Consequences

by E.M. Delafield

Alex Clare is awkward and oversensitive and gets everything wrong; she refuses to marry the only young man who ‘offers’ and believes there is nothing left for her but to enter a convent. But that is not quite the end of her tragic story. Nor was it for EM Delafield, who also entered a convent for a year; but in her case she was able to find freedom through working as a VAD in an army hospital, ‘which was emancipation of the most delirious kind. It was occupation, it was self-respect.’

Like Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians, written at the same time, Consequences is a scream of horror against Victorian values; however, its ironic tone cannot disguise EM Delafield’s deeply compassionate and feminist stance.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, British Literature, Literary Fiction, Feminism, Novels, Historical Fiction

421 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1919

About the author

Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood, née de la Pasture (9 June 1890 – 2 December 1943), commonly known as E. M. Delafield, was a prolific English author who is best-known for her largely autobiographical Diary of a Provincial Lady, which took the form of a journal of the life of an upper-middle class Englishwoman living mostly in a Devon village of the 1930s, and its sequels in which the Provincial Lady buys a flat in London and travels to America. Other sequels of note are her experiences looking for war-work during the Phoney War in 1939, and her experiences as a tourist in the Soviet Union.

Daughter of the novelist Mrs. Henry De La Pasture.

Reviews

[Emily May · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alex sometimes felt that she was not alive at all— that she was only a shade moving amongst the living, unable to get into real communication with any of them.

This powerful character portrait has to be up there with the saddest books I've ever read.

Consequences is a semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman growing up in London in the 1890s-1900s. This is a time when upper middle class girls and women like the protagonist were held back from education, and instead groomed to be wives, spending their childhood being forced into conformity in preparation for their "coming out" when they would attend dances and parties in hopes of securing a husband.

"Oh, my darling!" she exclaimed in sudden flattened tones, "don't go and get a reputation for being clever, whatever you do. People do dislike that sort of thing so much in a girl!"

This is the world Alex is born into and, with what she herself describes as "social incompetence," it quickly becomes apparent she is not well-suited to it.

Alex got to me in the same way Eleanor Oliphant, and Sally Diamond, got to me. I found her a highly sympathetic character, even if she was at times frustrating, even if I longed for her to be different, stand up for herself, something, I understood her struggles and I felt so deeply for her.

In childhood, she longs for friendship, forms attachments to her classmates, but does not know how to be someone others admire and want to befriend. As she ages, she dreams of a loving husband and family, but struggles to comprehend why, despite her pretty face, she isn't twinkly and charming and attractive like the other young women.

Like many women who failed to secure a husband at this time, she eventually turns to the convent.

Though the book didn't name it, what it depicts is long-term social anxiety that eventually develops into depression. Alex's failure time and again to form meaningful relationships leaves her ever more alone. It is truly awful to sit by and watch as she fumbles socially, making horrific mistakes that she cannot identify as such. This line perfectly encapsulates depression:

She had ceased to wonder whether life would ever offer anything but this mechanical round of blurred pain and misery[…]

I was shocked to discover how dark this book is. I have not read Delafield before, but she is most famous for her light comedy-- Diary of a Provincial Lady --and this book is horrible, vicious and heartbreaking. There can be no doubt here-- young women being raised to be paraded in front of men in the hopes that one of them will like what he sees is not a romance; it's a horror story. And yet another horror story was to be an unmarried woman in your thirties, having family members discuss what is to be done with you.

A very affecting read that may not be suitable for those sensitive to depiction of depression and/or suicide.

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read 12/12/23

Anyone expecting something light and frothy like the Provincial Lady, will be in for a surprise. It is a heart-breaking but beautifully told story.

Alex Clare's story begins as a child in Victorian London, in a respectable family, she's an awkward child who feels things deeply. She's clearly the least popular in the nursery not only with her siblings, but nanny too. Eventually she is sent off to school at a nunnery in Belgium. The harder she tries to be liked, the more people shy away from her. She develops a crush for one of the girls there, who she is no longer allowed to see on returning to London, (not the right sort). She is launched into her London season, but again although she knows she is pretty, it's the other girls that manage to attract partners; she does get a proposal, but knowing that he doesn't love her and not wanting a loveless marriage, she breaks off the engagement and here things really start to go downhill. Eventually she runs off to a nunnery having developed a deep attachment to Mother Superior but inevitably things don't all work out here either and she lurches from one failure to the next.

There were so few choices available to women back then and this feels like a reaction against the unfairness of it all; Delafield's chance to vent. Alex is one of those characters who I think will stay with me for a long time.

