An e-correspondent (Laura Green) draws attention to a book by Maurice L McCullen
called E.M.
Delafield. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985
and has kindly sent some quotes from this book about EMD's
novels.
ZELLA SEES HERSELF: 1917
"Zella Sees Herself, Delafield's first novel, set the thematic pattern: the
adult world's miseducation of a young woman whose romantic view of life fails
to fit social reality."
"... Zella moves through girlhood, convent school, and into society trying unsuccessfully
to conform to "type," while at the same time trying to discover "what is real."
""Chameleon-like," Zella either adopts inauthentic roles or lies in order to
meet the demands of these opposed worlds. Refusing to face the facts of
any situation, or unaware of these facts, she invents her own. Thus, she
is never quite sure what is true or real."
"While her family environments inhibit her development, Zella's egotism is responsible
for her successive social failures. A dreamy, defensive romantic, Zella
shuts herself off from real life, only to awake as an adult to the realization
that a firm sense of reality is the prime requisite for living."
THE WAR WORKERS: 1918
"The War Workers is an upbeat, even high-spirited account of Delafield's own
war servcie, and is notable for its first hints of her comic gifts."
"The novel's main theme, then, echoes that of Zella: egotism is destructive
to the egotist, who is not completely aware of her self-absorption, and who
creates tension in any situation."
"Light, dramatic, topical -- its humorous picture of the home front was most
welcome in 1918, and appreciative reviewers compared her favorably with Jane
Austen."
THE PELICANS: 1918
"The orphaned Grantham sisters in The Pelicans are opposites: Rosamund
is rebellious, growing up "at odds with her world and her passionate, unbalanced
self." Francie, two years younger, is a dreamer for whom the material
world scarcely exists. The movement of this novel, while detailing Francie's
steady progress towards a religious vocation, primarily traces Rosamund's rites
of passage from rebellious romantic egotists to realistic adult."
"Through Rosamund, Delafield examined another case of youthful romanticism at
odds with life."
CONSEQUENCES: 1919
"The eldest daughter of Sir Francis and Lady Isobel, Alex seeks slavishly but
unsuccessfully for affection throughout her nursery and school years.
Her excessive behavior causes repeated humiliations at her convent, and in consequences
her repressed emotions find sublimation in romantic dreams"
TENSION: 1920
"Tension is a good-humored romance on the Victorian "second-best" model.
Pauline Marchrose's jilting of one suitor and romance with a married man affront
local convention, in the person of neighborhood grande dame Lady Rossiter.
Marchrose is hounded from her college position; but she accepts the proposal
of a colleague, and the pair set out for the East as educational pioneers.
Dedicated with terse irreverence "To My Maternal Parent," Delafield caricatures
her mother in Lady Rossiter."
THE HEEL OF ACHILLES: 1920
"a negligible study of egotism"
HUMBUG: 1921
"criticizes adult society again for hiding the truth from its youth, thus causing
them to lose touch with reality."
"The epithet "amateur educationalists" symbolizes all adults in this novel,
and Lily does not begin to grow up until she discovers her husband's infidelity.
Although the amateur educationlists beseige her with advice, Lily finds for
the first time that she can control her own life: divorce, spearation, reconciliation
-- all decisions affecting her are in her hands, and the narrator informs us
that "she had learned honesty at last."
THE OPTIMIST: 1922
"The Optimist pits cynical World War I veteran, Owen Quentillian, against
the Victorian optimist, Canon Morchard."
"Against this background of dissension between old and new viewpoints, the disposition
of the five Morchard children provides plot conflict. None can live by
their father's principles; all suffer from his dominance."
"But what sets out to be another criticism of establishment views doubles back
on itself as the reflector character, Quentillian, changes his mind about Canon
Morchard. Whereas at first the canon "reminded him oddly of a book of
late Victorian memoirs," Quentillian comes to idolize the old man."
A REVERSION TO TYPE: 1923
"Delafield's reentry into English society first produced a potboiler, A Reversion
to Type, which makes a plea for greater understanding of mental illness
in children."
MESSALINA OF THE SUBURBS: 1923
"Delafield's reacton to postwar sexual mores really begins with the sensation
Messalina of the Suburbs, where for the first time she projected herself
into a character totally unlike her own."
"Her psychological "reconstruction," as she called it, presented her protagonist
as the vicitim of sexual determinism."
"Elsie's extreme sexuality leads directly to murder in Delafield's analysis;
and in her fictional equation, romantic temperament plus physical susceptibility
equals destruction."
MRS. HARTER: 1924
"...a tragedy of star-crossed lovers."
THE CHIP AND THE BLOCK: 1925
"Delafield continues her inquiry into the physical side of love with The
Chip and the Block. Paul Ellery, the central protagonist of this rambling
novel, finds in the arms of his landlady, Mrs. Foss, salvation from a false,
sentimental attachment. This vital widow listens to unawakened Paul recount
the kinds of emotional blackmail Gladys St. Lawrence and her manipulative mother
use to get him to propose, and then convinces him that Gladys does not love
him. If she did, Mrs. Foss declares, she would show it."
