''Dream of Fair to Middling Women'' is
Samuel Beckett’s first novel. Written in English "in a matter of weeks" in 1932 when Beckett was only 26 and living in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, the clearly
autobiographical novel
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction. ...
was rejected by publishers and shelved by the author. The novel was eventually published in 1992, three years after the author's death.
Partial publication
Three fragments from the book were published during Beckett's lifetime: "Text" and "Sedendo et Quiescendo" were actually published before he started working on the book and subsequently became part of it, whilst "Jem Higgins' Love-Letter to the Alba" was published in 1965. Beckett refused to allow the entire novel to be published during his lifetime, on the grounds that it was "immature and
unworthy": his biographer
Deirdre Bair
Deirdre Bair (June 21, 1935 – April 17, 2020) was an American literary scholar and biographer. She won a National Book Award for her biography of Samuel Beckett in 1981.
Early life and education
Bair was born Deirdre Bartolotta on June 21, ...
believes that his reluctance to make it available to the reading public was to avoid offending lifelong friends whom Beckett satirised in the book.
Setting and influences
The novel is set in the town of Kassel, Germany, where 17-year-old Peggy Sinclair, a cousin of Beckett, lived with her parents. Beckett made several visits in Kassel 1928–32. The main character Belacqua, a writer and teacher, is very similar to Beckett himself, though a character named "Mr. Beckett" also makes an appearance in the book. Belacqua's name is taken from
the character created by
Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: '' ...
. Influences on the novel include
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...
's ''
The Legend of Good Women
''The Legend of Good Women'' is a poem in the form of a dream vision by Geoffrey Chaucer during the fourteenth century.
The poem is the third longest of Chaucer's works, after ''The Canterbury Tales'' and ''Troilus and Criseyde'', and is possib ...
'',
Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...
's "
A Dream of Fair Women" and
Henry Williamson
Henry William Williamson (1 December 1895 – 13 August 1977) was an English writer who wrote novels concerned with wildlife, English social history and ruralism. He was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 for his book ''Tarka ...
's ''The Dream of Fair Women''.
Themes
Two main themes can be found in the Dream: a rejection of
realism
Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to:
In the arts
*Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts
Arts movements related to realism include:
*Classical Realism
*Literary realism, a move ...
in characters and the novel itself; and an anti-feminism, or perhaps an anti-sexuality, disavowing the possibility of sexual relations.
The narrator explicitly criticises such realist figures as
Balzac and
Jane Austen
Jane Austen (; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots of ...
, for their rigid characters and spurious novelistic coherence; but also challenges
Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...
’s exploitation of involuntary memory, and his metaphoric method of approach.
At the same time, the work is concerned with a sense of the body as a machine that is broken; and with male sexuality as oscillating between
Apollo
Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...
and
Narcissus. “We give you one term of Apollo: chasing a bitch, the usual bitch. And one term of Narcissus: running away from one”.
Both themes come together in a rejection both of a realist world, and of a unified self to be found in sexual relations.
[K Ince ed., ''Samuel Beckett'' (London 2000) p. 73-4]
See also
*
More Pricks than Kicks
''More Pricks Than Kicks'' is a collection of short prose by Samuel Beckett, first published in 1934. It contains extracts from his earlier novel, ''Dream of Fair to Middling Women'' (for which he was unable to find a publisher), as well as ot ...
*
Proust (Beckett essay)
Samuel Beckett's essay ''Proust'', published in 1930, is a study of Marcel Proust.
History
Beckett wrote ''Proust'' in the summer of 1930, in response to a commission precipitated by Thomas MacGreevy, Charles Prentice, and Richard Aldington, du ...
References
External links
*
Beckett´s visits in Kassel,Germany, incl. picture of Peggy SinclairAutobiographical aspects
{{beckett-prose
1932 novels
1992 novels
Novels by Samuel Beckett
Novels about writers
Autobiographical novels