Jack Maggs Dissertation

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Introduction

A postcolonial approach of the rewriting of Peter CareysJack Maggs (1997) to Charles Dickenss

Great Expectations (1861)

Postcolonial studies consist of a fairly new approach of re-readings of colonial and imperial

literature, thus examining the relation between the European nations the centerand their former

colonies the marginas outlined by Said. At the height of the British Empire many Victorian

novelists, Thackeray, Eliot, Gaskell, Bronte and Dickens, to mention a few, favored this as a useful

narrative device. For the British public the access to textual descriptions of the margin were easier

to get a hold of than firsthand knowledge, as a result the marginal colonies and its marginalized

people were often established through literary representations than reality.

However, in modern times there have been an insistent and need for postcolonial authors to write

back to colonial writers of history, that have portrayed marginalized people as the Otheras

savages and barbaric to the civilized and reasonable Selfof the colonizer. Thus, it becomes

crucial for postcolonial writers to resist and correct the myths created by colonial writers. Some of

the recent examples of re-working of Victorian novels have beenA Tempest (1969) to The Tempest

(1611),Things Fall Apart (1958) toHeart of Darkness (1902),Foe (1986) toRobinson Crusoe

(1719), and Wide Sargasso Sea(1966) toJane Eyre (1847), which is perhaps the best known

example of re-writing to date. What is essential in works of re-writing is the emphasis displacing

the center to the margin, in order to dismantle authority. Thus, the notion of rewriting is a way of

writing back to use Salman Rushdies phrase The empire writes back with a vengeance. 1

Similarly, the novel chosen for this paper, a fairly recent example, address these questions with a

political agenda as well, that is Peter CareysJack Maggs(1997) a re-writing of Charles Dickenss

Great Expectations. (1861) As the approach of this paper is postcolonial, focus is placed on Peter

CareysJack Maggs, thus Great Expectationswill function as a sub-text in relation to the

investigations of this paper.

While Great Expectations is a classic of the dominant ideas found within canonical texts by first-

person narration, the contemporary novelist Carey challenges this narrative structure. InJack

MaggsCarey re-tells the story of the convict Magwitch by taking up the last part of Dickenss

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novel. Careys novel begins when the convict, in the name of Jack Maggs, after having served his

time in Australia comes back to England, to see his adopted and financed son Henry Pipps. The

novel is thus the telling of why and how Maggs became a convict sent to Australia in Dickens

Great Expectations, thus giving him a voice and placing him at the center of the novel, like that of

the Englishman Pip.

Similar to Great Expectations in which Pips story is the coming-of-age,Jack Maggsis also a

bildungsroman, in that the hero Jack Maggs, frees himself from his emotional attachment and

relationship to his mother country, and conversely, accepts his home in Australia and embrace his

hybrid identity, which is the result of two cultures. Carey offers an alternative version rather than

provide it with a mere continuation as sequels usually do. Postcolonial re-writings challenge the

narrative authority and is thus able to challenge the power that was once synonymous with

colonialism - the metropolitan centre. Carey literally exemplifies this phenomenon by featuring a

dishonest novelist, Tobias Oates, in the allusion of Dickens, who gives the world an inaccurate view

of the convict in his fictional novel called The Death of Jack Maggs. By challenging the writing

process of authorship, Carey puts the source-text into perspective as one version of the truth

amongst possible others in order to make space for writings of alternative versions. In a very

postmodern matter, Peter Carey challenges any claim to the truth. He points to his readers that

(re)writing including his own,Jack Maggs, means producing another ideological discourse, nor

more but no less valid than the previous text.

Now, it seems obvious to ask why I have chosen to include Great Expectationsas a sub-text toJack

Maggs. SinceJack Maggsis an independent work, why not only focus on that work. However,

when we readJack Maggscomparatively to Great Expectations, we are able to recognize the

cultural form by studying the power relation between the hegemony culture in Britain and the

subordinate culture in Australia. Thus, we see how Dickens construct and practice Western culturalnorms in Great Expectations, by presenting Australia negatively. This for one allows the reader to

imagine that a second chance in life for the lowest type of renegades is only possible in Australia.

