Egoism and “The Eyes of Others”
Lord Jim, Miss Mole, and the Dialogue of Literary “Brows”
Abstract
This essay participates in recent scholarship destabilizing the binary opposition between high and middlebrow culture through a comparative study of egotism in two British novels. Rather than recovering forgotten classics such as E.H. Young’s Miss Mole within the categories of women’s literature or middlebrow literature, the writer examines the contribution of such novels to cultural discourses that cut across literary brows. Drawing on Wai Chee Dimock’s theory of resonance and Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism, she pairs the canonical Lord Jim and the insufficiently known Miss Mole in order to hear previously inaudible sounds in both texts and to claim their dialogic interaction. This critical approach illuminates the kinship of texts segregated by the commercial, cultural, and ideological projects of assigning brows to texts. The comparison of egotism in the two novels throws into relief both the modern anxiety that the individual might be lost amidst an indifferent and populated world and the two authors’ different responses to this anxiety. Comparison of the two novels’ treatment of egotism allows us to hear the woman’s domestic novel as a reply to the man’s adventure novel.
References
Ardis, Ann, and Patrick Collier. Transatlantic Print Culture, 1880-1940: Emerging Media, Emerging Modernisms. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Bakhtin, M.M. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. University of Texas Press Slavic Series 1. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981.
Baldick, Chris. The Oxford English Literary History. Volume 10: 1910-1940: The Modern Movement. Oxford and New York: Oxford U P, 2004.
Beauman, Nicola. A Very Great Profession: The Woman’s Novel 1914-39. London: Virago, 1983.
Benson, Arthur Christopher. “Egotism.” From a College Window. 1906. New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910. 152-73.
“Book Awards: Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Anglais.” The Library Thing. 23 September 2009. <www.librarything.com/.../Prix/Femina/Vie/Heureuse/Anglais>.
Caserio, Robert, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Twentieth-Century Novel. Cambridge, Cambridge U P, 2009.
Cavaliero, Glen. The Rural Tradition in the English Novel 1900-1939. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman, 1977.
Collier, Patrick. Modernism on Fleet Street. Farnham, United Kingdom: Ashgate, 2006.
Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim. 1900. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. Ed. Cedric Watts and Robert Hampson. London and New York: Penguin, 1986.
---. “To R.B. Cunninghame Graham.” 31 January 1898. Letter 9 of Joseph Conrad’s Letters to R.B. Cunninghame Graham. Ed. C.T. Watts. London and New York: Cambridge U P, 1969. 70-72.
---. “To R.B. Cunninghame Graham.” 8 February 1899. Letter 31 of Joseph Conrad’s Letters to R.B. Cunninghame Graham. Ed. C.T. Watts. London and New York: Cambridge U P, 1969. 116-18.
DiBattista, Maria, and Lucy McDiarmid, eds. High and Low Moderns: Literature and Culture, 1889-1939. New York and Oxford: Oxford U P, 1996.
Dimock, Wai Chee. “A Theory of Resonance.” PMLA 112.5 (October 1997): 1060-71.
Drew, Elizabeth A. The Modern Novel: Some Aspects of Contemporary Fiction. N.Y.: Harcourt, 1926.
“Egoism.” Oxford English Dictionary 7 July 2009 <https://libdatabase.newpaltz.edu/login?url=http://dictionary.oed.com/>.
“Egotism.” Oxford English Dictionary 7 July 2009 <https://libdatabase.newpaltz.edu/login?url=http://dictionary.oed.com/>.
Gould, Gerald. “The Egoism Specialists.” The English Novel of To-Day. London: John Castle, 1924. 133-41.
Graham, Kenneth. “Conrad and Modernism.” Stape 203-22.
Grover, Mary. “The Shame of the Middlebrow.” The Ordeal of Warwick Deeping. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson U P, 2009.
Hanson, Clare. Hysterical Fictions: The “Woman’s Novel” in the Twentieth Century. Houndmills, United Kingdom and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.
Humble, Nicola. The Feminine Middlebrow Novel: 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism. Oxford: Oxford U P, 2001.
Katz, Tamar. Impressionist Subjects: Gender, Interiority, and Modernist Fiction in England. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2000.
Lawrence, Margaret. The School of Femininity. New York: Stokes, 1936.
Levenson, Michael. A Genealogy of Modernism: A Study of English Literary Doctrine 1908-1922. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1984.
Marsh, Fred T. Rev. of Miss Mole, by E.H. Young. The Bookman October 1930: 171-72.
McCracken, Scott. “ ‘A Hard and Absolute Condition of Existence’: Reading Masculinity in Lord Jim.” Conrad and Gender. Ed. Andrew Michael Roberts. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993. 17-38.
