A wealthy, bored woman with time on her hands engages in matchmaking to fill her hours…
Sound familiar? Like Austen’s Emma Woodhouse, Wilmet Forsyth of Barbara Pym’s A Glass of Blessings is handsome, clever, and rich–but she’s already married to Ronald, a dull but kind civil servant. Still, Wilmet is convinced she knows the perfect match for the dashing and mysterious Piers Longridge–namely herself. However, Piers is not all he seems and the romantic fantasies Wilmet spins for herself don’t always correspond to reality.
Although Barbara Pym’s (1913-1980) books are set during the author’s own era, her wry and pointed observations of the romantic lives of middle-class English women and men have often drawn comparison with Austen’s works, stylistically and thematically. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Paula Byrne, author of a biography of Jane Austen, is also the author of a recent biography on Pym. For more information about this biography and Pym’s life (and extra credit if you want to read a bit of it before the meeting) The Guardian did a write-up of The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym when it was published.
Join JASNA-NJ for a discussion of A Glass of Blessings, both in terms of the themes it shares with Emma and also independently as a window into the lives of 1950s British society, on Saturday, March 16th at 2pm EST over Zoom. Click anywhere in this sentence to register for the meeting.
Jane Austen Society of North America - New Jersey Region 