It swings along confidently, telling you all you need to know about the inner lives and outer circumstances of the women protagonists, and seems light-hearted, even frothy, on the surface, which is deceptive, as the author takes a perceptive look at the condition of middle-class women in the 1920s.
Firstly we meet Mrs Wilkins, who knows absolutely that she is not happy, even though her circumstances are quite easy.
"Nobody took any notice of Mrs Wilkins. She was the kind of person who is not noticed at parties. Her clothes, infested by thrift, made her practically invisible; her face was non-arresting; her conversation was reluctant; she was shy. And if one's clothes and face and conversation are all negligible, thought Mrs Wilkins, who recognized her disabilities, what, at parties, is there left of one?"
Mr Wilkins feels dissatisfied with her, which also makes her depressed. But Mrs Wilkins actually has vision and a longing for something more than Hampstead in the rain, and it is because of her spirit, an Ariel quality, that the party of four women, who have not previously met, go to a beautiful castle in Italy for a month's holiday.
Here is Mrs Arbuthnot: "Steadfast as the points of the compass to Mrs Arbuthnot were the great four facts of life: God, Husband, Home, Duty. "
But her husband is a cheerful soul who makes money writing about the lives of the Grandes Horizontales, and Mrs A is so embarrassed and confused by the source of their money that she lives for the Betterment of the Poor.
"whereupon Mrs Arbuthnot, her mind being used to getting people into lists and division, from habit considered, as she gazed thoughtfully at Mrs Wilkins, under what heading , supposing she had to classify her, she could most properly be put."
...
"..she decided pro tem, as the vicar said at meetings to put her under the heading Nerves. It was just possible that she ought to go straight into the category Hysteria, which was often only the antechamber to Lunacy, but Mrs Arbuthnot had learned not to hurry people into their final categories, having on more than one occasion discovered with dismay that she had made a mistake; and how difficult it had been to get them out again, and how crushed she had been with the most terrible remorse."
Mrs Arbuthnot seems like an old lady and we find to our surprise (and in my case, horror) that she is 33 years old. She seems far too young to be the voluntary parish assistant (which is what she is). And more, she gives to the poor of the parish the money her husband makes on his biographies.
"The parish flourished because, to take a handful at random, of the ill-behaviour of the ladies Du Barri, Montespan, Pompadour, Ninon de L'Enclos, and even of learned Maintenon. "
"Mrs Arbuthnot .. was obliged to live on the proceeds. He gave her a dreadful sofa once, after the success of his Du Barri memoir, with swollen cushions and soft, receptive lap, and it seemed to her a miserable thing that there, in her very home, should flaunt this reincarnation of a dead old French sinner."
This is how von Arnim manages to tell us about sex without being explicit. Somehow, these two have failed in their sex life. He likes it, she does not - it makes her feel guilty. There is more...
"She didn't dare think of him as he used to be, as he had seemed to her to be in those marvellous first days of their lovemaking, of their marriage. Her child had died; she had nothing, nobody of her own to lavish herself on. The poor became her children, and God the object of her love. What could be happier than such a life, she sometimes asked herself but her face, and particularly her eyes, continued sad."
Mrs Wilkins is the first of the two to feel the enchantment of Italy, which von Arnim explains in a sexy way. "Now she had taken off her goodness and left it behind her like a heap of rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy. She was naked of goodness, and was rejoicing in being naked. She was stripped and exulting. And there, away in the dim mugginess of Hampstead, was Mellersh being angry." [Mellersh is her husband, and Mrs W immediately asks him to come out to Italy.]
Lotty, full of generosity of spirit, feels remorse. "I've been a mean dog."
Mellersh arrives, and all is well, as he is thrilled to meet Lady Caroline, another of the party, and Mrs Fisher, who is the fourth, because he knows he can charm them into getting their legal business (he's a solicitor.) So he is very pleased with his wife for extending his circle in this way, which enables von Arnim to be very amusing about the Wilkins' relationship blossoming in the sun.
Altogether it is a very charming read. When von Arnim wrote this book she was 56 - quite elderly, at that time, but the book reads like a young woman's book, I thought.
Salley Vickers writes: "The novel has a fairy-tale ending. But fairy tales are more realistic than is often believed. Joy, mirth, sympathy and kindness are magical in their effects, and it does no harm in our cynical and materialistic age to be reminded that we have it in us to enjoy these states of mind and exercise these powers - and that this might have modestly miraculous consequences. "
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