Research Paper on:
Cotter's England by Christina Stead

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
a "psychological novelist" and her favorite subject matter as "the drama of the person" (Blake, 1997, p. 12). The truth of Steads assessment is evident in her novel Cotters  England (1967), which is a deeply psychological novel about a young woman Neillie Cook, nee Cotter, surviving in post-World War II England. Rooneys discussion of Steads "bleak and strange"  post-World War II narrative proposes that Steads "obsession with counterrevolutionary sexual disorder betrays its own implicit idealization of the proper body," and that this position, furthermore, coheres with the wider  cultural politics that defined politics in post-war Britain (2000, p. 249). Despite the often radical situations that Stead portrays, Rooney argues that the "proper body," which is "foundational to revolutionary  discourse and the modern state," in Cotters England turns out to be "not only white and male, but also heterosexual" (2000, p. 249).  Substantiating this view of the novel, Rooney quotes Steads statements in the wake of the novels publication in which the author appears preoccupied with the energies of "ubiquitous, subterranean  sexuality", which she feels "infiltrates and subverts revolutionary goals" (2000, p. 249). In the same correspondence, Stead discusses her portrayal of lesbianism in Cotters England and how it appears to  be at odds with the prevailing stereotypes concerning lesbians at this time. In the same letter, Stead writes, "I detest Lesbians; but having to draw one I wanted to be  fair to her..." (Rooney, 2000, p. 249). The reader first becomes aware of the role of female sexuality as it emerges through the narrative when the reader encounters  the working-class Cotter family, which represents Great Britain in microcosm (Rooney, 2000). Stead sets her story against the backdrop of post-World War II, the massive food shortages and black-marketeering that