Why The Waste Land and The French Lieutenant's Woman exemplify modernism and postmodernism

Waste Land French Lieutenant

The Waste Land and the French Lieutenant as Exemplary Modernist Texts

Modernism and Post-Modernism are considered the dominant literary movements of the twentieth century, with Post-Modernism continuing into our own century. Each was an artistic movement representing a clear break with the past. Their literary components were especially unique, revealing the myriad unexplored forms that literature could take.

Although famous, these movements are difficult to define because their canons are composed of highly unconventional works, escaping easy categorization. Both movements are impossible to define through common features alone. Therefore, classifying a text, such as the Wasteland or the French Lieutenant's Woman, as Modernist or Post-Modernist, involves much more than identifying features off of a checklist.

The terms Modernist and Post-Modernist cannot be understood without an understanding of the social, political, and cultural contexts out of which these literary works were born. This paper will analyze not only the literary features that these works exhibit, but also analyze them as responses to social, political, and cultural forces influencing their creators.

Thesis: It will demonstrate that these texts are exemplary not because they possess the most Modernist or Post-Modernist features, as these terms are understood now. Rather, they are exemplary because they at the time, so unlike any work before it, and unique in a way that could be articulated with the understanding and terminology of that time.

Background: The Realist Period

Before the Modernist period, the artistic world was heavily influenced by Realism. Realist literature was primarily concerned with showing what life was actually like, much in the same way a photograph showed what a scene actually looked like. For many writers, this meant depicting human thoughts and social relations in a new way. (Fried, p. 11). For instance, Dostoevsky depicted, expertly and dramatically, the petty, neurotic thoughts of a repentant murderer in Crime and Punishment. (Snow, p. 87).

In literature, the Realist trend affected content and style. Writers started to include the mundane details of everyday life, especially middle-class life. (Fried, p. 13). They also ditched flowery, elegant turns of phrase for unadorned prose, preferring bare, detailed imagery to poetic or metaphorical description.

The Waste Land

The Waste Land is a 434-line poem by Anglo-American poet T.S. Eliot shortly after the First World War, in 1922. (Eliot). It is a very unconventional poem, lacking a dominant tone or style. The narrator of the poem seems to be based on Eliot himself. It is a heavily fragmented and disjointed poem, composed largely of literary quotes and references. It incorporates these quotes and references into scenes from modern, urban, and industrialized Western society. It is considered a quintessentially modernist poem, and one of the most important poems of the 20th century.

The Modernist Context of the Wasteland

Disillusionment, Alienation, and Despair

Modernist literature was partly a reaction to the increasing dehumanization of Western Civilization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The society and culture of all Western nations were undergoing rapid industrialization, urbanization, and secularization. (Low). These trends served to make Western nations more hostile, to non-Western nations, to each other, and to the natural environment.

The culmination of these trends, to Modernist artists, was the disastrous First World War, which left continental Europe, particularly France and Germany, in shambles. Modernist artists lost the sense of the certainty and promise induced by the Enlightenment. Moreover, they could not revert to the comforting notion of a benevolent, all-powerful Creator, which had been discredited by the Enlightenment. Modernist artists realized that individuals were all alone in a hostile universe. (Merriam-Webster, p. 1236).

The Wasteland conveys a deep disillusionment with human civilization. Part of this disillusionment stemmed from the exceptionally brutal Great War, now known as the First World War. The First World War seemed to thwart all of the promise that Enlightenment age values held for human civilization. It demonstrated that Western civilization would utilize reason and science only in the creation of weapons, not in the negotiation of political disputes. This indicated that mankind, though equipped with more sophisticated weapons, was as barbarous as ever.

Modernist writers were artists who were unwilling to conceal their awkwardness as individuals in society. They wanted to convey that a real human was fit for such an inhumane society. Postmodernist literature portrays society as the faceless antagonist and the individual as the suffering protagonist. As a consequence, postmodernist literature tends to place great value on the individual's sensitivity and integrity of mind. The individual's actual efforts are less important in Modernist literature because of the sense of futility and despair that runs through these works.

Modernist writers like Eliot were individuals who felt alienated from the dominant societal institutions of the day. They did not adopt the dominant narratives, views, and interpretations of society. (Baym, Vol. D, p. 17). Thus, although Modernism makes heavy use of creative works of the past by means of allusion, incorporation, and satire, these works are usually presented out of context, out of the traditional narrative.

