Early last year I read F.M. Mayor's The Third Miss Symons, a novel about a rather hard to like woman yet curiously interesting, too. The youngest daughter, one of a crowd of children of a proper Victorian family who has little to recommend herself. The victim of circumstance perhaps but also maybe the victim of her own narrowmindedness and lack of desire to achieve more than what she has been given. Maybe those are harsh words. It's 1914 and a youngest daughter with few prospects compounded by a lack of suitable husband material due to the war has a few obstacles to start with. Yet a single woman don't have to be miserable, and Henrietta is decidedly miserable.
So now after a rather glowing recommendation by Susan Hill in her book of essays about Mayor's novel, The Rector's Daughter, I had to find a copy and read it for myself. Once again there is a proper Victorian family but the young woman in stuck by circumstance rather than personality in a claustrophobic situation. I am not sure it will necessarily be a happier story, but maybe a more likable heroine even if her dreams are not exactly fulfilled. Susan Hill notes her copy is battered and much read but she won't buy a new copy as she is so fond of it. " . . .it has never failed me--never failed to make me forget myself and everything going on around me, never failed to move me beyond tears." From what I have read this is Mayor's best novel, though she only published three as well as some short stories.
So Mary is the daughter of a Canon (more than a vicar?) in a small and pretty boring sounding little village. It seems bland and quiet and Mary is one of two daughters and has two brothers, though as she matures she is stuck at home taking care of her father who is a widower. I've only just started to read, but she seems to want something more excited but maybe not entirely disappointed by the quietness of her life. Despite her lackluster appearance I think I already like Mary.
"His daughter (Canon Jocelyn) was a decline. Her uninteresting hair, dragged severely back, displayed a forehead lined too early. Her complexion was a dullish hue, not much lighter than her hair. She had her father's beautiful eyes, and hid them with glasses. She was dowdily dressed, but she had many companions in the neighborhood, from labourers' wives to the ladies of the big houses, to share her dowdiness. It was not observed; she was as much a part of her village as its homely hawthorns."
I don't think of plainness in appearance is a character flaw or it makes a person any less interesting or attractive in other ways, so I am rooting for Mary nonetheless. Besides she loves reading and her bookishness is completely understandable to me.
"Books streamed everywhere, all over the house, even up the attic stairs. They were on every subject imaginable."
So, even if her home life leaves much to be desired (she seems to be foiled on every attempt at a social life by her father), she has her books. I am hoping that she will, in the end, triumph.