Here Is This More the Case Than in Father
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Elizabeth von Arnim – Identities The University of Toulon, 2-3 July 2019 Organised by the Elizabeth von Arnim SoCiety Hosted by The University of Toulon Keynote Speaker: Kate Macdonald Visiting ResearCh Fellow at the University of Bedfordshire and DireCtor of Handheld Press Acknowledgements The Elizabeth von Arnim SoCiety would like to thank the University of Toulon for its support in the preparation of this ConferenCe. Our speCial thanks go to Marie-Catherine Cadet, ResearCh Librarian, and Daniel Eymard, DireCtor of the library at Toulon University. We would also like to thank Joe Shaughnessy for designing the ConferenCe poster, Noreen O’Connor for website support, and Jennifer Walker for her tireless efforts. Program Tuesday 2nd July (Batiment/Building EVE) 8.30 – 9.00 Registration 9.00 – 9.30 WelCome by organisers & DireCtor of Library 9.30 – 11.00 – Panel 1 (Chair: NiCk Turner) - Noreen O’Connor: Women Who Take to the Sofa: Family Limitation and Respectability in Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Pastor’s Wife - Jennifer Shepherd: DisCourses of Aging and Rejuvenation in Gertrude Atherton’s Black Oxen (1923) and Elizabeth von Arnim’s Love (1925) - Isobel Maddison: Transitions. The Enchanted April 11.00 – 11.30 Break 11.30 – 13.00 Panel 2 (Chair: Noreen O’Connor) - NiCk Turner: Sardines in the Sussex Garden: PlaCe, SpaCe and Comedy in Father - Juliane Roemhild: Neither Truth itself, nor life itself: All the Dogs of My Life and Virginia Woolf’s New Biographies - Sally Horovitz: Parva sed Apta: The Nursery Rhymes of Elizabeth von Arnim 13.00 – 14.00 Lunch 14.00 – 14.30 IntroduCtion to the Elizabeth von Arnim ColleCtion at the University Library by Marie-Catherine Cadet 14.45 – 15.45 Keynote, Kate Macdonald: Elizabeth and the Marriage Plot 15.45 – 16.15 Break 16.15 – 17.00 Closing panel / round table We are meeting at 7pm for the ConferenCe dinner at Le Bistrok at 19 Rue PiCot, 83000 Toulon. Program Wednesday 3rd July University Library 10.00 – 11.00 Workshop ArChives (facilitated by Juliane) 11.00 – 12.00 Workshop CritiCal Edition (facilitated by Isobel) 12.00 – 13.00 LunCh 13.00 – 14.00 SoCiety Business Abstracts Discourses of Aging and Rejuvenation in Gertrude Atherton’s Black Oxen (1923) and Elizabeth von Arnim’s Love (1925) Jennifer Shepherd [email protected] Concerns about the ‘aging problem’ Crop up frequently within literature written by women aCross the Cultural speCtrum in the so-called ‘Roaring Twenties’. I will draw attention to one new mediCal solution to this ‘problem’ posited by endocrinologists in the 1920s – glandular rejuvenation1 – and track the manner in whiCh this solution was taken up and examined by two middlebrow women writers of the period: Gertrude Atherton in Black Oxen (1923) and Elizabeth von Arnim in Love (1925). These novels offer two very different literary ‘takes’ on the glandular rejuvenation proCedure and its success as a health intervention; however, they both use the procedure as a vehicle for exploring ontological questions about the mature woman’s social purpose and identity in an age increasingly preoCCupied with youth. Both novels also reveal a great deal about their authors’ own respeCtive struggle with the ‘problem’ of aging on a personal level, as women and as writers-of- a-certain-age in an inCreasingly Competitive and diverse literary marketplaCe. Their ChoiCe to Capitalise on relatively ‘young’ and emerging media to maximise the profits of their novels (film for Atherton and magazine serialisation for von Arnim) reveals both the opportunities and limits of the interwar middlebrow literary market for exploring women’s ‘problems’ in a consistent and politically meaningful way. Biography: Jennifer Shepherd is a LeCturer in English Literature with The Open University. Her researCh interests inClude genres of the fin de siècle, 1 EndoCrine researChers suCh as Eugen Steinach Claimed to have disCovered a modern fountain of youth in the form of the ‘SteinaCh operation’, a simple procedure performed on men’s and women’s sex glands to reverse not just the signs of aging but the aging process itself. See Chandak Sengoopta, ‘Dr Steinach is Coming to make old young!’: Sex Glands, VaseCtomy and the Quest for Rejuvenation in the Roaring Twenties’. Endeavour. Vol. 27(2003): 22-6. middlebrow studies, the work of Elizabeth von Arnim, and the psychology of reading. She is Currently working on disCourses of gender and aging within transatlantiC middlebrow literary produCtion during the interwar period. Sardines in the Sussex Garden: Place, Space and Comedy in Father Nick Turner [email protected] The group of novels written by Mary BeauChamp after Love has as yet reCeived little CritiCal attention. While something of the vigour and originality of the earlier works may be missing, they nonetheless remain fasCinating, diverse fiCtions, sophistiCated Comedies that often develop themes from