Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca; desire and identification.

Examine the different ways in which Daphne du Maurier's  Rebecca engages with the issues of desire and identification.

In Du Maurier's (2003) Rebecca, identification and desire are key, entwined ideas. To explore them I will focus on the narrator and Maxim's desires and how they change their identities, the performance of desire and identity in costume and gender including theory of Butler's Gender Troubles (1990),  the narrator's desire for Rebecca, the 'ghost' of Rebecca in relation to queer theory and Castle's The Apparitional Lesbian (1993) and well as Mrs Danvers and her involvement with the narrator and Rebecca. I will also look at the genre's used in the novel.

            In Rebecca, the desire between man and wife isn't shown in a conventional romantic way as they seem to not have a usual adult and loving relationship since they only ever passionately kiss after Maxim's confession to murdering his late wife, which is strange enough alone.

            If this isn't odd enough, the reader finds that the two have a Father and daughter relationship through most of the novel, it being subverted in the opening (at the beginning of the novel where the narrator holds a Motherly role caring for Maxim who has become shell-like after the burning of Manderley).

            Due to this novel being marketed at the time, and still today, as part of the Romantic Fiction, this relationship is most peculiar as heterosexual desire is a leading element within this genre, however it is arguable that this text may be attempting, like many modern text, to be intentionally questioning the conventions of this genre to the means of confronting same sex female desire and the repressions it can have of female sense of identity, something I will discuss later in this essay.

            Still, Du Maurier does employ some aspects of the Romantic genre rather effectively in this novel such as; the plot being centred around a heterosexual relationship and marriage,  use of exotic locations or occasions (e.g. the ball and Monte Carlo) and intense emotions within the romantic relationship between  people of high social class. However, other techniques that she uses such as marriage used as a devise of desire to encourage the plot and help the heroine discover her identity (such as in conventional Romantic Fictions) yet she chooses to alter it by to not having  'happily ever after' in the conclusion, as the two seem to be in exile from everything they love and be in a state of punishment, perhaps a result of them both killing Rebecca (physically/her memory).

            She also chooses for the romantic hero in Maxim becoming aggressive, fatherly and passive, a combination not likely to have many followers of the genre swoon.

            However to start she follows Romantic conventions, in the quotation below we can see her using intertextual references to other Romantic texts such as Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847) and other Romanticised heroes like Conan Doyles' Sherlock-Holms (1904)  to form the description of a man walking a fifteenth-century city, to create 'Man-about-Town' imagery and the descriptions of his items of clothing that suggest richness and high class, much to the same effect as Atwood's character of the Polish Count does in Lady Oracle, (1976) and Walter in Sarah 'Waters' (1998) Tipping the Velvet. 

 He belonged to a walled city of the fifteenth century, a city of narrow, cobbled streets, and thin spires…His face was arresting, sensitive, medieval in some strange    inexplicable way, and I was reminded of a portrait seen in a gallery…Could one but rob him of his English tweeds, and put him in  black, with lace at his throat and wrists, he would stare down at us in our new world …from a long-distant past… men walked cloaked at night, and stood in the shadow of old doorways. (Du Maurier, 2003, pp.15)

            Also, the slow pace in this quotation created by the long sentence structure seems to frame Maxim in the readers first encounter of him as a man who is worth of a woman to stop, observe and romanticise about.

            However Maxim could also been seen in an entirely different light in relation to the Gothic genre, for in the quotation we see the first glance at the problems in their relationship, the paternal and aggressive masculinity which is a prominent side to Maxim in the novel.

            Du Maurier uses the words 'dark', 'medieval' and the phrase ' he would stare down at us' (Du Maurier, 2003, pp.15) and create the image of an aristocratic tyrant, observing the narrator with disdain to question whether he is the romantic hero or gothic villain.

            Maxims character is questioned further by the reader with his aggressive outbursts towards the childlike innocent narrator and the reader begin to feel a perversion in the romantic attraction between the pair.

