Go back fifty years and
you will meet a young man who as a teenager had read a handful of Victorian novels
and been devastated by one (The Mayor of Casterbridge) but who now had a
complete understanding of what was wrong with the genre. These were novels in
which an invisible but omniscient narrator created the trompe l’oeil illusion
of a real world, tricking us into tears and laughter which diverted us from the
temptation to engage in serious critical reflection on the moral and political
values for which those novels provided a vehicle. But now grown up, I had
learnt – and in three languages – what the alternative was. In Latin, larvatus
prodeo [I wear a mask] anchored the idea that if you are wearing a mask
then you should point to it as you advance on the stage, that you should make
clear that what you are engaged in is the product of artifice and an artificer.
In German, Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt [alienation effect] was the means
by which playwright or author could avoid the crime of jerking (fake) tears and
laughter from audience or reader by simply emphasising (frequently) that this
is only pretend – a thought experiment, if you like - and you are meant to be
thinking not wiping away the tears. In Russian, Shklovsky’s остранение [defamiliarization] labelled the ways in which
a verbal artist could make the familiar strange and thereby prompt reflection
rather than emotional self- indulgence.
Problem sorted. Farewell the Victorian novel.
Fifty years later and I am reading Anthony Trollope. I read The
Warden and enjoyed it and now I’ve just finished Barchester Towers (1857)
and enjoyed that too and no doubt in part because it provides so much grist for
my anti-clericalism. But what sticks out a mile [larvatus prodeo] is an
author who is all over the text, hopelessly intrusive, and very very funny. And
if I had to identify the style I would call it High Camp (which may well
pair with High Church which, if anything, is the religious value which
the novel defends).
Consider this passage (page 281 in my excellent Penguin edition) towards
the end of a fraught, intense, seat-edge clinging exchange between Eleanor Bold
[heroine] and a bungling but genuine suitor Mr Arabin [hero]:
As she spoke she with difficulty restrained tears; but she did restrain
them. Had she given way and sobbed aloud, as in such cases a woman should do,
he would have melted at once, implored her pardon, perhaps knelt at her feet
and declared his love. Everything would have been explained, and Eleanor would
have gone back to Barchester with a contented mind. How easily would she have
forgiven and forgotten the archdeacon’s suspicions had she but heard the whole
truth from Mr Arabin. But then where would have been my novel?
It's laugh out loud funny. And the tone of voice (which I can only render
with both hands spread open) is self-parodying camp. The reader is still in
volume two of what they know (according to the Victorian conventions) is to be
a three volume, triple-decker novel and will immediately understand the author’s
words. And when we do get to volume three we get (at page 415) this:
But we must go back a little and it shall be but a little, for a difficulty
begins to make itself manifest in the necessity of disposing of all our friends
in the small remainder of this volume. Oh, that Mr Longman [Trollope’s publisher]
would allow me a fourth! It should transcend the other three as the seventh
heaven transcends all the lower stages of celestial bliss.
And that’s high camp. I rest my case.