Customer Reviews

The Sweet Dove Died

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I happened upon this slim volume by accident the other day - and what a happy accident it turned out to be. Barbara Pym's "The Sweet Dove Died" is a novel of unrequited love - an unnatural love of an older woman for a much younger gay man. There are shades of the Tennessee Williams classic "The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone," yet the writing style is more akin to Patrick Gale's early works "The Aerodynamics of Pork" and "Kansas in August."
Pym's novels are what used to be called "comedies of manners." Her work is immediately engaging, always amusing, and quite pointed in its depiction of a woman so consumed with the appearence of perfection that she misses every opportunity for happiness.

This was the second Barbara Pym book I have ever read and it confirmed to me that she is greatly underrated as a writer. Though not perhaps as brilliantly comic as Excellent Women, Sweet Dove Died is gently satirical in the most delicious way. The type of woman she deals with is, this time, the affected 'lady of a certain age', rather than the humble and worthy types. One could almost imagine that this is how Madame Bovary may have turned out, had she had lived a city life. There is nothing prudish about Pym and readers today may be struck by how 'modern' she still appears, particularly in her depiction of the younger male characters in this novel. Greatly enjoyable.

Written during her "wilderness years" between the early 1960s and her critical rediscovery in 1978, THE SWEET DOVE DIED is one of Barbara Pym's darkest novels but also one of her finest. The fortyish protagonist, Leonora Eyre, is wealthy, elegant, and beautiful; she is also unmarried and idle, and fills her days doing little other than attending to her own minor pleasures, primarily acquiring Victoriana. At an auction she meets Humphrey, an antique dealer, and his nephew James, whom is young, single, handsome, and very impressionable. Leonora schemes to make James another of her acquisitions, while the sixtyish Humphrey makes plans of his own concerning Leonora; complicating matters even further are the dowdy Phoebe, who also longs for James, and the malicious young American literature professor Ned.

This novel returns Pym to her concern with the relations between unmarried straight women and men of alternative sexualities, first explored in her A GLASSFUL OF BLESSINGS; it is, I think, an even finer work than that previous novel, and casts a much colder eye towards its subject. Almost all the characters are petty, spiteful, snobbish and materialistic: Leonora is the worst among them (with the exception of Ned), but Pym's achievement is to make her readers care about her protagonist despite her selfishness and her self-deludedness. In its own way this book is something of a minor masterpiece; it brings off its story absolutely perfectly.

The definition of entangle is to write or knit together confusedly. This rather describes the progress of the characters in Barbara Pym's THE SWEET DOVE DIED.

Humphrey Boyce has an antiques shop. James, his orphaned newphew, commences to work at the shop after finishing at Oxford. At an auction they meet Leonora Eyre. Later Humphrey plans to have lunch with Leonora who is in her fifties. This is a novel of manners and amusement. Leonora, whose dinner with a friend and two very young men is described as being disappointing, regrets that James is not present, too. She finagles the interactions with Humphrey to go back to the shop to see James and accepts a ride with James because conveniently he is going in the direction of her house. James is too young to assume that a woman living alone is to be pitied.

For Christmas Leonora receives a paperweight from Humphrey and a card from James. She puts James's card near her bedside table. After Christmas Leonora's new social life with Humphrey and James picks up again. When the shop is the subject of a burglary Leonora sends flowers. Through various machinations she actually sends James's young woman friend to Majorca, but she cannot best a male friend Ned who, for a time, captures James's attention.

I am certain Barbara Pym has been compared to Jane Austen many times. Clearly the thrust of their works differ. Barbara Pym is not concerned with setting up a young person for life in some sort of matrimonial arrangement. Nevertheless, the means used, the comedy, the irony, the light touch and excellent writing are similar. "A sweet dove died" comes from a Keats poem.

I believe this 1970's book was the first Pym wrote after her hiatus and it has a bit of a different feel from the books she wrote in the 50's. It still has her insightfulness and of course her humor but with an acerbic edge. She's also more outspoken about sexuality though incredibly understated by today's standards. I most recently read `A Glass Full of Blessings' and I noticed that in both she toyingly withholds a key character's precise age until towards the end of the book. I was still left debating the exact age of the main protagonist, Leonora Eyre, though I'd estimate she's in her late fifties. And that's another Pym trademark; literature and music references. One character is named Phoebe Sharpe and Leonora compares her to Thackeray's Becky Sharpe which brings us full circle to speculate on the Jane Eyre implication with all its heartbreak and bittersweet ending though it's not overtly referred to. Poor Leonora can't see herself except through male eyes and she and her friends seem addicted to being with men much younger than themselves. Leonora's heart strings are wrapped around 20 something James but she also allows his age appropriate uncle to squire her around London, accepting his gifts and tributes but avoiding his physicality. Some of the literature mentioned is the poetry of Browning, Yeats and Keats. The title of the book actually comes from a Keats poem "I Had a Dove". James' "Washington Square" and its sad conclusion comes up as does Puccini's Opera "Tosca". The character development was more pronounced in this book than it was I "Blessing".

I have all of Barbara Pym's books and have read most more than twice. The first time I read it, this was not one of my favorites. In fact, I barely liked it. But I just read it again and found that I enjoyed it much more this second time. Much more. I'm still not sure that I like the uncertain ending, but perhaps it does work after all. After "A Glass of Blessings" this may be my favorite Pym...and that's a surprise to me.

I've only recently been introduced to Barbara Pym (when I came across a reference to her made by Eudora Welty) and was amazed to see a whole industry of interest' around her. There seems to be a flurry of references to her as a `sort of Jane Austen of today', which on one level can be seen as true. Certainly Pym's work seems to overload with references to Anglican churchgoers, tea, spinsters, the weather and middle class English vacations but I've found Sweet Dove Died as being more `tragic' and less comic than a few of the other Pym novels that I've read.
I think previous readers have outlined the story line sufficiently so I won't get into that. How biographical Sweet Dove Died probably deserves more emphasis when reading the book. We know that Pym endured a serious of unsuccessful romances as well as years of literary rejection so the tragic element of the book could well be seen as a reflection of her life. That said, I can't comment on whether Leonora Eyre is a parallel of Pym. Leonora is cold, selfish, vain, a narcissist, possessive and a snob but Pym attacks the themes as being much like the reality of middle age. Leonora represents one of the directions an aging, (unmarried) woman's (or man's) life could take (as depressing as that could well be): concern with aging and preoccupation with possessions. That said, there are more positive `middle age' characters in the book that could be seen as influential role models of reality: Miss Caton, Rose Culver and cousin Daphne (even `Ba'). More than anything Sweet Dove Died demonstrates Pym's dangerously sharp insight into human behavior which makes her a new favorite of mine. I'm looking forward to reading more of her work.