A Good Woman
by . New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. 1927, 12mo, v+432 pp. $2.50.
‘I WILL be good,’ said Victoria, when they told her she was Queen. That Victorian ‘goodness’ may become decadent; that conventional morality may be exploited in the interests of ambition: this is what Louis Bromfield pronounces in A Good Woman. He feels the theme strongly: his dedication goes ‘To all the ‘Good Women’ of America, which has more than its share of them.’
Emma Downes, the ‘good woman,’ is of a type common in America. She is resourceful, industrious, and an important member of her church. Apparently a prop to respectability, in reality she encourages her virtues merely because they sustain her pride. After the desertion of her husband her vanity demanded conspicuous approbation from her community. She attained it by means of the Methodist congregation, the local branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and her son Philip.
The story of Philip’s rebellion, told with Mr. Bromfield’s customary fervor, is crowded with portraits. Philip fights not only his domineering mother, but also a shrewd uncle, a bovine aunt, and his thwarted wife Naomi. Naomi’s portrait is the best of the lot; at all times, even in spectacular tragedy, she is convincing. But Philip has been docile too long for so striking a transformation. Though made engagingly pathetic, he is often a little unreal. Completely unreal is the woman he loves. Except when acting as dea ex machina, it is impossible to believe that she exists.
Behind Emma is The Town that meddles; The Town that gives Jason no ‘room to breathe and think . . . no room for a fella to do as he wants . . . always somebody a-watchin’ of ’im.’ Its transition from intimate village to industrial centre Mr. Bromfield related in The Green Bay Tree and Possession. By means of the title ‘Escape’ he would now hinge together these two earlier novels with the later Early Autumn and A Good Woman to form a screen revealing, from various angles, the struggle against the ugliness, intolerance, and falseness that is often significant of American life.
A Good Woman exposes the meddling of a pious hypocrite, one who capitalizes religious observance. During the Victorian era such a character doubtless achieved material reward. But surely she has no vogue at present. In America the proportion of ‘good women’ may still be large, but they have lost the authority to meddle. To paste warnings against obsolescent sins seems platitudinous.
Not in the portrait of a recognizable but passing type are to be found signs of the author’s increase of power, but rather in the nature of the revolt against it. Unlike his predecessors, who escaped from forces obviously alien, Philip fights his own blood; he demands release from himself. This is rebellion more profound. Were there less frequent scrutiny of the family album and more of Philip’s incipient regeneration, possibly his substance would seem less shadowy. Whenever described, his reactions are credible. Even memorable is the occasion of the family dinner, his shame of the petty boasting and lying, his shame of himself for being ashamed, and his ‘sickening sort of torture.’
HARRIET SAMPSON