Conclusion

Outline The Romantic novel Castle Rackrent Mansfield Park Waverley Frankenstein The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

The Romantic novel The Romantic era of the late 18C and early 19C constitutes a remarkably fertile period for fiction The story of the rise of realist fiction from the 18C can be told as being like a story within realist fiction itself – a movement from fragmentation to unity

The Romantic novel Realism’s account of its own rise to dom- inance represents a case of ‘history written by the winners’ What gets suppressed in the realist narr- ative of realism’s triumph in the develop- ment of fiction? Answer: the remarkable diversity, hybridity and adventurousness of novel-writing in the Romantic era

Castle Rackrent CR (1800) – fiction in a ‘wild’ state The story of the Rackrent dynasty as told by Thady Quirk – ‘quirkily’, more like a chronicle than a work of fiction This ‘chronicle’ is supported by a complic- ated set of apparatuses: Preface, foot- notes, a postscript, an Advertisement, a Glossary

Castle Rackrent Specific formal aspects of the novel here appear underdeveloped – plotting, characterization, di- alogue, etc. Narrative voice as a specific formal aspect ap- pears highly developed by contrast... ME shows that she can ‘speak like a man’; the honesty of ‘honest Thady’s’ narrative proves subversive; and the Editorial apparatus fails to check this (in fact, the ‘critique’ is sharpened)

Castle Rackrent Symbolically speaking, CR is the last 18C novel and the first 19C novel We discover the 18C wildness of fiction plus the 19C innovativeness in novel- writing (CR as the first Irish novel, etc.) ME stands as the most celebrated novelist in the early 19C prior to the publication of the Waverley Novels

Mansfield Park The inner hybridity of CR has an outward manifestation in terms of the novel’s ‘dia- logic’ relation to MP (1814) as a further in- stance of the country house novel MP appears a properly 19C novel – well developed in terms of all its formal aspects (plotting, characterization, dialogue, etc.)

Mansfield Park What also is ‘nineteenth-century’ about MP is the emergence of realism as the dominant genre in fiction JA practises ‘the art of copying from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life, … presenting to the reader … a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him’ (Scott)

Mansfield Park From the point of view of genre, JA in MP brings together romance, country house fiction, regionalist fiction, and satire within a structure that positions realism – a pic- turing of daily life – as dominant Also, via her protagonist Fanny Price, JA articulates MP as a call for a renewal of the idea of tradition which the landed gen- try appears to be struggling to uphold

Mansfield Park The emergent dominance of realism also brings to light one of the problems of real- ism itself – is it really a representation of daily life, of ‘things as they are’? If MP is a representation of things as they are, then one might expect some treat- ment in the novel of the contemporary re- ality of colonialism

Mansfield Park The issue of slavery is ultimately a ‘dead silence’ here, despite (and because of?) English tradition resting on the material productivity of the colonies Said: ‘it is genuinely troubling to see [with regard to great novels like MP] … how little they stand in the way of the acceler- ating imperial process’

Mansfield Park Thus, realism as a representation of things as they are begins to appear, as suggested pre- viously, a case of history being written by the winners... things are as realism says they are when realism itself is in a position to determine their reality In short, early 19C realism assimilates other genres within itself, arguably much as the British empire assimilates other cultures... it is all a case of governing through native customs rather than despite them

Waverley W (1814) is precisely that novel that tells the story of realism becoming a dominant force in modern British politics and culture From the end of the Jacobite rebellion ( ), realism proceeds to become the order of the day: the Highlands (romance) are defeated by the Lowlands (realism) See Waverley’s abortive relationship with Flora (romance) and subsequent marriage to Rose (realism)

Waverley W is thus a form of metafiction – a novel about other novels, as well as about the novel’s own historical development In this way, it tells the story of what proves to be the realist novel’s rise to dominance, beyond the Romantic era, into a full-blown 19C age of em- pire Correspondingly, W is also claimed as the first historical novel – it makes historical events and historical change its specific subject-matter

Waverley WS’s historicism captures the imagination of the contemporary reading public This ‘historicism’ appears an aspect of WS’s strategic masculinization of the novel as a literary form The novel has previously been regarded as a women’s form and, by the same to- ken, valued as second-rate

Waverley Thus, the newly masculinized novel (real- ist, rational, respectable) is re-positioned as dominant within the hierarchy of genres of writing WS emerges as the major novelist of the early 19C

Frankenstein What happens to the diversity, hybridity and adventurousness of novel-writing after the ascendancy of the Waverley Novels and of realism? The ‘wild’ writing that preceded WS be- comes constituted as an undercurrent in British fiction F (1818) appears a symbol of the exist- ence of this undercurrent

Frankenstein F is not regarded by contemporary critics as a novel of the first order Quarterly Review (1818): ‘[the novel] will not even amuse its readers unless their taste has been deplorably vitiated’ Criticism of the novel is remarkably strong – why?