'Listen my sweet.  When you were a little girl, were you every forbidden to read certain books, and did your father put those books under lock and key?’‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, then.  A husband is not so different from a father after all.  There is a certain type of knowledge I prefer you not to have.  It’s better kept under lock and key.  So that’s that.  And now eat up your peaches, and don’t ask me any more questions, or I    shall put you in the corner.’ ‘I wish you would not treat me as if I was six,’ I said. ‘How do you want to be treated?’   ‘Like other men treat their wives.’  ‘Knock you about, you mean?’ ‘Don’t be absurd… You’re playing with me all the time, just as if I was a silly little   girl.’ (Du Maurier, 2003, pp. 226-7)

            Indeed, the relationship between Maxim and the narrator seems to be prompted by a desire for innocence, which is rather reminiscent of Stokers Dracula (1897) in which Dracula feeds from the innocence in order to corrupt them sexually, however by Maxim taking a role closer to the father than the lover, his desire for innocence seem to be less destructive and more protective of sexuality and the identity of the narrator and fearful of what others, perhaps others like Rebecca, could do to his new angelic wife.

            Horner and Zlosnik write that 'Rebecca is associated throughout the novel with several characteristics that traditionally denote the vampire: facial pallor, plentiful hair and voracious sexual appetite.' (pp.111) and notice that she was killed more than once 'she was shot; she had cancer; she drowned' (pp.111). This idea of Rebecca being the enemy and who Maxim is protecting her new wife from is reminiscing on Gothic heroes' like Van-Helsing of Dracula. Comparisons are drawn further after the discovery that Maxim murdered Rebecca as she is revealed as the threat that intends to corrupt his two loves, Manderley and now new wife due to her growing identification to Rebecca and her desires .

            Also by Du Maurier using this form of relationship for the 'normal' desire bond in the novel, we could see how Mrs Danvers raising Rebecca, "She ought to have been a boy, I often told her that. I had care of her as a child" ( Du Maurier, 2003, Rebecca, pp. 272), Du Maurier maybe drawing on the similarities between the two relationships to suggestion the sexual nature between the two women.

            Prior to meeting Maxim, the narrator is a young woman struggling to find her identity and understand her desires. Throughout this novel, Du Maurier uses performance and costume similar to Sarah Waters (1998) Tipping the Velvet to explore this.

            Butler argues that gender exists as a form of  social performance. She argues that woman isn't a fixed identity and that gender;

'intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities of discursively    constituted identities. As a result, it becomes impossible to separate out "gender" from political and cultural intersections in which it is invariably produced and maintained.' (Butler, 1990, pp.6).

            She goes on to write; 'in this sense, gender is not a noun, but neither is it a set of free floating attributes, for we have seen that the substantive effect of gender is performatively produced and compelled by the regulatory practice of gender coherence.' (1990, pp.33) which questions how much of gender identity is performance.           

            'Put a ribbon in your hair and be Alice-in-Wonderland' (Du Maurier, 2003, p 219)

             In the quotation we see Maxim attempt for the narrator to assume the innocent to please him for fear of her dressing as a 'femme-fatal' , associated with Rebecca. His suggestion of childlike 'Alice' from Carroll's children's books (1865, 1871) is an example of intertextuality, used in the Romantic genre, such as in Atwood's  Lady Oracle, (1976), Sarah Waters (1998) Tipping the Velvet, Morrison's Sula (1973) and Winterson's Oranges are not the Only Fruit (1985).

                        Both of Maxim's wives dress to replicate Caroline de Winter, , and all of her social desirability in attempt to achieve different reactions in Maxim. Horner and Zlosnik (1998) writes of the narrators 'overwhelming desire is to please and surprise maxim by 'dressing up'' (pp118) by becoming as something virginal and pure, but as Rebecca also dressed up this way they go on to argue that she used it to aid her identity shield and perhaps disguise her bisexuality and construct 'heterosexualized femininity' to anger Maxim.

            In the line "And my curls were her curls, they stood out from my face as hers did in the picture" (Du Maurier, 2003, p238) the narrator uses the costume become the identity of Caroline, rather than mimic. As Rebecca dressed this way in the past she is also, invertible, becoming Rebecca.

            This scene is like the narrators dreams of transforming into Rebecca, in which Du Maurier explores the narrators hopes of pleasing her husband by presenting herself as stronger and closer to Rebecca, who, at this point, she believes Maxim loved dearly.

            Du Maurier referred to Rebecca as 'a study of Jealousy', jealousy the result of unobtainable desires. This is shown most prominently in a passage on pages 261-262 where the narrators lists her fears about Rebecca and the reminders of her she has encountered, this creates a tone of hysteria in the narrators voice which shows how greatly she has identified herself to Rebecca.

