Excellent women : the novels of Barbara Pym and Anita Brookner

Abstract

From 1950, until her death in 1980, Barbara Pym published ten novels. The social climate of the 'sixties and early 'seventies was not receptive to her subtle literary style, and her writing suffered an eclipse of 16 years. A renaissance in her fortunes came in January 1977, when the Times Literary Supplement asked a selection of critics to say which writers they considered the most underrated of the twentieth century; both Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil selected Pym as one of the most underrated novelists of this century. This critical acclaim stimulated renewed interest in her work, and Quartet in Autumn was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1977. Her renaissance In 1977 led to her canonisation In the literary world, and several previously unpublished novels, as well as her edited diaries and notebooks, appeared after her death In 1980. Anita Brookner published her first novel, A Start in Life, in 1981, and has published a critically acclaimed novel every year since then. In 1984 she won the Booker Prize for Hotel du Lac. With the publication of her second novel, Providence, reviewers mooted tentative parallels with the work of Barbara Pym. Similarities and correspondences between these two writers have been noted by critics and reviewers en passant only, and while an oeuvre of Pym criticism has gradually emerged, there has been no full-length appraisal of the work of Anita Brookner, and no comparison, other than passing comments in book reviews, of the novels of Pym and Brookner to date. It is surmised that this is due to the recent emergence (and prolific output) of Brookner as a novelist of stature. Pym's posthumous novels yield further topical and uncharted scholastic territory,

and her canonisation, as well as the critical acclaim accorded Anita Brookner in her rapid ascent to the stature of a cult novelist, makes a detailed comparison both timely and topical. A comprehensive survey of Pym criticism reveals that the bulk of criticism of her work stems from 1977, the year of her literary resurrection. Criticism takes the form of book reviews of varying length and academic rigour in literary and popular journals; however, the last three years have seen the gradual emergence of traditional and more substantial critical treatises on her novels. Her themes are loneliness and the perils of love, usually unrequited, unsuitable or hopeless, chronicled comically and wittily in the early novels, but more sombrely in her later ones. Pym is the persistent observer, and the vices which are satirised are mild ones. Her novels are peopled chiefly by women, the so-called "excellent women" of the title of her second novel, while her men are generally absurd characters of diminished stature. Wit, irony, compression and delicacy are the chief characteristics of her style, while her use of literary allusions and intratextual manoeuvring demands a fair amount of mental agility and erudition from her readers. Although Pym has been compared to diverse writers (chiefly to Jane Austen), this study is limited to Brookner - Pym parallels. Anita Brookner's publishing career has been infinitely happier than that of Barbara Pym. Critical opinion is confined to reviews and interviews, and the latter have added considerably to an appreciation of her fictional craft. Brookner's major theme lies in her content ion that the world is not won by virtue; the fable of the hare and the tortoise is a fallacy, as explicitly expounded in Hotel du Lac. Other themes which link her with Pym are those

of filial duty, and the failure of literature to provide adequate role models for life. In her examination of unrequited love, she evinces a bleaker perspicacity than Pym. Her heroines, like Pym's, are single women, but although they are successful in their careers, they are obtuse when confronted by the ways of the world. Critics are unanimous that l:lrookner is a fine and witty stylist, but accuse her of mawkishness in her repetitive handling of similarly bleak fictional situations. She transcends the writing of Barbara Pym in that her forte lies in the depiction of melancholy modes of existence which go beyond Pym's milder comedies of manners. A detailed thematic analysis of Pym's twelve novels reveals two important issues: the theme of romantic love is developed to include the Christian concept of "love thy neighbour" in the later novels, and Pym's themes are an integral part of her exploration of character. The early novels amusingly contemplate love and marriage, unsuitable attachments and men's love as opposed to women's, with quirky high spirits which take comfort in, and are appeased by, the safe and familiar. Excellent Women is a transitional novel; while still depicting with good humour "unsuitable attachments", it explores more trenchantly the theme of loneliness in the lives of those forced to live life vicariously. Intrinsic to several heroines' lives is the theme of filial duty, although this is intimated, rather than explored in depth. Most Pym heroines fancy a decorous literary role model, which is tentatively but ironically broached by nomenclatural whimsy. Greater psychological insight and a more plangent tone characterise the later novels, and a theme which is broached superficially in the early novels, and which culminates in Quartet in Autumn and A Few Green Leaves, is

