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S a T I R I S T C H R I S T I N A S T E A D s a t i r i s t A n n e P e n d e r C H R I S T I N A S T E A D s a t i r i s t ASAL Literary Series The ASAL Literary Studies Series is an initiative of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature to meet the need for specialist monograph publishing on Australian writing. The series publishes small print-run books on areas of Australian writing and its contexts that promote debate about aspects of Australian literary culture. ASAL E D I T O R I A L C O M M I TT E E Patrick Buckridge, Griffith University Christopher Lee, University of Southern Queensland Susan K. Martin, La Trobe University Elizabeth Webby, University of Sydney Editorial Advisors: Delys Bird, Robert Dixon, Harry Heseltine, Brian Kiernan, Susan Lever, Brian Matthews, Elizabeth Perkins, Ken Stewart, Shirley Walker and Michael Wilding. O T H E R B O O K S I N T H E S E R I E S David Carter, A Career in Writing: Judah Waten and the Cultural Cringe Leigh Dale, The English Men: Professing Literature in Australian Universities Alison Bartlett, Jamming the Machinery: Contemporary Australian Women'sr iW t i n g Susan Lever, Real Relations: The Feminist Politics of Form in Australian Fiction PA S T T I T L E S AVA I L A B L E F R O M ASAL Literary Studies Series Department of Humanities and International studies University of Southern Queensland Toowoomba, Qld 4350 Telephone: 61 (0)7 4631 1065 Facsimile: 61 (0)7 4631 1063 Further information: http://www.adfa.oz.au/asal C H R I S T I N A S T E A D s a t i r i s t A n n e P e n d e r For Grace and Lo u i s a This book is published at theHumanities.com a series imprint of theUniversityPress.com First published in Australia in 2002 by Common Ground Publishing Pty Ltd PO Box 463 Altona Vic 3018 ABN 66 074 822 629 in association with The Association for the Study of Australian Literature Humanities and International Studies Faculty of Arts University of Southern Queensland Toowoomba Qld 4350 www.theHumanities.com Copyright © Anne Pender, 2002 All rights reserved. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data: Pender, Anne. Christina Stead: satirist. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 1 86335 083 7 (pbk). ISBN 1 86335 089 6 (PDF). 1. Stead, Christina, 1902–1983 – Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. A823.2 Cover image: ‘Satiric Dancer’, Andre Kertesz, 1926, gelatin silver photograph from the collection of The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Designed by Jo Waite Design. Typeset in Italian Garamond by Jo Waite Design. Printed in Australia by dbooks on 80gsm Publisher’s Offset. Published with the generous support of the Academy of the Humanities and the Australian National University. Ac k n o w l e d g e m e n t s The research for this book was made possible by an Au s t r a l i a n Postgraduate Research Award, and I am most grateful for the financial support. Bruce Bennett and Susan Lever guided me through my project and I thank them for making it such an exciting and rewarding period of my life. The staff of the Australian Defence Force Academy School of Language, Literature and Communication were invaluable. I particularly thank Jack Bowers, Therese Weber, Jeff Doyle, Sarah Randles, Heather Neilson, Philippa Ke l l y, Elizabeth Lawson, Susan Cowan, Margaret McNalley and Cindy White. I would like to thank Stead scholars who have helped me at various stages of my study: Ron Geering, Margaret Harris, Hazel Rowley and Chris Williams. I also thank Clare Golson for her conversations and generosity in sharing her memories of Stead. I acknowledge the assistance I received from the ADFA Library staff, the staff of the National Library of Au s t r a l i a Manuscript Room and Oral History Unit, as well as the advice given by Peter Stanley at the Australian War Memorial. vi A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S My friends Anthea Gerrans, Penny Hanley, Sally Murray, Philippa Wicks and Susan Tridgell have been a great source of joy and support to me throughout this work. David Pa r k e r, Rich Pascal and the late Axel Clark of the Australian National University have also offered me advice and help on many occasions while I was researching and writing this book. I thank the Australian National University and the Au s t r a l i a n Academy for the Humanities for their assistance with the publication