Men and Women Writers of the 1930s: The Dangerous Flood of History

by Montefiore,Janet

• ISBN13: 9780415068925
• ISBN10: 0415068924
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-10-08
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Men and Women of the 1930sis an original and challenging critique of the issues of memory and gender during this trying decade. Montefiore asks two principle questions; what part does memory play in the political literature of and about 1930s Britain? And what were the roles of women, both as writers and as signifying objects in constructing that literature? Montefiore's topical analysis of 1930s mass unemployment, fascist uprise and 'appeasement' is shockingly relevant in society today. Issues of class, anti-fascist historical novels, post war memoirs of 'Auden generation' writers and neglected women poets are discussed at length and help explain how we understand and imagine history through literature.

Author Biography

Janet Montefiore lectures in English and Women's Studies at the University of Kent.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction	p. 1
Remembering the 1930s	p. 7
Politics and collective memory
Looking back in irony
'What about the women?' The sexual politics of memory
Memorials of their time
Neglected classics: Storm Jameson and Claud Cockburn
The pram in the hall: men and women writing the self in the 1930s	p. 43
Case-histories versus the 'undeliberate dream'
Case-studies from the Auden Generation
Women in and out of history
Marginal subjectivities
Gendering the self: Marion Milner and Rebecca West
Vamps and victims: images of women in the left-wing literature of the 1930s	p. 81
Women as signs
Devouring mothers and revengeful spinsters: women in the plays of Auden, Isherwood and Spender
Class stereotypes: the expensive whore and the washerwoman
Poetry and the symbolic feminine: Rickword, Day Lewis and others
'Underservedly forgotten': women poets of the thirties	p. 113
A buried tradition
Taking sides: women and political poetry
'The men who die': women poets remembering the Great War
Women poets and the Audenesque style: Naomi Mitchison and Stevie Smith
Irony and tradition: Ruth Pitter and Sylvia Townsend Warner
Traditional lyrics: E. J. Scovell, Valentine Ackland and others
Parables of the past: a reading of some anti-Fascist historical novels	p. 142
Realism versus fantasy?
Lukacs, Marxist humanism and other stories
The present in the past: Jack Lindsay and Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sexuality and socialism: Naomi Mitchison
Listening to Minna: Sylvia Townsend Warner and historical realism
Collective and individual memory: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon	p. 178
A 'typical Englishwoman' and her hybrid book
Collective memory and the grand narratives
Black lamb and grey falcon
Micro-narrative: Rebecca West's own journey
Writer as subject: diary versus book
Notes	p. 216
Bibliography	p. 245
Index	p. 253
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