June 15, 2023

What a treat this book was! Father by Elizabeth Von Arnim (1866-1941) is one of the books in the British Library Women Writers series. I have read books by a few of the series’ writers, including E.M. Delafield, Mollie Painter Downes, and May Sinclair, and even another title by Von Arnim, The Enchanted April. However, I have not read any of the titles in this series, and I admit I was attracted to Father’s perky pink cover.

The book is so much more than its pleasing cover, I am happy to report, and I think Jane Austen would be pleased to have Von Arnim as a colleague, a fellow observer of life and love and the roles of women in a specific time period.

In fact, I imagine the following quote could just as easily be from Pride and Prejudice or one of Austen’s other books.

In that quiet village, where nothing ever was different, the coming of a stranger was anyhow an event, and when the stranger was a spinster with no apparent raison d’etre for living there such as writing or painting, the event might as well be called stirring. Certainly it would stir the parish. The thing to aim at was that it shouldn’t stir James, True that if it did, thought Alice remembering the new tenant’s appearance, he must be really morbidly stirrable. Still–propinquity; a bachelor, a spinster, separated only be a handful of tombstones…

p. 65

I chuckled. Outloud. And that was not the only time.

The basic plot, which is set in post WWI around 1930, is that Jennifer, age 33, has promised her dying mother that she will care for her father, who is a novelist. In fact, she is trapped, unappreciated and without any life of her own. Her father unexpectedly marries a woman younger than Jennifer and while they are on their honeymoon Jennifer sees an opportunity to escape. She yearns to live in the country and leases Rose Cottage from the local vicar and is determined to live on the small yearly amount of money her mother left her. The bachelor vicar is James whose older sister Alice, also unmarried, lives with and runs his life. And the plot with all its ins and outs and improbabilities goes on from there…

I realize not everyone will be attracted to this book, but I love long, involved sentences and the unraveling of inner and often contradictory thoughts. I enjoy a book where there is a clear sense of place and attachments to homes and gardens. Rose Cottage is dilapidated and an uncared for mess, but Jennifer is delighted with its simplicity and with the opportunity to make the gardens and the small home her own. I was reminded of a very early reading experience in my life, a book my grandmother gave me, Dandelion Cottage by Carroll Watson Rankin (1864-1945) about four young girls who turn a rundown little house into their summer playhouse.

This book has historical significance, too, for it was written at a time when there were 1.7 million more women than men in the U.K. Marriage was not always possible, even if it was desirable. Also, in 1928, Virginia Woolf gave a lecture stating that women need an income and a room of their own. A version of the lecture was published as A Room of One’s Own the following year.

Does Father adjust to Jennifer’s escape? Do James and Jennifer marry? What happens to Alice? And I haven’t even mentioned another vicar named Denilish whom Jennifer in her mind refers to as “Devilish.”

Quite simply, I loved it.

An Invitation

Have you ever chosen a book because of its cover? Did it live up to its promise? I would love to know.