The Pastor's Wife

by Elizabeth von Arnim

Book by Elizabeth Von Arnim

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Audiobook, British Literature, Humor, Germany, Novels

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1914

About the author

Elizabeth von Arnim, born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an English novelist. Born in Australia, she married a German aristocrat, and her earliest works are set in Germany. Her first marriage made her Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin and her second Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. After her first husband's death, she had a three-year affair with the writer H.G. Wells, then later married Earl Russell, elder brother of the Nobel prize-winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell. She was a cousin of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield. Though known in early life as May, her first book introduced her to readers as Elizabeth, which she eventually became to friends and finally to family. Her writings are ascribed to Elizabeth von Arnim. She used the pseudonym Alice Cholmondeley for only one novel, Christine, published in 1917.

Reviews

[Antoinette · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic book! It is so different than either of the other 2 books I have read by Von Arnim. It is a grittier look at women’s situations.

The heroine of this book is Ingeborg, a young woman who is subjugated by her father, the Bishop. She is 22 years old and her life revolves around his work and needs. Her mother has taken to the “sofa” as she could no longer cope with all his needs. She has a brief escape from this captivity when she has to go to London to see a dentist. She takes charge of this freedom by going off on a tour to Lucerne. She meets Robert Dremmel, a German pastor and she agrees to marry him to escape her home situation. Of course, she finds herself in another totally different “cage” with this marriage.

Ingeborg is a very sympathetic character. All she wants is to have some freedom. She is naive in the ways of life. But her naivety only endeared her more to me. Yes, I did want to shake her a couple of times when she just didn’t get it. I just wanted all her hopes and dreams to come true.

What I love about Elizabeth Von Arnim is the way she highlights women’s plight of being ruled firstly by their fathers and then their husbands, but yet, she incorporates humour throughout. Women were subjugated, ignored, made to feel insubstantial. One of the themes of this book is women’s resignation to their fate under men.

In this book, as with others of hers I have read, there is always a love of the natural world- the appreciation for its beauty. Ingeborg revels in being outdoors , exploring, and being observant!

This was a marvellous book. I certainly am grateful that we as women have moved forward !

Published: 1914

[Jan-Maat]

I picked this up, probably just because it was cheap but was left wondering why I hadn't heard of Elizabeth von Arnim before.

The novel has a deceptively light tone that enables her to talk easily about troubled and difficult marriages - this is a book written in the early years of the 20th century as well as a book that drew on her experience of her own marriage.

The story is fairly straight forward. Young woman, the daughter of a bishop, is proposed to while on holiday and because she can't manage to say no, winds up married to an older Prussian Pastor. She is disapproved of by Prussian society, and in particular by her Mother-in-law (the mother-in-law is a fantastically sinister figure) and has children until her health suffers. She has an affair with a H G Wells type character(this I believe an autobiographical part of the novel), that relationship breaks down, the local (Jewish) Doctor has to step in and advise the husband that further conjugal relations are inadvisable on grounds of the wife's health. But it's well told and I'm left wanting to read more by von Arnim.

[JimZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is actually one of von Arnim’s darker works in my opinion. ‘Vera’ takes the cake on that front. But when you read passages like what is below…it made me apprehensive when I was reading stuff like this (Ingeborg, one of the main protagonists, during and after childbirth).
• “And still later, when Ingeborg had left off pretending or trying to be anything at all, when courage and unselfishness and stoicism and a desire to please Robert — who was Robert? — were like toys for drawing-room games, shoved aside in these grips with death, when she was battered into being nothing but a writhing animal. Nothing but a squirming thing without a soul, without a reason, without anything but a terrible, awful body….”
• “She was laying sideways, a huddled, crumpled figure, one arm hanging over the edge of the bed, her eyes shut, her mouth open, her hair matted and moist and dark, drooping over her white indifferent face.”

The book is divided into 3 parts…Ingeborg’s encounter with Robert Dremmel and their early days in marriage (which in parts was humorous, typical Elizabeth-style humor) — Ingeborg and motherhood — Ingeborg and her wannabe-paramour, Ingram, although she is not aware that he is a wannabe-paramour.

Men do not come off good in this book. None of them. I was ashamed to be of the male species. (Well maybe that is stretching it. 😐).

