Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation
5-2018
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph. D.
Department
Humanities
Degree Program
Humanities, PhD
Committee Chair
Omer-Sherman, Ranen
Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)
Griner, Paul
Committee Member
Griner, Paul
Committee Member
Stansel, Ian
Committee Member
Christopher, Karen
Author's Keywords
queen Elizabeth II; British monarchy; British government; motherhood
Abstract
The New Elizabethans is a literary novel-in-stories about the dramatic changes in gender and national identity witnessed by British women during Elizabeth II’s reign, a unified circle of ten finely observed stories outlining the desolation and confusion felt in this era that will be instantly, painfully evocative for anyone who has questioned who we are now – as individuals, as families, as a gender and as a nation. Told in episodic tales, jumping between eras and voices, The New Elizabethans gives witty, compact and remorseful snapshots of British life from 1953, the year of the Queen’s coronation, until today, the final chapter ending on the day of Prince Harry’s wedding, from characters defined as Baby Boomers, Gen X-ers and Gen Y-ers, expats and immigrants, mothers and daughters. At the centre of the axis sits the Crown, observing wryly as her subjects’ struggle with adultery, racism, infertility, depression and the day to day struggle of working out how to be a mother in a changing world that has changing expectations of what a woman should look like, think and provide. From the fall of the British Empire and the shockwaves across the Atlantic from Trump’s election, to the minutiae of an outbreak of nits and a fight with a breastfeeding activist in a coffee shop, The New Elizabethans follows five generations of London women whose regrets, traumas and triumphs will offer comfort, perspective and an insight into the zeitgeist of the #metoo movement, the global obsession with The Crown and Meghan Markle, and the eternal question: can women have it all?
Recommended Citation
Moffett, Sarah Ivens, "The new Elizabethans a novel-in-stories with critical afterword modifying motherhood in a new motherland : artistic approaches to communicating change in female and national identity during Elizabeth II's reign." (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2994.
https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2994
