LECTURE 9

PART 1

EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY AND MODRRNISM (1901-1950)

“ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”

From The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats

Queen Victoria’s death corresponded with the start of the new century and, as
Britain moved away from probably the most glorious period in its history. It
tentatively entered a new era in which its supremacy on the world stage would
come to an end as the result of two ruinous global wars.

For much of a Victorian age Britain had managed to steer clear of international
conflicts. The Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa, in which it contested control
of one of Africa’s richest territories with Dutch settlers, was the first major British
military campaign in many years.

International rivalries, however, had been building up for more than two decades.
The scramble for Africa had pitted European powers against one another as they
tried to gain control of the continent, and an economically resurgent united
Germany was piecing together a naval fleet that threatened Britain’s dominance of
the seas.

These factors along with the tensions in the Balkans caused by the break-up of the
Turkish and Austro-Hungarian empires, were to lead to war. Britain, who had
signed an Entente Cordiale with France in 1904 and who had pledged to defend the
Low Countries, declared war on Germany on the fourth of August 1914, following
Germany’s invasion of Belgium.
Initially the outbreak of hostilities was greeted with enthusiasm by the British
population, but as the months and years dragged on this enthusiasm gave way to
horror and revulsion at the loss of human life. One million and of Britons died and
over two million wounded. Those returning from the front told of the inhuman
conditions they had had to endure in the

trenches and of the debilitating effects of gas.

The victory of Britain and its allies in 1918 culminated in the signing of the
Versailles treaty (1919) which laid down punitive measures against Germany that
would lead to future conflict two decades later.

Despite the best efforts of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to come to a

peaceful agreement with the Nazi regime, following the invasion of Poland, Britain
again declared war on Germany in September 1939. The conflict, fought on a
world scale over six years, was not met in Britain with the same level of revulsion
as the First World War had been. An almost universal sense of national pride in the
country’s determination to resist German invasion, epitomized by the inspiring
rhetoric of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, produced a degree of
national unity not seen since Victorian times.

No amount of national pride, however, could hide the reality of Britain’s greatly
diminished position as a world power. Increasing demands for independence from
the colonies led to the setting up of the British Commonwealth of Nations in 1926,
which replaced the Empire with a free association of largely independent countries
that set close economic cooperation as their main objective.

Britain’s economic and social position was further weakened during the Second
World War, so there were very few objections to the granting of independence to
India, Burma and Ceylon in the late 1940s.

A major issue on the British political scene in the early part of the century was the
Irish question. Before the First World War the Liberal party was in favour of
giving substantial independence to Ireland, while the Conservative party was
against any break in the link with London. No compromise was reached and a
decision was postponed until the end of the war. A violent uprising in Dublin in
1916 reduced the room for compromise and, at the end of a 3year conflict between
Irish rebels and British forces, a treaty in 1921 established that the southern part of
Ireland (Eire) would become a free state, while the north-eastern corner (Ulster),
where the majority of the inhabitants were of English or Scottish descent, would
remain part of the United Kingdom.

As the Old Victorian colonial order in Ireland and elsewhere was disappearing, the
belief in constant and never-ending economic growth was becoming a thing of the
past.

After the first World war, Britain found itself in debt and a quarter of its workforce
was unemployed. It seemed as if the Industrial Revolution had been undone
forever as the production heartlands of Scotland, South Wales and the North of
England languished in stagnation and poverty. The General Strike of 1926 was the
most notable of the many warning signs to government that something would have
to be done to relieve the misery that millions were facing. Some improvements
were made, particularly in the Midlands, where a successful car industry was
established, and in the South, where service industries blossomed but the
worldwide economic depression of the 1930s greatly limited what any government
could do.

After the Second World War, a Labour government, influenced by the economic
theories of J.M. Keynes, who argued that the state should invest

Strongly in key areas of the economy and directly finance education and the social
services, set about reconstructing the nation’s economic base by nationalizing
major industries such as electricity, rail, coal and steel.
Despite the economic gloom that characterized the first half of the 20 th century
British society was by no means dormant, since both World Wars acted as catalysts
for profound social and cultural changes. Of these changes, perhaps. The most
significant the most significant the new role of women in society. In the first
decade of the century a suffragette movement under the leadership of Mrs
Emmeline Pankhurst had launched a campaign which demanded the right to vote
for women. The granting of this right to women over 30 in 1918 and to women
over 21 in 1928 was historic, but what was equally significant was the freedom
which women were beginning to enjoy in society. The dutiful, housebound
Victorian lady was being replaced by the flapper, a young, fun-loving and liberated
woman.

