'Odd how the War changes us': May Sinclair, domesticity and war

Frayn, Andrew

Abstract

This paper sees the post-war novels of the novelist, philosopher and poet May Sinclair (1863-1946) as negotiating between Victorian and modern values and literary forms: the First World War gives existing issues a focus during and after it. A suffragist and champion of psychoanalysis, she volunteered on the Western Front with the Munro Ambulance Corps in 1914 before being sent home. She recorded these experiences in A Journal of Impressions in Belgium (1915). A published author before the turn of the twentieth century, this was her twentieth published volume.
The War gave Sinclair a new urgency: from 1916 to 1922 she published eight novels and two philosophical works, along with sundry poetry and short stories. Here, I draw primarily on Anne Severn and the Fieldings (1922). The death of the protagonist’s mother, her father absent serving the Empire in India, portends the challenges to the family unit which continue throughout the novel due to circumstances from bereavement to malicious gossip about infidelity. These are heightened by the First World War. The central problem is Colin Fielding’s shell shock. His recuperation at home contrasts starkly the refusal of his wife Queenie to return home to nurse him, determinedly carrying on her work in the Medical Corps. Men and women each exhibit high levels of emotional and physical capability, but both are necessary for harmony in the post-war world. Published in the modernist annus mirabilis of 1922, this novel is politically progressive but formally conservative: it shows the complexities of the early response to the conflict, before the narrative of disenchantment became dominant.

Citation

Frayn, A. (2021, June). 'Odd how the War changes us': May Sinclair, domesticity and war. Paper presented at Networking May Sinclair, University of Nantes (online)

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Networking May Sinclair
• Start Date: Jun 24, 2021
• End Date: Jun 25, 2021
• Deposit Date: Apr 26, 2023
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/3085240