            Yet, one must question the use of Rebecca being dead throughout the novel but the fact she has a presence which creates the illusion of her being alive.

            In the Haunted Heiress, Auerbach writes ‘she [Du Maurier] had a passionate self within herself: the boy in the box, that independent entity who fell in love with women while preserving the wife and mother from the tarnish of lesbianism’ (pp.74). In this Auerbach argues that Du Maurier had repressed lesbian feelings and as the novel suggests, Rebecca may have been modelled upon Maurier's own identity and desire as Rebecca is 'boxed' in death, however, her acted upon her desires in life and became an example for Du Maurier's fear of displaying the true lesbian ultimately destroying the individual.

            We can see evidence in the text that Rebecca too was a 'boy-in-the-box' but  she expresses her 'boxed' desires by choosing the masculine-female fashion of short hair and taking part in boisterous activities such as sailing and horse riding.

            ‘Everyone was angry with her when she cut her hair…of course short hair was much            easier for riding and sailing’ (Du Maurier, 2006,  p. 190)

            Du Maurier uses Gothic Genre conventions to create the ghost-like character of Rebecca by imitating a technique of 'haunting' used in other Gothic text, such as Jane Eye, which often leaves the narrator becoming strongly associating and psychologically linked with the identity of the ghostly 'Other'. The 'Other', Rebecca, grows in the mind of the narrator and, with much help from Mrs Danvers, attacks her identity.

            Horner and Zlonik write 'The narrators identity is haunted by an Other' (1998, pp. 99) and in this text this is shown in many ways, including when the narrator dreams her handwriting and appearance become that of Rebecca's.

 I got up and went to the looking-glass.  A face stared back at me that was not my own. … The face in the glass stared back at me and laughed.  And I saw then that she was sitting on a chair before the dressing-table in her bedroom… Maxim was brushing her hair.  He held her hair … and as he brushed it he wound it slowly into a thick rope.  It twisted like a snake, and he took hold of it and … put it round his neck. (Du Maurier, 2003, Rebecca, pp. 426)

            In this quotation the use of the narrator slowly becoming Rebecca and the application of snakes, which biblically links to 'Eve' (female curiosity, Original Sin and the temptation of men) in the readers mind,  Du Maurier is showing the power of Rebecca and expressing that she is wanting to link into the narrators identity.

            In The Apparitional Lesbian, Castle argues that in fiction the Lesbian is 'ghosted' as is her desire and she is drained of “any sensual or moral authority” ( Castle, 1993, pp.32) Castle refers to this process as “derealization” (Castle, 1993, pp.6) meaning  an attempt that the Lesbian is now disappeared and no-existent and a ghost like entity is formed to take her place, a form that is easier to be completely removed.

Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been "ghosted" or made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised. (Castle, 1993, pp.32)

            With this in mind, we can further see how Du Maurier may have felt her to be too risqué of a character to explore her time, as I have written before, thus she is dead.

            However, Rebecca, although ghosted, is most overtly desired throughout the novel (by Maxim ,Jack Favell, Mrs. Danvers, the narrator and in their social circles). By doing this Du Maurier is attempting to 'un-ghost' her and expose her sexuality , be it Lesbian or bisexual. In the quotation below, Maxim indicates to a tabooed side of her personality that he seems reluctant or ashamed to provide detail to.

 You thought I loved Rebecca?... I hated her I tell you…She was vicious, damnable,             rotten …  We never loved each other, never had one moment of happiness together.         Rebecca was incapable of love, of tenderness, of decency.  She was not even normal.’            (Du Maurier, 2004, p. 304.)

            In this we see how Maxim, who perhaps represents society hence why Du Maurier deemed it necessary to 'ghost' this desire, finds her to be abnormal and associates her and her sexuality with evil and something for women to be shielded from, hence his paternal attitudes altering his desires. Whether this 'normal' is due to her being incapable of love etc. or if it is due to her sexual preferences we can only speculate, although Mrs Danvers line of ' She despised all men' (pp.382) the reader is readied to question it outright.

In this novel Du Maurier engages with the two issues of desire and identification to explore female taboos of sexuality, the performance of gender and the fear of the lesbian. Her novel is a complex argument between how desire shapes ones identity. I believe that this text is moreover a Gothic Novel, with the concern regarding female desire and a fear to express selfhood relating to ones own identity rather than the performance assigned by gender of woman.

