New York. People think that they’ve seen everything. Prove them wrong. Tell them something they don’t know. Hell, I’d read the shit out of that.” [He takes a drink of his Scotch, and Karen smiles. Then he walks out of Karen’s office and comes back with a bottle wrapped in blue foil with a silver bow.] Ellison: “Happy Hanukkah.” Karen: “Scotch.” Ellison: “Mmm. You know. Just in case.” [Ellison points toward Karen.] Ellison: “I’ll expect 2000 words in my inbox before Santa shows up.” Karen: “You got it, boss.” [Ellison walks out and Karen leans over her computer. She begins to type.] (“A Cold Day in Hell’s Kitchen”)



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In this fabulous scene, Ellison, the crotchety old news editor, captures why writing matters so much: “Tell them something they don’t know.” Give readers something new. Give them your voice. Post-Process Theory calls on us to think about the public nature of writing, and in this scene, Ellison helps us to understand that this means we must help student writers to understand that each one of them has something important to say. Every time we write, we make new meaning, we create something unique because we interpret our situation through our own unique perspective on the world, built from our own lifetime of experiences. It is the public nature of writing that is key to teaching from a Post-Process perspective. For Karen, her writing as a journalist means she has to provide readers with something new to hear. For students, we need to make publication in a public forum part of their writing work, so that their words can find a real audience. In fact, there have been calls to add public writing to composition for some time now. Isaacs and Jackson have argued, “Students and their writing benefit from having a readership beyond that of the teacher, in short, of going public” (p. x). We can have students do this by having students publish in a variety of modes and genres using a broad range of new technologies (Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel). Technologies like blogs, wikis, and websites are especially useful for giving students a public platform for their writing. Such writing can, indeed, be highly beneficial: “Our students have shown us that writing for the public audience of the Internet can build community, foster rhetorical problematizing, and encourage understanding of difference” (Mauriello and Pagnucci 52). When students publish their writing in a public forum, they have a chance to impact other people and to receive feedback on their thoughts and ideas. In Daredevil it is writing for the public which gives Karen Page a chance to reshape her world for the better. Ultimately her public work lets her become a social justice writer of the best kind. KAREN PAGE: WRITER-HERO Like so many female screen characters, as Daredevil progresses Karen Page finds herself in the middle of one dangerous situation after another; bad guy after bad guy tries to kill her. But from that opening scene of a terrified Karen on her knees screaming in her apartment, she rises from being a damsel-in-distress to being a hero. Becoming a writer proves pivotal for Karen, and Post-Process Theory helps us understand why and how. Situated in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen amidst crime, police and political corruption, and the Kingpin’s murderous machinations, Karen interprets her life as a hero, not as a victim. She chooses to become a writer and to tell the public the truth about the people working to do good for the city.

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Karen Page, like other screen heroines, has an important role to play. She is a model for how people can take life into their hands and make their own destiny. Writing about another such great hero, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jennifer Marmo argues that the heroine’s day has come: “Traditionally women needed to be saved. They were sacrificed and used as pawns. Women have not been the hero. Buffy Summers changed that ideal for a generation of young women. She forged the way for other young female heroes” (156). Marmo is right, and Karen Page stands proudly in this new tradition. Yes, Daredevil does save her from time to time, but there even comes a day when she tells him, “I’m not yours to protect” (“.380”). Karen becomes her own hero through grit, courage, determination, and the power of writing. In the season 2 finale, we hear Karen read aloud the beginning of the first story she has written for the New York Bulletin. Her words tell us how far she has journeyed: What is it, to be a hero? Look in the mirror and you’ll know. Look into your own eyes and tell me that you are not heroic. That you have not endured or suffered or lost the things you care about most. And yet, here you are, a survivor of Hell’s Kitchen, the hottest place anyone’s ever known, a place where cowards don’t last long, so you must be a hero. We all are. Some more than others, but none of us alone. Some bloody their fists trying to keep the Kitchen safe. Others bloody the streets in the hope they can stop the tide, the crime, the cruelty, the disregard for human life all around them. But this is Hell’s Kitchen. Angel or devil, rich or poor, young or old, you live here. You didn’t choose this town. It chose you. Because a hero isn’t someone who lives above us, keeping us safe. A hero is not a god or an idea. A hero lives here . . . on the street, among us, with us. Always here but rarely recognized. Look in the mirror and see yourself for what you truly are. You’re a New Yorker. You’re a hero. This is your Hell’s Kitchen. Welcome home. (“A Cold Day in Hell’s Kitchen”)

