E. M. Delafield is best remembered for her light and bright Provincial Lady books, but she wrote a great deal more than that. This book, reissued by Virago back in the day and by Bloomsbury more recently, is my first venture into those ‘other books’ and I found that it was very different and very good.

‘Thank Heaven Fasting’ speaks profoundly of the restrictive ridiculousness of upper class society in Edwardian Britain. The author grew up in this society, she struggled with it, and it is clear from the very first page that the passage of time had not tempered her feelings:

‘Much was said in the days of Monica’s early youth about being good. Life — the section of it that was visible from the angle of Eaton Square — was full of young girls who were all being good. Even a girl who was tiresome and “didn’t get on with her mother” was never anything but good, since opportunities for being anything else were practically non-existent.

One was safeguarded.

One’s religion, one’s mother, one’s maid…. But especially one’s mother.’

Monica Ingram was the much loved only child of a socially ambitious mother and wealthy father. They wanted only the very best for their darling daughter and they had made her aware of the supreme importance of a good marriage for a woman. She understood a woman who failed to elicit a proposal of marriage from the right man would be viewed as a failure for the rest of what would inevitably be a joyless life. She would have no wedding day, no home of her own, no children, no social position …

When Monica takes her first steps as a debutante things go very well: she is pretty, she is charming and she speaks quite naturally with the people round her. Her mother is cautiously optimistic and she is very pleased when she finds that Monica has an admirer; though she is quick to tell her daughter that he is not ‘The One’.

“Besides, though he may be a very nice young man, we’ve got to remember that he isn’t, really, very much use. He’s too young, for one thing, and there’s no money at all, even if he hadn’t got an elder brother.”

Monica, disconcerted and disappointed, did not quite know how to reply. She was afraid that her mother was going to say that she would not be allowed to be friends with Claude Ashe any more.

“It’s quite all right, darling,” said Mrs. Ingram very kindly. “I like you to make friends of your own age, and one wants people to see that — well, that there’s someone running after you, more or less. Only I want you to realize that you mustn’t take anything at all seriously, just yet.”

Things go terribly wrong when Monica encounters Captain Lane at a party. He draws her away from the company, he charms her, he kisses her, and she responds. In her innocence, she believes herself to be in love, she believes that what is happening can only be the precursor to a proposal of marriage, and she forgets everything that her mother taught her.

Monica’s parents are appalled. They know that Captain Lane is a notorious rake, they know that their daughter’s behaviour has been noticed and that there will be gossip; and that it will ruin her chances with any respectable man. The only course open to them is to bring the romance to a swift conclusion and take Monica away to the country for the summer, in the hope that when she returns, all will be forgotten.

When the Ingrams return to London memories have faded but they haven’t gone away; and events have taken their toll on Monica, she is a year older and her prettiness has faded too. She comes to realise that, she sees a new generation of debutantes catching the eyes of eligible young men, and she realises that her chance of marriage is diminishing rapidly.

Poor Monica.

She is thrown back into the company of her childhood friends, Frederica and Cecily, who had also failed to elicit proposals; because their upbringing had been so sheltered that they were uncomfortable and awkward in society; and because they felt the disappointment of mother, who was successful in society but seemed not to understand that her daughters needed her help and support.

Monica had a much closer relationship with her own mother, but seeing her friends’ position intensified her fears for the future.

In the end she had just two gentleman callers. One was a friend, who appreciated Monica’s willingness to listen to tales of his great lost love, and the other was an older man who had proposed to many and been turned down each time. Had Monica’s hopes of matrimony gone, or did she still have a chance?

Her story made a wonderful book.

Monica, her family, her friends, and her suitors were all trapped by ridiculous social conventions; and the range of characters and different experiences reinforced that point. Making herself attractive and appealing to men was the sole object of her life; because marriage was the only career opportunity for a woman of her class and anything other than that would constitute failure.

Her failure meant that she remained in her mother’s care, she continued to be a child and she never learned to understand her own feelings or make decisions for herself. No woman ever needed to, because she would pass form her parent’s charge to her husband’s!

This could have been a polemic but it wasn’t; because the characters lived and breather and because everything that happened was horribly believable.

The writing was clear and lucid. The dialogues rang true and they said everything that needed to be said.

The end of this book gave me hope for Monica but it also made me realise how trapped she was.

‘She could never, looking backwards, remember a time when she had not known that a woman’s failure or success in life depended entirely on whether or not she succeeded in getting a husband.’

Sad but true. ( )

She could never, looking backwards, remember a time when she had not known that a woman’s failure or success in life depended entirely on whether or not she succeeded in getting a husband.

