Review 2570: #1952 Club! Excellent Women

Entry #2 for the 1952 Club!

By “excellent women,” Pym seems to mean a type of English spinsters who occupy themselves with charity events and helping others, dress drably, and are taken for granted by men. That’s what Mildred Lathbury seems to think she is. She’s a clergyman’s daughter of limited means, mild-mannered and religious but observant of others’ characters while not wishing them any harm. In Excellent Women, she gets a surprising amount of attention from men, but then she’s always picking up after them.

Mildred lives upstairs of a vacant flat, and she’s curious about what her new neighbors will be like. She knows they’re named the Napiers by the sign at the doorbell. She meets Helena Napier on page 2, a young, stylish woman, and sees her around with a man, whom she assumes is her husband, Rockingham (known as Rocky). But he is not. He is Everard Bone, an anthropologist, and he and Helena, also an anthropologist, are writing a paper together. Rocky is off serving in Italy.

Mildred is good friends with Julian Malory, the vicar of her rather high church, and his sister Winifred. It is the expectation of several characters in the book that Julian will marry Mildred, but she doesn’t seem to expect it. Or does she? It’s hard to tell. Certainly, he is very friendly with her, but she thinks he is not the marrying kind.

Mildred meets Everard before she meets Rocky. Although he seems not to notice her at first, after a while he begins seeking her out. He is abrupt and serious, and she doesn’t think she likes him. Or does she? It’s hard to tell.

Once he shows up, Rocky is utterly charming and handsome. He is very friendly to Mildred and keeps popping up for tea. Mildred senses friction in the Napier home—well, she can hear them arguing. Rocky does all the cooking and cleaning in their home, because Helena is completely undomesticated. (She sounds like my kind of gal, even though she isn’t depicted particularly positively.) Mildred distrusts Rocky’s charm. She understands from Everard that Helena thinks she’s in love with him (Everard).

It being post-war London, it is still hard to find a place to live, so the Malorys decide to lease their upper floor. Soon, it is taken by Mrs. Gray, a beautiful clergyman’s widow. Mildred finds both Julian and Winifred transfixed by her, so she steers clear. It’s pretty evident what Mrs. Gray thinks Julian’s fate should be.

Mildred isn’t at all liberated. She is constantly cleaning up after men or doing ridiculously involved favors for Rocky and Helena, and all take her for granted. Yet, this is a lively, amusing social comedy. It is also a tale of the rapidly disappearing lives of upper- and middle-class English people.

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