Orlando Furioso as influence in the hero and setting of the Harry Potter series

Orlando Furioso by the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto is an epic poem that is considered to have influenced many writers of fantasy literature. The poem is filled with magical items, wizards, legendary creatures, transfiguration, magical spells, and a prophecy that must be fulfilled, which are also present in the Harry Potter series. The appearance of the hippogriff in Rowling’s work leads to the belief that she has knowledge of Ariosto’s poem, since he was the creator of this creature. However, the similarities between the texts go further than these superficial elements that could be merely coincidental.  Harry Potter and Orlando Furioso have heroes that are flawed and find out that there is a magical world in existence along with our non-magical world. These imperfect, human heroes, and the mixed magical and non-magical world in which they live gives the readers a heightened sense of connection to these characters. The Harry Potter series can be said to have been influenced by Orlando Furioso because it uses similar constructions of hero and setting to obtain akin effects on the reader.

One of the important magical creatures that appear in the Harry Potter series is the hippogriff, which was created by Ariosto in his epic poem (Borges, 79). The Italian poet describes it as “No empty fiction wrought by magic lore, / But natural was the steed the wizard pressed; / For him a filly to griffin bore; Hight hippogryph” (IV, 18); the poet also talks about the hippogriff’s pride: “But what to do with the hippogryph? This is / a question few of us worry about. To ride / is risky. The beast might not take any of his / suggestions and could go off on its own from pride” (VI, 57). In the Prisoner of Azkaban Hagrid teaches Harry and his friends about this creature emphasizing that “they’re proud … easily offended” (114), which is proven true when Buckbeak hurts Draco Malfoy after being offended by him.

Although it seems likely that Rowling’s source of the hippogriff is Aristo’s poem, there is a distinction in the symbolism of the creature in both titles. In Orlando Furioso, the hippogriff symbolizes the impossible love made real of Ruggiero and Bradamante who are knights at opposite sides of a war, as suggested by Joe Nigg in The Book of Gryphons (32). In the Prisoner of Azkaban Harry and Hermione ride the hippogriff together (413), but they do not have a romantic relationship as the couple in the poem does. According to Dendle, in Harry Potter the hippogriff represents “[T]he emotional need to express domination symbolically” (171), exemplified by the death sentence given to Buckbeak as means of vengeance by Draco and his father (Dendle, 172). It could be argued though that the impossible relationship that the hippogriff represents in Harry Potter is that of the hero with his godfather, Sirius Black, who could only be saved from losing his soul by flying off with the Buckbeak. This connection between the two texts, leads the readers to notice other similar elements that might have otherwise been overlooked.

Even though the name of the poem is Orlando Furioso the central hero is not Orlando, but Ruggiero, who is the subject of a prophecy that says he will become the forebearer of the future powerful d’Este dynasty in Italy. Harry and Ruggiero are very similar heroes; they are both of humble origins and become orphans when they are very young, growing up to find out that there has been a prophecy made about them, and their future is already decided. Both characters are flawed, not like the tragic heroes that have one fatal flaw, but many little flaws that bring them close to failing to achieve their expected destines. For example, Ruggiero is alerted by Astolfo about Alcina’s manipulations of men that she wants for lovers, nonetheless he lets himself be fooled by her soon after and is captured in her enchantments. He needs to be saved by Melissa, the sorcerer who guides him and Bradamente to the fulfillment of their prophecy. Likewise, Harry is easily played upon by the Death Eaters that successfully lead him to the Department of Mysteries in Order of the Phoenix, needing to be saved by his guide, Dumbledore. The response these mistakes draw from the readers is one of sympathy with these characters, because they have probably lived a similar situation in their lives, even if the consequences would not have been so grand, letting them understand the impossibility of these heroes always making the right choice.

