“Rough Critical Winds”: Mis-Selling English Pastoral in H. E. Bates’s Larkin Novels, 1958–1970

Abstract

ABSTRACT The revival of interest in H. E. Bates has largely come without much attention being paid to his series of five novels featuring the Larkin family (1958–1970). The neglect is because of their populist and comic mode. Yet, study of the Larkin novels enables us to understand better the relationship between escapist tendencies and social relevance in twentieth-century pastoral, which is precisely the issue that has recently occupied critics of the regional novel. Pursuing the theme of mis-selling, this essay examines how the nostalgic effects that Bates constructs act as a commentary on the commodification of the pastoral that is made possible by new social realities and shifting geographies in post-war England. In the process the novels construct a pastoral resistant to rough critical winds that have dismissed them as sentimental or dishonourable. It argues that the novels test the limits of pastoral tenets, particularly distinctions between dimensions embedded in physical space, contributing to discussions about modernity’s nostalgic blindspots.