Towards Defining Postrealism in British Literature

7/27/2019 Towards Defining Postrealism in British Literature

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Towards Defining "Postrealism" in British Literature

Williams-Wanquet, Eileen, 1951-

Journal of Narrative Theory, Volume 36, Number 3, Fall 2006,

pp. 389-419 (Article)

Published by Eastern Michigan University

DOI: 10.1353/jnt.2007.0013

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Towards Defining Postrealism in

British Literature

Eileen Williams-Wanquet

In spite of the death of the traditional realistic novel announced in the1960s, some fashion of realism has continued to flourish. As David Lodgewrites in The Modes of Modern Writing (1977),

There is . . . a certain kind of contemporary avant-garde artwhich is said to be neither modernist nor antimodernist, but

postmodernist; it continues the modernist critique of tradi-tional mimetic art, and shares the modernist commitment toinnovation, but pursues these aims by methods of its own.It tries to go beyond modernism, or around it, and is oftenas critical of modernism as it is of antimodernism.(220221)

Indeed, many critics have noted the appearance of a new type of novel,one which seems to blur the boundaries between postmodern experi-ment and Realism (Elias 9). John Barth calls this genre the Literatureof Replenishment because it takes up and transforms old forms. MalcolmBradbury likewise insists on the coupling of self-reflexive parody and re-alistic historical reference, or of artifice and mimesis: That double haunt-ing does seem a familiar feature of quite a lot of our writing, seeking itsnew relation both with the fracturing spirit of modernism and with the

JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory 36.3 (Fall 2006): 389419. Copyright 2006 byJNT:Journal of Narrative Theory.


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ways of nineteenth-century vraisemblance (54). This paradoxical novel ispart of what has been named the turn to ethics in the 1990s (Parker 1),

a sort of revival of a revised humanism in literature and in literary criti-cism. Linda Hutcheon has coined the now well-known term historio-graphic metafiction to describe this new literary form, which is both in-tensely self-reflexive and rooted in the historical world (Poetics x),while Susana Onega predicted its explosion as early as the 1980s.

Following Frdric Regard in Histoire de la littrature anglaise, wecan call this genre postrealist rather than postmodern, for unlike thelatter, it does not simply play autonomous language games. The term

postrealism has the advantage of aligning this genre with the already es-tablished tradition of realism, as it once again aims at commenting onand committing to the world after the avant-garde, formalist, and aestheticconcentration on abstraction, but finds new ways of doing so. If one dis-tinguishes modernism and postmodernism as aesthetic paradigms, andmodernity and postmodernity as historical epochs linked to an atti-tude or world view, both postrealist and postmodernist literaturecan be considered categories of fiction belonging to a postmodern epochdominated by the death of modernity as an ethos. Although Habermas

construes modernity as referring to the historical epoch associated withthe Enlightenment, the beginnings of which can be traced to the end of thefifteenth century, modernity can also be envisaged as an attitude, amode of relating to contemporary reality . . . a way of thinking and feel-ing; a way too of acting and behaving (Foucault 100). Thus, in the firstchapter ofThe Rise of the Novel (1957)entitled Realism and the NovelFormIan Watt implicitly takes the term modern as referring to both ahistorical epoch and an attitude.

However, if one considers postmodern lucidity as just the prolonga-tion and the exacerbation of modernist formalism, then realism and thesubsequent modernist/postmodernist aesthetics would each be manifesta-tions of modernity, representing two opposite sides of the same coin. Bothremain trapped in a dualistic either/or way of thinking, in the binary Carte-sian logic of the same and other. Modernitys Western liberal humanisticor common sense view of the subject and of reality is the philosophicalfoundation for literary realism, which the modernists rejected (Belsey

17). It makes the autonomous Kantian subject or the reason-centeredCartesian subject, the transcendent index of human nature, the center of

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consciousness and of mastery, the origin and source of meaning, truth, andhistoryas Jacques Derrida has shown, this idea of self as center is

founded on the presence of a transcendental signified (La Structure411416). It assumes a common phenomenal world, a stable reality, exter-nal to the subject, objectively grasped by the senses, and reflected by themind as a great mirror (Rorty 12). This vision of the world is essentiallydualistic, the center functioning as pivot between binary oppositeswhich always privileged one half: white/black, male/female, self/other,intellect/body, west/east, objectivity/subjectivity (Hutcheon, Poetics62). Thus, we have the extremes at each end of the (realist/modernist-

postmodernist) spectrum: intentionalism and anti-intentionalism, mimesisand formalism, contextualism and textualism, totalitarianism and absoluterelativism, subject as center and the death of the subject, absolute Truthand a total lack of meaning.

Ultimately, both traditional realism and avant-garde aesthetics are nowequally exhausted. Rorty speaks of postmodernism as part of a post-Kantian culture, or anti-Cartesian and anti-Kantian revolution, andSusan Bordo notes a certain similarity . . . with the Renaissance, in thecultural awakening (67; 115). What has been challenged are the philo-

sophical underpinnings of realism: the hierarchy in the signified/signifieropposition has been reversed as the signifier has been given priority overthe signified, thus invalidating the interdependent Enlightenment notionsof an autonomous subject and of a stable external reality that can be imi-tated by language. Antoine Compagnon indeed notes that the crisis of theconcepts ofmimesis and of the subject is linked to that of literary human-ism in general (126). As the transcendental signified is no longer per-ceived as derived from some Absolute TruthGod, History, or Reason

but produced by language, there is no source of meaning outside the text.No longer origin and source of meaning, only an effect of discourse, thesubject loses its masteryover itself and over the external worldandmeaning is radically indeterminate. As ideologytaken in Althussers useof the term, to mean the unquestioned condition of our existence in theworld, a way of thinking and acting that works in conjunction with socialpoweris inscribed in language, its so-called transparency is also invali-dated. If the world is mediated through language, which speaks always

already in our place, if we are always already subjects before beingborn (Althusser 32), traditional realism is no longer possible. Not only

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has the modern basis for traditional realism been all but invalidated, butthe joyous postmodern exaltation of simulacra and of the carnivalesque

has run its course. As Barth explains, it is not language or literature that isexhausted, but the aesthetic of high modernism (71).As it attempts to find a new way of conveying the world, the postreal-

ist novel of postmodernity incorporates historical characters and events(Hutcheons historiographic metafiction), as well as characters andevents from earlier fiction (Hutcheons modern parody). Indeed, inter-textuality is generally recognized as being one of the hallmarks of con-temporary literature. The predominant type of intertextuality is what

