Nomadic consciousness and border crossing in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater

ABSTRACT

This paper demonstrates that two novels of European and African origins, Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) and Emezi’s Freshwater (2018) share a common discursive formative. Nomadism, it is argued, constitutes the consciousness behind the textual formation of the two stories, and this consciousness informs the trajectory of border crossing observable in the two novels in terms of narration, characterization and incidents. The subjects in the stories mostly refuse fixed and normative identity, and are physically and mentally in motion. They traverse limits and lack sense of proportion. The narration apparently lacks cohesive elements as the stories, from varying narrative views, move from one point to another without transitional cues. Grounded in Postmodernism, particularly the concepts of deterritorialization and nomadism, this study shows that the two novels, though variant in many ways, are similar in terms of their figuring the nonrecognition and crossing of narrative, sexual, physical, mental and symbolic borders. This reestablishes and consolidates the novels’ relation to the post/modernist sensibility.

摘要

本文表明, 两部源自欧洲和非洲的小说, 伍尔夫的《达洛维夫人》 (1925) 和阿克韦克·埃米齐的《淡水》 (2018) 有着共同的话语形成性。本人认为, 游牧主义构成了这两个故事的文本形成背后的意识。这种意识影响了两部小说在叙述, 人物塑造和事件方面可观察到的边界跨越轨迹。故事中的主体大多拒绝固定和规范的身份, 在身体和精神上都在游移。叙述显然缺乏凝聚力, 因为这些故事从不同的叙述视角出发, 从一个点到另一个点, 没有过渡线索。依靠德勒兹和瓜塔里的思想, 特别是去地域化 (deterritorialization) 和游牧主义 (nomadism) 的概念, 这项研究表明, 这两部小说虽然在许多方面有差异, 但在塑造不承认和跨越叙事, 性, 身体, 精神和象征的边界方面是相似的。这重新确立并巩固了这两部小说与后/现代主义感觉的关系。

KEYWORDS:

• nomadic
• deterritorialization
• postmodernism
• border crossing
• discursive formation

关键词:

• 游牧
• 去地域化
• 后现代主义
• 跨越边界
• 话语形成

1. Introduction

The nature of narrative presupposes a subject, the narrator, who takes in the resources of language and impresses on a reader or listener a series of events oriented by the subject’s thought or consciousness. Narrative as discourse, therefore, carries a certain consciousness which determines the selection of functional units as well as structures its flow. In this case, the two modes of novelistic utterances identified by Kristeva (1980), the language of the narrator or narration and the language of the characters or discourse/citation (45) all sum up to one bounded text with one formative. The entire narrative discourse can therefore be analyzed into a single thought, something Foucault calls “discursive formation.” According to him, a

discursive formation is the general enunciative system that governs a group of verbal performances - a system that is not alone in governing it, since it also obeys, and in accordance with its other dimensions, logical, linguistic, and psychological systems. What has been called ‘discursive formation’ divides up the general plane of things said at the specific level of statements. (116)

This is to say that each of the statements and other dimensions of the narrative follow a certain pattern that points back to their constituting consciousness. Akwanya explains a discourse formative as “what gets a discourse going, gives the entire series of statements an intelligible structure and unites the series of action, or semantic element … ” This study argues that nomadism constitutes the discourse formative of the two novels, and that becomes the basis of their shared significance. Nomadism is a concept that relates to migration and border crossing and, as in both, transcends physical and geographical movements. Nomads are traditionally conceived as individuals, most of whom are herders, who move from place to place through the bushes, settling and continuing at intervals. The description of the nomads by Barfied offers the image pastoral nomads extend to what is considered nomadic consciousness especially in postmodernism, border and migration studies. According to him, “the very tents of the nomads are a sign of their ability to move at will and take their mobile livestock economy with them, throwing off old constraints and relationships” (205). This capacity for mobility, transcending of limits and continuous becoming points to the character of nomadism as figured in human subjectivity and production. When a subject becomes nomadic, they refuse fixed identity. Braidotti sees a nomadic subject as one “who has relinquished all idea, desire, or nostalgia for fixity … expresses the desire for an identity made of transitions, successive shifts, and coordinated changes, without and against an essential unity” (22). The nomad has “an acute awareness of the nonfixity of boundaries … and intense desire to go on trespassing, transgressing (36). In this sense, queer and anomalous embodiments (including the disabled body), by extension, share in the nomadic outlook. The nomadic is revolutionary and nonconforming. When human production such as art becomes nomadic it estranges the form by distancing itself from tradition. Deleuze and Guattari’s vision of nomadic art is as devoid of sharp edges and with abstract lines. By abstract they mean “a line of variable direction that describes no contour and delimits no form” (499). Hence, the borders of nomadic art are blurred.