The two heroes are also connected in that both have inside knowledge of what represents the evil side in both stories. Orlando Furioso tells a tale of Christianity versus Paganism, the latter being the evil side. Ruggiero is originally a pagan that in the end converts to Christianity, and being the hero of the story, shows to the readers that the side he chose is the right one. In Harry Potter the hero is aligned with the good side from beginning, however, he has been marked as an equal by the villain, and therefore has knowledge and abilities that are not among what are considered good qualities, like the ability to speak Parseltongue and to hear Voldemort’s thoughts. As pointed out by Dumbledore in Chamber of Secrets, it is Harry’s choice that shows his true values (333) and points to the readers which is supposed to be the good side. The heroes’ morality in something that was very important at the time Orlando Furioso was written, because the society was extremely influenced by Christianity, therefore Ruggiero had to represent these values. Even though Harry Potter was not written in the same context, it still needs takes into consideration the influence the hero will have on the readers, especially the young children who formed the majority of its public. The fact that the hero is representing what is considered morally correct in both stories is significant, because that is usually the character that the readers look up to in order to understand that world and what is right or wrong.

Besides the similitudes between the heroes of both texts, the world in which both stories happen is one where we, normal non-magical people live, but that is inhabited by magical creatures, wizards, and sorcerers that have the power to influence our world while living in their own magical existence. This blending of the two worlds is very entrancing because it allows the readers to immerse themselves in the story very deeply, making it possible to almost believe in the existence of this magical universe around us, unlike other fantasy worlds that are totally different or separated from the real place we know and do not allow such a profound connection. The appearance in Harry Potter of a famous place like Kings Cross with commoners like us in it makes a real link to the readers’ world and allows their imagination to firmly believe in the existence of the wizardry community. This connection between real and fantastic world is explored in Orlando Furioso with the same tactics. While flying on the back of the hippogriff, Ruggiero notices that “they’ve passed the Hercules’ Gates” (VI, 17), which is a landscape mark belonging to the non-magical world. For the readers of Orlando Furioso, the magical world viewed by the hero is almost within reach. This feeling is fomented in these works by the recognizable places of the readers’ world in them.

The Harry Potter series is a work that has certainly been influenced by many books and authors. Nonetheless, it is possible to see the influence of Orlando Furioso in the way that Rowling brings back this hero with whom her readers feel connected to by his normal, humble origins and human flaws; and by giving life again to this world that is a fusion between the world as we know it, and the one where the readers would like to inhabit, making it seems like the magical world is right here, almost within our reach. The Harry Potter series recall the hero figure of Orlando Furioso adapting it to contemporary culture and the target audience, but what is clear is that the effect both heroes have in the reader are the same; Ruggiero and Harry excite a feeling of affinity in the readers that guide them into the story and allows their imagination to be enchanted by their world, so much that they always want to go back there.

Bibliography

Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. Trans. David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009. Ebook.

Borges, Jorge Luis. The Book of Imaginary Beings. Trans. Norman Thomas di Giovanni. London: Penguin Books, 1974. Ebook.

Dendle, Peter. “Monsters, Creatures, and Pets at Hogwarts Animal Stewardship in the World of Harry Potter.” Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter. Ed. Elizabeth E. Heilman. New York: Routledge, 2008. 163-176. Ebook.

Nigg, Joe. The Book of Gryphons. Apple-wood Books, 1982. Ebook.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. New York: Scholastic Press, 1999. Print.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. New York: Scholastic Press, 1999. Print.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. New York: Scholastic Press, 1999. Print.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. New York: Scholastic Press, 2000. Print.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. New York: Scholastic Press, 2003. Print.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. New York: Scholastic Press, 2006. Print.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. New York: Scholastic Press, 2009. EBook.

[Final Paper] Diana Warwick and Sue Bridehead as heirs of Milton’s Eve

In Paradise Lost by John Milton, Eve gains pivotal importance as a character when she eats from the forbidden fruit and sets in motion the fall of mankind; likewise, in the novels Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, Diana Warwick and Sue Bridehead are vital characters who trigger many of the events in the novels through their desire for knowledge and independence. The three women are connected not only by this, but also by the temptation to assuage their vanity, their struggle in choosing between the spirit and the flesh. Eve, Diana and Sue seek to find their own identities in their male dominated environments, where they are seen by men as the necessary companions for their external completion. According to Luiz Sá, Jacques Derrida’s concepts of Destinerrance "unites under one heading destiny, inheritance, and errancy" (102) which can be applied to the connection between these three characters; it can be said that Diana and Sue are heirs of Milton and Eve through Meredith and Hardy. In Diana of the Crossways and Jude the Obscure, Diana and Sue inherit from Eve not only the desire to learn and be independent, but also the supposed blame of being the cause of men’s falls and mistakes, they are the new Eves of their societies.

