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LIBRADV

.6

University

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY OF

POPULAR AND ELITE LITERATURE

presented by

JANICE ANNE RADWAY

has been accepted towards fulfillment

of the requirements for

Jinn.— degree in Marian

Studies

Wan},

Major professor

Date

August 5, 1977

 

0-7 639

 

 

mlllllllmm1”grillll(ll[Lilli1mm!Willll L

3 129

 

 

 

© Copyright by

JANICE ANNE RADWAY

1977

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY OF POPULAR AND

ELITE LITERATURE

BY

Janice Anne Radway

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to

Michigan State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Program of American Studies

Department of English

.1977

ABSTRACT

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY OF POPULAR AND

ELITE LITERATURE

BY

Janice Anne Radway

Although the study of popular art has recently emerged

as a legitimate academic pursuit, very little theoretical

speculation about the nature of popular forms of expression

has been conducted.

Some popular culture analysts have demon-

strated a growing interest in new methodologies for the study

of specific works but few have scrutinized the methodologies

themselves or placed them within a larger framework consider-

ing human creation in general.

It is,therefore, the purpose

of this study to situate popular forms of expression within a

broad theory of human creation, to analyze the similarities

and differences between "popular" and "elite" literary texts,

and to suggest alternative procedures for aesthetic evalua-

tion and judgment.

A

While I agree with the premise of French Structuralism

that all forms of human behavior including literary expres-

sion can be fruitfully compared to man's use of the linguis-

tic system, I have definite reservations about the conception

of language which Structuralism employs.

In an attempt to

compensate for the Structuralist preoccupation with the syn-

chronic, institutional nature of language, I have, therefore,

Janice Anne Radway

turned to the linguistic theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

As a phenomenologist, Merleau-Ponty is primarily concerned

with individual speech acts and the effects they have on the

diachronically evolving nature of the language system.

After defining the need for a theory of popular liter-

ature in the first chapter, I provide, in the second, a

short exigesis of Merleau-Ponty's ontological theories about

the nature of man's insertion in the world, the general char-

acter of all expressive acts, and the specific character of

linguistic expression.

The chapter then concludes with an

examination of Merleau-Ponty's belief that speech may be

Creative if man uses the prOperties of the language system

in unfamiliar ways, thus creating new meaning, or Empirical,

 

if he employs the same prOperties traditionally, thus rely-

ing on the standard sedimented significance associated with

them.

The third chapter suggests that literature can be

thought of as a language system complete with fundamental

properties and rules for their combination.

After explain-

ing that individuals know how to create and read literary

texts only because they have acquired a "literary" compe-

tence in addition to the linguistic competence they possess

as native speakers of a language, I extend the analogy be-

tween literature and language even further, describing

"popular" texts as Empirical or Conservative uses of the

literary system and ”elite" texts as Creative uses.

I do

not, however, argue that every text must fit within one of

Janice Anne Radway

two rigidly defined categories, but maintain instead that all

texts form a continuum extending between the theoretical poles

of Empirical and Creative literary expression.

Part Two of this dissertation is a case study designed

to demonstrate through reference to a single genre, that texts

actually use literary elements in creative and conservative

ways.

Accordingly, in the fourth chapter, I analyze classic

examples of the gothic novel in order to establish the pro-

perties and essential combinations which define the genre.

My analysis is based on an examination of The Castle of

Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk, and Melmoth the

 

 

Wanderer.

Then, in the fifth chapter, I show how Phyllis

Whitney's popular gothic romances employ the standard gothic

"system" traditionally, while Carson McCullers' The Member of

 

the Wedding and William Faulkner's Sanctuary deform that sys-

 

 

tem, using essential properties in unfamiliar ways, thus

causing the gothic form to carry new significance.

The final chapter explores the possibility that popu-

lar texts may be read without the benefit of a literary com-

petence.

In arguing that such non-literary reading may be

related to play, I propose new ways for judging the relative

merits and success of different empirical texts.

"To S. O. R. with Love"

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Before I can thank all those teachers and friends who

have offered assistance and encouragement during the writing

of this dissertation, I would like to acknowledge the debt

I owe to two very special men without whose advice, criti-

cisms, and example this study would never have been completed.

Professor Russel B. Nye has directed my interest in American

Studies and popular culture from the beginning and it was he

who provided the initial suggestion for this paper.

His re-

markable curiosity, generosity, and willingness to listen

have been a constant inspiration to me.

It is with consider-

able regret that I now leave Michigan State and his immediate

guidance.

Professor E. Fred Carlisle has provided extraordinary

and continuing assistance during the past year.

I would have

found it vastly more difficult to come to terms with the theo-

ries of Merleau-Ponty had I not shared so many challenging

conversations with him about phenomenology, language, and

literature.

I have benefited immensely from his attentive

and critical reading of this study at every stage of its

completion and his delightful sense of humor has helped me

to laugh at the times when I needed to most.

So many of my teachers at Michigan State have offered

assistance and advice that it would be impossible to

iii

acknowledge every one individually.

I would, however, like

to thank Professor Roger Meiners for making my first encoun-

ters with critical theory immensely interesting and for in-

troducing me to the work of Owen Barfield.

I also want to

thank Professors David Mead, Douglas Miller, and Barry Gross

for their continuing interest and concern.

In addition,

John G. Cawelti of the University of Chicago was kind enough

to meet with me on a rainy Saturday morning to discuss popu-

lar culture.

That conversation proved particularly helpful

as I first began to formulate my own ideas about new criti-

cal perspectives.

I also want to acknowledge the support

of Karen, Marcia, Mary, and Ana upon whom I have come to

depend for much needed perspective and lightness of the

heart.

Finally, I want to express deepgratitude to two es-

pecially important people for their continuing care and con-

stant attention.

My friend, Nancy, helped me to see clearly

when lack of confidence and fatigue clouded my vision and I

truly appreciate her concern for my personal and professional

growth.

My husband, Scott, has cheerfully shared every mo-

ment of this enterprise and provided gentle but searching

criticisms when most needed.

I cannot imagine having com-

pleted this study without his unqualified support, friend-

ship, and love.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part One

Phenomenology, Language, and Literature

 

Chapter

Page

I.

THE PRESENT SITUATION IN POPULAR CULTURE

ANALYSIS:

THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIVE

THEORY O

O

O

O

O

O

I

O

O

O

O

O

I

I

O

O

II.

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY OF LANGUAGE

.

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology. and Human

Expression .

.

.

.

Speech and Language

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The Phenomenological Conception of

Language .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Authentic or Creative Speech .

Empirical Speech .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The Radical Interdependence of Creative

and Empirical Speech .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

III.

A PHENOMENOLOGY OF LITERARY EXPRESSION .

Why Phenomenology? .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Literature Considered as a Language

System .

.

.

.

.

.

Literary Competence

.

.

A Literary Continuum .

Who is Reading?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Part Two

Practical Implications of the Idea of a

Literary Continuum: 'A Case Studyi

14

14

23

28

34

52

54

69

69

78

90

98

122

IV.

AN ACCOUNT OF A LITERARY COMPETENCE AND A

THEORY OF THE GOTHIC NOVEL .

.

.

Specific Strategies for Reading

The "Codes” of Roland Barthes

The Origins of the Gothic Novel

The Castle of Otranto

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

138

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

138

143

156

160

Chapter

The Mysteries of Udolpho .

 

The Monk .

.

.

.

.

.

.

Melmoth the Wanderer .

 

The Conventional Gothic

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Page

167

181

198

211

V.

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN GOTHIC:

EMPIRICAL AND

CREATIVE USE OF A LITERARY "SYSTEM"

.

.

.

.

224

The Gothic Novel in the Twentieth Century. .

224

Phyllis Whitney and the Popular Gothic

Romance

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding,

 

and "New American Gothic“

.

.

.

.

.

The Gothic World of William Faulkner's

Sanctuary

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

 

.

.

.

.

The Question of the Literary Continuum and

Borderline Cases .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

VI.

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS ABOUT NON-LITERARY READING

PATTERNS, POPULAR LITERATURE, AND AESTHETIC

ANALY S I S O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

I

BIBLIOGRAPHY O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

0

228

256

294

328

344

366

vi

PART ONE

PHENOMENOLOGY, LANGUAGE, AND LITERATURE

CHAPTER I

THE PRESENT SITUATION IN POPULAR CULTURE ANALYSIS:

THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIVE THEORY

Since man first developed his capacity for expression,

all human societies have produced characteristic forms of folk

or popular culture.

However, because such forms were largely

the creations of the poorest and least educated members of so-

ciety, and because they differed greatly from the works of the

most celebrated artists of the day, they were generally ig-

nored in philosophical and critical treatises on the subject

of the arts.

But as industrialization changed the very nature

of life in the early twentieth century, it had a tremendous

impact on the standard critical neglect of popular culture

forms.

When the middle class appeared and grew to huge pro-

portions as a result of industrialization, it began to demand

and produce its own unique forms of expression.

Then, with

the help of the newly emergent business class and its increas-

ingly successful methods of production and distribution, such

cultural forms proliferated, became extremely visible, and

seemed to challenge the hegemony of high or elite art.

With

the advent of the electronic media, the problem became even

more worrisome, and many began to wonder if the exploding

popular culture of the middle class did not pose a serious

threat to the survival of high culture and elite art.

As

1

concern mounted, critics previously preoccupied only with the

state of high art began to devote time and energy to the analy-

sis of popular forms of culture and, as a result, the first

attempts to understand the nature of such work and to distin-

guish it from the forms of high culture were made.

During the 1930's and 1940's in the United States, and

even well into the 1950's, much of the resulting analysis of

popular literature, as only one form of this sort of cultural

production, was highly critical.

Such analysis was nearly

always based on the assumption that popular forms of expres-

sion were either unsuccessful attempts at the creation of art

or deliberate attempts to ignore artistic standards in order

to appeal to a broader group.

Dwight MacDonald pointed out,

for example, in Against the American Grain (1952), that popu-

 

lar culture came not from the masses but from above.

He ar-

gued that it was "fabricated by technicians hired by business-

men" and maintained that it did not satisfy but rather exploit-

ed the desires of the masses.1

Early analysts such as

MacDonald assumed that all artistic creation ought to pursue

the same purpose and argued that the real distinction between

elite and popular literature was merely the difference between

aesthetic success and failure.

Although such analysis paved

the way for serious consideration of a subject previously 1a-

beled insignificant, it managed to avoid the most difficult

questions posed by the appearance of two apparently separate

and distinct cultures.

Neither MacDonald nor others of his

persuasion ever questioned whether all forms of human crea-

tion embodied in written texts were the same.

They did not

ask if all literary texts were meant to perform similar cul-

tural functions, nor did they attempt to determine whether

they ought to be judged on the basis of the same aesthetic

standards.

In short, they failed to question that basic

premise which served as the foundation for all their critical

judgments; they simply assumed that all forms of human expres-

sion ought to be evaluated on the basis of a single set of

absolute criteria.

Highly critical analysis such as MacDonald's was gradu-

ally replaced in the 1960's by a more favorable sort in which

popular forms of culture were scrutinized and examined in their

own right.

This kind of analysis developed as a result of the

growing interest in comprehensive intellectual history and be-

cause of the new concern for the sociological study of all

forms of cultural expression, whether high or low.

Three dis-

tinct but related approaches developed during this period,

and all assumed that the study of popular literature could

tell a great deal about the culture that produced it.

The

first approach, which I call "historical," made every effort

to avoid critical judgments based on the notion of artistic

merit.

Its practitioners observed that popular forms of ex-

pression were appealing to larger and larger audiences and

they argued that because of this such forms ought to be ex-

amined systematically and in depth.

What resulted was a his-

torical catalogue or a history of the development of genres.

Perhaps the most important and best known study using

this general historical approach was Russel B. Nye's The Un-

embarrassed Muse:

The Popular Arts in America, first publish-

   

ed in 1970.

Nye's work was a detailed history of the develop-

ment of popular literature, music, and drama, and it was based

on the assumption that "whatever its manner of expression,

popular culture and the arts included in that culture can no

longer be treated with contempt or dismissed as unworthy of

study."

2

Nye rarely made comparative judgments about various

works within a particular genre and preferred, instead, to

describe in depth the development of the genre as a whole.

His book was one of the first to treat popular art seriously

and without condescension.

As the historical approach developed in sophistication

and popularity, it gave rise to a related form of analysis

and study which I like to call "sociological."

This approach,

like its parent, avoided the whole problem of critical evalu-

ation and instead thought of the popular arts as a cultural

barometer.

Sociological analysts argued that by examining

the themes and ideas of popular forms of expression, one could

learn a great deal about the general concerns and preoccupa-

tions of the culture as a whole.

Roderick Nash, for instance,

maintained in The Nervous Generation:

American Thought, 1917

 

1930, that "the intellectual

life of a nation does not begin

and end with intellectuals."3

As a result, his study of the

American twenties paid due homage to Fitzgerald, Hemingway,

and O'Neill, but also focused on Gene Stratton-Portor, Zane

Grey, and Bruce Barton.

Although Nash thus acknowledged the

importance of popular literature, his analysis of it was still

highly traditional in its preoccupation with theme and idea.

Nash simply applied the common tools of literary analysis to

popular literature in order to shed some light on those as-

pects of American culture not represented or expressed in

elite art.

In a sense, he assumed as MacDonald had, that

popular and elite literature functioned in the same way and

could be explicated using the same method.

The difference

was that Nash saw some sociological value in the study of

popular forms of expression, whereas MacDonald generally 1a-

mented the fact of their existence.

The third approach to the study of popular literary

forms also developed in the late sixties and was closely re-

lated to the sociological approach in its dependence on the

tools and forms of traditional literary analysis.

However,

while sociological analysts used these tools to demonstrate

the way in which pOpular works reflected the world of which

they were a part, these other "literary" analysts simply used

the tools to interpret works regardless of their connection

with society.

This "literary" approach became increasingly

popular after the founding of the Popular Culture Association

in 1968, and it is still the primary method employed by con-

tributors to the Journal of Popular Culture.

In this kind

 

of analysis, a popular work of literature is considered in-

trinsically valuable and it is dissected and explained with

the same kind of attention to detail that would be paid to

a work like Ulysses or The Sound and the Fury.

In the Fall,

 

1974 issue of the Journal of Popular Culture, for instance,

 

James B. Lane carefully analyzed the themes of violence and

sex in Harold Robbin's A Stone for Danny Fisher and Hubert

 

Selby, Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn.4

While Lane did specu—

 

late that the reason for the popularity of these works was

their ability to create a "realistic journey into the recent

past," he did not analyze the novels solely because they

could be treated as a window open to that past.5

Instead,

he argued that their very popularity attested to their sig-

nificance and, as a result, he carefully scrutinized character

development, plot construction, and thematic unity.

Like the historical and sociological analyst of popular

literature, the literary analyst like Lane seldom concerned

himself with the differences between his subject and the forms

of elite literature.

Content to confine himself to an analy-

sis of the structure and ideas found in works clearly identi-

fiable as "popular," this sort of analyst produced almost no

theoretical writing about the relationship between popular or

low literature and high art.

As a result, most of the ques-

tions left unanswered by the early critics of popular culture

continued to be ignored by the new historical, sociological,

and literary apologists alike.

It appears to me that if

these very basic questions about the structure and function

of popular literature are not first addressed, no serious at-

tempt can be made to formulate comparative or evaluative judg-

ments about popular forms of expression.

If we do not make

some attempt to describe the exact nature of popular literary

forms, we can never hope to distinguish them from high art

forms, nor can we hope to evaluate their relative success or

failure on their own merits.

To do so, certain fundamental

problems must first be confronted and resolved.

It is first absolutely necessary to recognize that the

heretofore generally accepted distinction between elite and

popular literature is not a distinction that has been care-

fully and systematically established in theory.

In most

cases where the problem is even treated, the two different

categories have been set up on two completely distinct and

separate sets of criteria.

The category, "art," or elite

literature, for example, is usually composed of those works

judged by the literary and academic community to embody cer-

tain ideal standards and to perform some generally agreed-

upon "aesthetic" function.

Often, however, these ideal

standards are not explicitly stated, nor are the aesthetic

functions to be performed by a work of art set forth.

Still,

works continue to be dismissed and excluded from this vaguely

defined category in an easy and off-handed manner that is

truly astonishing.

On the other hand, the category, "popular literature,"

is sometimes established on the basis of numbers alone, and

sometimes on the notion that the ideas and themes exhibited

in such works are “of the people."

There seems to be a genu-

ine disagreement over the meaning of the word, "popular,"

since some critics argue it refers simply to the phenomenon

of mass readership, while others maintain it delineates a cer-

tain kind of relationship between a work and the society that

produced it.

In both instances, however, the definition cre-

ates more problems than it solves.

In the first case, the

definition forces us to label most of William Shakespeare's

major plays "popular literature," and in the second case, we

find ourselves hard pressed to exclude Benjamin Franklin's

Autobiography from a list of those works whose themes are

 

judged to be "of the people."

While such categorization

might not bother the most rabid champion of popular litera-

ture, it would almost certainly be challenged by elite crit-

ics and popular culture analysts alike who, for centuries,

have thought of both Shakespeare's and Franklin's work as

"art."

The real problem with these glibly defined categories

of "art" and "popular literature," is that they do not sepa—

rate popular works from elite works on a consistent basis.

Because the criteria used to identify a work of art are

quite different from those used to isolate a popular work,

the categories thus established are not mutually exclusive.

They are not founded on a differentiation based on certain

constant reference points such as language-use or character

development and, as a result, it is entirely possible to

find a work that performs the aesthetic functions thought

of as the province of art, and which, at the same time, en-

joys immense popularity in the sense of mass readership.

By the same token, it is conceivable that we can point to a

work which reflects the attitudes and ideas "of the people”

and which fulfills, at the same time, the ideal standards

conceived of as the definition of art.

In each case, the

shoddy and inconsistent delineation of criteria prevents us

from identifying how a particular work differs from another,

and we are then prevented from assigning any work to a truly

descriptive category.

Consequently, categorization such as

this is generally useless and in effect serves only to muddy

already unclear waters to an even greater extent.

It seems evident to me that popular literature analysts

are in desperate need of a comprehensive theory of literary

expression which will include a system of categorization that

is both consistent and useful.

In such a theory, the exact

range of the categories themselves will have to be founded

on the similarities that exist among all forms of written

”literary" expression, and the resulting distinctions between

kinds or types of expression will have to be formulated on

the basis of a comparison over a fixed set of referenceepoints

or ideas.

Only by establishing such categories on a consist-

ent basis, can we hope to differentiate one kind of literary

expression from another with any sort of confidence.

However,

I must add here that I do not envision such a system of cate-

gorization as a rigid or static one composed only of separate

categories with absolutely determined and impenetrable bound-

aries.

Instead, I prefer to think of the whole realm of lit-

erary expression as a kind of continuum, possessing two

10

theoretical poles composed of works different from one an-

other, but joined by a middle range marked off by a multitude

of variations.

In such a system, the continuum would ideally

include all texts that could be identified as "literary," and

the two poles would be defined by the fact that certain groups

of works could be shown to theoretically exhibit diametrically

 

opposed structures and to perform opposite functions.

It will

be my purpose in this paper then, to define the nature of that

continuum, to indicate how and in what way it is marked off in

theory by two very different types of literary texts, and to

explain how those types gradually fade into each other in

practice.

In approaching such a problem, it occurs to me that

there is no small significance in the fact that all written

literary texts, whether casually defined as popular or elite,

are at one and the same time expressions of an individual

human mind and creations wrought of language.

While this

kind of observation may amount to nothing more than a truism

for some, it seems absolutely essential to me as that most

basic of starting points.

For if we can accurately determine

what it is that "high art" and "popular literature" have in

common as human creations in the medium of language, we might

be better able to discern exactly how they use that language

differently and in what way they vary their appeal to their

readers.

A two-sided observation such as this would then

enable us to suggest flexible categories based on both struc-

tural and functional differences.

While it would be impossible

11

to specify the exact dividing line between the two categories,

we could define them as pure theoretical types and then com-

pare specific works to each.

In this way, we could identify

which structures and functions a particular work possessed

or did not possess and, as a result, we could place that work

on the continuum of literary texts by referring to how closely

it approached one or the other theoretical type.

From the preceding introductory remarks, I am sure it

is easy to discern the direction I propose to take for the

remainder of this study.

After establishing a certain theory

of human expression and providing a complementary theory of

language-use, I intend to suggest ways in which written texts

employ language differently for different expressive purposes.

I propose to delineate both structural and functional differ-

ences among kinds of literary texts and I hope thereby to ex—

plain both how and why one kind of text can establish a cer—

tain relationship with its readers, while another type can

appear to create a very different one.

After formulating

such loose and flexible theoretical distinctions, I will ex-

amine certain texts generally thought of as obviously differ—

ent in kind with the intention of showing the structural and

functional variations in operation.

I then propose to con-

sider the problems posed by borderline cases, that is, by

texts which do not clearly fall within the ideal limits of

one category or the other.

Only then will I address the dif-

ficult problem of comparative evaluation and aesthetic judg-

ment and make some suggestions about the models and methods

12

which might be employed with such a normative interest in

mind.

NOTES

1Dwight MacDonald, Against the American Grain (New

 

York:

Random House, 1952), p. 14.

2Russel B. Nye, The Unembagrassed Muse:

The Popular

 

 

Arts in America (New York:

The Dial Press, 1970), P. 420.

3Roderick Nash, The Nervous Generation:

American

 

Thought, 1917-1930 (Chicago:

Rand McNally College Publish-

ing Company, 1970), p. ix.

4James B. Lane, "Violence and Sex in the Post-War

Popular Urban Novel:

With a Consideration of Harold Robbins's

a

Brooklyn.“

Journal of Popular Culture, VIII (1974), 295-308.

A Stone for Danny Fisher and Hubert Selby, Jr.'s Last Exit to

 

5

Lane, "Violence," p. 295.

13

CHAPTER II

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY OF LANGUAGE

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, and Human Expression

It has always been my conviction that the most useful

and convincing theories of literary form are those derived

from a clear theoretical conception of the human mind and

the process of artistic creation.

While many have speculated

over the years on the exact nature and function of literary

form, comparatively few have grounded such speculations in

an understanding of the complex relationship that obtains

between thought, language-use, and expression.

However,

modern phenomenology and linguistic theory have evolved since

the turn of the century into far-reaching inquiries into the

general human capacity to create meaning and, as a result, a

new comprehensive outlook has prompted the formulation of

several inclusive theories which treat literary creation as

a special case of human expression.

Although Maurice Merleau-

Ponty was only one among many phenomenological philosophers,

and despite the fact that he died before he could systemati-

cally examine the peculiarities of expression in the medium

of language, it seems to me that Merleau-Ponty's theory of

the body-subject possesses

some of the most interesting and

pregnant suggestions ever made about the intricate connec-

tions between consciousness, perception, and literary

l4

15

expression.

Before he died in 1961, Merleau-Ponty was able

to sketch out the framework for a complete phenomenology of

language, which I believe can be filled inland extended to

produce a phenomenology of literary expression which will

specifically treat the differences and distinctions between

those forms we traditionally call "elite" and "popular."

This chapter, then, is an exploration and extension of Merleau-

Ponty's phenomenology of language and, in it, I try to lay the

groundwork for the phenomenology of literary expression which

is the subject of the third chapter.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theory of language is itself

only one aspect of his more comprehensive exploration into

the nature of human life in general and it is, therefore, de-

rived from a complex conception of the relationship between

the human subject and his environment.

In fact, most of

Merleau-Ponty's early works are designed as systematic refu-

tations of the traditional notion of the human subject as a

consciousness distinct and separate from an independent en-

vironment or Nature.1

Merleau—Ponty generally disagrees with

Cartesian philosophy and rejects the traditional subject-

object ontology which even now still dominates much of

twentieth-century philosophical thought.

In The Structure

 

of Behavior, for example, Merleau-Ponty explores generally-

accepted theories about the relationship between the human

subject and its world, and concludes, finally, that "a deeper

reflection on the objects of science and on physical causality

finds relations in them which cannot be posited in-themselves

16

(en soi) and which have meaning only before the inspection

of mind."2

Merleau-Ponty argues, in effect, that subject

and object, body and world, are inextricably intertwined and

as a result cannot be accurately spoken of as separate and

distinct entities.

Consciousness, for Merleau-Ponty, is

always consciousness g: something, just as the world is a

world only by virtue of the fact that it exists f9; someone.

Using terminology borrowed from the writings of Edmund

Husserl, Merleau-Ponty expands upon this conclusion in his

preface to Phenomenology of Perception, where he advocates

 

that philosophy return to the Lebenswelt, or to a description

 

of things themselves.

"To return to the things themselves,"

he writes, "is to return to that world which precedes knowl-

edge, of which knowledge always speaks and in relation to

which every scientific schematization is an abstract and

derivative sign-language, as is geography in relation to the

countryside in which we have learnt beforehand what a forest,

a prairie or a river is."3

Merleau-Ponty insists that phe-

nomenology's goal is the description of the primordial con-

tact between body and world which exists prior to any form

of consciousness as suCh.

He argues that the human body is

not a separate physical entity which merely comes into con-

tact with an already fully constituted world, but instead,

a structure which is open to the world and correlative with

it.

He also maintains that the world is inseparable from

the perceiving subject who is always inserted in the world

by virtue of his incarnation as a body.

Man's "being-in-the-

17

world” precedes any consciousness he may have of that world,

and as a result, he is truly a body-subject who lives in

direct contact with beings and things.4

This notion of the body-subject, then, is the founda-

tion of all Merleau-Ponty's philOSOphical speculations in-

cluding those he made about language-use and the creation

of meaning.

It is the primary concern of his two major

treatises, Phenomenology of Perception and The Visible and

   

the Invisible,5 and it must be recognized for the revolu-

 

tionary concept that it is, if the full implications of his

position are to be known.

It is, therefore, necessary to

summarize this conception before any discussion of his lin-

guistic theories can begin.

The following is in no way in-

tended as a critical analysis of the notion of the body-

subject, but is meant, rather, as a quick summary of Merleau-

Ponty's most basic premise and starting point.6

In commenting on Merleau-Ponty's use of the phrase

j'en suis in The Visible and the Invisible, Remy Kwant has

 

pointed out that the choice could not have been a more per-

fect one, since the very structure of the phrase itself em-

phasizes the fact that man and the world are not separate

entities for Merleau-Ponty.7

Because of the peculiar exi-

gencies of French grammar, subject and object are locked to-

gether here as the single morpheme or word, 1:32.

Thus, by

using this particular wording, Merleau-Ponty has not only

said that I, as human consciousness, belong to it, or Being,

but that consciousness and Being are intertwined or joined

18

as two syllables of a single word or as two sides of a single

piece of paper.

He also uses the word 1e chiasme or chiasm to describe

 

this conjunction, and the metaphor seems peculiarly apt.

8

By referring to the connection between man and the world as

a figure of crossed lines like the Greek letter chi, Merleau-

Ponty indicates that the entity he seeks to describe is a

unity composed of distinct elements and that any analytical

procedure which attempts to isolate or separate those elements

actually destroys that unity.9

Merleau-Ponty maintains that

consciousness and the world only have real being as correla-

tive aspects of a single entity and that to speak of them ac-

curately, we must, in effect, learn to distinguish without

dividing.

Although Merleau-Ponty elaborates at some length

10

in the last section of The Visible and the Invisible on the

 

exact nature of this connection between man and Being, it is

not necessary to recount the entire argument here.

Suffice

it to say that Merleau-Ponty envisions human consciousness

and the environment as reverse "sides" of a unified single

Being and refuses to grant independent ontological status to

either.

They exist together for Merleau-Ponty as a unity of

reciprocal implication.

He argues that consciousness and

the world are inextricably intertwined through the medium of

the human body and that if we are to understand how man makes

-meaning out of that environment, we must acknowledge the im-

portance of the corporeal connection between the two.

19

It is absolutely clear that although the idea of incar-

nation is central to Merleau-Ponty's theory, his conception

of the body is not even remotely related to our common-sense

notion of it as a mere collection of physical organs.

In-

stead, he views it as a kind of power or ability, an I-can,

as he sometimes calls it.

Merleau-Ponty thinks of the human

body as the center of power or locus of a man's ability to

be subject and object for himself at one and the same time.

He points out again and again throughout his works that man

can use his left hand to touch his right hand just as his

right hand is touching his left, and thus simultaneously be

both toucher and touched, perceiver and perceived, subject

and object.

From this he concludes that man has the unique

ability to be both sensitive to himself and to the world as

well.

His body is a perceptible reality in that it is fully

continguous with Being and can be seen, and yet it is likewise

a perceiving reality since it can take note of the reality

that surrounds it.

The body, then, belongs to things or to

the world and is in full communion with them, but it is also

separate from those things in that it is capable of "looking"

at them from a distance.

As Merleau-Ponty writes in Themes

from the Lectures, "we are not dealing here with two natures,

one subordinate to the other, but with a double nature. .

.

.

Thus the body proper is a sensible and it is the 'sensing';

it can be seen and it can see itself; it can be touched and

it can touch itself, and, in this latter respect, it comprises

an aspect inaccessible to others, open in principle only to

20

In other words, while man's body is visible to

others, his power to see or to do is not; hence, his visible

body is the reverse side of his invisible power to see or to

do.

The human body is, therefore, simultaneously a "thing"

and an activity or power, and its two aspects are conditioned

by the fact that they occupy a physical place by virtue of

their connection and mutual interpenetration in a single,

sensible portion of Nature.

It can be seen therefore that for Merleau-Ponty the

human subject is truly a body-subject, that is, an incarnate

power-to-be occupying a specific, identifiable place in na-

ture.

What this means is that every human subject has a

unique physical perspective on the things of his environment

and is simultaneously affected by and expressive of that

situation or perspective.

To see the world is to see from a

certain place, and the things that are seen are thus per-

spectively altered by the position from which they are viewed.

To speak is to speak about things from a particular point in

space and time, and the things that are uttered are thus con-

ditioned by the special circumstances of the point of utter-

ance.

It is impossible'for man to operate outside his own

particular corporeal orientation and, as a result, every

gesture, movement, thought, and act is in some way an expres-

sion of that individual's way-of-being-in-the-world.

In es-

sence, then, both the act and the product of that act are

embodiments of the actor's particular corporeal situation.

Even in vision, as Merleau-Ponty says, "the meaning of a

21

perceived object when picked out from all others still does

not stand isolated from the constellation in which it appears;

it is articulated only as a certain distance in relation to

the order of space, time, motion, and signification in general

in which we are established."

12

Merleau-Ponty concludes that

meaning or order cannot be said to exist solely within the

natural world nor can it be seen as the creation of conscious-

ness alone.

Rather, it must be thought of as the pre-conscious

orientation itself or way of occupying space born at that mo-

ment when a body-subject is situated within Being.

Merleau-Ponty argues that this pre-conscious orientation

exists for the body-subject from the beginning, but not as con-

scious awareness of "meaning" as such.

It is only objectified

and given presence in the world through expression which he

defines as man's ability to absent one portion of his experi-

ential field as "object" from the rest of himself as experi-

encing subject.

Merleau-Ponty argues that man is continuous

with the world and open to its meaning before he is conscious

of it as meaning.

When he does gradually become aware of him-

self as the tangible-toucher, the audible-hearer, and the sen-

sible sensor, man can be said to be both absent from himself

and present to himself at the same time.

He is absent from

himself in that he feels a portion of himself as an alien

"object," as a tangible "thing," for instance.

But he is,

at the same time, present to himself because he continues to

”know" he is the toucher of that thing.

Once man is able to

absent himself in this way, he is able to make an object of

22

virtually any portion of that Being with which he is continu-

ous.

In doing so, he expresses his primordial situation and

gives it objective existence as the object seen, thing felt,

or act completed.

In essence; Merleau-Ponty argues the ob-

ject "created" is not separate from the act that gave it ex-

istence or meaning, and hence, that both are always necessary

expressions of a way-of-being-in-the-world.

Even perception

itself is expression according to Merleau-Ponty, and the thing

perceived is as much a part of that expression as is the act

itself.

"Perception," he writes, "is precisely that kind of

act in which there can be no question of setting the act it-

self apart from the end to which it is directed.

Perception

and the perceived necessarily have the same existential mo-

dality, since perception is inseparable from the conscious-

ness it has, or rather is, of reaching the thing itself."13

Expression then is that most basic activity through which

man gives objective, identifiable, and separate existence to

some small portion of his manner of being-in-the-world.

It

is the process by which he makes meaning out of his corporeal

situation and causes part of it to be born as sense or as

some "thing" in the world.

It is, in short, that "primary

operation which first constitutes signs as signs, makes that

which is expressed dwell in them through the eloquence of

their arrangement and configuration alone, implants a meaning

in that which did not have one, and thus-mfar from exhausting

itself in the instant at which it occurs-—inaugurates an order

and founds an institution or tradition."14

23

It is expression, therefore, which is the link between

human consciousness as we know it in everyday life and the

pre-conscious, pre-verbal level of existence in which that

consciousness is grounded.

At this primordial level of aware-

ness all being is inarticulate or mute in that it has no

identifiable "meaning" as such.

What form or structure

there is exists as inseparable and indistinguishable from

the field as a whole.

Individuals and things are merely im-

perceptible variations woven into the single fabric of Being.

However, through expression, these variations or mute struc-

tures and forms are actualized by being isolated; they are

marked off or framed by a body-subject as separate aspects

of its own field and thus given objective, bodily presence.

To express is to give existence to some part of that system

which is made up of all the connections and lines of force

created by a particular body-subject's insertion in the world.

As Remy Kwant points out, expression transforms man's pri-

mordial or pre-conscious awareness of the world into a reflec-

tive consciousness which is simultaneously aware of itself as

perceiver and of the world as perceived.15

Speech and Language

Merleau-Ponty maintains that expression can take many

forms including that of gestures, behavior, or work, but he

concedes that expression through speech is a special case

and occupies a privileged position.l6

Expressive speech is

born between two silences according to Merleau-Ponty; it

‘24

expresses the pre-conscious silence that is inarticulate and

unaware of its own meaning, but it does so only to bring that

silence or "truth," as he sometimes calls it, to conscious

existence--only to actualize it as part of the objective

world.

As Merleau-Ponty writes in The Prose of the World,

 

"when one goes from the order of events to the order of ex-

pression, one changes levels but does not change the world."17

It is through the objectification process inherent in lan-

guage-use itself that distance is achieved between man and

Being, and, as a result, man must speak of the world in order

to know it.

To say something about the world is actually to

bring that world to existence.

A word is not the sign or

representation of a particular thought but that thought's

very existence in the world.

Expressive speech, then, or

the use of language, is not merely a mental act but a produc-

tion of the entire body-subject.

Just as man's body is the

incarnation of a dimension or style of being in physical

space, so speech is the embodiment of that style in act.

Merleau-Ponty argues that when someone speaks, inchoate

Being is transmuted into objectified meaning.

In speech

there occurs a "migration of meaning scattered in experience

that leaves the flesh in which it did not manage to collect

itself, mobilizes already capitalized instruments for its

(own profit, and employs them so that in the end they become

the very body it had needed while in the process of acquir-

ing the dignity of expressed meaning."

Speech is not merely

18

one gesture among many for Merleau-Ponty but "the vehicle of

25

our movement toward truth, as the body is the vehicle of our

being in the world."19

It is the incomprehensible virtue of

language that it segm§_to efface itself before the meaning

that it embodies, and it thus always propels us toward the

world it signifies and to which it refers.

For example, when

we understand what someone is saying, we do not attend to each

word as it is uttered but rather to the entire meaning or idea

marked out by those words taken together.

As Merleau-Ponty

comments, "the perfection of language lies in its capacity to

pass unnoticed."20

Because of its abilities and consequent complexities,

language can always be considered from two distinct but en-

tirely related perspectives.

It is, on the one hand, an in-

stitution or system made up of culturally agreed-upon signs,

equivalent meanings, and rules for their combination.

On

the other hand, it can also be thought of as an act or event

whereby we are ostensibly led beyond the signs themselves to

some separate "meaning."

Language is neither the stable in-

stitution itself nor the speaking event alone.

The two exist,

rather, as reverse sides of a single entity.

If a system of

signs with generally agreed-upon meanings did not exist, men

could not objectify their experiences in such a way that they

could be understood by others.

But, on the other hand, if

it was not possible to add to that system through new speech

acts, to augment the meanings already available within the

institution, then no man could ever say anything that had not

been said before and no new meaning could ever be embodied in

26

the carnal presence of words.

For every potential speaker,

therefore, language is first a system that must be learned,

an institution to which entrance must be sought.

If looked

at in this manner, that is synchronically, it is a static,

unchanging body of knowledge which every child must acquire.

Merleau-Ponty refers to language looked at in this way as

le langage parlé21 and thinks of it as a "fait accompli--as

   

the residue of past acts of signification and the record of

already acquired meaning."22

Language in this sense, however,

is wholly dependent on speech events themselves which create

the institution over the course of time.

Speech, or 13

langage‘parlant, language looked at diachronically, is then

 

made up of contingent, temporary, individual acts which go

beyond the limits of the institution itself and which con-

stantly add to or actualize the possibilities of expression

contained within it.

Speech events are therefore capable of

and responsible for the modification of language as a system.

The two taken together comprise the true being of language,

which Merleau-Ponty refers to as logic in contingency.

Lan-

guage, he comments, is an "oriented system which neverthe-

less always elaborates random factors, taking what was for-

tuitous up into a meaningful whole - incarnate logic."23

In his essay, "On the Phenomenology of Language,"

Merleau-Ponty is careful to stress the fact that language

can never be reduced to either one of its two aspects.

He

cautions, furthermore, that we must not conceive of them as

two separate and distinct entities in sequential juxtaposition,

27

but must recognize that they interpenetrate one another and

function simultaneously in a kind of dialogue.

Merleau-Ponty

adds that "far from our being able to juxtapose a psychology

of language [focusing on the event] and a science of language

[focusing on the institution] by reserving language in the

present for the first and language in the past for the second,

we must recognize that the present diffuses into the past to

the extent that the past has been present.

History is the

history of successive synchronies, and the contingency of

the linguistic past invades even the synchronic system."24

In other words, it can never be a question of arguing that

speech events are the chronological antecedents of language

considered as a system, since there can never be a speech

event that does not use the elements of that system.

Nor

can we ever say that the institution as such precedes any

use that can be made of it, since the institution itself is

determined by the residue or sedimentation of all past speech

acts.

Still, theorists deliberately ignore the diachronic

aspect of the being of language and insist on considering

language wholly as a synchronic system.

But this kind of

limiting vision prevents us from understanding how new mean-

ing is made and how it is communicated among men.

To look,

at language synchronically, that is as a stable, self-contained

system, is to close off the possibility of diachronic or tem-

poral change and hence to ignore the fact that speakers utter

things that have never been said before and that, as a result,

28

still others are admitted to ideas they did not previously

know.

The Phenomenological Conception of Language

 

If we are to account for the fact that people g9 learn,

it seems absolutely necessary to consider language phenome-

nologically, that is, from the point of view of a speaker who

can manipulate the language system to express his unique way-

of-being-in-the-world and to communicate that meaning to

others.25

To look at language in this way is to recognize

the intertwining that exists between language as event and

language as a system and to acknowledge the fundamental na-

ture of the interdependence that results.

However, the phe-

nomenological point of view also enables us to admit that

despite this radical dependency, language as event is onto-

logically prior to language considered as a system.

What

this means is that the temporal speech act itself is actual,

that is, it can be said to exist in the real world, whereas

the language system as a whole is only virtual in that no

speech act can ever realize it in totality.

As Merleau-

Ponty says, "since synchrony is only a section of diachrony,

the system realized in it never exists wholly in act but

always involves latent or incubating changes."26

Thus, lan-

guage considered phenomenologically can never be thought of

as a group of absolutely determined univocal meanings which

are explicitly defined as the equivalents of certain signs

by some tranSparent consciousness.

Rather, it must be thought

29

of as “a cohesive whole of convergent linguistic gestures,

each of which [is]'defined less by a signification than a

use-value."27

Language in this sense is truly a system-in-

use and Merleau-Ponty refers to it as Speech.

This phenome-

nological conception of language as Speech, does not refer

merely to the act of speaking itself nor to the system of

sedimented.meaning, but rather to the convergence or inter-

twining of the two that is effected when a human subject

utters words to make himself understood.

Speech, as Merleau-

Ponty says, does not simply activate the possibilities con-

tained within the language system.

Far from being a simple

effect of that system, "it modifies and sustains [it] just

as much as it is conveyed through it."28

Merleau-Ponty is not always consistent in his use of

the term Speech and sometimes employs it to refer to any

speech event at all.

However, he does use the term most

often to designate that kind of speech act which manipulates

the language system in order to formulate a new meaning, that

kind of act which attempts to give carnal presence to an

”idea" that has only previously existed outside the system

itself.

When language is thus used "authentically," it

forces the listener to go beyond the system of signs and

their equivalent meanings to some indeterminate space where

the new meaning is created for the first time.

When language

is used in this way, as Speech, "it is not a simple invita-

tion to the listener or reader to discover in himself signifi-

cations that were already there.

It is rather the trick

30

whereby the writer or orator, touching on these significa-

tions already present in us [as part of the language system],

makes them yield strange sounds."29

As Merleau-Ponty usually

defines it, then, Speech is "that operation through which a

certain arrangement of already available signs and significa-

tions alters and then transfigures each of them, so that in

the end a new signification is secreted."30

Language used

in this way is truly expressive, that is, it is used to give

form to that primordial, pre-verbal level of experience which

is thereby organized and made to exist in the carnal presence

of words.

However, it must be added here that language can

also be used in such a way that both speaker and listener

rely on familiar significations which have been previously

deposited within the system as a result of creative speech

acts.

But before I can elaborate on this kind of language-

use or discuss its relationship to truly expressive Speech,

it is first necessary to point out a few crucial facts about

the nature of the language system itself.

As I have noted previously, a language system is com-

posed of signs which seem to possess certain equivalent mean-

ings and rules governing the combination of those signs.

Every speech act, therefore, whether true Speech or not,

must rely on and manipulate those signs according to the

agreed-upon rules if anything at all is to be said.

It is

important to point out, however, that the signs themselves,

taken singly, one by one, actually signify nothing.

While

this observation about language, first made by Ferdinand de

31

Saussure, is an extremely difficult one to grasp, it must be

understood if we are to comprehend how a word, already known

to possess a certain identifiable signification, can be modi-

fied and forced to take on new meaning as a result of combina-

tion with other words.

Saussure maintained that although the

sign was indeed the fundamental unit of language, it was not

a thing or a substance but a functional relationship which

itself contained two factors.

The sign was actually the

juncture between the word itself, the signifiant

or signi-

 

fier, and its arbitrarily determined meaning or signifié.

31

Saussure argued further that the essence of any sign was not

simply its signifié, or some positively determined diction-

ary definition, but rather the signification distance it

marked off between itself and other signs.

As Merleau-Ponty

acknowledges, Saussure maintained that each sign "does not

so much express a meaning as mark a divergence of meaning

between itself and other signs" and that, as a result, "the

terms of language are engendered only by the differences

which appear among them."32

For example, the phoneme, "knife,"

taken entirely by itself, does not automatically signify that

sharp-bladed instrument we commonly think of when we hear the

phoneme pronounced.

Rather, that sound refers to that instru-

ment only by virtue of the fact that there are other, differ-

ent sounds within the same language system which do not refer

to it, but which indicate instead fork, spoon, spade, or shovel.

Thus, the meaning of the word "knife" is not lodged in itself

as it is explained in the dictionary correspondence table, but

32

[exists within the language system as a whole.

The meaning of

each sign is, therefore, dependent on the total movement of

the language as it is spoken.

Currently accepted theory about the acquisition of

language in children seems to support Saussure's notion.

Jean Piaget, for instance, points out that for very young

children, words and even syllables function as complete sen-

tences.33

He implies that what a child fi£§E_learns about

language is not certain finite words and their dictionary

meanings, but rather certain oppositive and relational prin-

ciples about sign juxtaposition which are later applied and

extended to a broader and broader range of signs.

As Merleau-

Ponty himself points out, "the important point is that the

phonemes [or first words] are from the beginning variations

of a unique speech apparatus, and that with them the child

seems to have 'caught' the principle of a mutual differen-

tiation of signs and at the same time to have acquired the

meaning of the sign."34

What this means is that when a child

 

has learned to speak and to master these functional opposi-

tions, he has been initiated into a system where the ultimate

relation of sign to meaning is dependent on the lateral re-

lationship of sign to sign.

Meaning, then, as it is created through language, arises

only at the intersections and intervals between words.

In

order to Speak and to refer to the world we must make sen-

tences out of signs which are themselves "empty."

Like a

charade, our speech can only be understood "through the

33

interaction of signs, each of which, taken separately, is

equivocal or banal, and makes sense only by being combined

with others."

35

Each time a sign is uttered,

then, it is

entirely dependent for its meaning on the speech act as a

whole.

Thus it is that the creation of guy meaning, whether

familiar or new, is actually the product of the complete lan-

guage system as it is mobilized and put to use in that par-

ticular speech act.

Meaning, therefore, cannot be said to

exist behind or beneath separate words but is, rather, the

creation of whole sentences engaged in discourse.

To under-

stand a speaker's meaning, we must let outselves be seduced

by the motion of the sentences of his conversation, rather

than consult a dictionary for the meaning of each word.

Even

though the sentence as the foundation of the speech act is

composed of signs, it is not a sign itself.

Created by the

juxtaposition of a naming function and a predicative function,

the sentence is a synthesis which goes beyond the simple sum

of its parts.

It is, in reality, a wholly separate entity,

and it is through its existence as gygnp that meaning is made.

Therefore, we are forced to analyze the exact nature of the

speech event itself if we are to understand precisely how

"empty" words can be put together to yield very different

kinds of results.

It has got to be the character of the tem-

poral occurrence which determines whether words merely con-

front a listener with familiar meanings or whether they point

the way to radically new and not yet entirely formulated sig-

nifications.36

34

Authentic or Creative Speech

 

As has been mentioned before, language can be used in

two distinct and different ways.

Words can be combined

”authentically" so that they intersect with each other and

thus create new meaning or they can be put together in such

a way that both speaker and listener rely on the significa-

tions generally associated with the words used.

However,

since those significations were once the original products

of previously creative acts, the true importance of speech

to the institution of language becomes increasingly clear.

It would seem, therefore, absolutely necessary to explain

the nature of a truly creative speech act before analyzing

that secondary event which only refers to already expressed

meanings.

In the authentic use of language, that is, in true

Speech, the speaking subject seeks to give objective, verbal

presence to some portion of his pre-verbal, pre-conscious

existence.

What this means is that true Speech is not the

verbal equivalent of some previously existing, conscious

"thought," but that thought's actual existence or presence

in the world.

Thought simply cannot precede language if we

accept Merleau-Ponty's premise that true meaning is only made

to exist when some subject is able to separate a portion of

his primordial existence from the total experiential field

and cause it to exist apart from that field through the aus-

pices of some other medium.

A thought limited to existing

for itself, outside the confines of language and speech,

35

would merely sink back into the pre-conscious state as soon

as it had appeared.

In essence, it would not even exist for

itself, since without the separation and objectification of

language there would be no consciousness.

This idea can be demonstrated if we think about the

process that occurs when we see an object whose exact essence

we cannot discern.

When I perceive some "thing" partially

revealed in the shadows of twilight, that thing has no deter-

minate existence for me until I can name it.

While I do ad-

mittedly see something, the object does not come into focus

for me as an object until I can identify exactly what it is.

 

To identify it is to give it its proper name, and therefore

I only see a wheelbarrow-hidden-by-shadows at the very moment

that I can say "that is a wheelbarrow hidden by shadows."

The denomination of the object does not follow recognition

but rather is that recognition itself.37

Thus, my statement

itself bears the meaning, and by imposing it on the object,

I am conscious of finally reaching and understanding that

wheelbarrow.

When a speech act is successful, therefore,

and meaning is created, the sentence does not leave behind a

simple reminder of some thought existing "out there" but

brings the meaning into existence as the very essence of the

words employed.

As has been pointed out before, when I hear

someone speak, I do not first attend to his words and then

decipher the meaning hidden behind them.

Instead, I listen

to the thought or meaning directly as it is bodied forth at

that moment in the presence of those words.

36

What is so misleading about the relationship between

language and thought and causes us to believe in the exist-

ence of thoughts apart from language, is thought already con-

stituted and expressed--thought which we recall to ourselves

in the privacy of our silent existence.

However, this silence

is, in actuality, teeming with words, and our inner life is

really an internal speaking.38

Such thoughts were at one

time the original products of radically creative speech acts,

and it is only as a result of repetition and familiarity that

they have become acquired significations and internal posses-

sions.

We must say, therefore, with Merleau-Ponty, that

"true speech does not translate ready-made thought, but ac-

complishes it."39

When man uses language to accomplish thought, to ex-

press, whether for himself or others, something about his

living relation with the world, that language is not an in-

strument of translation, but a manifestation or revelation

of his most personal existence.

When he speaks "authenti-

cally," he does not simply transpose into equivalent words

some previously known "thing-to-say," existing before him,

but rather gives verbal existence to an as yet indeterminate

desire to say something.

This "significative intention,"

as Merleau-Ponty terms it, is an experienced gap or a

 

”speechless want,"

and it is produced by the fact that each

40

man experiences a great deal more than he or anyone else has

ever expressed.

What any speaker has to say, then, is only

"the excess of what [he] lives over what has already been

37

said."

41

Since this significative intention is merely the

awareness of a lack, the speaking subject has no text to

guide him, no concrete idea of what words to choose to tell

him what he feels the lack or privation of.

He has no ex-

plicit or formulated idea of what he desires to say until he

has actually said it.

In true speech, therefore, the subject

does not deliberately select each sign as the equivalent of

some previously worked out signification "the way one searches

for a hammer to drive in a nail or pincers to pull one out."42

Instead, he feels the need to say something, directs his in-

tention toward the as yet indeterminate goal and simply be-

gins to speak.‘ One might say that the speaker aims at the

words he needs in the same way that I unconsciously reach

across my desk to shut a window.

I do not need to mentally

represent space and my own body in order to effect the neces-

sary movements involved in shutting the window because both

space and my own body exist for me as part of a possible

field of action.

In the same way, the speaker does not need

to visualize a word or represent it to himself in order to

articulate it.

He possesses certain words as part of his

linguistic field of action, merely reaches back to the neces-

sary locations in that field, and utters the words he finds.

Since this is an extremely difficult concept to grasp, it .

might be helpful here to let Merleau-Ponty himself speak at

some length on the subject.

In commenting on the way in

which words are selected in a speech act, he writes:

38

The words and turns of phrase needed to bring

my significative intention to expression recom-

mend themselves to me, when I am speaking, only

by what Humboldt called innere Sppachform .

.

.

that is, only by a certain style of speaking

 

from which they arise and according to which

they are organized without my having to repre-

sent them to myself.

There is a "languagely"

meaning of language which effects the mediation

between my as yet unspeaking intention and words,

and in such a way that my spoken words surprise

me myself and teach me my thought.

Organized

signs have their immanent meaning, which does

not arise from the "I think" but from the "I

am able to."

This action at a distance by lan-

guage, which brings significations together

without touching them, and this eloquence which

designates them in a peremptory fashion without

ever changing them into words or breaking the

silence of consciousness are eminent cases of

corporeal intentionality. .

.

. Signification

arouses speech as the world arouses my body -

by a mute presence which awakens my intentions

without deploying itself before them.43

It is true to say, therefore, that a speaker never

knows exactly what he wishes to say until he says it.

While

he does experience a desire to say something, the exact char-

acter of that something remains concealed from him until he

gives it the "bodily" presence of words.

In a sense, his

meaning precedes his speaking and simultaneously is its re-

sult.

It can be said that it comes into existence as the

internal companion of the words he utters, and yet that it

also guides the choice of those words.

A speaker thus has

only one way to represent a word or idea to himself and that

is to utter it.‘

It is impossible to state, therefore, whether

meaning precedes language or is its creation.

There can be

no question of primary or secondary phenomena here since sub-

ordination of one to the other simply cannot exist.44

Speech-

39

or the act of expression-~"this joining through transcendence

of the linguistic meaning of speech and the signification it

intends - is not for us speaking subjects a second-order oper-

ation we supposedly have recourse to only in order to communi-

cate our thoughts to others, but our own taking possession or

acquisition of significations which otherwise are present to

us only in a muffled way."45

If we accept this fact that new significations come in-

to existence as the result of authentic speech acts, we must

inevitably wonder how it is that familiar words can be com-

bined to reveal meanings they have never carried before.

Furthermore, we are prompted by such an assertion to question

the manner in which the traditional use-value of individual

signs can be permanently altered by a single, contingent

speech event.

That this undoubtedly occurs is attested to

by the publication history of any good dictionary since the

meanings of many words are subtly altered between one edition

and the next.

But the exact manner in which such a change

is effected is not clearly understood and the process itself

is seldom treated systematically in linguistic theories.

In

attempting to account for the radical creation of meaning and

its consequent effect on the character of the language system,

Merleau-Ponty uses a phrase he attributes to André Malraux,

who attempted to explain the operation of a similar process

in painting.46

Merleau-Ponty speaks of "the coherent deforma-

tion," as that operation which arranges available words and

their significations in a new sense thereby taking "not only

40

the hearer but the speaking subject as well through a deci-

 

sive step."

What he describes here is that strange process

47

which occurs when one suddenly sees through the previously

opaque words of a speaker or writer and instantly understands

ideas which have been obscure until that particular moment.

Such an éclarissement or enlightening can occur at all levels,

 

whether one is confronted by the modest changes to a few

words introduced by the operation of a local metaphor or by

the radical reorientation of a whole language system created

by the statement of a new philosophical theory.

In either

case, once-familiar words are combined in such a way that

they are momentarily thrown out of focus for the reader or

listener who is then forced to ignore their generally accept-

ed significations and to await the modification or augmenta-

tion of them which will be effected by their own internal co-

herence and form.

It is this action of language upon language which is

the essence of Speech, and Merleau-Ponty argues we cannot

conceptually place it within the speaker or the listener or

even within the words themselves.

This magical transforma-

tion of signs occurs, instead, at the point of convergence

created when a man speaks to another man using the standard

units of a language system.

Merleau-Ponty acknowledges the

importance of this conjunction in The Prose of the World

 

when he writes, "the other's words or mine in him, do not

 

 

limit themselves to vibrating like chords the listener's

machinery of acquired significations or to arousing some

41

reminiscence.

Their flow must have thegpower of throwing me

 

in turn toward a signification that neither he nor I possessed

before."

In actuality then, it is the flow of the words

48

themselves as they interact within both speaker and listener

 

which creates the decentering and subsequent refocusing re-

sponsible for the foundation of new meaning.

This difficult concept can be explained fairly easily

if we stop here for a moment and expand on Merleau-Ponty's

notion of the body-subject, on its insertion in and perception

of the world, and on its confrontation with others.

At the

moment when man is born into the world as a body-subject, he

is primordially situated and immediately begins to organize

his perceptual field.

As a result of this normal situation

and organization process, certain figures are set off from

the ground, tOp is distinguished from bottom, and space is

organized.

As Merleau-Ponty puts it, "certain elements of

the world assume the value of dimensions to which subsequently

all the rest relate and through which we can point them out."49

Meaning is then created out of this situation when a subject

focuses on and isolates an aspect of his pre-verbal existence

as it is profiled against this primordial orientation or situa-

 

tion.

In a sense, this is a process of comparison, and in dis-

cussing it in The Prose of the World, Merleau-Ponty refers to

 

it both as the "coherent deformation" and as the perceiver's

individual "style" of perception.

He echoes Malraux's com-

ment that "all style is giving form to the elements of the

world which permits the orientation of the world to one of

42

its parts," and then adds that "signification occurs where

we subject the given elements of the world to a 'coherent

deformation.”50

His point here is that even at the most

basic level of individual experience, meaning is the product

of a comparative relationship established between the "object"

being brought into existence and the perceiving subject's

primordial organization of the perceptual field.

By placing

the new element into relationship with the already organized

field, the perceiver subjects the field to a change or deforma-

tion that is nonetheless coherent.

The whole field is deform-

ed in that it is organized around an entirely new focal point,

but that deformation is still comprehensible to the perceiver

because the reorganization is carried out with respect to the

originary dimensions which mark his primordial situation.

Merleau-Ponty argues that even when a man perceives his world,

he "stylizes" it--that is, he affects all the elements of the

thing, body, or behavior which he sees with a certain common

deviation with respect to the familiar norm that he has be-

hind or within him.51

Even perceptual meaning, therefore,

is the product of this comparison process--this coherent de-

formation through which man "focuses the signification still

scattered in his perception and gives it an express exist-

ence."52

As a result of this fundamental operation, each body-

subject works out a system of relationships and equivalences

which serves as the skeleton or framework for all future per-

ceptions.

