SUPERNATURAL AND ENGLISH FICTION
Glen Cavaliero
Oxford University Press, #18.99
THERE'S something strange about this book. It takes possession of
individual spirits and turns them into the plot of a literary landscape
that is forever English.
''English novelists are haunted by the presence of mystery and
strangeness,'' Cavaliero asserts on his first page, then cites ''the
cases of Dickens and James Joyce''. Once you drop the name of Joyce you
cannot make sweeping conclusions about English fiction, for Joyce, it
must be obvious to everyone except Cavaliero, was not only not English
ethnically, but wrote as a man conscious of his own culture -- ''the
uncreated conscience of my race''.
Discussing Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified
Sinner (1824), Cavaliero disputes the influence of Burns's Holy Willie's
Prayer on the novel, so invokes a ''Swiftian inexorability''. Yet Hogg's
text is firmly set in a Scottish context, his religious fanatic coming
from a country of religious fanatics. Like Holy Willie gossiping with
God, or James VI, in Daemonologie (1597), droning on about the Devil.
Cutting off a book from its cultural origins presents Cavaliero with
problems of interpretation. For him, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and
Mr Hyde (1886) is a ''dramatised enactment of schizophrenia'' though
schizophrenia, a term introduced in 1911, was the last thing on
Stevenson's mind when he wrote his allegory of addiction and
imaginatively re-created the low life he had embraced while running
native in his native Edinburgh. It is not necessary for all readers to
know how Stevenson shaped his story, but Cavaliero writes as a critic,
not a casual reader.
When he approaches another native of Edinburgh, Muriel Spark,
Cavaliero discovers ''typical English whimsy'' in a short story, then
goes on to analyse The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960) as an example of
Spark's ''grasp on the material world''. Had Cavaliero appreciated the
range of the distinctively Scottish tradition, he would have realised
The Ballad of Peckham Rye is a variant on Hogg's Justified Sinner. Spark
makes her Scottish devil in the image of Hogg's Scottish devil.
Putting Scottish matters aside, let us look at other classics of
''English fiction'' as understood by Cavaliero. Dracula (1897) -- by
Dublin-born Bram Stoker -- is criticised because ''where women are
concerned, Dracula flounders in the morass of Victorian
sentimentality''. Strangely, Stoker's work is a fantasy of sexual
perversion: not only is Count Dracula a bloodsucker, but his opponents
are driven by an irrational desire to abuse female flesh. In order to
free Lucy's soul from her bloody body, some eminent Victorians hammer a
stake into her heart: ''The body shook and quivered in wild contortions;
the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut and the
mouth was smeared with a crimson foam''. With its orgasmic overtones,
this is hardly sentimental.
The Turn of the Screw (1898) by Henry James -- born in New York of
Irish and Scottish ancestry -- is ''one of the most widely discussed
ghostly tales in English fiction''. Never mind that a great American
critic, Edmund Wilson, wisely discussed the tale in an essay honouring
James as ''a classical American writer'' inspired by ''the ideals of the
United States''. For Cavaliero, The Turn of the Screw -- like Hogg's
Justified Sinner -- illustrates an inquisitive attitude which is ''the
distinguishing feature of the English fictive imagination''. A desire to
see beyond the surface of reality may be an admirable creative impulse,
but it is not exclusively English.
Cavaliero comes close to undermining his own argument when he admits
he avoided ''the American supernaturalist tradition'' -- Hawthorne and
Poe and the like -- as this ''would require a whole book to itself''.
Thus American artistic independence is recognised when it suits, whereas
the artistic independence of other nations is ignored for the purposes
of this book. I note this, not to make a narrowly nationalist point, but
to question Cavaliero's imperious, and imperial, use of the epithet
English.
Look at it another way. English critics would be outraged if Scottish
critics described Frankenstein (1818) as a Scottish novel, though it is
more Scottish than English critics like Cavaliero, suppose. From June,
1812, to May, 1814 (minus a seven-month interlude back in London), Mary
Shelley was sent by her father and stepmother to stay in Broughty Ferry,
a town complete with a fifteenth-century castle. In her introduction to
the third edition of 1831, Mary felt it necessary to mention her
familiarity with Scotland.
''I lived principally in the country as a girl,'' she wrote, ''and
passed a considerable time in Scotland . . . on the blank and dreary
northern shores of the Tay . . . where unheeded I could commune with the
creatures of my fancy.'' Eighteen when she started Frankenstein, two
years after leaving Scotland, Mary originally opened her story with the
words ''It was on a dreary night of November'', and the epithet connects
with her memories of Broughty Ferry. Victor Frankenstein's confession is
framed by the letters of Robert Walton, who describes his voyage to the
North Pole, surely prompted by Mary's sea voyage of 1812 to Scotland.
Mary clearly experienced nightmarish moments in Scotland and recalled
them in making the Frankenstein monster.
Cavaliero mentions none of this in a book bound by his simplistic
belief that everything can be explained by advancing English tradition.
As an intelligent man, Cavaliero should have explored autonomous
cultural alternatives.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article