Rebecca K. Hahn - Side-Stepping Normativity in Selected Short Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Based on my understanding of queer, the stories selected for analysis have been grouped into different headings to reflect different forms of queerness. Chapter 2, “Homoerotic Desires” takes a closer look at the stories “The Shirt in Mexico” (1941), “Bruno” (1971) and “The Green Torso” (1970) to discuss how Warner deals with homoerotic affairs. Chapter 3, “Cross-Species Relationships”, analyses the “Introduction” to The Cat’s Cradle - Book (1940), “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East” (1940), as well as “The Wineshop Cat” (1942). The focus of this chapter is on representations of sexuality, power and control in cross-species encounters. Chapter 4, “Incestuous Longings” revolves around the diffuseness of incestuous relationships. It takes a closer look at “A Love Match” (1964), “A Spirit Rises” (1961) and “At a Monkey’s Breast” (1955). Chapter 5, “Avenues of Escape”, depicts how Warner’s heroes and heroines find unusual ways of escaping interpellations, as seen in the short stories “But at the Stroke of Midnight” (1970), “Trafalgar Bakery” (1955), and “An Act of Reparation” (1964). Chapter 6, “Vanishing”, examines “Boors Carousing” (1941), “A Dressmaker” (1961), and “A Work of Art” (1961) to consider how Warner enables her characters to temporarily disappear into non-existence. The last chapter, Chapter 7, takes a closer look at selected stories from Kingdoms of Elfin (1977). It contains an analysis of the elfin world with reference to Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of the friend/foe dichotomy outlined in Modernity and Ambivalence (1991) to illustrate why some readers may consider these stories utterly strange. Emphasis here will be placed on the elves’ behaviour and the consequences of their actions, as opposed to speculating on what the elves in the stories symbolise. Side-Stepping Normativity in Selected Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner will conclude with a discussion of the different analyses and examine the techniques employed by Warner in her writing (Coda).

The introduction started with an exemplary reading of “The Children’s Grandmother” to introduce first-time Warner readers to the oddness of her fiction. It ends with a reference to Warner’s first novel Lolly Willowes or the Loving Huntsman (1926) and discusses why this novel may be termed a “foot-off-the-ground novel” to highlight the relevance of this term for my research question.

Lolly Willowes tells the story of Laura Willowes – known as “Lolly” to her family – who, in the course of the novel, gradually changes from being a dependent unmarried woman into an independent witch. Following strict patriarchal structures, Laura’s family takes the decision that Laura must leave her old home in the country and move to London to live with her brother and his family after her father dies. At the time, Laura does as is expected of her without question. Some twenty years later, however, at the age of 47, Laura seizes the opportunity to move away from the clutch of her family and London to a place in the country called Great Mop. Her family objects strongly to the move, but despite this Laura goes ahead with her plan. She rents a room and soon settles down in her new home. The novel, which has described fairly realistic events up until this point, gradually starts to introduce more and more fantastic elements into the story. Laura’s encounter with Satan – “the loving huntsman” and not the evil entity feared by most religious groups – causes her to become a witch, a move that eventually enables her to free herself from all the social constraints imposed upon her throughout her life.

Lolly Willowes deals with Laura’s gradual withdrawal from her family and society and the theme of female liberation. In her new environment, Laura comes to realise that she is no longer the person she once was:

She was changed, and she knew it. She was humbler, and more simple. She ceased to triumph mentally over her tyrants, and rallied herself no longer with the consciousness that she had outraged them by coming to live at Great Mop. (Warner, Lolly Willowes 152)

Laura gradually learns to leave her past behind her. Step by step, she disengages herself from her former life and gives up defining herself by her relatives and family background. She resultantly ceases to derive pleasure from speculating on her relatives’ reactions to her departure as she cuts herself off. However, Laura does not remain passive to what has been done to her and deals with her past in her own way:

There was no question of forgiving them. […] If she were to start forgiving she must needs forgive Society, the Law, the Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament, the Bank of England, Prostitution, the Architect of Apsley Terrace [her London home], and half a dozen other useful props of civilisation. All she could do was to go on forgetting them. (152)

Instead of harbouring ill feelings towards all the institutions that confined her – emphasised here by the use of capital letters – Laura simply decides to forget about their existence. By admitting to their existence, she would have to accept the role they had cast her in and would always be tied to them. Only by forgetting them can she liberate herself from her past life. Bruce Knoll calls Laura’s reactions to society “an assertiveness that falls between the two extremes” of “feminine passivity” and “masculine aggressiveness” (344). Whereas Knoll calls the result of her behaviour “separatism”, I would argue that Laura’s behaviour cannot be regarded as a political reaction, but rather a casting off of her old life. She finds the strength to detach herself from her surroundings and, ultimately, society as a whole. Forgetting “useful props of civilisation” is not the same as consciously separating from them. If Laura had merely detached herself from these institutions, she would still have had to acknowledge their existence, thereby endowing them, and the society that produces them, with both meaning and power.

The institutions that Laura decides to forget (such as the Law and the Church to mention a random few) are firmly entrenched within society. According to Foucault’s concept of power, set out in The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality 1 (1976), institutions are powerful because society gives authority to them. Laura realises that in order to detach herself from these aspects of society, she must renounce society as a whole – an impossible task, since she herself is also a product of society. The only route that lies open to her is to detach herself from society as far as is possible. Foucault does not believe that power is imposed hierarchically from top to bottom, but considers power to work within a net-like system. Foucault states that

[o]ne needs to be nominalistic, no doubt: power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society. ( WtK 93)

Foucault explains that “power must not be sought in the primary existence of a central point, in a unique source of sovereignty from which secondary and descendent forms would emanate” and that it is always and continuously maintained by society (93). Since there is no single point to attack or to separate from, forgetting about society’s existence is an efficient way of dealing with society and all its institutions. In this way, the influence society has on Laura gradually loses significance since she does not confirm its value system ex negativo . As Foucault states, with regard to power and power formations, resistance is always possible. He notes that, “Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority to power” (95, emphasis added). Foucault highlights the fact that power and resistance are coexistent and that resistance automatically becomes part of the same structure as power. Foucault shows that ultimately there is no way out since whichever side you choose, you will never be able to disassociate yourself from one or the other side completely. Therefore, instead of fighting society or showing aggressiveness or resigning and remaining passive, Laura chooses to turn her back on society. She decides that she does not want to be part of any society that operates with means she abhors. Laura knows intuitively that by fighting patriarchal systems, she will only be perpetuating them.