Saggi Italiani Su Elizabeth Bowen- ContributoSilvia Granata

7/30/2019 Saggi Italiani Su Elizabeth Bowen- ContributoSilvia Granata

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5diretta da Leonardo Terzo

Collana di sintomatologiadelle apocalissi culturali

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Saggi italiani su

Elizabeth Bowen

a cura di

Barbara Berri


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Edizione a cura diArcipelago EdizioniVia Carlo DAdda 21

20143 [email protected]

Prima edizione febbraio 2010

ISBN 978-88-7695-423-8

Tutti i diritti riservati

Ristampe:7 6 5 4 3 2 1 02016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010

vietata la riproduzione, anche parziale, con qualsiasi mezzo effettuata, com-presa la fotocopia, anche ad uso interno o didattico, non autorizzata.


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INDICE

Leonardo TerzoPrefazione / Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Barbara BerriIntroduzione . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Elena Cotta RamusinoBowens Court . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Silvia GranataStructuring Space and Time

in Elizabeth Bowens The Hotel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Silvia MontiFigurative Language and Imageryin The Last September and To the North . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Leonardo TerzoAmore e morte, amore e vita in To the North . . . . . . . . . . 91

Cristina MarelliUniversi in solitudine in The Death of the Heart . . . . . . . 95

Barbara BerriLabisso del tempo ritrovato:A World of Love . . . . . . . . . . 117

Lia GuerraEva Trout: the girl who had been left unfinished . . . . . 133


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John MeddemmenIt Is a Fine Morning and We Are Still Alive.

Scrivere in tempo di guerra:Elizabeth Bowen, 1939-1946. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Biografia e bibliografia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Gli autori . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181


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7

PREFAZIONE

di

Leonardo Terzo

Questo libro il prodotto di un gruppo di studiosi, per metgiovani agguerriti, che, come risulta dalla nota sugli autori,fanno tutti capo alla sezione di anglistica del Dipartimento diLingue e Letterature Straniere Moderne della Facolt di Letteree Filosofia dellUniversit di Pavia. Forse proprio la loro giova-ne et, influenzando anche i meno giovani, ha creato le condi-zioni per osservare con uno sguardo inedito lopera di ElizabethBowen, una scrittrice la cui eminenza non mai stata soggetta

agli ondeggiamenti del gusto e delle mode, sia nella prima chenella seconda met del Novecento e oltre.

Lo spirito nuovo con cui i suoi romanzi e racconti sono quiriletti e interpretati, da un lato conferma, forse banalmente, laperenne attualit dei classici, anche moderni, dallaltro dimo-stra che uno sguardo e un interesse aggiornato sono in grado diriproporre ad altri livelli il proverbiale shock of recognition,tipico dei capolavori. Per questo lopera della Bowen si rilegge

ora come il sintomo di una trasformazione culturale pi profon-da di quella gi a suo tempo colta nella letteratura inglese edeuropea nel passaggio pre- e post-bellico dallimpegno degliAnni Trenta allo smarrimento degli Anni Quaranta.

Ci che si riflette e si riconosce in queste interpretazioni limmagine culturale disincantata, e poi nuovamente incantata,degli attuali lettori; ci che si scopre la capacit dellautricedi tracciare una diversa e ulteriore via, tra la ricerca sulle tec-

niche espressive, propria dei modernisti canonici, ed il ritorno


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agli interessi etici e sociali della letteratura del periodo bellicoe immediatamente successivo, e a seguire della fase di antimo-dernismo che caratterizz la letteratura inglese negli Anni

Cinquanta.Questa via comprende entrambe le istanze, mantenendo una

forte capacit di invenzione tecnica al servizio di una tematicache a suo tempo fu giustamente interpretata per lo pi in termi-ni di critica sociale, educazione sentimentale e di indagine psi-cologica, ma che, oltre a queste, oggi appare in grado di far sca-turire dimensioni e avvaloramenti impensati, per esempio neltrattamento del tempo e dello spazio, o nellapertura, segreta

prima, allusiva poi, e infine persino oscena, alla pluralit e allastratificazione dei livelli di esistenza pi o meno cosciente del-lanimale umano, culminanti nella sperimentazione metamorfi-ca diEva Trout.

Questa versione progressivamente apocalittica del moderni-smo e delliperrealismo ha tra gli altri effetti quello di sconvol-gere e ricostituire lordine cronotopico della narrativit. Entroquesta nuova apertura delle coordinate narratologiche, il

mondo e i personaggi subiscono una trasfigurazione e unacaratterizzazione che fornisce loro unintensit oggettiva pecu-liare, e nello stesso tempo proietta sui luoghi e sulle cose unasorta di animismo e animosit umanistici altrettanto inaspetta-ti.

