A Style of One’s Own

‘“These humble people remind me of Gray’s Elegy “, [the Archdeacon] said affectedly with his head on one side’, describing to Agatha and Belinda his clerical rounds of visiting at the workhouse in Some Tame Gazelle ( STG , 65). Characters in Pym’s novels are often reminded of people, sentiments and situations in other literary works; indeed, in the conversation which follows this pronouncement, the Archdeacon’s wife, Agatha, is ‘reminded of Piers Plowman , Belinda of the poetry of Crabbe, which she could not remember very exactly, but she felt she had to be reminded of something out of self-defence…’ ( STG , 65). In her first novel especially, as well as in her subsequent fiction, Pym is an intensely literary author; she always seems conscious of the weight of glory which precedes her. Literary tradition provides a counterpart for her own fiction, as she weaves numerous quotations from other works into her own text. This stems initially from her education at Oxford University. And the Victorian and contemporary novels she read after going down from Oxford influenced her style, as in some instances she consciously copied them. In this chapter I shall discuss the key influences on Pym’s writing, the way in which she incorporates fragments of other texts into her own fiction, and finally the way in which she forged her own literary style. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.