The social and aesthetic views of Dorothy M. Richardson: A study of "Pilgrimage" and her miscellaneous writings in the light of her theoretical and practical views of socialism and literary art

Abstract

The thesis sets forth Dorothy Richardson's ideas on socialism and literature, either as explicitly stated or as suggested in her writings, and emphasizes the strong link that in her view must and does exist between art and life. Part One, chapter I, presents Dorothy Richardson's ideas as expressed mainly in her articles and reviews, on socialism and anarchy, on the role of women in the new social order, and on the social implications of the feminine consciousness' Chapter II describes her views on the substance and aesthetics of social reform revealed in her reviews of the works of socialistically oriented writers, finding that aesthetics may suffer in the practicalities of socialist change. Chapter III shows that these ideas on the social order and the role of men and women in it are basically those set forth in Pilgrimage. Part Two, chapter IV, presents Dorothy Richardson's theory of the art of reading as analogous and complementary to the art of writing Chapter V presents her view of the novel as a psychological portrait of the author. Chapter VI applies the theoretical ideas of the two preceding chapters in exploring the explicit and implicit similarities to Emerson that Dorothy Richardson's consciousness reveals through Miriam, the main character of Pilgrimage. Part Three, chapter VII, discusses the initiation of Miriam's quest for a sense of personal reality in the face of unavoidable psychological and social pressures while chapter VXI1 emphasizes as her solution of this dilemma her developing critical and aesthetic sensibility and growing absorption with literature as the revealed consciousness of the author Chapter IX shows how these theoretical views and their practical application in Pilgrimage contribute to the multiple significance of the pilgrimage metaphor. Part Four chapter X explores both the nature of the creative consciousness as it reveals itself in its depiction of reality in the novel and Dorothy Richardson9s dissatisfaction with traditional realism revealed particularly in Pilgrimage Chapter XI investigates her views on time memory history the relationship of the annual cycle to the individual consciousness the paradox of being and becoming the source and repository of reality and the involvement of eternity in temporal time Chapter XII finds that her refutation of the "stream of consciousness metaphor is the result of her rejection of any view that is fundamentally evolutionary" whether social or scientific as ignoring life's essential and immutable reality apprehensible to the human consciousness.