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The Treatment of Gender in Twentieth-Century Scottish Women’S Historical Fiction

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The Treatment of Gender in Twentieth-Century Scottish Women’S Historical Fiction The Treatment of Gender in Twentieth-century Scottish Women’s Historical Fiction Amanda J. McLeod University of Glasgow March 2001 Submitted for the degree of MLit . ProQuest Number: 13833905 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 13833905 Published by ProQuest LLC(2019). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 f GLASGOW UNIVERSITY LIBRARY: 12300-O ? I 2 Contents • Abstract..............................................................................................................................3 • Acknowledgements ...........................................................................................................5 • List of Abbreviations .........................................................................................................6 • Introduction: Women’s Historical Fiction: A Contradiction in Terms? ........................ 7 • Chapter 1: Unchallenging Histories: Early Historical Fiction and Later Historical Romance by Scottish Women ........................................................................................ 26 • Chapter 2: A Time and a Place: The Relocation of Gender Identity in the Early Historical Fiction of Naomi Mitchison .........................................................................53 • Chapter 3: Jacobites and Gender: Self-reflection in Naomi Mitchison’s epic Scottish historical novel The Bull Calves (1947) ...................................................... 104 • Chapter 4: Celtic Goddess, Whore of Babylon: Sian Hayton’s Cells o f Knowledge Trilogy (1989-1993)..................................................................................................... 149 • Chapter 5: Redressing the Boundaries: the challenge to gender identity in Margaret Elphinstone’s Islanders (1994)....................................................................................189 • Conclusion: Pasts and Present: the Development in Scottish Women’s Historical Fiction in the Twentieth-century ............................................................... 235 • Appendices: Appendix I: Transcript of Interview with Sian Hayton ............................................. 242 Appendix II: Correspondence with Sian Hayton ........................................................244 Appendix III: Transcript of Interview with Margaret Elphinstone ............................251 Appendix IV: Email correspondence with Margaret Elphinstone .............................254 • Bibliography................................................................................................................... 255 3 Abstract This study focuses on the treatment of gender in historical fiction written by three twentieth-century Scottish women - Naomi Mitchison, Sian Hayton and Margaret Elphinstone. Each writer has used history as a base from which to examine the construction of gender. By fore grounding the female and by shifting the focus of history onto the private, domestic sphere, these women move toward the restoration of the female voice, both within the historical context of their fiction, and within their contemporary societies. Chapter 1 analyses the wider literary context of Scottish women’s historical fiction, touching on early exponents of the genre, and on the more recent writers who have focused on popular historical romance. Male writers in the field are discussed in relation to their own uses of history, and their comparatively scant attention to issues of gender. Chapter 2 moves into discussion of Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999). Mitchison’s early work in the historical genre, between publication of The Conquered in 1923 and the appearance of The Corn King and the Spring Queen in 1931, represents a radical approach to the examination of gender within fiction in the early part of the twentieth-century. Set predominantly in the ancient world, Mitchison’s novels and stories exploit the distance offered by ancient history to examine a range of gender-related issues, such as the economic independence of the female within society, sexual expression, and same-sex relationships. In Chapter 3, which discusses Mitchison’s epic Scottish novel, The Bull Calves (1947), many of these issues are treated again, yet the change in Mitchison’s own social and political situation and her strengthening identification with Scotland, inform a less radical approach to the female role than is evident in the first