Excellent women

Excellent women (original title: Excellent Women ) is a novel by the British writer Barbara Pym . The moral novel in the tradition of Jane Austen first appeared in 1952 and was the author's second published novel. The English title alludes to the slightly condescending term for women who do voluntary work in the church or for charities.

The novel is considered the masterpiece in the work of Barbara Pym. In 2015, 82 international literary critics and scholars voted the novel one of the most important British novels .

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The novel is set in Great Britain in the 1950s. As a typical moral novel, the novel is described less by plot than by a fitting, often ironic description of the protagonists' behavior. The first-person narrator is Mildred Lathbury, an unmarried woman in her thirties. Coming from middle-class circles, she no longer has any family members and now lives in noble poverty in a so-called bedsitter, a small apartment whose residents have to share the bathroom with other residents.

"I have to share the bathroom, I often mumbled shyly, as if I had found myself unworthy of having a bathroom of my own."

Always modest and cautious, but equipped with keen observation, Mildred's life takes place between romances, charity bazaars and the inevitable tea invitations. Mildred's quiet life is disrupted by the arrival of new housemates: Mildred encounters her new neighbor, the anthropologist Helena Napier, to her embarrassment as she is emptying the trash can.

“I had planned to take Mrs Napier over for coffee on one of the upcoming evenings. It would have been a neat, civilized encounter, with my best coffee cups and biscuits on small silver plates. Now I was standing awkwardly in my oldest clothes with a bucket and wastebasket in front of her. "

Rocky Napier, Helena's husband, turns out to be a handsome and dashing ex-officer and Mildred soon comes to believe that she is in love with Rocky. Through the Napiers she meets Everard Bone, another anthropologist with whom Mildred hesitantly begins a relationship towards the end of the novel. The romance of the local vicar Julian Malory, who lives as an unmarried pastor together with his sister Winifred in the rectory, also takes up a large part of her life. Many of the single women who volunteer in the church are hoping that one day Malory will see them as more than just a fine parishioner. Julian Malory becomes engaged to the pastor's widow Allegra Gray, who, with her glamorous nature, does not fit the ideal image of a pastor's wife. Nor is she at all ready to continue to host Moraly's sister Winifred in the spacious rectory. It finally comes to an argument and Allegra Gray leaves the rectory. Helena Napie's hope for an affair with Everard Bone is also in vain - she and her husband Rocky move out again.

Reviews

One of the great admirers of the novel is the English poet Philip Larkin , who in the 1970s also ensured that Barbara Pym, who had meanwhile been barely read, was rediscovered. Larkin said of the author, among other things, that he is more likely to read a new novel by Barbara Pym than a new one by Jane Austen . In July 1964, after reading Excellent Women again , Larkin wrote to Barbara Pym that the novel was even better than he remembered. It would be a study of the pain of standing alone. Again and again you not only get the feeling that Mildred is suffering from her situation, but also that no person around you sees anything unusual in her suffering. Like a Victorian cab horse, suffering seems to be part of their existence. He repeated his praise in a letter to Pym in 1971, in which he particularly emphasized the - in his words - wonderful protagonists. Critically, he only emphasized that Mildred was sometimes almost too modest, but one could not rule out that she was making fun of herself. Larkin also noted that almost every young academic woman he met had something from Helena.

Alexander McCall Smith , in his review of Pym's novels in The Guardian, points out that the novel is set in an environment characterized by renunciation and elegant dreariness. It's not true poverty, but all of the protagonists have seen better times in one way or another. This is also the reason why the novel is timeless. We would all have our hopes, but we would all also have to see some of them go unfulfilled.

