Early 20C morals: Adultery and Redemption

Expiation by Elizabeth Von Arnim

published 1929

 

 

There is one book by this author that I really love: Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther.

Others – not so much; My notes on one of them read: Dreadful. Absolutely awful. Two horrible girls. Dire.

I didn’t like Enchanted April, or her Garden.

I do like the fact that her books are numerous and very varied: Vera (1921) was an unexpected, compelling read, a very accomplished & not at all cheerful picture of a marriage, supposedly descriptive of her own bad times. I just read a comment that it was as if Wuthering Heights was written by Jane Austen, which makes me want to read it again, despite its grimness. There is intriguing foreshadowing of du Maurier's Rebecca, which came 17 years later.

Expiation I’d never heard of before (she wrote a lot, as I say) but I liked the setup. Persephone Books have re-issued it.

A well-off, respectable man, Ernest Bott, dies unexpectedly. He has a wife, no children, but a large family of siblings and in-laws. Everyone is horrified to learn that in his will he has cut off the grieving widow with a thousand pounds, and left everything else to a charity for Fallen Women. ‘My wife will know why’ he says in the will, splendidly.

Milly, seemingly a calm, placid unexceptional woman is an unlikely adulterer. But we (the readers) are told straightaway that it is true: she has had a long meet-once-a-week affair with an Oxford academic. Nobody else knows that yet – they just are astonished at the implicit accusation.

The book takes place over the next few days as the family, and Milly, decide what to do next. This is a huge family – I think the matriarch of the Botts had nine children, and all of them are married, and all of them with opinions on the whole matter.

I wrote once about authors reflecting eras in their choice of names:

Character Names – in living memory

The Tiffany Problem, and names in historical fiction

and my goodness the many characters in Expiation have the names you would expect:

George, Bertie, Dick, Percy, Mabel, Milly, Alec, Nora, Fred, Walter, Maud, Edith, Joan, Edward, Ernest

I would say, a great list if you were planning to write a historical novel set at the time, and wanted to get the names right. On the other hand, the book was published in 1929, and seems to be set roughly then (the First World War is mentioned as something in the past) but really has a feel of Edwardian times. Although, everybody is busy telephoning others up all the time.

And, while I’m complaining, there were just too many of the sibs and inlaws, I never really got them straight in my head at all.

There were some excellent moments in the book – you didn’t know where it was going, how it was going to play out, and I certainly did want to know. But, oh dear, it was padded out with long descriptions, going over of people’s thoughts, repetition, irrelevant passages. Sometimes when I am reading a book I can actually visualize myself going over the MS with a stout red felt-tip/marker crossing whole paragraphs out, and this was definitely the case here. [I may have a Clothes in Books Red Crayon line when the bedjackets have taken off. Or perhaps offer an editing service - 'More Clothes, Less Waffle']

It would have made a hugely enjoyable novella in my important opinion, but instead came it at nearly 400 pages. But I did keep on reading… It would also make a great play, with some scenes crying out to be staged.

Early chapters gave us a view of Milly, but in the second half of the book she was a cipher. Three promising characters appear in the first half but are packed off – in the later pages just about no-one appears who isn’t one of the Botts. (apart from the servants of course).

The mother of all the Botts is a slippery character – more of her would have been enjoyable with her odd comments: “till a woman had been through a husband, the old lady held, she didn’t really know what God could do to her.”

It’s a pity the in-laws aren’t better defined. Some of the men have a soft spot for Milly – which will lead to trouble – but also the situation makes them more cautious around their own wives:

Fred that very day had bought Mabel a new pendant, and Alec was thinking of getting Ruth something—perhaps a new garage, which he badly needed, the one they had being inconveniently small. 

And then they will say things like this:

“It does a woman no good to be too attractive,” one of these men, commenting on the situation, remarked to his wife—unguardedly.

[This is a direct quote, I think even the author couldn't be bothered working out which of the men said it]

No wonder everything has been messed up. There is a most enjoyable meeting where they all try to work out what to do with Milly next. There is one genuine surprise – a new way of looking at things – and then eventually, after peak fighting and arguing and suspicion, a resolution which I think is satisfactory.

Expiation is easy to read: it doesn’t have any great moral lesson, perhaps surprisingly. The family gets absolutely no credit for any of their attempts to sort out Milly - they never reject her - and she seems a pass-agg nightmare, but we can let everyone off and have a good time reading it, it slips down well if you skim through some of the boring bits.

There are no clothes to speak of in the book, apart from Milly’s deep mourning -  a crape veil hanging from her bonnet, which would both have been black.

We looked at this in a post 2x years ago

Mourning in Books

And various others followed on.

The families are well off, socially aspiring, living a very comfortable suburban life in outer London. They probably don’t get Paris creations as in the top picture, but I felt this pic had a look of the very judge-y sisterhood.

Three original Paris creations - NYPL Digital Collections

And the lady in the coat looks elegant too. As often the case, Milly is referred to as if she were ready to slide into decrepit old age, but she would seem to be not much more than 40, so I'm giving her one nice outfit.

[Woman modeling hat and suit with long coat and fur collar]