ISBN 978-3-8233-8389-5 C H A L L E N G E S Side-Stepping Normativity in Selected Short Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner discusses Sylvia Townsend Warner’s highly innovative narrative style, which does not conform to conventional modernist or postmodernist standards, and explores how Warner’s short stories shift to o -centre positions. Side-Stepping Normativity further outlines the way in which Warner constantly challenges the categories we apply to classify our surroundings and analyses how Warner succeeds in creating queer, that is, non-heteronormative as well as strange and peculiar stories without explicitly opposing the so-called norms of her time. In this, Side-Stepping Normativity joins a vibrant conversation in queer studies which revolves around the question how critics can approach literary texts from a non-antagonistic position. Rather than focussing on the role of the critic, however, this thesis shows that Warner’s texts have long achieved what queer theorists seek to achieve on an analytical level. www.narr.de # 4 Rebecca Kate Hahn Side-Stepping Normativity Side-Stepping Normativity in Selected Short Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner C H A L L E N G E S # 4 Rebecca Kate Hahn 18389_Umschlag.indd 2-3 18389_Umschlag.indd 2-3 25.06.2020 16: 00: 58 25.06.2020 16: 00: 58 Side-Stepping Normativity herausgegeben von Gabriele Alex, Anya Heise-von der Lippe, Ingrid Hotz-Davies, Dorothee Kimmich, Niels Weidtmann, Russell West-Pavlov Band 4 Challenges for the Humanities Herausforderungen für die Geisteswissenschaften Rebecca Kate Hahn Side-Stepping Normativity in Selected Short Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner © 2020 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Internet: www.narr.de eMail: info@narr.de Satz: pagina GmbH, Tübingen CPI books GmbH, Leck ISSN 2568-4019 ISBN 978-3-8233-8389-5 (Print) ISBN 978-3-8233-9389-4 (ePDF) ISBN 978-3-8233-0217-9 (ePub) www.fsc.org MIX Papier aus verantwortungsvollen Quellen FSC ® C083411 ® Umschlagabbildung: © Charlie Ohr und Rebecca Kate Hahn Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http: / / dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. For Zoë and Juno 9 11 13 33 2.1 34 2.2 40 2.3 50 2.4 58 61 3.1 62 3.2 68 3.3 75 3.4 83 85 4.1 88 4.2 96 4.3 104 4.4 114 117 5.1 118 5.2 127 Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner . . . . . . . . . . 2. Homoerotic Desires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “The Shirt in Mexico”: Gender Disruption and Ambiguous Speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The “Curious Quality” of “Bruno” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Seeking Meaning in “The Green Torso” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Desire and Detachment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Cross-Species Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Knowledge and Love in the Introduction to The Cat’s Cradle-Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Decentering the Human in “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Corporeality and Control in “The Wineshop Cat” . . . . . . . . . . Shifting the Species Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Incestuous Longings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Secrets and Sibcest in “A Love Match” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mothers and Desires in “At a Monkey’s Breast” . . . . . . . . . . . . Expanded Experiences and Material Objects in “A Spirit Rises” Indifference to Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Avenues of Escape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “At the Trafalgar Bakery” and Ex-Centric Spaces . . . . . . . . . . “But at the Stroke of Midnight” and Ex-Centric Modes of Being 5.3 137 5.4 145 147 6.1 148 6.2 156 6.3 163 6.4 170 173 195 201 201 202 “An Act of Reparation”: An Act of Emancipation . . . . . . . . . . Eluding Interpellation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. Vanishing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Death and Disengagement in “‘Boors Carousing’” . . . . . . . . . . Failure and Success in “A Work of Art” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Textural Desires in “A Dressmaker” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nonbeing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. Coda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Primary Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Secondary Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Contents Acknowledgements I owe thanks to many people who have all helped me in various ways to complete this book. I am especially grateful to my supervisor, Ingrid Hotz-Davies, who first kindled my interest in the writing of Sylvia Townsend Warner. Conversations with Ingrid Hotz-Davies, her enthusiasm and enlightening criticism helped me shape and reshape my ideas. I would further like to thank Christoph Reinfandt, my secondary supervisor, for his guidance and advice throughout the different stages of my thesis. Peter Swaab has likewise been very generous with his advice since I first contacted him in 2011. My work has benefited greatly from his constructive comments and his extensive knowledge of Sylvia Townsend Warner and her writing. I am grateful for funding received from the German Academic Exchange Service to study at University College London, the State of Baden-Württemberg Graduate Support Act, and the FAZIT Foundation. I am further grateful to the German Academic Exchange Service for funding a trip to the New York Public Library to conduct research in the Sylvia Townsend Warner archives, the Equal Opportunity Commission of the University of Tübingen for different travel grants and the partial funding of the publication of this book, and also the Institutional Strategy of Tübingen University for sponsoring an interdisciplinary winter school on literary figurations of failure that allowed me to discuss my ideas on non-normativity and desire with an informed audience. Sections of Chapter 7 have been published in The Journal of Sylvia Townsend Warner Society (2010). Permissions to reprint are gratefully acknowledged. Many thanks are due to my wonderful colleagues, friends, and sounding boards: Sandra Fluhrer, Eliza Cubitt, Xiang Zairong, Katharina Luther, Hanne Roth, Nathalie Walker, Raphael Zähringer, Luke Davies, Sara Vakili, Anna Berger, the members of the PhD colloquium at Tübingen University, Shetties, Nora Güthlein, and, in particular, Susanne Jung, who carefully read and commented on every chapter. My heartfelt thanks go to Gero Bauer and Jutta Kling, who provided inspiration and offered much-valued support throughout the writing process and beyond. Thanks is also due to Charlie Ohr for sketching the cat on the book cover and the team at the Centre for Gender and Diversity Research, as well as Anya Heise-von der Lippe, for stimulating discussions on feminist issues and diversity. My grateful thanks go to Jennifer Hahn and Timothy Hahn for their humour and understanding over the past years. I am deeply indebted to my mother, Siân Williams-Hahn, who generously read the entire thesis and provided invaluable editorial suggestions. Her encouragement and extensive support made this book possible. Thank you. As ever, a special thank you to Florian, Zoë and Juno, who make every day a brilliant adventure. Any errors that remain are entirely my responsibility. 10 Acknowledgements Abbreviations “Act of Reparation, An” “Reparation” “‘Boors Carousing’” “‘Boors’” “Dressmaker, A” “Dressmaker” “Green Torso, The” “Torso” “Love Match, A” “Match” “Monkey’s Breast, At a” “Monkey” “Shirt in Mexico, The” “Mexico” “Spirit Rises, A” “Spirit” “Stroke of Midnight, But at the” “Midnight” “Sylvia Townsend Warner 1893-1978: A Celebration” “Celebration” “Sylvia Townsend Warner and The New Yorker” “STW and NY” “Trafalgar Bakery, At the” “Trafalgar” “Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East, The” “Traveller” “Wineshop Cat, The” “Wineshop” “Women as Writers” “WaW” “Work of Art, A” “Art” Cat’s Cradle-Book, The CCB Element of Lavishness, The EoL Innocent and the Guilty, The IaG Kingdoms of Elfin KoE Letters: Sylvia Townsend Warner Letters New Yorker, The NY Sylvia & David: The Townsend Warner/ Garnett Letters S&D 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner DT: This is The New Yorker fiction podcast, from The New Yorker magazine. I’m Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker. Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine’s archives to read and discuss. This month we’re going to hear “The Children’s Grandmother” by Sylvia Town‐ send Warner. […] The story was chosen by the Colm Tóibín […]. Hi, Colm. CT: Hi, Deborah. DT: So, The New Yorker published about 150 of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s stories over forty years, from the 1930s to the ‘70s. Where did you first start reading her? Can you tell us a little bit about her? CT: I don’t really know anything about her at all. […] I know ex‐ actly where I bought the book [that contains “The Children’s Grandmother”]. It was a second-hand book in South King Street in Dublin. […] It was a hardback, big book, called Best Stories of the New Yorker. […] it had a story by John Updike, and I think towards the end it had this story that I didn’t think you could write [“The Children’s Grandmother”]. In other words, it really jumped at me. The fact that you could have, you know, this completely gothic story, this story that was so almost - strange, so strange that you would think, ‘Well, it’s not part of any universal experience. Not part of any common experience.’ And yet every detail, every tone in it, seemed to me fresh, and new, and incredibly interesting. (Treisman, my emphasis) In the interview transcribed above, Colm Tóibín talks about his reasons for choosing the short story “The Children’s Grandmother” (1950) by Sylvia Town‐ send Warner (1893-1977) for The New Yorker fiction podcast. Tóibín felt reading “The Children’s Grandmother” opened up a whole new reading experience for him. His immediate thought was that Warner had succeeded in writing about an almost impossible topic. His reply to Treisman’s question - whether he could tell his listeners more about the writer whose story he had chosen to discuss - contains some telling remarks. He points out that he is neither familiar with Warner’s writing nor her biography, and that he was drawn in by the ‘strang‐ eness’ of the story. “The Children’s Grandmother” is an intriguing, atmospheric short story that, amongst others, artfully negotiates preconceived notions of motherhood and grandmotherhood. It portrays the narrator’s elderly mother-in-law whose life is overshadowed, as the reader comes to believe, by the tragic loss of her seven children, one of whom was the narrator’s husband. Early on in the story, the reader notices that the grandmother has a very matter-of-fact attitude towards bereavement, and, seemingly, talks about her dead children without a hint of emotion: My husband, the last of my mother-in-law’s children, and born a long interval after the others, was the only one who lived to grow up, his childhood intimidated by the presence, which was also the absence, of Madeleine, Guy, Everard, Lucas, Alice, and Noel. He grew up an only child, in the middle of this shadowy band of brothers and sisters whom his father and the servants assured him were angels in Heaven, whom his mother told him were dead. (Warner, “The Children’s Grandmother” 35) Here the reader learns that, instead of offering her last remaining son solace in view of the death of his siblings, his mother curtly informs him that his siblings are dead and gone. This passage artfully echoes Wordsworth’s poem “We are Seven” (1798), which revolves around the speaker of the poem’s conversation with the “little cottage girl” (5). Asking her, “‘Sisters and brothers, little Maid, / How many may you be? ’” (13-14), she answers “‘Seven in all’” (15). Despite the fact that two of her siblings, “Jane” and “John”, have passed away, the child insists that “we are seven” and that Jane and John are just as present as her living siblings (18). Moreover, by constantly adding Jane and John to her sibling group, the girl effectively renders the speaker’s words, “But they are dead; those two are dead! / Their spirits are in heaven! ”, powerless (65-66). While the girl’s ut‐ terances demonstrate that she has reconciled herself with the fact that Jane and John “in the church-yard lie” (21), the protagonist’s mother-in-law’s terse reply invites the thought that she has not yet come to terms with the death of her children and is seeking to suppress her grief. Years later, after the death of the protagonist’s husband in a car accident, his widow and children move in with his mother. From the start, the dynamics between the widow, her children, and her mother-in-law are strained. The grandmother is cold, self-centred, and incredibly domineering, “[…] she had no trace of grandmotherly fuss or grandmotherly fondness” (35). Any form of in‐ teraction with her grandchildren takes place under her terms and conditions: 14 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner It was an extraordinary sight to see them [the children and their grandmother] playing hide-and-seek in the orchard - the tall old woman running, with her gray head stooped, under the lichened boughs, or folded away in some narrow hiding place, her eyes blazing with excitement. With a fickleness that matched the fickleness of a child, she would say courtly, ‘That’s all’ and walk out of the game without a trace of fatigue, for she played to please herself, not them. (36) To the narrator, the grandmother’s un-grandmotherly attitude is incomprehen‐ sible and she tries to find reasons for her behaviour. She tells the reader, “[…] I used to wonder if her detachment sprang from a contained and despairing dif‐ fidence - if, having failed so pitiably to rear her own children she had made some violent vow not to meddle with mine” and “[…] at other times I had the simple and sentimental thought: She has lost all her children; she dare not love again” (36). She further contemplates the idea that “[…] she accepted them as the remission of her own tragedy, an indulgence of a maternal feeling that in her own maternity had been deformed by constant blasts of fate […]” (36). The different explanations that spring to the narrator’s mind are all linked to the death of her mother-in-law’s children and contain a subtle, and yet predictable, form of judgement - the narrator judges her mother-in-law for failing her chil‐ dren, and, implicitly, questions her mother-in-law’s ability to be a ‘good’ mother. Through subtle manipulation on behalf of the autodiegetic narrator, the reader of the short story is led to believe the explanations offered by the narrator. It is not until her own four children have left the house that the narrator arrives at a new and very simple explanation for her mother-in-law’s behaviour: “At first, she had disliked us, and gradually her dislike had been overcome - that, and no more was the explanation” (38). A more conventional writer than Warner would have perhaps ended the story at this point and would have con‐ jured up the stereotypical image of a woman who was not fortunate enough to be able to see her own children growing up, who has gradually accepted her situation and decided to dedicate herself to her grandchildren. Perhaps this ex‐ planation was the one Tóibín had initially been expecting. This type of ending, however, would not have rendered the story “strange”, “fresh”, or “incredibly interesting” and caused Tóibín to use the following words to describe the story, “It is a gnarled story, and it’s full of the most gnarled feelings and then there’s … as it comes to the very end, one final gnarl” (Treisman). “The Children’s Grandmother” ends with a completely unexpected twist. On her deathbed, the grandmother finally reveals her true thoughts about her family: 15 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner Becoming aware that I was being looked at, I turned and saw her glance dwelling on me. Her eyes gleamed in their sockets; her lips were forming painfully into a smile of contempt. She struggled to raise herself, and writhed across the bed toward me. ‘Heh! You poor creature! ’ she said, taking hold of my chin in a violent, shaking grasp. ‘Heh! You poor, luckless creature! You have not lost one of your children, not one! ’ I thought she was raving, but her tone steadied, and there was the force of years of rational consideration in her voice as the continued, ‘So when you are old, you will not have a single child left you. Nothing but strangers! ’ (38, my emphasis) Here the reader learns that the grandmother and the child in “We are Seven” are less different than one would expect: to both characters, the deceased children are present. While the child, however, accepts this in a matter-of-fact way, the grandmother rejoices at the fact that nearly all of her children died young since their death spared her the pain of watching them grow up and leave home only to return as strangers. Contrary to what her daughter-in-law had believed all these years, the grandmother had not suffered from the loss of her children. This utterance finally exposes the dark and possessive side of her character, which was veiled in ambiguity throughout the narrative. Dead children, the grand‐ mother reveals, always remain at their mother’s side, whereas her daughter-in-law will have to watch her children grow up, leave home and be‐ come strangers. The grandmother sees this as a triumph over her daughter-in-law. This unexpected and powerful ending to the short story challenges normative expectations of ‘good’ mothers and ‘good’ motherhood. “As a mother gives life / vitality to her child,” Simone Fullagar et al. write, “it is assumed that she will continue to provide this to her child throughout her life - from childhood into adulthood and sometimes into older age” (108). In Warner’s story, the grandmother, as a mother, does not live up to these expectations; worse even, as her children pass away, she is not struck by grief - but rather feels relief. This, however, is not the “final gnarl” as the story does not end here. We witness how the grandmother’s power extends beyond the grave: “Those were the last words she [the grandmother] spoke. Then it was the disclosure of her hoarded malice that appalled me. Now I am appalled for a different reason. I am beginning to think that her words are coming true” (38, my emphasis). Up to this point, the grandmother is portrayed as the narrator’s antagonist. Years later, however, after her children have grown up, the narrator admits that her mother-in-law’s words contained some elements of truth. What is more, she has to admit to herself that she herself is not entirely different from the dying woman whose last words made her question her former beliefs. 16 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner The story artfully steers the reader away from the widely held concept of what constitutes a “good” mother and presents the reader with another form of motherhood. In this case, the grandmother does not seek to harm her children; she simply admits that she prefers them dead for her own selfish reasons. Even though this may be seen to challenge the idea of a “good” mother, it cannot be termed “bad” simply because the grandmother assumes an unconventional ma‐ ternal role. In the light of this, the story deliberately aims to catch the reader unaware. Hardly any reader would have immediately guessed the grandmoth‐ er’s true reasons for disliking her family. Moreover, hardly any reader could assume that the narrator, a seemingly gentle and caring woman, would even‐ tually harbour the same feelings as her dead mother-in-law. Set against this background, Tóibín’s reaction to the story, “it really jumped at me”, starts to make sense (Treisman). I chose to present this story at the beginning of my book for two reasons: to offer a prime example of the extraordinary directions Warner’s stories take and to set the scene for my analysis, which focuses on a body of work that has been ignored by most literary scholars. To this date, no comprehensive study of Warner’s short stories has been undertaken. The short stories of many of her close contemporaries, for example, Kathrine Mansfield (1888-1923), Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) or D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), have received a considerable amount of scholarly attention, whereas Warner’s stories have gone almost un‐ noticed. The few publications that exist have concentrated on individual stories, but so far no attempt has been made to connect the stories in terms of either content or form. This book seeks to close this gap by highlighting the way selected stories of Warner shift to off-centre positions (“Side-Stepping Normativity”) and by ana‐ lysing Warner’s highly innovative narrative style, which never conforms in any way to conventional modernist or postmodernist standards. Side-Stepping Nor‐ mativity in Selected Short Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner further sets out to outline the way in which Warner constantly challenges the categories we apply to classify our surroundings and analyses how she succeeds in creating queer, that is, non-heteronormative as well as “strange, peculiar, eccentric” stories without explicitly opposing the so-called norms of her time (“Queer”, def. 1a). Reviews and Literary Criticism of Warner’s Work “She [Warner] has the spiritual digestion of a goat”, writes John Updike, “Her stories tend to convince us in process and baffle us in conclusion; they are not rounded with meaning but lift jaggedly toward new, unseen developments” 17 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner (235). Warner’s stories begin relatively innocently and then, as in “The Grand‐ mother’s Children”, take a surprising turn that catches the reader unaware. In keeping with Updike’s description, Warner temporarily lifts her feet off the ground to present events, characters or settings from a new and unexpected angle. This perspective is not necessarily oppositional to a more conventional perspective; however, it does contain surprising and slightly peculiar elements - for example, a dying grandmother who prefers dead children to living children, or an artist who literally seeks to become one with his work of art. While Warn‐ er’s stories are very often very realistic, they always seem to develop a taunting little twist that makes them strange. “In Writers at Work” (1931), Louise Morgan observes that Warner displays similar characteristics in real life, “She [Warner] has that same quality of unexpectedness. It is part of her personal charm that she keeps her listener constantly on the alert, and never by any chance gives him what he is prepared for” (393). Most reviews imply that there is something bewildering about Warner’s writing, something that her readers cannot quite grasp - in addition to a certain feature that is apparent in all her writing. In the Times Literary Supplement of August 1984, for example, Anne Duchêne comments on Warner’s idiosyncratic writing style. In her article on the short story collection One Thing Leading to Another (1984), she criticises the fact that Susanna Pinney, the editor, left two of the thirteen stories undated, but points out: “Dates are of little significance, however, where there is no evolutionary change, and all stories might equally well have come from the previous two decades of the author’s writing life” (953). Duchêne draws attention to the fact that there is something unique about Warn‐ er’s style that she cannot pinpoint and continues to comment that: She [Warner] was happiest in the liberating latitudes of eccentricity, or when she could tilt some well-fleshed verisimilitude gently over into the unlikely, or perhaps beyond that into the fantastic; but she was a modest exotic and her taste for the improbable was always tempered by good humour, good taste and good will. (953) Duchêne also points out, like Updike, that Warner’s stories often take a turn for the unexpected. Duchêne, however, does not ascribe Warner the same amount of courage, artfulness and ingenuity as Updike. By repeatedly using the nonde‐ script adjective “good” to refer to her, Duchêne makes her writing appear less novel and less enterprising. While Updike and Duchêne admire Warner’s style, other reviewers find it inaccessible. In “Wit and Fancy” (1947), a review of The Museum of Cheats and Other Stories (1947), Elizabeth L. Sturch writes that 18 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner As a short-story writer Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner belongs to the school which believes in making its readers do a large proportion of the work. It is a commonplace that the farther we travel from the illustrated women’s magazines the farther removed also are the neatly tailored and explicit endings, the tidily rounded situations of the popular story. (461) Sturch criticises the fact that Warner does not resolve her stories, but asks her readers to actively engage with them. Decades later, Maud Ellmann flatly con‐ tradicts Sturch’s assessment of Warner’s writing: while Sturch bristled at the fact that Warner tends to alienate her readers, Ellmann claims that Warner does the exact opposite, “In this critical context, a modern novelist who strives to captivate rather than to alienate the reader tends to be discounted as a throw‐ back, lacking the gumption to burst the confines of the Victorian novel” (“The Art of Bi-Location: Sylvia Townsend Warner” 82). Sturch’s criticism has a strong misogynistic undertone, denying Warner the right as a woman to write stories that challenge her readers to think. Sturch even implies that Warner’s style displays a trace of conceit. With regard to the “exercise of imagination”, as she calls it, she maintains that […] it may be questioned sometimes whether too much is not expected of it, and whether readers are not deceived by intellectual snobbery into supposing that they have understood certain authors who in reality leave them completely fogged. (461) Sturch criticises the fact that Warner deliberately eludes her readership and establishes the author as an authoritative figure whose message the reader must aim to decipher. Her review clearly shows that she considers Warner’s writing too difficult and too odd to understand. In contrast to Tóibín, she does not see any value in the strange and unfamiliar elements Warner introduces into her writing. With regard to Warner’s style, Sturch points out, “There is nothing portentous or bludgeoning about the style; and as in her previous work, the author is at her best when she is most absurd or fantastic” (461). Sturch values the fact that Warner’s writing is - supposedly - auspicious and undemonstra‐ tive; that it is, as she believes, harmless. In a similar vein to Sturch, the critic Paul Binding also finds Warner’s stories not entirely convincing. Yet while Sturch criticises their open structure, Binding considers the stories collected in The Music at Long Verney (2001), a posthumous collection edited by Michael Steinman, to be too contrived. He writes, Her stories are very much those of the professional writer, aware of how effects can best be made in short space, of how essay-like musings can be given a narrative shape 19 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner […] and of how endings - like the flamingos Alice holds in Lewis Carroll’s croquet game - can turn round and bite the reader. (23) The above reviews highlight the controversial attitudes towards Warner’s writing. They also underpin the fact that there is something about Warner’s stories that reviewers find hard to place. Duchêne detects a timeless quality in Warner’s work but is unable to describe it further. Sturch describes Warner’s narrative style as neither “portentous” nor “bludgeoning” but does not enlarge on this. Binding disapproves of Warner’s short stories, dismissing their style, structure and content as too artificial. These widely differing opinions may be one of the many reasons why Sarah Waters writes about Warner, “The intelligence of her writing has sometimes resulted in her fiction being misunderstood as difficult, and has perhaps lost her readers; she’s certainly one of the most shamefully under-read great British authors of the past 100 years” (Waters). While I agree with the second part of Waters’ statement, I do not agree with the first premise that Warner’s writing has simply been misunderstood and labelled difficult. As the previously mentioned reviews have shown, her writing is not only difficult, but also extremely challenging. In accordance with Gay Wachman, I would argue that Warner’s writing is unexpectedly demanding: at first glance, her writing style seems innocently straightforward but as her stories progress it becomes apparent that the opposite is true. Referring to Warner’s intricate prose, Wachman writes, The complexity of her writing - her crossings of genres and genders; her learned but seemingly offhand allusions to literature and history; her sexual, feminist, communist, anarchist radicalism - is perhaps a cause of the simplification in much of the writing about her. (Lesbian Empire 2-3) Wachman believes that many readers readily allow the seemingly straightfor‐ ward texts to deceive them, dismissing them as nothing out of the ordinary. Short story readers often approach short stories metaphorically to find a hidden meaning. However, with Warner’s stories this approach does not work, since her stories are not riddled with symbols, images, or metaphors, but characterised by a clear structure which explores aspects of human (or, in her later stories, elfin) life in a very rational way. In addition, Warner’s prose is very clear and devoid of long, complicated sentences obscuring the plot. Consequently, the reader may be fooled into thinking that some of Warner’s stories are too simple, too ordinary. Not only reviewers, but also literary critics have found it difficult to classify Warner’s work, much as they admire her writing. In 1967, in a tongue-in-cheek manner, William Maxwell, Warner’s editor at The New Yorker, writes to Warner, 20 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner 1 In 2012, Jay Barksdale, librarian at the New York Public Library, for example, found Warner’s short story “Flowers” in the archives. See “Flowers, a Newly Discovered Short Story by Sylvia Townsend Warner”. The Guardian 2 Mar. 2012. Web. 15 July 2014. 2 Lolly Willowes (1926), Mr Fortune’s Maggot (1927), The True Heart (1929), Summer Will Show (1936), After the Death of Don Juan (1938), The Corner That Held Them (1948), The Flint Anchor (1954) 3 The Espalier (1925), Time Importuned (1928), Whether a Dove or a Seagull (1934, with Valentine Ackland), Boxwood (1957) 4 Many of her letters have been published. See, for example: William Maxwell (ed.), Letters (New York: Viking Press, 1983); Maxwell (ed.); Richard Garnett (ed.), Sylvia and David: The Townsend / Garnett Letters (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994); Garnett (ed.)Mon‐ ckton-How, Rachel and Moira Rutherford (ed.), Cousin and Friend: Sylvia Townsend Warner Letters to Rachel: 1950-1952 (Durham: White & Co., 2011); Monckton-How, Ra‐ chel and Moira Rutherford (ed.); Monckton-How, Rachel and Moira Rutherford (ed.); Susanna Pinney (ed.), I’ll Stand by You: Selected Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland: With Narrative by Sylvia Townsend Warner (London: Pimlico, 1998); Michael Steinman (ed.), The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell, 1938-1978 (Washington, D. C.: Counterpoint, 2001); Mon‐ ckton-How, Rachel, Moira Rutherford (ed.), Cousin and Friend: Sylvia Townsend Warner Letters to Rachel: 1950-1952 (Durham: White & Co., 2011). I shall tell her [Professor C. D. who wants to write a book about Warner] that the novels are a work of a secret society, each being by a different hand, which is why they are so different from one another. And that there is an affiliated sub-secret society that is responsible for the stories. I shall hint, rather heavily, that I belong to the latter and am the author of The Cat’s Cradle-Book. And that the greatest of all your books is unpublished, waiting in the British Museum - a four volume novel about Richard IV of England, the facts of whose reign were suppressed, in all the history books, by Cardinal Wolsey, for political reasons. (The Element of Lavishness 172) Warner was an extremely prolific writer of many genres, and, as Glen Cavaliero notes, “[…] a writer who stubbornly resists categorisation” (209). As Maxwell recounts, Warner’s first short story “My Mother Won the War” was published in The New Yorker in 1936. He adds that, “Over the next four decades The New Yorker published one hundred and fifty-four stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner, and nine poems” (“Sylvia Townsend Warner and The New Yorker” 44). Numerous other short stories have been included in collections, together with stories pre‐ viously published in The New Yorker. Many more remain undiscovered in the Sylvia Townsend Warner archives. 1 Warner also wrote seven novels, 2 four vol‐ umes of poetry, 3 a biography of T. H. White (1967), numerous newspaper articles, a great number of letters, 4 and in addition translated Marcel Proust’s Contre Sainte-Beuve (1954) into English (1957). Although Warner published a consid‐ erable amount of literary work during the modernist era, she was never con‐ 21 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner 5 See Robin Hackett and Gay Wachman, “Introduction: Making the Private Public: Women Writers, Modernism, Empire, and War”, in At Home and Abroad in the Empire: British Women Write the 1930 s, ed. by Hackett, Robin, Freda Hauser and Gay Wachman (Associated UP, 2009), pp. 13-30. sidered part of the literary canon of her time. Her indifference towards literary norms and expectations has posed a challenge for her critics who would like to assign her work to a specific genre and / or establish her as a writer of a move‐ ment. They have propounded different explanations for her absence from the canon and the lack of critical interest in her work. Claire Harman, for example, argues that “[…] the author’s name eludes recognition precisely because her oeuvre is so tremendously varied and, as a result, difficult to classify” (Garrity, Step-Daughters of England 147). Jane Marcus, who concurs with Harman, main‐ tains, “Warner’s neglect is due in large measure to the fact that she was both a lesbian and an active member of the British Communist Party” (148). Jane Garrity believes that “[Warner’s] marginalization […] has at least as much to do with her narrative style itself, which consistently employs the props of tradi‐ tional storytelling” (148). Warner was neither considered a modernist, nor a so-called ‘“writer of the 1930s”’ although, ostensibly, she resembles these writers in many aspects (Montefiore 143). As Janet Montefiore writes, A publicly identified Communist and a distinguished writer of fiction and poetry, Warner is […] very close to the canonical “Auden Generation” male writers in terms of her class, culture and education; but like so many other women writers of the thirties, she belongs to the wrong sex and the wrong generation (she was born in 1893) - to be counted as a “writer of the 1930s” by the historians. (143) Montefiore’s claim is still very accurate, although considerable effort has been made to re-evaluate the literary canon of the 1930s. 5 Montefiore adds, “Moreover, the ironized traditional forms which she [Warner] chose to write in - lyric poems and a pastiche of Crabbe, short stories and historical novels set in unpopular periods - do not fit standard perceptions of thirties writing” (143). Warner not only ignores the conventions of the 1930s literary scene but also remains indifferent to the literary or stylistic conventions of the time. In line with Montefiore’s assessment, Robin Hackett writes that Warner also seems to have lived the wrong kind of life to have been embraced by scholars of British modernism, left history, or feminist politics. She lived in London in the 1920s, was friends with Bloomsbury’s David Garnett and Steven Tomlin, once had lunch with Virginia Woolf, and later became friends with Leonard Woolf. But after 22 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner the mid-1930s, Warner lived rurally and wrote about rural people, while modernism is often defined as exploration of urban lives and mechanization. (85-86) Montefiore and Hackett both agree that Warner does not conform to the com‐ monly held views about writers of her era. Apart from the fact that Warner was female, she was slightly too old to be considered a writer of the 1930s. Moreover, she did not show enough interest in the London literary scene and society, and in other London writers and intellectuals, to be grouped together with other modernist writers. Furthermore, her writing did not fall into the traditional categories of modernist writing. Ellmann puts forward the following reasons why Warner was not considered part of the Modernist canon: Although Warner constantly experiments with form and content - her later novels subvert the convention of the hero, as well as the expectation of a climax and an ending, while her poetry shows a prosodic versatility akin to Auden - her grammar and sentence structure remain too orthodox to count as ‘modernist’. (Ellmann, “The Art of Bi-Location” 83) Like Montefiore, Ellmann sees the reason for Warner’s exclusion from the canon in the author’s style - she is convinced that most critics think that Warner simply lacks the “verbal complexities of Joyce” (83). Ellmann is highly critical of the categories that have defined and continue to define modernist literature and writes: “A further reason of Warner’s neglect in the academy is the long-standing over-valuation of experimental Modernism” (83). Ellmann welcomes the fact that these categories are slowly becoming less rigidly defined and observes that “[in] recent years the stranglehold of Modernism has begun to loosen, enabling a wider range of writing and writers to re-emerge, especially women and minorities” (83). She firmly believes that “[t]he term ‘modernism’ has long since outlived its usefulness, having condemned many talents to obscurity” (“Sylvia Townsend Warner” 18). Like Ellmann, Garrity believes that Warner should be included in the modernist canon since “[her] fiction, far from conventional or conservative, frequently melds satirical fantasy, social realism, allegory, and literary allusion - always with a convoluted eye towards subversiveness” (Step-Daughters 148). The following chapters examine the seemingly subversive elements in Warner’s short stories and show that they may indeed have a different quality altogether. Wachman further highlights the fact that Warner’s writing essentially blurs the lines of demarcation: Warner’s estrangement from the dominant ideology is crystallized in these narratives’ matter-of-fact crossings of borders that are generally assumed to be impassable: the incest taboo [“A Love Match”], the line between the human species and others animals 23 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner [The Cat’s Cradle Book], the distinction between the material and the supernatural [Kingdoms of Elfin]. What all this crosswriting of borders does is to blur rather than to cross the lines between genders, sexualities and species: not just hierarchies but boundaries themselves are made ridiculous. (Lesbian Empire 45) Wachman suggests that the literary works in question do not necessarily seek to reverse or deconstruct (hetero-) normative value systems and / or boundaries. Rather than contesting them, Warner’s stories subtly expose their absurdity. The reviews as well as the literary criticism, including Wachman’s assess‐ ment, all revolve around Warner’s lack of desire to conform to any standard or norm; either in terms of style, or content. They all confirm Maxwell’s humorous remark about Warner’s oeuvre - that her novels must be a “work of a secret society” and that an “affiliated sub-secret society” must have written the short stories. The Queer Lolly Willowes Way: Drifting Away from Normativity To Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “paranoid readings” are driven by the desire to ex‐ pose “truths”, dominant ideologies and hegemonic structures in texts and other cultural phenomena. She writes, “[…] paranoia is characterized by placing, in practice, an extraordinary stress on the efficacy of knowledge per se - knowl‐ edge in the form of exposure” (Sedgwick, Touching Feeling 138). In her essay “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay is About You” (1997, revised and reprinted in Touching Feeling 2003), an essay “[…] in which she diagnoses current research in the humanities with a pathological need to find ‘meaning’ in everything, and make knowledge explicit”, Sedgwick discusses “paranoid readings” and considers “reparative” ways of engaging with texts (Bauer 40). In this context, she highlights the parallels between paranoid readings and what Ricoeur terms the “hermeneutics of suspicion”, an approach favoured by Marx, Nietzsche and Freud which is marked by a strong distrust of given structures. Sedgwick suggests that little benefit can be gained by repeatedly querying how a text and other cultural, political, and historical phenomena address, for example, hidden homoerotic desires, criticise capitalism, or question other norm-enforcing structures. She maintains that it is much more beneficial to concentrate on the intricacies of a text and allow for surprises than to paranoically search for systemic oppression. The authors of the special issue of Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, entitled Queer Theory without Antinormativity (May 2015), discuss sim‐ ilar questions. Like Sedgwick, the authors - prominent queer theorists such as 24 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner Annemarie Jagose, Robyn Wiegman and Heather Love - address the question how readers can approach texts from a non-antagonistic position. They do not distinguish between “paranoid” and “reparative” readings, but between oppo‐ sitional and non-oppositional ways of addressing a text or an event. This dis‐ course on non-dualistic thought, analysis and action reveals a strong desire to abandon former ways of thinking. My hypothesis is that, on a narratological level, Warner’s short stories do exactly what Sedgwick and the authors of Queer Theory without Antinormativity set out to show on an analytical level. Nonnormative, that is, deviant, marginalised, non-heterosexual behaviours, desires and structures have traditionally been a topic of exploration for queer studies. In an attempt to sum up the objectives of queer studies, Donald E. Hall and Annamarie Jagose state, Queer studies’ commitment to non-normativity and anti-identitarianism, coupled with its refusal to define its proper field of operation in relation to any fixed content, means that, while prominently organized around sexuality, it is potentially attentive to any socially consequential differences that contribute to regimes of sexual normalization. (xvi) Hall and Jagose emphasise that queer studies seek to question and debunk modes of normalisation, particularly those related to sexuality, and choose to identify normalisation and normativity as the starting point for most of the research conducted in queer studies. In the special issue of Differences, Jagose, Wiegman and Love et al. discuss the possibility of queer theory without antinormativity and question why queer studies are so automatically linked to antinormativity. In their introduction, the editors Wiegman and Elizabeth A. Wilson ask “[C]an queer theorizing proceed without a primary commitment to antinormativity? ” (1). They question whether it is possible to do queer studies without a constant focus on normativity (i.e. the rules and regulations that determine the so-called norm), normalisation, and, in addition to Hall and Jagose’s list, normalcy (the state of being “normal”). Wiegman and Wilson do not claim that queer studies should ignore focusing on norms and regulations, rather they seek to explore whether it is possible to do queer research without encountering norms and regulations on oppositional terms (“anti-normativity”). Wiegman and Wilson argue that by insisting on the belief that antinormative criticism is the only way to dismantle norms and normativity, queer theory creates a duality that it, in effect, is attempting to eliminate. The introduction of Queer Theory without Antinormativity in particular, but also the journal in general, has met with harsh criticism. Jack Halberstam, for example, maintains that the editors create their own, simplified version of queer 25 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner 6 Halberstam stresses that the editors lump together such theorists as Laurent Berlant, David Halperin, and Sedgwick, to name but a few, without paying attention to the different nuances of their work: “No single theory of norms unites these works either through their embrace of the antinormative or through their understanding of the po‐ litical” (“Straight Eye”). theory, which is mainly characterised by its opposition to existing norms (see “Straight Eye”). 6 On this point, I would agree with Halberstam who contests the fact that all queer theorists follow a notion of antinormativity characterised by a simple stance against normativity - see, for example, Sedgwick’s work on non-dualistic thought in the introduction to Touching Feeling. Rather than in‐ sisting on antinormativity, which entails being against any form of normativity, I would argue that queer critique creates spaces in which normativity is tested, debated and toyed with - spaces in which nonnormative modes, in all their diversity, can be explored. My understanding of the term “queer” builds on Halberstam’s and Lisa Duggan’s definition of “queer”. Halberstam does not employ the term “queer” to merely refer to sexual identities but to a way of life that defies the norm, to “eccentric modes of being” (Queer Time and Place 1). Halberstam states, “If we try to think about queerness as an outcome of strange temporalities, imaginative life schedules, and eccentric economic practices, we detach queerness from sexual identity […]” (1). To me, the temporal and the uneconomical aspect of Halberstam’s definition is particularly important. In his writing, Halberstam does not exclude sexual orientation, but refrains from making it the focal point of his work. Duggan breaks the term “queer” down into three different catego‐ ries - which, as she maintains, can exist simultaneously. (1) Identity, or queer as a synonym for LGBT populations; (2) Practice, or queer as a broad umbrella term for dissenting sexual practices and gender expressions, and (3) Politics, or queer as a designation similar to feminist that appears quite independently of an advocate’s identity or sexual / gender practices. (Duggan) Duggan describes how the term “queer” can be applied to different contexts - identity, practice, and politics. I find Duggan’s approach useful since she, in contrast to Halberstam, explicitly refers to queer as a “broad umbrella term for dissenting sexual practices and gender expressions”. This aspect of queer is par‐ ticularly relevant for the first three chapters which revolve around nonnormative sexual desire. Accordingly, the term “queer” will henceforward be used to refer to nonnormative temporalities and desires. Based on my understanding of queer, the stories selected for analysis have been grouped into different headings to reflect different forms of queerness. 26 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner Chapter 2, “Homoerotic Desires” takes a closer look at the stories “The Shirt in Mexico” (1941), “Bruno” (1971) and “The Green Torso” (1970) to discuss how Warner deals with homoerotic affairs. Chapter 3, “Cross-Species Relationships”, analyses the “Introduction” to The Cat’s Cradle-Book (1940), “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East” (1940), as well as “The Wineshop Cat” (1942). The focus of this chapter is on representations of sexuality, power and control in cross-species encounters. Chapter 4, “Incestuous Longings” revolves around the diffuseness of incestuous relationships. It takes a closer look at “A Love Match” (1964), “A Spirit Rises” (1961) and “At a Monkey’s Breast” (1955). Chapter 5, “Avenues of Escape”, depicts how Warner’s heroes and heroines find unusual ways of escaping interpellations, as seen in the short stories “But at the Stroke of Midnight” (1970), “Trafalgar Bakery” (1955), and “An Act of Repara‐ tion” (1964). Chapter 6, “Vanishing”, examines “Boors Carousing” (1941), “A Dressmaker” (1961), and “A Work of Art” (1961) to consider how Warner enables her characters to temporarily disappear into non-existence. The last chapter, Chapter 7, takes a closer look at selected stories from Kingdoms of Elfin (1977). It contains an analysis of the elfin world with reference to Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of the friend / foe dichotomy outlined in Modernity and Ambivalence (1991) to illustrate why some readers may consider these stories utterly strange. Emphasis here will be placed on the elves’ behaviour and the consequences of their actions, as opposed to speculating on what the elves in the stories symbolise. Side-Stepping Normativity in Selected Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner will conclude with a discussion of the different analyses and examine the techniques employed by Warner in her writing (Coda). The introduction started with an exemplary reading of “The Children’s Grandmother” to introduce first-time Warner readers to the oddness of her fiction. It ends with a reference to Warner’s first novel Lolly Willowes or the Loving Huntsman (1926) and discusses why this novel may be termed a “foot-off-the-ground novel” to highlight the relevance of this term for my research question. Lolly Willowes tells the story of Laura Willowes - known as “Lolly” to her family - who, in the course of the novel, gradually changes from being a dependent unmarried woman into an independent witch. Following strict patriarchal structures, Laura’s family takes the decision that Laura must leave her old home in the country and move to London to live with her brother and his family after her father dies. At the time, Laura does as is expected of her without question. Some twenty years later, however, at the age of 47, Laura seizes the opportunity to move away from the clutch of her family and London to a place in the country called Great Mop. Her family objects strongly to the move, but 27 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner despite this Laura goes ahead with her plan. She rents a room and soon settles down in her new home. The novel, which has described fairly realistic events up until this point, gradually starts to introduce more and more fantastic elements into the story. Laura’s encounter with Satan - “the loving huntsman” and not the evil entity feared by most religious groups - causes her to become a witch, a move that eventually enables her to free herself from all the social constraints imposed upon her throughout her life. Lolly Willowes deals with Laura’s gradual withdrawal from her family and society and the theme of female liberation. In her new environment, Laura comes to realise that she is no longer the person she once was: She was changed, and she knew it. She was humbler, and more simple. She ceased to triumph mentally over her tyrants, and rallied herself no longer with the conscious‐ ness that she had outraged them by coming to live at Great Mop. (Warner, Lolly Wil‐ lowes 152) Laura gradually learns to leave her past behind her. Step by step, she disengages herself from her former life and gives up defining herself by her relatives and family background. She resultantly ceases to derive pleasure from speculating on her relatives’ reactions to her departure as she cuts herself off. However, Laura does not remain passive to what has been done to her and deals with her past in her own way: There was no question of forgiving them. […] If she were to start forgiving she must needs forgive Society, the Law, the Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament, the Bank of England, Prostitution, the Architect of Apsley Terrace [her London home], and half a dozen other useful props of civilisation. All she could do was to go on forgetting them. (152) Instead of harbouring ill feelings towards all the institutions that confined her - emphasised here by the use of capital letters - Laura simply decides to forget about their existence. By admitting to their existence, she would have to accept the role they had cast her in and would always be tied to them. Only by forgetting them can she liberate herself from her past life. Bruce Knoll calls Laura’s reactions to society “an assertiveness that falls between the two extremes” of “feminine passivity” and “masculine aggressiveness” (344). Whereas Knoll calls the result of her behaviour “separatism”, I would argue that Laura’s behaviour cannot be regarded as a political reaction, but rather a casting off of her old life. She finds the strength to detach herself from her surroundings and, ultimately, society as a whole. Forgetting “useful props of civilisation” is not the same as consciously separating from them. If Laura had merely detached herself from 28 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner these institutions, she would still have had to acknowledge their existence, thereby endowing them, and the society that produces them, with both meaning and power. The institutions that Laura decides to forget (such as the Law and the Church to mention a random few) are firmly entrenched within society. According to Foucault’s concept of power, set out in The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality 1 (1976), institutions are powerful because society gives authority to them. Laura realises that in order to detach herself from these aspects of society, she must renounce society as a whole - an impossible task, since she herself is also a product of society. The only route that lies open to her is to detach herself from society as far as is possible. Foucault does not believe that power is imposed hierarchically from top to bottom, but considers power to work within a net-like system. Foucault states that [o]ne needs to be nominalistic, no doubt: power is not an institution, and not a struc‐ ture; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society. (WtK 93) Foucault explains that “power must not be sought in the primary existence of a central point, in a unique source of sovereignty from which secondary and de‐ scendent forms would emanate” and that it is always and continuously main‐ tained by society (93). Since there is no single point to attack or to separate from, forgetting about society’s existence is an efficient way of dealing with society and all its institutions. In this way, the influence society has on Laura gradually loses significance since she does not confirm its value system ex negativo. As Foucault states, with regard to power and power formations, resistance is always possible. He notes that, “Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority to power” (95, emphasis added). Foucault highlights the fact that power and resistance are coexistent and that resistance automatically becomes part of the same structure as power. Foucault shows that ultimately there is no way out since whichever side you choose, you will never be able to disassociate yourself from one or the other side completely. Therefore, instead of fighting society or showing aggres‐ siveness or resigning and remaining passive, Laura chooses to turn her back on society. She decides that she does not want to be part of any society that operates with means she abhors. Laura knows intuitively that by fighting patriarchal systems, she will only be perpetuating them. It is not until Laura encounters Satan and eventually becomes a witch that she feels that she is getting close to achieving her personal freedom. Throughout the novel Satan remains an enigmatic character that not even Laura can pin 29 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner down. In reply to her question, “Tell me about yourself ”, Satan counters, “Tell me first what you think” ( LW 238, emphasis in the original). Inevitably, this question prompts Laura to start talking. She speaks out for herself and womankind when she says: When I think of witches, I seem to see all over England, all over Europe, women living and growing old, as common as blackberries, and as unregarded. […] Well, there they were, there they are, child-rearing, house-keeping, hanging washed dishcloths on currant bushes; and for diversion each other’s silly conversation, and listening to men talking together in the way men talk and women listen. Quite different to the way women talk, and men listen, if they listen at all. […] Nothing for them except for subjection and plaiting their hair. (239-40) Laura continues talking in this manner and Satan patiently listens to what she has to say. At a later point, he even encourages her to continue talking to struc‐ ture her thoughts (cf. 244). She explains that women become witches to “escape all that - to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out […] by others” (243). Laura clearly recognises that society treats women unjustly, but does not make plans to change the situation for women by, for example, becoming po‐ litically active. Laura eventually comes to realise that she does not fit into any of the groups of society open to her - neither in London nor in Great Mop. She therefore “[finds] herself moving even further into the indifferent, non-social company of shrubs and ditches” (Hotz-Davies and Gropper 1). Knoll finds this aspect of the novel problematic and expresses his dissatisfaction at the way Laura rejects society and gradually isolates herself from it at the end of the novel by stating, “It is not a perfect solution, in that Laura is effectively cut off from all others” (361). Knoll overlooks the fact that Laura is not cut off by society, but cuts herself off from the society towards which she has become indifferent. He does not recognise that Laura is content with her chosen lot and does not wish to join the society of any particular group. When Laura finds herself alone after Satan’s departure, she realises that the sun has gone down and that she has missed the last bus back home. Instead of feeling intimidated by the situation, Laura expe‐ riences a new sense of freedom: First Satan, then the sun and the bus - adieu, mes gens! With affectionate unconcern she seemed to be waving them farewell, pleased to be left to herself, left to enter into this new independence acknowledged by their departure. (LW 250) 30 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner 7 Pompey informs the reader: “And for my part I will try to punctuate this book, to make it easy for you to read, and to break it up, with spaces for a pause, as the publisher has asked me to do. But this I find very extremely difficult” (Smith 39). At the end of the novel Laura starts walking - and literally disappears - into the woods. This scene hints at the fact that death is possibly the only way to end the quandary of having to “keep one foot on the ground” (cf. Schabert 154). In view of the narrative style of the novel and the behaviour of the main protagonist, Laura, Ina Schabert describes Lolly Willowes as a “foot-off-the-ground novel”. The term “foot-off-the-ground novel” was origi‐ nally coined by the female protagonist, Pompey, of Stevie Smith’s Novel On Yellow Paper Or Work it Out For Yourself (1936). Referring to the novel she is writing, Pompey states, This is a foot-off-the-ground novel that came by left hand. And the thoughts come and go and sometimes they do not quite come and I do not pursue them to embarrass them with formality to pursue them into a harsh captivity. (38) Pompey’s novel does not follow a chronological order; it describes events, ac‐ tions and people that randomly spring to the narrator’s mind. Pompey further states that the only reason why she adheres to traditional rules of writing in the structure of her novel is to make it more accessible to the reader. 7 With regard to foot-off-the-ground novels, Schabert states: Der Boden, von dem die foot-off-the-ground novels abheben, ist die allgemeine Kultur, die akzeptierte gesellschaftliche, politische, moralische und literarische Sinnstiftung‐ spraxis. Die Autorinnen halten Abstand zu dem, was das Ihre nicht ist. Sie erzählen mit anderen als den gewohnten Prioritäten, Ordnungs- und Wertvorstellungen. Ein solches Erzählen ist in letzter Konsequenz paradox, da jede Literatur, um verständlich zu bleiben, sich der etablierten Diskurse bedienen muss. Ganz ohne diesen Boden geht es nicht; strenggenommen kann deshalb auch nur ein Fuß gehoben werden und ‘woanders’ sein. (153, emphasis in the original) Schabert claims that it is impossible for authors to write literary works without employing established literary “tools” and referring to certain aspects of human society. For this reason, Pompey is forced to use, for example, punctuation and orthographic rules. The above quote further implies that literary works are, by necessity, connected with human systems of thought, language and knowledge since humans are unable to comprehend anything that exists outside the domains of these systems. In Lolly Willowes this point of view is reflected by the actions of the protagonist. The protagonist, Laura, demonstrates how impossible it is to live outside the boundaries of the human world, that is, outside what 31 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner 8 The Lacanian symbolic order can be understood as “the order of language, the order of discourse” (Homer 44). As humans, it is impossible for us to avoid the symbolic order: “As individual subjects, we can never fully grasp the social or symbolic totality that constitutes the sum of our universe, but that totality has a structuring force upon us as subjects” (44). Lacan terms the symbolic order (cf. also Hotz-Davies and Gropper 1). 8 Laura forms a life for herself in which society and all those “other useful props of civilisation” gradually become insignificant to her. In line with Schabert’s description of foot-off-the-ground novels, Lolly Willowes does not feature any “[h]arte Gegenüberstellung, Antagonismen, Polemik gegenüber dem allgemein Akzeptierten, lautes Verlachen” (153). Laura ultimately displays a form of indifference that enables her to cope with her surroundings through detach‐ ment. Schabert points out: “In der Regel entwickelt sich kein feindseliges Ver‐ hältnis zu [der gesellschaftlichen Welt], sondern eher Gleichgültigkeit, ver‐ bunden mit Kompromissbereitschaft” (159). Readers will recognise that this particular mode likewise prevails in Warner’s short stories. As the following chapters will illustrate, this is one of the reasons why Warner’s fiction readily opens itself up to the form of reparative reading suggested by Sedgwick - that is, to a reader who is willing to explore the intri‐ cacies of a text, a reader who will accept that the stories sometimes shift to eccentric positions, that they open up gaps but do not close them, and that they do not always offer neat and tidy solutions. In this, they undoubtedly contain many queer moments. In the following analyses, it will become apparent that Warner has long disengaged herself from oppositional, dualistic ways of writing. 32 1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner 2. Homoerotic Desires In his introduction to The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell (1938-1978) (2001), Michael Steinman draws attention to the fact that Warner makes no distinction between same-sex part‐ nerships and heterosexual partnerships. “Trusting that the Maxwells would read her words and understand her experience with great sensitivity”, Steinman writes, “she [Warner] wrote of her marriage as equivalent to theirs […]” (xix). Maxwell and Warner became close friends and exchanged numerous letters on various subjects, including their respective relationships. In her letters to Max‐ well, Warner makes a casual remark about her life with Valentine Ackland: When Valentine & I had our grand house in Norfolk, with a servant, we used to count the hours till her half-days & evenings out when we would rush into the kitchen and read her novels and magazines: not quite up to the level of Mrs Henry Wood (she was too young for that) but such a grateful change from Dostoevski. (EoL 146) Warner never felt the need to address the fact that she was living with a woman. This attitude is apparent in the passing remarks she makes about her lesbian relationship in her private letters, and can be seen in the way she features male homoeroticism in her stories. Her unbiased acceptance of sexual desire was one of the main reasons why she was asked to write the biography of T. H. White: “In addition to the affinity for fantasy she shared with White, Warner had been chosen as his biographer in part because White’s closest friends trusted her, as a sexual dissident, to tell his tale generously, openly, and without judgement” (Micir 124). Writing White’s biography presented Warner with a challenge. She realised that she could not disclose too much information about his sexuality without causing a scandal and decided to omit several details. By contrast, Warner’s stories have never been subject to any moral censor‐ ship. In “The Shirt in Mexico” (1941), “The Green Torso” (1970), and “Bruno” (1971), Warner writes freely about homoeroticism and cross-generational long‐ ings. Despite the considerable time span between the writing of these stories, all three take a similar stance on homoerotic desires: rather than positioning themselves in opposition to normative or nonnormative desires, they explore the particularities of desire as such. They reflect on the porosity of boundaries, describe materials that stimulate desire, and investigate the role played by in‐ animate objects in deriving pleasure. The chapter begins with an analysis of “The Shirt in Mexico” (1940), followed by “Bruno” (1971), and “The Green Torso” (1971). 