Elizabeth Cadell (1903–1989)

24/2020. This is my seventh novel by this author.

Reading notes

A strong first chapter in which we meet all three members of the upper middle class protag's immediate family and they're all awful people in their own special ways. The selfish brother, whose infant children our heroine goes to rescue, would rather play music and golf than lift a single finger domestically, even to provide care for his own offspring (this was published in 1981 btw), and he blames his household circumstances on show more his estranged wife for being "left-wing" and expecting to be a working mother. He also implies she's stupid despite her having a degree from Oxford. And he's so unpopular locally that he can't even manage to hire a paid cleaner etc.

Fashionista sister-in-law, lol: "Freddie felt strongly that a natural appearance was only permissible, only really effective, it if was artificially produced."

This is the first time I've seen women's liberation embodied as a hungry hard-working school Matron, but if hearty eating is feminist praxis then I can support it 100%! I've noted before that Cadell's heroines are habitually shown enjoying their food.

Driving oneself = liberation for women is another of Cadell's regular themes. My mother, her mother, and all my great aunts would have agreed wholeheartedly.

I had to google this song reference: "A woman would have to suck a lot of cider through a number of straws before his pulse quickened."

On the Prince of Morocco in Merchant of Venice: "A nice dignity Shakespeare showed when dealing with the mixture of races. Rather different from our present-day attitude."

Before the halfway mark and not only has Cadell gone full-on with a Men Can Be Mothers Too (if they're prepared to make the effort) conversation but she actually put the argument into the mouth of a male character.

Our heroine apparently advocating redistribution of wealth (after meeting a working class British Asian woman character who came to England as a child after the Second World War, and has unsuccessfully applied for the nanny/housekeeper job although I'm currently guessing she'll be offered a concierge job in Brighton before the end of the story): "People say there aren't enough good things to go round. That's a lie. There are. There are enough good things for everybody, if only people would share them out. But we've got too much, and she's got nothing, and I let her go without even asking if she'd like a lift."

Then we meet our hero's Italian-British half-brother's school friend from Nigeria (both at a posh private school, of course).

Mrs Wray is presumably a fan of Margaret Thatcher, boo, hiss, etc.

Cadell tries to write from the perspective of her class and age to bemoan "the servant problem" but her refusal to write characters as exclusively goodies or baddies means it comes across to someone of my class and age more historically realistically as "the employer problem" where (specifically) upper middle class people couldn't manage to hire servants to suit them because working people expected living wages and decent humane treatment. It's very telling that the protag's upper middle class family can't keep a "children's nurse" from a lower middle class farming background, who is doing them a massive favour during her time off from her actual job, because she refuses to be servile. It's even more telling that the only servants they can keep are an extremely old-fashioned cleaner who's very set in her ways, and a babysitter who is literally escaping from what is now termed modern slavery and has no other options.

"controversial films at the local cinema": Life of Brian came out in 1979 and was one of few controversial films on general distribution to local cinemas.

There's some realistic racism at the dinner party but not out of the mouths of the characters we're actually supposed to like.

My guess that Mrs Swayne, the British Asian woman escaping "modern slavery", would be offered a job in Brighton was incorrect. She ends up much closer to home in Downing itself. show less

I thought Parson's House was utter tripe. Not only does the plot feature ghosts, always a mistake in my opinion, but for a book published in 1977 it is almost an anti-feminist manifesto. I'm happy to ignore the restricted roles of women in books of the thirties and earlier because they reflect their times, but in this book, at least, Cadell comes across to me as a woman-denigrating dinosaur.

57/2020. Elizabeth Cadell's writing often reminds me of Mary Wesley's novels, because of the spareness of their prose, the subtlety in storytelling, their obsession with the English class system as seen from an upper middle class perspective, and their willingness to tackle subjects that their more conventional peers shied away from (with Wesley it's class and sex, with Cadell it's class and family / community / international relationships). So it isn't surprising that this novel about a show more girl growing up, a quiet but perceptive bildungsroman, reminds me of Wesley's A Sensible Life, particularly in part one, although A Lion in the Way is set earlier and further afield in India from 1913 onwards. Part two, 1914-18, especially the protagonist's experience as a poor relation in an English country house in wartime, also gave me flashbacks to Margery Sharp's fictionalised autobiography The Sun in Scorpio (which I now want to re-read). Part three sees the protagonist returning to India in 1919 and becomes a testament for decolonisation written from the point of view of a white English beneficiary of colonialism who eventually realises it's time to leave. I suspect this might be Cadell's best book. show less

I like most of the novels by Elizabeth Cadell that I've read, and this is no exception. Having said that, I would consider this one of her weaker novels. It is also quite short.

Three girls in their early 20s share a flat in London, and deal with their parents and love lives. All of their parents are stereotypes, and the girls themselves only marginally less so. Their landlord is murdered; and their main concern is that they not be called home by their parents. The murder itself is cleared show more up in about 20 pages at the end.

I would not recommend this to anybody who has not previously read Elizabeth Cadell. But if you have read a lot of her books, it offers the chance to spend a few pleasant hours in her world. show less