Grard Genette calls hypertextuality, whereby the contemporary text(the hypertext) is grafted onto a previous text (the hypotext), with-out necessarily referring openly to it (1112). Most of the time, this hyper-textuality is compulsory in that the reader cannot fail to notice the tracesleft by the hypotext. Very often, the hypertextuality is signaled the directpresence of one text within another, whether in the form of quotation,paraphrase, or allusion, or whether in the main text or in the preface, epi-graph, or epilogue. The relation between a hypertext and its hypotext canbe either an imitation of stylepasticheor a transformation of con-

tentparody. In its broadest sense, parody is first imitating and thenchanging either, and sometimes both, the form and content or style andsubject matter, or syntax and meaning of another work, or, most simply, itsvocabulary (Rose 45). Moreover, the ridiculing imitation is only an op-tion, rather than a fundamental definition, of parody (Hutcheon, Theory 5).Postrealist texts tend to privilege intertextual parody, reproducing previoustexts with a difference. The ambiguous etymology of the term, whichmeans both singing with (d) and against (para), itself indicates the con-

flicting intimacy and contrast of parodywhat Steven Connor terms fi-delity-in-betrayal (167) and Linda Hutcheon terms extended repetitionwith critical difference (Theory 7). Parody may be an intra-textual phe-nomenon, a form of inter-art discourse (2), but it is far from being a lan-guage game cut off from the world. Although parodys target text is al-ways another . . . form of coded discourse, this does not mean thatparody does not have ideological or even social implications (16). Oftenparody aims at a satirical ridicule of contemporary customs (11), as in

what Hutcheon calls satirical parody; i. e. parody used for satirical pur-poses (Ironie 144). Postrealist texts are thus grounded both in a previous

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text and in the real world. This rooting in the real world is itself dou-ble, as the postrealist novel refers both to an empirical past (as in

Hutcheons historiographic metafiction) that is contemporary to the hy-potext and to an empirical present, i. e. the contemporary world, that ofthe hypertext.

Whereas the mimesis of the traditional realistic novelcalled thereaderly text by Roland Barthes (8283) or the egg-text by DavidLodge (126)uses language mimetically to imitate reality objectively anduses muthos (or emplotment) to consolidate the existing social order,thereby imposing some sort of meaning onto otherwise meaningless facts,

the modernist avant-garde novel severs the muthos from an irrecoverableworld to evoke a highly subjective sphere. Whereas the realist novel aimsfor an eternal reality, the postmodernist text, perceiving art as an au-tonomous activity, or a superior kind of language game, creates its own re-ality. The postrealist novel, in contrast to all of these aesthetic paradigms,re-emplots facts that have been severed from the world, only to send themback to the world with a new meaning. As Patricia Waugh puts it,metafiction is a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously andsystematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose

questions about the relationship between fiction and reality (2). As a wayof re-viewing the world, metafiction re-writes the muthos whereby brutereality is made to signify. If the world comes to us through language, it canbe re-written through language as well. If the world is metaphor, it can bere-metaphoricized. The muthos of the hypotext is thus decontextual-izedremoved from its original historical context (that of the hypo-text)and recontextualizedset in a new, contemporary contextandthereby made to re-signify.

Mimesis perceived as muthos is thus a dynamic process, an activity,which can invent what Paul Ricoeur calls a quasi-world (Temps et rcit

I9394)as first-hand reference is abolished, a second-hand referencecan come into being (Du texte laction 124129). Thus, parody, the rep-etition with a difference of a hypotext, can be a re-signifying practice(Butler 1314), an act of re-vision, a way of entering an old text from anew critical perspective (Rich 35), a re-writing in terms of some funda-mental master code (Jameson 58). As Jacques Rancire explains in La

Parole muette, the autonomy or intransitivity of literature, i. e. the factthat the written word can be cut off from its context, is what permits



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postrealist literature to re-write the world by re-emplotting it. Derridahas shown that the written word is fundamentally iterable: cut off from

its original context of enunciation, it becomes a sort of machine thatproduces new meanings as it is grafted onto new contexts (Signature377). A certain type of repetition can thus become citational, breakingwith the prior context of its utterance and acquiring new contexts forwhich it was not intended (Butler 14).

In order to examine the ways in which postrealism manages to recon-cile the postmodern filter of language, on the one hand, and the insistenceon a grounding in historical reality, on the other hand, I shall concentrate

on Marina Warners Indigo (1992), which re-writes traditional history aswell as Shakespeares The Tempest(1612), Jeanette Wintersons Boatingfor Beginners (1985), which re-writes the Bible, and Jean Rhys Wide Sar-gasso Sea (1966), which re-writes Charlotte Bronts Jane Eyre (1847).All three novels represent postrealisms double rooting, both in real timeand space andin a previous text, as well as its double realistic reference toan empirical past andto an empirical present. They all present true-to-life characters situated in history and evolving in a more or less plausibleplot, yet the traditional notions of subject and of time and space are under-mined by common narrative techniques. Moreover, they share certainthemes: a desire to see things from the other side, a feminist orienta-tion, and a blurring of patriarchal boundaries and dualisms, all linked to acall for change in point of view and to the suggestion of a possible happyending in the future for minority groups as well. Grouping narrativeswhich re-write sacred texts, classical literature, and traditional history tochallenge their philosophical foundations from within will foregroundpostrealisms preoccupation with reviewing foundational texts of contem-porary life. Taking each text in turn, I shall analyze the various intertextualtechniques used to re-write the previous texts, and examine how this re-writing comments on the real world and revises the modern notions of thesubject, as well as those of time and space.

Re-Writing The Tempest as a Challenge to History and as a

Feminine Reconstruction: Marina WarnersIndigo

The hypertextuality at work in Marina Warners Indigo (1992) is sig-naled by various forms of intertextuality: naming, verbal echoes, quota-

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tions, embedded pastiches, plays-within-plays, as well as parallel charac-ters, settings, and situations. The characters, the narrative events, and the

colonial theme ofThe Tempest(1612) are repeated; but to revisit Shake-speares play, Warner uses the techniques of classic realism (like those ofa well-made plot and of carefully delineated characters) and realisticallysets her true-to-life characters in geographical, historical, and autobio-graphical reality, connecting her novel to the world outside the page. Theplot is clearly doubly grounded in geographical space and time by the useof realistic techniques. The story alternates between London in the twenti-eth century (in 1948, then from 1969 to the 1980s) and the West Indies,

both in the seventeenth century (from 1600 to 1620) and in the twentiethcentury (from 1969 to 1983). Geographical details, names, and descrip-tions are given; a map of the islands figures at the beginning of the book;dates and historical details of the discovery of the islands and of subse-quent colonialism and slavery abound; historical characters, Warners ownancestors, figure as fictional characters; details of twentieth-century Lon-don are true-to-life. All the references correspond to figures in history andgeography books, lending a feeling of verifiability to the fictional world.Yet the very merging of fact and fiction illustrates that history is a human

construct, and is therefore subject to revision. Moreover, names, dates, andhistorical facts, although clearly recognizable, are often approximate ordeliberately falsified, as though to indicate the re-writing at work.

