Women, Heroism and Espionage in Fiction (NRG visiting speaker – Weds 14 January 2015, 4-5pm, PG144)

Tomorrow our Narrative Research Group’s visiting speaker is Emma Grundy Haigh from Goldsmiths, who will be speaking about lady spies in world war fiction (abstract below).

It’s 4-5pm in PG144 and all are very welcome!
Best, Julia

ABSTRACT: ‘She steeled herself for action’: Women, Heroism and Espionage in Fiction

Bold (1993) argues that the figure of the spy is often used to make sense of changes within the social order. In spy fiction, the female spy is used to challenge expectations of women’s roles as well as to explore how women can be active in society and still retain their femininity. At the core of these stories is an effort to broach questions of patriotism and heroism, as well as of identity and femininity. However, although the term ‘hero’ is presumed to be universal, it is nonetheless implicitly gendered (Dilley, 1998:141), reflecting cultural attitudes that seem to only allow men to occupy heroic positions. Furthermore, the field of espionage is stigmatised by its associations with criminality and negative femininity. For their female characters to achieve agency, these stories thus must renegotiate the terms by which heroic activity is permitted; at the same time, as they must redefine espionage activity as something specifically and definitively heroic.Drawing from several authors, this paper highlights portrayals of women in espionage, with especialfocus given to the middlebrow spy story produced during and immediately after the First World War,where questions of heroism and femininity are given as much weight as war work, to discuss howauthors examined, readdressed and in some cases reinvented conceptions of feminine heroism and theheroic capacity of women. Within the vast mobilisation of First World War propaganda, femininedelicacy gave way to feminine strength, indeed the latter became a virtue as popular women’spublications such as The Lady reminded its readers that ‘[t]he fact that one does not bear arms does notexcuse any one from helping their country’s cause’ (qtd. in Watson, 2004: 107). These sentiments werepromoted in the fiction of the time, especially in spy stories where feminine heroism became couched interms of acts of patriotism enacted against foreign attempts to invade, subvert or infiltrate British societyand politics.These texts thus simultaneously provide a safe space in which to uncover a hidden truth abouttheir female protagonists and provide powerful pieces of propaganda of the extent to which women can be counted on in times of war (Hibbard, 1918: 453). More importantly, the middlebrow spy novel offersa middle ground for ordinary women to investigate their changing role in society and to reflect upon their own conceptions of self.

Biography: Emma Grundy Haigh is currently working on a PhD thesis at Goldsmiths, where she taught post-colonialism, moderns and literary critical theory. She has published articles on early modern to Cold War spy fiction, genre, popular narrative, twentieth-century fiction and philosophy; and presented papers at conferences in Poland, Mexico and across Britain.​