Genre structure vs. Literary concepts in "The butterfly garden" by dot Hutchison

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Genre structure vs. Literary concepts in "The butterfly garden" by dot Hutchison

Muntian A.O.,

Candidate of Philological Sciences, Head of the Department of Foreign Languages Dnipro National University of Railway Transport

Shpak I.V.,

Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages Dnipro National University of Railway Transport

The purpose of the given piece is an attempt to analyze some aspects of the structure of a literary piece belonging to a genre of mass literature, i.e., a thriller and the relevance and importance of this structure comparing to the ideas and concepts conveyed by the author in the literary work. In the current investigation the authors dwell on the defining a genre of thriller and both compare and contrast it with an older and rather more established genre of the detective story. To achieve the goal both cultural and historical method and comparative and historical method will be used. The first method will give us opportunity to trace national peculiarities, which influence the whole literary piece in terms of pragmatics: help us to understand the authors ideas, which should be conveyed to the readership, from the socio-cultural point of view, whereas the second method will give us a perspective on modern products of not only mass literature but of mass culture on the whole. The basis for the current study is scientific pieces by both domestic and foreign scholars, which are devoted to the problems of literary reception and intercultural aspect of modern literary pieces. A thriller is a genre of mass literature and naturally has umpteen elements peculiar to this part of literature; however there are some idiosyncratic features as well. In the course of the research, it becomes obvious that a thriller novel may not have a strict genre frame, however, one of the main distinctive features for a thriller is presence of suspense: psychological tension, which comes into a novel and does not let readership lose their attention till the last pages. To illustrate the irrelevance of the rigid structure in comparison with the significance of ideas and notions recognition by the readership when we deal with a piece belonging to mass literature, the authors have chosen a thriller novel by Dot Hutchison “The Butterfly Garden” (2017). In our opinion this novel lacks the traditional structure, however, falls into the category of thriller novels due to the features pertinent to the genre, which are kept in the novel. hutchison literary work thriller

Key words: thriller, mass literature, detective story, literary character, fiction.

ЖАНРОВА СТРУКТУРА І ЛІТЕРАТУРНИЙ КОНЦЕПТ У РОМАНІ ДОТ ХАТЧІСОН «САД МЕТЕЛИКІВ»

Метою дослідження є спроба проаналізувати деякі аспекти структури літературного твору, що належить до жанру масової літератури (піджанр: трилер), а також актуальність і важливість цієї структури порівняно з ідеями та концепціями, які автор літературного твору ставить за мету донести до читача. У статті автори приділяють певну увагу тлумаченню піджанру масової літератури - трилеру, а також порівнюють та протиставляють його «старшому» та більш усталеному жанру детективної історії, або детективу. Для досягнення мети автори спираються на культурно-історичний та порівняльно-історичний методи. Перший метод дасть нам можливість простежити національні особливості, які впливають на літературний твір загалом з точки зору прагматики, а саме допоможе нам зрозуміти ідеї автора, які слід донести до читачів, із соціокультурної точки зору, тоді як другий метод дасть нам уявлення про сучасні твори не тільки масової літератури, але й масової культури загалом. Основою цього дослідження стануть наукові праці як вітчизняних, так і зарубіжних учених, які присвячені проблемам літературної рецепції та між- культурному аспекту сучасних літературних творів. Трилер - це жанр масової літератури, який, природно, має безліч елементів, характерних для цієї частини літератури, проте він має деякі своєрідні риси, що є типовими тільки для нього. У процесі дослідження стає очевидним, що роман-трилер може не мати жорсткої жанрової рамки, однак однією з головних відмінних рис трилера є наявність напруженості, адже психологічна напруга, яка присутня у романі, не дає змогу читачам втрачати увагу з перших до останніх сторінок. Щоби проілюструвати неактуальність чіткої структури літературного твору, зокрема трилеру, порівняно зі значимістю впізнання та сприйняття читачами ідей та понять, коли ми маємо справу з твором, що належить до масової літератури, автори вибрали роман Дот Хатчісон «Сад метеликів» (2016 р.). На наш погляд, у цьому романі відсутня традиційна структура, однак він потрапляє до категорії трилерних романів через риси, що стосуються жанру, які зберігаються в романі.

