I'm afraid the anticipation has just been too great, so I broke down and began reading E.M. Delafield's Thank Heaven Fasting. I'll still be reading along during the actual Virago Reading Week, however. If I finish this one well ahead of time you can expect my post on it then, and I'll get to pick another book in its place. Since I'm very taken with Downton Abbey (as I suspected I would be), I might just take up the suggestion to read The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West.
So far my experience with E.M. Delafield, the pen name for Edmée Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture, has been the utterly delightful Diary of a Provincial Lady and her nicely creepy short story Sophy Mason Comes Back. She was a prolific writer and very popular in the 1930s thanks to the success of the Provincial Lady books. Thank Heaven Fasting was published in 1932 and concerns itself with the subject most on young women's minds, well young women ca. 1930 anyway--marriage (though the setting may actually be slightly earlier). The story reminds me of Jane Austen with its witty prose and mamas concerned that their daughters are properly groomed and have every advantage when making the most important decision of their lives.
Monica is the only daughter of the Ingrams, who make sure she knows just the right people. My teaser comes early on in the story and will give you a taste of Monica's world;
"She could never, looking backwards, remember a time when she had not known that a women's failure or success in life depended entirely upon whether or not she succeeded in getting a husband. It was not, even, a question of marrying well, although mothers were pretty and attractive daughters naturally hoped for that. But any husband at all was better than none. If a girl was neither married nor engaged by the end of her third season it was usually said discreetly, amongst her mother's acquaintances, that no one had asked her."
Three seasons and no offer was surely the kiss of death, but then there was always India as a last resort and the voyage out was yet another opportunity to meet, mingle and marry. Imagine being groomed from an early age on for the sole purpose of finding a suitable husband. Maybe there is something to be said for being born into a lower class? I'm not sure what Monica's chances are, but so far, she is at least attractive to the opposite sex. That's only half the battle, I'm sure.