Abstract
This article explores the function of walking in two novels by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Rambling in post-Rousseauian nature, Laura Willowes discards the persona of spinster aunt to discover her vocation as a witch. However, the novel’s elegiac ending suggests her freedom may be short-lived. Sophia Willoughby’s heroic walks amidst the Paris barricades in Summer Will Show similarly suggest little possibility of real change. Walking in Warner’s fiction offers the prospect of liberation, but in crossing social boundaries her protagonists are ultimately confined to the margins of society.
Highlights
A no less dramatic transformation takes place in Summer Will Show when Sophia Willoughby, the ‘well-incomed, dis-husbanded’ mistress of Blandamer House, falls in love with her husband’s ex-mistress and joins the Paris revolutions of 1848.2 Sophia’s changing identity, like Laura’s, can be traced through her walks
This article explores the function of walking in two novels by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Walking in Warner’s fiction offers the prospect of liberation, but in crossing social boundaries her protagonists are confined to the margins of society
Summary
A no less dramatic transformation takes place in Summer Will Show when Sophia Willoughby, the ‘well-incomed, dis-husbanded’ mistress of Blandamer House, falls in love with her husband’s ex-mistress and joins the Paris revolutions of 1848.2 Sophia’s changing identity, like Laura’s, can be traced through her walks. ‘Walking at the Margins in Lolly Willowes and Summer Will Show.’ The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society, 2019, 18(2), pp.
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