*Spoiler thread* The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin (February 2020)

[Judy]

A spoiler thread for those of us who have finished the book to discuss its later twists.

[Judy]

Did anyone guess what Vera was up to? I didn't at all, I must confess.

The plot feels quite ahead of its time - very like a couple of more recent domestic suspense novels that I read a while back.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I didn't have a clue. I had thought maybe Louise goes berserk and, thinking there would be a good outcome anyway, Vera was there to protect the family.

[Jill]

I thought Vera was after the husband Mark, but didn't think about her wanting the baby.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

The children "copying" the diary was an interesting vehicle.

[Susan]

I thought Vera's interest was in Louise, for some reason. That she had some old act to grind. I thought that she was intending to abduct Michael, but I got the reason wrong.

I did find Mrs Hooper very amusing. When my eldest was born, I had a 'friend' who latched onto me at baby group, who was just like her! The kind of person who always managed to leave their baby with you, but always wriggles out of any reciprocal act...

[Val]

I also thought it was something to do with Mark. He didn't come across as the most perceptive of men, so there could have been something in their past he was unaware of.
Vera's behaviour was plausible, once we found out what was really going on, but I didn't guess it.

[Susan]

Most of the men in this novel were unperceptive. Mark, however, was - of his time - but generally kind. Oddly, for a man of his generation, he wanted to stop at two daughters, so he wasn't obsessed with having a son.

[Val]

I agree that Mark is generally kind. He is a bit short-tempered sometimes, but as Elizabeth pointed out in the non-spoiler thread, he is not always getting a good night's sleep either. He might even help with the children or household activities if Louise told him what would be helpful to her. He manages to make beans on toast for the girls on one occasion when Louise is out.

[Susan]

Yes, also he told her to stay home and went back to the fairground. He does, obviously, care about her. She is just too frazzled to see it and he makes unrealistic demands, such as coming home for lunch, when she has enough to deal with.

[Val]

He sees coming home to lunch as supportive, she sees it as one more thing to cope with, so that is definitely something they should have talked about.

[Susan]

I can't imagine. At my children's primary school, there was a rule that everyone had to have hot lunch and packed lunches weren't allowed, which I was very pleased by! My daughter will now, even as a teenager, have a packed lunch, if allowed and they are not my favourite thing to make :)

[Roman Clodia]

Judy wrote: "The plot feels quite ahead of its time - very like a couple of more recent domestic suspense novels that I read a while back."

I'd also spotted Vera's motivation quite early because of the spate of recent domestic noir that centre on women literally driven mad by the desire for a child (usually someone else's!) In fact, it was this trope that put me off reading the contemporary genre as it seems such a backwards step to fetishize motherhood to that extent. Fremlin does a far better job in keeping me engaged by keeping our focus on Louise rather than Vera.

I thought for a moment that Louise had died in the fire as well, but maybe that would have been a step too far for the 1950s?

Great read - I raced through it!

[Alwynne]

I thought it was great too, well-observed, atmospheric, but the ending made me quite uncomfortable, I really didn't like the implied demonization of childless, single women, and the apparent privileging of a certain ideal of womanhood over others. In some ways it seemed to be an attempt to justify the challenges of motherhood and marriage elsewhere in the novel, as if to say motherhood's hard, marriage's hard but look what happens to women outside of those institutions, they become totally unhinged. So it felt as if Fremlin was undermining her own arguments, having questioned the status quo for most of the novel she then reinstates it at the end. At least from what I can remember it's a while since I actually read this one.

[Roman Clodia]

I know exactly what you mean, Alwynne, and it's precisely this ideology that made me abandon contemporary domestic noir that seems to consist of either a) showing how unhinged women are if they're prevented from being mothers, or b) 'punishing' women for straying outside of marriage by making them the victims of stalkers and other assorted psychopaths. It's a very insidious form of anti-feminist backlash, I think, and a horrible example of internalised misogyny as these books are nearly always written by women.

All that said, I found Fremlin's approach much more palatable because she keeps the focus very much on Louise rather than Vera (modern versions tend to do that clunky alternating 1st person narrative) and because she's so upfront about the burdens and frustrations of Louise's life - even if there is a kind of happy ever after ending. I guess there's a limit to how much transgression we can expect from a book published in 1958!

That's why I was a little taken aback that it almost seemed for a moment as if Louise had perished and some sort of ghostly version of her was saving the baby (she says something about another presence being beside her as she wraps him in the blankets) - but, again, she can't be seen to be 'punished' by dying at the end.

