Novels of Social Activism: American Women Writers of the Interwar Years

Abstract

In the United States, the interwar decades of the 1920s and 1930s represented the struggle between liberation and conservatism during the “Roaring Twenties” and the turbulent Great Depression. The postwar emphasis on freedom, progress, and change was associated with the new youth, radical politics, industrial and urban growth, and immigration. Conservative reactions resulted in counteraction to modernization, working class activism, and foreign people and ideologies in light of economic crises, environmental disasters, and the changing socioeconomic and cultural structures of the United States. This dissertation explores six American women novelists who carried Progressive Era reform into the interwar years. Their social novels criticize the sociocultural and political context in order to improve modern American Woman’s self-image and position, conditions of working class and farmers, and American society’s awareness about global conflicts. Their drive to reform and consciousness raising narratives challenge popular and prejudiced portrayals in literature and the media. Gertrude Atherton’s The Sisters-in-Law: A Novel of Our Time (1921) and Black Oxen (1923) redefine the new woman’s liberation and morality through wartime services and the postwar reconstruction of society. Grace Lumpkin’s To Make My Bread (1932) and Mary Heaton Vorse’s Strike! (1930) convey working class families’ demands for rights in the booming textile industries via the Gastonia Strike of 1929. Josephine Johnson’s Now in November (1934) and Sanora Babb’s Whose Names Are Unknown: A Novel (written in 1939/published in 2004) address farm families’ struggle with the Great Depression, drought, and the Dust Bowl during the New Deal. In The Deepening Stream (1930), Dorothy Canfield critiques WWI and peace settlements, while warning American society against growing totalitarianism and persecution in the pre-WWII era in Seasoned Timber (1939). These novels of social activism express critical observations, the suffering of the masses, the reality behind myths and bias, and a call for change.