Master’s Thesis August 2008
Maj-Britt Boll Jensen AalborgUniversity
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Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Methodology - Structuring the Subject
2. Connecting Texts
2.1. Intertextuality: Structuralist Origin vs. Postmodern Broadening
2.2. Separating Pastiche from Satirical Parody
2.3. Paratext and Allusion: Indicators of Intertextual Referencing
2.4. Deployment of Terms
3. Woolf’s Project
4. Fact and Fiction in The Passion – Pastiching Woolf’s Expressive and Thematic Style
4.1. Pastiching a Broadening Perspective of Narrative
4.2. Pastiching a Broadening Perspective of Plot
4.2.1. Fact, Fiction and Feeling – A Comparison to Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
4.2.2. History and Fantasy – Comparison to Woolf’s Orlando – A Biography
4.2.3. Poetry – Pastiching a Poetic Plot and Expression
4.2.4. In Sum
4.3. Pastiching Woolf’s Thematic Style
4.3.1. The Allusion to Cross-Dressing
4.3.2. Pastiching the Theme of Marriage
4.3.3. Pastiching the Theme of Time
5. CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abstract
1. INTRODUCTION
“Judge the work not the writer” (Winterson 1996a: 192). Thus sounds the claim from British author Jeanette Winterson, and this is just one of many factors drawing attention to her work and, despite the claim, her persona. When regarding her oeuvre, this initial statement suggests that one should preferably disregard Winterson’s personal factors, which include age, class, gender, sexuality, marital status and religion. Nonetheless, I mention a few here – not for the purpose of judging, but introducing. Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester in 1959, given up for adoption and raised in Accrington by strict Evangelist parents. Though they hindered Winterson in her passion for reading, she has worked with reading and writing ever since finishing her English studies at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. She is a homosexual, has never married, and there is no denying that Winterson’s work touches upon lesbianism and gender stereotypes and makes use of postmodern traits such as intertextuality and genre mixing. Adding her claim that“[…] the book, itself, will prove more than its writer” (ibid: 160), that is,possibly expressing more than the author intended or was conscious about,these factors invite and partly explain the repeated use of the theoretical approaches of lesbianism, feminism and postmodernism to Winterson’s work. These approaches have resulted in a wide range of themes and criticisms.
Winterson’s portrayal of gender is by some feminist readers thought to be a political betrayal, since the genders are displayed as equal rather than reversing the hierarchy, placing women over men (Pearce 1994: 173). Also, her alleged disruption of gender stereotypes is by some meant to rely on those stereotypes itself (Andermahr 2007: 39). For instance, critics Helena Grice and Tim Woods claim that Winterson connects men with science and women with fertility and fantasy, while critic Gregory J. Rubinson believes that Winterson does not fall prey to such stereotypical perceptions (Rubinson 2005: 145).Instead, he believes Winterson to base her writing on a feminist agenda, for instance in her mixing of genres (ibid: 24). One of the genres identified in her work is the lesbian romance, which Sonya Andermahr sees both as being deconstructed and as a means to create a new language of sexual love (Andermahr 2007: 93, 97), while Lynne Pearce believes Winterson to be a representative of the popular face of lesbian fiction in Britain (Raitt 1995: 147). This new language is however also criticised for killing romance through its literal descriptions of the sexual body (Grice and Woods 1998:36). Likewise, Winterson’s perception of realism has been widely discussed. Some find her to have misinterpreted realism when she labels it simple and dead (Rubinson 2005:12f), while others believe her to succeed in puncturing the realist narrative (Andermahr 2007: 88).
