Constancy

by Phyllis Paul

254 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1951

About the author

Very little is known about Phyllis Paul and she is little-known today, although she received very positive reviews for her work at the time of publictaion. A subtle novelist, her work invokes an atmosphere of the supernatural and often allows for a supernatural interpretation.
Excerpt from tartaruspress.com

Here are her 11 known works:

1.We Are Spoiled, 1933
2, The Children Triumphant, 1934
3. Camilla, 1949
4. Constancy, 1951
5. The Lion of Cooling Bay, 1953
6. Rox Hall Illuminated, 1956
7. A Cage for the Nightingale, 1957
8. Twice Lost, 1960
9. A Little Treachery, 1962
10. Pulled Down, 1964 (Also published as Echo of Guilt, 1966)
11. An Invisible Darkness, 1967

Reviews

[Eggfir Traptoe]

The following is not a review but verbatim blurb from the dust jacket of the 1951 Heinemann first (only) edition of 'Constancy' by Phyllis Paul:

"This is a story of constancy and devotion; it is a story of that determination to sacrifice self which, feeding upon itself, grows from strength to strength until it dominates the mind in which it is implanted.
How youthful and fragile was Miss Paul's heroine when the fiancé whom she hardly even knew, and certainly did not love, broke down on his visit to her and was immured for long years in a mental home! Yet she, who was clearly on the point of ridding herself of him for a better match, suddenly decided to row in with his ineffectual family and assume responsibility for his welfare. Thus she sacrificed her best years to pay the expenses of this man to whom she owed nothing.
The years slipped by. In the dim outside world of reality, peace gave way to war, and war once more to peace; and "reconstruction" meant little to the burdened mind of the woman whose youth was now lost... until murder set her free.
To say that murder brings drama to this story would be ridiculous, because it is dramatic at every turn. Miss Paul's writing is inescapably dramatic. She has only to follow one of her characters the length of a poor street at night for the very shadows to be fraught with mystery and threat.
Yet this power of atmospherics is the most incidental of her gifts. It is her portraits of the inner life of her characters which finally obtrude in her pages. Take for instance that parallel case of constancy, the case of the young man of warped body and devious mind, whose picture brings more than a touch of humour to a novel rich in characterisation, and expressed in prose of truly fine quality."

[Ariadne Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Constancy is even more audaciously structured than Camilla by determinedly keeping its nominally central figures virtually off stage virtually all of the time. Henry James would have wept with envy. The oddest of openings introduces the reader to several figures: calling them characters would be almost too much. Paul is deeply concerned with psychology, but from an almost biblically-transcendent, infinite perspective, so she is not actually in the business of delineating character: rather, she abrogates character as a notion, for individual character in her world is incidental and a plaything for much more elemental forces. Her view of human nature is the bleakest one possible, and treachery, evil, victimhood, weakness, low passions and similar drivers of human behaviour are archetypal with her. These are not situational particulars, but immanent forces. To get back to the opening of the novel, we are introduced to three central figures whose subsequent fates, or actions, would be essential to the story. Two of those figures (the male ones) are then completely removed from view: one will remain present only through letters he sends (which are defiantly, almost insultingly tangential to everything else – but then again, the tangential is the essential with Paul), the other will sink into insanity and be committed to an asylum, and remain a colossal absence throughout. The early (inner) scene of encroaching madness is more terrifying and evocative than almost anything I could imagine from any other author.

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