‘Not a Feminist, but …’: Elizabeth von Arnim and Female Resistance

Abstract

This essay explores von Arnim’s systematic representation of the ways in which her female characters encounter, come to understand, and often seek to challenge patterns of male control and suppression of girls and women. Focussing chiefly on Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther (1907), The Pastor’s Wife (1914), Expiation (1929) and Father (1931), the essay addresses male silencing of women, emotional manipulation, and various forms of sexual intimidation and violence (including marital rape), and analyses the growth of self-knowledge and resistance in von Arnim’s female protagonists. Although von Arnim’s characters show little, if any, awareness of the feminist debates and arguments swirling around them in the world beyond the narrow confines of their own lives, many of them eventually come to voice, and act upon, the emerging demands of the contemporary women’s movement. They may not be feminists, but. …