The Narrative Silence in The Mayor of Casterbridge
One of the most conspicuous narrative blanks or “silences” in the corpus of Thomas Hardy’s works is found in The Mayor of Casterbridge: a span of 18 years, following the notoriously dramatic episode of Michael Henchard’s wife-sale. Interestingly, this remarkable silence makes some other problematics...
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| Xuất bản năm: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/fathom, |
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| Tác giả chính: | |
| Định dạng: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Ngôn ngữ: | Anglais |
| Được phát hành: |
FATHOM
2013
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| Những chủ đề: | |
| Truy cập trực tuyến: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Tóm tắt: | One of the most conspicuous narrative blanks or “silences” in the corpus of Thomas Hardy’s works is found in The Mayor of Casterbridge: a span of 18 years, following the notoriously dramatic episode of Michael Henchard’s wife-sale. Interestingly, this remarkable silence makes some other problematics of narrative silence unnoticeable. Particular attention should be paid to the silence concerning Elizabeth-Jane, Farfrae and Lucetta. Indeed, they are crucially important in that Elizabeth-Jane and Farfrae finally take the place of Henchard as central figures, and that Lucetta is forcibly introduced into the text as Elizabeth-Jane’s theatrical double. However, the narrator seems, rather strangely, to be only interested in their external behaviour and reserved about their inner motives and feelings.My purpose in this paper is to elucidate the ulterior meaning of this narrative silence by focusing on Elizabeth-Jane’s illegitimacy. With all due allowance for Hardy’s strong inclination to deviate from the accepted mores of Victorian society, to bring an illegitimate, socially non-existent child, to the very centre of the community would be beyond the pale in the period in which he was writing. It can be proved that the narrative blank, being inextricably intertwined with the text’s subversive desire of decentralisation, operates wily to cover (in both senses of the word) Elizabeth-Jane’s complicatedly displaced illegal origin. |
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