Jane and Prudence

by Barbara Pym

Book Overview

Middle-aged Jane is the well-intentioned but far from perfect clergyman's wife and mother. Prudence, who at 29 is teetering at the edge of spinsterhood, is an attractive, educated working girl. The two best friends share memories of their carefree days at Oxford, leisurely lunches, and gossip, but their ultimate goal is to find a suitable mate for Prudence.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060971010
• ISBN13: 9780060971014
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

How life works out, and doesn't

Part of what leaves me gasping about Barbara Pym the perfection with which she captures how people adapt to yearning, pettiness, and disillusionment: their own and those with whom they live. Her characters behave with civility and even gentility and yet -- In so many ways, these people break faith with each other and, more lethally, with themselves. Ennui and its traveling companion, laziness, undermine good intentions. A veneer of goodwill barely conceals condescension and even scorn. And is it really gossip if, when talking about somebody, we choose our words carefully and our concern is more or less genuine? We look at each other more clearly than we will ever be able to look at ourselves. Still, others are capable of surprising us, of acting against everything we believed of them. But the ability to shake things up depends largely on how we respond to darting moments of insight. We make decisions, Pym implies, especially when we decide to do nothing. This novel re-works some aspects of Pym's earliest novel, Crampton Hodnet. In particular, the dynamics between a spinster and her companion (whose names and other characteristics she reprises) play out differently and perhaps more satisfyingly. The story itself could be said to be painted on a larger canvas, but more subtly. I regularly reread this book and others by Pym because I enjoy her stories. But I do so knowing that she will challenge me, in the nicest possible way, to look at how I live with others and, even more cunningly, she will dare me to look at how I live with myself.

The Best

Of the 4 Pym novels I have read so far (Excellent Women, Glass of Blessings, An Unsuitable Attachment), this is my favorite. On her favorite subject, the relationship between men and women, Pym is at her most profound and funniest, often in the same sentence.

Married, not married

Prudence Bates is 29 and Jane Cleveland 41. Prudence was Jane's pupil at Oxford. Jane is married to Nicholas, a curate. She has one child, Flora. Moving to a new living in the country, a Mrs. Glaze is to help the Clevelands at their vicarage. Prudence in London is enjoying the rapture and misery of her love for Arthur Grampian, a middle-aged married man who is her employer. Jane and Nicholas have to go out to eat when Mrs. Glaze and Flora are not present because Jane doesn't know what is available in their kitchen. Jane goes to London for a meeting and meets Prudence there. Prudence feels that Jane has kept her independence more than most of her married friends. Nevetheless, her research on obscure seventeenth century poets has come to nothing. Flora has spent a semester at Oxford and is turning into a good cook. Her parents don't understand how she has learned to cook since they can't. The Clevelands have always had cold houses and so the prospect of visiting them in the fall or the winter is not appealing to Prudence. She visits at the time of a community whist party. Prudence feels that her friend Jane is wasted in parish work, that she really could have written books. Fabian Driver, a widower who attends the Parish Church dates Prudence. Jane had always wanted to be in a country parish since she believes that people in the country are noble. Jane is indignant on Prudence's behalf when Fabian shows more interest in someone else as a candidate for his second wife. Later Prudence recovers her self-respect by vacationing in Spain with a younger man from her office. The book presents a merry game of changing relationships at the office in London and in the village parish. It is great fun.

"I never read anything my mother reads."

"I never read anything my mother reads," said my best friend Tom when we were college students. Although that was a long time ago, I still remember his response when I offered him a copy of a Barbara Pym novel. Such is the far-reaching reputation of this very entertaining writer. However, I vouch for the fact that Pym's novels appeal to a much wider public than our mothers. Take Jane and Prudence. Jane is a frumpy but bright vicar's wife who would, in another age and novel, enjoy a profitable career in Human Resources Management. Prudence, her close friend from schoolgirl days, is a single woman living in a modest flat in London and working in a dreary office but whose life is anything but dull. She likes fine things, makes up her face artfully and fantasizes about her married employer. Jane and her husband the vicar have recently relocated to a village vicarage where the locals are hard pressed to accept their new neighbors. Prudence comes to visit and is courted by the local Lothario who is ultimately swept up by his rich neighbor's hired companion, leaving Prudence slightly bereft and impelled to dally with her pale, lean co-worker who enjoys hiking. That's the plot as best as I can describe it, leaving out the small but pretty byroads of church decorating parties, council meetings and office lunches. Within this precious story is great high comedy, full of irony and wit. The office scenes are hilarious, depicting an inpenetrable hierachy that had me laughing away. The village characters are all distinct and never reduced to stock rustic characters, therefore I was fascinated. The very industrious woman who lands the local but lazy Lothario gives a firm example of "setting one's cap" to winning a mate. Pym likes to depict characters who study anthropology and it's fitting that her people in this story are quite a tribal study in themselves.

Sheer bliss, even the 10th time around

What a joy it is to sink into a Barbara Pym novel, especially this one, which is one of my favorites. The eye for detail, the wit, the ability to sketch a character with just a sentence or two, that this author possesses, never fail to delight. I return to her novels every couple of years, and find them to be balm for the soul.This trip into the English countryside of 50 years ago, with its vicars, teas, and rationing, is a gentle and wondrous escape from current realities. Yet, like all great literature, its insights into human nature is timeless.