Lopera di Elizabeth Bowen resta pi che mai una letturaimpegnativa, una pietra di paragone che marca irrefutabilmen-te e distintamente la differenza fra i livelli di cultura, in un

tempo che vorrebbe credere di aver superato queste questioni.Lamore e la morte, la verit e lambiguit, la guerra e lo spio-naggio, ladolescenza e la maturit, le aspirazioni e le frustra-zioni sociali, lo spaesamento e il ritrovamento del s costitui-scono un repertorio di interessi sempre vivi per ogni generazio-ne di lettori; ci che invece del tutto straniante il trattamen-to ellittico a cui la narrazione della Bowen li sottopone.

Saggi italiani su Elizabeth Bowen

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I mondi che lautrice rappresenta sono infatti non tanto ciche resta dei sentimenti e delle aspirazioni, come se fosseroimpoveriti da un venir meno di autenticit e intensit. Al con-

trario la ricerca di una nuova autenticit trova nella simbiosicon gli oggetti e coi luoghi, nellaggrovigliarsi e arrovellarsidello spazio e del tempo, un nuovo paesaggio esistenziale dovelo scarto essenziale fra il non detto e il non fatto e lideale com-piutezza delle storie ben raccontate, e soprattutto ben accadu-te, non desolazione, e nemmeno solitudine, ma un nuovomodo di sussistere.

Come stato notato nellintroduzione a proposito dellamo-

re, ma che vale forse per ogni altra materia in questione: tutti siagitano intorno ad un vuoto dove lamore non riesce ad esseredetto, intorno ad un abisso dove lamore non c. La verificaindividuale e collettiva che quel qualcosa ci sia non ha un ter-mine, n una conclusivit, ed linedito modo di tenere insie-me in quel momento e in quel luogo i personaggi, la loro soli-tudine e la loro sopravvivenza. Una sorta di catarsi dacciaio inun involucro drammatico vellutato.

Prefazione

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45

Silvia Granata

STRUCTURING SPACE AND TIMEIN ELIZABETH BOWENS THE HOTEL

The Hotel, Elizabeth Bowens first novel, was published in1927, at the end of a historical decade characterized by a pro-found disillusionment, but also in English fiction bygroundbreaking productions by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf(Jacobs Room and Ulysses in 1922,Mrs Dalloway in 1925, Tothe Lighthouse in 1927). Bowens novel shares with coevalworks not only the concern for a new perception of time and theimpatience with Victorian values and beliefs, but also a subtleexploration of consciousness. Although The Hotel does not usu-ally appear among the great novels of the age, it presents inter-esting features that intrigue the reader, provoking contrastingreactions whose reasons deserve a thorough investigation.

As a number of British and American novels of the period,it is set in the Riviera, where wealthy Britons spend their longvacations. The hotel guests come to know each other, interlac-

ing relationships of various kinds and responding in differentways to the natural and social environment. Among them,prominence is given to Sydney Warren, a young girl whobecomes friend of the elderly Mrs Kerr, and is then deeply dis-appointed when Mrs Kerrs son arrives at the hotel, catalyzinghis mothers attention. Feeling betrayed and disoriented,Sydney decides to accept a marriage proposal by Rev. Milton.On the way back from a nearby village, the car she rides in

almost gets involved in an accident: nobody is injured but the


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episode prompts her to reflect on life, and she suddently real-izes that she doesnt love Milton, and that life is too importantto spend it with the wrong man.

The marriage is thus cancelled, and Rev. Milton leaves. Thehotel is also peopled by a number of other characters, like MissFitzgerald and Miss Pym, whose friendship seems to be shakenduring their stay, Miss and Mrs Pinkerton, whose main objectin life is to preserve their social standing, and VictorAmmering, a young man who cannot find a job because of thewar. The hotel guests are portrayed as a miniature model ofBritish high society, but the book is far more than a traditional

novel of manners. As noted by Harkness, although the typicalBowen novel may seem to have a slight plot, a closer lookreveals that in the background there are underplayed events ofno small weight1. The Hotel perfectly exemplifies this feature.As a matter of fact, all the turning points in the story are under-played and understated, so that the reader struggles to under-stand their importance, and is able to reconstruct it only later,when consequences of what seemed minor events unfold (this

is especially true for the main turning point in Sydneys story,the car accident).

In Harknesss words, another recurring feature in Bowensnovels is an overwhelming sense of place affecting the char-acters2. Indeed, as noted by Kreilkamp as well, the author isalmost obsessed with the formative role of the material spacesmen and women inhabit3. The Hotel peculiarly attracts thereaders attention because of the surrogate quality of the hotel

environment, which is a kind of second home without being

1 Harkness, Bruce, The Fiction of Elizabeth Bowen, The EnglishJournal 44, 9 (1955), pp. 499-506, p. 500.

2 Harkness, p. 500.3 Kreilkamp, Vera, Bowen: Ascendancy Modernist, in Walshe,

Eibhear (ed.),Elizabeth Bowen (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009), p. 15.


