British Literature, Politics, and Society: Interwar Period & WWII
LIT 57: The UK during the inter-war period & in WWII. Representative literary authors: 1. Introduction to UK between the wars. 2.1 Socio-political background. 2.2 Administration of the British Empire. 3. WWII 1939-1945. 4. The most representative writers of the period. 4.1 The novel. 4.1.1 D. H. Lawrence. 4.1.2 Virginia Woolf. 4.1.3 Graham Greene. 4.2 Poetry. 4.2.1 William Butler Yeats. 4.2.2 T.S. Eliot. 4.2.3 W. H. Auden. 5. Didactic. 6. Conclusion. 7. Bibliography.
Socio-Political Background
The three main political parties were encountered in the period: the Tories, the Liberal Party, and the Labour Party, created in 1900. In the 1906 election, a Liberal landslide resulted in one of the great reforming governments of the century. Nevertheless, the Great War brought an end to the Liberal government and fractured the party between two factions led by Asquith and Lloyd George. The popularity of the Conservative Party increased during WWI since it benefited from the splits and posterior decline of the Liberal Party. In 1916, the Conservative leaders supported the supplanting of the Liberal Asquith by a more energetic and charismatic Liberal, David Lloyd George. The Labour Party also benefited from the split of the Liberal Party as it achieved to make its place in the British political system. When Victory came in 1918, Lloyd George was at the height of his popularity. In this year also, the greatest political reform of the period took place, and it implied granting the right to vote to women. After WWI, Britain was profoundly hurt economically, and it moved from the position of a creditor to that of a debtor. The industries of the Industrial Revolution were now weakened and taken over by the Japanese market. Prime Minister Lloyd George spent a lot of time dealing with foreign affairs and consequently disregarding the problems within the UK, such as unemployment and Irish separatism. George had to resign. The Conservative Stanley Baldwin became the Prime Minister, but the country was faced with high unemployment, industrial stagnation, and foreign debts. Hence, Baldwin held an election, and the first Labour Government in Britain under PM James Ramsey MacDonald came to power with Liberal support. This government remained for 9 months, and he was substituted by Baldwin, who accomplished a big deal: it extended old-age pensions and pensions for widows and orphans, reformed local government, and finally, in 1928, lowered the voting age of women from 30 to 21, politically equaling them to men. MacDonald ascended to power again in 1929. The British economy was at that moment devastated by the Great Depression, and the PM was badly equipped to handle this situation where unemployment and the closure of banks were at their peak. Hence, the Liberal Cabinet resigned, but MacDonald remained PM. The new government was in fact a Conservative government, and MacDonald, by consenting to remain PM, became in Labour histories a traitor. Under Neville Chamberlain, the coalition government pursued a policy of strict economy based on protectionism. Finally, the economy improved, and the unemployment rates were reduced towards the end of the 30s. Chamberlain has always been regarded as the man of appeasement as he intended to formulate a policy of accommodation with Germany and Italy, but also as the man who began British rearmament and declared war against Germany. In 1939, he signed a military alliance with Poland and commenced preparations for war. Not only did Britain’s problems affect politics but also the monarchy. Upon the death of George V, his son Edward VIII decided to abdicate since he had fallen in love with an American divorcée. The PM Baldwin had determined that Edward couldn’t marry her so as to remain monarch. He was succeeded by his brother, who became George VI.
The British Empire
Regarding the creation of dominions, the Imperial Conference decided that self-governing Dominions in the Empire should be referred to as Dominions as opposed to colonies. The Balfour Declaration and the Statute of Westminster would recognize these territories as “autonomous communities within the British Empire,” and they would become independent members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. As for the Government of India, the demands for self-rule had been growing increasingly strong. Some British politicians believed that India needed to move towards dominion status; however, others disagreed, and three Round Table Conferences were organized. The Government of India Act was established, and some of its main points were the founding of the Reserve Bank of India and the competences given to the provincial governments. Finally, in Ireland, Catholics and Protestants organized themselves in military units for independence. The Home Rule Bill was enacted in 1914 but postponed due to WWI. Impatient, the Catholics and Sinn Fein struck in 1916 in the Easter Rising, which guaranteed success for Fein in the general elections in 1918. Led by Eamon de Valera, Fein withdrew from Westminster in order to establish the unofficial parliament in Dublin called Dáil Éireann. Finally, an agreement was reached between Ireland and Britain, and the Irish Free State was established in 1922, but disagreements over the treaty led to an Irish Civil War. In the middle of the war, the Irish Free State came into being, and the Irish Constitution was negotiated during the following years.
World War II
Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3 when Poland was invaded by German troops two days before. WWII fell into three phases:
- Phoney War: Perhaps the most important event of this phase was the announcement that Churchill assumed to have reached the end of his career in 1936. In 1940, Hitler overran Denmark and Norway, and the Norwegian campaign destroyed the Chamberlain government. Churchill was announced as PM. In 1940, Churchill said the British would fight alone, paving the way for the second phase of WWII.
- Heroic Phase: Britain stood alone and began the battle for survival in the air over the British Isles. The phase ended with the successful Soviet defense of Moscow and with the Japanese declaration of war on the US and the British Empire.
- The Grand Alliance: It lasted until the capitulation of Germany in 1945. The US entered the war, and the allies took control of Germany. Japan was defeated after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August.
Literary Trends
The great impact of different fields of science, the social changes preceding and following WWI, together with the appearance in England of a number of works which had no narrative in them, such as Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, made “modern” novelists of the period go against the already established conventions. The diverse conflicts of the time created a pessimistic feeling in almost all writers, which made authors feel estranged from the society they lived in and which was represented in their works. The most relevant productions in the UK during the 20s and 30s can be classified according to:
- Pessimistic works which were influenced by WWI and by the Great Depression. The most outstanding writer of this period is Aldous Huxley with his famous anti-utopian novel Brave New World.
- Works of authors who started their career earlier in time and were not much influenced by the pessimistic mood of the younger generations. A writer belonging to this group is E. M. Forster, who wrote Passage to India in the 20s. The post-war period also saw how class differences began to blur, and this issue was the theme of a series of novels written at that time by Ford Maddox.
- Modernist works had the common feature of experimenting with the form. The most representative writer in this sense is Virginia Woolf, whose novels apply the technique of the flow of consciousness.
1 D.H. Lawrence
He
He