Providence

"She felt an urgent need to put her own life into some sort of order, to ensure that she did not turn out like Caroline or like Pauline, the one so stupid, the other so intelligent, and both so bereft. She saw her two friends, who would have nothing to say to each other if they should ever meet, as casualties of the same conflict, as losers in the war in which Providence was deemed to play so large a part, and to determine the outcome, for some, not for others." (Page 81)

Kitty Maule is a smart, beautiful woman, a lecturer at a university but she's missing the one thing she desires more than anything: a relationship with a man she cares about. It doesn't seem to be meant to be. It's just not in the cards for her. At least it doesn't seem show more to be. Kitty is convinced that Maurice, a professor of French architecture, is the man for her and even though he does very little to encourage these thoughts, she persists.

Brookner really is a master at slicing and dicing relationships. What's obvious to the reader is just not evident to her characters. They seem to plow ahead, nursing their own grievances, blind to what's actually happening. Then Brookner surrounds them with well, all kinds of unusual characters. And once again, there's no necessarily happy ending, no satisfaction for the reader, no happiness all around. Sort of like life itself. show less

If you have not read Anita Brookner Providence is a wonderful novel with which to start. I daresay you will not look back as you traverse some of her many (too numerous to count) novels of romance and the social difficulties of young women - and sometimes not so young - in love. In this one the protagonist, Kitty Maule, longs to be "totally unreasonable, totally unfair, very demanding, and very beautiful." She is instead clever, reticent, self-possessed, and striking. For years Kitty has been tactfully courting her colleague Maurice Bishop, a detached, elegant English professor. Now, running out of patience, Kitty's amorous pursuit takes her from rancorous academic committee rooms and lecture halls to French cathedrals and Parisian show more rooming houses, from sittings with her dress-making grandmother to seances with a grandmotherly psychic. Touching, funny, and stylistically breathtaking, Providence is a brightly polished gem of romantic comedy. My favorite moments are the many literary references which are more important than they may seem to be at first reading. For example, at one point Kitty is thinking about Adolphe by Benjamin Constant and shares this comment about literature, "Such a refusal to give the story its usual complement of detail turns it into a sort of parable, makes one search for universal meanings which may not be there." Of course those meanings are there and the reader suddenly finds himself wondering if this is an opinion that the author/narrator agrees with. Certainly it is ironic to criticize an iconic Romantic novel for lack of detail which is more likely to be present in a post-Flaubertian novel like those written by Anita Brookner. It is the subtlety of references like these that warms the heart of this inveterate bibliophile. The best of Brookner's novels that I have read is Hotel du Lac for which she was awarded the Booker Prize. However, if you do not want to start at the deep end you should try reading Providence first. show less

No one does loneliness like Brookner.

Providence feels more controlled than the other books of hers I've read, in the sense that it reads almost like an extremely well-choreographed play, each scene very tight and taut, each emotional shift in protagonist Kitty Maule's mind orchestrated with a very deft hand—most times omniscient, and other times delving directly into her thoughts.

Unlike some of the other lonely and socially-estranged protagonists that populate Brookner's novels, Kitty is more independent, self-willed, and self-governed: while her upbringing leaves her feeling alienated and unsure as to which culture or nation she belongs (her mother's side of the family is French; her father, whom she never knew, British), she seems show more to carve out a niche for herself in the academic world, researching the Romantic tradition.

Brookner intersperses scenes from Kitty's seminar on Benjamin Constant's Romantic novel Adolphe with Kitty's own struggles to gain recognition as an academic, as an individual, and also to gain the admiration and love she desires from another scholar, Maurice Bishop. Kitty has several female role models, none of whom seem to fit her own particular sense of being in the world: her neighbor, Caroline, who is fashion-conscious, divorced, and drags Kitty to a psychic; her colleague, Pauline, who is also lassoed in by family, caring for her elderly, blind mother, yet able to balance an academic career of her own; and her aging grandmother, who clings to Parisian ways and modes of fashion despite living in London, and who wishes to see Kitty married before she dies.

