EXCELLENT WOMEN 313 A World Not Won by Virtue CHAPTER FIVE All the privilege I claim for my own sex . is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone. Jane A us ten: Persuasion The young woman has just read a novel by Rosamond Lehmann about the suffering of women in love - it makes her feel inferior as if she isn't capable of suffering so mueh. Barbara Pym: A Very Private Eye L'ironie est le fond du caractere de Ia Providence. Honore de Balzac: Eugenie Grandet 314 EXCELLENT WOMEN A World Not Won by Virtue EXCELLENT WOMEN 315 A World Not Won by Virtue 5 A WORLD NOT WON BY VIRTUE 5.1 A Start in Life Barbara Pym died in 1980; as if on cue, Anita Brookner produced her debut1 BildungsrQman, the impeccably crafted, wryly astringent, tragi-comic A Start in Ufe in 1981. The themeti of the novel are themes eommon to the work of Barbara Pym. Ruth Weiss, the heroine of the novel, has been "ruined by literature", having taken as her role models the prissier Dickensian epitome of filial devotion, and Balzac's Eugenie Grandet. This theme is more stringently imposed upon the novel than Pym's random quotations and nomenclatural fervour, as is the theme of filial duty, which is central to A Start in Life. The novel is an acute study of loneliness and the need for love, and its denial through the selfishness of the lucky, the beautiful, and t he manipulative. Expectations and illusions are countered by reality. Unlike Pym, however, Brookner intimates that a woman on her own is a pitiful creature: Brookner's women have little solace in the trivial round, and even the not so common task of considerable academic achievement is a poor substitute for romantic love. Brookner's view of academe is infinitely lonelier than the pettiness punctured by Pym's malicious jibes, and her continental setting and sombre European-Jewish household depict a world very different from Pym's, in which, even if the characters should venture abroad, their environment remains as comfortingly English as stewed tea. The pun is intentional, as A Start in U{e was published in America as The Debut, a rather more literal translation of Balzac's Un Debut dans Ia Vie. 316 gXCELLENT WOMEN A World Not Won by Virtue In this densely packed and met iculously crafted novel, Hrookner states her themes overtly at the outset. Pym's themes t end to emerge tentatively from the exigencies of the characters and mild plot; Brookner imposes her theme of "a life ruined by literature" in an arresting opening line, and uny expectations which the reader might entertain of Cinderella-like wish fulfilment are roundly quashed in Brookner's elegant, encapsulating style. 13rookner is given to aphor- istic, authorial comment, much in the manner of her heroine, Ruth, who assiduously copies the odd maxim, gleaned from her studies in the library. We are introduced to Dr Ruth Weiss, aged 40, after the catastrophic event: Dr Weiss, at forty, knew t hat her life had been ruined by literature. In her thoughtful and academic way, she put it down to her faulty moral education which dictated, through the conflicting but in this one instance united agencies of her mother and father, t hat she ponder the careers of Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary, but that she emulate those of David Copperfied (sic] and Little Dorrit. But really it had started much earlier than that, when, at an unremembered moment in her extreme infancy, she had . fallen asleep, enraptured, as her nurse breathed the words, 'Cinderella shall go to t he ball.' The ball had never materialized (SL:7)1 Ruth Weiss also blames her looks on literature, and "she aimed, instinctive ly, at a slightly old-fashioned effect " (SL:S). Ruth's misfortune is to expect, in the manner of David Copperfield and Little SL refers to BROOKNER, Anit a. 1982. A Start in Life. London Triad/Granada. EXCELLgNT WOMEN 317 A World Not Won by Virtue Dorrit, that virtue be rewarded, but she learns, through costly experience, that Balzac is closer to the truth: But she was working on Eugimie Grandet and Balzac's unnervingty accurate assessment of Eugenie's innocent and hopeless love was making her uncomfortabje, as it always did. 'Je ne suis pas assez: belle pour lui.' Why had her nurse not read her a translation of Eugenie Grandet? The whole of life might have been different. For moral forti­ tude, as Dr Weiss knew, but never told her students, was quite irrelevant in the conduct of one's life; it was better, or in any event, easier, to be engaging. And attractive. Sometimes Dr Weiss perceived that her obsession with Balzac stemmed from the fact that he had revealed this knowledge to her, too late. She grieved over Eugenic, and this was the only permissible grief she allowed herself. Beyond the imposed limits it hovered, threatening, insinuating, subversive. Better to invite Ned to dinner again and tell him her theories about Eugenic's relations with her parents, whom she still blamed for the defection of Eugenic's lover. She was wrong to do so, she knew. For had not Balzac given the right explanation? 