Secondly, that it is a place where one can financially prosper. Thus, Australia is imagined as a place

of criminals and money, which does not make a good combination. However, when we readJack

Maggscomparatively to Dickens story, we are told the stories which Dickens left out. The most

strikingly example is when Maggs accounts for his time in Australia, where he was whipped and

treated like a dog. The fact that Dickens left out this kind of information in his novel shows the


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imperial domination through literature. What is worse is that when Dickens as an influential author

portrays Australia and Magwitch as subordinate and negative, readers will most likely take Dickens

information of Australia and their citizens as knowledge. Thus, maintaining the power relations

between the empire and its colony through imperial practice in literature. Equally, Careys rewriting

of Great Expectations is a resistance of an alternative way of conceiving human history. Thus,

this leads to the research question for this paper.

How and why does Peter Carey rewrite the history of Magwitch in Jack Maggs from

a postcolonial perspective?

In order to investigate this question we need to develop a set of sub-questions. First we need to

examine the character Magwitch from the pre-text Great Expectations. How does Dickens generate

sympathy for Magwitch in Great Expectations? How does Dickens make us withhold sympathy for

Magwitch? It is only in light of our understanding of Dickens Magwitch that one is able to fully

understand the psychological impacts of colonialism on the subject of Jack Maggs. Thus, how does

Carey criticize Dickens through Oates? The argument for this research paper is the following:

In Jack Maggs, Carey rewrites the history of Magwitch by combining a form that

both mimics Dickenss style and subverts his authoritative narrative device in order to criticize

what Carey sees as the unscrupulous writing process of the colonial world by the Victorian

author, thereby expanding our sympathy for the former convict as part victim of Empire, in

relation to political enterprises.


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Theory

In order to examine these questions a comprehensive study of postcolonial theories needs to be

explored, hence it is highly essential to outline the postcolonial concepts from The Empire Writes

Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial Literature (2ed. 2002) by Bill Aschroft, Gareth Griffiths

and Helen Tiffin, three Australian critics who have been leading academics in commonwealth

literary studies. The title of their book, as previously stated, is from a phrase by Rushdies comment

The Empire writes back to the centre. Their work is valuable in relation to discussions of

important questions that arise when reading and writing/rewriting postcolonial texts. Additionally, I

have incorporated other studies of these three Australian writers as well, that of The Post-Colonial

Studies ReaderandPost-Colonial studies: Key Concepts, one being a collection of numerous post-

colonial critics and the latter, a great tool for theoretical concepts within postcolonial studies.

Secondly, the theoretical work of Edward Saids Culture and Imperialism (1993), which is a

response to the criticism he received from his first book Orientalism, because of his generalizing

claims about the West and East.However, in this work his message is that imperialism is not just a

moment in history, but that it is a continuing interdependent discourse between the subject people

and the dominant discourse of the empire. Similarly, Homi K.Bhabhas essay, Of mimicry andMan: The ambivalence of colonial discourse, from The Location of Culture(1994), also engage

with the relationship between colonizer and colonized, though it is much more complex in that

Bhabha is concerned with psychoanalysis influenced by Freud and Lacan. Both Saids and

Bhabhas theory derive from post structuralism, thus the tools they offer draw attention to texts as

unstable and always shifting. Bhabhas psychoanalysis is highly concerned with the notion of

nations, much inspired by Benedict Andersons key concepts ofImagined Communities: Reflections

on The Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983,) that all communities and nations are imagined,

because its members never actually perceive or meet each other because, however, they imagine the

same reality through readings of newspapers and participation in shared experiences.

