Compton-Burnett, Ivy. (1884 - 1969).
W o r k
- author of 18 novels on similar subjects
- concern: an enclosed, circumscribed, and dying historical world
- typical characters: a late Victorian upper middle-class extended family
- typical setting: a large shabby country house in the pre-WW I period
- preoccupation: oppression and exploitation, power and submission
- notable for her representation of conversation: simple, undramatic, determined by the flat good manners of a polite and often repressed society
- her claustrophobic dialogues are the basis for revealing of deceptions, frauds and often melodramatic surprises on which the novels turn
Pastors and Masters (1925):
- concern: two academics with literary pretensions
- set in a small school run by unqualified staff of four people
- conclusion: the cheating of both would-be-writers is revealed
Brothers and Sisters (1929)
Men and Wives (1931)
A House and its Head (1935)
Manservant and Maidservant (1947):
- concern: a household tyranized by a sadist husband whose children fear and hate him and whose wife plans to elope with his cousin
- a turning point: a sudden change and repentance of the husband
Mother and Son (1955)
Quote
"Time… is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary."
From Darkness and Day (1951).
Basics
(Photo: Bright Lights Film com).
-
Author
Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett. (1884 - 1969). British. -
Work
Novelist. Author of novels about human relationships. -
Genre
Modern fiction.
Literature
Abrams, Meyer Howard, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Barnard, Robert. Stručné dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: Brána, 1997.
Baugh, Albert C. ed. A Literary History of England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.
Coote, Stephen. The Penguin Short History of English Literature. London: Penguin, 1993.
Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946.
Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. New York: Clarendon Press, 1994.