EaCh time a subject confronts some new object,

43

person, or idea, those "things” are fit into that system,

differentiated by the distance marked off between them and

the elements of the system, and thus given meaningful, in-

dependent, perceptual existence.

Each individual, therefore,

can be said to possess his own unique style or system of in-

ternal relationships and'equivalences, and communication is,

as a result, the confrontation and merging of one style with

another.

This confrontation and interpenetration is made

possible by the fact that both subjects perceive the same

world through similar bodies.

Their perceptual systems,

therefore, possess certain elements in common, and the mean-

ings of one can be understood and accommodated by the mean-

ings of the other.

What this signifies is that when I per-

ceive the gestures of another, I do not merely understand

the meaning I have put into those gestures, but actually com-

prehend the gestures themselves in terms of my own body and

 

its system of equivalences.

As Merleau-Ponty says, "in

watching an organism orient gestures towards its environ-

ment, I begin to perceive its perceiving because the internal

organization of its gestures is the same as my own conduct

and tells me of my own relation to the world. .

."53

Just as we are able to understand another's gestures

because we share an anonymous corporeality, so we are able

to understand another's Speech because we possess the same

language.

The solution to the problem of understanding how

we can truly comprehend the "meaning" of another lies, Merleau-

Ponty writes, "in recognizing that, in the experience of

44

dialogue, the other's speech manages to reach us in our sig-

nifications, and that our words, as the replies attest, reach

him in his significations.

For we encroach upon one another

inasmuch as we belong to the same cultural world, and above

all to the same language, and my acts of expression and the

other's derive from the same institution."54

Because I speak

the same language as my listener, our internal perceptual sys-

tems are articulated in the same terms and even though slight-

ly different in focus and perspective, converge at certain

crucial points.

Because of this convergence, I can listen to

another's words which are expressions of his primordial situa-

tion, perceptual system, and style, fit those words into the

spaces of my own system, and thereby activate for myself the

meaning they already express.

As Merleau-Ponty so eloquently

puts it, "when I speak to another person and listen to him,

what I understand begins to insert itself in the intervals

between my saying things, my speech is intersected laterally

by the other's speech, and I hear myself in him, while he

speaks in me."55

All understanding of meaning, then, is a product of

the relationship established between the alien project of an

actor, whether in the form of gestures or speech, and the pri-

mordial situation or perceptual system of the perceiver.

The

gestures or words possess significance themselves, but that

significance cannot be meaningful for the perceiver until it

inserts itself within his own system, subjects that system

to deformation, and then reorients the entire system coherently

45

about itself.

This process explains why a subject can listen

to another's words, attend immediately to their traditional

significance and then realize that, taken together, they seem

to mean nothing.

It is only after he allows the coherent de-

formation to take place within himself that he is permitted

to hear the other speak in him.

It is in this remarkable way

that a speaker can listen to familiar words and suddenly be

led beyond the words themselves and the significations he

already possesses in connection with them to some new meaning

or comprehensible signification.

Speech, Merleau-Ponty re-

marks, "endlessly renews the mediation of the same and other"

and "perpetually verifies for us that there is no significa-

tion without a movement, at first violent, that surpasses all

signification."56

Before explaining just how this new meaning created by

the coherent deformation manages to anchor itself in the words

responsible for its presence, I would like to quote at length

once again from Merleau-Ponty.

His description of the process

whereby new significance is brought into existence is both

eloquent and precise and it is, I feel, the best illustration

that can be given of this amazing operation:

My relation to a book begins with the easy

familiarity of the words of our language, of

ideas that are part of our makeup, in the same

way that my perception of the other is at first

sight perception of the gestures and behavior

belonging to "the human species."

But if the

book really teaches me something, if the other

person is really another, at a certain stage I

must be surprised, disoriented.

If we are to

meet not just through what we have in common

but in what is different between us--which

46

presupposes a transformation of myself and

of the other as well - then our differences

can no longer be opaque qualities.

They must

become meaning.

In the perception of the

other, this happens when the other organism,

instead of "behaving" like me, engages with

the things in my world in a style that is at

first mysterious to me but which at least

seems to me a coherent style because it re-

sponds to certain possibilities which fringed

, the things in my world.

Similarly, when I am

reading, there must be a certain moment when

the author's intention escapes me, where he

withdraws himself.

Then I catch up from behind,

fall into step, or else I turn over a few pages

and, a bit later, a happy phrase brings me back

and leads me to the core of the new significa-

tion, and I find access to it through one of

its "aspects" which was already part of my

experience.5

In summary, we might say that it is the power inherent in

Speech itself which rescues the utterances of the other from

total non-sense and leads me beyond the significations I al-

ready possess to those he had originally intended.

The force

of the words themselves, as they are repeated within me, per-

forms the coherent deformation, remakes me in the other's

image and admits me to the presence of new meaning.

The other

can communicate with me and I with him because we are alike

capable of Speech in the same language and thereby open to

being led by the flow of each other's talk toward a new state

of knowledge.

The direction of the coherent deformation is

a centrifugal one in that it is a movement away from insti-

tuted language that is, from.words and their sedimented mean-

ings, toward an indefinite significatory space in which some

new meaning is gradually materialized.

The centrifugal

58

movement of the coherent deformation is then followed by a

47

centripetal movement which causes the newly created meaning

to be deposited in the very words that gave it birth.

In

actuality, it is this secondary movement which is responsible

for the sedimentation that is the foundation of the institu-

tion of language and it is to it that we must now direct our

attention.

The centrifugal movement of the coherent deformation

does not operate in isolation.

If it did, the creation of

new meaning would be a wholly transitory event and in effect

nothing new could be brought into existence.

If new meaning

is to be made present in the language system, it must be made

to exist within that system, as a property of familiar words.

This centripetal movement, therefore, is the process spoken

of earlier whereby a single, contingent speech event perma-

nently alters the "meanings" of particular words and phrases.

When I am led, for example, by the power of the other's words

to realize some new meaning beyond my own significations, it

suddenly appears to me that those words have always possessed

or contained that meaning which I simply never saw before.

I am deceived into believing that the meaning existed even

before I became cognizant of it as the content of the words

that only just gave it birth.

In fact, the meaning did not

exist prior to the immediate utterance, but once bodied forth

as the production of that utterance, drifted back into those

words and became merely one more addition to their polysemic

nature.

Although Merleau-Ponty admits this process occurs

at all levels, he notes it is particularly visible when we

48

read an unfamiliar author for the first time.

He claims, for

example, that when we begin to read a philosopher, we first

assign common and accepted meanings to the words he employs.

However, over the course of time, "through what is at first

an imperceptible reversal, his speech comes to dominate his

language, and it is his use of words which ends up assigning

them a new and characteristic signification."59

This signifi-

cation, therefore, becomes a permanent alteration of the words

used because the power of speech and the magic of the coherent

deformation admits us to the meanings intended by the philoso-

pher and forces us to alter our own language system in order

to accommodate them.

We come to understand the philosopher's

theories because we slowly comprehend his meanings as the

peculiar style of his way of speaking.

The meanings, as such,

become received knowledge for us when we can organize further

discourse about them.

But this occurs only when we have suc-

ceeded in giving them separate and distinct existence by forc-

ing them to live in that series of words which never before

carried them as significance.

60

When we are able to do this,

the meanings are truly acquired and henceforth always avail-

able to us.

We can be said to possess them as the transform-

ed content or significance of the once familiar words that

have now been forever altered by the speech of the philosopher.

The centripetal movement of the coherent deformation,

then, is the recentering process whereby the listener, having

understood the style of the other's speaking, gives form to

that style by locating it in the very words that first directed

49

his gaze or attention outward toward it.

Such a process can

also be thought of as a refocusing operation conducted largely

by the listener himself.

When someone hears familiar words

uttered by another and does not quite understand how they are

used or what is intended, he feels those words slip out of

focus.

However, if he lets the words continue to resonate

within him, his capacity to understand is transformed or aug-

mented by the centrifugal force of the coherent deformation.

Then, when he refocuses on the words, because he himself has

been altered, the words appear to contain the significance

he now comprehends.

It can be seen, therefore, that the process of under-

standing another's speech is a complex and delicately balanced

operation in which the listener is forced to step beyond the

language system itself in order to comprehend the new or dif-

ferent significations intended by the other.

However, that

same listener is forced to return to the system and to employ

familiar signs to act as vehicles for the newly discovered

significations if his comprehension of them as style is to

be transformed into understanding of them as acquired mean-

ing.

As Merleau-Ponty himself puts it, to understand the

unique meanings offered by another is to understand speech

as it is distinguished from language, and speech, he says,

"is that moment when the significative intention (still si-

lent and wholly in act) proves itself capable of incorporat-

ing itself into my culture and the culture of others - of

50

shaping me and others by transforming the meaning of cultural

instruments.

It becomes 'available' in turn because in retro-

spect it gives us the illusion that it was contained in the

already available significations, whereas by a sort of EEEE

it espoused them only in order to infuse them with a new

life."61

Therefore, it is through the centripetal movement

of the coherent deformation that speech comes to dominate

language as a system and the contingent event permanently

alters the meanings of individual signs contained within

that system.

As can be seen from the preceding discussion, a speech

act involves both a transitory action in which signs are com-

bined and uttered, and a simultaneous creation of meaning in

which significations are brought into existence which live

on in the listener after the event has exhausted itself.

This

dual nature of the speech act is once again a unity which can-

not be divided into primary and secondary elements.

Meaning

comes into existence at the very moment of utterance and is,

therefore, essentially part of the event itself.

It is simply

impossible to conceive of it as something separate from the

words through which it is first bodied forth.

If we are

careful, however, to distinguish without dividing, we can

state that the event is that aspect of the act which disap-

pears or ends.

In effect, it is the temporal aspect of the

speech act and in it the message exists as duration.

On the

other hand, the meaning is that portion of the act which,

from the moment of utterance, seems to live a life of its own.

 

51

Because we think of it as that aspect of the speech act which

is communicated from speaker to listener, we conceive of it

as an abstraction translatable from one vehicle to another.

In actuality, it never ceases to be the invisible side of

the visible event, but because it can continue to exist as

acquired meaning in our private world of silent speaking, it

seems to function as a "thought" capable of generating in-

numerable ways to clothe itself.

As Merleau-Ponty points out,

meaning is usually thought of as transcending the signs which

indicate it, just as thought is usually conceived of as tran-

scending the sounds and sights which mark it off.62

In truth,

that is, if we are speaking phenomenologically, neither is an

accurate description since the meaning of a sign exists only

in so far as it is profiled against other signs and thought

is always locked to words.

Still, we often do put signs to-

gether as if each word possessed its meaning once and for

all, and we talk as if speaking merely involved matching one

element of meaning with an equivalent element of discourse.

Language used in this way is neither expression nor Speech,

for it is no longer that primary operation which first con-

stitutes signs as signs and implants the meaning which dwells

in them "through the eloquence of their arrangement and con-

figuration alone."63

Instead, when language is used in this

manner, both speaker and listener rely on the sedimented

meanings of the signs as they are traditionally used and, as

a result, they remain within the boundaries of the language

system itself.

In Merleau-Ponty's terms, they speak

52

"empirically" or make use of language as a complete, fully

created institution.

Empirical Speech

 

Merleau-Ponty cautions in "Indirect Language and the

Voices of Silence," that "the empirical use of already es-

tablished language should be distinguished fromits creative

use" even though the latter necessarily involves the former.64

When language is used empirically, the speaker depends on

sedimented meaning or that collection of relationships be-

tween signs and significations which he gradually learned as

a child while seeking to master the use of the system as a

whole.

This store of established relations was itself at one

time the production of primary Speech acts which established

sign and signification together as one unit.

But because of

the peculiar nature of the act of speaking itself, the two

gradually appeared to separate and signs seemed to point to

meanings which were separate and distinct "thoughts."

Em-

pirical use of language, then, is nothing more than the "op-

portune recollection of a pre-established sign" which itself

possesses a definitive sense.

A speaker employs the sign

0

O

I

65

and its traditional sense conservatively and cannot be said

to change or augment its use-value in any way.

He does not

rattle the chain of language as an integrated whole to ring

from it some new signification, but is, instead, content to

strike each word separately, permitting it to vibrate the

next only in the most traditional way.

53

In empirical speech, therefore, the speaker allows what

he wishes to say to be controlled by the previously establish-

ed significations of the signs he uses, since he does not sub-

ject those signs to any kind of change or re-orientation.

Because he allows his intentions to be contained within the

language system itself, he does not truly express his unique

way-of-being-in-the-world, but instead permits the culture,

as it is contained within the language system, to speak

through him.

Furthermore, when using language empirically,

 

the speaker does not subject the system to a coherent deforma-

tion because that which he seeks to say is already embodied

within it.

As a result, there is no need for his significa-

tive intention to alter previously existing cultural instru-

ments in order to make itself present within the institution

of which they are a part.

Since the speaker simply utters

familiar signs and refers to their traditionally agreed-upon

meanings, it can be said that he speaks not as a unique and

individual body-subject, but as a culturally determined mem-

ber of a group.

In essence, he merely seeks to replace his

"thought," which was itself at one time the radical creation

of Speech and the coherent deformation, with some verbal

counter that can serve as its equivalent. 'His listener then

comprehends that counter because it vibrates like a chord

his own machinery of acquired significations and arouses in

him the necessary reminiscence.66

Merleau-Ponty points out

that "speech in the sense of empirical language. . .is not

speech in respect to an authentic language.

It is as

54

Mallarmé said, the worn coin placed silently in my hand."67

The Radical Interdependence of Creative

and Empirical Speech

 

This crucial distinction between the creative and em-

pirical use of language will, perhaps, be greatly clarified

if we can imagine two conversations, one of which is control-

led by the creative use of language while the other is domi-

nated by its empirical use.

In the first, I listen to ap-

parently familiar words uttered by some other and feel

strangely separated from their total meaning by a kind of

screen.

Words that ought to be transparent and reveal their

meaning to me because I have already learned them suddenly

become opaque, and I hear nothing more than Egg-sense.

How-

ever, if I listen to the speaker long enough, his speech

begins to take over and I am gradually led away from my own

understanding of the separate words he uses to the general

sense or signification they contain for him.

I am, in ef-

fect, changed or altered because his words repeated within

me actually give me the capacity or ability to comprehend

that which I did not know before.

Through the medium of

our shared language and by virtue of the power of his words,

I suddenly confront him as Other, as an individual wholly

distinct and different from me.

At this moment, I do not

meet him through what we have in common but instead am taken

out of myself and confront him on his own ground.

His style

or way of intending the world through language gradually be-

comes familiar to me and I begin to understand the way of

55

being in the world that is behind it.

Slightly altered

therefore in the direction of his vision, I now turn back to

the elements of my own system and see those once-familiar

words in a new way.

It is at this point that the screen is

removed, the words become transparent, and I suddenly possess

as acquired meaning the significations intended by the other.

It can be said, therefore, that when a speaker uses language

creatively, he not only fabricates new meaning, but also ex-

pands his listener's capacity to understand it and therefore

restructures the vehicle in which that understanding is to

be revealed.

In a sense, he can be said to re-create his

listener's entire language system.

As Merleau-Ponty argues,

"it is. . .necessary to conceive the operation of speech out-

side any previously institutionalized signification, as a

unique act whereby a man's speaking furnishes his listener

and a culture that is common to them."

68

Such use of lan-

guage is, therefore, a radically creative act and through

it a speaker can express for another his own very special

way of inhabiting the world.

Empirical language, however, cannot be used in this

way and, as a result, any conversation dominated by it is

vastly different from the one just related.

When I converse

on an empirical level, for example, I listen to the words

spoken by the other and simultaneously understand what they

mean.

I am not conscious of any disjunction between the

sounds the speaker utters and the significations he intends

for, in this instance, they appear to me to be one and the

56

same thing.

The words themselves are transparent and to hear

them stated is to immediately see through them to the sense

they contain.

This is possible because I possess those words

and certain

coordinate significations as part of my own per-

sonal language storehouse and, when they are spoken by the

other, it appears as if his language system is identical to

my own.

His words simply call up the thoughts or meanings

I possess as the equivalent of those particular counters.

Because of this rigid parallelism, we are not forced to con-

front each other as wholly separate and distinct individuals,

but instead acknowledge each other's presence within the same

institution or culture.

I am not pushed beyond myself in

order to understand what the other says because I carry his

meanings within me as the sedimentation of the signs I use

every day.

Thus, when we communicate in this way, on this

particular level, we converse as culturally determined beings

inserted within the same institution and, as a result, we

acknowledge all that we possess in common as members of the

same system.

It is just because we are able to depend on this pre-

viously worked out, stable institution of language that we

begin to believe our thoughts lead an independent existence

of their own.

Because we possess an equivalent meaning or

"idea" for every sign contained within the language we speak,

and because we know how to transpose those meanings into still

other signs, we begin to assume that the thoughts themselves

precede their expression in language.

The individual words

57

then seem to be simply the arbitrary English, French, or

German equivalents of previously existing human ideas.

The

real difficulty however in looking at language in this way is

that it prevents us from understanding how meaning can be

created or how men can learn things they do not already know.

For if, in speaking, a person merely codes his thought and

replaces it "with a visible or sonorous pattern which is noth-

ing but sounds in the air or ink spots on the paper," then an-

other can understand those thoughts only if he already pos-

sesses them as the equivalent of those particular sounds or

ink spots.

69

But if this is the case, then no listener can

ever discover in another's words anything more than what he

has put there himself and true communication between differ-

ent individuals is impossible.

Indeed, if language only

operates in this way, "how [can] communication possibly carry

us beyond our own powers of reflection, since the signs com-

munication employs [can] never tell us anything unless we al-

ready grasp the signification?"70

If we are honest with ourselves, however, we must ack-

nowledge that our own educational experience warns that this

is not the entire picture.

All, for example, who have ever

discovered a new idea expressed through the medium of famil-

iar words, must recognize that the meanings of words can be

changed by the context in which they are used.

Furthermore,

any one who has ever encountered the curious magic of a meta-

phor must certainly be aware that language is not entirely

fixed, but malleable and flexible, and that words can be

58

combined to say things they have never said before.

In fact,

the creation of new meaning is a common occurrence in all lan-

guage systems, and as a result of the contingent events re-

sponsible for this, such systems evolve diachronically through

time.

It can be seen, therefore, that language is pggh a pre-

established stable institution and a dynamically changing

method for making meaning out of the world, and it can, con-

sequently, be used in two entirely different ways.

A speaker

may situate himself within the system and depend completely

on its signs and accepted significations to carry his meaning

or he may choose instead to use that system the way a sculptor

uses clay.

Unable to change its basic structure or character,

he will mold it into the shape he desires and force it to

"say" that which he wishes to communicate.

While this does not mean that every speech act falls

clearly into one of these two categories or the other, it

does suggest the existence of two poles between which all

speech events are situated.

Although it is, in reality, im-

possible for an entire conversation to be conducted at the

level of the creative use of language, any such conversation

could conceivably be characterized by a preponderance of au-

thentic or creative speech acts.

At the same time, another

conversation could be dominated by the empirical use of lan-

guage and both speakers would then rely almost entirely on

the sedimented meanings of the words employed.

In any case,

when discourse effects true communication between two separate

individuals, it is highly probable that the conversation will

59

include both kinds of language use.

In summary, then, I might reiterate that language con-

sidered phenomenologically, that is, as it functions in real

speech, is truly "logic in contingency."

Although it is an

oriented, equilibrated system, it is, nevertheless, capable

of sudden change and can absorb the effects of such change

as permanent alterations of itself.

While it is also com-

posed of discrete units or signs, each of which possesses

its own sedimented meaning, it can be used in such a way that

those signs are forced to secrete a significance they have

never before possessed.

In other words, depending on which

aspect of its nature is stressed in the composition process,

language may force the listener to go beyond himself and his

immediate ability to comprehend in order to understand that

which has been intended, or it may merely require him to de-

pend on standard procedures and operations to decipher the

meanings encoded within traditional forms.

In the latter

case, when language is used empirically, both speaker and

listener rely on the sedimented meanings of the signs manipu-

lated.

By asking nothing more of the signs he uses than that

they reveal their familiar and accepted meanings, the speaker

fits his intention to speak within the limits of the language

system.

The listener, then, easily decodes the speaker's

utterance because the speaker's word-usage conforms to his

linguistic expectations.

Because he is a member of the same

language system as the speaker, he understands the same signs

and their traditional meanings, knows the same implicit rules

60

governing their combination, and thus possesses a similar set

of expectations or anticipations about the way in which those

signs should mean for him.

This linguistic "competence," or

ability to understand all rule-governed speech acts, then en-

ables him to immediately "hear" the meaning contained within

the speaker's utterances if they conform to the implicit rules

of the language he speaks.71

In the former case, however, when language is used cre-

atively, the listener does not immediately comprehend the

significance of the words uttered because they interact among

themselves in an unexpected way.

While the words, taken sepa-

rately, may each sound familiar to the listener, the statement

as a whole appears strange.

His linguistic competence is un—

able to aid him in decoding its significance because the words

have been combined in a manner that breaks some rule or ex-

pectation about context implicit within his language system.

In order to understand the meaning contained within this kind

of speech event, therefore, the listener must actually attend

to the words themselves and permit them to direct him toward

the as-yet silent space of signification intended by the

speaker.

When he lets the words resonate within him, he is

gradually led beyond his own expectations and, through the

power of the coherent deformation, begins to absorb the

other's style of speaking and the unfamiliar rules governing

the sort of expression that results.

To use language creatively, therefore, is to alter the

language system itself by changing the rules for the production

61

and comprehension of meaning.

The standard rules are effec-

tively changed or added to the moment a speaker produces an

utterance defying them, simply because the utterance as such

exists and cries out to be understood.

If he wishes to make

sense of such an utterance, a listener is forced to scrap his

previous expectations and must attempt to determine the im-

plicit principles underlying its peculiar organization and

structure.

If he can do so, his linguistic competence is

forever altered by the action of the words themselves, for

it is they who create in him the capacity to follow their

style and the ability to understand the latticework of inter-

nal relationships that is the necessary foundation of that

style.

When the listener finally does absorb the principles

by which a certain signification is given verbal presence in

the world, he then possesses as acquired knowledge the ability

to discern and comprehend other speech events organized along

the same lines.

In essence, both his capacity to understand

others and his ability to make meaning out of his own world

are enlarged by the concerted action of the other's speech

and the power inherent within language itself.

As Merleau-Ponty himself concludes at the end of The

Prose of the World, it is through Speech "that we realize

the impossible agreement between two rival totalities not be-

cause speech forces us back upon ourselves to discover some

unique spirit in which we participate but because speech con-

cerns us, catches us indirectly, seduces us, trails us along,

62

transforms us into the other and him into us, abolishes the

limit between mine and not-mine, and ends the alternative

between what has sense for me and what is non-sense for me,

between me as subject and the other as object."72

Although

it is ultimately authentic Speech which enriches language

and forever increases its capacity to delineate the world,

there can be no Speech or expression without the underlying

stability of a familiar language system.

In the end, both

personal expression and interpersonal communication are en-

tirely dependent on the fact that language can be made to

function for both speaker and listener in two distinct but

reciprocally dependent ways.

NOTES

1Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior, trans.

 

Alden Fisher (New York:

Beacon Press, 1963), and Phenomenol-

 

ogy of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London:

Routledge and

 

Kegan Paul, 1962).

Because of the limited availability of the

French editions, I have referred to and quoted from the stand-

ard English translations of Merleau-Ponty's works wherever

possible.

2Merleau-Ponty, Structure, p. 215.

 

3Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, p. lx.

 

4Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, p. xv.

 

5Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible,

 

ed. Claude Lefort, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston:

North-

western University Press, 1968).

6Because Merleau-Ponty's philosophical thought was

actually a system in evolution, there are contradictions, in-

consistencies and disavowals of earlier positions throughout

his work.

As a result, commentators often rightly disagree

over what Merleau-Ponty ”really" meant, and the writings them-

selves are not always entirely clear or definitive.

For pur—

poses of this short summary, I have attempted to represent

what seemed to be his position at the time of his death.

This

has been an extremely difficult task since Merleau-Ponty had

already abandoned consideration of several of the topics ex-

amined here by the time he turned to The Visible and the In-

 

visible where he was clearly changing or altering some of his

most fundamental premises.

I have been aided in this inter-

pretive task by Remy Kwant's invaluable study, From Phenome-

 

nology_to Metaphysics:

An Inquir

into the Last Period of

  

Merleau-Ponty's Philosophical Li e (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania:

 

Duquesne University Press, 1966).

7Remy C. Kwant, From Phenomenology to Metaphysics:

An

Inquiry into the Last Period ofiMerleau-Ponty s Philosophical

 

 

Life (Pittsburgh:

Duquesne Un1vers1ty Press, 1966), p. 44.

8

Merleau-Ponty, The Visible, p. 131.

 

9Merleau-Ponty, The Visible, pp. 145-146.

10In paraphrasing Merleau-Ponty's argument here, I have

made use of a phrase of Coleridge's that was first introduced

63

64

to me by Dr. Roger Meiners.

The concept of distinguishing

without dividing and its philosophical consequences is ex-

plored at length by Owen Barfield in What Coleridge Though;

 

(Middletown, Connecticut:

Wesleyan University Press, 1971),

pp. 18-21, 36, 93, 148, 172, l49n, 251n.

11Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Themes from the Lectures at

 

the College de France 1952-1960, trans. John O'Neill

 

(Evanston:

Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 129.

12Merleau-Ponty, Themes, pp. 3-4.

13Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, p. 374.

 

14Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Si ns, trans. and with an in-

troduction by Richard C. McCleary (Evanston:

Northwestern

University Press, 1964), p. 67.

15Kwant, From Phenomenology to Metaphysics, p. 77.

 

16This is the position set forth in the enigmatic and

incomplete last chapter of The Visible and the Invisible,

 

pp. 130-155.

It is in some sense a direct contradiction of

his earlier position, set forth in the Phenomenology, that

 

perception and its structures determine the nature of all

higher-level activities.

Merleau-Ponty defended his early

argument in his address to the Société francaise de

philosophie, which he called "The Primacy of Perception and

Its Philosophical Consequences."

This address can be found

in The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenome-

nological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History, and

 

Politics, ed. James M. Edie (Evanston, Illinois:

Northwestern

University Press, 1964).

Although he did grant primacy to

language in The Visible and the Invisible, he never abandoned

 

his notions about embodiment and incarnation and thus never

moved away from his conviction that language is still a form

of that most basic human activity of the body-subject, ex-

pression.

l7Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Prose of the World, ed.

 

Claude Lefort, trans. John O'Neill (Evanston:

Northwestern

University Press, 1973), p. 75.

18

Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 48.

19Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 129.

20Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 10.

21Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 10.

22Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 85.

65

23Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 88.

24This is, of course, to ignore the fact that at one

time there must have been an initial speech act which pre-

ceded language as institution and which was actually respon-

sible for the creation of that institution.

This is an ex-

tremely difficult problem and one that is really outside the

realm of this study.

Still, Merleau-Ponty does account for

the possibility of a radically creative speech act and the

reader may wish to consult his discussion in Chapter Five

of The Prose of the World, pp. 42-45, 131-146.

 

25

Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 85.

26Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 87.

27Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 87.

28Merleau-Ponty, Themes, p. 19.

29Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 13.

3oMerleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 13.

31Eugene F. Kaelin, An Existentialist Aesthetic:

The

 

Theories of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty (Madison, Wisconsin:

The University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), pp. 265-266.

32

Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 39.

33Jean Piaget, Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood,

 

trans. C. Gattegno and F. M. Hodgson (New York:

W. W. Norton

and Company, 1962), pp. 215-245.

34

Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 40.

35Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 42.

36This notion of the speech event will become very im-

portant in the third, fourth, and fifth chapters of this

paper where I will be arguing that a literary text is in

many ways like a speech act.

If we can think of literature

as a language system composed of basic units and rules for

their combination, then the meaning of any text is not to

be found solely in the units it uses but rather in the way

it uses those units.

For example, both The Golden Unicorn.

 

a popular novel by Phyllis Whitney, and The Member of the

 

Weddin , by Carson McCullers, are written about young girls

who Have been called descendants of the gothic heroine in

the novels of Ann Radcliffe.

However, these two novels are

extremely different from each other in theme and in signifi-

cance and, as a result, it seems logical to conclude that

m 6

the difference in meaning is "caused" by differing uses of

this gothic heroine.

3.7Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, p. 183.

 

38Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, p. 177.

 

39Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, p. 178.

 

4oMerleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 90.

41Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 112.

42Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 45.

43Merleau-Ponty, Prose, pp. 88-89.

 

44Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 83.

45Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 90.

46Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 61.

47Merleau-Ponty, S'gns, p. 91.

48Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 142.

(emphasis added)

49Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 61.

50Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 60.

51Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 60.

52Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 61.

53Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 142.

54Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 139.

55Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 142.

56Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 142.

57Merleau-Ponty, Prose, pp. 142-143.

58Merleau-Ponty never specifically appends the terms

centrifugal and centripetal to his discussions of language-

use and the coherent deformation.

He does, however, use the

terms to describe the reciprocal relationship established

between an individual and the culture within which he is situ-

ated in an essay entitled "The Philosopher and Sociology"

included in Signs, pp. 98-113.

The relationships he des-

cribes are strictly analogous to the operations of language-

67

use as he conceives it and, as a result, I have used his own

terms in this different context.

The passage from which I

have adapted the terminology follows:

For there are two truths which must be grasped

simultaneously.

The individual drama takes place

among roles which are already inscribed in the

total institutional structure, so that from the

beginning of his life the child proceeds--simply

by perceiving the attentions paid to him and the

utensils surrounding him--to a deciphering of

meanings which from the outset generalizes his

own drama into a drama of his culture.

And yet it

is the whole symbolic consciousness which in the

last analysis elaborates what the child lives or

does not live, suffers or does not suffer, feels

or does not feel.

Consequently, there is not a

single detail of his most individual history

which does not contribute something to that per-

sonal significance he will manifest when (having

firstthought and lived as he thought best, and

perceived according to his culture's imagery) he

finally comes to the point of reversing the re-

lationship and slipping into the meanings of his

speech and his behavior, converting even the most

secret aspects of his experience into culture.

From the causal point of view it is unthinkable

that this centripetal movement and this centri-

fugal movement are compossible.

59

Merleau-Ponty, Si

ns,F

60Merleau-Ponty,

'

3

F:

)
U

Merleau-Ponty,

Merleau-Ponty,

Merleau-Ponty,

O
C

.
H

)
U

.
P

D
(

-
P

E m

)

E U

)
S U
[

91.

91.

92.

42.

67.

61

62

63

64

65

66

Merleau-Ponty, Si ns,

45.F

Merleau-Ponty,

"
F

1 ns,

44.

Merleau-Ponty,

Prose,

1'42.

67Merleau-Ponty,

ns,F

44.

68Merleau-Ponty,

Prose,

69Merleau-Ponty,

Prose,

141.

7.

7oMerleau-Ponty,

Prose,

145.

68

71The term "competence" is actually Noam Chomsky's.

He was the first to use it to refer to that body of implicit

linguistic knowledge possessed by a native speaker of a lan-

guage which enables him to decipher grammatical and non-

grammatical utterances.

I suspect many of Merleau-Ponty's

followers would object to my application of this term to his

phenomenological theories since Chomsky's own enterprise is

strictly structural in its attempt to discover the principles

of a universal human grammar.

Although Merleau-Ponty criti-

cized such an attempt in his early writings on language, he

also recognized the importance of la langue and even argued

 

for its logical priority with respect to la parole.

I am

 

in full agreement, furthermore, with James Edie who maintains

in Speaking and Meaning;

The Phenomenologytof Language

(Bloomington, Indiana:

Indiana University Press, 1976), that

Merleau-Ponty tried to reconcile the structuralist and phe—

nomenological conceptions of language in his last published

work, The Visible and the Invisible.

It is on this basis

that I feel justified in incorporating a structuralist term

in my exigesis of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of language.

Since that phenomenology does recognize the claims of lan-

guage considered as a system, I see no harm in "naming" that

phenomenon with Chomsky's term.

For what Chomsky has to say

about linguistic competence, see especially Aspects of the

Theory Of Syntax (Cambridge, Mass.:

The M. I. T. Press, 1965),

pp. 3-15.

72Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 145.

CHAPTER III

A PHENOMENOLOGY OF LITERARY EXPRESSION

Why Phenomenology?

Before moving from the study of language to the study

of literature, it is necessary to explain why I have turned

to Merleau-Ponty and his particular phenomenology of language

in my search for a conceptual framework which might encom-

pass both popular and elite literary forms.

This question

is particularly significant in light of the fact that so much

recent work has been done in the name of "structuralism" on

the connections between modern linguistics and literary in-

quiry.

Although I agree with theorists such as Roland Barthes,

Julia Kristeva, and Tzvetan Todorov that literature as an in-

stitution can be fruitfully thought of as a language and that,

as a result, the characteristic principles and processes of

modern linguistics can be applied to written texts, I have

definite reservations about the particular conception of lan-

guage that they, as structuralists, employ.

It seems to me

that by looking at language phenomenologically, taking into

account the point of view of a speaking subject, Merleau-

Ponty corrects some of the significant omissions and unfor-

tunate emphases of purely structuralist analysis.

More spe-

cifically, he avoids their tendency to concentrate the meaning

69

70

of an utterance in the listener and his knowledge of the lan-

guage system alone.

Such a tendency derives from the fact

that structural linguistics directs its attention away from

the individual speech act and the meaning it founds in order

to focus on that unconscious knowledge of a language system

which is necessary for both the production and comprehension

of the act and its meaning.

Indeed, Ferdinand de Saussure,

acknowledged by the structuralists as one of their great pro-

genitors, devotes a considerable amount of time and effort to

the argument that while la parole or speech has significance

 

in and of itself, it is outside the realm of a truly scien-

tific linguistic study which ought to concern itself solely

with la langue.1

Because Saussure maintains that la langue

 

 

is the essential aspect of language and la parole only the

 

accessory or accidental, contemporary structuralism derived

from his theory "directs its 'scientific' attention toward

the analysis of the macroscopic and intersubjectivestructures,

the statistical regularities, the nontemporal and nonparticu-

1ar synchronic forms to which behavior can be found to con-

form."2

Indeed, structuralism has often been accused of do-

ing away with the human subject, since it attributes so much

power to the determining capabilities of unconscious struc-

tures.

~

Since most critics willing to call themselves struc-

turalists focus their attention on la langue or on the syn-

 

chronic system that is the possession of all speakers of a

language, they transpose that preoccupation with linguistic

71

competence to the study of literary texts.

They argue that

an utterance has a particular form or structure and hence, a

meaning, ggly_within a certain language system and that in

order to understand how that meaning is produced, one must

know the various rules and strategies used by a listener to

construe that specific form as meaning.

Structuralists are

 

less concerned therefore with the meaning of a speech act or

the significance of a text than with the peculiar manner in

which such meaning or significance is produced by a listener

or reader.

The structural analysis of texts, argues Roland

Barthes in Critique et vérité, is not a study of content, but

 

rather "a science of the conditions of content, that is to say

of forms.

What interests it will be the variations of meaning

generated and, as it were, capable of being generated by”works;

it will not interpret symbols but describe their polyvalency.

In short, its object will not be the full meanings of the work

but on the contrary the empty meaning which supports them all."3

While most structuralists acknowledge the existence of la

parole, and Barthes himself admits in §Z§ that the meanings

found in a text are not established by one reader or a series

of readers alone, but by specific "systematic marks,"

both

 

4

Barthes and his fellow structuralists continue to insist on

the primary importance and determining power of the linguistic

and literary systems as they are possessed by the readers of

such texts.

To study literature with the tools of linguistics

does not mean, for a structuralist, to analyze those meanings

produced by the language and comprehended by a reader, although

72

that is sometimes done.

Instead, it means to examine the

forms of specific texts in the hope of discovering what ex-

pectations and reading strategies a reader employs to make

those texts "signify."

While Merleau-Ponty does not discount the importance

of the listener and his knowledge of-a language system to the

comprehension process, neither does he focus on these things

to the exclusion of all other factors involved in the opera-

tion.

Although he acknowledges the logical primacy of 13

langue to la parole and admits that no human can ever speak

 

unless he already possesses implicit knowledge of a language

system, he maintains that ontological primacy must be granted

 

to la parole or to the speech event itself.5

In fact, in all

 

his various writings on language, Merleau-Ponty rarely con-

cerns himself with the listener or receiver of an utterance

because his interest rests primarily with the speaker and

his ability to express his way-of-being-in-the-world by em-

bodying his significative intention in the carnal presence of

words.

Furthermore, because he is most curious about man's

ability to create new meaning and to say things that have

never before been said in the language he speaks, Merleau-

Ponty focuses his attention on the peculiar nature of the

sign or the word itself and its capacity to carry wholly un-

familiar significance.

By arguing so vehemently for the ges-

tural significance of words and by maintaining that the mean-

ing of an authentic utterance cannot be separated from the

physical form in which it is couched, as the meaning of a

73

dance cannot be separated from the actual movements of the

dancers,6 Merleau-Ponty draws attention away from the fact

that, ordinarily, listeners do "know" words and associate

meanings with them.

Indeed, he often seems to forget that

even the creative use of language is entirely dependent on

the fact that both speaker and listener must necessarily be-

gin with empirical language, that is, with individual words

which possess certain known sedimented meanings.

If this

were not the case, men could express themselves with unique

but entirely random vocalizations and they thus would be in—

comprehensible to each other.

Still, his preoccupation with

the ”languagely" meaning of language itself and the power of

words to take a listener completely outside himself and the

knowledge he already possesses, is characteristic of his phe-

nomenological concern with the actual event or phenomenon as

"the thing itself."

[It is important to stress at this point that in sudden-

ly speaking of the listener and linguistic competence at the

end of chapter two, I believe I am reflecting a subtle shift

in position that takes place in Merleau-Ponty's thought it-

self.7

While he shows very little interest in language as a

system or body of knowledge in his earliest works, particu-

larly in Phenomenology of Perception, he encountered the writ-

ings of Saussure shortly after the Phenomenology's publication

 

in 1945 and his work published after 1949 reflects his very

personal version of Saussurean structuralism.8

Although he

continues to focus on the speaker after reading Saussure, he

74

pays new attention to the acquisition of language in children

and concerns himself with the problem of what it is a child

learns when he learns to speak.9

While this never leads

Merleau-Ponty to a full-fledged examination of language as

"possession," it does cause him to introduce the distinction

between authentic and empirical language-use and forces him

to acknowledge that speakers necessarily rely, at least ini-

tially, on sedimented meanings and traditional syntactical or

combinatory rules.

At a deeper level, his encounter with

Saussure prompts him to reconsider the nature of perceptual

truth and rational or intellectual truth, and eventually to

conclude in The Visible and the Invisible that perception is

 

structured as language is, and not vice versa, as had been

his argument in the Phenomenology.

 

In this last work, published after his death, Merleau-

Ponty argues that the structures of perception are analogous

to the structures of language and he suggests that man's

knowledge of anything is at once an opening onto the things

themselves and an introduction to the "ideal" structure under-

lying them.

It is possible, in fact, to argue, as James Edie

does, that Merleau-Ponty finally considers the world from pgph

a phenomenological and structural point of view.

He continues

to stress the essential reality of phenomena or "the things

themselves,” but he admits the equally real existence of the

necessary structural conditions present within the body-

subject which are responsible for the form those phenomena

take for that subject.

With respect to language, this leads

75

him to conclude that while the speech-event itself is of cru-

cial and even primary importance, there are, indeed, morpho-

logical, syntactical, and phonological rules governing both

the production and comprehension of such acts.

As Edie points

out, at the time of his death, Merleau-Ponty was attempting

to account for the interdependence of 1a parole and la langue

  

and to demonstrate the fundamental reciprocity of structural

rules or conditions and the actual events which are founded

on them but which give them their "ontological validity."10

The implications of Merleau-Ponty's final position are

considerable, especially for anyone contemplating the applica-

tion of language theory to the phenomenon of literature.

For

if we argue that meaning is produced in speech by the coming-

together of a speaker, speech-act, and listener, then any

analysis of the meaning of an utterance must be based on an

examination of all three factors and the nature of their con-

nection in the act of comprehension.

Furthermore, if we

agree with Merleau-Ponty that the utterance itself ig meaning,

then we must acknowledge the power of that utterance to de-

termine the nature of its comprehension.

However, if we also

concede that both speaker and listener are determined by the

structures of the language they speak, then it is also im-

perative that we recognize the extent of the comprehension

can be circumscribed by the listener's linguistic competence.

If, therefore, we decide to consider literature as a language,

we ought to admit that the meaning of a text is similarly the

76

result of a conjunction between author, text, and reader.

While the text itself can certainly be said to possess or ex-

hibit meaning, that meaning can only be brought into existence

by the action of a reader whose ability to construct or con-

strue meaning is directly affected by all his previous en-

counters with literature.

In dealing with literature, there-

fore, throughout the remainder of this chapter, I will not

argue that a single objective and complete meaning exists

within a text and can be ferreted out by some ideal reader.

Neither, however, will I argue that meaning is solely the

creation of a reader and thus wholly dependent on that read-

er's literary expectations and reading strategies.

Instead,

it is my contention that meaning does exist as the invisible

side of the visible words of a text, but that it must also be

construed by the actions of a reader if it is to be truly

present ig the world as an existential "phenomenon."

It is useful, I think, to point out that this notion

about the ontological status of meaning can be directly de-

rived from Merleau-Ponty's arguments about the essential

wrong-headedness of both materialism and transcendental ideal-

ism in philosophy.

He is, in fact, always careful to point

out that the order or meaning of the universe cannot be said

to exist solely within the material world itself nor can it

be thought of as the mental or "ideal" production of a trans-

parent, constituting consciousness.

His position is a care-

ful and calculatedly-maintained dialectical stance which

seeks to stress the essential but partial truth of each of

77

these two arguments.

For Merleau-Ponty, meaning exists 13

Nature as an inarticulate or undifferentiated variation in

the fabric of Being, but it must, nevertheless, be brought

to the level of carnal and hence conscious existence by the

activity of a body-subjectwif it is to exist as meaning.

 

It is, therefore, because Merleau-Ponty's theory of

language is derived from a complex position about the exis-

tential status of meaning that I have chosen it as my start-

ing point in an attempt to differentiate popular from elite

literary texts.

I do not claim, as the structuralists do

and, as Jonathan Culler does, that linguistics merely pro-

vides a useful model for the analysis of literature and lit-

erary texts.

I claim much more for the theory and philosophy

of language for I look upon language as the quintessential

semiotic system and think of speech as the primary instance

of man's ability to distance himself from the Being within

which he is situated and out of which he creates meaning.

I

am in full agreement with Merleau-Ponty, and I contend that

meaning is always and everywhere, in all media, the produc-

tion of the convergence between the act of an actor (13

parole) and the action or activity of some perceiver or lis-

tener who is, in some sense, determined by prior knOwledge,

experience, and structures (la langue).

The meaning produced

 

by such a convergence can be "new" in that what is apprehended

has previously been only an undifferentiated part of Being

and is now made to exist within the system or structures of

the particular vehicle used to bring it to existence for the

78

first time.

On the other hand, such meaning can also be fa-

miliar and previously understood since what is apprehended

in this instance is merely some act, idea, or object already

embodied in the system employed.

It is, therefore, absolutely

essential to look at literature as a kind of language which

is simultaneously an institution or system and a string of

individual and unique speech-events or texts.

When man en-

gages in the creation and comprehension of literature, he is

simply using his ability to make meaning of his world in a

very special way and thus, in order to understand the pecul-

iar nature of this activity, it makes sense to examine it

using what we already know about language and speech.

Literature Considered as a Language System

 

I want to make it clear that I am not, for the moment,

concerned with the current debate over the structural dif-

ferences between literary and non-literary texts.

While it

is entirely possible that such differences may be discovered

in the future when we have perfected methods for uncovering

the complex structures of all sorts of texts, I don't think

it is necessary to await Such a breakthrough in order to make

some observations on groups of texts we traditionally agree

are "literary."

Because I see no problem in defining litera-

ture functionally, I will use the term accordingly to refer

to those texts we approach by convention as fictional accounts

 

by an author designed to have some connection, however remote

79

or dubious to the world in which we live.

Furthermore, I

will include within this group not only those texts tradition-

ally labelled "Literature," that is, elite works of high art,

but also those works generally excluded as "popular culture,"

or the popularly acclaimed works of mass entertainment.

In

other words, for purposes of this study, the term "litera-

ture" will be applied to all those texts we can and do read

as literature.

While I am fully aware that this seemingly

 

arbitrary cultural agreement about what is to be designated

"literary" is almost certainly founded on unconscious, in-

articulate perceptions about real differences in structure

and function, I don't think these differences have been iso-

lated as yet.

It seems to me it will be possible to do so

only after we have acknowledged the existential reality of

this operational category and attempted to describe its

structural and functional properties in detail.

This is ob-

viously a huge undertaking and, as a result, this paper pro-

poses only to provide some general theoretical hypotheses

about differences within this group of "literary" texts and

then seeks to make some procedural and methodological sugges-

tions about how to conduct further analysis of individual

texts in order to discover those prOperties that differentiate

them from non-literary texts.

Because I take literature to be all those texts we read

as literature, I do not believe a reader can approach an un-

 

familiar text anew without falling back on certain implicit

notions about what literary texts in general ought to look

80

like or "do."

We cannot understand a wholly unfamiliar land-

scape without unconsciously referring to all other landscapes

we have previously viewed, just as we cannot comprehend a new

utterance without also relying on what we have already learn-

ed about utterances in general from our previous experience.

We are always already situated within an institution because

of our primordial incarnation as body-subjects and, as a re-

sult, we can never escape the unconscious knowledge that ac-

companies such a situation.

We are at once situated in a

world, a language, and a culture and, as we are educated, we

are also incorporated into a literary institution whose com-

position preceded our individual appearance.

To read a text

as literature, therefore, is to come to it with certain pre-

conceived ideas about the way sentences are put together and

the way those sentences refer to the world.

In other words,

in order to make sense of a text we have never encountered

before, we must rely on accepted notions about how written

literary language "means."

Similarly, we also approach new

texts with previously established expectations about the

ways in which specific textual elements are combined in the

production of certain generic forms, just as we encounter

the genre itself with certain ideas about that genre's rela-

tion to the world and its consequent significance.

In summary,

we might say that we always approach an unfamiliar text with

specific expectations in mind.

As a result, our ability to

understand that text is necessarily affected and often limited

by the flexibility of those expectations.

81

Before moving on to a consideration of the implications

of such a conception of the reading-process, it is necessary

to digress for a moment in order to examine the whole question

of "meaning" and "reference to a world."

As has been pointed

out before, the structuralists are not interested in the mean-

ing of a text but concern themselves instead with the neces-

sary conditions responsible for the presence of that meaning

in the world.

However, I do not see how we can go about iso-

lating the elements and structures responsible for a certain

meaning unless we already have a general sense of what that

meaning is.

Analysis or structuralist decomposition there-

fore can only follow understanding or comprehensive synthesis

and it is this process or ability we must account for before

proceeding to an examination of the structures of certain

texts.

We must first make some observations about he! mean-

ing is understood before we can speculate about exactly how

that meaning is made.

I have left this problem until now because Merleau—

Ponty does not deal with it explicitly in his numerous writ-

ings on language.

Despite this fact, however, it is possible

to derive the implicit notions he adhered to by acknowledging

the fact that he accepted most Saussurean linguistic theory.

This is exactly what James M. Edie has done in a volume en-

titled Speaking and Meaning:

The Phenomenology of Language,

where he concerns himself with how Merleau-Ponty the phenome-

nologist accounts for the process of comprehension.

In re?

sponse to such a concern, Edie writes, "the answer to this

82

question, of course, takes us away from la langue towards lg

 

parole and to questions of referential meaning and semantic

 

conditions.

This question takes us away from the necessary,

presupposed structural condition of all speaking to the speec -

ESE itself, and Merleau-Ponty, like all phenomenologists .

.

.

recognizes that meaning is actualized only in use and that

the sentence .

. .is, in an existential sense, intentionally

prior to its component parts (the morphemes and words, which

can be discovered only by a later, formal analysis.)"

11

Edie

notes that although Merleau-Ponty once wrote that as human

beings we are condemned to meaning, he never systematically

concerned himself with problems of syntax or semantics.

He

simply did not describe in any detail how one speaker under-

stands another.

As a remedy, Edie proposes to distinguish

four levels of meaning revealed by the BEE of language, and

I think it particularly useful to summarize the levels here

for his conception can provide a solid base for our attempt

to understand how human beings make sense of complex literary

texts.

Edie argues that four levels of meaning can be isolated

in linguistic experience; the first, the level of immanent

meaning, is dependent on language as a phonological system;

the second, the level of transcendent meaning, is produced

by the move from semiotics to the semantic; the third, the

level of syntax and semantics, concerns the use of sentences,

and the fourth, designated as "the higher unit of 'texts,'”

encompasses and goes beyond the preceding three.12

The level

83

of immanent meaning, which exists below the level of speech,

is that "languagely" aspect of language which Merleau-Ponty

charges with ultimate responsibility for the coherent deforma-

tion.

He bases such a conception on his belief that language

is not composed of discrete, wholly positive and independent

signs, but exists rather as a system of differences or dia-

critical oppositions revealed ip_the presence of a system of

phonemes.

At this level, the language system exists apart

from its ability to signify and it refers to nothing other

than itself.

As Edie points out, "each phoneme takes its

place in the phonological system as an element sufficiently

distinct to be distinguished from all others in the same sys-

tem and capable of being related to others according to a

system of phonological rules which apply within the system

and refer to nothing outside the system itself."

13

What this

means is that the phonemes or sounds of a particular language

system possess certain affective, immediately understood

"meanings" as immanent sense.

When a child begins to babble,

for example, Merleau-Ponty maintains that his utterances con-

tain this level of meaning for it is not words the child is

beginning to understand but the melody of the phonemic opposi-

tions characteristic of his native language.

"The meaning of

words," Merleau-Ponty writes, "must be finally induced by the

words themselves, or more exactly, their conceptual meaning

must be formed by a kind of subtraction from a gestural mean-

 

ing which is immanent in speech."

His point is that, des-

14

pite its ability to point beyond itself to elements of another

84

world, language first possesses a kind of internal or emotion-

al sense that is locked to the very sounds of which it is com-

posed.

That sense is unique to that particular system and it

is this level of meaning that cannot be translated into other

languages since they too are based on phonological systems

which possess their own immanent sense.

Once a speaker has

learned the necessary system of diacritical oppositions and

begun to speak, he has, in effect, internalized the "ideal"

collection of phonological rules which describes the operation

and possibilities of the system and he can immediately compre-

hend the level of immanent meaning in any utterance based on

the phonemes in question.

However, because these sounds and

phonemic oppositions are realized in the presence of words,

it is necessary to move on to the second level of meaning

which involves word-combination and usage.

At this second level of language-use, signs or words

are combined according to syntactical rules implicit within

the language system itself in order to refer to something

that transcends the system as a whole.

It is these rules that

have been the consistent concern of linguists for years, and

Edie merely summarizes the general concept.

As he points out,

this notion of language as a semiotic system of signs which

can be paired with ”meanings" is based on the assumption that

"the primary, although incomplete, elements of syntax are

Egggg which must be arranged according to strict syntactical

rules in order to make sense."

In other words, when any

15

speaker engages in discourse and seeks to make himself

85

understood, he must employ words contained within the language

he speaks according to the logical grammatical rules which gov-

ern such combination in his language.

Most linguists agree

that such grammatical rules are based on the primacy of the

logical proposition and it is because all languages are or-

ganized similarly at this second level that utterances Egg be

translated from one language to another.

As Edie points out,

our experience of words in their "isolability" often leads us

to question the possibilities of translation since a word in

one language is rarely identical to its equivalent in another.

But, he adds, "the purely syncategorematic or syntactical ele-

ments in various languages, particularly when formalized into

the rules of pure logical grammar, approach and even reach

the perfect unity (and translatability) of mathematical and

other purely formal systems."16

Once again, when a subject

learns to speak, he does not only memorize lists of words and

equivalent meanings but also internalizes these syntactical

rules that are contained implicitly in the language he is

 

learning.

As a result, he is forever after capable of dis-

covering the sense contained in word-combinations he has

never encountered before if those combinations are organized

according to the rules he has learned.

He does not, however,

have to be conscious of those syntactical rules in order to

understand another's speech.

It is enough that he possess

them implicitly if he wishes to distinguish the grammatical

from the non-grammatical and that which has sense from that

which does not.

86

On the third level of meaning, that is, at the level

of syntax and semantics, the words a speaker has learned in

the process of acquiring use of the system as a whole are

combined in sentences in an attempt to designate ideas,

things, feelings, and persons which exist wholly outside the

language system itself.

This is the level of speech to which

Merleau-Ponty often directed his attention because it is on

this level that someone speaks about something to someone.

It is the thing, idea, or person which transcends the semiotic

system and which is intended by the speaker that takes on pri-

mary importance here for it is this "meaning" which is reveal-

ed through the use of the sentence.

As Edie himself points

out, "language, which can be considered as a closed system of

signs or symbols governed by fixed rules on the semiotic level,

on the semantic level necessarily refers to something other

than itself."17

When a Speaker uses language in this way,

therefore, he simultaneously becomes conscious of himself as

the speaker and of his world as that which he intends through

his speech.

To focus on this level of meaning then is actually

to be concerned with la parole and the remarkable ability of

 

speakers to produce an infinite number of new word-combina-

tions using the same few syntactical rules which are invariant

and basic to nearly all natural languages.

Edie calls this the "paradox of language" and stresses

the fact that strict adherence to the syntactical rules alone

will not produce a sentence with meaning.

If a speaker does

not also pay attention to the meanings of words and to the

87

fact that they must generally appear in context, he may pro-

duce such utterances as "the book feared the grass" or "green

isn't intelligent."

While these sentences are structured

according to the rules of pure syntactical grammar, they make

no sense because ordinarily one cannot attribute fear to a

book or a quality of mind to a color.

Edie suggests that

what such utterances tell us is "that there are semantic

laws of 'context' which cannot be reduced to the purely for-

mal structures of syntax."

18

At this level, then, the fact

that words do refer to things which transcend the physical

presence of the words themselves becomes a determining fac-

tor in the sense that is produced, and, to converse meaning-

fully, a speaker must not only combine words according to

syntactical rules but according to meaning contexts as well.

In attempting to comprehend a new utterance, therefore, a

listener relies on both his implicit knowledge of grammatical

rules and on his understanding of the meanings of words and

the general regions in which they traditionally occur.

What prompts Edie to distinguish a fourth level of

meaning above that of sentences is largely an observation by

Emile Benveniste "that the recognition of the meaning of the

various constituent parts of linguistic strings is essential

to distinguishing them."19

Edie argues that this implies we

cannot determine the necessary constituent parts of a sen-

tence unless we already know what Significance each of those

parts contributes to the sentence as a meaningful whole.

Linguistic units, therefore, cannot be isolated unless they

88

can be understood as parts of some more complex, comprehen-

sible entity.

He reasons from this that there must be some

higher level of organization than the sentence itself which

permits us to discriminate, for example, between sentences

which contribute to plot structure and those which do not.

As he comments, "there has to be an organizing principle of

meaningfulness in language higher than the sentence simply

because, to be meaningful, sentences cannot follow one an-

other in random order."20

He agrees with such theorists of

the text as Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, and Hans-Georg

Gadamer who maintain that the larger structures of common

plots, generic types, and myths determine the significance

of single paragraphs and sentences.

Edie specifically credits

structuralism with the discovery of the text as a higher level

linguistic unit and he argues that the true strength of struc-

turalism lies in its ability to discover those structures in-

digenous to the text which give sentences, paragraphs, charac-

ters, and events the peculiar significance they possess as

parts of a whole.

"There is a meaning in the text," he agrees,

"which not only transcends the rules and elements of linguis-

tjx:usage. . .but also transcends the psychological and delib-

erate intentions of the authors themselves."21

In other words,

just as the phonemic, morphological and syntactical rules of

la langue control what a speaker wishes to utter because they

 

circumscribe what he can potentially say and still be compre-

hensible to another speaker of the same language, so the

structural rules governing the organization of linguistic

89

strings in texts also govern what an author can write and

still be understood by readers operating within the same sys-

tem.

While an author can deliberately choose to ignore the

structural semantic, and functional rules governing the compo-

sition of texts and write entirely outside the literary in-

stitution, it is doubtful he will be understood by more than

a handful of readers.

