Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion

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Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion is a nonfiction book by Rosemary Jackson, first published in 1981 by Methuen & Co. Ltd. In it, Jackson rejects the notion of the fantastic as a simple vessel for wish fulfillment that “transcend[s]” (Jackson, 2) human reality in worlds presented as superior to our own, instead positing that the genre is inseparable from real life, particularly the social and cultural contexts within which each work of the fantastic is produced. She writes that the “unreal” (4) elements of fantastic literature are created only in direct contrast to the boundaries set by its time period’s “cultural order” (3), acting to illuminate the unseen limitations of said boundaries by undoing and recompiling the very structures which define society into something “strange” and “apparently new” (8). In subverting these societal norms, Jackson claims, the fantastic represents the unspoken desire for greater societal change. Jackson also criticizes Tzvetan Todorov’s The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (1973) as being too limited in scope, examining only the literary function of the fantastic, and expands his structuralist theory to fit a more cultural study of the genre—which, incidentally, she proposes is not a genre at all, but a mode that draws upon literary elements of both realistic and supernatural fiction to create an air of uncertainty in its narratives. Jackson also introduces the idea of reading the fantastic through a psychoanalytical lens, referring primarily to Sigmund Freud’s theory of the unconscious, which she believes is integral to understanding the fantastic’s connection to the human psyche.

Synopsis

Jackson divides the book into two major sections of “Part One: Theory” and “Part Two: Texts.” “Theory” first describes the mode of the fantastic, containing references to the structuralist interpretation put forth by Todorov, then moves on to discuss the genre through psychoanalysis, noting how the “narrative effects” of the genre reflect “basic psychic impulses” (8). “Texts” provides closer analyses of select works from the 19th and 20th centuries (the post-Romantic period), many of which originated in England. This section also focuses in on certain subsets of fantastic literature, such as the Gothic and Victorian fantasy.

Part 1 - Theory: The Fantastic as a Mode

The imagination in exile

Jackson explains that the “fantastic” is derived from the Latin word “phantasticus,” which means “to make visible” or “to manifest” (12). In simpler terms, anything in relation to “imaginary activity” is considered to be fantastic; however, the range of literary works that fall under this category is too vast to be put into one genre. Jackson refers to an earlier genre of literature known as “the menippea.” The menippea, exemplified by works from famous authors such as Fyodor Dostoevsky and Edgar Allan Poe, marked a shift away from the need for realism and probability. In other words, the menippea was a genre that “broke the demands of historical realism or probability” (13). Jackson references Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the menippea by mentioning that it tests the limits of what “real” truly is and challenges one’s imagination. According to Bakhtin, the menippea is tied to the activity of “carnival,” which in turn introduces the concept of “abnormality:” The term that encompasses occurrences such as hallucinations, in which one seems to be experiencing feelings of depersonalization and derealization causing them to feel peculiar.

The "real" under scrutiny

Jackson claims that the worlds of the fantastic, developed in a secular (rather than religious) culture, do not fall into the commonly used realms of heaven and hell, but instead shift toward unfamiliar realities created from altered elements of the real world. The term Jackson assigns this concept is “paraxis.” Jackson explains, “Paraxis is a telling notion in relation to the place, or space, of the fantastic, for it implies an inextricable link to the main body of the ‘real’ which it shades and threatens” (18). This concept helps one to understand the fantastic, for it is a space that seems to be dichotomous, but it in fact is not—it “is neither entirely ‘real’ (object), nor entirely ‘unreal’ (image), but is located somewhere indeterminately between the two” (19). Jackson also claims a fantastic narrative contains “no rational explanation for its existence” and “suggests events beyond interpretation” (25), making real-world logic irrelevant. The evaporation and decay of standard categories into “the impossible, the un-real [sic], the nameless, formless, shapeless, unknown, invisible,” dubbed “negative rationality” (26), is a major defining element of the fantastic.

