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=                           Lolly_Willowes                           =
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                            Introduction
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'Lolly Willowes; or The Loving Huntsman' is a novel by English writer
Sylvia Townsend Warner, her first, published in 1926. It has been
described as an early feminist classic. It is a satirical social novel
with fantastic elements, set in England at the beginning of the 20th
century. It deals with the social restrictions on women as well as
alternative ways of living during the interwar period.


                              Synopsis
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'Lolly Willowes' is a satirical comedy of manners incorporating
elements of fantasy. It is the story of a middle-aged spinster who
moves to a country village to escape her controlling relatives and
takes up the practice of witchcraft. The novel opens at the turn of
the twentieth century, with Laura Willowes moving from Somerset to
London to live with her brother Henry and his family. The move comes
in the wake of the death of Laura's father, Everard, with whom she
lived at the family home, Lady Place. Laura's other brother, James,
moves into Lady Place with his wife and his young son, Titus, with the
intention to continue the family's brewing business. However, James
dies suddenly of a heart attack and Lady Place is rented out, with the
view that Titus, once grown up, will return to the home and run the
business.

After twenty years of being a live-in aunt Laura finds herself feeling
increasingly stifled both by her obligations to the family and by
living in London. When shopping for flowers on the Moscow Road, Laura
decides she wishes to move to the Chiltern Hills and, buying a guide
book and map to the area, she picks the village of Great Mop as her
new home. Against the wishes of her extended family, Laura moves to
Great Mop and finds herself entranced and overwhelmed by the chalk
hills and beech woods. Though sometimes disturbed by strange noises at
night, she settles in and befriends her landlady and a poultry farmer.

After a while, Titus decides to move from his lodgings in Bloomsbury
to Great Mop and be a writer, rather than managing the family
business. Titus's renewed social and domestic reliance on Laura make
her feel frustrated that even living in the Chilterns she cannot
escape the duties expected of women. When out walking, she makes a
pact with a force that she takes to be Satan, to be free from such
duties. On returning to her lodgings, she discovers a kitten, whom she
takes to be Satan's emissary, and names him Vinegar, in reference to
an old picture of witches' familiars. Subsequently, her landlady takes
her to a Witches' Sabbath attended by many of the villagers.

Titus is plagued with misadventures, such as having his milk
constantly curdle and falling into a nest of wasps. Finally, he
proposes marriage to a London visitor, Pandora Williams, who has
treated his wasp stings, and the two retreat to London. Laura,
relieved, meets Satan at Mulgrave Folly and tells him that women are
like 'sticks of dynamite' waiting to explode and that all women are
witches even 'if they never do anything with their witchcraft, they
know it's there - ready!' The novel ends with Laura acknowledging that
her new freedom comes at the expense of knowing that she belongs to
the 'satisfied but profoundly indifferent ownership' of Satan.


                               Themes
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The portrayal of Laura Willowes' rebellion against the limitations of
her life circumstances reflects a societal shift in gender roles at
the time the novel was written. In the interwar period, the question
of women's position moved to the center of national discourse. On one
hand, the introduction of women's suffrage recognized women's claim to
participation in political public life. On the other hand, women faced
considerable pressure to return to traditional role distributions
after the war. The tasks taken over outside the domestic sphere during
the war were to be reserved exclusively for returning men again. Laura
connects the reduction of her personality to her function as Aunt
Lolly with the move to London. She perceives the urban existence,
characterized by domesticity and compulsory heterosexuality, as
constraining and oppressive.


                       Biographical parallels
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Laura Willowes  and Sylvia Townsend Warner share several
characteristics: the eventual retreat to a rural environment after
years in London but also the rejection of a conventional life design.
At the time the novel was written, Townsend Warner was having an
affair with the older, married Percy Buck. While the relationship
itself, according to Townsend Warner's diary entries, often gave cause
for frustration on an emotional level, it at least guaranteed
liberation from traditional female roles in terms of motherhood and
hostess duties. It is not inconceivable that Townsend Warner saw in
the design of a life free from family entanglements a preview of her
own future. The general mood of the novel with regard to this
perspective gives the impression of anticipation.

Townsend Warner's later relationship with Valentine Ackland suggests a
lesbian interpretation of certain passages. This aspect becomes most
evident in the description of a witches' Sabbath to which Laura is
invited. Various villagers ask Laura to dance but meet with little
reciprocation. Laura is reminded of the boring balls of her youth and
disappointedly notes that such conventions cannot arouse her interest
even in the context of a witches' Sabbath. Only the dance with the
young village beauty Emily tears Laura from her apathy for a moment.
When a lock of Emily's red hair comes loose and brushes across Laura's
face, Laura feels a tingling all over her body. Laura, who hates
balls, finds she could dance until exhaustion with Emily.


                                Form
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The novel begins as a realistic narrative and eventually gains a
fantastic dimension. When Laura, pressured by Titus, gives vent to her
soul during a walk through the woods, and calls out her denial of
social expectations into the wilderness, she conjures up the devil.
Through her word, he becomes reality. The devil thus becomes the
embodiment of the methods by which discourses establish realities,
define their meaning, and model reactions. He symbolizes the
complicated interplay between text and reality.

On a formal level, the novel ends not only as fantasy but also as
polemic. While Laura's thoughts are previously predominantly rendered
in the form of free indirect speech, on the last pages she explicitly
formulates her worldview in detail. While Laura initially just wants
her peace and shows no great curiosity for the lives of the other
village women, she now identifies with other women in her situation
and places herself in a line of witches - like her, wives and sisters
of respectable men - who see in the pact with the devil the best
chance for freedom, self-determination, and adventure.


                    Position in literary history
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Laura Willowes' rejection of her confined and heteronomous existence
in the city in favour of a new life in harmony with nature in a
village full of witches corresponds to the contemporary interest in a
return to an earth-bound, rural way of life. Similar themes can also
be found in the works of Mary Webb and D.H. Lawrence. Laura's process
of self-discovery under the guidance of a satanic hunter shows
parallels to Connie Chatterley's sexual awakening through Mellors.

Literature with fantastic elements was very popular in the 1920s.
Further examples of this trend are David Garnett's "Lady Into Fox"
(1922), Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" (1928), and Rebecca West's "Harriet
Hume" (1929).


                        Reception and legacy
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The novel was well received by critics on its publication. In France
it was shortlisted for the Prix Femina and in the USA it was the very
first Book Of The Month for the Book Club.

Until the 1960s, the manuscript of Lolly Willowes was displayed in the
New York Public Library.

In a 1999 introduction to the novel's republication by New York Review
Books, Alison Lurie wrote that "a woman who refuses the 'Aunt Lolly'
role is, in the view of conventional society, a kind of witch, even if
she does no evil," tying the novel to Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of
One's Own', noting that Warner "had spoken for [such women] first."

Similarly, in her 2012 review of the novel, Lucy Scholes takes note of
the feminist focus of the novel, as well as the fact that it predates
the better known 'A Room of One's Own': "With its clear feminist
agenda, 'Lolly Willowes' holds its own among Townsend Warner's
historical fiction, but it's also an elegantly enchanting tale that
transcends its era."

In 2014, Robert McCrum chose it as one of the 100 Best Novels in
English, for his list for 'The Guardian'.


                              See also
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* Devil in the arts and popular culture
* 'Vinegar Tom', a 1976 feminist play about witchcraft


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