In the opening scenes of Thank Heaven Fasting, Monica is getting ready to come out in society, under the watchful eye of her controlling mother, Imogen. Her ability to quickly land a husband is assumed and expected, and Monica quietly looks down upon long-time friends who have not been so lucky. And initially, things look promising for Monica: she has all the right accoutrements, and men queuing up to fill her dance card, but E.M. Delafield had something different in mind

Delafield is best known for The Diary of a Provincial Lady, a witty satire of 1930s life in the English provinces. I approached Thank Heaven Fasting expecting a similar tone, and was initially amused by Imogen’s attempts to provide all the best accoutrements for her daughter, and coach her in proper behavior. I was somewhat concerned I would have to read about balls, gowns, and young men for 200+ pages, but the novel became more poignant as Delafield showed how very few options women had at this point in history. The final sentence hammered that point home, while leaving me wondering what was next for Monica. ( )

Despite being a slim and seemingly lighthearted novel of the lives of upper class women in pre-modern England, this book creates a powerful understanding of the sadness and fear attendant to being an unmarried woman in this society. The rules governing their lives were so narrow, they were so seemingly given everything that, in fact, they were allowed nothing. I found that the work provided a penetrating discussion of women's roles while simultaneously being a very enjoyable story. ( )

Thank Heaven Fasting falls along the same lines of Consequences, EM Delafield’s novel of a young Victorian woman who can’t seem to get her act together. Monica Ingram’s family belongs to upper crust London society, and the novel opens with Monica’s coming-out into society. The title of the novel comes from As You Like It: Thank heaven, fasting, for a good man’s love,” said by Rosamond as she’s posing as a man.

At the house in Easton Square, a rigid hierarchy remains in place, personified by Monica’s rather stern mother. The rules are absolute; even being allowed out up her own picture is a sort of victory, a symbol of independence, for Monica. She’s well aware of what’s expected of her: marry or perish, because women of her class weren’t trained for much else. And the goal was to be married within three years, or else run the risk of remaining a spinster (personified in the codependent Marlowe sisters, the eldest of whom, Frederica, is “on the shelf” at the age of 24). The rules are complicated: never let a man become familiar with you by using your Christian name, for example. And all of these rules are expressed in entendres, making it that much more difficult for more modern readers to understand (Delafield has a habit of having Monica mentally “translate” her mother’s words, which makes the flow of the book chunky in places). Everything a woman does must be at the expense of a man, too; or, at least getting a husband. As such, the characterizations of the men in this novel are pretty flat; none are memorable or likeable.

Although Monica has been raised to accept these rules without question, she still falls prey to the same pitfalls that many other young women do, in the form of a young mane named Captain Christopher Lane, who, the reader can tell, is up to no good. So it’s a testament to Monica’s youth that she can’t tell the difference between sincerely and falseness. It’s interesting to watch the cycle of Monica’s life: from acceptance of the rules imposed on her to a kind of rebellion to eventual conformism. Unlike Alex, the heroine of Consequences, Monica is neither brave nor different, and it’s because of this that her story doesn’t end as tragically as it could have. ( )

Written between the wars, Thank Heaven Fasting is a tongue-in-cheek look at the lives of young women in upper crust English society who have no purpose in life except as a wife and, if luck should follow them, as a mother (preferably to a son). Daughters are burdens, to be married off but suitably, to the right man who is "quite, quite...".

Monica Ingram has every advantage: wealth, the right connections, and good looks of the pretty sort, as well as intelligence. She is also relatively uneducated and completely untrained for anything except for the role society has designated for her. She is only required to not make a misstep to ford the river from maidenhood to her purpose in life: marriage and motherhood. Even the slightest placing of a foot wrong will toss her into the river of dismissal, washed away to lonely (and useless) spinsterhood. Tongue-in-cheek, yes, but with tremendous social commentary on the privileged classes clinging to their Victorian way of life.

Delafield is really asking why women can't work, can't have a purpose other than the one prescribed to them by society's mores and their own biology but she does so behind a fan held coyly in front of the face of her intentions. The men she places in the field from which Monica can make a selection are weak, limp, damp, old or cads. The truly good men, men who have intellect and values, are just not "quite, quite..." according to the stifling guidelines of the Victorian upper crust.

It is a wonderful little book, full of things like Victorian hysteria beautifully portrayed in the sisters Fricky and Cecily Marlowe, with their male counterpart, Carol Anderson, with his steamroller sensibilities. The society portrayed will make you gasp with relief that we no longer live in it. The ending left me with a wry, lopsided half smile on my face. I couldn't put the book down, once I started it. Not a heavy read but a satisfying one.