2.1 “The Shirt in Mexico”: Gender Disruption and Ambiguous Speech “The Shirt in Mexico” first appeared in The New Yorker on 4 January 1941 and was later included in the collection of short stories A Garland of Straw (1943) under the title “My Shirt is in Mexico”. Warner wrote and published this story at a time in which homosexual acts between men were still considered a crime in the United Kingdom (lesbianism was never considered worthy of any legal consideration). The story revolves around an intimate conversation between the narrator, the narrator’s friend Valentine, and a train attendant. During this con‐ versation, the train attendant tells the story of how he once met a man on the train with a very distinctive taste in clothes. This chapter analyses the sexual character of the language used by the different interlocutors and explores the connection between touch, textiles, and desire. It questions the art of gifting and examines the effect of the train attendant’s gift on the train passenger. “But the buffet car was almost empty and looked like something belonging to a different world, with its clean, light-painted walls and red leather upholstery” (Warner, “The Shirt in Mexico” 51). Coming from the passenger com‐ partments, the unnamed narrator and Valentine are described entering the buffet car of the train. The transition from one space to another is almost uncanny, since the cabin they enter is completely different to the cabin they have just left (“The train was crammed, a wartime train loaded with soldiers […]”, “It was difficult to move along the corridor, one had to edge one’s way past soldiers sitting on their packs […]”, 51). All of a sudden, they find themselves more-or-less alone in the empty compartment of an otherwise overcrowded train. In this compartment, the signs of war are less visible. The shift of scene gives rise to an extraordinary conversation revolving around homoerotic desires. Prompted by the narrator’s Mexican-inspired bag, “which was printed with a gay view of flowers and white-clothed tourists riding on festooned mules”, the buffet car attendant starts conversing with the two passengers: ‘“[…] Oh, I’d like to go to Mexico. It must be beautiful… I’ve got a shirt in Mexico,’ he said” (51). Up until this point, the three interlocutors were merely making small talk. The attendant’s last remark, however, prompts the two passengers to elicit further details. The attendant tells them: “It all happened before the war, because of a 34 2. Homoerotic Desires 9 Gay Wachman points out that the fictive German, called Renatus Leutner as we later learn, is based on Warner’s friend Ludwig Renn (1889-1979), “Renatus Leutner’s name reveals his origin in Warner’s and Ackland’s lives: he represents a dear friend of theirs from that now ‘historic’ world before the war, the German writer and communist exile, Ludwig Renn” (Lesbian Empire 146). Ludwig Renn, a gay German communist writer and activist, emigrated to Mexico via England and America in 1940 / 41. Regarding Renn, Wendy Mulford writes, “He stayed with them [Warner and Ackland] at Lower Frome Vauchurch before the war, and kept in touch after he left England for Mexico. He left behind with them the draft of an anti-fascist fable written in German, about an ant who reports on the way the two-legged creatures organise their world and doesn’t much like what he sees […]” (153). German gentleman, a refugee. I noticed him the moment he came in […] and I thought to myself, Now, he’s somebody” (51). The German instantly catches the attendant’s eye, “A bald man, and thin as a lath, and most remarkably clean”, and he recalls how he was determined to learn more about him (52). 9 After serving the German cake and a cup of coffee, the attendant carefully approaches him again under the pretence of changing the ashtray. He tells the narrator and Valentine, “‘When I went to change it [the ashtray], he said he didn’t smoke. Now, I don’t smoke either, so that was a beginning. And once you’ve got a beginning, it’s easy, isn’t? ’” (52). He does not hide the fact that he felt attracted to the German and desired to talk to him. His present audience, the narrator and Valentine, do not consider his behaviour inappropriate or odd in any way. They carry on listening to his story. Critics such as Gay Wachman attribute this to the fact that the narrator and Valentine are also gay. Wachman biographies “The Shirt in Mexico” and argues that the attendant knows that he is talking to a lesbian couple - namely, to the fictional versions of Sylvia Town‐ send Warner and her partner, Valentine Ackland. Based on this reading, Wachman writes, “No wonder the attendant looked at the two women ‘as though [they] were friends of his’ when he first brought them their drinks; he was responding, whether consciously or not, to their lesbian intimacy” (Wachman, “Lesbian Political History” 314). Given Warner’s biography, “The Shirt in Mexico” does lend itself to such an analysis. However, this in turn simultane‐ ously rules out any form of ambiguity and unmistakably defines the characters’ genders and desires. As a result, the story loses its light, oscillatory quality. Like Wachman, Frances Bingham combines close-reading with biographical criticism. Bingham, however, does not seek to unravel the ambiguities displayed in the story. Like Wachman, Bingham identifies the narrator as Sylvia Townsend Warner and the narrator’s friend as Valentine Ackland. At the same time, how‐ ever, Bingham draws attention to the fact that the story does not gender 35 2.1 “The Shirt in Mexico”: Gender Disruption and Ambiguous Speech Valentine and that the name “Valentine” is generally considered to be male. Bingham writes, A character actually named Valentine is introduced in ‘My shirt is in Mexico’, and remains carefully ungendered throughout. […] Ackland’s presence is not explained, her place as an intimate companion of the narrator is taken as inevitable. She is named but, as Warner knew from experience, the name was usually presumed to be mascu‐ line; no pointers in the text confirm this, not does anything disprove it. The reader’s own preconception, or foreknowledge, is delicately unstated by Warner. (36) Bingham emphasises the fact that Warner does not seek to confirm Valentine’s gender in any way - neither for readers aware of Valentine Ackland’s existence, nor for unaware readers. On the basis of the gender commonly ascribed to the name “Valentine”, and without any knowledge of Warner’s biography, the Valentine in the story is more likely to be taken to be male than female. Con‐ versely, there are no personal or possessive pronouns or any other form of ad‐ dress to confirm this assumption. Whilst Valentine’s gender remains ambiguous, there can be little doubt about the narrator’s gender. By addressing her as “Madam”, the attendant discloses that the narrator is female (‘“Excuse me mentioning it, Madam, but I see from your bag you’ve been to Mexico”, 51). Yet, even if Valentine were male, this would not automatically mean that the narrator and Valentine were in a heterosexual relationship; and if she were female, this would not automatically mean that they were in a homosexual relationship. The narrator merely refers to Valentine as her friend (“As soon as the train left London, my friend Valentine and I went along to the buffet car for a drink”, 51) and not as her companion, lover or partner. She deliberately obscures her relationship with Valentine. In a reading in which Valentine is male and not in a relationship with the narrator, the attendant, a gay male, can talk openly to anyone he trusts about his homo‐ erotic desires. In this reading, a person’s gender and the gender of their object of desire is of little significance. Textiles as Intermediaries Eventually, as their conversation progresses, the two men come closer without engaging in physical contact. The attendant points out to the narrator and Valentine that his acquaintance had hardly any luggage: 36 2. Homoerotic Desires What you’d take away for a weekend - and he was going to America for good and all. But not worried in the least. What’s more, he seemed so pleased with what he had got. Made me feel his suit to see what good wool it was and told me all about a won‐ derful pair of silk pajamas he’d been given. (51-52, emphasis in the original) Clothes and fine materials take on the role of intermediary in the conversation between the German and the attendant. From the attendant’s account, it be‐ comes clear that the German takes a delight in clothes and fine materials and is a connoisseur of beautiful things. During the first part of the conversation, the German remains fairly passive, but during the second part he becomes more animated and invites the attendant to feel the high-quality material from which his clothes are made. Rather than using words, he addresses the attendant’s sense of touch. After listening attentively to the German’s description of the material used to tailor his suit, the attendant makes a great show of determining the quality of the material for himself. The attendant does not simply examine the German’s suit; ultimately, he appears to caress the garment the German is wearing. This suddenly makes the scene appear very intimate, suggesting that the two men have found a way to communicate with each other. With regard to texture, Sedgwick maintains, To perceive texture is never only to ask or know What is it like? Nor even just How does it impinge on me? Textural perception always explores two other questions as well: How did it get that way? and What could I do with it? (The Weather in Proust 84, emphasis in the original) Sedgwick writes this in the context of the textile art she produces. These deliberations, however, are significant in the light of the pleasure experienced by the attendant. By feeling the suit, he actively engages with the material and participates in its history. He does not disclose any further details relating to the incident but intimates that the narrator and Valentine are aware of the erotic implications of the encounter. After discussing the wool in his suit, the German leads the attendant on to discuss an even finer material, namely silk. The dis‐ cussion remains hypothetical since the silk garment in question, a pair of silk pyjamas, is not within reaching distance. The German is challenging the attendant to use his imagination and to indulge in the idea of the soft material with a very smooth texture. The attendant must content himself with the animated description of the silk pyjamas, since he cannot feel the material for himself. The German is unmistakeably flirting with him, leading him on to imagine the most luxurious and seductive materials - while denying him the satisfaction of touch. 37 2.1 “The Shirt in Mexico”: Gender Disruption and Ambiguous Speech Finally, the attendant tells the narrator and Valentine, “And you could tell from the way he spoke he was the sort of gentleman who knows about clothes - quite a dandy in fact” (“Mexico” 51). The attendant uses the term “dandy” to describe a man who dresses elegantly and takes pleasure in high quality clothes. The term “dandy” does not always necessarily refer to men who are aroused by other men, it rather describes a lifestyle. As Adam Geczy and Vicky Karaminas write, “Dandyism was a particular way of being in that it combined dress, de‐ portment, attitude and worldview, a worldview that was at once weary but en‐ gaged […]” (58). Based on the attendant’s account, the German lacks the detachment commonly attributed to the dandy. The context in which he uses the term to describe the German strongly suggests that he believes him to be gay. Gifting and Regifting After feeling the fine material the German was wearing and then imagining the silky texture of the German’s pyjamas, the attendant remembers that he has something he could give to the German, “Then all of a sudden it flashed on me he could have my shirt. It was a very nice shirt. […] I always like to buy my shirts in London. You get a better style” (“Mexico” 51). By giving the German a shirt he had bought in London that same day, the attendant seeks to make sure that his new acquaintance will always be wearing something that will connect them both. He is very pleased by the way the German accepts his gift: But what I liked best was the way he opened the parcel and looked at the shirt most carefully - how the buttons were fastened and all. Examined it all over, he did. If he had just taken the parcel, that wouldn’t have been the same thing, would it? (52) In the same way in which the attendant examined the German’s clothes, the German now examines the shirt the attendant gave him - the main difference being that the attendant is not wearing the garment. As with the silk pyjamas, the German’s action describes a possibility; that is, the possibility of him exploring the attendant’s body. The two men do not communicate their desires directly but allude to them by means of fine materials. The narrator and Valen‐ tine both understand the underlying message of this account and refrain from making any further comments. Remembering the opening sentence of the attendant’s story (“‘I’ve got a shirt in Mexico’”, 51), the narrator and Valentine both assume that the German graciously accepted the attendant’s gift and took it with him to Mexico (“‘And now he’s in Mexico? ’”, 52). Subsequently, however, they learn that the German 38 2. Homoerotic Desires gave the attendant’s shirt to someone else. The German writes to the attendant, “And the beautiful shirt you gave me, it is not ungratefully that I bestow it to a comrade going to Mexico when he has greater need than I. […] I thank you again” (52). The German sends the attendant a letter in which he acknowledges the gift - in this sense, the gift becomes an object of mutual exchange. First the attendant gives the German a shirt, and then the German sends the attendant a letter. This exemplifies Derrida’s claim that there is no such thing as a genuine gift. Derrida writes, “If he [the receiver] recognizes it as gift, if the gift appears to him as such, if the present is present to him as present, the simple recognition suffices to annul the gift” (13, emphasis in the original). To Derrida, a gift can only be a gift if neither the giver nor the receiver are aware of the fact that one person is giving the other a gift. In the case of the shirt, the giver as well as the receiver have cognizance of the act of gifting. Regifting the shirt, however, in‐ terrupts the cycle of gifting between the German and the attendant. As Mark Graham points out: Exchanging gifts proceeds according to the rules and produces the system of gift giving on which it seems to draw, but, like gender, it might fail to produce the correct effects. […] There are no guarantees what will happen or that the results will be as intended. To some extent, this may even explain the pleasures of gift giving, which lie not in the meticulous calculation or even in the expectation of return, but in the openness and uncertainty of the exchange. (47) The attendant had not expected his shirt to be regifted to someone else, but it fills him with joy to know that his shirt now resides in Mexico (“‘I’ve always wanted a shirt in Mexico’”, 52). By regifting the shirt, the German disengages himself from any obligations to the attendant; he no longer feels indebted to him and, subsequently, the attendant can no longer lay any claim to the German. Now their connection is no longer based on material objects, but on a mutual history triggered by sensory pleasures. Wachman argues that “[r]eading ‘My Shirt is in Mexico’ requires a familiarity with codes - the moral code of life in the closet and the codes of writing within it. The verbal and literary codes are necessitated by social and legal oppression; […]” (“Lesbian Political History” 314). Rather than depending on an entirely queer readership, the story depends on a readership that pays close attention to what is being said and to what is not being said. The attendant is not communicating his non-heterosexual desires in a completely incomprehensible way. Notably, none of the characters is uncomfortable with their desires. This highlights the fact that the story does not aim at undermining straight speech and does not seek to define an identity different from the so-called norm. If 39 2.1 “The Shirt in Mexico”: Gender Disruption and Ambiguous Speech anything, the story treats non-heterosexual desires in a casual, unconcerned way. Since they know themselves to be in a safe space, the characters are able to converse naturally and freely, without fear of oppression. Their conversation is fuelled by the pleasure of each other’s company and the intimacy they share in the empty buffet car. Like the eponymous heroine of Lolly Willowes, they succeed in creating a queer place in which they can forget the “useful props of civilisation”, including the law. 2.2 The “Curious Quality” of “Bruno” Warner’s aim to distance herself from the characters in her stories is most evident in the short story “Bruno” which was first published in 1971 in the col‐ lection of short stories The Innocent and the Guilty after having been rejected by The New Yorker. In a letter to Maxwell Warner explains her reason for her de‐ tachment: As you may have noticed, I tend to make pets of my characters. This can be engaging, because readers feel a creative petfulness too. But it was becoming a habit, so in this last story [‘Bruno’] I have been at the utmost pains to pet nobody. Impartiality requires space to move in. So this is quite a long one too. (Steinman 177) The detachment Warner aims for is reflected in the way the narrator relates events; more often than not, the narrator refrains from giving the reader a full account of what is happening (this is precisely what Sturch, one of Warner’s earlier critics, finds fault with). “Bruno” tells the story of Gilbert, “Gibbie”, Brodie, a wealthy Scotsman in his sixties, and his nineteen-year old lover, Bruno Bonsella. The story is set in a remote Scottish estate Gibbie inherited from his mother, and which he is currently visiting with his young lover. During their visit to his estate, Gibbie’s cousin, Lilah, descends upon him with her 11-year-old grandson, Hector. Lilah has hopes of endearing Hector to Gibbie and making him a benefactor of Gibbie’s will. Hector’s visit, however, triggers off unforeseen consequences for Gibbie and Bruno resulting in a triangular relationship be‐ tween Gibbie, Bruno, and Hector. At first sight, “Bruno” seems to be a straightforward story. As mentioned in the introduction, however, Warner’s stories often contain elements that at first elude and then surprise the reader. “Bruno” is a perfect example of this. While certain elements of the story are very clear, others remain vague. It is clear, for example, that “Bruno” revolves around non-heteronormative acts and desires and is unquestionably queer in a non-heterosexual sense. It further revolves 40 2. Homoerotic Desires around a deviant, uncontained body, suggesting a critique of bourgeois body ideals. In this, it is queer in a more political, anti-capitalist sense. The story, however, also contains elements that remain ambiguous; for example, a walled kitchen garden that is presented as a site of secrecy and knowledge. Readers never fully learn what actually takes place behind its walls and are left to guess whether Bruno and Hector became intimate with one another in the garden. By analysing these different aspects of “Bruno”, I intend to show that the story goes beyond what is considered to be nonnormative. That is, besides devising char‐ acters and situations that deviate from what is commonly considered “normal”, or rather, the norm, Warner creates circumstances in which established rules and explanations become meaningless. In this, the so-called norm is neither defied nor confirmed. Politics, Deviant Desires, and Uncontained Bodies “Bruno” was published four years after “The Sexual Offences Act of 1967” which “decriminalised male homosexuality between consenting adults above the age of twenty-one” (“Wolfenden Report”). Up until then, homosexual acts were con‐ sidered a criminal offence and punishable by law. The law was changed on account of the Wolfenden Report (“Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution”) of 1957 which recommended that “homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private be no longer a criminal offence” and that “questions relating to ‘consent’ and ‘in private’ be decided by the same criteria as apply in the case of heterosexual acts between adults” (“Wolfenden Report on Male Homosexuality”). As Eustace Chesser re‐ calls, the Wolfenden Report caused much controversy: The hysterical attacks of the opponents of the [Wolfenden] Report undoubtedly echoed the indignation of a substantial part of the community. The dissidents did not merely disagree, they were infuriated. In the shrillest tones they declared that family life was in danger, and that a great barrier against depravity was being swept away. The Report was held up to scorn as the ‘Pansies’ Charter’. (14) Despite the foreseeable backlash, the law regarding homosexuality was even‐ tually changed and homosexual acts between “consenting adults above the age of twenty-one” were decriminalised (“Wolfenden Report”). In “Bruno” mention of the Wolfenden Report is made when Gibbie and Bruno are driving home together in the car. Warner’s treatment of this contentious report is notable in as far as she makes no attempt to polarise it. Unlike Chesser, who wrote Live and Let Live: The Moral of the Wolfenden Report (1958), from which the above 41 2.2 The “Curious Quality” of “Bruno” quote was taken, “[…] in the hope that it will help perplexed and uncommitted members of the public to keep their heads in the storm and reach a balanced decision”, Warner shows little interest in taking a stance on the question of male homosexuality or in joining in on any cultural politics (9). Although “Bruno” deals with homoeroticism and lovers of different age groups, these two aspects do not dominate the plot. Set against this background, Warner’s story shows that the law fails to grasp the intricacies of desire, intricacies that cannot be put into straightforward language. Bruno, who is bored and fed up with the relationship, is looking for an excuse to leave Gibbie. For this reason, he tells Gibbie that one of the domestic servants is spying on them and that their relationship is in danger of becoming exposed. To Bruno’s surprise, Gibbie remains completely unperturbed by this revelation and tells him, “‘You’re out of date. If you ever troubled to read a paper or listen to the news you’d know that all that is over and done with - small thanks to layabouts like you’” (76). Gibbie refers to the Wolfenden Report and the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 to silence Bruno and give legitimacy to their relationship. He succeeds in doing so even though in fact the 1967 Sexual Offences Act was only applicable to homosexual men over 21. This is the only instance in which the nature of their relationship is brought up in the story - not by other people in their surroundings, but by the two men themselves. Henryson’s niece, Deidre, had not been assigned to spy on Gibbie and Bruno; she had simply taken a liking to the younger man and had hoped to attract his attention by busying herself with housework in his vicinity. Bruno only uses her as an excuse to scare Gibbie. On the one hand, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act makes homosexual acts lawful, but on the other, it creates a homosexual subject with a clearly recognisable political identity. As a result, it essentially aligns all non-heterosexual male sub‐ jects to a norm, and, by default, creates new permissible and non-permissible desires. This is one of Matt Houlbrook’s main criticisms of the 1967 Sexual Of‐ fences Act. Houlbrook notes that “[…] the ‘homosexual’ was constituted through and within broader matrices of sexual differences, defined through his distance from places, practices, and people repudiated as abject, immoral, and dangerous” (Houlbrook 243, my emphasis). Houlbrook also points out that the Sexual Offences Act excludes men whose desires deviate from the new norm. He mentions “the effeminate quean, the man driven by uncontrollable lust into the city’s abject public spaces, the workingman moving between male and female partners, the pedophile” and insists that “[…] the victory of 1957 and 1967 was achieved precisely because it deliberately excluded those unable to fulfil the requirements of respectability” (243, emphasis in the original). That is, the 1967 42 2. Homoerotic Desires Sexual Offences Act effectively creates the “normal” homosexual man with “normal” desires. At first glance, it may seem as if Warner was alluding to the Sexual Offences Act to sanction Gibbie and Bruno’s relationship. However, in an almost comical way, “Bruno” presents the 1967 Sexual Offences Act as an unwanted intrusion into people’s private lives: “After putting the car in the garage, Bruno sat with his head in his hands, thinking about luncheons at the Eblis Hotel and cursing the Wolfenden Committee as a gang of interfering old busybodies” (76). Here it transpires that “Bruno” does not celebrate the new juridical developments as a step towards equality, but considers them a further means of regulating people’s behaviour. Doing the Wrong Thing at the Wrong Time “Queer uses of time and space”, writes Halberstam, “develop, at least in part, in opposition to the institutions of family, heterosexuality, and reproduction” (Queer Time 1). This use of time and space entails a refusal to engage in any future-oriented forms of behaviour. Halberstam maintains that […] in Western cultures, we chart the emergence of the adult from the dangerous and unruly period of adolescence as a desired process of maturation; and we create longevity as the most desirable future, applaud the pursuit of long life (under all cir‐ cumstances), and pathologize modes of living that show little or no concern for lon‐ gevity. Within the life cycle of the Western human subject, long periods of stability are considered to be desirable, and people who live in rapid bursts (drug addicts, for example) are characterized as immature and even dangerous. (4-5) Halberstam wrote this in 2005, thirty-four years after the publication of “Bruno”. However, her analysis of the way in which people live in a queer time and space and the way in which society regards people who deviate from the so-called norm proves to be true for the time during which “Bruno” was published. While his mother was still alive, Gibbie constantly failed to meet her expectations. He always seemed to be doing the wrong thing at the wrong time: “His good intentions went awry, his good ideas were inapplicable, his consola‐ tions were inappropriate, his jokes fell flat” (65). Gibbie resorted to alcohol to endure the pressure of his surroundings, and especially the pressure put upon him by his mother: “He [Gibbie] did not drink more than a Scottish landowner or a retired warrior might do unblamed, and it made his relations with his mother considerably easier” (66). The statement has an almost mocking tone. It contains two negatives to make an affirmative sentence (“he did not drink more”, “un‐ 43 2.2 The “Curious Quality” of “Bruno” blamed”). This, of course, has the opposite effect: the reader gathers that Gibbie consumed alcohol regularly and in considerable quantities. The narrator further compares Gibbie to a landowner and a retired warrior. Both roles, “landowner” and “war hero”, are generally considered to be respectable roles which the young Gibbie was unable to fulfil. In the eyes of Mrs Brodie, one of Gibbie’s main shortcomings is his indifference towards marriage and children. Using the example of Mrs Brodie, “Bruno” makes fun of the heteronormative logic that compels humans to gen‐ erate offspring, that is, “the norm that tries to exclude any desire outside a pro‐ creative sexuality” (Kling 40). In Mrs Brodie’s world, Gibbie needs to produce an heir. His purchase of a motorcar restores her faith in his masculinity: “In the spring he [Gibbie] bought a car. It was called a Trojan, and had solid tires. It was after this assertion of manliness that Mrs Brodie decided it was her duty to be‐ come a grandmother” (Warner, “Bruno” 66). Mrs Brodie, after her belief in Gib‐ bie’s masculinity has been restored, considers children to be the next step in Gibbie’s life. Mrs Brodie follows a heteronormative logic of succession. Now that Gibbie is a “man”, he must produce an heir to enable her to take on the role of grandmother to future offspring who, in turn, will take over the running of the estate. Gibbie, however, does not buy the car because he feels insecure about his masculinity, but to enjoy his independence. He fails to understand that the pur‐ chase of the car symbolises something completely different to his mother than it does to him. Ironically, he buys a car from a manufacturer called “Trojan”, a name that, if we think of the Trojan horse, immediately suggests false pretences. While Gibbie’s mother believes that the car will make her son more of a ‘man’, Gibbie eventually uses it to escape from his mother and designated wife to begin a new, queer life in London. By introducing the topic of the car, the story skilfully connects heteronormative desires with capitalist possessions. In this context, babies and cars are synonymous. While Mrs Brodie is entrenched in the system, Gibbie regards it with laconic indifference. Gibbie’s attitude towards the system that rewards reproduction and the pur‐ suit of material possessions resembles his attitude to the system that prioritises beauty and health. Years later, after his mother has long passed away, he meets Bruno. Gibbie’s attitude towards his body has not changed and stands in stark contrast to that of his lover: When they [Bruno and Gibbie] first took up together he [Bruno] had really done a lot for Gibbie, who was in a shocking state. Lambswool for his hammertoes, slippery elm for his stomach pains, valerian for his hangovers - Bruno, whose health was flawless, was a great believer in nursery physic. Gibbie became a believer too, but lost his faith after syrup of figs. (69) 44 2. Homoerotic Desires As Gibbie’s health deteriorates, Bruno installs himself as Gibbie’s carer. He finds it appalling that Gibbie has neglected his health to such a degree; he immediately notices that Gibbie’s toes are bent, that his stomach aches from gorging himself with food, and that he has a constant hangover from alcohol abuse. Bruno is driven by the desire to remedy Gibbie’s condition. He shames Gibbie for not paying attention to his health and prescribes medication that he believes will cure his illnesses. By taking care of Gibbie’s body, he seeks to render himself indispensable to Gibbie and, accordingly, demonstrate his power over him. Gibbie, however, is fickle and inconsistent. For a short period of time, he gives into Bruno and allows him to take control of his life. In the end, a laxative, the “syrup of figs”, foils Bruno’s attempts at restoring Gibbie’s health. The reader learns that Gibbie dislikes letting go of any of his old habits as much as he dislikes forcibly discharging his faeces. Bruno not only attempts to make Gibbie healthier, but also more attractive. His initial beauty regime proves more successful than his imposed health regime but both fail to produce any lasting effects. On the other hand, a course of beauty culture did wonders. Layers of grime were eased out of his [Gibbie’s] wrinkles, his scalp was frictioned, his eyebrows tailored. A slim‐ ming course gave him a new interest in life which lasted for over a fortnight. Then he went on the booze again, bungled his hoist onto a barroom stool, slipped, hit his nose on the rail - and was back where they’d started. Only the tailored eyebrows remained, and were embarrassing. (69) From Bruno’s point of view, Gibbie’s body is a shapeless mess full of superfluous fats and fluids. From his dirt-ingrained wrinkles, to his untidy eyebrows - which Bruno makes him have plucked and dyed - Bruno attempts to give Gibbie’s ageing body a makeover. He prescribes head massages, tries to make Gibbie lose weight and does his best to make Gibbie presentable. The above examples show that Bruno is not prepared to accept the diversity of human bodies - to him all bodies must conform to a single norm. His attempts to “normalise” Gibbie, how‐ ever, fail. Bruno does not succeed in inducing any sense of shame or unease in Gibbie. In the long run, Bruno remains impervious to Bruno’s efforts, refusing to allow them to permeate his life. In the same way as Mrs Brodie cannot change him by trying to impose her capitalist, heteronormative standards on him, Bruno cannot change him either. Both people fail to remove Bruno from the queer space he has opted to inhabit. On the whole, “Bruno” renders heteroas well as homonormativity insignificant and refrains from subverting these concepts. 45 2.2 The “Curious Quality” of “Bruno” The Walled Kitchen Garden In “Bruno”, the walled kitchen garden is a sexually charged place. It is associated with lust, knowledge, and desire and is both a site of inclusion and exclusion. Only the initiated know how to find it and, more importantly, how to enter it. It is notable that the reader is not included in this group and is never given a ‘key’ to solve the riddle of the garden. This approach is in keeping with the rest of the story which continually keeps the reader at a detached distance. Gibbie is very protective of the garden, jealously hiding it away: The lawn had its second mowing before Bruno discovered the kitchen garden. It lay a quarter of a mile from the house within a high brick wall. Its gate was kept locked; as a further precaution it was topped with iron spikes. Peering between the bars, he saw lettuces, peas, young carrots in disciplined rows, a tomato-house, a fruit-cage, and at intervals dead birds swinging from gibbets. In the first week Bruno would not have hesitated to demand the run of his teeth among the tomatoes and the peas and gooseberries - small quantities of which were vouchsafed by Henryson and implacably boiled by Mrs. Henryson. But now he had a changed Gibbie, a northern Gibbie, to handle, so he resorted to tablets of vitamin C, eked out by chewing sorrel and young conifer tips. (69) The garden is situated on the periphery of the house. It is connected to the main building - fruit and vegetables are transported from the garden to the house - but the garden exists independently of the house. The garden is notably enclosed on all sides by a high wall that extends far upwards. The wall has been constructed for defensive purposes to keep intruders and thieves out. Addition‐ ally, the gate to the garden is locked and only a person in possession of a key can open the lock. The key and the lock add to the sexually charged atmosphere of the garden - keys being suggestive of the phallus and locks of body orifices. The walls are also secured with iron spikes, sharp pieces of metal that visibly demonstrate that anyone without a key is unwelcome. The worst threat, how‐ ever, comes from the dead birds which form a striking contrast to the flourishing vegetation. Perversely, they also enable this form of vegetation. If they did not deter other birds from flying into the garden, there would be less fruit and vegetables. In the passage quoted above, Bruno is depicted as an intruder intent on vio‐ lating the garden. He is unable to enter, but he is able to stick his head between the bars and see what the garden has to offer. The produce he sees whets his appetite and drives his desire to gorge himself on the fresh fruit and vegetable. Just like Gibbie in an earlier scene, he wishes to consume what is in front of him. His desire, however, is much more unrestrained than Gibbie’s, since he, Bruno, 46 2. Homoerotic Desires wants the “run of his teeth among the tomatoes and the peas and gooseberries”. Mrs Henryson the cook, however, stalls his rapacious behaviour by boiling all the vegetables to a soft consistency until they no longer pose any temptation. Bruno realises that Gibbie, at this point, will not grant him access the garden. For the time being, he gives in to Gibbie’s wishes and resorts to tablets and plants he finds outside the walled garden. The “northern” Gibbie’s reluctance to open the garden up to Bruno is evidence of his fear that the garden will stimulate Bruno’s sexual appetite which he, Gibbie, will not be able to satisfy. The walled kitchen garden gains even greater importance when Hector, eleven years old, arrives with his grandmother, Mrs Lilah Lumsden, Gibbie’s cousin. Up until Hector’s arrival, Bruno and Gibbie do not refer to the garden again, and Bruno makes no further attempts to enter it. They [Mrs Lumsden and Hector] arrived. Bruno prepared himself for the sterner side of being a secretary. This included plucking and cleaning grouse in a whirl of feathers and bluebottles, since Henryson’s niece would rather face a bull than a maggot. The boy [Hector] was more stouthearted, and found maggots interesting and even a matter of congratulation. He would have taken on the grouse and asked no reward beyond entry to the kitchen and having something to do; but Bruno had a scruple of honor. He made an assault on Gilbert’s vassalage to Henryson and demanded the key of the kitchen garden. As he made the assault publicly, he got it. (77) Hector’s arrival is of great advantage to Bruno since it gives him the excuse he needed to ask for the key to the kitchen garden. When asked in front of other people, Gibbie is forced to give in and provides Bruno with the keys. He [Bruno] had not suspected figs; the bushes were not visible from the gate. While Hector rioted in the fruit-cage, he gorged on figs. No word was spoken between them and they walked silently back to the house. (77) There is no transition between the two sentences “As he [Bruno] made the assault publicly, he got it [the key]” and “He had not suspected figs”. The abrupt‐ ness with which the second sentence starts emphasises Bruno’s surprise at seeing figs and, more importantly, effortlessly places him and Hector in the middle of the garden. The narrator does not describe how they crossed the border between the house and kitchen garden only to find themselves in a very different world. By crossing over into this secret retreat, Hector escapes the control of his grandmother and can run wild in the fruit-cage. Once Bruno discovers the figs, nothing can stop him and he feeds on them greedily. Figs are usually associated with female sexuality and in Genesis 3. 7 Adam and Eve famously use fig leaves to hide their nudity (see The New 47 2.2 The “Curious Quality” of “Bruno” English Bible). Yet Warner does not comment further on the conventional asso‐ ciations of figs. Firstly, the fact that Bruno, a gay man, devours figs, considered a vulvic symbol, indicates her indifference to stereotypically gendered images. Secondly, Bruno never feels naked or ashamed after eating the forbidden fruit. Bruno feels the opposite in fact: he feels confirmed that he is beautiful. Bruno and Hector do not eat the same fruit. This indicates that they are experiencing different forms of sexual pleasures. While Bruno is occupied with the figs, “Hector rioted in the fruit-cage” and, in contrast to Bruno, Hector is confined. The narrator does not specify the fruit he gorges on, but, like Bruno, he also behaves in a dissipated way. Both characters appear to be very selfabsorbed and do not exchange any words. The narrator leaves it completely open regarding what exactly happens in the kitchen garden. The consumption of the fruit resembles a form of sexual initiation; however, it is impossible to tell whether, for example, Hector had his sexual awakening in the kitchen garden or whether an actual sexual encounter took place between Bruno and the boy. It is obvious that something happened in the garden to change Hector, yet the narrator never discloses what it was. At this point of the story, Hector is pre‐ sented as a child with diffuse desires who cannot be categorised as either gay or straight. It is evident that Hector perceives Bruno in a new light after their trip to the kitchen garden. To Hector, Bruno has become something rare and surprising, something he did not reckon with: It was on the threshold that the boy inquired. ‘Where did Cousin Gilbert find you? ’ ‘He picked me up on a beach.’ ‘Like a shell? ’ ‘Like a beautiful shell,’ amended Bruno. The figs had restored his knowledge that he was beautiful. ‘And sometimes he puts his ear against my ribs and listens to the noise of the sea.’ (77) In this passage, Bruno once again becomes associated with feminised objects. Like figs, shells and the sea are common metaphors for female sexuality. Warner, however, mainly draws attention to the sensual aspect that accompanies the image of the shell and disregards stereotypical associations. Hector questions Bruno just as they are about to cross the border that separates the house, representing tradition and order, from the garden, which stands for sexual de‐ sires. They are, in a sense, still standing on undefined territory which gives Hector the freedom to pose such questions. Bruno’s figurative reply to Hector’s question unmistakably implies that he and Gibbie share an intimate relationship, and that Gibbie takes pleasure in Bruno’s body. It does not, however, define their 48 2. Homoerotic Desires relationship. Under the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, for instance, Bruno’s de‐ scription of his and Gibbie’s relationship - despite the fact he is 19, and not, as required by law, 21 - could not count as an offence. From this moment on, Hector becomes infatuated with Bruno: He [Hector] fastened on him [Bruno] with a child’s imperative wooing. Bruno would have preferred figs and time in his own company, but companionship was forced upon him. They bathed together and sailed paper boats down the burn - Hector taught him how to make them; they climbed trees, explored about in the car, built a grotto, sat in the dank seclusion of the game larder telling ghost stories to an accompaniment of the steadfast buzzing of bluebottles worshipping without; they carved their initials on trees, went out at dawn to pick mushrooms, fled from hornets, swore eternal secrecies, competed, leaning toward each other till they became almost of an age. (78) Hector effectively courts Bruno. Although Bruno is not interested in spending time with Hector at first - he would have preferred to spend time alone in the kitchen garden - he soon gives in. Metaphorically, the figs stand for the sexual pleasures he would have enjoyed in the garden. Quite obviously, the long list of activities Bruno and Hector undertake together indicate that they are both in‐ fatuated by each other’s company. It is so full of romantic suggestions that it almost becomes comical. Only the last part of the sentence, “leaning toward each other till they became almost of an age”, sounds sincere, suggesting that Bruno and Hector are very well attuned to each other. It is revealing that the description of their shared intimacies and activities is extremely detailed and stands in stark contrast to the veiled description of their first outing to the walled garden. Re‐ turning to the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, the description of Hector and Bruno’s relationship vividly demonstrates that desire goes beyond the reality of the law. That is, although the reader gathers that something happened, or rather, is hap‐ pening, between Hector and Bruno, the story suggests that, whatever it is, the language of the law does not suffice to classify it a punishable offence. The first section of the chapter examined the occurrence of heteronormative expectations and unkempt bodies in the short story. Throughout his life, one of the main characters, Gibbie has been confronted with people, his mother and then Bruno, who expect him to conform to their norms. However, rather than giving in to their demands, he gradually becomes indifferent to them. Without paying much attention to anyone else, he continues to lead the life of his choice. The only person who has some influence on Gibbie is Henryson - at least for a short time. Under Henryson’s influence, Gibbie seeks to act like a proper land‐ owner. However, as Bruno thinks to himself, “Gibbie would tire of being at the beck and call of this malodorous man [Henryson] […]” (“Bruno” 68). Bruno 49 2.2 The “Curious Quality” of “Bruno” knows that Gibbie will soon abandon this new way of life, just as he had done in the past. This section underpins the fact that while the story revolves around the heteronorm it does not confirm or oppose it. The second section analysed the representation of the walled kitchen garden. Here, the level of indifference is reflected on a more abstract level. The narrator hints at the fact that Bruno and Hector shared some kind of sexual experience, however, there is no indi‐ cation of what really took place. The story does not categorise their desires and does not seek to explain them by reducing them to any kind of norm. In reply to Warner’s letter, in which she reflects on the way she devised the characters in “Bruno”, Maxwell writes, ‘Bruno’ isn’t right for The New Yorker. It is beautifully written, but it has a curious quality; you give your sympathy to the characters, each in turn, and then withdraw it. As if in the end you had come to dislike them all impartially. Which is perhaps the case, and your intention. (Steinman 180) Maxwell suspects that most readers will not enjoy reading a story that leaves them baffled and, ultimately, at a loss. The “curious quality” that he mentions results from the fact that the narrator does not offer any insight into the main characters’ thoughts and feelings, and remains dispassionate to the end. 2.3 Seeking Meaning in “The Green Torso” With regard to human behaviour, Zygmunt Bauman maintains that most human beings are eager to establish categories and assign items to their “proper” place. This is precisely what Ronald Pim, the protagonist of Warner’s short story “The Green Torso” attempts to do. Against all odds, he tries to “order” London, the city of his abode. While Ronald is willing to confront his surroundings, he is unwilling to con‐ front his innermost desires. It is not until Marco, another character in the story, humiliates him that Ronald realises the extent of his queer longings. “The Green Torso”, however, does not focus on the shame Ronald feels for desiring a man who ultimately humiliates him. The story equally does not question the social norms and regulations that define acceptable / unacceptable desires. “The Green Torso” instead reflects on the human need to establish categories to comment on human desires. “The Green Torso”, similar to “Bruno” and “The Shirt in Mexico”, avoids positioning itself in opposition to any heterocentric biases. The following chapter explores the intimate connection between desire, classifica‐ tion, and mapping in the short story. 50 2. Homoerotic Desires 10 Summarising Sedgwick’s main claim, Castle writes, “English literature is ‘homosocial’, according to Sedgwick, to the extent that its hidden subject has always been male bonding - the bonding mediated ‘between’ two men though, around, or over, the body and soul of a woman” (Feminisms 533). Ronald, the main protagonist of the story, has a distinctive birthmark that covers his face and leads him to shy away from social contacts. After his mother’s death, he takes up lodgings in Paddington, the place that soon becomes the starting point for his exploration of London. Since Ronald has given up hope of ever making human friends, he has become determined to make the city his friend, “But London [in contrast to his fellow human beings] was too large to notice him; he could make a friend of London” (Warner 108). Ronald sets out to investigate every corner, every neighbourhood in the city. After a while, he also decides to seek out “London characters”, that is, Londoners with a story to tell, with the intention of including them in his envisioned map of London. His desire to make their narratives part of his map demonstrates how eager he is to understand the city. Ronald does not feel self-conscious in the company of the “London characters” since they take no interest in him as a person. During one of his outings, Ronald meets Marco Brown, a charismatic person who comes to exert the same magnetic influence over Ronald that he exerts on all his followers. Erotic Allures Referring to René Girard’s book Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1966), Sedgwick writes that “[…] in any erotic rivalry, the bond that links the two rivals is as intense and potent as the bond that links either of the rivals to the beloved […]” (Sedgwick, Between Men 21). That is, the beloved, usually a woman, functions as a medium to enable the two rivals, usually two men, to form a bond. This bond is intimate; however, it is never openly sexual. In “The Green Torso” Ronald, too, relies on a medium, a green torso, to act out his desires for another man. Whilst the men in Sedgwick’s texts predominantly form homosocial bonds, Ronald in “The Green Toro” envisages a sexual bond with Marco Brown. 10 Miss Ewing, a “Typist & Literary Agent” who helps Ronald publish his stories about London characters, encourages Ronald to pursue his literary aims. After he submits some of his sketches about eccentric Londoners to her, she tells him, “‘You must write about more queer people like that’” (113). Elated by her words, Ronald seeks to find “queer people” at Waterloo Station, which is how he comes across Marco, a man who instantly awakens deep desires in him. At this point of the story, the reader witnesses the beginning of an unhealthy dynamic, in which Marco, who has power over Ronald, forces him to expose his 51 2.3 Seeking Meaning in “The Green Torso” vulnerability. Ronald hears Marco before he sees him, “It was the austerity of a musical note, piercing the mumbling and shuffling and coughing as if it were the only valid existence there, which announced him. A guitar; a desultory hand plucking a chord; another chord; a swift flourish; then silence” (115). Marco is performing at the station, exaggerating his role as the lonesome guitar player to get as much attention as possible. The sound of his guitar breaks through everything else, drowning out every other sound. The semicolons that separate the sentence that describes Marco’s performance indicate that Ronald is struck by Marco’s per‐ formance. He does not take the show in coherently, but merely sees flashes of what is happening in front of him. Like everyone else, Ronald is under Marco’s spell. Asking Marco why he plays at Waterloo Station, Marco tellingly replies: “‘To give them [the crowd and his followers] a chance to show off. It’s what we all want, isn’t it? ’” (116). Marco manipulates the crowd with his music and forces them to move along with him, despite his lack of musical talent. The crowd is impervious to this and blindly follows his lead. However, as soon as Marco abandons the crowd, it is lost. Ronald is infatuated with Marco and desperately tries to impress him with his knowledge of the city: Marco’s attention was as selective and compelling as his guitar playing. Remembering those words ‘a chance to show off ’, and habitually aware that his only social hope was to lurk behind his birthmark, Ronald nevertheless began to show off: not the Clack‐ mannan Messenger [the medium in which Ronald publishes his stories], which would never do in this gathering, but his knowledge of London. (118) Ronald feels the need to demonstrate that he is worthy of Marco’s friendship. Marco gives the impression of listening carefully to every word Ronald is saying, but then dismissively tells him how he should start to actually explore the city. Within a second, Marco manages to devaluate the knowledge Ronald has accumulated. ‘It’s not enough to trudge along pavements. Use your intuition, snuff the air, and whenever instinct tells you there’s something particular, go into the nearest shabby shop and get talking. And always look into shopwindows. That’s how Stewart found his peruke. It was in a greengrocer’s, with a cat sleeping on it.’ (119) Marco proposes an unstructured, disorganised approach to getting to know a place. He advises Ronald to leave familiar routes and to plunge into the unknown. This approach is not unlike the approach described by Hannah Jones, who writes, “A ‘contemporary flaneur’ does not follow A to B when charting 52 2. Homoerotic Desires the rhetoric of the city. Invisible routes lead an ensemble of designers to hidden spaces” (71). Jones proposes this approach to discover “awkward spaces”, that is, “zones of indeterminacy within the city’s structure” (74). Jones’ goal, however, is the opposite of Ronald’s goal. Ronald, unlike Jones, is not interested in indeterminacy, but in certainty, in finding out ‘truths’ about London. Nonethe‐ less, Ronald, on the advice of Marco, decides to change his approach and expe‐ rience London differently. This takes him on an unsettling journey during which he is suddenly confronted with erotic yearnings that he had not previously al‐ lowed to surface. Mediums of Desire As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, Sedgwick draws attention to the fact that two men often depend on a woman to form a homosocial bond (see Between Men). In “The Green Torso”, by contrast, the desiring man, Ronald, does not require the presence of a woman to reach out to another man. Here a torso - alternatively referred to as a dressmaker’s dummy - in the form of a woman’s body suffices. On one of his exploratory trips, Ronald discovers, as he thinks, the perfect object to impress Marco: a green dressmaker’s dummy which he intends to present to Marco at party he is organising. In the shop’s recesses, among washstands, horn gramophones, and rolls of linoleum, he saw the swell of a green bosom. It was a dressmaker’s dummy, armless, decapitated, breastless - but not bosomless; a massive uninflected protuberance expanded above a trim waist. Below the waist the swelling hips were cut short at their maximum extension and mounted on a short pedestal, stained to imitate mahogany. The green cloth covering, a triumph of tailoring, fitted the torso as a plum skin fits a plum. It would be the making of his party on Monday. (119-20) He first sees the dummy standing in a corner amongst other common items. Before Ronald takes in the whole object, he primarily notices the “swell of a green bosom”. Within a second, Ronald categorises the dummy as female. This, following a heterosexist logic, makes the dummy a safe choice implying Ronald is not attracted to a male torso, but to a female one. The narrator explicitly mentions the absence of a head, arms, legs, and breasts. This draws special attention to the fact that they are missing and, at the same time, emphasises the presence of the dummy’s protruding bosom. This play on absence / presence, or rather, absence as presence suggests that the torso oscillates between being an animate person and an inanimate dressmaker’s mannequin for Ronald. The 53 2.3 Seeking Meaning in “The Green Torso” absence of the extremities is further contrasted by mention of the neat waist and the curves of the dummy’s hips, which results in turning the dummy into a sexualised object. This is heightened by the use of a simile, “The green cloth covering […] fitted the torso as a plum skin fits a plum”. Plums are fleshy, luscious fruits symbolising mainly female sexuality. By implicitly comparing the torso to a plum, the narrator gives the torso an erotic allure. Gradually Ronald begins to project his innermost sexual desires onto the dummy. Two nights before the party, he has a telling erotic dream featuring himself, Marco, and the green torso. In his dream, his party guests are all enjoying themselves when he, Ronald, suddenly realises that he has not put the dummy on display: His anguish swelled like a boil. He realized he had forgotten the dummy. Rising in the air, he took the parcel from the top of the bookcase and, hovering, unwrapped it, saying to himself, ‘If this were a dream I should find a mincing machine.’ But the dummy was there, and gently descending he put her in the middle of the table, pressing the pedestal into a wedding cake. Marco stared at her. His lips parted; color came into his cheeks. Slowly, he handed the harp to Ronald. Then he began to pass his hands over her, and stroked her and took her into his arms and nuzzled his head against her bosom. His veiling ringlets spread over her truncated neck, her straight back. The little knob which served to lift her by rose above his caresses. Rearing his face from her green cloth bosom, he said, ‘This is the only woman I could love.’ (121) The above quote discloses his reliance on the dummy to catch Marco’s attention and his hopes of bonding with Marco over his unusual find. It is significant that Ronald dreams of presenting the dummy on a wedding cake. At first glance, the dummy resembles an oversized cake decoration. The way in which Ronald places it on the cake, however, suggests that the presentation serves a different purpose - a purpose that Ronald will not admit to himself. The image of him “pressing the pedestal into a wedding cake” strongly suggests that the dummy’s alleged sexuality is more ambiguous, i.e. that it is not exclusively female. While the dummy possesses female secondary sex characteristics the pedestal, to which it is attached, is decidedly phallic. “Pressing the pedestal into a wedding cake” unmistakably alludes to sexual intercourse; the pedestal enters the soft, spongy texture of the cake in the same way as an erected penis enters an orifice. It becomes obvious that a part of Ronald identifies with the dummy: his dream of inserting the stand into the cake strongly suggests that he imagines inserting his penis into an orifice. He bestows the dummy with androgynous qualities that allow him to experience the dummy as a substitute for his own body. 54 2. Homoerotic Desires In Ronald’s dream, Marco notices the torso only after it has penetrated the wedding cake. Suddenly, there is a shift; the dummy no longer exists with reference to Ronald only, but also with reference to Marco, who longs to become intimate with the object. In an obscure way, Ronald now experiences Marco’s attention and caresses as a bystander and as a receiver. Marco, in the dream, is besotted by the dummy and has eyes for nothing else. This is the position Ronald wishes to be in - the sole recipient of Marco’s undivided attention. Marco begins to caress and fondle every part of the dummy. He does not touch Ronald, but, implicitly, pulls him into the action. By handing Ronald the harp he is holding, Marco connects him with the event. For a short moment, Ronald, Marco, and the dummy become part of a diffuse triangular relationship in which Ronald experiences Marco’s exploring hands by proxy. The knob that rises under Marco’s touch, for example, is seen to symbolise Ronald’s growing arousal. Ronald plans to give Marco the dummy after his party - a symbolic gesture, since in real life Ronald feels unable to offer Marco his body. Before his guests arrive, Ronald fetches the dummy, places her on the table and surrounds her with food, reminiscent of an offering to a goddess (“[…] he fetched her down, unwrapped her, and placed her on the table as a centerpiece to the bottles and sausage rolls and pickled herrings and figs and doughnuts”, 122). This emphasises her uniqueness and the importance he attaches to the torso. How‐ ever, Marco and his followers, except for one sole person, fail to show up. Marco behaves as unpredictably as he did at Waterloo Station. Without any consider‐ ation for Ronald’s feelings, he decides to go to a different event. At this point, Ronald gradually becomes aware of his infatuation with Marco. In order to sup‐ press his feelings relating to the events of the past few days, he decides to dump the dummy in Regent’s Canal - metaphorically seeking to drown his queer yearnings: “Ronald took a grip on the dummy’s waist and hurled it into the canal with all its force. […] It rolled lopsidedly, sank lower, turned turtle. Only the wooden pedestal remained in sight, with a few bubbles rising around it (124). The former object of hope and desire has lost its sexual qualities and serves to represent Ronald’s agitation. “He Knew His Way About London”: Exploring the Unexplorable Before Ronald meets Marco, he concentrates on creating his own personal map of London. The above section showed that Ronald is unable to deal with his desires; rather than admitting to them, and putting them into perspective, he suppresses them. Ronald, however, does not generally shy away from confron‐ tation. He is obsessed, for example, with structuring London to make the city‐ 55 2.3 Seeking Meaning in “The Green Torso” scape comprehensible and to rid it of any form of ambivalence. Before Marco belittles his endeavours and propagates his own intuitive and uncoordinated approach to charting the city, Ronald has a very precise idea of how to create his own mental map of London. In this respect, “The Green Torso” minutely reflects on the human desire to structure and master one’s surroundings. In order to learn more about the city he wishes to befriend, Ronald starts by visiting places in London advertised in various guidebooks: He bought books about it [London]: about the City and its churches, about the Thames and its bridges, about Westminster and Mayfair and Old Chelsea. […] But it was a stranger’s London they told of. He did not care to be reminded that he was a stranger there himself. (108) Ronald feels unable to identify with the books he buys for the simple reason that they do not allow him to merge with the city, but instead erect a barrier between him and London. He soon becomes exasperated with the guidebooks that merely list landmarks and buildings without reference to the nooks and crannies which he believes are the heart and soul of the city. To Ronald, the authors of the books describe London as if they were strangers to the city. This is not the perspective he is interested in; he wishes to learn more about London from somebody who knows the ins and outs of London. In addition to that, he wishes to become a part of London, as if London were a living organism that could accommodate him. In this sense, the Victorian manuals he consults prove to be more satisfac‐ tory, since they give him an insight into London’s past. The authors of these books are passionate about London and describe the city’s achievements and histories in great detail: It was only from Victorian compilations, proudly expatiating on the sewage system, the docks and the vast quantities of merchandise they handled, the improvements in public lighting, Guy’s Hospital, the Blackwall Tunnel, Spurgeon’s Tabernacle that he got a sense of reality, of an intricate metropolitan existence, of a population who lived and worked and had their vivid present in that obscure past, and had an inherited past of their own. (108) The Victorian compilations take in the whole of London and do not differentiate between the sewage system and the Spurgeon’s Tabernacle. In contrast to the guidebooks, Ronald feels as if the Victorian compilations invited him to participate in an exploration of the city. Although they are not as straightfor‐ ward as the guidebooks, they shed a new light on the city to which he yearns to belong. The cityscape begins to mean more to him than ever before as he comes to realise that the city does not only consist of surfaces but also of different 56 2. Homoerotic Desires layers of history. By learning about the city’s past, he feels involved in the city’s present. He begins to feel as if “London” was beginning to communicate with him: “‘As black as old Newgate,’ he heard a woman at a bus stop say. She had not the smallest idea what she was talking about, and London spoke through her” (108). To Ronald, the woman functions as a medium, enabling “London” to address him. “London” is referring to Newgate Prison, a notorious prison that was demolished in 1902 (Halliday xi). “It [Newgate]”, Stephen Halliday writes, “has given its name to a phrase which has entered the language as a simile for blackness and filth, ‘as black as Newgate’s knocker’” (xi). By referring to a prison that no longer exists, “London”, or rather the woman that Ronald overhears, helps connect Ronald with the city’s past. Despite the richness of detail found in the Victorian compilations, Ronald still fails to experience London as a coherent entity. He has the feeling that his goal of befriending the city is becoming unattainable. The Victorian compilations also have their shortcomings because they too focus mainly on the city centre and pay little attention to the outlying districts. Ronald is interested in the parts of London that beckon with adventure. He realises that the only way he can get to know them is by visiting and seeing them himself. Ronald discards his guide‐ books and Victorian compilations, using only an atlas to memorise the routes he wants to explore. Ronald, in contrast to Laura Willowes in Lolly Willowes, still relies on other people’s knowledge to guide him through the streets. Unlike Laura, he does not want to wander aimlessly and celebrate his freedom. His aim is to order and classify London. He is not only interested in the architecture or infrastructure of a district but in everything that defines a place. For this reason, places which are not rich in local stories unsettle him: Place names remained, and some of them, like Balham and Tooting, were laughable and some, like Isle of Dog, were alarming. The sinister names, though, were those of districts so featureless - not even distinguished by a prison or a legend of violence - and so numerous that one did not know where they were, whether they lay north or south of the river: Homerton, Kingsland, Dalston, Newington, Stockwell, Plaistow, Walworth, Old Ford. (160) Ronald does not like any form of ambiguity. He wishes to know for certain where a place is and what he can expect to find there. In this way, he adds minor details and sensory experiences to his mental map of London, “What could be eaten off a barrow was part of a distinguishing physiognomy. Deptford and New Cross excelled at cockles in spiced vinegar” (110). Despite his endeavours, Ronald, however, is soon forced to realise that his efforts of categorising London’s districts are doomed to fail. The more Ronald 57 2.3 Seeking Meaning in “The Green Torso” tries to categorise London, the more difficulties he encounters. Moreover, his knowledge is frequently lost, “He could never learn it all and what he had learned was continually being filched from him” (111). While he feels that certain areas do not open themselves up to him, “It was like traversing an index to a book he would never be able to read”, other districts confuse him since they are under constant redevelopment (111). To avoid further frustration, Ronald tries to limit his research to the districts south of the Thames. However, not even here can he rely on his knowledge since there are still many places he has not heard of. Realising that his mental map of London will never be complete, Ronald decides to add a new dimension to his quest by interviewing local people and listening to their stories, which is how he encounters Marco. The chapter started by exploring Ronald’s desires and analysing how “The Green Torso” portrays sexual yearnings. It argued that the story chooses to remain non-committal on the question of the main character’s inclinations. Ro‐ nald channels his desires through a dressmaker’s dummy, an inanimate object, which, to him, oscillates between being female and male. Stimulated by the dummy, he gives into his desires for Marco. This, however, does not allow for any conclusive comments on his sexuality. As Sedgwick writes in Epistemology of the Closet, “People are different from each other” and experience desire and satisfaction in different ways (25). “Many people”, Sedgwick writes, “have their richest mental/ emotional involvement with sexual acts that they don’t do, or even don’t want to do” (25, emphasis in the original). “The Green Torso” high‐ lights the fact that classification and categorisation are frequently futile attempts to define a person’s sexuality. By reflecting on the human compulsion to assess and to order desires as well as cities - rather than localising the normative structures that produce nonconformity - “The Green Torso” vividly demon‐ strates the futility of any attempt at reducing complexities in order to establish an overarching norm. 2.4 Desire and Detachment As has been outlined, a “paranoid reading” of Warner’s stories that revolve around homoeroticism is of very little avail. Rather than concentrating on representations of homoerotic desire, it is infinitely more productive to consider the ways in which desire unfolds in the stories. All three stories revolve around non-heteronormative desires but are not committed to fighting heteronormativity in an oppositional or confrontational way. Instead, they choose to remain indifferent to labels and categorisation. “The Shirt in Mexico”, for ex‐ 58 2. Homoerotic Desires ample, aligns desire with textiles. By touching and examining fine materials, the train attendant and the German traveller communicate their desires without specifically voicing them. In “Bruno”, desire and sexual acts remain even more unspecified; the narrator is deliberately vague about the incident in the kitchen garden. Once more, desire is linked to a sensual experience; this time, with the eating of fruit. “The Green Torso” avoids being overly explicit about its main characters’ desires by shifting the focus from homoeroticism to the (futile) at‐ tempts made by the main character to establish order in a constantly changing world. 