Morality and family in the modern English novel c. 1960-1975

Abstract

The thesis proposes a model as a framework within which general outlooks on human behaviour evident in fiction - the "morality" of the title - can be discussed. The model is a trichotomy whose terms are: Augustinianism, Pelagimism and Agnosticism. They correspond,speaking generally, to (respectively): moral pessimism, moral optimism, and moral neutrality. Six novelists are discussed, in detail, in three pairs of two, corresponding to the categories above. The pairs are: I, Compton-Bumett and Margaret Drabble, Angus Wilson and Iris Murdoch, and Beryl Bainbridge and Paul Bailey. The thesis is topical and thematic,not authorial or literary historical. Essentially,it is conceived as an exercise as well as an argument; the object of the exercise being to demonstrate how critically productive the categories can be. The family has been chosen as a limiting focus, and is not in itself of primary concern.