The Rector's Daughter (Annotated)
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Review
'it is elegant and flexible, most fluently expressing every shade of human emotion' - Susan Hill 'The most exquisitely written, delicate, passionately felt and haunting book I have ever read' - Elizabeth Buchan
Product Description
Dedmayne Rectory is quietly decaying, its striped chintz and darkened rooms are a bastion of outmoded Victorian values. Here Mary has spent thirty-five years, devoting herself to her sister, now dead, and to her father, Canon Jocelyn. Although she is pitied by her neighbours for this muted existence, Mary is content. But when she meets Robert Herbert, Mary's ease is destroyed and years of suppressed emotion surface through her desire for him. First published in 1924 this novel is an impressive exploration of Mary's relationship with her father, of her need for Robert and the way in which, through each, she comes to a clearer understanding of love.
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First Sentence
DEDMAYNE is an insignificant village in the Eastern counties. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
DEDMAYNE is an insignificant village in the Eastern counties. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
36 of 36 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'Mary thought of her busy, happy life. She compared it to Kathy's fullness; it seemed starvation...'
This beautifully written, minutely observed novel will break your heart (and if you are a middle-aged spinster make you thankful that you are unmarried in the 21st century and not in the years after the Great War.)
Mary, the rector's daughter, is only in her mid-30s, dowdy, devotedly loyal to her chilly Victorian father, determinedly cheerful. Her quiet, mostly contented life is shattered when she falls in love; she is held in the man's arms and kissed ... but only once. When her father dies, Mary's life expands and, in a way, she blossoms; she is embraced into the world of Unnecessary Females - all those busy, active, organising but unfulfilled English spinsters of her generation.
But just as fascinating and beautifully observed is the unsuitable marriage of brash, thick-skinned Kathy and the austere clergyman who - on the face of it - should have married Mary.
Flora M Mayor knew from experience the heart-aching loneliness of the unmarried and childless; over 30, she was devastated when her own fiance died of typhoid /malaria as they were making their wedding plans.
Her book will haunt you.
Postscript, Sept 2009: I see that Susan Hill, in her thought-provoking and very readable new book Howards End is on the Landing (a book about books and reading) has placed The Rector's Daughter in her final 40 of books that she couldn't live without. Which places it in some very fine company indeed.
This beautifully written, minutely observed novel will break your heart (and if you are a middle-aged spinster make you thankful that you are unmarried in the 21st century and not in the years after the Great War.)
Mary, the rector's daughter, is only in her mid-30s, dowdy, devotedly loyal to her chilly Victorian father, determinedly cheerful. Her quiet, mostly contented life is shattered when she falls in love; she is held in the man's arms and kissed ... but only once. When her father dies, Mary's life expands and, in a way, she blossoms; she is embraced into the world of Unnecessary Females - all those busy, active, organising but unfulfilled English spinsters of her generation.
But just as fascinating and beautifully observed is the unsuitable marriage of brash, thick-skinned Kathy and the austere clergyman who - on the face of it - should have married Mary.
Flora M Mayor knew from experience the heart-aching loneliness of the unmarried and childless; over 30, she was devastated when her own fiance died of typhoid /malaria as they were making their wedding plans.
Her book will haunt you.
Postscript, Sept 2009: I see that Susan Hill, in her thought-provoking and very readable new book Howards End is on the Landing (a book about books and reading) has placed The Rector's Daughter in her final 40 of books that she couldn't live without. Which places it in some very fine company indeed.
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
From its opening pages, with their introduction to Dedmayne and to Mary, this book takes over my heart. The setting, the characters and the time are so exquisitely portrayed that they make this a book to live in, so that you can touch and smell the landscape and feel all of Mary's emotions as she falls in love and yet is doomed to live on as the rector's spinster daughter, performing all the relentless duties which that role involves.
Although I know this novel almost by heart, I always find something new on every re-reading - most recently I have realised how minutely FM Mayor examines the marriage of Mr Herbert and Kathy and I am always moved by the other relationships which are explored: father and daughter, servant and mistress, rector and parish.
There is also gentle humour in this novel and occasionally a curious sense of understatement, so that it is at times like a passionate version of "Cranford" with men added.
FM Mayor's prose has not a word out of place and her descriptions of the East Anglian countryside are reminiscent of Emily Bronte's evocations of Yorkshire.
To re-phrase a line from this most perfect of novels:
God bless Flora for ever for having given us this gem.
Although I know this novel almost by heart, I always find something new on every re-reading - most recently I have realised how minutely FM Mayor examines the marriage of Mr Herbert and Kathy and I am always moved by the other relationships which are explored: father and daughter, servant and mistress, rector and parish.
There is also gentle humour in this novel and occasionally a curious sense of understatement, so that it is at times like a passionate version of "Cranford" with men added.
FM Mayor's prose has not a word out of place and her descriptions of the East Anglian countryside are reminiscent of Emily Bronte's evocations of Yorkshire.
To re-phrase a line from this most perfect of novels:
God bless Flora for ever for having given us this gem.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a find! Just when you were wishing Jane Austen had written more, this book has a renaissance and fills the void. A charming book; well-observed and a reminder to us emancipated women how subserviant and hamstrung by the rules of society women were in that age.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Neglected classic
Considered a 'neglected classic', this is meaningful but understated. Another novel demonstrating the inferior/subordinate role women have played to fathers and husbands throughout... Read more
Published 24 days ago by Sally-W
Maybe one to reread?
This book came well recommended, so I was surprised to have been slightly disappointed.I did not take to the heroine, sadly, nor did I find her and her father very credible... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Mrs. M. Connolly
Engrossing story of repression and unfulfilled hopes
I soon became engrossed in this old-fashioned story of Mary Jocelyn, daughter of the ageing Canon Jocelyn in the Norfolk village of Dedmayne. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Suzie
The Rector's Daughter - a dull offering
I'm not sure who I feel more sorry for, the Rectors daughter for her dreary, dull life, or myself, for having purchsed the book and read it! Read more
Published 22 months ago by EarthlingrulesOK
A truly great if little-known novel
Although on the surface this novel is just a sad tale about the wasted and suppressed life of an intelligent young woman at the start of the Twentieth Century, the technique and... Read more
Published on 21 April 2010 by Ivan
A gentle Englishwoman's quiet life
For a deep insight into the character of a modest but passionate daughter- a single woman serving her family with a strong sense of duty who falls in love, suffers and triumphs -... Read more
Published on 16 Feb 2010 by Hilary Jayne
Sad and frustrating tale of doomed love
This book was first published in 1924, but deserves a review from yours truly after featuring on Radio 4's Forgotten Classics series from Mariella Frostrup's Open Book programme... Read more
Published on 15 Dec 2009 by J. Coulton
A disappointment
I bought a copy of The Rector's Daughter after hearing Susan Hill putting forward the novel as a `neglected classic' on Radio 4's Open Book programme. Read more
Published on 15 Dec 2009 by LCL
A 1920's love story
I loved this book. It is quiet, understated, and very much of its period, the 1920s. It is an easy read, and not very long. Read more
Published on 20 Oct 2009 by Bookworm
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