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An Irrelevant Woman
Their family has always been a living thing, its members encompassing, supporting each other, confident in the indestructible bond of kinship. Murdoch and Janet Saunders, Hugh, Stephanie, Katrina, Malcolm, and Humphrey the dog.
Murdoch stands at the head of the family, a highly respected novelist. But Janet is its true centre. She has guarded them all, protected them from wavering doubt and disillusion. She has always been there. Now the last of her brood has left home, leaving her without purpose. Her children plan fresh careers for her without understanding her loss. Murdoch too is undergoing some kind of transformation. Perhaps Janet, so sensitive to his writing gift, realises that this also is slipping away?
Abandoned, suddenly adrift in a sea of black despair, she has no shelter, no moorings, no direction. How will she manage? How will her family manage?
Murdoch stands at the head of the family, a highly respected novelist. But Janet is its true centre. She has guarded them all, protected them from wavering doubt and disillusion. She has always been there. Now the last of her brood has left home, leaving her without purpose. Her children plan fresh careers for her without understanding her loss. Murdoch too is undergoing some kind of transformation. Perhaps Janet, so sensitive to his writing gift, realises that this also is slipping away?
Abandoned, suddenly adrift in a sea of black despair, she has no shelter, no moorings, no direction. How will she manage? How will her family manage?
202 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
3 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Mary Hocking
32 books8 followersBorn in in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth.
Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961.
The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Even so, when she came to her beloved Lewes in 1961, she still took a part-time appointment, as a secretary, with the East Sussex Educational Psychology department.
Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the ‘Fairley Family’ trilogy, Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers, books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946.
For many years she was an active member of the ‘Monday Lit’, a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work. Equally, she was an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, where she found her role as ‘prompter’ the most satisfying, and worshipped at the town’s St Pancras RC Church.
* Source
Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961.
The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Even so, when she came to her beloved Lewes in 1961, she still took a part-time appointment, as a secretary, with the East Sussex Educational Psychology department.
Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the ‘Fairley Family’ trilogy, Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers, books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946.
For many years she was an active member of the ‘Monday Lit’, a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work. Equally, she was an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, where she found her role as ‘prompter’ the most satisfying, and worshipped at the town’s St Pancras RC Church.
* Source
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 23, 2014
My month of Mary Hocking reading continues with An Irrelevant woman; a novel still infused with Hocking’s warmth wit and understanding but that strikes a more sombre tone overall. Mary Hocking published this novel when she herself was in her late sixties, and I can only assume was beginning to consider the effect of ageing upon women in their everyday lives. One of the things I love about Mary Hocking’s writing is that – upon opening to the first page – one knows exactly where one is – for her novels are strongly rooted in the rural England that she knew so well.
“The house stood high above the village and a sufficient distance to discourage those whose pleasure it is to drop in on neighbours. An untidy hedge overhung the narrow lane so that passage was not easy and the chance passer-by was afforded only a limited view of ancient chimneys and mossy, tiled roof. To anyone sufficiently determined – and prepared to brazen disapproval – to push hard at the dilapidated wooden gate, a curve in the rough drive would still deprive him of full view of the house. If such an intruder were to venture on, he would soon come upon a rambling sixteenth-century house which, though plainly habitable, did not appear to have suffered much in the way of modernisation”
Janet Saunders is the irrelevant woman of the title; a woman who for years has successfully managed her household, of four children - now grown up and left home -while allowing time and space for her gifted writer husband to work. Now Janet is not so sure what her role is, her children have left, two of them have their own children, they each visit frequently, expecting things to remain just as they always were. Janet’s children all have ideas for what Janet should do now, she is only fifty after all – ideas they discuss in her hearing as the family gather for an Easter Sunday lunch. Hocking portrays a busy vibrant family, who fail to understand the changes that naturally occur as people grow away and leave home. Janet no longer knows who she is, her children assume they know who she is and that they can keep her exactly where she always has been, doing what she has always done, by finding something to occupy her when they aren’t around. “Janet was lying on the kitchen floor weeping, attended by Murdoch and Humphrey, each ineffectual after his own fashion. Hugh said, ‘she had better lie down in the sitting room’ and Stephanie said, ‘Get her out into the garden. She needs fresh air.’ This being what most of them needed, they moved Janet into the fresh air. They propped her once more on the bench beneath the apple tree where she slumped, looking uncomfortably like a straw figure. ‘She looks so pale,’ Katrina said. ‘Not a bit like my little nut brown Mum.’