Taking these aspects into consideration, a very valuable literary work is John Thiemes Post-

Colonial Con-Texts: Writing Back to the Canon(2004), in which he uses the con-texts as counter-

discourse and pre-texts for their canonical counter-parts. Thus, my discussion of the novel is partly

appreciative to Thiemes close analysis of the literary con-text and inter-text, Great Expectations

andJack Maggs. Thiemes criticism is that he mentions the difficulty of claiming Dickens simply


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From this point, Careys political agenda in his postmodern and postcolonial narratives differs from

that of many of the traditional views portrayed by his contemporaries. Thus, Carey seeks in his

novels to place responsibility and guilt of the nightmare the British have been responsible for.

Cartography

Cartography is the map and mapping, both literally and metaphorically, of the dominant practice of

colonial cultures. The process of imperial control and discovery of foreign land, is the centrality of

constructions of maps, thus it becomes [] textualizingthe spatial reality of the other, naming or,

in almost all cases, renaming, spaces in symbolic and literal act of mastery and control.14The

colonized lands were re-written to shape the ideology of the European cartographer and explorer.

This was one of the essentialist features of colonialism, yet it was not only restricted to unknown

territories. For instance, most of the native Irish, Gaelics, culture have literally been overwritten by

English imperialism. The blank space, referred as terra nullius (no mans land) or tabula rasa

(blank mind)accordingly becomes an open space for European imagination. Simultaneously, it also

encouraged cultural rewritings and drawings of the indigenous, as cannibals, savages, and monster-

like, thus prior knowledge, language and culture of indigenous people were almost completely

ignored and silenced by the cartographers.

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The Theoretical Framework of Edward Said

Edward Said is one of the founding figures in postcolonial studies, and is perhaps best known for

his work Orientalism(1979). In his second work Culture and Imperialism (1993),which is a

response to the criticism from his first book, Said is concerned with the fact that much criticism

despite its theoretical approach does not engage with the authors structure of attitude and

reference16to the colonial world in great English novels. Said emphasizes how much more

importance there is than the slight references to the colonial world in great literature. This is what

Said calls contrapuntal reading which is a way of reading texts of English literatures that reveal

their implications in imperialism and colonial process. As we look back at the cultural archive, we

begin to reread it not univocally, butcontrapuntally, with a simultaneous awareness both of the

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metropolitan history that is narrated and those other histories against which (and together with

which) the dominating discourse acts. 17

For instance, when Dickens refers to sugar plantations or

transportation of criminals to the colonies, he is, implicitly, revealing the attitude and the process of

a certain life style in England. Thus, Said argues that the formation of the English society and

culture is very much grounded on the ideology of imperialism.18

According to Said, influence is very much grounded in the history of ideas and the study of

cultures. In studying the relationship between the West and its dominating cultures, we not only

understand the unequal relationship, but also the construction and meaning of Western cultural

practice. Said argues that we need to take into account the inequality of power relations between

West and the non-West in order for us to understand cultural forms in novels, poems, historical

discourses or other works, where this inequality strives. Simultaneously, revealing how much the

stronger culture overlaps and also depends on the marginal culture.19

With the developing of postcolonial studies, Westerners have realized that what they used to say

about the history and culture of the subordinate people are being challenged by those very people

themselves. Although this is not a generalizing critique of all westerners, in that there were, Said

points out, many efforts of great and stunning achievement made of the world outside Europe

known by Western scholars, historians, artists, philosophers and so on.20

Nevertheless, with

postcolonial literature the Westerners have been confronted in seeing themselves not only as a

sovereign but also as a culture and race accused of crimes of violence and suppression. Resistance

therefore is an alternative way of conceiving human history.21

Said suggest, If, for example, French and Algerian or Vietnamese history, Caribbean or African or

Indian and British history are studied separately rather than together, then the experience of

domination and being dominated remain artificially, and falsely, separated.22Thus, it is important

to examine the imperial domination, from one aspect, and resistance to it, from another aspect, as a

dual process towards de-colonization, and then independence.23

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The Theoretical Framework of Homi K.Bhabha