[BrokenTune · Rating 4 out of 5]

Presently she sank into an armchair before the fire, and tried to visualize the effects of her own action. She was principally conscious of a certain amazement, that a step which seemed likely to have such far-reaching consequences should have been so largely the result of sudden impulse. She had not thought the night before of breaking off her engagement. It had all happened very quickly in a few minutes, when the sense of tension which had hung round her intercourse with Noel had suddenly seemed to reach an unbearable pitch, so that something had snapped. Was this how Important Things happened to one through life?

Consequences is one of the little-known gems that I discovered through the Persephone Books catalogue. It was published in 1919 and seems to mirror some of the author's own experiences as the book's main character "brought up according to strict late Victorian precepts, but failing to ensnare a husband, entered a convent in Belgium".

It would be inappropriate to speculate about how much of Delafield was reflected in the main character of Consequences, Alex(andra) Clare, but the descriptions of the confinement and limitations instilled in Alex by her family and social environment read like a very personal account. It is the personal voice that kept me glued to pages of this book because, lets face it, the plot was not riveting : young girl grows up surrounded by high-Victorian values, fails at everything expected of her, joins a convent, and finally sets out to live a life of her own only to discover she is not equipped for it.

None of the characters were likeable, and even Alex was of the sort that I felt sorry for but at the same time wanted to tell to get a grip - only to realise that she was trying her best but had not been raised to ever think for herself or do anything for herself, so how could she have any chance to make do or behave or think like an independent woman?

It was such a depressing story, and yet, it was strangely gripping.

If this has been based - even in part - on Delafield's own life and circumstances I am curious to find out more about her and how she created the life for herself that Alex so despaired over.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Until I picked up this book, I had completely forgotten the old-fashioned game of consequences; taking it in turns to write out a boy’s name, a girl’s name, where they met, what he said, what she said and the consequence of their meeting; folding over the paper each time so that nobody could see what had been written before their turn came.

I had never thought about the boy or the girl whose tales – sometimes odd, sometimes funny, sometimes sad – were folded over in discarded scraps of paper, but E M Delafield did, and it made her think of the world she grew up in and of young women whose life stories played out in a way that could be as haphazard and in a world where the only possible – the only acceptable – consequence was the acquisition of a wedding ring.

In this book – beginning with a game of consequences in a nursery – she asks whether there was an alternative.

The answer that she reached was a sad one.

She tells the story of Alex Clare, who is first seen as an insecure and awkward child. Alex is the eldest of her siblings, and she proud of the status she believes that gives her. She is bossy and the children’s nanny is protective of the younger children and critical of Alex.

I found that it wasn’t easy to like Alex, but it was very easy to feel sympathy for her. She lacked the understanding and empathy with others that many people are born with or quickly learn, and it seemed that there was nobody who would guide and teach her.

Alex pushed her sister, Barbara, to ‘tightrope walk’ on the stair rail, and the first consequence of that was that she fell and was lucky not to break her back. The second was that her parents decided that their eldest child was unmanageable, that they had to protect her siblings, and that she must be sent away to school – at a convent in Belgium.

This was possibly the worst thing that could have happened to Alex. She had nobody who would love her, nobody who would give her the guidance that she so desperately needed; and she had no aptitude for making friends. She developed intense crushes on certain other girls, but she was so intense in her affections that even when the other girl was kind there was no real prospect of a true friendship

Alex felt that she was a failure, unable to get anything right or make anyone happy, but she clung on to the hope that one day things would be different

‘It seemed to Alex that when she joined the mysterious ranks of grown-up-people everything would be different. She never doubted that with long dresses and piled-up hair, her whole personality would change, and the meaningless chaos of life reduce itself to some comprehensible solution.’

Of course there was no magical transformation.

Alex ‘came out’ as a debutante and her mother, Lady Isabel, did everything right. She took Alex to the right parties, she made sure that she was beautifully groomed and dressed, she carefully explained what Alex should do in every situation. But Alex had no more empathy, no more understanding, than she had when she was a small child.

‘She was full of preconceived ideas as to that which constituted attractiveness, and in her very ardour to realize the conventional ideal of the day failed entirely to attract.’

She had dance partners, she thought that she was a success, but in time she realised that other girls had much more interest from young men, and that their dance partners would return to them at other functions. Alex’s didn’t do that. She began to doubt herself, her small successes dwindled, and she becomes an unhappy wallflower.

