Mrs Whipple strikes again

'The absence of fuss'

I decided to give myself a treat this week and immerse myself in the hot chocolate of a Dorothy Whipple collection: my choice was The Closed Door and Other Stories, an early outing from my favourite publisher, Persephone Books, released back in 2007, but still flying off the shelves. I’ve read several of Whipple’s novels before, and raved about them here…

The enchanting Mrs Whipple

They Knew Mr Knight

But this is my first time trying her short stories. I’m not a great consumer of other people’s short stories; I always have a volume or two somewhere in my pile of books, but they are for dipping into, and I often find when I pick them up that I’ve forgotten which I have read, and I never get to the end. But this collection I inhaled in two sittings…

There are ten stories of varying lengths, originally published between 1935 and 1961: Dorothy Whipple published her first novel in 1926 and her last in 1956, so this collection reflects the skill of a woman who certainly knows what she wants to achieve, they are confident outings. If Jane Austen famously described her own work as painting with a "fine brush on a little bit (not two inches wide) of ivory," Whipple’s plots are similarly confined, her narrow world being that of the provincial English middle classes, in the middle of the twentieth century. But what a time to be writing! Leaving aside the impact of the Second World War, which is rarely mentioned, Whipple’s novels and stories are firmly placed in three decades of the most extraordinary social and political change, and many of her plots are driven by the tensions, opportunities and unhappinesses that such upheaval brings in its wake. So her stories are full of rebellious young women, of changing attitudes to sex and fidelity, of the widening gap between the generations. I lapped it all up!

The young Dorothy Whipple

There are two longer pieces among the ten: The Closed Door (the title track, as it were!), and my favourite, Family Crisis. Both of these feature an unhappy, unhealthy relationship between parents and an only daughter. In The Closed Door, the unwilling parents of a surprise late child seek to subdue her into becoming little better (probably worse) than a servant, and when she manages an escape through marriage, she soon finds the net closing in again. Can her friend Lucy save her?

The second of these, Family Crisis, sees a stifling domestic situation ripped asunder by the daughter’s elopement - but with humour and affection, Whipple manages to fashion a happy resolution. She brought a lump to my throat. ‘For if she looked like an erring daughter, they looked no less like erring parents.’ And you will never guess what’s been happening to George’s prized tomatoes…

Only one of the stories, Summer Holiday, is told in the first person: ‘We were overjoyed to hear that Rose was going with us to the sea, Rose was the nicest nurse-maid we had ever had. She was young and pretty and romped with us. Everybody loved her.’ And sadly, that prettiness will be Rose’s downfall. Of course we can understand what is happening to Rose on the seaside trip, but the two small children cannot, and they will be the unwitting cause of the disaster.

The saddest story is perhaps Wednesday, laying bare the experience of a sad divorcee, manoeuvred by her unpleasant husband into losing contact with her children. In fact, there are very few men who come out well in Mrs Whipple’s tales: they are either unscrupulous philanderers, or mean-spirited little men failing to fulfil the role of the good father. Women take centre stage - and they aren’t always the nicest characters either. Sometimes their daughters are able to turn the tables on them, and when they do we cheer them on: sometimes we can just tell that, as in the heart-breaking Cover, some young women have put themselves into impossible situations. The lop-sided nature of mid 20th century morality so often required the woman to take the blame, and to live with the consequences.

In 1961, The Times Literary Supplement, as it then was, reviewed Wednesday and Other Stories: ‘Economy and absence of fuss – these are Mrs Whipple’s outstanding virtues as a writer.’ Absence of fuss is what characterises so many of Whipple’s heroines. These are women caught on the cusp of the feminist movement: they have been given the vote, they have been given better educational opportunities than their mothers or grandmothers, but they have not yet learnt how to use the political power at their disposal to improve their chances in life, nor do they have the confidence, as yet, to try. Hence they struggle against over-bearing parents, against the consequences of sex outside marriage, and of unequal divorce laws. The 1960s would be the decade when things really began to change for women in England: the passing of the Divorce Reform Act, the liberalisation of Abortion Laws, the contraceptive pill, better nursery provision, more routes into Further Education, equal pay acts: all of these would have given enormous practical assistance to Whipple’s heroines and boosted their self-confidence.

In The Closed Door, the heroine Stella’s friend Lucy has begun to grasp the opportunities available - she has gone to Cambridge, she served as a VAD in the War, she has married a man she nursed, and now she has come to show her friend Stella the way out:

‘Stella, you can’t possibly want to stay here! Alone, in this dingy old house! Why it’s a dreadful place and you know it.’

‘I’m used to it,’ said Stella stubbornly. ‘I can’t change my ways now. I’m too set in them. I can’t leave my things. You can’t ask me to get up and walk out of the life I’m used to at a moment’s notice, Lucy. And at my age too!’

After further argument, Lucy leaves. And instantly Stella regrets her choice:

Fool! Fool that she was! She had shut herself in. Shut herself in for ever. No one would ever try to get her out again now. She had sent her only friend away. She would probably never see here again. And life was so long. What could she do with her long, empty life? She rocked herself backwards and forwards in her chair, weeping into her hands.

Mrs Whipple’s tales are all about the consequences of being brave enough to follow Lucy through the closed door, and to make the most of the opportunities that lie ahead. It was a message for women everywhere.