Hunger art: the novels of Anita Brookner

Twentieth Century Literature, Spring, 1995 by Ann Fisher-Wirth

Self-knowledge, in Brookner's fiction, has a great deal to do with acknowledging the depths to which one will sink, the lengths to which one will go, the ways in which one will abase oneself, in order to maintain the illusion of propriety, importance, or safety. For many of Brookner's heroines, self-knowledge is a mortifying business; even after Frances Hinton learns that she has been betrayed, for instance, she they call her, she will go. Self-knowledge comes at last to the bitter realization that the self is founded -- or not founded -- on emotional chaos and behind that, emotional deprivation. Brookner's women have been silent, dutiful children who cannot claim helpful relationships with their mothers -- women who are dead, or selfish and egotistical, or overtly seductive, or themselves silent and subdued. They cannot resolve their oedipal longings because for one reason or another they also cannot claim relationship with their fathers, who are dead, or cowed and pathetic though kind, or childishly engrossed in their childish wives. Consequently, the heroines' own sexuality is thwarted or tormented: Ruth Weiss and Kitty Maule have had practically no sexual experience, whereas Frances Hinton -- in a pattern that becomes increasingly prominent in Brookner's fiction -- has experienced a love affair of indescribable pain. Among the earlier novels, only Edith Hope of Hotel du Lac has experienced anything resembling happy or even temporarily fulfilling sexual love -- and her affair with David has its drastic limitations.

I return to A Friend from England, the plot of which turns on a cruel reversal whereby the narrator, Rachel Kennedy, whose self-deception we do not realize the first time through the novel, is by the end utterly undone. She has prided herself on her savoir-faire and sophistication, her suitability as a guide for the young, specifically for Heather Livingstone, daughter of the couple who befriend her. When Heather divorces her transvestite husband, moves to Italy, and announces that she will marry her Italian lover, Rachel goes after her to bring her home, as the agent of Heather's parents. She offers what she thinks is a cunning compromise: play it safe, keep "your own home. Your parents. The shop. Your own life, Heather" -- have it all, and Marco too. "People manage," she tells Heather. "Why go to such extremes? It may seem all right now, but in ten years' time? Supposing you change your mind?" To her astonishment Heather turns on her, accusing her of living a life of "Deceit. Control. Arrangements" (198), and tells her that she has succeeded all too well in serving as Heather's guide -- teaching her what not to be. She who has felt herself so important must learn that she is merely "a friend from England," and must realize with terrible clarity that "I had failed, but that was not what counted. What counted was that I was guilty of an error. It was not Heather who was endangered, but myself. I felt shame, penury, and the shock of truth" (203).