Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction by Jason Marc Harris

Abstract

MLR, 104.3, 2009 847 the subjectivity of those around him, as exemplified byWordsworth's Rousseauvian abandonment of his own child, Caroline, and his textual trinityof sexually available women (Mary Robinson of Buttermere and her analogue prostitutes). This rather monstrous but convincingly outlined autobiographical Wordsworth finds an alter ego in Frankenstein, whose Creature both acts wrongly and feels rightly?that is, he is ethically compromised, as is his creator. In this chapter O'Rourke rehearses Mary Shelley's own contradictory stance aswillingly public and private, but he does so to good effect: the emphasis is on Shelley's rhetorical skill and how this finds play in the 1831 version of Frankenstein. By concentrating on this version of the text,O'Rourke can discuss it as a production of Shelley's intellectual and literary maturity, an interesting complement to analyses of the 1818 text. The final two chapters, respectively on Jane Eyre and Villette and on Lolita, confront established readings of these texts in interestingways. Although I think O'Rourke initially underestimates Jane Eyre as a kind of dramatic monologue in prose, as his argument develops he opens up a new reading of her story that, after the by now obligatory reading of the figureof Bertha Mason, focuses on Adele as an avatar of Jane's own childhood banishment from the home: Adele must go so that the sexual domesticity of Jane,Rochester, and their family can be maintained. This new and highly interesting reading links Jane with Rousseau, Wordsworth, and Victor Frankenstein as a parent all too willing to abandon the inconvenient child. The last chapter's discussion of Humbert Humbert's lived fantasy of the sexually willing child completes the journey. Throughout, the book is closely argued, nuanced in its approach, and clear in itsdevelopment. Its closing picture of a Godwinian, perfectible society strikesme as an isolated weak moment. The assumption?or dream?that we hold ourselves to higher standards than people did in the past' (p. 197) threatens to reinscribe a morally simplistic stance that the rest of the book has resolutely rejected, an unfortunate slip that the intelligence of the book can, I think, overcome. University of Warwick Jacqueline M. Labbe Folklore and theFantastic inNineteenth-Century British Fiction. By Jason Marc Harris. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2008. xi+23ipp. ?50. ISBN 978-0-7546-5766 8. This is a study of how folklore (a word Harris tells us first comes into prominence in 1846) perpetuates itself in nineteenth-century literature, and is associated with the literature of the fantastic, about which Harris takes a line derived fromTodorov. Ithas a heavy, not wholly explained, emphasis on Celtic and especially on Scottish writing, with chapters on George MacDonald, J. M. Barrie, JamesHogg, Sheridan Le Fanu, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Carleton, and William Sharp. (The chronology seems curious here: it seems strange to go back toHogg afterBarrie.) MacDonald gets perhaps themost extensive treatmentwith work on The Princess and theGoblin, The Princess and Curdie, and At theBack of the North Wind, in relation 848 Reviews to which I wish he had said more about its realism, and Lilith and Phantastes. Because the book traces the presence of folklore and folk tales in such literature, it is prevented from being as interesting as it could be about what is distinctive in this fiction: the account of Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a JustifiedSinner being a casualty of this approach, so that the reader not knowing Hogg might not suspect what an extraordinary psychic analysis takes place within it and so might not even read it.The book does not set itself targetswhich are either exciting or challenging to itself, as here: 'The question remains: what are some of the ways in which nineteenth century British writers of the fantastic who use supernatural folklore represent "the marvellous within everyday life"?' (p. 101). The latter is, of course, a reference to 'magic realism'. This is hardly T. S. Eliot's 'overwhelming question'; nor ismore originality signalled by the declaration of intent, to show 'how the tension between folkmetaphysics and rationalism produces the literaryfantastic, and [todemonstrate how] narrative and ideological negotiation with folklorewas central to the canon, aswell as popular in themargins of British...