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Summer Will Show
Sophia Willoughby, a young Englishwoman from an aristocratic family and a person of strong opinions and even stronger will, has packed her cheating husband off to Paris. He can have his tawdry mistress. She intends to devote herself to the serious business of raising her two children in proper Tory fashion.
Then tragedy the children die, and Sophia, in despair, finds her way to Paris, arriving just in time for the revolution of 1848. Before long she has formed the unlikeliest of close relations with Minna, her husband’s sometime mistress, whose dramatic recitations, based on her hair-raising childhood in czarist Russia, electrify audiences in drawing rooms and on the street alike. Minna, “magnanimous and unscrupulous, fickle, ardent, and interfering,” leads Sophia on a wild adventure through bohemian and revolutionary Paris, in a story that reaches an unforgettable conclusion amidst the bullets, bloodshed, and hope of the barricades.
Sylvia Townsend Warner was one of the most original and inventive of twentieth-century English novelists. At once an adventure story, a love story, and a novel of ideas, Summer Will Show is a brilliant reimagining of the possibilities of historical fiction.
Then tragedy the children die, and Sophia, in despair, finds her way to Paris, arriving just in time for the revolution of 1848. Before long she has formed the unlikeliest of close relations with Minna, her husband’s sometime mistress, whose dramatic recitations, based on her hair-raising childhood in czarist Russia, electrify audiences in drawing rooms and on the street alike. Minna, “magnanimous and unscrupulous, fickle, ardent, and interfering,” leads Sophia on a wild adventure through bohemian and revolutionary Paris, in a story that reaches an unforgettable conclusion amidst the bullets, bloodshed, and hope of the barricades.
Sylvia Townsend Warner was one of the most original and inventive of twentieth-century English novelists. At once an adventure story, a love story, and a novel of ideas, Summer Will Show is a brilliant reimagining of the possibilities of historical fiction.
329 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1936
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6983 people want to read
About the author
Sylvia Townsend Warner
94 books439 followersSylvia Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, the only child of George Townsend Warner and his wife Eleanora (Nora) Hudleston. Her father was a house-master at Harrow School and was, for many years, associated with the prestigious Harrow History Prize which was renamed the Townsend Warner History Prize in his honor, after his death in 1916. As a child, Sylvia seemingly enjoyed an idyllic childhood in rural Devonshire, but was strongly affected by her father's death.
She moved to London and worked in a munitions factory at the outbreak of World War I. She was friendly with a number of the "Bright Young Things" of the 1920s. Her first major success was the novel Lolly Willowes. In 1923 Warner met T. F. Powys whose writing influenced her own and whose work she in turn encouraged. It was at T.F. Powys' house in 1930 that Warner first met Valentine Ackland, a young poet. The two women fell in love and settled at Frome Vauchurch in Dorset. Alarmed by the growing threat of fascism, they were active in the Communist Party of Great Britain, and visited Spain on behalf of the Red Cross during the Civil War. They lived together from 1930 until Ackland's death in 1969. Warner's political engagement continued for the rest of her life, even after her disillusionment with communism. She died on 1 May 1978.
She moved to London and worked in a munitions factory at the outbreak of World War I. She was friendly with a number of the "Bright Young Things" of the 1920s. Her first major success was the novel Lolly Willowes. In 1923 Warner met T. F. Powys whose writing influenced her own and whose work she in turn encouraged. It was at T.F. Powys' house in 1930 that Warner first met Valentine Ackland, a young poet. The two women fell in love and settled at Frome Vauchurch in Dorset. Alarmed by the growing threat of fascism, they were active in the Communist Party of Great Britain, and visited Spain on behalf of the Red Cross during the Civil War. They lived together from 1930 until Ackland's death in 1969. Warner's political engagement continued for the rest of her life, even after her disillusionment with communism. She died on 1 May 1978.
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August 24, 2016
I read this a few years ago and gave it three stars. On my re-read, that has been raised to five. Such a wonderful novel. The moral of the story is always re-read, kids.
April 1, 2025
I have bought this unknown book by a fortunate whim, and that is a rare event with me, as normally I am still conservative in books' acquisition, meaning I go mostly by old names of writers. My whim was chiefly triggered by the cover photo as it seemed I have felt a sudden compassion for the poor painted lady. Of course, I was attracted also by her simple nakedness, though I thought her legs a bit too robust for my taste. However, first and foremost, I have been glued to the strong impression of her falling asleep in that odd pose. I was immediately reminded that I have been lately falling asleep in a similar manner . Once my mum caught me in one of those peculiar moments, and coming closer to me, to check if I was indeed sleeping , she softly asked: 'why do you let yourself fall asleep in this manner as if you're a vagabond?' My usual reply was: ‘only 5-10 minutes, and I will be alive and fresh again’ :D
Surely, my mum didn't mean anything bad, just that I was leaving all my personal tasks, before the end of the day, on the last minute, and instead of taking care of them properly and timely, I usually chose to open a book and by no time, which I was not aware of, I started dozing, soon into light sleep, of course with a very tired, exhausted countenance :)) Then, as if struck by an inner alarm, I wake up by mid-night and start addressing my chores . Anyway, I feel the cover photo will haunt me for some time now..
I didn’t hear or know of this writer before I started reading the novel, so I felt the need to read a little bit about her life. When she died, I was born. That caught my attention initially because I have started with the last paragraph of the Introduction. Then I jumped up and started with the first paragraph. She was born in the first decade of December, again a nice coincidence. In other words, I was satisfied enough to plunge my full zeal into the book. By the way, it took me 3 times reading of some text to understand that her lifelong partner was a woman. Well, I don’t have what to comment on this, but only to say personal tastes are not common :))
To fully or better grasp this novel one should know a little bit, in fact more than a little bit, about the years before and after 1848 in Europe. That was quite a fervent period in the history of mankind. Fortunately, my history professor in high school was an expert in those years, it seems he had even worked extensively on documenting some of his articles on that period. So, I was ready for that, however, to give full confession I was interested mostly in the development of the relationship between the two main heroines: Sophia Willoughby, a young handsome Englishwoman from an aristocratic family, and Minna, a bohemian Jewess, talented artist in telling fairy tales and dramatic recitations . That offered a lot to savour and relish, in fact there is a love affair unfolding between the two, still I didn’t feel it is mocked or even vulgarly described. Some reviewers mentioned it’s a gay book. I didn’t recognize that, on the contrary, I thought the love relationship it is nicely captured in the author’s fine writing.
Sophia is a woman of strong will, opinion, character, mostly domineering in her matrimonial bond with her husband Frederick. He cheats on her and Sophia, without divorcing him, gives him the green light to go to Paris, to join his tawdry mistress Minna, while she decides to remain closest to her two children, who die shortly after of smallpox. Minna is a magnanimous and unscrupulous, fickle, ardent and interfering woman. I could understand why and how Sophia fell for Minna, and the two of them kicked off a wild adventure, through a bohemian and revolutionary Paris, a story that blends with barricades, bullets, bloodshed, even nice dinner parties with a diverse group of revolutionaries, into an unforgettable ending. In fact, possibly it is boring to read on the last page about the Communism spectre, strongly spreading into Europe, and a Communist Manifesto .
Apart from the intrinsic interest and literary quality of this potentially historical novel, I have enjoyed tremendously the special brand of wit and humour that pervades every word she writes. It is remarkably clear that Sylvia Townsend Warner has a deep understanding of the human behaviour and holds a connoisseur’s eye for the bogus, trying to express her unease with modern society, and its cruelties and injustices. Undoubtedly, I feel motivated to read more of her works. The beginning was a true success :)
Surely, my mum didn't mean anything bad, just that I was leaving all my personal tasks, before the end of the day, on the last minute, and instead of taking care of them properly and timely, I usually chose to open a book and by no time, which I was not aware of, I started dozing, soon into light sleep, of course with a very tired, exhausted countenance :)) Then, as if struck by an inner alarm, I wake up by mid-night and start addressing my chores . Anyway, I feel the cover photo will haunt me for some time now..
I didn’t hear or know of this writer before I started reading the novel, so I felt the need to read a little bit about her life. When she died, I was born. That caught my attention initially because I have started with the last paragraph of the Introduction. Then I jumped up and started with the first paragraph. She was born in the first decade of December, again a nice coincidence. In other words, I was satisfied enough to plunge my full zeal into the book. By the way, it took me 3 times reading of some text to understand that her lifelong partner was a woman. Well, I don’t have what to comment on this, but only to say personal tastes are not common :))
To fully or better grasp this novel one should know a little bit, in fact more than a little bit, about the years before and after 1848 in Europe. That was quite a fervent period in the history of mankind. Fortunately, my history professor in high school was an expert in those years, it seems he had even worked extensively on documenting some of his articles on that period. So, I was ready for that, however, to give full confession I was interested mostly in the development of the relationship between the two main heroines: Sophia Willoughby, a young handsome Englishwoman from an aristocratic family, and Minna, a bohemian Jewess, talented artist in telling fairy tales and dramatic recitations . That offered a lot to savour and relish, in fact there is a love affair unfolding between the two, still I didn’t feel it is mocked or even vulgarly described. Some reviewers mentioned it’s a gay book. I didn’t recognize that, on the contrary, I thought the love relationship it is nicely captured in the author’s fine writing.
Sophia is a woman of strong will, opinion, character, mostly domineering in her matrimonial bond with her husband Frederick. He cheats on her and Sophia, without divorcing him, gives him the green light to go to Paris, to join his tawdry mistress Minna, while she decides to remain closest to her two children, who die shortly after of smallpox. Minna is a magnanimous and unscrupulous, fickle, ardent and interfering woman. I could understand why and how Sophia fell for Minna, and the two of them kicked off a wild adventure, through a bohemian and revolutionary Paris, a story that blends with barricades, bullets, bloodshed, even nice dinner parties with a diverse group of revolutionaries, into an unforgettable ending. In fact, possibly it is boring to read on the last page about the Communism spectre, strongly spreading into Europe, and a Communist Manifesto .
