the art and life of djuna barnes 1892-1982

403 Pages·2015·21.01 MB·English

•A FOREIGN LANGUAGE WHICH YOU UNDERSTAND':
THE ART AND LIFE OF DJUNA BARNES 1892-1982
Thesis submitted for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
at the Department of English, Leicester University
by
Deborah Tyler-Bennett
B.A. (Hons) Loughborough University
M.A. State University of New York at Brockport
October 1993
UMI Number: U058027
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Acknowledgements iii
1. Introduction: Djuna Barnes and Problems of Textual Interpretation 1
2. A Language of Her Own: The Poetiy of Djuna Barnes 22
3. 'Museums of Encounter:' Rooms, Gender and Identity in tire Short Fiction
of Djuna Barnes 60
4. Barnes Among Women 1920-39: Ladies Almanack and Biography 95
5. 'Her Wench of Bliss': The Sexual Iconography of the Ladies Almanack 125
6. Ryder. A Critique of Family Life 156
7. Redefining the 'Feminine': Djuna Barnes, Painter of Women 188
8. 'A Web About Her': The Storytellers of Nightwood 219
9. 'The Other Woman that God Forgot': Gender and The Denied
' Womanhood' of Dr Matthew O'Connor 256
10. 'Love is Death and Death is Maidenly': The Antiphon, a Family Portrait 297
Conclusion: Towards a Reading of the Problematic Text 339
Appendix A: Plural Readings: The Lives of Djuna Bames 341
Appendix B: A Note on The Text 350
Bibliography 351
Acknowledgments
A project such as this entails the help and generous giving of time of many people. I
would firstly lilce to thank my partner, Dr Martyn Bennett, for his advice, encouragement,
proof-reading and patience. Thanlcs also go to my parents. Jack and Doris Tyler, and to my
sister and grandmother for their unfailing support and encouragement. I would also lüce to
thanlc both the Tyler and Bennett families for their support. In the early stages of this thesis I
was greatly encouraged by Hazel Bennett to whom I owe lasting thanlcs. It is my great regret
that she never lived to see the finished project.
To both tutors who have supervised the work. Dr Jane Aaron (now of the University of
Wales, Abeiystwyth) and Dr Clare Hanson (University of Leicester) I give great thanks. I
would also lilce to thanlc Katherine Cockin for her support and friendship and also the feminist
Research Group, Loughborough University, for allowing me space to discuss my ideas and
giving their opinions of them: Dr Elaine Hobby, Dr Gillian Spraggs, Dr Chris White, Dr
Kathy Bell, Ms Stella Brooks, Ms Pauline Polki, Dr Sara Mills and Ms Deedra O'Byrne and
all other members of the group. Dr Spraggs is also to be thanlced for discussing the sixteenth-
century underworld with me.
Below is a list of all others to whom I am indebted:
Staff at the Inter-Library Loan desk at Leicester University Libraiy,
Dr William Overton, Mr Jim Friedman, Dr Robin Hamilton, Mr Mick Wallis, Dr Elaine
Aston and Professor John Lucas, of the Department of English and Drama, Loughborough
University,
Staff at the British Library Reading Room,
Blanche T. Eveling Koning, Curator of the McKeldin Collection, College Park Library,
University of Maryland,
IV
Patricia C. Willis, Bieneke Rare Book and Manuscript Room, Yale University,
Dr Judith Rowbotham, Dr Sally Munt, and Dr Gregory Woods, Nottingham Trent
University,
Mrs Cruickshank, Mr Frank Püce and Mrs Valerie Eliot at Faber and Faber,
Mr Emmanuel Cooper,
Staff at Oaldiam County Museum, Oalcham, Rutland,
Dr Shearer West, Leicester University,
Dr Gabriele Griffin, Nene College.
Andrew Hope and John Fletcher for all their typing.
