Excellent Women

Summary

Excellent Women is narrated by Mildred Lathbury, an unmarried clergyman's daughter just past thirty, living in a shabby part of London near Victoria in the austere years after the Second World War. She works part-time for a society aiding impoverished gentlewomen and devotes herself to her parish church, St Mary's, where she helps the unmarried vicar, Julian Malory, and his sister Winifred. Mildred is one of the 'excellent women' of the title, the capable, self-effacing spinsters on whom churches, families and men depend without much noticing them. Her quiet life is disrupted when new tenants move into the flat below hers, sharing her bathroom: Helena Napier, a brisk, untidy anthropologist, and her husband Rockingham, a handsome, charming former naval officer who spent the war in Italy organising the social life of an admiral's Wrens. The Napiers' marriage is failing, and Mildred becomes the confidante of both. Through Helena she meets Everard Bone, a reserved, somewhat priggish anthropologist with whom Helena is half in love; Mildred finds herself drawn to him despite herself. Meanwhile the parish is unsettled by the arrival of Allegra Gray, an attractive clergy widow who takes a flat in the vicarage and becomes engaged to Julian, to Mildred's ambiguous relief and the dismay of parishioners who had assumed Julian would marry Mildred. Everyone treats Mildred as a resource: the Napiers ask her to manage their quarrels, their separation and the division of their furniture; Allegra plans to turn Winifred out of the vicarage, and Mildred must take her in; Everard invites her to learned society meetings and seems to want her to proofread and index for him. The engagement collapses once Allegra's plan to push Winifred out of the vicarage comes into the open, and the Napiers reconcile and move to the country. At the end, Mildred reflects wryly that she may yet have a 'full life', with Julian, Everard and the parish all needing her, and with the hint that Everard's need for an indexer may develop into something more. The novel is a comedy of tea, jumble sales and church politics, but also a sharp, sad study of loneliness, female labour and the expectations placed on single women.

Plot or Argument

• The Napiers arrive

  Mildred meets her new neighbours and is drawn into their marital difficulties; Rocky's charm and Helena's career.

• Anthropologists and parishioners

  Mildred meets Everard Bone at a learned society; Allegra Gray arrives at the vicarage and attracts Julian.

• Engagements and separations

  Julian's engagement, the Napiers' separation, and Mildred's role as everyone's helper.

• Resolutions

  The engagement ends, Winifred comes to stay with Mildred, the Napiers reconcile, and Mildred contemplates a future with Everard's index cards.

Characters

• Mildred Lathbury, narrator

  Observant, self-deprecating clergyman's daughter whom everyone relies upon.

• Rockingham Napier, neighbour

  Charming, idle naval officer back from Italy.

• Helena Napier, neighbour

  Brisk anthropologist neglectful of housework and marriage.

• Everard Bone, anthropologist

  Reserved academic who comes to depend on Mildred.

• Julian Malory, vicar

  Kind, unworldly clergyman briefly engaged to Allegra Gray.

• Winifred Malory, Julian's sister

  Gentle, impractical spinster who keeps house for her brother.

• Allegra Gray, clergy widow

  Attractive newcomer whose engagement to Julian unsettles the parish.

• Dora Caldicote, Mildred's friend

  Schoolmistress and old friend from Mildred's schooldays.

Lessons

• Invisible labour

  Mildred's competence makes her indispensable and overlooked. Pym exposes how communities rely on women's unpaid emotional and practical work.

  • What do people want from Mildred, and what does she want?
  • Is Mildred's helpfulness a strength or a trap?

• Comedy of small things

  Pym finds drama in tea, jumble sales and the sharing of a bathroom. The novel shows how small social details reveal character and power.

  • Why does Pym dwell on such ordinary details?
  • How does she use irony to protect Mildred's dignity?

• Choosing one's own life

  The ending suggests that Mildred may be able to shape a fuller life, but on terms still set by others. The book asks how much choice single women had in postwar England.

  • Is the ending happy?
  • What would a 'full life' mean for Mildred?
  • How would Mildred's situation differ today?

Context

Set in the years of rationing and bomb damage after 1945, the novel reflects a surplus of single women after two wars, the declining but still central role of the Church of England in middle-class life, and the professionalisation of anthropology. Pym's own work at the International African Institute informed her portrait of anthropologists.

Composition

Pym's second published novel, it appeared in 1952 from Jonathan Cape and drew on her own experience of church life in Pimlico and of spinsterhood.

Reception

It was well received and became her most popular novel. After her rediscovery in 1977 it was reissued and is now regarded as a classic of postwar English comic fiction.

Comparisons

• persuasion

  Mildred and Anne Elliot are both overlooked women whose intelligence and sense are undervalued, though Austen rewards Anne with romance where Pym is more equivocal.

• cold-comfort-farm

  Flora Poste and Mildred are capable women who manage other people's lives in comic English settings.

• the-warden

  Trollope and Pym are both gentle satirists of Church of England life and clerical politics.

