Deep South v.2 n.1 (Autumn, 1996)
Greville Texidor didn't like New Zealand. According to a very diplomatic Frank Sargeson, she was "unable to establish with this country relations which in any way resembled a love-affair" (Sargeson 1965:136). In this paper I intend to describe three of the stories Texidor wrote about New Zealand during her eight year stay here, "An Annual Affair," "You Have to Stand Up to Them," and "Anyone Home," tracing through them two possible indications of her dissatisfaction. First, most of the characters in these stories resemble Texidor herself in that their social interactions are strained. Second, the stories indicate Texidor's desire to de-bunk what she considered to be New Zealand's falsely optimistic Myth of Progress. They also show how the Marxist Myth, which some of her characters try to set up in its place, is just as fraudulent.
At the same time as I illustrate how Texidor de-bunked these two myths, I intend to explain her as one of the first writers to bring French existentialist notions to New Zealand--a country which from its beginnings as a British colony has had its own variety of unconscious existentialism, cultivated from the experiences of its pioneers and settlers. In distinguishing between these two kinds of existentialism, I propose that Texidor had a far bleaker vision of the human condition than her New Zealand contemporaries.
Texidor was a much-travelled English woman, only residing in New Zealand from 1940 to 1948. Nonetheless, I consider her a New Zealand writer because nearly all of her short stories and novellas were written in this country with the encouragement of Frank Sargeson.
Patrick Evans says of Texidor in the Penguin History of New Zealand Literature,
For someone used to the intensity and excitement of wartime Europe, the country must have seemed a wasteland. Texidor's New Zealand is a desert of emptiness peopled with men and women so repressed they can hardly go near one another. [Evans 1990:143]Evans then uses "An Annual Affair" as an example of what he calls "the desolation of a ritual family picnic at the beach".
That Frank Sargeson liked this story very much is evident in his Landfall article about Texidor:
If the aim [in "An Annual Affair"] ... is to present her Northland environment as a kind of petty hell inhabited by faintly damned souls, then it succeeds admirably. [1965:136]This is a masterly summary of what Texidor accomplishes from the very first paragraph of her story. Told by an omniscient narrator, most of the details are filtered through the naive consciousness of Joy, an alienated but obedient teenager. Here Joy is thinking to herself:
It almost seemed to be blowing up for rain. Every minute or two the wind came across the paddocks, like a lorry changing gears, and round the lonely store corner. The store looked lonely because it was closed for Boxing Day. The orange drinks and weeties in the window and the country scene with stout letters, KEEP FIT cutting across made you feel sad, as if you had eaten too much. The wallops from the wind made you feel tired. [Smithyman 1987:159]Does Texidor use Joy's name with ironic intent? As we shall see, several of Texidor's names seem to have symbolic meaning, and there is precious little "joy" in this story except for the few moments when the protagonist escapes her companions to go rowing by herself among the mangroves. When other members of the family arrive at the picnic site in a lorry, Texidor adds noise to the uncomfortable setting just described, allowing us to hear "the kids screeching." To Joy, the approaching vehicle sounds "like a cage of cockatoos on wheels" (Smithyman 1987:159). Seen thought Joy's eyes, life for her mother is indeed as "hellish" as Sargeson indicated in his article, especially when Texidor adds a little illicit sexual tension to Joy's decidedly unjoyful depiction of the picnic. Joy sees her mother, father, and Miss Jenkins sitting on the steps of the lorry:
Miss Jenkins had several rows of rolls on top of her head, and slacks which were tight behind, and dark red finger-nails .... Dad kept looking hard at Miss Jenkin's finger-nails, then looking away. [Smithyman 1987:160] Joy's matter-of-fact description serves to emphasize the underlying ironic tone: It began to rain a bit and the wind was chilly. Mum said they might as well go for a walk as it wasn't lunch time yet, and Miss Jenkins could see the view from further up. Everyone always said is was rather nice, only of course the tide was wrong now. [Smithyman 1987:160]Noisy children, rain, a floozy with red finger-nails, and a wrong tide. What more could Mum want? After their walk, Dad has come back from the pub. According to Joy, "Dad had red patches on his cheeks and his eyes were swimmy" (Smithyman 1987:162).
I indicated in my introduction that I would situate Texidor among New Zealand's existentialist writers. To do that I need to define both New Zealand's unconscious existentialism and the existentialist ideas that Texidor imported from wartime Europe. Then I need to show how they are similar yet different.
