‘Snob Value’: Gender and Literary Value in Mary Stewart

Abstract

All of Mary Stewart’s novels are rich in reference to other texts: most possess titles and epigraphs taken from a range of literary sources, and many of their plots are influenced by other works. Stewart, famous for her bestselling romantic thrillers, describes feeling that she needed to prove her worth—that she was required to demonstrate a particular level of literary awareness in order to earn her title as a particular kind of writer. However, Stewart associates her literary allusions with pleasure, something which, as the author discusses, undermines their literary value as it is calculated by the highbrow. This mixed attitude towards literary value is characteristic of Stewart’s work: the author argues that a complex negotiation of cultural capital and canonicity can be read throughout her oeuvre. With a focus on This Rough Magic (1964), this article shows that Stewart’s writing works to undermine the notion of the canon and redefine traditional notions of literary value, as well as reflect on the challenges faced by women writers. By comparing reviews of Stewart’s work with those of her male contemporary Ian Fleming, the author demonstrates how notions of gender and literary value affected the way Stewart and her novels were received and perceived.

Keywords:

• twentieth-century fiction
• women’s writing
• literary value
• canon studies
• genre
• romance
• thriller
• middlebrow

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The publications consulted include the Guardian, Listener, Daily Mail, New Statesman, Observer, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Times, Sunday Times and Times Literary Supplement.

2 Fleming’s Thunderball (1961) was top of the Sunday Times ‘Bestseller List’ in April 1961, falling to fourth place in May 1961, while The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) was third in April 1962 and fifth in May. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963) was second in May’s list and fourth in June’s, and You Only Live Twice (1964) was the second bestseller for April and third for May. Comparatively, Stewart’s This Rough Magic was top of the Sunday Times ‘Bestseller List’ in August 1964, and Airs above the Ground featured in the lists for September 1965, February 1966 and September 1967. The Gabriel Hounds was top of the October 1967 list, falling to seventh place in November, and the paperback edition of Touch Not the Cat also featured in the list for January 1978.

3 These novels are the two which most noticeably move away from Stewart’s usual formula. Thunder on the Right is written from the perspective of an omniscient narrator, whilst Stewart’s other romantic thrillers are in the first person. The Ivy Tree is longer than most of the novels which precede it, takes place in the English countryside rather than a European holiday location, and is the first to be situated solely within a domestic setting. Its exclusion therefore implies that reviewers were less inclined to discuss texts more securely placed within the (female) sphere of the domestic.

4 ‘The Queen of Hearts / She made some tarts / All on a summer’s day’ (‘The Queen of Hearts’ 1782).

5 Miranda unwittingly refers to the scene in The Tempest in which Prospero swears to cease his magic: ‘I’ll break my staff / Bury it certain fathoms in the earth / And deeper than did ever plummet sound / I’ll drown my book’ (Shakespeare 1997: 5.1.54–7, 3099).

6 Sanders also notes that, of all Shakespeare’s plays, The Tempest is the one most often referred to by twentieth-century women writers. This may have something to do with the position of The Tempest within Shakespeare’s oeuvre: usually considered to be his final full-length work, it is also the most metafictive and metatheatrical of his plays, in which he looks back at his career as a playwright and self-reflectively explores the artifice of theatrical performance. The introspective nature of the play sets it in good stead to act as a catalyst for women writers’ exploration of their own literary project(s).

7 In A Room of One’s Own (1928), Woolf associates the economic dependence of women on men throughout history with the lack of women-centred literature (Woolf 2000). Meanwhile, in The Madwoman in the Attic (1984), Gilbert and Gubar read nineteenth-century writing by women as an expression of creative frustration and dissatisfaction.