In the Hall of Mirrors

Abstract

After a long middle period, inspired by her lucky meeting with Blake, in which she considered the multiple dimensions of love in our century, Stead’s return to Europe after the war brought about a return to the Depression-inspired themes of her earliest fiction. Coming from the relative ease of wartime America, Stead was shocked by the poverty and hunger of postwar Europe. This shock seems to have stimulated a reconsideration of hunger as a drive even more powerful than love. Parallel to this shift from satisfaction to deprivation, emerges a shift in her portrayal of women. Unlike the sturdily iconoclastic heroines of her middle period, the women of this final period outwardly at least conform more closely to male stereotypes of female behaviour. Nellie Cotter is a ‘bleeding heart’, a ‘sobsister’, a lesbian and a ‘castrating bitch’ yet finally cannot be confined by any of these labels. Lilia Trollope is a victim, but a victim who eventually finds the strength to take her freedom. Eleanor Herbert is a ‘suburban wife’, but her desperate adherence to convention only serves to show its inadequacies.