ENVIRONMENT AND THE ILLUSION OF THE “OUTSIDE” IN GEORGE GISSING’S SHORT FICTION

Abstract

This paper argues that in a selection of short stories George Gissing constructs a singular topology of entrapment where the traditional dichotomy of country and city dissolves into a continuous spectrum of alienation, forming a cohesive ‘nether world’ that offers no refuge, only varying degrees of exile. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of “the thought of the outside” (Foucault 1998, p. 154), this analysis demonstrates how the protagonists’ yearning for an alternative existence beyond their spatial limits drives them towards physical displacement, only to reveal its tragic illusion. Their movements in space – whether from rural to urban or urban to rural – never lead to liberation, but trigger a state of psychological and physiological unfitness, which in turn reflect a cruel kind of environmental determinism. Through a close reading of the stories Transplanted, A Son of the Soil and A Freak of Nature this paper examines how Gissing subverts the pastoral ideal and the ideology of environmental reform, exposing the barbarism inherent in the civilizing impulse itself. The character’s incompatibility with any new environment underlines a deep ontological immobility that makes them “irremediably outside the outside”. Ultimately, Gissing’s naturalist project presents a harsh critique of any philanthropic attempt to transcend one’s constitutive milieu, framing such efforts as dangerous experiment that confirm the inescapable power of environment in shaping, confining and finally fracturing the individual.