Ключові слова: трилер, масова література, детектив, літературний персонаж, художня література.

Introduction

Understanding of most general questions and issues is one of the most difficult things both for theoretical scientific thought and for practical and emotional human beings. Concepts such as love, faith, truth are the most difficult for definition and even grasping. Literature is one of such concepts: if the question “what is literature?” is asked, it is highly likely that the number of answers would amount to an enormous array of data. However, for the time being we are not going to go deep into various approaches attempting to define the literature itself but would rather look at the aspect author-reader interaction, issue of readers' reception and pragmatic aspect of a fictional literary novel. In postmodern, post structural, postindustrial society, where there is access basically to anything any time, deformation and change are only logical things. Contemporary society to some extent is even past nihilism (concept forged by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi) widely popularized by Ivan Turgenev in his literary works, for after Nietzsche, who considered nihilism to be one of the milestones of human transformation, humanity left that milestone behind. Jacobi's general complaint to Kant and other philosophers of the time was that they diminished the real self to an illusion. Where modern society relate with Jacobi's concepts is the matter interaction, as far as Jacobi insisted that there cannot be “I” without “THOU”, and what is more important, in the matter of “personal God”, and despite the fact that he did not consider himself to be irrational and stuck to the idea that faith is rational [10, p. 279-297] his ideas were perceived and interpreted differently.

Modern socio-cultural, socio-linguistic, philosophical and other processes are getting viral due to globalization and technological factors, on the other hand those processes are commercialized and human centric, who means that it was high time for the development of mass literature oriented on certain readership. There is a great number of literary scholars who conduct their research in this sphere, among them Chernyak, Cawelty, Gudkov, Aytmatov and many others. In terms of semantics the term “mass literature” speaks for itself: masses have access to reading. However, it is rather simplified term, and in the course of time, mass literature has refined drastically. Chernyak believes that because of cutting throat competition on the market, mass literature authors need to find and fight for their target audience, they need to understand who “their reader” is [7, p. 3]. Thus, there is a partial shift in the literary dynamics; it is not only the reader who is looking for his or her author, it is also the author, who should be looking for his or her reader. As a result, the pragmatic aspect of a literary text gains importance. The advance of mass literature was imminent and inevitable, however if we choose to adhere to theoretical issues, we need to steer away from mass literature as a relatively new and popular concept, in general, and focus on its pragmatics.

The purpose of this piece is to consider specific aspects of the structure of a literary work vs. ideas and concepts conveyed by the author and try to ascertain the extent of relevance and importance of the structure for general perception of a fictional novel by readership comparing to its pragmatic aspect. Additionally, it is our intention to look for allusions natural for a postmodern literary piece and dwell on the connection of the “The Butterfly Garden” (2017) by Dot Hutchison with other significant works of fiction, namely “The Collector” (1963), the thriller novel by John Fowles.

Methodology

To achieve the goal both cultural and historical method and comparative and historical method will be used. The first method will give us opportunity to trace national peculiarities, which influence the whole literary piece in terms of pragmatics: help us to understand the authors ideas, which should be conveyed to the readership, from the socio-cultural point of view, whereas the second method will give us a perspective on modern products of not only mass literature but of mass culture on the whole. The basis for the current study is scientific pieces by both domestic and foreign scholars, which are devoted to the problems of literary reception and intercultural aspect of modern literary pieces. In this line, it is intended to apply the concept of “theoretical and practical reception” developed by V. Zhirmunski [2, р. 3]. According to this concept there are two types of literary reception, where the theoretical reception is preceded by the practical one.