I’ll give the briefest of synopses…Ingeborg is 22 and lives in Redchester (a fictional town not too far away from London). Her father is a Bishop in a church, and she lives a sheltered life essentially serving as a secretary to her father. The bishop-father is a jerk. She has to go to London to get a troublesome tooth pulled and her father allots a whole week for that to happen. It only takes a jiffy to pull It because they use laughing gas (nitrous oxide). So she has a whole week to do diddly squat and so she takes a 7-day holiday to Lucerne Switzerland, and ends up on a train with the rest of the vacationers, and a German man after 5 days of conversing with her decides to take her as his wife, almost as if she has no say in the matter. That was annoying but then that would fit his character. What men decide, let no woman complaineth or protesteth. So eventually they end up in Germany in his village in which he is a pastor (hence the pastor’s wife) as well as a farmer fixated on soil and manure science (I kid you not), and she is not in love with him but thinks him a decent man. However, childbirth and its sequelae nearly kill her and after experiencing six births she tells her husband ‘no more babies’. That does not sit well with the pastor and he now views Ingeborg as his lawfully wedded sister, not his wife. An artist comes to town, Ingram, and is besotted by her and since nobody has paid any attention to her in her life, she enjoys his attention. Ingram convinces her to go to Italy with him, and his plan is to sleep with her (he tells her he wants to paint a portrait of her). She tells her husband she needs to leave for 8 days so she can get shoes in Berlin, neglecting to tell him about her real plans with Ingram, and the husband does not give a hoot anymore about her and so waves her off so he can go back to his soil/manure experiments. Damn, that is not a brief synopsis. Well it wasn’t a brief book — it was 484 pages. And I’m not going to tell you what’s happens or does not happen in Italy. Read the book. Well OK…don’t peek When she finally figures out what his intentions are she skedaddles out of there and makes it back home, and she is fearful that her husband will beat her because she left a letter for him on his desk before she left telling him she was indeed going to Italy and Ingram was going to paint her portrait, but because he didn’t much give a damn anymore what Ingeborg did he never read the letter. She discretely took the unopened letter and I do believe she destroyed it. End of story.

Notes:
• I have two editions of the book, a first edition (1914) and an Everyman edition (1996). There is a fascinating Introduction in the Everyman edition — it is by Deborah Singmaster. I don’t have a lot of info on her, but she certainly dug really deep to write the Intro. She has written Introductions to other works: The Journal of a Disappointed Man & A Last Diary, by D.N.P. Barbellion (Hogarth Press issue, 1984), and The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton (Everyman issue, 1993). As told by Singmaster, a lot of what happens to Ingeborg in this novel more or less happened to Elizabeth von Arnim. You can substitute her first husband, Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, and his arrogant ways, for the pastor, Robert. You can substitute one of her lovers, H.G. Wells (The Time Machine & War of the Worlds fame), for the painter Ingram. Singmaster writes of Elizabeth von Arnim, “Elizabeth had endured four pregnancies before producing the son that her husband demanded of her.” Robert in the book wants a big family, just as Count von Arnim wanted.
• I gave this work of Elizabeth’s 3 stars. It, to me, was unnecessarily on the long side. Especially the last part when she and Ingram are in Italy. It could have been partly my fault…I read this in one day and it was getting late, and I wanted it to end because I had to make dinner. 😐
• Would I recommend this to first time readers of Elizabeth? Nope. There’s plenty more of her works that would be good to start off with, including The Enchanted April, Vera, The Caravaners, Expiation, The Benefactress, Solitary Summer, and Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight.
• I’m running out of books of von Arnim to read: I have these to go: Father, Love, In the Mountains, The April Baby's Book of Tunes, and Introduction to Sally. 😥

Reviews (lots of well-written reviews on blogsites):
• https://thesleeplessreader.com/2014/0...
• https://beyondedenrock.com/2018/08/31...
• https://thecaptivereader.com/2011/01/...
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2014/...

I have not read this but it’s a published review in a journal: Nick Turner (2017) Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Pastor’s Wife: A Reassessment, Women: A Cultural Review, 28:1-2, 56-71, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth von Arnim has that elusive quality, wit. Unlike humor or books written to amuse and entertain, wit must be appreciated through the lens of the reader's own experiences. You read a sentence or paragraph, nodding your head and chuckling because you get it. And you feel intelligent because of that, knowing that not everyone will. This whole book was that way, as was "Elizabeth and her German Garden", the previous von Arnim book I read. Added to that, most of her books contain autobiographical elements, making you wish you could have known the author herself.

