Mourning and Melancholy in Julian Barnes’s Levels of Life and The Only Story

Abstract

The loss of the beloved, the fear or experience of it, either because of death or other reasons has been a repeatedly occurring theme in the work of Julian Barnes. In Before She Met Me, the fear of loss forms the subconscious of a humorous and meticulous examination of obsessive jealousy, in Talking It Over and Love etc., it is analysed through deception, revenge and resentment. Even behind the apparent postmodernist strategies and playful tone of Flaubert’s Parrot, there resides the story of a retired, bereaving narrator who is trying to overcome the recent death of his once infidel wife. Irony and humour have always been the main traits of Barnes, no matter how serious the issues he represented. However, since the publication of The Sense of an Ending in 2011, Barnes’s novels have grown to be more melancholic and lyrical in tone and less humorous and playful in style. Barnes’s latest novels – The Sense of an Ending (2011), Levels of Life (2013), The Noise of Time (2016) and The Only Story (2018) – all develop around an aged protagonist or narrator whose story unfolds in an ironically self-aware lyrical tone, which detaches Barnes from postmodernism. The writing style of Julian Barnes, as a mature novelist, gets plainer as his mood becomes more sentimental and melancholic. This paper examines Barnes’s representation of mourning and melancholy in Levels of Life where he dedicates the last section to his bereavement process after the loss of his wife, Pat Kavanagh, and The Only Story where he offers the piercing and grim love story of Susan (48) and Paul (19). The concepts of mourning and melancholy will be analysed by reference to Freud’s and Derrida’s views to illustrate how Barnes subtly probes them in the two novels as an artist.