Although Mistress Masham's Repose is a novel of conflict, danger, and adventure, it would be a loss to overlook the deeper levels of meaning implicit in the work. Symbolically, Maria's predicament is an echo of the universal problem of tyranny and subjugation—a problem in the eighteenth-century days of Jonathan Swift as well as in the 1940s England of this novel. By making use of a lonely girl's dreams of friends and companionship, White presents a philosophical and political problem and makes it immediate and contemporary.

In large measure, this effect is brought about by White's skill in characterization and in his deft use of the English language. He has mastered the formal, mannered language of Gulliver's Travels and blends that style with a modern vernacular English with ease and wit. In addition, White captures the nuances of speech, and each of his characters uses...