A Look at
Marriage in Pym’s Early Novels: Jane & Prudence
Mild kindly
looks, spectacles and kiddisoaps: Where has all the passion gone?
by Dan DiPietro
INTRODUCTION
Jane &
Prudence (J&P) is rich with
insights into
marriage and, of the four novels chosen, the only work where our main
character
is married. At its center are Jane, married to clergyman Nicholas
Cleveland, and her friend and former pupil, Prudence Bates,
ambivalently
unmarried. From the first chapter, it is clear marriage is a core
construct of J&P: at an Oxford reunion, Jane reflects on her
marriage
even as she hatches a plot to find a suitable mate for Prudence;
Prudence
conveys mixed feelings about her unmarried state; Miss Birkinshaw, Jane
and
Prudence’s former tutor, articulates the societal imperative that women
marry;
and the various clergymen’s wives form a kind of Greek Chorus echoing
Miss Birkinshaw’s
sentiments. In fact, marriage-related words appear no fewer than
thirty-four times in Chapter 1.
The relationship
between
companionship and passion is the focus of Pym's exploration of the
marital
state. This dynamic is established early and revisited regularly
as Jane
reflects wistfully upon this both in her own marriage and that of
Fabian Driver
to the now deceased
Add to this
already spicy mix,
the ingredients of marriage as business transaction and marriage as
power
struggle and we have quite a delicious marital stew cooked up by Pym.
As prelude to
exploring Jane and
Nicholas’s relationship, I will discuss Pym’s observations about:
Regarding the
nature of the
relationship between Jane and Nicholas, I will explore the following
questions:
***
The Pressure
on Women To Be
Married
Regarding the
pressure to marry,
Pym establishes the societal expectation that women must marry from
several
points of view. Jane – even as she expresses doubts about her own
marriage – hatches a plan to find a suitable mate for Prudence.
Jane
feels a “…married woman [is]…in some way responsible for her unmarried
friends”
(122). Prudence – even as she disdains the married “frumps” who
were her
classmates – expresses discomfort with her unmarried status. Miss
Birkinshaw
offers the view that to be an unmarried woman is to somehow be less
than
complete – a view echoed by the various clergymen's wives. Later in the
novel, Jessie
Morrow, a thirty something spinster, interjects the economic argument
for women
to marry.
In that eventful
first chapter,
our narrator tells us: Prudence is 29, ‘...an age that is often rather
desperate for a woman who has not yet married’ (7) and Jane is 41,
‘...an age
that may bring with it compensations unsuspected by the anxious woman
of 29’
(7).
Prudence feels
both anxiety and
ambivalence about her single state: ‘[She] was conscious...of still
being
unmarried, though women of 29 or 30 could and still did marry’
(8).
Later, when observing the rather dreary garb of her former classmates,
she
reflects that: ‘One could hardly blame people for classing all
University women
as frumps...and yet most of them had married – that was the strange and
disconcerting thing‘(8).
And, in Chapter
1, we are
treated to a wonderful minor character, Miss Birkinshaw who, in her
musings,
makes quite clear the rarified territory the marital state occupies:
Miss Birkinshaw
liked her old
students to be clearly labeled – the clergymen's wives, the other wives
and
those who had “fulfilled” themselves in less obvious ways. (10)
Is there any
doubt as to that
pecking order?
And, if there
were any doubt, it
is quickly dispelled when we hear an unnamed clergyman's wife comment
‘in a
patronising tone’ that work like Prudence's “... must be ample
compensation for
not being married” (10).
In addition to
the societal
pressure to marry, there are also economic considerations. In
Chapter 13,
Jessie tells Miss Doggett and Jane that she “will not be a distressed
gentlewoman” (125). When Miss Doggett tells Jessie there’s little
she can
do about this, Jane counters that: “She may make a good marriage”
(125).
But the idea of marriage as a business transaction is not
gender-specific. Early on, our narrator informs us that, when
Fabian
married
Late in the
novel, Pym introduces
an alternative track to marriage – the comfortable spinster.
Eleanor
Hitchens, an unmarried classmate of Prudence whom we meet briefly in
Chapter 1,
comforts Prudence after her break up with Fabian: “You ought to get
married…That would settle you” (200). But, as Eleanor speaks
further and
contemplates the advice she’s given Prudence, Eleanor reaches a
different
conclusion. Let’s listen in:
“…I suppose
I’ll never get a
man if I don’t take more trouble with myself,” Eleanor went on, but she
spoke
comfortably and without regret, thinking of her flat in Westminster,
her
week-end golf, concerts and theatres with women friends…[and]…a good
supper
afterwards. Prue could have this kind of life if she wanted
it…One had to
settle down sooner or later into the comfortable spinster or the
contented or
bored wife (200).
