Credit: Andrew Whittuck |
As Rosefield says, 'Mildred is one of the “excellent women” of her novel’s title: efficient, virtuous and uncomplaining, expecting little and receiving little. Her clergyman father has died, and she lives in reduced circumstances in London, where she works part time for the Society for the Care of Distressed Gentlewomen (“a cause very near to my own heart, as I felt that I was just the kind of person who might one day become one”).'
Pym is quite often not generous to her male characters, as Rosefield says, "The very names of Pym’s male characters (Rockingham Napier, Alaric Lydgate) make it clear that they are better as romantic fantasies than as husbands." My favorite name is Everard Bone, the anthropologist, a character in "Excellent Women".
Rosefield describes the few of Pym's excellent women who marry, as opposed to the many who remain spinsters, as "married spinsters".