What Edie's fourth level of meaning tells us then is

that in comprehending a literary text, a reader relies on an

implicit body of knowledge which tells him how to construe

lower levels of linguistic meaning into larger structures

which are themselves meaningful and constitutive of the sig-

nificance of the text as a whole.

Like the linguistic compe-

tence he possesses as a native speaker of a language, this

knowledge is responsible for his extraordinary ability to

read a text he has never seen before and to know immediately

the structure of its plot and the import of its story.

It

is also synonymous with those expectations I was speaking of

earlier before embarking on this digression about meaning-

levels and strategies for comprehension.

Because he possesses

this knowledge, the reader of literature comes to a text with

certain expectations and preconceived notions and it is these

which enable him to understand that an occurrence in a text

is meaningful despite the fact that he is yet ignorant of the

outcome of that particular plot.

Similarly, it is this body

of knowledge which determines whether a text creates new mean-

ing or whether it merely manipulates old and, as a result, it

90

is to it that I now wish to direct my attention.

Literary Competence

 

While the first three levels of meaning are also neces-

sary components of literary texts and, despite the fact that

readers must implicitly understand the rules governing their

appearance in order to understand the significance presented

at those levels, it is the larger, fourth level that has be-

gun to preoccupy literary critics and theorists alike.

The

notion that there is an exclusive body of knowledge bearing

on our ability to make sense of literary texts is a relatively

new notion developed primarily by structuralists such as

Barthes and Todorov.

In his critical analysis of the struc-

turalist methodology, Structuralist Poetics:

Structuralism,

   

Linguistics, and the Study of Literature, Jonathan Culler

 

devotes an entire chapter to this body of knowledge which he

calls "literary competence."

22

If we recall that what Noam

Chomsky designates as linguistic competence is a native

speaker's implicit understanding of the phonetic, morphologi-

. cal and syntactic rules of the language he speaks, it becomes

clear that what Culler refers to as literary competence is

that collection of implicitly understood rules, procedures,

and strategies used by a reader to make sense out of those

long strings of sentences and paragraphs which constitute all

texts.

Because a reader knows these rules implicitly, he is

able to come to an unfamiliar text as a comprehensible, sig-

nificant whole rather than as a random and entirely'contingent

91

collection of independent sentences.

As Culler himself

points out, "anyone lacking this knowledge, anyone wholly un-

acquainted with the conventions by which fictions are read,

would, for example, be quite baffled if presented with a poem.

His knowledge of language would enable him to understand

phrases and sentences, but he would not know, quite literally,

what to mgkg of this strange concatenation of phrases.

He

would be unable to read it fig literature .

.

. because he lacks

the complex 'literary competence' which enables others to

proceed."23

Although it is certainly true that knowledge of the

language and tacit comprehension of the rules governing the

first three levels of meaning will take any reader part of

the way in understanding a novel or short story, neither will

instruct him in how to assign particular significance to cer-

tain descriptions and how to distinguish them from those

which may be passed over quickly as mere contributions to

superfluous detail.

This kind of comprehension is actually

a form of anticipation or an educated guessing about the way

in which the plot is likely to develop or the manner in which

the story will probably end.

Such anticipatory knowledge can

only have been built up in the reading of other similar types

of texts.

Because a reader already knows something about the

probable ways in which a story will progress or conclude from

his previous encounters with similar forms, he has a fairly

good chance of distinguishing events which will prove to be

meaningful with respect to the sense of the text as a whole

92

from those that are merely insignificant.

This ability to

discriminate between sense and non-sense in unfamiliar phe—

nomena, then, is the product of the reader's literary compe-

tence.

To say, however, that a reader possesses literary com-

petence or has acquired the principles of literary composi-

tion just as he has acquired the principles and rules of his

own language system is to say at the same time that the writer

must possess that competence as well.

In both, a portion of

this knowledge may be brought to the level of consciousness,

but a great deal of it often subsists at the pre-conscious,

inarticulate level of general existential awareness.

Even

though such knowledge is then possessed implicitly or tacitly,

it is just as powerful in directing a reader's attempts to

apprehend the structure and thus to comprehend the meaning

of an unfamiliar text.

There is an obvious parallel to lin-

guistic competence here, for while I may not know all the

rules of English grammar as they are currently represented

and articulated in my culture, as a native speaker of the

language, I have an internal awareness of what makes sense

and what does not.

While I may be aware that "erasers smile

curdled" is nonsense, at least according to traditional norms,

I may not be able to explain what rules have been broken or

to articulate why those particular words can't be combined

in that way.

Nevertheless, I do know this can't be done and

I either avoid communicating such nonsense to another or tell

the person to whom I am listening that this is precisely what

93

he is telling me.

In other words, while neither writer nor reader may be

aware of what constitutes his literary competence, nor even

of the fact that his comprehension is based on such a body

of knowledge, both possess that knowledge implicitly and, as

a result, it tacitly governs the nature of their production

and the quality of their understanding of literary texts.

Each has certain expectations about how texts are structured

and how they function.

Consequently, the writer may choose

to compose according to those conventions or he may deliber-

ately decide to violate some and ignore others.

The reader,

on the other hand, may find it helpful to rely on the reading

strategies developed from such expectations in order to make

sense of a strange text, or he may discover those procedures

are useless and the text remains obscure.

But, in any case,

to be composed or understood as a distinct entity, as a whole,

a literary text must be placed in relationship to all those

dimensions, perspectives, and expectations which are part of

man's situation as an incarnated, primordially oriented being.

This sounds remarkably similar to what Merleau-Ponty

asserted about all perceived objects when he wrote, "the mean-

ing of a perceived object does not stand isolated from the

constellation in which it appears; it is articulated only as

a certain distance in relation to the order of space, time,

motion and signification in general in which we are estab-

lished."

I might add here that the meaning of a literary

24

text does not stand isolated from the constellation in which

94

it appears either.

It is articulated only as a certain dis-

tance in relation to the order of literary texts in general,

the genre of which it is a member, and the author's corpus

of work in which it is included, to name only a few.

All of

these things are aspects of the competence we possess as

readers who have been introduced gradually and by education

to an always already constituted literary system.

It is important to emphasize, here, a point I made

earlier in this chapter; that is, the meanings of a text are

not simply imposed on that text by a reader and the competence

he brings to his confrontation with it.

While a text must un-

doubtedly be read and construed with respect to a previous

knowledge of how other texts function, it nevertheless pos-

sesses in itself that structure or form which serves as the

latticework, foundation, or vehicle for the meaning as it is

realized in the act of reading.

The text ii that inarticu-

late structure or form in the same way the environment is a

style or structure even before its various elements are marked

off and actualized as objects in the consciousness of a par-

ticular body-subject or perceiver.

The meanings of the text,

therefore, can be thought of as the tacit component of the

words, sentences, paragraphs, and larger structures which

make up the entity which is that specific text.

We can argue

that this meaning is "created" by the author because he is

the manipulator of the words, the one responsible for bring-

ing that text into existence.

However, once the words are

written down, the text frees itself from its author and the

95

meanings contained therein are no longer entirely dependent

on him or on the original significative intention which

sought to bring them into existence.

They simply await a

reader who, in the act of reading, confronts the visible form

of which they are the invisible depth.

If such a reader

closely and carefully attends to that form, he can reactivate

those meanings as they were formulated by the author so that

they come to exist for him in his consciousness.

It is impossible to say then whether the meaning of a

text, as it is construed by a reader, is the result of the

author's creative actions or simply an effect produced by the

power of the language itself.

Certainly, the author cannot

compose without the benefit of an already fully constituted

language and, as a result, what he wishes to say must, in

some ways, be determined by the language that he Speaks.

However, like any speaker, he can use that language creatively

or "authentically" and when he does, he stamps that language

with his own very personal imprint.

If he is successful in

this, the words he writes will cause his reader to be dis-

oriented for a moment until they can carry him along and help

him to detect, beneath familiar words, the new context, form,

or structure created by the author which causes those words

to mean in a different way.

Merleau-Ponty has described

this reading process at length and he makes it very clear

where he believes the meaning lies:

96

But the book would not interest me so much

if it only told me about things I already

know.

It makes use of everything I have

contributed in order to carry me beyond it.

With the aid of signs agreed upon by the

author and myself because we speak the same

language, the book makes me believe that we

had already Shared a common stock of well-

worn and readily available significations.

The author has come to dwell in my world.

Then, imperceptibly he varies the ordinary

meaning of the signs, and like a whirlwind

they sweep me along toward the other mean-

ing with which I am going to connect.

Before I read Stendhal, I know what a

rogue is.

Thus I can understand what he

means when he says that Rossi the revenue

man is a rogue:

but when Rossi the rogue

begins to live, it is no longer he who is

the rogue:

it is a rogue who is the revenue

man Rossi.

I have access to Stendhal's out-

look through the commonplace words he uses.

But in his hands, these words are given a

new twist.

The cross references multiply.

More and more arrows point in the direction

of a thought I have never encountered be-

fore and perhaps never would have met with-

out Stendhal .

.

.

.

I create Stendhal; I am Stendhal while

reading him.

But that is because he first

knew how to bring me to dwell within him.

The reader's sovereignty is only imaginary,

since he draws all this force from that in-

fernal machine called the book, the apparatus

for making signification.2

It is not possible to say, therefore, that the reader is

alone responsible for the meaning which is produced in the

act of reading a text.

While his activity certainly does

cause that book to live for him and thus serves as the agent

which brings the meaning into existence as meaning, such ac-

tivity must be carried out with respect to a text which it-

self possesses an unavoidable structure or form.

Although

no reader can ever make his knowledge of a book identical

97

with the psychological intentions of the author who produced

it, he is obliged to attempt to discern beneath the actual

presence of the words themselves, the peculiar style which

informs that author's way-of-being-in-the-world and the ex-

pression he has created out of it.

As Merleau-Ponty points

out, "although the final effect is not for me to dwell with-

in Stendhal's lived experience, I am at least brought with-

 

in the imaginary self and the internal dialogue Stendhal

held with it for the fifty years he was coining it in his

works."26

I want to make it clear, however, that in accepting

such a notion of the reading process, I do not think of the

meaning of a text as an objective "thing" present in or be-

hind the words employed which merely needs to be perceived

and described by an intelligent reader.

If we recall that

for Merleau-Ponty no object is conceivable except as an ob-

ject g: consciousness, then it becomes clear that the mean-

ing of a text cannot be conceived except as an object materi-

alized 12 the consciousness of a reader.

The meaning is not

a thing or object in the world but rather that which is formu-

lated in the mind of the reader about that thing which he

brings into existence.

Strictly speaking, the meaning is

the result of a convergence that occurs between a reader and

a text and it is thus always perspectively altered by the

reader's perceptual orientation, linguistic knowledge, and

literary competence.

Despite the fact that a text does have

a unique structure or form, that form can have no sense for

98

a reader unless he implicitly understands how to construe

that form as meaning.

While a poem such as T. S. Eliot's

”The Wasteland" has a complex structure which is often natu-

ralized or made to mean in a specific way, that form and

meaning do not exist for the reader who is ignorant of the

procedures necessary to construe them as symbols of the mod-

ern human predicament.

Because he lacks the necessary liter-

ary competence, the poem is meaningless for him.

A Literary Continuum

 

Before confronting this extremely complex question of

literary competence and attempting to determine exactly what

assumptions, rules, and strategies govern our comprehension

of popular and elite literary texts, I want to examine liter-

ature itself from a phenomenological point of view.

Whereas

phenomenology is, in general, a science of the various ob-

jects which can be given to consciousness, the following

discussion will be limited to concern with the object "litera-

ture" and to a consideration of some of the ways in which

that object is given to the consciousness of both author and

reader.

Specifically, I want to approach the act of writing

as a process that is in some respects analogous to the act

of speaking.

I will look at the activity from the point of

view of the writer who functions as a speaker when he pro-

duces his utterance, the text.

In order to present the world

with this ”thing," the author manipulates the words of his

language in concert with traditional literary forms and

99

procedures.

As the words are part of his linguistic compe—

tence as a native speaker of his language, so his knowledge

about literary forms and procedures for interpretation is

part of his literary competence as a member of a previously

existing literary institution.

In other words, I will be

discussing literature here as a language put to use, as an

institution that is made to "mean" by a writer in the act of

writing and by a reader in the act of reading.

Once I have

examined literature from this point of view, I will then re-

turn to it as a system or institution and discuss the prob-

lems of attempting to discern the particular elements and

rules of which it is composed.

At this point, it is important to recall Merleau-Ponty's

constant insistence on the fact that language possesses a

dual aspect.

It is, at one and the same time, a stable in-

stitution filled with familiar words and traditional meanings

and a tool for the creation of meaning which has never exist-

ed before.

It can be spoken of as la langue and yet, it is

 

simultaneously capable of being transformed into la parole.

 

Because of this peculiar property, a speaker may combine the

familiar signs of the system in different ways:

he may group

them together according to standard rules and use them in con-

ventional contexts or he may deliberately choose to ignore

those conventions in a creative speech act and thus try to

extend the signifying potential of the system as a whole.

If he decides to remain within the system and compose accord-

ing to traditional norms, that is according to syntactic rules

100

Egg traditional semantic contexts, he can rely only on the

sedimented meanings of the Signs he uses.

However, if he

chooses to break those norms and to combine words in a dif—

ferent way or to use them in a different context, he depends

as much on the sedimented meanings of those words Egg on

their immanent, phonemic meanings, as on the new structure

or combination itself.

It is, then, the conjunction of these

three things which gives to words the power to create an abil-

ity in the listener to discern the new sense brought into be-

ing because familiar words have been used in a strange way.

In this latter case, the Speaker uses language authen-

tically while in the former he uses it empirically.

A con-

Itinuum exists between the two for a speaker may actually

break or adhere to any number of rules he desires just as he

may violate contexts as he wishes.

He can, for example,

choose to ignore nearly all traditional rules for formulating

a verbal utterance, upset all his listener's expectations and

strategies for comprehension, and thus risk communicating only

nonsense.

If I say "purple into malicious of" to a native

speaker of English it is doubtful that even the most imagina-

tive listener will be able to make any sense out of it at all.

However, if I then say "purple boxes are desolate," it is con-

ceivable that my listener will be able to discover some con-

text or operation which will make that utterance meaningful.

In a case such as this, the speaker adheres to most of the

norms of the language he is speaking and simply violates one

or two expectations by using signs in an unfamiliar context.

101

As a result, he depends on his reader to detect the structure

or principle of composition underlying the new use.

On the

other hand, it is entirely possible for a speaker to remain

within the language system, break no rules, conform to all

norms and expectations, and thus to utter nothing more than

a clichéd phrase.

By continuing to extend the comparison between litera-

ture and language, it is possible to come up with a very use-

ful notion of a similar literary continuum in which specific

texts are located with respect to the number of rules, norms,

and expectations of the literary system which they violate.

Of course, I am not talking here of definitive, logical classes

based on some requisite number of broken or satisfied norms.

Rather, I am speaking of operational distinctions between

texts which use the elements of the linguistic and literary

systems differently and thus are rendered more or less mean-

ingful, more or less intelligible to the reader.

I think

texts can be grouped functionally according to the ways in

which they work for readers with respect to literary compe-

tence.

Given, for example, some absolute, ideal notion of

literary competence (it does not matter for the moment what

that includes), some texts will break all

the rules, some

will violate only a few, and others will violate none.

This

is not, certainly, a new notion, and Roland Barthes and other

structuralists have demonstrated how a wholly deviant and un-

readable "modern" text differs from one which fulfills con-

ventional norms of plot structure, character development,

102

and thematic unity.

Barthes himself, for example, distin-

guishes between the text of pleasure, "the text that contents,

fills, grants euphoria; the text that comes from culture and

does not break with it, [the text that] is linked to a 99m:

fortable practice of reading," and the text of bliss, or that

which "imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts

(perhaps to the point of a certain boredom), unsettles the

reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions,

the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to

a crisis his relation with language."27

To my knowledge,

however, no one has yet systematically applied this particu-

lar conception of the variations in texts to the subject of

popular literature and its differences from elite art.

I

find the notion an extremely suggestive one and I think it

can tell us a great deal about the very real differences ob-

servable between popular texts and those we call "art."

I

suggest, therefore, that those texts we traditionally label

elite literature are the texts that defy convention and vio-

late norms, while the ones we often think of as popular are

those which remain within the literary system and are com-

posed according to readers' expectations.

On the "revolutionary" side of the proposed continuum,

we might include all those texts which upset conventions,

pioneer in the formation of unusual structures, and create

new meaning.

Some of these works are so far outside the

literary institution as it exists at the moment of their cre-

ation, that they are virtually unreadable and incomprehensible.

103

In cases such as these, the deformation effected in the read-

er's competence is so great that what he reads is no longer

coherent for him.

Often, a certain amount of time must elapse

during which readers are pushed by the style of the work it-

self to the point where they can comprehend that style im-

plicitly, intuitively grasp the peculiar semantic richness

of the words and forms used, and then begin to articulate

that understanding by translating it into other words which

are roughly equivalent.

Works such as these which readily

come to mind are the "Cantos" of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot's

"The Wasteland," James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, and even

 

William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.

With each of

 

these texts, there was something of a time lag between the

composition of the work and adequate explication of its sig-

nificance.

As Barthes has so astutely pointed out in a

slightly different context, "to read is to struggle to name

.

.

. to understand, to thematize .

.

.

[it] is therefore

to retreat from name to name, driven by the signifying

thrust."28

His remark accurately diagnoses the peculiar prob-

lem posed by works such as the preceding, since, in violating

conventional norms and expectations, they create forms and

significance which are outside the literary institution and

thus have no label or name.

If we recall that to name some-

thing is to bring it to consciousness 3g an object of con-

sciousness, as meaning, it becomes clear that literary works

cannot be fully understood until their readers can express

in familiar form the new sense which they intuitively grasp

104

in their reading.

To say, therefore, what the meaning of

The Sound and the Fury is, is ultimately to understand the

 

style or structure which is the vehicle for that significance.

There are cases, however, where only a few conventions

and expectations are overturned and the consequent deforma-

tion effected in the reader's competence is less severe.

In

instances such as these, the text often adheres to the tradi-

tional norms governing generic form and plot construction,

but ignores a few covering character development or reference

to a world.

When this occurs, a reader often finds that the

meaning of the text has become momentarily Opaque only to

clear up a few moments later when the coherent deformation

extends his capacity to understand.

In a case such as this

one, the originary dimensions which mark off the limits of

the reader's competence are generally respected and the minor

deformation or disorientation produced by a strange configu-

ration is consequently a coherent one.

Merleau-Ponty has

pointed out that we can approach Stendhal precisely because

he makes use of commonplace words that are familiar parts of

our own linguistic competence.

But because he gives these

same words a new twist, we can no longer rely on our own

understanding of them and, in order to discover exactly how

they signify for Stendhal, we must listen to the author's

voice as it speaks through the entire context.

As Merleau-

Ponty observes, "common words and familiar events, like jeal-

ousy or a duel, which at first immerse us in everyone's world,

suddenly function as emissaries from Stendhal's world."29

105

A similar, though perhaps more extreme example, might

be the work of Henry James.

While his novels generally ad-

here to conventions of generic form and plot construction,

his characters are developed in a way that was alien to

readers of his day.

Since very little action of external

consequence ever occurs in his works, it is nearly impossible

to give meaning to his characters by observing how they be-

have and what they do.

It is necessary instead to pay very

close attention to what they think, what they see, and what

they choose 22E to do or say in order to make sense of their

extremely limited activity.

Though James' characters are re-

vealed in greater depth than those of many of his contempo-

raries, that depth can be missed if the reader does not con-

strue the characters in the proper manner, a procedure which

is dictated by the overall structure of the text itself.

James' works, therefore, force us to read in a way that was

unnecessary before he began writing.

In effect, his novels

have endowed his readers with new ideas and expectations

about character development and, as a result, he can be said

to have altered the general literary competence of the cul-

ture and extended its ability both to signify and to compre-

hend.

To say that some literary texts violate norms of com-

prehension and create new meaning may be a very useful ob-

servation, but it is not an easy thing to demonstrate.

While

we may intuitively feel that the statement is an accurate one

and that it correctly identifies an important characteristic

106

of literary works of art, we must still show hp! art effects

these changes and in what way it causes us to understand

things we have never encountered before.

While it is perfect-

ly admissable to agree with Merleau-Ponty that the meaning of

a novel is perceptible at first only as a coherent deformation

imposed on the visible and that "it is essential to what is

true to be presented, first, last, and always in a movement

which throws our image of the world out of focus, distends

it, and draws it toward fuller meaning,"30 it is quite an-

other thing to explain what that fuller meaning is and how

it is made to exist in the world as a property of once famil-

iar forms.

In attempting to deal with both aspects of this prob-

lem, I have found two comments made by Merleau-Ponty in The

Prose of the World particularly enlightening.

In the first,

 

he attributes much of the power of literature to the fact

that the words or signs of our language are Egg distinct en-

tities which cause us to conjure up equally distinct and iso-

lable significations.

He points out instead that "in the art

of prose, words carry the speaker and the listener into a com-

mon universe by drawing both toward a new signification through

their power to designate in excess of their accepted definition

or the usual signification that is deposited in them from the

 

life they have had together in us."

This power to refer to

31

more than accepted definitions is a direct result of the fact

that language is not composed of positive terms but of differ-

ences among terms which are realized in the process of

107

combination.

Merleau-Ponty firmly believes that the meaning

of signs cannot be set forth independently of them because

those meanings are really "nothing other than the way in

which the signs behave toward one another and are distin-

guished from one another."

32

Therefore, it is essentially

the process of combination itself which gives meaning to

signs, and the particular significance they carry is always

determined by the nature of the combinations in which they

occur.

Because signs can be made to secrete a new signifi-

cance simply by changing the context in which they are used,

one can argue, as Merleau-Ponty does, that the meaning of

any word is bound up with the drift of the entire language

and that only a minor portion of its semantic richness is

ever activated for us in any one combination.

He refers to

this capacity to signify beyond sedimented meaning as a

word's "semantic thickness" or its "signifying soil" and he

links it directly to the ambiguity of great literature which

he argues is not a weakness but "the price we must pay to

have a conquering language which, instead of limiting itself

to pronouncing what we already know, introduces us to new

experiences and perspectives that can never be ours, so that

in the end, language destroys our prejudices."33

This notion that great works of literature do not pro-

nounce what we as readers already know leads me to that sec-

ond very important point which Merleau-Ponty makes about art

in The Prose of the World.

He writes that "what is irreplace-

able in the work of art - what makes it not just a pleasant

108

occasion but a voice of the spirit whose analogue is found

in all productive philosophical or political thought - is

that it contains, better than ideas,matrices of ideas.

A

 

work of art provides us with symbols whose meaning we never

stop developing.

Precisely because it comes to dwell in the

world in which it makes us at home though we do not have the

key to it, the work of art teaches us to see and makes us

think as no analytic work can, because in the analysis of an

object we cannot find anything other than what we have put

into it."34

The point here is by no means a simple one, but

it seems to me Merleau-Ponty is arguing that a text which

functions outside the system, whether that system be linguis-

tic or literary, cannot present its reader either with a name,

label, or "idea," which already exists within that system as

the property of familiar words.

As a result, because the

reader is not confronted with a familiar abstraction, he is

forced to discover, beneath the surface level of word-combina-

tions, the new structuring principles which govern those com-

-binations and which are responsible for the new sense brought

into being in the process of reading.

As a matrix can be the womb or any place of origin and

growth,

35 so the structures of a text are the seeds from which

significations bloom and develop.

Once a reader has intui-

tively comprehended the nature of this dynamic structure and

is able to objectify it by giving it a name from within the

system, then the effects it has had on the very words through

which it is revealed become permanent aspects of the words'

109

Signifying soil.

However, the structure itself continues to

exist as a tacit component of the text itself, and whenever

it is actualized in the process of reading, it persists in

functioning as a matrix or womb of signification.

Merleau-

Ponty is careful to distinguish between the limited objecti—

fication produced by the naming process of analysis and criti-

cism and the eternal fertility of the structures themselves,

and he stresses the fact that confrontation with a true matrix

produces change in the reader before the meaning created 13

the matrix is brought to consciousness.

"Critical thought,"

he concludes, "takes the system of ideas and technical means

which it finds in the work of art and abstracts them from the

inexhaustible signification with which the novel is invested

when it manages to throw our imggg of the world out of focus,

to distend the dimensions of our experience and pull them to—

ward a new meaning.

Prior to any signification our experi-

ence is transformed when gripped by a novel, the way a figure

acquires a new Shape with the addition of an extra line."36

In response, then, to the questions articulated earlier

about what is created in a work of art and how that "thing"

is brought into being, Merleau-Ponty would argue that while

the significance itself is new, that significance is merely

the reverse side of a structure produced through the unfamil-

iar combination and use of familiar signs.

It is the struc-

ture or principle underlying the combination which is truly

generative and constitutive of the significance, for it must

be recalled that "meaning appears only at the intersection of

110

and as it were in the interval between words."37

I want to

make it clear that while I have been applying Merleau-Ponty's

observations primarily to language and thus to James Edie's

first three levels of meaning, I am convinced that they also

hold true with respect to the literary system and the fourth

level of meaning discovered in the text.

If one thinks of

the various units and functions combined in the creation of

a particular genre, for example, as signs and syntactic rules

governing sign combination, it is possible to see how the lit-

erary structure itself, taken as a whole, can also be thought

of as a matrix.

In this case, those particular elements such

as characters, objects, and events, which comprise the text

are juxtaposed to each other in new ways and the structures

underlying those strange juxtapositions generate unfamiliar

meanings and thus new poSsibilities in the genre itself.

However, if we were to engage in practical criticism

and attempt to discover the new structures presumably created

by Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! or by Hemingway's The Sun Also

   

Riggg, it would first be necessary to determine the rules and

conventions of the literary system or institution which they

as individual texts violate.

In other words, we must have a

fairly detailed picture of our own perceptual, linguistic,

and literary conventions for making sense of phenomena before

we can describe exactly how these works render those conven-

tions or strategies ineffectual, how they throw our under-

standing of the world out of focus, and how they lead us to

some new opening on it.

To draw such a picture, however,

111

would entail discussing the entire range of our linguistic

and literary competence, and I want to defer consideration

of the obvious problems posed by such an undertaking until I

have placed popular texts on the same continuum with those

that create new structures and significations for the first

time.

Before moving to this opposite end of the continuum,

however, I want to make it clear that I have purposely tried

to avoid imposing value judgments on the ability of certain

texts to draw a reader out of or away from himself and to

enable him to forge new tools and strategies for making mean-

ing of the world.

As a result, I would like to refrain from

stating categorically, at least for the moment, that it is

Art which creates new meaning and reorients the conventions

we have for making sense of literary texts.

Suffice it to

say at this stage in the argument, that some texts do create

new structures and new significations because they function

outside literary norms and conventions and that, for the most

part, these are the texts we have traditionally called "elite

literature."

To argue, however, that the creation of new

meaning is the sole criterion upon which we should base the

category "Art" is not my intent or purpose here.

I am simply

interested in the fact that such an operation can and often

does occur in literary texts and I think it useful to group

all such texts accordingly.

However, if we argue that our comprehension of a liter-

ary work is governed by expectations and norms which are part

112

of a literary system, and that any number of these norms can

be ignored or violated in the creation of texts, it is neces-

sary to argue at the same time that it is equally possible

for a text to remain within the system and to conform to all

or nearly all of those same conventions.

It is my belief

that the texts we traditionally label ”popular literature"

or disparage as ”mass entertainment" are actually those which

chose not to violate conventions, upset expectations or pio-

neer in the creation of new forms.

Such works prefer instead

to manipulate familiar forms and structures and to rely on

the standard or sedimented significance generally associated

with them.

These texts are formulaic in that they rarely

function outside a reader's competence and thus assiduously

avoid disappointing his expectations.

This notion of iden-

tifying popular works as those which are formulaic is not

new, however, and in exploring the idea at length, John G.

Cawelti has defined a formula as "a combination or synthesis

of a number of specific cultural conventions with a more uni-

versal story form or archetype."38

Cawelti maintains, fur-

thermore, that such texts serve the psychological functions

of escape and entertainment because ”the formulaic element

reflects the construction of an ideal world without the dis-

order, the ambiguity, the uncertainty, and the limitations

of the world of experience."39

This assertion is very simi-

lar to Barthes' claim, noted earlier, that because the text

of pleasure comes from culture and refuses to break with its

norms, it is linked to a comfortable practice of reading.

113

It seems to me that both observations are astute, and Cawelti

and Barthes are perfectly justified in focusing on the spe-

cific character

of the reading process, for it is that pro-

cess and the strategies which control it that determines

whether a text functions in a revolutionary way and creates

new meaning or whether it functions as a conservative force

and merely confirms or restates the familiar.

As might be expected, I see a direct parallel between

the empirical use of language described by Merleau-Ponty and

the formulaic manipulation of literary elements such as nar-

rative patterns, plot structures, and character types in popu-

lar literature.

If we recall that when a subject speaks em-

pirically, he combines the words of the language system ac-

cording to standard rules of syntax and thus reveals only the

generally accepted sedimented meanings of those words, it is

possible to think of the “popular'author "analogically" as

one who arranges the common elements or signs of a literary

text into familiar sequences which exhibit well-known mean-

ings and thus provide the reader with the experience he an-

ticipates.

While I am here thinking of literature as a lan-

guage system with basic units and rules of combination and

thus am considering only the fourth level of meaning des-

cribed by James Edie, I suspect that popular literature also

reaffirms familiar meanings on the first three levels as well.

In fact, it is my contention that those texts we have tradi-

tionally labelled ”popular” are properly named and truly "of

the people" in the sense that they remain entirely within

114

bgph the linguistic and literary expectations of the mass of

readers.

Indeed, the word-usage of a popular novel is seldom

strange or out of the ordinary and any native speaker can at-

tend to it as if it is transparent and provides a clear window

to the natural, normal significance of each familiar word.

By the same token, these texts also follow rigid patterns in

plot structure and often make use of stock character types

which rarely vary from one work to the next.

As a result,

any reader already familiar with the genre or particular type

of popular text he is reading, can immediately assign to an

 

event or character the proper significance it is to have in

the narrative as a whole when that narrative is concluded.

He does not need to suffer disorientation or to live with

ambiguity until the coherent deformation teaches him hgg to

comprehend that which he cannot see simply because there is

nothing in the text he has not encountered before, did not

expect, or does not know how to interpret.

Such texts are

entirely commensurate with the linguistic 32g literary com-

petence possessed by most readers and, as a result, they

function primarily to reaffirm their faith in the efficacy

of the strategies and procedures they use to make sense of

the world.

Because the creator of a popular text does not defy

convention and therefore relies on his own linguistic and

literary competence, it can be argued that what he says in

that text is actually molded by the language he speaks and

the literary system within which he operates.

He does not

115

express himself, at least in the way Merleau-Ponty thinks of

expression, that is, as the creation of something wholly per-

sonal and fundamentally new, because he does not stamp the

culturally-owned materials he uses with a new and unique im-

print.

Instead, he combines words into accepted patterns,

uses them in the proper contexts and manipulates literary

characters, events, and "ideas" in familiar ways.

Because

he does not subject either the words he uses or the literary

elements he employs to any kind of deformation, he does not

disorient his reader or ask him to step out of himself in

order to confront something alien to his entire range of pre-

vious experience.

Because he permits his culture to speak

through him, by using its language and literary forms and

generally accepted meanings, he enables his reader to decode

the text quickly because that reader is a member of the same

culture and possesses those same meanings as part of his own

competence.

For example, when a reader sees familiar words used in

the context he expects, he is able to discount the visual

presence of the words themselves and to penetrate to the

meanings he "knows” they contain.

As Merleau-Ponty himself

points out, when we become engrossed in a book, we no longer

see the letters on the page or even recall turning thepages.4o

Instead, we ignore those physical characters and attend to the

meaning itself.

Although this certainly occurs in the case of

successful authentic expression as well, it cannot happen im-

 

mediately if the expression we encounter is too strange or too

116

far outside the range of our normal expectations and compe-

tence.

In that case, we are forced to note the presence of

the character themselves Simply because those characters are

not transparent and do not give way to a readily available

"meaning."

We are, therefore, able to ignore the signs them-

selves in the reading process only because we already possess

those signs in conjunction with certain culturally agreed-

 

upon meanings.

In essence, then, to read a text which uses

familiar words in accepted ways is actually to affirm what we

already know as members of a previously instituted cultural

system.

Because what is "meant" in formulaic texts is already

an accepted part of the cultural and linguistic system, that

meaning or signification is not dependent for its existence

on those particular words of that particular text.

Such a

meaning already exists as an abstraction or "idea" within

the culture and it can be transposed from phrase to phrase

and from vehicle to vehicle.

For example, in the contemporary

gothic romance, The Golden Unicorn, Phyllis Whitney portrays

 

characters and arranges events in such a way that her story

seems to say the proper role of woman in modern society is

that of the beloved wife of a devoted husband.41

Since such

a notion is a cultural commonplace in twentieth-century

America, one might expect this same idea to be revealed in

numerous

other forms and, indeed, this is the case.

Not

only do all of Whitney's novels evidence this same theme or

preoccupation, but so do numerous other romantic novels,

117

daytime television serials, and magazine short stories.

As a result, the texts through which these cultural

abstractions are revealed are peculiarly ephemeral, and I

suspect they disappear precisely because the culture does

not 232g them to give expression to its concerns.

Since

those concerns are already well-known and previously embodied

in other nearly equivalent vehicles, new texts which express

them are largely interchangeable with the old and, as a re-

sult, they are not preserved and reread for the unique light

or perspective they shed on the modern world.

Therefore, the

function of such texts, with respect to both the linguistic

and literary system, is to shore up, to reinforce, and to

conserve traditional meanings and structures of combination.

They are, by their very nature, conservative since they choose

not to play with structure in the interest of creating new

meaning.

In addition, these texts also serve to confirm the

efficacy of their readers' literary and linguistic competence.

In fact, because they give way so quickly in the face of the

procedures the readers bring to bear on them and yield their

meaning so easily, they assure those readers that such pro-

cedures and strategies are effective in making meaning of the

world.

Whereas texts which function "authentically" for the

reader (by expanding his ability to make sense of other texts)

create matrices of ideas rather than ideas themselves, formu-

laic or empirical texts can be said to present the reader

with abstract ideas or "thoughts."

I do, however, want to

118

caution the reader here that I am not arguing for the estab-

lishment of two separate categories into which all literary

texts must be forced.

I propose, instead, to think of all

such texts as forming a continuum which extends between two

purely theoretical extremes or poles where the structures

employed are either radically creative or radically conserva-

tive.

In actuality, it seems to me, all texts fit somewhere

in between the two poles and they thus combine both authentic

and empirical use of the elements of which they are composed.

To return, however, to the abstract notion of a strictly

"empirical" text, I want to point out that such a text can be

said to contain abstract ideas because it makes use of lin-

guistic and literary structures that are already familiar to

the reader as structures which possess a certain definitive

sense or signification.

Because an empirical text, like em-

pirical speech, vibrates like chords the reader's "machinery

of acquired significations" and arouses in him specific remi-

niscences,42 the meaning of that text cannot be continually

developed through time.

Such a text does not provide the

reader with symbols whose significance can be constantly

elaborated and extended-but rather confronts him with counters

or indices which are directly linked by tradition to previous-

ly-known, immediately-available "ideas."

Because they are

members of the same culture and possessors of the same liter-

ary and linguistic systems employed in the creation of the

empirical text, readers of such texts know tacitly how to de-

cipher the codes and indices which they encounter.

They

119

possess the key to the puzzle because they already understand

the nature of the link between sign and signification.

A

reader of westerns, for example, does not need to await the

outcome of the adventure in order to know that the cowboy in

black is an index or sign of evil.

This is a common charac-

ter in all westerns and any reader familiar with the genre

knows implicitly that the black figure and evil are locked

together "naturally."

In essence, then, to read an empirical text is to re-

affirm what we already know as members of a culture and to

emphasize the accuracy and power of those strategies for com-

prehension and models of intelligibility that we use every

day in our ordinary encounters and intercourse with the world.

Because empirical texts remain within the linguistic and lit-

erary systems from which they are composed, it can be argued

that their function is to stabilize or strengthen both those

institutions.

These texts function as a kind of anchor or

weight in that they insure the continued survival of the sys-

tems as shared cultural resources and, at the same time, as-

sure their continued success in giving verbal conscious ex-

istence to the culture's most basic and universal concerns.

Continued use of the two institutions as they are familiarly

known and understood tends to perpetuate the life and vitality

of both.

However, if we recall that language itself possesses a

dual nature in that it is a stable system capable of radi-

cally creative expression, we must acknowledge that wholly

120

empirical use of the literary system is both impossible and

undesirable as well.

If that system is to continue to be

successful in making sense of a perpetually changing world,

then it is imperative for the system itself to evolve and

keep pace with environmental change.

A necessary function

is, therefore, performed by "authentic" or truly creative

texts with respect to the literary and linguistic systems,

because they constantly extend the boundaries or limits of

both institutions.

These texts are, by nature, subversive

or revolutionary in that in breaking rules and defying con-

ventions, they inevitably found new ones.

Furthermore, these

texts also undermine their readers' sense of stability and

tradition because they constantly demonstrate the ineffective-

ness and impotence of the reading strategies and procedures

that they, as readers, bring to bear on such texts.

Because.

a truly creative text will not yield and fit in with a read-

er's traditional models of intelligibility, that reader is

forced to alter those models and to fashion new ones which

will enable him to make sense of what he has previously been

unable to decipher.

A creative text that uses the linguistic

or literary system "authentically" thus forces the reader to

question his tacit knowledge and serves to push him out of

or beyond his own personal and cultural frame of reference.

In a sense, we might argue that texts such as these are a

force for true communication in the world and the power be-

hind the extension and growth of the institutions used for

that communication.

Creative texts renew literature

121

considered as a system, just as they tend to renew and extend

the capacity for expression contained within language itself.

In reality, they tug away at that anchor which holds the sys-

tem back and they therefore constantly drag the system to un-

charted areas and force it to function or Operate there as

well.

Once again, I want to make it clear that I do hgt_wish

to place greater value on the creation of new structures and

meanings than on conservation of the old.

While the former

activity is important and inevitable with respect to the in-

stitutions of language and literature, I don't believe we

can say that it is more important or desirable than the lat-

ter.

It seems essential that we remember, in language use

or discourse, the creative character of certain speech acts

is only discernible against the background of other more con-

servative acts which underscore the traditional structures

and meanings contained within the system.

Therefore, if we

are to argue that literature is also a system complete with

basic units, rules of combination, and strategies for read-

ing, and that it too is capable of being used to formulate

revolutionary creative texts, we must never lose sight of

the fact that those texts are creative only with respect to

the traditional norms and familiar conventions of more con-

servative works.

Just as language as a dynamic totality must

persist in functioning as a stable institution if the cre-

ation of new meaning is to be possible at all, so literature

must continue to exist as a balanced system of expression in

122

order for creative texts to be drawn from it.

In short, if

we are going to consider literature as a language, we are

forced to acknowledge the reciprocal importance of its sub—

versive and conservative texts.

The literary system itself

does not tell us which of its aspects has more value nor does

it provide us with intrinsic criteria for judgment.

All we

know is that both uses of the system are possible and neces-

sary and that it is inconceivable that one could exist with-

out the other.

Who is Reading?

 

In discussing the proposed literary continuum and the

violation or fulfillment of norms, expectations, and reading

strategies, I have been thinking primarily of those rules

which govern the structures of the text as a separate entity

beyond the level of connected sentences alone.

However, be-

cause such textual units are necessarily composed of written

language, they unavoidably make use of Edie's first three

levels of meaning as well and, as a result, they require the

reader to rely on his ordinary linguistic competence in read-

ing any literary text.

Because the writer may thus choose

to violate either linguistic or literary conventions, it be-

comes extremely difficult to situate texts on the suggested

continuum.

A given work, for example, can conceivably re-

main within the linguistic competence of a certain reader

while at the same time upsetting the traditional expectations

he possesses concerning a familiar literary genre.

On the

123

other hand, it is equally possible for a text to use language

itself in new ways while making use of traditional narrative

patterns, plot structures, and generic forms.

In describing

texts, therefore, and in attempting to decide whether they

use the linguistic and literary systems empirically or cre-

atively, it is first necessary to have some idea of who is

reading those texts and what is included in the competence

they bring to them.

However, while it might be possible to identify the

readers of various kinds of texts, I suspect that it would

be almost entirely fruitless to question such readers about

the procedures they use to derive sense from the astonish-

'ingly complex conglomeration of ideas, characters, and events

which make up a literary work.

AS fluent or accomplished

users of both the linguistic and literary systems, such read-

ers are no doubt tacitly aware of the rules and conventions

which govern "grammatical" use of both institutions, but it

is doubtful that even the most articulate reader could ever

bring to the level of consciousness all the assumptions and

tactics he uses to make sense of a text.

The question of

text identification and Classification thus becomes even more

problematic and it is difficult to see how we will ever be

able to suggest a procedure for categorization that will be

anything more than an idiosyncratic method for assignment

based on the most personal of expectations and assumptions.

Still, I do think the problem can be solved and I sus-

pect the key to it rests with the quality of our definition

124

of competence and our ability to keep in mind the fact that

competence is an extra-personal, intersubjective body of

knowledge that is directly connected with or related to a

literary system which, though only a system in potentia,

nevertheless exists as a phenomenological reality because it

can always be partially embodied in actual texts which exist

in the "real" world.

It is, therefore, absolutely necessary

to clarify the nature of the relationship between literary

competence and the literary system if we are to offer sug-

gestions about what it is we ought to look at in the attempt

to judge whether a particular literary text is truly "cre-

ative" or basically empirical.

A reader's literary competence is directly related to

the literary system since he can be said to possess compe-

tence only when he has mastered the use of that system.

How-

ever, mastery cannot be defined as the reader's express knowl-

edge of all the elements, functions, and relationships that

comprise that system, since he can never have read all the

texts which make use of the system, nor can he anticipate

all that will be done with it in the future.

To master the

use of a system, therefore, whether linguistic or literary,

is to have acquired an implicit knowledge of the basic opera-

tions that can be brought to bear on the elements contained

within it.

That is to say, then, competence is actually a

tacit knowledge of the principles governing the combination

of elements and the formulation of structures in that system.

Once he has acquired an understanding of these abstract

125

principles, the reader is able to approach a text he has

never seen before, pick out the peculiar juxtapositions of

elements which are the truly meaningful structures of that

 

text, and then construe for himself the meaning that exists

as the invisible component of those visible juxtapositions.

A reader's competence, then, is really the set of rules

governing his ability to read and to make sense of any le-

gitimate use of the system from which those rules have been

derived.

I think it essential to keep in mind the fact that the

literary system is at least logically prior to any individual

reader's competence or ability to make use of it, since such

competence or mastery must grow or develop out of an acquain-

tance with actual uses of the system.

The system then must

exist prior to any reader's introduction to it and it certain-

ly is present in the individual manifestations of it which he

confronts.

However, the idea of literature as a complete

synchronic system is really a theoretical one since the sys-

tem can never be made to exist in totality.

The literary

 

system is therefore the potential collection of all the signs

or basic units of combination and the possibilities of com-

bination that could be understood by a reader initiated into

the system.

It is easy to see here that while competence and liter-

ature considered as a system are inextricably bound up with

each other, they are still not the same thing.

It seems to

me that Jonathan Culler's foremost contribution to the

126

clarification of the structuralist enterprise is his ability

to distinguish between these two notions.

It is also signifi-

cant that he provides this subtle differentiation in the proc-

ess of pointing out that Northrop Frye's ingenious taxonomy

or scheme for literary classification is not founded on a

clear understanding of what literary categories ought to des-

cribe.

Culler points out that the status of Frye's taxonomic

categories is "curiously indeterminate" and he asks "what is

their relation to literary discourse and to the activity of

reading?"

It is at this point that he specifies the exact

43

nature of the difference between competence and the system

itself and he identifies which of the two he feels ought to

be studied:

The linguistic model provides a slight re-

orientation which makes apparent what is

needed.

Study of the linguistic system be-

comes theoretically cOherent when we cease

thinking that our goal is to specify the

properties of objects in a corpus and con-

centrate instead on the task of formulating

the internalized competence which enables

objects to have the properties they do for

those who have mastered the system.

To

discover and characterize structures one

must analyse the system which assigns struc-

tural descriptions to the objects in ques-

tion, and thus a literary taxonomy should

be grounded on a theory of reading.4

Culler bases this conclusion, in large part, on his

argument that linguistics itself did not meet with much suc-

cess when it insisted on trying to describe the actual prop-

erties or content of the synchronic language system.

He main-

tains that it made greater headway when it learned to focus

on the rules a speaker employs when trying to make sense of

127

utterances he has never heard before and he argues that those

concerned with the analysis of the literary system might

learn a great deal from the linguists' eventual success in

this area.

He goes on to say that what is needed now is not

a description of the literary system and the various cate-

gories contained within it but rather the explicit formula-

tion of a "poetics" whose object of study ought to be literary

competence.

Culler points out that "both author and reader

bring to the text more than a knowledge of language," and

he maintains that this additional knowledge which includes

"expectations about the forms of literary organization, im-

plicit models of literary structures, [and] practice in form-

ing and testing hypotheses about literary works - is what

guides one in the perception and construction of relevant

patterns.

To discover the nature and forms of this supple-

mentary knowledge is the task of poetics. .

. ."45

In actuality, Culler is not concerned with the lin-

guistic character of texts, nor is he interested in the

actual literary structure of specific works.

Instead, what

he wishes to discover is exactly how a reader goes about

detecting plot structures, identifying the important details

which aid in the development of a character, and assigning

meanings to particular occurrences.

He maintains that this

sort of meaning-giving operation must precede any analysis

of the text and he argues, therefore, that it should be the

object of study and the basis of literary categorization.

He agrees, finally, with Roland Barthes that the "task of

128

a structuralist poetics .

.

. would be to make explicit the

underlying system which makes literary effects possible”

and he cites Barthes' own statement that such a poetics

"will not interpret symbols but describe their polyvalency.

In short, its object will not be the full meanings of the

work but on the contrary the empty meaning which supports

them all."46

While I certainly agree with Culler that all readers

possess a certain literary competence and am, therefore, sym-

pathetic to his call for a poetics which would explicitly ar-

ticulate this in the form of a grammar, such a goal is not

my primary concern or preoccupation here.

I do not propose,

in short, to append to my theory of the differences between

creative and empirical texts an even more comprehensive theory

of literary discourse complete with a formal grammar account-

ing for all those rules, strategies, and conventions which we

possess as tacit knowledge and use to make meaning out of

literary works.

Rather, I am ultimately concerned with my

hypothesis that "popular" or empirical literary texts remain

within that competence hy using the elements of the synchronic

literary system in accepted and familiar ways.

I would,

therefore, like to demonstrate through the use of a case

study that such texts are, by nature, conservative in that

they are put together in traditional ways according to tra-

ditional conventions and that they can thus be construed or

understood using traditional strategies based on those rules.

In essence, what I am really interested in is the way in

129

which the various elements and structures, identified and

objectified through the application of a competence, combine.

I am interested in the properties of objects within a corpus,

as Culler might say, since I would like to identify in some

paradigmatic case those elements which constitute a particu-

lar literary genre and also would like to discover which com-

binations of those units are empirical or accounted for by

the system itself and which are authentic deformations or ex-

tensions of it.

In short, I propose to concern myself in

the next chapter with the actual content or composition of a

single generic manifestation of the synchronic literary sys-

tem.

I believe, furthermore, that it is possible to accom-

plish this precisely because I do possess both a certain

linguistic and literary competence and can thus construe a

text and "discover" the meaning that exists in it as the tacit

component of its structure.

Indeed, this sort of literary

analysis has been conducted for centuries even though critics

have, for the most part, been unaware of the implicit knowl-

edge or models of intelligibility they have brought to bear

on texts in the proceSS"of making them signify.

Despite

this lack of awareness, such critics have formulated adequate

and accurate analyses of numerous works and, in accordance

with that, I have every hope that the explications I shall

offer will correctly identify those elements crucial to a

genre and also accurately isolate the empirical and creative

combinations of them.

Jonathan Culler admits the worth of

130

such "unconscious" literary analysis in a roundabout way

when he admits that if a critic "began by noting his own in-

terpretations and reactions to literary works and succeeded

in formulating a set of explicit rules which accounted for

the fact that he produced these interpretations and not

others, one would then possess the basis of an account of

literary competence."47

He adds that "adjustments could be

made to include other readings which seemed acceptable and

to exclude any readings which seemed wholly personal and

idiosyncratic, but there is every reason to expect that other

readers would be able to recognize substantial portions of

their own tacit knowledge in this account.

To be an experi-

enced reader of literature is, after all, to have gained a

sense of what can be done with literary works and thus to

have assimilated a system which is largely interpersonal."48

What is implicit in Culler's statement is the notion that any

good reader who has a true mastery of the system will be able

to produce a substantially "accurate" reading of the text

even if he does not possess conscious awareness of what con-

stitutes that mastery and thus is unaware of how he produces

the literary effects he does.

Working under the assumption, therefore, that what I

isolate and describe in literary texts is not necessarily

selected on personal and idiosyncratic principles, I propose

to rely on my own competence or implicit understanding of

the interpersonal literary system in order to demonstrate

how certain elements of that system are used differently in

131

empirical and creative texts.

I have arbitrarily selected

a single type of genre within the broad class of texts identi-

fied as novels in order to circumscribe the scope of my analy-

sis.

This genre has already been identified by other literary

commentators who have themselves relied on their own mastery

of the system in question in order to isolate this one form

or manifestation of it and to include specific texts within

it.

I intend to examine the "contemporary gothic novel" or

those texts whose lineage can be traced either to eighteenth-

century gothics like Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto

 

and Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, or to Charlotte

 

Bronté's Jane Eyre which is itself an alteration or mutation

 

of Walpole's and Radcliffe's earlier work.

In the course of

my analysis and explication, I will attempt to delineate

those elements and their combinations, the structures of the

novel, which are constitutive of the contemporary gothic form.

I agree with Culler that a genre is actually "a conventional

function of language, a particular relation to the world

which serves as norm or expectation to guide the reader in

his encounter with the text,"49 and by examining works that

are almost exclusively formulaic, and thus the most reductive

versions of the genre, I hope to detect the exact nature of

the fundamental relation to the world which is the charac-

teristic mark of this particular form.

Culler later points out in his discussion of the idea

of genre that the function of genre conventions "is essen-

tially to establish a contract between writer and reader so

132

as to make certain relevant expectations operative and thus

to permit compliance with and deviance from accepted modes

of intelligibility .

.

. ."50

It is my contention that by

following the generally familiar procedures of traditional

thematic analysis and by continuing to take the analogy be-

tween language and literature seriously, thereby using cer—

tain linguistic terms and methods to modify this procedure,

I will be able to discover the terms of the contract estab-

lished between the contemporary gothic and its reader.

By

closely attending to the patterns of the texts themselves,

I hope to isolate those elements and functions central to

the genre which require reader construction or interpreta-

tion.

Then, having identified the functional units and

juxtapositions or oppositions between them which define the

genre, it will be posSible to deal with works which play

with those essential units and relations of opposition in

order to make that genre function or "mean" in a new way.

In other words, it will be possible to identify deformations

of the fundamental form and creative use of the system as a

whole.

In summary, then, what I propose to do in the fol-

lowing two chapters is to analyze certain selected texts ag

literature using the implicit literary competence I possess

 

as a member of the cultural literary system.

In the process

of interpretation, I will produce "literary effects" as

Jonathan Culler terms the meanings we derive from texts, but

where his concern would be with the procedures I use to pro-

duce those effects, my focus will be on the structures or

133

forms from which I create or construe those meanings.

NOTES

1James M. Edie, Speaking and Meaning:

The Phenomenol-

 

ogy of Language (Bloomington, Indiana:

Indiana University

 

Press, 1976), p. 108.

2Edie, Speaking, p. 108.

3Roland Barthes, Critique et vérité quoted in Jonathan

 

Culler, Structuralist Poetics:

Structuralism, Linguistics,

 

 

and the Study of Literature (Ithaca, New York:

Cornell

 

University Press, 1975), p. 118.

My understanding of the

structuralist enterprise has been greatly enhanced by Culler's

critical evaluation of its attempt to apply linguistic methods

to the analysis of literary texts.

While I do not agree com-

pletely with Culler.on the usefulness of the structuralist

methodology, I have found this notion of "literary competence"

extremely helpful and my own later use of the term in connec-

tion with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and its applicability

to the study of popular literature is directly derived from

Culler's work.

Since the question of literary competence

and its relation to both the production and comprehension of

literary texts is a major concern later in this chapter, I

will leave an extended discussion of Culler's work and my

own adaptation of it until then.

4Roland Barthes, gig, trans. Richard Miller (New York:

Hill and Wang, 1974), p. 11.

5It is necessary to point out here that Merleau-Ponty's

position on the exact nature of the relationship between 13

parole and la lapgue must be implied, for much of what he

 

wrote about these two aspects of language is really oblique

to the issue, at least as that issue has been formulated by

structuralism.

Unfortunately, he died just as the structur-

alist point of view was beginning to clarify itself and I'm

sure his statements on the problems involved here would

have been more to the point had he been writing in response

to explicitly formulated structuralist premises.

However,

this was not the case and, as a result, his comments on 13

parole and la langue must be carefully culled from other

contexts.

61 am indebted to Professor E. Fred Carlisle who sug-

gested this very useful comparison between a speaker and his

speech and a dancer and his dance.

134

135

7There are several critical works easily available to

the reader of Merleau-Ponty interested in the evolutionary

nature of his philosophical thought.

Perhaps the most gen-

eral and in some ways the most useful is the work cited

earlier by Remy Kwant, From Phenomenology to Metaphysics:

 

An Inquiry into the Last Period of Merleau-Ponty's Philo-

 

sophical Life.

James Edie's Speaking and Meaning:

The Phe-

   

nomenology of Language, however, considers the changes in

 

Merleau-Ponty's theory of language and J. F. Bannan's "The

'Later' Thought of Merleau-Ponty," Dialogue V no. 3 (December,

1966) focuses on the changes in his not1ons about perception.

All are extremely helpful in the attempt to understand the

exact nature of the changes in his approach embodied in the

incomplete last volume, The Visible and the Invisible.

 

8

Edie, Speaking, p. 75.

9Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Consciousness and the Acquisi-

 

sition of Language in Children, trans. Hugh J. Silverman

 

(Evanston, Iliihois:

Northwestern University Press, 1973).

10

Edie, Speaking, p. 123.

llEdie, Speaking, p. 112.

12Edie, Speaking, pp. 124-150.

l3Edie, Speaking, p. 126.

14Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, p. 179.

 

15

Edie, Speaking, p. 132.

l6Edie, Speaking, p. 134.

17Edie, Speaking, p. 137.

18Edie, Speaking, p. 139.

19Edie, Speaking, p. 142.

20Edie, Speaking, p. 143.

21Edie, Speaking, p. 149.

22Culler, Structuralist Poetics, pp. 113-130.

I en-

countered Culler's work immediately after I drew up the

schematic outline for this chapter and his writing has

helped me immensely in clarifying my own ideas on the sub-

ject.

I have decided to use his term to designate that

system of rules and expectations which guides our compre-

hension of literary texts in acknowledgment of his influ-

ence and because I think the designation itself is descrip-

tively precise and methodologically useful.

136

23Culler, Structuralist Poetics, p. 114.

 

24Merleau-Ponty, Themes, pp. 3-4.

25Merleau-Ponty, Prose, pp. 11-12.

26Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 12. (emphasis added).

27Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans.

Richard Miller (New York:

Hill and Wang, 1975), p. 14.

 

28

Barthes, S/Z, pp. 92-93.

29Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 12.

 

30Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 78.

31Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 87.

32Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 42.

33Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 90.

34Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 90.

35The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary

(Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 1744.

36Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 91.

37Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 42.

38John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery! and Romance:

Formula Stories as Art and ngular Culture (Chicago:

The

 

University of ChiCago Press, 1976), p. 6.

39

Cawelti, Adventure, p. 13.

 

40Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 9.

41Phyllis Whitney, The Golden Unicorn (Greenwich,

 

Connecticut:

Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1976).

42Merleau-Ponty, Prose, p. 142.

43Culler, Structuralist Poetics, p. 120.

 

44Culler, Structuralist Poetics, p. 120.

45Culler, Structuralist Poetics, p. 95.

46Culler, Structuralist Poetics, p. 118.

137

47Culler,

Structuralist Poetics,

p.

128.

 

48Cu11er,

Structuralist Poetics,

p.

