Mrs Miniver | Mumsnet

Zapss · 2024-02-09T11:41:43+00:00

These are well written. Quite enjoying. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b00nm5ww?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 09/02/2024 15:39

I listened to them all. Beautifully written, but her world and mine don't overlap much! What on earth does she do all day, given they have one child at boarding school, she doesn't have a paid job and they have a lot of paid domestic help? Shopping is the only activity mentioned. In one of the last episodes she seems to be coming back from a holiday somewhere German-speaking, without husband or children. I wondered if it was perhaps for health reasons.

I can see the link with the film, but Hollywood made a lot of changes, for understandable reasons, given it was propaganda to prod the US into entering WW2.

12tog · 09/02/2024 22:11

Loved the book. Thanks for the reco!

Original poster

Zapss · 09/02/2024 22:45

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 09/02/2024 15:39

I listened to them all. Beautifully written, but her world and mine don't overlap much! What on earth does she do all day, given they have one child at boarding school, she doesn't have a paid job and they have a lot of paid domestic help? Shopping is the only activity mentioned. In one of the last episodes she seems to be coming back from a holiday somewhere German-speaking, without husband or children. I wondered if it was perhaps for health reasons.

I can see the link with the film, but Hollywood made a lot of changes, for understandable reasons, given it was propaganda to prod the US into entering WW2.

My life probably doesn't overlap much with anybody's life 87 years ago, but I don't see why it should.

I suppose a lot of what she "does all day" is described in the text.

OP posts:

MissLucyEyelesbarrow · 09/02/2024 22:46

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 09/02/2024 15:39

I listened to them all. Beautifully written, but her world and mine don't overlap much! What on earth does she do all day, given they have one child at boarding school, she doesn't have a paid job and they have a lot of paid domestic help? Shopping is the only activity mentioned. In one of the last episodes she seems to be coming back from a holiday somewhere German-speaking, without husband or children. I wondered if it was perhaps for health reasons.

I can see the link with the film, but Hollywood made a lot of changes, for understandable reasons, given it was propaganda to prod the US into entering WW2.

I think Mrs Miniver is relatively wealthy, but I don't think this set up was unusual for middle-class women. I remember an elderly neighbour who would have been the same age as Mrs Miniver. She was surprised that I was both working and "running a household". And she wasn't wealthy: she was a vicar's widow.

I guess everything took longer e.g. no fridges, so you have to shop for fresh food every day, and everything had to be cooked from scratch. Typical middle class families would have had some help with the housework but not, by the 30s/40s, a cook. Domestic labour had become scarcer and more expensive after the First World War.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 10/02/2024 07:28

Thanks to Google, I see it's out of copyright so can be read online. Very interesting introduction here with a lot more information about Jan Struther (real name J. Anstruther!). https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/struther/miniver/miniver.html

I didn't know she also wrote hymns - When a Knight Won His Spurs, sung to a folk melody arranged by Vaughan Williams, no less, and Lord of All Hopefulness.

What a gifted woman. Sadly, she died from cancer at the age of 52.

Mrs. Miniver.

https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/struther/miniver/miniver.html

12tog · 11/02/2024 23:14

Listened on a car journey. I’d forgotten how beautifully written it was. And Penelope Wilton is a Proper Actress. (I get fed up with some bbc audiobooks where the readers don’t know how to pronounce something and no one corrects them.)