Clemence Dane

Clemence Dane This feminist investigation of the works of Clemence Dane joins the growing body of research into the relationship of female-authored texts to the ideology and cultural hegemony of the Edwardian and inter-war period. An amalgam of single- author study and thematic period analysis, through sustained cultural engagement, this book explores Dane’s journalism, drama and fiction to interrogate a range of issues: inter-war women’s writing, the Middlebrow, feminism, (homo) sexuality, liberal politics, domesticity, and concepts of the spinster. It examines form and a range of fictional genres: drama, bildungsroman, detective fiction, historical saga and gothic fiction. It relates back to the genre writing of comparable authors. These include Rosamond Lehmann, Vita Sackville-West, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Dorothy Strachey, Dodie Smith, Rachel Ferguson, May Sinclair, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Daphne Du Maurier, G.B. Stern, and detective writers: Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Gladys Mitchell, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh. Offering a picture of an era, focalised through Dane and contextualised through her journalism and the work of her female peers, it argues that Dane is often markedly more radically feminist than these contemporaries. She engages with broad issues of social justice irrespective of gender and her humanity is demonstrated through her sympathetic representations of marginalised characters of both sexes. However, she most specifically evidences a gender politics consistent with the fragmented and multifarious essentialist feminism that emerged following the Great War, which esteemed ‘womanly’ qualities of care and mothering but simultaneously valued female autonomy, single status and professionalism. Adopting the critical paradigms of domestic modernism and women’s liminality, the book will particularly focus on the trajectories of Dane’s extraordinary modern heroines, who possess qualities of altruism, candour, integrity, imagination, intuition, resilience and rebelliousness. Over the course of her work, these fictional women increasingly challenge oppressive normative forms of domesticity, traversing physical thresholds to create alternative domesticities in self-defining living and working spaces. Louise McDonald is currently Senior Lecturer in English at Newman University. Her publications include: ‘Clemence Dane’s Fantastical Fiction and Feminist Consciousness’ in Ehland, Christoph and Wachter, Cornelia Middlebrow and Gender 1980–1945 (2016), ‘Softening Svengali: Film Transformations of Trilby and Cultural Change’ in Cooke, Simon and Goldman, Paul George du Maurier: Illustrator, Author, Critic (2016) and ‘From Victorian to Postmodern Negation: Enlightenment Culture in Thackeray’s and Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon’ in Bloom, Abigail Burnham and Pollock, Mary Sanders Victorian Literature and Film Adaptation (2011). She has also contributed articles on Clemence Dane and her work to The Literary Encyclopedia, Baldick, Chris and Childs, Peter (eds.) English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century, 1945–Present (2017). Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature Modernism and Modernity in British Women’s Magazines Alice Wood Queering Modernist Translation The Poetics of Race, Gender, and Queerness Christian Bancroft Modernist Literature and European Identity Birgit Van Puymbroeck Embodiment and the Cosmic Perspective in Twentieth-Century Fiction Marco Caracciolo Life-Writing, Genre and Criticism in the Texts of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland Women Writing for Women Ailsa Granne Character and Dystopia The Last Men Aaron S. Rosenfeld Literary Criticism, Culture and the Subject Of ‘English’: F. R. Leavis and T. S. Eliot Dandan Zhang Clemence Dane Forgotten Feminist Writer of the Inter-War Years Louise McDonald For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com Clemence Dane Forgotten Feminist Writer of the Inter-War Years Louise McDonald First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Louise McDonald to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-56889-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-09980-2 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC For Karl, Marianne and Angelina, and in memory of Juliet Howe Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 1 Clemence Dane and the Inter-War Political, Cultural and Literary Context 21 Modernism and the Middlebrow 21 Feminist Consciousness 27 Social Ills and Liberal Solutions 45 2 Women’s Themes in Inter-War Drama 62 Women in the Modern World 65 Contesting Masculine Abuses in Plays About the Past 82 Interpreting Literary History 88 3 Imperilled Identities and Submerged Sexualities: Romantic Pathology in the Coming-of-Age Novel, 1917–1927 103 Lesbian Loss: The Amor Impossibilia 104 Romantic Yearning in Heterosexual Contexts 132 4 Domestic Choices: Companionate Marriage or Living as a Seule Dame. Rejecting Romance in Gothic and Saga Writing, 1924–1938 150 Fantastical Fiction and Female Visionary Experience 153 Family Chronicles: Women’s Journeys from Domestication to Professionalism 174 viii Contents 5 Subverting the Models of Golden-Age Detective Fiction 208 Detectives, Villainy and Masculinities 211 Investigative Women 222 Foregrounding the Woman’s Plot 229 Conclusion 253 Index 258 Acknowledgements My thanks go to my colleagues and friends at Newman University past and present, particular Helen Davies, and the Newman research commit- tee for granting my sabbatical, especially Emma Board and Jane Allcroft. I am also grateful for the advice given to me by members of the English Department at Leicester University, particularly Victoria Stewart and also Martin Stannard, Mark Rawlinson and Philip Shaw. My thanks also go to staff at the university’s Graduate Office. I would also like to thank staff at Newman University Library, Uni- versity of Leicester Library, Birmingham Central Library, Birmingham University Library, University of Bristol Theatre collection, The British Museum and associated Newspaper Library, the V & A, particularly staff working in the Theatre Performance Collections and Images Col- lections, the Harry Ranson Centre, the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress and the Claremon Fan Court Foundation Ltd. All efforts have been made to contact copyright holders. More thanks are due to Gail Marshall, Nicola Humble, Angela K. Smith, David Tomlinson, Sylvia Kent, Mia Khachidze and Gillian Ide. Many thanks to Brill Rodopi for giving permission to reproduce material first published in Ehland, Christoph and Wachter, Cornelia (2016) Mid- dlebrow and Gender 1980–1945. Thanks also to the editorial team at Taylor and Francis, especially Michelle Salyga and Bryony Reece. My very special thanks go to my mother, Clive, all other family, and friends, and my late Aunt Christine and her husband Roger for taking an interest in my study, sending snippets of information about Clemence Dane and thinking of me when browsing second-hand bookshops. Most of all I would like to thank my daughter, Marianne, for advising me throughout the course of the project; my daughter, Angelina, for putting up with a mother who must have appeared to be on another planet a lot of the time; and my husband Karl for doing just about everything around the house and keeping the ship afloat. If they hadn’t been so wonderful and supportive, this project would never have been completed. x Acknowledgements Thanksgiving Prayers O LORD, we thank thee and praise thee for the life of Clemence Dane WE THANK THEE For her courage, integrity and gaiety: For the quickness and depth of her perception: For her gift of friendship and the joy which she brought to her friends: For her instant response to all in need of help: For her writing: For her many other talents and her craftsmanship: For her love of words, colour and form: For her love of animals and the wonders of the earth: For her wide knowledge and endless delight in discovery: For her certainty in the continuity of life: For her beauty: And above all, for the great generosity of her heart and spirit, and her love of that which is good. THANKS BE TO GOD. Amen. From the address that Joyce Grenfell gave at the Service of Prayer and Thanksgiving for Miss Clemence Dane (Winifred Ashton), at the Royal Parish church of St Martin-in-the-fields, (Joyce Grenfell Archive, Theatre Collection, University of Bristol). Introduction Clemence Dane, C.B.E. (1888–1965) (born Winifred Ashton) was once a valued literary figure with an international reputation as a prolific novel- ist and playwright, as well as a scriptwriter, poet, editor, historian, literary critic, biographer, journalist, broadcaster, actor, one-time

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