128.

 

49Culler,

Structuralist Poetics,

p.

136.

 

soCuller,

Structuralist Poetics,

p.

147.

 

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PART TWO

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE IDEA OF A

LITERARY CONTINUUM:

A CASE STUDY

CHAPTER IV

AN ACCOUNT OF A LITERARY COMPETENCE AND

A THEORY OF THE GOTHIC NOVEL

Specific Strategies for Reading

 

Having made several broad generalizations about liter-

ature and the nature of its relationship to language and

linguistics, it is now my task to show-that these general-

izations are descriptive and that they identify real dif-

ferences in the way literary texts function.

This case

study is in no way deSigned to "prove" my theory scientif-

ically but is presented rather as a demonstration of its

applicability and usefulness in isolating both structural

and functional variations within a particular type or genre.

In short, I hope to show that an understanding of the notions

of literary competence and the literary continuum can help

us to comprehend what a text is attempting to do, how well

it succeeds in its purpose, and how that text can be class-

ified with respect to others of its type.

In this attempt

to demonstrate how certain texts do function as I have said

they can, I intend to make use of a method derived from the

analogy between literature and language.

In essence, this

approach will be a "linguistic" one despite the fact that I

will make no attempt to analyze the language of specific

138

139

literary texts.

Because I have argued that literature is, in actual-

ity, a language system, I have maintained that an analogical

relationship exists between the elementary signs or words of

a language and the fundamental combinatory units of the

literary text.

Just as a sign has little practical meaning

when isolated or taken-entirely alone, so the elements of a

text, whether they be sentence fragments, descriptive para-

graphs, or whole character presentations, do not signify

by themselves.

Like signs, which only begin to signify

 

when they are profiled against other signs, the basic units

of literary texts make sense for a reader only because they

are integrated within some larger literary context.

In

essence, they possess a meaning which can be comprehended

by a reader only because they are parts of a larger signif-

icant structure.

Therefore, in order to determine the sense

or import of any element contained within a text, it is

first necessary to discover the place it occupies in some

greater unit or structure and then to understand how that

structure is itself integrated into the largest unit of

all, the text as a whole.1

A simple example included at this point might help

to clarify this somewhat troublesome concept.

It is common

knowledge that in everyday language-use it is possible to

use the same word in different ways and, as a result, to

force it to carry two very different meanings.

If I say,

for example, "Give me another cup of coffee," the word

140

"cup" has a very different meaning from the same word used

in another sentence.

When I say, "If you want to light the

match in this wind, cup it between your two hands," I am

using the word in question in a different manner, that is,

metaphorically, and thus causing it to mean something other

than a "small, open container for beverages."

The meaning

of this simple word "cup" is in each case determined by

the exact nature of its relationship to the other words

in the sentence.

In this example, the significance is al-

tered by the fact that the word performs a different gram-

matical function in each of the two sentences.

This same

variation in meaning caused by a change in function also

occurs in literary texts where similar events or characters

can have different meanings depending on how they are used

in the text as a whole.

For example, the appearance of a

large medieval castle in a narrative could indicate that

the text is a gothic novel and that the hero or heroine is

about to be threatened by the dark forces of the world.

On the other hand, its appearance could conceiveably carry

no special significance at all.

The point here is that the

meaning or sense of any element in a literary text is deter-

mined by the relationship established by the author between

 

that element and others of the text as well as by the func-

tion it performs in the narrative as a coherent whole.

It can be seen, therefore, that in my analysis of

literary texts, I will have to concern myself with struc-

tures in much the same way "pure" structuralist critics do.

141

This is understandable since their structuralism derives

from their own use of the same linguistic model or analogy

upon which I have relied to develop the idea of the liter-

ary continuum.

However, the emphasis of my argument will

be different, since I plan to concern myself with the actual

variations in meaning and significance created by an author

and disclosed by the reader in his encounter with the struc-

tures in question.

It is unfortunate that many structural-

ists tend to ignore the fact that linguistic and literary

structures are meaning-ful entities and can only be ade-

 

quately understood as such.

This tendency to forget that

structures are employed by speakers and writers to commun-

icate meanings to other speakers and readers is dangerous,

since it permits one to believe that meaning exists wholly

within the structures themselves or within the mind of the

reader.

In actuality, meaning is a construction produced

by the conjunction or coming-together of an author, his

text, and a reader, and it is consequently the duty of any

analyst to recognize the role played by each in the reading

process.

I want to describe, therefore, the specific procedures

I will be followingin-attempting to isolate the elements

and combinations of elements essential to the gothic novel

in general and to the contemporary gothic novel in particu-

lar.

As I have pointed out before, comprehensive synthesis

must necessarily precede any explicit analysis or decomposi-

tion of a text into its component parts.

That is to say,

142

in order to identify those elements essential to a specific

text, a reader must first construe the unfamiliar words,

sentences, events, and sequences into an organic, coherent

whole.

The necessary units of a text are, therefore, only

identifiable against the background or outcome of the text

as a complete unit.

Because of this peculiarity, I have

found it necessary to read, construct, and interpret certain

texts identified as gothic novels as I would normally

approach any work of literature.

Therefore I have read

The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk,

  

and Melmoth the Wanderer in the same way I might read

 

Romeo and Juliet, Bleak House, Moby-Dick,or The Sound and

      

the Fury.

I have also read popular gothics such as The

Golden Unicorn, Spindrift, and The White Jade Fox in the

    

same manner, that is, as literature, and my analysis of them

 

is founded on the same set of analytic procedures and stra-

tegies.

However, I want to make it clear that I have done

this knowing full well that the reading conventions I have

followed, while standard, are not necessarily the only ones

available.

I engage, therefore, in such interpretation

fully cognizant of the fact that in accepting Merleau—

Ponty's phenomenological theory about how we transform

experience into meaning, I must also admit the possibility

that there are different ways of reading, as there are dif-

ferent ways of seeing, because individuals can come to a

new event with different histories and thus with different

143

expectations.

Since I intend to concern myself with the

possibility of reading popular texts as something other

than literature in the final chapter of this study, I will

leave that entirely separate problem until then and proceed

with a discussion of Roland Barthes' description of liter-

ary analysis--a description which I feel accurately, though

perhaps not exhaustively, describes my own literary compe-

tence.

This description will later figure prominently in

chapter six where I intend to propose a hypothesis about the

difference between literary competence and that competence

employed by those who read popular novels as something other

than literary texts.

The "Codes" of Roland Barthes

 

I In §L§v Barthes' primary concern is with the manner

in which a reader makes sense of the apparently random con—

glomeration of characters, actions, and events he confronts

when he begins reading any literary text.

Barthes identi-

fies the most basic or fundamental units of a text not as

its words or even as its sentences, but rather as its

meaning-units which can theoretically be groups of words,

sentences, or even paragraphs.

He calls these significant

units "lexias" and maintains that each lexia in a text de-

rives its meaning from the fact that it is organized hier-

archically into ever-larger units.

He also argues that the

overall meaning of the narrative is therefore the product

of this composite, hierarchical structure.

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144

In an early essay entitled "An Introduction to the

Structural Analysis of Narrative,"2 Barthes discusses this

sort of structure but refers to the lexia as a "function."

To avoid confusion with my own use of the term in chapter

three, I will quote Barthes substituting the later word

”lexia" which he himself chose to use in SLE.

In this

essay, Barthes identifies three separate levels of organ-

ization including the level of lexias, the level of actions,

and the level of narrative, and he points out that "atten-

tion is .

.

. called to the fact that those levels are

bonded together according to a mode of progressive integra—

tion:

a lexia has meaning only insofar as it takes its

place in the general line of action of an actant; and this

action in turn receives its ultimate meaning from the

fact that it is being told, that is, entrusted to a dis-

course which possesses its own code."3

In commenting on Barthes' notion of the lexia, Jon-

athan Culler has stated that "a lexie is a minimal unit

of reading, a stretch of text which is isolated as having

a specific effect or function different from that of neigh-

boring stretches of text.. It could thus be anything from

a single word to a brief series of sentences.

The level

of lexies would, then, be the level of one's primary contact

with the text at which items are separated and sorted out

so as to be given various functions at higher levels of

organization."4

Barthes himself maintains that the "soul"

of a particular lexia ”is, as it were, its seedlike quality,

145

which enables [it] to inseminate the narratiVe with an

element that will later come to maturity, on the same level,

or elsewhere on another level."

For Barthes, then, a

5

lexia is any identifiable portion of the linguistic pattern

of a literary text which possesses significance when viewed

as a step in the development of some larger action, event,

or idea contained within that text.

This lexia can be

thought of, furthermore, as a content-unit since it is

"'what an utterance means,‘ not the way it is made, which

constitutes it as a functional unit."

6

When, for example, I read Carson McCullers' The Member

 

of the Wedding and note that at the beginning of the second

 

chapter Frankie is suddenly referred to as F. Jasmine

Addams, the significance of this lexia as a meaningful

element in the text is not realized until I am able to

subsume it under some category related specifically to the

personality growth of Frankie Addams.

The fact that her

name is changed carries no special significance for me

until I can correlate it with other lexias which indicate

together that Frankie sees herself in an entirely new way.

It is the hierarchical organization or structure therefore

which gives a lexia its meaning and thus determines its

function in the text.

Because I am an educated reader and have already

encountered numerous other texts, when I read an entirely

new work as literature, I,am able to identify and isolate

 

lexias and to group them according to type or kind.

I

146

know what hierarchical structures they belong to precisely

because I am already familiar with the literary system and

know how certain textual units “mean."

I am generally

aware that certain kinds of lexias or stretches of a text

move different aspects of that text forward and I am able

to make immediate decisions about which descriptions con-

tribute to plot construction, character development, or

symbolic exposition.

In the course of his discussion of the lexia, Barthes

identifies several categories or groups of lexias which he

believes are descriptive of the various levels of organ—

ization present in a literary text.

He maintains that

these groups are organized and put together during any

reading of a literary work and insists that they are the

foundation of virtually all forms of traditional literary

analysis.

He argues, furthermore, that the organization of

each such group is governed by a code which he defines as

"one of the forces that can take over the text (of which

the text is the network), one of the voices out of which

the text is woven."7

Since Barthes is at his most cryptic

in this book, it might be helpful here to quote Jonathan

Culler who explains the code as a "general semantic model

which enables one to pick out items as belonging to the

functional space which the code designates.

That is to

say, the codes enable one to identify elements and to class

them together under particular functions."8

In sum, what

Barthes' codes account for is that remarkable process which

147

occurs when a reader encounters a wholly unfamiliar text

and knows not only how to ferret out the essential textual

units but also how to assign them to meaningful categories

and classes which themselves are descriptive of significant

"perspectives" of literary texts in general.

Although Barthes himself does not list these codes

in order of importance, it seems logical to begin with the

proairetic code since it is the one which governs the

reader's ability to identify and to name the actions con-

stituting the text's plot structure.

This code is the model

which enables the reader to discover and group lexias to-

gether that have to do with the story of the text and its

continuing advancement.

Because I already possess famil-

iarity with certain basic plot structures, I can read a

text I have never seen before and decide almost at the

moment of first reading that a certain element is identi-

fiable as a detail of the plot or one which primarily

contributes to related character development, symbolic pre-

sentation, or thematic exposition.

As Barthes points out,

the actions which are the terms of the proairetic code,

can be grouped into different sequences.

He argues that

"whoever reads the text amasses certain data under some

generic titles for actions (stroll, murder, rendezvous),

   

and this title embodies the sequence; the sequence exists

when and because it can be given a name, it unfolds as

this process of naming takes place, as a title is sought

or confirmed. .

. ."9

To read a text and to organize it

148

according to the proairetic code is, then, to order certain

of the available actions into sequences whose very names

indentify the meaning or function of the lexias so organ-

ized.

A second code closely related to the proairetic is

the hermeneutic code, defined by Barthes as "all the units

whose function is to articulate in various ways a question,

its response, and the variety of chance events which can

either formulate the question or delay its answer. . ."10

This code, therefore, actually enables the reader to iden-

tify those lexias which pose problems, ask questions and

present enigmas.

To fully comprehend this portion of the

text, the reader must be able to hold these units in abey-

ance, in waiting, so to speak, until the eventual solution

or answer is provided by later developments within the text

itself.

Culler has pointed out that the hermeneutic code

involves a logic of question and answer and, I might add

here, that because of this, it is primarily responsible

for the reader's ability to detect a mystery, to participate

in suspense, and to be overwhelmed by dread.

As one might

expect, knowledge of the hermeneutic code is essential to

an appreciation of the detective story and the mystery tale

as well as to an understanding of the gothic novel.

Like

the elements of the proairetic code, the lexias of the her—

meneutic code must be ordered horizontally or sequentially

and it is the name given to the sequence as a whole which

identifies the function or meaning of the elements contained

149

within it..

Whereas the organization of lexias in these first

two codes proceeds in a linear fashion, that is sequentially,

the organization in the remaining three must be carried

out hierarchically or categorically.

In other words, in

the last three codes described by Barthes, sequential order-

ing is not as important as is accurate grouping or assign-

ment.

For example, in the semic code, which enables the

reader_to identify and collect units which develop charac-

ters in the text, it is not immediately as important to

 

order details properly as to include all those that are

relevant and significant.

It is somewhat more difficult

to identify on first reading all those lexias of the semic

code than to isolate those of the proairetic, since appar-

ently trivial details often take on major importance in

light of subsequent actions performed by the character in

question.

Barthes equates this process, whereby the reader

comes to "know" a character, with the activity of naming.

"To state that Sarrasine is 'active or passive by turns,'"

 

he writes, "is to attempt to locate something in his char-

acter 'which doesn't take,‘ to attempt to name something."ll

Barthes adds that in this grouping and naming process, "the

connotator refers not so much to a name as to a synonymic

complex whose common nucleus we sense even while the dis-

course is leading us toward other possibilities, toward

other related signifieds:

thus, reading is absorbed in a

kind of metonymic skid, each synonym adding to its neighbor

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150

some new trait, some new departure."

.

12

Barthes identifies the fourth model which enables the

reader to construct thematic and symbolic readings of a

text as the symbolic code and maintains that the antithesis

or juxtaposition of opposites is always at its base.

His

discussion of antithesis and its grounding in the human

body is extremely complex, highly controversial, and irrel-

evant to my concerns here.

However, I do feel Barthes is

correct in maintaining that some kind of model guides the

reader's extrapolation of symbols from a text and I suspect

the code enables us to detect some underlying pattern or

theme which unites all the lexias organized through the

other codes into a single, coherent, meaningful whole.

As

Jonathan Culler points out, it is in the symbolic portion

or aspect of the text that "the process of interpretation

is made to seem natural."l3

This is so precisely because

it is the essence of this code to require us to generalize

or extrapolate some meaning from events, actions, characters,

and objects in the attempt to make those things signify

beyond themselves.

To read a text for symbols, in short,

is to recuperate lexias of other codes in such a manner

that they point to some acceptable, all-encompassing abstrac-

tion beyond or outside the text itself.

The final code is actually a group of models, iden-

tified by Barthes in S4; as the referential codes, which

permit the reader to focus on certain elements and to use

them in his construction of the meaning of the text because

1
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151

they derive from his own cultural background.

Barthes

argues that lexias in the text which can be organized

referentially are statements actually "made in a collective

and anonymous voice orginating in traditional human exper-

ience," and he maintains that through these lexias, the

text in question refers to general patterns of knowledge

and wisdom possessed by both author and reader alike.14

In discussing Barthes' notion of referential codes, Culler

points out that the role of referential lexias is primarily

"to substantiate the fictional contract,"

15 that is, to

convince the reader that the world he is constructing within

the text is identical to and contiguous with the world

that he himself inhabits.

Because the referential statements of a text seem

to appeal to moral and scientific authority, Barthes argues

that they function as implicit proverbs.

This might be

clearer if I cite one of the lexias from "Sarrasine" which

Barthes himself identifies as part of a referential code.

He labels the phrase "this golden age of love, during which

we take pleasure in our own feeling and in which we are

happy almost by ourselves," as referential and then notes

that the statement makes sense as part of the cultural code

about the ages of love.

What he implies here is that any

reader familiar with the culture and hence with the code

itself will be able to read this and immediately understand

what age is intended and exactly what is being asserted

about it.

If we convert the phrase itself into a proverb

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"the golden age of love is that time when we take pleasure

in our own feeling and in which we are happy almost by our-

selves," we will see that this statement is indeed a cul-

tural commonplace and we will know how to recuperate it or

to group it properly.

As Barthes points out, the utter—

ances of the cultural code "are written in the obligative

mode by which the discourse states a general will, the law

of society, making the proposition concerned ineluctable

or indelible.

Further still:

it is because an utterance

can be transformed into a proverb, a maxim, a postulate

that the supporting cultural code is discoverable:

styl-

istic transformation 'proves' the code, bares its structure,

reveals its ideological perspective."

16

The referential

codes, then, enable an author to construct within the con-

fines of the text a world whose limits appear to be contin-

uous with those of the world that exists outside that text

and which is inhabited by both author and reader together.

In large part, it is because we possess referential codes

and write and read according to them that we assume all

literary texts are "about" the human condition and the

world as we know it.‘

In discussing Barthes'

codes, Jonathan Culler crit-

icizes him for failing to include a code which enables the

reader to gather those lexias together which develop the

narrator of a specific text.

Culler acknowledges the

crucial role of this fictional personage when he points

out that the lexias or stretches of the text which

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153

characterize him also establish "a kind of communicative

circuit" between the text and its reader through the med—

iating role of the storyteller himself.

17

Although I am

sure Barthes would maintain that the semic code governing

the construction of characters in general would also cover

the reader's ability to "name" the distinguishing traits

of the narrator, I think Culler's emphasis on the special

nature of this character is well placed.

By separating

these lexias and hence the narrator himself away from those

units dealing with other characters in the text, we acknow-

ledge that, in large part, it is the relationship estab-

lished between the reader and the narrator which determines

how other lexias are to be recuperated and how the text is

to be read.

I have included Barthes'

complex description of the

procedures of traditional literary analysis here because

it seems to me his description accurately and adequately

' explains the strategies I have used in reading and inter-

preting gothic novels.

I have relied on my acquaintance

with other literary texts as well as on my implicit under-

standing of the methods my culture uses to detect the mean-

ing in unfamiliar texts in order to establish the plots of

these novels, to perceive their initial problem and its

solution, to identify and develop their important charac-

ters, to work out themes and a symbolic reading, and to

relate all that has been presented in them to the world

that I, as the reader, inhabit.

Throughout the remainder

154

of this chapter, therefore, I will be presenting various

interpretations or, in Culler's words, describing certain

literary effects which I see in gothic novels precisely

 

because I have acquired the use of these codes and know

how to classify and to arrange what would otherwise be an

orderless jumble of words, sentences, and paragraphs.

After presenting further interpretations of gothic novels

in chapter five, arrived at with the help of these codes,

I will then return to them explicitly in chapter six in

order to compare my literary mode of reading with that

method employed by those who refuse to analyze popular

novels and who claim that such works contain no signif-

icance beyond that of the story itself.

After describing the special literary effects pecu-

liar to certain specific gothic novels, I will attempt to

identify the various lexic groups or actants and actions

constitutive of the gothic as a genre.

Obviously, some of

these will have been put together at the direction of the

proairetic code, some according to the specifications of

the hermeneutic, while still others will have been organized

by the powers of the semic, symbolic, referential, and nar-

rative codes.

Furthermore, because I will continue to argue

that these textual elements or lexic groups only possess

meaning when they are profiled against other groups con-

tained within the same text, I will also strive to clarify

the nature of the relationships and oppositions that exist

between them.

For example, it will not be enough to state

155

that a gothic novel must have lexias devoted to a descrip-

tion of an isolated medieval castle since it is really the

relationship established between this castle and certain

identifiable inhabitants which makes the novel in question

a gothic.

In reality, then, it is actually the nature of

the relationship established between certain crucial lexic

groups which defines a genre and not the content or compo-

sition of the individual groups themselves.

I want to make one final point before proceeding with

my interpretations of specific gothic texts and the conse-

quent analysis derived from them.

If we recall the fact

that every literary text is first composed of language and

only then of certain fundamental textual units, I think

the extraordinary complexity of any and all such texts is

suddenly made clear.

Not only must a reader make sense

of the language he sees before him, but he must also dis—

cover the significance of those textual combinations which

produce a meaning above and beyond that secreted by the

simple words themselves.

In short, he must coordinate both

his linguistic and his literary competence in order to

read and understand any text, no matter how simple or how

complex its levels of integration.

What this remarkable

complexity and intricacy means for the analyst is that the

task of classifying texts as empirical or creative is made

even more problematic since all levels of meaning must be

taken into account in order to determine whether the system

has been deformed and new significations created, or whether

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it has been used conservatively to say that which it has

always traditionally said.

Indeed, we have to wonder whether

any blanket generalization can ever be made at all since it

is possible for a text to fulfill some expectations, to

rearrange and reorganize others, and to defy still others

completely.

The problem of categorizing texts is obviously

going to pose questions of degree since some works will

create new meaning on several levels and in several cate-

gories at once while others will pioneer in only one area

at a time.

In truth, we cannot avoid thinking of the entire

range of literary texts as a vast continuum which has two

clearly defined theoretical poles but which, in practice,

is composed of texts whose relative positions are somewhat

imprecise and strangely flexible.

Still, I do think certain

distinctions can be made and my ultimate task will be to

demonstrate how several identifiably "gothic" contemporary

novels use the conventions of the genre to underscore fam-

iliar truths or to forge ones that are entirely new.

The Origins of the Gothic Novel

 

While there is ever-continuing debate over what it is

that makes a novel "gothic," few literary critics or his-

torians would dispute the fact that the form first appeared

in 1764 with the publication of Horace Walpole's The Castle

 

of Otranto:

A Gothic Story.

Although Walpole's novel is

   

clearly derivative in that its close relationship to the

sentimental romance is easily demonstrable, it does violate

157

some of the conventions of its day, particularly those

which prescribed the kind of subject matter that ought to

be treated in a novel.

I do not propose to get involved

here in a detailed analysis of the relationships between

English gothic novels of the eighteenth century since my

primary concern is with contemporary American manifesta—

tions of the genre, but in passing, I would like to point

out that Walpole's novel is almost certainly one of those

problem texts which clearly violates certain specific lit-

erary conventions while it fulfills the vast majority of

others.

The Castle of Otranto is assuredly not a creative

 

or authentic text in the purest sense of those terms, but

neither is it entirely formulaic or empirical since it is

obviously distinguishable from the other literary works of

its time.

In fact, I suspect the borderline status of

Walpole's novel is reflected in the very way the novel has

survived in literary history.

Although few have argued

over the years that this first gothic romance is a great

work of art, it has still managed to survive and is studied

even now as the earliest serious manifestation of the de-

veloping genre.

The fact that it has not disappeared into

oblivion with the hundreds of other imitations it spawned

attests to its seminal place in the history of the form.

Had Walpole defied all the literary conventions of the per-

iod, his novel would have been incomprehensible to the vast

majority of readers and, as a result, unpopular, and I

question whether it could have had as great an impact as

158

it did on both the popular and "serious" fiction of the

day.

But, to return to the origins of the gothic genre,

I think it useful to point out that Walpole himself was an

intellectual dilettante convinced of the greatness of "the

past" and intrigued by all things medieval.

18

In fact,

having once purchased a small farm near Twickenham, Walpole

set about gothicizing the main building until it evolved

into a sort of castle complete with a gallery, round tower,

greater cloister, and cabinet.

19

Although Walpole is often

dismissed as a wealthy fop and dandy, his interests did

reflect thOSe of his class and his age, and his preoccupa-

tion with England's medieval past was really a reflection

of his culture's growing rejection of Enlightenment thought

and the Age of Dr. Johnson.

Because Walpole was in touch with the unconscious

trends of the day, his gothic story struck a chord in that

society and although the novel was not a "best-seller," it

did build up a solid following in the literary community.

It took some time for imitation to begin, but when it did,

a flood of gothic novels overwhelmed the English reading-

public.

Most of those gothic imitations were written by

women and, though extremely popular, few have survived.

Nevertheless, foremost among Walpole's imitators was a

woman named Ann Radcliffe, whose novels were, and still

are, recognized as a further development in the form

initially created in The Castle of Otranto.

Radcliffe's

 

159

The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797)

 

 

were followed by other novels which, though slightly dif-

ferent from hers, were still clearly derived from Walpole's

first formulation of the type.

Included among these were

Matthew G. Lewis's The Monk (1796), Mary Shelley's Frank:

enstein (1816), Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer

 

(1820), and Emily Bronté's Wuthering Heights (1847).

Al-

 

though all the novels mentioned here were quite different

from the immensely popular and clearly gothic "shilling-

shockers" and "penny-dreadfuls" sold throughout the period

in question, they originated in the same gothic impulse

that had motivated Walpole and Radcliffe as well as those

whose works were extraordinarily popular.

The fact that

all these novels are included together in a single genre

raises serious questions about the definition of the genre

itself and this situation poses subsequent problems for any

analyst who seeks to describe the ways in which that genre

has been varied and extended over the course of time.

Therefore, before I can make assertions about contemporary

use of gothic conventions, it is first necessary to identify

those conventions which are shared by the paradigm works

of Walpole, Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin and which, as a

result, constitute the genre of the gothic novel.

I believe that if we read these works closely enough,

it is possible to discover a certain common skeleton of form

and meaning underlying each unique set of characters,

events, and themes which is the immediate preoccupation of

160

each individual work.

In addition, it is my conviction that

"the gothic" is something more than castles, dungeons,

monks, and storms, and I am convinced that this peculiar

something is tangible and thus identifiable.

Therefore, in

order to isolate this skeleton, I will focus on four of the

works which I consider particularly representative with

the express goal of describing those conventional meaning-

structures which are at the foundation of all gothic novels.

By looking at The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of

Udolpho, The Monk, and Melmoth, the Wanderer, I hope to

   

formulate that literary pattern or set of conventions

which is the starting point for such contemporary "gothics"

as The Golden Unicorn, Thunder Heights, Sanctuary, The Mem-

ber of the Wedding, and Reflections in a Golden Eye.

   

The Castle of Otranto

 

As I have mentioned before, it seems to me that al-

though Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto has a great

 

deal in common with the sentimental romance, it is at the

same time the precursor of those novels often identified

with the high gothic mode.

Regardless of the changes the

(novel portends, Walpole's work is itself a peculiar con—

glomeration of old styles, stock narrative devices, and

familiar characters, and there are even long passages in

the novel which seem to have been directly transposed from

the plays of William Shakespeare.

The cut and paste char-

acter of the work has prompted Richard Kiely to remark

 

161

that because it is "littered with lifeless images and

archaic conventions, Walpole's novel may still strike some

as an act of irresponsible vandalism rather than a creative

literary experiment."

20

In fact, his own opinion is that

Walpole's novel "proves him more adept at dismantling the

old and presenting it in shambles than in building something

truly new."21

While I certainly agree with the general import of

Kiely's assessment, I feel Walpole's novel creates something

new in the atmosphere of suspense and dread which permeates

the entire narrative.

It is this atmosphere combined with

the change in subject matter which differentiates his work

from that of Fielding and Richardson and, although Walpole's

quarrel with his predecessors is primarily over issues of

content rather than over issues of form, it is a quarrel

nonetheless and it does result in a substantive break with

tradition.

Kiely himself has acknowledged this in distin-

~ guishing the earliest gothics written by Walpole and Rad-

cliffe from those later ones produced by Lewis, Shelley,

and Maturin, and, in fact, he has pointed out that "those

writers who first turned to Gothic castles and oriental

palaces did so because they were tired of the drawing room

and the country inn."22

While obviously still thinking of

Walpole and Radcliffe, Kiely adds that "certain of the

earliest romantic experimenters changed the setting and cast

of the novel without substantially altering the narrative

procedures established by their predecessors."23

I do not

162

agree completely with Kiely on this last point since it

seems impossible to me to ignore the fact that the inciden-

tal properties introduced into fiction-writing by The Castle

 

of Otranto later became the principal defining elements of

 

a new form, and I cannot help but wonder if such apparently

minor variations in scene and character were not also

accompanied by certain more significant changes in narrative

convention.

When this first gothic novel is analyzed with respect

to later works which developed from it, it becomes clear

that Walpole did something more than legitimize the use of

exotic settings and medieval architecture when he published

The Castle of Otranto.

Although the castle itself and the

 

supernatural events which take place within its walls,

because sensational, seem to be the most distinguishing

marks of the novel, it is, in reality, the slight change

in the narrative contract between text and reader which

sets Walpole's work apart from that of Richardson and

Fielding.

Where Walpole's predecessors present their

readers with numerous opinions about a sequence of events

which every one agrees has taken place,24 Walpole includes

fantastic events and then leaves his reader in doubt as to

whether they occur at all.

He does this by explaining to

his reader in the preface that while the characters are

represented as believing in "miracles, visions, necromancy,

dreams, and other preternatural events," such occurrences

"are exploded even from romances" and he implies that he

163

himself doesn't believe in such goings-on.

Walpole rea-

25

sons that an author “is not bound to believe them himself,

but he must represent his actors as believing them."26

This carefully calculated disclaimer suspends the

reader between the world of the text, in which life is

strange and threatened by the inexplicable, and the world

of his own everyday life where events are familiar, rational

and comprehensible.

Because he is not sure whether he is

to believe all he is told, the reader is left in a state

of suspense not unlike that experienced by the characters

themselves when they are confronted by the apparitions in

question.

Where sentimental fiction invites its readers

to contemplate and admire fine feelings, the gothic vision

of Horace Walpole requires participation by the reader in

the action of the novel and seems to conceal a deliberate

attempt to puzzle, shock and frighten.

In fact, an essen—

tial aspect of the gothic novel is its ability to include

the reader as an active participant in the action of the

narrative by carefully controlling the amount of information

released to him.

Reading The Castle of Otranto is like

 

walking hand in hand with Manfred himself as he blunders his

way from revelation to revelation and from mystery to solu-

tion.

Walpole knows very well what he is doing with the

tale as indicated by his comment in the preface to the first

edition that "everything tends directly to the catastrophe."27

As he points out, terror is the author's principal engine

and "it prevents the story from ever languishing."28

He

164

adds that because the terror "is so often contrasted by

pity .

.

. the mind is kept up in a constant vicissitude

of interesting passions."29

If we grant the fact that this attempt to engage

the reader by arousing his feelings is both a new and sig-

nificant departure from previous fictional patterns, then

it becomes clear why Walpole's gothic furniture had such

an effect on his contemporaries.

The isolated setting in

both place and time is not merely a curioSity produced by

Walpole's vivid imagination but rather a functional detail

which serves to distance the world of the novel from that

of the reader, thereby endowing the former with mystery

and magic.

The crumbling medieval castle, complete with

its dungeons and secret passages, is the perfect embodiment

of a world the reader is never intended to understand come

pletely.

Consequently it becomes the symbol of a kind of

fiction whose avowed purpose is to frighten the reader by

confronting him with the strange and the unfamiliar.

There-

fore, it seems to me Walpole's claim to be the "founder"

of the gothic novel does not depend on the fact that he

first wrote about a gothic castle or introduced the super-

natural into the novel form, but rather on the fact that

he created a narrative pattern or plot structure which

engages the reader in an entirely different manner.

In-

deed, it is the general movement of Walpole's plot that is

imitated by Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin despite the fact

that each modifies the focus of the action in a unique and

165

individual way.

It is possible to reconstruct the linear development

of Walpole's plot even though the reader is prevented from

following the action in this manner since certain of the

events are not disclosed until the final dénouement.

Al—

though we do not learn this fact until the end of the nar-

rative, the event which sets the story in motion and pro—

vides the necessary motivation is the murder of Alfonso,

Prince of Otranto, by Ricardo, the current Prince's grand-

father.

This crime has been compounded, we learn, by the

fact that Ricardo fabricated a will, thus depriving the

rightful heirs of their patrimony.

At the time the story

occurs, the true heir to the principality of Otranto, the

peasant, Theodore, is concealed in another identity and

even he is not aware of his "true self."

However, by a

chance occurrence, Theodore is introduced into the castle,

is persecuted by Manfred who is trying to solidify his claim

to the falsely—gotten inheritance, and is eventually re-

vealed as a man of noble birth and the rightful heir to

Manfred's estate.

As E. F. Bleiler says of the typical

gothic plot inspired by The Castle of Otranto, "through a

chain of circumstances, which usually involve the super-

natural, the ancient crime is detected, the villain is pun—

ished, and the heir receives his birthright."30

Interestingly enough, Bleiler also adds that "it might

be said the Gothic novel is a primitive detective story in

which God or Fate is the detective."

In truth, the

31

166

connection he draws between the gothic novel and the de-

tective story is entirely justifiable since both are struc-

tured around the fact that a crime has been committed and

cries out for detection.

In each, the reader is forced

to participate in the process of discovery since he is only

gradually accorded the knowledge he needs to solve the mys-

tery.

In Barthes'

terms, the reader of the gothic novel

is forced to rely on the hermeneutic code to make meaning

of the numerous lexias he encounters which suggest problems,

prOpose questions, and hint at enigmas.

He learns to keep

all the suggestions and clues revealed to him present in

his mind because, as he winds his way through the sub-

terranean passages of the novel, he gradually begins to

discover the answers to the problems that trouble him.

Al-

though this process of revelation begins slowly, it accel-

erates as the novel progresses until, in the last few pages,

masks are thrown away, the crime is explained, the criminal

himself is caught and punished, the hero gains what he

deserves, and a semblance of order is restored to this

fictionally disordered world.

However, because the great-

est portion of the gothic novel is devoted to the pieces

of the puzzle, to disorder and to mystery, this final

resolution often seems artificial and contrived.

Indeed,

in The Castle of Otranto, the reader is certainly less

 

impressed by Walpole's final assertion of order in a

"season of explanations" than by the chaos and illusion

which precede it.

Ultimately, it is the breakdown of

167

rationality, the descent into disorder, and the terror

produced by both which-are the hallmarks of Walpole's novel

and the genre created out of it.

The Mysteries of Udolpho

 

As Walpole's novel was absorbed by the literary con-

sciousness of the day, it was gradually and then widely

imitated.

Several of the earliest such adaptations were

produced by Clara Reeve and Charlotte Smith although none

of their works ever achieved the popularity and significance

of those created by Ann Radcliffe.

Her most popular novel,

The Mysteries of Udolpho, published in 1794, was an instant

 

and enormous success.

It went through ten editions alone

between 1794 and 1860, after which it appeared in 1870,

1877, 1882, 1891, and sporadically thereafter.32

The novel,

in short, became a general cultural possession, alluded to

again and again in numerous novels, essays, and critical

pieces as the epitome of the gothic form.

Richard Kiely

has pointed out that "her gently euphemistic prose, her

fainting heroines, and explainable ghosts were reproduced

by other writers so quickly and on such a large scale that

they were clichés before they had time to become conven-

tions.

Not only the plots but the titles of her books

were borrowed and used with slight variations.

"33

It seems

only natural to observe that where Walpole had struck a

chord in the literary community two decades before, Mrs.

Radcliffe touched a sensitive nerve now exposed throughout

168

the culture as a whole.

Although it might be interesting

to speculate why eighteenth century English society was so

ready to be emotionally stimulated by the gothic novel,

that cannot be my concern at this point.

Rather, I would

like to focus on the nature<fors. Radcliffe's debt to

Horace Walpole as well as on the changes she produced in

the form through the variations she included in The Mys—

teries of Udolpho.

 

Although several students of the gothic novel have

argued that Mrs. Radcliffe's work, like Walpole's, has more

in common with the sentimental romance than with the high

gothic novels of the nineteenth century, I cannot fully

agree.

It is possible to consider the plot of her novel

as a variation of the sentimental narrative with the addi-

tion of gothic proPerties, but again, it seems to me The

Mysteries of Udolpho contributes more to the development

 

of this new genre than scenic descriptions and weak-kneed

heroines.

As is the case with Walpole's novel, Mrs. Rad-

cliffe's work is centered around a series of mysteries

whose solutions must be sought by some character in the work

and by the reader himself.

However, where Walpole focuses

primarily on the villain, Mrs. Radcliffe's attention is

clearly centered on her heroine, Emily St. Aubert, who be-

comes the detective so to speak because she is thrown to-

gether with the villain, Montoni, a clear descendent of

Walpole's Manfred.

In fact, because Mrs. Radcliffe relates

her story from Emily's point of view, thus permitting her

 

169

reader to know only what Emily can discover, she forces

that reader to become involved in the mystery almost as

Emily's companion or alter ego.

By establishing a sense of

identification between her reader and her heroine, Mrs.

Radcliffe is able to control the reader's response to an

extraordinary degree, and it is obvious she expects Emily's

danger to arouse fear and dread in the heart of he Who

sympathizes with her.

Except for this difference in focus, the plot of

The Mysteries of Udolpho is similar to that of The Castle

 

 

of Otranto.

As with its predecessor, the action of Udolpho

 

is motivated by the fact that a crime has been committed

and concealed.

In this case, Lady Laurentini, the former

owner of Montoni's estate, murdered Emily's aunt with the

aid of that woman's husband many years prior to the open-

ing of the narrative.

Because Emily's father has concealed

the story from her, she is unaware that he once had a sister

who was indirectly connected with the castle of Udolpho.

Thus, when she accidentally sees a miniature obviously

very dear to her father, she has no idea the picture is of

his sister and she imagines the worst about her revered

parent.

Furthermore, because Laurentini's disappearance

is still unaccounted for by those living in and around

Udolpho, she suspects Mbntoni of having murdered her for

her estate.

Of course, none of this is revealed until the

tale is concluded.

As a result, Emily wanders through the

narrative dreading What she may discover about her father

170

and fearing what Montoni will do to her if she uncovers

the secret crime she is sure he has committed.

Although the

actual plot of the novel is a great deal more complex than

what I have recounted here, all of it concerns Emily and

is seen through her eyes.

Indeed, much of the narrative

is devoted to a detailed description of Emily's state of

mind and the increasing sense of confusion she experiences

as she chances upon clues and draws her own fantastic con-

clusions.

This preoccupation with a disturbed emotional

state, new to the English novel, is Radcliffe's major var-

iation in, and hence contribution to, the developing genre.

In large part, The Mysteries of Udolpho is an exploration

 

of what can happen to an individual so cut off from con-

tact with society, family, and friends that her sense of

reality is destroyed and all her perceptions colored by

the incredible fears to which such isolation gives rise.

Although it is true the mysteries and supernatural

events at the heart of the novel provide a great deal of

interest and excitement for the reader, the narrative is

actually the story of Emily St. Aubert, a sensitive young

woman who is susceptible to every nuance and change in the

environment which surrounds her.

We first see her at La

Vallée, her family home, in the company of her mother and

father, to whom she is clearly devoted.

Mrs. Radcliffe

focuses at length on the harmonious relationship which

exists within this family unit and is careful to describe

the sympathy each member of the family feels for the

171

natural world.

La Vallée is situated in a serene and pas-

toral landscape and Mrs. Radcliffe's descriptions of it

seem to have been drawn from the paintings of Nicolas

Poussin.

There is nothing irregular in the scene to destroy

its balance and proportion since the author deliberately

places even the majestic and "awful" peaks of the Pyrenees

at a considerable distance.

In fact, the entire first

section of the novel which takes place at La Vallée, is

dominated by this mood of natural serenity and classical

balance.

At its moral center stands Monsieur St. Aubert

who, we are told, has been able to maintain his principles

and benevolence despite his contact with morally corrupt

human society.34

The relationship established between St. Aubert and

his daughter in the early pages of the novel provides the

foundation for Emily's reaction to all that occurs later

in the narrative.

St. Aubert understands the extraordinar-

ily sensitive nature of Emily's character and knows full

well the problems such susceptibility can cause.

In an

extremely important passage, which has significance for

the reader on several levels at once,35 St. Aubert cautions

Emily about her nature and warns her that it leaves her

open to the dangers of unchecked passions and to the terrors

created by an imagination run wild.

I think, it necessary

to quote the passage at length here since the action of the

novel must be seen in its light.

"Above all, my dear Emily,"

St. Aubert tells his daughter, "do not indulge in the pride

172

of fine feeling, the romantic error of amiable minds."

He continues:

Those,who really possess sensibility, ought

early to be taught, that it is a dangerous

quality, which is continually extracting the

excess of misery, or delight, from every

surrounding circumstance.

And, since, in

our passage through this world, painful cir-

cumstances occur more frequently than pleas-

ing ones, and since our sense of evil is,

I fear, more accute than our sense of good,

we become the victims of our feelings, unless

we in some degree command them. .

.

.

I know

you will say, that you are contented sometimes

to suffer, rather than to give up your re-

fined sense of happiness, at others; but,

when your mind has been long harassed by

vicissitude, you will be content to rest,

and you will then recover from your delusion.

You will perceive, that the phantom of hap-

piness is exchanged for the substance; for

happiness arises in a state of peace, not

tumult.

It is of a temperate and uniform

nature, and can no more exist in a heart,

that is continually alive to minute circumr

stances, than in one that is dead to feeling.

You see, my dear, that, though I would guard

you against the dangers of sensibility, I am

not an advocate for apathy.

At your age I

should have said that is a vice more hateful

than all the errors of sensibility, and I say

so still.

I call it a vice because it leads

to positive evil; in this, however it does

no more than an ill-governed sensibility,

which, by such a rule, might also be called

a vice; but the evil of the former is of more

general consequence.36

Although St. Aubert delivers this lengthy address late in

the first section, (on his death-bed, in fact), it is clear

Emily has been following his advice throughout this early

portion of the novel.

Because of her father's influence

she is able to keep a tight rein on her emotions and she

never lets her imagination run entirely free.

In his study

of Mrs. Radcliffe's work, E. B. Murray has pointed out that

173

while certain typically gothic events intrude on the peace-

ful balance of La Vallée, they are either ignored or ex-

plained away by Emily and her family because reason always

tempers any fanciful notions they feel tempted to enter-

tain.

As Murray says, "tangential threats of banditti,

a way occasionally lost, even the mysterious chateau and

its prophetic music never emerge into descriptive or drama-

tic existence of their own in these early pages.

They are

psychological events whose existence is contingent on the

degree of response they evoke in those whose experience

they pass through."37

However, as this initial portion of the novel draws

to a close, Emily loses first one parent and then the other.

She is left entirely alone in a universe which no longer

seems serene, peaceful, or good.

Her carefully constructed

world begins to unravel at the seams, and she loses all

conventional ties to family, society and to objective

reality.

After the deaths of her parents, she is forced

to leave first her childhood home and then her native

country by her aunt whom she had thought to be her one

remaining connection with her old way of life.

However,

Emily is not even permitted to remain within the city of

Venice which, though entirely strange to her, at least

allows her to maintain a sense of connection with the out-

side world.

Instead, she is forced to withdraw to the

castle of Udolpho, which is completely isolated in a wild

and threatening countryside.

Where the landscape at La

174

Vallée had been dominated by "luxuriant woods," "planta-

tions of olives," "simple cottages," and "the soft green

of the pastures,

"38

that of Udolpho is characterized by

"tremendous crags," "scathed branches," "ridgy precipice[s],"

and "barren rocks.

"39

Although farms and pastoral scenery

occasionally come into view, they are only fleetingly

glimpsed "smiling amid surrounding horror."4o

As Emily's ties to benevolent human society are

severed one by one, her perception of reality gradually

changes; the world in which she is situated becomes almost

completely alien to her; and contemplation of the natural

environment no longer has the power to soothe the frenzy

of her increasingly hysterical emotional state.

In the

world of Udolpho, not even art can calm Emily's fears and

fantasies, and she throws down her lute when it fails to

provide the comfort she had always been able to find in

it before.

Almost completely abandoned and left to con-

front the evils of this unfamiliar world alone, Emily has

difficulty controlling her imagination which begins to

color and distort all she sees.

Because she is unable to

tell the difference between illusion and reality, she draws

false conclusions about what occurs around her and, despite

her father's warning to the contrary, continually extracts

"the excess of misery .

.

. from every surrounding circum-

stance."41

In the lengthy section of the novel which follows,

'it is the castle of Udolpho itself which serves as the

175

governing symbol of Emily's turn inward or descent into

the self as she attempts to escape the growing violence

and evil of the world she perceives about her.

Mrs. Rad-

cliffe spends more than two hundred pages detailing Emily's

flight through the shadowy corridors of the castle.

Her

attention in these passages alternates between a descrip-

tion of the subterranean complexity of the structure itself

and of Emily's almost tangible sense of dread as she ex-

plores its intricate turnings.

In fact, the two are nearly

always linked together by Mrs. Radcliffe, who leads Emily

further and further into the heart of the castle at the

same time she tells of the increasingly tenuous connection

Emily is able to maintain with the rationally ordered out-

side world.

Because of Mrs. Radcliffe's interest in Emily's

emotional state, the reader follows her day after day as

she is confronted by new horrors and more mysteries which

serve to convince both Emily and the reader of the reality

of Montoni's evil designs.

Surprisingly enough, however, very little actually

does happen to her.

Still, when she manages to escape from

Udolpho, after discovering Montoni is only interested in

her inheritance, the reader continues to fear Montoni's re-

appearance and Emily's eventual deflowering or death,

neither of which ever materialize.

Despite this fact,

however, it is not my intent to criticize Mrs. Radcliffe

for raising expectations fruitlessly because it is obvious

her real concern is with her heroine's fantasies and fears

176

and not with their substance.

Indeed, it is her aim as

a gothic novelist to explore the psychological state pro-

duced by extreme isolation rather than to justify the ter-

ror and dread experienced by either heroine or reader.

The truth of this contention is borne out by the

third and final section of the novel concerning Emily's

gradual return to society.

After escaping from Udolpho,

she proceeds to Chateau-le-Blanc, the home of the Ville-

fort family, where she looks back on her imaginings at

Udolpho with scorn and where, as a result, her sense of

stability is restored.

Through Emily's own discoveries,

Mrs. Radcliffe discloses that the apparitions and super-

natural events which had dominated life at the castle were,

in fact, easily explainable by rational causes, and she

appears to make fun of her heroine for her over-active

fantasy life.

However, by explaining away the causes of

Emily's terror, which in most cases has been shared by the

reader, Mrs. Radcliffe does not also explain away the terror

itself.

In fact, by minimizing the events which give rise

to such fears, she actually testifies to the power of an

imagination which can see horror in even the most ordinary

of daily happenings.

Mrs. Radcliffe's point, voiced clearly

almost four hundred pages earlier by Monsieur St. Aubert,

is that indulgence in fantasy and fine feeling is "the

romantic error of amiable minds."

She argues in this last

section of The Mysteries of Udolpho for the primacy of

reason but not before she has subjected her heroine and

 

177

reader "to the full potential for horror implicit in every

darkened passageway and ghostly utterance."42

I think it interesting to note that once supplied

with the rational explanation for an apparition, it is

possible to return to Mrs. Radcliffe's initial description

of the event and to discover hints which refer to its true

cause.

However, since few readers ever attend to these

clues, it seems safe to say Mrs. Radcliffe is extremely

successful in demonstrating her point, for it is only the

reader's own overactive imagination which causes him to

believe in Emily's fantastic explanations and to be dis-

appointed when corpses turn out to be wax and ghosts are

unmasked for smugglers.

As E. B. Murray has pointed out,

the power of Mrs. Radcliffe's art "depends on our sensi-

bilities being so thrown out of order and so distorted

that we accept the misconceptions that Emily entertains."43

Although it can be argued that a quest is at the

foundation of The Mysteries of Udolpho, it is necessary to

 

point out that the mysteries and puzzles which prompt

that search are strictly hermeneutical and thus nothing

more than plot devices.

Emily's search for explanations

of the horrors she thinks she has uncovered at Udolpho

can never be organized thematically at a higher level,

since she does not learn anything new about herself nor

does she discover some new truth about the world by destend-

ing into the depths of the castle of Udolpho.

Indeed, as

Richard Kiely has argued "there is nothing salutary,

178

creative, or formative about Emily's interior experience.

She does not emerge from her captivity in Udolpho with a

fuller comprehension of the complexities of human nature

or sympathy for its weaknesses. .

.

.

Her idea of nature

does not change either:

she does not find a deeper rapport

or a greater incongruity between herself and her natural

surroundings, but resumes in the last pages of the book

her never-ending walks in search of melancholy vistas and

moral edification."44

Emily's quest in The Mysteries of Udolpho is a

 

search for the proper explanation for apparently supernat-

ural occurrences.

That which she ultimately discovers is

the proper frame of mind enabling her to explain those

events rationally.

Her descent into chaos and evil is not

an initiation into a morally ambiguous world but rather

a temporary deprivation of reason in which the true nature

of the world is obscured by the shadowy phantoms of her

own imagination.

45

The world as she knew it at La Vallée

is restored to Emily at the end of the novel and she does,

in fact, return to her familial home with Valancourt.

Al-

though she has spent more than four hundred pages imprisoned

in the haunted castle of her mind, Emily emerges from that

castle, unscathed and unchanged, to a world where evil is

clearly Separate from good and moral choices are easily

made.

Kiely has pointed out that "when the blindfold is

removed, there is the same orderly universe, bright and

clear as it had before - mountains distinct from valleys,

179

virtue undaunted by-vice."

46

He concludes from this, and

rightly so, I might add, that Mrs. Radcliffe's moral point,

”despite her penchant for romantic atmosphere, is antiro—

mantic."47

While it is evident in the final analysis that Mrs.

Radcliffe's gothic novel owes a great deal to The Castle

 

of Otranto, particularly its plot structure and supernat-

 

ural marvels, it is also clear the The Mysteries of Udolpho

 

combines those properties in new and unusual ways.

The

linear development of Mrs. Radcliffe's narrative is similar

to that of Walpole's but where the latter tends to focus

on Manfred and his reaction1x>the wierd happenings at

Otranto, Mrs. Radcliffe centers her attention on Emily,

the one character directly threatened by the unfamiliar and

the strange.

In devoting an enormous amount of time to

Emily's hysterical frame of mind, and by linking her study

of this aberrant psychology to an exploration of the gothic

castle, Mrs. Radcliffe endows the most famous of Walpole's

medieval properties with new meaning.

Not only does the

gothic castle and medieval setting serve to distance the

action and thus create separation between the world Of the

novel and that of the reader, but it also functions on a

symbolic level as the objective correlative of Emily's

mental state which grows ever more irrational as she re-

mains within the castle walls, isolated from the calming

influence of the natural world.

Robert Kiely is entirely

correct when he argues that "the achievement of The

180

Mysteries of Udolpho is not, then, the mere introduction

 

of Gothic effects into an otherwise conventional senti-

mental narrative, but the projection of a nonrational

mentality into a total environment."48

By relating this story from her heroine's point of

view, Mrs. Radcliffe forces the reader to seek the solu-

tion to the mysteries with Emily herself; she is thus able

to prompt that reader to succumb to the power of his own

imagination and to experience with Emily the terror pro-

duced by total irrationality.

This careful narrative

decision enables Mrs. Radcliffe to emphasize her ultimate

thematic assertion, for it permits her to implicate the

reader in this situation where reason has lost its sway.

Because the reader believes in the reality of Emily's

fantasies, when those fantasies are exposed for the wild

imaginings they are, he cannot help but be impressed by

Mrs. Radcliffe's belief that the health of the human mind

is dependent on reason's ability to hold the imagination

in check.

Where Horace Walpole seeks only to arouse the

feelings of his reader and to confuse him about the ul-

timate reality of the world of Otranto, Mrs. Radcliffe

deliberately pulls her reader into the very action of the

narrative, forces him to participate in the dread and fear

experienced by her heroine, and thus prompts him to cry

out for the moral solution she proposes as the justifica-

tion behind The Mysteries of Udolpho.

In sum, her novel

is both a derivation from and an extension of the fictional

181

form first created by Horace Walpole in The Castle of

 

Otranto.

The Monk

If Ann Radcliffe's novel can be thought of as a

particularly important step in the development of the gothic

genre because of the modifications it produces in the form

initially worked out by Walpole, then Matthew Gregory

Lewis's The Monk must be considered equally significant

since it too begins with Walpole's plot and gothic encum-

brances, subjects them to a series of changes, and endows

the genre itself with entirely new possibilities.

Lewis's

novel initiates the subsequent variations it does primarily

because he adds a characteristically Radcliffean interest

in interior mental states to Walpole's preoccupation with

the villain.

As a result, he creates an infinitely more

intriguing character in the Capuchin monk, Ambrosio, than

either Walpole or Radcliffe are able to present in Manfred

or Montoni.

However, in addition to this major variation,

Lewis also reverses so many of the newly formed conven-

tions of the genre, that The Monk almost appears to be a

burlesque or parody of the early gothic novel.

Even though

Lewis does intend to poke fun at some of the most typical

gothic excesses, he also uses the form seriously to explore

the effects of passion, the dangers of superstition, and

the nature of power and the subjugation it exacts from

others.

182

Precisely because Lewis does intend to play with the

gothic conventions he uses, the sequential plot development

of The Monk is somewhat different from the familiar story

line related by Walpole, Radcliffe, and the other gothic

novelists of the period.

However, despite this change,

Lewis manages to include most of the expected gothic inci-

dents in the novel and The Monk is filled with crimes and

their concealment, descents into dungeons and catacombs,

and ghostly appearances.

Although an ancient crime com-

mitted by some relative of a major character does not func-

tion as the motivating force behind the main plot of The

Monk, such a device.does figure prominently in the primary

subplot concerning Raymond and Agnes.

Thus, we are treated

to the rather gruesome history of the Bleeding Nun and are

even permitted a glimpse into the sordid past of the

Wandering Jew.

However, it is essential to point out that

Lewis does not involve his reader in the detection of the

crime as Walpole and Radcliffe do.

In fact, the detection

of the double murder at Lindenberg occurs almost by acci-

dent as Raymond pursues the main business of his tale,

union with Agnes.

Nevertheless, Lewis does involve the

reader in his story and much of what he writes is deliber-

ately calculated to arouse emotions and to produce the

suspense and dread so characteristic of the gothic form.

He manages to accomplish this by advancing and then stall-

ing the forward progress of the primary plot; even though

the reader knows what crimes are meditated by Ambrosio he

183

is held in suspense as to whether they will be success-

fully brought to conclusion.

Lewis is able to provoke

his reader's concern in this by forcing him to sympathize

with both the heroine of the tale and with her potential

ravisher, who is presented as a superior being capable at

once of enormous excellence and abysmal crimes.

I might

add here that this extremely difficult task is one at

which Walpole does not succeed and one which Ann Radcliffe

never attempts.

The Monk opens conventionally enough as Lewis brings

together the three major characters of the now familiar

gothic plot--the heroine, her hero, and the villain.

Antonia, as she is described to us, is typically beautiful,

demure and-innocent,49 and, as might be expected, the young,

earnest hero, Lorenzo, falls in love with her at first

sight.

50

However, most of the first chapter is devoted to

a detailed description of the Capuchin monk, Ambrosio,

who is, strangely enough, presented to us at the height

of his powers.

Technically, it does not become clear to

the reader that it is Ambrosio who poses a threat to Antonia

until chapter three of volume two which occurs more than

halfway through the novel.

But the comments Lewis includes

in his first presentation of the monk hint at a dark nature

hidden deep beneath the surface nobility and exemplary

holiness he presents to the world.

As Lewis points out

about Ambrosio, ”still there was a certain severity in his

look and manner that inspired universal awe, and few could

184

sustain the glance of his eye at once fiery and penetra-

ting."'

When he compounds this hint by disclosing in

51

the second chapter that Ambrosio suffers from inordinate

pride,

52 it becomes obvious to a reader familiar with

gothic conventions that the haughty villain necessary to

the form will, in fact, prove to be Ambrosio himself.

However, as I have said, Lewis does not make this

clear until well into the novel, and, as a result, the

beginning of The Monk tends to disappoint any expectations

the reader might entertain about the way the story should

progress.

Although Lewis does detail Lorenzo's desire to

marry Antonia, he spends little time describing either

the relationship itself or the obstacles presented to it.

Instead, he switches his interest to Ambrosio and his rela-

tionship with the monk Rosario.

In fact, all of chapter

two is devoted to the story of Ambrosio's slip from grace

as he gradually submits to the seductions of Matilda who

has concealed her true identity and pretended to be Rosario

only in order to be near Ambrosio.

Again, Lewis interrupts even this tale and turns in

chapter three to Raymond's recitation of his unsuccessful

attempt to elope with his beloved Agnes.

His narrative

occupies two chapters and more than one hundred pages and

upon its conclusion, Lewis does not return to the story of

Ambrosio and Matilda, but rather doubles back even further

and proceeds with the tale of Lorenzo and Antonia.