Apart from the intrinsic interest and literary quality of this potentially historical novel, I have enjoyed tremendously the special brand of wit and humour that pervades every word she writes. It is remarkably clear that Sylvia Townsend Warner has a deep understanding of the human behaviour and holds a connoisseur’s eye for the bogus, trying to express her unease with modern society, and its cruelties and injustices. Undoubtedly, I feel motivated to read more of her works. The beginning was a true success :)
April 9, 2014
Sylvia Townsend Warner was a female writer with Communist sympathies in love with a female poet when she wrote this story of an upper-class Englishwoman, Sophia Willoughby, who falls in love with her husband's Jewish mistress Minna Lemuel in Paris and who becomes embroiled in the French revolution of 1848. It's much more the story of Sophia's changing politics and class loyalties than it is one of "lesbian love."
In her introduction to this edition, Claire Harman calls the book "this lesbian novel" and quotes Terry Castle on "[t]he typical lesbian fiction." The main character, however, has had only two romantic experiences in her life: one with her caddish husband, with whom she falls out of love almost as soon as they come back from the honeymoon, and with Minna Lemuel, who is herself clearly bisexual. The author Warner was also bisexual, having had a love affair with a married man, Percy Buck, before her 39-year partnership with the female poet Valentine Ackland. Harman, perhaps invested for personal reasons in the idea of this book as a "lesbian novel," ignores and erases the bisexuality of both character and author.
I had a hard time with the casual antisemitism of the main character, and I really couldn't tell whether the author herself, like Virginia Woolf, possessed some of the usual antisemitic prejudices of an Englishwoman of her class and period. Sophia Willoughby falls in love with a "Jewess," but sees her Jewish features as ugly, and thinks all Jews are money-grubbing or at least money conscious. At least a couple of reviewers believe that the author undercuts Jewish stereotypes by showing Minna and other Jewish characters acting counter to stereotype, as when Minna immediately gives away Sophia's gift of 25 pounds to a revolutionary charity in spite of her own poverty, but I'm not sure that Warner was herself free of such prejudices. Certainly, though, her account of Minna's childhood persecution in a Lithuanian pogrom is highly sympathetic to the victims.
The portrayal of Caspar Rathbone, Sophia's uncle's illegitimate child with a West Indian woman of color, has similar problems. Warner grapples with racism, antisemitism, and classism in the novel, but her starting point is that of a highly privileged white English Protestant woman in the early twentieth century. The writing is very beautiful with moments of wry humor. I enjoyed reading about the 1848 French revolution as imagined by Warner, who was busy at the time writing anti-Fascist articles in the lead-up to the second World War.
In her introduction to this edition, Claire Harman calls the book "this lesbian novel" and quotes Terry Castle on "[t]he typical lesbian fiction." The main character, however, has had only two romantic experiences in her life: one with her caddish husband, with whom she falls out of love almost as soon as they come back from the honeymoon, and with Minna Lemuel, who is herself clearly bisexual. The author Warner was also bisexual, having had a love affair with a married man, Percy Buck, before her 39-year partnership with the female poet Valentine Ackland. Harman, perhaps invested for personal reasons in the idea of this book as a "lesbian novel," ignores and erases the bisexuality of both character and author.
I had a hard time with the casual antisemitism of the main character, and I really couldn't tell whether the author herself, like Virginia Woolf, possessed some of the usual antisemitic prejudices of an Englishwoman of her class and period. Sophia Willoughby falls in love with a "Jewess," but sees her Jewish features as ugly, and thinks all Jews are money-grubbing or at least money conscious. At least a couple of reviewers believe that the author undercuts Jewish stereotypes by showing Minna and other Jewish characters acting counter to stereotype, as when Minna immediately gives away Sophia's gift of 25 pounds to a revolutionary charity in spite of her own poverty, but I'm not sure that Warner was herself free of such prejudices. Certainly, though, her account of Minna's childhood persecution in a Lithuanian pogrom is highly sympathetic to the victims.
The portrayal of Caspar Rathbone, Sophia's uncle's illegitimate child with a West Indian woman of color, has similar problems. Warner grapples with racism, antisemitism, and classism in the novel, but her starting point is that of a highly privileged white English Protestant woman in the early twentieth century. The writing is very beautiful with moments of wry humor. I enjoyed reading about the 1848 French revolution as imagined by Warner, who was busy at the time writing anti-Fascist articles in the lead-up to the second World War.
August 29, 2019
What luck, to have read two absolutely excellent novels in a row! That doesn’t occur very often. ‘Summer Will Show’ was wonderful, a novel calculated to appeal to me as it combines feminism with revolutionary upheaval in 19th century Paris - two of my favourite subjects. First published in 1936, it initially struck me as a combination of Madame Bovary and Two Serious Ladies. The writing is lyrical but not as deft as Flaubert; the tone is less deadpan and madcap than Bowles. Where it beats both is in politics, which are beautifully integrated into the narrative, and in utter unrepentant dismissal of Frederick, Sophia’s husband. Sophia is the point of view character, an intelligent, capable, and independent woman unsuited to life as a wife and mother. She comments early on that, ‘It was boring to be a woman, nothing that one did had any meat to it... Should she enforce her will over convention [...] the deed would only be granted to her on the terms that it was a woman’s whim, a nonsense to be tidied up as soon as possible by the responsible of the world’. Frustrated with life, Sophia travels to Paris with a vague plan of confronting her husband and his mistress. As soon as she meets the mistress, Minna, the pair form a strong bond, fall in love, and move in together.
Frederick is consistently depicted as Sophia’s inferior in all respects and a generally bad person. The two are estranged from the start and eventually their relationship deteriorates to the point that Sophia straight up punches him in the face. I was not expecting such a satisfyingly cathartic scene and was delighted to find it followed by this exchange, after Sophia has pawned her ring to buy dinner for bohemians:
Sophia and Minna are fascinating, inspiring, and unapologetically independent characters. A loving and supportive relationship such as theirs is rarely depicted between women nowadays. (I am reminded of Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present.) The treatment of racism, anti-semitism, and classism is interesting throughout the narrative, although sometimes uncomfortable. Intentionally so, I expect. The streets of Paris and their social ferment are vividly evoked. This really is a hidden gem of a novel, much more invigorating and radical than I had dared to hope. I also appreciated the potentially hopeful ambiguity of the ending. (I am choosing to believe that a best case scenario prevailed.)
Frederick is consistently depicted as Sophia’s inferior in all respects and a generally bad person. The two are estranged from the start and eventually their relationship deteriorates to the point that Sophia straight up punches him in the face. I was not expecting such a satisfyingly cathartic scene and was delighted to find it followed by this exchange, after Sophia has pawned her ring to buy dinner for bohemians:
”I regretted that ring this afternoon. You see, I lost my temper and hit him in the face. And the moment I had done it I remembered my ring and thought how much more it would have hurt if I had been wearing it.”
“Yes. A knuckle-duster. Rings are invaluable, I know, and diamonds most of all.”
Sophia and Minna are fascinating, inspiring, and unapologetically independent characters. A loving and supportive relationship such as theirs is rarely depicted between women nowadays. (I am reminded of Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present.) The treatment of racism, anti-semitism, and classism is interesting throughout the narrative, although sometimes uncomfortable. Intentionally so, I expect. The streets of Paris and their social ferment are vividly evoked. This really is a hidden gem of a novel, much more invigorating and radical than I had dared to hope. I also appreciated the potentially hopeful ambiguity of the ending. (I am choosing to believe that a best case scenario prevailed.)
September 29, 2019
"Should there be no brains under bonnets?"
Warner is likely the most under-rated writer I've ever encountered, and you, too. If you've already heard of her and cherish her, you're lucky. If you haven't, you're lucky I'm here to tell you to go out and read everything she wrote.
Summer is the story of a young Englishwoman, indignantly separated from her womanizing husband, whose kids die of smallpox. In the wake of all these disasters, which she finds refreshingly liberating, she journeys to Paris, falls in love with her estranged husband's Jewish mistress, and moves in with her. Along the way, she learns to eschew and shed the Oughts that her stuffy life thus far has been obligated to fulfill, and ends up on the barricades in '48.
Any review is a disservice to any novel, especially ones from a writer of Warner's caliber, because there is no way to properly depict or describe her charm, her frolicky, crazy-eyed whimsy, and her sense of humor which is drier than ash.
It'll be touted as a lesbian love story, of course, because it is about two women falling in love., but that is reducing to something all to the point that I bet Warner would sniff at. I prefer to think of it as just a love story with some revolutionary violence thrown in, and quite a bit at that!
Warner is likely the most under-rated writer I've ever encountered, and you, too. If you've already heard of her and cherish her, you're lucky. If you haven't, you're lucky I'm here to tell you to go out and read everything she wrote.
Summer is the story of a young Englishwoman, indignantly separated from her womanizing husband, whose kids die of smallpox. In the wake of all these disasters, which she finds refreshingly liberating, she journeys to Paris, falls in love with her estranged husband's Jewish mistress, and moves in with her. Along the way, she learns to eschew and shed the Oughts that her stuffy life thus far has been obligated to fulfill, and ends up on the barricades in '48.
Any review is a disservice to any novel, especially ones from a writer of Warner's caliber, because there is no way to properly depict or describe her charm, her frolicky, crazy-eyed whimsy, and her sense of humor which is drier than ash.
It'll be touted as a lesbian love story, of course, because it is about two women falling in love., but that is reducing to something all to the point that I bet Warner would sniff at. I prefer to think of it as just a love story with some revolutionary violence thrown in, and quite a bit at that!
June 27, 2017
Boring is the Word of the Day
boring
ADJECTIVE
Not interesting; tedious.
Quite frankly this was a disappointment which was a surprise. Reading the blurb on the tin it looked alright, just up my alley in fact; but once opened I found the culinary offering to be rather dry and lacking in flavour. It was pleasant enough at first, perhaps because the English setting suited the protagonist - however when the action shifted to Paris then it began to taste blander with each turned page. The main character (Sophia Willoughby) was so cold and reserved that I couldn't relate to her even in her distresses. Even when I knew what those distresses actually were because she came from the English School of Thought that held emotion to be crass and plain speaking, vulgar. She was boring.
