Re-reading S. T. Warner's Lolly Willowes
Abandon your family ✅ , Live in the woods ✅ , Become a witch ☐ ...
This Friday edition letter became a super-belated Monday edition because I ended up taking a lot of time to reabsorb this short novel, which has become something of a favorite.
Lolly Willowes was Sylvia Townsend Warner’s first book, and it was a big hit. It is so well written, and the way the fantastic accents the quotidian so successful. Warner joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1935, but even in the mid 20s her work shows progressive and socialistic sympathies.
The novel shows its style in the very first line. There is a visual or iconographic interest in how Laura Willowes—and her name—are sandwiched between two male members of the family.
When her father died, Laura Willowes went to live in London with her elder brother and his family.
The Willowes clan are of the landed gentry, and as per tradition, Laura, being a shy and unmarried spinster, is expected to just hang out at her brother’s.
This is Edwardian period of Britain, and in this social sphere things are still proceeding like in a Jane Austen novel from a century ago. The women go to Assembly Halls to do lame line dancing and find a marriage prospect, and the generational transference of property is assured along with the progeny.
Clearly, Lolly is considered by her family as little more than another article of furniture (the chief index of generational property).
This point of view was old-fashioned, but the Willoweses were a conservative family and kept to old-fashioned ways. Preference, not prejudice, made them faithful to their past. They slept in beds and sat upon chairs whose comfort insensibly persuaded them into respect for the good sense of their forbears. Finding that well-chosen wood and well-chosen wine improved with keeping, they believed that the same law applied to well-chosen ways.
What, you thought family structures under class society were organized around Love or something? Pshaw!
Actually, in this period the odds are even more against Laura: most of the Englishmen have gone abroad to the colonies or have died in WWI. And unfortunately she can’t have a good life as a bachelorette. She’s not allowed to live on her own or even control her own income.
It doesn’t help that Laura isn’t interested in cultivating social skills, and she looks kinda weird. Her hair is jet black and her complexion a tad dark, though paling since she moved to London with Henry’s family. “Her forehead had not a wrinkle, but two downward lines prolonged the drooping corners of her mouth,” the narrator says. Her face is “dominated by the hook nose and the sharp chin.”
Okay, so Laura may vaguely resemble a wicked witch out of the writings of Joseph Glanvill, but just because she seems like the odd duckling in the family doesn’t mean she ought to pick up and go off to the woods in Somerset. What do you mean she explores wooded areas and old city churches in her spare time, daydreaming of the frosted November trees and messages from the moon?
But the final straw is that she learns her incompetent lawyer brother has blown her income on colonial speculation in Ethiopia. He insists it was a “sound investment” thrown off-balance by “all this socialistic talk.”
That does it. She moves out to the tiny hamlet of Great Mop. And from this Austen or Forrester-like atmosphere we transition to a countryside assemblage of Dickensian goofsters with Dickensian names like Mr. and Mrs. Leak.
The way Warner’s leisurely, episodic storylines so gradually move into a spooky atmosphere without compromising anything in her style or tone is extremely fun.
Lolly Willowes is a phantasmagoric take on essentially the same grubby message of Woolf’s Room of One’s Own: at a time when women are entering the modern workforce, they need independence and control of individual finances. And sometimes you gotta make a pact with Satan to secure them.
A winkle appears when Laura’s baby nephew Titus has now grown up and is also moving to Great Mop. In a way, she lets him into her house, so to speak, on the same night that she adopts a scraggly black kitten—her witch’s familiar.
Shortly before this scene, we hear of Titus going off at dinner with Laura about an old painting master (historically a pet subject of scholarly Willowes), namely the great Fuseli:
“Fuseli—pronounced foozley—was a neglected figure of the utmost importance,” and Titus wants to write a book on the man in the seclusion of Great Mop, cramping Laura’s style all the while.
What’s that old saying about the Devil and his name again?
Aside from the kitten, there’s also strange music coming out of the woods at night. Indeed, the Devil is in these woods, and he has taken benevolent concern with Laura’s initiation into witchcraft.
Near at hand but out of sight the loving huntsman crouched in the woods, following her with his eyes. But all the time, whether couched in the woods or hunting among the hills, he drew closer. He was hidden in the wall when she threw in the map and the guidebook. He sat in the oven, teaching her what power she might have over the shapes of men. … And Satan, who has hunted from eternity, a little jaded moreover by the success of his latest organized Flanders battle, might well feel that his interest in a Solitary Snipe like Laura was but sooner or later to measure the length of her nose. Yet hunt he must; it is his destiny, and whether he hunts with a gun or a butterfly net, sooner or later the chase must end.
From these lines on to the end of the book an understanding develops that taps into a core piece of wisdom in western literature: that the Devil is not a force, or even a metaphor.
He is literally just a guy. He hunts in the woods, preferring to go unseen, and he wears a cool hat. He likes apples, because of course he does. He’s a chill individual; he’s happy to help you out and solve your problems.
And he helps solve Laura’s problems in a pretty funny way, if he does in fact exist, and Laura isn’t just experiencing her own self-empowerment in an especially hallucinatory way—on a second readthrough, I’m struck by the plausible deniability of the strange and marvelous that seems characteristic of so-called ‘magical realism.’
But if this is a story about female empowerment, why does the coven of witches remain in the power of Satan as their Master?
It’s just a result of women’s fundamental situation of dependence, Laura answers. “We have more need of you,” she says to Satan.
Women have such vivid imaginations, and lead such dull lives. Their pleasure in life is so soon over; they are so dependent upon others, and their dependence so soon becomes a nuisance. Do you understand?
The fantasy trope of the witch in her hut in the woods is kind of like the trope of the mad scientist but for girls. Independence, doing what you will, applying your efforts in projects you want, keeping your own hours—it’s a nice gig.
A bonus of the witch’s hut is that it’s super cozy, at least compared to the mad scientist’s secret lair.
Just imagine: friendly old ladies ensconced in the forest, chatting by a fire, drinking dandelion and plum wine in “small peaceful sips” under warm lamplight. Now that’s the life.
It’s not the collective struggle against exploitation and male domination called for by Communism. It’s the petty-bourgeoisie’s collective desire to be left alone.
But perhaps the former ideas, or Laura’s characteristic warm curiosity of them, have been sown in the witch’s garden of magick herbs.
There’s only a couple more Red writers left—though Silent Friends is likely to cover more books by Warner and Seghers in the near future.
But in the coming weeks we’ll be exploring more classic western literature. These forthcoming letters are the result of a massive reading project that began in the fall of last year. See you tomorrow…