59 2.4 Desire and Detachment 11 Margaret Kemp Ross’s poem “I Married My Dog” (2000) and Rosalyn Drexler’s novel Cosmopolitan Girl (1974). 12 See, for example, Juliana Schiesari Polymorphous Domesticities: Pets, Bodies, and Desire in Four Modern Writers. Berkeley: U of California P, 2012. Schiesari states, “Literary portrayals of polymorphous domestic relations between different beings, whether hu‐ mans of the same or different sex, or nonhuman creatures, raise significant questions about the potentials inherentin these relations and challenge our received understand‐ ings of what it is to be human or animal (114). 3. Cross-Species Relationships In her analysis of two texts that revolve around cross-species marriages, 11 Alice A. Kuzniar writes, “These two works redefine where intimacy, even eroticism can lie, and articulate a desire for a different passion, intensity and tactile knowledge”, and, very tellingly, “They thereby poke fun at the general public’s unease with the slightest hint of bestiality” (206). The unease with bes‐ tiality is closely connected to the fact that bestiality and cross-species desire have the troubling potential to draw attention to the nonnormative facets of human desire and to destabilise the species line. 12 Kuzniar’s observations aptly apply to the short stories discussed in this chapter, “Introduction” (1940), “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East” (1940) and “The Wine‐ shop Cat” (1942). All three stories complicate the notion of heteronormative desire and suggest that pleasure can be found outside of homospeciality. Whereas “Introduction” and “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East” were both published in The Cat’s Cradle-Book (1940), a collection that “embeds transfigured fairy tales in an animal fantasy frame”, “The Wine‐ shop Cat” appeared in The New Yorker in 1942 and was included in The Big New Yorker Book of Cats in 2013 (Stableford 423). It is notable that all three stories have a different setting: “Introduction” is set in a realistic world but features talking cats, while the structure of “The Traveller from the East and the Traveller from the West” resembles that of a fairy tale. “The Wineshop Cat”, by contrast, is straightforwardly realistic and does not contain any marvellous elements. Taking the different forms and the different settings into account, the following chapter focuses on the power struggles at play in the stories and analyses the human protagonists’ reactions to the way their feline companions live and express their sexuality. 13 For further information see Tess Cosslett. Talking Animals in British Children’s Fiction, 1786-1914. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006 and Catherine Elick. Talking Animals in Children’s Fiction: A Critical Study. Jefferson: McFarland, 2015. 14 Elick names “[s]eries like the Doctor Dolittle and Mary Poppins books” (2). 3.1 Knowledge and Love in the Introduction to The Cat’s Cradle-Book In “Introduction”, the story that functions as a preface to the other stories in the collection The Cat’s Cradle-Book, nonhuman animals, particularly cats, are able to use language to express thoughts and convey knowledge in exactly the same way as human animals. All cats speak the same language, called “Cat”, which allows them to be part of a cosmopolitan community that transcends geographical and social boundaries. Talking animals are not uncommon in fan‐ tasy tales, and especially children’s fantasy tales abound with animals that can talk. 13 Similar to Warner’s cat stories, many twentieth century children’s fantasy tales “[…] go on to explore just how unsettlingly fluid the boundary between animal and human nature is, hinting at the posthumanist perspective that the line we draw between ourselves and other species is more self-serving con‐ struction than scientific certainty” (Elick 2). Fables, by contrast, employ “animals as representations of human character traits” (Stableford 137). In general, fables do not seek to challenge the human / nonhuman animal divide. The talking cats in Warner’s introductory story are neither conveyors of a moral code nor ster‐ eotyped beings. Whereas fables, for example, commonly depict foxes as swin‐ dlers, the cats in Warner’s story do not symbolise any particular societal groups or mirror human characteristics. The cats speak because this is what the cats and the humans do in the introductory story. Warner’s cats’ language is not limited to catkind, but can be understood by all humans - provided they are willing to learn it. Cat is described as “catholic, explicit, unvarying” and, as the narrator learns, “every child picks up an inkling of it” (“Introduction” 31). In this, “Introduction” greatly differs from fantasy stories for children, which often “focus on extraordinary human characters who, by understanding the language of animals, are able to advocate for their ethical treatment and intuit their shared origins with humans” (Elick 2). 14 In Warner’s universe, you do not have to be “extraordinary” to speak Cat; you simply have to study it like any other language. In most fables, nonhuman animals communicate with humans in the language of humans. In “Introduction”, how‐ ever, the roles are reversed - humans have to learn the language of cats in order to converse with them. Since cats only converse with humans that speak Cat, it is relatively simple for humans to ignore the fact that at least one other species 62 3. Cross-Species Relationships 15 In a note, the narrator later states that the young man is Mr William Farthing, of Spain Hall, Norfolk. in their vicinity shares a common language. Acknowledgement of a common language would undermine the belief that the human species is exceptional. The cats, however, do not care about whether they can communicate with humans and are indifferent to the fact that humans consider themselves superior to all other species. “Introduction” begins with a young woman, from whose perspective the story is mostly narrated, talking to a handsome young man. 15 Although the story mainly centres around the young man and the narrator, it is significant that the reader never learns either of their names - implying that the story is more about cats and their interrelation with humans than the encounter of the two humans. In her conversation with the young man and the cats, the narrator has to admit that she understands the language Cat better than she speaks it, a confession that greatly displeases him. He, as the reader later learns, is intent on studying the cultural heritage of cats. The young man rebukes her sternly telling her: “‘You should study it properly. Why be so lazy? ’” and adds, “‘It is just a matter of taking pains and daily practice. If you speak Cat at all there is no reason why you should not speak it fluently. It is simply a matter of application’” (Warner, “Introduction” 12). His reproach not only criticises the young woman’s careless attitude towards learning the language of cats, but also highlights the fact that this story is highly sceptical of any form of anthropocentric thinking. Warner’s story further raises the question of what happens when something humans consider entirely their own invention or tradition suddenly turns out to have been invented not by humans, but by cats. The young man is mainly interested in cats for one reason: he has discovered that cats are not only very cultured beings but that the fables passed down from generation to generation, considered by humans to be their ancestors’ creation, were not invented by storytellers such as Aesop, but by cats. The stories the Siamese cat Haru tells the young man during their brief relationship are identical with the stories he hears the cats telling their kittens on his return to England. This leads him to the realisation that the stories told by humans all derive from one single source, namely catkind. The narrator, however, to whom the young man gives his collection of cat stories to read, is reluctant to attribute the stories to anyone but human storytellers. In order to account for the distribution of these stories, she tries to account for the routes the stories might have travelled before reaching all human animals, “East Anglia, Channel Islands, Greece. At first they seem far enough apart, but not too far for a Viking ship to have carried them [the human 63 3.1 Knowledge and Love in the Introduction to The Cat’s Cradle-Book animals] the story” (26). Speaking from a human perspective, the young woman tries to make sense of the fact that a large number of people in different countries have heard the same stories. The narrator’s approach to identifying the origin of these stories is highly anthropocentric. Although she has gained insight into the culture of cats, she automatically links everything back to humans. The young man, who has already reproached her for not learning Cat properly, now tells her, “Try to clear your mind of humanism and consider the evidence. Where do we find the stories most constant, most uncontaminated? Among the cats” (30). The story effectively contrasts two different points of views; the view of a person who has learned that humans do not hold an exceptional position on the planet Earth, and the view of a person who is in the process of realising that the divide between humans and cats is an entirely human construct. The cats remain indifferent to the fact that they were the ones to bring stories to humankind. They do not claim narrative ownership and are not interested in being recognised as the source of the stories they tell. As the young woman states, the main quality of the cats’ stories is their objectivity, and as the young man adds, these stories are not comparable to “ordinary moral tales, the ordinary web-footed propaganda” (25). These stories do not contain the same kind of moral messages and instructions found in human fables and fairy tales. Warner’s introduction cleverly puts forward the viewpoint that humans cannot actually be credited with the dissemination of traditional fables, and thus removes them from the central position they believe themselves to hold. As Jayne Elizabeth Lewis states, fables play an important role in human experience since they are closely linked to various aspects of human life. They serve edu‐ cational purposes, comment on social and historical occurrences, and criticise political events (see Lewis 3). By attributing the origin of these fables to cats, the construct around which humans have built their culture slowly begins to crumble. Emphasising this point, Georgia Johnston remarks, “Texts and their repetition through generations create culture, so the human culture forms in response to these cat stories”, which mocks any claim to human exceptionality and poses a threat to the culture / nature dichotomy (56). By concentrating on the flow of knowledge, “Introduction” not only shows that the distinction be‐ tween human and nonhuman animals is blurred, but also questions the notion of human exceptionalism. Cross-Species Desire “Introduction” further highlights how blurred the boundary line between human and nonhuman animals is by focussing on the aspect of intimate 64 3. Cross-Species Relationships cross-species love affairs. Not all cats the young man shares his habitat with are merely companions that serve as sources for stories. Touching on issues of bestiality, the story presents a man who is actually in love with a cat. Taking on the role of the first-person narrator, the young man recounts how he fell in love with Haru, a Siamese cat: Then, while I was in Turkey, I fell in love. The wife of the naval attaché had brought a Siamese cat. She [Haru, the cat] was beautiful, sensitive, unappreciated. The for‐ mality and the tedium of embassy life were as alien to her as they were to me. Though we were both egoists, we were both unhappy. Our unhappiness transcended our egoism, and by degrees, by a complicated process of advances and withdrawals, exchange of looks, fusion of silences, we fell deeply in love with each other. (17) The young man does not consider Haru to be owned by anyone, although he knows that, theoretically, she belongs to the naval attaché’s wife. While he interprets Haru’s behaviour in terms of human logic, he does not substitute her for a human being - he is completely and utterly in love with her as a cat. By contrast, the speaker in Charles Baudelaire’s “Le Chat” (1857) eroticises the cat in the story, but states, “Et que ma main s’enivre du plaisir / De palper ton corps électrique / Je vois ma femme en esprit” (7-9). That is, the speaker sees “his woman” in the cat, rather than the beguiling nature of the cat. It is notable that the young man in Warner’s story refers to the cat by the pronoun “she” and not “it”. This emphasises that he considers Haru a being in her own right. He does not consider the cat an “other”, but sees immediate parallels between himself and Haru; ultimately, he believes himself to have more in common with her than with the people in his surroundings. The passage above reveals that the young man does not insist on being exclusively human, but regards himself cat-like in character and his desires. The young man continues to tell the narrator about his relationship with Haru in order to explain how he first became interested in the culture of cats. Contrary to normative expectations, the narrator shows little surprise at the mention of a human / nonhuman animal relationship. It becomes clear that “Introduction” aims at redefining what forms of desire may be classified as acceptable. The young man vividly remembers how he and Haru first made physical contact: One night, as I lay awake, listening to the incessant uproar of the city, the cries of the tourists being conducted from one night-club to another, and those tedious muezzins, I saw her spring into my balcony. There she stood in the first light of dawn, poised, rocking lightly like a soap-bubble. Then with a cry of joy, raucous and passionate, she sprang on to my bed. (Warner, “Introduction” 18) 65 3.1 Knowledge and Love in the Introduction to The Cat’s Cradle-Book Haru appears at the break of dawn, a time between darkness and daylight. The timing of her visit gives her an unearthly quality and alludes to the vague boun‐ daries that separate humans from animals. Before Haru shows up, the young man is lying in bed, listening to the cacophony of city life. The noise is nerve-wracking and he is unable to block it out. In the midst of all this, Haru, crossing spatial boundaries, suddenly lands on the balcony. Haru, unruly and strong-willed, commits two transgressions: firstly, she crosses the line that separates the outside world from the inside world of the young man’s abode, and, secondly, she arrives with the intention of enjoying the physical pleasures the young man has to offer. Prior to entering the apartment, Haru briefly remains outside on the balcony, allowing him to gaze at her. In retrospect, the young man compares her to a soap bubble. Initially, the simile seems absurd - soap bubbles lack any kind of dignity, and, after all, the young man is recounting a love story. The image, however, perfectly captures Haru and, in addition, the young man’s relationship with Haru. Soap bubbles are glistening and shimmering, transient and illusive, and break easily when touched. Haru is self-determined, beautiful and capricious. The young man is intrigued by Haru but ultimately causes her destruction. On their initial encounter, the young man presents Haru as his seductress. Amongst the members of the diplomatic circles, with whom the young man associated at the time, his relationship with Haru causes a great uproar: Naturally, there was a good deal of talk about it - embassies always gossip - and the naval attaché’s wife made a fuss, and tried to reclaim her [Haru]. But after Haru scratched her to the bone and destroyed a coffee-service she recognised the inevitable and gave way. (18) This group of society shows strong reactions to Haru’s attachment for two reasons: firstly, they consider cats their property and do not consider it to be fitting that a cat should choose her own home and her own human lover. Sec‐ ondly, the young man’s relationship with Haru raises uncomfortable questions concerning the position of human animals in the world. If humans can enter into consensual relationships with cats, what distinguishes them from non‐ human animals? Cross-species relationships trouble the idea of human excep‐ tionalism since they place humans on the same level as nonhuman animals. It transpires that the members of this society are mainly concerned about the transgression of boundaries rather than the welfare of man and cat. Despite their commitment to each other, Haru and the young man’s rela‐ tionship has its problems: 66 3. Cross-Species Relationships ‘A month later we were in agonies. She came on heat. She howled incessantly, she howled the roof off. All her command of language was devoted to the filthiest eroti‐ cisms. She sulked, she made herself hideous, she destroyed my books and tore up my pyjamas. She refused to eat, and made her messes everywhere but in her tray of cedar chips. As for me, I behaved quite as badly as she, and quite as naturally. I refused to let her out. I called her every lewd name I could lay my tongue to, I beat her, I emptied the water-jug over her. Drenched and trembling she lay in my arms, staring with red eyes at the veins in my neck, alternately imploring me to release her and taunting me with my inability to console her lust.’ (19) While the young man readily accepted the staggering knowledge that human stories all originally derived from cats, he cannot accept the humiliation that comes with the realisation of not being able to satisfy his feline lover’s sexual desires. Recapitulating his and Haru’s sexual frustration, the young man sees a parallel in his situation and Haru’s situation at the embassy: both feel alienated by embassy life. With regard to their sexuality, however, it transpires that he does not consider Haru and himself to be on equal terms. Despite his earlier motivation, the young man begins to claim and control Haru once she comes into heat. He considers her sexuality a threat to his masculinity and violently seeks to oppress it. He demands fidelity while simultaneously robbing her of the freedom to leave his apartment. The young man’s attitude towards Haru has changed drastically; now that she is explicitly expressing her sexual excitement, he seeks to subordinate her. In this context, he tells the narrator of the frame story how Haru destroyed his flat. He seeks to show that, after all, she is a lesser creature than he is. He describes in detail how Haru went for the objects that represent human culture, books and clothing, and how she defecated in his apartment to demonstrate the savageness caused by her sexual desires. The young man considers her behaviour “bad”, but concedes that he is also guilty of behaving badly. Haru, however, behaves “badly” because he restricted her freedom. He, by contrast, abuses Haru physically and emotionally upon realising that he cannot control her. Feeling provoked by her behaviour, he soaks her in water and punishes her by beating her. He has created a relationship of dependency in which Haru, weakened and injured, remains in his arms. Even in this situation, however, the young man considers her threatening: physically, since he is convinced that she is aiming for his jugular veins to finish him off, and psychologically, since he feels that she is deriding him for his sexual short‐ comings. Marcus concludes, “Haru dies when he won’t let her out when she is in heat, and the narrative is charged with frustration at the impossibility of the physical consummation of their love” (“Bluebeard’s Daughters” 29). This does not take into account the young man’s cruelty. Rather than centring the narra‐ 67 3.1 Knowledge and Love in the Introduction to The Cat’s Cradle-Book tive on the sexual frustration of the young man and the cat, the story-within-the-story draws attention to the devastating powers of male dominancy while simultaneously providing a thought-provoking critique of human exceptionalism. The previous paragraphs have shown that Warner’s introductory story poses many questions regarding the idea of the centrality of human existence. By imagining love relationships between humans and cats, the introductory story touches on issues pertaining to accepted forms of desire and the so-called sexual norm and exposes prevailing anthropocentric worldviews. By introducing the reader to the language of Cat, the cultural heritage of cats and by reflecting on cat / human relationships, the story cleverly undermines the divide that sup‐ posedly separates human from nonhuman animals and highlights the flaws in the construct of exceptionality. 3.2 Decentering the Human in “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East” “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East” is one of the stories that has been passed on from one generation of cats to another. The young man from the introductory story writes it down, after he hears it told by one of his companion cats. Apart from the fact that the cats in the “Introduction” communicate with humans, the framing narrative follows the rules of realism. “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East”, by contrast, is set in an entirely fantastic world. It takes place in an inn frequented by numerous persons, characterised by ethnicity, profession, belief or appearance - that is, an “English traveller”, a “zither player”, a “rich merchant” “two Jews from Minsk”, and a “fat woman” all on their way to a fair (Warner, “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East” 136-137). They are joined by a cat who keeps his distance to the humans. Interestingly, the title contains an opposition: the traveller from the West, an Englishman, is contrasted with the traveller from the East, a cat. Yet despite their different backgrounds and the fact that they belong to different species, the two characters discover that they have at least one thing in common: they were both involved in cross-species relationships which ended badly. This chapter demonstrates how the stories the two travellers tell both share a common motif that serves to remove humans from any central position. At first glance, the title, “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East”, seems to highlight the unbridgeable gap between the two different species, yet, as this chapter will 68 3. Cross-Species Relationships show, the title is deliberately misleading. Just as “the West” and “the East” are socio-political constructs, the story reveals that the gap between the two species is not as wide as it would appear. Cross-Species Relationship Told from a Human Perspective A witch can assume the form of any bird or animal, but cats and wolves seem to be her favourite disguises. In many a backwoods village you may hear some gossip about a woman who visits her lover in the guise of a house cat. Once inside his cabin, she resumes her natural form and spends the night with him. Shortly before daybreak she becomes a cat again, returns to her home, and is transformed into a woman at her husband’s bedside. (Randolph 268) This brief account stems from Vance Randolph’s 1947 publication Ozark Super‐ stitions. The tale is in no way extraordinary, since witches have been associated with sexual desire and cats throughout the ages. In Warner’s story “The Trav‐ eller from the West and the Traveller from the East”, an instance of shapeshifting also occurs in the context of sexual activities. Like the witch in Randolph’s account, the English traveller’s wife is able to transform into a cat. Yet while witches change into cats to disguise themselves, the unnamed wife only turns into a cat when her predatory tendencies get the better of her. Upon discovering his wife’s shapeshifting powers, the Englishman leaves her and sets out to forget her. Ultimately, this is how he ends up in the inn. Seeing the cat in the inn chase a mouse (“All of a sudden the cat leaped out from under the bench and caught a mouse”, 137), he is reminded of his wife and nearly collapses (“Sure enough, the Englishman was leaning back with closed eyes, pale as death and holding his hand to his heart”, 137). Startled by his reaction, the other guests gather around him and demand an explanation for his behaviour. He finally tells them: ‘Three years ago I fell in love with a very beautiful girl. She was amiable, gentle, accomplished, witty, and well bred. Her skin was white as milk, her hair the palest flaxen. She had large pale-green eyes. I have never seen a woman move so gracefully, and her footstep was as noiseless as the falling snow. […] I married her. And on our wedding night I sat down on the bed and began to caress her, to stroke her white shoulders and kiss her hair. She lay on the pillows, full of languishing pleasure, and pinched my ear. Then, suddenly, her whole demeanour changed. Her face grew sharp, her eyes gleamed with excitement and even squinted, and the hand that had been pinching my ear now swept over my cheek and ripped it open with a finger-nail. She quivered, she drew her limbs together. And in a flash she leaped out of bed and began to spring madly about the room. She was chasing a little mouse.’ (138-39) 69 3.2 Decentering the Human in “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East” The story told by the Englishman highlights just how blurred the line between humans and cats is in The Cat’s Cradle-Book. Although the Englishman’s wife is very convincing at being human, there is no doubt that she is also partially cat (“She was chasing a little mouse”). Within the realm of this collection, this hints at the fact that being human is often a matter of performativity. If the Englishman’s wife had not acted upon her feline instincts, her husband would never have questioned her human status. The Englishman begins his story by describing his wife’s character. The adjectives he uses, “amiable” and “gentle”, serve to convince his audience of her equanimity and refined manners. He emphasises her good upbringing and comments on her fair features. All in all, he conjures up an image of almost saintly innocence. According to his account, there is hardly anything that indicates that there is anything extraordinary about the woman. It is only in retrospect that “her footstep was as noiseless as the falling snow” that he attributes a feline light-footedness to his wife. The cat within the woman first breaks out on her wedding night, while her husband is caressing her. Initially, his touch seems to arouse her and she seems to give herself away to him. Her excitement intensifies, not due to her husband’s sexual advances, but by the sudden sight of a mouse. Like the young man in the introductory tale, the Englishman cannot satisfy his lover’s needs. To her a mouse trying to escape her claw-like hands is significantly more alluring than her husband’s caresses. Her complete indifference towards her husband at this point is highly emasculating and results in moving her husband to an off-centre position. From passively lying on the bed (“full of languishing pleasure”, as the Englishman makes sure to point out), the cat / woman abruptly takes on an active role, now forcing her husband into passivity. Enthralled by the mouse, the wife’s behaviour and appearance change. The image of saintly innocence the Englishman evoked earlier disintegrates, and the woman appears savage and fierce. Voluntarily or involuntarily, she attacks her husband’s face and jumps out of their matrimonial bed to catch the mouse, proving to him that she is out of his reach. This makes her threating to her husband; he realises that his wife has a side that could emerge at any time, which he will never be able to control. Unlike the witch in the opening paragraph, the Englishman’s wife does not transform into a cat for the purpose of illicit sexual pleasures. On the contrary, by transforming into a cat she avoids any form of sexual engagement, thereby demonstrating her indifference towards his desires. The English traveller continues his tale by telling his audience how his wife went after the mouse: ‘I sat on the bed imploring her to desist. All the grace, all the lightness and agility I had admired became horrible to me as I watched her prancing around the room, casting 70 3. Cross-Species Relationships herself hither and thither, catching the mouse and letting it go again, catching it again, and tossing it into the air and catching it in her jaws as it fell. At last she settled down in a corner and ate it.’ (139-40) His wife’s transformation deeply troubles him and he begs her to return to her former state. Suddenly the woman he loved for her gentleness reveals predatory tendencies. By torturing an animal so much smaller and so much more vulnerable than herself, the cat / woman effectively destroys the feminine ster‐ eotype of the gentle, angelic woman the Englishman so gladly embraced. She reveals herself to be a predator who enjoys pursuing, capturing, tormenting and finally devouring her prey. In this, her behaviour is typically cat. Naturally, the cat / woman herself does not consider any of this a problem. After she has fin‐ ished her feast, she casually remarks, “‘You must forgive me’”, followed by, “‘My grandfather married a white Angora, and so my blood is one-quarter Cat. All the fur is inside, thank heaven! But when I see a mouse I cannot resist it’” (140). The Englishman is less disturbed by the fact that his wife’s grandmother was a cat than by his wife’s rapacious behaviour. The fact that she does not hesitate to attack a mouse suggests that she may not hesitate to attack him and possibly emasculate him. Addressing his listeners, he states, ‘“But how could I forgive her? It was not even her fault. There is no injury so impossible to forgive as an impersonal injury”’ (140). He further attributes her behaviour to her hereditary disposition and realises that there is nothing to forgive since she merely followed her cat instincts. Similar to the narrator in “Introduction”, the people in the inn do not feel troubled by the story of a cross-species relationship. Although a human and a cat, in this case, even produced offspring (the cat / woman), they merely try to express their compassion for the Englishman’s situation: “Murmurs of awed sympathy arose. It was difficult to know what to say after so strange and tragic a story” (140). The people in the inn condemn the cat/ woman for her wild and intimidating behaviour thereby demonstrating their fear of women who do not fit into any stereotypically female category. For all we know, however, the cat / woman remains indifferent to the fact that she deviated from stereotypically female behaviour. By telling his story, the Englishman, willingly or unwillingly, demonstrates that humans are not the most urgent priority for cats or cat-like creatures. 71 3.2 Decentering the Human in “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East” 16 The “zone of indistinction” is a term borrowed from animal studies. Matthew Calarco uses it to describe a new way of analysing human / non-human relationships. He writes, “[…] this alternative approach proceeds from a space in which supposedly insuperable distinctions between human being and animals fall into a radical indistinction and where the human / animal distinction (in both its classical and more complicated deconstruc‐ tive form) no longer serves as a guardrail for thought and practice” (54). Cross-Species Relationships Told From A Cat’s Perspective The Englishman’s story is closely mirrored by the cat’s story which also demonstrates a scant regard for humans. To condole the Englishman, the cat shares his story with him: ‘You have suffered by a mixed marriage. I too have proved to myself that bitterness lies at the bottom of a mixed cup. For many years I loved a woman, loved her with my whole being. She was not so beautiful as your woman, her movements were often clumsy, and her footsteps quite painfully audible; but she had no trace of feline blood - one should not expect figs from thistles. Nevertheless, she charmed me. She was mar‐ ried, and I might have been jealous if she had not shown me so plainly that she pre‐ ferred me to her husband. When he got up in the morning she would call me to her bed. And then she would tell me I was her comfort and her solace, and we would lie there caressing each other and praising each other’s eyes.’ (141) At the beginning of his story, the cat appears biased towards cross-species relationships. It further transpires that he considers catkind superior to human‐ kind. In contrast to the Englishman, he does not find the woman he loved particularly beautiful and attributes her lack of beauty to the fact that she is not of cat descent. Yet, despite her physical shortcomings, he feels intrigued by her and comes to function as a substitute for her husband. The cat and the woman share an intimate relationship and take physical pleasure in each other. Unlike the Englishman or the narrator from the introductory story, the cat is able to give his lover everything she desires. Very briefly, they succeed in creating a “zone of indistinction”, a zone in which any qualities that would distinguish them from each other are rendered meaningless (Calarco 54). 16 After her husband’s death, however, their relationship is thrown out of balance and their zone of indistinction vanishes. To survive, the cat goes poaching, and the woman sells the poultry he thieves. Reluctantly, the cat comes to realise that the new circumstances bring out the worst in her: ‘Finding how agreeable it is to make money she began to set her prices higher and higher, till no one would buy. The house was full of maggoty birds and stinking hares. […] How could it be a pleasure to love a person so obviously lazy, greedy, dirty, and 72 3. Cross-Species Relationships 17 “The ‘cat’s view’ of human morality”, writes Clare Harman, “was the means by which Sylvia was able to carry on her old joke of defamilarising the familiar, reversing ex‐ pectations […]” (192) inefficient? I was forced to admit it: she was no more than human. […] Then one day she washed herself all over with scented soap and went to the brothel.’ (Warner, “Traveller” 142-43) Just as the Englishman’s wife, the cat’s lover undergoes a change that makes her unbearable to him. While the Englishman is shocked by the discovery that his wife is partially cat, the cat is disappointed to realise that his lover is simply human. He is further disgusted by her failure to run a business and by the dead animals that are starting to pile up in the house. In comparison, the cat / woman is infinitely more resourceful. While the cat’s lover is demanding, but completely unable to support herself, the cat / woman can always fall back on her ability to catch mice. The cat’s lover has no resources that would help her survive other than her body. Reflecting on the past, the cat describes the opposing elements of the “dirty home” and the “clean prostitute”. This serves to show that to him, as a cat, homes do not necessarily have a positive connotation and prostitutes have a negative connotation. The opposition he outlines serves as an excellent example of the way in which Warner employs a cat to “revers[e] expectations” as Harman calls it. 17 To the cat, both institutions, the domestic and the sexualised, are interchangeable; homes are not essentially homely and clean, and prostitutes are not essentially infectious and corrupted. The cat’s view stands in striking contrast to the wine merchant’s view in the story “The Wineshop Cat”, as the following chapter will show. Contrary to his expectations, the cat does not meet with compassion at the end of his tale. While the guests of the inn readily expressed their sympathy with the Englishman, the cat’s story disgusts them, “No murmurs of sympathy followed this narrative. Such a tale, a tale of unnatural affection, brothels, and poultry-stealing, outraged the whole assembly” (143). Their reaction exposes the guests of the inn as anthropocentric hypocrites. Why do they not show a similar reaction towards the cat as they did towards the Englishman? The two stories differ in their choice of narrators. The first story was told by a privileged human being, more specifically, a male human being from a Western country who apparently fell victim to a treacherous woman. The second story, by contrast, is told by an animal, a cat from the East, which alone makes the listeners suspicious. Furthermore, it explicitly details a romance between a woman and a cat, which raises uncomfortable questions regarding the definition of a human being. “Spatially and symbolically,” writes Jody Berland, “the ‘hu‐ 73 3.2 Decentering the Human in “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East” man’ has been defined by specific (if culturally relative) relations to the non-human” (448). According to the so-called norm, a cat that lives in a human being’s home is a human being’s companion animal - and not their lover. This is what the cat’s audience would agree upon. The cat, however, took over the role of the deceased husband and lived with the dead man’s widow as man and wife. In this, the cat showed that it is not too difficult to behave like a human. While the Englishman mistakenly believed that his wife was a woman, and nothing else, the cat and his human lover deliberately sought out each other, i.e. a being from another species. The audience is repulsed by the “unnatural affec‐ tion” that characterises the cat and his human lover’s relationship. Whereas the audience merely consider the cat a cat, they expect a woman to adhere to the so-called norm and remain either single or remarry another (male) human. Contrary to the Englishman, who, after his experience with the cat / woman, fears the sight of cats catching mice, the cat does not appear greatly shaken by the breakup. Moreover, he does not see a great difference between cross-species and interspecies love affairs. Before he leaves, he tells the Englishman: “‘But because you and I have both chanced to come to grief by loving astray, do not be misled. Quite ordinary normal loves may be just as distressing’” (144). The “lover” from the West and the “lover” from the East are not that unalike; both deviated from the so-called norm by engaging in cross-species relationships. This, and the fact that they both entered into consensual relationships with a being from another species, makes the boundary that separates them seem increasingly blurred. By ignoring the audience’s reaction and by attempting to appease the Englishman, the cat further succeeds in dismissing the hierarchy the audience sought to impose onto the two narrators and leaves without showing any sign of irritation for his listeners’ narrow-mindedness. Although both tales revolve around humans and cats, the respective tales’ foci gradually start to shift towards the cats, delegating the humans to an off-centre position. In the Englishman’s tale, the human is effectively emascu‐ lated: once his wife acts upon her feline impulses, his sexual advances no longer interest her. With regard to the short story as a whole, the cat’s tale is more radical. By comparing the lazy, unindustrious woman to the resourceful cat / woman, “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East” suggests that humans are essentially incompetent and lack the necessary out‐ look. From a cat’s perspective, it is clear that humans can only inhabit an off-centre position for this very reason. 74 3. Cross-Species Relationships 3.3 Corporeality and Control in “The Wineshop Cat” In “The Wineshop Cat” the humans and the cats do not share a common language. The cats accordingly never voice an opinion or narrate stories, which leave humans to speak for them. With regard to the ending of “The Wineshop Cat” (1942), when the narrator deliberates on the consummation of cat meat, Anthony Lane writes, “Cats can be savored for their fellowship, then eaten for their flesh: that, at any rate, was the alarming formula arrived at by Sylvia Townsend Warner […]” (Lane, “The Big New Yorker Book of Cats”). While the first two stories, “Introduction” and “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East”, revolve around ownership and eroticism, no reference is ever made to the consumption of cat meat. This chapter puts forward the claim that the dynamics of human / animal companionships become particularly com‐ plex when one species is eaten by another for reasons other than necessity. It further argues that the narrator, when imagining the wine merchant consuming the cat, becomes less human and more feline. Firstly, by comparing the “Wineshop Cat” (1942) to the two stories from The Cat’s Cradle-Book, this chapter illustrates how Warner depicts cross-species relationships and feline indifference in a setting devoid of fantastic elements. Secondly, it examines the connection between meat and masculinity before an‐ alysing the narrator’s emerging creatureliness. Indifference and Domination “The Wineshop Cat” (1942) takes place in a realistic context. It is set in Paris, somewhere in the vicinity of Montparnasse Cemetery. The location and social setting are both clearly defined by the autodiegetic narrator, a confident, urbane woman who knows her way about the city. The reader further learns that the incident she is about to narrate took place nearly five years previously. In con‐ trast to the characters in “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East”, the narrator, who is also the protagonist of “The Wineshop Cat”, is not merely typified, but is a well-defined, slightly ambiguous character. In the previous two stories, cats and humans were able to communicate easily and lead consensual relationships. In this story, consent becomes a matter of interpretation. The analysis of the two stories from “The Cat’s Cradle-Book” clearly highlighted that Warner’s cats are characterised by one specific feature: their indifference towards any human moral principles. As the following passage shows, the cat in “The Wineshop Cat” story likewise displays this distinctive trait. 75 3.3 Corporeality and Control in “The Wineshop Cat” The beginning of the story is highly symbolic. Firstly, it illustrates the cat’s indifference towards the human world and, secondly, it links up with the nar‐ rator’s musings on the cat’s death at the end of the story. Observing a majestic Siamese cat on the streets of Paris, the narrator imagines the cat to go about his ways as follows: It [the Montparnasse Cemetery] was closed, but closing hours would mean nothing to a Siamese cat. The dusky paws would bunch together and arrive neatly among the spikes on the top of the wall, […] and an instant later the cat would be alighting on consecrated earth while a few dry leaves, since it was August, would have started on their twirling passage downward. (“The Wineshop Cat” 30) The narrator refers to manmade restrictions to highlight the cat’s indifference towards human constraints. By describing the cat’s physique, she emphasises that he is impervious to human rules - he can easily overcome any physical obstacle. In this sense, the transgression she envisions does not count as an act of disobedience. The cat is a law unto himself: he is not wilfully trespassing since this would imply the infringement of an accepted law. The walled cemetery, in contrast to the walled kitchen garden in “Bruno”, which symbolised temptation and nonnormative desires as discussed in Chapter 2, holds no appeal for the cat. The cemetery has no sexual connotation and the cat may decide to visit it on a whim (“perhaps it simply preferred consecrated earth”, 30), or may decide to go somewhere else. The repeated usage of “would” in the quote above draws attention to the hypothetical states of the narrator’s reflections. She understands that she can never be certain of the cat’s thoughts and whereabouts. Referring to the cat’s aloofness, the narrator succeeds in conjuring up the image of an autocratic, unapproachable animal: I had never seen a grander Siamese cat. In a way, it was regrettably grand. Had it been a more ordinary cat, I could have followed it, and got acquainted with it. But one might as well hope to get acquainted with Phoebus Apollo, I thought, watching it disappear with arrogant leisureliness down that undistinguished Boulevard Edgar-Quinet. (30) By comparing the cat to Phoebus Apollo, the name of the Greek and Roman god, the narrator acknowledges and reinforces the unbridgeable gap between herself and the cat. Respecting the cat’s privacy, she does not initiate any contact and refrains from fulfilling her desire to engage with him. Upon seeing the cat in a wine shop a few evenings later, the narrator enters the shop and compliments the owner of the shop on the cat. Subsequently, he strikes up a conversation with her. Implying that he had no other choice, the 76 3. Cross-Species Relationships wine merchant tells the narrator, “‘What can one do? ’ I had to have him [the cat] neutered! ’” (30). From the outset, his reasons appear dubious: As a male, he was a misery. He wouldn’t eat, he wouldn’t thrive, he was away for days on end, infatuated with all the worthless she-cats of the quarter. He came back starving, dirty, wet to the skin, disfigured with bites and scratches, looking an object. Besides, his voice was loud, and people threw things at him. (30) The wine merchant had the Siamese cat neutered to eradicate his unseemly unwanted behaviour, to control his sexuality, and to ensure that his external appearance remained unharmed. Unlike the narrator, he does not admire the cat’s autonomy but wishes to subject the cat to his will. He unwittingly contra‐ dicts himself when he maintains that, “One cannot imprison a cat; it is against nature” (30). On the one hand, he considers it wrong to keep a cat locked up inside, on the other hand, he has no problem with having him neutered. In “Inconvenient Desires: Should We Routinely Neuter Companion Animals? ” (2015), Clare Palmer et al. discuss different views on neutering animals. Pre‐ senting a relational approach to the question as to whether animals should routinely be neutered or not, they write that neutering a companion animal often serves to create a “better”, i.e. docile, less dominant, and disruptive com‐ panion and that, from this point of view, “neutering can be defended as a means to foster closer and more harmonious relationships between humans and com‐ panion animals” (Palmer, Corr, and Sandøe 165). This is what the wine merchant has in mind; he wishes to subjugate the cat to his desires. Palmer et al. are critical of this motivation for neutering and maintain, “The language of companionship […] serves to conceal the ways in which such animals are actually coercively manipulated to meet human preferences” (166). The wine merchant believed that “[a]s a male, he [the cat] was a misery”. But what exactly does this mean? Did the cat consider his life a misery, too? According to the merchant’s descrip‐ tion, the cat was in great mental and physical distress. The problems he lists, however, all hint at the fact that he was not in agreement with the way in which the cat lived out his sexuality. In the end, he decided to desex him to limit his sexual activities. The wine merchant connects a cat’s sexuality with infectious diseases, and, interestingly, the story at first supports the dichotomy between “home / de‐ sexed / healthy” and “outside / sexually active / diseased”. When the narrator asks the wine merchant whether he had tried to find the cat a companion, he replies, “‘Madame, as you know, these cats are opinionated. He would not domesticate himself. Instead, he took up with the most frightful females. I was in horrors, thinking how they might infect him with filthy diseases’” (Warner, “Wineshop” 77 3.3 Corporeality and Control in “The Wineshop Cat” 31). The wine merchant is not responsive to the narrator’s enquiry; this clearly shows that he never intended the cat to have any other companion than himself and that he believes that female cats would pose a possible threat to his com‐ panion. He suggests that they, dirty and diseased, would corrupt him and infect him with diseases, “‘Mange! ’ he exclaimed, and I [the narrator] shuddered” (31). In the context of the story, this exclamation has a twisted double meaning: one the one hand, it refers to the skin disease that any animal might catch, and on the other hand, it alludes to the French verb manger, to eat, with je mange meaning “I eat”. All this suggests that the wine merchant harbours the desire to devour his cat and finally possess him just as the narrator imagines. For a short moment, the wine merchant confides in the narrator and recounts his dilemma at having to decide whether to have the Siamese cat castrated. If we believe him, he did not reach the decision in favour of the surgical removal of the cat’s testicles easily (“I have robbed him of a joy”, 31). His previous utterances, however, suggest that he did not waver for very long. As if to prove that he made the right decision, he tells the narrator, “‘Look at him now’”, and continues, “‘He is superb. One would say he has never regretted his virility’” (31). The merchant speaks for the cat although he cannot possibly know what the cat feels. While the story emphasises the cat’s independence and marvels at his disregard for human constraints, it simultaneously reveals the cat’s vulner‐ ability concerning the power the wine merchant holds over him. In this respect, the cat resembles Haru, the Siamese cat in the introductory story of the Cat’s Cradle-Book. Like Haru, the Wineshop cat ultimately suffers at the hands of a human. As Palmer et al. write, “[…] companion animals are permanent depend‐ ents. The owner can, if they choose, withdraw support, give them to animal shelters or have them euthanized” (166). Or, if they wish, eat them. Surprisingly, and perhaps even vexingly, the narrator, who was depicted as admiring the cat’s superiority and independence, does not question the wine merchant’s decision to neuter the cat. She even agrees with him and says, “‘You have robbed him of a great deal of uneasiness, too, and loss of dignity” (Warner, “Wineshop” 31). Just like the cat, who ingratiates himself with the wine merchant to receive food, the narrator also seeks to be as agreeable as possible to the wine merchant. With hindsight, it transpires that her indifference towards him allows her no other reaction. Meat and Ingestion The story makes much mention of devouring flesh. Notably, all three characters, the wine merchant, the cat, and the narrator, are associated with - or at least 78 3. Cross-Species Relationships think about - consuming the meat of an animal that has just been killed. In this respect, the narrator is the most ambiguous figure of the three; while the cat remains largely aloof and the wine merchant is generally unpleasant, the nar‐ rator oscillates between compassion and morbidity. To the wine merchant, meat is connected with power. Analysing the connection between gender and food, Deborah Lupton writes, “The killing and eating of animals is coded with the attributes of virility, aggression and power, which are also coded as masculine” (107). At this point of the story, the wine merchant has not yet killed an animal; however, the way he handles the cat’s food, prime steak in this case, graphically demonstrates that he associates eating meat with force, vigour, and manliness. After the narrator compliments him on the cat’s condition, he shows her the kind of meat he feeds him: Balancing his cat on his shoulder, the man walked over to a refrigerator, opened it, and took out a large slice of prime steak. Still silent, he held it across the counter for me [the narrator] to examine. Then he said to the cat ‘But you won’t get it yet, you know’. (Warner, “Wineshop” 31) The wine merchant does not explain his action, but his motivation is clear. It is his way of demonstrating his masculinity and dominance of the cat. On a different level, this demonstration is part of his twisted game of subordinating the cat to his will. Although he has emasculated him, he seeks to feed him the kind of meat he considers masculine and invigorating. His whole performance, however, is thwarted by the fact that the cat is not balanced steadily on his shoulder (“[b]alancing his cat”) and that he has to ensure that the cat will not jump down and suddenly abandon him. This clearly shows that he is not in full control of the animal. Aware of the fragility of his power, he tantalises the cat by showing him the meat and withdrawing it again. Yet, unsurprisingly, one of his greatest pleasures is to feel the cat’s body against his own, (“The man thrust his head back against the muscular, sidling caress, and his face assumed the severe look of intense pleasure” 30). Observing the cat at close range, the narrator notices how his behaviour and facial expression changes: He [the wine merchant] slammed to the door of the refrigerator. With dusky paws the cat began to knead his shoulder in time to its rattling purr and blinked at me. Its eyes, which had reddened at the sight of the meat, were now a clear blue in its pokerwork face, and its purr became more rhythmical and hymnlike. I felt that I had best leave this happy pair to themselves. (30) 79 3.3 Corporeality and Control in “The Wineshop Cat” 18 I chose to employ the term “cannibalistic”, despite the fact that the act of consumption occurs between members of a different species, since the cat is more than just a com‐ panion animal to the wine merchant. At first the cat is agitated, but, after a while, he calms down and starts to pound the wine merchant’s shoulder and purr rhythmically. The vibratory sound almost immediately gives the scene a tranquil quality, which leads the narrator to perceive the cat and human as a unit, as a “happy couple”. The cat’s behaviour, however, was stimulated by the sight of meat and not by his affection for the wine merchant. Yet, temporarily, the “large slice of prime steak” allowed the wine merchant to feel loved - and in control. While flesh symbolises control and masculinity to the wine merchant, it merely means food to the cat and the narrator. At the beginning of the story, when the narrator is observing the cat walking down the street, imagining him about to enter the Montparnasse Cemetery, she remarks, “The cat was walking with a stately air of habit. Perhaps this was the hour when it took a sparrow as an apéritif chez Baudelaire […]” (30). Her thoughts are entirely with the cat; the fact that he would kill a bird and have it as an appetizer are of no consequence to her - killing another species and eating it leaves her unmoved. Her detach‐ ment, however, reaches another level when she imagines the wine merchant eating the Siamese cat: Thinking of the present, I recall the pair of them [the wine merchant and the Siamese cat]. For some time now cat flesh has fetched high prices in the Paris market. But I am sure of this: if anyone ate that Siamese cat, it was his master. And I am sure of another thing: that the cat, when he killed it, was still in good condition. It had not guttered into scabby starvation before the decision was attained and acted upon. (31) The memory of the cat and the man continues to haunt the narrator and, years later, she speculates on what happened to the “happy couple”. In spite of a range of possible scenarios, the narrator projects almost cannibalistic behaviour onto the wine merchant. 18 She bases her suspicion on the occurrences she witnessed in the wine shop. During the short period of time she spent there, she gained much insight into the merchant’s character. The narrator believed that it was evident that he wanted to subjugate the cat to his will. Musing on what he might be capable of, the narrator imagines that the wine merchant finally ate his cat. Even though her thoughts were purely hypothetical, the narrator has no problem entertaining this idea. By consuming the cat’s flesh, he would be able to prove, albeit only to himself, that he had the upper hand and no longer had to fear loss of control or simple rejection. Ingesting the cat, however, is not only a means of dominating the cat 80 3. Cross-Species Relationships and the cat’s body, but also a demonstration of excessive love. From the mer‐ chant’s account, it became clear that he could not love the cat as an individual being, but only as an extension of himself. Ultimately, this meant that the cat had to cease to exist as a cat. “[…] consumption by another”, writes Jeff Berglund, “collapses identity boundaries: in being consumed, You become Me, I become You-Me” (Berglund 9, emphases in the original). After consuming the cat, the merchant would no longer merely be the merchant; he would become the mer‐ chant / cat - their identities would have merged. Carla Freccero highlights the sexual component of cannibalism when she writes, “Cannibalism is an act of erotic aggression, however ambivalent, that effaces alterity […]”(201). The story vividly confirms the erotic aspect of eating the other, that is, the ensuing sexual gratification, but also shows that consuming one’s object of desire blurs other‐ ness rather than obliterating it. The narrator is sure that the merchant’s action will not be without consequences: Later in that day, it seems certain to me, the man must have got on his bicycle and ridden off, silent and catlike, but with a small, uncatlike weight against his thigh. Some evening or other that cat has been avenged - or will be. For he was that kind of man, and loved after that fashion. (Warner, “Wineshop” 31) Allowing her mind to wander, the narrator begins to picture the merchant after the cannibalistic murder. The merchant, who, up until this point, was firmly located in his wine shop, now leaves the building and starts to roam about out‐ side - just like the cat used to do. The cat, however, has ceased to exist; all that is left of him is a “small, uncatlike weight”. After the merchant has completed his task, the cat loses its agency and becomes nothing more than a weight in, presumably, some kind of carrier bag. This weight, however, continues to present itself to the merchant. Dangling against his leg, it becomes a constant reminder of the crime he committed, reminiscent of the cat in Poe’s short story “The Black Cat” (1845). In a twisted way, the merchant still desires to possess the cat in his entirety which prevents him from disposing of the cat’s remains and compels him to carry them around with him. With hindsight, it can be assumed that the cat’s fate was sealed once the merchant decided to have him neutered. The previous quote suggests that the narrator believes that the wine mer‐ chant’s behaviour always follows the same pattern. Despite the fact that it was his decision to have the cat castrated, he feels guilty for depriving the cat of his virility. Consequently, the narrator is convinced that after the wine merchant killed and ate the cat, he felt guilty for the death of his companion. In this 81 3.3 Corporeality and Control in “The Wineshop Cat” scenario, the merchant understands that he has crossed a boundary from which there is no return, a boundary that drastically changes who he is. This is reflected in the narrator’s musings; after consuming the cat, the merchant becomes less human and more “silent and catlike”. From the narrator’s perspective, cat and man have now truly merged. The cat has become less catlike in a kind of role reversal. The narrator believes that the merchant would not be able to live with his crime and that, perversely, he would want to take vengeance on behalf of the cat. Her use of the present perfect passive and the future passive in one and the same sentence (“Some evening or other that cat has been avenged - or will be”) indicates that she believes that the wine merchant’s crime will continue to haunt him; possibly, until he too ends up like the cat. The narrator’s reflections on the subject of ingestion are in themselves quite remarkable. Why does the thought that the merchant killed and ate his cat not unsettle her? From a postcolonial, queer perspective, Berglund writes, “This fear of losing one’s self to another alien culture is also the force responsible for pro‐ jecting cannibalistic behaviour onto others, in what I have referred to as a classic moment of ‘Othering’” (Berglund, Cannibal Fictions 9). According to Berglund, attributing another culture with cannibalistic tendencies functions as an attempt to draw a line between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the known and the un‐ known. The logic of this statement cannot, however, be applied to “The Wine‐ shop Cat”. The narrator does not attribute cannibalistic behaviour to the wine merchant to create so-called mutually exclusive categories, such as “the brutal, uncivilised male” and “the compassionate, cultured female”. It gradually emerges that she has no interest in setting herself apart from him. Berglund further argues that “[…] the threat of cannibalism evokes a sense of the uncanny made popular by Sigmund Freud’s literary meditation on the subject” (9). Regarding the uncanny, Freud writes, “das Unheimliche sei jene Art des Schreckhaften, welche auf das Altbekannte, Längstvertraute zurückgeht” (231). That is, a person will only find an occurrence or an event uncanny, if they are already familiar with it. This concept takes the reader to the heart of the story. The narrator is familiar with cannibalism, or rather, the idea of ingesting the other, but it does not “evoke[…] a sense of the uncanny” within her. That is, it neither makes her uncomfortable nor does she fear it. In a cool and dispassionate manner, she reflects on the deeds of which she believes the merchant to be capable. Ultimately, this makes her, and not the merchant, less human and more catlike. In this respect, her thoughts on the cat’s end reveal a lack of emotion bordering on indifference. She is more interested in the wine merchant’s behaviour and the consequences of his act of cannibalism, which leads her to show the same kind of detachment displayed by the Siamese cat in the story. 