Women's writing, Englishness and national and cultural identity

About this book

An exciting new mapping of women's writing in the 1940s and 1950s, this book examines Englishness and national identity in women's writing. Taking as a starting point the premise that mobility is a metaphor for the times, this book uses a synthesis of historical retrieval, literary theory and textual analysis to provide culturally situated and historically-specific readings of a wide range of texts addressing issues that relate to the changing experience of women in this time. Themes addressed include the displacements of war, women's radically altered understandings of their own sexuality, the retreat from Empire, the relationship of women to the idea of nation, the migrant experience, the literary representation of Welsh, Scottish and English identity, and the meanings of home. The book includes accessible scholarly commentary on Englishness and gender by women from Scotland, Wales, Ireland the Indian subcontinent and Africa and discusses the work of authors such as Elizabeth Bowen, Virginia Woolf, Dodie Smith, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Pym, Daphne Du Maurier, Jessie Kesson, Lynette Roberts, Doris Lessing and Muriel Spark.