UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI DATE: 15 May, 2003 I, Anna Catherine Priebe , hereby submit this as part of the requirements for the degree of: Doctorate of Philosophy in: English Literature It is entitled: “May I Disturb You?”: British Women Writers, Imperial Identities, and the Late Imperial Period, 1880-1940. Approved by: Wayne E. Hall, PH.D Tamar Heller, PH.D Maura O’Connor, PH.D “MAY I DISTURB YOU?”: BRITISH WOMEN WRITERS, IMPERIAL IDENTITIES, AND THE LATE IMPERIAL PERIOD, 1880-1940. A dissertation submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTORATE OF PHILOSPHY (Ph.D.) in the Department of English and Comparative Literature of the College of Arts and Sciences 2003 by Anna Catherine Priebe B.A., University of Cincinnati, 1993 M.A., University of Cincinnati, 1995 Committee Chair: Wayne E. Hall, Ph.D. Abstract “May I Disturb You?”: British Women Writers, Imperial Identities, and the Late Imperial Period, 1880-1940. During the late Imperial Period, 1880-1940, the ways in which the identity category “British” was created allowed for fluidity in both personal and collective identity construction. Because the period saw both great expansion of the Empire and the federation of many discrete colonies into national entities, the issue of national versus British affiliation became an important one. Given these particular historical circumstances, budding national identities could be elided into Britishness and Britishness into the budding national identities. And this potential for fluidity influenced the ways people could and did use their British, English, or other colonial identities when negotiation the enormous social, political, economic, and cultural changes of the era. Using Julia Kristeva’s notion of the “subject-in-process” and her theory of female individuation, the study examines the writing of four British women writers of the period and its relationship to modern Britishness: “Lucas Malet” from England, “Somerville and Ross” from Ireland, and Rosa Praed from Australia. Though they were all white, middle-class, British women writers, and though they all addressed the complexities and possibilities created by the inter-connected, trans-nationalist slippages of the imperial system, their responses are inflected by the particular relationship of their home place to the culture of the “center.” Lucas Malet understood that, in order to unseat what she considered the “dullness” of the English middle class, she needed to question the legitimacy of the narratives being used to knit women into the English social fabric. For Somerville and Ross, the difficulties women faced in their quests for individuality were compounded by competing narratives of Irish national identity, narratives which often seemed to overpower the thoughtful, intelligent voice of the Anglo-Irish woman. The trauma Rosa Praed experienced in her youth on the Australian frontier is reflected throughout her work in her preoccupation with experiences that are difficult to articulate, can be enormously inspiring, and yet can also threaten her heroines’ physical, emotional, and spiritual integrity. Acknowledgements This project would never have been completed without the support and encouragement of my family, and I would like to thank them all. My parents Dorothy and Peter Lawrow gave me a love of learning and deep appreciation of the arts; my mother- and father-in-law Lila and Bruce Priebe offered constant and kind support. My daughter Elianor patiently found other things to do while “Mummy was working on her big paper;” and without the love and good commonsense of my wonderful husband Craig, I would still be lost in a sea of unnecessary details. I would also like to extended my deepest and most sincere thanks to my dissertation committee: Dr. Tamar Heller, Dr. Maura O’Connor, and Dr. Wayne Hall. Dr. Hall has been a constant positive presence throughout my college career at the University of Cincinnati, and I believe it is no exaggeration to say that without his patient support and capable assistance, I would never have finished this project. 1 Table of Contents Introduction. Imperial Beginnings and Endings ........................................................................... 2 Chapter1. Narrating the Late Imperial Period, 1880-1940…………………………………… 14 Chapter 2. Rewriting English Courage: “Lucas Malet”………………………………………. 42 Chapter 3. Rollicking in Ernest : “Somerville and Ross”……………………………………... 