Meredith, George. The Egoist. 1877. New York: Random House, 1947.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Joseph Conrad: A Biography. New York: Scribner’s, 1991.
Nordau, Max. Degeneration. Translated from the Second Edition of the German Work. New York: Appleton, 1895.
Pykett, Lyn. Engendering Fictions: The English Novel in the Early Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford U P, 1995.
Radner, Hilary. “Extra-Curricular Activities: Women Writers and the Readerly Text.” Women’s Writing in Exile. Ed. Mary Lynn Broe and Angela Ingram. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1989. 251-67.
Radway, Janice A. A Feeling for Books: the Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1997.
Rainey, Lawrence. Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites and Public Culture. New Haven: Yale U P, 1999.
Saveson, John. “Marlow’s Psychological Vocabulary in Lord Jim.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 12:3 (Fall 1970): 457-70.
Scholes, Robert. Paradoxy of Modernism. New Haven and London: Yale U P, 2006.
Silbey, David. The University of Virginia and the Moneychangers in the Temple. [Blog post.] The Chronicle of Higher Education Blog Network. June 18, 2012. http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/2012/06/18/on-the-university-of-virginia-and-moneychangers-in-the-temple/.
Stape, J.H., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1996.
---. “Lord Jim.” Stape 63-80.
Stirner, Max. The Ego and His Own. 1845. Trans. Steven T. Byington 1907. Ed. John Carroll. New York: Harper, 1971.
Tomlinson, Kathleen C. “New Novels.” Rev. of Miss Mole, by E.H. Young, and five other novels. The Nation and Athenaeum August 30, 1930: 680-81.
Trotter, David. The English Novel in History 1895-1920. London and New York: Routlege, 1993.
Watts, Cedric. Introduction. Lord Jim. By Joseph Conrad. 1900. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. Ed. Cedric Watts and Robert Hampson. London and New York: Penguin, 1986, 11-30.
Wexler, Joyce. Who Paid for Modernism?: Art, Money, and the Fiction of Conrad, Joyce, and Lawrence. U of Arkansas P, 1997.
Wiley, Paul L. “Conrad’s Solitaries.” Excerpted from Conrad’s Measure of Man. U of Wisconsin, 1954. Conrad, A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Marvin Mudrick. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1966. 63-73.
Woolf, Virginia. “How It Strikes a Contemporary.” 1923. The Common Reader, First Series. Edited and Introduced by Andrew McNeillie. San Diego: Harvest-Harcourt, 1984. 231-41.
---. “Mrs. Bennett and Mrs. Brown.” 1924. The Captain’s Death Bed and other Essays. New York: Harvest-Harcourt, 1950. 94-119.
Young, E.H. Miss Mole. 1930. Virago Modern Classics. Garden City, N.Y.: Dial-Doubleday, 1985.
Bakhtin, M.M. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. University of Texas Press Slavic Series 1. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981.
Baldick, Chris. The Oxford English Literary History. Volume 10: 1910-1940: The Modern Movement. Oxford and New York: Oxford U P, 2004.
Beauman, Nicola. A Very Great Profession: The Woman’s Novel 1914-39. London: Virago, 1983.
Benson, Arthur Christopher. “Egotism.” From a College Window. 1906. New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910. 152-73.
“Book Awards: Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Anglais.” The Library Thing. 23 September 2009. <www.librarything.com/.../Prix/Femina/Vie/Heureuse/Anglais>.
Caserio, Robert, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Twentieth-Century Novel. Cambridge, Cambridge U P, 2009.
Cavaliero, Glen. The Rural Tradition in the English Novel 1900-1939. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman, 1977.
Collier, Patrick. Modernism on Fleet Street. Farnham, United Kingdom: Ashgate, 2006.
Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim. 1900. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. Ed. Cedric Watts and Robert Hampson. London and New York: Penguin, 1986.
---. “To R.B. Cunninghame Graham.” 31 January 1898. Letter 9 of Joseph Conrad’s Letters to R.B. Cunninghame Graham. Ed. C.T. Watts. London and New York: Cambridge U P, 1969. 70-72.
---. “To R.B. Cunninghame Graham.” 8 February 1899. Letter 31 of Joseph Conrad’s Letters to R.B. Cunninghame Graham. Ed. C.T. Watts. London and New York: Cambridge U P, 1969. 116-18.
DiBattista, Maria, and Lucy McDiarmid, eds. High and Low Moderns: Literature and Culture, 1889-1939. New York and Oxford: Oxford U P, 1996.
Dimock, Wai Chee. “A Theory of Resonance.” PMLA 112.5 (October 1997): 1060-71.
