‘Something Must be Done to Stop the Rot’: The City, Civilization, and the Threat to Europe in Storm Jameson's Europe to Let

Abstract

In Europe to Let (1940a), Margaret Storm Jameson—novelist, essayist, and former pacifist—presents a Europe characterized by corruption and cruelty. Ranging from Cologne to Vienna, and Prague to Budapest, the novel critiques Europe's institutions, its increasingly problematic politics and, most importantly, its poverty-stricken cities as the cause of the crisis. Exploring the presentation in this novel of the problems inherent in Europe, this article makes links between Jameson's fears and preoccupations and those of her contemporaries in order to elucidate this novel's contribution to discourses around the threat to Europe and the end of civilization at the beginning of the World War Two. It demonstrates the anxieties embedded in the narrative around modernity, progress, and in particular, an overblown and ruthless capitalism, to exact a reading of this novel as an indication of Jameson's own hopes and fears for Europe during this time, as well as a testament to her relevance as a cultural commentator in her own right. It explores the representation of war in Europe to Let as a means of rehabilitation for the whole continent.

Keywords:

• war
• civilization
• Europe
• Storm Jameson
• conflict
• City

Notes on contributor

Katherine Cooper completed her AHRC-funded Ph.D. entitled ‘Beyond Borders: War and Nation in the Novels of Storm Jameson, 1937-1962’ at Newcastle University in 2013. Her Ph.D. considers Jameson's work with the PEN Club and her links with a wider European community of writers and intellectuals. It elaborates upon theories of war, nation, identity and gender to explore her fiction. It argues that Jameson's work is original, in terms of the British literary landscape, in its appraisal of war from a particularly European angle. Her current research looks at refugees and European civilisation during the two world wars. She also works on the intersections between gender and genre, historical fiction and contemporary women's writing. She is currently teaching at Newcastle University.

Correspondence to: Katherine Cooper, Newcastle University, UK. Email: [email protected].