Thank Heaven Fasting E M Delafield

I haven’t read all of Delafield’s novels, and I am not a fan of her most famous work “the Provincial Lady” which was so popular.  I have read some of her novels about married ladies of the middle to upper class, such as “The Way Things Are”, and I haven’t greatly liked them.   They seem to be about well-off women complaining about their servants, their husbands etc. and its hard to have any sympathy or find the plots interesting.   In these, Delafield seems snobbish and I can’t warm to her heroines.  

But I loved “Thank Heaven Fasting.”  It is about a young woman -Monica, who is just about to make her coming out in Society, in the Edwardian age.  The year isn’t given, but it’s clearly in the era of Women’s Suffrage, and strict chaperonage of young girls.  It is the world of Delafield’s girlhood, with all the rigid customs that ended with World War One.

Monica is pretty, pleasant and conventional, and eager to please her parents by getting married soon.  She also has a normal desire for pleasure and a normal sex drive, although she’s very innocent.   There are no money problems, she does not need to marry in order to live comfortably... but she knows in her bones that it is every woman’s duty to get married as soon as possible...

It is important to marry someone of suitable birth and breeding who has the means to support a wife... but in the end, getting a well off husband matters less than “just finding a husband of any kind”.  At first, she has an admirer who seems suitable, Claud.  He is well bred, has a career and is comfortably off... and she likes him.  But before long, she knows that her mother and father will be glad of any man of the right class, even if he does not have much money… or is older...or in some other way not all that desirable.

Monica has hopes of Claud -right from their first dance, but her friends Frederica and Cecily, the daughters of a hard selfish society woman, are much less lucky than she appears to be.. They are shy and plain, and they cling to each other obsessively because they know that their chances of marriage are slim, and that their coarse-fibred mother despises them for being lacking in charm and sex appeal.

But Monica makes a disastrous mistake.  Not long into her first Season, she gets into a heavy flirtation with a soldier, Christopher, who is only interested in a bit of fun.  Her parents discourage the relationship, because he has no money and is soon to be shipped off to India.  But he arouses Monica’s desires and she is eager to marry him... even if her parents disapprove.  
He encourages her to disobey the rules, to sneak out and meet him... Finally, she allows him to take her off during a dance, kissing her on the rooftop of the ballroom.  Word gets out about the “disappearance” and although Monica has done nothing more than kissing, she finds that there is gossip about her.  Christopher has treated her, a lady, like a little shop girl... who is good for a few kisses but not good enough to marry..
Monica realises that she has lost her “freshness” and gradually slides into a half world of “almost spinsterhood”.  She has another Season and another, and her friends (apart from Frederica and Cecily) get married.  She is left behind. She is less attractive to men.  But she keeps on hoping.  Some readers get annoyed with this book because Monica’s only goal is to marry; she has no interest in a career... or agitating for the Vote, or even charity work.   She knows that to take up full time charity work is a confession of failure for a girl of her kind.  But I can understand.. Monica is not different to most other girls of her kind and class.  Some readers want Monica to be ahead of her time, to give up "wasting her time looking for a man" and find a job, or for Delafield to rescue her by producing a husband that she can love.

Delafield however is being realistic.  Monica is who she is.  She doesn’t want to be unconventional… she wants a suitable marriage and to be the same as other girls.

And when a suitable man comes along, even though years ago she would probably have rejected him as too old and not romantic, Monica is relieved and happy…Its real life, not "romantic novel life".