Political and social issues in British women's fiction, 1928-1968 / Elizabeth Maslen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Maslen, Elizabeth.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English fiction--Women authors--History and criticism.

English fiction.

English fiction--Women authors.

Politics and literature--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Politics and literature.

Great Britain.

History.

Literature and society--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Literature and society.

Women and literature--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Women and literature.

English fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Political fiction, English--History and criticism.

Political fiction, English.

Social problems in literature.

Politics in literature.

Physical Description:

viii, 248 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Palgrave, 2001.

Summary:

In Political and Social Issues in British Women's Fiction, 1928-1968, Elizabeth Maslen reassesses fiction written by women between the granting of universal francise andthe advent of new-wave feminism. Through close readings of a wide range of novels, Maslen analyses how writers responded to their contemporary world, and how they chose to represent such issues as pacifism and the threat of facism, war and violence, race and class, and gender.

Contents:

1 Women's Ways of Writing 20

'An uproar of voices' in the thirties 28

The forties as 'a series of transformations' 41

'The dangers of insufficient symbolism' after the War 46

The 'socially determined fiction' of private life in the sixties 52

2 Wars and Rumours of Wars 62

Hauntings and forebodings of war in the thirties 67

Home and abroad in the War years 75

'The post-war': neither war nor peace in the late forties 85

Under the shadow of the bomb in the fifties and sixties 90

3 Marginalities of Race and Class 99

Race, empire and wage-slaves in the thirties 101

Xenophobia, merging and mixing in the forties 113

The shifting and changing margins of the fifties 123

New voices of the sixties 134

4 Men, Women, Sex and Gender 145

Advances and exclusions in the thirties 148

The gender paradoxes of the forties 158

Domesticity, rebels and victims in the fifties 166

The politics of self-actualization and progressive social change: the sixties 174

5 Women in a Changing Society: Conclusion 185.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-240) and index.

ISBN:

0333729536

OCLC:

45283009