Bobbin Up as a Social Reproduction Text

Reading Dorothy Hewett's Bobbin Up (1959) with the tools provided by recent advances in social reproduction theory, this essay suggests that Hewett's text develops a richer and more sophisticated account of the relations between waged and unwaged labour than previous materialist critics have acknowledged. In turn, it reads Bobbin Up for the ways Hewett's fiction can provide insights for social reproduction theorists. Hewett's novel, this essay argues, builds a specifically social-reproduction poetics.