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5 | “The best product of this century” Margaret Kennedy’s The Constant Nymph Among the novels discussed in this study, Anne of Green Gables and The Constant Nymph (1924) are the most romantic in their vision. Kennedy, like Montgomery, places much emphasis on imagination and creativity, imbues her texts with literary allusiveness (particularly in reference to Shakespeare), and creates a pastoral idyll. But the romantic qualities are not straightforward. Both authors undercut the pastoral fantasy, and also refuse “romantic” endings in the lovestory sense. In Anne of Green Gables and also in Emily of New Moon, Montgomery ensures that her teenage heroines’ relationships with the leading males remain on the level of friendship. Whilst the reader is aware that Dean Priest, in his thirties, has fallen in love with Emily, aged twelve, Emily herself is protected from this knowledge. Kennedy, whilst more daring in her depiction of a love affair between a fourteenyear -old girl and an adult man, takes care that the affair shall not be consummated, and her novel ends in tragedy. Some have judged Kennedy ’s work as “excessively romantic” (Harold Bloom, 167), yet while she certainly does work partly in the genre of romance, her texts also include ironic critiques of romantic excess. The role of female protagonist in The Constant Nymph is split between Teresa (or Tessa) Sanger and her older cousin Florence Churchill. Tessa’s father, Albert Sanger, is a composer who lives in the Austrian Alps with his children, so numerous and unruly that they are known as “Sanger’s circus.” This family, representative of artistic genius, is pitted against Florence, who is identified with civilized culture. On the death of Albert Sanger, Florence travels to Austria to T4194.indb 124 T4194.indb 124 5/2/07 6:45:59 AM 5/2/07 6:45:59 AM Margaret Kennedy’s The Constant Nymph | 125 take charge of her orphaned cousins, but her entanglement with them changes her from a benevolent, if interfering, woman into a cruel and uncontrollable one. The real heroine of the novel is Tessa, whose instinctive taste and natural distinction are ranked far higher than Florence ’s carefully acquired cultivation and polish. The Constant Nymph appeared in the same year as Michael Arlen’s The Green Hat, and these were the most notable international best sellers of the 1920s. Arlen’s novel was immediately identified as a popular culture product and was not, on the whole, taken very seriously, but The Constant Nymph was a great critical success. Across the spectrum of British periodicals, reviews were almost all admiring: repeated terms included “brilliant,” “work of genius,” “moving,” “masterpiece,” and “dazzling.” Dozens of eminent writers, from Thomas Hardy to Antonio Gramsci, bestowed great accolades upon the novel. Its appeal crossed the Atlantic; by October 1926, it was reportedly selling a thousand copies a day in the States.1 The same year it became a successful stage play, cowritten by Kennedy and Basil Dean and starring Noël Coward and, later, John Gielgud. Two years later, Dean directed the first film adaptation, starring Ivor Novello and again cowritten by Kennedy . Already extremely famous on her own account, her renown was increased through association with these theater and film celebrities. The Constant Nymph was the classic “crossover success,” and Kennedy became, as Billie Melman puts it, “the writers’ bestseller” (77). Readers and reviewers reiterated the paradox that the book had “achieved the remarkable success of being the admiration of the ‘highbrows ,’ a ‘best-seller’ and a box office triumph.”2 High sales, however, threatened its literary status, and dissident voices began to emerge, expressing distaste at the novel’s eroticizing of young girls or branding it as a deliberately commercial undertaking. The text anticipates these issues in that it is much preoccupied with cultural hierarchy, and the debates about its literary value and possible sensationalism often seem to be inscribed on its own pages. Several of Kennedy’s later books, notably Return I Dare Not (1931), A Long Time Ago (1932), Together and Apart (1936), and The Heroes of Clone (1957), continue the exploration of romance and sensationalism and also of cultural value, as well as reflecting on the nature of celebrity. These little-known but intriguing fictions can productively be compared with their celebrated predecessor. It is perhaps because of the ambiguous literary status of Kennedy ’s work, and her complex attitudes toward cultural value, that later generations of critics have apparently not known what to make of her. T4194.indb...

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