This was the story of a young girl, who got herself engaged to a German pastor by mistake, but sees it as a chance to escape her domineering father. Our of the frying pan into the fire, as they say. That's the basic plot, but after 6 pregnancies in 7 years, and life in a provincial Prussian village married to a man who takes her for granted, she finds another avenue for escape.

I loved the book, and the writing, but was horrified by the ending. Realistic, maybe, but women have come a long way since the turn of the last century.

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look at the title—this is a story about the pastor’s wife, Ingeborg. Before becoming the pastor’s wife, she was the Bishop’s daughter. Later, she is also a famed portrait painter’s muse and a traveler. The question to be answered is if she will ever be her own master Must she always be possessed or under the control of another?

When we first meet Ingeborg, she is twenty two, lives in a small, provincial English town and has a toothache. She will travel up to London to fix that tooth. This will lead to other destinations--Switzerland, Italy and East Prussia, outside Königsberg. When does all this occur? At the turn of the 20th century. We follow Ingeborg for a bit more than seven years—during this time she will give birth to six children, of whom only two remain living at the story´s end. The book is not about Ingeborg’s children. It is about her, about who she is and the woman she becomes.

One might debate if this is a feminist novel. Get together a group and discuss this. The discussion will be lively. In my view, by the book’s end, Ingeborg is her own master, but at the same time wishes to share her life with another. Is this not possible without subjugation? Can one have a warm, affectionate marriage on equal terms?

I think the book speaks particularly to women. We are the ones who give birth to the children. Often it is the women who to a large extent raise them, at least when the book was written. It came out in 1914 and has both fictional and autobiographical content. What happens when our kids leave home? Who or what do we substitute in their place?

The prose grabbed me from the start. The writing itself had me intrigued. The prose mirrors Ingeborg’s personality. It’s clever, it reflects her curiosity and a desire to get to the bottom of an issue. It’s outspoken and has plenty of humor.

I loved sharing time with Ingeborg. Her spunk, her curiosity, her appreciation of what life has to offer and her courage to defy societal conventions are attributes I admire. That she wants to stick to the truth plays out in a very special way. You must read the book to the very end to find out how and why.

The book speaks out against the rigidity of social class. It wonderfully captures how it is to live in a community where all those around you insist you do not belong. This feeling of foreignness, of not fitting in, pervades everything, even if you do your very best to fit in. Ultimately, one must decide to what extent you want to fit.

Half-way through, the book enchanted me for one reason. On completion, another reason took priority. The focus had shifted from being different and feeling alienated to being independent and strong.

The book is available free at Librivox, here: https://librivox.org/the-pastors-wife...

James E. Carson narrates the audiobook at Librivox. Every word is meticulously enunciated. The problem is that the reading does not flow naturally. I cannot say I like the narration, but because I could hear every word, I am willing to give the narration performance two stars. It’s OK.

*************************

Half-way through:
I love how one book read, I am thinking now of Inge's War: A German Woman's Story of Family, Secrets, and Survival Under Hitler, makes you appreciate another book more. Both books are set near Königsberg, at least part of the time.

Arnim’s book has a very special prose style. It wonderfully captures living in a country where the customs of the land are not your own--all feels foreign and strange to Ingeborg. This is a woman's book in its ability to draw a woman's point of view, the female perspective over a male's. It doesn't matter that Ingeborg is naive. There is humor--I smile and I laugh. Never again will I hear the word sofa, in reference to women who recline there, without smiling. At other times, I cringe, at the hypocrisy and cruelty of so-called polite, proper behavior.


*********************

*Elizabeth and Her German Garden 4 stars
*Love 4 stars
*The Pastor's Wife 4 stars
*The Enchanted April 2 stars

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never read such an apparently mild book that made me so wildly angry. Von Arnim is becoming a personal hero.

(Longer review written at a greater distance included in my fall/winter roundup on my blog: https://shouldacouldawouldabooks.com/...)

[Jane]

This is not the book I planned to read for Elizabeth Von Armin Day, but for some reason I picked it up, I began to read and I had to keep going. The story makes some very serious points, but because Elizabeth Armin writes with such warm and wit, because she writes from experience, it is wonderfully readable.

