Ritual Violence and the Maternal in the British Novel, 1740–1820 (review)

Mr. Hilliard’s argument is fascinating, if sometimes disturbing. Drawing heavily on psychoanalytic theory, particularly the “relational model” of Melanie Klein, he introduces “the myth of persecution/reparation,” which exposes heretofore unrecognized links between such apparently dissimilar authors as Richardson and Fielding (and, outside the scope of the Scriblerian, Burke and Godwin). Klein’s model assumes infantile fantasies of oral cannibalistic persecution—and, in its comic mode, reparation—of and by the mother. The model points to a common narrative in which the text is understood as an intra-psychic self composed of interaction among six functions: the good mother, the bad mother, the villain/sacrificer, the rescuer, the persecuted heroine, and the implied or metaphorical infant. Just as the villain/sacrificer is associated with the bad mother, so the rescuer is associated with the good.

Focusing on this myth, Mr. Hilliard argues, expands our comprehension of eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century novels and, most interestingly, the relationships among them. But these new insights come at a cost. He explicitly distinguishes his readings from the “historically contingent” work of critics like Toni Bowers and argues instead that we should think in terms of male and female archetypes that are consistent across the world. Though he eventually claims Klein’s theory is only a “system of metaphors that provides concrete ways of understanding complex relational kinds of affects,” Mr. Hilliard, nonetheless, depends on Klein’s theory to explain as well as describe this consistency, arguing that the infantile fantasies on which the theory is based are common to male and female infants and that the fantasies take place before gender identity is formed. Furthermore, the myth of persecution/reparation is common to male and female authors and includes both male and female protagonists. He concludes, therefore, that the mythic/psychic level of meaning “is best construed as distinct from particular ideological representations.” In short, to appreciate the coherence of Mr. Hilliard’s analyses, one must suspend interest in history, gender, and ideology and read within the closed system of psychic and mythic meaning carefully laid out in the introduction.

The implications of this book’s theoretical underpinnings become clear in subsequent chapters, those on Richardson (and Godwin) and on Fielding. In the first, Mr. Hilliard argues that Richardson deftly combines the manifest and mythic levels of meaning by locating in Lovelace’s aggression toward Clarissa an instance of “violence as associated with various embodiments of the terrifying ‘mother.”’ This leads to a discussion of Lovelace as similar to Clarissa; both are indulged by their mothers, yet both feel abandoned and persecuted by a mother denying them autonomy. From here it is a short step to figuring Lovelace as a victim: the event of the rape “is entirely controlled by a ‘wicked confederacy’ of mother figures who have made him their ‘machine’ and who might be described without exaggeration as ganging up on heroine and villain alike, or reducing both to ‘humility and passiveness.”’ To be sure, Mrs. Sinclair and her confederates do urge Lovelace on, and Mr. Hilliard’s thorough analysis of Sinclair does argue strongly for the presence of a bad mother figure motivating the villain/sacrificer. But to make this observation at the mythic or psychic level and ignore the ideological implications of such a myth for women is to leave a great deal unsaid indeed.

If Clarissa provides an especially clear, if problematic manifestation of the tragic myth of persecution, Tom Jones provides a similarly rich and troubling instance of the comic myth of reparation. The central action involves warring mother figures fighting over Tom while he tries to rescue Sophia. Mrs. Miller, the reformed Mrs. Waters, and Mrs. Fitzpatrick all represent good mothers, while Molly Seagrim, Mrs. Western, Lady Bellaston, and Mrs. Fitzpatrick are instances of what Mr. Hilliard terms the Amazon/bitch. Again, he insists that we not view this mythic battle in terms of historically constructed gender, taking issue with critics like Betty Rizzo and Nina...