Political and social issues in British women's fiction : 1928-1968

Elizabeth Maslen reassesses fiction written by women between the granting of universal franchise and the advent of new-wave feminism. Through close readings of a wide range of novels, she analyzes the way writers choose to represent such issues as pacifism and the threat of fascism, war, race and class, and gender. Choice Maslen provides academic readers with a useful tool for understanding a difficult period. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 9 Introduction......Page 10 1 Women's Ways of Writing......Page 29 'An uproar of voices' in the thirties......Page 37 The forties as 'a series of transformations'......Page 50 'The dangers of insufficient symbolism' after the War......Page 55 The 'socially determined fiction' of private life in the sixties......Page 61 2 Wars and Rumours of Wars......Page 71 Hauntings and forebodings of war in the thirties......Page 76 Home and abroad in the War years......Page 84 'The post-war': neither war nor peace in the late forties......Page 94 Under the shadow of the bomb in the fifties and sixties......Page 99 3 Marginalities of Race and Class......Page 108 Race, empire and wage-slaves in the thirties......Page 110 Xenophobia, merging and mixing in the forties......Page 122 The shifting and changing margins of the fifties......Page 132 New voices of the sixties......Page 143 4 Men, Women, Sex and Gender......Page 154 Advances and exclusions in the thirties......Page 157 The gender paradoxes of the forties......Page 167 Domesticity, rebels and victims in the fifties......Page 175 The politics of self-actualization and progressive social change: the sixties......Page 183 5 Women in a Changing Society: Conclusion......Page 194 Notes......Page 213 Primary Sources......Page 238 Select Bibliography......Page 244 B......Page 250 D......Page 251 G......Page 252 K......Page 253 M......Page 254 R......Page 255 T......Page 256 Y......Page 257 In Political and Social Issues in British Women's Fiction, 1928-1968 , Elizabeth Maslen reassesses fiction written by women between the granting of universal franchise and the advent of new-wave feminism. Through close readings of a wide range of novels, Maslen analyses how writers chose to represent such issues as pacifism and the threat of fascism, war, race and class, and gender, exploring in the process how the writers' priorities affect their decisions on how to write. Elizabeth Maslen reassesses fiction written by women between the granting of universal franchise and the advent of new wave feminism. She analyzes how writers chose to represent a range of issues, exploring in the process how the their priorities affect their decisions on how to write