CURATES WIFE

Jenny Wren #2

by Emily Hilda Young

"Life would be a much simpler matter with her will, her thoughts and her footsteps following Cecil's, but how very dull this docility would be, how bad for both of them!"

Dahlia Rendall has moved not many yards from her family home, Beulah Mount in Upper Radstowe. While her sister Jenny sojourns in the English countryside, the lovely unconventional Dahlia launches forth on what appears to be the most conventional of marriages - to a curate, the Rev. Cecil Sproat. As Cecil struggles with his sermons, Dahlia battles with domesticity, her naturally irreverent wit, and her weakness for handsome young men. And Dahlia's vision of marital perfection is at odds with Cecil's. But she has intelligence, determination, and a sense of humor -- all useful weapons in the age-old battle of the sexes called marriage.

Genres: Fiction, British Literature, Classics, Novels

350 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1934

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

“She cried without tears while she undressed. She found the loneliness of trouble in marriage greater than its joy when all went well, for happiness need not be concealed. The success of marriage calls for proclamation, its failure must not be acknowledged and now she could not creep into Jenny’s bed, as she wished to do, and warm herself and find comfort in a love that needed no explanation.”
This is a sequel to E H Young’s earlier novel Jenny Wren, about two sisters Jenny and Dahlia. This one focuses on Dahlia Rendall who has just married the curate Cecil Sproat. There follows an analysis of a marriage and of two people who don’t know each other that well attempting to live together. There is also a comparison with another marriage: Rev Doubleday and his wife. It’s really a study of character. The only really happy couple Louisa and her new husband Mr Grimshaw (Jenny and Dahlia’s mother), who is, of course, from the wrong side of the tracks. As is often the case there is very little plot and not a great deal happens. Young is pretty good at characterisation and all of the characters have depth.
As usual with Young the novel is set in Bristol (renamed Radstowe) and this one is in Upper Radstowe (Clifton). The Church in the novel can be identified as Christchurch Clifton. One of the points Young is clearly making is that the main female characters are clearly all intelligent and all completely frustrated with no real role in life. It’s all about the repression of talent and lack of purpose.
There’s one example of rather lazy racism and the whole does feel like a bit of middle class navel gazing, but it is of interest.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of the first 4 months of a marriage, when you're just finding out what it means. There are all sorts of expectations and because of that, misunderstandings. Little things that can get out of hand and cause angry words and tears. Cecil Stoat is a serious young curate, full of the need to do good and act correctly, and Dahlia is a fun-loving non-believer, ready with a sarcastic quip for any occasion. Yes, they love each other, but coupled with small town morals and the arrival of Dahlia's younger sister Jenny, things go from bad to worse. The Vicar's wife, Mrs Doubleday, is hated by everyone in Upper Radstowe, but wields enormous power, and their unhappy long marriage is contrasted with the Stoats much shorter one. Then their son Reginald arrives for a 3 month stay. Now things get really interesting!

Two quotes that explain why I love the character of Dahlia, and, by extension, E.H. Young:

"Talking about the people you know is always despised as gossip, but if you talk about the masses of them you've never seen, and hope you never will, you're supposed to be doing some good."

"I like what you would call common people. They are so much warmer-hearted. I know they don't behave as though the world belongs to them but, secretly, the ones who do are terribly afraid of losing it. That's why they are so particular about their acquaintances. They don't feel as safe as they look."

I'll finish by using a couple of words that I love, but don't get much chance to use. Mrs. Doubleday, the old harridan, gets her comeuppance in the end.

[Lori Keeton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sequel to Jenny Wren centered around Dahlia and Cecil Sproat and was a novel of the beginning of their marriage. Dahlia’s decision to marry the older curate was one of safety – Cecil was a safe choice – and not one made out of love. Cecil was a very serious-minded curate mindful of doing right and keeping peace in the community. Dahlia is very independent and free-spirited who doesn’t care to speak her mind.

A new marriage is never easy at the beginning and we are witness to the struggle these two have trying to wade through the expectations on so many levels. How does a newlywed couple learn to love each other? What if one of the two cannot be the person the other wants them to be or to behave? How can two people so completely opposite (one a believer and the other a non-believer) manage to find common ground and make a marriage successful?

She would do her best, but again, she wished he were that greengrocer, going early to market, coming back with things which were definite in their value and giving people what they wanted instead of what he thought they ought to have.

