Pedestrian Modernism

Abstract

This thesis explores walking as a mode of social and aesthetic critique in the work of Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978), Gladys Mitchell (1901-1983) and Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973). The pedestrian — synonymous with the prosaic, the banal and the dull — is readily overlooked as a critical category and all too often under read. I argue that walking operates at an indirect but nonetheless radical level to interrogate and disrupt narratives of female mobility on and off the page. These markedly different authors in terms of recognition, politics and genre enjoyed long writing careers spanning a period of unprecedented change in the lives of women. Their female characters navigate a complex path between freedom and constraint, balancing what is permissible with what may be desirable in a new and uncertain modernity. These writers draw on the rich history of walking in English culture and literature to contest the heroic masculine orthodoxy commonly associated with the solitary walker through a formal and thematic resistance which I seek to capture in the title Pedestrian Modernism. The project contributes to critical debates in twentieth-century literature on the intersection of class and gender in the regulation of space and mobility and argues that walking acts as a democratising force across literary genres. Reading genre fiction alongside more literary forms invites a reconsideration of the lines of influence between the two. All three authors have been claimed as modernists, despite writing in a predominantly realist mode, and my focus on walking questions the cultural categories that distinguish modernist from other forms of twentieth-century writing, highlighting correspondence rather than difference. I contend that these authors contribute to a broadly-based body of work that uses walking to express, and sometimes resist, the instability of the modern era.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Howard Booth (Supervisor) & Daniela Caselli (Supervisor)