The list of critique and admiration is long, and the above are just a few examples indicating how it is practically impossible for critics to label Winterson as a traditional lesbian or feminist writer. Therefore, I attempt to avoid such labelling and rather explore further the fact that Winterson admires modernist writers and pays tribute to them in her own writing – contrary to the above, this is something most critics agree upon. Great modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot and James Joyce are remembered for ‘making it new’; for going against the literary canon in terms of thematic and linguistic choices. According to Winterson, this is her project as well. As she writes in Art Objects;“[a] writer must resist the pressure of old formulae and work towards new combinations of language” (1996a: 76). This connection to modernism has, like the criticism above, not gone by unnoticed. Lyn Pykett labels her a ‘post-Modernist’ rather than a postmodernist, as she finds it important to focus on Winterson’s traces back to modernism and her continuation of the modernist project (Grice and Woods 1998: 6). These traces from modernism have been identified as for instance a new way with words (ibid: 60) and as blurring the boundary between prose and poetry (Onega 2006: 11). They have also led to a critique of some of Winterson’s work for being second-hand, copying routine modernist opinions (ibid: 131). Although new is always in opposition to old, I find it interesting how Winterson ‘makes it new’ and “resist[s] the pressure of old formulae” while returning to modernist writers – in particular to Virginia Woolf. This raises the question of why Winterson looks to the past – to modernism and Woolf – to renew her present.
Though the connection to modernism is widely agreed upon among scholars, what distinguishes my thesis is the specific focus I place and keep on Virginia Woolf. Winterson is known as and claims to be a big fan and follower of Woolf. She compares Woolf work to that of Mozart, Cézanne and Dickens and states; “[w]hen I read Virginia Woolf she is to my spirit, waterfall and wine” (Winterson 1996a: 65). A possible answer to the question above is that the Woolfian writing project encompasses ideas that inspire Winterson and help her reach the goals of her own writing project.
At first glance, their writing styles appear remarkably different. However, priortreatments of this particular relation have found that Winterson in fact uses writing techniques similar to Woolf’s and that they have the emancipation of a ‘woman’s sentence’ as a common goal (Rusk 2002: 70f). Furthermore, Susana Onega points out that Winterson has turned out as the kind of woman writer Woolf predicted would appear; “[…] a new novelistic form created by women with the intellectual and material freedom to express their own sensibility and worldview” (Onega 2006: 13). These comments are however made rather superficially and, in my opinion, lack textual examples to document the relation. Moreover, they particularly lack a focus on influence, rather than just similarity. Hence, this thesis is an investigation ofexactly how Winterson’s fascination with Woolf is detectable in and fruitful to her work.
An example of Woolf’s influence on Winterson is seen in a ‘paratext’ which according to French literary theorist Gérard Genette is a title, a subtitle, a preface, etc. (Genette 1997: 3). It is what connects the naked text to the outside, the ‘threshold’ which readers can cross or turn away from (Genette and Maclean 1991: 261). Therefore, it is also of great importance to the expectation, reception and perception of the text - a contract between the text and the reader (Genette 1997: 3). The title of the last chapter in Winterson’s Art Objects (1995), “A Work of My Own” (Winterson 1996a: 165), is a paratext imitating the title of Woolf’s famous essay A Room of One’s Own (1929). The titles have the same beginning, middle and end – only two words have been replaced by Winterson. I find these paratexts to be very meaningful and indicative of the authors’ relation.
The styles of the two worksin question are similar; essays about writing, women writing and themselves writing. Furthermore, Woolf’s title represents the condition necessary for a woman to write, i.e. a room of one’s own in both a physical and metaphorical sense, which women widely lacked in her time, and therefore she regretted the lack of possible progress within women’s writing (Woolf 1993b). Winterson honours this advocation from Woolf when she shows through her title such progress by not only having achieved a room of her own, but a whole work of her own. As if a personal goal for Winterson, she shows how the preconditions set by Woolf have been met, pinpointing that women have achieved to produce and publish writing, but she also renews Woolf’s essay by advocating for new aspects in writing generated by spirit (Winterson 1996a: 172f), the same generator posed by Woolf (Woolf 1925: 150).
This is just one example of Woolf’s influence on Winterson and the latter’s treatment of that influence. I investigate such issues further in thisthesis, which I base on the following question:
Focusing on the two writers’ ways of ‘making it new’, how does Jeanette Winterson’s fascination with Virginia Woolf reveal itself in and contribute to her work?
