Serena Blandish or The Difficulty Of Getting Married

by Enid Bagnold

First published in 1924 under the pseudonym of "A Lady of Quality" this second book by the author of the better-known "National Velvet" outlines the difficulties faced by a poor, candid young girl of great beauty who has no money, no savoir faire and no self confidence. The solution at which she finally arrives would hardly horrify a modern reader, and part of the interest of the outdated plot lies in the change in social attitudes in the eighty years or so since it was written.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1924

About the author

British writer of novels and plays, best known for National Velvet and The Chalk Garden.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Bag...

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was on my "find at all costs" list for a few years before I finally ran down a first US edition for $40 -- the first copy that ever floated past me. Not one of her best known works these days, partly because of the subject matter, and it was published pseudonymously...

[Carey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just too outdated for me.

[Pascale · Rating 2 out of 5]

Published some time between "The House of Mirth" and "Thank Heaven Fasting", this very bitter novel deals with the same theme: the cruel fate of young women who do not have what it takes to bag a husband in a world where remaining a spinster is economically disastrous as well as socially unacceptable. Serena is a strange creation because at the ripe age of 19, she is supposed to have already had many secret lovers, yet retained her innocence intact. Without being a sensualist, she simply finds it impossible not to yield to men who want her, thereby acquiring their scorn instead of their affection and gratitude. Her fortunes seem to improve when she is "adopted" for a spell of 2 months by an eccentric Brazilian millionaire always in search of new distractions, but all the Countess Flor di Folio does is bully Serena, not teach her how to make a bachelor propose marriage. Sweet and naive Serena is about to be turned out by her fickle benefactress when a bizarre Portuguese aristocrat finally proposes. Only on her wedding day does Serena realize why this man was in so much of a hurry to get her: Montague D'Costa's mother is black. Critics have said that Bagnold intended this to be a conte philosophique in the same vein as "Candide". It certainly deals with the theme of women on the marriage market very differently from Wharton and Delafield. Most of the characters are grotesques and Bagnold isn't interested in a detailed description of social double standards. This is a short and witty book which seems to be propelled by the author's anger at the world's hypocrisy. What makes a reprint unlikely is that Bagnold does seem to think that marrying a mulatto is, for Serena, the ultimate humiliation, the final trick that fate plays on her. And disgusting sentences like "As a Jew he admired moral courage immensely, being the quality he most lacked himself" make it clear that Bagnold had the knee-jerk racism common to many people of her class and generation. What a shame.