Figures on the threshold: Refugees and the politics of hospitality, 1930–51

Cooper, Katherine (2018) Figures on the threshold: Refugees and the politics of hospitality, 1930–51. Literature and History, 27 (2). pp. 189-204. ISSN 0306-1973

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Abstract

If, as Peter Gatrell has suggested, the figure of the refugee was defined and even constructed during the twentieth century, then the Second World War was a crucial period in this process (Gatrell, 2013). This article looks at three representations of refugee figures from this period, Graham Greene's novel The Name of Action (1930), Rebecca West's short story ‘Around Us the Wail of Sirens’ (1941) and Storm Jameson's novel The Black Laurel (1947), evaluating them in light of recent scholarship around hospitality and asylum to suggest that these refugee characters subvert the norms and customs of British hospitality. It argues that in these three texts, refugees act as ‘threshold figures’, exposing the realities of war and the inadequacy of British social processes to contain them. In doing so, they point towards a different way of representing the refugee as an active agent, rather than a passive recipient in both political processes and social interactions.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	refugees,hospitality,domestic spaces,war,second world war,sdg 16 - peace, justice and strong institutions ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/peace_justice_and_strong_institutions
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Modern and Contemporary Writing Research Group Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Institute for the Study of Ideas of Europe (ISIE)
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	12 Sep 2018 14:30
Last Modified:	04 May 2024 01:48
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/68258
DOI:	10.1177/0306197318792374

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