With No Crying: Celia Fremlin (1980)

Celia Fremlin’s novels focus on the horrors of everyday domestic life, and the author’s With No Crying, examines motherhood and abortion through its main character, 15-year-old Margaret Fields. 4th former Miranda is still in the fantasy realm of dreaming about boyfriends when she has sex with her slightly older idol. As a result she is pregnant, and she has to break the news to her parents.

Catastrophe was upon her: humiliation beyond anything she could ever have imagined.

Her parents live in a “pleasant suburban house–with their pleasantly permissive principles and their vaguely left-wing broad-mindedness about vaguely everything.” Mr Fields is a quiet man and he assumes a “see-no-evil, hear-no-evil” look at home after Miranda breaks the news. Mrs Fields, the dominant one in the marriage, isn’t angry or disappointed–rather it’s an exercise in her broad-minded approach to parenting. She is very kind to her daughter but broaches the subject of abortion. Miranda wants to keep the baby–even has a name picked (she’s certain it’s a girl) and she begins refurbishing her old doll house for “Caroline.” Mrs Fields almost loses it but she returns to cajoling Miranda into an abortion, and promises her a long holiday and lots of new clothes. Miranda won’t agree, and at school, where she tells everyone that she is keeping the baby in spite of her mother’s wish, she is “the heroine of the Fourth Year.”

It must be like this to be an astronaut, or a pop star. During those last days of the summer term, Miranda basked in such glory as she had never known.

But Miranda has an abortion and there in the hospital, she decides she hates her mother. Leaving a note expressing her hatred for her parents, she runs away from home, with a large pillow stuffed under a maternity smock. As luck would have it, Tim, a bypasser invites Miranda back to a squat. After she tells her story: pregnant at 15, determined to keep the baby and defy her mother’s demands, Miranda is petted and praised by all the residents–everyone that is except Iris. Iris was pregnant by Tim but had an abortion to please him. Tim has drifted from the relationship anyway, but it is especially bitter for Iris to listen to Tim blindly and insensitively raving on and on about how “plucky” Miranda is. Jealousy and grief brew in Iris’s heart and already hostile to the newcomer, she begins to suspect Miranda’s story.

While this is not Fremlin’s best, I liked the way the book tackled the dynamic between Miranda and her mother. They each play their roles: broad-minded mother, defiant daughter, and they are so busy playing those roles that they both find it hard to let go. There are times when Mrs Fields wants to scream with frustration when Miranda talks about the baby, and there are times when Miranda, who is, if she would admit it, terrified, wants to revert to being a child again. The idea of role play continues with the squat housemates who all (except Iris) assume various socially acceptable positions of support… About the halfway point, the novel pulls a plot switcheroo which I found unbelievable. So a good set-up but not so great execution.

Stella Dallas: Olive Prouty (1923)

Olive Prouty’s novel, Stella Dallas, is the tale of a social climbing woman, driven by her desire for a better life, who marries out of her class. But while Stella may attain what she sees as social position, she remains an outsider in a judgmental society.

Stella is the daughter of a Millhampton mill labourer. Anticipating a drab future, she sets her sights on white-collar mill employee, Stephen Dallas. The Dallases were an eminently respectable Illinois family, until Stephen’s father, a lawyer, committed suicide. After his death, it was discovered that, as a trustee and advisor, he had embezzled funds from various estates and charities. With a deep sense of shame, Stephen repaid the stolen (“borrowed”) funds from the family coffers, left the girl he loved, Helen Dane, and prepared for a modest life far from the public eye.

So here’s Stephen, freshly wounded from scandal, far from home and family, working at a mill. Stephen stands out as “different” compared to the other mill employees, and Stella recognises that difference. She learns he attended the same college as other Millhampton “blue-bloods who lived on the other side of the river.” Stella is “aware that this Mr. Dallas was the biggest opportunity she had ever had.”

Stella, who is considered locally to be a cut above the other mill town girls, has rather craftily created the most flattering setting for herself by creating a beautiful summerhouse trailing with vines. It’s here Stephen, who is leading a drab depressing life, courts Stella, and they marry 4 months after they meet.