Ingeborg Bullivant was the daughter of a bishop and, because her mother was an invalid and her sister was a great beauty who was expected to marry well, it was expected that she would be the dutiful daughter who would look after the house and run around after her father. She had escaped for a fortnight, because she needed to visit a dentist in London and had been granted a that time in the big city to receive treatment and to recover. One visit to the dentist was all that it took. He whipped the tooth out, the pain disappeared, and Ingeborg had a quite unexpected week of freedom. She couldn’t have been happier.

“After weeks of miserable indifference she was quivering with responsiveness again, feeling the relish of life, the tang of it, the jollity of all this bustle and hurrying past of busy people. And the beauty of it, the beauty of it, she thought, fighting a tendency to loiter in the middle of the traffic to have a good look—the beauty of the sky across the roofs of the houses, the delicacy of the mistiness that hung down there over the curve of the street, the loveliness of the lights beginning to shine in the shop windows. Surely the colour of London was an exquisite thing. It was like a pearl that late afternoon, something very gentle and pale, with faint blue shadows. And as for its smell, she doubted, indeed, whether heaven itself could smell better, certainly not so interesting.”

A colourful travel poster caught her eye, and she realised that she had time to take the trip to Lucerne that it was advertising, that the money she had been given to cover her expenses would more than cover the cost and that she wasn’t expected at home. She booked her place and off she went!

‘She felt like a bulb must feel, she thought, at the supreme moment when it has nosed its little spear successfully up through the mould it has endured all the winter and gets it suddenly out into the light and splendour of the world. The freedom of it! The joy of getting clear!‘

Ingeborg fell into the company of Robert Dremmel, an earnest young Lutheran pastor from East Prussia, who had a passionate interest in agriculture. They were the only two single people, it was natural that they would come friends, and before the trip was over there was a proposal.

“‘…I do not ask you,’ he went on, ‘to love me, or whether you do love me. It would be presumption on my part, and not, if you did, very modest on yours. That is the difference between a man and a woman. He loves before marriage, and she does not love till after.’

‘Oh?’ said Ingeborg, interested. ‘And what does he -’

‘The woman,’ continued Herr Dremmel, ‘feels affection and esteem before marriage, and the man feels affection and esteem after.’

‘Oh,’ said Ingeborg, reflecting.’”

Ingeborg wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to marry Robert, but she liked him and she didn’t want to go back to her old life and explain everything. And so she did marry him, she set off happily for a new life in Germany, leaving behind a family who were horrified at what she had done, at her abandoning her duty to them to marry a foreigner!

At first Ingeborg is happy with her new life in the German countryside. She loves being mistress of her own household, she is happy to spend hours in her garden, and she can read as many books as she life. But she comes to realise that that Robert is more interested in his soil research than in his pastorate or in her, and that he only expects her to housekeep and too provide a stream of children. Her husband, her mother-in-law, all of her husband’s friends, are only interested in her as somebody who will produce and raise his offspring!

After six pregnancies result in two living children, two infant deaths, and two stillbirths, Ingeborg’s heath begins to fail. Her doctor intervenes, and sends her away to convalesce. When she comes home she realises that she has to make changes, and she explains to her husband that she cannot run the risk of falling pregnant again. Robert doesn’t understand all, he loses interest in her, and began to treat her more like a sister or a favoured family retainer.

That unsettled her, but Ingeborg realised that she was free again, and she struck up a friendship with a visiting English painter, Edward Ingram. He was charmed by her old-fashioned ways, her love of the arts, and her enthusiasm for the natural world, and tempted her with the prospect of a trip to his studio in Venice. He was delighted when she accepted, but horrified when he realised that she come for her second adventure , and that she hadn’t run away with him.

Ingebourg went home to her husband, but how would he receive her?

I loved Ingeborg; she was a simple soul, but that was hardly surprising after her sheltered upbringing and her swift marriage. She found such joy in living in the world, and all she wanted was to have a place of her own place in that world.

I loved the diverse cast of characters that spun around her, they had such depth, and each one of them had a distinctive voice.

I appreciated that Elizabeth Arnim made her main point well. Ingeborg was cast in different roles by her father, by her husband, and by her would-be-lover in turn. None of them gave much thought to what would make her happy, what life would be like for her, but none of them were villains, none of them were deliberately cruel or unkind. They were simply men who assumed that they would – they should – be at the centre of her world ….

