Ok I will try answering some questions myself... I was very struck by the development of Kathy as a character (or rather, she's the one who most sticks in mind, in the years since I first read it). Like AN Wilson, I don't give plot spoilers in my essay here, but I'm going to assume if you've got this far, you probably know what happens. Perhaps in creating the glamorous outgoing Kathy, Mayor was exploring what might have happened if she herself, as a would-be actress, had settled down with a decent but rather staid man. Kathy's loss of beauty (and her feckless friends) allows her to show her vulnerability rather than cover it up with 'hilarity' and makes her all the more interesting as a character, I think. While Robert Herbert shows signs of turning into a Canon Jocelyn, perhaps...
Reading the novel again after several decades, I was struck just as much by Mary and the way the narrative brings you to experience the crises as I was before. The emotion for me was as powerful as ever. At the same time I took much more pleasure in Canon Jocelyn, finding him really amusing as well as a monster, given that such monsters had a lot of power still in the university system and did so for years to come. (A friend studying science at Oxford in the early 1960s told me recently of a lecturer who, finding only women undergraduates in the lecture theatre, stated solemnly since there was no one present to hear his lecture, he would give it on another occasion, and walked out.) Like you, I was very taken with the care shown to Kathy in the narrative, both accounting for her in a social/political sense, and enabling the reader to see her as a rounded figure. I think this works by refracting judgment through Mary’s sensibility, a wonderful skill on Mayor’s part I think and an updating of the Austen method. Thank you for reminding me of this wonderful novel, and for placing it in the context of F M Mayor’s life.
Thanks Heather for your wonderfully insightful comment. You describe the emotional power of this novel so well, and I'm very interested that you had some sympathy for the rather hopeless Canon Jocelyn. I guess he was a product of the system as much as he was - and I love that poignant scene where, trying to show his 'grateful tenderness' towards her, he offers her a glass of his best Madeira, telling her it's 'particularly well suited to ladies' and she drinks it to please him. I can well imagine your friend's experience at Oxford, it shows how long those attitudes lasted. The connection to Jane Austen is one I hadn't thought of, but that's exactly right - refracting the other characters through Mary's sensibility, even in her absence (as in the Herbert marriage).
I would have preferred that the Herberts addressed the issue of Mary less directly at the end, because you have to believe that they could throw off their habitual reserve, and I wasn’t quite convinced. Canon Jocelyn, on the other hand, is completely convincing in rising above his selfishness at various points, though never in a way that is going to set Mary free. (Acknowledging her literary powers at the end of his life, when he would no longer have to face the consequences, is typical of his twisted generosity.) I can’t recall what Virginia Woolf thought of the book, and whether she commented on it in the diaries, for example, but it strikes me that Leslie Stephen her father was a comparable monster in her life, and she did say something to the effect that without his death she would not have been a writer.
I thought Kathy interesting as well. As I was reading, I felt like she reminded me of someone. I finally settled on a less intelligent, more vivacious Lady Mary Crawley. I think Mayor did a good job of making Kathy more complex than simply a beautiful, shallow young woman.
What a good comparison, Katy! Mayor did a good job is suggesting her inner life (and I sometimes struggle to picture a character so it helps to imagine who could play them in a film). Mary could be played by Anna Maxwell Martin, who played Esther Summerson in the BBC adaptation of Bleak House (perhaps I'm thinking of her because her chracter suffered facial scarring from smallpox).
I thoroughly enjoyed the novel! I looked forward to picking it up every evening--always the sign of a good book for me. I like books that are both plot and character driven, and this one met those criteria. Mayor was a gifted and insightful writer. I highlighted extensively, both long, descriptive paragraphs and short, substantive observations such as "The soft power of time at length healed her."
So glad you enjoyed it, Katy and I agree it does have a plot that twists in unexpected ways, but never feels melodramatic. Mayor does have a great way of expressing things, such as when Canon Jocelyn (at last) appreciates Mary's presence because he has also become softer with his decline: 'she forgot how frail is any building whose foundations are old age.'
I agree Katy. I liked very much how she uses nature in the novel, evoking how important it is to Mary, and writing very lyrically about it, even while insisting it’s not at all picturesque or dramatic.
