Excellent Women

Laurie Colwin let out that Barbara Pym is one of her favorite writers in one of her food essays. I'd never heard of her before that. But, as I was, at the time, approaching the end of Colwin's corpus, I wrote down Barbara Pym's name, hoping she might be some sort of replacement when I needed her. Well, I stumbled across one of her books for less than the price of Amazon shipping at a used book store in Philly. In that case, books are basically always worth buying.

Guys, I have a secret theory. I think that Barbara Pym died and was reincarnated as Laurie Colwin, who died and was reincarnated as ME! (to borrow from PAL) I know, I know--this doesn't work as all of our lifetimes overlapped with each other, but this is the only explanation that I've got. Plus, I'm not a writer. But my mother thinks I will be someday. I just got this email from her the other day:

Hi,

I had the thought today while reading your blog that you will probably write a novel someday. Just make sure it's readable and not too deep or heavy! m

She clarified when I asked her that this doesn't mean that she thinks that this blog is too heavy or deep. Anyway, Barbara Pym: the narrator in Excellent Women falls in love and starts wearing green dresses! (Okay, that's an overstatement, but she does mention green dresses, a switch from normal brown ones.) Another example: she writes, "No sink has ever been built high enough for a reasonably tall person and my back was soon aching with the effort of washing up." Gosh--I feel like no one has ever understood me before Barbara Pym. It's so true: sinks are built too low, and when you're tall, this hurts your back.

I mean, with a title like Excellent Women, who could go wrong? Excellent women refers to the unmarried women who help out with church events. Many of our narrator's (Miss Mildred Lathbury's) friends are church people. She also becomes friend with her neighbors. The wife is an anthropologist. The irony of the book is that while the wife is portrayed with this intelligent scientist and our narrator is a frumpy woman at the edge of society, our narrator ends up astutely observing even the anthropologists. Plus, the novel is full of sarcastic digs at men for not helping more in the kitchen; this is something of which I have been painfully aware, and somewhat resentful, since I was a young child. Fr. OP will call me a liberated woman here.

I suppose a novel of manners means that nothing really happens. This book isn't an exception, although it doesn't seem to bother me. Don't get me wrong: I love books with plot--with such a daze of events that sweeps you up and you can't put the book down. But I also like the ones where nothing happens, as long as the narrator is a witty woman.

(Spoilers in this paragraph; spoilers is a bit of an overstatement, because, as I said before, nothing really happens in the novel.) "Virtue is an excellent thing and we should all strive after it, but it can sometimes be a little depressing." This is one of the lines in the novel, and one that sums it up pretty well. Our narrator is one of the excellent women who help men--she helps out the church, she helps out her neighbors, she helps out her friends, and she helps out three or four single men who come and go from her life. And she gets pretty sick and tired of helping them out. She believes in love, but none of the men in her life love her; they simply look to her as a help-mate. They would marry her if she let them, but she is uninterested in settling for that. So the book is somewhat depressing and tragic: She hopes that men will want her, quite apart from her functionality. And yet, her alternative to settling down in a functional marriage is for her to keep on helping everyone as she was before. She's the one who always ends up making tea and doing the dishes.

Religion is one of the ways that the book deals with manners; food and tea are another. Pym's narrator is an Anglo-Catholic, at the time when there conversion to Roman Catholicism or extreme dislike of Roman Catholicism seemed to be the things (our narrator hovers, as always, in the middle). Our narrator also sees a sharp distinction between church-going people and non-church going people.

Pym writes about an interaction between an Anglican and a Roman Catholic at the church jumble sale:

"'Well, really, that woman has a nerve, inviting me over to their jumble sale next week and telling me that their new priest, Father Bogart, is a lovely man! As if that would attract me!'
"Oh, but think how it does and how it has done, that kind of thing. Where would the Church be if it hadn't been for a 'lovely man' here and there? It's rather nice to think of churches being united through jumble sales,' I suggested. 'I wonder if the Methodists are having one too?'"

Pym also writes about the conversion to Anglicanism of a not very sympathetic character (Everard, who Miss Lathbury is discussing with her two neighbors, Helena and Rocky; Miss Lathbury is a regular church attender; Helena and Rocky are not):

"'You mean you don't expect anthropologists to go to church, Miss Lathbury,' said Helena. 'But Everard is a convert, quite ardent, you know.'

'I thought converts always were ardent,' said Rocky. 'Surely that's the point about them? The whole set-up is new and interesting to them.'
...
'Of course it is more of an intellectual thing with him,' said Helena. 'He knows all the answers.'
'We certainly want people like that,' I said. 'The Church needs intelligent people.'
'I should think so,' said Helena scornfully. 'All those old women swooning over a good-looking curate won't get it anywhere.'
'But our curate isn't good-looking,' I said indignantly, visualising Father Greatorex's short stocky figure in its untidy clothes. 'He isn't even young.'
'And anyway, why should the Church want to get anywhere?' said Rocky. 'I think it's much more comforting to think of it staying just where it is.'
'Wherever that may be,' Helena added.
...
'I'm afraid we aren't all very intelligent about our religion,' I said, slightly on the defensive, 'we probably don't know many of the answers and can't argue cleverly. And yet I suppose there's room for the stupid as well,' I added. ... Though obviously He must be very pleased to have somebody as clever as Everard Bone."

P.S. Could it be?! And, at the same time, doesn't it all make sense?: A couple of days ago, while I was reading Excellent Women, Hopkins was blogging about Pym's No Fond Return of Love. Kindred spirits are wonderful! Hopkins sees her Pym novel as a satire, but not one that goes all the way. Excellent Women was certainly satiric--Pym was questioning the order of society. She, through our narrator, questioned why tea had to be drunk all the time. And yet our narrator realizes if she questions the social order in that way, everything will crumble. So she quickly backs off of her critique. Like the furniture of one of her neighbors, which is damaged by worms, society is fragile, and this alarms our narrator. Conversion is also a threat to society, but one that our narrator keeps alive as a possibility.


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