At first, everything goes well with Stephen sure he can “make her over, rub down the rough edges,” but soon “grave doubts and misgivings assailed” him. Stella is a “clever mimic” and at first she manages to hold her own at various Millhampton gatherings, but very soon she oversteps the boundaries of a polite society she doesn’t understand. Stella equates money with class; she doesn’t understand the difference. Stephen tries to remonstrate with Stella about her behaviour–in particular, behaviour with other men, but Stella insists she wants fun. The birth of their daughter, Laurel, does not turn Stella into the manageable matron Stephen hopes for. Instead Laurel is mostly ignored while Stella throws herself back into a social whirl and becomes much too friendly with Alfred Munn, the life-of-any-party, a horse riding instructor.

When the book opens, Stephen and Stella are leading separate lives. He lives in New York and sees Laurel, now 13 years-old, a few times a year. Stella receives $350 a month and Stella and Laurel live in the “cheapest rooms” in hotels and are subject to casual snubs from guests and staff alike. Laurel thinks her mother is beautiful but we are told she is a “fat, shapeless little ball of a woman” who takes hours to dress, dyes her hair and lathers on the makeup.

Laurel is just beginning to interpret the contrast between her father’s genteel world and her mother’s. She also notes the barbed, seemingly friendly comments made by other residents at the hotels. Then Stella makes the disastrous decision to take Laurel out into society …

Stella Dallas is a character study of a woman who is driven by ambition to marry out of her class only to face a painful decision regarding her daughter’s future. The film version with Barbara Stanwyck is a tear-jerker. Stella in the film is portrayed more favourably while Stephen comes across as a stiff, empty suit. In both the book and the film, Stephen’s idea of fatherhood leaves a lot of be desired while the book version of Alfred Munn’s behaviour sounds predatory alarm bells when it comes to Laurel. The book version of Stella offers a far more complex character–a woman not much interested in being a wife, not much interested in being a mother–a woman who wants to define her own life with her own standards of right and wrong. Stella at first attempts to do this within the prism of her husband’s ‘authority,’ and so fails. It’s only through complete independence that Stella finds some of peace.

The ultimate sacrifice Stella makes may seem like a traditional happy ending but the outcome of that sacrifice is off in the distant future and cannot easily be predicted. Personally I wouldn’t want to cozy up with this snooty crowd.

I loved Stella’s ability to ‘stage’ a scene. I rather enjoyed this book and rewatched the film too.

Prisoner’s Base: Celia Fremlin (1967)

In Prisoner’s Base, author Celia Fremlin creates another hellish domestic environment which involves three generations. Grandmother Margaret owns a large home on land, and her married daughter, Claudia lives there too along with Margaret’s mostly absent son-in-law, and Claudia’s daughter, teenager, Helen. Claudia, known for her interest in strays (humans, not animals) brings a series of damaged people to stay in Margaret’s house. It is easy to describe Claudia’s interest in these strays as charitable, or even misguided, but Claudia’s fascination with damaged people is far more complicated. She loves to psycho-analyze, but there’s more to it than that; housing these strays inflates Margaret’s massive ego, sense of self-importance and righteousness. Margaret loves the vision of herself being generous, high-minded, and tolerant. But also these acts of charity, which appear to claim the moral high ground, seemed designed to feed hostility between Claudia and her mother, Margaret. There are frequent “Claudia-isms” “typical manoeuvre [s] to belittle and undermine” her mother whenever a point of dispute erupts. One Claudia-ism is to impute her mother’s opinions to the narrowmindedness of her generation. Another is to imply that any difference of opinion between mother and daughter is a sign of Margaret’s mental decline.

Claudia’s latest stray is the neurotic Mavis, who has been living with them for the past 5 months. Mavis, a little mouse of a woman who wanders around in her dressing gown has, according to Claudia, an “inferiority complex,” but with her self-effacing ways, she manages to ruin Margaret’s day by continually invading her privacy. Oh the delicate people of this world who must be handled like bone china.. . in case they break.

If she’d stolen ten shillings out of your handbag every day at one o’clock you could have had her put in prison, reflected Margaret sourly, and yet you had to stand by, helpless, while she stole one by one, far more than ten shillings worth of happy hours of solitude.

