A Glass of Blessings
Barbara Pym, 1958
Moyer Bell
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781559213530
Summary
Well dressed and looked after, Wilmet, the novel's heroine, is married to Rodney, a handsome army major, who works nine thirty to six at the Ministry. Wilmet's interest wanders to the nearby Anglo-Catholic church, where at last she can neglect her comfortable household in the company of a cast of characters, including three priests.
Set in 1950s London, this witty novel is told through the narration of the shallow and self-absorbed protagonist who, despite her flaws, begins to learn something about love and about herself. Through Wilmet's superficial monologues readers are exposed to Barbara Pym's clever commentary on class, the church, and her engaging characterizations. Readers will become captivated, as is Wilmet, with the lives and personalities of characters such as the kleptomaniac Wilf Bason, the priests Keith, and Piers Longridge.
She fancies herself in love with Piers, the brother of a close friend, and imagines he is her secret admirer (the admirer is in fact her friend's husband). Wilmet fails to realise that Piers is gay until she becomes aware of his relationship with Keith, a young man she regards as rather common. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Full name—Barbara Mary Crampton Pym
• Birth—June 2, 1913
• Where—Shropshire, England, UK
• Death—January 11, 1980
• Where—Finstock, Oxfordshire, England
• Education—Oxford University
Pym was born in Oswestry, Shropshire. She was privately educated at Queen’s Park School, a girls school in Oswestry and from the age of twelve attended Huyton College, near Liverpool. After studying English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, she served in the Women's Royal Naval Service during World War II. Her literary career is noteworthy because of the long hiatus between 1963 and 1977, when, despite early success and continuing popularity, she was unable to find a publisher for her richly comic novels.
The turning point for Pym came with an influential article in the (London) Times Literary Supplement in which two prominent names, Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin, nominated her as the most underrated writer of the century. Pym and Larkin had kept up a private correspondence over a period of many years. Her comeback novel, Quartet in Autumn, was nominated for the Booker Prize. Another novel, The Sweet Dove Died, previously rejected by many publishers, was subsequently published to critical acclaim, and several of her previously unpublished novels were published after her death.
Pym worked at the International African Institute in London for some years, and played a large part in the editing of its scholarly journal, Africa, hence the frequency with which anthropologists crop up in her novels. She never married, despite several close relationships with men, notably Henry Harvey, a fellow Oxford student, and the future politician, Julian Amery.
After her retirement, she moved into Barn Cottage at Finstock in Oxfordshire with her younger sister, Hilary. In 1980, Barbara Pym died of breast cancer, aged 66. Following her death, her sister Hilary continued to champion her work, and the Barbara Pym Society was set up in 1993. Hilary remained at Barn Cottage until her own death in February 2005. A blue plaque was placed on the cottage in 2006. The sisters played an active role in the social life of the village, and are both buried in Finstock churchyard.
All told, Barbara Pym published 12 novels:
Crampton Hodnet (circa 1940) *
Some Tame Gazelle (1950)
Excellent Women (1952)
Jane and Prudence (1953)
Less than Angels (1955)
A Glass of Blessings (1958)
No Fond Return Of Love (1961)
An Unsuitable Attachment (1963) *
An Academic Question (1970-72) *
Quartet in Autumn (1977)
The Sweet Dove Died (1978)
A Few Green Leaves (1980) *
* Published posthumously (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Older books have few if any online reviews from mainstream press. See customer reviews at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.)
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for A Glass of Blessings:
1. How would you describe Wilmet Forsyth...and the kind of life she leads? Does she make an interesting heroine? A likeable one? What are her views on love and marriage, including her own marriage to Rodney?
2. What makes Wilmet believe that Piers Longridge might be in love with her? Is there evidence to suggest that either Piers or Rowan is pursuing her?
3. Pym is described, like Jane Austen, as an astute observer of British life. How does Pym present her small slice of life in A Glass of Blessings? How would you describe her Britain? Is it a time and place in which you would enjoy living?
4. Much is made of Pym's gentle but pointed humor. What or whom did you find particularly funny in this novel? Where does Pym direct her satirical eye?
5. Wilment attends the Christmas Eve service alone? Why don't Sybil and Rodney accompany her? What are their religious views? Do you find those views unusual? How does Wilmet experience the service?
6. Were you satisfied by the ending, especially the way in which the couples come together?
7. How (or why) does Pym treat the subject of homosexuality, a subject not openly dealt with in the mid-20th century? Were you surprised by Pier's and Keith's relationship?
8. Pym's Wilmet has been compared to Austen's Emma Woodhouse (in her masterpiece, Emma). If you've read that work, what parallels do you see between the two heroines... or perhaps the two plots?
9. What does our heroine come to learn at the end of the novel? Have her views on love and marriage altered. Has she changed...or matured?
10. The book's title comes from "The Pulley," a poem by 17th-century poet, George Herbert:
When God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can:
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.
That is only the first stanza. What is the significance of Herbert's "glasse of blessings standing by" to Pym's book?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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