Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested. âFrancis Bacon (1597)
This book is about a body of contemporary neo-Victorian novels whose ambivalent relationship with the past can be theorised in terms of aggressive eating, even cannibalism . Although cannibalism does not appear as a theme in all neo-Victorian novels, it is pervasive in neo-Victorian writing, whether fictional or critical, in its extended sense of aggressive appropriation of pre-existing texts. Not only is the imagery of eating repeatedly used by critics to comprehend neo-Victorian literature, the theme of cannibalism itself also appears overtly or implicitly in a number of the novels and their Victorian prototypes. I argue that aggressive eating or cannibalism , then, can be seen as a pathological and defining characteristic of neo-Victorian fiction. It provides a framework for understanding the genreâs origin, its conflicted and violent relationship with its Victorian predecessors, and the grotesque and gothic effects it generates in the fiction. Some novelists and critics have touched upon the relationship between cannibalism and neo-Victorian literature, indicating that the connection has not gone entirely unnoticed. However, there is as yet no substantial study of the topic. This book aims to discuss how the idea of aggressive eating or cannibalism might be used to analyse and theorise the relationship between the contemporary and the Victorian .1
The contemporaryâs cannibalism of the Victorian has two motivations: to commune with the Victorian model on the one hand and to create a new identity through the absorption of elements of the very same model on the other. In some ways, this seems paradoxical and irreconcilable and creates a kind of dilemma for the neo-Victorian novelists. I believe that these contemporary writers have aesthetic and artistic aspirations and therefore âthe very existence of a past creates the necessity for differenceânot for the audience, not sub specie aeternitatis, but for the writer and artist himselfâ (Bate 1971: 31). If the neo-Victorian writer imitates the Victorian too closely (total communion), he or she risks their work becoming little more than pastiche. If the novelist embraces the contemporary too closely, the work could lose all semblance of the Victorian and no longer fit the genre comfortably. The stronger the contemporary writersâ instinctual desire and anxiety to establish a difference from their predecessors (while at the same time imitating them), the more vigorous and aggressive their approach in appropriating or âmisreadingâ (to use Bloomâs term) the Victorian elements would be. It is the opposing directions that contribute to the ambiguity of the neo-Victorian genreâs relationship with its Victorian model, a relationship I describe as âaggressive ambivalenceâ. Neo-Victorian novels demonstrate a desire to emulate the literary accomplishments of their Victorian forebears but this desire is tainted with a distrust and disgust of the era and its authors (and possibly a certain level of self-disgust). The neo-Victorian embraces Victorian fiction by consuming its literary styles, plots and techniques (communion), while aggressively criticising Victorian ideologies through contemporary theoretical paradigms and by seeking to undermine the success of Victorian authors and their works (identity-formation). In both their search for communion and identity-formation, they are aggressive, simultaneously pushing away and enthusiastically embracing their ancestorsâ influence. Cannibalism provides an apt metaphor to explain this aggressive ambivalence, itself an ambivalent and violent practice; one takes in as well as destroys its food. More fundamentally, cannibalism also provides a theoretical basis for both the neo-Victorianâs desire to commune with the Victorian and the conflicting need to form a self-identity.
Although I believe the neo-Victorian genre as a whole can be characterised as aggressively ambivalent towards the Victorian, it is important to note that individual novels embody this ambivalence to different extents and intensities. Each demonstrates its own pattern of negotiation and struggle between the two coexisting motivations of cannibalismâcommunion and identity-formation. The treatment of the Victorian sources in the texts can thus range from respectful and affectionate to highly dismissive and aggressive and far and wide in between. In some cases, this negotiation may even demonstrate itself in overt references to cannibalism /vampirism or in self- or sub-conscious descriptions of the cannibalistic nature of the writerâs own work.
In this book, I will investigate how different neo-Victorian novels negotiate the conflicting desires of communion and identity-formation, and will explore themes of cannibalism within the texts. The neo-Victorian texts chosen include earlier works in the genre and relatively recent ones and are written by writers of different nationalities. Some of the texts have received ample academic attention while others have been examined less. The chapters are divided in order to focus on thematic pairings of Victorian and contemporary texts (and authors-as-texts). The pairings demonstrate the cannibalism of a specific element of the Victorian , for example, author, text and feature of its history, by the neo-Victorian as well as illustrating and elucidating the cannibalistic nature of the genre . The selection of texts, then, apart from reflecting my own taste and cannibalism of the Victorian , also points to the extent to which cannibalism is evident in the genre as a whole.
The theme of cannibalism is manifested in various ways in neo-Victorian works, thereby mirroring the highly aggressive relationship between the contemporary and the Victorian and highlighting the range of subjects and subgenres associated with neo-Victorian fiction. Each chapter in the book hinges on one type of âcannibal â through which the discussion of the theory of neo-Victorian cannibalism is elucidated. Chapter 2, âContesting (Post-)colonialism: Jane Eyre , Wide Sargasso Sea and Three Neo-Victorian Rejoindersâ, establishes the important connection between two recent literary responses to Victorian literature, namely, the wider neo-Victorian project and a more specific subset of it, which reconsiders the nineteenth century from a postcolonial perspective. These two are yoked together and manifested in Jean Rhys â Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), the foundational neo-Victorian text. I argue that, apart from incorporating canonical nineteenth-century celebrities and texts, contemporary writers also appropriate ideas about Victorian empire. That Rhysâ Wide Sargasso Sea is the foundational postcolonial neo-Victorian text prompts the reading of its pre-text, Charlotte BrontĂ«âs Jane Eyre (1847), as a foundational colonial Victorian work. I tease out the cannibalistic, Caribbean and (post-)colonial elements in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea. I then read a group of Anglo-American neo-Victorian novels which return to both BrontĂ«âs and Rhysâ models. In particular, I focus on how they reorient the narrative focus away from the empowered Creole Antoinette (a reworked version of Bertha Mason) in Wide Sargasso Sea back to the British characters of Jane Eyre. I consider this shift of narrative attention away from Antoinette/Bertha as a problematic commentary on (and possible rejection of) the corrective postcolonial agenda found in neo-Victorian novels such as Wide Sargasso Sea.
Chapter 3, âDickens the Cannibal Canni...