The marvelous, mimetic and fantastic

Jackson briefly summarizes Todorov’s analysis of the fantastic, derived from the theories of Vladimir Solovyov, as purely theoretical rather than relating to any real-world context. She also explains Dostoevsky’s theory, which she claims resembles Solovyov’s, that the fantastic cannot “break the hesitation experienced by the reader” (27) regarding whether or not events are real, and must stay within the realm of realistic possibility. Jackson then describes Todorov’s three conditions which define the fantastic. Jackson iterates that the biggest takeaway from these conditions is that the fantastic largely dissolves the dichotomy of realistically possible and impossible: “...Within the text itself supernatural and natural explanations of strangeness are made redundant; there is a foregrounding of the impossibility of certainty and of reading in meanings” (28).

Jackson then goes on to describe her own theories about Todorov’s diagrammatical categorization of the different kinds of fantasy: the pure uncanny, the fantastic uncanny, the fantastic marvelous, and the pure marvelous. She points out that Todorov does not directly consider the ambiguity surrounding perception in fantastic stories from a historical standpoint, whereas she feels his scale can easily be traced back to Romantic and post-Romantic concerns—namely, the “shift in ideas from supernaturalism towards an increasingly scientific and rationalistic world view” (31-32). She then explains how the “polarization” present in the verbiage of Todorov’s scale “leads to some confusion” (32) and asserts that it is better to define the fantastic as a “mode rather than a genre” (32), which then can be placed between two other modes: the marvelous and the mimetic.

Jackson describes the marvelous as a mode associated with fairy tales, such as works by Hans Anderson, the Grimm Brothers, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Andrew Lang. It typically involves a detached narrator and takes place in the distant past (hence the clichéd opening “Once upon a time…”). It does not require active thinking on the part of the reader due to the fact that it is established that the events take place in an unquestionable past. The mimetic, on the other hand, is a mode that attempts to imitate (or mimic) the reality outside of the text’s own. It presents itself as “realistic,” typically using a third-person narrative. These texts try to draw parallels between the fictitious world of the text and the “real” world. Examples of the mimetic given by Jackson are William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton.

Jackson explains how the fantastic combines elements of these two modes by saying, “They assert what they are telling is real – relying upon all the conventions of realistic fiction to do so – and then they proceed to break the assumption of realism by introducing what – within those terms – is manifestly unreal” (34). By this definition, the fantastic is a mode that “borrow[s] the extravagance” of the marvelous, while also borrowing the “ordinariness” of the mimetic (35). This creates a necessary confusion in the reader that is able to “shift[] the relations” of “real” and “imaginary” through “indeterminacy” (35).

Non-signification

Jackson explains how the fantastic often refuses to define “reality” or “truth,” and is instead “structured upon ambivalence and contradiction” (37). She describes the apparent “gap between signifier and signified [object]” (38), which is another way of saying that symbols are detached from any specific meaning. Jackson states, “There could be no things but nameless things, no names but ‘thingless names’ – is an expression of a severance of connecting lines of meaning, a severance given graphic form in many fantasies” (38). She asserts that many stories in fantastic literature give names to things that are actually empty and/or meaningless, allowing the reader to give them their own meaning. Jackson explains that this phenomenon of non-signification arises due to the fantastic “attempting to articulate ‘the unnameable’, the ‘nameless things’ of horror fiction, attempting to visualize the unseen, or by establishing a disjunction [sic] of word and meaning through a play upon ‘thingless names’” (41).

Topography, themes, myths

Jackson explains that the marvelous transports its reader into a world outside of our own, which examines the real world’s values only through allegory and from an outside position, never penetrating into the real world itself. However, this alternate universe is built from elements of ours—specifically, our hopes and fears. In contrast to the bright and whimsical settings of the marvelous, the worlds of the fantastic are “indeterminate”; they break down the idea of what exactly a “place” is. Jackson claims the fantastic opens a space outside of cultural norms, as opposed to “fairy tale” fantasies and science fiction, which both remain inside that space to some degree.

