Diana Tutton (1915–1991)

Piquant but ultimately rather unsatisfying.
Set in the 1950s, I believe.
There are five daughters in the Harvey family. The eldest is recently married; the remaining four are unsure of what life holds for them. All they know is that their activities and friendships are severely curtailed by their parents, particularly their mother. They've grown up with this and are fairly content with it. Their parents encourage them in semi-intellectual pursuits, which helps them feel like they are happy. They all more or less recognize that they're not a "normal" family, but they willfully ignore exploring why, until it is forced upon them. Also mysterious to them is why their eldest sister was allowed to get married, when so much of the family life is centered around staying at home and never, ever rocking the boat.

Only a limited amount of resolution at the end.

Rather interesting characters, but kind of a cold book.… (mehr)

Protege a tus hijas (1953) puede leerse fácilmente como una divertida inversión moderna de Orgullo y prejuicio con un toque de Mujercitas, títulos ambos que se citan en la novela. Si en la célebre obra de Jane Austen una madre se desvivía por casar a sus hijas, aquí, dice uno de los personajes, «ni siquiera la mismísima señora Bennet lo conseguiría, a menos que contara con el apoyo de unos cuantos clérigos». La familia Harvey vive en un pueblecito no lejos de Londres justo en los años posteriores a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El padre es un escritor de novelas policiacas de éxito, muy celoso de su intimidad, y se pasa el día encerrado en su «vestidor». La madre, una belleza serena y delicada, tiene el hobby de pintar, come y cena muchas veces sola en su habitación, y hay órdenes tajantes de no alterarla en ninguna circunstancia. De sus cinco hijas, que nunca han ido a la escuela y se han educado en casa (no solo a base de Jane Austen y Louise May Alcott sino también de Gide y Proust), solo una se ha casado y vive en Londres. Las otras cuatro siguen viviendo en un mundo excéntrico y aislado, que a veces parece idílico y otras preocupante. Una de ellas, Morgan, va contando las pequeñas incidencias de su vida en común con jovialidad y ligereza, hasta que de pronto descubre que hay algo raro, quizá hasta cruel, en ese aislamiento. Diana Tutton, con su magistral uso del punto de vista, guía a su narradora para establecer con el lector, en un brillante ambiente de comedia, una grata complicidad, y para que los hallazgos perturbadores se produzcan para los dos –narradora y lector− al mismo tiempo.… (mehr)

‘Guard Your Daughters’ is an interesting little book that took me awhile to track down, as it’s been out of print for some time. It’s about a family in rural England who have five daughters, all of whom are sheltered with the exception of the eldest, who is married and living in London. The book is told from the perspective of the middle child who is 19 or so, and her narrative voice is delightful. Through the trials and tribulations of dealing with siblings as well as trying to find someone romantically, she’s humorous and has that wonderful British way of putting things. The girls have been educated at home but are well cultured in classical music and literature, so there is an intelligence to their dialogue. There is also a lovely undercurrent of darkness in the book – something’s wrong with their mother, but Tutton is wisely subtle about it until the end. I loved that, but I confess I wasn’t quite as satisfied with the ultimate explanation. The general message, that over-protecting your kids is unhealthy, is interesting to see from 1953 as a prelude to the sixties.

Quotes:
On old age, apparently from Castiglione:
“Therefore (me thinke) olde men be like unto them that sayling in a vessel out of an haven beholde the ground with their eyes, and the vessel to their seeming standeth still and the shore goeth; and yet it is cleane contrarie, for the haven, and likewise the time and pleasures, continue still in their estate, and we, with the vessel of mortalitie fleeing away, go one after another through the tempestuous sea, that swalloweth up and devoureth all things, neither is it graunted us at any time to come on shore againe, but alwaies beaten with contrarie windes, at the end we breake our vessel at some rocke.”

On oneness and yet isolation:
“Mother came with me one day, and a walk with her is always a revelation as she sees all sorts of little things in the hedgerows that no one else would notice. Sometimes, too, she would walk for a few yards with her eyes shut, and her lovely tragic face upturned to the air, as though its touch upon her brought peace. Oh, darling Mother! If only I could have come near to her, could have understood her sorrowful isolation and relieved it with my love.”

On the past:
“I lay smiling in the dark. There were wonderful things ahead, and I would not look back or regret what was gone. ‘But,’ I thought with a pang, ‘we shall never really be a family again. That part is done, and it was everything while it lasted.
‘That part of our story is ended now.’”

On poetry:
“If I could really grasp that farm there, the walnut tree, the pond, the sky, the cold air, all those and the emotion they give me – Oh, Morgan, and those two horsemen coming slowly over the hill! If I could put it in a poem what it all does to me – the – the intensity of it, do you understand? Well, it wouldn’t matter if the poem lasted or was completely lost. I’d have done it. I’d have made something perfect.”… (mehr)