The

reader is not permitted to learn the consequences of

185

Ambrosio's temptation until the third chapter of the

second volume.

At this point Lewis finally dovetails the

three stories heretofore kept separate and involves the

participants of each with those of the other two.

In this chapter Ambrosio conceives his plot to rape

Antonia and, in a development unlike that in any other

gothic novel preceding The Monk, he succeeds in his designs.

In the process, Ambrosio kills Antonia's mother and mur-

ders Antonia herself.

Although Lewis does fulfill one of

the gothic conventions by uniting his hero with a beauti-

ful virgin at the end of the tale, he still manages to

disappoint expectations since Lorenzo does not win Antonia

and is forced to console himself with the affections of

the hastily produced Virginia.

Lewis does permit Raymond

to win Agnes, but again, he provides a significant twist

to the conventional gothic union since Agnes has already

been seduced and the child she conceived has been allowed

to perish.

I think it probably clear from this brief recital of

the plot structure of The Monk that although Matthew

Lewis includes most of the conventional narrative devices

of the gothic novel worked out by Walpole and Radcliffe,

he introduces them at unexpected moments, delays the an-

ticipated conclusions usually derived from them, and thus

subjects the resolution of the story itself to a subtle

shift in meaning.

By tampering with gothic cliches, Lewis

is able to fulfill a dual purpose in his novel.

Since his

186

story does not hinge on the detection and revelation of

a long-hidden crime, he must find some other way to in-

volve his reader in the action of the story if his work

is to remain within the gothic genre.

Furthermore, be-

cause he does not focus on his heroine or ask his reader

to identify solely with her, he must use other means to

create the sense of dread and fear of further exploration

which are behind the plot development and reader response

in The Castle of Otranto and The Mysteries of Udolpho.

   

By conjuring up the necessary characters or properties in-

volved in a certain typical gothic incident, he sets cer-

tain expectations in motion and then turns around abruptly,

disappoints them, and "proves" to his reader that things

are not always as they seem.

Thus, in bringing his reader

face to face with the fact that most of what he thinks he

"sees" is a deception, Lewis is able to create both the

feeling of suspense and the dread of what lies hidden be-

neath the surface which Walpole and Radcliffe produce by

withholding information from their readers.

In short,

Lewis actually distorts certain gothic conventions pre-

cisely because he wants to disorient his reader and to

intensify that relationship between reader and text which

is so characteristic of the gothic form itself.

His deliberate attempt to involve his reader in the

tension between deception and truth, and between illusion

and reality serves an additional purpose in that Lewis

causes the reader to experience that which is felt by

187

Ambrosio himself, who discovers again and again that

appearances are false and conditions in this world are

almost never what they seem.

It appears to me that this

is Lewis's ultimate goal, since his primary concern is

certainly the fate of the Capuchin monk and it is through

his demise that Lewis demonstrates the larger theme of

this gothic romance.

Although the subplots of the novel

involve the conventional gothic lovers and the difficul-

ties they encounter in consummating their love in an evil

world, The Monk, as its title implies, is really the story

of Ambrosio, the Capuchin abbot.

More fully realized than either Manfred ar Montoni,

Ambrosio is an extraordinarily talented man who is neither

wholly good nor totally evil.

In fact, Lewis is careful

to point out that had Ambrosio been allowed to develop

naturally, he may well have become a generous and kind

human being.

As he says, "he would have shown himself

possessed of many brilliant and manly qualities.

He was

naturally enterprizing, firm, and fearless:

He had a

warrior's heart, and He might have shone with splendour

at the head of an Army.‘ There was no want of generosity

in his nature:

The Wretched never failed to find in him a

compassionate Auditor:

His abilities were quick and shin-

ing, and his judgment vast, solid, and decisive."53

How-

ever, Lewis makes it clear, first through Ambrosio's

actions and then in an explicit aside, that most of these

qualities have been distorted or destroyed by the repressive

188

training of monastic life.

That Lewis blames the church

for what Ambrosio has become is clear for he comments,

”while the Mbnks were busied in rooting out his virtues,

and narrowing his sentiments, they allowed every vice

which had fallen to his share, to arrive at full perfec-

tion.

He was suffered to be proud, vain, ambitious, and

disdainful:

He was jealous of his Equals, and despised

all merit but his own:

He was implacable when offended,

and cruel in his revenge."54

However, not only is the

Church responsible in Lewis's eyes for Ambrosio's harsh

and unyielding temperament, but he suggests it is also

responsible for the crimes he commits, because it is the

-excessive natureof his passion, previously repressed and

now released with a vengeance, which causes him to murder

and rape.

Indeed, Lewis is ambivalent about all forms of

social convention, and though he seems to be aware of

the fact that they are necessary, he is also cognizant of

the dangers inherent in them.

In the end, his portrait

of Ambrosio is the picture of an individual in almost

total rebellion against the constraints produced by such

forms.

It is important to point out that although Ambrosio

is clearly a descendent of Manfred and Montoni and thus a

gothic villain, he also has a great deal in common with

Emily St. Aubert, since his situation echoes, in some

respects, that of the typical gothic heroine.

Both Emily

and Ambrosio gradually lose all ties to human society; the

189

story of each is the story of increasing isolation and

the dangers it poses to the life of the individual.

By

first introducing Emily in the shelter of the family unit,

Mrs. Radcliffe is able to contrast her idyllic life in

the society of others with the hysterical and narcissistic

existence she leads imprisoned within Udolpho and_the re-

cesses of her own imagination.

Lewis establishes a similar

contrast between Ambrosio's early life as a participating

member of the monastic community and his later existence,

characterized by a rejection of all ordinary human rela-

tionships and a refusal to conform to certain of his order's

social conventions.

Ambrosio's rejection of society is

particularly ironic since early in the novel he discour—

ses at length on the importance of human connection.

How-

ever, we cannot ignore the fact that even at this early

stage, Ambrosio is fascinated by the possibility of an

absolutely free and individual life, for he admits to

lRosario that "were it possible .

.

. for Man to be so

totally wrapped up in himself as to live in absolute se-

clusion from human nature, and could yet feel the contented

tranquility which these lines [of poetry] express, I

allow that the situation would be more desirable, than to

live in a world so pregnant with every vice and every

folly."55

Although he feels the pull of the individual

life, Ambrosio is still mindful of the dangers it poses.

Thus, he lectures Rosario on the effects of an existence

lived outside the bounds of human society and the

190

conventions it necessarily imposes, arguing:

However little [man] may be attached to

the World, He can never wholly forget it,

or bear to be wholly forgotten by it.

Dis-

gusted at the guilt or absurdity of Mankind,

the Misanthrope flies from it:

He resolves

to become an Hermit, and buries himself in

the Cavern of some gloomy Rock.

While Hate

inflames his bosom, possibly He may feel con-

tented with his situation:

But when his

passions begin to cool; when Time has mel-

lowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds

which He bore with him to his solitude,

think you that Content becomes his Companion?

Ah! no, Rosario.

No longer sustained by the

violence of his passions, He feels all the

monotony of his way of living, and his heart

becomes the prey of Ennui and weariness.

He

looks round and finds himself alone in the

universe:

The love of society revives in

his bosom, and He pants to return to that

world which He has abandoned.56

Ambrosio explains further to Rosario that he values his

life in the monastery because it permits him to combine the

best of two possible worlds.

He can isolate himself from

the evil and horror which plague human society in general

and can yet partake of the pleasures of a social existence

lived among a few valued friends.

He argues that this bal—

ance between isolation and conviviality' is

"the principal

merit of a Monastic Institution" since it "secludes Man

from the temptations of Vice,” procures that leisure nec-

essary for the proper service of the Supreme," "spares him

the mortification of witnessing the crimes of the worldly,

and yet permits him to enjoy the blessings of society." 57

I have quoted Ambrosio's sentiments at length because

they are essential to the theme of the novel and because

they occur at a crucial point in the narrative.

No sooner

191

has Ambrosio delivered his speech about the necessity for

communal life than he is presented with an opportunity to

escape the restrictions it imposes.

Rosario discards his

disguise, reveals that he is a woman and, as Matilda, con-

fesses her love for the Capuchin abbot.

Although Ambrosio

is able to resist Matilda's charms and to suppress his

awakened passions for a short while, he is intrigued with

the idea that he may be able to indulge his individual de-

sires, disobey his religious vow of chastity, and yet remain

within the protecting walls of the monastery itself.

Once

he has entertained such thoughts, his desire is released

from the fetters which bound it, and he begins to dwell on

Matilda's beauty and the possibility of possessing her.

He

does succumb, and in so doing, defies one of the most im-

portant restrictions of the individual will established by

the monastic community.

Thus having denied the social taboo

against expression of certain sexual desires, Ambrosio is

completely unable to hold his passions in check.

He grows

bored with Matilda and when Antonia appears, imploring his

help for her mother, he lusts after her.

As a result, he

breaks another of his mohastic vows by venturing outside

the cloister.

At this point, Lewis begins to link Ambrosio's sexual

passion and his desire to express it with the will to power.

What Ambrosio actually wants to do is to set himself outside

or above all social conventions so he might satisfy those

wants which society has decreed must go unfulfilled except

192

in certain situations.

Matilda recognizes this, and in

her attempt to bring Ambrosio into league with the devil,

plays on his pride in his own individual strength and power.

When he expresses horror at her pact with Satan, she con-

tradicts his argument that she has enslaved herself for

momentary happiness.

She assures him that "the Enemy of

Mankind is my Slave, not my Sovereign," and asks, "is there

no difference between giving and receiving laws, between

serving and commanding?"

When he still refuses to accept

58

her reasoning, she scorns his timidity:

You dare not?

How have you deceived me!

That mind which I esteemed so great and

valiant proves to be feeble, puerile, and

grovelling, a slave to vulgar errors,

and weaker than a Woman's....It is not

virtue which makes you reject my offer;

you would accept it, but you dare not.

'Tis not the crime which holds your hand,

but the punishment; 'tis not respect for

God which restrains you, but the terror of

his vengeance!

Fain would you offend him

in secret, but you tremble to profess your-

self his Foe.

Now shame on the coward soul,

which wants the courage either to be a firm

Friend, or an open Enemy!

When Ambrosio continues to resist, she excites the one de-

sire she knows he can no longer control and permits him to

observe Antonia, the object of his lust, as she disrobes to

bathe.

Matilda succeeds in persuading Ambrosio and from

this point on he seeks to impose his individual desires on

those about him despite their wishes to the contrary.

In

his push to exert his will against any and all opposition,

he murders Elvira, rapes Antonia, and then kills her as well.

His attempt to set himself above society and the restrictions

193

it imposes on its members only serves to assure his par-

ticipation in the violence and evil of the world, and as a

reward for his hubris, Ambrosio achieves the isolation he

had coveted.

As the story draws to a close, he is rejected

by his former monastic brethren and by society as a whole,

and discovers that total isolation is even more terrible

than he had suspected.

Ambrosio, however, retains his

sense of superiority to the end.

He will neither pray to

God nor beg for absolution because he reasons his crimes

are so great that they could never be forgiven by anyone.

That extraordinary pride in his own individuality and

uniqueness which continues to separate him from the rest

of humanity, eventually brings about his total destruction.

The last few pages of Lewis's novel are particularly

interesting for he integrates his belief in the dangers of

extreme individualism with his interest in the problem of

distinguishing between illusion and reality.

When it be-

comes clear to Ambrosio that his death is imminent, he

decides to accept Matilda's solution and conjure up the

devil.

However, because he is not ready to renounce all

ties to humanity or to give up hope of eventual salvation,

he attempts to bargain with Satan himself.

Indeed, in his

final hours, Ambrosio is still so driven by pride that he

suggests a lesser bargain and proposes to Satan, "be my

Servant for one hour, and I will be yours for a thousand

years."

The devil, of course, refuses, for his condi-

60

tion is nothing less than the possession of Ambrosio's

194

soul for eternity.

However, when his jailers are about

to open his door to escort him to almost certain death,

Ambrosio signs the pact and is spirited away, only to be

told by his "savior" moments later, "the guards whom you

heard at the prison-door came to signify your pardon."61

In fact, those very men who seem to be escorts to destruc-

tion are actually agents of his salvation.

Furthermore,

his apparent escape from death by fire turns out to be a

wholly unnecessary flight into the flames of eternal damna-

tion.

In addition, Ambrosio learns that in raping Antonia

and in killing Elvira, he has ravished his own sister and

murdered his mother.

He discovers, to his horror, that

what he thought was a simple crime against the laws of

society was actually the most terrible crime against Nature

itself.

Ambrosio finally realizes that in denying the

necessity of abiding by social convention, he has destroyed

his most fundamental tie to human society, his connection

with the members of his own family.

However, even this

revelation is not the last Ambrosio must endure, for Satan

now withdraws from the bargain, admitting that Ambrosio

will never leave the mountain upon which he has been depos-

ited.

In truth, what Ambrosio thought was a sure contract

guaranteeing his continued existence is actually his death

warrant.

His story concludes as he is impaled on a moun-

tain peak, rejected even by Satan himself.

Unlike Emily,

Ambrosio is never permitted to return to society and the

solitude he once desired becomes his final curse.

195

Of course, it is essential to point out that Lewis

contrasts Ambrosio's fate with that of the four lovers who

do, in fact, achieve union and begin the formation of two

new families.

As Emily rejoins society and is united with

Valancourt in The Mysteries of Udolpho, so Agnes is re-

 

stored to Raymond and Lorenzo is joined with Virginia in

The Monk.

Even though Mrs. Radcliffe appears to be more

interested in the chaos and confusion created when an in-

dividual imagination is permitted to run wild, she even-

tually reestablishes order in her novel by restoring the

family unit to its position of dominance, leaving us with

the distinct impression that Emily will never again allow

her fantasies to control her reason.

However, while Matthew Lewis also restores order and

creates two new family units, we cannot forget that 2M3

M925 ends not on this note of relative stability and hope

for the future, but rather concludes with the horrible

torture and death in isolation of Ambrosio himself.

Lewis's

last words to his reader concern the monk's final days and

his description is a gruesome reversal of the opening of

the Book of Genesis.

Ambrosio finally dies on the seventh

day after he has been abandoned by Satan and Lewis makes

it clear that he is aware of his state until the very last

moment.

Lewis's final description of his death in total

isolation can only be an indication that Lewis himself enter-

tains very little hope for the future.

The ending of his

gothic novel is bleak indeed--his vision is far removed

196

from that of Walpole or Radcliffe even though he makes use

of similar properties and conventions to realize it.

Blind, maimed, helpless, and despairing,

venting his rage in blasphemy and curses,

execrating his existence, yet dreading

the arrival of death destined to yield

him up to greater torments, six miserable

days did the villain languish.

0n the

Seventh a violent storm arose:

The winds

in fury rent up rocks and forests:

The

rain fell in torrents:

It swelled the

stream; The waves overflowed their banks;

They reached the spot where Ambrosio lay,

and when they abated carried with them

into the river the Corse of the despairing

Monk.62

Before leaving Lewis's gothic romance for Charles

Robert Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, I want to comment on

 

Lewis's use of standard gothic architecture as well as on

his explicit descriptions of sexual passion, violence, and

death.

Although a gothic castle does not figure in the

main plot of The Monk, Lewis does dwell on the castle of

Lindenberg at length, using it to intensify the mystery

surrounding the Bleeding Nun and to create a sense of dread

about the outcome of the midnight tryst between Raymond and

Agnes.

Furthermore, it seems to me Lewis uses the Capuchin

monastery of the primary plot in much the same way Radcliffe

uses the castle of Udolpho.

It is also particularly signi-

ficant that when Ambrosio accepts Matilda's help in his

attempt to rape Antonia, he does so in the dungeons and

catacombs of the monastery.

Furthermore, at the moment

when he cuts all ties with society by raping and murdering

his sister, he is hidden deep within the bowels of the struc-

ture, surrounded by the bodies of dead monks and nuns.

In

197

a sense, the more Ambrosio turns away from society and looks

within himself for the power to satisfy his desires, the

further he descends into the depths of the monastery, away

from the life of society and into the embrace of the dead.

It is also important that Ambrosio is never again released

from these dungeons until he has signed away his right to

be a member of the human community.

Unlike Emily St. Aubert

who is able to leave the haunted gothic castle behind and

to rejoin society, Ambrosio continues to be imprisoned in

it almost until the moment of his death.

In the end, be-

cause he continues to assert his individual will, he cuts

himself off from intercourse with other men, and locks

himself away in the prison of his own egotism.

Although Lewis varies and plays with several gothic

conventions in The Monk, the novel is most notably differ-

ent from those preceding it because of the kinds of descrip-

tions he chooses to include.

While it is true that both

Walpole and Radcliffe set out to shock their readers, they

tend to do this by surprising them with an unexpected ex-

planation or by suggesting that something terrible is about

to happen.

In fact, very little ever does, though we are

continually told that the horrible sight is "beyond descrip-

tion" or "too awful to express in words."

Lewis, however,

feels no such squeamishness.

His novel is filled with

graphic portrayals of torture, passion, and death; indeed,

he is at his most detailed when writing of the dark side

of human existence.

His most original contribution to the

198

genre is his refusal to stop at "unspeakable horrors" and

his willingness to present the physical aspects of pain

and death in a realistic manner.

Where The Castle of

 

Otranto and The Mysteries of Udolpho are tales of terror

 

in that their primary aim is to strike fear into the

hearts of those who read them, The Monk is closer to a

horror story in its desire to bring the reader face to face

with everything decayed and disgusting in this world.62

Melmoth the Wanderer

 

If Mattew Lewis's novel is important because of the

complexity it brings to the traditional presentation of the

gothic villain as well as because it darkens the gothic

vision through its preoccupation with death and decay,

then Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer should

 

also be considered equally significant for its villain is

even more interesting than Ambrosio and its view of the

world is less hopeful than that of The Monk.

Although the

derivation of the novel is clear because it makes use of

the standard gothic props and conventions, it is, never-

theless, decidedly different from either The Castle of

 

Otranto or The Mysteries of Udolpho.

Melmoth's story bears

 

little outward resemblance to that of Manfred or Emily but

it is still my conviction that Maturin's novel is a par-

ticularly creative variation of the gothic form established

in the two earlier romances.

I am inclined to agree with

Richard Kiely who sees it as a derivative work which is,

199

at the same time, "wilder, more complicated, and, in many

ways,...more daring...than most of its predecessors."63

One of the things setting this novel appart from those

which precede it is the fact that many of the traditional

gothic properties dealing with the Roman Catholic Church,

such as convents, monasteries, monks, and priestly rituals,

are no longer employed simply to distance the action or

to create an air of miraculous mystery.

In Melmoth the

 

Wanderer these things are important at the level of plot

construction, but they are also integral to a larger thematic

level of meaning as well.

Maturin's work functions in

some respects as an explicit denunciation of Catholicism

and Kiely has called it "a belated work of the Reformation,

a roar of outrage against the bigotry, superstition, sadism

and hypocrisy which had infested the Roman Church."64

Part of the impact of this novel is attributable to its

complex use of properties whose meanings in other gothic

novels are simply the result of the functions they perform

while moving the narrative forward.

Because Maturin uses

them within a larger conceptual framework, the properties

themselves derive their significance from the thematic

argument to which they contribute as well as from the role

they perform within the plot.

As a result, the monks,

nuns, and monasteries of Melmoth the Wanderer are all more

 

fully realized than those appearing in the earlier works.

Although the thematic character of Maturin's work is

relatively simple, his interest in the evil that pervades

200

all human existence is revealed through a complex narra-

tive structure which is directly related to the halting

forward movement of Lewis's The Monk.

Melmoth is composed

of five separate tales nested within each other as a "set

of chinese boxes."65

These tales are, in turn, suspended

within an even larger frame story whose principal charac-

ter is John Melmoth, a descendent of the Wanderer.

The

six different stories are linked together by the fact that

this wanderer, the original Melmoth, figures in all of them.

Although the details of his story are not revealed until

we encounter "The Lover's Tale," the last tale in the nar-

rative, they do explain how he can continue to appear over

the course of 150 years in places as far removed as Spain

and the Orient.

Like any good gothic novelist, Maturin

releases this information about his villain-protagonist

only gradually and he is thus able to shroud him in a cloud

of mystery.

Each new detail about Melmoth's history and

temperament, supplied by some new character in a new tale,

serves to compound this mystery.

As a result, Melmoth be—

comes an almost mythic figure even before he appears as

principal protagonist.

We eventually learn that Melmoth had become interested

in astrology and the occult sciences and had been promised

knowledge of the future world on the condition that he

would yield his soul to the devil.

However, this contract

was made to appear less horrible by the fact that Melmoth

was told he could be released from his bargain if, in the

201

course of 150 years, he presented a single soul as his

substitute.

Thus armed with the power to appear to the

suffering at that moment when their pain was the greatest

and resistance lowest, Melmoth wandered the world in

search of a stand-in.

Each of the tales recounts in ever-

increasing clarity the power of his attempts and the ul-

timate failure of them all.

However, each time we reach

the moment of temptation in a particular tale, Maturin

lowers the veil once again, telling us only that the mys-

terious visitor made a proposition which cannot be repeated.

For example, in the second tale contained within the

frame, Moncada tells Melmoth that a curious apparition

"took advantage of my agony, half visionary, half real as

it was, and, while proving to me that he had the power of

effecting my escape from the Inquisition, proposed to me

that incommunicable condition which I am forbid to reveal,

except in the act of confession."

66

Maturin then deliber-

ately suggests that this creature may be the one who

tempted Stanton in his moment of despair in a madhouse.

He appends to Moncada's recitation the observation that

"here Melmoth could not forbear remembering the incommun-

 

icable condition proposed to Stanton in the madhouse, -

 

he shuddered and was silent.

67

ll

By thus exciting our

curiosity and delaying our discovery about the true

nature of the Wanderer's plight, Maturin creates that air

of suspense and dread which is at the heart of every gothic

novel and which is the basis of the cOntract between the

202

gothic text and its reader.

In Melmoth, as in Otranto

and Udolpho, we are kept ignorant, given a few hints and

suggestions about the reality that exists beneath the sur-

face of events, and charged with the task of discovering

the solution which will explain all that we have seen.

Although the primary motive behind Maturin's delaying

tactic seems to be his desire to provoke the reader's in-

volvement in the mystery which enshrouds Melmoth, this in-

tricate narrative structure serves a thematic function as

well.

Each of the five tales is told by or about a par-

ticularly engaging character with whom we, as readers,

are asked to identify.

Four of these stories center around

attractive young men who are subjected to all sorts of

outrageous tortures and cruel punishments.

In fact, it is

easy to see that the younger Melmoth, Stanton, Moncada,

and Guzman are all modeled after such innocent young heroes

of earlier gothics as Theodore, Valancourt, and Lorenzo.

The fifth tale is the story of the beautiful, Eve-like

Immalee, and her derivation from Emily and Antonia is

equally obvious.

Thus, Maturin engages our sentiments in

such a way that when Melmoth does intrude into the early

tales, he is taken to be strangely alien, wholly evil, and the

ultimate gothic villain.68

Maturin effectively controls

our perception and leads us to a certain interpretation of

this enigmatic figure whose situation we are sure we under-

stand by the time the "Tale of the Indians" is presented.

However, as in The Monk, appearances in the world of

 

203

Melmoth are deceiving, and in this crucial tale Maturin

dashes our expectations, contradicts our interpretation,

and presents Melmoth himself as a complex character who

is both hero and villain to Immalee.

By demonstrating to

us that things are not always as they seem, Maturin pre-

pares us for the moral argument he wishes to make in the

novel as a cohesive whole.

In essence, his narrative is

really the story of Melmoth, and each of the tales must

be reconstructed or reinterpreted in that light.

The first encounter between Melmoth and Immalee occurs

in the "Tale of the Indians," the third narrative related

within the original frame story.

The tale itself centers

around Immalee who is, at this time, the sole inhabitant

of an Edenic island in the Pacific.

She is completely

innocent and unfamiliar with the corrupt ways of the out-

side world and Melmoth thinks of her as a means to escape

his destiny. He destroys her innocence by acquainting her

with the suffering and evil of the world beyond her island,

but at the same time he is touched by her trust and grad-

ually falls in love with her.

Robert Lougy has argued

that Maturin is at his best when describing Melmoth's re-

awakening and rediscovery of dead emotion,69 and I certainly

agree.

His description of the pain Melmoth experiences as

a result of the tension between the cynicism and despair

he has lived with for over a century, and the fragile hope

nourished by his feeling for Immalee, is a moving testament

to Melmoth's deeply human nature in which evil is inextricably

204

bound up with good.

Maturin writes:

When absent from her, his purpose was what

I have described; but while present, that

purpose seemed suspended; he gazed often

on her with eyes whose wild and fierce

lustre was quenched in a dew that he has-

tily wiped away, and gazed on her again.

While he sat near her on the flowers she

had collected for him, while he looked on

those timid and rosy lips that waited his

signal to speak, like buds that did not

dare to blow till the sun shone on them, -

while he heard accents issue from those

lips which he felt it would be impossible

to pervert as it would be to teach the

nightengale blasphemy, - he sunk down he—

side passed his hand over his livid brow,

and, wiping off some cold drops, thought

for a moment he was not the Cain of the

moral world, and that the brand was effaced,

- at least for a moment.

He felt again the

gnawings of the worm that never dies, and

the scorching of the fire that is never to

be quenched....He looked intensely at her,

while rage, despair, and pity, convulsed

his heart. .

. .70

However, despite the redeeming nature of Immalee's love,

Melmoth, whose extraordinary intellect still controls

his emotions, reasons that a shield of cynicism and de-

spair is the only armor man can use to combat the pain

and suffering of human existence.

As a result, he does

not beg for the forgiveness still available to him and

finally persuades Immalee to leave her island.

He becomes,

in effect, the agent of her corruption, and despite the

short revival of his feelings, he appears to the reader

even more depraved than before.

After Immalee is returned to her family in Spain,

Melmoth continues to visit with her.

Once again, his dor-

mant feelings are awakened and he begins to entertain the

 

205

faintest hope that his misery might be alleviated if he

can share it with another.

Immalee delays when he proposes

marriage but eventually consents to follow him wherever

he wishes.

Melmoth, however, restrained by his conscience,

cannot subject Immalee to a marriage with a doomed soul

and abruptly disappears.

He returns just as abruptly, how-

ever, to marry her in a bizarre and diabolical ceremony

which reverses the marriage ritual concluding every other

gothic novel.

Melmoth finally appears to be totally evil

after all.

But Maturin surprises us yet again.

We learn

some 200 pages later that in the interval between Immalee's

acceptance and the actual marriage, Melmoth, in an unself-

ish attempt to protect her warns her father of the danger

which threatens her.

In fact, he tells Aliaga, "there is

an eye fixed on her, and its fascination is more deadly

than that fabled of the snake! - There is an arm extended

to seize her, in whose grasp humanity withers! - that arm

even now relaxes for a moment, - its fibres thrill with

pity and horror, - it releases the victim for a moment."71

He beseeches Aliaga to hear him, but because business

matters prove too pressing, Aliaga does not hurry home,

and the marriage takes place.

Maturin's point in present-

ing these reversals can only be that the will to do good

still exists within Melmoth's soul and is at constant war

with its darker, more pessimistic side despite his pact

with the devil.

With Melmoth's story, Maturin argues that no matter

206

how evil a man seems to be, no matter how depraved his

life appears to others, he is always just outside the

range of God's infinite mercy which can be extended to

him if he will only deny his power-seeking ego and aCk-

nowledge his need for something beyond himself.

Melmoth,

however, controlled by his own pride, cynicism, and de-

spair, refuses to avail himself of the opportunity ex-

tended to all men.

As Robery Lougy points out, "his

damnation results not from the diabolic powers without,

but from within, and in this lies the tragedy of his

fate."72

Like Ambrosio, Melmoth considers himself super-

ior to all he sees about him, and it is finally this pride

which isolates him from human society and dooms him to

perdition.

Both novels function on a thematic level as

an exploration of the dangers of extreme individualism,

and although both assert that human connection, achieved

through the social institution of marriage, is both

necessary 329 possible, they present that argument in

subplots which are subordinate to the bleaker, less hope-

ful stories of the title characters.

Even though Ambrosio

and Melmoth are finally punished and order restored at

the end of both novels, it is still with the sense of

hopelessness and despair which seems to be the character-

izing theme of these two gothic "romances."

By exposing

the hypocrisy and corruption of the Church, both Lewis

and Maturin seem to imply that man's salvation is entirely

dependent on his personal, individual relationship with

207

God.

However, since they also dwell on the horrible con-

sequences of total reliance on the self, the reader cannot

help but be more impressed with the inevitability of the

paradox of individualism than with the possibility of its

resolution.

In his lengthy analysis of Melmoth the Wanderer,

 

Richard Kiely includes an excellent statement of the prin-

cipal concern of the literary form known as the gothic

romance.

Although he tends to speak of it in terms

slightly different from mine, Kiely, too, focuses on the

paradoxical situation confronted by Melmoth in the novel,

exploring the consequences of the tension produced by the

conflict between the two sides of Melmoth's nature.

Kiely

calls these two aspects "the compassionate" and "the

cynical," referring specifically to Melmoth's desire for

union with some other fellow human, and his inability to

lower himself to the level of others.

In this context,

Kiely writes, "the difference between them, then, cannot

be described in terms of action, but only in terms of

attitude.

One feels and hopes and therefore suffers

mentally from the physical suffering he witnesses; the

other feels and expects nothing, rejoices in his isola-

tion from other men, and even asserts an indifference to

nature, which gives him a kind of superiority over it.

The struggle thus depicted is an internal one between two

aspects of the self which can never be reconciled, yet

which define one another as surely as night and day,

208

death and life."73

Like Ambrosio, Melmoth is an extra-

ordinarily intelligent and perceptive human being, appalled

and disgusted by the depravity and corruption he sees about

him.

But because he possesses such an acutely sensitive

nature, he suffers from his own awareness, and isolates

himself from others and thus from his own "human" nature.

Whereas Ambrosio shuts himself up in a monastery, Melmoth

tries to learn more than anyone else in order to alleviate

his suffering.

By setting themselves above the rest of

men, both Ambrosio and Melmoth reject human society and

are forced to turn inward in search of the power and abil-

ity necessary to insure survival in a difficult world.

This journey into the self, however, proves disastrous,

for once an individual's connection to the social world

is severed, the triumph of narcissism is complete and abso-

lute isolation is the result.

Neither Melmoth nor Ambro-

sio ever discovers the passageway out of the haunted castle

of the individual self.

In the end, both succumb to the

darker, more pessimistic side of their nature and die par-

ticularly horrible, gruesome deaths.

The damnation of

each is made even more poignant by the fact that in both

novels, some character does establish a connection with

another which, however tenuous serves to justify the suf-

fering and pain they must endure as part of the paradox

of the human condition.

It is ultimately this conflict between the power of

the individual will, and the undeniable need for

209

communication and connection with others, which is at the

heart of the gothic novel.

While early manifestations of

the form do not locate the conflict within the limits of

the individual human psyche, they represent it as a struggle

between the forces of good and evil.

Neither Manfred nor

Montoni is a fully realized human being precisely because

each functions as a personification of the absolute evil

inherent in the desire to control one's own destiny and

that of others.

They are opposed in Otranto and Udolpho

by characters who similarly personify absolute good or

the longing for connection and, as a result, Theodore and

Valancourt, Isabella and Emily are easily and accurately

described by the terms "hero" and "heroine."

However,

Radcliffe avoids Walpole's absolute dichotomy by placing

her heroine in the middle of these opposing impulses,

forcing her to choose between them.

When Emily loses her

ability to distinguish illusion from reality and good from

evil, it is because she has been isolated from society by

the power of her own will and imagination.

As she grad-

ually leaves objective reality behind her, she sinks into

the same isolation and narcissistic individualism which

imprisons Montoni, the "villain" of the story.

Radcliffe,

however, permits Emily to escape.

Her marriage to Val-

ancourt symbolizes both the necessity for and the possibil-

ity of achieving connection with another, and hence, with

the rest of human society.

As I am sure it is clear by now, both The Monk and

 

 

210

Melmoth the Wanderer are structured around this seminal

 

"gothic" conflict.

However, in these two more complex

variations of the genre, the struggle is located within

the individual self and good and evil are not so easily

distinguishable from one another.

Although both novels

include pairs of lovers who seem to be "heroes" and

"heroines" this designation is not entirely satisfactory,

for while Ambrosio and Melmoth are clearly the villains

of the narratives, they also seem to be their heroes as

well.

Both are complex characters and, while it is not

possible to say they are wholly good, neither can it be

said that they are wholly evil.

The will to exert power

over others by virtue of one's own superiority is equally

balanced in these hero-villains with the desire to rely

on others through connection and communication.

Although

the desire for power wins the battle, these two men who

have tried to live at the expense of others are harshly

and brutally punished.

Society is restored in The Monk

and in Melmoth just as it is in Otranto and Udolpho, but

the happiness of the restoration is tempered by the fact

that the marriages upon Which it is based are not the ideal

unions we might wish.

Lorenzo does not marry his true

love, but must content himself with a devoted substitute.

Raymond marries Agnes only after he'has raped her and

nearly caused her death.

Similarly, Immalee is finally

joined with Melmoth, but dies soon thereafter giving birth

to their doomed child.

211

In the world of the late gothic novel, happiness is

inextricably bound up with terrible suffering, good is

unavoidably mixed with evil, and moral ambiguity charac-

terizes all of human existence.

These novels are directly

linked to those by Walpole and Radcliffe by the fact that,

in the end, they too counsel against hopelessness, assert-

ing the importance of human connection even in the face of

the constraints it produces on the individual will and the

horrible pain it must endure in order to survive.

Adapting

a comment Kiely makes about Melmoth alone, one might say

that the lesson these novels try to teach--which is not

to despair--is all the more moving because their vision of

man and nature gives so much to despair about.74

The Conventional Gothic

 

Having presented this general interpretation of the

genre, it is now possible, I think, to describe with accur-

acy which elements or combinations of elements are constitu-

tive (If the particular literary "system" we call the gothic

novel.

This form, as I have characterized it here, first

appeared in reaction to the realistic novel of manners and

morals which focused on society, its customs and conven-

tions, and the individual's adaptation to each.

Whereas

the gothic is also concerned with the relationship between

the individual and society, its focus, unlike its prede-

cessor's, is on the individual and the state of his mind

when he is cut off from harmonious communion with others.

212

The form is characterized, therefore, by its concern with

an isolated, often orphaned seeker who is forced to pursue

some goal in order to insure his own survival.

Strangely

enough, this seeker may either be a beautiful young woman

or an extraordinarily talented, diabolical figure.

The

content of the unit does not matter as much as its rela-

tionship to other central or defining units in the genre.

What is crucial then is that this figure must somehow be

cut off from all normal intercourse with human society and

thus from the aid or sustenance which might be provided by

others.

As a result, this gothic seeker is forced to

look inward to find the strength necessary to help him

withstand the pain of life in a universe which is anything

but wholly benevolent.

The gothic is marked, furthermore, by the antipathy

which develops between the isolated questor and the natural

world.

Because most of his normal ties to society have

been severed, the questor's perception begins to be colored

by the fact that it cannot be checked against the percep-

tions of significant others.

As a result, he gradually

loses his ability to see objectively; he feels himself

confronted at every turn by a completely alien and hostile

environment bent only on his personal destruction.

It is,

in fact, the gothic novelist's preoccupation with the ques-

tor's psychic state during this confrontation with the out-

side world which produces that curious sense of dread and

fear so characteristic of every novel in the genre.

This

213

atmosphere of mystery and suspense is not simply a pecu-

liar feature of certain novels but rather a defining unit

of the genre itself.

Indeed, it is through this presen-

tation of an ominous and oppressive air that the gothic

novelist is able to describe the questor's loosening grip

upon reality and at the same time engage the reader's

sympathies in the protagonist's struggle to control his

own destiny in an alien world.

Most gothic novels guarantee their reader's parti-

cipation in this experience of dread by controlling the

amount of information released to them, thereby forcing

them to identify with the questor of the tale.

Again,

this technique is not a mere curiosity employed randomly

by a few authors, but rather a condition of the contract

established between reader and gothic text.

By telling

the tale from the questor's point of view and by granting

to the reader only that information possesed by the ques-

tor himself, the author places the reader in a position

equivalent to that of the protagonist; he is thus forced

to see the universe through the protagonist's strangely

colored glasses.

The obvious assumption behind such a

strategy is that if a reader participates in the terror

and fear produced by complete isolation, he will be all

the more willing to accept the author's moral argument

that order and stability are dependent on healthy social

relationships.

This sense of fear and dread is thus both

thematically and stylistically important to the genre and

214

it is for this reason that the single defining element of

the gothic novel is often thought to be its peculiarly

oppressive atmosphere.

Of course, it is my conviction that

it is not suspense and dread alone which make a gothic

novel, but rather the appearance of both within a tale

told about an isolated seeker who at some time perceives

the universe surrounding him as unutterably "other."

However, there are still other elements I have not

yet mentioned also central to the genre of the gothic

novel.

In addition to the relationships between questor

and universe and between reader and text already mentioned,

there must also be established certain relationships be-

tween the questor and other characters if the novel is to

be considered a gothic.

The characteristic action of the

genre is set in motion by a conflict between the desire

for a life of isolation lived outside the cares and wor-

ries of the world, and the recognition that connection with

others is the only thing that can provide a shield against

the suffering inherent in the human condition.

These tend-

encies may be embodied in two entirely separate characters

or they may be portrayed as opposite sides of a single

figure.

In any case, not only must both forces exist

within the novel, but they must be played off against each

other in such a way that both protagonist and reader con-

front the possibility of choosing between them.

Thus, we

have Emily St. Aubert, who wishes to marry Valancourt,

suddenly locked within Udolpho and the fantasies of her

215

own imagination and then threatened with the isolation

Montoni deliberately chooses.

In another instance, we

see Ambrosio the monk simultaneously attracted and re-

pelled by the life of isolation and in the end cruelly

punished because he chooses an existence ruled by the in-

dividual will.

In both cases, these opposing tendencies

confront each other and the conflict is ultimately re-

solved in favor of a life lived within the limits of social

existence.

It is necessary to add at this point that as a re-

sult of this "gothic" conflict, the seeker-protagonist

of the novel is always brought face to face with the vio-

lence, evil and unspeakable cruelty which characterize

human existence.

He is most often initiated into an aware-

ness of this evil, but occasionally he is implicated in it

as well because he finds it necessary to use the same vio-

lence and cruelty to assert his individual will.

However,

such a movement is not absolutely necessary, since what

is truly important to the genre is the fact that knowledge

of the suffering at the foundation of all human existence

makes the choice between isolation and community even more

difficult.

The questor is seduced by the apparent ease

of a life lived outside the inevitable problems of human

society and he often believes he is opting for a virtuous

existence by denying his participation in the human commun-

ity.

No such questor in the traditional gothic novel ever

survives his choice of isolation; social connection is

216

always presented as the painful but necessary solution to

a life that must be lived amidst such horror.

Manfred,

Montoni, Ambrosio, and Melmoth all try to impose their

wills on others, attempt to deny their need for human con-

nection and, as a result, are ultimately destroyed.

The

fate of the character who chooses the individual life is

always contrasted in the gothic novel with that of one

who is willing to commit himself to an existence lived in

the presence of others despite the inevitable suffering'

V such a connection portends.

Marriage is essential to the

resolution of the standard gothic romance for it stands in

opposition to the life of isolation, symbolizing man's

need for the comfort provided by others within the limits

of social convention.

While I have characterized the traditional gothic

romance as a kind of quest novel, it is, in some respects,

an escape narrative as well.

At the same time the pro-

tagonist of the novel searches for a way to live in a world

filled with violence and pain, he desperately tries to

avoid being sullied by the evil he perceives about him.

Consequently, much of the gothic plot concerns this char-

acter's attempts to escape a realization of or consummation

with evil and the novel itself is dominated by his dread

of this final, inevitable outcome.

While evil is thus

often the prime motivating force in the standard gothic

romance, it seldom affects the ultimate resolution.

As

I have pointed out before, order is restored at the end

 

 

217

of these novels because all those who have attempted to

set themselves outside society are punished, while all

those who have consented to remain within it are rewarded

with marriage.

Nevertheless, because so much of the novel

is devoted to descriptions of violence, torture, sexual

passion, and death, the reader cannot help but be impressed

by the extreme fragility of the gothic resolution.

In

short, the gothic form is characterized by this strange

tension between the cynicism and despair of its thematic

concerns, and the optimism and hope of its narrative action.

Before leaving this discussion of the gothic genre

in order to explore the ways in which it has been varied

since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I want to

make some comments about those standard properties often

isolated as exclusively "gothic" and generally thought of

as the defining elements of the form.

I am referring

specifically here to medieval castles, labyrinthine pass~.

ages, subterranean caverns, ghosts, and all manner of super-

natural happenings.

It seems to me that simply because

some of these things are present within a certain novel

does not necessarily guarantee that such a work is in

reality a true gothic romance.

Indeed, it is my convic-

tion that these "gothic" encumbrances are so closely iden-

tified with the genre because they are the outstanding

features of the earliest presentations of that strange,

mysterious, and largely alien world so central to the

fictional form just discussed.

Including such properties

218

in a novel does not automatically make that novel a gothic

because those properties must be integrated within the

more fundamental structural patterns which function as

the true foundation of the gothic form.

Thus, a medieval

castle is "gothic" if it is used to symbolize the charac-

teristic questor's descent into the self.

Similarly, ghosts

and apparitions are "gothic" if they function within a nar-

rative which concerns a character's loss of rational

contact with objective reality.

In other words, the tra-

ditional gothic furniture is important to the genre because

it plays an integral part in the creation of that menac-

ing world which threatens both the protagonist of the novel

and the reader who sympathizes with him.

However, it is

entirely conceivable that a gothic novel can be created

without these properties since the necessary relationships

between seeker and universe, between seeker and other char-

acters, and between reader and text are not dependent on

the presence of medieval castles or subterranean passages,

or even on the appearances of ghosts.

The gothic novel, then, can be defined as any prose

narrative of considerable length which uses the structure

of interlocking relationships heretofore discussed as its

point of departure.

An author may choose to use these

relationships or oppositions in a conventional way, that

is, according to the form defined by Walpole, Radcliffe,

Lewis, and Maturin, or he may choose to subject them to

slightly new combinations thus giving to the elements he

219

uses a somewhat different meaning.

However, no matter

how deformed he may wish to make the relationships among

these elements the author must use them if his novel is

to be in the gothic mode.

In other words, he must concern

himself with the conflict between the individual will and

social commitment by focusing on a seeker who is isolated

from the world and thus threatened by all he perceives

about him.

Furthermore, this author must include the read-

er in the terror and fear experienced by the seeker as a

result of his isolation, in order to involve that reader

in the seeker's choice between a life lived with others

amidst violence and pain, and a life lived alone within

the confines of the solitary ego.

While an author does

not have to resolve this conflict in any specific way, his

novel must dwell on the evil that pervades life in this

world if it is to be judged a true gothic.

The gothic

vision, in short, is characterized by an awareness of the

pain, suffering, and death inextricably bound up with life,

and the narrative action of the genre is dominated by the

discovery that any attempt to escape this human condition

is doomed to failure.

Connection with another human being

is held out in the traditional gothic novel as the only

viable solution for man in his attempt to withstand the

tortures of human existence.

Although these tortures can-

not be avoided, they can at least be minimized by the com-

fort derived from a life shared with others.

NOTES

1Although I would also argue that the text itself

has meaning only because it too is integrated into the

larger context of an individual life, that issue need not

concern us here if we can accept the premise as given.

For a discussion of the connection between extra-literary

contexts and the construction of meaning within a liter-

ary text I would direct the reader to Si; by Roland

Barthes and to Jonathan Culler's chapter on "Convention

and Naturalization" in Structuralist Poetics, pp. 131-160.

2Roland Barthes, "An Introduction to the Structural

Analysis of Narrative," trans., Lionel Duisit, New Liter-

 

ary Histopy (Fall, 1975), 238-272.

 

3Barthes, "An Introduction," p. 243.

4Culler, Structuralist Poetics, p. 202.

 

m
m
q
m

Barthes, "An Introduction," p. 244.

Barthes, "An Introduction," p. 245.

Barthes, S/Z, p. 21.

Culler, Structuralist Poetics, p. 202.

9Barthes, 8/2, p. 19.

10Barthes, S/z, p. 17.

11Barthes, 8/2, p. 92.

12Barthes, S/Z, p. 92.

13Culler, Structuralist Poetics, p. 229.

 

14Barthes, 8/2, p. 18.

15Culler, Structuralist Poetics, p. 203.

 

l6Barthes, 8/2, p. 100.

l7Culler, Structuralist Poetics, p. 203.

 

220

221

18Eino Railo, The Haunted Castle:

A Study of the

 

Elements of English Romanticism (New York:

E. P. Dutton

 

& Co., 1927). p. 2.

See also Martin Kallich, Horace Walpole

 

(New York:

Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1971), pp. 1-33.

19E. F. Bleiler, "Horace Walpole and The Castle of

 

Otranto" in Three Gothic Novels, ed E. F. Bleiler (New

York:

Dover Publications, 1966), p. ix.

 

20Robert Kiely, The Romantic Novel in England (Cam-

bridge:

Harvard Univ. Press, 1972), p. 41.

21

22

Kiely, The Romantic Novel, p. 41.

 

Kiely, The Romantic Novel, p. 10.

 

23Kiely, The Romantic Novel, p. 10.

 

24Kiely, The Romantic Novel, pp. 20-21.

25Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto:

A Gothic

 

Stogy in Three Gothic Novels, ed. E. F. BIeiIer (New York:

Dover PubliEatiOns, 1966), p. 18.

 

26

Walpole, Otranto, p. 18.

27Walpole, Otranto, p. 18.

28Walpole, Otranto, p. 18.

29Walpole, Otranto, p. 18.

30Bleiler, "Horace Walpole," p. xv.

31Bleiler, "Horace Walpole," p. xv.

32Bonamy Dobrée, "Introduction," to Ann Radcliffe,

The Mysteries of Udolpho (London:

Oxford University Press,

1966), p. Vii.

33Kiely, The Romantic Novel, p. 65.

 

34Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, ed. Bonamy

Dobrée (London:

Oxford University Press, 1966), P. 1.

35Not only does this passage enable the reader to add

to his understanding of M. St. Aubert, but it also helps

him to characterize Emily and to deepen his understanding

of her.

Furthermore, as the action of the novel progresses,

it becomes clear to the careful reader that this passage

must also be interpreted thematically as one of the key

statements of the novel's moral point.

In actuality, it

functions simultaneously on several different meaning levels.

222

36Radcliff, Udolpho, p. 80.

37E. B. Murray, Ann Radcliffe (New York:

Twayne

 

Publishers, Inc., 1972), p.117.

38

Radcliffe, Udolpho, p. l.

39Radcliffe, Udolpho, pp. 225-226.

40Radcliffe, Udolpho, p. 226.

41Radcliffe, Udolpho, p. 80.

42Murray, Radcliffe, p. 124.

 

43Murray, Radcliffe, p. 127.

 

44Kiely, The Romantic Novel, p. 78.

 

45Kiely, The Romantic Novel, p. 78.

 

46Kiely, The Romantic Novel, p. 78.

 

47Kiely, The Romantic Novel, p. 78.

 

48Kiely, The Romantic Novel, p. 77.

 

49Matthew Lewis, The Monk:

A Romance, ed. Howard

   

Anderson (London:

Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 9.

50

Lewis, The Monk, p. 24.

51Lewis, The Monk, p. 18.

52Lewis, The Monk, p. 39.

53Lewis, The Monk, p. 236.

54Lewis, The Monk, p. 237.

55Lewis, The Monk, p. 53.

56Lewis, The Monk, p. 53.

57Lewis, The Monk, p. 54.

58Lewis, The Monk, p. 268.

59Lewis, The Monk, pp. 268-269.

60Lewis, The Monk, p. 434..

223

61Lewis, The Monk, p. 440.

62Although this is a distinction frequently made by

critics of the gothic, I think it has been most cogently

set forth by Robert D. Hume in an article entitled "Gothic

versus Romantic:

A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel," PMLA,

84 (1969). PP. 212-229.

63Kiely, The Romantic Novel, p. 189.

 

64Kiely, The Romantic Novel, p. 189.

 

65This comment on the novel's structure is included

in nearly every study of the work but it is usually cited

without an indication of its source.

In Charles Robert

 

Maturin: The Terror Novelist (Amsterdam, H.J. Paris, 1933),

 

p. 90.

Wiilem Scholten attributes the observation to an

anonymous reviewer in The Quarterly Review, 1821, vol xxiv,

 

p. 303.

66Charles Robert Maturin,Melmoth the Wanderer:

A Tale,

 

ed. Douglas Grant (London:

Oxford University Press, 1968),

p. 237.

67

Maturin,Melmoth, p. 237.

68Melmoth actually figures in three stories before

he is presented to us in depth in the "Tale of the Indi-

ans."

We first hear of him in the frame story concerning

his descendent.

Then, he appears in Stanton's narrative

and in the "Tale of the Spaniard" both of which are con-

tained within the frame.

The "Tale of Guzman's Family" in-

tervenes between the "Tale of the Indians" and the "Tale

of the Lovers," the two stories which actually concern

Melmoth himself.

Thus, Maturnuuses Guzman's story to tem-

porarily halt the revelation of Melmoth's character begun

but not completed in the "Indian" narrative.

69Robert E. Lougy, Charles Robert Maturh1(Lewisburg,

 

Pa.:

Bucknell University Press, 1975), p. 72.

70

Maturin, Melmoth, p. 299.

71Maturin, Melmoth, p. 503.

72Lougy,'Maturin, p. 72.

73Kiely, The Romantic Novel, p. 199.

 

74Kiely, The Romantic Novel, pp. 204-205.

 

CHAPTER V

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN GOTHIC:

EMPIRICAL AND

CREATIVE USE OF A LITERARY "SYSTEM"

The Gothic Novel in the Twentieth Century

Although Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth the

 

Wanderer is generally thought of as the last real manifes-

tation of the genre created by Horace Walpole and Ann Rad-

cliffe at the end of the eighteenth century, many works

written after 1820 have continued to be identified as

"gothic" novels.

In fact, this appellation has been ex-

tended to such an extraordinarily diverse group of fic-

tional products--including Wuthering Heights, Dracula,

 

"The Fall of the House of Usher," Moby-Dick, The House of

 

the Seven Gables, As I Lay Dying, and The Hawkline Monster--

that one must wonder exactly what these very different

works could have in common in order to warrant the same

description.

While I dO'nOt propose here to engage in a

defense of all those critics who have argued the gothic

is something more than ghosts,castles, and monks, I would

like to examine several contemporary works called "gothic,"

either by literary critics or book publishers themselves,

in order to ascertain whether these works actually make

use of that structure of interlocking relationships I have

224

225

identified as the skeleton of the form.

In describing a particular novel's dependence on

this peculiarly "gothic" constellation of textual units,

I will attempt to establish whether the constellation

has been used conventionally, that is, in the manner estab-

lished by Walpole and Radcliffe and modified by Lewis and

Maturin:

or whether it has been subjected to a structural

deformation severe enough to change the basic significance

of the form itself.

In short, I will attempt to demon-

strate that two novels as different as Phyllis Whitney's

The Golden Unicorn (1976) and William Faulkner's Sancturay

 

(1931) can justifiably be called gothic novels, even though

they appear to have nothing in common, because they both

use the same skeleton as their point of departure.

Ulti-

mately, I hope to show that the distinction I have drawn

between the empirical and creative use of a literary system

is, in fact, a useful way of describing how certain texts

employ the same elements or structures and yet appear to

belong to two absolutely different categories of literary

works.

Since I have theorized that the texts we tradition-

ally dismiss as "popular literature" or "mass entertain-

ment" are, in reality, conventional or formulaic uses of

a specific literary system, it seems logical to begin here

with the popular gothics for, if my hypothesis is correct,

they ought to prove very similar to those works by Walpole,

Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin examined in the last chapter.

226

Although I will focus on only two popular gothic romances

written within the last five years, these two novels are

so similar to the hundreds of others which have flooded

the paperback market in the last two or three decades that

my analysis of them will be representative of the entire

"class" or group as a whole.

Before getting involved in

a lengthy interpretation of Phyllis Whitney's Spindrift

 

(1975) and The Golden Unicorn, I want to make a few com-

 

ments about the enormous popularity of these and other

works like them.

According to a circular distributed to

retail book outlets by a large midwest book distribution

firm, "gothic" novels such as those by Whitney account for

ten per cent of all mass market releases and sixteen per

cent of all fiction published in any given year.1

Nearly

thirty-five gothic titles are released in a typical month

while more than 400 appear each year.

The initial print-

ing of a Phyllis Whitney paperback usually runs to about

800,000 copies.

When Spindrift was first published in

 

1975, it sold more than 57,000 hard cover copies in less

than eight months and remained on the New York Times best-

 

seller list for more than three.

Although very little

research has been done on the nature of the audience

reached by these books, most agree the majority of the

readers are women.

While these facts and figures certainly

tell us nothing substantial about the relationship between

these contemporary gothics and those English novels pub-

lished more than 200 years before, they suggest that the

227

form still touches a nerve in the populace at large, and.

that there continues to be something peculiarly appealing

to women about these narratives--since the vast majority

of Radcliffe's readers were also female.

For purposes of organizational symmetry, I shall cen-

ter my analysis of the contemporary gothic romance on two

novels by Phyllis Whitney.

Although most of the novels

included within this popular genre are written by British

writers (such as Victoria Holt, Norah Lofts, and Mary

Stewart), Whitney's novels are structurally and thematic-

ally so similar that any statements about them can be

applied to the works of English authors as well.

I have

decided to focus on an American novelist primarily because

I want to use American novels when I discuss the creative

use of the gothic system later in this chapter.

I want to

do so in order to demonstrate that two works obviously de-

rived from the singular world of the American South--TM§

Member of the Wedding (1946), and Sanctuary (l931)--are

   

directly descended from The Castle of Otranto and The Mys-

 

teries of Udolpho, though neither contains any of the medi-

 

eval architecture or props so prominent in the earlier

works.

My purpose is two-fold.

I want to establish, first

of all, that the gothic form is something more than a ran-

dom collection of drafty castles and moaning ghosts, by

showing that the genre can continue to exist even though

these properties have been long discarded as instruments

228

of terror and dread.

Furthermore, I wish to show that the

gothic novel is, in fact, the product of a literary system

which exists outside cultural boundaries, one which can

be adapted and modified to suit various kinds of thematic

purposes.

By selecting American novels which are neces-

sarily derived from different cultural backgrounds and

settings, I hope to show that in creating the gothic form,

Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe did more than give expres-

sion to popular British preoccupations of the late eigh-

teenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Phyllis Whitney and the Popplar Gothic Romance

Phyllis Whitney first began writing during the De-

pression when she composed hundreds<mfshort stories for the

romance magazines then so popular.

She later switched to

the field of children's books, and then in the early

1950's, began working with a form she called the "romantic

suspense story" patterned after Charlotte Bronté's Sgpg

Sypg and Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca.

Her first novel in

this vein, The Quicksilver Pool, was published in 1955 and

 

since then she has written nearly a gothic novel a year.

By 1975, Whitney had published more than fifty-five books

and her work had been translated into seventeen languages.2

Her name is so well known and so closely identified with

the genre that publishers often try to boost the sales of

a work of an unknown author by claiming on the cover that

the novel is in the Whitney tradition or, better yet, that

229

it has been read and approved by Phyllis Whitney herself.

In February, 1967 article published in The Writer

 

magazine, Whitney addresses herself to all would-be writers

of gothic romances and, in the course of giving novices

advice about how to write such a work, provides an excel-

lent summary of the main features of the genre which can

serve as an ideal introduction to her work in particular

and to the popular gothic.in general.3

Whitney first

points out that she rejects the term "gothic" as a descrip-

tion for her work because she feels it confining and too

redolent of a "gloomy-old-house" atmosphere.

She prefers

instead to call her works "romantic novels of suspense"

and requests this phrase be placed on the jacket of her

books "by way of identification for the reader."

She ad-

mits, furthermore, that she is not writing serious novels,

but rather providing entertainment for an audience which

has clearly defined expectations.

She likes to think of

each work, she adds, as a "performance."

I think it use-

ful here to examine Whitney's theory of the form in some

depth, since her analysis is an accurate description of

her own work as well as that of numerous others.

Indeed,

if this short article is any indication, it seems safe to

say Phyllis Whitney fully comprehends the nature of the

gothic novel and knows exactly how to put one together so

it will appeal to a huge number of readers.

Whitney makes it clear that when writing one of her

romantic suspense stories she is acutely conscious of her

230

reader's expectations.

