Miss Peabody's Inheritance

by Elizabeth Jolley

A lonely, middle-aged Englishwoman, bound to her bedridden mother and her clerical job, becomes enthralled by her correspondence with Australian novelist Diana Hopewell and by the novel that Diana is writing in her letters

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Literature, Classics, Novels, Literary Fiction, British Literature

157 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Monica Elizabeth Jolley was an award-winning writer who settled in Western Australia in the late 1950s. She was 53 years old when her first book was published, and she went on to publish fifteen novels (including an autobiographical trilogy), four short story collections, and three non-fiction books, publishing well into her 70s and achieving significant critical acclaim. She was also a pioneer of creative writing teaching in Australia, counting many well known writers such as Tim Winton among her students. Her novels explore alienated characters and the nature of loneliness and entrapment.

Honours:
1987: Western Australian Citizen of the Year
1988: Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to literature
1989: Canada/Australia Literary Award
1997: Australian Living Treasure

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I see I started this short novel - 163 pages - in March, and finished it today. I put it down when I reached page 65 or thereabouts. It's more or less the climax of the book - a disturbing, perhaps shocking for some, scene, between Miss Thorne, headmistress of Pine Heights, a boarding school in Australia, and Gwenda, schoolgirl of 16. I put the book down there, and yes, I have to admit, appalled! I put the book down for 4 months - no less!

I re-read the middle section, and this time, for some reason I heard the voice of the writer; I heard her speaking to me, her cadence, her way of breaking off and introducing the other voices; and how the framing story between the novelist, Diana and our Miss Peabody in London, complements the story of the boarding school ladies on holiday in Vienna, and then London.

On my second reading I understood the powerful needs being expressed between Gwenda and Miss Thorne. I'm used to reading books where I have to apply my intellect, but the unique quality of Elizabeth Jolley's writing is that you are required to apply intellect and emotion equally. You have to step into the skin of those characters - it's not enough to just think it through, you have to feel yourself into their lives and feelings also. Most readers here will say, but we always do that, it's why we enjoy our fiction. This is fiction but it explores those uncomfortable feelings, those shady areas - those ick moments; feelings of repulsion or disgust or horror even; and then you are led quietly down the reality of how Miss Thorne thinks and feels - all of her thoughts and feelings and you sympathise and love her sorrow and her restraint and her regrets and most of all her self-awareness.

I've always liked Elizabeth Jolley's novels, and so I knew I would return to this. Jolley provides us with an explanation of the strange relationship via advice given to Miss Peabody from her correspondent, the novelist, Diana:

Very sorry about your ma's death. It comes to us all - our own death that is, Diana's letter came so quickly, Miss Peabody realised she must have replied as soon as hers was received. You will notice, the novelist went straight on with other matters, you will notice that I am writing the story of Miss Thorne in the present tense. This makes it all very immediate. There are bound to be some people who will dislike this. One man's meat is another man's poison or some such stupid remark comes to my mind, you will know what I mean. If you feel disturbed and strange this is all perfectly natural. It is disturbing to explore the breast of a sixty year old woman in relation to a girl of sixteen. If you feel emotionally involved that is natural too. The writing is packed, it is dense writing, emotions on several levels packed in. It is, I hope a novel of existence and feeling. A reader can be as involved as he wishes and some readers will fight off this involvement. Don't worry. Read on.

Jolley reminds me quite a bit of Margaret Laurence - Hagrid Shipley comes to mind from The Stone Angel. And you also have to wonder if Jolley is smirking at us a little - that sentence "The writing is packed, it is dense writing, emotions on several levels packed in." I know from my previous reading of Jolley that she likes her writing to be light, with plenty of humour - so I would guess she is asking us not to be so serious about everything - including love and passion and illicit feelings such as jealousy and spite and revenge and greed. She has it all packed in, in various forms.

[Justin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than a few reviews of this delightful novel deduct points because the characters are mostly lesbians. To which I can only shake my head in bafflement. Who are these people?

Anyway, this is a wonderful comic novel wrapped up in a meta-fictional frame that adds just enough to justify itself. First, the comic novel: Miss Arabella Thorne (note the hyper-Trollopian name) runs a boarding school in Australia, falls for her students, takes one to Europe, is generally unpleasant to her jealous life-partner, then gets taught a lesson in jealousy herself. It's wonderful, it's funny, it's moderately thought provoking. It's Oscar Wilde.

