"How strangely knowledge comes to us" : Thomas Hardy and the limits of representation PDF
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"HOW STRANGELY KNOWLEDGE COMES TO US": THOMAS HARDY AND THE LIMITS OF REPRESENTATION By ALEXANDER MENOCAL A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1992 QFROTinr-s UNIVERSITY wish to dedicate this dissertation to my friend, John I Leavey for his inexhaustible generosity and his diligent f support, and to my close friend, Ali, in gratitude for her love and the brilliance of her imagination. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I should like to thank everyone on my committee for their support and counsel. First, my thanks go to my director Professor John Leavey, who has taught me the importance of a certain demanding form of reading and circumspection. thank Professor Dan Cottom for his I avuncular counsel, his friendship, and tireless assistance in helping me become a better writer and reader. My thanks go to Professor Elizabeth Langland for her strong support and counsel. My thanks go to Professor Robert D'Amico for his encouragement and questioning. thank Professor I Alistair Duckworth for his questions and support. And my thanks go to Professor John Perlette for his questions and encouragement. Special thanks go to my close friend, Sara Kimball, who has always been a source of amazing insight and limitless kindness. My deepest thanks go to my parents and brother, in gratitude for their many sacrifices and love. And above all, my thanks go to my close friend, Ali. 111 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii ABSTRACT V PART I THE DEMANDS OF REALISM 1 INTRODUCTION 2 CHAPTER 1 CRISIS AND THE DEMANDS OF REALISM 8 The Demand of Realism and Truth 17 Notes 28 CHAPTER 2 THE MORAL AND THE FORMAL 30 CHAPTER 3 THE DEMANDS OF REALISM AND HISTORIOGRAPHY. 47 . . PART II THOMAS HARDY'S RESPONSES 73 CHAPTER 4 THE INTERVIEW 74 Notes 105 CHAPTER 5 SINCERITY 108 Sincerity: The Demand to Challenge and Question 109 When Techniques Replace the Authority of Providence 130 Sympathetic Appreciation 142 The Rejection of Closure in Sincerity 146 The Gift of Intuition 151 A General Truth is Difficult to Grasp 159 Critical Responses 173 Notes 181 CHAPTER 6 REFLECTIVE AND WARPED READERS 182 Notes 206 WORKS CITED 208 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 212 iv Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy "HOW STRANGELY KNOWLEDGE COMES TO US": THOMAS HARDY AND THE LIMITS OF REPRESENTATION By Alexander Menocal May, 1992 Chairman: John P. Leavey, Jr. Major Department: English This dissertation demonstrates how nineteenth-century British realism is guided by the demand to represent the world of "ordinary life." This demand, which authorizes the realist project and defines the place of literature in relation to the world, is both a formal and a social demand, a call for a just representation of the world and for social responsibility. Only by responding to this demand can realism show that it is responsible and not a product of prejudice or dogma. In addition, although this demand enjoins realism to record only what it discovers in the world of "ordinary life," it also sanctions realism's discovery of a universal or general truth within the diverse experiences composing the world of "ordinary life." The desire for universal truth, however, is compromised by the necessity to represent the demand that gives rise to realism. In other words, this demand is not only the cause of realism but also the effect of realism, something realism itself represents as demanding. Part 1 explores how some nineteenth-century writers and twentieth-century critics respond to and read the demands of realism. A crisis of representation, argue, motivates I realists to view their project as demanding. Although realists feel compelled to represent the world of "ordinary life," they also contend that any representation of reality is conditional. Despite the conditional nature of their representations, realists do not question the foundation of their project--the demand of realism. In fact, it becomes necessary to integrate the question of the formal into the question of the moral. The nature of the language of realism then appears as the medium of morality. Part 2 considers how Thomas Hardy in particular responds to this crisis. Hardy proposes that the crisis of representation can be suspended in the setting of the interview, where two parties can meet face-to-face to sort out the truth from a host of misrepresentations. The interview, however, fails to function as a sanctuary. In order to counter this failure, Hardy proposes that two strategies are necessary to respond to the demand: a sincere and conscientious representation and a reflective reader . vi PART 1 THE DEMANDS OF REALISM 1 INTRODUCTION Before judgment occurs, the process of assimilation must already have taken place --Nietzsche, The Will to Power 289 When realism vaulted the world of ordinary life to its preeminence, this life inspired tremors of wonder in its literary cartographers as it was made to disclose the extraordinary features of its landscape. No longer presupposed as the background of activity, ordinary life seemed to call out for inspection, to enjoin realists to take it into their view. Proposed by many as the ground of activity, ordinary life itself, however, in realism was in need of a ground. The truth of ordinary life for which realism was searching was not simply rediscovered in some unforeseen place. Rather, the topography of this truth was undergoing a thorough reconfiguration. New voices were beginning to be heard, for instance, from hitherto unacknowledged pockets of society. Exceptional cases became the rule. In all of this, realism, as it was understood by many Victorian writers, aspired to an unprecedented sense of transcendence, one very different, however, from the romantic idealizations against which realism is often set. For one thing, while tethered to a qua s i -emp i r i ca i 3 representation of the world, realism would claim for itself a basis in a sociology or psychology of the "individual," a figure that could at once illustrate the most ordinary and extraordinary, the most universal and yet most idiomatic qualities. Meanwhile, social and literary conventions principally derived from traditional models of authority practically lost their circulating power. Even when there seemed to be growing fascination with the a par t cular i za t i on of experience, even when widespread anxiety at the excess of significant detail replaced this fascination, even when this social chorus seemed to splinter into a terrific din that signified at once mobility and prostration, even when realist writers perceived the historical changes taking place around them as a crisis or a loss of order--there remained the imperative to seek out the truth of ordinary life and respond to its enjoinder. Be true to the truth of ordinary life, be responsible to this truth, says the imperative, for truth demands it. No doubt much of this has been said already. In fact, an almost random search of contemporary criticism on realism would likely reveal that contemporary critics tend to define realism in terms of a crisis and a demand, or some comparable moral or ethical scheme. These defining terms recall the ways nineteenth-century writers define realism, as if to say this critical language has been bequeathed to contemporary critics by nineteenth-century writers. But as 4 some characters in Austen's Sense and Sensibility quickly learn when they must execute the terms of an inheritance, one's goods are not always one's own. Likewise, one might say contemporary critics are less in possession of an explanation of realism than they believe as long as they adhere to the terms of this inherited language. Rather than possessing these terms, contemporary critics are possessed by them; indeed, they are their appointed custodians. All of this takes on added importance due to the self-conscious or s e 1 f -cr i t i ca 1 sophistication contemporary critics impute to nineteenth-century writers. For contemporary critics and nineteenth-century writers alike tend to leave unexamined the defining terms of realism despite all their supposed self-consc ousness about them. i If the terms and gestures that coalesce in the demand of realism remain unexamined, they will continue to exercise an almost sacred authority over critics. In other words, these terms and gestures, relations and definitions, will seem demanding and invariable. The argument presented in Part 1 contains three sections. I begin by examining how 19th-century realists perceive themselves as working within a crisis of representation. This perception is based on the recognition that the existing forms of representing their world are incapable of responding to the social changes underway in their world. Although realists will strive to replace these
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