The sleeping beauty of Miss Taylor's title is Emily, terribly injured in a car accident, who does not recognize the beauty of the new face created for her by plastic surgery and lives in nunnish seclusion, looking after the mentally defective daughter of her sister Rose. Emily is warmed to life again by a middle-aged Jamesian figure named Vinny who has already a wife living, but makes a bigamous alliance with Emily which is enduring happily at the end of the book. The plot of The Sleeping Beauty is grotesque: but once it has been accepted, or ignored, there can be little but admiration for the subtlety and humour with which Miss Taylor has invested her whole curious fairy-story…. [The] book is full of … moments in which the pathos and comedy of social incongruities are neatly caught. It is Miss Taylor's comic sense, conveyed through many passages of conversation between minor characters that owe something to Miss Compton-Burnett, which makes the book such a pleasure to read. The love story of Vinny and Emily, upon which she has perhaps spent more pains, is much less satisfactory.
"Human Incongruity," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1953; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), No. 2670, April 3, 1953, p. 217.∗
This is a free excerpt of 215 words. There are 221 words (approx.
1 page at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Taylor, Elizabeth 1912–1975: Critical Essay by The Times Literary Supplement Access Pass.
