Dave's Book Blog: "Excellent Women" by Barbara Pym

Monday, 19 October 2026

"Excellent Women" by Barbara Pym

A sort of Jane Austen novel but written in the first person (and the past tense) and updated to just after the second world war (but with nearly as much ignoring of the geopolitical context as Austen herself displays). The narrator (Miss Mildred Lathbury) is one of a host of unmarried spinsters (the legion of 'Excellent Women' of the title) who live in rented apartments in less fashionable areas of London off private incomes, perhaps supplemented with a little part-time work, and find a meaning to their lives by attending and helping out at the parish church. And perhaps dream, somewhat forlornly. of marriage. The reader is teased as to whether Mildred will marry the Vicar, the downstairs neighbour, or the anthropologist. Difficulties to this union are thrown in her way. The Vicar becomes engaged, the downstairs neighbour (the glamorous and flirtatious Rockingham) is already married (but unhappily) and the anthropologist (Everard Bone!) seems to be involved with Rockingham's wife. Will love triumph?

It starts with the arrival of Mildred's new neighbours in the person of Rockingham's wife and it starts with a disappointing amount of exposition. But give it a chance. It blossoms into a gentle but sometimes savage portrayal of spinsterhood.

There are wonderful, almost anthropological (not for nothing are some of the characters anthropologists) observations of social customs and more, delivered with clear-sighted penetration, such as:

“Perhaps Rockingham with his love of Victoriana also enjoyed cooking, for I had observed that men did not usually do things unless they liked doing them.” (Ch 1)
“Virtue is an excellent thing and we should all strive after it, but it can sometimes be a little depressing.” (Ch 5)
“‘Men are so strange,’ she said, in a pathetic puzzled way, as if she were finding it out for the first time.” (Ch 22)
“A clergyman’s just the same as other men, isn't he, only he wears his collar back to front.” (Ch 23)

But these are mingled with heartbreaking self-reflections which highlight the pathos and loneliness of the lead character:

“Women like me really expected very little - nothing, almost.” (Ch 4)
“I must not allow myself to have feelings, but must only observe the effects of other people's.” (Ch 9)
“I remember girlhood dances where one had stayed there [in the Ladies cloakroom] too long, though never long enough to last out the dance for which one hadn't a partner. I didn't suppose Helena had ever known that, and yet it was in its way quite a deep experience.” (Ch 10)
“Love was rather a terrible thing, I decided next morning, remembering the undercurrents of the evening before. Not perhaps my cup of tea.” (Ch 11)
“What had we done? We had not made particularly brilliant careers for ourselves, and most important of all, we had neither of us married. That was really it. It was the ring on the left hand that people at the Old Girls' Reunion looked for.” (Ch 12)
“Widows nearly always do marry again. ... They have the knack of catching the man. Having done it once I suppose they can do it again. I suppose there's nothing in it when you know how.” (Ch 13)
“Perhaps I really enjoyed other people's lives more than my own.” (Ch 24)

She is really a very sad woman, not at all reconciled to spinsterhood: she is forever remembering the damp squib of her previous romance or considering the possibility of having a future romance, even when eating spaghetti: “Perhaps long spaghetti is the kind of thing that ought to be eaten quite alone with nobody to watch one's struggles. Surely many a romance must have been nipped in the bud by sitting opposite somebody eating spaghetti.” (Ch 10)

The idea of the Vicar [Spoiler alert!] rowing with his fiancee, breaking off his engagement and then going round to Mildred's flat, all the while carrying a pair of ping pong bats, was so wonderfully surreal as to seem completely what a normal person would really do.

Notes:

Crome Yellow is a novel by Aldous Huxley which I haven't yet read.

The 'c 1300' poem quoted from the Oxford Book of English Verse is called Spring-Tide or (afeter its first line) 'Lenten ys come with love to toune'. It's one of the Harley Lyrics. The passage quoted is

Deowes [properly 'deawes'] donketh the dounes,
Deores with huere derne rounes
Domes forte [should be 'for to'] deme;

This means: Dews dampen the downs/ Animals with their mysterious secrets/ which they tell one another. Mildred's response is "that would teach me not to be so foolish" I think the point is that it is a hymn to spring love and plants blossoming and animals making love. A couple of lines later it states: 'Wymmen waxeth wounder proude' (women grow marvellously proud). Perhaps that is also to the point. Nevertheless, I would make yet another plea to editors: don't leave untranslated foreign (or archaic) passages without providing at least a footnote!!!!

Selected quotes:

“The burden of keeping three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.” (Ch 1)
“It was part of his charm that he could make people like that feel at ease. He must be rather a shallow sort of person really.” (Ch 4)
“I had an inexplicable distrust of widows, who seem to be of two distinct kinds, one of which may be dangerous.” (Ch 5)
“Nobody really likes to be called a dear. There is something so very faint and dull about it.” (Ch 14)
“The voices seem to be raised as if they were having an argument. I'm afraid it was impossible not to hear some of the things they were saying, but I cannot bring myself to record them here.” (Ch 16)
“If I ever wrote a novel it would be of the ‘stream of consciousness’ type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink.” (Ch 17)
“I learned that a package or envelope sealed with white of egg cannot be steamed open.” (Ch 18)
“On the rare occasions when I had a fresh egg to poach I should continue to delve for it in the bubbling water where the white separated from the yolk and waved about like a sea anemone." (Ch 20)