This thesis is a study of the family saga in British women’s writing and explores how women writers between the two World Wars and within the context of modernity appropriated the genre. At the turn of the twentieth century social changes in British society led people to a reconsideration of what family and modernity meant. The re-imagining of family experience thus caused a flourishing of family sagas, particularly among women writers, and these sagas enjoyed a widespread readership and sales. Yet, the family saga has attracted little academic interest and criticism, and it has even been pejoratively labeled as ‘middlebrow’ writing, seen as conservative, domestic and feminine. Thanks to the initial male production of the family saga in the early twentieth century, a conservative tradition of the family saga was established: a family saga was a lengthy multi-generational family narrative, written in the realist mode, about the evolution of a family and its family dynamics. However, women writers have made shifts and appropriations of this literary form so as to make the personal world of the family political and open the genre to the discussion of a variety of topics. By tracing the differences in the family sagas written by Rose Macaulay, Vera Brittain and Virginia Woolf from the conventional family saga, this study argues that in the hands of women this feminine and middlebrow genre can be used for a serious consideration of feminism, the institution of the family and questions of history and modernity. I will also overturn the conventional assumption of the conservativeness of the family saga by arguing that the genre opens up space for progressive considerations of the family as well as space for modernist innovation. Thus, Rose Macaulay articulates her unique idea of the ‘indefinite sameness’ in history to dialogue with modern views of the past in Told By An Idiot; Vera Brittain expresses her feminism through her ideal of the ‘companionate marriage’ in Honourable Estate (1936); and Virginia Woolf captures the changes in British families through her modernist portrait of a modern family in The Years. / published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy

Taking the subject of the exploration of familial tropes in the novels of Walter Scott and Jane Austen, this thesis opens by investigating the literary context in which the two authors worked, as well as offering an explanation of the methodology used, and an exploration of criticism on the topic. An in-depth analysis of the historical state of the family provides this thesis with its social and historic background, and is offered in section two. Section three explores conventional presentations of the family in the novels, and contends that even such conventional interpretations are open to complex and fluid readings. In particular, this section explores the nuances surrounding the role of marriage as a symbol of comedy, and also as the fulfilment of a bildungsroman narrative. It also contends that social virtues are key in establishing the representation of familial roles and in this context inheritance and lineage are also explored. The ways in which familial representation may be employed for subversive or controversial purposes are the subject of section four. This thesis posits that subversive readings do not negate conventional ones but rather that alternate representations of the family create multiple, not hierarchal meanings. Marriage, children, inheritance, lineage, siblingship, incest, illegitimacy and widowhood are all part of section four's investigation. Abstract! Anna Fancett Section five works as a short coda to the thesis and raises questions about the role of the narratorial voice. In particular, it argues that although some critics have assumed that the author's authority is present in any direct, unnamed third-person narrator, the voice of the narrator must never be conflated with that of the author or implied author. This section postulates that the narratorial voice destabilises both the conventional and subversive use of the family in these novels and suggests that the texts generate multiple readings. Overall this thesis demonstrates that the social, cultural and literary pressures which operated on the concept of the family in the Romantic period are manifested in a parallel complexity in the ways in which familial tropes operate in the work of Scott and Austen. However, it also shows that these two authors move beyond a merely representational engagement with social structures to provide a new and dynamic engagement with the idea of the family in the Romantic novel.

Thesis--Heidelberg. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [251-257]).

Rozprawa habilitacyjna--Uniwersytet Warszawski. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [227]-231) and index.

Thesis--Heidelberg. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [251-257]).

Rozprawa habilitacyjna--Uniwersytet Warszawski. / Includes index. Bibliography: p. [227]-231.

Thesis (M.A.)--Rowan University, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2006. / English Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

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