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    MODERNIST MOVEMENT 18901930

    18901930=difficult to define analyse, classify. Not all authors of this period=modernist. New tendencies,

    creative results. Intellectual change from 19th to 20th century. 19th century knowledge shaped by positivism,

    faith in detailed observation. Victoriam novel formed in an objective world, with empirical characters and

    actions. All changed in the 20th century and became uncertain insecure.

    *Cultural climate

    According to V. Woolf, world change with the opening in London of the postimpressionistic exhibition

    (December 1910) with V.Goh Czanne, Gauging, Picasso

    Interpretation of dreams=1913 Freud.

    Those mens emphasizes rational nature of 19th against the irrational unconscious, mythical of the 20th

    .Reality for these modernist=not only what we see, also lives in the surface of the things. Poet =able to

    abstract reality, giving reality the meaning of a fiction.

    Social results

    Modernist answer the disorganisation and chaos after the first world war, that is the destruction of civilisation.

    Art of this world interpreted Marx, Freud,and Darwin.

    World of the existential exposure to ABSURDITY to the meaningless war results.

    Movement of urban societies, show us city life, with the citynovel,citypoem.citynovels= represent every

    portions of reality.

    Revolts against the past, certainties, customs.

    IN USA= Americans attracted by European rich culture, want an American identity/culture=their Americans

    themes and techniques=not very revolutionary.

    La revolucin tcnica y temtica

    Towards sophistication and mannerism

    Movements

    Towards internal selfscepticism.

    Experimentalism suggest darkness,alination,desintegration, a difficulty to understand.

    Modernism: from romanticism to the esthetic idea (reaches a crisis)

    prose/novel= disseapearece of lineality.

    Worried about representing:

    *What we see ( complexity of the forms)

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    *The inner state of consciousness, of characters

    *A sense of nihilistic disorder behind the other surface of life and reality.

    * Worried to free the narrative art from the determination of a plot= FREE PLOT.

    This novelistic revolution concerned with formal matters: uses of language, design of a novel.

    victoriam fiction. More intimate, personal, sensitive. Each novel= a personal significance/Tecnihc

    PLOT=disappears subjective

    New view of time: continuous flow in the consciousness of the individual. Time relative

    Multiple view point , crossed references=back forward time.

    Nature of consciousness= man / woman not alone in a continuous line of events. Traditional English novel

    reproduces the real world. Winter= explore inner world of the character. Modernism describes what is under

    the surface. Traditionals novels reproduce reality though stories: people, time and place, but modernist novel

    change the telling of this reality for the use of language : metaphores, metonymies; builds a language.

    Authors disappear in modern novel. Not reflected directly in his work, not an omniscient narrator. Loneliness,

    isolation of the individual (main theme)

    Human dilemma between privacy end the need to communicate.

    VIRGINIA WOOLF (18821941)=her prose: delicate, experimental, fundamental for the suppression of the

    difference poetry/prose. Her writing= modernist, experimentalism: to the light house,the waves.She

    defended the feminine writing> A room of ones own(essay)

    FORTIFY> a woman writer finds a 1st technical difference= the form in the sentence because writing, created

    by men, so for women , writing sentence too rigid, heavy and artificial.because mans writing doesn't fit into

    the feminine personality, the woman writer makes for herself this feminine writing.

    NOVEL= 1st genre cultivated by women/poetry, drammer, essays=more difficult for them. Dorothy

    Richardson= 1st to use the internal monologue.

    For V.Woolf this internal monologue =psychological sentence of the feminine genre.

    Her sentences= full of ellipsis, hyphens, parenthesis, commas

    the waves=to and fromovement, rhythm, flashbacks, stream of consciousness. Many modernist men writers

    imitated her syntax of the sentence, Joyce created a free style, style capable of adapting this flowing of

    though.so , she didnt discover a feminine sentence, but she revolutioned poetic language, revolutionary

    adapting the stream of consciousness> only way to reach feminine thoughts.

    Her literary experimentation in form and contest for her past novels, reflected and unreal reality, determined

    by logic.

    Technical devices=

    1) reader is made to take part in the interpretation of the novel.

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    2) She tries to gain unity in the novel.(inmss Dalloway= the party: inthe waves= the sun;to the light house)

    She plays with time and place. In her books we can see time still, and characters though space or opposite>

    character still travelling though time ( mind , flashbacks)

    3) Time , place = part of the unreality of reality.

    4) stream of consciousness= characters opens more that complexity, though language and consciousness.

    5) complex use of symbolism; so, the writer has to create another world by suggestion and symbolism.

    words= musical; elements of that symbolism.

    symbolist novel; different for external reality.

    V.Woolf uses a feminine language full of symbolism. This symbolism expressed in her writings with:

    hyphens, parenthesis, semicolommes these devices indicate briefness and independence of sensations. In her

    literary experimentation= 1st characteristic= there is NOT PLOT. Modernist novels try to escape this

    convections of story telling; for V. Woolf ordinary life= not logical.Mrs Dalloway>V.Woolf show us life is

    state of constant creation and change. Characters= aware of the past time. Difficult to follow characterssthoughts . this moment which Virginia describes= associated whit similar past experiences>FLASHBACKS.

