And perhaps more than ever 2017 is the time for stories about waking up from the drowsiness of lives cocooned by social expectations and respectability politics and be pointed toward modes of being that are idiosyncratically imagined and intentionally pursued. Part 1 is all charming, "quintessentially" English eccentricities—a broad assortment of kooky extended family members, whimsical family heirlooms hoarded in drawing rooms, teatime and other daily rituals, and the like; this is the life of one Laura Willowes, quietly sloughed into a life of genteel spinsterhood, and cloistered in the tiny spare room in a brother’s family home in London. She slowly transforms into docile “Aunt Lolly” after being christened as such by a baby niece—her identity is so nondescript that even she doesn’t quite register her very name is no longer her own. Lolly Willowes is an odd little book. I found it a bit delightful in the beginning, but midway through it changes direction and becomes almost another kind of tale. Of the second half, I admit to not being smitten, but in fairness to Sylvia Townsend Warner, she does foreshadow that darker things are coming:

Laura remembers a picture she saw long ago, a woodcut of Matthew Hopkins, the witch-finder. Here, I found it for you: It is then that the unmarried Lolly goes off on her own. As she tells Henry: Nothing is impractical for a single, middle-aged woman with an income of her own. PhillipsRichard, ShuttletonDavid and WattDiane (eds.). De-Centering Sexualities (London: Taylor & Francis, 1999). I've tried to find a representative passage short enough to reproduce here so readers don't imagine that I'm making things up but I can't so I'll just throw in two entirely random quotes and hope you can see what I mean, however faintly: "Mr. Arbuthnot certainly was not prepared for her response to his statement that February was a dangerous month. `It is,' answered Laura with almost violent agreement. `If you are a were-wolf, and very likely you may be, for lots of people are without knowing, February, of all months, is the month when you are most likely to go out on a dark windy night and worry sheep.'" Townsend Warner clearly establishes the Willowes as a conservative family. Their beliefs and preferences were not the only ones present in England in 1902, but they were strongly held, and not only by the Willowes. And Laura, brought up in these traditions, is at first passive in the face of them:Time just gets away from her, and soon she’s middle aged and desperate for her own life. She up and leaves them all to go to the Chilterns, where she discovers how much she enjoys being alone and being in nature. Her solitary walks put her in touch with some supernatural forces, and eventually these lead her to … well let’s just say an unconventional life choice. The novel was well received by critics on its publication. In France it was shortlisted for the Prix Femina and in the USA it was the very first Book Of The Month for the Book Club. [3] With this opening, Townsend Warner establishes some key concerns: the disposition of single women as if they were furniture, the strong convention that single women needed to live under the care of a male guardian, and the conviction that this convention subsumed the wishes of any individual woman. Townsend Warner’s approach to exploring these themes is extraordinary, and therein lies the power of the novel. She structures Laura’s story to carry her readers along with Laura’s awakening to her own desires and powers. She does so with a deep understanding of the power of social conventions, a wry sense of humor, and the ability to express is beautiful, wild prose the powers of nature and Laura’s relationship to the land on a deep, almost primeval level. I emerged from this novel with a new favorite literary character, and a deep appreciation of Townsend Warner’s considerable skills as a writer and a social critic. That's enough, I think, to indicate that Lolly's/Laura's mental processes are unusual. Townsend Warner's visions were too. This is known as a feminist novel, and it is certainly takes a look at the expectations, and limitations, for unmarried women in this period. Laura becomes the ever helpful aunt, and sister-in-law. Caroline feels sorry for her reduced status, while, eventually, Laura feels too restricted, and confined, by the life she lives. As time passes, she suddenly decides to change her circumstances and moves to Great Mop in the country. However, will she be allowed the peace, and independence she craves? And, if the expectations of family, and society, follow her, how far will she go to retain control over her new life?

I can see that in 1926 this was a strong proto-feminist whimsical thoroughly English magical realist subversively satanic cri de coeur but for me it was more of a shoulda coulda woulda.The book started off well-enough. It tells the story of Laura Willowes (“Lolly”), a very independent aging spinster (I dislike that word but that’s the word they use in the book) who lives in England with her brother and his family. Because she’s single, her family try to control her but it’s obvious that Lolly is very headstrong. DaviesGill, MalcolmDavid and SimonsJohn (eds.). Critical Essays on Sylvia Townsend Warner: English Novelist, 1893–1978 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006). She had quitted so much of herself in quitting Somerset that it seemed natural to relinquish her name also.”