The deferential attitude of women towards men was disappearing, as was that of
the lower classes towards the upper. Despite the national unity exhibited during the
wars, the inter-war years were marked by a sharpening of social tension and a
dramatic rise in the power of Trade Unions. Such tensions, however, never
developed into open revolution, a in Russia, or into totalitarianism, as in Italy and
Germany, Successive governments managed to push through enough social
reforms to alleviate hardship and ward off the threat of widespread social unrest.
Among the most significant reforms were the introduction of a National Insurance
scheme for workers and the provision of Old Age Pensions.

The publication in 1942 of the Beveridge Report, which recommended that all
social services be centralized and that the state be responsible for the well-being of
its citizens from birth to death, was the end of the process that had begun during
the Industrial Revolution. In the early 20th century Liberal, Conservative and
Labour governments pieced together a jigsaw of reforms that became the Welfare
State.
Even though British citizens suffered economic deprivation as a result of the wars,
the effects were alleviated by the gradual provision of basic social services for all
and unemployment benefit for those out of work.

Another area in which government felt the need to intervene was in that of
housing. Massive public housing programmes in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s helped to
transform cities into a patchwork of terraced, detached and semi-detached houses.
The growth in the number of detached and semidetached houses was an indication
of a growth in suburban styles of living. Thanks to improved public transport and
the greater, though still limited, availability of motor cars, people began to live
away from the centre of towns and retreated after work to the tranquility of their
suburban houses and gardens in the evenings and at weekends. Weekends also
meant football and the cinema. Huge crowds thronged football grounds around the
country to cheer up their heroes, while for the first time in history the cinema
became a popular form of entertainment.

One feature of British life that did not change was love for the monarchy. Not even
the abdication of Edward VIII to marry an American divorcee in 1936 shook the
faith of the people in royalty, and the king’s annual appearance at the football Cup
Final in Wembley came to symbolize the unity of the nation.

The world of politics did undergo major changes, however, the most significant of
which was the rise of the Labour party and the election of the first ever Labour
government in 1924. Another major change was the reduced power of the House of
Lords. From 1911 onwards, only the House of Commons could decide on financial
matters,

The first fifty years of the 20th century saw the end of the British Empire and of the
Industrial Revolution. It also saw southern and central Britain become richer while
the North, Wales and Scotland suffered from widespread poverty.
The two wars had meant that Britain would play a less prominent role in a world
dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union, but they had also highlighted
the resilience and unity the British people were capable of. After the Second World
War, a new phase in British History was to begun, in which the focus of attention
would be not on survival in a time of war, but on growth in a time of peace.

