📚 'Rather Dated' February: F.M. Mayor's 'The Rector's Daughter'

[MotherofPearl]

Welcome to the Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' book club. This month we are reading and discussing F.M. Mayor’s ‘The Rector’s Daughter’. Please do add your thoughts when you are ready.

About the threads:

We are reading and discussing fiction from the 1930s to the 1990s that would have been described as 'contemporary' in its day. We are reading one book a month. Spoilers are permitted!

We started the chat thanks to a thread where we kicked off with a discussion of Penelope Lively, The Road to Lichfield.

Currently we have these separate threads:

November: Anita Brookner, A Start in Life
December: Margaret Drabble: A Summer Bird-Cage
January: Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Beautiful Visit.
March: Winifred Watson, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.
April: R.C. Sheriff, The Fortnight in September.
May: Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.
June: Margaret Kennedy, The Feast.
July: Mollie Panter-Downes, One Fine Day.
August: Elizabeth Von Arnim, The Enchanted April.
September: Barbara Pym, An Academic Question.
October: Dorothy Whipple, High Wages.
November: Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September.
December: Monica Dickens, The Fancy.
January: E.M. Delafield, The Messalina of the Suburbs.

Link to the main thread:

📚The Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' Book Group - All welcome to join📚 www.mumsnet.com/Talk/whatweree_reading/4624300-the-mumsnet-rather-dated-book-group-all-welcome-to-join

I found this a really heart-wrenching read. I took a while to get into it, but then felt really gripped by the story. I was quite shocked by the ending - I really didn't see Mary's death coming. It was such a tragic story.

I thought this was beautifully written, with some really evocative descriptions of landscape. I share Mary's love of long winter evenings, and wild windy walks. I know that life in the rectory was stifling and lonely in many ways, though I was quite attracted by its calm and predictable pattern of life.

All the characters felt quite vivid to me, especially Kathy, whose voice I felt I could almost hear in my head (posh, jolly hockey sticks, brisk). Wasn't Lesbia just ghastly? And the whole Riviera scene was repellent - though that was the point, I suppose. It was the counterpoint to Mary's dignity and morality.

I loved it too. I’ll post my thoughts tomorrow.

Hello all! Thank you, MotherofPearl for starting the thread.

I really liked it too. I thought it started very slowly but it picked up and I became completely engaged with it once Kathy came on the scene. Perhaps the slow start was deliberately done for the reader to live Mary's life and appreciate what she had? I thought it was suffocating at first but soothing in its way. It was calm and predictable as Mother said.

Mary's death was a complete shock and it was reported in such a matter of fact way, something like 'Mary sank. And three weeks later she died'. I think I gasped out loud. I was convinced that something was going to happen to Kathy and that Mary would get her happy ending.

I would describe Mary and Robert's relationship as a restrained love affair. They were a pair of innocents. I think they could have had a happy marriage if the timing had worked out better and if Robert hadn't lost his head over Kathy.

This was a very poignant read. I liked it because it didn't go to the anticipated 'she lived happily ever after'. Mary represents the women who live quiet, ordinary lives that don't amount to very much, but whose contribution is valuable in supporting their families and their community.

Lots more to talk about but yes to Lesbia. She was vile! And to be burdened with an awful name!

I really enjoyed this book too, if ‘enjoyed’ is quite the right word. At times it seemed like the evil twin of a Barbara Pym novel with its curates and church groups and spinster daughters of clerics, but a Barbara Pym with zero laughs and an overtly bleak outcome (as opposed to the quietly tragic, underplayed ones in Pym).

At other points it really reminded me of Middlemarch and the terrible, tyrannical Casaubon and his eternal Key to all Mythologies. I gathered that we weren’t really supposed to see the Rector as a hate figure but I’m afraid I disliked him heartily. Mary was trapped completely by the restrictions of her sex, time and class.

I too felt my heart give a sudden thump at the sentence ‘three weeks later she died.’ It was done so casually, almost, as if to signal how unimportant she’d become to anyone. Poor, poor Mary.

I had no preconceptions about this one, having never even heard of FM Mayor. But I knew from the first sentence I was going to like it. I found it a hard novel to categorise: at first I thought it was going to be focussing on Mary and her intellectual, ridiculous, elderly father, and he reminded me of Mr Wodehouse. I’m sure I’ve read other books where the elderly rector lives a remote life detached from reality, quoting Latin to all and sundry and retiring to the study. Usually they’re comic figures but I agree, Canon Jocelyn wasn’t funny. For part of the novel, it seemed to be a satire of bright young things, Brynhilda and Dermott and the flat with its orange walls and blue paintwork, and “lovely serious girl who wrote bad poetry”. And then later a sad love story, and a portrait of a failing marriage. It was all these things, which kind of subverted my expectations. Kathy was an interesting character, really well drawn I thought. She would have been happier not marrying anyone, and going hunting all the time. Her beauty was her downfall, really. And the doomed, quiet love between Mary and Mr Herbert was very sad. It was shocking how quickly and quietly FM Mayor dealt with Mary’s death. Exactly as you say, @Terpsichore , as if she didn’t matter at all. She was one of the “surplus women” after WW1. And even more chilling was the way Mr Herbert forgot her quite quickly, and persuaded himself that it hadn’t been a big deal. A sad and very thoughtful book.