[Roman Clodia]

I was also fascinated by the way Mark is presented: I agree that he does care for his family and Louise but he is shown to have practically zero paternal instinct: he abandons them at the fair and goes home, leaving Louise with two kids and a baby in a pram! He goes upstairs when guests come round. He even avoids helping his mother shift those books of hers from the attic to her car - apart from making beans on toast once, he does literally nothing in the house. And this is a good husband and father!

[Alwynne]

Absolutely Mark's appalling but reading memoirs from that era and before it's clear this was acceptable, Elizabeth Jane Howard's autobiography makes for particularly painful reading when it comes to what passed for a decent male partner.

And yes I avoid domestic noir for similar reasons, like you I didn't find this as distasteful as contemporary ones I've tried and I wasn't convinced that Fremlin was convinced by the resolution either. I've only read this and The Long Shadow but in both her underlying critique of the nuclear family and of families in general is so condemnatory and so pointed it's hard to ignore. It may be that she had those views but couldn't fully think outside the prevailing social norms or perhaps felt unable to fully follow through on them in terms of market/reader expectations.

[Alwynne]

But I still thought it was a great novel otherwise, she writes so well and so vividly.

[Roman Clodia]

Alwynne wrote: "... and I wasn't convinced that Fremlin was convinced by the resolution either."

No, good point! It is all wrapped up very neatly by the end so that we can close the book happy. It feels like Fremlin has stretched the genre then allows it to close her down at the end.

It's interesting about her writing style because it feels quite plain and simple, none of the startling word placement of a Shirley Jackson, for example, yet it's completely gripping. She delineates characters deftly, and even walk-on roles like the neighbours are distinct and memorable.

Given how much of a success she is in this group, I wonder why she ever faded from prominence?

[Alwynne]

It's hard to fathom, I only came across her because I collect vintage Virago books and this was revived by them as part of their classic crime series. It clearly did well when they reissued it, and everyone I know who's read it thought it was outstanding. But after the Virago edition it was out of print again, in the UK, for years.

[WndyJW]

I just finished it and thought it was very, very good.

Fremlin was of that generation that felt the household was solely the responsibility of the wife, so for Fremlin to recognize and portray so viscerally the outrageous expectations of women and the fecklessness of husbands, and embed it in a page turner of a suspenseful mystery was brilliant.

I don’t think I give Mark as much credit as others. He was an ass. He could see that Louise was delirious with sleep deprivation yet he badgered her constantly and did nothing to help. I’ve watched enough black and white family shows, Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, to know that men then took a bit more interest in their children and all of them dried the dishes while educating their pretty wives about current affairs and answering any questions the silly thing was thinking about that day.

I loved Humphrey, the nerdy professor desperate to be a wolf. It was both appalling and comical. I agree with RC, the neighbors were all wonderfully awful.

RC, I’m pretty sure it was Vera next to Louise wrapping up blankets, either Vera believed or fantasized that she has saved Michael, that’s why Louise was yelling to Vera that they baby was safe.

[Alwynne]

Mark was an ass, but they're a fairly middle-class couple so he's likely to be someone educated at public school, even if only a minor one, or at the very least a grammar school aping a public school, and his behaviour seems quite in keeping with middle-class, British men from that kind of background in that era, and more recently if some of my friends' fathers are anything to go by. Penelope Mortimer's work addresses a lot of similar issues and some of the ways in which Fremlin's represents the family dynamic, gender roles reminded me a lot of her fiction.

[WndyJW]

I used to work at a party center (wedding, showers, etc) with a few women a generation older than me and there was a lot of talk of what they left their husbands for dinner before the women came to work, “he’s easy to feed,” “he’ll eat anything I leave him,” “I’ll take some of this food home and that will be his dinner tomorrow,” it’s a hard habit to break I guess.

I’m 60 (in 11 days) and even though I’ve worked full time most of my adult life and my husband doesn’t feel it’s my responsibility to cook I still have a tiny, quiet whisper that I really should be making dinner every night. My mother has been preparing a hot meal of meat, starch, vegetable, and desert, served at a set table with serving dishes, no filling your plate from the stove then sitting down, every 24 hours for 63 years!

[WndyJW]

My mother has been preparing a hot meal complete with meat, starch, veggie, and desert, served at a fully set table with serving dishes, no filling your plate at the stove, every 24 hours for 63 years!

[WndyJW]

Alwynne wrote: "I thought it was great too, well-observed, atmospheric, but the ending made me quite uncomfortable, I really didn't like the implied demonization of childless, single women, and the apparent privil..."