The Vicar and his wife, Mrs. Doubleday, demonstrate how a lengthy marriage doesn’t necessarily mean there is love there. Mrs. Doubleday is a power-hungry woman and quite selfish. The Vicar is good-natured and kind-hearted living with a woman who is not liked (which is a huge understatement) in the community. What seems a neat and tidy marriage on the surface begins to emit the cracks in the relationship and the jealousies that form over time.


So much of the conversations and thoughts are of the disharmony experienced by Cecil and Dahlia. They annoy and hurt each other over and over yet haven’t figured out how to turn that into something loving or at least heading that direction. These two need to get to know one another and learn how to manage each other’s idiosyncrasies. I wanted something more for them, something definable that would mark the true beginning of a loving marriage rather than one so besotted with angst and weariness. Young leaves the ending ambiguous yet on a hopeful note.

My thanks to my buddy reader, Megan, who adds such remarkable thoughts and makes reading together so much more joyful!

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a feeling that it was important for me to read this soon after Jenny Wren because I felt unsatisfied with parts of that novel. I am so glad I picked up The Curate's Wife right away because it does bring a completeness to the full arch of the characters that I found satisfying. I was scared to read it though because I longed for Cecil and Dahlia to be happy. I would love to hear what others think about the ending because it is ambiguous, though I contend that it is ambiguous on the hopeful side.

I think the main question of the novel boils down to this: Does marriage--two very different individuals becoming one--really work? From that one question springs many other questions depending on which character is under the microscope.

We have two main couples in the story who act as foils for each other. Mr. and Mrs. Doubleday have been married more than 30 years. Mr. Doubleday is the vicar; Cecil Sproat is his curate. The Doubledays have a son Reginald who has been in Africa in some kind of business role, but he's coming home to recuperate from malaria. At the beginning of the book, there seems nothing amiss with the Doubledays' marriage. But the closer we look, the more cracks appear and the cracks appear to be mostly with Mrs. Doubleday whom no one seems to like. Certainly Dahlia knows immediately that Mrs. Doubleday is going to be a problem. She is autocratic and certain of her own methods of helping in the parish. She is a snob. (Or as Jane Austen puts it so wonderfully: 'She has prejudices on the side of ancestry.') She thinks her husband is a fool and has been compensating for her perception of his foolishness for years. She is also jealous of Reginald's affection and thinks of herself as a model mother.

The Sproats are just returned from their honeymoon as the main action opens and they're moving into their own house. The Sproats are on an uneven footing in their marriage from the start. Cecil loves Dahlia. Dahlia likes and feels safe with Cecil. Cecil is passionate about his calling to the church. Dahlia was raised as a rather indifferent agnostic. There are so many ways this marriage could crash and burn. The progression of Cecil and Dahlia's marital dance is beautifully written. It feels so real. They misapprehend each other and fail to ask the right questions or make the right move. They have moments of brilliant connection that sustain them and moments where they painfully fail to connect. They have to contend with the other person's differing priorities and, most difficult, the other person’s full personhood.

Halfway through the novel, Dahlia’s sister Jenny comes to live with the Sproats because she has nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. I felt relief to see her (and I didn't like her in the first book!) because finally there is someone who speaks Dahlia's language. They can communicate without words or with half sentences. Cecil and Dahlia both notice the difference between Dahlia's interactions with Jenny and her interactions with Cecil. There's a freedom of interaction when you love someone unconditionally, an assurance that the other person wants to understand you. There is a key scene where Cecil tells his life story to Dahlia. (Why didn't this happen before marriage? Obviously a different time/place and expectations around marriage. Strange to a modern reader.) Dahlia wants to feel angry with Cecil for their accumulated conflict but the power of this simple give and take and the trust it builds between them draws her in.

I think Young's exploration of the mismatched desire between Cecil and Dahlia is fascinating. Dahlia has inherited her mother's beauty, and Cecil desires her early on and ignores the obviously more 'suitable' Miss Morrison. (Side note: When does suitability become unsuitability and unsuitability become suitability? This is another question in the novel that I find fascinating.)

After they're married, Dahlia's beauty continues to delight and attract him and he has to come to terms with desire having a good and proper place in his marriage. As a curate, he has been dutiful almost to an extreme and suspicious of desire. I love that Cecil's desire for Dahlia actually makes him a lovable character, both to the reader and to those in his parish. It makes him vulnerable, shakes up some of his engrained ideas, and opens him up to a broader experience of being human.