Her husband was boring too and even more unforgivably so was the 'captivating mistress' Minna. The Jewish storyteller who was a great artist and a passionate individual. Supposedly anyway. As it was Sophia who the narrators eye focused on we only got to see Minna through the filter of Sophia's thoughts which meant that she was totally washed out and anaemic. I couldn't even figure out if the two of them were lovers in the physical sense. Even Henry James gives a reader more to go on than this!
As for the other people in the book, intellectuals and would be revolutionaries. They were all ... wait for it! ... ... ... boring. Where was the passion? Where were their personalities? Why did they all seem exactly the same as Sophia? Dull, Bland and Boring.
As for the setting that was another disappointment. This was set in Paris, during a revolution! Things should be exciting!
Things weren't.
boring
ADJECTIVE
Not interesting; tedious.
Quite frankly this was a disappointment which was a surprise. Reading the blurb on the tin it looked alright, just up my alley in fact; but once opened I found the culinary offering to be rather dry and lacking in flavour. It was pleasant enough at first, perhaps because the English setting suited the protagonist - however when the action shifted to Paris then it began to taste blander with each turned page. The main character (Sophia Willoughby) was so cold and reserved that I couldn't relate to her even in her distresses. Even when I knew what those distresses actually were because she came from the English School of Thought that held emotion to be crass and plain speaking, vulgar. She was boring.
Her husband was boring too and even more unforgivably so was the 'captivating mistress' Minna. The Jewish storyteller who was a great artist and a passionate individual. Supposedly anyway. As it was Sophia who the narrators eye focused on we only got to see Minna through the filter of Sophia's thoughts which meant that she was totally washed out and anaemic. I couldn't even figure out if the two of them were lovers in the physical sense. Even Henry James gives a reader more to go on than this!
As for the other people in the book, intellectuals and would be revolutionaries. They were all ... wait for it! ... ... ... boring. Where was the passion? Where were their personalities? Why did they all seem exactly the same as Sophia? Dull, Bland and Boring.
As for the setting that was another disappointment. This was set in Paris, during a revolution! Things should be exciting!
Things weren't.
February 16, 2014
This book is odd, fascinating and uneven. What's wonderful about it is practically sublime; that which is mediocre about it balloons and overtakes the plot and the narration by the conclusion. So what's wonderful about it, as far as I'm concerned, is the fact that this book was published in the same year as Gone with the Wind, yet it's practically the anti-Gone With the Wind.
Like Gone With the Wind, it is historical fiction about a feisty, self-serving, and often unsympathetic protagonist. Sophia Willoughby is cold and masterful, making of her feminine aristocratic lot on her country estate as much as she can, shaping her ambitious to the restrictive shape of maternity and house-holding. She is an unloving if panicky mother, scrambling to defend her children's safety while failing to care for them on any other basis than their likelihood to establish her family's posterity. Like the Civil War to the plantation life of GWTW comes the smallpox to Willoughby's estate, Blandamer. It ravages and changes everything. Sophia departs and goes to see her husband who has run off to Paris to be with his notorious mistress, Minna Lemuel. (Thus far, it seems as though Scarlett has headed to Atlanta.)
Like Ashley in GWTW, Frederick, Sophia's husband, is a disappointing and conventional man, drifting from charismatic woman to charismatic woman and leaching the wealth from his more established wife. But what is SO COOL in this novel is that Sophia's Rhett Butler is Minna Lemuel, the mistress herself. Our frigid heroine falls madly in love with Frederick's mistress and basically sets up house with her on the Left Bank. This startling plot twist and character development makes this book awesome to the extent that it is awesome. Instead of supporting terrible social values, as GWTW does--generating nostalgia for the plantation system, justifying slavery through Mammy and other happy black characters, even exculpating the postwar Klu Klux Klan--Summer Will Show becomes a work of radicalism. When Sophia falls in love with Minna, she also falls in love with the revolution, and the conclusion of the novel sees her discovering communism (what???) and her first ideological, intellectual raison d'être.
This is also where the book suffers stylistically and narratively. The depiction of the February revolution becomes bloated, unclear, a little boring. All of the revolutionary characters sound a bit the same--cold, intellectual, polemical, often exotically Jewish. (Some of the reviews on Goodreads have pointed out the anti-Semitism of the novel, and it's undeniable. While Minna the "Jewess" serves as the exotic, Orientalized Jew, the depictions of Jewish revolutionaries, while sympathetic, also partake in the Jew-as-strange-and-crippled-Other stereotype.) I like the uncertainty and confusion on the city streets that Warner evokes, but I really didn't care about these conflicts, and the resolution (that Sophia discovers that she really cares about Communism) feels very tidy and tacked-on, much like the Marxist conversion at the conclusion of Native Son.
I would really have liked more time spent with Minna and Sophia in their apartment, coming to understand their companionship and intimacy. It's obvious that there is some dodging of the censors going on here, but I think in another way, the book suffers because, especially as a woman writer in the 1930s, Warner may have felt that only political, public, historical books are "important" books. Also, I don't know what to make of the odd racial dynamics undergirding the plot, as Sophia has unaccountable hostility towards the illegitimate creole son of her uncle who comes to England to be fostered and educated. This character, Caspar, is crucial to the plot; Sophia jealousy of him (both in comparison with her insipid children in the and in competition for the attention of Minna who really likes him) is a central emotion in the text. I don't really understand what this meant (about colonialism? exoticism? class dynamics?) or where it fit in the book as a whole.
The pacing is not great, and while I was impressed with Warner's elegant and leisured syntax during the first half of the book, following the circuitous routes of Sophia's self-assessment and strategic musings (a would-be Henry James heroine!), it felt a little tedious and misplaced by the end of the book when Sophia is wandering the streets of Paris, responding to violence and displacement.
Like Gone With the Wind, it is historical fiction about a feisty, self-serving, and often unsympathetic protagonist. Sophia Willoughby is cold and masterful, making of her feminine aristocratic lot on her country estate as much as she can, shaping her ambitious to the restrictive shape of maternity and house-holding. She is an unloving if panicky mother, scrambling to defend her children's safety while failing to care for them on any other basis than their likelihood to establish her family's posterity. Like the Civil War to the plantation life of GWTW comes the smallpox to Willoughby's estate, Blandamer. It ravages and changes everything. Sophia departs and goes to see her husband who has run off to Paris to be with his notorious mistress, Minna Lemuel. (Thus far, it seems as though Scarlett has headed to Atlanta.)
Like Ashley in GWTW, Frederick, Sophia's husband, is a disappointing and conventional man, drifting from charismatic woman to charismatic woman and leaching the wealth from his more established wife. But what is SO COOL in this novel is that Sophia's Rhett Butler is Minna Lemuel, the mistress herself. Our frigid heroine falls madly in love with Frederick's mistress and basically sets up house with her on the Left Bank. This startling plot twist and character development makes this book awesome to the extent that it is awesome. Instead of supporting terrible social values, as GWTW does--generating nostalgia for the plantation system, justifying slavery through Mammy and other happy black characters, even exculpating the postwar Klu Klux Klan--Summer Will Show becomes a work of radicalism. When Sophia falls in love with Minna, she also falls in love with the revolution, and the conclusion of the novel sees her discovering communism (what???) and her first ideological, intellectual raison d'être.
This is also where the book suffers stylistically and narratively. The depiction of the February revolution becomes bloated, unclear, a little boring. All of the revolutionary characters sound a bit the same--cold, intellectual, polemical, often exotically Jewish. (Some of the reviews on Goodreads have pointed out the anti-Semitism of the novel, and it's undeniable. While Minna the "Jewess" serves as the exotic, Orientalized Jew, the depictions of Jewish revolutionaries, while sympathetic, also partake in the Jew-as-strange-and-crippled-Other stereotype.) I like the uncertainty and confusion on the city streets that Warner evokes, but I really didn't care about these conflicts, and the resolution (that Sophia discovers that she really cares about Communism) feels very tidy and tacked-on, much like the Marxist conversion at the conclusion of Native Son.
I would really have liked more time spent with Minna and Sophia in their apartment, coming to understand their companionship and intimacy. It's obvious that there is some dodging of the censors going on here, but I think in another way, the book suffers because, especially as a woman writer in the 1930s, Warner may have felt that only political, public, historical books are "important" books. Also, I don't know what to make of the odd racial dynamics undergirding the plot, as Sophia has unaccountable hostility towards the illegitimate creole son of her uncle who comes to England to be fostered and educated. This character, Caspar, is crucial to the plot; Sophia jealousy of him (both in comparison with her insipid children in the and in competition for the attention of Minna who really likes him) is a central emotion in the text. I don't really understand what this meant (about colonialism? exoticism? class dynamics?) or where it fit in the book as a whole.
The pacing is not great, and while I was impressed with Warner's elegant and leisured syntax during the first half of the book, following the circuitous routes of Sophia's self-assessment and strategic musings (a would-be Henry James heroine!), it felt a little tedious and misplaced by the end of the book when Sophia is wandering the streets of Paris, responding to violence and displacement.
July 25, 2018
The Goodreads description is spoilerish - I didn't realize how much. But some of it is inaccurate. Sophia had not "packed her cheating husband off to Paris" as he was already there and had been so off and on for many years. Although not quite literally so, she had essentially been abandoned. She simply wrote a letter making it official.
And, as the description says "Then tragedy strikes: the children die." She has been raised a lady, a woman who is to occupy herself as wife and mother, doing needlework and writing letters. She recognizes she is no good at these tasks. Sophia despairs that she has no purpose in life. In 1847, an English woman did not travel alone, though she might have only her maid to accompany her. But Sophia, in a sort of revolution, takes herself to Paris - alone.
I thought for much of this novel that the author had deftly overlaid this revolution of an individual with that of the French. (This is not the *big* revolution we all think of when we think French Revolution. This was *little* revolution. It had a similar result - Napoleon III.) I spent most of this novel remarking to myself that it is a very feminist novel. I came to revise my opinion somewhat, but that would be including even more spoilers here. I'll simply remark that I did not like the direction of the last approximately one quarter of the novel.
