'Something Must be Done to Stop the Rot': The City, Civilization, and the Threat to Europe in Storm Jameson's Europe to Let. (May 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cooper, Katherine
• Is Part Of: Journal of war & culture studies. Volume 7:Number 2(2014)
• Page Start: 147
• Page End: 161
• Publication Date: 2014-05
• Subjects: War and society -- Europe -- Periodicals; War and society -- Periodicals; War -- History -- Periodicals; War and civilization -- Europe -- Periodicals; War and civilization -- Periodicals; 303.6605
• DOI: 10.1179/1752627214Z.00000000040
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1752-6272

Abstract

<abstract> <title> <x content-type="archive" xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>In <italic>Europe to Let</italic> (1940a), Margaret Storm Jameson—novelist, essayist, and former pacifist—presents a Europe characterized by corruption and cruelty. Ranging from Cologne to Vienna, and Prague to Budapest, the novel critiques Europe's institutions, its increasingly problematic politics and, most importantly, its poverty-stricken cities as the cause of the crisis. Exploring the presentation in this novel of the problems inherent in Europe, this article makes links between Jameson's fears and preoccupations and those of her contemporaries in order to elucidate this novel's contribution to discourses around the threat to Europe and the end of civilization at the beginning of the World War Two. It demonstrates the anxieties embedded in the narrative around modernity, progress, and in particular, an overblown and ruthless capitalism, to exact a reading of this novel as an indication of Jameson's own hopes and fears for Europe during this time, as well as a testament to her relevance as a cultural commentator in her own right. It explores the representation of war in <italic>Europe to Let</italic> as a means of rehabilitation for the whole continent.</p> </abstract>