SOURCE: "Barbara Pym's Women," in World Literature Today, Vol. 61, No. 1, Winter, 1987, pp. 31-7.

In the following essay, Bradham reevaluates Pym's portrayal of unmarried women, dismissing superficial comparison to the work of Jane Austen and association with feminist literature. Bradham examines the "condition, thoughts, desires, and emotions" of Pym's female protagonists as they reflect the author's attitudes and interests.

Since the Barbara Pym revival, begun in 1977 when Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil independently cited her in the Times Literary Supplement as one of the most underrated novelists of the twentieth century, surprisingly little of consequence has been written about one of this century's great writers. Most of the criticisms of Pym's novels have consisted of brief articles and book reviews in publications such as the TLS and the New York Times Book Review. Most of these have demonstrated only a shallow understanding of Pym, and some have actually...