Kirjahaku

Set in a small town in Edwardian England, Regiment of Women is about the relationship between two teachers at a private (and elitist) girls' school. One of them, Clare Hartill, is in her mid-thirties and runs the school in all but name, the ageing and sickly headmistress depending on her whenever a decision has to be taken concerning the school or any of its pupils. Most of the girls are devoted to Hartill and gladly suffer under her strict but charismatic rule and the loads of homework she sets them, mainly to prove to her and to themselves that they are more academically advanced than she told them they were. Hartill lives alone near the school in a small, old-fashioned flat full of books but without gas or electricity.

Set in a small town in Edwardian England, Regiment of Women is about the relationship between two teachers at a private (and elitist) girls' school. One of them, Clare Hartill, is in her mid-thirties and runs the school in all but name, the ageing and sickly headmistress depending on her whenever a decision has to be taken concerning the school or any of its pupils. Most of the girls are devoted to Hartill and gladly suffer under her strict but charismatic rule and the loads of homework she sets them, mainly to prove to her and to themselves that they are more academically advanced than she told them they were. Hartill lives alone near the school in a small, old-fashioned flat full of books but without gas or electricity. The other teacher is Alwynne Durand, an attractive nineteen-year-old woman without any formal training who lives with Elsbeth Loveday, her unmarried aunt and guardian. When Durand starts teaching at the school she is immediately popular with her students but also excites Hartill's attention — not just because the young mistress is as enthusiastic about teaching as herself, but also because Hartill is always on the lookout for companionship. The two women become close friends, and Durand spends more and more of her spare time in Hartill's flat, occasionally not returning to her aunt's for days. The couple also travel abroad together during the summer holidays. Although Loveday and Hartill hardly ever meet, a strange kind of antagonism develops between them, each woman fighting to spend more time than they do with Alwynne Durand and to be the dominant person in Alwynne's life. But what will this antagonism lead to? Keep reading!

Messrs. Mitchell and Bent will shortly issue 'The Life of Madala Grey' by Anita Serle: a critical biography based largely on private correspondence and intimate personal knowledge.That was in The Times a fortnight ago. And now the reviews are beginning-The Cult of Madala Grey....The Problem of Madala Grey....The Secret of Madala Grey....I wish they wouldn't. Oh, I wish they wouldn't.No admirer of the late Madala Grey's arresting art can fail to be absorbed by these intimate and unexpected revelations....Delicately, unerringly, Miss Serle traces to its source the inspiration of that remarkable writer.... And-this will please Anita most of all-We ourselves have never joined in the chorus of praise that, a decade ago, greeted the appearance of 'Eden Walls' and its successors, and in our opinion Miss Serle, in her biographical enthusiasm, uses the word genius a little too often and too easily. Madala Grey has yet to be tried by that subtlest of literary critics, the Man with the Scythe. But whether or not we agree with Miss Serle's estimate of her heroine, there can be no two questions as to the literary value of the 'Life' itself. It definitely places Miss Serle among the Boswells, and as we close its fascinating pages we find ourselves wondering whether our grandchildren will remember Miss Serle as the biographer of Madala Grey, or Madala Grey as the subject matter merely, of a chronicle that has become a classic.