The troublesome woman : a study of Barbara Pym's novels and short stories

Abstract

This dissertation offers a revisionist account of Barbara Pym's fiction written between 1935 and 1979. It is an analysis of Pym's published work and unpublished manuscripts. The thesis contends that Pym's writing has a significant feminist dimension in the way it represents women characters and challenges conventions about women's role. Pym was a consummate observer. It is argued that, consciously or unconsciously, she interpreted her observations from a feminist perspective. Unlike post-1970s writers, she was ill equipped to place her observations into a feminist framework. Their familiarity with a body of feminist theory gave their work recognisable markers through which to interpret their feminist understandings. Re-reading Pym's work through some of those understandings demonstrates that, although she has no apparent feminist framework, many of the issues she raises and the way in which she approaches them, are feminist. It is argued that Pym continues some of Jane Austen's practices in her use of irony and mockery; confounding expectations of male and female behaviour; uttering truisms to highlight inconsistencies in behaviour; and using a conforming woman to contrast with a troublesome woman. This thesis argues that the arguments for a feminist re-reading of Austen's work are legitimately applied to re-reading Pym's texts. Until the 1970s, Pym also wrote subversive texts in inhospitable circumstances. The familiar conservative village setting or context for much of her fiction is a cover for the challenging exploration of the unequal nature of relationships between women and men. In the reception of Pym's fiction, the village has often been mistaken for the whole interest of the work. This thesis contends that Pym's techniques provided a cosy cover for representations of women and men that disturbed conventional pieties about marriage and women's social role. Pym would not describe herself as a feminist writer. However, Pym gives women's stories credibility, supports the notion of spinsters who choose to remain unmarried and observes friendships between women and realises them in her fiction. Pym's work is examined against feminist criteria. She gives what I refer to as the ""troublesome woman"" a central place in her narratives; her work destabilises the argument that women have inherently different characteristics from men and that nurturing is central to women's lives; binary feminist ideas are a recurring feature; and she features some aspects of the politics of difference. Pym's work is also compared with Fay Weldon and Zoe Fairbairns' acknowledged feminist work. Pym's feminist approach culminates in her 1970s novels, An Academic Question and Quartet in Autumn. --provided by Candidate. Show more