Women at War in the Prose of Contemporary British Women Writers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17072/2073-6681-2023-2-121-130Keywords:
World War II; the Blitz; memory; history; role of women; modern novel; M. Spark; S. Waters; K. Atkinson.Abstract
The contribution of British women to the victory in World War II was great: unmarried women under 30 were mobilized to Women’s Auxiliary Service, to work in industries and in the so-called Land Army. During the Blitz – a period of intense bombing of London and other British cities in 1940–1941 – women worked in voluntary teams clearing rubble, in ambulances and in hospitals. Descriptions of the bombed, burning city are numerous in the books of writers who witnessed the war (G. Greene, E. Bowen, and others). The war changed the everyday life of British women and their social roles drastically. The life of women in the wartime London is described in M. Spark’s novel The Girls of Slender Means (1963), but in subsequent years the topic was not much discussed in literature. The return of British literature to national history took place at the end of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the wartime women’s life and fight is reflected in the following novels by contemporary women writers: S. Waters The Night Watch, K. Atkinson Life after Life, E. Healey Elizabeth is Missing, K. Morton The Secret Keeper, and others. All the novels are based both on wartime documents (witnesses’ diaries and memoirs) and on literary tradition. Each of the writers describes the heroic struggle of women during the Blitz and their everyday life; wartime daily life and its constituents acquire a symbolic, even ideological meaning. The novels analyze similar themes and problems, but the writers use different points of view and narrative techniques. S. Waters uses reverse composition, her characters are marginal from the point of view of public morals. K. Atkinson’s novel is a complex postmodern narration where numerous plotlines are interwoven. E. Healey mostly relies on memory games, while K. Morton uses popular literature techniques. Two categories – memory and history – are employed in all the novels to show and to reconstruct the role of British women in the WWII victory.References
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