A Wreath of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor

First published: 1949

Type of work: Character study

Time of work: The mid-1940’s

Locale: Abingford, a small country market town in England

Principal Characters:

• Camilla Hill, an unmarried school secretary in her thirties
• Richard Elton, a chance acquaintance with whom Camilla has a brief relationship
• Elizabeth “Liz” Nicholson, Camilla’s girlhood friend, also in her thirties
• The Reverend Arthur Nicholson, Liz’s husband and father of their infant son, Harry
• Frances Rutherford, Liz’s former governess, now a painter in her seventies, with whom Liz and Camilla spend a few weeks every summer
• Morland Beddoes, a middle-aged film director who has collected Frances’ paintings and corresponded with her for years and who comes to visit her for the first time while Liz and Camilla are on their annual visit

The Novel

For years, Canlilla Hill and Liz Nicholson have enjoyed quiet, uneventful summer holidays with Liz’s former governess, who is now a painter. Endless, idle mornings have been varied by simple domestic tasks, coffee and gossip under the mulberry tree, walks along country lanes, and shopping in the town; high points in the weeks they have spent together have been the annual fair and a picnic on a hilltop overlooking the town.

From the beginning of the novel, the three women realize that this holiday will be different from the others, though the reasons for the change appear only gradually. Superficially, the changes in each woman seem fairly obvious and undramatic: Liz is thoroughly preoccupied by motherhood and by the demands of her marriage to a busy, popular, domineering clergyman. Camilla, feeling estranged from her girlhood friend because of her new concerns and aware that her own life is dulled by uninteresting routine and by her own solitary habits and reserved nature, becomes obsessed by a handsome, vaguely sinister man whom she met at the train station. Frances is also different: she has aged noticeably in the past year; she has stopped painting delicate, tenderly sad and lovely pictures; and she is now vainly struggling to express her awareness of the violence and chaos in the heart of even everyday life. Each woman feels some disappointment in herself, in the other women, and in life itself.

The events of the novel form a pattern in which the male characters repeatedly enter and leave the scene, each participating briefly in the life of one of the women before returning to his home (in Arthur’s case) or to the Griffin hotel (in the case of the other two), only to reappear and impinge once again on the lives of one or more of the other characters.

The book opens with an act of violence and turmoil. A shabby, unnamed, almost unnoticed man leaps from the footbridge over the railroad tracks as the train passes underneath. Shortly afterward, sitting in the same compartment, Camilla and Richard become acquainted. Camilla is so shocked by the incident they have just witnessed that she fears it will affect the future in some way. She fails to notice some odd elements in the conversation and behavior of the man, who both attracts and repels her.

The events involving Liz and her husband Arthur are by contrast relatively uncomplicated and ordinary. Arthur appears unexpectedly to ask that Liz return home with him overnight in order to make a speech at a church affair. Much against her inclination, she agrees, then admits upon her return that she has had a nice time. Arthur appears again when the fair takes place and arrives once more to join the others on the annual picnic. With each visit, unremarkable in itself, the marriage of the two seems to grow in strength and closeness.

Also making a marked difference in this holiday is the arrival of Morland Beddoes. Lodged at the Griffin, where Richard is also staying, Morland walks back and forth every day, gradually endearing himself to the women and reassuring Frances, who had dreaded his coming, but who now realizes that the opinions of others distract and silence the artist. Morland’s effect on all the characters except Richard is the result, not of anything he does, but of the kind of person he is: self-effacing, concerned, compassionate.

Ashamed and humiliated by her infatuation with Richard, Camilla realizes that she is using him as a weapon against Liz, of whom she is jealous. In turn, Richard is using Camilla to help him fight his fear, loneliness, and despair. He is never part of the group going in and out of the cottage. He and Camilla have a few drinks together, climb to the Saxon earthworks, and share a wretched dinner. He asks her to marry him, but he is seen by Camilla, Liz, and Morland on separate occasions in the company of women who are clearly of a very different type from Camilla: loose, pretty, common.

