| The imaginative power that is discussed in this dissertation is the ability that people have to determine their identity within and apart from society. Drawing on the work of various theorists, most notably Benedict Anderson and his concept of the imagined community, I examine works written before, during, and after the First World War. The goal of this dissertation is to take the reader on a literary and critical journey into fictional representations of the war in British literature. Through the various narratives presented, the reader will see how the imaginative powers of the authors examined in this dissertation were challenged by the concept of warfare. The first two works that are examined are George Chesney's The Battle of Dorking and Saki's When William Came, both of which reflect the national paranoia of the time that England would be invaded. Attempts to make sense of warfare are explored in H.G. Wells' Little Wars, where Wells tries to channel warlike impulses into parlor games, and in Mr. Britling Sees it Through, where a fictional writer attempts to learn from the war. The consequences of warfare are next seen in James Barrie's collection of plays entitled Echoes of the War, where soldiers and civilians experience the aftereffects of the war and, at times, a need to grieve that is sublimated because the characters are constrained, sometimes actively, to fulfill national identities that deny the cost of the war. I conclude the dissertation with an examination of Virginia Woolf and the character of Septimus Smith in Mrs. Dalloway, whose postwar existence is a refutation of the martial culture that spawned him. Septimus tries to imagine a new existence, but his persecutors cannot because their social myths have remained intact. Septimus' suicide forces an examination of the national identity that formed him and failed him, compelling him to fight for the right to be himself and to hold the national imagination accountable for its failings. |
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