that of the changing face of Britain and the incontrovertible erosion of culture and middle-class values. The advent of maturity through the loss of illusions is a theme which Pym shares with Jane Austen, but Pym's heroines are generally less myopic than Brookner's. Pym intimates that love is a universal need, and the characters in her later novels who deny this, either through senile dementia or hedonistic self-absorption, are depicted with compassionate pathos, or, in the case of The Sweet Dove Died, with cool and detached wit. A detailed thematic analysis of Anita Brookner's six novels reveals that as in the work of Pym, character and theme are inextricably intertwined. Brookner's heroines, in their unmitigated quest for love, are more single-minded than most of Pym's, who find alternative options and compensations when love eludes them, or settle for attachments which are second best. Love and marriage are the only options for Brookner's heroines, and the solitary woman is seen as an object of pity. Brookner's novels are littered with ruined expectations and unrequited love; in a Brookner novel, innocence is routed by experience, trust by prurient self-interest. Brookner intimates that literary role models do not provide a blueprint for life , and that the lessons taught by literature are misleading. Although her heroines are adept at explicating recondite literary texts, they are dyslectic in analysing their own predicaments, and therefore irony in Brookner's novels is omnipresent and insistent. Obedience to filial duty is a barrier to happiness which is explored in considerable detail, while adherence to "the trivial round, the common task" which occupies Pym's heroines, gives little solace to Brookner's women. Brookner imposes her themes insistently from the outset, and although

her moral tone is more overt than Pym's, her deft literary craftsmanship and pervasive irony preclude didacticism. Although the close reader finds constant nuances of Pym in the writing of Brookner, the latter's novels are on a more ambitious emotional and literary scale. Pym does not admit despair, while Brookner does not allow charity, and Brookner's avowal of human need seldom goes beyond the self. In her novels there are no happy endings, no redemption. In addition to similarities between the protagonists, there is also substantial correlation between the authors' peripheral characters. "Peripheral" must be used with caution, however, as these characters often contribute substantially to the illumination of the central theme or themes, as well as to the stories and plots. A major difference is in the size of the writers' respective casts, and Brookner's list, in keeping with her more interior style, is more circumspect. There is a vast preponderance of clergy in Pym's novels, and Pym's clergymen, as befits their traditional comic character, are generally static characters, and the recipients of the ministrations of the excellent women. They are characterised by mannerisms, preoccupations and obsessions. While Anita Brookner does not number clergymen among her characters, her male characters with Christian leanings are the complacent recipients of women's adoration as well as of their cooking. Both writers have a vast cast of academics, and Pym is particularly given to detailing the machinations of anthropologists. In addition to providing comedy, anthropology also becomes a metaphor for detachment, observation, classification

and categorisation. Some of her most malicious creations are librarians, who are averse to both books and borrowers. Her jibes at academe are countless; while they are frequently intrinsic to the plot, her funniest scenes concern academic ambition and pretensions. Brookner, having spent most of her working life as an academic, reserves her most potent wit for academe. Cleaning women are also important peripheral characters in the novels of both Pym and Brookner. Cleaning is not as much in evidence as gratuitous advice; clad in an amazing array of garments, these characters offer a reflection in microcosm of the themes of the novels, as well as being the stock comic characters of fiction. Both Pym and Brookner make wide use of semiotic signifiers like food, clothes and interiors in their depiction of character. The comforting rituals of eating and drinking anchor Barbara Pym's novels firmly in the real world, and food, drink and their consumption frequently and' amusingly offer insights into characters, illuminate the roles of men and women in the war of the sexes, and comment on human behaviour in general. Food is particularly pertinent in Pym's comic reflections on men's "needs", a prominent theme in the early novels, and the excellent women are seen as endless purveyors of fine victuals. Food is less obtrusive but as important in the novels of l:lrookne1•. In addition to being a touchstone of character, it is also a symbol and prognosis of mood, and is thus important to Brookner's interior narrative mode. Brookner's female protagonists also cater assiduously and with destructive self-abandon to the

