Literary Essays

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Critical literary essays by Gillian Dooley discussing authors and novels.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 46

Fiji: Republican Rome in the Pacific?
(CRNLE, 2000) Dooley, Gillian Mary
Review of 'Fiji: Paradise in Pieces' by Satendra Nandan.
Those Difficult Years
(CRNLE, 2000) Dooley, Gillian Mary
Review essay of 'Letters Between and Father and Son' and 'Reading and Writing: A Personal Account' by V.S. Naipaul. The letters of the Naipaul family are compared with the fictional version of events in 'A House for Mr Biswas'.
Looking Back in Anger: The Transformations of Childhood Memories in V.S. Naipaul's 'A House for Mr Biswas' and Jamaica Kincaid's 'Annie John'
(Prestige Books, 2000) Dooley, Gillian Mary
A comparison of the novels 'Annie John' by Jamaica Kincaid, set in Antigua, and 'A House for Mr Biswas' by V.S. Naipaul, set in Trinidad. Both novels build upon angry memories of childhood in a West Indian setting.
Searching for Clues
(CRNLE, 2000) Dooley, Gillian Mary
Review of 'Hymns for the Drowning', a novel by Christopher Cyrill.
Attitudes to Political Commitment in Three Indian Novels: Raja Rao's 'Kanthapura', Khushwant Singh's 'Train to Pakistan' and Nayantara Sahgal's 'Rich Like Us'
(Prestige Books, 2001) Dooley, Gillian Mary
An examination of attitudes to political commitment portrayed by three Indian novels written in English, Raja Rao's 'Kanthapura', Khushwant Singh's 'Train to Pakistan' and Nayantara Sahgal's 'Rich Like Us'.
Patterns of Communication in Roger Mais' 'Brother Man'
(Prestige Books, 2001) Dooley, Gillian Mary
An analysis of patterns of communication in the Jamaican novel 'Brother Man' by Roger Mais.
The Uses of Adversity: Matthew Flinders' Mauritius Writings
(Wakefield Press, 2002) Dooley, Gillian Mary
A discussion of Matthew Flinders' 'Biographical Tribute to the Memory of Trim' and of an extended journal entry, both written while he was detained on Mauritius.
My Evening Song
(Wakefield Press, 2002) Dooley, Gillian Mary
A discussion of the song Matthew Flinders wrote for his wife Ann while detained on Mauritius.
The Horizon Conquerors: Post-war London through Colonial Eyes.
(New Literatures Review, 2003) Dooley, Gillian Mary
Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul both arrived in London a few years after the end of the Second World War. This paper looks at their perceptions of the city as 'colonials', as seen from their fiction and non-fiction writings.
Alien and Adrift: The Diasporic Consciousness in V.S. Naipaul’s 'Half a Life' and J.M. Coetzee's 'Youth'
(New Literatures Review, 2003) Dooley, Gillian Mary
In this paper, I look at some similarities in sensibility of Naipaul and Coetzee, one clearly a diasporic writer and the other less identifiably so, as expressed in these two recent books. I discuss to what extent their differences in literal diasporic status are significant in forming the consciousness of these two writers and their characters, none of whom seem to owe any allegience to a group, a race, a class or a nation.
Iris Murdoch’s Use of First-Person Narrative in The Black Prince
(English Studies, 2004-04) Dooley, Gillian Mary
Many critics place Iris Murdoch’s first-person novels, narrated by a more or less egotistical and unperceptive male who is also the protagonist, near the summit of her achievement as a novelist, and most agree that The Black Prince (1973) is one of the best, if not the best, of all her works. In a novel like this, which is full of veiled meanings, ironies and mixed messages, how does the reader decide where the truth lies? How can a narrator such as Bradley Pearson, who is patently misguided throughout much of the book’s action, convince us that at the time of writing he has attained true wisdom from his ordeals? And what made Murdoch choose, for the fourth time, to impersonate her protagonist in this “complex and brilliant exploration of the relationship between the author and her male narrator” (Johnson 35)?
An Interview with Marion Halligan
(Antipodes, 2004-06) Dooley, Gillian Mary
Marion Halligan has won awards for her novels, essays and short stories. She has published fifteen books including, most recently, the novels The Fog Garden and The Point. Born and raised in the New South Wales industrial coastal city of Newcastle, she moved to the inland national capital, Canberra, in the 1960s. Her first book was published in 1987. While reading The Point, I was strongly reminded of the best work of the great British novelist Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) in many details, but also in the intellectual scope and generous spirit of the novel. I therefore began my interview by asking Halligan about her interest in Murdoch and her influence on The Point in particular.
Naipaul's Women.
(South Asian Review., 2005-11) Dooley, Gillian Mary
V.S. Naipaul's three novels of the 1970s (In a Free State, Guerrillas and A Bend in the River) earned him a reputation as a misogynist. The only sustained critical examination of women in his fiction came in the late seventies and eighties as a reaction to these novels. In this paper I attempt a survey of female characters in Naipaul's fiction across his whole career to establish to what extent this reputation is justified, and whether his harsh treatment of some female characters is matched by equally critical attitudes to male characters. While early conditioning has given Naipaul a traditional view of women’s roles, he cannot be said to show a consistent dislike of women, as his female characters range from the admirable to the repugnant in the same way as his male characters do. Much of the misogyny identified by critics is, on closer examination, attributable to characters rather than Naipaul himself.