She argues that the genre has a

definite form and is composed of a series of "ingredients,"

all of which are familiar to her reader and anticipated

by him.

As she says, "There is about these stories - and

I'm now speaking as a reader - a certain wonderment.

One

steps into what Monica Dickens has called 'a dear familiar

landscape,’ in which anything at all may happen, romantic-

ally speaking.

There is an entrancing promise, sure to be

fulfilled by the skilledwriter."4

A gothic romance then,

according to Whitney, must appear to be open-ended--domin-

ated by a sense that all things are possible, even while

it gives the reader only those things he has been trained

to expect.

In actuality, the promise of these books is

not infinite, since the action is always predictable enough

to fulfill crucial expectations entertained by the audience.

But they derive much of their power from the illusion of

endless, infinite promise and, as a result, the atmosphere

of excitement and suspense is probably the most important

"ingredient" in the genre.

In fact, I think it no mere

coincidence that Whitney mentions this aspect of the form

first in her attempt to characterize it.

Whitney attributes the gothic's sense of promise to

its setting, or "background" as she calls it.

While she

understands that it is "the Spooky old mansion set in a

brooding landscape" which provides this interest in the

traditional gothic, she maintains these specific props are

not necessary to the creation of the correct atmosphere in

231

the modern version of the form.

I find it interesting

that Whitney seems to know implicitly that it is not the

medieval castle nor the sublime landscape which is func-

tional in the standard gothic; rather it is the reaction

these things produce in the reader as he follows the pro-

tagonist's encounter with this environment which gives to

the novel its distinctive air.

Whitney argues it is

entirely possible to set a gothic novel in the twentieth

century, but she cautions the action must be distanced in

some way so the world of the novel appears strange and

threatening.

She advises her reader, "If you use the

modern scene, you'd better remove your characters to some

isolated spot where you won't have as much trouble with

believability.

Such isolation can even be achieved in an

old brownstone in today's New York, if you can shut out the

 

outside world to a sufficient extent."

It is clear from

 

5

her comment that in the contemporary as in the traditional

gothic it is necessary that all formal ties between the

protagonist and the outside world or objective reality be

cut.

Not only does this introduce the crucial theme of

isolation, but it also helps to create that suspense and

fear which must be coupled with the promise of excitement.

The second necessary ingredient mentioned by Whitney

also concerns the relationship or contract established be-

tween reader and text.

She maintains that the gothic

suspense story must be centered around romance and emotion--

"No feeling, no story - and that's a rule!"

Thus, if we

232

take her word for it, we must conclude that the contempor-

ary gothic shares with its more traditional predecessors

a scorn for mere contemplation and an interest in engaging

the emotions of the reader.

It is also interesting to

note that she advises the potential writer of such tales

that a love story combined with some significant problem

to be solved is the surest plot device for involving any

reader in the action of the narrative.

The parallel to

the traditional English gothic is once again made evident

if we recall how important the pairs of lovers are to

Otranto, Udolpho and The Monk and if we remember that

 

crime detection is in some respects at the center of all

three.

Although Whitney's next piece of advice ostensibly

concerns the presentation of sexual passion in these novels,

what she is really concerned about once again is the rela-

tionship between reader and text.

She states categorically

that sex should never be presented explicitly but the

passion it produces should be allowed to smolder just be-

neath the surface.

As she points out, "a scene that is

underplayed, suggested rather than stated, can often have

greater emotional effect because of the way the reader's

imagination will work for you."6

Again, what she is con-

cerned about here is the effect of the narrative action on

the reader; what she hopes to do by leaving sexual details

unsaid is to engage that reader by forcing him to flesh

out the skeleton with his own hopes and desires.

This

233

procedure is similar to that employed by Ann Radcliffe

herself who, in Udolpho, attempts to activate her reader's

imagination in the same way as Emily's by confronting him

with maddeningly incomplete hints, clues, and suggestions.

The sex element is also important and I think it one of

the unstated agreements between author and reader of the

genre at this level that sex will not be discussed openly.

This is attested to by the fact that when Doubleday pub-

lished a gothic in 1975 it received an enormous number of

complaints because the heroine had been raped.

As Sally

Artseros, a Doubleday editor, has pointed out, rape, like

explicit sex, "is going beyond the understood agreement

with the reader."7

Whitney calls the next ingredient "the damsel in

distress."

She places great emphasis on the fact that the

young woman who is to be at the center of the novel must

be both "plucky" and vulnerable.

She stresses the fact

that the heroine must be strong because she is the focal

point of the novel and thus the center of action.

It is

essential she initiate much of the movement of the plot.

However, Whitney does not discount a need for female weak-

ness; the extreme sensitivity evidenced by her heroines is

derived directly from Radcliffe's portrayal of Emily St.

Aubert.

Whitney points out that these women "are brave,

and sometimes reckless, they meet adversity with courage,

but they are fearfully open to hurt, and the reader must

feel this, believe in it."8

234

In elaborating on her conception of the properly

presented heroine, Whitney makes a particularly interest-

ing comment in light of what I have said about the gothic

genre as a whole.

She maintains that the young woman at

the center of the novel must be vulnerable not only because

of her love and because of her involvement with other char-

acters, but also "because her initial position is one of

helpless unimportance."9

.This situation does exist, in

fact, at the beginning of most contemporary gothics, where

the heroine is usually orphaned, friendless, and alone.

While she is often portrayed as self-confident and assured,

she seldom has any close relationships and she herself

often stresses the fact that she is of importance to no

one.

Like her counterpart in the gothic novel of the eigh-

teenth and nineteenth centuries, the contemporary heroine

too is isolated and cut off from all meaningful human rela-

tionships.

To balance character presentation in the contempo-

tary gothic,Whitney maintains it is necessary for the author

to present a hero who is believeable as a person and equal

to the challenge of winning the heroine away from her life

of isolation.

She admits that all her heroes are descended

from Heathcliffe, Rochester and Max de Winter, described

as "driven, bedeviled, stern, dark men."

Although I have

not dealt with either Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, it

   

is possible to argue that the extraordinarily complex

heroes of these novels are themselves but a step removed

235

from Manfred, Montoni, Ambrosio, and Melmoth.

The heroes

of Whitney's gothics, however, are not even as complex

as Ambrosio or Melmoth, nor are they plagued by the dark

side of their nature.

While they often physically resemble

their earlier prototypes in that they are presented as

dark, brooding and imposing figures, Whitney does not use

this sort of description as a symbol for internal psycho-

logical complexity.

The farthest she is willing to go in

suggesting that the hero is not wholly good is to portray

him as aloof or brusque.

She often spends a great deal

of time pointing out that her heroine is both attracted

to and repelled by this man.

When the tale is finally re-

solved, any suspicions the heroine may have entertained

about her hero are proved groundless and he eventually

does succeed in ending her isolation.

Since the major male figure in the contemporary

gothic therefore is always innocent of all wrong-doing,

he cannot be said to stand in opposition to the heroine

and thus does not function as that source of evil so essen-

tial to the story.

Whitney acknowledges that a true villain

is necessary to the gothic and she maintains that such a

villain may either be male or female.

In discussing this

figure, she argues his identity must be kept a secret as

long as possible‘and she does, in fact, manage to do this

in all her books.

Much of the suspense created by the

novels at this level depends on the heroine's attempt to

search out and unmask that nameless character who threatens

236

her throughout the narrative.

It is not the malignancy

of the evil that threatens her which is so frightening,

but rather the fact that she cannot identify its source

and therefore cannot effectively combat it.

As might be expected, Whitney fully understands the

importance of mystery and suspense to the gothic romance.

At one point in the article she obligingly asserts that

"from the first, there must be a sense of mystery, of grow-

ing threat, of fear that mounts into terror."

10

She main-

tains, furthermore, the test of a good gothic novel is

the effectiveness of its attempts to build suspense,

pointing out again that there must be a genuine feeling of

evil, existing in some unknown form."11

In fact, all

Whitney says about suspense and the central position it

occupies in her novels accords with what I have said

about the gothic genre as a whole, nor do I find this

coincidental.

The structural basis of the contemporary

gothic is similar to that of its predecessors and knowledge

of the hermeneutical code must be at the base of the read-

er's response to both.

Throughout her novels, Whitney

raises questions, poses enigmas and then postpones the

solutions until the very end.

If the reader is to make

sense of her story, he must be able to pay attention to

those hints which will later prove "useful," hold them in

his consciousness until all the puzzle pieces are provided,

and then make the necessary connections to solve the mys-

tery.

Indeed, Whitney herself argues that the role of the

237

gothic novelist is to ask the reader questions from

chapter to chapter but, as she points out, "You don't

answer the last question until the final scene."12

In concluding her analysis of the contemporary gothic

form, Whitney maintains two last "ingredients" are essential

to the genre and must never be neglected.

She insists that

the novel must have both a "meaning" and a "happy ending";

"We read a story of suspense," she asserts, "so that every—

thing will stop hurting in the end."13

Whitney believes

her novels are about human growth and she is convinced they

would not be read if the heroine did not show some develop-

ment or change in her outlook.

A good story, she argues, is

one about somebody who grows, and she advises potential

authors that "Your heroine is human - she makes mistakes,

she stumbles, she learns - and in the course of her maturing

you cannot help but say something to the reader.

Something

worth saying about life, about living, about maturing."14

Whitney never does quite say what this "something" should

be but if the endings of her novels are any indication, then

it must have something to do with the importance of love,

marriage, and the family.

Every story she has ever written

concludes with an impending marriage, making it evident that

the heroine has finally achieved happiness through her union

with another.

As in the early English gothic, order is re—

stored and the family unit is returned to its rightful

place at the foundation of society.

As Whitney's general comments on the genre make clear,

238

all her novels written according to this form are extra-

ordinarily similar.

In fact, if we discount surface var—

iations in the content of those units used as the skeleton

of each novel, and consider only the structure and function

of the units themselves, I think it permissible to say

that her novels are all virtually identical.

This is not

to criticize Whitney, but rather to stress the essential

importance of the formulaic structure itself at this level

of text composition.

The same "ingredients" or actants

and actions are always combined in the same way in all

such novels; variations are generally non-functional in

that they have no significant effect on the structure of

the work as a whole and thus do not alter its "meaning."

Because of the close resemblance that exists among popular

gothics, it is possible to analyze the form by looking at

a very small number of novels.

I propose, therefore, to

use two of Whitney's most recent releases in order to

sketch out the formula which serves as the backbone for

each work, and ultimately to demonstrate how this contemp-

orary form is related to that system first worked out some

200 years ago by Horace walpole and Ann Radcliffe.

The first thing one notices in reading a popular

gothic by Phyllis Whitney is that the general movement of

the plot is close to that evidenced by early versions of

the form.

Whitney makes it immediately clear in both TEE

Golden Unicorn and in Spindrift that the central character

   

of the work is a young, attractive heroine.

Each novel is,

239

in fact, narrated by the heroine herself who tells us

by the end of the second page both who she is and why she

has a tale to tell.

Thereafter, most of the first chapter

is devoted to expository material which sets the scene

by delving into the past and leading us up to the point

where the heroine's adventures begin.

I use the word

"begin" here because although the action at the foundation

of the novel occurred in the heroine's past, it is always

related to us as if it is happening to her simultaneously

with her telling of the tale.

By establishing this sort

of narrative position, Whitney involves us in the excite-

ment of the story and frightens us with the unknown, even

after she has indicated to us that the story has been com-

pleted and the heroine has survived the terrors we are

about to confront.

Thus, even an inexperienced reader of

popular gothics understands after the first few pages that

he can safely identify with the heroine and participate in

her fear, knowing full well that order will be restored at

the end and both he and she will survive the about-to-be-

related experience with style and grace.

Aside from assuring us about the final outcome of

the novel, this first chapter in the popular gothic estab-

lishes that initial situation of the heroine which is to

be altered by the action of the story.

She is always pre-

sented to us as a lonely, isolated figure who has recently

lost some member of her family.

In most cases, the heroine

is newly orphaned and forced to depend for her survival on

240

the mercy of relatives who are less than anxious to re-

ceive her.

In The Golden Unicorn, for example, Courtney

 

Marsh tells us that the parents who adopted her as a small

child have recently died and thus that she has been or-

phaned for a second time.

On the day the story opens,

she has resigned her job as a successful magazine writer,

refused the help of friends, and thus cut all ties to her

past life which has been dominated by her relationship

to her family.

We also learn, significantly enough, that

although there have been men in her life, Courtney Marsh

has never been loved.

She is, in fact, the typical gothic

virgin caught between her childhood allegiance to her par-

ents and her adult desire to establish a primary relation-

ship with a man.

The story of The Golden Unicorn begins

 

as she leaves her immediate past behind and sets off in

search of her original family.

Whitney places great empha-

sis on the fact that she must uncover her real parentage

if she is to learn her true identity and to begin her adult

life with an assured sense of self.

The popular gothic

is, in effect, the story of an adolescent's entry into

the world and the actionof the novel chronicles the her-

oine's developing maturity and her gradual resumption of

a life of communion with others.

Despite the fact that Whitney varies some apparently

significant details in Spindrift, the net effect on the

 

structure of this initial situation is negligible.

Al-

though Christy Moreland is already married and the mother

241

of a small child when the novel begins, she too is alien-

ated from all those who surround her.

We learn that as

a result of her refusal to believe her father committed

suicide a year before, she has become emotionally estranged

from her husband, son, and mother—in-law.

In addition

she has also suffered a nervous breakdown over the loss

of her father and has been hospitalized in a kind of san-

itarium.

As a result, she is no less isolated than Court-

ney Marsh in The Golden Unicorn or, for that matter, than

 

Emily St. Aubert in The Mysteries of Udolpho.

Indeed, I

 

think it safe to say that the initial situation presented

in the popular gothic is nearly a perfect carbon copy of

that which occurs in Udolpho, The Monk, and even in Melmoth.

The protagonist is, in effect, cut off from all normal

connection with society, the family unit is in total dis-

array, and a search is begun for some way to put an end

to the isolation which results.

The action of the novel always begins when the her-

oine enters an old, disintegrating house somehow connected

to the disordered family unit which she now confronts.

Often, this family is composed of an odd assortment of rel-

atives upon whom she must depend for security.

In the case

of Courtney Marsh, however, it is the group of people she

suspects of being her original family; in the case of

Christy Moreland it is her own estranged husband, son, and

mother-in-law--with ea few friends added to make the con-

frontation even more interesting.

The heroine is brought

242

to this mansion by a need to find the solution to a mys-

tery which has been concealed by the family connected with

the house.

Just as Emily St. Aubert suspects Montoni of

murder, so these modern heroines concoct theories involving

different family members and all sorts of crimes.

Christy,

in fact, goes to Spindrift to prove her father was murdered

and at one point she even suspects her husband of the deed.

While Courtney ostensibly goes to The Shingles only to find

her natural parents, soon after arriving she uncovers all

manner of strange disappearances and the hint of murder.

The house itself is clearly patterned after the

gothic castles and monasteries dominating works like QEEEB’

£9, Udolpho, and Melmoth, and although it usually lacks

dungeons and catacombs, the modern version has dark winding

corridors, faulty lighting, and blowing draperies.

Upon

entering the dilapidated structure, the heroine feels

uneasy and her apprehension grows as she becomes convinced

the house is aware of her presence and hostile to her.

Since the gothic castle and the heroine's reaction to it

plays a significant role in the traditional gothic novel,

it is useful to examine the way Whitney presents The Shin-

gles in Unicorn.

Courtney's first description of the house

is particularly interesting because the emphasis in the

passage is focused on the atmosphere or ambience surround-

ing the house rather than on the details of the structure

itself.

In fact, this first paragraph devoted to the most

famous of gothic properties is remarkably imprecise, thus

243

serving as proof for my hypothesis that it is not the castle

itself which is functional in the gothic novel but rather

the atmosphere of dread and suspense created by it which

is essential to the form.

Courtney is overwhelmed by the

house because it is not at all what she expected.

As she

says:

His words prepared me to be impressed -

so that I expected beauty, soaring archi-

tecture - some vista of loveliness.

The

house that lifted three stories into the

air atop its high dune was anything but

beautiful.

Impressive, yes, with a great

and brooding dignity as it raised shingled

walls and tall brick chimneys against the

blue sky, but its color was a dark umber,

shading into ebony in the shadows, somehow

heavy and oppressive.

It had stood there

since the last century, braving the storms

that had burst over its head, riding like

a ship into the very teeth of the gales

and high seas that must have hurled them-

selves upon it.

'The Shingles' seemed a

modest name for so overpowering a struc-

ture.15

And that, precisely, is the extent of the description we

are given.

Although we are told a few pages later Courtney

feels threatened by The Shingles, Whitney never provides

the kind of detailed plans and pictures which figure so

prominently in Otranto and Udolpho.

Courtney tells herself

that there is something far from reassuring about it, some-

thing she must eventually reckon with, but we are not told

what gives her that impression or why she feels the way

she does.

It is enough for the popular gothic that the

house is present, that it is mysterious and threatening,

and that the heroine must live within it for a time.

244

Simply by including such a house at all and by presenting

the slightest hint that it is dark and brooding, Whitney

is able to capitalize on the associations most readers have

about haunted houses and strange castles in general, and is

thus able to create the necessary air of suspense and atmos-

phere of dread.

She does not, like Radcliffe, use the house

on a thematic level, for she never correlates movement within

the house with any identifiable state of mind experienced

by the heroine herself.

There is no progression in the

way the house is developed or explored; apparently the only

function it serves in the narrative is to trigger the al-

ready established response the reader possesses toward

haunted old homes.

Once the heroine has entered this modern version of

the gothic castle, the search for answers begins in earnest.

She dashes about trying to discover the solution to her

mystery, uncovers clues, clutches at hints dropped by other

characters, and generally upsets the traditional routine of

the house into which she has been thrown.

Almost immedi-

ately after she has begun to ask questions, her life is

threatened.

The first threat is usually verbal but as her

search progresses, the attacks become increasingly more

physical and dangerous.

At no time, however, in these

novels do we ever fear that the heroine is threatened with

rape.

It is her life, not her virginity which is endangered

and, in this respect, the popular gothic differs slightly

from its earlier prototype.

While the change iS'a

245

relatively significant one, I don't think it radically

alters the meaning of the narrative, since the young woe

man's fear of union with a man is explored elsewhere as

part of her relationship with the hero.

Thus, where Ann

Radcliffe deals openly with this fear by threatening her

heroine with rape, Phyllis Whitney merely hints at it by

developing a love-hate relationship between the young

woman and the hero of the novel.

Courtney Marsh finds

herself simultaneously attracted to and frightened by

Evan, the dark and brooding man at the center of 222

Unicorn, and while Whitney never says Courtney is afraid

of being ravished, her suggestions are always clear.

What

Courtney is attracted to in Evan is his strength and his

vitality, but at the same time she fears his male power and

wonders whether she dare waken the sleeping tiger.

In

fact, I think it necessary to examine this fear a little

more closely since this relationship between hero and

heroine is at the thematic center of the popular gothic

novel.

As I explained before, the heroine of the popular

gothic is emotionally inexperienced in that she has had

very limited contact with men.

Although she is, in most

cases, a young woman in her early twenties, she is some-

thing of an adolescent in that she is frightened of men

and still possesses a strong attachment to her father.

However, soon after entering the "gothic" house, she con-

fronts the customary dark, brooding male and finds herself

246

responding in a way she never has before.

Her initial

reaction, always one of fear, is similar to that expressed

by Courtney when she speaks to Evan for the first time.

She is disturbed by the tone of his response and thinks

to herself, "Formal words, ordinary words, with a wild

rage seething beneath them and held in check by that iron

grip he kept upon himself.

He was a man I would not want

to make angry.

"16

As the story progresses, however, her

fear is lessened by the fact that she is gradually attrac-

ted to this man, and beginning to wonder what it would be

like to love and be loved in return.

As she starts to over-

come her fear, she also begins to see the hero differently,

as less gruff and cold.

However, their immediate union is

always prevented by the fact that the contemporary gothic

hero is somehow remotely implicated in the crime at the

center of the novel and the heroine is never quite sure

that it is not he who is a threat to her.

It is easy to see the contemporary hero's derivation

from the villain-hero of The Monk and Melmoth, since he is

both the man the heroine desires (as Antonia is attracted

to Ambrosio and Immalee is drawn to Melmoth) and he who

apparently means her harm.

However, the contemporary ver-

sion of Melmoth is only apparently evil, and when the young

 

woman is able to admit that she loves and wants him, he

reciprocates her love and quells all her uncertainty.

Their relationship culminates at the end of the novel after

the real villain is unmasked, the crime is solved, and the

247

heroine is able to lay her past to rest.

Free from old

family ties, she promises to marry her hero; and her

isolation is effectively ended forever.

The resolution

of the relationship between the lovers in the contemporary

gothic is thus virtually identical to that presented in

the earliest versions of the form.

Since Phyllis Whitney varies the relationship between

hero and heroine in Spindrift and still manages to write

 

the same formulaic "gothic" novel, it is interesting to

examine her changes in order to see why they are not func-

tional.

First of all, even though Christy Moreland is al-

ready married and the mother of a young son when the story

opens, her emotional state is no different from either

Courtney Marsh's or Emily St. Aubert's.

Christy is as

alienated from her husband, Joel, as if he were dead, and

her own son rejects her because his grandmother, Christy's

mother-in-law, suggests to him that his mother doesn't

love him.

Such a situation leaves Christy isolated, alone,

with no family at all.

The one emotional connection that

still dominates her life is her love for her father and

her desire to prove he did not commit suicide.

Because

Joel will have nothing to do with her theories of murder,

she is so estranged that they no longer sleep together.

It

is then that she meets Bruce Parry, described for the reader

in the same terms as the typical contemporary gothic hero.

In this case, he is set off in direct opposition to Chris-

ty's husband:

248

I was aware once more of the contrast be-

tween the two men.

It was not in Joel's

favor.

Bruce was a little older, but he

always seemed infinitely more mature.

He

was dark-browed with heavy, winged eye-

brows, a strong forceful mouth and carved

nose.

But his dynamic intensity came

through most of all in eyes that were al-

most jet in their lack of color.

His

appraisal of me seemed sharply alert, and

I wondered what he saw.17

After this initial confrontation, the relationship

between Christy and Bruce progresses in the same way as

does that between Courtney and Evan.

First frightened by

his strength and vitality, Christy is suspicious of Bruce

and wonders whether he is set against her as every one

else at Spindrift seems to be.

However, she is soon

attracted to him in that same love-hate manner which is

at the foundation of the hero-heroine relationship in all

popular gothics.

Indeed, Christy's reaction to Bruce

could be transferred to any one of hundreds of these novels

and it would not seem out of place.

Although the partic-

ulars change, the heroine's emotions are always the same:

He stood very close to me on the small

balcony and I was aware of him, as I had

not been aware of a man for a long while.

For the first time I wondered a little

about him.

Why had he never married?

What would it be like to have those nearly

jet black eyes kindle when he looked at a

woman?

My own thoughts startled me, frightened

me a little.

I wanted to come back to life.

But not in this way, not for this man.

In-

finitesimally I moved away from him on the

balcony.18

As Christy responds to Bruce, her interest in her

husband also revives and she begins to see Joel a little

249

differently.

He suddenly appears much stronger to her

and although much of his force is now directed against her,

she finds him more attractive than when he had been overly

solicitous.

Thus, in some ways, the relationship between

Christy and Joel is marked by the same tensions which char-

acterize her relationship with Bruce.

Christy, however,

eventually chooses Bruce because Joel seems opposed to her,

but at the moment of revelation she is shocked to discover

that it was Bruce all the time who was threatening her life

and who had murdered her father.

She then seeks Joel's

assistance, as Courtney asks for Evan's, and in the end,

their marriage is restored to even greater harmony since

Christy has now overcome her adolescent attachment to her

father.

Although the gothic hero turns out to be the villain

in this version of the contemporary form, the love-hate

relationship is still the major preoccupation of the novel.

It is significant that Whitney does not continue the ini-

tial opposition set up between Bruce, the strong, virile

lover, and Joel, the kind, gentle husband, because if she

did, we would have to conclude that the message behind the

action was a general warning about the dangers of sexual

passion.

But Christy is attracted to Joel only when he

begins to exhibit some of the male strength initially iden-

tified with Bruce, and by giving in to him at the end and

by depending on his help, she submits to that power and

overcomes the fear of being taken over by another.

The

250

point behind the resolution of Spindrift is the same as

 

that behind The Golden Unicorn:

although physical passion

 

is frightening in that it can lead to loss of self-control,

if properly channeled in marriage it can also be the basis

of a lasting union which will banish the loneliness and

isolation so bound up with the human condition.

Thus,

although Whitney's changes in the plot development of Spig-

gpift appear to be significant, they do not negate the

functional oppositions set up within the standard structure

of the form and therefore do not alter the basic signif-

icance of the novel.

Although this relationship between the hero and the

heroine is the primary concern of the contemporary gothic,

there are several other interesting relationships developed

in the novels which contribute to the statement of the major

theme.

These secondary relationships do not usually contri-

bute to or affect the final resolution, but they often

heighten the contrast between the life of isolation and

that of connection with others which stands at the center

of the novel.

For instance, there is always another woman

who is contrasted to the young heroine.

She is usually

older than the heroine, divorced or widowed, and she is

portrayed as exotically beautiful and vitally sensual.

In

most cases, she is extremely strong and independent and

she directs the weaker men who surround her.

More often

than not, she is involved in the crime uncovered by the

heroine and while she is not usually the villain, she is

251

implicated in the violence and evil as a willing accomplice.

Thus, the opposition establiShed between this woman and the

heroine functions as a sort of warning about what happens

to a woman who does not admit her need for dependence on a

man.

The popular gothic novelist suggests that her fate

will be isolation and unhappiness and we are shown that this

lack of human contact and connection can ultimately lead to

a desire to harm others.

In this context, it is also inter-

esting to note that the villain in these novels is usually

an unattached male who has adored and been rejected by this

dark, independent woman.

Because he seeks her approval or

because he is despondent at her rejection, he commits some

crime in the hope that he will be able to win her love.

Of

course, he never does, and both are ultimately destroyed by

their inability to establish association with another.

In

the end, this pair functions as a foil for the hero and her-

oine; their fate is meant as a warning to those who would

choose a life of independence and total freedom.

As I am sure it has become clear thoughout this anal-

ysis of the plot development of the contemporary gothic,

the narrative progress of Phyllis Whitney's novels is ex-

tremely close to that of The Castle of Otranto, The Mys-

 

teries of UdolpMo, and even of Lewis's The Monk.

For in-

 

stance, the major character in all these novels is always

emotionally stranded at the beginning of the narrative.

Furthermore, he or she embarks on some quest, either to

solve a crime or to fulfill some personal design and, in

252

the midst of the search, is physically threatened by powers

from without.

This character, plagued by a sense of dread

and by a fear of what lies beneath the surface, often

wishes to withdraw into a life of isolation.

If the char-

acter does choose such isolation, he is punished and his

fate contrasted with that of two lovers who are able to

achieve union as a result of his destruction.

If, however,

the character is able to overcome Mg; fear, she returns to

the world and is united with Mg; hero in the end.19

In

any case, these novels are concluded in similar ways and

the reader is always told that a life of connection with

others, lived within the confines of dictated social con-

vention, is better than an existence lived alone.

Since I have argued in the previous chapter that in

addition to possessing a certain plot structure, the gothic

novel must also establish a particular relationship with

its audience, it seems only natural to examine the way

in which Phyllis Whitney involves her reader in the story

and creates the necessary suspense.

In fact, it seems to

me Whitney's method is similar to that utilized by Radcliffe

herself in The Mysteries of Udolppo.

Although Whitney's

 

tale is narrated by the heroine and Radcliffe's story is

merely focused on her, the effect is the same for the reader

is given only as much knowledge and information as the her-

oine in each novel possesses.

In essence, what Emily,

Courtney, and Christy see is what I see as well; when EEEEE

fear leads to suspense and dread, I am forced to participate

253

in that feeling too.

However, despite this basic similar-

ity, Whitney and other popular gothic novelists have made

one change which tends to lessen the intensity of the sus-

pense.

Because the heroine begins the tale speaking in

the present about actions which have occurred in the past,

we know that no matter how frightening what we are about to

read, the story will turn out all right in the end since

the speaker herself has survived to tell about it.

Thus,

once the story is in progress and we find it impossible to

figure out who is threatening the heroine or why, the sus-

pense and fear we experience are mitigated by the fact

that we have already been assured those threats will not

succeed.

Because it uses this technique, the popular

gothic is able to create that air of mystery so essential

to the genre, while at the same time it assures its reader

that the disorder and chaos which dominate the tale are

not permanent, but rather temporary and titillating.

We

are never in doubt about the outcome of the popular gothic--

as we often are about the resolution of its prototype--for

the suspense it creates is not open-ended.

Even if we are

reading a popular gothic for the first time, we know the

outcome of the tale even before it begins because of the

verbal clues contained within the text itself.

In addition to her use of carefully manipulated verb

tenses, Whitney also employs another technique to create

the illusion of total chaos and to assure us that no matter

how frightened we may be by the heroine's story, her

254

triumph will be secured.

Whitney presents hint after hint

and clue after clue throughout the narrative and reserves

the final solution of the puzzle until the end of the novel.

However, she also occasionally presents an enigma, provides

a very obvious hint, and permits her reader to draw the

inevitable conclusion which she then verifies a page or two

later.

By providing this instant corroboration, she assures

us that we are using the right methods in our attempt to

draw the prOper conclusions, suggesting by implication that

a solution to the mystery does exist and can be found if

we will only persevere long enough.

In pointing out Whitney's deliberate efforts to

reassure her readers, however, I do not mean to imply that

suspense is absent from or unimportant to the contemporary

gothic.

In fact, this atmosphere of uncertainty and dread

is still the most obvious characterizing feature of the

genre and the contract between reader and text is quite

similar to that originally established by Otranto, Udolpho,

 

Melmoth, and The Monk.

As readers, we are still kept in

a state of ignorance, provided with certain clues and sug-

gestions, and then drawn into the effort to solve the

mystery.

We are engaged in the narrative action, and forced

to construct our own explanation of that which we are per-

mitted to see.

Furthermore, because of the way the story

is told, we sympathize with the heroine and participate in

her growing sense of unease.

However, the fear and appre—

hension we experience never become intolerable, primarily

255

because Whitney refuses to graphically portray the violence

of the threats made against the heroine and leaves the person

responsible for those threats anonymous.

As a result, the

evil force which motivates the opposition in these tales is

only sketchily drawn and the ultimate focus of the novel

is the resolution and the restoration of order which the

author provides.

In some ways, the contemporary popular gothic can be

thought of as a homogenized version of the earlier form be-

cause of its unwillingness to dwell on the causes of the

suspense and terror at the heart of the gothic experience.

All the necessary actants and actions are included in the

newer version, but the motives behind those actions are only

discussed on the most obvious of levels.

Thus the inten-

sity of the emotion generated by the narrative pattern is

to a great extent lessened.

While the basic significance

of the form is no different from what it was nearly 200

years ago, the response it can potentially evoke in the

reader has been tamed by the popular novelist because she

wishes to reassure at the same time she frightens.

In

short, the structure of Phyllis Whitney's novels is nearly

identical to that form standing at the heart of those ro-

mances written by Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe.

What

is different is her relative lack of concern for the de-

tails of evil.

Because she skims over the violence and pain

produced by_the villain in the novel, she is able to avoid

that peculiar tension evident in Otranto, Udolpho, and The

256

EEEE between the despairing tone of the gothic work and the

hopeful nature of its final resolution.

Although the

happy ending Whitney provides in all her novels also occurs

in those earlier works which define the genre, that happy

ending of the contemporary popular gothic is never qualified

as it is in Otranto and Udolpho by an inordinate interest

in the evil which nearly prevents it.

In summary, then,

where the older gothic is marked by its fascination with

the dark side of the world even while it asserts the in—

evitable necessity for the success of its opposite, the

contemporary popular version of the form is characterized

by its unwillingness to do more than hint at the existence

of evil, and by its overwhelming faith in the ultimate

power and superiority of the good.

I

Carson McCullers, The Member of tMe Wedding,

. and "New American Gothic"

 

Although many "serious" American novels written since

1820 have been identified from time to time as descendants

of the English gothic romance, few have been subjected to

as close a comparison with the eighteenth century proto-

type as that diverse group of novels which has come out of

the American South during the last fifty years.

In fact,

there have been two book length studies detailing the gothic

roots of Southern American fiction including Irving Malin's

New American Gothic (1962)20 and William Van O'Connor's

 

The Grotesque:

An American Genre (1962).21

In addition,

  

257

Leslie Fielder has devoted a large part of his study, Love

and Death in the American Novel (1966) to tracing the gothic

 

ancestry of American fiction,

and numerous articles have

appeared discussing gothic elements in the works of William

Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, and Truman

Capote.

While I tend to agree with the final verdict of

these studies that works such as As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary,

   

Wise Blood,

"Judgment Day," Reflections in a Golden Eye,

   

The Member of the Wedding, and In Cold Blood all derive

   

their peculiar tone from the gothic novel, I find some of

the arguments about specific "borrowings" to be superficial

and strained.

I suspect that the tortured nature of some

of these discussions is the direct result of an inadequate

conception of the traditional gothic novel, since it is

extremely difficult to demonstrate that these novels are

gothic if one believes gothicism is produced by castles,

storms, dungeons, and ghosts.

Indeed, very few of the

novels mentioned here ever use those medieval properties

identified with the eighteenth century form, and as a

result, if we are to continue placing these works within

the gothic tradition, we must do so on some other basis

and for some other reason.

Neither Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding

 

nor William Faulkner's Sanctuary presents us with a castle,

 

a catacomb, or a monk, but both use that same structure of

interlocking relationships, that same skeleton of form and

meaning, which I have identified as the essence of the genre.

258

However, I also feel both novelists have taken liberties

with the gothic structure by modifying certain of the cru-

cial relationships at its foundation and have subtly but

surely altered its final significance.

If the gothic vision

expressed by McCullers and Faulkner is even darker than

that of Lewis and Maturin, it is because they have sub-

jected the entire gothic system to a structural deformation

which itself serves to eliminate much of the hope manifested

in earlier versions of the form.

Therefore, in discussing

The Member of the Wedding and Sanctuary, I will first

   

attempt to uncover that same gothic foundation--initially

laid by Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe--which is at the

base of these novels, and will then demonstrate how both

change the appearance of the edifice erected on it by

making certain significant structural alterations.

Be-

cause Carson McCullers makes fewer changes than Faulkner,

her novel is more obviously "gothic."

It seems wise there-

fore to begin with her somewhat modified version of the

gothic form rather than with Faulkner's radical reorien-

tation.

It is interesting to note that, like The Mysteries

 

of Udolpho, The Member of the Wedding is divided into three

 

sections, each of which corresponds to a significant change

in the life of the young woman who stands at the center of

the novel.

As the three major divisions in Radcliffe's work

are marked by Emily St. Aubert's changing residence and

emotional conditions, so the sections of The Member of the

 

259

Wedding correspond to Frankie Addams's evolving relationship

to her childhood home and her changing state of mental

awareness.

The first section of the novel takes place pri-

marily within the kitchen of Frankie's home on an oppres-

sively hot evening in late August after Frankie has learned

her brother is going to be married at the end of the week.

Most of the first forty pages are devoted to an explanation

of what the summer has been like for Frankie; this is the

initial situation which is to be changed by the action of

the novel.

In the second section, Frankie, now F. Jasmine

Addams, wanders about town on the day before the wedding

seeking contact and connection with all whom she meets.

This is the longest of the three sections in the novel and

it is almost entirely devoted to a description of Frankie's

frame of mind as she confronts the world about her and grad-

ually becomes aware of what it means to be human.

Although

the last section begins with her departure from her home

as her family prepares to go to the wedding, Frankie, now

referred to as Frances, is on her way back to town and to

the house she thought she had escaped.

She is forced to

return and two more months elapse before she is finally

permitted to leave this home behind.

The novel concludes

just as Frances is preparing to move to a new house with

her father and, in our last glimpse of her, she puts the

past behind her and prepares to meet the future.

Although this brief recital of the general plot de-

velopment of McCullers' novel does not show in any detail

260

how The Member of the Wedding resembles the gothic novels

 

of the eighteenth century, it does suggest that McCullers'

development of Frankie Addams parallels Radcliffe's presen-

tation of Emily St. Aubert.

Accordingly, it also provides

us with a useful procedure for comparison.

Indeed, the

three sections of The Member of the Wedding not only cor-

 

respond to the three sections of The Mysteries of Udolpho,

 

but they echo the peculiar character and concerns of the

three major textual divisions contained in Ell gothics,

that is, the initial situation, the quest, and the resolu-

tion.

By exploring McCullers' use and "misuse" of these

divisions, I hope to show both how and why she makes the

changes she does in the plot structure traditionally iden-

tified with the English gothic romance.

Although Frankie Addams is neither orphaned nor so

physically isolated as the narrative action of the novel

begins, she is as emotionally alone as Emily St. Aubert,

Ambrosio, Melmoth, or Courtney Marsh.

The first few lines

of The Member of the Wedding could almost describe these

 

other gothic protagonists as well as Frankie herself.

We

are told that something happened to Frankie during the

summer of her twelfth year, and though McCullers does not

tell us what that something is, she does elaborate on the

character of the summer itself which she describes as "green

and crazy."

McCullers adds, "this was the summer when for

a long time [Frankie] had not been a member" and she con-

tinues to underscore this theme of isolation:

261

She belonged to no club and was a member

of nothing in the world.

Frankie had be-

come an unjoined person who hung around'

in doorways, and she was afraid.

In June

the trees were bright dizzy green, but

later the leaves darkened, and the town

turned black and shrunken under the glare

of the sun.22

In fact, Frankie's summer has been dominated by a growing

sense of unease as she feels less and less a part of the

groups with which she has been connected.

For instance,

we learn that Frankie has suddenly grown freakishly tall

and that this and her boy's haircut sets her apart from

her former girlfriends.

23

Furthermore, we are told that the

two people to whom she has been closest, Berenice Sadie

Brown, her family's cook, and John Henry West, her six-year-

old cousin, no longer fill the void which is becoming in-

creasingly real to her.

Indeed, when the story opens at

the end of the summer, she is tired of their company and

incredulous at John Henry's suggestion that she might be

able to have a good time with him alone.

Frankie has not

been able to give a name to what she feels and when all

she has experienced during the summer is abruptly changed

by her brother's announcement of his impending marriage,

she cannot express her reactions to that development either.

As McCullers points out, "the name for what had happened to

her Frankie did not know, but she could feel her squeezed

heart beating against the table edge."24

Although she is

not yet aware of it, what has happened to Frankie is that,

her brother's wedding has awakened her desire to belong to

262

someone else and has only served to make her feel the pain

of adolescent separation more acutely.

Carson McCullers is particularly adept at juxtaposing

the sudden changes of Frankie's twelfth summer with the sense

of isolation produced by them and the fear she feels as a

result.

In elaborating, for example, on Frankie's unnatur-

al height, she points out that because Frankie has grown

so tall she is no longer able to walk under the scupper—

nong arbor with the other children who can "still walk

around inside, give shows, and have a good time."

She real-

izes this puts her in a group with "the grown people" al-

though she does not understand why this causes her to be

afraid.25

The fear is all the more unsettling because it

is amorphous and apparently without cause.

But although

Frankie cannot consciously identify what creates her fear,

McCullers shows that awareness of it is just below the sur-

face.

Immediately after she finds John Henry in the arbor,

she invites him to dinner.

When Berenice reminds Frankie

she had said she was sick of him, Frankie justifies her

action:

"I am sick and tired of him," said

Frankie.

"But it seemed to me he looked

scared."

"Scared of what?"

Frankie shook her head.

"Maybe I

mean lonesome," she said finally.2

In fact, it is not John Henry who is scared or lonseome but

Frankie herself, and on this day before her brother returns

to announce his marriage, all her feelings of isolation and

263

fear have converged to make her doubly glad at John Henry's

presence.

Later in the evening, after they have gone to

bed, Frankie listens to John Henry breathe and thinks that

"now she had what she had wanted so many nights that summer;

there was somebody sleeping in the bed with her. .

. .With

somebody sleeping in the dark with her, she was not so much

afraid."

By presenting Frankie's emotional state in such detail

so early in the novel, McCullers begins to prepare us for

her strange reaction to the announcement of her brother's

wedding.

Although the wedding is mentioned prior to this,

we do not become aware of the fact that it holds more than

ordinary significance for Frankie until her perception

of it is linked with the pain in her heart.

When McCullers

writes, "the wedding was bright and beautiful as snow and

the heart in her was mashed,"

27 it becomes clear that Frankie

envies her brother's happiness and wishes to participate in

it.

When she realizes her brother and his fiancée both

have the initials J. A., Frankie contemplates changing her

name in order to be like them, but when she decides on F.

Jasmine Addams, Berenice tells her its against the law.

Later, she compares the wedding to the Freaks of the

Chattahoochee Exposition who have come to town nearly every

year since she can remember.

These strange creatures have

frightened Frankie and she has now begun to wonder if she

is growing up to be like them.

When she assures herself

Freaks don't marry or go to weddings, it becomes clear that

264

she sees the wedding as an escape from the "freakish"

life of loneliness and fear which has increasingly become

her state since the previous April.

But before McCullers

allows Frankie or the reader to make that connection ex-

plicit, she elaborates once more on what has happened to

Frankie with the coming of Spring.

I think the passage

worth quoting at length for only the intensity of Frankie's

loneliness can explain what it is she sees in the wedding.

The long afternoons flowered and lasted and

the green sweetness sickened her.

The town

began to hurt Frankie.

Sad and terrible

things had never made Frankie cry, but this

season many things made Frankie suddenly

wish to cry.

Very early in the morning she

sometimes would go out into the yard and

stand for a long time looking at the sun-

rise sky.

And it was as though a question

came into her heart and the sky did not an-

swer.

Things she had never noticed much

before began to hurt her:

home lights

watched from the evening sidewalks, an un-

known voice from an alley.

She would stare

at the lights and listen to the voice, and

something inside her stiffened and waited.

But the lights would darken, the voice fall

silent, and though she waited, that was all.

She was afraid of these things that made her

suddenly wonder who she was, and what she

was going to be in the world, and why she

was standing at that minute, seeing a light;

or staring up at the sky:

alone.

She was

afraid, and there was a queer tightness in

her chest.28

Frankie is caught, in this summer of her twelfth year, be-

tween the innocent world of childhood and that unknown

future toward which she is being inexorably propelled.

On the one hand, her father will no longer permit her to

sleep with him because she is too old, but on the other

she is disgusted when she learns the details about sex

265

with a boy in a garage.

Similarly, she is tired of John

Henry and has outgrown the games they used to play tOgether,

but, at the same time, she has been rejected by friends

her own age and has no one else to rely on for companion—

ship.

In essence, she has been forced to turn inward by

her growing inability to connect with others—-much the same

situation at the beginning of the novel as that of Emily

St. Aubert as she escapes from Udolpho Castle.

While it

takes Emily a good part of the gothic romance to realize

the dangers inherent in extreme isolation, Frankie's tale

actually begins at the moment when she seizes the idea of

her brother's wedding as the only means of escape from the

pain and terror produced by being alone.

McCullers allows

Frankie to learn what Emily learns at the end of The Mys-

teries of Udolpho much earlier in her story, which has a

 

significant effect on the structure of the novel.

But be-

fore we can talk of significance it is first necessary to

explore her reaction to the wedding and to discuss the

Quixotic quest she begins as a result.

Before she allows Frankie to give a name to that which

she feels, McCullers presents her spontaneous reaction to

her brother's announcement of his impending marriage.

We

are told the sight of her brother and his fiancée "shocked

her heart" and caused her to feel emotions that were "like

the feelings of spring, only more sudden and more sharp,"

and we learn that she is once more afraid.

The fact that

29

'two peOple are going to marry only serves to place Frankie's

266

sense of isolation in high relief as she too longs for the

promise of love and protection that this union seems sure

to provide.

Soon after she is stricken by the realization

that they will probably go away and leave her after the cer-

emony, she decides she will go with them and never return.

As the plan matures in her mind, she suddenly understands

what she has been feeling and why the wedding is the answer

to her problem.

She thinks to herself:

They were them and in Winter Hill, together,

while she was her and in the same old town

by herself.

The long hundred miles did not

make her sadder and make her feel more far

away than the knowing that they were them

and both together and she was only her and

parted from them by herself.

And as she

sickened with this feeling a thought and

explanation suddenly came to her, so that

she knew and almost said aloud:

they are

the we of me.

Yesterday, and all the twelve

 

years of her life, she had only been Frankie.

She was an I person who had to walk around

and do things by herself.

All other people

had a 32 to claim, all other except her. 0

Frankie realizes that the only 33 she can claim is

"the terrible summer pg of her and John Henry and Berenice,"

which she rejects as the last thing in the world she could

ever want.

At this point, she turns her back on her child-

hood and looks toward an adult future.

She does not, how-

ever, envision her own marriage but rather attaches herself

to her brother and his wife.

She is delighted with her new-

found knowledge, assures herself that "they are the we of

me," and vows to go with them on their honeymoon.

But no

sooner has she made her vow than McCullers makes use of a

standard gothic device to suggest that her scheme can only

267

bode ill for all concerned.

An ominous darkness gathers in

the "thick-leaved trees" even though night has not come.

"It is too quiet," she tells John Henry, and she con-

fesses she has "a peculiar warning in her bones."31

We

cannot help but suspect that her new awareness of what she

lacks and what she needs will only cause her tremendous

pain.

This realization is made all the more poignant by

the fact that the last words of the section describe in ex-

quisite detail Frankie's feelings of joy and hope at sud-

denly having something to call her "we."

Although the chap-

ter seems to end on a note of happiness and anticipation,

the seeds of disappointment and despair have been sown.

We

know that it will only be a matter of time before Frankie's

beautiful dream comes crashing down.

Before moving on to the second section of The Member

 

of the Wedding, I want to say a few words about Carson

 

McCullers' use or nonuse of standard gothic properties.

Al-

though there are no castles and dungeons in the novel,

Frankie does feel as if she has been imprisoned in the kit-

chen which she likens to a "crazy-house" because its walls

are covered with John Henry's "queer, child drawings."

This room is a symbol for Frankie of her isolation and she

is acutely conscious of the fact that she has spent her

entire summer playing cards with John Henry and Berenice

amidst its oppressive heat and gloom.

McCullers uses this

kitchen in a way quite similar to Ann Radcliffe's use of

the castle of Udolpho, since she links Frankie's fear to

268

the atmosphere of the place within which she is confined.

Although she likes John Henry's drawings at first, they

begin to bother her as the summer progresses and by the time

the wedding is announced the entire kitchen looks "strange"

and unfamiliar to her, even frightening.

As Frankie, like Emily St. Aubert, remains cooped up

in the kitchen and locked within her self, the more fright-

ened she becomes about the truth and accuracy of her own

perceptions.

The world seems to be a strange and terrifying

place.

The more isolated she becomes, the more she is

forced to return to the kitchen and to rely on the company

of Berenice and John Henry.

Thus, even though McCullers

does not include a creaky old house in her novel and de-

votes relatively little attention to description of Frank-

ie's house, she still manages to create the atmosphere of

dread and fear so essential to the gothic experience simply

by linking Frankie's emotional traumas to the stifling heat

and depressing air of that crazed kitchen.

Frankie's kit-

chen is her gothic castle.

Like the castle in the works

of Walpole, Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin, it functions as

a symbol of a self turned in upon itself, out off from

others, thus unable to feel at ease with the natural en-

vironment or the human society which it inhabits.

McCullers

uses other gothic props much as she uses

an adaption of the medieval castle.

Although the ghosts

and apparitions of the English version of the form do not

figure in the plot of The Member of the Wedding, they are

 

269

occasionally mentioned when Frankie is particularly afraid

and lonely.

For example, immediately after telling Ber-

enice that she means to go away with her brother and his

bride, she wanders off by herself, unsatisfied with her

attempt to express what troubles her.

She realizes "the

questions she had asked that afternoon had all been the

wrong questions"

and that Berenice had not taken her ser-

iously.

We are told "she could not name the feeling in

her, and she stood there until dark shadows made her think

of ghosts."32

McCullers does not need to develop the

ghosts in greater depth for their simple appearance empha-

sizes the fact that Frankie is alone, afraid, and at the

mercy of her imagination.

The ghosts are, in effect, a

short-hand reference to fear, adapted from the earlier

gothic novels in which supernatural apparitions terrorize

the heroine and set her wandering about the castle in

search of aid.

As I have pointed out before, McCullers also uses

the typical gothic storm in order to create a sense of

foreboding and dread.

Again, however, she does not work

this storm into the plot-but merely includes it as a frag-

ment of Frankie's own imagination or consciousness.

Simply

by mentioning it she immediately calls up all those associ-

ations of storms and impending disasters developed in her

readers as a result of their familiarity with traditional

gothics.

She is thus free to concentrate instead on a

description of the emotional state over which the storm

270

is meant to cast a shadow.

In Carson McCullers' hands

the traditional gothic furniture, which is an integral part

of the plot structure in The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk,

and Melmoth the Wanderer, becomes a kind of short-hand script

 

for easy and immediate characterization of an emotional state

or mood.

These props are no longer truly functional since

they play no part in the action of the narrative nor do

they tell us things we don't already know.

They are, how-

ever, descriptive in an auxilliary sense and they tend to

underscore or emphasize that crucial connection between

the structure of McCullers' novel and those of her prede-

cessors.

Returning to the plot structure of The Member of the

 

Wedding, it is important to note that the second chapter of

the novel seems to be almost a complete reversal of the typ—

ical quest occupying the middle section of the gothic ro-

mance.

Where Emily, Ambrosio, and Melmoth sever nearly all

ties with the outside world and withdraw into castles and

monasteries, Frankie Addams walks out of her haunted kitchen

and begins a day-long journey about town.

She does not

feel out off from the outside world or threatened by every-

thing she sees as most other gothic protagonists do, but

for the first time since early April, senses that she truly

"belongs."

In fact, she no longer calls herself by her

tomboyish, schoolgirl-name, Frankie, but insists instead

that she is really F. Jasmine Addams.

We are told that it

was "because of the wedding, F. Jasmine felt connected with

271

all she saw, and it was as a sudden member that on this

Saturday she went around town. .

. .It was the day when,

from the beginning, the world seemed no longer separate

from herself and when all at once she felt included."33

Buoyed by the awareness that she now has a "we" to claim,

Frankie goes out to meet the world as if protected by new

armor.

Because she no longer feels lost or afraid, her

perception of that world is drastically changed and every-

thing she sees is actually a reflection of her own mental

state.

We learn, for instance, that because of her new

sense of connection Frankie is now able to see her father

differently.

Although she has held a "secret grudge"

against him since June because he declared her too old to

sleep in his bed, she now no longer holds this grudge be-

cause his rejection is negated by her membership in the

wedding.

Similarly, she sees the people of the town in a

new way; she perceives them differently because she feels

differently.

When she sees an old colored man rattling

down the street in a wagon she exchanges glances with him

and detects new meaning in this chance occurrence.

But in that glance, F. Jasmine felt between

his eyes and her own eyes a new unnamable

connection, as though they were known to

each other - and there even came an instant

vision of his home field and country roads

and quiet dark pine trees as the wagon rat-

tled past her on the paved town street.

And she wanted him to know her, too - about

the wedding.34

This feeling of connection dominates her entire morning and

as she moves from place to place, Frankie feels a special

272

link "with a lady, going into MacDougal's store, with a

small man waiting for the bus before the big First National

Bank, [and] with a friend of her father's called Tut Ryan."35

She shares her good fortune with everyone and is joyously

happy during much of the early part of the day.

In a sense,

we might say that Frankie chooses to end her isolation as

Ambrosio and Melmoth cannot, and it would seem that McCullers

thinks it an easy and natural choice which all men need to

make to be happy in this world.

However, even as we are told of Frankie's sense of

oneness with the universe, McCullers interjects another note

of warning, preparing us for the sudden changes about to

occur.

Although the novel is narrated by a third person,

it is told from Frankie's point of View gftgp the action

has been completed.

As a result, we are increasingly made

aware throughout the early pages of the section that some-

thing wholly strange and unexpected eventually destroys

Frankie's sweet euphoria.

We are not yet told what it is,

but it is clear that it involves the red-headed soldier and

the Blue Moon café.

Indeed, when we first meet this soldier,

we don't see him as Frankie did for we are immediately told

of her retrospective point of view which gives him an added

significance he did not have when she first saw him.

It was then she noticed him for the first

time, the soldier who at the very end would

twist so strangely that last, long day.

Later, on thinking back, she tried to recall

some warning hint of future craziness - but

at the time he looked to her like any other

soldier standing at a counter drinking

273

beer....He was one of the thousands of

soldiers who came to town from the camp

near-by.

But as she looked into this

soldier's eyes, in the dim light of the

Blue Moon, she realized that she gazed

at him in a new way.36

By carefully juxtaposing these two very different points of

view, McCullers creates a feeling of dread about that name-

less horror which will soon take place at the same time she

extends our awareness of Frankie's sense of happy expecta-

tion.

She thus manipulates our feelings and sets us up to

experience that same shock which terrifies Frankie herself.

In essence, what McCullers has begun to do here is

to establish that contract between reader and text charac-

teristic of the gothic novel.

We are asked, in short, to

identify with the young heroine and then kept in a state of

semi-ignorance about her fate.

The suspense thus created

only heightens the tension and makes our senses even more

acute.

As a result, we are pulled into the narrative and

exposed, as Frankie's alter ego, to the pain and suffering

inherent in the human condition.

Although the direction of Frankie's journey appears

to be different from the direction followed by Emily,

Ambrosio, and Melmoth, what she encounters on that journey

is remarkably similar to that which the earliest gothic

protagonists discover as a result of their descent into the

self.

Although Emily manages to avoid being deeply affected

by her experiences within Udolpho castle, she is, at least,

forced to acknowledge the very real presence of evil in

274

the form of Laurentini's lust and murder.

Neither Ambrosio

nor Melmoth, however, fare as well as Emily and both are

implicated in the evil that is a natural part of human ex-

istence even though they make a deliberate attempt to be

"different" from other men.

As I have pointed out in

chapter four, it is their desire to be unique and to set

themselves apart from others which finally effects their

personal participation in the evil they so despise.

In

these early gothic novels, in short, the protagonist's

quest eventually results in an initiation into evil which

itself seems to dominate the mood and tone of this quest

section.

Although Frankie's search seems to take her out of

herself and into communication with other men, she is not,

as one might expect, suddenly protected against the dark

forces present in the world and in herself as well.

In

fact, as the day progresses, her journey abroad turns into

a harrowing encounter with sexual passion, violence, and

death.

Her vision of the red-headed soldier signals the

crucial change in mood as Frankie tries to enter the adult

world previously barred to her.

Indeed, when she walks

into the Blue Moon which "the old Frankie had known she had

no valid right to enter," she enters a world still just be-

yond her adolescent comprehension.

As a result of her

encounter with this soldier, a meeting which is prompted

by her desire to belong, Frankie is forced to come to terms

with those aspects of the adult world which are neither

275

comforting nor beautiful.

Frankie is willing to attach herself to this soldier

because he seems interested in her and because she wants

to tell the story of the wedding to someone else.

However,

she is not totally unaware of the fact that he intends

more than simple friendship, for when they walk down the

street together she does not feel "altogether proud."

We

are told that "there was an uneasy doubt that she could not

quite place or name."37

Again, McCullers increases our

sense of dread since we already know this soldier will

have something to do with the fact that Frankie's day

descends into total "craziness."

Frankie herself is on

the verge of dawning awareness for when the soldier flirts

with her she realizes he assumes she is much older than she

is.

This makes her happy for she wants to be grown up, but

we are also told "her pleasure in this was somehow uncer—

tain."

Her sense of uneasiness is increased when the sol-

dier asks her for a date and McCullers is adept at describ-

ing the tension between Frankie's unconscious desire to

remain within the world of childhood innocence and her

longing to move into the adult world which, on this day,

is symbolized for her by the impending connection between

her brother and his fiancée.

On any other day than this it would have

seemed almost impossible that anyone,

much less a soldier, would have invited

her to a date.

The very word, date, was

a grown word used by older girls.

But

here again there was a blight upon her

pleasure.

If he knew she was not yet

276

thirteen, he would never have invited her,

or probably joined with her at all.

There

was a troubled sense, a light uneasiness.

"I don't know -"33

Frankie still doesn't know what she is getting herself into

but she does sense that it is somehow threatening and dan-

gerous.

When she accepts his proposal she is not entirely

happy for the encounter has destroyed "the wedding feeling"

of the early morning.