of this book. In particular I thank Bruce Moore for his advice and friendship. I would like to thank Delys Bird, Pa t r i c k Buckridge, Susan Martin and Christopher Lee of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for their support with the project also. I am very grateful to Robin Freeman of Common Ground Publishing for her work on the manuscript and for steering the book through the publication process. Without the support of my husband, Pe t e r, and my parents, Bob and Marie Pe n d e r, I would not have been able to undertake this work. To them I owe a great debt. C o n t e n t s Dedication Acknowledgements v Introduction 1 Chapter One Paris and the ‘Gilded Postwar Harlequinade’: Christina Stead’s Early Satires 27 Chapter Two ‘Fantastic Outrage’ and ‘A Faint Odour of Malice’: Towards a Degenerative Satire in Letty Fox: Her Luckand Miss Herbert (The Suburban Wife) 58 Chapter Three ‘A Wilderness of Lies’: History, Truth and the Development of Christina Stead’s Satire during World War II 91 viii C O N T E N T S Chapter Four ‘What’s Wrong with My England?’ Christina Stead’s Satirical History in Cotters’ Englandand the English Short Stories 126 Chapter Five Christina Stead’s Encyclopaedic Vision: I’m Dying Laughing and Twentieth Century History 167 Conclusion 199 Appendix One Christina Stead’s Satirical Novels – Composition and Publication Dates 203 Appendix Two Types – Known from All Time 204 Endnotes 207 Bibliography 225 Index 243 I n t r o d u c t i o n Christina Stead was an accomplished satirist yet critics have chosen to ignore the satire in her fiction. In this study I will look at Stead’s novels as inheritors of a tradition of satire that dates back to the Roman satires of Horace and Juvenal. My focus is on Stead’s attempt to interpret the history of her own period through satire. Understanding Stead as a satirist allows us to draw on elements of each of the critical perspectives brought to bear on Stead’s fiction from 1934 until the present day. Through this perspective we are freed from thinking of her as an exclusively modernist, realist, expressionist or socialist realist writer. We are enabled to see her as an author whose work encompasses modernist and realist elements as well as offering glimmers of a postmodernist aesthetic. Acknowledging Stead as a satirist also allows us to move towards a view of her work that places her political interests and historical knowledge within a new framework: that of the satirical novel. The argument in this work is twofold. I seek to establish Stead as a satirist by demonstrating the way in which she adopted the 2 C H R I S T I N A S T E A D : S AT I R I S T techniques associated with satire. I analyse the way Stead castigates folly and vice, just as her classical predecessors did, paying careful attention to the tone and style of her denunciatory prose. However, Stead’s satire was experimental and transformed the genre as her career progressed. Unlike Juvenal, Stead resisted making moral judgements and her characters are more complex than those found in many traditional satires. Furthermore, in presenting an historically interpretive kind of satire, Stead speculates on the reasons for various social phenomena; thus her satire is analytical. For example Stead analyses the degeneracy she witnessed in the United States of America and the wretched social conditions in England after the war, rather than simply describing them. Christina Stead’s satiric style is evident in her very earliest fiction. Her strength as a satirist is apparent in some of T h e Salzburg Tales(1934) and Seven Poor Men of Sydney(1934) but it becomes palpable in The Beauties and Furies(1936) and in House of All Nations(1938), in which Stead begins to present a history of her own times. Each of the satires that follow the encyclopaedic House of All Nationsforms part of an historical project in which Stead explores the failure of radical political action amongst various members and factions of the left in both the US and England. Stead’s autobiographical novels, The Man Who Lo v e d Children (1940) and For Love Alone(1944), are her least satirical novels. However there are elements in these works that can be regarded as satirical. Satire is frequently blended with other modes of narrative and, in these novels especially, is more usefully recognised as a mode or spirit than as a distinctive genre.
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