I felt very deeply for Alex as she watched other girls achieve what she most wanted, what she had been quite sure she would have, while she was failing and understanding why. The worst indignity came when a young man took her down to dinner and she found that he had asked her because he wanted to talk about his love for her school-friend; when she went home to bed and desperately prayed that somebody would love her like that one day ….

It seemed that hope was lost, but a holiday romance led to a proposal and an engagement ring for Alex.

Success at last!

After the proposal, it seemed that the romance was over. Alex’s fiance showed no interest in wedding plans and a new life together, though he wpuldtalk at length about himself and his plans for the land he was to inherit. Alex tried to persuade herself that she loved him, but she knew that she was not loved as she hoped to be loved, that she was a means to an end, and she began to fear the prospect of a loveless marriage.

She broke off the engagement.

She thought that she was doing the right thing, she thought she was being brave, but her family was horrified. She hadn’t realised that marriage was the only option for her and that she had thrown away the only chance of success she ever had.

‘Alex almost instinctively uttered the cry that, with successive generations, has passed from appeal to rebellion, then to assertion, and from the defiance of that assertion to a calm statement of facts. “It is my life. Can’t I live my own life?”

“A woman who doesn’t marry and who has eccentric tastes doesn’t have much of a life. I could never bear thinking of it for any of you.”

Alex was rather startled at the sadness in her mother’s voice.

“But, mother, why? Lots of girls don’t marry, and just live at home.”

“As long as there is a home. But things alter, Alex. Your father and I, in the nature of things, can’t go on livin’ for ever, and then this house goes to Cedric. There is no country place, as you know—your great-grandfather sold everything he could lay his hands on, and we none of us have ever had enough ready money to think of buyin’ even a small place in the country.”

“But I thought we were quite rich.”

Lady Isabel flushed delicately.

“We are not exactly poor, but such money as there is mostly came from my father, and there will not be much after my death,” she confessed. “Most of it will be money tied up for Archie, poor little boy, because he is the younger son, and your grandfather thought that was the proper way to arrange it. It was all settled when you were quite little children—in fact, before Pamela was born or thought of—and your father naturally wanted all he could hope to leave to go to Cedric, so that he might be able to live on here, whatever happened.”

“But what about Barbara and me? Wasn’t it rather unfair to want the boys to have everything?”

“Your father said, ‘The girls will marry, of course.’ There will be a certain sum for each of you on your wedding-day, but there’s no question of either of you being able to afford to remain unmarried, and live decently. You won’t have enough to make it possible,” said Lady Isabel very simply.’

That was horribly true, and from this point Alex’s life goes steadily downhill. She then turns to religion and enters a convent, but she was drawn there by a love of the mother superior – an echo of her schoolgirl crushes – and when she moves to a new community, nearly a decade later, Alex realises that she does not have a vocation and must leave.

Back in a world that has changed, where she has never lived independently, where she has never handled money and has no resources at all, she struggles to cope. Her family try to be kind, but Alex is beyond any help that they can give to her ….

‘Consequences’ is a desperately sad story but I had to keep turning the pages because E M Delafield was such a wonderful storyteller and she wrote with lyricism and with clarity. I could never doubt the truth of the characters and their circumstances, and I understood how trapped they were by the strictures of a society that might work for some but could never work for all.

I knew that there could not be a happy ending but I had understand exactly how the story would play out.

I felt the author’s anger, and I knew that it was justified.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 3 out of 5]

In one of the appendices to the Persephone edition of Consequences, the New York Times Book Review from 9 November 1919 is reprinted. Not only does it take the opportunity to take a potshot at English culture and practises of child-rearing, but it also describes the protagonist of the book, Alex Clare, as a neurotic.

"The central character, for whose depiction and for the working out of whose destiny the novel seems to have been written, is the eldest daughter of a wealthy and aristocratic family, Alex Clare, who had the misfortune of being a neurotic young girl before science and society had discovered how profoundly interesting and important neurotics are."

Alex Clare is certainly unhappy; her life is unsuccessful by any measure; she makes bad choices consistently throughout the book, and only has moments of understanding herself or connecting her behaviour to her own needs and feelings. But should we think of her as neurotic, or merely the product of a culture that was in many ways inimical to the formation of healthy self-hood in females? Is Alex's sad fate a mental health issue, or a cultural one? Is this book a tragedy, or merely very, very sad, (in the words of Nicola Beauman, who writes the introduction to this book). Beauman realises that there is a problem with ascribing the word 'tragedy' to the problems of the 'comfortable middle classes' and Alex is at least that. Certainly, her aristocratic parents Lady Isabel and Sir Francis are at a loss to understand why their oldest daughter (well-born, pretty enough, cossetted by their way of thinking) is unhappy. And yet. Alex spends her short life searching for love and understanding, but is constantly thwarted by her own insecurities and neediness.

