📚 The Rather Dated Bookclub: Enid Bagnold's 'The Loved and Envied' 📚

[FuzzyCaoraDhubh]

Welcome to our discussion for June!

This book is a fascinating view into the lives of a fading class of aristocrat expats living in France in the 1950s. At the centre of the circle is the beautiful Lady Ruby McLean whose good looks dazzle those who meet her and keep her friends in constant thrall. This woman is the 'loved and envied' of the title. While others in her circle come to terms with encroaching old age and look back on missed opportunities and regrets over actions not taken and words unspoken, Ruby seems unaffected and lives a charmed life. However, her family life is complicated and her relationship with her daughter is strained. The reader has the impression that Ruby's beauty could be as much of a burden as a blessing. I also felt that her beauty was something that almost existed separately to her, that it was a bit like she was wearing a mask.

I really enjoyed this book and read it quite quickly. I particularly liked the evocation of the time and place; the backdrop of the chateau and the estate and the part of the book set in Jamaica. I enjoyed the interesting cast of characters, each one quirkier than the next. I never knew who was going to turn up next or what was going to happen next. There were plenty of twists and turns.

While I enjoyed the characters hugely, I felt that the central character was the least interesting one and was mainly defined in relation to her beauty. How many times 'her beautiful face' was mentioned in the text! At least her act of kindness to a woman in need showed that she was a good person and not just a beautiful face.

It's interesting that the author drew on real people for inspiration in her books and that Ruby was based on one of her own friends. I can't help thinking that if she hadn't been writing with her own friend in mind, that she may have written Ruby in a less idealised way.
However, that's a minor point. I enjoyed this book very much. It was a very satisfying read.

Just noticed nobody’s added their thoughts to @FuzzyCaoraDhubh's - not sure mine are very coherent but here goes! This was indeed an easy read and held the attention, so it’s not that I didn’t enjoy reading it…I think my slight problem was twofold. Firstly (and this is very much a 'me' issue), I get a bit twitchy with books set in the rarefied world of the moneyed classes, and I don’t think it helped that I knew Lady Ruby was based on Lady Diana Cooper. I know a bit about her, enough to feel that this came across very much like a kind of starry-eyed homage to a high-society goddess - as Fuzzy says, Lady Ruby was impossibly superb in every way, and I did get a bit weary of all the men falling for her.

The other odd thing was the underlying message that most of the main characters were old and coming to the end of their lives - indeed, three of them died rather suddenly. I think nowadays we wouldn’t think of 60-year-old Rose as quite so aged, or the men, in their early 70s, as all that decrepit. Ageing seemed very much to be an obsession with Bagnold, and I found a very interesting talk about her - including some eye-opening details about her marriage - which noted that she underwent a facelift in her 70s because she was so fixated on looking young. To me it felt as though the emphasis on ageing was a reflection of a personal concern that Bagnold somehow felt compelled to express.

Other than that, it was quite unlike anything I've read before - in a good way, I think! Definitely odd, and quite dreamlike in places….what on earth was going on with the aunt and her strange ear growing out of her face?! That was like something out of Wilkie Collins. In fact, the more I think about it on reflection, the odder I think the whole book is…!

There was also the great-aunt who liked to paint her ears crimson. Now that was odd!

Bagnold's preoccupation with aging certainly explains a lot about what was going on in the book.

I don't ever remember reading a book quite like this one. As you said, Terpsichore, it's odd, but in a good way! * *

I'd forgotten about the crimson ears, @FuzzyCaoraDhubh 😂 Yes, thinking about it more, the underlying message running through the book that women needed to rely on marrying men (or having affairs with men) because of their beauty/charm, rather than doing something useful and interesting with their lives, is pretty alien to us now. The disfigured aunt had to make a career, but only because she was too physically different to ever attract a man. The daughter (always described in such unattractive terms) grew up feeling worthless in comparison to her beautiful mother. Rose continually lamented the loss of her looks.

But actually, Bagnold was writing in the 50s after her own extremely successful career, so it seems odd.

Rose's story was very sad. I think the book could have been shallow but her story gave it depth.

I wish she hadn’t just died - as though she couldn’t exist without her man!

Yes, but I think that Rose's story couldn't have had any other ending!

Agreed. But nowadays she'd have opened a quaint little Parisian boutique selling her vintage hats, and become a strong and successful Woman of Substance 😂

Yes! She wouldn't have had to buy much stock! Just sell off the family heirlooms from the back room 😁

I loved this book, and read it in three sittings. There’s a lot to think about though!

I think the main theme is about ageing, but also the tension of realising that the thing which has smoothed the path of your life - in this case, beauty - is inevitably going to leave you: what will happen then, how will people treat you?

This fact is hammered home by people suddenly dying. And not “car crash sudden”, but “suddenly dying of old age”, which sounds wrong, but actually for everyone except very close family, that’s what it must feel like. The deaths aren’t violent, but do have a sort of narrative violence. For those of us of a certain age, deaths are a constant series of punctures in the fabric of one’s life.

So while accepting that the reasons why Ruby had had to rely on her good looks so much are pants, I think it’s still powerfully drawn how much she fears what’s going to happen when that option is no longer available.

Talking about the Ruby/Miranda relationship could take a while book of its own lol, but this post is too long anyway.

I love novels from and about this period; this group in particular seem like they are from an age that has functionally already passed, after the end of the Great War. What adds poignancy for me is that the “new” era following, immediately post WW2, has also thoroughly departed. Time’s arrow and all that, but it’s very melancholic.

Thanks to whoever suggested this one, I really enjoyed it!

Just looked back through the other thread: it was @crochetgrannysquare who first mentioned Enid Bagnold, and @motherofpearl who first suggested The Loved and Envied - thanks both! And everyone else who concurred on the choice as well of course 😀