There are four of them -- the Misses Mallett, that is. Two, Caroline and Sophia, are no longer young, though they enjoy dressing up and still like to think of themselves as the belles of the ball and the toasts of the neighbourhood. Then there's Ruth, their beautiful, much younger half-sister, who is about thirty. And finally there is Henrietta, the young daughter of their recently deceased, impoverished ne'er-do-well brother and his even more recently deceased and embarrassingly working-class wife. Henrietta has been living in real poverty for some time until her three aunts, hearing of the loss of her mother, give her a home and an income. She soon learns how to make the best of her good looks and before long she has fallen in love. Unfortunately it is with a man who is not only married but also happens to be the person Ruth has been in love with for many years. The novel tells the story of the hopes, anxieties, disappointments and triumphs of these two women, superficially very different characters, both of whose happiness seems to depend on their gaining the love of the handsome, charming, unreliable Francis Sales.
Published in 1922, this was Emily Young's fourth novel, and the first one that Virago thought good enough to republish. The blurb on the back says it is the one of her novels that most resembles Jane Austen, a judgement with which I cannot at all agree. When I read (and loved) Young's slightly later William about a year ago, I was reminded in some ways of Pride and Prejudice, but here I found nothing remotely like Austen, either in style or in content. Well, I suppose the fact that it's partly about a young girl trying to find her way in an unfamiliar world might be reminiscent of Northanger Abbey, but there are so many differences that they far outweigh any superficial similarities.
I've read quite a few of Emily Young's novels now, and I've always admired the way she depicts family relationships. She's extremely perceptive about human beings and the ways in which they respond to the demands placed on them by the worlds which they inhabit, and to an extent you can see this perceptiveness at work in this novel. I've also always loved her irony and wit, but alas these last two things are pretty much absent from The Misses Mallett. Here, instead, everybody takes themselves rather too seriously -- Ruth, elegant, remote and pure, who has realised too late how much she is in love with Francis Sales -- Henrietta, who thinks she has inherited her father's unreliability and immorality and sees no reason why she shouldn't indulge her passion for a married man -- and Francis himself, married in a fit of pique to a woman who almost immediately has a serious accident which leaves her a pathetic bedridden invalid.
I don't think Emily Young could write a really bad novel, and there's much of interest here, but I have to agree with Simon (who liked it even less than I did) that if this was your first inroduction to Young you might never read another one. As he also says, though, the novel is almost redeemed by the wonderful character of Charles Batty, the young musician who is sure of nothing but his unswerving, though unrequited, love for Henrietta.
So -- I can't really urge you to read this, unless you love Young as much as I do in which case you'll be wanting to read everything she ever wrote. But if you do, bear in mind that here she hasn't really found her mature voice. You can still enjoy what is, after all, a quite conventional but pleasantly satisfying story with some interesting and unexpected twists and turns and an ending which, though perhaps predictable, at least leaves everyone getting what they wanted, even if they hadn't quite realised they did.
