Jane and Prudence
I checked out this novel — Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym — after reading about the late British novelist somewhere. It was entertaining — I think Pym is maybe regarded as a 20th-century Jane Austen, i.e. an author who liked to pierce uptight social norms? Jane and Prudence follows two friends as one (Jane) embarks on a new life after her husband, a clergyman, moves to a country congregation, and the other (Prudence) relishes in her mantle as city career gal. It was published in 1953. Busybody-ness reigns supreme, and it was an easy, delightful read.
“Busybody-ness” — a combo of gossip and a forcing of or interference with life’s natural flow — is easy to make light of…like something women with too much time on their hands do. (And this feels very true with the “church ladies” in this novel.) But let me tell you what headline I just saw: “Author Barbara Pym may have worked for MI5, research suggests.” In 1941, Pym became a censor, checking correspondence between Irish people living in Great Britain to people back “home.” Oxford houses her notebooks and diaries now, and through those, it has been revealed that Pym learned code and also made several trips to Germany in the 1930s. According to a researcher named Claire Smith whose work about British surveillance and intelligence was just published, “If you’re just reading everybody’s letters to strike out forbidden parts, why would you be learning code?” And further, “I thought it very odd that an Oxford graduate who speaks German and is already writing should really only be looking at letters between Irish families.”
The point being, the math seems to be mathin’, as Smith has even more evidence that she believes ties Pym to MI5.
Yet isn’t “spy” the most perfect side hustle for a novelist? For “busybody” also = shrewd observer of society. Or, maybe it’s like how Pym describes Prudence: “Disliking humanity in general, she was one of those excessively tender-hearted people who are generally moved by the troubles of complete strangers, in which she sometimes imagined herself playing a noble part.”
{PS: Shall we bring back the name Prudence?}
originally published on instagram