Rhetorics of Fantasy

3. The Intrusion Fantasy

Chapter 3 The Intrusion Fantasy x This chapter was originally planned as chapter 2, immediately succeeding the discussion of the portal-quest, of which it seemed a mirror image. It has been moved because I disagree with Brian Stableford’s comment that an intrusive fantasy ipso facto begins in a simulacrum of the real world (2005, liii). Granted, the intrusion rhetoric seems best hosted in the primary world—perhaps because in this mode the contrast between the mundane and the intruding fantastic can be heightened—but in practice, immersive fantasies can host an intrusion (see the Slake Moths of Perdido Street Station or the alternative worlds of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake sequence [1993–2000], or Robin McKinley’s Sunshine [2003]) and I might argue that almost every Dark Lord of the portal-quest fantasy is an intruder. They never seem to be natives to the Land: one of the early models for the form, the White Queen of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is descended from an intruder from another world; while in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter sequence, both the evil intrusion and the disruptive humor are located with half-breeds (Lord Voldemort and Hagrid respectively). It is quite possible, as we shall see when we consider intrusions within immersive fantasies, that one rhetorical function of the intruder in an otherworld fantasy, is to render that otherworld more “real” by virtue of the juxtaposition. It consequently makes sense to place this chapter after the two chapters within which it can work, and before the chapter that Stableford argues is simply a subspecies of intrusion (but that, I am more inclined to argue, is perhaps the most antagonistic to it). There is also an argument that runs through this discussion, that the intrusion fantasy, in normalizing the “other,” can actually function as an immersive fantasy in that it (sometimes) demands that the protagonist, if not the other characters, accept the fantastic as normal. We shall see this use of immersion in the discussion of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, in which the fantastic is the norm, but the specifics of the fantastic intrusion are not.This approach of course ties in with the idea of the club story, the idea that belief, not reason, reigns supreme that I have discussed in chapter 1 and shall discuss again here. The trajectory of the intrusion fantasy is straightforward: the world is ruptured by the intrusion, which disrupts normality and has to be negotiated with or defeated, sent back whence it came, or controlled. In a few cases the intrusion wins but there is always a return of some kind (see Clute and Grant for an explanation of return). Edward Eager saw this trajectory as the basic shape of his comic urban fantasies, elaborating on the formula in the chapter titles of Seven-Day Magic: “Finding It, Using It, Taming It, Losing It, Thwarting It, Being Thwarted, Keeping It?, and Giving It Back.” (Attebery, Tradition 142). Eager of course took this structure from E. Nesbit’s fantasies. In Five Children and It (1902), the screwball comedy structure always begins with the intrusive consequences of an inappropriate wish and the tale of each chapter is the children’s attempt to cope with the consequences. Each day, however, is begun anew. As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick understood in her discussion of the Gothic, once you know a novel is intrusion fantasy, its structure is unnervingly transparent (8). As a rhetoric, the form appears to depend both on the naïveté of the protagonist and her awareness of the permeability of the world—a distrust of what is known in favor of what is sensed. This lack of trust sets up an interesting dynamic around the issue of what is known. As Stephanie Moss (2005) has pointed out, the role of the skeptic is frequently crucial to generating the push/pull rhythm of the fantasy. The trajectory of the intrusion fantasy is from denial to acceptance: from taking a meal with a vampire and ignoring his lack of reflection, to the point where the protagonist reaches for the stake. For all that the intrusion fantasy appears—usually— to be a “this world” fantasy, the narrative leads always toward the acceptance of the fantastic, by the reader if not the protagonist.1 At least one of the necessary considerations for writers constructing intrusion fantasies is how to negotiate this acceptance. The rhythm of the intrusion fantasy is a cycle of suspension...