La vulnérabilité dans et de Pilgrimage de Dorothy Richardson

Abstract

The notion of vulnerability is everywhere to be found in Pilgrimage, an autofictional narrative written by Dorothy Richardson between 1915 and 1938 (as far as the first twelve novels are concerned) and narrating how Miriam Henderson, the main protagonist, managed to become a writer against the odds. In the aftermath of her father’s bankruptcy, Miriam settles in London (1896-1907) where she discovers how socially vulnerable she is both as a worker and as a woman in a patriarchal society whose cultural norms are potential traumatic wounds. Miriam is also confronted with another loss, that of her mother whose suicide leaves her dismayed and dispossessed. Trying to avoid being in a position where she could be undone by the people coming along, Miriam sometimes fails to take the others’vulnerability into consideration. Thus the text is both an account of her vulnerability (through ellipses, indirection and fragmentation) and an instance of Miriam’s making light of the others’ vulnerability by commodifying them in the narrative. The new role given to the readers, however, in a text which is itself a deeply vulnerable text, shows how fundamental and necessary the ethical model is when it comes to vulnerability.