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NEW BOOK! From The Watchtower

You are driving to work, walking to the shop, sat at home or perhaps just sitting down. For a moment you are lost in your thoughts. When you are back to your self you begin reading these words, finding this story and become lost in the words of an unnamed man... 

From the Watchtower is a letter to you, a glimpse into a place that you can not see. An example of a wish that shouldn't become a reality. A favor that only you can fulfill.

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Novel Studies, Kristeva; Dialogism and Carnival

With reference to the work of Kristeva, discuss the relevance of Dialogism and Carnival to a postructuralist understanding of the Novel.

In this essay I will be discussing the two terms carnival (the spectacle of the colloquial language) and dialogism (two or more speakers in play in language) in response to the form of the novel and to Kristeva’s essay entitled Word, Dialogue and Novel (1986) and, due to the strong influences of Bakhtin in this essay, The Dialogic Imagination (1975), specifically the chapter Discourse in the Novel.

Prior to the work of Bakhtin, the novel was viewed much differently to what customary today, as it was usually analysed with a structuralist reading. These theorists favoured to apply poetic theory to the novel, and used a scientific vernacular in attempt to explore and explain this form. Structuralists believe the novel to be monophonic, defined as there being one voice only acting within the text opposed to dialogic in which there are many, and they used symbols, scientific language (such as the term ‘centrifugal forces’- a force that acts to pull away from the centre or norm) and equations to better explain their views, as well as tending to ignore decentralised forces in life and language when examining the novel.

            The Dialogic Imagination is a compilation of Bakhtin’s previous essays including Epic and Novel (1941), From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse (1940), Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel (1938), and Discourse in the Novel (1935) and was first published together in 1975, due to the increases in the popularity of the poststructuralist ideas within his essays. Indeed, pre 1960-70s, structuralism was the accepted method of considering the novel and as Bakhtin’s ideas developed in the 1940s, this Russian theorist’s idea failed to reach the west due to west and east hostilities.

            Kristeva, however, presented and adapted his ideas to bring them to the west, she wrote of many of Bakhtins idea’s with her own insight in her essays, with the effect of a poststructuralist approach to language and the novel. However, like Bakhtin, Kristeva struggled to cut off from the methods in which structuralists present their ideas in the same ways I have stated previously (the use of symbols, scientific language and equations) thus creating an essay which contains a contradicting duality, also as I will discuss later, she failed to apply her theory to all novels, so briefly allotted the noncompliant text into another category of literature, the epic, to the effect of lessening her theory’s integrity.

            In both the essays; Word, Dialogue and Novel (Kristeva, 1986) and to The Dialogic Imagination (Bakhtin, 1975), the argument that the novel is dialogic (a multitude of voices) is a significant one.

Bakhtin argues that language, therefore the novel, is a representation of life, and life itself is dialogic and full of disrupting forces from many events and individuals pulling the language away from the simplistic view of structuralist understanding (centrifugal forces). He writes;

A common unitary language is a system of linguistic norms. But these norms do not constitute an abstract imperative, they are rather the generative forces of linguistic life, forces struggle to overcome the heteroglossia of language, forces that unite and centralise verbal ideological thought, creating within a heteroglot national language the firm, stable linguistic nucleus of an officially recognised literary language.                                                                                                               (Bakhtin, 1975, p271)

Bakhtin is arguing here that the official linguistically language is monologic and ideological. As it is often dictated by the ruling upper classes, it neglects all of the irregularities of language found in the national language. The national languages are obviously dialogic, as they are affected by; dialect and colloquial words (e.g. the novel Adam Bede, 1859), a modern example could be a the way that language had adapted in response to media and technology with the creation of new words and their abbreviations as well as the evolution of text/internet speech and their abbreviations. Bakhtin believes that the national language in the novel should be celebrated rather than rejected and restrained by the official language, as he believes that the influences behind the writing in the novel should be evident within the language used.

