Consequences / The War Workers

by E.M. Delafield

This volume contains two of the greatest novels written by E.M.Delafield, better known for her delightful and witty "Provincial Lady" books. The books are:
- CONSEQUENCES
- THE WAR WORKERS

Consequences was a deeply-felt novel she wrote about the plight of girls given no opportunities apart from marriage. Alex Clare is awkward and oversensitive and gets everything wrong; she refuses to marry the only young man who ‘offers’ and believes there is nothing left for her but to enter a convent. But that is not quite the end of her tragic story... Delafield was in a convent herself, which allowed her to describe the hell young girls would live in the convents from a 100 years ago.

The second book, The War Workers is the story of a group of women working in the Midland Supply Depot during WWI. The Depot is run by Vivian, an upper class young woman in her 30's who finds it impossible to delegate the smallest task & runs the Depot on a mixture of resigned martyrdom & the hero worship she receives from her staff...

683 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 3, 2014

About the author

Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood, née de la Pasture (9 June 1890 – 2 December 1943), commonly known as E. M. Delafield, was a prolific English author who is best-known for her largely autobiographical Diary of a Provincial Lady, which took the form of a journal of the life of an upper-middle class Englishwoman living mostly in a Devon village of the 1930s, and its sequels in which the Provincial Lady buys a flat in London and travels to America. Other sequels of note are her experiences looking for war-work during the Phoney War in 1939, and her experiences as a tourist in the Soviet Union.

Daughter of the novelist Mrs. Henry De La Pasture.

Reviews

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read these two books among several others by women writing about late Victorian - early Edwardian times and the changing role of women, particularly with the advent of WW I. Delafield was one of those authors. I think her books are pretty interesting in that context , though in these two works in particular the main characters are not very sympathetic people. They are strikingly different women - the first a neurotic young woman whose tragedy is being unable to make a single honest human connection while desperately desiring it. Her hyper-conventional upbringing leaves her unable to cope with real life and real human beings. The second features a young woman who gets drunk on the wielding of petty personal power as the "director" of some war work operations in a suburban town and ends up alienating both family and coworkers. Delafield creates some vivid and interesting characters and she explores how women can support or sabotage each other in a variety of ways, both subtle and overt. For Delafield, a woman can overwhelmed by her circumstances or she can attempt to exert control over them, but there are no easy answers.