ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some effects of this general adoption of Virginia Woolf's argument. Virginia Woolf's attack on Bennett and her proclamation of the need to break with what she saw as his adherence to a 'materialist' tradition has been of surprising importance in later discussions of fiction and especially in discussions of the nature of 'Modernism'. 'Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown' and, even more, 'Modern Fiction', have figured largely in critical studies and critical anthologies. The chapter suggests the same kind though it do not think that we need necessarily lean towards the mildly chauvinist opposition of international Modernism and sturdy Englishness. It focuses on discussion of the evolution of the concept of Modernism in England on the social circumstances which caused a number of writers and critics to take kindly to the idea of a conflict between the perceptive few and the insensitive masses.