Yes, as expressed with gentle irony in Ch.27 when she feels deprived of the countryside she loved: 'Autumn came with charm enough to transform the suburb.'
I am so grateful that you introduced me to this novel, Ann. As I read, I had to keep reminding myself that this novel was published in 1924 by Hogarth Press. Just from that standpoint, I think Flora Mayor evidenced great artistic integrity in her decision not to embrace Modernist experimentation for the sake of critical validation.
The novel’s astute yet accessible psychological insights reminded me very much of Katherine Mansfield. Also like Mansfield, Mayor sensitively illuminates the struggles of marginalized female characters who display quiet dignity through pained resilience & muted grace to help readers view these figures with much deeper respect than the supporting figures who stunt their tentative quests for autonomous expression & fulfilling companionship. _Persuasion_ came repeatedly to mind as Anne has much in common with Mary. Perhaps both Austen & Mayor attempted to rewrite their own life trajectories through these subtle yet emotionally resonant character studies. I value the way that Austen, Mansfield, and Mayor encourage readers to cultivate deeper empathetic awareness for their achingly poignant protagonists in their challenged attempts to experience full presence in their insular yet meaningful lives.
Thank you Alisa, your comment has given me so much to think about, and I need to re-read Katherine Mansfield and Persuasion. It's wonderful to see these connections - and there's something 'out of time' about The Rector's Daughter - I had to keep reminding myself of when it was written, because it has such a Victorian, 1890s feeling about it. But perhaps it does reflect some of the grief and anxieties of the 'surplus woman' following the First World War. And as you say, it's so interesting that the Woolfs chose to publish it. I think they were quite taken aback when it sold so many copies, and Leonard clearly remembered it years later.
I chose this as my book on A Good Read -BBC Radio 4. It was repeated and as that programme had a large audience the novel got enough attention to persuade Penguin to reprint. I knew Tess Rothschild nee Mayor who had thought it would be forgotten. There were a lot of TV rights enquiries but it was never adapted, I think fortunately because so much of it is interior, about innermost thoughts, hopes, feelings. It is so moving, indeed, heartbreaking when Mary loses what she has privately longed for, to someone totally unworthy. A novel I return to every few years and always to discover new subtleties.
Her other novel, The Third Miss Symons, is good..but it does not have the emotional force or the depths of insight F.M.Mayor revealed in The Rector's Daughter.
Thanks Susan for your lovely comment & welcome to Substack. How interesting to learn that it was partly thanks to your interest that Penguin reprinted The Rector’s Daughter. I will look out for that episode. Yes, a tv adaptation wouldn’t capture what is so special about the novel, but it would be quite nice! I hope you might write more on your Substack about what you’re enjoying reading these days.
I'm joining this discussion very late, after listening to Juliet Stevenson read the abridged version on BBC Sounds. I don't usually like abridgements but this was beautifully read and I now very much want to read the full novel, so thank you, Ann, for introducing me to it. Like others, I found Kathy was the character who stayed with me, because I like being surprised by people and she turned out to be so much more complex than she appears at first. I thought the scene where the pony bolts and she is so cheerfully confident until it's all over was particularly telling. And the Herberts' marriage is also portrayed very subtly, with some unexpected twists and a real understanding of how relationships evolve over time.
Belated thanks Alison! I love your comment on this - and the horse-bolting scene is wonderful. I do think it could be a very good TV adaptation, and the idea of living with a changed appearance is very well done (though perhaps Mayor blurs the issue by restoring K's beauty).
Thank you for this introduction to Flora Mayor and THE RECTOR’S DAUGHTER! Just added to my list. It almost sounds as though a George Eliot novel and an Anita Brookner novel had a baby, and THE RECTOR’S DAUGHTER was the result!
I loved reading this piece - thank you, Ann! It's probably a decade since I read The Rector's Daughter, and I now feel inspired to seek out a bottle-green Virago edition in a charity shop and read it again. I remember the humour, the Cranford-like detail of women's lives, and the deep melancholy. Funnily enough, this week I've been reading Eerie East Anglia: Fearful Tales of Field and Fen, ed. Edward Parnell (one of the British Library's Tales of the Weird series), and it has a story by Mayor in it, called Miss de Mannering of Asham. There are some interesting parallels between it and The Rector's Daughter. I won't say more - because I recommend reading the story - but here is a quotation from it that I think you and your readers will appreciate: "I don't know if you want to hear these minute details, but nearly everything I have to tell you is merely a succession of minute details."