    In characters= similar to Joyce, in the method of organitation.Mrs Dallowayorganised in a similar way to

    Ulysses,and both, associated with 2 big cities= London & Dublin. Relationship among characters who have

    shared experiences together. Self consciousness, union bound among them. From time to time characters

    sensibility ends, and there are many moments of revelation (in Joyce too).

    JAMES JOYCE (18821941)=His literary career divided in three phases:

    1 Ireland>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    2 Austria>Ulysses

    3 France>Finnegars Wake

    WithA Portrait of the ArtistandUlysses= center of the modernist experience in modernist fiction. Joyce

    influenced by symbolistic period in France, Germany; England. Joyce born in the period called= CELTIC

    RENNASSANCE= two idealist for the limited reality of Ireland. Ibsen = he took him as a model; Joyce= His

    own style. 3 characteristics = relationship of being Irish: his nationality, religion and language.

    *Nationality= he had Irish characters= humorous, imaginative, eloquent; In A Portrait of the Artistwe find a

    desire of independence, frustrated with the downfall of Ireland's political leader. He represents the situation of

    Ireland, with the confusion and chaos in fathers house.

    * Religion= Ireland's Joyces religion= CATHOLIC especially his mother. InA Portraitdifferent stages of

    Jesuit education . his literary technique full of ecclesiastical symbolism.

    *Language= own language. Latin (church) and Irish popular speech.

    He lived in semiblindness, so, he use his imagination a lot. Used auditory skills more than visual. Described

    mind and sounds he heard. STYLE= raise/fall of rhythm; words= magical.A Portrait=naturalist tradition;

    Finnegars Wake= symbolist;Ulysses= naturalist and symbolist.

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    He doesnt invent, he uses his own experience. But his imagination gives difficulty to interpret experiences.As

    Woolf, interested in everyday routine and devices of human behaviour.from photographic realism of the life

    to esthetic impressionism. Words= control experience worried with : city (finding order in city) and art. for

    him ,we all get moments of truth and revelation, and the writer has to recollect this moments. Style

    characteristic:

    Novelistic worried with sinesthesia (mixture of sensations) e.g. heavy & silence.

    Form, though sequences of consciousness.

    Relation characters/ time.

    Dialogue ( use )Dubliness, A Portrait

    Reporter of Irish life. He tells us conversations he hears with a lot of closer variations.

    Relationship art/ life and musical preoccupation ( with sound of words/ repetitions)

    structure sentence= according to musical patterns.

    The Dead> although they are opposites, Dickens ( London ) and Joyce ( Dublin) , they are similar in

    recreation of cities that they loved like chroniclers of life and culture.Dublinesses>more conventional work.

    Influenced by late 19th short fiction. But he tries to produce something new different. Many critics> these

    stories from naturalistic tradition (French) :objectivity; irony and sobriety.

    Humority subjected to rules. 15 short stories= slices of life. For him, human situation in Dublin> paralysis.

    Describes on externally poor moral/ intellectual/spiritual condition similar toHeart of Darkness.

    Environment opped to the Celtic renaissance.

    Influenced by Ibsen> upper class society destroyed by a revelation of events from the past.

    Dublinesses> 15 short stories= frustration, defects, degradation of the soul with the life in Dublin.

    Incompatible= the solution of the soul/ life in Dublin.

    The Dead >Gabriel Oconery destroyed when he knows a past, but not forgotten passion of his wife for a

    young man. Gabriel similar to Joyce= literate, college, teacher, works for a Dublin newspaper, European,

    disapproves Ireland naturalistic aspiration. His own culture, superior to other people in Dublin. No salvation

    to Gabriel because, he doesnt know he is living with a ghost who make a dead man of him. Irony at the end

    prose, gradually, dies too, beginning= very naturalistic approach, but later, change in perspective: story more

    private, intimate and personal. The symbols are: snow ( death), horse ( no future), art (side which will save

    him ), east/west ( beginning of life and death ), food ( the holy bread and wine) and sea ( stillness).

    Similar toHeart of Darkness> in frustration defeats, a degradation of the soul. Describes an externally poor

    moral/ intellectual/ spiritual situation in Dublin / Africa.

    Life in Dublin/ Darkness= as a paralysis; difficult the salvation of the soul, incompatible with live in Dublin/

    Darkness; indirect narration, symbolism of the story:

    Dublinesses: snow/ horse/ art/ food/ east6west/ sea.

    Heart of Darkness: Kurtz/ trip/ wildeness/ sea/ light/ darkness.

