Nonverbal Signals

in Muriel Spark’s The driver’s seat

 Every work of fiction bears a message to the reading public but
each does convey the information in a different way. There are many means of
communication, which usually combined together provide the addressee with the
necessary piece of information. Spoken and written language rank among those
ways of communication which can be controlled by the speaker to a high extend.
Besides this, there are signals about which people who give them hardly know.
There is the complex sphere of nonverbal communication, which can be used as
a secret path to the gloomiest chambers of the human soul. At the same time, it
can be rather difficult for the addressee to decode the signal in the right way.
This is also the principle on which Muriel Spark’s short novel The
driver’s seat is based. As Jonathan Kemp states in his essay “The Ineffability of
Erotic Sociality in Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat”: “Everything is described
externally, as if it were being viewed through a camera lens”.1 Indeed, the novel
does not include any description of character’s emotions and it is up to the
reader to decode the signals given to them. Therefore a number of interpretations
are available, because the novel does not provide a wider context. (If the story is
considered realistic, wider context is really important for the analysis of suicidal
behaviour, because, as Josef Viewegh points out in his work Sebevražda a
literatura, presuicidal development can take several years or even decades. 2
Concerning Spark’s novel, events preceding Lise’s suicide and the real motives
have to be deduced from details in her behaviour during only few days before
her death.)
The dominant non verbal signals appearing in the story are given by
Lise’s mouth, which functions as the indicator of her emotions in a particular
moment. Lise’s whole personality is somehow concentrated to her lips, which
represent her character, her sense for detail and accuracy. Lise’s behaviour
indicates that she wants everything to be perfect and under her control (whether
it was reality in her life or just an unfulfilled wish finally satisfied by planning
and committing her suicide, can become a topic for another essay and therefore
it will not be discussed here into much detail). Lise’s fight for “the driver’s seat”
is commanded by her “final and judging mouth, a precision instrument, a detail-

1
Kemp, 2008, p. 545
2
Viewegh, 1996, p. 74

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warden”3, by her lips which, generally, are firmly pressed together in difficult
situations and parted in moments when Lise is filled with positive emotions.
The expression of Lise’s lips can be compared to the gesture of
folded arms, which is generally perceived as an expression of a reserved person
or of somebody with a negative attitude to their environment. In the novel,
Lise’s lips are described as “normally pressed together with the daily
disapprovals of the accountants’ office”. 4 Similarly to a person with folded arms,
which are subconsciously used as a barrier against the world that surrounds
them, Lise closes her mouth so that no one can get too familiar with her. At the
same time she uses it as a shield against problems so that she is affected by them
as little as possible. Parted lips are also connected to breathing through mouth
and thus receiving more air which is neither filtered nor warmed as it is when a
person breathes through nose. Similarly, Lise wants to reduce and smooth the
effect of negative impulses from outside by closing her mouth.
At the same time, keeping her lips straight helps Lise to conceive
her emotions. When she suffers a nervous breakdown in the office shortly before
leaving for her holiday, she comes back from the lavatory and looks at her
colleagues “with her lips straight as a line, which could cancel them all out
completely.”5 She is sorry because she was not able to control and hide her
emotions for a moment but she immediately resumes her strategic position and
rebuilds the barrier between her and the other people in the office.
On the other hand, Lise’s parted lips indicate that she finds a
particular situation enjoyable and therefore she slightly opens her mouth, and in
fact her whole self, “as if to receive a secret flavour”.6 When the atmosphere is
both body- and soul-friendly, Lise removes the barrier between her and the rest
of the world and does not avoid contact any more. This usually happens when
she gives herself over to an activity which is a part of her suicidal plan,
especially when there is a need to follow her intuition. At the very beginning,
when she is looking for the right dress, in which she would draw people’s
attention, her parted lips are accompanied by her eyes and nostrils which are “a
fragment more open than usual”7. Lise’s eagerness to achieve her objective
3
Spark, 1994, p. 9
4
Spark, 1994, p. 9
5
Spark, 1994, p. 10
6
Spark, 1994, p. 10
7
Spark, 1994, p. 10

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penetrates her whole body and she engages all her senses in a search after an
object that will help her to attain her goal. Later, she subconsciously uses the
same “technique” when she is looking for her “boyfriend” who would help her
to carry out the suicide: “she is a stag scenting the breeze, […] she seems at the
same time to search for a certain air-current, a glimpse and intimation.” 8 So not
only does she give more freedom to her emotions in these situations, but she also
unbinds her animal self to lead her.
It is interesting, that Lise enjoys herself mostly when she is relaxed
and her emotions together with her facial expression are not under control.
Paradoxically, her aim is to gain an absolute control over her life (and death),
but the successful realisation of this plan, brings her moments of happiness just
when her dominance over emotions is weak.
Besides Lise’s lips, there are other minor nonverbal signals, which
are also mostly connected to Lise’s suicidal intentions. Viewegh states that the
aim of each suicide is to reach a state of peace and relaxation, to put an end to
the stress and tension which people have to face in their life. 9 This is also Lise’s
target which she explicitly mentions when her colleagues urge her to take a
holiday: “I’m going to have it,” she said, “I’m going to have the time of my life
…”10 This essay, however, focuses on nonverbal signals. In Lise’s behaviour,
there is quite a number of situations in which she becomes dreamy as if looking
beyond the boundaries of this world or she is restless and eager to move on.
When she tries her new, brightly coloured dress “Her lips part, and
her eyes narrow, she breathes for a moment as in trance” 11 and later the day,
lying on the bed in her apartment she stares at the flat door “as if to see beyond
it”.12 Also at the airport, Lise shows anxiety to go ahead with her plan. She pays
to the taxi driver “with an expression of abstract eagerness to be somewhere
else”13. Than she proceeds as if in a dream to the scale and “pushes her ticket to
the clerk as quickly as possible” 14 and when her flight is finally called, she
“moves off, her eyes in the distance” 15. All these signs indicate that Lise is not
8
Spark, 1994, pp. 72 – 73
9
Viewegh, 1996, p. 23
10
Spark, 1994, p. 10
11
Spark, 1994, p. 11
12
Spark, 1994, p. 13
13
Spark, 1994, p. 19
14
Spark, 1994, p. 19
15
Spark, 1994, p. 24