Jackson returns again to the idea of the paraxis introduced in “The ‘Real’ Under Scrutiny.” Expanding on this, Jackson claims that sight can be a revealing thing in the fantastic. Mirrors often serve as gateways to other worlds or allow humans to gaze at their true selves. When seeing is synonymous with believing, the obfuscation of sight becomes the blurring of reality. That which is unperceived is partial, or otherwise corrupted.

Jackson also addresses that while the worlds of the marvelous are set in external realities, the realities of the fantastic are nothing—the mode’s essence is emptiness itself. Time within the fantastic starts to break down as well; it is not as absolute as one would expect. Jackson provides the example of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, as Jonathan Harker’s obsessive timekeeping is eventually rendered completely obsolete in his surroundings. Along with time, the concept of the self also frequently decays throughout a fantastic story, Jackson argues. Faults of the self can result in fear and danger; this principle is seen in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, in which Victor Frankenstein’s downfall occurs due to his own hubris. Alternatively, fear may come from an external force that warps the self into an otherworldly form.

Part 1 - Theory: Psychoanalytical Perspectives

The uncanny

In this section, Jackson reviews Freud’s theory of the uncanny. The uncanny is described as “something which is familiar” (66) that becomes unsettling through its unconscious “repression.” This repressed feeling, belief, or being may be the result of opposition toward some established societal law, and it seems wrong only because it defies that which is “normal” and established (66, 69). Freud argues that “literature of the uncanny” uncovers that “which should remain obscure” and is driven by “animistic thinking and libidinal desire” (70, 71). In other words, it is a human being’s deepest desire to transgress the natural lines of society and behave as they please. Jackson then ties this concept back into Romantic period fantasy, indicating, for example, that mentions of the uncanny are evident in Dracula when Jonathan Harker describes an “uncanny” and “dreadful fear” at Dracula’s castle (64).

Metamorphosis and entropy

According to Jackson, the fantastic describes the human desire for “undifferentiation” or, as Freud states, “a drive towards a state of inorganicism” (72). This “undifferentiation” is called “entropy,” and the desire to achieve entropy is termed the “entropic pull” (73). To attain a state of entropy, one must first act in opposition to everything that once was “considered absolute and achieve the complete “reverse of life” (75). After turning normal life on its head, they must “become everything without ever losing the self: a permanent metamorphosis” and self “symbiosis” (77). Although symbiosis with the “self” and “other” seems to be a mutually beneficial relationship, in post-Romantic fantasy, it is often “monstrous.” Instead of the “self” and “other” staying together as one, the “self” is “lost” and “the object consumes the subject” (81, 82). Jackson says kind of chaotic transformation is usually seen in stories about werewolves, as well as in the novels The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde by R.L. Stevenson and Frankenstein.

Disintegrated Bodies

Jackson begins by providing some relevant background. During the 1800s and early 1900s, there was “a reluctance to admit of the possible existence of partial or contradictory aspects of the self” (83). However, during the late 1800s, the idea of multiple selves was beginning to take root in literature and art. One such transgressional artist was Salvador Dali, with his paintings of “scattered objects” (85). According to an H.F. Ellenberger study cited by Jackson, “in every man there is a spectator and an actor, one who speaks and one who replies” (86). Therefore, there is not one, but two internal beings which dwell in the mind. This theory is supported by the mirror analogy. A mirror “establishes a different space, where notions of self undergo radical change” and “versions of self transformed into another” (87). According to Freud, the mirror also transforms a person’s conscious concept of self into an “object” as seen through the eyes of others (88). Jackson’s argument is that the fantastic describes the human desire to return to the state of self-love and self-image before the “mirror stage and its creation of dualism” (89). However, a “return to undifferentiation” is usually impossible for fantastic characters because the “‘self’ cannot be united with ‘other’ without ceasing to be” (90 & 91).

Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion

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