A Study On Anxiety Of British Intellectuals In Neo-victorian Fictions Of A.S.Byatt

A cultural panorama of British intellectuals has been formed in the process of their development by integrating Britishness and the nature of intellectuals as a whole due to the special cultural and political context,among which the intellectuals' lingering sense of anxiety can be taken as one of the most striking features.British intellectuals are bound to be disturbed by worries and anxieties in face of a strong feeling of frustration permeating in the fields of economy,politics,culture and literature with the loss of the leading status as a world power of their country and the dissipation of the ethnocentricity after the Second World War.Many important English writers focus on the developing course of intellectuals in writing,which endows their literary works with a strong academic color.Among them,A.S.Byatt represents the British intellectuals' anxiety which plays a decisive role in thematic construction,plot development and characterization of her works.Simultaneously,Byatt's fictions show her deep reflection about the identity of British intellectuals who should be viewed as social elites,but are always marginalized by the ruling class and excluded from the mainstream discourse.The dissertation aims to explore the concrete manifestations and coping strategies of British intellectuals' anxiety in specific socio-historical context so as to clarify the reasons for their existential predicament on the basis of A.S.Byatt's neo-Victorian fictions as well as relevant critical works,letters and interviews.Critical controversies about A.S.Byatt's neo-Victorian fictions have never been ceased.Irresponsible for initiating the literary genre of neo-Victorian fiction,A,S.Byatt has been generally recognized as one of the most important practitioners and innovators of this genre since the publication of her masterpiece Possession.Some critics insist that Byatt is so haunted by the Victorian specter that she holds a morbid fascination with Victorian legacy while others argue that she has displayed the great power of literature in the revival of Victorian realism.Some critics also explore Byatt's concerns about social problems by relating it to the idealized vision of Victorian values revitalized by Thatcherism and define her works as Bildungsroman which traces the growth and development of central characters.Besides,some critics hold the viewpoint that Byatt s neo-Victorian fiction writing is originally prompted by her attempt to provide wisdom and strengths drawn from historical issues for the progress of modern people.They focus on the postmodern techniques adopted by Byatt,especially her writing strategy which coordinates the past with the present in the text.Most critics focus on the profound cultural expectations held by the contemporary intellectuals in Byatt's novels towards the Victorian era,but their attention given to the connection between such expectations and the anxiety of intellectuals still seems to be inadequate.They tend to view Byatt as an academic writer or a feminist,but seldom take her as a public intellectual.Byatt's neo-Victorian novels give an insight into the changes in terms of economy,society,religion and academy in Britain through the depiction about the circumstance of intellectuals,and point out that the intellectuals should shoulder the responsibility of enlightenment instead of turning themselves into an isolated and solitary class.This dissertation finds out that the contemporary significance of Byatt's neo-Victorian novels lies in her attempt to solve the mystery of general anxiety of contemporary British intellectuals.The identity crisis of intellectuals is manifested in their deep reflection upon the social transformation from the pastoral past to the modern capitalist mechanism,their confusion about the disgraced God and the disjunction between the current reality and the cultural tradition.The intellectuals' anxiety about their identity also reflects the historical vicissitudes of British society.What Byatt concerns is also beyond her times.Withdrawing from the British historical and cultural fission into the inner world of the intellectuals,she explores the eternal issues of love,solitude and death by the juxtaposition of the Victorian period and the twentieth century.She also attempts to recreate the images of British intellectuals against a shared cultural background of the two given periods and conceives that the future of British intellectuals relies on the construction of a platform for intellectuals from all walks to communicate with each other equally.Additionally,Byatt affirms the markedly permanent significance of intellectuals' persistent pursuit of equality,justice and social responsibility for the present and future society,although the semiotic referents of the term "intellectual"remain ambiguous and contentious.Apart from the introduction and conclusion,there are four chapters in this dissertation,dealing respectively with the intellectuals' economic anxiety,their anxiety about social status,the religious anxiety resulting in their spiritual crisis and the academic anxiety that is exclusive to the intellectuals,so as to explore the possibilities to realize the economic independence,socio-political ideals,as well as spiritual and academic freedom of the intellectuals through the construction of a communication platform.Chapter One discusses the economic anxiety of British intellectuals.The economic anxiety of the upper-class intellectuals is mainly manifested in their financial instability,stemming from their panic and hostility towards the rapid development of the market economy.Byatt condemns the blind "Thatcherite devotion to 'Market Forces'" in the novels,especially "the encouraged and glorified greed,material ambition and shallow self-aggrandizement",which not only aggravates the intellectuals'anxiety,but also greatly damages their moral values.