Look in the mirror, and you’ll see a hero. Karen is a mirror for us and our very real ability to do good in the world, to be heroic. Karen Page just might be the greatest heroine Marvel has ever given us, a woman who doesn’t fight with superpowers but instead uses writing to bring truth and justice to the world. WORKS CITED “.380.” Daredevil, season 2, episode 11. Writ. Mark Verheiden. Dir. Stephen Surjik. Netflix, 2016. “AKA Smile.” Jessica Jones, season 1, episode 13. Writ. Jamie King, Scott Reynolds, and Melissa Rosenberg. Dir. Michael Rymer. Netflix, 2015.



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Bizzell, Patricia. “Opinion: Composition Studies Saves the World!” College English, vol. 72, no. 2, 2009. Breuch, Lee-Ann M. Kastman. “Post Process ‘Pedagogy’: A Philosophical Exercise.” JAC, vol. 22, no. 1, 2002, pp. 119–50. Buck, Scott, creator. Iron Fist. Marvel Television, ABC Studios, and Devilina Productions, 2017–2018. Coker, Cheo Hodari, creator. Luke Cage. Marvel Television and ABC Studios, 2016–2018. “A Cold Day in Hell’s Kitchen.” Daredevil, season 2, episode 13. Writ. Douglas Petrie and Marco Ramirez. Dir. Peter Hoar. Netflix, 2016. “The Dark at the End of the Tunnel.” Daredevil, season 2, episode 12. Writ. Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and Douglas Petrie. Dir. Euros Lyn. Netflix, 2016. Dobrin, Sidney I. Constructing Knowledges: The Politics of Theory-Building and Pedagogy in Composition. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. ———. “Paralogic Hermeneutic Theories, Power, and the Possibility for Liberating Pedagogies,” in Post-Process Theory: Beyond the Writing-Process Paradigm, edited by Thomas Kent, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999, pp. 132–48. Flower, Linda, and John R. Hayes. “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 32, no. 4, December 1981, pp. 365–87. Goddard, Drew, creator. Daredevil. Marvel Television, ABC Studios, DeKnight Productions, and Goddard Textiles, 2015–2018. “Into the Ring.” Daredevil, season 1, episode 1. Writ. Drew Goddard. Dir. Phil Abraham. Netflix, 2015. Isaacs, Emily, and Phoebe Jackson, ed. Public Works: Student Writing as Public Text. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Heinemann, 2001. Kent, Thomas. Post-Process Theory: Beyond the Writing-Process Paradigm. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. Lee, Stan (w), Bill Everett (p, i), Steve Ditko (i), and Sol Brodsky (i). “The Origin of Daredevil.” Daredevil #1 (April 1964), Marvel Comics. Lightfoot, Steve, creator. The Punisher. Marvel Television, ABC Studios, and Bohemian Risk Productions, 2017–2019. Marmo, Jennifer. “The Heroine’s Journey,” in Yin and Yang in the English Classroom, edited by Sandra Eckard. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, pp. 147–59. Martin, George R. R. A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1. New York: Bantam Books, 2011. Mauriello, Nicholas, and Gian S. Pagnucci. “‘Can’t We Just Xerox This?’ The Ethical Dilemma of Writing for the World Wide Web,” in Public Works: Student Writing as Public Text, edited by Emily Isaacs and Phoebe Jackson. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Boynton/Cook, 2001, pp. 44–52. Murray, Donald. “Teach Writing as Process Not Product.” The Leaflet, November 1972, pp. 11–14. Pagnucci, Gian S. Living the Narrative Life: Stories as a Tool for Meaning Making. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Boynton/Cook, 2004.