The prose is very readable, even though it occasionally doesn't flow as smoothly as prose of the later 20th Century. I should read more of this period to know if it is typical. Sophia - and a few others - looked upon the Jewish characters stereotypically. In all fairness. Warner presents the Jewish characters as people, not stereotypes.
Because I did not like the direction taken toward the end, I'm having a hard time rating this. However, just because I choose to disagree with the author's philosophy, shouldn't mean it loses it's readability or value. I think it is 4-stars and I'll leave it there.
And, as the description says "Then tragedy strikes: the children die." She has been raised a lady, a woman who is to occupy herself as wife and mother, doing needlework and writing letters. She recognizes she is no good at these tasks. Sophia despairs that she has no purpose in life. In 1847, an English woman did not travel alone, though she might have only her maid to accompany her. But Sophia, in a sort of revolution, takes herself to Paris - alone.
I thought for much of this novel that the author had deftly overlaid this revolution of an individual with that of the French. (This is not the *big* revolution we all think of when we think French Revolution. This was *little* revolution. It had a similar result - Napoleon III.) I spent most of this novel remarking to myself that it is a very feminist novel. I came to revise my opinion somewhat, but that would be including even more spoilers here. I'll simply remark that I did not like the direction of the last approximately one quarter of the novel.
The prose is very readable, even though it occasionally doesn't flow as smoothly as prose of the later 20th Century. I should read more of this period to know if it is typical. Sophia - and a few others - looked upon the Jewish characters stereotypically. In all fairness. Warner presents the Jewish characters as people, not stereotypes.
Because I did not like the direction taken toward the end, I'm having a hard time rating this. However, just because I choose to disagree with the author's philosophy, shouldn't mean it loses it's readability or value. I think it is 4-stars and I'll leave it there.
September 27, 2016
Well that was unexpectedly brilliant.
March 16, 2010
My unrequitable love affair with Ms. Warner continues. More detailed review to come.
***************
Readers of my recent fiction reviews will know that I’ve been carrying on a literary love affair with Sylvia Townsend Warner these last few months. With Summer Will Show, the third of her novels I’ve read, that “passionate” relationship continues. Once again Warner creates a remarkable character in Sophia Willoughby and presents her life in beautifully crafted, natural prose.
Sophia Willoughby is a model, upper-class British wife: She has two children, Damian and Augusta; a beautiful home (her family’s); she maintains a properly distant but kind relationship with her servants; and has a wastrel husband, Frederick, who lives in Paris with a Jewish mistress. This “idyllic” life is shattered abruptly when her children die of smallpox. For a time, Sophia becomes irrational, contemplating having sex with the kiln-worker to get pregnant. Fortunately this notion goes no where but she does determine to go to France and bring Frederick back so that he can give her a child. Traveling to Paris, Sophia meets Minna Lemuel, Frederick’s mistress, and falls in love. The remainder of the novel, set against the backdrop of the Revolution of 1848, chronicles how Sophia breaks the chains that have bound her all her life and her developing relationship with Minna.
In Summer Will Show, Warner becomes ever more confident in her depiction and celebration of sexual, social and political transgressions. Lolly, in Lolly Willowes is a spinster who gives herself to Satan and becomes a witch. There’s a rejection of her social position but it’s an individual choice. And the almost whimsical prose softens the impact and meaning of her choices. In Mr. Fortune’s Maggot, Timothy Fortune too is a largely sexless character. You can read a homosexual element into Fortune’s relationship with Lueli, the young native man who comes to live with him, but it doesn’t need to be part of the story, and it certainly isn’t explicit.* In the present story, there’s no doubt that Sophia and Minna are lovers. The initial attraction is palpable and only grows:
As clear is where Townsend’s political sympathies lie for Summer Will Show is not solely about Sophia’s growth and her love affair but is also set against the backdrop of political revolution and the growth of what becomes Communism; the final scene in the novel has Sophia sitting alone in her apartment reading a copy of The Communist Manifesto. Some may find this latter foray a distraction from the focus on the people in Warner’s world but, by and large, she manages to integrate the political and social commentary believably into the words and actions of her characters. I will admit there is an unlikely ex temp speech given by a Communist before he’s shot but it’s short and – as usual – beautifully written (you wish people would speak so eloquently off the cuff).
*I don’t think there was a sexual element in Fortune’s and Lueli’s friendship. At least a conscious one. Though I can accept the argument that Fortune’s unconscious longings may have factored into his decision to leave Fanua; and I have read elsewhere that Warner herself described Fortune as “fatally sodomitic.”
Again – An unqualified recommendation that you should read this book.
***************
My love is of a birth as rare
As ‘tis of object strange and high,
It was begotten by despair
Upon impossibility.
Readers of my recent fiction reviews will know that I’ve been carrying on a literary love affair with Sylvia Townsend Warner these last few months. With Summer Will Show, the third of her novels I’ve read, that “passionate” relationship continues. Once again Warner creates a remarkable character in Sophia Willoughby and presents her life in beautifully crafted, natural prose.
Sophia Willoughby is a model, upper-class British wife: She has two children, Damian and Augusta; a beautiful home (her family’s); she maintains a properly distant but kind relationship with her servants; and has a wastrel husband, Frederick, who lives in Paris with a Jewish mistress. This “idyllic” life is shattered abruptly when her children die of smallpox. For a time, Sophia becomes irrational, contemplating having sex with the kiln-worker to get pregnant. Fortunately this notion goes no where but she does determine to go to France and bring Frederick back so that he can give her a child. Traveling to Paris, Sophia meets Minna Lemuel, Frederick’s mistress, and falls in love. The remainder of the novel, set against the backdrop of the Revolution of 1848, chronicles how Sophia breaks the chains that have bound her all her life and her developing relationship with Minna.
In Summer Will Show, Warner becomes ever more confident in her depiction and celebration of sexual, social and political transgressions. Lolly, in Lolly Willowes is a spinster who gives herself to Satan and becomes a witch. There’s a rejection of her social position but it’s an individual choice. And the almost whimsical prose softens the impact and meaning of her choices. In Mr. Fortune’s Maggot, Timothy Fortune too is a largely sexless character. You can read a homosexual element into Fortune’s relationship with Lueli, the young native man who comes to live with him, but it doesn’t need to be part of the story, and it certainly isn’t explicit.* In the present story, there’s no doubt that Sophia and Minna are lovers. The initial attraction is palpable and only grows:
“One could love her freely, unadmonished and unblackmailed by any merits of mind or body. She made no more demands upon one’s moral approval than a cat, she was not even a good mouser. One could love her for the only sufficient reason that one chose to….
“Her head, with the black hair fitting so purely to the curve of her brow, seemed, outlined against the sky, another of the domes of Paris, and it was part of her outrageous freedom from anything like conscience that a visage so inharmonious, so frayed with former passions and disfigured with recent want should appear in that very trying full light exaltedly beautiful as the face of an angel….
“I am fascinated, she thought. I have never known such freedom, such exhilaration, as I taste in her presence.”
As clear is where Townsend’s political sympathies lie for Summer Will Show is not solely about Sophia’s growth and her love affair but is also set against the backdrop of political revolution and the growth of what becomes Communism; the final scene in the novel has Sophia sitting alone in her apartment reading a copy of The Communist Manifesto. Some may find this latter foray a distraction from the focus on the people in Warner’s world but, by and large, she manages to integrate the political and social commentary believably into the words and actions of her characters. I will admit there is an unlikely ex temp speech given by a Communist before he’s shot but it’s short and – as usual – beautifully written (you wish people would speak so eloquently off the cuff).
*I don’t think there was a sexual element in Fortune’s and Lueli’s friendship. At least a conscious one. Though I can accept the argument that Fortune’s unconscious longings may have factored into his decision to leave Fanua; and I have read elsewhere that Warner herself described Fortune as “fatally sodomitic.”
Again – An unqualified recommendation that you should read this book.