'Aussi, se dit-elle en se mirant, sans savoir encore ce qu'etait l'amour: "Je suis trap laide, il ne (era pas attention a moi"' (SL:S- 9). 2 Brookner also gives an intimation of Ruth's ironic fate, when her narrative is described as "the stuff of literature itself" (SL:9), for, like in the novels of Balzac, Ruth's "great terror, great emotion" moves to its inexorable climax with the implacable momentum of Greek tragedy. Ruth's early, cloistered childhood is described in claustrophobic detail. In this Brookner appears to have emulated Balzac, whose description of background is almost as important as his development of characters. Balzac once said that I am not beautiful enough for him. 2 Also, she said to herself wonderingly, without yet knowing what love was, 'I am too ugly, he won't notice me.' 318 I~XCgLLEN1' WOMEN A World Not Won by Virtue "the events of public and private life are intimately linked up with architec- ture", and consequently he portrayed the houses and rooms through which his characters move in such a way as to reveal their passions and desires. Ruth is provided with "sad but improving" books: From Grimm and Hans Andersen she graduated to the works of Charles Dickens. The moral universe was un­ veiled. For virtue would surely triumph, patience would surely be rewarded. So eager was she to join this upward movement towards the light that she hardly noticed that her home resembled the ones she was reading about: a superficial veil of a musement over a deep well of dis­ appointment (SL: 11). The Weiss household is presided over by her sombre, East European grand- mother, whose "sad European past was a constant rebuke of her father George (born Georg) Weiss's desperately assumed English nonchalance" (SL:ll). George is a ponderous, affable, rather dim dandy, who conducts a perennial, middle- aged honeymoon with Helen, a mythomaniacal matinee coquette, who is just a little past it. Like Pym, Brookner makes sedulous use of parallels and con- trasts: the elder Mrs Weiss and Helen, Ruth and Belen, the dining room, over which Mrs Weiss presides, and the drawing-room and bedroom, where Helen holds sway: Mrs Weiss had brought with her from Ilerlin pieces of furniture of incredible magnitude in dark woods which looked as t hough they had absorbed the blood of horses • .• To the child, it seemed as if all dining rooms must be dark, as if sodden with a miasma of gravy and tears. She imagined, across the unknown land, silent grandmothers, purple flock wallpaper, thunderous seascapes, heavy meats eaten at speed . • If the dining room belonged to her grandmother, the drawing room was Helen's. It was light and bright and frivolous, and it had a piano and a lot of photographs in silver frames and cut glass vases filled with slightly stale flowers, and a white carpet. It looked EXCELLENT WOMEN 319 A World Not Won by Virtue exactly like the set for one of Helen's more successful comedy roles and she used it as an extension of her dress­ ing room . J!er quarters seemed less substantial than the grandmother's. More alluring, but less safe (SL:IZ-13). Pym is prone to vivid descriptions of houses, drawing-rooms and bedrooms, but Brookner's descriptions are more felling. Ruth, even as a young child, is cog- nizant of her absurd parents' dependence on illusion, rather than reality. Amidst the ridiculous, hectic, hothouse, honeymoon atmosphere of their ageing lives, "the child loved her parents passionate ly and knew them to be unsafe •.. To the child they were still glamorous and beautiful. To the grandmother they were fools" (SL:l5-16). George, who is a dealer in rare books, although his temperament and intelligence fit him to sell cars or insurance instead, ironically provides Ruth with the wherewithal for her tragedy: Her father kindly kept her supplied with books, usually in the Everyman edition, with its comfortable assurance in the fly-leaf: 'Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide. In thy most need to go by thy side' (SL:17). When the elder Mrs Weiss dies, reality punctures George and Helen's honeymoon hotel. George's acknowledgement of their change in fortunes revolves around his gastronomic wellbeing: "'There will be no dinner,' said George dully" (SL:17).