Dave's Book Blog: "A House and Its Head" by Ivy Compton-Burnett

Wednesday, 26 February 2025

"A House and Its Head" by Ivy Compton-Burnett

A classic Ivy Compton-Burnett novel, a study in domestic tyranny.

Duncan Edgeworth is a Victorian paterfamilias of independent means who controls his wife and family by keeping them short of money and by bullying them. The only thing beyond his power is that, not having a son, his estate will pass on his death to his nephew. Then his wife dies and he takes the opportunity to remedy this.

In the opening scene, Duncan throws Grant's Christmas present into the fire because it is a book of which he disapproves. I'm guessing it is Darwin's The Origin of Species still making waves years after its publication in 1859 (AH&IH is set starting in 1885). If my conjecture is correct it would fit the theme of the book which is inheritance in all its forms: physical, psychological and economic.

The setting is classic ICB: the Edgeworths live in a large house with servants in a village socialising with the other ‘respectable families including the local doctor, the village parson and a couple of families of independent means. The plot, which, despite lots of foreshadowing, sometimes seems to lurch unpredictably and opportunistically, is also typical.

The style too is unique (?) to ICB: there is hardly any description and the characters communicate in formal and grammatically constructed sentences without any filter: they say what they are thinking. But their thoughts seem utterly bloodless. No one shouts or swears: opposition is by sottovoce asides. Shocking things (even murder) take place and no one seems shocked - their principal concern is to hush up any hint of scandal and continue with their cocooned existences. At the end, Nance, who is described by Hilary Mantel in the Introduction as the "moral centre" of the family, says: “We can’t be too thankful that Mother is dead ... How difficult it would be, if people did not die. Think of the numbers who die, and all the good that is done! They never seem to die, without doing something for someone. No wonder they hate so to do it, and plan to be immortal. ... I have been so ashamed of being alive and well, and having to be housed and clothed and fed and provided for.” The death of her Aunt has meant she now has financial independence. Of course, she isn’t providing for herself. Work? None of them (except the doctor and the rector) work.

It is an utterly artificial novel constructed about an utterly artificial world without a hint of verisimilitude ... and yet I love it. It is so very different. It is hard work to read because of the near complete absence of dialogue tags meaning that the reader has to use clues in the text to work out who is saying what. Characters must be constructed from what they say. And yet if you pay sufficiently close attention, the characters spring to life.

The key character is that of Duncan, the archetypal ICB domestic tyrant. His whole purpose seems to be to exert power over others. He does this by keeping his wife short of money and by bullying his (grown-up) children. There is a suggestion that he knew his wife was ill but refused to allow her to be treated because that would disrupt his routine and take the attention from himself. In one wonderful scene, he is in the process of leaving to stay with his sister when he delays and delays so that the kids are in despair that he will miss the train, sending them scurrying to look for things he already has. When he finally leaves we all breathe a sigh of relief ... and then he returns for something that has been forgotten. He enjoys watching them run around at his whim. This is a commanding portrait of a very unpleasant man.

The other characters are more or less window dressing. Even Sybil, his younger daughter, who seems to have learned from her father how to manipulate others, and whose moral compass seems to have been warped by the emotional abuse she has received at his hands, is a shadowy and insubstantial figure. Grant, Duncan’s nephew and heir presumptive, has learned to bend in the wind and is tossed about by the vagaries of the plot; his only independent feature is that he actually has a sex life, mostly with maidservants. Three of the neighbours deserve notice. Old Gretchen Jekyll, the vicar’s grumpy mother, is a truth teller and prophetess of doom who turns into a detective. Beatrice is a self-appointed missionary, forever thrusting her message (of Christmas, of light, of Jesus) at people whether they want it or not; she hopes and believes that people don’t regard her as “a preaching busybody” but that is what she is. Dulcia blunders in where angels and even fools fear to tread, the sort of person who likes to think they’re plain-spoken when they’re just rude, elevating gossip to a martial art, sometimes penetrating to the truth of things but much more often blurting out the wildly inaccurate conclusions to which she has jumped. I’m surprised she is tolerated but since none of the neighbours seem to have anything better to do than gossip (and they always turn up en masse at the most painful of times on the pretence that their nosiness is supportive), she is only the worst of a pretty awful bunch.

Selected quotes:

“The day went on, silent, swift, at a standstill, without time.” (Ch 4)
“It is good to serve other people and ourselves.” (Ch 6)
“Better be a young man’s darling than an old man's slave” (Ch 8)
“Women walking, women talking, women weeping!” (Ch 12)
“My son is a substitute. I am too old to have a future, and my present is a sham: I feel as if I were a shadow. Well, I must live in the past, with the rest of the old.” (Ch 14)
“Uncle seems to have contracted a habit of proposing. Perhaps he proposes to the first woman he meets after he is free. ... It is a mercy Miss Burtenshaw and Dulcia have not been about.” (Ch 15)
“Thistledown in dispersing goes a good many ways.” (Ch 19)
“Let us leave the village its rumours ...Don’t deprive the bumpkins of their diversions.” (Ch 19) This is almost the only acknowledgement that there are other people outside this privileged bubble (except for servants of course).