At the end of the novel, at the age of only 31, Alex leaves the convent where she has sought shelter and the elusive combination of love and purpose for her life. The final chapters reveal, in excruciating detail, how unfitted she is for any kind of life or any kind of service. She has never found the discipline or interest to excel at anything - whether it is education, spiritual faith, conversation or even tennis. It's comically sad, but one of turning points of her life occurs because she so shames herself at a family tennis tournament. Except for knowing French and a bit of Italian, her knowledge and talents add up to nearly nothing. Having missed her one chance at marriage, she has not even learned the rudiments of running a house or managing finances. She has been raised to be taken care of, and she has that expectation without being more than dumbly aware of it. In her own way, she is a huge egotist. She is pitiable, but very rarely sympathetic - even to the reader who is privy to her emotional turmoil and inarticulate misery.

It's an emotionally compelling book, but also a miserable one. Readers who have loved Delafield's classic The Diary of a Provincial Lady will be surprised (and perhaps unhappy) by the tone of this book. It's a vivid portrayal of a family at the end of the Victorian age, but it is a terribly sad book. It will stick with me for a long time, but I cannot imagine ever wanting to reread it.

A three star rating is, in the end, a compromise between the artistic accomplishment of the book and how much I enjoyed reading it.

[Fiona MacDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

I adored the first half of the book, and found it witty and playful with the sort of writing I love from Persephone books. The second half however dragged on for me, and seemed to lose steam around the 300 page mark... the final part of the book was very sad but also seemed a bit pointless, as though the author had been asked to bulk the story out more (which it didn’t need) and as a result things sort of staggered to a halt on the last couple of pages. I look forward to read Delafield’s ‘Provincial lady’ stories however!

[Dorotea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a good read. Delafield denounces the Victorian mentality. Yet she is not gentle towards the protagonist either – it’s not just others’ failings, it’s also hers. Alex Clare, the protagonist, is unable to find love and understanding, although she is desperate for a real human connection. She is clearly defined by others (as further stressed by the choice for the chapter titles), she’s not expressing herself and not examining herself and her heart, choosing instead to be led by her latest whim. Even when she was excited at the prospect of the next step, she was letting time pass by and not enjoying the moment itself. She’s always waiting, not appreciating the present – Delafield expresses this clearly when she says “The old sense of ‘waiting for the next thing’ was strong upon her, and she spent her days in desultory idleness”.

[Kristin-Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poignant, tragic, and so so readable/hard to put down - practically a one-session read for me even at 400+ pages!

[Ceci · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was easily one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. In some ways I related to Alex, the protagonist, more than was really comfortable. I think we're all supposed to, especially as modern women who take for granted that a clever young lady would need the freedom that Alex so desperately wants, but shit, is it ever bizarre to see yourself reflected so clearly in such a deeply flawed individual.

I haven't seen anyone mention Consequences as a lesbian novel, which is a shame, because it seems very clearly and self-consciously one. As much as it's is a novel about the Victorian unmarried woman, it's moreso a novel about the Victorian unmarried clearly gay woman. That last bit is the clincher, and what really seals Alex's fate. It's the whole reason why her desire for affection can't be realized, and come on, Delafield isn't in the least bit coy about it.

The whole last fifth of the book you can FEEL the eventual suicide sneaking closer and closer, and all the while you're desperately hoping something, anything miraculously happens to save Alex, even if she never gets the companionship she so desperately wants. We need a crumb of a happy ending, to prove that the Alex's of the world can have happy endings. In some way, I really respect that Delafield stuck to her guns and let the character arc take the inevitable conclusion, but it's all so desperately sad, without ever being appropriately tragic. Alex wants her life to follow the narrative of a sentimental novel, and so do we, but instead we just get this thoroughly pathetic mess of a human being who can't even manage to turn her own melancholy into great drama. It's just sad, and awkward, and very, very disturbing.