The Post-War Novel in Crisis: Three Perspectives
(AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language & Literature Association, 2005-11) Dooley, Gillian Mary
Three major novelists of the period following the second world war, Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul, have pondered the question of why the post-war novel is unable to achieve the heights of its nineteenth-century predecessors. Each of these three writers has suggested remedies, to which they have aspired with varying degrees of success. And each of them offers, implicitly or explicitly, different reasons for the change. In this essay I will evaluate their arguments and attempt to account for some of the factors which give rise to the consciousness that they are different in some qualitative way from their predecessors. I will also discuss the effect such attitudes may have on their own work.
An Autobiography of Everyone? Intentions and Definitions in Doris Lessing’s “Memoirs of a Survivor”. [abstract].
(2006) Dooley, Gillian Mary
"Memoirs of a Survivor" was first published in 1974, and is the second of what Lessing has described as her “unrealistic stories”. The “real” setting of the novel is an unnamed English city in the near future, when for some unexplained reason civilization is crumbling. The narrator, a single middle-aged woman, is mysteriously put in charge of a young girl, Emily. The wall of her flat occasionally melts to reveal a large house. This is the “impersonal” world; however, shortly after Emily’s arrival, the narrator begins to be subjected, beyond the wall, to a child’s-eye view of an oppressive nursery where “personal” scenes from the childhood of Emily and her baby brother are played out. Meanwhile, in the “real” world, Emily passes with unnatural rapidity through the stages of adolescence, while outside cannibalism and violence become common among the gangs of young people. The narrator and Emily are besieged in the flat until the wall finally reopens and admits them to a new world. "Memoirs" is subtitled, in the early editions, “an attempt at autobiography.” Lessing complains, “curiously, no one noticed it, as if that precision was embarrassing”. This is not strictly true: of a sample of ten contemporary reviews, only half do not mention the autobiographical element.
Doris Lessing Versus Her Readers: The Case of 'The Golden Notebook'
(Prestige Books, New Delhi, 2006) Dooley, Gillian Mary
Doris Lessing is a major force in contemporary English literature, holding a unique position as an iconoclastic, outspoken critic of society and politics with a sage-like, almost magisterial status. However, she has not always been content with the ways her books have been read, and has expressed her disquiet in interviews, essays and other publications. Her struggle to deal with her readers’ interpretations of her work is well illustrated by the case of The Golden Notebook. In this paper, the Preface to the Golden Notebook, written ten years after the novel was first published, is examined to show the inconsistencies in Lessing's attitudes and beliefs about the rights of readers to make their own interpretation of her work.
Getting to Know Matthew: A Personal Account of Editing Flinders' Private Journal.
(L'Harmattan, 2006) Dooley, Gillian Mary
Review of Patrick French, 'The World is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul'.
(South Asian Review, 2007) Dooley, Gillian Mary
Review of Patrick French, 'The World is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul'.
‘What trouble I have with Jane Austen!’ V.S. Naipaul’s blind spot.
(Victorian Association for the Teaching of English,, 2008) Dooley, Gillian Mary
In an April 2006 interview with Farrukh Dhondy in the Literary Review, V.S. Naipaul spoke disdainfully of Jane Austen, labelling her writing as 'nonsensical' and directed solely at 'those people who wish to be educated in English manners.' Disturbed by this clash between two of my most admired writers, I am interested in trying to understand why Austen, who after all appeals to many people around the world who are not seeking education in 'English manners', fails so signally to appeal to Naipaul. There is much comedy in the novels of both writers. While their settings are very different, they share a sense of the ridiculous in everyday life and a mastery of irony. In my paper, I will try and establish whether their worldviews are really incompatible by comparing their approaches to comedy.
Naipaul’s ‘Fraudulent’ London Novel: Mr Stone and the Knights Companion
(Journal of Contemporary Literature., 2009) Dooley, Gillian Mary
An examination of V.S. Naipaul's 1963 novel 'Mr Stone and the Knights Companion' which Naipaul later described as 'fraudulent' because of the suppression of his personal point of view. It is compared to other works of the time such as Evelyn Waugh's 'The Loved One', and to Naipaul's later novels 'Half a Life' and 'Magic Seeds', which he has stated were written in some sense as a corrective to the earlier novel.

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