There is a mass of lovely detail and incident, the writing is wonderful, there is light and shade, and there is a great deal to think about. I flew through his very thick book, feeling so many different emotions along the way. Understanding, amusement, annoyance, empathy ….

It all rang true, except maybe for the last few chapters. I couldn’t quite believe that the daughter of a bishop and the wife of a pastor would think nothing of travelling with another man and letting her husband think she was making a trip of a very different kind.

But the ending was quiet and it was stunning.

I’m still thinking about it.

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't sure whether to be happy or sad for Ingeborge by the end of this book. She got the ending she wanted, but I felt she deserved better.

[Poiema · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my second von Arnim read, and I am rather amazed at this author's ability to confront complex women's issues and still maintain a light touch. By that I mean that the heavy issues are not confronted head-on, but are wrapped in layers of humor, heady descriptions of nature, and forays into art and literature. I find I need time to digest it all after closing the book.

In this novel, a young woman goes from the protected and stifling cocoon of her Father's home (an English Bishop), to the parsonage of a German pastor. At first she experiences exhilarating freedom, something this author absolutely excels at describing. You can feel the joy coursing through your veins as you travel along with Ingeborg in her little punt, enjoying the natural beauties of rural Germany.

The freedom is short lived, however, as Ingeborg has 6 pregnancies in seven years. She has difficult pregnancies which leave her weak and listless, and she loses all but two of the babies. Still under the age of 30, her life looks bleak as she anticipates a continuation of this cycle of pregnancy and death.

Ingeborg is given the opportunity to recoup for a couple of months at the seaside, alone. She comes back home with the determination to cease conjugal relations with her husband in spite of the fact that she maintains a respect and affection for him. To her, it seems a choice between life and death.

Her husband acquiesces to her wishes and immerses himself in his work, growing ever more distant. Ingeborg at first feels hurt that he has found happiness totally apart from her. On further introspection she determines that to insist that she be integral to his happiness would render her a tyrant. I found this insight to be profound. Here is a tender young woman who has known nothing but tyrannical male overlords and yet she can see tyranny in her own heart. That is a rare thing.

One way she seeks to amend this in herself is to appreciate nature and to delve deeply into reading and literature, filling her mind and heart with beautiful things. Although this has a certain delight, her isolation makes her vulnerable. Her thirst to share the treasures of her newly furnished intellectual life put her in a precarious position with a famous artist who arrives on the scene.

The end of this novel was less than satisfying to me. Ingeborg manages to keep her integrity but one senses that there will be no "happily ever after" for her. Beauty and truth are substantial benefits in life but without someone to share them with, they are unable to truly satisfy the heart.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a roller coaster ride this was! I was so surprised at ever turn. What utterly perfect and marvelous character development. What exquisite changes in points of view. This is exactly what I read Elizabeth von Arnim for. She makes me smile. Sometimes she sort of breaks my heart. She never bores me. What a fabulously unexpected ending.

[Mighty Aphrodite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quando si è vissuti per tanti anni in una prigione, una prigione forse dorata, fatta di qualche privilegio pagato, però, a caro prezzo, l’unico vero e animalesco istinto che riesce ad emergere dalla coltre della remissività è quello di sentirsi liberi, almeno per un momento, riempirsi i polmoni di un’aria fresca e pura, prima di indossare nuovamente le catene che ci vincolano alla quotidianità, chiusi in stanze polverose, chino sul nostro dovere.

Ma quando si è stati docili e sottomessi per troppo tempo, anche il più piccolo accenno di indipendenza, la possibilità di scegliere seguendo solo ed esclusivamente il nostro piacere e i nostri desideri, dà alla testa, inebria come un bicchiere di vino a stomaco vuoto e ci lascia in uno stato di esaltazione ed estasi che difficilmente la ragione può mitigare.

Sola e lontana per la prima volta in ventidue anni dalla casa paterna e dalle incombenze che la vedono indaffarata e schiava dei serratissimi programmi del padre, Ingeborg non riesce quasi a frenare la sua fantasia, mentre immagina come impegnare quella giornata: una bella cena in un albergo (forse il Ritz?), la visione di uno spettacolo in un cafè – concert o semplicemente bere una gustosa tazza di cioccolata calda in una deliziosa pasticceria. Il mondo è lì, davanti ai suoi occhi affamati e non chiede altro che di essere gustato, afferrato, addentato con energia.