That being said, despite one or two lines that leans towards anti-semitism (or just ickiness), this is very much worth reading. Prepare to be pulled through the emotional wringer.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Consequences is quite different in tone from the Provincial Lady books, much more somber; yet it also deals with women's constricted lives and how they deal with them. It's not a cheerful read, as Alex, the heroine, goes through much suffering, but a thoughtful and perceptive one. She's hard to like, being rather a neurotic wimp, but it's equally hard not to feel sympathy and pity for her, trapped in a society she's unsuited for. I've read reviews wishing for a more spirited heroine, but surely part of Delafield's point is that it's women like Alex, without the spirit to do anything about their constricted lives, who most needed help and opportunities they simply weren't given in the late Victorian/early Edwardian time period in which Consequences is set.

[Arpita (BagfullofBooks) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 🌟

[Diane Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars seems like a lot for a book with an insipid, unintelligent woman as a main character. Alex Clare came of age in the Victorian era, which was admittedly very restricting for women, but she could never figure out how to make the right decisions for herself, or how to make herself happy. She had a morbid personality, and when, three times in her life she made an impetuous decision from which there was no turning back, it always was a disaster. But E. M. Delafield managed this novel so deftly, with such good writing, that I was able to root for Alex each time, even though I could never like her very much. And what a fine depiction of Victorian life and social values of the time! We've come a long way since then.

[Noémi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book a while ago now, but it remains a great and painful experience. It's absolutely worth a read if you want an early account of how gender norms restrict and diminish women's lives. I wrote a lenghtier and personal review on my blog when I read the book back in 2014 and I realized I forgot to share it on Goodreads. And as I feel Alex as a character deserves all the defense she can get, here it is: (contains minor spoilers about the overall tone of the story and character arc, if you prefer to know as little as possible before reading something):

Alex Clare is the eldest daughter in a wealthy Victorian family, and has been made to feel awkward, out of place and chastized for being ‘oversensitive’, all her life. It is a story of an individual who desperately wants to belong but is rejected by others, time and time again.

Oh, my heart. I have been interested in all the gorgeous Persephone Books by forgotten or undervalued authors for awhile before I decided to try Consequences.

I have to say, reading about Alex’s childhood was a painful experience, not only from an adult viewpoint, where you see on how many levels and in what ways this child was let down early on and left feeling inadequate, without those responsible for her upbgringing once making the effort to meet her needs. There were a lot of things in Alex’s behaviour I recognized from my own childhood, and the constant clash between intention and consequences she experienced. So, in some ways, reading about her experiences and recognizing my own in trying to fit into an all too narrow gender role resonated very deeply with me. And I was very saddened by how her life progressed. This is by no means a feel good-story. There are very few – if any – bright moments. I also felt very clearly, that the difference between Alex Clare’s Victorian childhood and my own, is that the time and society I grew up in was one where I eventually got the possibility to acquire the tools to carve out my own place and be able to rest in the belief that being who I am has a worth in and of itself, regardless of what restrictive norms and expectations say. But Alex is not so lucky; having lost the battle of fulfilling the cultural norms early on she is only viewed as inadequate, a failure, not worthy of love or respect and this is something she quickly internalizes, having nothing and no one around her to contradict this belief. Delafield makes a very great point in showing how society in those days – and to this day – let its women down by not giving them any worth beyond their looks and ability to please their environment.

Alex’s story is therefore an immensely important one, no matter how disheartening. There have been a lot of discussions in the latest years on Strong Female Characters, discussions that have dismantled this trope (for example: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2...) and pointed out the necessity of allowing female characters to be human, flawed, or even victimized without it diminishing their worth as characters and human beings. These discussions have been very needed, and I think it is very good that people have started to question the love that Strong Female Characters receive and the hate that their less fortunate sisters get ( example: http://feministfiction.com/2012/05/10...). Alex’s story is just a story like that, of a woman who couldn’t cope, who never got the chance to be ‘strong’ and to ‘rise above’ her hardships. And that is okay.

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of Alexandra Clare who is sensitive, eager to please and has overwhelming passions for other girls and women - therefore doesn't fit in to late Victorian society in at all the way that her parents expect. Unfortunately, she keeps trying, and makes some bad mistakes.

It's a tragic book, not at all like Diary Of A Provincial Lady, and I found it very moving. Alex tries desperately to conform but the more desperate she becomes, the less everybody likes her. Her dilemma is that she can't be real and be accepted by the people around her: she has to choose one or the other, and she vacillates disastrously between the two.

[Paulina · Rating 5 out of 5]

It really snaps you out of romanticizing victorian era. It’s a very practical and literal representation of what turn-of-the-century reality was, unlike the usual poetic and vaque descriptions of a general gloom fear in society.