82 3. Cross-Species Relationships As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, Lane implies that “The Wineshop Cat” proposes that “Cats can be savored for their fellowship, then eaten for their flesh […]” (Lane, “The Big New Yorker Book of Cats”). Lane, however, fails to realise that the cat in Warner’s story, if it is eaten, is not merely eaten for his flesh. As this chapter showed, the hypothetical consummation is linked to power and, perhaps surprisingly, the desperate need for love. The nar‐ rator is convinced that the excessive and jealous tendencies displayed by the wine merchant resulted in him destroying the cat and eating its flesh. This process is reflected in the deconstruction of the “home / desexed / healthy” and “outside / sexually active / diseased” dichotomy which the story seemed to main‐ tain at first. Ultimately, however, home is where you get killed - and just as homes are not what they seem, narrators are not either. The fact that the narrator pictured the merchant killing and eating the cat revealed a facet of her character that nearly goes unnoticed throughout the story. She fantasises about the killing and projects her cannibalistic tendencies onto the wine merchant in order to distract from her own person, intimating that she too would be capable of such an act. It is not the merchant who, from a human’s perspective, is merciless and cruel, but the narrator herself. Like the sparrow’s life, the cat’s life means very little to her, despite the fact that she originally admired the animal for its feline sovereignty. 3.4 Shifting the Species Line All three stories, the “Introduction”, “The Traveller from the West and the Trav‐ eller from the East”, and “The Wineshop Cat” destabilise traditional ideas about human and non-human animals. As has been shown, the dynamics that lead to this destabilisation are different in each story. This is mainly due to the different position held by the cats. In both the “Introduction” and “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East”, cats occupy transitional states, albeit to different extents. Johnston maintains, “The ‘Introduction’ shows the liminality of Cat culture by describing the caretaker’s cats as halfway between the human world and the wild” (57). While these cats are companion animals - the kittens of which the young man sells at his own discretion - they also go their own independent ways. In “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East”, animals, or rather cats, pursue similar activities to humans, insofar as they also frequent inns. Despite this, they live their own cat-like lives in which human rules and regulations have no consequence. In these two stories, humans hardly distinguish themselves from cats, and vice versa, since, firstly, they can com‐ 83 3.4 Shifting the Species Line municate with each other, and secondly, since they form meaningful love rela‐ tionships with the respective other species. The “Introduction” points out that all human knowledge derives from cats, (“Cats tell their stories, passed down through generations, to their kittens, but also to human babies”), which removes humans from the centre of authority ( Johnston 56). In “The Wineshop Cat” these dynamics work differently. The owner of the shop, the wine merchant, also considers himself the owner of the Siamese cat. With regard to domesticated animals Berland writes, “Humans assumed a special place in the universe by denying their bestial nature; the keeping of pets was a good illustration of human compassion” (448). In “The Wineshop Cat” this does not work out. The wine merchant desires to merge with the cat and after his attempts fail, he assumedly ingests his companion animal. Contrasted with the cat, the wine merchant loses his superiority as a result of his assumed act of cannibalism. Despite their differences in setting and focus, all three stories revolve around cross-species relationships and describe the predominately male fear of losing sexual control over a partner. The young man from the “Introduction” punishes Haru, his feline lover, once she is in heat because he cannot satisfy her lust; the Englishman starts to panic when his wife reveals her feline side and rejects his sexual advances; the wine merchant prohibits his tomcat from engaging in any sexual adventures by castrating him. The stories contain a harsh critique of heteronormative, patriarchal structures that seek to determine acceptable sexual behaviour. Notably, none of the stories explicitly refers to penetrative sexual acts between two species. This highlights that sexual pleasure is not always synonymous with genital stimulation. As Kuzniar maintains, “Pet devotion has the potential to question the regulating strictures and categories by with we define sexuality, eroticism and love, though not in the banal sense that it offers different forms of genital stimulation […]” (208). This assessment accurately echoes Warner’s words to Garnett, “Tiber [Garnett’s cat] has the pleasure of being pleased and knowing he pleases in his love-making with you” (Letters 175). Read together with the stories in this chapter, it points at the various forms eroticism and pleasure can take. 84 3. Cross-Species Relationships 19 For studies on incest in literature see, for example: Elizabeth Barnes, ed. Incest and the Literary Imagination. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2002. Print, Janice Doane, and Devon Hodges. Telling Incest: Narratives of Dangerous Remembering from Stein to Sapphire. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2001., Ellen Pollack. Incest and the English Novel, 1684-1814. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2003. Print, Otto Rank. Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung Und Sage: Grundzüge Einer Psychologie Des Dichterischen Schaffens. Wien: Franz Deuticke, 1912. Web. 14 July 2016. 4. Incestuous Longings In a letter to Maxwell, Warner writes, “Incest is a wonderfully rich theme; or rather, it is a wonderfully enriching light, stretching a whole series of unex‐ pected shadows from familiar objects” (Warner and Maxwell 141). Warner’s words highlight the fact that she is not interested in the moral aspects of incest, but that she considers incest a topic that allows her to view the world from a fresh perspective. Incest has been discussed in many different fields, most prominently in anthropology and psychoanalysis. The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, for example, “[…] sees the incest taboo in positive terms as the means of bringing about exogamy” (Wiseman 145). Lévi-Strauss writes, “[…] as soon as I am forbidden a woman, she thereby becomes available to another man, and somewhere else a man renounces a woman who thereby becomes available to me” (42). To J. G. Frazer, a further anthropologist, incestuous longings are omnipresent in society. “Instead of assuming, therefore, from the legal prohib‐ ition of incest that there is a natural aversion to incest, we ought rather to assume that there is a natural instinct in favour of it,” writes Frazer, “and if the law represses it, as it represses other natural instincts, it does so because civilized men have come to the conclusion that the satisfaction of these natural instincts is detrimental to the general interests of society” (97-98). Freud, who draws on Frazer’s work, is of similar opinion, “For what nobody desires to do does not have to be forbidden, and certainly whatever is expressly forbidden must be an object of desire” (Totem and Taboo 115-116). The prominence of incestuous longings allows the anthropologist Arthur P. Wolf, author of Incest Avoidance and the Incest Taboos (2014), to declare, “Given that if there is anything more interesting than sex, it is tabooed sex, there is probably no need to justify my topic” (3). Literature, too, has always revolved around incestuous longings. 19 Whereas anthropological and psychoanalytical works commonly discuss the conse‐ quences of incestuous longings for society and a patient, respectively, literature is able to engage with incest creatively. Literature may reflect the current dis‐ courses of the time, but, in addition to that, it is free to explore intricacies of incest that do not surface in anthropology or psychoanalysis. Literature is not required to categorise or even explain these desires; it may remain ambiguous, undecided or even indifferent. This privilege will become most apparent in the analysis of the three short stories, “A Love Match” (1964), “A Spirit Rises” (1962), and “At a Monkey’s Breast” (1955) in this chapter. Three years after Warner published “Between Two Wars” (1964), her famous incest story that she later renamed “A Love Match”, the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon published “If all Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? ” (1967). An introduction to Sturgeon’s, at times, strenuously didactic story, highlights just how indifferent Warner is to (non-) normative desires and shows how ingeniously she makes use of the privilege of literature. In less elegant writing than Warner and with a tendency to objectify female characters, Sturgeon puts forward numerous arguments in favour of consensual incest, amongst others, “stabilization, purification, greater survival value”, (“If All Men Were Brothers” 421). Sturgeon’s sci-fi story revolves around Charli Bux, a visitor from another planet, who becomes familiar with the incestuous way of life on the planet Vexvelt. In a quasi-Socratic debate, Vorhidin, who, like everyone on Vexvelt, has incestuous relationships with close family members, enlightens Charli about their way of life. This happens after Charli, to his dis‐ gust, realises that Tyng, the woman he sleeps with, also has sexual relations with Vorhidin, her father. ‘Are you ready? Tell me, then: what’s wrong with incest? I take it back - you know me. Don’t tell me. Tell some stranger, some fume-sniffer or alcohol addict in a space‐ port bar.’ […] Charli stopped to think. ‘You mean, morally, or what? ’ ‘Let’s skip that whole segment. Right and wrong depend on too many things from one place to another, although I have some theories of my own. No - let’s be sitting in this bar and agree that incest is just awful, and go from there. What’s really wrong with it? ’ ‘You breed too close, you get faulty offspring. Idiots and dead babies without heads and all that.’ ‘I knew it! I knew it! ’ crowed the big Vexveltian. ‘Isn’t it just wonderful? From the rocky depths of a Stone Age culture through the brocades and knee-breeches sort of grand opera civilizations all the way out to the computer technocracies […] - you ask that question and you get that answer. It’s something everybody just knows.’ (419, emphasis in the original) 86 4. Incestuous Longings 20 In the afterword Sturgeon notes, “I have always been fascinated by the human mind’s ability to think itself to a truth, and then to take that one step more (truly the basic secret of all human progress) and the inability of so many people to learn the trick” (Sturgeon, “Afterword. If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? ’” 424-425). The extended dialogue between the two men from two different planets forms a pivotal moment in the story. Vorhidin succeeds in convincing Charli that incestuous relationships do not lead to “faulty offspring” and proves his bio‐ logical concerns to be wrong (“Any livestock breeder will tell you that, once you have a strain you want to keep and develop, you breed father to daughter and to granddaughter, and then brother to sister”, 419). Vorhidin also dismisses any form of moral apprehension, “The moral consideration is that it’s a horrifying thought, and it’s a horrifying thought because it has always been”, and attributes any squeamishness to tradition (420). Moreover, he puts forward the claim that people who are sexually frustrated will seek other, potentially destructive out‐ puts, “Who but a gaggle of frustrates, never in their lives permitted all the ways of love within a family, could coin such a concept as ‘motherland’ and give their lives to it and for it? ” (422). The story suggests that the Vexveltians, since they are not required to repress their sexual desires, live a happier and more fulfilled life: It took a long time for Charli to be able to let these ideas in, and longer for him to winnow and absorb them. But all the while he lived surrounded by beauty and fulfil‐ ment, by people, young and old, who were capable of total concentration on art and learning and building and processing, people who gave to each other and their land and air and water just a little more than they took. (423) In the end, it transpires that incest, or rather the possibility to act upon any sexual desire, is the key to happiness. Just as Vorhidin succeeds in converting Charli, Sturgeon attempts to convert his readership or to at least make them question cultural taboos. 20 If we juxtapose Sturgeon’s story with Warner’s, we will immediately recog‐ nise the full extent of her indifference towards tabooed desires. In stark contrast to Sturgeon, Warner does not make incest the central point of her writing and does not pass any moral judgement. Readers interested in the “tabooed sex” which Wolf, for example, promises, will find her stories that revolve around incestuous longings terribly disappointing. Rather than focussing on the actual transgression and the moral consequences it entails, Warner’s stories revolve around the everyday life of an incestuous couple (“A Love Match”) and the dif‐ fuseness of incestuous desires (“A Spirit Rises”, “At a Monkey’s Breast”). While 87 4. Incestuous Longings 21 In this, “A Spirit Rises”, as well as “At A Monkey’s Breast”, bear similarities to “Bruno” (Chapter 1), the story in which the narrator deliberately withholds information re‐ garding Hector and Bruno’s relationship. 22 See, for example, Daley, Christine. “Ghastly Confidences: War and Transgressive Sex‐ uality in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s ‘A Love Match.’” Women Writers: A Zine. N.p., n. d. Web. 21 July 2016. “A Love Match” is very straightforward when it comes to incest, “A Spirit Rises”, as well as “At a Monkey’s Breast” are much less explicit and, rather than pre‐ senting explicit incestuous desires, explore the manifold levels of incestuous longings. 21 This chapter pursues the idea that Warner is more interested in the side effects a story on incest creates than in incest itself. 4.1 Secrets and Sibcest in “A Love Match” Of all Warner’s short stories “A Love Match” (1964) is the best known; Sandi E. Cooper even calls it a “minor classic” (194). “A Love Match” portrays the love relationship between the siblings Celia and Justin Tizard. The story chronicles the development of their relationship but does so without moralising, treating the transgression and the incest taboo in an almost casual way. Most notably, it does not contain any passages in which brother or sister feel guilty for their transgressive relationship. During Justin’s home leave from the Front during World War I, he and his sister, Celia, become lovers. After their first sexual encounter, Justin merely says, “‘Now we’ve done it’” and Celia answers, “‘A good thing, don’t you think? ’” (Warner, “A Love Match” 105). As other critics have noted, the story neither endorses nor condemns the fact that the siblings commit themselves to a relationship considered unacceptable by society - it simply establishes the relationship on a factual level. 22 Once the siblings give in to their feelings, they calmly go about their shared life and for this reason, the story is rather unspectacular. This approach to a seemingly outrageous topic is typical for Warner. This story, which at first glance seems to trouble the norm by dis‐ cussing a tabooed, nonnormative aspect of human life, turns out to be one of her most uneventful. This chapter explores the structure of the siblings’ secret rather than focussing on the nature of their relationship. The Literary Background of Sibling Incest Otto Rank’s psychoanalytical study Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage: Grundzüge einer Psychologie des dichterischen Schaffens (1912) is one of the first 88 4. Incestuous Longings 23 Johnson takes Byron as an example and refers to three of his works that deal with sibling incest (The Bride of Abydos, 1813; Manfred, 1817; Cain, 1821). 24 Glenda A. Hudson draws attention to the Romantic hero’s narcissism that ultimately destroys his beloved, “But the narcissistic attraction between family members is am‐ bivalent: the sibling evokes the other’s love because he or she is a double of the other; at the same time, he or she evokes the other’s fear and hatred because the other is a double with a difference” (23). In Manfred, Manfred’s narcissism ultimately leads to the death of his “missing half ”. comprehensive studies on incest in literature. It draws attention to the fact that incestuous sibling relationships have always been part of oral and written lit‐ erature. One chapter, “Die Bedeutung des Geschwisterkomplex”, deals exclu‐ sively with sibling incest and discusses instances of this in the Bible, in Greek, Egyptian, Japanese, and in Indo-European novels, myths, and fairy tales (443-465). Speaking as a psychoanalyst, Rank maintains that children project their oedipal desires onto their siblings in order to redirect them away from their parents (443-444). Rank’s exhaustive study is of great value; however, since his methodology is predominantly informed by psychoanalysis, he tends to treat his characters as case studies. Years later, D. Barton Johnson published an essay on “The Labyrinth of Incest in Nabokov’s Ada” (1986) in which he discusses the sibling incest motif in English, German, and French literature, and, particularly, in Nabokov’s Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969). In contrast to Rank, he refrains from purely psychoanalytical readings. Reflecting on the literary his‐ tory of brother-sister incest, Johnson writes, “The great age of the sibling incest theme is the Romantic period” (244). 23 He states that the Romantic treatment of sibling incest is inextricably entwined with “rebellion and solipsism” and main‐ tains that “[t]he act of incest is an attack on society: the triumph of irrational nature over rational society. […] Incest is the ultimate rebellion” (244). By breaching the most deep-seated cultural taboo, the Romantic hero shows his ultimate disregard for his society. Johnson further notes that, “So exalted is the hero in comparison with the surrounding world that only one of the same blood, someone genetically and psychically very like the protagonist, is conceivable as the missing half, i.e., capable of reconstituting the lost whole” (245). In Byron’s Manfred (1817), for example, the “missing half ” can only be Manfred’s sister Astarte. 24 The twentieth century, as Johnson notes, heralds a change in the attitude towards sibling incest. He writes, “Ada allies itself with most other major twentieth-century treatments of the theme. Ada rejects the ‘rebellion’ component of the romantic model and emphasizes the exclusivity-integra‐ tive-solipsistic polarity of the thematic dyad” (248). In the twentieth century, 89 4.1 Secrets and Sibcest in “A Love Match” 25 In this context, he mentions Warner’s “A Love Match” in a footnote, but does not include it in his analysis of Ada. “Our survey of sibling incest is by no means exhaustive. Other recent examples include: Sylvia TownsendWarner, “A Love Match” in Swans on an Au‐ tumn River (New York, 1966); Theodore Sturgeon, “If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry your Sister? ” in Dangerous Visions: Thirty Three Original Stories, ed. Harlan Ellison (Garden City, N. Y., 1967); Piers Paul Read, The Villa Golitsyn (New York, 1982); John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire (New York, 1981); and the 1982 film Cat People” ( Johnson, “The Labyrinth of Incest in Nabokov’s Ada” 247-248). Johnson maintains, the theme of sibling incest is not marked by defiance, but by introspection and self-absorption. 25 Roles and Secrecy During the war, while Justin is on leave, society automatically assumes him and his sister to be husband and wife. Oblivious to the fact that they are brother and sister, they are happy for Justin and Celia, “[…] many people glanced at them with kindness and sentimentality, and an old woman patted Celia’s back, saying, ‘God bless you, dearie! Isn’t it lovely to have him home? ’” (103). In the guise of a heterosexual couple, unknown to be siblings, Celia and Justin pass without any problems. Sometime after his first visit to his sister, Justin is being treated in a London hospital for gangrene. In this context, the narrator speculates on the attending nurse’s attitude towards the Tizards. Slyly humorous, the narrator recounts, “Nurse Painter was in favour of sisters. They weren’t so much trouble, didn’t upset a patient, as sweethearts or wives did - and you didn’t have to be hanging round all the time, ready to shoo them off ” (106). Nurse Painter does not expect brother or sister to engage in any sexual or inappropriate activities. Sisters are supposed to support their brothers, as devotional and as sacrificing as mothers, without any erotic attachment. For this reason, Justin and Celia are not considered a moral threat. The narrator, however, is reluctant to endow Nurse Painter with such strict sexual morals. If brother and sister decided to live together as lovers, the narrator is convinced, Nurse Painter would not judge them too harshly, […] it is probable that her approval would not have been seriously withdrawn. The war looked like going on for ever; the best you could hope for was a stalemate. […] If a gentleman and lady could pluck up heart enough to love and be happy - well, good luck to them! ” (106) “A Love Match” suggests that wartime creates a different reality, a reality in which life suddenly appears disturbingly finite. The narrator is convinced that these circumstances make people less critical. Confronted with death and war 90 4. Incestuous Longings 26 Gay Wachman points out that Justin and Celia’s incestuous relationship closely mirrors Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland’s lesbian relationship, “Their [ Justin and Celia’s] delight in the closet’s ironies is entirely comparable to that of a lesbian couple enjoying ‘scandalous immunity from blame’ because they [Warner and Ackland] are perceived as dried-up old maids” (149). For a detailed analysis of the parallels be‐ tween incest and homosexuality in “A Love Match” see Daley, “Ghastly Confidences”. they are willing to suspend their usual moral judgement. Christina Daley, by contrast, does not believe that wartime changes society’s feelings towards non‐ normative desires. She points out that the passage above not only highlights what society wishes to see, but also what society does not want to see, “If a gentleman and a gentleman or a lady and a lady were the ones plucking up enough heart to love, it is highly unlikely that Nurse Painter’s approval would be so forthcoming” (Daley, my emphasis). To Daley, the story criticises the fact that non-heterosexual desires are not considered tolerable. During and after the war, to people that are known to them, Justin and Celia successfully perform their attributed roles of “injured brother” and “devoted sister”. 26 After the war is over, they continue their life together in Carnac, France, “like innumerable British sexual outlaws” (Wachman, Lesbian Empire 149). The narrator remarks, “It would have been difficult for them to be anything but inconspicuous, or to be taken for anything but a brother and sister”, and con‐ tinues “- the kind of brother and sister of whom one says, ‘it will be rather hard for her when he marries’” (107). Society considers their current arrangement to be temporary; it will come to its “natural” end when Justin finds another woman and gets married. Notably, society does not think “it will be hard for him when she marries”. Since women have always performed caregiving duties, no one is surprised that Celia, instead of living a life of her own, stays with her brother to look after him. To the outside, Celia and Justin embrace this misogynist norm since it works in their favour. In private, however, they blissfully flout it and celebrate their close connection, “Their relationship, so conveniently obvious to the public eye, was equally convenient in private life, for it made them unusually intuitive about each other’s feelings” (107). Warner inserts a shrewd subversion into the description of the Tizards’ relationship and artfully upsets the sibling incest taboo on a semantic level. Describing the relationship, she uses variations of “convenient” (as an adverb and as an adjective) in two very different contexts: firstly, to refer to public space (“Their relationship, so conveniently obvious to the public eye […]”), and, secondly, to refer to private space (“[Their relation‐ ship] was equally convenient in private life”). This is particularly noteworthy since, in general, public and private spaces are considered mutually exclusive. Public space is open to everyone, whereas access to private space is always 91 4.1 Secrets and Sibcest in “A Love Match” restricted. By using the same term in two different contexts, Warner treats the tabooed as well as the non-tabooed context equally, demonstrating that she does not differentiate between permissible and impermissible desires. Not only their surroundings assign different categories to them, Justin and Celia themselves seek categories that allow them to pass unnoticed. After living in France, the Tizards resettle in Hallowby, England where Justin becomes the curator of the Beelby Military Museum. To avoid any unwanted attention, Celia resolves that they must socialise with other people: “Celia grew alarmed; if you make no friends, you become odd. She decided that they must occasionally go to church […]” (109). Celia successfully finds a niche for herself and for Justin where, once again, they become invulnerable. Every now and then they go to church and spend time with the same people, “The Tizard’s were no longer odd. Their new friends were all considerably older than they; the middle-aged had more conscience about the war and were readier to make friends with a disabled major and his devoted maiden sister” (110). The company of the middle-age churchgoers provides them with the kind of cover they need. This connection makes them visible in public, and, once again, allows them to pass as brother and sister. Even if their new friends suspected that they were lovers, it is doubtful that they, as devout Christians, would mention it in public. The only time Celia is considered threatening is when she breaks out of her role as boring, unmarried woman, and sister to an invalid, “During their fifth summer in Hallowby they [ Justin and Celia] gave an evening party in the Beelby Museum. […] and Celia was so gay, and her dress so fashionable, that she was within an inch of being thought a dangerous woman” (110). For a short instant, Celia publicly displays a very passionate, very feminine side. Hallowby society feels unable to reconcile this with the category they have assigned to her and from then on watch her suspiciously. Johnson maintains that one important aspect of sibling incest in the Romantic period is the thrill of breaking taboos and defying conventions. In “A Love Match” this tendency can be seen, too. In contrast to Romantic writing, however, it is not attached to a general sense of superiority and a feeling of resentment towards society, but mainly to boredom and frustration. As Justin Jaron Lewis writes with regard to Justin and Celia’s relationship, “Being closeted has its difficulties, but also its transgressive pleasures” ( J. J. Lewis 4). Fed up with her life in Hallowby, Celia remembers her life in France, “At Carnac […] the exal‐ tation of living in defiance of social prohibition and the absorbing manoeuvres of seeming to live in compliance with them had been stimulus enough; she had no mercy for less serious rebels.” (112). In Hallowby, secretly breaking the incest 92 4. Incestuous Longings 27 See, for example, The Cement Garden (1978) by Ian McEwan, The Hotel New Hampshire (1981) by John Irving or Moon Tiger (1987) by Penelope Lively. taboo no longer gives her much satisfaction since “if she overlooked a con‐ formity”, her transgression is always covered up by Justin (112). D. A. Miller, author of The Novel and the Police (1988), is spot on when he writes, In a world where the explicit exposure of the subject would manifest how thoroughly he has been inscribed within a socially given totality, secrecy would be the spiritual exercise by which the subject is allowed to conceive of himself as a resistance: a friction in the smooth functioning of the social order, a margin to which its far-reaching dis‐ course does not reach. (207) Celia’s incestuous secret is important to her since it gives her life meaning and sets her apart from the crowd. The fact that her main stimulus is constantly being dismissed as unimportant by her brother is highly frustrating. To escape the stifling boredom of Hallowby, Celia seeks distraction in different activities, for example, in the movement of The Bright Young Things (“the sight of any rebellion, however, puerile, however clumsy, roused up her partisanship”, 112), in relief work (“As impetuously as she had flung herself into Justin’s bed, she flung herself into relief work at Hallowby juxta Mare”, 114), and in politics (“by 1936 she was marching in Communist demonstrations”, 115). These activities, however, do not offer her the excitement she longs for. In most literary works, sibling incest is a secret that eventually leads to some sort of final catastrophe. 27 Johnson writes, “The taboo provides the dark secret which is the novel’s [Ada] central plot mechanism. Were Van and Ada not brother and sister, there would be no need for subterfuge, no obtacle [sic] to their love, and no plot” (248n). In “A Love Match”, sibling incest is a secret too, however, it does not lead to a spectacular showdown. In fact, the secret assumes the character of an open secret which everyone knows about but tends to ignore. Summarising the structure of secrecy and open secrets, D. A. Miller further writes, Secrecy would thus be the subjective practice in which the oppositions of pri‐ vate / public, inside / outside, subject / object are established, and the sanctity of their first term kept inviolate. And the phenomenon of the ‘open secret’ does not, as one might think, bring about the collapse of these binarisms and their ideological effects, but rather attests to their fantasmic recovery. (207) 93 4.1 Secrets and Sibcest in “A Love Match” Miller stresses that open secrets do not disrupt the norms and conventions that structure a society. On the contrary, as he maintains, open secrets stabilise the categories on which a society relies. By turning a blind eye to a love affair or an idea that would force a society to reconsider its morals, life continues without any major interruptions. Soon after her period of boredom, Celia begins to receive abusive letters from an anonymous writer. These letters, “which taunted Celia with being ugly, ageing and sexually ridiculous”, scorn her and refer to her secret relationship with her brother. Furthermore, they contain lists of people who know about their secret (see 117). Yet notably “[…] the letters did not blackmail, did not even threaten” (116). That means, the letter writer does not threaten to reveal her secret to extort money or anything else from her. They merely serve to inform her that “what the writer knew was common knowledge” (116). Gradually, it crystallises that everyone in Hallowby has knowledge of Justin’s and Celia’s relationship, but chooses to ignore it and accepts the categories they have chosen for them. Since Celia bases her identity around their secret, the fact that it is almost common knowledge creates a great crisis for her. Eventually Celia learns from Justin that the compromising letters were written by a young villager, Mary Semple, who is in love with him: ‘But Justin - how did she [Mary Semple] know about us? ’ ‘No fire without smoke, I suppose. I daresay she overheard her parents cheering each other along the way with Christian surmises. […] ‘No fire without smoke,’ she repeated. ‘And what about those lists? ’ ‘Put in to make your flesh creep, most likely. Even if they do know, they weren’t informed at a public meeting. Respectable individuals are too wary about libel and slander to raise their respectable voices individually.’ (118) Mary is the first person to confront the Tizards with the knowledge of their transgressive relationship. Unlike her parents, she does not turn a blind eye to what she hears. Mary, however, does not know what to do with the knowledge she has gained. One the one hand, she feels empowered by it, on the other she knows that she cannot use it to expose the Tizards since the nature of their relationship is well-known. Hallowby society does not care whether the siblings lead an incestuous relationship as long as they are not forced to acknowledge it. Therefore, the Tizards do not have to fear any form of ostracism, “The people listed by Mary as cognizant showed no more interest in the Tizards than before. The tradesmen continued to deliver. Not a cold shoulder was turned” (120). 94 4. Incestuous Longings Referring to Foucault’s analysis of confession, Lisa Fletcher writes, “The im‐ portance of confession, of telling a secret, is not to reveal the truth, but rather to insist on who owns the truth […]” (39). Despite the fact that the “truth” about the Tizards is widely known, Mary believes that she has the power to detrian‐ gulate the Justin / Celia / Mary relationship by speaking it. In the end, however, Justin intervenes and silences her. The narrative highlights that Mary is unable to do anything with her knowledge; in this sense, she never “owned” the truth about the Tizards at all. Justin’s and Celia’s sudden deaths during an air raid serves as a further proof of Hallowby’s desire to keep up appearances. After the impact of the bomb, rescue workers enter their house and find the siblings’ bodies in the same bed. This is a decisive moment in which their incestuous secret finally travels out into the public; however, this is also exactly where it fizzles out. Although the scenario strongly suggests that they lived together as lovers, the workers decide to interpret it differently: A dark bulk crouched on the hearth, and was part of the chimney stack, and a torrent of slates had fallen on the bed, crushing the two bodies that lay there. The wavering torchlights wandered over the spectacle. There was a silence. Then young Foe spoke out. ‘He [ Justin] must have come in to comfort her [Celia]. That’s my opinion.’ The others concurred. Silently, they disentangled Justin and Celia, and wrapped them in separate tarpaulin sheets. No word of what they had found got out. Foe’s hypothesis was accepted by the coroner and became truth. (122) Rather than stating the obvious, the workers invent a different explanation. They tell and retell it until it becomes the truth. Even after Justin and Celia are dead, the people of Hallowby do not openly acknowledge the fact that the sib‐ lings lived together as a couple. “It is thus a misleading common sense that finds the necessity of secrecy in the ‘special’ nature of the contents concealed,” writes Miller, “when all that revelation usually reveals is a widely diffused cultural prescription, a cliché” (194-195). Miller points out that the content of a secret, in “A Love Match” the incestuous relationship, is usually not particularly note‐ worthy. It usually merely refers to a form of deviance or departure from the so-called norm. Miller emphasises that it is much more rewarding to look at how the structure of secret-keeping works - if it works. In “A Love Match” the anal‐ ysis showed that, ultimately, secrets, which turn into open secrets, pose no threat and continue to confirm the status quo. This is what makes it so infuriating to Mary. Mary realises that she has knowledge of one of the greatest taboos; how‐ ever, this knowledge proves to be entirely useless. She cannot spread it, because 95 4.1 Secrets and Sibcest in “A Love Match” everyone already knows, and she cannot use it to blackmail Celia into doing anything, because she has nothing to threaten her with. The inhabitants of Hallowby know that Justin and Celia lead an incestuous relationship but prefer to ignore it, since it is easier to ostensibly adhere to the norm than to question it. More than Mary, however, Celia suffers under the fact that “her” secret is merely an open secret. The “secret” knowledge of her relationship with her brother empowered her and made her feel different, less bourgeois, less boring. The fact that everyone knows about it greatly shatters her sense of self. 4.2 Mothers and Desires in “At a Monkey’s Breast” In Primate Visions (1989), Donna Haraway writes, “Especially western people produce stories about primates while simultaneously telling stories about the relations of nature and culture, animal and human, body and mind, origin and future” (5). That is, “western people” tend to look for similarities between pri‐ mates and humans to create “truths” about human behaviour and human desires. At first glance, Warner seems to be doing something similar in “At a Monkey’s Breast”. Using the example of a monkey, Warner seems to be talking about old age and sexuality. Yet, as it turns out, Warner’s monkey is not a monkey after all, but an aged woman living in a nursing home. The narrator only gradually discloses this information and does not enlighten the reader until about half-way through the story. Readers may wonder why Warner employs a monkey to talk about an elderly woman. Could she have not simply referred to her as an elderly woman, without disguising her as a monkey? As we learn, the monkey serves a very distinct purpose in this story since it ultimately enables the female pro‐ tagonist to free herself from the restrictions that come with being human. Considerably shorter than “A Love Match”, “At a Monkey’s Breast” revolves around a middle-aged man’s visits to his elderly mother in a nursing home. Mother and son do not talk very much, and for most of the visiting time, the son feeds his mother with cherries. Very artfully, this story toys with normative expectations: with the reader’s expectation regarding the monkey and, in par‐ ticular, senility. Almost unnoticeably, it further emerges that the male protago‐ nist’s feelings towards his mother are ambivalent. While he is her son, a part of him also seeks to take on the role of ‘the husband’, with occasional slips into the role of ‘the lover’. This, in addition, is further confused by the strong aversion he feels towards her. Set against this background, this chapter examines the son’s role in feeding his mother and discusses the way the story abandons pat‐ riarchal structures. 96 4. Incestuous Longings The Act of Feeding In “At a Monkey’s Breast”, Warner frequently uses images of feeding - the title alone instantly evokes images of a baby monkey feeding at the mother’s breast. The title, however, also contains a significant gap: it does not specify who exactly is at a monkey’s breast; the reader merely assumes that the suckling infant can only be a baby monkey. The use of the indefinite article, “At a Monkey’s Breast”, further gives the title a detached quality. It seems as if someone were watching a monkey mother and her infant from a distance which lends the scene an almost voyeuristic quality. The distance that exists between the observer and the mon‐ keys immediately puts the observer into a more privileged position. While the monkeys cannot escape the observer’s gaze, the person observing them can change their position or simply turn away. In this story the reader becomes the voyeur who is compelled to watch as the protagonist, the son, feeds “the old monkey”, his mother (Warner, “At a Monkey’s Breast” 121). The reader does not observe any explicitly sexual activities, but witnesses the main protagonist’s underlying desires as the roles of nurturing are reversed. The beginning of the story introduces the “visitor” who supposedly comes to visit the “old monkey”. Although there are some indications, it is not at all clear at this point that the monkey is not a monkey in an enclosure, but an elderly woman in a care home. The visitor - who came so regularly that one might almost call him the patron - sat feeding the old monkey - which should, in strict biology, be classified as ape, had it not lacked so completely the intellectual earnestness of the ape that monkey was the only word for it - with cherries. (121). The first sentence suggests a hierarchical relationship between the two primates. He is not merely a visitor, but “almost” the monkey’s “patron”, i.e. “[a] person standing in a role of oversight, protection, or sponsorship to another” (“Patron”, def. 1). The primate he visits cannot be called an ape, because, rather amusingly, the animal is not serious enough; it therefore has to be classified a monkey. In contrast to apes, monkeys are considered to be more playful and more mischievous. This sentence contains the first clue that the monkey in question could be a human being. If the taxonomic order, or rather, “strict biology”, in‐ cludes this primate in the group of apes, the primate’s behaviour should be of no consequence. Notably, the hierarchical order the narrator evokes does not depend upon a dualism between human and monkey, but on feeder and feedee, and, to a lesser degree, on patron and protégée: “The visitor […] sat feeding the old monkey […] with cherries” (121). The visitor is in power; he is in possession of the fruit. He provides the “old monkey” with nourishment and oversees her 97 4.2 Mothers and Desires in “At a Monkey’s Breast” 28 Due to their curvy and cleft shape, cherries often symbolise virginity. The OED quotes The Visual Dictionary of Sex (1978), according to which the term “‘to take or eat a cherry’” means “to deflower a virgin” (“Cherry, N.”). In this story, however, Warner, as in e. g. “Bruno” employs a fruit with certain gendered connotations, but remains indifferent to the images it evokes. actions. He also determines the amount of cherries she is allowed to eat, and could, if he wanted to, withdraw his gift of fruit. The “old monkey”, on the other hand, accepts the cherries he hands her and eats them. It is notable that the syntax of the quote above draws special attention to the cherries. They appear at the end of the sentence, separated from the part of the sentence to which they belong (“sat feeding the old monkey”) with a dash. Cherries carry a strong sexual connotation and, in this story, allude to the son’s diffuse sexual desires. 28 At this point, the story does not reveal that the monkey is a human animal. The narrator, deliberating on the bond that man and monkey formed, notes that, “There was nothing in his [the visitor’s] appearance to account for the degree of intimacy which obviously existed between him and his protégée” (121). Earlier on, the narrator comments on the visitor’s “countenance” and states, “[…] it revealed marks of frustration and some distant timidity beneath the healthy colouring and the pompous mould of the lips” (121). The “patron” and his “protégée’s” intimate relationship arises from the fact that they are mother and son; the narrator, however, chooses not to disclose this information but to leave the reader guessing about the relationship between the monkey and the middle-aged man. The narrator continues to compare the son’s visits to his mother to “almost romantic” liaisons, “As a rule, those who practice these odd, these almost romantic, assignations with captive animals bear, or come to bear, a physical likeness to the creatures they frequent” (121). The narrator insists on the fact that the “old monkey” is an animal and not an elderly woman in a nursing home. What motivates the narrator to mislead the readers, making them believe that the son is visiting an animal? The narrator emphasises the fact that the visitor and the monkey share an intimate relationship. Once this has been sufficiently established, the reader has no other choice but accept that the son is driven by more than filial love for his mother - only then, when the reader can no longer deny the underlying eroticism, is the narrator willing to reveal that the monkey is the son’s mother. “At a Monkey’s Breast” shows that the attempt to draw a line between mother / son and human / animal is doomed to fail. Keeping up the animal pre‐ tence, the narrator proposes that people who visit “captive animals” usually take on their characteristics and, consequently, become more like the animal in ques‐ tion and less like the person they used to be. That is, the narrator seeks to erase 98 4. Incestuous Longings the boundary that separates visitor from visitee. This has already occurred on a semantic level: But the man with the cherries bore no resemblance whatsoever to the creature he visited so punctually and indulged so patiently. One might even think that he had taken pains not to look like a monkey, and that in dress and manner he had exerted himself to obliterate the inherent simianity they had in common. (122, emphases added) The “inherent simianity” referred to by the narrator, could easily be misread as the “inherent similarity”, emphasising the visitor’s likeness to the visitee (122). The monkey’s visitor, however, is determined to hold on to the boundary that supposedly separates him from the “old monkey”; he is seeking to erase any visible sign of kinship between himself and his mother, making any kind of union more acceptable. Notably, “the visitor” has now become “the man with the cher‐ ries”, that is, the man is no longer defined by his frequent visits, but by the fruit that he brings with him. This puts an emphasis on the act of feeding and high‐ lights his desire to make “the monkey” want his cherries. In certain contexts, feeding someone certain types of fruit can be a romantic gesture and suggests a sensual moment. In “At the Monkey’s Breast”, however, the seductive com‐ ponent of feeding is met with complete disinterest as “the monkey” takes little notice of the visitor. Like the story as a whole, the quote above operates on different levels. If the monkey were in fact a monkey, this part would be an interesting take on cross-species relationships. The visitor would appear to be extremely anthro‐ pocentrist, anxious to keep the so-called dividing line between animal and human in place. On this level, the narrator’s remark would highlight the fact that, since humans as well as monkeys are both primates and share certain ge‐ netic characteristics, there is no way for him to deny their common ancestry. Since, however, the monkey is revealed to be the protagonist’s mother, the story turns into a reflection on unchannelled longings. The image of the monkey has long been associated with lust and sexuality. Gordon William, for example, finds evidence for the monkey as a “figure of lust” in Shakespearean and Stuart lit‐ erature (900). The “monkey” in this story, however, shows no libidinous desires at all. On the contrary, she is entirely indifferent to her son’s endeavours. The cherries he offered were snatched at, conveyed with an odd rapid daintiness to the working mouth. The cherry-stones, which one by one the mouth returned to the paw, one by one were tossed gaily into the air, with an aristocratic disregard where they might fall. (122) 99 4.2 Mothers and Desires in “At a Monkey’s Breast” The visitee hurriedly grabs the cherries her visitor offers her. Her movements are swift and determined. She takes no time to pause, but one by one puts the cherries into her mouth - notably, with an “odd, rapid daintiness”. To this point, the monkey has been described as disorderly and uncultured. Her elaborate eating manners and her “aristocratic disregard”, however, allude to the fact that her conduct is indeed deliberate. The fact that Warner deliberately brings two seemingly incongruent levels together - a monkey as an aristocrat - has a further comic effect. The visitee is obviously enjoying herself throwing the cherry stones about, revealing her complete indifference towards any norms or conventions. This implies that she is also completely indifferent to her son’s frustration and desires. His dependence stands in remarkable contrast to her carefreeness and complete detachment from the outside world. In addition, the visitor and the visitee’s communication is very one-sided. While the visitor addresses the monkey using infantilised and strangely inappropriate terms of endearment, the monkey pays scant regard to him. Unoffended by the cherry-stones hailing upon him, the man continued to feed his favourite. From time to time he broke the silence, remarking, ‘Here’s a nice red one, darling,’ or ‘Look, what a big one! ’. But these speeches seemed to be attached to the act of giving rather than addressed to a receiver. (123) The visitor ignores the “monkey’s” caprices and continues to feed her the cherries he brought along. Once again, the narrator draws attention to the spe‐ cial bond that exists between the “old monkey” and the visitor and emphasises that he prefers “the old monkey” to everyone else. The visitor’s comments re‐ garding the cherries have a strangely sexual undertone. His utterances, which draw attention to the cherries’ colour (“‘Here’s a nice red one’”) and their size (“‘what a big one! ’”), invoke images of sweet, luscious, pulpy fruits which, in turn, symbolise lust and temptation. Remarkably, he is not talking to the “monkey”, but commenting on his gifts. This demonstrates that he projects his desires onto his mother, not seeing her for what she is, but for what he wants her to be. This behaviour stands in strong contrast to the fact that he is contin‐ uously checking his watch. If the story was not interspersed with hints about the son’s undefined longings, it would seem as if the son’s visits were nothing more than a duty call. As it is, these visits are something in-between: the duty of visiting an elderly mother, as well as the possibility of unspecified, repressed, longings to surface. During these visits, while the “monkey” devours the cherries, time passes differently, enabling the visitor to experience reality in another way (“[The visitor’s] stay seemed to be more measured by cherries than by minutes”, 123). Once there are no more cherries left, however, the spell is 100 4. Incestuous Longings broken, “The last cherry had been eaten. Frowning slightly, and with a natural embarrassment, the man said, ‘No more, my darling. No more just now,’ and rose to his feet” (123). Again, the son refers to his mother as “my darling”. Were he talking to a monkey, the choice of this term of endearment would not seem surprising; it would merely stress the fact that he felt superior to this species. Since he is talking to his mother, however, “darling” sounds patronising, and at the same time too intimate. The story not only invokes a contrast between visitor / visitee and human / monkey, but also between different sensory experiences. The cherries, ripe and delicious, are juxtaposed with the stench that fills the space inhabited by the “monkey”. The old monkey was well cared-for, her bedding was plentiful and clean, the walls of the room were painted with white enamel, an electric fan whirred overhead; but for all that, the smell of old animal was oppressive, and like a direct defiance to the fresh‐ ness and sparkle of the cherries. Now that the cherries were so few the smell seemed more prevailing - as if the power of an exorcism were running out. (123) The stifling smell creates an unpleasant atmosphere. Despite numerous pre‐ cautions, it has taken over the room. The space the “monkey” inhabits is very sterile, with very little life and colours in it. The white walls, which are supposed to keep their inhabitants calm, and the fan, which creates a current of air for ventilation, are reminiscent of a nursing home or hospital. For a short period of time, the sweet smell of the cherries masks the human smell that prevails in this space, but now that they are almost gone the pungent odour becomes increas‐ ingly notable. At first glance, the fresh fruit is contrasted with the aged body to emphasise the unpleasantness of old age. However, it is not “the monkey” who finds the smell disagreeable, but the visitor. This, again, hints at the fact that being a “monkey”, regressing into a stereotypically lower species, is not a bad thing if you choose to disengage yourself from the world. Cultural Markers No one directly calls the aged mother “monkey”. It is only the narrator, who, describing her and her interactions with her son, refers to her as “monkey”. Amusingly enough, the nurse refers to her as an animal, too. She uses “ducks” as a term of affection (“‘What is it, ducks? ’”, 124). In contrast to the narrator, however, she does not depict her as a duck. “Monkey” is not as derogatory as it may sound at first - and less belittling than “ducks”. In this story, Warner 101 4.2 Mothers and Desires in “At a Monkey’s Breast” redefines the term “monkey”, highlighting the positive effects of surrendering to a certain creatureliness. It is notable that Warner chooses to depict the aged mother as a monkey, and not, say, as a bear or a wolf. The choice of the monkey allows the narrator to reflect on different shades of humanness - or rather monkeyness since, biologically, monkeys are more closely related to humans than bears or wolves. A woman who becomes a monkey gradually begins to inhabit a transient state, somewhere between being human and being monkey. On the one hand, she is able to free herself from the constraints of human society, on the other she still has to accept certain limitations, for example those of a nursing home and of being a mother. In this, she resembles the monkey who spends their life behind bars. While the narrator grants the mother the freedom of being a monkey, the son seeks to place her in his reality. Motivated by con‐ flicting reasons, he is strongly averse to the freedom she has claimed for herself. The story ends with the son’s sudden outburst after he notices the absence of his mother’s wedding ring (“‘Nurse’, he said, and his air of dignified pertur‐ bation almost supplied the authority he lacked. ‘Nurse! My mother is not wearing her wedding-ring’”, 124). Although his mother’s hands were plainly visible while he was feeding her the cherries, he did not notice the missing ring then. Why is the son so upset about the missing ring now? His outburst alludes to the fact that, during this transitory period, which excluded his father, he allowed certain longings to surface. Now, however, since this moment has passed, his mother’s hand suddenly seems alien and incomplete without the ring. Hysterically, he tells the nurse, “‘I would prefer her to wear it. I would very much prefer her to wear it. It must be put back again, nurse, and somehow or other, she must be persuaded to keep it on’” (124). The narrator refrains from telling the reader why it is so important to the son that his mother wears her ring and almost seems to assume that the reader knew the reason for the son’s conduct. One possible explanation is that the ring marks a certain boundary which the son does not dare to challenge or overstep. He depends on the ring to ground his mother in a patriarchal, heteronormative context. With the ring, his mother is clearly marked as his father’s wife. The son wants to believe that if his mother wears the ring, no one, including himself, will feel tempted to approach her. Once the ring is missing, however, the son’s restraint vanishes and his longing to recapture his closeness to his mother reappears. A double entendre finally exposes the son’s desires. After he calls in the nurse, she innocuously remarks to the mother, “‘You’ve been enjoying yourself with those cherries, haven’t you, you naughty old pets! ’” (124). Her words indicate that she knows that her patient relishes eating cherries and reveal that she is aware of the mother’s mischievous behaviour, too. The son, however, reads a 102 4. Incestuous Longings further meaning into her words. To him, they are sexually suggestive, hinting at the erotic pleasure that accompanies the act of feeding someone succulent fruit. Adding a deeper meaning to her words, he reacts accordingly, Colouring like a child, he said in a diminished voice, ‘After all, it’s a wedding-ring, you know. A wedding-ring. I don’t wish to be troublesome. But as her son, you see, and in my position, it is not pleasant for me to see her without it.’ (124) The nurse’s words induce a sense of shame in him and he feels as if she knew about his repressed longings. Infantilising him, the narrator compares his affective response to that of a child (“Colouring like a child”). In this moment, the son turns into a young boy again and feels as if he has been found out doing something wrong. His outburst suggests that he relies on the ring to ground himself and his mother in a heteronormative society that draws a distinct line between grown-up son and mother. The chapter shows that the title “At a Monkey’s Breast” works on multiple levels. The monkey of the title refers directly to the mother, who, for most of the story, is not identified as a human being, but as an animal. The fact that she is called a monkey is not patronising or insulting, but, on the contrary, extremely liberating. As a monkey, she no longer owes anyone anything. Although the son tries to suppress his longings, the story is full of allusions to his erotic desires and his wish to share some form of intimacy with his mother. Since he is no longer an infant, however, he can no longer claim the position at her breast. He is therefore constantly seen to be torn between repressed longings, disgust, and a sense of duty towards his mother. This peaks when the nurse, implicitly, catches him out on his desires. The title also refers to the futility of the son’s longings since his mother inhabits a state in-between humanness and monkey‐ ness and has ceased to take much interest in him. Set against this background, the son appears to be clinging to a notion he had of his mother when he was a young child, rather than the mother he sees in front of him. The narrative, how‐ ever, contains some significant gaps that obscure the ongoing events. Ultimately, these gaps force the reader to decide whether they are willing to accept the ambiguity of the story or whether they feel the need to categorise the son’s desires. 103 4.2 Mothers and Desires in “At a Monkey’s Breast” 4.3 Expanded Experiences and Material Objects in “A Spirit Rises” Dearest Sylvia, Thank you very much for A Spirit Rises. I have now read all the stories and have been continuously delighted. If your name had not been attached I should have known them at once - for the intense flavour of your precise humour is always striking out. No one else, living or dead, or to be born in the future, would have described St Jerome’s ‘small lion for ever waiting for a word of recognition’. Oh dear - oh dear. Garnett to Warner, 1962 (S&D 64) “A Spirit Rises” was first published in The New Yorker on 8 July, 1961, three years before the publication of “A Love Match”, and six years after “At a Monkey’s Breast”. It was later published in 1962 in the eponymous collection of short stories referred to by David Garnett in the above quoted letter. As mentioned in the introduction, Garnett, like many of Warner’s readers, recognises something unmistakeably Warnerian in the stories, namely, Warner’s characteristic sense of humour. In contrast to “A Love Match”, which revolves around sibling incest and open secrets, and “At a Monkey’s Breast”, which explores the son’s desires, “A Spirit Rises” depicts a complex father-daughter relationship. “A Spirit Rises”, like “At a Monkey’s Brest”, differs from “A Love Match” insofar as the main protagonist is not in an incestuous relationship with a family member, but has ambiguous, incestuous longings for a parent. In both stories (“A Love Match” and “At a Monkey’s Breast”), Warner cleverly avoids creating a stereotypically oedipal situation in which the child desires the parent of the supposedly opposite sex and rejects the parent of the allegedly same sex. Although the unnamed protagonist of “A Spirit Rises” directs her queer and diffuse incestuous desires onto her father, and obviously longs for his intimate touch, she does not seek to possess him in an entirely sexual manner. This constellation may at first seem puzzling. If, however, we bear in mind that “A Spirit Rises” is on sceptical terms with Freudian concepts, the scope of the daughter’s desires become more plau‐ sible. In the light of this, the chapter shows that the young girl avoids any form of heterosexual practices and / or romances, and demonstrates that, ultimately, she finds satisfaction in a liminal, erotic event. Intimate Spaces and Inattentive Father Figures “A Spirit Rises” is divided into two parts that pay scant regard to chronological order. The first part, set in the present, contains numerous flashbacks. In this 104 4. Incestuous Longings part, the nameless protagonist has reached middle-age and is referred to as an “ageing woman” (Warner, “A Spirit Rises” 75). It mainly revolves around her conversation with Philip, an “ageing man”, whom she meets at a social event, and the memories they share in connection with their past (75). Their entire conversation revolves around a person known to both of them, namely the woman’s father, who was also the man’s teacher, and the large rocking horse the father kept in his study. Alluding to the title of the short story (“A Spirit Rises”), the conversation between Philip and the protagonist conjures up the deceased man, metaphorically bringing him back to life. The title not only refers to the father, but alludes to, as Swaab points out, “a more romantic way of con‐ ceiving the elusive arrival” of a sexual awakening (Swaab, “Re: The Rocking Horse”). The protagonist is reluctant to share her memories of her father and his rocking horse with Philip, mainly, because she still holds a grudge against Philip and her father’s other pupils for alienating her from her parent, and also because the rocking horse has a very personal, very sensual meaning for her. The second part of the story moves back in time and explores the woman’s childhood memories of growing up with her father. Whereas the content of the protagonist’s and Philip’s conversation is not enclosed in any significant punctuation marks, their memories are enclosed in brackets. Brackets in general contain supplementary information that can easily be omitted, but the brackets in these stories are vivid passages of prose that lend the characters’ thoughts more momentum. In the protagonist’s case, they ad‐ ditionally serve to exclude any third-party participation in her memories and reveal her desire to guard her father from the rest of the world. Talking to Philip, the protagonist recalls the following picture: (The man [her father], dead for so many years, now entered the room carrying a large stoneware jar of ink. The cat fastened herself round his leg, intending to climb up on him. The jar slipped from his hand. As it hit the floor the cork flew out, and a fountain of ink spurted up, drenching everything except the cat. This incident she knew only by hearsay, but on the ceiling a corona of spattered ink, like a satanic halo, remained to bear witness.) (76) Although she did not, in fact, witness the scene described above (“This incident she knew only by hearsay”), she made it part of her personal memory after hearing about it in the past. She actively creates a memory of her father in his study to include herself in his world. Philip, by contrast, is thinking of an event that actually took place. He recalls sitting in his teacher’s room as a pupil: (Laying a hand over a title, for instance, he [his teacher] would inquire what the essay was about, adding that though it didn’t matter which end of the worm you took hold 105 4.3 Expanded Experiences and Material Objects in “A Spirit Rises” 29 According to the legend, Saint Jerome ordered his monks to extract a thorn from a lion’s paw. After this, the lion remained faithful to him for the rest of his life. See Herbert of, a given theme should be approached with more respect - if only as a formality of thanks to the bestower. Then, sitting beside him, you watched him read on, slowly, carefully, giving his whole mind to it, while you felt increasingly sick as you remembered the passages lying ahead - the eloquent, the learned, the judicious pas‐ sages you had been so pleased with at the time of writing; and finally you went off, walking on air because now and henceforward you would know how to set about it.) (76) Both memories are very different. Whereas the protagonist “recalls” a situation at which she was not present, and where there was no form of communication between her and her father, “the ageing man” remembers a moment of direct exchange. In the midst of Philip’s recollections, the narrative mode suddenly changes. It begins with a sentence in indirect speech, in which the teacher advises his pupil on how to approach an essay, and then shifts to a second-person account of the former pupil’s feelings. The use of this particular narrative mode, and the frequent use of the pronoun “you”, lends the description a striking immediacy (“you watched him”, “you felt”, “you had been so pleased with”, “you went off ”, “you would know”). The pronoun not only refers to “the ageing man”, but also addresses the reader, thus giving the reader access to Philip’s memories. This stands in stark contrast to the protagonist’s thoughts. Whereas the pro‐ tagonist reveals none of the thoughts she has about her father and the study, Philip ends his thoughts with a comment related to recently recalled memories (“‘There has never been anyone like him’”, 77). This indicates open admiration rather than a desire to protect and keep this memory to himself. Significantly, the bracketed thoughts only appear in the first part of the story. The missing punctuation marks indicate that once “the ageing man” leaves the protagonist to herself, she gives free rein to her thoughts and no longer feels the need to guard her private memories from intruders. On recalling a further image of her father’s study, the “ageing woman” remembers a figure that Garnett also mentions in his letter to Warner, “At one end was the fireplace, with St. Jerome above it, his bald, studious head eternally bent, his small lion for ever waiting for a word of recognition” (151). This sen‐ tence strikes Garnett as particularly humorous - possibly even absurd. It seems to also have a melancholic undertone. In this piece of art, Saint Jerome is por‐ trayed as a kind, patient scholar immersed in his work and accompanied by a lion, his emblem. 