Dave's Book Blog: "More Women than Men" by Ivy Compton-Burnett

Sunday, 5 January 2025

"More Women than Men" by Ivy Compton-Burnett

This classic ICB novel, focused on the staff of a girls' school, repeatedly overturns expectations.

ICB's novels are mostly about the downfall of a domestic tyrant. Typically, they are dialogue-heavy and that dialogue is extremely formal. Despite the precision of the language, it can be hard to decode exactly what is being said; nevertheless one gets an appreciation of the characters. The plot is unstructured and sometimes seems contrived.

MWTM more or less conforms to type. Josephine Napier is owner and headmistress of a girls' school and, although everything she does is out of solicitude for her staff, she is a benevolent despot. This extends to her family sphere where she rules her ineffectual husband and her informally adopted son, Gabriel, her brother Jonathan's child. Meanwhile the elderly and impecunious Jonathan lives nearby with, and on, his "intimate", the much younger Felix, a delicate and unemployed young man who becomes drawing-master at Josephine's school. Josephine's old friend Mrs Gifford (who knew Josephine's husband before their marriage) turns up with her daughter Ruth, successfully seeking employment at the school. Marriages and deaths ensue.

This plot is very much 'one thing happens after another', a bit like real life, rather than the narrative designed by God or fate to punish baddies and reward goodies. Instead, the plot seems designed to pose challenges for the characters; conveniently these challenges occur at exactly the right times. This absence of a 'proper' plot is a reason why some (including Natalie Sarraute,author of Tropismes) see ICB's work as a precursor to the 'nouveau roman' movement in France.

The heavy reliance on formal dialogue undermines the verisimilitude of the novel, reminding me of the alienation techniques practised by Bertolt Brecht in his plays. ICB's characters say what they are thinking, in perfectly formed and very grammatical sentences. Despite the formality, it is remarkable how this gives a full and rounded portrait of those characters, at least the major ones.

I'm not sure if MWTM is full of ambiguity or whether I just failed to understand some of the sometimes tortuous but always apparently precise sentences. Possibly I am interpreting the hints in the light of more modern thinking. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there are repeated hints about same-sex relationships, for example between Miss Luke and Miss Rosetti, which is described by Miss Chattaway as "a wonderful case of devotion" (Ch 1) and between Felix and Jonathan, upon whose knee he sits in chapter 2. However, the subsequent behaviour of these characters does not conform to these initial assumptions. ICB seems to be saying that human beings are more complicated creatures than we allow, that sexuality is not binary but can shift according to circumstance.

The novel has some typical ICB moments of comedy when one of her characters questions a saying used by another. For example, when Simon used the phrase "his work would not keep the wolf from the door", Gabriel wonders aloud: "The wolf is always represented as at such close quarters ... Why may he not lurk at the outer gate?" (Ch 5)

Selected quotes:

“Things like poverty and old age and death are shameful. We cannot help them; but that is the humiliation. To accept conditions that would not be your choice must be a disgrace.” (Ch 1)
“I cannot imagine any useful and self-respecting person of either sex wishing to belong to the other.” (Ch 3)
“A leopard does not change its spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit.” (Ch 4)
“I am sure your clothes are admirable. I cannot imagine you without them - without your own kind of them, I mean.” (Ch 13)

January 2025; 231 pages