Meet Lolly. She's an useful, acquiescent, and stifled member of the early 20th century, British middle-class. Before her widowed father died and her subsequent, unceremonious shuffling off to a married brother's London household replete with children, she, known as Laura back then, wasn't as abjectly compliant as the proximity to rural life allowed her to be grounded in her own identity.
Ms Townsend's novel is a feminist classic; it is also a gorgeously written story. Domestic duties are expected to be done by this twenty-seven-year-old unmarried woman without complaint or resistance, transforming her into just a placid servant, and an unpaid one at that. It was through this gradual servitude achieved by considerate interaction, as they only had her best interests at heart, her comfort, her safety, her respectability, Laura became separated from her real self and becomes Lolly. Paraphrasing Kate Manne, misogyny is not hatred of women, but the control of them. Constraining the woman comes slowly but unrelentingly, like a lobster being boiled alive. The lobster's increasing difficulty is unnoticed as the tenders of the pot righteously keep the lobster where it belongs as it is of course the correct action to take.
Despite being lulled for twenty years into being Lolly and before her identity could be completely subsumed into familial machinery, she announces over dinner that she's off to live in Great Mop, a village situated in the Chilterns and a place she has never seen. The day of the dinner while she was out walking about, a shop's jumbled, countrified display of flowers, vegetables, and bottled fruits/jams catches her eye. She buys not only one Football Chrysanthemum which would have been an extravagant purchase on its own, but all that is displayed. The shop keeper adds as a bonus some beech leaves and tells her they came from his sister's place in the Chilterns. She then purchases a guide map for that area. Upon return to her small bedroom and once the mums are put to vase: She unfolded the map. The woods were colored green and the main roads red. There was a great deal of green. She looked at the beech leaves. As she looked a leaf detached itself and fell slowly. She remembered squirrels.
À la prochaine!
OTHER BOOK REVIEWS
Book Review / Against Empathy by Paul Bloom
Book Review / The Tulip by Anna Pavord
Book Review / The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt by Robert I. Sutton
Book Review / Florike Egmond's An Eye For Detail: Images of Plants and Animals in Art and Science, 1500-1630
RELATED LINKS
Sylvia Townsend Warner's Wikipedia page
Lolly Willowes at Amazon
À la prochaine!
Ms Townsend's novel is a feminist classic; it is also a gorgeously written story. Domestic duties are expected to be done by this twenty-seven-year-old unmarried woman without complaint or resistance, transforming her into just a placid servant, and an unpaid one at that. It was through this gradual servitude achieved by considerate interaction, as they only had her best interests at heart, her comfort, her safety, her respectability, Laura became separated from her real self and becomes Lolly. Paraphrasing Kate Manne, misogyny is not hatred of women, but the control of them. Constraining the woman comes slowly but unrelentingly, like a lobster being boiled alive. The lobster's increasing difficulty is unnoticed as the tenders of the pot righteously keep the lobster where it belongs as it is of course the correct action to take.
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| The author |
Despite being lulled for twenty years into being Lolly and before her identity could be completely subsumed into familial machinery, she announces over dinner that she's off to live in Great Mop, a village situated in the Chilterns and a place she has never seen. The day of the dinner while she was out walking about, a shop's jumbled, countrified display of flowers, vegetables, and bottled fruits/jams catches her eye. She buys not only one Football Chrysanthemum which would have been an extravagant purchase on its own, but all that is displayed. The shop keeper adds as a bonus some beech leaves and tells her they came from his sister's place in the Chilterns. She then purchases a guide map for that area. Upon return to her small bedroom and once the mums are put to vase: She unfolded the map. The woods were colored green and the main roads red. There was a great deal of green. She looked at the beech leaves. As she looked a leaf detached itself and fell slowly. She remembered squirrels.
Her brother tries to stop her from relocating, and his vehemence comes not only from righteousness but also from his covert use of her trust fund for speculation. She incisively tells him to take what remains and put it in a dividend-earning stock while accepting her reduced circumstances means she can afford just lodgings instead of her own house.
