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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