The transformative power of Italy. Maybe it's the Italian sunshine, or the wide expanses of green and burnt sienna of the Tuscan countryside. Whatever it is, on more than one occasion a literary heroine's life has been transformed by her experiences there. Lucy Honeychurch comes to mind right away. I imagine there is a Henry James' heroine or two who has lived and loved and been transformed by Italy. And a few of Edith Wharton's as well. Now Lettice Cooper's Fenny can be added to the list.
Ellen Fenwick's life takes on a richer hue when she travels to Italy to be governess for a year. After overcoming adversities in life and love she will come into her own. This is a story where happiness is achieved through a certain amount of struggle, but it's a life that is as full of satisfactions as it is of heartache. And isn't that the way of real life, too. Life may not turn out exactly as planned or hoped for, but it can be happy and satisfying nonetheless--a contentment that we all strive for.
Ellen, already in her twenties, at the beginning of the story is still so young in many ways. A schoolteacher at home in England, she looks forward to this opportunity to travel and live abroad before she must return home and settle into an average life. But Ellen, who becomes Fenny in Florence--so called by her young charge discovers a new and wondrous world, but it is sometimes harsh one as well.
This is Florence just before the war at the story's outset. It's an unspoiled Florence where the expatriate community is tightly knit. Everyone is aware of everyone else's business and there are hints and innuendos of illicit romantic entanglements. Some will be closer to home than others. Fenny's employers, a British couple with a young daughter, live in the countryside just outside of Florence and mix with the other families. One in particular, An American man married to an Italian woman--both with children from prior marriages, have a British tutor for their son, for whom Fenny will fall for. It's a first love and she falls hard.
There is an ambivalence both to Fenny and her place in British expatriate society and her relationship with others--British and Italian alike. It's the time and place no doubt. She is neither a servant nor a guest, though she is treated as both in some cases. Governess first and foremost, she is Fenny, not Miss Fenwick. She's both teacher to the family's daughter and friend to her employer, yet not entirely so. And it's this ambivalence and perhaps her youth and naivety that will cost her her first love.
Fenny recoils from the inappropriate behavior of her employer, too good to fight for what she really wants. But the draw of Italy is too strong and she stays even after her disappointments in love. She agrees to work for another family but is dismissed for overstepping bounds. But it's these decisions who make her what she is and shows a moral strength. It's this fortitude that will take her though the war years. Her experiences as a younger woman circle back and help inform her decisions and the advice she gives after the war. Hers is not a life lived easily but it's one that is satisfying and happy on her own terms.
Fenny is a beautifully written novel filled with the warmth of the Italian sunshine and the satisfaction of a life well lived. This is a story that is full and replete with characters who are solid and feel real. They, especially Fenny, do not end up in the same place they began. I had no idea that Lettice Cooper was such a good author--why have I let her books languish on my shelves? She began life as a governess too, but went on to Oxford where she studied the Classics. She had quite a literary life and traveled, too, to Italy. Her career as a writer spanned more than sixty years. She wrote twenty novels, children's books and two biographies. I'll be looking for more of her work in 2014! And I think Italy will be a literary destination for me as well in the New Year.