Lolly Willowes (Virago Modern Classics)

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Laura’s individuality is absorbed by her family. Even her name is changed to Lolly when one of her nieces cannot pronounce “Laura,” after which no one in her family calls her Laura again. Townsend Warner presents Laura as satisfied with her life with her father, where she takes on the role of housekeeper after her mother’s death. She carries out her life to the rhythm of family traditions and the customs of the village. And she even follows her own version of her father’s trade in brewing: Solidarity between women isn’t fully possible in this state. Perhaps Heinrich Kramer, writing his manifesto against female devilry, was right about “the woeful rivalry” between married and unmarried women. Kramer worried that when women talked to one another, they spread witchcraft. Their “slippery tongues” made them “unable to conceal from the fellow-women those things which by evil arts they know.” A system that prevents alliance between women prevents witchcraft as well. AlexanderNeal, and JamesMoran (eds.). Regional Modernisms (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013). HalberstamJudith. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York: New York University Press, 2005).

The book] I’ll be pressing into people’s hands forever is “Lolly Willowes,” the 1926 novel by Sylvia Townsend Warner. It tells the story of a woman who rejects the life that society has fixed for her in favor of freedom and the most unexpected of alliances. It completely blindsided me: Starting as a straightforward, albeit beautifully written family saga, it tips suddenly into extraordinary, lucid wildness.” - Helen Macdonald in The New York Times Book Review's “By the Book." The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society. UCL Press; ISSN 2398-0605. Open access journal available free online. JoannouMaroula (ed.). The History of British Women’s Writing, 1920–1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). And Laura, feeling rather as if she were a piece of property forgotten in the will, was ready to be disposed of as they should think best.If this was the story of Lolly Willowes, it would still be of note as a showcase for Warner’s remarkable facility with language and sinuous approach to syntax; it's additionally exceptional as an early feminist fable making a persuasive and poignant case for female agency (Warner’s novel predates Woolf’s landmark A Room of One's Own by several years). But the author envisions much, much more for her text and hurtles headlong into the utterly startling Part 3. While I suspect most readers will know, as I did, the general trajectory of the narrative, I think the less known the better so will leave it at that. What a lovely defense of demanding and then enacting a life lived fully and deliciously and—take the term in whatever sense you prefer— queerly too. CastleTerry. The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). Laura also thought that the law had done a great deal to spoil Henry. It had changed his natural sturdy stupidity into a browbeating indifference to other people's point of view. He seemed to consider himself briefed by his Creator to turn into ridicule the opinions of those who disagreed with him, and to attribute dishonesty, idiocy, or a base motive to every one who supported a better case than he.” Lolly Willowes; or The Loving Huntsman is a novel by English writer Sylvia Townsend Warner, her first, published in 1926. It has been described as an early feminist classic. [1] Title [ edit ] On a sudden autumn impulse, Laura moves, alone, to a village called Great Mop, where she both finds what she wanted and fails to find it. She wanders the countryside, map in hand, looking for that unknown something she has wanted in the autumns. But all of this comes crashing down when Laura’s nephew Titus shows up.

Lolly Willowes explores the ways that patriarchy can quietly, gently, lovingly deform a woman’s entire life.

Lovely to be with people who prefer their thoughts to yours, lovely to live at your own sweet will, lovely to sleep out all night! After her father’s death, Laura’s caretaker role is shifted from dutiful daughter to irreplaceable aunt. Townsend Warner depicts her as much loved, but greatly constrained in her life in London. Once it becomes clear to Caroline and Henry that Laura will never marry, Caroline resigns herself to sitting with Laura by her side for the rest of her life: When Laura Willowes’s beloved father dies, she is absorbed in the household of her brother and his family. There, she leaves behind “Laura” and enters into the state of “Aunt Lolly,” a genteel spinster indispensable to the upbringing of her nieces. For twenty years, Lolly is neither indulgent nor impulsive, until one day when she decides to move to a village in the Chilterns, much to her family’s chagrin. Warner's short stories include the collections A Moral Ending and Other Stories, The Salutation, More Joy in Heaven, The Cat's Cradle Book, A Garland of Straw, The Museum of Cheats. Winter in the Air, A Spirit Rises, A Stranger with a Bag, The Innocent and the Guilty, and One Thing Leading to Another. Her final work was a collection of interconnected short stories set in the supernatural Kingdoms of Elfin. [13] Many of these stories were published in The New Yorker. [16] In addition to fiction, Warner wrote anti-fascist articles for such leftist publications as Time and Tide and Left Review. [12]

In the final scene of the novel, Lolly encounters the Devil in person (or not – he could be just a man she encounters or even a figment of her imagination) and explains herself: Enjoy strange, diverting work from The Commuter on Mondays, absorbing fiction from Recommended Reading on Wednesdays, and a roundup of our best work of the week on Fridays. Personalize your subscription preferences here. The book] I’ll be pressing into people’s hands forever is Lolly Willowes, the 1926 novel by Sylvia Townsend Warner. It tells the story of a woman who rejects the life that society has fixed for her in favor of freedom and the most unexpected of alliances. It completely blindsided me: Starting as a straightforward, albeit beautifully written family saga, it tips suddenly into extraordinary, lucid wildness.DoanLaura, and GarrityJane (eds.). Sapphic Modernities: Sexuality, Woman and the National Culture (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).