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satisfied with the presence state of things and that her mind is preoccupied with
the intention to reach her “holiday destination”.
Another peculiar feature in her behaviour is Lise’s obsession with
sharp objects, which is connected to the way in which she is finally murdered.
Although it might seem that she is not sure about the way she wants her suicide
to be carried out – she asks a policeman in the street whether he has a gun 16 and
in fact she does not buy the paper knife for her murder herself – her liking for
pointed objects is indicative from the very beginning. The first thing she wants
to buy after the purchase of the bright coloured book 17 is actually a paper knife,
which she “removes from its curved sheath and tests the blade and the point with
deep interest”.18 On the plane when she takes a knife and fork to eat her toast,
again “she feels the blade of the knife” and “presses two of her fingers against
the prongs of her fork” and comments that they are “not very sharp”.19 During
her shopping with Mrs. Fiedke, Lise buys a food blender, which is quite an
unusual thing to buy on one’s holiday and in a sports shop, she stops at a pair of
skis “feeling and stroking the wood”.20 Later, she plays with a corkscrew in a
gift shop where Mrs. Fiedke considers buying a leather notecase for her nephew
and Lise suggests her to buy a paper opener instead.21 Although from Freudian
point of view, these signs might be interpreted in another way (if we also
consider the ambiguity of her ankles bound only after her death and other
aspects), this approach would, however, make a topic for another essay and
therefore it is not going to be further developed here.
To achieve her objective, Lise also very often ensures that
everything is as she wants it to be. This is again connected to her never ending
effort to gain control over things. Lise wants everything to be perfect, so that she
can be sure of a good result. Although she wants to control her emotions too, she
very often gets nervous which can be seen in her behaviour. Many times in the
story, she checks the content of her bag, taking the things out and putting them
back again.22 Lise’s whole flat is in perfect order23 and also the night before her
16
Spark, 1994, p. 82
17
Spark, 1994, pp. 21 – 22
18
Spark, 1994, p. 24
19
Spark, 1994, p. 32
20
Spark, 1994, p. 60
21
Spark, 1994, p. 65
22
Spark, 1994, p. 13, 15, 47, 49, 82, 85
23
Spark, 1994, pp. 14 – 15

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departure, she can not sleep and keeps going through her luggage and all things
packed for the holiday24.
Although Lise’s aim is an absolute control over her life and even
herself, she is rather an emotionally unstable person (just as it is in most cases
except for balance suicides, who are not emotionally disturbed25). On several
occasions, Lise is overcome with emotions of disappointment and hopelessness
because she has made a mistake in the choice of her “boyfriend” and has spoken
to a wrong man. For example at the airport of her holiday destination, having
been refused by a “sick-looking man” whom she hoped was “her type”, Lise
starts crying, which draws attention of all the people around her. 26 As time
passes, her emotional outbursts become more intense, because she starts to
worry that she will not manage to find the right person who would help her to
carry out her plan. Sometimes the reason for her distress is also the feeling of
her own failure; she claims that she “keeps on making mistakes” 27, which makes
her upset because things are getting out of her hands, which is completely
opposite to her main objective. To make things even worse, the fact that she is
losing control over the situation results in her losing control over her emotions.
This leads her into a vicious circle of strong emotional suffering, which she
radically puts an end to by her drastic and unusual suicide.
To conclude, most of Lise’s nonverbal signals are connected to her
suicidal behaviour. They either give evidence of her personal qualities and the
state of her mind or they indicate her suicidal intentions. Lise’s main aim is to
gain and keep control over her life, in other words to get to “the diver’s seat”,
which she wants to reach by committing her strange suicide, but there are many
situations in which her plans go wrong. Even the suicide itself is not carried out
according to all her instructions28, which suggest that no matter how hard a
person tries to gain control of their life, there are still forces stronger than us.

24
Spark, 1994, p. 15
25
Viewegh, 1996, pp. 19, 22
26
Spark, 1994, pp. 39 – 42
27
Spark, 1994, p. 71
28
Spark, 1994, p. 107

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Bibliography:

1. KEMP, Jonathan. "Her Lips Are Slightly Parted“: The Ineffability of Erotic
Sociality in Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat. MFS Modern Fiction Studies
[online]. 2008, vol. 54, no. 3 [cit. 2009-05-28], s. 544-557. Dostupný z
WWW:
<http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/modern_fiction_studies/v054/54.3.ke
mp.pdf>.

2. SPARK, Muriel. The driver's seat. New York: New Directions Books, 1994.
107 s.

3. VIEWEGH, Josef. Sebevržda a literatura. Brno: Nakladatelství Tomáše

Janečka, 1996. 280 s.

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