            Kristeva supports and builds upon this point in her essay and argues that diologism “appears on every level of the denotative word” (p.44). She explains this by proposing three dimensions of textual space for dialogue, she writes that; “These three dimensions […] of dialogue are writing subject, addressee, and exterior texts” (Kristeva, 1986, p.36). In this quotation Kristeva is arguing that word is a product of word definition, as well as being influenced by upwards of two prospective of intertexuality at any given time. To her, even a single word isn’t a stable thing; it is ever changing due to the readership which alters the word from the literal or connotative meaning to one of perception that is influenced by many factors. This point in her essay I strongly agree with as I can understand how, for example, the word ‘Apple’ could be understood in a myriad of ways. Today this could be a reference to the fruit, a colour, a first or surname, an acronym, a band, a technology company and many other endless associations. The listener and the speaker could take a very different meaning from the simple word ‘apple’.  In the same way, the novel can be read in a way that derives from the authors intentions by any reader, and each reader can perceive the same novel differently from the other members of the novels audience, in this way the novel is dialogic as there are no right, wrong or otherwise ways of reading, all readings including the intended and the perceived are valid and present with in the text.

The author Virginia Woolf arguably portrays the dialogic in experimental novel, entitled The Waves (1931), in which the characters dialogue is the main body of writing and the prospective and character’s voice within the dialogue are ever changing. This could be seen as Woolf using a literal diologism in her text to create waves of consciousness; also she chooses her characters to have different backgrounds to conjure different expectations of the characters in the readers attempting to represent all of the aspects that effect writing to make it become dialogic. This could also be to represent national language, which is the language group formed of regional words etc. which I write about later.

 In a sense, intertexuality is a form of diologism, being that a reader and author brings their intrinsic and extrinsic experiences to what they are reading and by doing this they shape the novel in a dialogic way.  An example of this can be seen within the literary genres, as for a novel to become of a set genre the author must intentionally apply conventions and techniques of the desired genre to their writing for it to work successfully. In Gothic genre, set preconceptions of intertexuality are present, I will explain using the ‘vampire’. In Bram Stokers Dracula (1897), the most famous vampire in literature had ratty teeth and for a long time this was their appearance until Hammer Horror (1970s) films adapted the vampire to have two pointed fangs, the ratty teeth were no more; soon the vampire became sparkly and gentle in the works of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. Yet some aspects do not change, like the dark clothing, telepathy, the drinking of blood etc. This shows how past examples of a subject is present in subsequent novels, even if they become adapted due to centrifugal dialogic forces.

In her essay Kristeva explores Carnival in relation to the dialogical novel, explaining that dialogism give way to carnival as they both explore the perceptions of the many. She believes that all novels are carnival novels due to the expression of the public and the private languages with in the texts, she writes that;

Carnivalesque discourse breaks through the laws of language censored by grammar and semantics and, at the same time, is a social political protest. There is no equivalent, but rather, identity between challenging the official linguistic codes and challenging the official law.
                                                                                                                (Kristeva, 1986, p36)

          In this, Kristeva is arguing that carnival is now a set feature within the novel and that the carnivalesque can be present in novels despite the author’s intentions. Carnival has a way of entering a novel through diologism. It is notable that term of ‘carnival’ was discovered by Kristeva in the work of Bakhtin’s Discourse in the Novel (1935). Bakhtin wrote;

At the time when major divisions of the poetic genres were developing under the influence of the unifying centralising, centripetal forces of verbal ideological life, the novel – and those artistic prose genres that gravitate towards it – was being historically shaped by the current of decentralising, centrifugal forces […] poetry was accomplishing the task of cultural, national and political centralisation of the verbal ideological world in the higher official socio-ideological levels, on the lower levels, on the stages of local fairs, buffoon spectacles, the heteroglossia of the clown sounded forth, ridiculing all.              (Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination; Discourse in the Novel, 1975, p.273)

In other words, Bakhtin is arguing that whist the official literary language was successful in the history of society; the diologism of life still influenced the lower forms of the literary arts in a protest to monologic forms of literary arts, as form of rebellion against the latter and a celebration of satire, dialects and the unusual, etc. Through these acts of street plays etc, language was brought to the lower classes in their national language through spectacle and this influenced the shaping of the novel.