Deleuze and Guattari conceive deterritorialization as a movement by which a subject/body leaves a territory especially by reconstituting and extending the territory. They refer to this taking up of new territory as reterritorialisation. They also argue that the movement of the nomad is not always escapist like the migrant’s. In fact, the nomad does not always move but moves their space. In other words, they don’t seek home, they create home everywhere. They can make and unmake their world like comic heroes. The alteration and nonfixity that characterize the nomad can take place without an external movement. It is in this sense that the deterritorialization of the nomad is contemporary with their reterritorialisation., Deleuze and Guattari; write;

If the nomad can be called the Deterritorialized par excellence, it is precisely because there is no reterritorialization afterward as with the migrant, or upon something else as with the sedentary (the sedentary’s relation with the earth is mediatized by something else, a property regime, a State apparatus). With the nomad, on the contrary, it is deterritorialization that constitutes the relation to the earth, to such a degree that the nomad reterritorializes on deterritorialization itself. It is the earth that deterritorializes itself, in a way that provides the nomad with a territory. (381)

This process implies a continuous journey of becoming, of mutation and transcending of borders. The two novels, Woolf‘s Mrs Dalloway; Emezi‘s Freshwater, as this paper argues, share this character of narrating nomadism in characterization, incidents and textual formation. Various forms of borders such as symbolic, physical, mental etc. are transcended in a way that underlines the nomadic consciousness that undergirds the narratives.

Existing studies on the novels apart from not finding a comparative nexus between them seem to isolate the various elements that constitute the nomadic significance of the stories. This is especially true of Woolf‘s novel, which has received more critical attention. For instance, in identifying Septimus as a lone redemptive sufferer and therefore an archetypal figure of Prometheus and Adonis, Lathan (1970) raises without discussing the aspect of the story that points to the loneliness of the nomad and their quest for freedom. His death being redemptive, it shows that he chooses suicide as a way of escaping the constricting boundaries of existence. Richter (1982) gives significance to the hours conspicuously presented in the story and insists that they order the story. This, from the point of view of nomadism, shows the norms and orders which the nomadic struggles against. Edmondson (2012) demonstrates how the characters in the story identify with other people and go as far as becoming part of others’ consciousness. This level of intersubjectivity as she calls it resonates with border crossing which the story is basically about, and which the present study explores. Shaffer (1994) shows how the novel reflects on civilization, showing its glory and gore. Similarly, Cetinkaya, Gunduz and Uygur (2017) see the novel as a reflection on the change and disillusionment of modernity and a critique of institutions of civilization. Barett (1977) is also unknowingly discussing another aspect of nomadism in the novel when she unmasks the unusual sexual passions and the story’s critique of heterosexuality and marriage. This sample review shows that the existing literature on the novel has maintained a reductive focus, making this panoramic view of the novel necessary.

Emezi‘s novel on the other hand has intrigued readers because of the usual behavior of the major character, Ada. More attention has therefore been focused on identifying the cause of her strange personality. Waldman; (2018) considers her case a psychological disorder; Adebayo (2018) claims it is a result of cultural displacement; Nzezewa (2018) calls it mental illness; Bereola (2018) argues that her behavior is a traumatic effect of her parents’ separation; Ukwueze and Okolo (2021) claim that she is unable to achieve symbolic identification. Some other critics are undecided however, citing that the story has both cultural and psychological dimensions. Lemus (2021) says that Ada’s behavior is both a mental illness and a consequence of cultural dislocation. Wilkins (2018) says that the story fuses Nigerian traditional spirituality and western medicine. Ben-Iheanacho (2020) offers that the story is about recognizing and coming to terms with fragments of and multiple personalities, a story about contested containment. From the foregoing, it is obvious that there is something scandalous about the story. The novel certainly does not conform; it refuses conclusive reading and crosses known borders both in event and narration, which is why it is considered nomadic in the present study.

