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"In Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner tells of an aging spinster's struggle to break away from her controlling family--a classic story that she treats with cool feminist intelligence, while adding a dimension of the supernatural and strange. Warner is one of the outstanding and indispensable mavericks of twentieth-century literature, a writer to set beside Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles, with a subversive genius that anticipates the fantastic flights of such contemporaries as Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson"--Publisher description.… (more)
An odd story, but beautifully written. Laura Willowes, a spinster, who, through childish mispronunciation, became known as Lolly. Set in the 1920s, Lolly rejected the safe, respectable, boring life with her brother and sister-in-law to live in an out of the way village named Great Mop. When she discovers her identity as a witch the story becomes much more interesting. ( )
Sentence after sentence that makes you smile with delight. Very British, very witty, and a countryside I would not mind losing myself in. Besides this, this is a book about suffocating social conventions, women who are not allowed to have lives of their own, space of their own - and about how to win your life and space. I think this is the kind of book it is going to be a pleasure to re-read at some point. ( )
the dominant character in this book is the countryside. it's a very pastoral novel and although the plot and character writing is good to me it felt of secondary importance. weirdly it reminds me of the kinks village green preservation society album. it feels like a paean to the traditional village which never changes - a certain character even says something like once a wood always a wood. weirdly the main character goes through all this effort just to stay still. I loved all the descriptions of the village and the countryside and "traditional living" and it made me want to live it pretty bad. the main story about a woman escaping her forced role etc is also good although I couldn't help thinking "well you're from a rich family and have an income so that's good" but also genuinely I feel like it's not emphasised so much and it only appears really explicitly near the end. idk it's good ( )
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner was such a cozy and truly delightful read. Crafted in three parts we get to know Laura, Lolly, in the wake of the death of her parents. She’s 28 at the start of the novel, unmarried, and not looking to be. She was extremely close with her father, who was the most recent to die, and her grief absolutely overtakes her. Her older brother and his wife decided they need to take care of her. They want to move her out of their country home, and then to London, which they think will be good for her grief. In doing so they end up (in my opinion) taking advantage of her agreeable state. She spends a lot of time with her nieces and nephews and ends up devoting 20 years in that service.
The first part really covers all of that. And we get a good sense of who her family is and what the Willowes are like. We don’t get hung up in the minutia of the day to day, but you see a lot of love between the family members and also a real disconnect between them. The lines of love and pity are constantly crossed and the family members are very different in terms of what they’re looking for in life or even in their religious and familial directives.
The second part focuses a lot more on Lolly’s coming of age after the 20 year period. She starts to realize how unfulfilled she is. She’s 47 years old and she’s figuring out who she is. It’s kind of an awakening.
The third part deals with the main excitement of the book of which I do not want to spoil, but I would say it escalated quickly and it gets fun and interesting as she continues to come into her own. This is absolutely charming and while the pacing was not always my favorite (and I wanted more of a certain sections than I got) ultimately it felt really special and I’m so glad that I finally read it.
There were really poignant messages of moving on from the wrongs people have done you, and not having to do so through forgiveness. As well as messages of not being good at things even though you want to be, and even though you feel called to a way of life. Lolly is, in so many ways, working against herself constantly… but that’s okay, and that’s realistic.
I would recommend this pretty much to anybody who’s looking for something cozy, with low stakes and enjoyable writing. I did pick this up thinking it was going to be very autumnal and it’s really not. But it didn’t bother me too much. A great feminist classic, though, and we’ll worth ( )
Laura (Lolly) Willowes is an aging spinster, having spent her life first caring for her father and then for her brother’s children. After the ravages of World War I, she sees herself fair on the way to soon looking after her brother’s grandchildren, and she decides that it’s time she did some living for herself. She therefore takes what money she has left (after her brother invested it unwisely, without consulting her) and moves to a remote village, where she soon finds her true self - a witch. But her family isn’t done with her, and when her nephew comes to the village and looks to be taking over her life once again, she calls upon Satan for help…. This short novel from 1926 passed me by for many years; as a good feminist, I knew the name of the author but wasn’t familiar with her work. This is the kind of book that I find I need to be in the mood to enter, otherwise it just seems both bland and overworked in the fashion of the times in which it was written. But if one *does* get into the proper mood for it, it’s a terrific indictment of the place of women, especially surplus women, in late Victorian Britain going through into the post-WWI age and before the Depression. Whether Lolly really is a witch, whether she summons Satan and has long conversations with him, whether what befalls her nephew is planned or accidental, none of this matters; what matters is that Lolly finally can live her own life on her own terms. Recommended. ( )
When her father died, Laura Willowes went to live in London with her elder brother and his family.
Quotations
Preference, not prejudice, made them faithful to their past. They slept in beds and sat in chairs whose comfort insensibly persuaded them into respect for the good sense of their forbears. Finding that well-chosen wood and well-chosen wine improved with keeping, they believed that the same law applied to well-chosen ways.