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Pagnucci, Gian S., and Alex Romagnoli. “Rebooting the Academy: Why Universities Need to Finally Start Taking Comic Books Seriously.” Works and Days, vol. 32, no. 1–2, 2014–2015, pp. 9–21. Pare, Anthony. “Toward a Post-Process Pedagogy: Or, What’s Theory Got to Do with It?” English Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 2, 1994, pp. 4–9. “The Path of the Righteous.” Daredevil, season 1, episode 11. Writ. Steven S. DeKnight and Douglas Petrie. Dir. Nick Gomez. Netflix, 2015. Petrie, Douglas, and Marco Ramirez. Defenders. Marvel Television, ABC Studios, Goddard Textiles, Nine and a Half Fingers, Inc., 2017. Romagnoli, Alex, and Gian S. Pagnucci. Enter the Superheroes: American Values, Culture, and the Canon of Superhero Literature. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013. Rosenberg, Melissa. Jessica Jones. Marvel Television, ABC Studios, and Tall Girls Productions, 2015–2019. “Seven Minutes in Heaven.” Daredevil, season 2, episode 9. Writ. Marco Ramirez and Lauren Schmidt. Dir. Stephen Surjik. Netflix, 2016. Sheridan, David M., Jim Ridolfo, and Anthony J. Michel. The Available Means of Persuasion: Mapping a Theory and Pedagogy of Multimodal Public Rhetoric.” JAC, vol. 25, no. 4, 2012, pp. 803–44. Trimbur, John. “Taking the Social Turn: Teaching Writing Post-Process.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 45, no. 1, 1994, pp. 108–18. Vygotsky, Lev S. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. Williams, Deborah. “How First-Year Comp Can Save the World.” Inside Higher Ed, 2 January 2020, https:​//​www​.insidehighered​.com​/views​/2020​/01​/02​/benefits​ -applying​-best​-aspects​-composition​-classes​-higher​-education​-general​-opinion. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Index

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 3 Allen, Grant, 164 Anderson, Sherwood, 170 Atlas, James, 27 Austen, Jane, 177 Ayers, David, 170 Baelo-Allué, Sonia, 82, 83, 88 Baldanza, Frank, 199 Balzac, Honore de, 162 Barnes, Djuna, 168 Bassnett, Susan, 32 Baym, Nina, 158 Blewett, Kelly, 37 Bond, Gwenda, 108 Bordo, Susan, 196, 197 Breuch, Lee-Ann M. Kastman, 211, 212 Bronte, Anne, 177 Bronte, Charlotte, 177 Bronte, Emily, 177 Brown, Carol A., 85 Buckley, Jerome Hamilton, 16 Butler, Judith, 190, 191, 198 Carlyle, Thomas, 161–62 Carpenter, Humphrey, 170 Castro, Joy, 178–79 Charles, Ron, 41, 45 Cholmondely, Mary, 160, 166

Cixous, Helene, 124, 125, 126, 129, 133 Cohen, Roger, 84 Davidson, Robyn, 27 Dean, Michael, 92 Dekker, Thomas, 70 Delafield, E. M., 179 Delaney, Paul, 169 Dickens, Charles, 16, 31, 32, 46, 160 Dixon, Ella Hepworth, 167 Dobrin, Sidney I., 210, 211 Donovan, Robert, 31 DuPlessis, Rachel Blau, 195 Dworkin, Andrea, 84, 124 Dziuban, Emily, 36, 37 Eisenstein, Zillah, 85 Eliot, George, 161, 166, 177 English, Elizabeth, 192 Erbland, Kate, 114–15 Everett, Percival, 3 Fausto-Sterling, Anne, 41 Felski, Rita, 189, 194 Finney, Gail, 196 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 177 Flower, Linda, 210 Ford, Ford Maddox, 170 Fortin, Nina, 158, 160 231

232

Fulkerson, Richard, 212 Gibbons, Stella, 168 Gissing, George, 162 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 16 Greene, Gayle, 188 Greene, Graham, 192 Greenfield, Sayre, 139 Hamsun, Knut, 162 Hanna, Adam, 170 Hardy, Thomas, 162, 163, 170, 180 Harrington, Erin, 125 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 3 Hayes, John R., 210 Heathcote, Charlotte, 39 Heilmann, Ann, 187 Hemingway, Ernest, 170, 177, 180 Hichen, Robert, 169 hooks, bell, 85 Huf, Linda, 177, 179 Hume, Kathryn, 82 Hunt, Violet, 173, 178, 180 Hunt, William Holman, 173 Hutcheon, Linda, 187, 188 Huxley, Aldous, 170, 180 Huyssen, Andreas, 158, 168 Jackson, Rosemary, 191 Jacobus, Mary, 188 Jaffe, Aaron, 171, 177 James, Henry, 162, 164, 169, 180, 189 Jameson, Storm, 175 Jensen, Robert, 40, Johnson, Claudia, 139 Johnson, James Weldon, 3, 13 Jones, Ann Rosalind, 50, 55, 65 Jonson, Ben, 70 Joyce, James, 170, 177, 180 Kakutani, Michiko, 84, 88, 98 Kaula, David, 60 Keating, Peter, 160 Keesey, Douglas, 83, 95, 96 Kent, Thomas, 209, 218