I thought we would have had more to say on this book!

I like the comparison of the Rector to Casaubon in 'Middlemarch'. I knew he reminded me of someone.

I think that posters' observations have been very good by the way and I don't mean to be critical. Perhaps it's just that fewer people than usual have read it.

I really enjoyed/admired this but then lost my annotated, highlighted copy and will to post... But going to jump in anyway.

Like @Terpsichore I found this reminiscent of Dorothea's story in Middlemarch, but a much more pessimistic/realistic exploration of how it might feel to actually be one of those excellent women of "unhistoric acts....the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs” (Eliot). Pretty fucking miserable, IMO. Contrast even the town names: Middlemarch vs De[a]dmayne. Also noting that Mayor, like Eliot, seems to have lived a much more adventurous, unconventional life than her heroine.

For me, Canon Jocelyn was a much more sympathetic and rounded character than Casaubon, and I found aspects of his relationship with Mary very moving. The few glimpses we get into his head, the painful acknowledgement of his failures as a parent (not only the practical estrangement from his other children, but towards Mary, the one most like him) and realisation of being out of time, in more senses than one. Following from last month's chat about E.M. Delafield @FuzzyCaoraDhubh the gap between this particular generation of (Victorian) parents and children does seem especially impassable, and I really admired Mayor's empathetic portrayal.

Generally I thought the greatest strength of this book lay in its openness and broad-mindedness, as if in defiance of the narrowness and repression that characterised Mary's life. Agree with everyone that Kathy was wonderfully characterised and defiant of cliché. (Even loathsome Lesbia was capable of feeling shame and her hypocrisies felt psychologically necessary rather than just part of being a villain, boo hiss.) I recall several passages that hinted that she and Robert ultimately made a more successful marriage than M&R would have done (being too similar to each other, and R to Canon J) which was another example of Mayor refusing the easy answers and predictable plot paths.

That's not to say I wouldn't have preferred it if Mayor had given Mary a few decades of second life as London bluestocking grand dame / late publishing phenomenon, but I suspect this very downbeat ending will stay with me longer.

Thank you @HenryTilneyBestBoy
Lots to think about in your review.
I remember that quotation from Middlemarch and I agree that it suits Mary to a T. I definitely agree that this is a book that will linger on in the memory.

Thanks again Henry. Most interesting.

I'd forgotten about this book, I read it years ago. I think it might have been recommended by Sarah Walters. No idea where it is or I'd read it again.

I didn't know about this book club, will be back later in the month to see what March's book is!

Welcome @Almahart We have another thread as well for general chat about Rather Dated books. Come over if you can find it. I would link you to it if I knew how!

Yes welcome @Almahart. Here's the link to our main thread:

📚The Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' Book Group - All welcome to join📚 http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/whatweree_reading/4624300-the-mumsnet-rather-dated-book-group-all-welcome-to-join

Oh great! Thanks, I'm delighted to have found you!

I didn't love it, because I just found it too downbeat. The comparisons to Middlemarch make sense, as I didn't like that either!

I thought it was a really interesting take on "surplus women", and how beauty potentially protected you from being a surplus woman, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing.

I agree that Mary's death was dealt with extremely well - so understated and sad.

I’ve just finished. Like PPs, I can’t exactly say I enjoyed it, because it’s so sad, but I thought it was very well written.

Canon Jocelyn is a far nicer man than Casaubon, he is just of his time, utterly incapable of expressing his feelings and quite unable to see his daughter as an equal.

I found the class distinctions fascinating, particularly the subtle ones: the clergymen looking down on the doctor, for example.

I was a little confused as to when it was set. The Bloomsbury-esque set in London and the fast set in the Riveria had a post-WW1 feel, but I did think the war might have merited a mention if it had already happened.

I only spotted one mention of the war - in a passage about Kathy's earlier life, saying that her brother got married (to Lesbia) while she had plenty of offers but didn’t accept any - 'it was before the war'. I suppose in 1924 it was still absolutely so much a part of everyone’s consciousness that maybe F M Mayor didn’t even feel she needed to point it out.

I really enjoyed this book. It angered me that a clever capable woman was relegated to the role of carer to her disabled sister and then to her father due to her sex and her status as unmarried. No one thought she could choose another path. And her father was no use to his parishioners and had no appreciation that his daughter was filling his role as he dreamed of Latin.

I liked how Kathy’s character changed as her looks changed. Her husband found her easier to love when she was more vulnerable.

Hello fellow dated people! May I join?

I read The Rector’s Duahhter a while ago, and “enjoy” books about “surplus” women, especially when they are pinning their hopes on (usually crappy) vicars/curates. The RD is like Barbara Pym or even Miss Read but of course not humorous. You could feel the loneliness seeping through the pages.

Please do join! Our (new) main discussion thread:

📚The Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' Book Group - All welcome to join📚 http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/whatweree_reading/5029141-the-mumsnet-rather-dated-book-group-all-welcome-to-join

I did enjoy this - like other readers the “wasted women maryters to their undeserving menfolk 1850-1939” is a trope I’m a bit addicted to, and if the heroine dies all the better. I did find the characterisation a bit ropey from time to time - especially Kathy, who I didn’t find credible. But I particularly enjoyed her redemption being marked by her pumping out boy twins.

I need to catch up with whatever’s coming next.