July 7, 2017
I had heard and read, here and there, about Sylvia Townsend Warner, but I didn’t know much about her, and “Summer Will Show” is my first true introduction to her. What an amazing surprise, and actually, what a shock that she is not more universally applauded as one of the best English writers of the last century. “Summer Will Show” is a historical novel unlike any others: it is a romance that defies all the codes of the genre, a story that is as much about the past as it is about today (or, as the novel was written in the mid-thirties, about the world then), a pure fiction that is also a genuine work of political ideas, a stylish literary gem and a powerful feminist tract. The first part of the story takes place on a British estate and centers on Sophia, a rich, married landowner who has separated from her husband and who raises, alone, their two kids while taking care of the property. It beautifully, with a gorgeous sense of atmosphere, recaptures what some great female writers of the XIX century, from Charlotte Brontë to George Eliot, have done before, and it also subtly makes of Sophia a heroine of our era: despite the prejudices of her class that she (at least in the beginning) holds, Sophia is hungry to be who she truly is, she craves for the same kind of freedom that men can enjoy, and that is where the beating heart of the novel lies. The story turns harrowingly dark when Sophia loses her children, and is then propelled toward an entirely different, exalting, and ferociously romantic direction: Sophia decides to reunite with her husband in Paris, where he lives a life of pleasure, because she wants another child, but instead, she falls in love with his mistress, the beguiling Jewish artist Minna, and ends up moving with her and into her circle of bohemian artists and rebels. As both women give in to their immediate passion, Paris succumbs to the turmoil of a new revolution (the 1848 revolution – the one that Victor Hugo writes about in "Les misérables" and Flaubert in "L’éducation sentimentale"). Sophia abandons all the trappings of high society that have burdened her so far, even if that means losing her wealth: by doing so, she goes against the tradition of most heroines of such novels, whose destinies are usually from-rags-to-rich sagas, and becomes all the more original and intriguing. Sophia finds her voice as a woman, she follows her heart without regrets, and she discovers an entire new world that she’s never quite sure what to make of (she never feels like she belongs to it, even in the midst of bloody fights, which makes her case interesting). It is a world where political engagement and dying for a cause do mean something: once more, Townsend Warner twists the tradition of the historical fiction genre, putting at the center of a complex novel of ideas and politics a woman – even two! - instead of the usual young idealistic male hero. Townsend Warner writes exquisitely, and that elevates her work to remarkable heights. Her command of the English language is masterly and it does, rather wonderfully, evoke the literature of Dickens and cie. The passion that unites the two heroines is at the same time very openly described (the word love is actually used more than once) and yet very discreetly developed, without luridness or sensationalism: it is just the most natural thing. Townsend Warner also deftly avoids the clichés of many historical novels (like the over-abundance of details and descriptions lifted from research) and gives preeminence to the psychological evolution of her characters: some entire chapters could actually take place in a novel set today, and that is partly what makes her story so modern and relatable. Sophia’s thirst for freedom is enthralling, and in that regard the book is lovingly intimate, letting us discover all the thoughts and emotions that agitate her. But it is also quite epic in scope, especially toward the end, when the revolution explodes and engulfs Sophia and the bohemian world that she has come to be part of. The author doesn’t bother to explain dutifully to the reader all that is happening, nor what the complicated situation in 1848 France is, yet her plot is perfectly understandable and gripping. "Summer Will Show" is loaded with extraordinary scenes – the most powerful, maybe, being Minna reminiscing about the horrific, bloody pogrom that she survived as a child in Lithuania. As for the political elements, they are quite intelligently introduced by Townsend Warner through the evolving personality of Sophia: first she shows us the heroine’s vision of society, at a time when she is a rich and powerful - and therefore inherently conservative - landowner, and then she uncovers her transformation, a riveting change of heart and mind that will lead Sophia to fight against the forces in power. If there is one element that feels ambiguous to a contemporary reader, it is the puzzling treatment of a minor character, Caspar, Sophia's mixed-race nephew, who plays an unexpected role toward the beginning and then the end of the novel. But Sophia herself is a woman who's sometimes hard to like, and Townsend Warner makes no excuses for the preconceptions of her heroine. Still, I wish Caspar had been more fully - and with more empathy - explored. Some readers may also feel that Minna's Jewish identity is written about in a way that is tinted with antisemitism: I do believe that would be actually misreading the novel. Minna is, on the contrary, one of the book's most fascinating characters, she's actually much more lovable than Sophia is, and I do think that Townsend Warner, while encapsulating what makes Minna so intoxicating, is at the same time underlining and denouncing the unescapable antisemitism that was characteristic of many Europeans at the time. As one of Europe’s greatest capitals is torn apart by clashes than announce those of the next century, Sophia, amidst all her losses, discovers what may lead her to a new life: communism. It is a stunning ending for a novel that has many faces and that dares be what few novels of the genre are. For, really, how many historical epics are there who dare to be, simultaneously, a romantic lesbian love story, an ode to female empowerment and political leftist engagement, an exciting foray into the lost world of Parisian bohemia, and a literary tour de force? That “Summer Will Show” is not better known, and is not considered a classic, shows how much the literary canon of the XX century still needs to be reevaluated.
June 27, 2012
Wow, this was fantastic. Why isn't anyone reading this author?
I picked this book up at Harvard Bookstore's warehouse sale last year. It first caught my eye because of the photo on the cover, by one of my favorite Victorian artists, Lady Clementina Hawarden. Then I noticed a quotation by Sarah Waters, one of my favorite novelists, who said this was one of her favorite novels. Well! Then I realized I had already read a STW novel before, the delightful Lolly Willowes, so I decided to try it out.
I'm so glad I did! This was really an amazing novel about the sexual, social, and political awakening of a (wealthy, conservative) heroine. The writing is just beautiful; it reminds me in some ways of Charlotte Bronte. Oddly enough, I found the first part of the novel, which starts at Sophia's ancestral home, to be the most compelling part, followed by her first encounter with her soon-to-be lover. But even though the political/revolutionary parts in Paris are actually a little more drawn out, STW's ability to convey Sophia's transformation from a relative conservative to a full-fledged radical -- which is so delicately done as to be almost imperceptible as you're reading -- is in my mind the mark of a great novelist.
I truly don't understand why she isn't more widely read... but at the same time, I'm a bit glad, since she feels like my little secret.
I picked this book up at Harvard Bookstore's warehouse sale last year. It first caught my eye because of the photo on the cover, by one of my favorite Victorian artists, Lady Clementina Hawarden. Then I noticed a quotation by Sarah Waters, one of my favorite novelists, who said this was one of her favorite novels. Well! Then I realized I had already read a STW novel before, the delightful Lolly Willowes, so I decided to try it out.
I'm so glad I did! This was really an amazing novel about the sexual, social, and political awakening of a (wealthy, conservative) heroine. The writing is just beautiful; it reminds me in some ways of Charlotte Bronte. Oddly enough, I found the first part of the novel, which starts at Sophia's ancestral home, to be the most compelling part, followed by her first encounter with her soon-to-be lover. But even though the political/revolutionary parts in Paris are actually a little more drawn out, STW's ability to convey Sophia's transformation from a relative conservative to a full-fledged radical -- which is so delicately done as to be almost imperceptible as you're reading -- is in my mind the mark of a great novelist.
I truly don't understand why she isn't more widely read... but at the same time, I'm a bit glad, since she feels like my little secret.
August 29, 2010
A mid-19th century aristocratic Englishwoman who has always chafed at the limited role her life offers women, has "dishusbanded" herself, lost her children to smallpox and so heads to Paris, where history immediately catches up with her, as it is February 1848. She more or less falls in love with and moves in with her ex-husband's ex-mistress (though the lesbian angle is somewhat sublimated), undergoes a transformation of her understanding of class (and, to a lesser extent, race) and by the June days of that year, is standing on the barricades and distributing copies of the just-printed Communist Manifesto.
This all, to some extent, mirrors the author's life as she published it on the eve of heading off to join the anti-fascist Brigades in 1930s Spain with her life-long companion, the modernist poet Valentine Ackland.
Aside from a reasonably gripping historical plot, full of event, the writing is subtly beautiful and at times quite pointed as it examines the conduct and motivations of people drawn into revolutionary movements.
This all, to some extent, mirrors the author's life as she published it on the eve of heading off to join the anti-fascist Brigades in 1930s Spain with her life-long companion, the modernist poet Valentine Ackland.
Aside from a reasonably gripping historical plot, full of event, the writing is subtly beautiful and at times quite pointed as it examines the conduct and motivations of people drawn into revolutionary movements.
February 5, 2010
I disliked this book so much, I want to go back and turn every book I've ever reviewed and left a one star for and up it to to. I wish there were negative stars. The antisemitism in this book made it very difficult to read. I am reading it for a lesbian book club, and apparently it's supposed to be a love story, but the protagonists never has anything nice to say about her supposed love interest, and often what she says is based in such stereotypical and hateful descriptions that it makes me think that it may not be possible to love another human being if you hate that much.
Maybe it is a product of it's time, published in 1936, but if loving someone cannot soften you towards prejudice, what can?
And the political discussion was shallow. There was very little ability to develop sympathies for the main character, the people in her life, the movement she became a part of, etc.
Maybe it is a product of it's time, published in 1936, but if loving someone cannot soften you towards prejudice, what can?
And the political discussion was shallow. There was very little ability to develop sympathies for the main character, the people in her life, the movement she became a part of, etc.
May 10, 2011
This is the first STW I've read in ages, but the deep satisfaction of it is amazing. Like watching old movies on TV, you keep asking; why don't they write them like this anymore? Lovely, lovely...
October 26, 2014
"Summer Will Show" is the story of an upper-class Englishwoman who becomes a Communist. It is also, and far more interestingly, the story of an upper-class Englishwoman who escapes the bounds of her rigidly conventional existence (and sexuality) to find happiness. (Sylvia Townshend Warner was herself upper-class, English, a lesbian, and (for a time, at least) a Communist, though one shouldn't get carried away with any resemblance between her and our heroine, Sophia Willoughby: the book hardly counts as fictionalized autobiography.) Most of the book is in fact this second story, and Warner excels in telling it. She brilliantly describes Sophia's transition from the lady of the manor in her country house (though without her husband, who, in our first indication that she is perhaps different from the usual run of English gentlewomen, she has banished due to his constant infidelities) to penniless Parisian revolutionary. She manages to show just how constrained Sophia feels, even as a seemingly-independent lady who runs her own affairs, and how poverty could, in her case, feel more like freedom than riches. Indeed, genuine freedom for Sophia may require poverty: as soon as she begins to attain a real independence, rather than the pseudo-independence she had in England as a lady of means with no husband on hand, that husband immediately moves to more or less open war, among other things making it entirely clear that her previous freedom was a sham by -- as far as we know, legally -- seizing control of her money. In fact, "Summer Will Show" goes further as a story of a woman obtaining freedom in the teeth of societal opposition than the similarly-themed "Lolly Willowes": Lolly is an old maid without much of a position in society when she opts to abandon that position to become a witch, while Sophia has responsibilities of all kinds, including children, which must be discarded before she can achieve a genuine independence. Indeed, the most revolutionary aspect of the book may well be the way in which the children's deaths from smallpox actually end up being the catalyst for Sophia's freedom. The fact that she herself was responsible, though accidentally, for exposing them to the disease is even more suggestive.
Th book follows Sophia from the English countryside to Paris, where we meet most of its characters, most prominently Minna Lemuel, the Jewish story-teller, revolutionary, and (presumably, though this is never made explicit) Sophia's lesbian lover. Sophia's immediate attraction to Minna, despite the fact that Minna is her husband's former mistress, is presumably due to the fact that Minna has achieved the kind of freedom Sophia is searching for, if only subconsciously. Minna is of course firmly positioned on the fringes of society, as a Jew and an artist (her being a revolutionary is just the icing on the cake), but she embraces this position -- the scene where she takes all the money that Sophia has on her and donates it to a fund for a support of Polish revolutionaries firmly illustrates her attitude -- and finds a freedom in it that Sophia wants, even if she won't admit that to herself at first. The other characters we meet in Paris are equally well drawn. Frederick, Sophia's husband, is satisfyingly smug and caddish, convinced that everything he is doing is both right and for the best, but nonetheless a real person, rather than simply a caricature of patriarchal brutality. Sophia's aristocratic great-aunt Leocadie represents the best possible face of the old order, always smooth, self-possessed, and polite: her and Minna's mutual admiration (albeit from afar) is surprisingly plausible. The collection of artists and radicals that surrounds Minna gets somewhat less time, but Warner avoids falling back on any of the obvious cliches, and is gently satirical to good effect. If the book had just ended approximately two-thirds of the way through it, there would be nothing to complain about.
