Daniel Williams* Apprentice to Deception: L. P. Hartley and the Bildungsroman DOI 10.1515/anglia-2016-0003 Abstract: This essay argues that L. P. Hartley’s novel The Go-Between (1953) fits into the critical tradition of the Bildungsroman in one specific sense: its attention to matters of deception. First, this plot of formation and development involves a necessary apprenticeship in deception: a moral training that has links with every- day practices of concealment in linguistic construal, social etiquette, and inter- personal trust, whose presence I track in the novel. Second, the novel’s framing screens the salient context of its production, the ‘angry decade’ of 1950s Britain. I consider Hartley’s conservative distance from other writing on childhood and youth in the period, suggesting that his representation of deception relates to his critique of social and moral erosion in the postwar period. In the loose vehicle of a Bildungsroman where development is compromised, Hartley presents a novel whose formal structure, in its use of deceptive tropes, affords both its turning away from historical difficulties and its indirect critique of failing morals. 1 Introduction It was literally a moral revolution and accomplished in the depths of her nature. […] She had a new feeling, the feeling of danger; on which a new remedy rose to meet it, the idea of an inner self or, in other words, of concealment. – Henry James, What Maisie Knew ([1897] 1985: 43) No one denied that the summer of 1900 was hot, at least by British standards. Meteorological stations recorded temperatures in excess of 80°F and London saw several July days that climbed beyond 90°F. The newspapers declared a heat- wave, there were several deaths from sunstroke, and amateur forecasters led a chorus of laments about the heat. 1 Within a few months the heat would be over *Corresponding author: Daniel Williams, Harvard University E ˗ Mail: william1@fas.harvard.edu 1 See weather sections and letters to the editor in The Times (1900): July 17 (8, 11), July 18 (13), July 21 (10), July 24 (8), and July 28 (14). Anglia 2016; 134(1): 43–69 Authenticated | william1@fas.harvard.edu author's copy Download Date | 3/21/16 2:40 AM