29 As in many works of art showing the scholar and the lion, the animal is disproportionally small. Herbert Friedmann points out that the 106 4. Incestuous Longings Friedmann, A Bestiary for Saint Jerome: Animal Symbolism in European Religious Art (Washington D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980), pp. 20-22. small-scale depiction of the lion by artists indicates that the lion is seen to be merely an “identifying tag” without any agency (240). The way the artefact is described in Warner’s story suggests that the lion is driven by the need to be recognised. Adverbs such as “eternally” and “for ever” emphasise that the rela‐ tionship between Saint Jerome and the lion will never change. This brief ek‐ phrasis mirrors the daughter’s relationship with her father. In a similar way to the lion, the daughter is constantly hoping for more attention and more recog‐ nition from her father. Most of the “ageing woman’s” memories, which mainly surface in the second part of the story, revolve around the time she spent alone with her father, usually in the absence of her mother: When her mother was out for the afternoon, he [her father] would fetch her down to have tea with him … After tea, she would stay on till bedtime, pulling out from the lower shelves books she couldn’t read and methodically replacing them while he wrote at his desk, a cat dripping from his knee, or sat on the dapple-grey horse, reading and gently rocking. (77-78) While her father “would fetch her down” into his study, that is, take an active role, the daughter remained passive. This shows how much the child is dependent on the father’s decisions; like the lion, she has very little agency. Once in his study, she begins to play with the books with which her father occupies himself. Due to her age and height, however, she is only able to reach the books on the lower shelves. The grown-up protagonist still remembers these differ‐ ences in size, underpinning how small she felt in her father’s room. We learn that the young protagonist is only able to engage with the materiality of the books, as opposed to their contents. At first glance, the way in which she engages with her father’s books suggests that she is seeking to change the order of his things and to exert some form of influence on his arrangement. By removing the books from the shelves, she opens up a gap, which potentially, could be closed differently. She, however, always puts the books back in exactly the same place. She does not rearrange them, or fill the empty spaces differently; neither does she leave the books lying about in disarray, indicating that although she seeks to engage with her father, she does not wish to disturb his order. It appears she has no desire to impose her presence on his room, which demonstrates self-effacement rather than possessiveness. 107 4.3 Expanded Experiences and Material Objects in “A Spirit Rises” 30 For more information on rocking horses see Sharon M. Scott. Toys and American Cul‐ ture: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2010. p. 265. Scott writes that Queen Victoria made the dapple-grey rocking horse fashionable after she acquired one for her children in 1851. Soon after Queen Victoria purchased this particular toy people who could afford it equipped their children’s nurseries with dapple-grey rocking horses. The Materiality of the Rocking Horse Since the publication of D. H. Lawrence’s short story “The Rocking Horse Winner” (1926) the riding of a rocking horse has often been ascribed sexual meaning. W. D. Snodgrass, for example, immediately identifies sexual, that is, masturbatory elements in the act of riding a rocking horse in “The Rocking Horse Winner”. These can be seen in the way Paul, the young protagonist, rides his toy, “Wildly the horse careered, the waving dark hair of the boy tossed, his eyes had a strange glare in them” (Lawrence 798). Paul’s behaviour is highly suggestive of a sexual trance; he rides himself into a frenzy that eventually leaves him in a state of exhaustion similar to post-orgasmic fatigue. With Lawrence’s essay “Pornography and Obscenity” (1929) in mind, Snodgrass writes, “Even a brief reading of the essay should convince us that Paul’s mysterious ecstasy is not only religious, but sexual and onanistic” (197). By and large, rocking horses, “an entirely British invention”, are to be found in children’s nurseries (Scott 265). 30 Accordingly, the decision of the protagonist’s father to keep a rocking horse in his study appears rather unusual, suggesting, from a Lawrencian per‐ spective, a sexual transgression. The effort that goes into rocking it, the way the person sits astride the horse, the friction involved and the resulting movements are all highly suggestive of auto-erotic experiences. Yet, in the same way in which “A Spirit Rises” is on sceptical terms with Freudian interpretations of female desire and sexuality, it is also on sceptical terms with a Lawrencian reading of riding rocking horses. The rocking horse plays a central role in the narrative indicating that all three characters have a very special relationship with it. During their conversation, “the ageing man” repeatedly asks the protagonist, “’[…] why did your father keep a rocking horse in his study? ”’ (75). Anxious to divert the conversation away from the rocking horse, she reminds him of another item her father kept in his study, ‘“Was that odder than a carpenter’s bench? ’” (75). Paired together, these objects evoke an interesting contrast: while a carpenter’s bench represents order, measurement, and a certain sense of productivity, a rocking horse suggests distraction and is neither practical nor productive. By drawing her conversation partner’s attention to a practical object such as the carpenter’s bench, the protagonist seeks to divert attention from the intimate space she 108 4. Incestuous Longings shared with her father. Yet he persistently repeats his question, ‘“But a rocking horse - a large rocking horse. Why? ”’ (75). Ironically, the name of the “ageing man” is Philip which stems “[…] from the Greek name Philippos. This name, in turn, derived from the Greek words philein (‘to love’) and hippos (‘horse’)” and, consequently, means “‘lover of horses’” (Pickering 284). Set against this etymo‐ logical background, Philip’s persistence about her father’s toy is almost comical. It seems as if he cannot help but pursue it. Yet, despite his telling name, he is unable to grasp the significance of the horse. As a pupil, desperate to solve the enigma of the rocking horse, he once measured it to determine its proportion (“‘I measured it, one day when I was waiting for him’”, 76). His efforts, however, yielded little success because he approached the problem in the wrong way. He discovers the height of the rocking horse but not the deeper meaning of the toy for his teacher. For the longest part of their conversation, the “ageing woman” manages to evade her interlocutor’s probing questions. Towards the end, however, she finally takes pity on him and discloses, to his great astonishment, that her father kept the rocking horse to ride on it. Incredulously he replies, “‘He rode on it? ’” (77). A grown-up man rocking on a children’s toy seems out of place and disturbingly infantile to him. His astonishment makes us wonder what he had really expected. The story, however, leaves this question open to interpretation. To Philip it comes as a great relief to hear that his teacher used to read while rocking on the horse since this lends his teacher’s actions credibility. This information, however, hardly reveals any of the knowledge the protagonist has of the horse. Most notably, she conceals the sexual connotation she attributes to it. This connotation, however, becomes apparent in the following memory: ([…] The rocking horse was a dapple-grey, with tail and flowing mane of silvery horse-hair. The saddle and the harness, scuffed with usage, were of crimson leather, and it was mounted on rockers, painted green. And as a child, looking up into its flaring blood-red nostrils, she had always felt an uneasy sense of pity. Surely anything so red must be a representation of pain? ). (75) The protagonist vividly remembers the size of the rocking horse from a child’s perspective, just as she remembers her size in relation to her father’s bookshelf. In her recollections, the rocking horse is large, towering over her (“looking up”), and shines in many different colours, namely, grey, silver, red, and green. She does not specify any colours in her description of the horse until her mention of the nostrils; they are not simply red, but “blood-red”. The attribute “blood” instantly evokes images of wounds and violation. These images stand in stark contrast to the otherwise simple colours she uses to describe the horse. Con‐ 109 4.3 Expanded Experiences and Material Objects in “A Spirit Rises” fronted with the sight of the nostrils, the young girl feels an “uneasy sense of pity”. Once the narrative voice changes to free indirect discourse (“Surely any‐ thing so red must be a representation of pain? ”), the reader becomes acutely aware of the protagonist’s concerns. The question mark emphasises the fact that she is trying to convince herself that she has interpreted the look of the nostrils correctly. We further learn that the young girl views these orifices as something distinct and separate from the rest of the horse’s body, “Because of the blood-red nostrils, which had a different reality from the rest of the horse, she was afraid of the horse” (78). Uncannily, she almost bestows on them a kind of agency. The question arises why she associates the redness of the nostrils with pain and distress. What is she afraid of ? Clearly, the “blood-red nostrils” have a sexual connotation, referring to forms of penetration that leave orifices bleeding. This indicates that the blood-red nostrils represent female genitalia; that is, female genitalia that have been penetrated and left wounded. The fear and the pity the young girl feels upon seeing the nostrils reveals that she relates the nostrils to her own body and that she considers penetrative, heterosexual practices with repugnance. By doing so, she exempts herself from what patriarchal societies expect of women: to be sexually available to men. The story, however, offers a compelling alternative - not a homosexual union, but a form of sexual pleasure that is triggered by multiple stimuli. Strikingly, her father initiates this experience by lifting her onto his rocking horse (“But one rainy summer afternoon he called her to him and pulled her to sit on the saddle-bow before him”, 78). Most notably, her new elevated position prevents her from viewing the horse’s terrifying nostrils. On top of the horse, she no longer feels reminded of wounding, penetrative acts and no longer considers her body to be in danger. Here, she is able to let go of her fears of the horse. At this precise moment, her father begins to read “The Romance of the Swan’s Nest” (1844) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning to her, ‘Little Ellie sits alone ’Mid the beeches of a meadow, By a stream-side on the grass, And the trees are snowing down Doubles of their leaves in shadow On her shining hair and face.’ (78) “The Romance of the Swan’s Nest” revolves around a young girl, “little Ellie”, who fantasises about her future lover. “Little Ellie” dreams of courtship that ends in marriage and, ultimately, in sexual intercourse, 110 4. Incestuous Longings “He [her lover] will kiss me [Ellie] on the mouth Then, and lead me as a lover Through the crowds that praise his deeds: And, when soul-tied by one troth, Unto him I will discover That swan’s nest among the reeds.” (Browning 177) As Beverly Taylor notes, Browning “[…] had employed a child in ‘The Romance of the Swan’s Nest’ (1844) to illustrate how literature constructs gender stereo‐ types” and maintains that “[t]he ballad shows how reading the unrealistic poetry of courtly love has deluded the young heroine” (418). Taylor emphasises that Browning is highly critical of conventional gender roles and disapproves of the limited options, namely courtship, marriage, motherhood, that are available to women. In this, “The Romance of the Swan’s Nest” is highly feminist in its criticism of patriarchy and female submission. “A Spirit Rises” quotes the first and the fifth stanza of Browning’s poem. Whilst the first stanza introduces Ellie sitting “by a mid-stream on the grass”, the fifth describes the horse she imagines her lover to be riding on: And the steed it shall be shod All in silver, housed in azure, And the mane shall swim the wind; And the hoofs along the sod Shall flash onward and keep measure, Till the shepherds look behind. (Browning 175) Like “A Spirit Rises”, Browning’s poem questions the validity and potential of heterosexual relationships. Whereas “The Romance of the Swan’s Nest” questions the fact that Ellie merely envisions happiness in courtship, marriage and conjugal duties, “A Spirit Rises” contemplates happiness beyond monoga‐ mous heterosexual unions and cleverly challenges culturally normative views of sex. Seated in front of her father, the young protagonist suddenly begins to perceive her surroundings differently: “The rocking horse was keeping measure, the silver rain was falling in order to be silver, everything ran together and was one thing’” (78). The protagonist’s physical experiences, the poem, and the in‐ tensity of the moment, fill her with a sense of completeness she had never felt before as she, her father, and the rocking horse become one. She relaxed, abandoning her weight to the hard body behind her, leaving her legs to dangle, rubbing her head against her father’s shoulder. The grasp tightened round her, the voice went on. (78) 111 4.3 Expanded Experiences and Material Objects in “A Spirit Rises” The protagonist lets go of all her fears and, without any restraints, gives herself up to her father. By “rubbing her head against [his] shoulder” she assures herself of his presence. She is no longer passive, but engages with his body, demanding it to correspond to her desire for touch. He reacts to this form of contact and draws her closer. The steady movements of the rocking horse, the sound of the voice, the touch, and the soothing rain falling outside create a sexually charged, almost dreamlike atmosphere where time is suspended. By detaching herself from the person she knows to be her father, she is further able to give in to her feelings: “It [his voice] was familiar, and made itself unknown” (79). Although the voice of the reciter remains familiar, it is no longer the voice of her father to her, but that of her lover. The voice almost seems to attain an agency of its own, existing in a different reality, just as the horse’s nostrils seem to exist in a different reality. For a moment, this is not her father reading poetry to his daughter, but a lover merging with his beloved in a moment of ultimate serenity. In this passage, Warner offers her readers a fascinating alternative to a heterosexual union. The daughter experiences a form of pleasure that tran‐ scends everything. Although her father is present, it is not him she desires; she gives in to the moment that he helped to create. This moment is connected with the movement of the rocking horse, the falling rain outside the window, and the recital of the poem. The protagonist’s feelings are decidedly non-heteronorma‐ tive; she is experiencing a moment of non-penetrative orgasmic pleasure, at which her father is present, but not sexually participatory. She feels overwhelm‐ ingly happy and realises that she cannot control her emotions: Lulled and held and enchanted, happier than she had ever been before, she knew for certain that presently she was going to weep; but to weep as she had never wept before, to weep in acquiescence and delight and participation in a whole, as the rain fell in acquiescence to the grey skies, as the ferns on the bank spread out their fronds under the rain. (79) It transpires that the protagonist is experiencing a form of orgasmic pleasure in which everything is coming together. She feels a unity with her surroundings that she has not ever felt before. Crying is the only way for her to deal with the powerful erotic sensations she is experiencing. This timeless, boundless state lasts until the bell at the convent forcefully interrupts it: But presently the iterated single strokes [of the bell] began to trail an echo after them, an echo that swelled and vibrated till the syllables of the bell were almost unheard in it and became a rod of sound that pierced one through like a crystalline gimlet. (79) 112 4. Incestuous Longings The protagonist reacts heavily to the sound of the bell and compares the “rod of sound”, another phallic image, to a “crystalline gimlet” that bores itself into her body. The sound has a penetrative quality, a quality that almost seems to violate her physically. It points towards the patriarchally structured world outside the study to which her father belongs and to which she, as a young girl, has very little access. She continues to cry because her orgasmic experience is coming to an end and reality is enforcing itself upon her. It is notable that her father does not try to console her, “Her tears fell and fell. He made no attempts to check them” (79). It seems probable that he is unaware of his daughter’s extreme emotions. In the end, he resorts to recounting Keats’s “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” to comfort her. He begins with, “‘O what can ail thee, Knight-at-arms…’” (79). In contrast to Browning’s poem, which focuses on a young girl, Keats’s ballad mainly revolves around a forlorn knight. Yet, the father seems to have deliberately chosen the poem to address his daughter, in the sense of “O what can ail thee, daughter-of-mine…”. In Keats’s poem, the knight-at-arms states that he met “[…] a lady in the meads” and continues by recounting, She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept, and sighed full sore, And there I shut her wild wild eyes With kisses four. And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dreamd - ah, woe betide! - The latest dream I ever dreamed On the cold hill’s side. (29-36) Keats’s poem remains enigmatic insofar as it discloses neither the identity of the woman, nor the nature of their meeting. The lines above, however, strongly suggest a sexual encounter. As Charles I. Patterson maintains, the lady takes the knight to her cave, “another obvious female sexual symbol”, where “they evi‐ dently consummated ecstatic sexual union” (143). Subsequently, the knight falls into a “post-coital slumber” - after which he finds himself to be alone (Tetreault 71). Despite his attempts, “[…] she [the lady], together with what she signifies, escapes his acts of appropriation” and he has to come to terms with the emotional consequences of the encounter (73). Unbeknown to the father, the knight’s emotions are very similar to the emotions he has released his daughter. In the end, when the sound of the bell penetrates her world, she, too, experiences a form of post-orgasmic desolation. She, however, does not make others 113 4.3 Expanded Experiences and Material Objects in “A Spirit Rises” responsible for her situation. As in Keats’s poem, where the reader is only pre‐ sented with the knight’s version of the story, the reader of “A Spirit Rises” like‐ wise only witnesses everything from the daughter’s perspective. No mention is made of the father’s perspective. In Keats’s case this is misogynistic; as Anne K. Mellor notes, “This poem thus becomes […] a sexual and verbal assault upon a female whose response is neither listened to nor recorded” (223). In Warner’s case, however, matters are different. The daughter does not accuse her father of any shortcomings or emotional abuse. Despite her attempts to gain his attention and recognition, she remains an independent being. 4.4 Indifference to Conventions Each story, “A Love Match”, “At a Monkey’s Breast”, and “A Spirit Rises” treats incestuous longings differently. In “A Love Match” they are dealt with openly; from the beginning, the reader learns that the siblings desire each other and wish to stay together. “At a Monkey’s Breast” and “A Spirit Rises”, by contrast, never openly discuss incestuous longings. In both stories such longings exist, but only surface every now and again in connection with other longings and emotions. In “At a Monkey’s Breast”, for example, incestuous longings are inextricably entwined with aversion and a sense of duty. In this story, it seems as if the son himself is anxious to suppress his desires. To control his emotions, as well as his surroundings, he seeks to ground his mother in a heteronormative order by demanding that she wears a wedding ring. This stands in stark contrast to the mother’s desire to become less human and to give into a creatureliness that celebrates the possibility of giving up all forms of non / normativity. In “A Spirit Rises”, incestuous desires are coupled with a rejection of heterosexuality. Although the daughter desires her father, she does not seek to form a sexual bond with him. He is present when she experiences her first sexual awakening, but he is not engaged in a sexual way. Sitting on her father’s rocking horse, feeling the constant movement of the toy, feeling her father’s body close to hers, hearing his voice recite poetry, and watching the rain falling outside, the pro‐ tagonist experiences a queer form of orgasmic unity. Close analysis of these different stories demonstrated that Warner takes a very detached approach to the subject of incestuous longings. Rather than focussing on tabooed desires, she renders familiar situations unfamiliar, con‐ stantly demanding her readers not only to think outside the box, but to tempo‐ rarily leave the box. In this, Warner achieves something very different to any 114 4. Incestuous Longings anthropologist or psychoanalytic. She does not merely observe and analyse human behaviour and human desires, but creates them, playing through scenarios which remain inaccessible to the adherers of other disciplines. The brilliance of these stories lies in the ambiguities she evokes and her indifference to conventions. 115 4.4 Indifference to Conventions 5. Avenues of Escape There are individuals walking along. Somewhere (usually behind them) the hail rings out: ‘Hey, you there! ’ One individual (nine times out of ten it is the right one) turns round, believing / suspecting / knowing that it is for him, i.e. recognizing that ‘it really is he’ who is meant by the hailing. But in reality these things happen without any succession. The existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing. (Althusser 1504) In “Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses” (1970), the essay from which this quote is taken, Louis Althusser maintains that ideological state apparatuses, “societal mechanisms”, hail individuals into being subjects and emphasises that individuals have no means to escape these mechanisms (Leitch et 1477). Althusser differentiates between ideological state apparatuses, “civil institutions that have legal standing” such as “churches, schools, the family”, and repressive ideological apparatuses, for example “the police, the military, the prison system” (Althusser 1477). Despite their different patterns of power, both apparatuses instil not only a sense of obedience, but also submission in the individual. That is, they seek to normalise individuals and make them accountable. Summarising Althusser’s essay, Vincent B. Leitch writes, “‘Ideology and the Ideological States Apparatuses’ analyzes how dominant social systems enforce their control - subtly molding human subjects through their ideology - and how they repro‐ duce themselves” (1476). By reacting to an interpellation (“Hey, you there! ”), individuals recognise the role assigned to them - even if they begin to fight against it. Inevitably, they allow themselves to be “moulded” into a particular subject (e. g. into a mother in a patriarchal culture or a mother in a patriarchal culture who does not want to be a mother in a patriarchal culture). While Celia and Justin, the protagonists of “A Love Match”, toy with these interpellations, and, in fact, even embrace them to hide their incestuous secret, the female pro‐ tagonists in “At the Trafalgar Bakery” (1955), “But at the Stroke of Midnight”, and “An Act of Reparation” (1964) struggle to accept them. Celia and Justin realise that interpellations grant subjects “a place in hegemonic society” (Gray 56). As chapter 3 demonstrated, this is exactly what they require in order to pass. In “Gender is Burning” (1993), Judith Butler confirms that interpellations root subjects in society and writes, “In the reprimand the subject not only receives recognition but attains as well a certain order of social existence, in being trans‐ ferred from an outer region of indifferent, questionable, or impossible being to the discursive or social domain of the subject” (381, emphasis added). As this chapter will show, the “outer region[s]” Butler imagines, come close to the spaces the female protagonists in Warner’s stories seek or temporarily come to inhabit. Butler, in “Althusser’s Subjection” (1997), which is basically a continuation of “Gender is Burning”, further reflects upon the possibilities of evading interpel‐ lation. Ultimately, however, she concedes that there is no way to escape it. Butler considers interpellation to be a constitutive element in identity formation without which individuals cannot exist. Towards the end of the essay, she asks rather factually, “How would one know one’s existence? ” (Butler, “‘Conscience Doth Make Subjects of Us All’: Althusser’s Subjection” 130). This suggests that the only way to escape interpellation is through non-existence, that is, death. It is precisely this conclusion that Jennifer B. Gray arrives at with regard to Edna, one of the main characters in Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening (1899). Re‐ flecting on Edna’s attempts at opposing the system into which she was born, Gray writes: “Her only escape from this ideology [“the patriarchal ideology”] is death, and hence, Edna commits suicide at the site of her awakening […]” (54). This chapter aims at showing that Warner, in contrast to Chopin, creates dif‐ ferent avenues of escape that allow the female protagonists of “At the Trafalgar Bakery”, “But at the Stroke of Midnight”, and “An Act of Reparation” to leave the ideological system, albeit temporarily. It is during these brief spells that they become non-interpellatable. 5.1 “At the Trafalgar Bakery” and Ex-Centric Spaces Contrary to popular belief, the roles open to women in 1950 s Britain were not restricted to “motherhood” and “housewifery” (Bell 10). As Melanie Bell main‐ tains, Women might have been addressed primarily as wives and mothers but they also entered paid employment in growing numbers, had smaller families and higher ex‐ pectations of marriage and home life, and were increasingly able to reflect on their own sexual pleasure, expressing sexual needs and desires that went beyond repro‐ duction. In sum, transition, instability and negotiation were features of gender roles in this decade with women and the wider society poised between traditional modes of thinking and the emergent new social order. (10) With great insight and a subtle sense of irony, Warner’s story “At the Trafalgar Bakery”, set in 1955, touches upon this development. On the one hand, the pro‐ tagonist Penelope Ludham believes in traditional gender roles and has been 118 5. Avenues of Escape 31 Similar to the protagonist, Warner had an affair with a married man and a difficult relationship with her mother. This chapter, however, refrains from offering a biograph‐ ical reading of the story; readers interested in Warner’s personal life will find more information in Wendy Mulford, This Narrow Place: Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valen‐ tine Ackland Life, Letter and Politics, 1930-1951 (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1988) and Claire Harman, Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography (London: Chatto&Windus, 1989). trained to adhere to Christian doctrines; on the other hand, she has begun an illicit affair with a married man, suggesting that she is enjoying some sexual freedom. Throughout the story, we witness how Penelope struggles with the dominant ideology of her time and questions the roles available to her. She never seeks to evade the ideological system as such, but continually tries to find ways to justify her actions and to adjust her situation to comply with prevailing norms. Penelope sanctions her illicit affair, for example, by convincing herself that it would “constitute a marriage in the sight of heaven” (Warner, “At the Trafalgar Bakery” 72). As this chapter will show, it is only by chance that she creates a space in which she is temporarily able to elude interpellation. “At the Trafalgar Bakery” is part of the short story collection Winter in the Air and Other Stories, which was first published in 1955. The story mainly revolves around Penelope’s escape to London and the brief interval she spends at the Trafalgar Bakery. 31 In Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, Penelope, Odys‐ seus’ wife, waits for twenty years for her husband to return home to her. The protagonist of Warner’s short story is more radical than her mythological name‐ sake; she does not passively wait for her partner to come to her, but sets out to meet him. This, however, is not an entirely emancipatory gesture: once Penelope meets Robin, she readily abandons herself to him and his plans. Moreover, Penelope does not seek to free herself from the norms and conventions of her time, but desires to fit in with society. At first glance, it seems contradictory that she struggles with the mechanisms that structure society, or, to use Althusser’s term, with the ideological state apparatuses, but readily accepts the roles they offer her. On second glance, however, it transpires that Penelope Ludham is a bleaker version of Laura Willowes, lacking in the wisdom and far-sightedness of her fictitious predecessor. This chapter shows how the protagonist’s internal struggle becomes evident by the intensified way in which she perceives her surroundings. Everything Penelope notices on her way to the bakery is inextricably linked to her decision to renounce the role of the ‘good daughter’ and assume the, allegedly, opposi‐ tional role of what society would call ‘promiscuous woman’ - or, in Penelope’s eyes, the role of the ‘as-good-as-married-wife’. While the first part of this 119 5.1 “At the Trafalgar Bakery” and Ex-Centric Spaces chapter analyses the obstacles Penelope encounters on her way to London, the second part revolves around the short instance in which she becomes noninterpellatable. Interpellation and Obstacles For most of her life, Penelope has been under the control of her mother. At the beginning of the story, we witness how hard it is for Penelope to ignore her mother’s beckoning. ‘PENELOPE! Pe-nel-o-pe! ’ For a moment the girl hesitated, arrested on the doorstep, in her hand a small suitcase and before her the suburban street running straight as a rule, straight as her intention, towards the railway station. The habit of biddability proved too strong for her. She went back into the house, put down the suitcase, and entered a room where a middle-aged woman was looking at a half-made dress. ‘Yes, Mother? ’ (70) Hearing her mother’s call, Penelope is literally standing on the threshold that separates her past from her future. In this brief transitional moment, her old life with her mother and her job with a “firm of church furnishers” lies behind her, and the promise of a new life with Robin lies ahead (71). Standing on the threshold poised for flight, she is no longer just ‘the good daughter’ but not yet ‘the eloper’. This moment, however, does not - and cannot - last and Penelope goes back inside the house because “[t]he habit of biddability proved too strong for her”, turning into good daughter / becoming the eloper. Since Penelope has always given into her mother’s beck and call, she cannot ignore it, not even at this decisive moment. Her name Penelope, however, implies that ultimately, she will decide to leave with Robin. As the obstacles Penelope perceives on her way to London graphically illus‐ trate, it is difficult to defy the mechanisms that seek to shape an individual into a certain role. Walking to the train station, Penelope has the feeling that her surroundings are becoming increasingly hostile: Milk was being delivered at Avondale, and the pony who drew the milk-cart was standing as usual with his forefeet on the pavement, canvassing to have his nose patted. Suppose as she went by he turned suddenly and bit her arm? The elm tree in front of the Memorial Hall [...] might drop a limb on her. The Owen girls might come out of Lindenlea, announce that they were off to town and insist on accompanying her. Even the paving-stones lay in wait to do her an injury. They seemed to rise up and thump her feet, so that she was in peril of making a false step and spraining an 120 5. Avenues of Escape ankle. All this was but a mild suburban prelude to what London might have up its sleeve. (72-73) The list of possible threats grows longer the closer Penelope moves towards the station. She imagines the pony that usually only wants to be stroked suddenly biting her arm and preventing her from catching the train or the elm tree wilfully dropping a branch onto her to stop her from running away. Nothing, it seems, feels well-disposed towards her. Penelope begins to believe that everything and everyone has conspired against her and is seeking to ruin her plans, even the paving stones beneath her feet appear threatening. Whereas the elm tree poses a threat from above, the paving stones assault her at ground level, jeopardising her stability. Penelope perceives her environment in a menacing light, causing her walk to the station to become an obstacle course. In this respect, she has more in common with Odysseus, whose journey home to Ithaca was thwarted by Poseidon, than with her namesake, Penelope. Even on the train, where she is ostensibly more focussed on her future with Robin than anything else, her mind turns to the dangers of her endeavour (see p. 75). Michel de Certeau considers railway cars “travelling incarceration[s]”, since every traveller is “pigeonholed, numbered, and regulated in the grid of the railway car” (111). Penelope, however, is relieved to be on the train; she feels less exposed in the rail car than on her way to the station. Whereas the open road has a panoptic quality, the compartment reduces her visibility. Walking to the station, Penelope can never be sure who is watching her; alone in the train compartment she has more control over who is able to see her and who is not. Finally, allowing the train to control her movement and dictate the pace, she begins to unwind: She saw no one she knew, and as the train pulled out a sensation of fearless tranquillity descended on her. Her heart left off thumping, her limbs relaxed, the skin on her face felt limber and released, as though an actual mask had been lifted off. (74) The fact that she has managed to get on the train without being found out gives Penelope a new sense of empowerment. The metaphor of the mask suggests that Penelope is now gradually changing from being the “good daughter” to be‐ coming the “eloper”. Now that she feels that this mask has been removed, notably not by herself, but by an unnamed agent, as the use of the passive voice indicates, her former life and her former role start to fade away. Travelling in her compartment, Penelope no longer perceives the landscape sweeping past her window in relation to herself. As de Certeau recalls, the win‐ dowpane “creates the spectator’s distance” (112). Her peace of mind, however, vanishes once the train stops at a station: “Instantly she felt blinded, deafened, 121 5.1 “At the Trafalgar Bakery” and Ex-Centric Spaces intimidated by the harshness of being brought to a halt” (“Bakery” 75). Suddenly, Penelope experiences a sense of unspeakable terror and feels as if she is losing her senses. The first stop not only interrupts Penelope’s journey, but also cuts through the thoughts she is entertaining about her future with Robin. Since Penelope is trying to leave her home and her past behind her, every new stop fills her with dread and causing her newfound sense of freedom to vanish. When the train went on she wondered why there should be this sudden chill in the air that blew on her from the open window. […] How could she possibly recapture that sense of fearless tranquillity, knowing that there would be nine more stops before the terminus, nine more buffeting arrests in the process of being conveyed to her love? (75) The following nine stops she has to endure are reminiscent of the nine circles of hell that Dante passes through in The Divine Comedy in order to reach pur‐ gatory and ultimately paradise. This allusion highlights the agony Penelope ex‐ periences on her way to London. The story plays very effectively with the no‐ tions of “purgatory” and “paradise”. In contrast to Dante, it remains doubtful whether Penelope will reach paradise at the end of her journey. Ironically, the name of Penelope’s hometown, Holmeden, suggests that she has already left paradise behind her. Yet Holmeden has an ambiguous quality; her mother’s domineering presence, moral conventions and strict regulations spoil its seem‐ ingly paradisiacal nature. Despite the fact that she does not consider herself of the “taxi class”, Penelope gladly follows the porter to the taxi rank after she arrives in London (76). While walking and travelling by train made her feel anxious, taking a taxi to the meeting point calms her down. Like the train, the taxi is also forced to interrupt its journey: “The taxi turned out of the forecourt and was immediately halted by a red light” (77). However, unlike the stops during her train journey, Penelope does not find this stop threatening. While the taxi is weaving through the traffic, Penelope feels as if she had been relieved of a huge burden. Penelope finally casts off the role of the ‘good daughter’ and is ready to assume the alternative role of Robin’s ‘as-good-as-married wife’ (see p. 77). At the Trafalgar Bakery The Trafalgar Bakery functions as a stopover for Penelope, and, for a short span of time, separates her past from her future - just like the threshold of her mother’s house. Inside the bakery, Penelope is able “to enjoy an interval of blamelessly remaining in one place” (78). Up until this moment, Penelope cannot 122 5. Avenues of Escape be held responsible for any wrongdoing since she has not yet left the country with Robin. Alone in the bakery, however, Penelope continues to feel the terror she had experienced earlier on her journey to London. In the bakery, her fear is more ambiguous: “Now, if she had not left her Times in the taxi, she could have read not merely leading articles but the Correspondence and the Personal Column without exposing herself to the ominous; […]’ (78-79, emphasis added). The “ominous” resembles a presence, something lying in wait for Penelope, something menacing, and deeply unsettling. The bakery is divided into two parts, a front and a back. In the front customers place their orders, and in the back there are tables and chairs. Penelope immediately aims for the back, which is separated from the front by heavy curtains. The curtains form a barrier and isolate her from the busy customers in the front. In the back of the bakery, Penelope’s contact with other human beings slowly comes to a halt. It is almost as if she becomes invisible after she passes through the curtains. Despite the fact that there are many people in the bakery, no one takes any notice of her, not even the shop assistants (see p. 80). Penelope is completely isolated and alone. Is it at this point that she comes into contact with a non-human being, a cat called Monty. Like the people in the bakery, Monty does not pay much attention to her. Although the cat is asleep, Penelope desperately tries to catch its attention. The cat, however, is reluctant to give in to her beckoning: Like a frond of weed in the depth of an ocean, an ear stirred, but the cat did not wake. She continued to look at it in silence, and the cat deepened the profundity of its slumber, as though the intensity of her gaze were pushing against it like a tide, and it knew this, and resented it, and was subconsciously resolved against wakening. (81) The simile expresses a likeness between the cat’s ear and “a frond of weed”, a common plant. Like the frond, the cat’s ear moves aimlessly. Both objects merely react to their surroundings. The “frond of weed” lies in an unfathomable region and is entirely out of human reach. Monty the cat, in contrast, is unable to avoid human reach, but is free to ignore them if he does not wish to interact. It is not until Penelope begins to stare at him that he starts to feel disturbed by her pres‐ ence. Penelope’s gaze is compared to an underwater current that persistently exerts pressure on the plants within its reach. The cat, however, still does not give in to her, and “[a]t last she crossed the narrow room and sat down beside the cat”. Monty gives her the company she has been craving. Through the cat, the story opens up a new dimension. Here, words become meaningless and tactile experiences all-important. Where the cat’s and the hu‐ man’s bodies meet, bodily warmth is exchanged. In this they are completely 123 5.1 “At the Trafalgar Bakery” and Ex-Centric Spaces equal; cat and human fulfil the same communicative task. This form of com‐ munication oversteps the boundaries that ordinarily exist between strangers. Whilst it has a soothing effect on Penelope, it does not alter Monty’s behaviour towards her or his surroundings. Penelope is completely preoccupied with the creature next to her, and, tem‐ porarily, forgets about her situation: Her glance slanted round to the cat and dwelt with a copyist’s attention on the pattern of its tabby markings. Presently her forefinger began to inscribe on the air the scrolled stripes of the central ebony that tapered down over a maplewood gold which, as it rounded the curve of the belly, became a pure sulphur yellow. On the haunch was a design like the eye on the wing of a peacock butterfly. (82-83) As a copyist, Penelope has been trained to pay rigorous attention to detail. Before she touches the cat’s coat, she takes a close look at it and traces the pattern in the air. She studies the fur in the same way in which she would study the colours and embellishments of a missal or a psalter. This is also how she notices the conspicuous eye-like marking on the cat’s upper leg. On a peacock butterfly, the eyespot mimics the eyes of a predator. On the cat, the circular marking is merely part of the pattern of its tabby fur and does not serve to scare predators. Monty is indifferent to his surroundings since he does not have to fear any predators. Examining the different shades of his fur, Penelope carefully distin‐ guishes the many different colours. To her, the fur is not simply black, gold, and yellow, but “ebony”, “maplewood gold”, and “sulphur yellow” - these being the names of the colours illustrators used to illuminate texts and manuscripts. Pe‐ nelope falls back into her old role as a copyist, and is so completely focussed on the cat’s coat that she begins to see the cat as a work of art rather than an animal. In contrast to works of art, however, it breathes and emanates warmth, with the result that the tactile investigation of the cat gradually becomes as meaningful as the visual examination itself. It was hither [to the marking on the haunch] that her finger was drawn and descended into the thick fur. Her hand bedded itself in repose, and presently she began to stroke the cat with a regular impersonal pressure, meeting and remeeting the variations of texture which corresponded, like changes of vegetation on the globe, with the different colours of its coat. The darkest fur was also the sleekest, the maplewood gold was softer and more airy, and where the peacock eye of the haunch included a half-circle of drab, the texture changed to a feral roughness and crudity. Her hand did not venture so far as the sulphur yellow of the belly, but she knew that to do this would carry her into yet another zone, an innocent and youthful fur which was almost fluff. (83) 124 5. Avenues of Escape With the different patterns guiding her way, Penelope gains a sensuous pleasure from the cat’s fur. Luxuriously, she loses herself in the enjoyment of the remarkably different textures. For the moment, she finds herself free of all dis‐ turbing thoughts. When Penelope begins to stroke the cat, she applies an “im‐ personal pressure”, suggesting that she has no particular connection with the creature whose contact she previously sought. Penelope finds herself in a posi‐ tion off-centre; she is in the Trafalgar bakery, and, simultaneously, in a place where human ties, and any form of interpellation, lose significance. For a brief moment, she truly manages to escape. She has become indifferent to her sur‐ roundings and has freed herself from the constraints her mother and Robin have imposed upon her. In this sense, she starts to resemble the cat that displays a strong sense of indifference to its surroundings. Its behaviour stands in stark contrast to the way Penelope normally reacts towards people, animals, images, and places. In the next lines, the story takes a further step back from the realm of human existence. By comparing “the variations of texture” of the cat’s fur to “changes of vegetation on the globe”, it offers a picture of the earth free of constructed borders. From this perspective, all human actions, quarrels and quandaries, vanish out of sight. The focus of the text is likewise constantly shifting - at times it offers an intense close-up, for example of the cat’s coat, at other times it zooms out and merely comments on, for instance, the external boundary of the human world. This movement emphasises the particularities of perspective. Monty the cat, particularly, is seldom shown in any meaningful context with other human beings. Previously, the cat’s ear has been compared to underwater plants. Now the similarities between its fur and a carpet of vegetation are pointed out. By associating Monty with non-human organisms, the text further removes him from any form of human existence. For a while, everything ceases to exist for Penelope, except the cat’s fur. She gives herself over to the tactile sensation and shows that she is very perceptible to different textures. By touch, she ascertains the distinct quality of each part of the differently coloured fur. While the black hair is perfectly smooth and the golden part is very fine, the spot with the circular marking feels coarse and bushy. She does not explore the fur on his stomach, but believes that it would feel downy and lanuginose. For a while, the cat’s fur becomes her only reality - a reality created by tactile exploration. Touching the cat, feeling its body, Penelope feels complete. When Monty decides to get up, she feels an acute feeling of loneliness and abandonment. By getting up, the cat interrupts the communication Penelope felt going on between them. Now that there is no longer any form of exchange, she is back in her old 125 5.1 “At the Trafalgar Bakery” and Ex-Centric Spaces place, feeling the same kind of insecurity. She tries to re-establish the connection she felt earlier and starts talking to the cat, “Lovely Monty! ” (83). Projecting her own desires onto the cat, Penelope is convinced that “[i]t was that it wanted. It wanted to be talked to” (83). She fails to realise that she has inevitably left the place in which she felt any sense of freedom, this “outer region of indifferent, questionable, or impossible being”, and that language will not help her regain the tranquillity she felt while stroking the cat (Butler, “Gender is Burning” 381). Language, in fact, separates her from the realm of tactile communication; by using language she re-enters the symbolic order (“[…] the realm of ordered, structured, paraphrasable language, the realm of Law”, Wolfreys et al. 46). Yet Penelope continues to address Monty: “I see how it is. You are really my brides‐ maid. I didn’t expect to have one, and at first you were not sure of it either, because I didn’t look the part” (84). Penelope clings to the idea of getting married to Robin, if only metaphorically. In a traditional, heteronormative wedding sce‐ nario, a bride has a bridesmaid. Since there is no one to fill the role, Penelope decides that Monty will play the part. She anthropomorphises the cat and acts as if he had chosen to be a part of the event (“I didn’t expect to have one [a bridesmaid], and at first you were not sure of it either”). Monty does not react to any of this; nonetheless, she carries on talking to him: “Or would you rather be a page? No, you are too dignified for that. A bridesmaid, a brides-cat. All dressed in velvet, my beautiful one, and wearing white gloves and black velvet boots” (84). Despite the circumstances, Penelope conjures up a conventional wedding scenario. Notably, she neither hesitates to reverse the roles assigned to certain species, nor the roles assigned to particular genders, believing that the cat is better suited to be a bridesmaid than a page boy. This demonstrates the extent to which she is willing to shape her own reality, that is, to adjust her actions to blend with the norm. On second thoughts, Penelope revokes her words, and makes Monty a brides-cat rather than a bridesmaid. Her speech ap‐ pears to be motivated by Charles Perrault’s fairy tale “Puss in Boots”. In this tale, the “puss in boots” helps his master to marry the king’s daughter. Similarly, Penelope engages with the cat to promote her “marriage” to Robin. In contrast to the cat in the fairy tale, however, Monty remains completely indifferent to her situation. During the scene in which Penelope examines Monty’s fur, she loses interest in her surroundings and adopts some of his creatureliness. Using language, she now forcefully attempts to draw the cat into her world. The cat, however, cannot and will not enter the symbolic order in which Penelope finds herself again. The story shows that here words do not hold the same power as touch. Although the cat goes to sleep on her lap again, Penelope does not experience the same 126 5. Avenues of Escape kind of meditative daze again. Yet the cat calms her down, and when Robin finally appears to meet her, he notices that “[h]er face had achieved a look of childish abstraction and repose […]” (84). He links her facial expression to child‐ ishness and does not realise that she has turned her mind away from the world. At this point, Penelope no longer resembles Odysseus, but his wife Penelope. Like her namesake, she has waited faithfully for her “husband” to arrive, con‐ firming the position of women in patriarchal societies. In this sense, Penelope’s escape has failed. Although she has escaped her mother’s demands, she does not find herself in a more fortunate position with Robin. “At the Trafalgar Bakery” temporarily opens up a space in which Penelope reaches a state in which she becomes non-interpellatable; however, with Robin’s arrival, this space closes again and, Penelope, once more becomes a captive of societal demands, as she elopes with Robin to another country. 5.2 “But at the Stroke of Midnight” and Ex-Centric Modes of Being “But at the Stroke of Midnight” was first published in The New Yorker in 1970 with the title “At the Stroke of Midnight”. In 1971, it appeared in the short story collection The Innocent and the Guilty with a slightly modified title (“But at the Stroke of Midnight”). The story revolves around Lucy Ridpath’s attempts at escaping the interpellation of ‘Lucy Ridpath, wife of Aston Ridpath’ and her transformation into ‘Aurelia Lefanu’. Like Penelope, Lucy seeks to leave her former life behind, and, much like Penelope, Lucy forms an intimate bond with a cat that allows her to experience time and reality differently. As Maud Ellmann notes, “[…] cats take a leading or supporting role in much of Warner’s poetry and fiction, where they often serve as catalysts for transformation” (Ellmann, “The Art of Bi-Location: Sylvia Townsend Warner” 81). As this chapter will show, Lucy Ridpath can only transform into ‘Aurelia Lefanu’ once she is able to cast her former identity onto the cat. The aim of this chapter is to examine Lucy’s attempts at evading the ideo‐ logical system that interpellates her as “Lucy, wife of Aston”. It further examines her failure to comply with the norms of her time and demonstrates that, firstly, the story does not commit to an economical notion of progress and, secondly, that it challenges the idea of a future defined by permanence, stability, and hope. Subsequently, it takes a closer look at the brief period during which the dominant ideologies lose all meaning for Lucy. 127 5.2 “But at the Stroke of Midnight” and Ex-Centric Modes of Being Heteronormative Conventions When Lucy, a middle-aged woman, leaves the flat she shares with her husband, Aston, she does so with no intention of ever returning. Cutting all ties with her past, she is determined to assume the identity of her deceased cousin, Aurelia Lefanu. Since Lucy does not mention her or ever comment on their relationship, it remains unclear why she is so obsessed with becoming Aurelia. The only information the reader receives about Aurelia is provided by Aston. After Lucy fails to show up at their flat for several days, Aston begins to feel anxious about his wife’s prolonged absence. He salves his conscience, however, by telling him‐ self that she must be taking a holiday. More than anything else, he finds relief in the knowledge that Lucy cannot be spending time with Aurelia: Wherever Lucy might be, she could not be with Aurelia and would return from wherever it might have been his own normal Lucy. During those Suffolk absences all he could be sure of was that Aurelia was leading Lucy, whether up a windmill or to Paris, by the nose, and that what he received back would be Aurelia’s Lucy: talking in Aurelia’s voice, asserting Aurelia’s opinions, aping Aurelia’s flightiness, flushed, overexcited, and giggling like a schoolgirl. Thoroughly unsettled, in short, and needing several days to become herself again. (23-24) The comment reveals that, even in retrospect, Aston finds the power he believes Aurelia to have had over Lucy to be unnerving. It also hints at the fact that Aston considered Aurelia a threat to his marriage - or rather, a threat to his power over Lucy. In Aston’s opinion, Lucy’s holidays in Suffolk transformed her from “his own normal Lucy” into “Aurelia’s Lucy”. In neither case does he grant Lucy any agency; she is either his or Aurelia’s. Aston’s “normal” Lucy stands in stark contrast to “Aurelia’s Lucy” who is dull and unostentatious, whereas “Aurelia’s Lucy” is adventurous and full of life. The Lucy he knows “had a soft voice, and a habit of speaking as if she did not expect to be attended to”, whereas the person that returns from a visit to Aurelia displays flashes of self-assurance and vivacity (20-21). Aston finds it hard to reconcile this person with the person who left for Sussex; he strongly disapproves of the fact that, as he sees it, Lucy tries to emulate Aurelia since it turns her into the type of person that makes him feel uncomfortable. Aston is confident that Lucy’s “true” self is only evident when she is with him - in his presence, she is the middle-aged wife of a middle-aged man who complies with the gender conventions of her time. Warner effectively creates Aston as Aurelia’s counterpart: whereas Aurelia offers Lucy freedom and adventure, Aston offers Lucy stifling conventionality. Aston’s comments reveal that Lucy’s visits to Aurelia had a liberating effect on her and offered her an escape route from married life in London. These escapes pave the way for 128 5. Avenues of Escape Lucy’s final getaway; however, with Aurelia dead, Lucy no longer has a desti‐ nation. Aston’s choice of words to describe the cousins’ relationship implies that he suspects Lucy and Aurelia shared an intimate relationship. Hence his efforts to belittle Aurelia: Family affection is all very well, but it was absurd that visits to a country cousin - a withered virgin and impecunious at that - should be so intoxicating that Lucy would return from them as from an assignation, and acknowledged them as such by leaving him with such quantities of soup. (24) His remark is highly sexist: he describes Aurelia’s body as undesirable and inadequate, and criticises her refusal to comply with the traditional roles as‐ signed to women. By referring to Aurelia as a “country cousin” rather than calling her by her first name, Aston implies that she is dull and uninspiring. He further criticises her for not having followed the repro-normative life cycle of birth, marriage, reproduction (“withered virgin”). He is so completely caught up in heterosexist ideology that he fails to understand why his wife is drawn to Aurelia. More than anything else, however, his derogatory remarks about Aurelia reveal his suspicion that the cousins share something that he and his wife do not. Swaab observes this too and, comparing Lucy Ridpath to Laura Willowes, writes, “[…] in this story too there would be some possible grounds for inferring Lucy’s lesbian proclivity as well as her dissatisfaction with heter‐ osexual marriage: her most powerful emotions seem to be her love and admi‐ ration for her free-living cousin Aurelia” (“The Queerness of Lolly Willowes” 37). Routes of Escape It transpires that Lucy did not plan her escape. In contrast to Laura Willowes, Lucy did not, for example, look for alternative housing before she left. By allowing herself to lose herself in the moment, Lucy follows a markedly queer way of life. As Halberstam notes, “[Queer uses of time and space] […] develop according to other logics of location, movement, and identification” (In a Queer Space and Time 1). Lucy does not remain in one place - neither with regard to where she lives, nor with regard to whom she wishes to be. By leading a semi-nomadic life, by drifting here and there, and by seeking to become Aurelia, Lucy Ridpath subtly challenges the structures of a patriarchal society, which, amongst others, values intelligible women, clear categories, and heterosexual unions. 129 5.2 “But at the Stroke of Midnight” and Ex-Centric Modes of Being 32 To avoid confusion between Lucy, the person who is now Aurelia, and Lucy the cat, I will refer to the first as Lucy / Aurelia and to the latter as Lucy / cat. Lucy’s deeply felt unease with this society immediately becomes apparent in the way she regards her wedding ring. After focussing on Aston and his thoughts on his wife, the narrative perspective swiftly shifts from Aston to Lucy: “As Aurelia walked toward the Tate Gallery she noticed that she was wearing a wedding ring” (25). At this point, it is not clear that Aurelia is in fact Lucy Rid‐ path; we only gradually learn that this Aurelia is the former Lucy Ridpath and that she has taken on her deceased cousin’s identity. 32 By drawing attention to the wedding ring, the narrator immediately stresses Lucy / Aurelia’s married status. It is precisely this status that “Aurelia” seeks to escape. She therefore decides to rid herself of the ring that defined her former existence. Noticing it, “[h]er first impulse - for she was a flighty creature - was to drop it into a pillar-box” (25). On second thought, however, she decides not to throw it away, but to make some money by selling it. Whereas the elderly lady in “At the Monkey’s Breast” voluntarily casts aside her ring to forget the fact that she is rooted in a patriarchal system, Lucy / Aurelia keeps it for economic reasons. She has not yet renounced the system she is a part of and realises that she will need money if she wants to go on. Significantly, Aston used the noun “flightiness” to describe Aurelia. The repetition of the corresponding adjective to describe Aur‐ elia not only substantiates Aston’s description of his wife’s cousin, but also demonstrates that Lucy is copying Aurelia’s behaviour in an attempt to become less controlled and less well-adjusted. The people Lucy / Aurelia encounters on her escape route are unaware of her transformation; they mainly see what they choose to see in her and create their own version of “Aurelia Lefanu”: Aurelia, the replacement of Lucy, was a nova - a new appearance in the firmament, the explosion of an aging star. A nova is seen as a portent, a promise of what is variously desired: a victory, a pestilence, the birth of a hero, a rise in the price of corn. (37, emphasis added) Shortly after Lucy / Aurelia leaves the home she shared with Aston, she en‐ counters a man in the Tate Gallery. After a short conversation and a joint taxi ride, she allows him to take her back home with her. Lucy / Aurelia does not tell him anything about herself, and he is left to draw his own conclusions: She was middle-aged, plain, badly kept, untraveled - and she had the aplomb of a poule de luxe. Till quite recently she must have worn a wedding ring, for the dent was on her finger; but she bore no other marks of matrimony. She knew how to look at 130 5. Avenues of Escape 33 Other people, too, project what they desire onto Lucy / Aurelia. While her fellow lodgers at St. Hilda’s guesthouse, where she stays after she leaves London, consider her pictures, and from her ease in nakedness he might have supposed her a model - but her movement never set into a pose. He could only account for her by supposing she had escaped from a lunatic asylum. (27-28) As the quote demonstrates, Lucy / Aurelia’s latest acquaintance finds it impos‐ sible to categorise her within mainstream society. He can only picture her in a marginalised place, highlighting how much humans depend on classifications. While we never learn whether Penelope, the protagonist of “At the Trafalgar Bakery”, makes it to France, we know that Lucy / Aurelia remains in Britain: alone in her acquaintance’s flat. Filling out the visa application for France, she accidentally starts her signature with an “L” (29). Upon realising her mistake - upon realising that she is still too accustomed to being Lucy Ridpath - Lucy / Aurelia leaves the man without any further explanation. Since her ac‐ quaintance learned very little about her, he is now able to invent “his” Lucy / Aurelia. To him, “[…] she was at last an object of art he could not account for”, and one whom he considers to be sexually uninhibited (Ellmann, “The Art of Bi-Location: Sylvia Townsend Warner” 78). After she encounters the man at the Tate, Lucy / Aurelia meets a clergyman at Highgate Cemetery, who reads something entirely different into her: Thinking about her [Aurelia] afterward - and she was to haunt his mind for the rest of his life - Lancelot Fogg acknowledged a saving mercy. His Maker, whom he had come to despair of […] had done a marvel and shown him a spiritual woman. His life was full of women […]. But never a spiritual woman till now. So tall and so thin, so innocently frank, it was as if she had come down from the west front of Chatres [Cathedral] into a world where she was a stranger. (35) To Lancelot Fogg, Lucy / Aurelia has an almost saintly aura. He, moreover, notices how alienated and detached she appears which accurately describes her present situation. Lucy / Aurelia never rejects anything anyone reads into her because she is already distancing herself from the world around her. Strikingly, the two men Lucy / Aurelia encounters, the art lover and the clergyman, project two very stereotypical images onto her. While the art lover considers her an intriguing object, not a self-determined human being, the clergyman considers her a saint. On the one hand, this alludes to the constraints women experience in a patriarchal structured society; on the other hand, it mocks the limited knowledge of the two men she meets. 