So the present study offers a panoramic view of the texts, offering a clearer understanding of the stories within which most other studies are encapsulated and reconfirmed. The discussion shows how the characters transcend and, sometimes, shift existing boundaries of subjectivity, sexuality, ethics etc. and how the narratives subvert the norms of textuality and narration. The focus of the stories, which is a critique of civilization, is reengaged as part of the constitutive temper of nomadism and border crossing. As a comparative study, the paper itself embodies the ideals of border crossing since finding a ground of intertextuality, which is a category of transtextuality in Genette‘s conception, entails crossing the boundaries of textuality. In other words, this study seeks the paths of textual transcendence which, Genette explains as “all that sets the text in a relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts” (83). This kind of textual extension guided by “an ideology of inclusion of the ‘Other’” (178) orients comparative study toward the nomadic sensibility.

2. Shifting and transcending boundaries

The first statement in Woolf‘s novel introduces the reader to a time and space where things are out of their usual place, out of proportion even: “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself” (35). As innocent as this opening line appears, it marks the beginning of a departure from the norm as well as its interrogation. Previously, “Lucy had her work cut out for her” but today, and probably henceforth, she is to do the work herself. The world we are introduced to, therefore, is one that has been unhinged from its mooring and it now roams, just like the first statement is unhinged from a speaker; it is afloat, being a free indirect discourse known to collapse the boundaries between narrator and character (MacKay 140). The immediately succeeding lines appropriate the word “unhinge” and further invite the reader to wander without reach through the metaphors of “unhinged door” and “Rumpelmayer’s men.” It reads, “The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men are coming” (35). It is not clear who these men are even though critics have made several hunches, the most prominent of which is that they are caterers (see Goldman 71; Hoff 79). However, we do not see the arrival of these caterers in the story. In fact, the second appearance of the phrase in the story is also in the company of the unhinged door, “doors off their hinges, Rumpelmayer’s men” (60). It is more suspended in this context, being within a parenthesis, which earns it suspicion as a possible metaphor. While the roaming in search of the meaning of the unhinged door and the Rumpelmayer’s men continues, the text significantly underlines its ruling consciousness, which is wandering and transcending of normative boundaries. In fact, the absence of the door, having been unhinged, signals unrestricted movement and boundlessness.

Similarly, the introductory sentence, also alone, of Freshwater strikes a first time reader: “The first time our mother came for us, we screamed.” It shocks to find out from the next sentence that the mother is a snake. The discovery opens another wonder: who are the “We” written on the top of the page as the narrator(s), the persons whose mother is contrary to what they expect? The scandal of the story is heightened by the resolution of this second question. To find out that the narrators are lost vagrant spirits inhabiting a young girl’s mind is to come face to face with the story’s departure from and disruption of the normal. Having affirmed itself as an incongruous story from this moment, the task would be to follow the logic of the narration which is itself upset by certain inconsistencies. For instance, the spirits claim they are “three” years old (1) but later said it is Ada (12). They separately identify as distinct beings with Ada as their human body, and as one with Ada. This cannot be considered an error but an index of the nomadic sensibility of the narration and properly of the first narrator(s). Furthermore, the narrator(s), “We” are simultaneously omniscient and limited in their view. For instance, they tell about how things have not been easy for Saachi at home (29) and everything that happens in the hospital even though Ada whom they inhabit does not follow her mother to the hospital. This gives them an air of omniscience. Conversely, when the nurse asks Saachi if everything was fine at home and she answered in the affirmative, the spirits claimed, “we do not know if she was lying … ” (31). This impression of limitedness contradicts not only their supposed omniscience but also the information about how things are for Saachi which they reiterate shortly afterward, “It’s like we said – things had not been easy for her” (31). Hence, the narrators refuse both fixed identity and commitment to their narration.