The love interest aspect of Providence is more interesting than ones I've encountered in previous Brookner's: Maurice is more accessible than the typical Brookner protagonist's object of obsession, and it is through the lens of aesthetics and academics that Kitty and Maurice can relate to one another on almost equal footing—apart, that is, from Maurice's faith and Kitty's lack of faith, and, too, apart from a past love affair that Maurice clings to stubbornly like an albatross and against which Kitty feels powerless to assert herself.

Despite its strengths in the very controlled way it's plotted, unlike the meandering Falling Slowly, Providence fails slightly with its abrupt ending: admittedly, it works, but it doesn't satisfy or bring the various threads with which Brookner is working to a pleasing denouement. There is less pathos here than in her other books, and, perhaps, this is why the ending left at least this reader feeling as if something was missing, or as if the ending was rushed without much thought... something made all the more glaring given the extreme composure of the novel as a whole. Indeed, more seems to happen in the discussions of Adolphe's considerations of love, individuality, and the Romantic hero's predicament than it does at the end of Providence when it comes to Kitty: the intertextual foregrounding doesn't altogether work, then. show less

Author Brookner is a master of creating believable human characters and the intricate, complicated emotions that go along with them. Sometimes she has created infuriating characters, as was the case in this story, about Kitty, an English academic, who is in thrall to her conceited, egotistical, spoiled-rich-boy colleague, Professor Bishop. She has been dating him for a couple of years now, and at the age of 30, she realizes she needs to nail him down, so to speak. But he's very lackadaisical and aprovechando about their relationship. Ugh.
I became very invested in the life of Kitty, and wanted the best for her, but at the same time, i wanted to slap her for putting all her eggs in one basket with this sin vergüenza Man She was trying to show more get to marry her.
Professor Bishop takes a trip to France, during the summer break of their little obscure university that exists somewhere outside of London, to go study some of the cathedrals there. Kitty herself, who is half French, takes her own trip to Paris, and arranges to meet up with him at her hotel. The next day they travel to a town with a dreary dark cathedral. While Maurice Bishop studies friezes, statuary, etc., Kitty sits alone and prays to her dead mom.
(1982 Hardcopy)
P.120-1:
"then she saw Maurice sink to his knees in front of the statue of the Virgin by dagobert's tomb and watched his bent head as he prayed. He has left me, she thought; I am alone, and she leaned against the pillar, her throat aching. she tried to pray and failed. Then she said, silently, Marie-Thérèse, dearest little mother, are you there? is this what you wanted for me, your heart's darling, on those evenings calm enough to quiet even your fears, when we walked together arm in arm in the tiny garden? do you see him, my pious lover, for whom I wait in hotel rooms, whose notes I type, whose dinners I cook, and who will never marry me? He prays to the madonna, a stone lady with a chipped face. do you watch me, the daughter who amazed and alarmed you sometimes with her strange ambitions? Did you wish for something simpler, more docile, more predictable? You did not hand me on, as a parent should, but you were so scarcely a parent. You were a child, and perhaps all the children I shall ever have. have you found him again, your husband, the father I never knew? will you tell him who I am? You, so happy to be looked after by others, will you try to look after me?"

Kitty is teaching a class to graduate students in the summer session. They are studying the book "adolphe." It has something to do with a man who took for granted a woman who loved him, and then when she died he felt remorse and the shock of being all alone. Brookner contrastss the life of Ellénore and Adolphe with the characters of Kitty and Maurice.
Kitty is discussing the book with her students one day:
P.126-7:
" ' "Ellénore was still alive, but I could no longer confide my thoughts to her; I was already alone in the world; I no longer lived in that atmosphere of love that she diffused around me; the air that I breathed seemed harsher to me, the faces of the people that I met more indifferent; the whole of nature seemed to tell me that I should never again be loved." '
'psychiatrists call this phenomenon "separation anxiety",' said kitty. 'it is more widespread than you suppose. Sociologists blame the alienating effects of modern urban life. but aDolphe is on an estate in the middle of poland: he suffers the disorder in its pure state. alienation is a Romantic phenomenon. do you see what aDolphe says towards the very end of the book? Philip?'
' "How it weighed on me, that liberty I had longed for! How my heart missed that dependence which had so frequently repelled me! formerly all my actions had an aim; with each of them I was sure either to avert pain or to give pleasure. I complained of this; I was impatient that a loving eye should watch my every move, and that the happiness of another should be of so much consequence. now nobody watched me; I was of interest to nobody; nobody claimed my time or my attention; no voice called me back when I went out. I was free indeed, I was no longer loved; I was a stranger to the rest of the world." '
(I find it shocking that she was teaching a graduate class in literature where the students were smoking in the classroom.)

