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The Pumpkin Eater (1962)

de Penelope Mortimer

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The unnamed narrator of this story is married to her fourth and excessively well-paid husband. This income only serves to highlight the emptiness of a life led by a woman deprived of the domestic trappings that have defined her.
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I thought about my rating of this for a while but I decided to go with this as I really didn't like it personally, even though I see some merits. The thing is, it's tough to pinpoint what I really dislike and I absolutely acknowledge this might be my own mood and faults. And I think if you've been in a similar situation you would appreciate it a lot more because you'd be able to fill in some of the gaps I found confusing.

The first thing is that the main character shows contempt to pretty much everyone else. At several points (particularly with a character named Philpot) she looks down on people poorer than her. She makes some really dodgy comments on race. She shows no fondness for her children at any point. It's not exactly a good start. She also whines about being rich - this is the most obvious thing for me to explain my dislike of the book. Nothing annoys me more than this. She complains about how having cleaners and nurses have made her feel alienated. Why couldn't she just dismiss the nurses, given she doesn't work and she's apparently not doing other housework? Who knows! Later she apparently has 1 nurse for her large amount of children and does some caring for them but she's annoyed about having to take care of children so I guess nothing pleases her. She reminiscences about a time when she was poor and apparently it was perfect. Incredible. Wow. I feel so sorry for you, having a massive income.

There are vague elements that seem like they're going to be surreal but just resolve into nothing. There's a tower being built in the countryside and things are going to be good after they move in? Sounds interesting. Oh, it just gets built and they live there for a summer and that's it. Wow. Her children are never given a number and most aren't described? Sounds vaguely spooky but several are named and described, she just ignores the vast majority, which makes her seem even more of an ass.

A big element of the book is her children, but as said above she doesn't seem to like them much. She only talks about one in any detail and just gives ages to a few others. Yet she talks about how she wants one, apparently deliberately gets one against the wishes of her husband (somehow? did she mess up contraception or what? surely he'd have expected the possibility? i don't know). Children have defined her life. This probably sounds like it reflects a fundamental ambiguity of being a woman or something but it's written poorly. An event later is really horrible for her and is the one point in the book where I feel incredibly sorry for her yet I still don't understand. She is strongly encouraged to have her uterus removed and fetus aborted under false pretences. Yet she hasn't mentioned why she wants the baby - it seems like a bizarre spur of the moment thing. This is probably a metaphor for womanhood or something but it just doesn't work at all She regularly gets annoyed by her children, yet she hates parting with them or the possibility of them. She doesn't spend time with her children or care for them, yet they're presented as some sort of obstacle in her life. It's baffling.

The most important "poor writing" element is that she never really talks about her feelings. This is a first person narrative yet we rarely get to find out what she's really feeling. There's sort of some of it but mostly she describes events with maybe just "what exact emotion she's feeling at the moment". Yes, to a certain extent it's clear this is deliberate, that she's confused as to how she feels, but it's ridiculous for a whole book.

There's an attempt at treating the events that happen as inevitable but it really doesn't work at all. She clearly acts in ways that changed her life, entirely of her own accord. There's no reason to believe anything in this book is inevitable from the text (even though it is believable in a real life context). She's had children by several different men during long term relationships/marriages, leaving all but two by choice (one by death, one because she's still married). She's apparently still attractive and there's no reason to believe she couldn't leave again but she basically says "oh yeah I can't" at a couple points with no reason - I mean it's weird enough that every one of her partners was totally cool with her previous kids but they apparently were so anything is believable. She describes something bad that happened early on (Simpkin) and I can understand that she was encouraged to do something but it was again her choice, her decisions and what happened was a weird kiss that she stopped of her own accord and was respected in doing so. This is described later on as if it was really awful, the worst thing a man can do. Don't get me wrong - he is clearly a creepy, disgusting, lecherous man. But her reaction doesn't fit her own choice to phone this guy up and ask to meet him while having a vague idea what will happen. The problem again is the emotions are inconsistent and poorly described so even bad events are confusing to understand from her perspective. She talks about inevitability yet at no point does she seem coerced and on the contrary actually takes decisions completely against typical standards for women and succeeds while doing so. There's vague stuff about gender roles but it feels completely unconvincing. Even though I know how awful expectations and pressures on women can be, the book only really vaguely alludes to it. The lack of convincingness is the main problem here.

