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Raymond Williams identifies the ‘intense, singular narrative of unsettlement,
homelessness, solitude and impoverished independence’ as key to modernism.
Explore these themes in one text.
One of the totems of Christian belief is the notion that God is omnipresent,
hereby preventing believers from ever being truly alone. However, in Sylvia
Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes, it is not God who is presented as omnipresent
for Laura, but Satan. This is just one of the ways in which Satan fills the ‘God void’ in
Laura’s life, along with saving her from her family’s oppression and guiding her
towards freedom from them. This rejection of Christian mores appears to be an
exploration of post-war disillusionment with Christianity, which is further highlighted
by the novel’s ambiguous stance on Satan.
The protagonist’s alienation from the church is pronounced throughout the
novel. Laura is “not in any way religious” (52) and “shuddered” at her pious sister-inlaw Caroline’s habit of folding clothes because “the graveclothes were folded in the
tomb” (51). Only Caroline’s visit to Great Mop prompts Laura to venture inside the
village’s church, and only then for the purpose of sight-seeing. During this, Laura
takes a liking to a carving of “one foolish Virgin... [who] stood a little apart from the
group” (139), implying her own desire to be separated from God. In breaking with
God, she breaks with family tradition, as “religion was something to be preserved: it
was part of the Willowes life” (53). As the novel centres around Laura’s desire to
escape her family, her dismissal of Christianity is a manifestation of this; though
Caroline and Henry can control her London lifestyle, they cannot control her beliefs –
and so she achieves freedom in one facet of her life.
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Her solitude is emphasised throughout the novel, and her desire for it prompts
the novel’s progression. As a child she does not “have the companionship of girls of
her own age” (17) and is “nonchalant” (15) when tied to a tree by her brothers and
forgotten – ironically, the tree in question is a “Bon Chrétien pear tree” (16),
translating as ‘good Christian’. Even as she matures, she “disliked going out” and
“seldom attended any... parties” (25), and her move to Great Mop comes as a result
of wanting to be independent as “a single, middle-aged woman with an income of her
own” (102). ‘Solitude’ is effectively synonymous with ‘freedom’ for Laura, who
pejoratively considers her family her “moorings” (72), hence its importance to her.
“Her battle for what might be called ‘a room of her own’” (Poulos Nesbitt, 451)
overrides her brother’s will and the financial difficulties resulting from his rash
investment of her inheritance.
However, the implied solitude Laura eventually enjoys when exploring
Buckinghamshire is misleading. On several of her walks, nature is personified
through its communication with her. The wind engages in this – “‘Hoo! You devil,’
said the wind. ‘Have you come out to join us?’” (107) – and she appears to seek the
approval of the woods more than the people in the village. One reason she resents
her nephew Titus for living in Great Mop is because “the woods judged her by her
company, and hushed their talk as she passed by with Titus” (161). Although they
oppress her as her family do – “She heard the mutter of heavy foliage. ‘No!’ the
woods seemed to say, ‘No! We will not let you go.’” (165) – it appears to be a more
welcome oppression, as she continues to prefer the ‘company’ of the woods to that
of her nephew.
Such an emphasis on the nature’s personification could infer that Laura is
hallucinating, until it is revealed that “couched within the wood... had lain the Prince
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of Darkness” (170). From here on, she realises that Satan has been following her for
years, “near at hand but out of sight” (177). This phrase has parallels with the Bible
verse “Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off?” (King James
Bible, Jer. 23:23), stressing the novel’s replacement of God with Satan. The
replacement is explicitly demonstrated through the fact that Mr Jones, Great Mop’s
resident clergyman, is a warlock, and in league with Satan.
Satan also fills some of the duties that the Christian God would usually
undertake. He manifests himself in order to help Laura in a time of need, as God
does – “[God] will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry,
and will save them” (Psalms, 145:19) – and the only payment he requests is that she
gives her life to him, arguably following the Christian model of salvation through
belief, that “by grace are ye saved through faith... it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8). This
Satanic salvation is considered in the text, for “As Laura muses, there “remaineth a
rest” for the people of Satan as for those of God” (Shin, 723).
While these parallels are important, it is similarly important to note that Satan
remains a sinister and semi-disempowered alternative to God. Despite Laura naively
considering him a “black knight... succouring decayed gentlewomen” (234), Satan is
“a representative of a larger entity with motivations that are not entirely predictable”
(Poulos Nesbitt, 465), betrayed by details such as “a slightly malevolent smile”
(Townsend Warner, 223). While he appears to have been omnipresent throughout
Laura’s life, albeit as a hidden presence, he is denied full omnipresence through his
corporeality, as “It is clear that if God has a body then it must be the case that he is
spatially locatable... if a body is located at a certain place... then there are places
where it is not. But if a being is omnipresent, then there is no place where it is not”
(Dyck, 86).
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Essentially, Laura’s journey is representative of that of many post-war Britons.
As Laura breaks with the traditional church to seek her own beliefs, so too did
enough Britons for there to be a “a decline in church attendance” (Fekete, 4). This
was for several reasons. There was a collective disillusionment with faith following
the war, as “After the Great War many survivors of WWI felt that ‘a loving God’ had
died in the trenches” (Karpova, 2), but the 1920s also saw the rise of Modernism,
reform and radicalism, leading many to feel that the church was too staid and
outdated an institution for the modern age. If the former explanation is to inform a
reading of the text, however, it would be that the figure of Satan is actually that of
God; albeit a twisted one who allowed the atrocities of war. Perhaps, then, the text is
an allegory for an increasing consciousness among the public of the dubious
goodness of God.
I do not believe that Townsend Warner advocates Satanism within the text,
despite the fact that she paints it in a more engaging light than she does Christianity.
Instead, she is recording the disenchantment and cynicism surrounding spirituality in
the 1920s, and exposing flaws within the accepted idea of God.
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Works Referenced
Dyck, Grace M. "Omnipresence and Incorporeality." Religious Studies: 13.1 (March,
1977): 85-91. JSTOR. Web. 19 Feb. 2012.
Fekete, Peter. "Social Trends in Britain During the 1920s." Black's Academy Co. Ltd,
2003. PDF.
The Holy Bible, Authorized King James Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009.
Print.
Karpova, Lisa. "Capitalism and Christianity in British Society." PRAVDA.Ru. 30 Sept.
2011. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.
Poulos Nesbitt, Jennifer. “Footsteps of Red Ink: Body and Landscape in ‘Lolly
Willowes’.” Twentieth Century Literature: 49.4 (Winter, 2003): 449-471. JSTOR.
Web. 19 Feb. 2012.
Shin,
Jacqueline.
"Lolly
Willowes
and
the
Arts
of
Dispossession."
Modernism/modernity: 16.4 (November 2009): 709-725. Project Muse. Web. 20
Feb. 2012.
Townsend Warner, Sylvia. Lolly Willowes. London: Virago Press Ltd, 2000. Print.
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