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    D.H LAWRENCE=aware with the modernist novel ( as V.Woolf), that is a fine consciousness higher poetic

    realism Joyce= European writer, French naturalistic and symbolist. But Lawrence was English, much closer in

    a spirit and in his view of the novel to Elliot. As Fielding and Elliot, also a moralist and novelist. The novel is

    used to moralised the human beings. Lawrences fiction, the main character, always struggling to develop into

    a whole character. So, Lawrence moralist, novelist, short story writer, poet, travel books, literary critic As

    novelist, three main novels:

    Son and Lovers(1913), The Rainbow( 1915) and Women in Love ( 1920). Plot inSon and Lovers= struggle

    between his father and his mother. Father : miner, illiterate, often drunk, but a very vital man. Mother = highersocial class, more intellectual and refined; result= UNNHAPPY MARRIAGE. The children are in the middle

    of his struggle father/mother. One of the most autobiographical novel by Lawrence= first in his mothers side,

    but he would change his mind later. We can see in the novel the idea of the destruction of the instinctive man

    by an spiritual woman. In Lawrences fiction 3 phrases:

    1)The autobiographical (19091912)= themes like male/female world, he thinks that women destroyed mans

    personality (Aaron Rod). Dualism mind/body= /spiritual/physical) = against the idea of making the body

    prisoner of the mind,. Antagonism, towards the father and the authority. Degradation of the man from his

    potentialities.Sons and Lovers> a great example of bildungsroman: mind= mother, body= father. . conflict

    mind/body> mother/father. Paul caught in a Edipal situation. He fights for a normal relationship with his

    father and mother. He seeks spiritual attachment in Miriam and physical attachment in Clara. One mainproblem in the novel > difficulty of Paul to act as an integral man. He seemed by Lawrence as product of the

    industrial society. FRUSTRATION > main characterise of this novel autobiographical.

    Emotionalajustment to the modern Era (19131920) = the rainbow> super description of realism of the

    19th century.Women in Love . In some passages of the rainbow influenced by Elliot and Thomas Hardy.

    But the story describes mainly the changing psique relationship, because England was changing from a

    rural to an urban society. Whit this novel, for the first time, Lawrence explores the basic sexual relationship

    of the characters> describes also, the prissionate life of the individuals as a result of the social revolution of

    the past hundred years. Ursula> most important character> the modern woman who explores the physical

    world more than the spiritual. Her search is at time homosexual, but after she became pregnant by an polish

    officer. She losses her baby, but driving her convalescence. She sees the rainbow promise in the sky.

    Rainbow represents the possible return to human values. Women in Love>represents the industrial world

    obsessed by money, possessions, lacks of humanity. But at the end of the novel this search for human

    values will be achieved. mind

    Mystic prophet (1920 )= individual human divided

    body :physical achievement

    Lady Chaterlys Laer 1929= banned for many years.

    He wanted sex to be the source, the center of life. Mens lack of values and mechanical man obsessed only

    with work and money. Lawrence preferred a dynamist style passionate and full of energy.( dont deprive his

    prose of beauty)

    experimental quality> he looks for the inner reality of men

    fictional characters

    unconscious part of woman and man > difficult to read Lawrence

    for his problem to express emotions and feelings.

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    Sons and Lovers>great example of the modern man/woman and the loneliness of the individual, lack of

    communication, split between oneself and the other self, notion of harmony.

    Settlement= city/country= this difference involves the lack of harmony between man and society.

    In the 20th century, man satisfied with social/political/economical achievements, but when he /she receives

    pressure from society, takes refuge in nature.= a kind of mother; protection; man/woman takes refuge in it

    when they feel alone or strangest in an hostile world. Physical location represents the moral situation. Dualism

    city/countrycity/nature. Natural/industrialized men. Ambition destroys nature.

    Nature> freedom, intict, purity,passion.

    Industrialisation> slavery. Industrial man, society> creation of man which has turned against him and made

    him loses his identity, his naturality. Lawrence proposes a rediscovery of man though nature. Mind/body>

    antagonistic forces. Paul has been searching for light, but finally he tends to darkness. Pauls choice: looks for

    protection and find the true reality of his being. Human relationship> family= no harmony, no balance. Mrs

    Morell attracts the children to her side, to hate the father, but paradoxically she is very conscious with the idea

    of family.

    Relationship Paul/woman= incompletely, unsatisfactory.

    Mrs Morell married Mr Morell because she wanted his characteristics, his nature and to change him. But they

    don't accept each other. The way they are. Mrs Morell> divided character= mother/wife/woman.

    Miriam> an idealist character. Nature joins. Paul and Miriam, both interested in nature.she is idealistic in the

    area of love. At first, she feels like an victim of love, but lated she will act romantically by letting Paul go

    with Clara. For Miriam sex not essential in love; she gives spiritual love. She is not ready., so, Paul needs a

    boding love, so, looks for a different kind of relationship(failure relationship).

    Clara> body= woman married, but abandm him. Represented like a beautiful flower that grows forgotten,

    waiting for someone who loved her. Her personality very attractive to Paul. With sexual relationship with

    Paul, she seems to come back to life again. The problem> Clara needs someone who needed her. But Paul is

    not sure. The special spiritual relationship Miriam/Paul is something that Clara will never have.(fail of

    relationship). So, the only woman whom Paul has ever felt joined, is his mother> the person who understand

    him perfectly well, his peace. It is a very easy way of loving for him, but, of course, it is not a complete love

    and, at the end, he reaches what he need.

