Lolly Willowes
Lolly Willowes or The Loving Huntsman is a novel by the British writer Sylvia Townsend Warner from 1926. It is a satirical social novel with fantastic elements. The action takes place in England at the beginning of the 20th century and deals with the social restrictions of women and alternative lifestyles in the interwar period .
content
action
After the death of her father, the almost 30-year-old Laura Willowes moves to live with her brother Henry and his family from Sommerset in London. Laura suffers from the loss of her father and the familiar surroundings, has little to gain from city life and cannot fulfill the family duties of an unmarried aunt belonging to the household. Neither is she enthusiastic about the well-meaning attempts of her relatives to find a husband for her, who are then soon hired due to dwindling prospects of success. But since she fulfills the role of caring aunt intended for her without complaint, her dissatisfaction is not noticed by the family.
When buying flowers, Laura spontaneously decides to leave town. She purchases a map and a guide and chooses Great Mop as her new place of residence. She does not allow herself to be deterred by the concerns of her brother, who has meanwhile significantly reduced her share of the inheritance through speculation. In the chalk hills and beech forests of their new home, a self-determined life seems to be imaginable again after a long time.
Laura soon sees this hopeful perspective endangered by the arrival of her nephew Titus. Titus sleeps with his aunt in order to find the peace and quiet to write a book in the seclusion of the village. It goes without saying that he will continue to be looked after by Laura. Laura feels pushed back into an unloved role and wants to avoid a relapse into the old life at all costs. In desperation, she makes a pact with the devil to get rid of Titus.
Shortly afterwards, Titus suffers a series of mishaps - curdling milk, attacks of flies, bats and wasps - in which Laura recognizes the handwriting of the devil. Damaged by the wasp attack, Titus arouses the pity of Pandora Williams, a Londoner visiting Great Mop, who tends his wounds and accepts his marriage proposal. Laura accompanies the young couple to the train station. On the way home, she meets the devil again in the form of a gardener, who this time takes time for a longer conversation with her. Laura ponders the special charm of witchcraft for women, who otherwise have little chance of adventure, decides to spend the night outside this time and feels in good hands in the "content, but deeply indifferent possession" of the devil.
worldview
The portrayal of Laura Willowe's rebellion against the limitations of her living conditions reflects a social change in gender roles at the time the novel was written. In the interwar period, the question of the position of women moved to the center of the national discourse. On the one hand, the introduction of the right to vote for women recognized the female right to participate in the political public. On the other hand, women faced considerable pressure to return to traditional roles after the war. The tasks taken on during the war outside the domestic sphere were again to be reserved exclusively for returning men. Laura combines the reduction of her personality to her function as Aunt Lolly with the move to London. She feels that the urban existence, which is characterized by domesticity and obligatory heterosexuality , is restrictive and oppressive.
Biographical parallels
With her character Laura Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner not only shares the eventual retreat into a rural environment after years in London, but also the rejection of a conventional way of life. At the time the novel was written, she was having an affair with the older, married Percy Buck . While the relationship, even according to Townsend Warner's diary entries, often caused frustration on an emotional level, it at least guaranteed a release from traditional female roles with regard to motherhood and hostess duties. It cannot be ruled out that Townsend Warner saw a glimpse of her own future in the draft of an evening free of family entanglements. The general mood of the novel with regard to this perspective gives the impression of anticipation.
Towsend Warner's later relationship with Valentine Ackland suggests a lesbian interpretation of certain passages. This aspect becomes clearest in the description of a witch sabbath to which Laura is invited. Various villagers ask Laura to dance, but do not meet with much approval. Laura feels reminded of the boring balls of her youth and is disappointed to find that such conventions cannot arouse her interest even in connection with a witch's sabbath. Only dancing with young village beauty Emily pulls Laura out of her apathy for a moment. When a lock of Emilie's red hair comes loose and strokes Laura's face, Laura feels a tingling sensation all over her body. With Emiliy, the ball-hating Laura finds out, she could dance to exhaustion.
shape
The novel begins as a realistic narrative and eventually takes on a fantastic dimension. When Laura, oppressed by Titus, gives vent to her soul on a hike through the woods, and her denial of social expectations calls into the wilderness, she conjures up the devil. It becomes a reality through her word. The devil will thus establish realities through the discourses to embody the methods, define their meaning, and model reactions. It symbolizes the complex interaction between text and reality.
