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" Fiction and the meaning of place : "
Mansfield, Jane
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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1097994
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| Doc. No
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TLets528351
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| Main Entry
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Mansfield, Jane
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| Title & Author
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Fiction and the meaning of place :\ Mansfield, Jane
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| College
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Leeds Metropolitan University
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| Date
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2010
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| student score
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2010
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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Narratives help to affix identities to places. During the mid-nineteenth and the midtwentiethcenturies, the North appears frequently in novels and plays and is particularlyprominent in national imagination. Such fictional texts are narratives which help tocreate and maintain stereotypes of West Yorkshire and Manchester and to foster theconcept of northern identity. Qualities of the North become more significant during theseperiods but qualities of northemness alter across time. The North's reputation as anuncivilized, but authentic place, as a land of bleakness, dearth and poverty, as anenvironment where only hard men and strong women survive, can be seen to permeatethe writing of the mid-nineteenth century. However, tropes and stereotypes of the Northare not unchanging; new stereotypes emerge and older stereotypes adapt to the newersettings of the mid-twentieth century. What might seem like a monolithic North is in factan ever-changing imaginary land where few of the stereotypes remain unchanged. Aswith the narrative of England, the mythologies of the North modify and are politicallyinflected. Northern character is a narrative with longstanding political motivations inwhich individuals and geographical regions are 'placed' within hierarchies of power andprestige. This placing of the North has significance for those inside and outside theregion. Northernness is a donned identity; it is also a rejected Other and it is a desiredshadow or projection. Tropes and stereotypes alter across time but because of thenature of myth and stereotype, the concept of a North remains. The strength andlongevity of a stereotype is closely linked to repetition and depictions of the North infiction and film function as repetitions.Consequently, we should be wary of essentialising regions in the same way that wefight against essentialising genders or races. Key texts for the mid-nineteenth centuryinclude Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847), Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847)and Shirley (1849), Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton (1849), North and South (1855)and The Life of Charlotte Brontl3 (1856), Charles Dickens' Hard Times (1854), andBenjamin Disraeli's Coningsby (1844) and Sybil (1845). Texts for the twentieth centuryinclude John Braine's Room at the Top (1957), David Storey's This Sporting Life (1960),Stan Barstow's A Kind of Loving (1960), Keith Waterhouse's Billy Liar (1959) andShelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey (1958
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Leeds Metropolitan University
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