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one. Moreover, although the whole plot takes place in Italy, thehotel guests never mix (or even bother to get in touch) with thelocals, typically remaining isolated in a kind of small Britain

abroad. It is true, as observed by Bennett and Royle, that thenovel is pervaded by a sense of abeyance4; the hotel guestsseem to be suspended, both in place and time; the authors useof time and place in fact represents one of the most peculiarfeatures of the novel, influencing as it does not only the char-acters vicissitudes, but also their very perception of them-selves, as I will try to demonstrate below.

Whereas the theme of the novel is apparently slight and

quite traditional (a young girls entrance into the world, the dis-appointments of love and the criticism of high society), Bowenchooses to narrate in an elusive way, which makes the plotalmost evanescent. This elusiveness is first conveyed throughthe very setting: the hotel, which deeply affects characters andreader as well, is never described, but its presence pervadesevery scene. Not only as a building, but also as the symbol of awhole life-style, the hotel is so ubiquitous that it could be con-

sidered as the real protagonist of the novel.Notwithstanding this prominence though, its appearance

remains shifty and mutable, exactly as the contrast betweenlights and shades characterizing it. Its interiors are often darkand shadowy, perpetually enveloped in a kind of half-light.They are presented more through allusions than descriptions,compelling the reader to create his own image of it. For theItalian reader, but also for the British one who has travelled,

such image often overlaps with real places seen and vividlyremembered. It is thus significant that The Hotel does not start as other novels set in the Riviera with an objective site-description, but with a foreshortened view of interiors by one of

SILVIA GRANATA ~ STRUCTURING SPACE AND TIME IN E. BOWENS THEHOTEL

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4 Bennett, Andrew and Nicholas Royle, Elizabeth Bowen and the

Dissolution of the Novel (New York: St. Martins Press, 1995), ch. I.


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the characters. Our first glimpse occurs through the eyes ofMiss Pym, who spies the lounge to see if someone is there:

There was not a soul down there; not a movement among the

shadows, it was eleven oclock and everybody would have goneout to the shops or the library, up to the hills or down to thetennis courts. Not a shadow crossed the veiled glass doors ofthe drawing-room to interrupt the glitter from the sea. Not asound came up from the smoking room. (7) 5.

This passage, built on a series of negations (not a soul, not amovement, not a shadow nor sound), suggests an idea of deso-lation which is counterbalanced by the final mention of the glit-ter of the sea, implying, as the novel itself repeatedly does, thatwhatever happens, happens elsewhere. However, the hotel alsohas sunny spots: they are reserved to the wealthiest guests,emphasizing through location and architecture a social divide:apparently, only those who stand higher in the social scale havethe right to enjoy the sunshine in their rooms:

The front rooms looked over the town into dazzling spacious-

ness, sky and sea; the back rooms were smaller, never sobright, and looked over the road with its chestnut trees on tothe side of the hill. Into these the north light came slanting; nosky was visible until one leant far out, only the scramblingolives and scared little faces of the villas (26).

But this highly-purchased sunshine is not really enjoyed,even in the most elegant apartments. Miss and Mrs Pinkertonfor instance find it too bright, and thus barricaded themselves

in from the assault of noonday behind impassable jalousies(26). In general, the dusky atmosphere inside the hotel createsa feeling of stall, as if the place were always suspended betweennight and day.

5 Bowen, Elizabeth, The Hotel (London: Vintage, 2003). All quotations

from the Vintage edition, page numbers are given in the text.


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The hotel itself is experienced by the characters as an in-between place: it should be a kind of provisional home forthem, but they obstinately cling to their real homes in England

through letters, through the information they gather about newguests, and the news they read about British social events. Theymiss home, but at the same time repeatedly tell each other howindispensable this vacation is, and how dull it would have beento remain in England. Each in their own ways, all the guestsseem thus to be suspended in a kind of voluntary homelessness.

At times, the small world within the hotel is seen as a con-tinuation of home life, as when Miss Pym reflects on new

arrivals (which she thinks of as long forecast shadows foreverdarkening the threshold of the hotel): she learns of Rev.Miltons arrival from three letters for him and something thatlooked like a bill (or perhaps a receipt) [that] had been forward-ed from an address she knew quite well, a country house inDerbyshire. She feels gratified by how ones intimate worldcontracted itself, how ones friends wove themselves in! Societywas fascinating, so like a jigsaw puzzle (8). But this displaced

life is by no means a synonym of freedom: even though on vaca-tion, characters still adhere to the formalities they follow athome, creating a web of obligations and social duties thatmakes their everyday-life fixed in a perennial routine:

Nobody was hurried or constrained; time put out no compul-sion and the afternoon might have stretched ahead, as itseemed to stretch, brightly blank. Over it, however, habit hadspun her web of obligations; a web infinitely fine and fragilefrom which it was yet impossible to break without outrage.Beyond the dining room, along the expanses of the lounge,people risen early from their tables were awaiting one another,meek under the rule of precedent, to fulfill a hundred smallengagements. Leisure, so linked up with ennui, had been sed-ulously barred away (24).

