Abstract
This thesis aims to offer a fresh perspective from the concentration on religious criticism and metafiction that dominate readings of Spark’s fiction by commenting more widely than has been done before on her preoccupation with exile. I redefine what is meant by Spark’s ‘exilic phase’, classifying it as a fourteen-year period starting with The Mandelbaum Gate in 1965 and extending to Territorial Rights in 1979. By categorising eight of her protagonists as fictional representations of the female stranger, I examine Spark’s engagement with the feminine experience of exile throughout her fiction.
The first chapter argues that Robinson (1958), The Mandelbaum Gate (1965), and The Public Image (1967) contain the first three female strangers to emerge in Spark’s fiction – January, Barbara and Annabel – and are the only ones who experience their mobility being constrained forcibly by men within their foreign settings. In chapter two, I discuss the considerable shift in the representation of the female stranger of The Driver’s Seat. Lise’s empowerment over her mobility and death sets the tone for how future versions of the female stranger in Spark’s fiction navigate space and renegotiate power relations with men in their narratives. The third chapter focuses on The Hothouse by the East River and The Takeover as the female strangers of both novels continue to subvert traditional gender roles and power dynamics. The fourth chapter turns to a different version of a female stranger and the last of her exilic period in Territorial Rights and analyses how Spark critiques the Western gaze cast on the Eastern European refugee. I conclude with the final and longest settled female stranger in Spark’s fiction – Hildegard in Aiding and Abetting – to show how this figure exhibits familiar exilic tropes and reflects Spark’s interest in exile re-emerging after twenty-one years.