The War-Workers / Consequences

by E.M. Delafield

This carefully crafted ebook: "The War-Workers & Consequences (Two Unabridged Novels)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents.
"The War-Workers" (1918) - The travails of working in a Supply Depot under the tyrannical control of Charmain Vivian, who meets her match in a newly arrived clergyman's daughter Grace Jones.
"Consequences" (1919) - A young woman entering a convent. Its heroine, Alex Clare, refuses to marry the only young man to make her an offer of marriage, and, finding herself regarded as a failure by society, must resort to convent life.
E. M. Delafield (1890-1943) was a prolific English author who is best known for her largely autobiographical works like Zella Sees Herself, The Provincial Lady Series etc. which look at the lives of upper-middle class Englishwomen.

200 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.