The double temporal perspective, both twentieth-century and Eliza-bethan, corresponds to the two historical contexts of the hypertext and ofits hypotext, which both explore the theme of power from vantage pointsrooted in contexts separated by over three hundred years. The double geo-graphical grounding, both in the New World and in the Old World, indi-

cates that Warner intends to comment on British colonization in the WestIndies and on the scars that it has left behind. The narrative, which coversa time-span of almost four centuries, focuses on the before and afterof colonization, repeating with a difference the narrative events and char-acters ofThe Tempest, which are thus decontextualized and recontextual-ized in time and in space. Such recontextualization necessarily involves achange of perspective from an imperialistic seventeenth-century point ofview to a twentieth-century point of view marked by a guilty conscience

towards colonization. Writing from an epoch highly conscious of the rela-tivity of things, Warner further reverses the point of view. She pits the



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and ideology: Kit, who returns to the islands in the 1960s to make moneyfrom tourism, ends up ruined and ironically living in the same conditions

as the natives before the arrival of the Europeans. In a fairy-tale happyending, Miranda has a child by George Felix, a black actor who plays thepart of Caliban, thereby literally marrying Shakespeares savage.

The re-writing ofThe Tempestis thus used both to deconstruct the tra-ditional historical perspective which underpins the play and to re-emplot itaccording to another fundamental code. This deconstruction is achievedmainly through irony. Whereas The Tempest presents things from Pros-peros authoritarian point of view,Indigo opposes the points of view of the

colonized people and those of the English colonizers, each being set intwo totally different contexts and conceptions of life. Warner secularizesthe mythical by insisting on what was there before the creation of themyth of history (Connor 190). She not only grants as much depth andcomplexity to the natives as to the English, but also puts readers on the is-landers side by acquainting them with highly sympathetic and humanecharacters before the arrival of the colonizers, and by presenting the lat-ters arrival as violent invasion seen from the point of view of peacefuland anxious inhabitants. On the other hand, the invaders are presented as

having a romantic vision of themselves as civilizers and heroes, as thosewho have God on their side and who perceive the islands as a tabula rasaand the natives as savages. But the narrative events ironically clash withthe false image that the colonizers have forged of themselves and of theworld, as they are presented as the real savages and colonization is un-masked as violent and destructive. Moreover, Warner embeds pastiches ofletters or of family memoirs to show that the primary sources used by his-tory books are highly subjective and romanticized accounts of historical

facts, whereas the fact that the point of view of the islanders (which is farcloser to reality) has not been recorded for posterity is symbolized byAriels muteness.

The deconstruction of the traditional historical perspective goes handin hand with that of the traditional notions of time and space and of thesubject. With colonization, the natives cyclical vision of time isshatteredthe revolving the world came to an end, space and time col-lapsed into a point (131)and the islanders enter the same temporal

world as the English invaders, a world of linear progress, which makespossible ambition, but links the experience of time to that of loss (Con-



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nor 191). For Dul, the ladder on which he teaches himself to balance is animage of graduated time and of the now impossible dream of unity with

his lost past. In addition to breaking up the unity of time and space in TheTempest with a time-span covering over three centuries and with the re-doubled spatial setting, Warner challenges the modern linear conception ofhistorical time as linear progress by establishing a dialectical relationshipbetween the past and the present. The story oscillates between history andcontemporaneity, as well as between England and the West Indies. Thetwo plots, referred to as then and now, are connected both backwardsand forwards in time. The twentieth-century characters, who are the de-

scendants of the first colonizers, go back to visit the islands in 1969 for the350th anniversary of the historical landing, and some of them actually set-tle there, working in the tourist trade, presented as a new form of exploita-tion. Inversely, Sycorax lives on, beyond the grave, into the twentieth cen-tury and passes her testimony on to Serafine, the English familysWest-Indian maid. The two plots are also connected in space and timethrough the survival of an imperialist mentality in the Everard men, whichis defined by the desire to possess others; this mentality persists throughthe ages, taking on different forms (colonization, tourism, capitalism,

religious fanaticism), but remaining the root cause for the repeated vio-lence of history. Miranda, half Creole and half English, serves as a link be-tween the two plots (Zabus 145), being described as a slash andblurred (36, 43).

Furthermore, Warner challenges the myth of essentialist origin: theimage of the colonized land as a tabula rasa is shown to be an illusion, asis the original essence of the Everard male characters. Rather, the subjectis shown to be a product of complex historical forces that s/he can not con-

trol, and history can backfire. The uprooted foundling, Ariel, representsthe ambiguous third element, forever in-between opposing sides, belong-ing to neither and to both: as Kits mistress, she occupies no clear position,taking on different voices; she is as flexible and elusive as Shakespearesethereal spirit; she is repeatedly described as being able to leave her body.She can be seen as a hyphen, a figure of connection and division,[which] marks a space that lies between, and, at the same time, a bridgethat leads across, signal[ing] belonging as well as separation (Dring 21).

Finally, the change of gender from male spirit to female child makes heran androgynous figure. The blurring of gender categories is typical of this

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type of fiction, in which gender is increasingly emerging, . . . as an activ-ity, a performance, a becoming, or a site where identities may intersect,

proliferate and undo one another (Gibson 42). Indeed, the ethical empha-sis on respectful non-violent encounter with alterity, central to Levinassthought, finds its most potent illustration in the figure of the androgynethat refuses closure and in doing so vindicates the taking into account ofthe other (Ganteau 2367). Such a destabilization of gender categoriesin the framing narrator is inseparable from a destabilization of narrationalcategories (Gibson 47), which, instead of being hierarchically opposed,are reversed then incorporated into another. Such privileging of the nei-

ther/nor, rather than the either/or, counters the strategy of domination thatpits the I against the Other (44, 32), challenging the logic of binaryoppositions [that] is also a logic of subordination and domination(Parker 3), as the ego is deposed . . . and enters into . . . dialogue (Gib-son 25).

As writing deconstructs the male myth of history as violence and thesurvival of the fittest, and makes reparation, a new feminine myth arises,reconstructed through the female characters. The new myth goes against

the grain of the main story line, into which it weaves itself in allegoricalpassages and embedded tales, magical realism merging with classical real-ism. The alternative story is handed down through women as oral tradi-tion, from Sycorax to her contemporary counterpart, Serafine, who picksup the babble on the air that Sycorax transmits from her grave (373).Calibans the isle is full of noises (3.3.133) is repeatedly quoted in In-digo, eventually being transformed into the voices of the past calling outfor recognition (211). Serafine transforms these voices into fables, passing

on the oral tradition of the islands. The numerous parallels with the mainstory signal that Serafiness stories function as mise en abyme, reflectingthe totality of the main narrative to throw moral light on it. Their repeatedmoral message is hammered home by maxims and reinforced by echoeswith mythology or fairytales. They illustrate the dangers of greed, selfish-ness, and domination, and preach generosity and love as mutual respect oropenness to the other. Moreover, sea, oyster, and pearl imagery, yonicsymbols of femininity and spiritual rebirth, permeate the novel, calling for

a sea-change, a radical transformation of imperialist mentality, in bothprivate and public life (The Tempest1.2.40203; qtd. inIndigo 376).