The Wasteland represents the evils of an industrialized, hostile society, embodied in World War through the perversion of human sexuality. Just as the natural world was being stripped bare and used for inhumane purposes and base impulses, the female body was being objectified as a source of pleasure, without acknowledgement of the female body's sacred purpose of creation. (the Wasteland, III.237-244; III.249-243). The impossibility of pure, true love is echoed in the narrator's own romantic self-frustration, demonstrated the hyacinth scene, where he shies away from the love of the beautiful young lady that he presented with a hyacinth. (the Wasteland, I.40-42).

Sterility, the Lack of Vitality, and the Loss of Creativity

The Wasteland touches on a key feature of industrialized society, the cold sterility. lack of vitality and the Wasteland's very title points to the barrenness and sterility of the post-war world. The natural world had become infertile and obscured through the influence of modern, industrialized life, leaving a world where "…the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water."). (the Wasteland; I.23-27). This phenomenon was at the heart of the Naturalist literature that preceded Modernism, represented by the back-to-nature works of Whitman and Thoreau. (Baym, Vol. C: p. 467).

It makes a bleak estimation of the ability of the individual to live out a full life in modern civilization. (Rainey, p. 27). All of its scenes are marked with disappointment and frustration, a sort of world-weariness not acknowledged, or even recognized in the familiar works of literary history. (the Wasteland, I. 35-4). The Wasteland references these works in order to show that the seeds of modern disappointment and frustration already existed in such works. (the Wasteland, I.30-34; I.42).

In the Wasteland, the natural world's barrenness is represented in the barrenness of the human psyche. This barrenness is revealed by modern artists themselves, who were no longer felt capable of true creativity, constantly confronted by literary tradition. Rather, Modernist writers chose to appropriate the creative works of earlier periods. These works were broken down and reprocessed to explain modern day problems, in the same way that trees were broken down and reprocessed for the daily newspaper, the enduring and the sacred sacrificed for the transient and trivial.

The Wasteland references literary works of the past to provide thematic structure, for sections as well as stanzas. The third section is named after the Buddha's Fire Sermon, where the Buddha preached that the world is on fire, inflamed with desire, represented in the Wasteland as lust. (the Wasteland, III. 308) Just as the Buddha preached that nothing satisfies for long, Eliot illustrates a "tired, bored" young woman who makes love to some random young man, only to comment, after his departure, "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over," before smoothing "…her hair with automatic hand, and puts a record on the gramophone," seeking another diversion for her bored, restless mind. (the Wasteland, III. 253; 256-57).

The genius and beauty of such classics were publicly admired by the modern literati, much like the industrialist extols the sacred beauty of nature. In both cases, the object of admiration is never admirable enough to keep in its original state. The great creative works of the past were chopped up, referenced, analyzed, parodied, incorporated, alluded to. Eliot, in a separate essay, called this process "…a dialogue with tradition," the mark of a truly original work. (Eliot, 1919).

The Wasteland is marked by the sort of extensity and confusion which marked Western Civilization itself at the start of the modern era. Western nations were already penetrating much of the whole known world through trade and Imperialism. The appropriation of past creative works extended beyond the famous and familiar, into the exotic and obscure, such as India. This sophistication and erudition, actually, was often what distinguished the most iconic modernist writers, the T.S. Eliots, Ezra Pounds, and James Joyces of the world. Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, much like the Wasteland, was virtually impossible to understand without the aid of some commentary, whether secondary or from the author's own notes. (Eliot, 1971).

The Subjective over the Objective

Modernism was a reaction against Realism and its focus on objective depiction of life as it was actually lived. Modernist writers derived little artistic pleasure from describing the concrete details of the material world and the various human doings in it. They derived only a little more pleasure from describing the thoughts of those humans inhabiting the material world. Their greatest pleasure, however, was in expressing the angst, confusion, and frustration of the individual who has to live in that world. (Merriam-Webster, p. 1236).

Modernist writers used novel means for expressing these newly intense emotions. They did not always express the individual's confusion and frustration by relating the inner discourse of the individual. Instead, they manipulated the structure, style, and content of their works to cultivate a certain effect on the reader. (Baym, Vol. D, p. 17). They wanted to convey the experience of the individual in a hostile, disconnected, and dehumanized world.