gastronomic needs of their pusillanimous men, but Brookner invests food with multifarious qualities and significance, and creates narratives of horrendous expectation around social occasions involving eating. Brookner's use of food in her fictional technique is more complex than Pym's. In Brookner's novels, not only is character illuminated by food and the Imagery and occasions surrounding it, but moods are• sustained and alienation, isolation and need are delineated. Food is never a barometer of character alone, but an Integral element of theme and style in both novelists. Above all, it anchors the novels comically, and sometimes traumatically, in reality. Clothes are as important, and Barbara Pym is fond of contrasting her characters in terms of dress and appearance. She frequently imbues appearance and clothes with comic and ironic intent. Clothes and outward appearance often designate "suitability", but Pym wryly intimates that love does not conform to sartorial rules. Brookner is also fond of contrasting characters sartorially, and invests• clothes with symbolic significance. Dress, like food, imbues her novels with tangible expectation. Interiors are important in the novels of both writers. In Pym's novels, the interiors of houses arc delineations of character, barometers of dissatisfaction, or touchstones of "suitability". Above all, houses are symbols of comfort and privacy. Brookner's heroines give the impression of occupying their domiciles in transit, and consequently make no impression on their bland surroundings. Brookner relentlessly describes interiors, creating mood as much as delineating

character, and her interiors do not provide much in the form of peace, security or serenity. Warm, sombre, stifling interiors, ponderously furnished, reflect the interior landscape and foreign ambience of Brookner's characters. Pym's intratextual manoeuvring is analysed, and her penchant for what Henry James called "the revivalist impulse on the fond writer's part" reinforces her theme of survival through "the trivial round, the common task". Brookner does not revive individual characters. Her heroines are cast in the same mould, which makes her plots somewhat predictable. As indicated by her revival of characters, Pym's perspective is also infinitely wider than that of Brookner, and to some extent Pym uses the device of the self-conscious or omniscient authornarrator. This device creates fictionality, which Brookner achieves by deft, retrospective structures, and in Family and Friends, by using the device of the photographer's lens as a method of estrangement. Citations from the novels conclusively demonstrate Brookner's thematic and stylistic allegiance to and familiarity with the work of Barbara Pym. In addition to this symbiosis, the novels of both writers are dense with literary allusion, and predict the author's familiarity with the English literary tradition, although Brookner's scope is more catholic, as it encompasses the French tradition of Balzac, Flaubert, et a! . Many of Pym's titles, culled from "the greater English poets", appositely reflect her themes, and both writers employ the myths of literature as controlling themes, although Pym's modus operandi appears more desultory in comparison with Brookner's. Pym's allusions frequently work, as does her comic irony, by deflation, and examples of this are prolific. Her allusions are often subtly interwoven in her texts, but to the observant and literate reader they lose none of their ironic impact. The

influence of the seventeenth-century Metaphysical poets is particularly evident in her wit. In marked contrast, Brookner's style is inflationary, and therefore approaches tragedy. Brookner underscores her ironies with sedulous literary parallels, and many casual allusions invest her mild heroines with tragic grandeur. Both novelists' predilection for allusive style extends to occasional appropriation; while Pym's literary allegiance is chiefly to Jane Austen, Brookner has echoes of Austen and Dickens, and in her exposition of subtle states of consciousness, in dialogue, and in moral stance, she is closest to Henry James. Brookner's forte is the grimace, rather than "the edge of smiling" which Larkin discerns in Pym's novels. Her wit is more pithy, more astringent, more aphoristic and infinitely less charitable than Pym's. Pym is not a true satirist, for she is too compassionate, charitable and understanding. In keeping with her more stringent moral tone, Brookner frequently verges on a satirical diatribe, but this is kept in check by her fine wit. Pym's generic vehicle is the comedy of manners, and although she forsakes manners for melancholy to some extent in the later novels, she never approaches Brookner's introspective and philosophic profundity. Although Brookner employs the vehicle of the novel of manners with its hallmarks of sophisticated wit, repartee and comic characters, in a novel like Look at Me, her essay into the realm of the psychological novel and her interior style elicit greater involvement and empathy from the reader than the more superficial genre of the comedy of manners generally allows.

The popularity of both writers' novels testifies to a reader market still appreciative of a civilised, fastidious tradition of English writing, and although counter-arguments could be raised to the effect that excess is a fitting metaphor for contemporary angst, Brookner incontrovertibly demonstrates that psychological turmoil can be effectively contained within the English tradition of sophisticated decorum. Brookner is a self-avowed moralist, and in her writing does not disavow the truth. This unflinching quality, combined with her consummate polished style, makes her judgements more felling than those of Pym. She embraces happiness as a sine qua non for the human condition, and in her disavowal of this, Pym possibly evinces greater tolerance and maturity. Although Brookner's themes are similar to those of Pym, her heroines' refusal to settle for half-measures makes her work more excruciating than that of Pym, with the latter's unflinching Christianity, agape, and comfort in the mundane and familiar.