Thank Heaven Fasting

Thank Heaven Fasting / E.M. Delafield
London: Virago, 1989, c1933.
240 p.

Another book with marriage at its heart, this one is a little bit bleaker than some. It's set in Edwardian England, where young Monica Ingram - only daughter of socially ambitious parents - understands that the only goal of a woman's life is to marry well. 

Young women must be very very careful - reputation is everything. And Monica, with a young and soon faded kind of prettiness, much catch a husband. She has a caller whom she likes, but according to her mother, he is much too young and unimportant for her. And then alas, she gets drawn aside and has her head turned by a rake at a party, being momentarily unguarded. In a moment, her reputation falters. 

Her family takes her away for a while but by next season she sees that the new crop of younger, prettier debutantes have made her life more difficult. She spends a few years festering, with two options appearing on the horizon. One just wants her to listen to his complaints and grumbles, and the other is a froggy looking gentleman of her parents' generation. But needs must, and getting the crumbs of a choice makes Monica happy in the end. As the author notes, Monica "could never, looking backwards, remember a time when she had not known that a woman’s failure or success in life depended entirely on whether or not she succeeded in getting a husband."

This was an interesting read; it shows the utter lack of options for young girls of this class. They have no education, no worldly knowledge at all, no access to money -- marriage is literally the only choice, unless they happen to be a particularly strong natured girl and run off to be a Bohemian. Monica is not that, and she's contrasted with her childhood friends, sisters Frederica and Cecily Marlowe. They have it worse than she does; they are homely and their beautiful mother can't stand them, and makes no effort to help them to a good marriage. Their characters show all the inward neuroticism that arises from their stifled lives. 

This book is a strange mixture, written in that light Delafield tone but full of deadly serious commentary. She reveals, in small details, the stifling world that girls like Monica lived in. The so-called choices open to them are pretty terrible, and to our modern eye, it's almost unbearable to read about their daily round and their disappointed hopes - they have no power to shape or control any of these, and just have to survive them. Despite how lightly the book begins, it's an airless world and a sad ending, from our perspective.