Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther: A Heartfelt Portrait of Everyday Life and Resilience

by Jan Struther

To be entirely at leisure for one day is to be for one day an immortal:

her invariable reluctance about new cars was not thrift but sentiment. she simply could not endure the moment when the old one was driven away.

I’m the same!

Mrs. Miniver was a fool about inanimate objects.

Words were the only net to catch a mood, the only sure weapon against oblivion.

Tedious because neither side possessed any currency but cliches, and unprofitable because it was clear from the outset that neither side was going to budge an inch.

If you felt as strongly as that, the only thing to do was to have ‘flu and stay away.

Dropped g’s fell as thick as confetti.

it seemed to her that to abolish shooting before you had abolished war was like flicking a speck of mud off the top of a midden.

It seemed to her sometimes that the most important thing about marriage was not a home or children or a remedy against sin, but simply there being always an eye to catch.

It was a Wedgwood day, with white clouds delicately modelled in relief against a sky of pale pure blue.

This was the real meaning of peace—not mere absence of division, but an active consciousness of unity,

day without a chunk or two of solitude in it is like a cocktail without ice.

whereas to conceal direct pain was a virtue, to conceal vicarious pain was a sin.

Money, food, clothing, shelter—people could give all these and still it would not be enough: it would not absolve them from the duty of paying in full, also, the imponderable tribute of grief.

Mrs. Miniver had tried for a few moments to treat the scene as a reality, and had found herself wondering whether there was any cause or conviction in the world for which she would have the courage to go to the stake.

she shuddered, and admitted humbly enough that she herself would probably recant at the crackling of the first twig.

The unfortunate ones of the world were subjected to a more lingering torment, and the fortunate ones were merely condemned to watch it from a front seat, unwilling tricoteuses at an execution they were powerless to prevent. The least they could do was not to turn away their eyes; for with such a picture stamped upon the retina of their memory they would not be able to lie easy until they had done their best to ensure that it could never happen again.

what mattered was that here at least was one small roomful of warmth and happiness, shut in by frail window-panes from a freezing, harsh, and inexplicable world.

Each of us, to relieve his feelings, broadcasts his own running commentary on the preposterous and bewildering events of the hour:

They’ve never learnt to think with their hearts or feel with their minds.”

I’m sick and tired of being offered nothing but that same old choice. Left wing...Right wing...it’s so limited;

how could there be this ridiculous talk of war, when little boys in all countries collected stones, dodged cleaning their teeth, and hated cauliflower?

The children of the world are one nation;

It was like knitting: you couldn’t bear to stop until you had done one more row, one more bine.

But it oughtn’t to need a war to make a nation paint its kerbstones white, carry rear-lamps on its bicycles, and give all its slum children a holiday in the country. And it oughtn’t to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the evenings, and live simply, and eat sparingly, and recover the use of our legs, and get up early enough to see the sun rise. However, it has needed one: which is about the severest criticism our civilization could have.