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A Re-Writing of the Bible as Parodic Satire:

Jeanette WintersonsBoating for Beginners

Jeanette Wintersons Boating for Beginners (1985) is similarlygrounded in both a previous text and a double historical reality. Hypertex-tuality with the Biblical episodes of Noahs Ark and the Flood is clearlysignaled by a number of intertextual devices: naming, direct quotations,allusions, references, paraphrases, narratorial intrusions. For example, thecharacters are called Noah, Ham, Shem, and Japeth; the narrativeevents are based on the story of the Ark and of the Flood; the narrative isexplicitly rooted in Biblical geographical space (Ararat, Nineva, Ur of the

Chaldees); the novel is framed by an epigraph announcing that two Bibli-cal archeologists have found relics of Noahs ark and an epilogue showingthese scientists at work; big chunks from Genesis 6 to 9 are quoted. More-over, in a reflexive, metaleptic paragraph in italics at the beginning of thenovel, the framing external narrator explains that this narrative is a versionof a Biblical story: All this was happening a long time ago, before theFlood. . . . Of course you know the story because youve read it in the

Bible and other popular textbooks, but theres so much more between the

lines (12).Wintersons story is set in the same historical space and time as is the

Biblical story: the action takes place in Nineveh (a town on the banks ofthe Tigris), on and around the Tigris and the Euphrates (the two riversframing the Babylonian heartland) and especially in Ur of the Chaldees (inthe Bible, the home of Abraham in ancient Mesopotamia, which existedabout 6000 years ago); when the waters retire, the Ark lands on MountArarat, now situated in Turkey, just as it does in the Bible. But the action

is also anachronistically set in the context of a highly capitalistic Westerntwentieth-century society, with numerous references and allusions to con-temporary authors, film producers, literary critics, magazines, films, soapoperas, books, poems, fashions, trends, fads, television series, eatinghabits, technological and scientific discoveries, economic policies, or po-litical trends. In a bewildering excess of realistic details, a profusion offrozen food, instant coffee, electrical appliances, health clinics, plasticsurgery, press conferences, capitalistic speculation, etc. run riot. Thus

Winterson thickly sets the Biblical story in contemporary culture pat-terns, which Clifford Geertz describes as religious, philosophical, aes-

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thetic, scientific, ideological blueprints for behavior situated in a precisemilieu.

The anachronistic decontextualization and recontextualization of theBiblical story in the contemporary Western world serves as a metacom-mentary on our society and is used to challenge its dominant traditionalpatriarchal mentality, which is upheld by the Bible, the founding text ofWestern culture. Indeed, the Bible is the most totalitarian, patriarchal butalso the most unquestionable history of all (Onega, Telling Histories140), the ur-text of patriarchy (Ostriker 27). Winterson describes herfirst novel as a comic book. Indeed, the burlesque transposition of the

story of Noah into the contemporary Western world is a parodic re-writingof the Bible, which incorporates the traditional aspect of ridiculing imita-tion. But the target of the parody is not the sacred text itself. Wintersonsparody is most definitely a moral and political act. Revising Biblical dis-course from a contemporary vantage point, she uses subversive femalelaughter as a revolutionary weapon against authority, as she replaystragedy as farce and makes what is sacred . . . a joke (29).

To challenge dominant discourse, to laugh patriarchy away and fill inthe gaps and silences of the Biblical text, Winterson creates an army of

bizarre, eccentric female characters, who are nonetheless realistically de-scribed and rendered highly sympathetic. The author uses mainly a type ofhumor that Susan Sontag calls camp, the essence of which is love ofthe unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration (qtd. in Guignery 162). Noahsthree daughters-in-lawto whom the Bible merely refers to as the threewives of [Noahs] sons (Genesis 7:13)are given names, personalities,histories, and voices. Sheila, Desi, and Rita become a burlesque cross be-tween modern American women and wives of Middle Eastern oil mag-

nates, both by their preoccupations and by their outrageous clothes. Forexample, Rita [is] dark-skinned with a bush of orange hair and matchingpainted fingernails (26), and Sheila is bent double underneath the goldshe had managed to attach to every spare inch of flesh (57). Life is alsogiven to the women who do all the donkeywork behind the scenes. Gloria,derisively referred to as a zoo-keeper, selects animals for the ark. Mrs.Munde, her mother, is a religious fanatic and Noahs cook. Doris, thecleaner, who calls herself an organic philosopher, is in touch with

Gross Reality. Marlene is a grotesque character, a case of mistaken iden-tity or of metamorphosis, that is at one point likened to a monstrous bat-



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like creation with wings (75). Her every appearance assures the readerof another juicy episode and language. She/he is an over-sensitive, neu-

rotic transsexual (96), a man who has had breasts added and a penis re-moved, but who is nostalgic for that penis, whining to have her sleepingsnake back for decoration (37). Ribaldry is added to vulgarity to fur-ther deride the male organ, as the right spare cannot be found and asausage from a chain store called Meaty Big and Bouncy is trimmedto fit (46). They all live in a world where hyperbole, excess, and fantasytransgress boundaries and where the bizarre interacts with the entirely or-dinary: the houses have no walls (98), a pet elephant eats the curtains (17),

or an arm is chopped off in a hamburger machine (86). Thus magic real-ismin which the supernatural and magical become ordinary, everydayoccurrencesis used to transgress ontological boundaries, requiringreaders to scrutinize accepted realistic conventions of causality, material-ity, motivation (Zamora and Faris 3).

The Biblical story itself is re-visited through the prism of a profusionof debunking and improbable details and perspectives. The comedy, whichderives mainly from the anachronisms concerning thematic concerns,characters, and language, serves to reveal the truth behind the facades, to

unmask the secret ideology underlying dominant discourse and lay barethe way that those in power create the discourse that suits them, therebyviolently excluding minority groups. For example, Noah is no longer therespected patriarch, a good man chosen by God to survive the Flood andre-found human society; he is irreverently pictured as a ridiculous, fanati-cal, vain, dishonest, greedy, selfish, capricious little man, comically be-coming a four-foot tall spherical man with a bright bald head, who wearsa red-and-white-spotted bow tie (50, 61). He is also described as a thriv-

ing capitalist, a lousy fascist bastard . . . right wing, suspicious of womanand totally committed to money (69). His sons are also portrayed as mod-ern capitalists: Japeth the jewellry king, Ham the owner of that presti-gious pastrami store, More Meat, and Shem, once playboy and entrepre-neur, now a reformed and zealous pop singer (21). Likewise, God is acapitalist, irreverently referred to as YAHWEH the omnipotent stockbro-ker (30), or as that self-aggrandizing being (115). He lives in a super-sonic cloud, acts like a spoilt child, and uses vulgar language: I want his

ass! thundered YAHWEH (52). Miracles are transformed into publicitystunts and the destruction of this materialistic world is reduced to bank-