Life in the hotel thus follows the same unwritten rules andconventions of life at home, but is not pervaded in general by


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the feelings of security, ease and coziness usually associated tothe idea of home. This might be due to the fact that form andetiquette are inherent in the characters daily life. The result-

ing restlessness is well expressed by one of the ladies that gath-er in the hotel drawing-room:

As winter comes on with those long evenings one begins tofeel hardly human, sitting evening after evening in an emptyroom. One cant always be going out or visiting people or invit-ing people to come to one. If I shut my drawing-room door, Ibegin to feel restless at once; it feels so unnatural shutting one-self in with nobody. If I open it, one hears the servants laugh-

ing, or something to worry one. [] Its not, of course, that Imnervous, but I really begin to feel if youll understand mysaying anything so extraordinary as if I didnt exist. [] Onewould go mad if one were not able to get abroad (61).

While the inside of the hotel is often immersed in half-light,the outside is flooded by a blazing glare. Extreme southernlight, however, like shadow, prevents from seeing well, and is attimes hard to bear; moreover, the stronger the light outdoor, the

deeper the outside shadows, which often reveal the charactersfeelings. This is why the positioning of the characters inlight/shadow is so important, as for instance when Miss Pymlooks at the tennis players on the court: The quality of theirhard, cool stare of indifference yet so penetrating was enhancedfor Miss Pym by the glare of the courts, the air charged withsunshine, the treelessness, a kind of positiveness everywhere(12). Sunshine here emphasizes Miss Pyms feeling of being outof place, irremediably separated from the in her view happyand carefree players. Words like glare, sunshine and posi-tiveness, usually associated with agreeable connotations, arehere employed to stress the characters inquietude, thus point-ing to uncanny, sinister overtones.

But the tennis players are not so light-hearted as Miss Pymthinks: in fact, their mood is strangely intertwined with con-trasts between light and shade: Sydney, who is usually a very


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good player, starts to feel uneasy when Mrs Kerr shows up as aspectator; the girl is so keen on what her friend thinks of herthat her play is affected. While Mrs Kerr looks at the court

(unseen, sitting far back in the shadow, 13), Sydneys playbecomes awful. Her companion kindly attributes her failure tothe terrible glare that prevents from seeing, but the reader

just like Sydney understands that the reason lies elsewhere:Mrs Kerr remained sitting: the edge of her skirt, the tip of herparasol, came out into the sunlight. From out of the black shad-ow that hid the rest of her, her scrutiny like a livewire wasincessantly tugging at Sydneys consciousness (15).

Indeed, much of the novel is centered on the issue of per-ception: characters seem to exist only as far as they exist forothers; in Bennett and Royles words, people, like people innovels, are constituted by thoughts, their own and others: peo-ple in Bowen are being thought6. Sydneys attachment to MrsKerr is exactly of this nature:

if she did not exist for Mrs Kerr as a tennis player, in the mostordinary, popular of her aspects, has she reason to feel sheexisted at all? It became no longer a question of What didMrs Kerr think of her? but rather Did Mrs Kerr ever thinkof her? The possibility of not being kept in mind seemed toSydney that moment a kind of extinction. (17).

What is true for the hotel tennis courts is also true for thesurrounding landscape: although the location is undeniablybeautiful, it does not offer a reassuring setting. The hills around

the hotel are described as pervaded by light, but it is a lightwhich does not offer any chance of enlightenment: Beyond thevillage more hills, a disheartening infinity, rose blade-like,without shadow, against the vapourless and metallic brillianceof the sky (39). Even the much waited for sunshine after astorm is described as painful and impersonal: against an

6

Bennett and Royle, p. xx.


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opaque, bright blue sky the expressionless faces of the build-ings had again their advertised and almost aching whiteness(65). Thus, the hotel guests live in a place characterized in var-

ious ways by otherness: it is another home, but not quite com-fortable as ones own; it is another country, which they perceiveas strange and vaguely mysterious (they do not understand thelocals, nor try to), and, finally, it is always pervaded either byshade or by glaring light. Both forbid a clear vision, and signalthe difficulty of the characters in placing themselves; theirvision (of the place they live in, of themselves and others)always seems to be disturbingly blurred.