phase of her writing. Further, a move toward the more recent historical setting of 1747 in The Bull Calves is partially responsible for curtailing the more overt feminism of her early work. Chapter 4 discusses three novels by the contemporary writer Sian Hayton (1933-). Cells of Knowledge (1989), Hidden Daughters (1992) and The Last Flight (1993), comprise a Dark-Age trilogy in which female identity is explored. Hayton’s texts set up a system of oppositions between Christian and pagan and male and female, which Hayton then attempts to deconstruct, and in many ways, her strong supernatural heroines provide a positive female image in relation to the monks they encounter. I argue, however, that she is not entirely successful in this, and that the trilogy’s feminism is undermined, to a degree, by a deep-rooted patriarchal framework. 4 Chapter 5 concludes this study with an examination of Margaret Elphinstone’s Islanders (1994). Elphinstone (1948-) moves away from the supernatural elements found in Hayton’s trilogy, toward a more realist portrayal of the way in which women in Old Norse society may have lived. My discussion focuses on the strategies of resistance Elphinstone provides for her female characters in response to the restrictions of their patriarchal community, and asks whether the ultimate failure of her heroine to find fulfilment is influenced by contemporary gender structures. This study argues that the portrayal of the female within Scottish women’s historical fiction is reflective of continuing inequality in the contemporary socio-political environment. 5 Acknowledgements Thanks to: Douglas, Joyce, Inga, Johanna, Hazel, Katy and Kirsten. To Margaret Elphinstone, and especially to Dr John Corbett - for the enthusiasm, time, endless advice, and mostly for caring enough - thank you. Special thanks: To Audrey and miguel for too much to mention, and to Iain and Dawn for being such a good friends even though I haven’t visited you. To Diarmid for nearly everything. To Jay D ’Arcy, for the support and friendship. To Philip, Clare, Ali, Stu, KRP, Charlie, Greg and all at Whistler’s, and to Jamie for helping more than you know. To Colin, my best friend, for still thinking I’m clever, and most of all to Mum and Dad - you know I could never thank you both enough for all the love and support. List of Abbreviations All primary works quoted in this thesis are identified by abbreviation as follows: D.K. Broster: The Dark Mile (DM) Catherine Carswell: Lying Awake {LA) Open the Door (OD) Dorothy Dunnett: The Game o f Kings (GK) Queen’s Play (QP) Margaret Elphinstone: Islanders (I) The Sea Road (SR) Outside Eden (OE) Jane Findlater: The Green Graves o f Balgowrie {GG) Neil Gunn: Sun Circle {SC) Sian Hayton: Cells o f Knowledge (C) Hidden Daughters {HD) The Last Flight {LF) Margaret Irwin: The Gay Galliard {GG) Jane Lane: He Stooped to Conquer {STC) Naomi Mitchison: All Change Here: Girlhood and Marriage {AC) Among You Taking Notes: The Wartime Diary o f Naomi Mitchison {D) As It Was: An Autobiography 1897-1918 {ATW) Barbarian Stories {BS) Beyond this Limit: Selected Shorter Fiction of Naomi Mitchison {BTL) The Big House {BH) Black Sparta and other Stories {BSS) The Bull Calves {BC) Cleopatra’s People {CP) Cloud Cuckoo Land {CCL) The Conquered (C) The Corn King and the Spring Queen {CK) Early in Orcadia {EO) Five Men and a Swan {FM) The Oath-Takers {OT) Sea-Green Ribbons {SGR) Small Talk: Memories o f an Edwardian Childhood {ST) You May Well Ask (YMWA) Nancy Brysson Morrison: The Gowk Storm {GS) Willa Muir: Imagined Corners {IC) Margaret Oliphant: Autobiography and Letters {AL) Kirsteen {K) 7 Introduction Women’s Historical Fiction: a Contradiction in Terms? The aim of this thesis is to discuss the ways in which three Scottish women writers, Naomi Mitchison, Sian Hayton and Margaret Elphinstone, have successfully examined issues of gender through their historical fiction. The thesis describes the socio-cultural and literary context of their work and attempts to show where and why they are successful. My assertion that all three writers have produced feminist historical fiction is based on the application of Pam Morris’s definition of ‘feminism’ as an understanding of ‘the social and psychic mechanisms that construct and perpetuate gender inequality’1 and a commitment to changing them. I would argue that all three of these female authors highlight these social and psychic mechanisms through their fictionalised historical societies, and that in exposing gender inequality within the changing conceptualisation of twentieth-century Scottish society, they each endeavour to challenge it. It is the
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