Recontextualizing the Self: The Voice as Subject in Beckett's "Not I"

Abstract

During the middle 1960s, the character of Beckett's style changed drastically and gave way to a new mode of expression whose structure was based on the transformation of language densities and texture, on the statistical arrangement of events.' In Not I, Beckett breaks down the basic sentence or phrase structure and moves towards complex patterns of unfixed or random frequency content. This new style, while perplexing to reader and viewer alike, serves both to define a new theatrical function and, moreover, to visualize the plight of woman. By the time he wrote Not 1 (1972), Beckett had interiorized sound density even further than he had in its predecessor, Play, and had formalized periodicity-that is, cyclical and repeated phrases. Beckett emphasizes structure, formalized patterns, artifice, and the undercutting of pathos in order to develop the themes of rejection, of isolation, and of the absence of love. The paradox of woman's position with others is that her place is in fact defined in the scattered, spastic voice of the text. The central significance of couples for Beckett is that they shift among interpersonal, grammatical, and conceptual variants. Beckett grounds his notion of the couple in an increasingly theoretical foundation of the voice. This is a voice that does not communicate or inform as we ordinarily think of it, but is governed by its relationship with the subject speaking. The voice points out what is before the scene of Mouth's inner gaze rather than what is visible to her senses. In other words, the voice relates to what is inside the subject all the while. The most productive approach here will be to look at how Beckett reevaluates the couple through Mouth's narrative voice and her inner voice speaking of itself. In each case it is necessary to forget the usual meaning of the word voice, which in this work is defined as external to Mouth. Much of Beckett's exposition of the voice can appear forbiddingly abstract on a superficial reading, but those who devote some effort to penetrating his language often find this work to be intensely emotional as well. Accordingly, Beckett never loses sight entirely of a quite traditional, humanistic view of the couple in terms of loss and sorrow. Both approaches are indeed at work in Not I, hence the greater emphasis on just how and where they intersect and evolve in Mouth's story.