MAIN EVENTS: BRITAIN 1901-1950

1899-1902 The Boer War in South Africa

1901 Queen Victoria dies

1901-1910 The reign of king Edward VII

1902 The Education Bill introduces state secondary schools

1904 Entente Cordiale with France

1906 First Labour representatives elected to government

1909 Pensions introduced for people over 70 years of age

1910-1936 The reign of George V

1911 Power of House of Lords reduced

The National Insurance Act

1911-1912 Widespread strikes. - Minimum wage introduced

1914-1918 The First World War

1916 The “Easter Rising” in Dublin

1918 Vote for women over the age of 30

1918-1921 War of Independence in Ireland – Ireland partitioned

into two parts

1924 First Labour government elected under

Ramsay MacDonald

1926 General Strike

1928 Vote for everyone

1936 King Edward VII abdicates

1936-1952 Reign of King George VI

1937 Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister

1939 The Irish Free State becomes a republic (Eire)

Outbreak of Second World War

1940 Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister

1942 The Beveridge Report on the Welfare State

1947 India Independent

1948 Burma and Ceylon independent

 THE LITERARY BACKGROUND

As Queen Victoria’s reign ended and Britain ended the 20th century, the world of
letters was no more immune to change than was the rest of society. Identifying
when and why literary tastes alter is not, however, an exact science and becomes
more precarious the closer we get to the present day. To put a date on when the
heritage of Victorianism was completely abandoned in favour of a more modern
approach to literature is impossible to say. What can be said is that in the first ten
years of the last century some writers were still bound to tried and tested Victorian
traditions, while others began to enlarge their vision and adapt their work to
encompass the changing world around them. Even those who mourned the passing
away of an England that had been the envy of the world in the 19 th century could
not ignore the cultural and social earthquake whose first tremors were being felt
all over the western world. Albert Einstein’s (1879-1955) Theory of Relativity
(1905), the psychological studies of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the
encyclopaediac examination of human beliefs and institutions undertaken by Sir
James Frazer (1854-1941) in the Golden Bough (1890-1915) and the political
theories of Karl Max (1818-1883) were just some of influences that would shape a
completely new era.

Between 1910 and 1930 the impetus toward innovation and experimentation
gathered pace as Modernist writers published groundbreaking works that made this
period one of the most memorable in the history of English Literature. In a world
in which religious, ethical and social values were no longer taken for granted, they
tried, along with artists such as Picasso and Matisse, to find forms of expression
that reflect the complexity of 20th century life.
The 1930s and 1940s, dominated by economic depression and the threat of war,
provided further proof off how difficult it is to plot the demarcation lines between
literary movements, as more traditional forms of expression were again preferred
by many authors.

A fundamental change in the literary world that characterized the entire century
was the dramatic rise in the number of writers and readers, thanks to improvements
in education. The reading public was no longer a compact and restricted group, but
a diversified world of customers who demanded a wide variety of products.

This demand was satisfied by writers whose works ranged from the elitist and
intellectual (highbrow) to the more down-to-earth (lowbrow).

Although the Modernist revolution instigated by the highbrow writers Joseph

Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce and Virginia Wolf was the most notable
development in the world of early 20th century fiction, most writing during the
period respected more traditional stylistic and organizational norms.

When trying to classify the writers of the period, what emerging is cross-
classification in which individuals can belong to one or more groups, depending on
which aspect of their work is under examination. H.G. Wells, for example, stands
on his own as a pioneer of science fiction but he can also be grouped with John
Galsworthy and Arnold Bennet as a socially committed writer.

Without getting lost in a maze of interlacing groupings, certain trends can be

identified. The above-mentioned Wells, Galsworthy and Bennet are sometimes
referred to as Edwardian realists because they observed society very closely and
in great detail. A more damming form of social criticism characterized the works
of George Orwell, while Evelyn Waugh resorted to satire to make fun of inter-war
Britain.

The Bloomsbury group, so called because it met in Bloomsbury area of London,

included E.M. Forster and Virginia Wolf. To some extent they followed in an
aesthetic tradition of the late 19 th century and totally rejected the moral and artistic
restrictions of the Victorians. Their views were to have a major on progressive
writers in later years.

Certain controversial issues provided the basic subject matter for some of the best
known books of the period. Forster, along with Rudyard Kipling and Josef Conrad,
dealt with colonialism as the first breaches began to appear in the defences of the
Empire.

Literature can mirror and criticize society or it can delve into specific issues, but
first and foremost it is an art form. The role of the writer as artist was never
forgotten or underestimated by a man whose distinguished career straddled the end
of Victorian era and the beginning of the new century. Born in the United States,
Henry James became a British subject shortly before his death and is perhaps the
first writer to be equally claimed on both sides of the Atlantic. His complex style
based on intricate syntax has one much admiration on a technical level, but has
come in for criticism from those who find some of his writing unnecessary
difficult to follow. In an age, however, when psychology was just beginning to be
accepted as a fundamental human science, Jame’s style and intricate analyses of
character seem singularly appropriate. His style mirrored the refined nature of the
human consciousness.

Isabel Archer, the rich, Europe-based American heroine of the Portrait of a Lady
(1881) who falls victim to an unscrupulous husband, is one of the most finely
drawn creations. Of his many short stories, the haunting The Turn of the Screw
(1898) has given rise to many interpretations and continues to be popular.

