{"id":8777,"date":"2022-03-14T18:13:49","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T18:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=8777"},"modified":"2022-03-14T18:13:49","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T18:13:49","slug":"lolly-willowes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=8777","title":{"rendered":"Lolly Willowes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Penguin Modern Classics 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Helen McDonald, she of H is for Hawk<\/em> fame, says of Lolly Willowes<\/em> that it is \u2018The book that I\u2019ll be pressing into people\u2019s hands forever\u2026\u2019, so I was going to have to read it sooner or later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was a huge fan of The Corner That Held Them<\/a><\/em>, but Lolly Willowes<\/em> is completely different \u2013 not a substantial novel of witty historical construction, but a slender flight of fantasy set firmly in its own time (it was first published in 1926).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of fictional stock characters, Lolly (Laura) is the classic maiden aunt. Her many years of devoted service looking after her widowed father come to an abrupt end when he dies , and the incoming heir to the property, Lolly\u2019s older brother, packs her off to London to live with her younger brother and his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not at all what Lolly wants, but the habit of obedience is too deeply ingrained in her to allow any protest. She accepts the general consensus that she will enjoy life in London far more than being stuck in the country. After all, \u2018London life was very full and exciting. There were the shops, processions of the Royal Family and the unemployed\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Lolly is really a creature of woods and trees and rising sap, a gardener and a creator of strange herbal decoctions. When even the First World War fails to make any dent on the comfortable and complacent existence of her brother\u2019s family, Lolly begins to feel restless \u2013 and to assuage her restlessness, she begins to walk, to explore far and wide in her city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s on one of these walks that she discovers an Aladdin\u2019s cave: a greengrocer\u2019s in Moscow Road, Bayswater. She has an epiphany as she gazes at a collection of glowing bottled fruits: \u2018She seemed to be standing alone in a darkening orchard, her feet in the grass, her arms stretched up to the pattern of leaves and fruit, her fingers seeking the rounded ovals of the fruit among the pointed ovals of the leaves.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On learning that the source of the shop\u2019s abundant produce and flowers is Buckinghamshire, she moves to the village of Great Mop, much to the consternation of her family, taking rooms at the house of a local woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here the weirdness really begins, confirming my belief that the countryside (even the safe Home Counties countryside) is not a haven of healthy communion with nature, as some would have us believe, but a maelstrom of dark desires and unspoken mysteries \u2013 but, in this case, in a good way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Revelling in the woods and wildness her daily walks take her into, Lolly is in her element. A savage little kitten adopts her, and her landlady proposes a late-night ramble, during which she realises that most of the village is about and about among the shadows. And who is the affable gamekeeper who provides such reassurance to her in the woods after she has passed a somewhat disturbing night?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By now Lolly has utterly subverted the expectations of dutiful spinsterhood she had submitted to for twenty years, and articulates this transformation in a long, impassioned statement about the need for the liberation of women that is the equal of anything written by Greer, Friedan or Figes: \u2018It\u2019s to escape all that \u2013 to have a life of one\u2019s own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread of life a day\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is a joy from the start to this magnificent concluding rallying cry (there\u2019s lot\u2019s more of it I won\u2019t quote for spoiler reasons).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s the equal of anything written by Greer, Friedan or Figes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,309,126,59],"tags":[448,125],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8777"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8777"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8783,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8777\/revisions\/8783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}