He left his pipe and tobacco pouch on the mantelpiece. They lay there like the orb and scepter of an usurping monarch. I loved Laura--the way she stands up for herself and embraces her individuality. I especially loved how she knows things she doesn’t know. RoseGillian. Feminist Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993). NesbittJennifer Poulos. ‘Footsteps of Red Ink: Body and Landscape in Lolly Willowes’, Twentieth-Century Literature 49 (2003), pp. 449–471.The novel flows beautifully, and has many lines like this: "The bees droned in the motionless lime trees" (38). Sensitive images like that do many things: they show the passion for the countryside (as I mentioned), and also give the reader a sense of time, and place, and mood, and Lolly's interior thoughts. These carefully-crafted sentences are not random poetic lines dropped into the text but part and parcel of this novel's pace and tone of voice. In a pivotal scene, Lolly is in a shop room when she goes into a sort of meditative trance; the room falls quiet like she's alone outdoors: "No sound, except sometimes the soft thud of a riper plum falling into the grass, to lie there a compact shadow among shadows" (80). The two women sat by the fire, tilting their glasses and drinking in small peaceful sips. The lamplight shone upon the tidy room and the polished table, lighting topaz in the dandelion wine, spilling pools of crimson through the flanks of the bottle of plum gin. It shone on the contented drinkers, and threw their large, close-at-hand shadows upon the wall. Warner's short stories include the collections A Moral Ending and Other Stories, The Salutation, More Joy in Heaven, The Cat's Cradle Book, A Garland of Straw, The Museum of Cheats. Winter in the Air, A Spirit Rises, A Stranger with a Bag, The Innocent and the Guilty, and One Thing Leading to Another. Her final work was a collection of interconnected short stories set in the supernatural Kingdoms of Elfin. [13] Many of these stories were published in The New Yorker. [16] In addition to fiction, Warner wrote anti-fascist articles for such leftist publications as Time and Tide and Left Review. [12] I enjoyed the economical writing and the fluid storyline. The NYRB catalogue seems to be making its way into my collection because of such wonderful selections and such wonderful printed books. This trade paper was set in Trump Mediaeval, with an elegant frontpiece. Hard to ignore, easy to read.

This posh family gives up trying to marry off daughter Laura so she stays at home looking after dear widower Daddy until she is 28 when he pops his clogs. After that she is effortlessly absorbed into her brother’s family as a Useful Aunt to perform child minding and doily re-arranging tasks and pretend to enjoy ghastly conversations at miserable dinner parties for twenty years. Inside she is in a state of carpet chewing agony, she is suffocating, drowning, dying, and one day she can’t take it any more and she ups and announces she wants to go and live all alone in a teeny village nobody has heard of. He seemed to consider himself briefed by his Creator to turn into ridicule the opinions of those who disagreed with him, and to attribute dishonesty, idiocy, or a base motive to everyone who supported a better case than he. Steinman, Michael, The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell (Counterpoint 2001) Laura hated him for daring to love it so. She hated him for daring to love it at all. Most of all she hated him for imposing his kind of love on her. Since he had come to Great Mop she had not been allowed to love in her own way. Commenting, pointing out, appreciating, Titus tweaked her senses one after another as if they were so many bell-ropes…. Day by day the spirit of the place withdrew itself further from her…. Presently she would not know it any more. For her too Great Mop would be a place like any other place, a pastoral landscape where an aunt walked out with her nephew.” pp. 163-4a something that was dark and menacing, and yet in some way congenial; a something that lurked in waste places, that was hinted at by the sound of water gurgling through deep channels, and by the voices of the birds of ill omen. Part II ends when Lolly's enjoyment of her new freedom is threatened by her nephew Titus' announced plans to move to Great Mop because he's entranced by its bucolic ways. Titus is the son of Lolly's deceased second brother John. She likes him well enough, and would welcome visits, but his intention to follow her into the "wilderness" leaves her feeling as confined, stifled and miserable as she was in London with Henry and clan: "Laura hated him for daring to love it so. She hated him for daring to love it at all. Most of all she hated him for imposing his kind of love on her. Since he had come to Great Mop she had not been allowed to love in her own way. Commenting, pointing out, appreciating, Titus tweaked her senses one after another as if they were so many bell-ropes.... Day by day the spirit of the place withdrew itself further from her.... Presently she would not know it any more. For her too Great Mop would be a place like any other place, a pastoral landscape where an aunt walked out with her nephew." AhmedSara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006). The women in Laura’s life who perform gender better than she does, who read the right books, got the right look, the right husband, the right house in London and the right holiday spots in the country or by the seaside, don’t have lives that look more open or fulfilling than her own. They are mothers, menders, and spoilers of husbands less capable than themselves. Of the sister-in-law with whom she lives for much of the book, Laura thinks, “She was slightly self-righteous, and fairly rightly so, but she yielded to Henry’s judgment in every dispute, she bowed her good sense to his will and blinkered her wider views in obedience to his prejudices.” This constant indulgence by his wife changes Henry’s “natural sturdy stupidity into a browbeating indifference to other people’s point of view.” A good wife makes a worse husband.