While Henry James offered an outsider’s view of Britain and Europe, Rudyard
Kipling looked at the British Empire from the inside. His vast output of both prose
and poetry drew greatly on the time he spent living in India. Idolised by
nationalists and reviled by anti-imperialists for his defence of the Empire,
Kipling’s reputation is still controversial. Of his prose works, the novel Kim
(1901), about an Irish orphan who grows up in India, has stood the test of time, as
has much of his writing for children, especially The Jungle Book (1894) which was
made into a hugely successful Walt Disney film.

A contrasting view of the British in India is given by E.M. Foster in A Passage to

India (1924). His condemnation of the ruling British elite leaves little room for any
hope that the gap between governors and governed can be closed. A member of the
Bloomsbury Group, Foster was deeply critical of the upper-middle classes from
which he himself came. The structure and style of his novels was traditional, but
his crusade against the conventions and hypocrisies of society placed him among
an avant –garde band of writers. In both Howard’s end (1910) and A Room With A
View (1908) love, tolerance and human decency are the antidotes to mistrust,
falseness and snoberry.

Unlike Forster, H.G. Wells was one of a new breed of writers who came from
relatively poor backgrounds. His interests and wide reading in the sciences led him
to write some of the first science fiction novels in the language. Of these, The War
of The Worlds (1898), which describes a Martiasn take over of London, has been
highly influential. Wells was also a political and social theorist who railed against
the injustice that pervaded society. In Tono Bungay (1909), a large country house
where the upper classes live upstairs and the lower classes downstairs represents
in a state of imminent collapse. Ann Veronica, published in the same year,
supports the view that women should be as free as men go decide what kind of life
to lead. Another writer who used this art to highlight social and political issues was
George Orwell. Two of his political novels, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen
Eighty Four (1948) have never lost their relevance. The former, written in the form
of a fable with animals as the main characters, explodes the myth that an
egalitarian utopian political system is feasible, while the latter is a nightmarish,
futuristic description of a totalitarian world where people cannot even think for
themselves.
Although Aldous Huxley (1894-1936) was much admired for his cutting and witty
1920s novels, he is best remembered today for his highly topical Brave New World
(1932) in which human births are programmed and engineered. Less topical but
very popular throughout the 1930s,’40s and ‘50s were the novels of Evelyn Waugh
(1903-1966), which ranged from the hilariously funny, for example A Handful of
Dust (1934), to the more somber, like Brideshead Revisited (1945).

In a less critical and apocalyptic vein than Wells or Orwell, a group of novelists
described in highly realistic terms various segments of English society. One of the
most popular was Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), who wrote about provincial life in
the area around Stoke in central England. Equally realistic was John Galsworthy’s
(1867-1933) series of novels published under the name of The Forsyte Saga
(1922). In great detail , the author traces the ups and downs of the upper class
Forsyte family over three generations.

While the traditional novel thrived and continued to find a wide readership, more
daring attempts at rendering fiction relevant to the complexities of modernity were
underway. Unlike their more traditional colleagues, Modernist writers believed that
nothing could be taken for granted in literary form and that no theme or subject
matter was unsuitable for fiction. Whereas novelists up to the end of the 19th
century had concentrated on describing people and the world from the outside,
writers like Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence and Conrad applied psychoanalytic theory to
their work so that the inner psychology of man became as important as the external
world. In practical terms this meant that some novelists dispensed with
chronological plot and narration in favour of disjointed but highly significant
flashes of thought which gave truer impressions of how the mind really works and
how it perceives the world. In James Joyce’s works, e.g., there are periodic
moments of heightened understanding in which the deeper meanings of reality are
revealed. These moments are known as epiphanies.
For the reader this approach is a great challenge because, instead of following the
action of the novel from an identifiable beginning to the climatic end, he must
piece the fragments of the work together to arrive to an interpretation of the
meaning. This interpretation will be very subjective, because Modernist works are
deliberately opened to myriad of interpretation.