I agree with this, Alwynne, and would include this in the women are damned if they do, damned if they don’t oeuvre. Here we have a woman made mad by being childless and a woman driven to doubt her own sanity by the exhausting chores of motherhood, but as you pointed out, in the end the drudgery of domestic life was all worth it. The Bitch is also about a woman deranged by a “failure” to give birth.
Conversely, we have women made mad by motherhood and marriage: The Lost Daughter in which the mother is plagued by doubts about her failure as a mother and Die, My Love about a psychotic mother.

[Roman Clodia]

Just going back to the topic of gender expectations and what passes for a 'good' and considerate husband: I'm reading The Persephone Book of Short Stories and there's a tale by E.M. Delafield which wittily makes the same point - a vicar takes his wife and three kids, one a newborn, away on holiday and can't understand why his wife sees it not so much as the second honeymoon he envisages but as a constant trial of kids, shopping, cooking, changing, waking in the night... It's not nearly as spiky as Fremlin but is already making the same points about women's domestic work and how grateful the wife is for a husband who occasionally pushes a pram up a hill.

[WndyJW]

Sadly, there are still many couples with both partners working, but the woman still has the “second shift,” with very little help from the man.

[Alwynne]

Absolutely, very common here too. And glad you had a good birthday WndyJW

[WndyJW]

I just want to shake those women!

[Alwynne]

Really? It's the men who piss me off.

[WndyJW]

Thank you, Alwynne.

I don’t usually meet the men. I hear women who complain in a joking way about their feckless husbands, they bond with other women over their complaints about their husbands. I ask them why they allow themselves to be taken advantage of like that, but so many of the women I’ve had this discussion with assume it’s just the way it is.

I should say in fairness to men that I know plenty of men who do not expect to mow the lawn and be done, they don’t “help” their wives. They assume responsibility for their home and their kids.

[Alwynne]

I don't think it's always a question of 'allow' there can be so many reasons, bonds of affection, financial issues, the difficulties of tackling these issues when you're tired or overwhelmed. So many women get stuck in relationships because they can't afford to leave, for example. And joking can be a survival technique as much as a lack of gumption or an inability to take responsibility. It can also mask low-level depression or other factors that make it hard to change your situation. Everyone knows someone who's been or is in a relationship that has aspects we personally wouldn't tolerate, it's never as simple as confronting them with our perspective. And sometimes people shrug things off because they want to save face, it can be hard for someone to admit they're not happy with how things are, and there's a lot of pressure on women to keep things flowing for the sake of their children.

[WndyJW]

I wouldn’t presume to tell a woman I don’t know well how to live her life or confront her with my perspective, expecting her to account for herself. These discussions were with friends that I’ve known for years, usually over coffee. I know them and their families and they know me. I was lucky to work as a server with a group of the same women for over 13 years.

[Alwynne]

I wasn't suggesting you would, although personally I probably wouldn't say something like that to friends either, if they aren't happy but they're not able or ready to change things it would make the relationship far too uncomfortable. What's a server btw?

[WndyJW]

Server is a waitress. I worked at a party center, Im not sure what they would be called in the UK, but it’s a center for parties :) weddings, showers, big fund raiser dinners. We served the meal, then sat around a big table and talk about life for an hour or so, then clean up. I sometimes half wished my husband expected dinner and needed to be begged, nagged and cajoled to do anything so I could take part in The Who has the Laziest Husband contest.
It seemed to divide between the younger women who would complain about husbands expecting too much, while doing too little, and the older women who simply reported that their husband is “easy to feed,” or what they left him to heat up while they were at work, but the older women were mostly women who didn’t get employment until their kids were raised so for them it was an easy arrangement, he worked outside of the house, she raised the kids and ran the household, he gassed up her car, shoveled the driveway and brushed off her car when it snowed, fixed things; the older women weren’t resentful. The younger women, some who had a full-time job and this was their second job, would complain and laugh and compare notes. That was when the few women like me who had responsible partners would ask why they didn’t push their partners to do more.

[Alwynne]

I think that arrangement only seemed to work when the wife stayed at home but even then it was clearly frustrating. Have you read any Penelope Mortimer? If not you might like her work and she's very good on this, The Pumpkin Eater or her short stories Saturday Lunch with the Brownings and Other Stories

It'd be interesting too to meet up with those women a few years later and see how many of them are divorced/separated/single. The women I know in those kinds of relationships mostly seem to stay because it's hard to survive as a single mother, there's so little support available. And to be fair I know men who want to be more involved in parenting but have partners who aren't keen, and ones who simply don't have the skills and their partners find it easier to do things themselves than find the time to show them. A friend who works with the elderly has quite a few male clients who've reported enjoying learning to cook, do laundry etc. And again it's an economic thing as wealthier people get round the whole issue by employing other people to do the work for them.

