The whimsical and perilous charm of daily life
Many biographies are written in stiff, academic style, but that just would not be appropriate for the biography of Miss Barbara Pym. Pym, as many of her friends called her, was a highly intelligent woman with a lively imagination. She chose to dramatize her own life with love affair angst, sometimes even through made-up romances with men who weren't even aware of her. I am surprised that she didn't want to be an actress—she certainly threw herself into romantic roles.
I think I'm being mostly fair when I say that Barbara Pym was a boy-crazy young woman. However, her adventures gave her abundant fodder for her fiction. Pym was very observant and kept diaries which only sharpened her memory. And, as the author notes, “Barbara Pym's male characters are more often than not shifty, feckless, selfish and self-dramatising, relying on excellent women to solve their difficulties.” One of the reviewers of her first novel said it was “so gentle that the reader scarcely notices the claws.” As a woman who has occasionally weaponized “niceness,” I can fully appreciate and approve of this description.
I think Pym suffered from the same problem as Dorothy L. Sayers: she couldn't find a man as intelligent as herself who would take her seriously. They both enjoyed their time at university, although Sayers seems to have been more academically inclined. But Pym got her source material and her close friend Jock Liddell out of those years, both things worth having. Although she avidly pursued men and relationships, I suspect she would have found marriage dull as dishwater. As Pym found during WWII, housework is repetitive and boring. Laundry, cleaning, and cooking are all necessary, but are mostly noticed if you don't do them, rather than when you do keep up. Pym liked to be appreciated, not taken for granted. At some level, I think she was aware of this part of herself, as she had a talent for choosing unavailable men (been there, done that).
I now realize why I love Barbara Pym's writing as much as I do. Barbara Pym is my spirit animal. Independent, intelligent, wanting a relationship, but unwilling to give up her options, especially since she can't find a decent, compatible man. I identify with her far more closely than I would ever have believed if I hadn't run across this book.
As the author says in her afterword, “Pym is one of the great writers of the human heart.” She also states “Pym was a courageous writer and a brave woman. Women are at the heart of her stories. They are not all ‘excellent women’, but they are flesh and blood.” I wholeheartedly agree.
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