From pp. 86-171 of Excellent Women
Mildred gets wrapped up in the lives of others. On the surface, she is viewed as a potential romantic interest of Rocky, Julian, and Everard. She doesn’t see any of them as wholly suitable because Rocky is married, Julian strikes her as someone who will never marry, and Everard is standoffish. Of the three “prospects,” Rocky is most interesting to Mildred, for he’s charming. Yikes! On the surface, the story sounds so frivolous. If it is, then so is much of ordinary life. This is a social novel and explores what it’s like to navigate the social spheres of a certain place and time (1950s middle-class London) and determine where one fits. It’s hard to escape the labels and limits such a world uses to define its inhabitants. I think that is why Pym chose a title that might initially seem positive (Excellent!), but upon further consideration evokes negative connotations (is it so great to be deemed an "excellent woman"? What is that?). Why can’t something that seems so light actually explore serious matters? So much of what people argue about seems silly but can escalate into conflict. I think that’s why there’s so much paradox in this novel. Pym is taking a very small, contained and apparently nice world and exposing its connections to bigger things and crueler truths. (That’s why I think the Alice in Wonderland allusion is so great. Alice finds herself in a world that’s just as hard to successfully navigate as Mildred’s.) The set-pieces for important clashes among characters are of a particular world and seem stereotypically post-war British: the church jumble sale; a talk at the "Learned Society"; Evensong in a half-bombed out church; the dedication of a stained glass window at a childhood school. I make it all sound so terribly boring here, but the novel is engaging. Partly, it holds my attention because it is so well written, but it also provides the experience of eavesdropping as so second nature to most people that the reader gets wrapped up in it. I can't help but think of Hitchcock's Rear Window and its take on voyeurism. The viewer of that film becomes an accomplice in the protagonist's spying on his neighbors. In a similar way, Mildred allows the reader to experience this feeling. It's an odd way to get involved, but it feels true to life.
"'Yes, of course,' that is what I do,' I agreed, but somehow it seemed so inadequate; it described such a very little part of my life. 'Of course,' I went on, 'some people do write more details about themselves, don't they, so that one gets more of a picture of their lives.'" (Pym 109)
The gap between what we do and who we are is felt throughout the novel. Mildred is much more than an excellent woman who does part-time work. Part of what we are is narrative or an amassing of details that create "a picture" of a life. What we do is too narrow, while the "picture" we create might be too embellished to get at who we are. irony
As Mildred reads an obituary of an older alumna of her old school, she observes how "all these details and obscure personal references moved me deeply so that I hardly knew whether to laugh or cry." (Pym 113)
Mildred sees both the comic and tragic sides of life. Pym collapses these two views by writing of an obituary notice with an embarrassingly bad piece of poetry attempted by the eulogizer. characterization
"Inside it was a sobering sight indeed and one to put us all in mind of the futility of material things and of our own mortality. All flesh is but as grass... I thought, watching the women working at their faces with savage concentration, opening their mouths wide, biting and licking their lips, stabbing at their noses and chins with powder puffs. Some, who had abandoned the struggle to keep up, sat in chairs, their bodies slumped down, their hands resting on their parcels." (Pym 131)
At the department store ladies room, Mildred presents a grotesquely humorous vision of women tending to their appearances. By describing the application of make up with words like "savage," "biting and licking," and "stabbing" Pym suggests - ironically - that rather than undergoing a beautifying process, the women are mutilating themselves. violent diction, irony
"I'm afraid women take their pleasures very sadly. Few of them know how to run light-hearted flirtations - the nice ones, that is. They cling on to these little bits of romance that may have happened years ago." (Pym 137)
The paradox of taking "pleasures very sadly" seems to be at the heart of the novel and Pym's worldview. Unwittingly, Rocky describes a trait of Mildred's here, for she admits to looking back with a mix of fondness and sadness to a "little bit of romance" in her own life.
"A few more people had come in now and were drinking very quietly and soberly, almost sadly, sitting on a black horsehair bench or at one of the little tables. I stared into the fireless grate, filled now with teazles and pampas grass, and wondered why I should be sitting here with Everard Bone." (Pym 141)
Pym deftly establishes the atmosphere of the pub where Mildred and Everard sit together yet apart or alone with the people "drinking very quietly and soberly." The paradox of drinking soberly matches the paradoxical situation of being with someone and feeling alone. It's a scenario that's underscored by the visual image of a fireplace with no fire.
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