    PERIODO DE ENTREGUERRAS Y POSGUERRA.

    Novela tras modernismo con la primera guerra mundial=In literature very sterile period, no good writers,

    novels very insignificant in literature. After stimulant period modernism, new dull, boring, poor era in

    England. On the contrary, very productive in America. English novel= back to traditional novel and fictional

    culture. With the 2th w.w, another division in England social/cultural life= end of the empire and coming of

    the welfare state. Literary revolution. English fiction remains the same traditional forms. Emphasis on

    alienation, emptiness, negation> political phenomenon which results from wars, economic depression,

    increase of population. Cynicism about culture; Mark, Nietzsche, Freud= questioned if life is not developing

    into a world of frustration or falsity.society, establishment> questioned. Marxist, Catholics= tried to search for

    other, but this search= unsuccessful. Democracy, totalitarsm, Marxism> had turned unsatisfactory. The only

    solution for the irrational man is the individual experience. Man/woman have to explore inside him/her.

    Proletarian novel=years of unemployment, huger, frustration, few expectation in the western world. But

    English novel of protest seemed more moderate than the American novel. Period of rage of working classes,

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    proletarian. In the proletarian novel they reflects their thoughts, aware of differences between them and

    upper classes; they should organices themselves to improve their lifes and reconstructing society to suppress

    economic classes. RALPH BATES= revolutionary writer and man in Spain revolution

    The Olive Field (1936)=defective in telling, but strong in ideas proposed weak, grey novels.

    Henry Green=novelist, industrialist= write sophisticated satires, described the changing class structure after

    2nd W.WLiving(1929)best English novel of factory life. (showed the greyness of working class novels) style:

    laconic, repetitive. Themes: reorganisation of world and gitels who want marriage and children with a manwho abandon her.

    Catholic novelist=(reality chroniclers ) 20th century; concerned with finding something to believe in. To

    find values one way is the catholic view of life, than other groups.Evelyn Wough=one of the most brilliant

    satirical novelist of his days, but become more serious writer.

    Angry Young Men=50s period of class rebellion in England.Angry Young Menrepresented this British

    rebels. Describe humans beings who want to be accepted by themselves and dont want to be absorbed by the

    establishment. Group of intellectuals, most of them of working/low classes and universitaries. Roge for class

    distinction, pride in their lower middle class origin. these writers criticised British establishment, British

    universities, Royal Family and the postwar welfare state. John Wains 1st novelHurry or Downcriticised allthis. In the early 60s the impetus of the movement finished and was soon to be replaced by other social and

    cultural expressions.

    Alegories y Satires=

    Allegory: story in verse or prose with a double meaning. Usually, in the allegory Wickedness or fooly=

    censured. In the western civilisation of 20th century there are many different ways to express in literature the

    emptiness, social criticism and loneliness. Fantasy is one of them, especially in the 2nd half of the 20th c.

    Although fantasy, forgotten in Gothic and romantic literature, end of the century stimulates

    imagination/terrors of the people. Also, in this end of the century there are omens, predictions of the end of

    the world, and science fiction novels. Apocaliptical moments= explosion of atomic bomb, bring the literature

    the questioning of man and civilization.

    Orwell(19031950) and Golding (19111993), present an imaginative world to express their concerns.

    ORWELL (19031950)=(Eton) attracted by Marxism, but his disillusion with Russian communism produced

    such a bitter work:Animal Farm(1945). At first, he considered the common man lets himself be manipulated

    by demagogues. As a journalist he knew very well that it was very easy to manipulate people through

    language.Animal Farm=satirical essay of Russian revolution. As a fabule, characters are animals, treated as

    if they were human beings, but, as an allegory of power, those animals' represents very specific components

    of society. Characters Molly (turn coat, pigs) never work and grow fatter and fatter. Dominate the others

    animals. In the final game between napoleon (Stalin) and Pillangton (human), the spectators find it impossible

    to distinguish between pigs and human beings.

    SATIRE= a form of writing, holding up a person of society to ridicule or showing the wickedness or fooly.

    Literary genre that makes fun of people, themes, situations, through exaggerations and distortion to attack,

    criticise them.

    MOSES=the Jesuits, church. Boxer,Clover=working class who work without thinking.

    PLOT=inspired by a dream of old mayor (are of the pigs). Animals of the menor farm expell the farmer and

    establish an animals republic they want to create a free, equal community (parallels Russian history from

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    1917 to tehean conference). In this work, Orwell is not only sacrificing communism, but also criticise mans

    stupidity. Characters= animals very significant. Human beings can be manipulated as animals. Even thought

    they are the intelligent race.