Drew, Elizabeth A. The Modern Novel: Some Aspects of Contemporary Fiction. N.Y.: Harcourt, 1926.
“Egoism.” Oxford English Dictionary 7 July 2009 <https://libdatabase.newpaltz.edu/login?url=http://dictionary.oed.com/>.
“Egotism.” Oxford English Dictionary 7 July 2009 <https://libdatabase.newpaltz.edu/login?url=http://dictionary.oed.com/>.
Gould, Gerald. “The Egoism Specialists.” The English Novel of To-Day. London: John Castle, 1924. 133-41.
Graham, Kenneth. “Conrad and Modernism.” Stape 203-22.
Grover, Mary. “The Shame of the Middlebrow.” The Ordeal of Warwick Deeping. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson U P, 2009.
Hanson, Clare. Hysterical Fictions: The “Woman’s Novel” in the Twentieth Century. Houndmills, United Kingdom and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.
Humble, Nicola. The Feminine Middlebrow Novel: 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism. Oxford: Oxford U P, 2001.
Katz, Tamar. Impressionist Subjects: Gender, Interiority, and Modernist Fiction in England. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2000.
Lawrence, Margaret. The School of Femininity. New York: Stokes, 1936.
Levenson, Michael. A Genealogy of Modernism: A Study of English Literary Doctrine 1908-1922. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1984.
Marsh, Fred T. Rev. of Miss Mole, by E.H. Young. The Bookman October 1930: 171-72.
McCracken, Scott. “ ‘A Hard and Absolute Condition of Existence’: Reading Masculinity in Lord Jim.” Conrad and Gender. Ed. Andrew Michael Roberts. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993. 17-38.
Meredith, George. The Egoist. 1877. New York: Random House, 1947.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Joseph Conrad: A Biography. New York: Scribner’s, 1991.
Nordau, Max. Degeneration. Translated from the Second Edition of the German Work. New York: Appleton, 1895.
Pykett, Lyn. Engendering Fictions: The English Novel in the Early Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford U P, 1995.
Radner, Hilary. “Extra-Curricular Activities: Women Writers and the Readerly Text.” Women’s Writing in Exile. Ed. Mary Lynn Broe and Angela Ingram. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1989. 251-67.
Radway, Janice A. A Feeling for Books: the Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1997.
Rainey, Lawrence. Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites and Public Culture. New Haven: Yale U P, 1999.
Saveson, John. “Marlow’s Psychological Vocabulary in Lord Jim.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 12:3 (Fall 1970): 457-70.
Scholes, Robert. Paradoxy of Modernism. New Haven and London: Yale U P, 2006.
Silbey, David. The University of Virginia and the Moneychangers in the Temple. [Blog post.] The Chronicle of Higher Education Blog Network. June 18, 2012. http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/2012/06/18/on-the-university-of-virginia-and-moneychangers-in-the-temple/.
Stape, J.H., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1996.
---. “Lord Jim.” Stape 63-80.
Stirner, Max. The Ego and His Own. 1845. Trans. Steven T. Byington 1907. Ed. John Carroll. New York: Harper, 1971.
Tomlinson, Kathleen C. “New Novels.” Rev. of Miss Mole, by E.H. Young, and five other novels. The Nation and Athenaeum August 30, 1930: 680-81.
Trotter, David. The English Novel in History 1895-1920. London and New York: Routlege, 1993.
Watts, Cedric. Introduction. Lord Jim. By Joseph Conrad. 1900. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. Ed. Cedric Watts and Robert Hampson. London and New York: Penguin, 1986, 11-30.
Wexler, Joyce. Who Paid for Modernism?: Art, Money, and the Fiction of Conrad, Joyce, and Lawrence. U of Arkansas P, 1997.
Wiley, Paul L. “Conrad’s Solitaries.” Excerpted from Conrad’s Measure of Man. U of Wisconsin, 1954. Conrad, A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Marvin Mudrick. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1966. 63-73.
Woolf, Virginia. “How It Strikes a Contemporary.” 1923. The Common Reader, First Series. Edited and Introduced by Andrew McNeillie. San Diego: Harvest-Harcourt, 1984. 231-41.
---. “Mrs. Bennett and Mrs. Brown.” 1924. The Captain’s Death Bed and other Essays. New York: Harvest-Harcourt, 1950. 94-119.
Young, E.H. Miss Mole. 1930. Virago Modern Classics. Garden City, N.Y.: Dial-Doubleday, 1985.
Downloads
Published
2017-06-30
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Egoism and “The Eyes of Others”: Lord Jim, Miss Mole, and the Dialogue of Literary “Brows”. (2017). Journal of Narrative and Language Studies, 5(8), 11-25. https://nalans.com/index.php/nalans/article/view/63
