The Flint Anchor Part Two: Crinolines & Conversations

The Flint Anchor by Sylvia Townsend Warner

published 1954

 

[excerpt] Women had begun to wear crinolines, and Mary prided herself on having the most imposing crinoline in Loseby. Every year more yards of silk and velvet were required to drape the structure, and a more elaborate system of flounces and outworks was festooned about it. With her stiffly corseted body, her necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, she seemed to be an idol rising from some peculiar dome-shaped altar, and looking calmly and negligently down on the offerings that had been laid around her.

The wedding had taken place, Mary had come downstairs in her travelling bonnet (a married woman’s bonnet with feathers waving) and had given her last embraces and got into the carriage and been driven away - alone with her husband.

comments: I did a first post on this book yesterday, but there was so much to say, and also it was time I looked at some clothes…

Mary came downstairs wearing black velvet. A Raphael Madonna in black velvet….

She has recently ‘lost’ her husband. The picture shows Charity Barnum, first wife of PT Barnum – not looking a lot like Michelle Williams. Portrait by Frederick Spencer, from the Barnum Museum . (All over the blog there are many posts on what women wear as mourning should you be interested)

I’m still trying to analyse what makes this book so enjoyable.

The author is very good at short telling conversations. John takes his daughter with him to call on some new neighbours.

Miss Mutley expressed a warm desire to see more of Madame Bon, and Euphemia got an impression that she would be glad to hear that Madame Bon was at the bottom of the sea.

After this visit:

As they walked home, John Barnard said, ‘I do not like him.’

‘Neither do I,’ said Euphemia, pleased to find herself able for once to agree unequivocally with her father.

‘Perhaps you are too young to form a decision on first sight, Euphemia. In any case you are too young to express it.’

The sheer annoyingness of this is so recognisable, you want Euphemia to hit him. But she never will… There is an awful moment when she thinks about being 24: ‘she was past marrying and a long way from burying’. Though – there are still turns in the road for her.

There are other similar dreadful moments, particularly at mealtimes, as here when someone makes an unfortunate comment:

Julia resigned herself. Her husband had many failings, and conscience had petrified most of them into faults, but unfortunately worldliness was not among them. There was no guest he would not have kept dangling, no dinner that he would not have let burn, if a moral fox broke covert. Mary had obviously spoken the truth, so Euphemia had been deceiving him. This must be looked into.

You couldn’t read the book without realizing the bleakness of the lives and opportunities available to many women, and STW has this description of two people who need to be sorted out: Thomas, a young man, and his aunt, the Miss Mutley above, who is nicknamed Mutty:

Entangled in the question of Thomas was the question of Mutty; but the question of Mutty was worse. A little delay in finding the exact hole to drop Thomas into did not matter, but at all costs Mutty must be disposed of before the wedding; and though finding a hole for her was not complicated by exactitude, for woman is a fluid form of matter and can be poured into almost any shaped receptacle, Mutty was as ticklish to manage as a confectioner’s boiling syrup.

Mutty is impossible, and would be maddening in real life, but she is also treated very badly, and simply not considered fully.

There is an extraordinary scene where the sisters are screaming at each other, telling secrets, making accusations, explaining homosexuality to each other, and playing the piano very loudly at the same time. It is intensely visual – and will have extreme results.

I take a strong line on dreams in fiction - memo to authors: they are always boring. But here is the exception – John Barnard (briefly) thinks about a recurring dream, and works out what it means: ‘he had come up from the wine-cellar with the right thing left behind’. It is excellently done.

There are some very interesting discussions of the book online, as people struggle to understand and analyse it, and look at the ways it breaks the rules of traditional narratives, and of historical fiction.

Kate Macdonald has an excellent review of it here, one that very much chimed with my own views (so is obviously correct 😉)

Another fascinating take on it here, Gallimaufry blog. That post sent me to another from Mumpsimus

The Flint Anchor by Sylvia Townsend Warner

which very much places it in within Warner’s other works in a very helpful way. But  - be warned – it was full of intriguing links to follow. I spent a lot of time following these lines…

The matter of crinolines, and what they meant to women, turn up in unexpected places - see this post.

Women’s fashions from NYPL.