Modern bodies. Tensions between liberation and suppression of the body in Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin and Jean Rhys’ Good Morning, Midnight.

Abstract

This thesis explores the tensions between corporeal liberation and suppression which can be seen to play themselves out in Jean Rhys' Good Morning, Midnight and Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin, and to relate these to contemporary perceptions and debates with regard to the body. The novels have been read in the context of the ostensibly liberal climate of the time, exploring how an overall aspiration to achieve more liberated modes of life come into conflict with remnants of repressive conventions but also with new constraints, stemming from the demands and pressures of commodity culture as well as the rise of new oppressive ideologies.