In her examination of the protagonists of literary history, Samantha Ellis praises the author Barbara Pym as an excellent miniaturist who is as ironic as Jane Austen. Her unmarried heroines are all admirable - pragmatic, energetic, competent, and helpful - while their married heroines are carefree and incompetent. Pym's male heroes need the fine women to smooth the rough edges of life, but they marry the women who don't even know how to clean a salad. So it is almost inevitable that Julian Malory overlooks the competent Mildred as a potential life partner and opts for Allegra Gray, whose helplessness causes a whole crowd of unmarried parishioners to line the curtains for her. However, Ellis criticizes Mildred for defending her own way of life so little. To Allegra Gray's malicious question about what an unmarried woman does, Mildred replies:

“They stay in their parents' house, look after their parents and take care of the flowers [in the church] ... or they have a job and live in one-room apartments and boarding houses. And then they become indispensable parishioners and some of them even join a religious community. "

literature

Samantha Ellis: How To Be A Heroine: Or, What I've Learned from Reading too Much . Chat & Windus, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-4481-3083-2 .

Web links

Alexander McCall Smith: Very Barbara Pym. In: The Guardian. April 5, 2008.

Single receipts

↑ ^a ^b ^c Alexander McCall Smith: Very Barbara Pym. In: In The Guardian. April 5, 2008, accessed March 5, 2016.
↑ ^a ^b The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? In: The Guardian. accessed on March 5, 2016.
↑ Barbara Pym: Excellent Women. P. 2. In the original the quote is: I have to share a bathroom, I had so often murmured, almost with shame, as if I personally had been found unworthy of a bathroom of my own.
↑ Barbara Pym: Excellent Women. P. 2. In the original the quote is: IIt was to have been a gracious, civilized Occasion, with my best coffee cups and biscuits on little silver dishes. And now here I was standing awkwardly in my oldest clothes, carrying a bucket and a wastepaper basket .
↑ John Sutherland: How to be well read: A Guide to 500 great novels and a Handful of Literary Curiosities. Entry on Barbara Pym: Crampton Hodnet . Random House Books, London 2014, ISBN 978-0-09-955296-3 .
↑ Anthony Thwaite: Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940–1985. ISBN 978-0-571-15197-4 , p. 386 and p. 442.
↑ Samantha Ellis: How To Be A Heroine: Or, What I've Learned from Reading Too Much . Chapter Flora Poste . Ebook position 2711
↑ Barbara Pym: Excellent Women. S. 144. The original quote is: ... they stay at home with an aged Parent and do the flowers, or .... they have jobs and bareres and live in bed-sitting-rooms or hostess. And then of course they become indispensable in the Paris and some of them even go into religious communities . The phrase "do the flowers" means taking care of the flowers in a church.

[McCall_Smith-1] Alexander McCall Smith: Very Barbara Pym. In: In The Guardian. April 5, 2008, accessed March 5, 2016.

[guardian-2] The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? In: The Guardian. accessed on March 5, 2016.

[3] Barbara Pym: Excellent Women. P. 2. In the original the quote is: I have to share a bathroom, I had so often murmured, almost with shame, as if I personally had been found unworthy of a bathroom of my own.

[4] Barbara Pym: Excellent Women. P. 2. In the original the quote is: IIt was to have been a gracious, civilized Occasion, with my best coffee cups and biscuits on little silver dishes. And now here I was standing awkwardly in my oldest clothes, carrying a bucket and a wastepaper basket .

[Sutherland-5] John Sutherland: How to be well read: A Guide to 500 great novels and a Handful of Literary Curiosities. Entry on Barbara Pym: Crampton Hodnet . Random House Books, London 2014, ISBN 978-0-09-955296-3 .

[6] Anthony Thwaite: Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940–1985. ISBN 978-0-571-15197-4 , p. 386 and p. 442.

[7] Samantha Ellis: How To Be A Heroine: Or, What I've Learned from Reading Too Much . Chapter Flora Poste . Ebook position 2711

[8] Barbara Pym: Excellent Women. S. 144. The original quote is: ... they stay at home with an aged Parent and do the flowers, or .... they have jobs and bareres and live in bed-sitting-rooms or hostess. And then of course they become indispensable in the Paris and some of them even go into religious communities . The phrase "do the flowers" means taking care of the flowers in a church.