33 131 5.2 “But at the Stroke of Midnight” and Ex-Centric Modes of Being “arresting but harmless”, two “haunted young men” believe her to smoke cannabis and consistently ask her for a joint, “[…] ‘Spare us a reefer, beautiful. Have a heart’” (37, 38). Like everyone else, these two men “had seen her as a nova” (38). “Aurelia” is not only regarded as a portent by the people that surround her, Lucy Ridpath herself sees Aurelia “[…] as a portent, a promise of what is vari‐ ously desired” (37). She hopes that becoming Aurelia will enable her to live life differently - possibly even in a similar fashion as her deceased cousin. The metaphor of the nova, however, hints at the fact that for “Aurelia the Supernova” death is inevitable since supernovas die after a short period of brilliance. Movement and Transformations Movement, which relates to discontinuity, a state of neither being here nor there, plays a crucial role in Lucy / Aurelia’s transformation. After the dispiriting experience with the visa application, Lucy / Aurelia finds herself wandering aimlessly through London. Searching for a place to rest, she finally catches a bus (see p. 33). Lucy / Aurelia is in want of a place where she does not have to be anybody: not Lucy, not Aurelia, not Aston’s wife, nor the woman who had a sexual adventure with a man she met in the Tate Gallery - a place where she is simply another passenger. This suggests that, ultimately, Lucy / Aurelia will be‐ come a ‘no body’ and that she will cease to be. London buses become the perfect place for her, since they do not require her to reflect upon her movements and allow her to surrender herself to their speed. Similar to Penelope on her train journey to London, Lucy / Aurelia feels safe and unobserved on the bus. For the rest of the day, she allows the buses to determine her movements; she herself does not make any plans to go anywhere in particular. She exposes herself to her surroundings, but does not actively respond to anything or anyone. Lucy / Aurelia allows herself to move about aimlessly, abandoning any form of structure. At the end of this day, Lucy / Aurelia finally realises that “[w]hatever it had been she had so desperately escaped from, she had escaped it” (34). In contrast to Penelope, Lucy / Aurelia cannot find words to describe what exactly made her run away. Her desire is much vaguer than Penelope’s desire to leave her middle-class home and elope with Robin. In this context, death also becomes an option to her. In the “ladies’ waiting room” of King’s Cross Station she notes: “The dutiful trains arrived and departed - demonstrations of a world in which all was controlled and orderly and would get on very nicely without her” (34). Lucy / Aurelia realises that she cannot succeed in a “world in which all was con‐ trolled and orderly”. This thought, however, does not depress her and she ac‐ knowledges it in a very factual way. 132 5. Avenues of Escape It is significant that Lucy Ridpath only managed to escape “[w]hatever it had been she had so desperately escaped from” by assuming the identity of her dead cousin. As Lucy Ridpath she would not have been able to take this radical step. Consequently, the narrator describes Lucy / Aurelia as Lucy Ridpath’s replace‐ ment. The visa incident in the art lover’s flat, however, demonstrates that Lucy / Aurelia cannot rid herself of her former identity in its entirety, i.e. that Aurelia cannot replace Lucy. It transpires that Warner is reluctant to invent characters whose identities hinge on binary oppositions; in this sense her pro‐ tagonist cannot be either Lucy Ridpath or Aurelia Lefanu, but only ‘Lucy Ridpath becoming Aurelia Lefanu’. Warner skilfully eludes the either / or dualism by in‐ troducing a further entity to the story, namely a cat. On the outskirts of a fairground, Lucy / Aurelia finds an injured tomcat. Feeling sorry for him, she feeds him some sausage that leads the cat to follow her home. Suddenly, Lucy / Aurelia sees her former self in the cat: “Its expression was completely mute - and familiar. The cat was exactly like her cousin Lucy (39). By referring to the person she used to be in the third person, Lucy / Aurelia demonstrates the distance she has already put between her new and her old self. Yet it emerges that she cannot be the person she desires to be with Lucy Ridpath gone. She finds a very resourceful solution to this problem. Without great ado, she transfers her former identity to another creature, i.e. the tomcat and calls it “Lucy”. By naming the cat, Lucy / Aurelia classifies it and shapes it into the being she wants it to be. J. L. Austin calls sentences such as “I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth” or ‘“I do” (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife)” per‐ formative sentences since they not only describe an action, but actually make something happen (6, emphasis added). By repeatedly calling the cat Lucy, the cat becomes Lucy to Lucy / Aurelia. Austin stresses that performative speech acts are only effective if they follow certain rules. For example, “[…] the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked” (26). If this rule does not apply, the per‐ formative sentence is a “misfire” (16). The cat found by Lucy / Aurelia does not care whether it is called Lucy, Milly or Molly. It does not even matter to him that he has been given a female name, whereas, according to the tenants at the guest house at which Lucy / Aurelia is staying, “it seemed a deliberate flout, a device to call attention to the creature’s already too obvious sex” (38). Although the cat is not “appropriate for the invocation”, Austin’s theory helps to explore the dynamics at work in the story. Lucy / Aurelia is effectively performing an act; however, it is not directed at the cat, but rather at herself: Lucy / Aurelia is establishing Lucy Ridpath as a presence. 133 5.2 “But at the Stroke of Midnight” and Ex-Centric Modes of Being With feline Lucy at her side, Lucy / Aurelia experiences a sense of complete‐ ness she had lacked since her departure from her former life: Since her adoption of Lucy, she had become so unshakeably Aurelia that she could contemplate being Lucy, too, so far as being Lucy would further Aurelia’s designs. But Lucy, the former Lucy, must be Aurelia’s property. There must be no little escapades into identity, no endorsing of checks, no more slidings into Lucy Ridpath. (40) As before, Lucy / Aurelia remains in charge - Lucy only exists to further her interests. With Lucy / cat by her side, and by blackmailing her husband into sending her money, Lucy / Aurelia feels confident enough to leave the hostel and move to the margins of society where she rents an isolated cottage in the woods. Here, in this new place, Lucy / Aurelia keeps to herself with only Lucy / cat for company. In London and in the guesthouse, Lucy / Aurelia heavily relied on other people to acknowledge her as Aurelia Lefanu. With Lucy / cat, she no longer depends on their recognition. In this environment, Lucy / Aurelia begins to paint to earn some money to help her through the winter. Having shifted “Lucy Ridpath” onto the cat, Lucy / Aurelia is now able to sign these paintings in Aurelia’s name - something she was unable to do in London, without Lucy. Living on the Outskirts Over the course of the story, the protagonist develops a different relation to time. While Lucy the cat is still injured, he demands Lucy / Aurelia’s full attention. In a state of mental distraction, Lucy / Aurelia takes care of his wounded body: “There were a great many things to be done for Lucy. His suppurating paw had to be dressed, his ears had to be cleaned and his coat brushed, food had to be bought for him, and four times a day he had to be exercised in the garden” (39). To Lucy / Aurelia, searching for fleas in feline Lucy’s fur “[…] was like a dream-like occupation: it put her in touch with the infinite” (39). The sensual pleasure she receives from handling the cat allows the protagonist to experience life differently. As a nova time seemed limited, as Lucy’s carer, however, time becomes expandable. Her experience comes close to Penelope’s experience in the Trafalgar Bakery. By handling the cat, Penelope, too, became removed from her surroundings. After the protagonist and the cat move to the bungalow, the passing of time begins to matter less and less: 134 5. Avenues of Escape Happiness is an immunity. […] With immunity she watched Lucy sharpening his claws on the massive armchairs. She had a naturally happy disposition and preferred to live in the present. Happiness immunized her from the past - for why look back for what has slipped from one’s possession? - and from the future, which may never even be possessed. Perhaps never in the past, perhaps never in the future, had she been, could she be, so happy as she was now. (46) Lucy / Aurelia no longer lives in anticipation of a future that may never materialise. Except for the money she has earned by painting and the wood she has collected to keep the cottage warm in the winter, she has not made any further provisions for the future. In the cottage, in the company of Lucy / cat, Lucy / Aurelia is no longer required to put on a performance for others who might question the fragility of her momentary happiness. Lucy / Aurelia allows herself to live for the present moment. She has become unresponsive to the linearity of time and has reached a state of equilibrium in which only the present matters. Penelope senses a similar form of freedom in the bakery, stroking the cat. In Penelope’s case, however, the moment passes too quickly. In contrast to Penelope, Lucy / Aurelia has disengaged herself from everything that defined her past and has decided not to look back. With Lucy / cat at her side, she has reached a state of indifference in which nothing matters. In this sense, Lucy / Aurelia has reached an ex-centric mode of being. She is still rooted in this world; however, she has positioned herself ex-centrally to it. In her isolated cottage, far away from the core of society, she feels no obligations to anyone or anything. Lucy / cat is capable of looking after himself and does not require her attendance. Content with her new surroundings, Lucy / Aurelia feels immune to external demands. As Swaab writes: “In this new life, her affection is routed into animal companionship, described with great poignancy” (“The Queerness of Lolly Willowes” 37). Lucy / Aurelia does not seek contact with other human be‐ ings, she feels completely at ease with the cat. Gradually, Lucy / Aurelia comes to resemble Lucy / cat in his creatureliness; she takes care of her basic needs, but other than that feels indifferent to any conventional needs and obligations. Here, in this cottage, Lucy / Aurelia comes close to evading interpellation. Lucy / Aurelia’s new home stands in stark contrast to the home she shared with Aston. In London she was expected to look after their place, and keep it nice and tidy with the help of a char. In the cottage such conventions have no relevance. Even the sight of “Lucy sharpening his claws on the massive arm‐ chairs” does not disturb her in the least. She has become completely indifferent to worldly possessions such as furniture. 135 5.2 “But at the Stroke of Midnight” and Ex-Centric Modes of Being In “But at a Stroke of Midnight”, Warner astutely shows how much identity depends on the act of being recognised as someone, or, to use Althusser’s words, to be interpellated to a role. How much Lucy / Aurelia depends on the cat’s pres‐ ence to be Lucy / Aurelia becomes obvious when Lucy / cat dies. After being hit by a car, the cat passes away with Lucy / Aurelia at his side: His breathing stopped. He flattened. It was inconceivable that he could ever have been loved, handsome, alive. “Lucy! ” The cry broke from her. It unloosed another. “Aurelia! ” She could not call back the one or the other. She was Lucy Ridpath, looking at a dead cat who had never known her. The agony of dislocation was prosaic. (51) The narrator leaves it open whether Lucy / Aurelia’s first cry “Lucy! ” refers to Lucy the cat or Lucy Ridpath. I argue that it refers to both since at this point in the story Lucy the cat and Lucy Ridpath are inexorably linked. Lucy realises that she has lost the being that enabled her to become Aurelia, and the moment she loses Lucy / cat, she also loses Aurelia. This catastrophic event has an almost eerie quality and marks the end of Aurelia’s existence. The scene further demonstrates how deeply identity and endorsement are connected and recalls the power of speech acts. Lucy / Aurelia believes that by calling out “Lucy” and “Aurelia” she transfers these identities back to different bodies. Although there is no textual evidence for this transfer, Lucy / Aurelia sees herself as Lucy Ridpath again, and she decides to inter the cat the very next day: “Lucy would bury Lucy, and then there would be one Lucy left over” (51). Lucy finds herself transformed back into the being from which she once tried to escape. Since she cannot stand the thought of being Lucy Ridpath again, she finally decides to drown herself in the river. Floodwater has transformed the whole landscape and now covers land that is not usually under water. The disorder reflects the agitation Lucy / Aurelia felt at the moment of the cat’s death. The water becomes an important agent as the focus of the text constantly shifts between the protagonist and the element. Lucy experiences it as a force that exists along with her, and does not feel the urge to combat it. The floodwater is described as impassive: “It leaned its ice-cold indifferent weight against her” (51). It inclines its body against Lucy’s in the same way it would lean against a tree trunk or a rock. In the water, she is on par with the other objects floating by. The choice of “indifferent” emphasises that the water does not act maliciously; if it drowns Lucy, it does not drown her with ill intent. 136 5. Avenues of Escape For a brief moment, Lucy realises that she will die and tries to escape her circumstances: “When a twig was carried bobbing past her, she felt a wild impulse to clutch it. But her arms were closed about the cat’s body, and she pressed it more closely to her and staggered on” (51-52). Lucy will not give up the cat that allowed her to temporarily become someone else. If she saved herself and let go of the animal’s body, she would have to face a world in which Aurelia was ultimately lost to her, and she would have to continue to exist as Lucy Ridpath. Without the cat, she would be unable to experience the happiness that had immunised her against the outside world. Hence, Lucy Ridpath abandons herself to the water in a similar way as she surrendered herself to the motion and speed of the London buses. As the water takes complete control over Lucy’s body, she remains passive and gives in to its power. In this, she acts as indiffer‐ ently as the element itself. Comparing Lucy Ridpath’s escape to Sophia Wil‐ loughby’s, the protagonist of Warner’s novel Summer Will Show (1936), Ellmann writes: “In Sophia’s case, as in Lucy Ridpath’s, escape concludes in disaster; Minna [Sophia’s lover] falls to a soldier’s bayonet, Lucy perishes in a flood” (Ellmann, “The Art of Bi-Location: Sylvia Townsend Warner” 81). I would argue, however, that, although Lucy’s death is described in violent terms, it does not seem lamentable. She has reached a state in which the outside world is rendered meaningless once again; a state in which she has truly become non-interpellat‐ able. 5.3 “An Act of Reparation”: An Act of Emancipation “An Act of Reparation” was first published in The New Yorker in 1964. In 1966, it appeared in the short story collection A Stranger with a Bag and Other Stories. “At the Trafalgar Bakery” and “But at the Stroke of Midnight” both explore interim spaces, namely a bakery and a cottage, where societal constraints and patriarchal structures lose their meaning. In both stories, the protagonists suc‐ cessfully elude interpellation. In “An Act of Reparation”, Warner also creates a space - tellingly, a kitchen - where any form of interpellation becomes mean‐ ingless. “An Act of Reparation” deals with two escapists, Valerie Hardcastle, née Fry, and Lois Hardcastle. Whereas Lois’ escape from conventionality and boredom ends successfully, Valerie manoeuvres herself into a less fortunate situation and finds herself trapped in marriage. “An Act of Reparation” is lighter in tone than “At the Trafalgar Bakery” and “But at the Stroke of Midnight”, its criticism of restrictive female gender roles, however, is just as scathing. The story “An Act 137 5.3 “An Act of Reparation”: An Act of Emancipation of Reparation” revolves around an unexpected encounter between Fenton Hard‐ castle’s ex-wife, Lois, and his new wife, Valerie. At first, the story seems to follow a familiar pattern: middle-aged husband leaves middle-aged wife for young and attractive dancer. In a conventional set-up, the ex-wife would loathe the new wife and would perhaps try to win her husband back. Characteristically, Warner, however, approaches the topic from a completely different angle. Rather than being jealous of her husband’s new wife, Lois, the ex-wife, pities Valerie for having to endure this tedious and conventional man, this “grand […] bore” (Warner and Maxwell, EoL 129). This chapter first examines the different escape routes the two protagonists take, before examining how closely space and control are linked in the story. The focus of the chapter, however, lies on Lois’ preparation of the oxtail soup and the witch-like power it gives her. Set against this background, the chapter argues that the preparation of the soup directly challenges patriarchal struc‐ tures. It further shows, however, that the story as whole desists from giving extra meaning to the dominant ideology by adopting a radically oppositional stance. Different Runaways Valerie shares some similarities with Penelope (“At the Trafalgar Bakery”), who is of a similar age and equally naïve regarding her future. Valerie was looking for an adventure, but all she found was a bourgeois marriage arrangement. Together with her friend Olive Petty, Valerie “broke away” from a Secretarial College “to share a bed-sitting room and work as dancing partners at the town’s new skating rink” (Warner, “An Act of Reparation” 152). Unlike Lucy or Pene‐ lope, Valerie did not run away from a repressive background, but from a dull occupation. As a secretary, Valerie would have had a stable job with a stable income. At the time, however, she was not interested in this conventional life‐ style, but chose to earn her money as a semi-professional dancer. In this job, she relied mainly on her body, her most valuable asset, to attract attention. Valerie, the dancer, stands in stark contrast to the person she became after her marriage to Fenton. Seeing her in the bank, Lois describes her as “careworn” and “deflated” (152). Whereas Valerie ran away to seek exciting experiences, Lois fled from a sti‐ fling marriage. The short story does not reveal much information about Lois’ past before the divorce. All the references made to her life at Fenton’s side are immediately connected to Valerie. For example, after they meet at the bank, Lois is immediately reminded of the pain her marriage inflicted upon her: 138 5. Avenues of Escape Lois took one [bag] from her [Valerie]. It was the bag whose handle Fenton, in a rush of husbandry, had mended with a string. The string ground into her fingers - as fatal, as familiar, as ever. (155) This example perfectly describes the acute discomfort she felt as Fenton’s wife. Here, physical pain and emotional distress merge and become inseparable. The scene further reveals Fenton’s deficiencies - the means he uses to fix a broken item are less than adequate. Reliving her pain, Lois feels bad for passing her problems on to Valerie, “They were her [Lois’] bags, her burden; and she had cast them onto the shoulders of this hapless child and gone flourishing off, a free woman” (155). Lois refers to herself as a woman, whereas she still considers Valerie a child; in this, she appears almost maternal. Lois’ guilt mainly stems from the fact that she believes she tricked Valerie into getting together with Fenton. In retrospect, she feels that, as the elder, more mature women of the two, she should have protected Valerie from this relationship. Whereas Valerie looks disillusioned and worn-down, Lois looks “uncommonly healthy and pros‐ perous” (155). Space and Control Fenton likes to think of his new wife in clearly defined places. This becomes apparent from the very beginning of the story that starts with the remainder of a shopping list based entirely on his needs. If Valerie buys all the items on the list and runs all the errands Fenton wishes her to take care of, she will have moved exactly within the area he has marked out for her. In this, the list effec‐ tively creates a closed space. The list contains six items and mirrors the demands Fenton makes on his wife: Lapsang sooshang - must smell like tar. Liver salts in blue bottle. Strumpshaw’s bill - why 6d.? Crumpets. Waistcoat buttons. Something for weekend - not a chicken. (151, emphasis in the original) Fenton has given Valerie precise instructions for most of the items. The smoked tea has to “smell like tar”, and the liver salts have to come in a “blue bottle”. The third item on the list, “Strumpshaw’s bill - why 6d.? ”, suggests that Fenton is not sure why he owes Strumpshaw a sixpence and that he sees it as Valerie’s responsibility to look into the matter. The instructions further hint at the fact 139 5.3 “An Act of Reparation”: An Act of Emancipation that Fenton does not fully trust his wife to buy the items he wants - items he has grown used to over the years - and considers it necessary to specify them. The added explanations further serve to reveal Valerie’s lack of confidence and her fear of making a mistake, which is why she diligently writes down Fenton’s instructions. Not one item on the list is exclusively for her. Although they may share the crumpets, the structure of the list suggests that it is Fenton who wishes to consume them. The waistcoat buttons, too, are for Fenton. Most prominently, the last item on the list is only defined ex negativo: “Something for weekend - not a chicken”. It is this unspecified item that presents Valerie with a problem. It requires her to decide on a Sunday meal that does not consist of the one meal she knows to prepare. As a dancer, Valerie was not restricted by household chores. She certainly did not occupy herself with cooking; she and her friend mainly lived of “chips and salami, varied by the largesse of admirers who took them to restaurants” (152). While they were still getting to know each other, Fenton invited her out for dinner and provided her with international meals: “as an admirer, [he] had expressed himself in scampi and crêpes Suzette […] with never a mention of joints” (152). Once they were married, however, his true character surfaced: Fenton adheres to strict gender roles and longestablished traditions. In this, he is not a tyrannical pater familias, he is the opposite - weak, conventional and tedious. In his opinion, his wife is responsible for their home and his well-being. Fenton’s ideal wife strongly resembles Odysseus’ wife Penelope, who pa‐ tiently waited for her husband’s return. In addition, Fenton also seeks his wife’s undivided attention: One of the things Fenton particularly liked about Valerie was her habit of awaiting him. A man likes to be awaited. At the end of a dull day’s architecture, to find a wife quietly sitting, undistracted by any form of employment, not even reading a book, but just sitting and waiting and ready to look pleased is very agreeable. (161) This passage gives the reader instantaneous access to Fenton’s thoughts. While the first sentence is still concerned with two individuals (Fenton and Valerie), the following sentences assume a more general tone, and comments on “a man” and “a woman”. According to Fenton, men and women, respectively, have dif‐ ferent characteristics, which by definition stand in stark contrast to one another. While “the man” likes to be “awaited”, “the woman” likes to wait for her husband. That is, while “the man” is active, “the woman” remains passive and fully focussed on her husband. Fenton considers activities like “reading a book” dis‐ ruptive, since they take a woman’s attention away from her husband. To a cer‐ tain extent, Fenton’s thoughts are comical and even slightly absurd. This, how‐ 140 5. Avenues of Escape ever, cannot hide the fact that they are also highly offensive. Fenton does not take into consideration what women, or rather, his wife, might desire, but con‐ siders men the centre of the universe. This is highlighted by the fact that it is only the narrator, and not Fenton, who mentions Valerie’s name in this crucial passage (“One of the things Fenton particularly liked about Valerie was her habit of awaiting him”). Fenton merely equates her with the general term “a wife”. He generally talks of Valerie in terms of the benefits she has to offer him. He does not comment on any of her qualities that do not have an immediate effect on his well-being. The Witch’s Kitchen In Lolly Willowes (1926), Laura strongly condemns the roles imposed on women and criticises the fact that women lack the opportunity to lead a more inspiring, less dependent life. Significantly, it is not until she becomes a witch that Laura herself is able to lead a truly independent life. As Miriam Wallraven points out, “The role of witchcraft in general […] is central for the realisation of women’s potential, for living a self-determined life, in short, for personal emancipation” (71). In Lolly Willowes becoming a witch is tantamount to becoming selfsufficient. In “An Act of Reparation”, by contrast, autonomy and independence are linked to more mundane circumstances. Lois Hardcastle has successfully gained her freedom by divorcing Fenton and moving to London. She is firmly rooted in the world and has accepted an oppositional role to matrimony (“the divorced wife”). Significantly, this allows her to cast off her role as Fenton’s spouse, but it does not allow her to evade interpellation or the dominant ideology as in the case of Laura. When Lois learned about Fenton’s extramarital affair, she realised that this was just the opportunity she needed to walk out on him and, consequently, insisted on getting a divorce. Several months later, she meets Valerie, who is now married to Fenton, and suddenly starts feeling guilty for instigating this union. In retrospect, she is annoyed with the fact that, “[…] it was impossible to commit the simplest act of selfishness, of self-defence even, without paining and inconveniencing others” (156). During this encounter with Valerie, Lois suddenly sees a way of repairing her act of “selfishness” (or “self-defence”). When she learns that Valerie is struggling to cook a meal for her ex-husband, she resolves to prepare it for her. Without further ado, she takes Valerie on an excessive grocery shopping trip: 141 5.3 “An Act of Reparation”: An Act of Emancipation A wife Fenton hadn’t given her an idea of, a wife as animated and compelling as a scenic railway, swept Valerie to the butcher’s, summoned old Mr. Ensten himself, made him produce a series of outlandish objects totally unlike Valerie’s conception of what could be called a joint, chose out the most intimidating of the lot, stiff as a poker and a great deal longer, watched with a critical eye as he smote it into coilability, swept on to the greengrocer’s […]. (157) During the shopping trip, Valerie realises that she does not know half as much about her husband’s ex-wife as she thought. Up to this point, she had felt superior to Lois: young, attractive, exciting. Now she realises that Lois has not suffered from the break-up of her marriage, but that she is full of energy, demands everyone’s attention and knows exactly what she wants. At the butch‐ er’s, Lois selects a highly symbolic piece of meat, an oxtail. Told from an om‐ niscient third-person narrator’s perspective, the reader learns that the butcher presents Lois with a variety of oxtails from which she chooses what Valerie considers “the most intimidating of the lot”, which is as “stiff as a poker and a great deal longer”. The bony piece of meat is clearly a phallic symbol. It is rigid and of considerable length. Valerie finds the texture and the size of the oxtail incredibly daunting; her unease suggests that she recognises its phallic features, but would prefer to suppress any thought of the male organ. The reader obtains first knowledge of this at an earlier moment in the story, shortly before Valerie meets Lois: “Sunk in marriage, she sat at a small polished table in the bank, […] enjoying the orderliness and impersonality of an establishment so unlike a kitchen or a bedroom” (153). The item of meat that inspires Valerie’s fear is chopped up into regular rings. The act of “smit[ing] it into coilability” suggests that the symbolic meaning of the phallic symbol - virility and male dominance - is destroyed. The butcher’s procedure clearly resembles a castration ritual. The act is carried out under Lois’ “critical eye”, which suggests that she is in control of the situation while the role of the butcher is merely instrumental. Lois does not want to let the oxtail out of her sight and quickly intervenes when Valerie tries to take her leave with some parting words after the shopping spree: ‘Such an unexpected pleasure to meet you. You’ve quite changed the day for me.’ ‘But I’m coming, too. I’m coming to cook the oxtail. I hope you don’t mind.’ ‘Mind? My God, I’d be thankful! And more.’ (158) Lois will not leave her former surroundings until the oxtail has been transformed into oxtail soup. In this state, the bony meat rings lose their stiffness and merge with the other ingredients of the soup. The phallic symbol is turned into a simple soup that Lois intends Fenton to consume. In a quasi auto-cannibalistic act, that 142 5. Avenues of Escape is, by eating the meaty bits that refer to his genital organ, Fenton will have unintentionally partaken in his own castration. This is the ultimate image of female dominance and female liberation: the destruction of the phallus and the annihilation of the phallic order - by the male himself. Yet the story never dis‐ closes whether Fenton actually ate the soup. This ambiguity plays a crucial role in the structure of the story and adds to its non-oppositional quality. Valerie, who is completely ensnared by the patriarchal system, is not sure what to make of Lois’ “act of reparation”. It seems as if the shopping spree had turned her whole world around. With reference to the way she begins to thank Lois, we learn more about the narrator’s thoughts on Valerie’s behaviour: “The ring of sincerity transformed the poor’s girl’s voice. To say ‘transfigured’ would, however, be going too far. Transformed it. Unmuzzled it” (158). Lois has opened up a new world to Valerie, but Valerie is not yet able to handle it which is why the narrator deems “transfigured” too strong an adjective. Valerie has not changed completely; she has, however, started to change, to “transform”. Most notably, Lois has “unmuzzled” Valerie’s voice and succeeded in enabling Valerie to talk free of constraints. Despite this, Lois’ efforts at bonding over an act of castration have not been entirely successful. Valerie, although she has learned that dominant orders can be challenged, will not give herself over to Lois. Lois realises this and acknowledges the differences that still exist between herself and Valerie, “She happened to like oxtail herself, but very likely the girl would have preferred rolled ribs” (158). Lois is aware of the fact that Valerie (“the girl”, as the narrator patronizingly refers to her) lacks the experience to help her see through prevailing patriarchal systems. Back in the house she shares with Fenton, Valerie dissociates herself from Lois (her voice is “now back in the muzzle”) and will not reflect on the knowledge she has been given. As mentioned earlier, Fenton desires his wife to be in one place when he returns from work. Giving in to Fenton’s wishes, or possibly to get away from Lois, Valerie leaves the kitchen to get ready for Fenton’s return. As mentioned previously, Fenton tries to control Valerie’s movements by giving her a shopping list with precise instructions that he expects her to follow. At first, Valerie is agitated by this list but after she meets Lois and they decide to go shopping together, the shopping list fades into insignificance. She does not purchase any item on the list, except for the ingredients needed for the oxtail soup. In contrast to the shopping list that starts off this story and implies a very regular shopping tour, the tour Lois takes Valerie on has a dizzying effect on Valerie. Lois whisks Valerie from one shop to the next without giving her time to think: “Whirled on in this career, consulted and assenting over God knew what next, abandoning all thought of the rest of the shopping list, Valerie fell from 143 5.3 “An Act of Reparation”: An Act of Emancipation gasps to giggles” (157, my emphasis). Despite the fact that they are shopping for the unspecified item on the list that Fenton ordered, “[s]omething for weekend - not a chicken”, Lois’ instructions have replaced Fenton’s (151). With regard to her outing with Lois and the shopping list, Valerie tells Fenton when he arrives home: I had to do most of the talking. And before I knew where I was, she was wanting to come and cook you an oxtail. I couldn’t very well stop her, could I? Of course I paid for it. The worst of it is, she was in such a rush to get here that I hadn’t a chance to ask Strumpshaw about that sixpence, or to get the waistcoat buttons or the right liver salts or your China tea. She isn’t what I’d call considerate. (163) Valerie did not buy one single thing on Fenton’s list. The only item she bought was the piece of meat for the stew. She will not take the blame for this, but accuses Lois of distracting her. Her strategy works very well since Fenton does not question Lois’ authority. This demonstrates, however, that Valerie will not follow Lois’ lead, but will stay with her husband. In “At the Trafalgar Bakery” as well as in “But at the Stroke of Midnight”, both protagonists discover a place where they are able to exist detached from the world and any patriarchal struc‐ tures. In “An Act of Reparation”, Lois introduces Valerie to a world in which the phallus is rendered insignificant. Significantly, this occurs in a place in which women have worked extremely hard for centuries, namely the kitchen. How‐ ever, Lois merely shows this world to Valerie; she does not force her to engage with it. This is because Lois does not wish to fight Fenton openly. Fenton, on the other hand, is unable to make sense of Lois’ behaviour and, in particular, her desire to cook him dinner. To him, this can only mean that she is trying to win him back: He would have to open the kitchen door, take the full assault of that bewitching smell, see Lois cooking as of old - an unassimilable answer to prayer. For of course she mustn’t come again, she mustn’t go on doing this sort of thing; nor was he a man to be won back by fleshpots. Poor Lois, making her way back almost like an animal, forgetting her jealousy, her prejudice […] just to cook him a favourite dish. What had impelled her to do this? Remorse, loneliness, an instinctive longing to foster and nourish? (163) Ever since Fenton entered the house, he has been under the spell of the smell of the oxtail soup (‘“What a wonderful smell”’, ‘“Delicious! ”’, ‘“When will it be ready? ”, 161-62). Lois’ dealings in the kitchen have a witchlike quality, and the soup she cooks has a “bewitching smell”. Furthermore, the “large stewpan” she uses to cook the oxtail soup is reminiscent of a cauldron, a pot witches use to 144 5. Avenues of Escape concoct their potions. To Fenton, Lois becomes a seductress who is trying to tempt him to return to her. Smells have the power to bring back memories and trigger emotions. To Fenton, the smell of homemade oxtail soup will always be linked to Lois and their shared past. The smell affects him strongly, but he tries to suppress his desire to surrender himself to it. Involuntarily, he conjures up the picture of her standing in the kitchen just as she used to when they were still married. He realises that this is what he has been longing for: a familiar setup with his ex-wife waiting upon him. However, at the same time, he forbids himself to entertain these thoughts. Unable to think other than in terms of tra‐ ditional gender roles, Fenton wonders what brought Lois back to the house. All he can think of is that she returned because she longed to take care of him. Unaware of Lois’ motives, Fenton feels superior to her and begins to patronise her behaviour. Comparing her to an animal, he pities her for humiliating herself. Amusingly, his reaction stands in stark contrast to Lois’ true motives. Convinced that he is about to encounter her, he “[…] sprang to his feet, straightened his waistcoat, left the sitting room, entered the kitchen. It was empty. She had gone” (164). Lois is no longer in the place where Fenton expects to find her. She has left the place of ultimate domesticity, thereby avoiding an encounter with her ex-husband. Very characteristically for Warner’s heroines, she does not seek direct confrontation, but eludes her oppressor. The kitchen, however, is not entirely empty of Lois. Most obviously, the soup on the stove figures as a reminder of her presence - or rather, her absence. The story ends with a handwritten note attached to the stewpan, “This will be ready by seven. It should simmer till then. Don’t let it boil” (164, emphasis in the original). “An Act of Reparation” begins with a note of instructions by Fenton and ends with a note written by Lois. This implies that Fenton has lost a power struggle to Lois. However, Lois disappears without ever confronting Fenton. Although her aim is to punish Fenton for his domineering behaviour, she does not wait to see the results of her actions. Her disappearance suggests that she remains indifferent to her ex-husband and his new wife. In the end, it transpires that the kitchen, which temporarily resembled a witch’s kitchen because of the transformative power it held, functioned as a place where Lois sought to pass her knowledge on to Valerie. 5.4 Eluding Interpellation The above analysis has shown that Penelope, Lucy, and Lois are all driven by one desire: the desire to leave domesticity behind them and become someone 145 5.4 Eluding Interpellation else. A further element common to these stories is the way in which the pro‐ tagonists, for a short span of time, successfully elude interpellation. In contrast to “At the Trafalgar Bakery” and “But at the Stroke of Midnight”, where both protagonists become so absorbed in a creaturely existence that they forget to recognise any interpellation, Lois, the protagonist of “An Act of Reparation”, simply leaves the place in which she could be interpellated. In this, she effec‐ tively evades the interpellation ‘repentant ex-wife’. In her fiction, Warner repeatedly toys with the idea of spaces in which indi‐ viduals become non-interpellatable. As my analysis has shown, she continu‐ ously seeks to create what Butler calls “outer region[s] of indifferent, question‐ able, or impossible being”, inviting her readers to envision, and possibly maintain, these spaces (“Gender Is Burning” 381). At the same time, however, Warner hints at the fact that these spaces are temporary and may only ever exist during the act of reading. With regard to her writing, this means that her pro‐ tagonists must keep at least one foot on the ground, to use Schabert’s words, if they are to carry on living. Warner herself realised how difficult it is to escape interpellation: Warner was repeatedly called a “stylist”; and even though she detested this term, it stuck to her (see Harman 218). Possibly, she even began to accept this interpellation - and started writing accordingly. 146 5. Avenues of Escape 6. Vanishing “‘Boors Carousing’” was published in 1947 in the short story collection Museum of Cheats. The New Yorker describes this collection as “[t]he best of the author’s memorable, and frequently bitter, stories of life in England during the war years and the first days of peace” (“Museum of Cheats” 99). The choice of the adjective “bitter” to describe the stories in the collection is poignantly appropriate, espe‐ cially with regard to “‘Boors Carousing’”: in this story, the male protagonist harshly dismisses his neighbour Miss Metcalf and fails to realise the potential of her thoughts on death and vanishing. Rather than listening to her, he decides to immortalise her in a short story - which is exactly the opposite of what Miss Metcalf desires. Far from seeking immortality, she is in fact contemplating ways of detaching herself from her surroundings. As this chapter shows, the story’s bitterness lies in the fact that the female voice is drowned out by the behaviour of the male protagonist. Unlike “‘Boors Carousing’”, “A Dressmaker” and “A Work of Art” both appeared in The New Yorker (on 20 May 1961, and 22 April 1961, respectively) and were published in the short story collection A Spirit Rises (1962). The New Yorker uses captivating words to describe this collection: “In these fourteen short stories, the timeless ingredients of the storyteller’s art are obligingly at the service of a view of human life that is usually, but not always, impersonal, unsparing, and wickedly amused” (“A Spirit Rises, by Sylvia Town‐ send Warner” 179). This “impersonal, unsparing, and wickedly amused” per‐ spective certainly dominates “A Dressmaker” and “A Work of Art”. In both sto‐ ries, the protagonists, who from a conventional point of view may seem insane, do not wish to participate in society and respectively seek to merge with dif‐ ferent materials, garbage and fine textiles. Both protagonists are driven by a deep desire to vanish and to detach themselves from their surroundings. The narrator recounts this in an indifferent, objective manner without ever en‐ dorsing the behaviour of one single character. In the previous chapter on escape, the protagonists - often involuntarily - entered states in which they evaded interpellation. That is, they sought to flee certain circumstances that interpellated them into a role. In doing so, they were at least briefly able to escape from prevailing ideologies. By contrast, the char‐ acters in “‘Boors Carousing’”, “A Dressmaker”, and “A Work of Art” (1961) ac‐ tively envision or even deliberately create surroundings that will allow them to 34 In 1944, three years before Warner published the story, Adrian Brouwer’s painting “Boors Carousing” was on display in the Milton Galleries, London. A short article in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, “A Loan Exhibition of Flemish old Masters”, suggests that it was fairly well known at the time. In the article, the author compares Brouwer’s style to that of Bruegel (see “A Loan Exhibition of Flemish Old Masters” 25). It is left open for speculation, however, whether Warner visited the gallery and felt inspired to refer to Brouwer’s painting in her writing or not. vanish. As the following will show, their escape from interpellation is far from accidental. 6.1 Death and Disengagement in “‘Boors Carousing’” The short story revolves around Adam Kinloch, a pretentious writer attempting to write a philosophical novel, and Miss Metcalf, an elderly woman who lives alone on the outskirts of the village. Mr Kinloch is not keen on socialising and prefers to keep himself to himself. Miss Metcalf, likewise, lives a secluded life, but she is not as reluctant as Mr Kinloch to engage with people. One afternoon, Miss Metcalf comes knocking at Mr Kinloch’s door with a request for help. The river next to her house has risen, and she fears the rising water may drown her rabbits. Mr Kinloch agrees to help lift the rabbits’ cage onto a table, although secretly he would have preferred to stay at home. (“I’ll come at once,” he said, dimly and gloomily realizing an appeal to his manly strength”, 159). After he has carried out the task, Miss Metcalf invites him into her house for a drink. “‘Boors Carousing’” borrows its name from an engraving that is mentioned halfway through the story. It remains unclear, however, whether this engraving is, in fact, a replica of a work of art entitled “Boors Carousing” or not. 34 The owner of the engraving, Miss Metcalf, remains silent on this question, and Mr Kinloch cannot tell for sure, “‘Kermesse,’ perhaps, or possibly ‘Boors Car‐ ousing’” (Warner, “‘Boors Carousing’” 164). The engraving, which is presumably based on a seventeenth century Dutch genre painting, depicts farmworkers en‐ joying alcoholic drinks (see 164-65). With reference to seventeenth century Dutch paintings of peasants, Nanette Salomon points out that “[r]ecent inter‐ pretations of peasant imagery have for the most part, rather restrictively, vac‐ illated between the opposite poles of condemnation and exaltation for the figures depicted” (95). Salomon’s statement stresses the fact that artworks like “Boors Carousing” may be interpreted in numerous ways. Viewers cannot know for sure whether seventeenth century painters intended to ridicule the peasants 148 6. Vanishing 35 For example, in 1940, with regard to the tavern scenes the Flemish painter Adrian Brouwer depicted, Leo van Puyvelde writes, “[The common Dutch folk] drank, smoked and sang in dingy taverns, where they met to find what to-day’s decadents seek in dives and drugs: forgetfulness of their life and the dreams of an unfettered spirit” (140). Puy‐ velde’s analysis of Brouwer’s work implies that Brouwer did not aim at scorning or pitying the characters in his paintings, but wished to depict their lives impartially. they depicted, whether they wanted to portray their lives as accurately as pos‐ sible, or whether they wished to celebrate their excesses. 35 In the same way in which “‘Kermesse,’ perhaps, or possibly ‘Boors Carousing’” only allows a limited glimpse into the lives of the peasants depicted, the short story “‘Boors Carou‐ sing’” only allows a very limited glimpse into the life and thoughts of the female protagonist, Miss Metcalf. Just as the painter controls the viewers’ gaze by only depicting certain details, the narrator, too, controls the information the reader receives about Miss Metcalf, which in addition, is always filtered by Mr Kinloch’s thoughts about her. The following chapter will first analyse how “‘Boors Carousing’” creates the “female drunkard” in order to show that the form of escape and disengagement generally associated with alcoholic excess has little in common with the form of vanishing contemplated by Miss Metcalf. In addition, it will explore the two very different perspectives on vanishing presented in the story and discuss how the ambiguity surrounding the eponymous engraving artfully structures the plot. Death and the “Female Drunkard” Inebriation and alcohol dependency are themes common to both Warner’s short story “‘Boors Carousing’” and her long narrative poem Opus 7 (1931). Both works, however, deal with alcohol addiction from a different perspective. Opus 7 refers explicitly to the heroine’s drunkenness, albeit in a non-judgemental way, thus highlighting Rebecca Random’s non-normative behaviour, whereas “‘Boors Carousing’” makes hardly any reference to alcohol-induced excesses. Despite this, Miss Metcalf is seen as a tragic alcoholic figure, mainly because the story is told from Mr Kinloch’s perspective. On their first meeting, Mr Kinloch almost immediately classifies her as an alcohol addict, and constantly associates her with death and decay. In Tendencies (1994), Sedgwick investigates the position held by the drug addict in society. Although she mainly refers to users of opium-derived sub‐ stances, her assessment of “the addict” also applies to alcoholics. 149 6.1 Death and Disengagement in “‘Boors Carousing’” In the taxonomic reframing of a drug user as an addict, what changes are the most basic terms about her. From a situation of relative homeostatic stability and control, she is propelled into a narrative of inexorable decline and fatality, from which she cannot disimplicate herself except by leaping into that other, even more pathos-ridden narrative called kicking the habit. (131, emphasis in the original) Sedgwick maintains that addiction is mainly associated with instability and deterioration and closely linked to failure - the failure to remain “strong”, “pro‐ ductive”, and “in control”. Like drug users, alcoholics are not considered to be in control of their lives, and are reproached for living in a state of excess and profligacy. The only acceptable option for an addict is to fight the addiction and re-enter society as a rehabilitated person. Sedgwick is highly sceptical of this procedure and, using the generic “she”, states that “she [the addict] is installed as the proper object of compulsory institutional disciplines” which continue to spin narratives around her, the choices she makes, and the acts she performs (131). Representatives of these “compulsory institutional disciplines” are con‐ vinced that they alone understand and know best how to handle the addict. These beliefs are reiterated throughout “‘Boors Carousing’” and are mainly conveyed by Mr Kinloch. Remembering rumours about Miss Metcalf and her father, Mr Kinloch forms a first opinion of her: Miss Metcalf ’s father had been the Reverend Thomas Metcalf, sometime Rector of this parish and resident under a very ornate and informative tombstone; which did not, however, mention that he had drunk himself and his fortune out of existence, which was why poor old Miss Metcalf lived where and how she did and was a trifle eccentric, you know. (“‘Boors’” 161-62) Mr Kinloch instantly defines Miss Metcalf by her paternal line. To Mr Kinloch there is no doubt that the Reverend was an alcoholic, and, based on this belief, he immediately determines the consequences Miss Metcalf ’s upbringing must have had on her. By ascribing all the authority to Miss Metcalf ’s father, he removes any form of agency and self-determination from her (“No doubt she was all filial piety, the daughters of abominable fathers always are […]”, “‘Boors’” 164). His immediate assessment is patronising and disempowering and instantly links her to alcoholism. The quote further highlights that Mr Kinloch values productivity and condemns wastefulness and excess. To him, the Reverend Met‐ calf acted irresponsibly, and even worse, uneconomically. He fathered a daughter, but failed to provide for her future. Miss Metcalf, as Mr Kinloch believes, is continuing her father’s wasteful life. 150 6. Vanishing The detailed description of the route Mr Kinloch and Miss Metcalf take to reach her cottage on their mission to save her rabbits links Miss Metcalf even more strongly to waste and death: They turned about and splashed down a lane and across a sopping meadow where an indeterminate track led into a grove of willows and alders which was also, apparently, the rubbish-tip for the village, since some old iron bedsteads and disused oil-heaters glowered rustily among the tree-trunks. Beyond this, suddenly and surprisingly whitewashed and neat, was Miss Metcalf ’s dwelling, like a bandbox abandoned on the river’s brim by someone who had committed suicide. (160) There are no proper roads to Miss Metcalf ’s house, only a dirt track that is reached after crossing a waterlogged field. The geographic remoteness of Miss Metcalf ’s dwelling reinforces the fact that Miss Metcalf is indeed an outsider in the village. The dirt track disappears into a small wood full of discarded rubbish such as “old iron bedsteads” and “disused oil-heaters”. These objects used to be part of a home, but are now worthless and unwanted. The narrator anthropomorphises these commodities; they do not merely lie about, but appear to be staring at the people passing by (“glowered”). The presence of these disused objects gives the grove an eerie and desolate atmosphere. Implicitly, the narra‐ tion links Miss Metcalf to the disused objects and suggests that she, too, has been abandoned. This narrative strategy serves to support Mr Kinloch’s belief that Miss Metcalf has become the hapless victim of her circumstances. Once Mr Kinloch and Miss Metcalf have passed through the gloomy grove, Miss Metcalf ’s house suddenly appears out of nowhere. Its whitewashed exte‐ rior stands in stark contrast to its dark surroundings. It has a temporary quality and is compared to “[…] a bandbox abandoned on the river’s brim by someone who had committed suicide” (160). This is in itself an odd comparison since a person about to commit suicide is unlikely to worry about a bandbox before drowning themselves. Swaab, too, pays close attention to this simile. To him, it highlights the narrator’s morbid streak, “Is this astonishing image inspired or demented? […] The story shocks us into recoiling from a narrator whose habits of thought are represented by such a simile” (“Similes” 773-74). Arguably, the simile implies that the house is just another item cast away by its owner, just like the bedsteads and the heaters at the tip. In contrast to the discarded junk, however, it seems oddly out of place due to its neat and tidy outward appearance. The Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins states that “[…] the bandbox was a box in which clergymen kept their vestments, which were invariably spotless and neatly pressed” (“Bandbox”, emphasis in the original). Set against this back‐ ground, the simile emphasises the close connection between the Reverend and 151 6.1 Death and Disengagement in “‘Boors Carousing’” the house and draws attention to the fact that, even if the Reverend committed long-term suicide by drinking himself to death, he provided his daughter with adequate housing. Inside the house, Mr Kinloch continues to secretly belittle his host. While regarding her face, a metaphor linking Miss Metcalf with death and decay immediately springs to his mind: He glanced across her at the table. She also was keeping the cold out [i.e. having a drink with him], and it had greatly improved her. Sister to the beauty of the young leaf is the beauty of the skeleton leaf, having the last skirmish of its vegetable blood before the winter sucks it into the mould. (163) Mr Kinloch contemplates Miss Metcalf ’s features over the course of a few whis‐ kies. He notes that the whisky has a positive effect on her appearance and restores her vitality. This leads him to compare her to an autumnal leaf, a “skel‐ eton leaf ” - a leaf that is on the verge of decay, but still has some life left in it. Just as the “skeleton leaf ” “ha[s] the last skirmish of its vegetable blood before the winter sucks it into the mould”, he believes that the alcohol has temporarily brought Miss Metcalf back to life (163). Neither the leaf, nor Miss Metcalf, he believes, will last very long. Like the leaf, she will soon fade and die. From Mr Kinloch’s perspective, Miss Metcalf is a lonesome, pitiable woman who suffered from her late father’s alleged alcoholism. After she pours him the glass of pre-war whisky, he thinks, “Fortunately she had obeyed his saying of When with instantaneous accuracy. One could see that she was a drunkard’s daughter and well trained” (163). He first connects her with alcoholism, then, as discussed above, imagines her on the verge of death. After observing Miss Met‐ calf closely, Mr Kinloch casts his eye over the room they are sitting in. It is then that she draws his attention to the picture hanging over the mantelpiece (‘“I see you are looking at that picture, Mr Kinloch”’, 164). Mr Kinloch and his host start talking about the picture, but their conversation soon circles around her anxieties: ‘It [the picture] is a very fine specimen, I believe. And very valuable. My dear father thought the world of it.’ Leaning across the table, her light whiskyed breath on his cheek, she exclaimed: ‘Sometimes I think I will take it down! But if I did,’ she said, ‘what can I put in its place? ’ “Why need you put anything? ” ‘Oh, I must, I must! Because you see, if I took it down there would be the patch on the wallpaper. The different coloured patch where the wallpaper hasn’t faded. It would always be there to remind me.’ ‘True.’ (164, emphasis in the original) 152 6. Vanishing Miss Metcalf does not talk much about the piece of art as such. She mentions neither its name, nor the name of the artist, nor its date of origin - she only talks about how she feels about it. She immediately points out how much her father admired it but does not comment on what he admired about it. Miss Metcalf ’s remarks contain two significant ellipses. Firstly, she will not disclose what trig‐ gers her desire to remove the picture from the wall (‘“Sometimes I think I will take it down! ’”, 164). Secondly, she will not explain why she could not tolerate the empty space the engraving would leave on the wallpaper if she took it down. Possibly, she fears that the gap would remind her of her deceased father. The story remains deliberately vague on this question. Mr Kinloch, by contrast, promptly offers an explanation for her reluctance to take down the engraving: Absent or present, the boors would always be carousing. Morning, noon, and night Miss Metcalf would see those drunken faces, those paunches and overturned flagons and wrinkled boots, those frank vomits and idiot rejoicings. Morning, noon, and night it would remind her of the Reverend Thomas Metcalf who had drunk himself to death and left her stupefied and penniless. Absent or present it would taunt her with an inherited alcoholism, a desperate maidenly desire for strong drink. (165, emphasis added) He firmly believes that the picture, whether on display or out of sight, would constantly remind Miss Metcalf of her father’s drinking habits and intensify her desire for alcohol. As has been previously stated, Mr Kinloch has already clas‐ sified Miss Metcalf as an alcoholic with little left to look forward to in life. The story, however, neither confirms nor disputes this assessment. Moreover, the repetitions “[a]bsent or present” and “[m]orning, noon, and night” give Mr Kin‐ loch’s thoughts an overly sensationalist tone; they show that he does not sym‐ pathise with Miss Metcalf, but regards her circumstances with a detached form of interest, comparable to an artist observing a scene in front of him. Further‐ more, he does not grant Miss Metcalf any agency; he believes that she has inherited her father’s addiction and that there is no way for her to escape it. Her inferiority, as he sees it, bolsters his superiority. When she starts to become emotional (“she had begun to whimper”, 165), he quickly deserts her. On his way home, he imagines her obituary; this indicates that he is already beginning to see her as a character in his short story: Regrettable death of one of our oldest parishioners, Miss Metcalf, daughter of the late Revd. T. Metcalf, once Rector of Little Bidding. The deceased lady presumably fell into the river whilst attending to her rabbits, to which she was devoted. All those who knew her will feel her loss. (165, emphases in the original) 153 6.1 Death and Disengagement in “‘Boors Carousing’” Throughout the story, Mr Kinloch constantly associates Miss Metcalf with death and sees her only in relation to her alcoholic father. Mr Kinloch is convinced that she, too, is an alcoholic. He judges her social position by the location of her dwelling and believes that she is incapable of organising her life. After briefly thinking of showing her some kindness (“There was nothing for it, he would have to pull himself together and be neighbourly to Miss Metcalf […]”, 165), he decides to write about her, instead of offering her help. (‘“Do nothing for her, but put her into a story”’, 166). In this way, he does not have to take any responsibility for his actions and can shape her the way he wants her to be (“What a story she would make! ”, 166). Disengagement and Nonentities Mr Kinloch wishes to keep Miss Metcalf inside a story, just as the characters in Miss Metcalf ’s engraving are confined within a picture. The peasants are restricted to a limited space and cannot escape the boundaries of the work of art. They are not individuals but merely representatives of a certain social group of seventeenth century Dutch society. As a fictional character, Miss Metcalf ceases to be human for Mr Kinloch. She begins to function as a synecdoche, representing all elderly, unmarried women with an alleged drinking problem. By writing about Miss Metcalf, Mr Kinloch seeks to reduce her to a fictitious character and gain power over her. His thoughts on her are patronising, latently morbid, and closely connected to his thoughts about the characters in the picture on her wall whose excessive drinking he condemns. He not only feels superior to the drunken peasants, but also to Miss Metcalf. His presumptuous behaviour and his arrogance lead Mr Kinloch to imagine Miss Metcalf being on the brink of death. Perhaps surprisingly, Miss Metcalf, too, contemplates her own death, but sees her end very differently to Mr Kinloch. To Miss Metcalf dying is a form of undoing, of vanishing, of merging with other elements. In an earlier conversation, Miss Metcalf tells Mr Kinloch: “Personally I should never be surprised to wake up and find myself floating down the river - away and away! ” (163). This is a wonderfully tranquil thought. Miss Metcalf imagines herself floating on the surface of the river, calmly moving with the current. Furthermore, she imagines herself passing into an unsettled and ulti‐ mately unfixed state, having completely surrendered herself to the river’s motion. It does not trouble her that she is travelling without a definite goal and that she is parting with everything she once knew and possessed. This form of departure is calm and non-violent. She accepts the fact that she cannot exercise any power over her surroundings and does not fear the loss of control. Miss 154 6. Vanishing Metcalf continues by telling Mr Kinloch: “I often wonder where I should get to. Out to the sea, perhaps.” (163) The adverb “often” emphasises that Miss Metcalf has already given the idea of drifting away - gradually drifting out of life - some thought. Miss Metcalf ’s reflections on merging with the river emphasise that she is willing to give herself up to the water entirely; she does not fear crossing the border that separates life from death. Through the example of Miss Metcalf, the story shows that drifting and blending in with other substances and changing one’s form is symptomatic of a general indifference towards stability and futurity. Mr Kinloch, in contrast, is much more cautious than Miss Metcalf is. He con‐ siders his existence too important to simply give it up. Although he considers immersing in another element, he does not seek to end his existence: All through his lovely empty house rang the noise of rain, singing in the gutters, lisping against the window-panes, plashing on the flagged walk; and in his mind’s ear he heard the most melodious rainfall of all, l’eau qui tombe dans l’eau, the rain falling into the swollen river that washed the foot of his garden and tugged at his Chinese willows. (157) Mr Kinloch couches everything in poetic language as is reflected in his descrip‐ tion of the sound of the falling rain. The rain does not merely come down, but sings, lisps and splashes. It has a light, musical quality, and appears to be dancing around the outside of the house. Although he finds the sound of water falling into water, ‘l’eau qui tombe dans l’eau’, most pleasing, he does not go outside to experience it, preferring to simply imagine it (157). His aestheticized perception of water does not affect him physically: he thinks of water dissolving in a main body of water, not of human bodies being carried away by floods. His thoughts on effacement are not related to dying, but to enlarging, to becoming part of a larger whole. The rain that falls into the water makes the river swell and run faster. In one instance, Mr Kinloch pictures himself merging with another entity. He believes that, “The act of reading, the effacement of mind in a kindred mind, l’eau qui tombe dans l’eau, puts one in the best frame for the act of writing” (157). Once more, the form of vanishing that he has in mind is not the same form of vanishing that Miss Metcalf has been contemplating. Mr Kinloch believes that reading the work of a famous author will enable him to write better. For this purpose, he is willing to give himself up to an external stimulus - but only temporarily. To conclude, I would like to comment once more on the fact that the reader does not actually learn very much about Miss Metcalf: any information about her is gleaned from the perspective of Mr Kinloch. Without considering her as 155 6.1 Death and Disengagement in “‘Boors Carousing’” a person in her own right, Mr Kinloch constructs a story about her based on her late father’s alleged alcoholism. It is conceivable that Miss Metcalf might not be the wretched person he describes after all. In fact, Miss Metcalf might well be another Laura Willowes who has turned her back on all societal restraints. At first glance, the title of the story, “‘Boors Carousing’”, supports Mr Kinloch’s assessment of Miss Metcalf and her background because of the images of drunk‐ enness, excessive behaviour and debauchery it evokes. The term “boor” is usually used in a derogative way to refer to people from a lower social class. It implies that the person referred to is primitive, unrefined, and somewhat simple (see “Boor”, def. 3a). “Carousing”, on the other hand, refers to excessive behav‐ iour, mainly in connection with alcoholic beverages. The title, however, turns out to be a red herring: it deceives the reader into thinking that the story is about inebriation and drunkenness. Not at any time do we witness any scenes in which the characters partake in excessive alcohol consumption. In fact, only one ref‐ erence is made to the two characters drinking whisky together and, in this scene, neither character behaves inappropriately. 6.2 Failure and Success in “A Work of Art” Failure, like success, is a question of standards, norms, and, in particular, per‐ spective. If you set yourself a goal you realise you will not be able to attain, you might feel a sense of failure. The goal you set yourself, however, may be linked to societal standards which, apart from anything else, other people expect you to achieve. This is precisely the case in “A Work of Art” (1961), in which one of the main characters, Mr Herzen, is expected to adjust to an orderly, conventional, and bourgeois life. He fails to live up to society’s expectations and, rather than trying to assimilate, finally turns his back on all human interaction. In The Queer Art of Failure (2011), Jack Halberstam poses the question “What kind of reward can failure offer us? ”, and states, “Perhaps most obviously, failure allows us to escape the punishing norms that discipline behavior and manage human devel‐ opment with the goal of delivering us from unruly childhoods to orderly and predictable adulthoods” (3). In this, failure is not negative and not merely the opposite of success, but a form of freedom. As this chapter shows, “the escape from the punishing norms that discipline behaviour” is one outcome of Mr Her‐ zen’s failure to adjust to the norm. A further outcome is his realisation that he no longer requires recognition from anyone. 