In Paradise Lost Eve is not allowed to take part in the conversations between the visiting angels and Adam. When Raphael is sent by God to warn them about the presence of an enemy in Eden he is told to “Converse with Adam” (5.230); later, when Michael is sent to show Adam the future, he “drenched [Eve’s] eyes” (11.367) so that she would sleep while they talked. In a similar way, Diana and Sue are kept from positions of power and decision making, even if they have some access to knowledge. Diana is an intelligent woman who knows a lot about politics, but she can only have the position of hostess in her own home, throwing dinner parties where politics, literature and other subjects are discussed; she cannot be a member of the Parliament herself and her published novels are signed with a pen name . Sue is also intelligent and had more opportunities to study and learn than Jude had; however, she needs the endorsement of a man to get a position of training teacher. Furthermore, Jude withholds from her the information that he is married; he purposefully avoids telling her something that is essential for her to make decisions about her own life. Diana and Sue are, in a way, in a better position than Eve because they have a chance to acquire more knowledge than she had before eating from the Tree of Knowledge; nonetheless, their situation is very similar, Diana and Sue, like Eve, do not truly retain the power to choose as they wish because society imposes their ideals and beliefs on them; Eve was put to sleep, Diana and Sue need to submit to their husbands, the church and society rules.

Marriage is an important discussion in Diana and Jude, the lives of Diana and Sue revolve around the need to be married in order to be respected by society. Redworth and Jude see the two women as the companions they need for their completion, in the way that Adam asks God for a companion (PL book 8) and later decides to eat form the Tree of knowledge so that he and Eve could stay together (PL book 9). Diana marries Mr. Warwick following an implusive need to distance herself from her best friend's husband who had made advances towards her. She understands that the only way to avoid living with her friend is to have her own home, which she can achieve only by marriage. Sue marries Phillotson in an impulsive move to distance herself from Jude as soon as she learns that he is married. These impulsive decisions prove to have been wrong for both women because they are too different from their husbands and cannot have a real connection to them. Eve does not choose to be Adam's wife, but she also does not feel like she has an equal relationship with him and when Satan, disguised as a serpent, plays on her vanity she chooses to appease the flesh, in detriment of the spirit, which would be obdience to God.

Following in the footsteps of their predecesor, Diana and Sue also give in to their vanity in ways that gain society's disaproval and their banishement from its good grace. Diana not only has an affair and abandons her husband to live on her own, she also sells the secrets of the man she falls in love with to assuage her vanity of being better informed than a famous newspaper editor,  she has a vision of "Mr. Tonans petrified by the great news, drinking it, and confessing her ahead of him in the race for secrets" (4478). Sue also shows her vanity in many instances, for example when, after she is already married, she writes Jude that if he wants he can love her (3133). Sue's abbandonment of her husband and her unmarried life with Jude also places her as an outcast from society. Diana and Sue regret their decisions and choose to live according to what is expected of them by marrying respectably and being good wives; however, they do not find the contentment and peace that Eve finds with Adam when they leave Eden for Earth. The difference in their feelings adds meaning to the original ideas in Paradise Lost and are in agreement with Milton's ideas on marriage expressed in his The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, in which he advocates that a marriage where there is "indisposition, unfitnes, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable" should not be enforced on any couple.

Eve is blamed for eating from the forbbiden fruit and leading to the loss of Eden by both her and Adam, who also eats from the fruit to accompay her. It is ironic that Sue, while asking Phillotson to let her go live with Jude, also accuses Eve of being the cause of her problems and wishes she had never fallen, she tells him that "no poor woman has ever wished more than I that Eve had not fallen" (4302). The irony is accentuated by the fact that as soon as Phillotson lets her go she is also blamed for the misfortunes that he encounters becasue of this. Like Eve and Sue, Diana is also blamed by society for Mr. Warwick's decline in health, they argue that he is sick because of her abandonment and that if she went back to him, he would certainly get better.