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ruptcy in a pun, as God pettily announces, Im going to start raining thisplace . . . prepare to be liquidated (91). The Ark, a caricature of patriar-

chal capitalist society, is in reality a technically sophisticated and luxuri-ous yacht, filled with useless materialistic objects, like games, alcohol,television sets, cars, one-armed bandits, all of which represent the superfi-cial civilization of a childish, irresponsible, selfish, dishonest, and pettygroup of men. The type of woman let on to the Ark is represented byBunny Mix, the writer of Harlequin romance, who is a caricature of femi-ninity as male construction. Her name is a combination of that given to ahostess in a Playboy Club and of myxomatosis, the disease so fatal to

rabbits: by collaborating with men, she has contributed to murdering herown kind. Masks and disguise are comically used to illustrate how theBible has fostered the image of attractive women as dangerous whores andwitches: in the acting out of the Creation scene, Noah forces the women towear false noses, teeth, and wigs so as to be as ugly as possible (51).Womens general exclusion from positions of power is farcically illus-trated: they are knocked over the head and taken along by force, whichgives rise to a good deal of low, knockabout comedy, involving absurd sit-uations, exaggerated physical action, shouting, and buffoonery. Thus

Boating for Beginners uses surprise and laughter to deconstruct thebedrock of civilization that has privileged the masculine over the years.The way that history is written, the notions of reality and of the self, arealike challenged.

The novel gives us its own clue to how to read it, as the characters dis-cuss what is in fact a favorite theme of Wintersons: whether or not youshould write books . . . which flouted the usual notion of time in an effort toclear the mind of arbitrary divisions (100). Desi, cast both as Bluebeards

wife and as the heroine of a Gothic novel, discovers a secret manuscriptwritten by Noah (an embedded parody of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein),describing how he created God by mistake out of a rotten piece of frozenBlack Forest Gteau and a giant electric toaster. Thus God, the transcen-dental Signified upholding the modern binary vision of self opposed toother, is doubly debunked: he belongs to the lowest element in the Chain ofBeing; moreover, he is only a figment of mans imagination. The murderedmother of the Bible is restored, as God comically calls Noah, Mother.

God and Noah then collaborate to write a best seller, Genesis orHow I DidIt (15). The baroque theme of the world is a stage is used to blur the



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boundaries between fact and fiction, to flout realistic conventions and com-ically lay bare the secret ideology upholding dominant discourse. God and

his creator decide to dramatize the book. God, Noah, his sons, their wives,and Bunny act the main parts, and Bunny helps with the screenplay to in-crease romantic interest (20). They plan to make it into a grandiose spec-tacle: a film company would be putting the whole thing on camera, not

just the play itself but the making of the play (20). The Biblical charac-tersincluding Godthus become actors playing their own roles in theirpre-written history. But if life is the enactment of a play, it can be re-writ-ten. Indeed, in the middle of the novel, God will force Noah to rewrite the

world (124). Furious, because he has not been consulted about the filmand has not got a contract, God decides to flood the world for real,telling Noah, We can change the book, put it out under a new cover(9091). Noah thus writes a third version in collaboration with Bunny, al-though it is clearly Noah who masters the discourse. As author, film direc-tor, and inventor of the whole story, he is perfectly conscious of his power:If weve got a new world we can tell them anything. . . . Whos to saywere lying? (110111). Noah writes that the ark, in reality made out offiber-glass, is made of gopher wood (137) and then, with the deliberate

aim of deceiving future generations, he actually gathers bits of wood andplant[s] them on top of Mount Ararat (151). The actors discover that thefuture is being re-written and start preparing for the real thing, adjustingtheir show, that is to say, their lives, to what they think will really hap-pen. Thus, not only does fiction invent reality, but reality also invades fic-tion in an endless chass-crois. Real life is but illusion; conversely, illu-sion is disrupted by reality, which will not fit in with written history. Pastand present merge and mutually influence one another; moreover, both are

tailored to fit the needs of the forecasted future. Noah, the hero of the bibli-cal narrative, the subject of history, invents and writes the story of his ownhistory as he is actually living it, thus pointing to the radical inconclusive-ness of any representation and the shifting dimensions of a plural reality.The novel thus demythologizes the Bible, illustrating that Biblical history,

just like any other historical narrative, is partial, selective, and subject to re-vision, as it presents facts only from the point of view of those who are in aposition to dominate through discourse.

Traditional historical discourse is further comically undermined in theepilogue. The group of eccentric women who unmasked the official version

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of Genesisthe tragic story of a good man and his family singled out byGod to survive and recreate a better worldas a lie, manage to survive the

Flood on a raft, but are then excluded from sacred history, which is re-vealed to be a tissue of lies. Ironically, Soames, a Biblical archaeologistlooking for remains of the Ark on Mount Ararat, triumphantly brandishesthe piece of gopher wood deliberately left by Noah to manipulate posterity,as it fits in with his theory of the Ark as having been built by primitive peo-ple. Yet he furiously throws away precious clues as to the real nature of theinhabitants of the Ark, namely a one-armed bandit and what looks like anancient bottle-dump. When Gardner, his assistant, finds a message in a

bottle, which reads Hey girls, I made it, . . . love D. . . , Soames turn[s]on him, his face purple with rage, and accuses him of some cheap hoaxbefore tearing up the precious parchment. When he later comes across whatlooks like part of a romantic novel, he gives up and asks to be sent home.Thus, historical discourse is comically shown to be partial and selective.Not only do the people in power choose to write what suits them, but theyare themselves ironically manipulated by the actors of history. (159160)

The humorous re-writing thus functions as what Hutcheon names Par-odic Satire (Tronie 168), as Winterson challenges a whole way of life,

intermingling a profusion of comic effects and intertextual referencesranging from Punch and Judy Shows and Dallas to irreverent allusions tothe Romantic poets and botched quotations of their titles of poems. Someaspects of contemporary Western society which are criticized include ma-terialism, capitalism, political and religious manipulation, the power of themedia, the preoccupation with physical appearance, narcissism, romanticlove, illusions and irresponsible attitudes, disrespect for manual labor andemotions, and the importance given to the intellect. More generally and

fundamentally, Winterson denounces all forms of tyranny of totalitari-anism, of fanaticism, of fundamentalism all monologic discourse (seeReynier 26), and all belief in a unique legitimating Truth. She unmaskswhat Ren Girard, in Des choses caches depuis la fondation du monde,calls the victimization processes set up in Biblical discourse, wherebyscapegoats and marginal groups are unjustly condemned in order to ensurethe survival of a dominant group (205).

