‘Better left unsaid’: Debunking the myth of the author in Somerset Maugham’s Cakes and Ales

Cette communication a été filmée dans le cadre du colloque international  "Writers in Neo-Victorian Fiction" organisé par l'équipe anglophone ERIBIA le 11 octobre 2019 à la Maison de la Recherche en Sciences Humaines de l'Université Caen Normandie, sous la responsablilité d'Armelle Parey (ERIBIA, Caen) et Charlotte Wadoux (19-21, Paris 3).

Julie Depriester is a PhD candidate at the Université d’Artois. She researches the themes of escape, confrontation with the other, and self-discovery in the works of John Fowles.

Abstract

Published in 1930,Cakesand Ale bySomerset Maugham (1874-1965) is arguably one of the earliestneo-Victorian novels. The story revolves around flashbacks of EdwardDriffield, a recently deceased Victorian author, who is partly basedon Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)—his love of cycling and famousknickerbockers, the outrage at Jude,Victorian provincialism are rewritten in the novel. But the novelistis given new fictional life here. Alroy Kear, a fictionalrepresentation of Hugh Walpole (1884-1941), and author of theprojected life of Driffield, insists that everything should not betold in the biography: ‘I do think there’s a certain amountthat’s better left unsaid’. Then, in a passage that prefiguresthe self-reflexivity of postmodernism, the narrator, Ashenden—moreor less based on Maugham himself, therefore voicing the author’sown viewpoint—expands on the value of the first-person narrative,used in the novel itself, raising questions of reliability. Besides,the notoriety of the novelists is also called attention to, thecritics’ opinion being contrasted to personal feelings.

 Asa consequence, the representation of the three author-characters isabove all a means to deconstruct the myth surrounding the figure ofthe writer. Indeed, the reader is led to question what makes thereputation and worth of an author, as Maugham proposes a criticalassessment of the process of idealization of the Victorian authorfigure, from the brief temporal distance of some forty years.