“Why This Rather Than That?”: The Delightful Perversity of Brigid Brophy

Abstract

Difficult to categorise either by literary movement or style, Brigid Brophy’s oeuvre is notable for its determined eclecticism. An accomplished journalist and literary critic, Brophy was also a prolific, and somewhat eccentric, novelist. Among her eleven works of fiction she wrote The King of a Rainy Country, In Transit and Flesh, each of which spoke to the changing ideas of sexuality in post-war Britain and anticipated later debates in feminism on essentialism and the social construction of gender. This article offers a brief introduction to these three novels, situating them in their literary-historical contexts and suggesting that a revival of critical interest in Brophy’s work is important in broadening our understanding of contemporary women’s literature in the post-war period 1945-70.