(Su 709).On the one hand,the upper-class intellectuals ally with the bourgeoisie to defend their economic privileges.On the other hand,they contempt this sort of dependence upon wealth and greed for materials.With the decline of the old economic model,they inevitably fall into financial crisis.They have deep-rooted prejudice against the commercial value.In their mind,a living based on the capital market and exploitation would get their spirit stuck in a paradoxical state.Indifferent to fame and wealth,they refuse to exchange mental labor for materials or capital,which threatens their financial stability.The driving force for the middle-class intellectuals' economic predicament is the unfailing tradition of patronage in Britain which not only justifies the exploitation by the British aristocrats,but also encourages the intellectuals to depend on the aristocrats.The miserable condition of the lower-class intellectuals is mainly caused by the problematic distribution of economic resources.The social wealth is highly concentrated in the hands of the ruling class represented by the great aristocracy and the big bourgeoisie.The lower-class intellectuals are unable to enjoy the fruits of economic development.They are under the threat of falling into the bottom of society.Byatt points out that the intellectuals' sense of economic anxiety can be somehow relieved by the collection.The possessiveness of their research subject or the relevant things replaces their material needs,which reduces or even eliminates their original economic anxiety from the ideological level.Byatt also encourages the intellectuals who struggle under multiple oppression to come across gender boundaries,to achieve economic independence through the platform of "work",to obtain a corresponding discourse status and to relieve their anxiety about the marginal identity.Byatt constructs a new way for the intellectuals to perceive the concept of "work",in which the intellectual power can be reconstructed by working,thus,the intellectuals can take "work" as a sort of redemption.Chapter Two focuses on the intellectuals'anxiety over their social status."Hierarchy"has always been an arbiter of the intellectuals' "otherness" in British society.Due to the deep-rooted political and cultural prejudice,the intellectuals have long been stuck in embarrassing social positions and have not been improved so much even in the twentieth century.Byatt constructs a panoramic historical framework to exhibit the social roles of the intellectuals extensively and analyzes the underlying reasons for their unstable social status and discourse power in her novels.Firstly,the Fabian intellectuals were the main body of the British public intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century.Fabians desire to be a real public intellectual with the whole world and the mankind in heart.However,they depend on the privileged class while oppress the disadvantaged group.They lead an immoral life,which cannot be covered by their seemingly glamorous public image,so that they fail to develop into a relatively independent social stratum with great social influence on behalf of social conscience and human ideal.The middle-class intellectuals' alienation stems in part from the suppression of the British hereditary aristocracy,and in part from the prevalence of philistinism in British industrial culture.People are fascinated with the accumulation of wealth and the expansion of trade,but disinterested in cultural tradition and intellectual pursuit.Under such circumstances,the middle-class intellectuals are excluded from the mainstream discourse of the bourgeoisie.This philistinism not only limits the intellectuals' influence on the ideological system of the ruling class,but also damages their organic connection with the masses,leading to their double disconnection with the upper class and the lower class and the solidification of their marginalized social status.The identity anxiety of the lower-class intellectuals results from their awkward position in the middle between the servant and the master.They are featured with low social prestige,humble political status,and entire dependence on the ruling class.Their subjectivity as an intellectual is on the verge of being denied or deprived by the ruling class and other privileged intellectuals.Besides,they break up with the lower-class deliberately so as to shake off their humble origins,which forces them to be a rootless group wandering around anxiously on the periphery of the dominant discourse circle.In order to address the afore-mentioned issues,Byatt stresses the positive role of the intellectuals' anxiety in her novels for the causes that the sense of anxiety may prompt them to break the restrictions of social class.She puts forward that the upper-class intellectuals should make full use of their intimate relationship with the ruling class to build a public discourse platform for equal exchange of intellectuals from different strata.With this platform,the middle-class intellectuals,especially the lower-class intellectuals,can break the confinement and voice their own opinions.At the same time,they may get access to public appeal and combine it with the intellectual discourse.Chapter Three deals with the intellectuals' religious anxiety.Religion has been given a supremacy in Victorian society,but British intellectuals' religious