The Girl of Slender Means 1963 Muriel Spark Key characteristics of style; Mixture of Social Realism Verbal Economy

Wit and Literary experiment

Sparks Poetic Language Lucidity, precision and formal elegance of classical poetry Spark: the novel as an art form was essentially a variation of a poem Poetry punctuates and resounds in Spark s text, channelled through the human voice with an intense, mantra-like delivery

Complication of Realism Move away from the Movement and the Angry Young Men (satire or gritty realism) Move towards experiment and self-consciousness about language Alain Robbe-Grillet (nouveau roman) Christine Brooke-Rose B. S. Johnson

A mixture of techniques Social Realist mixed with experimental which fits in with the context of 1950s- 60s. There was an emerging consciousness about the meaning of the war and its implications towards society and art 3 key tropes The May of Teck Club as a social microcosm which reflects the post-war era The centrality of Nicholas Farringdon an absent presence whose consciousness we are asked to decipher The critique of materialism, which also turns out to be a critique of idealism

Born in Edinburgh and died in Florence her father was Jewish and mother Anglican. An exile to Scotland Caledonian Society of Edinburgh [...] cannot accommodate me , The only sons and daughters of Edinburgh with whom I can find common understanding are exiles like myself She began writing after the war 1954: She joined the Roman Catholic Church Crucial to her career as a novelist I was just a little worried, tentative. Would it be right, would it not be right? Could I write a novel about that would it be foolish, wouldn t it be? And somehow my religion whether one has anything to do with the other, I don t know but it does seem so, that I just gained confidence...

Catholicism as an order The first reaction I had when I became a Catholic was that my mind was far too crowded with ideas, all teeming in disorder. That was part of my breakdown. [...] But as I got better I was able to take them one at a time. ...It was like getting a new gift. I used to worry until I got a sense of order, as sense of proportion. At least I hope I ve got it now. You need it to be either a writer or a Christian.

Post-war London An emerging Youth Culture Street fights, popular music, dance-halls, pubs + Poverty and Economy A morality of saving and bartering, Stinginess and opportunism + Welfare State Efficiency Use value overrides Imagination

Sparks Satire - There is the satiric presentation of a carefully limited society, witty depiction of its closely scrutinized inhabitants, ironically accurate notation of the speech-inanities, social and private rituals, current in the circle under observation. (Kemp, 11) Metaphysical time I believe events are providentially ordered Only a materialistic conception of Time a strictly chronological one could have obliterated that understanding of matter which acknowledges outward and changing forms to be invisibly and peculiarly possessed , each after its own kind in a spiritual embodiment.

A Moral Message The unavoidable realities of time, age, and death throw into relief the futility of the character s behaviour, the brevity of the rewards they are pursuing with such misguided ingenuity. (Kemp, 13)

Questioning Order While Spark was a Catholic, and saw this as part of her authorship, it is also possible to read her work as questioning order, or as invoking more demonic orders. Spark is never quite sure whether the quest for order, as in her own conversion, is not itself a form of crazed unreality as it expunges an all too human confusion and fermen from the world. (Cheyette, 12-13)

Two considertations Spark s referencing of the Scottish ballad tradition and Scottish Gothic tradition Spark s investment with 1960s anti-totalitarian moral-political theory, Which institutes a new, secular idea of human evil

Eichmans Trial Spark attended the trial 1965 book The Mandelbaum Gate: Minute by minute throughout the hours the prisoner discoursed on the massacre without mentioning the word, covering all aspects of every question addressed to him with the meticulous undiscriminating reflex of a computing machine. Barbara turned the switch of her earphones to other simultaneous translations French, Italian, then back to English. What was he talking about? The effect was the same in any language, and the terrible paradox remained, and the actual discourse was a dead mechanical tick, while its subject, the massacre, was living. (177)

The Banality of Evil it would have been very comfortable indeed to believe that Eichmann was a monster [...However,] the trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. (287)

Thoughtlessness as vice thoughtlessness and remoteness from reality , can in fact wreck more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man (288)

Postwar failure of confidence In art The suggestion of art s impotence to resist darker forces or, worse, its possible complicity with demonic energy marks an equally decisive shift in contemporary imagination. (Stevenson, 105)

Spark developed a new understanding of morality and what evil meant (this came through the eichman trial) If your of slender means it could mean a number of things, your figure/poverty which is seen through the novel, this created a new awareness of ideology. Post war realism was a concern for values in that current standpoint of society combined with literary experiment.

