Abstract
ABSTRACT Situating Elizabeth Bowen within a feminist literary history of experimentation with the conventions of popular genre fiction, this essay investigates the innovative generic hybridity of Bowen's WWII spy thriller, The Heat of the Day (1948). Through the imbrication of international espionage and a romance plotline, the novel demonstrates the intrusion of the wartime state into women's everyday lives and intimate relationships. Drawing connections between patriarchal oppression of women's sexual and political lives, Bowen maps the psychological struggle of the thriller onto the interpersonal conflicts of a love triangle, creating a romantic enigma her spy characters must solve. The result of the genre hybridity in Bowen's romance-thriller, I argue, is a rejection of the masculinized notions of patriotism associated with the spy thriller and endemic to the British political system at mid-century, and the reclamation of intimate spaces as sites of feminist political action and solidarity during times of war.
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