Frost in May (1933)

Frost in May is the story of Nanda Grey a young catholic convert during her four years at the Five Wounds convent school. Nanda is just nine when she comes to the school, and stays until her sudden departure when she is thirteen. Nanda quickly becomes part of the life of The Five Wounds, and its often harsh strictures. She forms friendships (which are frowned upon) with girls of a higher social standing, enjoying their company as is typical of young girls at school together. Although she once or twice gets into trouble she is generally a hard working, often pious young girl, with an active imagination but a mind of her own. Yet one of the things the convent see itself as being responsible for, is the breaking of wills, so that they can be re made for God. This is a rather disturbing idea. Young Nanda's immersion in her Catholicism and the eventual breaking down of her spirit is poignantly described. The end is shocking in it's way.
Antonia White does seem to have been making fun at times of a Catholic education at this time, and I am sure is deliberately highlighting the horrors that a catholic girls boarding school can hold for a child.
I found this very enjoyable although although a little meloncholic. ( )

Frost in May is the first Virago Modern Classic that was ever reprinted. It follows the four-year school career of Nanda (short for Fernanda) March, a girl both meek and rebellious at the same time. She enters the Convent of the Five Wounds at the age of nine (and, according to the blurb on the back of the book, in 1908), staying there until her ignominious disgrace at the age of thirteen. Nanda becomes very familiar with life at the convent school, taking for granted most of what goes on.

A good deal of the novel deals with the breaking down of the girls’ wills, so that, as the nuns claim, they can build character. But does this method really work? This, I think, is an underlying theme of the book, and one that White writes about particularly well. The author talks endlessly about all the rules that are imposed upon the girls at school, governing everything from what they can read to who they can be friends with. And many of the rules make no sense to outsiders; as Mrs. March says about exemptions, “exemption from what?” So there’s a certain amount of underhanded satire at work here.

I didn’t like this book as much as I was prepared to, but I did enjoy it. Antonia White was a great writer, but she infuses her story with too much Catholicism. That’s not to say that the tone of this book is overtly religious; I simply didn’t care for the stories that were told. They especially slowed down the plot. So if you’re like ma and aren’t particularly religious, you might dislike these parts of the novel. I think I might have enjoyed them more if I'd had a Catholic upbringing.

However, White depicts really well the rigidity of convent life, highlighting (and sometimes making fun of) the nonsensical strictures the nuns imposed upon the students. Apart from the religious bits, the plot moves along very well, and the ending is just as devastating as promised—all the more so because what Nanda does wouldn’t have been considered so bad in a normal school. ( )

This is the story of a little girl, Nanda, a Catholic convert, and the four years she spends in a convent school. She is a little spitfire at times and very shy at others like most little girls. Her father, also a recent convert wants Nanda to receive a good education and to learn more about Catholicism.
Nanda is very nervous and intimidated at first but comes to love the rigid lifestyle behind the convent walls. She makes friends easily and must learn the hard way that close friendships are not encouraged by the nuns. She wants to be good, studious, and all that the nuns expect from the students, but occasionally messes up and gets in trouble.
This book was a rare treat. It was so very readable and is a rare glimpse into a world that has always been secreted away from me as a protestant and is just a lovely story. Antonia White writes with a fluid pen and the pages turn quickly as you are drawn into the story.
Another truly good read and I highly recommend it. ( )

Frost in May, by Antonia White, tells the story of Nanda Grey, a nine year old girl who enters a Catholic convent school in the early 1930s. Her father has only recently converted to Catholicism and wants Nanda to get a solid foundation in the faith. The school caters to many of the upper class Catholics in Europe, and Nanda befriends several girls who are in a different social strata than she is. As she grows older, Nanda discovers that she loves literature and music, and while she is inoculated into Catholic dogma, she also finds herself occasionally questioning some of the things she is taught.

Frost in May is a coming of age story. While there is a long tradition of these types of stories focused on boys, White has made something different by focusing on a girl's experience at boarding school. I think, however, that because I am an American who was raised in a Protestant tradition, I probably missed some of the nuances and social/religious criticism of the book. There was an undercurrent of social class issues which would have probably been quite obvious to an English reader in the 1930s, but which was only hazily apparent to me. Additionally, while I am familiar with Catholicism to some extent, because I was not raised in the tradition I'm sure that some of the religious nuances were lost on me. Overall, Frost in May was an excellently written, well-plotted book, but one which did not resonate for me. ( )

very good about lonely, religious girl at catholic boarding school with nuns in all your business rooting out sin and finding sin in most things. ( )