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chocolatepotI was very happy reading the first two Miss Buncle books, and the first half or so of Vittoria Cottage. Country village settings appeal to me - though not as much in the way that they're frequently used today, at least in American fiction - and the books are soothingly simple. Everything will come out perfectly all right in the end, and the characters who hit it off (as well as the characters who don't meet up but you know would be just right for each other) end up together. You can't read them one after another or the similarities will bore you to death, but they're like having a nice cookie every so often.
But then ... I hit this point in Vittoria Cottage where Caroline (the protagonist) has trouble with the rationing board because she was keeping more than 25 hens and sent eggs to her sister in London instead of to the government, and yes, it was annoying that they fined her for a first offense when she didn't know the rules, but considering how superhumanly resigned Caroline is to everything else, it stood out as a HUGE DEAL. And then when Caroline goes to help with a premature birth, the doctor's away and oh that NHS, decreeing that there should be only one doctor to a district (presumably so that areas with no doctor can get one), they're so awful. And then the crowning moment of awkward conservatism was when Caroline reflected on how "these country people ... were very independent when things were going smoothly, some of them affected the creed of Socialism and pretended to despise 'the gentry,' but when they were in any sort of trouble they turned quite naturally to people like herself." WHOA.
It shouldn't be such a surprise, because in all the books there's a rather conservative portrayal of social class, the heroines associate with the other middle class people in their towns and the servants are always devoted to their mistresses. You expect some conservatism in sweet old stories about rural life ... but I guess I didn't expect it to be quite so blatant. But now I'm reading the third Miss Buncle book and it's bothering me because it's just all so samey. I'm hoping that this all comes from the dates the books were written - Miss Buncle 3 was written during the war and Vittoria Cottage just after it, so maybe the extra conservatism crept in as a reaction. I'll probably finish this book, but then in the future I'm going to make an effort to stick to the books from the '30s. (I don't know about the books from the '50s and '60s, I'll consider them.)
But then ... I hit this point in Vittoria Cottage where Caroline (the protagonist) has trouble with the rationing board because she was keeping more than 25 hens and sent eggs to her sister in London instead of to the government, and yes, it was annoying that they fined her for a first offense when she didn't know the rules, but considering how superhumanly resigned Caroline is to everything else, it stood out as a HUGE DEAL. And then when Caroline goes to help with a premature birth, the doctor's away and oh that NHS, decreeing that there should be only one doctor to a district (presumably so that areas with no doctor can get one), they're so awful. And then the crowning moment of awkward conservatism was when Caroline reflected on how "these country people ... were very independent when things were going smoothly, some of them affected the creed of Socialism and pretended to despise 'the gentry,' but when they were in any sort of trouble they turned quite naturally to people like herself." WHOA.
It shouldn't be such a surprise, because in all the books there's a rather conservative portrayal of social class, the heroines associate with the other middle class people in their towns and the servants are always devoted to their mistresses. You expect some conservatism in sweet old stories about rural life ... but I guess I didn't expect it to be quite so blatant. But now I'm reading the third Miss Buncle book and it's bothering me because it's just all so samey. I'm hoping that this all comes from the dates the books were written - Miss Buncle 3 was written during the war and Vittoria Cottage just after it, so maybe the extra conservatism crept in as a reaction. I'll probably finish this book, but then in the future I'm going to make an effort to stick to the books from the '30s. (I don't know about the books from the '50s and '60s, I'll consider them.)