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning of Consequences was rather charming, but it settled rather quickly into a typical Virago-esque coming-of-age story. Whilst I adore the notion of such a thing, I always tend to feel a little disappointed when said stories hold no unusual elements or the odd surprise, such as this. Consequences is a sad novel; not as good as The Diary of a Provincial Lady in my opinion, but a worthwhile read which goes surprisingly quickly.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Free download available at Project Gutenberg.

3* Diary of a Provincial Lady
2* The Provincial Lady Goes Further
4* Consequences
TR The Way Things Are
TR The Provincial Lady in Russia
TR Thank Heaven Fasting

[Jeni Hankins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review of "Consequences" by E.M. Delafield: It’s funny that I mentioned Anita Brookner in my review of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “The Shuttle” because I have just read E.M. Delafield’s “Consequences” and I was often reminded of Brookner’s novels. Delafield was born nearly 40 years before Brookner, but her protagonist in “Consequences,” Alex, reminded me of a classic Brookner character who lives very much in her own head feeling tremendously misunderstood, and who is often squashed by outside forces. Delafield’s Alex wonders when she will start feeling “grown-up,” when life will begin, when she will feel part of things, when she will “arrive.” But like many of Brookner’s characters, she never reaches that future that she seems certain is out there waiting for her.

This book really puts the reader through an emotional wringer. I read nothing about the book beforehand except that it was reprinted by my favorite book people at Persephone Books, and I read only the barest facts about the author after I finished the book because I didn’t want to color my review with the impressions or analysis of others. But one thing I did learn was that “Consequences” was Delafield’s favorite of her own books. I wonder if that’s because it is so honest. I was reminded at times of Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth,” (which Wharton wrote about 14 years ahead of “Consequences”) when reading this book because the protagonist seems to be entirely unfit for her position in society, goes to extremes disappointing everyone around her in order to assert her personality, feels morbid about her choices afterward, and comes to a very sad end. And not a single person around her seems to make an effort to understand her at all.

As I began “Consequences,” I thought, this is going to go very badly for Alex. Maybe it was watching so much “Days of Our Lives” with Mawmaw Smith when I was a kid, but I can tell within the first two pages when things are going to go south. I almost chucked the idea of reading the novel, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to read something so tragic, but I decided to see what I could learn from Delafield.

At the end of the book, I asked myself why an author would put her reader through such an ordeal? You can ask this about a lot of books – Anna Karenina, for instance, which I loved. I regularly ask myself this when writing my own songs. Will there be any hope in this song or are we going to forge ahead and lay bare the cold hard facts? When I reflect on “Consequences,” I think the answer to why Delafield decided to put her reader through an ordeal and why she loved this book so much is because she had a deep empathy for young women brought up in the late Victorian era who had no hope of financial stability except making a brilliant match. The pressure to make this match in one or two “seasons” for an emotional, shy, fiercely loving, and very impractical girl was unbearable and, ultimately, fatal.

I felt very thankful to be a woman of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, after reading this book. Even though I love Jane Austen novels and a book that ends with a wedding, I am glad that I now have this other sort of story in my pocket about life in a highly tiered, socially stratified, corseted life.

If any other fans of Anita Brookner’s work, or readers of “The House of Mirth,” read this novel, I would be glad to know if you felt the resonance with “Consequences,” too.

A very sad, but revealing story about growing up in society at the end of the Victorian era. Recommended, but with a caution that if you love your protagonists, even if they are a bit unbearable, like I do, you’ll feel gutted – to use a British expression – by the end.

This book is available in Britain from the marvelous people at Persephone Books: http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/cons...

You can also read it for free as an ebook thanks to the studious folks at Project Gutenberg: http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/34935.mobile

Or you can find a used copy to hold in your hands at abebooks.com

[Mirte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am still numb after just having finished this novel.
Though contemporary reviews might be right in their assertion that Alex Clare's ill fate is exaggerated - everything must always go wrong with her - the hurt and pain laced through Alex's life story does not feel less real for it. Because Nicola Beauman is also right in her introduction: everyone recognises a bit of Alex in themselves, be it small or large, or knows someone rather much like Alex.

Consequences delivers thinly-veiled criticism of the Victorian morale concerning women in the upper classes; to marry and have children is their one and only purpose, and therefore their one and only goal in life. This consciousness is instilled into girls from a very young age, though they are suddenly expected to live up to expectations and become a woman overnight at their "coming out". There is no room for diverging paths, it must be all or nothing. And for Alex Clare, awkward and egotistical, with a tendency to do the wrong thing at the wrong mment, it is to be nothing. Her eagerness to love is touching, the many denials and refusals her worship meets sting, and the general air of disappointment seeping through the pages of this novel are poignang. A disappointment not necessarily with other people, but with society at large for raising people in straitjackets, unable to directly speak of emotions or feelings, thus creating a gap between themselves and others. The reader is the only one allowed a glimpse of Alex's mind, allowing for both her view and that of the world around her, making the contrast the more stark.