156 6. Vanishing “A Work of Art”, features three main characters: Mrs Bernstein, a rich bene‐ factress who adamantly refuses to better her protégées, that is, she refuses to impose her worldview upon them, Miss MacTavish, who is Mrs Bernstein’s administrator, and Mr Herzen, one of Mrs Bernstein’s protégées, who wishes to be left alone, but cannot escape from Miss MacTavish’s attempts to interfere in his life. The narrator makes little reference to Mr Herzen’s circumstances. All the reader learns is that he receives money from Mrs Bernstein’s charity from time to time. Mrs Bernstein’s charity differs from other charities insofar as it does not seek to impose any particular lifestyle or worldview on its protégées. Mrs Bernstein, who “[…] had been bettered in her youth”, remains indifferent to her benefiters’ outlook on life (204). Her greatest fear is that the administrator of her charity, Miss MacTavish, might resort to “professional do-goodery” and influence her protégées’ behaviour (203). Mrs Bernstein merely wants to provide her benefiters with money to enable them to carry on with their lives (“She was even suspicious of bodily betterment, since the body is the envelope of the soul and not always reliably impermeable”, 204). For the most part, Miss MacTavish manages to act on these principles, but at the same time, she expects her em‐ ployer’s protégées to value permanence, structure, and stability. People who indulge in excess and rapture are considered unreliable and inconsistent. Unlike most other people around him, Mr Herzen has deliberately chosen to live a life determined by instability and impermanence. He is unwilling to function in the same way as Western capitalist society, which depends on seemingly stable “in‐ dividuals” functioning in a particular way. When Mr Herzen and Miss Mac‐ Tavish meet, two worlds clash: the conventional, clean, middle-class world of Miss MacTavish and the eccentric, peculiar, dirty world of Mr Herzen. To explore the way in which the story deals with the categories of “failure”/ “success” and “dirty”/ “clean”, and also to analyse how Mr Herzen succeeds in disengaging himself from his surroundings, the chapter first analyses the representation of art and domestic space, before taking a closer look at the im‐ plications of Mr Herzen’s artwork. Artistic Expression “An orderly world is a world in which ‘one knows how to go on’”, writes Bauman, “[a world] in which one knows how to calculate the probability of an event and how to increase or decrease that probability […]” (1). To create an “orderly world” we need structure, and we must “behave as if events were not random” (Bauman 1). Strict classifications and order suggest security and con‐ trol over a situation. In order to maintain this control, we constantly sort and 157 6.2 Failure and Success in “A Work of Art” shift our lives to include or exclude people, events, items and / or information. According to Bauman, the opposite of order - randomness, contingency, ambivalence - “[…] confounds calculation of events and confuses the relevance of memorized action patterns” (2). This means that randomness, contingency, and ambivalence make us feel threatened and at a loss; we no longer know how to handle a situation and, for that reason, try even harder to establish some sort of order. In a similar vein to “The Green Torso” (see Chapter 2), “A Work of Art” depicts this quest for order, albeit on a domestic level. Throughout the story, the tension between Miss MacTavish and Mr Herzen steadily increases as their two worlds clash. As a general rule, Miss MacTavish tries to keep things under control. She does not give herself over to excess, extravagant feelings, or intemperance: “Miss MacTavish had already got herself into a perfectly satisfactory life of her own. She was an artist and illustrated children’s books for a living” (203). Miss MacTavish is content with what she has and feels no need change it. She has arranged her life to accommodate her needs. Since she cannot live off the art she produces, she also illustrates child‐ ren’s books. Economically speaking, and in stark contrast to Mr Herzen, she acts responsibly and maturely. She is happy to compromise and does not consider commercial art below her. The illustrations she draws usually depict images of “little girls with turned-up noses offering apples to horses with classical profiles” (203). In order to sustain herself, she is willing to reproduce clichéd images of carefree girls with cute little faces feeding apples to regal horses. Rather than focusing on the art Miss MacTavish works on when she is not working on com‐ missioned artwork, the narrator draws the reader’s attention to these kitschy, commercial sketches. By focusing on this aspect of her artistic work, the narrator immediately directs the reader’s attention to her pragmatism - and her artistic shortcomings. This is also reflected in the way the narrator describes Miss MacTavish’s artist’s studio, which appears too clean and too organised to allow for any spon‐ taneous acts of creativity. Miss MacTavish pursues her art in a “tidy study”, where she has her “tidy modest industry”, with the drawings for “Jennifer Sees It Through”, a children’s book, lying on her desk (209). Miss MacTavish possesses an easel to support “the blue abstract”; the only piece of artwork the narrator deems worthwhile mentioning (209). On a semantic level, the repeated use of “tidy” emphasises Miss MacTavish’s obsessive desire for order and cleanliness. Everything is in meticulous order; the objects in her studio are not simply a conglomeration of objects, but occupy their own special place reflecting Miss MacTavish’s outlook on life: everything has to be in one place, and must be neat and tidy. To her, the orderly arrangement of her studio represents control and 158 6. Vanishing success. It soon transpires that Miss MacTavish considers the inability, or rather the reluctance of other persons to conform to her standards as a failure and, as will be seen with regard to Mr Herzen, she does her utmost to purge him of his outlook on life. In contrast to Miss MacTavish, Mr Herzen is described as being “solitary, sickly, hypochondriacal, sometimes charming, always shiftless, and never con‐ tinuing in one stay” (205). Whereas Miss MacTavish and her “muscular legs” radiate health and energy, Mr Herzen’s health is poor. He does not look after himself and has allowed his body to deteriorate. Unlike Miss MacTavish, he does not stay in one place. He leads a nomadic life, which means he is always on the move, and pretends to forget to inform his benefactresses about his current location. He continually seeks to escape from the influence the two women exert on him; Miss MacTavish however, always manages to track him down. In the eyes of Miss MacTavish, his failure to keep his flat in order mirrors his inability to live an independent life. While Miss MacTavish’s studio is neat and tidy, the flat Mr Herzen occupies, “the bright little reformatory they [Mrs Bern‐ stein and Miss MacTavish] had designed for him”, is the complete opposite (209). It is slowly but steadily falling into a state of filth, foetor, and grime. The dichotomy of “cleanliness” and “dirt” are indicative of the dichotomy of “suc‐ cess” and “failure”. A dirty, stinking flat reveals the inhabitant’s inability to take care of a place, to maintain it and to keep it habitable. In contrast to Quentin Crisp, who maintains, “There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse”, people like Miss MacTavish insist that the failure to clean, the inability to separate dirt from cleanliness, and dis‐ ease from health is indicative of overall failure (Crips 102). Mr Herzen has grad‐ ually lost the qualities that, in MacTavish’s eyes, define a functioning human being. He has succumbed to squalor and refuses to keep his body and his sur‐ roundings clean. The narrator, too, begins to dehumanise Mr Herzen, “Dust lay thick on the furniture, cobwebs trailed from the ceiling and latticed the grimy window. Dirty and unshaven, he [Mr Herzen] stood at bay in his den” (208). The narrator no longer refers to Mr Herzen’s abode as a flat but calls it a “den”, the habitation of a wild animal. The story shows how Mr Herzen eventually pushes Miss MacTavish to her limits since his behaviour is completely at odds with her world. Due to Mr Herzen, Miss MacTavish even loses what Mrs Bernstein calls her artistic outlook on the world (see 203). Before her meeting Mr Herzen, Miss MacTavish’s employer had praised her detached way of dealing with the various charity cases: “The outlook remained that of the artist; no tendency to confuse making people a trifle better off with making people better clouded Miss MacTavish’s 159 6.2 Failure and Success in “A Work of Art” appraising eye” (203). This observation implies that in the past Miss MacTavish was always able to distance herself from the individual human predicaments that unfolded in front of her eyes and remain indifferent. Mrs Bernstein com‐ pared her to an artist who views the world impartially, without feeling the necessity to change it. Mr Herzen, however, gradually ruins this artistic outlook since Miss MacTavish simply cannot accept the choices he has made for himself. Ultimately, she wishes to restrain him, to limit his creativity, and make him function like everybody else. Mrs Bernstein, in contrast, simply “[…] ceased to inquire about him - as though she knew by some private information that he was dead, but respected his privacy” (206). The Work of Art Miss MacTavish considers the new flat she rented for Mr Herzen in terms of a home, and to her a home must always be clean. One day she manages to force herself into Mr Herzen’s flat and, for the first time, sees what has become of it. Shocked by the dirt and the stench, she fails to see any artistic value in Mr Herzen’s messy, unintelligible creation - that is, the flat he allowed to fall into a state of filth - which he himself regards as a work of art. Despite this, or possibly because of this, Mr Herzen stirs something inside her that makes it impossible for her to detach herself from him. The fact that she desperately tries to impose her standards on him suggests that she has come to realise that the truths she has chosen to believe in may be less than universal. Since she cannot handle the so-called piece of art Mr Herzen has created, she seeks to destroy it - by suggesting a thorough clean-up. Mr Herzen’s artistic creation stands in stark contrast to the type of bright and colourful art produced by Miss MacTavish. Mr Herzen’s art not only consists of rubbish, unwanted and soiled items, but also smells bad. He is the only person to regard his assemblage a work of art; every other character fails to see the beauty of it. Using Miss MacTavish as an example, the story shows how dirt and rubbish kept in the wrong place has the power to deeply unsettle human beings. As Mary Douglas emphasises, “There is no such thing as absolute dirt: it exists in the eye of the beholder” (2). What Miss MacTavish considers filth, Mr Herzen sees as being part of an art object that fills him with pride. […] Mr Herzen savoured the moment when he would turn back to his dirt, his solitude, his paradise and great work of art. He turned. There it was, his own, and grimier and grander than ever before, having been acknowledged by her submission and astonishment. How she had stared, pretending not to stare! (209) 160 6. Vanishing 36 For more information on Sedgwick’s concept of “paranoid reading”, see the introduction to this book. Mr Herzen has transformed the space he inhabits from being a normal flat, “a bourgeois kennel”, into a work of art (210). Over time, it has grown organically. It has a very specific texture and consists of soot, “spatterings from medicine bottles”, and “the morass of dirty socks” (209). Whereas “dirt” usually carries a negative connotation, the story, or rather Mr Herzen, presents it as something desirable. Dirt is what defines “his paradise and great work of art”. At this point, the narrator still presents Mr Herzen as a kind of revolutionary, or activist - albeit on a very small scale. Mr Herzen feels as if he has won over his enemies, namely the people that have been trying to make him adjust to a different, that is, normative lifestyle. Miss MacTavish’s disgust only confirms to him that he has succeeded in resisting all Miss MacTavish’s attempts to socialise him, “But she [Miss MacTavish] had seen enough to know what he thought of the bright little reformatory they had designed for him - insulting his misery with light paint and flowery walls - and to know that he was not a man to swallow insults” (209). A paranoid reading 36 of “Work of Art”, driven by the desire to expose dominant ideologies and hegemonic mechanisms, would seek to establish why people like Mr Herzen do not fit in with the norms, and would also examine the oppressive mechanisms these people seek to resist. This reading would empha‐ sise the non-normative aspect of the story and the way it challenges accepted “truths”. Subsequently, it would aim at isolating the elements in the story that defy these norms. Mr Herzen’s refusal to settle down in a “bourgeois kennel”, for example, could be regarded as an act of rebellion. Unwilling to perform the role society assigns to him, he counters any expectations by corrupting the space he has been “generously” given. If the story ended here, with Mr Herzen triumphing over his “tyrants”, a paranoid reading would suffice to offer inter‐ esting and thought-provoking insights into “A Work of Art”. After Miss Mac‐ Tavish leaves Mr. Herzen’s flat, however, the story takes a different turn. As part two of the analysis shows, a paranoid, suspicious approach alone cannot do the story justice. Eccentric Art The story’s non-antagonistic stance towards Mr Herzen’s art form is immedi‐ ately apparent in the following passage in which the narrator recalls how Mr Herzen witnesses the completion of his masterpiece: 161 6.2 Failure and Success in “A Work of Art” Slow to get under way, tantalizingly slow and fitful, the process of deterioration had gathered impetus, sweeping him along with it, inspiring him to spill and scorch and knock over so that whatever he did prompted a new invention of filth and squalor. And then, impalpable as a vapour, the quality of perfection had emerged, grave and austere, wrapping his inventions and contrivances and laboured-at dinginess in a solemn veil of inhumanity. (210) During the growth of his piece of art, Mr Herzen gradually loses every form of agency, and the creation begins to develop a life of its own. He himself empha‐ sises that he did not create it entirely on his own, “[…] he had foreseen the masterpiece that he and time would create between them” (210, emphasis added). Mr Herzen works collaboratively with a force over which he knows he has no control. The development the artwork undergoes electrifies and inspires him, and he wilfully gives himself up to it. Eventually, the “quality of perfection” lends the piece of art its finishing touch. There is hardly a way to describe this element; it is intangible, intense, and has the power to transform the object - by enshrouding it in “a solemn veil of inhumanity”. This aspect is particularly important. What exactly does it mean to wrap something in “a solemn veil of inhumanity”? A negative way of reading this would be to see “inhumanity” as something barbarous and cruel, something that lacks any form of compassion. These, however, are not the only aspects covered by “inhumanity”. “Inhumanity” also refers to the state of no longer being human, of losing all human qualities, of reaching different levels, of dissolving. Ultimately, it refers to a state of indifference, a state in which all human norms, structures, and constructs be‐ come meaningless. In this sense, Mr Herzen’s work of art has started to exist outside human boundaries. This is what makes it a masterpiece: its ex-centric position. Despite the fact that it is still situated in the human world, and always will be, it is constantly linked to a different, indescribable place that humans cannot conceptualise. The description of Mr Herzen’s work of art is reminiscent of Stevie Smith’s poem “Pretty” (1972), which ends with the lines, Cry pretty, pretty, pretty and you’ll be able Very soon not even to cry pretty And so be delivered from humanity This is prettiest of all, it is very pretty. (115) By repeatedly uttering the gendered adjective “pretty” the word gradually begins to lose its meaning. No longer caught up in any system, the person ad‐ dressed by the speaker will be freed, and possibly disintegrate into nothing - or everything. The piece of art and its creator are characterised by a similar quality. 162 6. Vanishing Both begin to exist in a world “delivered from humanity”. Mr Herzen and his eccentric piece of art are part of this world but exist detached from any kind of human value system. It becomes clear that the story does not seek to establish whether Mr Herzen has failed or has been successful. Since he withdraws from the outside world (“He would not open the door again”), he has evaded catego‐ risation and, by merging with his work of art, has become less intelligible. In the end, Mr Herzen no longer requires recognition from anyone. At first, he revelled in Miss MacTavish’s disgust since it confirmed the existence of his work of art; however, he soon came to realise that he no longer depended on any form of human assent. His work of art exists for and with him; he is completely in‐ different to the outside world’s perspective on it. In this sense, the categories of “success” and “failure” become completely meaningless. Within the logic of the story, it is conceivable that, in the words of Stevie Smith, “[t]his is prettiest of all”. The story challenges conventional understandings of accepted norms and deviant behaviour, however, not in a moralising way. Mr Herzen is the only person to regard his accumulation as a masterpiece; every other character fails to see the beauty of it, recognising in it only dirt and squalor. The story considers both options - dirt as something undesirable/ dirt as something desirable - but, in the end, does not settle for one or the other. Instead, the story suggests that both options are merely part of the human value system. Moreover, it becomes clear that the story does not seek to establish whether Mr Herzen has made a success or failure of his life. By doing so, “A Work of Art” not only questions the idea of success and failure, but also exposes how meaningless they are. 6.3 Textural Desires in “A Dressmaker” In “Boors Carousing”, Miss Metcalf imagines herself to be part of the river and in “A Work of Art” Mr Herzen seeks to merge with the piece of art he created. In both cases, the protagonists wish to go beyond the boundary that separates human existence from other forms of being. “A Dressmaker” shows similarities with both abovementioned stories insofar as Mrs Benson, a customer of the dressmaker Mrs Cleaver, seeks to merge with costly fabrics. She wears gowns made of expensive materials to allow her to escape reality, to enter a different world - a world that even excludes the reader. The chapter explores both female protagonists’ passion for fine fabrics and the textural desires that motivate them. It further demonstrates how the story links the sense of touch to non-dualistic experiences. 163 6.3 Textural Desires in “A Dressmaker” “Country estates, summer lets and village shops (along with their eccentric occupants)”, writes Christian House, “were all grist to Warner’s literary mill” (House). “A Dressmaker” is set in the small village of Dumbridge, in the dress‐ making studio of Mrs Cleaver. The story is divided into three parts. The first part revolves around Mrs Cleaver, who yearns to work with rich fabrics. She must content herself, however, with simple patterns and ordinary material until the opportunity arises to make evening gowns for Mrs Benson. Mrs Benson, who, according to Christian House, is “the mad anti-heroine of ‘A Dressmaker”’, has very extravagant wishes (House). She has a clear idea of what her dresses should look like and brings along the finest materials for Mrs Cleaver to sew into gowns. In the second part of the story, Mrs Cleaver finds Mrs Benson roaming the streets of Dumbridge wearing one of the ball gowns she had sewn for her. The townspeople consider Mrs Benson’s behaviour distinctly odd and watch her from a distance, without intervening. Mrs Cleaver takes pity on her customer and leads her back to her flat to tidy her up. In the third part, Mrs Cleaver makes the acquaintance of Mr Benson. A few weeks after his wife’s scene in Dumb‐ ridge, he approaches Mrs Cleaver in her dressmaker’s studio. He has come to settle any outstanding debts that his wife may have incurred and informs Mrs Cleaver that he has had his wife committed to a mental home. As House points out, stories like “A Dressmaker” “[…] illustrate little faith in matrimony” (House). Mr Benson cannot handle his wife’s eccentricities and, rather than trying to understand her problems, resorts to sending her away. Textural Pleasures In “Making Things, Practicing Emptiness” (2011), Sedgwick reflects on her artistic creations. She recounts her practice of working with textiles and de‐ scribes how her relationship with fine materials developed over the course of time. She writes, I think I was finally giving up the pretext of self-ornamentation, to which my love of textiles had always clung before. […] Apparently the notion of a visual or tactile beauty that might be impersonal, dislinked from the need to present a first-person self to the world, came as news to me - late, late news. (Sedgwick, “Making Things, Practicing Emptiness” 71) Sedgwick describes how she began to experience textiles as something abstract; as something that was no longer necessarily linked to her own body. Although she admired the texture of a particular material, she no longer felt the desire to dress herself in, for example, silk or cashmere and display her new garments in 164 6. Vanishing public. “A Dressmaker” explores similar inclinations; neither character engages with expensive materials for the purpose of self-embellishment or “to present a first-person self to the world”. Mrs Cleaver’s and Mrs Benson’s desires to engage with expensive fabrics - to wear them, to touch them, to create something with them, to beautify them, to cut through them or even to destroy them - are driven by different motives. Mrs Cleaver, for example, takes pleasure in creating flowing, colourful gowns and garments, while Mrs Benson relies on special tex‐ tiles and styles to enable her to disappear into a world of her own. To Mrs Cleaver’s regret, she is usually only asked to sew practical garments. Only occasionally is she commissioned to sew something a little more exciting: But after the third suit came a most enjoyable dressing-gown - purple velours with angel sleeves; and the following year when the Bishop visited Dumbridge for a con‐ firmation, Susie and Moira Jameson, Anne Nobbs, and Dawn Pullibank were dressed for the occasion by Madame Cleaver. Such dresses, with their pin tucks, their organ pleats, their little touches of hand embroidery, were a real pleasure to make; nor would her skill be wasted on a single appearance before a bishop, since afterward they could be secularized with coloured sashes and scoop-out necks and gone to parties in. (134-35) Despite the fact that none of the above garments are made of any particularly stimulating material, Mrs Cleaver still enjoys working with them. She revels in minute details and intricate designs and, for example, invests great time and effort in embellishing the girls’ dresses with her intricate needlework. It is notable that the dresses are ordered for a religious occasion, namely a confir‐ mation, and not for the sheer pleasure of wearing them. After the ecclesiastical event, however, Mrs Cleaver is asked to turn them into party dresses by adding a few ribbons and lowering the neckline. The example of the dresses epitomises the attitude of the majority of Mrs Cleaver’s customers. They are not inclined to spend money on costly materials or fancy designs, but prefer practical outfits that can be worn on different occasions: “[…] they preferred colours that would not show the dirt, and styles that would not create remark” (135). Before Mrs Cleaver starts making gowns for Mrs Benson, she rarely gets the chance to create the kind of dress she has been envisioning. The dresses she designs for Mrs Jelks, “who twice sang the contralto solos in the Dumbridge and Westpool Choral Society’s yearly performance of Handel’s Messiah - once in shades of heliotrope, once in electric blue”, are a rare exception (135). Attending her customer’s performance, Mrs Cleaver revels in the sight of the dresses, especially the blue dress. The magnificent colour and the texture of the loosely swelling material fill her with pride: 165 6.3 Textural Desires in “A Dressmaker” Like the note of a trumpet, the electric blue dominated the scene, more shimmering than the violins, more imposing than the organ. Bright, and never to be forgotten, was the vision of Mrs. Jelks, her bosom swelling, her skirts unfurling, rising in a torrent of electric blue satin to sing He Was Despised. (136) Mrs Cleaver is far more interested in her creation than the actual concert. She is confident that the colour of the gown - the intense blue - ranks equally with the sound of the trumpet, not with regard to beauty, but with regard to force: the “electric blue” holds the same power over the concert-goers as the trium‐ phant sound of the instrument. Apart from the trumpet, she regards all the other instruments, the violins and the organ, to be inferior to the gown. Interestingly, Mrs Cleaver does not differentiate between the sensory expe‐ riences of sight and sound. Likewise, she does not divide the sound of the violins and the organ and the colour of the gown into clear categories. In her mind, they are part of the same sensation. The relative ease with which she compares colour to music is striking. In Touching Feeling (2003) Sedgwick points out that “[…] other senses beyond the visual and haptic are involved in the perception of texture, as when we hear the hush-brush of corduroy trousers or the crunch of extra-crispy chicken” (15). The two objects Sedgwick mentions - the corduroy trousers and the chicken - both have a specific appearance and surface and both have an individual sound. Sedgwick draws attention to the fact that these dif‐ ferent properties immediately come together in our perception of texture. In Sedgwick’s example the multiple sensory perceptions - the way the chicken looks, the way it feels when we touch it, the sound we hear when we chew it - are all linked to the same object. In “A Dressmaker”, the perception of texture is experienced differently again. Here, the sensations Mrs Cleaver experiences are not directly linked to one another: the music the different instruments make is not part of the gown, i.e. the gown itself does not produce the music. Strikingly, however, the arrangement of the visual and aural experience intensifies the way Mrs Cleaver perceives its texture until the sounds gradually become an exten‐ sion of the gown. Mrs Jelks’ body, too, becomes part of the textural experience: Her physical performance accentuates the different details of the gown Mrs Cleaver has created and lends it a new force. As in the previous example, the garment was made for a church event. Mrs Jelks knew she would be standing in front of a large group of people and wanted to look her best. To her, the gown is not just a garment she uses to cover her body, but a symbol of her social and artistic standing. As the following sec‐ tion shows, the gowns Mrs Cleaver sews for Mrs Benson serve a different pur‐ pose. 166 6. Vanishing Experiencing Textiles Mrs Cleaver is not very impressed when she first meets Mrs Benson. She does not expect her to be the kind of woman who would commission dresses made from expensive material (“Probably some sort of lightweight tweed, or a wool jersey”, 137); however, appearances are deceiving. When Mrs Benson presents her with the material she wishes her to use, she realises that Mrs Benson is not just unfolding any kind of material, but a very expensive fabric, namely brocade: The tissue paper rustled to the floor. Mrs. Benson unfolded a silvery-blue brocade, the colour of a winter sea; the colour, too, of her eyes, though until the brocade was unwrapped they had not seemed to be of any colour at all. (137) The sight of the brocade has an overwhelming effect on Mrs Cleaver. She does not merely see different colours but a picture of the sea. Light colours dominate the picture, shades of silver and blue. The brocade emanates dignity, and sud‐ denly Mrs Cleaver sees Mrs Benson in a new light. Her eyes, which did not seem very animated until the brocade was unwrapped, now appear to have the same colour as the fabric. The dressmaker is overcome by rapturous emotions, “[She] went down on her knees to it, as though before a shrine. Piously revelling in its intact beauty and abundance, she longed to get her scissors into it, to transform it into something really stylish” (138). It appears as if Mrs Cleaver were genu‐ flecting in admiration before the brocade. As indicated above, Mrs Cleaver is not particularly devout or given over to religious practices but, in this instance, she seems to revere fine fabrics in an almost sacred manner. She also, however, feels a yearning desire to cut through the material and fashion it to her intent. She admires the material’s “intact beauty”, but cannot wait to change its immaculate appearance. Her impulse to cut through the material reveals her urge to consume it, to make it hers. Although Mrs Cleaver takes delight in working with expensive textiles, she shows little interest in wearing the garments she creates. Once she finishes a piece of clothing, she becomes a distant observer (“Mary Cleaver did not speak of her new client [Mrs Benson]; she did not even mention that she had been making a gown. The ambition had been satisfied”, 140). She resigns any form of ownership after the garment has changed hands. Her creation will be admired, but she will not receive any credit for having designed and made the garment. Mrs Benson, like Mrs Cleaver, is mainly interested in the material and does not seek public appraisal. For her, the most important aspect is the wearing of the clothes. She does not consider the expensive gowns she commissions to be a kind of status symbol, and has no interest in presenting them to other people, unlike, for example, Mrs Jelks who takes pleasure in showing her gown off in 167 6.3 Textural Desires in “A Dressmaker” church. To Mrs Benson, the gowns she has had made mean much more. In typical Warnerian style, the story does not disclose what exactly the gowns symbolise to Mrs Benson, or what they remind her of. It is suggested, however, that the material is linked to her past, and by wearing it she is temporarily able to forget being the Honourable Mrs Georgina Benson. Soon after Mrs Cleaver finishes the first gown for Mrs Benson, her customer returns with more expensive material (“satin, mahogany-coloured”, 141) to be made into yet another evening gown. Mrs Cleaver is very apprehensive about making another gown for Mrs Benson (“It had been too much of a responsibility to handle that expensive brocade, to carry the burden of it unencouraged by any words of appreciation”, 140), but she accepts the order. This time, however, she does not fall to her knees in front of the material. She is very sceptical of the cut Mrs Benson demands: The skirt was to be draped to show a lead-coloured petticoat, the trimming to consist of a few lead-coloured bows. Three sets of bows had to be made before Mrs Benson was satisfied with them. It was a cruel gown to make, and would be even crueller to wear. But it was what Mrs. Benson wanted. She said so, standing in front of the glass, intent and motionless. It was as if she would stand there for ever, like a tree in a landscape, like an effigy of dark marbles in a church. It needed several recalling fidgets to dislodge her from her dream. (141) Mrs Benson remains an opaque figure. The story does not reveal why she chooses to wear a gown that will not offer her much comfort. It suggests that she deliberately seeks the feeling of wearing a beautiful robe made from expen‐ sive materials to restrict her movements and weigh down her body. In addition, the story does not reveal what Mrs Benson sees or imagines standing in front of the mirror. Speaking with Foucault, she sees herself “there where [she is] not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface” (Foucault, “Of Other Spaces” 24). The passage hints at the fact that Mrs Benson longs for a space, a time, maybe even a period in her life that has irretrievably been lost to her. Mrs Benson later tells Mrs Cleaver that her mother used to take her to a dress‐ maker’s to have her clothes specially made: “Discovering that Mary [Cleaver] had worked for Langridge&Harmony, she told how she used to go there as a little girl accompanying her mother, to sit watching the fitter and wishing for a little black velvet pincushion to bob at her waist” (146). Wearing the garments which Mrs Cleaver sews for her possibly allows her to forget the present and withdraw to a time in the past. Observing her customer, Mrs Cleaver notices that Mrs Benson has become unaffected by the passage of time. She has slipped out of the present reality that 168 6. Vanishing she and Mrs Cleaver share and has become oblivious to the world around her. For a short period, Mrs Benson transcends the boundary that ties her to the role of Mrs Benson, wife of Mr Benson. This state is effected by the gown she has commissioned. Mrs Cleaver first compares her to a “tree”, then, notably, to an “effigy”. Effigies are commonly made of stone or marble and represent other - absent - persons. Standing in front of the mirror, Mrs Benson is the effigy as well as the person represented by the effigy. “Effigy’s similarity to performance should be clear enough: ”, writes Joseph Roach, author of Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic performance (1996), “it fills by means of surrogation a vacancy created by the absence of an original” (36). The Mrs Benson, who dresses in costly fabrics, fills the vacancy created by the absence of the Mrs Benson of the past. She is present in body, but absent in mind. Standing in front of the mirror, Mrs Benson no longer makes an effort to be the woman she usually is; she sees herself somewhere very different, in a place and time of which she can no longer be a part. Mrs Benson begins to trust Mrs Cleaver and soon after the satin gown, she orders a gown for a very specific occasion; she requests a gown “‘[f]or sad evenings’” (141). Mrs Cleaver fails to understand the meaning of Mrs Benson’s words: “Mary supposed that the next dress she would make for Mrs Benson would be for those dusky, clammy evenings when one almost lights a fire but instead puts on a shawl, and she was glad to think that for once Mrs Benson was facing realities” (142). Up until now, Mrs Cleaver had always sewn gowns for specific ceremonies or events. The dressmaker understands “sad” to mean damp and cold; she fails to notice the bleak and melancholy tone that resonates through Mrs Benson’s words. Yet, the material her customer brings unmistak‐ ably communicates her understanding of “sad”: “The silk she brought, patterned in arabesques of brown and mulberry and a curious dead slate-blue, was fine as a moth’s underwing” (142). It is obvious that this fabric will not protect Mrs Benson against the cold since its purpose is simply decorative. “Sad” to Mrs Benson means dismal and dreary; the sober colours and the fragile texture reiterate these notions. Whereas the brocade Mrs Benson first brought was of a light silvery-blue, the silk is of “a curious dead slate-blue”. Over the course of the story, the colours of the materials Mrs Benson brings gradually lose their vivacity. The gown, however, that Mrs Benson envisions will never be made: over the years, the silk has started to perish. Confronted with the flawed material, Mrs Benson suddenly seeks to destroy it further: Mrs. Benson had repossessed herself of the silk, and with an expression of gleeful malice was poking holes in its ruined web. Mary Cleaver blinked and looked away, 169 6.3 Textural Desires in “A Dressmaker” and afterwards tried to convince herself that what she had seen was nothing out of the common, and not in the least horrible. (143) The wickedness with which Mrs Benson pursues her action makes Mrs Cleaver feel uncomfortable. She does not know how to handle the situation and pretends not to see what is going on. She, likewise, has been driven by the desire to destroy an expensive fabric. However, she did not seek to ruin it, but to transform it into something new. Mrs Benson, in contrast, is manically enjoying the destruction she is bringing about. She realises that the gown that would allow her to enter the reality of “sad evenings” will never be made. The gowns Mrs Benson orders with Mrs Cleaver do not help her construct a new identity. They allow her to do much more: they enable her to abandon her identity and lose herself in a different reality. Wearing the gowns she orders, Mrs Benson becomes oblivious to her surroundings. One day, for example, Mrs Cleaver discovers her walking the streets of Dumbridge in a blue evening gown to the amusement of all the townspeople and holidaymakers (“‘Look at her! I ask you! Did you ever see such a scream? […]’”, 144). Mrs Benson does not pay any attention to any of the voices. She is so lost in her world that no one matters to her. In contrast to Mr Herzen, who seeks to become one with his work of art, Mrs Benson is unable to vanish from the world by merging with costly fabrics. Her marriage to Mr Benson tethers her to him and his reality. Sedgwick writes that “[…] the sense of touch makes nonsense out of any dualistic understanding of agency and passivity; to touch is always already to reach out, to fondle, to heft, to tap, or to enfold, and always to understand other people or natural forces as having effectually done so before oneself, if only in the making of the textured object” (Touching Feeling 15). These ideas are echoed in Warner’s poem “The Only Child” (1925) as well as in “A Dressmaker”. In “The Only Child” the speaker, wrapped up in her mother’s shawl, participates in the long and intricate history of the cloth. In “A Dressmaker” the protagonist de‐ velops an indifference to the categories her surroundings seek to impose on her by wearing costly gowns. 6.4 Nonbeing In “A Work of Art”, as well as in “A Dressmaker”, the characters are seen to merge with the materials that surround them. In the case of “A Dressmaker”, Mrs Benson loses herself in fine textiles whereas in the story “A Work of Art”, the protagonist devotes himself to waste. In ‘“Boors Carousing”’ the female protagonist, Miss Metcalf, imagines surrendering her body to the river, and in 170 6. Vanishing doing so becoming one with the waves. Her ideas of vanishing stand in stark contrast to those of Mr Kinloch, the male protagonist of the story. While he merely pictures her dying, possibly drowning in the river next to her house, her thoughts on death go beyond the limits of conventional experience; they are much more elusive, much more transcendental. All three stories, “‘Boors Carousing’”, “A Dressmaker”, and “A Work of Art” contemplate a state in which humans are free of dominant ideologies enabling them to vanish into another entity. Sedgwick, in “Making Things, Practicing Emptiness”, reflects upon a similar state. In contrast to Warner, however, Sedg‐ wick employs a specific name to define it; she refers to it as “nonbeing”. She writes, For me, the slow and late-in-life emergence of a distinct artistic practice involving textiles has not mostly involved the construction of an identity, nor a change of iden‐ tity, nor even the deconstruction of one, but something very different: a meditative practice of possibilities of emptiness and even nonbeing. (69, emphasis added) Her experience comes close to the experiences that Mrs Benson and Mr Herzen undergo. Like these two characters, Sedgwick enters a state of nonbeing when handling certain materials. In this respect, Miss Metcalf differs from the rest. Her vision of this state of nonbeing, of vanishing, is not triggered by material objects or touch but by the sight of free-flowing water. These stories continue to explore the idea of evading interpellation, similar to the stories in Chapter 6. The protagonists’ actions in these stories, however, are generally less dictated by coincidence than the actions of, for example, Pe‐ nelope Ludham in “At the Trafalgar Bakery”, Lucy Ridpath in “But at the Stroke of Midnight”, and Lois Hardcastle in “An Act of Reparation”. 171 6.4 Nonbeing 37 In this context Harman notes, “The book [Kingdoms of Elfin] was a collection of short stories about fairyland - a subject […] which many of her admirers, including her ‘gen‐ tleman friend’, The New Yorker, found hard to come to terms with” (“Celebration” 31). 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin During an interview with Val Warner and Michael Schmidt in 1975, Warner talks about her reasons for writing about elves instead of humans, and her move away from mostly realist fiction to fantasy, “‘[…] I suddenly looked round my career and thought, ‘Good God, I’ve been understanding the human heart for all these decades. Bother the human heart, I’m tired of the human heart. I’m tired of the human race. I want to write about something entirely different’” (“Conversa‐ tion” 36). From this point on, Warner stops writing about humans - and other talking animals - and begins to write about an elfin universe characterised by distinctive value systems. As Ingrid Hotz-Davies writes, “She [Warner] was keenly conscious that she was embarking on a new journey, a challenge and an adventure” (1). Despite Warner’s initial concerns that The New Yorker would not publish them, the magazine published fifteen of Warner’s elfin stories, and, as Maxwell points out, “[…] fifteen stories about fairyland is a considerable number for any magazine to publish” (“Sylvia Townsend Warner and The New Yorker” 44-45). Maxwell’s words imply that The New Yorker was not always entirely sure what to make of the stories, which, at times, are rather bizarre and seldom contain “a breath of human kindness” (EoL 215). 37 After appearing in The New Yorker, Warner’s elfin stories were published in the short story collection Kingdoms of Elfin: Strange Tales of the Fantastic, the Sinister and the Impossible (Chatto and Windus, 1977, Handheld Press, 2019). As the previous chapters have highlighted, Warner’s pre-elfin stories display many common characteristics - most notably, they are marked by a striking indifference to societal norms and feature eccentric, unconventional characters. The stories never attempt to defend or explain their characters’ desires and actions and often adopt a detached narrative mode. The following chapter explores the consequences of elfin indifference in selected stories from King‐ doms of Elfin, arguing that the elfin stories elude categorisation and move even further off-centre than Warner’s earlier stories. The chapter will further show that the elfin stories do not seek to convey a moral message as Brian Stableford suggests with regard to the whole collection (“a remarkably ornate and effective 38 See, for example, “Sir Godfrey Macculloch”, a story in which an elf rescues a mortal from the gallows since, on a previous occasion, the mortal had agreed to change the direction of his drain pipe, which, until then had “emptied itself directly into his [the elf ’s] chamber of daïs” (Douglas 112). 39 Kirk wrote the first version of The Secret Commonwealth, The Secret Commonwealth, or, An essay on the Nature andActions of the Subterranean (and for the most part) Invisible collection of moralistic fantasies”, 423). It also argues that they do not merely constitute a “different approach to reality”, a quality that Ursula K. Le Guin con‐ siders to be a significant feature of fantasy fiction (145). Warner’s Realm of Fairy In “The Fairies in Scotland”, a fairy-tale collected in Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales (1901), the reader learns the following: “The Fairies of Scotland are represented as a diminutive race of beings, of a mixed, or rather dubious nature, capricious in their dispositions, and mischievous in their resentment” (Douglas 108). “Re‐ demption from Fairyland”, another story in the collection, sheds further light on elfin behaviour: Shortly after their [ John and Mary’s] marriage, they being a young couple, they went to live in the town of Aberdeen, where he followed his trade, being a goldsmith; they lived loving and agreeable together until the time of her lying-in, when there was female attendants prepared suitable to her situation; when near the hour of twelve at night they were alarmed with a dreadful noise, at which of a sudden the candles went out, which drove the attendants in the utmost confusion; soon as the women regained their half-lost senses, they called in their neighbours who, after striking up lights, and looking towards the lying-in woman, found her a corpse, which caused great confu‐ sion in the family. (139) It turns out, however, that Mary did not die, but that she and her child were abducted by elves who left “a piece of wood” in her bed that resembled her (140). In general, the elves in Douglas’ collection are very ambiguous beings, “capri‐ cious in their dispositions”, and, for the most part, they show little concern for a mortal’s feelings. On occasion, however, they help mortals, especially if the mortals unwittingly helped them in the past. 38 Warner’s elves are very similar to the elves in Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales - though they are much less disposed to provide mortals with any kind of support. As Geoffrey Grigson implies, Warner’s elves also share many similarities with the fairies Robert Kirk describes in The Secret Commonwealth  39 (17). Warner, it appears, did not invent an entirely 174 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin People heretofore going under the Name of Faunes and Fairies, or the lyke, among the Low Country Scots, as they are Described by Those who have the Second Sight, in 1691, “a work later published in several different versions” (Stott). 40 Bauman quotes Derrida on the undecidable to clarify his concept: ‘“[The undecidable] can no longer be included within philosophical (binary) opposition, resisting and dis‐ organising it, without ever constituting a third term, without ever leaving room for a solution in the form of speculative dialectics’” (55, emphasis in the original). new species of elves in her stories, but rather builds on earlier fairy lore. As Hannah Priest points out, “Warner’s presentation of the amorality of fairies is by no means unique” (3). Referring to earlier representations of fairies, Priest continues, “From Shakespeare’s Titania and Oberon to Barrie’s Peter Pan and Tinker Bell, fairy literature abounds with imperious and thoughtless creatures that use mortals simply for sport, and treat one another in much the same way” (3). As the following pages will show, Warner, in contrast, endows her elves with a liveliness and energy rarely found in fairy tales or other works of fantasy. The Human Perception of Elves Bauman states that humans attempt to make the world as comprehensible as possible and, as a result, feel a need to categorise their fellow human beings (54). Bauman observes this tendency with regard to non-fictional characters. This attitude, however, can also be detected in literary works, especially in Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin. Bauman maintains that the first classification humans make is one of friend or foe. In a structuralistic division, friends are positive, present, true, and have a moral duty, whereas enemies are negative, absent, false, and refuse to take any moral responsibility (see 53-54). According to Bauman, how‐ ever, the friend-enemy dichotomy overlooks an important element: that of the “stranger”. The stranger poses a threat since they undermine this antagonism: “As that opposition [of friend and enemy] is the foundation on which rest all social life and all differences which patch it up and hold it together, the stranger saps social life itself ” (55). Bauman describes the stranger as “neither friend nor enemy” or both, in other words, the stranger cannot be classified (55). With reference to Derrida, Bauman therefore calls the stranger an “undecidable” 40 who “put paid to the ordering power of the opposition, and so to the ordering power of the narrators of the opposition” (56). The following chapter sets out to explore to which extent Warner’s elfin stories work with, and around, these antagonisms. 175 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin 41 A person reading the collection of short stories might find this further piece of infor‐ mation on elves unnecessary; however, it is important to keep in mind that these short stories were first published successively in the New Yorker and not in a complete col‐ lection. Most mortals in Kingdoms of Elfin have a low opinion of fairies and believe them to be nothing more than “thieving pests” (KoE 24). They derive their knowledge of the fairy folk largely from legends, folktales, and traditional songs rather than from actual encounters. The reason for this being that mortals are unable to see fairies, as the narrator tells the reader in “The Revolt at Brocé‐ liande”, [m]ortals do not see fairies - the generalization is as nearly a rule as anything in this turning world can be. It is certain that they cannot be seen by those who are looking for them. If a fairy of Brocéliande were seen, it was by some peasant whose mind was taken up with his own concerns - hunger, a leaky roof, a lost cow. (56) Elves can see mortals whenever they choose, whereas mortals are only able to glimpse elves under certain circumstances, and then only if the elf is wearing visibility. This gives elves an advantage over humans, but is not the only reason why encounters between elves and humans rarely end well. The mortal Elisha Blackwell in “Elphenor and Weasel” encounters elves twice in his life; the first time as a child and the second time as an adult. During the second encounter, Elphenor, the elf who crosses his path, forgets to turn off his visibility, “though the shift between visible and invisible is a press-button affair” (24). Blackwell remarks, expressing anti-gypsy sentiments, “There were fairies all round my father’s place in Suffolk. Thieving pests, they were, bad as gypsies. But I half liked them. They were company for me, being an only child” (24, emphasis added). Blackwell has ambivalent feelings towards elves and he is unsure whether these strange creatures can be classified as friends or enemies. The narrator of “The Revolt at Broceliande” further stresses that most mortals do not wish to see a fairy, “since to see a fairy is unlucky” (56). In the first paragraph of “The Mortal Milk”, the narrator gives the reader further information about fairykind and recounts that “[it] is commonly sup‐ posed that fairies, or elfins, are trifling little beings, always on the wing and incapable of dying. This misapprehension has come about because they prefer to live in invisibility” (66). 41 From this quote, it becomes evident that mortals have very little real knowledge of the fairy folk. The narrator exposes the common beliefs held by mortals (“always on the wing”, “incapable of dying”) to demonstrate that fairies are different from what mortals consider them to be and that the relationship between fairykind and humankind is closer than is 176 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin 42 Robert Crossley, in his 1985 comparison of Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin and J. R. R. Tol‐ kien’s Silmarillion, sees aspects of Warner’s life are reflected in her writing,especially with regard to the long lives Warner’s elves live. He recalls that Warner was already in her eighties when she was writing the stories and states that “[she] can be ironic about elfin longevity because she had accepted her own brevity” (Crossley 59). supposed. As regards the physical size of fairies, they are not much smaller than ordinary humans and, although they live longer than humans, they eventually die like everybody else. 42 These facts are revealed in “The Five Black Swans”: The mysterious tribe of fairies are erroneously supposed to be immortal and very small. In fact, they are of smallish human stature and of ordinary human contrivance. They are born, and eventually die; but their longevity and their habit of remaining good-looking, slender and unimpaired till the hour of death have led to the Kingdom of Elfin being called the Land of the Ever-Young. (15) In the above description, the narrator uses the word “mysterious” in an ironic sense to describe the tribe of fairies, indicating that the narrator does not con‐ sider the elves to be enigmatic at all. They refer to them in the same way as humans and subtly make fun of those mortal characters that hold romanticised opinions of the elfin world, believing it to be a world of magic inhabited by benevolent friends. The reader is not solely dependent on the narrator’s direct accounts of what mortals believe they know about fairies. Intertextual references to existing works of literature verify the prevailing knowledge of fairies and lend the nar‐ rator further credibility. In the short story “The Occupation”, Gideon Baxter, the Minister of Cotho, reads Robert Kirk’s treatise The Secret Commonwealth to find out more about elves. From the treatise he learns: These Siths, or FAIRIES, they call Sleagh Maith, or the Good People, it would seem, to prevent the Dint of their ill Attempts, (for the Irish use to bless all they fear Harme of; ) and are said to be of a midle Nature betwixt Man and Angel, as were Daemons thought to be of old; of intelligent studious Spirits, and light and changable Bodies, (like those called Astral,) somewhat of the Nature of a condensed Cloud, and best seen in Twilight. (203) In Kirk’s work, fairies are not presented in an entirely positive light. The Minister of Cotho, however, likes to think that fairies would make perfect com‐ panions, “He stared round at his empty room, smiling as if to welcome these guests: intelligent, studious spirits, a companionship he had longed for ever since coming to Cotho” (203). He does not have ambivalent feelings towards fairies and assumes they can be placed in the category friend. Unfortunately, the 177 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin Minister comes to realise that fairies are nothing like what he had hoped them to be. After the fairies, who are occupying his house, hide his youngest son, the Minister becomes convinced that the fairies have stolen his child and left behind a changeling in his place. The simple truth of the matter was that the fairies had hidden the child for egotistic reasons - the incessant crying of the infant annoyed them. Nevertheless, the Minister “[…] felt the weeping resentment of a man betrayed. He felt the fury of a man made a fool of ” (206). At the end of the story, the Minister comes to the sobering realisation that he has become a victim of his own delusions. All along the fairies had constantly been indifferent towards him and had not shown any interest in socialising with him. The en‐ counter proves to have dire consequences: “[…] there was nothing for it but to have him [the Minister] declared a madman and taken to the County Bridewell […]” (207). The strangers, whom the Minister believed to be friends, turn out to be - from a mortal’s perspective - enemies. Contrastingly, from an elfin per‐ spective no enmity was felt: merely indifference. They occupied the mortal’s house because they had no other place to go, and they left when the situation became too tense. Humans Through the Eyes of Elves Most elves simply accept the existence of humans and show little or no intention of engaging with them - unless circumstances necessitate it. In “Elphenor and Weasel”, for example, the elf Elphenor is forced to engage with Blackwell, the human necromancer for whom he works. In this story, the reader receives fur‐ ther insights into the different cultures and is gradually prepared for the clash they later witness in stories like “Foxcatle”. Elphenor enjoys the orderliness and regularity of the tasks Blackwell makes him perform. He finds the mortal world he chooses to remain in extremely structured, in contrast to the world he orig‐ inally comes from, and especially likes the idea of completing a task before starting a new one (“[…] everything in his new life, from observing the planets to analyzing specimens of urine, entertained him. It was all so agreeably ter‐ minal: one finished one thing and went on to another”, 25). Unlike mortals, elves are not familiar with the concept of moving within a teleologically structured world and working towards a specific goal. They live their lives according to a different time scale and do not experience the limitations of time in the same way as human beings. Elphenor furthermore enjoys observing the drama of everyday mortal life: 178 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin 43 Due to the wide scope of this thesis, I have chosen not to comment on the fact that “Elphenor and Weasel” also questions xenophobic attitudes towards colour and race. While Elphenor is white, Weasel is “a very pretty shade of green” (27). Due to their different skin colours, they cannot return to either of their home kingdoms together since the local fairies do not tolerate elves of different skin colours. Further information on this topic may be found in Meyrav Koren-Kuik. “From Lolly Willowes to Kingdoms of Elfin: The Poetics of Socio-Political Commentary in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Fan‐ tasy Narratives.” Baptism of Fire: The Birth of the Modern British Fantastic in World War I. Ed. Janet Brennan Croft. Altadena: Mythopoeic Press, 2015. 44 As a later part of this chapter shows, changelings play a similar role in the fairy world. He did not want to [go back]. There was better entertainment in the mortal world. Mortals packed more variety into their brief lives - perhaps because they knew them to be brief. There was always something going on and being taken seriously: love, hate, ambition, plotting, fear, and all the rest of it. (27, emphasis added) The mortal world intrigues Elphenor and he finds the many differences between human and elfin behaviour highly entertaining. However, upon learning that Master Blackwell intends to sell him and his lover Weasel to another necro‐ mancer, the elfin couple decides it is time to leave. 43 Fairies very often do not take humans seriously, regarding them even as a form of entertainment. 44 This aspect can further be seen in the story “The Blameless Triangle” where a group of fairies leave the court of Wirre Gedanken in order to be able to hold intellectual symposiums. In their search for a place to stay, they come across a chapel. They ensconce themselves in the building, but are shortly afterwards disturbed by a band of gypsies who begin preparing a sumptuous meal. Since the fairies are hungry, they start stealing their food, which causes a quarrel to break out amongst the gypsies: “Before long, [the fairies] were filching from the very hands of their hosts. A small irate gypsy turned to his neighbour, accusing him of snatching a drumstick from between his jaws” (42). The fairies do not stop there, they soon start pinching and pes‐ tering them until “the gypsies snatched up their belongings and made off ” (42). As a result of this incident, the rumour spreads that the chapel is haunted. A priest arrives to perform an exorcism which the fairies at first watch “with mild amusement, even a certain tenderness” (45). They do not interrupt the exorcism and watch it with great interest, almost as if they are watching a child’s per‐ formance put on to entertain them. They are in a superior position since they know that the chapel is not haunted by demons and that their mischief is re‐ sponsible for the priest’s appearance. When the priest starts sprinkling holy water, Tinkel, one of the fairies gets water in his eye. At this point, the situation escalates and becomes very hostile. Annoyed, because he “received a full charge 179 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin of salt and water in the eye”, Tinkel shakes the priest until he drops to the floor and dies (45). This story is a clear demonstration of the fact that most fairies are only interested in humans if humans are able to provide them with something they require - in this case food. The fairies play tricks on them for their amuse‐ ment and provoke fights but otherwise do not show any interest in socially engaging with them. In general, humans do not play an important part in their lives and are regarded with indifference. Although “[it] was felt that Tinkel had gone rather too far”, the fairies do not feel any compunction about the murder since the priest was of little relevance to them (45). In the short story “The Late Sir Glamie” the connection between mortals and elves is discussed in greater detail. Here, the elves make it clear that they do not think mortals and elves should unite. Triggered by the reappearance of the ghost of the late Sir Glamie, the elves at Ring Castle try to ascertain the differences between elves and mortals. Up until the appearance of Sir Glamie’s ghost, elves were convinced that, unlike humans, no elf possessed a soul that could reappear in form of a ghost, therefore “[i]n a mortal court, apparitions are unobjectable - even picturesque, and creditable” but at an elfin court they are not acceptable since they shatter everything elves believe in: Most painful of all was the threat to the calm negation on which all Elfindom reposes. Once this was undermined by Sir Glamie’s reappearances, libertine speculations and surmises would widen the breach, superstition, proselytizing, fear of an awaiting life after death, would rush in and Elfins sink to the level of mortals. (170) The elves at this court wish to draw a clear line between the mortal and elfin race; however, they realise that this is not an easy task. They have to admit that mortals and elves do mix: “[…] at some point or other of Sir Glamie’s pedigree an Elfin lady must have yielded to a mortal lover, and immortality, like the pox, has run in the family ever since” (170). Elves are opposed to interracial relationships; the reason for this is explained in greater depth by the narrator in the story “Castor and Pollux”: “Above all, miscegenation with mortals is re‐ probated because of its likely results - corpulence, coarse skin, broad smiles, dimples, premature decay, and flat fingernails” (176), the main objection, how‐ ever, is that the product of such unions results in so-called “demi-mortals”. At one point in “The Late Sir Glamie”, the Master of Ceremony, the Chancellor, the Chamberlain and the Treasurer discuss the relationship between humans and elves in greater detail. They have information about mortals since, as the nar‐ rator points out, “One could not live on the same planet […] without an occa‐ sional glance at the conventions and convictions which made them a race apart” (172). The Master of Ceremonies picks up the narrator’s remark and comments: 180 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin “‘A race apart. And a race akin’” (172). His view on the relationship between humans and elves is supported by the Treasurer, who agrees, “‘There are re‐ semblances’”, and adds, “‘The same social structure. The same number of toes’” (172). Whereas the Chancellor believes that wings form the “essential distinc‐ tion”, the Master of Ceremonies considers that mortals’ belief in life after death is the most important feature that distinguishes them from elves (172). The Treasurer explains, ‘They lead such unsatisfactory lives. They are so short-lived and so prolific. They see their children dying by the dozen and in the twinkling of an eye are dead themselves. So they avenge themselves on their limitations by thinking there’s more to it than that.’ (172) This statement stands in strange contrast to the previous discussion about the ghost of Sir Glamie. All the elves present know of the ghost’s existence and link it to Sir Glamie’s mortal ancestors, that is, to his immortal soul, assuming that mortals rightly believed in life after death since the evidence was right in front of their very eyes. This thought, however, does not occur to them since they are predominantly interested in the elfin condition. This conversation highlights the fact that a discussion on mortals is only considered necessary if mortals threaten to affect elfin life. This particular group of elves does not talk about mortals because they are interested in the number of their toes, but because something extraordinary is happening inside their kingdom that is causing the mortal world to impinge on the elfin world. The fairy species is not consistent in its treatment of humans and its behaviour towards humans. If, at the end of one story, readers think they are beginning to understand elfin behaviour, then they will be disappointed to find out that in the next story all prior assumptions no longer hold true. In “Visitors to a Castle”, for example, the fairies from the Welsh kingdom, Castle Ash Grove, take care of a mortal who fell off her bicycle and injured her knee. Although they are not overjoyed at the idea of taking her in, the Welsh elves lead her to their castle since “hospitality is a sacred duty among Elfins” (98). In this case, the fairies appear to be friends who “are moulded out of responsibility and moral duty” (Bauman 54). This stands in stark contrast to the elfin behaviour described above and hints at the inconsistencies that exist within the different texts thus high‐ lighting the impossibility of accurately determining what constitutes an elf. As a whole, Kingdoms of Elfin does not generate a coherent picture but is charac‐ terised by subtle contradictions. 