    Moral fabules=traditional in English literature sincethe Pilgrims Progressof John Bunyan .In 1678

    Allegories with a moral, not new, are still in fashion in the 20th c. but this allegories likeAnimal Farmhave

    more misanthropy. Fantasy used in 20th century to express pessimism ,criticism by Orwell Golding. For

    Golding, theme of the novel is a attempt to show the defeats of society.The moral of the novel is that society

    depends on the nature of individual not on a political system.Golding> sceptic to any political system;represented this scepticism inLord of the Flies.Lord of the Flies likeThe Pilgrims Progressshows how the

    religious meaning has been changed.He descended from a family of the schools masters. Destined to be

    scientific, but studied literature. He joined the Royal Navy in the 2nd w. w, he shows the atrocities that human

    being was capable of doing.he observed that evil is something inherent in the human hearth is the bases of

    Lord of Flies.the novel has a lineal structure because it shows the condition of the children at the beginning

    and at the end of the novel. There are three sessions in the novel:

    1)The arrival= they arrive at an island, is the paradise for the children and they dont have a moral authority.

    The life is easy they want to create their own utopian society free from adult restriction.Meetings are very

    important in the plot , they mean reason, law, order and communication among the children.

    2)The beginning of break up this society =divided into 2 groups and points of view so they have 2

    leaders.They became enemies, lost the innocence.

    3)The disappearance of all civilisation and the lack of communication= the novel represented by school boys

    with no adult to control them.The evil nature appears when they have hurt Piggie.

    *Ralph= sensible and natural leader. He is happy at the beginning but this disappears because he observes the

    fail of his leadership.

    *Jack= violent , selfconfident.he is another leader. Always laughing at Piggie who represents reason and Jack

    represents istint

    *Piggie= physically imperfect, intelligent, reasonable. He is Ralphs complement he cannot survive from

    himself.he need Ralph and his personal force.

    *Simon= truth and reason. He has faith in humans beings.

    *Rogert= irresponsible, sadist, insint of an animal.

    There are three important things represented in the novel:

    Description of the nature of man.Against the 18th c. idea that man was good an victim of

    society.Golding shows the disappearance of civilised control, go to brutality.Golding goes back to

    Adan and Eva and the original fault.

    Fair, always present in mans soul.InLord of the flies ; progresses and provocates the degeneration

    and violent.

    Innocent and experiences; innocence is losing from day to day; for example killing an animal

    represents the frontier between innocent and experences.there are a lot of pessimism in the novel.

    WOMEN NOVELIST OF THE 2ND HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY=

    Difference between books that have been written by women an a female literature>express womens

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    experience and point of view. In the 19th c. women novelist /imitators, in the 20th c./innovators; tried to write

    like men.in the 20th c. they didnt have a literature of their own. Contributed to the literature of the age: Jane

    Austen, Emily Bronte; George Elliot. In 19th c. the problem of women writing:

    n woman writers, reduced to small group.

    Male critics saw womens writing in their own idea of what feminity have to be.

    Womens writing considered as an exception to the rule. Is considered in a different way from men's

    writing.

    Since the 60s in England and America 1968 there has been an enthusiasm for the idea of the emergence in

    literature of a female selfawareness. Many critics considered now that women writers have established a

    pattern in literature.this female literary tradition comes from the relationship between women writers and their

    society. So is the favourite gender, more important than poetry or drama.reason= the novel has been the only

    literary gender in which women have participated.according to V.Woolf this dedication is due to several

    reason:

    Novel: flexible, women can adapt it to her necessities of expressions.

    Other genders: created by men, so, for women, very difficult to change that male language.

    Lack of money, time, training.(difficult to write poetry or drama)

    History and culture also contributed to the novel.20th c.=age of prose,so, some writers adopted the novel male

    & female.

    Most of the 19th c. phase of imitation (women imitated male writing) from the appearance of the main

    pseudonym to the death of George Elliot.

    1) Phase of imitation 18401880 (feminine phase)

    18801920women won female vote (feminist phase= protested against values and traditions)

    1960?female phase, Margaret Drabble, Muriel Spark.

    With the death of many young men writers (1st w.w.) women writers achieved a national literary tradition that

    had excluded them.

    Last generation of victoriam women writers who had been born 18801900 developed from feminist phase to

    female phase of selfexploration of a search of identity. But lack of confidence from women feminist

    behaviour.

    Feminist writers retracted a separated literature of inner space. This literature try to look for safety from the

    man world.V.Woolf in the late writings, moved to social realism.However many woman writers in 1940 and

    1950 continued to work in a conservative way (not influenced by modernism).

    Ivy ComptonBurnett famous novelist who are closely connected to a female tradition in the postwar

    English situation, they seem to represents a passive rather than an active community.

    In the 1960 the female novel entered a new undinamic phase influenced by the international womens

    movements.the contemporary women's novel observes the traditional form of the 19th c. realism. But they

    operated in the context of the 20th c. Freudian and Marxist analysis of existence.

    DORIS LESSING:she was involved in communist party and peace movement. She probes in her novels the

    representation of political questions from a woman point of view.this let her to adopt a variety of political

    perspective and literary tecniqs.The golden Notebookbegins selfexploration period and female subjectivity.

