Rebecca West

Biography

Rebecca West [née Cicily Isabel Fairfield] was born on December 21^st, 1892 in Westbourne Park, London. She was the daughter of Isabelle Campbell Makenzie and Charles Fairfield, a military officer and journalist. He left his family in 1901, an event that triggered feelings of desertion in West. Isabelle Fairfield then had to financially provide for her three daughters; she moved the family to her native Edinburg in 1902, where she struggled to support them. West grew up surrounded by strong females and with little support from male family members (West). Her involvement with these woman, specifically her sisters, connected her with the suffragette movement and served as a foundation for her feminist views. She and her sisters were well-educated; West herself trained at the Academy of Dramatic Art, London. She left before completing her studies, but her theatrical connections are made apparent by her use of the name Rebecca West, the heroine in Ibsen’s Rosmerholm, which she adopted at the beginning of her journalism career (Scott).

During the early years of her London career, West entered the feminist conversation, joining the editorial staff of The Freewoman and later, The New Freewoman. West published short stories and novels such as The Return of the Soldier (1918). She also wrote literary criticism, critiquing her modernist contemporaries such as D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, particularly on how they dealt with gender in their stories. Her review of H.G. Wells intrigued the writer so much that he invited West for tea, leading to a tumultuous love affair and the birth of West’s only child. West eventually broke from Wells and married Henry Andrews in 1930, whose German connections prompted West to investigate the issues of fascism and antisemitism that would soon lead to WWII. After the war, West’s journalism continued on this political bent. She traveled extensively, and her friendship with American journalists and writers allowed her to occupy a transatlantic position as she reported on espionage and communism. This prolific writing career continued until West passed away on March 15, 1983 (Scott).

West’s short story Nana, which was published in The New Freewoman (1913), has a strong undertone of the feminism that shaped much of her life. The gender of the narrator is ambiguous, perhaps connecting the story to the radical feminist idea of the inside being sexless, which was promoted by Dora Marsden in the journal. This may not, however, be the idea West was attempting to portray as much of the story focuses on female strength and beauty, qualities that the men in the café lack. This focus was most likely influenced by the strong women in West’s life, women who took care of themselves in a period when female independence was still rather rare. The story not only relates to the women and feminist issues in West’s life, but also to her extensive traveling. It is set Spain, from which West had recently returned before taking up her editorial position on The New Freewoman staff and publishing the story (Gibb 50). The story also bears the influence of West’s contemporaries, modernists like Pound and Woolf whom West knew and critiqued. For instance, West employees stream-of-consciousness and does not develop a definite plot, both of which are literary techniques common to the artistic culture of West’s time period.

On September 19, 2012, West wrote a scathing review of H.G. Wells’ book Marriage in The Freewoman in which she called him “the old maid among novelists.”  This review caught H.G. Wells’ attention and he invited her to lunch.  Although their connection was immediate, due to pressure from his wife and current mistress, H.G. Wells’ tried to distance himself from West.  This threw West into a depression, and her mother took her on a trip to Spain in an attempt to help her get over Wells.  During this trip she wrote short stories, including “At Valladolid,” a deeply autobiographical story in which the heroine attempts suicide twice due to the jilting of a lover.  This story appeared in The New Freewoman on August 1^st, 1913.