The New Elizabethans a Novel-In-Stories with Critical
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University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2018 The new Elizabethans a novel-in-stories with critical afterword modifying motherhood in a new motherland : artistic approaches to communicating change in female and national identity during Elizabeth II's reign. Sarah Ivens Moffett University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the Fiction Commons Recommended Citation Moffett, Sarah Ivens, "The new Elizabethans a novel-in-stories with critical afterword modifying motherhood in a new motherland : artistic approaches to communicating change in female and national identity during Elizabeth II's reign." (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2994. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2994 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE NEW ELIZABETHANS A Novel-in-Stories with Critical Afterword MODIFYING MOTHERHOOD IN A NEW MOTHERLAND: ARTISTIC APPROACHES TO COMMUNICATING CHANGE IN FEMALE AND NATIONAL IDENTITY DURING ELIZABETH II’S REIGN By Sarah Ivens Moffett B.A., University of Kent at Canterbury, 1996 M.A., University of Louisville, 2011 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Humanities Department of Comparative Humanities University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky May 2018 THE NEW ELIZABETHANS A Novel-in-Stories with Critical Afterword MODIFYING MOTHERHOOD IN A NEW MOTHERLAND: ARTISTIC APPROACHES TO COMMUNICATING CHANGE IN FEMALE AND NATIONAL IDENTITY DURING ELIZABETH II’S REIGN By Sarah Ivens Moffett B.A., University of Kent at Canterbury, 1996 M.A., University of Louisville, 2011 A Dissertation Approved on April 16th 2018 by the following Dissertation Committee: _____________________________ Dissertation Director Professor Ranen Omer-Sherman, Department of Comparative Humanities ______________________________ Professor Paul Griner, Department of English ______________________________ Professor Ian Stansel, Department of English ______________________________ Professor Karen Christopher, Department of Sociology ABSTRACT THE NEW ELIZABETHANS A Novel-in-Stories with Critical Afterword MODIFYING MOTHERHOOD IN A NEW MOTHERLAND: ARTISTIC APPROACHES TO COMMUNICATING CHANGE IN FEMALE AND NATIONAL IDENTITY DURING ELIZABETH II’S REIGN Sarah Ivens Moffett April 16th 2018 The New Elizabethans is a literary novel-in-stories about the dramatic changes in gender and national identity witnessed by British women during Elizabeth II’s reign, a unified circle of ten finely observed stories outlining the desolation and confusion felt in this era that will be instantly, painfully evocative for anyone who has questioned who we are now – as individuals, as families, as a gender and as a nation. Told in episodic tales, jumping between eras and voices, The New Elizabethans gives witty, compact and remorseful snapshots of British life from 1953, the year of the Queen’s coronation, until today, the final chapter ending on the day of Prince Harry’s wedding, from characters defined as Baby Boomers, Gen X-ers and Gen Y-ers, expats and immigrants, mothers and daughters. At the centre of the axis sits the Crown, observing wryly as her subjects’ struggle with adultery, racism, infertility, depression and the day to day struggle of working out how to be a mother in a changing world that has changing expectations of what a woman should look like, think and provide. From the fall of the British Empire and the shockwaves across the Atlantic from Trump’s election, to the minutiae of an outbreak of nits and a fight with a breastfeeding activist in a coffee shop, The New Elizabethans follows five generations of London women whose regrets, traumas and triumphs will offer comfort, perspective and an insight into the zeitgeist of the #metoo movement, the global obsession with The Crown and Meghan Markle, and the eternal question: can women have it all? TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………….iii THE NEW ELIZABETHANS The New Elizabethans ……………………………………………. Elbow Grease …………………………………………………… Ladies-in-waiting ………………………………………………. Little Dictators …………………………………………………. Something Borrowed ………………………………………….. The Eggshell Carpet …………………………………………... The Matchstick Girl …………………………………………... The Doldrums ………………………………………………… An Occasional Ordeal ……………………………………….. Happy Ever After ……………………………………………. CRITICAL AFTERWORD………………………………………….. REFERENCES ………………………………………………………. CURRICULUM VITA……………………………………………….. THE NEW ELIZABETHANS A newspaper had been left on one of the cafe’s tables. The obituary section lay open and someone had