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    In the 20th c. greater social possibility than before, New view of woman . Golden Notebook describes best the

    condition of contemporary women. The time is the idea of a free woman as illusory, as the idea of free

    society. The protagonist Ana and Molly seem to live free live, they live like men. Ana has known financial

    problem, she has not domestic bounds but because of this freedom she feels emotionally unprotected, she

    needs love and protection. Very difficult to live a free existence. Show 4 notebook; black, red, blue, and

    yellow. She finds difficult to achieve integrity. The terms work/ love, independence/ dependence, solititude/

    relationship are oppositions and contradictions which are difficult to solve and she has to make choices. Ana

    pays a price and this is another important topic of the novel.

    MARGARET DRABBLE:Her literary production A Summer Birdcage, The Garrick year The Millstone.

    Contemporary woman novelist, follow a female self discovery phase. Treated topics= adultery, abortion,

    lesbianism, prostitution. Based on Victorian writers, but with personal artistic autonomy. Created an own

    literature.

    Contemporary women writers= socercess of modern novel, chronology, myth, stream of consciousness,

    flashbacks. Heroines full of unexpressed rage.

    In 1990s all these writers are developing into new phases.

    3 phases: feminin, feminist, female, combined in the second half of 20th c. with a social political concern.

    Drabble the most traditionalist= in her past she used material from the Bronte novels as myths in their own

    writings. Drabble has write about 19th women novelist. Her characters names of great victoriam heroines:

    Rosamunde, Jane, Sara, Emma.. Her protagonist talk about 19th c. writers heroines and topics= in some ways

    based on the 19th c. womens life. She is the novelist of maternity.

    The three novels develop the topic of survival, difficult for a personal independence life, Sara, Emma and

    Rosamunde uses the term survival several times.novels by women or about women were concern with a

    marriage plot. When the protagonist was married that was the end as an heroin, the interested return when she

    was a mother.

    To control their lives and to achieve independence is impossible in the 20th c. modern woman is still a dark

    one.

    Drabble tries to show in her fiction how difficult is to be for a woman to succeed in modern society.

    The Millstone=conceiving a child from her first and only sexual relationship.

    The Garrick year=responsibilities of tensions bet6ween domestic life and professional life. Emma becomes

    the first woman T.V. newsreader.

    Drabbles heroines as representative of high social classes have been attacked because they dont represent the

    stereotype English woman.they are privilege women.

    Rosamunde has to be selfish if she wants to survive.The Millstoneshows the isolation of human being with

    an enorurmous clarity.

    Drabbles quality is controlling intelligence. She has a quite modest style.

    MURIEL SPARK:Edinburgh. She became writing when she became catholic. Catholicism a big influence.

    She doesnt search her work religiously, she even cricizes.The Prime of Miss Jean Broodie.She described an

    elitist, strict high school.she likes to analyse group of people and attacks social instutions as marriage, school,

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    religious communities, resting houses for old people.In the Prime of Miss J. Broodiewe have individualism

    and collectivism. Miss Brodie controls her students. She even makes one of these students; go to Spain to

    fight for Franco.

    Fascism represented not only in the teacher also in the ideas of her students.

    The main topic on the novel is Calvinism in a very ironical way, the girl cannot think for her selves. Three

    main themes Individualism, Calvinism and Catholicism. Catholicism and Calvinism are different in the idea

    of destinity; catholic face one can chose, Calvinism depends on the God.

    METAFICTION:is a term given to a fictional writing. There are questions about the relationship between

    fiction and reality.In the last 20 years novels involve questions, refexions and uncertainties. The connection of

    these doubts is referring as metafiction because they explore the theory of fiction through the practise of

    writing fiction. The term of fiction was originated in an essay by Williams Gass.

    Since 1960s there was an interest in the problem of how novelist construct and meditate their experiences.

    Language reflects a coherent meaningful and objective world is no longer too. Language in the last 20 years is

    considered as an independent and selfcontained system which generates its own meaning. Novels survived

    trough constant renovation of language.

    It is impossible to describe an objective world because the observer always changes the observed.

    Metaficcion process= how it is possible to describe anything? The main problem is to represents the world.

    Novelist trough experiences of illusions, deception often represents the world. Metafiction doesnt hide

    fiction; try to adjust what someone says to what someone feels.

    The linguistic develop the metalanguage=it is a language which takes another language as an object.

    Saussure= the signifite is the concept evoque by the world so a metalanguage is a lang. Metafiction may

    concerned itself with particular conventions of the novel.

    METAFICTION AND THE NOVEL TRADITION.Patricia Waugh argues the metafictional practice has

    become very important in the fiction of the last 20 years. The term metafiction is new, the practice is as old as

    the novel. The language appears to mix with the real world. When we study metafiction we are studding

    identity. Metafiction shows an exaggerate the foundations of the real world.

    Bakhtin refered to the process of relativitation of the real world as the dialogic. Bakhtin defines as a dialogic

    the novels that introduce a direction into the world and this direction is opposed to the original directions.

    Bakhtin consider dialogic against the omniscient author.

    The positivist and empirist view of the world no longer exists in metafictional novels.

    Muriel Sparks novels are metafictional novels without organised plots. David Lodge considered M. Spark is

    a metafictional novelist because of the use of metaphors, metonyms.