With her husband, Murdoch secreting himself away all morning writing, Janet a little isolated by living outside the village is often thrown together with her daughter-in-law Patsy and an elderly distant relative Deutzia. Janet’s daughter in law (ex-daughter–in law strictly speaking) has taken to visiting Greenham Common a cause that begins to interest Janet and Deutzia. However none of this is enough to prevent Janet’s fragile sense of herself breaking down. Suddenly Murdoch has to do things he has never done before, cook, clean, shop, all while caring for a Janet he doesn’t entirely recognise, he is confused and out of his depth. Janet’s breakdown is brilliantly re-created with real compassion and a deep understanding – Hocking’s characters are often intelligently introspective, deeply questioning and very much a part of the landscape in which they live. The more of Hocking I read the more I see why people have likened her writing to that of Elizabeth Taylor. Just as with Taylor, Hocking’s peripheral characters are as strong as her central characters. Her observations of people and places so sharp and exact, that she can’t help but bring them to life. In this novel for instance we have Patsy so brilliantly described when we first meet her:
“The kitchen door opened to admit a woman who wore clothes which proclaimed that she would not wish to be seen dead in anything which fitted her. The purple skirt was too wide across the hips and the uneven hem trailed about her ankles, as muddied as her boots. The pink shirt sloped, shoulder seams just above the elbows, cuffs at finger-tip level. Both shirt and skirt were generously creased. Cleanliness, however seemed to be important and had obviously preceded the creasing process.”
Janet’s eldest daughter; psychologist Stephanie, capable and rather bossy, angered that her father’s brilliant creativity has been upset, vies with Janet’s psychiatrist and has still not entirely forgiven her husband for leaving the church. Local vicar Hector Beaney is rather alarmed that now that Janet is so obviously unwell he may actually have to do something for her, feeling rather unequal to the task.
“Deutzia feels that I should be doing something more for Janet Saunders now that she is so ill,’ Hector Beaney said to his wife over breakfast. Breakfast in the Beaney household usually had something of the confessional about it, the hour when Mr Beaney unloaded upon his wife those cares which the night had failed to dispel”
Surrounded by people who seem incapable of properly helping Janet in her hour of need, it seems as if it is only Janet herself that can bring herself back. Everyone will face changes and challenges as Janet slowly comes back to herself, her breakdown having shown her how she should live the rest of her life.
“The house stood high above the village and a sufficient distance to discourage those whose pleasure it is to drop in on neighbours. An untidy hedge overhung the narrow lane so that passage was not easy and the chance passer-by was afforded only a limited view of ancient chimneys and mossy, tiled roof. To anyone sufficiently determined – and prepared to brazen disapproval – to push hard at the dilapidated wooden gate, a curve in the rough drive would still deprive him of full view of the house. If such an intruder were to venture on, he would soon come upon a rambling sixteenth-century house which, though plainly habitable, did not appear to have suffered much in the way of modernisation”
Janet Saunders is the irrelevant woman of the title; a woman who for years has successfully managed her household, of four children - now grown up and left home -while allowing time and space for her gifted writer husband to work. Now Janet is not so sure what her role is, her children have left, two of them have their own children, they each visit frequently, expecting things to remain just as they always were. Janet’s children all have ideas for what Janet should do now, she is only fifty after all – ideas they discuss in her hearing as the family gather for an Easter Sunday lunch. Hocking portrays a busy vibrant family, who fail to understand the changes that naturally occur as people grow away and leave home. Janet no longer knows who she is, her children assume they know who she is and that they can keep her exactly where she always has been, doing what she has always done, by finding something to occupy her when they aren’t around. “Janet was lying on the kitchen floor weeping, attended by Murdoch and Humphrey, each ineffectual after his own fashion. Hugh said, ‘she had better lie down in the sitting room’ and Stephanie said, ‘Get her out into the garden. She needs fresh air.’ This being what most of them needed, they moved Janet into the fresh air. They propped her once more on the bench beneath the apple tree where she slumped, looking uncomfortably like a straw figure. ‘She looks so pale,’ Katrina said. ‘Not a bit like my little nut brown Mum.’