But characters are not only suspended between light andshade, they are also suspended in time, often feeling that theyoccupy an odd space between different eras, or different ages oflife. To begin with, they are frequently concerned with the issueof age. This emerges for instance in the friendship between thetwenty-two years old Sydney and the middle-aged Mrs Kerr, aconnection which many find odd, or even dangerous. Sydneyherself seems to see the generational gap between them as an

obstacle, fearing that her own youth might induce Mrs Kerr tounderestimate her, and feels resented when her friend useswhat she calls a girl-of-your-age tone. Youth and age are oftendiscussed, as when Rev. Milton observes that young peopleare always funny: as we get more sophisticated we cant helprealizing that ourselves I dont know whether that makes usless funny or more so (77). A few lines below though, we findthat being sophisticated is not seen as a positive outcome, and

that Milton finds the growing refinement of youth alarming.Sydney, on the other hand, is initially discouraged by his mid-dle-aged whimsicality (78). Ultimately, youth and age tooseem to blur, as exemplified by the figure of the late MrPinkerton, whose very age comes to be perceived as elusive:

The Honourable Edward Pinkerton had died before his father,Lord Parke. Though he had not been young when he died, such

a frustration of lifes high purpose for him he was an only son


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had lent him the pathos of youth. Had his widow been lesssubstantial and less palpably recent he might have passed, bythe references made to him, as having died before his majori-

ty. (8).In different ways, most of the characters are also trapped

between two historical periods, a condition they sharply feel ashaving a paralyzing effect. Thus, if Sydney can express her dis-appointment with the exclamation How Victorian! (13), oth-ers see the difference between youth and age as a dividebetween the Victorian era and modern times. Rev. Milton, forinstance, who is used to being in touch with his rather oldish

parishioners, looked with interest at these modern girls (35).At times modernity is palpably misunderstood: for instance MrsLee-Mittison thinks wrongly that young girls are not sointerested in men as those of her generation used to: accordingto her, this was the most delightful aspect of modern girls, theyall liked just being jolly together (43). Young people them-selves seem to mistake youth for modernity, as when Veronicawonders why Sydney has been invited to Mr Lee-Mittisons pic-

nic: You dont effervesce. Youre not breathlessly modern (onhis level!) every minute like we are. You cant think how tiredwe get. Thats why Joan struck at coming this morning. She saidshe felt old... (37).

Modernity is not, however, universally identified with ener-gy and youth: the modern era is also the one deeply scarred bythe catastrophe of the war, whose effects are embodied in thenovel by Victor, out of job and with nothing left to do inColonel Duperriers words but rot[ting] about here for a win-ter (55). An undefined but impassable divide separates thenew generation from the previous one, as noted by the youngJoan while talking with the Colonel: the wars come very hardindeed on our generation. I dont think people understand abit (55). The dialogue between the girl and Duperrier,although apparently banal, can provide a key to better under-stand the atmosphere of suspension and paralysis that Bowen


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captures in this novel. After the first general observation on thehardness of the period they live in, the discussion shifts fromhistory to age, clarifying the way in which the two terms are

linked together. Joan candidly tells the middle-aged Colonelthat it must be very nice for him, having no future to thinkof (56). Seeing that the colonel fails to understand, sheexplains:

you havent got to do anything that matters. I mean, theresnobody but yourself to please and, of course, your wife. Whilea young man, like well, oh, anyone say Victor Ammering,has got the whole beastly thing ahead of him. I suppose it wont

all be beastly; I mean, hell fall in love and, I suppose, marry,and sooner or later his fatherll die and then hell have somemoney of his own; but in the long run its all rather an effort.(56-57)

Joans point of view does not only reflect a young personsfear of not reaching his or her goals in life. As we learn from hernext words, which clearly keep Victor in mind, it is the age theylive in which turns a common anxiety about the future into akind of paralysis, a mood of renunciation deriving from the feel-ing that any possible effort would be meaningless. WhenDuperrier asks whether Ammering is not ambitious, Joananswers in the negative, specifying that being ambitious is nogood, since there may be another war. And even if there isnt,disappointed people are dreadful to live with (57). The realissue which Joans generation is experiencing is thus first stat-ed vaguely, then apparently circumvented, and finallyexplained in a casual, dispassionate way. She is implying thatbeing young in that particular historical moment is dramatical-ly different from being young in any other period, a conditionthat the old often fail to understand. As a matter of fact, the eld-erly guests of the hotel continue to live as they used to, vague-ly perceiving that something has changed but still clinging tothe old values and principles that informed their lives (what

Sydney would define Victorian); some of the young guests


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instead, clearly see that things have changed, and that the val-ues and assumptions of the former generation are irremediablyoutdated, without being substituted for new ones.

Bowen depicts a period characterized at least for theEnglish bourgeoisie she deals with by a deep sense of confu-sion, and by the idea that there is nowhere to go, or worth going.Even the received function of the upper middle classes, con-scious of being the keeper of traditional values and feeling ittheir duty to provide a positive example, is here underplayed bythe fact that no one really looks up to them, apart from them-selves. Their role as a class is discussed in a dialogue between

Milton, Miss Pym and Mrs Hillier; this is one of the fewinstances in the book where characters bring up political orsocial issues, but what most strikes the reader is the tone of theconversation, and the revealing quality of its conclusion. Whileon a trip to a beautiful villa, Milton thinks of its former aristo-cratic owners, and asks if one comes to think of it, what wasthe good of them? (121); Miss Pyms polemical answer comessomewhat as a surprise: if you come to think of it, what is the

good ofus?. Milton fears this might lead to a quarrel about theEmpire, but Miss Pym explains she only meant us all, ourclass.... Mrs Hillier who here represents the old generation,still faithful to certainties that others see only as illusions playfully accuses her of being a socialist. Miss Pym howeverstill pursues her point very seriously: but must one be aSocialist [] to wonder sometimes what is the good of us?Mrs Hillier then tries to stifle the debate through politeness,

that is, with the same well bred instinct to cover this that shehad when anybody tried too discuss religious experiences.Then she states that their role as a class is to give the otherssomething to go by with. I mean, people do notice. Why, onefeels it even out here Italians notice. To this, Miss Pymanswers with a statement that sounds both ironic and desperate,highlighting the narrowness and self-centredness of the othersposition: but dont you wonder if they dont just think were


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lazy?. Mrs Hillier however is not impressed and finds the ideasimply preposterous; she replies that Italians are positive par-asites, blaming Miss Pym for being acutely self-conscious in

worrying about what the hotel waiters might think of them. Thedialogue thus ends by leaving Mrs Hillier still firm in herVictorian upper-class prejudices (and quite self satisfied) andMiss Pym thoroughly confused (122), while the reader seesthat both the accusations (that of being lazy and that of beingobsessed by others opinions) are correct, and might apply to allthe guests of the hotel, as well as to the whole class they belongto. Nineteenth-century values embodied by Mrs Hillier do

not sound convincing any more, but the real question is, whatshould substitute them?

Even those who demonstrate a vague faith in modernity,always interlace it with anxiety, a kind of disappointment forunfulfilled promises. For instance, Ronald feels sure that timesare changed, and this makes it even more puzzling that peoplestill continue to live as before:

As a matter of fact, said Ronald gravely, I dont think wemind being respected. I think, Mother, if you dont mind mysaying so, that it is a mistake ever to confuse us with yourfin-de-sicle friends. Of course a remark like that would have athousand satirical reverberations in say a Wilde play. Butreally, one is able to take it quite simply. (106).

This modernity that everybody talks of, and nobody is ableto define, is often connected with women: there is nothing now

to prevent women being different, said Ronald despondently,and yet they seem to go on being just the same. What is thegood of a new world if nobody can be got to come and live init? (126). Apparently, modern women should be free from theduties and boundaries which marked their mothers lives: thehorizon of young girls should stop being circumscribed to thehope of finding a husband and settling down. However, thethoughts of most girls in the hotel are still absorbed by their

relationships with men, while Sydney, the intelligent and sensi-


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tive outsider who defies conventions and chooses to pursue acareer, is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Instead of beingimpressed by her academic achievements, other women find

them boring and vaguely depressing. Thus not only the veryidea of modernity becomes evanescent, being understood byeach character in a different way, but the reader starts to sus-pect that the elder generation even though still anachronisti-cally tied to prejudices and formalities of the previous century is ultimately happier than the younger one, that sees thehypocrisy and vacuity of old ideas but as yet has been unableto substitute it with something new and more satisfactory.

Indeed, time can be puzzling, and relative in odd ways; asnoted by Bennett and Royle, this further emphasizes theghostliness of the present7, as does Sydneys reflection in thevillage graveyard:

the present, always slipping away, was ghostly, every momentspent itself in apprehension of the next, and these apprehen-sions, these faded expectancies cumbered her memory, crowd-ed out her achievements and promised to make the past bar-

ren enough should she have to turn back to it (99).

Something similar results from Sydneys allusion to thephantasy that Saracens could appear and ravage the hotel. Infact, such a powerful and uncanny image is ultimately drownedby the meaningless and mediocrity of the present: while acloud of depression crept over her Sydney asks Milton (andherself) how many of us they would really care to take away?

(pp. 40-41). Her conclusion is that she pities any Saracen thatever got into them [villages], for theyre perfect honeycombs,and the people I think are cruel in a leisurely sort of way(40); as if this was not enough discouraging, she adds, in a waythat invites no discussion, that women must have deteriorat-ed (41).


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7 Bennett and Royle, p. 11.