Thanks for your great comment Catherine, and for so generously supporting my writing. I did wonder whether to mention the ghost stories, then thought the post was getting a bit too long as it was! That collection sounds fascinating and I'm so glad Mayor's been included by the modern writer, Edward Parnell. Apparently MR James was a big fan of her stories too, and I love that quotation about minute details so much! Saving it in my files & commonplace book... and will read the story shortly. Great recommendation.
I am so glad your first book choice prompted me to read this. As for you, I think what will stay with me is character of Kathy. The shift in her circumstances was so unexpected, and then it's reversal, it allowed her character to be so much more than vain and thoughtless. I found Mary's forebearance and selflessness so moving. When Kathy regains her beauty, she seems to have learned little, and Mary is sidelined again. I found this very difficult to read but the truth of her writing is what makes this such a rich experience and I am sure I won't forget it.
Great to have you reading along, Deborah, and thank you for your generous comment. I will have to pick a more cheerful novel next time, as I know reading something sad can be too much at times. I'd forgotten that Kathy has so little sympathy for Mary at the end! I did like the final lines though, and the way it's expressed that no photograph could have captured Mary's special qualities for Mr Herbert, but that she accompanies him 'in the great equinoctial blasts of autumn' and other strong winds - showing her strength, I suppose and Hardy-esque presence. 'Woman much loved, how you call to me, call to me' must have been in Mayor's mind, writing these lines, and think there's a sense of 'life's little ironies' about the book too.
Although not an easy book to read at times, I am so glad to have read it. It is a remarkable novel. The end was deeply moving, and the right one, and I hadn't made the Hardy connection, but I am sure this was what she had in mind. I should also have said how touching a creation cook was and her response at the end was so affecting. The book club is such a great addition and I am so glad that we had time to read it without feeling rushed!
Ok I will try answering some questions myself... I was very struck by the development of Kathy as a character (or rather, she's the one who most sticks in mind, in the years since I first read it). Like AN Wilson, I don't give plot spoilers in my essay here, but I'm going to assume if you've got this far, you probably know what happens. Perhaps in creating the glamorous outgoing Kathy, Mayor was exploring what might have happened if she herself, as a would-be actress, had settled down with a decent but rather staid man. Kathy's loss of beauty (and her feckless friends) allows her to show her vulnerability rather than cover it up with 'hilarity' and makes her all the more interesting as a character, I think. While Robert Herbert shows signs of turning into a Canon Jocelyn, perhaps...
Reading the novel again after several decades, I was struck just as much by Mary and the way the narrative brings you to experience the crises as I was before. The emotion for me was as powerful as ever. At the same time I took much more pleasure in Canon Jocelyn, finding him really amusing as well as a monster, given that such monsters had a lot of power still in the university system and did so for years to come. (A friend studying science at Oxford in the early 1960s told me recently of a lecturer who, finding only women undergraduates in the lecture theatre, stated solemnly since there was no one present to hear his lecture, he would give it on another occasion, and walked out.) Like you, I was very taken with the care shown to Kathy in the narrative, both accounting for her in a social/political sense, and enabling the reader to see her as a rounded figure. I think this works by refracting judgment through Mary’s sensibility, a wonderful skill on Mayor’s part I think and an updating of the Austen method. Thank you for reminding me of this wonderful novel, and for placing it in the context of F M Mayor’s life.
Thanks Heather for your wonderfully insightful comment. You describe the emotional power of this novel so well, and I'm very interested that you had some sympathy for the rather hopeless Canon Jocelyn. I guess he was a product of the system as much as he was - and I love that poignant scene where, trying to show his 'grateful tenderness' towards her, he offers her a glass of his best Madeira, telling her it's 'particularly well suited to ladies' and she drinks it to please him. I can well imagine your friend's experience at Oxford, it shows how long those attitudes lasted. The connection to Jane Austen is one I hadn't thought of, but that's exactly right - refracting the other characters through Mary's sensibility, even in her absence (as in the Herbert marriage).
