Review: The Collector by John Fowles (and others)

Two thirds of the way into July so I'd better post this before it gets any further into the month.

I have already recorded that I didn't read any books for leisure throughout May, so it seems that throughout June I made up for last time. I finished Amanda Foreman's A World on Fire, her history of the complex, paradoxical, and often retaliatory relationship between Britain and America during the American Civil War; it was thoroughly, thoroughly excellent. I would review it but I lack the ability to do it justice; indeed, it is such a long book that a comprehensive review would take longer to write than I have time on my hands. Foreman has done a wonderful job; the inclusion of cartoons from Punch spread throughout the book alongside the text was an inspired decision.

I also read Alexander Masters' Stuart: A Life Backwards, which was what they call a moving read. This sensational biography of Stuart Shorter, a homeless man, is novel for starting with the end of his life and moving backwards into his past to show what influenced him to become the man he was by the time of his death. The idea is to look at Shorter's life as a kind of murder mystery: what killed the innocent boy he once was? The device works, and the final third of the book is extremely bleak indeed.

There were some duds.  Through work I received a copy of David Almond's new book, The Monster Billy Dean, which disappointed me. It's a post-apocalyptical story about a boy brought up in near-isolation, taught about Christianity but not about the outside world; Billy Dean is special for being able to communicate with the dead. Words are spelt almost phonetically throughout the book which contributes to the sense of Billy Dean's isolation. Unfortunately, I didn't think that the story quite lived up to what was promised by its cover and the publisher's letter. I think I was expecting something darkly atmospheric, something bloodcurdling enough to be a little trashy, yet with enough pretensions that it might be literary. I wanted to be reminded of the eerier moments in Susanna Clark's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I wanted a sub-Shirley Jackson story - perhaps something about feral children. The book didn't do any of these things for me, and I think that my dissatisfaction irreparably clouded my enjoyment.

Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell - the story of an Ozarks girl on the hunt for her meth-cooking father to turn into the police - was rather murky. It was well-written - and far more atmospheric than Billy Dean - but ultimately forgettable. It did have some engaging details that I wish the film had retained - Ree's loss of virginity, her relationship with her best friend, the horror of her uncle's face destroyed by an accident while cooking meth - but it's not one that I'd rush out to buy again.

I read Diana Wynne Jones' final book, Earwig and the Witch, which was as entertaining as anything else she wrote. I adore Jones' writing - Fire and Hemlock is a regular "top tenner" when listing my favourite books - and this last of hers managed to strike the right note of being "darkly adorable" (the illustrations help). It was the story of an orphan girl called Earwig who's adopted and enslaved by a woman called Bella Yaga, who only wants her around to help with her spells; Earwig, a girl used to getting her own way at the orphanage, now decides to scheme her way into becoming a witch herself. Only the ending felt a little rushed - I got the feeling that perhaps it was finished by well-intentioned family and editors after Jones' death - but I still loved it.

In fact, I was all set to make Earwig and the Witch the main focus of this post, even though it was written for young children - but then I read John Fowles' The Collector.  I thought it was an absolutely wonderful book - sort of as if Nabokov had written Emma Donoghue's Room. Set in the 1960s, a young man is obsessed with an art student, whom he abducts and keeps locked up in the cellar of his isolated cottage, storing her like one of the butterfly specimens he also collects. I imagine it was an extremely difficult book to write - Frederick Clegg actually seems almost reasonable during his narration. It is only in the second half of the book, told through a series of diary entries written by the kidnapped Miranda, that Clegg's "weirdness" is put into perspective.

In spite of any sympathy owed to her awful situation, Miranda herself is not wholly likeable - she's snobbish ("The ordinary man is the curse of civilization" (127)) hypocritical, self-obsessed - but I was impressed by how much her imperfections made me appreciate her, and to her credit, she frequently recognises the flaws in her character, reflecting on what she's written and done and criticising poor behaviour. We talk about "real" characters in books - she seemed real to me. I certainly appreciated her interest in and ability to discuss literature - she was able to compare herself and her situation to other literary moments. Halfway through the novel she thinks, "I am Emma Woodhouse" (157) - I am Miranda - or at least, I was when I was her age, twenty.

Curiously, there wasn't - or I didn't catch - a reference to Pamela, an obvious example of captivity in the western canon, and considering the frequent allusions to Emma, Sense and Sensibility, The Catcher in the Rye, Romeo and Juliet, Robinson Crusoe, various paintings, and (most notably) The Tempest, this omission appears to be an oversight. Perhaps Miranda simply wasn't familiar with the work. Clegg certainly wouldn't have been.

