Experiment in Springtime

by Margaret Millar

In this complex and psychologically acute critique of the post-war family a husband’s paranoia concerning his young wife’s fidelity escalates just as she struggles to survive while surrounded by his oppressive insecurity.Martha and Charles Pearson have been married for four years when Charles becomes convinced she is trying to poison him. Charles is desperately in love with his young, beautiful, and coolly removed wife, but he knows in his heart that she married him for his money. Martha, meanwhile, is miserable in the cage of her husband's psychotic paranoia. She struggles through her bland, textureless days, doing her best to care for him and to keep up appearances. When an embittered ex-boyfriend returns from four years away at war, a confrontation with him is all Martha needs to turn her life upside down. Experiment in Springtime is the poignantly observed story of an unfortunately entered marriage, a novel that scrapes away the veneer of domestic bliss to reveal the heartbreaks, neuroses, and dissatisfactions of the mythical post-WWII nuclear family.

Genres: Mystery Thriller

4 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Margaret Ellis Millar (née Sturm) was an American-Canadian mystery and suspense writer. Born in Kitchener, Ontario, she was educated there and in Toronto. She moved to the United States after marrying Kenneth Millar (better known under the pen name Ross Macdonald). They resided for decades in the city of Santa Barbara, which was often utilized as a locale in her later novels under the pseudonyms of San Felice or Santa Felicia.

Millar's books are distinguished by sophistication of characterization. Often we are shown the rather complex interior lives of the people in her books, with issues of class, insecurity, failed ambitions, loneliness or existential isolation or paranoia often being explored with an almost literary quality that transcends the mystery genre. Unusual people, mild societal misfits or people who don't quite fit into their surroundings are given much interior detail. In some of the books we are given chilling and fascinating insight into what it feels like to be losing touch with reality and evolving into madness. In general, she is a writer of both expressive description and yet admirable economy, often ambitious in the sociological underpinnings of the stories and the quality of the writing.

Millar often delivers effective and ingenious "surprise endings," but the details that would allow the solution of the surprise have usually been subtly included, in the best genre tradition. One of the distinctions of her books, however, is that they would be interesting, even if you knew how they were going to end, because they are every bit as much about subtleties of human interaction and rich psychological detail of individual characters as they are about the plot.

Millar was a pioneer in writing intelligently about the psychology of women. Even as early as the '40s and '50s, her books have a very mature and matter-of-fact view of class distinctions, sexual freedom and frustration, and the ambivalence of moral codes depending on a character's economic circumstances. Her earliest novels seem unusually frank. Read against the backdrop of Production Code-era movies of the time, they remind us that life as lived in the '40s and '50s was not as black-and-white morally as Hollywood would have us believe.

While she was not known for any one recurring detective (unlike her husband, whose constant gumshoe was Lew Archer), she occasionally used a detective character for more than one novel. Among her occasional ongoing sleuths were Canadians Dr. Paul Prye (her first invention, in the earliest books) and Inspector Sands (a quiet, unassuming Canadian police inspector who might be the most endearing of her recurring inventions). In the California years, a few books featured either Joe Quinn, a rather down-on-his-luck private eye, or Tom Aragorn, a young, Hispanic lawyer.
Sadly, most of Millar's books are out of print in America, with the exception of the short story collection The Couple Next Door and two novels, An Air That Kills and Do Evil In Return, that have been re-issued as classics by Stark House Press in California.

In 1956 Millar won the Edgar Allan Poe Awards, Best Novel award for Beast in View. In 1965 she was awarded the Woman of the Year Award by the Los Angeles Times. In 1983 she was awarded the Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition of her lifetime achievements.

Reviews

[Carly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn’t enjoy this at all. It’s not a new book (1947), so I thought maybe since the library went to all the trouble of getting the ebook it must be a classic or something? Anyway, at least it was short. I didn’t find any of the characters, nor the author’s attempts at psychological analysis of them, interesting in the slightest. Blech.

[Andrew Diamond · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2017, Syndicate Books published the collected works of Margaret Millar. Bless them for that. The quality of Millar’s writing, the strength and depth of her mind, her psychological insights and her unusual powers of observation and description should have kept her work in print forever.