I would have preferred that the Herberts addressed the issue of Mary less directly at the end, because you have to believe that they could throw off their habitual reserve, and I wasn’t quite convinced. Canon Jocelyn, on the other hand, is completely convincing in rising above his selfishness at various points, though never in a way that is going to set Mary free. (Acknowledging her literary powers at the end of his life, when he would no longer have to face the consequences, is typical of his twisted generosity.) I can’t recall what Virginia Woolf thought of the book, and whether she commented on it in the diaries, for example, but it strikes me that Leslie Stephen her father was a comparable monster in her life, and she did say something to the effect that without his death she would not have been a writer.
I thought Kathy interesting as well. As I was reading, I felt like she reminded me of someone. I finally settled on a less intelligent, more vivacious Lady Mary Crawley. I think Mayor did a good job of making Kathy more complex than simply a beautiful, shallow young woman.
What a good comparison, Katy! Mayor did a good job is suggesting her inner life (and I sometimes struggle to picture a character so it helps to imagine who could play them in a film). Mary could be played by Anna Maxwell Martin, who played Esther Summerson in the BBC adaptation of Bleak House (perhaps I'm thinking of her because her chracter suffered facial scarring from smallpox).
I thoroughly enjoyed the novel! I looked forward to picking it up every evening--always the sign of a good book for me. I like books that are both plot and character driven, and this one met those criteria. Mayor was a gifted and insightful writer. I highlighted extensively, both long, descriptive paragraphs and short, substantive observations such as "The soft power of time at length healed her."
So glad you enjoyed it, Katy and I agree it does have a plot that twists in unexpected ways, but never feels melodramatic. Mayor does have a great way of expressing things, such as when Canon Jocelyn (at last) appreciates Mary's presence because he has also become softer with his decline: 'she forgot how frail is any building whose foundations are old age.'
I agree Katy. I liked very much how she uses nature in the novel, evoking how important it is to Mary, and writing very lyrically about it, even while insisting it’s not at all picturesque or dramatic.
Yes, as expressed with gentle irony in Ch.27 when she feels deprived of the countryside she loved: 'Autumn came with charm enough to transform the suburb.'
I am so grateful that you introduced me to this novel, Ann. As I read, I had to keep reminding myself that this novel was published in 1924 by Hogarth Press. Just from that standpoint, I think Flora Mayor evidenced great artistic integrity in her decision not to embrace Modernist experimentation for the sake of critical validation.
The novel’s astute yet accessible psychological insights reminded me very much of Katherine Mansfield. Also like Mansfield, Mayor sensitively illuminates the struggles of marginalized female characters who display quiet dignity through pained resilience & muted grace to help readers view these figures with much deeper respect than the supporting figures who stunt their tentative quests for autonomous expression & fulfilling companionship. _Persuasion_ came repeatedly to mind as Anne has much in common with Mary. Perhaps both Austen & Mayor attempted to rewrite their own life trajectories through these subtle yet emotionally resonant character studies. I value the way that Austen, Mansfield, and Mayor encourage readers to cultivate deeper empathetic awareness for their achingly poignant protagonists in their challenged attempts to experience full presence in their insular yet meaningful lives.
Thank you Alisa, your comment has given me so much to think about, and I need to re-read Katherine Mansfield and Persuasion. It's wonderful to see these connections - and there's something 'out of time' about The Rector's Daughter - I had to keep reminding myself of when it was written, because it has such a Victorian, 1890s feeling about it. But perhaps it does reflect some of the grief and anxieties of the 'surplus woman' following the First World War. And as you say, it's so interesting that the Woolfs chose to publish it. I think they were quite taken aback when it sold so many copies, and Leonard clearly remembered it years later.
Thanks so much for your willingness to add a book club feature to your offerings. It is such a delight to encounter new female authors of this era!
I chose this as my book on A Good Read -BBC Radio 4. It was repeated and as that programme had a large audience the novel got enough attention to persuade Penguin to reprint. I knew Tess Rothschild nee Mayor who had thought it would be forgotten. There were a lot of TV rights enquiries but it was never adapted, I think fortunately because so much of it is interior, about innermost thoughts, hopes, feelings. It is so moving, indeed, heartbreaking when Mary loses what she has privately longed for, to someone totally unworthy. A novel I return to every few years and always to discover new subtleties.