On the formal level, the novel ends not only as a fantasy, but also as a polemic . While Laura's thoughts were previously presented mainly in the form of indirect speech , she formulates her worldview explicitly and in detail on the last pages. While Laura initially only wants her peace and quiet and shows no great curiosity about the life of the other villagers, she now identifies with other women in her situation and places herself in a series of witches - like her, wives and sisters of respectable men - those in the pact see with the devil the best chance for freedom, self-determination and adventure.
Position in literary history
Laura Willowe's decision against her cramped and alienated existence in the city in favor of a new life in harmony with nature in a village full of witches corresponded to the contemporary interest in a return to an earth-bound, rural way of life. Similar themes can also be found in the works of Mary Webb and DH Lawrence . Laura's self-discovery process under the guidance of a satanic hunter shows parallels to Connie Chatterley's sexual awakening by Mellors.
Fantastic literature was very popular in the 1920s. Other examples of this trend include David Garnett's Lady Into Fox ( 1922), Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928), and Rebecca West's Harriet Hume (1929).
reception
Lolly Willowes turned out to be a successful debut for Sylvia Townsend Warner. The novel was shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Femina , which was then awarded to Radclyffe Hall for Adam's Breed . The novel was particularly well received in the United States - it was chosen as the first title for the recently established Book of the Month Club and made Sylvia Townsend Warner a celebrity there. Until 1965, Lolly Willowes' manuscript was on display in the New York Public Library alongside manuscripts by Thackeray and Woolf . The novel provided the inspiration for a sonatina by the composer John Ireland. However, plans for a film adaptation were never realized.
In 2014, Robert McCrum's novel was selected for its list of the 100 best English-language novels , compiled for The Guardian newspaper .
literature
Text output
- Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes or the loving hunter man . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1992 (first edition: Chatto & Windus, 1926).
Secondary literature
- Jennifer Poulos Nesbitt: Footsteps of Red Ink: Body and Landscape in Lolly Willowes. In: Twentieth Century Literature . No. 49-4 . Duke University Press, S. 449-471 .
- Bruce Knoll: "An Existence Doled Out": Passive Resistance as a Dead End in Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes . In: Twentieth Century Literature . No. 39-3 . Duke University Press, 1993, pp. 344-363 .
- Flassbeck M .: Infiltration instead of confrontation: feminine comedy in Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes. In: Journal of English and American Studies . No. 52 (1) , 2014, pp. 35-52 .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes . Chatto & Windus, 1926: "[...] that would be all she would know o fhis undesiring and unjudging gaze, his satisfied but profoundly indifferent ownership."
- ↑ Jennifer Poulos Nesbitt: Footsteps of Red Ink: Body and Landscape in Lolly Willowes . In: Twentieth Century Literature . No. 49-4 . Duke University Press, S. 457 .
- ^ A b c d e Sarah Waters: Sylvia Townsend Warner: the neglected writer. (No longer available online.) March 2, 2012, archived from the original on September 24, 2017 ; accessed on October 1, 2017 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Jennifer Poulos Nesbitt: Footsteps of Red Ink: Body and Landscape in Lolly Willowes . In: Twentieth Century Literature . No. 49-4 . Duke University Press, S. 463 .
- ↑ Jennifer Poulos Nesbitt: Footsteps of Red Ink: Body and Landscape in Lolly Willowes . In: Twentieth Century Literature . No. 49-4 . Duke University Press, S. 464 .
- ^ Robert McCrum: The 100 best novels: No 52 - Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Towsend Warner (1926). September 15, 2014, accessed September 30, 2017 .