Homi K. Bhabha is also one of the leading postcolonial theorists and critics. In TheLocation of

Culture (1994),Bhabha builds on Saids concept of the Other.However, he differs from Saids

strong focus on binary oppositions. Bhabha observes that the colonized person has two distinct

views of the world. One is the world of the colonizer and the other of the colonized subject

himself/herself. Thus, Bhabha questions which culture the colonized person belongs to. At first,

neither cultures feels like home, and it is this feeling of unhomelinessor uncanniness borrowed

from Freuds concept of unheimlich that Bhabha believes the colonized engages in, a sense of

double consciousness.24In Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,an essay

from the same book,Bhabha refers to Jacques Lacans idea of mimicry, thereby relating his theory

to psychoanalysis,

Mimicry reveals something in so far as it is distinct from what might be called an

itself that is behind. The effect of mimicry is camouflage It is not a question of

harmonizing with the background, but against a mottled background, of becoming

mottled exactly like the technique of camouflage practiced in human warfare. 25

Mimicry in colonial literature is often seen when a member of a colonized society, for instance,

Indians and Africans, imitate the language, dress, politic, and cultural attitude of their colonizers,

for instance, the British or the French. Thus, mimicry is when one copies the person in power,

because one hopes to have access to that same power oneself. However, when copying another

persons pattern of behavior one has to intentionally suppress ones own cultural identity. In some

cases the colonized subject or immigrant living in a foreign place becomes so confused by the

encountering dominant culture, that there may not be a preexisting identity to suppress.26

According to Bhabha, mimicry reveals the ambivalence of colonial discourse. For instance, when

the colonized mimics the colonizer, the colonized forces the colonizer to see himself as an Object,

because through colonial power the colonizer have constructed and represented the colonized and

its culture as Object and Other. Mimicry therefore, Bhabha claims, proves to be an effective

strategy for power and knowledge to the colonized. However, it can also be a threat, a menace, for

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the colonized, in that, The menace of mimicry is its double vision which in disclosing the

ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts authority.27

The ambivalence of the mimicking man

is contradictive in that he simultaneously reinforces the colonial authority and disturbs it. Thus,

mimicry is deceptive by nature and serves as partial presence which is the basis of mimicry. As it

is merely a resemblance of something and holds no essence in itself, it is therefore also the most

terrifying thing to behold.28 It is terrifying because the colonized man will realize that his

deceptive life cannot last and often, his traumatic experience of subjugation brings him to take on a

quest for a hybrid identity. Bhabha claims that there are two ways of considering mimicry, What

emerges between mimesis and mimicry is writing, a mode of representation, that marginalizes the

monumentality of history, quite simply mocks its power to be a model, that power which

supposedly makes it imitable. Mimicry repeatsrather than re-presents [].29This proves to be

effective for postcolonial writers, because by imitating the colonial authors, they are able to

demonstrate the deceptiveness of their artistic models and thereby dismantle the colonial authors

authoritative power of colonial practice within Western literature. Yet, on an unconsciousness level

mimicry also reveals the ambivalence towards colonial discourse. Here, Bhabha quotes Freud to

stress his idea,30

Their mixed and split origin is what decides their fate. We may compare them with

individuals of mixed race who taken all round resemble white men but who betray

their coloured descent by some striking feature or other and on that account are

excluded and enjoy none of the privileges.31

Thus, mimicry proves to be powerful in realizing ones self and eventually leads to an awareness

of the hybridity of the colonized, that ones identity is not fixed as represented and constructed

through imperialism. Similarly, ambivalence is a way of reading hybridity in a text that allows for

the possibility of textual resistance, because it creates these in-between spaces, which proves tobe a strategy for selfhood and truth.

32Bhabha calls this the Third Space where people in

acceptance of an hybrid identity are free to negotiate and interpret their cultural identities through

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reject Biddy and Joe. Thus, we find Maggss mimicry of behavior in which he has suppressed his

Australian cultural identity, in order to become like the colonizers the British.

