74 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel
man whom her father—and most of the community—seem to dis-
approve of in their vision of a static, traditional England, Dorothy
is countermanding these forces and, as Macherey puts it, rupturing
“the historico-social totality” of her world.^97 Of course, the tragic
trajectory of the narrative, which results in the violent severance of
their friendship and Dorothy’s descent into illness, places such a sin-
gular triumph within a poignantly restricted frame.
As I observe above, the transition from The Nature of Blood to A
Distant Shore is marked by a substantial departure in form, signaling
an interesting point of development in Phillips’s literary career. In
Higher Ground and The Nature of Blood , the writer deploys different
voices (even more so in the latter novel) from distinct historical peri-
ods that interlace to adumbrate shared themes of exile and deracina-
tion. As I demonstrate, in both novels, Phillips employs techniques
that disrupt the reader’s empathic engagement with the characters.
But when it comes to The Nature of Blood , Phillips is more deliber-
ate in his attempts to illustrate a close connection between language
use and historical context. All the voices in both novels are of course
rendered using dramatically different registers and narrative voices
that reflect the extent to which the material, cultural, and social
circumstances that attend a given historical moment exert a large
degree of influence over the ways in which we observe and process
our realities. However, in the case of The Nature of Blood , narra-
tives such as Eva Stern’s present a more patent departure in style,
particularly in Phillips’s utilization of broken syntax to convey the
manner in which the character’s harrowing experiences compel her
to employ strategies of psychological defense that ultimately lead to
schizophrenia and suicidal depression.
As well as causing the protagonist to suffer social isolation, which
in turn exacerbates her depression, the psychological damage Stern
sustains also impedes the reader’s attempts to empathize with the
character (a literary technique I associate with defamiliarization and
estrangement). Further complicating this task of empathy are the
additional voices that intrude upon Stern’s narrative, which presume
to “explain” or bring sharper focus to the character’s story. I also
argue that one of the salient effects of these intrusions is to tempt
the reader into subsuming the character’s account under another,