Posthumous Narration in the Works by Muriel Spark. Article 1

A series of two articles is devoted to the study of posthumous narration (i. e. the narration of a character who, in the conventional reality of the text, is represented as a dead person) in the works of the British writer Muriel Spark. It is argued that Spark gravitated toward various narrative experiments of a paradoxical nature, which certainly includes posthumous narration – a technique that she used repeatedly. The first article in the series analyzes her short stories “Portobello Road” (1956) and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” (1957) in this aspect. In both cases, the plot centers on a criminal event, namely the murder of the main character who is also the narrator. But the perspective is different: in “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” the narrator does not know that she is dead until the very end, until the last paragraph (nor does the reader know this), whereas in “Portobello Road,” the narrator knows about her ontological status from the very beginning of the narrative (and for the reader, it becomes clear quite quickly). Accordingly, the entire plot of “The Girl I Left Behind Me” is built precisely on the female narrator’s gradual insight into her new status, whereas “Portobello Road” is more of a story about retribution. In “Portobello Road,” the narrator is represented as a writer, the story is metafictional, and the theme of “writing about life” becomes fundamental here. In “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” the plot’s “spearhead” is aimed at the goal of a sudden flash of understanding, and the motif of the relationship between soul and body, which has been repeated in various posthumous narratives since ancient times, comes to the fore.