One of the earliest writers to experiment with time shift was JOSEPH KONRAD
KORZENIOWSKI. Polish born, he became a British subject and wrote under the
name of Joseph Conrad. Although his idiosyncratic phraseology did not please
some purists, he quickly gained a reputation as a leading writer of his day. The
background material for much of his best work was provided by his experiences as
a sailor. His most ambitious novel NOSTROMO (1904), is a panoramic tale of
corruption and greed in an imaginary South American colony. Colonial Africa is
the setting for his highly acclaimed short story HEART OF DARKNESS (1902) in
which the evils and degradation of colonialism are revealed through the complex
character of an ivory trader, Mr Kurtz.

The complexity of human psychology and the central importance of man’s

emotional and sensual life are core features of the works of one of the period;s
most revolutionary writers, D.H. Lawrence. His characters’ deepest inner
emotions are revealed to the reader, as they stride to find the new vitality in a
brutalised and brutalising industrial world. Man’s salvation, according to Lawrence
lies in rooting in his natural instincts and in the pursuit of self -fulfilment. His
avowal of sex liberation from inherited social repression was the farthest any
writer had yet gone in the battle against the old moral order. In the semi-
autobiographical Sons and Lovers (1913), the daring Women in Love (1922) and
the then scandalous Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928), about a liaison between a
gamekeeper and his employer’s wife, Lawrence never flinched in his crusade to
save England from the triple horrors of industrialisation, moral repression and
elitist intellectualism.
The attempt to get into regions beneath superficial reality was was brought a step
further by VIRGINIA WOOLF. She applied her acute feminine sensibility to the
examination of the inner workings of the human mind, and brilliantly exposed the
spontaneous flow of the characters’ thoughts, impressions and emotions. Woolf
uses the technique of the interior monologue to great effect in works like Mrs
Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927) to reveal the mind of the main
character, whereas in The Waves (1931) the thought pattern of six friends are
interwoven with consummate skill.

While Conrad, Lawrence and Woolf made important contributions to the

development of the mid-twentieth century novel, the writer who best symbolises
the Modernist revolution in fiction is James Joyce, who experimented with the
form, technique and subject matter of the novel. His early book of short stories
Dubliners (1914), though conventional in form and language, is breathtakingly
forthright in its clinic depiction of the small-minded conservatism of lower middle
class Dublin. The autobiographical novel The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
(1916) is the first indication of Joyce’s intention to stretch the bound of linguistic
use beyond traditional confines. For example, the first pages of the book, which
describe his earliest years, are written in the babyish language of an infant.
Linguistic, structural and thematic experimentation were brought to far greater
lengths in his masterpiece Ulysses (1922). Generally regarded as the greatest novel
of the 20th century, Ulysses is ostensibly the story of one day in the city of Dublin,
written in a framework based on the Greek classic epic of the same name.The
reader soon realises, however, that the novel escapes all compartmentalised
definition. It is a seemingly chaotic, but in reality, a highly organised celebration
of every day life and ordinary people which pushes the stream of consciousness
technique to new limits, plays havoc with the rules of syntax and displays a vast
range of styles of writing. Although Joyce’s last uncompleted work , Finnegans
Wake (1939), caused some disquiet even among the most ardent supporters
because it seemed to go beyond the absolute limits of experiment, Joyce’s
reputation as the writer who did most to free the novel from the shackles of
tradition has never diminished.

POETRY

Like fiction, poetry in the first half of the 20 th century developed along two lines
which can be broadly defined as “Modernist” and “traditional”. The traditional
trand was best exemplified by the Georgian Poets, so called because much of their
work was published during the rein of George V (1910-1936)/ The most
noteworthy were Walter de la Mare, D.H. Lawrence, Siegfried Sassoon and
Rupert Brooke. Their poems were conventional in form and did not move very far
away from the canons of Victorian poetic diction, while the idyllic peace of rural
England was a prime source of inspiration. Brooke and Sassoon are also grouped
with Wilfred Owen and others under the name of War Poets, who produced a
unique corpus of work around the theme of war.

The modern strand was best exemplified by the Imagist movement. The anthology
Des Imagistes (1914) contained such illustrious names as Ezra Pound and the
sometimes poet, James Joyce. Poems were generally short, contained hard ,
condensed, precise images, were written in free verse, employed every day
language and dealt with topical and varied subject matter. In its search for poetic
diction that was suited to the contemporary world, the Imagists were joined by the
most famous Modernist poet of he era, T.S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats.