Religion is a modest-running theme throughout The Collector; not the prevailing subject (that's class) but it appeared often enough to interest me. There are frequent references to Clegg's semi-religious upbringing; he was "brought up in the atmosphere" (13) of Christianity in spite of his nonconformist aunt and still retains the loosely puritanical beliefs of childhood. Certain things are "not nice", such as sexual promiscuity in women.

Miranda does not appear to have had a particularly religious upbringing - at most, we can imagine that it was vaguely Church of England, in the way that most girls of her class in the 1960s were vaguely Church of England. She believes in God - and even prays to him occasionally - although a Christian God is not a defining aspect of her life until the end. Early on in the story she asserts herself as a Buddhist, although she does not repeat this belief. It appears to be part of her self-identification with the Left.

Yet religious lifestyles are far more important to Clegg and Miranda than either of them seem to realise. Each of them unconsciously follows a religious path. Clegg, surprisingly, aligns himself with western Buddhism, which as I understand it, promotes the acceptance of situations for what they are. Clegg is unwilling to alter his own lifestyle unless necessary and cannot understand why Miranda can't come to loves him. In fact, most of Clegg's motivation throughout the book comes from the belief that if Miranda contemplates her situation properly, she will realise that she loves him. He is unwavering in this principle and his position at the end of the book is much the same as it was at the beginning. Miranda's failure to love him is her fault, with her "la-di-da ideas and clever tricks" (282).

By contrast, Miranda, for all her modern views, is demonstrative of one of the ideals behind western Christianity: that a person is imperfect and must strive for self-improvement. Her development is only partly spiritual, going from subservience to God to hatred - "he's a great loathsome spider in the darkness…God is impotent…I hate beyond hate" (255). Similarly, her experience with violence until her capture has been observant - the "H-bomb" and teddy-boys harassing Indians - and the idea of violence makes her "feel weak". Yet eventually a physical attack is something she must do.

Her experience has aspects of a religious retreat - albeit one of luxury. Being kept in isolation in a cellar for months, she has time to think and reflect. She must discard her former principles and compromise her beliefs in order to have a chance at survival and escape. Unlike Clegg, she does go through several transformations. Enlightenment is perhaps too strong a word for her path but her development throughout the book, her ability to think and question herself, are certainly increased. Would it be too hideous to retain the butterfly metaphor here?

The Beggar's Opera at Regent's Park

Last night I went to see The Beggar's Opera at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre - a wonderful performance. They used an eighteenth-century setting - unusual for older drama, these days - and managed a perfect evocation of old London. I was overwhelmed with emotion, almost to tears, during the opening: a Newgate prison scene, wordless, semi-comic, with traditional music playing in the background - it was so well staged. As a theatrical achievement it was aesthetically marvellous - as the Open Air Theatre always is - and was the perfect tonic for reinvigorating my interest in the subject.

Although there hasn't been a place for The Beggar's Opera in my work so far, the performance has made me look at it in a new way - made me think, "Ooh, maybe...!" I'm looking forward to getting down to work this coming week in consequence - it's so thrilling to be excited and interested in work.

Farces

I've read quite a few farces over the past few days - a fantastic dramatic genre for my research as they frequently emphasise the extravagance and bombasticity of heroic drama.

Picking plays to use is a dicey subject, though: I spent ages on Sunday looking for William D'Avenant's The Playhouse to be Let (1663), the fifth act of which, I had read, is one of the earliest examples of English burlesque. It features several characters typical of heroic dramas, tragedies, and romances - Cleopatra, Marc Anthony, and Caesar - presented in a decidedly unromantic way. Once I had finally found a copy online, through EEBO, it was a little disappointing. It was very short (not even five pages long) and about the best joke was the consistent naming of Anthony as "Tony" - as farcical jokes go, rather weak.

Reading Thomas Duffett's The Empress of Morocco (1674) now, which is slightly more interesting - especially as the cast-list reveals that the female characters were all played by men in its original run. It's a direct spoof of Elkanah Settle's own The Empress of Morocco and turns the London underclasses into a sort of alternative Moroccan nobility: Morena, the titular empress, is also an "apple woman", for example.

Speaking objectively, I do feel that a lot of farces of this period have fallen out of popularity deservedly. There's a lot of pantomime humour in them, which makes them extremely useful to use as sources to tell us what was popular in the late seventeenth century - the humour in The Playhouse to be Let, for example, derrives from the baseness of Cleopatra et al's behaviour, and indicates that the official take on them was far more serious. By burlesquing their characters in suggesting an everyday humanity to their behaviour, pretension of taste and ideology is being lampooned. As I say, this is interesting for what it tells us about seventeenth-century cultural. beliefs. Yet at the same time, no one can expect a modern audience to go to a play fully briefed on all the intricacies of Restoration culture and society. And as much as anything else, a lot of the humour is very cheap, frequently with a rushed feel about it.