Index

Knechting, Bernd, 52 Knipperdolling, Bernd, 52 Knox, Ronald, 194 Kontou, Tatiana, 186 Kosiba, Sara, 176 Lamond, Julieanne, 159 Lanham, Richard, 50, 55 Latimer, Margery, 178–79 Lawrence, D. H., 179 Leggatt, Alexander, 50 Leiden, John of, 52, 53, 56 Lewis, Wyndham, 170, 177 Lichfield, Richard, 52 Llewellyn, Mark, 187 Loos, Anita, 168 Looser, Devoney, 136, 138 Lorber, Judith, 33 Lowry, Malcolm, 177 Lubbock, Percy, 189 Mandel, Naomi, 98 Mann, Thomas, 177 Mansfield, Katherine, 168 Marcus, Greil, 27 Marcus, Jane, 186 Marmo, Jennifer, 228 Matthys, Jan, 52 Matz, Jesse, 187 Maugham, Somerset, 170, 180 McCarthy, Cormac, 45 Merrick, Leonard, 163, 164 Monahan, David, 141 Mookerjee, Robin, 82 Morace, Robert, 94 Morrison, Matt, 117 Morrow, Patrick, 50 Mott, Jason, 3 Müller-Wood, Anja, 53 Muñoz, José Esteban, 190, 191 Murray, Donald, 209 Oates, Joyce Carol, 91 O’Connor, Flannery, 177 Ovid, 59, 60

Index

Pare, Anthony, 209 Paston, George, 167 Payn, James, 167 Percy, Walker, 192 Peters, Joan Douglas, 187 Plato, 51 Porter, Katherine Anne, 177 Powell, Dawn, 176, 177–78, 180 Priestly, Michael, 24 Prose, Francine, 15 Proust, Marcel, 177 Ramus, Peter, 59 Rich, Adrienne, 87, 202 Richardson, Dorothy, 174, 178, 180 Riddell, Charlotte, 167 Ridge, William Pett, 164, 165 Robins, Elizabeth, 165, 166 Robinson, Marilynne, 45 Rucka, Greg, 117 Said, Edward, 141, 145 Sales, Roger, 141 Salzman, Paul, 50 Sanchez, Francisco J., 41 Saraiya, Sonia, 109 Schoene, Berthold, 94 Schwyzer, Philip, 56, 58, 70 Scott, Bonnie Kime, 189 Self, Will, 93–94 Shuster, Joe, 104, 117 Sidney, Philip, 62, 69 Siegel, Jerry, 104, 117 Sinclair, May, 179 Snyder, Zack, 113, 114 Spenser, Edmund, 70 Stein, Gertrude, 168, 185–86 Steinem, Gloria, 84 Stephanson, Raymond, 58

Sterne, Laurence, 144, 145, 146, 150 Strayed, Cheryl, 37 Suzuki, Mihoko, 57, 59 Tanner, Tony, 91 Taylor, Christopher, 95 Taylor, Diana, 198 Tartt, Donna, 15 Thompson, Nicole Diane, 158 Thurman, Wallace, 3 Trilling, Lionel, 137 Trimbur, John, 209 Trollope, Anthony, 161 Troost, Linda, 140 Troy, Michele K., 179 Tuchman, Gayle, 158, 160, 168, 178 Updike, John, 180 Vechten, Carl Van, 3 Vidal, Gore, 180 Vorda, Allan, 92 Wajcman, Judy, 193 Waldeck, Franz von, 52, 53 Waugh, Evelyn, 192 Waugh, Patricia, 187, 190 Wells, H. G., 169, 178, 180 Wenke, John, 50 Wharton, Edith, 3, 173–74, 177, 178, 180 Wideman, John Edgar, 3 Williams, Deborah, 216 Williams, Raymond, 141 Wilson, Edmund, 171 Wodehouse, P. G., 170, 180 Wolfe, Thomas, 177 Woolf, Virginia, 34, 158, 159, 166, 168, 172, 177