I could go on. There's just nothing convincing, no real development of character, no way you can really empathise. It just feels like an inconsistent mush, with the actual sad and awful events completely brought down by the set-up. The ending isn't anything special in any respect, although it again tries some vague surrealism and presumably it's symbolic. It does nothing for me really. Just a poor ending to a poor book. ( )
  tombomp | Oct 31, 2023 |
An alright semi-autobiographical look at a marriage riddled with classist, racist whiny garbage. This is everything wrong with white feminism. ( )
  womanwoanswers | Dec 23, 2022 |
What are children? Why do women have them? Those were the puzzling parts to me and the narrator. An odd but interesting read. ( )
  77nanci | Jan 25, 2021 |
Aquesta ressenya s'ha escrit per al programa Donatius de membres de LibraryThing.
I suspect this would have been a powerful book when it was first written, and it's a fast read, but I have to admit that I wanted more from it. Though there were parts that I found really engaging and worthwhile, it felt like style and intention overtook any real depth in story or character, both of which I wanted more of. There were times when I felt the book could have been stronger if lengthened and given that depth, and other times when I felt it really should have been much shorter, given the author's apparent intentions. It's possible that that's a signal of the times--and that it needed to be this length to make its point, upon first publication--but in any case, I can't say that this really lived up to my expectations or made me want more from the writer. I can see it being something studied in English classes, but not something I'd be likely to recommend outside of to readers looking for a very specifically feminist and satirical novel of its time. It just fell flat for me in too many ways. ( )
  whitewavedarling | Apr 29, 2020 |
I had been aware of this novel for years, but really can’t think why I haven’t read it till now. Penelope Mortimer is a writer I have read just once before, Daddy’s Gone-A-Hunting, published by Persephone is a beautifully written novel about a woman’s nervous breakdown. With this novel, we are definitely in familiar territory but The Pumpkin Eater, in my opinion is an even better novel. This is a novel about the pitfalls of marriage and motherhood, Mortimer’s simple prose is wonderfully immersive, dreamy and intimate.

“I want to fly from a window and pour through the air like a wind of love to raise his hair and slide into the palms of his hands.”

Reading Daphne Merkin’s introduction to this edition, it is clear that there is a lot about this novel that is autobiographical. Merkin suggests that the novel reads like a work of catharsis. In this novel Mortimer has reproduced something of her own tumultuous marriage, and there are other painful episodes in the novel which come from life too.

We only ever know our narrator as Mrs Armitage, the doctor – to whom she is talking about the wool drawer that her mother had had years before – calls her this, and we never do learn her first name. Whatever her name; it is not Penelope; Mortimer may have taken much directly from her own life – but she did not put herself into her central character. Whatever else was happening in her private life, Penelope Mortimer had her own professional and creative life – Mrs Armitage has never been more than a wife and mother. Her husband, Jake is a screenwriter – he has a rich, creative, rewarding life, filled with travel and acclaim. Jake’s wife is part of his home life – an attractive feature of his home, an accessory. The couple live in London but are building a glass tower in the country – with the intention that it will one day, become the family home. Mrs Armitage proudly tells the doctor about the tower. We sense immediately this happy ever after is an unrealistic expectation, that fairy tale ending perhaps, that we so often strive for.

Speaking to us from her therapist’s couch as the novel opens, Mrs Armitage is at once a warm and confiding voice. so wryly, intelligent, I liked her enormously straight away.

“I don’t know who I am, I don’t know what I’m like, how can I know what I want? I only know that whether I’m good or bad, whether I’m a bitch or not, whether I’m strong or weak or contemptible or a bloody martyr – I mean whether I’m fat or thin, tall or short, because I don’t know – I want to be happy.”

Jake is our narrator’s fourth husband, she a mother to an enormous brood of children – from this, and her previous marriages – who are equally nameless – sixteen-year-old Dinah is the only one who we meet and whose name we learn. All the rest are a homogenous whole – the youngest is just three – and there is a nurse employed to help care for them. What will she do then if she doesn’t go on having children? She rather likes the idea of having yet another child, Jake is dead set against it. Throughout the novel we sense the children running in and out of rooms, calling for attention, as their mother Mrs Armitage is either falling apart – or trying to hold things together.

Slowly Mrs Armitage begins to piece together what is going on in her head, she has broken down in Harrods’ linen department weeping great tears over the linen.

“I began drinking because the thought that I was drinking gave me a kind of identity: each time I poured myself a brandy in the deserted afternoon I could say to myself ‘I am a woman who drinks.”

Mrs A is very comfortably off, Jake has been successful for a number of years, and she wants for nothing, and yet this comfortable existence only serves to highlight her isolation, depression and fragility. Mrs A has had her whole life directed by men, from her parents’ home she entered into a series of marriages and had children it is the one thing she knows how to do. At the heart of the problem of course is her marriage, her husband’s betrayals are bruising – yet all he can do is shrug them off – as little nothings. (Can I just mentioned I wanted to punch Jake).

She remembers a time when a friend from school came to stay, the fifteen-year-old Mrs A, had a quiet little passion for the vicar’s son, her friend Ireen is younger and quite the femme fatal. Ireen is desperate to have ‘a story’ to take back to school – and her friend is soon disenchanted with the girl who at school seemed so wonderful. There’s an uncomfortable encounter with a much older man, who Mrs A is reminded of suddenly, in the person of an unpleasant social acquaintance, when Jake brings all the film people to the house for a party.

The Pumpkin Eater is a powerful novel, I loved it. A book I had suggested to my book group – but they didn’t pick it, so I read it anyway. I would have been interested to talk to them about it – there are definitely feminist issues at the heart of it.

Edited to add – a big big thank you to Thomas from Hogglestock for this book, which I won on his blog. ( )
3 vota Heaven-Ali | Oct 13, 2018 |
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Nom de l'autorCàrrecTipus d'autorObra?Estat
Penelope Mortimerautor primaritotes les edicionscalculat
Merkin, DaphneIntroduccióautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat

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Peter, Peter, Pumpkin eater, / Had a wife and couldn't keep her. / He put her in a pumpkin shell / And there he kept her very well.
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"Well," I said, "I will try. I honestly will try to be honest with you, although I suppose really what you're more interested in is my not being honest, if you see what I mean."
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