All the same, I'll defend The Dragon of Wantley to the death. Cheap or not, any hero who wins the day by kicking his adversary in the bum is pretty funny.

The Assignation - Dryden

I read Thomas Sourtherne's adaptation of Oroonoko earlier this week and it was rather a strange play. I'm not sure whether I like it or not; I think I need to write a blog so that I can puzzle it out for myself.

That will come later, though. At the moment I'm reading Dryden's The Assignation, a standard little drama which I'm not sure I'll use. However, I did just come across an interesting scene. Ascanio, a man about town, and Hippolita, a novice, are talking about their friends' budding romance - and doing a bit of flirting themselves. They then have the following charming exchange:

HIPPOLITA: Dare you make all this good you have said of your Master?

ASCANIO: Yes, and as much more of my self to you.

HIPPOLITA: I defy you upon't, as my Lady's Second.

ASCANIO: As my Masters, I accept it.  The time?

HIPPOLITA: Six this evening.

ASCANIO: The place?

HIPPOLITA: At this Grate.

ASCANIO: The Weapons?

HIPPOLITA: Hands, and it may be Lips.

ASCANIO: 'Tis enough: expect to hear from me. II:I 

Duelling language! To arrange a romantic tryst! More than anything, this gives a good example of the sort of duelling language that a mid seventeenth-century audience would be familiar with. I was very excited.

The Rehearsal - Buckingham

On Monday, I opened up the document containing my first chapter and, perhaps unsurprisingly, realised that I was stuck. I spent six weeks concentrating on the same ten thousand words that now that it's time to move on from them, I'm outside of my comfort zone. Fortunately, I had a copy of Buckingham's The Rehearsal in my bag, so I spent two days rereading that and taking notes to get back into the flow of things.

I don't think that it's saying too much to claim that The Rehearsal struck a massive blow to heroic drama and effectively changed English theatre. Its success suggested that the burlesque could have, as Simon Trussler writes, a "corrective function" and that furthermore, "the grosser absurdities of the heroic idiom could no longer be perpetrated with impunity". (Trussler, 2)

Even aside from its theatrical importance, The Rehearsal is an interesting play. It has a rather MST3K feel about it: two "men about town" sit down to watch a rehearsal of a bad play, and make sarcastic comments as it plays out in front of them. Throughout, they discuss the play's quality with its author, Bayes - played by the seventeenth-century comic giant John Lacy - who is adamant about its greatness. The bad play is an explicit parody of the heroic dramas that Dryden was putting out - and Bayes is a direct parody of Dryden - and is utterly ridiculous, the chief complaint being that there is no actual plot. The drama is rather a series of scenes depicting people reacting unconvincingly to strange and random events.

Perhaps Buckingham's greatest scene is one in which the Prince Volscius falls in love with a girl just as he is preparing to depart for war. As he is pulling on his boots, he gives a tragi-comic speech on the dilemma of love versus honour - but cannot come to a conclusion and thus "goes out hopping with one Boot on, and the other off". A point charmingly and humourously made regarding the agonies that Volscius' alter egos go through in serious plays.

Unfortunately for my purposes, The Rehearsal does not have a duel in it. However, I shall use what I can, given that it skillfully parodies heroic modes, and there is plenty of comic violence throughout. I am especially fond of a battle scene which has only two soldiers, both wearing ribbon and carrying lutes. This is possibly the first instance of the "two man army" gag, beloved of later burlesques - the joke is, quite simply, that there are only two men representing enormous armies - although I am not certain.

Of particular note is the final battle, won by Drawcansir - a violent young man described by the author as a "fierce Hero". He kills everyone else on the battlefield, after which he declares:

DRAWCANSIR: Others may boast a single man to kill;

But I, the blood of thousands daily spill.

Let petty Kings the names of Parties know:

Where e'er I come, I slay both friend and foe.

The swiftest Horsemen my swift rage controuls,

And from their Bodies drives their trembling souls.

If they had wings, and to the Gods could flie,

I would pursue and beat 'em through the skie:

And make proud Jove, with all his Thunder, see

This single Arm more dreadful is, than he. V:I, 275-284

More powerful than Jove! Buckingham here parodies the belligerence of modern heroes, and in particular the apparent insistence that the greatest, most powerful hero must necessarily be the bloodiest warrior. Remember: up until relatively recently, heroism in English literature didn't depend on killing numerous people on a battlefield. This was especially the case in English drama - medieval dramas were almost exclusively morality tales or retellings of Bible stories.