This wandering persists in the narrative viewpoint. The mixture of stream of consciousness and free indirect speech in Mrs Dalloway allows the narration to move unrestrainedly from one narrative point to another. The freedom that inheres in these narrative styles also resonates with free, unconstrained movement of thought and actions. The abrupt movement of attention from character to character without cues also points to the chaotic effect of nomadism. For instance, in the excerpt below, the narrator suddenly moves attention from Elizabeth’s thoughts and actions to Septimus’:

Calmly and competently, Elizabeth Dalloway mounted the West-minster omnibus.

Going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow, which now made the wall grey, now the bananas bright yellow, now made the strand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow, seemed to Septimus Warren Smith lying on the sofa in the sitting room; watching the watery gold glow and fade with astonishing sensibility of some live creature on the roses, on the wall-paper (135)

This change in narrative viewpoint is more evident in Emezi‘s novel. In fact, the story has three different narrators: We (Smoke and Shadow), Asughara and Ada, which leaves it in fragments. While Ada in her narration admits limited knowledge of the story (101), We and Asughara claim omniscience even though more facts obtainable in the narration and story expose their unreliability. Both narrators were born at different stages of Ada’s life, yet they claim first-hand knowledge of events of her life from the beginning of her birth. In fact, everything known about Ada’s birth is as narrated by “We” who also narrate that they were born/woken at Ada’s teen (20–22). Asughara in particular arrogantly admits, “I wasn’t born when Ada met Ewan, but I can tell the story anyway” (103). This threatens the textual decorum of the story and contradicts formal features of narratives. They further defy logic by claiming that until the awakening, “we stayed asleep with our eyes open” (6). These spirits who inhabit her mind are also confused and lost in her (5). They are not supposed to be stuffed in human flesh (22). Hence, apart from the story’s transition from one narrator to another, the narrators themselves are nomads.

This free movement also facilitates free association so that one subject can be identified in terms of another. In the final analysis, there is no boundary of individuation; everything becomes everything else. Clarissa for instance has been seen in terms of Septimus especially with regard to her identification with him at the party on hearing about his death. Edmondson considers these intersubjectivities as well as other unusual narrative strategies in the novel as “not only anomalous but also a radical challenge to the assumptions about typical narrative practice” (20). This is to say that the story’s narration and characterization defy norms. In addition to Clarissa’s association with Septimus, there is more to the indelible memory of each other she shares with Peter Walsh. The narrative voice, which is both her thought and an omniscient narrator, reports,

but somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to its bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself. (39)

The excerpt above evinces that Clarissa and Peter Walsh do not just have a shared past that impinges on the present but that Clarissa considers Peter a part of herself. She identifies not only with Peter Walsh but also with the entire universe. She is therefore a typical nomad for being that “’expansive self’ … absorbing other characters and the cosmos” (MacKay 150) thereby transcending existing borders of individuality. This flexibility and ability to enter into and identify as another makes her lack a fixed identity, which is why she is variously Clarissa and Mrs Dalloway. In addition, the fact of the individual containing the social anticipates the triumph of the self over society. In other words, the social conventions and norms which hold a society together are given up in exchange for unrestrained selfish desires. Nomadic consciousness signals the decline of society, which connects it to postmodern ideals.

In Freshwater, boundaries are not just blurred but conveniently crossed. There is no clear-cut border between the realm of the spirits and humans. In fact, the spirits dwelling in Ada participate in and motivate most of her outer actions. Though they live in the marbles of her mind, the Ada visits this space and engages them in conversations. The spirits also possess human emotions. They have skin, feel pain and cry (141). These are, therefore, not the usual kind of spirits real humans share knowledge of. It can be said that her mind is peopled by different subjectivities. Though Shadow and Smoke identify as one, they have distinct characters. Then Asughara and St. Vincent want and feel different things. All these various subjectivities converge in Ada. In other words, Ada is a conglomeration of different consciousness. Her sectioning also creates various versions of her. The narrator shares that:

The Ada could look back on her life and see, like clones, several of her standing there in a line. This terrified her, because if there were so many of her, then which one was she? Were they false and her current self real, or was her current self false and it was one of the others, lost in the line, who was the real Ada? (229)

This multitude and confusion of self raises Ada beyond a fixed personality. She is a neither-nor. She is a liminal being, a thoroughgoing nomad. Leshi also shares an intersubjective intimacy with Ada. According to the spirit narrators, “he reached inside us, through us, and he pulled the Ada out into the light” (236). This transgression of border is also significant because it marks the beginning of Ada’s self-discovery and salvation. His ability to cross the border of subjectivity opens the gate for an epistemological border crossing.

