Getting Stuck: Joyce Cary's Gulley Jimson

Abstract

Gulley Jimson, narrator of The Horse's Mouth, is one of Cary's most amusing characters and popular favorite.' He seems to be popular not just because he is funny, but because he keeps his sense of humor in the face of difficulties with society which at heart are not so different from those most people experience, or think they do. Among general readers of the novel there are those who enjoy Gulley as bouncy comic figure, winning against tough odds, and those who see him as essentially tragic, man victimized by society. Both are partly right, but both emphasize the conflict between the society and the artist, as does Gulley himself, whereas the real conflict in The Horse's Mouth rages within its protagonist.2 Gulley, like Sara Monday in Herself Surprised, is first person narrator only partially aware of what he tells about himself.3 Conscious of the dangers of internal strife, he constantly talks of the need to avoid into a state. But the fact that he so often does upset underlines his limited knowledge of the divisions within himself and of how best to resolve them. At first glance, Gulley looks like the prototype of the romantic view of the artist, struggling and eccentric, always clashing with the mores of society. His motivation, his urge to paint, has been adequately examined in critical studies. Yet for perhaps half the novel, Gulley does no painting. one reason or another, he cannot on with his work and the reasons are not always poverty or social opposition. The actual blocks to his motivation, the real causes of his getting (as he calls it), need more attention. Explaining Gulley's inability to on with his painting can be as crucial to an understanding of his characterization as the recognition of his motivation. The inevitable questions are: what causes Gulley to get stuck, what is involved in this state, and how does he resolve his dilemma or unstuck? Getting stuck usually takes the form of an artistic immobility. days at time Gulley stops painting while he diverts himself with rascality and invective against the world. The apparent reasons for such disruptions are his frustration with the interference and ignorance of society, his poverty, and his problems with style. The last concern is examined by Tauno F. Mustanoja, who sets up his study by saying: For Joyce Cary the central theme of the novel was an artist's pilgrimage through world of everlasting creation, where the original, creative mind is always facing change of symbolic values.4 Mustanoja describes Gulley's situation as one, frequent among painters in later life, in which the potential of the technique he has selected seems exhausted. Gulley, he argues, tries to give up impressionistic, lyric (Gulley's own term)