Literary Criticism Of Stevie Smith's Novel

Literary Criticism:

Stevie Smith’s novel has limited criticism and literary scholarship however the variety of scholarship is intriguing. Smith herself has more criticism on her poetry, but the following are some selections of criticism about Novel on Yellow Paper and about Smith and her other work. Often times Smith is examined in the context of feminist theory because of her dealings with female characters and her involvement in confronting gender conformity: “…her novel’s meta-fictional commentary on not only ‘women in fiction’ but ‘fiction by women’, as Woolf might have put it – which for ages perpetuated images of female identity solely ‘in relation’, or dependently on man” (Huk 93). Critics also explore the anti-Semitic comments made

Severin argues that Smith, who breaks away from the traditional mold, is still a modernist writer and that her books are more important because in them she attempts to break free of social norms. The article focuses mostly on The Holiday by Smith, however the breaking of social norms is a familiar themes that runs throughout Novel on Yellow Paper. Severin explains, “Each of Smith’s novels marks an assault on the romance plot, although the techniques she employs are remarkably varied. Novel interrupts the romance first of Karl and heroine Pompey, then of Freddy and Pompey, with disruptive interludes – lists of quotations, fantasies, retold versions of the classics” (462). In The Holiday, Smith is taking an even more radical approach than her previous works, and in doing so she is shaking up the “social agenda” by breaking from narrative conventions and enabling her characters to not fall into romance, and instead come to terms with their own form of society: “According to Smith, a new world can only come about through the relinquishment of all forms of possessiveness, the psychological as well as the materials” (464). In Novel, Pompey is able to begin to break free from the societal norms because of her determination to be intelligent and her desire to avoid a marriage in which she would be merely a housewife. Smith allows her characters to

In particular, Nemesvari uses Novel on Yellow Paper to explore the way Smith uses language to create interactions between Smith and her audience this “playfulness” Nemesvari names it (26). He goes on to state: “Clearly what Smith desires is the play between illustration and text, but such an interaction immediately subverts the ‘purity,’ the self-sufficiency of poetic language-in-itself” (27). This allows Smith to call attention to the “uncertainties and protean nature of language” (27). Nemesvari uses Smith’s poems as the format of examining her language, including the poem about Casmilus from Novel, which Nemesvari argues tells us how the text should be read. Nemesvari explores Smith’s word choice throughout this poem and other selections in order to encompass ideas of romance, social order, and the limitations of language. He focuses on how Novel forces “the recognition that language and the conventions of fiction are themselves artificial constructs” (30). Smith is aware of the limitations of language, but she is able to utilize it through Pompey by creating a stream of consciousness that allows