Walking at the Margins in Lolly Willowes and Summer Will Show

This article explores the function of walking in two novels by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Rambling in post-Rousseauian nature, Laura Willowes discards the persona of spinster aunt to discover her vocation as a witch. However, the novel’s elegiac ending suggests her freedom may be short-lived. Sophia Wi...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Emma Shaw
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: UCL Press 2019-03-01
Series:The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society
Online Access:https://ucl.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14324/111.444.stw.2019.16
Description
Summary:This article explores the function of walking in two novels by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Rambling in post-Rousseauian nature, Laura Willowes discards the persona of spinster aunt to discover her vocation as a witch. However, the novel’s elegiac ending suggests her freedom may be short-lived. Sophia Willoughby’s heroic walks amidst the Paris barricades in Summer Will Show similarly suggest little possibility of real change. Walking in Warner’s fiction offers the prospect of liberation, but in crossing social boundaries her protagonists are ultimately confined to the margins of society.
ISSN:2398-0605