carefully circled three entries with thick, black ink. Next to one was a pair of jaunty exclamation marks, which expressed more delight than surprise, thought Cressida, who over time had resigned herself to her countrymen’s open enjoyment at other people’s despair. She’d grown-up ploughing through Dickens, who wrote of Parisian crones merrily knitting and gossiping as they watched helpless human beings clambering onto scaffolds and getting their heads sliced off in front of a roaring crowd. She couldn’t believe it as a young girl, delving into the classics tucked up in bed after school and chores, eking out pages after lights off, droopy eyelids inches from the page following her flashlight’s glares under the blankets. The cruelty we are capable of inflicting on those around us. ‘We had everything before us, we had nothing before us’ Cressida, now 53-years-old and a little less surprised by life’s brutality, pushed the well- read paper away and returned her hands under the table, where she sat in the far corner of the sunlit room, weaving her thin, dry fingers together until they formed an empty nest on her lap - the lap her children once fought over. “Here’s your pot of tea, love. You sure I can’t persuade you to try a slice of cake? It’s a Victoria Sponge,” sang the woman who’d been racing around the café – which was still festooned with the Union Jack bunting from the Queen’s coronation a few days earlier - since it had opened at 6am. It was now 4.23pm. The waitress loomed over her with an arched eyebrow, waiting for an answer as she plonked down the chintzy hand- painted teapot. Cressida shuddered. Her grandmother had collected teapots just like it and if she behaved as a child, which she always did, she was allowed to climb up onto a chair and choose one to carefully take off the high shelf, dust and admire. Tea had never been poured from them. “Even if King George V himself popped by for a cuppa, I’d tell him to keep his grubby mitts off my posh china,” her grandmother snapped when Cressida’s mother once questioned the sanctity of the old woman’s ceramics. Her grandmother, a stout and proud lady who would never leave the house without her one good hat, which wasn’t very good at all, and a pair of gloves, wasn’t used to being questioned. In fact, she forbade it. “I really couldn’t,” Cressida refused the offer with a curt smile and busied herself by placing a sugar cube, which had a tiny heart painted on it with red food dye, into a delicate teacup, then filling it with a long pour of Earl Grey. The heart dissolved with the first splash of warmth. Cressida sipped too quickly, scorching the tongue that had been stuck to the roof of her mouth since she’d woken up that morning, realizing today was the day. If they walked in now, the girls, if she could still call them that when they were both 27 years old and married, she’d be unable to speak. Even getting three words out to the woman serving her, a stranger who seemed nice enough if a bit pushy, was a trial. But tea would help. Tea was what the British Empire ran on, her grandmother always said. “Suit yourself,” the proprietress pulled out the bill from her jam-stained apron and sat it next to the milk jug. Snooty cow, Jean thought. But sadly by now she was used to rude customers who lacked the common decency to tag on a please or thank you, or to buy more than a cheap pot of tea in exchange for sitting in her establishment for hours, gormlessly watching the world go by as they sought shelter from a sudden downpour, or nursing one cup of cocoa as they worked their way, slowly, through War and Peace. “You’re mad taking this on at your age, Jean” her husband Archie, a sensible man who had never dared be his own boss, had warned her two years ago when the bank had agreed to give them a loan, in his name, for her idea. She found the perfect spot on the high street, a slightly crooked Tudor building that was filled to the brim with cosy light from its creaking floorboards to its oak-beamed ceiling. There was a cavernous fireplace in the heart of the dining room, large enough to fit a small table and two chairs, which Jean knew would make a romantic spot for courting couples to hide from prying eyes. She could make good use of the kitchen, which had a huge oven to bake pies, pasties and cakes, and a long, practically new, Formica countertop she envisioned loading up with plated corned beef salads and cheese flans, creamed swedes and braised onions, ready for the queues of hungry patrons who’d soon make The William Morris Tearoom, est. 1951, their favourite destination. “Running a café isn’t just about cooking food and chewing people’s ears off,” warned Archie.