Cecil notes in the middle of the novel that he has married the right woman. Cecil is sober to Dahlia's bright joy. Cecil is slow to see a joke; Dahlia almost can't not joke. He recognizes that he needs her brightness and her humor and her backbone. But he worries that she has married the wrong man. He's older (maybe 10 years or so older), a curate, serious-minded, and he knows he is plain. Has Dahlia married the wrong man? Does their differing desire for each other matter? Should it matter?

I could go on and on, but I'm running out of steam at the moment. This is a novel rich in ideas that are embodied in its characters. Dahlia even says "I think I could like her" about Mrs. Doubleday so there is a lot even in the most unlikable character to wrestle with and (oddly!) enjoy. Even Jenny became likable for me in this second half of the story. She has some interesting character development and storyline of her own. I didn't expect Mr. and Mrs. Doubleday to be such important characters, but they really worked in the narrative, both on their own and in relation to the Sproats. There are some scenes towards the end that were just superb regarding the Doubledays and their inwardly troubled and outwardly placid marriage and parenthood. There’s a whole bit involving Jane Austen that is priceless!

I do think E.H. Young's writing is perhaps the most like George Eliot's of all the 20th century authors I've read. I'm not quite sure how to sum it up; it's more a feeling. But there's full-blooded humanity to their characters and a richness in their method of storytelling that demands a lot of the reader and yet is satisfying. You can really sink in your teeth.

[Mela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Things had to be judged in the whole, not in part, and the whole was mainly good.

A fascinating, observant, deep study of marriage.

This watching closely two marriages for a few months, one new and one thirty years after the wedding was a priceless glimpse. No drama happened, yet those two couples went a long way to be where they were at the end of the book.

I think this novel could be used in the author's time as a couple therapy, self-help, personal development book.

The characters were complex, and I totally believe in their changes.

The ending was simply marvelous, although it was opened. A reader can't know for sure how Dahlia's and Jenny's marriages would look later. But it is just so - we never know.

[Carla · Rating 5 out of 5]

The sequel to JENNY WREN, and a stunner of a novel. The story picks up where the former had ended, as the alluring Dahlia marries a shy, intelligent curate whom she does not love, but respects. The novel takes this couple through the first months of their marriage, as they take the measure of one another. What's wonderful here is the balance of the feminine and masculine viewpoints, and a courtship that's different from any other I've ever read.

[Annette · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book. First published in 1935, THE CURATES WIFE, is an interesting treatise on marriage during that time. Well worth the read today.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Curate’s Wife is the sequel to Jenny Wren. The Curate’s Wife focuses on Jenny’s sister Dahlia and on her new husband Cecil after who she married knowing him for a short period of time. Cecil is madly in love with his new wife, while Dahlia is more unsure. The book contrasts their marriage with the marriage of the rector, Mr. Doubleday, as well as with Jenny’s various love affairs. It is an interesting book because it takes a hard look at what marriage is, and how two people who don’t really know each other can build a life together. In that way the book seems a little old fashioned. I wondered why Dahlia, who clearly did not love her husband (though she liked him quite a bit), agreed to marry him. Later, when she realizes that she may have made a mistake, it is heartbreaking to think of a young woman giving up so easily – a fact Dahlia herself realizes. On pg. 133 of the Virago edition:

“She was too young to be content with safety, after all. It had been the chief thing she wanted, and it was not enough. . . . She would be quite safe, she seemed doomed to be safe.” Sad – and a little alien. What twenty-year old girl today is looking for safety – and marries someone she has known for eight months to get it?

And yet, if you think on it broader the book does offer something for a modern reader. Many people get married, even today, without really knowing the other person – desiring security or being afraid of being single, or what have you. And many people end up like the Doubledays, hating each other after thirty years of marriage, because they never took the time to communicate. Even though the circumstances of Dahlia’s story are a little remote, the book itself wisely tackles questions of what makes a good marriage and how to work through the strangeness and really understand each other. I quite enjoyed it.

[Mbuye · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘The Curate's Wife' (1934) is a follow-on to the coming-of-age novel about the two Rendall sisters, featured in ‘Jenny Wren.' While the earlier book was about adolescent love and angst, and had brilliant portraits of the women featured there, the second book is about the adjustments needed to make any marriage a successful one.

