Dorothy Whipple was once a highly regarded bestselling novelist and it is typical of the excellent Persephone books that they have restored her glory within their elegant silver jackets and distinctive floral end papers.
In They Were Sisters, with its, surely intentional, Chekhovian undertones, Whipple explores the fortunes of three sisters: Lucy, Charlotte and Vera. Lucy is clever and studious but must abandon her intellectual aspirations when their mother dies and, in the custom of the times (the novel is set in Thirties Britain), Lucy, as the eldest, becomes duty-bound to raise her siblings. Charlotte is sensitive but wilful and, dis- regarding all the signals, marries an out-and-out rotter, while Vera, an egocentric beauty, marries a mother’s boy and a bore. The only one of the three who remains childless, Lucy finally makes a sound marriage to William, who loves and respects her as an equal. With nothing more troubling than companionable contentment to engage her, Lucy’s creative energies continue to focus on her sisters and their marriages, which are made a long way from heaven.
The most original, and compelling, part of the story concerns Charlotte’s treatment at the hands of her husband, Geoffrey. Geoffrey is a sadist, who through steady disregard for the needs of anyone but himself drives his wife to drink and his children to disrespect and ultimately various states of alienation. Charlotte’s decline is painfully charted; she adores her brutal and brutish husband and Whipple is psychologically in the vanguard of her time in illuminating the perverse attachment of the victim to the torturer. The subtle way in which a misplaced devotion will often fuel its own destruction, and fire its object to renewed cruelties, is a truth revealed by Whipple with chilling accuracy. Geoffrey’s meanly partial treatment of his children is a further example of Whipple’s grasp of the mental machinations of the low- grade psychopath. Geoffrey, through rank favouritism, cripples one daughter, destroys for good, by his vicious treatment of the family’s beloved dog, the trust of his only son and, with nothing left over for the youngest, luckily leaves her free to be rescued, and redeemed, by her devoted and childless aunt. I thoroughly approve of Whipple’s unfashionable advocacy of the psychological virtues of neglect.
Geoffrey’s narcissism is mirrored, if more likeably, by Vera, whose casual inattention to her child and husband has inevitable repercussions. For Whipple is a moralist, in the line, if less augustly, of Jane Austen and George Eliot, and in her universe unkindness and selfishness and, above all, self-centredness do not escape retribution. But, since she doesn’t whitewash either, not before lasting damage has been done. The worm turns on Vera, and, perhaps a little too predictably, she loses her husband — and thus her posh home and lavish life-style — to a dreary governess. In time-honoured novelistic fashion, Vera fetches up with an indifferent younger man, whom, inevitably, she must now dread losing. This is the least original part of the story where the slippery slope of social decline is indicated by dyed hair, a prejudice which it is hard for us to reach inside today. But that is not to diminish the sparkling achievements of this accomplished novelist, not the least of which is the ability — rarer today than it should be — simply to entertain. I read this diverting novel on the plane to Australia and the journey flew by.
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