Having explored the town, Richard selects a house which he pretends to Camilla was his boyhood home. He continues the fantasy as they talk with the present owner and walk through the house; clearly, he enjoys Camilla’s embarrassment, distaste, and distress for him. In the last incident, Richard and Camilla are caught in a storm and seek shelter in an abandoned house. He confesses to her that he is a murderer and, realizing that she is not going to help him, lets her go after thoroughly frightening her, something he has previously told her he has enjoyed doing throughout his life. The story ends somewhat ambiguously, with Richard at the train station, echoing the opening scene, and Camilla meeting Morland on the way back to the cottage.

The Characters

Because each of the six main characters is such a distinct individual, so sharply drawn, the interplay between them is fascinating even though the events in their lives are in themselves of relatively minor significance. Portrayed with precision and restraint, each one is revealed primarily through dialogue and inner reflection, but the author varies her method of characterization by such devices as having Liz, the youngest, say almost everything she thinks and feels, often contradicting herself—she is warmhearted, impulsive, easily disappointed, easily pleased—while Frances, on the other hand, so absorbed in her work that she rarely speaks at any length, is portrayed through reflection and meditation, so that what she leaves unspoken she expresses in her thoughts. This method of characterization is particularly effective in Frances’ case because she is both reclusive and sharply analytical, observant, and passionately dedicated to her work.

Morland Beddoes is the character Elizabeth Taylor chooses to present primarily through her own description of him: the quiet way he works and lives, the advantage that others take of his sympathetic and generous nature. Thus, his almost immediate and total involvement with the other characters is entirely credible and consistent. He is also given to introspection, and it is not long before he realizes that Camilla is unexpectedly important to him, though his devotion to Frances and her paintings is by no means diminished; his love for Camilla is of another kind. As Camilla begins to realize Morland’s goodness and her desire for his approval, the sad and shameful episode involving Richard comes to an end. Camilla reveals aspects of her complex self through what she says to each of the characters; she is by turns prim and passionate, sensitive, considerate, isolated, self-contained, witty and candid.

The reader comes to know Arthur especially through what others say about him, not always kindly, yet despite his predilection for titled ladies and his skillful handling of church affairs, his vanity, his arrogance, and his insecurities, he is sincere in his love of Liz and shows the capacity to grow and change.

Richard is the only character without appealing qualities, a possible flaw in his portrayal, but as he is the one real outsider, and as his end is presaged from the beginning, his particular presentation might also be seen as intentional. Violent, mendacious, manipulative, cruel, and egotistical, he is unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. His background, manners, and values are totally at variance with those of everyone else. He is not melodramatic—he could easily have been made so—but again Taylor’s portrayal of him is controlled and understated, thus making him more menacing and alienated than he might otherwise have appeared.

Critical Context

The author of more than a dozen novels and short-story collections, Elizabeth Taylor was recognized in her lifetime as a distinguished writer. In her sense of irony, her humor, her interest in human relationships, her careful plot structure, and especially in the grace and precision of her style, Taylor is one of the few writers who can be seen as directly descended from Jane Austen. Like the earlier writer, Taylor is perhaps not universally appealing, one critic having called her “a pastel stylist.” She does not, however, ignore the violence that pervades life; the artist Frances is particularly affected by this realization, but dramatic action is limited to a murder that took place before the book begins and to ambiguous, symbolic suicides in the first and final chapters.

It is continuous introspection combined with pointed, concise dialogue that constitutes Taylor’s narrative form rather than more direct conflict and confrontation. This somewhat oblique and restrained form has led some critics to find the characters in Taylor’s novels lacking in full-blooded reality; one critic called them “interior creations.” Undeniably they are that, but many critics admire Taylor’s stylistic grace, analytical mind, and profound understanding of people. When A Wreath of Roses was published in 1949, Taylor had already written three widely admired novels and had a devoted group of readers, one of whom spoke of her as “a real novelist . . . with the kind of unfoolable mind that invented the novel in the first place.”

Bibliography

Austen, Richard. “The Novels of Elizabeth Taylor,” in Commonweal. LXII (June 10, 1955), pp. 258-259.

Barr, Donald. “Texture of Experience,” in The New York Times Book Review. March 13, 1949, p. 4.

Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor, 1985.

Liddell, Robert. “The Novels of Elizabeth Taylor,” in A Review of English Literature. I (April, 1960), pp. 54-61.