Our author is
validating an
alternate path for the unmarried woman – the comfortable spinster – a
role that
recurs regularly in Pym’s novels. Later, we will revisit the
options Pym
provides for the marital state – contented or bored – nary a mention of
romance
or passion!
The Duties of
Women in
Marriage
Let’s turn to
another important
and recurring theme: the subservient roles women typically played as
wives.
Wives’ duties
usually revolved
around making life easier for their husbands. This is evident in
Jane’s
periodic pangs of guilt about her failure to be the proper clergyman’s
wife and
her musings about what a good wife Prudence would make. We even
get a
glimpse of a marriage from another novel – Mildred Lathbury to Everard
Bone (Excellent
Women). This glimpse specifically
addresses the issue of a woman providing support to her husband.
Let’s begin with
Jane. As
we first meet her, she thinks back to the early days of her
relationship with Nicholas:
When she and
Nicholas were
engaged Jane had taken great pleasure in imagining herself as a
clergyman's
wife... But she had been greatly disillusioned... Jane's outspokenness
and
fantastic turn of mind were not appreciated; other qualities which she
did not
possess and which seemed impossible to acquire were apparently
necessary.
And then, as the years passed and she realised Flora was to be her only
child,
she was again conscious of failure (8).
These are very
strong words and
express a sense of Jane’s having failed to live up to society’s
expectations of
her. Our narrator confirms that the outside world would indeed
agree with
Jane’s assessment. Jane is described as a ‘great novel reader,
perhaps
too much so for a vicar’s wife’ (15) who ‘hardly yet grasped where the
kitchen
was…a part of the house she took very little interest in’ (18).
Later,
she herself wonders if Nicholas really minded her missing the Mother’s
Union
tea:
…“After all,”
Jane said [to
Nicholas], “I don’t really feel so very much of a mother, having only
one
child, and you know how bad I am at presiding at meetings…” (66).
Even a task as
simple as pouring
tea seems to have eluded Jane:
“I always do it
rather badly,”
said Jane, “The ability to pour tea gracefully didn’t come to me
automatically
when I married” (112).
Jane also turns
her attention to
Prudence and how good a wife she would prove to be for Fabian Driver:
...She would
certainly make an
admirable mistress... She could give cultured little dinner parties
with
candles on the table and the right wines and food (124).
Miss Doggett
weighs in with her
views on the duties of wives when she discusses the recent marriage of
characters Excelent Women:
“That nice Miss
Lathbury has
got married...He [Everard] is a brilliant man... She helped him a good
deal in
his work... She even learned to type so she could type his manuscripts
for him”
(125).
Jane, who is
part of this
conversation, initially agrees stating: ‘…“he would be quite sure she
would be
a useful wife,” she added a little sadly, thinking of her own failures’
(125).
But she
reconsiders a bit later
when discussing with Miss Doggett a possible Prudence/Fabian marriage:
“Typing a man's
thesis,
correcting proofs, putting sheets side-to-middle, bringing up children,
balancing the house-keeping budget – all of these are nothing, really,”
said
Jane in a sad, thoughtful tone. (126)
Prudence also
has a view on how
well her friend has played the role of the clergyman’s wife:
…here she [Jane]
was trying,
though not very hard, to be an efficient clergyman's wife, and with
only very
moderate success (83).
We will return
to the question
of how hard Jane tries to master the role of clergyman’s wife but first
let’s
look more closely at men and passion.
Passion: Is
It Really What
Men Want?
Before
discussing Jane’s regrets
about the loss of passion in her marriage, it is important to
understand the
view described in J&P of men as passionate creatures.
On the
surface, the message appears quite straightforward: men are by nature
more
passionate than women. But in the Pymian world, things are often
not as
they first appear.
Various minor
and major
characters comment on the passionate, baser nature of men, often using
food as
a humorous metaphor. Let me recite a brief litany of these
references:
Mrs. Mayhew: ‘a
man must have
his meat’ (30); Prudence, to Geoffrey Manifold: “You men have such
enormous
appetites” (45); Mrs. Crampton: “a man needs his eggs” (52); Jane: “man
needs
bird” (52); Jessie: man needs meat; Miss Doggett: “…a man needs a
cooked
breakfast” (90); Jessie: “Men seem to need a lot of food at all times.”