In the 1930s and 1940s innovation and experimentation were not uppermost in the
minds of poets like w. H. Auden, who often dealt with pressing publicissues of the
day, though Dylan Thomas, a lone lyrical Welsh voice, found refuge in the private
reaches of the heart.

A good example of how poetry developed in the early 20th century is to be found in
the work of W.B. Yeats, whose traditional staightforward early poems ere followed
by much more complex later works. His involvement into Irish Literary Revival at
the turn of the century is reflected in his celebration of the Celtic World, and his
unfulfilled love for an Irish revolutionary, Maud Gonne, gave rise to a long series
of lyrical love poems like He Wishes for the Cloth of Heaven (1899 ).

The dream of a Celtic wonderland was given a rude awakening by the violent
political events of 1916 and afterwards. Yeats, who knew many protagonists
personally, wrote some of his most acclaimed poems during this period including
Easter 1916 (1921)/ He was, however, by no means only a mouthpiece for Irish
mythology and nationalism. His work became increasingly sophisticated,
philosophical and diversified, covering subjects like ageing, as in Th Wild Swans
At Coole (1917), personal regret and he importance of high culture. As the range
of heme expanded, so did the mastery of tone, diction and imagery.

While Yeats was caught up with he events in Ireland, a group of young English
poets was fighting in and writing about the Great War. The amazing outpouring of
poetic talent during the war was partly due to the fact that the combatants formed
part of one of the first generations that had had the benefit of a formal education.
However, it was the horror and shocking brutality of the conflict that provided the
main inspiration for so many to write.

In different ways the War poets supplied their readers with myriad impressions of
war. While Rupert Brooke’s verse inspires a love of country, Wilfred Owen
stresses physical hardship and emotional pain that he soldiers have to endure.
Perhaps the most scathing in his condemnation of the absurdity of sending young
men to their deaths is Siegfried Sassoon. For him, cliches and slogans that are used
to foment nationalist fervour are simply lies that try to hide the hideous reality of
trench warfare.

As an American citizen, Ezra Pound di not take part in the war. He was one of the
founders of Imagist school of poetry and over a period of 50 years from 1917 he
wrote his CANTOS, which, although an exceptional achievement, have sometimes
been criticised on account of overabundunce of allusions from various cultures and
the use of abstruse images. Pound was to have a lasting influence on his fellow
American, T.S.Eliot, who many regard as the father of he modern poetry in
English. The publication of Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) and of The
Waste Land (1922) shook the world of letters to its roots.

Here was poetry as it had never been seen before. Free verse poems were written in
contemporary language and contained a succession of striking images interspersed
with erudite allusions. Dramatic monologue and stream of consciousness went
hand in hand with slangy, colloquial speech while the classical and everyday were
intermixed. Eliot’s vision is of an alien desert world in which man’s only hope lies
in finding fragments from the cultures of the past to survive the ruin of the present.
Ruin and destruction were also to be found in early poetry of W.H. Auden. Unlike
Eliot, Auden and his generation believed that the personal world could not be
separated from social and political contexts, like Refugee Blues are an example of
how poetry can be an effective weapon against injustice. After the 1930s Auden
wrote more personal poetry in a wide variety of forms, earning himself the
reputation as the most prolific and complete poet of his day. In the 1920s-1930s he
sworked in close collaboration with a group of left-wing poets including Cecil
Day-Lewis (1904-1972), and Stephen Spender (1909-1995), who became known
as the Oxford Poets.

Like the later Auden, Dylan Thomas preferred to deal with private mattters rather
than public events. His verse is exuberant and fullof infectious vigour that
expresses very powerfull feelings. In both Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
and In My Craft Or Sullen Art the stress of emotion is an indication of how
Thomas felt himself to be a pioneer of a new Romanticism.

Of the minor poets of the period, one of the most popular was Walter De La Mare
(1873-1956). With faultless technique, he wrote poems for both adults and children
that created atmospheres of wonder, of terror and of melancholly. Also worthy of
mention is D.H. Lawrence, whose poems reinforce the belief so often expressed in
his novels that man must be at one with nature.