The Use of Weapons for the Production of the Uncanny in Hardy and Conrad
This paper explores a particular sub-category of objects, namely weapons. In Hardy’s work, guns, swords, cannons, and other tools of destruction are put to use with disturbing frequency not in the public arena of battle but in private spaces, for courtship (as in Troy’s sword), or to settle what the...
Shranjeno v:
| izdano v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/fathom, |
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| Glavni avtor: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jezik: | Anglais |
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FATHOM
2019
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| Teme: | |
| Online dostop: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Izvleček: | This paper explores a particular sub-category of objects, namely weapons. In Hardy’s work, guns, swords, cannons, and other tools of destruction are put to use with disturbing frequency not in the public arena of battle but in private spaces, for courtship (as in Troy’s sword), or to settle what the police might call domestic incidents (as in Boldwood’s gun). The insinuation into private/domestic space by weapons designed for impersonal combat is met by a movement in the opposite direction which sees the conversion of everyday objects into weapons. The suddenness with which weapons appear in the narrative, the fact that any object may be repurposed as a weapon, and the suggestion that weapons, like other objects in Hardy, have agency, contribute to the production of the uncanny. I conclude by suggesting grounds for comparison between Conrad’s The Secret Agent and Tess of the d’Urbervilles. In both novels, a woman is practised upon by an unscrupulous man and eventually revenges herself in the same way, using the same object, a carving-knife, as weapon. Although the two novelists use different techniques to stockpile affect in the object for sudden, cataclysmic disbursement, they both leave open the question of the object’s agency. |
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