But it doesn't, and drifts increasingly from being both propaganda and art to just being propaganda. Warner handles the politics of feminism with a sure touch, but when it comes to Communism she becomes a lot more rigid and ideological. The description of the first stage of the revolution, the overthrow of Louis Philippe, the Orleans monarch, is handled brilliantly, presumably because there are no dogmas that need to be respected when it comes to a more-or-less bourgeois revolution: Warner gives the whole thing a slightly comic-opera touch and displays a certain amount of skepticism when it comes to some of the revolutionaries. Her description of the slow failure of the revolution over the next six months is also well executed. And Sophia's increasing radicalism is, given everything, a sensible response to circumstances. On the other hand, she was starting from the position of a conservative upper-class Englishwoman, so increasing radicalism could have meant a lot of things, and it's never really explained just why she becomes a Communist. Sure, she's now poor, and there's lots of poverty around, but Warner's description of it is considerably less harrowing than, say, Dickens' description of Paris before the first revolution in "A Tale of Two Cities". Furthermore, for most of the book the primary attribute of the Communists is not their economic program but their willingness to go to any lengths to achieve it. This hardness is exemplified by the one Communist we get to know, Minna's friend (or at least member of her circle) Ingelbrecht. While a success as a character, Ingelbrecht is not a particularly strong advertisement for his ideology: his main contribution to the story is to foreshadow Minna's death by politely but firmly pointing out that she is a relic, her romantic radicalism as old-fashioned as Leocadie's desire to see a Bourbon on the throne of France again, and that the revolution cannot succeed until it gets rid of people like her. Whether the success of the revolution would be genuinely desirable in that case is a question the book shies away from: how Sophia reconciles the idea of such a revolution with her love for Minna is never addressed. Part of the problem is that there aren't really any working-class characters in the book: everybody is either upper-class or Bohemian. Sophia may be aware that if things go on as they are in the post-revolutionary period she stands a good chance of starving to death, but this awareness is never communicated to us, for the good reason that it's still preferable to her previous situation. The result is that the references to Communism in the book come off not as emerging naturally from the lived experience of the characters, but simply as dogma. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the last 50 or so pages, when the uprising starts and everybody is martyred except Sophia. Here the book becomes simply inspirational propaganda: the fighting, the execution of prisoners, the Communist who gives an inspirational speech just before being shot, are all intended to rouse the reader rather than further the plot or our understanding of the characters (they aren't particularly original either). The book ends with Sophia refusing to return to a life of plenty, and instead studying the Communist Manifesto in a garrett, an image (admittedly, a well-executed image, better than most of the scenes taken from the uprising) of pure propaganda. Given that at the time she wrote this, Warner was about to set off to the Spanish Civil War to serve as a nurse in the International Brigades, you can be forgiven for wondering to what extent the ending was intended to raise the author's spirits. Luckily, Communism plays a minor role, or is absent entirely, for most of the book, so Warner's inability to handle it with nuance isn't a significant stumbling block to enjoying it, but it is an unnecessary and unfortunate addition.
Th book follows Sophia from the English countryside to Paris, where we meet most of its characters, most prominently Minna Lemuel, the Jewish story-teller, revolutionary, and (presumably, though this is never made explicit) Sophia's lesbian lover. Sophia's immediate attraction to Minna, despite the fact that Minna is her husband's former mistress, is presumably due to the fact that Minna has achieved the kind of freedom Sophia is searching for, if only subconsciously. Minna is of course firmly positioned on the fringes of society, as a Jew and an artist (her being a revolutionary is just the icing on the cake), but she embraces this position -- the scene where she takes all the money that Sophia has on her and donates it to a fund for a support of Polish revolutionaries firmly illustrates her attitude -- and finds a freedom in it that Sophia wants, even if she won't admit that to herself at first. The other characters we meet in Paris are equally well drawn. Frederick, Sophia's husband, is satisfyingly smug and caddish, convinced that everything he is doing is both right and for the best, but nonetheless a real person, rather than simply a caricature of patriarchal brutality. Sophia's aristocratic great-aunt Leocadie represents the best possible face of the old order, always smooth, self-possessed, and polite: her and Minna's mutual admiration (albeit from afar) is surprisingly plausible. The collection of artists and radicals that surrounds Minna gets somewhat less time, but Warner avoids falling back on any of the obvious cliches, and is gently satirical to good effect. If the book had just ended approximately two-thirds of the way through it, there would be nothing to complain about.
But it doesn't, and drifts increasingly from being both propaganda and art to just being propaganda. Warner handles the politics of feminism with a sure touch, but when it comes to Communism she becomes a lot more rigid and ideological. The description of the first stage of the revolution, the overthrow of Louis Philippe, the Orleans monarch, is handled brilliantly, presumably because there are no dogmas that need to be respected when it comes to a more-or-less bourgeois revolution: Warner gives the whole thing a slightly comic-opera touch and displays a certain amount of skepticism when it comes to some of the revolutionaries. Her description of the slow failure of the revolution over the next six months is also well executed. And Sophia's increasing radicalism is, given everything, a sensible response to circumstances. On the other hand, she was starting from the position of a conservative upper-class Englishwoman, so increasing radicalism could have meant a lot of things, and it's never really explained just why she becomes a Communist. Sure, she's now poor, and there's lots of poverty around, but Warner's description of it is considerably less harrowing than, say, Dickens' description of Paris before the first revolution in "A Tale of Two Cities". Furthermore, for most of the book the primary attribute of the Communists is not their economic program but their willingness to go to any lengths to achieve it. This hardness is exemplified by the one Communist we get to know, Minna's friend (or at least member of her circle) Ingelbrecht. While a success as a character, Ingelbrecht is not a particularly strong advertisement for his ideology: his main contribution to the story is to foreshadow Minna's death by politely but firmly pointing out that she is a relic, her romantic radicalism as old-fashioned as Leocadie's desire to see a Bourbon on the throne of France again, and that the revolution cannot succeed until it gets rid of people like her. Whether the success of the revolution would be genuinely desirable in that case is a question the book shies away from: how Sophia reconciles the idea of such a revolution with her love for Minna is never addressed. Part of the problem is that there aren't really any working-class characters in the book: everybody is either upper-class or Bohemian. Sophia may be aware that if things go on as they are in the post-revolutionary period she stands a good chance of starving to death, but this awareness is never communicated to us, for the good reason that it's still preferable to her previous situation. The result is that the references to Communism in the book come off not as emerging naturally from the lived experience of the characters, but simply as dogma. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the last 50 or so pages, when the uprising starts and everybody is martyred except Sophia. Here the book becomes simply inspirational propaganda: the fighting, the execution of prisoners, the Communist who gives an inspirational speech just before being shot, are all intended to rouse the reader rather than further the plot or our understanding of the characters (they aren't particularly original either). The book ends with Sophia refusing to return to a life of plenty, and instead studying the Communist Manifesto in a garrett, an image (admittedly, a well-executed image, better than most of the scenes taken from the uprising) of pure propaganda. Given that at the time she wrote this, Warner was about to set off to the Spanish Civil War to serve as a nurse in the International Brigades, you can be forgiven for wondering to what extent the ending was intended to raise the author's spirits. Luckily, Communism plays a minor role, or is absent entirely, for most of the book, so Warner's inability to handle it with nuance isn't a significant stumbling block to enjoying it, but it is an unnecessary and unfortunate addition.
August 3, 2023
Sophia is a domineering and strong-willed upper class British wife who has “unhusbanded” herself. In the wake of the death of her kids she travels to Paris to find her estranged husband - she moves in with her husband’s mistress where they then fall into an adventurous, bohemian love affair.
Set in the 40’s, this book was confident in its exploration of social transgressions and finding love. It was witty, funny and beautifully written. I loved the gripping historical plot that didn’t dull down the Sophia’s internal upheaval of her values and everything she held true.
Set in the 40’s, this book was confident in its exploration of social transgressions and finding love. It was witty, funny and beautifully written. I loved the gripping historical plot that didn’t dull down the Sophia’s internal upheaval of her values and everything she held true.
April 22, 2018
I am always excited to find historical historical fiction - written in an earlier era, about an era earlier than that. I like discovering the way people in the past approached historical fiction, particularly when those people are very good writers.
Sylvia Townsend Warner is, indeed, a Very Good Writer. This novel is probably her most complete in scope, character, and execution. Unlike the complex, difficult, and ultimately ambiguous The Corner That Held Them, this novel is the story of a single, fully-realised character during one period in her life. Unlike Lolly Willowes, Warner had, I think, more of an idea of where she wanted this one to end up, and she reached it.
This is one of those novels that ends the way an F. Scott Fitzgerald story ends: inevitable, unbearable, terrible and compelling. Sophia's choices are strong-minded, sometimes infuriating, but always comprehensible. I'm the one who's always on the side of safety: marry the rich man! Take the steady job! Do the safe, dull thing! The great thing about this novel is that Sophia is that person too, and the story pivots on her slow unbending and a quiet upheaval of everything she once held to be true and important.
Sylvia Townsend Warner is, indeed, a Very Good Writer. This novel is probably her most complete in scope, character, and execution. Unlike the complex, difficult, and ultimately ambiguous The Corner That Held Them, this novel is the story of a single, fully-realised character during one period in her life. Unlike Lolly Willowes, Warner had, I think, more of an idea of where she wanted this one to end up, and she reached it.
This is one of those novels that ends the way an F. Scott Fitzgerald story ends: inevitable, unbearable, terrible and compelling. Sophia's choices are strong-minded, sometimes infuriating, but always comprehensible. I'm the one who's always on the side of safety: marry the rich man! Take the steady job! Do the safe, dull thing! The great thing about this novel is that Sophia is that person too, and the story pivots on her slow unbending and a quiet upheaval of everything she once held to be true and important.
