Barbara Pym
British Novelist
1913-1980
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Introduction
Relegated for most of her life to the position of minor
literary figure, Pym is now regarded as one of the most
accomplished British novelists of the twentieth century.
Pym's fiction, rediscovered after more than a decade and
a half of obscurity, centers on the frustrations and domestic
solitude of women in middle-class British social circles.
An astute observer of human relationships, Pym explores
the insular world of eccentric Anglican clergymen, anthropologists,
librarians, fringe academics, small office workers, and
unmarried women whom she depicts with gentle irony, humor,
and compassion. Pym's trademark spinster is a central
figure in all of her novels, portrayed as a quiet, self-reliant
middle-aged woman resigned to a life of compromise and
small pleasures. Often compared to the work of Jane Austen,
Pym's popular and critically acclaimed novels, particularly
Excellent Women (1952) and Quartet in Autumn (1977), are
well-wrought and deceptively understated comedies of manners
that exhibit unpretentious tragic undertones and impressive
psychological depth.
Biographical Information
Born Barbara Mary Crampton Pym in Oswestry, Shropshire,
Pym was the eldest of two daughters raised in a comfortable
middle-class English home near Wales. Pym's father was
a successful solicitor and her mother an assistant organist
at the local parish, whose curates and vicars were regular
dinner guests. At age twelve Pym was sent to Huyton College,
an Anglican boarding school in Liverpool, where she developed
an interest in literature and contributed to the school
magazine. Four years later she read Aldous Huxley's Chrome
Yellow which confirmed her literary aspirations and inspired
the composition of an unpublished first novel, "Young
Men in Fancy Dress." At age eighteen Pym enrolled
at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, where she studied English
literature and graduated with second-class honors in 1934.
While at Oxford, Pym experienced several frustrating romantic
affairs that supplied material for her early writing.
During the Second World War, Pym performed volunteer work
in Oswestry and later found employment in the Censorship
office in Bristol. She joined the Women's Royal Naval
Service in 1943 and was stationed in Naples, Italy, until
the end of the war. In 1945 Pym began work for the International
African Institute, a non-profit organization in London,
while continuing to work on her fiction. Her first novel,
Some Tame Gazelle (1950), was accepted by publisher Jonathan
Cape in 1949. Pym produced a steady output of modestly
successful novels in the next decade with Excellent Women,
Jane and Prudence (1953), Less Than Angels (1955), A Glass
of Blessings (1958), and No Fond Return of Love (1961).
In 1963 Pym's manuscript for An Unsuitable Attachment
(1982) was summarily rejected by her publisher and numerous
others on the grounds that it would not satisfy changing
literary tastes of the 1960s. For the next sixteen years
Pym published nothing. While working at the International
African Institute as an editor for the journal Africa,
however, she continued to write for her own amusement
and completed The Sweet Dove Died (1978) and Quartet in
Autumn, both of which were also initially turned down
by publishers. During the 1970s Pym suffered serious health
problems resulting in a mastectomy, several strokes, and
a heart attack. Despite such setbacks, Pym experienced
a remarkable reversal of fortune in 1977 when poet Philip
Larkin and biographer Lord David Cecil named her one of
the most underrated authors of the century in a Times
Literary Supplement feature. Their adulation sparked a
revival of interest in her work, prompting Macmillan to
quickly accept and publish Quartet in Autumn and The Sweet
Dove Died. Pym completed her final novel, A Few Green
Leaves (1980), shortly before succumbing to ovarian cancer
in 1980. This book and the remainder of her unpublished
manuscripts appeared posthumously, including An Unsuitable
Attachment, her previously rejected novel, Crampton Hodnet
(1985), An Academic Question (1986), Civil to Strangers
and Other Writings (1987), and A Very Private Eye (1984),
a volume of Pym's diary entries and correspondence edited
by her sister, Hilary, and longtime friend Hazel Holt.
