System is a fairy and a dream, you never find system where you expect it’: Stella Benson’s This is the End

In the midst of the first world war, Stella Benson published her second novel, This is the End. Ostensibly, the novel explores the ramifications of a woman’s decision to live independently during a time of war. It is a tale told with wit and humour as Benson plays with notions of a traditional, nineteenth century realist novel, ‘making it strange’ both in content, and narration. This paper explores Benson’s use of the uncanny, of the weird, in a novel filled with secret friends, secret worlds, and anthropomorphic objects, where reason and system are cast aside in an attempt to discover true meaning in a world beset by chaos.