In "An Annual Affair" Texidor uses Joy's naive observations of the typical Kiwi picnic at Christmas to knock holes into the Myth of Progress. What I mean by the Myth of Progress is that according to the early pioneers and settlers, everything was going to get better and better in New Zealand. Judging from the colony's early literature, the pioneers and settlers really did believe that they would progress. When they didn't, they regarded their failure to thrive in their new environment as evidence of their personal inability to cope with the contingent hardships of pioneer life. They doubted that they personally could live up to the ideal of Progress inherent in the rationalism that informed almost every aspect of nineteenth-century life. The fiction dramatizing the symptoms of that sort of doubt is what I define as New Zealand's pre-existentialist literature.
Modern existentialists, by contrast, are convinced that failure is inevitably part of the human condition: all human beings are born to die, and all human projects are bound to fail. Their existentialism can be summarized as a fundamental doubt in the rationality of the universe. It is utterly opposed to the optimism that New Zealand's pioneers and settlers had carried from Victorian England. Expressed very simply, modern atheistic existentialism arose when the nineteenth century witnessed a decline in religion and the rise of science. Subsequently, the twentieth century with its wars and economic depressions proved that science could not ameliorate the human condition. Deprived of their traditional hope in God, and having learned through experience to doubt their faith in science, many people recognized that they had to rely wholly on themselves when deciding their values and their destinies.
This realization explains the difference between New Zealand's two kinds of existentialism. Both sorts of existentialist literature portray characters who contend with uprootedness, isolation and alienation. They are fundamentally different, however, in their attitudes towards contingency and the human condition. An early pre-existentialist might have said that their situation was uncomfortable or dangerous, but there was reason to hope that it would improve, especially if individuals and families stuck together. A generation later Frank Sargeson and John Mulgan would imply in their short stories and novels that some people's situations would not get any better, but that fellowship between mates could make survival bearable. An atheistic existentialist would say, "I am alone in a Godless universe, and there is absolutely no reason to hope that my situation will ever improve." Texidor was one of the first writers in New Zealand to interpret the human condition as so terminally isolated.
In Texidor's ironic translation of the Myth of Progress, it rains at the picnic; the men go immediately to the pub and drink too much; the women are left to worry about the children and the mud. Texidor further questions the myth when she causes Joy to describe the distant scenery, and an implicit comparison is set up between the natural green of the landscape and the pastures which had been "improved" for exploitation: "It looked lonely, but pretty and peaceful, the grass a soft green, not the metal green of the properly fertilized paddocks (Smithyman 1987:165-166).
When the Reverend Allum strolls by, Texidor adds another character to the scene of Joy's discomfort. The Reverend's name may also be symbolic: alum is a dry and bitter tasting ingredient in pickle recipes. The Reverend himself is as disapproving and critical as Joy's mother: she has just cautioned Joy to pull her skirt down; he admonishes Joy for reading her Bible verses each night instead of in the morning when they are supposed to act as "armour for the day."
After listening to Allum's sanctimonious pronouncements on the first settlers, Joy meets Jim, the young man she adores. Jim has a scholarship which allows him to study in town. He refers to the Reverend as "old stick in the mud" and is constantly sarcastic about life in the country, its hidebound society, and the capitalist system. Jim can hardly wait to escape from New Zealand to wartime Europe. From there he will progress to the Revolution which will inevitably follow World War II. Texidor uses Jim, an inexperienced and ignorant youth, to introduce the Marxist Myth popular around the start of the war, that come the Revolution all men would be equal and life would be worth living. In "An Annual Affair" Texidor only points a satirical finger at the Marxist Myth. In "You Have to Stand Up to Them" to be discussed below, she definitely seeks to de-bunk it.
The objection that "An Annual Affair" hardly sounds like an existentialist short story has considerable validity. Texidor wasn't a writer like Albert Camus or Jean-Paul Sartre, both of whom hammered their narratives onto conspicuous philosophical frameworks. "An Annual Affair" doesn't explicitly tackle deep, philosophical questions. The mist that shrouds this story as well as most of her fiction, however, arises from the same ground: in a world without God, everything is meaningless; people are alone and exist without justification; everything they do will inevitably fail. This mood is evident in the small, casual details of "An Annual Affair" which imply that the world is indifferent to human beings. It is also evident in Texidor's tacit comparison between what people pretend to enjoy year after year and what they actually experience.
In "You Have to Stand Up to Them" about the failed Myth of Progress and the disappointing Marxist Myth, Texidor's exploration of a very existentialist concept, that myths are mere abstractions, is rather more marked. At the same time, she dramatizes the existentialist notion that everything is running down.