    The Drivers Seat=centre on the enigmatic nature of female in the 20th c. Liz constructs her death as a

    suicide. The reader doesnt understand the motivations and the critic has not find answers to the question Why

    did she do it ?

    In flevers Madame Bovarygives a lot of explanations about the suicides. But female suicide as an enigma are

    against 19th c.

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    The drivers Seatis one of the best examples of this enigmatic nature of female suicide in womens literature.

    There are a double enigma in the novel of death and feminity.The novel goes between complicity and

    criticism of this solution for women. The mysterious death is the murder by a sadist psychopath. Her suicide

    can be considered as the desperate effort of an invisible woman to render her individuality. The way in which

    she dies can be seen as unique to her. Like many others novels where the heroin commits a suicide; the

    question is whether death is the only way of real feminine power of selfarticulation.

    Answers are only hypothesis. The enigma is search in the interpretation of insignificant details. The task of

    the detective and the reader consists of deducing some certainties to solve the enigma of her death and her life.Basic questions0 How?, Who? and Why?.

    Spark reproduces the principles of detective stories. The conflict is between a public identity and a private

    identity that is characteristic of feminity in a collection of womens fictional and autobiographical.

    Her flat clean, neutral minimalist reflects emptiness in her life. It is the tragedy of a life with no stimulant

    activities and no personal relationshionships. 10 years before the narrative takes place, the same time, she

    starts to work as a secretary, the flat hasnt change.

    Death is the manifestation of others death particularly the death of herself.

    Liz is 35 years old according to Freud the womens like Liz the only solution is the death. In the novel is

    explained her social and psychological death. Liz has nothing to lose because she already feels half death.

    Freud, aggressiveness is turn round upon the self.

    You need a holiday She prepares this journey,change in personality the day before taking the plane.She looks

    for the necessary dress. Getting the new dress often symbolizes a new hope. The clothes in many women

    believe believe that they can use and change their own selves. Life enthusiasm with her death dress shows the

    new hope that she has in a different life. She is obsessed with projecting an image in their suicide, costs her

    image when shes planning her death. The image is different from her personality. She wants to disguises her

    dying body like an actress and in this way she alienate her self in one of the most enigmatic questions of the

    novel.

    Elaine showalter explains that a woman creates her identity closing her dress.

    She gets throw away her passport; symbolizes the disappearance her public image.there are a contrast between

    public image and underline itself this topic is explained inthe public Image.

    Liz death is clearly voluntary, is carefully planed and it is controlled by her. The person who executed her

    death is not herself is a psychopath. Liz convinces the sadist to murder her. She seduces her victim and she

    anticipates her own death.

    The novel creates an example of what may happen when a woman loses control of her life and carries out her

    aggressive fantasies. Liz satisfies her sadism in her own.

    Trough the centuries this aggression has been thrown against womens self because it was suffer for them.

    DRABBLE: WOMEN AND CHILDRENS.Women and childrens remains constancy. We cannot say that

    all her novels are writing about intelligence and cultivated woman like Rosamunde. Four of her main novels

    have references to 19th womens writers.

    A Summer birdcagerecallsPride and Prejudice.

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    The MillstonerecallsThe Scarlet Letter.The millstone is about an intellectual woman only sexual enchanter

    produces an illegitimate child.

    InThe Garry YearEmma progresses from a self consciously isolated to a participant in the events of her life.

    InThe Ice's AgeAnthony having failed as an academic entertainer finds himself in the middle of a military

    coup. Contemplating strange moralcode by which he is behaving he is acting.

    Although she is influenced by victoriam novelist she also connected to modern writers in the sense ofcorncense of life, like marriage, family, children.

    Drabble insists in moral problems0 family background, children, husband & wife, provides the basic material

    of her novels. Treated without violence, madness, sexualperversity, which are associated with modern

    fiction.

    InThe Garry yearEmma considers her marriage with the actor David Evans, as a good gamble. Each of them

    thinking that the other has the qualities for which it is worth to get marries. When she gets pregnant is

    transformed by the birth of her daughter into relief. Having a daughter is something common, but she is proud

    of this commonness.

    Rosamunde finds that pregnancy brings awareness of the facts and feelings of maternity. Rosamunde thinks

    that is something simply and common, but it is something which she has lost and now she recovers.

    InJerusalen,the GoldenClara (victoriam name) is looking for an emotional situation dense and complex. The

    answer is in family group.

    With the exception ofThe Ice Age, all the novels stick very closely to the women experience.

    Drabble was in her third pregnancy when she wrotethe Millstoneher pride prevents her from telling

    George Mathews, her childs father. At first, she thinks about an abortion. In the end, she decides to keep

    the baby when her older sister admises putting the child up for adoption.everything is miraculously into

    places.

    Rosamundes parents ignorant of her daughter problem, give her their elegance and big flat. Lidia Reynolds,

    her friend shares the flat with her.

    The only difficulty is with the National Health Service. The birth is easy and octavia, the child is a healthy and

    beautiful baby. Doctor discovered a hard defeat which requires a difficult operation. The child survives,

    Rosamunde realizes the vulnerability.