[WndyJW]

Last I heard they were all still married, probably still complaining. That was my point, these women I knew (and they were all white, suburban, middle class women, whose mothers were housewives, dad’s work supported the family) weren’t miserable and they love their partners, but they just don’t ask much of them.
The women tried to do all their mothers did, even though at most their mothers might have had a part time job, while my friends were working a job and a half. It was some odd badge of honor to always be tired, and I think you’re right, at least some of those men probably would have helped if allowed.

I just saw Penelope Mortimer while looking through the presses you mentioned. I’ve had good lucks with authors named Penelope. I will look for those books.

[Roman Clodia]

The idea that women are more domestically able is such nonsense, too: after we returned to work earlier this year after lockdown, I picked up all Mr RC's work shirts from the dry cleaners... and promptly left them all on the tube! Took weeks to get them back, and he lived in t-shirts to his work colleagues vast amusement. Don't think I'll be asked to do that again ;))

[WndyJW]

Apropos of this discussion our local radio station this morning announced that today is National Men Cook Dinner Day, followed by jokes about ordering pizza.

[Alwynne]

Aargh! I think there'd be an outcry if that happened on our local radio.

[Roman Clodia]

And given that so many Michelin-starred/famous chefs are male... oh, but that's culinary *art*, it's the daily grind of feeding oneself/partner/family that is apparently so challenging to those Y chromosomes ;)

[WndyJW]

Which is so backward and not the case. All the men in my family cook, almost all my male friends cook, my partnered women friends have men that cook. So much of this nonsense is media fed.

Within the last ten years there was a news story about a man who took his wife’s last name as his last name when they married. That was deemed so outrageous that it warranted a slot on the local evening news.

[Laura]

Hi - joining rather late. I read RC's review of this a few months ago - and finally read it.
I've scanned the comments - surprised that Val and Susan ?? think Mark is an ok husband. He is cruel - in places. What about the scene where he simply accepts the invention of Beatrice and husband that Louise is jealous of Vera - he abruptly challenges her - accuses her and L is so tired she can barely keep herself upright.
Or the situation discovered after the event - when Mark goes upstairs with Vera - drawn by her cooking - the 2 small girls downstairs alone and Edna is it who left at 6. So many situations when Mark isn't aware... his invite to the cinema causes nothing but panic in Louise. Louise getting up every night and doing everything in the house every day and Mark is completely oblivious to her exhaustion - he sleeps but does he help with any domestic arrangements - I can think one time. The time he yells at Louise to keep the door shut - and both kids running in and out and the neighbour arriving to complain about Michael yelling on the front lawn - I mean Louise doesn't know what to do first. The point being Mark doesn't help or alleviate the work but actually ADDS to it - I mean how selfish! And yet Louise rarely if ever thinks badly of her husband instead she worries that Mark isn't getting any attention. Surely any husband of any worth would be concerned about reassuring his wife and would show his appreciation for her endless unfailing hard work day and night. He yells about his shirt buttons - he complains about the basic food... He ignores her concerns about Vera. He never offers emotional or psychological or just plain everyday support.

I thought Fremlin's novel is demonstrating the thankless task of wife and mother in the 50s - there is a telling couple of paragraphs where Louise says it is so much easier to erase her own needs - as they simply represent one more demand on her time and energy - she feels she is being reduced to a labour saving machine - with no identity of her own - it represents yet another path towards madness - in addition to the mental distortions suffered through sleep deprivation - it points in my view quite clearly to -The Yellow Wallpaper - the risk of a woman asserting her unique identity can only end in Madness - submit to the tyranny of wife, mother, home-making machine, door-mat etc ... or risk the alternative.
I mean Louise no longer knows what is real when the pram disappears - Vera follows her and leaves her sleeping on the park bench - when L wakes surely she is traumatized and again in the fun park - the trauma of losing your baby!! She keeps a level head persuading herself Mark has the baby. Ones sanity could easily slip away under the pressures Louise endures and as we learn that is exactly Vera's plan - which reminds me of another writer.
Yes - I see WndyJW - refers to this many books reference Women driven over the edge into madness and in Hours there are the pointed references to Eurípedes' Medea - she kills her children as her only means of revenge on her husband Jason - there is definitely the same suggestion towards Louise - several a comment about - she could have dropped the child as she slept - or did the pram sink into the pond - did she destroy her child in a fit of exhaustion - the question is never quite asked - only probed - I read - Mothers Don't by Katixa Agirre - which gives a real-life case of infanticide - twins drowned by their mother - ruled temporary insanity...
Fremlin keeps the story balanced carefully just this side of sanity through the exemplary strengths of Louise.
The penultimate chapter is a little vague - and not my favourite part - merely demonstrating Vera's slide into madness - at the loss of her child - and we have so little empathy for her - she appears a true villain - and yet Fremlin - master if suggestion that she is ever so faintly questions - could she be right? Is it Louise who notes how all friends and family are so quick to side with her - to support her version of what happened. I liked that - so many stories of babies switched at birth ...

