I’ve always been intrigued when I saw mid-century novels by authors I’ve not heard of, and that’s particularly true since I’ve been scouting for titles for the British Library Women Writers series – and so I’ve started looking through my shelves for novels that are out of print and a little lesser known. Recently, I read The Unnatural Behaviour of Mrs Hooker by Eileen Marsh, from 1947.
Mrs Hooker lives in a small village where everybody knows each other’s business and usually makes it their business too. In the opening pages we are introduced to the community – vicar and wife, policeman, teacher, local aristocrats. The expected crowd of a village scene, though confusingly the women include Moya, May, Mary, and Maggy, which doesn’t make it particularly easy to remember which is which. Marsh has a light touch and quickly lets us know which characters will amuse and which will frustrate us. Though Mrs Hooker isn’t among this initial crowd.
She lives with her son Jim, who has just become an adult. During the war, they – like most people in the village – took in an evacuee. A young girl called Sylvia. The village – and seemingly the author – have some prejudice against London girls and their forward ways; their swaying hips and eyes that are asking for it, etc. Suffice to say, this sort of description would not be welcome in a novel now, and thank goodness.
Sylvia goes back to London for a bit, where Mrs Hooker visits, looking on her as a surrogate daughter despite the village’s distrust of her. She is rather upset by the indifference shown by Sylvia’s parents, not to mention the poverty she lives in. So when Sylvia unexpectedly returns to the village, she is welcomed by Mrs H. And she comes bearing news: she is pregnant, and Jim is the father. She is also only fifteen years old.
Jim denies that he ever slept with her, and says it must be some London dalliance. [Or – call it what it is, which the novel does not – statutory rape.] The village is divided in whom they believe of the pair. But the one person you’d expect to be on Jim’s side, and who isn’t, is Mrs Hooker herself:
“I don’t know why I should doubt the poor child’s word. I reckon she’s speakin’ the truth, poor lamb. No, it was Jim, an’ he’s got to stand the racket. I’d give my right hand for it not to be him – the disgrace of it – well, you know what folks are! But it is him, an’ she’ll make him a nice little wife an’ I’ll look after the baby for ’em an’ she can go out to work.”
This is the unnatural behaviour of the title: that she refuses to believe her son, and will not be swayed.
It’s an interesting premise for a novel, and a spin on the evacuee situation that I haven’t read before but must have been relatively common. The reason the novel didn’t quite work for me is that, after this set up, it’s incredibly repetitive. It’s less than two hundred pages long, but it keeps going in circles. Jim insists he isn’t the father. Sylvia insists he is. Various local people repeatedly refer to Jim as a ‘good, clean boy’. Mrs Hooker maintains that she is going to be a grandmother. I shan’t say what the truth is, but the reader does know it pretty early on – so we aren’t reading to find out the solution to a mystery. It all just got a bit samey – not to mention rather unpleasant to read, when people blame the fifteen-year-old Sylvia for being a hussy etc.
So, an interesting writer and a good village set up – but the theme of the novel hasn’t dated well, and the structure of the plot is severely lacking. But I’d still read something else by her, hoping for the best.
An interesting review of a book that I now won’t add to my TBR pile! I always find it odd, how some books (and not always the “great” ones) transcend their time and place and some don’t. It almost sounds like this one is a snapshot of a bygone era; which can be fun if the writing and plot are sufficiently good and awful if they aren’t. I’ll wait until you review another Marsh novel before I give her a try!
Yes, agreed! I often find it largely depends on the themes they concentrate on – even those which seem to have dated well will doubtless have these attitudes lurking in the background…
Very interesting review Simon. I understand your reservations about this novel and I am sure I would share them. It is striking to think how differently we would view this situation now. That, coupled with the repetitive nature of the narrative would put me off. It is exciting to come across and explore these mid century writers. The overall premise of this one is good, it’s a pity it doesn’t work.