Claudia thinks Margaret should be grateful to have Mavis for company. So why doesn’t Margaret just tell Claudia that this is her house, that she won’t tolerate any more unwanted guests? The answer is that Claudia claims Margaret is small-minded and selfish and then again Claudia seems to be so good with these damaged souls which causes Margaret self-doubt. Margaret makes the error of questioning the validity of her own feelings and so she can never tell Claudia where to shove it. Claudia’s impositions are just part of an elaborate psychological game between Claudia and Margaret–Claudia with the moral superiority and Margaret painted, by her daughter, as selfish and dotty.

Claudia had always been an adept at putting you in the wrong before you had so much as opened your mouth; Margaret had been waiting for her to grow out of this unlovable talent ever since she was thirteen; but she never had. Indeed, she was getting better at it, and now, at nearly forty, she could switch off the family arguments before they began at all; like turning off the water at the main in some depressing outhouse to which she alone had access.

Problems in Margaret’s household erupt in two ways: First, Margaret discovers that Claudia is trying to sell the field (owned by Margaret) and is having it appraised:

“Now, don’t panic, Mother. Just relax. Why is it that women of your generation always have to be so tense? Naturally, the field has to be valued; and to be valued it has to be looked at. Doesn’t it? Surely that’s common sense? They have to send a man along. To look at it.” Claudia was emphasising the simplest of the one-syllable words as if she was hoping that these, at least, might come within the range of her mother’s intelligence.

Margaret is battling Claudia’s bullying attempts to sell when Claudia takes in a new stray. This one, Maurice, is an ex-con–possibly even a murderer, and Claudia is determined to bag this trophy after he pops up at the local poetry group. She brings him home to dear old mum. Even Mavis, who is Claudia’s sycophant, is disturbed by Maurice’s presence in the house. Convinced that Maurice is going to sneak into her room, it’s more than her nerves can handle. Claudia, ever a armchair voyeur, loves to hear about Maurice’s criminal exploits, but he’d rather she type up his 100s and 100s of dreary poems. The household becomes a simmering stewpot of resentments, fears and suppressed rage. So of course, something violent is going to occur. Prisoner’s Base is my favourite Fremlin novel so far. The dynamic between Claudia and Margaret is brilliantly drawn. For this reader, the relationship between mother and daughter was bitter and all-too real. On the surface, they coexist and are cordial, yet under the familial membrane are festering skirmishes. Fremlin creates a very a credible hell of everyday domestic nastiness, dominance and unhealthy relationships.

Family Matters: Elizabeth Berridge

Elizabeth Berridge’s foreword in Family Matters, a collection of 16 stories, is strong stuff:

There is no substitute for the family. It is society’s first teething ring, man’s proving ground. When repudiated it still leaves its strengthening mark; when it does the rejecting, the outcast is damaged. Within its confines, devils and angels rage together, emotions creep underfoot like wet rot, or flourish like Russian ivy. It is the world in microcosm, the nursery of tyrants, the no-man’s land of suffering, a place and a time, a rehearsal for silent parlour murder. 

These stories focus on different aspects of family life, and it should come as no surprise, thanks to that excerpt from the foreword, that these relationships are often toxic. While the stories dissect various relationships, several of the stories examine the life of widows as they ‘move on.’ Some of the stories are from the 40s while others were published closer to the time of this book’s publication (1979)

Here’s a breakdown of the stories: 

Idolatry in the Afternoon

Breakthrough

Between the Tides

Time Lost

Mr. Saunders

Growing Up

The Beacon

Lullaby

The Story of Stanley Brent

Subject of a Sermon

The Notebooks

The Prisoner

Tell it to a stranger

Breath of Whose Being?

Under the Hammer

Nightcap

Of course with this many stories, I have some favourites. Idolatry in the Afternoon is the tale of 86-year-old Great-aunt Esmé who is visited by William and Kate.  Great-aunt Esmé tells the story of her Uncle Claud, a man who rented a little house in which he discreetly entertained his mistresses. But discretion falls by the wayside when Esmé overhears the servants gossiping about Claud, a divorce and takes note of the statement: “I never thought it counted as adultery if you did it in the afternoon.” This bit of information, not understood by Esmé and her sister Lila, disastrously slips out at the church bazaar tea. 

But the story is more than a memory; it’s also William’s smary, superficial  relationship to his Great-aunt, and Kate’s discomfort and feeling of exclusion when William and Esmé chat. 

