The last book in the Frost in May quartet was quite a ride through the ups and downs of Clara's moods. Based on her own life, this final book looks at what happens to Clara as she is navigating the process to have her marriage annulled and then falls very hard for another man, into what feels like a manic-phase, and then spirals out of control and is put into a mental institution. Following along is depressing, disturbing and unnerving, but you can't take your eyes away either. A study of mental illness, and you hope for the best in the end. ( )

Rating: 3.5

This unusual and absorbing autobiographical novel is set in the early 1920s. It focuses on 22-year-old Clara Batchelor, a self-described “fifth-rate” actor whose three-month-long, unconsummated marriage to Archie Hughes-Follett has quickly unravelled. Archie is also an actor, apparently only marginally more talented than his wife. The reader isn’t explicitly told what’s wrong with him. (This is the fourth in a quartet of linked works by White, and it’s possible if I’d done the sensible thing and read the books in order, I might have a better idea.) Maybe it’s a combination of things. He’s a veteran of the Great War, and he may be psychologically scarred or physically injured. Quite possibly he is a closeted gay man. Whatever the case, he and Clara certainly love each other, but their relationship is not a sexual one.

Prior to Clara’s break-up with Archie, her parents had noticed “a coarseness in her looks and manner.” She’d gained weight and appeared haggard and prematurely aged. What they are unaware of is that she’d also thrown herself at a womanizing painter but then had physically fought him off when he responded to her encouragement. It was this episode that brought the marital problems to a head.

Clara’s hard-working schoolmaster father, Claude, converted to Catholicism when Clara was a young girl, and she is unusually close to him. Having psychologically invested a good deal in his daughter’s union with Archie, a scion of a well-to-do, old Catholic family, Claude is loath to give up his “Catholic” dream about his only child. His wife, Isabel, is far more pragmatic. As far as she is concerned, Archie is a “wretched boy” and the “ghastly marriage” is better ended. She rejoices when she learns an annulment is possible, though it it is a lengthy ordeal that involves both ecclesiastical and legal proceedings. One requirement is that Clara submit to a humiliating physical exam by two separate doctors to determine if she’s “intact”.

Once re-installed in her childhood home, Clara is apathetic and depressed. Though her marriage is certainly over, until the church and the law declare it so, she is expected to conduct herself discreetly and with decorum. She finds herself lying to her father about an impromptu dinner she has with Clive Heron, an eccentric friend, whom she’d bumped into on the street one afternoon. Even though he has met Clive before, Claude is horrified that Clara should have been alone with this harmless man in his private rooms. Through Clive, Clara meets her great love, Richard Crayshaw, a career soldier, who is on a month’s leave. The two experience an immediate spark and telepathic connection. There is no question that they will marry.

Over the course of the month that Richard is with her, Clara experiences problems with sleep and appetite. She becomes increasingly “absent-minded”, somewhat grandiose, and then, quite suddenly, delusional, psychotic, and violent. She ultimately ends up in a padded cell in “Nazareth”—an asylum the author has modelled on London’s famous Bethlem Royal Hospital (“Bedlam”), where White herself was committed in her twenties. During her institutionalization, Clara believes herself at various times to be a horse, a salmon, a mouse, an imp, a dog, and a flower. She is at the mercy of her hallucinations—some of which read like dark scenes from the Brothers Grimm or Russian fairy tales—and the rough hospital staff who handle her aggressively, forcefully administer medication and food using a nasogastric tube, and confine her in a straitjacket. Some of the descriptions are quite harrowing.

Clara spends nine months in a world “beyond the looking-glass,” the details of her identity and history entirely forgotten. Words lack meaning, she forgets how to write, daily events do not unfold consecutively or cohere in any sort of logical way. Clara’s return to the world on “this side of the glass” requires a “tremendous, absorbing effort of willing herself back to consciousness.” When she is released from the asylum for a two-week trial, the important thing is for her to know the truth about Richard. The author handles this well. (This section reminded me of the old Natalie Wood/Warren Beatty film, Splendor in the Grass.)

Although I’ve been aware of Antonia White for years, this is the first of her books I’ve read. I’m impressed by her portrait (based on her own experience) of a young woman’s sudden descent into and effortful re-emergence from madness. White provides enough detail about the disorientation and distress of her protagonist to help readers understand what psychosis feels like. She shows how mental illness takes fragments of the patient’s former life story and kaleidoscopically rearranges and distorts them to create strange new narratives about identity in the patient’s mind. However, White’s depiction of Clara’s parents and their relationship is a little less satisfying. Some of the dialogue between the two seems wooden and melodramatic. For one thing, there are just too many interjections of “Darling” and “Dearest”. Maybe people really did speak to each other like this once, but it doesn’t translate well across the years. Telepathic communications between lovers likewise weaken the realistic feel of the novel. Having said that, I still found Beyond the Glass a compelling and rewarding read. ( )

beyondtheglass

Beyond the Glass is the final novel in Antonia White’s series of novels which explore the schooldays, girlhood and early married life of Clara Batchelor, the daughter of a Catholic convert. I have loved these books and had been looking forward for some time to this instalment. It didn’t disappoint. Antonia White’s writing is brave and evocative, and endlessly compelling. The third novel in the quartet; ‘The Sugar House’ concluded with Clara and her young husband Archie agreeing to separate, their relationship more like that of siblings playing house. ‘Beyond the Glass’ – written, following lots of appeals from her readers to provide a conclusion – takes up the story exactly where ‘The Sugar House’ left off.

