Social Transformation in Hardy's Tragic Novels: Megamachines and Phantasms by David Musselwhite (review)

Abstract

MLR, ioi.i, 2006 235 women, racial tensions, rural versus industrial processes, are neatly replicated in the fiction written for adolescent girls, he argues. Using a multitude of evidence, such as fan letters, reviews, diaries, and magazine commentary, Stoneley makes a convincing case for a biographical and historical understanding of such literary genres. Louisa May Alcott, for example, provides the 'perfect means for us to explore this complex intersection of genre, pleasure, and capitalism' (p. 21) as she left behind so many forms of such evidence. Stoneley outlines a fascinating and contradictory trope of the pre-feminist, protofeminist , feminist,and post-feminist possibilities ofthe texts. The ultimate paradox of the fiction resides in the fact thatjust as the stories suggest a 'fetishized' uncorrupted pre-capitalist cleanness, they propose increased opportunity for enterprising women to enter into modernity and consumption, only at the last minute to close it down and resurrect the 'dominant' hierarchy. The symbolism of the female adolescent, he argues, is that she represents these impossible negotiations so well. Stoneley follows this trope of industrial development in an examination of the mode of production of the stories, from the 'yeoman' individual writer through to mass circulation in magazine serialization and the production of syndicated novels and stories, epitomized by the Nancy Drew mystery series. The popularity of such commercial fiction thus developed its own poetic paradox: for many women in the nineteenth century story-writing had become a way to bypass the restrictions of tradi? tional femininity despite reinforcing traditional gender roles, but as heroines became more 'adventurous' and exciting, the mass production of texts meant that 'numerous writers would be employed in the literary equivalent of a sweatshop', and these writ? ers were more often than not women (p. 91). Stoneley traces this paradox exceedingly well in a crafted combination of cultural studies with literary close readings. In many ways Consumerism and American Girls' Literature is more about the pro? duction than consumption of texts, as the girl reader remains an ethereal presence. This, however, leaves us open to imagine a response rather than close down the mean? ings that the texts may have held forreal women. The mildly illicit pleasure of reading such texts for girls may well have been bound up tightlywith the contradictions and paradoxes they embodied. Stoneley's exploration of the fissures and cracks of these texts through a cultural analysis of the producer, the mode of production, and con? sumption is managed with a skill and fluency that is too often missing in academic writing. University of Sussex Sue Currell Social Transformation in Hardy's Tragic Novels: Megamachines and Phantasms. By David Musselwhite. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2003. xii + 225pp. ?45. ISBN 1-4039-1662-4. Those who admired David Musselwhite's Partings Welded Together (London: Rout? ledge, 1987) have had a long wait forthis second book, which continues the Deleuzian meditations of the earlier study in a more focused fashion?both interpreting and extending Deleuze's and Guattari's writings, and reading them against the work of Jean Laplanche. In treating Hardy in this way, Musselwhite takes up Deleuze's and Guat? tari's own admiration forHardy's novels, with their characters who 'are not characters ofsubjects: they are collections ofintensive sensations' (cited p. 1). The result is a theoretically provocative and fascinating study,sustained by careful readings ofthe novels. Musselwhite's exposition of the work of these sometimes maddeningly produc? tive thinkers?whose every text revised or multiplied the theoretical apparatus of the previous ones?is admirably clear; one would want to recommend it to students. 236 Reviews Musselwhite aims to read Hardy's tragic novels in terms ofthe differentkinds of so? cial order described by Deleuze and Guattari, and in terms such as the 'body without organs', the 'megamachine', Autrui, and so on. In addition he offers,as a corrective to the anti-psychoanalyticpolemic of Anti-Oedipus, an analysis ofthe 'phantasm' de? rived from the work of Laplanche and Pontalis?pointing out that Deleuze's earlier work (especially Logic du sens) was in fact founded on the notion of the phantasm, the ambiguous imprinting, a writing and rewriting, which represents the interface between social construction and the biological...