
The introduction in my (e-)edition of this book says that it was a “surprise international best seller” in 1926. To me, this is indeed a surprise, since the plot can basically be summed up as an answer to the question, “in what factual matrix would a nicely-bred, genteel Victorian spinster be motivated to make a literal pact with the devil in order to guarantee herself some peace and solitude?”
To be clear, the devil in this book is not a metaphor. I mean, in the broader, HSC-English sense, of COURSE he’s a metaphor (this being, after all, satire), but within the confines of the text he’s a character who walks around and has conversations and who is not treated as an hallucination and who, when he sits on a lawn, leaves flattened grass behind him. Hence, I’m surprised that something so trippy found an apparently eager market in the newly modernist 20s.
It might help that things start off slowly; in fact, for about the first three-quarters of the book, things are pretty “normal”, if by “normal” you mean “unmarried women are regarded as the rightful property of whatever male family member is willing to house them”. This is because Townsend Warner’s main concern is to be clear about exactly what life was like for a single woman in late-19th and early-20th century England, so as to follow her character through to her ad absurdum conclusion. In other hands, this loooooong establishing shot could get pretty boring, especially because almost nothing happens (in fact, the almost nothing that happens is kind of the point). Luckily, this novelist, of whom I had never heard (thank you, Emily Books), is a freaking goddess genius. I was so overcome with the glory-tinged-with-comedy of the prose that I had to restrain myself from reading it aloud to my fellow commuters. Here are a couple of examples that I actually remembered to highlight:
“A kind of pity for the unused virgin beside her spread through Caroline’s thoughts. She did not attach an inordinate value to her wifehood and maternity; they were her duties, rather than her glories. But for all that she felt emotionally plumper than Laura.”
EMOTIONALLY PLUMPER. Or this:
“During the last few years of her life Mrs Willowes grew continually more skilled in evading responsibilities, and her death seemed but the final perfected expression of this skill. It was as if she had said, yawning a delicate cat’s yawn, ‘I think I will go to my grave now,’ and had left the room, her white shawl trailing behind her.”
Perfection. If you only read one book about the ways in which women born before the 20th century were not considered to have any particular inherent personhood…well, you shouldn’t just read one book about that, because reading a whole bunch of them will definitely be more interesting than whatever nonsense Jonathan Franzen is currently subjecting the internet to*. But this is a good book to add to the list, and has the benefit of working itself down with a spoonful of sugar – not to mention a walking, talking iteration of the Prince of Darkness. If that’s your thing.
*Confession: I loved both Freedom and The Corrections. But I find Franzen himself to be utterly unbearable and I would like to hear no more of his opinions, thanks.