“Now that the trap had been sprung, she felt a perverse desire to remain in it. Instead of going upstairs to pack, she began to tidy the dishevelled room. She paused in front of the armchair where her father had sat so upright on the orange cushion which concealed its broken springs. There was a dent where Archie’s untidy red head had rested, less than twelve hours ago. Hesitating to smooth it out, she found herself suddenly confronted with her image in one of the mirrors artfully disposed to make the room seem larger. She was as startled as if she had discovered a stranger spying on her.”

Clara has a difficult time explaining her situation to a her father whose approval she always sought – his often strict, unyielding attitude and Catholic certainty hard to live with. However Claude Batchelor’s stubborn adoration of Archie, in the face of mounting evidence that the marriage was in trouble, make it doubly difficult. The truth is that Clara has grounds for a dissolution to her marriage, an annulment, the only kind recognised by the Catholic Church. For Clara’s marriage was never consummated, not an easy conversation for a young woman in the early 1920’s to have with her Catholic father. Claude takes Clara to Paget’s Fold, the family home in the country, a small rural idyll, where Aunt Sophy and Aunt Leah live quietly and companionably, proudly caring for the place until such time as Claude requires it for himself. Clara has always loved her summer holidays at Paget’s Fold adores her aunts and the life they live there. Claude, decrees that Sophy and Leah should not be told of Clara’s separation, and persuades her and his wife Isabel to pretend that all is well and that Archie is merely off rehearsing a play and unable to join them. Clara has always had a difficult relationship with her mother, and when Isabel tries desperately to reach out to her daughter and talk honestly to her about her own relationships Clara is shocked at the revelation, and Isabel is left feeling she has given her daughter more ammunition against her.

Following the holiday, Clara finds herself living back in the parental home, almost as if she never left at all. As Clara embarks on the long and humiliating process that should lead to her marriage annulment, she meets Richard Crayshaw. Clara dives head first into this new highly passionate relationship, revelling in an extreme and all-consuming happiness. Clara’s fragility and sense of identity cannot cope with this heady mix and suddenly and tragically descends into what in 1920’s is termed “madness”. This gradual slide into mental illness is brilliantly portrayed by White, as Clara becomes erratic with even the besotted Richard finding reason to worry about her behaviour. When Richard goes away for a week, Clara’s final decline is terrifying and Claude and Isabel have no option but to seek help for their daughter. Clara is sent to a public asylum – where for almost a year she exists in a frightening and confused world – where she’s not even sure who she is.

“She lost herself again; this time completely. For months she was not even a human being; she was a horse. Ridden almost to death, beaten till she fell, she lay at last on the straw in her stable and waited for death. They buried her as lay on her side, with outstretched head and legs. A child came and sowed turquoises round the outline of her body in the ground, and she rose up again as a horse of magic with a golden mane, and galloped across the sky. Again she woke on the mattress in her cell. She looked and saw that she had human hands and feet again, but she knew she was a horse.”

Antonia White uses recurring images of glass and mirrors to portray Clara’s growing mental instability, in this brave and ambitious novel about mental illness. Antonia White herself spent ten month in Bethlem Asylum in 1922-3, a time she apparently was able to later recall every moment of. Her quartet of novels is famously autobiographical, and certainly the second half of ‘Beyond the Glass’ feels very personal, intense and real. Clara’s experiences are harrowing and very frightening, although surprisingly I found this section of the novel utterly compelling, after all it is so brilliantly written.

This was a wonderful conclusion to a brilliant quartet, Antonia White was a wonderful writer, who sadly produced too few books. I have a small volume of her short stories sitting here tbr – which I am certainly looking forward to. ( )

It took me a while to remind myself at what point in her life we found Clara at the start of this novel, as it had been quite a while since I read The Sugar House. Here we have her at the end of her failed marriage to Archie, going back to live with her parents and starting the awkward divorce/annulment proceedings, meeting Richard and falling for him at the sight of his photograph, with her mental health getting worse until something must give and it does. Beautifully written and engaging throughout, which surprised me a little as I expected the subject matter to make it hard going, but it wasn't, at all. ( )

Beyond the Glass is the last book in an autobiographical series of novels by Antonia White. The story opens with the heroine, Clara Hughes-Follett (neé Batchelor) seeking a marriage annulment, on the grounds that the relationship had never been consummated. The cover art on this Virago Modern Classic edition is from A Girl's Head by Sir George Clausen, and was brilliantly chosen based on this paragraph:
Isabel looked at the photograph of Clara at sixteen. Her fair hair was neatly tied back with a black bow and she wore a white, embroidered blouse with a V neck so modest that it barely revealed the base of her smooth neck. Her lips were pressed together in the effort to conceal their fullness of which she had always been rather ashamed; her eyes looked out, clear and unconfident. (p. 29)

The annulment process promises to be long and drawn out, involving both civil and church proceedings. Clara moves back home with her parents during this time of transition. This proves somewhat stressful, as Clara is now 22 and unaccustomed to her father's smothering influence. When Clara begins to socialize again she meets Richard Crayshaw. It's love at first sight, and their feelings for one another are intense. Clara also finds work writing advertisements. It appears things are looking up, but the careful reader will detect cracks in Clara's façade. Years of repression and the endless quest for parental approval finally take their toll, with nearly disastrous consequences. The title of this work is a reference to Alice in Wonderland ("through the looking glass"), and refers to Clara's stay in hospital. The glass metaphor works well, conveying the Clara's emotional fragility. And because it is based on White's own experience, it feels very real.

Clara's recovery takes a long time, and the book ends on a sad note with the future uncertain. The introduction to this novel states that White always intended to write a final installment in which Clara's life settles down and becomes almost happy. Unfortunately, she was unable to write more than a chapter, even though she lived for 36 years after publishing Beyond the Glass. ( )