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This pervading sense of elusiveness, this struggle to find anapparently unavailable meaning, is emphasized by Bowensstyle. She not only underplays key-events so that the reader

struggles to identify them as such, but also manages to let someof her characters experience the most trifling circumstances asif they were epic ones. This happens for instance when Tessa,Sydneys cousin, ponders over her choice to see the hotel menuin advance: she was not sure whether she should continue thearrangement [...] She wished so much that she could make upher mind about this, turned her head among the cushions andwith a sigh refolded her hands on her bosom. In Life one

seemed always to be making decisions (19). As other charac-ters, Tessa feels deeply, but her feelings (especially those ofuncertainty and inaptness) are often connected with formal orunimportant things. At times, this widespread tendency toover-react (at least psychologically) to trivial facts becomes ameans to convey a powerful social satire, which is, however,always mixed with sincere curiosity, a feeling of compassion,and a half-hidden fascination. This is evident for instance in

chapter four, titled Bathroom: Miss and Mrs Pinkerton, whosenames are always accompanied with ironic insistence by theadjective honourable, have payed an extra-fee in order tohave exclusive use of the bathroom facing their room. The placeis described as a sacred space, almost as a temple:

here in white-tiled sanctuary their bowls of soap, their loofahs,their scented bath salts could remain secure from outrage;here, too, their maid could do their smaller washing and hangthe garments up to dry before the radiator. There generallywere garments drying there; the two distrusted foreign laun-dresses, perhaps with reason. (26)

The insistence on this aura of sacredness is clearly ironic,but Bowen does not stop there, complicating the picture with ahint at the effect that the arrangement has on the other guests.Instead of being annoyed at having to share the only remaining

bathroom, other visitors on this floor respected this arrange-


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ment which had a certain beauty for them, the accretion of pres-tige (26). Thus it is not only the Pinkertons who attach valueto trifling things; their ideas are in fact widely shared and

accepted, and many other guests are indeed impressed (orawed) by their aloofness. Rev. Milton, however, who has justarrived from a long journey, quickly heads towards his room(which is on the shadowy side) and then to the Pinkertons bath-room, without knowing it is private. The Pinkertons reactionis one of profound astonishment and anxiety: the author,though, presents it through the eyes of Sydney, who happens tobe there, and immediately informs Tessa of the circumstance.

Thus Bowen exhibits three different reactions to the same fact:for the Pinkertons it is a source of excruciating embarrassment,Sydney finds it really funny, while Tessa, more used toempathize with others, pities the outraged ladies (29). ThroughSydneys eyes, we can thus see the funny side of the situation,but we are also encouraged to look deeper into the Pinkertonsmotivations, as Sydney does when she and Tessa are invited intheir room:

she realized that this must be something worse for them thannot, simply, getting what they paid for. It went deeper thanthat. They were stupid but not, she felt, vulgar; all this laceand leather, monograms everywhere and massive encrustationsof silver meant less to them, probably, than to herself, to whomwealth and position would have been conveniences to be madeuse of. They were part of the immense assumption on whichthe Pinkertons based their lives. The Pinkertons imposed

themselves on the world by conviction. (30-31)

The adjective vulgar, with its obvious classist overtones,recurs often in the novel. Sydney employs it to blame herself formisunderstanding Mrs Kerr (I am sorry, that was horribly vul-gar of me. It is so much easier to be vulgar and so much lessnoticed, 69); Miss Fitzgerald and Miss Pym, during their quar-rel, had seen each other crudely illuminated, and they hadseen each other as

vulgar(10). Such a linguistic choice by


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even the unconventional and modern Sydney signals that sheshares, perhaps unconsciously, the widespread snobbery of theother guests. However, she still finds the episode of the bath-

room hilarious, counterbalancing with her irony the excessivepathos attached to it by the Pinkertons. While in their room,Sydney is still overcome by a simultaneous desire to yawn andto laugh (31), which contrasts even more with their suffering,expressed through a kind of leave-taking speech by MrsPinkerton: there are situations in life said Mrs Pinkerton,face to face with which one is powerless:

Though she only meant that in the struggle for life one is sore-ly handicapped by the obligations of nobility, Tessa andSydney gathered that Mrs Pinkerton was prostrated. After ablank little silence intended to express the inexpressible theymurmured a solicitous good night and slipped through thedoor. (31)

The Pinkertons are an example of the way in which peoplecan be entrapped by conventions and assumptions about

social standing, a feeling of entrapment which is frequentlyalluded to in the novel: they seemed somehow enclosed asthey sat there, moated about by their patent honourableness.Distinction drew a bright line round their woolly white heads,detaching them from the panorama of faces; distinction floweddown with their sleek satin draperies into dark folds (23). Ofcourse, this leads to isolation, even though this enclosednessis ultimately pointless:

Mrs Pinkerton and her sister-in-law never sat for more than aminute or two in the drawing-room where other ladies forgath-ered. They withdrew early to their rooms where they wouldembroider, eat little pastries and drink coffee. No one else hadever been invited to join them there; such an invitation washardly to be expected, thought the Pinkertons had consentedto be present once or twice at Mrs Lee-Mittisons coffee par-ties. They felt, perhaps, a little lonely these evenings; the com-fortable feeling of enclosedness would fall away when there


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was nobody to be enclosed against. In the high room amongmarble-topped furniture they sat listening with their well-bredattentiveness to one anothers breathing (27-28).