conviction turned to be chaotic,fragmentary and uncertain under the impact of new scientific discoveries in Byatt's works.Clerical intellectuals who have a firm faith in God,as the weather-vane of ruling class' ideology,are unable to give up their Christian belief completely,neither can they resist the influence of scientific discourse.They plan to adopt the theory of evolution to construct a new theological system to prove the existence of God.However,they are unable to find out a proper framework to present it.Consequently,their compromise with science alleviates instead of easing their religious anxiety.Their impotence and hypocrisy contribute heavily to the religious anxiety of other intellectuals.Under the banner of defending God's authority,the clergies distort Christian doctrines,turning the immoral and evil behaviors into the moral and benevolent ones,which fundamentally denies the authority and value of their religion,and accordingly casts out the religious zeal of other intellectuals.The traditional interpretation of Christian doctrines has been questioned by the intellectuals,but the spirit of religion and its influence is still powerful.Before a new belief system is established,the intellectuals' meditation on the duality of spirituality and materiality results in their addiction to supernatural power.Religion,as the spiritual characteristic of a given nation,has been pondered constantly by the intellectuals.In Byatt's opinion,in order to construct spiritual autonomy,the intellectuals have to break the spell of intellectual paralysis due to the belief crisis by challenging the religious authority rather than act as their adviser or accomplice.She also points out that an effective way to alleviate religious anxiety and to realize the spiritual independence of the intellectuals from all walks is to restore the intellectual power,promote universal values,establish a new belief system that God is the Self with intellectual power and firmly believe that religion would finally give way to science-oriented modern civilization.Chapter Four concentrates on the academic anxiety of British intellectuals.Byatt points out that British intellectuals are either dominated by the "great" academic traditions of the nineteenth century or overwhelmed by the prevailing postmodern theories of the twentieth century.In face of these two cultural forms,they fail to find their academic footing no matter what standpoint they take,i.e.conformance or exclusion.What they can do is to passively accept the embarrassing status of "academic others" in the torment of academic anxiety.Byatt proposes three main reasons for the predicament of identity of contemporary intellectuals.The first reason is the prevalence of academic dogmatism.Dogmatic ideas stifle the intellectuals' thoughts and cast threats to their pursuit of truth through the powerful cultural symbols.The second reason is the dominance of academic authority.Certain authoritative scholars who dominate the academic community and control the academic discourse have deprived the young scholars of their research freedom and finally restrained the innovative development of the academia.The third reason is the deficiency of intellectuals' caring towards the public.The intellectuals are confined within their own academic area,but they show little humanistic solicitude to matters beyond their personal interests.For the academic anxiety of the contemporary intellectuals,Byatt advocates that intellectuals' identity should be reconstructed on the basis of shared academic concerns and the overall development of the intellectuals should be promoted through the construction of a cooperation platform.The young scholars are able to enhance their academic status and alleviate the anxiety about their social positions by exhibiting their new findings as well as challenging the academic authority through this platform.By contrast,the academic authorities start to listen to different voices,explore the collective strengths and get out of their own academic dilemma.Some scholars draw inspiration from nature,and finally find a spiritual homeland in the intimate contact with nature.The dissertation analyzes Byatt's thorough and systematic thinking about the sense of anxiety of British intellectuals in her neo-Victorian novels.Byatt manifests the British intellectuals' antagonism against the hierarchical social system,and explores the essential reasons for the marginalization and the secularization of British intellectuals.Byatt's works not only show her attention to the fate of British intellectuals,but also express her concerns about the impact of commercial culture on British literature and culture,her merciless attack on the power abuse in politics,religion and academy,her despair of the hypocritical social elite,and her sympathy for the intellectuals who struggle in cowardice.Nonetheless,the prospect of the intellectuals seems ambiguous and uncertain.Some intellectuals get rid of identity anxiety temporarily by getting spiritual and academic autonomy from power disputes while others choose to escape and return to nature in order to pursue the core of human nature and illusory ideals.In a hierarchical social system,Byatt,as a spokesman of British intellectuals has neither consciousness nor courage to give priority to discourse power of the underprivileged.British intellectuals are still far from fulfilling their mission to speak for the disadvantaged groups or to promote social progress.The intellectuals are unable to get rid of the sense of anxiety unless they can make a wise choice between the progress of the overall mankind and the development of their own.