In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

7 | “Wildest hopes exceeded” E. M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady In February 1931, E. M. Delafield published the first installment of a series called “Women in Fiction” in Time and Tide. It identified the types of women likely to feature in “the dialect novel”: The malignant grandmother [. . .] dominates the book, and all the people in it, and the destinies of every one of them, and is almost always the victim of a disease, or at least a disability, that keeps her in bed, or anyway in a chair. Briefly, the general rule is that her sons should be weaklings and degenerates and her daughters neurotic victims of sex-repression, but her grandchildren, curiously enough, are fearfully strong characters, and end by defying her. [. . .] The younger women in dialect novels have the most terrifically strong passions. Either it’s the old homestead, [. . .] or the Squire’s oldest son, or perhaps their own oldest son. (“Women in Fiction”) This is precisely the plot of Cold Comfort Farm, and all the characters Delafield mentions are included in Gibbons’s novel exactly as described . The piece appeared just before Gibbons began work on her book, and as an occasional contributor to Time and Tide herself, she may well have read it. It might have crystallized the ideas she had gained through her own extensive reading of agricultural fiction. More importantly, the piece draws attention to the affinities between the two authors. Like Gibbons, Delafield had an eye for pattern, in terms of both literary convention and ordinary social language; and like her she was a skilled parodist and imitator. In her journalism, Delafield T4194.indb 179 T4194.indb 179 5/2/07 6:46:11 AM 5/2/07 6:46:11 AM 180 | Women, Celebrity, and Literary Culture parodied the style of numerous writers, while in her Provincial Lady books, she convincingly evoked the conversation of a whole range of social types. Lady Rhondda (later Viscountess Rhondda, and editor of Time and Tide) comments in her obituary of Delafield that her literary parodies “were amongst her best work, but the Provincial Lady, and indeed most of her lighter work, was also in fact parody—parody of life,” adding: “One was, I think, more conscious of her amazing ear and memory for words than one is of that of most writers” (Rhondda, Obituary). Delafield—like Gibbons and also Dorothy Parker—creates humor through the very predictability of what her characters say. Yet the styles of these authors would never be mistaken for one another; paradoxically, in the rendering of the phrases of ordinary social intercourse , each found her own distinctive voice. Delafield’s best-known work, The Diary of a Provincial Lady, began as a serial in Time and Tide from December 1929 onwards, and before the end of 1930, its popularity led to publication in book form. It became a best seller, making its author internationally famous and giving rise to three sequels, The Provincial Lady Goes Further (1932), The Provincial Lady in America (1934), and The Provincial Lady in Wartime (1939).1 The protagonist’s first journal entry immediately reveals her characteristic combination of wit and exasperation, literary and domestic reference. November 7th.—Plant the indoor bulbs. Just as I am in the middle of them, Lady Boxe calls. I say, untruthfully, how nice to see her, and beg her to sit down while I just finish the bulbs. Lady B. makes determined attempt to sit down in armchair where I have already placed two bulb-bowls and the bag of charcoal, is headed off just in time, and takes the sofa. Do I know, she asks, how very late it is for indoor bulbs? September , really, or even October, is the time. [. . .] We talk some more about bulbs, the Dutch School of Painting, Our Vicar’s Wife, sciatica , and All Quiet on the Western Front. (DPL, 3) The diaries are invariably described as chronicles of ordinariness and domesticity, and their heroine as a representative “type.” When the first book appeared, an anonymous notice in Time and Tide commented that Delafield had “created a complete and therefore composite portrait of, not only one woman, but a type of women, a state of society, a phase of life.”2 In the Irish Times, a reviewer of the 1944 omnibus T4194.indb 180 T4194.indb 180 5/2/07 6:46:11 AM 5/2/07 6:46:11 AM [18.116.118.198] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 09:51...

Share