Continua a leggere qui: https://parlaredilibri.wordpress.com/...

[Xenja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bello e acuto come tutti i romanzi della Von Arnim, questo è più di tutti gli altri un vero e proprio manifesto femminista; incredibile il coraggio con cui l'autrice scrive cose che ancora oggi sollevano furiose polemiche, come, per esempio, che il corpo della donna dovrebbe essere gestito solo dalla donna stessa; che il parto può essere un'esperienza brutale; che i figli possono anche non essere la più grande gioia della vita di una donna; che, come dice la dolce e candida protagonista Ingeborg, "perché una moglie dovrebbe chiedere al marito il permesso di andarsene per un po' se ha voglia di farlo? Il marito certo non lo chiede alla moglie!" Evidentemente questa scrittrice è sempre stata ed è ancora oggi troppo poco conosciuta, nonostante il successo delle ristampe degli ultimi anni, altrimenti il movimento femminista ne avrebbe sicuramente fatto una delle sue icone.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

English woman Ingeborg is a young bishop's daughter, charming and cheerful. The year is approximately 1910 or so. As the book opens Ingeborg is trundled off by her parents to London where she is supposed to get a toothache fixed, the country dental situation being not so good. She has a little wad of cash and will supposedly need a week for the dentistry and recovery. But instead of taking a week, her toothache is fixed fairly instantly, she feels utterly marvelous, so she starts wandering around town. And still, she doesn't have to be home for days and days. Intrigued by a sign advertising Dent's tours, she impulsively signs up for one and goes off to Lucerne for a few days with the tourist group. Along the way she meets Robert, a German pastor who is single and falls for her straight away. He manages to convince her to marry him, even though she's not really keen on the idea at first. Her parents are absolutely appalled, although her father does consent to perform their marriage ceremony. She promptly goes to Germany with her new husband, ready to settle in and start a family.

This is probably the longest and most detailed of the novels by Elizabeth von Arnim. The text dives quite deeply into Ingeborg's thoughts and feelings as she navigates the new life in Germany, takes care of her husband and small farm, and has six babies in seven years. (Only two survive, however.) The author's prose is utterly delicious most of the time.

The crux of the book has to do with what happens later as she is pursued by a dashing young and famous painter who visits one of the nearby minor nobility and meets her in passing. They strike up a friendship, all very above-board, and the man wants to paint her portrait. Will he manage to seduce her? Does she even know she's being seduced, and it's all not just friendly and brotherly?

Notes: I read the Girlebooks.com EPUB version, which is nicely formatted, based on the Project Gutenberg e-text, and has a few little internal illustrations. First published in 1914, the book is now in the public domain, so you can find it out there freely available, as well as in the nice Virago edition.

More Notes: I own a copy of the Virago edition and have had it on my shelf, along with a hard cover edition and every other von Arnim novel, too. But I put off reading this for several years, in part because I wasn't sure I wanted to tackle it right away, being a rather longer book than most of hers... And also because I haven't wanted to gobble all of the von Arnim novels too quickly, but really savor them over a period of decades. True story.

[Sylvester (Taking a break in 2023) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed Ingeborg's brief escapes. Women going quietly about their work might suddenly break out and do surprising things. People you take for granted might have an inner life you never imagined. von Arnim has a predominantly negative view of men in most of her writing - it seems to have been her life experience - but it gets tired for me. Ingeborg's work to develop her mind through reading, her attempts to break her children out of their mute acceptance of what is, and her sheer joy at seeing Italy were the only things that kept me going. The contrast between the men's views of her - one who sees her as a servant, one disregards her altogether, and the other makes too much of her for his own purpose - is interesting and well-examined, if depressing (and true of many women's lives). It's not that these scenarios haven't happened in the past or continue to happen now, it's just that the men in this book seem more like types than real people.

[Laura McDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

I believe I am getting to the root of what I love and don't love about Von Arnim's writing. I love her autobiographical and first-person POV work. I love her insights into life, love, and nature. I love her optimism and happiness and boundless joy at small pleasures. I love that she loves to be alone with her thoughts, and she actually thinks and sees right to the bottom of things.

