Biographing Sylvia Townsend Warner

Abstract

This article is the result of postdoctoral research on British writer Sylvia Townsend Warner and is theoretically grounded in contemporary gender studies and critical scholarship on the author's work. The focus here seeks to present aspects of the author's life, beginning with her most famous work, Lolly Willowes ([1926] 2013), in dialogue with her nonfiction writings, Man's Moral Law (1932), Spain's Living Daughters (1938), and Women as Writers (1959), which address issues related to gender roles, the working class, and women's writing. Lolly Willowes speaks of the transformation of a common woman, a spinster, who discovers she is a witch after years of silent and inconspicuous family life. The work engages with the fin de siècle ideals and the avant-garde values ​​of The New Woman's Fiction from the same period. Sylvia Townsend Warner's writing combines fantasy with a critique of the rigid gender roles imposed on women, questioning the lack of female freedom. Although the author began from a place of racial and social privilege, she sought to understand other contexts, as can be seen in her essays centered on themes related to women's emancipation in contemporary society.