I will not Serve -Eveline Mahyère (1958)/ Spinster -Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1958)

This year the Librarything Virago readers group, which I have mentioned from time to time in the past, are hosting a series of monthly themed reads. This month the theme has been nuns, teachers and governesses – and there are plenty of those in the literature beloved of VMC readers. I have managed to read two books for this month’s theme – and I had intended to review them before now, but that hasn’t happened. So I am glad I am managing to squeeze in a double review post to the end of the month.

The books I chose were I Will not Serve by Eveline Mahyère translated from the French by Antonia White (a wonderful vmc novelist herself) and Spinster by New Zealand author Sylvia Ashton-Warner (not to be confused with Sylvia Townsend Warner). The first is a novel about the relationship between a pupil and a teacher (and soon to become nun) and the second is about a teacher of mainly Māori children in a small New Zealand town. Two fairly different novels, yet both fitted the theme perfectly, and both coincidentally first published the same year.

I Will not Serve – Eveline Mahyère translated by Antonia White

Sylvie is a seventeen year old schoolgirl due to take her Baccalaureate at the convent school of Sainte-Thérèse. She is an impetuous, rebellious young woman, an unbeliever who sees God as her rival. Three months before her crucial exams she is expelled from the school, for Sylvie has fallen passionately in love with her teacher, Julienne. Julienne, a former architecture student is setting out on the path to becoming a nun – and it is especially from this suffocation (as she see it) that Sylvie wants to save her.

So Sylvie returns home – from where she writes imploring, adoring letters to Julienne, refusing to forget her, and forcing Julienne to enter into a correspondence. The novel is written in both first and third person narratives, Sylvie’s letters and journals giving the reader a very intimate, intense perspective, before moving to a third person narrative, which changes the perspective. The first few letters Sylvie writes go unanswered, but she is persistent – obsessive in her pursuit.  

It is the tone of these letters that is immediately striking – the hectic, overblown nature of the sentiment – it smacks of youthful obsession, all very of the moment. Mahyère’s portrait of this troubled young woman is quite brilliant.

“I’m frightened. I’m frightened of everything you’ve never told me, of what you dream about when you sit at the organ, when you go to your Gregorian Chant Choral Society, or even simply when you’re getting up in the morning to go off to those classrooms all adorned with revolting little plaster statues of Sainte-Thérèse.”

She writes begging Julienne to meet her, making it almost impossible for her former teacher to refuse. In the meantime Sylvie encounters the fashionable bohemianism of 1950s Paris, frequenting jazz clubs and bars, she spends much of her time with her best friend Albine, and her cousin Claude who has been pursuing Albine with little success.

Julienne agrees to meet Sylvie, more than once – but Julienne is set on her path, she is quite ambivalent to Sylvie and her feelings, and this becomes hard for Sylvie to take. Sylvie’s moods become more and more erratic as she moves from ecstasy one minute to the depths of despair the next.

The novella ends with a desperate act – that the reader feels coming from the start, and although Sylvie is not the most sympathetic character the reader can’t help but feel sympathy in some way for this overwrought young woman.

The story of Eveline Mahyère herself is a sad one, and one wonders how much of Sylvie was in Eveline, for a few months after she wrote this her only novel, she took her own life. The novel was published posthumously a year later.

Spinster – Sylvia Ashton-Warner

Sylvia Ashton-Warner was herself a teacher of little Māori children – she taught for many years, and like the teacher in this fictionalised account developed a psychological approach to the teaching of reading. Her method focused on a key vocabulary which would be different for each child – depending upon what their interests and experiences were, what was going on in their little lives at that moment. The development of this technique comes about two thirds of the way through the novel – and really fascinated me, as someone who has worked with children for a long time.

Spinster is the story of Anna, a spinster teacher of young children in a small New Zealand town. The children she teaches are mainly Māori but there are a few white children too. She takes the infant class – and their classroom is an old prefab building across from the main school building where the older children are taught.

Anna is a passionate woman, though she is unsure of herself around men, she tries to make the best of herself on those days when she will be seeing the men in the school – the headteacher and the other junior teacher, Paul. However Anna is really only fully at ease with herself when she is her garden, or in the small back room in the house near the school where she lives. As the novel opens, Anna is having to take a little drink of brandy in the mornings to get herself out of the door and down the road to school – for she often struggles with her role of teacher, and doubts her own abilities. However, she does adore her ‘little ones’ and longs to fill their minds.

Anna enters into a rather odd relationship with Paul – the other teacher at the school – he is several years younger than Anna – there is a sense of her continually holding back, which is more than just sexual. In her mind she returns to a relationship she once had which was never consummated, grieving for the children she might have conceived had it been.

For Anna the teacher, the shadow of the inspector looms large. He visits the school on a few occasions, and it always seems to send Anna into a mild panic. This made me smile, how little things have changed it seems.

“‘Mr W. W. J Abercrombie, senior inspector of Primary Schools’ begins the Head portentously at morning tea…

‘Don’t say that terrible word! Don’t speak like that in front of a woman!’

‘The new Senior inspector,’ carries on the Head beginning to laugh ‘is on his rounds. Making the acquaintance of his teachers.’

‘Oh no no no, don’t say that! Oh no no, you mustn’t say that!’

Paul Vercoe looks up from his tea at me. ‘We heard it last night at an Institute meeting.’”

However it is the recreation of that prefabricated infant classroom which is the real joy of this novel. The portrait of a busy, chaotic classroom and the lively, noisy bunch of children that Anna gives her heart to – is brilliantly authentic. She gives voice to the children, recreating their speech patterns, their clamour, and infant squabbles. The children are an infectious little bunch – and Ashton-Warner recreates them with great affection.

Two quite different but fascinating novels from my collection of unread old green viragos – what treasure that old VMC list had in it.