Miss Doggett
asserts that “men
want only one thing” (70). A smile, of course, comes to
one’s
lips, when the Narrator goes on to explain that ‘Miss Doggett...looked
puzzled;
it was as if she had heard that men wanted only one thing, but had
forgotten
for the moment what it was’ (70). Pym uses humor to suggest it is
not so
easy to determine what men really want and perhaps it is quite
different from
what Miss Doggett perceives.
Jessie Morrow
comments tartly on
men and passion when she tells Jane about Fabian Driver's relationship
with his
deceased wife, Constance:
“Her husband was
more
interested in other women than he was in her. Her death came as a
great
shock to him – he had almost forgotten her existence.”
But Pym turns
this on its ear
later in the novel when we are given Jane thinks about Fabian’s
philandering
ways:
…[Jane] had a
theory
that…[Fabian] tended to make love to women…because he couldn’t really
think of
much to say to them. (96)
When Jane,
Nicholas and Prudence
discuss Flora’s qualifications as a wife, we begin to understand that
passion
may be a two way street. Nicholas says: “Flora is shaping very
well as a
cook…She will make a good wife for somebody one of these days”
(82). Jane
has a different view:
“But men don’t
want only
that…” Her sentence trailed off vaguely, for perhaps she too had
difficulty remembering what it was that men wanted. (82)
Here Pym
reinforces the view
that men are perhaps not as single minded as Miss Doggett believes but
also
gives us a hint that Jane is missing passion in her life.
Food is also a
useful transition
to begin discussing the passion Jane seeks in her life. Here’s a
wonderful exchange between Jane and Prudence as they prepare a supper:
“Have you some
garlic?”
Prudence asked.
“Garlic?” echoed
Jane in
astonishment. “Certainly not! Imagine a clergyman and his wife going
about the
parish smelling of garlic!...I should have liked the kind of life where
one ate
food flavoured with garlic, but it was not to be.” (156)
So let’s explore
the lack of
spice in Jane’s marriage.
Jane and the
Loss of Passion
As the novel
opens, Jane rues
the onset of middle age and its corrosive effects on the passion in her
marriage to Nicholas:
“Ah, those
delphiniums,” sighed
Jane. “I always used to think Nicholas's eyes were just that colour.
But I
suppose a middle-aged man – and that he is, poor darling – can't have
delphinium-blue eyes.” (7)
In a later
chapter, Pym returns
to this theme as Jane describes how her relationship with Nicholas has
changed
over the years:
Mild, kindly
looks and
spectacles, thought Jane, this was what it came to in the end. The
passion of
those early days, the fragments of Donne and Marvel...all these faded
into mild
kindly looks and spectacles. There came a day when one didn't quote
poetry to
one's husband any more. Could she have noted…[that day]… and
mourned it
if she had been more observant? (48)
Jane feels this
waning of
passion in her marriage more acutely when confronted with Nicholas’s
reaction
to the heavily made-up Prudence:
…[Jane] found
herself quite
unable to look at Prudence, whose eyelids were startlingly and
embarrassingly
green…Was this what one had to do nowadays when one was unmarried? she
wondered…The odd and rather irritating thing about it was, though, that
Nicholas was gazing at Prudence with admiration; it was quite
noticeable.
So it really did work…Would [Nicholas] look at her with renewed
interest if she
had green eyelids? [Jane] wondered. (84)
Nowhere is this
loss of passion
brought into more poignant and humorous perspective than in the
kiddisoap
incident. Pym uses Fabian and Nicholas in a wonderful
counterpoint. In two contiguous passages, we experience Jane
flirting
with Fabian, followed by her being displaced in Nicholas’s affections
by…soap
animals!
As Jane leaves
Miss Doggett and Jessie,
she spies Fabian coming towards her:
Perhaps a sight
of his
beautiful, worn looking face was what she needed on the first evening
of
spring. Her heart lifted for a moment in quite an absurd
way as
she prepared to greet him. “Have you been for a walk?” [Jane
said].
She raised her eyes to his... “You take an umbrella for a
country
walk?... Oh, I never think of things like that,” said Jane, tossing
her head...
(128) [emphasis mine]
Jane returns
home and encounters
Nicholas holding a package:
The absurd
first-evening-of-spring feeling came back to her suddenly and she
wondered if
he had perhaps felt it too and brought her a present. “Look,”
[Nicholas]
said…“I thought I'd put them in my little cloakroom...” On the
table
stood four soap animals... “Kiddisoaps, for children, really... I shall
arrange
them on the glass shelf”... He went happily away, humming to himself.
