Between Wars, Between Genders: The Radical Reconstruction of Identity in Interwar Literature

Abstract

The present research paper evaluates the radical reconstruction of the gender identity in the Anglophone literature of the interwar period (1918-1939) as the direct outcome of the trauma of the World War I. According to a comparative reading of canonical modernist novels, the paper hypothesizes that identity crisis brought about by the psychological shock of the Great War amalgamated the societal conceptions of masculinity and femininity. By utilizing Trauma Theory and Hegemonic Masculinity, the paper concludes that male authors made their stories revolve around the issue of manhood in the failure of the body, whereas female authors drew their attention to the post-war trauma in psychology and the domestic consequences of shell shock. This trauma discourse helped to unravel rigid forms of gender binarity resulting in a gender fusion as a survival psychological strategy in a social order which was rendered obsolete by modernity.