PS1: EXCELLENT WOMEN - Journal #3

From pp. 172-256 of Excellent Women

The ending is somewhat unconventional for a comedy (no weddings!), but it does leave things open. The question about whether or not Mildred does or will lead a "full life" is raised and perhaps answered - in a typically oblique way - in the closing passage. The fact that Mildred is referring to Helena's concept of a “full life” and puts the expression in quotation marks suggests that she already knows her life is full and needn't conform to Helena's or society-at-large's view of the full life. If a full life means getting married, then Mildred isn't there, but Pym leaves that possibility open with the calling off of Julian and Allegra's engagement and the work that Mildred agrees to do for Everard. Taken further than a conventional view, a full life might mean one that combines male and female attributes in one person. In this respect, Mildred does seem to adopt qualities that are both stereotypically female (all of those teas she prepares for those unburdening themselves to her) and male (speaking more frankly towards the end of the novel, e.g., during the planning of the Christmas bazaar). Nearly all of the novel covers have blurbs comparing Pym to Jane Austen, a subtly subversive social critic. What is Pym holding up for questioning? Is it simply that marriage/full life question? I don’t think so. In her memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi examines “blindness and empathy” in Austen’s work. I think this contrast is also at the heart of Excellent Women. Mildred witnesses characters who possess many noble and ignoble qualities; she admits to many of the latter in herself. But throughout the book she does prove to exhibit empathy. It is a quality that requires self-awareness, courage and effort. It might be the most excellent thing to gain and share.

"'Oh, respect and esteem - such dry bones! I suppose one can really have feelings for somebody but I should have thought one would almost dislike a person who inspired them." (Pym 190)

Mildred considers that when one has "respect and esteem" for a woman, the words are euphemisms for someone who's dull and reliable. The "dry bones" metaphor connects with Everard nicely. His last name is Bones and he does invite Mildred for dinner to have meat.

"'This may sound a cynical thing to say, but don't you think men sometimes leave difficulties to be solved by other people or to solve themselves?" (Pym 206)

Although Mildred qualifies her observation, most of the men in the novel do leave the solving of problems to others or to fate. Ironically, however, Winifred (to whom this comment is voiced) is doing the same thing in hoping that Mildred will solve her own problem (as do Helena Napier and Allegra Gray).

"If he had gone into a shop and chosen them...I pulled myself up and told myself to stop these ridiculous thoughts, wondering why it is that we can never stop trying to analyse the motives of people who have no personal interest in us, in the vain hope of finding that perhaps they may have just a little after all." (Pym 221)

Rocky brings flowers to Mildred, but they are snatched - almost as an afterthought - from his garden. The idea of choosing them from a shop as being more meaningful gets at the idea that love - or romantic feelings of love for someone - has more to do with choice and deliberation than impulsivity. Mildred uses "we" here, but is clearly speaking for herself. characterization

"Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look, 'Do we need tea?' she echoed. 'But Miss Lathbury...' She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realise that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind." (Pym 227)

This seemingly innocuous question is about conventions or rituals upon which we rely for comfort and seldom think about. The metaphor at the end perfectly captures the feelings one has when facing such a large why question. The trivial becomes existential here and suggests Mildred is coming to a realization about what conventions she’ll accept.

"I promised that I would cook the meat and I felt better for having done so, for it seemed like a kind of atonement, a burden in a way and yet perhaps because of being a burden, a pleasure." (Pym 241)

The paradox of a pleasurable burden connects to a number of other contradictions at the heart of the novel. Many of Mildred’s interactions with other people could fall under this description. The idea of finding some joy out of suffering is present here and seems like an important part of Pym’s worldview.

PS1: EXCELLENT WOMEN - Journal #2

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.

