Lolly Willowes (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Things are definitely on the unusual side and Laura makes a choice here that gives her her freedom but with a great and shocking cost. I didn’t quite have enough space to include the following quote as my review was already getting very long. Believe me when I say that she finds something that most of us would think twice about before accepting. I think it helped that I was so invested in Laura’s future well-being and happiness by the time the weird and wonderful elements kicked in.

Commenting, pointing out, appreciating, Titus tweaked her senses one after another as if they were so many bell-ropes…. Townsend Warner’s approach to exploring these themes is extraordinary, and therein lies the power of the novel. Much easier to label ‘Aunt Lolly’ than see the living, breathing, stifled woman burning to get free. It is here in the unfettered realm of the countryside that Laura is able to rediscover herself, finding freedom and independence in the most unexpected of sources.And after I bought it but before I read it, I heard this book mentioned in passing on the Backlisted Podcast about "We Have Always Lived in the Castle," as an example of when witchcraft is used as a foil to show something about society, or something like that. Sylvia Townsend Warner's relationship with her American readers was cemented in 1929 when she was appointed guest editor of the New York Herald Tribune and subsequently became a long-term contributor of short stories to the New Yorker.

It is a failure to be always and ever living up to what one should be doing, which, after all, as Lolly achingly feels over and over again- isn’t such a problem when someone just wants you to wind the yarn, or just help mend this one sheet. With traces of her radical politics (STW was an active member of the Communist Party), of possible queer desire, and the underpinning of a need, however gently expressed in Lolly/Laura, to decide what her own life should look like, this is a subversive narrative - and a sparkling, funny one. Moreover, it is clear that Mr Willowes loves his daughter very dearly, to the extent that he secretly hopes she will remain at home to take care of him even though he knows her future happiness may suffer as a result. It's the face of the crone in the classical tripartite idea of womanhood (maiden, mother, crone) so that women are defined by their sexual state and relationship to men: the virgin/maiden, the wife/mother, the withered woman/widow. On publication Lolly Willowes did well with the London critical establishment, but made a special hit in France (shortlisted for the Prix Femina) and the US, where it was selected as an inaugural Book-of-the-Month title for the newly launched book club.Lovely to be with people who prefer their thoughts to yours, lovely to live at your own sweet will, lovely to sleep out all night! There are signs that Laura is feeling somewhat restless and frustrated with her life, longing as she does to reconnect with the countryside in some way. It was believed that an unmarried woman needed the assistance of her family and it was never, ever considered appropriate for her to be on her own. Willowes grew continually more skilled in evading responsibilities, and her death seemed but the final perfected expression of this skill. That’s why we become witches: to show our scorn of pretending life’s a safe business to satisfy our passion for adventure….