Antonia White (1899–1980)

This is a Virago Modern Classic, in fact the first book issued in that series. It is the story of a young girl coming of age in a convent school in the years just before World War I. To my thoroughly protestant and currently non-observant-of-anything outlook, this is the story of the systematic destruction of minds and souls in the name of "love" and obedience to an utterly perverse supreme being. Any expression of joy, kindness or love for fellow humans, appreciation of beauty, or even show more excellence is somehow suspect, and if taken too far, grounds for mortification. Our protagonist, Fernanda Grey, struggles with her desire to be a proper Catholic set against her terror that she may receive the "call" and be destined to take the veil, or worse, that she will miss the message, and be doomed to live life having rejected a vocation without realizing it. This reminds me of the terror of MY adolescence, born of precisely the same adult-fostered ignorance, that any number of perfectly innocent interactions with boys might result in having a baby. The most disturbing thing about this novel, I think, is that I'm not sure whether the author means us to feel what I feel while reading it, or whether she is presenting Nanda's story as some sort of cautionary tale. I suspect this will be made clearer in White's three "sequel" novels, and as cranky as this one made me, I am contrarily eager to read those too. show less

A beautifully observed book, Frost in May is set in a Catholic girls' boarding school in England in the 1910s. Young Nanda Gray, the daughter of a recent convert to Catholicism, at once finds herself entranced by the romanticised religiosity of the nuns and her fellow students, and uneasy with the petty cruelties inflicted by the nuns that are designed to break down those girls who take pleasure in, show an aptitude for, or independently think about, well, pretty much anything.

As someone show more who was educated in a similar environment to Nanda, but who never had any faith to speak of, even as a child, the experience of reading Frost in May was at once alienating and queasily familiar. No contemporary YA dystopia comes close to the kind of hothouse, authoritarian, ritualised power games that play out here—and often for such small stakes. show less

“I don’t think I want to be anything. In fact, I hate thinking about the future at all.”

“How do people become real? Does one just change as one gets older? Or did something definite happen to you?”

On the brink of the Great War when Clara Batchelor is almost 15, her grandfather dies and her mother, Isabel, becomes seriously ill with “female troubles” related to a dangerous, later-in-life pregnancy. Having had to finance Isabel’s costly operation, Clara’s father, Claude, can show more no longer afford to send the girl to Mount St. Hilary Convent School, where prominent Catholics send their daughters.

White not only tells the story of Clara, now back at home and attending the Protestant St. Mark’s Girls’ School, but she also spends a good deal of time on the two people who exert the greatest influence on the girl: her intense, conflicted, and emotionally disturbed father and her beautiful, narcissistic mother. Clara’s new friendships with two Jewish girls—the studious Ruth Philips and the flirtatious, high-spirited Patsy Cohen (whose lively, busy and noisy home provides a significant contrast to Clara’s dark and quiet one on Valetta Road)—are also explored.

Claude Batchelor converted to Catholicism when Clara was a child of seven. The ritual, the pomp, Claude’s self-identified “feudal temperament”, and a compulsion to rein in dark urges and a sinful nature were all factors in his decision. Claude’s relationship with Clara, though not literally incestuous, is certainly emotionally so. His reaction to her budding sexuality is alarmingly inappropriate. Claude is demanding, controlling, and ambitious for his daughter. A boys’ school classics teacher who would have preferred a son, Claude sees academic potential in his daughter and attempts to steer her towards Cambridge, at a time when few women attended institutions of higher education.

Clara is, however, “the lost traveller” of the title. She is rudderless after leaving the convent school. She belongs neither to the Catholic world nor the Protestant one, and though she claims she does not want to marry, she also rejects life as a bluestocking. She ends up taking a position as a governess to a precocious, spoiled ten-year-old boy, Charles Cressett, the only heir to a wealthy, old Catholic family in Worcestershire. Once installed in the Cressetts’ Jacobean great house, Clara meets a young man from a nearby estate who is even odder and more adrift than she, Archie Hughes-Follett. “From babyhood,” we are told, “he had attracted accidents and misfortunes of all kinds or [had] been the innocent cause of accidents to others.” A soldier, now at home convalescing after a grenade explosion that killed another man, Archie, is another only son of a wealthy old Catholic family. Clara’s meeting with this young man proves to be a fateful one, life-changing and tragic.

The Lost Traveller is an intense, absorbing, “old-fashioned” (in the best sense) read. It explores not only the adolescence of a young girl but the lives of her parents (and their influence on her). Though there are melodramatic elements, characterization is strong, the writing can be quite evocative, and White creates a convincing portrait of a girl who cannot find her way. show less

What could be more appealing than living in a sugar house? This pleasant image turns sinister as young bride Clara equates her situation with that of Hansel and Gretel. After bad luck on the stage and in love, Clara impulsively marries a childish, alcoholic young man of indeterminate sexuality. The two are miserable together in every way. Finally, Clara seeks--and finds--a way out of the sugar house.

Clara is an unusual heroine; she's both naïve and determined, messy but honest about her show more faults. No doubt she is based on Antonia White herself.

This novel is the third installment in White's Frost in May quartet. I'm looking forward to reading the fourth one, Beyond the Glass. show less