Yes, sometimes that what happens when you take a gamble on something completely unknown, isn’t it?
You are completely right when you say the novel hasn’t dated well but it is a good snapshot of British village lige in the late 40’s. Some things have changed and some I suspect, are still the same – the population of the villages, for one thing.
If you are willing to sample some of the author’s other adult novels, look for “To Be Content” or “So Built We”.
He adventure stories for girls are worth a look too, althjough they were written using a variety of pen names – Dorothy Carter, Elizabeth Rogers, Eileen Marsh, D E Marsh, Eileen Marsh.
Thanks for those recommendations, Sally! I’ll keep an eye out once we can go back to secondhand bookshops.
Having read a little bit of Evacuee Lit (and my father was an evacuee exploited as domestic help by the people he lived with) I think this situation is probably all too authentic. What many people do not know is that the narrative about providing a safe place for children at risk from the Blitz does not usually explain that it was compulsory. The authorities identified houses that had spare rooms and calculated how many evacuees that home had to accept. The homeowners had no choice and they were often resentful about what they saw as an imposition.
And a culture clash was inevitable in class-conscious Britain and when both urban and rural people thought they had a superior lifestyle. Country people were shocked by the poverty of kids from the East End, and disgusted by the grubbiness from the slums. People whose lifestyle meant that the whole family worked e.g. on farms expected their evacuees to do the same, but the kids were (understandably) unskilled and unenthusiastic. (My father, who was a bookish boy and a keen student, wanted to read and study as he had in London, not muck out stalls among livestock that alarmed him. He missed his library and other cultural opportunities in London, but since he was one of the ‘lucky ones’ not separated from his little brother, ended up doing his brother’s chores because his brother was a sickly boy). I think there would have been an expectation that the evacuees would show gratitude, but that’s probably not at all how the children saw it, because they had been uprooted from their homes and families and they had no choice about it either.
There were also shocking cases of abuse. Traumatised little children separated from their siblings thrashed because they wet the bed, sexual abuse of the type depicted in this book, and paedophilia too. As with the pandemic now, systems hastily put in place to protect large populations can end up having unintended results, such as the epidemic of domestic violence emerging from the lockdowns.
One thing I do like about this book is that this is a mother who is honest with herself about her son. Time and again we see footage of parents of terrorists denying that their child could possibly have committed the crime because they are ‘good’ children. Teachers know this kind of parent well. It’s always someone else’s fault, and not their child. So Mrs Hooker is a kind of hero, IMO!
Yes, that involuntary nature is central to Evelyn Waugh’s rather unpleasant Put Out More Flags! And then people like Lady B in the Provincial Lady in Wartime claims her house is being held as a military hospital, to avoid it.
That does sound hard for your dad. I am grateful that I grew up in the countryside a couple generations later, where you could be bookish there and not have to muck things out! One of my pet peeves is the idea that intelligent people live in the city and unintelligent people live in the countryside, but I can’t deny that there would have been fewer cultural opportunities for those raised in the countryside at that time.
As for your last point… well, you might have to read the book ;D
I think it’s the same Eileen Marsh who wrote a number of stories for girls, usually about flying. Perhaps that was more her metier.
Ah, quite possibly
Okay… sounds like it should have been cut down to novella length. I’ll pass, thanks!
The funny thing is that it practically IS novella length! Fewer than 200 pages. I think she should have made it a short story…
Oh dear…. Interesting idea, but sounds baggy, and like the attitudes of the time are going to be hard to overcome. I won’t rush to search this one out! :D
Yes, think it can stay safely on the shelf…
One of my pet peeves is characters with similar names. Why?
So unnecessary! If it’s not there for a purpose – and it didn’t seem to be here – it just makes life confusing.
Really interesting – I feel as though I’ve learned as much from this review and comments as I might from the book! However, it looks as though someone else enjoyed it a lot… https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/history/onthisday/16254121.15-years-ago-library-book-returned-55-years-late/