The book blog has been sluggish lately because my world is utterly crowded with all sorts of crucially time-voracious real-life stuff, but a wicked virus has knocked me around enough this past week to give me some enforced down time and I have happily read my way through a number of okayish novels. Norah Lofts et al., suitably light but reasonably intelligent amusement for someone under the weather.
And then this one.
Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple. Written in 1932, this was Whipple’s second published novel, and the third I’ve now read.
They Knew Mr. Knight (1934) and Because of the Lockwoods (1949) were highly enjoyable, if slightly melodramatic, but Greenbanks was something on a different level.
Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple. Not my own copy – mine is a lovely grey Persephone – but borrowed shamelessly from the internet (thank you, Milady’s Boudoir) for the sake of the glowing cover blurb by Hugh Walpole.
Ostensibly a sedate family saga, it evolves into a deeply convincing manifesto on the rights of women to self-determination and social, educational, financial and sexual equality. Set in the decades before, during, and immediately after the Great War, centre stage is shared between a family matron and her granddaughter, representatives of the old world and the new, with sporadic but telling secondary roles played by the adult children of the household, their various spouses, lovers, friends and acquaintances.
The ending was unexpected, and deeply satisfying in its blunt refusal to neaten things up in a conventional way; it shocked me because I’d rather expected Whipple to manufacture an eleventh-hour cluster of pleasantly innocuous solutions to its most pressing dilemmas, and she didn’t go there at all. And it worked.
I am starting to see why Persephone Press is so dead keen on this writer; those first two books piqued my interest but this third one has given rise to real enthusiasm.
If you’re already a Dorothy Whipple person – and I know many of you are – I’d be most pleased to hear your personal opinions on Greenbanks as it stands in her body of work. Is this as good as she gets? Or am I in for some more unexpected readerly surprises?
Someone at a Distance is here on the shelf; it came in the package with Greenbanks just the other day and I am torn between diving right in, and, alternatively, allowing myself some cooling off time, because I’m still processing the deeper nuances of the book I’ve just devoured with such paradoxically reluctant speed.
It’s time to choose my evening’s reading-in-bed book, and I am at a loss at what to attempt, not wanting to diminish the mood. I’m thinking Elizabeth Cambridge, or maybe Rose Macaulay, or perhaps even a return to one of the previously-read Whipples, sure to be well sauced with the piquancy of this fresh appreciation.
The “Whipple Line”, indeed! Virago, hang your metaphorical head in shame!
Leaves & Pages 
Delighted you are back tho sorry you’ve been ill. I have loved all the Whipples I’ve read but I haven’t read this one. Someone at a Distance is good, maybe the place to go if you already have it. But other Whippleites may have better advice.
I’m on the mend. 🙂 I am obviously in good company with my positive response to this writer, though I know there are those who passionately despise her work. No matter, there are authors enough for all!
I’ve not read enough Whipple to understand where this sits in her list, but I have read this book and I can say that your assessment is perfect.
Oh, lovely to hear! As I was reading away I would occasionally stop and think, “This is subversively strong stuff, disguised as a middlebrow ‘light’ novel!” The female characters in particular are very well portrayed. Reminds me of E.M. Delafield, too, among so many others writing in that same time period. They were all saying much the same thing, weren’t they? Suburban suffragettes! 😉
I love the sound of this. The refusal to tie up ends neatly at the end of a novel gets me every time, so I decided to put Greenbanks on the wish list. Then reading Harriet’s comment above, the temptation to become a Whippleite just proved too much. Ordering it now!
Enjoy!
Oh yes the ‘Whipple line’ was shameful. I love Dorothy Whipple. I’ve now read all the ones Persephone publish. Someone at a Distance is very good.
I will save Someone at a Distance for a bit. I decided instead to re-read Because of the Lockwoods, and it is going over very well indeed this second time around. I looked up my old review and saw that I gave it a 9/10 the first time; I believe that assessment shall stand. 🙂
Can someone enlighten me on ‘the Whipple line’? A disparaging comment…it sounds like, anyway. I have enjoyed the Whipples I’ve read–all Persephone, and I have been wanting to discover more. The goal was to re-read what I have as a starting point, but you may have lured my checkbook out to snuffle the winds of possibility. 😀 This one sounds like a good next stop! I enjoyed your review. I hope you get well soon. (I have also been currently enjoying a similar ‘forced’ rest and reading excursion; booklovers and readers are never without satisfying ways to pass the time.)
Virago Press founder Carmen Callil is quoted from a newspaper interview in 2008 (in The Guardian), describing the selection process for inclusion on the Virago Modern Classics list: “We had a limit known as the Whipple line, below which we would not sink. Dorothy Whipple was a popular novelist of the 1930s and 1940s whose prose and content absolutely defeated us. A considerable body of women novelists, who wrote like the very devil, bit the Virago dust when Alexandra, Lynn and I exchanged books and reports, on which I would scrawl a brief rejection: ‘Below the Whipple line.’”
Nicola Beauman, Persephone Press founder, had a differing view on the merits of Whipple, and proceeded to re-publish her works to astounding success; apparently the Dorothy Whipple titles are Persephone’s perennial bestsellers.
Whew–the lines are drawn! (between publishing houses, anyway!) Thank you for taking the time to explain this. Fascinating. This is the type of dichotomy of opinion that makes me even more curious to explore a new writer. While I enjoyed my first two Whipples, I don’t remember that buzz of excitement that happens sometimes with a new author…nor could I tell you much about either novel, right off the top of my head…but that is why I feel the need to re-read. Sometimes it is just the place my head is in at the moment I am reading–impervious to subtleties–and it takes time for more appreciation to set in.
I have only read a couple of her books, both of which I enjoyed very much in different ways. I have had this one in mind for my next Persephone order, and now I think I will move it up the list. I’m also interested in the one about a young woman working in a dress shop.
Would that be High Wages? I recently read a review on that one. (The reviewer was very much in favour.)
Yes, that’s the one! I see a visit to the Persephone site in my near future. And thank you for explaining “the Whipple line” – I am very surprised at the dismissal of her books. I’ve tried at least a couple of Virago authors whose “prose and content absolutely defeated” me.
Someone at a Distance was my introduction to her books, via a lucky library sale find.
I had given Someone at a Distance 4/5 stars, and Because of the Lockwoods, They Were Sisters, and Greenbanks all 5/5 stars.
This is the only Whipple I’ve read where I have finished the book feeling something other than livid, which is as much praise as I think I’ve ever given her (and as much as I’m ever likely to!). 😉
Aw, sorry you’ve been feeling crummy! I hope you’re feeling better now?
I believe I read a Dorothy Whipple book at some point during the blogosphere’s mad devotion to her in the late aughts, and it MAY have been Someone at a Distance — but obviously it didn’t stick with me. Greenbanks sounds surprising and wonderful! And ahead of its time!
I could have sworn I’d read this one, but can’t find it in my records. But I have very much enjoyed all the Whipples I have read – 5 or 6 of them – and was always outraged by that Virago comment. By any standards she is better than many Virago authors, but that’s not even the point – I am disappointed in the Virago board for being so pointlessly judgemental.