Expert Modernists, Matricide, and Modern Culture

Expert Modernists, Matricide, and Modern Culture

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Expert Modernists, Matricide, and Modern Culture Woolf, Forster, Joyce Lois Cucullu

Lois Cucullu 2004 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2004 978-1-4039-3531-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-51781-7 ISBN 978-0-230-50195-9 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230501959 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cucullu, Lois. Expert modernists, matricide, and modern culture : Woolf, Forster, Joyce / Lois Cucullu. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. English fiction 20th century History and criticism. 2. Women in literature. 3. Forster, E.M. (Edward Morgan), 1879 1970 Characters Women. 4. Woolf, Virginia, 1882 1941 Characters Women. 5. Joyce, James, 1882 1941 Characters Women. 6. Modernism (Literature) Great Britain. 7. Matriarchy in literature. 8. Mothers in literature. 9. Family in literature. 10. Home in literature. I. Title. PR888.W6C83 2004 823.912093522 dc22 2003070733 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04

Gordy and Michèle

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Contents Acknowledgments viii 1 Modern Hordes: Women, Modernism, and the Cult of Experts 1 2 Retailing the Female Intellectual 31 3 Sacred Cows: Modernism, Woolf, and Her Fictive Seraphs 58 4 Queer Couplings: Forster s Hellenic Pastoralism and Modern Masculinity 91 5 Putting Rouge on the Corpse: Cosmopolitan Joyce and Modern Culture 120 Afterword 155 Notes 170 Bibliography 206 Index 219 vii

Acknowledgments The intellectual debts for a book on expert culture that is also a first book are bound to be numerous and great. To begin, let me first express my appreciation for the permissions that have allowed me to include sections of the work on Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster that have been published elsewhere. I accordingly thank the editors and publishers for permission to reprint Retailing the Female Intellectual, in differences: A Journal of Feminism and Cultural Studies, Volume 9, No. 2, pp. 25 68, Copyright, 1997, Brown University, differences: A Journal of Feminism and Cultural Studies and Duke University Press; and to excerpt Shepherds in the Parlor: Forster s Apostles, Pagans, and Native Sons, in Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Volume 32, No. 1, Fall 1998, pp. 19 55, Copyright Novel Corp. 1998; and to excerpt Exceptional Women, Expert Culture and the Academy, in Signs: A Journal of Women and Culture in Society, Volume 29, No. 1, Fall 2003, pp. 27 54, Copyright, 2003, Signs and the University of Chicago Press; and to excerpt Only Cathect : Queer Heirs and Narrative Desire in Howards End, in Imperial Desire: Dissident Sexualities and Colonial Literature edited by Philip Holden and Richard Ruppel (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), pp. 195 222, Copyright 2003 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota Press. For the support that enabled me to research and complete this project, I also gratefully acknowledge the following: the University of Minnesota s Graduate School for a Grant-in-Aid Fellowship and for McKnight and Faculty Summer Research Fellowships; the College of Liberal Arts for a single semester leave; The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas and its support of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship; the Modern Archive Centre of King s College, Cambridge and the Centre s archivists Jacqueline Cox and Rosalind Moad for their invaluable assistance during my visit and after; and The Huntington Library and its support of a W.M. Keck Foundation and Mayers Fellowship. To begin a more personal recitation of intellectual debts means recognizing Nancy Armstrong, whose Desire and Domestic Fiction made scholars and critics, regardless of ideological stamp, acknowledge the decorous elephant in the room that was the domestic woman. No less did the argument of this book take shape from the impress of that figure. But even more than that engagement, I owe its author profound thanks for viii

Acknowledgments ix great generosity and judicious advice, imparted with a wit that ever enlivened the intellectual work informing our profession. To Ellen Rooney and Elizabeth Weed, I extend warm thanks for their astute and prescient reading of the manuscript in its early stages that helped me identify the contours and consequences of the argument taking shape. I likewise here remember the late Roger Henkle for his humane teaching and for his interdisciplinary commitment to contextualizing literature that I hope this book may in some measure honor. My intellectual debts extend as well to Devon Hodges and Eileen Sypher, who first led me to consider the maven Woolf and to theorize her literary production beyond pathology. Coming forward, I extend my thanks to the present and past faculty and students at Minnesota, but especially to Paula Rabinowitz and Andrew Elfenbein for their incisive readings of the manuscript that helped me to sharpen the argument in its final drafting, and to Jani Scandura and Rita Raley for the intellectual climate their work created that supported me at crucial stages of my writing. To invoke intellectual climate is also to express my gratitude to Robert C. Ritchie, Director of Research at The Huntington, for the year spent in research among the library s collections and in colloquy with the scholars gathered under his aegis. Of friends, fellow travelers, backers, and accomplices, I must not fail to recognize Julia Flanders, Caroline Reitz, John Marx, Jennifer Campbell, Nick Daly, Lorraine Mazza, Jan Schrader, Susan Davis, Deb and Bob Petersen, Tim Wager, Elyse Blankley, Carola Kaplan, Maria Lepowsky, Dolora Wojciehowski, Thadious Davis, Cynthia Herrup, Coppélia Kahn, Susi Krasnoo, Mona Noureldin Shulman, Donna and Warren Brown, Roberto Alvarez, and, lastly, Steve Nolan for his ever sound counsel. Finally, to my family but principally to my children, Gordy and Michèle Cucullu, for their humor and for humoring me over the course of the project theirs is the advocacy I most credit.