Happy Wednesday everyone, and yes, this is the second Recommensday inspired by reading At Mrs Lippencote’s! The first one back at Easter was about unhappy marriages, and this one is about Struggling Wives of various types.
Julia in At Mrs Lippencote’s is the wife of an RAF officer who finds the social expectations of her frustrating and can’t ever quite get to grips with what she ought to be doing and what she wants to do. In Mrs Tim of the Regiment – Hester is also a military wife, but she’s not struggling with her relationship with her husband like Julia is – it’s everything else that’s causing her headaches. Her husband is away, and she’s been moved to a new area and has a lot on her plate: a new group to fit into, a friend with a romantic entanglement and some one chasing after her too. This is written as a diary and part of the fun of it is Hester’s obliviousness to the various men who are sniffing around her. In The Diary of a Provincial Lady, our heroine is also struggling – but in her case it’s mostly to keep the house from falling into chaos whilst also trying to keep up appearances in the neighbourhood. This is not the first time I have recommended this and I continue to love it and empathise with an inability to plant bulbs when you’re meant to!
In Marghanita Laski’s To Bed With Grand Music, Deborah is struggling in a different way: to be faithful to her husband who has left for Egypt (why always Egypt?) and who she promises to be faithful to despite the fact that he says he can’t promise to be. She up sticks for London, abandoning her son and takes lover after lover. Deborah is an awful person – and a terrible failure as a wife and mother – but it makes for great reading. and finally In Guard Your Daughters the daughters are the centre of the plot but their mother is absolutely a struggling wife. She’s not living in the real world or actually participating in the household and you could say it’s the root of all the problems in that household.
I have plenty of books that suggest they might be in a similar vein on the shelf to be read: like Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins, An Academic Question by Barbara Pym and Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple, so there may yet be a follow up-follow up post!
Happy Humpday!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 