June 17, 2015
Summer will Show, Warner’s fourth novel. Summer will Show is not an especially easy read, but I found the beginning particularly readable, almost unputdownable and although the novel eventually spirals off into a far more complex narrative – it is really very good and very beautifully written. This is a book that I think I will remember – which is always a very good sign. While several of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s novels revisit similar themes, the novels themselves do appear on the surface at least to be very different. Summer will Show is the third of them that I have read. The Corner that Held Them is set among a community of nuns in a fourteenth century abbey, Mr Fortune’s Maggot concerns a missionary on a tiny South-Sea island. First published in 1936, Summer will Show; the story of Sophia Willoughby takes us to the mid nineteenth century, specifically the streets of revolutionary Paris in 1848.
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2015/...
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2015/...
September 30, 2018
one weird m-fer of a book. Set in Victorian England, it begins as a recognizable English country novel but hubby's gone so wifey's a lot independent. Once her children dies she wants to screw the local filthy kiln worker--and then find hubby to screw him too. She heads to Gay Paris to find him and his Jewish lover. She falls in love with lover (though the book is full of anti-semitic screed--damned, Britain was scary, and this was written in the midst of Hitler.) Ultimately both women support the 1848 revolution. Too many words, too little action considering the time--but some nice zingers on women's limited roles.
Read
June 21, 2021I really just don't know what to make of this. On paper, this should have become an instant favorite for me: the wlw, the revolution, the exploration of two people who should hate each other instead finding themselves in each other. But y'all, the antisemitism.
It seems the consensus among GoodReads reviewers is that the author herself doesn't hate Jewish people, that she's just recreating the way an upper-class British woman in 1848 would feel. But does it really matter when it's that gross and othering? Regardless of whether Townsend Warner "meant it," it really made me very uncomfortable to read.
It seems the consensus among GoodReads reviewers is that the author herself doesn't hate Jewish people, that she's just recreating the way an upper-class British woman in 1848 would feel. But does it really matter when it's that gross and othering? Regardless of whether Townsend Warner "meant it," it really made me very uncomfortable to read.
Read
August 5, 2013I left this on a Virgin train to Birmingham yesterday. Damn! The kids had died, she'd confronted the kilnsman, and was set on going to Paris. Will I see it again? I have two lost property numbers to call on Monday. Meanwhile, I'm in Cheltenham without a book. But there's a used bookshop opening at 10am... Hoping to find a gem.
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It doesn't look like I'm getting this back. I don't quite know what to do with this review now.
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It doesn't look like I'm getting this back. I don't quite know what to do with this review now.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 12, 2016
2.5
this really isn't bad, but it is different from what I thought it would be and I wasn't really in the mood for it.
this really isn't bad, but it is different from what I thought it would be and I wasn't really in the mood for it.
Want to read
March 30, 2024came for the lesbians, stayed for the revolution
June 8, 2021
Four stars because it is a truly excellent (yet flawed!) book.
Ok, on paper the plot is too perfect. Sophia Willoughby is an upright and conservative "Lady" who has kicked her hated, flighty husband out of their huge estate, and she looks after their two dull children as if she were looking after two delicate pedigree dogs. When they die suddenly of smallpox, she is broken, but mostly because she is too unimaginative to create a life beyond being a mother, however boring it is. In her grief she goes to Paris with the vague idea of finding her husband, who is living with his rumoured-to-be Jewish communist mistress (Minna Lemuel), and begetting more children so she can fix her past life. Instead, delightfully and surprisingly, she falls in love with the mistress, in the process disgusting her husband and being cut off from her money (which of course became his when they married), and slowly but surely has a political awakening (to Communism!!!) that leads her to join the 1848 Paris uprising.
There is really too much to love about this. Warner as always writes like no-one else and the first third of the novel (which is set in the English country home) is styled like a traditional Austenesque story, with florid descriptions of the countryside, the invisible servants and peasants, the pompous mundanity of everyday upperclass life, a style which makes the second sections more shocking in contrast. But it breaks, and it breaks.
Sophia resists the change which begins with her children's death like a fish in a net, but the end product is an ode to ripping your life apart, to imagining other futures. It is about living outside of men and money. It is about living with other people, not against them. It is about loving a woman who is not perfect, but through that love and understanding gaining meaning in your own life and being able to love the whole world. (It's very romantic in a low key way!)
However, there are two main issues which I have tried and failed to incorporate into what is good about the book.
Firstly, there are problems of race. Sophia first meets Minna (her future lover) she is virulently anti-Semetic. I am not Jewish and thus cannot completely excuse this but it seems to me that this is a device to show how closed minded and rigid Sophia (pre meeting Minna) is compared to how she begins to look past her learned prejudices as she enters the world of, indeed, Jews, communists, poor artists, labourers, etc - those who she previously hated and could not understand as human. Indeed, as they live together, Sophia slowly stops exoticising Minna or explaining her personality with reference to an essential and unchanging "Jewishness".
However, less explainable is that Sophia's wealth comes from a sugar plantation in the Caribbean. From this, she has an uncle who has had a mixed race child with one of his enslaved women, Caspar, who comes to stay with her and eventually is . Despite themes of equality etc. running through the novel Caspar has a flat and racist characterisation, and Sophia takes no responsibility for colonialism or the slave trade, with the usually wry novel having no comment either on the ethics of this. Caspar is a sour note, an object, unredeemable.
Secondly, the actual politics of the book, despite the aforementioned reading of the Communist Manifesto, are confused to say the least. Sophia and Minna the Communists are happy to own and live off the rent of a little farm which they have never seen - the definition of profiting from capital. What is thus intended to be the political journey of the two of them is meandering, sentimental, and non material. I actually think this is because although Townsend Warner was a member of the British Communist Party she lived a comfortable middle class life and was perhaps more aesthetically than physically attached to Communism. However, this is not to diminish entirely the achievements of presenting Communism as a life changing and freedom giving ideology, open to men and women, a route to creating a new way of being with eachother.
In summary, I obviously loved it so much. ........................ ..... Please read it! (If you have an ereader, ask me for a copy!)
Ok, on paper the plot is too perfect. Sophia Willoughby is an upright and conservative "Lady" who has kicked her hated, flighty husband out of their huge estate, and she looks after their two dull children as if she were looking after two delicate pedigree dogs. When they die suddenly of smallpox, she is broken, but mostly because she is too unimaginative to create a life beyond being a mother, however boring it is. In her grief she goes to Paris with the vague idea of finding her husband, who is living with his rumoured-to-be Jewish communist mistress (Minna Lemuel), and begetting more children so she can fix her past life. Instead, delightfully and surprisingly, she falls in love with the mistress, in the process disgusting her husband and being cut off from her money (which of course became his when they married), and slowly but surely has a political awakening (to Communism!!!) that leads her to join the 1848 Paris uprising.
There is really too much to love about this. Warner as always writes like no-one else and the first third of the novel (which is set in the English country home) is styled like a traditional Austenesque story, with florid descriptions of the countryside, the invisible servants and peasants, the pompous mundanity of everyday upperclass life, a style which makes the second sections more shocking in contrast. But it breaks, and it breaks.
Sophia resists the change which begins with her children's death like a fish in a net, but the end product is an ode to ripping your life apart, to imagining other futures. It is about living outside of men and money. It is about living with other people, not against them. It is about loving a woman who is not perfect, but through that love and understanding gaining meaning in your own life and being able to love the whole world. (It's very romantic in a low key way!)
However, there are two main issues which I have tried and failed to incorporate into what is good about the book.
Firstly, there are problems of race. Sophia first meets Minna (her future lover) she is virulently anti-Semetic. I am not Jewish and thus cannot completely excuse this but it seems to me that this is a device to show how closed minded and rigid Sophia (pre meeting Minna) is compared to how she begins to look past her learned prejudices as she enters the world of, indeed, Jews, communists, poor artists, labourers, etc - those who she previously hated and could not understand as human. Indeed, as they live together, Sophia slowly stops exoticising Minna or explaining her personality with reference to an essential and unchanging "Jewishness".
However, less explainable is that Sophia's wealth comes from a sugar plantation in the Caribbean. From this, she has an uncle who has had a mixed race child with one of his enslaved women, Caspar, who comes to stay with her and eventually is . Despite themes of equality etc. running through the novel Caspar has a flat and racist characterisation, and Sophia takes no responsibility for colonialism or the slave trade, with the usually wry novel having no comment either on the ethics of this. Caspar is a sour note, an object, unredeemable.
Secondly, the actual politics of the book, despite the aforementioned reading of the Communist Manifesto, are confused to say the least. Sophia and Minna the Communists are happy to own and live off the rent of a little farm which they have never seen - the definition of profiting from capital. What is thus intended to be the political journey of the two of them is meandering, sentimental, and non material. I actually think this is because although Townsend Warner was a member of the British Communist Party she lived a comfortable middle class life and was perhaps more aesthetically than physically attached to Communism. However, this is not to diminish entirely the achievements of presenting Communism as a life changing and freedom giving ideology, open to men and women, a route to creating a new way of being with eachother.
In summary, I obviously loved it so much. ........................ ..... Please read it! (If you have an ereader, ask me for a copy!)
November 8, 2025
So far I’ve read Sylvia Townsend Warner’s first and fourth novels. Lolly Willowes, her first novel, published in 1926, is a funny and uplifting story of rebellion and witchcraft set in the English countryside. It was when I first discovered that the author puts her women characters onto transformative journeys, both geographically and personally speaking, during which personal and social upheaval boil under the surface. Summer Will Show, published in 1936, takes the idea even further. Sophia Willoughby trades the safety of Blandamer, her aristocratic family home against adventure on the streets of 1848 Paris, a city marred by barricades and civil unrest. She is the wife and heiress who is transforming into a revolutionary fighting for herself and for her right to love.
https://leseriana.blog/2025/11/08/sum...
https://leseriana.blog/2025/11/08/sum...
January 13, 2023
SUMMER WILL SHOW (1936) by Sylvia Townsend Warner
What a book this is.