I don't love her third-person and omniscient POV work. I didn't know exactly why until I read The Pastor's Wife and found the dialog extremely irritating. It may be naturally the way people talk, but were I to watch a movie of people talking this way--choppily with unfinished sentences--I would wish to strangle them. I wished many times to strangle the characters in this book.

I believe the choppy dialog is Von Arnim's way of getting across the frustration of a situation. The characters, particularly the main character herself, can never finish a sentence without being interrupted. From reading Von Arnim's biography, it is clear that many times in her life she felt things were out of her control; that she was being controlled by other people, especially by the husbands in her two (mostly) unhappy marriages.

That is what this book is about. A girl grows up being pushed around by her father. In a reckless, thoughtless moment--the first moment she is ever alone and left to her own devices--she decides to take a trip to Switzerland. She is alone for only a few hours, however, and then the next overpowering man comes into her life. He is a pastor from Germany (East Prussia to be exact), and she somehow--through no effort or even desire of her own--becomes his wife.

The basis of the story seems to be that this woman is utterly lacking in consciousness of herself. She is utterly unconscious of what others think of her. And she is even more unconscious that she can will her own destiny, much less rebel again what others have planned for her. She has been meticulously trained, while growing up, to bend to her father's will. And that is what she does in this new marriage, bends to her husband's will until it almost kills her and zaps the spirit right out of her. Almost instantly upon recovery, the next overpowering man comes into her life...

I give this three stars. One for simply being by Von Arnim whom I mostly adore. Two more for some beautiful passages and insights that on their own are worth reading. The story is depressing, however, and I failed to see the larger purpose of it. It was possibly a product of the time, also possibly a product of a bout of depression following the death of her first husband.

This text was a produced through the Girlebooks proofreading project with freeliterature.org

[Lytton Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writing sometimes almost reaches the poetic eloquence of a D.H. Lawrence - maybe this was simply a shining moment historically for English Literature. I had to give it five stars because she pulled off a miraculously tragic ending without inspiring utter hopeless agony in the reader. Genius trick. The characters were so subtle, complicated and interesting - how did she do that. Especially how Ingram turned slowly from hot sauce to dry rot in such a way as to convince you he had always been a villain, even when you loved him dearly. The unconscious way a man will destroy the very innocence in someone that initially attracted, and almost redeemed him. I can't wait to read Vera now.

[Redbird · Rating 5 out of 5]

Von Arnim so beautifully captures the human spirit in all its happiness and pain that it feels as fresh as if it were written today. This novel is an emotional roller coaster, with dry humor often the result of conflicting social norms or values, yet also the setting of agonizing verbal and physical abuse - which felt so real it was almost hard to read.

Nevertheless, I would read it all again because it was so beautifully written.

[Mary Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful, thought-provoking book!

Reminds me of Madame Bovary and other feminine awakening novels. Only here the consequences are very different. I liked it very much.

[Magda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am puzzled about how to consider this book. On the one hand, the main character is over-powered by everyone else in the book except her preternaturally good children (who utterly creeped me out, innocent as they were), but has, as it were, two moments of happy personal strength (and it is strength), one at the beginning and one at the end. The rest of the time is a struggle which is hard for the reader to "watch." The ending is a sort of triumphant tragedy, and I don't know that I will ever know what to think of it.

[Hallgerd · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am amazed at the lightness of touch of this book. It is witty, sometimes downright hilarious (for example the proposal scene) and joyful and yet manages to reveal (without any preachiness or tut-tutting) the crushing effect of the inequality that dominated women's lives. It's beautifully written. I recommend it.

[Hope · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Pastor's Wife (1914 fiction) was a sad commentary on people in the church who haven't a clue what it means to follow Christ. Every character was selfish to the core. It was terribly hard to like a book in which none of the principle characters have any redeeming qualities.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Lovely, long Von Arnim novel which deals ith marriage, motherhood and the subjugation of women.

My full review here: http://heavenali.wordpress.com/2014/0...

[Lora · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this book is a mix of serious and ridiculous, so it captures life pretty accurately. While wrestling with serious issues regarding women and society, von Arnim lets the ridiculous just shine through so that sometimes I couldn't be sure if I was angry or laughing. Poor Ingeborg!

[Priscilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little tough for contemporary attitudes about the role of women, but still a well-told story of an true innocent whose naivete is rock solid. Lots of humor, particularly with regard to the minor characters. It was an interesting read.

