This essay derives from research towards a Ph.D. in International Socialism and British woman’s writing in the interwar period at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. In my dissertation, I mention Love’s Winnowing as part of a larger discussion about Mannin’s fiction as crucial to her activism: see Carrie Timlin, “In Search of Utopia: Sylvia Pankhurst, Ethel Mannin, Nancy Cunard, and International Socialist Woman Authors in Interwar Britain” (Ph.D. diss., University of the Witwatersrand, 2024). (213-214)
I've created an entry for that dissertation here. Here's the abstract for the article:
With rare exceptions, studies on author and activist Ethel Mannin have focused on her political non-fiction despite a broad consensus that many of her novels and short stories were vehicles for Socialist ideology. Her novelette “Love’s Winnowing” is a seminal example of how Socialist authors, and Mannin in particular, subverted the romance to political ends. Blurring the line between cultural commentary and popular fiction, Mannin’s nuanced integration of the experiences of working-class women in the story provides a window into the lives and concerns of its target audience, the connection between literature and its socio-political context, and the dialectic between aesthetics and class politics in interwar Britain. If Mannin’s fiction is detached from her politics, scholarship on it will remain incomplete. The same can be said for work that focuses on her politics, neglecting her fiction. Drawing on the popularity of the romance and the political affordances of a genre that occupied a controversial place in working-class communities, Mannin spoke to an intimately gendered politics located firmly within working-class women’s experience, not by overtly stating her aims, but by inviting a group of socially situated readers to draw on their familiarity with cultural codes to interpret her narrative creatively.
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When Ethel Mannin appears in scholarly work, she is typically introduced as an industrious writer who produced upwards of one hundred books in her lifetime. This unnecessarily labored phrase and slight variations therein place emphasis on her productivity rather than the nature and quality of her work, in part because most of the books that she so industriously wrote were romance novels. (197)
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Romance novels, and Mannin’s work was no exception, comprise a set of predictable themes and tropes, set in different contexts, but with similar events producing similar outcomes. In its simplest form, two people meet, develop a romantic attraction, face obstacles to their love, resolve the conflict, and end up married. (197-198)
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the text provides a window into the lives and concerns of its target audience marking it as an important example of the Socialist romance, and illuminating both the connection between literature and its socio-political context, and the dialectic between aesthetics and class politics in the interwar period. (198)
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“Love’s Winnowing.” [...] is not a novel, but a novelette written in the 1920s before Mannin was an established author. (199)
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Mannin’s early fiction has been swept aside because its political affordances are not immediately apparent. The Socialist ideology that she wove into the fabric of her texts relied on reader response. Her first novel, Martha, with its depictions of class disparity, gender-based violence, and the stigma attached to illegitimate children, was arguably a work of socio-political commentary. While it ends with a marriage and a seemingly content protagonist, it does not afford readers the satisfaction and closure that typically accompany a “happy ending.” (202)
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Mannin wrote covertly Socialist romance novels and novelettes that spoke to an intimately gendered politics embedded firmly within working-class women’s experience: the private space, personal relationships, and reproductive labor. It is precisely there, on the margins of class struggle, that “Love’s Winnowing” becomes a political text. (203)
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an inherent sense of shame and guilt at romance reading and romantic aspirations was not only passed down from mother to daughter, but socially policed. If a working-class woman attempted to fulfil the fantasy of romantic love, her community was quick to respond with ridicule and castigation. It was commonly accepted among the working-classes that marriage was purely transactional—romantic love was reserved for those who had the financial stability and time to dedicate to their personal relationships. (205)
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While the story concludes with obstacles overcome and a marriage characteristic of genre romance, Mannin breaks with convention insofar as at no point in the story does Diana fall in love with any of the men who pursue her. (210)
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I've created an entry for that dissertation here. Here's the abstract for the article:
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