Resonating Poetic Images Her writing slowly complicates in reaction to post war movement, it resists closure and finality. Parodys social relations. Catholic writer believe that life is determined and wants to convey techniques which are important to spiritual view of the world a longer order which literature expresses which in turn challenges realism The novel plays with time, incorporates new notions, reflective idea of language, concerned with the morality of society. Girl of slender means reflects to the new sexual freedom of post-war, new American culture optimised through Nicholas s position in the government

Albert Camus The outsider The novel begins with a negative start It is a vast generalisation of his life It uses language to reinforce its own authority He doesn t seem to care that his mother has died Is friends with Raymond who is a chauvinist/racist Tells marie he doesn t love her but will marry her Excuses salamano when he beats his dog Doesn t care that he has killed a man Agrees with the judge and prosecutor who condemn him

Existentialism Is to understand what a human is, its not enough to know all. The truths natural science tell us are not enough. Various explanation for our behaviour is present but this is not enough at all, there need be an idea of authority, psychology doesn t comprehend entirely Matos behaviour. Novel fails intentionally to create a hero figure. The narrator remains a stranger even to us, the novel itself is a critique to the expected discourse. Values under fascism are no longer adequate.

The Absurd The absurd carries from the contradictory narrative of the human mind Refers to conflict between human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and human inability to find any.

How can you love someone and treat them so badly; benign indifference its kind to understand, the absurdity of life gives life meaning.

To what extent does he feel guilt or remorse and to what extent to we take his indifference seriously. To what extent is Meursault s narrative governed by his feelings for his mother, whether resentment or love. Accidental death of an Arab, does it reflect the colonial situation of Algeria conflict between pied noir and arab community. Absurdism distinguishes towards a meaningless and pointless world. Philosophy Existentialism He doesn t care of the fact that he may die, but he then becomes aware of the fact that he will cease to exsist. The morality he does find he will lose, he forces himself to accept it. He understands that the death he dealt with on the day he should ve thought of that notion beforehand. He will die and he realises how important his life is. Disgust Ironic takes everyday as it comes yet He uses the lexis such as chance not necessarily fact.

It seems that he finds himself as someone so disconnected with the idea of death that the thought of living life and appreciating that infront of him is not apparent due to the infringement of death to himself. He creates the notion of class conflict through beating the arab woman who is already condemned twice from being one person of a minority descent and being a woman. The benign indifference is more so dedicated to himself than anyone and the fact that it is benign leaves the thought of whether social conditions were even slowly changing or was it only gradual in himself leaving his diverse form of thought to no one but his own, as others would not understand. Existentialism does not deny the validity of the basic categories of physics, biology, psychology, and the other sciences (categories such as matter, causality, force, function, organism, development, motivation, and so on). It claims only that human beings cannot be fully understood in terms of them. Nor can such an understanding be gained by supplementing our scientific picture with a moral one. Categories of moral theory such as intention, blame, responsibility, character, duty, virtue, and the like do capture important aspects of the human condition, but neither moral thinking nor scientific thinking suffices. Existentialism, therefore, may be defined as the philosophical theory which holds that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to grasp human existence. The absurd arises from the contradictory nature of the human mind and the universe existing simultaneously.

For Sartre this situation is impossible: man cannot live with this knowledge, he must instead make a choice. For Sartre the absurd is intolerable, man cannot live with the knowledge of absurdity and therefore must make a choice. His choice saves him. For Camus the absurd is not intolerable, man can live with the knowledge of absurdity. It is precisely what gives life meaning. There is no freedom through choice for Camus. His Dilemma Meursault wants to explain death, or more properly, to evade it, but no way presents itself, and this pits him in a position of denial. He keeps looking for an escape. He cannot imagine what it means for him to die. Absurdity as Freedom I too felt ready to live my life again. As if this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at the mass of signs and stars to the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world. And finding it so much like myself, in fact so fraternal, I realised that id been happy, and that I was still happy. Camus is not usually considered a postmodernist. For him there does seem to be a sense of the divine! Even if found in the physical world. While he is cynical about authority, there is not that deep- seated distrust of revolution and utopia that postmodernism invokes. Likewise, he is still fundamentally concerned with the freedom of the individual. So this may also be conceived of as idealism of a sort. My decision. Notion of politics Given that the plot turns around the supposedly accidental death of an Arab, how does this reflect on the colonial situation of Algeria more generally and the developing conflict between the pied noir and arab communities? What are the implications of this murder as you see them? On a technical issue is the text really this open at the end, or is an interpretation imposed? Does the arabs murder and the court case really just offer a defence existentialism, in a contrived way? And doesn t this defeat the point? In relation to the journal itself, aren t there problems both with the temporal structure and with the point of view, given that the narrative is told in retrospect (after he is dead) and often with a knowledge of changed perspective.

Sexism and Racism Given how much camus appeals to virility and physical strength and male sexuality in the novel, is he a sexist? Is this a chauvinist novel?

Is camus a racist (for if meursault s killing of an arab reflects tensions between the pied noir and the arabs in Algeria at the time, how does the novel respond to these? Is there a solution present, apart from a rejection of capital punishment?) note also that camus remained in favour of colonialism even while he condemned the abuses of the French government towards the Algerian arab population