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Olivia Manning's Balkan and Levant Trilogies In Victory, Defeat Olivia Manning’s Balkan and Levant trilogies and Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour By Frank Hawcroft A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Literature Victoria University of Wellington 2011 1 Abstract Olivia Manning’s Balkan and Levant trilogies (1960-65, 1977-80) and Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy (1952-61) are sequences of historical novels set during the Second World War. This thesis compares and contrasts these sequences as conservative fictional voices from a period of social and literary transition. My first chapter discusses how ideas of heroism and sacrifice prove outmoded and unsupported by institutions during the war. Particularly in Waugh’s trilogy, but to a lesser extent also in Manning’s sequence, models of heroism taken from past texts—such as colonial adventure stories—are shown to be inadequate. Heroism is only possible on a small scale and involves moral compromises. The second chapter considers the treatment of being English outside England. Depictions of foreign countries are considered in the context of the fading of the British Empire and British global power. Colonial life is attractive in a nostalgic sense but is problematic in the present. Episodes about Jewish refugees in both sequences are discussed as symbolising defiance of the entropy of imperial decay as well as attempts to find post-imperial models for intervention. The third and final chapter examines the uses of literature and culture in the novels and how they hint at ways out of the historical binds discussed in the first two chapters. Literature and the teaching of literature have a propagandistic function but also subvert this function by offering escape from the realities of wartime. I also touch on the connection between literary creativity and the subversion of gender roles. I argue that while these sequences construct a generally negative perspective on social changes during the war, this is not unchallenged by subversive undercurrents such as these. The conservative Catholic morality of Waugh’s trilogy contrasts with Manning’s willingness to raise questions about gender, class and colonialism, but in both authors’ works the war is presented as a time in which initially optimistic ideals and hopes are disappointed, while the validity of these ideals in the first place is also questioned. 2 Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 1 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 4 Why choose Manning and Waugh? ....................................................................................... 4 The critical field ....................................................................................................................... 7 An outline of my approach .................................................................................................. 11 Chapter One: Heroism and Sacrifice ....................................................................................... 15 Ideals of heroism and sacrifice in Men at Arms.................................................................. 15 Fractious marriage, vexed politics, and untouchable heroes in the Balkan trilogy ...... 19 The failure of institutions ..................................................................................................... 23 The failure of old colonial heroes: the past unredeemed ................................................. 27 The failure of military heroism: class, courage and cowardice ........................................ 30 Crouchback’s redemption: the moral of the tale in Sword of Honour ............................... 37 The lack of closure in the Levant trilogy ............................................................................ 42 Chapter Two: Being English Abroad ...................................................................................... 45 Images of abroad: romantic nostalgia and “death objects” ............................................. 45 Engaging with the natives in the Balkan and Levant trilogies ........................................ 51 Disengagement from the natives in Sword of Honour ......................................................... 56 Personalising the Holocaust (1): the Pringles and Sasha Drucker .................................. 59 Personalising the Holocaust (2): Crouchback and the Jewish refugees ......................... 62 Escaping the empire .............................................................................................................. 65 Chapter Three: The Uses of Literature ................................................................................... 69 Ludovic the romantic author ............................................................................................... 69 Everard Spruce and state-sanctioned literature ................................................................. 74 Troilus in Bucharest (1): the historical and political context ............................................ 77 Troilus in Bucharest (2): acting out desire ........................................................................... 80 The attractions of a literary career in the Levant trilogy .................................................. 86 Education, elitism and propaganda in Manning’s and Waugh’s sequences .................. 88 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 91 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 94 3 Acknowledgements Thanks most of all to my supervisor, Jane Stafford, for all her support and suggestions. Harry Ricketts serendipitously reminded me of the value of thinking about First World War poetry through my employment as a tutor on his modern poetry course, as well as contributing more intentionally through providing me with a copy of a conference paper on Anthony Powell’s use of Kipling. Anna Kamaralli’s seminar on Cressida and Isabella helped me greatly in developing my ideas about the significance of the staging of Troilus and Cressida and the gender politics likely to prevail in Guy Pringle’s production. Koichi Inoue, the Subject Librarian for the School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies here at Victoria University, was very efficient at ordering some books I suggested could be purchased by the library. Thank you in general to the other anonymous library staff at Victoria, Otago and Waikato University libraries for rapidly supplying books from their collections. Jasmine Lovell-Smith’s proof reading was much appreciated – particularly since it took place in New York. To my family and friends – especially Monica, and my parents Rose and Norman – thank you for supporting and putting up with me during the writing of this thesis. 4 Introduction Olivia Manning’s Balkan and Levant trilogies and Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy have been described as the best novels by, respectively, an Englishwoman and an Englishman about the Second World War.1 This thesis compares and contrasts the two sequences. By examining the similarities and differences in Manning’s and Waugh’s historical narratives, I hope to show how they can be read as attempts to deal with a period of social upheaval. In terms of both world and literary history, these novels come from a period of transition. The war years in which the novels are set saw victory coincide with the start of the loss of the empire and massive social change. They were published over long periods some years after the war: Waugh’s trilogy appeared between 1952 and 1961, the Balkan trilogy between 1960 and 1965, and the Levant between 1977 and 1980. Even by the time Waugh’s trilogy was completed, waves of change had moved through the consciousness of the novel: the social realism of the “Angry Young Men”, the rise of a new generation of women novelists. The beginning of what is now generally identified as the postmodern period was countered by an attempt to return to earlier, arguably pre-modernist, styles of narrative by artistically conservative authors such as Manning and Waugh. Why choose Manning and Waugh? Novels from the post-war period, about the war, seem to have been critically neglected. In their introduction to a collection of scholarly articles on British Fiction After Modernism (2007), Marina MacKay and Lyndsey Stonebridge describe the post-war period as “a critically awkward phase of twentieth-century writing” (1). In his critical survey, English Fiction of the Second World War (1989), covering both literature published during the war and literature about the war published later, Alan Munton also writes that “it is worth remarking that as a period the Second World War has been refused critical recognition” (3). The publication of 1 For example, in his critical survey Wartime and Aftermath Bernard Bergonzi declares that “Sword of Honour is generally and rightly regarded as the finest English novel to come out of the Second World War” (117). In The Novel Now (1967) Anthony Burgess states that the Balkan
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