Discipline — Helen Waddell

Following in the footsteps of H.G. Wells, Elizabeth Von Arnim, Arnold Bennett, Ada Leverson, May Sinclair and others, in 1915 the young Helen Waddell and Maude Clarke (later well-known medievalists) collaborated on a marriage-problem novel, Discipline, published here for the first time. Modeled on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the action centres on Elizabeth St. John's grievances against her husband, in her eyes justifying a series of rebellions which, however, rebound upon herself. Equally important is her friendship with Anne Delahide, sparkling with the fun of being intellectual. Like other marriage-problem novels, ‘Discipline' sows seeds of feminist doubt even as the romantic comedy returns the heroine to the marital embrace.However, the friendship between Elizabeth and Anne allows the authors to hint at a homosocial alternative. The Introduction by Jennifer FitzGerald teases out the subtext, the struggles of a young university-educated and independent-minded wife to forge the stable self-defined identity her husband can take for granted. It examines the parallels and contrasts with Waddell's 1916 biographical essay, also published here, on the 18th-century Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, which also follows the trajectory of romantic comedy but ends in the humdrum, unrelenting heartbreak of an irreconcilable marriage. Both texts are comprehensively annotated.