The mobility of the nomad is also realized physically in the stories. The major characters in both stories, Septimus, Peter Walsh, Elizabeth and Clarissa; Saachi and Ada are physically in transit in most part of the story. The characters in Mrs Dalloway variously walk around the streets of London, sometimes aimlessly like in the case of Elizabeth who chooses to be on the move instead of going home (132). Saachi and Ada move to and from Melaka, London, Umuahia, Aba, Saudi, Virginia, Louisiana, Denmark, New Jersey, Texas, Georgia Sweden, Germany, Malaysia, Addis Ababa etc. Ada’s travels are almost instinctive. She cannot stay at one place just as she cannot stay with one man. This mobile nature corroborates her identity as a fluid figure, the source of all freshwater (249). As fluid characters therefore, Clarissa and Ada are evidently nomadic in nature and propagate the nomadic consciousness that orients the stories.

In their wandering aptitude, the nomadic entertain the forbidden and appear queer. Although subtle, some characters in the novels entertain queer passions, which consists of the crossing of sexual borders. Clarissa’s reception of the kiss from Sally is a return of the repressed lesbian passion in her. She considers the kiss the most exquisite moment of her life, and she spends a lot of time reminiscing about it (58). In fact, the event is recollected through her memory because it has a significant impact on her. Sally herself is presented as a transgressor, one who is not bound by codes. For instance, she is said to have shocked everybody by running along the passage naked (57), but she does not mind. She also smokes and involves herself in careless, unlady-like activities such as cycling. In other words, she is evidently a border crosser. But Clarissa maintains a double standard despite her latent queer desires. In fact, her continued unprovoked denial of having a romantic feeling for Sally points to her attempt to cover up this transgressive inclination. Further on the sexual border crossing, Septimus’ “supreme secret” which haunts his life has been argued to be his romantic love for his dead friend and colleague, Evans (Barrett 152–3). His refusal to impregnate his wife also shows his displeasure with familial and sexual norms. Ellie Henderson also appears queer for her constant reference to a woman, Edith, who though not with her at the party is referred to as the one whom she hopes to tell everything she witnessed (157–9, 176). Hugh makes the first reference to her in the story as an alternative to Sally (87). One therefore hazards that there is something Edith and Sally share in common but Edith being an “Honourable” with a name is preferred. This common feature is lesbian passion, which explains the bond Ellie shares with her.

Ada’s lesbian passion and other perversions are preceded by an important border crossing that simultaneously deterritorialises her and the spirits in her. Soren’s forceful penetration of Ada is a significant trespassing, a border crossing that activates further crossing. With the rape, Ada becomes a host to another two spirits, Asughara and Vincent; one a beast, the other a saint. Asughara causes her to engage in illicit and unrestrained sex while Vincent imbues same-sex desire in her. Although she “liked being seen as a boy” and could move “between boy and girl, which was freedom” (133), Ada begins to date women from this moment. Donyen is one of the women she dated, and like all her relationships, it is short-lived for she cannot be tied to one person. Her lesbian passion eventually makes her cut off her breast in order to appear less feminine. The removal is also a way of deterritorializing her given that the spirits in her want her to become less human. The new identity she takes as she reterritorialises smacks of nomadism. She discovers that she is queer and fluid: “it was difficult to accept not being human but still being contained in a human body. … Ogbanje are as liminal as is possible – spirit and human, both and neither. I am here and not here, real and not real, energy pushed into skin and bone. I am my others; we are one and we are many” (248). Like Clarissa, Ada achieves a self-realization as an absorptive self, one who is everything and nothing, a nomad.

3. Against borders and containment

The nomadic consciousness is opposed to and critical of all strategies of fixation, of absoluteness and normativity. Given that civilization fixes subjectivity and circumcises their potential, the nomad struggles against this sensibility that contradicts its orientation. Hence, a story informed by nomadic consciousness will always mock society and social institutions through beaming lights on the “lack in the Other” (Lacan 221), the weakness in the law that organizes society. Emphasizing this lack in the law and its institutions facilitates and rationalizes transgression. The ultimate aim therefore is unrestrained border crossing.

