The representation of the roles of women in the fiction and journalism of Nelle Margaret Scanlan

Abstract

Nelle Margaret Scanlan was New Zealand's all-time best-selling author in the first half of the twentieth century. Despite her popularity with readers critics have tended to dismiss Scanlan as a writer of conservative romances. This thesis ventures a new reading of Scanlan which re-places her fiction in the context of her professional career as a writer and journalist and presents a broad view of the roles of women in a male-dominated society including support for women's equality. The preliminary chapter assesses Scanlan's current position in New Zealand literary history followed by a second chapter that gives an account of her unorthodox life, emphasising her desire for independence and personal rejection of a division of labour between the genders. The thesis then focuses on the strategies employed by Scanlan to critique societal roles for women. Beginning with her most well-known works, the family sagas, I suggest that while the novels conform to the conservative conventions of the romance genre on one level, they ultimately suggest that there is no happily-ever-after and that women are trapped by marriage. My argument is developed by extending analysis to Scanlan's other novels, which I classify as domestic romances, showing how these novels use a number of techniques to highlight gender inequality and the unhappy lot of women. Chapter four moves away from Scanlan's fiction to her journalism, showing that her articles promote equality and outline the problems faced by women. I speculate that though it is too problematic to label her journalism as feminist it does embody elements of feminism. The final chapter develops this argument, suggesting that Scanlan was a progressive thinker but that her writing never truly develops progressive principles. I conclude that Nelle Scanlan used her writing to criticise the enforced gender roles placed upon women in society and that although her work is not subversive it makes some powerful points and merits a rethinking of the way her work is read.