The Changing Representation of Family and Social Relationships in Contemporary English Literature

Abstract

This paper examines how contemporary English literature has reimagined the family and the wider network of social relationships that surround it. Where the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century English novel typically organised itself around a coherent, patriarchally structured domestic unit, contemporary fiction increasingly represents families as fragmented, multicultural, reconstituted, and non-linear in form. Drawing on sociological theories of intimacy and individualisation alongside literary criticism of the contemporary British novel, this study undertakes a close comparative reading of works by Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, Andrea Levy, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sarah Moss, Jonathan Coe, and Philip Hensher. The analysis identifies four recurring patterns: the erosion of the idealised nuclear family; the emergence of multicultural and diasporic kinship structures; generational conflict as a vehicle for social critique; and the expansion of ‘family’ to include chosen, communal, and non-biological relationships. The paper argues that these formal and thematic shifts register broader sociological transformations in British social life migration, individualisation, and the erosion of traditional authority while also demonstrating that the novel remains one of the most sensitive instruments available for tracing the reconfiguration of intimacy and belonging in a rapidly changing society.