THE ENTERTAINMENT: 1926
Short stories. Includes: THE ENTERTAINMENT; THE PHILISTINE;
O TEMPORA! O MORES!; INCIDENTAL; THE LUGGAGE IN THE HALL:
AN UN-MORAL STORY; ". . . AND NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET";
BLAIIRGOWRIE; "THIS IS ONE WAY ROUND . . ."; THE TORTOISE;
REFLEX ACTION; HOLIDAY GROUP; THE WAITING LADY; TERMINUS;
A TALE OF THE TIMES; REPARATION; THE THRESHOLD OF ETERNITY
JILL: 1926
"Jill, the symbolic title character, emerges as Delafield's first heroine.
Her mother is a kept woman who relinquishes Jill first to Jack and Doreen and
then to Cathie and Oliver, but none of the perversions of love which mark her
three envrionements can touch her. She stands for joy, vitality, and purity;
and when Jack has divorced himself from the sterile amorality represented by
Doreen, Jill marries him."
THE WAY THINGS ARE: 1927
"Thoughtful, insightful, and accurate, The Way Things Are is an important
document in the history of women's literature. With its themes of entrapment
and renunciation, it is in many ways an angry book, a compelling full-length
portrait of an intelligent, sensitive woman chained to deadening domesticity."
WHAT IS LOVE: 1928 (U.S. Title: FIRST LOVE)
"What is Love ironically contrasts traditional and modern love through
two cousins, one a romantic "Sleeping Princess" who cannot see reality, and
the other a smart, self-confident modern."
THE SUBURBAN YOUNG MAN: 1928
"Only two years after Jill Delafield could find no realistic basis for
romantic love. The Suburban Young Man, her second novel in 1928,
is one which she always regretted writing."
WOMEN ARE LIKE THAT: 1929
Short stories.
TURN BACK THE LEAVES: 1930
"Turn Back the Leaves tells of the demise of an English Catholic family,
and it so resonantly treats the ubi sunt theme that English Catholicism
itself becomes the subject."
CHALLENGE TO CLARISSA: 1931 (U.S. Title: HOUSE PARTY)
"...the wealthy and egotistical title character's challenge is to halt the course
of young love. She fails -- as does the novel. The latter's firm
organization, fine supporting cast, and comic scenes cannot hold up the dead
weight of the bland ingenue parts and their pallid romantic conflict."
THANK HEAVEN FASTING: 1932 (U.S. Title: A GOOD MAN'S LOVE)
"This polished, compact novel is a deep and deeply ironic evocation of the atmosphere
of a vanished way of life, and it gains great sociocultural authority as the
carefully detailed record of one who knew."
"Monica, and to a lesser extent the Marlowe sisters, symbolizes the traditional
training of upper-class Edwardian women. Monica is the epitome of the
Delafield character who can never grasp reality. She is imaged repeatedly
as living the life of a fictional character, enmeshed in the unreal daydream
of the Tradition."
GAY LIFE: 1933
"For her only non-English setting Delafield chose a resort hotel on the French
Riviera , where her mostly English tourists, all from different social "worlds,"
must interact in unfamiliar surroundings."
"Its three plots fit solidly into the Delafield canon. All three deal
with the perversion of love by cynical moderns."
FASTER! FASTER!: 1936
"...a novel of mid-life crisis..."
"Claudia Winsloe finds herself trapped by the twin responsibilities of career
and family. The harder she works, the faster she moves, the more out of
touch with herself and others she becomes."
"The plot first sets her up as a modern superwoman -- talented, tireless, and
selfless -- and then attacks her for those very qualities. One after another
those close to her discover that her actions stem from her "power complex"."
"Increasingly isolated, she grows in the novel's terms more and more "unreal"
-- out of touch with everything, understood by no one."
"Her daughter recalls asking Delafield, "is that a book all about you?" and
her mother answering "Yes." "She was being spiteful about herself," Rosamund
recalls, because of something "quite unkind" that a friend had said about her."
NOTHING IS SAFE: 1937
"Nothing is Safe continues Delafield's concern for the contemporary family.
It chronicles the effects of divorce on two children during their summer holiday.
The breakup of their home makes a chaos of their lives as they are pushed back
and forth between parents whose lives have now no place for them."
"Although this novel does not seem to be based closely on Delafield's own life,
except as imaginative projection, two of its characters came directly from it:
her children Lionel and Rosamund were the models from which she drew (in some
instances copied) Terry and Julia."
LOVE HAS NO RESURRECTION: 1941
Short stories. "the best of the three" collections. McCullen has
next to nothing to say about the other two.
NO ONE NOW WILL KNOW: 1942
"The great sense of loss in this novel, the vivid impression of things sliding,
passing, lost beyond recall, faithfully reflects her deepest fears during wartime."
LATE AND SOON: 1943
"Delafield took her title from Wordsworth's famous sonnet, "The World is Too
Much With Us," and the spirit and movement of her last novels follows that of
the poem -- from the material, confining world which "Wastes our powers" to
the free world of natural, spontaneous emotion. Delafield characters had
struggled from her first novel onward to repress their desires for a "romantic
miracle" and to join instead the world of objective reality. In Late
and Soon, however, the claims of the "real" world are challenged and, surprisingly
in the light of her career, disavowed."