The University in Modern Fiction: When Power is Academic PDF
Preview The University in Modern Fiction: When Power is Academic
THE UNIVERSITY IN MODERN FICTION Also by Janice Rossen AGING AND GENDER IN LITERATURE: Studies in Creativity (co-editor with Anne M. Wyatt-Brown) INDEPENDENT WOMEN: The Function of Gender in the Novels of Barbara Pym (editor) PHILIP LARKIN: His Life's Work * THE WORLD OF BARBARA PYM WRITERS OF THE OLD SCHOOL: British Novelists of the 1930s (co-editor with Rosemary M. Colt) * Also from the same publishers The University in Modern Fiction When Power is Academic Janice Rossen Senior Research Fellow Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre University of Texas at Austin 150th YEAR M 5t. Martin's Press © Janice Rossen 1993 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1993 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. First published in Great Britain 1993 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG212XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-22848-5 ISBN 978-1-349-22846-1 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/978-1-349-22846-1 First published in the United States of America 1993 by Scholarly and Reference Division, ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-09585-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rossen, Janice, 1955- The university in modern fiction: when power is academic / Janice Rossen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-09585-7 1. Education, Higher, in literature. 2. Universities and colleges in literature. 3. Fiction-History and criticism. I. Title. PN52.R67 1993 809.3'9355----dc20 92-46153 CIP University in Modern Fiction For Lucky Bill (now a professor) Contents Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 1 Exclusion: Outside University Walls 11 2 Resistance: Women at Oxbridge 32 3 Marginalization: Men of the Lower Classes 56 4 Enclosure: Undergraduates 93 5 Power Politics: Masters, Fellows and Dons 119 6 Competition: Scholars and the Global Campus 139 7 Creativity: Novelists in Academe 171 Notes 189 Index 199 vii Acknowl edgements I am first of all indebted to my friends who read drafts of the manuscript in progress: James D. Garrison, Charles Romney, and (as always) John Augustine. Warm thanks go also to John P. Farrell, who found resourceful ways out of endless knots and tangles. Many others have contributed to my thinking on the subject of aca- demics, and I am especially grateful to Guilland Sutherland, Claire M. Tylee, James Booth, David Braun, Tim Rogers, Bart Willis, Robert J. Ray and Noreen Crawford. Like myself, they have all suf- fered problematic relationships with academe, the entire crew of us having been in and out of various institutions of higher learning for most of our adult lives. lowe them much; they have been compan- ions on the quest. I am also grateful to David Bevan and the Rodopi Press, who allowed me to include portions of my essay on Dorothy L. Sayers from their University Fiction volume in the chapter on women at Oxbridge. Most of all, I want to thank my husband, William Rossen, who has been knit up with my academic career since our days in gradu- ate school together. His passion for knowledge has inspired me; his love has nourished me. This book is for him, and for all the times he has made me laugh. viii Introduction The way in which academic life is portrayed in fiction creates a complex intersection among a number of forces. A primary issue which these novels engage is the interplay between fiction and fact: we assume University novels to be realistic because they are based on an actual institution, often enough on a real University in a real place. As such, they are important because they are widely b~lieved by their readers to constitute an accurate representation of aca- demic life, whether they do so or not; and what remains true is that these novels are heavily influenced by the subject itself, which exerts a strong pull on the novel form. Mortimer Proctor's excellent study of University fiction in English literature makes this the basis of his reason for having undertaken such a survey. He concludes that: "the university novel, in the long course of its development, has been shaped more than anything else by the state of the English universities". Given the fact that the University holds an important place in our culture, it therefore follows that we should give atten- tion to fiction about it because of its self-proclaimed connection with actual institutions; as Proctor goes on to observe: "As a literary genre, it has always reflected conditions within Oxford and Cambridge far more closely than it has followed any literary trends or movement."l In his survey of British academic novels after the Second World War, Ian Carter takes up in terms of chronology where Proctor leaves off and confirms Proctor's earlier assessment, noting that most novels are set at either Oxford or Cambridge, in a way that is far out of proportion to their actual number among British universities. Still, novelists are not concerned with sociologi- cal accuracy or representative samplings so much as they are to write novels which will be true to the ideals and anxieties of their times, and which will tap into their readers' collective fantasies about academe. In reflecting a high value for Oxbridge, modern fiction writers affirm a fact of social history in holding Oxford and Cambridge Universities to be preeminent in prestige. And this strikes at the root of what fiction is and why we read it. These writers either wish to identify with Oxbridge themselves, and thus to appropriate its mana by boasting of their insiders' knowledge, or they assume that their readers will wish to do so vicariously through their novels. J. Rossen The University in Modern Fiction © Janice Rossen 1993
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