Winifred Holtby
published The Crowded Street in 1924,
becoming part of the emerging and financially marketable middlebrow fiction
genre. This was a significant female literary tradition in the inter-war years,
that has until relatively recently, been given little critical attention. More
so, these novels and in particular, The
Crowded Street sought to interact with other prominent literary traditions
such high modernism and impressionism. This post will consider this concern,
specifically looking at how Holtby uses The
Crowded Street to both affirm
conventions of the middlebrow novel but also to challenge it.
Nicola Humble in The Feminine Middlebrow Novel 1920s to
1950s: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism outlines the problematic
perception of the middlebrow genre ‘Middlebrow has always been a dirty word.
Since it coinage in the late 1920s, it has been applied disparagingly to the
sort of cultural products thought to be too easy, too insular, too
smug…convenient literary fictions like ‘Modernism’, ‘the Auden generation’,
‘the angry young men’ leave little space for writers.’ This lack of critical
space, as previously discussed, has resulted in middlebrow fiction to be
overlooked or misunderstood through class bound misconceptions. As a result,
literary innovations in such texts are yet to be fully recognised and thought
upon in terms of critical introspection. Holtby opens the novel with the first
chapter entitled ‘Prologue’, exploring the childhood of the novel’s main
character Muriel. Muriel attends her first society party at the Kingsport
assembly room and is fascinated by the dynamic of the party. There is also a prominent
theme of preparation involved before attending the party, in particular the
adults focussing attention on the child. In the case of Muriel, this
preparation revolves around dress.
Clothing and its
importance is reflected in Muriel’s anticipation towards wearing a dress that
has been chosen for her ‘She was at the party. Her new dress had been made by
her mother’s dressmaker…There had been a lengthily ceremony of dressing before
the nursery fire, with Connie dancing around irrepressibly, wanting to try on
Muriel’s sandals and silk mittens.’ (p.4). This performance ritual, in the
private, enclosed liminal space of the nursery, is a demonstration of the expectations
for Muriel to transition from childhood to adulthood. In particular, it is also
a gendered expectation for Muriel to represent a certain ‘type’ of
heteronormative femininity. The preparation ritual for the party itself, is as
significant as the event in terms of performance.
Later, at the
party, this performance becomes more significant in terms of its gendered
expectations. As each child walks from one side of the hall to the other, the
female gaze is being applied, and centred directly on the females who are
carrying out this act. ‘Ladies in white
trailing gowns, the mothers and aunts of other little girls at the party,
drifted across it like swans on a lake.’ (p.3). This sense of the woman in
white can be contextually drawn back to Victorian and Edwardian ideas of ‘The
Angel of the House’, immortalised by Coventry Patmore’s poem of the same name
in 1851. Holtby, I would argue, is directly making reference to the constraints
of performance identity and the pressures of conformity and expectation.
Furthermore, this performance is being replicated and reflected back on to the
individual through natural elements of light and mirror imagery ‘Their
reflections floated after them, silver-white along the gold. When Muriel rubbed
her foot against the floor she could feel with joy its polished slipperiness.’
(p.3). This use of naturalistic elements transcends conventional literary
technique and can act as an interaction point between Holtby’s assumed
middlebrow convention and other traditions such as impressionism.
Winifred Holtby
further explores this focus, especially an apparent gender imbalance. When
Muriel, who is still in the rapture of the party, speaks to Godfrey, she asks whether he goes to parties very
often, to which he later responds ‘Not very often. These things are a bit slow.
I like footer, and riding. I’m going to Winchester next autumn.’ (p.8). Even
though Muriel asserts that she knows where Winchester is and its significance,
this is a reference point about her lack of formal education. Winchester
College is private boy’s boarding school which was founded in 1382, and
Godfrey’s admittance to this school speaks a lot about his socio-economic
circumstances. It is also a connection point between boy’s and girl’s being
given different levels of education at the start of the 20th century
– with an emphasis on male dominated education and schooling systems. Holtby,
it can be argued was aware of this difference, having being given a place at
the University of Oxford. There is also a sense of frustration here, and this
had been famously written about by Virginia Woolf, who called herself one of
‘the daughters of educated men’. Most tellingly, perhaps, is how the party is
further gendered towards females performing and eventually becoming a certain
kind of female identity. Godfrey on the other hand is merely an observer, his
role is already assumed in the patriarchal structures that exist.
However, Muriel’s
performance eventually results in public humiliation and failure. The narrator
reflects ‘For, in her unhappiness, this was the most poignant anguish that by
some mysterious cruelty of events Muriel has never found the party.’ (p.14).
The party therefore, is a conceptual space that is bound by the success of
gendered normativity. Whilst this is not fully made aware to Muriel, she feels
a sense of desolation at failing to achieve this. This chapter in the novel is
influential on the setting out of themes that Holtby later uses but also it
exposes the difficulties of Muriel’s positon as a woman in the early 20th
century. This is a dynamic and fluid section of the novel which challenges the
notions of what middlebrow fiction can offer. What Holtby achieves is dynamism
between convention and revealing societal pressures and problems. By doing so,
it enables Holtby to explore complicated and innovative themes in the mask of
conventionality. The middlebrow therefore, is far from what it seems.
Ieuan Rees
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