Barbara Pym. Excellent Women. (1952) Mildred Lathbury, daughter of a clergyman (deceased), narrates this tale of apparently uneventful lives. She’s generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing, but every now and then a throwaway remark reveals a sharp moral intelligence. She knows phonies when she sees or hears one. She has part-time work with an organization that helps impoverished gentlewomen, but we are told nothing about it.
Mildred is one of the excellent single or otherwise unencumbered women that every functioning, well-run parish depends on to do what needs to be done, because after all they don’t have much else to do, do they? Mildred’s a spinster. Her responses to the few men in her life show that it’s by choice. Everard Bone, an archeologist, is the one man who’s her equal in intellect and insight. But he’s emotionally awkward, so nothing comes of the couple of times she visits him. The Wiki article on Pym’s novels indicates that between books Mildred does in fact marry him; but as she’s background scenery in other books, we know nothing of their courtship and marriage.
I enjoy Pym’s books. There are fierce undercurrents beneath the placid surface flow of the narrative. Every now and then, a swirl or eddy of indignation, or unwitting cruelty, or exasperation reveals that even the most humdrum lives include the usual quota of pain and suffering, most of it undeserved. This book has a good deal of this, but includes compensating (if small) pleasures and joys. Well, not so small when compared to the pain. Recommended. ****
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