It is clear that Eve, Diana and Sue are connected to one another by their personalities and the events in their lives. Analyzing their conection through the concept of Destinerrance it can be said that Milton's Eve errs and meets Diana and Sue, even though they were not the intended destiny the author had for her. Diana and Sue are heirs of Eve through Meredith and Hardy, who are in their turn heirs of Milton through the tradition that they have elected to be a part of. Diana and Sue are the new Eves of their society because they choose to search for knowledge and freedom, trying to find their identities independetly of a man and marriage. They defy society as Eve defied God's orders and the angels' and Adam's counsels for caution. Eve finds peace in the end with Adam because she is now on equal footing to him and she can reach her inner paradise. Diana and Sue do not have such a happy end, they have to choose between the life they really wish for and that would banish them from society, and a life of contentement at most which is the price they pay to be respect in their enviroments. The choice they make is to appease society and become good, obdient wives, which shows that they are heirs of Eve not only becasue of who they are, but also because society in general still expects women to present a certain behaviour in order to avoid being another Eve, destined to fall and take men with them.

Works Cited

Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. Ed. Amy M. King. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003. Ebook.

Meredith, George. Diana of the Crossways. United States of America, 2004. Project Gutenberg. Ebook.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. Philip Pullman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Ebook.

Milton, John. "The Doctrine & Discipline of Divorce." The John Milton Reading Room. Ed. Thomas H. Luxon. Dartmouth College, 2014. Web.

Sá, Luiz F. F. "Shalimar, the Ex-Centric: Rushdie Reads Milton Through Derrida." Itinerários, 37 (2013): 97-109.

Literature and Other Arts and Media - The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

[Essay] The Tempest by William Shakespeare as a representation of the theater

William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest is often described as his most elusive work. It has been read as “a romance of reconciliation, a Christian allegory of forgiveness, a meditation on the powers of the imagination and the limits of art” (Lindley 1) among other readings. These different interpretations can be supported by elements in the text, which makes all of them valid and does not allow one reading to be pointed out as the right one. Although the play can be read in many different ways, the similarity the story being told has to theater itself is a relevant reading of the playwright’s work. The Tempest is a reflection on theater and art and constantly reminds us of the made-up quality of what we are reading while highlighting its reformative power in the real world. From the beginning of the play when Prospero uses his art to cause the shipwreck to the epilogue, in which the character, and not the actor, is the one closing the play, we are presented with many metatheatrical elements that emphasize this reading of the play. (Egan, Johnston)

In the first scene of the first act of The Tempest we watch a terrible storm in the sea and the fight of mariners to avoid the wreck of their ship. The King of Naples, Alonso, and his companions are not happy with the tempest and the threat it represents to their lives and want to talk to the master of the ship. The boatswain tells them to go back below deck because they are not helping them by standing in the way. Even when Gonzalo remembers him that he is talking to a king he is still adamant that they should leave. On the next scene we learn that the storm was actually caused by Prospero, it was not a natural occurrence: “MIRANDA: If by your art, my dearest father, you have / Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them” (1.2.1-2). Prospero orchestrates the storm, being careful not to cause harm to those in the ship, as a director or a playwright orchestrates a scene in a play. Here we can already recognize Prospero as the one who will direct all the other characters, through his art, into following the necessary steps for them to better themselves.

Prospero proceeds to tell his daughter, Miranda, the story of how they came to live in the island. He tells her of how he was betrayed and lost his dukedom, but confesses that he was not a good ruler because he was more interested in his books than in his duties as a Duke. According to Johnston, Prospero’s admission of his own fault in losing his position reminds us that “whatever the powers and wonders of the illusion, one has to maintain a firm sense of what it is for, what it can and cannot do, and where it is most appropriate” for art cannot substitute life. He then puts Miranda to sleep by use of his magic so that he can talk to Ariel, the spirit that serves him. The dramatic, metatheatrical aspect of Prospero’s magic is again evidenced when he asks Ariel: “PROSPERO: Hast thou, spirit, performed to point the tempest that I bade thee?” (1.2.193-4), the tempest was no more than a performance by the spirit. The servant gives a report of the wreck and the ship passengers and is then requested to continue to help Prospero, which is actually an order since Ariel is not free but bound to the exiled duke by his magic.