Major Works
Pym's first novel, Some Tame Gazelle, establishes many
of the essential features of her subsequent work. Set
in an English country village, the story centers on the
uneventful lives of two unmarried sisters in their mid-fifties
as they share the disappointments and small joys of selfless
service and unrequited love. While one sister privately
devotes herself to a married archdeacon who ignores her
feelings for him, the other dotes on a young curate who
eventually marries a younger woman. In the end, both sisters
remain unattached though pleasantly satisfied in the company
of each other and the security of their uncomplicated
lives. As in many of Pym's novels, the male characters,
usually clergymen, anthropologists, and academics, are
depicted as self-centered, insensitive, and ineffectual
recipients of adoration and deference from the female
characters. Pym's erudite familiarity with English literature
is also revealed in frequent literary allusions, present
here in the title which is taken from a line by a minor
Victorian poet. Such allusions are also prominent in Jane
and Prudence, which contains significant references to
Jane Austen, John Milton, Matthew Arnold, and John Keats.
Excellent Women, Pym's most popular novel, features Mildred
Lathbury, an unmarried woman in her thirties who represents
the archetypal Pym spinster--educated, sharp witted, unsupported
by family or husband, committed to community and church,
modest and alone but single by choice. In this novel Mildred
relates her involvement with an estranged married couple
while residing in a London flat. Here, as in other novels,
anthropologists and clergymen figure prominently. Mildred's
role as arbiter among the uncomfortably situated characters
underscores her tenuous position as a welcome participant
and lonely observer on the verge of isolation. Typical
of Pym's fiction, the plot revolves around detailed analysis
of seemingly inconsequential incidents and encounters.
Small gatherings and commonplace domestic activities,
such as teas, dinners, and church attendance, take on
the significance of major events. Pym's experience with
anthropologists while working at the International Africa
Institute is particularly evident in Less Than Angels.
In this novel the female protagonist adopts anthropological
research techniques to make shrewd observations about
English social convention and to satirize anthropologists
themselves. While most of Pym's novels feature unmarried
women, the protagonist of A Glass of Blessings is the
emotionally deprived wife of a prosperous civil servant.
Failing to find love outside of the marriage, the disenchanted
wife enters into a fulfilling friendship with a gay man.
Like the spinsters of Pym's other novels, she finds herself
content to accept companionship in place of romantic intimacy.
In contrast to her earlier work, Pym's later novels, including
Quartet in Autumn, The Sweet Dove Died, and A Few Green
Leaves, exhibit a marked bitterness in their bleak tone
and grim humor. Quartet in Autumn is a spare and unflinching
examination of late-life loneliness in which Pym describes
the experiences of four co-workers upon their retirement
from a London office. Unprepared for the unpredictability
and alienation of contemporary British life, the two women
and two men struggle to find meaning in their lives without
family, friends, or benevolent institutions to support
them. In a contrapuntal pattern suggested by the title,
Pym follows each as they face their separate solitude
with reluctance and sadness. While focusing on the complex
emotional impact of the aging process rather than courtships
or romantic attachments, Quartet in Autumn nonetheless
reveals Pym's central and recurring preoccupation with
the individual's struggle to connect with others.
Critical Reception
Before 1977, Pym was considered a minor author of unassuming
novels for a small, loyal readership. Since her literary
rebirth and enthusiastic reevaluation, critics consistently
praise her highly developed narrative abilities, remarkable
social awareness, and striking modern sensibility. Pym's
quiet domestic settings, unsensational plots, and earnest
attention to the minutiae of social behavior are frequently
associated with the work of Jane Austen and nineteenth-century
realists. While such mundane subjects once rendered her
work unpublishable, critics now acknowledge the surprising
modernity of her fiction, particularly as found in her
masterpieces Excellent Women and Quartet in Autumn. Pym's
disarming, dry wit and conversational narrative voice
convey strong feelings of loneliness and despair with
unusual subtlety and poignancy. As many critics note,
the veneer of conventionality and tradition that overlays
Pym's fiction adds depth to her perceptive insights into
human relationships, alienation in the modern world, and
the changing role of women in contemporary society. Despite
the Victorian propriety of Pym's spinsters, these sophisticated,
self-aware, independent female protagonists bear resemblance
to the modern liberated woman. Such sympathetic treatment
of autonomous women who refuse to settle into complicated
and unsatisfying relationships with weak or immature men
has drawn the attention of feminist critics. Pym's critical
reputation rests largely on her unique and highly refined
tragicomic humor, emotional sensitivity, and narrative
gifts.
For more information visit her page at Literature
Resource Center online...
Prepared by Rebecca Stuhr
