Conclusion

Abstract

The frequency and insistence with which the situations and dilemmas portrayed in the texts discussed here reappear in other novels of the period confirm their significance as fundamental and continuing problems of female existence. The approach to these problems differs widely however. While many were eager to depict reality ‘as it was’, some sought to exemplify the damaging effects of the ‘poison at the source’ by constructing desperate and tragic resolutions to their protagonists’ plights. Others, however, sought to devise new ways of being which transcended actuality and through which a degree of fulfilment and a (moderately) happy ending could be achieved. A brief glance at a further sample of novels will confirm these views.

Female rebellion may be perfectly justified, but there’s no good universe next door, no way out, young potential revolutionaries can’t find their revolution. So they marry in defeat or go mad in a complicated form of triumph, their meaning the inevitability of failure … Pain is the human condition, but more particularly … the female condition.

Patricia Meyer Spacks, The Female Imagination