The Wasteland is not characterized by one particular style or rhyme scheme. Some would type the poem as free verse, but it is not totally unstructured. Rather, the Wasteland was a pastiche of different literary conventions. Eliiot uses famous styles and quotes from literary history to illuminate the problems of the modern world.

Eliot juxtaposes a number of different modes and tones, drawing from the bible, classical antiquity, Renaissance, Symbolist, and more exotic sources from the East. He switches between different speakers, locations, and time. In the first section, he switches from a biblical tone in prophetic mode to the fragments of a dialogue between the narrator and a romantic interest to whom he had given a hyacinth, an idyllic scene reminiscent of the Romantic period. (the Wasteland, I.35-39). Later, he discards English altogether and quotes Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in German, "Od' und leer das Meer."(the Wasteland, I.43).

The French Lieutenant's Woman

The French Lieutenant's Woman is a novel written by John Fowles in 1971. (Fowles). It is a romantic novel set in Victorian England, depicting a love triangle between an idealistic aristocrat, his nouveau riche fiance, and a mysterious social outcast, who is educated, but destitute. It is marked by numerous interruptions of the story by the author himself, who reflects on the story as it progresses comments on the process of writing the story. It has a very ambiguous ending, presenting three possibilities for the fate of Charles, that he stays with his fiance, reunites with the mysterious woman, or is rejected by the mysterious woman.

The Post-Modernist Context of the French Lieutenant's Woman

Post-Modernism is even harder to define than Modernism. Actually, it is probably more accurately described as a time period than a coherent artistic movement. Post-Modernism, like Modernism was partly a response to the end of a war, but in this case, World War II instead of World War I. Post-Modernism as an artistic movement is now considered to have started sometime in the 1940's. However, at the time of the French Lieutenant's Woman, the term Post-Modernist literature as a genre had not yet been conceived.

Response to Modernism

Post-Modernist literature was both a continuation of Modernism as well as a response to Modernism. In many ways, the French Lieutenant's Woman echoes the Modernist period of literature. Like the Wasteland, it is concerned with the oppression of the individual by a hostile and unreflective society. Charles and Sarah are heroes because they are sensitive individuals, not because they are strong, know what they want, and eventually get what they want. In fact, it is possible that they both end up miserable at the end of the novel. However, both individuals are strong enough to resist the dictates of Victorian society as well as literary convention. (Fowles, Chapter 10 / p. 30).

The French Lieutenant's Woman is love affair set in Victorian England and France. It is written as a Gothic romance novel, with a heroic, virtuous male protagonist attempting to rescue the beautiful, young female protagonist. (Brantlinger & Rothblatt, 341). The female protagonist is typically stuck in some unfortunate situation, usually controlled by a malicious lord of some sort. (Brantlinger & Rothblatt, 341). Instead of focusing on the effects of industrialization and alienation on the individual, as Modernist authors did, Fowles highlights the absurdity of class and social conventions and its effect on society's perception of individuals.

Fowle's novel can be seen as a throwback to popular pre-Modernist literature. Certainly, it would be hard to imagine any Modernist writer choosing to write in the genre of Gothic romance. (Brantlinger & Rothblatt, p. 341). Fowles, however, does not mean to rehash the Victorian Gothic romance. Nor does he mean to parody it. He uses the flat and rigid format of the Victorian Gothic romance novel to highlight the roundness and complexity of the main characters, especially Charles and Sarah. It is not clear that we truly know Sarah and it is also unclear that Charles knows himself.

Heterogeneity in Themes

With the end of World War II, artists were no longer responding to common political events that had dominated public discourse during the first half of the century. There was no longer a Zeitgeist which all artists had to react to, or at least acknowledge. Thus, artists were able to pursue lines of thought and ideas that would not have occurred to them during the Modernist period.

Post-Modernist literature discarded the Modernist view of industrialized society as bereft of literary value, as Eliot expressed in the Wasteland. In fact, some Post-Modernist works reassess the Victorian society which preceded the Modernist period, the society against which the Modernists were reacting. Post-Modernist authors, such as Fowles, noticed unrecognized literary value in the rigid, subdued Victorian society of the 19th Century.

