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Wetherilt, Anne
(2024).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.00098557
Abstract
This thesis examines selected novels by five women writers, published between 1948 and 1972 – the decisive years encompassing the dissolution of the British Empire. The authors – Cecilie Leslie (1908-1988), Elspeth Huxley (1907-1997), Mary McMinnies (1920-?), Han Suyin (c. 1916/17-2012) and Kamala Markandaya (1924-2004)– occupied a unique vantage point, as they witnessed the process of decolonisation at first hand. My central claim is that women’s post-war novels reveal a much deeper engagement with the politics and economics of decolonisation than is usually ascribed to this fiction. Drawing on their journalistic backgrounds and personal experience of empire, the five women develop narratives which cast a critical eye on Britain’s imperial past and the post-imperial present. They interrogate official narratives of orderly withdrawal and successful stewardship; debate neocolonial legacies in the guise of infrastructure investments; challenge the discourse of development; and expose Britain’s complicated response to immigration.
The thesis also makes the case for viewing the novel of decolonisation as exemplary of the political middlebrow. The formal qualities of the middlebrow novel – compelling plots; narrative closure; believable characters; a recognisable fictional world; accessible prose – allow the authors to explore difficult topical issues through the familiar conventions of the middlebrow. Together with the novels’ dialogism, these narrative strategies produce the deep political engagement of the female novel of decolonisation. Conversely, reading the novel of decolonisation through a middlebrow lens illustrates the flexibility of the genre and its ability to transcend the domestic politics, customarily associated with women’s fiction.
Finally, the thesis studies contemporary reviews to gauge the metropolitan reception of the novel of decolonisation. Acting as tastemakers, reviewers are shown to impose a middlebrow aesthetic, revealing a sensitivity to the balance between fact and fiction, and ranking the adherence to certain narrative qualities above overtly political commentary. The female middlebrow, it appears, is expected to wear its politics lightly.