• mansfield-park

  Fanny Price and Mildred are quiet, dutiful observers whose moral sense is tested by charming, selfish neighbours.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The arrival of the Napiers in the flat below, with whom Mildred must share a bathroom. Notice how quickly both Helena and Rockingham begin to treat her as confidante and go-between.
• Every pot of tea Mildred makes in a crisis. Tea marks the moments when someone needs her, and Pym uses it as a running comic measure of how much of the novel's emotional work falls to Mildred.
• The arrival of Allegra Gray at the vicarage of St Mary's and the parish's assumption that Julian Malory would one day marry Mildred. Watch how Mildred reports her own feelings with careful understatement.
• Allegra's plan to move Winifred out of the vicarage, and Mildred's decision to take Winifred in, which brings the engagement to a crisis.
• Everard Bone's requests that Mildred help with proof-reading and indexing at the end of the novel, and her wry reflection that she may yet have a full life.

Key terms and names

Excellent women

The novel's phrase for capable, unmarried, church-going women like Mildred who keep parishes, families and other people's lives running. Others praise them for this while assuming they want nothing for themselves.

Mildred Lathbury

The narrator, an unmarried clergyman's daughter just past thirty who works part-time for a society helping impoverished gentlewomen. Her dry, self-deprecating narration is the source of the book's comedy.

St Mary's

Mildred's parish church, served by the unmarried vicar Julian Malory and his sister Winifred. Its jumble sales, services and parish rivalries form one of the novel's two social worlds.

The learned society

The anthropologists' world that Mildred enters through Helena Napier and Everard Bone. Pym, who worked at the International African Institute, presents it as another closed community with its own rituals and gossip.

Postwar austerity

The years of rationing, shortages and bomb damage in London after 1945. The shabby flats, careful meals and scarcity of single men in the novel all belong to this setting.

Clergy widow

Allegra Gray's position: the widow of a clergyman, with standing in parish society but little income. Her engagement to Julian is partly a bid for the security of the vicarage.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Who are the Napiers, what does each of them do, and what practical arrangement throws Mildred into their lives?
2. Comprehension How does Mildred meet Everard Bone, and what does he come to want from her by the end of the novel?
3. Comprehension Why does Julian's engagement to Allegra Gray come to an end, and what happens to Winifred as a result?
4. Interpretation Mildred is constantly asked to help, listen and manage. Does she resent being an excellent woman, take quiet pride in it, or both? Point to moments where her narration lets you see beneath her composure.
5. Interpretation Why does Pym give so much space to tea, jumble sales, bathrooms and furniture? What do these small details reveal about character and power in the parish and in the Napiers' marriage?
6. Interpretation Pym sets the parish of St Mary's beside the learned society of anthropologists. How are the two communities alike, and what does the comparison suggest about church life?
7. Big Question Mildred serves others faithfully and is rarely thanked or noticed. Is a life of hidden service a true vocation, and how can a person serve generously without being simply used?

Faith Connections

• Luke 10:38-42 (Scripture)

  Martha is busy with much serving while Mary sits at the Lord's feet, and Jesus says Mary has chosen the good portion. Mildred is a modern Martha, and the novel quietly asks whether all her busyness for the parish leaves room for the one thing needful.

• 1 Corinthians 7:32-35 (Scripture)

  Paul says the unmarried woman can give herself to the things of the Lord without the divided cares of marriage. Mildred's single life gives her this freedom in principle, yet in practice everyone in the novel fills it with their own demands.

• Galatians 6:2-5 (Scripture)

  Paul tells believers to bear one another's burdens and, a few verses later, that each must carry his own load. Mildred bears everyone's burdens, while the Napiers, Allegra and Everard are slow to carry their own.

• C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, ch. 3 (Affection) (Great Conversation)

  Lewis sketches Mrs Fidget, who lives for her family and exhausts them with her service. Mildred is her opposite in temper, self-aware and ironic, and the comparison helps students ask when service is love and when it becomes a need to be needed.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Parishes, families and learned societies depend on the steady, unnoticed labour of capable single women. Those who receive this labour come to treat it as a natural resource rather than a gift. Mildred, who gives it, is therefore both indispensable and overlooked, and the only defence she has is a clear, ironic view of her situation. The novel's comic argument is that such a life is neither tragic nor triumphant, but full in ways its own world fails to see.

Rhetorical device: understatement. Throughout her narration, and especially when she reports Julian's engagement to Allegra and Everard's request for help with his index, Mildred describes her own disappointment or hope in muted, self-mocking terms, so that the reader must infer the strength of feeling beneath the polite surface.

Debate: Resolved: Mildred Lathbury's life of service is a vocation rather than a confinement.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Mildred ends the novel imagining a full life of helping Julian, the parish and Everard. Analyse how Pym's ending balances comedy and sadness, and argue whether the final chapter is a happy ending, an ironic one, or something in between.

Comparison with Persuasion: Anne Elliot and Mildred Lathbury are both capable, overlooked women whom others use and underestimate. Austen rewards Anne with Captain Wentworth; Pym leaves Mildred with Everard's index cards and a hint of something more. Compare how each novelist presents the quiet, useful woman and argue what each ending says about the worth of such a life.

Medical Lens

Little medical content; the novel's interest for a psychiatric reader lies in its quiet portrait of loneliness and of tea and routine as everyday consolations.

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write a scene of Mildred twenty years later, in the 1970s, still being 'excellent'.

• Essay

  Pym's spinsters have been compared to Austen's heroines. What has changed in the 140 years between them?

• Classroom

  Track every cup of tea in one chapter. What social work does tea do in the novel?

Further Reading

• Quartet in Autumn, Barbara Pym

• Jane and Prudence, Barbara Pym

• A Very Private Eye, Barbara Pym

  Pym's diaries and letters, edited by Hazel Holt and Hilary Pym.