But Wintersons revision goes far beyond the power struggle involved

in the overturning of the Biblical myth. As the traditional notions of realityand of the self are challenged, a new way of being is suggested, one that



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calls for a radical transformation of mentality. Going against the grain ofthe main storyline, of linear history, is another parallel story, that of the de-

velopment of Glorias self. Her bildungsroman is punctuated by threedreams, echoing the baroque theme exemplified by Shakespeares We aresuch stuff as dreams are made on, in which an orange demon (whichrepresents authorial intention) keeps appearing. The dreams are given amythical dimension: they all tell the story of some quest that Gloria keepson trying to fulfill, but in vain, as her self will not be pinned down to anyone trajectory. As the world moves towards destruction, Gloria, in a reversemovement, can come into being. As the male self is progressively decon-

structed, the repressed female self can reconstruct herself retrospectively.As in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the story moves . . . from themonologic and totalizing history of the creation of the world by God tothe individual story of the redemption of a woman (Onega, Telling His-tories 141). To affirm her self, Gloria gradually frees herself from hermother and from her obsession with her body, from modern societysstereotypes of women as objects, which are male constructs. But the recon-struction of her female self is set in terms of what seems to be a personaland satirical reading of Northrop Fryes classicAnatomy of Criticism. It is,

of course, ironical that Gloria should reconstruct her female self accordingto a classic of literary criticism, which is read as supporting Western civi-lizations patriarchal division of reality into the metaphysical and the phe-nomenal world, originating in Platonic dualistic philosophy and embodiedin literature in the split between mind and body, between reason and emo-tion. As Gloria approaches Fryes third and last stage, that of continuousprose, she indeed becomes more self-assertive, grows more purposeful(48), begins to think (61) and expresses herself better (45). But ironically,

what she calls her development into a fully rounded person is in fact agradual setting aside of instinct in favor of the intellect (55), one accompa-nied by smugness, by mistrust of her instincts (48) and by learning to lie(57). Gloria, in trying to construct her self after a male model, is obviouslyon the wrong track, as she reflects: Until her epiphany with Northrop Fryeshed been an emotional amoeba. Now . . . subject and object, herself andwhat she did, were very much split (62, 73). Northrop Frye is the object ofridicule, as artists and intellectuals are in general. The target of the novels

satire is not only the male model of the self, which relegates women to therole of the other. It is also the feminist who tries to imitate men, thereby

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lapsing back into the masculine symbolic, resetting the trap of rigid genderidentities. What Winterson seems to propose is a radical change in percep-

tion, a liberation from the very notion of either/or.This new way of thinking is expressed through philosophical discus-sions between Gloria, the demon, and the marginal, subversive, fantasticfemale characters, who turn out to be wise and enlightened. Marlene isboth man and woman, her grafting itself being a metaphoralso used byWinterson in Sexing the Cherryfor the reconciliation of the traditionalbinary opposition of the sexes. It is not a question of reinstating genderidentity for a political purpose: the issue is not equality between men and

women, neither is it a question of a reversal of power; it is a call for achange in mentality, for challenging the fundamental laws of culturethrough which the human subject is sexed (Cornell xxxxvii, 11, 1718).Glorias subversive yet fictional life-story undermines the concept of thebourgeois individual subject and challenges Platonic dualistic philoso-phy, as it aims at a typically baroque reconciliation of body and spirit andof emotions and intellect. It redefines reality as complex and plural, andthe self as always in becoming. The personal and political, the individualand universal, merge, as Western patriarchys stereotyped images of fe-male identity are challenged, as is the violent and linear official narrativeof human history as a survival of the fittest.

Boating for Beginners seems to belong to what Steven Connor termspost-apocalyptic and pre-apocalyptic novels at once (199245). It ispost-apocalyptic because it is the narrative of survival, the ending suggest-ing a new starting point. It is also pre-apocalyptic: the temporal contor-tion, which consists in situating a clearly capitalistic twentieth-centurynarrative before the Biblical flood, can be read as a fable, as a sort of par-allel imaginative history (231), denouncing the crasser moral and politi-cal aspects of modern life and warning humankind of possible or even im-minent catastrophe if we do not change the behaviors founded onpatriarchal discourse.

A Re-Writing ofJane Eyre from the Other Side:

Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea

Like both Indigo and Boating for Beginners, Rhys already familiarWide Sargasso Sea (1966) is rooted both in a previous text and in histori-



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cal reality. Jane Eyre (1847)although without Jane, the central con-sciousnessis clearly signaled as being the hypotext for Wide Sargasso

Sea by a number of intertextual references. Rhys protagonists are carboncopies of an earlier cast and the narrative events are similar to those ofBronts novel. In both texts, the marriages take place in Spanish Town,Jamaica, and Part III ofWide Sargasso Sea is actually set inJane EyresThornfield Hall. Rhys takes up Bronts imagery of fire and ice, as well asher use of color symbolism. There are a number of eerie verbal echoes be-tween the two novels, mainly concerning the description of Antoinettestransformation into Bronts Bertha Mason. These echoes become actual

quotations once the narrative has moved inexorably to Thornfield Hall,thus back into the previous book.Rhys re-contextualizes Bronts story in time and space. The charac-

ters and narrative events ofJane Eyre, which take place in England be-tween 1799 and 1809 (Oates 45), are brought forward in time to 1830s and1840s British West Indies (Jamaica and Dominica), the post-slavery pe-riod. Right from the opening pages, personal tragedies are grounded inhistorical conditions, which are realistically expressed through dramatiza-tion, characterization, and imagery, as economic factors condition life: in-

deed, [a]ll the human relationships are marked by slavery and the planta-tion society, and all are constructed, for the most part, within theseparameters (Gregg 8586). Thus, whereasIndigo andBoating for Begin-ners are rooted in separated periods of time, respectively, by over threehundred and fifty years and by about six thousand years, Wide SargassoSea is rooted in only one period of history, the same as that of its hypotext,the temporal decontextualization and recontextualization concerning onlya question of some thirty years. Nevertheless, the vantage point is defi-

nitely situated in the second half of the twentieth century, like in the othertwo texts. Also, whereasIndigo alternates between two settings andBoat-ing for Beginners anachronistically transposes the ancient Middle Easternsetting of the hypotext into the contemporary Western world, Wide Sar-gasso Sea mainly fills out the West-Indian setting which is kept offstage in

Jane Eyre. Rhys re-writing is thus closer to its hypotext: it is actually sit-uated inside it, but presents events from the opposite, silenced point ofview, a device which is typical of a twentieth-century mentality highly

conscious of eurocentricism and of patriarchal oppression.As a white Creole from Dominica, Rhys once declared that Bront is

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only presenting one sidethe English side (Letters 297). She clearlystates her intention of reversing Bronts text to tell the story from the

mad wifes point of view: The Creole in Charlotte Bronts novel is alay figure . . . off stage. For me . . . she must be right on stage (156).Rhys revision of Bronts novel thus aims at giving a voice to the doublysilenced other (silenced as woman and as Creole), whose discrepant narra-tive has been bracketed by the dominant patriarchal and imperialistic dis-courses. Rhys restaging and resignifying of the offensive [text] is thus akind of counter-speech, a kind of talking back (Butler 1415). Indeed,whereasJane Eyre can be described as a realistic romancethe resolu-

tion of Janes journey to self-realization depending on Bertha, her darkdouble or monstrous other, being killed off so that reason and social ordercan triumph over an excess of chaotic passionWide Sargasso Sea is atropical romance, which gives free rein to everything that is sup-pressed in the order of the world (Stone 102; Maurel 149, 154).