But she is yet able to dismiss the

whole incident from her mind and to ignore the awareness

which keeps pressing upon her as she returns to the kitchen

and John Henry and Berenice.

The scene which follows is

a lengthy commentary on what Frankie has been seeking

throughout this morning before the wedding and it seems that

McCullers intends it as the thematic center of the novel.

In addition, by delaying Frankie's final encounter with the

soldier, she prolongs our suspense and intensifies the at-

mosphere of dread she has created about Frankie's initiation

into the adult world.

I think it particularly significant that this crucial

discussion between Frankie and Berenice takes place in the

kitcher EEEEE her initial foray into the world, for much of

what Frankie says directly contradicts the feeling of con-

nection which had motivated her wanderings about town.

It

is almost as if Frankie has had to attempt an escape from

her self in order to discover the fact that absolute con-

nection with another is impossible.

She talks with Beren-

ice as one adult to another on this afternoon and the

277

subject they discuss is love.

Because she has fallen in

love with the wedding, she understands something about the

desire to be connected with others and though her under-

standing is yet inarticulate she seems to know what it is

she seeks.

Even though Berenice warns her about the impos-

sibility of fulfilling this desire completely, she will

not listen and continues to cling to her plan to run off

with her brother and his bride.

This is made all the more

poignant by the fact that on one level, she seems to under-

stand that human beings can never wholly overcome their

isolation within the individual self.

Indeed, Frankie

appears to possess a certain adult understanding but it

has not yet affected or controlled her adolescent longings.

Even while she prepares for the wedding, she explains her

new-found understanding to Berenice:

What I've been trying to say is this.

Doesn't it strike you as strange that I

am I, and you are you?

I am F. Jasmine

Addams.

And you are Berenice Sadie Brown.

And we can look at each other, and touch

each other, and stay together year in and

year out in the same room.

Yet always I

am I, and you are you.

And I can't ever

be anything else but me, and you can't

ever be anything else but you.

Have you

ever thought of that?

And does it seem

to you strange?39

Frankie is disturbed by this inability to be anything but

"I" and she wonders about its effects on perception.

She

puzzles over the problem, asking Berenice how people know

they are seeing the same world if they really can't com-

municate with one another.

Berenice, of course, tells her

278

proof is impossible and points out that a certain amount

of faith is necessary if we are to believe we understand

each other's world.

But even though Frankie comprehends

all this, at least subconsciously, she doesn't want to

admit it.

She laments the fact that she is leaving town

and "there are all these people [she] will never know,"

and when Berenice asks her exactly who she wants to know,

her reply is simple and childishly naive.

She answers,

"Everybody.

In the world.

Everybody in the world."40

Still, she is frustrated by the fact that she cannot

express all she has begun to understand, and we are told

her unsaid words stick in her throat and make her sick.

She alternates throughout the rest of the conversation be-

tween black despair and frenzied exaltation about the wed-

ding and at one point contradicts what she has just said

to Berenice.

As she grows more and more hysterical with

joy over the prospect of going away with her brother and

his bride, she blurts out, "We will belong to so many

clubs that we can't even keep track of all of them," adding,

”We will be members of the whole world.

Boyoman!

Mano-

boy

!"41

Part of Frankie still wants to believe that union

with others is possible, but this belief is gradually being

shoved aside by her growing awareness that it is impossible

to escape from the self.

However, even in her last ex-

change with Berenice, she still insists there must be some

kind of connection between men.

At this point, Berenice

has begun to understand what Frankie is driving at, and

279

she puts it in her own words:

We all of us somehow caught.

We born this

way or that way and we don't know why.

But

we caught anyhow.

I born Berenice.

You

born Frankie.

John Henry born John Henry.

And maybe we wants to widen and bust free.

But no matter what we do we still caught.

Me is me and you is you and he is he.

We

each of us somehow caught all by ourself.

Is that what you was trying to say?42

Frankie isn't sure but she does know she doesn't want to

be caught and her final comments to Berenice indicate once

again that she refuses to believe isolation is total.

In

thinking about Berenice's question Frankie considers the

notion of being "caught" and decides it isn't quite what

she means.

She thinks she understands what Berenice says

but she adds, "at the same time you almost might use the

word loose instead of caught."

When Berenice is under-

standably puzzled, Frankie explains:

I mean you don't see what joins them up

toqether.

You don't know where they all

came from, or where they're going to....

People loose and at the same time caught.

Caught and loose.

All these people and

you don't know what joins them up.

There's

bound to be some sort of reason and con-

nection.

Yet somehow I can't seem to name

it.

Frankie is not yet ready to admit that connection is not

possible and she still believes there is reason behind the

apparent craziness in the universe.

She no longer wants

to think about the paradox of being caught and loose and

finally confesses to Berenice that the wedding is her

escape.

"After we leave Winter Hill," she says, "I won't

have to worry about things anymore."44

280

But even before she can escape with her brother and

the bride, Frankie must carry out her rendezvous with the

red-headed soldier, a meeting she is now afraid may prove

to be a mistake.

From the first, things do not go as she

would like and she finds herself distressed by a queer-

ness she cannot place or understand.

Of course, the pain

of the episode is heightened for the reader who is aware of

the soldier's sexual intentions even though Frankie her-

self is not.

Again, however, awareness is just below the

surface and when he leads her upstairs, Frankie is sure

something is wrong.

What is wrong is that all she wants

from this soldier is a general sense of companionship and

connection; what he thinks she wants and is willing to

give is sexual intimacy.

As fear takes charge of Frankie,

she feels threatened by the soldier whom she now sees as

an isolated "single person" and "not as a member of the

loud free gangs who for a season roamed the streets of

town and then went out into the world together."45

In

short, what Frankie and the soldier have become is an "I"

and a "you" and both are wholly separate from each other.

This separateness frightens Frankie and for a moment she

is paralyzed.

But as soon as he reaches for her, she hits

him.over the head with a water pitcher and he crumples to

the ground, apparently dead.

Immediately thereafter Frankie

is overwhelmed by a knowledge which threatens her childhood

peace and she tries to ignore the images that come flooding

over her.

Even though all her previous encounters with

281

sex are immediately conjured up together, she absolutely

refuses to acknowledge what they suggest.

As McCullers

says, "There slanted across her mind twisted remembrances

of a common fit in the front room, basement remarks, and

nasty Barney; but she did not let these separate glimpses

fall together, and the word she repeated was 'crazy.'"46

Frankie is not yet ready to come to terms with her own sex-

uality or to understand that even though man may physically

connect with another, he can never escape from the prison

of the self in which he is confined.

As a result, she

rushes back home, sits very close to her father, and drinks

sweetened condensed milk to wash away the disgust she feels.

Slowly her "anxiousness" is eased and terror begins to sub-

side.

The "quest section" concludes as Frankie tells her-

self, "I'll never be so glad to get to any place in all

my life as Winter Hill tomorrow.

I will be so thankful

when the wedding is over and we have gone away.

I will be

so thankful."47

As I am sure it must be clear by now, while Carson

McCullers makes use of the typical gothic quest in The

Member of the Wedding, she also manipulates it sufficiently

 

to alter its significance.

Where Emily, Ambrosio, and Mel—

moth begin their quests as isolated beings, Frankie is

determined to end the isolation she feels and she sets out

on her journey to establish connection with others.

By

contrast, the "journeys" undertaken by Emily, Ambrosio,

and Melmoth all draw them farther away from the beneficent

282

influence of human society and they are confronted with a

choice between eternal isolation or connection with a world

drastically flawed by evil.

Emily, of course, chooses con-

nection, while Ambrosio and Melmoth continue to assert

their own individuality and thus choose isolation.

The end

is the same, however, for in each novel we are told that no

matter how imperfect a solution connection is, it is the

only viable one since absolute isolation leads only to

violence and death.

Frankie Addams appears to be one step beyond these

earlier gothic protagonists, for she chooses connection even

before the second section of the novel begins.

But strangely

enough, she discovers at the end of her search that connec-

tion itself is fleeting, sometimes ugly and violent, wholly

inadequate to the task of banishing the loneliness she

whishes to repudiate.

McCullers seems to suggest by this

that the choice so glibly marked off by the earlier gothic

novelists is not a choice at all, since isolation is man's

unavoidable human condition.

She appears to say the indi—

vidual will is powerless to effect escape from this fate

because even the decision to share one's happiness with

another leads ultimately to violence and death.

The vision

of this second section of The Member of the Wedding is

 

extraordinarily bleak and it seems, at least at this point,

that the "meaning” behind McCullers' gothic tale is diamet-

rically opposed to that set forth in The Castle of Otranto,

 

The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk, and Melmoth the Wanderer.

 

 

283

This verdict, however, is not final, for the third section

of the novel has not yet been played out nor has Frankie

gone to the wedding.

The third and final section of the novel opens as

Frankie, now referred to as Frances, prepares to go to the

wedding.

But almost before the description of her prepar-

ation and journey is completed, we are told that the affair

has ended in a complete fiasco for everyone concerned.

McCullers is careful to give us Frankie's perceptions and

what seems to surprise her more than anything else is the

fact that she has not been able to control what happens

to her.

As she sits on the bus returning home, she thinks

back on the wedding which now seems as "unmanaged as a

nightmare" because "all that came about occurred in a world

beyond her power."

48

Slowly, the details of the wrecked

occasion are revealed and it becomes clear that despite her

decision to run off with the bride and groom, she has not

even been able to tell them of her need or her plan.

She

wishes now that she had written down what she wanted to say

for that might have changed things.

As it was, they called

her Frankie instead of F. Jasmine and treated her as a child.

Thinking back, she decides "there was from first to last,

the sense of something terribly gone wrong."

49

We finally

learn that even at the moment when the newly married couple

was about to drive away, Frankie could not tell them that

they were her "we" and she had to be dragged from.the car

crying "Take me, take me."

When Berenice tries to cheer

284

her up we discover for the first time how the entire inci-

dent has affected Frankie herself:

The baby promises rasped her nerves.

Her

cheap heart hurt, and she pressed her

crossed arms over it and rocked a little.

'It was a framed game.

The cards were

50

stacked.

It was a frame-up all around.‘

Frankie's pain is acute.

No matter what scheme Berenice

proposes, she is inconsolable.

But her hurt soon turns to

anger and she plans to run away to spite them all.

"You

think its all over," she says to Berenice and John Henry,

"but that only shows how little you know."

51

Frankie de-

cides that even if she can't go into the world "safe with

her brother and the bride" she will undertake the frighten-

ing venture by herself.

In a sense, she is right back

where she started at the beginning of the second section

for she still refuses to rest content with the isolation

she feels.

That night Frankie runs away but in the midst of her

flight she realizes she doesn't even know how to hop a train.

She wanders through town instead carrying her father's pis-

tol intending to shoot herself with it.

She changes her

mind, however, and continues to wander, growing ever more

afraid.

Images of death plague her consciousness and she

sees Lon Baker's slashed throat and the red-headed soldier's

slumped body.

Her longing for company is so great that she

thinks she sees her missing cat and then imagines a strange

couple is really her brother and his bride come to take her

with them.

Both visions fade, however, and Frankie decides

285

instead to see if the soldier has survived her "attack"

and to ask him to marry her if he has.

But as she walks

toward the Blue Moon, the adult knowledge she sought to

escape earlier dawns once again and this time she cannot

ignore what she now comprehends.

The separate recollec-

tions of the fit in the front room, the silence of the

soldier's hotel room, and the nasty talk behind the gar-

age suddenly fall together "as shafting searchlights meet

in the night sky upon an aeroplane, so that in a flash

there came in her an understanding."52

Each separate en-

counter with sex now illuminates the other and the sudden

recognition produces in her "a feeling of cold surprise"

which only increases her fear and forces her to admit to

herself that she is too scared to go into the world alone.

No sooner has she admitted her dependence, however,

than she is grabbed by the arm of "the Law."

Although the

policeman only wants to return her to her father, Frankie

assumes she will be jailed for killing the soldier or for

stealing from Sears and Roebuck.

Although she's not sure

why she has been captured, she is not surprised for "the

crimes of the long spring and summer merge together as

one guilt which she had lost the power to understand."53

Frankie feels guilty and, in a sense, she is.

Because of

her journey into the world, she has been implicated in the

violence which plagues human society.

She has become

acquainted with evil and death and finally initiated into

the adult world.

When "the Law" asks where she is going,

286

Frankie cannot answer because the world now seems incred-

ibly far away.

It is obvious that she is now forced to

acknowledge the human isolation that cannot be denied:

Between herself and all the places there

was a space like an enormous canyon she

could not hope to bridge or cross.

The

plans for the movies or the Marines were

only child plans that would never work....

It was better to be in a jail where you

could bang the walls than in a jail you

could not see.

The world was too far away,

and there was no way any more that she

could be included.

She was back to the

fear of the summertime, the old feelings

that the world was separate from herself -

and the failed wedding had quickened the

fear to terror....In the blue light she

felt queer as a person drowning.

At last

she was staring at the Law and finally he

looked into her eyes.

He looked at her

with eyes as china as a doll's and in them

there was only the reflection of her own

lost face.54

What Frankie now sees when she exchanges glances with an-

other is not his past or his private world but only her

own reflection.

She cannot connect with anyone in the Blue

Moon because all are isolated within their own skins and

she is finally forced to relinquish her dream of discover-

ing and possessing the "we of me."

In the end, there is

no choice between separation and connection in the world

of The Member of the Wedding because all men are "caught"

 

within themselves and thus cut "loose" from others to roam

about the world alone.

But Frankie does not perish as a result of her new-

found awareness, which is as significant as the fact that

her quest ends in disappointment and despair.

She returns

287

home, survives John Henry's death and prepares to leave

Berenice as she moves to a new house.

We are told she has

a new friend, Mary Littlejohn, and that they plan to travel

around the world together.

Particularly important to

Frankie is the fact that Mary is a Catholic for "this dif-

ference was a final touch of strangeness, silent terror,

that completed the wonder of her love."

In this last,

55

very short section of the novel it is clear that Frankie

does feel a connection with Mary but that connection is

tempered by fear and by the sad recollection of John Henry's

death.

The two are linked together in her mind for both

changes have come about in October.

Her memory of John

Henry's suffering and pain is interlaced with her joyful

recollections of the fair just as her happiness at having

a friend is still shadowed by her fear of loneliness and

death:

It was the time of the Fair and a big

banner arched the main street and for

six days and nights the Fair went on

down at the fairground....As the bright

days followed one upon the other, the

words of Berenice became so terrible that

she would listen in a spell of horror,

but a part of her could not believe.

John Henry had been screaming for three

days and his eyeballs were walled up in

a corner stuck and blind.

He lay there

finally with his head drawn back in a

buckled way, and he had lost the strength

to scream.

He died the Tuesday after the

Fair was gone, a golden morning of t2e

most butterflies, the clearest sky.s

As October fades into November, Frankie is able to remember

John Henry as he used to be and her days are filled with

288

"radar, school and Mary Littlejohn."

She is no longer

bothered by nightmares and only at "twilight time" or when

a room grows especially quiet does she feel John Henry's

presence - "solemn, hovering and ghost-gray."

It is, of

course, significant that the novel ends at such a twilight

when the geranium glow fades from the sky and "the last

pale colors. . .crushed and cold on the horizon" intrude

on Frankie's babbling about her plans to go around the

world with Mary Littlejohn.

But the terrible resulting

hush does not last for long because Mary rings the door-

bell and "an instant shock of happiness" courses through

Frankie once again.

In the gothic world of Carson McCullers

temporary connection between separate human beings is pos-

sible and when it occurs it produces happiness, joy, and

contentment.

But such connection is only temporary and the

wonder it creates is thus always intermingled with the pain

and suffering produced by the knowledge that isolation is

inescapable and death itself unavoidable.

In the last analysis I find the similarities between

The Member of the Wedding and The Monk and Melmoth the

   

Wanderer more striking than those between McCullers' novel

and Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho.

Even though the plot

 

structure of this twentieth century gothic seems to echo

Radcliffe's work, I think the vision it sets forth is act-

ually much closer to that of the two later gothics written

by Matthew Lewis and Charles Robert Maturin.

McCullers

manages to darken Radcliffe's vision of the world by making

289

structural changes in the progress of the narrative which

contribute to the creation of a more satisfying work be-

cause they eliminate some of the disturbing contradictions

between plot and subplot evident in both Melmoth and Eng

929.21;-

Although McCullers' focus, like Radcliffe's, is on

the psychic state of a young heroine as she confronts the

evil present in the world, McCullers conceives the con-

frontation itself in a different way and at a different

time.

In The Mysteries of Udolpho, while Emily St. Aubert

 

is forced into isolation by others, she makes the condi-

tion worse by allowing her imagination to run wild.

Once

she can control her fantasies with a deliberate act of the

will, she recognizes the dangers inherent in extreme iso-

lation and chooses to end hers by forgiving Valancourt his

transgressions and by consenting to join with him in mar-

riage.

Although evil does exist in the world of Udolpho,

it is clearly separate from good and the choice between

the two is presented as a necessary and relatively simple

one to make.

On the other hand;-by focusing on Frankie only gftgp

she has acknowledged that isolation is both painful and

destructive, McCullers considers whether the choice "recom-

mended" by Radcliffe is actually a choice at all.

Because

she alters the direction of Frankie's journey and presents

it as a physical journey outward intg the world, she is

able to underscore the terrible fact that even in the face

290

of a deliberate decision to establish connection with

others, individual isolation is utterly inescapable.

Frankie too confronts the evil abroad in the universe,

but she discovers its presence because she attempts to

deny or negate her imprisonment within the self not be-

cause she wallows in it.

Once she recognizes that she

will always be "caught" and "loose," Frankie is able to

withstand the pain produced by her initiation into evil

and death and, in spite of that pain, learns to establish

temporary connection with others.

The world Frankie joins

at the end of The Member of the Wedding is a morally am-

 

biguous world where good can only exist as the opposite

of evil, a world where human isolation cannot be denied

though the loneliness it produces may be temporarily as-

suaged in fleeting moments of connection and communication

with others.

Although a marriage takes place in McCullers'

novel, in no way can it be said to contradict or alter the

meaning of Frankie's fate, for Jarvis and Janice never be-

come characters in their own right nor are they ever dealt

with except as they affect Frankie herself.

In fact, be-

cause their union serves to emphasize Frankie's "I-ness,"

we might argue that the marriage is meant to demonstrate

once again that happiness is inextricably intertwined with

pain and connection always marred by isolation.

Finally, it seems to me, the significance of Frankie's

story is closely related to the meaning of the primary

plots of The Monk and Melmoth even though the latter two

291

novels are preoccupied with the sins of an outstanding

villain-hero, not with a beautiful young heroine and her

initiation into evil.

Because of extreme egotism and faith

in the power of the individual will, both Ambrosio and Mel-

moth choose to set themselves apart from their fellow men.

As a result of their decision they are implicated in the

violence and evil of the world and finally destroyed.

De-

spite this ultimate destruction, however, Lewis and Maturin

create complex protagonists who are extraordinarily talented

and capable of tenderness and affection.

I think they mean

to suggest by this that good and evil are not so easily

distinguishable as Radcliffe teaches nor is the choice be-

tween the two as clear-cut as she would like.

Nevertheless,

both authors dwell on the evil deeds of their villain-heroes

and the resulting tone of the two novels seems to suggest

that evil and death are more powerful than the forces of

good and thus the dominating powers in the universe.

Fur-

thermore, because Lewis and Maturin seem to contrast the

fate of Ambrosio and Melmoth with that of fairly well de-

veloped characters who marry at the end of the subplots,

it seems both are reestablishing, at least to a certain ex-

tent, the distinctions between good and evil they had

sought to discredit in their presentations of the two major

characters.

In fact, I think the resulting tension between

plot and subplot diminishes the power of both novels since

the vision of the world as a morally ambiguous place pre-

sented through the characterizations of Ambrosio and Melmoth

292

is contradicted by the "happy ending" and resolution pro-

vided in the secondary narrative.

Because McCullers

trains her gaze on Frankie to the very end, she does not

resolve the polarities she establishes into clear-cut

opposites and thus is able to maintain a subtle balance

between good and evil and between isolation and connection

within the same individual.

Frankie is not destroyed by

 

her isolation nor is she punished for injuring or killing

the soldier, but, on the other hand, neither is she re-

warded with the connection she seeks.

Life, for Frances

Addams, in the gothic world of The Member of the Wedding,

 

is simultaneously a painful journey in search of an impos-

sible union and a pleasing contentment provided by the

attentions of a temporary friend.

In the end, The Member of the Wedding is a direct

 

descendent of the English gothic novel of the eighteenth

century In? virtue of its general plot structure, the

relationship between the protagonist and the world that it

explores and the narrative contract between reader and text

which it establishes.

Although she does not use a castle

or even an old, dilapidated house, McCullers does create

an ominous mood as well as an atmosphere of suspense and

dread and manages to involve her reader in the action of

the narrative.

She consistently drops hints or clues about

what is to happen in the future and then deliberatley with-

holds actual disclosure to the last possible moment.

She

forces the reader to fall back on the hermeneutic code to

293

make sense of the halting motion of the text and she care-

fully structures the narrative point of view so the reader

will sympathize with the heroine's struggles.

She places

this heroine in a position of isolation and follows her as

she attempts to come to terms with the alien world she sees

about her.

Although McCullers changes the direction of

her seeker's quest, her concern in using the quest is the

same for she explores the possibilities for human connec-

tion in the world and the effect such may have on man's

isolated condition.

However, because she alters Frankie's

movements and allows her to attempt connection and to fail,

her conclusions are somewhat different from those of Rad-

cliffe, Lewis, and Maturin.

The significance of the stru-

tures presented in The Member of the Wedding seems to be

 

that moral ambiguity is at the foundation of life in this

world, since at no time does McCullers ever resolve polar-

ities into diametrically opposed, easily-distinguished

moral opposites.

In her presentation of twelve-year-old

Frankie Addams, Carson McCullers is able to suggest that

truth about the universe which Lewis and Maturin can only

hint at in their complex-characterizations of Ambrosio and

Melmoth and which they ultimately dilute with the "happily-

ever-after" ending of the secondary narrative.

Her vision

is darker, finally, because of the key structural change

she makes in the gothic quest and because she refuses to

counter Frankie's story with a parallel tale of two lovers

who achieve the union Frankie is denied.

294

The Gothic WOrld of William

 

Faulkner's Sanctuary

 

In attempting to place William Faulkner's Sancturay

within the gothic tradition, it is not enough to point out

that the novel establishes the necessary contract between

reader and text or concerns itself with the relationship

between the individual will and collective social institu-

tions and conventions.

While Sanctuary does clearly man-

 

age both these tasks, it also deforms the standard gothic

plot structure to such a degree that few would feel jus-

tified in defining this work as a "gothic novel."

However,

despite the changes Faulkner makes in his cast of charac-

ters and in the outward action of the narrative, Sancturay

is still based on the structures created in Otranto, Udol-

 

png, and Melmoth and it depends for much of its effect on

the reader's prior acquaintance with gothic conventions and

clichés.

The significance of Temple Drake's destruction,

for example, is rendered largely ironic by the fact that

the function she fills in the structure of the narrative

is that performed by the typical gothic heroine.

She is

forced into isolation by some representative of evil,

threatened with rape and death, and eventually presented

with a choice between individual pleasure and moral respon-

sibility to others.

However, Faulkner thwarts our expec-

tations governing this gothic role at every turn, permitting

Temple to be raped and finally corrupted, and consequently,

her characterization functions as a kind of commentary on

295

the vision of the female heroine generally presented in

works by Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and Charles Robert

Maturin.

Throughout the novel, Faulkner begins with the ster-

eotypic gothic characters and the usual confrontations

which occur between them, fills those roles with highly

unusual individuals, often reverses the nature of the res-

olution effected, and thus radically alters the final sig-

nificance of the narrative as a whole.

Because the varia-

tions Faulkner weaves into the standard gothic theme are

almost more important than the original theme itself,

Sanctuary appears to be very far removed from The Castle

 

 

of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and even from Mel-

 

moth the Wanderer.

Still, those variations are variations

 

on a theme and their meaning derives as much from their

 

relationship to the theme as from the distance established

between them and the original air itself.

In paraphrasing

Roland Barthes' comments on the modern literary text, Jon-

athan Culler has written that "subversion requires a

Chiaroscuro.

«57

His remark can be fruitfully applied to

D

Faulkner's Sanctuary and‘its relationship to the genre of

 

the gothic romance.

It is easy to see that Sanctuary is

 

not the same novel as either The Mysteries of Udolpho or

 

Melmoth the Wanderer since it obviously defies the conven-

 

tions of those novels and thus subverts much of what is

"said" in them.

Yet Faulkner does defy conventions in

 

Sanctuary, and the significance of his defiance is only

 

296

made clear when it is considered against the background

of what he "should" have done in using the conventions of

an already fully worked-out form.

Consequently, in my

analysis of the various actants and actions which domin-

ate Sanctuary, I will try to make continuing reference to

 

the standard characters and events standing at the center

of those works defined as classic examples of the genre.

Where most gothic novels focus on a single character

to the exclusion of all others appearing in the narrative,

the fabric of Faulkner's complex text is woven of three

different skeins, each of which is dominated by a fairly

well developed individual whose function in the novel de-

rives from one of the three principal roles found in all

standard gothic tales.

As a result, it is impossible to

say that Sanctuary is only the story of Horace Benbow or

 

of Temple Drake or even of Popeye himself, for their fates

are so intricately intertwined that the meaning of one can-

not be completely paraphrased without referring to the

meaning of the others.

Temple is, as I have said, modeled

after the typical gothic heroine in that she is young,

"virginal," and unfamiliar with the adult world.

However,

Sanctuary is not simply the story of Temple's initiation

 

into the world for, although that process is chronicled

at length, Faulkner also devotes a great deal of attention

to Horace Benbow and pig confrontation with evil.

Horace

resembles the standard hero by virtue of his opposition

to the individual who threatens the heroine, but his primary

297

goal in the novel is not to rescue Temple but rather to

acquit the man wrongfully accused of her defilement.

Thus,

the hero and heroine of Faulkner's gothic tale are not pre-

sented as lovers nor even remotely connected as a couple.

Instead, the function each fills in the novel is defined

by the nature of his or her relationship to Popeye, the

villain figure of the story.

As a result, Temple is

initially delineated for us as his "victim" while Horace

is portrayed as his opponent.

Popeye is clearly the representative of evil essen-

tial to the form but, unlike other gothic villains who func-

tion as the protagonist of the narrative, he does not possess

any redeeming qualities of excellence or superiority to war-

rant our identification with him.

Nevertheless, he is of

central concern in the novel, and Faulkner increases the

significance of his fate by including that last chapter

which apparently accounts for much of what he does through-

out the narrative.

However, not only does that description

of Popeye's past "explain" his evil nature, but it also

places him in a situation not unlike that of Temple, Hor-

ace, or other gothic protagonists.

All three are, in short,

symbolically cut off from the rest of society as the novel

opens and virtually everything they do throughout the course

of the narrative is the result of a quest--a search for a

human connection or for an explanation of why such connec-

tion is rendered impossible by the evil inherent in the

universe.

Faulkner's gothic tale is, then, the story of

298

three lonely seekers, all of whom have embarked on quests

in pursuit of some absolute, and the meaning of the tale

is the product of the integration he works out among these

three separate journeys.

Even though Faulkner begins Sanctuary from Popeye's

 

point of view and closes with Temple's musings as she sits

on a Parisian park bench, Horace Benbow stands both physic-

ally and thematically at the center of the novel.

Indeed,

it is his perceptions which dominate the middle section of

the book and it is with him that we as readers are most

consistently asked to identify.

When Popeye and Temple

first appear, Faulkner describes them in such a way that

we are immediately distanced by the fact that both seem

slightly sinister and threatening.

While Popeye's skin

has "a dead, dark pallor" and his face fades away "like

the face of wax doll set too near a hot fire and forgot-

ten,"

Temple has a "bold painted mouth and soft chin,"

58

blank eyes, and is described generally as "cool, predatory,

and discreet."59

On the other hand, Horace Benbow is

initially characterized as a "tall, thin man, hatless, in

worn gray flannel trousers and carrying a tweed coat over

his arm. . ."60

His essential harmlessness is underscored

by the fact that he immediately antagonizes Popeye and in-

curs his wrath.

Faulkner thus uses this initial altercation to estab-

lish an opposition between these two characters and to set

the scene for the confrontation between the two which will

299

inevitably materialize.

Although Horace and Popeye never

see each other again after this chance meeting, their

fates become as intertwined as if Popeye had committed a

crime against Horace himself.

The crimes he does commit,

however, do not occur until the thirteenth chapter of the

book and the battle is not actually joined until the six-

teenth chapter, when Horace accepts the task of trying to

get Goodwin acquitted of the crime he knows Popeye commit-

ted.

As a result, despite his early preoccupation with

this stand-off between Horace, the lawyer and defender of

social institutions, and Popeye, the gangster and social

outcast, Faulkner devotes over one hundred pages, between

their first encounter and ultimate confrontation, to a

third character, Temple Drake who, at least initially, has

no connection to either man.

When we first meet Temple Drake, she is precariously

poised on that thin line separating social acceptibility

from social ostracism.

As a college girl she lives within

one of the human community's principal institutions designed

for socialization of its young--the school--and although

she participates in some of its conventions, she also flirts

with expulsion by defying others.

Temple dates college

boys and attends formal college dances but at the same time

she breaks curfew rules and runs around with town boys in

forbidden automobiles.

On the day the central story of

Sanctuary begins, Temple escapes from school to run off

 

unchaperoned with Gowan Stevens to a baseball game.

300

However, this time her refusal to abide by social conven-

tions gets her into serious trouble.

When Gowan gets drunk,

she is forced to sever all ties with the community from

which she thinks she has only temporarily escaped.

Then,

when he runs the car into a tree, Temple has no understand-

ing of the fact that she has, in some sense, chosen her

own fate.

At the moment the crash occurs, she thinks of

the event as "the logical and disastrous end to the train

of circumstance in which she had become involved."61

Temple does not see that she has actively chosen to dis-

obey rules established for the protection of the group

against the excesses of the few, and she sees herself as

a passive victim of Gowan's wanton behavior.

She continues to think of herself as a victim once

she is "captured" by Popeye and held "prisoner" within the

Old Frenchman place even though she makes no attempt to V

escape.

I use these words deliberately to point out the

similarities which exist between Temple's situation and

that of every gothic heroine, since Faulkner's use of the

isolated, ominous old house recalls the standard use of

the gothic castle and Temple's stay there echoes the typ-

ical incarceration of the heroine by the villain.

Indeed,

Temple's refusal to walk up to the house is understandable

considering the way it first looms up out of the distance.

Faulkner's description is meant to deliberatley evoke recol-

lections of all those gloomy castles and forbidding mon-

asteries which dominate the uninviting landscapes of the

301

earliest gothic novels.

The house came into sight, above the cedar

grove beyond whose black interstices an

apple orchard flaunted in the suny after-

noon.

It was set in a ruined lawn, sur-

rounded by abandoned grounds and fallen

outbuildings.

But nowhere was any sign

of husbandry - plow or tool; in no direc-

tion was a planted field in sight - only

a gaunt weatherstained ruin in a sombre

grove through which the breeze drew with

a sad, murmurous sound.62

Like most other gothic houses this one is occupied

by a group of people who comprise a strange and disordered

family unit.

Goodwin and Ruby, for example, are not

married and their sickly child is a bastard.

In addition,

they take care of a blind and crippled old man and a half-

wit named Tommy, and are joined by Popeye himself who lives

with them from time to time to supervise Goodwin's work.

Goodwin, it seems, is a moonshiner and is thus engaged in

systematic defiance of society and its laws.

In fact, all

the inhabitants of the Old Frenchman place live outside

the conventional boundaries of "pleasant" society.

It is

ultimately into their midst that Temple is thrown.

However, it is essential to point out that despite

the position some of these people occupy in relation to

respectable society, they are perhaps the most civilized

figures in the book.

Ruby and Goodwin, for example, love

each other and both go out of their way at different times

to assist each other when aid is most needed.

Similarly,

although Tommy does not understand much of what goes on

around him, he senses Temple's fear and tries to protect

302

her by hiding her in the barn.

Thus, although Faulkner

peoples his gothic house with typical social rejects and

rebels, he also endows those outcasts with a moral sense

found curiously lacking in the more respectable characters

of the story, including Temple herself.

However, Faulkner

does not divulge this information until later.

When Temple

is first taken to the house she appears to be isolated from

all that is familiar to her, and forced to cope with an

amoral situation that is not governed by social rules or

conventional behavior.

Temple's experience with men prior to her encounter

with Popeye and the others at the house has been at least

partially controlled by the rigid conventions which pre-

scribe the proper behavior for a young Southern girl.

Be-

cause of her upbringing, Temple is learned in the art of

coquetry and knows very well how to tease, excite and deny.

However, she does not understand that this behavior func-

tions only because it is part of a larger context which it-

self is determined by concomitant social conventions and,

as a result of her ignorance, gets herself into even more

serious trouble.

Although she certainly does not will her

own rape or acquiesce in it, she does engage in the one

form of behavior guaranteed to arouse and enrage these men,

who live outside the bounds of the only society she knows.

As Olga Vickery has pointed out, Temple's sexual teasing

is an accepted and safe form of behavior in her own world

but it becomes a highly dangerous taunt when used in the

303

context of the Old Frenchman place.

63

Because her behavior

does not elicit the expected response, Temple is thrown

into a state of utter confusion.

She is forced to rely

upon her own individual resources and as she grows ever

more hysterical, she loses her ability to distinguish be-

tween those she ought to fear and those who present no

threat at all.

For example, she is terrified of Goodwin

who wants nothing to do with her and she is horribly

frightened by Pap who cannot even see who she is.

How-

ever, she does flirt with Popeye, the one really danger-

ous man on the premises.

Like all gothic heroines, Temple

is cut off from familiar society, forced to turn inward,

and thus frightened because all she sees around her sud-

denly appears alien and totally "other."

The first thirteen chapters of Sanctuary take place

 

in and around the Old Frenchman house and Faulkner accord-

ingly devotes most of his attention to creating that

special atmosphere of mystery and dread associated with the

gothic castle.

While very little actually does happen in

these chapters, Temple, like Emily St. Aubert, imagines

and anticipates all sorts of things and is alternately over-

come by hysterical fear of the men and attracted to them

because of the violence and rebellion of their lives.

It

is this fascination with evil which seems to keep Temple

at the house for she makes no attempt to escape even when

Ruby impresses her with the necessity of doing so.

Because

she continues to stay and taunt the men, the tension

304

increases to the point where we are absolutely sure some-

thing must happen.

Faulkner expertly manipulates this

feeling of certainty when he has Goodwin, Popeye and

Tommy stand over the undressed Temple and demand only

her raincoat.64

When they leave her as abruptly as they

have materialized, it appears as if the "heroine" will be

protected as she always is in the gothic novel and that

she will escape with both her virginity and her life.

But

no sooner has Faulkner lulled us into a complacency bred

by familiarity with the standard gothic plot structure than

he shocks us by thwarting the expectations he has raised

and by permitting the unthinkable to occur.

Just when Temple thinks she is safe from Lee Goodwin,

Popeye approaches her from the rear, kills Tommy who is

protecting her from imagined danger, and then attacks Temple

herself.

Faulkner does not tell us exactly what happens

here but rather focuses on Temple's frame of mind as she

realizes Popeye is standing in the corncrib.

Although she

is clearly terrified, she keeps repeating "something is

going to happen to me. . .something is happening to me.

.

.

.I told you it was. .

.I told you. .

.I told you all

the time," and she almost seems to exult over the fact that

she has now provoked the violence which so fascinated and

attracted her.

Unlike Emily St. Aubert who eventually

does escape consummation with evil, Temple Drake's ambival-

ence brings about that which she has both feared and desired,

an act which finally effects her complete isolation from

305

the social community of her adolescent past and marks her

initiation into Popeye's amoral world.

In the fifteenth chapter when the narrative returns

to town and respectable society, the focus of the novel

shifts from Temple Drake to Horace Benbow.

This change

in perspective is unheard of in the standard gothic novel

but Faulkner manages the shift and at the same time con-

tinues to write a "gothic" story.

While I have previously

characterized Horace as the "hero" of the novel, it is

necessary to point out that in many ways he also resembles

the typical gothic heroine.

Although he is married and

close to middle age, he is isolated from his family, an

innocent wandering about in a world he cannot comprehend.

He is an innocent for he still believes in the high-minded

abstractions of honor, truth, and justice, nor does he

understand that such ideals are unerringly compromised in

the real world.

He defends Lee Goodwin because he knows

he did not kill Tommy just as he shelters Ruby because he

understands she loves Lee and sympathizes with her.

It

does not matter to Horace that Lee is black and lives with

a woman who is not his wife because Horace cares little

about social conventions and taboos.

He is, in short, set

up in direct opposition to his sister Narcissa whom we

first see dressed in white "with that serene and stupid

impregnability of heroic statuary."65

Narcissa symbolizes

all that is most respectable in white, Southern society

and when Horace urges her to consider the reality of Ruby's

306

situation, she absolutely refuses.66

Since Narcissa and

the other white, Christian ladies of the town live their

lives and judge the lives of others according to rigid

social principles, Ruby's human need can never erase the

fact that she lives in sin with a nigger.

But Horace re-

fuses to be cowed by his sister's "imperviousness," con-

tinues to mount Goodwin's defense, and challenges the

society to which he belongs and whose laws he is trained

to defend.

Faulkner brilliantly plays off Horace's encounter with

his sister's rigidity and her society's civilized violence

against two related themes which appear intermittently

throughout the rest of the novel and which underscore Hor-

ace's growing sense of despair and disillusionment with life

in the real world.

The events in Sanctuary take place in

 

late May and early June just as the delicacies of Spring

give way to the fully-developed, almost violently vital

growth of summer.

Faulkner's first description of the

heaven-tree near the jail is particularly significant for

it is through Horace's reaction to this tree that he chron-

icles his increasing estrangement from the world in which

he finds himself.

We are told "the last trumpet-shaped

bloom had fallen from the heaven-tree at the corner of the

jail yard," and that "they lay thick, viscid underfoot,

sweet and oversweet in the nostrils with a sweetness surfei-

tive and moribund, and at night now the ragged shadow of

full-fledged leaves pulsed upon the barred window in shabby

307

rise and fall."67

Later, Faulkner characterizes these full-grown leaves

as "the ragged grief" of the heaven-tree and he likens the

fallen blossoms to blood by describing them as a "viscid

smear."

What is most significant, however, about this is

68

that Horace is irritated by the tree's natural growth and

at one point complains, "they ought to clean that damn mess

off the sidewalk. .

. Damn. Damn. Damn."69

We are meant

to recuperate these descriptions symbolically, for Faulkner

juxtaposes the decay of the trumpet-shaped blooms of the

heaven-tree with the moral decay of organized religion as

it exists in the Baptist Church.

For instance, immedi-

ately after the tree is first described Horace angrily

recounts for Miss Jenny what has been going on down town

after Goodwin's arrest.

He is particularly outraged by the

fact that so-called "Christians" are more hypocritical than

those they condemn:

They knew what he was doing, but they waited

until he was down.

Then they all jumped on

him.

The good customers that had been buy-

ing whiskey from him and drinking all that

he would give them free and maybe trying to

make love to his wife behind his back.

You

should hear them downtown.

This morning

the Baptist minister took him for a text.

Not only as a murderer, but as an adulterer;

a pollutor of the free Democratico-Protestant

atmosphere of Yoknapatawpha county.

I

gathered that his idea was that Goodwin and

the woman should both be burned as a sole

example to that child; the child to be reared

and taught the English language for the sole

end of being taught that it was begot in sin

by two people who suffered by fire for having

begot it.

Good God, can a man, a civilized

man, seriously. .

. .70

308

But Faulkner's point is precisely what Horace can't yet

say aloud--that the minister is not civilised--and that the

Church itself is not moral but as decayed as the trumpet

blooms that lie rotting under foot.

Miss Jenny excuses

the townspeoples' righteous behavior because "they're just

Baptists," but her dismissal is made all the more ironic

by the fact that it is the churchwomen who run Ruby out

of town and Narcissa herself who guarantees Goodwin's de-

struction because she reveals to the district attorney

that Temple can be found to testify.

In short, what Hor-

ace learns as a result of his involvement in Goodwin's

fate is that religion is morally bankrupt and the princi-

ples it teaches empty platitudes offering no guidance or

advice on how to behave in an evil and violent universe.

Although Horace thus rejects one of society's prin-

cipal institutions early in the novel, he continues to cling

to his belief in justice and in the efficacy of social law.

In fact, he thinks the two are synonymous for he believes

the law will protect Lee Goodwin and justice will ultimately

be done if that law is permitted to function properly.

Accordingly, he tries to persuade Lee to divulge the fact

that Popeye was at the scene of the murder but Lee refuses

because he is sure Popeye will immediately have him killed.

Horaces's characteristic response is that "the law, justice,

and civilizaiton" are behind him and he urges Lee anew to

stop obstructing that justice.

Horace continues to be-

71

lieve in these abstractions throughout most of the novel

309

and his search for a way to get Lee acquitted is really a

version of the standard gothic quest.

What Horace is actually looking for, however, is a

way to prove to himself that these ideals function in the

real world and that good is ultimately distinguishable

from evil.

Because he lives in a state of almost complete

innocence and thus truly believes in these abstractions,

he is able to judge those in the society around him who

do not live up to his noble ideals.

But as Olga Vickery

has commented "the very ideals which make him an unerring

judge of society render him incapable of fighting [it],"72

and indeed, as the narrative progresses, we see Horace

counter cruelty with self-righteous anger and hatred with

empty words.

He truly believes that by passing enough of

the right laws, society can control evil and he is con-

vinced that somehow Lee will be freed and Popeye punished

for the crime he committed.

However, Horace, unable to

translate his beliefs into constructive action, wastes

precious time available to him for preparation of a defense

in making speeches and voicing his indignation.

He is, in

short, immobilized by his ideals and he seems to deliber-

ately resist acting in order to avoid contact with evil.

Nevertheless, it is forced on him by his encounter with

Temple Drake.

As Faulkner chronicles Horace's quest to re-establish

reason and order in the world of Yoknapatawpha county, he

contrasts his flight from evil with Temple Drake's

310

continuing attraction to it.

Ike switches back and forth

between Jefferson and Memphis where Popeye has imprisoned

Temple in a whorehouse, an alternating structure which

serves to emphasize the incredible power of evil.

No soon-

er are we impressed by Temple's growing inability to resist

the pleasures and excitement of Popeye'sway of life than we

are confronted with Horace's ineffectual attempts to counter

the harm done to others because Popeye leads the life he

does.

As a result, evil itself dominates Sanctuary and

 

Faulkner splits the typical gothic protagonist into three

separate characters in order to consider the kinds of re-

sponses it evokes in the individual.

Although Popeye is

at first presented as the human incarnation of evil and the

simple villain of the novel, Faulkner later qualifies and

clarifies his relationship to evil by appending the story

of Popeye's past to his account of what that past has

prompted him to do to others.

On the basis of this addi-

tional chapter I feel justified in arguing that Faulkner

is as concerned with Popeye's reaction to the evil present

in the universe as he is with Horace's and Temple's response

to it.

However, since this concern is not revealed until

just before the novel ends and since Popeye functions

throughout the better part of the narrative as the repre-

sentative pf evil, I think it best to discuss how Faulkner

modifies the typical gothic descent into the dark reaches

of the world by alternating his focus between Temple Drake

and Horace Benbow as they confront the "black" world in

311

which Popeye lives.

When the narrative returns to Temple after the scene

in the corncrib, he makes it clear that she has indeed been

raped by Popeye.

However, this violation seems to produce

a curious reaction in her for when he leaves her alone in

a gas station, she makes no attempt to escape.

In fact,

instead of running away from her attacker altogether, she

hides behind a barrel to avoid being seen by a boy from

school.

Temple is really more concerned about maintaining

the appearance of virtue than she is about its loss.

Faulkner

continues to develop her ambivalence once she is locked in

her room in the Memphis whorehouse.

She is clearly fright—

ened and shamed by all that has happened to her and when a

doctor is brought in to examine her, she cries "hopelessly

and passively" like the child she really is.

Furthermore,

when Popeye returns for the first time she "cringes upon

herself in as complete an isolation as though she were bound

to a church steeple."73

But at the same time this cringing

movement is accompanied by a strange grin which appears to

be prompted partially by fear and partially by her old

seductive habits.

Although Faulkner gives no explanation

or interpretation of Temple's behavior, by noting her grin

he suggests that she is still in some way fascinated by

Popeye's violence and all he represents.

He confirms this rather gruesome suggestion in chap-

ter twenty-three when Temple and Horace meet personally for

the first and only time.

Although Horace exerts little

312

effort on his own to find Temple, when Clarence Snopes tells

him She is in the Memphis whorehouse he travels to see her

in order to persuade her to testify for Lee Goodwin.

Faulk-

ner makes it clear that Horace still pursues his dream of

realizing truth, honor and justice in this world, for when

Miss Reba questions him about why he wants to pester Temple,

his reply is as idealistic as ever.

"And don't you consider

this good reason," he asks, "that a man is being tried for

his life for something he didn't do?"74

Ironically enough,

his argument does persuade Miss Reba who, like Goodwin him-

self, consistently defies society's conventions and still

manages to remain civilized, kind, and generous.

As Miss

Reba says to Temple, she has never double-crossed anybody

in her life.

Furthermore, we are also told that she is

capable of love and affection and truly mourns the loss of

Mr. Binford for whom she had cared deeply.

In fact, like

Ruby and Lee Goodwin, Reba lives outside the conventional

boundaries of respectably society and yet her behavior

toward other human beings is more moral than that of the

ladies of the Jefferson Baptist Church.

Faulkner thus de-

lays Horace's encounter with Temple just long enough to

develop Reba's character in depth in order to contrast

her response to the world in which she lives with the re-

sponse that same world provokes in Temple Drake.

Because Reba understands the notion of moral obliga-

tion and recognizes that Temple ought to testify if she did

see the murder, she allows Horace to question her.

313

Faulkner's description of Temple as she faces Horace for

the first time is meant to suggest that she has not aban-

doned her seductive behavior nor has she been emotionally

destroyed by the violence visited upon her.

Instead, she

actually appears more brazen and forward than she ever has

before and the implications of her hostility toward Horace

are obvious.

It is, furthermore, significant that it is

Miss Reba who urges her to testify and to be more modest

as well.

Temple flung the covers back and sat up.

Her head was tousled, her face puffed, two

spots of rouge on her cheekbones and her

mouth painted into a savage cupid's bow.

She stared for an instant at Horace with

black antagonism, then she looked away.

"I want a drink," she said, pulling up

the shoulder of her gown.

"Lie down," Miss Reba said.

"You'll

catch cold."

"I want another drink," Temple said.

"Lie down and cover up your nekkidness,

anyway," Miss Reba said, risin , "you al-

ready had three since supper."

That Temple has grown accustomed to life with Popeye is

made even clearer when she insists to Horace that she is

not afraid to tell anyone what has happened to her.

She

describes the night of fgar she spent at the Old French-

man place in detail and Horace is appalled to discover that

she recounts the experience "with actual pride, a sort of

naive and impersonal vanity, as though she were making it

"76

up.

However, in her description of the fantasies she

engaged in as Popeye approached, we also get a sense of

314

the terror she suffered as a result of the rape.

Faulkner

makes it clear that although her behavior may have provoked

Popeye's attack, she did not at first desire that attack

nor did she acquiesce in it.

As Cleanth Brooks has pointed

out, prior to her experience in the corncrib she had no

understanding of good and evil and believed only in proper

and improper behavior.

She thought the world could be con-

trolled by her father's money and power and she is horribly

shocked to discover she cannot protect herself with her

father's position.

Temple discovers that evil is a very

real force in the world but we are never given the sense

that this discovery brings with it disillusionnment and

destruction.

Rather, the whole experience seems to prompt

self-recognition for what she learns as a result of the rape

is that she is fascinated by violence and sexual passion

and that She too has a capacity for evil.

In fact, we are

finally told that when Popeye dawdled over her, she re-

peated to herself "Coward! Coward! Touch me, coward. .

.

.

Do you think I'm going to lie here all night, just waitin

on you? .

. .Let me tell you what I'll do."77

Once Temple has completed her recitation, Faulkner

deliberately contrasts her initiation into evil with Hor-

ace's reaction to her story.

Although Horace does not have

to suffer the physical affront Temple was forced to with-

stand, his response to the knowledge that such things do

occur in this world is more despairing than hers and

prompted by profound disillusionment.

He is deeply shocked

315

by what he has heard and thinks to himself that it would

be better for Temple if she were dead.

But the fact that

he also thinks he should be dead indicates that in recog-

nizing the evil which has enveloped both Popeye and Temple,

Horace admits to himself that if evil is so powerful it

must inevitably enshroud him as well.

In fact, Faulkner

tells us that Horace ”thought of her, Popeye, the woman,

the child, Goodwin, all put into a single chamber, bare,

lethal, immediate, and profound:

a single blotting instant

between the indignation and the surprise.

"78

Horace contin-

ues to himself that "that [is] the only solution.

Removed,

cauterised out of the old and tragic flank of the world.

And I, too, now that we're all isolated."79

Like Ambrosio the Monk, Horace acknowledges that

complete isolation is extremely attractive, because he un-

derstands for the first time that if evil really pervades

the universe, the only way to escape implication in that

evil is to withdraw into a single, bare but also lethal

chamber.

As Horace reasons to himself, once man admits

that there is a logical pattern of evil in the universe he

has one of two choices-dhe can submit to its power as Pop-

eye and Temple have done or ignore its existence by com-

pletely withdrawing from the world.

In either case, the

result is annihilation.

Ultimately there is no difference

between the despair of Temple's moral and emotional death

and "the cooling indignation, the shocked despair" he had

"once seen in the eyes of a dead child, and of other dead."

316

I agree with Olga Vickery's argument that Horace's "imagin-

ative world of moral and aesthetic perfection" is violated

and ultimately destroyed by his “one excursion into the

world of concrete experience,"

80for after he leaves Temple,

he is overcome with desire for his stepdaughter and physic-

ally sickened by the self-knowledge thus thrust upon him.

This central chapter finally closes as Horace identifies

Little Belle with Temple and both with himself as he im-

agines himself being raped in the corncrib.

In the end, it

seems clear to me that Horace Benbow is as much a victim

of the destructive power of evil as is Temple herself.

Although this crucial scene between Temple and Horace

is followed by several more chapters, I think their fates

are already sealed when Horace departs for Jefferson.

In-

deed, all we are told about Temple after chapter twenty-

three serves only to confirm what Faulkner has already

led us to suspect.

She has, in fact, begun to enjoy her

life with Popeye because she desires Red, the surrogate

lover Popeye provides to make up for his own impotence.

However, her feelings for Red are not love nor even affec—

tion but simply desire, for she is willing to jeopardize

his life just to have sex with him.

When she realizes

Popeye intends to kill Red, her bereavement is short-lived

and desire takes over.

We are told she thinks "it will

never be again" and that she sits "in a floating swoon of

agonised sorrow and erotic longing, thinking of Red's

body."

Temple's corruption is complete by the time of

81

317

Red's murder for although she does not actually pull the

trigger, she is implicated by the fact that she calls Red

even after Popeye has forbidden it and has threatened to

kill him if she disobeys.

In effect, she denies her re-

sponsibilities to others and refuses all moral commitments.

Later, her perjury at the trial does not come as a complete

surprise either to Horace or to the reader.

Although we

do learn that in spite of his confrontation with Temple and

the reactions that encounter produces, Horace continues to

believe she will testify if he really needs her, we are

also told that Horace learns of Red's murder and that Tem-

ple and Popeye have fled.

Coupled with his earlier under-

standing that she would be better off dead, this information

prepares him for what he now knows is inevitable.

As he

walks through "the gothic entrance" of the court, Horace

stops just inside the door, sees the "Jew lawyer from Mem-

phis," and says to himself, ”I know what I'll find before

I find it .

.

. she will have on a black hat."82

Faulkner never makes it entirely clear whether Temple

commits perjury because she has been corrupted by her

descent into the underworld, or because she fears Popeye,

or because her respectable father and brothers force it

upon her.

However, given the information Faulkner does re-

veal to us about her behavior toward Red, it is reasonable

to conclude, as Cleanth Brooks has done, that "in her lassi-

tude and docility she [is] willing to carry out Popeye's

command."

By emphasizing once again Temple's painted

83

318

mouth shaped into a "savage and perfect bow," Faulkner de-

liberately stresses her fundamental viciousness and amor-

ality.

In the end, this child-woman who is held up by the

court as a symbol of pure, white, Southern womanhood un—

willingly defiled, mechanically condems Lee Goodwin to

death even though she knows he didn't commit any crime.

Like the other "civilized" ladies of Jefferson's Baptist

church, Temple Drake is neither generous nor kind when it

is not in her self-interest to be so, and Faulkner makes

it clear that her quest for excitement has led only to her

own ruin.

Although the Drake family unit is restored to

wholeness once again with Temple's return, that reunifica-

tion does not restore order and harmony to the universe

because it is founded on one man's unjustified destruction

and because Temple's degradation can never be denied.

Thus,

Faulkner ends his heroine's story in the traditional way by

permitting the family to regroup about her.

However, even

though the form of the ending is standard, its significance

is not, because Temple's relationship to others and to the

world is not the same as it would be if Faulkner had chosen

to use the gothic form empirically.

In the final analysis, Temple Drake is responsible

for the deaths of Red and Lee Goodwin and thus never estab-

lishes real connection with others by reaffirming her moral

responsibility and commitment to them.

We last see her in

the midst of a Parisian autumn as alone and isolated as

she has ever been, and although accompanied by her father,

319

they neither speak nor acknowledge each other's presence.

Instead, Temple occupies herself with her own reflection in

a compact mirror and sees "a face in miniature sullen and

discontented and sad."

Her future does not extend happily

before her as it would were she the typical gothic heroine

but seems to promise only emptiness, idleness, and despair.

Faulkner's last sentence confirms what Temple's fate

appeared to be back in chapter twenty-three.

It is, con-

sequently, a complete and devastating reversal of the

expected "happily-ever-after" conclusion to this gothic

heroine's tale.

That evil has conquered Temple Drake and

effected her complete destruction is finally undeniable.

She closed the compact and from beneath her

smart new hat she seemed to follow with her

eyes the waves of music, to dissolve into

the dying brasses, across the pool and the

opposite semicircle of trees where at sombre

intervals the dead tranquil queens in stained

marble mused, and on into the sky lying prone

and vanquished in the embrace of the season

of rain and death.84

Before discussing the similar resolutions Faulkner

supplies to Horace's and Popeye's stories, I want to point

out that in this bleak and hopeless world of Sancturay even

 

those who love and establish commitments to others are

violently destroyed.

Although we never learn the extent

of Red's feelings for Temple Drake, Faulkner does reveal to

us through the ludicrous funeral scene that Red was generous

with his friends and appreciated by them.

Gene the boot-

legger donates free liquor for the funeral party and tells

any and all who will listen, "I couldn't a loved him no

320

better if he'd a been my own son."

85

But despite the ob—

vious affection Red inspires in his friends, he is brutally

Shot in the center of his forehead and his funeral dissolves

into a macabre brawl which only subjects his corpse to one

more horrible indignity.

Red's body tumbles "slowly and

sedately" out of its resting place, his cheek is pierced

by a floral wire and the wax plug for the hole in his head

falls out and is lost.

In the end, he is buried with his

cap pulled down over his eyes to hide this gruesome reminder

of the final violation and corruption all men must suffer.

Lee Goodwin, like Red, also violates society's laws

and conventions andyet manages to live a more ethical

life than those who profess to respect those laws.

He

truly loves Ruby and cares for his child.

His only request

to Horace is that he "promise to get the kid a newspaper

grift when he's old enough to make change."

86

Despite his

evident worth, however, Lee Goodwin is imprisoned for a

crime he did not commit.

Furthermore, he fully understands

that he cannot hOpe to survive this injustice because he

knows the judicial system cannot protect him from Popeye

even if it does acquit him of Popeye's crime.

As he ex-

plains to Horace, "Do you think for one minute that man

is going to let me walk out of that door and up the street

and into that courthouse, after yesterday?

What sort of

men have you lived with all your life?

In a nursery?"87

Lee is neither as innocent nor as naive as Horace Benbow

and although he is not killed in the way he had anticipated,

321

he dies because the conventional legal and judicial system

cannot protect him from the evil that exists in other men.

Subjected to perhaps the most horrible physical violation

described in the novel, Lee is then immolated by the pious

townspeople of Jefferson who commit this outrage in the

name of moral retribution.