Research and discussion

Without any doubt a thriller is a genre of mass literature, thus it is an obvious reason of why novel “The Butterfly Garden” should be analyzed as a mass literature product, which has its own target audience. Mass literature due to its “for everyoneness” status has some negative connotations and is perceived among general readerships as “low-class”. Some scholars point out that inextirpable and undying readers' love for mass literature speaks about undeveloped and unsophisticated readers' consciousness [5, p. 12-19]. However, in our opinion, such attitude is generalized and somewhat unfair both to readership and literary product. We believe that term “mass literature” does not correlate with the quality of a literary piece, but rather with multitude of potential readers. The notion, which is important for current research is the one offered by Chernyak, who noted that mass literature is of cosmopolitan and outward-looking character, without national peculiarities, with similar plots and motifs [6, p. 11]. According to Cawelty, literary pieces that belong to mass literature have in common a great number of narrative similarities [3, p. 86]. He also noted that a literary formula, especially a formula of a mass literature piece, is a universal model, based on cultural stereotypes and implemented in an exact genre through repeated (cliched) plots [3, p. 79-87]. For instance, in a detective story genre, especially if a series of novels is the case, one of the most recognizable cliches is vitality of the criminal and perpetual fight of protagonist and antagonist from novel to novel (the series about Sherlock Holmes and his nemesis Dr. Moriarty), very often in the framework of suspense, easily felt by the readership. According to Barkhudarov a literary cliche is speech of nonfiction, which is a mechanic reproduction and substitute of author's creative initiative. He contemplates the author to be an artist, who overcomes the material resistance and shapes the language of fiction [1, p. 1] Affiliation of a literary piece with one or another genre and the existence of cliches in that exact piece does not exclusively determine the quality of the literary work in question. A detective story is a mass literature genre, however, is it hardly possible to say that all the detective stories are of low quality and there is not a single detective story, belonging to so-called high literature. As an illustration we may address to “The Black Prince” by Iris Murdoch, a well-known post-modern literary piece, with the “elite” target audience, and all the motifs and techniques pertinent to a postmodern literary work, with multi-layered philosophic text and narrative.

The 20^th century detective story greatly differs from the traditional canon. Under the traditional canon we understand the works of such authors as Sr. Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Gilbert Chesterton, Edgar Allan Poe and others. Their works to an extremely great extent fall under the classification developed by V. Shklovsky in terms of structure. However, when we talk about a post-modern detective story the structure of a literary work undergoes dramatic transformation. The structure and the order lose their significance in literary works of the kind. The modern detective story has the number of variations: from “Whodunnit” to “Howdunnit”, from “Female detective” to “Noir detective”, from “Police detective” to “Thriller”.

In the context of this piece, we would like to dwell on the attempt to understand the notion of a thriller, primarily because in our humble opinion most fiction pieces of today have a few characteristics of a thriller, disregarding their genre affiliation. We may say that thriller is a variation of horror, however unlike horror, the thriller is not about pure horror, it is mostly about a committed crime, or mystery, which needs to be resolved; an integral part of any thriller is suspense [8]. Among major tasks of an author who writes a thriller is to open for the readership the door to a different world: to the world of crime and perversion; to the world with a different morale and rationale for action - this world is the domain of Evil. Another task for the author is to introduce the criminal as an ordinary character with his or her life story, sometimes complicated, sometimes outright sick, but human. The main message is that the criminal, the antagonist, the main villain - is a human being and has the right to be treated as one; the task of the author is to give readers opportunity to understand the criminal and to some extent to side with him or her. The narrator of a thriller is most often either a criminal or a victim [8]; in the case of “The Butterfly Garden” readers will hear the story from a victim. Taking this into account, we should understand that the role of a detective in a thriller is rather superfluous. It is very often the case that a detective has extremely vague understanding of the process and sometimes his role is even reduced to a listener. The main characteristic of a thriller - storytelling, reveling the mystery, talking about a crime; not so much solving the crime, but telling the story of how it was solved.

When we deal with any literary piece belonging to mass literature (despite all canons, formulae and cliches) it is rather difficult to set the borders for each genre. A thriller is not an exception. There is a point view according to which the difference between thriller and detective story lies in the plot structure. When we talk about a detective story, we move from committing a crime to solving it, and when we talk about a thriller - the crime, the disaster is happening in the end [4, p. 39]. However, in our opinion this is a rather simplified definition of a thriller, which at present time is not exactly relevant, as far as there are umpteen instances of literary pieces where this definition cannot be applied, and “The Butterfly Garden” is one of those.

