A Reading of Ian McEwan's Atonement Through the Lens of the Cultural Studies

UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL

Instituto de Letras

Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras

Mestrado em Literaturas de Língua Inglesa

A reading of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement

through the lens of the Cultural Studies

Master Thesis Project

Fábio Ronaldo Gutterres Fernandes

Porto Alegre, RS

October, 2011.

A reading of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement through the lens of the Cultural Studies

Fábio R. G. Fernandes

External Justification

This thesis project aims at discussing issues related to changes in the social, cultural and political landscape of English society in the period between the 1930s and 1990s, from the facts narrated in the novel Atonement by Ian McEwan. This period embraces a time of great transformations in England, from the pre-second world war moments to our days.

This project is part of a research which can be used in the courses of Letters, History, Social Sciences, Psychology, Law and others from the perspective of Cultural Studies providing professors, undergraduate students and readers with new readings about a given period of time concerning the English society and how historical, economic and social factors were determinant on the characters' lives.

In Atonement the characters have important roles that express different social classes or groups. The character of Briony Tallis, the protagonist and the girl who tells the story, represents England and all the arrogance of the rural aristocracy. On the other hand, Robbie Turner stands for the proletariat and doubtlessly, the one who suffers the most. His life becomes completely different after he goes to prison and then to war. Despite all his expertise and ability at university (he was said to be an excellent student), he always worked as a gardener at the Tallis' family house. In the army Robbie was a soldier, but he was responsible for the important decisions in the North of France with Corporals Mace and Nettle. Paul Marshall is the representative of the wealthy. He is part of a group of people who will not be affected by the war. Instead, he will profit from it selling chocolate for the British army. The underprivileged are represented by the servants who work in the mansion, like the Hardman family, and the poor people living in the suburbs of London.

It is not my objective here to analyse this novel simply in terms of the text by the text. Thus, I propose a reading of Atonement by contextualizing its inner and outer features, using the Cultural Studies approach based on the studies of authors like Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Terry Eagleton, Maria Elisa Cevasco, and others.

Internal Justification

This project might bring contribution to literary studies through the analysis of the stories and the memories of some characters permeated by historical facts. Through the plot we can examine a past that does not exist anymore and a present with drastic changes in the lives of the characters involved. Their lives are transformed in a way that there is no turning back, and the influence and the impact of the war would mark their futures in a very deep way producing frustration and broken dreams.

The theoretical approach will be based on the Cultural Studies. In my opinion it is interesting and valuable for students and teachers alike to use this kind of discussion in the classroom and try to show them a new method of reading and analysis, based on popular culture and everyday life phenomena. If we give students the opportunity to learn more about the construction of themes, characters and situations found in literature allied to historical, social and economic context, they will have a chance of better understanding the intricate process of the literary text and the context in which it is immersed providing them with the prospect of becoming better readers and more critical about what they read.

According to Maria Elisa Cevasco (2003, p.139),

O impulso dos estudos culturais, em especial na versão que segue o pensamento seminal de (Raymond) Williams, era lutar para que essa cultura exclusivista começasse a fazer parte de uma cultura em comum, onde os significados e valores fossem construídos por todos e não por uns poucos privilegiados. (...) uma cultura em comum seria aquela continuamente redefinida pela prática de todos os seus membros, e não uma na qual o que tem valor cultural é produzido por poucos e vivido passivamente pela maioria. Trata-se de uma visão de cultura inseparável de uma visão de mudança social radical e que exige uma ética de responsabilidade comum, participação democrática de todos em todos os níveis da vida social e acesso igualitário às formas e meios de criação cultural.

The novel is filled with a great deal of intertextuality. There are references to the works of Henry James, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov and William Shakespeare, among others. The narrative establishes a dialogic communication with other texts from former times, providing an enriching integration of many fields such as literary studies, the process of authorship, historical events of different decades in England, social changes and the influence of external elements on the construction and development of the characters' lives.

Concerning the space and time where the novel Atonement takes place, it will be relevant for the present study to make use of the themes that Raymond Williams developed in his book The Country and the City (1975) such as the country and the city, the migration of people from one place to another and also the duality of the countryside versus the city in the British literature throughout the centuries. This dialogue between literary texts can be very productive in the analysis of the novel.

The setting has an important symbolism in the novel. While the novel is located in the country, there is often an atmosphere of simplicity and naivety, maybe almost infantile, with the lively participation of the children's perspective in the story. When the narrative moves to the