Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman's daughter and a spinster in her mid-thirties, is the main character of this story which takes place in London in the 1950's. She is an independent woman of modest means, but also one of those "excellent women" who is depended on to take care of the needs and comforts of others. Mildred, a practical woman with common sense, becomes embroiled in the petty dramas of her self-centered neighbors as they intrude on her with expectations for her comfort and assistance. Humorously written from Mildred's point of view, Excellent Women is written in the style of Jane Austen, and gently makes fun of the rules and manners of society, especially the repressed roles of women in early 1950's England. This was a fun and fast read and I will be reading more of Barbara Pym's work. Recommended. ( )

Pym’s indexers make their first appearance in her second novel, Excellent women. Foremost among them is Esther Clovis, secretary of a Learned (anthropological) Society; a formidable and recurring figure, seen by the narrator, Mildred Lathbury, as having ‘hair like a dog, but a very capable person, respected and esteemed by Everard Bone, and, moreover, one who could make an index and correct proofs’.
Less impressively, the wife of the President of the Learned Society always attends its meetings, knits, and drops off to sleep. Mildred asks Everard:

‘Did she work with him in the field?’
‘Good Heavens, no! She knows nothing at all about anthropology.’
‘Didn’t she even do the index or proofreading for one of his books? You know what it often says in a preface or dedication—“To my wife, who undertook the arduous duty of proof-reading” or making the index.’
‘She may have done that. After all, it’s what wives are for.’

After that, we should not be surprised (or affronted) by the dialogue in which Mildred, the novel’s heroine, is invited to dinner by Everard, an anthropologist. She asks how his book is progressing, and he tells her:

‘I have just had some of the proofs and then of course the index will have to be done. I don’t know how I’m going to find time to do it,’ and proceeds to ask her to undertake the task. She protests: ‘But I don’t know how to do these things,’ but he persuades her, and she reflects -- ‘Yes, it would make a nice change. And before long I should be certain to find myself at his sink peeling potatoes and washing up; that would be a nice change when both proof-reading and indexing began to pall. Was any man worth this burden? Probably not, but one shouldered it bravely and cheerfully ...'

Mildred Lathbury is an excellent woman -- respectable, efficient, practical, church-going, and, of course, resignedly single. She is the sort of person that others take for granted. She seems to be the person that people turn to when they need help -- someone to tend to the details of moving house, or to pour out one's feelings to in the midst of a personal crisis. No one ever seems to think of doing anything for her. Most of the time Mildred bears it all with grace and good humor, although she occasionally succumbs to self-pity.

The book provides a glimpse at an interesting period in English history, the years shortly after World War II when the country was recovering from the effects of the war, many goods were still scarce and rationing was still in force. The middle class still clung to traditional social roles and customs, although it was becoming apparent that society was on the brink of change. While her circumstances apparently had not changed at the end of the novel, there are inklings that Mildred's outlook on life had begun to alter by the book's end.

This book couldn't have been written even ten or fifteen years later. In some ways Mildred was trapped by the social expectations and obligations of the era, but the upheavals of the 1960s erased many of the former social conventions. On the surface this is a rather light novel, but I think it is one that will require repeated readings to appreciate all of its undercurrents. ( )

Post-WWII England, rationing, bombed-out streets, nothing but churchgoing, endless trite church-related events, unmarried "excellent" women, married harpies (good-looking tho'--somebody give these spinsters a sex manual and explain the biological basis of attraction), weak tea (oh NO!), a crush on a married charmer, a bloodless friendship with the unmarried vicar (neither fowl nor fish, until he gets interested in a bad beauty), and an ambiguous finale with the elegant scowler who, like all the SMART men, prefers a good housewife to passion.

No other interests but matchmaking. The usual A. "well-bred" extolling of ignorance over curiosity, especially scientific curiosity. Comical (perhaps deserved) view of anthropology, at the time big on the Continent, pygmy in the Isles.

The heroine, we are given to understand, has a wry sense of humour, and therefore we should like her. I'm glad she was halfway armed in her dreary existence, but still I didn't give a fig for her and her future. ( )

Just reading the introductory bumf, I have become aware for the first time that Barbara Pym was born in Oswestry. I went on cricket tours to Oswestry for many summers and never saw her in The Bell. More to the point, I never saw any references to her.