Excellent Women (Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Barbara Pym
- First Published: 1952
- Type of Work: Novel of manners
- Time of Work: The years after World War II
- Setting: London, England
- Principal Characters: Mildred Lathbury, Helena Napier, Rockingham (Rocky) Napier, Julian Malory, Winifred Malory, Allegra Gray, Dora Caldicote, Everard Bone
- Genres: Long fiction, Satire, Fiction of manners
- Subjects: Love or romance, Gender roles, Psychology or psychologists, Social issues, Communication, Marriage, 1940’s, Friendship, Social life, Women’s issues, Women, London, Lifestyles, Single people, Clergy, Office employees, Church or churches
- Locales: London, England
The Novel
Excellent Women resembles the other novels of the Barbara Pym canon in that it permits readers to spend something like a year involved in the lives of middle-class English people-most particularly in the life of an “excellent woman,” one of those responsible, genteel, educated, unmarried women, neither young nor old, rich nor poor, strikingly pretty nor hopelessly plain, who are towers of strength in parish affairs and who are expected to be similar bulwarks in the personal lives of the people who surround them. Excellent Women differs from most other Pym novels...
[The entire page is 2718 words long]
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