Since Wide Sargasso Sea writes back to a precursory novel, which isone of the classic texts of nineteenth-century British imperialism, it can beread as a post-colonial statement of resistance to an imperialist text(Howells 21). Rhys brilliant play with Bronts novel makes a comment

on colonization, not only as a political phenomenon but, more signifi-cantly, as the direct result of an underlying imperialistic mentality affect-ing all spheres of life. The ghosts are not only those of previous charac-ters; they are also the ghosts of colonialism and its underlying psychicstructures. Rhys characters are thus doubly trapped: by historical forcesand by the previous text, whose underlying ethos is imperialistic. Theiremancipation fromJane Eyres mid-nineteenth-century point of view intoa vantage point situated at the end of the 1960s reveals to what extent their

individual psychic history is bound up with historical and political forces.Both Antoinette and her English husband are victims of familial, societal,cultural, and more generally of ideological discourse, which drives theminexorably to their tragic fates and makes the novel a complete study oftragic incompatibilities (Thorpe 184). The characters realistically repre-sent the social and racial categories that are a legacy of the colonial sys-tem, categories which condition their vision and determine their relations:The levels of betrayal range from the cultural and historical implicit in

the relationships between blacks and whites to the familial and filial lev-els (OConnor 198). Antoinette goes mad because she is betrayed by



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everyone. Moreover, madness is literally written into her, reinforcing theheredity which binds her, just as language (in the Foucauldian concept of

power) is used as an instrument of the strong against the weak, . All of thecharacters keep repeating to her English husband that she is going thesame way as her mother, until he also begins to perceive her as mad andto call her mad, finally actually engendering the mad woman in the attic ashe re-names her Bertha. Of course, the main agent in Antoinettes descentinto madness is her husband, whose very identity is engendered by the im-perial tradition underpinning Bronts text. Rochester embodies all of thecharacteristics of the colonizer, presenting many of the imperializing de-

sires deeply embedded in the education of privileged Englishmenthenarcissism, the will to domination, and the inevitable tragedy that itbreeds (Gregg 106), as well as typifying many of the characteristicswhich the ethnologist Octave Mannoni groups under the label of theProspero complex (9). Right from the start, Rochester feels insecure,uneasy, and unhappy in the island, which, like Antoinette, is [n]ot onlywild but menacing (39). A victim of his sex and birth, he mistrusts every-one and feels superior to his wife, whom he treats as an object, replacinglove and reciprocity with sex and domination. To survive, he has to assert

his ego and assure his dominance. Thus, through the agency of her hus-band, who is guilty mainly because he conforms to the Empire-foundingideology that fashioned him, Antoinette becomes disjointedAll youwant is to break her up (99), repeats Christophinedriven mad by an en-compassing ideological system. She is trappedlike her island, she iscolonized, her independence an autonomy subsumed to British cultureand to British law (OConnor 193). In delineating the common workingsof fascism, racism and bourgeois patriarchy, the persecutory power of the

modern religion of intolerance (Carr 62), Rhys echoes Virginia Woolf,who in the Three Guineas argues that patriarchy, racism, pomposity, mil-itarism, economic exploitation, autocracy and fascism are all part of thesame process (51). Sexual politics are thus caught up in a wider systemof power relationships and, within that ideological discourse, gender isonly one factor alongside class and money (OConnor 12).

Moreover, the philosophical underpinning of the imperialist mentalitythat engenders violence and domination, namely the traditional notions of

the subject and of time and space, are challenged by modernist/postmod-ernist narrative methods. As Rhys answers back, she suggests another way

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of being in the world, of challenging the traditional all-knowing Kantiansubject. Janes authoritative voice and central consciousness is replaced

not only by Berthas voice, but also by a mosaic of voices and of points ofview, as a similar event is recounted several times and conflicting viewsand interpretations are made to cohabit in endless dialogue and unsolvableequivocation in a world where certainties dissolve and characters losetheir bearings (Maurel 156157). Rhys reverses the identity-buildingprocess ofJane Eyre: Janes activity and control give way to Antoinettespassive, non-judgmental nature and increasing loss of control as An-toinette moves from the tentative identity that she embroiders in a medley

of colors in the convent school to a final loss of identity, to become onlya ghost (111), a voiceless doll or marionette deprived of liberty andautonomy (112, 100). Her dark not-self (which was never an autonomousself in the first place) turns out to be her true self. Moreover, Bertha has noreal existence: she represents the unconscious aspect ofJane Eyre, themonstrous other, or dark continent, repressed in the patriarchal order ofthe world (Regard, Lcriture fminine en Angleterre 146147). Further-more, far from being in control of herself or of her world, she (along withRhys other characters) is trapped in a plot of predestination (Maurel

131). The text is shot through with a sense of obligation, as though thecharacters are mere puppets of a tragic fate. It also abounds in internalechoes, forebodings and premonitory signs and dreams, as the charactershave an eerie knowledge of their pre-written end. The fact that the text isliterally haunted byJane EyreRhys initially thought of calling the bookLe Revenantfurther challenges the myth of essential origin, especiallywhen Antoinette finally becomes Bertha, the ghost that engendered andhaunts her.

Traditional patriarchal notions of time and space, logic and reason, arealso challenged. Wide Sargasso Sea, written in 1966, gives the illusionof being situated before Jane Eyre, written in 1847. The end of Rhysnovel is transferred to another text, which precedes it in time: An-toinette/Bertha does not die in Rhys text; she only jumps from the roof ofThornfield Hall in her dream, but she never reaches the ground and willonly be killed inJane Eyre. Time becomes reversible and uncertain in thisdream of a future in the past. Past, present, and future are conflated in a

dizzying whirl of uncanny repetitions, as experiences are distorted in amirror-like eddy of connections and separations, until the future of the text



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is finally swallowed up by another text situated in the past. There is nei-ther origin nor center, as neitherJane Eyre nor Wide Sargasso Sea comes

first. Geographical categories also dissolve. Both England and An-toinettes island are called a dream and Antoinette loses her way cross-ing over to England in the Sargasso Sea, a no mans land situated betweenthe old and the new worlds, full of asexual, ungraspable slippery eels andgiant sea-weed that traps ships and kills sailors: They tell me Im in Eng-land, but I dont believe them. We lost our way to England. When?Where? I dont remember but we lost it (117).

