Eleven Ways of Looking at Hopkins

BOOK REVIEWS [oriental tropes] with other tropes of gender and of class, and to assemble them, with . . . Girardian trigonometry and binary division, into a framework that circumscribes, and so defines, the British male subject." Based on this determination, Holden concludes that "[t]hrough the act of Writing, and through his fiction's constant recreation of the figure of'W. Somerset Maugham,'narrator," the author creates a heterosexual, masculine public persona. This process, Holden says, is tantamount to the production of a closet, and much of his subject's work can be seen as an attempt to "re-establish the barrier" between inside and outside. One danger that Holden sees in focusing on Maugham's strategy of containment of desire as opposed to desire itself is the possibility of underestimating Maugham's own sense of identity as a homosexual. Clearly, Holden focuses on the subject of homosexuality in Maugham's writing to a degree not present in other criticism. While some of his conclusions may seem tenuous or based on assumptions that are not fully enough supported with textual evidence, many of his insights are valuable. This is particularly true in his connection between the nature of Maugham's characters and the British colonial mindset. For those interested in Maugham, the representation of the colonial mind and milieu in literature, the exotic/Orient, and the history of sexuality in literary texts, Orienting Masculinity, Orienting Nation: W. Somerset Maugham's Exotic Fiction will be a thought-provoking acquisition. Steven H. Gale _______________ Kentucky State University Eleven Ways of Looking at Hopkins Francis L. Fennell, ed. Rereading Hopkins: Selected New Essays. ELS Monograph Series No. 69. Victoria: English Literary Studies, 1996. 194 pp. $10.50 (Canadian). GLORY BE TO SCHOLARS for dappled things, for essays counter, original, spare, and ah! strange (who knows why?). Rereading Hopkins is a pied collection of eleven new essays whose authors reread the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins in different ways. In his preface to the collection, Francis Fennell acknowledges the variety of approaches taken by the contributors and observes that it is a sign of the times in contemporary criticism. The older reading strategies often produce new insights; the newer ones, though their cross-fertilization does not always result in fruitful hybrids, surely create some exotic specimens. Taken 367 ELT 40:3 1997 together, they present an image of Hopkins as dappled as they themselves are. Not only do the essays represent multiplicity, but many of them advocate it in reading Hopkins's poetry. In "'Bone-house' and 'lovescape': Writing the Body in Hopkins's Canon," Lesley Higgins begins with Michel Foucault's idea that the body is the site of power relations and then discusses examples of the many different ways Hopkins refers to the body in his works. There are strong bodies and beautiful bodies, healthy bodies and sick bodies, virginal bodies and imperilled bodies, bodies dead and divine, bodies sacrificial. So many bodies remind us that for all its metaphysics, Hopkins poetry is intensely physical. As the title indicates, Aleta Cane's "Double Discourses in "The Wreck of the Deutschland'" also takes a divided view, in this case one that discovers homoeroticism beneath the primary religious theme. She contends that Hopkins unites sexual and religious language, the "double discourses" of her title, as a way of expressing the two sides of his emotional life, and, further, that he identifies himself with the nun. In doing so, he "experiences a metaphoric ejaculation contemplating the union of Christ and the nun." Less sensational and fanciful is Howard Fulweiler's interpretation of this same experience as a Christian metaphor of the sacred marriage between Christ and his bride. In "Hopkins and Patmore: Sexual Sentimentality and 'the Woman Question,'" Fulweiler ably defends Hopkins against the charge of misogyny by arguing that in his attitude toward women he was a Victorian sentimentalist rather than a misogynist. Through a comparison with Coventry Patmore, Fulweiler shows that Hopkins was a man of his time who should be judged with an "imaginative historical understanding." Such an understanding does not ignore errors of the past, but it does moderate our judgments of them. A counterpoint to Hopkins's attitude toward women is Joanna...