Comfortably, Great-aunt Esmé switched off her lamp and composed herself for sleep. Well  they were all gone now, and she was the only one left. Kate was a little like Lila, kind but judging. She wouldn’t approve of the end of the story. And that young scallywag William –well, he didn’t want to hear old women’s tales. Men became bored so quickly, and then they went away … no she wouldn’t tell them.

What a fuss! By tomorrow she’s have forgotten it, anyway. Another bit of cargo dropped overboard to lighten the boat on its lonely journey over a darkening sea. 

In Breakthrough, a recent widow, Mrs. Jameson, is downsizing and moving into a flat. This means that she needs to get rid of many precious family possessions. Her pregnant daughter, Tessa, is supposed to be helping, but Tessa barely manages to hide her impatience. There’s little affection between the two women, and Mrs. Jameson, who relied on her husband for a great deal of support, isn’t coping well with widowhood. There’s resentment brewing in Tessa, and when her mother reaches out for emotional support, Tessa takes the opportunity to strike. 

Time Lost is a cautionary tale. Pat visits Aunt Tazie in Wales every summer. Although there are other nieces, Pat and Tazie have a special relationship. Pat loves visiting Aunt Tazie as ” we were both great readers, the two of us.” So there’s a meeting ground where they read together and squabble over various fictional characters. At one point, Pat asks Aunt Tazie if she’s read Proust:

At once, she blushed, like a child stealing jam, and said in a whisper, “Oh I long to read Proust! I’ve promised myself Proust for years … but I’m leaving him till last, like a bonne bouche.” She gave me a hesitant look, “I’m saving him up for my deathbed, my dear. What a beautiful way to drift off.”

“It will have to be a long deathbed, then Aunt Tazie.”

Life has a way of playing tricks with our plans, and so it is with Tazie with her “longed-for, saved-up pleasure of this last bonne bouche, this Madeleine which had also turned to sawdust in her mouth.”

Mr Saunders is the story of an inmate in a mental home. The narrator’s Uncle Albert is the superintendent and Mr. Saunders, a long-term patient, and an artisan, has become a sort of hospital mascot. He’s allowed a great deal of freedom with Uncle Albert’s permission. …

Under the Hammer is another great favourite. There’s an estate sale afoot at Glanbadarn, and sensible Bella Linton can’t resist going to the sale. Bella is the daughter of a “previous” vicar and the widow of the local doctor. Her father was great friends with the old squire, also known as the Colonel. Bella’s father, the vicar marries again after the death of his first wife, and Bella finds herself with a stepmother and a step sister, Phoebe. Phoebe eventually marries the squire’s son, but now she is a widow too, and she’s shedding the great house that belonged to her husband’s family for many generations. To Bella, the house has many wonderful memories, and Phoebe’s decision to sell it along with its hordes of treasures of the past, seems like sacrilege.

Bella leaned against the big window that looked into the courtyard at the back of the house, then aside at her young step-sister. Young? She had always considered her to be so, and now she saw that age had not withered so much as preserved her. Now her skin showed a certain dryness, as if it might suddenly flake off. Hers was not a body to sag into old age and death; it would explode into dust, each particle dancing with its owner’s infuriating vivacity.

All the village is gathered to bid for items that will look incongruous in their modest homes. Some desire a slice of memory from the great house and others cannot hide their glee at acquiring an item owned by the Rushby-Knightons.  Bella finds that the visit to the house stirs resentment at her stepsister but more than that, she remembers how “always she had left Glanbadarn Hall with more than she came: a bunch of roses, a basket of peaches from the hothouse, asparagus, black grapes.” And then Bella commits an unpremeditated act that she did not think she was capable of. 

The 16 stories showcase the author’s range and talent at dissecting the power of memory and magnifying the complex dark corners of human relationships. We seek companionship, love, friendship and yet all those things often twist with a bitter sting, for in long-term relationships we so often cannot resist evening the score. Here Elizabeth Berridge shows women who are adjusting to being alone, women who confront their pasts, a lonely spinster on holiday, a mother whose charitable occupations alienate her son, a strange triangle which occurs between a married couple and a single male friend, a spinster who becomes attached to a German POW, a widow who prevaricates over the sale of her late husband’s papers, two sisters who meet a clairvoyant, and a rancid moment in a decades long marriage. There was only one story I disliked and that was Lullaby.