By Kohinoor Dasgupta
Barbara Pym’s The Sweet Dove Died
(Originally published in my weblog Draupadiarjun on November 1, 2010)
Towards the end of Barbara Pym’s life there was a revival of interest in her work. The Sweet Dove Died was published in 1978, during this period.
What with the title and the blurb on the dust jacket, followed by the lines of Keats that give the title, it takes courage to approach this book. However, sweet doves die all the time, and if you must hear about it, you might as well ask the unflinchingly truthful Miss Pym.
Towards the end of the novel, the author writes: “… but in the end parting had come with the inevitability of the last scene of a well-constructed play.” This line reminds us that not only the last scene, but all of the scenes in this novel were constructed by Pym. This is done so unobtrusively that we forget the skill at work, rather in the way Leonora could not imagine why her tenant, old Miss Foxe, should be struggling up the stairs with two gallons of paraffin! The scenes in The Sweet Dove Died toggle expertly between the fleeting loves and disappointments of the characters, and the author’s birds-eye-view of passing life and the invisible superstructure of interwoven lives.
Leonora is the author of her own aura. Courage her creator grants her, but packaged along with it is a soul-dulling blindness. Exquisitely aware of the aesthetics of dressing and presenting herself socially or even in the privacy of her own home (the last-mentioned habit endears her to me because it shows that not all Leonora does in her zeal to achieve elegance is for display to others), she rarely sees past dowdiness and decrepitude, till three young people disrupt her blissful existence.
Leonora knows other women – her friend Meg, her neighbor Liz, her cousin Daphne, her acquaintances Joan Murray and Miss Caton, and the aforementioned genteel Miss Foxe – and her “automatic” interest in appearances gives Leonora no respite from noticing other women, even when she need not. Most of them she dismisses as not her equal, mostly because they dress badly. Before James, Leonora enjoyed her own company, but when shocking loneliness results after he sneaks away (even taking the fruitwood mirror and its kind reflection), Pym runs several coping options by Leonora through the other women. Forgiveness and a bottle of Yugoslav Riesling? Voluntary work? Work? Husband? Cats? Books and frozen “dinner for one”? Women’s Club? Sanatogen Tonic Wine? Travel? Only a couple of those options appeal for a moment or two, "perhaps because growing unhappiness had made her more sensitive" or because of the new burden of time.
The preening and ever-appraising Ned is the disquieting American in the book. He is the young man who wants to gift a leather hippopotamus to an unattractive aunt. In a way, Ned is the specter of Leonora’s self-love and her tendency to work her charm to achieve her ends. But Ned she is not and, we hope, will never have to be, after losing a dove and gaining a little heart.
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