Title: Strangers and secrets
First published: 1994
Description: What happens when we communicate with other people? The topic has been much studied in sociolinguistics, as well as by philosophers, sociologists, and communication theorists; but it is also one of the main concerns of novelists, and it is a major source of comedy, intrigue, and pathos in many novels. To illustrate this, R. A.

York studies eight classics from nineteenth-century England - Emma, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, North and South, Barchester Towers, The Woman in White, Great Expectations, and Middlemarch - showing that literature is not only a celebration of the power to communicate, but also a celebration of the need to discipline communication.

Some of the novels treated by York depict a seemingly stable society within which strong conventions for what and how something can be communicated exist. But the norms of communication are challenged and threatened by two things: the presence of outsiders - strangers who do not share the social norms or the common knowledge they imply - and the wish of characters, through shame, modesty, or self-interest, to keep their knowledge and feelings secret from others.

These two factors are, in fact, often intertwined - the arrival of strangers in a community creates an atmosphere of secrecy and reserve, which brings with it uncertainty, tension, curiosity, and excitement.

In thus recording social mobility and the disturbances it brings to the community, the novelists of nineteenth-century England offer - more or less openly - a comment on the impact of historical change, showing how characters seek to save themselves from the challenge of new degrees of communication (that is, to maintain self-respect and social cohesion by restricting the extent to which they allow themselves to know others and to be known by them).

If the novelists often show sympathy for such a defensive strategy, they also celebrate the openness and fullness of communication which may be forced upon their characters, and they explore forms of communication that are all the more satisfying because they are difficult - often indirect and gained at the cost of overcoming xenophobia and the comfort of secrecy.
Subjects: Communication in literature, English fiction, Secrecy in literature, Outsiders in literature, History and criticism, English fiction, history and criticism, 19th century
Time periods: 19th century
LC classification: PR868.C636 Y67 1994