Library Director’s Notebook
September, 2009
One of my favorite writers whom not too many people know about is Barbara Pym. Pym, a British writer who wrote primarily in the 50’s and 60’s, was once called by a well-known literary critic "one of the most under appreciated writers of the 20th century.“ Well, I’d like to add another name to that list of the under appreciated: Dorothy Whipple.
I first heard about Dorothy Whipple while browsing through my favorite book catalog Bas Bleu. Bas Bleu has a wonderful selection of books, many of which are classics of once popular fiction that has gone out of print and been reissued. Many of the books I’ve talked about in these columns came from reading Bas Bleu catalogs and then finding the book in Barrington Library’s outstanding fiction book collection. If you are not familiar with Bas Bleu, here’s the link to their online webpage: www.basbleu.com
But back to Dorothy Whipple. Like Pym, Whipple concerns herself with domestic stories, the stories of the relationships between men and women and their various friends and family. Only so many things can happen in this somewhat circumscribed setting; however as so many excellent writers know, from Jane Austen onwards, even the most innocuous of families can generate a great deal of heat and hurt among themselves.
In Someone At A Distance, Dorothy Whipple’s last novel written in 1953, the story is a common and sad one. Mrs. North, a well-to-do widow with a penchant for feeling herself slighted by her family decides to hire a companion, a young French woman named Louise Lanier. Louise, elegant, arrogant, and perpetually discontented soon bonds with Mrs. North, perhaps because both recognize a shared trait of distrusting and devaluing love and warmth in others. With the advent of Louise, an element of calculation and cold blooded conniving enters the otherwise idyllic life of the North family, who in addition to the senior Mrs. North includes her son Avery, his wife Ellen, and their two teenage children.
What happens is perhaps predictable, even inevitable, given the character of Avery, Ellen, and Louise. Yet the seduction of Avery by Louise (and his willing acceptance of it) is very painful to read because the marriage between Avery and Ellen is shown as having been, up to that point, a rare and precious thing. Ellen, Avery’s wife is a truly warm hearted and loving wife and mother, generous to everyone, even her acrimonious mother in law. She is grateful for the sweetness of her life, and knows herself to be blessed, so it is very difficult to read of her emotional devastation upon discovering Avery’s deception and eventual desertion.
Avery suffers too, although it is hard to feel the compassion for him that we feel for Ellen and her children. But it is part of the skill of Dorothy Whipple that we do feel some sympathy for Avery as he digs a miserable hole for himself and gets himself deeper and deeper in it. Indeed, one of the reasons that Someone At A Distance works so well is that Whipple is able to bring us into the lives and hidden feelings of nearly all the characters, including minor ones, such as Louise’s parents or Mrs. North’s housekeeper, so that no one in the story appears wooden or unrealistic.
Louise is also a well drawn personification of discontent and selfishness. Scornful of her parents’ devotion, jealous of Ellen’s happiness, and bitter towards the boyfriend who rejected her for a woman of higher social standing, Louise seems willing to risk anything, including her own comfort and safety, so long as she can cause the ignominious downfall of others. Louise has often been compared to Madame Bovary, but certainly Emma Bovary was not in her league when it comes to plotting and scheming quite ruthlessly.
The best part is, I now have discovered Dorothy Whipple and so can have the great pleasure of reading all of her novels. For a voracious reader, the discovery of a new author who has written a whole slew of books is like discovering a treasure chest with lots of little drawers, each containing a shining gem. I hope you will give Dorthy Whipple’s insightful, compassionate, and often funny novels a try!