As the play progresses we learn that Prospero uses his powers to control the islander Caliban who, according to Egan, knows that Prospero’s powers are not natural to him, but gained with his studies (173): “CALIBAN: Remember first to possess his books; for without them he’s but a sot, as I am” (3.2.83-5). Caliban is calling attention to the fact that without his books, Prospero is just a human being like any other, as any dramatist is a human being offstage.

Prospero also uses his art to contrive the meeting between Miranda and Ferdinand, the king’s son, and to prevent the murder of Alonso and Gonzalo by the hands of Sebastian and Antonio. The way that Prospero conducts the events in the island is reminiscent of the way the writer or the director controls a play, he is a “magician as well as a dramatist” (Egan 174). The betrayed duke guides the events and the people on the island to fit his own purpose of revenge and of transformation, for he intends to make those who wronged him see their mistakes and alter their attitudes as the banquet scene shows: “ARIEL: But remember […] that you three from Milan did supplant good Prospero […] for which foul deed the powers […] have incensed the seas and shore, yea, all the creatures against your peace” (3.3.68-75). Prospero’s art, or the theater, is an instrument of renovation and improvement for those involved in it, even if you are simply part of the audience for the spectacle.

The epilogue of The Tempest is unique amongst Shakespeare’s plays because the one speaking is not the actor, released from his characterization and asking for applause, but Prospero himself addresses the audience from the island and asks them to get involved in the art of the theater and send him back home: “PROSPERO: I must be here confined by you, or sent to Naples, let me not, since I have my dukedom got and pardoned the deceiver, dwell in this bare island, by your spell” (Epilogue 4-8). As Egan asserts, “the play’s art has no terminal boundaries but rather subsumes the ‘real’, extra-theatrical world of its spectators, supplanting their sense of reality with its own” (173).

The Tempest implies that the art of theater has power of reformation because it “reminds us of things we may too easily forget; it can liberate and encourage youthful wonder and excitement at all the diverse richness of life” (Johnston). During the play, Prospero constantly asks Miranda if she is paying attention to what he is saying, “Dost thou attend me?” (1.2.78). This could also be seen as a way to ask the audience if they are paying attention, because theater can serve as a way of bettering oneself, but, as the epilogue shows, it is necessary to go back to real life afterwards and apply what you have learned in the world of illusion to your reality as a human being.

Bibliography

Egan, Robert. “The Rough Magic: Perspectives of Art and Morality in The Tempest.” Shakespeare Quartely 23.3 (1972): 171-182. Web. 19 Jan. 2013.

Johnston, Ian. "You Can Go Home Again, Can't You? An Introduction to The Tempest". Vancouver Island University. Nanaimo, BC. Lecture. Web. 19 Jan. 2013.

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Ed. David Lindley. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 2002.

[Final Paper] Narrative strategies reflecting the characters’ inner turmoil in Margaret Drabble’s The Middle Ground

The Middle Ground is considered by many critics to belong to a second phase of Margaret Drabble’s writings which has a social focus, differing from her five novels from the 1960s that have a subjective focus. The form is also a notable difference between the two groups of novels (Stovel, 56).

According to Rubenstein (139), the intrusive narrator who calls attention to the fictional aspect of the narrative is one of the signs of the tension between the mimetic plot and the narrative strategy of these novels, especially The Middle Ground. As pointed out by Bromberg, the novel was criticized by its “clumsy style and lack of evident form, as well as the proliferation of points of view and corresponding lack of character development” (464). Bromberg argues that it is necessary to question why Drabble chose this narrative strategy before condemning it, she believes that it makes the reader stop and take note while expressing the novel’s “profound uncertainty about conventional narrative strategy” (467). Another point that should be highlighted is that the narrative form resembles the internal turmoil of its characters, as Greene calls attention to, "Drabble suggests parallels between Kate's crisis and problems of narrative construction." (294)

