SISTERS IN LITERATURE

Transcription

1 SISTERS IN LITERATURE

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3 Sisters in Literature Female Sexuality in Antigone, Middlemarch, Howards End and Women in Love Masako Hirai Professor English Department Kobe College Nishinomiya, Japan flfl

4 m m First published in Great Britain 1998 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN X First published in the United States of America 1998 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y ISBN Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hirai, Masako, 1949 Sisters in literature : female sexuality in Antigone, Middlemarch, Howards End, and Women in Love / Masako Hirai. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN (cloth) 1. English fiction History and criticism. 2. Sisters in literature. 3. Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), Women in love. 4. Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan), Howards End. 5. Eliot, George, Middlemarch. 6. Sophocles. Antigone. 7. Women in literature. 8. Sex in literature. I. Title. PR888.S52H * dc CIP Masako Hirai 1998 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

5 For my mother

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7 Contents Preface and Acknowledgments x 1 Introduction 1 2 The Common Doom 8 The Split in the Novelists 8 Mothering the Artist 14 3 Reading Antigone 25 Antigone for George Eliot 25 Antigone and Eliot for D. H. Lawrence 28 Antigone and Eliot for E. M. Forster 31 Reading Antigone from the Sisters' Dialectic 35 4 Middlemarch: From Heroic Legend to Emotional History 41 Beginning with Legend: History as Narrowing Path 41 Juxtaposition: Images and Counter-Images 44 Dialogue: Passion vs. Common Sense 50 Disillusionment and Sexual Images 65 Ending with a Diminished Myth: an Emotive History 74 5 Howards End: From Letters to a Connecting Vision 77 Beginning with Letters: History as a Disconnected View 77 The Dilemma: Freedom and Discontinuity in Social and Sexual Myths 84 Dialogue: Poetry and Prose 88 Disillusion, Madness and Sexual Vision 103 The Language of the Wound: Woman's Body, Tree and House 111 Ending with an Image: House and Woman as Spirit Women in Love (1): The Disruptive Style, its Images and Arguments 121 The First Scene: Tradition and the Gap 123 Wedding and Fashion: Social Act and the Inner Gap 132 Animal Imagery 136 vn

8 Vlll Contents Contrast in Colours 138 Female Mystery and the Knowledge of the Artist 142 Changing Colours and the Other Mode of Being 144 From under the Mirror: the Inhuman Light 148 Passion for Debate and Death of Language Women in Love (2): The Language Between 169 Between Purity and Shame 169 The Game of Death 175 The Knowing Adult vs. the Innocent Child 181 Art and Life: Ambiguities about the Rock 186 The Disruptive Form 190 Inversions in the Mirror: Parting and Attachment 194 The Sacrifice to 'Love' 202 Blood-brotherhood and the Death of Tragedy 207 Notes 211 Bibliography 216 Index 220

9 Page references given for the texts quoted are to the following editions: Antigone, edited by Andrew Brown, Aris and Phillips, Middlemarch, edited by Bert G. Hornback, Norton, Howards End, edited by Oliver Stallybrass, Arnold, Women in Love, edited by David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, Cambridge, 1987.

10 Preface and Acknowledgments The idea for this book had its origin in the wonderful, open atmosphere of conversation at Clare Hall, Cambridge, where I was a Visiting Fellow for the year At lunchtime, the dining hall of this small college was always filled with visiting fellows who came from all over the world and visitors from the other Cambridge colleges, as well as the graduate students and the friendly and hospitable fellows of Clare Hall, who shared and encouraged others to share the research interest of the person sitting beside you. It was stimulating and liberating to be introduced to new books and ideas, to have explained in simple terms the difficult theories of unfamiliar subjects, or to have a perceptive audience for sharing what was still in the process of forming and being tested in the mind. This made me more creative in the quiet hours of reading and thinking. In that atmosphere I talked about George Eliot, Forster and Lawrence, whose works each had such a distinctive character and yet, I thought, were connected through something close to the heart of their creation. I was interested in the common theme of 'the two sisters' which was central to their major novels and which was the main source of the author's imaginative use of language and experience, and generated the theme of conflict between individual passion and social and physical reality. This theme represented the combination of problems of duality and human consciousness in vulnerable female protagonists and, at a deeper level, of the minds of the authors themselves. They seemed to converse with each other through the common roots of their emotional and literary experiences. I could trace their conversation in the texts. It was Michael Black who responded to my ideas, and he immediately suggested that I should write a book. I am grateful to him for his unfailing encouragement and support since then. Though I was allowed to stay on for another half year as a Life Member of Clare Hall and wrote my first draft there, a work of inspiration, I had to work more closely on the book after returning x

11 Preface and Acknowledgements xi to teach in Japan. I was often prevented from continuing my work by many things, including the great earthquake in Hanshin, but Michael Black read every draft of the manuscript I sent him, commented on them and gave me practical advice, which helped me to proceed with confidence. While in Cambridge, I was fortunate in meeting people and being treated as a friend. I am particularly grateful to Gillian Beer and John Beer for their warm sympathy and invaluable advice, as well as for the stimulating ideas I got from their books. In the University Library and the English Faculty Library, where I spent many hours, I found some 'spiritual' friends who had either expressed in their books or hinted at some of the boldest ideas I had about interpreting and interconnecting the texts. They were not necessarily the most recent books. Looking through the studies of Antigone, the tragedy which was obviously originative in understanding the sisters' scenario, I found George Steiner's book and was overwhelmed by its insights, and his wide knowledge of the Antigone myth in Western literature. After I left Cambridge I had the opportunity to meet Frank Kermode and was able to tell him how much I was struck by some passing comments of his (published in 1968) on the reality of female sexuality in two parallel scenes in Middlemarch and Women in Love. I want to thank H. M. Daleski for continuing to inspire me and encouraging my work as a friend, also John Worthen, Mark Kinkead-Weekes, Michael Bell, Keith Cushman, Paul Eggert, Anne Fernihough and other members of the International Lawrence Conference. I am also grateful to my Japanese friends and the professors of Kyoto University and Kobe University, Kazuso Ogoshi, Yasuo Suga, Teruo Oka, Jisei Aoki, Tetsuo Kishi, Takehiko Terada, Yoshizo Miyazaki, Manji Kobayashi, Yoshio Abe, Haruhide Mori, and members of Lawrence Society of Japan, the English Literary Society of Japan, and Comparative Literature Association of Japan. I am grateful to the Macmillan Press and to Charmian Hearne in particular for the willingness and care with which they published my book. Finally, I thank my fellow professors of Kobe College for their support in various ways, and Kobe College itself for sending me to Cambridge and supporting the publication of this book. I have quoted passages mainly from Sophocles's Antigone, edited and translated by Andrew Brown (Aris and Phillips, 1987), George Eliot's Middlemarch, edited by Bert G. Hornback (Norton, 1977),

12 Xll Sisters in Literature E. M. Forster's Howards End, edited by Oliver Stallybrass (Arnold, 1973), and D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love, edited by David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge, 1987), and I would like to express my gratitude to these editors. Masako Hirai Ashiya