Excellent Women

There are certain books that really can't be fully appreciated until you're older and can bring to them the understanding of maturity: Henry James's "major phase" novels, for example, and perhaps Jane Austen's MANSFIELD PARK. A writer whose talents completely eluded me when I was younger was Barbara Pym; her world of elderly churchgoers and celibate vicars in postwar England seemed too grim to me when I was in my early twenties, and I saw her novels as tragedies rather than as the brilliant comedies they really are. EXCELLENT WOMEN fully deserves its current reissue status in the Penguin Classics series because it really IS a twentieth-century English classic. Its title has famously come to describe a certain kind of character to which Barbara Pym thoroughly lays claim as an author, and is thus often considered the most emblematic of Pym's works (it is certainly one of the funniest). The comic genius of the novel is not that its heroine, the respectable and virginal and shabby-genteel Mildred Lathbury, is unwanted by her society, as I misunderstood when I was in graduate school, when I first read the novel. Rather, she is TOO much in demand, and not only is of great use to the church officials who want her to shine the brass of their decaying pews, but also of the confused married neighbors in her lodgings and even the few bachelors she knows (who subtly feel her out for her interest in marrying them--overtures which she always curtails). Although Mildred is puzzled by the work of the anthropologists she meets, she is herself too much of an anthropologist ever to commit to married life (or even sharing a room with another spinster friend). Her constant self-deprecation is always offset by her unspoken understanding that her life is far too rich in its observations of others for her to subsume her ego fully into another's needs. Pym has been frequently compared to Jane Austen, and the comparisons are quite just, though it should be noted that her work is more like the more autumnal and scathing PERSUASION than the giddy exuberance of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.

There are certain books that really can't be fully appreciated until you're older and can bring to them the understanding of maturity: Henry James's "major phase" novels, for example, and perhaps Jane Austen's MANSFIELD PARK. A writer whose talents completely eluded me when I was younger was Barbara Pym; her world of elderly churchgoers and celibate vicars in postwar England seemed too grim to me when I was in my early twenties, and I saw her novels as tragedies rather than as the brilliant comedies they really are. EXCELLENT WOMEN fully deserves its current reissue status in the Penguin Classics series because it really IS a twentieth-century English classic. Its title has famously come to describe a certain kind of character to which Barbara Pym thoroughly lays claim as an author, and is thus often cosnidered the most emblematic of Pym's works (it is certainly one of the funniest). The comic genius of the novel is not that its heroine, the respectable and virginal and shabby-genteel Mildred Lathbury, is unwanted by her society, as I misunderstood when I was in graduate school, when I first read the novel. Rather, she is TOO much in demand, and not only is of great use to the chruch officials who want her to shine the brass of their decapying pews, but also of the confused married neighbors in her lodgings and even the few bachelors she knows (who subtly feel her out for her interest in marrying them--overtures which she always curtails). Although Mildred is puzzled by the work of the anthropologists she meets, she is herself too much of an anthropologist ever to commit to married life (or even sharing a rooom with another spinster friend). Her constant self-deprecation is always offset by her unspoken understanding that her life is far too rich in its observations of others for her to subsume her ego fully into another's needs. Pym has been frequently compared to Jane Austen, and the comparisons are quite just, though it should be noted that her work is more like the more autumnal and scathing works (like PERSUASION) than the giddy exuberance of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.

This book is a window into what was perhaps a better time when such things as good manners in social interaction were held in higher esteem than now. I wondered while I read this book why it was never my good fortune to have met an "excellent woman" such as the protagonist Mildred Lathbury. Perhaps such women existed only in post war London and not in the America of the last quarter of the twentieth century if they existed at all. Such is my loss, but I can at least enjoy the carefully crafted character of Pym's women as they cope with their rather ordinary, but very real and believable lives. Barbara Pym is not a Jane Austen, and I don't mean that negatively, as she is worthy in her own right without the comparison. She is at least as observant of her time, its people and its customs as Jane was of hers. Seen through the eyes of Mildred Lathbury, this period of less than a year's span around 1951 or so contains momentous human events such as romance and disengagement, breakup and reconciliation, old friends revisited, new friends explored, new experiences, and the hopefulness of companionship and romance to come. Mildred imagines herself to have been in love once long before and the reader is sidetracked into wondering how she came to realize that she was not in love, even as she speculates on the types of men with whom she might now come to find herself in love. But, she seems to have given up on love and become reconciled to being over thirty and likely to remain unmarried forever. There is a sort of grayness about Mildred's existence that she recognizes with some dissatisfaction, but has come to accommodate with resignation. It is only at the end that she realizes that she might indeed be included in the painting of a greater canvas of life than she has previously known, despite her reconciliation with her apparent lot in life. The book ends, not in the usual comedy ending where the happy end is known for certain, but on a note of great hope where the reader is left with no doubt that for at least one "excellent woman" things will indeed work out very well. This is a thoroughly delightful book and I highly recommend it for all readers with even a touch of a romantic soul.

All of Ms. Pym's books are excellent and worth reading over and over. Quartet in Autumn & The Sweet Dove Died are sad. All the others are humourous. About everyday life--stuff we've all been through, the people we put up with, the slights, the boredom. But through Ms. Pym's eyes, these tedious daily events are amusing set pieces. She's subtle...just describes the situation, makes a comment and lets you figure out just how funny your everyday life would be if you could stand back a little. As I said in the title of this review...her stories are like the sitcom Seinfeld: nothing ever happens, but it happens to all of us, and it's hilarious.