Earnest silliness, high seriousness in Illyria

By Ann Bridge
Virago Press, 1990
353 pages

By Comrade Reviewer Marienka

Setting

Illyrian Spring . . . oh to be in Illyria during this long dark tea time of the soul. Doubtless, some of you are wondering, “where the heck is Illyria?” A good question. Illyria in this particular work refers to the first “Yugo-slavia” or perhaps the Republic of Ragusa, now Croatia (the author uses both terms interchangeably). Most of the action takes place in and around the city of Ragusa or Dubrovnik as it is known now.

So much for setting. On to more important issues, such as time, plot, characters, theme, and symbolism (not discussed here) and anything else inquiring minds want to know.

Time

A little vague. After WWI but before WWII. More about this issue to come.

Plot

Lady Kilmartin, internationally renowned painter and unappreciated wife of Sir Walter Kilmartin an equally renowned economist, decides she has had it with her unappreciative family, kicks up her heels and heads for Greece to paint and consider whether her marriage is over. Before she reaches Greece, she meets Nicholas Humphries, a frustrated painter (his family wants him to be an architect) sixteen years her junior. Things happen. They always do. The denouement is reached and the resolution . . . resolved. But . . . in the meantime, pressing questions arise: Can an attractive older woman and a much younger man with “groggy digestion” find true love? What about Professor Halther, the older sophisticated philosopher and general dispenser of wisdom? Will he become a competitor for the lovelorn Lady K.’s attention? Will Lady K. succumb to “the most insistent feelings of all, those which the body imposes on us whether we will or no”? Will Walter run off with Rose, an extremely intelligent but overweight economist? And that most pressing of all questions, will anyone make it to Greece? If I thought it would be good for you, I would answer these questions that undoubtedly keep the inquiring minds of inquiring readers in a tizzy. However, the Dark Tea Times frowns upon spoilers, so you will either have to read the book or apply your Sherlockian powers of deduction.

I must confess I initially was not a sympathetic reader. In fact for the first three hundred pages of the novel, I wanted to smack the living daylights out of Lady K. She is talented, intelligent, and kind, so why does she let people walk all over her (or snitty readers fantasize about smacking sense into her)? However, the last 100 pages redeemed the first 300 pages. Ordinarily, I do not give redemption much time; but redemption as used in this book  reflects the central arguments taken up in two texts I have read recently: Nocola Humble's The Feminine Middlebrow Novel: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism and Elizabeth Maslen's Political and Social Issues in British Women’s Fiction, 1928-1958. Both writers deal with roughly the same time period, and both want to restore “neglected women” writers to a position of respect; however, each approaches her subject from a slightly different perspective. After WWI, Humble argues, the old categories of class and gender began to break down. The feminine middlebrow novel provided a safe, comfortable space for women to explore new possibilities about work, family, and gender relations. Additionally, as the old normative notions of class collapsed, these novels provided an education in “good taste” and allowed women a space in which to flirt safely with bohemianism and alternative lifestyles. Maslen takes a slightly different approach, arguing that these novels fall squarely with the modernist project and tackle not only the issues Humble addresses but also more serious political issues such as war and fascism. In this regard, Illyrian Spring seems strangely out of sync with the times. The book published in 1935 curiously offers no hint of the Great War recently passed and only once lightly alludes to the growing fascism in Europe. Illyrian Spring remains suspended in a different time – perhaps one that never existed – an idyllic beautiful place for upper class ladies and gentleman to pass a few pleasant weeks.

So on to the really big question, should you read this book? My answer is mixed. Illyrian Spring is a genteel novel for genteel readers. If you do not fall into this category, exit stage left. If you enjoy cozy novels that begin in flight, proceed to melodrama, end in high comedy - didn’t someone named Shakespeare use this plot a lot?—and include much holding of febrile hands (all that groggy indigestion), passionate kissing of foreheads, and tumescent prose that leaves you at the edge of “the crisis” (an old-fashioned term I will not explain here), then you will like Illyrian Spring.

Of Related Interest

Nicola Humble. The Feminine Middlebrow Novel: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism. Oxford University Press, 2004. 288 p.

Elizabeth Maslen. Political and Social Issues in British Women’s Fiction, 1928-1958. Palgrave, 2001.