More Women than Men – Ivy Compton Burnett
This 1933 novel is set in the early Edwardian era. It certainly feels like it was written after World War I, which demonstrated to thinking people that complacent generalities about life were not true. Like other writers who explored the ironic disconnection between optimistic assumptions and brutal outcomes, ICB examines, usually in the context of unhappy families and their followers, pain, stress, scandal, cowardice, defeat and resignation, cruelty petty and not, fear and spite.
The upshot is, ICB studies tangled relationships, narrating in her peculiar style. The reader begins to see behind the cloak of convoluted grammar, the veil of simple words in intricate arrays. In surprises worthy of Miss Austen and Mr. Collins, these characters are shown to us as they really are. They doff the mask and we have to review their words and actions in a different light. When we read the novel a second time, we see that ICB told us crucial information, if obliquely, if we had only been alert enough to observe. My strategy, therefore, with ICB is to read it, get the characters straight, get over the jolts and shudders of the incidents, and then immediately read it again.
Anyway, the owner and operator of a girl’s school is Josephine Napier. Her husband Simon ostensibly co-runs the school, but in fact he is utterly browbeaten, sidelined, and probably clinically depressed. When young, Josephine stole Simon from her friend Elizabeth Giffard. Though Liz carries a grudge, she is hardly the blameless lamb since we get hints that back in the naughty old days her shilly-shallying wasn’t honest, designed as it was to keep men on a string.
Josephine has adopted her widowed brother’s son Gabriel Swift and sent him to Oxford. Josephine has complicated feelings about Gabriel, feeling more than a mother, more than a best friend. Josephine is all benevolent generosity on the outside. But her goal, which she usually achieves, is to satisfy her own self-serving nature. Gabriel, manipulated and emotionally coerced since childhood, walks around with the hunted look, hungry to get out into the world, away from Josephine’s relentless giving.
Elizabeth - widowed, down on her luck, jealous that hers live lean while others live fat - is employed by Josephine as a housekeeper at the school. Her daughter Ruth and Gabriel hit it off enough to plan nuptials, to Josephine’s jealousy and opposition. Her condescension in her remonstrance to the young couple reaches the astonishing. Josephine doesn’t see herself as an “ogress” – do they ever? -- but she is, rather
Josephine’s brother, Jonathan Swift (sic), is a former Anglican clergyman and struggling writer ahead of his time. He has carried on a liaison with drawing master Felix Bacon for 23 years, since Felix was 18 and Jon was 47. Influenced by turning 40, Felix feels change in the air. Besides feeling every minute of his 70 years, Jon harries himself with the notion that Felix has cocked his eye in the direction of Gabriel.
Hey, I never said ICB was for everybody, certainly not readers in search of a genial author or likeable characters. Always remember - we’re World War One away from Lily Dale eating her heart out over Crosbie in the sewing room. ICB challenges us to identify just what the hell she is doing, reconstructing values out of the ethical wreckage of World War I or denying there is any meaning at all to be had. Or talking about clothes so much that a character querulously asks, "Can we stop talking about clothes." Or putting in the good word for middle-aged unmarried women who surprise Felix by not fawning over him.
These attachments go through relentless change in the course of the novel. Readers and critics who claim nothing happens in her novels must have radically different conceptions of flux and unrest than I do. When Ruth clutched her hands in response to Josephine’s mad manipulative behavior, I clenched my teeth. When another character made a horrendous confession, as he pantomimed playing a piano, I held my breath.
Nothing happens! As the course of this novel plays out, there are two mysterious deaths, one death of natural causes and two marriages and a birth that provoke drastic change. Oddly enough, this story winds up with a happy ending, I mean, given, of course, no heteronormative prejudices make us squirm. It’s not me to go all meta but when I read ICB, I’m aware that she’s playing me. It starts simply enough – a straightforward examination of ordinarily dramatic situations starring over-civilized people -- but from about page 3 insensibly things change. Jabs become more ferocious. Spontaneous chances are ruthlessly exploited. And though one expects the surprises, they’re still shocking as hell.
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