We begin on the estates of Sophia Willoughby, née Aspen. Sensible, unsentimental, this Victorian matriarch is taking her two sickly children - taking more after the family of her errant husband than her own stalwart Aspen stock - to be held above a lime kiln to breathe its fumes and be cured of the whooping cough. Only 28, she already identifies with maturity, with steady, stable things past their first flowering. But she is not as staid as she may seem - just in the past year she has written to her husband, who has taken up with a woman in Paris - that she does not wish for his company anymore and he should stay in Paris, drawing of course on an allowance from her.
Then she is given custody over her far-off uncle's half-black illegitimate son. The time this boy spends with her and her children before being packed off to school brings the first notes of something outside the civilized, sedate, responsible cast of Sophia's life.
Then she loses her children and decides to go to Paris to demand her estranged husband give her another child.
Instead, she falls in love - there is no other word for it - with his mistress (really, her own mistress and no one's kept woman), Minna Lemuel. She spends time among the Bohemian tag-rag of artists and revolutionaries around Minna, thinking she is tolerating their outlandish ideas for the sake of Minna. The revolution of 1848 breaks out and she finds herself absorbed into the revolutionary cause. Engelbrecht, a communist, diagnoses her as an aristocrat playing the dilettante, Minna as a sentimental revolutionary, useful in rabble rousing, but not sound in theory or praxis. He's not wrong, perhaps, yet he doesn't continue to be right as the events of the revolution progress and both women are pushed to extremes.
Then the novel takes us deep into the fighting on the barricades of Paris, into a catastrophic ending. A kind of calm after the storm sees Sophia, having lost about everything she is capable of losing, sitting down, engrossed, reading a pamphlet by two German thinkers, published in February, 1848.
Along the way, Warner's rich, perceptive, always-unexpected prose draws us through every twist and turn of thought and feeling, of moral, intellectual and emotional contention, as surely as it conjures scenes and characters and unspools a gripping, slowly escalating plot. A novel of ideas, provocations, and convictions - but so subtle and paced, so unlike the flashy polemics of that tradcath buffer, GK Chesterton, for example.
Queerness, liberation, gaining the world by losing one's place in it. Warner's novel is an exhilarating ride away from the verities of a social order the author herself saw convulsing through so many upheavals in her own lifespan from 1893 to 1978. This is a less seductive, less charming novel than LOLLY WILLOWES - Warner found that its charm was too often mistaken for mere quaintness, its subversion for mere eccentricity. In this novel, her fourth, she means you to take her rejections and embraces seriously, though not always solemnly.
What a book this is.
We begin on the estates of Sophia Willoughby, née Aspen. Sensible, unsentimental, this Victorian matriarch is taking her two sickly children - taking more after the family of her errant husband than her own stalwart Aspen stock - to be held above a lime kiln to breathe its fumes and be cured of the whooping cough. Only 28, she already identifies with maturity, with steady, stable things past their first flowering. But she is not as staid as she may seem - just in the past year she has written to her husband, who has taken up with a woman in Paris - that she does not wish for his company anymore and he should stay in Paris, drawing of course on an allowance from her.
Then she is given custody over her far-off uncle's half-black illegitimate son. The time this boy spends with her and her children before being packed off to school brings the first notes of something outside the civilized, sedate, responsible cast of Sophia's life.
Then she loses her children and decides to go to Paris to demand her estranged husband give her another child.
Instead, she falls in love - there is no other word for it - with his mistress (really, her own mistress and no one's kept woman), Minna Lemuel. She spends time among the Bohemian tag-rag of artists and revolutionaries around Minna, thinking she is tolerating their outlandish ideas for the sake of Minna. The revolution of 1848 breaks out and she finds herself absorbed into the revolutionary cause. Engelbrecht, a communist, diagnoses her as an aristocrat playing the dilettante, Minna as a sentimental revolutionary, useful in rabble rousing, but not sound in theory or praxis. He's not wrong, perhaps, yet he doesn't continue to be right as the events of the revolution progress and both women are pushed to extremes.
Then the novel takes us deep into the fighting on the barricades of Paris, into a catastrophic ending. A kind of calm after the storm sees Sophia, having lost about everything she is capable of losing, sitting down, engrossed, reading a pamphlet by two German thinkers, published in February, 1848.
Along the way, Warner's rich, perceptive, always-unexpected prose draws us through every twist and turn of thought and feeling, of moral, intellectual and emotional contention, as surely as it conjures scenes and characters and unspools a gripping, slowly escalating plot. A novel of ideas, provocations, and convictions - but so subtle and paced, so unlike the flashy polemics of that tradcath buffer, GK Chesterton, for example.
Queerness, liberation, gaining the world by losing one's place in it. Warner's novel is an exhilarating ride away from the verities of a social order the author herself saw convulsing through so many upheavals in her own lifespan from 1893 to 1978. This is a less seductive, less charming novel than LOLLY WILLOWES - Warner found that its charm was too often mistaken for mere quaintness, its subversion for mere eccentricity. In this novel, her fourth, she means you to take her rejections and embraces seriously, though not always solemnly.
September 15, 2014
A curious, disappointing, puzzling book, and one which I found a great deal more interesting than enjoyable. It’s in the unusual position of being a novel which is basically modern but which feels doubly dated today: it was published in the 1930s, but while it’s ostensibly set in the French revolution of 1848, it still feels like the product of a twentieth-century literary conscience. It’s a book about the role of women in several different societies, all essentially patriarchal, and it’s also about the rise of socialism while being written in a time when another revolution in Britain was not inconceivable.
The story follows Sophia, a fairly dull and reasonably affluent upper middle-class woman who is raising her children alone after her husband Frederick runs off to Paris with his mistress, Minna. It’s not long before her two own kids are done away with in sudden circumstances, and with her third adopted child safely stowed in a rather grim Cornish boarding school, Sophia decides to alight for France, determined to win back her hubby — or at least get herself pregnant again. But when she gets there she finds Frederick embroiled in a radical community that has Minna at its heart. And of course she finds Minna so alluring that she doesn’t want to leave.
I was enjoying things up to this point. The prose is somewhat overcooked, and the protagonist rather unexciting, but the authorial voice is nothing if not intelligent and articulate. There are some passages here which are ridiculous — there’s a lot of unfortunate orientalist musings about Minna, the ‘Jewess’ — but there are other moments where the writing is lovely and timeless. The basic problem is that the spaces between those things become longer and longer as the book goes on. For a book about a violent revolution, the action is somewhat limited to a series of rather ponderous musings in airless rooms. Things certainly pick up a bit near the end, but by that point I’d rather lost faith in the text. There’s a great deal of interesting feminist political context here, but the author doesn’t seem to have much to say about the lot of actual women, and the book often seems torn between being about the present and the nineteenth century. It can’t quite seem to choose one or the other, so in the end it goes for neither.
The story follows Sophia, a fairly dull and reasonably affluent upper middle-class woman who is raising her children alone after her husband Frederick runs off to Paris with his mistress, Minna. It’s not long before her two own kids are done away with in sudden circumstances, and with her third adopted child safely stowed in a rather grim Cornish boarding school, Sophia decides to alight for France, determined to win back her hubby — or at least get herself pregnant again. But when she gets there she finds Frederick embroiled in a radical community that has Minna at its heart. And of course she finds Minna so alluring that she doesn’t want to leave.
I was enjoying things up to this point. The prose is somewhat overcooked, and the protagonist rather unexciting, but the authorial voice is nothing if not intelligent and articulate. There are some passages here which are ridiculous — there’s a lot of unfortunate orientalist musings about Minna, the ‘Jewess’ — but there are other moments where the writing is lovely and timeless. The basic problem is that the spaces between those things become longer and longer as the book goes on. For a book about a violent revolution, the action is somewhat limited to a series of rather ponderous musings in airless rooms. Things certainly pick up a bit near the end, but by that point I’d rather lost faith in the text. There’s a great deal of interesting feminist political context here, but the author doesn’t seem to have much to say about the lot of actual women, and the book often seems torn between being about the present and the nineteenth century. It can’t quite seem to choose one or the other, so in the end it goes for neither.
November 15, 2021
A 1936 novel by a mature Warner about an Englishwoman's experiences in Paris at the time of the 1848 "June revolution", based on quite a bit of research Warner did.
I got the book because it was highly recommended by an author I like, May Sarton.
The June revolution, which I had known nothing about, turns out to have to do with growing sympathies for Communist ideas at that time, and unrest among the suffering lower classes.
Warner herself, along with her life partner, joined the Communist Party in 1935.
But politics is only a small part of the book, which shows the main character being amazed at what more there is to life than her role of small gentry in England. In Paris she struggles with whether or not to divorce her husband [who spends a lot of time in Paris] and she becomes friends with a Jewish woman from eastern Europe who lives a highly irregular life and has unusual friends, including impoverished eastern European communists.
This is not escapist fiction, but is pleasant to read and think about.
I got the book because it was highly recommended by an author I like, May Sarton.
The June revolution, which I had known nothing about, turns out to have to do with growing sympathies for Communist ideas at that time, and unrest among the suffering lower classes.
Warner herself, along with her life partner, joined the Communist Party in 1935.
But politics is only a small part of the book, which shows the main character being amazed at what more there is to life than her role of small gentry in England. In Paris she struggles with whether or not to divorce her husband [who spends a lot of time in Paris] and she becomes friends with a Jewish woman from eastern Europe who lives a highly irregular life and has unusual friends, including impoverished eastern European communists.
This is not escapist fiction, but is pleasant to read and think about.
April 19, 2014
Sylvia Townsend Warner has written a beautifully crafted tale of a 19th C wealthy, landed and slightly smug Englishwoman who spurns her adulterer husband, loses her children from smallpox and flees to France. There she finds herself stretching her feminist inklings to forge a new life with her husband's ex-mistress and embraces the revolution of 1848 happening around her. As Minna, her new companion, says "Though you may think you have chosen me..or chosen happiness,it is the revolution you have chosen." My commonplace book at the ready, there were abundant quotations to jot down, some outright humorous, but mainly the clear thinking and revolutionary story of a woman's transformation which propel the reader along. Townsend Warner was a contemporary of Woolf and Mansfield and equal to them in her writing. We read this book for a book club and the conversation flowed hither and yon.
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