Passing On by Penelope Lively

First published: 1989

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Domestic realism

Time of work: The 1980’s

Locale: Long Sydenham, a village in the Cotswolds, England

Principal Characters:

• Helen Glover, a part-time librarian in her early fifties
• Edward Glover, Helen’s younger brother
• Louise Glover Dyson, Helen’s younger sister
• Phil Dyson, Helen’s nephew and the inheritor of Dorothy’s house
• Giles Carnaby, the Glovers’ solicitor
• Ron Paget, an unscrupulous builder and developer
• Dorothy Glover, mother of Helen, Edward, and Louise

Form and Content

Passing On is the story of two middle-aged children who are struggling to free themselves of their dead mother’s malicious influence. In their attempt to understand current circumstances, Helen and Edward, who are almost fifty when the novel opens, recall many earlier events in their lives. The constant juxtaposition of contemporary action with memory emphasizes how isolated Helen and Edward have become. They have lapsed into dependency on their mother and each other, and they have ignored the changes and demands of the outside world.

Helen, who is working as a part-time librarian, has become immersed in books. As a child, she viewed reading as a way to escape any confrontation with her mother, but the habit developed into a genuine love of all types of literature. Only after her mother’s death does Helen recognize that her fascination with books has been a way of defying Dorothy, who is hostile to education in any form. Ignorant and opinionated, Dorothy sees reading as a waste of time and an excuse for inaction.

Edward retreats from conflict by maintaining vigilant observation of the Britches. An amateur naturalist, he keeps detailed records of the changes that occur over the years in the woods. Reviewing his notes, Edward finds little that is truly meaningful because he refuses to write anything personal. His indignation about the exploitation of the natural world and his deep sympathy for endangered species are genuinely felt, but they also indicate the extent to which he has misplaced his own emotional life. His habit of avoiding close relationships takes a huge toll by the end of the novel; he has nightmares, experiences periods of insomnia, and behaves spitefully toward Helen, who has always protected him. Finally, his unnecessary struggle to repress his sexuality and need for intimacy erupts into a crisis that could threaten both his and Helen’s future.

The novel is about many of the practical matters that follow a death. Inheriting the Britches, Helen and Edward must decide whether to sell the property or to continue to resist the pressure of Ron Paget, an unscrupulous builder who wants to develop the site for new housing. They must face, for the first time, their financial state. Neither makes enough money to live elsewhere or to remodel the aging family home to contemporary standards. Unless they sell the Britches, they will be trapped in the same circumstances that have immobilized them for years, a plight, Helen and Edward realize, that their mother has intended.

Necessary legal considerations bring together Helen and Giles Carnaby, a smooth, glib solicitor with a reputation for womanizing. Helen recognizes his flaws and tells herself—in Dorothy’s voice—that Giles is simply toying with her. Nevertheless, she falls in love with him and finds herself eagerly waiting for his next phone call, postcard, or chance visit. Giles is a master of flirtation who enjoys his effect on women but never intends to develop any relationship seriously. When Helen at last challenges his behavior, she recovers a large measure of self-respect and no longer hears her mother’s voice. By refusing to let herself be manipulated, Helen begins to move beyond her mother’s dominance.

Two incidents bring home to Helen the full extent of her mother’s control. While cleaning out an oak chest of Dorothy’s, Helen finds a dress of her own which Dorothy had hidden. Helen remembers the honey-colored muslin as her only attractive dress and remembers, too, Dorothy’s offhand explanation that the dress had been destroyed at the cleaners. This was devastating to Helen at eighteen; at fifty-two, she is almost sick at this revelation of her mother’s mean-spiritedness. Her next discovery is even worse: In an old jacket of Dorothy’s, Helen finds a letter addressed to herself. Written nearly twenty-five years earlier, the letter is from a former beau of Helen’s who seeks to be reconciled after a foolish argument. Helen realizes that this goodwill gesture would have made all the difference in their relationship and that her mother undermined the possibility of Helen’s marriage by keeping the letter. While Helen blames her mother’s evil nature, she is also forced to acknowledge her own passivity. Helen’s self-honesty is a refreshing antidote to Dorothy’s deceptive manipulations.