Alex is stuck in her past, her multiple past selves all making multiple mistakes that cannot be revisited, only reviewed over and over again, merely to realise the futility of it all and the waste of fruitful years. Alex knows she might have been happy, somehow, but considers happiness something that is no longer attainable anymore. The ending shook me excessively, though it was inescapable too - and the sense that things would have been so, so different had Alex lived ten or fifteen years later is stifling.

No matter the sadness this book evoked in me, it is a story for every woman living today and striving for a different career than marriage. I rejoiced in the opportunities women are offered today, cringed at the parallels still apparent in terms of relationships between the sexes, and eventually, this book instilled in me an intense feeling of hopelessness: who knows how many Alexes were out there?

[Bronwyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really lovely and heartbreaking. It’s beautifully written and you feel for Alex at every turn, and want to yell at her too. There’s so much emotion and feeling in Alex, you want her story to be different than it is.

[Bethany · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was so much sadder than I was anticipating, but I did enjoy it. There's a lot to be said about the complexity of Alex's character and the ways Victorian society failed women, but all can say is... Alex needed a wife, dammit.

[Leonie · Rating 4 out of 5]

1919 story of Alex Clare, who is cursed with the inability to make anything of her life. We meet her as a child, domineering over her siblings in the nursery and insatiable for admiration and spoiling from her mother’s friends in the drawing room. When she is sent to a convent school she suffers from the educational culture of this time and place, which looks on “exclusive friendships” as dangerously adjacent to perversion and treats them as criminal. She has a great hunger for emotional fulfilment and a growing conviction that human relationships are the only nourishment that might sustain her but a charisma vacuum and an unattractive personality that is either doormatty or power-seeking renders it impossible for her to form the kind of relationship with someone “who understands” which she longs for. All she manages at school are hopelessly unequal danglings after withholding types which are not allowed by the nuns to be their own punishment. When she leaves school she enters adult life as a late Victorian debutante. She’s pretty enough, and is bought expensive clothes and introduced to tons of people who are all seeking to form suitable connections. Somehow she is unable to capitalise on these advantages and it becomes slowly clear that there seems to be no route ahead. At this point she falls under the spell of a charismatic nun and becomes a nun herself for a decade, as Delafield did for a shorter amount of time. The prospect of divine and infinite love is held out to her as a consolation for the lack of human love. Alex progresses through the various stages of taking her vows, waiting for access to this consolation. Throughout her life, she is always waiting and hoping that the next thing will finally bring her relief. A nervous breakdown forces her to admit to herself that God’s love means little to her and she defiantly insists on her inability to live without human attachments and is finally released from her vows. Cast back upon a changed world, her limitations assume a more final aspect.

The beginning of this novel drags Alex into the dock and convicts her straight away of being a miserable failure, aggressively telling rather than showing, though even in the beginning it has a certain crude propulsiveness. The lambasting creates a kind of inadvertently comic distance which relieves some of the depressingness. Later, Alex is inhabited as well as exhibited, which perhaps increases the depression but lessens the sense that Delafield is treating Alex as her Nurse treats her. Not that Alex is ever unconvicted; her characterisation has that overly-personal harshness that makes you wonder whether it deals with an alternate universe self of the author’s. Alex’s conventional upper-class background, with a family that, if it isn’t warm and close, isn’t particularly unhappy and dysfunctional, has two purposes that to some extent contradict each other. On the one hand it is an occasion for Delafield to voice her frustrations with the stifling petty restrictions of this environment, which has carefully refused Alex resources with which to supplement her defects. On the other it is a demonstration that Alex is dealt some pretty good cards — which makes her inability to play them more tragic. The darkest part of Consequences is that to a large extent Alex’s tragedy is that of being herself, not of extrinsic happenstance. The philosophy of life that Alex settles on is the necessity for understanding and forgiveness of the weak and erring. It would perhaps have added more layers to the novel if there had been other failures in it for Alex to practice this sympathetic understanding on as subject rather than imploring object.

[Andie · Rating 3 out of 5]

E. M. Dalafield is best known for her delightful :Diary of a Provincial Lady" series. This book is anything but ddlightful. IT is instead a cri de couer about the plight of girls who have no opportunities in life apart from marriage.