“The Butterfly Garden” written by Dot Hutchison was published in 2016 and is the first part of “The Collector Series”. “The Butterfly Garden” is a very blatant reminiscence to the novel by John Fowles “The Collecter”. In both novels there is a story of unusual and untypical collectors - of men who collected women rather than butterflies. Those villains and their victims are quite different; nevertheless the ideas are pretty much alike. The leading characters of “The Butterfly Garden” are the FBI agents who interview (or interrogate) the surviving victim, and the surviving victim herself - a girl called Inara. However, it is very unclear what her real name is. The agent's task is to determine who are the victims and who are the criminals, or at least to determine how damaged all the parties are. Inara's task is to minimize the damage, which the rest of the victims may continue to endure. It is rather vague who is who in the beginning of the story:

“We're the FBI; usually people think we're the good guys.”

“AndHitler thought he was evil?”

Eddison lurches to the very edge of his seat. “You're comparing the FBI to Hitler?”

“No, I'm engaging in a discussion about perspective and moral relativity” [9].

On the example of this novel, we may stress out that the structure of a literary work is of little importance if the other elements pertinent to a genre or subgenre are in place: suspense, intrigue, misleading, investigation, enigmatic artistic images, etc. It is obvious for the readership that the crime has already been committed and most probably the FBI agents know, or highly suspect, who has done it, however the thrill is to understand the reasons, to know what happened and how it happened rather than simply identify the criminal. The first intrigue presented for the reader is to figure out who are the “good guys” or “good girls”. The landslide in modern literature is the involvement of readers: the readership is no longer solely source of perception of facts and ideas presented by an author; today readers become active participants and even co-creators of fiction.

Building of trust between a victim and investigator, police officer, FBI agent, etc. is a crucial element for a story. An investigator is someone who will (generally) help a victim to find the truth, who will offer expertise necessary for delivering justice. In any case, the partnership of victim and investigator is one of the key structural elements: a victim needs help form an investigator, regardless of the fact whether an investigator is good or bad. In the case of “The Butterfly Garden” the role of an investigator is reduced to the role of chronicler or story writer. The FBI agent get only the information that Maya (Inara) gives them, and she does not feel obliged to share with them more than she deems relevant. In our opinion this also a shift from established structural cannon: the victims take the lead and become main characters of the novel. Their stories are important, they are important, whereas the detectives receive the secondary roles of chronicles who try to piece together what happened.

“The Butterfly Garden” tells a story of the Garden - a beautiful and horrific place. It is a place within a place. It is a world within a world. The world where beauty borders with atrocities; distorted love exists next to uncovered tortures. The Garden lives according to strict rules. Gardener's family is the outside world, his Butterflies - inner world. The Butterflies get to the Garden in the age of puberty and live there till their 21^st birthday, and on the day when they turn 21, they stay in the Garden forever:

“But for the most part, the walls only came down two mornings a week - what we'd taken to calling the weekend, whether it was or not - so the actual gardeners could do maintenance around our beautiful prison. The hired help never saw us, and the multiple sets of closed doors between us and them guaranteed they never heard us either.

No, wait. The walls came down when a new girl was brought in too, or when one died.

We didn't like it when the walls came down. Wishing they would was kind of extraordinary” [9].

If we step away from the structure and turn to the ideas, which make a work of fiction popular, it is worth saying about recognition of ideas and concepts. It is crucial for readers to understand what is happening in a novel, to recognize elements, thoughts, notions, and concepts pertinent to this or that culture. While reading “The Butterfly Garden” it is rather difficult not to think that the whole thing is some perverted version of a popular TV show “The Bachelor”, where the Gardener if the Bachelor and the Butterflies are involuntary Roses. Such elements help readers to stay involved, to make predictions and thus develop interest. Another interesting aspect is that in modern thriller a villain is depicted as a regular man: a neighbor who waves you hello, a teacher who gives you a lecture, a father on a parents' committee. This person does not stand out; do not set your instincts on edge. In the original “The Collector” by Jon Fowles the main villain Caliban was repulsive, retarded, and illiterate; he was not likable; he was not charming; he was not interesting. The Gardener, on the other hand, represents the new type of villain. He is intelligent, he is good looking, he is enigmatic, and in the same time he is delusional and mentally unhealthy:

“The Gardener came for her just before daylight.