More than simply holding opposite categories in unsolvable oxy-

moronic paradox, Wide Sargasso Sea is a mad text (Maurel 158): it sug-gests that everything is constantly and instantaneously reversible and am-biguous. The dichotomous either/or structure upholding patriarchy isreplaced by a simultaneous both/and structure, as limits are abolished, dis-solving the oxymoronic structure. Everything is also at the same time itsopposite: as Antoinette says, There is always the other side, always (81).This is a world where boundaries overlap: between life and death, betweensleep and wakefulness, between good and bad, between love and hate, orbetween truth and lies. Frdric Regard interprets this haunted text as

being more than a fantastic destabilization of categories, preferringFreuds term Unheimliche (Lcriture fminine en Angleterre 152) todefine its instantaneous, ungraspable, substitutive process of doubling,which Derrida refers to as a taking place typical of the operation of thefeminine (H. C. pour la vie 71).

As Rhys writes back to Bronts text, she countersigns further, mark-ing her text off from the hypotext by the symbolical echoing of the relatedwords secret, hidden, silence, truth, lies, and nothing, as well

as by her subversive use of color symbolism and her ambiguous ending.The secret, that is, love as reciprocal sharing, is the truth. But in thedominant patriarchal order, which is upheld by the power of the word,love is hidden or silenced and reduced to lies, in effect becomingnothing. Thus the genesis and nature of madness is unmasked as repres-sion of all that is other. Nonetheless, Rhys is not content with simplymaking visible the secret lie of patriarchy. The unnamed husband is him-self reduced to nothingness, as his life and text . . . decompose at the end

of his narrative into a Nothing . . . annulled, reabsorbed into the Euro-centric discourses of narrative and history (Gregg 101102), and An-

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toinette is given the last word as her voice takes over the final section ofthe novel. Moreover, in Part III, the feminine subtext symbolically ex-

plodes to the surface in a blaze that destroys the dominant discourse. Red,which metaphorically signifies reprehensible passion inJane Eyre, is asso-ciated with Antoinette throughout Wide Sargasso Sea. Whereas red assymbol is repeatedly repressed by the unnamed husband, it literally suf-fuses the text in the last part of the novel. The red of flames invades thefinal pages, as Antoinette dreams that she sets fire to their world . . . madeof cardboard (116), thus symbolically destroying the dominant patriar-chal order that is upheld by discourse and opening the way to a different

vision of reality. Instead of actually setting fire to Thornfield as Berthadoes, Antoinette metaphorically sets fire to the discourse which perpetu-ates the repressive patriarchal order, and to the book which engenderedher. In her dream, she does not jump to her future in a past text. Instead,she lands in the past with Tia in the pool at Coulibri (123). Thus Eurocen-tricism is reversed, the past cancels out the present, and dream triumphsover realityThen I turned round and saw the sky. It was red and all mylife was in it (123). Only then does she walk along the passage with hercandle to accomplish the ending in anotherbook. She does not cross the

gap from dream to reality in Wide Sargasso Sea. She remains in her nat-ural element, the dream, leaving Bertha and Bront to inhabit reality(Angier 529533). But since it is a reality made of cardboard, it can bedestroyed by the flames.

The most obvious common feature ofIndigo, Boating for Beginnersand Wide Sargasso Sea is the use of metafiction to make a moral and po-litical comment. The repetition with a difference of a hypotext aims at a

re-vision of the worldview or of the master code underpinning the hypo-text. The decontextualization and recontextualization of a previous text in-evitably leads to a different vantage point, as similar narrative events arere-written or re-emplotted according to a different point of view, informedby a different context. The secret ideology of a text is unmasked and de-constructed, before another way of being can be suggested. Such re-writ-ing, which seems to be typical of postrealist texts, has a double aspect: it isboth an answer to a previous text and an entirely new text; it is both imita-

tion of and challenge to; it has both a commemorative function and a de-constructive function.



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Yet the subversive function clearly predominates, as the postrealisttexts of this postmodern age re-write discourse that is perceived as tyran-

nical. Literary postrealism belongs to a postmodern epoch that does notcompletely reject modernitys notions of subject and of reality, the prefixpost indicating a break within continuity. Rather, these have to be rede-fined, in what is a revision of enlightened modernitys world-vision. Thepast is repeated, not as copy, nor as negation, but rather as subversiveghost, which is always already present within it as a possibility whichhollows it out (Miller 9). This type of repetition is to be distinguishedfrom what Kierkegaard terms recollection: Repetition and recollection

are the same movement, only in opposite directions; for what is recol-lected has been, is repeated backwards, whereas repetition properly is re-peated forwards (Brooks 124). Whereas recollection corresponds to aPlatonic form of repetition grounded in a solid archetypal model whichis untouched by the effects of repetition, the other Nietzschean mode ofrepetition posits a world based on difference and [s]imilarity arisesagainst the background of this disparit de fond (Miller 67). The rep-etition found in postrealist texts is not of the first sort, which Deleuze calls

a work of forgetting (29), but rather of the second, which is a re-working of the past to call for a new way of being in the future. The prefixpost indicates neither a return to the past, nor a rejection of the past, butan endless questioning of the past, which aims at going beyond it. As But-ler puts it: The disjuncture between utterance and meaning is the condi-tion of possibility for revising the performative, of the performative as therepetition of its prior instance, a repetition that is a reformulation (87).

Critics have spoken of the turn to ethics of the 1990s. Indeed,

whereas [f]or a traditional, moral criticism of the novel, . . . the key textswere largely nineteenth-century. . . . for the ethical critic, it is twentieth-century texts that are of cardinal importance (Gibson 1718). Whereasmorality is concerned with deontology, with consolidating existing rulesof conduct, ethics operates a kind of play within morality, holds it open;whereas morality is associated with the universality of final authority,ethics concerns the undetermined and plural; whereas morality is linked toconformity, ethics is associated with subversion. In questioning the past,

and in being concerned with an ought rather that an is, ethics isutopian and turned towards the future: At the dead center of ethics lies

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the ought, . . . which seems to embody a wish that things become differ-ent (Harpham 18).

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Angier, Carole.Jean Rhys: Life and Work. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.

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Bradbury, Malcolm. An Age of Parody: Style in the Modern Arts.No, Not Bloomsbury.London, 1987. 4664.

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Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge,1997.

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Dring, Tobias. Woman, Foundling, Hyphen: the Figure of Ariel in Marina Warners In-digo. Writing as Revision. Ed. Eileen Williams-Wanquet. Spec. Issue ofAlizs 20(July 2001): 926.

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Towards Defining Postrealism in British Literature

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