Time is a fundamental fiction instituted and sustained by norm, and a conspicuous presence in Mrs Dalloway. Richter has critically given significance to the canonical hours highlighted in the narrative and claimed that it orders the story (239). Conversely, evidence from the story shows that time is actually an element of human constriction against which the story stands. Time is raised and subdued in the story. The narration blurs the boundaries of past and present as a way of defying time. The hours and the chiming Big Ben and other clocks even though recognized do not influence the lives of the characters. While they may note the hours and the bell ringing, they do not take any action indicative of the guide of time. For instance, the striking sound of Big Ben does not affect the interaction between Peter Walsh and Elizabeth (67) neither does it affect Clarissa as she sits ever so worried and annoyed in her drawing room (119). The characters do not even acknowledge the sounds of the clock, of time. Instead, Clarissa makes a direct interrogation of the rationale behind the fiction of time and human subscription to Big Ben, “The leaden circles dissolved in the air” which is a metaphor for time: “Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh” (36). It is significant that this transgressive thought occurs to her while she is in motion, for the thought itself is nomadic; it challenges existing ideology. Her “crossing Victoria Street” at the same time she entertains this transgressive thought is symbolic of her crossing the limits of norm.

Temporality gets conflated in Freshwater so that the past refuses to detach itself from the present thereby forging a future of uncertainty. The story is as much of Ada as it is of the spirits who are deterritorialized. They are sent into the world from the realm of the spirits but without locking the gates of their past. Hence, the past continues to impinge on their present. In other words, they do not conform to the human time; they transgress time borders. Inside their host, they say, they could have become one with her but for the past that clings to them: “We should have blended into the Ada when she was born, but instead there was a stretch of emptiness between us, bitter like kola, a sweep of nothing. A space like that has no place in a mind” (39). This is the case because behind them, the gates were left unlocked whereas they ought to be “sealed afterward, because the gates stink of knowledge, they cannot be left swinging wide like a slack mouth, leaking mindlessly (36). Their alien sense of time, which the spirits admit is different (23), influences and largely determines the events in the human world of the story. This way, the sense of time in the human world is subverted and rendered impotent. But not even the control of the spirits’ temporality survived to the end. The spirit of the Ala, the python takes over Ada and she attains a liminal position that places her outside and beyond time. In declaring, “I am the source of the spring” Ada ceases to be bound by time for the spring has neither beginning nor end.

Septimus’ death in Mrs Dalloway has an ambivalent significance. While it denotes a crossing of the bounds of existence, a transgression characteristic of the nomadic, it also offers a critique of civilization, which the Medicare home in which he is confined represents. As noted by the narrator, “death was defiance” (169). It is a form of deterritorialization whereby Septimus relocates his tent, having considered the former territory unfavorable. Of course, his suicide is blamed on the inhumanity of the home and Dr Holmes whose insistence on proportion is paradoxically out of proportion. Dr Holmes and his home where “unsocial impulses” are “held in control” (108) represent civilization. Septimus frequently complains that Dr Holmes was on him and the only chance was to escape. The demand of civilization on him was unbearable: “the whole world was clamouring: kill yourself, kill yourself for our sakes” (101). The death required of the subject by civilization is the death of desire, of self, so as to let society thrive. This is the death that is metaphorized in psychoanalysis as castration. Freud calls this metaphorical death “a shared sacrifice” and “a societal entry fee’ (12). It entails being attached and limited. This is why the moment Septimus begins to detach from the crowd and refuses the burden of social containment, he is considered mad, different and alone. The narrator notes that he is “quite alone, condemned, deserted … straying at the edge of the world, this outcast, who gazed back at the inhabited regions, who lay, like a drowned sailor, on the shore of the world” (101). This metaphoric progression of narrative merely accentuates Septimus’ nomadic nature as “the other.” His suicide therefore is a revolt against the constriction of civilization and by extension a manifestation of the lack in the Other, the weakness of civilization.

