In the Margins

I can think of no writer who wields more influence over the course of an English Literature degree than Shakespeare. Austen puts up a decent fight, and the Brontës have strength in numbers, but no hierarchy of texts can quite measure up to the one spun by the Professor who sets the reading list. The canon dribbles out of their biro on some Tuesday afternoon in August. They can already hear the same questions and answers that will come from two lectures on Pride and Prejudice and a seminar on a certain Bleak book that no-one has waded through more than two hundred pages of. Many of the choices are truly foundational texts, essential for an understanding of the development of Western Literature. But whilst these choices have their strengths, they also have their margins.

I would bet my precious Norton anthologies that the majority of personal statements for English Literature featured at least a sentence heralding reading as ‘the chance to step into somebody else’s shoes’, albeit in a less cliché fashion. And yet, the bookshelf of boots prescribed by universities up and down the country all seem to fit and look the same. They are mostly men’s, old and too big… perhaps an oxford shoe. A couple of heels lurk in the back but all in all it is a bit of a sorry sight… a disappointing charity shop’s stock. I am being a little harsh; I have enjoyed the majority of the books on my course so far and they have felt like they belong in our century just as much as their own, which of course shows their merit. It is a shame, however, that there is so little diversity on our bookshelves. 

There is one particular novel that is often studied at universities: Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. A controversial text, it is often read through a post-colonial lens which denounces its inexcusable racism. Indeed, the text is often accompanied by Chinua Achebe’s ‘An Image of Africa’ essay when it is taught. This essay criticises the text as ‘an offensive and deplorable book’ and discusses the way in which it perpetuates stereotypes which establish Africa as a foil to Western ‘civilisation’. Achebe is, of course, an author in his own right. His seminal work, Things Fall Apart, catalysed the Nigerian literary renaissance of the 1960s and has sold over twenty million copies. I may venture to suggest that Achebe could be put on primary text reading lists and take Conrad’s spot. Indeed, Achebe’s essay on Heart of Darkness asks why Conrad’s text is ‘today the most commonly prescribed novel in twentieth-century literature courses in English departments of American universities’. Achebe’s essay was published in 1961. In the sixty years since, Conrad’s book has stuck stubbornly to its place in the canon. It is certainly read more critically nowadays than it was in the sixties, and it may have its merits in so far as it highlights the barbarity of our history, but it nevertheless eats away at lecture spaces that might have been used to talk about Achebe’s own novels. 

In some cases, courses may be narrowed out of necessity by the distinction of being English literature courses, which do not read texts in translation. There are nevertheless works of literature that bring a diversity of perspective, whilst being written in the English language. Their Eyes Were Watching God, written by Zora Neale Hurston, is regarded as a classic of the Harlem Renaissance. It sings with the Southern speech rhythms that Hurston mastered so uniquely, reflecting ‘the richness of Afro-American oral culture’ and ‘the durability of black speech’, as Sherley Anne Williams puts it. The novel is a beautiful expression of female spirituality, sexuality, and self-fulfilment. It closes with its protagonist ‘pull[ing] in the horizon like a great fish-net […] so much of life in its meshes!’ Such words hardly belong in the margins. Indeed, it is time we pull texts like these from the horizon  – texts which, holding so much of life in their meshes, deserve to be read.