The hotel setting amplifies this feeling, making such self-enclosure even more evident. But there is also a way in whichthe very nature of the hotel a group of people, all more or lesssharing values and assumptions, all close to each other andconstantly under each others scrutiny functions as a kind oftrap. This applies for instance to Rev. Milton, who as the textis at pains to underline is sincerely and at times naively look-ing for new experience; however, the hotel will not let him

escape his social role, as Sydney understands, apparently rec-ognizing the hotels almost intentional influence on its guests:she knew how inexorably the Hotel would refuse to let himescape from all that he was, and had pity on his innocent holi-day taste for incognito, foredoomed from its birth on the thresh-old of the hotel (40).

The idea of the hotel as a kind of prison recurs again duringthe picnic, in a reverie by Mrs Lee-Mittison, whose attention iscaught by a nicevillino on the hill; she starts fantasizing aboutliving there with her husband, and enjoying a place where thedark interior of the house would not be dark from within (42).In comparison with that cozy, intimate though modest abode,the idea of returning to the hotel becomes disgusting:

she felt sick at the thought of their hotel bedrooms thatstretched, only interposed with the spare rooms of friends, in

unbroken succession before and behind her. She felt sick atthe thought of for how many mornings she would have to turnthe washstand into an occasional table by putting away thebasin and jug in the cupboard and drape with Indian embroi-deries the trunk in which they concealed their boots. (42)

The very nature of the hotel, as a place that forces a closecohabitation, in which everybody is always under other peoplesscrutiny, is at the same time enervating and revealing of anoth-

er way in which Bowens characters are suspended: their


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thoughts constantly shift from their own perception of them-selves and the supposed perceptions of others. It has beenobserved that characters almost maniacally worry about other

peoples opinions; what makes this attitude even more confus-ing, is that their thoughts are always shifting, never coherent ordeeply grounded. We often hear contrasting opinions on themain characters, so that it becomes quite difficult to under-stand what they really are: is Sydney a very clever, sensitivegirl, or is she simply an over-reactive, morbid spoiled child? IsMrs Kerr nave or manipulative? And what about Rev. Milton?Is he the simple, cheerful man Mrs Kerr thinks, or is he terri-

bly self-conscious as Sydney sees him? (68). Bowen astutelydramatizes the difficulty of really understanding others by pro-viding multiple points of view on the same character. As a fur-ther reminder of this, the difficulty of seeing others clearly isoften remarked by the characters themselves. As observed bySydney: its a fatal combination, Im sure, to be clever andkind; you can never see clear: its a sort of squint. The stupid-est person out here could describe me immediately (169).

But the interplay between conscience and perception isexplored also on another level: the text invites reflections onthe relation between identity and artistic representation, anissue Bowen often points to, comparing her characters not onlyto dolls, but also in a kind of meta-narrative play to charac-ters in a novel, to actors on stage, and to movie stars. Thus themetaphor used by Sydney, who describes the hotel as a dollshouse, becomes dramatically resonant:

I have often thought it would be interesting if the front of anyhouse, but of an hotel especially, could be swung open on ahinge like the front of a dolls house. Imagine the hundreds ofrooms with their walls lit up and the real-looking staircase andall the people surprised doing appropriate things in the appro-priate attitudes as though they had been put there to representsomething and had never moved in their lives. (78-79).


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The difference between real person and fictional charac-ter is further discussed by Cordelia Barry, who explains:

I only like people in books who only exist when they matter. I

think it is being in danger or terribly in love, discovering treas-ure or revenging yourself that is thrilling and for that you haveto have people. But people in hotels, hardly alive...! (93)

Ironically, Sydney answers that you never know what mighthappen to them, but this sounds quite unconvincing. Thus thepeople in the hotel are characters since this is how they feel,with their obsession for other peoples opinions (from which

only Mrs Kerr seems to be free), but also because they actuallyare characters in a novel. In the passage above, Bowen drawsthe readers attention on the interaction between fiction andreality, ironically making Cordelia blame her fellow-charactersfor being less real than those of the books she is reading.

Furthermore, the hotel guests are also compared to actors onstage, tirelessly repeating the same script: Tessa and Sydneyhad been sitting on interminably; they had watched from rise to

fall of the curtain the whole drama of lunch (25). Lastly, theybecome for each other like figures on a screen, as when Sydneysees Veronica and Victor together: the couple gesticulatingsoundlessly below her in the sunshine appeared as in some per-fect piece of cinema-acting, emotion represented without emo-tion (48-49).

Bowen thus creates a multi-layered novel, which portrays avery complex, transitional historical moment from various per-

spectives. On the one hand, she investigates the crisis of oldvalues and beliefs, questioning the meaning and implications ofmodernity. The very setting she chooses emphasizes this,underlining the cultural and at times existential homelessnessof her characters. On the other hand, the author also exploresthe issues of conscience and identity, through reflections on therelationship between life and art, never suggesting a one-waysolution but posing perplexing questions, and leaving the ulti-

mate answer to her reader.


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Saggi Italiani Su Elizabeth Bowen- ContributoSilvia Granata

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