Alex Clare is awkward and oversensitive and gets everything wrong. Her attempts at friendship at school come across as over-eager, she refuses the offer of marriage from the only man who asks her, and then turns to religion (and an obsessive adoration of the Mother Superior) and enters a convent.

At this point, her family, with some relief, thinks that Alex is finally settled. Unfortunately, Alex seems unable to settle anywhere and after nine years, just before she is to take her final vows, she leaves the order.

Coming home she finds herself in the unfortunate position of the maiden aunt with no financial resources and bounces from one relative to another until, totally at the end of her tether, she takes the only way out of her difficult situation.

This book was Delafield's "scream of sheer horror against Victorianism" as she writes in the preface to the book. In another 20 years, Alex could have done something other than marry a rich man, but as it was, she was born too soon.

[Linda Gillard · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extraordinary book. I'm at a loss to know how Delafield makes such an unsympathetic young heroine so interesting and so moving. There's little to admire in the shallow & socially inadequate Alex, but the compelling quality of Delafield's writing draws the reader into her tragic story bit by painful bit, so that eventually you feel as if you're watching some catastrophe happen in slow motion. The end seems inevitable, but nonetheless appalling for that. (Imagine a Greek Tragedy crossed with Downton Abbey.)

I found it a hard to put down, but as is often the case with really good books, I don't really know what made me keep turning the pages, except that I just had to know what happened to Alex, even though I knew it wasn't going to be anything good! So all I can say is: "Read it."

(I'd actually like to give the book four & a half stars. I found Delafield's over-use of adverbs distracting at times and they marred my enjoyment slightly, but otherwise this was a 5-star read for me.)

[Sela Still · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written account of a young girl who is unable to fit into the conventional mould demanded by her family and social class. A prickly, difficult personality with no leavening of humour to lighten her circumstances, Alex finds her only relief in the crushes she develops on friends at school and various acquaintances. Her feelings of devotion to the Superior of a local convent lead her to enter the order but her vocation lasts only as long as the object of her devotion remains as Mother Superior and her life becomes increasingly bleak and difficult.

Even the minor characters are well-rounded and believable and though the dilemmas and moral outlook of late Victorian/Edwardian times are different from those of our age, E.M. Delafield draws you into the story so well that you become involved in their lives and care very much what happens to Alex.

[Kathryn Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book to be extremely depressing. I don't have a problem reading tragedies, but honestly, I just didn't feel enough sympathy for the character to make the whole thing work for me. However, I readily admit that I have a difficult time connecting with characters like that of Alex, who don't really seem to try anything to help themselves. I understand the time period and the social restrictions on women and have read extensively from that period, but my own spirit and energy being so different, I have a hard time truly understanding their choices. I had the same trouble with Portrait of a Lady. Now give me a Jane Eyre, who has spunk and fights for herself in spite of the social restrictions of the time and I can really sympathize with that. But for all that, the book was beautifully written and I can see why others like it so much. It just wasn't for me.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this 1919 novel, young Alexandra Clare wants to be a round peg who fits into upper middle class life in Edwardian England. Somehow, she never can. And, Alex’s options are limited; she and her sisters are expected to be introduced to society and then marry. She has no education or support to do anything else. An introvert who has difficulty expressing her feelings, Alex wants so much to be liked that she drives people away. Consequences made this modern reader feel claustrophobic, which is probably a testament to the author’s skill in creating Alex’s character, but made for an uncomfortable reading experience.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another splendid reprint by Persephone. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, despite wanting to beat the protagonist repeatedly with a blunt object. The author implies that Alex is the way she is because of the way she was raised. However, her two sisters turned out all right. She is, quite simply, a moron (although that may be my 21st century take on things). She is incapable of doing anything right, has zero confidence (entirely understandable) and basically needs to be taken by the hand. I had little empathy for Alex. However, superb writing more than makes up for her.

[Mary Durrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poor little Alex Clare, a story of a thwarted life where Alex never really fitted in.
Branded as the black sheep of the family.
She breaks off her engagement to an eligable man as she couldn't bear the thought of being married to him.
She then turned to God and became a Nun but failed to find her place and ends by giving up her vows!
She returns an outcast who just didn't fit in and had no place in society.
She had failed in life which she took by drowning herself.
I did so feel for Alex and found this a very moving book which had such a tragic end.

[Chrissie]

***********************
*Diary of a Provincial Lady 4 stars