With this in mind, Kristeva builds her argument that all novels are carnival due to this shaping. In the quotation;

Within the carnival, the subject is reduced to nothingness, while the structure of the author emerges as anonymity that creates and sees itself created as self and other, as man and mask… The carnival first exorcises the structure of literary productivity, then inevitably brings light this structure’s underlying unconsciousness: sexuality and death. Out of dialogues that appear to be established between them, the structure dyads of carnival appear: high and low […] the carnival challenges of god, authority and social law; in so far as it is dialogical, it is rebellious. (Kristeva, 1986, p.49)

            Kristeva argues that carnival can be in the novel despite author’s intentions (Richardson’s Pamela, which could be read as a character of pure womanhood and virtue, as the author intended, or as something else, such as a satire to the absurdity of such a woman). Kristeva also argues in this quotation that by the novel having the presence of one in a novel, (e.g. laughter) the other (e.g. tears) is also present, this also relates back to dialogism as the reader will associate positives with their opposites unconsciously. She goes on to write that “The scene of carnival, where there is no stage, no ‘theatre’, is thus both stage and life, game and dream, discourse and spectacle.” (Kristeva, 1986, p.49). However, there is an irony with in the argument of carnival by both the theorists, as by presenting a law in which carnival works, they are structuring what they observe that can not be structured, thus counter arguing themselves.

The novels that do not fit to Kristeva’s theory that all novels are carnival, she briefly refers to as ‘epic’ novels. This seems to the crucial setback in her theory which she doesn’t allow much counter argument against. She writes that the epic is ‘an extra-textual, absolute entity […] that relativizes dialogue to the point where it is cancelled out and reduced to monologue’ (Kristeva, 1986, p.57).  This section reads differently to the previous points of the essay, not sounding as convincing and almost desperate due to the amount of diagrams she uses to try explaining her point. This seems as though she knows that they are flaws to the theory but dos not want to recognise them enough to cancel out her own argument. I understand why she does this as there are many more examples of novel that fit to her theories than go against.

            The novel is a very complex form of literacy and by being such it would be much too simplistic to apply the theory of poetry to it; the novel can not be monologic no more than life can be. As a form, it is designed to be the means to which individuals can relay information to one another, express experiences, rebel against the repression of society and ultimately invoke thought and ideas of others mentally and physically.

            To suggest that a novel is dialogic is to suggest that it is not a novel at all, and to say that a novel isn’t an exploration of carnival (even in the most minor way) is just as detrimental. The word is the expression of human life, the novel is a collection of words, and the novel therefore is human life in word form.

Bibliography

Bakhtin, M (1975). The Dialogic Imagination. Texas; University of Texas Press.

Eliot, G (1859). Adam Bede. Scotland; John Blackwood Publishing.

Kristeva, J (1986. Word, Dialogue and Novel). New York; Columbia University Press.

Richardson, S (1740). Pamela. London; Messrs Rivington and Osborn.

Woolf, V (1931). The Waves. London; Hogarth.

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Woolf’s 'The Waves'; Modernism, Realism and Post-Structuralism

Discuss the ways in which Modernism, Realism and Post-Structuralism have shaped the form of the novel, in reference to Woolf’s The Waves (1931).

                

                                 

Through the course of this essay I will look at Woolf as a modernist writer and how she uses the Waves (1931) to rebel against and address issues in the design of realist novel, this primarily being that they are unrealistic to life, therefore unrealistic to the novel. However, this novels lack of realism, in the conventional sense, should not question its place with in the form of the novel, even though critics such as Watt (1968) would argue that realism is one of the defining features of the novel form. Woolf appears to be employing post-structuralist ideas within the text in order to address her problems within the standard, realist novel. I will be arguing that Woolf’s novel is with the product of the experimental idea of trying to form life into an accurate narrative, which was initiated by the post-structuralist arguing that language, therefore the novel, is a representation of life.

The Waves (1931), as a modernist novel, pushes the boundaries of the standard novel form. In the Waves ‘Introduction’, Parsons (2000) writes how this is supported in the way that this text is read differently to the conventional narrative, its arrangement being much closer to the medium of music, writing to a rhythm not a plot; it is due to this key factor that this novels true literary form is often questioned.  This novel was labored over much more than Woolf’s previous novels in which two full drafts were made, reflecting Woolf’s ‘ever-increasing concern with the inflexibility of language and the need to accomplish a greater elasticity of expression with the novel form’ (Parson, 2000, p.iv). This novel, through its conception to its creation, was an experimental text, which Woolf feared would be incoherent, due to its contrast to the standard novel, to the majority of readers. Keep, McLaughlin and Parmar writes;