In Freshwater, the failure of the therapist to find neither explanation nor cure for Ada’s problem is a mockery of civilized medicine. It is strange that the spirits who cause her problems defy and frustrate the efforts. It is more ironic and critical of medicine that Ada is born of a medical doctor and a nurse yet she finds herself in this mysterious space in which she is considered mad. Ada herself majors in biology (52). Despite the knowledge associated with their training on life and health sciences, they are unable to solve the riddle of her life and health. Eventually, it is Leshi, not because of any formal training, who gives insight into the nature of her problem and leads her to the verge of self-discovery. The implication of this is that formal medical education and practice are undermined as a reaction against civilization, which constitutes it.

Marriage is another strategy of containment, particularly of human desire, that receives criticism and rethinking in the two stories. Sally and Clarissa, we are told in a passing, “spoke of marriage always as a catastrophe” (57) and Peter Walsh also thought marriage the worse thing for some women (62). Beyond these remarks, the sacred institution of marriage is threatened and its hole revealed in the story. The continuous presence of Peter Walsh in Clarissa’s life and her entertaining his intruding presence is a danger to her marriage. This threat is heightened by the weak foundation and poor romantic life of Clarissa and her husband, Richard. Even though married, the couple do not share anything and are independent of each other (38). Richard equally finds it difficult to express love to the wife. This conjoined with the dry and loveless marriage of Septimus and Lucrezia mocks the institution of marriage in which humanity is bound by contract. The spirit of nomadism that guides the narrative orients this nonconforming perspective on strategies of bordering.

In Freshwater, marriage is also held in contempt. There is a rising tension in Saachi and Saul’s marriage, which eventually causes it to crash through separation. The fact that they neither reconciled nor remarried reveals the story’s disregard for marriage. In fact, marriage is presented as a limiting factor, in the absence of which Saachi becomes free and is able to achieve the best in her career, traveling around the world and living an unrestrained life. Unlike in some narratives that extol marriage and therefore present the unmarried or divorced as unfortunate, the story rewrites this myth, and demystifies the sacredness of marriage and its necessity. Ada and Ewan also have a failed marriage. All Ada’s romantic relationships that ought to get her committed and bound are fleeting. In her case, she is never to marry nor procreate, being liminal. Hence, marriage as a strategy of containment, as a delimiting border is thrashed so that the individuals can associate freely.

The two novels also present a derogatory image of religion, another structure of containment in human subjectivity. Doris Kilman is the ridiculously religious character in Mrs Dalloway. She has a sense of entitlement, which makes her ungrateful, jealous and bitter. The irony of her embodying religiosity lies in the obvious animosity she bears against her boss, Mrs Dalloway and other ladies of honor. In fact, she earnestly desires to hurt Clarissa. She once thought; “if only she could make her [Clarissa] weep; ruin her; humiliate her; bring her to her knees crying, You are right! But thus was God’s will, not Miss Kilman’s. It was to be a religious victory. So she glared; so she glowered” (125). That she bears this resentment for Mrs Dalloway is bad enough and that she does so in God’s name and behalf is ridiculous and satiric of religion. In Freshwater, religion, particularly Christianity is defeated. In the struggle over Ada’s mind, Yshwa, who is the image of Christ, loses to Asughara and eventually to Ala. Asughara refuses to let Ada do His will, and He is unable to change that (217). The priest is also presented as someone that contradicts the vow of chastity. Although he only kisses Ada, we are told that he has a lover in Paris (234). However, his being in the same hotel with Ada and staying comfortable with Ada naked on his body is scandalous. These undersides of religion follow from nomadic consciousness’s effort to undermine structures of bordering.

The symbol of authority that perpetuates civilization and institutions of containment, the Prime Minister, who also represents traditional values, receives a demeaning presentation, which signifies the dissatisfaction with civilization that orients the story. The majesty of the Prime Minister is vividly portrayed initially, when everyone and everything stood still in awe of his assumed presence in the royal car which Watkiss humorously called “The Proime Minister’s kyar” (43). Ironically, his confirmed bodily presence is not recognized among those at the party. According to the narrator,

One couldn’t laugh at him. He looked so ordinary. You might have stood him behind a counter and bought biscuits – poor chap, all rigged up in gold lace. And to be fair, as he went his rounds, first with Clarissa, then with Richard escorting him, he did it very well. He tried to look somebody. It was amusing to watch. Nobody looked at him. They just went on talking, yet it was perfectly plain that they all knew, felt to the marrow of their bones, this majesty passing; this symbol of what they all stood for, English society. (159-60)

He looks ordinary and tries to be somebody because the social imaginary that constitutes the foundation of his essence and significance has been weakened by the wave of nomadism. Peter Walsh’s reference to him comes off as mocking and derogatory. This shows the antisocial attitude and lawlessness that underlie the nomadic spirit.