    Rosamunde meets George and she takes him home; she lies about Octavias age, so he ca have no idea of his

    paternity. They are not able to stay together.

    She wanted to communicate, the importance of a child, the feelings that a mother has for a child, and the

    changes that a chid brings to ones life.Rosamunde cannot go to her parents and fiends with her problems. A

    woman with a problem which is a dryness of spirit. Mixes confident, covardis and female stereotyping. The

    major point is that independence in a human being is double h; on the one hand is a virtude but it is also an

    impediment because it is separated people similarly the baby Octavia is a contradiction because her birth is

    humiliated, painful and frightening. She will change Rosamunde and the experience of having a baby is

    important and regarding. The bad luck of getting pregnant became good luck because throw the child (who

    name of a famous feminist Octavia Hill), Rosamunde experiences real love and becomes more human.

    Questions= How can be independent and have other people dependence? How can a person intelligent,

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    beautiful and lucky, feel lonely? Novel is not so different from other Drabbles novels because the protagonist

    is very similar to other heroines; she is emotionally vulnerable and struggling to be both a woman and a

    human.

    Parents painted as socialist even belong to a high social class. They believe comfort is dangerous to the soul

    and they look for ways to punish themselves. Rosamundes father is an economist professor who helps under

    develops countries. Against capitalism, the reason they dont put their flat to rent and Rosamunde take it. She

    notes that her life is too pleasant, she ought to do something unpleasant, that why she tries to be a good

    teacher.

    Rosamundes mother had educated her daughters to be equal. Rosamunde consider it as a disaster, her older

    sister is an economist but was married when she graduated. Rosamunde thinks that she must be unhappy.

    Beatriz is the pacifist of the family, live with her husband, who is a scientific nuclear station and her sons play

    with guns. Rosamunde feels that her parents dont like she chose literature.

    She tries to escape from her background but it is impossible, when she decided to have the baby.

    Rosamunde uses language to restrict rather than to expand for example, Octavia is ill she changes thinking

    from the immortality of the soul to the fact that there is no pain.

    Like others Drabbles heroines Rosamunde believes that what we think we get.

    Relationships with men in general many problems that are not her fault.

    Rosa consider herself superior to Lydia in everywhere.She prepares food just edible but Lydia makes food

    rich, different, amusing. Rosa can be fair but she is not generous.

    At the end she tells George that her nature is to worry there is nothing I can do about my nature, is there.

    Octavia damages Lydia's novel. She compares herself with the maid of John Stuart who burnt the only

    manuscript of Thomas Curlys history of the French revolution. She does not realize how this novel can help

    her to improve her character.

    Rosamunde ask a neighbour to take care of Octavia while she goes to the chemist, new communication, she

    considers this to have others in debt.

    Rosamunde mixes out on Lydia's novel as an opportunity to use herself as others.

    Impossibility to communicate with Lydia and George.she relegated to the position of George Bernard Shaw;

    one, a woman wants children but no husband. She lies to George she does not want to marry George.

    She thinks that literature is grounded in the real rather than in the magic.

    She is upset with Lydia for basing her novels in facts.

    Before Octavia is born a mother gives her a baby to hold and the baby wet her throw this we see the

    impossibility of Rosamunde to be more flexible.

    Lidia is more concern with reality she prefers writing bad books than not write. At 26 having published 2

    novels she thinks she has dry up, does why she writes about Rosamunde and her baby. Lidia creates literature

    from life. Rosamunde finds life and reality her own pregnancy as too unrealistic for a novel.

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    Rosamunde believes that because something happens it is true.

    She is moved by ironies.

    Her solipsism disappears a little by maternal love. Her limitations are replaced by new limitations.

    She knows that she will be left in darkness by her child. She remains static position and her surname Stacey

    could stands for the word Stasis.

    The dim life= the world of drabbles heroines not brilliant,they never enjoy themselves fully because they

    feel for others, they feel guilty, they are afraid that they will lose what they have because they dont deserved.

    Rosamunde not used to happiness, accustomed to momentary feelings of satisfaction, of excitement..When

    she holds Octavia for the first time she knows what to be happy. Her privilege status carry the situation of

    being a single mother. She was a child isolated by her family and her intellect. Hospital she feels sociable and

    cheerful.

    One of the base moment= she and Beatriz played with 3 boys in the park. They discover that they had a maid

    they think, they were rich.

    She will have to ask strangers for help and Octavias health problems will obligated to be worry by continuouscheck and examinations.

    Before Octavia was born she only thinks about people in theory. The message= human rather than a female.

    Rosamunde fights for the rights to see her daughter. She prefers to feel uncomfortable rather than offend.

    Rosamunde throw her daughter is supposed to reach a new sense of self and also selfrelation to others.

    The effort cost at the end, we can she Rosamunde in her mid 20th with greying hair. She still needs to develop

    as a female. She is a successful mother, university teacher, she has made small advances but not capable of

    using systems that are fair to others.

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