In this paper I discuss how the narrative structure strategy used by Drabble in The Middle Ground resembles the inner turmoil faced by the characters, especially Kate, in their mid-life crises. As Rose argues, the way the characters deal with the “discovery that life is fragmented and inherently without pattern translate into alternative narrative strategies.” (80) This topic is relevant for the understanding of the complexity of the novel’s narrative when, at first glance, the readers could tend to side with the critics that point out its lack of form without considering that the form could be intentionally like this, fragments that replace conventional expectations for the “likelihoods of reality”. (Bromberg, 466)

The Middle Ground begins with a discussion between Kate Armstrong and her friend Hugo Mainwaring about what he termed her “mid-life crisis”. The narrator then interferes and speaks directly to the reader: “Here is an account of Kate’s past history, some, if not all, of which must have led her to wherever she now is” (17). Here the narrator indicates the idea that torments Kate during the present time in her life: that where her life is now should be explained by her past and predict her future, but she has difficult visualizing these links. As Greene remarks, Kate loses the connection between past and present (294): “the past no longer seems to make sense, for if it did, how would it have left her here, in this peculiarly draughty space?” (16) The narrative follows the same path and does not hold to a linear passage of time. Starting in the present moment of Kate’s life the narrator goes back and offers the reader a brief account of her life and then it returns to the point it had left and the novel begins: “And that is Kate’s history, up to date” (79); “ […] two new elements have entered Kate’s life. One is a new job. […] The other new element is the Iraqi.” (81-2) As discussed by Rose, these two new elements will have an important part in solving Kate’s mid-life crisis (71). According to Bromberg, the intrusion of the authorial voice destroys the illusion of an objective or dramatic point of view and it makes Kate seem more “real” to the reader in that she seems independent of the authorial voice (466-7).

From this moment on, the novel has a multiplication of perspectives, the narrator changes abruptly from Kate to other characters. According to Pickering, it is not only the points of view that change, "but other ways of representing reality" are introduced (481). These switches show how Kate is perceived differently by herself and each person in her life, including the narrator. The multiplicity is part of her past and her present, as Bromberg points out, and to know her we would have to know all these different perceptions (471-2). Another interesting aspect of the multiple perspectives is that, as stated by Bromberg, they “challenge the romantic individualism of the nineteenth century Bildungsroman, as well as subverting its narrative structures.” (8)

The narrator leaves Kate sitting on a bank near her old home and gives an account of Evelyn’s daily routine as a social worker. As Kate, her friend also reflects on her life and how she ended up where she is and she finds it “hard to know what kept her at it in this way.” (135) Both characters are trying to understand the ways of life and the meaning of everything they have been through and might yet face, they are trying to figure out the patterns of life and how they apply to themselves. These thoughts of Kate and Evelyn are reflected in the narrative strategy that asks if “any of the patterns of art can accurately reflect life” (8), as Bromberg asserts.

Another change of focalized by the narrator occurs and we are presented with Hugo’s own ruminations on his life and that of his friend Kate. Hugo is trying to write a book about the Middle East, but is having trouble and decides to write something else. He tries to write about himself, but his account of his own life does not have much of reality, as the narrator tells the reader “he has failed to convey much useful information about his own past history” (171). Hugo’s reflections on writing demonstrate a metafictional aspect of the novel. He gives up on his attempts of writing a novel because “life is too bizarre for fiction, these days” (171) and “the more I try to tell the truth, the worse I write” (161). Rose defends that his reasons show his limited conception of a novelist, that “life is too bizarre a subject for fiction if we demand that novels be well-written – that is, formally coherent” (77), which is the idea that the narrative structure of The Middle Ground challenges by its supposed lack of form.