Djuna Barnes and Problems off Textual Interpretation
How can we best best spealc of what is extraordinary? We can, first, reduce it to
a normal or abnormal model, so that it can be explained, in a simple or more
complex fashion, given a profile, a name, a handle: the key word here is
'reduce', and the unique may well escape us. Or then, we can celebrate it without
trying to understand it, give it the name of genius or genius neuroticus (thus
justified): this is surely not reductive nor is it risky - on the other hand, it is not
trying anything at all. Or then again, with more difficulty, and at more risk, we
can both salute it and attempt, however modestly and incompletely, to
understand it, depict it, and appreciate it as and in itself, and as is is self
represented: this calls upon whatever resources we might have, and may call -
more urgently still - for developing some we did not Icnow we had.^
So wrote Mary Anne Caws when endeavouring to describe the 'braided' lives of
Carrington, Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Her analysis is complex and, it seems to me,
embodies those problems which also confront any scholar who wishes to study the life and
works of Djuna Bames. When I began this thesis, my aims appeared to be straightforward. I
wished to consider Barnes's biography and to reveal how concepts concerning the writer's
'expatriate' years had clouded subsequent interpretations of her texts. In this manner I
intended to re-evaluate both the texts themselves and the sources which Bames used to create
them. However this approach proved problematic from the outset, as it was difficult to
discover a critical strategy which successfully encompassed the diversity of Bames's texts. A
critical framework should in my opinion, provide a useful theoretical basis for a reading of a
text. Yet Bames's texts, it might be argued, deliberately elude definition. The works defy
categorization, as they avoid critical strategies. Most critics who have dealt with her work.
^ Caws, Maiy Anne, Women of Bloomsbury: Virginia, Vanessa and Carrington (London:
Routledge, 1990), p.5.
from traditionalists such as James B. Scott, to feminists such as Karla Jay, Susan Snaider
Lanser and Mary Lynne Broe, have aclcnowledged this difficultyWorldng as a feminist
literary historian myself, I became increasingly aware of this elusive quality and the way in
which the works continually challenged the strategies which I was employing. Thus those
initial aims have changed significantly, as has the framework of the thesis itself.
I hope that this critical introduction goes some way to explain these changes. A brief
synopsis of Bames's life which complements it can be found in Appendix A. The introduction
begins with an explanation of Bames's sources, followed by an analysis of the critical
approaches which have been applied to Bames's career thus far and concludes with an
exploration of why I have chosen particular literary and cultural strategies with which to
approach her work.
Barnes's Sources and the Fluidity off the
During the course of this thesis I began to realise that Bames's texts rely upon a series of
historical sources. In tracing these sources I have had to constantly re-think my own critical
position regarding her work. For example, as the project progressed it became obvious that
whilst critics such as Julie L. Abraham, Cheiyl Plumb and Louise De Salvo have discussed
Barnes's use of historical sources (such as Shalcespeare's The Tempest, which provided one of
the many sources for The Antiphon [1958]), no single critic appears to have analysed the
breadth and depth of her deployment of source material from the sixteenth, seventeenth and
eighteenth-centuries, or noted how several of those sources were used throughout Barnes's
long career.^ Not only this, but the subversive nature of many seventeenth-century sources.
For these opinions on Bames see Scott, James B., Djuna Barnes (Boston: Twayne, 1976);
Jay, Karla, "The Outsider Among the Expatriates: Djuna Barnes's Satire on the Ladies of
the Almanack', in Silence and Power edited by Broe, Mary Lynne (Carbondale: Southem
Illinois University Press, 1991), pp. 184-94; Snaider Lanser, Susan, 'Introduction', in
Ladies Almanack (New York: New York University Press, 1991), pp.xv-li; Broe, Mary
Lynne, 1991, pp.3-23.