The two marriages here are those of the kindly, stammering vicar and his domineering, unpleasant, and not to put too fine a point on it, unChristian wife, the Doubledays, and the curate, Mr Sproat and his new-minted wife, Dahlia Rendall Sproat.

The vicar has lost confidence in himself, and is under the sway of Mrs Doubleday, who has disliked the curate, despite the fact that he has taken to parish work quite as enthusiastically as herself.

When Mr Sproat marries Dahlia, her disapproval is so pronounced that Sproat is quick to defend his wife and insist that she be treated with respect. When, in her intemperate complaints to the vicar, she adds insults to clearly unreasonable demands, she loses at once her ascendancy over her husband and the possessiveness she has for her son. Her son admits that he had been engaged to Dahlia’s sister for over a week, the final blow to her supremacy.

She is a totally cowed woman by the end of the novel, and will regain her dignity only if the courtesy her husband accords her continues.

Mr Sproat is a kindly man, madly in love with Dahlia, but deeply committed to the Church’s teachings. For him, therefore, it is something of a shock that his nonConformist wife has never been to church in her life, and tells Sproat that a less abstract profession, some kind of trade, or a shop, would have made them more compatible than sermonising without compassion for people's sorrows and burdens. Her own natural exuberance makes her interested and concerned about people, regardless of their rank or economic status. Her friendliness and sympathy go out to people whom Sproat regards as morally corrupt. They may be so; but when they are in trouble, their instinct is to turn to Dahlia, and not the curate. Such external influences exacerbate the misunderstandings common to newly married couples. The fun-loving Dahlia longs for more cheerful company – and finds it.

For the younger couple, there is a chance of starting again when both realise that marriage calls for compromise, and understanding each other's anxieties together grows into love, and ‘being in love’ and getting married is not itself a guarantee of happiness.

This was a livelier novel than its predecessor, since we see the perceptible growth and development of personality in all the characters. Although the brilliant portraits and caricatures of ‘Jenny Wren' are missing, there is a greater depth in the psychological analysis of her people. The vicar, until now seen only as incompetent, almost as a buffoon, here is seen as a man of sweetness, grace and dignity; the horrendous Mrs Doubleday finally learns the limits to which she can browbeat and humiliate people; Jenny recognises her own faults of selfishness and vanity. Dahlia, tempted almost to rebellion against her husband, comes slowly to understand his real strength and the power of his love for her.

The best part was Mrs Grimshaw, the girls’ mother, who has married a local yeoman farmer, and who is very happy in her second marriage,working together with her husband on the farm, her eggs and butter much sought after.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Curate’s Wife, takes up more or less where Jenny Wren left off – only the focus shifts from the character of Jenny Rendall to her sister Dahlia. In the previous novel gently educated Jenny and her sister – the daughters of a gentleman who had married beneath him – struggled with aspects their new life in Upper Radstowe following their father’s death. Their mother – who everybody acknowledges to be their social inferior starts a boarding house – next door to a nasty, vicious old gossip, and openly conducts a relationship with a farmer. Jenny particularly feels the social difference between herself and her mother – which leads to trouble in her own romantic life.

Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2016/...

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the internal narrative of the characters slightly wearing after a time and longed for her to get to the point. I think this book is dated but makes some interesting observations about the nature of marriage but ultimately I found it quite dull.

[Luann Ritsema · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yum.

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reviews sounded good for a strong female character, written by a female author, but I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe another time.

[JimZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gadzooks! Only 7 GR folks reviewed this book. Oh well...

This is the sequel to ‘Jenny Wren’. I would recommend if you are going to read this novel that you read ‘Jenny Wren” first to more fully appreciate what E.H. Young is talking about in this novel. It can be read as a stand-alone novel, but I was able to get a full appreciation of the “back story” behind some of these characters because it was in the previous novel.

That said, I wonder what compelled her to write this novel. There were loose ends to tie up at the end of ‘Jenny Wren’ but there invariably there are in most good novels. So at the end of that novel, it appears Dahlia (20 at the beginning of the novel and 21 at its end) is going to get married to the curate, Mr. Sproat...who is at least 10 years older than she is. She does not love him but rather likes him, and hope love will grow after the marriage. Hmm... I guess there are worse reasons to get married. 🤨

A major part of the novel is the reader being aware that Dahlia is often annoyed by Cecil Sproat, and that Cecil Sproat is often annoyed and hurt by Dahlia. He is hurt and annoyed because he realizes he loves her more than she loves him.