"You Have to Stand Up to Them" opens in a rural electrical goods store. Myrtle, who describes herself as "the pretty girl keeping the books," is doing just that. She is distracted by the electrical sounds coming from the workshop, by the "clapping and static that sounded like lost souls. The drone of the flies" (Smithyman 1987:151). She remembers how much more comfortable the store used to be, when "the music that cured poured from the open shop door, like a sunny sweet sauce ... had made her feel that Electrical Supply and Fitting, was really a wonderful business to be in" (Smithyman 1987:151).
These days, however, there were few new appliances and the workroom was overflowing with machines that needed to be repaired. One of the owners, Mack, had guaranteed what Myrtle describes as "another wreck on the bench". But,
"he shouldn't have done. Nothing ought to be guaranteed any more. Dead valves ... elements burnt out ... having to do with parts that didn't do .... Getting snowed under. [Smithyman 1987:152]It wasn't only business that was choking on old machines which people couldn't replace. Texidor has Myrtle notice that "civilisation was on the skids," too. According to Myrtle they did what they could about it, belonged to the Red Book Club, ran the Workers' Enlightenment Group, and had a progressive professor come from Auckland to address them. Myrtle's summary of his speech is an ironic comment on her earlier description of their business woes: "We have our organisers to thank ... this active group ... wonders of science ... freer and fuller lives ..." (Smithyman 1987:152).
A customer comes in and Ernest, the other owner, ruminates to himself about the Meaning of Life:
As often as not your plans just fizzled out. And even in spite of the Left movement and Progress sometimes you couldn't see the use of it all. It might be different in Russia. It was very quiet. Only the little singing from the workshop. Wasting, wasting away, it whined. Ethel was putting on her hat to go home. Another day over, Another day .... [Smithyman 1987:154]Concepts from Sartre's Being and Nothingness or even from his more accessible plays or short stories don't echo loudly in the excerpt above. As in "An Annual Affair," however, I sense the existentialist mood. Texidor resembles many European and American authors around World War II when she explores what was then a fashionable and portentous topic: the futility of existence.
I will conclude with the story "Anyone Home?" because it seems to me that Sartre's ideas about the "I" and the "other," particularly his ideas about the battle between the sexes, are more evident in this story than in the other two discussed above. The situation Texidor imagines in "Anyone Home?" also raises one of the questions that Camus explored in his existentialist novels, plays and essays: What is the point of existing in a world without God where people are so alienated from one another?
"Anyone Home?" reminds me of Allen Curnow's poem "House and Land" and its definite de-bunking of the Myth of Progress. "House and Land" tells the story of a "land of settlers/ With never a soul at home." While Curnow's poem is about the spiritual poverty of colonial exiles from England who don't feel at home in New Zealand, in a sense Texidor's "Anyone Home?" dramatizes a tragedy of cosmic proportions: "Anyone Home?" is about a man who has realized that he is not at home anywhere.
The story opens with Roy who has just returned from fighting in World War II. He has been badly wounded physically, and that has affected him emotionally. When Texidor looks at a rural New Zealand family through his changed perceptions, the reader sees what Roy sees, and the view is not uplifting. Roy sees a farmhouse with an "empty veranda with its closed doors and windows looking blankly." The inhabitants, Mr. and Mrs. Withers, are a shrivelled and unimaginative couple. They also appear in "An Annual Affair", and their name may be symbolic. Their daughter Lily, whose conversation doesn't extend much beyond than "Yes, Roy. If you like, Roy," is colourless. Her name may be symbolic of death.
Roy and Lily are engaged, but they have very little in common any more. Instead of a conventionally romantic honeymoon, the two of them are going to Auckland where Lily will have her teeth pulled out. Lily's family sees this as a practical means for dealing with her rotten teeth. They don't seem to appreciate how unromantic the honeymoon will be as a result.
Once the fiances are married, they won't be able to build their home among the Withers' trees as Roy had planned. Mr. Withers had chopped down the trees and used them for fence posts because, as Lily says to Roy, "he thought you wouldn't want anything wasted in wartime." Roy has returned from the war sick with the waste of life that war represents. His cynicism about the motives of the older generation is evident in his reply: "Just thinking of me?" Roy echoes Jim's general dissatisfaction with the status quo in "An Annual Affair" when he adds, "Well, he won't have to think any more. Everything's going to be different from now on. We're going to please ourselves" (Smithyman 1987:174). The irony of this statement is emphasized when Roy carries Lily down to the pool, the scene of their one and only sexual encounter. The stroll isn't romantic. Instead, Roy is reminded of carrying a wounded comrade during a skirmish. The soldier was dead by the time Roy reached the camp.
