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1+1 National Ubrary of Canada Bibliothèque nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Direction des acquisitions et Bibliographie Services Branch des services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. rue Wellington Ottawa. Ontario Ottawa (Ontario) K1AON4 K1AON4 NOTICE AVIS The quality of this microform is Iieavily dependent upon the quality of the original thesis submitted for microfilming. Every effort has been made to ensure the highest quality of reproduction possible. If pages are missing, contact the university which granted the degree. Sorne pages may have indistinct print especially if the original. pages were typed with a poor typewriter ribbon or if the university sent us an inferior photocopy. Reproduction in full or in part of this microform is governed by the Canadian Copyright Act, R.S.C. 1970, c. C-30, and subsequent amendments. Canada La qualité de cette microforme dépend grandement de la qualité de la thèse soumise au microfilmage. Nous avons tout fait pour assurer une qualité supérieure de reproduction. S'il manque des pages, veuillez communiquer avec l'université qui a conféré le grade. La qualité d'impression de certaines pages peut laisser à désirer, surtout si les pages originales ont été dactylographiées à l'aide d'un ruban usé ou si l'université nous a fait parvenir une photocopie de qualité inférieure. La reproduction, même partielle, de cette microforme est soumise à la Loi canadienne sur le droit d'auteur, SRC 1970, c. C-30, et ses amendements subséquents. - Femicide in /the Critical Construction off The Double Rook: A Case Study in the Interrelations of Modernism, Literary Nationalism, and Cultural Maturity Donna Palmateer Pennee Department of English McGill University, Montreal March 1994 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ~ Donna Palmateer Pennee 1994 1+1 National Ubrary of Canada Bibliothèque nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Direction des acquisitions el Bibliographie Services Branch des services bibliographiques 395 Wellinglon Streel 395, rue Welington Ottawa, Oritario Ottawa (Onlario) K1A0N4 K1AON4 THE AUTHORHAS GRANTED AN IRREVOCABLE NON-EXCLUSIVE LICENCE ALLOWING THE NATIONAL LmRARY OF CANADA TO REPRODUCE, LOAN, DISTRmUTE OR SELL COPIES OF mS/HER THESIS BY ANY MEANS AND IN ANY FORM OR FORMAT, MAKING!mS THESIS AVAlLABLE TO INTERESTED PERSONS. THE AUTHOR RETAINS OWNERSmP OF THE COPYRIGHT IN mS/HER THESIS. NEITHER THE THESIS NOR SUBSTANTIAL EXTRACTS FROM IT MAY BE PRINTED OR OTHERWISE REPRODUCED WITHOUT mS/HER PERMISSION. L'AUTEUR A ACCORDE UNE LICENCE IRREVOCABLE ET NON EXCLUSIVE PERMETTANT ALA BmLIOTHEQUE NATIONALE DU CANADA DE REPRODUIRE, PRETER, DISTRmUER OU VENDRE DES COPIES DE SA THESE DE QUELQUE MANIERE ET SOUS QUELQUE FORME QUE CE SOIT POUR METIRE DES EXEMPLAIRES DE CETTE THESE ALA DISPOSITION DES PERSONNE INTERESSEES. L'AUTEUR CONSERVE LA PROPRIETE DU DROIT D'AUTEUR QUI PROTEGE SA THESE. NI LA THESE NI DES EXTRAITS SUBSTANTIELS DE CELLE- CI l-l"E DOIVENT ETRE IMPRIMES OU AUTREMENT REPRODUITS SANS SON AUTORISATION. ISBN 0-612-00122-9 CanadrL - SHORT TITLE OF THESrS (less than 70 characters) Femicide in Ithe Critical Construction ofl The Double Hook Abstract This thesis participates in a reconsideration of English-Canadian literary critical history through a reading of the critical construction of Sheila Watson's novel, Thé Double Hook. The thesis examines the rhetoric by which Watson's novel has been read as central to and representative of Canada's literary cultural maturity. That maturity has been measured by such n.odernist formaI principles as the objective correlative and the mythical method, formalist standards and tastes valorized by New Criticism and by the synchronie mythographies of Freudian psychoanalysis, structuralist anthropology, and structuralist literary criticism (such as Frye's mythopoeics). The thesis argues that a structural mechanism of sacrifice is central to the literary critical narrative about this novel; that the myth-making by which violence becomes sacred and thereby marks the establishment, redemption, or survival of culture, is founded specifically on the sacrifice of women in The Double Hook. • • Précis Cette thèse fait partie du nouvel examen d'anglais- canadien critique littéraire, en examinant la construction critique du roman The Double Rook, par Sheila Watson. La thèse analyse la rhétorique qui considère The Double Rook comme réprésentatif de la maturité culturelle du Canada. Dans les termes des principes du modernisme, soit le "objective correlative" et la "mythical method, " et dans le contexte de la Critique nouvelle et ses mythographies synchroniques comme l'anthropologie structurale, la psychanalyse Freudienne, et la critique littéraire structurale (cômme les "mythopoeics" de Frye) , The Double Rook représente cette maturité