1.1. Methodology - Structuring the Subject
In attempt to answer the question above, the rest of this thesis is divided into four chapters. First and foremost, in order to investigate the impact of one writer upon another, it is necessary to assemble an intertextual apparatus. Therefore, the overall term ‘intertextuality’ is discussed in chapter two along with the related and more specific terms ‘pastiche’, ‘paratext’ and ‘allusion’. For this discussion, I rely mainly on the definitions and opinions of Fredric Jameson, Ingeborg Hoesterey, Linda Hutcheon and Gérard Genette – some of the mainstream literary theorists within this field, dealing with intertextual relations and delivering criticism of each other’s contemplations. This enables me to consider different opinions of the intertextual terms and condensethese to definitions best suited for my investigation of Winterson’s integration of Woolf’s work in her own.
Chapter three is an introduction to Virginia Woolf’s project. Such introduction is necessary in order to answer - and understand the answer to - the question of this thesis. Itis mainly based on her novelsOrlando – A Biography (1928), which I generally refer to as simplyOrlando,Mrs Dalloway (1925) and her essays Modern Fiction (1925), A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Women and Fiction (1929). This way, both Woolf’s fiction and non-fiction are considered in and contribute to the outlining of her project, which is supplemented by overall considerations of primarily Jane Goldman in The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf (2006). This choice of material and outline is explained further in the beginningof chapter three.
The main body of thisthesis is chapter four. While leaning on the intertextual terminology and the outline of Woolf’s project,Winterson’s The Passion (1987)primarilyand examples fromsome of her other workssecondarily comprise the analytical material investigated in order to expound Woolf’s influence on Winterson’s writing. Firstly, I analyse Winterson’s expressive and then her thematic style in a comparative analysis to Woolf’s style and project. As in chapter three, further considerations concerning this chapter are presented at its beginning.
Thethesis is rounded off with chapter five in which the findings of the thesis are recapped, considered and contextualised.
2. Connecting Texts
In this chapter, I present the theories and terms necessary for my analysis of the relation between Woolf and Winterson and their work, which is executed in chapter four. Firstly, the term ‘intertextuality’ is discussed since this is the term generally covering any kind of reference between works. Secondly, the more specific terms ‘pastiche’, ‘paratext’ and ‘allusion’ are explored and discussed in their various forms in order to narrow down definitions to those most profitable for my investigation of Woolf’s influence on Winterson’s oeuvre.
2.1. Intertextuality: Structuralist Origin vs. Postmodern Broadening
When dealing with one author’s work in relation to and specifically integrated into another’s, as in the case with Woolf and Winterson, the first term that comes to mind is ‘intertextuality’. The term was initially developed and introduced by Julia Kristeva. Subsequently, intertextuality has been assigned a number of different meanings. In an introduction to Kristeva’s Desire in Language from 1980, Leon S. Roudiez defines ‘intertextuality’ with reference to the, in his opinion, many misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the term:
The concept […] has been generally misunderstood. It has nothing to do with matters of influence by one writer upon another, or with the sources of a literary work; it does, on the other hand, involve the components of a textual system such as the novel, for instance. It is defined […] as the transposition of one or more systems of signs into another, accompanied by a new articulation of the enunciative and denotative position.
(Roudiez in Kristeva 1980: 15, original emphasis)
Hence, Roudiez here denies that the function of intertextuality deals with influences between authors – the very function I am looking into. Instead, the original definition deals with the production of literary texts as new combinations of existing sign systems and their objective and expressive functions. It identifies a recycling yet altering deployment of textual systems such as genres, and as an example he mentions the novel: the textual system, the conventional signs determining the genre of a novel, has been intertextually reused and reinvented, thus developing the genre. Roudiez’ preoccupation with Kristeva and this very narrow definition of intertextuality isexplainable, considering his structuralist background. Though born in America, he was raised in France and Germany and translated many works of French structuralist and poststructuralist critics into English and also co-wrote articles with for instance Kristeva herself. Thus, he adopted their explicit focus on the importance of structure, signs and codes in texts as well as their decentring of author and reader. However, later definitions of intertextuality do include author and reader: “The current term intertextuality includes literary echoes and allusions as one of the many ways in which any text is interwoven with other texts” (Abrams 2005: 11, original emphasis). This quotation indicates a wide range of intertextual possibilities stretching beyond the textual sign system. For instance, ‘allusion’, which I define later in this chapter, includes referencing to persons, places and earlier literary passages (ibid: 10). Aside from in allusions, such intertextual referencing is visible in quotations (direct or indirect), imitations, parodies and so forth of one author’s work in another’s – exactly what Roudiez criticises.