Millar’s 1946 novel, Experiment in Springtime, appears in the second volume of the Syndicate collection, called Dawn of Domestic Suspense. The back cover blurb describes Experiment as:

A poignantly observed story of an unfortunately entered marriage, a novel that scrapes away the veneer of domestic bliss to reveal the heartbreaks, neuroses, and dissatisfactions of the mythical post-WWII nuclear family.

The story opens with Martha Pearson nursing her husband Charles back to health after a bout of anaphylactic shock. We see the distance between them right away. “He was no longer Charles, her husband, but a piece of anonymous, broken-down macinery.” The cause of the anaphylaxis was a pair of aspirin tablets Martha had given him to soothe a headache. She knew he was allergic, but she didn’t know the pills she gave him contained aspirin. Charles is sensitive, generous, permissive, weak-willed, and profoundly insecure about his wife, who he knows does not love him.

In his more bitter moments, he accuses her of giving him aspirin on purpose in an attept to kill him. In her more bitter moments, she accuses him of attempting to frame her for murder.

To the outside world, they look like the perfect couple, rich and secure in the peaceful house on the hill. Martha engineers her life to maintain that appearance. In doing so, she becomes cold, shutting out all feeling for herself and others.

While out shopping one day, she runs into her ex-boyfriend Steve, newly arrived in town after five years at war. Like many returning soldiers, he’s emotionally raw, nearly broke, and trying to find a home and a job in a society that’s struggling to reabsorb millions of soldiers it can’t yet accomodate. While Martha’s feelings are buried beneath miles of ice, his are right up on the surface.

Over time, we learn that Steve broke off their engagement when he enlisted in the army. He thought they were both too young to marry. Martha felt jilted. She cut off all communication with him and married Charles, his opposite, a wealthy, cultured, overly sensitive man who, despite his deep love for her, is clueless about how to love her.

So far, the story and characters sound like classic tropes. Millar’s gift lies in her ability to breathe life into these characters, to explore their depth and complexity with subtle nuance and great power. Even her throwaway descriptions are sharp. Here’s one of Martha’s feckless mother, an avoidant type, stuck in the past, who sees the dysfunction in her daughter’s marriage but won’t offer her the counsel she needs:

Her mother’s vagueness was a camouflage, a protection; if she pretended not to notice things, she would not be expected to do anything about them… She retired to her room to relive her life, without the mistakes.

This isn’t the type of genre fiction where you root for the lovers to live happily ever after. There are no good guys or bad guys. As in real life, there is no easy path for anyone, and the question everyone must answer is which compromises they’re willing to make, which hardships and regrets they’re willing to endure in exchange for which joys.

The marriage between Charles and Martha is a particularly well observed study of dysfunction showing how two people who are, on their own, decent, kind, intelligent and thoughtful, can together become apallingly toxic. In many cases, mismatched couples balance out each other’s extremes, complementing strengths and shoring up weaknesses. In some cases, however, the mismatches are fatal, and watching the couple interact is like watching an engine grind itself to pieces.


One of the most keenly observed episodes in this book comes when Martha visits Charles to tell him she wants a divorce. She is certain of this and absolutely determined to go through with it, until they start talking. Charles has no idea she’s come to say she wants a divorce. He has no intention of manipulating her, and yet, his mere presence is enough to undo her resolve and shut down her mind.

He’s like a field of Kryptonite. She can’t be near him, even when he’s being nice, without becoming the confused, neutered, utterly stifled person she had been in their marriage. The woman who walked into the scene with such vigor and purpose is suddenly sinking in a swamp of molasses.


This was Millar’s seventh novel. It’s not among her best, but it does show off her exceptional skills. She was thirty-one years old when this was published, and she was already producing better work than many better known authors would ever produce in their lifetimes. I’m amazed at her eye for detail and her ability to describe all sides of complex interpersonal dynamics. I wish more readers knew about her.

[Maryanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like Ms Millar's writing, the dialogue, character descriptions and the way she explores a topic, this case, a mismatch marriage with psychological problems. This story seemed like a narrative without a plot and an ending that makes you wonder if it was part of dream sequence.

[Annabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this post-war suburban psychological thriller. I found the characters more believable than those in Millar’s better-known novel, 'Beast in View'.