In literature, the movement [modernism] is associated with the works of Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, W.B. Yeats, [etc.] in their attempt to throw off the aesthetic burden of the realist novel, these writers introduced a variety of literary tactics and devices. […] Modernism is often derided for abandoning the social world in favour of its narcissistic interest in language and its processes. Recognizing the failure of language to ever fully communicate meaning […] the modernists generally downplayed content in favour of an investigation of form.                                                                        (Keep, McLaughlin & Parmar, 1993)

            With this in mind, this texts form is clearly a modernist attempt of addressing the function of realism within the novel. In this novel, Woolf is questioning the fundamental role that realism has within the novel, seeing it as a contradiction. She is viewing the structural techniques used within these realist texts to be an unrealistic processing of the written word and of human experience. Indeed, through the use of the ‘stream of consciousness’ technique in the Waves (1931) she is endeavoring to re-create the true realism of the mind. However, the result is that the Waves (1931) is a novel that is rather unstable in form, as it struggles to fit within any single form of literary text; with Woolf often referring to it as a ‘Play-poem’, that address the unconscious aspects of being, rather than a novel. However, there are many aspects of the text that place it within the form of the novel, such as its use of ‘dialogism’ (many voices within the text, rather than one singular voice of the author) that helps to create reliability which is lost though the lack of realism in the text, which build upon the novels essential goal of exploring the reality of selfhood and life.

In the novels, interludes are used at the beginning of each of the nine parts, setting the scene of the time of day and the stage in the lives of the six characters, acting as waves that push the flow of the narrative. The interludes provide boundaries that help to shape the text, which can appear to be a collection of soliloquies or monologues through its use of its characters dialogue. Parsons writes that ‘the metaphor of the waves provides the formal structure for the presentation of these lives’ (Parsons, 2000, The Waves ‘Introduction’, p.vi), aiding the suggestion that these interludes are to help engage the reader with the text by Woolf framing her experimental writing within small sections of more standard and realistic writing in order to achieve clarity and foot hold for the reader that it searching for plot. Yet, these interludes can interfere upon the narrative and its rhythm, thus pointing out the flaws of realism within texts. Undeniably, the interludes create a contradicting duality towards realism in the novel. Watt writes that realism;

Is the distinctive narrative mode of the novel. [It is] the sum of literary techniques whereby the novel’s imitation of human life follows philosophical realism in its attempt to ascertain and report the truth. The novel’s mode of imitating reality may therefore be equally well summarized in terms of the procedures of another group of specialists in epistemology: the jury in a court of law. Their expectations and those of the novel reader coincide in many ways: both want to know all the particulars of a given case.’

(Watt, 1968, the Rise of the Novel, Chapter I).

In this sense the Waves (1931) largely challenges realism place within the novel, as it contests this direct relationship between author, content and reader (which links to my point about Kristeva’s, 1986,  three textual dimensions, p. 5). This novel never fully addresses ‘truth’ as it favors observations of the ‘truth’ which, paradoxically, is more realistic to life. Furthermore, its use of ‘stream of consciousness’ this text is insistent on creating a hyper-reality that is as close to first hand human perception as is possible within the written word. In this respect, Woolf’s text is questioning how a realist novel could be labeled as realistic as the language and form of realist text are not realistic in the logic of the human mind and experience. Yet her text is not coherent within the logic of the standard novel form.

Indeed, Woolf is using her novel to explore the essence of realism of self and what it is to be an individual. Moreover, she is using this form to highlight contradictions found in life and selfhood by putting a ‘true’ realism into the form of the novel. We can see this in her use of characters;

In the Waves she considered the six monologists as facets of one, larger complex identity, writing to G.L Dickinson that. ‘I did mean that in some way we are the same person, and not separate people. The six characters were supposed to be one’, and continuing, ‘I come to feel more and more how difficult it is to collect oneself into one Virginia…’

(Parsons, 2000, The Waves ‘Introduction’, p.x)

By Woolf using six characters in her novel, she relates to the ways in which selfhood is divided. In the text Woolf intentions are shown in the character of Barnard who affirms that; ‘I am not one person; I am many people; I do not altogether know who I am – Jinny, Susan, Neville, Rhoda or Louis: or how I distinguish my life from theirs’ (Woolf, the Waves, 1931, p.156). This split of character/personality is in order to follow the many paths that an individual could journey, a task that realistically can not happen, hence why Woolf may have been inclined to create an anti-realism text.

