Señora de circunstancias

by Louis Auchincloss

Nancy Chauncey tenía catorce años cuando su padre perdió toda su fortuna en el crash de Wall Street, en 1929. La familia se adaptó a la nueva situación, pero ella se volvió una mujer de inteligencia y de carácter, que se propuso recuperar su posición en la vida. A fuerza de astucia e imaginación, busca su fortuna en la fortuna de los demás. Señora de circunstancias, Natalia saca partido de las situaciones más improbables y se convierte, a pesar suyo, en una femme fatale inolvidable.

Louis Auchincloss ofrece en esta novela una rica pintura de las costumbres del mundo aristocrático norteamericano, que tan bien conoce, y traza el certero retrato de la ambición desmedida de una mujer.

Genres: Fiction

268 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Louis Stanton Auchincloss was an American novelist, historian, and essayist.

Among Auchincloss's best-known books are the multi-generational sagas The House of Five Talents, Portrait in Brownstone, and East Side Story. Other well-known novels include The Rector of Justin, the tale of a renowned headmaster of a school like Groton trying to deal with changing times, and The Embezzler, a look at white-collar crime. Auchincloss is known for his closely observed portraits of old New York and New England society.

Reviews

[Tree · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ve known about Louis Auchincloss for many years but this is the first book I’ve read by him. I think it’s just okay and nothing I’d recommend.

The main character, a young woman named Natica, desires a wealthy life and succeeds for a time by marrying into an incredibly rich family after multiple lies and manipulations. Only when it falls apart does she go to law school, paid for by her former mother-in-law, and then marries another lawyer who seems to be her intellectual equal although probably not a sociopath like her.

The author writes extensively of the ultra wealthy in the early 20th Century and the Byzantine rules they must follow, whether at boarding schools or in their marriages or within their families. This of course is the life Auchincloss knew well, and he is successful at depicting how brutal and claustrophobic that world was. However, the book and its characters are superficial. There’s nothing here to dig into.

I made it nearly to the end then gave up while reading Natica’s lawyerly take on why it’s so much better to be an educated Jew killed in the gas chambers than an uneducated Black person who lives a long life with a family. I mean, really? Why the hell anyone aside from a raging antisemite and racist would consider that acceptable writing is beyond me. And at that point I was well past the point of figuring out the predictable ending, and disliked Natica so much that I just didn’t care beyond a cursory glance how it all ended.
I think overall it was an unpleasant read.

[Jill Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every so often I like visiting the backlist of some of my favorite authors. Authors, like the late Louis Auchincloss, who have written quite a few books and now many of those books are appearing in e-form. His novel,"The Lady of Situations" originally published in the early 1990's, was priced at $1.99, so I devoted an afternoon to reading it. Anybody going into the Auchincloss oeuvre recognises right off that Auchincloss, like so many prolific writers, basically writes the same book over and over. Oh, the names may change, and the places may be different, but the characters that Auchincloss returns to every time remain the same. Wealthy Christians who feel secure in their customary surroundings, with their class being recognised and respected, even if at times, their wealth has gone south. Now, this is not a bad thing because Auchincloss knows what to do with his people.

This story is told in both the third and first person. The first person teller is an old school teacher, Ruth, who describes herself as an old spinster. But if the aunt is a spinster, the niece is not. Married three times - the first two unhappily - Natica Hill comes from an old money family which has lost coin due to bad investments. The Depression years have not been good for Natica; she's the poor relation invited to parties to even up the numbers and, horrors, has to go to public school! But penury gives Natica a goal in life and she's a smart gal, pretty, too. She marries her way back into the upper class she came from, while giving the neighbors and those luckier than her some things to gossip about.

Now, the reader may think badly of Natica, but she really is an interesting person. She knows when to seize opportunities and comes through life as a success. Perhaps more than her first two husbands, but they came across as weak and whingy and probably deserved their fates. Reading about Natica Hil and her aunt Ruth was fun, mostly due to Louis Auchincloss's impeccable writing. I'm already planning my return visit to the land of Louis Auchincloss.

[Rachel M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Natica Chauncey reminded me somewhat of Scarlett O'Hara, without the warmth. She walks into every situation with the ability to turn things around to her favor. But there was something about her, and about this book, that felt cold.

Auchincloss doesn't seem like a remarkably unique writer, but I think his writing perfectly reflects the climate of his generation. The more I read of writers from the 1920s-1940s, the more I sense this cool-blooded intellecutalism - a casual nod at societal traditions and class, and yet a smirking irreverence for them.

The characters seem cleverly drawn, but I often get the sense that they are observed from the mind and not from the heart. It seemed fashionable to write this way, then - I don't know why. The writers who did it well, are remembered today - Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, Nancy Mitford, etc... but from Auchincloss I found I didn't really care about Natica when the story was over. So she wanted to be a social climber - and by foul means accomplished her goals... and that was the story. Was there more? It was hard to identify with her, or find any gold in this story for my own life.

So, I guess what this revealed to me is that I get impatient with this kind of characterization. The best literary characters are drawn from both the head and heart - Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Carol Kennicott, Jean Valjean, etc. It seems like those two ways of seeing and knowing must intersect in order to create a believable, viable character, and a memorable story.

[Paddy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Auchincloss failed to convince me of his heroine's authenticity. His male characters in previous novels have been truer.

[Beverly Little · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice tale of changing social norms

Well written. Characters appealing. Easy read. Interesting that a female life that is successful in the contemporary mode is, in the end described as "monstrous".

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of Natica, an intelligent, pragmatic woman who is undaunted by how some of her choices turned out and ready with the next phase of her life with no looking back. Yet she retains woman friends from previous phases, possibly because they recognize Natica as a winner in life.

What I liked was that the author gave Natica the desire to apply her clever mind to something other than just supporting her husbands. I admit that Natica's first move to escape from her family and improve her lot in life put me in mind of Sister Carrie. That comparison didn't last long. Natica always retained a certain control of her life, and each setback merely got her closer to what she was truly capable of being. This is a woman who moves from a mere wife to the secretary of the autocratic headmaster of a boys school to the proprietor of a successful book store on Madison Avenue to a law clerk in a high powered law firm to wife, mother and partner in another large law firm with her third husband. So who says you can't have it all?

[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The language in this book kept making me think it was set in a time previous to the 1930's. The book was okay nothing special.