He was an elegant figure of a man, maybe a little above average height, well built. The type of man who always looked at least ten to fifteen years younger than he really was. Dark blond hair, always perfectly in place and well-trimmed, pale green eyes like the sea. He was handsome, that couldnt be argued, even if my stomach still turned at the sight of him. I'd never seen him dressed all in black before. He stood in the doorway, thumbs hooked in his pockets, and just looked at us” [9].

In the outside world the Gardener has a name, he has a house in close proximity to the Garden, he has sons, who unlike his wife, are aware of the Garden and have access to it. The Gardener is a functioning and successful member of society; he does not raise any suspicion or alarm. He is one of us. This is another notion brought up in many works of fiction: social adaptation and functioning. Psychological problems and childhood traumas have great effect on the development of every person. It is exceedingly difficult to understand how those childhood traumas will manifest themselves in the adulthood, and more importantly, what should be done in this regard.

There are several intriguing questions in the “The Butterfly Garden”, which practically every reader is trying to answer. One of such questions arises right in the beginning - Is there a way out from the Garden? Naturally, while reading readers predict some extraordinary escape attempts, however at some point it gets clear that there is no way to leave the Garden: all the Butterflies stay there forever in the glass with just one exception - Lorraine. The Gardener reckons that the beauty should be preserved. When they turn 21, they stop being sexual objects and become skin tapestries under the glass. Regardless of everything, the paradigm master-slave exists in the novel. The Butterflies may be objective regarding the intellect and education of the Gardener, about his affable appearance, but the very well know that they are prisoners and victims and, no matter what, they want to break free. On the other hand it may be this desire for freedom and fight provokes in the Gardener exactly the feelings that would make them eternal prisoners. With the development of Inara's story, readers realize that the Gardener has help with the girls. There is a woman who cooks for them, who does the linen and runs other errands. Inara is trying to understand who that woman is and is it possible to receive help from her in terms of breaking from the Garden, more importantly she is trying to understand the nature of relationship between Lorraine and the Gardener:

“He sent her to nursing school and to cooking classes on the side, and she was so broken by submission to his interests, so absolutely in love with him, that she never tried to run away, never tried to tell anyone about the Garden or the dead Butterflies or the living ones who still could have had some hope. She went to her classes, and when she came back into the Garden she studied and practiced, and on her twenty-first birthday, he took away all those backless, pretty black dresses and gave her a plain grey uniform that covered her entirely, and she became the cook and nurse for the Garden” [9].

In our opinion this character did not receive much of deserved attention. It happened because her Lorraine's story line is not crucial for construction a thriller, as far as there is not so much suspense there: she was submissive to the will of the Gardener and could not add anything to the action and development of the situation. On the other hand, her character is extremely interesting in terms of psychological behavior and Stockholm syndrome analysis.

Conclusions

Since the dawn of times the structure of a literary work played a crucial role for piece creating. Authors dealt with such issues as inciting incident, plot development, culmination, outcome, etc. Even one hundred years ago every literary work was built according to the canon of this or that literary genre. However, in the course of time and under several social trends and technological developments, today even defining a genre is no longer as easy as it was before, and when it comes to defining a certain structure for a genre it borders the impossible. Structural elements and features of different genres can be traced in one novel and it is not a rare instance in modern literature. A detective story novel can start with the name of a criminal stating the crime he or she committed and then the readership will face the challenge to guess why the crime was committed, did the criminal get any help, will he or she be punished or justified, etc.

In our attempt to analyze “The Butterfly Garden” by Dot Hutchison in terms of relevance of structure vs. ideas in a thriller novel, we have reached the conclusion that modern reader does not pay attention to a structure of a literary piece in the way literary scholars and critics do. Mass literature gave a few opportunities to the readership: it involved the readers in the world, which is close to them, or at least the world quite familiar, and that is what really matters. In contrast to the reader of two hundred years ago, modern reader recognizes himself or herself (or someone they know) in the novel, which is more significant - trying to understand the characters, to predict the next step, to expect the unexpected turn from the author, thus it means is that the structure of a literary work today is becoming irrelevant if other features of a genre are kept.

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