The King and His Reign IV: Women's Rights

Non-fiction ~ essay
Published in The Spectator, 15th March 1935
1,420 words
(First read 11/12/2014)

Mrs Pankhurst addresses a crowd

This one falls very much under the 'His Reign' category: as EFB makes barely any mention at all of George V, we can only assume he had nothing to do with women's rights¹.  What we get instead is a preamble in which we're reminded of Queen Victoria's opinions on uppity females (she was rabidly agin the idea), of Edward VII's opinions ditto (also agin, but less so), followed by a potted history of the pre-War emancipation movement, of the role women played during the War itself, and of their new-found freedom after it.
Benson was clearly no feminist; indeed he's often accused of outright misogyny ~ generally by people who've only read the Mapp and Lucia novels.  In fact his fictional women fall into two very pronounced types: (1) the cats, shrews, vixens, cows, harpies, bitches, witches (etc.) we all know and love from his satirical novels; and (2) the sweet, noble, impossibly virtuous, nauseating and frankly improbable saints so prominent in his (melo)dramas.  There was practically no middle ground. [Sorry ~ wandering off the point a bit.]  In this article he carefully aligns himself with those who claim post facto that their sole objection to the Suffragist movement was the activities of its more militant wing.  EFB might not ever have been violently anti-women's suffrage but, before the Great War, he rarely missed an opportunity to poke fun at it².


¹ I daresay he didn't approve, though.  Queen Mary wouldnt've let him.
² For his most sustained mock see the novel Mrs Ames (1912).  It has to be said that the eponymous heroine's feeble'n'futile pro-suffrage protest is the highlight of that book.

Mapp and Lucia

Fiction ~ novel
Published September 1931
105,100 words
(First read 18/07/1992) 

Mapp and Lucia is the fourth in the Mapp and Lucia sequence of novels and (obviously) the first one in which our eponymous 'heroines' get together and lock horns.















THE CRITICS

In Mapp and Lucia, Mr E. F. Benson is in his gayest and most irresponsible mood. He has no story to tell, but his description of the deadly and long-drawn-out duel between Miss Mapp and Mrs Lucas for the social leadership of the pleasant but scandal-loving town of Tilling is replete with rich humour. Nobody with a sense of the ludicrous can fail to find excellent entertainment in a volume in which Mr Benson is at his best.

~The Western Morning News and Mercury, 14/09/1931

E. F. Benson, author of Miss Mapp and Queen Lucia, has achieved a great success by bringing these two entertaining characters together in his latest novel, Mapp and Lucia […]. With charming insincerity they almost fall on each other's necks, and in an equally charming manner they manoeuvre and skirmish in a 'war to the death' for struggle for leadership of a quiet old village.

~The Daily Mail [Hull], 26/09/1931

After [the effort of producing Ferdinand Magellan, The Inheritor and As We Were (1929-30)], Benson was able to relax with another frivolous adventure, bringing together his two outrageous heroines [in] Mapp and Lucia. [With this novel the two characters] reached the apogee of their absurdity [and] Benson, too, reached the summit of his powers. […] It was a bold stroke to risk the clash of Titans in Mapp and Lucia, effected in the simplest manner by having Mrs Lucas rent Miss Mapp's house in Tilling for a period of two months. No sooner is the redoubtable lady ensconced than, by 'showy little dinners and odious flatteries', she manages to supplant Mapp's position in the town, as a result of which the two women are locked in combat. Quaint Irene, with her 'dismal directness', observes the fun and remains the only character not to take these people seriously. It is much to Benson's credit that he contrives a preposterous climax without losing the reader's sympathy: a sudden flood sweeps Mapp and Lucia away on an upturned kitchen table! Fred read the scene aloud to [his friend] Steven Runciman on the evening of the day he wrote it, to test reaction. He was encouraged.

~Brian Masters in The Life of E. F. Benson, 1991

The Mapp and Lucia series

Fiction ~ six novels, two short stories
Published 1920-39

Benson's Mapp and Lucia series consists of six novels and two short stories:
(1) Queen Lucia (1920; Lucia only)
(2) Miss Mapp (1922; Mapp only)
(3) Lucia in London (1927; Lucia only)
(4) The Male Impersonator (1929; Mapp only)
(5) Desirable Residences (1929; Mapp only)
(6) Mapp and Lucia (1931; both)
(7) Lucia's Progress (1935; both; known as The Worshipful Lucia in the USA)
(8) Trouble for Lucia (1939; both)

There are, of course, whole herds of proto-Lucias and pseudo-Mapps, not to mention Lucias-in-waiting, Mapps manquées, mini-Georgies, the odd Major Benjy, beefy parlourmaids with their lesbianic mistresses, snobs, cats, bitches, pseuds, prudes ... and umpteen stories (some comic, some spooky) set in Tilling, Tillingham, etc. etc. scattered throughout the works of E. F. Benson from 1893-1940.
I've read the whole lot of them umpteen times and the comedy never palls for me.