Description

[From “Let’s Talk About Books” column by Franziska in The Australian Woman’s Mirror, Nov. 1, 1938, p. 49]

Anne Duffield is a nother novelist who never varies her ground work but can always be depended upon to write a novel to please her tremendous public and make more money than thoughtful writers of provocative social studies. Her plots are always the same with change of setting. Her characters too are always recognisable, no matter what they do or where they do it. "Grecian Rhapsody" (Cassell, 7/6; N.S.W. Bookstall Co., Sydney) has Athens for background. Cecil Fraser, nearing his forties, marries nineteen-years-old Carol Seton and takes her from London to Greece. Ten months later, finding the feather-brained Carol a hopeless manager, he cables her cousin Violet to come over and straighten things out. Not an easy position for the mouselike Violet, who has loved Cecil all her life. Violet arrives, smoothes things over, falls out of love with Cecil and into love with Sir Edward Frampton, nearing fifty, while in the background is Jack Stephenson, more her own age, giving her something to think about with his dynamic personality. Add to the poor girl's worries silly Carol flinging herself at Stephenson's unwilling head. The tangles are untangled with Miss Duffield's customary skill. Pleasant feminine reading.

Notes

Franzika, above, is pretty on the mark about Duffield and this book. Unless you take exception, as I do, to the claim that 42 is "nearing 50". The story's basically about the personal growth of a young woman who's intelligent and capable but has an unhealthy tendency to idolize (older) men. Duffield spends a leisurely time getting to the real pairing -- the "big mis" is actually not between them -- and this can be a little frustrating. How the female mc could spend so many pages mooning over a man in his 40's with a monocle who is NOT Peter Whimsy is beyond me. It's clear Duffield has a deep fondness for Greece, though, which is a pleasure to read. The Greek landscape is lovingly described and we get a really wonderful glimpse of historic sites (the Acropolis, Delphi) pre- tourist buses disgorging 7.2 million sight-seekers a year. Her negative take on, and her character's rejection of, British colonial prejudices (towards colonial born whites solely, it must be admitted) adds a bit of welcome social commentary to the story and, as in many of these books, the cost of traditional gender roles is highlighted in the stark choice facing a young, middle-class woman who has not been educated to a profession (matrimony or financial dependence on family of origin). I have to say, I enjoy characters like her mother, too -- these shallow, practical, indefatigable middle-aged women trying to marry off their reluctant progeny. They provide comic relief and they deal out home truths that their finer-in-every-sense daughters can only afford to disdain because around the corner waits an HEA (with Pemberley & 10 thousand a year). Christine Seton's a nicely-drawn example of the type. I think the story would have been better for one of the characters being gay instead of having feet of clay -- his Greek rhapsody, in that case, would have been the more interesting one to read.

Flags: Occasional negative references to some vague "Eastern mindset", which, however, the female character comes to appreciate and feel she shares.

Tags

1930s, English, Greece, Greek, ambitious, athletic, beautiful/handsome, charming, competent, dominant, efficient, f/m, family, parent, scheming, farmer/horticulturalist, female, hair, dark, idealistic, independent, intelligent, investor/speculator, jealous friend/family member, landowner, love someone else, love triangle, practical, quiet, reserved, rich, robust, romance, selfless, single, strong, tall, third-person, unreadable to other MC, young

Flags

child death/miscarriage