The meta-narrative features the Australian novelist writing the above book in letters to a fan in England. The novelist (fairly obviously Thorne) is not so subtely seducing her reader (somewhat like the student, somewhat like the life-partner) from afar. Literary critics, here is your mud; go to it like pigs, but beware the ending.

There's even a joke about writing in the present tense, something I've previously complained about in Jolley's work. Touche, Liz, touche.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good, and worth tracking down. Interestingly structured and full of good stuff about loneliness and queer desire.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read Miss Peabody’s Inheritance by Elizabeth Jolley (1923-2007) back in 1990, long before I kept a reading journal much less a litblog, so I have no record of my impressions then, only vague, fond memories of enjoying it, as I enjoyed all her novels. It’s a pity, because it would be interesting to track back what I thought of the postmodern flourishes in Miss Peabody’s Inheritance, back then, when I had never heard of meta-fiction. (If the list at Wikipedia is anything to go by, I had read a few examples of it, but not recognised it for what it was, having completed my degree in The Good Old Days).

Miss Peabody’s Inheritance is a story about a writer creating a story. The first lines begin with the enigmatic declaration that ‘the nights belonged to the novelist’ but the novelist’s character sketch for the headmistress Dr Arabella Thorne quickly segues into what seems like an ordinary novel, five pages broken only by the novelist’s promise to tell us more about one of the girls later. It’s easy to miss this brief insertion as the reader plunges into the novel, intrigued already by the eccentricity of this headmistress who invites a new parent to the bra-burning ceremony at her exclusive Pine Heights Boarding School that evening. But that’s not all that’s unusual about Miss Thorne …

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2013/08/06/mi...

[Stefani Akins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a relatively small book of only 157 pages, and as it is written in a lively manner and with a good dose of humour, it was a fast read. Most people today would, however, not consider an adult taking erotic interest in a schoolgirl "gently" anything but rather in the category of child abuse. Besides that, I'm afraid I have to subtract points for laziness in the category of German place names and the proper treatment of such; an unforgivable faux-pas when the geography is so well researched.

[Don · Rating 2 out of 5]

I choose this letter after finding it on the epistolary list on the Seattle Public Library. Thought it would be interesting having been written by an Aussie author back in the early 1980's. It was a slow start and I gave up after 40 some pages. The writing is odd and seemed it was turning into a bit of oddly romantic love story between a woman author and a spinster...just not interested.

[Barb Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caring for her bedridden mother and tied to her boring clerical job, Dorothy Peabody has few pleasures or friends. Through correspodence she befriends an author of novels from Australia. The authors letters include the progessive writtings of a newly developing novel.
When Dorothys mother passes away unexpectedly...she decices to take a holiday to Australia and look up her friend. When Dorothy gets there she finds the author has also just passed away and had been living in a hospital/convelesent home. She then realizes she has received and inhertiance of a new novel through the correspondence she has received. She only had to put a title to the work.

[Troy Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very clever

[Natalia · Rating 1 out of 5]

To me, it's a charmless book. I read it for the 3rd time yesterday evening, making sure I want to get rid of my copy.
I understand how the structure, with its interplay of narrative voices, is functioning, I recognize the contexts, I get the allusions, the jokes, but, somehow, it just doesn't spring to life, doesn't get airborn for me. A boring book about boring people. Where is the spark? Suspense? A something, of any sort?
May be, it's the book, not me? I surely shouldn't tackle it for the fourth time.
The nicest article I found on it yesterday was by Delys Bird in Australian Book Review, one shoul probably begin by reading first and only then turn to "Miss Peabody's..." proper, clutchung to markers and lila ink pens in one's fist, as one goes.
I wish I could remember, who recommended it to me, and in what context. A story similar to that of Barbara Pym's novelS, and with similar results too.
Is this novel representative of Jolley's fiction? Should I try another novel of hers, and if yes, which one?

[UQP Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Wickedly satirical.’ West Australian

[Stefanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, You must to suspend disbelief, then you can enjoy a rip roaring tale that Miss Peabody encourages to unfold after she begins her correspondence with the author of a book she enjoyed that “brought something exciting into her life” Well. she asked for and we all got, details of a new story that develops about the headmistress of a Boarding School and her friendships and sexual dalliances. Miss Peabody grows into her role as a faithful correspondent rather than shying away from it and it allows her to experiment with her own social and family connections while she analyzes her upbringing and her role as caregiver for her aging mother.
In the end, she is not much more worldly, but certainly in a position to have the last word!