The above definitions and the constant development of theoretical terms reflect the difficulty of presenting an unequivocal definition of intertextuality. Nonetheless, it is a central term in postmodern literature and useful to my analysis. The original definition is relevant when dealing with both Woolf’s and Winterson’s preoccupation with ‘making it new’, since ‘it’ includes the novel genre – a textual system. Furthermore, to detect Woolf’s influence on Winterson and her writing beyond the level of sign systems, the wider definition of intertextuality is needed, which encompasses the more precise – though still discussed and varying – terms, ‘pastiche’, ‘paratext’ and ‘allusion’.
2.2. Separating Pastiche from Satirical Parody
The term ‘pastiche’ has also been defined in various ways, and though it appeared as far back as in the seventeenth century, it is perceived as a subcategory of intertextuality. The majority of scholars do not avoid the perhaps more widely known term ‘parody’ when defining ‘pastiche’. This is also the case for Fredric Jameson, who states:
Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language. But it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody’s ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs (Jameson 1991: 17)
Here, Jameson claims that the version of pastiche present in postmodernism is dead – it is static and blind. His definition is made in very negatively loaded words, such as “amputated”, “devoid”, “blank”, “blind” and indirectly ‘unhealthy’ – and finished by a metaphor which leaves an extremely dreary impression of pastiche. Jameson is of a Marxist tradition which might explain his disapproval of pastiche compared to parody; a literary work should not only reflect the state of social and political ideologies, but also expose its flaws through its unconscious contents. It is for instance through this, the texts ‘unspoken’, that Jameson argues “[…] for the power of literary culture to intervene in and transform existing economic and political arrangements and activities” (Abrams 2005: 159). ‘Parody’s ulterior motives’ are examples of such unconscious contents of a text, and these are what Jameson claims pastiche to lack. In the quotation, Jameson makes it clear that he does not believe pastiche to be a type of reference contributing to the understanding or development of societal ideologies, and he therefore denies it any contributing qualities at all. This leaves the question of the possible purpose of pastiche. With no ulterior motives, satirical values, humour, irony, respect, honour, praise, tribute or the like, what does pastiche provide for the reader?
Perhaps this is the reason for the disagreement from, for instance, Ingeborg Hoesterey, who opposes Jameson’s definition (Hoesterey 1999: 86). Instead, she claims that pastiche is an imitation of an admired author or great poet with the purpose of paying homage; that it has gained status, cultural relevance (ibid: 78ff) and has been reborn in the spirit of postmodernism (Hoesterey 2001: ix). She divides postmodern pastiche into two categories: homage and cento pastiche, which both deal with the appropriation of the work of a generally admired author by a later writer (ibid: 80f). Cento pastiche is also called ‘patchwork’ since it is constituted as a collage of earlier works. Winterson does not deploy this category, as she aims to develop her own style and resents copying (Winterson 1996a: 182); thus, my focus is on homage pastiche. Hoesterey sets homage pastiche in comparison with parody as well, by stating that negative homage is often seen associated with aspects of satire and parody (ibid: 86). Other characteristics of pastiche are imitation and dialogical engagement (ibid: 95). Many of her opinions about pastiche are in agreement with Gérard Genette, whom I introduce later, although she criticises him, among other things, for not directing attention to pastiche in other art forms than literature. In this particular case, this lack of attention is acceptable, since literature is the only art dealt with in this thesis.