With her husband, Murdoch secreting himself away all morning writing, Janet a little isolated by living outside the village is often thrown together with her daughter-in-law Patsy and an elderly distant relative Deutzia. Janet’s daughter in law (ex-daughter–in law strictly speaking) has taken to visiting Greenham Common a cause that begins to interest Janet and Deutzia. However none of this is enough to prevent Janet’s fragile sense of herself breaking down. Suddenly Murdoch has to do things he has never done before, cook, clean, shop, all while caring for a Janet he doesn’t entirely recognise, he is confused and out of his depth. Janet’s breakdown is brilliantly re-created with real compassion and a deep understanding – Hocking’s characters are often intelligently introspective, deeply questioning and very much a part of the landscape in which they live. The more of Hocking I read the more I see why people have likened her writing to that of Elizabeth Taylor. Just as with Taylor, Hocking’s peripheral characters are as strong as her central characters. Her observations of people and places so sharp and exact, that she can’t help but bring them to life. In this novel for instance we have Patsy so brilliantly described when we first meet her:
“The kitchen door opened to admit a woman who wore clothes which proclaimed that she would not wish to be seen dead in anything which fitted her. The purple skirt was too wide across the hips and the uneven hem trailed about her ankles, as muddied as her boots. The pink shirt sloped, shoulder seams just above the elbows, cuffs at finger-tip level. Both shirt and skirt were generously creased. Cleanliness, however seemed to be important and had obviously preceded the creasing process.”
Janet’s eldest daughter; psychologist Stephanie, capable and rather bossy, angered that her father’s brilliant creativity has been upset, vies with Janet’s psychiatrist and has still not entirely forgiven her husband for leaving the church. Local vicar Hector Beaney is rather alarmed that now that Janet is so obviously unwell he may actually have to do something for her, feeling rather unequal to the task.
“Deutzia feels that I should be doing something more for Janet Saunders now that she is so ill,’ Hector Beaney said to his wife over breakfast. Breakfast in the Beaney household usually had something of the confessional about it, the hour when Mr Beaney unloaded upon his wife those cares which the night had failed to dispel”
Surrounded by people who seem incapable of properly helping Janet in her hour of need, it seems as if it is only Janet herself that can bring herself back. Everyone will face changes and challenges as Janet slowly comes back to herself, her breakdown having shown her how she should live the rest of her life.
January 14, 2023
3.5 stars
July 30, 2024
An irrelevant book with a cast of unpleasant characters. Not recommended.
August 30, 2013
This is a fairly demanding, emotionally draining, but ultimately satisfying, look at a family caught in the "crisis" of accepting new roles for both children and parents.
It is not easy to watch an admirable, solid, wife and mother unravel as she struggles to understand her place in the world with her children grown. She consciously allows herself to fall apart so she can put herself back together. Tough stuff, even for those of us who are not mothers.
Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of this book was the role played by the "genius" father and husband. For the first time in his life it was not all about him. A serious revelation to him, and a difficult role reversal for his children to accept.
This book took me far, far out of my comfort zone because of the personal pain and struggles the family encountered. But, I am a true believer in people reinventing themselves and I found salvation in the character's choices in the end.
It is not easy to watch an admirable, solid, wife and mother unravel as she struggles to understand her place in the world with her children grown. She consciously allows herself to fall apart so she can put herself back together. Tough stuff, even for those of us who are not mothers.
Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of this book was the role played by the "genius" father and husband. For the first time in his life it was not all about him. A serious revelation to him, and a difficult role reversal for his children to accept.
This book took me far, far out of my comfort zone because of the personal pain and struggles the family encountered. But, I am a true believer in people reinventing themselves and I found salvation in the character's choices in the end.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews