THE NOVELIST STILL AT THE CROSSROADS

Based on her early novels, Spark was pigeonholed by her contemporaries mostly as a Catholic satirist committed to eternal truths. However, Spark took an increasing delight in elusiveness in her later novels, refusing to confer value on her texts or insert an easily recognizable moral preoccupation. This paper is an attempt to discuss whether Spark's cool, unengaged quality and ostentatious disinterestedness in upholding moral values may or may not enable satire within the confines of its traditional predicament. Since Spark came very close to contradicting many of her previous claims and findings during her dynamic development, I am obliged to utilize novels from different periods, The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1961) and Symposium (1991), to find out whether any method can be derived from apparent inconsistency.