(129)
In sharp
contrast to Miss
Doggett’s view of “what men want,” Jane reaches a different conclusion:
If it is true
that men only
want one thing, Jane asked herself, is it perhaps to be left to
themselves with
their soap animals...? (129)
Evening ends
when ‘Nicholas came
in with their Ovaltine on a tray and it was time to go to bed’ (129).
Alas… not
exactly champagne and
chocolate covered strawberries!
Jane has one
last encounter with
the kiddisoaps:
...the sight of
Nicholas's soap
animals reminded her of her love for him and she might have wept had
she not
been past the age when one considers that weeping can do good or bring
relief.
(137)
It is crystal
clear that these
are not tears of joy.
Companionship
vs. Passion
And yet there is
most certainly
the joy of companionship – and perhaps still some passion – in Jane's
marriage.
In Chapter 1, we gain insight into the richness of her relationship
with
Nicholas:
...a husband was
one to tell
one's silly jokes to…and do the tipping at hotels, thought Jane with a
RUSH
(emphasis mine). And although he certainly did these things, Nicholas
was a
great deal more than that. (10)
It is left to
the reader to
determine the exact dimensions of a ‘great deal more.’
In Chapter 2,
part of an
exchange by our couple, who are discussing various clergymen,
reinforces this point.
Nicholas says: “Not all High church clergymen are plain looking”
(16). Jane counters with: ‘“Nor all Moderate ones, darling”
...for her
husband's eyes were still blue and he had kept his figure’ (16).
Fabian Driver
gives us a glimpse
of the warm companionship shared by Nicholas and Jane when he sees them
returning from lunch at Miss Crampton's:
Fabian...had a
confused feeling
of irritation and envy as he watched them. It must have been Jane's
smiling up
at her husband and the awful coat she was wearing, the kind of coat a
woman
could wear only in her husband's presence, he thought (53).
As we near the
end of the novel,
Jane seems to come to terms with her marriage:
But wasn't that
what so many
marriages were – finding a person boring and irritating and yet loving
him? Who could imagine a man who was NEVER boring or
irritating? Perhaps this was after all what men liked to
come home
to, someone restful and neutral... (192)
Not exactly the
stuff of romance
novels!
Jane &
Nicholas – Are
They Equal Partners?
Earlier, I
highlighted
Prudence’s perception that Jane is not trying very hard to fulfill the
duties
of a clergyman’s wife. Prudence may be on to something. Despite
the
regrets Jane expresses, there is no evidence she makes a serious effort
to modify
her behavior. And, there is little evidence that Nicholas is
upset with
Jane’s lack of domesticity or has applied pressure for her to comply
with the
scripted role of clergyman’s wife. In fact, the kitchen scene
where Miss
Doggett reveals the Fabian/Jessie relationship to the
Also, Jane
signals the shifting
nature of the roles of men and women in their relationships when she
learns
from Prudence that Fabian has not yet proposed marriage:
“Why don’t you
ask him?”
Jane said recklessly. “Women are not in the same position as they
were in
Victorian times. They can do nearly everything that men can now.”
(161)
Pym seems to
mark this as a
transition period for women with the use of “recklessly” and
“nearly.”
This view of the emerging power of women in relationships is evident in
Jessie
Morrow’s interactions with Fabian Driver. Jessie, in response to
Fabian’s
brooding, says: “Women are very powerful – perhaps they are always
triumphant
in the end” (110). Fabian seems to agree as he begins to have
second
thoughts about the pending marriage: ‘Life with Jessie suddenly seemed
a
frightening prospect…It was as if a net had closed around him.’ (199)
***
CONCLUSION
To conclude,
Jane’s regrets are
much more about getting older than doubting her love for Nicholas and
his for
her. Despite her musings, she is essentially happy in her
relationship. Nicholas has not made demands on her to fulfill the
role of
clergyman’s wife which suggests she is fulfilling a much more important
role –
as equal partner and soul mate.
Pym deals with
the issue of
passion in marriage in interesting ways. While we have Miss
Doggett’s
mantra of men wanting only one thing, Pym is not convinced that they
want it in
their marriage. Fabian seeks it outside his first marriage and
chooses
the plain Jessie Morrow as his second wife over the more attractive
Prudence. Nicholas does not appear to need passion and, contrary
to Miss
Doggett’s refrain, it is Jane who possesses a much more passionate
nature.
Our author
strikes a blow for
women’s equality in leaving us with a Prudence who does not appear to
need
marriage after all and Eleanor Hitchens who appears quite content
outside the
institution of marriage.
In the end:
Jessie gets her man,
Fabian his just desserts, Prudence her dalliances, Nicholas his
kiddisoaps and
Jane her mild kindly looks.