Drawcansir is a parody of Dryden's greatest heroic creation, Almanzor, from The Conquest of Granada, a character heavily drawn from Achilles. Buckingham was not afraid of misquoting lines from Granada for comic effect; for example, regarding his forbidden love for Almahide, Almazor says:

He who dares love, and for that love must die,
And, knowing this, dares yet love on, am I. IV:III

- while Drawcansir says, in anticipation of a drunken brawl:

He that dares drink, and for that drink dares die,
And knowing this, dares yet drink on, am I. IV:I, 190-191

Indeed, Drawcansir is permissible as a hero in spite of the fact that he "frights his Mistress, snubs up Kings, baffles Armies, and does what he will, without regard to numbers, good manners, or justice" (IV:I, 83-84) because his violent, often brutal behaviour is what had come to be regarded as acceptable heroic conduct. There is no inconsistency; in writing Drawcansir, Buckingham is simply taking the standard to its logical extreme.

A duel would have been nice, of course, as it would mean that I'd be able to write more about The Rehearsal than I'm now going to. Still, the play stands as an excellent parody of heroic behaviour, and perhaps it's one that I'll be able to return to at a later date. 

Exhibition

I was excited to read in the newspaper yesterday of an upcoming exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery entitled The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons. As you can probably guess, it's a display of portraits of actress from the late seventeenth through to the eighteenth century, and by all accounts it sounds as though there are going to be some good ones: as well as the two in the exhibition's title, this news article references Susannah Cibber, Mary Robinson, and (my personal favourite), Dora Jordan, some of the most famous eighteenth-century actresses (and in some cases, playwrights).


It does seem as though the exhibition's focus will be on beautiful young things which is rather a shame - grotesque women and women in drag have a place in eighteenth-century theatrical history, particularly in burlesques, and their portraits were certainly painted. Nevertheless, I'm greatly looking forward to it. October can't come quickly enough!

Still alive

Blog posts have been rather sporadic over the past month, mostly due to the fact that I've been preparing for my end-of year upgrade, to allow me to move from MPhil to PhD status. To do so, I had to submit a piece of work between seven and ten thousand words long, an annotated bibliography, a working thesis outline (including chapter breakdown), an evaluation of the past year and plan for the coming year, and exercises demonstrating my attendance of research seminars. Additionally, I had to make a fifteen minute presentation of my work so far in front of the other candidates, and have a fifteen minute mini-viva. Quite a workload. I just wanted to write about duelling!


Anyway, I've been very preoccupied with writing and preparing, the consequence being that blogging has rather fallen by the wayside. It was all to the good, however. My interviewers at my mini-viva - comprising of my supervisor, my advisor, and an external examiner - agreed that I passed, which is a huge weight off my mind. I could have my PhD by 2013!

I think my only downfall was the presentation. While I followed the guidelines for submission of work, I didn't realise that there were guidelines for what to include in presentations as well. As a result, I was one of the only people who didn't use PowerPoint, and I certainly didn't make any evaluations of my own work thus far. I was also much vaguer and informal than I ought to have been - so much so that I was asked (in full seriousness) whether the use of satire would be a part of my thesis. I was just telling some jokes to make my presentation interesting! To misjudge the requirements to the extent I did makes me feel embarrassed - I felt very unacademic when compared to everyone else - but I suppose I should try not to let it bother me too much. I was upgraded; that's what's important.

Under other circumstances I'd segue into a review of a book unrelated to my thesis, but this past month I haven't managed to finish anything that wasn't concerned with masculinity, duelling, or the seventeenth century. I did begin two (Hi-de-ho: The Life of Cab Calloway by Alyn Shipton and The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - the latter an intertwined history of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the serial killer HH Holmes) but I haven't been able to finish them. I also bought and skimmed a beautiful book called Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It by Michael J. Trinklein. As you can probably tell from the title, it's a peekaboo look at proposed US states which, for various reasons, never made the grade. This is a coffee-table book, really, and I read it in the same way that one might read a magazine.

I have just started Amanda Foreman's A World on Fire, an elegant account of the relationship between Britain and America during the American Civil War. Foreman is perhaps best-known for her biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (which shaped the 2008 Keira Knightley film), and this second book is an excellent follow-up, vividly written with a real feel for the atmosphere. She does seem to be writing more from the Northern perspective - the issue of slavery, rather than independent state rights, is cited as the predominant cause of conflict - but I suppose that slavery was the overriding concern for the interested British. Nevertheless, it's shaping up to be a wonderful book.

I'm taking the next week off from thesis work to allow my mind to fallow a bit. It's been both surreal and difficult over the past few days not to think about it - I've got an open tab of Thomas Southerne's 1696 stage version of Oroonoko which I'm trying hard not to read - but I do think that it's necessary. As of next Monday, I'm going to be tackling the second half of my first chapter; once I'm back into a normal routine, this blog will be updated more regularly again.