The narrator then gives an amplified account of Hugo’s history, but, as pointed out by Rose, even this involved an attempt to find a pattern in life, but “if life is not clearly patterned, how is the novelist to tell the truth about it […]?” (78). According to Bromberg, in this section of the novel, Drabble “makes explicit that the organizing subject in The Middle Ground is the problem of finding patterns for art that do not distort or oversimplify reality” (471), as the narrator of the novel acknowledges writing is “the art of selection. The art of omission.” (180)

Hugo concludes that writing is such a difficult exercise because “everything has too much history” and a pattern in life is slow to emerge because the past is too dense and the future has not yet thinned out, there are too many cross-references and hidden connections (182); He sees now that “modern life is in some mysterious way too fragmented” (182). The narrative is also fragmented in the constant changes of perspective and the frequent intrusions of the narrator speaking directly to the reader and giving her/his opinion about the characters. As Bromberg argues, Drabble “presents the reader with a scenario of the novelist in search of truth, no longer certain what to include and what to leave out, baffled by endlessly multiplying perspectives" and that "no single perspective [...] can encompass an ever changing, multiplying truth." (473)

The two new elements that enter Kate’s life when the novel begins are linked to each other and her perception of herself and the patterns that she has been seeking to visualize in her life’s history. When Mujid appears in her life, Kate tells herself and her friends that he “is the next stage in my education” (87) because she believes that everything in her life has to be connected somehow. As Rose points out, “Kate, who sees her life as moving through a sequence of ‘phases’, charts her development through a progression of mentors” (71) that are represented by Hunt, her ex-husband Stuart and his family, her lover Ted, and Mujid who she believes to be her last opportunity to “some interesting discovery about human nature.” (87) According to Rose, Kate’s view of Mujid changes to a more realistic one because of the realizations she encounters through the other new element in her life, her new job. (73)

Kate’s new job of producing a television program leads her to re-visit her past where she is surprised to find “no revelations […] just memories” (116). She interviews many women that are connected to her past in Romley and as she discusses with her producer, Gabriel Denham, about the editing of these interviews she points out to him that they “fell into no recognizable patter, and that it was unfair to try to force them into a general statement about Woman Today” (213). Her perception of the interviews’ lack of pattern and the tragedy that happens to Evelyn finally teaches her that life has no predetermined patterns and she is able to release herself from “the grip of the representative. Henceforth she would represent nothing but herself.” (224-5) Kate concludes that “she’d spent enough time looking for patterns and trends” (225) and that she has had enough because it would get her nowhere, she feels reconciled with the idea of a “shapeless diversity” (225) now. Bromberg notes that when "she and the reader least expect it, her [Kate's] crisis dissipates as she accepts and embraces plurality and uncertainty." (475) Pickering concludes that this “shapeless diversity” is a comment on the narrative strategy in that the narrator uses various representational methods, be it description or direct quotation, in her/his effort to “establish the facts of the case, to seek out the story”. (482)

The planned party at the end of the novel will unite an immense variety of personalities that represents Kate’s own diverse identity that she finally accepts. As pointed out by Greene, nothing has really changed from the beginning of the novel to the end, only Kate’s perspective is different (314). Kate looks around her family and friends assembled in her small house and she feels “a sense of immense calm, strength, centrality, as though she were indeed the centre of a circle […] a moving circle” (268).

The narrative strategy of The Middle Ground is a fragmented collection of facts, points of views, memories and discoveries that are aligned to the characters’ doubts in their mid-life crises and subsequent understanding of the “shapelessness” of life and the impossibility of defining it in expected patterns. The novel ends without a final conclusion, Kate is sitting in her bed pondering what to wear to the party and what will happen from now on. She has only the certainty that “anything is possible, it is all undecided” and “unplanned” (270). The narrative strategy itself represents this idea of multiple possibilities by refusing to give a closing end to the story. As the characters conclude that no patterns are to be found in life and no future can be predicted, the narrative leaves the reader with a cliffhanger that stands for all the possible endings for the novel.

Bibliography

Bromberg, Pamela S. "Margaret Drabble's ‘The Radiant Way’: Feminist Metafiction". NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 24.1 (1990): 5-25. Web. 06 Dec. 2012.

Bromberg, Pamela S. “Narrative in Drabble's ‘The Middle Ground’: Relativity versus Teleology”. Contemporary Literature 24.4 (1983): 463-479. Web. 30 Nov. 2012.

Drabble, Margaret. The Middle Ground. Penguin Books: Harmondsworth. 1981. Print.

Greene, Gayle. "Feminist Fiction and the Uses of Memory". Signs 16.2 (1991): 290-321. Web. 22 Nov. 2012.

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