181 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin Elves and Humans in “Foxcastle” Pursuant to Bauman, we will always be confronted with objects and events that prove to be unclassifiable, regardless of how hard we try to keep everything in order, an idea that is further taken up by Junge: “Es gibt kein Klassifizierungs‐ system, das alle Phänomene einzuordnen vermag” (67). Most humans are aware of the fact that: Modern existence is both haunted and stirred into restless action by modern con‐ sciousness; and modern consciousness is the suspicion or awareness of the inconclu‐ siveness of extant order; a consciousness prompted and moved by the premonition of inadequacy; nay non-viability of the order-designing, ambivalence-eliminating project; of the randomness of the world and contingency of identities that constitute it. (Bauman 9) The desire to establish order is one of the main themes of “Foxcastle” which tells the story of a mortal, James Sutherland, who enters the fairy world and tries to make sense of it by applying human standards and categories. This analysis focuses on two aspects: the fairies’ examination of Sutherland and Sutherland’s gradual rejection of categorisation systems. First and foremost, the story shows the process of development undergone by a mortal in the fairy world. The story begins when James Sutherland, who has always been fascinated with fairies, sets out to search for the fairykind. His search is successful, but his encounter with the local fairies of Foxcastle leads to his cap‐ ture and subsequent incarceration in a cell-like place in the fairies’ subterranean castle. Sutherland finds himself alone in a “shadowy stone vault” and is no longer able to move freely because he is “bound hand and foot in swathings of cobweb” (KoE 210). The elves remain invisible to him and he has no means of escape. Since the moment of his capture, the roles have been reversed: instead of him studying the fairies, the fairies study him. At first, it appears that the elves cap‐ tured Sutherland purely for research reasons: The fingernail explored the convolutions of his ear, left it, traced the lines on his cheek. Other hands were fingering him, lightly, delicately, adroitly. […] The cobweb bonds yielded as he writhed and struggled, and each time he thought he had snapped them they tightened again. The explorers waited till he lay exhausted, replaced the watch, and proceeded methodically to his genitals. (211) The fairies show no respect for Sutherland’s feelings; for them he is merely an object and not an equal being. For this reason, they do not even try to engage with him. Sutherland is unable to make sense of their behaviour, but despite this, 182 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin he is very reluctant to give up the idealised image he has of fairies: “Throughout his life they [the fairies] had been his dearest preoccupation. He had believed in them, venerated them, championed them” (211). Although he cannot understand their conduct, he tries not to find fault with the fairies. Similar to the Minister in “The Occupation”, Sutherland has always believed that fairies would be per‐ fect companions for him. In contrast to the Minister, however, he refuses to regard them as enemies since apart from interning him, they do him no harm. He convinces himself that he alone is responsible for the treatment he is undergoing and asks himself: “How had he offended them? Why were they so ungrateful? ” (211). The fairies continue with their examination of Sutherland but as time passes their interest in him wanes: At lengthening intervals he [Sutherland] was measured, but now a little perfunctorily. Before long they would lose interest, and there would be no more visits. Whatever they had had in mind - entertainment, the pursuit of knowledge, the pleasure of being busied about something - they had intended him no harm, no good. It was impersonal, the traffic of water flowing over a stone. (213) This statement supports the idea that the elves are completely indifferent to Sutherland and highlights the fact that they quickly lose interest in conducting a clinical study of the human anatomy. Their examination appears arbitrary and seems to derive from a simple “biological curiosity” (212). In contrast to human methods of examination, the elves do not aim at categorising and comparing human body parts for research reasons and do not collect the data in the same way as mortals. However, since the narrator does not speak from an elfin point of view in this story, the reader never learns the reasons for their research. At a later point in the story, Sutherland remarks that “he found it difficult to acclimatize himself to a society which had not a vestige of mortal scholarship” (217). Once the elves have ended their physical examination of him, Sutherland finds himself free to move about the castle. At this point, Sutherland begins to make further excuses for their behaviour towards him: If he had offended them and so put himself in their power, they had shown a most moderate resentment, imposing nothing worse than solitude - which he had always preferred to company - and cobweb fetters. They had washed him, fed him, bedded him in a comfortable thickness of fern; their hands had always been gentle. Where was the farm animal who could say that of a mortal master? Why had he wasted all these months being unappreciative? (214) 183 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin Sutherland refuses to allow negative thoughts about the fairies to enter his mind and chooses to focus on the positive aspects of his imprisonment. He blocks out the many times he felt so lonely that “[he] grew attached to his beard [which] replaced the mouse or the spider which ameliorate the lot of ordinary prisoners” (218). The first event that eases his entrance into the fairy world still happens during his imprisonment. His watch, the “sole ally of his rational man” stops working (211). His watch was his only connection with the outer - mortal - world and was something he was dependent upon to measure his life in meaningful inter‐ vals. Without his watch, he feels insecure and unbalanced. Once he has gained access to the fairy world of Foxcastle, Sutherland comes to realise that any human form of measurement is meaningless there since the elves have a com‐ pletely different notion of time and space: “Accustomed to a methodical social order where time is respected and persons occupy the portion of space where you expect to find them, he reconciled himself to the vagaries of Foxcastle by seeing it as an exemplification of the Fay ce que vouldras of Thélème” (216). As Sutherland gradually comes to understand, the fairies of Foxcastle do what they want, whenever they want. This involuntary experience of losing track of time, of “renouncing chronometry”, enables him to integrate into fairy society and accept the prevailing customs and beliefs held by the fairy folk. A rigid schedule measured by units of time would have been viewed with complete indifference in the fairy world of Foxcastle (cf. 112). One of the first things Sutherland decides to do, after being taken prisoner in the elfin castle, is to analyse the elfin language. As the narrator comments, One is always disconcerted by the ease with which foreigners talk their native tongue. The speech he [Sutherland] heard resembled no civilized mortal language; slurred and full of hushed hisses, it was more like some dialect of Gaelic; but though he listened, hoping to catch a word which would put him on the track of what they were talking about, all he knew was that some proposal had been made and accepted. (215) At this point, Sutherland still feels vulnerable in the fairy world, mainly, because he does not understand their language. This, however, does not make him want to leave. He seems convinced that learning and categorising the elfin grammar will help him to familiarise himself with the elfin world and reduce ambivalences. His aim is to apply a mortal structure to the elfin language and demystify it with the intention of mastering it. However, as Bauman points out, The ideal that the naming / classifying function strives to achieve is a sort of commo‐ dious filing cabinet that contains all the files that contain all the items that the world contains - but confines each file and each item within a separate place of its own (with 184 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin remaining doubts solved by a cross-reference index). It is the non-viability of such a filing cabinet that makes ambivalences unavoidable. And it is the perseverance with which construction of such a cabinet is pursued that brings forth new supplies of ambivalence. (2) Sutherland’s project is doomed to failure since a linguistic analysis of the elfin grammar will not suffice to help him understand the elfin world. Any attempt is bound to result in further ambivalence. Only by accepting the elfin world as it is, with all its vicissitudes and inconsistencies, will Sutherland be able to par‐ take in it. His project cannot succeed for practical reasons either, since he is unable to acquire suitable writing paper: […] “the Grammar was never written, because the load of paper was stolen from a cooked-meats shop, and consisted of a manuscript cantata soaked in grease” (217). Although the elves at Foxcastle carry out certain measurements of Suther‐ land’s body, their intentions remain obscure. The fact that they let Sutherland go after a while shows that they do not act strategically but according to the motto “Fay ce que vouldras” which translates as “Do what thou wilt”. Sutherland ascribes this motto to them after observing their behaviour (216). In contrast to what may be termed a lack of scholarly ambition on behalf of the elves (from a mortal point of view), Sutherland displays great ambition in trying to classify the elfin language and make it transparent. He fails, however, since the elves do not take his project seriously. Their lives do not revolve around a linear notion of time and order. Sutherland’s failure is caused by the way he tries to make sense of the elfin world by structuring it from a mortal perspective, in order to make it logical, coherent and readable. His inability to write a book on elfin grammar turns out to be a major turning point in his life amongst the elves. His character slowly undergoes a change and he gradually adopts the elfin way of living: “It was as though he had always lived at Foxcastle, accepting his good fortune without surprise as the fairies accepted him, and endlessly fascinated by their unaccountableness” (218, em‐ phasis added). Although Sutherland gives up on structuring their language, he does not renounce his lifelong study of elves. He continues to compare their behaviour to that of mortals and soon realises that he is unable to find any motives for the fairies’ actions. He concludes that their behaviour is irrational and thus inexplicable. He waives judgment on their behaviour and henceforth begins to think and act increasingly like a fairy: […] the overruling disconcertingness was to find himself unconcerned. It was as if some mysterious oil had been introduced into the workings of his mind. If a thought irked him, he thought of something else. If a project miscarried, a flooding serenity 185 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin swept him beyond it. He lived a tranquil truant, dissociated from himself as though by a slight agreeable fever - such a fever as one might catch by smelling a flower. (217) Sutherland accepts that he cannot structure the fairy world and that every attempt he makes will fail; he learns to live with ambivalent situations and even comes to welcome the fairies’ fickleness and inconsistency. Gradually he learns to approach the world in a similar way as the elves at Foxcastle. The narrator even goes so far as to state: “What happened to his wig [which fell to pieces] might well be happening to the compartmented order inside his skull” (218). Sutherland loses the ability to think in straightforward categories and embraces the incongruity of the fairy world and its incompatibility with the mortal world. Instead of feeling distressed, he feels a new sense of freedom and happiness. Sutherland finally realises that mortal structures and systems are of little importance in the elfin world and he stops believing in their face value. He strips himself of the human qualities considered indispensable in the mortal world and “[watching] these happy beings for whom weeping was impossible, he [be‐ comes] incapable of grief; watching their inconsistencies, he [becomes] inca‐ pable of knowing right from wrong; disregarded by them, he [becomes] inca‐ pable of disappointment” (220). Sutherland lives in a state of bliss in which he remains completely indifferent to his surroundings. It is significant to note, however, that the fairies are not completely free of categorising. They, for example, strictly categorise mortals and changelings into young / old. Once a mortal or a changeling shows any sign old age, they are expelled from the kingdom. Therefore, Sutherland’s state of bliss is short-lived. The fairies immediately exclude him from their world when he visibly starts to grow old. They force him back into the world he originally came from - a world that no longer makes sense to him. On his first encounter with humans, he tries to communicate with them; however, “[he] had lived so long with the fairies he had forgotten his native speech; he could only gibber and stammer” (221). It is the mortal world that is now completely alien to James Sutherland. The above analysis has shown that humans such as James Sutherland or the Minister Gideon Baxter try hard to classify elves by mortal and moral standards. They do not succeed, however, since the elves they encounter remain elusive and enigmatic, strange and rather queer. Very often, from a mortal perspective, elves seem cruel and indifferent to any form of suffering. Robert Crossley describes them as “elegant, cultivated, shrewd - but petulant, selfish, blasé” (63). In some respects, Warner’s elves closely resemble foot-off-the-ground persons like the protagonist of Lolly Willowes. By contrast, however, Laura is never deliberately cruel towards the people in her surroundings. It transpires that elves have very little concern for mortals since they are indifferent to the 186 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin human race. They do not investigate the mortal way of living or take a closer look at, for example, human history. The indifference of the elves towards human systems of order, thought and knowledge is a common theme that runs throughout the elfin stories. Yet despite this, the elves do not inhabit some kind of pre-symbolic realm. On the contrary, they have a clear position within their different realms and are expected to abide by the rules of these realms - in the same way humans are required to abide by the rules governing the human world. Mortal and Elfin changelings In “Castor and Pollux” the narrator stresses that elves in general are “incapable of repentance” which is regarded “a fortunate provision in view of their lon‐ gevity” (KoE 184). The inability to show repentance or empathy is a trait common to changelings as well as elves, as we discover in the story “The One and the Other”. Adam, a changeling, who was taken to the mortal world and exchanged with a mortal infant named Tiffany, never loses this elfin “capacity”. Adam is not entirely elfin or human since “[before] an elf-baby is sent into the human world its wings are extirpated and it is dosed with an elixir of mortality, compounded from the tears and excrements of changelings” (5). Despite the elixir, Adam still displays distinct elfin characteristics that most mortals in his environment find very unsettling. As an infant, for example, Adam refuses to drink from Mrs Tod’s breast and will not take the milk rag either. Therefore, Ailie, the servant, places him among the cat’s kittens and to her relief “[the] baby sucked the cat, who purred and laid her paw over it” (2). Adam does not thrive on mortal milk, but on cat milk. Ailie is therefore convinced that Adam must have tender feelings for the cat since it rescued his life. Adam grows up thirsty for knowledge and is fascinated with the concept of death. One day he comes home to find Ailie weeping: “‘She waited on for you, poor old Pussy! But you’re too late. She’s gone. Pussy Bawdron’s gone’” (6). However, contrary to Ailie’s expectations, Adam is not consumed with grief for the old cat that has passed away, but is filled with excitement at the thought of dissecting the cat’s body: “There was the knife, and there, where the teats protruded from the shabby fur, was the place where he would make the first incision” (9). Adam does not feel any respect for the dead body and does not hesitate to make the first incision at the teats from which he drank. Ailie is devastated by his behaviour: “She had two things in the world to love: one was the boy, the other the old cat. In an hour she had lost them both” (6). This scene shows a type of behaviour that is presented as typically elfin throughout most of the stories. 187 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin Adam continues to study death, “To understand death, he must approach it through its opposite: the incapacity to die. He must catch a fairy, draw blood from it, identify that special element of magnetic air” (11). Ironically, Adam is not aware of the fact that his veins contain the magnetic air he is so desperately in search of. One night at an inn, he unknowingly encounters the mortal for whom he was exchanged. Tiffany, the mortal, a sick old man, has been banished from the fairy kingdom because of his infirmity. Tiffany longs to go back and talks incessantly about Elfhame. For this reason, Adam believes Tiffany to be an elf and in order to pursue his studies on magnetic air, he decides to examine Tiffany’s blood. Adam repeats his analysis numerous times only to discover that Tiffany’s blood is “totally unmagnetic” (18). Absorbed in thought, he turns away from Tiffany but soon realises that “[he] had not plugged the vein sufficiently after the phlebotomy” (14). Tiffany dies due to Adam’s negligence, but Adam shows no remorse. As with Pussy, he is only interested in advancing his research. Unremorseful and indifferent he “put his things together, and went to bed” (14). Crossley states that [in] his final acts and words Adam displays the real ethos of the elfins, which Warner elaborates in the succeeding tales. Adam has all the carelessness, the ethical obtuse‐ ness, the immunity to sympathy that makes [Warner’s] elfins seem so utterly other. (65, emphasis in the original) Crossley, writing from a reader’s perspective, tries to make a clear distinction between mortals and elves. However, by seeking to characterise elfin behaviour, Crossley reveals more about what he believes to be typically human behaviour than what constitutes an elf. This example shows that “[identity] is not merely differentiated from alterity, the other, by singling itself out from a multiplicity of others; it is itself constituted in a dialectic process that interacts with the other” (Fludernik 261). By referring to elfin characteristics in order to explain why elves are to be considered un-human, Crossley positions humans in relation to elves and constructs human identity mainly with regard to elfin character traits. Consequently, the elf as the “utterly other” ceases to exist. It is notable that the stories do not offer any correctives to determine what exactly makes an elf an elf and a mortal a mortal. Possibly, however, Crossley wants to stress the fact that most readers have difficulty identifying with the elves because they are so unfathomable. Throughout the stories, the elves remain unpredictable and the reader is often at a loss to understand the elves’ reactions. Whereas the previous section dealt with the changeling Adam and his expe‐ rience in the mortal world, the following section focuses on the experiences of the mortal changeling exchanged for Adam in the elfin world. On entering the 188 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin 45 Analyses of Warner’s work of fiction often draw on publicly known details of her love relationships, her political attitude, and her biography. Bingham, for example, sees the elfin queen Tiphaine in “Five Black Swans” as a mirror image of Warner: “There is clearly a parallel between Tiphaine, the Queen of Elfhame who has outlived her mortal lover by centuries and still mourns his loss, and Warner who was indifferent to her longevity without Ackland” (31). 46 cf. “Five Black Swans” fairy world, the stolen mortal received the name Tiffany and underwent special treatment to enable him to adapt to the fairy world. The treatment is described as follows: […] when a human child is brought into [Elfhame] there is a week of ceremonies. Every day a fasting weasel bites the child’s neck and drinks its blood for three minutes. The amount of blood drunk by each successive weasel (who is weighed before and after the drinking) is replaced by the same weight of a distillation of dew, soot, and aconite. Though the blood-to-ichor transfer does not cancel human nature […] it gives considerable longevity; up to a hundred and fifty years in the usual span. (2) Neither the mortal nor the elfin changelings are ever asked whether they wish to leave their respective worlds. The fairies simply steal a human baby and replace it with an elfin baby without any thought of the consequences for the changelings. Upon seeing Tiffany for the first time, Queen Tiphaine, the queen of the kingdom to which Tiffany is brought, remarks, “‘I hope he won’t age prematurely’” (2). 45 Since elves live much longer than humans do - Queen Ti‐ phaine is in her 700 th year when she passes away 46 - a life span of 150 years does not seem very long to most elves. This is one of the reasons they do not take changelings very seriously. Changelings do not stay long enough in the elfin world to be regarded as equals, and for this reason, elves see them as pets. For many years, Tiffany leads an agreeable life at the elfin court. Due to his good looks and manners, he is well-liked and even qualifies for the Green Ribbon. The Green Ribbon is given to a young boy to symbolise “that when he is old enough he will be the Queen’s love and that in the meantime no woman may lay a finger on him” (4). For a long time, Tiffany is the Queen’s lover. This shows how casually the stories deal with intergenerational and cross-species sex and relationships. After thirteen years, however, he receives the “Willow Leaf ” that dismisses him from his special position. The willow is generally regarded to symbolise “grief for unrequited love” (“Willow”, def. 1d). By handing the willow leaf to Tiffany, the Queen shows that she expects Tiffany to grieve for the loss of her. The Queen, in contrast, simply takes a new juvenile lover. 189 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin After his dismissal, Tiffany devotes much of his time to Titania, a new-born elfin girl. This part of the story functions as a mirror to the events involving Tiffany and the Queen. In the same way in which Queen Tiphaine took a fancy to the new-born Tiffany, keeping him as her personal plaything, Tiffany takes a fancy to Titania; and “[even] when she was going through her awkward age and people were finding her a nuisance and being disappointed in her, he still kept her as pet” (KoE 8, emphasis added). In contrast to the Queen, who decided from the very beginning that she would make Tiffany her lover, Tiffany harbours only fatherly feelings for the elfin girl. However, on seeing her flying one day - an activity strictly forbidden for higher class elves - his feelings towards her change and he realises that “[he] was in love with Titania” (8). Their relationship does not change since she does not love him back, but “[from] that hour, he was her delighting, miserable slave” (8). Whereas Tiffany truly loves his flying “pet”, the Queen’s love of Tiffany can best be described as infatuation. Titania knows that Tiffany is devoted to her, but remains indifferent to his feelings. She “established a bond of mutual guilt between them: her reckless indecorum of flying, his disloyalty of consenting to it” (9). Tiffany knows that Titania has him in her grip but cannot do anything about it. He dreams of Titania being expelled from Elfhame, which would give him the opportunity to follow her and have her all to himself (cf. 9). One night, however, in a very unspectacular manner, Tiffany himself is banished from the Kingdom of Elfhame because of his increasing age: “Every face was averted as Tiffany was led to the door of the hillside and put out, to make the rest of his way through the mortal world” (10). The reader never learns anything about Titania’s reaction to his expulsion since it is not to be expected that she shed many tears over his sudden departure. In both his relationships with female elves Tiffany ends up being discarded. Although Titania is not directly involved in his expulsion from the kingdom of elves, the reader does not sense any loyalty on her behalf towards him. In Kingdoms of Elfin, both changelings and mortals are regarded as playthings for elves to use for their own pleasure or amusement. Elves do not display any feelings of responsibility towards mortals, and as soon mortals show signs of physical aging elves discard them. In this respect, the relationship between elves and changelings does not differ considerably from the relationship between elves and humans. Elves do not feel any concern for anyone originally from the human race and often observe their suffering with complete indifference since they do not regard them as equals. This does not necessarily mean that elves and mortal changelings are not able to coexist or interact with one other, as the 190 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin 47 A further story featuring the relationship between elves and changelings is “Winged Creatures”. In this story, the elf Grive treats the mortal changeling Gobelet in the same way as Titania treats Tiffany, rejecting him as soon as he longer needs him. The critic Sutherland claims that “[…] the changeling Gobelet is kept in thrall, not by magic spells, but by his love for the elfin, Grive, whose indifference to him changes nothing” (Su‐ therland 29). Despite the fact that Grive does not reciprocate Gobelet’s feelings, Gobe‐ let’s feelings towards Grive remain unchanged. example of Tiffany and Titania showed. 47 The main reason why these friend‐ ships do not last is basically due to their different understanding of the concept of friendship, the elves’ lack of empathy, and the fact that mortals age much faster than elves. Queer avant la lettre The previous analysis has shown that indifference is a distinctive elfin trait in The Kingdom of Elfin - a trait that is especially evident regarding their interaction with mortals, but also in their interaction with other elves and mortal changelings. Whereas human beings strive to order their world and the people in their surroundings, elves are not particularly interested in categorising mor‐ tals. The exception to the rule, however, is the distinction they make between young and old mortals. Once a mortal - or a changeling - living in an elfin kingdom grows old, they are forced to leave the kingdom and fend for them‐ selves. This expulsion does not particularly affect any of the elves, even if they are close to the expelled person. In general, the indifference displayed by the elves differs greatly from the indifference shown by the protagonists of the short stories towards their surroundings and any “useful props of civilisation” (Warner, LW 152). In the case of the elves, indifference is not a means of coping with their surroundings but simply an elfin trait. On a narrative level, it serves to detach Kingdoms of Elfin from what Schabert calls “die akzeptierte gesell‐ schaftliche, politische, moralische und literarische Sinnstiftungspraxis” (153). These stories reject everything that can be called “normal” in such a callous way that it is challenging to find a way of approaching them. The use of this technique moves Kingdoms of Elfin to an off-centred position resulting in the established centre losing all significance. The analysis has shown why the collection of short stories Kingdoms of Elfin may be said to have a “queer” quality, that is, that the stories and the characters they feature are “strange, odd, peculiar” and even “eccentric”. With regard to the characters and the structure of the individual texts, however, it must be noted 191 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin that this is involuntarily caused by the mortal perspective that is applied to analyse the stories. This does not mean, however, that the elves show forms of behaviour that are alien to mortals, but that mortals have difficulties in judging how elves will behave at any given moment of time. To a certain extent, King‐ doms of Elfin is also queer in a non-heteronormative sense. Most strikingly, it almost anticipates concepts of the “antisocial thesis” discussed in queer theory. As Mari Ruti writes, the antisocial thesis “[…] presents queerness as deeply antithetical to normative sociality and seeks to defend forms of queer rebel‐ liousness against the quest for respectability […]” (113). The “antisocial thesis” is further defined by “queer negativity” and the refusal to commit to “repro‐ ductive futurism” (Edelman 4) indicating that it refuses to accept a form of pol‐ itics predominantly oriented towards the “Child” (Edelman 4). As the previous chapters have shown, Warner’s elves seldom reproduce and do not refer to the future (elfin) Child to legitimise their political decisions. With regard to her elves’ love life, Warner writes to Garnett, “Un amour de convenance is more their line” (S&D 229). This makes them almost queer avant la lettre: the elves do not base their happiness and wellbeing on heteronormative standards (mo‐ nogamy, heterosexuality, reproduction, to name but a few), but live in the mo‐ ment and for the moment. Inconsistency, indifference and unpredictability are not only forms of elfin behaviour, but are also ways of structuring literary texts. In Kingdoms of Elfin, inconsistency and indifference are apparent not only in the content, but also in the structure of the short stories, and the fact that the elfin kind is not homo‐ genous in terms of behaviour and attitude. The individual stories, which form a literary entity, often contain contradictory statements. In some stories, for example, it is stated that elves do not to believe in the existence of god. In other stories, the reader learns that elves not only believe in the Christian doctrine but also take it seriously. In “The Blameless Triangle”, for example, the narrator observes that “Ludo’s mother had been pietistic, and there was a sort of Christian proverb he remembered her quoting, to the effect that one must pass through many tribulations to enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (42). These contradictory items of information aim to disorient the reader and shift the position of the text so that it does not openly stand in opposition to the so-called norm. The indif‐ ference to establishing structured patterns is often counterbalanced by meticu‐ lous descriptions of, for example, the fairy race. On the surface, these descrip‐ tions appear to emphasise the narrator’s reliability. Yet the more stories the reader becomes acquainted with, the more uncertain the reader becomes with regard to what is true and what is false. 192 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin With regard to the opening quote, “‘Bother the human heart, I’m tired of the human heart. I’m tired of the human race. I want to write about something entirely different’”, the question arises whether Warner’s decision to write fan‐ tasy fiction marks a change in her writing and throws a new light on her oeuvre (“Conversation” 36). Do the elfin stories serve a particular function or produce a particular effect? Do they achieve something that Warner’s more realistic stories cannot achieve? Helen Sutherland’s analysis of Kingdoms of Elfin offers an interesting approach to this question. In her article “From Elfhame to Oth‐ erwhere” (2005), Sutherland shows that the “Secondary world”, the term she uses to refer to the fairy world, closely reflects the “Primary world”, populated by mortals: In Warner’s construction of faery […] the familiar opens up into the fantastic and is made strange to us, forcing us to look back at what is familiar in our Primary world: the effect is like that of suddenly seeing an intimately known landscape in a mirror where the strangeness of the vision makes us turn back from reflection to landscape once more. (26) Sutherland argues that Kingdoms of Elfin functions as a mirror that gives us a different - distorted - view of our reality. This assessment of Warner’s fantasy stories resembles Le Guin’s description of the fantasy genre referred to in the introduction, “It [fantasy] is a different approach to reality, an alternative tech‐ nique for apprehending and coping with existence” (84). Both Sutherland’s and Le Guin’s comments highlight the self-reflective quality of Kingdoms of Elfin and fantasy. The above analysis of Kingdoms of Elfin, however, suggests that Warner’s elfin stories do not necessarily invite the reader to re-think their world and their reality. In contrast to Sturgeon, who challenges his readers to think differently about incest (see Chapter 4), Warner does not prod her readers to question their behaviour and attitudes towards others. In Kingdoms of Elfin, Warner gradually detaches herself from the human world, shifting her writing to off-centred positions. In the light of her statement, her decision to turn her back on the human world - “‘I’m tired of the human race. I want to write about something entirely different’” - must be taken literally. Her move towards fan‐ tasy is not part of a thought experiment to create alternatives to human moral values, but marks the climax of her indifference to human norms and world‐ views. 193 7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin 8. Coda In May 1959, Warner followed an invitation to give the annual Peter le Neve Foster lecture on the subject of “Women as Writers”. One of the first arguments Warner propounded was: “Women as writers are obstinate and sly” (“Women as Writers” 234). A little later in her talk she states, “But I have sometimes won‐ dered if women are literary at all” (234). If her first argument appears odd, the second statement appears positively bizarre. Presumably, most members in the audience were expecting to hear a talk celebrating the history of female writers and not a debate on whether or not women were literary. Warner then continues to expand this statement: “It [being literary] is not a thing which is strenuously required of them, and perhaps, finding something not required of them, they thank God and do no more about it” (234). Here the tone of her argument changes and it becomes clear that Warner is on to something as she delivers her punch line: “They [women] write. They dive into writing like ducks into water. One could almost think it came naturally to them - at any rate as naturally as plain sewing” (234). Ironically, Warner refers to a stereotypically housewifely task to comment on women’s writing (“plain sewing”). At second glance, however, the comparison contains a clever twist: “plain sewing” is strongly reminiscent of the expression “plain sailing” (“it is plain sailing”), which, figuratively speaking, refers to an easy and straightforward activity. By this neat turn of phrase, Warner manages to emphasise that women are just as literary as men are, but, in contrast to men, simply do not make such a big fuss about it. Warner’s words further expose the bias towards men in the literary world and emphasise that the establishment clearly considers women less capable of writing than men. This viewpoint is also ironically reflected by the title chosen by the Royal Society of Arts for the lecture (“Women as Writers”). It implies that male writers are the norm and that female writers are, by contrast, deviant and less capable of writing. Warner’s talk artfully shows that she has long distanced herself from institutions like the Royal Society of Arts. Rather than openly criticising the title and the organisers, she employs a different tactic: she skilfully reflects upon the title and the absurdity of the implication that women merely pose as writers and 48 At the beginning of her lecture, Warner briefly debates the connotations of the title, “But then I reread my invitation, and became a prey of uneasiness. Women as Writers. Women as Writers. Supposing I had been a man, a gentleman novelist, would I have been asked to lecture on Men as Writers? I thought it improbable” (231, emphasis in the original). 49 In a similar context, Swaab brilliantly analyses the usage of Warner’s similes and points out, “[…] the relations Warner imagines in her similes are unpredictable, challenging, and unusual” (“Silvia’s Similes” 774). This attitude reverberates throughout all of her writing and prominently comes to the fore in the short stories discussed in this book. are not to be considered writers in their own right. 48 In this, her attitude resem‐ bles that of the heroines of the foot-off-the-ground novels described in the in‐ troduction of this book. In the same way as foot-off-the-ground heroines effec‐ tively remove themselves from normative systems, Warner distances herself from the accepted order of things. These short excerpts serve as examples to illustrate the technique Warner continually employs in her writing. By reclaiming and re-attributing words and expressions, and by connecting seemingly unrelated concepts, Warner con‐ stantly forces her readers (and, in the case above, her audience) to think outside the box. She invites them to imagine different causalities, different connections, and different conventions, and to avoid all too obvious answers. 49 As a result, Warner’s writing constantly produces the same effect: it shrewdly opens up the possibility of encountering non / normative events in a productive, non-oppo‐ sitional way. Ultimately, the answer to the question posed in the introduction, “How does Warner succeed in creating queer spaces and how does she avoid opposing normativity? ”, inspired by the queer theorists Wiegman and Wilson, lies therein. By employing a technique which, in Updike’s words, constantly leads her readers “towards unseen developments”, Warner renders normative as well as non-normative expectations insignificant (235). It is exactly for this reason that Warner’s stories open themselves up to what Sedgwick calls “reparative readings”. Warner encourages her readers to engage with her stories and to allow themselves to be surprised by their outcome. By doing so, she invites her readers to think “beside”, and not about what is “normal” and what is not. Sedgwick, in her introduction to Touching Feeling (2003), pro‐ vides a very fertile definition of “beside”. She writes, “Beside permits a spacious agnosticism about several of the linear logics that enforce dualistic thinking; noncontradiction or the law of the excluded middle, cause versus effect, subject versus object” and continues with the words, “Beside comprises a wide range of desiring, identifying, representing, repelling, paralleling, differentiating, ri‐ valing, leaning, twisting, mimicking, withdrawing, attracting, aggressing, warping, and other relations” (8, emphases in the original). In this, Sedgwick 196 8. Coda strongly encourages her readers to look for different, non-binary ways of en‐ gaging with texts. Warner does not state this as plainly as Sedgwick, but the tone of her short stories speaks for itself. Looking back at the short stories analysed in Side-Stepping Normativity in Selected Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner, it is apparent that they display many tendencies that play into the notion of beside. Firstly, they do not aim at con‐ structing new centres of meaning that stand in opposition to given centres. This is most evident in Chapter 2, the chapter on “Homoerotic Desires”. In all three stories, “The Shirt in Mexico” (1941), “Bruno” (1971) and “The Green Torso” (1970), Warner refuses to take a stand on nonas well as normative desires. Rather than exploring queer love, the stories explore the complexities of desire. Secondly, Warner’s stories avoid the use of categorisation and show a great mistrust of commonly accepted truths. This, for instance, becomes apparent in Chapter 3, “Cross-Species Relationships”, in the short stories “Introduction” (1940), “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East” (1940) and “The Wineshop Cat” (1942). In the first story, Warner nonchalantly maintains that humans received their knowledge from cats. This indirectly mocks humans for taking themselves so seriously and for claiming the right to inhabit a superior position in this world (in a similar vein Warner makes fun of the male writers who take themselves so seriously). Chapter 3 further explored the representa‐ tion of cross-species desire and cross-species relationships, demonstrating Warner’s indifference towards the boundaries of the species line. It also discussed the reliability of the narrator, especially in “The Wineshop Cat”, showing that the “truth” the story originally proposed did not turn out to be the truth the reader expected to hear. Thirdly, Warner’s stories are characterised by a movement away from established norms. This drift becomes visible in all sto‐ ries; most prominently, perhaps, in Chapter 4, “Incestuous Longings”, that focuses on “A Love Match” (1964), “A Spirit Rises” (1961) and “At a Monkey’s Breast” (1955). These stories highlight the fact that Warner considers incestuous longings to be simply another aspect of desire. As with homoerotic desires or cross-species longings, Warner remains non-committal on the subject of incest. Finally, and most importantly, Warner’s stories frequently reveal the desire to gain access to places beyond human structures. Strikingly, Warner’s stories do not discuss counter-measures to resist regulatory human strictures, but intimate that escape is only possible if it is coupled with an indifference towards all forms of categorisations - categorisations disguised as gendered expecta‐ tions, identity categories, and permissible desires, to name but a few. Warner’s protagonists, however, only ever occupy these places outside human structures for a short space of time, since permanent occupation would imply death or not 197 8. Coda being part of (human) reality. Chapter 5, “Escaping”, which explored “But at the Stroke of Midnight” (1970), “Trafalgar Bakery” (1955), and “An Act of Repara‐ tion” (1964), gives short glimpses into these places. Two of the protagonists of the stories in this chapter, Lucy (“Midnight”) and Penelope (“Trafalgar”), expe‐ rience brief moments of non-interpellation as they touch and explore the fur of cats. While they engage with the cats’ bodies, running their fingers through their fur, feeling their warmth, they detach themselves from their immediate surroundings and enter a place that is not regulated by human structures. “An Act of Reparation”, by contrast, works differently. By removing Lois, one of the main characters, from the story (the kitchen, in which Fenton expects Lois to be, is empty), Warner shows that absence, too, facilitates non-interpellation. In the stories analysed in Chapter 6, “Vanishing”, Warner takes the desire to strive for a place outside human structures one step further. In these stories, “Boors Carousing” (1941), “A Dressmaker” (1961), and “A Work of Art” (1961), the pro‐ tagonists seek different ways of disappearing. Ultimately, by envisioning them‐ selves merging with other materials, the protagonists are able to find a way of side-stepping the constrictions human society tries to impose upon them. In such cases, heteronormative, bourgeois barriers have no power to restrain them. The desire to access a place beyond human reach is most prominent in King‐ doms of Elfin (1977). The stories collected in this collection revolve around a place that mortals can neither fully reach nor understand. Chapter 7 demon‐ strated that portraying the elfin world from a mortal perspective serves to create a dynamic tension between text and reader. It additionally showed that the nar‐ rator not only functions as a fixed point of reference but often includes the reader in the tale, as, for example, in “The Blameless Triangle”, when we read, “Fairy gold, as everybody knows, is only operative in Elfin; received by mortals, it turns into withered leaves by the morrow” (44, my emphasis). By narrating stories involving elves, the narrator presents the reader with a text that continually moves away from - only to return to - human reference points. Narratologically, this type of movement hints at a longing for a place that is beyond human reach. This specific form of longing is explicitly shown in the short story “Foxcastle”, in which the mortal James Foxcastle yearns to be part of an elfin kingdom. Once he is accepted into the kingdom of “Foxcastle”, he gradually gives up thinking and behaving like a mortal. In this context, the elfin world comes close to being “a place of longing in which the demands or all systems of signification could finally be shrugged off ” (Hotz-Davies, Gropper 3). Chapter 7 shows that the fairy world, which merges on the human world, is the closest place outside human structures that the narrator and the reader can reach. 198 8. Coda To conclude, Side-Stepping Normativity focuses on tracking the way Warner’s short stories shift to the position beside. It demonstrates that Warner’s stories continually move to an off-centre position in which all norms, whether accepted or deviant, become insignificant. This does not imply that there are no categories in Warner’s literary universe, but rather that Warner prefers to detach her stories from common human reference points. 199 8. Coda Works Cited Primary Literature Warner, Sylvia Townsend. “A Dressmaker.” A Spirit Rises. London: Faber and Faber, 2011. 133-151. Print. ---. “A Love Match.” A Stranger with a Bag and Other Stories. London: Faber and Faber, 2011. 94-122. Print. ---. “A Spirit Rises.” Sylvia Townsend Warner: Selected Stories. Ed. Pinney Susanna and William Maxwell. London: Virago, 2002. 75-79. Print. Virago Modern Classics. ---. “An Act of Reparation.” A Stranger with a Bag and Other Stories. London: Faber and Faber, 2011. 151-164. Print. ---. “At a Monkey’s Breast.” Winter in the Air. London: Faber and Faber, 2011. 121-124. Print. ---. “At the Trafalgar Bakery.” Winter in the Air and Other Stories. London: Faber and Faber, 2011. 70-85. Print. ---. “‘Boors Carousing.’” The Museum of Cheats. New York: Viking, 1947. 156-167. Print. ---. “Bruno.” The Innocent and the Guilty. New York: Viking, 1971. 63-82. Print. ---. “But at the Stroke of Midnight.” The Innocent and the Guilty. New York: Viking, 1971. 19-52. Print. ---. “Introduction.” The Cat’s Cradle-Book. London: Chatto & Windus, 1940. 9-46. Print. ---. Kingdoms of Elfin: Strange Tales of the Fantastic, the Sinister and the Impossible. Har‐ mondsworth: Penguin, 1979. Print. ---. Lolly Willowes or the Loving Huntsman. Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1979. Print. ---. New Collected Poems. Ed. Claire Harman. Manchester: Carcanet, 2008. Print. ---. “The Children’s Grandmother.” The New Yorker 25 Nov. 1950: 35-38. Print. ---. “The Green Torso.” The Innocent and the Guilty. New York: Viking, 1971. 105-124. Print. ---. “The Shirt in Mexico.” The New Yorker 4 Jan. 1941: 51-52. Print. ---. “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East.” The Cat’s Cradle-Book. London: Chatto & Windus, 1940. 136-144. Print. ---. “The Wineshop Cat.” The New Yorker 18 July 1942: 30-31. Print. Secondary Literature “A Loan Exhibition of Flemish Old Masters.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 86.502 (1945): 25. Print. “A Spirit Rises, by Sylvia Townsend Warner.” The New Yorker 15 Dec. 1962: 179. Print. Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001. 1483-1509. Print. Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon, 1962. Print. Baudelaire, Charles. “Le Chat.” Les Fleurs Du Mal. Ed. Charles Pichois. Paris: Gallimard, 1972. 64. Print. Bauer, Gero. Houses, Secrets, and the Closet: Locating Masculinities from the Gothic Novel to Henry James. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2016. Print. Bauman, Zygmunt. Modernity and Ambivalence. Oxford: Polity, 1991. Print. “Before and after the Wolfenden Report.” The National Archives. N.p., n. d. Web. 5 Oct. 2016. Bell, Melanie. Femininity in the Frame: Women and 1950 s British Popular Cinema. London: Tauris, 2010. Print. Cinema and Society Series. Berglund, Jeff. Cannibal Fictions: American Explorations of Colonialism, Race, Gender, and Sexuality. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2006. Print. ---.Cannibal Fictions: American Explorations of Colonialism, Race, Gender, and Sexuality. Madison, Wis: U of Wisconsin P, 2006. Print. Berland, Jody. “Cat and Mouse: Iconographics of Nature and Desire.” Cultural Studies 22.3-4 (2008): 431-454. Web. 10 July 2017. Binding, Paul. “Seen by Candlelight.” Times Literary Supplement 30 Nov. 2001: n. pag. Print. “Boor.” Def. 3a. OED Online. Web. 24 Nov. 2014. Bowlby, Rachel. “Part I: Myth and Psychoanalysis.” Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought. Ed. Miriam Leonard and Vanda Zajko. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Web. Classical Presences. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Selected Poems. Ed. Marjorie Stone and Beverly Taylor. Peterborough: Broadview, 2009, 169-173. Print. Butler, Judith. “‘Conscience Doth Make Subjects of Us All’: Althusser’s Subjection.” The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997. 106-131. Print. ---. “Gender Is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion.” Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives. Ed. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997. 381-395. Print. Cultural Politics 11.Calarco, Matthew. “Identity, Difference, Indistinction.” The New Cen‐ tennial Review 11. 2 (2011): 41-60. Web. 10 July 2017. 202 Works Cited Castle, Terry. “Sylvia Townsend Warner and the Counterplot of Lesbian Fiction (1993).” Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. Rutgers UP, 1997. 532-560. Print. Cavaliero, Glen. The Alchemy of Laughter: Comedy in English Fiction. Basingstoke: Pal‐ grave, 2000. Print. Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984. Print. “Cherry.” Def. 5c. OED Online. Oxford English Dictionary. Web. 25 May 2016. Chesser, Eustace. Live and Let Live: The Moral of the Wolfenden Report. Watford: Taylor Garnett Evans, 1958. Print. Cooper, Sandi E. “War and Gender Transformations: Transatlantic Examples.” Journal of Women’s History 13. 1 (2001): 189-195. Web. 22 Sep. 2016. Crisp, Quentin. The Naked Civil Servant. London: Penguin, 1968. Print. Crossley, Robert. “A Long Day’s Dying: The Elves of J. R. R. Tolkien and Sylvia Town‐ send-Warner.” Death and the Serpent: Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Ed. Carl B. Yoke and Donald M. Hassler. Westport: Greenwood, 1985. 57-75. Print. Daley, Christine. “Ghastly Confidences: War and Transgressive Sexuality in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s ‘A Love Match.’” Women Writers: A Zine 2000. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. Douglas, George, ed. Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales. Mineola: Dover Publications, 2000. Print. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge, 2003. Print. Duchêne, Anne. “Witty and Well-Mannered.” Times Literary Supplement 24 Aug. 1984: n. pag. Print. Duggan, Lisa. “Bully Bloggers.” Queer Complacency without Empire. N.p., 22 Sept. 2015. Web. 24 Sept. 2015. Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2004. Print. Elick, Catherine. Talking Animals in Children’s Fiction: A Critical Study. Jefferson: McFar‐ land, 2015. Print. Ellmann, Maud. “Sylvia Townsend Warner.” Oxford Handbooks Online: Scholarly Research Reviews. N.p., May 2016. Web. 26 Sept. 2016. ---. “The Art of Bi-Location: Sylvia Townsend Warner.” The History of British Women’s Writing, 1920-1945. Vol. 8. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 78-93. Print. Fletcher, Lisa. Historical Romance Fiction: Heterosexuality and Perfomativity. Aldershot, England: Routledge, 2008. Print. Fludernik, Monika. “Identity / Alterity.” The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Ed. David Herman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print. 203 Works Cited Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces.” Trans. Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 16. 1 (1986): 22-27. Web. 20 Aug. 2015. ---. Power / Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Ed. Colin Gordon. Trans. Colin Gordon et al. New York: Pantheon, 1980. Print. ---. The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality Volume One. Trans. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin Books, 1976. Print. Frazer, J. G. Totemism and Exogamy: A Treatise on Certain Early Forms of Superstition and Society. IV. London: Macmillian, 1910. Print. IV. Freccero, Carla. “Queer Spectrality: Haunting the Past.” A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies. Ed. George E. Haggerty and Molly McGarry. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. 194-216. Print. Freud, Sigmund. “Das Unheimliche.” Werke aus den Jahren 1917-1920. Vol. 12. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1999. Print. 17 vols. Sigmund Freund: Gesammelte Werke. ---. Totem and Taboo: Resemblances between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics. Trans. A. A. Brill. New York: Moffat, 1918. Web. 27 July 2016. Friedmann, Herbert. A Bestiary for Saint Jerome: Animal Symbolism in European Religious Art. Washington: Smithsonian, 1980. Print. Garnett, Richard, ed. Sylvia and David: The Townsend / Garnett Letters. London: Sin‐ clair-Stevenson, 1994. Print. Garrity, Jane. Step-Daughters of England: British Women Modernists and the National Imaginary. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003. Print. Gray, Jennifer B. “The Escape of the ‘Sea’: Ideology and The Awakening.” The Southern Literary Journal 37. 1 (2005): 53-73. Web. 11 Jan. 2016. Grigson, Geoffrey. “Elfins and Densmen.” The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society VI (2005): 17-20. Print. Hackett, Robin. Sapphic Primitivism: Productions of Race, Class, and Sexuality in Key Works of Modern Fiction. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2004. Print. Halberstam, Jack. “Straight Eye For the Queer Theorist: A Review of ‘Queer Theory Without Antinormativity.’” Bully Bloggers. N.p., 12 Sept. 2015. Print. ---. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke UP, 2011. Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York UP, 2005. Print. Hall, Donald. E., and Annamarie Jagose. The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 2013. Print. Halliday, Stephen. Newgate: London’s Prototype of Hell. Stroud: Sutton, 2006. Print. Haraway, Donna J. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge, 1989. Print. Harman, Claire. “Sylvia Townsend Warner 1983-1978: A Celebration.” PN Review 23 8. 3 (1981): 30-31. Print. 204 Works Cited Hirsch, Marianne. The Mother/ Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism. Bloo‐ mington: Indiana UP, 1989. Web. 25 Feb. 2017. Homer, Sean. Jacques Lacan. Routledge, 2005. Print. Routledge Critical Thinkers. Hotz-Davies, Ingrid. Introduction. Kingdoms of Elfin. By Sylvia Townsend Warner. Bath: Handheld, 2018. XV - XXXVIII. Print. Hotz-Davies, Ingrid and Stefanie Gropper. “Off Centre: Eccentricity and Gender.” Edito‐ rial. Gender Forum: An Internet Journal for Gender Studies 27 (2009): 1-7. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Houlbrook, Matt. Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005. Print. House, Christian. “Dorset Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner.” The Independent. Web. 2 Dec. 2014. Hudson, Glenda A. Sibling Love and Incest in Jane Austen’s Fiction. Basingstoke: Mac‐ millan, 1992. Print. Johnson, D. Barton. “The Labyrinth of Incest in Nabokov’s Ada.” Comparative Literature 38. 3 (1986): 224-255. Web. 11 Dec. 2016. Johnston, Georgia. “Narratives of Ethnography in The Cat’s Cradle-Book.” The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society XII (2011): 51-68. Print. Junge, Mathias. Zygmunt Bauman: Soziologie zwischen Moderne und Flüchtiger Moderne: Eine Einführung. Wiesbaden: VS, 2006. Print. Keats, John. “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” Romanticism: An Anthology. Ed. Duncan Wu. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 1390-1391. Print. Kling, Jutta Cornelia. “On Knowingness. Irony and Queerness in the Works of Byron, Heine, Fontane, and Wilde.” Thesis. University of Tuebingen, 2015. Web. 16 Mar. 2017. Kuzniar, Alice A. “‘I Married My Dog’: On Queer Canine Literature.” Queering the Non / Human. Ed. Myra J. Hird and Noreen Giffney. Aldershot: Routledge, 2008. 206-226. Print. Queer Interventions. Lane, Anthony. “The Big New Yorker Book of Cats.” The New Yorker. N.p., 2013. Web. 17 June 2016. Lawrence, D. H. “The Rocking-Horse Winner.” The Complete Short Stories of D. H. Law‐ rence. London: Heinemann, 1955. 790-804. Print. Leitch, Vincent B., ed. “Louis Althusser 1918-1990.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001. 1476-79. Print. Le Guin, Ursula. “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie.” Ed. David Sandner. Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader. London: Praeger, 2004, 144-155. Print. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures Of Kinship. Ed. Rodney Neddham. Trans. James Harle Bell and John Richard von Sturmer. Boston: Beacon, 1969. Print. 205 Works Cited Lewis, Jayne Elizabeth. The English Fable: Aesop and Literary Culture. Cambridge: Cam‐ bridge UP, 1996. Print. Lewis, Justin Jaron. “A Love Match in Leviticus.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 32. 2 (2014): 1-24. Web. 3 Sep. 2017. Lupton, Deborah. Food, the Body and the Self. London: Sage, 1996. Print. Maxwell, William. “Sylvia Townsend Warner and The New Yorker.” Ed. Claire Harman. PN Review 23 8. 3 (1981): 44-45. Print. Mellor, Anne K. “Keats and the Complexities of Gender.” The Cambridge Companion to Keats. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. 214-229. Print. Micir, Melanie. “‘Living in Two Tenses’: On the Intimate Archives of Sylvia Townsend Warner.” Journal of Modern Literature 36. 1 (2012): 119-131. Web. 01. Jan. 2018. Miller, D. A. The Novel and the Police. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988. Print. Montefiore, Janet. Men and Women Writers of the 1930 s: The Dangerous Flood of History. London: Routledge, 1996. Print. Morgan, Louise. “Writers at Work (from Writers at Work, 1931).” With the Hunted: Selected Writings Sylvia Townsend Warner. Ed. Peter Tolhurst. Norwich: Black Dog Books, 2012. 393-99. Print. Morris, William, and Mary Morris. “Bandbox.” Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins 1971: 21-22. Print. XI. Mulford, Wendy. This Narrow Place: Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland: Life, Letters and Politics 1930-1951. London: Pandora, 1988. Print. Palmer, Clare, Sandra Corr, and Peter Sandøe. “Inconvenient Desires: Should We Rou‐ tinely Neuter Companion Animals? ” Anthrozoös 25. 1 (2012): 153-172. Web. 10 July 2017. “Patron.” Def. 1. OED Online. Oxford English Dictionary. Web. 1 June 2016. Patterson, Charles I. The Daemonic in the Poetry of John Keats. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1970. Print. Pickering, David. Dictionary of First Names. 2nd ed. London: Penguin, 2004. Print. Priest, Hannah. “The Unnaturalness of a Society: Class Division and Conflict in Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin.” The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society XII (2010): 1-16. Print. “Queer.” The Oxford English Dictionary. Web. 29 Sept. 2016. Randolph, Vance. Ozark Superstitions. New York: Columbia UP, 1947. Print. Rank, Otto. Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung Und Sage: Grundzüge einer Psychologie des Dich‐ terischen Schaffens. Wien: Deuticke, 1912. Web. 14 July 2016. Roach, Joseph. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York: Columbia UP, 1996. Print. Ruti, Mari. “The Antisocial Thesis in Queer Theory.” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 13. 1 (2008): 113-126. Print. 206 Works Cited Salomon, Nanette. Shifting Priorities: Gender and Genre in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2004. Print. Schiesari, Juliana. Polymorphous Domesticities: Pets, Bodies, and Desire in Four Modern Writers. Berkeley: U of California P, 2012. Print. Scott, Sharon M. Toys and American Culture: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2010. Print. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia UP, 1985. Print. ---. Epistemology of the Closet: Updated with a New Preface. Berkeley: U of California P, 2008. Print. ---. “Making Things, Practicing Emptiness.” The Weather in Proust. Durham: Duke UP, 2011. 69-122. Print. ---. Tendencies. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print. ---. The Weather in Proust. Durham: Duke UP, 2011. Print. ---. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. Print. Smith, Stevie. Novel on Yellow Paper or Work it Out for Yourself. London: Virago, 1980. Print. ---. “Pretty.” New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith. Ed. James Mac Gibbon. New York: New Directions, 1988. 115. Print. Snodgrass, W. D. “A Rocking-Horse: The Symbol, the Pattern, the Way to Live.” The Hudson Review 11. 2 (1958): 191-200. Print. Stableford, Brian. The A to Z of Fantasy Literature. Lanham: Scarecrow, 2009. Print. Steinman, Michael, ed. The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell, 1938-1978. Washington, D. C.: Counterpoint, 2001. Print. Stott, Louis. “Kirk, Robert.” Oxford DNB. Web. 14 Feb. 2017.Sturch, Elizabeth L. “Wit and Fancy.” Times Literary Supplement 13 Sept. 1947: n. pag. Print. Sturgeon, Theodore. “Afterword. If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? ’.” Dangerous Visions. Ed. Harlan Ellison. Orion, 2012. 424-429. Print. ---. “If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? ” Dangerous Vi‐ sions. Ed. Harlan Ellison. Orion, 2012. 379-424. Print. Sutherland, Helen. “From Elfhame to Otherwhere: Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin.” The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society 6 (2005): 21-32. Print. Swaab, Peter. Re: The Rocking Horse. 23 Nov. 2014. E-mail. ---. “Sylvia’s Similes: A Stylistic Approach to Sylvia Townsend Warner.”Literature Com‐ pass. 11.12 (2014): 767-775. Web. Special Issue: Sylvia Townsend Warner. 26 Aug. 2015. ---. “The Queerness of Lolly Willowes.” The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society 11 (2010): 29-51. Print. 207 Works Cited Taylor, Beverly. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Politics of Childhood.” Victorian Poetry 46. 4 (2008): 405-427. Print. Tetreault, Ronald. “Women and Words in Keats with an Instance from La Belle Dame sans Merci.” Mind in Creation: Essays on English Romantic Literature in Honour of Ross G. Woodman. Ed. Douglas Kneale and Ross Greig Woodman. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1992. 58-73. Print. Treisman, Deborah. “Colm Toibin Reads Sylvia Townsend Warner.” Audio blog post. The New Yorker’s Fiction Podcast. The New Yorker, 17 March 2012. Web. 1 May 2013. The New English Bible: With the Apocrypha. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1970. Print. Updike, John. Picked-Up Pieces: Essays. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. Print. Wachman, Gay. Lesbian Empire: Radical Crosswriting in the Twenties. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2001. Print. ---. “Lesbian Political History: Introduced and Selected by Gay Wachman.” Gender in Modernism: New Geographies, Complex Intersections. Ed. Bonnie Kime Scott. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2007. 307-335. Print. Wallraven, Miriam. Women Writers and the Occult in Literature and Culture: Female Lu‐ cifers, Priestesses, and Witches. London: Routledge, 2015. Print. Warner, Val, and Michael Schmidt. “Sylvia Townsend Warner in Conversation.” Ed. Claire Harman. PN Review 23 8. 3 (1981): 35-37. Print. Waters, Sarah. “Sylvia Townsend Warner: The Neglected Writer.” The Guardian. N.p., 2 Mar. 2012. Web. 27 Sept. 2016. Wiegman, Robyn, and Elizabeth A. Wilson. “Introduction: Antinormativity’s Queer Con‐ ventions.” Queer Theory without Antinormativity 26. 1 (2015): 1-25. Print. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. Williams, Gordon. A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature. II. London: Athlone, 1994. Print. III. “Willow.” Def. 1d. OED Online. Oxford English Dictionary. Web. 24 Jan. 2017. Wiseman, Boris. Levi-Strauss, Anthropology, and Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print. “Wolfenden Report on Male Homosexuality 1957.” British Library: Learning Timelines: Sources from History. N.p., n. d. Web. 5 Oct. 2016. Wolfreys, Julian, Ruth Robbins, and Kenneth Womack. Key Concepts in Literary Theory. London: Routledge, 2016. Print. Wordsworth, William. “We are Seven.” Romanticism: An Anthology. Ed. Duncan Wu. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 372-373. Print. 208 Works Cited ISBN 978-3-8233-8389-5 C H A L L E N G E S Side-Stepping Normativity in Selected Short Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner discusses Sylvia Townsend Warner’s highly innovative narrative style, which does not conform to conventional modernist or postmodernist standards, and explores how Warner’s short stories shift to o -centre positions. Side-Stepping Normativity further outlines the way in which Warner constantly challenges the categories we apply to classify our surroundings and analyses how Warner succeeds in creating queer, that is, non-heteronormative as well as strange and peculiar stories without explicitly opposing the so-called norms of her time. In this, Side-Stepping Normativity joins a vibrant conversation in queer studies which revolves around the question how critics can approach literary texts from a non-antagonistic position. Rather than focussing on the role of the critic, however, this thesis shows that Warner’s texts have long achieved what queer theorists seek to achieve on an analytical level. www.narr.de # 4 Rebecca Kate Hahn Side-Stepping Normativity Side-Stepping Normativity in Selected Short Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner C H A L L E N G E S # 4 Rebecca Kate Hahn 18389_Umschlag.indd 2-3 18389_Umschlag.indd 2-3 25.06.2020 16: 00: 58 25.06.2020 16: 00: 58