In the past two years, Anita Brookner's novels The Debut and Look at Me have delighted readers here and in Great Britain. With Providence,… she effectively claims her territory as a writer. "Territory" may, however, be too large a word to suit these politely agoraphobic works. With several other British novelists of past and present, Anita Brookner shares a love of order and pattern, a discreet sense of humor, and a piquant awareness of manners, as well as a rather small canvas. These are novels for a disciplined sensibility—not the excesses of the groaning board but the light sufficiency of the luncheon table; not Wagner crashing through the symphony hall but Brahms suffusing the chamber with rational poignancy.
Jane Austen's world comes congenially to mind, although we would not immediately group Anita Brookner's heroines with Emma Woodhouse—"handsome, clever, and rich," secure in her provenance and her social context. Brookner's young women are certainly clever and usually have a small, liberating independent income, but of their "handsomeness" they are never confident. The exemplary Ruth Weiss of The Debut, a Balzac scholar, is haunted by Eugénie Grandet's self-assessment: "Je ne suis pas assez belle pour lui." Ruth, Fanny Hinton of Look at Me, and Kitty Maule of Providence are excellent women—dutiful daughters, passable cooks, occasional wits, and considerable scholars—but all of them are observers and outsiders. None considers passion her prerogative. In all of them, femininity is lodged useless: Je ne suis pas assez belle pour lui. They exist most fully in their yearning for impossible, inaccessible men who we know will never seriously look at them, and this yearning shapes each novel's small plot.
This is a free excerpt of 272 words. There are 566 words (approx.
2 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Brookner, Anita 1938–: Critical Essay by Frances Taliaferro Access Pass.