Moreover, as a result of this, Woolf is addressing the centrifugal forces (unbalanced events of life that are beyond control) in life and the novel that pull away from selfhood. Structuralists believe that the novel was void of centrifugal forces, however Bakhtin (1975) wrote otherwise, saying that the novel was much more complex and was under constant shaping by theses centrifugal forces due to the novel being the literary expression of life (The Dialogic Imagination, 1975, ‘Discourse in the Novel’, p.271). With this in mind, we can see how a modernist writer would utilize this theory that challenged the form of the novel in their own writing, in order to further the exploration and experimentation with the novels form in order to further explore their topic, life.

The Waves (1931) relates heavily to Kristeva’s (1986) theories of ‘dialogism’ (the theory that all novels are a multitude of voices) which she constructed from the work of Bakhtin (The Dialogic Imagination 1975, ‘Discourse in the Novel’). Before the work of Bakhtin (1975), structuralism was the common method of interpreting a novel. Structuralism is a method towards interpreting the novel as a methodical, narrow structure which has a set path through which authors explore life through their texts. They viewed and critiqued the novel with fundamental ideas that the novel was monologic (a single voice, i.e. the authors). As Bakhtin (1975) was a Russian writer, his ideas did not reach the west until Kristeva (1986) wrote and elaborated upon them, arguing that the novel was in fact dialogic (many voices) due to her idea that even the singular word was dialogic (see below, three textual dimensions). Modernists, such as Woolf, explicitly illustrate in their text how this ‘dialogism’ is present through their use of experimental forms. As this text uses the voices of six personas to create a wave of consciousness, wherein the voice is constantly changing through the dialogue and prospective of the characters, Woolf is creating an apparent ‘dialogism’. All characters represent different life directions and backgrounds which influences the readers’ expectations of the character. This relates to Bakhtin’s (1975, p. 271) argument that the language of the novel, as with the language of life, is shaped by the heteroglot national language (colloquial speech, dialects etc.), rather than the ideological and monologic official language. However by the Waves (1931) being rather difficult for the average reader due to its form, Woolf somewhat questions the use of a heteroglot national language, as her book, like the official language, alienates lower classes. But by creating characters that represent very different roles and ambitions in life we can see that Woolf is attempting to represent the national heteroglot and the diversity of language.

Woolf may be exploring the three dimensions of textual space that Kristeva Word, Dialogue and Novel (1986) addresses.  In the quotation, Kristeva writes that the “three dimensions [of language ] are writing subject, addressee, and exterior texts” (Kristeva, 1986, p.36), meaning that the word and therefore the novel is a product of word definition, which is unstable due to the perceptions of the writer, literal definition and reader. We can see that Woolf is exploring this in her work by having each character deal with similar and overlapping ideas/themes. Indeed in a sense, all six characters represent an exaggerated example of how in all novels there are an overlapping of ideas and themes that is deeper than plot.

The Waves (1931) is not a standard example of Novel, however it is a crucial example of how the novel is shaped and re-shaped over time, representing the era of the modernists and the need to allow different formats and techniques within the novel form. It is a model of how this form shouldn’t rely upon ridged, structuralist rules over language and structure, as the novel is a written representation of life and selfhood, which I believe is the main effect that the form of the Waves (1931) creates for the reader. It is through experimentation that the novel should both explore and evade from the techniques found in realism novels,  in order to evolve into a written ‘truth’ that is as close to life as a work of literacy can become.

Bakhtin, M (1975). The Dialogic Imagination. Texas; University of Texas Press.

Blackburn, S. (2008) Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, second edition revised. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Keep, C. McLaughlin, T. Parmar, R. (1993). Modernism and the Modern Novel. Accessed [Internet] < http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0255.html> Last accessed; 10^th May 2013.

Kristeva, J (1986). Word, Dialogue and Novel. New York; Columbia University Press.

Parsons, D (2000). The Waves ‘Introduction’. Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire.

Woolf, V (1931). The Waves. London; Hogarth.

Watt, I (1968). the Rise of the Novel. Chatto and Windus Press, London. ‘Realism and the novel form, Chapter I, p.9.

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