SOURCE: Roberts, Heather. “Mother, Wife and Mistress: Women Characters in the New Zealand Novel from 1920 to 1940.” Landfall: A New Zealand Quarterly 29, no. 3 (September 1975): 233-47.

In the following essay, Roberts suggests that the female characters populating New Zealand fiction between 1920 and 1940 can be divided into three major categories: those who fulfill traditional female roles of wife and mother; those who intrude into traditionally male domains; and those who reject traditional roles in favor of a new place in society.

Joan Stevens has called the novelists of the period from 1920 to 1940 ‘The Forerunners’¹ and the women characters portrayed in their fiction are the precursors of the women in New Zealand fiction after 1940. The three strands that can be traced through the novels of this period are apparent in New Zealand fiction before 1920, but there is not a sufficient body of literature on which to base a satisfactory analysis of women...