If the fates Suffered by Red

and Lee are any indication, then the world of Faulkner's

Sanctuary is a world without hope where evil is stronger

 

than good and all things kind, generous and valuable are

extinguished by death and destruction in the end.

Because

the only’loverswho appear in Faulkner's gothic novel are

violently denied the union they seek, we must conclude that

even human connection is powerless to control the evil

which permeates the entire universe represented in the

radically altered gothic structure of Sanctuary.

 

Faulkner's treatment of his gothic "hero" reinforces

such an interpretation, for although Horace manages to

survive his confrontation with evil, he fares little better

than Temple Drake, who serves as the agent of his initia-

tion.

He is not surprised when Temple suddenly materializes

in court to testify against his client but neither does he

have any idea of how to combat the amorality she represents.

When the district attorney tries to suggest that Temple's

rape "is no longer a matter for the hangmen, but for a bon-

fire of gasoline," Horace can only object on a point of law

and, although his legal objection is sustained, that action

has no power to prevent Lee's death in just such a bonfire.

322

Indeed, what Horace discovers as a result of his quest and

journey into the real world is that law cannot control the

evil which runs rampant throughout the universe.

While a

law may differentiate between good and bad and moral and

immoral behavior, it can provide no guarantee that it will

be applied even-handedly.

Because essentially evil men

such as the Jefferson district attorney (who suborns per-

jury) are responsible for the enforcement of the law, that

law is rendered impotent in its fight to control man's

immoral impulses.

In spite of Horace's belief in honor and justice,

Lee Goodwin is convicted of a crime he did not commit and

condemed to die.

Horace can only weep at the loss of his

perfect world and when he sees a snow of locust blooms on

a driveway resembling the smear of the heaven-tree blossoms,

he mutters to himself. "It does last .

.

. Spring does.

You'd almost think there was a purpose to it."

88

What dis-

tresses him more than anything else is that Spring promises

so much, as if there is a purpose behind its glory, and yet

it decays into a viscid smear of dead blossoms on the hard

pavement of a driveway.

Like Spring, the law also promises

a good deal, just as the Church does, and both purport to

exist for the benefit of man.

However, the perfection they

promise is also never realizable in the world of actuality

and Horace is emotionally destroyed by the understanding

that man must content himself with a good deal less than

the ideal if he wishes to remain a member of that world.

323

Beaten by this merciless awareness, Horace returns

to his home in Kinston and to the wife he no longer loves.

She does not acknowledge either his departure or his re-

turn and when he prompts her with the comment, "I came back,"

her only response is to ask him if he looked the door.89

It is important to note that Horace's new-found understand-

ing does not carry with it any suggestions on how he might

better carry out his assault on evil.

In fact, when he

thinks to himself that "summer nights are hard on old people"

his response to the problem is the same as it has always

been.

He replies to himself, "something should be done

about it.

A law."90

Olga Vickery has pointed out that although Horace

learns to recognize the fact that "justice and law, truth

and belief, dream and reality" will always be separated,

"the task of reuniting them, which is the necessary pre-

requisite to the salvation of man and his society, is beyond

his powers."91

Horace can propose no solution to the prob-

lem of evil in this world.

In response, we are forced to

conclude once again that the novel has no solution to offer

to the reader either.

Like the traditional gothic heroine,

Horace Benbow returns to the family fold and re-establishes

physical proximity with the members of his family.

However,

like Temple Drake, he is unable to restore emotional close-

ness and through this subtle shift in the resolution of the

traditional gothic plot, Faulkner creates an even darker

vision than that of The Member of the Wedding.

Human

 

324

connection is not proposed in Sanctuary as a counter force

 

to evil nor as a means of mitigating the suffering evil

causes.

Instead, Faulkner suggests that every human rela-

tionship is as much a victim of evil as are those ideals,

once so dear to Horace Benbow, of truth, honor, and justice.

In the light of what I have said about evil and its

central importance to the meaning of Sanctuary, I think

 

it particularly Significant that Faulkner does not allow

Popeye to remain the cardboard character he is throughout

the better part of the novel.

By including the last chapter

on Popeye's family history he erases the early impression

he creates of Popeye as the allegorical incarnation of

pure, naked evil.

Faulkner gives him humanity finally by

showing us the horrible circumstances of his childhood.

While Faulkner does not intend to excuse Popeye for his

crimes or to absolve him of guilt, he means to suggest that

like Red, Lee, Temple, and Horace, Popeye too is a victim

of the evil which is an integral part of human existence.

The fact that he was born of syphilitic parents and brought

up by his mad grandmother does not excuse his murder of

Tommy and his rape of Temple, but it explains those acts

and permits us to attribute Popeye's malevolence to that

force in the universe which is forever responsible for dis-

tortion, destruction, and decay.

Like the other two most

"gothic" characters in the novel, Popeye also tries to re-

turn home to establish connection with the only family he

has left, but he is arrested in Birmingham for a murder he

325

did not commit.

When the policemen and judge ask him if

he wants to hire a lawyer to defend himself, Popeye's only

response is "What for?"

He already understands, as Lee

had, that the law cannot save him and all he wants to do

is to "get it over with all at once."92

He refuses the help

of a lawyer-friend from Memphis and ignores the aid offered

by the minister; in the end, all there is left to life for

Popeye is the deliberate placing of cigarette stubs in

carefully marked-off spaces.

This meaningless act, however,

is no more meaningless than the lives Temple and Horace

will lead.

As a result, we must finally conclude that

Faulkner, at least in this novel means to say that no

matter what response to evil man is able to devise the re-

sult is always the same--for evil is ultimately more power-

ful than good and is, therefore, the controlling principle

in the universe.

In speaking of Sanctuary's indebtedness to the English

 

gothic novel, after we have noted Faulkner's creative use

of the traditional plot structures and characters and have

acknowledged his concern with standard gothic themes, we

should also note his establishment of the typical gothic

contract between reader and text.

Cleanth Brooks has re-

marked that André Malraux once compared Sanctuary to a

 

detective novel,

a credible comparison since there is a

93

clear similarity between the way information is released

to the reader of a gothic text and the way it is given to

the reader of a detective novel.

Faulkner is a master at

326

building suspense because he can so successfully describe

scenes of action without providing the details necessary

to attribute a particular significance to those events.

For example, by gradually revealing the details of Popeye's

 

impotence, Faulkner is able to create a sense of foreboding

and horror about Temple's rape as well as conjectures

about the extent of Popeye's viciousness.

When a descrip-

tion of that rape is finally given, because our expecta-

tions have been raised to such a feverish pitch, the horror

and disgust we feel about her violation with a corncob is

almost unbearably intensified.

By keeping us in a state

of semi-ignorance through the narrative, Faulkner draws a

pall of foreboding and dread over the entire text so that

each discovery only serves to confirm what we feared but

hoped could never occur.

Like other gothic novelists,

William Faulkner suggests, implies, and alludes to unspeak-

able horrors.

However, unlike most of his predecessors

Faulkner does not stop at suggestion, implication, and

allusion, but allows the seeds he plants to come to frui-

tion.

As a result, we realize our worst fears.

The shock

thus produced because we do not expect that final surprise

is central to the experience of reading Sanctuary and, it

 

seems to me, Faulkner's penultimate goal.

Sacntuary is, in short, an extraordinarily bitter

 

novel.

Much of its power to shock derives from Faulkner's

ability to echo gothic conventions and thus to establish

certain expectations which he then deliberately demolishes.

327

Although I suspect it is possible to read and interpret

Temple Drake's story without making reference to the gothic

tradition, I think her fate takes on added depth and signif—

icance when we recognize the similarity between her situa-

tion and that of the typical gothic heroine.

Temple's

destruction is, in itself, frightening, but that destruction

appears even more terrible when we realize that it is meant

to be contrasted with the happier fates of Isabella, Agnes,

and Emily St. Aubert.

What this contrast does, then, is

to place an even greater emphasis on the hoeplessness of

man's condition in the contemporary world.

If the recogni-

tion that modern man's existence is charaCterized by an

impossible ambiguity is alone distressing,then that real-

ization can cause even greater sadness when it is con-

trasted with the picture of.a more comforting world

(presented in earlier gothics) where evil is clearly dis-

tinguishable from good and certain kinds of behavior can

be recommended as the means to a relatively happy life.

While the contemporary, surface significance of the

structures used in Sanctuary is immediately available to

 

any serious reader of the text, that significance is en-

riched by the past history which those structures evoke as

part of the sedimented meaning clinging to them--a meaning

which is itself the result of the way the structures have

previously been used.

For example, Faulkner's initial pre-

sentation of Popeye evokes disgust and horror in the reader

just as the eighteenth century portrayal of a gothic villain

328

does.

However, Faulkner intensifies that disgust and

horror with his wholly unexpected suggestion that Popeye

too must be seen as a helpless victim of evil.

By first

presenting Popeye as a clear-cut villain, Faulkner makes

an implicit reference to the world of the eighteenth-century

gothic in which such a villain appeared.

Then, by "deform-

ing" that presentation with atypical details and qualifica-

tions, he not only presents the picture of a new world but

also emphasizes the distance which separates the two.

It

is, then, this distance which intensifies the revulsion ex-

perienced by the reader.

The fact that the separation be-

tween the two worlds cannot be denied gr overcome leads to

the despair and sense of hopelessness produced by an

"in-

formed" reading of the text.

Sanctuary must, therefore, be

 

read as a gothic novel if the full force of its impact is

to be felt and the full measure of its Significance is to

be understood.

The Question of the Literary Continuum

and Borderline Cases

 

The texts I have selected for analysis in this case

study seem to belong at opposite ends of the literary con-

tinuum proposed in the third chapter.

It is fairly easy

to see, for instance, that Phyllis Whitney's "romantic

novels of suspense" are formulaic uses of the genre created

in England in the late eighteenth century.

On the other

hand, it is equally obvious that beneath the substantive

329

differences of The Member of the Wedding and Sancturay

lies a pattern of relationships among crucial actants and

actions similar to that structure which serves as the skel-

eton of The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk and Melmoth the

 

Wanderer.

However, if my notion of the literary continuum

is truly descriptive of the range of differences among

literary texts, it would seem likely, though not necessarily

certain, that I would also be able to identify texts which

straddle an imaginative line between empirical and creative

use of the gothic genre.

This, however, has not proved to

be the case at least in that I have found very few novels

to place between Whitney's The Golden Unicorn and McCullers'

 

The Member of the Wedding.

 

While I have, certainly, discovered texts such as

André Norton's Velvet Shadows and Daphne Du Maurier's

 

Rebecca which modify specific characteristics of the gothic

characters, those modifications do not alter the essential or

functional relationships nmgng characters and events and

thus do not "qualify" as meaningful deformations of the form.

For instance, although André Norton develops her gothic

heroine in more depth than Phyllis Whitney does, she does

not alter that heroine's role as questor nor does she prevent

her from solving the necessary crime and joining the hero

at the end.

As a result, her novel is structurally identi-

cal to The Golden Unicorn and Spindrift just as its themes

   

are a mirror image of the themes which dominate those two

novels.

Similarly, although Daphne DuMaurier spends

330

considerable time drawing a complex picture of the "vil-

lain" in Rebecca, that is, of Rebecca herself, her real

concern is still with the narrator and Max de Winter and

their ability to overcome Max's victimization by evil with

love.

Although we learn Max, the hero, actually did commit

the crime which is at the center of the novel, we also

discover that he was goaded into it by the cruel and self-

centered Rebecca who wanted only to hurt him.

As a result,

despite these changes in standard character presentation,

DuMaurier clearly separates the evil from the good and

stresses the ameliorating effects of human love and con—

nection.

Once again, the significance of her novel is

fundamentally no different from that of the novels written

by Phyllis Whitney.

Still, content changes in the individ—

uals who fill standard gothic character roles are changes

nonetheless and they thus serve as a means of distinguish-

ing Norton's and DuMaurier's novels from those more formu-

laic works of Whitney, Norah Lofts, Victoria Holt, and

Mary Stewart.

Therefore, while I would argue that Velvet

Shadows and Rebecca are closely related to The Golden

 

Unicorn and Spindrift, I would also maintain that the var-

 

iations they include within the standard formula, while

minor and of relatively slight significance, set them apart

from Whitney's novels and thus place them at least a little

closer to the more radical deformations of Carson McCullers

and William Faulkner.

By the same token, I think it obvious that The Member

 

331

of the Wedding is closer to the early gothic novels in

 

structure and significance than is Faulkner's Sanctuary,

 

Indeed, when McCullers' novel is read carefully with ref-

erence to such works as Otranto, Udolpho, and Melmoth, it

 

becomes clear that this contemporary work is, in fact, a

modern version of the gothic quest in which the goal is

once again human connection.

However, because McCullers

deliberately modifies the direction of Frankie's search,

she subtly alters the nature of the relationship between

her gothic heroine and the universe, thus changing the

final outcome of Frankie's odyssey.

Because her journey

echoes the journey into darkness undertaken by Isabella,

Emily St. Aubert, and Agnes, the qualified nature of her

success is implicitly contrasted with the happier, more

complete resolution of difficulties contained in the stories

of these earlier heroines.

As a result, McCullers is able

to stress the limitations inherent in communication and

 

connection even though she permits Frankie some measure of

growth and friendship with another at the end.

Faulkner's

novel, however, is even further removed from its progen~

itors by virtue of its radical reversal of the typical

gothic "return from the underworld" and by its wholesale

rejection of any form of comforting resolution.

In Sanctu—

gry, in fact, the evil which merely threatened the world

of the eighteenth century gothic novel, now reigns trium-

phant.

Furthermore, because Faulkner can suggest no sure

way to differentiate this force from that which is not

332

evil, Sanctuary itSelf asserts that the universe is con-

 

trolled by evil and that while those who commit foul deeds

may sometimes be punished, such punishment has no real

effect in the end on that malignant force which is an in—

tegral part of the universe.

In generalizing, therefore, about my examination of

these and other contemporary gothic novels, I would argue

that while no two novels are ever completely identical,

they do tend to separate themselves into two rather large

groups clustered around either end of the theoretical liter-

ary continuum.

I have, in fact, discovered a large number

of novels closely related to each other and to my abstract

notion of "the gothic novel," at least with respect to the

ways in which they use traditional gothic characters, con-

frontations, and resolutions.

On the other hand, I have

also discovered a good many works which tend to play with

those same conventions, reject the standard gothic resolu-

tion, and finally tend to darken the typical gothic vision.

It seems necessary, therefore, to account for this peculiar

polar distribution if we are to retain the notion of the

continuum as it is introduced in this study.

Consequently, I would like to point out that the

"cluster-effect" noted here is the direct result of the

fact that I have examined the texts in question with

respect to only one set of literary conventions, specific-

ally with respect to those relating to the genre of the

gothic novel.

I have not, therefore, explored the ways

333

in which these texts use the English language itself and

thus have not made any attempt to detect differences in

their dependence on purely linguistic competence.

Neither,

however, have I explored the ways in which these works

adhere or do not adhere to those standard rules and conven-

tions governing creation of the novel in general.

As a

 

result, I have been forced to group works such as Rebecca

and Velvet Shadows with works such as The Golden Unicorn

   

and Spindrift when they may actually be differentiated from

 

each other by variations in the way they use language to

create a world.

Furthermore, I have been prompted to link

The Member of the Wedding and Sanctuary more closely per-
  

haps than they would be were we to consider the entire

range of literary conventions governing narrative technique,

the presentation of literary time, and creation of a point

of view.

I suspect, in short, that had I the space and

time to examine all contemporary novels derived from the

eighteenth century gothic romance in conjunction with a

much broader range of conventions governing textual forma-

tion as well as in conjunction with James Edie's first

three levels of meaning, that is, with respect to the

immanent, transcendent and syntactic levels of Significance,

I would find much greater variation among the novels and

they would then appear to be distributed more liberally

across the entire range of the proposed literary continuum.

Therefore, because I have had to circumscribe the

scope of my investigation by limiting my case study to an

334

exploration of the changes made by specific literary texts

in a single set of generic conventions, a great deal of

work still remains to be done before we can say with any

certainty that popular texts are indeed structurally and

functionally different from elite texts and that they are

different in definite, identifiable ways.

For instance,

if we wish to assert categorically that spy text which

uses language or literary conventions conservatively by

refusing to operate outside reader expectations should

not be classed as art or elite literature, then we ought

to first demonstrate empirically that popular novels typ—

ically depend on clichéd phrases and wholly familiar types

of description just as they depend on formulaic use of

certain generic structures.

Furthermore, we ought to show that those works we

call high art or "Literature" tend to use language creative-

ly by founding new metaphors and by formulating new meaning

just as they say new things by deforming generic conventions.

Such a demonstration could easily be carried out with re-

spect to the gothic novel for it seems to me the language

used in the popular gothic romance bears a marked and pe-

culiar resemblance to the language used in "ladies' mag-

azines" such as Family Circle, Woman's Dny, and The Ladies'

     

Home Journal.

It would be possible, therefore, to come to

 

some conclusions about the familiarity of the language

used in the popular gothic by studying the frequency of

appearance of certain phrases and descriptions of the gothic

335

novels in the women's magazines previously mentioned.

One

might then contrast the ready availability of this language

with that used by McCullers, Faulkner, Melville, or O'Connor

to detect whether their novels actually tend to renew the

language and to create meanings for the first time by using

familiar words in wholly unfamiliar and unexpected contexts.

Of course, this would have to be done with the help of a

good historical dictionary for we would need to know when

the meaning of a word changed in order to assert that a

particular literary text had directly influenced that

change and augmented the Significance associated with the

sign in question.

While this study would alone be a huge undertaking,

it needs to be conducted not only on gothic novels but on

other kinds of novels and literary genres as well in order

to determine whether popular literary forms generally differ

 

from elite forms by virtue of their conservative use both

of language and of the specific conventions governing con-

struction of the particular generic types which they exem-

plify.

If such analysis can then be coupled with a broad

examination of the ways in which popular texts use the con-

ventions dictating the formation of the novel, the poem,

or the drama in general,2[think we will be able to say with

some conviction that popular texts appear less complex than

elite texts not because they are less successful or artistic

but because they use their materials conservatively and in

such a way that their meaning is readily available to almost

336

any reader.

In other words, if we can demonstrate that formulaic

texts composed of familiar language never tamper with a

basic literary form and thus never challenge our concep-

tions of the gothic, the western, or the detective story,

our standard ways of describing reality, or our notions of

the novel, the play, or the poem, then I think we will be

justified in stating that certain texts must not be dis-

missed simply because they are formulaic and easily under-

standable.

It will be possible to maintain that they

appear so because it is their deliberate intention and

necessary function to fulfill reader expectations and thus

to remain comprehensible to the normal range of interpre-

tive or meaning-giving procedures.

To recognize, however,

that certain texts can and do intend to employ linguistic

and literary conventions conservatively, is to admit at

the same time that such conventions can also be ignored and

defied.

Therefore, I think it will be necessary to ack-

nowledge that another large group of texts must be differ-

entiated from this first group by virtue of the refusal

of some works to respect reader expectations and by their

resistance to standard interpretive operations.

However, even if we demonstrate empirically that the

basic distinction between conservative and creative use of

linguistic and literary conventions is observable at all

levels, that is, in the use of language, in the employment

of specific generic conventions, and in the use of general

337

rules governing construction of a broad literary form, be-

cause we have acknowledged the importance of competence and

the conventions of which it is composed to the problem of

text classification, we must admit that there can be in-

finite variation in the extent of compliance with the

specific conventions in question just as their can be in-

finite variation in the extent to which they are defied.

Therefore, it will be essential to acknowledge that texts

do not in reality fall into two entirely separate categor-

 

ies defined by exactly opposite uses of certain requisite

materials and conventions.

We will simply have to admit

that the meaning of all literary texts is dependent on a

reader's linguistic and literary competence and that each

text uses the conventions and rules of that combined com-

petence in a wholly unique way.

In the end, however, Should we wish to work out an

abstract scheme for convenient classification and thus

attempt to group texts according to the general nature of

their use of the linguistic and literary systems, we must

first describe both systems in detail before we can ident-

 

ify what constitutes a creative or an empirical use of

either.

To accomplish this task, it will be necessary to

identify what sort of person is reading or writing the

texts and to describe the exact nature of the linguistic

and literary competence he uses to make sense of them.

Then, in the process of explicitly formulating the conven-

tions, rules, and expectations which are the substance of

338

that competence, assuming the competence itself to be shared

by others, we will simultaneously provide a picture of the

pptential linguistic and literary systems put to actual

 

use in individual texts.

Once we have a relatively complex

understanding of the scope of the linguistic and literary

systems as they exist at a given moment, it will be possible

to distinguish those texts which use elements of both sys-

tems empirically from those which defy conventions and use

elements of both creatively in order to extend the possibil-

ities for signification contained within them.

Only at that

time will it be possible to describe two new categories

designed to take the place of those discredited in chapter

one because of their inability to discriminate among texts

on the basis of consistent criteria.

At that point, in-

stead of identifying a given literary text as a "popular"

novel or as a work of mass entertainment, we will be able

to classify it as a Conservative work because it adheres

to mgsp conventions of the linguistic and literary systems.

Furthermore, in place of classifying some other text as a

work of "Art" or as "Literature," we will be able to ident-

ify it as a Creative work because it defies either linguis-

tic or literary conventions.

In the event that these sug-

gested studies can be carried out and that both the linguis-

tic and literary systems can be mapped, we will finally

possess a new method for determining the structure and

function of particular texts as well as a new scheme of

classification for discriminating among them.

NOTES

1"How to Identify, Display and Sell the Gothic,"

Lansing, Michigan:

Suits News Co.

2

Pam Proctor, "Phyllis Whitney:

She Writes Best

Sellers the Old-Fashioned Way," Parade, November 2, 1975,

p. 20.

3Phyllis Whitney, "Writing the Gothic Novel," Eng

Writer vol. 80, no. 2 (February, 1967), pp. 9-13, 42-43.

4Whitney, "Writing," p. 9.

5Whitney, "Writing," p. 10, (emphasis added).

6Whitney, "Writing," p. 10.

7Proctor, "Whitney," p. 20.

8Whitney, "Writing," p. 12.

9Whitney, "Writing," p. 12.

10Whitney, "Writing," p. 13.

11Whitney, "Writing," p. 13.

12Whitney, "Writing," p. 13.

13Whitney, "Writing," p. 43.

14Whitney, "Writing," p. 43.

15Phyllis Whitney, The Golden Unicorn (New York:

 

Fawcett Crest Books, 1976), p. 38.

16

Whitney, Unicorn, p. 37.

17Phyllis Whitney, Spindrift (New York:

 

Fawcett Crest

Books, 1975), p. 29.

' 18

Whitney, Spindrift, p. 114.

 

19I use the feminine pronoun because those gothic

novels which "allow" the protagonist to return to the world

339

340

are always the story of a female heroine.

I have equated

these women with the villain-heroes of novels such as Eng

Monk and Melmoth because their initial position of isola-

 

tion in the story is identical and because they are con-

fronted by the same problem as the narrative progresses.

Although their fates are resolved differently, the meaning

of the resolution is the same in each case.

The villain-

hero is destroyed because he attempts to set himself out-

side or above human social institutions, while his counter-

part in the female-centered gothic is rewarded with her

true love because she refuses the freedom of total isola-

tion.

20Irving Malin, New American Gothic (Carbondale:

 

Southern Illinois University Press, 1962).

21William Van O'Connor, The Grotesque:

An American

   

Genre (Carbondale:

Southern Illinois University Press,

1962).

22Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding,

 

Bantam Pathfinder Editions (New York:

Bantam Books, 1974),

p. l.

23McCullers, Wedding, p. 2.

24McCullers, Wedding, p. 4.

25McCullers, Wedding, p. 6.

26McCullers, Wedding, p. 7.

27McCullers, Wedding, p. 15.

28McCullers, Wedding, p. 22.

29McCullers, Wedding, p. 25.

30McCullers, Wedding, p. 39.

31McCullers, Wedding, p. 7.

32McCullers, Wedding, p. 38.

33McCullers, Wedding, p. 44.

34McCullers, Wedding, p. 50.

35McCullers, Wedding, p. 50.

36McCullers, Wedding, p. 55.

37McCullers, Wedding, p. 65.

341

38McCullers, Wedding, p. 67.

39McCullers, Wedding, p. 109.

40McCullers, Wedding, p. 110.

41McCullers, Wedding, p. 112.

42McCullers, Wedding, p. 113.

43McCullers, Wedding, p. 114-115.

44McCullers, Wedding, p. 115.

45McCullers, Wedding, p. 129.

46McCullers, Wedding, p. 130.

47McCullers, Wedding, p. 133.

48McCullers, Wedding, p. 135.

49McCullers, Wedding, p. 138.

50McCullers, Wedding, p. 139.

51McCullers, Wedding, p. 140.

52McCullers, Wedding, p. 146.

53McCullers, Wedding, p. 147.

54McCullers, Wedding, pp. 148-149.

55McCullers, Wedding, p. 151.

56McCullers, Wedding, p. 152.

57Culler, Structuralist Poetics, p. 191.

 

58William Faulkner, Sanctuary (New York:

Vintage

Books, 1931), p. 5.

 

59

Faulkner, Sanctuary, p. 29.

 

60Faulkner, Sanctuary, p. l.

 

61Faulkner, Sanctuary, p. 38.

 

62Faulkner, Sanctuary, p. 40.

 

63Olga W. Vickery, The Novels of William Faulkner:

A Critical Interprstation (Baton’Rouge, La.: *LouiSiana

 

 

State University Press, 1964), p. 107.

342

64Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

 

PP- 77-78.

65Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

102.

 

66Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

114.

 

67Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

122.

 

68Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

130.

69Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

130.

 

70Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

pp. 123-124.

 

71Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

PP- 127-128.

 

72

Vickery, Faulkner, p.

112.

73Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

154.

 

74Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

204.

 

75Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

207.

 

76Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

209.

 

77Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

 

212.

78Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

PP-

213-214.

 

79Faulkner,

Sanctuary.

p.

214.

 

80

Vickery, Faulkner, p.

114.

81Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

p.

230.

 

82Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

p.

274.

 

83

Cleanth Brooks, William Faulkner:

The Yoknapatawpha

 

Country (New Haven:

Yale Universtiy Press, 1963). P. 126.

84Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

p. 309.

 

85Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

239.

 

86Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

265.

 

87Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

271.

 

88Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

285.

 

89Faulkner,

Sanctuary,

292.

 

343

90Faulkner, Sanctuary, p. 292.

91Vickery, Faulkner, p. 114.

92Faulkner, Sanctuary, p. 303.

 

93Brooks, Faulkner, p. 118.

CHAPTER VI

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS ABOUT NON-LITERARY

READING PATTERNS, POPULAR LITERATURE,

AND AESTHETIC ANALYSIS

All I have said about the literary continuum and the

classification scheme proposed in the last chapter has been

based on certain premises which must be accepted if we wish

to use these notions in our attempt to understand and judge

"popular" texts.

In placing popular novels on the same con-

tinuum with "great works of art," I am assuming that such

texts are fundamentally similar to elite works and that they

can be read in the same way, using the same procedures we

employ to make meaning out of "literary" works.

As I pointed

out early in chapter four, I have deliberately ignored the

disturbing question of the differences between literary and

non-literary texts and defined a literary work as any written

text which can be read as literature using the strategies and

 

procedures of a specifically "literary" competence.

Further—

more, I have assumed that.we can read formula novels as liter-

ature, without automatically disparaging them as less success-

ful or aesthetically pleasing than their elite counterparts,

by recognizing that such works are attempting goals which,

though different from those of an elite work, are yet equally

valuable.

By accepting these decisions as logical postulates,

I have been able to work out the concept of a single, unbroken

344

345

literary continuum, composed of texts which can be read in a

similar way even though their intentions may vary widely and

they may appear structurally and functionally dissimilar.

Specifically, then, I have argued throughout that popu-

lar gothic novels can be read as we would read any work of

literature, because such works signify or mean in a manner

fundamentally similar to that of a literary work of art.

That is to say, I have assumed all gothic texts, whether tra-

ditionally labelled "popular" or "elite," are composed of

certain necessary materials combined in a structure peculiar

to the gothic in particular and to the novel in general.

Because the combinations produced in actual texts may vary

widely within the necessary skeletal framework, the texts in

question can be so unlike each other as to appear to be wholly

different in kind.

That this is not the case, however, has

been demonstrated in chapter five.

Consequently, it is un-

necessary to dwell on my principal conviction that while

"popular" and "elite" novels may appear to be entirely dif-

ferent sorts of texts, they are actually composed of the

same raw materials, that is, of linguistic and literary units

which are themselves joined together by an author into cer-

tain irreducible linguistic and literary strings.

Because

these texts are wrought of the same basic substance, and

forged into a form which tends to be altered in certain

limited ways, they can be encountered in a similar manner

and made to signify by using identical procedures.

346

To say, however, that ”popular" novels can be deliber-

ately and consciously read as literature is not to say that

such texts can gnly be read in that particular way.

I sus-

pect, for example, that many women who read popular gothics

would object to my assertion that the gothic story possesses

a thematic significance beyond that of the plot itself.

Such

readers do not consciously pick up a popular gothic because

the narrative explores the relationship between the individ-

ual and social institutions, but because the text tells a

story that is somehow pleasing to them.

While the thematic

significance of the gothic's flirtation with rape, for ex-

ample, always exists as latent meaning in the text, it can

only be fully actualized for that reader who knows how to ap-

ply the semic code to the necessary lexias, thereby discover-

ing that larger sense associated with them.

If the typical

reader of pOpular gothics has not been formally introduced

to the literary system and thus has not learned ngy_to re-

cuperate an object or event symbolically or thematically,

then those objects and events peculiar to the gothic novel

appear to possess nothing more for him than the significance

they would ordinarily contain as a house, storm, or darkly

complected male.

Furthermore, although all readers must

possess some ability to operate the semic code in order to

identify character traits and to understand the personalities

of the individuals involved in the narrative, I suspect that

many readers of popular novels do not extend semic comprehen-

sion much beyond those descriptions which explicitly state

347

"He was dark and brooding," "She was kind and generous," or

"He was almost entirely without good points."

What I am suggesting here is that even though popular

novels are composed of those same linguistic and textual units

which are the foundation of all great literary works of art,

it is possible that both kinds of novels may also be read,

understood, and enjoyed by people who either do not possess

an extensive literary competence or who do not choose to use

that which they do possess.

To make this suggestion, however,

is to raise that same question I begged earlier--about the ex-

act composition of literary competence--by relying on Roland

Barthes' description of the procedures he uses to make a lit-

erary text signify.

Before we can say that certain readers

do not rely on an exclusively "literary" competence when they

encounter popular novels, we must have a better understanding

of what that literary competence entails; how it goes beyond

a purely linguistic competence; and whether the procedures of

which it is composed are different from those we use to under-

stand other forms of written discourse such as newspaper ar-

ticles, historical descriptions, and scientific treatises.

I suspect that many of the objections raised by popular cul-

ture devotees to the literary analysis of popular novels can

be explained by the fact that some of them do notactually

read those novels in the same way a literary analyst does.

To assert, however, that they do not read in a certain way

is a far cry from providing a definitive description of the

manner in which they g9 read.

It is this latter task to

348

which I wish to direct my attention.

While I have formulated a hypothesis and can make a few

suggestions, those suggestions have not yet been verified

since I have not conducted an empirical study of the typical

audience of the gothic novel nor have I made any attempt to

determine what procedures that audience uses to make sense

of the words printed on the page.

Furthermore, because I

have not written that complete poetics called for by Jonathan

Culler, my conception of literary competence is limited to an

elaboration of the codes proposed and described by Roland

Barthes.

Although this in no way negates the worth of my

hypothesis, it has affected the way I think of the entire

problem of reading words clustered together in units larger

than sentences.

As a result, my conception of the procedures tradition-

ally used in the reading of a popular novel is actually a

modified or limited version of Barthes' notion of the liter-

ary codes.

I point this out here only to caution the reader

that the competence commonly employed in reading texts pub-

lished for mass entertainment may be more closely related to

the procedures we follow in reading non-fictional forms of

discourse than those we use to read literary fiction, assum-

ing, of course, that something broader than a purely linguis-

tic competence is necessary to the deciphering of any unit

significantly larger than the sentence.

But again, to make

this comparison, we need a theory and description of the pro-

cedures needed to make sense of non-fictional texts.

Since

349

neither the theory nor the description is yet available, and

because the formulation of them is not the subject of this

paper, I have had to consider the problem of the popular text-

reader from the literary perspective.

I suspect, first of all, that every reader who can de-

rive sense from strings of sentences and discover a fictional

"story" told through those strings understands implicitly how

to operate the proairetic and hermeneutic codes described by

Roland Barthes.

If, indeed, the reader of popular novels

could not isolate crucial details and events, he could not

construct a linear plot sequence.

Without that ability, I

doubt whether such a reader could see more than a random con-

glomeration of sense-less sentences in any text.

Since nearly

every popular gothic novel is printed with a cover boasting

a two or three sentence summary of the story-line, I think we

can safely conclude that the typical reader of such novels

knows how to construct a plot in the process of reading and

that he may very well read the gothic novel primarily because

he knows it will contain that plot once he has approached it

with the proairetic code.

The cover of the gothic novel also suggests that the

reader understands the hermeneutic code, for the pictorial

shorthand of the cover portrait poses a mystery to which it

does not give the solution.

The picture of a terrified young

woman fleeing from a dark and dilapidated mansion into a

stormy night immediately challenges the reader to discover

the cause of her fear and the reason for her flight.

The

350

cover thus suggests that the typical gothic reader is able to

make sense of details which pose a problem or state an enigma,

and that he knows how to hold those details in suspension

while he searches for the necessary solution.

Consequently,

I think some of the most prominent characteristics of the

gothic novels suggest that readers of popular texts operate

at least with implicit knowledge of the two codes governing

plot construction, that is, with an ability to use the pro-

cedures and strategies of the proairetic and hermeneutic

codes.

Internal evidence contained in the gothic novel also

implies that the referential code is a standard possession of

the typical reader of the genre.

In examining popular ver-

sions of the contemporary form, for instance, I have found

not only general references to familiar objects and proverbs

which exist in the "real" world, but also a peculiar sort of

descriptive phrasing which seems to refer to a specific realm

or sub-culture contained within that world.

I am speaking

here of such phrases and sentences as "I plucked at the

sleeves of my blue cashmere," "the slit in her pale jade

 

 

satin showing a leg that was still shapely," "the easy chair

wore a muted pattern of green vines and tiny red flowers on

a cream background," and finally, "Theodora Moreland lay on

 

her back on the green carpet beyond the bed, her legs sprawl-

ed beneath the hem of her citronéyellow robe, and blood seep—

 

ing from a wound on her forehead.”

These descriptions seem

l

incongruous particularly if we are expecting the language of

351

such novels to sound like the language we use in every-day

conversation or that we encounter in other literary texts.

Obviously, it resembles neither.

However, this language is directly related to that of

fashion and home-decorating magazines where a simple dress

is always a "teal-blue chiffon" and an ordinary tablecloth

is transformed into ”mocha-hued linen."2 Descriptions such

as these have little bearing on the development of the story,

but because they appear so ubiquitously throughout the novels,

we cannot avoid the conclusion that these special referential

lexias serve some crucial purpose for the reader.

What they

do, in fact, is to tell her that the world of the gothic novel

is contiguous with the very world she inhabits and with the

magazines she reads.

Such reassurance, then, tends to rein-

force her identification with the heroine and permits her to

apply the solutions and lessons of the heroine's story to the

situations of her own life.

Whether the typical reader of the popular gothic ever

does relate the implications of the story to her own predica-

ment is, however, open to debate.

Furthermore, if we could

answer this question we would be able to state categorically

whether such a reader uses Barthes' semic and symbolic codes

to construct textual meanings larger than the surface signifi-

cance of plot developments and simple descriptions.

Again,

although I suspect a typical reader of gothics would accuse

me of having read too much meaning into a story intended only

as entertainment, I also suspect that the thematic significance

352

I have detected as the integral companion of the plot is at

least subconsciously understood and appreciated by her.

To

say, however, that the heroine's love-hate response to the

hero is actually an exploration of the contemporary woman's

fear of rape is not necessarily to say that such a reader

possesses the ability to isolate the significance of this

particular plot development from the undifferentiated fabric

of her global, existential awareness or that she knows how

to "construct" that meaning for consciousness.

I am inclined

to think, therefore, that many readers of popular novels do

ngr read semically, consciously constructing thematic inter-

pretations--either because they do not possess the competence

required to perform such an operation, or because they choose

not to use the applicable portions of the competence they do

possess.

To all those faithful followers of popular literature

who so vociferously object to thematic analysis of popular

novels, I would respond that while such novels may be read

using only the hermeneutic, proairetic, and referential codes,

nothing contained in the novels themselves prevents us from

using the semic code to unlock whatever additional signifi-

cance they may contain even if that additional significance

never comes close to the symbolic and thematic complexity of

creative works.

I would also point out that because "liter-

ary" readings based on the use of this code can and do pro-

duce consistent and rewarding interpretations of such texts,

the texts can be said to contain that significance as an

353

invisible companion of the visible words employed.

However, I would also caution the literary analyst that

just because that significance is "there" and can be objecti-

fied in the process of reading, this does not mean that every-

one is obliged to read in that way in order to feel the full

impact of the text in question.

Because such a reader cannot

or deliberately chooses not to approach a text as a thematic

statement about some aspect of the human condition, her in-

ability or her refusal to read consciously in this way does

not necessarily prevent her from perceiving and understanding

themes at some preconscious, inarticulate level of awareness.

In a case involving this sort of unconscious "knowing," the

novel's impact on the total body-subject may be the same as

it is on another body-subject who is additionally able to

give conscious existence to both that impact and its cause.

As a result, although my conception of the popular gothic

novel, constructed with the help of a literary competence,

may sound both foreign and pretentious to a typical reader

of such novels, I suspect that if such a reader possessed the

desire and the ability to articulate all that she absorbed in

the process of reading, her consciously objectified concep-

tion of the text would not then seem so different from mine.

This theory of the strategies and procedures used by

the typical reader of popular literature raises some immedi-

ate and very important questions about the relative merits

of this reading pattern and that other pattern informed by

literary competence which I followed throughout chapters

354

four and five.

If the primary difference between these two

sets of procedures is only that of levels of awareness, might

we not argue that it should be the goal of gygry_reader to

give objective existence to all she knows at the preconscious

level of existence and thus to bring her total "bodily" com-

prehension of a text to conscious awareness?

This is obvious-

ly an extraordinarily difficult question.

Furthermore, in

proposing an answer to it, we cannot avoid also making im-

plicit suggestions about the goals of education, the nature

of entertainment and enjoyment, and ultimately about the pur-

pose behind individual existence.

While this may sound ri-

diculous, I don't think it is, for to answer the question

about how someone ought to read, we must first make a value

judgment which has broad implications for areas other than

reading.

If I argue, for instance, that every reader should

strive for total awareness and complete conscious comprehen-

sion of all that is contained in a text, and that he should

thus be taught all those procedures which might produce such

articulation, I am first assuming that conscious understand-

ing is somehow better than tacit, preconscious comprehension.

While there is, in itself, nothing wrong with such an assump-

tion, we must acknowledge that the assumption is not an a

priori given, but rather a qualitative value judgment based

on criteria extrinsic to the texts themselves.

In other

words, there is nothing contained within a literary text

which tells us how we must or should read it.

Although such

355

a text contains certain possibilities which can only be re-

alized in a specific way, it does not impose strictures on

us nor require us to bring what is only potentially contained

within it to actual existence.

The decision to carry out such

a task is just that--a decision--and can only be based on the

prior belief that it is generally our duty or to our advantage

to bring what we primordially know and only subconsciously

perceive to the level of conscious, reflective existence.

While I personally believe that to attempt to understand con-

sciously all that we possibly can about the nature of our in-

sertion in the world is both a duty and a pleasure that is

beneficial to us, I also see the need for entertainment, en-

joyment, and play.

Furthermore, I suspect that when most

people read popular literature, they are actually engaging

in a task more closely related to play than to the cognitive

articulation and comprehension of traditional literary analy-

sis.

In developing his theories about cognitive development

in children, Jean Piaget has formulated a coordinate notion

of play which can be directly adapted for our purposes here.

"Unlike objective thought," he writes, "which seeks to adapt

itself to the requirements of objective reality, imaginative

play is a symbolic transposition which subjects things to the

child's activity without rules or limitations."

He continues

that "it is therefore almost pure assimilation, $43; thought

polarized by preoccupation with individual satisfaction.

Since it is a mere expansion of tendencies, it freely

356

assimilates things to one another and everything to the ego."3

Piaget argues further that play is not an activity engaged in

because it produces learning and conscious comprehension, but

rather an activity undertaken because it enables the child to

impose actions and behavior he already "knows" on any and

everything in his environment.

Play, Piaget concludes, is a

"happy display of known actions."4

If we recall that popular forms of expression are charac-

terized by their conservative use of linguistic and literary

materials, as well as by their tendency to remain within the

limits of the competence generally used by their readers, I

think the connection between nonanalytic reading of such

forms and childlike play becomes evident.

Because I have

argued that most readers of contemporary popular gothics do

not consciously construct thematic interpretations of the

texts, it is possible to maintain that even though evil is

dealt with in the novels, and its appearance may be under-

stood and integrated at the preconscious level of existence,

it is never permitted to prove really troublesome to the

reader because it is not brought to explicit awareness as a

symbol of nis_world in this particular reading process.

As

a result, all that might challenge the individual ego of the

reader is blocked in the subconscious, if it is realized at

all.

Furthermore, the process of encountering the text is

made even more pleasurable because the words of which the

story is fabricated appear to give way easily before the

meaning-giving strategies and procedures the reader brings

357

to it.

This happens because the author had to use language

and literary forms in familiar ways in order to create an

empirical or "popular" text in the first place.

Consequently,

such texts contain very little which cannot be understood

easily and automatically.

To read an empirical or popular

text is, therefore, to apply familiar procedures to a phe-

nomenon and to have the resulting interaction confirm the

efficacy and power of those very procedures employed.

In essence, then, it is the nature of the texts them-

selves which guarantees this pleasurable, ego-gratifying ex-

perience.

Whether we construct the meaning of such works

relying only on the proairetic, hermeneutic, and referential

codes, or even if we also apply the semic code to them, by

definition, such texts will contain almost nothing that could

possibly contradict our most basic assumptions about the‘world

or our most fundamental ways of making meaning of its phenom-

ena.

To read them, then, is to happily display certain known

actions or, as Roland Barthes says of the text of culture, to

engage in a "comfortable" practice of reading.5

The empirical

text, therefore, pleases its reader in a fundamental way be-

cause it permits him the experience of confronting a strange

phenomenon and succeeding rather easily in discerning and

understanding its significance.

Its goal, aside from using

the linguistic and literary systems conservatively, is to

please its reader, to underscore what he already knows about

his culture, and to confirm the power of the procedures he

uses to make sense of that culture.

The empirical text is,

358

in short, designed to conserve and to delight.

In reading

it, therefore, the individual can be said to ”play" because

he assimilates or subjects something outside himself to that

knowledge and ability he already possesses.

In returning to the question of whether all readers

ought to approach popular forms of expression as literature,

thus attempting to bring everything "contained" in the text

including themes stated implicitly to conscious existence, I

would argue that since the basic role of such works is that

of objects designed for play, when and if "literary" con-

struction destroys that play, it should not be undertaken.

Whether it accomplishes this destruction however will, of

course, depend on who the reader is, what sort of competence

she possesses, and what she already believes about her world.

If, for example, in bringing to the level of awareness her

tacit understanding that one of the underlying concerns of

the gothic novel is the potential threat to the self posed

by physical connection with a man, that reader must also

recognize that she is frightened of her own husband, then

conscious articulation of that theme will only upset the

balance between fear and need that she has been able to work

out in her daily life.

Reading "literarily" for this individual, then, is not

play but an activity closer to learning, education, and cog-

nitive understanding.

If, however, another reader already

understands that this fear of the "Other" is an inevitable

part of all human relationships, then the literary activity

359

of constructing this thematic interpretation continues to be

play for her because the activity itself is familiar, because

it works, and because she discovers nothing she did not al-

ready know.

In rnrs case, literary reading remains a form

of play because of the conservative, empirical character of

the text itself.

In both cases, it is because the author has initially

used linguistic and literary materials conservatively that

the empirical text permits its reader--whether he be liter-

ary or not--to approach that text using familiar procedures,

knowing full well that the encounter will be a "safe" one for

him.

Indeed, it will be safe primarily because there is noth-

ing contained in such texts to force him to see that which he

does not wish to see just as there is nothing in them to cause

him to forge new procedures for giving order to that which he

does perceive.

Thus, whether it be read with the aid of a

literary competence or with the help of procedures less rigor-

ous than that, the empirical text can hardly upset the read-

er's balance because it always remains within his culture and

thus within the limits of what he already understands and

knows how to do as a member of that culture.

The empirical

text, or "popular literature," if you will, is therefore

necessary to human endeavor not only because it tends to re-

inforce the linguistic and literary systems out of which it

created, but also because it provides some individuals,

though not, certainly, all, with the opportunity to engage

in play by allowing them to exercise their own powers and by

360

enabling them to feel the incomparable satisfaction of im-

posing the order they desire on unfamiliar phenomena.

In exploring the analogy between language and litera-

ture, and in proposing the literary continuum, my primary

purpose has been to describe and document both the similari-

ties and basic differences exhibited by empirical and cre-

ative texts.

However, I also wish to point out that if we

accept the idea that empirical texts are deliberately con-

structed the way they are because they are meant to function

as objects designed for play, then we must also admit that

the relative merits of such texts ought not to be judged on

the basis of the same criteria applied to works of art cre-

ated for an entirely different purpose.

Indeed, to recog-

nize, on the one hand, that a creative text is meant to de-'

form conventions, to challenge familiar procedures, and to

upset the reader's balance, while on the other hand an em-

pirical text is meant to use those conventions, to rely on

familiar procedures, and to confirm that reader's balance,

is to acknowledge just how preposterous a task it is to

evaluate the success of both on the same basis.

Although profundity, veracity, and complexity may be

admirable goals for an author hoping to write a creative

text, since each of these qualities provides a significant

challenge to the reader's previously worked-out schemas for

dealing with the world, I doubt that any one of these three

aims is necessary or even desirable in a work deliberately

seeking to make that reader feel safe and comfortable.

In

361

fact, profound truth-to-life will probably only destroy the

reader's play, since it is doubtful any truly mimetic rep-

resentation of human existence will allow him to impose the

order Mg desires on it.

Furthermore, complexity and intri—

cacy of organization can conceivably squelch play, since it

is unlikely that the reader will be able to easily and auto-

matically unravel the significance contained therein.

As a

result, a new set of criteria must be devised before we can

begin to distinguish between an empirical text which accom-

plishes its purpose well and one which does it poorly.

Even though the creation of a new evaluative system

ought to be the subject of some subsequent dissertation, I

would like to make a few suggestions which might help to

guide future study.

In order to determine the relative suc-

cess of certain empirical texts, it might first be useful to

inquire more carefully into the nature of play.

This could

be done empirically or by relying on the numerous case stud-

ies described by Jean Piaget himself and by other child

psychologists such as Virginia M. Axline.6

This might prove

particularly beneficial if it resulted in the isolation of

qualities, activities, and techniques which make play more

satisfying and thus more "successful" for the child.

If we

could state, for instance, that a certain amount of complexity

or variation in situations makes play more interesting because

it enables the child to impose his desires and abilities on

ever more diverse phenomena, we might then find it possible

to state that an empirical text is also rendered more

362

interesting by its ability to incorporate minor innovations

and change within a fundamentally familiar structure.

On the

other hand, if we discover that a child enjoys play more when

the situations he confronts are wholly familiar and the ac-

tivities he engages in totally repetitive, we might then as-

sert that the ”best" empirical texts are those most conserva-

tive ones which remain entirely within the reader's compe-

tence by refusing to deviate from any conventions at all.

In any case, what we discover about play itself could

then be compared with what we might learn from questioning

typical readers of popular literature.

If such readers sepa-

rately indicate that the texts they "enjoy" most are the more

conventional ones, and if that kind of judgment parallels

what we have already learned about play, it would probably

then be safe to assert that the "best" popular texts, or at

least those which are most successful at accomplishing their

goal of pleasing the reader, are those that are most rigor-

ously conservative.

On the other hand, if such readers express a prefer-

ence for works which tend to be "quirky" manifestations of

a standard formula, and if that preference accords with the

child's appreciation of some variation and change, I think

we could argue that variety is fundamental to all forms of

human expression and thus as desirable in an empirical text

as in a creative one.

In the case, however, that our con-

clusions from one study do not bear out those of the other,

it would then be necessary to account for the discrepancy

363

or to scrap the whole comparison between reading popular liter-

ature and play.

While I don't expect this to occur, it is a

possibility which should be anticipated since my assertion

that the reading of conservative texts is really a form of

play is still only a hypothesis that must be tested empiri-

cally and shown to be an accurate description of a relation-

ship actually existing between the two phenomena.

Although this is certainly not the only way to proceed

in attempting to establish criteria for the judgment of em-

pirical texts, I think it might prove particularly success-

ful because it will enable us to consider such texts on their

own terms.

By bracketing out the creative end of the liter-

ary continuum, we will avoid the inevitable problems created

when simple texts like The Golden Unicorn and Rebecca are com-

 

pared, even implicitly, to vastly different works like Sang:

Egary and The Member of the Wedding.

Indeed, if we can ad-

mit that pOpular literature, like play, is meant to entertain

and to reassure its readers, we might find it easier to ac-

cept the accomplishments of such works even though they are

far removed from what we have traditionally defined as ex-

cellence in a literary text.

I hope that once we have learn-

ed to value empirical works for the conserving functions they

do perform, we will then be more sensitive to the differences

they exhibit among themselves although such differences are

neither as great nor as significant as those appearing among

the creative texts deliberately designed to be unique and

different.

Only when we are able to see "pOpular" literature

364

clearly, for what it really is, will we begin to understand

why some texts are more successful and hence more popular

than others.

If we can, in short, develop this sort of ap-

preciative comprehension, we will be able to provide much-

needed descriptions of the procedures and forms used by the

extraordinarily popular text to accomplish its dual purpose

of conserving linguistic and literary forms while simultane-

ously pleasing an enormous audience.

NOTES

1Phyllis Whitney, Spindrift,pp. 17, 33, 113, 139.

 

2This peculiarity of the popular gothic is dealt with

at length by Joanna Russ in "Sombody's Trying to Kill Me and

I Think Its My Husband:

The Modern Gothic," Journal of Popu-

 

lar Culture, VI:4, Spring, 1973, pp. 666-692.

Russ writes,

 

for example, that "when the Heroines of Gothics are not

noticing other people's clothes (or their own) or being

thrown off cliffs, or losing the men they love, they often

spend their time thus:

I unpacked quickly, showered, and put on a

cool dress of black linen with touches of

lime green.

I slid my feet into high heeled

black sandals and fixed gold star earrings

in my ears.

(Gabriella, p. 14)."

Russ continues, "these novels are written for women who cook,

who decorate their own houses, who shop for clothing for

themselves and their children - in short, for housewives.

But the Heroines - who toil not, neither do they spin - know

and utilize (sometimes bizarrely) the occupation of their

readers.

'Occupation Housewife' is simultaneously avoided,

glamorized, and vindicated."

(p. 670).

3Jean Piaget, Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood,

 

trans. by C. Gattegno and F. M. Hodgson (New York:

W. W.

Norton and Company, Inc., 1962), p. 87.

4Piaget, Play, p. 93.

SBarthes, S/Z, p. 14.

6Virginia M. Axline, Dibs:

In Search of Self (New York:

 

Ballantine Books, 1964).

See also Play Therapy:

The Inner

 

Qynamics of Childhood (Boston:

Houghton

Mifflin Company,

 

1947).

365

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This bibliography of works consulted is divided into

three sections.

The first, concerning Maurice Merleau-Ponty,

includes the standard English translations of Merleau-Ponty's

major works and secondary sources focusing specifically on

his writings about language and art.

A complete bibliography

of Merleau-Ponty's work and all available secondary sources

can be found in Richard Lanigan's Speaking and Semiology,

 

listed below.

The second section of the bibliography then

includes all those works on the gothic novel consulted for

Part Two of this dissertation.

In addition, I have separated

the novels themselves from pertinent secondary sources.

The

third section finally lists the miscellaneous works cited

throughout the study which do not specifically treat Merleau-

Ponty or the gothic novel.

This list is enlarged upon in the

"General References" section, appended to the bibliography.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

 

Primary Sources

 

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice.

Adventures of the Dialectic.

Trans-

lated by Joseph Bien.

Evanston, Illinois:

Northwestern

 

University Press, 1973.

.

Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language in

Children.

Translated by Hugh J. Silverman.

Evanston,

Illinois:

Northwestern University Press, 1973.

.

Humanism and Terror.

Translated by John O'Neill.

Boston:

Beacon Press, 1969.

366

367

.

In Praise of Philosophy.

Translated and with a

 

preface by James M. Edie and John Wild.

Evanston,

Illinois:

Northwestern University Press, 1963.

.

Phenomenology of Perception.

Translated by Colin

Smith.

London:

RoutIedge and Kegan Paul, 1962.

.

The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phe-

nomenological Psychology, The Phiiosophy ofArt, History,

and PoliEics.

Edited by James M. Edie.

Evanston,

Illinois:

Northwestern University Press, 1964.

.

The Prose of the World.

Edited by Claude Lefort.

Translated by John O'Neiil.

Evanston, Illinois:

Northwestern University Press, 1973.

.

Sense and Non-sense.

Translated by Hubert L.

 

Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus.

Evanston, Illinois:

Northwestern University Press, 1964.

.

Signs.

Translated and with an introduction by

Richard C. McCleary.

Evanston, Illinois:

Northwestern

University Press, 1964.

.

The Structure of Behavior.

Translated by Alden

L. Fisher.

Boston:

Beacon Press, 1963.

.

Themes from the Lectures at the College de France,

1952-1960.

Translated by John O'Neill.

Evanston,

 

Illinois:

Northwestern University Press, 1970.

.

The Visible and the Invisible.

Edited by Claude

Lefort.

Translated by Alphonso Lingis.

Evanston,

Illinois:

Northwestern University Press, 1968.

Secondary Sources

 

Ballard, Edward G.

"On Cognition of the Pre-Cognitive."

Philosophical Quarterly, XI (July, 1961), 238-244.

Bannan, John F.

The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty.

New York:

Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1967.

.

"The 'Later' Thought of Merleau-Ponty."

Dialogue, V (1966), 383-403.

Barral, Mary Rose.

The Role of the Body-Subject in Interper-

sonal Relations.

Pittsburgh:

Duquesne University

Press, 1965.

Bayer, Raymond.

"Merleau-Ponty's Existentialism."

Univer-

sity of Buffalo Studies, XIX (1951), 95-104.

368

Bergeron, André.

”La Conscience engagée dans le régime des

significations selon Merleau-Ponty."

Dialogue, V

(1966), 360-372.

Charlesworth, James H.

"Reflections on Merleau-Ponty's Phe-

nomenological Description of 'Word'.”

Philosophy and

 

Phenomenolpgical Research, XXX, (June, 1970), 609-613.

Chiari, Joseph.

Twentieth Century French Thought from

 

Bergson to Levi-Strauss.

London:

Paul Elek, 1975.

 

Cowley, Fraser.

"L'Expression et la parole d'aprés Merleau-

Ponty.”

Dialogue, V (1966), 373-382.

Daly, James.

"Merleau-Ponty's Concept of Phenomenology."

Philosophical Studies, XVI (1967), 137-164.

Ecker, David W.

"How to Think in Other Categories:

The

Problem of Alternative Conceptions of Aesthetic Educa-

tion."

Journal of Aesthetic Education, IV (April,

1970), 21-36}

Edie, James M.

"Expression and Metaphor."

Philosophyand

 

Phenomenological Research, XXIII (June, 1963), 538-

 

561.

.

"Recent Developments in Phenomenology."

American

Philosophical Quarterly, I (April, 1964), 115-128.

 

.

Speaking and Meaning:

The Phenomenology of Lan-

guage.

Bloomington, Indiana:

Indiana University

Press, 1976.

Gerber, Rudolph.

"Merleau-Ponty:

The Dialectic of Conscious-

ness and World."

Man and World, II (February, 1969),

83-107.

Gillan, Garth.

The Horizons of the Flesh:

Critical Perspec-

 

tives on the Thought of Merleau-Ponty.

Carbondale,

Illanls:

Southern Illinois University Press, 1973.

.

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