233

About the Contributors

Megan A. Anderson is an assistant professor at Limestone University, where she teaches for the English Department and the Honors College. She is currently a PhD candidate at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and writing a dissertation titled “The Development of the Defiant: The Evolutionary and Revolutionary Elements of the American Female Bildungsroman.” She has previously been published in American Political Humor: Masters of Satire and Their Impact on U.S. Policy and Culture, a two-volume set edited by Jody C. Baumgartner. Her research areas include American literature, the bildungsroman, and subversion. Julie M. Barst is a professor of English at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan, where she teaches courses in nineteenth- to twenty-first-century British literature, ethnic and gender studies, postcolonial and gothic literature, literary theory, and composition. She is the director of the Ethnic and Gender Studies Institute and the EGS minor and is chair of the Humanities Division. She has published essays in Prose Studies; European Romantic Review; Pedagogy; Australasian Victorian Studies Journal; BRANCH: Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History; Honors in Practice; and the anthologies Victorian Ecocriticism: The Politics of Place and Early Environmental Justice and From Wollstonecraft to Stoker: Essays on Gothic and Victorian Sensation Fiction. Sarah Briest completed her PhD at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, with a study of the ritual functions and emblematic qualities of the early modern Lord Mayor’s Show. Until 2019 she investigated representations of death and burial in British seventeenth-century plague pamphlets at Freie Universität Berlin under the aegis of DEEPDEAD, a HERA-funded collaborative project involving literary scholars and archaeologists in the United Kingdom, Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic. She is currently studying metaphors of poetic inspiration and co-creativity as a member 235

236

About the Contributors

of the special research group SFB 1391 Andere Ästhetik at the University of Tübingen. Christopher Burlingame works as the writing consultant and study skills specialist at Mount Aloysius College. He earned his PhD from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, his MFA from Chatham University, and his BA from Juniata College. In addition to pedagogy, his research interests include transgressive fiction and adaptation. Cynthia Cravens is an associate professor of English at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, where she has taught courses on African American Literature and Cinema, American Literature and Culture, Introduction to Film, and Creative Writing workshops. Her work has appeared in South Atlantic Review, Film and History, American Book Review, and the collected volume Social Justice and American Literature. She currently serves as the founding director of the Center for Teaching Excellence. Sandra Eckard is a professor of English at East Stroudsburg University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses focusing on writing, literature, and education. In addition, she is the director of the Writing Studio, a tutoring space for student writers. Her research focuses are writing center theory, composition theory, comic book pedagogy, and teaching with popular culture. Her publications include The Ties That Bind: Storytelling as a Teaching Technique in Composition Classrooms and Writing Centers, Yin and Yang in the English Classroom: Teaching with Popular Culture Texts, and the Comic Connections series. Amy B. Hagenrater-Gooding is an associate professor at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, where she has taught for ten years. Her research interests deal with women’s studies and gender issues, as seen in her publications “The Impossibility of Male/Female Relationships in Willa Cather’s My Antonia” in CEA-Mag; and “Pink Is the New Green: Raising Little Shoppers from Birth,” featured in a collection from North Georgia University Press. Mother-work is her primary interest; she has forthcoming publications with Demeter Press dealing with mothering concerns in the French novel Beside the Sea and another piece focusing on Josh Mallerman’s Bird Box published with Lehigh University Press. Melanie D. Holm is an associate professor of literature and criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of expertise include the long eighteenth century, the rise of the novel, adaptation, and, especially, Jane Austen. She is the co-editor of Mocking Bird Technologies: Essays on the

About the Contributors

237

Comparative and Global Poetics of Bird Mimicry (Fordham University Press 2018) and of the forthcoming collection of essays Grimm Realities (McFarland). Her publications include essays on Margaret Cavendish, Henry Fielding, and Laurence Sterne, and she is currently writing a book on the development of the literary heroine. Elizabeth King was awarded her PhD from the University of New South Wales, Australia, where she currently works as a research associate. She has recently contributed to the third volume of British Women’s Writing from Brontë to Bloomsbury, edited by Carolyn Oulton and Adrienne Gavin, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan. She is currently co-editing a collection of essays entitled Reading the Contemporary Author: Fictionality, Authority, Narrativity with Alison Gibbons of the University of Sheffield Hallam. Alexandra Oxner earned her PhD in English from Vanderbilt University. She is the assistant director for inclusive teaching in the University of Notre Dame’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence, where she leads faculty development initiatives and specializes in issues of equity and diversity in higher education. Her literary research focuses on twentieth-century women writers, and she has presented her work for venues such as the American Literature Association, College English Association, and International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. Gian Pagnucci is distinguished university professor and chair of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include comic book pedagogy, academic leadership, and narrative inquiry. He is the author of Living the Narrative Life: Stories as a Tool for Meaning Making and co-author of Enter the Superheroes: American Values, Culture, and the Canon of Superhero Literature.