Jane and Prudence

Jane and Prudence is the third novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1953.

Jane and Prudence
First edition
AuthorBarbara Pym
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
PublisherJonathan Cape
Publication date
1953
Media typePrint (Hardback)
Pages222 pp (hardback edition)
ISBN978-1-84408-449-4 [1]
OCLC166627476

Plot summary

Jane, a vicar's wife, lives a very different kind of life from her friend, the single and independent Prudence. The book details the period in Nicholas and Jane’s life when they take over a new parish in an (anonymous) English village and encounter the widower Fabian Driver, who Jane decides will make an excellent husband for Prudence.[2] Prudence has an imponderable attraction to her older and completely impervious employer, the head of an unspecified academic foundation. There is, however, competition for Fabian - Jessie Morrow, another spinster in the parish who seeks escape from her low-paid job as a companion to the domineering Miss Doggett.

Publication history and reception

Jane and Prudence was Pym's third novel, published by Jonathan Cape in 1953. Whereas Pym's first two novels had been successful, this received more mixed reviews. Literary figures Lady Cynthia Asquith and Lord David Cecil both championed the novel, but The Guardian felt it was "a horrid disappointment after Excellent Women" and the Times Literary Supplement remarked that the plot was "not easy to recall after one has closed the book"[3]. The novelist Jilly Cooper regards Jane and Prudence as Pym's finest work - "full of wit, plotting, characterization and miraculous observation".[4] Throughout her life, Pym remained unhappy with the novel, commenting several times in her diary that she had not emphasised the "town and country" differences between the lives of the protagonists more effectively [5]

The novel did not sell particularly well; the initial bookshop orders from Cape totaled 2,300 [6] and the publisher had sold 5,052 copies by the end of the 1950s. This meant that the book had made money, but was not a bestseller [7]. Pym reported in 1954 that the publishers could attract no interest from American or Continental publishers [8]. The book was first published in the United States in 1981, after Pym's death.

The novel was released as an audiobook by Hachette in 2011, read by Maggie Mash.

Characters
  • Jane a good hearted Vicar’s wife in her 40th year
  • Nicholas, her mild mannered husband
  • Flora, their despairing teenage daughter
  • Prudence 29 a beautiful and elegant spinster[9]
  • Fabian, a vain and self-obsessed widower
  • Miss Doggett, a tyrannical old lady
  • Miss Morrow, her outwardly meek but calculating companion[10]

Adaptations

Jane and Prudence was adapted for radio by Hilary Pym and Elizabeth Proud in 1993, with Julian Glover, Elizabeth Spriggs, Samantha Bond and Penelope Wilton among the cast [11].

A second radio adaptation was broadcast 2008, this time written by Jennifer Howarth. Penelope Wilton was the narrator, Emma Fielding played Prudence and Susie Blake Jane. Miss Doggett was played by Elizabeth Spriggs.[12]

Connections to other novels

Characters in Pym novels often reappear or are referenced in later works. The characters of Miss Morrow and Miss Doggett had originally appeared in an early unpublished work from 1940, Crampton Hodnet, which would be published after Pym's death. The character of Miss Morrow is distinctly different in Jane and Prudence, as is that of Barbara Bird, also re-used from Crampton Hodnet.[13] The character of William Caldicote, from Pym's previous novel Excellent Women, appears very briefly late in this volume.

Footnotes
  1. Reprinted by Virago Press on 6 December 2007
  2. For an evaluation of this setting see Chapter 4 Jane and Prudence in "Reading Barbara Pym" Donato, D. Ch 4 pp81-101 Maddison, N.J Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003 ISBN 0-8386-4095-8
  3. Holt, Hazel (1990). A Lot to Ask: A Life of Barbara Pym. London: Macmillan. p. 164. ISBN 0525249370.
  4. "If you want a great read Barbara Pym will fix it" - article in "Seven" p3, Sunday Telegraph Issue 2,425 (dated 3 December 2007)
  5. Cocking, Yvonne, Jane and Prudence: A Novel of Contrasts, paper featured in Green Leaves: The Journal of the Barbara Pym Society, Spring 2012.
  6. letter from Wren Howard to Barbara Pym, October 1955,, published in A Few Green Leaves: The Journal of the Barbara Pym Society, Vol 9, No. 2, November 2003
  7. Holt 1990, p.194
  8. Pym, Barbara (1984). A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters (ed. Hazel Holt and Hilary Pym). New York: E.P. Dutton. p. 191. ISBN 0525242341.
  9. An analysis of her inner qualities is found in Barbara Pym and Anthony Trollope: Communities of Imaginative Participation Heberlein, K.B in "Pacific Coast Philology", Vol. 19, No. 1/2 (Nov., 1984), pp. 95-100
  10. These last two characters resurface in Crampton Hodnet where they are ensconced in academic Oxford-article The importance of literature in the novels of Barbara Pym Ackley, K.A pp33-46 in "All this reading: the literary world of Barbara Pym" Lenckos, F.E./. Miller, E.J.(Ed) Maddison, N.J Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003 ISBN 0-8386-3956-9
  11. A Few Green Leaves: The Journal of the Barbara Pym Society, Vol. 11, No. 2, November 2005
  12. BBC Media Centre. Accessed 9 June 2013
  13. Yvonne Cocking, "Jane and Prudence: a Novel of Contrasts", Paper presented at the 14th North American Conference of the Barbara Pym Society Cambridge, Massachusetts, 17–18 March 2012. Accessed 13 February 2013
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