Abstract
ABSTRACT This article argues that in Armed with Madness Mary Butts proposes new options for successful living in the disaffected interwar years of the twentieth century, by adopting a counterintuitive modernist position of looking back to ancient myth and spiritual magic practice in order to look forward. In doing so, she questions establishment notions of female agency, personal relationships, and the role and constitution of families through the lens of feminist occult modernism; each of these themes is underpinned by magic and the supernatural as an elemental power within women and the landscape. At the centre of the narrative is a rediscovered jade cup, a purported Holy Grail; in her use of a traditional Matter of Britain theme and an ancient object freighted with magical and mystical power, Butts’s occult modernist vision is characterised by a gesture towards transformation, resolution and acceptance of difference, through the influence of the Grail.
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