Jerusalem, 1961: Muriel Spark’s Cold War Intrigue

Abstract

Abstract Muriel Spark investigates the meanings of community, nationality, duty, and betrayal across her oeuvre. In her novel The Mandelbaum Gate (1965), Spark experiments with a different kind of citizenship and community belonging than the Cold War climate typically allows, and she does so in content as well as through the style of her prose. In the context of the Cold War, national belonging and citizenship are politically charged endowments: conflicting memberships can only belong to double agents. Because protagonist Barbara—a British, half-Jewish, Catholic convert, like her author—does not swear fealty exclusively to Britain, Judaism, Israel, or Catholicism, she is seen as betraying each in turn. Challenging notions of singular nationality or uncomplicated allegiance in light of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Spark employs melodrama to parse the meanings of betrayal and belonging. The excesses of melodrama serve as a model for citizenship in the postwar, decolonizing world.