Literary Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I hadn’t thought about the cancer returning being a cause of Marcia’s weight loss. Yet I also don’t think it was really anorexia. She seems more unaware or forgetful about not eating than intentional about it. Her shrinking size is symbolic of her shrinking world after retirement. She isn’t getting nourishment from the world either. She is increasing isolated. She doesn’t want to socialize with her past colleagues. Her character appears to get more disheveled in outward physical appearance.

That is how I read it too. Perhaps especially the retirement ending her main tie with the world outside of herself. While this is not directly the same as Marcia's case as she was not a workaholic, I see quite frequently people who have been workaholics with negligible other interests, at a complete loss when they retire. In the worst case I recall among those very visible to me, as they were friends of my parents, the husband retired and within 6 months was dead, a few months later his wife killed herself.

I did find the place in the story of Marcia interesting in another way. The four work associates lived closed lives with their own behaviors but in this none of them interfere with others in the world or are overtly judgmental. The book itself in turn seems to not write any judgements about the behaviors of the four into its story either. But then we have Marcia who is stricken with the unwanted attentions of the social worker who won't take hints to stay out of her life.

The social worker seems to me to be the only overtly judgmental character in the book as she doesn't accept that people are entitled to live and manage their own lives, and they can refuse help or advice even if that means they starve themselves to death and collect milk bottles. She comes across to me as being a pest with a mission, which is in contrast to the non interfering behaviors of the other main characters. I felt the contrast of that relationship against that with Dr Strong, from which Marcia would like more attention, to be interesting - he performs his surgery then gets out of her life, he is not a pest.

That is not meaning I think people who appear to need help should not have help offered and available, but rather that they have a right to refuse that help and then be entitled not to be pestered.

Ultimately, if Marcia had fed herself she may have lived to deteriorate to committable mental illness but that will never be written. As it seems that a lot of Pym's writing is based on her own experiences if Marcia's relationships are based on some living model involving a pestering do-gooder.

Looking at the book overall, it has much more to it than the above for me, it is one of the better novels I have read recently.