PS1: EXCELLENT WOMEN - Journal #1

From pp. 1-85 of Excellent Women

The novel begins outside the narrator’s flat in a respectable but “shabby part of London” where a new tenant is moving in. What makes this otherwise ordinary scenario noteworthy is that Mildred Lathbury - the first person narrator of the story - doesn’t get the first word in. That honor goes to Mr. Mallett, a minor character who for most of the novel hammers away at harmless (or harmless-seeming?) knocks at Mildred in particular and women in general. His “roguish” comment that opens the novel accuses Mildred of always turning up and being in the know when anything of interest is happening. Indeed, Mildred is an observer who does more speculating and/or anticipating during the novel’s opening pages than she does acting. She is an “excellent woman.” The novel’s title sort of confused me until I encountered this label enough times in the novel to recognize it to mean an unmarried woman of the church community who volunteers her time there and keeps the institution running. At best, it’s a backhanded compliment. But Mildred's role changes as the two big events upon which the novel’s plot seems to rely unfold: 1) is the arrival of the aforementioned new tenants in Mildred’s building, and 2) is the arrival of a new tenant at the vicarage near by where Mildred is friends with Father Malory and his sister Winifred. In this small world, these entrances - or disruptions of the usual order - make for some shaking up of the pleasantly dull life in the neighborhood. Mostly, they bring up questions involving marriage, fidelity, happiness, responsibility, duty, and stereotypes (particularly those that run along gender lines).

“The jingle of the little beaded cover against the milk reminded me of Dora and her giggles, her dogmatic opinions and the way she took offence so easily. The little cover, which had been her idea, seemed to symbolise all the little irritations of her company, dear kind friend though she was.” (Pym 19)

The paradox addressed here of finding a good friend to be a nuisance is one of many in the opening section of the novel. The way that something so small and seemingly innocuous as a milk cover can upset Mildred to the point of wanting “to fling it away with a grand gesture” suggests that what might appear to be trivial can touch an otherwise undetectable nerve.

“‘It depends what you set out to do,’ I said rather crossly, feeling like Alice in Wonderland. I was doing very badly here and was grateful when Rockingham came to the rescue.” (Pym 35)

This is the first allusion to Alice in Wonderland, but not the last. Mildred often functions as a grown up version of Alice, navigating an absurd grown up world of confusing relationships. The allusion here is not only to Carroll, but also the archetype of the knight-in-shining-armor. Rocky serves this romantic role here.

“‘But of course it’s not really my business.’ I did not then know to the extent I do now that practically anything may be the business of an unattached woman with no troubles of her own, who takes a kindly interest in those of her friends.” (Pym 47)

There’s irony here when Mildred claims to have “no troubles of her own”; it’s an arrogant assumption on the part of those who come to Mildred with their troubles that she is actually without any problems of her own. The greatest irony of all is that the very fact of her being “unattached” is - for many characters who approach Mildred - a huge problem to be solved by finding her a suitable spouse.

“‘We, my dear Mildred, are the observers of life. Let other people get married by all means, the more the merrier.’ He lifted the bottle, judged the amount left in it and refilled his own glass but not mine. ‘Let Dora marry if she likes. She hasn’t your talent for observation.’” (Pym 70)

William thinks he shares Mildred’s powers of observation, but fails to acknowledge how easily she will notice - and be able to interpret - his exclusionary gesture of just pouring himself wine. Although Mildred says nothing about it to William, her observation separates her from William. She is not merely an observer, but an observer who does care about those she sees. characterization

“We settled ourselves and our food at the table and I paused for a moment to draw breath before eating. The room was enormous, like something in a nightmare, one could hardly see from one end of it to the other, and as far as the eye could see was dotted with tables which were all full. In addition, a file of people moved in through a door at one end and formed a long line, fenced off from the main part of the room by a brass rail.” (Pym 77)

The visual image here of a crowded cafeteria as “like something in a nightmare” suggests Mildred’s fear of the masses. She’s fine with the small congregation at her church or smaller parties. The sentence of description runs on in the way that her horrified gaze must do to take in the space.