Edward finds his mother’s influence harder to come to terms with than does Helen. With less direct cause to rage at Dorothy, he turns much of his anger against himself or his sisters. He mocks Helen’s relationship with Giles, fusses at her attempts to cook new foods, and resists all attempts to improve the house. Inwardly, he howls over his wasted life. Forced by his mother’s death to face his own mortality, Edward is propelled to the edge of a breakdown that culminates in an act that nearly destroys him: He makes sexual overtures to Ron Paget’s son, who has come to do gardening for Helen. Horrified by what he has done, Edward tries to kill himself, but he is saved by Helen and Phil. Recovering from an overdose, Edward feels drained but prepared to get on with his life, freed from his mother’s oppressive presence and the sexual taboos of her generation.

In contrast to Helen and Edward’s passivity is the ceaseless activity and worry of Louise, their younger sister. Louise has also been scarred by her mother’s brutal attempts at control, but she rebelled in adolescence and escaped to London, never to return home. Her life, however, is defined by a series of emotional upheavals that threaten her marriage and her relationship with her children. Like her mother, Louise can be blunt and tactless with Helen and Edward, but her remarks are never calculated or uttered with malicious intent. By the end of the novel, she too escapes her mother’s legacy by mending her relationship with Phil, who decides to go back to London and return to school.

Context

Penelope Lively is a brilliant practitioner of the domestic novel. A literary genre well established by Jane Austen and practiced by twentieth century writers such as Barbara Pym, domestic realism focuses on the lives of women at home. Often exposing the economic and social inequities facing women, the domestic novel attempts to recognize the realistic hardships and accomplishments of characters who typify the times in which they live but are not represented in the public sphere.

In most of her novels for adults, Lively, who has also written extensively for children, addresses the concerns of women in middle-class circumstances who are going through a period of change. The heroines of nineteenth century novels would often work to achieve marriage proposals, but Lively’s characters have different aspirations, reflecting the wider choices available to today’s women. In Passing On, Helen develops a greater sense of self-worth by withdrawing from a demeaning relationship. In Lively’s novel Cleopatra’s Sister (1993), the most developed female character recognizes the importance of trying to balance a career with an intimate relationship.

Although her work is not overtly feminist, Lively demonstrates great sensitivity to the roles women play in twentieth century society, and she is one of the few contemporary writers to examine the complexities of parenting from both a female and a male perspective. She demonstrates great skill at revealing the emotional background to human action, as well as delineating its historical context. A historian by academic training, Lively often uses her novels to explore the relationship between individuals and the historical moment. Her most experimental treatment of history occurs in City of the Mind (1991), which uses London’s architecture as a device to recount episodes from different periods of the city’s development.

Despite having won Britain’s most prestigious annual literary award, the Booker Prize, for Moon Tiger (1987) and having received high praise from book reviewers, Lively has been the subject of little critical analysis. Because of her emphasis on realism, she may not invite as much scholarly attention as do writers who challenge familiar novelistic devices and structures. By choosing to write about subjects that are within ordinary experience, however, and by doing so with talent and insight, Lively is contributing to the rich tradition of literature by and about women in a new way.

Bibliography

Bausch, Richard. The New York Times Book Review, February 11, 1990, 12. A review that focuses on Lively’s scathing portrayal of Dorothy Glover, typing her as a nearly Dickensian villain. Bausch praises Lively’s gift of capturing what takes place in the most private moments, especially the small nuances of emotion.

Birch, Dinah. The London Review of Books 11 (April 29, 1989): 20. A review that praises the particularity with which the characters of Helen and Edward are drawn but suggests that the conclusion of the novel is unconvincing.

Le Mesurier, Nicholas. “A Lesson in History: The Presence of the Past in the Novels of Penelope Lively.” The New Welsh Review 2 (Spring, 1990): 36-38. A brief discussion of the relationship between the individual and the past in Lively’s novels. Mentions also the changing historical perception of children.

Moran, Mary Hurley. “Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger: A feminist ‘History of the World.’” Frontiers 11 (1990): 89-95. An article that notes the lack of scholarly interest in Lively and identifies Lively’s place in the developing tradition of the feminist novel. Calling the novel a “subversive attack on established assumptions about reality,” Moran demonstrates how the heroine attacks linear notions of history and challenges male expectations of female behavior.

Walker, J. K. L. The Times Literary Supplement, April 7, 1989, 363. A review that assesses Lively’s ability to write about apparently dull characters and make them interesting and sympathetic.