85 Chapter 4. The Spirit and the Bush : Rosa Praed……………………………………………… 135 Conclusion. The Narrative of Disturbance or the Disturbance of the Narrative? ……………….188 Works cited………………………………………………………………………….192 2 Introduction. Imperial beginnings and endings. It was a December morning in1978 when, after emerging out of the cosmopolitan bustle of London’s Heathrow Airport, I stared incredulously at the scene before me. From the time I had left my family and friends in the brilliant light and color of an Australian summer morning, I had waited impatiently for this meeting with one of the fabled places of my childhood, a meeting I imagined would be the most important moment of my life. For years I had heard people speak reverently about “Home” as though the very experience of stepping onto English soil was a wonder, the ingredient needed to become an individual of worth. And from the dismissive way they spoke of those who had not “made it” in England, it was clear that a person’s inability to take advantage of this quasi-magical influence meant that he or she was deficient, hopelessly untalented, or a simply loser of some kind. If I was certain about anything, it was that I did not want to be considered that; so, it was with a great deal of anticipation that I stepped through those automatic doors. But to eyes used to the beauty of Sydney harbor and its environs, the streets of London were a shock. The cabbie drove through dingy, tired suburbs filled with scurrying, sickly- looking people. The sky hung gray and heavy over people rummaging through underwear outside a dilapidated Marks and Spencer store, and passers-by barely noticed a bus conductor jump off his double-decker and chase after a black man who had obviously done something he shouldn’t have. This London was not far removed from the seedy, desperate London of a Dickens novel, a world that I in my naiveté had assumed those wonderful Londoners would surely have “fixed” by now. As the cabby drove through streets whose names I knew as well as those of the city of my birth, I registered with growing dismay the contrast between the 3 marvelous things I had imagined for myself in the great city of London and the squalor of what I actually saw. Though by the end of my cab ride I had come to terms with the fact that London was not completely what I had imagined, the reality of my new identity—a young woman fresh from a former colony in the fading metropolis—was not made clear to me until later that day. We were a strange group, ballet dancers from all over the Commonwealth drawn together by what we imagined to be our common culture and our goal of dancing professionally in England. We weren’t particularly glad to be thrown together, but our sense that we were culturally related allowed us to create fleeting, uncertain alliances, temporary antidotes to our fears and worries. At the fruit barrow where we stopped to buy some apples, we consciously and shamelessly applied what we knew to be our bright, colonial ways, and charmed the English barrow boy into giving us more fruit than we had paid for. But, as we were walking away, laughing uproariously about the measly, disfigured English apples, a little Englishwoman walking behind us began a tirade which we soon realized was directed at us. “How dare you make fun of our English produce! It’s typical of you colonials!” she fumed. “Why do you want to come here anyway? WE certainly don’t want you!” Before we could come up with a suitable retort, she stomped away into the gathering twilight, leaving us giggling, but not a little unsettled. Though I have forgotten much about that first journey “Home,” the question that little lady spat at the heels of us perky girls has haunted me across the years and, consciously and unconsciously, I have sought an answer to it ever since. Why did being “colonial” mean that we could become the subject of a tirade like that? What was wrong with our being in England when, after all, as members of the British Commonwealth we were supposed to have some kind 4 of deep and unbreakable connection to this Mother country? And, how were we supposed to succeed if the last thing Home seemed to want was us? It is, of course, impossible to answer these questions with tidy, definitive statements. Recognition of the complexity of the human psyche and the multifarious nature of individuals’ motivations would prevent such a thing. But even at the time I was aware that there was something elementally wrong about that lady’s dismissal of our importance to British life. Feminist historians have long sought to restore the contributions of women to the story of British colonialism, and more recently they have focused our attention on the fact that since the earliest days of the British colonial enterprise women from the colonies have made significant contributions to English culture.1 The cultural record shows that generation after generation managed to become legitimate players in the English cultural landscape. How they managed this and how English women viewed them intrigues me, especially with regard to that generation of Anglo women writers active during the late Imperial period, circa 1880-1940. The historian Eric Hobsbawm has noted that for many of us there is an historical period that ghosts our deeply-rooted, imagined self.