In Freshwater, Ada’s behavior is symptomatic of “superegoic lawlessness” (McGowan). She does not conform to the codes of symbolic authority. In addition to the absence of law in her life, the usual hierarchy of authority is inverted in the story. Saul, the man, would ordinarily be the phallic symbol and the representative of the name-of-the-father as conceived in psychoanalysis. Conversely, Saul holds no significant place of authority in the children’s life. Saul is absent in the children’s life, and is considered blind by the spirits who said, “the children were always more Saachi’s than his” (30). Saachi is the one whose rules cannot be broken in the house (24). This subversion of hierarchy of authority reaches its apex in the fact that Ada does not accede to any law, not even her mother’s. In the end, Ada only identifies with the imperative for transgression figured in the python.

The nomadic spirit, which pervades Woolf‘s story accounts for the metaphorical doors opening and people spilling out. Clarissa is surprised to find out that “everybody was going out. What with these doors being opened, and the descent and the start, it seems as if the whole of London were embarking in little boats moored to the bank, tossing on the waters, as if the whole place were floating off in carnival” (154). The subjects are shown to have given up on fixity and decide to move, to cross borders. There is no faithfulness to civilization, which is built through work. It therefore makes sense that all the fuss in the story is about party, and not work. Partying, which entails revelry and lack of commitment, attracts everybody including the so-called symbol of civilization, the Prime Minister. The story’s beginning on the note of preparation for party and ending with party, not for any purpose but just for the fun of it, signals a world that has lost its solemnness. No one cares to know why the party is being organized, but everyone subscribes to the holiday it offers, a holiday that smacks of free-spiritedness. Similarly, Ada arrogates the power of control to herself in the end. She crosses from humanity to liminality. While it seems she has acceded to the power of the python, she actually appropriates the power of the python. Until the moment of this usurpation, “all freshwater comes out of the mouth of a python” (10). But henceforth, she declares with a note of finality, having taking over the narrating voice, “all freshwater comes out of my mouth” (249). This is a rebellious act of taking dominion and crumbling all other external structures of signification. Hence, meaning proceeds from her; she becomes detached from any other authority and attains transcendence.

4. Conclusion

Since stagnancy consists in conformity and fixity, the nomadic spirit is the basis of creativity, of innovation. The nomadic formative of these discourses imbues them with the features that properly characterize language art especially of the post/modern turn namely, the ugly, scandalous, the impossible (Foucault 327). Bearing in mind that literature is a cultural production, which implies that it is influenced by and influences culture, this kind of transgression of cultural borders as witnessed in the two novels introduces new cultures such as a postmodern culture. This is the case Schimanski and Wolfe make, “People engaged in cultural production can negotiate borders by providing new visions of what they may be or even what borders should not or cannot be. Their cultural and aesthetic practices can disrupt expectations of what borders are through the creation of imagined borderlands” (39). This is another way of conceiving deterritorialization as contemporary with reterritorialisation, for every debordering is already a rebordering; even liminality is a space already. The two novels achieve this disruption and creation of alternative spaces through interrogating existing borders. The postmodern sensibility disposes with normative paradigms and convictions, and inscribes a temper of free transient associations. This sensibility pervades the novels as this study demonstrates. In their subversion of established knowledge and norms, the novels announce the prevailing consciousness of nomadism, which consist in transgression and border crossing. By redeeming themselves as narrative discourses oriented by the same formative (nomadic consciousness) despite their authorial, spatial and temporal differences, nomadic consciousness is also proven to obtain beyond borders.

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Ogochukwu Ukwueze

Ogochukwu Ukwueze teaches literary theory and criticism at the Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He works on Literature and Popular Culture with research interests in psychoanalysis, disability studies, subjectivity, postmodernism, queer theory, migration/border and humor. Contact @ [email protected]