Her other novel, The Third Miss Symons, is good..but it does not have the emotional force or the depths of insight F.M.Mayor revealed in The Rector's Daughter.
Thanks Susan for your lovely comment & welcome to Substack. How interesting to learn that it was partly thanks to your interest that Penguin reprinted The Rector’s Daughter. I will look out for that episode. Yes, a tv adaptation wouldn’t capture what is so special about the novel, but it would be quite nice! I hope you might write more on your Substack about what you’re enjoying reading these days.
I will..among other things. Thank you
I'm joining this discussion very late, after listening to Juliet Stevenson read the abridged version on BBC Sounds. I don't usually like abridgements but this was beautifully read and I now very much want to read the full novel, so thank you, Ann, for introducing me to it. Like others, I found Kathy was the character who stayed with me, because I like being surprised by people and she turned out to be so much more complex than she appears at first. I thought the scene where the pony bolts and she is so cheerfully confident until it's all over was particularly telling. And the Herberts' marriage is also portrayed very subtly, with some unexpected twists and a real understanding of how relationships evolve over time.
Belated thanks Alison! I love your comment on this - and the horse-bolting scene is wonderful. I do think it could be a very good TV adaptation, and the idea of living with a changed appearance is very well done (though perhaps Mayor blurs the issue by restoring K's beauty).
Thank you for this introduction to Flora Mayor and THE RECTOR’S DAUGHTER! Just added to my list. It almost sounds as though a George Eliot novel and an Anita Brookner novel had a baby, and THE RECTOR’S DAUGHTER was the result!
Ha, that's a great way of putting it, Sarah! Hope you enjoy it - it strikes me as an autumnal sort of a book...
I loved reading this piece - thank you, Ann! It's probably a decade since I read The Rector's Daughter, and I now feel inspired to seek out a bottle-green Virago edition in a charity shop and read it again. I remember the humour, the Cranford-like detail of women's lives, and the deep melancholy. Funnily enough, this week I've been reading Eerie East Anglia: Fearful Tales of Field and Fen, ed. Edward Parnell (one of the British Library's Tales of the Weird series), and it has a story by Mayor in it, called Miss de Mannering of Asham. There are some interesting parallels between it and The Rector's Daughter. I won't say more - because I recommend reading the story - but here is a quotation from it that I think you and your readers will appreciate: "I don't know if you want to hear these minute details, but nearly everything I have to tell you is merely a succession of minute details."
Thanks for your great comment Catherine, and for so generously supporting my writing. I did wonder whether to mention the ghost stories, then thought the post was getting a bit too long as it was! That collection sounds fascinating and I'm so glad Mayor's been included by the modern writer, Edward Parnell. Apparently MR James was a big fan of her stories too, and I love that quotation about minute details so much! Saving it in my files & commonplace book... and will read the story shortly. Great recommendation.
I am so glad your first book choice prompted me to read this. As for you, I think what will stay with me is character of Kathy. The shift in her circumstances was so unexpected, and then it's reversal, it allowed her character to be so much more than vain and thoughtless. I found Mary's forebearance and selflessness so moving. When Kathy regains her beauty, she seems to have learned little, and Mary is sidelined again. I found this very difficult to read but the truth of her writing is what makes this such a rich experience and I am sure I won't forget it.
Great to have you reading along, Deborah, and thank you for your generous comment. I will have to pick a more cheerful novel next time, as I know reading something sad can be too much at times. I'd forgotten that Kathy has so little sympathy for Mary at the end! I did like the final lines though, and the way it's expressed that no photograph could have captured Mary's special qualities for Mr Herbert, but that she accompanies him 'in the great equinoctial blasts of autumn' and other strong winds - showing her strength, I suppose and Hardy-esque presence. 'Woman much loved, how you call to me, call to me' must have been in Mayor's mind, writing these lines, and think there's a sense of 'life's little ironies' about the book too.
Although not an easy book to read at times, I am so glad to have read it. It is a remarkable novel. The end was deeply moving, and the right one, and I hadn't made the Hardy connection, but I am sure this was what she had in mind. I should also have said how touching a creation cook was and her response at the end was so affecting. The book club is such a great addition and I am so glad that we had time to read it without feeling rushed!