The ending was a surprise. I kept thinking that professor Bishop's girlfriend Lucy was going to come back from Calcutta where she was helping Mother Theresa, but nooo. Brookner has a shocker in store for us. show less

"Providence" is the 3rd novel I’ve read by Anita Brookner, and I don’t know why I keep giving her another chance. All her novels seem to revolve around sad, lonely, pathetic individuals who have a difficult time functioning in society.

In this particular novel, the protagonist Kitty Maule is a single, 30 year old women, living alone in London, trying to establish a personal identity for herself while pursuing a career in Academia. She is currently giving a series of lectures on the French Romantic Tradition - and the reader gets a glimpse of her in action in the class room. She appears to be obsessed with dry, technical, minute details in analysis of the verbiage of the French novel "Adolphes", while missing the big picture of the show more exact meaning of French Romantic Tradition.

This misdirected focus carries over into Kitty’s personal life. She is in love with a colleague, and imagines an intimate relationship with him. Sad to say, as the story progresses, it becomes clear to the reader that she is out of touch with reality - again, focusing on little details while ignoring the big picture. She is inexperienced, and naive - and one begins to question if Kitty is in love with Maurice, or simply in love with the idea of being in love. And all the while, she is trying to re-invent herself - shunning her Russian/French heritage, thus, never revealing her true self to anyone.

It is a terrible state of mine if loneliness evokes a feeling of no purpose - that nothing in life has any meaning, and the only escape from nothingness is to find a soul mate. I sympathize with Kitty on that issue. I’ve been there. But it is hard to feel sorry for someone who ignores wonderful opportunities, too busy wallowing in a false reality.

Anita Brookner is a gifted storyteller, however, her novels are intentionally minimal in plot content, yet she merely skims the surface of character development. Brookner writes emulating the way her primary characters think… holding back with a cool aloof attitude - refusing to embrace, and honor their true identities and refusing to share too much of themselves, with other characters… or with the reader.

When Anita Brookner creates a 5 Star Character, I will rate her a 5 Star review.

Rated 3 Stars October 2021 show less

Another Brookner heroine, all intellect and poise, but blind to the flaws in the man she wants to marry. The characters, especially the women are all very well drawn and distinct. As ever with Brookner the plot is fairly minimal, but the writing is precise and excellent.

Drat, Anita Brookner is GOOOD! It is true there are qualities of sameness to so many of her books, but frankly that's a good quality when the sameness is something that interests the reader. She's a lot like Iris Murdoch in that way. Ms. Murdoch also re-wrote the same book over and over a few times, but either I have creeping senility and don't mind, or the caliber of the writing is so high I don't even care. I just think Anita Brookner is incredibly impressive, and that's that.

_Providence_ has so much to say about women "of a certain age" who start questioning the choices they've made and whether they maybe should pick out a china pattern and settle down after all. It may give feminists the jitters seeing these strong female characters show more contemplating whether or not they do actually "need" a male in their lives, as it does somewhat beg the question as to whether a strong woman on her own should even be thinking about His 'n Hers towels, but I just adore the female characters in Brookner's books. They're a bit fusty, in some ways, and never the beauties, but they all have wonderfully developed inner lives and are generally quite secure in all ways but romantically.

If you enjoy Brooker, try Barbara Pym and Jane Gardner, as well as the above-mentioned Iris Murdoch. Just trust me! show less