Consequences by EM Delafield

This is one of Delafield's best known works. It is set in the late Victorian era - at the time when she herself was growing up. The work has been described by critic Nicola Beauman as a very angry book. It seems as if Delafield was rebelling about the way she and other Victorian girls were brought up. She also felt anger at the way she had been treated when she went into a convent as a young girl. She put up with harshness as a young nun, but when her younger sister Yoe began to think of going into a convent too, she felt she could not bear for her beloved sister to be as harshly treated. She finally left the convent. Her heroine is a girl called Alexandra Clare. She is a neurotic and unhappy girl, whose father is a well to do gentleman, Sir Francis Clare. He is a Roman Catholic, but her mother Isabel is not much interested in religion. Their children are brought up strictly, however and Alex is not very happy all through her childhood. Her parents criticise her all the time. She does not get on well with her siblings, and she is not liked by her hyper critical Nanny. She believes that when she is grown up, she will be a success "like people in books". But for the present, she indulges in passions for friends, whom she admires extravagantly. Her parents don't like her emotional nature or the people she chooses to adore. As a young girl, she tries to dominate her younger siblings, but tends to end up in scrapes. The most serious is when she bullies her younger sister Barbara into playing "tightropes" with her. Barbara does not want to play, but Alex gets her to stand on a makeshift tightrope, and she falls, hurting her back. Her parents are angry at her "nearly killing Barbara" and send her away to a convent school as a punishment. She is not religious then, and does not like the school in Belgium. She spends a few years there, and during her time, she "falls" for an older girl, Queenie, whom she adores. Queenie is not interested in Alex. She is preoccupied with coming out in society. She is friendly to Alex but it's clear that she does not want to be friends with the girl - she is just cultivating her because Alex is from a better class family than hers. When she goes back home, she asks her mother if she can ask Queenie to stay but her mother is horrified at the idea of her befriending a girl who is not their social equal. Alex comes out and finds that she is not a success. She is too anxious to please and she does not make any real friends. She does have one suitor, Noel Cardew, who is a vain "full of himself" young man who simply wants her to listen to him while he talks about how clever he is.