According to Evans in the Penguin History of New Zealand Literature,
Texidor's New Zealand is imagined with an intensity of emptiness that only an alien can see ... the background of some of the stories seem almost to shimmer with a horrifying insistence upon their own lack of meaning. [Evans 1990:143]As example Evans quotes a scene that is overwhelmingly indifferent to the presence of Roy and Lily:
He was glad to put her down beside the pool, in the silence of the sombre bowl of the bush. Tall banks gave the trees a tremendous height, thick green edged down to the black water, and a fallen rata lay like a bridge across it. On the marble-hard surface of the pool every leaf of every tree was reflected. Each detail was there without life or sound, and across the colours strangely dark and cold, a bright shuttle was weaving meaningless traceries. A dragonfly was passing and repassing, but in this flat, black world of pictured silence it had no destination. [Smithyman 1987:173]When Roy asks his fiance why they can't return to their careless childhood days, Lily replies that her days are too full of worry about Roy and the wedding. Roy's response to this reminds me very much of Sartre's grim interpretation of relations between the sexes, when one individual tries to entrap another by objectifying them through "the gaze." I have emphasized with italics the notion that Roy wants to wants to objectify Lily, to hold her still in a photograph:
He watched her reflection crystallise in the sun. Stretched on golden bird's legs, in its dress of endless blue, it slanted bright-balanced, its delicate head glistening against the sky in a clearing between dark and monstrous shadows. When it moved it did not disturb the surrounding air. The face, small, light and almost transparent, looked up, yet it was not lying, nor standing, but floating stationary, an angel in dark ice. The blue space behind the skull was staring through eyes like crystals-- `Got you!' he called out. `Now laugh, for God's sake.' [Smithyman 1987:174]Just before they leave the pool Roy takes one last look at the "empty, flat world on the water." It reminds him of what he had felt when he was trapped in the "rubbery darkness of the anaesthetic" when he was wounded in hospital:
(The numb dullness that was always there, where bodiless problems spun with no meaning and no direction because it had always been there, and time was only a load of rubber darkness. Where there was no Roy, no me, no life, no dying, no rest. Only the suffering speck not-I. And the pointless joke of grey rain through glass and a clock that pointed to three. The hand pointing to the fraud, the dream that is no dream and lasts for ever. The fraud that would take my name. My name is Roy.) [Smithyman 1987:174]In other words, when Roy was wounded and sedated he felt powerless, a mere speck. In the twilight world of heavy sedation, he learned that death is a fraud, a dream which people hope is eternal life but in reality is nothingness. This fraudulent dream would take his name. Once Roy was dead, he would no longer exist.
Back at the homestead, the Withers hold a dreadful party to celebrate Roy's homecoming and Lily's engagement. In Texidor's surreal depiction, the mood teeters on the edge of hysteria and prepares for the awful realization which comes when Roy and Lily stand outside to talk about their future together:
"I knew it was coming," she said. "I knew from the beginning we should have to have it out. You don't care about me." "Nobody cares about anything," he said .... "You know I never regretted it," she said, "but now--oh, I wish I was dead." "You make me laugh," he said. "You don't know what you mean. There's no point in it. No future in it .... You're perfectly free, though. Just think it over. Don't speak now. Don't say anything yet." Her voice was soft and bitter and far away, like the voice of an old person. "Your perfectly free ... Don't say anything yet ..." Her pale hair that smelt of earth and antiseptics covered his mouth and nose and stifled him. [Smithyman 1987:180]Why do I think that Texidor's vision of the human condition is grimmer than that of her New Zealand contemporaries? There is no hope for this couple. Lily's hair, significantly, reminds Roy of burial dirt and the hospital--Lily herself reminds him of death.
In summary, I have considered three of Texidor's New Zealand stories and given examples from them of how she sought to de-bunk two potent myths, the Myth of Progress and the Marxist Myth. I have also situated Texidor in New Zealand's existentialist literature and shown that I find her fiction a lot bleaker than that of her New Zealand contemporaries. In other New Zealand narratives, even the more dismal ones by John Mulgan or Frank Sargeson, characters may become aware that death will end everything, but while they are alive they learn to value companionship with other doomed people. In Texidor's stories there is no companionship, nothing to relieve the characters' stark loneliness once they become aware that they have nothing to look forward to.
Evans, Patrick
1990 The Penguin History of New Zealand Literature. Auckland: Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd.
Sargeson, Frank
1965 Greville Texidor 1902-1964. Landfall 74 (June):135-138.
Smithyman, Kendrick, ed.
1987 In Fifteen Minutes You Can Say a Lot: Selected Fiction by Greville Texidor. Wellington: Victoria University Press.
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