Settling down in her new home, she gets to know various villagers. She hears unexpected activity at night and is given suitable explanations. Then a stray kitten, soon to be named Vinegar, starving, but still able to bite the hand that feeds, draws blood, and she identifies it as a demonic familiar. She has been transformed into a witch, a witch who discovers that the village has a substantial representation of her kind. Since Christianity binds The Patriarchy's cloak tightly arounds its members, it is unsurprising that her liberator would be Satan. Liberation does come with a state of liminality, where one's footing is unsure, as during a night of revelry with witches, warlocks, and the Prince of Darkness himself, Laura feels disoriented, out of synch and place.
Settling down in her new home, she gets to know various villagers. She hears unexpected activity at night and is given suitable explanations. Then a stray kitten, soon to be named Vinegar, starving, but still able to bite the hand that feeds, draws blood, and she identifies it as a demonic familiar. She has been transformed into a witch, a witch who discovers that the village has a substantial representation of her kind. Since Christianity binds The Patriarchy's cloak tightly arounds its members, it is unsurprising that her liberator would be Satan. Liberation does come with a state of liminality, where one's footing is unsure, as during a night of revelry with witches, warlocks, and the Prince of Darkness himself, Laura feels disoriented, out of synch and place.
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| The author & cat |
A beloved nephew comes to stay with her. Despite being likeable—everyone in the village warms up to him—he irritates Laura. As a man all he needed was his own presence to feel at home in the world. She notes:
It almost estranged her from Great Mop that he should be able to love it so well, and express his love so easily. He loved the countryside as though it were a body. She had not loved it so. For days at a time she had been unconscious of its outward aspect, for long before she saw it she had loved it and blessed it. With no earnest but a name, a few lines and letters on a map, and a spray of beech-leaves, she had trusted the place and staked everything on her trust. She had struggled to come, but there had been no such struggle for Titus. It was as easy for him to quit Bloomsbury for the Chilterns as for a cat to jump from a hard chair to a soft. Now after a little scrabbling and exploration he was curled up in the green lap and purring over the landscape. The green lap was comfortable. He meant to stay in it, for he knew where he was well off. It was so comfortable that he could afford to wax loving, praise its kindly slopes, stretch out a discriminating paw and pat it. But Great Mop was no more to him than any other likeable country lap. He liked it because he was in possession. His comfort apart, it was a place like any other place.
Such psychological entanglement with her past life results in Lolly departing and Laura staying for good. Of course, the devil plays a most charming and creative role involving wasps: It had pleased Satan to come to her aid. Considering carefully, she did not see who else would have done so. Custom, public opinion, law, church, and state--all would have shaken their massive heads against her pleas, and sent her back to bondage.
Ms Townsend's style covers much ground, from richly eloquent, Pandora's smooth cheeks and smooth lappets of black hair seemed to shed calm like an unwavering beam of moonlight, to stingingly sparse, Titus talked incessantly, and Pandora ate with the stealthy persistence of a bitch that gives suck.
Nature offers a way to become reacquainted with ourselves. It is not uncommon that middle-aged women experiencing an empty nest turn to gardening. It has been suggested such activity is a substitute means to nurture. I say it is more likely they embrace pottering about flowers, fruits, and vegetables to reclaim their selves. It's hard not to recognise yourself when you smell the earth.
Nature offers a way to become reacquainted with ourselves. It is not uncommon that middle-aged women experiencing an empty nest turn to gardening. It has been suggested such activity is a substitute means to nurture. I say it is more likely they embrace pottering about flowers, fruits, and vegetables to reclaim their selves. It's hard not to recognise yourself when you smell the earth.
OTHER BOOK REVIEWS
Book Review / Against Empathy by Paul Bloom
Book Review / The Tulip by Anna Pavord
Book Review / The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt by Robert I. Sutton
Book Review / Florike Egmond's An Eye For Detail: Images of Plants and Animals in Art and Science, 1500-1630
Book Review / Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook: Artisanal
Baking From Around The World by Jessamyn Waldman
Rodriguez with Julia Turshen
Book Review/The Confidence Game: The Psychology Of The Con And Why We Fall For It Every Time By Maria Konnikova
Book Review / The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art by Joyce Carol Oates
RELATED LINKS
Sylvia Townsend Warner's Wikipedia page
Lolly Willowes at Amazon
À la prochaine!
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