[Arancha Ch. Gonzalez · Rating 1 out of 5]

Es una novela dentro de otra. Una señora mayor cuidando de su madre enferma cuyo único incentivo en su vida es recibir las cartas que una amiga novelista le envía desde Australia con una novela que está escribiendo sobre la amistad entre las profesoras mayores y propietarias de un colegio de señoritas muy progre. Se cuenta con toda claridad las relaciones de tipo lésbico y las atracciones del mismo sexo entre los personajes.
Particularmente no me ha gustado el estilo narrativo usado por la autora y tampoco le he visto sentido a la historia que no tenia ni pies ni cabeza.

[Markflund · Rating 4 out of 5]

This epistolary novel, filled with unusual characters, depicts the relationship of reader to text and writer. The lonely Miss Peabody, an office worker in London, receives letters from the Australian novelist Diana Hopewell telling the of school teachers and two students as they tour Europe. The plot moves between the fictional characters and the lonely reader who has some escape through fiction from her rather pathetic life. I found the twist at the end of the novel clever and satisfying.

[Noah Melser · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lonely woman who looks after her mother and a story within the letters she receives from a writer she greatly admires. Nice parallels and Jolley has strong control of the pacing and the writing in the way she brings you into the narratives and interweaves literary and musical references. Just perhaps the lonely dry lives of the characters felt a little intentional and hitting on familiar arcs.

[Journey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miss Peabody's Inheritance has great action, dandy issues and characters.

[(Mark) EchoWolf · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately, one of the most uninteresting novels I've ever read.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Caring for her demanding, bedridden mother and confined to a dreary clerical job, Dorothy Peabody has few pleasures to sustain her until she begins a correspondence with the novelist Diana Hopewell. In this delightful story-within-a-story, the letters between a lonely, middle-aged Englishwoman and an Australian writer become a moving novel of love and the need to create. As the correspondence progresses, Miss Peabody becomes completely absorbed in the fictional travels of Hopewell's heroine, the headmistress Arabella Thorne, and her various students and companions. She discovers that the world of storytelling provides escape, but that the surprises of fiction are nothing compared to what real life has to offer."
~~ back cover

I think what turned me off of this book was the turn of both stories (the story, and the story-within-a-story) into lesbianism -- almost as if to say that no other form of love is available to women who lead sequestered lives. The admiration, friendship and attachment Miss Peabody came to feel for Diana Hopewell could have remained at that level, without beginning to explore anything further. Likewise, I found the basis for Miss Thorne's gallivantings around the Continent with a student and two women teachers in tow odd, and disturbing. Miss Thorne comes quite close to seducing the student, and the student is eager to be seduced -- being the stereotypical schoolgirl at a girl's boarding school, and thus prone to crushes on her teachers. I kept waiting for the shoe to drop -- for Miss Thorne and her particular friend to wind up in bed, and of course they do, only to be discovered by the schoolgirl, whose rosy picture of life is thus burst.

In my opinion, there were myriad other ways to explore the questions of love and the need to create, rather than the ways the author selected.

[Cindy Bellomy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Odd, yet kind of interesting. Not enough to make me want to read more by the author.

[Glenice]

Excellent book. It inspired me to write epistolary fiction

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I could give this 3.5 stars I would. I liked it even though the stories seemed a bit odd mostly because I think each of the main characters with the exception of Diana were well written. Each character was written well and the author did a nice job of capturing different varieties of the human spirit.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was very strange and funny and then again strange. A novel within a novel and oh, my, I laughed but often thought, "Are you kidding me." It wasn't the right book for me at this time, but I kept reading or skimming because I had read good things about it. Oh yes, the timing is all.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very enjoyable read. Amusing insights into the lives of strange and lonely characters. Jolley writes of the inner life, of dreams, longing and the final solution. The reader needs to concentrate to follow multiple story lines. Worth the effort.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

fun.

[Berthe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A peculiarly entertaining romp, which gives me cause to smirk in my otherwise nerve wracking encounters with school principals! These women are eye poppingly kinky.

[Randomerde · Rating 4 out of 5]

from one life into
another, out of another,
disguised as real lives.