culturelle. La thèse souligne le fait qu'un mécanisme structural, le sacrifice, est central à la critique littéraire; la méthode par laquelle la violence devient le sacré et par laquelle la culture est fondée, établie, ou sauvée. Dans les interpretations, cette survivance et cette maturité de la culture sont basé spécifiquement sur le sacrifice des femmes dans The Double Rook . Contents Preface and Acknowledgements iv Introduction 2 Notes to Introduction 46 Chapter One: How to Read The Double Hook 56 Notes to Chapter One 74 Chapter Two: Modernist Scenes 79 Notes to Chapter Two 119 Chapter Three: From Modernist to Postmodernist; or, The Sacrifice Continues 126 Notes to Chapter Three 144 Chapter Four: Postmodernist Cowboys; or, Sex (and Violence) and Death in Western Critical Constructions of The Double Hook 150 Notes to Chapter Four 185 Chapter Five: Postcolonial Repetitions 193 Notes to Chapter Five 217 Chapter Six: Feminine/ist Constructions of The Double Hook 222 Notes to Chapter six 241 Conclusion 245 Notes to Conclusion 261 Works Cited 263 • • • Preface and Acknow1edqements To say, as this thesis does, that Sheila Watson's novel The Double Hook has been canonized through the sacrifice of women, is to say something that sounds familiar, even predictable, to those who are no longer surprised by what feminist excavations tend to uncover and who may be tired of such digs. Clearly, l cannot claim originality in remarking on the exclusionary practices of literary discourses--such practices have been identified by vast numbers of revisionist theorists, not just feminists. Nor can l claim originality in noting the recurrence of sacrifice in Canadian literature: the apparently arbitrary but cultura1ly necessary selection of a victim on whom the ills of a group are blamed, a victim whose exclusion or expulsion, often by death, is presumed to cure or redeem this group, to restore it from a degraded or dying state to a thriving or civilized culture. Donald Stephens (author of one of the proceeding epiqraphs) identified in 1968-69 "the sacrificial theme in Canadian fiction" as a sign of the participation of Canadian literature in "universal" culture (500-01). "The Sacrificial Embrace," a chapter in D. G. Jones's Butterfly on Rock (1970), likewise unproblematically examines six novels in which, through image and theme, "The characters • • are led to a view of life that not only comprehends suffering and death but sees in them the conditions that make possible the highest human values" (139). Neither iv • • • Stephens nor Jones (nor any of the thematic critics who were preoccupied with the survival of Canadian culture) is interested, however, in the specifically gendered costs of these conditions of possibility, conditions that this thesis identifies as high anglomodernist (a shorthand term whose parameters will be sketched below), and finds implicit in a critical narrative of the nation's literary maturity. This thesis is situated where high anglomodernism, English- Canadian literary nationalism, and ciaims for cultural maturity come together in the critical history of Watson's novel, and examines their collusion in cultural femicide. Thanks are due to many people for many things: to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for support in the form of doctoral fellowships; to members of the Department of English at the University of Guelph for an opportunity to discuss the work in progress (October 1992 in their Work-in-Progress series); to the organizers of the Gender, Colonialism, Postcolonialism Conference (Commonwealth-in-Canada-IV, November 1992) at the University of Guelph for the opportunity to begin to circulate these ideas; to Constance Rooke and Susan Brown for the loan of word processing equipment; to Michael Bristol for commonsensical advice; and to my students in Canadian Literature, Literary Theory, and critical Practice, whose needs and ideas contribute so much to the expansion and v • • • reconfiguration of the repertoire out of which I conduct my research and write my criticism. Thanks are due especially to Robert Lecker who has not lost faith in me, despite aIl the reasons I have given him for doing so, and who has generously allowed me to read his articles in manuscript on Canadian literary criticism: his scholarship on Canadian literature is a model of ingenuity, rigor, and devotion to the critical culture of this country. Finally, thanks are not enough to begin to speak my debt to my spouse, Robert Pennee, whose subjectivity has been permanently altered by my investmant in doctoral studies, and who can attest to the sacrificial mechanism at work in the occlusion of private life in the pursuit of academic life. His own engagement with Klaus Theweleit's Male Fantasies and René Girard's Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World was uploads/Industriel/ donna-palmateer-pennee-double-hook.pdf