the earlier work. Nowhere is this more the Case than in Father. I will Consider two aspeCts of the novel that relate more widely to Beauchamp’s work. The first is the theme of plaCe and spaCe. The novelist’s work has often Considered the relationship of a Central female CharaCter to domestiC spaCe, and allowed them degrees of liberation through solitary journeys or aCtivity in the liminal, domestic-unconfined boundary spaCe of the garden. In Father, the protagonist, Jennifer, undertakes independent travel to esCape and appears to transgress soCietal and gender Codes in her new establishment. I Consider how Jennifer’s behaviour, Centred around unconventional or absurd aCtivity in her garden, is presented by Beauchamp. The manner of this presentation relates to the seCond question in the paper: how the author uses the ComiC mode in Father, and why. Does the use of nonsense and the absurd, the ease and even Comfort of the ‘delightful’ comedy, work against more serious satirizing of social norms? I will show that the ambiguities of the novel make Father all the more interesting, a key example of intermodernist women’s ComiC fiCtion. Biography. NiCk Turner is an AssoCiate LeCturer at the University of Salford and English CurriCulum Co-ordinator at RastriCk Independent SChool. His monograph is Post-War British Women Novelists and the Canon (Routledge, 2010), and he has reCently published an essay on von Arnim’s The Pastor’s Wife in Women: A Cultural Review. He is Co-chair and co-founder of the Elizabeth Bowen SoCiety and Co-editor of the Elizabeth Bowen Review, Co- editor of the journal Writers in Conversation and a specialist on the work of Barbara Pym. Soon-to-be published work includes an artiCle on the Crime fiCtion of Mary Fitt and an edited projeCt on Comedy in the work of intermodernist British women writers. Women Who Take to the Sofa: Family Limitation and Respectability in Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Pastor’s Wife Noreen O’Connor [email protected] Elizabeth von Arnim’s 1914 novel The Pastor’s Wife tells the story of a young woman who is swept suddenly into a marriage to a rural German pastor. The novel focuses on the next eight turbulent years of her marriage, providing an acCount of pregnanCy, Childbirth, illness, infant mortality, and a wish for esCape. Through the story of an individual woman’s experienCe, The Pastor’s Wife engages with a Contemporary Cultural moment in whiCh the very definition of respeCtable marriage and parenthood, and women’s bodies, was the subjeCt of fierce mediCal, politiCal and soCial debate ConduCted by men in high ranking positions of power. The Cause of this debate stemmed from concerns raised by the British and French birth rate, which had begun falling significantly in the final years of the Victorian era and continued to decline, especially among members of the middle and upper Classes. In the guise of a middlebrow novel, von Arnim provides an extraordinary politiCal Commentary on marriage and Childbirth within “respeCtable” CleriCal families in the years before World War One. A Close examination of the novel reveals its alignment with an emergent, muCh more radiCal and overtly politiCal debate about women’s bodies, family planning, and the plaCe of women within soCiety. Biography: Noreen O’Connor is an AssoCiate Professor at King’s College in Pennsylvania. Currently viCe president of the International Elizabeth von Arnim Society, she was Co-organizer of the joint Elizabeth von Arnim and Katherine Mansfield ConferenCe, held at the Huntington Library in 2017. Her research foCuses on women modernists, narrative, and war trauma. Parva sed Apta: The Nursery Rhymes of Elizabeth von Arnim Sally Horovitz [email protected] The April Baby’s Book of Tunes, von Arnim’s third book, was issued in 1900 and illustrated by the renowned Children’s artist Kate Greenaway, then at the end of her Career. This skilfully structured trio of text, music and pictures is as closely connected to biographical details of von Arnim’s life as are her novels for adults. She addresses, too, several of the themes Central to her oeuvre with a piquant lightness of touCh suited to a young audience while slyly sustaining the interest of their elders. The interesting publication history of the book shows von Arnim’s growing dexterity in handling her relationship with MaCmillan and Co., and the artistry of the freshly Composed songs captures in purely musical terms the precision and vitality we all admire in her. This earlier ‘April’ of her titled works is, literally, enchanted. Biography: Presently a Member of Wolfson College Oxford, Sally Horovitz graduated with a double first after winning an academiC sCholarship to read MusiC at St.Hilda’s College. During her doCtoral study she was eleCted a Graduate SCholar at Wolfson, ConCurrently studying musiC analysis at King’s College London. Sally has held LeCtureships in MusiC at St.Hilda’s and St.Edmund Hall and Membership of the FaCulty of Music, Oxford.