The 'Pretty Lady', by Arnold Bennett: Illustration of the metamorphosis ofdomesticity in Great Britain during the First World War

The Pretty Lady, written by Arnold Bennett and published at the beginning o f 1918, alludes to the disappearance of the Edwardian order and social valu es, under the combined effects of the cataclysm of the First World War and of the social reforms voted by the Radical Liberal government. In this pape r, the analysis of the changing image and evolutive parts played by several house servants, highlights the mood of social, moral and cultural transfor mation between 1914 and 1918. Indeed, on the one hand, individual interests had to be subordinated to the collective contingencies of the nation, and, on the other hand, the family unit had to be reconstructed and strengthene d around the regenerative function of the mother. Arnold Bennett presents t hat metamorphosis as a tragic upheaval for the upper classes and builds a m etaphorical background around his ideological message, which confers to PL an unavoidable aesthetic concern extending beyond historical reality; but e ven if PL is a literary and subjective work of fiction, it can nevertheless be regarded as a relevant painting of the whole metamorphosis undergone by British society during the First World War.