The family and the modernist novel : the treatment of the family in the works of Conrad, Lawrence, Woolf and Joyce

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Puleston, Richard L.
Copyright Year	1999
Abstract	This thesis seeks to establish the family as the material and ideological structure through which modernist novelists explore the place of the individual within the community. The thesis focuses on the works of Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce. It looks at both the inscription of the family at the level of content in the works of these writers and also explores how their sensitivity to changes to the family politics of the early twentieth century feeds into a formal reappraisal of textual construction and a retheorisation of the author's relation to the novel. The introduction to the thesis establishes the extent to which the family has always been a critical site for the disputation of power relations and describes the escalation of this contention in the late Victorian period. With the intensification of the focus on the legitimacy of the family the very authority of the narrative of succession and descent that also underpins the nineteenth century novel increasingly comes under scrutiny. Chapter Two situates the work of Joseph Conrad in a philosophical context that sees his novels as staging the typically modernist, and typically novelistic confrontation between the individual and the community. Hegel and Nietzsche are adduced as the principal reference points in this chapter, each representing the apotheosis of one pole of the dialectic, that is Hegel/communalism, Nietzsche/individualism. Conrad is seen as valorising the concept of community/communality as an ideal whilst recognising that it is also a source of danger and corruption in the modern world. Chapter Three is an extension of this theme, an exploration of the way in which Lawrence's work continually navigates between these poles and is thus fundamentally expressive of a deep ambiguity where traditionally it has been seen as the confident manifestation of patriarchal oppressiveness. The chapter charts a movement in Lawrence's work towards an increasingly authoritarian perspective that eschews examination of the dynamics of the family in favour of a presentation of a Lawrentian ideal. Chapter Four examines Woolf's very different attitude towards the power relations operating within the family. Her critique of patriarchy represents a counter-narrative to Lawrence's perception of the fracturing of patriarchal authority. The chapter on Woolf is followed by one on Joyce which taking up the question of narrative strategies for opposing the family, thoroughly addresses the question of textuality, the extent to which writing itself is engaged in an anti-patriarchal, anti-familial economy. In the conclusion I restate my argument that modernist literature represents an assault on both the ideology and the material structure of the nineteenth century family. I argue that it is by understanding modernism in terms of the family rather than in terms of a concept such as patriarchy that writers as -different as Woolf and Lawrence can be understood within the same discourse.
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Alternate Webpage(s)	https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/2928779/314200.pdf
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article