H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e1 6 8patriarch. All men and women have to shoulder the burden of
a feckless father.
Besides, novels, not least Victorian ones, are fascinated by
characters who rise from rags to riches by their own strenuous
efforts. It is a dry run for the American dream. Indeed, the fact that
these figures are parentless can actually smooth their progress.
There is less history to hamper them. They are not caught up in a
complex web of kinsfolk, but can go it alone. In D.H. Lawrence’s
Sons and Lovers, Paul Morel more or less kills off his mother.
The story ends with him walking off on his own towards a more
independent life. Whereas realist novels, as we have seen, tend to
close with some kind of settlement, the typical modernist novel
ends with someone walking away solitary and disenchanted, his
problems unresolved but free of social or domestic obligations.
Orphans are anomalous figures, half in and half out of the fami-
lies that take them in. They exist at an angle to their circumstances.
The orphan is de trop, out of place, the joker in the domestic pack.
It is this disruption that then sets the narrative in motion. So
orphans prove useful devices for telling stories. If we are Victorian
readers, we know that they are going to emerge at the end of the
book in fine fettle, but we are curious about how the story will pull
this off, and what agreeable misadventures they may meet with en
route. We are thus unsettled and reassured at the same time, which
is always an ambiguity to be relished. Horror movies unsettle us
with their spookiness, but reassure us because we know their
horror is unreal.
English literature’s favourite orphan these days is indeed Harry
Potter. Harry’s early life with the repulsive Dursley family is not far
from Pip’s experience as a boy, or the young Jane Eyre’s in the Reid
family. In Harry’s case, however, Freud’s family romance syndrome