1998/01/01 by Gareth Cordery · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Contemporary Literature and Criticism #Short Stories in Global Literature #Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction #Narrative #Active listening #Harm #Human sexuality #Literature #Psychoanalysis #Variety (cybernetics) #Aesthetics #History #Art #Philosophy #Sociology #Psychology #Gender studies #Social psychology
paper · doi:10.1017/s106015030000228x
openalex publication_date 1998/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/24
Margaret atwood's narrator in Bodily Harm , reminiscing about her childhood, says: “I learned to listen for what wasn't being said, because it was usually more important than what was” (55). Making a similar point, in The History of Sexuality Foucault writes that “There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses” (1: 27). If we read David Copperfield in this way — listening to the silences, as well as attending closely to what is being said — the narrative which emerges from the surface bildungsroman is very different from the traditional story of David who learns that “there can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose,” and that his marriage to Dora was “the first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart” (ch. 45; 733). In this surface narrative David, suitably chastened, is released to marry the boring Agnes by the fortuitous death of the unfortunate Dora. Many critics have commented wisely on David's emotional and psychological development. What I want to suggest is that, while the surface story traces the disciplining of David's emotions, there is another narrative which tells of a different kind of disciplining, one that subjects David to a variety of social norms, rules, and regulations.