So Laura read undisturbed, and without disturbing anybody, for the conversation at local tea-parties and balls never happened to give her an opportunity of mentioning anything that she had learnt from Locke on the Understanding or Glanvil on Witches. In fact, as she was generally ignorant of the books which their daughters were allowed to read, the neighboring mammas considered her rather ignorant. However they did not like her any the worse for this, for her ignorance, if not so sexually displeasing as learning, was of so unsweetened a quality as to be wholly without attraction.
Being without coquetry she did not feel herself bound to feign a degree of entertainment which she had not experienced, and the same deficiency made her insensible to the duty of every marriageable young woman to be charming, whether her charm be directed towards one special object, or in default of that, universally distributed through a disinterested love of humanity.
She had thought that sorrow would be her companion for many years, and had planned for its entertainment.
After some years in his house she came to the conclusion that Caroline had been very bad for his character. Caroline was a good woman and a good wife. She was slightly self-righteous and fairly rightly so, but she yielded to Henry's judgment in every dispute, she bowed her good sense to his will and blinkered her wider views in obedience to his prejudices. Henry had a high opinion of her merits, but thinking her to be so admirable and finding her to be so acquiescent had encouraged him to have an even higher opinion of his own.
Mr. Arbuthnot certainly was not prepared for her response to his statement that February was a dangerous month. "It is," answered Laura with almost violent agreement. "If you are a were-wolf, and very likely you may be, for lots of people are without knowing, February, of all months, is the month when you are most likely to go out on a dark windy night and worry sheep."
When the better days to come came, they proved to be modelled as closely as possible upon the days that were past. It was astonishing what little difference differences had made.
Out of these she had contrived for herself a sort of mental fur coat. Roasted chestnuts could be bought and taken home for bedroom eating. Secondhand book-shops were never so enticing; and the combination of east winds and London water made it allowable to experiment in the most expensive soaps. Coming back from her expeditions, westward from the city with the sunset in her eyes, or eastward from a waning Kew, she would pause for a sumptuous and furtive tea, eating maron glaces with a silver fork in the reflecting warm glitter of a smart pastry-cook's. These things were exciting enough to be pleasurable, for she kept them secret.
Women have such vivid imaginations, and lead such dull lives. Their pleasure in life is so soon over; they are so dependent on others, and their dependence so soon becomes a nuisance.
Even if other people still find them quite safe and usual, and go on poking with them, they know in their hearts how dangerous, how incalculable, how extraordinary they are.
One doesn't become a witch to run round being harmful, or to run round being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It's to escape all that - to have a life of one's own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread a day, the workhouse dietary is scientifically calculated to support life.
Lovely to be with people who prefer their thoughts to yours, lovely to live at your own sweet will, lovely to sleep out all night! She had quite decided, not, to do so. It was an adventure, she had never done such a thing before, and yet it seemed most natural.
Sir Ralph Maulgrave, the Satanic Baronet, the libertine, the atheist, who drank out of a skull, who played away his mistress and pistolled the winner, who rode about Buckinghamshire on a zebra, whose conversation had boon too much for Thomas Moore.
One has to offer marriage to a young woman who has picked dead wasps out of one’s armpit.
Last words
A closer darkness upon her slumber, a deeper voice in the murmuring leaves overhead--that would be all she would know of his undesiring and unjudging gaze, his satisfied but profoundly indifferent ownership.
"In Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner tells of an aging spinster's struggle to break away from her controlling family--a classic story that she treats with cool feminist intelligence, while adding a dimension of the supernatural and strange. Warner is one of the outstanding and indispensable mavericks of twentieth-century literature, a writer to set beside Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles, with a subversive genius that anticipates the fantastic flights of such contemporaries as Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson"--Publisher description.
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From the book cover: "When I think of witches, I seem to see all over England, all over Europe, women living and growing old, as common as blackberries, and as unregarded. . . and they think how they were young once."
Lolly Willowes is a twenty-eight-year-old spinster when her adored father dies, leaving her dependent upon her brothers and their wives. After twenty years of self-effacement as a maiden aunt, she decides to break free and moves to a small Bedfordshire village. Here, happy and unfettered, she enjoys her new existence nagged only by the sense of a secret she has yet to discover. That secret--and her vocation--is witchcraft, and with her cat and a pact with the Devil, Lolly Willowes is finally free. An instant and great success on its publication in 1926, Lolly Willowes is Sylvia Townsend Warner's most magical novel. Deliciously wry and inviting, it was her piquant plea that single women find liberty and civility--and her pursuit of the theme Virginia Woolf later explored in A Room of One's Own.
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A fiction story about a woman who decides to sell her soul to the devil so she does not have to live
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