Then there is Jenny, Dahlia’s younger sister (18 years old), who was in love with a squire in the previous eponymous novel....and that fell apart. In this sequel, Jenny eventually meets a son of the vicar who Mr. Sproat (the curate) works under, Mr. Doubleday. Mr. Doubleday the vicar is a genial fellow who is married to a super-bitch, Nora Doubleday. She is the nemesis of this novel, and E.H. Young does not give the reader any reason to like her. She is controlling over her husband and her son and pretty much whoever she meets.

I gave Jenny Wren 3.5 stars, but I could only give this novel 2.5 stars. It was too long (340 pages) for the story line. E.H. Young provided little evidence in the novel for why Jenny should want to marry Mr. and Mrs. Doubleday’s son, Reginald. And I thought Dahlia was somewhat mean to Mr. Sproat at times...Dahlia makes fun of him during half of the novel and oftentimes thinks ill of him, and has fantasies of dancing and getting kissed by some doofus she meets (Mr. Tothill), which makes me wonder why the hell she married Mr. Sproat in the first place. But I guess that is part of the point of the novel – that perhaps she was hasty in marrying him. The story ends with Mr. Sproat getting Dahlia a new wedding ring that is nicer than the plain one she was currently wearing, and which she threw on the floor at one point in the novel, so I guess we’re led to believe there is hope for their marriage. 🤨 😐

Review:
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2016/...
• https://layreadersbookreviews.wordpre...

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Curate’s Wife (1934) by E.H. Young is the story about newlyweds, Dahlia and Cecil Sproat. They are an odd couple. She is innocently outspoken, and he’s reserved and diplomatic, he’s a curate, and she’s a nonbeliever, she’s local and he’s not, her origins are humble and his are higher. The Sproats are struggling to get to know one another and trying to balance their individual desires and expectations with their partner’s. The Vicar and his wife are another couple of interest: the mild, conciliatory Norman Doubleday and the controlling, spiteful Flora Doubleday. The long married Doubledays aren’t happy together, but they have coexisted in a kind of symbiotic relationship for years with Flora having had the upper hand. It’s an ambitious story that does a good job of describing the difficult road of marriage, its intimacy and isolation, its expectations and realities, our self-involved and limited perspectives, the inequalities in the roles and opportunities of the sexes, and classism. I also enjoyed the occasional interesting observations about life, see a few examples below. There is much greater interiority than event, so some may find it slow paced and desultory at times, but the author knows what she is doing, and the story eventually comes into beautiful focus. I’ve only read two other novels by E. H. Young, but I have enjoyed her insights and outspokenness on issues affecting women’s lives in each of them.

Excerpts:

“She thought of her own mother, uneducated and inarticulate, outside the social and moral world of Mrs. Doubleday but incapable of meanness, tolerant, possessed unknowingly of a wisdom derived from the country in which all her days have been spent, where she had seen the seasons come and go, the crops spring up and fall under the reaper, bareness where once there had been woodland and fertility overcoming waste, while the rocks and the shape of the land, the wind and the rain remained the same. It was a training to reduce the sense of personal importance, to show that death for one might be life for another, and she has been willing to sacrifice herself for Jenny. She had not given her action so grand a name, she had not seen, perhaps hardly felt, it was a sacrifice; it was the natural thing to do and she had done it in that spirit.”

“ ‘The difficulty is being young and kind too. When you get to our age if you’re not kind hearted you might as well be dead. I’m going to start myself, in a few years’ time. Yes, I shall fall back on being very kind-hearted before long,’ she said, and with a farewell that sounded weirdly jaunty to Mrs. Doubleday’s already astonished ears…”😁

[Darla Ebert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surprise of an excellent read. Each page is delicious. I think the time period is the most compelling as authors were not reduced and seduced into writing graphically about couples and their love lives. This story shines for its discretion and at the same time the author uses a virtually unknown method of delving into the minds and personalities of the characters. I was perpetually and happily bemused and amused.

[sosser · Rating 3 out of 5]

early feminist writing wrapped up in a melodrama set in a sleepy british village.

[Judith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book. The characters rang true, likewise the relationships between them. I will definitely be reading more books by E.H.Young.

[Agnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Her writing is lovely, there's so many female characters, and I love the examination of marriage from so many perspectives
but, I didn't love this as much as the first in the set.