Frankenstein Perhaps because it is a work that reflects the extraordinary variety of the contemporary under- current in modern fiction F is a novel that embodies, in the space of a sin- gle work, so many of the forms of popular liter- ature that exist within the Romantic era... an epistolary novel, a fictional journal, a Bild- ungsroman, a romance, a science fiction novel, a Gothic novel, a supernatural tale, a satire, a sentimental novel, a form of travel writing, an epistolary novel again!

Frankenstein The symbol in MS’s text for all this ‘diversity’ – Frankenstein’s monster assembled from the body parts of other human beings It is precisely the hybrid nature of the monster that signifies its monstrousness The more ‘wild’ (hybrid, diverse) the monster is the more it poses a threat to that which is realist, rational and respectable about the realist novel and its ruling ideology

Frankenstein Thus, F threatens a return of the repressed in relation to realism’s growing dominance over other fictional genres The very monstrousness of MS’s novel – ‘my hideous progeny’ (MS) – testifies to the vitality of the literature of those whose taste has become ‘deplorably vitiated’ The degree of hostility expressed in ‘deplorably vitiated’ suggests, perhaps, a certain anxiety about preserving realism’s dominance on the part of the critical establishment

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner JS (1824) – a further instance of the ‘re- turn of the repressed’ in relation to a pol- itically and culturally dominant realism The novel is damned critically for catering to depraved tastes JS is another remarkably hybrid work of fiction: the Editor’s narrative, the Confes- sions proper, the Editor’s postscript

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner Hybridity itself appears imaged in the text in terms of the shape(s) of Gil-Martin Satan as shapeshifter – not a pantomime devil! Gil-Martin’s shifting identities correspond to the monstrosity that is Frankenstein’s hybridized creation (and MS’s hybridized novel)

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner Thus, JH works a return of the repressed through his novel as the work unfolds The above is signified by the presence of the ‘uncanny’ to JH’s text – the figure of the double, making the inanimate animate, ‘making strange’, etc. See Sigmund Freud, ‘The “Uncanny”’ (1919)

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner SF: ‘[the uncanny is an experience of] something repressed which recurs’ (Rivkin and Ryan, Lit- erary Theory (1998), p. 166) SF: ‘[the uncanny may be understood as] some- thing which ought to have been kept concealed but which has nevertheless come to light’ (ibid.) In short, JS appears a stranger, even more un- canny work than F, perhaps, due to JH’s deploy- ment of many of the traits of the ‘Freudian’ un- canny

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner The above strong uncanniness of JS seems an index of the repressed coming through the more strongly in JH than in MS But at the same time, contemporary real- ism can be seen as acting in such a way as to neutralize the disruptive forces erupting within such works as F and JS

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner E.g. the subversiveness of F appears contained from MS’s use of the frame narrative Robert Walton’s point of view in the epistolary, beginning-and-ending parts of the work is ess- entially realist – Walton everywhere assumes he is representing things as they are, and this con- ditions the ‘truth’ of the novel What of realism’s corresponding neutralization of a ‘subversive’ JS?

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner Note how the George Colwans are pre- sented as more sympathetic characters than the Robert Wringhams in JH’s novel What makes them sympathetic in this way is precisely that which is moderate, com- mon-sensical, level-headed about them In other words, they represent a version of Walter Scott’s middle-of-the-road hero, hence a ‘Waverley effect’

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner In the end, JS is evidently as much about the evils of extremism as W is with its pointed re- jection of the passion of Highland romance (See W’s turning-point: ‘the romance of [Waver- ley’s] life was ended... its real history had now commenced. He was soon called upon to justify his pretensions to reason and philosophy’ (ch. LX) Interestingly, WS has previously been respon- sible for discovering JH (the ‘Ettrick Shepherd’) as a writer – is able to exert a degree of control- ling influence

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner In sum, despite the challenges from below, re- alism goes on to strengthen its hegemony as the Romantic era passes into the Victorian era... realist fiction functions as a symbolic model for empire itself within the context of Victorian- ism’s imperial project Conclusion: the twenty-nine novels now known as the Waverley Novels ( ) constitute, for good and ill, the single most powerful form of novel-writing in the Romantic era – a total Wav- erley effect