In Subjection by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (1906)

There are two main considerations in appreciating this novel. One is its look to a reader of this era - its depiction of the place of a woman in marriage and the relations between the sexes is not ours. The other is more the province of the connoisseur - it's about the change coming over Fowler as her career progresses. I've said before that by modern standards Fowler is frankly ludicrous: her idea, which began with her magnificently successful first novel, was that a novel with a strong Christian element could also be engagingly witty. Her works, on the whole, are also something else which modern readers find enormously unpalatable - they're comfortable, and very assured in their own rightness of attitude. This attitude is an echo of the Establishment feeling of her times in its profound conservatism; something interpretable today as Empire smugness. The irritation caused by that tends to obscure what she actually achieves, which is a brilliant even flow, and much pretension-pricking humour - she's not afraid of sending up stuffy nonsense (as seen from the perspective of her times), and in the process gives us a taste of her independence of mind. This book takes the story of the main character of Concerning Isabel Carnaby, that first novel, forward a good few years. Isabel is married happily to Paul Seaton, aware of his deficiencies, but loving him absolutely. This is an interesting trope in fiction of this time, and echoes the tolerance displayed by Edith Ottley toward her husband Bruce in Ada Leverson's trilogy, though Paul is nowhere near as mortifyingly stupid as Bruce Ottley. Isabel and Paul welcome a 'project' from India, a wealthy young Anglo-Indian woman, Fabia Vipart, who needs to find a husband. She's not a cipher, rather a headstrong character, easily bored by British reserve. Fowler's treatment of Fabia illustrates her middle-position in terms of enlightenment on racial subjects. Fabia's breadth of character testifies well, her typification as elemental and slightly godless not so well. We follow as Isabel and Fabia cross swords, and forge into new arrangements and liaisons, surrounded by a cast of some humour. There is an inexplicable disappearance, an initially disastrous marriage, an unexpected impersonation, and a revelation, when the disappearance is solved, which stretches credibility enormously. There is also much philosophic talk about the right subjection of the female in the marriage contract, with Fowler saying that the compensations as she sees them are more than adequate for the loss of personal power. But Fowler's sang froid keeps the nonsense humming. In thinking about this book, one other conclusion is inescapable: it is that the author's epigrammatic power is waning - it's impossible not to feel, I think, how "comfy" she is becoming, and how much less we are treated to caustic and sharp observations, compared to prior works. They are not absent - they are diminished. Despite her disadvantages, and the lack of hope for modern readers to bother with her, I would wish her the regaining of that cut- through.