A Laodicean (1881): Power and Agency

Abstract

A Laodicean is a ‘playful’ text in more than one sense. It is a text that plays, in a serious way, with the idea of subjectivity and its construction and articulation through language. Like Desperate Remedies, it utilises the metaphors of the play and performance to draw attention to this process. In common with The Hand of Ethelberta it is a self-conscious text which sets out not merely to reflect reality, but to show how reality and truth are discursively produced and, by their very nature, artful, provisional and therefore open to change. In its examination of the relationship between Art and life, A Laodicean anticipates Hardy’s final novel The Well-Beloved (1897), which participates fully in the Aesthetic debate. A Laodicean also focuses on the dilemmas and discontents of the ‘New Woman’ and thus anticipates the presentation of Sue Bridehead in Jude the Obscure.

‘Who lets the world, or his own portion of it choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.’

(Liberty, p. 34)