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The Narrative Mood of Jean Rhys' Quartet
- Author(s):
- Octavio Gonzalez (see profile)
- Date:
- 2018
- Group(s):
- CLCS 20th- and 21st-Century, GS Prose Fiction, LLC 20th- and 21st-Century English and Anglophone, Postcolonial Literature, TC Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Literature
- Subject(s):
- Rhys, Jean, Psychoanalysis and literature, Affect (Psychology), Narration (Rhetoric), Literature--Theory, etc.
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Jean Rhys, Anglo-American modernism, Psychoanalytic criticism, Affect, Narratology, Modernism, Postcolonial literature, Narrative theory, Theories of affect
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M61W0D
- Abstract:
- Abstract: This article evaluates the application of dominant institutional discourses, such as psychoanalysis, in the interpretation of literary fiction. I take up the case of Jean Rhys and her 1929 novel _Quartet_. Both author and novel have been analyzed through the concept of masochism, as creating masochistic characters or a masochistic aesthetic. But what do we mean when we classify or “diagnose” authors of literature or fictional characters as in the case of Rhys’ and _Quartet’s_ protagonist? Against this mode of reading, I argue that Rhys’ novel asks us, in various ways, to understand it on its own terms, suggesting a mode that I call _immanent reading_. It enjoins the reader to understand rather than to classify the famously problematic Rhys “heroine.” Ultimately, _Quartet_ foregrounds the instability of moral and social positions, implicitly arguing against what it calls the “mania for classification” employed by the novel’s antagonists. _Quartet_ cautions against diagnostic interpretations by dramatizing scenes of hypothetical focalization, emphasizing the modal nature of reality, and providing the novel with its characteristically shadowy mood. _Mood_ is a term drawn from Gérard Genette, which describes how certain narrative choices and devices (or _mode_) compose a discursive narrative atmosphere (or _mood_). is project suggests the untapped potential of narratology for analyzing affect in fictional narrative.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 5 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
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