Feminism, Freedom and the Hierarchy of Happiness in the Psychological Novels of May Sinclair

May Sinclair, in her psychological novels The Three Sisters (1915), Mary Olivier: A Life (1919), and The Life and Death of Harriet Frean (1919-1921), develops a concept of happiness which critiques the social, psychological, and physical constraints that are placed upon women due to their emotional labour. For Sinclair, some forms of happiness are better than others, creating a hierarchy of happiness across her work. Drawing on contemporary affect theory, this chapter offers an analysis of Sinclair’s complicated and deeply ambivalent representation of the feeling of happiness. The concept of happiness in Sinclair’s writing is protean. Certain forms of happiness must be resisted; for example the infantilizing contentment of Harriet Frean or the manipulative selfishness of Mary Cartaret. Still other forms should be actively pursued, for example Mary Olivier’s ecstatic and rapturous relationship with nature. Happiness can also become parasitic on suffering. Sinclair seems to be suggesting in both Mary Olivier and The Three Sisters that self-sacrifice, even self-abnegation, is the route to the “perfect” happiness. Affect can be dangerous in Sinclair’s work. To experience affect is to be affected and therefore the safest happiness is ecstatic: to be outside of the self, to be beyond the body.