Furthermore, Carey shows in Maggs obsessive blind love to England, the same tendency found inmodern day Australian identity. That is, as previously mentioned, Carey has stated that his

generations of Australians grew up with an ignorance of the history of Aboriginals, mistakenly

thinking that they did not fight for their country. Thus rejecting a nation they did not feel the need

to be proud of, and seeking a parental acceptance in England. Similarly, it is only when Mercy

emphasizes the positive nature of his relations in Australia, his two sons They walk along the

street, they think they see your face in the clouds.113That he comes to realize that he can actually

lead a successful live there with his family, thus finally making his own decision to return to New

South Wales,

There were, as in all crooked business, two sets of books, and had Jack Maggs seen

the second set he might have recognized scenes (or fragments) more familiar to him: a

corner of a house by London Bridge, a trampled body in a penal colony. But even here

the scenes were never very clear. For the writer was stumbling through the dark of the

convicts past, groping in the shadows, describing what was often a mirror held up to

his own turbulent and fearful soul.114

Carey argues with Maggss return to Australia, that the country can be transformed from a place of

banishment into a literal and imaginative home, even for those who suffered physical and

physiological tortures of penal oppression and that settler colonies should not be seen as an

obstacle, but rather as an open door of opportunity. However, if we compare Dickens ending with

Magwitch to the ending ofJack Maggs, Magwtich was denied the return and acceptance of the

English society, Careys ending offers the status quo, in that once a criminal is deported to the penal

colony it is difficult, if not impossible to come back to the English community and lead a fruitful

life. While Careys Magwitch is given a second chance in life, Dickenss Magwitch is punished

with death. The fact still remains that Carey appropriates the same denial of the English community

as an imaginative home for the former convict. If this is the case, then how can the former colonizer

and colonized subject establish a mutually respectful relationship in a postcolonial world, which is

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the essence for postcolonial criticism? Careys novel is an attempt to reevaluate the convict

experience and its contributions to the countrys history.

Careys criticism of Dickens through Tobias Oates

In Careys novel there is a struggle of power to enunciate, between Jack Maggs and the novelist,

Tobias Oates. The character of Oates has quite a few elements from Charles Dickens real life. First,

the account of Oates and his life Tobias Oates was twenty-four years old, and for twelve months

past he had been the head of a family which now consisted of his wife, Mary, his son, John, and his

wifes younger sister, Elizabeth.115Secondly, Oatess sexual relationship to his wifes sister, who

dies having an illicit abortion.Dickens was passionately fond of his sister-in-law, Mary Hogart

[]116Moreover, Oates writes [] a painful letter informing his father that he could be no longer

responsible for his debts.117Similar to Dickens father who spent several years in debtors prison.

Thirdly, Dickenss enormous sympathy for poor and exploited children is also attributed to Oates

For Tobias had been a poor child too, and he was fiercely protective of abused children, famously

earnest in defense of the child victims of mill and factory owner118

and Oatess fascination with

mesmerism. The clarity of the Dickens-like figure in Tobias Oates is not to be mistaken.

The essential part of the novel is Careys criticism of the act of storytelling itself. As the

performance of storytelling is a Western concept, thus by representing Dickens as Tobias Oates,

Carey satires the Western ownership of storytelling, and breaking with the idea that there is only

one grand narrative, a metaphor for the British Empire and colonization, thus also breaking with

history and the way history itself has been narrated. Careys re-examining of storytelling is like

many other postcolonial works, an important aspect of writing back to the center.

The storytelling about the idea of the storytelling in that the character Oates writes the book The

Death of Jack Maggs inJack Maggs,Carey challenges and questions the concepts of character and

criminality. More importantly, how they are constructed in literary representations. Oatess control

of Maggs makes him de-humanize Maggs, treating him like an animal Jack Maggs began to beat

his fists upon his chest. He was truly like a wild animal, and Toby his expert trainer. 119or Be still

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Jack Maggs Dissertation