[Laura]

The Blank Wall - Elizabeth Sanxay Holding - it's also Noir - came back to me as I'm thinking about women needing to resist psychological pressure in order to protect their family. The one above is a great read.

[WndyJW]

Is this your first Fremlin, Laura? The feckless husband is a stock character in Fremlin’s domestic noir. I joke that the real horror in Fremlin’s novels are the expectations placed on married women. My favorite Fremlin is Prisoner's Base. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Roman Clodia]

Yes, I agree the feckless husband is a permanent fixture in Fremlin. And, within the context of the times at which she was writing, he was also perceived of as a 'good' husband - he loves his wife, he loves his children, he has a steady job and funds a decent lifestyle. Expectations were clearly different.

It's markedly the case that Fremlin's women don't call out their husbands because according to their own values, he/they are doing nothing wrong in leaving everything to do with the house/kids/food to the woman - it's part of their 'nurturing' role.

I think Fremlin is quite subtle here: she clearly has issues with that whole domestic labour/burden falling on the women but she doesn't make the men into villains.

Thank heavens our gendered expectations have changed now - to the benefit of men as well as women.

[Laura]

Yes - but have our gendered expectations changed? It's our current readers who didn't find too much out of order with Mark?

And yes to answer Wendy? - I felt exactly that - the real horror are the expectations placed on married women - of the 50s.
Yes - my first Fremlin - but I would really prefer - insights into married life without the narrative drive of a murder mystery - I mean there is almost a murder - and the building horror element certainly keeps us glued... Fremlin clearly felt her interests and social analysis needed to be delivered in a palatable or saleable format.

Her ability to hang her real interests on a particular frame/genre indicate both intelligence and the pressures of what is available to her within the scope of categories then. Nowadays the novel has morphed in multiple ways - auto-fiction - memoir as fiction - graphic novels - thrillers, detective-noir - plenty more: authors using different pen-names etc.
I've never particularly liked - narrative controlled by something bad will happen - or whodunnit plots - I've read Simenon's Maigret novels but was delighted to move on to roman durs - which is a misnomer anyway...

I mean Patricia Highsmith and Dumaurier play with mystery - but they are never trapped into the details of their plots... Highsmith always provides intriguing psychological analysis - I've only read a few of hers - but I think she would be the exception to the rule - whereby I genuinely avoid any mystery - or murder-mysyery driven writing.

[Laura]

generally avoid - mystery driven writing...

[Roman Clodia]

Whereas I love crime and noir fiction so to have that feminist-y analysis added to a gripping plot is like cat-nip for me!

Interesting connections, Laura, to Highsmith and Du Maurier, both firm favourites in this group. I would see them both as entangling all that psychological stuff in with the plot so that neither would stand alone without the other.

It's hard to know whether Fremlin felt she had to wrap up her domestic analysis in a more easily swallowed page-turner format - I suspect, given the gusto with which she comes up with so many different plots and the glee with which she executes them, that she loved the mystery-shading-into-horror/psychological-thriller genre for itself.

[Laura]

Hmm - Fremlin refers to Medea several times. I think the husband insisting on the psychological reality of Medea's character - above I mention Katixa Agirre's book where she jumps headlong into the Medea atrocity - a woman drowns her infant twins - her book Women Don't - challenges society's concepts of all the things a woman does or doesn't do... - it feels like a direct line from Fremlin to Agirre - or also Ariana Harwic's - Die My Love - which I couldn't finish.

Both demonstrate that women feel more liberated and the publishing world is more than prepared to take risks with outré writing - I would say the distance between the choices available to Fremlin and Agirre gives us some direct measure of the freedoms opening up for women ... hallelujah!