Theresa Jane Bury

MRes title: ‘Decent Women’ - Helen MacInnes’s War Novels and the Transition in Attitudes Towards Women and War

Literature does nothing if it does not capture shifts in the human psyche and make sense of our collective history. Our forefathers may have been rendered incomprehensible could we not access their innermost thoughts, attitudes and emotions towards the world they faced through the literature they left behind.

Theresa is fascinated by the function of cognitive dissonance, the tension one feels when our beliefs and actions are incongruent. Such tension can be a signifier of societal change, of barriers being broken down or our adoption of changing politics.

Minds do not change overnight but, in fact, may take generations to shift to a point of new normal. As one steps across previously existing societal boundaries cognitive dissonance can restrain and restrict our full embodiment of the new. This dissonance may cause momentary or a prolonged return across the boundaries from where we came. A need to re-establish a correct order of things to reduce dissonance creates a narrative which exposes changing thinking.

Scottish born spy writer, Helen MacInnes increasingly challenged societal boundaries across her three war novels; ‘Above Suspicion’, ‘Assignment In Brittany’ and ‘While We Still Live’ through her political and feminist comment. Yet the narratives betray a restraint which, when we understand preceding female spy stereotypes as well as having a view of where these narratives would shift towards in contemporary spy fiction, points to cognitive dissonance, or thought caught in the act of change!

Theresa's supervisors are Kyle Smith and Paul Malgrati.