In the final chapter I look at Bames's use of Shakespeare's Tempest in The Antiphon', See
Shakespeare, William, The Tempest (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 1623 folio; Bames,
Djuna, The Antiphon (London: Faber and Faber, 1958); also in Selected Works (London:
Faber and Faber, 1962), pp.77-224.
documented here in the chapters on poetiy, Ladies Almanack (1928), Ryder (1928), and The
Antiphon, do not appear to have been linlced to Bames's own aesthetic which might be
regarded as equally subversive A In this thesis, sources used by Bames to inform her texts are
analysed using a blend of strategies from Anglo-American feminist theorists, such as Elaine
Showalter and Maqorie Garber, who use literary theory, ideas on gender construction, and
historical context to inform their works.^ As with Sara Mills, whose work on women travel
writers is constructed using a blend of theoretical techniques (Mills uses ideas from writers as
diverse as Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak) this thesis uses a historically based construction
which draws on works by critics as separated by time and technique as Walter Benjamin and
Mary Lynne BroeA The final section of this introduction looks at why I selected certain
theorists over others, why, on the whole, I avoided French feminist techniques, and what I
feel my choice of critical strategy to have achieved. It also outlines ideas on 'modemism' and
my interpretation of the term, and where I have placed Barnes in the histoiy of American
letters.
My original concept of a thesis in two strands, interweaving both the author's life and
work, proved to be inadequate. Such an analysis would have avoided a discussion of Barnes's
sources, and a close textual reading of her works which was not based on biography. This, of
course, created further problems, as it would be almost impossible to discuss Bames's work as
totally separate from her life. Thus, biographical information vital to my critical argument
(such as the life of Natalie Barney on which Bames based the life of Dame Musset) is
contained within the text, whilst a brief analysis of Bames's life as a whole is provided in
Appendix A. In the text, biographical sections are used to challenge existing ideas on Bames's
work. For example, the section on Nightwood which deals with how Bames used the life of
Bames, Djuna, Ladies Almanack (Dijon: Darrantiere, 1928); Ryder (New York: Liveright,
1928); also Bames, 1962.
^ See Garber, Marjorie, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (London:
Routledge, 1992); Showalter, Elaine, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin-de-
Siècle (London: Virago, 1992).
® See Mills, Sara, Discourses of Difference (London: Routledge, 1991), pp.3-23.
her friend Dan Mahoney as a basis for the character of Matthew O'Connor, challenges
previous ideas about the creation of O'Connor. Whilst critics such as Andrew Field and Broe
regal'd Mahoney as the sole inspiration behind O'Connor, I suggest that O'Connor represents a
pastiche of many people Icnown to Bames.^ Such biographical revisions allow a textual
reading to occur which differs from previous analysis.
Because Bames's output was so vast, it is impossible to analyse all of it within the
confines of the thesis format. Thus, journalistic pieces by Bames exploring themes which
informed later works are mentioned throughout the sections referring to her short fiction,
poetry, novels and plays. Lilcewise, Bames's old age and years as a recluse are explored in
relation to the creations of her old age, in poetry such as 'Walldng Mort' and 'Quarry', both
published in The New Yorker in the 1970s, in The Antiphon and in her bestiary Creatures in
an Alphabet (1982).^ I have, wherever possible, attempted to highlight biographical depictions
of Bames's work where the text is obscured by myths arising from the biographies, memoirs
and letters. This reveals how anecdotal accounts of Bames's life have clouded textual
readings. The following sections outline past interpretations of Bames's work, demonstrating
previous critical strategies.
Bames's fictional and theatrical style has always possessed the ability to infuriate, baffle,
disquiet and defamüiarize. As Plumb notes, early plays such as The Dove (1923) and Kurzy of
the Sea (1920) irritated reviewers, with their seeming obscurity.® Writing in 1919, Alexander
Woolcott wrote of the plays:
It is really interesting to see how absorbing and essentially dramatic a play can be
See the section in this thesis on Nightwood.
^ Bames, Djuna, 'Quarry', in The New Yorker (27 Dec 1969), p.34; Barnes, Djuna, 'Walking
Mort', in The New Yorker (15 May 1971), p.53; Bames, Djuna Creatures in An Alphabet
(New York: Dial, 1982).
® Plumb, 1986, pp.34-5.