[Igenlode Wordsmith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book from the era when Germans were portrayed (by the English) as simple, sentimental folk, and/or focused scientists and engineers, rather than 'the evil Hun' portrayal that would take over popular literature for the next sixty years or so...

Mainly to be read for the writing, rather than the characters or plot. Like Elizabeth Goudge, the author evokes nature in its various moods vividly and well, and is equally good at showing the shifting intensities of feeling of her heroine, from embarrassment to drowsy happiness to singing delight, and occasionally hopelessness and despair. Most of the other characters, on reflection, are a bit one-dimensional, although their various self-deceptions and perceptions are written with wry humour.

Knowing that the author herself apparently had an unsatisfactory German marriage did make me wonder uncomfortably while reading how much of this material was simply biographical (the afterword suggests that the pregnancies, at least, reflect personal suffering) - but Ingeborg actually manages to get a reasonably happy outcome out of what looks ominously beforehand like foreordained disaster. Admittedly this is mainly due to her ability to be self-sufficiently happy and to find pleasure in little things, but the author forebears from heaping disasters upon her. Her husband is self-absorbed, but not unkind; the neighbours disapprove of her foreignness and ignorance, but do not inflict misery on her; and her would-be seducer fails to hold out any actual temptation.

And there are some wonderful word-pictures.

Out in the garden, for instance, down there beyond the lime trees at the end, where you could stand in the gap in the lilac hedge and look straight out across the rye-fields, the immense unending rye-fields, dipping and rising, delicate grey, delicate green, shining in sunlight, dark beneath the cloud, restlessly waving, on and on, till over away at the end of things they got to the sky and were only stopped by brushing up against it,—out there with one's hand shading one's eyes from the too great brightness, who could find fault with anything, who could do anything but look and see that it was all very good?

[Gina House · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another enchanting book by Elizabeth von Arnim! This novel was poignant and warm, but also frustrating. A coming-of-age story about a young girl who is trapped in a self-absorbed family and uses marriage to "free" herself from her father, The Bishop, and his tight and selfish hold on her.

You follow poor Ingeborg from a teenager to a grown woman, facing life's challenges with thoughtfulness, strength, love, and a deep sense of longing for joy and happiness. There are a few touchingly beautiful passages in this book that truly stay with me after finishing it. Otherwise, it was a very sad and, sometimes painful, story of "Poor Ingeborg", as I called her in my mind.

Besides the naive and inexperienced Ingeborg, there is not one other character that I liked—particularly the unhelpful and unsympathetic Herr Dremmel, the harsh and conceited Bishop, and the insincere, society-hungry Baroness.

But, Ingeborg is such a wonderful character that nothing else matters. EVA's writing is exquisite and I think that's the only reason I kept on going with this very long novel. So many thanks to my dear friend Caro (@carosbookcase) for buddy reading this with me. Reading this book with her and discussing all of the chapters in detail made this a fun and amazing experience.

[Mady · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh Ingeborg, how silly and naive can you be? :)

Elizabeth Von Arnim writes about charming characters. But the funny thing is that her books make me try to picture her, the writer, the voice behind her characters. I try to imagine which of her flaws, which of her strengths she gives to each of her characters.

Only down side for me on this book was some slowness of the plot development, some lack of action that created the need for me to read other books in the meantime. Regardless, I was happy to return and follow Ingeborg for a bit longer.

[GONZA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ma che bello questo libro, che sembra scritto dalla sorella caustica di Jane Austen e che prende tutta un'altra piega rispetto a quello che avrebbe dato lei ad una storia d'amore. Mi sarebbe piaciuto conoscerla questa scrittrice considerata la donna piú intelligente della sua generazione, perché se ce ne fossero statte di piú come lei, forse il nostro futuro sarebbe stato diverso. Ora invece, mi devo accontentare di rimediare tutti i suoi libri in giro e scriverne un'apologia postuma....

[Iris · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is mordantly funny though with a significant edge of depression and discouragement. About a young woman who accidently trades in her overbearing clergyman father for an overbearing clergyman husband, when all she was really trying to do was taste a little freedom and get some dental work done.

[Chamindra Warusawitharane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the author's power of observation and the way she revealed emotions. The tone was wry yet beautiful. She has a way with descriptions that I find appealing.