critical commentary III JOE KIDSON
In ‘Circle’, I explored the use of metafiction, foreshadowing and binary oppositions to make the reader aware that they are reading fiction and to comment on the seeming class struggle between the two protagonists of the two narratives. My principal inspirations were ‘The Mysterious Case of Miss V.’ by Virginia Woolf and ‘The Reticence of Lady Anne’ by Saki. In the former, the narrator alerts the reader to her existence and creates two narratives: the narrative of the author writing and the narrative of “the mysterious case of Miss V.” In Saki’s short story, Egbert argues with and is defeated by a deceased Lady Anne highlighting the decrepit nature of the aristocracy. However, in my story I seem to initially agree with Saki’s depiction of the aristocracy before breaking down the binary oppositions of class to come to a different conclusion. In ‘Circle’, I wanted to alter the metafiction used in ‘The Mysterious Case of Miss V.’ and instead of introducing the narrator into the short story I wanted to place the narrator into the narrative of the piece that the author is writing. Woolf ’s persona writes “I think I will knock over a chair” in order that “... the lodger beneath knows that I am alive” so that she is not forgotten like Miss V. It also makes the reader aware of the ‘alive’ nature of the author who has written the piece. In my short story the persona thinks, “Perhaps I should ring, just to let someone know that the author is still alive”. The word “alive” makes us aware of the writer’s mortality, in a similar fashion to Woolf, and foreshadows his eventual demise. However, where my writing differs is in the explicit third-person description of “the author”, which specifically identifies him as the writer, making the metafiction more apparent to the reader, and incorporates Barthes’ idea of the death of the author and birth of the reader.
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