Review: Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
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SATANISM AND FEMALE REBELLION.
‘Lolly Willowes’ shows us three ways to go through life:
1. Embrace the responsibilities society expects of you, performing them to the highest standard, and aligning your personal identity with society’s perceptions. (Like Caroline, striving to be the ideal wife and Christian).
2. Passively accept the identity society heaps on you. You carry out the motions, but your heart is not in it. You while away your life feeling empty and unfulfilled. (Like Lolly, trapped as the ‘spinster’ aunt for decades).
3. Create your own rebellion to take charge of your identity and independence. Ignore or even rejoice in the disapproval of others, and find a sense of acceptance within yourself. (Like Lolly, and her decision to move to the countryside).
‘Lolly Willowes’ is certainly a classic of Feminist literature. It’s the story of Lolly, a woman who leaves the household of her brother and has encounters with witches and the devil himself.
It was published in 1926, a time when gender roles were changing due to the war. Older unmarried women from the late Victorian Age were the last generation to be absorbed into the families of their male relatives to serve as domestic caretakers.
The main theme of ‘Lolly Willowes’ is overcoming social gender roles to experience self realisation. Lolly wants to be defined by her relationship with herself, rather than her servitude to others.
Most interesting to me was Lolly’s quiet, introverted path to rebellion. While in London her defiance manifests as a disinterest in social occasions and buying exotic flowers, considered to be a frivolous extravagance.
Once in the countryside, she realises that layers of gendered oppression had been ‘settling down on one like a fine dust’. She also considers that her family is not to blame, but rather the greater machinations of social structures such as the church.
Instead of confronting her family members or actively challenging society, Lolly achieves a resolution and inner peace through introspective reflection.
This is a short book, but something about it really dug into my heart. I was moved by Lolly’s sense of relief after years and years of repression, and the strange sense of disconnect from the identity of a past-self.
Lolly reminded me what an incredible achievement it is to build your own agency in life, when you’re expected to obediently follow.
As Lolly says, ‘one doesn’t become a witch to run round being harmful. It’s to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others.’
Bravo.
4 out of 5 demonic black kittens.
If you liked Lolly Willowes you may also enjoy these books:
- My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
- In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt
More witches!