Self-Reflexivity

The absence of a universal Zeitgeist made the Post-Modernist period more heterogeneous than the Modernist period in regards to themes. Avant-garde writers no longer felt compelled to convey the individual's frustration and alienation from society, though some did. Such alienation and frustration were seen as normal by now, most felt numb to it. Without a Zeitgeist to react to and criticize, many artists turned inward. They began to use themselves and their craft as subject matter, examining their work with a new sort of cynicism, as well as playfulness. (Lewis, p. 97).

Indeed, the most conspicuous distinction between Fowle's novel and Modernist literature was the Fowles' explicit self-consciousness as a player in his story. Modernist authors were self-consciousness as well. However, in their works, this self-consciousness took the form of opinions and commentary, expressed by the characters themselves, usually the protagonist. The characters were meant to teach certain lessons by expressing the author's sense of angst and frustration.

In Fowle's novel, however, the characters are not the author's mouthpiece or his pedagogical instruments, as they were in Modernist works such as Joyce's Ulysses or Eliot's Wasteland. In Fowle's novel, the thoughts of the author are clearly demarcated from the thoughts of the characters. Fowles, as the author himself, appears in the novel as an observer and self-conscious narrator, commenting on his characters, the historical context, and the creative process in general. (Fowles, Chapter 11 / p. 33). Before the French Lieutenant's Woman, such commentary would only be found in the author's own notes, such as the notes found in the annotated edition of the Wasteland. (Eliot, 1971). This self-reflexivity was to become a defining feature of Post-Modernist literature.

Fowles demonstrates the influence of the author's self-consciousness through highly intrusive metafiction. Fowles appears in the novel, unbeknownst to the characters, who look at him in puzzlement. He meets Charles as the author of the novel on a train while Charles travels to London. (Fowles, Chapter 55/p. 172). While Charles is asleep, Fowles analyzes him as a character, considering the possibilities for the ending, finally flipping a coin to decide between the endings. (Fowles, Chapter 55/p. 172). Through this method, Fowles explicates the self-consciousness of the author as a transparent element of the story, with just as much effect on the story as the protagonist's own personality.

Rejection of a Dominant Narrative

The mood of the post-World War II world was much different than the post-World War II world. Instead of shock and concern about the future of Western society, as occurred after World War I, there was a feeling of relief and hope in the future as the United States rose to prominence and the United Nations was created. However, the Imperialist policies of the United States, represented by the Vietnam war, dashed the optimism of the previous decade. (Lewis, p. 95-96).

As a result of increasing political cynicism, authors were recognizing the importance of perspective on our conventional view of history and of our own world. They rejected the notion of absolute, objective truth, emphasizing subjectivity and moral relativity. (Lewis, p. 100). They were concerned with the voices that were left out of the dominant narrative, the people who were neither the tyrant nor the iconoclast.

The Post-Modernist authors' distrust of the dominant social narrative led them to look at the neglected areas of society. However, they looked at these neglected areas much differently than, for example, a Charles Dickens would look at the street urchin Oliver in Oliver Twist. The French Lieutenant's Woman focuses on social outcasts such as Fowle's heroine, Sarah Woodruff, who is ostracized by the town as an abandoned whore, with no family and no place in Victorian society. (Fowles, p. 16). Instead of portraying Sarah as a powerless victim held back by society, Fowles shows that the marginalized can attain self-realization precisely because of their marginalization. (Fowles, p. 196). This is demonstrated when Sarah reveals that she had taken role of outcast willingly, as it carried her to her destiny as an independent artist. (Fowles, p. 196).

Post-Modernist authors also made use of alternative narrative structures. Many Post-Modern authors discarded the standard chronological narrative, which went from a to B. without interruption, except for flashbacks. (Lewis, p. 97-98). Some authors turned to thematic narratives.

After the liberation from the chronological narrative, modernist authors after Fowles, such as Italo Calvino's turned to a thematic narrative. In Invisible Cities, Calvino organizes the travelogue of the narrator by themes, e.g. "Cities and Memory," "Cities and Desire," etc. (Calvino, 1971). The novel's thematic organization allows Calvino to de-emphasize the traditional characteristics of cities, such as their material structure and their uniqueness from other cities, focusing instead on the invisible reasons that move these cities. (Calvino, p. 10). The cities themselves were not accurate to history, and many were themselves a pastiche of images and experiences from Calvino's travels in the modern world. (Lewis, p. 98-99).